"Neo Negima"

"Black Sakura"

By Sweet Heavens

Chapter 1: When The Last Petal Falls

Disclaimer: If I freaking owned Negima I would also have created Love Hina and if that were the case Mutsumi would have been with Keitaro. I may be a masochist but come on! At least Mutsumi was gorgeous!

Member of "Otaku Town"

XreviewX

The perfect blue of the endless ocean glistened like a field of diamonds. The sun kissed white sandy beach for all the people could see packed by the masses for the glorious weekend of frolicking planned. The mountains with the carpet of green pine trees with the beautiful background of Mt. Ojigadake made the Shibukawa beach resort a most breathtaking sight to take in a vacation.

It had everything for a guy such as himself. It had the soft sounds of rippling tides caressing the beach, the smell of fresh ramen from the shack across the way and the hyper attitudes of people his age wanting to just have fun. The electric atmosphere made getting excited about being on the beach easy and the will to do anything constructive like studying fade into the azure sky and orange sun that beat down generously its maize coloured rays down upon the land. He had the cool shade of the beach umbrella and the padded sun lounger for him to just wile away his day from those exams he was sure to have aced.

The teenagers cracked open a satisfied eye and admired the many women passing through in their bikinis or those soaking wet from playing in the water or…

Yeah life was fucking good right now. He should buy his godmother who was paying for all this with the old guys a nice present. The perfect marks for his exams should cover what the old men would want from all this. It was their idea to give the group this trip as an award after all.

"Negi-chan," a soft girl's voice asked innocently. It was her trademark after all.

Negi turned onto his side, wriggling his ass to straighten out his black trunks. He was facing a blue sports umbrella they had brought from home where lying on her side casually was his oldest friend Konoe Konoka. Now she was really totally innocent and naïve, like she had been in a coma since birth and only woke up yesterday not knowing anything but she had this tenacity to come off as the complete opposite by complete accident like fate loved being ironic.

Like now with one hand running through her shiny black hair, making her eyes when closed come off as coy and setting off what men called the come hither look. She had her other slender arm arched behind her back to accidently emphasise her white bikini clad body and her well toned hour glass figure. She may have lack certain assets that would get the school girl noticed instantly to anyone like his godmother (when she wore a bikini it was like she was wearing a siren and a marching band was following her from behind) but his best friend still made an alluring figure if the groups of lecherous men watching her were anything to go by.

Negi remembering his duties made a face and held back a snarl that sent the men packing. Well the killing intent kind of worked too and the flex of his six pack stomach he had been working on all year at the gym or training with his friends added the killing blow to their less than honourable intentions. The teenager had promised Setsuna, the ever watchful bodyguard on her break that he, the super mage (the mutt's words not his) would keep an eye out for her charge while the swordswoman had a turn in the ocean to play with his auntie.

"What is it Konoka-ojou-sama," Negi teased, winking at her when she scrunched her nose and her cheeks reddened. If you wanted one way to tease the nigh unflappable girl you used the suffix she hated most.

"Negi-chan," she retaliated well that was what she called him anyway with no hint of teasing. She just didn't get the message that using chan on someone who had killed a man was kind of demeaning. Not that she knew the red haired mage had ever killed a man of course. "Do you know where the others are?"

"Setsuna is playing with oba-chan," Negi pointed out, using his finger for Konoka to look out into the crowded shallow water of the ocean. His poor long distance vision could just make out his red haired aunt and her dark haired counterpart throwing a ball around with people hovering around still. That wouldn't last long if his aunt started noticing men were watching. Ever since she got dumped by her boyfriend last year she was very volatile to guys trying their luck. "And as for nee-chan, Gateau-oji-san, Takamichi and the old lady, I think they went drinking somewhere. Probably the bar back at the hotel."

"What about Kotaro-kun and Natsu-chan?" Konoka asked, opening a bottle of sun block and smearing it on her body that started to herd the weirdo population towards her location again.

Negi scratched his head. When was the last time he had seen the pair? It had been two days of the teen mage kicking back and relaxing with a cold drink, sunbathing and checking out the women whilst trying to build up the courage to ask one out. It was hard to remember with all the time spent plotting time to get on his lonesome to look around to remember where exactly the hound had last made an appearance. It was hard to flirt when your nee-chan every time she got within two hundred metres of you tried to pamper you like you was five years old or something.

"I guess maybe at the hotel?" Negi shrugged, wincing at the cold slender metallic gold choker around his neck chilling his collarbone. It was something his mother had given him as a small child even if he couldn't remember his time with his Otou-sama and Okaa-sama anymore or a time when he had taken it off. It was all he had left of them as far as he knew. The decorative inscription read something about a protective spell but he knew and had been told by Gateau-oji-san that it was only a symbolic defence with no actual magic in it. "This was a much a holiday for Natsu-chan after all that stuff with the lead in the play and trying to get that lazy dog to study for the exams."

The girl giggled like someone was playing a harp. The girl didn't even know she was making the sharks swarm around her again. Negi unleashed another blast of killing intent that sent shivers down the spines of any normal person and sent them scurrying back to the sea where they belonged.

"So it's just us then?" Konoka said, pouting. Although she tried to pout but it came off as usual rather innocently. He loved that side of his best friend and hoped she never changed.

"That a problem?" Negi japed, pulling out a pair of sunglasses from the top of his shaggy hair and slipping it on. He leaned back and relaxed. "At least I'm not trying to get you to cover up."

"I suppose," Konoka admitted, "Set-chan is way too conservative with her swimsuits. Why can't she be more like Asuna-chan?"

Negi on cue made a horrified groan like he had just seen something truly horrendous. "Oba-chan doesn't need to look sexy when I am around," Negi mumbled, closing his eyes again. He was going to try and get a little nap before going for a wander along the beach and hopefully he might find a girl who would let him hang out with her. And yeah the mutt would be cool staying where he is and not anywhere near any girls he tried to attract.

He had no idea how Natsu-chan put up with the horny hound dog. Natsu-chan was a strong woman who learned from the best in Yukihiro Ayaka, class president who seriously hated the dog boy for merely existing and sharing the same oxygen as Natsu-chan. It was anger that was kind of misdirected when the queen of class 3A should have been blaming Chizuru Naba, super hot girl of his class for introducing the normally shy girl to her chemistry class partner in the first place.

"She hates you calling her auntie," Konoka chided. The girl had to have finished up rubbing her sunscreen in since he heard her white lounger creak as she lay back to enjoy the shade.

"She is my auntie so I got the right to call her auntie," Negi retorted jokingly. "Calling my auntie by her first name?" Negi faked a shudder. "I didn't do it when we were five when she nagged me for six solid months about it and I sure ain't changing a habit of a lifetime anytime soon."

Negi breathed out deeply and rolled onto his opposite side into a relaxed foetal position. He took another deep breath in and just went still as a rock to feel the humidity on his tanning torso. He presumed Konoka was following suit as the little chatterbox said nothing more about anything for nearly an hour. As he relaxed his thoughts emptied like his training had taught him to and just being still was something he revelled in.

End of year exams was literally hell on earth and that was especially so for an honour student like him. The old men, the old lady godmother and the family plus friends expected him to be an instant success and on top of that he had to coordinate with the hound to be his private tutor so the dog boy actually scraped through with a pass. It had been so stressful Negi had almost started downing calming draughts spiked with pureed salamander tongues to stop him from exploding from the ambivalent stress and anxiety along with the anger of repeating himself a hundred times to a hound that treated algebra like it was written in Sanskrit.

The red haired mage finally had a chance to chill out and to alleviate the stress he had to undergo. He was not obsessed with studying par say. The teenaged mage worked hard with help from his natural talents in both magic and academics but it got to him at this point every year. The student was just like any other Japanese student under pressure.

"Hey babe," some guy drawled, "What is your name sweet thing?"

"Do people really still talk like that?" Negi thought. He was sure the two blasts of killing intent would keep that invisible boundary he desired for all men to keep to and it was starting to grate on his nerves that he had to exert more effort to repel the annoyances. The teen opened an eye irately and it was exactly the same scenario as usual.

Was he getting obsessed with this security job? Or was it just really that he was just annoyed raw killing intent was not holding back a bunch of wet behind the ear idiots with rich parents? His rising sense of exasperation was at the moment too charged right now for Negi to care.

But it was the same old story. Be it if they were in school, on the streets, Kyoto or even here in Tamano city all the way up in Okayama the typical jock with his crew of equally horny to the point of mental impairment buddies gravitated towards and tried poorly to chat up the Yamato Nadeshiko otherwise known as Konoe Konoka. He couldn't blame them either for noticing since she did have perfect alabaster skin she took time to take proper care of and was dainty as a flower making you sometimes want to sweep the frail looking damsel off her feet.

Negi shook his head to scold himself for going down this line of thought. Yes sadly to Negi's regret the teen had learned to appreciate the Konoe girl's beauty but she was his friend, a comrade, a little sister and the girl he had helped out of a tree when they were nine years old that she somehow climbed up thirty feet in a kimono just to go "rescue" a cat that had climbed down the moment the caring girl reached the top. It did not compute to see Konoka, the woman he still called ojou-sama to annoy her as anything more than a friend.

And besides he was very afraid of Sakurazaki Setsuna. The first time they had met Negi had instantly developed a short lived childish crush on the beautiful swordswoman but that was until he found out how introverted she was and what the girl did to people who looked like they would upset Konoka with her sword. The ice cream man sold up his store down the street a week later after the poor bastard was made to wet his pants.

Negi knew the routine to counterattack when Setsuna was not here with her sword to scare the masses of hormones away. The red head climbed to his feet lazily and already missed the comfy spot these tools had made him depart from. The mage allowed for time to pass for Konoka to try and politely rebuff the advances of the group of three, giving him the moral justification Setsuna, bless her heart for caring too much wouldn't give them before threatening them off or pulverising if Setsuna had any say in it before making a move.

The mage took in a deep cleansing breath and politely coughed. "Are you okay Konoka ojou-sama?" Negi asked in his best regal voice. The girl swirled round to scold him for calling him by that name but the guys trying to ask her to go to tea or some other cliché thing were also sizing him up. It only made him think even less of these brutes with the pea sized brains.

"So your name is Konoka?" one of the dudes, a surfer in green trunks and bleached blonde hair asked smugly.

"I think I just told you that," Negi interrupted. The best way to deal with the terminally horny was to punch them unconscious. For those who were not a regenerating hanyo plan B was to intimidate and glare at them in the most polite way possible. He thought the idea sucked too. "Are they bothering you?"

"What is it to you?" another bum, a probable university drop out much too old for a junior high school girl anyway, around two to three inches taller than Negi was with green tight trunks and a bad case of sun burn on his shoulders.

"The lady is with me guys," Negi growled. Konoka, sweetness incarnate nodded dutifully to his declaration. Negi was not sure if she could sense the tension in the air. The promise of violence clung like a bad odour over the beach. Observers like passing couples and kids playing on the beach were watching speculatively boarding gawking in some people interested in watching brawls and could most likely smell the musk of menace. "So go away." It was said with a voice that threatened pain if his request was denied.

"Or what?" the first guy, the leader of the gang it seemed since the others trying to pick up women were nodding in time with his bleached highness like a group of really bad mimes.

Negi smiled condescendingly, opened his mouth as if to say something that had the group on edge in anticipation of a quick retort until he shook his long fringe from his green eyes and stretched his left arm out with his right. Then for just a moment enjoying that they kept gaping at him like he was made of money that was so fast that most would have missed it if not peering intently his face shifted to one promising death that coincided with a concentrated blast of killing intent that would make veteran warriors wet their pants. The group to his pleasure at it finally working fell to their knees like their strings had been cut before Negi smiled again. The simple gesture had the men tripping over their feet and backing away with as much dignity as they could muster.

Third time's the charm or so they say anyway. In this case the charm made him feel all gooey inside that all his lessons with master in projecting his killing intent were not such a waste of time after all.

"Did you have to do that?" Konoka moaned, "Set-chan does that all the time wherever we go."

"Setsuna would have done a lot…" Negi felt nauseous all of a sudden as an energy spike in the air around him passed through his body and instantly the mage went on alert.

The sensation lasted for merely a moment; the shivering of his body unconsciously brought a recurring sense of nausea out of respect to the momentary gigantic explosive force of the power that shimmered all around him. He had to clear his eyes as his equilibrium failed him for an instant and his ears began ringing with the feeling of being in an airplane but what he didn't hear was what made him worry.

The world had become like the rippling tide only silent. The people moved like they were moving faster or slower in time than he was. Every breath each person took, every single step distorted their true image until it was unclear what they looked like. The land followed suit where the gentle wind touched. It was like the air itself was actually disrupting subspace.

Negi had been in a dimensional fold before but not one so close to the real world. This was neither the alien paradigm these holes in space and time were usually nor something disorientating or a place breaking the rules that normally governed the normal world and normally artistic license was taken when these kind of traps were sprung. Like the one his family had walked into on the pilgrimage to Ostia. The thousand master's journal had described it as being a vast void of white that had nothing or anything for miles around. His father had flown for hours perfectly vertically and saw no end in sight either until with the help of Albireo Imma they pulled down a wall of the field with their bare hands. His mother had spoken of the recreation room in the destroyed palace long ago that had been equally the same only instead it was a vast coastline with a constant warm sun bathing down on them twenty four seven.

This rupture was nothing more than a hole to place someone slightly out of alignment with the world around them. He took time to get used to it as his ears although not painful still rang but it was quieting by the second. The blurs were starting to stabilise when he almost had his bearings back to create washed out blurs with more familial details to prove they were actually the people who had been sharing the beach with them. Negi realised that he was not alone in this world.

A group of darkly clothed shinobi and kunoichi were standing around a trembling Konoka. They all wore identical baggy clothing in an attempt to remove any identifying features however vague like sex or height and some of what he observed was false. The red head could pick out subtle attempts at illusions that his magic with a mental command was filtering with no problem. At his count before he unleashed his full blazing aura in his first mind game with his enemy they had twenty people surrounding the terrified Konoka Konoe, three of them partially hidden in their comrades shadows each with their individual ninjato swords pointed at a vital point on her body.

If they had been allies he would have been impressed for their efficiency. Instead he was so enraged at being taken off guard so casually and his friend taken hostage so easily Negi just wanted to obliterate them all in one barrage. The only problem was Konoka. His childhood friend had never seen him do anything but spar with Kotaro half heartedly and Asuna wanted, no to a great extent wanted her best friend kept oblivious to Negi's lack of morality concerning killing.

It was not the Mundus Magicus way.

Negi pooled his magical power within him. Konoka tried to call out when the shinobi were distracted by the redistribution of his magical energy only for one of the ninja, a kunoichi he was sure slapped a piece of paper around her mouth and the girl went still like she had been frozen in a block of ice. The kanji on the paper dripped off the paper and travelled up to her eyes like worms borrowing through the earth. In a moment the young Konoe had slumped unconscious.

In an immediate surge of fury Negi's skin turned darker as black sludge like energy appeared to pour from the pores of his skin to surround his entire body. It travelled up right through his form submerging his entire torso in an instant, covering up his trunks and upon submerging him right up to his neck just below his chin it tightened until it was snug on his body. From within it hundreds of strands of this energy no thicker than a pencil lead shot out from every point on his body after his prey.

Two of the enemy, one of them the Kunoichi incapacitating his friend grabbed the Konoe girl and dashed out of the way. The others scattered to take advantage of their numbers and in synch they took star shaped shurikens from a concealed part of their bodies and threw them. Negi watched them get closer and listened for the right time by the swishing sound of the metal flying at him before he recalled the strands and reshaped them to make a shield to block them.

But in the brief moment he lost sight of a couple of them four of them that seemed to include the ninja who had tried to hide among their kin used the shundo technique to invade his personal space in the blink of an eye and slash their ninjatos at his unprotected neck. Negi was soon safe when the black energy enveloped his full head leaving eye holes and some for his other facial orifices. The ninjatos bounced off the protective magic with a clang and in a counterattack Negi's hands reshaped to make blades to stab only for him to remember Konoka would see the aftermath of his slaughter. The idea of traumatising her and his inner voice that reminded him of his oba-chan chiding him for trying to kill someone in front of innocent friends made him momentarily hesitate and waste time in reshaping them to make subtle knuckledusters to bludgeon two of them unconscious.

As the other two retreated to a safer distance Negi whispered a single word and two misshaped abominations, his marionettes conjured from his twisted imagination with thin rakish bodies like a chimpanzee with long cat like tails that contained spiky protrusions on the tips emerged. To complete the look they wore ancient Greek style white masks that only added extra credibility to their ghoulish look when they clambered out of his enemies' own shadows and pinned them to the floor. When the ninja tried to resist the slender tails were put up against their necks threateningly until they gave in at least for the moment.

In the moment between breaths a few questions rattled inside his mind. Who were these guys? They didn't move like Kotaro nor did they carry weaponry or equipment like any member of the lotus battalion the mutt described or even anything the Black Hand, the Shinmei ryu united shinobi forces liked to use. Their skills levels were not all that great either and their battle tactics so far... The less said about that the better. But the big questions stuck out more and the inconsistencies... Why didn't they leave with Konoka already? Wasn't the future heir of the Shinmei-ryu their objective? Or did they want…

The mystery and his contemplations were cut silent by the two ninja holding his charge that Setsuna would castrate him for failing to protect trying to force a powder covered in paper down her throat while she was asleep. Negi used the shundo with some risk to him, reappearing luckily right in front of his enemy with his armoured body rebuilding rapidly due to his concentration wavering to perform his speed technique. The black clad mage allowed his hands to reform into pincer like shapes that careered forward, stretching his arms unnaturally around their necks and then the claws changing form again to completely cover their faces. To finish and with some vindication the sorcerer smacked their heads together so hard it made him even wince.

"Are you alright?" Negi asked after peeling off the talisman and crushing it making the paper smoke before combusting into ash. His dark protective armour had melted through to burn his hand but the oily substance quickly regenerated. "Did you," he halted for a second as her eyes started fluttering before he concluded, "Did you swallow any of the powder?"

Konoka smacked her lips trying to taste any foreign substances in her mouth. "I don't think I swallowed any of it," Konoka moaned, rubbing her head, "But it was horrible. I felt okay one moment then I just…" Konoka stopped, her eyes rolled but the mage was able to send strands of his dark power to catch and hold her up. A singular thread stabbed the girl in the neck directly adjacent to the jugular vein and Negi used it to spike her with a burst of raw magical energy that woke her back up again. "Your shadow powers are amazing."

Negi was unable to accept her compliment due to the shinobi regrouping enough to destroy his minions and revive their unconscious comrades. They had broke off into two groups with ten of them charging forward with shundo techniques of their own while the last eight pulled out a talisman and started quietly chanting.

"Shield yourself!" Negi warned. He had enough already with these foes. They had kidnapped Konoka, knocked her out, had the gall to try to force some unknown and potentially harmful substance onto her and they were slinging talismans around.

There was no redemption for these people. If Konoka's skin was even slightly discoloured Setsuna would be grouchy with him for weeks.

From his feet a puddle of shadow energy spread out around him on the intangible sand. It enveloped the unconscious ninjas and made them seem as if they had never been there in the first place. It spread out for nearly fifty metres stopping at the water's edge and it gained a look identical to that of the ocean at night with its continuous rippling. It looked like an artist had painted a contrast of the day and night of the ocean cycle side by side.

The first shinobi attacking him landed in the sludge and was dragged under like he was standing in quick sand until the man vanished into the depths. Five more shared this destiny until the last of the attackers used their comrades as platforms to jump back and avoided suffering the same fate.

Just then the eight talisman users finished their talisman chants, making the talismans all glow and then spit out a purple crackling beam that resembled lightning between each talisman until they reached the centre that gathered around the central shinobi's talisman that shrunk to fit onto his palm that they discharged at him.

(Greek) "Kronos Telvos Magnia," Konoka chanted, holding her hands out where upon her ring finger on her right hand a delicate thin platinum band sat glittering, "A world blessed by eternal peace, forged by the hand of man. May this land of the pure, shield and protect thy invoker with its warm embrace. The shield of the pure ones!" Around her body a silvery colour emitted off her entire body like steam. This steam spread out like an eerie fog until upon reaching five feet in front of her solidified into a cubic shield that completely surrounded her.

With that cue Negi disappeared into the pool of darkness he created, returning at the edge of its perimeter where the talisman users and their quick witted friends were standing. He caught the tail end of that strange lightning ricocheting off Konoka's nigh impregnable barrier.

Negi created some marionettes with his own pool of shadows, large beings with ape like arms and powerful clawed feet with white hockey like masks strapped to their faces tightly and ordered them to rush his unprepared foes while he snuck in some mono molecular thin threads in their millions. The difficulty curve of the latter technique while maintaining the marionettes was extreme enough that it made his raven coloured armour expose his skin in several sections while he sent them at his foes vibrating at incredible speeds.

An instant splash of crimson answered his assault. His marionettes had crushed all four of the surviving ninjato users by forming longer limbs and going on all fours to pin two of them beneath their powerful forelimbs and their tails, thin like a rat's and with needle fine bladed on the tips they had stabbed into their torsos. The wires only met smoke as the rest used a ninpo technique to make bunshin or copies to conceal their ascent to the air.

Four of the darkly dressed enemy landed at exactly the same time and threw shurikens. As Negi vanished again into the darkness the people in the sky had landed on the shoulders of their comrades, drawn some new talismans and started chanting. The red head decided to remain dematerialised and only made the currents of the shadow ocean rougher to hide his head, the only part of his body visible in the darkness to wait and see what happened.

The talisman users emitted an enormous amount of chi from their bodies, their entire bodies glowed a bright white indicating a great deal of training in manipulating chi and honing it within their bodies. Each moment he stayed hidden proved an educational experience in who these people could belong to and he wasn't worried about the shielded Konoka.

She had stayed in the same position she had been in when she cast the spell. It was its only flaw. It didn't stop her from chanting an Onmyoujutsu, ethereal prayer beads were crackling around her hands and forearms without marring her pale flesh. The heir to the Konoe house had her eyes closed and a magical circle was glowing underneath her as she made her prayer to invoke divination spells as well as attempts to communicate with the outside.

Konoe Konoka was doing her job perfectly.

The conclusion of that mighty blast produced nothing but a loud pitched sound that made his shadows rescind towards his position towards the core of the sea of darkness. His own ears were ringing once again until he plugged them with more clumps of shadow and Konoka's shield had to be reinforced to block out high pitched sounds when she made the command, causing the shield to change shape to a pyramid and burn bright yellow.

Negi took that moment to finish them all off while the reinforcement to Konoka's barrier was still active. Anytime now his family were going to be breaking through the paper thin walls between realities and he didn't want Nekane or Asuna getting hurt. He didn't need to worry about Konoka but it looked like she was starting to worry about him and her diverted attention might cause her shield to waver and quite frankly he was disappointed in himself that he had taken so long to win this battle. The sea of shadow was too slow and he should have gone like his shishou and hit them directly.

Now this technique Negi was about to use. His master had warned him as it took a great cost to your energy to use. It needed time to form and just in general was something frowned upon by the shadow users who knew how easily their art consumed their inner power in one sitting when their long ranged repertoire was restricted to threads or wires with limited distance. Anything like firing cannonballs took the right conditions not to exhaust you after five or six shots.

The school child emerged from his remaining shadow, shivering at how hard it was to maintain keeping all those captured within his spiritual focus and spread it another ten feet around him. Then with an exaggerated waving motion of his arms a gigantic snake shaped ball of black energy emerged and took position in front of him in mid air. He fed more and more of the energy in small fine threads from his fingers, coaxing its erratic shape like a bubble about to burst to both feed its insatiable demand for power and keep it from blowing him up before it was ready. The mental concentration was taxing, the energy he could dully feel reverberating through his being was off the scale. He could barely manage to retain the protection around the critical points of his body and the sorcerer was forced to give up some of the points to the silent enemy no doubt planning an attack.

Negi knew one thing would happen after all this was over. He was never using this again in a hurry.

The tunnel vision kept him unaware of what was going around him. There were some defences in place like an automated system of defence that he had given free will to defend him but that still needed regulation so the power requirements or rather its limited supply meant its effectiveness was unreliable.

The shinobi force stupidly instead of launching a direct attack tried another barrage of shuriken that his defence took care of with ease. One even tried to attack the defence instead of going right through it and it would have been easy to use their impressive speed not that it mattered at this point. He was only adding more fuel to the fire now. If they cut his concentration at worst he might miss a couple of them.

The first dig at his ribs from a sword edge broke the flow of thought needed to contain the sphere. Negi happily released his hold over the ball and in a moment his vision went black and he felt himself being swept away by the current.

He floated helplessly around the endless darkness and occasionally banging into either one of the newly caught talisman users or the unconscious bodies he had already removed from the field of play. All Negi did was close his eyes and wait for the tiny dimensional space he had conjured and compressed to within two ninths of its true diameter to rush out to its full size, possibly overlapping and destroying the existing dimension in a sheer clash of spiritual forces.

These shinobi seemed to know a hell of a lot about his powers. The very fact they trapped Konoka and him here spoke of their knowledge and intelligence gathering. Konoka Konoe he could understand but his fighting had been reduced to patrols around Mahora on the weekend or sparring with Kotaro in the multi environmental resort his godmother allowed him to use as long as he left her a text message. Any big time fighting had been in Mundus Magicus and all his training had been done in secret in the dead of night as was the way of the shadow masters of the old world to stop rivals stealing their moves.

All that didn't matter for the moment. The thick miasma laced environment was finally starting to break down. The energy of the void had been entirely consumed from expanding too rapidly and already the walls of existence were breaking down to leave only oily residue that was impossible to reform into useful power for him to employ. Scholars claimed dark matter was the residue of a falling dimensional barricade, like flaws in space and time just like this.

Negi opened his eyes to see he was back in the trap world his foes had made and Konoka was still safe and sound. Her shield had changed shape again to allow her ethereal praying beads to connect to it and allow her to purify with a white hissing any of the waste matter of a dead universe. It was a true show of her amazing potential, the power that made people claim her family lineage were descended from the gods like his own.

"Are you alright Konoka?" Negi asked, realising how tired he was as it came out like a whisper that echoed across the space that was flickering like a dying light bulb in sections. His lucky day as it had suffered cohesion loss in the little rumble with the dimension growing within it. His shadow was almost gone except for the strands around his wrist and he was shivering as the usually warm aura he exuded had waned to tell him the shinobi had tried to make him uncomfortable by lowering the temperature inside the world.

"I'mfine," Konoka said, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I couldn't see you when you did whatever you did. All I saw was darkness and I just kept up my shield and stayed still while it swirled all around me and…" Negi's eyes failed to hide the incredulity they expressed. She had managed to stay stationary in a forming universe? Even for a small dimensional rift what had been inside was a spark compared to the real big bang that brought the universe into being but still she had managed to defy it with only magic… "I couldn't see you or sense you and all the diagnostic spells went haywire and my divination kept screaming about the end of the world and…"

Negi took the time to look around the world some more. The shimmers had become more full bodied and however quiet the sounds of the real universe were definitely there when he controlled his breathing. The two worlds were starting to sense the existence of the other and if it had been improbable before to enter from the outside to someone of his godmother's skill the job would have been expedited exponentially.

"It seems all our enemies were swept into the collapsing vortex of a dying universe," Negi explained, seeing nothing all around him but Konoka and herself. He was too drained to waste magical energy on sensing, a skill he was especially skilled in to look for more opposition. If anyone had escaped they would have reacted instantly to his weakened state and the magnitude of his magical manifestation immediately to stop him trying it again. "We just need to wait for pickup," he added, feeling faint. The rush of his power surging back into his being, recharging automatically was like drinking a bottle of vodka in one go. His legs gave way and he hit the ground, wincing from the third degree burn on his hand from earlier when he used it to slow his fall.

"Negi-chan!" Konoka cried, breaking her shield forcefully and running over to him. She knelt down on bent knees and with both hands wrapped around his waist in a comforting hug. Negi leaned back into her embrace, smelt her scent he had been used to since they were children. Her magic was by nature warm and protective just as her magical mastery leaned towards. "Are you alright?"

Negi offered his cauterised wound; the talisman that had burned it was so hot Negi had suffered minimal bleeding by peeling back his shadow to his wrist. Konoka began to fuss and already a soft glow was enveloping her left hand while her right formed what appeared to be a long strip of kanji covered medical tape that upon a command in ancient Japanese became animated and started wrapping his hand tightly.

"You have gotten better with those Shikigami," Negi said grinning. "I remember you used to cry when your origami birds wouldn't take flight."

Konoka adopted a cross look but it did not reach her eyes. Instead she tugged his wrist a bit harder than her usual delicate touch and checked to see if the pressure the paper made was sufficient.

"You were always such a show off with all those tripwires you tried to trip up Gateau-san with. But Negi…" She held her breath only when she was reluctant to ask any questions. "Can those people come back?"

Negi considered lying about the fact they were obliterated into the ether but he realised she needed to know about his willingness to kill. They had held it back from the fragile princess, both his oba-chan and himself for too long. They had been in a war for god sake for the freedom of an entire nation that if circumstances were a bit different he would be second in line for the throne.

"There won't be an atom of them left Konoka," Negi said to her straight, feeling a single crystalline tear drip onto his bare shoulder. The girl had the purest heart of anyone Negi knew. "I created a new dimension for a minute then collapsed it so they were sucked in. I made sure that you and I weren't hurt but the others... they're sucked into oblivion and there will be nothing left of them now or ever." Negi had deliberately pulled no punches.

The silence that followed made more noise than the entire skirmish before. Negi held her hand and watched on a silent vigil feeling the usually serene person shake as she silently with only a few hiccups to hide the tears that continued like a light rainstorm down his shoulder. Each drop tore a new hole in his soul as his best friend learned of what her best friend was capable of.

It was much to his shame but he considered again who and what the enemy had for a motive for all this. Konoka had not been the target. That left only him and that made no sense. The only shinobi he knew was the exile Inugami Kotaro who had taken the chance at a new life away from the lotus battalion. Could it be one of the tiny clans who hadn't joined the Shinmei ryu during the Meiji restoration? Say groups like the Koga clan who were nothing but splinter families slowly forgetting the skills their ancestors had honed for centuries. But who would hire anyone to capture a worthless exiled prince? Of a dead kingdom no less?

All he was sure of was now he would never know why they were here. Nobody was left standing. He would have to wait out the priestess's tears or be greeted by his family and need to explain why she was crying.

It didn't matter now. Vacation was ruined and the red head would be on the first flight home to be debriefed and then yelled at by his irate aunt the first moment they would get alone. Oh joy!

"Negi-chan?" Konoka whimpered finally, snorting her nose cutely. She hugged his back with her face and then rested her head on her shoulder. The quiet sniffles reverberated like bells in a belfry in his ears. It ate some more into his guilt. "You and Asuna-chan used to travel around in a war party with your kaa-san and tou-san. Is that where you…"

"Not here," Negi asked curtly, "Wait till oba-chan and the old people get us out of here. You can ask them together when we are all safe and sound."

"I can," she sniffled, "Live with that Negi-chan."

"Good girl ojou-sama," he joked weakly, patting her head. "Give me some help while I sense for cracks in the dimensional space. Maybe we can help them out."

She struggled but the girl managed to chant the Japanese phrase and draw the symbols required with her fingers that upon completion phased into being on her wrist. A line of magical energy travelled between the two marks and he felt the brief infusion of power and the control that made the rushing powers inside Negi's body stabilise under her direction.

Once his inner self was sated and the connection was broken to stop him confusing her energy as part of the readings he wanted to look out for Negi closed his eyes and reached out with his senses. Everything and anything with a power signature informed him of its presence from everywhere for nearly a hundred metres. He sensed the crackling of tiny micro fractures invisible to the naked eye but too small for his powers in their current state to force open. The walls hiding this world from the real world overlapping it were thinning and had a limited lifespan before nature took its course and they would be freed anyway.

But above him to his dread suddenly Negi felt a bio signature above him. The being existed in both worlds and an exit was there just above it, a small hole that had been forced open. The mage bit back his urge to say "Bingo" when he saw freedom and a way out and stupidly stared up vacantly right at the Holy Grail in question.

A black thing that moved at super high speed shot down like a bullet right at him and being so blindsided Negi's subconscious only had enough time to push a startled Konoka out of harm's way before a horrible pain wracked through his body. The blood shower was horrible; the agonising wound in his shoulder made him savagely bite his lip and the woman holding him down was just the icing on the cake.

"Negi-chan!" screamed Konoka so loudly Negi was sure the hole in the sky would have let echo out for all to hear. "Oh god," she tried to crawl forward but a burst of killing intent so vile it made Negi want to vomit made the girl step back and leave a trail of urine.

The doe like expression on her face let the beast known as rage growl like the very lord of the dead himself seem like a whimper. His two shadow protected hands made piano wire like strands that took hold of the woman and flung her with the power of a bulldozer fitted with a race car engine hundreds of feet across the dimension.

The kunoichi landed gracefully after scraping her feet across the floor like skates to gain some traction that caused her open long blonde locks to flutter around her and drew am elegant katana, the first deviations from the norm suggesting who the leader of this team had been. The woman covered her masked face with some kind of origami wing she must have used to escape his earlier attack from her hidden position and a kodachi blade in the winged hand.

"Come on then," Negi shouted, no demanded authoritatively at the top of his lungs. The red head in a display of stubborn male pride yanked out the embedded ninjato spilling blood it had been holding back like a flood. With a snarl a strand of the shadow around his wrist writhed up his arm like a coiled spring and expanded to serve as a makeshift field dressing. Negi grabbed the bladed weapon into one hand biting back the yelp leaving his cracked tooth as the only casualty of his resistance from the pain and threw it back at the hesitant woman. "What is keeping you?" His killing intent with a concentrated effort was honed and channelled with maximum intensity right at her and the kunoichi stood her ground easily.

He counted between pulses of blood in his arm. In time he blinked with each ache of his moaning arm wrapping the various strands into two singular whips and cracked them like a professional bull fighter. The kunoichi dodged effortlessly, throwing thin shurikens from her ankles that were stopped in their tracks by the almost living shadows that devoured them before they could reach their target. The powerful kunoichi slashed and tore her way through the shadows but each time she was forced to retreat or risk being captured.

Like a game of cat and mouse this continued for a time. Negi knew he was being probed, tested for weaknesses and her game plan was to tire him out and the worst thing was Negi knew he had no hope in hell in beating her in this war of attrition. Negi had to change tactics again. The straight forward kill until they fall only worked when you were in the peak of your strength.

The red head stopped his attack, wrapped the shadow whips to make a springy bowl shaped shield and used the shundo to dive into it. He submerged into its depths and mentally commanded it to mould around his skin. Just as it retook its position in its defensive form he felt one of the blades strike his side and again another in his knee. Negi struck and god was with him as the shadows wrapped around the weapons and yanked them out of her hands.

Negi righted himself and brought the weapons to each of his hands. The woman was stationary seemingly nonplussed about having both of her weapons taken away with trickery. She just stayed in stance plotting her next move.

"Negi-chan," Konoka whispered loudly, "You…" She was hiccupping from fear. Those not used to killing intent usually were overwhelmed for a long time until they brought their emotions under control or learned to lean into it. His training adopted the former.

The woman made a swift movement reaching into her uniform and Negi tensed, solidifying his armour to be ready for action. What the blonde girl did surprised him. She took out a crisp like new talisman with very neat calligraphy and placed it on her forehead. The woman then rather dramatically which was out of character for a trained kunoichi taught to use as little wasted movements as possible it into the air without any kind of preparation and stepped back.

The flow of power was gigantic when that strip of paper combusted instantly with a fierce scarlet fire so powerful that the mage had felt it through his armour. The fire took form first with nine like tails of golden yellow flame. Then the fire formed a body in the shape of a lithe female body blessed with generous curves and assets. Next from each of the original nine fires like will of the wisps came a white hot fire that created a beautiful if a little tattered flower patterned kimono. The last features produced a feminine Japanese face, porcelain skin that rivalled Konoka in all ways in its perfection, a regal arched jaw line and a mess of primly brushed golden locks that ran down her body until they met the original flames that too turned into golden furred tails.

"A demon," Negi breathed. Her black slatted eyes sang of an unworldly abomination of epic power. Her mere presence made his heart skip a beat, his soul shiver in terror and behind him Konoka had started to hyperventilate. Only the old ones, beings of unquestionable power could simply cause a person to react this way without resorting to killing intent.

He didn't get a chance to admire her for very long. Her nine tails of power whipped around her like a hurricane and immediately the temperature skyrocketed high enough for him to struggle to breathe. His shadow armour could not regulate his body temperature and before he understood that it was a warning to something even more dangerous the nine tails created a force of power unlike any Negi had detected before.

Negi didn't understand what parts of his body said defend but it had to have but it did not matter what it did. It had not been enough. His entire body screamed out like a chorus of tortured prisoners. Every single nerve that existed all registered their existence and his lungs; the very air they breathed was like being branded with a branding iron every time he dared take breath.

But its presence jostled him to open his eyes. Surprisingly he was wrapped in the remnants of the ultimate defensive spell of the shadow arts commonly known as a spiral shield or for layman terms a twisted inversion of the space time continuum usually conjured up first with a catalyst from an existing technique like his shadow armour. But the shield had failed to perform its function. His shoulders were red raw, his knees and upper legs were smoking from the horrific burns they had endured.

Negi was more surprised that he wasn't in more pain than he actually felt.

"I'm still alive," he said incredulously. The demon woman stared down at him with those expressionless eyes and those pointed ears that were well hidden within her golden locks. Her staring made no sense. Why not employ just another blast of whatever the hell she just did to him? What was she…? Wait? Negi looked around and could not see the kunoichi that had attacked him.

"Watch out!" Konoka screamed.

The warning came too late. The tell tale rush of someone using the famed shukuchi technique the mutt had used so much in sparring to get to the opposite side of wherever she had been to face him now directly originally left his dulled reflexes no time to react. Negi could only watch his final moments until a black blur creating the displaced air of a perfectly performed shukuchi saved the day and the fatalistic slapping sound of metal entering flesh echoed through the dimension.

Reality slowed to a crawl. Time flowed back to the snail pace that only appeared to affect the heavy body that leaned into his torso. Negi winced at the sharp sting of an edge cutting shallowly into his side and the fountain of red hacked onto his cheek and torso that came acted out a grotesque dance. The waltz of death done by his best friend in the world Inugami Kotaro made his adrenaline overdosed heart start beating like a war drum.

Kotaro stared up at him with a glazed look. His ears and tail were convulsing as if he was being electrocuted and his breathing was erratic. Kotaro's mouth dribbled blood and his clawed hands tightly held back the spray from the katana stabbed right through his stomach.

"Hey," Kotaro gasped as his form started becoming hairier with black fur by the moment. His naked toned torso started shape shifting as his hanyo side started to take over to heal his weakened body sending bristling pain from the fine hair on his burned body. "Sorry I was late."

"Kotaro-kun?" Konoka whimpered from behind him. The Inugami hanyo clenched hard into Negi's shoulder piercing the already charbroiled flesh by accident from the pain. The scent of blood, the mage's to be specific but Kotaro managed to suppress his natural instincts to look over his taller friend's shoulder over for Kotaro to be able to smile weakly at the priestess. While dog boy tried poorly to lie to the priestess Negi could feel the bloody sword wound pulse with fresh blood escaping his futile attempt to contain it by holding Kotaro closer to his own body.

"Kotaro!" Konoka screamed. Negi hadn't seen what happened but rather heard the wracking cough and the felt the stream of blood falling down his bare back and again it felt like acid on his injured form.

While this all occurred the demon just stood there elegantly staring hard at the situation. The kunoichi was missing once more but the interfering surges of chi from Kotaro from resisting the full transformation interfered with any chance of sensing him with his dulled pain receptors playing up as well.

"Let me go," Kotaro wheezed in the wizard's ear. "I shouldn't have just dived into the action and get this fucked up." He coughed again and slumped even further downwards. Konoka screamed and the kunoichi was still not visible. The woman demon had her nine blonde tails dancing like the sun behind her body all nonchalant.

His dead emotion regarding his healing friend was replaced by a seething anger. He without thinking expelled a suffocating amount of killing intent so potent the demon took a step back. The kunoichi reappeared beside her summoned companion with her hand shielding her face.

"I'm scared!" Konoka screeched. The petrified girl was like a temple gong when she crumpled to the ground. The injured hanyo pushed back from his friend with his eyes rolled behind his head. Negi took his green eyes off his target for just a second to watch the descent of his friend and the last thing Negi would recall as whom he truly was would be to his later guilt a surge of annoyance that Kotaro had grabbed the choker, his only memory of his mother around his neck to stop himself falling to the ground.

When that hunk of gold snapped off for the first time since his mother had presented it to him as a toddler the teenager known as Springfield Entheofushia Anarchia Negi ceased to be.

The stigma of the king had taken his place.

XreviewX

A/N End of chapter but you will find out the conclusion of this battle next chapter.