"Zzzz… Extreme… Zzzz… Extreme… Zzz… Guh…"
*Giggle* *Giggle* *Giggle*
Ryohei started to wake up on that extreme saturday morning to the sound of giggling. He shifted a bit before performing his usual extreme morning stretch, to help get the blood flowing… or at least he tried too.
"Wha!? Why!? Huh!?" Ryohei shouted in his confusion, suddenly wide awake as he found his blanket wrapped tightly around him, with several of his father's old belts being used to hold it closed.
Kyoko and Hana all burst into laughter while Natsumi continued to try to stifle her giggles as Ryohei's struggles for freedom resulted in him rolling off his bed and falling to the floor.
"Kyoko!? What's going on!? Why am I all tied up!?" Ryohei asked, his voice as loud as usual.
"Sorry Onii-chan, but this is an intervention." Kyoko said with her disarming smile. "You've been pushing yourself too hard recently, so we are giving you a mandatory day off."
At first, Ryohei just seemed confused, but then he started to give a worried chuckle. "Ve...very funny Kyoko. Now let me go. I need to do my morning run."
"Nope." Kyoko said, popping the 'p'. "Today you are going to rest. No exercising."
"But… but my morning run!?" Ryohei cried, his face starting to pale as he realized his little sister was serious.
"I know that exercising is important to you, but after what happened to Yamamoto-san… Please Onii-chan. Please just rest for today. I don't want you to be hurt too." Kyoko said, giving her brother the puppy dog eyes.
Ryohei was gapping like a fish, searching for some way to react, but in the end, he was no better with Kyoko than Shirou was with Illya. "...Alright. I promise that I will take an extreme break." Ryohei said, his entire body wilting within its bindings. "Now, will you untie me already?"
"Not a chance." Hana said with a rather evil smile. "We know you better than to think that you can help yourself. You are going to sleep in till noon today, like a normal body, and if you are good, we will consider untying you after that."
"You've got to be kidding me!?" Ryohei cried out in despair.
"Come on Kyoko, let's go make some breakfast." Hana said, pushing the girl towards the door.
"Right. Stay tight, Onii-chan. I'll spoon feed you some of it later." Kyoko said, waving goodbye as the three girls left the room.
"Wait, Kyoko! Don't leave me like this! Hana-chan, have mercy! Natsumi-chan!" Ryohei cried. Natsumi gave Ryohei an apologetic smile as she carefully closed the door behind her.
Natsumi felt a sort of guilty happiness she had never felt before as she worked with Kyoko and Hana to prepare breakfast.
She had never been a part of a prank before, and as pure as Kyoko's intentions were, that was without a doubt a prank.
"Well, hopefully this will teach him a valuable lesson about the importance of R&R." Hana declared, not showing any sign of guilt at all.
"Thank you for coming over to help us, Natsumi-chan. I'm not sure if Hana and I would have been able to move him on our own." Kyoko chuckled.
"I'm glad to be invited to join in." Natsumi said, her cheeks flushing a bit at being thanked by Kyoko.
"I just feel bad about calling you here so early when you were with the Kendo Club too." Kyoko said. "My Onii-chan may sleep like a rock, but he is always back awake the moment the sun starts to rise. So we had to do it really early."
"How are you holding up? You seemed to have been having a chaotic week. Are you doing alright?" Hana asked before giving another one of her evil smiles. "We don't have to tie you up too, do we?"
"No, I'm good." Natsumi said with a little bit of a worried smile. "It's been chaotic, but last week went really well for me."
"Onii-chan wouldn't stop talking last night about how well you did in the competition. It's a shame the final round got canceled when it was just starting." Kyoko said.
"I wasn't all that great. It was Onii-san and Shirou-senpai who carried the team." Natsumi insisted.
"According to Ryohei-san, you managed to go eight in ten. For someone with only a week's worth of training under their belt, that is insane." Hana said, giving Natsumi a look, as if to say humbleness had no place here. "Though I suppose not as insane as the final round getting canceled because the roof collapsed on people's heads. I'm glad no one got hurt."
"Yeah, me too." Natsumi said, thinking back to the final round between Shirou and Taiga, with the roof collapsing on them. It left uncomfortable questions.
Did the ceiling collapse because whatever cosmic hands that were causing all that chaos knew that Shirou would throw the match to save Taiga, or was it because if she died she couldn't lose the match.
Everything about it was uncomfortable.
"Still, tying for first place is pretty good. We should throw a small party to celebrate!" Kyoko said with a big grin.
"Another good excuse on your part to eat cake." Hana deadpanned. "Though… It isn't a bad idea, having a victory party. What do you think, Natsumi-chan? If you feel up to it, we can go and buy the supplies right after breakfast."
"Well… I don't know who all would come. Shirou-senpai had promised to take his little sister to the zoo today, I don't know Kusakabe's phone number, and as for Gokudera… ah... " Natsumi didn't really know what to say about the mafia boy, as his behavior seemed to have a server disconnect with reality, though she honestly didn't want to spend her weekend with him.
"It doesn't need to be a party for the whole team. Just a small token to show we are sorry for not being there to show you our support." Kyoko said.
"Thank you." Natsumi said, once again blushing uncontrollably.
"Well, it sounds like a plan. Now, let's get breakfast out of the way so that we can start preparing." Hana said as she got the eggs she had been cooking out of the skilt. "Parties don't throw themselves, after all."
"You know, it would probably be easier for us to just buy a cake rather than baking one ourselves. They aren't that expensive." Hana said with a raised eyebrow as Kyoko went over the ingredients for baking a cake as they moved about the local grocery store, grabbing what they needed for the party.
"But if we did that, it wouldn't feel as special." Kyoko said, pouting a little before looking to Natsumi for support. "You think so too right?"
"Well… It would be fun to make our own." Natsumi agreed, looking away from the pout before it was too late.
"I guess, but if we are going to be spending time making the cake ourselves, maybe we should just take it easy on the main course and just buy some freezer foods and snacks." Hana suggested.
"Sounds good." Natsumi agreed, and they all started to shift towards the freezer section to pick out what they would want for the party. That was where she spotted someone she hadn't been expecting to see again. Or at the very least, not so soon. "Fuji-nee?"
The Yakuza Princess looked up in surprise before giving her usual heartfelt grin. "Good morning, Natsumi. I wasn't expecting to see you so soon, not that I'm complaining."
"It's nice to see you too." Natsumi replied.
"I didn't know that Natsumi-chan had an older sister." Kyoko said, looking between the two girls.
"Ah, Fuji-nee isn't my older sister." Natsumi said, realizing that the form of address might be confusing for people. "This is Fujimura Taiga, a friend that I made at the Kendo Competition yesterday. She was from the other school who made it to the final round."
"You only met her yesterday and you are already addressing her as '-nee'?" Hana said, raising an eyebrow.
Kyoko didn't seem to mind as she smiled and introduced herself. "It's nice to meet you, Fujimura-san. I'm Sasagawa Kyoko, one of Natsumi-chan's friends from school."
"It's nice to meet you, Kyoko-chan. Though please, just call me Taiga. Either that, or you could use Fuji-nee too if you like." Taiga said with a grin.
"Alright, Fuji-nee." Kyoko said with her bright smile.
"She sure works fast." Hana said, not sure if she should be impressed or not.
"But Fuji-nee, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be back in Fuyuki right now?" Natsumi asked.
"Well, I did promise that if I lost the match that I would join your school's Kendo Club, right? And regardless of what Shirou and that weird ref say, I know he beat me good. So, my grandpa got me a condo nearby." Taiga explained.
Wasn't it supposed to be the Boxing Club? Well, she supposed that Ryohei had tried to claim that the Kendo Club was part of the Boxing Club.
"But that all just happened yesterday afternoon. How do you already have a condo set up?" Natsumi asked.
"You've seen what my grandpa is like. His people work fast." Taiga chuckled weakly. "I'm just glad it is only a normal condo. I had to talk him down from buying a mansion for me to stay in."
"A mansion!?" Natsumi shouted, Hana and Kyoko also looked shocked.
"Yeah, I know." Taiga said with her own exasperated look. "Grandpa has a really weird perception of money."
"...Yeah, I guess Reborn does too." Natsumi said with her own sigh. The not-a-baby hitman often talked about a hundred million yen as if it was no big deal. Something that could be lost on a hand of poker without feeling too bad about it. Compared to some of the things Reborn said, buying a mansion to send your granddaughter to the school she wanted wasn't that unusual.
"So, what brings you girls here this early?" Taiga asked in an attempt to change the subject.
"We were planning on having a small party to celebrate after the Kendo Tournament and were buying a few supplies." Natsumi explained.
"A party huh? That sounds nice." Taiga said with a nod of her head.
"Would Fuji-nee like to join us?" Kyoko offered.
"Can I?"
"Of course! Right now it was only going to be the three of us and my Onii-chan, so one more person couldn't hurt."
"Onii-chan? Was your brother part of the Kendo Team too?" Taiga asked.
"Ryohei is Kyoko's Onii-chan." Natsumi explained.
"Huh!? You mean you're that loud mouthed boxer's sister!?" Taiga said, looking at Kyoko with wide eyes before realizing she was being rude. "Sorry, I didn't mean anything by it, it's just…"
"It's fine. I get that a lot." Kyoko said with a giggle.
"Besides, if there are three words that sum up Ryohei-san, it would be 'loud mouthed boxer'." Hana said with a knowing smile.
"Well, I'd be glad to be a part of your party. In fact, how about we have it at my condo? You can help me break the place in." Taiga offered.
"Are you sure? I'd hate to make a mess of your new place." Kyoko replied.
"Don't worry about it. I'm probably going to make plenty of a mess of it myself soon anyways." Taiga said with a laugh.
"Well then, it sounds like a plan to me. Let's hurry up and finish shopping so that we can start." Hana said, all the girls nodded in agreement before getting back to work. They had a lot to do if they wanted to have a proper party.
It was a beautiful early summer's day and Illya felt like queen of the world as her Onii-chan led her around the zoo on their very first date.
...Alright, so maybe it wasn't a real date, but a girl could dream, couldn't she? Perhaps someday, after Illya grew into a beautiful woman like her mama and managed to charm her Onii-chan, they would look back on that day as the first.
At the moment, they were going through Illya's favorite exhibit, the bird house. "They're so pretty." Illya said as the multicolor birds flew around them, one of the smaller ones landing on her outstretched arm and working its way down to her hand to get at the birdfeed she was holding for it. She couldn't help but giggle as it tickled her hand.
Illya had always loved birds and the freedom of flight. There was just something inspiring about it.
It made her wonder if she was going to be able to learn how to fly. Was it possible? She was a Magical Girl after all. While most of the time they just jumped really high, but they sometimes flew.
As the bird finished off the seed and once again took flight, the sun caught its wings and produced a beautiful rainbow of colors.
"Onii-chan, do magical birds exist?" Illya asked as she watched it go.
"Hm… I'm not actually sure." Shirou said, following Illya's gaze. "I was told that there exists another world beside ours called the 'Reverse Side of the World' and that after the Age of the Gods ended, almost all of the magical creatures and divine spirits that could no longer survive with our world's dwindling mana supply all fled into that Reverse World. But after seeing Reborn and his pet lizard, I'm not so sure if that is the case."
"The Reverse World?" Illya said, imagining a wide and beautiful expanse filled with magical creatures and unicorns. "Onii-chan, is it possible to go there?"
"...I don't know. Though if it is, I would very much like to go there myself. Perhaps see the Kingdom of Avalon for myself." Shirou said.
Illya looked up at her brother, confused at the amount of regret and shame she heard in his voice. "Onii-chan, what's Avalon?"
"Avalon was the name of a magical island in the legends of King Arthur, and said to be the home of the Faeries. From what I know, the island may still exist within the Reverse Side of the World." Shirou said.
"If it's the kingdom of the Fairies, then maybe Reborn-san knows how to get there!" Illya said, her eyes shining with excitement.
"Maybe he does." Shirou said with a small smile. "But I think we should hold off on asking him until you get a little older. Fairies are notoriously tricky individuals. I'm sure if we take our eyes off of Reborn for a second, he'll show his true colors by stealing all the launder socks and rearranging the silverware drawer." Illya couldn't help but to laugh, picturing Reborn cackling to himself as he plucked socks from the clothes line. "You seem to be out of bird seed. You want to go get more?"
"No, I'm good. Let's go see the otters next." Illya replied with a smile.
"Alright, let's hurry and get your brother so we can start the party." Hana said as she and Kyoko returned to Kyoko's house to retrieve Ryohei after helping to prepare for the party.
It was a little bit past noon, since preparations had taken a bit longer than expected, as Taiga and Natsumi kept making small mistakes that would cause setbacks. After a while, Hana had had enough and simply booted the two of them out of the kitchen and told them to set up the dining room.
It was so funny, seeing the two's almost identical embarrassed looks as they were scolded. It was hard to believe that the two of them weren't related.
As it turned out, Taiga's condo was huge, big enough for a family of five to live comfortably, though the girl said she was going to be living there herself.
From what Kyoko understood, both her parents were in good health, but they tended to be very busy, so she had spent most of her time with her grandfather.
Kyoko could relate, since her parents were usually too busy to even spend holidays with her and her brother. They occasionally were around for breakfast, and they always at the very least talked on the phone every night to stay in touch, but sometimes it felt like they could be in another country and it wouldn't make a difference. It was always just her and her Onii-chan.
"I'm half expecting us to get there and find that he managed to break out." Hana joked. "Well, if he did, we will just have to punish him for not taking relaxing seriously."
"Don't be too hard on him." Kyoko giggled as they reached Ryohei's room. "I just hope he isn't too mad at us for..."
Kyoko stopped mid sentence as she opened Ryohei's bedroom door and saw her brother, still lying on his bed and still bound in his blankets, but with an horrible, pained expression on his face. His breaths were shaky and he looked paler than normal.
"Onii-chan!?" Kyoko shouted in panic before rushing to his side, quickly working at the straps that held the blankets around him.
"K...Kyoko? You're back already?" Ryohei said, forcing a big smile, his eyes not really focusing on her.
"Onii-chan, are you alright?" Kyoko asked, reach out and touching Ryohei's face to find that he was burning up.
"I'm alright. Don't you worry, Kyoko. You worry too… too..." Ryohei didn't finish his sentence as his eyes simply started to roll back in his head and his head fell back.
"Onii-chan!? Onii-chan!?" Kyoko screamed, shaking him, trying to get him to respond as Hana rushed to the house phone to call for help. Kyoko started to shake herself as tears came to her eyes. "I'm sorry, Onii-chan! I'm sorry I tied you up! Just please be okay! Please! Onii-chan!"
"Don't worry, Kyoko-chan. I'm sure Onii-san will be alright." Natsumi tried to reassure Kyoko as they sat in the waiting room of the hospital, hoping for good news.
The party had been completely forgotten after Hana had told them of the condition that they had discovered Ryohei in.
None of it made sense to Natsumi. Reborn had said that Sun Flames like Ryohei could heal and recover from almost any sort of injury, so how was it that he ended up in this kind of terrible shape? He had been fine earlier that morning. Now he was starting to fall into a coma.
With the doctors as flummoxed as Natsumi was, and Shirou not having a cell phone, she did the only thing she could think of. She called Reborn.
Reborn told her to sit tight and said he would be right over with a mafia doctor to help. Apparently the mafia doctor that Reborn had requested to come to give Natsumi herself a check up had arrived that day.
Natsumi had been nervous about having a 'freelance hitman' as a doctor, but at the moment, she would be willing to take anything that could help. So she will admit she was relieved when she heard his familiar little voice. "Ciaossu."
"Reborn?" Natsumi said, looking up with hopeful eyes to see Reborn stand alongside a man she had never seen before. The man's body language was a little too casual, which wasn't very comforting in this high stress situation, and with his messy brown hair in the same 'bad boy' haircut as Gokudera, unshaven stubble on his chin and a sort of white suit that looked like it was out of a film about the 80's, he didn't LOOK like a doctor.
However, Reborn introduced him as such.
"Allow me to introduce the best doctor in the Mafia World, Doctor Shamal." Reborn said, gesturing towards the man.
"Good afternoon, Ojou-chans." The man said with the kind of smile that made Natsumi really wish she had that can of pepper spray that Illya had given her. "So tell me, which one of you lovelies is my patient?"
Natsumi pressed down on her revolution and pushed forward. "It isn't us! Kyoko, her brother is in really bad shape!"
"Oh… a brother." Shamal's face fell. "Sorry, but I don't treat boys."
"What!? What the hell kind of doctor refuses to treat someone who's sick!?" Taiga shouted, saying what they were all thinking.
"All kinds of doctors. Usually it is about the money though." Shamal said with a huff. "Sorry, I only treat girls."
"Why you…!?" Taiga growled, clenting her fist, though Natsumi instead of getting angry did the only thing she could do, appeal to a higher power.
"Reborn!?"
"Don't worry. He'll help Ryohei." Reborn said with certainty.
"Reborn, you know my policies." Shamal said.
"I do. And I know you make exceptions. Or are you going to tell this sweet little girl that you are going to simply let her brother die?" Reborn said looking up at Shamal with his thousand yard stare.
"Please, sensei. Please help my brother." Kyoko begged, her eyes puffy and red from crying.
Shamal looked back at her before sighing. "I'm not touching the boy, but I suppose I could take a look at him." The man said with a sigh. "So, where is he?"
"Emergency room 3, in the back of the first floor." Reborn replied, somehow already knowing.
"A civilian emergency room? Great, as if this wasn't already troublesome enough." The man grumbled. "Alright, follow me."
He then just started walking towards the double doors that separated the waiting room from the main branch of the hospital. The girls blinked in surprise, but then went chasing after the man.
When they had tried to enter there before, they had been scolded by a nurse and turned back, but for some reason, no one even noticed them as the group walked through the halls. It was almost as if they couldn't see them.
It became even more suspicious when Shamal cropped a feel of one of the nurses as he passed them, causing them to give a yelp of surprise and look around, but not seeming to see the group. "The nurses here aren't bad. Maybe I could work here for a little will." Shamal mused as he simply continued walking, as if nothing had happened.
"What the hell?" Hana said in disbelief as they followed behind.
Something was up, different from Reborn's passive enchantments that simply stopped people from noticing that something was wrong. Natsumi could see a sort of dark blue mist emanating from the man, thinner and weaker than most of the flames she had seen before.
"They are Mist Flames." Reborn told her, sensing the fact that she had noticed them. "They are a type of Dying Will Flame that specializes in creating illusions and controlling the perspectives of the people around them. A very scary kind of thing to fight against."
Natsumi swallowed a little, imagining what it would be like to be on the receiving end of someone who could control what you see, and hoping she would never have to find out what that was like.
In this manner the group walked to the end of the hall and to the emergency room, where Shamal casually pushed the door open.
"What? Who are you? You aren't supposed to be he…" One of four doctors who were working on Ryohei started as Shamal raised one of his hands. With Natsumi's flame enhanced eyesight, she could see the four tiny mosquitoes fly up out of the man's sleeve, and her intuition told her that they were not normal.
Reborn smiled at the girl as she tapped into her own flames, hardening her skin on instinct, sensing the danger that came from being bitten.
The moment the mosquitoes left Shamal's sleeve, they rushed for the doctors, biting each one of them exactly once. All four doctors fell to the ground unconscious.
"HIIEEE!?" Natsumi squealed.
"They aren't dead. I just knocked them out for a little." Shamal said as he walked forward to examine Ryohei.
Kyoko began to cry again, seeing her brother on a respirator, with all the wires connected to him. Meanwhile, the rest of them were all slack jawed, as they stared at Shamal, wondering what he did.
"It was Shamal's personal weapon and his means for his treatments, the Trident Mosquitoes." Reborn explained. "Shamal is an ESPer of sorts and can control the behavior or mosquitoes with his mind. Each of his mosquitoes contains a type of virus, which he uses both as his weapons for assassination and as his treatments for saving people."
"How can that be used as a treatment!?" Taiga asked in shock.
"All medicines are poisons that are supposed to change something about your body, counting the effects of whatever disease you have in order to return your body to a proper equilibrium. Shamal just does the same thing, only using disease to counter disease. If your existing condition causes dangerous high blood pressure, he injects you with an illness that lowers your blood pressure, balancing everything out." Reborn explained.
That sort of made sense, though it still sounded crazy.
"Ojou-chan, you say this is your brother right? Is he blood related?" Shamal asked.
"Yes." Kyoko replied.
"I see. White hair and darkened skin that aren't a part of his genetics. It's a sign of prana poisoning, and the boy is an active Sun Flame. How much sunlight does he usually get?" Shamal asked.
"He's almost always outside when he can be. He goes on two or three mile rounds every day." Kyoko replied.
"I see, and how much did he get today?" Shamal asked.
"What does that have to do with anything!? He isn't a plant!" Hana shouted at the man.
"We… we tied him up so that he would take the day off from exercising." Kyoko admitted weakly.
"I get it." Shamal said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out two pills, flicking them into the air. The pills broke and little mosquitoes came flying out before going to bite Ryohei. "Alright, know someone grab him. We need to talk him to the roof and let him absorb some sunlight."
"What?" Natsumi asked.
"Like all Sun Flame users, the boy naturally absorbs a large quantity of prana from the sun through his Manipura. But in the case of an inexperienced rookie like him, he doesn't know how to regulate his Yin and his Yang. Because his body has too much Yang, the prana he absorbed became poisonous to him. Usually, someone like him would die within a few days of being born, after they absorb too much sunlight. However, since he is alive, we can assume that his body has learned to expel prana at a high rate to prevent himself from dying to prana poisoning." Shamal said, rolling his shoulders.
"Prana? Are you some kind of witch doctor or something?" Hana said, though the man ignored her and just continued talking.
"However, since his body is always expelling prana, he needs to be constantly refilling his supply, or else his body will start to shut down from having too little prana. I injected him with two diseases, the first being the 'Angelic Disease', which will drastically increase his Yin and help balance him out, while the other is the 'Encasing Disease', which will decrease the rate in which he expels his prana. Now he just needs to recharge his supply and he'll be fine."
"How long will that take?" Kyoko asked.
"About twenty minutes in the sun will do the trick, though if you want faster results, you'd have to inject him with some Sky Flames."
"Sky Flames?" Natsumi said, surprised.
"That's right. While the body normally treats foriegn prana as a type of poison, Sky Flames can easily harmonize with anyone. So if you let him absorb some of your Sky Flames, he'll be back to normal in just a few seconds." Shamal said.
Sky Flames. All that Natsumi needed to do was let Ryohei absorb her Sky Flames.
"Natsumi, do you want to do it?" Reborn asked her.
"I… Yes." Natsumi said, confusing Hana and Kyoko as she walked forward and placed her hands on Ryohei before visualizing the spinning top.
Part of her was worried that she would get the same negative reaction that she got when she had tried to bring Yamamoto into her Sky, but that didn't happen this time. Her flames gladly blanketed over Ryohei, and within seconds the boy's labored breaths calmed down and all the monitoring equipment in the room started to show normal readings.
"Huh… Natsumi-chan? Where are we?" Ryohei asked as he started to walk up.
"Onii-chan!" Kyoko cried, jumping onto her brother and wrapping her arms around him.
"Huh, Kyoko! Hey, don't cry! Everything's alright!" Ryohei said, back to his old self and panicking as his little sister cried into his chest.
"Thank goodness." Natsumi said with a sigh.
"Natsumi, what did you do? What in the world is going on?" Hana asked.
"Ah… well… you see…" Natsumi started to panic, realizing how much of the mafia world she had just exposed her friends too. She tried to think of how to respond, but Reborn beat her to the punch.
"The answer is very simple, Kurokawa-san." Reborn said with his trademark smile. "Tell me, have you ever heard of 'Magical Girls'?"
Natsumi couldn't help but to deadpan as Reborn's words.
She was getting the impression that this 'Magical Girls' thing was becoming his favorite deceptions.
For those of you wanting to debate if Taiga's luck is beyond A-rank or if EX means something else, I don't care. Shut up. I don't care about canon verse fanon, and I don't care about EX verse STAR(or whatever it is called).
But considering that she is supposed to have accidentally saved the world three times in one day during the Fourth War through dumb luck, I am going to say last chapter wasn't that much of a stretch.
You also have to understand that that kind of fight is consistent for the tone and lore of both KHR and the Nasuverse, and that it was literally the only way I could have a satisfying end to an arc that involved Emiya Fucking Shirou in a sword fight with a 15 year old girl (regardless of magically enhanced strength).