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Blazblue: Critical Anomaly

Gag Reel 2: Uninvited Guests — Part 13
No, You Haven't Missed Anything

After the run in with Hazama, Ragna thought he was ready for anything. That being said, he had made a point to spend the rest of his day relaxing in bed to the best of his ability. And when it came to taking naps, the only person better than him was Taokaka.

Which is probably the very reason someone came looking for him.

This time it was the second-last person he wanted to see.

"Oh, please tell me I'm just hallucinating…" he said as he saw a short girl with platinum blonde hair walk through the door.

"Yaaay! I finally found you Ragna! Nu's been so lonely without you," giggled the Murakumo earnestly, jumping onto his bunk and falling down on top of him.

"Of course I'm not," he said, continuing to talk to himself, "I'm the only one around here who's unlucky enough to be completely sane."

He stretched his arm all the way back and felt around for the emergency intercom button by the side of the steel headboard. He was completely pinned beneath Nu. She wasn't even wearing her armor, but she was surprisingly heavy. She must have had a lot of muscle mass. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, someone picked up the other end of the line.

"Ragna? What's going on?" answered Kagura.

"Kagura, is Jin with you right now?" he gasped out, attempting to push Nu away, but she hung on tightly.

"I'm here, Brother. What did you want?"

"Is a guy named Murphy skulking around the branch?"

"You're using the emergency line to ask an inane question?" Kagura sputtered.

Jin took it more in stride.

"I'll go out on a limb and assume you mean to obscurely reference the colloquial law that states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong?"

"More or less. If he's around, murder him in the most horrible way you can think of."

"You want your brother to find a random guy named Murphy and castrate him while bludgeoning him to death with a live crocodile?" shouted Kagura.

"That's the most horrible thing you can think of? You have no imagination," said Nu, nuzzling into the crook of Ragna's neck.

He sighed and spoke up before Kagura had the chance to add his two cents to the situation. "Look, Jin, I'm in my room, I've got an amorous and very psychotic Murakumo unit in here with me, and she has me pinned. Literally. I'd find it extremely helpful if someone could get me out of this. Can you or…someone, anyone really, get down here ASAP?"

"I'll come right down and see what I can do," Jin answered to Ragna's immense relief.

The p.a. wasn't shut off just yet though. Kagura had heard a girl's voice, and now he was curious.

"So, Ragna, who's that with you? You're not going to tell me that you actually managed to pick up a girl are you?"

"Ragna didn't seduce Nu. Nu already loves him. And… I want to become one with you."

"Not bad. You just met this chick and you've already got her going down on you," said Kagura.

Ragna on the other hand had a rather different interpretation of that statement. The last time he heard it, it preceded grievous, nearly fatal abdominal wounds. And he didn't even have his sword on hand this time.

"HEEEELLLLP!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. Within seconds, the door burst back open and Noel rushed inside.

"Ragna! What's wrong? Are you hurt? I— Oh gawd! I-I-I'm s-so sorry!" she suddenly dived out of the room, her face going so red it looked like she had a bad sunburn, eyes welling with tears. Then she suddenly found her embarrassment replaced by something far less pleasant.

"Wait a minute!" she shouted, stomping back not the room, outraged. "What's she doing here?!"

Even stuck as he was beneath a dangerously amorous girl, Ragna still managed to inject some snark into his reaction."

"Noel, you can't seriously believe this is what it looks like. Not after what you've literally seen her do to me!"

"That's no excuse!"

"You make it sound like I'm cheating on you! Have we even gone on so much as a date?!" he continued struggling against Nu's iron grip with negligible success.

"Nu doesn't want Ragna to have any other lovers. Nu wants you all to herself."

"Wha-wha-whaaat?!" Noel's face was just getting redder and redder.

"Nu said she won't share Ragna with you," said Nu petulantly.

"Yes, that's very nice, now will you please get off me before I have to start throwing punches?" said Ragna. He was quickly coming to realize that whenever she wasn't in a fight, Nu was twice the airhead Noel was. Which just made the difference in her behavior that much scarier.

"Don't ignore me!" wailed Noel.

"Hey, if you're going to just stand there complaining about this psycho on top of me being here in the first place, instead of helping me remove her, I'll ignore you all I want."

"You're terrible!"

"No I'm not! You're ignoring the fact that I could be seconds away from being killed right now because my attacker's a girl!"

"Nu doesn't want to kill you today, Ragna. She just wants to cuddle."

He ground his teeth together in frustration.

"Thanks Nu, that was really helpful. If I do get out of this in one piece, I'm gonna kill you."

"What kind of thing is that to say to a girl who likes you?" admonished Noel.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!" he snapped, "Are you on her side, or your own? Pick one, because you certainly aren't on mine!"

"I can't help it! She's in your bed. On top of you! I'm very distressed!"

"Why?! Is there something between us that I don't know about?! Because if there is, A; I want to know what—if anything—I'm missing out on, and B; Why I haven't heard anything about it. And by the way, key words: On top of! I can't get her off! You're willfully ignoring the fact that I'm struggling to get her off right now!"

Noel moved her mouth as though to say something, but nothing came out. She wasn't as good in an argument as she was in a straight-up fight, that much was certain.

Nu on her part just stayed where she was, snuggling him and giggling cutely. Maybe she really wasn't planning on killing him. On the other hand, he'd still rather be pinned down by Taokaka. At least he knew how to get rid of her.

"Well, I guess I'll just lay here and wait until she goes back to normal and kills me," he said apathetically, "I hope you can live with yourself knowing that you could have prevented my gruesome death, Noel."

As luck would have it, Jin finally arrived as Ragna was saying this.

"And in what area has the trash failed this time?" he asked before seeing the Murakumo unit securely fastened to his brother's upper body.

Ragna almost sneered fro his prone position, "Nu, for your own safety, I'd recommend getting the hell away from me. Like, right now."

"What in the hell do you think you're doing to my brother, you disgusting creature?" he asked Nu warily, his tone carrying a subtle, yet dangerous edge. Noel cringed involuntarily.

"Nu isn't doing anything, silly," said the Murakumo.

"I'm afraid whether you're doing anything or not doesn't matter. It's time to get you out of here," said Jin, grabbing Nu by the collar and attempting to throw her from the bunk. She didn't budge an inch. He tried pulling her by the arms with no more success, even as he began to strain himself.

"Wow…" gasped Noel, in awe of the other girl's sheer strength.

Seeing that he wasn't getting anywhere, Jin released Nu and took Yukianesa, maneuvering the sheathed blade between the two bodies like a pry-bar.

"Thanks for the save, Jin, I'll owe you one after this," said Ragna.

Jin didn't answer. He just pushed down on the hilt with all his strength. Nu shifted slightly this time, but not enough to get her off.

"Jeez, what is with this chick?!" Ragna snarled, trying to help Jin as much as he could by pushing her away with all his might, to no avail.

"Stop trying to make Nu go away. You're making Nu sad."

"I don't give a damn about your feelings! You're an Anti-Sankishin Unit. You're less of a person than the trash over there! And I've had enough. Yukianesa!"

He unsheathed the sword this time and struck at Nu with impossibly accurate slashes, hitting her over and over with freezing blows and not even coming close to Ragna.

Nu didn't even flinch. Within moments she had completely repaired herself.

"You can't force Nu to go. She wants to stay here," she said.

"Yeah, it's beginning to look that way," mused Jin. He might need to swallow his pride on this one. "Noel, can you give us a hand here?" he asked.

"Uh, okay, I guess. But you have to take responsibility for your actions, Ragna!"

"Responsibility?! Responsibility for what?! Oh forget it, just get her off of me," he whined.

"Alright, I'm ready," said Noel, taking hold of the back collar of Nu's half-cape.

"Good. Now, on three," Ragna said, placing one hand against Nu's collarbone and the other on her ribcage. Jin went back to using Yukianesa like a crowbar, and Noel got ready to pull with all her might. "One, two… —what in the hell was that?!"

He wasn't angry; he was just shocked—and slightly terrified—that Noel had singlehandedly pulled the apparently immovable Nu off of him.

She was now holding a rather dejected-looking Nu from beneath the arms and forcing her toward the door.

Ragna and Jin weren't really paying too much attention to that though. They were too busy replaying the part when Noel took hold of Nu's arm and pulled her away with virtually no resistance.

"How do you think she managed that, Brother?" Jin asked.

"Well, I've got two theories," he said, sitting up. "The first is that Nu wasn't able to resist the pull of another Murakumo unit. The second is that Noel's strength as Kusanagi has surpassed that of Hakumen. I'm really hoping it's the first."

The truth was actually far less straightforward.

"And that's that!" said Noel, walking back into the room.

"Thanks for your help, you two. I honestly feared for my life a few times there."

"I'm surprised you weren't more frightened when I arrived. I still have a strong urge to kill you, brother.

"Well, you haven't yet, I can handle you any day of the week, and I'm sure that Noel would have defended me had you attacked me here.

"You know, it's bad enough that she nearly killed me multiple times, but do you know what the worst part is? It's that despite her ludicrous behavior, I'm pretty sure she actually loves me, and would be really adorable if it weren't for her obscenely dangerous misconceptions about sex.

"HUH?!" Noel sputtered.

"Hey, what the hell are you acting so surprised about? You literally saw what she did to me! She shoved that sword hanging from the end of her braid through my gut and hers. You were right there! That was, in her mind, the so-called greatest experience in life."

"You're kidding," Jin said with a completely straight face.

"Not even. You should have heard her; 'Deeper, Nu wants it deeper!'" he said in a lame imitation of Nu's voice, "She even started whispering pillow talk into my ear while she inched me over to the cauldron."

"Wha-a-a-at?!" Noel wailed, on the verge of passing out from embarrassment.

"Oh, for the love of—! Do you really think you interrupted an intimate moment all of a sudden? After all this time? It's been weeks! Was it not perfectly obvious that you saved my sorry ass back in Kagutsuchi?"

"I'm sorry! I'm not good in these types of conversations!"

"Well I'm certainly not stopping the both of you from getting outta here. I just want to spend the last few hours of my day not dealing with a million crises. You know, peace and quiet and all that."

"Oh! I'm sorry! I'll see you later then. Bye."

She hurried away and went back to her previous activity.

She wished she was a better judge of her own writing ability. Writing poetry was hard.

"You too, Jin. So long."

Jin shrugged and left the room. He had plans with Tsubaki soon anyway.

"And that's everything," he thought for a moment. "Oh, right…" He'd have to take care of one last thing before he could actually relax.

"Tao, I know you're here," he growled, "Where are you hiding?"

There was no answer, but he decided to make a stop at the cafeteria and buy some pork buns, just in case. He got five, and set them out on a dish which he left on the end table outside the door. He even left a note:

For Taokaka
Don't bother me!

He didn't know if Tao could even read her own name, but if she saw food laying around unguarded, she'd eat it without a second thought. And as long as she wasn't hungry, there was nobody else to bother him.

Thank. Freaking. Heaven.

Kokonoe wasn't one to do things halfway. Every single one of her security cameras on-site had built-in microphones so she could get quality audio footage.

Its value spoke for itself: this little incident would provide her hours of entertainment right now, and after that, she could save it for a rainy day.

"Still, I've gotta wonder, how come only Noel was able to move her?"

Rachel, having watched the scene unfold on the monitors with no shortage of disdain, explained it.

"Nu had been clinging to Ragna very resolutely, but not so tightly as to be an immovable object. As a matter of fact, that part was Noel's doing: As soon as she saw Nu in Ragna's bed, she Observed the scene as the Eye of the Azure, and lapsed into doubts about her self-image, Thereafter, as long as she was angrily dwelling on her own insecurities and spacing out, so to speak, Nu would not even have been able to move away from Ragna even had she desired to do so. Naturally, when she finally was prompted to do something about it, Noel then Observed Nu's removal. Thus it was only natural that Nu came loose with virtually no effort on anyone's part."

Kokonoe shrugged.

"Huh… Makes sense, I guess."

"Of course it does!" said Gii, "The Princess explained it after all!"

"So true," agreed Nago.

A vein throbbed in Kokonoe's temple. How could a pair of stuffed animals be so annoying?

"Ugh… shut 'em up, or sew 'em up, Rachel, but for the love of god, please just make them stop talking."

Rachel did neither. She did vanish with her entourage, but that left the scientist with the new problem of seeping up the rose petals she always left behind. She dipped her hand into a bag of candy-coated chocolates and stuffed a handful into her mouth. She needed some stress relief. Maybe she'd go find Ragna tomorrow and show him her fantastic security footage.

She got back to work, ignoring the petals for the time being. She'd clean her room later.