The Surgeon General's Warning:
Read at your own risk. Suspension of Disbelief is required.
Springfield, Ph.D.: A Different Paradigm
Chapter 04:
Changing of The Guard
An Negima-ish fanfic by James "Ray" Edwards
Doctor N. Springfield wondered if he would ever be able to go a day here at Mahora Academy without someone screaming at him. Due to the urgency of his professional duties, he still did not have adequate time to get his affairs in order, e.g. unpacking, and had spent the remainder of the evening prior playing catch-up on his laptop. Mercifully, his predecessor, one Takamichi Takahata, had been kind of enough to share his lesson plan and print outs, so that Negi's coming classes would have some material to absorb while he scrambled to ready his own genius.
The tall, bespectacled gentleman took his reassignment surprisingly well, in spite of the short notice, offering his best wishes at the brief "welcome aboard" meeting in the staff room. It was not as if he was being fired, so Negi imagined he could make some peace with himself and accept the transition, for what it was: way out of his hands. The same could not be said of Asuna Kagurazaka, whose loud decry preempted all of her classmates.
"Sensei, you can't be serious! Is That Guy really taking over from you?!"
Again, the boy genius found his personal space violated by the very UN-Japanese Finger Point of Accusation! It was rude and extremely disrespectful, a fact that did not go unnoticed by anyone present. Asuna, being the wool-headed fool she was, had not the faintest clue of the controversy she had just created. As the senior man, Takahata was obligated to step up for his junior colleague. He already lost face to Negi right in front of his old class because of the outburst, and now, he would be forced to choose between her or his integrity.
It was a lose-lose situation really. His reputation was already in the hole amongst the faculty because of 2-A, but since his successor's arrival, his previous failure that had been tolerated previously transformed into a true mark of shame. The meeting earlier in the morning had not just been for Negi's benefit, but an unspoken blacklisting of Takahata as well. His detractors had always said he was too soft and lax; thus, his students suffered for it.
Most likely, even with the Dean's influence, this trimester would be his last term teaching at this particular school within the Mahora Academy District. The Board of Trustees would have him sacked and mailed off to one of the lower division schools, during the brief recess after the third term closing ceremony, before the new fiscal year began in April. Office politics was an awful business.
Professor Negi Springfield, of course, had not the full picture of his fellow colleague's plight, but a sinking suspicion that there were more forces at work here than meets the eye. Alas, he was scarcely in a position to help anyone, much less himself, as his credibility was still very much a work-in-progress. Anastasia was probably enjoying every single moment of this delightful booby trap somewhere, while the boy genius debated whether to put his reputation to the test now, or...
"That will be quite enough of you, Kagurazaka Asuna-san!" like a messenger from an angel (was that even proper English?), a miracle intervened on behalf of both the stranded teachers in the form of Class 2-A's very own class representative.
Takahata thanked his stars for Ayaka Yukihiro; he could always depend on the blue blood girl to throw her weight around, when it came to Asuna. Those two had been feuding, what, since primary school, was it?
As for Negi, he was glad he got saved by the bell yet again, but seriously, was that girl power posing? Hand on her hip and her own Respect My Authority Finger Point! directed at the infuriated redhead? Check. Blossoming flower background of elegance? Check. Yes, she was indeed powerposing for effect.
"Stay outta this, Class Rep!" Asuna vented, turning her metaphorical loaded gun now on her long time rival. "This has got nothing to do with you, understand?"
"My, my, but I must insist, Kagurazaka Asuna-san, especially when you infringe upon my duties and act as if you speak for us all. Your gross behavior is simply aw-ful; you have no right to exercise such power! Be ashamed and know your place, you violent gorilla girl!!"
The power of her decree had all the explosive kaboom of a canon shot, which quite understandably shocked her on looking classmates into stunned silence. As for the poor teachers caught in the crossfire, they could scarcely believe their awful luck at being led into yet another Mexican standoff. Takahata, badly, wanted to flee from the scene. Negi could only look on in macabre fascination of the oncoming train wreck, while wondering how was it possible that Asuna had not lunged at her opposite number with a blood curling scream yet.
It could not be anything good now, could it? Why the throbbing vein of anger on her forehead practically screamed that Mt. Asuna was about to blow! So what was the hold up, eh? Eh?!
"Feh, what's up with that~, iinchou-san?" Asuna drawled, her lips pulled back in an almost psychotic leer that sent a jolt up Negi's spine. Oh, he did not like that look; he did not like it at all.
Bad things were about to happen and Ayaka was blissfully ignorant. Ugh, damn the curse of dumb blondes! ...although Doctor N. Springfield would hope she was natural blonde, for at least that particular color combination was totally possible in normal humans. It would do his sanity so much good to know.
"Why, whatever could you mean?"
"Oh, come on~! Everyone knows your elegant and pure act is just that an act."
"Ho, what nonsense! Everyone knows that is the natural way of things that my outer beauty is but a drop in the ocean of my inner beauty, too."
Asuna's grin grew wider, if that was possible. "Heeeehhhhh~? What beauty could you mean---you filthy shotacon!"
For those spectators, it appeared to have happened in an instant. Under different circumstances, a flurry of red and gold would have seemingly flown over chairs and desks, colliding with each other loudly in a titanic clash of feminine fury. What happened instead was the sharp scuff from a pair of Oxfords punctuating the air with all deafening loudness of an explosion, and standing there at the epicenter was Professor Negi Springfield.
Ayaka stood frozen in place, dumbfounded, by no more than finger upon her rosy lips that had silenced indignant triade. Her own scornful, stinging accusations she was about to hurl across the room, like an artillery barrage, that would attack her foe right at the heart, before the ensuing skirmish in bitter hand-to-hand combat. Oh, she should have been furious at this young upstart coming between her and her old rival, but...
"Thank you, Yukihiro-kun. I will take over from here," the new teacher, no, their teacher, Negi Springfield, told her with the most piercing eyes she had ever seen. Even her own father, who had first demonstrated the feat to her, could not hold a candle to the influence this young man, her own age, commanded, and---well, it was an exhilarating experience.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Negi thanked the riveting drama queens, for drawing the class's attention away from his stealthy movements. Their electrifying chemistry would make a great duo in theatre or the silver screen, truly. As for himself, well, his talents were better put to use in more practical applications, such as using a little animal magnetism to let Ayaka Yukihiro know her own place in the lion's pride.
In fact, he was better than just a lion. He was a damn "Tigerman", to homage Alfred Bester, and it was high time Asuna got a taste of her own medicine.
Negi pointed, and a collective gasp was released from the swooning majority of Class 2-A, who thought the whole spectacle totally romantic and savvy. "Kagurazaka Asuna. I, Professor Negi Springfield, sentence you to five hours total of remedial lessons to be completed by the end of the week. Your supervisor will be Takahata-sensei, and you are to report to him not a minute late within twenty minutes of the closing bell sounding at the end of each school day. I also expect a written letter of apology to the entire class, reflecting on your impropriety, in three hundred words, delivered to my desk, by the end of the week."
His words rang out with all the metaphorical force of arrows raining from the sky that soon turned Asuna's ego into a bloody pin cushion. Valiantly, she stood her blood stained ground on shaky knees, the color gone from her face, with the executioner's axe hovering overhead. Though wavering, the fire of defiance in her soul would not be extinguished yet!
"T, Takahata-sensei, he can't-"
"I'm afraid he can, and it's legal too, Asuna," Takahata smiled sheepishly.
"...Ah."
YOU WA SHOCKU!
Thanks to the bells wound in her hair, the sound, oddly, was very similar to a cow collapsing, as Asuna fell to her hands and knees, defeated, a triumphant theme song from Hokuto no *** trumpeting metaphorically in the background. Operation World Peace by Detention appeared to have been a resounding success. Negi could only share a silent manly glance with his co-conspirator, while the man went over to console his former student. Who knew they could still turn this beast around into a relative win-win situation?
"There, there, Asuna. It'll be okay. I'm sure your grades will finally rebound thanks to this, so let's do our best together, okay?"
Now, with no further interruptions, Negi wondered if he could please start his own flipping class already?!
The end of the school day tolled at four in the afternoon, a note that could not have come sooner. Young Negi Springfield exchanged the congratulatory pleasantries, demanded of his new celebrity status, amongst his colleagues, before making himself scarcer than ghost. The last thing he wanted to disappoint everyone with was how very human he could be.
Negi was exhausted. As much as Miss Asuna Kagurazaka had become an unexpected stepping stone in his rise to popularity, part and parcel of his growing list of "Heroic" feats, the experience had drained him, and considering the requirements of his profession, by the end of the day, he was utterly spent of empathy. More than anything at the moment, the boy genius wanted some space to himself, which was precisely why he was laid out on a bench beside a rather grand building that was the school library.
Excessive volumes of books and girls tended not to mix well together like flies and insect repellent. Coincidentally, it also worked against boys, too. In his experience, he could rely on the correlation to thin out all but the most exasperating outliers, depending of the time of day and the particulars of the season. Alas, there was one thing he forgot to account for, being in Japan.
It could not have been more than ten minutes of peace, when the great double doors to the library disgorged a busy bee that Negi did everything humanly possible in his power to ignore. Never mind the infernal creature, this particular specimen of a library representative, who was no beast of burden, yet already overloaded with a stack of books higher than she could see through her awful fringe, attempted to fulfill an impossible evolutionary niche. Bad hair, or so he had been told, could serve as a very effective means of preventing premature promiscuous relations between males and females, but the poor misguided creature clearly had taken the natural defense mechanism a step too far.
She was walking blind, illegally. Doctor N. Springfield, badly, wanted to forget he had seen such heights of idiocy. He did not have the heart or the mood to tolerate such a flagrant offense to mankind's common sense. Alas, he was a teacher, a scholar, and an English gentleman, obligated by duty to move his kisser over yonder and bring light where there was once none.
"Ho there, wait a moment, young lady," he called after the preceding girl, his Japanese losing much of its usual glamour for his aptly dubbed, au naturel charm. For some reason, she just kept on going, without acknowledging his existence, which did not seem plausible in an environ of relative privacy, unless she was hard of hearing. Well then, the professor knew just the remedy for the problem. "...I say STOP, ye soaping git!"
His caustic cry, certainly, caught the cowlick-haired waif's attention, sending something akin to a paralyzing shock that jolted up her spine, now ramrod straight as soldier at attention. The little whimpering "eep!" was cute, probably too cute for his blackheart, which was on the verge of becoming unchained and ravishing the poor creature, with terrible words of foreplay. By the time he would be finished, she would be no more but a hopeless masochistic slut, for whom the pleasures of the flesh could no longer sustain her scarred intellect. Exchanging bodily fluids was asinine; artfully constructed insults to make Satan sport a new belly, now that was hot.
Alas, Negi would have to start charging by the minute then. One hundred yen per minute to say on the line with The Doctor sounded great, even though it was tantamount to prostitution. Wait... No, no, no, no, no Doctor N. Springfield. Very bad, Doctor N. Springfield! You are a doctor / Not a gigglo / Not a masseur / What does that mean? / and I'm sorry he's dead, Negi. PRANA~ TOR~PE~DO~!
"Thou who wishes to cross the bridge of peril yonder," Negi caroled, while a great madness born of eccentricity and sleep deprivation took his mind to the farthest reach of the great beyond, "ye must answer me these questions three, from 'ere the other side she see!"
Magis-tra An~ya open hailing frequencies!
"Wot is your name?"
Yes, Doctor N. Springfield / opening hailing frequencies, Sir.
"Actually, don't answer that; I'd rather have it remain a surprise should we ever meet again, which we probably will, 'cos it's a small world, savvy~?"
Let's boldly go where no man has gone before / Ha ha ha ha ha!
"Wot is your quest?"
Beam me up, Mas-ter / Zelretch, go to warp!
"Wot is your favorite color?"
Warp Three, Sir? / No! That would be way too slow! / Warp Four, Sir? / That still is way too slow
"Wot is the title of play from which the line, 'What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,' is derived from?"
Warp Five, Sir? / It still is too damn slow / Warp Six / It's too damn slow / Warp Seven / It's still damn slow / IT'S TOO DAMN SLO~OW~!
Alas, the good times of a little bit of fun insanity could not last. To be truthful, he had listened to a single stuttering reply from the mousy, misguided creature he had been circling for the better of a minute like Jaws smelling blood in the water. His buzz was ruined utterly by a sweet reply, smelling of confidence that did not seem possible coming from the skittish library representative.
"William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, circa sixteen-hundred A.D. approximately, act two, scene two, lines one through two, as spoken by Juliet to Romeo."
"Aw, rats. There goes me groove," Negi deadpanned, and without thinking, did the sensible thing to be done. "Now, gimmie some of that tome stack already."
He was not quite a hundred percent yet with the names and faces, much less cutesy gasps. Yes, it did tickle his fancy some, a curtain of indigo hair, like totally biologically impossible for homo sapiens, but he made a deal with the skittish waif, integrity and all that jazz, so she was effectively under his protection. Excessive bullying of one's wards was just bad form, when his appetite should have already been sated with the earlier performance.
"Chop, chop, come along, cheerio! And lead the way, won't ye? Don't fret; it's not a lame duck act. After all, wot kind of English gent would I be, if I did not aid a damsel of distress, within the limits of me power? You win, and I'm your snarky knight until the quest is complete, savvy."
The indigo-haired wunderkind gaped at him openly. Doctor N. Springfield had seen and shared his debt of shyness, but the girl seemed to be trying to elevate the act to a new art form. By his dead reckoning, she probably was not used to having an infodump worth of words dropped into her lap, short of a lecture, which was a norm for habitual wallflowers. They tried not to get noticed; poor self-image and all that other laughable masochism.
"No, please. Don't. Just don't talk," he directed her around to the forward position by shear force of will. "I'm actually really, really, really tired right now, and cranky. Jet lag's got me bad, and I just feel---awful. Not close to human. Need tea. Need food. Need sleep. And, ohhh, much ado about nothing. Ye understand? Good."
It was a sufficient assessment of the girl, except he might have been missing a few details concerning her present trepidation over him. Perhaps, she realized herself to be an accept brand of cute~ person that fit his dietary pallate for teasing? Wait a second... Oh gosh! Self-fulfilling prophecy! Bad, Doctor N. Springfield. Very, very bad, Doctor N. Springfield. Did he need a leash? Well, Negi would hope he did not require one, since Kommisar Anastasia Yurievna Cocolova would be more than happy to walk him. He would sooner suffer a bloody aneurism than give her pleasure of such humiliation.
Thankfully, the damsel, whom Negi later identified as one Nodoka Miyazaki, student No. 27, understood the value of golden silence. She had no idea what was her homeroom teacher and English professor's major malfunction, but it seemed he was trying to vent his stress, while devolving into greater depths of neurosis. In fact, the boy---and, oh yes, he was very much a boy (oh heavens, she hoped he did not notice her blush)---might be neurotic to the bone from the start.
...Well, not that Nodoka thought it was a bad thing. If anything, erm, he looked quite dashing and brilliant, borrowing a line from Haruna-chan, as he spouted off about something or another and mussed his auburn locks. He acted the part surely like a modern William Shakespeare racking his genius for his next masterpiece of theatre! H, How could she even think to find fault in a man who had such good taste to appreciate the classics of literature?
Meanwhile, Doctor N. Springfield was blissfully ignorant that one of his distant admirers was leveling up into a full-time groupie. He was only too glad to be rid of her having done the deed at their final destination of delivery, though not before extricating a promise that in the future.
"Speak up, and ask for help; ye should know yeself best about how much responsibility ye can shoulder. Self-sufficiency and independence may be championed as the highest virtues, but everything has a silver lining to it, young lady. Wisdom amounts to knowledge and the courage to act upon it, understand?"
Of course, Negi would never make a claim to fame with espousing such philosophy, for he had enough shame to realize that he, too, was the product made from standing on the shoulders of giants who came before him.
"Good now I work here six days in a work week, so you know where to find me. Cheerio, carry on, and away I go. Whoosh!"
The same could not be said for Nodoka, who never read or heard those words. To her, he was empowering, the best thing since books! Before she could try to make a fool of herself, God bless, the impressionable Miss Miyazaki, Honya-chan to some, was abducted by a mysterious train of squealing groupies that had been following (read: stalking) herself and young professor for some time now. Suffice to say, they cared very little for her protests, as she was carried off like a trophy prize, and were out to extract every last juicy detail of the too hot for television encounter, in a fashion befitting a pack of vultures. Afterward, they would then disseminate the grisly tale through their friends, flowing eventually into the grand rumor mill in the blue sky where Don Quixote chases windmills even now.
Ah, the exuberance of youth, a spectacle Negi would be glad he had no direct participation in, as he returned to his original haunt at last, outside the library before fate threw him a bone. Never had it felt so good, so relaxing, and so right to flop his exhausted person down on the bench, with all the dignity of a pig wallowing in mud in a blistering hot Summer day. Everything would have been perfect, if he could just curl up in a ball and take a nap right here, without catching his death by the common cold.
For the record, he was really looking forward to stringing up a hammock somewhere in the coming Japanese Summer heat wave, beneath some cool shade, and sipping lemonade over cookies and a good read. Few things beat taking life easy and simple on his own terms, never mind that his love of simple pleasures grew out of an allergic reaction to the horrors he had faced growing up. It was a little known factoid that Doctor N. Springfield would never admit just to anyone, and he liked it that way for good reasons.
He was a perfectly stable human being, not unhinged, fit for duty, and why he was summarily annoyed when a shadow that definitely did not belong to the library fell over him.
Ugh. Wot. NOW?! thought Negi, feeling his tolerances for interruptions stretched to their limits. Opening his previously closed eyes, he had half the nerve to shoo the interloper off, when he saw who it was...
"Ah, it is you, Miss..."
"Sakurazaki Sestuna, number fifteen, Springfield-sensei," the sharp-eyed native girl bowed to him, an elegant, dignified gesture he found difficult to reciprocate adequately in his surprise.
In fact, the tired professor botched it badly, stuck between standing, bowing, sitting, and being embarrassed. He had not been expecting her to show up out of the clear blue. If this was the Dean's idea of being helpful, Negi did not want to find out his best at being a pain in the arse. "Ah ha ha ha...! Sorry, it appears you caught me flat footed, Sakurazaki-kun."
"Iya, iya, it's not like that. Please, don't misunderstand, sensei," Setsuna spoke quickly, holding up a placating hand. "It was never my intention to see you so... Well, erm..."
Okay, so she had not been sent here to prove how much of a douche his new boss can be, which was a good start, but it still did not explain the obviously troubled bodyguard girl's intentions. Setsuna had her school bag on one hand and a small tubular carryall slung on her shoulder that seemed to say she had been on her way to an afterschool activity. If he recalled correctly, yes, she was part of the kendo club, though he strongly doubted any of the children here could keep up with a professional swordswoman like her.
"Is there something I can do for you?"
The girl looked at him like he was a god send, which seemed to put an end to his theory regarding Konoemon's intervention. Alas, it also meant she did not know about his true identity or mission here either, a conundrum he would have to solve later. At the moment, though, Negi had to admit he was enjoying studying her some. He had never a met a serious samurai wannabe girl before, and interacting with one in the flesh was an unexpected joy, compared to manga or anime.
Atypical Japanese beauty personified, Setsuna Sakurazaki carried herself with a dignity and seriousness that put herself heads and shoulders above most of the specimens in the student body he had encountered thus far. She might even prove to be Anastasia's intellectual equal. Integrating her into the team should not be too difficult, and silently, Doctor N. Springfield was looking forward to the clashes between the traditionalist bodyguard and equally conservative magistra magi. It would take the bite off his boredom for quite some time, he imagined.
Though on a side note, The Doctor had to wonder, if beauty was a prerequisite for enrollment at Mahora Academy? He had yet to see one ugly person here, even the fat girls were homely pretty, the kind of future wife most men will settle for inevitably. The gross concentration of comely persons in such close proximity was starting to remind him of that one village he helped liberate some years ago where many of the young people were being sacrificed to some despicable parasitic creatures, who thought of themselves as gods.
Hah! Well, the Master and him, along with a help of other like minded individuals, sure showed those clowns that their beauty was only skin deep, and they were really just bulbous, stinking sacks of ass. Oh, how they partied hard when they got back to the villagers, hailed as-
Then abruptly, thunderstruck really, Negi held up his hand and shook his head knowingly, putting whatever else Setsuna was about to say on indefinite hold. "You do not need to say another word. I think, I know what this is about."
She could only stare quizzically as he stood up and stretched, breathing so deeply and vast that one might wonder if he were a mountain. It was rather---odd---to see a boy her age exude such a palpable air that the bodyguard could sense no pretense behind, a false mantle of self-important arrogance that was all too common. If it was not arrogance, it was ignorance, and to be frank, Setsuna prided herself to be a good judge of character, a skill she had plenty of practice in, more than she would care to have, actually.
Negi Springfield was an enigma. Even so-called child prodigies were still just that---brokenhearted children forced to grow up too fast, but it was becoming increasingly self-evident he may be the genuine article. The boy, no, young man certainly had his fair share of desirable traits: wise beyond his years, eloquent, charismatic, a "people person", handsome---wait, where did that thought come from?
The bodyguard blinked, as Negi gestured to her with a suave "Walk with me" gesture, which found no reason not to obey. As for her lapse in judgment, Setsuna chocked it up to the season getting to her bones, and the fact her extended post here in Mahora Academy was making her soft. Besides, she was only evaluating her teacher as a potential suitor to her young mistress, for it seemed the only logical reason he could be here, instead of teaching at some major institute, like Tokyo University.
In fact, Setsuna would not put it past Konoe Konoemon-sama, the whole thing smacked of the cunning old squirrel's influence. That said, it was damn well overdue he finally arranged for a proper husband-to-be to her young mistress! The bodyguard had been growing increasingly infuriated and insulted by the string of idiotic fops Konoka-sama had been forced to suffer, year after year. Distinguished men they might be but gentlemen they were not, and the furthest thing from warriors. They possessed no honor.
The almost ritualistic humiliation made her question, truly, whether the lord of the noble household she served had gone senile, a near unforgiveable infraction upon the code of bushido she followed. It was a terrible schism that tore her soul in two: loyalty to her lord, or loyalty to his granddaughter, whom she had been privileged enough to be charged with the mission of Konoka-sama's welfare. Hell, she had been beyond lucky to be chosen amongst all of the princess's many protectors to accompany her to Mahora Academy, an unbelievable honor.
These days, however, Setsuna could barely restrain her choler, bemoaning her fate, her powerlessness, and wishing for the impossible. The bodyguard could only pray Negi Springfield would not disappoint, or else, to borrow a phrase from the modern lexicon, she might just lose it like a screaming banshee, and heads would roll. Most likely she would be put down like a rabid dog, but someone had to speak up against the inhumane treatment her young mistress had to bear with for so long. It was ridiculous!
"Welcome! Negi-sensei~!" the cry of a hundred or so odd voices reverberating through the gymnasium broke Setsuna from her intense reverie.
Goodness, she had not been consciously aware that she managed to fulfill her present mission at all. Earlier, 2-A's very own Ayaka Yukihiro had accosted her, saying she was the only one the blue blood could trust to carry out a very important favor. Turns out the girl had been most moved by Springfield-sensei's gallantry that she thought it only correct to throw a surprise welcoming party for the young man to thank him and celebrate a historic changing of the guard. Takahata-sensei for all of his faults was quite beloved by all his pupils.
But with Ayaka being Ayaka, she could not keep such a grand operation secret for long, and once the other classes got wind of the scheme, they wanted in on the occasion too. It was said to have been a legendary battle of wills and rhetoric, hard fought, but oh-so worth it. At least, it was as much Ayaka told her with great enthusiasm, and as for why she had been chosen, well, Setsuna was quite flattered to learn that the class representative thought of her as a very respectable, dignified figure, in spite of her reticence.
Alas, her impeccable dignity made her a touch difficult to approach, for most people, an enlightening revelation actually, which would partly explain why juniors and seniors at the kendo club tended to avoid her. Not that Setsuna Sakurazaki minded terribly; solitude and her were old friends. It could be lonely at times but her sword work and meditations helped to curb the worst of her melancholy.
"Heh. All right, you rascals," the guest of honor spoke from his podium, with a sheepish smile. "I will allow your bit of selfishness this time, so without further ado: Let's PAH-TAY~!"
Well, now that her task was complete, she had best be going. There was never enough training to be done-
"May I have this dance~, young lady?" said the unexpected surprise to her, leaning in so that they were nearly nose to nose with each other. "Hit it, DEE-JAY!!"
How. H, How most inappropriate! N, Negi Springfield. What was he doing... UUWAHH~!?!
Elsewhere, in a dark secluded location, staring into the glowing bloom of her crystal ball, Magistra Magi Anastasia Yurievna Cocolova felt a treacherous pang of envy take root in her heart at the festive scene playing out some twenty minutes away. It. Just. Wasn't. RIGHT. that her target was having so much more fun than she was!!
"Mambo~ Num-bah Five~!" echoed the suave, jazz tones of Lou Bega over the audio reception.
And oh, could that scoundrel dance, was dancing with his own students! Anastasia loved to dance, but no one in their right minds would ever ask a prepubescent girl to a dance. Short stuff, midget, house elf, gnome: she was the sum total butt end of every joke at her first ballroom party with the agency.
Aaagghhhhhh! Curse you, Negi Springfield!!!
To be continued...
Production Notes:
Hnnn, nothing in particular. Everything seems to speak for itself. Swing dancing~! And yes, Hideaki Sorachi, the creator of Gintama is very much my inspiration for the lemony narration.
My thanks to the folks who reviewed last time, and I hope to see you all again for the next gig.
Cheerio.