This fanfiction chronologically follows the events of the Carnival according to the anime; however there are some changes to note:

- Firstly, any events directly following the resurrection of the Hime (i.e. any events following the scene where Mikoto's stomach rumbles, appearing to be hungry and thankfully not dying) were ignored.

- Secondly, when I first started writing this fanfiction over 8 years ago, I had misunderstood how much time had been skipped between the end of the Carnival and Graduation. Because Reito and Mikoto were still injured at Graduation, I thought the Carnival had ended in February. After recently re-watching the series, it looks like it ended before Christmas of the year before… Oops. Well, as the author, I made a rash decision to pretend that the Carnival ended in late Jan/early Feb.

- While writing this, I decided that the prologue will act as a modified "Natsuki no Prelude" since I wished to build up Natsuki's character a little differently to meet the developments she ended up making at the end of my plot.

- And also, events before and during the Carnival will be referred to but may not follow the anime plot exactly, e.g. Natsuki's father does not feature at all and Sagisawa Yohko was the school nurse in the anime but in my fic, she is the school doctor

- Obviously, the ridiculous Mai-Hime manga plot was ignored entirely. I mean Shizuru with no awesome power? That's absurd.

Any confusion, please ask away.

Disclaimer: I do not own Mai-Hime. Sunrise do. I simply borrowed the characters to create a fanfiction that fit my purposes. But I own the plot! Yay, I own something…

OOO

It was not a special occasion or a day that held a specific memory for her, but all she knew was that she… felt like it. And she had not 'felt like it' for a month perhaps? No, it had been more than a month now… and here she was, accelerating her Ducati DRIII, enjoying the feeling of raw power as she hurtled around a corner and the scent of burning rubber and engine fumes that managed to creep into her helmet.

These empty roads were forever burned into her memory. Along with flashes of unwanted memories, the screams, the gunshots; echoes of her past… Her grip on the handlebars tightened and she revved her bike another notch before suddenly skidding to a halt with all the skill of a racer at a small hard shoulder on the cliff roads that looked like something had cut through it cleanly and with deadly precision; almost like a hot knife going through butter… or a nagingata being wielded by a Hime of astounding power…

Kuga Natsuki practically ripped off her helmet at the sudden urge to breathe in the fresh cool air and clear her head of unnecessary thoughts.

"Hime… huh."

Her feet found themselves moving involuntarily towards the cliff edge and her gloved hands slowly placed themselves on the newly implanted safety railings. She stared unseeingly into the horizon, where the sun was feebly sending out rays of light as it peeked over it, and took a deep breath of fresh ocean air before letting it out in a heavy sigh.

No matter how she tried, she could not shake off the bitter taste of… betrayal.

First her own mother… and then Shizuru…

She shook her head violently.

Neither had really betrayed her, yet in a sense they had. She was grateful for what they had intended, yet wished they had never bothered. She wanted to blame them, yet she could not blame them for anything…

Natsuki just wanted to be left alone. Completely alone. People were so damned confusing. But emotions involving people were even more confusing.

Natsuki sank to her knees and rest her head against the cold metal bars. She just wanted to think this all over once… and be done with it. She had been putting this off for too long and now it was time to deal with her convoluted thoughts one at a time… starting with her mother. Thanks to her research over many years, for almost as long as Natsuki could remember, she now had a fairly clear picture of what had happened to the elder Kuga.

Doctor Kuga Saeko graduated with a PhD in Bioengineering at Tokyo University and became a lecturer there to pay the bills. Following a relationship with a man that was never named to Natsuki, Saeko gave birth to her on August 15 in an unknown location and gave her surname to her daughter, since the man never returned after finding out that she was pregnant.

From what Natsuki had gathered, Saeko had assumedly been terrified of society's view of bastard children and therefore managed to keep the whole pregnancy a secret – resigning before it became too obvious and then paying a small private hospital on a small island called Fuuka to allow her to use a pseudonym without too many questions asked. To support Natsuki, Saeko had gotten a job as a lecturer at Fuuka University and it was here that she was approached by the First District, who were at the time using the name "Tenth District".

Saeko quickly rose to the position of one of the leading scientists in a research to channel an ancient power, namely of the Hime Star. The research was kept secret, away from the prying eyes of the government, the media, and the public by claiming to be a drug research company called Iwasaka Pharmaceuticals. Therefore in return for an astounding pay, all the scientists were sworn to secrecy under a strict contract.

Natsuki had just turned two when Saeko got the job at First District and during the 5 years Saeko worked there, whenever she was mentioned she was referred to as "Kruger". Natsuki vaguely remembered promising to play a 'spy game' with Saeko, where at her workplace Natsuki was a spy who had to live as her alias "Kruger", who was a child of a distant cousin of Saeko's and they just happened to look a lot like each other. Saeko did try to minimise Natsuki's contact with her workplace and therefore sent her to many martial arts classes after school, since it was the only club Natsuki agreed to attend and Saeko had always thought that a girl living without a father should know how to protect herself efficiently.

Eventually, during one of Natsuki's visits to her mother's workplace, Saeko realised that Natsuki was exhibiting the same power as a fragment of an artefact linked to the Hime Star was and after excitedly allowing the First District to perform some experiments on her, and finding that the scientists were ruthless and inhumane towards her child, became unsure of what to do. News quickly spread throughout the First District that the new "Experiment 24601" was a potential Hime that had been found and a mole from Searrs, a then young John Smith, planted within the First District made a very tempting offer of a very large sum of money that would set the two of them up for a rich and easy life with guaranteed protection from the First District… if she handed over over Natsuki and all her work on the Hime Star to Searrs.

According to the sly hook-nosed Smith, Saeko had been planning to sell Natsuki to Searrs. However, a conversation held much later with Sakomizu and information from Yamada gave her a slightly less damning view. Saeko was likely to have been paid half of the money then and there despite her protests, as the money was already in a bank account that was opened using Saeko's details, and the account number was hidden on Natsuki's toy dog, which she discovered in her mother's old office many years later during the Carnival.

John Smith had apparently told Saeko that the other half of the money and the protection that was promised would only come once she had handed over Natsuki to Searrs. Saeko transferred the money as quickly as she could into a bank account she had opened in Natsuki's name, desperately hoping that the First District, who tailed all their scientists, would not notice. One of the investigators assigned to Saeko was Sakomizu Kaiji, who was then ostensibly a security guard in Saeko's research lab. He became good friends with her after he accidentally blew his cover as an investigator but Saeko promised to keep it a secret to save his job and he believed that she was the only one with a humane conscience in the First District.

As feared, it was not long before the First District felt something suspicious was going on since they had more than one investigator tailing each of their scientists. Sakomizu tipped her off and she escaped with Natsuki and their pet dog Duran in a car, only to be chased. And on the very cliff that Sakomizu had once said was an easy place to set an ambush, they were caught by surprise and forced off the road by a barricade of armed agents and cars.

Natsuki had been irked when it was Nagi of all people who was able to fill her in on the details of the night Natsuki lost everything. According to him, the car slammed into the side of the cliff once before plummeting down towards the rough waters of a violent sea. On the way down, Nagi appeared to a very young and frightened Natsuki and offered her the chance to live. Without knowing exactly what it would entail, she agreed and as the car hit the waters, she lost consciousness but not before she heard the sound of a wolf howling in the distance.

Upon waking on a hospital bed about a week later, the doctors found that despite their concerns Natsuki was wounded but still very much alive. The doctors and nurses informed her that she was found washed up on the shore by some local fishermen and had brought her in. They had found no others.

The staff tried to ask her numerous times for her name and what had happened but little Natsuki said nothing. Once they had given up and left, Nagi reappeared to remind her that she had to put something important on the line to continue using her newly gained powers and before leaving, commented that ice wielders always had such tragic beginnings.

At the time, Natsuki still had no idea what Nagi was talking about and simply began crying silently on her hospital bed over her lost family. It was not long before the First District turned up, intent on taking her in dead or alive, since they had heard about the rescue of a girl in the nearby area whose body was ice-cold to touch. As soon as the door burst open and several men in black suits entered, wielding guns, Natsuki recalled the feeling a mixture of fear and anger creeping into her young heart and survival instinct kicked in immediately as she began to fight back when one tried to grab her wrist… by throwing the much larger man bodily across the room and into several other of his comrades.

The knowledge of martial arts that she had accumulated from the numerous classes she had attended over the years to pass her time; namely Ninjutsu, Karate and Jujutsu, had helped her greatly alongside her newly gained powers of the Hime. However, being only seven years old and wounded, she was soon overpowered and she stopped struggling when one of the men recovered enough to raise his gun and aim for her head. At first Natsuki was almost relieved… she would be able to see her mother again… Her kind mother who had been brutally torn away from her so suddenly… Why? Why did this have to happen?

The following events became a blur in Natsuki's memory. All she could remember was a gun being levelled at her face as she was being held down by two First District assassins and then her rage building until she saw nothing but red. Then the next thing she could clearly recall was standing in the middle of the room with all the men lying immobile on the ground, presumably dead and in her small bloodied hands were two oddly shaped pistols. She stared at them, wishing desperately in her mind that the guns would disappear and that this would all turn out to be a dream. When they didn't, she let out a haunting shriek and threw them away from her as hard as she could. If she had been more focused, she would have seen them disappear as they hit the ground, however, at the time, she was more intent on throwing herself out of the window to end the nightmare to notice much at all. With stuttering steps she ran forward and hurled herself into the glass…

Only to hear the sound of a howling wolf again and a metallic wolf fully equipped with canons caught her as she flew through the air with the shattered glass and carried her off before hiding her in an alleyway as the police arrived at the scene. Natsuki later found that the police had been puzzled as to what kind of weapon had killed the men, since the pattern of the fatal wounds suggested that it was a bullet but the ice bullets from Natsuki's guns had melted away, leaving no trace. It was decided that the child had been kidnapped, assumed dead, and the report was written up stating that it was very likely that the girl had been part of some Yakuza faction, as it was the only way to explain the goons with guns in suits.

Yamada found Natsuki after a couple days or so had passed, or more specifically, Natsuki found Yamada about to be shot by First District agents who had discovered him investigating what they were after. Incidentally, Saeko had first hired Yamada to read the First District agents' movements when she had found out that she was being tailed and when Yamada heard of a mysterious girl who was found with injuries mirroring those from a bad car accident and later disappeared leaving only a room full of dead Yakuza members, he had assumed it was Natsuki and had been trying to track her down before the First District did. Unfortunately for him, the First District had found him first instead.

Natsuki could not remember much at all from that week, all she knew was that she was safe with Duran and that she was looking for her mother. Yamada told her how she had leapt out from the shadows with Duran and had killed the agents, seemingly acting purely on the instinct of revenge. He realised that Natsuki had gone into a state of mental blankness due to the trauma of the recent events, to the point where it looked like the girl had no idea that she was still very badly injured. He could see fresh wounds that he assumed she had gained from fighting other agents whom she had come across.

Before he could move forward to thank her and ask where the hell the metal wolf had come from, he quickly hid himself when a new figure somehow suddenly appeared on the scene. Kazahana Mashiro had sensed that there was an awakened Hime on the streets with a very dark aura threatening to overwhelm her, and she had sent her ever faithful maid, Himeno Fumi, to subdue her or as a last resort, eliminate her. But all Fumi found was a badly wounded girl with her Child trying to protect her and appearing to ask for help at the same time. Fumi lowered her Element and offered her help but before Natsuki could reply, or retort, the exhausted girl finally collapsed over her Child. Fumi rushed forward and picking up the unconscious girl, prepared to carry her back to Mashiro (who was conveniently waiting in a car around the corner) but before leaving she spoke quietly into the shadows, "Whoever you are, I expect to see you at Fuuka Gakuen in the next couple of days."

Yamada had nodded forgetting that Fumi could not see him.

When Natsuki awoke the next morning, she found herself re-bandaged and in unfamiliar surroundings with Duran sitting calmly next to the bed, obviously not finding the two strangers, where one with pink hair stood behind one with lilac hair in a wheelchair, a threat to them. Fumi and Mashiro began by introducing themselves and asking a number of questions, to which Natsuki was only able to answer one: her name. The rest, Natsuki could either not remember or she chose not to answer. They then explained everything about what it meant to be a Hime and Mashiro offered Natsuki a full scholarship to stay at Fuuka Gakuen until she graduated to leave for university, as long as she agreed to protect the world from Orphans.

Natsuki's first inclination was to reject the offer so that she could devote all her time to finding her mother and the reason for the sudden attack on her only family, however there was something in both Mashiro's and Duran's eyes that told her that it was best to accept. When she did, Mashiro informed her that Natsuki was to start a year later to have sufficient time to recover from her wounds and, although unspoken it was implied, her trauma. Before Fumi and Mashiro left her to brood, Mashiro tactfully added that Natsuki's birth certificate held the name of her father but when he had been contacted regarding guardianship, he had denied ever knowing a Saeko Kuga and was not interested in adopting an orphan.

Yamada turned up later that week, and after introducing himself as Saeko's informant, informed Natsuki that he had managed to find an off-shore bank account in Natsuki's name, which matched all her details and that contained a very hefty sum of money. Natsuki's bank account was still intact with the wired money from Searrs that Saeko had immediately transferred in fear of getting caught – however, this proved to be too late. The First District had either not been able to track Natsuki's down since they only knew her by the names, "Experiment number 24601" or "Kruger" or they chose not interfere too much once she was under Mashiro and Fumi's protection.

At a young Natsuki's request, Yamada agreed to be her information broker not only because she had saved his life but also because his innate curiosity made him want to know more about the First District and what exactly it was hiding – more specifically what it had to do with humans who could fly and ride on large metallic animal-artillery hybrids.

Yamada obtained a small apartment for Natsuki under one of his many alias names and was paid for whatever information he could salvage on the First District. He also helped Natsuki get her motorbike licence, although she had obviously been quite a few years underage at the time. Meanwhile, Natsuki continued with her martial arts, achieving her black belts and also greatly increased her fighting skills with all the run-ins she had with First District agents and from the street or bar fights she ended up in from wandering around the shady areas of town to meet up with Yamada undetected. And as soon as Sakomizu was transferred to Fuuka High, she hunted him down and cornered him until he agreed to become one of her informants (although Natsuki wondered if his surprisingly easy agreement was due to her uncanny resemblance to her mother, as his initial reaction was to look like he had seen a ghost, forcing him to face his guilt for his part in her death).

Natsuki found that the amount of information she gathered on the First District massively increased when the Carnival began and they began to show themselves more and left more tracks to follow. She blindly tried to sabotage their movements, only to find that she was fighting headlong against the Hime's destined fates – which she found out after she was resurrected at the end of the Carnival that it was not impossible, but nearly.