"Status of noncombatants and civilians?" Misato asked as she stood in the center of the command center's lower bridge, staring up at the display that showed the Angel's slow progress over Japan's territorial waters.

"We've already received reports that the evacuation has been completed," reported Lt. Aoba Shigeru, seated at a terminal to her left, as reports of unlikely sounding physical phenomena were made elsewhere.

Mizuno Ami closed her eyes and shook her head. She had, quietly and without drawing attention to herself, examined the conditions of the various shelters operated by the so-called Disaster Prevention Department, and come to the horrifying conclusion that they had virtually no possibility of withstanding forces of the sort that the so-called Third Angel had employed in its attack. Whatever the so-called Fourth Angel would bring to the table would likely be even worse. Nowhere was safe. No one was safe.

"It's a lot sooner than we expected," Misato observed as she looked at the first visual representations of Shamshel. The Angel resembled a flying purple giant squid with large, toyetic eyes on its mantle. A flying purple people eater, she thought, and smiled grimly.

"They gave us a fifteen year break the first time," reported Lt. Hyuga Makoto, seated at a terminal before her. "This time it's only been three weeks."

Misato, who of all people in the world probably least needed a reminder of the timeline, didn't bother to directly respond to that. "Never caring about our convenience," she said disgustedly. "They're the type women hate most."

To her right, she heard the faint sound of a chair squeaking, and turned to regard Mizuno, who was in turn regarding her with a somewhat bewildered expression. "Something, Lieutenant?" she asked.

"Ah, no, no, it's just that you ... well, sounded like you're talking about the Angel as though it were something you might date," the blue-haired woman answered.

Misato stared at her. Mizuno smiled haplessly, glancing at Hyuga and Aoba, who were making a great show of studying their computer displays.

"Well, that's obviously not what I meant," Misato said with great patience.

"Yes'm," said Mizuno, returning to her task ... and trying very, very hard not to think about how much her superior officer had sounded like a certain person, whom she had no business sounding like, just now.

Impossible, right? Impossible.

Oh, for a time when I had a simpler notion of the impossible.

Mahou Sensei Negima Alter:
Anything That Burns

Inspired by OverMaster's Anything That Moves

Chapter Fourteen: Haruhi

"Well, once more unto the breach," muttered Shinji as the LCL took on its clear form around him. He then found himself idly wondering exactly what a 'breach' was. It was a pleasant distraction from other, much more grim thoughts that he could be having at the moment.

This time, when he'd arrived at Nerv, he'd learned rather quickly that his father wasn't present at the base this time. Instead, an older man who'd introduced himself as Fuyutsuki Kozo (part of which name Shinji vaguely remembered from the last time) had been the one to give him his marching orders. Shinji had decided not to trouble the man with any mind games, regardless of the fairly strong likelihood that this person was basically his father's surrogate, and thus every bit as committed to an atrocity.

Truthfully, he was a bit too distracted at the thought that his father was walking up and down in the world, engaged in malevolence that Shinji probably couldn't imagine. What if what he'd told Ayanami had given his father more information than Zazie had expected? What if he'd put his only friend in danger?

Oh, wait, doesn't that mean a hole in the wall? Yes, that makes sense.

And then there was the faintly ridiculous notion of himself as a hero that his class was starting to foster. He definitely didn't remember saving anyone. Frankly, his role in the last battle had been that of a passenger, more than anything else. Shogoki was the hero, more than him. The problem being that they were also a monster every bit as terrible as what they fought.

Shinji felt a faint chill in the LCL around him.

"Of course, 'monster' has a lot of meanings. It could just mean something unique!" he murmured aloud.

"What was that?" asked Misato's voice over the intercom.

"Nothing, just ... talking to myself," he quickly answered, cursing in his head as he remembered just now little privacy he had at the moment. And also realizing that maybe he'd imagined the chill.

All those kids had no idea what was going on. Their innocence was somewhat appalling. And yet ... it came to Shinji, as the unit was moved into launch position, that there was a sort of heroism in being the one to do things so that other people didn't have to do them. As long as he did this, no one else in the class would be called upon to do it.

That was ... somewhat comforting, in a way.

"So whatchawanna talk about?" Toji asked as he stood before the urinal and did his business.

"I have to see it at least once before I die," declared Aida Kensuke, his so-called best friend, standing before the next urinal down and doing his business.

"'It' bein' all dat fightin' up dere?"

"Yes. Nobody knows when the enemy will come next time."

"Stop quotin' war movie dialogue, Kensuke."

Kensuke ignored this delicately voiced suggestion. "If we let this opportunity escape us, we may lose it forever! Please help me unlock the gate," he added in a much less affected tone of voice.

"Not a frickin' chance," Toji told him flatly.

"Come on, man, don't you owe it to Shinji to go witness his heroism for yourself?"

"No, I owe it to him to stay down here where it's safe, an' stop tryin' to manipulate me, dammit!" With that remark, Toji headed off to wash his hands, leaving Kensuke to fume.

Yasashisa wa totemo zankoku
Kokoro o yudanetara, watashi wa kowarete shimau
Kokoro ga fure-aeba, ano hito wa kizutsuku

Quietly singing one of her favorite songs, Suzumiya Haruhi walked briskly through the otherwise empty streets of Tokyo-3. Empty and, she noted, rather heavily fortified. She'd heard about the so-called geofront, that allowed taller buildings to be pulled down into some sort of gigantic cave beneath the earth, but hadn't been sure how much of that to believe. After all, wouldn't a giant cave like that make it hard to establish a foundation for the buildings in the first place?

Yet, there they were, and here she was, on a day when all the defenses of this fortress city were online, as they supposedly had been three weeks before, when - if rumors were to be believed - a giant monster had attacked this city and been beaten off by a super robot and a flying person.

Now, Haruhi did not think of herself as the sort of person who gave easy credence to rumors. (This self-perception had absolutely nothing to do with reality, in which Haruhi was the sort of person who gave easy credence to rumors that no one else would consider remotely credible, and scoffed at those that other people thought plausible.) But she'd had three weeks to quietly think about these rumors, and achieve a certain realization. With that realization, and the announcement of another special state of emergency for the Kanto-Tokai area, the proper course of action had become utterly clear to her.

She'd only told Kyonko about her decision because, as the lowest and least important member of the Brigade, it was Kyonko's responsibility to take care of all the matters that weren't being handled by the Brigade's officers. And the club's bylaws, contained in a text that existed nowhere outside of Haruhi's head, had oddly omitted assigning the duty of informing Mitsuru that the head of the Brigade was borrowing his motorcycle without doing anything unnecessary like asking for permission. So that was on Kyonko.

She'd return it, of course. Assuming the world didn't end. Probably.

Haruhi had of course not in any way shape or form wanted Kyonko to volunteer to come with her. Which was good, because the obnoxious girl had just sputtered and told her that she should reconsider the notion (HAH!) or at least wait until the emergency was over and go find out what had happened rather than watching it happen (HAH HAH!) and then threatened to tell Negi-kun about all this. All of it was just more proof that she deserved to be Kyonko.

Frustratingly, however, Haruhi had yet to see any sign that this was anything other than a false alarm, and was starting to find herself just the teeniest bit frustrated. (Possibly explaining her song choice.) The notion of having to go back and be told 'I told you so' by Kyonko while Negi-kun regarded her with that sad, disapproving look of his was beyond mortifying. (It should be here noted that Haruhi had no idea that Negi was on a class trip, having let that datum go in one ear and out the other when he told her about it, as it was oh so utterly normal-sounding.)

And then. In the distance. She heard a sound like glass breaking, to her left. Her head snapped to that side, and saw a set of stairs leading up to what was probably yet another abandoned Shinto temple, and, without further ado, began running up them.

"All right, Shinji-kun, are you ready to sortie?" Misato's voice asked.

No, he thought about saying, then shook his head. No mind games. Misato probably didn't deserve mind games. "Yessir," he replied instead.

"Just do it like we rehearsed, Shinji. Neutralize the enemy's AT field, then fire a burst from the pallet gun. That should definitely settle the matter," said Ritsuko's voice.

Shinji nodded. "Right, okay," he said, reflecting on what he could remember of the files on the weapon he'd been given and verbally told absolutely nothing about. "One question though."

"Shinji-kun, we really need to get going here," Misato said through what sounded like clenched teeth.

"It's just one little question. What kind of rounds does this thing fire? High explosive, kinetic, or AP?"

Dead silence greeted his inquiry. Which was sort of odd, he thought, since they were supposedly in a hurry and probably shouldn't be taking these sorts of pauses.

"What - where -" Misato started to ask, then let out a hiss. "High explosive. Now launch!"

Why was she getting angry now?

At last, Haruhi reached the top of the stairway, and stared out into the valley below. Her breath caught in her chest. There. It. Was. Emerging from behind a building, shining black, the monster's eyes gazed upward.

"Hello," she said softly. Then more loudly, "Hello! Hello!"

No one was seeing this. Everyone in the city was hiding away like pathetic cowards who were afraid of reality. Haruhi supposed that there might be a few cameras recording and transmitting the sight she now observed, but no one was seeing this with the naked eye and letting the fact that there were giants in these days write itself into their mind and soul in the way that she, Suzumiya Haruhi, was doing. She was unique. She was.

"It's okay," she babbled to the monster, sure that it could somehow hear her. "You haven't done anything bad! It's just that you're in a world that was never made for you! It's scary, the world. It's scary for us, too. But maybe if we talk to each other, if we come together, it won't be so scary for either of us! What do you say?"

And it clearly was hearing her, since it lifted its body up while letting its head lie parallel to the ground, 'arms' folding out from its sides.

"Yeah!" cried Haruhi, spreading her own arms out to the side in imitation.

A horn sounded in the distance, and on a building in the valley, not too far from where the monster was posed, a shutter slid up to the roof and revealed a giant purple robot.

"Wait," she said.

Utterly unobediently, the robot darted out from behind the building, leveled a rifle-like weapon at the monster, and began firing shot after shot after shot.

"No!" Haruhi cried. "You didn't even try to talk to it! What's wrong with you!"

One hand was on the so-called pallet gun's trigger, the other supporting the weapon's barrel. Shinji imagined pulling the trigger over and over again, and Shogoki proceeded to do just that. The weapon blazed away at the Herald, which had extended glowing tendrils from its arms. In moments, a great cloud of smoke had enveloped the target, hiding it from view.

"Idiot!" Misato's voice called sharply over the comm. "The enemy's covered in smoke from the explosions!"

"That's what tends to happen when when you shoot a barrage of explosive rounds," Shinji snapped in response, but he did stop shooting all the same. Hopefully, the Herald had been annihilated by the explosions, which should have bypassed its AT Field, and -

As he was thinking this, the tendrils whipped out of the cloud and darted towards him.

Evidently not, Shinji thought as Shogoki dropped to the ground so that the whips would cut through the air over its head. Unfortunately, owing to its posture as it dropped, the whips also cut through the pallet gun, held in that very air.

"All right, I'm sending you a spare rifle," Misato said over the comm.

"That's not going to work!" Shinji yelled back. "I have visual on the angel, and it's completely undamaged! I'm going to have to close for hand-to-hand combat!"

"Absolutely not!" Misato shouted. "Those whips will cut you to pieces while you make your approach!"

"And they won't do that if I stand still and start shooting?!" he yelled some more. "Aw, dammit, here they come!"

Indeed, the whips of light did lash down towards where Shogoki was half-recumbent on the ground. Throwing what was left of the pallet gun in the Herald's general direction, the Evangelion retreated, dodging out of the way of the tendrils as they cut through buildings like the proverbial hot knife through the proverbial butter. The unit was almost dancing out of the way of the debris, until its gavotte came to an end when its back crashed a building that hadn't been cut up.

The Herald decided to rectify that, and tore the building apart with a few swift whiplashes, sending Shogoki backwards through the rubble - and tearing the unit's power cord.

"Ohhhhhhh crap," Shinji said quietly. Over the comms, he could hear the control team's voices discussing, in mildly panicked tones, how much the unit's AT field strength had diminished and how much time remained until shut down. Misato wasn't saying anything; he suspected that she was probably too disgusted.

"Shinji - withdraw. Now," said Ritsuko's voice. "Head for tower three, we'll get you back down here and replace the cable -"

"I don't think it's going to let me do that," he replied, hearing a bit of panic in his own voice, as Shogoki pulled itself to a standing position.

And then he felt a terrible burning sensation in his left ankle. Looking down, he managed to see that one of the whips had wrapped around Shogoki's left ankle, in the second or so before it was pulled down, then flung through the air.

"Wait, did you just throw that stupid robot in my direction?" Haruhi protested as she watched the humanoid form fly through the air towards where she was standing. "I'm on your side! What's wrong with you?"

Seconds later, the giant purple thing crashed onto the hillside, knocking her off her feet and momentarily out of her senses. When she came to, she found herself between the fingers of a gigantic hand, staring up at a decidedly monstrous face.

"Um ... thanks?" she said.

"I thought you said that all the civilians had been evacuated!" Misato snapped as an ID card flashed onto the computer screen.

"She's not even from Tokyo-3, I don't know what's -" Ritsuko started to reply.

High above, Fuyutsuki let out a gasp. "Her?" he said, loud enough for the entire command chamber to hear it.

"Sir?" Misato said, turning to look up at him.

The old man shook his head. "Never mind. Get her into the cockpit."

"What?" Ritsuko said, eyes gone wide.

"You heard me. Get the Child to open the cockpit and tell her to get in," Fuyutsuki ordered.

"That will cause an immense amount of interference in the spinal transmission system!" Ritsuko continued to object. "We'll see a massive reduction in effectiveness, under circumstances -"

"I have given an order," Fuyutsuki snapped. "And as I am still your superior officer, regardless of whom you might be sleeping with, that order will be carried out."

As Ritsuko stood staring up at the high level bridge, Misato turned to regard the display. The Unit had caught the Angel's whips in its hands, roasting them.

"Shinji, we're going to open the cockpit and let the girl in," she heard herself saying. "Once that's done, we'll make a temporary retreat, and regroup."

"... okay, sure, why not?" Shinji replied over the comm.

One of the fundamental truths of Suzumiya Haruhi's outlook on life, which she herself didn't fully comprehend and which no one who did understand was willing to explain to her, was that she hated surprises. A surprise, by definition, is something that defies, and often challenges, one's expectations. From the first time she'd stood in the presence of a great assembly of mechanisms for turning food into shit, as she generally thought of humanity, and had her understanding, and thus expectations, of the world challenged, and thus defied, she'd learned to loath the feeling of loss of footing which always accompanied surprises.

So the surprise that she'd just endured, when the alien life form with whom she'd identified had tried to kill her by throwing a giant robot in her general direction, and when the giant robot had saved Haruhi's life by spreading the fingers of her hand - Haruhi didn't know why she thought of the giant robot as 'her', but she did. - left her somewhat irate. She expressed that ire through profanity directed up at the alien life form, with which the giant robot was presently grappling. The way that it pretended to ignore her added quite a bit to her frustration.

Haruhi's commentary on the alien life form's parentage and relationship with said parentage - terribly ironic in light of subsequent events - was abruptly interrupted when the giant robot's head lolled forward, and a tube slid out like an extending spinal column. "Get in - quickly!" snapped a female voice.

Now ... Haruhi was a naturally contrary person. Telling her to do something was one of the surest ways that she would never, ever, ever do it. But there were limits even to contrariness, and so Haruhi somehow climbed up the giant robot's neck to enter the tube which had produced the voice. (When she looked back on it, a bit later, she wasn't exactly sure how she'd managed that.) Then she endured being drowned without actually dying, and emerged into a small area behind a chair where a teenaged boy was sitting and clutching a pair of -

"Wait, you're a boy?" said Haruhi, as she caught up with the narrative in which she was entwined.

"Well spotted!" snapped Shinji without looking back at her.

Before she could respond to that, a static charge went through the liquid medium which they were both breathing. "LCL re-electrified," said a different woman's voice over what Haruhi guessed was some sort of radio. "Abnormality in the - wait, what?"

"What, Mizuno?" said a third female voice. (Haruhi found it somewhat relieving to realize that the brains of this operation were clearly female.)

"It's ... these numbers are higher than they were before! The girl's incorporation isn't interfering with the spinal transmission system, it's reducing the noise that was already present!"

Haruhi blinked. Were they talking about her? Well, obviously, what else would someone talk about, but what were they saying?

Before she could do the sensible thing and ask about it, though, Shinji let out a serious groan. Glancing at the display screens that filled the lower part of this chamber, Haruhi could see that the giant robot's hands were nearly burnt to bones-or-whatever as they held the alien life form's tentacles in check. With a sudden surge of motion, the robot's arms pulled the alien's tentacles to the left, throwing them off into the distance.

"Okay, Shinji, retreat!" called out the first female voice. (Unlike the other two, Haruhi found it rather soothing, even if there was a sharp note of command there, too.) "Recovery route 34, head down the east side of the mountain and we'll regroup there!"

The robot had stood up, but that was all that it did. No steps towards the east side of the mountain. No steps of any kind. The boy was staring at the monitors.

"Uh - hellooo?" Haruhi pressed. "The nice lady told you to retreat, right?"

Again, he didn't look back at her. "How many people," he asked, in a very quiet voice, "are going to die ... while I take the time ... to get Shogoki repaired?"

"... I dunno," she replied, bewildered. "How many people have died already?"

She was never sure, then or ever, whether it had been the wrong thing, or the right thing. In the distance there was a clanging sound, and some excited announcement over the radio about a progressive knife or something like that.

"Shinji-kun," said the nice lady's voice. "You should really be retreating now!"

"I. Won't. Back. Down," Shinji said. And then he let out a wordless scream of pure rage.

The robot began half-running, half-stumbling down the mountainside towards where the alien had recovered its balance. Its tendrils whipped out towards her, and Haruhi had the strangest sensation of impact against her own body when they ran through the robot's lower chest. But somehow, the robot kept moving forward, and swung whatever it was clenching in its hands up to a bright orange sphere attached to the alien's body.

Sparks flew. The boy kept screaming. Haruhi stared in silence.

The bright orange sphere turned gray and lifeless.

The scream stopped.

"Oh," said Shinji, very hoarsely. "It worked."

"... you're fucking nuts," Haruhi informed him.

And the remaining lights inside the capsule went out, leaving them both in the dark, once more.

Eventually, the recovery team came to extract the two youths from their predicament, and in the process also get what Haruhi thought of as a giant robot, and what Shinji didn't bother to correct her about, back to base. It was the first time he'd ever gone through this while conscious, and he might have found the way that it worked very interesting, particularly for someone who was theoretically spying on Nerv's internal workings. Unfortunately, he was somewhat distracted.

"Hey, what's this?" Haruhi demanded.

At least the questions were easily answered. "I don't know," Shinji answered honestly.

"Okay, then what's that?" she pressed on.

"I don't know," he answered - dishonestly this time.

"What's the other?"

"I don't know."

This went on for a while before Haruhi started glaring at him. "... can you say anything other than 'I don't know'?" she growled.

Two souls warred within Shinji's breast. One soul, a somewhat mischievous soul, wanted to answer that with, 'I don't know', possibly augmented by a slight grin. The other soul, more practical, urged him to remind this confusing woman that she should be well-aware that he could say things other than that, as she had answered something he'd said in the fairly recent past with aspersions cast upon his mental health. From this thesis and antithesis arose a synthesis, and he answered, "Yes." Without the slight grin.

"You think you're cute, but you're not," she told him.

And now he was having aspersions cast upon his appearance, too. Wow, what a wonderful day.

Eventually, of course, the fun times had to end, and he was escorted by a group of men in black in one direction while Haruhi was escorted by a different group of men in black in a completely different one. Shinji would have felt happier about this - inasmuch as he could feel happy about anything - if he hadn't known what was sure to follow.

His expectations were completely justified, as he soon found himself sitting inside one of the recovery team's vehicles while Misato stood nearby, boring a whole through a wall with her gaze. He prepared himself for a lecture, and waited for it to start. A minute later, he was still waiting, Misato was still glaring, and nothing had been said. This was even more awkward and unpleasant than he'd imagined it would be.

Had Shinji had a watch ... well, it would probably have been under the wrist fasteners of his plugsuit, and he wouldn't have been able to consult it, but if he'd been able to look at a clock nearby, he would have learned that, exactly two minutes and twenty-two seconds after he was escorted into Misato's presence, she finally spoke up. "How did you know about explosive ammunition?" she asked, very quietly, without looking at him.

"Excuse me?" he asked, turning to regard her.

"No," she answered, without at all looking in his direction. "How. Did you know. About explosive ammunition?"

"Um ... Forty-Kay," he answered.

"Excuse me?" she asked, now turning to look at him, a heady mixture of confusion and anger writ plainly on her face.

"Sure," Shinji answered. "I mean, uh, th-the tabletop game? From Brittania? Warhammer Forty-Kay. I played a lot of it back at my old school. And, well, one of the rules of the game talks about what happens when you use explosive ammunition, and it worked just like that in this situation, too." He nodded for emphasis.

Misato stared at him, and for a brief interval Shinji feared they were going back to the long silence. "All right, then," she answered. "That, that explains a few things, actually. Ahem. Shinji, I'm in charge of operations. That means that you have a duty to obey my orders. So the next time I tell you to do something in battle, even if you think it's the wrong call, do what I say, all right?"

"Nope," he answered calmly.

"What was that?" she snapped.

"That was a refusal. I'm not a soldier. I'm definitely not a samurai. I have not sworn any oaths to do anything, especially obey orders, and if I think I know better than you do, I'm going to do what I think best. What are you going to do, fire me?" Shinji sneered.

Something blazed in Misato's brown eyes, and her right hand swept up behind her. Shinji closed his eyes and braced for impact. When it didn't come, he cracked one eyelid open to see what was happening, fully expecting that to be what triggered the actual blow.

He was somewhat surprised to see that Misato was standing and staring at her own hand, held before her, with an odd expression on her face that Shinji couldn't quite read. She realized that he was watching, and dropped her hand, with her face settling into a much more understandable expression of disgust. "You stupid little kid," she said softly, then turned and walked away, through the sliding door that led from this section of the vehicle to the next.

Shinji covered his face with his hands, mostly to hide the expression of panic that was there. He couldn't believe that Misato had bought that bullshit about tabletop games. (He'd seen some people playing them at school, but had never worked up the courage to ask if he could join in.) It had been a complete improvisation to avoid talking about the manual for the pallet gun that he'd read among the papers Zazie had given him.

The same papers had made it completely clear to him that, yes, he could be fired and replaced, by one of the other pilot candidates from his class. Except that he had a hunch that he would not be allowed a graceful retirement, but suffer some sort of 'accident'. What the hell had he been doing, tempting fate like this?

And why the hell hadn't she slapped him? That was what superior officers did to insolent juniors, right, to motivate them? Despite what Zazie had told him, he felt as though he was no closer to understanding Misato than he had been when they'd first met.

Well, at least the charade could continue for one more day, and one more Herald was finished. Fourteen more to go.

Another thing that must be understood about Haruhi is that she did, in fact, have respect for authority. Quite strong respect for authority, in fact. Viewing herself as an authority, and feeling enormous resentment whenever any Kyonko-shaped individuals demonstrated a lack of respect for that authority, she naturally understood that to demonstrate a lack of respect to persons who - momentarily - had authority over her, would similarly provoke resentment in them. This was not something she would generally prefer.

This was the reason that she had restrained herself from groping Mitsuru, or biting his cute little ears, when she dragged him into the Brigade's headquarters for the second time, when Negi-kun was present. (If there had only been fellow students pleasant, she might have fingered Mitsuru's sweet little ass right there.) She knew that would demonstrate a lack of respect for someone who was, at least notionally, a teacher. And that was also the reason that she cooperated completely with the various men in dark suits who asked her questions, over and over again, about what she'd seen, done, and thought while the strangest experience of her life thus far took place.

They had authority over her. And she really did not want them to employ it.

Eventually, the interrogation of Suzumiya Haruhi came to an end. She found herself seated at a table, inside a sealed chamber that had very little to recommend it, with a man in black on either side of her. Towering over either side of her, to be honest. She glanced at either of them, not getting any reaction from her glances. It was really really very tempting to start chatting with them about whether they felt their outfits dehumanized them, but she managed to restrain herself.

Haruhi was right on the verge of starting to whistle one of her favorite tunes, about a girl who looked forward to getting to a place of no return, when the door to the chamber unsealed and opened. There then entered an elderly-looking, grey-haired man in a dark purple suit, who regarded her with a patient, friendly smile that she didn't believe for a fraction of a second.

"Suzumiya-san," he said. "I'm Fuyutsuki Kozo, Vice Commander of this organization." He offered her a polite bow.

She returned it as best as she was able to do so, without actually standing. Respect for authority. Respect for authority. Asking the name of this organization, when he was going to some lengths to avoid saying it, would not be respectful of his authority. So she remained silent and waited to hear what else he had to say.

"We've concluded our investigation into the circumstances of your inadvertent involvement in today's events, and there's no question that you just got involved in something beyond anyone's control. As such, you'll be free to go very shortly."

"Really," said Haruhi, blinking innocently. "I'm not in any trouble?"

"Not at all," Fuyutsuki reassured her.

"Oh. That's wonderful, I had the strange expectation that I might be kept here so that you could study whatever it was that made your giant robot work better when I was inside it," she said, smiling warmly.

The old man's smile twitched a bit. "Ah, yes, I can understand why that overheard misinterpretation by one of our staff might have led you to think that. But, no, not at all."

"Misinterpretation," Haruhi repeated.

"Yes, that was simply a misinterpretation of the unit's telemetry. Your presence within it was ... more or less irrelevant," explained the FUCKING SON OF A BITCH WHO DARED TO LIE TO HER FACE.

Despite the urge to start screaming, and leaving the option of physically attacking her nemesis on the table for the moment, Haruhi just nodded. "I see. Well, then, I guess I should be on my way."

"Yes," Fuyutsuki agreed. "And your guardian is already here."

There then entered into the room a bald, dark-skinned man wearing gold-rimmed sunglasses and a long gray trenchcoat that matched his gray goatee. "Haruhi," he said by way of greeting.

"Hi, papa," she replied.

He of course did not react. She had the consolation of seeing Fuyutsuki look visibly startled, however, and of hearing him utter, in a somewhat higher register than he normally used, the word, "Papa?"

"Let's go, now," her so-called guardian said, beckoning her to stand up. Again, respectful of authority, she did so, and walked around the table to stand next to him.

"I'll handle the rest, Vice Commander Fuyutsuki," he added once she was there.

"Good day, Director Yuge," said the ASSHOLE CRAP ARTIST.

It occurred to her, then, that she was no longer under that individual's authority. "Ah, just one thing, though," Haruhi said as Yuge began to walk towards the door with the clear expectation that he was going to be followed.

"Yes?" Fuyutsuki asked. "What might that be?"

"Well, I hope you won't mind some feedback about how you run things in this organization of yours."

"Haruhiiii," said Yuge in a voice of soft menace.

"Not at all," Fuyutsuki replied, still smiling gently.

"All right then - seriously, what's with all the men in black? Two guys to guard me? Really? All your security personnel are men? No women to guard women? Isn't that a little ridiculous? I mean even the Yakuza are equal-opportunity these days. You don't want people to think that your organization is run by some monstrous misogynist, do you?"

"Ahhhhh," Fuyutsui said. She'd clearly startled him, which was almost as good as her profound desire for his violent death. "Uh, I mean, ah, well, I'd say he's more of a monstrous misanthrope than a misogynist, as such, but - ahem - I mean, thank you for that suggestion." If a bit shorter lasting.

With that, she smiled and walked out ahead of her so-called guardian.

"Papa?" Yuge said when they were in the car.

"You act like one," Haruhi replied without looking at him. "Don't want to be called one, don't act like one."

He let out a long sigh. "Haruhi, your father was one of the very few men I genuinely respected. Despite our differences, I learned a great deal from him while I was at the academy. I look out for you and your mother in his memory. I don't want to take his place."

"Good for you," she said, still without looking at him.

Yuge shook his head. "Dial Wanda," he said.

Now Haruhi turned to look at him. "What?" she asked as her head snapped in his direction.

"I'd said I'd call her as soon as you were in my charge," Yuge explained as the dashboard mounted phone made a dialing noise. "I've put it off long enough."

"I don't believe thiiiiis," she groaned.

The phone rang one and a half times, then clicked. "Yuge-san?" asked an anxious voice on the other end.

"I've got her, she's right here. Say hello, Haruhi," Yuge instructed.

"Hello Haruhi," the girl sulkily repeated.

"Oh, thank heaven," the voice on the other end said, still faintly accented after twenty years in Japan. "You have a lot of explaining to do, young lady."

"Yeah, yeah," said Haruhi.

It was then that she realized that she'd never asked that stupid boy's name, and had indeed missed a chance to ask someone who probably would have had no problems telling her what it was. And, as she often did, she seethed.

The train had finally started moving again, after it stopped for almost half an hour. Negi had, as politely as possible, grilled the train's staff about the reasons for that, without getting anywhere. It had finally become clear to him that the conductor must have gotten orders unaccompanied by any explanations from higher up. Yet another mystery, and one that he wasn't really in any position to unravel.

So, somewhat unhappily, he went back to the train car where his students were sitting, intending to check on them. Such intentions were quickly forgotten, when he discovered that Shanna was sitting in one of the front row seats, patiently reading a copy of The Life of Pi. Her eyes flickered in his direction as he sat down beside her, but then went back to the book. "Didn't find out anything?" she asked, in a disinterested tone.

"No, not at all," he replied. "Well, at least they didn't try to avoid me."

Shanna closed her book without bothering to mark her place, and turned those icy blue eyes in his direction. "I have not been avoiding you. I have been unavailable," she told him.

"I'm not sure what the semantic difference is," Negi told her right back.

"... do you really want to talk, here and now?" she asked after a moment.

He started to offer a reply, took a moment to consider, then softly and quietly chanted in Latin for a moment. "We are now inside a privacy bubble," Negi continued. "Anyone outside of it who hears us speaking will think that we're talking about, oh, test scores, let's say."

"I don't care about test scores," Shanna told him, characteristically blunt.

He coughed, uncomfortably. "Well, as a member of the faculty of an educational institution, you probably should, so this will help you to maintain your cover as well." He smiled at her.

She didn't smile back. It occurred to him then that she hadn't even smiled before, after, or during their sex, and that he had never seen her smile. Pointing this out didn't seem like a gentlemanly thing to do, though.

"Why haven't you been available when I've tried to talk to you, recently?" Negi finally asked.

"There were different reasons each time. That's the 'semantic difference'," she added as an afterthought.

"Do you want to talk to me?"

"If I didn't, I'd leave," Shanna answered. "I don't see what there is to talk about."

He coughed. "All right, then, I'll explain. I'm assembling a collective of the people with whom I'm intimate, and I was hoping that you would be willing to join it. However, it would involve you becoming pregnant with one of my children, and I'm not sure whether you can do that. Which is why I was trying to see you with Ryouko, so that she could - can you?" he abruptly asked.

"Yes."

Negi blinked. "Oh. I wasn't sure, because, well, from what you told me while we were, um, your origins ..." He shook his head. "No, there's no nice way to say that, is there?"

She shrugged.

"But you can?"

"If I want to have a child, I can have a child," Shanna confirmed. "If not, then not. Mother, who chose to never have a child of her body, also chose to give me more control over the process than she had."

"Ah," said Negi, somewhat fascinated. "Well, then, I guess the question is -"

"Not yet," she answered before he could ask it. "I have something I need to do before I can make choices like that."

"Okay, then," he said, not surprised. "Can I help you to do whatever you need to do?"

She was silent for a while, and towards the end of that while, Negi began to grow a bit concerned that he'd given her offense with that last question. But then she spoke again. "I don't think you should. It's not a thing for a child."

Negi raised an eyebrow at that.

"Yes, you are not a normal child. But ..." She closed her eyes, and shook her head. When her eyes opened, they were even colder than they normally were. "I need to kill a man. The man who tried to kill the world. His name is Ikari Gendo, and I cannot live while he lives. So I'm going to kill him." A handful of heartbeats. "Do you still want to help?"

"Ahhhh," Negi replied, wide-eyed. "I - ah - o-okay, when you say, 'tried to kill the world', are you talking about Second Impact?"

Shanna nodded.

"I thought everyone involved with that died?" he asked.

"No. The man left the day before. He must have known. He let it happen."

"Why?" the boy asked, horrified.

"I don't care," the huntress answered.

"Would either of you care for some lunch?" asked a smiling cabin attendant, pushing her tray in front of her.

Still a bit shaken, Negi turned to look up at her. Ordinarily, he would have favored such an attractive lady with a smile to match her own, but at the moment, all he could do was stammer out, "N-no, not thank you, I mean."

The attendant blinked. "I'm sorry, what? Who got a high score in what?"

The bubble, he realized, and suppressed the urge to start swearing. With a gesture on his other side that he hoped this lady wouldn't notice, Negi cancelled the bubble. "Sorry, I meant no thank you," he said.

"Hahhhhh," she replied, nodding. For some reason, Negi thought she really resembled Konoka when she did that. "And for you, ma'am?" she asked Shanna.

Shanna answered by silently handing over a note to cover one of the lunches, and got one and some change back. Then the lady was on her way down the aisle, as Shanna opened the box and started in on its sandwiches without further ado.

"I'm hungry," she answered Negi's startled stare.

Mankanshoku Mataro had been through a strange few days, recently. He'd been dragged away from his minions as his family had risen incredibly rapidly in wealth and influence thanks to their houseguest, and though wealth and influence were things that Mataro more or less craved, he had to admit that their abrupt disappearance was probably ... what was the word? Ah, right ... 'good'. It wasn't like he'd missed his minions, or anything, but the kind of crap that he'd gotten up to without them had been pretty boring, no matter how lucrative it was.

So it was something of a relief to be working with them again, and setting up a good old-fashioned mugging. The minions had not been completely idle while he was 'away', and had discovered that someone had actually taken a job as a bicycle delivery person. It was like they were asking, nay, begging to be robbed! Doing this was almost a public service.

Thus, they waited behind one of the buildings on a street to the side of the one where the bike was supposed to be passing, until they heard the faint whirring sound made by air moving through the bike's spokes. Then they launched themselves towards the bicyclist as she came into view, overwhelming her with their numbers and stealing away the less than 2000 yen she carried in change plus the delivery item, laughing madly all the while.

At least, that was what should have happened, Mataro thought when he woke up a half hour later and began coughing the pavement taste out of his mouth.

When she'd sought out the job of making deliveries, the silly owner of the restaurant had warned her that there was a catch to how much she was being paid, and that she should expect to have to fight off people who would rob, rape and murder her, not necessarily in that order. Shan Pu had nodded, then asked, "Okay, what catch then?"

It was faintly ridiculous, really. Even the bandits here were seriously weaker than the ones she'd dealt with back home. She'd hoped that this would be an opportunity to get some exercise, but the best that she'd experienced so far had only risen to the level of distracting entertainment. Well, the money was good - delivery work, and the guarding therof, being one of the few jobs that were acceptable for a warrior - and the leftovers she was given added some variety to the meals that Kasumi made.

She spent a few heady moments thinking about the taste of Kasumi's food, and the taste of Kasumi's sweet little self. It passed when she reminded herself that she was on the job right then, and should not be thinking of sex right then. That could lead her to a place where she seriously considered accepting the occasional offers of a 'tip' from her customers, rather than politely declining them when women made them, or politely beating the hell out of the men who dared tempt her into adultery.

Shan Pu wasn't really sure why she declined the women's offers. She and Kasumi had no formal arrangement, and she was fairly sure that the Tendo daughter had other lovers. And if she was being honest, the bloom was coming off the rose when it came to that particular relationship, no matter how charmingly depraved she still found Kasumi. The girl would unhesitatingly do things that Shan Pu's idiot cousins, who'd come to worship the ground that she walked on, would balk at until she smacked them into obedience.

But Kasumi, lovely, sexy, uninhibited Kasumi, was not a warrior. She had never, and likely would never, know the sensual pleasure of battle, the cries of anger and of pain that sounded so nice and tickled her deep core of sadism and -

Wait, that was the sound that she was hearing right now!

Shan Pu brought her bike to a halt and turned to her left. There, in a vacant lot that had probably been vacant for as long as she'd been alive, a girl in a school uniform with her hair done up in a pony tail was fending off the attacks of a trio of individuals wrapped in bandages. They were employing pathetic-looking clubs, while she used nothing more substantial than a ribbon - though with such skill and power that it seemed more like a whip. Indeed, within a few moments, the girl had disarmed her attackers and was in the process of scourging them. Bandages, it seemed, made for poor armor.

Of course, Shan Pu didn't even consider coming to their aid. If they were unable to overcome someone with three-to-one odds, they had to be almost as weak as those stupid children she'd ridden over a few minutes before. So she just watched, fascinated, as the girl asserted her supremacy in a way that would have been a bit impressive even back in Nycheizu. But the sight alone wouldn't have captivated Shan Pu under normal circumstances. There was something about this girl, something ...

Eventually, the girl either grew weary of her whipping, or sensed the killing-no-let's-face-it-fucking intent coming from Shan Pu, for she turned to face her. "And whom," she said in a very formal dialect, "might you be?"

"Just passing through," Shan Pu replied, then raised her eyebrow. "Not custom to give one's own name first?"

The girl blinked as she made sense out of Shan Pu's statement, then coughed. "Indeed. Be known, then, to Kodachi, the Black Rose of St. Lilim." From nowhere, she plucked a flower which appeared, indeed, to be a black rose, then cast it in Shan Pu's direction like it was a dagger.

And like a dagger cast in her direction, Shan Pu caught it with ease. Almost reflexively, she brought it up to her nose. Whatever flower scent remained was covered up by the dye that had been used to turn it black, but Shan Pu found it to be a sweet smell nonetheless. By the time she looked away from the flower, though, the individual who'd thrown it had departed, making several impressive leaps in the process.

"Kodachi," Shan Pu said, utterly ignoring the sobs of the bandaged attackers. "I will remember."

Kodachi had heard that in some of the palatial mansions surrounding the north end of Academy City, it was customary for the residents of the household to be greeted by the assembled domestic staff when they arrived home. She thought that an utter waste of human resources, and that the staff would do much better to remain focused on their actual jobs. How much of that opinion was informed by the fact that, when she arrived at the palatial mansion where she'd grown up, there was never any one to greet her, was known only to her.

As she walked up the stairs leading to her room, she stripped off her garments and dropped them behind her, until she was clad only in the green leotard which was the only thing she wore by choice, rather than convention. Each garment, once released from her hand, disappeared in mid-air before it reached the floor. Kodachi did not witness this, but she had no reason to think that it wasn't happening.

Once in her room, she approached her mirrors and examined herself carefully. She didn't think that any of the louts of Furinkan had come close to actually touching her person, much less injuring it, but it was hard to be certain of such things in the heat of the moment. Once she was satisfied that her appearance was as immaculate as her soul - a smile spread across her face at that thought - she felt free to move on to other matters.

"Sasuke," she said, not raising her voice.

"Yes, young mistress?" answered the old man, dressed in the garb of a stagehand, who had not been kneeling behind her before she spoke, but was doing so now.

"Where is everyone?" Kodachi asked without looking back at him. (Of course she could see his reflection in the mirror, but to actually acknowledge his presence would never do. One could not give one's domestics Ideas.)

"Your elder brother and father have departed for the southern island, young mistress. Did they not inform you of their travel plans?"

Had they? She supposed that her idiot brother might indeed have done so, but if so, then - as with all else that did not interest her - the subject had soon passed from her thoughts. Briefly, she considered the worth of wrath for having been questioned, but decided that the inquiry did not rise to the level of insolence. Besides, she could always torment him for something else, later. There was one thing that should be said, however. "Sasuke, under these circumstances, we may dispense with the convenient fiction that the master of the house is my father."

"As you say, young mistress," the ninja replied.

Now, that merited punishment. Of course it was as she said. What was not as she said? Still, she did not unleash her fully justified fury just yet. "Attend me," she said, turning away from the mirror and walking out of her room.

After a few moments journey through the hallways of the manor, they came to the library, with shelves filled with books discussing the various island cultures of the south Pacific, most of which no longer existed - the cultures, not the books - as well as a single copy of The Secret of the Old Clock. She pulled at the spine of that volume, producing first a click, and then a groaning sound as one of the other bookshelves swung out from the wall, revealing a hidden passage behind it.

"Have the hinge oiled at the earliest opportunity," Kodachi commanded as she passed through the passage.

"Yes, young mistress," Sasuke replied, following in her wake.

Even more than usual, Kodachi didn't really bother to listen to her servant's response to her instructions. There was something much more captivating within the small room on the other side of the passage, though of course pretty much anything would have been more captivating than Sasuke's words. The wall, however, was of transcendant interest, with its photographs, newspaper and magazine excerpts, and string weaving it all together into a web centered on the only extant image of her mother. She approached it in much the same way that she imagined the more conventionally religious might approach a shrine, moving along one particular set of strings, and tapping one particular photograph with her varnished fingernail.

Just as she had with the mirrors, she stood there a while in thought, before turning away and sitting down in the room's only chair - only furnishing, really - which faced away from the wall and towards a ... different wall that didn't have any photos or what-not pasted to it.

She closed her eyes as she brought up one leg to her chest, her other foot making circles in the dust on the floor. "Suspect A, Sasuke," she said. "I may have a lead."

"Indeed."

"He has associations with China, correct?" Even Kodachi wasn't sure what the point of asking this was, when she'd just spent a few moments staring at a visual representation of the information she'd discovered about Suspect A and all the rest. Perhaps she was testing her own memory. She was quite aware that things that didn't interest her were not the only things that passed, very quickly, from her thoughts.

"Yes, young mistress. He was apprenticed under the tutelage of a Chinese master when young, although he and Associate 12 are believed to have murdered said master roughly thirty years ago. And our last report of his whereabouts puts him on a boat to China shortly before the Brittanian invasion. Obtaining reports of his activities subsequent to that have been ... understandably difficult."

She nodded reflexively. "There is a girl. A Chinese girl. Works as delivery for the Nekohanten restaurant," she pronounced the characters she'd seen on the box attached to the back of The Girl's bicycle. "Her manner is reminiscent of Suspect A's legal daughter, as well as Tendo-san."

"Tendo-san?" Sasuke repeated questioningly.

"Victim 6," Kodachi corrected herself through clenched teeth. "Tomorrow, you will begin an operation by which you will learn all that is learnable about this girl. For now, pleasure me," she added, reaching down to unhook her leotard's lower hook and expose her genitals.

"Yes, young mistress," the old man said, and was down between her legs almost as soon as he offered that utterly unnecessary agreement.

Kodachi sighed as she leaned back in her chair, neck tilting until she looked up at the ceiling, and wondered, as she sometimes did, whether she should give Sasuke the title Suspect E. He had been in service to her family for longer than she could remember - there were photographs with a blurry image that she identified as him accompanying her legal father's parents - and, as one of the most skillful lovers of her somewhat limited experience, it seemed fairly likely that her harlot mother had employed the same services that she was now.

For the first time in this interlude, his tongue glanced against her clitoris, and she shuddered.

But that was a dead-end. She had never been able to discover anything about Sasuke's personal history, and it was only with his assistance that she was able to investigate Suspects A (the martial artist), B (the doctor), C (the cultist) and D (the scientist.) Asking him to investigate himself was ridiculous. Despite this, she still had so many questions that she would have wanted answered, besides the obvious one.

The circumstances under which he'd lost his arm, for example.

"Can I ask you a question?"

Risa closed her eyes, momentarily blocking out the sight of the hotel room's ceiling, and let out a long, rather irritated sigh. Beyond that, she didn't respond to the question she'd just been asked.

Sitting on the other bed, Sairenji Haruna blinked in confusion. "Risa?"

"Gimme a moment, please, I'm fighting off the temptation to do a really, really cliched bit, and I don't do well in fights with temptation." With that, Risa opened her eyes and looked across the space between the two beds at her roommate for the current class trip, to some hot springs resort in Hinata. "What was it that you wanted to know?" she asked.

Haruna's expression looked just a little more confused than that, for a moment ... and then realization struck her, and her face scrunched up in embarrassment. "Um, yes, well," she said as she managed to recover. "I was just wondering why you volunteered to room with me instead of Mio."

"We're not married," Risa replied.

"... I-I know that you're not married," Haruna replied. "I never said you were. But she is your best friend, so I don't understand why you're not with her, right now."

As she returned her gaze to the ceiling, Risa briefly considered the notion of Mio as her 'best friend'. She supposed that the other girl was that, in addition to all the other words - 'fuckbuddy', 'early notch on my bedpost', 'fellow member of the Negi Springfield collective' - that applied. "We needed to spend a little time apart, I guess," she said, since saying, 'I'm finding it hard to control my jealousy over the fact that she got knocked up first' would reveal too much.

"Okay," Haruna said slowly. "I guess I was overthinking things, imagining that there might be some sort of tension between the two of -"

"Oh for fuck's sake," Risa interjected.

"Risa!"

"No, seriously, how the hell can you be so perceptive sometimes and so, so blind the rest of the time?" Risa demanded, glaring at Haruna now.

"I don't know what you're talking - wait, so something did happen between the two of you?" Haruna asked, perhaps focusing on the less-confusing aspect of Risa's complaint.

Risa let out another sigh. "Yes something happened, no it wasn't between us, it's something I don't want to talk about with her or you. And of course you don't know what I'm talking about, you have nooooo idea. Do you even know that Mio and I have sex?" she asked abruptly.

"Ummm," said Haruna, starting to resemble a blue-haired tomato. "Well, I mean, I'd heard the rumors, but, well, I didn't want to believe malicious gossip."

"It's not malicious gossip if it's true. Okay, actually it's probably still malicious gossip even - but anyway, yes, we have that kind of a relationship. But you have no clue, do you?"

"Well, I do now," Haruna replied, not quite meeting Risa's glare.

"Not even remotely what I meant," Risa nearly groaned. "I mean, do you think that Mio and I are the only ones in our class who swing that way?"

"Ah, well, like I said, I don't really listen to ... but, um, are you talking about Nagato having a crush on Tadamichi, and Iincho having a crush on Nagato?" Haruna asked hesitantly.

Risa's eyes went wide as she sat up and rolled so that she was sitting on the bedside facing Haruna. "You know about that, but you don't know about Riko."

It was almost beautiful, in a way, how Haruna's mortified expression morphed into something decidedly less embarrassed as soon as Riko was mentioned. "Yuuki? What are you talking about?" she asked, not sounding so much confused as ... wary, Risa decided.

"She's gay, Haruna," she said at last.

Haruna's face inched closer to a frown. "Risa," she said, half-chiding. "I'd think you of all people wouldn't engage in stereotyping. Just because Yuuki plays lacrosse, and is maybe a little overly aggressive while doing so, doesn't mean that she's -"

"No shit it doesn't mean anything!" interrupted Risa, now almost on the verge of shouting. "Know what does mean something? The way she looks at you while she thinks no one is looking. She's jonesing for you, Haruna! She wants to throw you to the ground and perform lewd acts on your person! She and you should be like this!" She proceeded to scissor the first two fingers of each of her hands together.

Haruna's eyes resembled tiny little black dots in a vast white space. "What?" she said. And also, "But." And even, "Huh?" Each monosyllable repeated a few times, in varying order.

"You had no fucking clue," Risa said, now sounding very weary. "You know, the real reason I wanted to be your roommate? I was thinking it might be fun to steal your first times away from Yuuki, and gloat about it to her and thus maybe sway her into bed, too. And then Lala-chi, because hot damn that chick is hot. But, y'know, I've had sex with a ten year old boy, so it's clear I have no real limits, but you? You are too fucking innocent for me to try anything with after this! I give up! Congratulations, your loss is Yuichi's gain." With that, Risa leaned back onto the bed and rolled over so that she was facing away from Haruna. "Shut the lights out when your head reboots, okay?" she added wearily.

Haruna continued to engage in monosyllables for a while. Sometime after the heat death of the universe, she managed to get herself together enough to say, "Ten year old boy?" But by then Risa was quite fast asleep.

"Can I ask you something?"

Nagato Yuki looked up from her book long enough to offer a quick nod of encouragement.

"What exactly are you reading?" Mio asked from where she lounged on the other bed.

"Second Foundation," Yuki answered calmly.

Mio nodded. "Ah, okay." After a moment, she further unburdened herself. "I don't know what that is."

Yuki offered a quick shrug as though to suggest that this was not her problem. With that, she returned to her book.

I hope Risa's having more fun than this, thought Mio.

Shinji was conscious, as he ate dinner in stony silence, of a pair of cartoonishly large eyes regarding him. The stress of Howard's regard was not exactly comfortable, but it was at least not hostile, as he was fairly sure that Misato's gaze would be. And from time to time the duck's gaze shifted away from Shinji and towards Misato, regarding her with the same expression he directed at Shinji. So there was a certain comfort in the idea that the other resident of these rooms was neutral in the current quarrel.

He did wonder when Howard was finding time to eat in between all that gazing, though. Not that it was any of his business.

Eventually, Shinji finished his meal, expressed his formal and not-really-all-that-sincere thanks for the meal (which had been microwaved TV dinner) and carried his utensils and dishes to the kitchen, where he rinsed them and set them in the dishwasher - which was more than any other resident usually did, so he really was being diligent. This task accomplished, he headed into and down the hallway leading to his room, slid open his bedroom door, and then slid it shut while he was still outside. Then he waited.

His patience was rewarded a moment or so later, when he heard Howard speak up. "Soooo," the duck said. "Would I be correct in my conclusion that matters did not go very well this day past?"

"It's disturbing when you talk all flowery like that," Misato replied, the words punctuated by the sound of her cracking open another can of Yebisu.

"Blame the spell that lets me talk like one of you," Howard retorted. "It's not my damn fault that when I talk normal-like, I sound like something out of a yakuza movie. So what went down?"

"I'm not sure I should tell you anything." This, interspersed with the sounds of beer being swilled.

"You gonna make me wait until you've had three more of those, in other words?" the duck asked snarkily. Shinji found himself wishing that he had a notebook so that he could write down that line, which sounded like it could be very useful.

As demonstrated by the way that Misato let out a sigh, set down her can, and began talking. "So, basically, after some civilian got caught up in the operation and Fuyutsuki outed Ritsuko for sleeping with the Commander -"

Shinji's eyes went wide. What?

That little tidbit proved distracting enough that he missed the next minute or so of Misato's monologue. When once more sufficiently engaged with the world outside his head, he heard her saying, "- know, even more than the sheer nerve he had in defying orders - to my face, even - the thing that pisses me off the most is the way that he just threw himself at the Angel, like he didn't care if he lived or died as long as he got to fight it. What the hell is up with that?"

Well, you never do hear anything nice about yourself when you're eavesdropping, Shinji reminded himself. Then wondered, idly, why Howard wasn't replying to that comment.

"What?" Misato asked irritably.

Ah, his response was nonverbal.

"Can I ask a question?"

"That is a question."

"Hahahaha," the duck 'laughed'. "Question - who's teaching the kid how to fight?"

Huh? thought Shinji.

"Huh?" said Misato.

"Who's teaching him how to fight? Where did he learn to do the knife-fighting you just told me about?" Howard paused. "I assume that ain't an elective in middle school."

"Wha- well, I thought it was just instinct, I mean, he knows he's got a knife, so he uses the knife."

"If I gave you a knife, would you know how to fight with it?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact."

"'Cause of all that JSDF training. Right?" Howard didn't give Misato the chance to respond. "From what you've told me, from time to time, that big hunk of ... stuff ... moves the way he thinks it should move. So it fights like he thinks it should fight. Maybe, if someone was teaching him how to fight a little smarter than he has been, he might not fight so he pisses off his bosses."

Misato was silent for a while before she spoke again, sounding disbelieving. "Are you seriously volunteering to teach Shinji that Quack-Fu business you showed me that one time?"

Quack-Fu? Shinji thought and, indeed, mouthed.

"I think it couldn't hurt. If nothing else, it'll help him learn when he has to back down."

In the distance, Shinji heard sounds indicative of someone getting up from the table. Abruptly realizing that an individual getting up from the table was an individual who could walk into visual range of him, he darted into the bathroom before they could do so.

There, crouched on the toilet, he found himself considering two, equally confusing thoughts. One, he was apparently going to be learning martial arts from a duck. Two ... where had he learned how to fight before this?

"Chamo-kun," Negi said in a rather pensive tone as he sat in the soothing warmth of the hot springs behind the traditional Kyoto inn currently occupied by his class, gazing up at the bloody red of the evening sky. "I'm starting to think that this expedition might not be the simple, easy process that the Headmaster suggested it would be."

"Gee, bro," Chamo replied as he sat in the water beside Negi, taking occasional sips from a small cup. (Negi really wondered where he'd acquired that.) "What could possibly give you that impression? I'm sure that it's perfectly normal for alcohol to be mixed into the waters of a fountain that kids are visiting, so that a good two-thirds of the class get blitzed out of their heads. Probably happens any given Sunday."

"Alas, it's not Sunday."

"No it's not."

Negi shook his head. Well, at least Shanna had helped him to convince the rather intimidating Nitta-sensei that the students who had imbibed the intoxicating waters of Otowa were just those who'd pulled an all-nighter the previous evening and were now over-tired. (The fact that one of the most drunken members of the class was the class representative, who was somewhat notorious for taking too much on herself, had made this a surprisingly easy sale.) Thus, rather than cancelling the trip and returning everyone involved to Mahora, they'd just proceeded to the inn where the students, drunk or sober, had been put to bed.

"From what Sakura told me about relationships between the Mahora Mage Order and the Kansai Magic Association, I think it's fair to say that someone here doesn't want the message the Headmaster gave me to be delivered," he mused. "There are still a lot of people angry over how the civil war ended, many years ago."

"And the message is probably some important diplomatic communication," Chamo agreed.

"Actually it's just a rather snidely-worded demand that the head of the order get his act together, expressed as a command from one's father-in-law," said Negi. As Chamo stared at him, he rolled his eyes. "Of course I read it. If I'm going to be used as a patsy between two hostile groups, I'm going to try to find out what the stakes are. Anyway, my priority has to be getting to father's workshop and performing the ritual. I think I'll slip away tomorrow and take care of that, then deliver the message the day after."

"Sounds like a plan, bro. Of course, you know what they say about plans."

"... that they don't survive contact with the enemy?"

"Atchally, I was thinking more the one that goes, 'if you want to make God laugh -'"

The ermine's voice stilled at the sound of one of the doors behind them sliding open. Negi glanced over his shoulder, silently wondering whether one of the other teachers was about to join him. His thoughts on the matter were just as abruptly cut off as he saw, through the mist, the form of Naba Chizuru, wrapped in a towel, stepping through the doorway and onto the stone platform.

"Negi-kun?" his student asked, looking about in apparent confusion. "I was told that you were in here."

"Yes, I'm right here, Chizuru-san," Negi called out.

She smiled brightly and let the towel drop, before stepping into the water and striding through it, the water level not quite reaching her pubic mound. Chamo made a series of interesting noises at the sight of her naked splendor while she approached the two of them.

"Did you bring your pet ermine into the baths?" Chizuru asked, blinking.

"Um, he's actually more of an adviser than a pet," Negi replied.

"Oh. Well, that would explain it, then," she said, then sat down next to him, the water seeming to rise up even more than her full breasts would have normally caused.

"Is Iinchou all right?" he asked.

"Oh, yes, she's sound asleep," she replied. "Doubtless having very happy dreams."

A moment or so they sat in somewhat awkward silence, before saying, in unison, "I've been meaning to talk to you - ah, no, you go first." There followed yet another moment of awkward silence.

It happened that Negi was the one to speak up. "Have you learned anything of interest from the Melchizedek? I should have asked you much sooner, but events kept getting in the way."

"Yes, yes, I have. And events kept getting in the way of my coming to talk with you about what I found out," she admitted with her usual smile, which faded quickly. "I read a passage which suggested that I might be some sort of demigod, the product of a union between one of the Greek or Roman gods and a mortal."

Negi blinked. "That would explain a few things, yes."

"You're familiar with the subject?" she asked.

"Not very," he admitted, just a bit sheepishly. "Most mages prefer to ignore the Olympians as much as possible. One of my teachers basically described them as a bunch of malfunctioning supernatural robots that have remained active for entirely too long."

"Really," she said flatly.

"I-I personally don't have an opinion on the subject," he assured her, hoping that he hadn't offended. "Um, well, from what I was told, when the British royal family fled to what became Brittania, the Olympians likewise abandoned England to move the center of western civilization to North America. That's where they've resided ever since, apparently, and why the Amazon Princess went there to - anyway, I would never have expected to encounter one of their progeny here in Japan."

Chizuru nodded, her momentary annoyance clearly passed. "Nor do I have any idea just how I'm related to them. I'm not even sure how to ask my father whether I'm adopted, or if he or my mother dallied with someone and I was the result, or ... I'm not sure where to start," she summarized, wearily. "And, well, it's all making me question a lot of things about myself."

"Regardless of who your parents were, you're still you, Chizuru-san," Negi assured her, reaching out to take her hand in his own. "I believe that we are the choices that we make, not those of our -"

"Thank you, Negi-kun," she said softly. "But it's making me reconsider a lot of choices I've made recently, too." And with that statement, she brought their joined hand up to one of her breasts.

"Oh," said Negi, after another moment of not-so-awkward silence. More of a pregnant pause than anything else.

"I know, I said that I wanted to wait until you'd established a relationship with Ayaka," she continued to speak softly. "And I really did think that once you visited her home ... but you've kept me waiting and waiting, and ... I've never been terribly patient, Negi-kun." She leaned closer, so that their noses were almost touching, and the warmth of her breath tickled his face when she spoke again. "Do you object?"

"Not at all," he said, and pressed his lips to hers. They kissed deeply for a while, tongues wrestling like oiled men in a squared circle, before Chizuru pulled back and began kissing down his throat and chest, pulling him up out of the water as she did. It didn't take long before she was able to lay one more kiss on the head of his erection, and then she slid her mouth onto it, giving a glance as she did at the seemingly comatose body of the ermine floating in the water nearby, before she returned her attention to the task at hand.

Negi let out a gasp, half from the sensation of Chizuru's mouth and half from the surprise that she, whom he'd only ever seen making love to other girls, was so talented in this area. Her lips, teeth and tongue were all employed to magnificent effect on his member, just as her hand had been that one time. But most affecting of all was her enthusiasm, something usually absent when he coupled with those of his associates who preferred their own sex.

She went down to his root once more, tongue sliding out to lick his testicles, before pulling back up again to speak. "Would you like to come this way?" she asked, not quite teasingly but clearly with an answer in my mind. "Spraying down my throat? Would you rather mess up my face, so that I have to clean it up in this public bath?" Quite suddenly she moved up his body so that her face was against his chest and he rested between her breasts. "Or would you rather do it like this, fucking these breasts of mine? Mikado might be bigger, but I wonder whether she's let you do that."

The shock of hearing her use such language prevented Negi from addressing another point of confusion, such that all he could do was stammer out, "N-no, no, we haven't, I-I -"

Even that was interrupted when she slid up even further to kiss his mouth once more. "No, you wouldn't play such games, would you?" Chizuru asked once that was done. "You're a boy in a hurry, and even when you're enjoying yourself, there's always the mission, isn't there? It's sort of a shame. Sex should be an act of pleasure, of worship, even. Still, I'm in a hurry, too. And for those in a hurry -"

With that, she grabbed hold of his shoulders and pulled him away from the rock, turning them about so that her own hips rested against it instead, then spread her legs. "Fuck me," she commanded, purple eyes gleaming in the mists of the bath.

Without hesitation, without even any further thought, Negi hastened to answer this charming request, pushing into her hard enough that she fell back against the surface of the stone. She cried out in apparent release as she did so, apparently not minding the hardness against her shoulder blades any more than she minded the hardness somewhat further below.

His lips sought and found one of the nipples of those breasts as he pounded into her.

"No milk," she said, her cries finally approaching a semblance of words. "Not yet! But there wiiiiillll be, oh, yes, my wonderful boy, go harder, harder!"

Honestly, he didn't think he could go any harder, despite all his experience until now, but he nonetheless felt compelled to try and answer her plea.

"Ahhhhh!" she nearly shrieked. "Yes, that's it, Rias will be such a lucky girl, more, more, more!"

Rias? he managed to think. Perhaps that was a nickname for Ayaka for which he lacked the context and - No, no analyzing, just focus on the one you're with! Give her pleasure and then do your duty! he reminded himself, and applied himself to this all-important task.

Within moments, he could feel the sensations that told him the moment was at hand. "I'm about to -" he gasped out.

Her lower legs wrapped around his buttocks, unnecessarily holding him in place. "Do it! Do it!" she said.

So of course he did it, semen exploding upwards and inwards in search of its own form of union. He collapsed on her, drained in a way that was somewhat foreign to his experience, even when he'd mated in the warmth of the pool at Mahora. Why was he so very tired at the moment, and -

"Negi-sensei?" a voice asked.

His eyes blinked open. The first surprising thing was that his eyes didn't rest on the warm pink flesh of Chizuru's body, but on the surprisingly pale form of yet another young woman, standing before him and wrapped in a towel. The second surprising thing was that he was sitting in the pool as he had been before Chizuru arrived.

"S-setsuna-san?" Negi asked, for indeed it was she.

"Are you all right?" the slender young woman asked, regarding him with concern that he wasn't used to seeing on her normally taciturn face.

"Wha-" he said, looking about. "Where -" He barely stopped himself from continuing that question with - is Chizuru?

"You're in the baths, Negi-sensei," Setsuna replied, misunderstanding his question in the way that he'd wanted. "I came in and found you asleep in the water, almost about to drown, I think."

"Oh," said Negi. Dream? he thought, hoping his confusion didn't show on his face. He glanced to his side to see that Chamo was floating unconscious in the water just as he had been the last time he'd given his friend some thought.

"Did you bring your pet ermine into the baths?" the girl asked, blinking.

"Um, he's actually more of an adviser than a pet," Negi replied, further bewildered by deja vu.

"Oh. Well, that would explain it, then," she said, then blinked rapidly. "Are you sure that you're all right?"

"Yes," he said, striving for calm. "Yes I am."

"... all right then," Setsuna replied, clearly skeptical. "Well, it's probably for the best that I found you here, so that we can speak in private."

"Oh boy," Negi said very quietly.

She didn't seem to have caught that. "This isn't easy for me."

"I suspect it will be easier than you think," he told her, offering what he hoped was a comforting smile.

"I doubt that very much," she replied, then took a deep breath. "I. Nnnnneeed. Your. Hhhhhh. Ahem. Just a moment, please," she said much more quickly and quietly, took another breath. "I-need-your-help," Setsuna said at last, deciding to pull the band-aid off quickly instead.

"In what way?" asked Negi, who now believed that this probably wasn't a confession after all.

"You see, I am -"

And then the screaming started, coming from the changing rooms. Setsuna immediately dashed in that direction, snatching up an object that Negi, moving somewhat more slowly behind her, was startled to recognize as a sheathed sword. There was no time to address this development, though, because the two of them reached the changing room doors almost immediately.

Within was a scene of ... well, not quite horror, but more bewildering embarrassment. Konoka and Asuna were being assailed by what looked like a small army of monkeys who were engaged in the act of stripping the two middle-school girls of what few articles of clothing they were wearing. "Kek, kek, kek!" declared the monkeys as they divested Konoka of her panties.

"You damned dirty monkeys!" Setsuna declared, trembling with fury as she began to draw forth her sword from its sheath. "What the hell are you doing to Konoka-ojosama!"

Under other circumstances, Negi might have tried to stop Setsuna from attacking the monkeys, out of horror at animal abuse that didn't involve Chamo. As it happened on this particular occasion, however, something about the situation seemed off enough that he hesitated long enough for her to slice through the particular monkey presently holding on to Konoka's lacy panties ... which promptly turned into a piece of paper cut right through the middle.

"Negi?" gasped Asuna, covering her breasts and very glad that she'd managed to overcome the monkeys who'd attempted to steal away her own panties. "Sakurazaki-san? What the hell is going on here!"

Setsuna didn't answer, being entirely focused on exterminating the monkeys, which took a surprisingly brief amount of time. With this accomplished, she seized up one of the two sets of underwear which had been dropped, then knelt before Konoka and offered said clothes up to her. "Avert your eyes!" she snapped in Negi's direction.

"Um, no, it's okay, he doesn't have to avert his eyes," said Konoka, clearly embarrassed as she took hold of the garments being offered her.

"... do not avert your eyes!" Setsuna promptly snapped in Negi's direction.

"I mean, he can avert his eyes if he'd like, but I'm sure it's not anything he hasn't already seen," Konoka elaborated.

This time Setsuna took a moment or so to consider matters, before snapping, in Negi's direction, "Avert your eyes or not as it suits you, but know that there are consequences to not doing so!" It was sort of remarkable how she managed to snap two clauses like that.

"Setsuna, maybe you could just not?" Konoka said with a sigh.

"Is anybody even going to try to answer my earlier 'what the hell'?" Asuna asked a bit plaintively.

"In brief, early this morning, before we boarded the train, I received a message from one of my informants that there would be an attempt to kidnap Konoka-ojosama when we arrived in Kyoto," Setsuna began to explain, several moments later.

She was seated in the inn's lounge, across from Negi, Chamo, Asuna, and Yuna, who'd been awakened from a comfortable snooze beside a thoroughly blitzed Makie and was less than thrilled by this development.

"You have informants?" Yuna asked, blinking.

"... of course I have informants," Setsuna replied. "The first duty of a bodyguard is to keep their charge safe, and one can only do that if one has foreknowledge of what dangers might confront them. Kagurazaki-san no doubt has informants who tell her when enemies to her master are plotting something," she added.

"Ummm," said Asuna, looking a bit sheepish. "I'mmmm ... really more the 'go beat up whoever Eva says to beat up' type of servant, rather than a bodyguard. That's really more Karin's job. But she probably has informants. I guess. We don't really socialize."

"So who exactly is trying to kidnap Konoka?" asked Negi, both because he wanted to know and to spare his older sister Setsuna's rather judgemental gaze.

"That was not something my informant could or would tell me," Setsuna admitted. "From their tactics thus far, however, it seems likely to be a renegade faction of the Kansai Magic Association. As the daughter of the head, and also the granddaughter of the Association's former enemies, ojosama would -"

"Okay, can I just, can I just stop you right there?" Asuna interrupted. "You do know that Konoka hates that ojosama shit, right? Seriously, what is your deal?"

For the first time since she'd gotten so furious at the monkey-things, Setsuna's taciturn features expressed an emotion - severe embarrassment. "I ..." she started. "It is only right for someone so ... high above me, as she is, to be addressed in such terms. I understand that she would prefer to live a more normal life, free of the strictures of her position, but that is not a realistic desire. My 'deal' is that I will try to protect her from the shadows, using whatever tools or strategies are needed to do so. As long as I can do that, I am content."

"Would those tools include black bags on peoples' heads?" Negi asked mildly.

"Hah?" chorused Asuna and Yuna, who then gave each other a startled stare.

"I will not apologize," Setsuna answered Negi's question. "But I do think that I will need your help. I cannot be everywhere, and I cannot do everything. And you have a much larger circle of allies than I do."

"Yeah, but some of the key members of that 'circle' aren't here right now, so things are going to be a little harder than they who are you calling?" Yuna abruptly asked Negi as her magister pulled out his phone and hit one of its speed dials.

Negi let his phone conversation do the answering for him. "Hello, Shizuru? Have you gotten settled in at your house? Good, good ... oh, that's very good, I was hoping she'd be with you. Anyway, we've got a bit of a situation, here. If you and Natsuki could come to the inn I told you about tomorrow morning, I'll explain all the details then. Thank you." He hung up.

"So ... shouldn't those two be back at school right now?" Yuna asked.

"Natsuki is a notorious delinquent, and Shizuru can make a pose of having family obligations whenever she needs to do so," Negi answered. "It's all good."

"I'd say that you shouldn't be encouraging that sort of thing, but we're pretty much past that point," Yuna admitted, glancing at Setsuna, who was back to looking utterly calm and composed. Also pretty darn sexy, Yuna's libido added.

"For now," I think the best thing that you and Asuna can do is to go to the room your group is staying in and keep a close eye on Konoka-san there," Negi told Setsuna. "Yuna, you should probably go back to sleep, unless you'd rather help me patrol the outer perimeter?"

"I know perfectly well what would happen if we did that, so yeah, g'night children everywhere," his roommate agreed as she got up from her chair and started to amble in the direction of her room.

"Don't worry, Setsuna-san, I won't let anything happen to Konoka-san or any other members of the class," Negi assured her.

"Under the circumstances, I think worry is entirely appropriate, as you are something that has already 'happened' to a surprisingly large number of my classmates," she replied. "Nonetheless ... th, th-th-th-thh-thh-thhhhh -"

"I think she's trying to say thank you," said Chamo.

"Probably, yes," agreed Asuna.

"Ahem," said Negi, offering a bow in Setsuna's direction before turning to walk towards the inn's front door, past a lady pushing a tray of linens, whom he carefully avoided colliding with and exchanged a pleasant smile.

He came up short a moment or so later. "Wait a minute, wasn't that the same lady who was serving lunch on the train?" he asked.

Inside the inn, having disposed of her linens, Amagasaki Chigusa put on her glasses and continued her mission.

Even before room-temperature-and-cooler water had become something Ranma generally sought to avoid, he'd never really seen the point of lounging around on a beach. He'd trained at such places, cultivating both the ability to swim and resistance to whatever it was in the world's waters that turned them red and caused occasional sickness. But to visit a beach for the sole purpose of lazing around - something you could do anywhere, as his shitty father had frequently demonstrated - just left Ranma boggled.

Hiroshi and Daisuke had taken it upon themselves to show their new good buddy, who'd expressed such sentiments aloud to them, what they claimed to be the point of spending time on a beach - girl-hunting. Privately, Ranma found this to be hilarious, given that he was fairly sure that he was the only one of the three of them who was not a virgin, and was completely sure that he was the only one of the three of them who actually understood how women thought, being as he was one from time to time. But it got him out of the hotel room that he had to share with the class weirdo, who claimed to be able to practice black magic.

(Now, given that Ranma had met and had carnal knowledge of someone who actually did practice magic, he might have felt somewhat inclined to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. But the way that it had been made very clear to him that actual practitioners of the occult did not advertise their abilities, and the way that the weirdo was so vague about what it was that he could do with his so-called magic, suggested that he was dealing with a fraud.)

So he just tagged along with the two of them, as they approached various women of various ages - mostly older than the three of them, but not that much older - who variously found them juvenile, annoying, juvenile and annoying, and in one case, interesting and appealing. Unfortunately, that one case had been also been forthright about being a transwoman, which had horrified Hiroshi and Daisuke. Ranma's unique perspective on gender led him to view the situation as rather intriguing, but his love life was honestly already complicated enough, so he'd just offered her his apologies and headed after the two idiots, as he was starting to think of them.

Said idiots were beginning to argue over which of them was the greater idiot who should shoulder the blame for this entire humiliating affair, which amused Ranma a bit as they were clearly both at fault. Before the dispute could go any further, though, Daisuke had noticed yet another possible romantic conquest for their group of would-be stud monkeys, in the form of a young lady wearing a blue sundress, standing at the end of a short wooden dock and staring out to sea. Hiroshi promptly went out to try and chat her up, but returned with nothing to report but failure ... failure which was repeated but Daisuke.

"Well, Ranma, it's your turn," Hiroshi told him.

Ranma blinked. "I'm just here for the show, you guys."

With that remark, any semblance of companionship ended, and Hiroshi and Daisuke tromped away grumbling in annoyance. He was about to follow them, but decided to head up to the girl and offer her an apology if she'd been bothered by the two idiots. He stepped on to the boards of the dock and began to approach her, but before he could say anything, one of the wooden planks of the dock gave way beneath his foot and dropped him into water.

"Aw, dammit," she said. Well, at least she'd had the foresight to wear one of her usual shirts in addition to the swim trunks the guys had urged on her, so that she was not now topless. Getting back to the hotel while avoiding the attention of those interested in 'the pig-tailed girl' was going to be trouble, but maybe she'd be able to find a beach stand with a -

She felt a shadow fall upon her and looked up.

The girl in the sundress had blonde hair and the deepest blue eyes that Ranma had ever seen. Her neck, her hands, and her legs were all extraordinarily pale, in comparison to her face, and she appeared to be wearing shoes that looked like they were ... hooves, almost.

"You," the girl said.

"Uh ... hi?" Ranma replied.

"I have found you," she said. "Here, in this place, I have found you. I have been searching," she added. Her voice was so strange, it sounded like she was on the verge of tears and yet her face seemed so very calm. But that clearly had to be some sort of facade, because in another moment she was pressed up against Ranma, her nose at about the height of Ranma's forehead. "My highest priority is to be with you!" she declared.

"Uhhhokay, then," she told the clearly crazy girl. "... so, can we maybe start with some introductions?"

"Aigis. My name is Aigis."

To Be Continued.