This work is based (mostly) on the work of Kazuma Kamachi and other writers. A translation from Baka Tsuki was used in its creation and I claim no ownership over their work. Please Read, Review, and Enjoy.


Well now… This… certainly wasn't what I expected when I reached the afterlife…

This was what Kamijou thought as she looked around at her surroundings with a blank, expressionless look on her face.

The student found herself out in the middle of what she could only describe as a barren, lifeless field, devoid of any sign of plant or animal life. The sky was completely overcast with light gray clouds thick enough to obscure any hint of the color of the sky, but thin enough to allow light through to make the world as bright as it would be on a normal sunny day.

However, the word normal could not even begin to be associated with the scenery surrounding Kamijou at that moment in the slightest. Even as she had stared at it for the untold amount of seconds, Kamijou could only sigh in disbelief at what she saw.

You know… I had hoped to go to a paradise free of suffering when I died, after everything that I've had to deal with… But this… This doesn't look like a hell of eternal torture either… This is… just strange.

Stretching out for as far as the student's eye could see, the landscape surrounding her was entirely made up of a continuous, unmarred blue crystalline material. Without any sunlight shining directly onto the crystal surface, the material was almost completely opaque revealing nothing deeper than what seemed to be two or three centimeters beneath Kamijou's feet.

The student looked down at the muddled surface with a still blank expression on her face, putting a little bit of force into stepping down on the surface, and finding that it would not yield in anyway. After discovering this, Kamijou sighed and began to rub the back of her head before turning to look at something far off in the distance.

"Really now… I guess that there is absolutely nothing around here other than 'that' over there… Meaning that the only thing I can do right now is head over to 'that'… isn't it?"

'That', the subject of the student's rhetorical question, was a massive spire of the same crystalline material that made up the landscape, stretching up towards the heavens, going far from the sight of the student, piercing the clouds and disappearing.

Kamijou sighed and briefly took one more look around herself before shaking her head and looking back at the spire.

There is absolutely nothing around here that would give me any indication on what in the world is going on, but then again… there is no guarantee that there will be anything there that will help me understand what is happening either…

However, with no leads to go off of around her, Kamijou could only swallow any feelings of uncertainty she felt and start moving reluctantly towards the spire.

Once the student had put her mind to heading towards the spire, however, the distance from where Kamijou had been looking at the spire and the base of the spire was closed in no time at all, causing the student to briefly pause and look behind her at the wide open, empty expanse behind her.

Is it… is it just me… or was that a bit too quick for how far I had to travel? Is it because that there was nothing around while I was walking up to it or…

Kamijou sighed as her own though trailed off, understanding that even if she thought about what was going on at that moment, she wouldn't be able to do anything about it until the situation decided to allow it to take care of it.

Sighing again, the student shook her head and began to examine the small section of the spire's base that lay before her, with a somewhat critical eye.

The spire, upon closer inspection of the formation, was found to indeed be made of the same crystalline material as the ground beneath the student's feet, unsurprising, considering that the spire was growing out of the surface. The surface of the spire was slightly different to the ground, being slightly more reflective than ground, though it was only barely so, as Kamijou could only faintly make out her own features in the surface.

The moment that Kamijou noticed her own features in the cloudy mirror like surface of crystal, however, her attention was instantly drawn to it, making her even forget the predicament she was in.

Is that… What in the world is wrong with this thing? My face… It just looks… wrong somehow…

Kamijou began to lean towards the surface of the spire, narrowing her eyes to try and make out the image that lay before her.

Once the student had the faintest idea of what was going on in the reflection, Kamijou jumped back in surprise, and briefly felt her face to see if anything was as out of the ordinary as the reflection shown.

When she found that there was nothing wrong with her face to the best of her knowledge, Kamijou looked back at the vague reflection in the spire as a cold sweat began to pour down her neck.

Who… Who in the world is that?


"… Listen… As much as I respect a person's right to do whatever the wish to their bodies… I must inform you, for the third time today I might add, that you cannot smoke inside of the hospital!"

At the sound of a person speaking somewhat sternly in a rather loud voice, Kamijou drearily opened her eyes to be blinded by the high efficiency fluorescent lights that were endemic to Academy City.

As the student quickly moved her hands up to shield her eyes from the blinding light shining down on her from the ceiling, Kamijou's entire body lit up with the dull pain of sore muscles that haven't been moved for a long time.

The pain made the student's mind go completely blank to the point where she did not even begin to notice that she had two arms until after she had regained some semblance of her sight, after which she looked at her left arm with a gaze of pure confusion.

Wait… my arm is…? What in the world is going on right now?

Raising her upper body up so she was in a sitting position, Kamijou began to examine her surroundings. The student quickly found that she was inside of a hospital room, almost exactly the same as the one she had woken up in two weeks prior. The only reason that she knew it was not the same room was the fact that the view from the room was different than the other.

At the foot of the bed were two familiar people who were locked in what seemed to be a heated argument. One was the old frog faced doctor who had been Kamijou's supervising doctor the last time she had been in the hospital, a stern look on her face, and a pack of cigarettes that she had obviously confiscated from the person she was arguing with.

The person who the doctor was arguing with was a rather annoyed looking Styx, who was wearing a hospital gown instead of her usual all black nun habit.

Both people were completely entrenched in their argument with each other that they didn't even seem to notice that Kamijou had woken up.

Styx gestured at the pack of cigarettes in the doctor's hands, her gaze a hot glare of annoyance and anger that she kept firmly directed at the older woman.

"I really don't understand what it is with everyone in this place constantly trying to either take away my cigarettes or direct me away from every out of the way spot I try to smoke at. Does this city have a personal vendetta against me or something?"

The doctor sighed and carefully extracted a cigarette from the pack she had confiscated, looking at the sample with a critical eye before returning her attention to the red head magician.

"Well… there are several things that are wrong with a person like you smoking, and there are also problems with where you were trying to smoke… So, in my opinion, this 'vendetta' you speak of is one you brought on yourself."

The red haired magician sneered up at the doctor and crossed her arms in a defiant gesture towards the older woman. Styx then turned to look to the side, her gaze obviously going to Kamijou as she was the only other thing of interest in the room.

Once Styx's gaze noticed that Kamijou was awake and looking at the two women who were arguing near the foot of her bed, the magician turned all of her attention and annoyance towards the bedridden student.

"Oh… So now you're awake now of all times, huh?! How was your overly long nap… or should I call it your normal amount of sleep, considering that you've been fast asleep for the last three hours?"

Kamijou felt a drop of sweat roll down her neck as the magician bore down on her with an annoyed glare. The student nervously smiled up to the red head and made a small wave up to her.

"He- Hey Styx… How… How are you actually? Considering on how I last saw you… You look considerably better than before."

The memory of the smell along with the sight of burning hair, melting flesh and charring bone were all still fresh and vivid to Kamijou's mind to cause her stomach to do a turn, but the student managed to keep herself from vomiting just from a memory.

The memory must have also been fresh with Styx as well, because the annoyed expression disappeared as all the color drained from her face. The magician nervously coughed into her hand before looking at Kamijou with a slightly annoyed look.

"Well… yes. Considering what had happened to me before, looking like myself is quite a blessing to say the very least… By the way… What happened after that…?!"

Styx was abruptly cut off when the doctor carefully moved the magician out of the way, quickly moving into the void left by the magician. The doctor sighed and turned to look at the red head with an accusing glare.

"Listen… As much as I am sure you are happy that she just woke up… but should you really be bombarding her with pointless questions before an expert can look after her and check she is alright? She could be in pain right about now and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to figure out if she is or isn't."

The magician glared at the doctor and crossed her arms again in a gesture of defiance, but remained completely silent as the doctor stared at her.

The doctor sighed and began to scratch the back of her head before turning to Kamijou with a smile forming on her face.

"Well then… Are you feeling any type of pain Miss Kamijou? I must say… With two hospital visits in two weeks, it leaves one to wonder whether or not you are living a healthy lifestyle or not."

Kamijou sheepishly grinned up at the doctor rubbing the back of her head with her left hand.

"Yeah… Well… a lot of stuff happened since I was last here… a lot of stuff that I couldn't avoid even if I tried… But thankfully I'm tough enough to have survived all of it to at least make it back to the hospital."

Even though Kamijou had fully meant what she said as a joke, the doctor looked down at the student with a grim look. Almost the moment the girl stopped talking the doctor held up a finger that guaranteed that the student was in for a lecture.

"As much as I am sure you like to joke about your condition, I'm quite sure that the damage that had failed to heal from your last visit was made worse by your antics, not to mention all of injuries that you gained."

Kamijou lost her sheepish grin and looked down at the ground in an ashamed gesture towards the doctor.

"I'm… I'm sorry about that…I can certainly imagine that my injuries this time around were quite terrible for people to deal with… Yet you have dealt with them so well that… I had thought…"

The doctor sighed at Kamijou before she reached over and grabbed the student's medical chart from its holder. The older woman began to look over the student's chart with a critical eye before turning back to the student.

"Actually now… The injuries that you came with this time weren't all that bad… at least compared to what you came in with last time. This time you only had a few minor bruises… A small scar on your stomach… and an extremely low blood pressure considering how you came in… Yeah, you were much better off this time."

Kamijou looked down at her left arm, the left arm that she had a clear and vivid memory getting chopped off with nothing but a person's hand. Remembering that, Kamijou could only look at the doctor with a confused look.

"Uhmmm… Aren't you forgetting an important detail there? I mean… Didn't I come in with a detached left arm? I wouldn't exactly call that better off."

The doctor furrowed her brow in confusion and looked back at the chart for a moment before turning back to the student.

"Are… Are you absolutely certain that your arm was detached from your body when you came in? While that would explain your abnormally low blood pressure… It doesn't say here that your arm was detached when you came in."

Kamijou felt a bead of cold sweat begin to form on her forehead, which she silently reached up and wiped away with her right hand. She slowly turned to look at Styx, who had a look of annoyed curiosity due to not being involved in the conversation.

It was at that moment that Kamijou was able to figure out what was going on by simply looking at the magician. The girl realized that since Styx was standing in front of the student perfectly fine, despite the fact that they both remembered that she had been set on fire.

I seriously doubt that it was this hospital was able to so quickly and so perfectly recreate Styx's face… So it must have been something else that had healed her and reattached my left arm once it was taken off… But the question is… who was it that…!?

At that moment, as if set to some sort of cue, the door to Kamijou's room burst open with a band, and a flash of white cloth and silver hair dashed across the room before jumping onto the bed, landing on Kamijou and forcing her into a laid down position.

All at once, Kamijou felt all of the air that had accumulated in her flow past her mouth as a pair of white clothed arms wrapped around her neck. Through the haze of oxygen deprivation and pain from the human size mass on her stomach, Kamijou heard what appeared to be an incoherent bawling coming from said mass.

"T-T-Touka! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! It's all my fault again! You got hurt because of me!"

As Kamijou's vision readjusted from the haze that had come on after all of the oxygen in her body had been knocked out, she saw that the clothed mass that hand landed on her abdomen was none other than Index. Though Kamijou was a tad bit annoyed at the boy priest's choice of entrance, the student couldn't help but smile as she reached down to dislodge the boy from her person.

"Look… Index, as glad as I am to see how much you care for me… could you please get off of me so that I could breathe a little bit? Being deprived of oxygen is fun and all… But I prefer having oxygen more."

Almost as if Kamijou had said he was killing her, Index jumped off the bed and backed off a good meter before looking at the student with a sheepish gaze.

"Touka… I'm… I'm extremely sorry! I… I got you hurt again because of how useless I am… and worse yet, it was when I was trying to help you… Touka… I'm… I'm really-!"

"Are you quite done sounding like some sort of whipped dog, or are you going to keep whining for another 20 minutes on how you are sorry about something?"

Everyone in the room turned to the doorway that Index had thrown open, and standing in the doorframe was the irate form of Kamijou's homeroom teacher, Negi Springfield.

The cause of the teacher's annoyance at the world was all too clear if anyone looked at him for even a second. The young looking man's right arm was bound up in a sling, a clear indication that it was broken. His face also bore a set of almost bandaged covered scars, some of which were bleeding to show how recent they were. To top off his rather disheveled look, his flaming red hair was in disarray, and his characteristic pair of glasses were bent in such a way that one of the lenses no longer lined up with its corresponding eye.

Kamijou looked her homeroom teacher up and down with a somewhat concerned gaze before smiling at the young looking man.

"I must say Negi-sensei… You look like a complete and utter mess. What in the world could have happened to you?"

The teacher looked at his student with a tired, almost outright annoyed, gaze as he rubbed the back of his head with his free hand and sighed.

"Oh nothing much happened to me, I just got into a bit of a spat with someone and it ended up like this. Though you shouldn't really worry about me, but the other person. They got the worse end of the battle by far."

After somewhat answering his students question, Negi turned to look at the frog faced doctor who had attentively looking over Kamijou's patient chart.

"Hey! Are you going to be standing here all day when you have other patients to look after? I'm pretty sure on my way up here that I saw several nurses scrambling around looking for the on call doctor!"

The doctor sighed aloud before turning and smiling at Negi, with a sense of familiarity hanging in the air between the two.

"Well… If it isn't my favorite patient, Mister 'I can smoke wherever I choose'. When I was dealing with the red head over there today I was thinking of you. You two must have a kindred spirit in how much you like to smoke."

Negi briefly turned his head to look at Styx, who again looked fairly annoyed for being left out of the conversation. The teacher sighed in annoyance yet again and redirected his annoyance directly at the doctor.

"So… What? As I said before the nurses are scrambling for doctors outside. Apparently there was some sort of accident earlier today, and there are several people in need of help."

The doctor's air of light heartedness disappeared in an instant of the teacher's response and what replaced it was an aura of serious and concentration that everyone minus Negi was taken aback by.

"Why didn't you tell me that when you came in?! If had just been that the nurses were looking for me I would have blown it off. I hope that no one has been in need of major surgery while I was here."

The doctor instantly went out of the room at a rapid pace, and Kamijou could hear her steps go farther and farther away until they disappeared. Almost the moment that the noise of the doctor's steps disappeared, both Styx and Negi somehow managed to produce cigarettes from hidden places on their body.

Kamijou looked at both the magician and the teacher with an annoyed glare as they both lit up their cigarettes without a care in the world.

"I hope you didn't make up a story about people being in danger just so you could smoke in here without repercussion."

Negi looked over at Kamijou and grinned with the cigarette in his mouth and used his non broken hand to rub the back of his head.

"Well… I didn't make up the fact that there was an accident earlier today, and that there are people who need to be looked after… it's just that I might have exaggerated the severity of the situation is all."

The teacher stretched out for a moment before walking over to Kamijou's bedside with a somewhat sinister grin on his face.

"So tell me Kamijou-chan… How are you feeling? The last time you were that injured, I had to apply my special medicine all over you, and even then you were out for a week. Are you certain that you are-…!"

Before Negi could finish speaking, he was hit squarely in the side of the face with enough force to send him flying across the room and land face down in a dazed heap. Kamijou looked down at her teacher as her left fist was still smoking from the contact with the young looking man's face.

The student smiled down at the teacher with a most deceptively sweet smile that had ever graced her face.

"Oh Negi-sensei did you think that I had forgotten about all of your earlier antics that you pulled? You know… the most recent one being you going through and messing with my personal belongings while I was away!"

The red headed teacher slowly worked himself into a sitting position and rubbed the side of his face where his student had punched him. A somewhat consigned grin began to form on his face as he looked up at Kamijou.

"Really now… is that any way to treat you homeroom teacher in any case? Why can't any of my students ever give me the respect I should get in this position?"

It's because you are a massive pervert with the face of high schooler. How you believe people should take you seriously is the question here.

Kamijou did not voice her thoughts of the matter to Negi, and instead crossed her arms and pouted at her teacher.

"What in the world are you doing here sensei? Did you come all the way here just too sexually harass me like you always do?"

Negi put on an insulted look as he looked up at his student, taking the cigarette that had flown from his mouth when Kamijou punched him, sighing as he realized that it had been completely squashed somehow during his flight.

"Now, Now Kamijou-chan. Despite my completely harmless hobbies, I am still a teacher, and that means that I have to at the very least fulfill my responsibilities as a one. Having a student who has been in the hospital twice in two weeks is not something that I can ignore is it?"

Kamijou said nothing in response to this, but that did not stop the student from glaring at her teacher with a look of pure venom.

Negi could do nothing but sigh under the annoyed gaze of his student, and the teacher quickly began to look around the room with a curious eye.

"Say… Kamijou-chan… would you happen to be thirsty? I can see that you don't have any water in here."

Kamijou looked at her bed side table and saw that Negi was right in his statement. Perhaps it was because the student had just awoken and the nurses had not though to put a pitcher in the room for when she would.

The student didn't want to admit it either, but the moment Negi pointed this out, she felt her throat dry up. However, her teacher somehow realized that she was thirsty, because he turned to Index with a smile.

"How about this Index? Why don't you run along and grab Kamijou something to drink and possibly something to eat while you're at it? Since you've got no money I guess I'll spot you a small amount."

Index turned to look at Kamijou for a brief moment, his gaze questioning if Kamijou would really want something, before he sighed and nodded at Negi.

"Fine I'll do it… As long as you come with me Negi-san. Because I doubt that Touka would really want you to be here for much longer."

Negi looked up at Kamijou with a curious look, which his student responded with a look of cold disdain. Negi suffered under the student's gaze for a few moments before sighing and nodding in agreement.

"Yeah… I guess my student really doesn't want to be in my presence any longer. A pity to be sure, but I guess I'll just have to deal with it, won't I?"

Negi stood up with mighty groan and assistance form Index before bowing to the two girls in the room and stepping out with a smile on his face. Index followed after the teacher with a slight look of apprehension towards Kamijou.

Kamijou sighed as the stress of dealing with Negi slowly began to leave her body, going back into a laid down position as she closed her eyes. From the side of Kamijou's bed, the student could hear Styx sigh as well, a giant plume of smoke coming from her nose as she exhaled.

"Really now… That was an… interesting person right there… Not exactly the type of person one would like to know, but… interesting none the less."

Kamijou looked over at Styx who was looking at the doorway with a look of curiosity and concern, a look that the student had no problem in deciphering.

"Why don't you go after them if you are worried about them? You certainly aren't doing anything here that is worthy of note."

Styx looked at Kamijou with a somewhat annoyed look before turning back to the door and nodding.

"I guess I'll do just that then. I hope you enjoy sitting here by yourself."

Styx walked out the door with a slight grin on her face, and, almost instantly after she disappeared, Kamijou heard the sound of a person asking why someone was smoking in the hospital.

Kamijou sighed yet again and shut her eyes, hoping beyond hope that she would simply go back to sleep.

I do not have the patience for anything else that is bound to happen today. I need at least two or three more days of sleep before I can even deal with another person today.

Just as Kamijou thought that, she felt something collapse on her feet. From the weight and warmth that the student felt, she could easily deduce that it was a creature about the size of a small cat.

Opening her eyes, Kamijou saw the creature that Index had picked up sitting at her feet, staring at her with its beady red eyes, and a questioning tilt to its white head. The student and the creature had a brief staring match until Kamijou caved.

Well… technically it's not a person, so I should be fine dealing with it just for a little bit. I mean… What's the worst that could happen?

The creature put on a face that a human would have made if it had been insulted, but Kamijou ignored it as she reached over and picked it up. She looked over the creature with a critical eye before locking gazes with it yet again.

"You know… When I first saw you I had thought you were quite an… unnatural looking thing… but now… I don't know… You're kind of growing on me now."

The creature looked at Kamijou with a look that the student would have guessed was saying 'really?' This time Kamijou noticed that the creature was making a rather humanlike expression, but managed to keep herself from commenting on it just barely.

"W-Well… We have figure out a name for you, don't we? I can't just keep calling you … well 'you'. Index gave you the name 'Sphinx' earlier, but somehow I don't think that fit's you to well… I can't place why I think that, but something doesn't feel right about it."

"Well that is simple. A Sphinx is an ancient Egyptian creature with the head of a man and the body of a lion. As you can see I am neither of those things, so calling me a sphinx would be a tad bit wrong."

Kamijou nodded in the face of that argument.

"Yeah that's why you shouldn't be called Sphinx. A sphinx is a terrible thing to name you after. No you need a name that suits-…!"

Kamijou looked at the creature that she was holding in her hands with widened eyes. The creature looked up at Kamijou with an annoyed look.

"Oh please don't start the thing that all you human's do when you hear me talk for the first time. Is it so weird to have something other than one of your kind talk to you?"

Kamijou quickly moved the creature to the furthest point of her reach, continuing to stare at the creature with a shocked gaze.

"What… When… How…?"

As Kamijou's questions trailed off into incoherent babbling, the student could hear the creature sigh in her head, and the creature's head began to shake back and forth.

"Really now… Every single time I do this you humans just seem to lose all semblance of intelligence. On the subject of names, If you must call me something, Kyubey is the name that I choose to call myself, so how about you use that?"

Kamijou stared at Kyubey with the look of complete and utter disbelief for a full five seconds before setting the white creature down and lying back down. Once she was in a comfortable enough position, the student placed one of her pillows directly over her face in a bid to deprive her brain of enough oxygen so that she could go back to sleep.