There's just enough of you in me
For me to have sympathy
And take it in stride – I know I had mine
And you were as kind, I am told

-Indigo Girls

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Part 10: Rage

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"For Christ's sake, Kaname, what is your problem today?"

Kaname looked up from her lunch to see Momomi staring at her from the other side of the bench, looking vaguely annoyed. "What?" she asked, defensively.

"You keep muttering under your breath, and you've been doing it ever since last night. Seriously, what's eating you?"

For a moment, Kaname wanted to continue protesting, but she had to admit that Momomi was right. She had certainly been preoccupied with unpleasant thoughts after yesterday's lunch meeting. A look at the mangled sandwich in her hands only confirmed it: she was feeling a lot of tension. "Sorry," she said with an expressive sigh. "I've got a lot on my mind."

Momomi looked partially mollified by the apology for all of about three seconds, then she frowned. "You know, I have a lot of work to do for the council, and I'm trying to make time to have lunch with you, but if you're going to ignore me, maybe I should just stay back at the office."

"I said I was sorry," Kaname sighed again, but with a little more force in her voice this time. "Look, I had a rough day yesterday. You know how much I hate seeing my father, and... this time we hit an all-time low in the field of parent-child bonding."

"What happened?" Momomi asked, a hint of actual concern crossing her face.

Kaname took a slow breath, considering whether or not she wanted to get into this now, even in the relative seclusion of the Spica courtyard. She had not dared bring this up to Momomi thus far, because the rage had been too fresh and too raw. She had cooled off a little since then, though; maybe it would be best to finish getting it out of her system. "My father is trying to set me up to marry his boss's son," she said at length.

Given the ever-present birdsong and the constant shouts from the distant athletic fields, it could not exactly be said that a long silence followed, but nonetheless it was quite some time before Momomi stopped blinking at her and spoke. "Wait... he wants to... marry you off?"

"He probably thinks it'll score him some more points with the old bastard," Kaname snorted. She could feel the bile rising in her throat even as she thought about Saiga, and what he had put her through. Much of the past twenty-four hours had been spent fantasizing about the creative revenge she wished for.

Revenge that she was now more than capable of administering, she knew: a thought that gave her deep satisfaction as well as an equally real sense of disquiet.

Rather than follow that train of thought yet again, though, Kaname returned to the here and now by giving a dismissive wave and a roll of the eyes. "Anyway, he can try all he wants. I've already refused, and if he knows what's best, he won't push it." She turned a thin smile on Momomi, but the expression quickly turned into a frown.

Momomi looked... unsettled. "What is it?" Kaname asked her.

"Maybe you..." Momomi said hesitantly, then stopped.

"Maybe I what?"

"Maybe... maybe you should consider it."

In the years of their relationship, with all its feint and parry, all its gamesmanship and competition, Kaname could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that Momomi had left her completely speechless. And now she was going to have to add another finger to that count.

Perhaps noticing the look of slack-jawed shock Kaname was giving her, Momomi continued. "If it's his boss's son, then... it would probably be a move up in social standing, wouldn't it?"

"Social... standing?" Kaname managed. "Momomi, social standing can go and f*** itself. Hello? This is me we're talking about here. Maybe you haven't been paying attention for the last five years, but I'm... I don't know, ever-so-slightly gay?"

"Well, yes, but... it's not as though we have a lot of men in our lives, going to school here," Momomi pointed out. "Who's to say anyone who goes to this school is really gay for any other reason than lack of options?"

For a moment, Kaname had to give serious consideration to the idea that this conversation was not actually happening. She suddenly found herself flashing back to a talk with Chikaru in the gym, when a similar question had been posed. Truth be told, it was a question that had stayed with her in the time since, and it was a question that made her very uncomfortable, in spite of her self-assertion that no one else, by action or inaction, had made her who she was. "Who's to..? Momomi, I'm to say that. I'm queer, through and through. Not to mention committed to someone?" She fervently hoped that Momomi wouldn't use this opportunity to bring up Lilith again.

"Oh, wake up, Kaname," Momomi growled. "What, do you think that after we graduate, you and I are going to be able to get married? Have a little house together? We're high society. We're supposed to end up in empty, arranged marriages. If this is going to get you ahead in the world, you should do it."

Kaname was quickly running out of fingers.

How could Momomi say such a thing? Never mind the veiled assertion that being with a man could change her: how could she so much as suggest that Kaname consider marrying into the family of the man who'd raped her? She had always known her partner to be unhealthily obsessed with social status, both her own and that of their peers, but this was obscene. Didn't she know who Saiga was? What he had done?

But then, with shocking clarity, Kaname realized that Momomi did not, in fact, know about any of this. Because in all these years, Kaname had never told her.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you say that," Kaname said in a tight, shaky voice. "It's not going to happen. Period."

"I'm just saying that if you have a good chance, you should go for it," Momomi insisted. Her face worked through several unfamiliar expressions before settling on a painful attempt at flirtatious. "Besides, who's to say you couldn't still have me, even married? I'd be willing to be the mistress."

"Willing to..." Kaname sputtered. "Is that all you think you are to me, after everything we've been through? Just an affair, while I'm stuck in some man's bed? What happened to wanting me to stay with you, and fight for you? What are you saying here?"

"I'm saying that I'd make that sacrifice for you!" Momomi said, heatedly. "If it meant something good for you, I'd settle for being your girl on the side. I know where your feelings would really be. We wouldn't have to lose anything, and... and maybe there would be something to gain, for both of us!"

Kaname had, by this time, mostly learned to deal with the presence of the Souma inside herself, relegating it to background noise unless she needed it. Since seeing her father the previous day, however, it had been seething beneath the surface, and now the thick, slow warmth of it was rising, filling her almost to the point of pain, threatening to burst through at any moment. Briefly, she had the incongruous thought that she needed to tell Tamao she had been right: it was turning out to feel like molten lava after all. And she herself was the volcano on the verge of erupting.

Thoughts were quickly giving way to fury, but she had enough presence of mind left to know that she could not stay here, lest she say (or even do) something to Momomi that she would later regret. "I have to go," she managed as she pushed herself to her feet and hurried away, feeling Momomi's bewildered eyes upon her as she made her retreat.

Still somewhat restless and lost in thought, Hazuki aimlessly wandered the lower level of Strawberry Hall, exchanging subdued greetings with teammates and acquaintances as she passed. Bits of the conversation she'd had with Chikaru and Tamao the previous night were still echoing in her head, and not for the first time, she wondered guiltily if she should have kept secret the emotional surge she'd felt upon having Hatsumi in her arms again.

Chikaru, unsurprisingly, had been understanding itself, echoing the sentiment expressed by Eve and reminding Hazuki that a first love was always the most difficult to let go of. ("Besides," she had shrugged, "no kiss, no foul. You felt temptation, and you backed away from it.") Tamao, however, had been visibly unsettled by Hazuki's admission, and while she had made an effort to say that she understood, there had been an uncharacteristic feeling of tension in the nightly cuddle. Hazuki could not help but wonder whether it had been too much to admit to her encounter with Eve so soon after disclosing her horrible actions in the Universal Garden, but at the same time, she knew that simply sitting on those feelings of shame could only hurt them in the end.

One thing was certain: between the meeting with Kaori, and now this, Hazuki was more than ready to put the past weekend behind her, and try to earn back some of the trust she feared she might have lost.

Preoccupied by these and many other thoughts, Hazuki nearly ran over Kizuna before noticing she was there.

"Hazuki-senpai," the Lulim third-year addressed her, giving a deep bow, "I must apologize to you."

"Apologize..?" Hazuki asked, confused by the serious tone coming from the normally gleeful junior. "I'm the one who almost crashed into you. What do you need to apologize for?"

"I apologize for... for honking your girlfriend," Kizuna went on, grimacing as she said the last words. "Please forgive me."

For a few moments, Hazuki could not for the life of her figure out what Kizuna was talking about, but then she remembered an unexpected grope during Friday night's anime party. So much had happened since then that it seemed a distant memory. "Thank you, Kizuna-chan, but don't you think you should be apologizing to Tamao-chan and not me?"

"Um, yes," Kizuna nodded. "And I will, but... I wanted to talk to you first, because... well, because Kachou Kamen is meeting today, and I didn't want there to be any hard feelings, and I promise I didn't even enjoy it, well not much anyway, and that's not to say that Tamao-chan doesn't have nice breasts, because they're really really nice, not that I had too long to enjoy it, because I didn't, and..." Here, Kizuna took a breath and bowed again. "Please don't punish me, Hazuki-senpai."

Hazuki glanced down the hall to see Remon peeking out from the next corner, looking nervous. "Kizuna-chan," Hazuki said, almost laughing at the display, "I'm not going to punish you, I promise."

The younger girl's lower lip quivered for a moment, then she sprang forward and hugged Hazuki tightly. "Thank you, Hazuki-senpai."

"I hope I didn't scare you too badly," Hazuki chuckled, hugging the smaller girl in reply. "Honestly, though, Kizuna-chan? You're one of the first people who welcomed me here, and I adore you. It would take a lot more than an inappropriate squeeze to make me angry with you, much less to make me want to punish you. And I'd never intentionally pick on you in practice, so don't worry about it."

"Do you really mean that, Hazuki-senpai?"

"I mean it. I can't stay mad at you over a honking."

"Do you really, truly mean that, Hazuki-senpai?"

"I promise," Hazuki laughed.

"That's good to know," Kizuna nodded against her.

Hazuki was more than aware of how much the presence of Souma had changed her, both over the course of her journey and since. Her reflexes were honed to the proverbial needle-point, and her instincts were strong enough to make her almost prescient in certain situations.

Even with all of this, however, occasionally something utterly unexpected would come along and catch her completely flat-footed.

"Honk!"

And then a maniacally grinning Kizuna was gone in a flash of ginger pigtails, ducking around the corner with Remon, sharing a loud squee with her partner in crime before vanishing with the sound of two sets of receding footsteps almost before Hazuki could even raise a hand to cover her recently groped breast.

She stood there stock-still for a few seconds, still in shock, then laughed in spite of herself. She made a mental note to warn Chikaru, just in case Kizuna might want to try for the honking hat trick sometime soon.

Even as she had this thought, though, a strained voice came from behind her. "Hazuki."

The tall Spican looked around to see Kaname approaching her from down the hall, looking particularly stormy. "Kaname," she nodded. "What's going on? You look like hell."

"You got time for a spar today?" Kaname asked in lieu of an explanation.

"Um... possibly. Why?"

"Because I'm suppressing a lot of rage right now, and I need to take it out on someone that I know can handle it. You game?"

Hazuki blinked at her former nemesis. "Well, when you put it that way, how can I refuse?"

Kaname nodded. "When?"

"I've got about half an hour between kendo and Kachou Kamen. Come by the gym. Will naginata be okay?"

"That'll do," Kaname said shortly, then nodded again and stalked back down the hall, leaving Hazuki to wonder what had brought that on. It occurred that maybe someone was having a stranger day than she was after all.

Kizuna and Remon did not stop dashing until they were well clear of Strawberry Hall. "So!" Remon giggled, caught somewhere between sheer terror and an equal amount of glee. "What exactly brought that on?"

"It's the art of the honk," Kizuna nodded, trying to look solemn and sage (and failing utterly). "You need to find the opening and seize the day."

"Or seize something else, in this case."

"Yeah. Carpe pectus, that's what I always say."

"You've never said that before in your life!"

"Then maybe I need to start."

"So... was it everything you dreamed?" Remon chortled.

Kizuna held out the hand which had performed the deed, then turned it slightly to consider it from another angle. "Simply majestic. Full, soft, with just a hint of the corded steel that is the rest of her."

Remon chose not to ask what a corded steel bosom would feel like. "Yeah, well, forgiveness or not, you'd better keep an eye on that hand, or it might go missing one of these days."

"Not before my work is done," Kizuna grinned. "The only question now is..."

"Is..?"

"Who's next?"

Remon blinked a few times, then took a deep breath, not-so-accidentally puffing out her chest in the process.

"Who shall be the next to feel the touch of the Masked Honker?" Kizuna went on.

"Hmm, who indeed?" Remon agreed, not-so-surreptitiously stretching both arms over her head and arching her back.

"What glorious bust will be my next target? I think it shall be..."

Remon clasped her hands behind her back and gave her shoulders a not-so-subtle wiggle. She even began a classic Innocent Whistle.

"...Remon-chan!" Kizuna cried suddenly.

"Hmm?" Remon smiled, leaning in more closely.

The hand in question shot forward and closed over Remon's... shoulder. "Where do you think Yaya-senpai is right about now? I'm sure Tsubomi-chan can't be watching her all the time. Come on!"

With that, Kizuna dashed off, leaving Remon to slowly deflate.

Months ago, in one of their long talks, Chikaru had imparted a particularly unique piece of advice for coping with the strangeness of Remon's day-to-day experiences. Life, her onee-sama had said, is like being on stage or screen. Sometimes the best thing to do is to think of the absurdities as being part of the script, acted out for someone else's entertainment. Think of life itself as having a fourth wall, and then remember that fourth walls are meant to be broken.

And so, Remon turned to the invisible audience and sighed. "What am I going to do with her?" she said as an aside, then turned to chase after her fellow actor.

Nagisa checked to make sure the wrappings on her practice naginata were secure (even though it did not have an actual blade, it was necessary to wrap that section in cloth while carrying it through the public areas of the dormitory), then reached under her bed to pull out the duffel bag containing her sparring gear. "I never thought I'd say this, Tamao-chan, but after the weekend we just had, I'm really looking forward to practice today. I've never been that much of an athlete, but I think it'll really feel good to work off some of the leftover tension."

"Hmm... the weekend was certainly... challenging," Tamao said quietly from her side of the room.

Realizing belatedly the way in which her words might have been construed, Nagisa amended herself. "I didn't mean it to sound like I don't enjoy practice. I do, really. It's just... hard not to be intimidated. You're all so much better at it than I am. Even Kagome-chan beats me five times out of six when we're sparring." She paused a moment before starting the laborious process of unbuttoning her uniform dress, then quickly slipped it off and started getting into her loose-fitting hakama pants. Once these were fastened properly, she remembered that she would need to change into a sports bra before continuing with the keikogi jacket: she knew from experience that she would regret it if she didn't. While she knew that all the serious girls wore a traditional sarashi for this kind of practice, she could never manage to put one of those on by herself, and asking Tamao to help her wrap a long strip of cloth around her torso would probably not be the nicest thing she could do for the best friend who'd once crushed so hard on her, recent trip to an onsen notwithstanding.

She reached around to find the clasp of her bra, and as she did so, peeked over her shoulder to see if Tamao was watching. Before she could even chastise herself for this habitual glance, though, she felt a wave of concern for her friend and roommate.

Tamao, perched on the edge of her bed, was very much not watching her. Not only that, she was staring into space, eyes filled with tears that slowly dripped down to land on the uniform dress she had not yet removed. While she was crying, though, she did not look particularly sad. Instead, perhaps more unsettlingly, she looked completely numb.

Nagisa immediately forgot about unclasping and took a step toward her. "Tamao-chan... what is it? What's happened?"

"Tell me something, Nagisa-chan," Tamao whispered.

"Of course."

"When... when you met Kaori-sama, and saw her with Shizuma-sama... did it scare you?"

The question shocked Nagisa in its bluntness, and she suddenly found herself needing to sit down, so she settled onto the mattress beside Tamao. "It scared me a lot, Tamao-chan."

"Even though you knew that Kaori-sama didn't love her? This Kaori-sama, I mean?"

"It still scared me," Nagisa nodded. "It scared me to think of what seeing her was doing to Shizuma. Even knowing what I knew about this Kaori-sama and where her feelings were... how could I not be scared?"

"Are you still scared?" Tamao asked quietly.

"Well... Shizuma set me straight right away. She told me that her heart was mine, and that nothing would change that, and even if this had been her Kaori, it wouldn't have mattered: she wouldn't leave me, even then."

Still not looking at her, Tamao nodded slowly. "But... are you still scared?"

Nagisa let out a long sigh. "Of course I am. A little. Why... why is Tamao-chan asking me this?"

Finally, Tamao turned to look her in the eyes. "Because... I'm scared too, Nagisa-chan..."

Even in the midst of her ongoing rage, Kaname took the coward's way to her spar with Hazuki. Rather than risk running into any of the kendo team in the locker room, she got dressed in her own room, then hauled her gear over to Spica at the appointed hour. Once she arrived at the gymnasium complex, she studiously avoided taking any halls that might be occupied with departing kendouka, or even (God help her) Kojima-sensei.

Cowardly, perhaps, but necessary. She had no idea what she'd say to anyone who questioned her presence there, and she had no desire to find out.

Once she arrived in the tertiary gym, which housed both kendo and now naginata practice, she was relieved to see Hazuki already there, dressed, and warming up with her practice polearm. Unfortunately, there were several others milling about as well, including that Nanto girl and her pink-haired pipsqueak protector. Kaname had really been hoping not to have an audience this time, but it couldn't be helped.

She set down her equipment bag some distance from Hazuki and began putting on her protective gear. She quickly finished the chest protector and gauntlets, and was wrapping the requisite small towel around her head when she noticed the shaft of a naginata entering her peripheral vision. She looked up to see Hazuki extending her a practice weapon, and Kaname, to her annoyance, realized that she had never even considered the fact that she did not own a naginata. She had been so focused on this spar that the small detail of not possessing the proper weapon had completely evaded her. "Thanks," she muttered, taking it from her sparring partner.

"Kaname, are you okay?" Hazuki asked, giving her a guardedly concerned look.

"No, not really," Kaname smiled tightly as she put on her sparring helmet. "Ask me again after we've had the chance to beat the crap out of each other for a while."

"Ever used one of these things before?"

Kaname hefted the naginata two-handed, then gave it a couple of quick sweeps and thrusts. "Not frequently, but I'm willing to spot you the extra expertise on this one." She then held it at the ready position and faced off with her former rival.

Hazuki mirrored her pose for a moment, then shook her head. "You know, empathy isn't my strongest skill, but even I can tell there's something bugging you. You sure you don't want to talk this over?"

"Nothing personal, Hazuki, but I'm sick of talking. Look... I need this, okay? We can talk later."

"I'll hold you to that."

They touched blades, then settled back. Kaname took a deep breath, willing that sense of Zen-like warrior calm to fill her.

After a few seconds in which it completely failed to do so, she gave it up for a lost cause and attacked.

It was a rarity that Nagisa found herself in the role of the comfort-giver with Tamao, but she found that she was grateful for the chance to return even a little of what her best friend had given to her over their time together. And so, with Tamao's head in her lap and her friend's long hair twined between her fingers, Nagisa listened to her story, only asking questions once it was finished.

"So... Hazuki-chan went to visit Naoko-sama in the Great Library, and when she gave her a hug, she... got excited?"

"I don't know if excited is the right word," Tamao sighed. "But... she said that all those old feelings came back to her. All the..." Tamao paused and swallowed hard. "All the... want, and desire."

"And it bothers Tamao-chan that Hazuki-chan felt desire for someone else," Nagisa nodded.

"I don't even know that it's as easy as that. We're teenagers, for Heaven's sake. At some level, we're all at the mercy of our hormones. I'd expect her to feel a rush when seeing someone as beautiful as Naoko-sama, especially given their history together, but..."

"But what?" Nagisa prompted her.

Tamao half-buried her face in the thick cloth of Nagisa's hakama. "I already lost one girl to a goddess. I don't want it to happen in a more literal sense."

"Tamao-chan," Nagisa sighed, patting her friend's head fondly.

"I'm sorry," Tamao went on. "I just needed to wallow for a moment."

"It's okay. But if Naoko-sama is really a goddess of some kind... well, don't you think that might have something to do with why Hazuki was so attracted to her originally?"

"But how," Tamao asked carefully, "could I ever compete with a goddess? What if Naoko-sama changes her mind one day, and wants Hazuki-chan for herself? How could I ever measure up to a literally deified first love?"

Nagisa actually managed a smile at that, and gave Tamao a gentle tap on the forehead. "Well, now you're just being silly."

"Nagisa-chan?" Tamao asked, looking up at her with a confused expression.

"Maybe I don't know the whole story as well as you do, but wasn't there something in there about how it could never work out for them because of Naoko-sama being a goddess? Besides, Hazuki-chan did the right thing, didn't she? She got all hormonal, but then true love took over, and she came home to you and Chikaru-sama."

"I know," Tamao sighed again. "I guess it's just hard not to feel... inadequate. How can I compete with a first love who was an angel?"

"I may not be the best person to ask," Nagisa chuckled, though there was not much humor to it. "Never mind Kaori-sama: I was scared that Miyuki-sama would try to steal Shizuma away for a while there, even though she explicitly said she wouldn't. I'm actually a really good authority on feeling inadequate, not overcoming it."

"I'm sorry, Nagisa-chan. I've reminded you of painful things, haven't I?"

"You're worth it."

"Does it get any easier? The being scared part, I mean?"

Nagisa thought about this for a while before answering. "Maybe a little, but... I don't think you have anything to be scared of. Not only did Hazuki-chan back away, but she came clean about the whole thing right away, didn't she?"

"True..."

Heartened by her friend's agreement, Nagisa forged ahead. "Like I told you a few weeks ago, I'm not a love sage who knows all the answers, but... I think Hazuki-chan is just doing what a lot of people do: she's having trouble fully getting over her first love. I've heard it plenty of times, how people just have a hard time letting go of that first special someone, and... and that a lot of people never really do. No matter what they do with their lives, no matter how hard they may fall in love again, there will always be that part that remembers what it was like with that first love, and just being around that person can sometimes lead to temptation, and... er..."

Quite suddenly, Nagisa remembered the person to whom she was saying this, and she found herself all too conscious of two facts: that said person's head was in her lap, and that she herself was still clad only in a bra from the waist up. She looked down uncertainly, only to find Tamao smiling up at her, looking genuinely humored. "Well, when you put it that way..."

Nagisa blushed hotly. "Um, yes, well..."

Tamao sat up beside her, then gave her a slightly more weary version of her previous smile. "No, you're right. Forgive me for saying so, Nagisa-chan, but... you're right. Maybe that's why it was so hard to hear that from her: it hit too close to home."

"Do you..." Nagisa began, but then she paused, wondering if she should really ask this. "Do you still... um... think of me in that way, Tamao-chan?"

"Not so much anymore," Tamao smiled wanly. "There'll still be times when you do something so outrageously cute that I can't help remembering that part of last year, but..." She looked away. "A part of me will probably always wonder what might have been, and regret not confessing to you sooner, or never having had the chance to kiss you, but... like I said to Hazuki-chan months ago, I can live with that part."

"Then... can you live with that part of her, as well?"

Tamao's smile widened. "And here I thought you weren't an all-knowing love sage?"

"I'm... just a friend," Nagisa smiled back, blushing at the compliment.

"No," Tamao disagreed, shaking her head even as she continued smiling. "You're my Nagisa-chan. Thank you. I really do feel better, having talked about it."

Nagisa looked over at her bedside clock. "Well, then... should we hurry up and get changed? If... you still want to go to practice, that is?"

"Of course," Tamao nodded, hopping down from the bed and reaching beneath it to drag out her own equipment bag. "We'll probably be late, though, won't we?"

"I'll tell Hazuki-chan it was my fault," Nagisa shrugged, sticking out her tongue at her friend. She then went to open her wardrobe and find that sports bra she'd wanted earlier. Once she found one, she again reached around to unclasp the one she was wearing and slid it off her shoulders.

Something occurred to her then, and she paused before she could put the new garment on. "Tamao-chan?"

"Hmm?"

"Um... does it make you uncomfortable when I change clothes in front of you?"

"You're the one who had to put up with my obsessiveness last year. More importantly, does it make you uncomfortable?"

Nagisa thought about this for a moment, then made a decision, and slowly turned to face her friend. "No, not really."

As it turned out, the moment of trust went unheeded, as Tamao had her back turned while she continued unloading her equipment bag. "You're not worried that I'll see something I like and jump on it?"

"No, not really," Nagisa giggled. "But I don't want you to be... sad and regretful either. Or to feel guilty for looking."

"Maybe I need a little guilt," Tamao said in her familiar teasing voice, and Nagisa knew that they would both be just fine.

Letting the moment pass for now, she slipped on the tight stretch-top, then got into her keikogi. "Then maybe you could help me with the sarashi sometime?"

"Hmm, a difficult sacrifice, but I'm sure I could manage it for the sake of our friendship. I'll just have to..."

Tamao's voice cut off all of a sudden, and Nagisa turned to see her staring wide-eyed into space, her mouth hanging open in the shape of her last spoken word. "Tamao-chan? What is it?"

"Hazuki-chan..!" Tamao said in a strangled whisper, and when she turned to Nagisa, her eyes were green fire.

While the Zen feeling never came, Kaname quickly found another way to sharpen her focus: she finally took the lid off her anger and let it fly.

Only gay for lack of options, huh? Maybe she just hadn't met the right man yet, right? Sure, blame the school. Anything but accepting the reality that she might actually be what she said she was. What she knew she was.

Minutes into the spar, she had Hazuki completely on her heels. At least, that was how it looked: knowing her, she was probably choosing to stay on defense. After all, no one could really overpower the legendary Azuma Hazuki, with her warrior's wisdom and her inhuman reflexes. Or maybe Hazuki was just letting Kaname get it all out, playing the part of the metaphorical punching bag rather than providing a real challenge. For a moment, Kaname realized that she could choose to be grateful for that, but instead, she just let it piss her off even further.

More members of the naginata team were arriving in ones and twos. Hyper-aware of everything around her, Kaname noticed Chikaru among them, giving the two fighters a look of concern.

Because Chikaru was always concerned for everyone, wasn't she? Hell, Chikaru was perfection itself, just like her girlfriend here. Always the counselor, always the voice of reason... unless she was threatening to ruin you, of course, or gleefully collecting every rumor she could find about you. So perfect that she had not one but two of Astraea's finest pieces of ass in her bed, and she couldn't deign to tap them. So wise that she could plant an idea in your head and let it grow like a vine, choking you from the inside.

So tell me, Kaname, are you really gay, or did a bad, bad man just make you that way?

A bad, bad man whose face still filled her nightmares, along with the look of shattered horror on the face of the son... Her future husband, eh? My, what a functional family that would be! And even better, it would be a boost to her social standing! Yay! And she could have tawdry affairs with Momomi while popping out heirs for Saiga's "family business." Hey, maybe she'd even have daughters! No doubt grandpa would love to babysit them... once they reached a certain age, of course...

Or she could always hook up with Lilith, right? Night after night of soul-bending sex with a goddess was certainly an appealing idea... at least until Kaname did something to piss her off, and had her entire existence erased around her while she was left to enjoy the feeling of there being absolutely nothing left of the life she knew...

She continued to rain blows from all directions, each of them blocked expertly by Hazuki, whose naginata was a blur in her hands. Kaname's Souma was burning hotter than ever, and the tension was building toward the breaking point inside her. That volcano was getting ready to pop.

With a flash of what was almost humor, she briefly pondered the obvious sexual subtext, and wondered if Hazuki knew that Kaname was, in a very real sense, having her way with the younger girl.

Because forcing herself on another was what she was good at, right?

Blindsided by that thought, she felt herself completely snap, and she gave a harsh bellow as she swung her naginata in a left-to-right arc that seemed to bend the light around it as it passed. Her Souma exploded inside her, and it was not something orgasmic, or triumphant: it was a complete loss of herself, as the searing heat stripped her of everything that she was, and everything that she felt. There was nothing left but the weapon, and the weapon was her.

Loud as thunder, Kaname heard two distinct cracks. The first came when her blow split Hazuki's naginata in half as her opponent attempted to block. The second came when that same blow struck Hazuki at the base of her helmet, right where shoulder met neck, and her head snapped sideways with the force of it.

Almost in slow motion, Hazuki collapsed to the gymnasium floor. Kaname was distantly aware of screams, and approaching footsteps, but all she could really perceive at that moment was Hazuki lying there motionless, with her neck bent at an angle that human necks are simply not supposed to bend.

Just like that, the erupting lava within her was gone, and Kaname felt very cold indeed.

Next: Recoil

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter was going to be a lot longer, but I chose to split things here because it's been six freaking months, and I seldom indulge in a good cliffhanger. Kanpai!