Still Waters, Another Turn, Chapter 1
Author's Note: Well here we go with part two. I hope you like it. Also, I OWN NOTHING. Not Negima, not the songs whose lyrics I am borrowing, and nothing else that may or may not be referenced throughout the story. I only own the original characters. I suppose the spotty plot belongs to me as well, thought I'm not sure anyone else would want to claim it.
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Easy Come, Easy Go. Little High, Little Low.
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It had been over a month since the students returned to school, but the normal routine was still slightly off. The gym had been badly damaged during the flooding and had yet to be repaired. The athletic fields were heavily pitted and off limits. The students couldn't use the lunch room, because it had sustained quite a bit of burn damage by Arvel, the mage that had destroyed so much of Mahora a couple months ago. Lunch was currently being served from several small shops that the school had set up in one of the plazas that had been relatively unscathed.
All in all, the school and the city itself were far from recovering from the chaos of that day. But that was in the past, and Mahora, while steeped in tradition, was never a city to wallow in bad times.
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Asuna sighed heavily and gazed out through the window as the history teacher droned on about something or other, she wasn't sure what. How was she expected to concentrate on class when she had that special training to look forward too? Eva had said that Asuna would face a demon today after school, and that was a lot better than listening to a bored teacher babbling about some guy she had never heard of who did something and then died three hundred years ago.
Soon enough, the last class of the day ended, and Asuna was free. Slinging the sword case containing the evil sword she had received from Eishun over her shoulder, she practically ran from the classroom in her eagerness to get outside, struggling to hold the bouncing case in place. Setsuna had instructed her to carry the sword at all times, so she would become used to its weight…apparently, you couldn't just pick up a sword somewhere and instantly be able to use it perfectly like people did on TV. Setsuna kept repeating that you had to get used to a sword to use it well.
After a quick trip to the bathroom, she found Madoka waiting for her at the front of the school, and the two of them headed for Eva's place. Madoka had been training with Eva as well, if one could call it that. More like using Eva's resort to train and then getting yelled at. Asuna didn't know all the details, but the other girl apparently had a strong ability to use ki, the same as Setsuna. The cheerleader had been uncharacteristically quiet in the time since the big battle against Oscar Marshall, but the two of them had grown fairly close over the past two months, and the cheerleader was now a common sight around campus with the more active members of Negi's group.
They met up with Chachamaru outside of Eva's cabin, and went down to the resort.
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"No no no! What are you, stupid?" Eva shouted after Madoka broke yet another wall, having completely missed her target. Unfortunately, Eva had been in the building that the wall belonged to.
"I'm sorry," Madoka said again as she looked down at her fist, still a little surprised at her strength. She had been trying to learn the so-called 'long hit' that had been used to great effect during the tournament, but it was a lot harder to get it to go where you wanted than it looked.
"Control! You have to learn control or you'll never be able to use it," Eva lectured. This was something she had drilled in Madoka's head since the beginning.
As for Madoka, her control had gotten much better, but was still far too unrefined to risk using it against a real opponent, lest the other person end up a bloody splotch with a twenty foot radius. Madoka imagined her power felt something like a high pressure water faucet, where you only had a quarter inch of play between 'nothing' and 'full blast', and her control was sloppy at best. The first time she had blown up a desk had been a big surprise, and blown amps were pretty expensive to replace as well. She still remembered the glare Misa had given her when she fried her friend's one-of-a-kind guitar. Luckily, she had managed to learn enough control to get to the point where she no longer caused everything she touched to explode or short out dramatically, but whatever she targeted tended to be reduced to a fine powder, even if she only intended to knock it over. There had even been a short time just after school resumed where everyone she touched or bumped into complained that she was full of static electricity.
"No! How many times do I have to tell you?!"
Yes, she definitely needed practice.
"Eva-chan~" Asuna called out as she approached.
Eva executed a nice facepalm and turned to glare at the approaching redhead. "What now?"
Asuna looked sheepishly at Eva and grinned hopefully. "I, ah…accidentally unsummoned that fake demon…thing you made. Can you make another one…?" Eva had only done it because Negi had begged her to help Asuna, and the idiot was really getting on her nerves. Those things took a lot of energy to make, after all.
Eva sent one of her better deathglares at Asuna, then turned back to Madoka. "Don't break any more walls. Your target is that rock, got it? Not the fence, not the building over there, but the rock. If I come back and find that you broke another wall I will make you regret it, understand?"
"Er…I understand," Madoka answered. Eva-san was surprisingly intimidating for someone that looked ten years old. Her initial reaction to learning the truth about Eva-san was disbelief…it took a match between Eva and Negi-sensei to drive the point home, and Madoka hadn't known what to do with herself in her excitement over the possibilities that the concept of magic presented. Unfortunately, she had no feel for magic at all, and had been forced to settle for learning how to use ki, which she was a natural at, according to Setsuna. Now, if she could just figure out how to use a level of power somewhere between 'zero' and 'maximum'…
"Good. Now you," she said, pointing at Asuna. "Come with me," Eva said as she walked past the red head, who shot an embarrassed grin at Madoka. That had been the second fake demon Asuna had unsummoned today. It wasn't as if she was trying to unsummon them, it just kind of…happened. The red head heaved a deep breath as she followed Eva; it seemed that she needed more practice in controlling her abilities as well.
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Jennifer laughed as she walked alongside Akira, listening to a story the taller girl recounted from earlier in the day.
"So Asuna-chan fell asleep in class and poked herself in the head with her pencil? That sounds like something Max would do," she said with a smile that Akira returned. The girl had thought the same thing when she saw it.
"Hey, Jennifer, Akira," Max said as he approached the duo and slipped an arm around Jennifer's waist.
"Well, speak of the devil. Anyway, 'san', Max. You forgot the –san again," Jennifer said.
"Right, right. Akira-san."
Jennifer and Akira got along shockingly well, considering what had happened before Jennifer's arrival. Max had kissed this girl after all, and that was usually a bad thing for any relationship. But Jennifer understood quite well what had been behind it, and she sort of understood the connection the two elementals shared, or thought she did. They were connected on a very deep level, seeming almost able to read each other's minds. She had heard that that was a fairly common thing when two elementals were friendly with each other long enough. They got on the same wavelength, so to speak. She was a bit jealous of that connection of course, but it wasn't as though it was stronger than her own connection with Max. You didn't get much closer than a permanent Magister and Ministra, after all. Besides, the girl was Max's apprentice, and there was no way around that. It wasn't as though there were any other elementals around to train the girl. Besides, while Max may have been prey to wild throes of emotion, he always ended things abruptly when he realized what he was doing, which, unfortunately, usually seemed to be the instant his lips touched the other person's.
"So, how about I take you two ladies out for dinner?"
Jennifer and Akira looked at each other and nodded simultaneously. This was a rare thing, it wouldn't do to waste the opportunity.
Max never had any money, after all.
So, with a girl on each arm and nothing worrying on his mind, Max strutted down the street, feeling like a million bucks for the first time in a long time.
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Negi sat on his bed, staring at the sheathed sword.
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"Nothing." Not a single shiver. Asuna's sword was always shaking or falling over, as if whatever was sealed inside wanted out desperately. His, however…
"It's no good, aniki," Kamo said.
'Perhaps Kamo-kun is right, maybe there was a mistake and this sword is just a normal one. But Setsuna-san said…' Negi thought.
His musing was interrupted by someone pounding on his door.
"Negi-kun, Negi-kun! Hey, let me in!"
"I'm coming, Yuuna-san!" Negi said as he climbed down from the loft and welcomed an excited Yuuna. "Hello Yuuna-san." Yuuna had perhaps fared the best of them all, considering what had happened to the girl. She had been incredibly lucky that Konoka's healing powers had been at their monthly peak. If not, Yuuna would have died without a doubt. No one had had a chance to examine her before the battle ended so abruptly, but after the water receded they had rushed her to a doctor, who had declared her to be dangerously exhausted and heavily bruised both internally and externally, but otherwise fine. Quite surprising, considering what Akira had recounted of Yuuna's condition after Oscar Marshall, the wood elemental, had squeezed her half to death and then shot giant thorns through her.
Yes, Konoka's healing magic had saved her life without a doubt.
"Hey, Negi. Can you teach me a new spell? I'm tired of the fire one," she said urgently.
Negi held back a tired sigh. Yuuna had been quite insistent on learning the practice of magic right away, but Negi had refused to give in. He hadn't wanted the girl to get involved at all, but she refused to give it up, so he had had no choice but to teach her, lest she experiment on her own and get hurt. "The basic theory is more important right now, Yuuna-san," he explained again while the girl pouted and crossed her arms.
"Oh, Kamo-kun!"
"Wha—Ah! Aniki, help!"
"Kamo-kun is so cute and fuzzy, I had no idea he was like a magical girl's pet too," Yuuna said, rubbing her face on the poor ermine and tickling him.
"I'm an ermine spirit, a familiar. I'm not some magical girl's pet," Kamo said testily after he extricated himself from the girl's crushing grip.
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Mana, finally released from the hospital, made her way slowly through the campus to the dorm building, which had survived the chaos intact. She was thinner and weak as a kitten and still had a limp, but she was back. She saw someone seated on the front steps of the dorm as she approached, and the corner of her mouth twitched upward.
"Hello, Kaede-san."
"Hello, Mana-dono."
The two just looked at each other for a moment, then grinned. Mana almost felt like laughing, in fact. She couldn't explain it easily, but…it was good to be back.
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Things were almost back to normal in Mahora. Rubble was cleared, what was destroyed would be rebuilt, and…
"Captain Fei, you have a challenger!"
"Oho! Bring it on-aru!"
Some were doing better than others, as the poor challenger could tell any who asked.
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"Hey, did you guys ever find that missing unit from the festival?" a college robotics student asked the small group working on another new body for Chachamaru in the university lab.
"Unit 0043, or 1125?" Hakase asked. "No, they probably ended up in the river. We only found 1214 two weeks ago after all, you know?"
The college student nodded. That had just been a fluke, too. A sewer worker had found the damaged Tanaka-san jammed up against a grate and thought he had found a body. The man's startled scream had echoed up through sewer grates for a mile around, providing sufficient fodder for several weeks' worth of storytelling and jokes.
"Yeah, it's not like someone kidnapped it or anything," another student said with a laugh that was shared all around.
"No way that would happen."
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Author's note: A bit of an infodump, eh? Don't worry, the rest won't be like that, this one only was because it's the first chapter of a new story, and background is necessary in this case.