There was almost nothing positive to be said about the slums on the hills surrounding Academy City, with the possible exception of that item which formed the three most important factors in real estate - location. It could be fairly said that they afforded a truly unique view of the area, with perhaps the clearest possible line of sight towards the gigantic World Tree at the heart of the region and the great hill on which the pre-eminent school in the area had been built.
A girl was currently enjoying that view, pausing for a moment before turning a corner in her path across the narrow streets of the slums, which would slowly but surely heading down towards Academy City proper. She was slightly shorter than the average with a slim and athletic build, and quite tomboyish in appearance, yet still undeniably feminine. Her hair was short and black, with a single thin streak of read falling over her forehead. She was clothed in a practical, even plain, fashion, in a pair of running pants and an old open jacket over a white shirt, and a very large backpack.
After pondering the horizon ahead in silence, the girl started walking again, eventually crossing paths with a scrawny old lady who walked slowly and stiffly, splashing water around with a ladle, apparently to wash her path. The young woman didn't know and didn't care, as she easily avoided being splashed by the seemingly oblivious lady, both women going their separate ways, probably to never meet again.
Around the next block, following the wet path the old lady had left behind, the girl found an angrily squealing tiny black piglet sitting on top of a pile of black and yellow clothes, with a bandana loosely hanging around its neck. Blinking, she crouched down to pick it up, all to better look at what it had been sitting on. Along with the blouse and trousers, someone had left a backpack, and not only that, but an umbrella. Seeing how she currently didn't own an umbrella and could use one - the last few days producing a fair amount of rain - and since what one found tossed on the street was anyone's to take, she reached over to pick it up as well, ignoring how the pig seemed to grow even more frantic at that, kicking madly.
Much to her surprise, the umbrella was incredibly heavy, although not enough so she couldn't lift it single-handed. As she did so, the piglet seemed to fall into stunned silence. "Well," she said to herself, smiling, "looks like this day is off to a good start."
"That's our line, oneechan," a chuckling, raspy but squeaky voice said, and four little boys, none older than eleven, walked out the corners around her, surrounding her from all angles. They had their hands into their pockets, and their poses were those of snot nosed punks trying to act gangsta.
The girl sighed to herself. What a bother.
"Hand everything out, okay? And no funny stuff. We're this street here's Yakuza, and everything here is ours, didn'tcha know?"
"Nope. I didn't know." She coolly looked at the smallest, yet also cockiest of the children, who was actually leering up at her. "And what will happen if I don't want to play along?"
"Play? Play! Oh, you bitch, you're on! Guys, get her!" the brat yelled, his voice cracking in a way that was far from being imposing, as his partners in delinquency sprang up towards the girl ...
... who quickly spun around, swinging the heavy umbrella, whacking each of them in quick succession, and sending them flying and crying in all the directions they had originally come from. It was over in the blink of an eye, and then she lowered the umbrella, held the piglet closer to her chest, and smirked cockily at the now trembling and wide-eyed lead wannabe punk, whose nose was leaking a thick line of snot. "Well, just look at that. Who's next to be this bitch's bitch?"
He immediately fell to his hands and knees before her, prostrated in submission. "That, that, that was just a joke, Ma'am! We'd never dream of threatenin' or hurtin' a lady! 'Tis but a harmless gag we poor orphans pull off to liven up our tragic lives, for the amusement of tourists! Please god don't kill me."
Before she could react to that in any way, a short but reasonably busty and perky girl, older than the boy but younger than herself, appeared as though from nowhere. "Poor orphan? Who's a poor orphan now, Matarou?"
"Yikes! O-Oneechan!" he cried, even more scared and frantic now. "That, that was just part of the joke, see, we here was, I mean where, I mean-"
All of a sudden, the newly arrived girl was pulling on both his ears at once, tugging on them like taffy, as he wailed and the dark haired girl and piglet looked on, stunned. "Instead of wasting your time here, you should be in school, so you can earn a scholarship as well! Just think of what you're doing, and right before the sexy outsider we'll probably never see again and who couldn't possibly be fated to be my soulmate!"
The black haired girl blinked. "Uhhhh ... sorry, what was that last part?"
"I'll change, I'll change!" the little boy whined.
His sister perked up, looking down the road. "Oh, there's the bus! I'm going to miss it!" she said, tossing the boy aside before sprinting downhill, her legs replaced by cartoon swirls.
"The bus? There's a bus?" the other girl asked, picking the backpack destiny had no doubt saved for her and following the weird girl, the piglet clutching onto her for dear life despite her attempts to shake it off.
"Yeah, the bus up to Honnouji!" the short girl said, jumping up to plunge into the comically overcrowded bus that had briefly stopped there. The other young lady made her way in as well, pushing several assorted extras aside with her feet, and finding herself awkwardly pressed against the girl's front, both of them squeezed by the sweaty crowd, and smashing the gasping, nose-bleeding pig between their bodies. "Oh, you're going there as well? That's great, that's great! How do you do! My name is Mankanshoku Mako! I'd shake your hand, but I think my hand is on someone's ass!"
"I think it's on mine, actually."
"Ah, that would explain why it feels like such a nice ass!" Mako smiled, very wide and cutely, nodding like a blissed out fool.
"Thanks?" the newcomer awkwardly replied. "Um, I'm Matoi Ryuko, and I'm starting at Honnouji today, and ... could you can take your hand off my ass, please?
"Nope, too crowded."
"... well, could you at least stop squeezing?"
Mahou Sensei Negima Alter:
Anything That Burns
Inspired by OverMaster's Anything That Moves
Chapter Three: Ryuko
Mmm tough times they keep coming
All night laughing and fucking
Some days like I'm barely breathing
Then after we were high and the love dope died, it was you
Beautiful Trauma, by P!nk
Mako and Ryuko, on whose head now sat the black piglet, paused for a moment at the gates of the main Honnouji campus area, over which someone had hung a crucified short, chubby young man in nothing but white boxers and bruises. On his forehead, they had written 'SPY' in bold red characters. He stirred for a moment, smiled a loose-teeth smile, gave a weak thumbs up and gurgled "I'm alive!" before falling unconscious again.
Ryuko only blinked, staring up.
Mako shrugged. "He must have done something really bad. Hey, hey, do something funny!" she chirped, beginning to film the battered figure with her cellphone. "Maybe we can get you on 'World's Dumbest Videos'!"
"Okay," Ryuko said after a moment. "Then I guess my second question is, what's that all about?" She indicated the 'that' with a jerk of her thumb in the direction of the seared circle on the grounds just outside the gates, surrounded by a crowd of rubberneckers, who were staring at the two girls - one short and dark-haired, one taller and with hair of orange - who were lying on the ground in the middle of the circle.
As she spoke, the orange-haired girl apparently regained consciousness, rose up on her hips, and looked around. "No," she said. Abruptly she began pounding the pavement with one of her hands, head hanging in despair. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no!"
"Dunno," Mako admitted cheerfully. "But it's got nothing to do with us. See how the one with the rack is wearing a different uniform than I am? That's a Mahora High School uniform. It doesn't even rise to the level of a no-star. It's from one of those schools." She pointed down the hill.
"Riiight," replied Ryuko, filing away the term 'no-star' for later reference.
Mako grabbed Ryuko's wrist and started dragging her along behind her as she ran towards the school gate. "Now, hurry, we only have a little bit of time to get Ryuko to the office so that she can begin her first day here and cannot pause to get busy in a supply closet and oh that's right you should probably hide P-chan!" At this realization, she stopped dead in her tracks, almost throwing Ryuko off of her feet.
"P-chan?" Ryuko asked weakly.
"P-chan!" Mako confirmed, pointing at the black piglet on Ryuko's head.
"Bukii?" said the piglet, as though seeking to confirm this new-forged synonym.
"Oh," said Ryuko, who hadn't seen the point of naming the creature she was almost certainly going to end up eating. "Yeah, it'd be bad if this guy got confiscated, wouldn't it? Okay, in the bag you go, 'P-chan'. Don't mess things up in there, or ... hm. Kinda hard to come up with an effective threat under the circumstances." She shrugged as she closed the bag up, sealing the pig in stygian darkness.
"...bweee..."
Maybe fifteen minutes later, and, despite herself, faintly awed by how efficient Honnouji's transfer student process was, Ryuko found herself standing at the head of her new classroom, with her name written on the board. Beside her was a middle-aged teacher with messy blue hair and eyes that were covered by ray-bans that might have been fashionable twenty years ago, who was announcing her. And before her, in the sea of unfamiliar faces, was Mako, somehow managing to wave her hand in greeting and simultaneously point out the empty desk beside her.
After a moment or so of this, the teacher turned to look at Ryuko. "Are, uh, you and Mankanshoku already acquainted?"
"I guess you could say that," Ryuko admitted. This must be karma for how I treated Akko towards the end, she thought as she walked toward the empty desk, took off her bag and set it down on the floor - which shook slightly under the weight - and took her seat.
Beside her, Mako flashed a thumbs up, then set up her text in such a way as to block the teacher's view of the way that she was eating her lunch. Ryuko found herself vaguely wondering why the other girl was eating lunch this early, but as long as she was doing that, she wasn't flirting with Ryuko. So, good times all around.
"All right, let's resume Contemporary History," announced the teacher. "As we all know, no one is quite sure what year it is exactly. Our best guess is that it is the year 2015 of the common era, but we could be off by about five years in either direction. Hence the reason some people use the imaginary number 20XX to represent the year."
Right, this was nothing Ryuko hadn't heard a zillion times before. She could safely ignore it, and start working on her plans.
"It was roughly fifty years ago that the Historical Source Divergence was discovered, in which various media reported fundamentally similar versions of the same event as having happened on different official dates, each with physical evidence to confirm their data," he continued to lecture. "To this day, no one has proposed an explanation for the phenomenon."
Bringing this place to its knees was not going to be easy, but it was, Ryuko thought, going to be fun.
Suzushiro Haruka was not having a good day. Truth be told, she couldn't really point to something she considered a good day in the last three years of her life, and sometimes felt a bit of concern that she wouldn't recognize one if it actually happened to her. (Well, Yukino would probably be there when it happened, and be able to point it out to her, so that wasn't really a major concern.) But she could recognize a day that was the exact opposite of good, and weird and inexplicable phenomena headed the list of things that created such a day as this.
"Explain yourself," she demanded of the younger woman sitting before her desk.
"I'm sorry, sempai," said Tokiha Mai without looking up at her. "My memories of the last day or so are very muddled and confused, so I can't offer any explanations."
Somehow, Haruka knew the girl was lying. "You appeared on campus in the company of an unregistered individual. You vandalized school property. You presented yourself in a way as to inflame and pollute the innocent minds of the students here. On top of all that, you brought a weapon onto campus!" She pointed in the direction of the jet black greatsword that had been found in the circle with the two girls. To her annoyance, Tokiha didn't even bother to glance in the thing's direction. "And you can't explain any of this."
"My memories of the last day or so are very muddled and confused," Tokiha repeated.
On the one hand, Haruka was aware that she was probably overreacting to the presence of the sword, after yesterday's fun with Saotome. The way that she was treating Tokiha was thus not particularly fair. Fortunately, or something like fortunately, fairness was no longer part of the code of behavior she was sworn to uphold. On the other hand, she knew that the girl was lying, that she knew much more than she was saying about whatever had happened. Surely the truth, whatever it was, couldn't possibly be less in her interest than this feigned amnesia.
As Haruka momentarily lost herself in contemplation of this, Tokiha took a moment to look up and examine the Detention interrogation room where she and Haruka were presently ensconsced. "Um, given the horrific nature of my crimes, shouldn't the student council be supervising this ... interview?" she asked.
Haruka's eyebrows went up. Well, someone has a high opinion of themselves. "While your sins are indeed crimson, they are not yet enough to bring you to the attention of President Kiryuuin and her inner circle."
"... Kiryuuin?" the other girl repeated as though the name was unfamiliar.
"Yes, Kiryuuin Satsuki, president of the Academy City Joint Student Council. Did you do no research before coming here, or has that vanished into anesthesia as well?"
"I guess the latter. I think. Do you mean amnesia?" she asked, meeting Haruka's eyes for the first time.
Dammit dammit dammit dammit dammit! Haruka thought. "Yes, that is what I said. Perhaps you misheard," she said aloud.
"Maybe," Tokiha agreed vaguely.
The door to the room slid open behind Haruka, and she saw Tokiha's eyes dart in that direction, then look somewhat disappointed and confused. Haruka looked over her shoulder to see that it was one of her Executives, just as he announced, "Someone's here to visit the accused."
At that point, a young boy with reddish hair rushed past him, calling out "Oneechan!" as he did.
"Takumi!" Tokiha exclaimed as she got to her feet, embracing him as he ran to her, in the process showing the most genuine emotion Haruka had yet seen from the other girl.
Haruka was not heartless. Under the circumstances, she was willing to step back and let these two siblings have their reunion. She was, however, paying attention to what they said.
"You were scared, I understand. I'm sorry," Tokiha murmured.
"When we got separated after the train derailed, I was so worried that you might be -" the boy started to explain.
"Train?" Tokiha asked. "Not a ship?"
"Ship?" Takumi asked in turn. "Oneechan, we're miles away from the coast. Why would we be on a ship?"
"... I'm sorry, Takumi. My memories of the last day or so are very muddled and confused," she told him after a moment.
Okay, so much for the idea that she'd be more forthright with him, Haruka thought. She coughed to remind them of her presence. "All right, Tokiha Mai-san, under the circumstances, I cannot clear you to attend classes at this point. I am ordering you to be taken to the infirmary for a complete medical examination. I presume you have no objections?"
"No, sempai," the girl said, surprisingly meekly. "Um ... can Takumi come with me?"
"Your brother can go with you to the felicity, but then he has to get back to his own classes," Haruka dictated. "Bayushi -" she said to the Executive hovering at the door.
"It's Kobayashi, sir."
"Whatever. You're their escort."
Eventually, class let out, and Ryuko headed out into the hallways to start exploring, in particular hoping to find out where the bathrooms were. Before she could get very far in that, however -
"Ryuuuuuko-chan!" cried the very swiftly moving object that shot down the hallway toward her.
A moment later, Mako was lying on the floor a few feet ahead of Ryuko's position, and slowly turned to look up at her with a faintly reproachful look. "Why did you dodge?" she asked.
"Who wouldn't dodge?" Ryuko asked in turn.
"Someone who wanted a hug," Mako answered.
That threw Ryuko a little. "Ah ... well ... I ..." She paused, took a breath, then continued. "Look, I get that you want to be friends."
Mako nodded vigorously, since that was in fact a sequent of the relationship she actually desired.
"In that case, maybe you can help me out."
"I would be happy to help you pick out a uniform at the school store," Mako enthused, seeing enough change room opportunities as to make her head spin a little. "It will only be a no-star, of course."
"No, not that," Ryuko said disgustedly. "... well, actually, now that you mention it, could you explain this whole 'no-star' business?"
A few moments later, having learned more than she really wanted to know about the various grades of super-powered uniforms that were distributed to certain members of Honnouji's student body - and apparently to a handful of students at those other schools who performed useful tasks - and finding herself not sure how much of it she believed, considering the source, Ryuko sought to change the subject. "Okay, right. So I'm assuming that the person who hands out these three-star uniforms would pretty much be the top dog of this school?"
As they'd spoken, they'd peregrinated out through the front doors of the school building to the commons in front of it, where a large number of students were presently gathered in two long lines.
"Oh, yes, she's a terrible person, and YIKES! Bow, Ryuko-chan, bow!" Mako urged and simultaneously pushed Ryuko to assume a position of respect similar to that adopted by the two lines of students.
"Why am I bowing?" Ryuko asked after a moment.
Mako silently jerked her head towards the far end of the lines. Ryuko looked in that direction to see a remarkably tall, dark-skinned, blond young man walking briskly down the corridor formed by the lines of students. She noted that he had three black stars on the chest of his uniform, as well as spikes on his shoulders, gauntlets and boots. "Okay," she said after a moment, once he'd passed where the two of them were standing. "And this would be?"
"Gamagori Ira, the head of the disciplinary committee!" Mako hissed. "One of the personal adjutants of oh my god there she is."
Descending from cloud-enshrouded stairs was a woman in a white uniform that, interestingly, included leggings. Also interestingly, her eyes were closed, as though suggesting that she knew the route she was walking so well that she didn't need to see it.
"The student council president?" Ryuko guessed.
"Kiryuuin Satsuki-sama!" Mako confirmed.
"Thanks," said Ryuko, and stood up.
"What?" Mako said, looking up at her. "Ryuko-chan, what are you doing?"
"I'll think I'm gonna have a little chat with her."
"No. No, this is a terrible idea. This is the sort of idea that will either get you killed or result in you dating someone else. Ryuko-chan -"
"Oi, twinkle-toes!" Ryuko said as she stepped out into the middle of the corridor. "Got a few questions for you!"
Now the tall woman's eyes opened, and she looked down at the person who was addressing her. Yet she remained utterly silent.
A number of the students surrounding Ryuko took it on themselves to speak for her, however. "You wench, how dare you insult Satsuki-sama!" they chorused as they jumped Ryuko - who, with a few kicks, elbow strikes, and backhands, sent them flying back. With that out of the way, she drew forth a red sword from her backpack.
No, not a sword - half of a pair of scissors.
Satsuki blinked.
"I'm looking for the owner of the other half of this pair of scissors!" Ryuko declared. "You've seen them before, haven't you!"
What is this feeling, so sudden and new, that I felt the moment I laid eyes on her? thought Satsuki. Aloud, she simply said, "What of it?"
Ryuko's jaw clenched. My pulse is rushing. My head is reeling. My face is flushing. "It's you, isn't it. You're the one who owns the other half!"
In the picosecond before Ryuko charged, both women would have been surprised to realize that they were thinking the same thing. What is this feeling? Fervid as flame, does it have a name? And that the same flash of realization illuminated both their minds. Yes!
Loathing!
At the distant sound of a what must be a loud boom, Mai lifted her head from her pillow and looked out the infirmary window in mild confusion. When no blast wave swept across her field of view, however, she settled down again. She still had no idea what that was all about, but it wasn't a direct threat. Probably.
Upon arriving at the infirmary, Dr. Sagisawa had given her a brief examination, paying particular attention to her eyes, and asked her a number of searching questions - some of which she couldn't answer, as her memories of the last day or so were very muddled and confused. Mai suspected that this wasn't actually fooling the doctor, any more than it had fooled Suzushiro, but the doctor hadn't questioned it, only asking Mai to remain until evening for observation ... and possibly come back for a psychiatric evaluation later in the week. Mai found herself all right with the first part of that. The second part was not going to happen.
Despite all the time she'd spent visiting people in hospitals over the years, Mai had never really been in one herself, and was somewhat unprepared for how boring it could be. On the other hand, boring experiences were not without their own charm, under the circumstances. Still, her eyes kept being drawn to the curtained off area of the infirmary, where - so the doctor had been kind enough to tell her - the 'other girl' who'd 'arrived' with her was still unconscious. The temptation to go over there and -
The door to the infirmary slid open, and Mai quickly looked away from the curtains, gazing patiently upward at the ceiling instead. No, perhaps she should feign sleep. Drat, too late now, she realized as footsteps approached her bedside, and she turned to look.
Standing there were a tiny boy with red hair and glasses, in a suit that would have suited a grown man better, and a taller girl with dark brown hair held back by an orange ribbon and a disgusted look on her face. "Hello," said the boy. "Are you Tokiha Mai-san?"
"Yyyyyes," Mai replied hesitantly. What was this?
The boy smiled up at the girl, who let out a deep sigh, before speaking up. "I'm Suzumiya Haruhi, dic- ahem, president of the SOS Brigade, a club which seeks out aliens, time travellers, espers and sliders. We're interested in discussing the possibility that you were abducted by aliens."
Mai blinked a few times. "Sliders?" she repeated.
"Sliders," Haruhi confirmed ... without providing anything in the way of the explanation and definition that Mai had been seeking.
"Okay," said Mai. "Um ... what makes you think I was abducted by aliens?"
"I don't," Haruhi answered briskly.
"Haruhi-san," the boy said sweetly.
"However," she continued, with obvious reluctance, "the fact that you mysteriously disappeared from last night's train derailment and then mysteriously reappeared here on campus, and supposedly in a circle of burnt ashes, could possibly suggest that something ... vaguely ... mysterious is going on. And that's the sort of thing we're supposed to seek out. So here I am. Would you be interested in joining the club?" Haruhi concluded.
From the way she phrased that last question, it was fairly clear (to Mai at least) that the other girl was hoping the answer would be no. And anyway, Mai wasn't going to have time for clubs, she had to work -
- and work and work and work and work diligently and work endlessly and work unceasingly and work my fingers to the bone and the bone to dust and the dust to -
"I'd be happy to join," Mai heard herself saying. "But I'm afraid that my memories of the last day or so are very muddled and confused, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to answer any of your questions."
"That's all right," the boy told her. "That's fairly typical in cases of alien abduction, isn't it, Haruhi-san?"
"Yeah, sure, whatever," said Haruhi as she handed Mai a membership form.
"I do have one question, though," said Mai as she looked at the boy. "Who are you, exactly?"
"Oh, my apologies, I should have introduced myself sooner. I'm Negi Springfield, the club's faculty adviser," he told her, smiling warmly.
"... no, seriously, who are you?"
His smile got a little frayed. "Seriously, I teach English at Mahora Girls Middle School."
"... you're a dwarf, right? I'm mistaking you for a child."
"No, I don't have short stature. I'm ten years old."
Mai stared at him for a few moments, then looked up at Haruhi. Try though she might, though, Mai was unable to find anything to say. So instead she just waved the membership form and nodded politely in Haruhi's general direction.
"Yeah, I get that a lot," said Haruhi, rolling her eyes. "See you on Monday. Or not."
"Haruhi-san," Negi chided her as they turned to leave the infirmary.
"Well, she might still be sick," said the girl as the door slid closed behind them.
Yes, I might be, at that, Mai thought to herself, and looked at the curtained off area once more. She got up out of bed and walked over, slid the curtains to one side.
The girl in the bed looked so small there. Mai let out a long, shuddering breath. "Train derailment, huh?" she asked, very softly. "Then I probably didn't give you mouth-to-mouth. Then we probably haven't ... oh, Mikoto. My most important person." She leaned down to the bed and pressed her lips to the other girl's, holding the kiss for what felt like a long time.
When she drew back, the girl's cat-like, yellow eyes were open.
Mai's heart stopped.
No movement. No reaction. Just a stare.
Hoping against hope, Mai found the strength to ask, "Mikoto, do you know who I am? Do you remember me?"
"The girl from the train," Mikoto said after a moment.
Mai's heart sank. Before she could say anything else, Mikoto sat up in bed - and then bolted out the window beside her bed.
"Oh no," Mai groaned. "Not this again."
"All right," Negi said abruptly, as he walked beside Haruhi down the path leading from the infirmary back to Mahora High School. "From the way you haven't said anything since we left Tokiha-san, I think you might be a bit upset. Would it be all right if I asked why?"
Haruhi, who had been marching at full steam, came to a sudden stop. So did Negi. She didn't turn to look at him, however, nor did she speak for a moment. "Sensei," she said at last, in a tone of great patience, "I think I might have given you the wrong idea about what the SOS Brigade is supposed to be about."
Negi frowned. "You told me that it was to search for aliens, espers, time travellers, and ... um."
"Sliders," she supplied, much less patiently. "Sliders. Persons who travel between various parallel realities as predicted by the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics or other multiverse hypotheses. Swear to god, this is not that hard to remember!"
"All right, I'll remember next time," Negi attempted to reassure her.
"Thank you, I would appreciate that," Haruhi replied through clenched teeth. "But, sensei, I don't think you quite understand. The purpose of the club isn't to find people who've ... met aliens, espers, time travellers or sliders, like Tokiha supposedly did. It's to meet those strange phenomena. In person."
"I'm afraid I don't follow," Negi admitted.
Suzumiya Haruhi took a deep breath. "When I was in sixth grade, my whole family and I went to watch a baseball game. I didn't care about baseball ... but when we got to the stadium, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There were so many people. More people than I could count, more people than I could see. I found out later that the stadium could have seated up to 50,000 people, and that it was only about one fifth full, that day. And that however many people there had been, that was just a tiny portion of the fifty million people in Japan. Which is only a tiny portion of the four billion people on Earth. I realized just how small and insignificant and ... normal ... I actually was. If there was anything strange and wondrous happening in the world, it was not happening to me. That's why I want to find these things, sensei. Because if I find them, they've found me, and then I'll know that I'm special." She fell silent, then.
After a moment, however, she was moved to speak up. "Sensei, shouldn't you be chiming in with some platitude about how we're all special, right about now?"
When he still didn't reply, she looked down at the empty space where he'd been standing a moment ago with a perplexed expression. Her head lifted up, and whirled around to look in all directions as a maniacal grin grew on her face. "Aliens!" she cooed.
"Why was she ranting about population numbers, anyway?" asked Sawada Mio.
"It's probably better not to try to understand the very weird," Momioka Risa told her best friend. She smiled down at Negi as the she and Mio, holding the small boy in between them, quickly and silently sped away from where Haruhi was still standing in total self-absorption. "Aren't you glad we rescued you from that crazy person, Negi-kun?"
"Well," he said, a bit hesitantly, "I did want to see you again, Risa, so I guess this is a good thing, although -"
Risa's face went blissful as she interrupted. "I know, I haven't been able to think about anything other than those magic moments, either. So when Mio and I chanced upon you and Suzumiya, I knew we had to save you for our own twisted purposes."
"Indeed," said Negi, and turned to look at his other abductor. "And you would be Mio."
The girl with hair just a shade darker than Haruhi's, but done up in two pig tails, and wearing a pair of glasses, smiled and nodded. "Sawada Mio, best friend to Momioka Risa!"
"We share everything," Risa cooed in Negi's ear. "Every. Thing."
"Ah," Negi said.
Moments later he was flat on his back on the floor of an abandoned music room, with his pants around his ankles, his jacket under his rear end, and his shirt pulled up to his nipples. Said nipples were being enthusiastically thumbed by Risa, mounted on his mouth, while his erection was pulsing in and out of Mio's cleft.
"Holy shit!" cried Mio, as her hips rocked back and forth. "Ho-li-shi-to! I thought you were kidding!"
"I wasn't!" replied Risa. "And you know what? You know? I'm getting the better part of this!" As though to soothe whatever hurt feelings might possibly have been provoked by this statement, she darted forward to kiss her partner deeply, and apply some of the same treatment she'd been handing out to Negi's nipples to Mio's own.
Several orgasms later, with Negi lying a bit wearily between the two girls and his no-longer hot white cum dripping from them both, Mio brought a bit of said semen up to mouth and licked at it, a bit like a cat. "I don't normally let boys do this, you know? Next time you should really wear a condom, Negi-kun."
Risa's laughter cut off Negi's response to that suggestion. "Miooo. He's like twelve. At that age he's shooting blanks!"
Negi decided to correct the larger of Risa's misapprehensions first. "No, that's not right, I'm fecund."
"Sorry?"
"I'm capable of reproduction."
She looked a little startled. "Oh. Uh, well, no big, we're both on the pill."
Now Negi looked a little startled. "I thought birth control medication was illegal in Japan." There'd been a movement to change that before Second Impact, but the damage, the continuing decline of Japan's birth rate, and the hardline moral stance of the Yagami government had ensured it never got any traction.
"Well, yeah, it is, but you know, it's sort of illegal to have sex with teachers, too," Risa explained. "Not terribly bothered by some kinds of illegality are we, is what I'm saying. Basically, we've got a source."
"I see. You know, Risa, I have some friends I'd like to introduce to you, and you to them, and I'm fairly sure that they'd like to have access to that source, too," Negi told her. "Do you think you could help arrange that?"
In a sane world, Sanageyama Uzu knew, this wouldn't be happening. In a sane world, they would be seated comfortably in their headquarters, bantering about the afternoon's events and delivering a tongue lashing to Fukuroda while making plans for what to do next. Instead, they were - admittedly - seated comfortably in a row of chairs behind the chair where Satsuki-sama was seated, in the principal's office, and listening to a tongue lashing being delivered to Fukuroda while studiously keeping their mouths shut.
Finally, the tongue lashing was delivered, and Fukuroda was permitted to walk - well, actually crawl backwards - out of the principal's office after having heard dire threats made to his manhood if he screwed up a second time. Sanageyama found himself clenching his chair's armrest. Had he been the one making those threats to his subordinate - which Fukuroda was, as captain of the boxing team - it would have been one thing. He would have later offered words of encouragement when it came time for Fukuroda to be actually put to the test. That was how things worked. Stick and carrot, not too much of one or the other.
In a sane world, the Elite Four and their Lady would not be answering to the principal of Honnoji Academy.
The principal of Honnoji Academy, Morimoto Reina, took a long sip of a cup of coffee from her desk, then set it down again. "So, I have a few questions that I hope you won't mind answering, Kiryuuin," the tall, bottle blonde began quite calmly, considering the torrent of abuse she'd just unleashed on Fukuroda. She leaned forward in a way that should probably have threatened to spill her full breasts out of the incredibly low-cut blouse she was wearing. "First of all, about this Matoi Ryuko girl, the one with the sword. Ah, no, the scissors. What exactly are those scissors?"
"Those are a special weapon designed to combat Goku uniforms, half of which is currently in my family's possession, and half of which, of course, is in the transfer student Matoi's possession," Satsuki-sama quietly and calmly replied. Her long black hair would have been a complete contrast to the golden locks of the principal ... except that Sanageyama had seen what his master's hair contrasted with, and there was no real comparison.
"Ah, I see. And how came a transfer student from Buttfuck Nowhere Academy to possess such a device?" The principal's charming tone had not changed.
To his side, Sanageyama heard Gamagoori cough uncomfortably.
"As yet, this remains something of a mystery," Satsuki-sama admitted. "One of several, in fact, that I hope to address once Matoi is captured and interrogated, and the scissor blade returned to its proper place."
"Right. Moving on then, tooooo -" Morimoto checked one of the pieces of paper presently decorating her desk. "Mankanshoku Mako, who was also involved in this episode. Hm. That's a name I've heard before. Yes, I think I may actually have discussed her with you in the past, Kiryuuin. Well! Isn't it a small world. Tell me, please, why isn't she decorating a crucifix?"
"Gamagori," Satsuki-sama said quietly.
"Madam Principal!" the Disciplinary Chair barked. "All witnesses to the affair agree that Mankanshoku took no part in Matoi's disgraceful insults and assault on Satsuki-sama! Many further attest that she attempted to dissuade Matoi from that course of action! Under the circumstances, it is reasonable to conclude that -"
"Ira-kun," interjected the principal, smiling warmly. "Could you remind me please - are students here considered innocent until proven guilty? Or is it the other way around?"
"It is the other way around, Madam Principal! However, the evidence we have discovered - "
"Did you look hard for that evidence?" asked the principal, still smiling. "If so, why?"
Gamagori didn't seem capable of answering the question for some reason.
Thus Satsuki-sama chose to speak for him. "It is my considered opinion, Principal Morimoto, that Mankanshoku will serve the interests of this school best as bait to draw Matoi back to the academy so that we can capture her sooner, as part of the plan that Captain Fukuroda already outlined. Specifically as live bait."
"I think you are overestimating this Matoi girl's cleverness," Morimoto replied, with more than a bit of a sniff in her words. "You could use any reasonably similarly proportioned girl in a disguise for that purpose, while nailing the actual Mankanshoku's hands to the boards and slitting her throat, for good measure."
"Your opinion is noted," Satsuki-sama said.
A long silence fell in the principal's office.
"You do remember why we discussed Mankanshoku in the past, Kiryuuin?" the principal asked eventually. "What she represents? How she's a stain on your perfect society and on my balance sheets?"
"I remember," Satsuki-sama replied. "And I remember that we agreed that, at an appropriate time, her presence at Honnoji would be re-evaluated. This is not the appropriate time."
"Then wh-"
"Perhaps, if you disagree, you should take it up with my mother," said Kiryuuin Satsuki.
Slowly, the principal leaned back into her chair. "Well, there's no need to go that far. I look forward to seeing how your plans work out, Kiryuuin."
"Yes. In that case, please excuse us, as there are a number of preparations to be made." Satsuki-sama rose, and, perhaps a second or so later, the Elite Four rose up behind her. The Four (but not Satsuki) bowed in unison, and then departed the principal's office, with Sanageyama the last one out of the room. As such, he was in the unique position to see a small smile on the principal's face.
He was familiar with all manner of sports, and thus knew that sometimes, to win, one had to seem to lose. Somehow, the principal had done just that.
In a sane world, this wouldn't be happening.
"Okay," Jakuzure Nonon finally spoke up when they were a few minutes out from the principal's office, their lady leading them down the hallways of the administrative building. "Could someone please explain to me what the bureaucrat's deal with the underachiever is?"
Without looking back, Satsuki-sama replied. "Inumuta. Explain the scholarship situation for Jakuzure's benefit."
Inumuta Houka adjusted the lenses of his glasses with one hand. "Yes, Satsuki-sama. Three years ago, when Honnoji Academy was established, a number of scholarships were offered to the children of local politicians, tradesmen, and physicians - among the latter to be numbered one Mankanshoku Barazo, whose only daughter is Mankanshoku Mako. At the start of the current school year, however, when Principal Morimoto took office as Honnoji's principal, an effort has begun to ... persuade, and if not persuade then force, these scholarship students to explore other academic options. Mankanshoku is the only one remaining."
"... well, sucks to be her, then," commented Jakuzure after a moment.
"Indeed," said Satsuki-sama as they arrived at the Student Council President's office. "Thank you all, but now I require an interval of privacy," she said, once again, without looking back.
"Uh ... but we still have to go over -" Sanageyama started to say.
"I require an interval of privacy," their master said, now looking slightly over her shoulder ... not quite enough to fix one of those eyes on any of them, but enough to give the suggestion that she could do so at any moment.
"Of course, Satsuki-sama!" declared Gamagori.
She nodded, opened the door, stepped through, and closed it behind her. For the next few moments, the four of them stood there, listening to the sounds of several locking mechanisms being engaged.
"This is your fault," chorused Gamagori, Sanageyama and Jakuzure once that was done, as they stood glaring at each other.
"Rather than waste time finding fault, let us use the time Satsuki-sama has graciously granted us to demonstrate that we can, in fact, work on our plans without needing her constant supervision," suggested Inumuta through clenched teeth.
Sanageyama and Gamagori looked unhappy about that, but, after another exchange of glares, they marched off together down the hall. Inumuta patiently gestured for Jakuzure to follow.
She chose instead to look at him angrily. "You know what she's doing in there, don't you?"
"No I don't," he answered her firmly. "And neither do you. Do not get above yourself."
"All right," said Mai to herself as she set out. "At least this time, I know where she's going to end up, so I don't have to chase her half way across campus."
It didn't take her very long to realize how horribly wrong she was. The bigger problem, which she had realized either of the times that she was marched across campus that morning, was that this wasn't the school she'd come to know. At all. But the implications of that hadn't really hit home until right this moment. Heading to the fountain where she'd finally found Mikoto quenching her thirst was not going to work, because it seemed pretty likely that said fountain didn't exist in their current reality. And, frankly, none of the fountains that did exist seemed like the sort of places Mikoto would drink from.
It was a Saturday afternoon, so the students she saw were those engaged in club activities. The overwhelming majority were unfamiliar to her, with a handful of faces who fit in her memories. She almost tripped and fell as she caught sight of a henna-haired girl in the Mahora middle school uniform, sitting on a bench and thoroughly engrossed in her cell phone, while an even younger girl was seated beside her eating a popsicle. Despite everything that the sight of Yuuki Nao implied, Mai found herself faintly relieved.
Takumi is here. Mikoto is here. Nao is here, she recited to herself as she walked, somehow managing to keep alert for Mikoto-sign while engaged in her internal tally. Suzushiro is here. Sagisawa-sensei is here. If Mikoto and I were in a fight last night, then Natsuki has to be here. Fujino ... Fujino isn't the president, but she has to be here. Doesn't she? Yes, of course, if Natsuki's here, then Fujino's here.
If Natsuki's here.
She decided to focus on the more immediate challenge confronting her as the paved path she was walking led her up over a small hill, which gave her an excellent vantage point of a disaster. Mai found herself looking at the putrefying remains of a vast flower garden, surrounding a semi-collapsed, graffiti-covered gazebo. The sight nearly knocked the air out of her lungs. Mere minutes earlier, she'd been thinking that she wouldn't find any familiar landmarks. Now she'd found one, and almost wished that she hadn't.
"What happened here?" she asked involuntarily.
"A few years ago, the Kazahana Financial Group endowed a park here in Academy City," a familiar voice spoke from behind her. Mai controlled her urge to jump and scream with some difficulty. "Unfortunately, the funds intended to maintain the park were ... used elsewhere." By this point, Mai was fairly sure that nothing of what she was feeling would show on her face, so she slowly turned to look at the petite, lavender-haired girl in the wheelchair who was addressing her, and the taller, pink-haired maid who stood behind the wheelchair in silence.
"I come here, now and again, to contemplate how fragile our best intentions can be," Kazahana Mashiro continued. "I suppose that's the best moral to take away from all this. Other than don't embezzle, of course." She smiled warmly, then. "Good afternoon."
"Good afternoon," Mai replied, awkwardly. "Sorry about your park." The words came out before she could retract them.
"... as we are both students here, it would be no less your park than mine, but thank you all the same," Mashiro replied with a nod. "I take it that my reputation proceeds me?"
"Uh, yeah. I mean, I know that you're the Kazahana heir. I didn't realize you were a student, though," Mai continued to engage in verbal diarrhea. "You're not ... in a uniform. I mean."
"Well, yes, I'm a student at St. Lulim, over in the next sector. They're a bit relaxed about dress codes," the young girl said, as though confiding a great secret.
All right. Whoever this was, it definitely wasn't the secretive and manipulative Director Kazahana Mai had come to know. Unless she was a much better actress, in the bargain. If it had been the Mashiro she'd known, Mai might have considered confiding her secret to her, in hopes that Mashiro - who'd been one of the best-informed people Mai knew - might have some sort of secret knowledge that could put things to rights, but there was no point in troubling this child with Mai's bizarre problem. "Um, I don't suppose you saw a cat running around?" she asked with a half-hearted smile.
"No, I can't say that I have. Fumi?"
"No, mistress," the maid answered. "Fumi did see a young woman running around on all fours in a way that was reminiscent of a cat, however. She was headed in that general direction." Fumi helpfully pointed.
"... seriously?" Mai asked, smile thoroughly collapsed.
"Excuse me?"
"No, sorry, never mind. Have a nice day, both of you," she said, then turned and started to jog in the direction indicated.
Mashiro and Fumi stood a moment watching her.
"Isn't she great?" asked a voice coming from atop the gazebo's rooftop.
Maid and mistress exchanged a rather frustrated look, before Mashiro turned her attention to the white-haired apparently young apparently boy sitting on said rooftop and looking at Mai's retreating rear with a gaze that could only be called salacious.
"The last of the HiME. And she's already halfway around the bend!" he cheered. "But oh, if you could see the way the way that she's dancing, even now - this is going to be such a great Carnival."
"Nagi-san," said Mashiro, in the polite tones one used to address one's deadliest enemies. "Are you familiar with the English expression 'bitten off more than you can chew'?"
"I hope I didn't interrupt anything important by summoning either of you here this afternoon," said Principal Morimoto, with cloyingly false solicitude, to the two students seated before her desk.
"No, madam principal," replied Suzushiro, who'd been taking a briefing on a number of unusual incidents on campus, but promptly left it when the summons came in.
"Not at all," answered Joint Student Council Vice President Fujino Shizuru, in her two-star uniform which she'd somehow managed to arrange as something stunningly boring - a brownish-grey jacket and skirt combo, with only the two black stars at her collar to identify it for what it was. For her part, she'd been enjoying a quiet cup of tea, and was much more inclined to resent this intrusion on her private time. Never, however, would she let the enemy know that.
"Good, good. Now, as you may have heard, we had some excitement here on Honnoji today," the principal started to explain.
"Student Council Executives attempted to intercept and capture the fleeing perpetrator after she left Honnoji's grounds, but were unable to do so, mostly because she was on a motor scooter and they were on foot. I believe we may need to reopen the discussion about adding a mobile unit to the Executive at this time." That last was said without a glance at Fujino, but was nevertheless clearly directed in her direction.
"Suzushiro-san has clearly forgotten that the expense of a mobile unit was deemed insupportable, despite the fact that there had already been a number of similar incidents," Fujino commented smoothly, likewise without looking at Suzushiro. "Another one, while clearly detrimental to the public order, does not change that cold calculus."
Suzushiro started to respond to that remark, but was cut off when the principal clapped her hands, smiling broadly. "All right, if you two bitches are under the impression that this meeting is an excuse to revisit old business from your little debating society, let's get that crap out of the way right now. This is a meeting where I tell you what's going to happen, and you tell me how you're going to help it happen. Are we clear on that?"
After a brief moment of silence, both Suzushiro and Fujino replied, "Yes, ma'am."
"Gooood. There's going to be an execution this evening. Yes, an actual execution. No, we will not be faking anything. If everything goes smoothly, the Matoi wench will be captured and a pain in the ass will be joining the ancestors. The good news for you is that it's not your job to make sure things go smoothly." She pointed at Fujino. "You should find your job pretty easy. All you have to do is stand with the rest of the student council and indicate that all this is taking place with the approval of said body. You could probably bring in some tea and crumpets."
"How appetizing," Fujino replied calmly.
Ignoring that, Morimoto pointed at Suzushiro. "Yours is a little harder. If things don't go smoothly, it's pretty likely that, once again, Matoi will attempt to escape from Honnoji. I want as many of your precious little Executives standing between her and the exit as possible, to slow her down so that someone actually competent might do something about her. Hopefully permanently. Can you do that? That was a rhetorical question, by the way."
"That will require pulling a large number of them off of their regular patrols," Suzushiro stated quietly.
"Is that an objection? Because I'm pretty sure that I -"
"No, just an obsecration," she answered quickly.
"I see," said Morimoto after a moment. "Okay. Your patrols can get fucked. Any other questions? Another rhetorical question. Dismissed." She punctuated that statement with a wave of her hand.
They were on the lower level of the Honnoji Administration building, walking together in stony silence without looking at each other, when Suzushiro came to a stop and looked ahead at Fujino's back. "You and I need to discuss certain matters. Primately."
Fujino paused, then turned back to look at her. "Do you mean, 'privately'?"
"That is what I said."
"Very well, then. This office appears to be empty. Let us go in, and I'll lock the door, pull down the blinds ..." Suiting the action to the words, Fujino then slowly turned to look in Suzushiro's direction.
She was holding a wand-like device in the air, moving it in a slow circle. "No bugs," she reported. "No hidden cameras. No observers. We are ... alone."
A second later, Fujino was upon her, the taller girl managing to push her back a few steps so that the rear of her hips came to rest against the office's desk. Her hand snaked up under Haruka's skirt, caressing through the panties for a moment before savagely yanking them aside to start rubbing frantically against her denuded womanhood. Haruka hissed at the sensation, her teeth snapping at Shizuru's ear for a moment before her own hands stopped rubbing at the surface of the other woman's rear and yanked up the hemline of her skirt to get access to what lay beneath.
It wasn't long before they were fucking each other with their fingers, eyes never meeting as they did, despite how their bodies pressed up against each other. The sounds of their schlicking seemed to echo above the noise of their breaths, even as those breaths turned into gasps and faint cries and ...
... and then Shizuru let out a hollow cry of orgasm. Immediately, as always, reality ran up their spines like a stream of liquid nitrogen, and they released their grips on each other and jerked away, trying to put as much space between themselves as they could and remain in the same room.
"Sane again?" Haruka found herself asking.
"Yes. And disgusted as always," Shizuru replied, pulling down her skirt.
"Why does this keep happening?" Haruka asked, trying to reorder her own appearance. "I hate you."
"I assure you, my contempt for you is no less."
Haruka ignored that. "It's got to be these uniforms," she said, staring down at the arms of her one-star. "Nothing like this happened until I started wearing this thing."
"I can't argue with that, but no one else who wears one is affected in this manner. I have quietly felt out a number of the other members of the student council -"
Now Haruka was paying attention. "You let Kiryuuin know about this?" she gasped, appalled.
"Quietly felt out, and no, not her, you probably interact with her more frequently than I do," Shizuru replied. "No one else reports any feelings of ... desire ... building up the way you and I experience. There's something else going on." Her reddish eyes closed in weary pain. "As though I didn't have enough to worry about!"
"Yes, your concerns about which brew of tea to drink today must be so overwhelming."
"Muzzle your envy, Suzushiro-han," Fujino replied, a bit of Kyoto slipping back into her tone. "And remember - against Kiryuuin, you and I are on the same side, however little either of us likes that."
"Yes, we are," Suzushiro admitted, now sounding just as weary. "A genuine public execution. Shit. Do they honestly think that this is still the Dark Years?"
Tendo Dojo, read the sign on the antiquated looking residence in the slightly better part of the slums. It hadn't been hard to find the place, fortunately, even if the owner really needed to think about advertising if he wanted to have any students ... which Haruna was only guessing that he did, admittedly. But that was not really any of her concern. She took a deep breath and rapped on the door plate.
Moments later, a woman maybe half-a-decade or so older than Haruna, with brown hair tied back in a long pony tail, peered out curiously.
Let's start off right, Haruna told herself. "Good afternoon, my name is -"
"Haruna-chan!" the other woman said, clearly surprised, opening the door the rest of the way. "It's been ages!"
Well, there went her game plan. "Uh ... you know me?" asked Haruna.
"Why, yes! Your mother used to bring you with her when she came around to visit ... oh my, what am I saying, of course you don't remember any of that, you would have been five years old at most! But please, do come in!" The woman, who hadn't yet given her name, gave Haruna the warmest smile she'd gotten from anyone whose name wasn't Yotsuba, and beckoned Haruna to come in quickly.
Since even the slightly better part of the slums was not somewhere you wanted to just stand around with an open door, Haruna aceded to the suggestion and entered the Tendo home's foyer. "I'm sorry, not only do I not remember visiting, I don't remember -" she started to explain as she slid off her shoes.
"I'm Kasumi," the older woman interjected warmly. "Kasumi-san, if you want to be formal, but under the circumstances, that seems a bit silly. How is your mother?"
Being kept out of the loop of a horrible secret. Utterly unaware that both her children are perverts. "She seemed quite well when I spoke with her last time. Her work keeps her very busy, of course."
"Yes, I suppose that it would." Kasumi led Haruna into the small living room of the house - really just a TV and a table, off from the kitchen - and bade her set down. "Can I offer you some refreshment?"
"That would be nice, but I ... I really need to discuss some things with ... I should probably have asked if your father's in, first of all," Haruna concluded, awkwardly as she sat down at the table.
Kasumi nodded. "Then I could have told you that he's out playing shogi with some of the other gentlemen from the neighborhood. And he will probably not be back until very late, I'm afraid," she added, anticipating Haruna's next question.
"Aw dammit."
"Ahem."
"Sorry. Let me start over," Haruna said at last, after thinking things through. "Do you know about an arrangement between your father and mine?"
"Yes, of course," Kasumi promptly answered. "When I was not that much older than you are, my father told me that he'd made a promise with his fellow student to marry the children of their two houses together. Of course, by that time it was fairly clear that your poor father and brother were both dead."
The treacherous words 'We should be so lucky' almost erupted out of her mouth, but Haruna managed to keep control over them. "Except that he's alive. They both are. My brother, Ranma, is alive and here in Japan. That's what I came to tell you. Part of it, anyway."
Kasumi's eyes widened in shock, and then she smiled even more broadly than she had earlier. "That's wonderful news, Haruna-chan! You must be so happy, to be reunited with your brother after so long!"
Happy. Well, she'd felt something like happy when Ranma's tongue encountered her clit for the first time, so she guessed that counted. "Yes, yes, I am. Very happy. Unfortunately, Ranma has acquired a ... condition ... during his travels that could make it a bit difficult to marry. In his view. At least. Do you think that, given the length of time that's passed, the years that he thought Ranma was dead, that your father would be willing to just let it go?"
"No," Kasumi answered, still smiling. "My father is very conscious of the honor of our family. We don't have very much else beyond that, I'm afraid. At a minimum, he'd want to know what sort of condition could do that."
"That's what I figured," Haruna admitted. "Okay, then, I will give you my number, if you could pass it on and have him give me an e-mail - why are you laughing? Oh come on, don't tell me he doesn't have a phone."
"I'm fairly sure that my father has never even seen a cell phone, Haruna-chan," Kasumi admitted. "Nabiki, my younger sister, does have one, and she'll let father use it for this sort of thing."
So now she was going to be getting a cell phone call from the Joint Student Council's Deputy Treasurer. Greaaaaat. "Well, then we'll set up a meeting so that Ranma and his ... uh, condition can all be explained. I'm sure that your father will understand when he ... understands."
"... it's good to have sureties in life," Kasumi replied. "Are you sure you wouldn't like something refreshing to drink?"
"I'm sorry, you want me to do what?" asked Mikado Ryoko, seated in her private laboratory's office.
It had been a fairly typical Saturday. She'd gotten up, had a nice long shower, sent the high school boy she'd seduced the previous evening packing - that being part of the reason that the shower took so long - and then headed off to do her rounds, which took her to the Astraea Hill schools that day. After a boring morning - no injuries or illnesses, no girls trying to use the infirmary to hook up - she'd headed back to her home, where she conducted a few experiments that mildly pushed at the boundaries of human decency, before receiving guests in the form of two of the most frequent customers of her private pharmacy and a ten year old boy they claimed was a teacher. After a short conversation about, for the most part, nothing, the girls had departed and left her alone with the alleged teacher, who'd just made a very interesting request.
"I'd appreciate it if you'd you'd stop distributing birth control medication to the students," Negi repeated.
She stared at him, the tiny red-head in a blue suit. He stared back at her, the medium-sized red-head whose breasts seemed on the verge of falling out of her shirt.
"All right then," Ryoko said with a polite smile and a nod. "Consider it done."
Negi's eyes got very wide. "Just like that? My goodness, I was expecting to have to make some very good arguments."
"No, that won't be necessary," she assured him. "If a representative of the faculty is asking me to stop providing this service - this admittedly illegal service - to the students, then I really don't have any choice but to follow their instructions. Admittedly, I suspect that my customers, when I tell them the bad news, will be a bit unhappy with the faculty, and morale will probably suffer, but it can't be helped." She shrugged.
"Um," said Negi. "I, ah, think I should clarify that I'm not really asking officially. I'm not here as a representative of the faculty," he explained. "This is more in the line of a personal request."
"Oooohhhh," said Ryoko, who'd known that was what it was from the very beginning. "That puts a different complexion on matters, Negi-kun. Still, out of courtesy to your status as a visitor here, I'd be more than happy to shut down the pharmacy for the duration of your stay here at Academy City ... though I suspect that would be a very short stay, once word got back to the faculty about the problems you were causing." There. Let him take that however he likes.
From the look on his face, he wasn't taking 'that' very well. "I'm not trying to cause problems, really I'm not, it's just that, well, there are ... and ..."
"And I'm a little surprised," she continued, as though he hadn't said anything. "I didn't realize that people from the European Federation were so ... moralistic. I thought you left that to the Brittanians."
Interestingly, that helped the boy recover a little. "Stereotyping is very lazy thinking, doctor," he said, just a bit haughtily. "And I'm not acting on moral grounds, here."
"Really? Then why do you want to restrict the flow of birth control medication? Are you planning on knocking up a large number of girls who would normally be protected by it?" she asked, more to provoke than anything else.
Negi swallowed visibily.
Ryoko felt her stomachs drop. "What?" she asked after a moment.
"I mean, of course not, that would be ridiculous," Negi said in a terriby unconvincing manner. "I'm only ten years old."
"That ... that would explain why Momioka and Sawada had that 'just-fucked' look on their faces," she said, not even bothering to listen to him. "And Springfield ... I know that name." Her eyes narrowed. "You're a mage. This is mage business, isn't it?"
Negi's wand came out of his sleeve and was in his hand in less than a second. "I'm very sorry, doctor, but you now know too much. I'm not very good with memory erasure charms, so -"
"So let me offer you an alternative," she interrupted, and reached up to brush her hair away from her left ear. Her pointed left ear.
"... did you have an unfortunate accident as a child?" Negi asked, confused.
Mikado's face collapsed a bit. "No," she said when she recovered. "I'm an extraterrrestrial. I'm originally from a planet orbiting the star your species knows as Epsilon Eridani. In addition, I lied on my resume when I claimed to be from Nagasaki. One of these facts would get me fired, one of them will result in my vivisection. I'm putting my life in your hands, Negi-kun. Can you trust me with your secrets, now?"
Before Negi could answer, a loud but muffled voice began to sound in the distance, likely coming from the streets outside.
"Oh, now what?" Ryoko asked, and reached over to turn on her radio, trusting that the announcement would also have taken over other media.
"- to witness the infinite justice of Honnoji Academy! I repeat! Transfer student Matoi Ryuko! In one hour, we will execute your friend, Mankanshoku Mako, in shared responsibility for your heinous crimes of treason! For this special occasion, all students of the lesser schools of Academy City are welcome within our walls, to witness the infinite justice of Honnoji Academy!"
"Execute?" Negi gasped, coming to his feet.
"Relax," Ryoko snapped. "It's a farce. They do this a few times a year, subjecting students who've violated some rule or other to ridiculous punishments that ought to kill them. They end up hurt very badly, but nobody ever actually dies."
"Oh, well, that makes everything all right then," said Negi calmly ... then turned and ran out of the room anyway.
While Minagi Mikoto regarded a day as beginning when she regained consciousness and ending when she lost the battle to maintain it, she was nonetheless aware that some days were longer than others. The day on which she regained consciousness to discover that the strange girl who had interfered in her fight on the train was performing a lewd act on her person was the perfect example.
After escaping from that unusual situation, she had sought to fulfill her food requirements, only to suffer a horrific betrayal by the first food item she found. Food should not be that spicy, no matter how red and glowy it was. Then she had sought water to deal with the pain and thirst she was experiencing, while being chased by various people. When she had finally found a supply of potable water, she had drunk until she was almost ready to collapse. And then she realized that the strange girl had caught up with her. Before Mikoto could ascertain the strange girl's intent, the hunger she hadn't really been able to assuage also caught up with her, and the long day ended.
When she next regained consciousness, as a remarkably appealing scent entered her nostrils, she found herself reclining on a bed. She sat up quickly, turning to see that she was in a room filled with boxes whose only other resident was the strange girl ... who was standing near what looked to be a stovetop, cooking soup. "Ah, you're awake," said the strange girl, further demonstrating her strangeness. (If she hadn't been awake, why would there have been a need to say anything?) "This'll be ready in just a few."
Just a few later, a bowl full of appetizing looking soup was set down before Mikoto, on a box in the middle of the room's floor. She stared at it, hesitating despite herself.
"Are you worried that I'm trying to poison you?"
No, it would be ridiculous for the strange girl, no matter how strange she was, to kill her like that when she'd had plenty of opportunities to do so while Mikoto was passed out. It was simply that this all seemed a little too good to be true, after the business with the treacherous red food, and so she hesitated. But her hunger would not be denied, and so she started to delicately sip from the bowl, just to get a taste for things.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Delicious beyond her previous understanding of the term!
"Yeah, yeah, chalk up another thing that hasn't changed, no matter screwy everything else is," the strange girl observed as Mikoto began to frantically work at the bowl's contents with the provided chopsticks. Rather sooner than she would have liked, she found herself with an empty bowl, a full stomach and a very satisfied expression on her face.
"Okay, now for some introductions. My name's Mai," said the strange girl, whose name was apparently Mai. Despite how they'd met, the sheer goodness of the soup caused Mikoto to move Mai into the category of 'people whose names I should try to remember'. "And you are Mikoto," Mai continued, to which Mikoto could only nod in response, since that was in fact her name.
"So, Mikoto?"
"Yes, Mai?"
"Were we introduced before this?"
Mikoto shook her head in a negative.
"Then ... aren't you a bit curious as to how I know your name?"
This time she hesitated a bit before she shook her head no. It was somewhat confusing, but the best thing to do with confusing things was to try and forget about them.
Mai was rubbing her forehead with her hand now. "And when I'd like her to be catlike, she refuses to be catlike," she muttered.
Mikoto wondered briefly who Mai was talking about, but then the all-important purpose of her presence in this place. "And now I must go," she declared, standing up. "I must find my brother. That was great soup, Mai. You ... are a strange person, but probably a good one." And with that declaration, she lept atop a nearby desk, and tried to slide the room's only window open.
It wouldn't budge.
"I latched it shut," Mai told her.
Mikoto turned to look at the latch.
"And locked the latch," Mai told her.
Sure enough, there was a large padlock attached to the latch. Mikoto considered it for a moment, before turning to look at Mai ... who was holding a key on a chain, which she promptly slid around her neck and dropped down her blouse.
"Now, before you start considering dramatic stuff like breaking through the window," said Mai, "why don't you come back own here and we'll have a little chat about your brother? Besides, you really don't want to be out there tonight, some fairly crazy things are apparently going on."
Somewhat hesitantly, because the notion of breaking through the window honestly sounded much more her speed, Mikoto did in fact step down from the desk top and resume her seated position on the other side of the box from Mai. She didn't say anything, though.
"What you have to understand is, your brother's not out there, waiting for you to find him. In fact, it would be fair to say that he is pretty much actively hiding from you, and that going out to search for him will -"
"How does Mai know about my brother?" Mikoto asked in a very quiet voice.
"Would you believe that we were sort of married for a while?" asked the strange girl.
"No," Mikoto answered firmly.
"No, I wouldn't believe me either, if I put it that way," Mai admitted wearily, rubbing her head again. "Okay, Mikoto, what do you understand about what you are?"
Mikoto stared.
"You have a mark. On your right upper arm," said Mai, starting to sound very frustrated. "You wield the Element Miroku. That is also the name of your Child. What do all these things make you?"
"... me," Mikoto answered, honestly.
"Aggggh. All right. And if I told you that I had a mark on my breast, and wielded the Element Magatama, and that my Child's name is Kagutsuchi, what would all these things make me?"
"... Mai ... is a hime?" Mikoto said after some serious thought.
She wasn't sure what she was expecting the answer to do to this strange girl. She wasn't expecting to see something very, very dark cross her violet eyes. "No," said Mai. "I'm not a HiME. I am the motherfucking bitch queen, and as of right now, you and I are done playing the Obsidian Prince's little game."
"Oh," said Mikoto ... since that was what one said to crazy people.
"I'm so sorry, P-chan!" Mako cried out as she hung upside down from an x-shaped cross. "You shouldn't have been drawn into this pinch!"
"BWEEEEE!" the pig, presently attached to her head with some duct tape, agreed violently.
Apparently, the Disciplinary Committee had found the pig inside Ryuko's bag of stuff when they seized it, and (somewhat capriciously) decided to add it to the execution. Why no one had mentioned 'and your little pig, too' in the announcement was somewhat bewildering. Certainly that would have gotten Mako to come running that much sooner, if the situation were reversed.
On the whole, though, even as the boiling oil was rolled out and the boxing team's captain Fukuroda used a live shrimp to give a little demonstration of what was going to happen when Mako and the pig were plunged into it, Mako found it in her heart to be glad that the situation wasn't reversed. After all, it would have been completely impossible for Mako to get here in time to save Ryuko, instead of the only kinda-sorta impossible that it was going to be for Ryuko to save Mako. The kinda-sorta was why she was more or less resigned, at this point, to the idea that Ryuko wasn't actually coming.
Well, after all, she'd have to fight or sneak her way through a crowd of bloodthirsty maniacs (mixed in with some who appeared very calm about the whole situation, Mako noticed with some interest, like that one girl with reddish blonde hair in twin-tails in the front row who was studying the execution machinery and making sketches) and then attack someone who'd beaten her once already, and all for the sake of someone else whom she'd just met and probably didn't realize was her soulmate. It was okay. Ryuko might be brave, and strong, and tough, and beautiful, and sexy beyond the ability of the human imagination to conceive, but it wasn't like she was a superhero or something.
Although I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this one! Mako decided as she saw Fukuroda take a nice bite out of the no-longer live breaded shrimp.
And then there was a giant whooshing noise. In an eyeblink, something was in front of Mako, and, in her hands and feet, Mako start to felt the bindings holding her up give way. "Hold on tight," a familiar voice hissed.
She does want a hug! Mako thrilled, and obliged her. A group of boxing club members dove to intercept the pair of them, but the two girls were already moving upwards on a ballistic arc, resulting in the boxers diving face first into the oil and breading, from which they ran away in great pain a moment later.
Ryuko, covered in a heavy brown cloak and shawl, came to a landing in the middle of the boxing ring that had been set up beside the execution site, with Mako somewhat awkwardly hanging onto her back. Fukuroda was already there. "Right," said Ryuko. "Boxing, is last time I checked, one of those one-on-one sports, isn't it? You really wanna drag other people into this thing?"
"I'm not sure you got any room to talk," he told her.
"Oh, yeah. Mako, could you let go of me and maybe get to somewhere safe?"
"Don't really want to, don't really think there's anywhere like that nearby," Mako answered without letting go.
"You're undermining my moral point, here!" Ryuko hissed.
Mako very reluctantly released her hold on Ryuko and slid under the boxing ring's ropes to drop down to the ground ... where she promptly found herself taken back into custody by Student Council Executives. I knew it! she thought, in mixed triumph and annoyance.
Ryuko wasn't in any position to notice this, unfortunately, as she was a little too busy being assailed by Fukuroda, whose initial attack really more resembled something out of the later seasons of a giant robot anime than anything to actually do with the sport of boxing - a constant barrage of tiny boxing gloves that flew through the air slammed into their target. Oddly, the fact that there was no muscle driving these boxing gloves didn't seem to reduce the force that they demonstrated as they slammed into Ryuko as she stood in the middle of the ring, taking it.
"And he moves into a right straight!" proclaimed Fukuroda, providing his own color commentary as his right arm began to pull back for the punch. "But it's really a corkscrew!" And sure enough, the reddish black material of his boxing glove sembled into the form of a drill as it steamrolled towards Ryuko.
Who blocked it on the back of her scissor blade, though she had to tear open her shawl in the process. "You don't quite get how feints are supposed to work, do you?" she asked.
Virtually everyone let out a gasp as they saw what Ryuko was wearing under the shawl. In concept, it vaguely resembled a sailor uniform, though not even the most decadent school in the nation would have approved of its students wearing one that showed off anywhere nearly this much skin. But it was jet black, with red piping, and a strange decoration above the left breast that looked like nothing so much as orange eye.
"Oh wow, Ryuko-chan is an exhibitionist!" Mako called out from where she was being held.
"No I'm not!"
"You're trying to distract me with your sexy abs!" Fukuroda protested angrily.
"No I'm definitely not!"
"You mock the proud institution of boxing!"
"Fucker you fucking came at me with a fucking drill!" Ryuko finally shrieked.
With a shove, she pushed Fukuroda back a handful of steps and, before he could recover his footing, she sliced upwards with the sharp edge of her scissors. And quite abruptly, Fukoroda's gloves, helmet, jacket, shorts and boots seemed to spontaneously disassemble into their constituent fabrics, leaving the stunned club captain clad only in a set of fundoshi. The very alert among the audience might have seen a handful of those constituent fabrics drawn towards and within Ryuko's suit. Most would probably have been slightly distracted by the way that Ryuko promptly kicked Fukuroda's denuded form up towards the spire of rock where Kiryuuin Satsuki had been watching over the entire affray.
Her Elite Four prevented the flung body from even touching their mistress. It wasn't clear whether she even noticed, however, for her attention was drawn, laser-like, to the girl in the boxing arena.
"Where," Kiryuuin Satsuki demanded, in a voice that could be heard throughout Honnoji, "did you obtain that outfit?"
Ryuko drew in a deep breath. "Who wants to know?" she yelled back at the top of her lungs.
Satsuki blinked.
"I can answer questions with questions, too, y'know! Anyway, we had this conversation already, today, and I don't think anything more productive is gonna come of this one. Later, biyatch!" Right, time to make an exit, she told herself, glancing to the side in the hopes that she'd see Mako in some hypothetical safe place. The sight of her surrounded by people in what she now recognized as Student Council Executive outfits, with her hands firmly pinned behind her back, really served as the ur-example of what she was not thinking of when it came to that sort of thing. "Dammit, Mako!" she hissed.
"I am not," said Satsuki from on high, "in the habit of repeating myself."
"Good for you," Ryuko snarked. The people holding Mako didn't look too tough. Honestly, they were the sort she could have taken before all of the zaniness had happened. The problem was two-fold - she had no idea how much in the way of backup they had, and the voice she was trying to pretend was a figment of her imagination was telling her something about blood loss, and she felt like she was about to fall over. Wait, that was three things. Not a good sign.
Maybe she should consider abandoning Mako. After all, it wasn't like she was some sort of hero trying to save the day. Ryuko wasn't even sure what that would look like! Yes, that was the best call. She should really just run for her own life. Sucked to be Mako, but it couldn't be helped. Yep, she should run, all right.
Why the hell wasn't she running already?
"Very well, if you will not answer, I will engage in some speculation," Satsuki began to orate. "You found that outfit -"
And then, out of the crowd surrounding the area, a petite form in a hoody jogged up to the Executives holding Mako, held out a hand in the direction of the nearer of the two, and declared, in a muffled sounding voice, "Flans Saltatio Pulverea". A gust of wind kicked up from nowhere, knocking the executive off of his feet and back several steps. The small form turned on his heel, repeated the invocation, "Flans Saltatio Pulverea", this time in the direction of the second executive, sending her tumbling right into the edge of the boxing arena.
A bit of the wind drifted back at the hoody, pushing it back to reveal that the person beneath it was wearing a golden helm that completely covered the face, with no apparent openings to allow one's eyes to see through. Yet despite this, something about the way light reflected from two particular points on the surface of the helmet seemed to suggest a pair of eyes that were staring right at Ryuko, as the voice which had just made those two invocations now urged her, "Run!"
Ryuko found it a bit ridiculous that she could run now, when a masked weirdo told her to do so, yet run she did. Her course led her to slide under the bottom ropes of the boxing ring, and was not terribly surprised when she found herself running alongside the boy and Mako, who was bringing up the middle between them.
"I see. Run and hide, then, if that's what you want. Run and hide among the pigs," Satsuki declaimed behind them.
Ryuko heard a snapping sound at that moment, and looked around to see what it might be. Nothing leapt out at her, but what did become apparent was that as they were approaching the exit to Honnoji's walls, a rather large force of Executives were standing in their path, led by a woman with blonde hair in a uniform that identified itself as a one-star.
"Stop right there," demanded Suzushiro. "Whatever President Kiryuuin might declare, you three have some questions to answer -"
"Bwee-biikii-bee-bwee, bwee-buukii-brrrr!" announced P-chan, which could be roughly translated, "That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more!" And with that, the tape holding him onto Mako's head, which had frayed over the last little while, finally broke completely with a surge of the tiny pig's muscles. He then shot at Suzushiro's head like a cannon shell.
"Wha-" she managed to get out before the tiny black pig slammed into her with far more impact than physics would have predicted, sending her to the ground and in a daze.
"Chief!" howled several of the high ranking members of the Executive, who promptly closed ranks to protect their fallen leader ... rather than continuing to pursue the objectives she'd assigned them, like keeping Mako, Ryuko and their mysterious ally from getting out through Honnoji's front gates. A few more announcements of 'Flans Salvatio Pulverea' took care of the rest of the problem, and the three of them were outside the barriers in almost less time than it takes to tell it.
To Mako's amazement, she saw the tiny black pig also emerge from the gateway almost on their heels. "P-chan!" she cried, snatching him up. "That was so brave! Thank you!" And she kissed him right on his piggy little snout.
P-chan visibly turned to mush.
"Wow, it's really gonna be hard to eat the little porker now," Ryuko said in a rather dazed, weary tone, sweat running off her body in sheets.
"Are you all right?" asked the boy in the helm, the flares on the surface of the golden helm now giving the impression that he was examining her.
"I - no," Ryuko admitted. And with that admission, she collapsed completely.
The boy managed to catch her before she hit the ground completely, coincidentally managing to feel up the portions of her chest left exposed by her unique costume. "Oh, feathers!" he swore. "Why is she so cold?!"
"Let me take her home!" Mako suggested.
"She needs a doctor!"
"My papa's a doctor!"
The boy hesitated - which suggested to Mako that he might possibly be familiar with her father's reputation - but finally handed her over to Mako. "It's probably for the best that we split up, anyway."
"Who are you, masked man?" she asked.
"... just call me Fate," he told her, and ran off, back towards Honnoji's gates, to draw pursuit in a direction away from whatever way the two of them were heading.
"You let them go."
Satsuki didn't bother to turn aside from her view of the courtyard. The sight she kept in view was not actually that much more interesting than the expression of petulant annoyance no doubt decorating the principal's face. Most of the students had departed, by now, with the exception of the members of the boxing club, dragooned into cleanup duties, and the one who'd been making sketches earlier, who was still examining the wreckage of the boiler with interest. Satsuki decided that this Enoshima Junko - for the President had the names, faces and academic records of every student at her Honnoji memorized - should probably be recruited to serve a role in her organization before the other girl got up to some mischief.
"Why?" the principal finally asked. Satsuki found herself triflingly grateful that the woman had not insisted on doing the 'asked a question'/'made a statement' conversational chain that might have led to this point. The fact that she was asking the question that the powerless asked of the mighty was also rather pleasant.
"Because the two of them that are students here will be back again tomorrow," Satsuki finally answered. "And because a number of interesting possibilities have now been created."
"How spiffy," said Morimoto. "What about the one who wasn't a student here?"
And now to give the woman something, a distraction to keep her out of Satsuki's hair for a while. If not for one of the interesting possibilities, she might have had to invent something. "Most likely, that was Negi J. Springfield, the most recently installed teacher at Mahora Girls' Middle School." It would now be somewhat embarrassing if the masked figure was actually a very young representative of one of the other covert factions of Academy City's kriegstanz, but the time and energy that it would take to discover the truth would not be expended by Satsuki or her followers.
"One of Konoemon's do-gooders?" the Principal asked.
As whatever conclusions the woman drew from her supposition were entirely her own affair, Satsuki didn't bother to react to that in one way or another. Besides, her attention was now focused on the way some of the members of the boxing club were attempting to console, in a typically manly way, their captain after his defeat. Despite the fact that he had lost his uniform and with it his captaincy, they persisted in viewing him as one of their own. She idly considered testing those bonds by insisting the new captain torment Fukuroda for his failure. No, that would be getting too involved in what was ultimately a club affair. She would pass the suggestion to Sanageyama, however.
"I can use this," Morimoto said eventually.
"Oh good," said Satsuki, since even she felt the urge to fill conversational space from time to time.
"If the two of you are done posturing at each other, then could the rest of us go home? It's been a long and, frankly, vulgar evening, and I want it to be over," stated a voice from behind the pair of them. There were a handful of people from across Academy City who could make Kiryuuin Satsuki pause in her contemplations, or command the attention of the principal of Honnoji. As it happened, one of them had just spoken.
The process by which Togami Byakuya had become Treasurer of the Joint Student Council for the current school year was somewhat unique in the history of that body. He had not sought election to the post, viewing public service with withering contempt and having no need, now that he had established himself as heir to the Togami family, to enhance his resume. Yet for some reason, roughly forty per cent of the popular vote had written his name in, in contrast to the thirty per cent that each of the actual candidates had received. Despite his vocal protests about the situation at the start, he had more or less settled into the role ... largely by passing onto his deputy all work save that which he utterly could not avoid, such as his presence here tonight.
"You and the rest of the Student Council are quite free to leave, Togami," Satsuki replied after a moment. "I appreciate how difficult your role in all this must have been."
"No you don't," he told her, but turned on his heel and marched down the slope muttering to himself the whole way. He was soon followed by the Council's Secretary, Shinonome Nanami, who paused to offer a sincere bow to Satsuki before she departed.
"What sort of possibilities?" Morimoto asked after a moment.
"The sort which would only distract you from your schemes against the other schools here," Satsuki answered.
"I see. And if I were to contact your mother and ask her to -"
"Then I would wonder how long of a conversation you could have while falling from a great height," the President interrupted.
Morimoto fell silent. "Right. I'm glad we understand each other," she concluded after a moment.
"We do not, and you never will."
Ask not the weasel how the eagle soars.
Matoi Ryuko never really gave the future a great deal of thought as she was moving through the present in hopes of avenging the past, and so there hadn't actually been a moment where she'd imagined the circumstances under which she was going to be sleeping when she woke up this morning. But lying down to bed beside a crazy girl who kept hitting on her, in said crazy girl's house, not far from the rest of the crazy girl's family - all of whom seemed to be crazy themselves, except maybe the mother (and Ryuko had a hunch that she was actually the craziest) - anyway, none of this had even remotely been part of any day she'd imagined for herself.
Then again, neither was wearing a vampiric sailor uniform that gave her super powers. She looked up to where said costume was presently hanging, its orange eye 'closed'. "Hey?" she said, speaking softly. "Are you awake?"
Apparently the answer was no. Truth be told, Ryuko was still not sure that she hadn't imagined Senketsu (as she'd named the voice in a bit of manic moment) talking to her in the first place. When they'd met, she'd been hurt, and confused, and frightened, and none of these things were helpful in thinking straight. But everything it - no, he - had said to her had turned out to be right, so far.
"Hey?" she said again, a little louder.
"Ryuko-chan?" came a voice in a just-awakened-from-sleep sort of tone.
Shit.
"Are you talking to your uniform?" Mako asked.
"... it seems that way, doesn't it?" Ryuko equivocated.
"Wouldn't you rather talk to me instead? I talk back," she added in a way that was probably intended as an incentive.
Ryuko rolled over to face Mako, who was looking at her with what Ryuko had to admit was a rather cute smile on her face. They lay there on their sides, facing each other for a few moments, before either of them talked.
As it happened, Ryuko broke first. "Sooo ..." she said, then trailed off, not sure where to go from there. Attending slumber parties where you learned this sort of thing had been one of those experiences she'd missed out on.
"I would really like to have sex with Ryuko-chan," Mako informed her.
Ryuko flushed brilliantly. "Didn't we used to have a tradition of small talk?"
"But Ryuko-chan is still hurt, and probably tired, and shy despite being an exhibitionist," the other girl continued.
"I'm not! Not either of those last two things, I mean! But your parents and your little brat of a brother would be able to hear us -"
"Oh, that's not a problem," Mako reassured her. "When Mama and Papa are having sex, or when Papa is down in the clinic with the nice oneesan who helps out, or when Mama is working, or when Mataro and his friends are playing, or when Guts has one of his bitches over, I never mind when I can hear them, so why would they mind if they can hear me?"
Ryuko tried and failed to find an answer to that question.
"Just listen. Don't listen to me, just listen," Mako suggested, drawing a little closer.
It was hard to do over the sound of her own heartbeat, but Ryuko managed. She could hear all sorts of sounds coming from the jungle of urban blight around the Mankanshoku home ... and, somewhat inevitably, she recognized that some of those sounds were those of people enjoying themselves, or others.
"You just learn to tune it out," Mako told her, as she saw understanding dawn on Ryuko's face. "But maybe we shouldn't, maybe it's important to take it all in, embrace it all, all the loving and the not-so-loving and the just-because-you're-there-ing." She fell quiet for a moment. "Does Ryuko-chan not like girls?"
"No," Ryuko managed to say. "That's not it. I've just never ... um ..."
"Ohhhh," said Mako, in a tone of much enlightenment.
"You have, I guess?"
She nodded. "With the nice oneesan who helps out."
"Oh-kay," said Ryuko, eyes rather wide. That was ... actually no less weird than anything else that had happened.
"I think I'd like doing it with Ryuko-chan more."
"But ... aren't you scared?"
"Of Ryuko-chan?" Mako asked, incredulously.
"No. Well, maybe a little yes, but ... what if the sex messes everything up?"
"Won't happen."
"But what if -"
"Ryuko-chan. I'm going to kiss you now. And then we should probably go back to sleep. Okay?" Mako asked, and then sat there doing absolutely nothing.
It occurred to Ryuko that she could end this conversation by just rolling over and going to sleep, leaving herself unkissed and not at all bothered by the fact. Hers was the power to deny.
"Okay," she affirmed."
Mako leaned forward, and pressed her lips to Ryuko's. They lingered there a long time before she pulled back with a warm smile on her face. "Sex with Ryuko-chan is going to be awesome," she declared, then closed her eyes and began blowing a new snot bubble from her nose.
Ryuko kept staring at the face of the girl who'd given her first lying down kiss. (Sitting up kiss had been someone else.) Eventually, she rolled over -
- Was it her imagination, or was the eye on the uniform open an instant before she did that? No, she had to be imagining things. -
- and went to sleep.
"Saotome is alive? And coming here?" Tendo Soun asked his eldest daughter, eyes wide with disbelief and likely a bit of chemical stimulation as well.
"His son is coming here, at least," Kasumi confirmed as she helped her father off with his jacket. "You will need to borrow Nabiki's phone and set up the meeting with him. But that can wait until tomorrow, father. Tonight, you need your sleep."
"Yes, yes, of course," he agreed, since he was clearly in an agreeable state of drunkenness. "But this is so wonderful, so, so very wonderful, dear Kasumi," Soun told her as she guided him out of the foyer and down the hallway to his bedroom. "I dreamed of this day, but I thought it would never come. At last, one of you three girls can be married!"
"One of Nabiki or Akane can be married, father," she corrected as they reached the doorway to the bedroom. "I am not marrying a man younger than I am. We have discussed this before."
"Yes, but, dear, at least consider waiting to make up your mind until you have met Saotome's son," her father asked as she helped him out of his gi.
"That is impossible, father, as my mind is already made up," she told him while unfolding the futon so that he could lie down on it. "Besides, what would you do without me to take care of you?"
"Dear Kasumi," he said again, eyes watering. "So like your mother!"
"Indeed," she agreed, and kissed him, his mouth easily opening to accept her tongue within him. It wasn't a particularly pleasant kiss for Kasumi, as she'd never liked the taste of alcohol or cannibis that were so prevalent on her father's mouth after his celebrations with his friends. But her sense of duty kept her pressed up against him, until one of his hands came up to begin rubbing at her breast through her blouse. Then she pulled back, and shook her head. "No, father."
"No?" he asked, pitieously.
"No," she repeated. "You need your rest." She glanced down at his loin cloth. "So I will take care of that, and then you go to sleep, all right, father?" Without waiting for his agreement, she moved down his torso and sild the cloth to one side, exposing his erection for a moment before she took it into her mouth, then all the way back into her throat. "Gagkh, gagkh, gagkh," she went as she slid it back and forth within her, playing with his balls with her fingers as she did.
"Kasuuuumiiiii," Soun groaned, his fingers starting to grasp at her hair.
Eventually, of course, he was going to start pulling at it, and that was something she could happily live without. And so, with the hand not engaged with her father's testicles, she reached down, and back and up - with two fingers, held straight.
"Ahhhhhhhh!" he cried, and released his ejaculation. Some was still coming out as she slid him out of her mouth, and so she had to taste it - musing, yet again, that she really needed to add more fruit to her father's diet - before she gave his collapsing manhood a delicate kiss on the tip. With that done, she folded the top of the futon over him.
"Good night, father. Pleasant dreams," she told him, before leaving for her own room.
Alone with her thoughts, as she undressed for bed, Kasumi found herself wondering what sort of changes Saotome Ranma was going to bring to her home. The notion that he wouldn't be staying after the meeting was one she dismissed out of hand - father would find a way to persuade him that it was in his interest to remain for the duration, regardless of his 'condition', whatever that might be. And, very likely, he would be marrying one of her sisters.
She wondered whether it would be the daughter of her mother's affair with Saotome Genma, or of her affair with Mendo Mugihito? The irony of the former appealed to her on some level, even though it would be very damaging in some ways. Then again, since the world was dying, it was difficult to really give much of a fuck.
Ah, but for all that, she couldn't stop thinking about it, no matter what she'd told her father. She still had no intention of marrying the boy, of course, but perhaps it would be good to see to it that he was a good bridegroom for whichever of her sisters he did marry. That was sort of her duty as the neighborhood's older sister, after all.
Well, there would be time to think about all of this tomorrow. Kasumi closed her eyes and allowed herself to drift off to sleep.
Next: SPOILER