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Story: [Ashikabi of Romance]
Summary: She doesn't want to be Winged by anyone else, he doesn't want the crazy lady to plant a wet one on him. It's a perfect match.
Crossover: (Harry Potter) / (Sekirei)
Genre: Romance, Drama, Humor
XXX
She'd been rejected.
She'd found the one, her destined one, her Ashikabi. And he'd rejected her. Ruthlessly, apathetically, without any interest whatsoever.
Sometimes, she wished he could've been gentle, other times she wished he'd been cruel. Anything except that complete lack of anything, as if she wasn't even worth feeling anything at all about.
Sometimes, she wanted to hate him. Sometimes she was entirely convinced that she did. Sometimes she would've done anything to convince him to Wing her. And other times she wasn't even sure if she even cared anymore.
Those times hurt the most, the times when she felt herself reflect that same horrifying apathy. But Miya kept trying to tell her that that was somehow part of the 'process of mourning', but none of the stories ever spoke of something like this. She would know, she'd read hundreds by now, possibly thousands. It felt as if her entire life rotated around those two things. Sappy romances, and booze.
Booze was nice. It sometimes even managed to convince her that she'd be able to forget her own misery for a moment or two. Unfortunately, it very rarely actually delivered on that. The traitorous bastard of a best friend that it'd become to her.
She'd been rejected, and her life seemed destined to spin out of control as she watched her previous passions flickering and dying.
She didn't want another Ashikabi, she wanted to continue to stew in her own misery, she wanted to continue to never care about anything ever again. Healing felt like betrayal, and she hated it, because there was nothing to betray.
So, when she stumbled through an alley and found a little boy huddling under what might generously classify as a makeshift shelter, her first thought went – somewhat ungenerously – along the lines of 'I'm glad I'm not the only miserable bastard around'.
Heartbroken she might be, stumbling through darkened alleys in the middle of the night she might be, probably well on her way into killing her liver into an early grave she might be – she wasn't sure if her being a Sekirei would make it give out faster or slower than a human's – but at least she had a roof over her head when she wasn't too drunk to make it there.
Feeling oddly cheered at being able to indulge in a bit of honest pity for another person, she continued on her way.
She wasn't going to get drunk enough to possibly-maybe forget by standing around looking at some tiny little street kid. Even if he looked like a foreigner.
XXX
Harry had seen a few drunks over the last few weeks. And whilst he generally tried to stay as far away from them as possible – he didn't know the language, and their speech generally turned a bit too slurred for him to have an even remotely accurate clue to their intents – he'd experienced both unusual generosity fueled by pity, and violence fueled by contempt.
Normally though, the only people who'd dress this scantily tended to be some variation of prostitutes. And whilst they could be just as unpredictable as anyone else one might meet on the street, she didn't have that half-pinched expression some of them had that made him think that they found his presence annoying.
So, even though she was both drunk and scantily clad, Harry guessed that it wasn't a horrible idea to simply keep to his makeshift shelter and try to get some sleep for the night. Regardless of if she was passed out right next to him.
It wasn't exactly a very gentlemanly decision – a gentleman should've probably tried to give her a blanket to keep her warm or something – but it wasn't as if Harry really had anything to be hospitable with. If he did, he wouldn't be huddling in a dark alley in the middle of a strange city, in a foreign country where he didn't speak the language.
Harry's last thought before finally falling asleep, was that he would've really liked to have a blanket.
XXX
When she woke up, she discovered that she'd apparently been too drunk to make it back to a place with a decent roof. This was a slightly annoying thing to realize, because asphalt wasn't a very soft thing to sleep on, and apparently it had decided to rain today, because she felt water-drops on her skin and it was altogether a pretty miserable state to wake up to.
Then she discovered that she actually recognized where she was, and felt a brief surge of elation at the possibility that she might be close enough to a place to stay that she could stumble there and continue sleeping for a few more hours. Before that hope was dashed as she remembered exactly why this particular alley was something she recognized.
The street kid was still there, huddled underneath newspapers and cardboard and whatever else that stuff was made from. It didn't smell as if it'd ever contained anything hazardous to anyone's health, but it was starting to give off the very distinct smell of wet paper. Of wet dissolving paper. And yeah, the kid was definitely shivering underneath it.
Oh wow, that was just all kinds of pitiful.
She would've probably felt more sympathy for the kid if she wasn't nursing a hangover. As it was, she could barely do more than give a guilty wince for feeling so sadistically satisfied that someone else was just as miserable as she was.
Shifting into an approximation of being upright, Kazehana tried to consider what to do from here.
She was fairly sure she knew the surroundings of the alley, so there shouldn't be a lot of issues with trying to stumble back to a place with a decent roof, except most of those places were far enough away that she'd either have to go at it by roof-hopping, or find a bus-station or something.
She checked her usual hiding spots for cash, and came to the – silently impressed – conclusion that she'd managed to drink up all of it last night. No wonder her head felt like it'd been stomped on by an elephant.
Trying to straighten further proved that she probably wasn't in any shape to go try jumping across roofs, unless she wanted to break both of her legs and go 'splat' on a side-walk.
Kazehana seriously considered doing just that for a good long moment, before deciding that her hangover wasn't nearly that bad. And besides that, how could she allow herself to die in such a ridiculously unromantic way? If she was going to kill herself, she'd do it in such a flamboyant way that that man wouldn't be able to help but remember her forever.
Anything less than that felt too much like crawling off to die in a ditch. And people weren't actually supposed to do that in proper stories, so Kazehana resigned herself to the inevitable. She was going to have to stumble back in the middle of the rain.
Rainy-season or no, Kazehana was entirely convinced that the sky was opening up on her just to be annoying.
XXX
Harry woke up to the sound of movement.
Instantly alert, Harry very carefully opened his eyes. It would be best to fake sleep if someone was trying to sneak up on him, that way he might have a chance to ambush the sneaking person, but it was also really important to have a good idea about what the hell was moving around next to him, because sometimes it was people who just wanted him to wake up and get the hell away from their property.
It was the woman from the night before. The one who dressed in what could only very charitably be called 'clothes', and had managed to pass out drunk in his alley. And now she'd apparently woken up.
Hopefully, she'd prove to be an-... if not a good person, then at least not an actively shitty one. He really didn't want to start off his day by getting into a fight with someone.
For one, he'd probably end up getting into trouble with the police, no matter how that fight played out, and – drunk though she might be – she was still bigger than him so she'd probably win.
Unless he-... Unless Harry did something that he most definitely didn't want to do.
It wasn't that hard to find a sharp and reasonably hand-sized object to keep on him, once he'd realized that he probably needed to look for one, and though he didn't even remotely want to end up having to use it, it would end up being used if he needed to do it. Life on the street had made him far too survival-oriented to simply roll over and play dead.
Harry briefly considered how to deal with the situation if it ever came to that, and went through the silent steps of it.
Don't get blood on your own clothes. Don't let the opponent scratch you with their fingernails. Don't let the opponent grab something of yours. Clean the weapon of fingerprints, using something that wasn't his own. Try not to touch anything. And then get the hell out of this corner of the city, without running.
It wasn't the kind of checklist he was happy that he had. But it was the kind of checklist that he felt unfortunately classified as a potential necessity.
XXX
Throwing one last glance at the sleeping kid, she squared her shoulders for the most-likely unpleasant attempt to stumble all the way back home through the rain.
She made a mental note – again, and she'd probably just end up forgetting it next time as well – to get a cab instead of trying to walk home. Even if hailing a cab tended to make half-drunk males a lot more willing to 'make sure she got home safely'.
Really, was it so hard to see that she was drinking her troubles away, not drinking in order to pick up a bed-partner? She would've thought that her enthusiasm for getting completely plastered in as little time as possible to at least be a bit of a clue.
She walked out of the alley in as straight of a line as she could manage.
XXX
Harry followed her path with a single open eye for a long moment, before he huddled together a bit tighter and allowed himself to slip back to sleep.
Strange lady or no, she walked as if she could take care of herself, and Harry wasn't really in any position to offer anyone help. Not when he himself was too busy clinging onto the survival-aspect of his current life.
Hopefully, in the morning it would've stopped raining, and he'd end up finding something filling to eat.
That would be nice.
XXX
Kazehana stared blearily at the little street kid that looked distinctly familiar to her hangover-dazed eyes.
She'd fallen asleep in an alley again. Though this one was a bit more sheltered from rain than the last one she'd met the kid in.
He also looked just as scrawny and pathetic as she remembered him, even if he'd somehow managed to acquire an actual blanket this time around. Albeit one that looked as if it'd seen better days, and years, and possibly decades.
He was still shivering though, which might be expected because even if it wasn't raining this time, it was still getting pretty damn chilly lately.
A part of her was surprised he'd managed to even survive this long. Another part chalked it up to him being better at getting food and shelter than what she'd actually managed to see of him. And a third part was feeling slightly peeved for some reason.
No, she knew why. The kid was barely clinging to life, desperate and pathetic to no end, but he wasn't pestering her or begging for help. He did his thing, and allowed her to continue to do her thing as long as she kept her distance.
It was almost as if he was the one who was 'better off' between the two of them. Him, barely surviving on the streets, and her, trying and generally failing to drink herself into a coma. At least she had enough money to spend on frivolities such as booze, so she should be better off, shouldn't she?
And yet... there was that niggling feeling that she wasn't. That she wasn't somehow luckier than him, that he was through some bizarre world-ranking system completely defeating her score. And, oh wow, she really must've been listening a bit too much to Matsu if those kinds of comparisons was starting to make so much sense to her.
But it annoyed her, the way that she felt as if she was losing to this pathetic-looking little kid.
Sure, she probably wasn't very high up on the list of 'lucky people', but she felt as if 'kid hobo' should still be below her. And yet, despite the high likelihood of him freezing to death come winter, she was faced with the frustrating doubt that she wasn't better off than him. That he was somehow free, even as he barely clung to life.
And for the first time in a long long while, Kazehana felt herself actually breaking out of her depression-related apathy for long enough to realize that she actively disliked this kid.
Briefly considering actually acting on that dislike, she hurriedly dismissed the thought. She disliked him, but she wasn't going to try to make him more miserable than he already was, that'd just be-... like kicking a puppy or something. A scrawny, half-starved, abandoned puppy.
She might've grown pretty apathetic to relationships and people over the years, but she wasn't some kind of sadistically cruel old hag. Not yet anyway, she wasn't going to be making any promises on that front, after all, she'd heard something about alcoholism turning people mean.
Sending a last glance towards the kid before making her way back to a place with a decent bed, Kazehana felt herself freeze.
Her heart was beating. Quickly, heavily, with intent. It was almost as if-... No, it definitely was-... But she didn't want to-... She'd already met her Ashikabi-...! She didn't want another-...! She didn't want to be reacting-...!
The wind was shifting, her heart was thundering in her ears, and the boy met her eyes with one single open one of his own.
Green, the lenses of his glasses had fractured at some point, multifaceted green, narrowed in suspicion, wary, beautiful green-...!
She wanted to kill him. She wanted to kill this person. She was reacting to him, but she didn't want to be Winged. And she hated him for that. She hated him with every bitter little corner of her heart.
Her body moved on its own, not paying any attention whatsoever to her mental turmoil.
She just needed to kiss him. Just once, on the lips, then she'd be Winged, then she'd have an Ashikabi who'd love her, who'd appreciate her, who'd say and do romantic things and whisper sweet nothings into her ear at night-... And her body completely rejected the sensible argument that all of that was clearly wishful thinking because the kid was probably just some shitty little street kid and this was most definitely not a good idea.
Then her bodies unstoppable advance came to a screeching halt. There was a loud noise, and then she fell on her butt, strangely overbalanced for some inexplicable reason.
Her cheek stung.
The kid blinked stupidly right back at her, and then his eyes widened and he grabbed his blanket and made to bolt for the alley entrance.
He'd hit her.
She'd been reacting to him, and instead of accepting her with open arms the way her body felt was only sensible that she would be, he'd hit her right in the face.
Kazehana stared numbly at the boy's retreating back.
Oh.
Oh it was on!
No way in hell was she going to let some scrawny little brat try to damage her amazing face and then just disappear. Oh hell no! She was going to grab him, and she was going to explain to him what an absolutely shitty life-choice he'd just made. In explicit detail.
It never occurred to her that her annoyance at the boy echoed louder in her hear than anything else had done for years, but if it had, she probably would've just grown even more annoyed about it.
XXX
After having spent the last half-hour strapped to a chair as the crazy lady ranted to him about 'harming a woman's face' and trying to lecture him on the finer points of 'being a gentleman', Harry came to the conclusion that his life was just plain bloody weird.
It didn't help that she'd kept one of his arms non-immobilized for the sake of punching her if she started trying to kiss him.
If she didn't want to kiss him, then she should bloody well stop trying. Also, his hand was starting to hurt, and her cheek was starting to swell in a way that would probably end up making this lecture even more over-the-top from the crazy lady's side of things. Though Harry wasn't sure if he should really be classifying the crazy lady's face as a 'woman's face'.
Almost as if she could read his mind, the crazy lady got a glimpse of herself in a mirror or something, and made a horrified sound.
Harry really hoped that this wouldn't mean that she'd try to tie up his free arm as well. He didn't want to be kissed by the crazy lady, and since she apparently couldn't control herself at all, he kind of really needed that arm.
XXX
Matsu stared at the crazy drunkard that was her former coworker.
She'd known that alcohol killed brain-cells, but this was a new level of insight into that theoretical fact. Kazehana had been a fairly reasonable individual back in the day, but she'd clearly gone completely around the bend at some point when Matsu hadn't been paying attention to her.
She wanted to ask what she was doing, but she didn't actually really want to know, and besides that, she was fairly sure that Kazehana had already given her both an 'explanation' as well as a 'reason' for what she was doing. It just didn't seem to connect at all to any kind of sensible argument whatsoever.
"Are you alright?" She turned her question towards the kid, who probably wasn't a crazy drunkard.
"My hand kind of hurts." He admitted, holding up his free hand. "But otherwise I'm fine."
"Ropes not too tight?" Matsu continued to ask, feeling so far removed from reality that she thought that she might be delving into her rudimentary knowledge of bondage and the various safety-checks that such things entailed.
"No, they're pretty okay." The kid admitted.
"Hungry? Thirsty?" Matsu tried again, not sure if she was hoping that he would say 'yes' to confirm Kazehana's craziness, or 'no' so that Matsu could return to her own room and never ever think about this moment ever again.
If anything, the kid looked amused. "We had pizza."
Considering just how scrawny the kid was, as well as Kazehana's mention of finding him on the street, Matsu came to the obvious conclusion that he was humoring the crazy lady because she was feeding him.
Deciding that this was likely illegal somehow anyway, Matsu quickly made her excuses for important things to do, and then went to have a chat with Miya about Kazehana completely losing it.
No way in hell was she going to allow Miya to consider her an accomplice to whatever crazy thing Kazehana was thinking up, and the best way to avoid that fate, was to tattle instantly.
XXX
Miya stared at the scene in front of her.
Kazehana was holding an ice-pack to her cheek in order combat the swelling, the child was trying to stifle yawns, and she had this incredibly bizarre and more than a bit disturbing feeling that the two of them were getting along fine.
Kazehana was being overly dramatic, reminding Miya more of the woman who was eagerly awaiting finding her Ashikabi, than the hollowly tired wreck of a Sekirei that she'd become after being rejected by that man. And the boy looked oddly content, as if today had been one of the first bright spots in his life for ages.
Even so, Miya had this distinct urge to shove the drunkard's head down the toilet. Not only because she'd apparently kidnapped some street child that she'd reacted to, but because this was just too weird.
Kazehana still hadn't been Winged, and was in fact trying to keep it that way despite how her body went off on its own with trying to get Winged. And the boy seemed pretty okay with not Winging her, even if it meant he had to endure lecture upon lecture about how one shouldn't go around damaging a woman's face.
Kazehana had always been a bit weird. No, actually, most of the original Discipline Squad had been weird. But Miya was still finding herself kind of shocked by just how strange this entire situation was. And it really wasn't made any better by the fact that everyone present in it seemed fairly at peace with it.
XXX
When he'd first been kidnapped, Harry had been worried. Then he'd mostly just thought that it was all very strange, and then he'd kind of decided to just roll with it.
Despite how dramatically the crazy lady ranted on about things at him, she didn't really seem angry at all, just kind of overly enthusiastic. And she'd fed him, and this place was warm.
He was actually warm for the first time in what felt like forever. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like.
Still, the situation was strange, and from what little Harry had manged to pick up, there was a lot of other strange things under the surface of it.
The crazy lady was instinctively trying to 'wing herself' by kissing him, but she didn't really want to be 'winged' so she was happy that he'd stopped her, even as she was offended that he would reject a kiss with such a 'gorgeous beauty as herself'.
A part of him wanted to say that he could've done without the lecturing, but it was actually kind of funny to hear the lady stumble between words that no native-speaker would ever consider trying to use in context. Though Harry was starting to suspect that the crazy lady had learnt English entirely from trashy romance novels.
Harry suppressed another yawn. He was getting kind of sleepy.
XXX
On behalf of keeping the child out of MBI's clutches, Miya reluctantly agreed not to call social services.
Then she spent the rest of the week staring in a kind of morbidly curious confusion at how the potential Ashikabi and Sekirei interacted.
Harry wasn't tied down anymore, and Kazehana had moved on to trying to spark his interest in various romantic movies and books, without much success. Harry also seemed to have grown quite fond of Kazehana, even if he still called her 'crazy lady' rather than by her name.
It was-... Miya kind of had the feeling that this was a lot like 'courting' would be like. Without the love-at-first-sight that the Winging-process tended to advertise, this felt more like they were happily growing closer to each other until such a time when they decided that a Winging ought to be performed.
Snorting at the irony of having the 'Sekirei of Romance' be the single Sekirei amongst the lot of them to completely dodge around the 'love at first sight' cliché, Miya shook her head.
Those two were just weird.
XXX
Minato would never understand Harry and Kazehana.
As far as he could understand it, they'd been something like friends for several months before he'd finally Winged her, or she'd accidentally Winged herself on him, Minato was unclear on the specifics. Regardless of how it'd happened, it apparently hadn't done anything at all to change their relationship.
Namely, they spent most of their time watching anime, yelling at each other about the plot and the romance and the characterizations, and in general being very peculiar.
Neither of them were paying any attention to the Sekirei Plan whatsoever, and had more than once been classified as 'on the level of Seo' in how productive they were being. Which was pretty harsh, but considering the way that they'd both laze about and watch television instead of either going to school or finding a job, it might not be all that untruthful.
In fact, they actually got along rather well with Seo, something which Miya time and again attempted to nip in the bud to her utmost abilities.
Matsu thought they were weird, and had refused to elaborate on the specifics behind how the two of them had met, beyond that it had been very awkward. Musubi didn't understand why they were both so interested in movies. Kusano often joined them whenever an anime was on, and usually listened curiously to some of the duo's more elaborate arguments. Tsukiumi was vaguely offended that they weren't taking the Sekirei Plan seriously at all. And Homura generally tried his-... her best to sleep through their arguments regardless of how loud they ended up getting.
So no, Minato didn't think he'd ever manage to understand Harry and Kazehana.
And he was pretty okay with that thought.
XXX
[Time passes]
XXX
Minerva felt her eye twitch as she stared at the scene in front of her.
Harry looked an awful lot like his father, and had apparently also inherited his penchant for pranking, if the black-haired woman's mood was anything to go by. But despite the familiar territory of that, she still had the distinct feeling that she was out of her depth for some bizarre reason.
"Only the first season was any good!" Harry yelled, dodging out of the woman's reach.
"Bah! The romance of the second season was much more developed!" The woman shouted back, twisting as her momentum made it difficult to turn to catch him again.
"ALO ruined the spirit of the original!" Harry continued, again slipping away from her grasp.
"It was Suguha's story!" The woman tried to use her leg to trip him. "Of course the spirit was different!"
"It was too cliché!" Harry argued, leaping over the extended leg.
"There's no such thing, you little brat!" The woman rather obviously took offense to that.
Minerva wondered what in the world they were arguing about.
"Oh my, you two wouldn't be making a mess with your roughhousing, would you?" The landlady peeked out from the doorway.
Both Harry and the woman froze in mid-motion, faces paling. "We'll clean it up!" They hurriedly assured her.
Miya smiled at them. "Well, that's good. And Harry-kun, you have a visitor." She motioned towards Minerva.
XXX
Hermione was a girl on a mission. Namely, to find a certain lost toad belonging to one of her future classmates.
However, despite this, she couldn't quite help but stop and stare.
There was a woman with long black hair and a positively outrageously revealing dress, who was arguing with a boy that looked to be Hermione's age. She wasn't entirely sure what they were arguing about though, because they only spoke English a bit of the time, half of it being spent in a language that her studious know-it-all tendencies labeled as 'Japanese'.
Even so, what she did understand still made no sense whatsoever.
Hermione frowned as she tried to focus a bit more, were they arguing about a book or something? A story? An interpretation of a story?
"It should've ended after the second season!" The boy yelled.
"But then Tabitha would never have gotten any screen-time!" The woman yelled back.
"A story doesn't need to explore each and every one of its characters! It just needs to be a good story! And that means knowing when to stop!" The boy declared passionately, dodging around the woman as she tried to pounce on him for saying such 'sacrilegious' things.
"You're just partial because the second season's finale made you cry!" The woman argued as she chased the boy around the cabin.
"That's the bloody point! An ending should make you want it to continue! Otherwise it won't live on inside of your heart!" The boy argued, scrambling across the seats in order to dance out of the woman's reach.
"As long as there are things left to explore, the viewer should be allowed to experience it!" The woman ruthlessly rejected his argument.
Hermione finally decided that she'd seen enough, and promptly closed the door – that neither arguing party had noticed that she'd opened in the first place – and then determinedly continued onwards.
Some things were simply too weird to waste time on contemplating.
XXX
A/n: Yeah, of course Kazehana and her story-watching Ashikabi go off on the exciting adventure into magic. Even if they're being completely ridiculous about it.
The stories they're arguing over are the two animes of "Sword Art Online" and "Zero no Tsukaima".
And yes, I've always been an advocate of stopping a story early rather than letting it ramble onwards indefinitely, so I guess Harry's sort of being my spokesperson on this subject. And that does indeed mean that the finale of ZnT's second season made my cry. Not just like a single manly tear either, it made me sob grossly for like twenty minutes straight. It was fucking amazing.