A/N: Here's the first of the requested pairings. I hope you enjoy it. Warning: There are MAJOR spoilers for anyone who hasn't read up to chapter 192 in the manga. Enjoy!
A Day Indoors XXV
It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Yuna thought as she ran for her life. Follow Negi and the other girls, see what was going on between them, maybe jump out and surprise the cute little teacher. She'd never expected this.
Yuna ducked under a branch as she ran, nearly losing her footing. High above the dragon swooped lower as it searched for its tasty young meal. Yuna barely had time to yelp before the shadow of the giant beast blocked out the sun. Yuna looked up into her death as the monstrous talons descended to claim her life and the dragon's meal. Resigning herself to die, Yuna closed her eyes and prayed it would be swift.
"Jovis Tempestas Fulguriens!"
The basketball player felt the wind pick up around her as she fell to the ground hanging on against the sudden gale. She opened her eyes to look up at where the dragon had been on to see it flailing as a tornado hurled the beast helplessly through the air.
"Negi-sensei!" Yuna shouted as the young teacher jumped from the canopy to land in front of her.
"You saved…"
"No time, RUN!" Negi screamed as he grabbed the girl by the arm and took off at top speed.
Yuna struggled to keep her footing as the young boy pulled her to a near horizontal angle as he sped through the jungle. How is he doing this? Yuna thought as even her long legs failed to keep up with the pace from the much smaller boy.
Foliage whipped by at an accelerated rate, stinging her painfully as she looked back at the dragon as it soared over the treetops in pursuit. Finally, Negi turned and headed toward an outcropping of rock.
"Here!" Negi cried in triumph as the two ducked into a cave.
Yuna was finally able to catch her breath as the dragon swooped down, but Negi pushed her deeper into the cave. Yuna ran deeper as Negi guided her, finally stopping to pull her aside down a side passage.
"Negi-kun, why are we still running? That thing can't possibly fit…"
The torrent of flame that blew down the main corridor of the cave lit the little side passage where the two of them were standing. It was so hot that Yuna could feel her face starting to blister even though she was several feet away from the flame. Finally, as the flames died, Negi slumped down, and began to breathe easier. "That was too close."
Yuna just slumped to the floor and heaved a sigh of relief at being saved from certain death. Negi then peeked around the corner and motioned for her to follow. The two of them returned to the main branch of the passage where the dragon had scorched the walls.
"Well, this is convenient at least." Negi said as he kicked some of the burning debris in the cave into a pile to make a crude campfire.
"Is it gone?" Yuna asked timidly.
"For now; it probably isn't safe to venture out yet though, jungle dragons are wickedly clever ambush predators." Negi said looking around the side passages of the cave for anything that hadn't already caught fire to add to their little blaze.
Yuna stood there trembling and not from lack of heat. She had nearly died. Now she was looking at her ten year old English teacher who had come and saved her in the middle of a world gone mad. Just a few days ago, she'd also seen him nearly die fighting others with powers similar to his own when she and her friends had inadvertently been pulled along for the ride through some kind of teleportation portal. "Negi… sensei…"
"I'm sorry I couldn't get here to save you sooner Yuna. You four didn't have any tracers on you, so I didn't think it would be that easy to find you. When Chachamaru announced she'd picked you up on her short range scanners, I was stunned." Negi said as he finished his work and finally looked up at the trembling girl.
Yuna didn't remember fainting or falling, but Negi had managed to catch her before she struck the ground. He gently leaned her against that cave wall, and looked her over in concern. "You aren't hurt anywhere are you?"
Yuna reached out and grabbed the boy and pulled him into an embrace as hard as she could. He was the only thing left from her world that made sense right now. She didn't care if he wasn't the boy she thought she knew, right now she just needed to cling to what she found familiar. "Uh, Yuna-san… you're choking me."
Yuna eased her grip on the boy but still kept him pulled close to her chest. "Negi-kun, what's going on? Where are we?"
Negi struggled to free himself for a moment, but then strangely returned her embrace. The middle school student found herself being rocked like a small child as the small child comforted her. "It's alright Yuna, I'm here. I promise I'll explain everything."
"We were in that weird place and everyone was fighting, and then you…" Yuna said trying to take it all in. "It looked like magic."
"Yes, Yuna-san. I know." Negi said with worry evident in his voice.
"Negi-kun, are you a wizard?" The basketball player asked leaning back to look at the young boy in her arms.
"The proper term is 'mage', and yes I am." The teacher affirmed.
"Then all those girls that went with you…"
"Yes, they all know."
Yuna nodded, trying to wrap her mind around the fact that her homeroom teacher wielded strange powers beyond the realm of human understanding aside from English verb conjugation. A million and one questions raced through her mind of things she wanted to ask, things she wanted to say, but only one thing managed to come out. "I want to go home now."
"I know Yuna-san, don't worry, I'll find a way for us all to get home somehow." Negi reassured her. "I have to find everyone first. I'm just glad Chachamaru managed to locate you girls so quickly."
"Where is she?" Yuna asked looking around as if expecting the robot to be standing around.
"She and Chisame headed off to find Ako. They detected her nearby. We'll go find them in the morning, by then the dragon will have given up and gone away." The boy mage told her.
"I hope Ako is okay." Yuna said worriedly.
"I'm sure she will be." Negi said as he tried to get comfortable.
Yuna finally released her teacher so that he could turn around to sit, but she still pulled his back up to her chest so she could hold on to him. "So, how long have you been a mage?"
Negi let out a short chuckle and relaxed into his students embrace. "Five years. I was five years old when I started studying magic."
"That was about how old I was when my mom died." Yuna said thinking back to what SHE had been doing as a five year old. Looking up spells in a musty old tome would have been impossible for the little bundle of nerves and energy that had been the five year old Yuna Akashi.
Negi merely nodded. "I came to Mahora to learn to become a Magister Magi, the highest rank for a mage. It's my work assignment, I guess you could say."
"So you've been a mage all this time and all those other girls already knew?" Yuna asked.
"Well, not a first. Most of them found out I was mage over the course of the past year as different things would happen." Negi explained.
"Like exploring magical places and having dragons chase you." Yuna noted.
"No, Yue and Nodoka already knew about magic before that happened." Negi said absentmindedly.
Yuna couldn't help her eye from twitching. She'd been referring to what she'd just experienced, but this type of situation had happened before? "So you've seen a dragon before?"
"Yeah, there was one under Library Island that chased us out." Negi told her.
"I see." Yuna said, not really seeing anything at all, but concluding that she really didn't want to know more. It then struck her what she was hearing. "You mean OUR Library Island? The one I have to go to when I check out reference materials for book reports?"
A sudden vision of a giant monster chasing her through the library made Yuna more determined than ever to become a straight 'F' student and join the Baka Rangers. Then she remembered that currently, every last member of the Baka Rangers was lost in an alien jungle so that idea seemed to be out. Maybe she could drop out and become a hermit.
"Yeah, but it's safe. The dragon lives in the lower levels where the students aren't allowed to go." Negi reassured her.
"Do the teachers know it's there?" Yuna asked.
"The ones who are familiar with magic do."
An alarm went off in the back of Yuna's mind as another question started pushing its way forward in her mind. "How many teachers know about magic at our school?"
"Not all of them." Negi said evasively as he realized what her next question was going to be.
"Is my father a mage?" Yuna asked directly. "What a minute, Donet-san was there with you and she is a friend of my father's. He IS a mage too!"
Negi began to look exceedingly uncomfortable for someone who was being held by an attractive teenage girl. "I think I better let your father explain that one to you."
"You wouldn't hesitate if it weren't true." Yuna accused the boy. "Please sensei, is my father a mage?"
Negi sighed in defeat and held his peace for a moment longer before he nodded. "Akashi-sensei is one of the mage teachers. He and Donet-san have been tracing that individual that attacked us when we arrived. His name is Fate Averruncus, and he's one of my enemies. He tried to petrify several of the girls and may be linked to the attack on my home village years ago."
Yuna listened, speechless at hearing that her father had such a deep dark secret that he'd been keeping from her for so long. "Was my mother a mage as well?"
"No, your mother was what we in the magic world refer to as a partner. Mages generally have a companion who helps protect them, and take care of them. Many of them end up getting married." Negi said seriously.
"Protect? You mean my mother actually protected my Dad?" Yuna asked in disbelief. Granted, she'd always thought her father tended to be rather lost without someone to take care of him so it made sense in that one respect.
"Look, Yuna-san, I don't know any details. You should really ask you Dad." Negi whined.
Yuna turned Negi until he could look into her eyes in the firelight. "Negi-kun, this is a dangerous place and I may never get to see my father again to ask him. Please Negi-kun; tell me so I won't have to wonder."
Negi seemed to mull it over for a few minutes but finally nodded. "I don't know the details, but I know that Akashi-sensei is a highly respected member of the faculty. He's been a mage all his life. I don't know how your mother died, but I do know that she was his partner and her death really hit him hard. He had been assigned to Mahora Academy, just like I've been, but when your mother died he decided to stay and raise you there. I don't know why he's never discussed magic with you, but that is his decision. All I do know is that I have to keep you safe or he'll kill me when we get back."
Yuna tried to imagine her father of all people casting some dangerous spell like she'd been seeing Negi use for the past few days. The image made her laugh. "Who knew Dad was leading a double life? So my mother was some kind of warrior that fought to defend my father?"
"Yes, and a fairly good one too, if all the reports are to be believed." Negi conceded.
Yuna felt happy. "So Donet-san, and my Dad are probably looking for us right now."
"I imagine your father will be tearing up the Magic World trying to get you back." Negi agreed.
"So how do we go about finding everyone else and getting out of here?" Yuna asked her magical sensei.
"Well, if we can get close enough, hopefully I'll be able to get in touch with the others using these." Negi said pulling out a strange tarot card.
"Hey, I've seen one of these before. Didn't Nodoka get one of these during the school field trip?" She said with wonder.
"Yeah, all of my partners have one." Negi said holding up his copy of Nodoka's card.
"Didn't you just say that mages often marry their partners?" Yuna asked suspiciously.
"Well… yeah." Negi said slowly.
"So does this mean that all these girls are your girlfriends?" Yuna said drawing out the last word for maximum embarrassment.
"It's not like that!" Negi said blushing and waving his arms frantically.
"I had to form most of these in order to help keep the girls safe." Negi pleaded.
"You mean like now?" Yuna asked quickly.
"Well yes, like… NO!" Negi shouted quickly, jumping up as if escaping from the coils of a boa constrictor.
"Aw, come on Negi-kun, do those cards grant all sorts of magical powers?" Yuna said getting a greedy glint in her eye.
"Not really, Look Yuna-san, becoming a partner…" Negi started to say.
"…must be incredibly easy if several of the girls from class have already done it." Yuna finished for him.
"It's not that Yuna, you see partnership is a very special bond…" Negi continued uneasily.
"…that you've made with several girls." Yuna jumped in again. Then it struck her like a ton of bricks. Negi was blushing heavily and looked like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. Partnership tended to lead to marriage. Negi had all female partners. Negi was seriously blushing. It was a very special bond.
Yuna was speechless for a moment while she looked at Negi getting more embarrassed by the moment. It had to be it. Negi had been having sex with girls from his class. "So Negi-kun, am I to understand that there's something physical in making this bond."
Negi nodded, abashed at the idea. "Yeah."
"So to become your partner you and I…" Yuna hinted, not really wanting to blurt out the various euphemisms she'd learned for the fine art of lovemaking.
Negi nodded again. "See I told you, it's not something…"
"I'll do it." Yuna concluded. After all, if it meant helping get out of here and back home to safety it would be worth it. Besides, she really didn't want to die a virgin. That, and Negi WAS cute after all.
"Yuna! You can't be serious!" Negi said aghast.
"What's wrong, you've done it before. Do you not want to 'partner' with me?" Yuna asked disappointed that someone would find her undesirable.
"It… it's not that. It's just that I shouldn't. You're my student. Exposing you to the world like that…"
"Aw, don't worry about it Negi-kun." Yuna said softly. "It's going to happen one day anyway, I'd love to be your partner."
Negi seemed indecisive. "If you're sure."
"So, is there anything special we have to do?"
Negi seemed embarrassed. "No, we just have to do… it… in a magical circle. It'll take me a minute to draw it."
Yuna nodded and Negi turned and set about drawing the magical circle on the stone floor of the cave. It wasn't exactly the most romantic of settings for losing one's virginity, but it would have to do. While Negi worked, Yuna quickly stripped out of her clothes. She looked over his shoulder to see how things were going.
"That circle seems a little small, are we both going to fit in there." Yuna asked.
"Yeah, it'll be big enough if we both stand." Negi said not looking up.
"I'll probably have to kneel." Yuna said looking at how tall she was compared to her soon-to-be lover.
Negi chuckled a little nervously. "Yeah, you are rather tall compared to me."
"So, have you done this a lot?" Yuna asked, a little nervous herself.
"No, just whenever I've needed to make a partner contract. And of course there was that time at the festival with Nodoka." Negi said as he continued to work.
Slut. Yuna thought as she watched Negi work. She had to admit, for being a small little guy, he was definitely strong. If his performance in the martial arts festival was any indication, his other performance was going to be spectacular.
"This will only take a minute." Negi said as he finished the circle.
Oh well, so much for THAT idea. Yuna thought to herself.
Finally Negi finished and turned around, his jaw dropping as he stared dumbfounded at Yuna in all her nude glory. The magic made the circle begin to glow and Yuna felt the rush of energy into her body making every hair on her head stand on end.
"Yuna! We're supposed to KISS!" Negi cried desperately.
"Sounds like a great way to start to me…" Yuna said as she tackled the boy.
A/N: Well, I think I'll leave the rest up to the readers and their imaginations. Romantic comic misadventure, or segue into a porno flick, you decide. This is my little idea of how Yuna and Negi might meet back up. Hope you liked it. RyougaZell requested it, if anyone is interested…