Still Waters Run Deep: And the Wind Cries Mary

Eva watched the carnage unfold from her position floating far above. Honestly, she had had no idea Okochi Akira had been so strong. She had known the girl was unusual from the start, but this… She watched as the girl released the enormous sphere of water, which ballooned out to a ridiculous degree upon contact with the ground. "Chachamaru, check for survivors. I saw someone moving in that clocktower to the east," she added as the water continued to expand and envelop the old tower. She watched Chachamaru fly off, then turned back to see if she could find the water elemental anywhere. She didn't know what the girl had done to the water, but it had finally stopped expanding. However, rather than running off as she had expected, it seemed to be at least semi-solid, and remained in a vague sort of cone shape, not unlike a very old volcano, or a ball of bread dough that has been dropped onto a table.

The coverage was enormous. The mountain of gelatinous water was almost a mile across, and maybe three hundred feet tall at its highest point in the center. She could see buildings poking up out of it here and there where they had not been destroyed by the enormous stresses put upon them. It looked as though someone had dropped an enormous blue lump of jello into the center of Mahora…the image was surreal.

And finally, she spotted her. A tiny bit of blue, almost lost in the expanse below it. She approached cautiously, but the elemental didn't seem to notice her until she was within hailing distance.

The blue being that looked like Okochi Akira turned around and regarded Eva solemnly. "YUUNA IS DEAD," it said in its deep voice. "YUUNA IS DEAD." Its eyes were eerily bright, almost white, and Eva realized she could see the shapes of buildings through its body. Something like this would be hard to defeat if it became hostile. Not impossible, but hard to defeat without killing.

"You are Okochi Akira, correct?" Eva asked, unsure where to begin. She had never been one for delicate work like this. Her usual M.O. was to drive enemies to attack, not talk them down.

"OKOCHI AKIRA," it repeated. "OKOCHI AKIRA IS SLEEPING." It turned around again as if to survey the destruction.

Well now, at least she knew who was in charge now. Or rather, who was not. "Who are you?"

It turned to regard her again. "I AM WATER."

Eva felt the urge to just blast the thing out of the sky, but forced herself to continue. "I want to speak to Okochi Akira," she demanded.

The thing shook its head in response. "OKOCHI AKIRA IS SLEEPING."

"Well wake her up then!"

"O-OKOCHI AKIRA WILL SLEEP FOREVER." It turned straight toward Eva and advanced slowly.

Eva frowned and prepared a spell, only to be distracted by a growing spot of bright light deep in the expanse of water below. A vague sense she had all but forgotten in her years of confinement suddenly caught her attention as the light faded: she could feel the mages, all of them. Or at least, those who were unshielded against such things. 'That would be the Konoe girl,' she thought. Then another familiar sensation caught her attention.

"Akashi Yuuna is alive," she said in genuine surprise. She had been sure the girl was dead…no human could have survived such a thing, not without divine intervention, or something like it.

"YUUNA IS ALIVE…?" It stopped its advance and seemed confused.

A pulsing flare of energy, wavery and weak but still present, niggled at the back of Eva's mind. "That Max is alive too," she added with something akin to wonder. That had been another one she was sure would die. The back of his head had been all but opened up when that air mage pounded it into the parking lot.

"MAX IS ALIVE…MAX IS MINE." It started approaching again, and Eva backed up to keep sufficient space between them. She was no prideful fool, to let a dangerous enemy get within striking distance so easily. The thing was emitting an aura of danger now. 'Apparently I should have kept that bit of information about the fire elemental to myself,' she thought.

"You can have him, I don't want him," she spat. The thing stopped its advance again, apparently sensing the truth in her words. And why not? It was true, after all. All Eva wanted from the fire elemental was for him to stay far away from her. She grimaced and cursed internally. The boy…he would owe her big time for this. He wouldn't be getting away with just a sip of blood this time, not if she had anything to say about it.

"Why don't you release the water down there?" Eva asked.

"N-NO."

'That was odd,' Eva thought. It had stuttered when she told it to wake Okochi Akira, too. Something made her recall an incident at the start of the year during her conflict with the boy, and an evil grin slipped onto her face. She had sucked blood from that Sasaki Makie first, and then used her to turn the other three into half vampires in the baths during the blackout. It had just been a trick meant to test the boy, and she hadn't thought of that incident again since it happened, but apparently some trace still remained within this girl. Perhaps the return of Eva's abilities had triggered it? This required some experimentation.

"Stop your advance!" Eva ordered. It obeyed shakily.

"N-"

"Wake up Okochi Akira!"

"NNNNNNNN…!" It began thrashing wildly back and forth as its hands gripped its head, and an odd bellowy noise sort of like someone with acromegaly moaning into a barrel filled the air. "NNNNOOO…!"

Its body began to shimmer oddly, splotches of it becoming more solid and then liquefying again.

"Okochi Akira! I order you as your master to wake up!" Eva shouted in the thing's face.

The thing suddenly stopped in mid-thrash, frozen in place. An eerie screech filled the air and in a massive burst of pressure, it seemed to explode and Akira was left there naked in the air before her, eyes wide and unseeing, still glowing blue as she fell from the sky and disappeared into the water below before Eva could catch her.

Eva felt her power start to waver and quickly flew down to a nearby rooftop, lest she join the girl in the water. It seemed her fifteen minutes of freedom were up. She sighed as her power left her, and settled down in the shade of the roof exit door to get her bearings. She felt incredibly weak now that she had been resealed…she had forgotten about that aspect of the sudden loss of power. Shortly thereafter, Chachamaru found her sitting there and carried her down to ground level.

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Max gasped and his eyes shot open. The last thing he remembered was ripping Guy Sculler apart. Now he seemed to be…underwater? A quick glance around showed that he was in a dry bubble in a world of water. It took another moment to realize the ground under him was a paved section of parking lot. There seemed to enough air to last several hours if he didn't push himself, so he sat down and tried to relax and pace his breathing, as there was nothing else he could do for now. Thinking about it, there was only one person he knew who would be even remotely capable of such a thing, so he set that aside and began doing what he could about his wounds. With the utmost care, he gently probed the back of his head with his good hand. Bloody, but it didn't feel as though anything was out of place or broken back there. He could only vaguely recall what had happened, but he knew Guy Sculler was dead. He had put up one hell of a fight, however.

"At least I'm alive," he said to himself as he moved to a more comfortable reclining position. Slowly the details of his fight with Guy came back to him. It could have been worse. It wasn't as if he had been beaten by someone like Arvel, he would never have lived down something like that. An experimental poke at the walls of the bubble revealed a familiar rubbery consistency not unlike what Akira had done several times back in the small valley they had hidden in. Had they really only left the place this morning? It seemed so long ago… Exhausted, he made himself comfortable and looked at the walls of his temporary prison and somehow sensed a gentle, protective feeling, one that brought back peaceful memories of early childhood and a homely brown haired woman who would laugh and coo at him.

With nothing else to do, he lay back and fell asleep as he waited for the water to recede.

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The headmaster looked out over the remains of his city, drowned here and burned there, but overall still intact. The odd mountain of water seemed to be dissolving; the few scouts he had sent out earlier reported that it was slowly oozing through the streets as the mountain shrunk, and chunks taken from it were quickly reduced to plain, ordinary water. It would take some quick work to prevent disastrous water damage, but it could be done if he were quick about it.

"Sir, I have Evangeline's report," a mage teacher said as he approached.

"Thank you."

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When Max woke up again, the water level had dropped enough to expose the top of the air bubble, so he stuck his head out, not knowing what to expect.

It was like looking out at an alien world. The familiar environs of Mahora were completely changed, at least in this area. Everything less substantial than the largest trees or the most solid buildings nearby was flattened, and the water seemed to be oddly hill-shaped and covering a huge area spanning through part of the woods and a large chunk of the middle school campus, not to mention the city itself. The water at his current position was only about six feet deep now, though he could see where it sloped gently upward to a maximum height of maybe fifty feet or more. Even as he looked out, a large section of the mound liquefied with an odd splurt and flowed down the side as water. If anything, the mound was just like the water balls Akira had been making for the past few weeks, only on a frighteningly large scale.

"Hey! Is anyone out there?" someone shouted.

He looked around for the source of the yell and spotted Asuna's sword poking up from the water and waving around.

"Hello," he shouted, wincing painfully as his head began throbbing again. "Is that you, Asuna?"

"Max-sensei? Is anyone else with you?" the girl shouted from her bubble a little further down the slope.

"No, it's just me," he replied.

"Negi's over here!" Asuna shouted.

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As the water receded and exposed more survivors, more heads poked up above the water and Max began to get an idea of where he was and who was around him. He heard Konoka somewhere off to the left, calling frantically for help. The mage teachers were coming now, he could see them wading through the shallower water and flying around above. One of them stopped above him and asked if he needed any help, but he waved her off. There were others here that needed it more, he was sure. Three mages passed directly overhead; he saw them stop perhaps three hundred feet away, where they carefully lifted two people from the water. 'That would be Konoka and Yuuna,' he thought as he watched them. He hoped the girl was ok…even though she had done some stupid things, she had just been trying to help her friend.

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The water receded even more and people began wading through it, astonished at the jelly-like consistency, looking for other survivors and pulling each other to safety. This area of Mahora was a disaster zone as far as Max could tell. But as he watched the determined faces, he knew that they would rebuild. Mahora wasn't just any city after all, and these were not just any people. They had been protected when by all means they should have died, and they wouldn't forget such a thing.

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Marshall's body was recovered the next day. It was so horrifically changed that Max almost didn't recognize the man when he was asked to identify the remains, however. In the end, Marshall had become a shadow of his former self. No one said anything, but it seemed that the man's body had exploded outward and then been crushed under tremendous force, a look of pure and utter horror frozen forever on his face, which was singularly unnaffected.

As forAkira, she was nowhere to be found; Eva had been the last to see the girl. There had been veiled accusations of course, but one glare from the vampire had been enough to clear up most of that business. Nevertheless, the girl had not been found, nor any body recovered.

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It was almost a week later that any semblance of normalcy returned to Mahora. The hospitals were crammed full with the sick and injured, but overall things were getting back to normal. Well, almost normal.

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Max limped out of the taxi and up into the waiting area at the airport. Jennifer was coming, and it wouldn't do to keep her waiting.

He slumped thankfully into a chair and waited. That fight with Guy had really taken a lot out of him; it seemed he wasn't as young as he used to be. A short time later, he heard a familiar voice and opened his eyes to see the person he had been waiting for.

"Max! Max, I heard what happened, are you ok?" The speaker was a somewhat attractive woman, twenty-something, barely five feet tall and a little more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. He struggled to his feet as Jennifer approached.

"I hope you brought enough stuff to stay here for a while," Max said as he held up a hand to slow her approach and bring attention to his arm sling; he had obtained a nice hairline fracture in his ulna or radius, or something like that, he couldn't remember. The woman took one look at his face and made an expression half glare, half pout.

"You did it again, didn't you?" she accused.

"I don't know what you're talking about. Now, let's go—"

"Ok, who did you kiss this time?"

Max sighed. Jennifer knew him far too well, it seemed. He explained hesitantly as they walked to a waiting taxi and rode back to the campus.

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"Yuuna-san will be ok," Negi said as Max approached with Jennifer. "The doctors say she'll need a lot of tests and regular checkups for a while, but she will be ok thanks to Konoka-san. It sure is lucky they ended up together in the water, isn't it?" the boy asked.

Max nodded. He knew it had been no coincidence that Yuuna ended up next to a girl with the potential to be the strongest healer the world had ever seen. Lots of things like that had happened during the hours in which Mahora was underwater, people ending up where they needed to be rather than where they had been…there were far too many to be mere coincidence.

"Who's Yuuna, did you kiss her too?" Jennifer asked accusingly. Max just shook his head resignedly and turned back to Negi.

Negi, this is Jennifer, my mage," he said, gesturing to the woman. "Jennifer, this is Negi. He's a teacher here."

"Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise."

After the pleasantries were complete, Max spoke again. "How about the other injured people?"

"Most of them will be all right."

That was good. Apparently, the only casualties, other than Marshall and Guy Sculler, had died in the initial hours of the attack, when Arvel was destroying everything. Everyone who had been in Library Island would be ok, it seemed. Eva was still grumbling about her power cutting out too early due to the sloppy contract-workaround old Konoemon had worked out, but her fight with Guy, even though it was only seconds long, along with the way she had stopped the out of control water elemental had likely saved a lot of lives, and everyone knew it.

But still…Akira was missing.

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Everything was blue. It was pretty, she thought, but it wasn't enough. Just not enough. So warm.

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A week passed, then another, and the people of Mahora began to rebuild in earnest.

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Max formed a habit of taking his breaks beside the Library Island Lake, where he stared out across the water. It wasn't as if he could help much with the rebuilding with a broken arm and bruises all over.

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It was nice, like this. If she stayed this way, nothing could ever hurt her again. She could be here always, and things like homework and worrying about grades didn't seem to matter as much. Nothing mattered as much here, but still, something was missing.

An image of sad gray eyes. Why?

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"Come on, this isn't healthy, Max," Jennifer told him one day as he sat beside the lake.

Max sighed. "I know, I feel like its kinda creepy, too. But I miss her, you know? And this place reminds me of her."

Jennifer nodded. She knew that sort of feeling well; one didn't work in a military environment without losing friends and loved ones from time to time.

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A big man with black hair sat beside the lake with a much shorter brown haired woman.

She watched them sitting there, drawn for some reason. She came closer.

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"Shouldn't you light incense or pray at a shrine?" Jennifer asked after a moment. "That's the usual method here, isn't it?"

"Something like that," Max agreed.

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A name came to her. Max. Max-sensei. She tried to wave and call out, but she had no arms with which to gesture or a mouth with which to speak.

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"You would've liked her, I think." Max said as he idly skipped a stone across the water, his movements still jerky and awkward due to his injuries.

"How so?"

"She was strong," Max said as he grinned. "Protective of her friends, loyal to a fault. She was a bit motherly," he finished as Jennifer nodded. She really sounded like a good girl.

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Negi-sensei and Asuna-san and Evangeline-san, Makie and Ako and Chizuru-san and Natsumi-san, Kotarou-kun and Iincho-san, the names flooded in and she decided she missed them.

But she had no arms with which to gesture or a mouth with which to speak. She thought hard, trying to remember. An arm, another arm, legs, a head; a torso they connect to. Bones. Skin. Hair. Organs. Heart, liver, stomach, intestines and glands. Miscellaneous slimy bits. Blood, bile, a brain. Lungs with which to breathe. Air to breath in and out. Her lungs were full of water, she couldn't breathe.

She couldn't breathe.

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A faint ripple in the lake caught Max's attention and he trailed off from his conversation with the woman beside him in mid sentence as he looked out over the water, his eyes widening comically in an uncharacteristic expression of surprise.

Akira's head burst through the surface and she was born again, a new born baby at fifteen, flailing in the water as she tried to recall the skills she had had Before. She was just starting to get the hang of it when the big black haired man plucked her from the water.

"Akira! Akira…!" It seemed to be all he could say.

"…Max-sensei…?" she asked hesitantly. Then, more firmly: "Max-sensei."

And then he was carrying her and wading toward the shoreline where the woman waited, a wide-eyed and open-mouthed expression of surprise on her own face as she watched the two of them approach.

When he got to dry land, he set her on her feet and she fell to the ground, having never stood up before. Max took off his ever-present light coat and put it around her to hide her nakedness, and tried to speak. All he could do was repeat her name. "…Akira…"

She looked around and Max-sensei was there, speaking to her, and the woman was running down the gravel path toward the buildings on that end, and she wandered briefly how she knew these words, but decided it didn't matter. She felt warmth, and realized his arms were around her and she was hugging him back, and it was right. They were alike, they were kindred spirits. The woman returned with others and joined the two of them in their hug. She felt a spark of what could be called jealousy, but brushed it aside and put one arm around the newcomer as well. She could be there, too. Those two were two halves of a whole, just as she and Max-sensei were two halves of a whole. Together, the three of them were something greater.

She smiled happily.

Author's Notes: All that's left is the epilogue; expect it in a couple days.