Akamatsu Ken and Kodansha created and own Mahou Sensei Negima!
Yabuki Kentaro, Hasemi Saki and Shueisha created and own To Love Ru.
Bittersweet.
He had been sitting there for quite a while now.
Sitting in the silent darkness, he remained still and contemplative on his small chair.
Negi Springfield had always been the thoughtful and quiet type, especially for one as young as he was. If he was told to sit still for a long while, he would do so with no major hassles, unless there was something very important for him to do. Granted, with Negi, he almost always felt there were important issues he had to tend to, but generally speaking, if an authority figure commanded him to sit quiet, he'd also trust said person or group of persons to handle those affairs for him.
His current situation was more complicated than that. Technically, he could freely walk all around his small cell, as long as he made no (futile, since all cells in the facility were magic-proofed) attempts to escape. Even so, he saw no point on it, and he didn't feel well enough as to move.
He had failed everyone. His sister, his father's memory, his friends, his students, his superiors, his superiors' families and loved ones. He had even failed Chao-san, in a way, since he was certain now she would be stopped far more harshly than he would have done it. Then again, perhaps such strictness had been necessary, and this whole ugly affair was the result of his refusal to dispense discipline in a blunter way. That was what a tiny side of him that now sounded oddly like Evangeline at the back of his mind was telling him, to the point of nagging, and it only added to his overwhelming discomfort and sense of guilt.
How long he had been sitting there since Takamichi left, alone in the dark, getting up only to go to the small bathroom included in the cell? More than one day now, he was sure of that.
He had noticed they had slipped him a tray with food under the door around twenty hours ago, but he hadn't touched it yet. He just wasn't feeling hungry at all. Still, by now his stomach ached and growled regardless, so he supposed he should take the food anyway. Perhaps he had offended them by ignoring it, and so they hadn't passed him any more. Always concerned about offending others or not, the red haired Welsh boy said a honest, belated "I'm sorry," walked to the tray, unpacked it open, and quietly ate its cold contents in silence.
They hadn't given him any more meals after that.
That was strange.
Mages, even magi, were not given to starve their prisoners as punishment, at least not in Mundus Vetus. The Clock Tower Convention of '46 had outlawed the procedure as inhuman and inadequate. Still, what did he know? He was given to understand there were secret protocols for highly special cases, and he had even learned, during one of his quests for forbidden lore, one of them included summary clandestine executions of those found guilty of highly immoral and dangerous crimes. Perhaps he counted as one of such, as an accomplice in the destruction of the magical community's whole modus vivendi.
Then Negi began weeping, because he didn't want for that kind of fate to ever befall Chao, or the rest of his friends.
Another day in the unbearable silence passed before dutiful, respectful Negi dared banging on the door with his small fists.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I realize there's no way I can make up for my misdeeds. But please, could I at least get a few last words with my lawyer, or a final phone call? A Pactio call, maybe?"
He waited for an answer that never came, and sat back down with a weary, tortured sigh.
"I said I was sorry," he repeated himself. "For all the good that makes, but that's all I can do now."
His jailers remained silent and unseen, and now Negi actually began growing worried. He hadn't heard them walling his door up, or sniffed any gas filtering in, so even in the event of an execution, things weren't adding up at all. Now he was finally pushing through his despair to see the facts from the impartial perspective of someone with nothing left to lose or protect, his normally keen mind could realize that. He knew they still wanted more info from him, so why hadn't they returned for more questioning? A dead boy can supply no answers, a live ermine can.
Of course, if they had captured Chao, maybe they just didn't need him anymore. She could tell them about everything, while, well, he just couldn't. Even so, that didn't feel 'right' either, even leaving the moral angles aside. This whole situation felt highly illogical. It was as if they had just... abandoned him. And more importantly, abandoned the holding pen, in a time where odds were they would be hurting for room for many more prisoners.
He hadn't heard steps outside, or the obligatory questions of his guards, making sure he still was in there. Looking up, he realized even his surveillance camera was occasionally flicking off briefly, until it finally went dead. Long before he did. No. Even for an execution, that made no sense.
He walked back towards the bathroom and checked the running water had stopped as well. He turned every and each light switch on and off, and they weren't working either. Then it dawned on him, maybe the situation was far worse than he had imagined.
"Oh my God," he said in a hushed, distraught tone, before dashing back to the door and slamming his fists and feet on it repeteadly, moved by a frantic angst. Blows that had defeated fighters several times his size and far more experienced than him during the Mahorafest Tournament did nothing on the reinforced door, and after nearly a hour of bashing and hitting, the spent, underfed boy teacher dropped on the floor, gasping for air, whimpering. "Not... fair. Not fair! What have I done?! My God, what have I done?!"
Pushing himself up onto his knees, he whacked on the door with his forehead furiously, shouting up a storm. "CHISAME! CHAO, MASTER EVA, KU-ROSHI! TAKAMICHI, ANYONE! Please..." he slid back down in tears, completely defeated and crushed. "Please, just... be okay... I only need to know..."
He fell asleep shortly after, some way or another. He hadn't intended to, but his body had given up for him.
Negi had no idea how long he had been unconscious when the horrible sounds on his door woke him up. He only knew of the taste on his tongue as he pulled his mouth off the floor, and of the unbearable sensation in his stomach, and of all the nightmares that had plagued his highly troubled sleep. He had no idea what could be happening right outside, although it sounded like someone was-
Then, instinctively, he pulled back, reeling away on his ass, as the door plummeted off its hinges and fell where had been only a second ago. With a fully dry throat, he gasped at the sight of the person now standing at the cell's doorstep, staring down at him with clear, large, cold eyes. The eyes of an unrepentant killer.
"You," he recognized her. "You?" he repeated one moment later. On the one hand, it kind of made sense for her to be kept in the same building as him, on the other, it made no sense at all she was out of her own cell...
"Oh," Golden Darkness scoffed slightly, clearly unimpressed at the sight of the short boy at her feet. Her long blond hair was hovering around her in the shape of twin gigantic jackhammers. "What a disappointment, I was expecting for someone more capable. What are you doing here, anyway?"
Still, it was good to finally see someone else again.
Quickly, he looked away, since his angle would give him a good view of the panties under her short black skirt, and besides being a good English gentleman, he knew she despised perversion- and quite violently, at that- above everything else. "I, I was charged with betrayal to the magical community," he sputtered a confusion.
She arched a thin eyebrow of gold. "You of all people? Is this some sort of setup for me?"
"Wh-Why would we do that when you already were imprisoned?!" he asked, still twisting his neck aside towards the wall. "How did you escape YOUR cell anyway?"
"Tube. I was held in a tube, not a cell," Golden Darkness corrected him. "A tube my jailers stopped visiting days ago, after which I started applying as much pressure on it as I could. Fortunately, it paid off, since otherwise we both would have starved to death."
Shocked, the teacher spun his head up and around to stare widely into her tranquil eyes. "What do you mean with that?!"
She grabbed him by a hand and helped him up, which was surprising on itself, but moreso considering the gentle, even caring way she did it. "Our caretakers have abandoned the building, or at least the part of it that remains under lockdown. Unfortunately, it's sealed so tightly I couldn't find a way out. That's why I was looking for other prisoners to free, so they could possibly be of any help."
Negi's breath left his body. "They... They abandoned us, just like that? But, but that makes no sense!"
The hired assassin shrugged. "If you say so. I'll trust your judgment on it since I ignore much about the ways of your people yet."
Negi sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Okay. Hm. I'll see what can we do. Does this mean we have a truce for now?"
"You never were my sworn enemy, I make a habit out of never harming children. If I fought your forces twice it was just because I gave my word, but I wouldn't hurt you without a valid reason," she flatly told him. "Of course, should you not abandon Saotome Haruna's toxic company before being of legal age, you will be my sworn foe by association as well."
He frowned at the killer for hire who had plagued him and his White Wings first in Kyoto and then at Mahora itself. "I'd never desert a sincere friend and supporter like Haruna-san."
"Hopefully you'll grow out of your delusions over time," the blonde told him. "You can't expect true friendship from perverts and deviants, she's just fooling you. Then again, you're just a child, so I'll overlook your foolishness for now."
"I'm not just a child!" he childishly pouted at the girl who, in all fairness, wasn't that much taller than him. "But fine, this isn't the time to be bickering, much less fighting each other. First of all, I'm going to need my staff and my Pactio cards..."
She nodded and turned around, beginning to walk away. "Of course. They should be in the room of confiscated belongings where I found my clothes in storage."
Negi gasped and blushed as he followed her. "You mean... they were holding you-?!"
She nodded without looking back. "I won't hold it against them, however, since it's just plain common sense to take a dangerous prisoner's clothes away. A professional killer of a decent level can strangle you with a sleeve, suffocate you with buttons, stab you in a vein or artery with a belt buckle. So I'm giving them the benefit of doubt and assuming they didn't do it out of perversion... for now..."
"They kept me fully dressed, however," Negi pointed out, despite vaguely suspecting he shouldn't.
"That's different," Golden Darkness coldly said, "I made it clear I was talking about dangerous individuals."
By default, Negi always liked everyone he met, but then he realized this girl was making it really difficult so far.
Negi frowned at the mess scattered all over the room's floor. "You," he said, "should have put everything back in place after you were finished."
"I saw no point on it. Why to waste my time?" Golden Darkness casually asked as the boy sighed and crouched down to start rummaging through the piles of varied junk and personal belongings she had spreaded in all directions less than one hour before. He could have summoned his staff by just calling out to it, but he wanted to save as much of his magical energy as he could, feeling overall weakened and slightly dizzy right now.
Not that he had to take that long anyway, since moments after he felt the familiar wooden surface and tugged on it, pulling the bandaged treasure from his father back to relative light. He smiled widely, happy to see the staff well preserved, before realizing something and looking back at Yami. "Hadn't you recognized it while looking through. It is rather distinctive, you know..."
"I wasn't paying much attention to random walking sticks," she told him. "I can't use magic, anyway, so any catalyst for it would be useless for me all the same. Besides, while I briefly saw you using it, it didn't occur to me at the time they might've jailed you as well. They always spoke very highly of you before they disappeared."
Negi blinked. "Really?"
Yami nodded. "Why did they imprison you, then?"
He sighed sadly as he began looking for the next item in his mental list. "I was found guilty of allowing a major conspiracy to unveil the secrets of the magecracy to the mundanes."
"I see," Golden Darkness said. "Your companions always struck me as the kind to never keep any secrets for long."
"I won't blame others over my own misfortunes and mistakes, especially not my friends," he sternly told her while pulling out a small sealed case on which a note reading ' Springfield, N.' had been pinned. Grunting, he literally ripped it open with vigor and smiled, checking all his seventeen cards where there, every last one in a pristine state of being. Chisame, Misora, Satomi, Misa, Asuna, Sakurako, Haruka, Haruna, Ayaka, Yuuna, Sora, Konoka, Setsuna, Cocone, Madoka, Alice*, and Evangeline**. He sighed in bliss. "Good, they're all okay..."
Yami looked over his shoulder, then harshly slapped him across the back of his head.
"OWW!" he complained, rubbing the struck area.
"Ecchi," she icily accused him. "I know what those things are for, and how they are made. I've fought several mages before."
Negi scowled, standing up. "You don't know the first thing about our circumstances."
"Nor I want to," she replied. "Well? I never thought I'd be saying this, but why aren't you summoning them here already?"
"It's not that easy," answered Negi as he stuck the cards into his breast pocket. "This unit has been built mainly to hold magically powered prisoners, and if it's truly been placed into lockdown, then summoning anyone here would be not only useless but dangerous- the walls are supposed to be protected against magical effects, meaning nothing can pass through them."
"Right, that makes sense," Yami nodded. "So no teleporting in or out, no way to establish links with the outside even if you were to escape your cell."
"Precisely," Negi nodded back. "If I were to attempt transporting my friends in here, they'd either be blocked out, leaving them easy pickings for anyone right outside, or they'd get stuck in mid transit- probably right at the middle of a thick wall. And I'm not going to run those risks no matter what."
Yami hummed thoughtfully. "Then what? Air vents?"
"Booby trapped," Negi looked up at the ceiling. "I've read on these facilities, they are all but unescapable. Our best bet would be simply smashing our way out through a wall, but... I imagine you've already tried that yourself."
She nodded, her lower lip pouting up very slightly. "I didn't even put a dent on it," she admitted.
"Figures," Negi sighed. "And I'm not sure I'm stronger than you yet, either..."
"That's one interesting way to say you are nowhere as strong as I am," Golden Darkness said.
He half-smirked despite everything. "I've been training a lot since last time we met. I might just surprise you. Actually, let's just hope I can."
While he rolled his sleeves up, she huffed. "Are you actually just going along with it, just like that? I was under the impression you were far too law abiding..."
"I try to be," the boy said, "but these events don't match with any legal procedure I have been officially informed of, so I think I'm just going to break out so I can handle myself over to an actual instance of legal punishment."
"As long as I'm not delivered as well," Yami threatened, shaping a hand into a blade and waving it twice towards him.
He exhaled. "I already delivered you to the law once, so let's simply agree I shouldn't be carrying out the same arrest for the same crimes twice. I won't consider this breakout a crime since it's a simple matter of survival, something you still are entitled to."
Yami pondered his words carefully and then asked, still not lowering the blade, "Are you a teacher on English or Law? I should fairly warn you, I really dislike lawyers..."
Negi threw his hands up, walking towards the door. "Let's just find the furthest point we can reach and try breaking out from there, okay?"
Negi and Yami dropped on their butts, exhausted, after unloading everything they had on the sealed exit.
Golden Darkness had led him to the furthest closed door she had found in the restricted area, the one that just wouldn't give in no matter what. He had charged up with Cantus Bellax and then they had unleashed their best attacks together, concentrating on the same spots at once, never taking a breath as they pummeled, blasted and otherwise released the mother of all beatings on the large, thick black door. Most buildings, even most living creatures, would have been left completely obliterated after receiving such a merciless, relentless onslaught...
But the door didn't fall, didn't even show any evident signs of damage.
"Well," Negi panted, with his hands on his knees, "we're going to need another approach."
Yami pouted and took a hand to her grumbling stomach. "Maybe we need feeding before trying again. I don't feel at the peak of my capacities."
"Me neither," he had to confess, feeling actually rather dizzy and disoriented. The boy sighed sadly. "I only hope they haven't taken the food supplies away..."
Yami got up and began walking back the way they had come, her heels softly clicking against the cold floor. "I only hope they have teriyaki. If they do, the rest is all yours."
Negi blinked before following her. "You only eat teriyaki? That, that just can't be the basis for a healthy balanced diet!"
"My digestive system assimilates and processes nutrients in a way that diversifies the nutritive components of any meal in a way that satisfies all of my current biological needs," the hitwoman explained quietly as she made her way into the supply area, which fortunately had been left inside of their limits. Reaching over with the long tendrils of her hair, she began opening one locker lined up with stands of preserved food after another, making Negi sigh in relief. At the very least, they wouldn't be facing starvation yet. "However, to simplify the procedure, my organism would rather adapt to a single type of food at a time. And I like teriyaki the best of all."
"Oh... okay," Negi absently said, unsure of what else to add.
Then she smiled as she finally found what she had been looking for, as one of the largest lockers was filled with bags and bags of fresh teriyaki in several flavors. "There is hope for your society yet," she told him, with a faintly pleased smile.
"Um... thank you?"
Technically, the electricity had been cut off, but even so, thanks to one of Negi's fire spells, they had been able to cook a decent meal for themselves. Neither was a good cook, but Negi had some outdoors survival training from Merdiana, and Yami was used to looking for herself on the wilderness of alien planets, so they could at least make edible food.
Now they sat before each other in the mild darkness, eating in a tense, subdued silence.
One that Negi ended up breaking, naturally. It was obvious she wasn't going to do it.
"Why do you think they did it?" he asked.
Golden Darkness looked at the ceiling, as if trying to feel something in the surface, above the underground complex. "Whatever their reasons were, they were born from an emergency. I was supposed to be delivered to the Galaxy Police for a trial at Jurai itself. The fact they not only isolated me, but they haven't come to look for me yet, tells me something drastically huge has happened outside."
"Jurai?" Negi asked.
She nodded. "One of the most powerful homeworlds in the Galaxy. I was deceived into killing one of their highest ranking officers. No way they would just leave me here to rot afterwards, not after my location was signaled to them by your superiors. Emperor Azusa and Lady Seto would want to punish me themselves."
"My superiors? Do they... Do they actually have the means to contact alien cultures, just like that?"
"Pretty much all high authorities on Earth do, at least those who command really high levels of power," Yami informed him. "Of course, that's not something they want to be of any public knowledge, not even across lower ranking members of their forces like yourself."
Negi frowned incredulously.
"I have no reasons to lie to you," Yami told him. "Professor Mikado Ryoko? She's your academy's, and your Kanto Association's, liaison with the Galactic Federation. Most world leaders have one as well, and there's even a global organization of Men in Black working in tandem with your governments to keep the existence of extraterrestrials a secret from the populace."
"..." Negi said.
"What is so unbelievable about that? It is the same thing your own ranks do about the existence of magic. That's why you are here in the first place, isn't it?"
Negi swallowed the last mouthful of his dinner (or breakfast or lunch, since he had lost track of the time already and all clocks had stopped working) and sighed. "I see. So what could have stalled those aliens from coming to retrieve you? You seem to imply they were about to do so."
She nodded. "Indeed, my transport to trial was most likely a priority for Jurai, and even a global conflict in your planet probably wouldn't delay them in the slightest. They'd just descend discreetly, retrieve me, and depart with me. They wouldn't need to concern themselves with whatever is happening to you."
Negi grew even more concerned. "Are you talking about-" he trailed off, every idea that came to his mind too horrible to linger on it any long. Again, he checked on his Pactio cards to see they all were okay.
Golden Darkness stood up and stretched lazily. "I will worry about that once I have escaped. In the meanwhile, I'll recover my full strenght by resting before attempting a breakout again. You should do the same, at your own room," she suggested, heading back to the chamber of her containment tube.
Negi blinked. "Um... okay."
"But before you rejoin me," she warned him, "do try and cleanse yourself. Your smell is frankly unbearable."
Negi blushed and looked down, muttering an unintelligible apology as the petite blonde closed the door behind herself.
They dropped on their butts again, looking up haplessly at the still pristine, unyielding reinforced door.
"Scott Free," Yami mumbled.
Negi blinked at her. "Excuse me?"
She gave a small sigh. "That's whom we would need to escape this place. The best escape artist in the galaxy. I have been in several difficult prisons before, but this one's particularly vexing in its simplicity."
It was like being trapped in a plain box with little to no features that could be exploited as openings, no groups to inmates to interact and coordinate escape plans with, no guards to threaten or bribe. Or like being trapped in a coffin sealed underground, without the necessary firepower to flee it. She had never dealt with supernaturally enforced captivity before, all of her prior prisons were based on scientific principles, so she was utterly baffled as to how to deal with this new, unexpected environment.
As much as she admit to admit it, the boy could be her best bet for freedom.
She was so fucking lost.
"Is Scott Free his real name," Negi asked, "or he picked it just because he was an escape artist?"
"Don't be a namist," she chided him.
"How am I being a namist? I'm not saying it's a bad or ridiculous name, I'm just saying it's awfully convenient for an escape artist to have... Anyway, do you know him, have you learned anything from him?"
She shook her head, getting up and touching the door with her fingers, trying to push it down, only to find out it still wasn't budging at all. Not even after they had tried again well rested and fed, and even harder than the day before. She grimaced. "Never met him myself. Now I wish I had."
Negi dusted his hands off on his pants. "No visible hinges to attack, no clear weak spots. Maybe we should try another angle. Let's look all over the place for a vulnerable area, there must be one somewhere."
Golden Darkness pondered this suggestion before realizing she didn't really have a better one herself yet. "Worth a try," she conceded.
The next meal, after a particularly frustrating chain of strikes at strategic-looking areas of the complex, felt especially chilly and uncomfortable to Negi. It was like eating with a disgruntled Chisame, but even far worse. He was under the impression Golden Darkness somehow blamed him for their joint failure at demolishing anything but the furniture and blasting a way out to freedom, so he guessed it was up to him to break the ice, re-establish a functional enough working relationship, and set their efforts back on track.
Being a nerd whose social success relied on appeal and charm over any actual knowledge of how to handle difficult surly people, he naturally started by asking the withdrawn, silent girl a personal question.
"So, um, what do you intend to do after breaking out?"
She glared at him. "Why should that matter to you?"
"Hm, well, it's not like it's any personal business of mine, but..."
"Are you afraid I'll kill Saotome Haruna?"
"Now that you mention it, I'd rather prefer you wouldn't try that, as not only it seems pointless, but it would place us at odds against each other again, but-"
"Right now," Yami said, "I've got more important things to worry about than punishing your perverted friend. Even if the world outside is still functioning as usual, Jurai will still be after me, and I can't stay here after my location has been compromised. I'll have to go retrieve my ship and escape off-planet while I figure my next move out."
Negi blinked. "Your ship?"
"Aren't you supposed to be a genius? How else did you think I arrived to this planet?"
"No, no, I get that," Negi argued, "but I wasn't aware you still had access to a ship. Even if it had survived the landing that brought you here, I'd assumed they'd have confiscated it after your arrest."
Realizing she had said too much already, she uneasily only added the necessary as to not raise any more suspicions or questions. "I'm not an idiot, I left it in a faraway secret location before coming to Japan. I can fly under my own power, so I only need the vessel for interplanetary travel."
"I see..."
"What about you? Are you seriously going to simply turn yourself again?"
He shrugged. "What else can I do, live the rest of my existence as a fugitive?"
"It's what I intend to do, what do you have against my life choices?"
"N-Nothing! But I have people I care about, who would pay the consequences of my actions in my place!"
"What makes you think I don't?"
He blinked and blushed. "Y-You do, too? Oh dear, sorry, I had no idea, I had just assumed, ehhh, sorry about assuming things in the first place-!"
"No, actually, I just wanted to congratulate your deduction powers since I don't really have any people I actually care about."
"... oh."
"It comes with being in this line of work."
"I believe you."
She waited, looking at his face.
"Wh-What?" Negi finally stammered, still nervous.
"Aren't you going to tell me I shoould have to find myself people to care about, and who would care about me in turn?"
"I... I don't think I should be telling you how to live your life, so..."
Yami hummed softly, taking another bite of teriyaki. "That's funny. I had pegged you as the type who would stupidly preach to others about filling their lives with hope and friendship, but I'm glad I was wrong this once."
Negi frowned, looking slightly troubled. "Ah... Thank you?"
Now that she mentioned it, that nagged him slightly, the feeling he now realized he should have tried talking her out of that bleak, solitary outlook on life. He was fairly certain he would have done it, too, before getting to know-
Ah.
"We must get out of here as soon as possible," he declared out of the blue, putting his bowl down and all but growling the words out with fierce resolve.
"Of course, of course," she kept on eating at her own dignified pace. "Glad to see our conversation made you actually realize the stupidly obvious at last, too."
He really was missing Chisame a lot now.
After unleashing enough firepower (both physical and magical, just in case and because they were growing that desperate) to obliterate the now ransacked criminal belongings room but the walls (which continued standing just as proudly as before) Negi decided to try the communication channels again.
Yami sat by herself, sulking, and occassionally giving sharp glances his way. That way he'd stalked of, barely saying anything, after their latest failure somehow was annoying her more than the failure itself, since she had the vague impression she was being blamed on it all. Not that she cared about his opinion or about listening to him as little as possible, of course, but still, she felt she was being done an injustice all the same.
She'd escaped her cell on her own, after all, which he hadn't been able to achieve, so it was perfectly rational assuming the lion's share of the ongoing failing was on him. How he'd managed to become a leader anyway? And how could it be a team led by someone like him had defeated so many powerful enemies, herself included, so far? Edge in sheer numbers and blind luck were factors, no doubt, but she still doubted those explained it all.
As she saw him struggling with phones, computers and old fashioned radio systems (mages apparently were quite stuck in the old ways of that planet) just as uselessly as all prior times she couldn't help but wondering whether admiring his stubborn drive or detesting his blindness to reality. Then, while looking at his back in silence, she had an idea.
But no, naturally, that couldn't and shouldn't be the solution to their- her predicaments. She refused to even consider the option beyond that point, disgusted at herself, but mostly at him.
Golden Darkness hugged her knees, rested her chin on them, and kept on sulking mutely while hearing the boy slowly descend into anguished self-recrimination, his small hands strongly banging against a metal desk...
Golden Darkness still slept in the shattered tube she had escaped from days ago.
Her position in it would have been impossibly uncomfortable for most, but Yami was well used to sleep in inhuman conditions, and as a matter of fact, a rather large part of her life had been spent in tubes. So she had no problems getting to sleep. It is important to make this clear, since this wasn't the reason why she woke up that night.
In the middle of the night, her sharp sense of hearing had caught on some unexpected motion outside of 'her' chamber. At first she had expected one of their caretakers might have returned, the better to ambush them and fight her way to freedom from there. But as she peeked out with each limb turned into a sharp weapon, her hopes were disappointed, as she only saw Negi Springfield, sleepwalking around, moaning softly in his undershirt and boxers, shuffling around like one of the undead.
"Chi-sa-me-" he would say, barely understandable, every once in a while, and Golden Darkness knew he was calling out for one of his companions. One with glasses, she seemed to remember from her thankfully short interactions with them. At the very least, he wasn't calling out for Saotome.
She kept on observing him, seeing him scratch at every door he passed along and groaning like a needy animal as he did so, his troubled tone downright feverish at times. For an academic used to hold answers and keep an uptight attitude when he couldn't find them, he had to release a lot of bottled up tension somehow, she guessed. Sleepwalkers were, in her experience, always disturbed people in one way or another. Even she could sleep at peace with herself, after all, eve if pure survival needs had made her easy to wake up by outside interferences.
Just like this one.
Finally, in his aimless trudging, he stopped before the door, standing before her, and while she knew he couldn't see her, she still frowned at him, almost challenging. His hands roamed around, reaching for the part where a door's handle would have been; since that roughly corresponded to where her chest currently was in his way, she had to slap his hands away with a large hand made of strands of her compressed hair. And she was being understanding and easy on him since he was only a child.
However, as his hands were slapped, a few golden hairs flew from their whole, and floated up to tickle his nose. He grimaced, then his nose twitched a few times. She raised an eyebrow, and then he loudly sneezed on her, with the force of a small hurricane, blowing her hair back and shredding all clothes off her body and into tiny black petals that fluttered around them...
THEN she furiously punched him through the wall that separated the hallway from his cell room.
"ECCHI!"
"For the last time," Negi coldly said, bearing his black eye as a proud wound of war, "my sleepwalking is not faked at all, it's merely an otherwise harmless manifestation of... let's call it childhood trauma I developed back at home."
Yami scowled almost viciously while he finished drawing his paper copy. "I can't believe it. Then why haven't you gotten it treated?"
"Because it's otherwise harmless," he patiently repeated himself.
"How can you say it's harmless right after telling me it drives you to sleepwalk into others' beds?!" she protested, threatening him with a massive hair fist.
He kept his British grace under the pressure. "Back there, I only walked into my sister's bed, making it far more acceptable."
"No, if anything, the fact she was your sister only made it worse!"
"I fail to see how," he said. "As for my stay here, well, Chisame has taken measures to make sure I never walk into her bunk or Satomi-san's."
"Uh-huh," she growled, eyes squinted. "Such as?"
"That's an entirely private matter that, also concerning Chisame, I don't feel entitled to reveal away from her presence," he piously said, unwilling to confess it was because Chisame had him sleep in her bunk in the first place so he wouldn't sleepwalk around. "Anyway, it's done now," he quickly added, interrupting Yami's next proteste before it could be voiced.
He shook the paper doll he'd been carefully writing onto, and in a small puff of smoke it changed into a nearly identical duplicate of himself. Yami was, despite herself, mildly struck, and truly voiceless for a second. While she had ran into clones before, she'd never had seen anyone creating them in less than months of sample taking and bio-artificial development. To create them from paper and a black pen was downright astounding!
"Hello!" the duplicate said happily. "I'm Negi."
The real Negi nodded. "Nice to meet you, Negi. I'm Negi."
The duplicate nodded and turned to Yami, greeting her as well. "Hello! I'm Negi."
Golden Darkness just blinked. She was vaguely reminded of that tree creature who was partnered with that hideously annoying furry mammal in Sector 616, and she wasn't sure she liked that all that much.
"They aren't very intelligent, I'm afraid," the real Springfield told the alien hitwoman, "but he'll suffice for a simple task like this. Negi?"
"Yes? I'm Negi," Negi told Negi.
Negi nodded at Negi. "Negi, we want you to climb up into that air vent and see where it leads you. Be warned you may run into several traps along your way, but I've cast several basic and advanced routines of survival into you-"
"He barely can say anything but his name!" Yami pointed out.
"And that's because I left little room in his mind for anything but avoiding traps," the actual teacher told her. "Anyway, Negi, your mission is seeing how far through the air conduits you can go, then return here and report us on your discoveries. Can you do that, Negi?"
"Yes! I'm Negi!"
"That's the spirit!" Negi patted Negi on the shoulders. "Now go and please take good care of yourself!"
"Yes! I'm Negi!" Negi nodded, hopping onto the desk under the air vent, then quickly and skillfully climbing up and into it. Before any long, he had scurried away through the vent system, while his originator and Yami waited tensely...
Then the sound of a powerful explosion startled them, along a sharp, shrill cry of "I'M NEGI!"
And the ventilation system sprayed a rain of confetti all over them.
Negi sighed. "See," he sadly told Golden Darkness, "I told you it wouldn't be that easy..."
"Maybe you could send one down the toilet, or would it unravel in contact with the water?" she suggested.
"I'm not looking forward to eating your remains," Golden Darkness quietly, miserably even, said over the next somber meal.
"Maybe," Negi respectfully said, "it would help if you consumed your rations less... quickly."
"I can't help it," she said. "I have a high caloric intake. Moreso when I'm trying my best to apply unusual amounts of physical strenght on something."
"I am doing that too, you know," Negi informed her.
Yami glared at him. "Why did you take that as a personal attack?"
"I don't know, from the tone you said it, it sounded like you were resenting me..."
"I resent you over many things," she said, "but that isn't one of them. It's hardly your fault you are weak."
"I'm not weak!" he protested.
"No, I suppose, for a Terran, you aren't."
He pouted. "Well, these Terrans you look at with such contempt have, not only caught you, but also kept you imprisoned more successfully than anyone else, isn't that right?"
Now she downright glared at him. "Don't ever use that tone again with me. I've overlooked many of your missteps because you are a child, but if you insist on being as insolent as an adult, I'll treat you as such."
"Oh, but it's okay for you to talk down at me!" he argued. "Look, I'm not asking for much, just for a little respect! I hardly like being here any more than you do!"
She put her bowl down and readied herself. "Fine then. Let's fight."
Negi blinked. "What?"
"I'm sick of enduring you and your uselessness. If you think I'm treating you with contempt, fine, I'll give you enough respect as to treat you as an adversary instead. Prepare yourself."
"Wait, I don't want to fight at all! What happened to simply talking things out? I realize I might have stepped out of the line, and I'm sorry, I've been under too much pressure, but I don't think I'm the only one here who-"
"I didn't ask you if you wanted to fight," she matter-of-factly told him, and then rushed at him.
It wasn't that Negi Springfield disliked fighting. Well, originally, he did, but training under Ku Fei and Evangeline had changed his mind on the subject, at least in what concerned to calculated violence as a tool of personal improvement. He had come to greatly appreciate and even enjoy fighting for sport between two agreeing competitors, each of whom would derive some physical and arguably spiritual enhancement out of the experience.
And since his fighting education had come from two women, he hardly had the same overall qualms about fighting women than Kotaro had. He'd enjoyed his fights in the Mahora Tournament against females as much as he'd enjoyed all those he had fought against any males but Takamichi and Albireo, and those two only because of what they personally meant for him, regardless of their gender.
So that wasn't what was bothering him about fighting Golden Darkness now.
It was how pointless this fight was.
"This is absurd!" he shouted even as he dodged another series of fast flying blades sprouting from her body, blocking a massive mallet created from her right leg with his forearm, and then doing a leg sweep on her left foot. "We shouldn't be fighting each other when we still have to work together!"
"First prove it's worth working with you!" she argued, leaping back to her feet, then spinning in the air as she dodged his Sagitta Magica which crashed against the ceiling, being absorbed by its magic-neutralizing properties.
"I could ask the same from you, yet I'm not doing it!" he protested, trying to incapacitate without seriously hurting, and without destroying the parts of the facilities they still needed for their survival.
"Then consider this a chance I'm giving you to test me, too!" she offered, holding herself back far less so, yet still not going all out either. He knew he couldn't afford himself to be gentle, and in a way, she probably didn't deserve it either; she was a career killer, and most likely, her hands were far dirtier with blood than Amagasaki Chigusa's had ever been. She lacked the heartfelt restrains of Kotaro, replaced by cold, harsh efficiency, and yet, he knew that same lack of qualms meant she could kill him in his sleep if she really wished it so. He still couldn't figure her real motives to attack him right now, despite of her words, and that only made him more confused about the whole ordeal.
Then again, he suspected she wasn't all that clear on the topic herself.
They blew each other through walls that sadly only led to other rooms they already had access to. Whenever they hit a wall leading to different sectors of the complex, such walls would not fall yet, either. They fought with a mixture of brutal abandon and heartfelt reluctance to take their agression- or defense- to their last consequences. They kicked, blasted, pummeled and punched each other in ways that would have quickly annihilated most other adversaries they ever had. Before long, they both were bloodied and bruised, their cute, appealing faces swollen and covered in scratches and wounds.
They rolled through the kitchen's door and across its floor almost like crazed lovers, stopping only when they hit the oven with a metallic clang. She landed on top of him, panting and aiming a long scimitar of transformed hair at his throat. He rasped and wheezed, holding the tip of his father's staff against the base of her chin.
They intensely looked into each other's eyes, each whispered a none too pleasing but perfectly educated and non vulgar word, and then they pulled away from each other, cheeks reddened by more than the heat of battle and the bleeding from their cuts.
They knelt on the floor eyeing each other suspiciously, in a new, strangely pregnant silence, struggling with confusing, turbulent feelings neither understood or wanted to understand. She briefly created a pair of giant scissors out of her hair, snipped at the air tentatively with him, and pondered striking at him again, but finally just undid them with a weary sigh.
He thought about asking her if she'd had enough already, but decided against it, too.
So they just remained there, in silence, looking at each other.
"Okay," Golden Darkness finally said, icily and inhumanly, green eyes narrowed in a vicious scowl. "You win. I'll do it."
Negi blinked, childlike confusion almost flowing back instantly just like that. "You'll do what?"
She sneered evilly at him, then clumsily pouted her soft pink lips towards him, showing a complete lack of experience, practical or otherwise, on the subject.
Negi instantly grew ghastly pale, and not because of the blood he'd lost during the battle.
"I... I thought you had said, more than once, you hated perversion?" Negi could finally say, quite helplessly.
"I thought you had said there was nothing of perversion in what you do?" Yami glacially accused him.
"Not what I do, what I did, I promised myself to never- Anyway, you still think it's perverted, so why to bring that up now!" the boy grew panickly agitated.
"It's true I hate ecchi, of course," she said. "You know what else I hate? Starving to death."
"But we haven't tried so many alternative options already, like, um, ah, and-"
She grabbed him by his collar and shook him angrily. "Do you think I haven't spent days ransacking my brain for alternatives? Do you think I'd stoop this low if I had other viable options for my survival?!"
"Ah, so that's why you were acting that way towards me, then..."
She let him go with a disgusted groan. "Don't think so highly of yourself. My frustration at you had nothing to do with any dependence of mine on you, but on your inability to stand on your own without a convenient 'alliance'. And before you say anything, yes, I do realize that applies to me as well, in a way. I haven't grown as strong as I should have, and this is my way to punish myself over that, too."
Negi frowned. "I'm not sure that's the right attitude for-"
"Either way," she flatly summarized, "I'd rather think of this as a continuation of our terms of temporary teamwork. Let us compromise you depend as much on me as I depend on you... until we break free, and all bets amongst us are off. We will walk our separate ways, hopefully never meet again, and will never mention this to anybody else."
He found himself nodding thoughtfully. "If it's a temporray alliance, it can be dissolved through a mutual agreement and ceremony staged between both contractors, but-"
"Now what?" Golden Darkness growled, blushing uncomfortably.
"I don't know how to set a Pactio up," he confessed.
"You. The prodigy mage who's had more than fifteen of those... disgusting things. You don't know how to set them up."
"W-Well, every time, it would be Chamo who would do it, that's his job as my Familiar, I mean, a part of it anyway, and I always thought it'd be rather rude from me to-"
"Who's Chamo?"
"My ermine friend," Negi informed him. "You've seen him already!"
Yami stared blankly at him.
"The white weasel," Negi sighed.
"Ah. Still, every last time you have seen him doing it, haven't you?"
"Why yes, naturally, but-"
She frowned in an extremely sour way at him.
Negi gulped. "I suppose I could try it, but what would happen if I failed, and it all were for nothing...?"
"Then I would murder you over taking advantage of me. Just like I will murder you eventually as I grow desperate and crazed by starvation."
"And if it doesn't fail, won't you murder me anyway?"
"I might not."
"..." Negi said.
"..." Yami replied, still frowning and blushing. It was just as terrifying and brutal as it was cute.
Negi sighed. "We're going to need some chalk."
"They had chalk in a drawer. Of course they'd have chalk sticks in a drawer of a holding unit..." Negi muttered as he drew the circle on the floor.
"Too true," Yami uneasily agreed. "I can see the point of it in a permanent jail, as to educate the inmates, although I still believe prompt executions make far more sense in a reasonable legal system. But I can't fathom what it'd be doing in this place..."
"Well, most of the staff here also works at the school, so there's that," the boy mused while still working on the pattern. "Some of us just kind of put chalk in our pockets after writing on the blackboard, and then forget about it..."
The girl sighed, rubbing the bridge of her small nose. "You know what, this is an awful idea. Let's drop it already."
He also sighed while pulling back and standing up, dusting the chalk off his hands. "It's not going to work anyway. I copied the design from what I've seen of Chamo's drawings, not because I wanted to pull it off, mind, but Chamo's an artist, I just can't compare. Chamo-"
Then the circle of runes began glowing, making Golden Darkness grimace and wince visibly.
"Chamo's done this far too many times, definitely," Negi decided with gloomy accuracy.
The blonde shook her hands before herself. "W-W-Wipe it off! You lied to me, you pervert! You said you couldn't do it!"
"I was wrong, okay, I'm not perfect!" he argued.
"Oh, you aren't perfect, but you can pull that off in your first try?!" she demanded, pointing down for emphasis.
"Okay, okay, I'll wipe it off, but it was your idea anyway!" he said, aiming his staff at the floor.
"Only because I don't want to die!"
"Neither do I!"
"Then why are you foiling what could be our only survival chance?!"
"Because you just told me to! And because I want to in the first place!"
"Well, then do it!"
"I'll do it!" he cried, clenching his teeth and gripping harder on the staff, his hands trembling violently...
Then her hand was on his. "W-Wait," she said.
"Now what?"
"L-Listen," she said through gritted teeth. "I realize I'm being irrational, okay? I can't help it. Then again, you aren't being much better. But then, you're only a child."
"I'm not only a-"
"Yes, you are. But, but that's not my point. Y-You're just a child, so this doesn't matter to me anyway, right? It's not like I'm kissing a man, it's barely above kissing a baby."
"Then I'd say that yes, that was your point!"
"Be quiet, child," she coldly scolded him. "Yes. Very well. I'm not being perverted. I'm just kissing a child, it just happens to be on the lips and briefly rather than on the forehead, and anyway several cultures allow light and casually kissing children on the lips without it being s-se-perverted, it's a simple innocent thing to do..." she reassured herself, slightly twitching as she spoke, concerning Negi greatly. He'd have ran or flown away, except because, well, they were imprisoned, which had started the whole mess in the first place.
Then, quickly, before he could react, he had his eyes and most of his face for that matter, tightly covered by Golden Darkness' prehensile hair. Since his mouth was still unblocked, he could voice a gasping, "Hey, what are-!" before being forcefully lifted off his feet and pulled along, feeling the familiar warmth of the Pactio circle under him now.
"B-Before I regain my senses and regret this," Negi heard her voice. extremely bitter and disgusted, before he had a sudden, slightly bittersweet, taste abruptly forced into his mouth.
Rather quickly, Negi realized this girl was an even worse kisser than Asuna.
It wasn't that he placed any personal value on people's ability or lack thereof to kiss others, of course, but she was actively hurting him with her clumsy, yet extremely agressive and rough kiss, which was at once too forceful and too reluctant, despite how theoretically impossible that should be. It was as if she was pulling her lips back while mostly attacking his mouth her teeth, biting more than actually kissing. Compared to that, the dim bittersweet flavor was a minor thing to think about, really. This wasn't being a pleasurable experience at all, but then, it dawned on him, and worried him, she wouldn't be having any pleasure from it herself.
Which would be terribly bad and sad for her, if this was her first time... and it definitely had to be. Briefly he thought of doing something to make it more plesant for her, but he had no idea what could he do about it, and either way, odds were it'd only enrage her even more anyway. Not to mention she already was pulling back from him, after a final fierce flash of light from below...
Well. At least, it had been short. Thank God.
With evident disgust, she caught the card slowly fluttering down from ceiling level before he could. "You'd better hope this worked-"
Then she gave it a look, and a massive vein bulged on her head.
Negi gulped loudly. "Y-Yami-san...?"
"ECCHI!" she shouted, moments before he had to duck under a gigantic hair-fist projectile, then to leap over several hair-blades flung his way.
"What?!" he protested, jumping and pirouetting his way through the angry onslaught from the furiously hissing Golden Darkness, who was doing her best to crumple her card in a hand, despite how surprisingly resiliant it was proving being. "What did I do, why do I have to die?!"
"Just, just look at what your perverted lips did to me!" she said, shoving her brand new card on his face while fuming, as they briefly stopped in their dangerous dance. He blinked and blushed, taken aback by more than the shock itself of her sudden newest reaction. Now he couldn't be that critical of her, as he had to agree the Spirits of Magic seemed to have played a particularly mean joke on her.
The Pactio card showed her in a skimpy, revealing black attire better fitting Evangeline. Her feet bare, her hands armed with long, sharp claws. A hairpiece with long ornate horns on her head, a ragged cape loosely hanging from her shoulders, and black angel wings sprouting from her back. It was positively scandalous and-
"Indecent, filthy, grotesque, degenerate and insulting!" Yami ranted at him, surrounding him with all sorts of blunt and sharp instruments of destruction and carnage sprouting from her body, from all sides. "You knew this would happen, didn't you? You arranged for it with your strange arcane arts!"
Negi, in the meanwhile, chose focusing on the card's writing rather than her mostly naked graphic depiction. "Your actual name is Eve?" he quietly inquired. "That's almost funny, it's nearly the same as Master's-"
Yami huffed proudly, snatching the card that read Eve- Tenebris Aurea away from him. "I don't want to talk about that," she informed him with deadly seriousness.
Negi shrugged. "That's your prerogative and I'll respect it, sorry for asking. Then, will you murder me before or after we have tried to see if we can use that Pactio to make our escape?"
She opened her mouth as wide as it would go, remained perfectly still for just a second, and then grunted bitterly, lowering all of the weapons pointing at Negi. "After," she murmured. "Depending on our failure or success, I'll make it either more or less painful."
They were back before the large door blocking them away from the rest of the complex, and now they stood there, they actually paused, despite having waited for a long time for an edge like the one they might have now.
Negi could understand and even share Eve's... he had to stop thinking about her by that name, now... reservations. Trying would mean seeing if the Pactio would help them at all. And failing would mean their alliance- their kiss- had been for naught. He wasn't sure how far her frustration and anger would go then, but he thought he had a fairly accurate idea on the subject, and it wasn't something he was looking forward to.
So he gulped loudly when she finally steeled herself and glacially announced, "I'm doing it now."
"Ah, okay," he said, quickly spinning around on his heels as to face away from her. "J-Just hold the card up, say 'Adeat', and the transformation should follow immediately. Your Artifact might manifest right away with you, especially the first time, but if it doesn't, you only have to summon it by-"
"Adeat," she hissed, and then Negi felt the warm, nearly overwhelming flash happening behind him.
Then it subsided just as quickly, and he heard a low, throaty, long drawn moan. Confused by the sound, he spun back and blushed as he saw Eve- no, Yami, whatever- standing there in the same revealing outfit from the card, flexing her claws in and out and smiling spacedly at them, while still moaning in apparent faint delight. There was something strange and utterly different about her expression now, too.
"Negi-kuuuuun..." she cooed, slowly tilting her head around so she could look into his eyes, her eyelids slightly hanging down seductively. "Thank you, for this wonderful gift..."
"Ahhh... You're welcome?" he swallowed, now greatly concerned about what would come next. His Pactios had never altered the Ministra's personality, and neither had those of Lala, Skuld, Itoshiki-sensei, Akashi-sensei or Shirou. Was this a result of Golden Darkness' particular kind of alien biology? Or was she, somehow, just pretending as to set an ambush of sorts for him? "But, but why are you, all of a sudden-"
She sighed dreamily, tossing her long blond hair back. "I'd never felt so... free!... before. Hu hu. Hu, hu, hu. I want to share this... freedom with everybody else now." She caressed the outline of her chin with her claws, giving a new, louder moan. "I'm so warm, everywhere, but especially down there, in my core..."
"Y-Your heart, you mean?" the boy stammered. "That isn't so low, unless you are-"
She laughed in a way that eerily reminded him of Tsukuyomi. Whom he almost was wishing were there now. Or not. "How cute! For a teacher, you've still a lot to learn from your Oneechan. But there are far better, wider classrooms out there. So let's do this!" she happily said, lifting a clawed hand and then bringing down in a quick slashing arc, projecting an abrupt area effect that manifested itself as a pulsating wave of pure disruptive energy...
... And then the door was literally made to collapse unto itself, suctioning itself into a vortex that instantly blinked out of existence, and making Negi gasp in horror. What had he just brought onto this world?
She looked out at the new hallway they had just gained access to, one that didn't look different at all from all those in the maze they had spent days caught into. She licked her lips, looked back at Negi, smiled sweetly at him, and offered him an open hand. "Come on, my mate. Let's explore the world in our honeymoon," she sing-sang, staring deeply at him with those large, fixed green eyes that looked so disturbing compared to their simple earlier murderous resolve.
"H-Honey-?!" he began to gasp the word out before she interrupted him, grasping his hand with just enough force as to not shred it with the sharp talons.
"Why, thank you," she flightily said, and then flew out with a screaming Negi in tow.
She giggled- giggled, making the skin on the back of his neck crawl- as she zoomed across the air, through corridor after corridor. He tried to keep a presence of mind, analyzing the facts as they fastly unraveled around them, even as she firmly held him against herself, fiercely unwilling to let go of him yet.
They weren't stumbling into any more barriers or finding any defenses blocking their way, which was good in the short range. On the other hand, that strange silence all over wherever they went, that complete absence of any guards or staff anywhere in sight, they all added to the puzzle, and he disliked the implications he could deduce about the whole.
Yet he had little time to dwell on such thoughts, as Golden Darkness' increased flight speed was so high they were reaching the front gates of the large house that secretly nestled the prison facilities in its basements. Such gates were flung open, allowing the former prisoners their first full view of the sunlight in over a week.
"Ooohhhh..." Yami cooed while finally stopping, delicate bare feet landing on the manor's front steps, even as Negi instinctively shielded his brow from the intense sun at first, blinking a few times as to be able to look at- at-
"Oh my goodness," he quietly said.
The house overlooked most of the surrounding campus grounds, which were as deserted as the insides of the facilities. Not devastated, not wrecked and tirn, but abandoned and still all the same, not a single human soul anywhere in sight.
Small birds chirped on the still intact trees, but the streets showed clear signs of having been unattended for days, and the houses and buildings in the distance seemed to be empty, no one coming in or out of them, no inhabitants at the windows. It was as if Mahora had became a ghost town, not through the force of violence of annihilation, but just as efficiently as if it had. "What..." the boy genius asked himself, "What is going on here..."
His newest Ministra Magi sighed in good humor, hugged him harder so his face would be pressed between her breasts and his limbs would madly flail around, and she stared into the lonely horizon line, with the same almost vacant, broken eyes and matching wide smile.
"I think," she pleasantly, but just as creepily, said, "I'm going to like this a lot!"
Elsewhere.
The soft sounds of gentle waves affably hitting the shoreline woke him from his troubled sleep.
The young, cadaveric man on the bed, under thin white blankets and an almost as light ceiling that allowed a lot of natural illumination in, finally shook the chains of slumber off and groggily sat up, wearing a thin white robe. He took a hand to his aching forehead and then reached around, feeling for his glasses on the nightstand next to the bed. That was where his butler always left them for him, after all.
He had been there more than once. He had recognized the room as soon as he regained consciousness. It was part of the Itoshikis' favorite island resort, where he had spent many a vacation under circumstances most other boys would have found highly enjoyable. Not him, but he didn't fault the island, the house or the servants for that. That was just the way he was.
Soon enough, his long, bony fingers latched on the glasses, and he put them back on, getting a better look of the bedroom, which had hardly changed at all since the last time he had been there. He also saw the person who had been sitting by the bed, wearing a pretty, light yellow summer dress and sporting an enigmatic, polite smile. It had been more than one year since he had last seen her, but she smelled and looked exactly the same.
"Rin," he said the name, adjusting the glasses a little.
"Welcome back, Oniisama," Itoshiki Rin told her brother, cocking her smiling head slightly aside. "I'm so glad to see you again."
To be Continued?
* From either version of The Keys of the Kingdom.
** From Twenty Five Other Times Negi Made a Pactio.