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Story: [Itchy Teeth]
Summary: Asuna doesn't end up being dragged in to Negi confronting Evangeline. AKA, Negi gets bitten by Evangeline during the canon-start.
Genre: Humor?
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Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
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So, okay, she might've held a bit more of a grudge than even she herself had anticipated.
Nagi had left her, dumped her in a school and promised to come back for her only to run off and get himself killed. Purely on that, she'd been pretty upset. Then she'd found out that the bastard had had a kid somewhere in between those two events.
He'd dumped her in a school and run off with some other woman and then gotten killed.
She wasn't sure if she was bitter or despairing or resigned or absolutely furious. Mostly, she just wanted to kill someone and get the hell out of Japan as quickly as possible.
For all that she enjoyed most things about the country, she'd been more-or-less forcibly nomadic for her entire life. It'd been nice enough to settle down for a bit when she'd trusted Nagi to come back for her, but with fifteen years and counting surrounded by nothing other than middle-school girls and a few shitty mages, she'd have given an arm and a leg to be free to actually get the hell out of there.
So, a bit desperate, largely furious, embarrassingly hurt, ridiculously frustrated, and bitter enough at the world and herself that she was honestly considering locking herself in a basement for the next century. And then there was Nagi's brat, practically falling into her lap.
She could hardly call herself an evil mage if she didn't at least try to suck him dry and escape the curse, right?
To be honest though-... Eva wasn't actually very good at magic that wasn't massively destructive, and whilst this was mostly obvious in her complete inability with healing-magic, there were... other fields that her lack of proficiency also became noticeable in.
For example, despite her vampiristic nature, Eva wasn't exactly the most experienced with drinking blood. Early on, it'd been because any reminder of her true nature was a reminder of all the things she'd lost, which meant that she'd avoided it like the plague. Later, it'd been because the amount of power it granted her beyond what she'd already had was in fact fairly miniscule. Not to mention the way that drinking enough blood of a person that they died from it, tended to result in a lot of angry mages popping up out of the woodwork to make a nuisance of themselves.
Sure, she'd drank and experimented with various applications of blood-magic over the centuries, but in the end it simply wasn't her go-to solution to most problems.
She was as much an avid drinker of blood as Rakan was a connoisseur of fine wine. He could guzzle it down with enough gusto to leave anyone in awe when he felt like it, but he was more likely to burp loudly enough to rattle the windows than he was to accurately determine what year it was from.
Unfortunately, with how Nagi's prison for her was set up, drinking someone's blood was really the only way to go. Preferably the blood of someone powerful, and even better if they were connected to the person who'd sealed her.
And yes, she kind of needed to drain the brat dry for it to be enough. She was an evil mage, for all that she'd avoided killing brats before, it was a sacrifice she was willing to make.
Really, she'd get over it.
Again, this was the point where her lack of proficiency came back to bite her in the ass.
For all that she'd get over it, the various shitty mages around Mahora were much less likely to let slide her murdering one of their own. So, there was an exit-plan that had needed to be paid attention to, along with her memories of the few times she'd actually drank that much blood from a single person at once, on top of her theories for exactly how to bypass the curse, and then there was the brat himself.
The son of Nagi didn't exactly go down without a fight. Clearly the kid had talent, if he could get that far from whatever shitty lessons people learned in wizard-school nowadays. But still, even with her powers sealed, he really didn't stand a chance.
Despite sucking him dry however, she couldn't exactly overpower the curse in a single burst. The blood was needed to get the ball rolling so to speak, but in all honesty even her most optimistic predictions still left her standing around Mahora for the better part of an hour.
Which was why she'd stuffed the brat's drained corpse in a cupboard, rather than leave him in the street for someone to stumble across.
A good head-start was nothing to scoff at.
But no, the problem wasn't-...
Honestly, up until that point she'd been willing to sort of nod along and say that she was pretty pissed off at Nagi for her to so easily justify her actions. The point where her apparent enmity to the Thousand Master became a surprise for even herself?
That only came when something in the cupboard started moving around. The empty cupboard that she'd stored the brat's corpse in. The one that she'd made very sure was both empty and not in use. The cupboard where she'd just stashed the blood-drained corpse of a young mage with a great amount of talent and what was likely a very youthfully desperate will to live.
She'd honestly been so busy being upset about Nagi that she hadn't even considered that something like... this, might happen.
Eva wasn't sure if she ought to be laughing at the absurdity or moaning in embarrassment that her first actual 'childe' was not only a brat that looked younger than she did, but also something she'd done completely by accident.
She'd always been very careful about not turning anyone. Better that they died properly than to have them get turned like she'd once been.
Except she'd been so busy trying to avoid thinking about how disappointed Nagi would be in her, and how viciously pleased – and silently guilty – it made her to think of how hurt he'd be to see her murdering his only son in order to escape from a prison that he himself had created, to actually think about it. She hadn't even considered the possibility of the brat somehow managing to cling to life for long enough to struggle back into vampirism.
She-...
Killing the brat had been one thing. That was on his asshole of a father who'd gone and gotten himself killed. Bad luck, kid. No hard feelings.
This though? Turning the brat into a vampire because she didn't pay enough attention to properly take the steps to prevent it from happening?
Eva threw a glance at the gear she'd carefully packed for a quick getaway, another glance at the spell-work she'd been dealing with, and then hung her head with a defeated sigh.
She'd break the curse, yes. But she wasn't going to leave the brat to deal with this shit on his own. And there was no way she'd succeed in convincing him to come with her – or get away if anyone suspected that she'd kidnapped him – so her grand escape was a complete failure.
She kind of doubted that the brat would want her around, or that anyone around them would be very appreciative of her presence once they figured out what she'd done. But-... But for all that she'd long since given up on living some kind of saintly life, there were lines she wasn't going to cross.
Abandoning the brat after everything else she'd done to him?
Hopefully she could at least use him as a human shield against the other mages of Mahora. She really wasn't in the mood for duking it out with a whole slew of veteran mages. Even if she'd probably be back up to her full power by then.
She'd much rather lock herself in that basement now. More out of embarrassment and guilt than bitterness and despair though. So that might technically classify as an improvement. Maybe.
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"Master should've just burnt it properly!" A high-pitched voice huffed.
"And if he inherited my regeneration?" Another voice answered, somewhere between resigned and annoyed.
"Keep on burning until he gives up and dies!" The high-pitched voice laughed.
"Yes, that tactic always worked out, didn't it?" The girl's voice sighed. "No, accept your mistakes and keep on crawling through the blood and dirt of the world."
She sounded like she was quoting something, but Negi couldn't remember ever hearing that before.
"Ah, he twitched!" The high-pitched voice again.
"Tch, of course the brat would wake up at the most inconvenient time." There was the sound of footsteps. "Chachazero, distract him for another couple of minutes. And try not to convince him to bring down the building around our ears, okay?" A door closing.
Negi was fairly sure that he already had his eyes open, but he couldn't see anything. So either it was pitch-black in here, or he'd gone blind. Which was ridiculous, because even if he wore glasses, his eyesight wasn't bad enough for him to spontaneously go blind-...
Evangeline's fangs, piercing into his neck, the warmth slipping through his fingers like dry sand in autumn.
...- But then, it wasn't really spontaneous, was it?
He'd been bitten by a vampire. A vampire who'd told him that she very much needed enough of his blood that he wouldn't survive the process. And yet, he was alive. He'd woken back up, despite his current inability to see anything at all.
So either she'd lied about needing that much blood, or she'd decided to stop drinking it before she killed him regardless, or-...
"Am I dead?"
"As a doornail!" The high-pitched voice responded, sounding unimaginably chipper about it. "Even deader than a doornail actually! A doornail was never alive to begin with!"
Negi decided that he didn't much like the owner of that high-pitched voice. He still couldn't see anything, and he felt too lethargic to be terrified about the implications of it all, but that person was clearly not very nice.
"Why can't I see anything?"
"Master blindfolded you in a dark room! Said something about it 'probably being like a hangover'!" The voice explained, before making an ear-splitting high-pitched noise.
Negi twitched involuntarily at the painfully piercing sound, limbs shifting against what might be ropes.
"What do you know! It is just like a hangover!" The high-pitched voice laughed delightedly. Then it made that horrible noise again.
Negi strained against the ropes, trying to twist enough to dislodge the blindfold around his head, or possibly break free outright and strangle the owner of the high-pitched voice. Surely they wouldn't be able to continue making that noise if his hands were wrapped around their throat?
"Ah, right. Don't provoke him, right right." The high-pitched voice nearly sighed, its tone more of a whine of disappointment than anything else.
"Where-..." -was he? What had they done to him? Why hadn't Evangeline killed him? What was going on?- "Where is she?"
"Master is trying to not accidentally blow up Japan!" The high-pitched voice answered enthusiastically. "Which would've been cool, but also a shitty way to die!"
'Accidentally'? Why would the evil vampire be at risk of accidentally destroying a country? Sure, from what she'd said, she'd needed to drain him dry in order to get her powers back and to break free from the curse-... Did breaking the curse make it unstable somehow? Negi had read about a lot of big feats of magic tending to have explosive results when unraveled without utmost care.
A curse strong enough to remove the Dark Evangel's powers and imprison her in a school for fifteen years? That was probably a big enough feat to classify for explosive unraveling. And the doll was probably exaggerating about the whole country exploding, it wasn't like there were-...
Mahora Academy was rather famously built by the World Tree, one of the single most magical places in the world. And even if the Thousand Master hadn't knowingly included it into the weaving of the curse, after fifteen years of exposure? After all, magic had a rather unfortunate tendency to get tangled up with itself.
Maybe-... Maybe the doll wasn't actually exaggerating how badly that could go wrong.
Still-... "Why does my throat hurt?"
"You're thirsty, dumbass!" The high-pitched voice seemed to take great delight in insulting him.
So he really was-...?
Negi wasn't sure how long he remained like that, tied down with robes and blindfolded, listening to the high-pitched voice as it warred between trying to annoy him for its personal entertainment and trying to avoid provoking him.
He felt... 'numb' was probably the best word for it.
For as long as he could really remember, his goal had been to follow in the footsteps of his father and become a Magister Magi before searching the world for him. And whilst he hadn't found his father yet, vampires couldn't earn the title of Magister Magi. So that was a large portion of his hopes and dreams, gone up in smoke.
Things always seemed to go up in smoke around him. His parents, his home village, Anya's mother, Nekane's legs, and now his hopes and dreams along with his life. What a useless existence.
"Cut that out, brat." A voice, Evangeline's voice.
A pair of hands jostling his head, and then light touched his eyes again. It hurt.
"Where's that will to live that let you continue breathing even after I drained you dry?" Blue eyes stared down at him.
She looked like an angel. Even frowning, even knowing the sharpness of her teeth, even understanding-... She looked like an angel.
"Beautiful..." He couldn't tear his eyes away at all.
Evangeline blinked, looking a bit stunned, before something in between aggravation and guilt slipped across her face. "Of course. Even with all of this, you just had to get caught by the damn thrall-state, didn't you?" She leaned back with a huff of annoyance. "Causing me this much of a headache... you're definitely that man's son."
Negi didn't really know what she was talking about. He could remember something about vampires turning people into thralls, but wasn't that only relevant for people who were still alive? It wasn't like someone could be both a thrall and a vampire, right? Wasn't the magic involved in the turning-process supposed to counteract that somehow?
"I'm probably going to have to invent a whole new branch of magic, just to fix that." Evangeline groaned. "As if I'm not gonna be busy enough as it is."
"You should make him wear a collar, Master! And walk him on a leash!" The high-pitched voice laughed delightedly.
Turns out, the high-pitched voice seemed to belong to a doll that was casually dangling its legs over the edge of a dresser. It would've probably been cute-looking, if it hadn't been for the manically sadistic gleam in its wide eyes.
Evangeline sent a glare towards the doll. "Shut up, 'zero."
Despite Negi getting the feeling that the doll wasn't the really the type to actually obey any of Evangeline's instructions whatsoever, it stopped talking. Negi guessed that it'd said everything it felt like saying for the moment.
"Whatever." Evangeline snapped her fingers, magically undoing the ropes he'd been tied down with. "Come on, brat. I'm gonna have to talk to that shitty old man of a dean about why the English teacher hasn't showed up for his lessons."
Ah, the dean was Konoe Konoemon, and the English teacher was... Negi, wasn't it? He'd missed his lessons?
Negi startled upright, eyes wide. "I missed my lessons?!" He glanced around, making sure that he was dressed – a dress-shirt and pants, good enough – before launching himself in the direction of what looked like the nearest exit.
And got hit face-first with sunlight streaming in from a nearby window on behalf of the setting sun.
Negi went down like a sack of bricks, clawing at his eyes with an aborted scream of pain.
There was a 'pat-pat' sound like small wooden blocks knocking together. "Bravo! Eight-out-of-ten, at least! The expression of confused and sudden pain was fantastic, Master!" The doll applauded.
"Shut up, 'zero." Evangeline grumbled, before grabbing Negi by the ankle and beginning to pull. "Now get back in here, brat. Before you burn your eyeballs out of your skull."
Negi didn't think there was much left of his eyeballs left to burn out at this point, but he allowed himself to be dragged back through the door with little more than a pained whimper in protest.
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"A surprise contender!" Makie pointed an accusing finger at Evangeline.
"How dare you steal away Negi-sensei all to yourself!" Ayaka joined in, haughty as always.
Evangeline stared at the brats crowding into her cottage, suppressing the urge to simply blast the whole lot of them into frozen smithereens. She could actually do that now, but the consequences would be a pain in the ass.
"Where are you hiding him?!" Ayaka continued after having realized that the boy wasn't in the room with her.
It would've been so wonderful to blast them all into frozen smithereens. The faces they'd make as jagged blades of ice shredded what little brains they still had left between them. Oh, the memory alone would surely keep her warm for decades after this.
Unfortunately, she'd already decided not to to that, so it'd remain as nothing more than a daydream.
"Hangover." She motioned towards the stairs. "Apparently someone slipped him something, and he's still feeling it."
"You drugged Negi-sensei?!" Makie leapt to the obvious conclusion.
It wasn't even technically wrong. Evangeline was definitely the cause for what had happened to their teacher, she just hadn't 'slipped him something' beyond her fangs to his neck. And a lot of semi-legally obtained blood, but that was more to counteract the hangover-symptoms.
"I said someone." Evangeline glared at the girl. Like hell was she going to admit to being in any way responsible for his current condition. "Found him by the roadside in the middle of the night. And then he woke up past noon with a hangover. I'm not a detective."
That last one was thrown in there because-...
"We'll definitely find the fiend who'd hurt Negi-sensei!" Ayaka leapt at the bait without hesitation.
Evangeline wasn't really the kind of person to feel guilty about exploiting someone's weak-point. Mostly, there was just a mixture of resigned annoyance and a vague sense of disgust at their naivety. But Ayaka definitely brought out those feelings by the truck-load.
It was like stealing candy from a crippled baby. Only with less entertainment-value.
Then the whole lot of them blasted up the stairs like a horde of rampaging elephants. Leaving only Kagurazaka Asuna and herself.
"You're in on this magic-thing, aren't you?" Asuna glared at her with narrowed eyes.
Of course the brat of a teacher couldn't even manage to hide the existence of magic for a month. Why would she have expected anything else?
"Yes." No point in denying it. She doubted that Negi would be able to hide that fact under anything resembling an interrogation from the girl. He couldn't lie for shit.
"What really happened?" Asuna continued.
"His father cursed me." She made a brief motion to her body, smiling enough that her fangs were visible. "Things happened."
Asuna frowned, opened her mouth to say something-...
"Negi-sensei! You look super-pale!" Makie's voice echoed through the cottage.
Even Evangeline felt a bit like wincing at the volume, so she could hardly guess how bad it'd be for the brat and his sensitive ears. Hadn't she told them that he had a hangover? Did Makie not understand what that was, or was this how she greeted everyone with hangovers?
Evangeline made a mental note to never interact with Makie after having drunk anything. No point in tempting fate.
However, with that timing?
Asuna's eyes were slowly widening in realization. "You-?"
"Kind of an accident, actually." Evangeline shrugged with an indifference that she didn't feel. "But done is done."
It didn't look like Asuna entirely agreed, but at the same time it wasn't like she really knew enough about magic and vampires to understand exactly what Evangeline had done to manage it 'by accident'. Instead of hurling herself at Eva with her fists swinging in protective and well-deserved outrage, the girl kind of just huffed in annoyance and went off up the stairs, presumably to try and keep the chaos to a minimum.
Honestly, that'd gone a lot better than Takamichi showing up at her doorstep with murder in his eyes. As much as it would've been fun to stomp him into the dirt when he was actually serious, she doubted that she'd be leaving Mahora Academy any time soon, and she liked her cottage too much to have it turn into a crater without a good reason.
There was no hiding the fact that Negi had been turned, and even the most naive person in the world would admit that Evangeline's presence being unaccounted for at the time made her look awfully guilty of it. The fact that she couldn't honestly deny it? At this point, she might as well admit it to anyone aware enough of magic to ask.
Evangeline wasn't sure if Negi would be able to continue teaching. Ignoring the potential for certain urges to override his desire to keep his students safe, most vampires could barely roll out of bed during daylight hours, sun or no sun.
Evangeline was an exception to the rule, and it was entirely possible that the brat would inherit that ability, but it was equally possible that Negi would barely be able to keep himself conscious during his own lessons. And really, no matter how much nepotism was involved in hiring a ten-year-old as a teacher, keeping one that couldn't even teach his students? That'd be very hard to justify.
Until that point however, the brat was unlikely to give up his employment without a fight, and she'd sworn to remain by his side until he could at least handle himself on his own. Even if turning him had been a mistake, even if killing him would've probably been a mercy, even if he hated her with every fiber of his being, Evangeline wasn't going to allow him to stumble into the same mistakes that she'd long since learned to live with.
As for the brat not seeming to even carry a grudge towards her for her actions? That was really only a matter of time.
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