Akamatsu Ken and Kodansha created and own Mahou Sensei Negima! despite consistently showing they have no fucking idea what to do with it.

Not that I'm much better, but still.

Further Side Conquests of an Accidental Stud Monkey.

The Unequal Unfairness of It All.

Based, once again, on a storyline by Darkenning.

Prelude.

"There is something I would like to ask you," Akemi Homura said coldly. She might have been well aware she was starting the conversation in what had to be one of the worst possible ways. Or she might have not. No one ever said social skills were her strong point. Either way, she would have been unlikely to care whether she was or not.

"Then ask," Skuld Jottunsdottir sighed, with a quietly jaded air of resignation. By now she was beyond wondering why it seemed these conversations always seemed to start the same way.

For a moment, Akemi Homura silently pondered the black haired girl sitting across her and the curiously expectant Kaname Madoka, at the lunch table of the Kaname-Akemi residence. Her face was nearly featureless except for those large, deep purple eyes that bore coldly into Skuld, and Skuld thought it almost looked like Homura-san's mouth had disappeared altogether for the moment. Never a good sign, that. All the same, since Homura-san still wasn't talking after a few moments of that, Skuld felt like tempting fate and asking for some ice cream. If she was going to go, she might as well go on a full stomach.

"Um, Homura-chan," the pink haired woman said, preventing Skuld's incoming and potentially disastrous faux pas. "Do you want me to ask her myself, since you—"

"I'm just considering the best way to ask this, Madoka," Homura said quietly, with a softness that was a far cry from the tone she had used with Skuld only a few moments ago. It was not any more cheerful regardless.

Madoka nodded. "I see. That's a very commendable thing to do, especially when we are dealing with someone of Skuld-chan's stature, but remember, you had plenty of time to ponder that before she arrived. And I know you spent most of that time pacing around and sulking, but I was under the impression you had come to a conclusion on the matter by the time she came."

"If I have such a high stature, why do I get the '-chan' suffix?" Skuld wondered aloud.

The faintest shade of pink appeared on Homura's pale cheeks before the dark haired woman addressed Skuld again. "What are your intentions regarding Makie-chan's Pactio?"

Despite herself, Skuld blinked. She had been expecting for a 'What are your intentions regarding Makie-chan?', but hardly this. Briefly, she turned wary, suspicious eyes to Kaname-san, but she found nothing there but a bland, generic sweet smile of encouragement, and the Norn couldn't help but sigh in exasperation.

"I can't say I intend to ever turn it into a Permanent Alliance, if that's what you're asking," she said. "I'm sorry, but it's hardly advisable for gods and mortals to establish that kind of lifelong links. Since, well, you know, our lives…" She extended her arms open as much as she could, then added, "… your lives." Saying this, she folded her arms, then raised a hand, and showed a tiny gap between her thumb and the pointer finger.

Then Skuld patiently waited for the women's reaction. Surely they would take it well, since she had made sure of explaining it in terms that were as plain and unscientific as possible, even if explaining herself that way downright repulsed her.

Even so, to Skuld's puzzlement, Homura quietly but visibly bristled for a fleeting moment, before calming back down and abruptly asking, "Then why contract with her in the first place?"

"It wasn't my idea, I only had come for a Provisional Alliance with someone else," Skuld protested. "Makie, who was under pressure from unrelated factors and afraid for her life at the time, thought imitating what she had just seen transpiring between that person and me was the best course of action."

"So she kissed you, you didn't kiss her," Madoka piped in before Homura could speak.

Skuld groaned, annoyed. "Yeah, pretty much, you got it."

Madoka sighed in relief. "Good to see she didn't take after Homura-chan, then."

"Hey," Homura-san monotoned before talking to Skuld once more. "Why was she afraid for her life, then, and what were those 'unrelated factors' you talk about?"

"She and her classmates were under attack from a demon horde during their Kyoto field trip, of course," Skuld muttered. "What, didn't she tell you that much?"

"I knew they should've gone to Hawaii," Homura droned. "Didn't I tell you, Madoka?"

"Yes, you told me, Homura-chan," her wife saintly nodded. "Repeatedly, as a matter of fact."

"Exactly. And yet, despite your claim that was against your will, you haven't seen fit to cancel that Alliance between the two of you yet," Homura accused Skuld. "Even though you are two-timing on Makie-chan by also being partners with that other girl."

"A boy, actually," Skuld corrected.

"A boy," Homura agreed. "A boy!"

"Being bisexual is no sin either," Madoka pointed out.

"I'm not bisexual!" Skuld shrieked.

"Don't get me wrong, Skuld-san," Homura said, "All things considered, I feel better about your being partners with Makie-chan than I'd feel if Negi-sensei were her Magister Magi. And if you were to devote yourself exclusively to her, I would have no problems giving your relationship a test period. But, this… I don't think I can accept this."

"We aren't in a romance with each other," Skuld growled.

"So! You are toying with Makie-chan's feelings! And you admit it freely!" Homura said as a scary black aura began surrounding her, a haunting faint music flowing from behind.

"She's always been well aware of that!" Skuld kept on protesting.

"Then you're making her suffer even worse, by leading her off through the torture of an unrequited love!" Homura replied, strands of her hair beginning to stand up as if to become the extensions of a monstrous dark figure.

"Kaname-san!" Skuld moaned.

Madoka sighed, raised a hand, and firmly slapped the back of Homura's head, who quickly went back to what passed for normal in her, wincing. "Homura-chan! Enough of that already!"

"Thank you," Skuld nodded. "Now, regarding the nature of my relationship with Makie-san, you can rest assured it is merely, we could say, professional."

It was Madoka's turn to glare over the table, even if nowhere as coldly as Homura. "Now, now, Skuld-chan. I love Makie dearly, and I'll be the first one to say she's much smarter than she lets on, but if there's one word that doesn't define her, that's 'professional'."

"What if you're talking about gymnastics?" Homura questioned, still rubbing the back of her own head.

Madoka primly wagged a finger. "The most devoted of amateurs is still an amateur! I'll say otherwise when her hobby starts bringing in money!"

Skuld looked back and forth between them, frowning, before saying cautiously, "What I meant was, we've reached an agreement where our contract stands, because, besides the fact that it is extremely difficult to break a contract with Heaven to begin with, we have a common interest in a certain endeavor."

"What kind of endeavor?" Makie's mothers asked at the same time.

And Skuld sighed again. "Well, if you really need to know…"

Negi Springfield sat on a bench under a massive cherry tree, ignoring Itoshiki Nozomu's quiet presence literally hanging above him.

Inugami Kotaro, who sat by Negi's side thoughtfully munching on a handful of still steaming meat bun ('cause real men didn't wait for the cooldown, of course, that was for sissies and girls), kept on looking, back and forth, at the child teacher and then at the older, lanky teacher who had hung himself on the tree's upper branches. Finally, the wolf boy sighed and shook his head in disgust.

"I can't decide which one of you is the saddest. Wait, I think I can. Suicide can be honorable at least under some circumstances. Weeping over a full schedule never is," Kotaro observed.

"I'm, I'm not weeping!" Negi said, turning his haunted eyes to Kotaro as his hands still held the Mahorafest schedule notebook, open on a page that showed multiple annotations and tiny cute doodles of girls' heads drawn all over the three days of the event. "I'm just baffled as to how this could come to happen!"

"Well," Kotaro said, "it might have something to do with your refusal to say 'no' whenever a girl came to you asking for you to spend time with them."

"How could I?!" Negi protested. "They're my students! I can't possibly deny them any guidance! I could stunt, stall, or even delay their academic and emotional development! What kind of teacher would I be then?!"

"A normal one?" Kotaro questioned.

"That's not funny!" Negi replied. "God, I hope you never get to be a teacher!" he shook his head in absolute dismay. "You'd be terrible at it!"

Kotaro shrugged after swallowing another mouthful. "I don't think you have to worry about that. Anyway, as long as you don't try to squirm outta our fight, I don't care one way or another. Just commenting."

Negi glanced sideways at him. "What do you mean with 'our fight'? It's not like we're going to be the two only people in that tournament, what makes you so sure we'll be facing each other?"

Kotaro snorted at him. "What, are you telling me we ain't gonna be the two last men standing in the finals?"

"I highly doubt that, by the mere virtue of Saotome-san's father coming along," Itoshiki observed from above. "Not to mention Takamichi might-"

"Isn't your neck too tight for you to speak?!" Kotaro barked up at him.

"- and that's even without going on how Ku Fei-san mustn't have taught Negi-sensei all she knows yet, and Nagase-san surely-"

"I repeat, isn't your neck too tight for you to speak?!" Kotaro said, reaching up to grab one of Itoshiki's ankles and tugging down on his foot.

Negi frowned, then slapped Kotaro's hand off his colleague's foot. He shook his head disapprovingly at the other boy, who pouted petulantly at him.

"What, would you prefer duking it out right now?" Kotaro challenged. "All the better for me! I'm sure anyone else in that tournament could give me a better fight anyway!"

"By now you should know me well enough, Kotaro-kun," Negi coldly said, standing up and taking his jacket off. "If you think I'd ever fall for such shameless baiting, then you can't truly call yourself my rival, as is clearly your intent."

Kotaro sneered as he downed his last meat bun and stood up as well, rolling his sleeves up. "Don't get me wrong, I'm still young and believe in starting small. I'm just using you as a warmup rival while I move up the ladder."

"Don't fight, don't fight," Itoshiki weakly pleaded, but his words passed right over their heads in more than one sense. "Why don't you focus your great power on destroying me instead? It'd do a lot for your budding friendship, and, believe me, for me as well."

"Well, I suppose that, since you're a Mahora student as well now, it falls on any available teacher to discipline you as soon as you step over the proper lines, Kotaro-kun," Negi reasoned while assuming a fighting stance. "I'd fail in my job if I neglected that."

Kotaro chuckled, smashing his knuckles together. "Just don't expect me to moan 'Please teach me, Negi-sensei'! I'm not one those-"

Then a body was violently flung through the air directly onto his back, making him stumble ahead and land on the sidewalk facefirst, greatly startling Negi. "Chao-san!" the boy teacher gasped. "Are you, are you okay?!" he rushed to her side, helping the Chinese girl up even as she already chuckled apologetically, the hand that wasn't holding Negi's rubbing the back of her neck instead.

"- girls who keep getting in our way," Kotaro muttered darkly from the floor, while being completely ignored by Negi and Chao Lingshen, who now stood facing each other, the Welsh boy looking visibly troubled and confused. "I'm fine, by the way, thanks for asking."

"Ah, yes, I am, Negi-bouzou," the black haired girl said, nodding clumsily as smiling in pretty much the same way. "Sorry about that, and, oh, to you too, Inugami-kun, right? Ah, you're here as well, Zetsubou-sensei, how do you do? Looking fine today!"

"Thank you," the adult said without looking down. "Since you're here, Chao-san, could you tie something heavy to my feet? These unruly boys would prefer to fight each other instead."

"Oh, sorry, can't do!" Chao gasped, as if suddenly remembering something very important. She quickly grabbed Negi's hands very tightly, making him blush with cheek stickers identical to her own, while Kotaro stood back up, muttering to himself and eyeing her suspiciously. "You must help me, Negi-bouzou! I'm being pursued by some very strange and threatening people!"

"I don't agree with that!" Homura protested.

"And I can't say that's a surprise," Skuld said nonchalantly.

Homura stared at her, in that way of hers that was at once chillingly icy and heatedly dreadsome. "Look. I can't say I really care whether that friend, or ally, of yours, succeed at that insane plan or not. But I refuse to let you drag Makie into it. We both do! Don't we, Madoka?"

"Well..."

"Madoka!"

"Well," her pink haired spouse repeated, then continued, "I don't like it any better than you, but by now, maybe we should be letting her make her own world changing decisions? We did when we were her age."

Homura gave her an aghast look before shaking her head in shaken dismay. "I just can't believe this."

Madoka pouted. "Homura-chan! We never even thought of involving our parents! At least Makie-chan's been honest enough to pull us into her secrets! Don't you think that earns her a little credit?"

"Well, I hated my parents anyway," Homura mumbled to herself, looking rather childlike for a moment as she folded her arms and looked away.

"Just look at it this way," Skuld pointed out, "If every girl in the world knew the truth about magic, then they wouldn't be as likely to fall for Incubators, would they? Not when there are other, safer ways to learn how to perform magic. Maybe we even could make public service announcements concerning Incubators! Oh, a few will still be stupid enough as to fall for it, no offense intended, but you can't really do anything for those kind of people, can you?"

Again, Homura glared at her. "Didn't your people create the Incubators to begin with?"

"That's classified information," Skuld merely shrugged. "I'm only authorized to say, if we had done that, it would have happened long before I took office, and I wouldn't necessarily agree with the concept in the first place."

Then she pulled her laptop on the table, turned it around so its screen faced both women, and said with a wide smile, "I've developed a much better and more efficient long term project to deal with the Entropy matter anyway! Do you have a couple hours? I promise it's completely enthralling! And there'll be lots of highly engaging graphics and statistics!"

Homura calmly reached over, then pushed the laptop closed. "We aren't interested in hearing about anything but Makie."

Madoka nodded. "Fuck Entropy."

Skuld blinked. "Wow. The Precision F Strike. So you are serious. Ahem. Well. Look, Makie already made her mind on the subject, don't you think you owe her some respect for her decisions, after keeping the secrets about her origin from her for so long? I mean, if you really wanted to keep her away from magic so much, you shouldn't have enrolled her in Mahora, and in class A of all places, in the first place, right?"

"Right, because nothing strange and horrible ever happens at CLAMP Gakuen, or Ohtori, or God in Heaven, Honnouji." Homura faintly shook her head.

Madoka, in contrast, nodded. "Better the devil you know than the one you don't. Speaking of which, Homura-chan, are you sure you should be invoking God's name? You are the Devil, after all."

"Retired Devil," Homura primly reminded, pointer finger raised. "The point is, one school has Shadow card games, the other has death matches with Social Darwinism and super powered uniforms, and the third one has Ohtori Akio. And all other schools in this area aren't worth their salt. Where else could we place Makie?"

Skuld nodded slowly. "When you put it that way -" Then her cellphone rang to the tune of some Inoue Kikuko song. "Just a sec, please. Yes? Oh, it's you, Yuuna. No, I'm here with Makie's mothers, not- What? Whaddya mean what am I doing here, why, I am- What's that sound back there? Are you being- What?!" she suddenly screamed, eyes bugging out.

Homura and Madoka tensed immediately.

Skuld clenched a very forced grin, began sweating visibly almost in the spot, and told them, while pushing the cellphone down. "W-Well, heh heh, we might have to cut this delightful conversation short for now. You'll see, it just happens-"

"Where's Makie and what's happening to her?!" Madoka and Homura loomed over her and the table at once.

Skuld cringed and, despite herself, shrunk under their combined shadow.

"So, what did she say?" Izumi Ako asked as Akashi Yuuna cut the call short, then pocketed the cellphone back into her tight shorts.

Yuuna shrugged as she ran, along Makie and Akira, the latter of whom was in full Sailor Mercury regalia, sporting a perfectly blank expression, and carrying Ako on her back, with the pale nurse holding tightly for dear life. "She said she'd be on her way. Looks like she's with your mothers, by the way, Makie-chan."

Makie gulped. "Oh, geez! Now that... that's scary!"

The five strange figures chasing them along the street might have taken offense to that overheard comment, since they obviously were trying their best to look imposing and threatening, in their long, all concealing white and golden robes with huge wings on their backs, but since their faces were also completely covered by sharp white masks, there was no way to say for sure for any of the curious bystanders taking pictures and gawking in awe as they got out of the pursuit's way, all the while commenting on the street shows outdoing themselves every year.

"Didn't she tell you what are these things?" Ako asked again, her voice a high pitched whine over the mutters and cheers of the crowd.

"No, she didn't! You know how she is!" Yuuna grumbled. "Aki- I mean, Mercury-san, are you sure they aren't-"

"I told you, no, they just don't look evil enough," Akira stoically said, actually trying her best not to leave her other two friends behind in the dust. That was one of the two good things about this whole situation, knowing she could escape as soon as she figured out a way to get the other three girls out of harm's way, hopefully leading the strangers away from them until Minako and Shiho arrived. The other good thing was, at least no one could connect Ookuchi Akira directly with this. That was worth something, right? At least she wouldn't make Mom and Dad concerned, unless the creatures happened to kill her, of course.

"They don't look evil enough?!" Yuuna incredulously echoed.

Akira just nodded. "Once they drop their human disguises, youma look invariably evil and twisted. And while these fellows are certainly stern and dangerous looking, I don't know ... they don't look evil to me. Much like that fire girl I fought at Kyoto... I wonder what's become of her since?"

Yuuna resisted the urge to facepalm while she ran since that never was a good idea.

"Okay, whatever, now call on Negi-kun!" Makie urged. "You're the only one who can, since only you are his Ministra, and he-"

"THAT'S PART OF THE PLAY TOO, PEOPLE!" Yuuna screamed over what Makie said next, then shot the smaller girl a truly fierce stare. Makie only bit her tongue and shrank down apologetically.

And then...

"VENUS LOVE-ME CHAIN!" someone shouted from above, as a chain made of glowing energy hearts descended from a rooftop, slashing across the street right before the silent pursuers, forcing them to stop and look up.

Yuuna and her three friends also came to a halt and looked in that direction. "Venus, Mars!" Akira sighed in relief.

Sailor Venus struck a heroic pose as she stood on the rooftop's edge, cutting an impressive figure under the afternoon's sun, orange miniskirt flapping in the breeze while the crowd below squee'd and began taking pictures of the white leotard that could be clearly seen under said skirt. Next to her, the red-haired Sailor Mars frowned, holding her own skirt down with the hand that was not holding two high heeled red shoes, her feet bare.

"Chasing pretty girls who aren't interested in you is an unforgivable crime of harassment!" Sailor Venus cried out, gesturing grandly. "School festivals shouldn't be about chasing innocents around! That's a perversion of the spirit of Mahora and all it stands for! So Sailor Venus-"

Pause.

Then Minako discreetly elbowed Shiho's chest a few times.

Shiho sighed very deeply. "- and Sailor Mars-" she droned.

"- will punish you in the name of Venus!"

Another pause.

"You're supposed to add 'and in the name of Mars'," Venus mumbled to Mars from a corner of her mouth.

"Like fuck I am!" Shiho protested, then threw one of her shoes down. "Let's just finish this whole mess already!"

The shoe flew down, then imbedded itself, sharp heel first, in the mask of one of the strange pursuers, throwing it back and dropping it on the pavement, lifting dust in all directions.

"... she still hasn't learned how to walk in high heels?" Ako asked Akira.

Akira only shook her head.

"Shut up, you try and to walk in those things, you stupid girl, you!" Shiho madly prattled from above while the downed being stood back up, took hold of the shoe, dislodged it, touched the cracks on its mask, and silently sulked under the seemingly strict gaze of its companions.

Then, as one, they charged again, while Yuuna spun around pulling her guns out, and Sailors Venus and Mars leapt down to join the starting fray.

Oboy, thought Makie. Mom and Mom would be really upset now.

"Far from me," Kotaro said while leaping from tree to tree, him, Negi and Chao having chosen to take their own chase into the woods to lead their pursuers away from Mahora campus proper, "to butt in on a lady's business, but why the hell are these guys chasing you anyway?"

"I have no idea," Chao candidly confessed. "I have never seen them before!"

And, believe it or not, that was not a lie, since she was usually chased by the forces of the Mahora staff instead. Well, the first few times at least. After a while, she had wised up and learned to hide her hand from the teachers until the Festival proper started, which annoyingly hadn't helped her in the long run yet, but at least took a few concerns off her mind in the meanwhile. She hadn't been chased before the Festival for a good while, actually. "Although... I might have a few theories, but it'd do no good sharing them now, ne?"

Kotaro gave her an annoyed side glance while the girl smirked sheepishly, a finger on her chin. "Well, can you at least tell us how strong they are? I think we're far enough by now to start kicking the crap outta them."

"They're strong enough to put me on the run," Chao warned.

"That's good enough for me, then," Kotaro announced, dropping off the latest tree and onto the middle of the forest, gesturing for the five masked, robed humanoids with wings coming after them. "Alright, guys, I know you've been waiting for this, and so was I! If you aren't the talking type, fine with me, let's talk through our fists instead!"

Negi came to a halt in the midle of his own sprint to turn back towards the other boy. "Kotaro, no! We don't have an idea yet how powerful they might be!"

"Only one way to find out!" Kotaro howled, claws coming out as he jumped straight into the lead attacker, managing to give it a large slash across the chest. The heavy cloth protecting its body was not even ripped, however, and the creature merely slapped Kotaro away against a tree, making him growl in pain. "Okay, first contact says 'a lot'!" he admitted while landing back on his feet.

Negi took a deep breath while Chao placed herself behind him, striking a kenpo ready pose. The boy mage, on the other hand, lifted his father's fabled staff and chanted, "Septendecim spiritus aeriales, coeuntes! Sagitta Magica, Series Fulguralis!"

The seventeen projectiles of light flew from Negi, splitting themselves in mid air as to engage different adversaries at once, but they all were deflected in all directions instantly when strange, pentagonal shields of translucent energy appeared before each pursuer, easily blocking every arrow. Negi cringed while grabbing Chao and jumping back to her, barely dodging the barrage of impacts sent back against them in time. "Gosh! Those sure are good barriers!"

"AT Field?" Chao murmured to herself. "Then, these-"

Negi chanced a very brief glance back at her. "Huh?"

"Nothing!" Chao rushed to reply. "Just be careful, Negi-bouzou! These beings are unlike anything you've ever faced!"

"Well, I wouldn't say that much, Chao Lingshen," a slow, heavy, yet naturally sensual and rich female voice said as the five pursuers took pause, just long enough as to step aside and let a newcomer walk into sight from behind them, fixing fascinating, bright green eyes on the youngsters. "Why, when you get down to it, I'm just like my little sister. Although far more beautiful and powerful, of course," the voluptuous, dark skinned woman who had just arrived added, tossing her short platinum white hair back, forcing a smile that tightly tugged at the corners of her lips. "Surely she's told you kids of me? My name's Urd. Pleased to meet, well, two of you at least."

"A woman. Figured it had to be a dame," Kotaro grunted, slowly walking aside to stand by the frowning, wary Negi, who still wasn't lowering his staff and glared intensely at the stranger.

"Skuld-san only ever mentioned one sister, ma'am," Negi polite but coldly said, "and her name was Belldand- Oh," he quietly said, then slapping himself on the forehead. "But of course! How could I ever be so stupid?!"

"Eh?" Kotaro snorted.

"Urd, Verdandi, Skuld, naturally!" Negi shook his head to himself, blushing brightly. "Where's my mind been lately? Anya would surely laugh at me now!"

"Well, you have been under a lot of stress of late," Chao said.

"I'm afraid you don't even know the half of it, Chao-san," her teacher said, "but even so, that's no excuse for a mental slip of that degree."

"No, seriously, what in the world are you talking about?" Kotaro asked.

"Ahem," Urd rasped into a fist.

The three children looked at her again.

Negi bowed. "I apologize over my oversight, it won't happen again, I don't know Skuld-san's reasons for never mentioning you, but-"

"Ohh, that doesn't matter!" the tall woman in the tight, revealing blouse and hip hugging pants waved a hand in fast acted annoyance, "That's just like her anyway! I just want you boys to step aside and let me take this ... this girl under custody! Okay?"

Chao blinked, made her best wide eyed innocent face, and sheepishly pointed at her own chest. "... Moi?"

Normally, the customers and staff of the Radish Cafe that happened to be conveniently close to the site of the latest Mahora street brawl never paid very much attention to said street brawl. They had been a long standing tradition of the area, and nowadays they usually all were about either Ku Fei schooling a few challengers, Death Glasses Takahata disciplining a few unlucky hooligans, or that weird, goofy vagrant in the pink karate gi challenging someone and having the crap kicked out of him.

Today, however, the situation was different. Students and staff from the other three major schools in the district were there for the Mahorafest, and while those from Honnouji were even more indifferent to random street violence than Mahora denizens, those from CLAMP Gakuen and Ohtori were unused to the sight of battles that didn't involve fencing duels, tankery games, Gundam models, collectible card games, roses, or Brave Duel simulations. Not to mention the visiting parents and other relatives of the Mahora contingent were in the season of watching in horror and gasp at the environment their salaries were buying for their children. A few of them would even consider retiring their children from Mahora afterwards, until they realized their options were, well, CLAMP Gakuen, Ohtori or Honnouji. Then, generally, they would stick with the lesser evil.

The main reason everyone was looking and taking pictures today, however, was the rare presence of Mahou Shoujo in a fight during daytime, in the open. At this rate they would soon have Superman and General Zod fighting at the middle of Mahora.

"So that's Sailor V, huh," Tokiha Mai, who was still fairly new at Mahora herself, blinked as she stood by the window, behind several awestruck customers, in her Radish waitress uniform and holding a large empty tray close to her even larger bustline. "It must be cool having this sort of mutant powers, but... shouldn't we, maybe, evacuate the site LIKE RIGHT NOW?!"

"Eh, you only live once, Mai-san," shrugged the shorter and less busty daughter of the cafe's manager, also Mai's co-worker, leaning closer to the window over a few of her customers, who were being slow but steadily pushed aside by her as she moved. "Be quiet and let us enjoy the show, okay? Besides, it's even more dangerous to go out while this is going on, don't you think?"

Still sitting at her table several meters away, Kuchiki Rukia kept on giving the girl who had just spoken an ongoing series of puzzled, troubled looks, before leaning closer to the apathetic boy sitting across her while stuffing his mouth, and asking him in a low voice, "Hey, Ichigo. Isn't that girl... well, wasn't she supposed to be dead? I could swear we saw her once, hell, we reaped her, for Kami's sake."

Kurosaki Ichigo shrugged and mumbled, "We only handle the reaping. If afterwards they are brought back by a wish on a cursed artifact, Puella Magi contract, or a superhuman punching reality, that's their own problem, not ours. Don't overthink these things, Rukia."

"A superhuman punching reality?" Rukia asked. "What kind of stupid- Wait, no, better yet, what is a Puella Magi supposed to be?"

Two tables away, a little girl around thirteen with dark hair who was sitting with her quiet, busty older sister shuddered briefly.

"VENUS LOVE AND BEAUTY SHOCK!" a voice was shouting outside, and then the whole street seemed to quake.

"Whoa!" said a girl with reddish hair made in two side tails, mouth very open while her black haired mother, bespectacled eagerly tried to take pictures and annotations at once, and her little brother kept on pushing the head of a frog trying to peek out right back into the handbag he was holding. "Now that's power! Did you see that?! She blew that guy right into that lamppost! Awesome!"

"Hey, Nee-san, do you think more Mahou Shoujo could show up before the authorities do?" a busty, bright eyed girl with long light brown hair wearing a CLAMP uniform anxiously asked Mai, while her dark haired, pale and proper looking friend took a delicate hand to her mouth and gasped quietly at the violence unfolding outside.

"How, how could I know?" Mai stammered, eyebrow twitching lightly. "I'm not even sure what other Mahou Shoujo are there around here..."

"Oh!" the other girl smirked, pulling a small booklet out and flipping through it. "The fanzines have all the info you need, then! They gather info about every Mahou Shoujo in the Four Schools Area and have it printed for our convenience as soon as it's hit the Internet! I never leave without one, as you never know when you'll have an encounter with the world of-"

"Mutants! They're mutants, everyone knows that!" someone shouted from the tightly gathered crowd. "Stupid outsiders, just let us watch the fight in peace!"

The girl with the fanzine stuck her tongue out. "Nyah! Good day to you too, mister!"

"Saori-chan, please," her friend sighed, "This isn't the time for scenes... And why not to just carry a laptop around, instead of a fanzine? Isn't that too... well, 20th century?"

Takebe Saori wagged a finger. "Everyone knows the active presence of Mahou Shoujo in a scene often brings massive energy pulses that interfere with Internet transmissions, Hana-chan! Ah! I wish we could also see that mysterious cute blond reaper in black! Or the newest one, Magical Heart!"

"... who?" Mai asked.

The girl who had shuddered moments ago shuddered again.

Her sister raised an eyebrow. "Kokoro-chan? Something wrong?"

The Imouto shook her head nervously. "No, no, it's nothing, Kotonoha-nee-chan, really... Just a passing feeling, that's all..."

Saori gasped and pointed out, even more excitedly. "Oh, look at that! There are more, new ones joining the fight now!" She began to quickly flip through her booklet. "I don't recognize these ones! Oh gosh oh gosh, we might be looking at the actual debut of new Mahou Shoujo, this is so thrilling!"

"I, I heard Magical Patissier is... sort of cool, too?" a tiny, mousey voice said from the back of the group.

Heads were briefly turned to look at the average looking girl with dark brown hair who had just spoken, and who now looked like she wished for the ground to swallow her.

"... who?" Mai repeated herself.

"Ah, no, nothing, forget it, just... there've been some sightings at Honnouji, of someone calling herself that..."

Onodera Haru groaned softly and tugged at the sleeve of her big sister. "Oneechan. On second thought, please let's just go back to our table."

"I'm sorry, Ma'am," Negi said, valiantly standing his ground, "but even if you are the sister to one of my students, I just can't grant you custody of one of my students without a proper, signed and sealed authorization from the Headmaster himself."

Urd blinked.

So did Kotaro, for that matter. "Um, Glasses," he told Negi, "not that I don't respect your guts just this once, but from what I know about that Skuld girl, you realize you're talking to a goddess, aren't you?"

Negi nodded steadily, his eyes still fixed on the perplexed Urd. "Naturally. Still, the rules I've sworn to uphold apply to everyone. There is no clause saying gods are exempt."

Urd paused as her Angel units looked at each other and her waiting for a confirmation on what to do next. Then she sighed and said, "I have a signed and sealed authorization from our Father Himself, is that good enough for you, squirt?"

"It would be if it came from Chao-san's father, but as it stands, it'd only authorize you to remove Skuld-san from campus grounds, sorry," Negi apologized.

"Oh, in the name of all that's holy!" Urd groaned, reaching into her Victoria's secret compartment and feeling inside, which made Kotaro take a hand to his nose and Negi just keep standing apparently unaffected. "You can't tell me you are going to resist an executive order from Yggdrasil itself! What are you, a demon? An atheist? Just look, I'm sure I have it right here, hmmm." She stopped, and looked at one of her Angels. "Hey, you, do you have it instead?"

The Angel said something that came out highly muffled through the mask.

"Take that darn thing off before answering, you know I can't understand a damn thing when you have it on!" Urd protested. "Geez, it's not like you have secret identities to protect in this world!"

The Angel nodded, then took the mask off and pulled the also white hood over it back, revealing the pale, gorgeous face of a young woman with short blue hair and quiet, passive red eyes. "I apologize. We have no such written authorization in our power, Lady Urd. Only divine entities are allowed to carry them on their person. Perhaps you left it in your nightstand. Again."

"Dammit!" Urd muttered, quickly pulling a cellphone out and hitting the speed dial. "Satoru? It's me. Look, I think I left a golden envelope in my nightstand drawer, would you be a dear and bring it here? Yeah, I'm at the school. Just use the GPS I gave you, why do I need to give you an exact address? It's there, right? No, moron, don't touch it, you know well Heaven's own touch burns! Damn, I warned you, Satoru! Oh, don't be a baby, just put some lotion on it and grab it with some gloves! Yeah, you can use mine! Just get me that thing on the double, I'm in the middle of important business here!" She cut the call and irritably shook her head. "You can't even get decent fucktoys these days, I tell you!"

"What's a fu-" Negi began before shaking his head himself. "No, forget that, regardless, I'm sorry, but even if they bring you that document, I'm afraid it'll still do you no good unless it comes from the Principal's office. Would you like to call him? That, I can arrange."

"I think I'd prefer it if you didn't, Negi-bouzou," Chao piped in.

"Oh, of course you wouldn't, would you," Urd sneered at her. "You should be grateful, pipsqueak. It's just because of your friendship to Skuld I asked to be sent here instead of Rind. And believe me, then you'd be really sorry! Oh, if you had any idea how many favors I had to pull off for this..."

Kotaro kept on blinking. "Okay, then. Well, if there's going to be no fight, I guess I'll be on my way then."

"Yes, you do that, please," Urd nodded.

"While I'd certainly like it better that way, no one's said for sure there won't be conflict yet," Negi insisted. "Because no matter what, no one will outright kidnap one of my students while I can help it."

Kotaro stared at him, then slapped his own forehead. "When did we go and change places, for Pete's sake?! Look, I'm always up for a good brawl, but I'm also a well raised Shinto, and they teach us to respect divinity, dammit!"

"She's a Norse goddess," Negi pointed out.

"Same difference, we Shinto are very accepting of others' beliefs! That's why we and Buddhists didn't kill each other over control of Japan in the first place!"

"You kids sure are amusing," Urd allowed herself a jaded smirk before being tapped by the unmasked Angel on a shoulder. "Now what, Rei?"

"Mistress," the Angel handed her her own cellphone, "we just got news from the Beta Squad. They have just been engaged by The Pink One and The Black One."

Urd immediately, violently, choked in her saliva.

It wasn't that Akashi Yuuna was unhappy to see even more people coming from above to join the melee. Even if they were ultimately hostile to them as well, at least it looked like their main target were the strangers who had been chasing her and her friends around, so she figured they could escape in the confusion even in the worst case scenario.

And it was a relief, too; her handguns had proved to be useless on these... fellows, as her father would say, since they just kept on deploying those weirdass fields that gave Yuuna a headache just by looking at them, and her anti-magic bullets would simply bounce off them. She had to wonder if Asuna's harisen would have been effective at all against it, but the last thing she wanted to do right now was pull even more of her friends into this mess.

"Ako," she said, grabbing the sweaty, pale and small hand of the assistant nurse, whom Akira had left behind a well polished mailbox (a relic of the old times left for decoration purposes only for over a decade now). "Let's split now! while they're distracted!"

"Ah? Buh, but Yuuna-chan! Akira -!"

"She'll be okay!" Yuuna insisted, pulling her up to her feet. At least she hoped so. Unlike her own attacks, those of the Senshi had more of an actual effect on those guys, even if they kept on coming back from everything the Mahou Shoujo threw at them. Still, those attacks could at least pierce through their defenses after enough pressure, especially the fire based projectiles of the crazy octopus-haired Senshi.

"FIRE SOUL! FIRE SOUL! FIRE SOUL!" Sailor Mars kept on chanting, again and again bringing her hands together to spam huge figures of flames shaped like demonic crows, repeatedly pushing the Angel unit facing her back and back, visibly draining her more and more by the moment. It was clear she would collapse before long, but Yuuna hoped they could hold their own long enough until the magical teachers arrived to put the kibosh on the whole thing. That was more than could be said about the likes of Ako, which was why Yuuna was so intent on taking her away quickly.

Well, that, and because she wanted to leave before the teachers arrived. Dad might be one of the chosen to sweep the scene up, after all.

It probably would be a moot point anyway moments after, when the two new girls arrived instead. And now they stood there, so small and delicate looking and yet also giving such a strange impression of being larger than life. Especially, ironically enough, the shortest one, the one in pale pink, even down to her hair, smiling faintly while holding a longbow loaded with several sharp arrows at once. The one with long and smooth black hair standing shortly behind managed to draw less attention to herself, somehow, which probably was a good thing seeing how she seeming so uncomfortable with the gazes she was getting.

"Hey! You!" the pink haired newcomer suddenly said, looking towards Makie, who had paused in the middle of aiming her Ball Artifact at one of the Angel units. So far, her attacks hadn't been any more successful than Yuuna's, but unlike Yuuna, she hadn't yet gotten the idea maybe that meant she should stop attempting them already. "Are you okay, Ma- um, Miss?"

"Ah?" Makie blinked a few times, then pointed at herself. "Do you mean me?"

Nod, nod! went the other pink haired girl.

"I'm fine, thank you!" Makie smiled before squinting and glaring really hard at this strange girl. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Um-" the girl with the arrows began to say.

"Absolutely not! We are new in this city, and as a matter of fact we're only passing by! We're going to leave real soon!" her partner rushed to answer for her, still intently avoiding looking in Makie's direction. As a matter of fact, she was casually holding a sleeve to her face, as if to shield herself from the sun, the gun in that hand being held up in a way that made people peeking through several windows in neighboring upper stories duck warily.

"Oh," Makie slowly said. Now she looked at Sailor Venus. "Do you know them from somewhere, then?"

"If they were with us, you'd better believe they'd be wearing the proper attire!" Venus protested, tugging down on the edge of her skirt once.

In the meanwhile, the Angel units had huddled together at the other end of the street, coming closer to each other and seeming to conference between themselves, although no sound could be heard coming from them. Perhaps they simply were speaking too softly for human ears at that distance. Whatever the case was, their current attitude was far different from the confident, nonstop attack they had been pressing on the girls until moments ago, and now, despite their featureless masks, they definitely gave the impression that they would never take their sights off the newly arrived duo.

Then they all tensed for a moment, as if sensing a call from somewhere, and instantly vanished in thin air.

"Well," Shiho said. "That was anticlimactic."

"Report," Urd, with a fist cocked on a hip, coldly told one of the new Angel units who had just arrived out of nowhere, simply blinking into existence at the spot in the woods where Negi and the others were. The boys still held the careful, tense battle ready stances they had struck just as soon as the new units appeared, while Chao simply stood behind them, kicking peebles as she crossed her arms behind her neck.

The Angel unit Urd had addressed began speaking in a tone that was completely unintelligible through the mask.

"Not you too!" Urd shouted. "The mask, you moron, take the mask off!"

The unit nodded, then obeyed, revealing a pale face identical to that of the first unmasked Angel, who by now simply stood aside, extending a hand up and letting a tiny bluebird stand on her fingers while chirping. "I apologize. As informed, the two singularities appeared to further interfere in our apprehension of Chao Lingshen's accomplices. Thus we contacted you immediately, My Lady. Should we return and engage them?"

"Singularities?" Kotaro wondered aloud.

"Accomplices?" Negi said.

"That's such an ugly word to use in this context!" Chao sighed whimsically.

"Further?" Urd inquired.

The unit she had asked this to nodded. "In the middle of our pursuit, we were attacked by two of the current Solar System princesses, those of Mars and Venus. Should we return and engage them as well?"

"Are you nuts?" Urd groaned, beginning to rub her own temples. "That was supposed to be a simple apprehension and extraction job, how could you botch it that much? Honestly, this is why I just don't trust clones."

"Our apologies, but they simply began running away as soon as we commanded them to-"

"You shouldn't have commanded anything in the first place, you should have just dropped on them and taken them down just as soon as you arrived!" Urd reprimanded her. "What are they teaching you at Basic Training?!"

"Actually, Lady Rind says the correct procedure starts with a Cease and Desist order -"

Urd began rubbing her temples in circles again. "And this is why I never applied for the Warfare Department. They have to make such a big fuss of something as simple as wrecking stuff up! Argh! Now look at what you did, of course you'd alert the singularities if you started chasing their daughter, you, you clone!"

"Is everyone okay?" Negi asked.

Urd and the Rei she was talking with looked back at him. Then the Angel nodded. "Affirmative. The battle was short enough no one was seriously injured, although massive public property damage was still a factor."

Negi sighed in relief. "Oh, that doesn't matter as long as everyone's okay! So, um, who are those accomplices you were-"

"Again, I wouldn't call them accomplices!" Chao interrupted with a cute angry pout. "I can't believe you're using such an ugly and dismissive term as well, Negi-bouzou! On your own students, too!"

Negi gave her a bewildered glare. "Chao-san! You're pulling your classmates into delinquent activities?!"

Chao's pout only intensified. "If anything, we're the complete opposites of delinquents! We are angels of selfless mercy!"

"Cough cough," went the Reis.

"You're nurses?" Kotaro asked slyly.

"Well, one of us is, ne."

"You've dragged Ako-san into this?!" Negi gasped aloud.

Urd threw her hands up. "You know what, let's call it a day for now. We weren't supposed to deal with the Pink and the Black, so we'll have to pull back until we're told what our next move supposed to be after this. But remember this, Chao Lingshen! Don't even start thinking you're off the hook yet!"

Chao shrugged. "I never think that, yo."

"Who are the Pink and the Black?" Negi said. "Honestly, people are never that secretive with me unless they're talking about sex!"

Silence fell all over the clearing.

Negi stomped his foot down. "Well, I don't understand the specifics, but I know they're talking about sex! I think."

Urd began gesturing with a hand in growing frustration before simply shaking her head and exhaling, lowering the hand. "I'll let you settle this amongst yourselves for the time being. Skuld likes playing to be the Woman with the Answers, so why don't you start asking her? You're more likely to get answers from her than from this troublemaker here."

Chao kept on pouting. "I fix problems, I never start them! Negi-bouzou, are you going to believe a suspicious woman with a god complex dressed that way on high school grounds while commanding a squad of clones trying to kidnap your students and fighting Magical Girls, or me?"

"..." Negi said. "Well, when you put it that way..."

"Hey!" Urd groaned. "Okay, I might be a little bit naughty and proud of it, but I'm still a perfectly okay person, I mean Goddess, of a high moral caliber!"

"Boss," said a young man who had just arrived in a bike, softly stopping by her side and tapping her on a shoulder with a golden envelope. "Boss, I'm here as you asked!"

"Not now, Satoru!" she fiercely growled at him while snatching the envelope away. "I can't believe you've got the gall to show up now, after everything's done! Now what use do I have for this anyway?!"

"Boss, I had to drive through the whole city, and then these woods," the young biker who remarkably looked a lot like Keiichi-san in Negi's perplexed opinion moaned, with the voice of a highly downtrodden man (even in that, so much like Keiichi-san!) "And I even had to work my way around a blockade, because there was some big fight involving Magical Girls in the middle of-"

She began walloping him over the head with the envelope. "Shut up, shut up, if I wanted to hear excuses I'd have asked for them instead of for this!"

"Who are you," Kotaro asked him, "and why are you wearing women's dominatrix gloves?"

"What's a dominatrix?" Negi asked. "And, I feel like I should add, how do you know what is that to begin with?"

"You don't know a lot about the type of places bad guys with bounties on their heads like to hide, do you?"

Elsewhere, the dark haired girl in the short skirt and the very tall black stockings sighed for the shortest moment, almost breaking the cool, unflappable image she had been giving until now, and which was making a lot of the people watching and taking pictures in the crowd to swoon, much to the disturbance of others.

"Be thankful it was anticlimactic," she told Sailor Mars. "Climaxes in this business are dangerous, deadly things. Most often involving heart-wrenching, painful sacrifices for the good of mankind."

"That sometimes are rendered pointless by the well-intentioned interference of adorably misguided people," her partner in light pink dutifully added.

The first mysterious Magical Girl gave her a look. "It worked out in the end, didn't it?"

Shiho grimaced, then looked at Minako. "I want out."

"For the last time, that's not an option anymore!" Venus told her, then took two fingers to her own forehead and sighed. "Never mind, let's just go home already. I'm not even in the mood to question you guys anymore. Shoo, shoo, just enigmatically vanish away leaving behind a cryptic message and hinting we'll meet again. That's the proper protocol for these things, after all!"

The very short girl with pink hair gasped at that. "What? No! What kind of twisted, unreliable Mahou Shoujo racket are you running in this world?!"

"Eh?" Minako snorted.

"Are you sure we haven't met before?" Makie hummed, squinting again to take a very close look at the other pink haired girl's face, before being grabbed from behind and grabbed back by a mortified Yuuna.

"Maki-chan," Akashi-sensei's daughter said, "Enough already, okay? Any moment now, the you-know-whos will arrive to interrupt this, ahem, amateur film we've ran into, and then we might get into a mess because we aren't official part of any movie club, and Dad-"

"Yuuna?" a dismayed voice said from the other end of the street.

Akashi Yuuna's skin crawled.

Because she had recognized the voice instantly, and even though she already was pulling the long overcoat tightly around her scantily clad body, trying to pull its neck up to hide as much of her face as she could, she knew, even from behind, that person had recognized her as well.

Standing on the sidewalk, with an awkward looking Takane D. Goodman and Sakura Mei right behind him, Akashi Wataru, just arrived to the scene and ready to clean any mess and wipe any memory he had in the line of duty, couldn't have been ready for that. To find his own daughter at the middle of a public incident involving magical vigilantes, and worst of it all, wearing that kind of tight shorts, and really, that top!

And with a gun in a hand!

"Oh, hey," Makie was waving at him, in a pink leotard that wasn't much more modest than Yuuna's attire. "Good afternoon, Sensei! We're filming a student movie!"

A moment later an angry Yuuna was punting her ass, hard.

"DID I ERR?!" Makie whined, unknowingly showing her generic heritage from long ago, from a time where her ancestors roamed the world braving danger and looking for cheese dip, always with a wide confident smile and not a whole lot of common sense...

[[Mako Voice]].

But that is another story. And that story, and the one of how Makie would become a Princess by her own hand, shall also be told.

[[/Mako Voice]].

To be Continued.

In Further Side Conquests of an Accidental Stud Monkey, Chapter One.