Conquests of an Accidental Stud Monkey
Chapter Nine
A few days later, after the conclusion of the sports festival and the day off from school which followed it, generously ceded to allow students (and teachers) to recover from the previous days exertions, classes resumed, and 3-A gathered together in their classroom to see what was going to happen. Well, most of them gathered. The class representative and Chizuru were both absent - again - and so was Asuna - again - and Evangeline - again. Not all that surprising, particularly in contrast with the other absence, that of Konoka. Or at least, her absence was surprising when conjoined with the presence of Setsuna, who sat in her usual seat, face still and closed off, something in her posture suggesting that death would come on swift wings to anyone who asked her about Konoka's situation.
"So where's Konoka-san?" asked Makie.
Setsuna's hands clenched her desktop. "Makie-san," she said, as calmly as someone on the verge of berserk fury or possibly a nervous breakdown can speak. "Do you not perceive the subtle air of menace and doom which I am attempting to emote?"
Makie blinked, looked at Setsuna a bit more carefully. When she spoke again, it was a bit hesitantly. "You kinda look constipated. Is that what that subtle air thing is supposed to look like?"
"... both conditions would suggest an air of tension, so yes, I suppose that it would."
"Huh. Cool. I'll try to remember that. So, anyway, where's Konoka-san?"
"She is attending to her responsibilities somewhere else," Setsuna replied, and then the bell rang, indicating that class was about to start and granting a merciful release as Makie quickly headed back to her desk and away from Setsuna, thus saving both their lives.
"You should probably try to ease up a little," Mana observed as she sat beside her room-mate and seat-mate. "It's like we're back at the start of our second year again, when it comes to these moods of yours."
"Oh, the misty water-colored memories of the way we were," Setsuna replied sourly as she kept her eyes on the front of the room.
"Okay, that's a little different," Mana admitted.
Then the door opened and Fate walked in. Everyone held their breath. Well, almost everyone. Sakurako tensed up, but her breathing remained normal. She'd rehearsed this with him quite a bit the last night, but realized as she went to school today that she had no idea if he was going to stick to the script they'd worked out. So she was worried, but holding her breath, like everyone else, would have suggested too much of a lack of confidence in him, and he'd have noticed.
Fate stood at the lectern a moment, looking over the classroom full of girls, before he spoke. "I've already said this to one or two of you, but in retrospect I suppose that I should have waited until you were all assembled, like this." He paused, and went off script. "Except for the unexcused absences, but that was never in my control. Ahem. It seems that I have been behaving very badly, recently, and that I have clearly offended. For this, I am truly sorry, and I will strive to be a more merciful and compassionate teacher in the future. I understand why certain things that happened during the sports festival did so, and while I was very embarrassed by them, I will not hold these events against the perpetrators, or seek any vengeance." For a moment, it was like he was going to say something more, but then he closed his mouth on it, and simply offered a bow in the class' general direction.
A stupefied silence fell in the classroom. Whatever any of them had been expecting, this certainly wasn't it. Several of the girls - Misa, Yuna, and Haruna foremost among them - were giving Fate extremely skeptical looks, while Sakurako was smiling like a proud parent. Misa noticed this, and turned her skeptical expression in her teammate's direction, though Sakurako affected not to notice.
"Now," said Fate, patiently. "If you'll please retrieve your books, we'll begin today's lesson."
Almost in synchrony, the girls reached into their desks to do so.
Almost in synchrony, twenty-six cherry cream pies exploded up out of their desks and into their faces.
"Goodness," said Fate, who was certainly not smiling. "I wonder how that happened. I do hope it doesn't stain anyone's uniform. Now, on to page 27 ..."
It's a work in progress, Sakurako decided as she wiped cherry out of her eyebrows.
But that was all a day or so later.
On the morning immediately after the sports festival, Negi found himself being roused from his slumber - for he had prevailed on Kaede to teach him the pressure point combination she'd used on him, spent an hour studying and improving on it, and could now put himself out for four hours at a time - by the now-familiar sensation of someone's mouth around his member. He lifted his head from his pillow and looked down to see a large bump under the blanket that covered him, moving slightly, back and forth.
Somewhat involuntarily, he smiled. But then his mental schedule kicked him in the metaphorical back of the pants, and he shook his head. "Asuna, we don't have time for this, this morning," he told the bump as he reached down to tug the blanket out of the way. "I've got that doctor's appointment, and then we both have to go to Iinchou's to -"
The blanket came away, revealing a set of purple hair and locks that almost covered up a pair of eyes that were gazing up at him with obvious amusement. "Fufufu," she 'laughed' as she went down on him further, her tongue licking at his testicles as she drew him up into her throat.
"N-Nodoka?!" Negi gasped.
A sigh came from Negi' side and he quickly turned to see Asuna lying - every bit as naked as Nodoka - beside his futon. "I guess you were right, he really isn't sensitive enough to figure out who's doing it to him. I wonder if I should be just a tad bit upset about that, Negi," she said, mock-frowning at him. "You cost me a Coke!"
Negi swallowed, both from the sensations he was experiencing and confused embarrassment. "You bet a Coke on whether or not I would be able to tell -"
Asuna interrupted him with a kiss. "Would you rather I'd bet money?" she asked when she pulled back, a tiny silver line of spit connecting their mouths even as she spoke. "Would that be more conducive to your self-esteem?"
His jaw worked, breaking the line, before he just sighed. "Well, no, but ... but, what I said is still true, I've got that appointment and then we've got to -"
"Oh, it'll be okay," Asuna soothed him as she kissed her way down his chest, to join Nodoka and begin an attempt to persuade the other girl to relinquish her grip on the dick through kisses to her cheek and, after a moment, her lips as well. "We can reschedule the appointment - it's not like they're going to pass up a chance to examine you, now are they? And if it should happen that it gets delayed long enough that we have to give Iinchou our apologies and not actually go to her house, welll -" She broke off as the tip of Negi's dick finally emerged from Nodoka's mouth, and she swooped down on it herself.
"That's not - mmmnnnn," Negi replied.
Nodoka shook her head as she gazed down at Asuna, admiring her technique which was clearly far more advanced than her own. "I wonder if this is what it was like," she mused as she ran a hand down Asuna's back, reaching for her butt with some fingers. Asuna moaned but didn't let go. "For my friends, I mean, watching me being all shy around you," she continued, glancing up at Negi. "Wasting so much precious time."
Asuna frowned despite her enjoyment of what she was doing. That ... hit a little close to home.
"That's not going to happen," Negi said, regaining the thread of what he'd been trying to say earlier. "I'm not going to be late for my appointment. I'll, I'll take care of you two girls and -"
"And what about Yue and Chachamaru-san?" Nodoka asked.
"I have already rescheduled the appointment for somewhat later," announced Chachamaru's voice from a bit outside Negi's field of vision. "Please do not reply to this statement, as it is a recording made so that I need not interrupt the use of my lips on Yue-san."
"AAAAAAH!" cried Yue's voice from much the same direction.
Negi gave up.
Temporarily, at least.
Eventually, Negi got to go to the doctor. Just as eventually, he got finished there, and walked out beside Kotaro (in grown-up form himself) to meet Asuna as she waited just outside the office building's doors.
"So?" she asked.
"Three months," he said, cutting to the chase. "Their best estimate is three months for the effect to work it's way out of my system, and they don't have a way to speed the process up." He grimaced. "And given that developing one would put a pretty effective weapon in the hands of anyone who opposes me, as it'd work on anything I turn into a Complexio, I'm not entirely keen on that particular line of research."
"I suppose you wouldn't be," Asuna agreed. She glanced curiously at Kotaro. "Why were you there?"
The dog-boy shrugged. "They wanted a baseline of how this crap is supposed to work to compare against the way it's working with him," he answered.
"And they picked you as a baseline?" Asuna said, obviously checking him out.
"Oy!" he replied, ducking behind Negi. "None of that!" As he protested, Kotaro quickly realized that Negi was giving him a moderately unamused expression. "Oh, what?" he groaned. "You said there was no hard feelings!"
"I may," Negi said coolly, "have been slightly exaggerating."
"Aw, come on!"
"Yeah, Negi, come on!" Asuna agreed. "Think of it as a way of deepening your friendship! Now you're Eskimo brothers!"
"Yeah, now we're - what?" Kotaro broke off, blinking. "What the heck are Eskimos?"
"They're a people who live in the northern regions of Canada and the United States," Negi explained, now giving Asuna a bit of an unamused look. "They prefer the terms Inuit, Aleut and Yupik, actually."
"Oh, those guys." Pause. "What the heck does that have to do with -"
"In fact," continued Asuna, boldly ignoring this entire digression as she sauntered up to stand between the two of them, a hand on each of their shoulders, "I bet that if we put our minds and other aspects of our anatomy together, we can come up with lots of ways to deepen your friendship even further! And if by chance doing so means that we end up being way too late to go a certain obnoxious class representative's dream house, well, that just can't be -"
"Cough, cough," rasped a voice from nearby.
Asuna froze, then turned to look, relaxingly slightly when she saw who it was. "Oh, hey, Natsumi-chan. Slap anybody around today?"
"It's early in the day," said Natsumi, frowning. It was very tempting to say that she expressed herself by frowning, but we won't.
Kotaro jerked out of Asuna's semi-embrace, face going pallid as he turned to look at Natsumi. "Na-Na-Natsumi-nechan!" he stammered.
"Kotaro-kun," she said, glaring. Again, it was very tempting to say that she glared those words, but we won't.
He forced himself to calm down. "Natsumi-nechan ... I'm really, really sorry."
"Yes, you are."
He let that slide. "I done wrong. I admit it. And, y'know, I realize that it's gonna be hard to fix this. Trust is gonna be hard to rebuild. We will have to learn if we're still the same people we were and actually can we just skip all that?"
"No!" Natsumi snapped, storming forward to grab ahold of his earlobe. "We are going to have words, you and I! Lots and lots of words! If you'll excuse me, the two of us are gonna go off and have words! Actually, even if you won't excuse me, the two of us are still gonna go off and have words!"
Negi felt moved to offer some assistance to his friend and rival, hard feelings or not. "Um, Natsumi-san, I hope that you won't be too hard on -"
"Butt out, sensei."
"All right then." There were limits, after all.
He and Asuna watched Natsumi basically dragging Kotaro off.
"That girl has some moves," Asuna said admiringly. She looked speculatively at Negi's earlobe.
"Don't even think about it. We're going to Iinchou's house now."
"Dammit."
"Ow," Kotaro said, rubbing his earlobe. Natsumi had let go of him once they reached a secluded nook in back alley Mahora.
He wasn't expecting any sympathy. He was, to some degree, expecting comments like, 'Oh suck it up, you big baby,' and/or 'Like I could really hurt you by doing that'. He definitely wasn't expecting what he got, which was silence and a frosty glare that ... honestly was nowhere nearly as intimidating as Natsumi probably wanted it to be, particularly considering the effect that Chizuru's saintly smile had on both of them.
It did still make him uncomfortable, though. So he sought to fill the silence. "Y'know, for someone who declared she was gonna have words with me, I'm not actually hearing a lot of -"
"I'm waiting for something," Natsumi interrupted.
"What?" he asked, reverting to his younger form half-way through the word.
"'What?'" she repeated, shaking her head and muttering indistinctly for a few moments. Then, after a deep breath, she continued, sounding much less tense and angry. "Are you all right?"
"Uh ... yeah," Kotaro admitted. "The earlobe doesn't hurt at all, anymore. I guess the shapechange -"
Like the dew in the morning, so vanished Natsumi's calm. "I'm not even remotely talking about your ear, you idiot! I know perfectly well that I couldn't hurt you like that! Agggh!"
Well, things were a little out of order, but he was back on somewhat familiar ground. And yet strangely, it didn't help. Man, there were times he wished he could just break down and cry unmanly tears. "Well, what do you mean, then?" he whined.
"I mean what I mean!" Natsumi retorted. "Are you all right? The last time I saw you - aside from ... that episode - you were running out of our room looking like you were scared beyond belief! Since then, I haven't seen you at all - aside from ... that episode - and I've been worried sick about where you were and what was happening to you!" It was a little disturbing how she could go from angry yet concerned to icily furious in under a second when she spoke of ... that episode. "You didn't leave a note! You didn't call! And until ... that episode ... I couldn't get any answers out of Chizu-ne and since then I haven't wanted to talk to her!"
"It wasn't her fault," Kotaro weakly defended his alpha.
"I don't care whose fault it was! God, now you've got me acting like a parental role-model!" Natsumi cried, holding her hands to the side of her head. "Where were you? What happened to you? These are the things that you would be telling me now if you didn't want me to get even angrier than I already was!"
"... well, for a while I went an' hid out at the shrine, and then I came back and ... um, well, that episode happened." He saw her start to bristle at his misappropriation of her terminology and, though he thought it monstrously unfair, he hurried on with his narration. "After that, I sorta hung out at Negi's for a while, and ... well, that's it." He briefly considered confessing everything that had happened, in hopes of spreading some of her fury around on Asuna and Chisame and ... well, but that was an unworthy thought. He was gonna take his lumps like a man.
"And the notion of asking Asuna or Konoka or Negi-sensei to let me know what was happening didn't occur to you because why?"
"... 'cause I'm a dumbass?" he supplied what he thought was the right answer.
"Accurate but not good enough!" Natsumi roared.
"Okay," Kotaro said, covering his face with his hands. "I get it. I screwed up, and you hate me now. I get it. An' I know 'I'm sorry' won't cut it, but -"
"What?" Natsumi gasped. "Kotaro-kun ... what - how - nyaaaaargh!" she growled. "God, I wish I could pull off twin-tails so that I'd have something to pull in situations like this!" she howled at the sky.
"Huh?" said Kotaro, peeking out between his fingers.
"Kotaro-kun, do you seriously think that I'd be this worried or upset over someone I hated?" Natsumi cried. "I am very very very very and a few more verys angry at you right now, but I don't hate you - aggggh, dumbass! I love you, stupid!"
"Dwa?" said Kotaro.
"Aggggh!" Natsumi cried, shaking her head furiously. "It's bad enough you made me say it, but now you also have to act with dull incomprehension when I do? Satsuki-san, this is working out just like I thought it would!"
Kotaro blinked. "Satsuki-san? What, what does she have to do with this?" he asked, seizing on the one part of the bizarre situation that didn't leave him utterly bewildered, instead just vaguely confused.
"What does she have to do with - hello? She was there that night, or have you just blocked everything else out?" Natsumi snapped.
"No, no, I just ... she didn't say anything and -"
"She didn't say anything to you," Natsumi corrected, and then her anger seemed to subside a little, and she spoke a little more calmly. "She didn't say anything to me, either, not then. But ... later, a day or so later, when she saw how I was acting around Chizu-ne, she came over to talk with me. And she asked me ... asked me if I was angry at Chizu-ne because she'd had sex with you or because you'd had sex with her instead of me."
"Uh," said Kotaro, who honestly couldn't see the difference between the two statements. "And ... what did you say to that?" he asked, since she'd just fallen silent after that statement, and was staring at the ground.
It got her to lift her head, at least, and glare at him. "Obviously, I said that there wasn't any difference between the two statements," she snapped. And then again, she subsided. "But I was lying. And she knew that I was lying. I was mad at Chizu-ne because she'd had sex with you instead of me ... and I wanted to be the one you were having sex with, instead of her. Agggh, it sounds even worse when I say it out loud!" she groaned.
"So ... so are you saying that you -"
"Don't be so oblivious!"
"Okay, yes, clearly, that's what you are saying ... um ... o-okay?"
She glared. "Okay, as in you understand what I was saying despite being a dumbass, or okay as in you want to have sex? With me?"
"The latter one of those," Kotaro quickly clarified. "Well, I guess you could say that the first one is true, too, but, mostly, the latter." He grinned nervously.
She didn't grin back. She didn't so much as smile. "Okay," she said, nodding. "Okay, then. We are going to have sex. Um. But there are conditions!"
"I'm good with conditions," Kotaro said, nodding rapidly.
"Condition number one ... you're not allowed to have sex with anybody else, ever again!"
"... I'm good with that!" he assured her. Honestly, he was a little bit skeptical of his ability to hold to that promise, considering the crazy situations that kept happening to him and Negi. But he was gonna try, and after all, she would -
"Condition number two ... I get to cheat on you! At least once!"
"Huh?" he gasped.
"You were with Chizu-ne, remember?" Natsumi said in a tone aiming for menacing and missing just a bit. "Did you already forget?"
"Well, no, but that's not -"
"It was cheating on me, retroactively! So ... I'm going to be cheating on you, at least once, proactively ... to balance the scales!" She nodded, sharply.
And all at once, Kotaro experienced a flash of understanding. He wasn't sure why he got it, but right at that moment, he understood why Natsumi was doing what she was doing - or rather, he understood that she really had no idea what she was doing. She was just making it up as she went.
It was the sort of thing he'd do. It was exactly the sort of thing he'd do. It was ... really sweet.
"Okay," he said gently, and reached to take her into an embrace. She stiffened at his touch, and for a second he thought he might have gone too far too soon, and then she eased up and bent down to press her lips to his.
Moments later, Kotaro's head was pressed back against the wall of the building as he looked down at Natsumi's head moving back and forth as she licked and sucked on his erection. It was dizzying, really. She hadn't even bothered to build up to it, she'd just dropped down to her knees, unzipped his pants and gone to town. It made him wonder, and the wondering made him speak. "Nnnnatasumi-chan," he gasped as he finally broke out of a moan. "H-how did you learn to do this?"
Unfortunately, that was another one of those questions, innocently asked, which had unfortunate implications which he clearly didn't realize. Natsumi pulled back, leaving him hanging in air, and glared up at him. "I just know stuff, okay? Okay?" she snapped.
"Okay," Kotaro peeped.
"Well, good!" she said, as she went back to sucking him. She was not about to admit that after they'd gotten back, she'd casually asked Haruna to discreetly supply her with some shota manga by convincing her that they were for Ayaka. She'd felt terribly guilty about doing that, because it exploited the Class Representative's unfair reputation and certainly not because of the dizzy haze from which she'd emerged with sticky hands after reading them. So of course she couldn't tell him about it. Ever.
Eventually, she judged that he was hard enough - his thing now resembling the whited-out spaces which represented boys' things in the manga - and wet enough that she was confident about moving on to the next step. She'd considered having him lick her as a further preparatory step, but the way that the girls always screamed about how they were going crazy from having that done to them frightened her. So it was probably best to just move forward quickly.
"Okay," she said, standing up and lifting up her skirt. "Okay, for the next part -"
"I got this," he told her, ducked down to grab hold of her panties and pull them down, then pushed his face up into her crotch.
"Agh!" she cried at the touch of his tongue against her clitoris. "No! I'm gonna go crazy!"
"Huh?" Kotaro asked, jerking back to look up at her with a startled expression. "I didn't even do anything yet."
"Ummm," Natsumi temporized as she fought to push down her blush with difficulty. "Just, just skip that part, okay?"
Women were just incomprehensible, Kotaro decided. Chizu-ne, Asuna, Chisame, they'd all seemed to like that, but apparently Natsumi thought it was unpleasant enough to drive her insane. How she knew that from a few seconds confused him, but if that's the way that she thought, he shouldn't try and argue the point. He knew it wouldn't work.
"Um, okay," he said, as he got up. "But ... this is gonna be a little awkward. Maybe it'd be better if I changed into -"
"It's not like you have some of those pills in your back pocket, now is it?" Natsumi replied sharply.
Actually, it was exactly like that. "Ummmm."
"So there's no point, we'll work it out," she said quickly. She didn't want him changing back! She'd studied shota, not regular boy-girl sex! They were bound to be completely different! And she wasn't prepared. You couldn't expect good results from changing the script half-way through the performance of a play, now could you? "Just, uh, stand there, and I'll, well, I'll do this." She put her back against the wall, then slid down until she was squatting, flinching at the feeling of the building's stonework rubbing against her back through her shirt, to say nothing of the tension in her hips, knees and ankles.
But the position brought her crotch so that it was level with his, allowing him to push forward and into her. She let out a strangled gasp when he did so.
"Did I hurt you? Did I hurt you?" he asked a bit frantically.
"No!" she lied. "It's just surprising, that's all. Now ... get to work!"
"Yes ma'am."
"Um, boss?" said one of the laundry workers. "I was heading out into the alley to have a smoke, and there's a couple of kids having sex against the back wall. Should I chase 'em off?"
"What's wrong with you?" asked his employer. "They're young and in love! If you were that age, and you was with a girl you liked, how'd you like it if some old fart chased you off?"
It occurred to him that he should possibly have noted one of the oddities of the pairing he'd observed. "Um, but boss -"
"But nothing! Get back to work!"
"You didn't happen to take pictures, did you?" another of the workers said, in a low tone.
The others turned aghast looks at him.
"I didn't say anything!" he quickly said, then went back to work.
"Welcome to the Yukihiro household, Negi-sensei and Asuna-himesama," chorused a dozen or so black-clad maids in carefully rehearsed unison. If any of them experienced any cognitive dissonance over calling someone 'himesama' when they had, a year or so earlier, been instructed to refer to her as 'gorilla woman', it wasn't apparent on their faces.
That was all right, though, because Asuna was clearly experiencing enough of it for all of them combined. "Please can I hit her this time, please?" she asked through gritted teeth.
"No," Negi said firmly. "We can't do that sort of thing anymore."
"I'll hold back so I don't kill her, just hurt her really really bad," Asuna promised.
"Asuna."
Fortunately for Negi's headache - in the short term, at least - Ayaka chose that moment to make her entrance, high at the top of the foyer's staircase, resplendent in a dazzling white dress which managed to suggest both a wedding dress and a fairy queen's costume without looking quite like either of them. "Ah, I see that our guests have at last arrived," she declared as she began to walk down the stairs ever so slowly.
"Trip," Asuna muttered, each time the class representative took a step. "Trip."
"Stop that," Negi muttered.
"Is something the matter, Asuna-san?" Ayaka asked cheerfully as she descended yet another stair. "You seem somewhat disconcerted."
"That's a good word for it," Asuna replied, finally lifting her voice. "I told you that I hate it when I get treated like that, over and over again I told you that, and what do your maids do?"
Ayaka paused, and lifted a hand to her mouth. "Gasp!" she gasped. "Do you mean to tell me that they did so, despite my deliberate and specific instructions against doing so? Is this true?" she added, glancing down at the still-assembled maids.
The foremost maid - Negi realized with a start that he'd never bothered to learn any of their names, despite the fact that several of them had shown up on campus from time to time and even visited his room in Ayaka's company - took a step forward. When she spoke, it was with the tone of one who was clearly aware that she was being thrown under the bus, and had in fact been thrown under the bus so many times as to grow accustomed to the sight of its chassis. "We apologize, ojousama and Asuna-sama. Our enthusiasm sadly got the better of us."
"And there you have it," said Ayaka, taking another step down as she did so.
"Oh, bullroar! How would they even know about any of that if you didn't tell them?" Asuna demanded, glaring in the maids' direction ... and abruptly doing a double-take.
"You're imagining things," Ayaka said dismissively, as she finally arrived at the ground floor and began to sweep across it towards them. "There are many ways they could have learned without my telling them. Far too many ways to discuss, when dinner awaits!"
"Uh," said Asuna. "Right."
Negi noted her abrupt change in attitude, but as they were being ushered along to the dining room, there wasn't any time for him to do anything except shoot Asuna a quizzical glance, which she answered with a quick shake of her head. Whatever had provoked it, then, was going to remain a mystery for a while.
"Y'know, considering that every time I come here, you lay out a spread like this, I really have to wonder how the heck you manage to stay in shape," Asuna observed as they were led into the dining room where (as her words would suggest) a feast was laid out on the dining room table, steam rising from the plates and trays.
That managed to crack Ayaka's up-to-then impermeable air of good cheer. "I do not eat like this all the time, Asuna-san! Honestly, the ideas that come flying out of your mouth sometimes! This is a special occasion! It is the first visit of Negi-sensei to my humble abode since our forbidden union was formalized!"
Asuna noticed the maids exchanging a weary look, but before she could comment on it, one of them - gah, what were their names, anyway? - spoke up, trying (and, to be honest, failing) to sound like she wasn't delivering a rehearsed line. "Forbidden union, oujosama? What in the world are you talking about?"
"Ah, yes, the tale of my forbidden love with Negi-sensei -" Ayaka began to orate.
And then Asuna saw all, and her jaw dropped. "Oh god no, you're not going to do it again, are you? The interpretative dance and everything? Come on, seriously?"
"Interpretative dance?" Negi repeated. "What - oh, that," he concluded, remembering, now.
"- and how it was at last -" Ayaka continued, paying no mind to any of this.
"No, nuh-uh, nix, not doing this again, and I'm sure your maids have already heard all this and don't really want to hear it again either," Asuna interrupted.
Ayaka glanced at the maids, who did their best not to meet her eyes. "I'm sure they're all quite happy to -" she began to say.
Asuna held a hand up in front of Ayaka's eyes. "Okay, hands up everyone who doesn't want to - wow, that was fast," she said as hands went up all around the room.
Thank you, Asuna-himesama, mouthed one of the younger maids.
Don't call me thaaaaaat! Asuna mouthed right back. She glanced at Negi, who'd been watching all this a bit dazedly and whose hand was conspicuously not raised, then lowered her hand from Ayaka's eyes. "Okay, not every hand went up," she said, deliberately looking in the direction of a certain maid. "But enough did that I think we can declare a plurality."
"But ... but my dance," Ayaka protested, looking truly wounded.
"Some other time, maybe," Asuna said. "But not right now. Right now, there's something important that we need to discuss."
Despite the wackiness of the situation, Negi found himself feeling proud of Asuna. She hadn't wanted to do this, but now that it was come to it, she was going to tell the class representative the truth about her situation and -
"What happened to that room with all the toys in it?" Asuna demanded.
- and he really should have known better, shouldn't he?
Ayaka blinked. "How in the world did you know about that?"
Asuna was honestly tempted to say 'you just told me'. "When I looked at your maids, back in the hall, I happened to see the window of that room, and even though I couldn't see everything, I could tell that some of the toys that were hanging on the wall had been taken down. There's no reason to do that ... unless you've cleaned the whole thing out! What gives?"
Ayaka glanced away. It was an unspoken signal, for the maids began to silently and swiftly exit the room as she spoke. "Your eyesight has gotten even better, apparently."
"All sorts of things have gotten better! My patience isn't one of them!"
"Is this true, Iinchou?" Negi asked, both because he was both startled and curious, and because he thought they'd probably catch more flies with sugar. "Did you -"
Ayaka sighed. "You are both making something of ... well, not nothing, but very little. After you were here a few months ago, Negi-sensei, and had so much fun playing in that room -"
"Time out," Asuna interrupted. "You actually got him to play? How in the world did you manage that?"
Ayaka gave her a sly look. "I can't really approve of you prying into others' affairs like that, Asuna-san, but if you insist -"
"Oh come on, you can't have interpretative dances for everything! What happened?" Asuna quickly asked Negi.
"There were dinosaur toys," Negi answered, looking more than a bit embarrassed.
"Ah."
Artistic impulses momentarily stymied, Ayaka continued, a bit more brusquely. "In any event, the next time I found myself passing by the room, I couldn't help but notice how ... sad, and empty, too, it seemed, now that it had finally had a little boy playing with the toys therein. It seemed such a waste. So, with a bit of help from Chizuru-san, I arranged for them to be donated to some charities that provide toys for children whose parents can afford them, especially those who are sick and in hospitals. A fair chunk of them went to that orphanage on the outskirts of town. I'm sure that they appreciated them." She shrugged. "So, shall we sit down to eat?"
"Shall we sit down to - you can't just drop a bombshell like that and then sit down to eat!" Asuna protested.
"I'm actually starting to feel a bit peckish," Negi confessed.
"Negi! Be startled by this!"
"I really don't see what the big deal is," Ayaka said, sounding genuinely bewildered at Asuna's own bewilderment. "You knew that I donate to several charities, and this is just a logical extension of that -"
"The hell it is! Those were your -" She broke off in mid-sentence, looking frustrated and ashamed.
Ayaka drew in a deep breath. "They were supposed to be my little brother's toys. Yes. They were. But ... I came to realize that I wasn't honoring his memory by clinging to things that he would have liked. Time passes, and we have to move on, never forgetting, but accepting that certain things that are ... gone ... can never come back. No matter what. No matter how much we might wish that they could. I understood that, and I thought you did too, but I suppose that it might be a bit beyond -"
"I'm going to be put in suspended animation for a hundred years as part of Negi's plan," Asuna said quietly.
"What," Ayaka said after a brief moment of silence.
"Maybe I could have some aspirin before we start eating," Negi said, just as quietly. "I hear it's good to take it with food -"
"You shock me, I shock you," Asuna said, looking off to one side.
"No ... what?" Ayaka repeated, just a bit louder.
"Say what again. I dare you."
"Of all the movies I showed you to try and help you with your English, that is the one that had to stick?" Negi complained. He wasn't sure to whom he was complaining really, but he did feel entitled to voice a certain complaint.
"What do you mean, you're going to be put in suspended animation for a century as part of Negi-sensei's plan?" Ayaka shrieked.
"It's really kind of amazing how she can emphasize parts of the sentence when she's screaming like that, isn't it?" Asuna mused to Negi.
Negi didn't answer. It was somewhat difficult even for someone with his abilities to talk when his hands were over his face. Moaning, now, that he could manage. And he did so.
"Asuna-san!"
"I don't know what the heck you want from me," Asuna said, finally looking right at Ayaka for the first time since her bomb had been dropped. "I can't elaborate on it except by talking about weird magical jargon that I don't really understand and you won't either, and I can't say 'psyche, just kidding' because I'm not kidding, so before I say anything, could you tell me what exactly you want me to say?"
"Why," Ayaka said with glacial slowness, "am I only now learning about this?" Her jaw dropped. "Don't tell me ... no! You couldn't have done it again! Tell me that this isn't like with Negi-sensei's magic and I'm the last one in our class to find out!"
"You weren't the last one last time either, that was Fuuka and Fumika!" Asuna protested.
"Actually, Kaede told them everything before we left for the airport," Negi interjected.
"Oh," Asuna said, wind momentarily taken out of her sails. "Okay, then ... but you still weren't the last one to know, that was, I guess, the cheerleaders! Or maybe Satsuki-san!"
"I actually think she might have known since the festival," Negi mused. "If not earlier."
"Whatever!" Asuna snapped. "This time, I've only told Konoka, Setsuna, Asakura, Chisame, Kotaro and, well, technically, I've admitted it to Nodoka and Yue, and I guess Konoka also told Haruna when she was telling the two of them and Asakura has also told Sayo-chan but I haven't really talked about it with either of them and Evangeline and Chachamaru also already know and, oh, gosh, I guess Hakase knows, unless Chachamaru kept it out of her logs but I can't see why she would and ah crap you really are coming in late," Asuna concluded rather weakly.
"Kaede knows, too," Negi added just as weakly. "And ... well, I think Commander Tatsumiya and Zazie-san -"
Had this been a slightly more absurdist story, mention would here have been made of the way that Ayaka had literally turned to stone while listening to this litany. But in fact, she had only figuratively done so, become very pale and utterly, utterly still and silent, until at last she stopped being either thing. "I FOUND OUT AFTER AISAKA SAYO DID?" Ayaka screamed at the top of her lungs.
"Well, not much after," Asuna offered.
"Oh, well, then," Ayaka said, grinning broadly after a moment of gaping at her. "That makes it all better! Not!" she snarled. "And when, pray tell, were you planning on telling me about this, if not for your inadvertent discovery today?"
Asuna looked at Negi. Negi looked at Asuna. Then, simultaneously, the two of them looked away from each other, all without even once looking in Ayaka's direction.
So they weren't looking at her as her eyes went wide and her jaw worked silently for a few moments, before a tiny voice finally came out of her mouth. "You weren't planning to tell me at all." Her tone didn't make it a question.
"... you probably would've noticed when I didn't show up for graduation, so ... then, maybe?" Asuna speculated, still without looking at Ayaka.
The blonde debutante staggered, glancing at the table with the cooling food on it. "I wish we were a little older," she said dazedly. "Just a few years older. Then I would have felt justified in raiding our family's wine cabinets, and there would be glasses of wine there, and I could pick one up and throw it in your face! Instead, all we have is fruit juice, and that just wouldn't be even a little bit the same, now would it?"
"Oh, come on," Asuna groaned. "Look, if you're mad, go ahead and start grabbing my face or -"
"Why bother?" Ayaka interjected, stumbling towards one of the dining room chairs, and pulling it away from the table so that she could collapse into it, staring wildly at the two of them. "Why bother indeed? There's no point in it. No point to any of that. You don't care about me at all."
"What?"
"It's so obvious, in hindsight," Ayaka continued her monologue, gesturing with her hands. "You were uncomfortable with my honest expression of emotion, so I returned to our old banter, and yet even that just makes you irritable, so it's clear that you just don't care even little bit about me, that I'm just some sort of burden, and -"
"No!" Asuna snapped, dashing over to stand in front of the chair, hands gripping its arm rests as she brought her face right up to Ayaka's. "That's not it. That's not even a little bit -"
"Then why?" Ayaka demanded, tears starting to flow. "Why didn't you tell me, why weren't you going to tell me, why, why, why?!"
"What are you going to do, now that you know?" Asuna demanded right back.
Ayaka drew in a shaky breath, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, there were no more tears there. "I'm going to save you, of course," she snapped. "I'm going to use everything in my power, every resource my family commands, to -"
"Yes, of course you are!" Asuna interrupted. "God, no wonder you went crazy for Negi, he's just like you!"
Negi blinked. So did Ayaka. They exchanged a look, then blinked some more.
"I consider my point proven," Asuna said with a roll of her eyes.
"What in the world -" Ayaka started to demand.
Asuna slapped her hands against the chair's armrests. "You'll do whatever it takes to rescue me. You'll drop everything to do that. Just like him! And tell me, oh person of awesome power and deep responsibility, what else won't get done while you're moving earth and heaven? What if something seriously important goes wrong and you aren't able to deal with it because of all the resources you've dedicated to saving me? How'll you live with that?" She was silent for a second, then added, far more quietly. "How am I ... supposed to live with that?"
Ayaka stared up at her, then turned to look at Negi. "Is this an argument she presented to you?"
Negi nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
She returned her gaze to Asuna. "Let me guess what his response was, then. 'You are just as important as anything could possibly be.' Confess the touch, please," she added when the other girl flinched.
"But I'm not," Asuna replied through gritted teeth. "I'm not ... I'm not ... I'm not -"
"Asuna -" Negi tried to interject.
"I'm not real," she said at last. "This person that you care for, she's just another silly illusion, and you should - you can get along without me, I know it, you'll find -"
Ayaka's hands, folded in her lap, shot up to grab hold of Asuna's forearms. "You are not permitted to say that," she hissed. "Whichever of the confused young women presently residing in what I may loosely refer to as your mind whom I am presently addressing, know this - you are not permitted to dictate to whom this Yukihiro Ayaka gives her love and affection. Not now, not ever." Very quietly, she added. "And no one, not even you, is ever permitted to say, in my hearing, that Kagurazaka Asuna is not real. Not now. Not ever."
Asuna sagged - quite possibly, without Ayaka's firm grip on her arms, she might have collapsed. "Dammit," she said.
"Language," Negi interjected.
Asuna recovered enough to shoot him a look which told him that he was going to pay for that later. "You really do love me, huh?" she said to Ayaka.
Ayaka hesitated, then sighed. "Yes, I guess that I do, at that. It's so annoying. I did so want to be pure for Negi-sensei, but it just didn't work out that way."
"Oh, that's not a problem," Asuna said, shooting Negi a look that told him that later had arrived. "Negi doesn't really mind purity. Really, not at all."
"Oh, boy," Negi muttered.
"What are you talking about?" Ayaka asked.
"Do you think it's safe to go back in?" asked one of the maids waiting outside the closed door to the dining room.
"You did what?" came a shriek from that direction.
"Not even a little bit," the maid she'd addressed answered. "Let's go clean the house. Specifically, the other side of the house."
"I do not believe this," Ayaka groaned, her hands over her face. "The nonsense between Chizuru and Kotaro-kun was bad enough, but this? Is there something in the water in the magical world? Is that it?"
"Why do people instinctively go for a 'is there something in the water' bit?" Asuna wondered as she looked down at her, then turned to look at Negi who was taking off his jacket. "What are you doing?"
Negi shook his head. "I know where this is going," he said as he undid his tie. "It's going to the exact same place that it always goes. I'm tired of trying to argue against it, and it never ever works when I do, so I've decided to just stop fighting and submit to my own baser instincts." He started to unbutton his shirt.
"... well, okay, then!" Asuna replied cheerfully. "How'bout you?" she directed at Ayaka.
Ayaka let her hands fall and gazed wonderingly at Asuna. "You had two huge secrets like this, but you had the nerve to be surprised by my donating my little brother's toys to charity."
"I think we're kind of past that, now," Asuna replied irritably.
"I think we maybe shouuuuuuhhhh -" Ayaka broke off as she saw Negi taking down his pants to reveal his boxers.
Asuna followed her gaze, and snickered. "Loves me, she says, but show her that, and all of a sudden -"
"Oh, do be still," Ayaka sighed, standing up. "Negi-sensei ... I am, I think, in much the same situation as you. I find that I do, in fact, yearn for this, this ... consummation of our relationship, even if it means that we can never return to the innocent happiness we once - Asuna-san, stop laughing."
"Innocent? You kissed him so hard he damn near fainted! Innocent?!"
Ignoring her, Ayaka returned to her theme. "However, I am ... quite naive in these matters. While there have been many young men who have attempted to gain my affections, I never allowed myself to grow so close to any of them, and ..." She hesitated, then looked away. "The one person with whom I was almost as close, I pushed away, and - well, never mind any of that now. If this is to be, you must be my teacher in this, as well."
Negi nodded after a moment. "I will strive to do so to the best of my abilities. But please do not call me master or anything like that."
"Eh?"
"Never mind." He stepped forward, wrapped his arms around her and pressed their lips together.
Asuna half-expected to see Ayaka's nose explode in a shower of gore, but it didn't happen. After hesitating for a moment herself, she stepped forward and began to examine the fasteners of Ayaka's dress. It was relatively easy to figure out, and her fingers were more than capable of undoing them. At the sensation of Asuna's fingers on her back, however, Ayaka tensed up and turned to look at her with a startled look that Asuna answered with a raised eyebrow.
Ayaka swallowed ... then nodded.
Asuna leaned forward and pressed her lips against Ayaka's, then half-turned to kiss Negi as well, then watched the two of them kissing for a moment while she worked the fasteners, then pushed in again to claim someone's lips, she wasn't really sure whose, as the top of the dress finally came undone and sloughed off Ayaka's shoulders to reveal her braless status.
"Ahem," said Asuna.
"This is simply how this dress works!" Ayaka insisted, blushing brightly.
Before she could answer Asuna's amused glance with further insistence that she hadn't had any salacious intent when she picked this dress, her mind went completely blank. The sensation of Negi's mouth on her nipples, nursing at her like a little baby bro- like a baby, ahem, drowned all other thoughts out. She faintly shrieked with happiness.
"Uh-huh, he's really very good at that," Asuna said absently. "Cripes, how the heck do you get this skirt undone? It's impossible! Anyone would think you didn't have any salacious intent when you picked this dress!"
"Uh duhdn't!" Ayaka squealed around her hand, which was covering her mouth as her head fell back and she gasped at the sensations Negi's tongue was provoking in her.
"Whatever you say, but - ah, geez." Asuna sighed. "I really am still a baka ranger, aren't I? There's an obvious solution. Just a second."
"Tuhke yuhr tuhm!"
Asuna rolled her eyes as she darted over to the table and snatched up a certain item. She turned, fully intending to quickly head back ... then paused as she saw how much sheer happiness was radiating from the class representative's face. Well, she thought, might as well get naked myself. It's not like I'm doing this for ...
...cripes, I'm such a tsundere.
By the time she was down to her panties, Negi and Ayaka had both dropped to their knees and were slowly descending further, doubtless to end up on the floor. While that wasn't a problem, her plans did require Negi to be somewhat upright, so she quickly headed over. "Hey, Negi," she said.
Negi looked up. "Hmmm?"
She whipped out the pepper grinder from behind her back and gave it a twist, shooting a cloud of freshly ground pepper right into his face.
"Oh, come on, you ca- ... ca- ... kachoooo!" Negi sneezed, somewhat undermining his argument.
"Gesundheit," Asuna said smugly as she observed that the difficult to remove skirt was presently decorating the far wall of the dining room.
"... what just happened?" Ayaka asked bewilderedly as she stood there, completely denuded.
"No panties, either, huh?"
"What? No, I distinctly remember putting some on and -"
Negi rubbed his nose unhappily.
A few moments later, Negi was flat on his back on the floor, with Ayaka crouched over his hips, gazing down in awestruck wonder at his member. Asuna was crouching behind her, pressed up against her back. "Well?" she asked.
"It's just so cute," Ayaka said softly.
"... cute?" Asuna repeated. "It's a one-eyed trouser snake."
"Ruby-tipped warrior of love," Ayaka cooed a correction.
"Um, could we please stop coming up with silly names for my penis?" Negi asked. "It's just a little embarrassing, really."
Ayaka drew in a deep breath, then nodded solemnly. "Yes, Negi-sensei, we will move on from that now. We will move on to the trying part of this. I know there will be pain, and blood, but you must not worry for -"
"You ride horses," Asuna interjected dryly.
Ayaka broke off, and twisted around to look at her bewilderedly. "I know that I ride horses. Why do you see the need to announce it?"
Asuna used her hands to mime a pair of legs spreading.
"... why are you making odd gestures in response to a perfectly straightforward question?"
"... oh great balls of fire, how can anybody be so ... look, there's not going to be any pain and blood, okay, so just hurry up and go for it, will you?" Asuna replied. "Should've done it with Maki-chan first, I bet she wouldn't have been anywhere nearly this naive," she added in a low mutter.
Blithely ignoring that last remark, Ayaka turned back to Negi and smiled sweetly down at him. "Please be gentle," she cooed as she grabbed his unit firmly.
"Got it," said Negi as he shifted in her grasp, pushing the tip of his erection up into her.
"Ahhhhhhh!" Ayaka cried. "Oh joy, oh bliss, oh elysian transport! At last we are one, as was always -"
"Oh, for fuck's sake, he's just gotten started!" Asuna groaned, then pushed Ayaka down so that the erection went further up into her.
"GUUURGGGHHHH!" Ayaka commented as her eyes went utterly blank.
"Aaaaahhh!" Ayaka shrieked a few moments later. "My hips, my hips! They're moving on their owwwwwnnnn!"
"No, you're moving them," Asuna informed her as she pushed tightly up against the other girl's back. "You're in control of yourself and you don't get to pretend otherwise. No matter what happens," she added as she reached down to rub Ayaka's rear entrance with her fingers.
"Aaaahhh!" shrieked Ayaka some more. "No, don't, not there, it's dirrrrtyyyy!"
"Eeesh! Are you going to use every single cliche in the book?" She shook her head as she snaked her other hand around the front of Ayaka's self-governed hips, so that her fingers brushed against the other girl's clitoris. "Let me guess, now you're going to say -"
"Nooooo!" Ayaka obligingly shrieked. "I'm going to go craaaaaaaaazzyyyyy!"
"Are these really cliches?" Negi asked as he pumped up into Ayaka.
"Oh, such cliches."
"Nyaaaaaagggghhh!"
"And so is reverting to wordless howls."
"AAAAAAAHHHH!" Ayaka climactically shrieked, then collapsed forward onto Negi's chest, giggling faintly. "So good, Negi-sensei, so very very wait wait why are you still hard inside of me?"
"Well, um, I didn't really -" Negi stammered uncomfortably.
Ayaka's eyes went tiny. "But ... but surely the terrible pressures of my orifice constricting upon your member as I achieved the blissful state of climax would be enough to compel you to release your ejaculation up into my moist, receptive womb?"
"... sorry," Negi apologized.
"But ... but ... but surely -?"
"Oh, just fuck him some more, already," Asuna sighed, drumming her fingers impatiently on Ayaka's right shoulder blade. "He's kind of developing a talent for staying hard for a long time."
"But ... but ..."
"Or would you rather watch me do it?"
"... ahhhh!" Ayaka shrieked. "My hips are moving on their owwwwwnnnn!"
Several minutes and a few position changes later, Ayaka was lying on her back, lifting her head with just a bit of difficulty to gaze at the white fluid splashed across her belly in confusion. "But -" she said, blinking. "But - why? Why did you not spill your masculine liqueur into the flagon of my femininity?"
"Okay, please stop using language that reeks of purple text," Asuna said wearily, before she bent to start licking the semen up off of Ayaka's stomach.
"Prose," Negi announced.
"Huh?"
"Purple prose, not purple text."
"Oh. I was wondering about that, since I don't think books in English are ever printed in purple text, are they?"
"No, the term comes from a Latin phrase -"
"Negiiiii!" Ayaka squealed, interrupting this fascinating discussion. "Why didn't you finish inside of me?"
"Well ... I wasn't sure if it was a safe day or not?" Negi replied.
"What?" Ayaka asked blankly.
"A safe day," Negi repeated, then flushed as he realized that repetition was no substitute for explanation. "You know, a day when a young woman can't become pregnant."
"... there are such things?" Ayaka asked blankly.
"Not really," Asuna interjected, between licks of Ayaka's stomach, gazing speculatively at the other girl's clitoris as she did so.
"Well, then, I don't - has he finished inside of you?" she asked, changing direction abruptly.
"Oh, yeah, I don't know how many times ..." Asuna replied dreamily.
"Asuna," Negi groaned.
"Not fair! Not fair not fair not fair!" Ayaka ranted, shaking her fists in the air. "Am I to tolerate such inequality? Is it not bad enough that Asuna-san has become better than me in practically everything we were once equals or I her obvious better -"
"But, but you could become pregnant," Negi objected soothingly.
"And Asuna-san cannot -"
"No," Asuna interrupted. "I cannot."
The words hung in the air for a long moment.
"I know you don't want to hear it," Asuna said, when that moment had passed. "But I ... am just ... a doll."
"No, you're not," Ayaka said, again, a few minutes later, as the two of them floated together on the surface of the mansion's pool.
"That's the fifteenth time you've said that without me saying anything," Asuna replied as she stared up at the vaulted ceiling.
"And I will say it fifteen more times if that's what it takes to get you to believe it," Ayaka replied as she stared in the same direction. "Or fifteen hundred. Or fifteen thousand. No, you're not."
"The thing about lies, even sweet, beautiful, life-affirming lies, is that no matter how much they're repeated, no matter how many people choose to believe them - reality keeps right on being reality." Asuna considered her own words for a moment. "Good grief, when the hell did I get so profound?"
"No, you're not."
"No, really, I think that was just pretty profound, right up there with what Eva-chan said about souls and stories and stuff like - oh. You're still doing it."
"We are Ala Alba. We make the impossible possible. Reality can go take a hike." A brief pause. "No, you're not."
Asuna closed her eyes. "You crazy, crazy, crazy girl," she said. "I think ... yeah, on the whole, this has been a pretty sweet life. I've known some pretty great people ... but even so ... I think meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me."
Slowly her hand reached out across the water, and just as slowly, Ayaka's hand reached out and wrapped around it. The two girls turned to look at each other, as they floated there, and smiled.
"No, you're not," Ayaka said.
"Oh, geez, enough with that already."
On the edge of the pool, Negi sat and watched two of the people he loved most in the world finally accepting their love for each other ... and wished, so very much, that it hadn't taken this to bring it about.
But he wished for a lot of things.
A few days after that and a few hours after we came in:
"Let me get this straight," Misa said flatly as she stared at the card depicting Sakurako in her cheerleader outfit, held in her hand. "You ... kissed ... him."
"When you put it like that, it sounds like some great betrayal," Sakurako commented from where she was being held in a shoulder lock by Madoka. "You're really good at this, I can't wiggle out at all," she added to her other partner.
"That's because it is a great betrayal!" Misa yelled, banging her desk with a shoe she'd gotten somewhere. "Saku, it's bad enough that you went and helped that little jerk after we walked off with his barrel, but to kiss him? I can't believe you! What were you thinking?"
"Mostly, 'this will show him not to underestimate us', mixed with a bit of 'why is he such a good kisser for a boy his age'?" Sakurako answered honestly. Mostly honestly. The portion of her thoughts which had been 'aggh I can't believe I have to go through with this' had actually outnumbered 'such a good kisser' by a reasonable amount, but there was no point in dwelling on such things.
"So he's actually a good kisser?" Makie asked curiously from the next row of seats.
"Surprisingly, yes," Sakurako admitted. "I mean, there wasn't any tongue or anything like that," she added, lying through her teeth.
Makie nodded in understanding. "There wasn't any when I kissed -"
"What do you mean, 'not to underestimate us'?" Misa asked, since her interest in listening to Makie's harebrained romance tales was only slightly greater than her interest in having a dirty yak sit on her dinner. It was a little surprising that she'd gotten to first kiss stage without everyone in the entire world knowing about it, but now was not the time to address the issue. "How did you kissing him and somehow getting a magically-appearing and -disappearing card out of it show that he shouldn't underestimate us?"
"Oh, I see why you did it," Makie interjected cheerfully. "It was like that with us, too, wasn't it, Yuna?"
"Eh, kinda sorta," Yuna agreed.
"What are you all talking about?" Misa asked.
"Pactios," Makie and Sakurako chorused. Then, "Jinx! Double jinx! Okay, seriously stop it. This is getting creepy."
"Huh?" Misa said, abjectly bewildered.
"You know, pactios. When you kiss someone who can use magic and get a card and sweet magical powers out of the deal," Yuna explained. "Like we all did with Negi-kun."
"Huh?" Misa repeated, still abjectly bewildered.
And then, because some things simply must happen, Yuna tapped her head with her fingers and shook it in profound and patently false regret. "Oh, that's right, Kakizaki has yet to experience the adventure! I feel sooo bad about saying anything at all! Tsk. Tsk. Tsk."
"Back up a second," Misa said, very quietly. "When you say 'like we all did', who exactly are we talking about?"
A few moments later, Fate was approaching the classroom. "Well, hopefully, they'll have calmed down now that the festival is over," he mused aloud. "... good grief, I'm talking to myself out loud. This never happened when I was the leader of an evil organization. Well, other than that one time when I -"
The door flung open, and Misa ran out, with Madoka and Sakurako (the latter still in a shoulder hold) following closely behind her. "Prepare yourself, Negi-sensei!" Misa declared. "Your lips are about to be stolen by a sexy older woman! Oh crap," she concluded as she saw Fate.
"This isn't my fault," Sakurako said when she did the same.
"Ghrar," Fate replied.
To Be Continued