AN: For those of you who keep up with Twitter fanartists, blame (the very awesome) iori147 for this one; ran Google Translate on one of their tweets and wound up with this idea running through my head!

Deja Vu

"Someone looks comfortable."

Emma flushed at Alisa's good natured jibe, but remained seated on the soft grass nonetheless, her right hand idly combing its way through Machias' green hair as he rested his head on her lap, fast asleep.

"He never did get enough rest. Not at Thors, and certainly not now," she noted ruefully, a look of fond exasperation crossing her delicate features. "He started to nod off while we were waiting for you, and... well…"

"I think we can suss out what happened next," Rean quipped, deciding to spare his former class president any undue embarrassment. "I'm kind of surprised he accepted the offer, though. I guess he's moved past his 'shake his head and deny, deny, deny' days?"

"Please. You're making it sound like she had to really twist his arm on his one," Celine sniffed from her position beside Emma, causing her partner's blush to deepen and forcing Rean and Alisa to hide tiny smiles.

"… Anyway," Emma coughed, trying to salvage some kind of dignity out of the situation. "I trust you both managed to finish any business you had?"

"Oh yeah, we're all good," Alisa replied with a nod. "We're all ready to go once he's… uh, upright."

The feline took that moment to stand on all fours, arching her back with a satisfied purr. "Leave that to me."

"W-Wait, what are you – " Emma stammered, her eyes widening in alarm behind her glasses as Celine sauntered up to Machias with a grin, tapping a paw (sans claws, thank the Goddess for small blessings) on his left cheek.

Machias stirred, one eye blearily cracking open at the contact, and considering he was greeted with Celine immediately yowling in his face as only a cat could – well, his reaction certainly made sense.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAH-!"

"Ah…!"

What happened next was a comedy of errors that involved a scrambling Machias and a flailing Emma, both trying and failing to regain their equilibrium in the subsequent chaos, and perhaps if Rean hadn't been observing, things might have ended up differently.

But alas, he was watching, and thus there was only one way things could have ended; with a frozen Emma on top of an equally frozen Machias, his head buried within her ample chest.

If not for Celine's cackling, you could have heard a pin drop.

"Huh," Alisa intoned, her fingers curled into tight fists and her face contorted into a smile that could only be described as painfully forced, "would you look at that? Where have I seen this before, I wonder?"

Rean, meanwhile, glared up towards the heavens, a dark and baleful look in his eyes. "This again, huh? Kurt and Juna weren't enough? Is this supposed to amuse You? Is this supposed to be funny? Because rest assured, it's not!"

"…" added Emma, looking more flustered than she'd ever been.

"So," said an understandably muffled Machias, "this is what it's like to be Rean. It's... novel."

The familiar scoffed, trotting off toward where Rean and Alisa were. "Come off it, you look way too comfortable where you are for this to be your first – "

"CELINE!"