XXX

Story: [Negi and Kazuto]

Summary: Negi gets sent to Mundus Magicus instead of Mahora, and gets involved in a war. And when it's all over, he just wants to retire somewhere peaceful. As for Kazuto... well, it's not like he's got anything else left to go home to.

Crossover: (Mahou Sensei Negima) / (Sword Art Online)

Genre: Friendship? Romance?

XXX

Negi could admit that he'd never been all that good with people.

He'd always been, if not alone, at least solitary. Any friends of his could be counted on a single hand with fingers left over. Especially if you removed his cousin Nekane, and his father's old friend Takamichi.

That only really left Anya, and that was probably the most accurate depiction of Negi's social life.

Anya was a good friend, and Negi had been too invested in his studies to think too much about making other friends. But with the power of hindsight he could easily admit that all of that time on his own from an early age had interfered with his ability to deal with people in general.

He didn't exactly regret it, because he'd learned a lot of very important things, but he did... 'mourn' it.

Especially as it made it all the more difficult to find the right words to say.

Negi shook his head, turning again to watch the flying nation of Aincrad break apart and fall into the sea.

Once, before the great war that Negi's father had helped to end, there'd been many flying islands. Floating in the sky through some amazing magic that Negi still boggled at. Except, from what Negi had managed to find about it, that magic had been transformed and used to defeat the orchestrators of that same war, sacrificing an entire country for the sake of the rest of the world.

Negi wasn't sure how truthful the reports of that really were, and a few of the flying islands had avoided that end, whether by luck or design.

Aincrad had been a beautiful place.

Oh, Negi had only seen it when the war had already started, but even then it'd managed to be beautiful. A castle the size of a nation, floating in the sky.

What were you even supposed to say to someone who'd just lost everything?

It was easy to remember his feelings as the demons had overrun his village, all those years ago. But there hadn't been a hero who'd saved them this time. There'd just been Negi, and the dawning understanding that the king of Aincrad was a madman.

Negi squeezed Kazuto's hand a little tighter, and tried not to dwell on the smell of charred flesh and ozone that still seemed to linger in the air.

XXX

Kazuto had always had a bit of a complicated relationship with his home.

There was a reason why he'd decided to be an adventurer on his lonesome, instead of signing up for one of the knight-orders like all of his other combat-oriented classmates.

Most of those people ended up washing out into adventuring, sooner or later, but Kazuto hadn't ever wanted to be a knight. Too many rules, and too much pressure to always show the world a flawless mask.

Kazuto had already had more than enough of authority-figures and pretense. The awkwardness of his family-situation had seen to that.

So Kazuto had taken on the role of an adventurer, and wandered off into the sunset. Except, then he'd ended up getting involved with Argo and her information-network, which in turn lead to the King Kayaba Akihiko of Aincrad himself taking an interest in his work.

Which then lead Heathcliff to more-or-less forcefully recruit him into the Knights of the Blood-Oath, since he'd ended up working too close to them and the lack of a proper chain-of-command had been causing issues.

Kazuto couldn't exactly say that he'd ever liked Heathcliff, any more than he could've said that he'd liked their king. But he'd respected them both, and he would readily admit to feeling a bit proud that they'd gone out of their way to recruit him.

Only for the war to finally break out in full, and for everything to start happening all at once.

Kazuto wasn't exactly suited for being on the front-lines against an invading army, but he was perfect for scout-work and-... And for assassinations.

He wasn't exactly proud of that. Never had been. But he'd rather stab someone in their sleep, than watch as those people went on to kill hundreds.

The 'Greater Good' was a powerful phrase, for all that Kazuto hated it.

Except, then he'd ended up crossing paths with an old acquaintance who was supposed to be doing archaeology-work, not running some kind of makeshift evacuation of civilians.

Negi and Kazuto hadn't exactly been close, having only briefly crossed paths before Kazuto had been dragged off to become a knight. But if it was a choice between 'fulfilling his mission' and helping a friend save the lives of innocents caught up in the war?

Kazuto hadn't even really needed to think about it.

And that's when he first started to notice the cracks. The strangeness of some of his orders, the peculiarities of some of the motivations and emotional speeches.

If only he'd noticed it sooner, if only he'd found out the truth sooner-...

In the end, his old classmate Asuna had been the key to unraveling the mystery, and she'd received a sword through the stomach for it. Stabbed in the back by the very man whom she'd admired for years, as Heathcliff himself dealt with her 'insubordination'.

Because apparently, Aincrad had been on the side of the Cosmo Entelecheia since the very beginning. And the brilliant King Kayaba Akihiko of Aincrad had taken an interest in Kazuto, not for his talents but rather for how much of a thorn in their side he could've been if he hadn't been under their thumb from the start.

It was humbling, in the sense that it pulled the rug out from under Kazuto's feet.

And then suddenly he was trying to scrape together a resistance against the mad king and the knights who supported him. Which had lead him back to Negi, limping and bruised.

Everything after that was a blur of battles upon battles upon battles. Constantly being forced to retreat, constantly trying to avoid Heathcliff turning innocents into hostages.

And then it was over. The resistance had distracted the forces of Aincrad for long enough that their neighbors finally managed to bring their own armies to bear.

And so Aincrad fell. And the war against Cosmo Entelecheia ended once more.

XXX

The mastermind behind Cosmo Entelecheia's resurgence had been Negi's father.

Oh, he'd been mostly possessed at the time, but that didn't really change all that much in the grand scheme of things.

Negi had always wanted to be a Magister, like his father. And yet, in the end, the man he'd so admired had been the cause behind all of the misery and bloodshed he'd seen during the time he'd been trying to evacuate innocents from the active war-zone.

It didn't really matter why he'd done it. Negi's dream of 'becoming like his father' had crumbled to the point where he could barely look at the man without his stomach churning.

A Magister was someone who chose which people ought to be saved.

And Negi wanted nothing to do with it.

The fact that the man was now infamous all across Mundus Magicus, and that it was blatantly obvious that Negi was his son, just made Negi all the more determined to not stick around.

So when Takamichi showed up and hinted heavily at a school in Japan needing an English-teacher, Negi packed his bags. Or, what little he still had left, anyway.

And Kazuto followed him.

XXX

"As you're both used to Mundus Magicus, Takamichi-san suggested that you might need some aid in adjusting your personal histories to more accurately fit with this world's." Konoemon explained, before gesturing towards the girl next to him.

"It's good to see you both well, Negi-san, Kirigaya-senpai." The girl nodded politely, her voice only barely familiar.

Kazuto was the one who recognized her first. "Ah... Mana-chan!" He smiled, genuine if a bit hollow. "You're actually taller than I am now."

Negi blinked, trying to reconcile the small girl always hiding behind Tatsumiya-san with the young woman in front of him.

"And you're wearing something other than rags." Mana smiled.

Kazuto opened his mouth, no doubt to defend the coat that really had been more holes than coat, but Negi cut him off before he could start.

"It's good to see you too, Tatsumiya-chan."

Mana blinked, before turning back to Negi with a slightly wistful look in her eye. "I see you're as polite as ever, Negi-san." She shook her head, expression fading into a professional blankness that was definitely familiar. "Let's get down to business."

XXX

Mana couldn't exactly say that she'd known either of them very well, even before the war had broken out.

She'd first met them when she was eight, separately. Negi had been one of the main reasons why Mana had chosen Tatsumiya as her last name. That she'd dared to choose it.

After the young mage had referred to her as if she'd been her Magister's daughter for the better part of a month, without the man ever correcting him, Mana hadn't really been able to muster up that constant gnawing worry about it anymore.

In that sense, she owed Negi quite a bit. Not that she was going to tell him that.

In contrast to the time she'd spent with Negi as a result of her Magister's work in the area, her introduction to Kirigaya-senpai had been through a series of very short encounters over the span of nearly two years.

Mana had met a lot of adventurers during her time in Mundus Magicus. It kind of came with the territory. And whilst most of them were friendly, few were quite so openly laid-back as Kirigaya-senpai.

The fact that he was also a close friend with Argo, the information-broker, had lead Mana to learn quite a lot of things from him. Main among them being the understanding that demanding payment for random and usually completely irrelevant things, could be a way to make friends.

If it also landed you with some extra coins in your pocket, then that just meant that you could take more naps and do less actual work.

Mana's Magister had made a very complicated face when Mana had first started to refer to him as 'senpai' because of these valuable life-lessons. And in hindsight, Mana was fairly certain that it was because Kirigaya-senpai wasn't the most appropriate of role-models for a young girl to have.

But in a way, that too was a valuable life-lesson.

She wasn't sure what had happened during the war. She'd heard that Kirigaya-senpai had joined the royal knights of Aincrad, and that Aincrad had been betrayed by their own king to the Cosmo Entelecheia. She didn't know how Negi and Kirigaya-senpai had actually met, or why they'd become friends, or how Aincrad had fallen, or what part the two of them had played during the war.

She supposed that the fact that they were both here, rather than off adventuring or dusting off old tomes in some ancient ruin, meant that whatever part they'd played had left its own share of scars on them.

Few people crawled out of a war-zone without a few scars. Internal or external.

XXX

Negi wasn't sure what he'd really expected from the class of 1-A, but they certainly delivered something.

Negi knew that he was attractive. It was hard to deny that, though it felt a bit arrogant to say it out loud. He also knew that he was only two years older than the students he was supposed to teach, and he'd guessed that they'd be rather excited to talk to him.

He hadn't anticipated the chaos.

Someone had set up traps for their new teacher to stumble into, and once Negi had disabled all of those, the girls started yelling out questions at him in a way that turned the whole exercise into nothing more than a wall of noise.

Negi was fairly certain he knew a few names, by the end of it. But – excepting Mana, who didn't count – the only ones he knew for sure was the class-president's, Ayaka.

Considering that there were thirty girls in the class, and that he'd tried his hardest to pay attention, it wasn't a fantastic start.

Thankfully, the book for the seating-arrangement also included both the picture and name of the person in question. So, with a bit of studying on his own, he should probably be able to learn the names within the week.

Not that he felt especially motivated to study, considering the headache he'd developed from the constant noise.

"Middle-schoolers are a vicious bunch, aren't they?" Kazuto grinned at him.

Negi very deliberately didn't drop his head to the table, because Kazuto had gone to the trouble of making tea for him, and he wasn't going to discourage that.

"Calling them 'vicious' is perhaps a bit too crude." Negi scolded halfheartedly, pulling his teacup closer.

"Uwaah, that bad, huh?" Kazuto shook his head. "Better you than me."

"For the sake of their ability to learn, certainly." Negi agreed.

There was a choked-sounding snort of laughter from Kazuto, as Negi once again brought up his previous lack of success with teaching anyone anything at all.

"Harsh, but fair."

XXX

A/n: This setting of having Negi show up at Mahora as a teenage-war-veteran of sorts has been lingering in my head for ages. However, this version was the one that came closest to being any kind of fic at all.

As you can see from the mentioned "genre", this was kind of intended to move into romance-territory. Mainly in the sense that all of Negi's students start shipping them pretty much immediately (because they're somewhat codependent after the war). It's hard to guess if either of them would actually figure that out or not, or if they'd even end up falling in love in the long run, but it exists in a sort of "will they or won't they"-limbo.

Understandably, without any kind of plot, and with a fuckton of trauma and Slow-Burn to deal with, this was never going to be an easy thing to write. But considering how I haven't written on this thing for a very long time now, I feel like it's best to just let it go.