Disclaimer: I don't own any of the original Mai-HiME characters. All credit duly goes to Sunrise. The following is purely a fantasy involving their characters. :3
The following may be TL;DR so don't feel bad for skipping it.
Most of my stories will be set in Canada. I'm sorry if that seems unrealistic and boring to anyone but I'm not familiar enough with Japan or even the US to set a story in those countries and I will try my best to create a reasonable back story for this if the story calls for it (I hate back story). I think I would offend people more if I tried to set a story in a different country and made mistakes regarding the customs, geography, culture, etc. of the place. I could never do enough research short of going out and spending a lot of money buying books, watching films, and travelling in order to truly represent the original setting of these characters...
Characters are somewhat true to their original personalities. I'm doing my best and we all have different interpretations.
This is my first fan fiction since I was 13 years old, obviously (as I'm almost 21 now) my writing mechanics and overall grasp of the English language are better but my creativity as far as writing fiction is out of practice. So please be nice and keep that in mind if you want to critique – be brutally honest about how I can improve, but respectful. Thank you!
Natsuki watched the clouds drifting lazily by; the sails of great ships fairing through an azure sea. In the shade of the tree under which she lay, her thoughts wandered through the murk that was the night before. Her eyes were open to the world, letting light through to the depths of her mind. She was in another place entirely, unaware of the mild excitement around her. Small children played in the distance. The clang of a ball hitting a bat rang through the park. A child shouted "GO! Go!" to his teammate. The world went on around the girl under the tree, but for her time had ceased completely.
For a while after she arrived at the park her mind was on the past. She rifled through early childhood memories, through to the past few years. Through discoveries she'd made of the mother she once thought had been murdered. Her thoughts soon turned ugly as the previous night's conversation played through her memory. Her mother came home, for once, from work. She usually spent nights at the lab, leaving Natsuki to fend for herself. Naturally, the house was left in a chaotic mess of dirty dishes, dusty furniture, and crumb-covered floors.
But her mother hadn't come home alone. A man entered the house after her. Natsuki heard his piercing, whining voice first – protesting some decision of her mothers' from the moment he stepped through the door. Her mother responded with insistent anger. She was stubborn, a trait she passed down to her daughter.
Natsuki crept to her bedroom and left the door ajar just enough to overhear bits and pieces of their conversation. Something about nanomachines, or nanotechnology, being built wrong, or used wrong, or something. Something about research being used for destructive purposes. And then her name was mentioned. Natsuki, an experiment, a failure. There was so much of that conversation that she'd missed it was impossible to piece it together through context. But she knew she'd heard her name, there was no doubt about that.
A sudden blow to her head shot her straight out her daze.
"OW!" She winced as her hand snapped to her head. She shot up into a sitting position, opened her eyes and looked frantically around for the object that had struck her. A tennis ball rolled to a stop a few feet away from her.
"Oh my God! Are you all right?" called a familiar female voice.
Natsuki saw a young red-haired woman in exercise shorts and a tank top jogging towards her. She was carrying a tennis racket. Behind the girl, about thirty feet away, was a tennis court and the girl's opponent watching with his hand shielding his eyes.
"Natsuki!" The girl stopped a few metres short of the tree.
A chill shot through Natsuki's spine. She couldn't believe her eyes! "Mai?" she exclaimed, clambering to her feet. She didn't even think to hug her old friend – all she could do was stare in pure amazement. "Holy shit, I haven't seen you since graduation!"
"I know, right!" grinned the girl. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm taking Criminology at U of BC. My mom had a job offer with a research facility connected to the university. What about you? How the hell did you end up all the way over here?
Mai gave a glance to her younger brother and waved in his direction. "Takumi had to be transferred to a hospital here in Vancouver. I thought I would like to be closer to him so I decided to go to school here as well. I'm taking Honours Biology. I'm hoping to get into medical school after I graduate! If not, I can go on to teacher's college."
Natsuki smiled. Just like Mai to tend to her little brother. She had let him go with just his girlfriend to America for his first surgery but it seems the poor girl thrives off of caring for people. Nonetheless, she was relieved. It was nice to see a familiar face for once. Since moving to Canada, Natsuki has built up her personal barrier. Work kept her mother stressed and away from home. Relations between the two were becoming more tense the more Natsuki doubted the ethics behind her mother's work. Friendship was the last thing on the young woman's mind.
"So did Mikoto tag along with you across the Pacific?"
Mai grinned. "How about you come along with Takumi and I and find out?"
"That depends, how did you two get here? My bike seats two."
"I've got wheels." Mai gave a flirty wink and motioned for Natsuki to follow.
As they met with Takumi at the court Natsuki saw Okuzaki Akira sitting under a large pine. She waved a friendly hello to Natsuki, who returned a small smile and nod.
"Kuga-san, is that really you?" Takumi asked, eyes wide with disbelief.
"In the flesh," she replied coolly. She ruffled the young man's hair; it had been a couple of years since she'd seen him. "You're tall. Taller than me even. Who said you could get taller than me?"
Mai gave a smirk. "No offence but it ain't hard to be taller than you."
"Hey!" A swift smack on the back taught Mai to be a little more careful with her words. "At least I don't have to duck to go through doorways!"
Mai rubbed her shoulders for a moment and turned the conversation back to heading home. "Come on, I'll show you my car."
The group trekked off to a side street by the park. A few cars sat next to the curb, hidden under the shade of mature trees lining the street. Mai stopped at a red Honda Civic and unlocked her door.
"Not bad," Natsuki mused, admiring her friend's modest taste.
"It gets me from point A," Mai shrugged, opening the door. "But getting used to driving on the wrong side was hard." She hit the power lock and her brother and Akira hopped into the back. "I'm not far from here. Just go up Ontario Street, left on Prince Edward, and hang a right on Ashton Street. My place is just on the right. It's about a ten minute drive."
The red car lurched from the parallel parking spot and again gave a jerky lurch forward before gliding off gracefully down the street. Natsuki made her way to her bike a few streets away. It was so strange to think they had ended up in the exact same part of the world, in the exact same park even, without any communication for two years. It was almost as though some kind of fate had guided them to this place. The thought turned her stomach; fate, from her experience, was hardly on her side. She decided to pass this odd occurrence off as a complete coincidence. No more killing loved ones, no more dying, no more saving the world. That was all in the past.
She arrived to the little cottage-style house to find Takumi and Mai waiting on the concrete porch. She parked the bike next to Mai's car and followed her friends inside. The house was quaint and comfortable. The front hall was small, containing a small coat closet and a shoe mat. The stoop led to a cream-carpeted living groom to the right and a flecked-laminate floor kitchen straight ahead. To the left was another hallway which probably led to the bedrooms.
"Do you own this place?"
"No, no," Mai replied. "I don't have the income for that yet. I rent it with a few -" she hesitated. "Just a few friends from school. It's owned by an older couple but we have full run of the place."
"So where is Mikoto?" asked Natsuki. She took in her surroundings – paintings of British Columbia and of Japan, and photographs of their high school friends, vacations, and family on the walls; shelves with trophies and figurines; a modest 24-inch flatscreen television. Natsuki saw a picture of herself on the windowsill and felt her cheeks slightly redden.
"You'll see her soon," Mai smiled. Natsuki wondered what the anticipation was about. Mai continued with an eager grin, grabbing Natsuki's wrist. "Come, I'll show you the basement."
To the right of the kitchen by the back door were the stairs to the dark, cool basement. Takumi flipped on the light and led the pack down the steps to the rectangular, red-carpeted room. A brown vintage chesterfield sat against the far wall, facing a fireplace. A couple of '70s Lazyboys sat next to the chesterfield. And in the farthest chair sat a woman who sucked the air right from Natsuki's lungs.
Her gasp was audible. All eyes turned to her as her gaze locked on that vision of beauty sitting only a room across from her: a woman she thought she'd never have the grace of seeing again.
"Shizuru!"
Fujino Shizuru stood from her chair and placed the tea cup she'd been sipping onto the side table. That loving smile shone not just on her lips but radiated from her eyes. Her kimono fell gracefully to her ankles.
"Na-tsu-ki," she whispered.