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.


Really now… I know I am one of the first people who would advocate the choice of practicality over aesthetics… But even I would say that this place could use a bit of a sprucing up.

As Negi Springfield thought this, the red haired teacher sighed in annoyance towards the owner of the room that he currently inhabited.

The room that the teacher had just entered was lit by a single dim light hanging down from the ceiling, meaning that it took Negi a few moments for his sight to adjust to the darkness of the room.

The room was a small, unadorned space framed on every side with smooth, uncovered concrete walls, giving the room a bland and gray feeling. There was only one piece of furniture in the room, a simple medical trolley, and due to the fact that there was nothing else in the room, anyone's attention would be drawn to it the moment they entered the room, it and the thing that was laid on top of it.

Negi walked up to the side of the medical trolley and looked down at the object that was on it with a completely blank look on his face. After a few moments of examining the object that was laid out before him, Negi sighed in a tired sort of way.

So… This is what a lump of human meat looks like when it is laid out without any thought towards treating it with any sort of respect.

Negi shook his head in a tried gesture as he continued to look at the object that was laying on the medical trolley, which indeed was what one would call a lump of human flesh, though one would be asked in more polite company to refer to it as a body.

The 'body' as one would be forced to call it, lacked any sort of feature that would have defined it as human, and if Negi had not known that what was in front of him was indeed the remains of a human, the teacher would have guessed that the remains were that of some sort of animal.

The flesh of the body had been horribly discolored, becoming a sickening shade of purple that was a sign that the flesh had been subject to a great deal of pressure before the person died, making the blood congeal and form large bruises. The limbs of the body had been twisted and bent in odd, unnatural angles, showing that the very bones of the body's skeleton had been shattered and pulled apart in the course of its death.

Negi sighed to himself yet again as he reached out with his non-injured hand and unceremoniously poked the body's facial area with the air of a person testing a surface.

You know… I've never understood how other humans could ever see the flesh of one of their own kind as a source of food. Maybe it's just down to my perspective as a person who enjoys eating the flesh of other animals, but I can't even begin to think about consuming another person's flesh.

Negi shook his head in a dismissive gesture and looked to the foot of the medical trolley, where there lay a clipboard that held the sheets of paper giving this body a name and history. Without a moment's thought Negi picked up the clipboard and began to read aloud the information that lay there.

"Name: Kaname Tomohisa… Age: 13… School: **** Middle… Esper Level: 1… Additional Notes: Two year member of Judgement. Picture… Well… You certainly don't look like your picture any more my friend… But then again, I would be beyond surprised if you did."

Negi turned to look at the facial area of Tomohisa, as if he was expecting the body to rise up and respond to his satirical comment. The body of Tomohisa, of course, remained still due to the fact that there was no life in the boy's body. Negi did not look disappointed at the fact that he did not get a reaction, instead turning his attention back to the clipboard and reading Tomohisa's information silently this time.

The teacher continued to read all of the body's personal information for a good minute or two before sighing to himself and looking impatiently at what used to be the face of Tomohisa.

What in the world is taking that woman so long?! There can't be a single thing that should be more important than… Well no… There is that project that I gave her a year ago to look after… And that other thing that I said that I would need at some point… And maybe posing that idea to her last week might not have been-…?

In the middle of Negi's thoughts, the teacher heard the door to the room open and shut, indicating that someone had entered the room. The red head turned to look at the new person in the room with a look of mocking annoyance.

"Well what in the world took you so long to get here, huh? You left before me, and I had-… Oh… It's just you."

Negi's face fell to a look of disappointment as the white haired exorcist who stood in the doorway sneered over at him, or at least tried to through the bandages that completely covered his face.

"Sorry to disappoint you so much with my presence. Granted I wasn't expecting, or even wanting, a good reaction from you magician, but still, I find it to be a bit of an insult all the same."

Negi shook his head in disagreement with the statement of the exorcist, converting his disappointed look to a grin that all but openly mocked the white haired boy.

"Oh no, no, no! Do not take my actions as anything to do with you my friend; this is just a poor outcome due to circumstance."

The exorcist glared over at the magician with a venom filled gaze, but quickly shrugged at the teacher in a gesture of how much he cared.

"So… Magician… What in the world are you doing here? Usually once a magician gets all they can out of human being, they leave the body alone for its eternal rest. Are you actually one of those magicians that are interested in dead bodies?"

Negi continued to smile at the exorcist briefly before turning to look at the body of Tomohisa, poking the dead boy's face again without a care to doing so.

"No, No. I'm not one of those necromancers that you are probably talking about. I'm just here making sure that the spell that is keeping this guy's soul in his body is working properly. This was the first time I had occasion to cast the spell, and I was worried that I might have messed it up somehow."

The exorcist looked over at Negi with a look that clearly communicated of how tired he was of the teacher's conversation. The red head continued on, ignoring the look from the white haired boy and continued poking Tomohisa's face.

"Luckily the spell worked beyond even my quite high expectations. A little bit of blood from the subject while they are alive, a tiny amount of your own blood, and a magic circle painted at the spot where the skull and neck meet, and voila! You have bound a person's soul to their body even if the body expires… Really, it reminds me of something very familiar if I think about it for a bit."

The exorcist sighed aloud so loudly that it made it sound as if the white haired boy was getting rid of all the air inside of his body. The boy turned to look towards Negi with a look of pure venom and distaste for the red head.

"You see… This is why I can't stand magicians… Always going about fucking with the laws of nature and perverting them to fit your own selfish desires… I just feel sick having to breathe the same air as people like you."

Negi grinned over at the exorcist who was staring at the teacher as if he was some sort of pile of trash, pulling out a cigarette from some secret pocket on his body and lighting it up. Blowing out a puff of smoke, the magician rubbed the back of his head and chuckled innocently.

"Well… I can understand your way of thinking up to a certain point… but I would like to inform you that I am not doing this for my own personal gain. This is… You could call this part of my extensive and diverse volunteer work."

The exorcist snorted out in what could only be disbelief and glared over at the magician with a condescending look.

"Really now? You are doing this without thinking about gaining anything from it? Then tell me, why are you so adamant about injecting 'that' inside of this boy? If you truly wanted to just help him out, shouldn't you just save him, rather than use him as an experiment?"

Negi chuckled at the exorcist as he took another puff of his cigarette and hopped onto the trolley next to Tomohisa's body.

"Well… That is simply because I am following a very old and archaic magical tradition. I believe it was… Ah that's right. The law of equivalent exchange. It states that for every action one does, the must expect an equal and opposite amount of compensation for the action."

The exorcist pointed at Negi with the air of a person exposing a massive lie, his face twisting into a look of pure rage.

"Don't you even pretend to try and get away with spouting bullshit to me! You see… During my time spent with the alchemist, she mentioned the law of equivalent exchange. She told me that the law was a natural law that affected every interaction a person has with the world. This covers things like moving rocks around or growing plants, and not the social interactions that we humans subject ourselves to."

The magician chuckled at the exorcist as he took another puff of his cigarette, grinning over at the white haired boy with a most malicious grin.

"So… You did actually talk to her for an extended period of time then. Funny… going off your earlier words I had assumed you hated her or something."

The exorcist sighed and put a hand up to his bandaged face, looking over at the magician with a look of utter distaste.

"My relationship with the former Miss Trisha was simply a professional one. She had something I was interested in, and I was a person that she wanted to get in contact with. Our opinions of one another had nothing to do with how we interacted with each other."

The magician nodded slowly, bringing his cigarette into its last quarter with yet another puff.

"I can completely understand what you are saying… Now then… On the topic of the law of Equivalent Exchange… It is true that when the law first came to be, and for many centuries after that, it only applied to dealing with natural things, and didn't have anything to do with any social constructs. However…"

The magician grinned over at the exorcist with and almost mocking grin, finishing off his cigarette with one last puff before tossing it to the ground with a careless gesture.

"Don't you think that such a law almost perfectly mirrors how most of our social interactions go about? One must give in order to receive, and one always wants to receive before they give up anything. Don't you think that describes us humans perfectly?"

The exorcist shot the magician a look that clearly showed how through he was with the conversation, clicking his tongue before looking like he was going to say something.

Before the exorcist could speak, however, the conversation was ended when both men heard the noise of the door to the room opening and shutting, causing both of them to look at the entrance; the magician with a look mild annoyance, and the exorcist with a look of mild curiosity.

Standing in the doorway of the room, with a somewhat surprised look on her face, was the frog faced doctor who had been in Kamijou's room earlier. The doctor had exchanged her characteristic doctor's coat for a set of surgical scrubs, minus a face mask, hair net, and gloves. At her side was black, unmarked leather bag, emitting the sound of metal rubbing against metal every time the bag swung slightly. The moment that the doctor seemed to understand who it was that was in the room with her, her surprised look turned to one of tired acceptance.

"Ah… So it's you two is it? I see that both of you came here despite my specific instruction to not do so. I really had hoped that the two of you possessed the common sense to not tamper with a body that a doctor would be looking at, but obviously I had set my hopes to high. Looking back at my thoughts, I really wonder why I even hoped that you would have listened."

The exorcist looked at the doctor with as much of an affronted look as he could manage with his face covered in bandages.

"I'm sorry but are you criticizing me in the same breath as that idiot magician? I must ask where you are getting the idea that I did anything at all wrong. As you can see from my placement in the room, I am a good distance away from the body, meaning that there is now way that I could have done something to the body."

The exorcist made a gesture with his hand toward Negi, who was still sitting on the medical trolley without a care in the world, watching what was happening with a grin on his face.

"In contrast, that magician bastard is sitting right next to the body, doing all sorts of stuff to it, while smoking I might add! If I were you I'd be more annoyed at him rather than me."

The doctor looked over at the exorcist with a look that was a mixture of pity and annoyance before sighing at him.

"I know that this idiot has messed around with the body even though I told him not to. You wouldn't believe the number of times he has messed up various operations with his bullshit. However the reason I was annoyed at both of you is because each one of you has a different way of being a pain. He just messes around with whatever he pleases, while you just being in the room somehow manages to cover the all the surfaces with that innocence dust that you seem to give off."

The exorcist glared at the doctor with as much venom as he could muster from behind the bandages that covered his face, but said nothing in response. The doctor met the glare of the exorcist with a look of silent contemplation, before opening up the bag she was holding and digging through it.

"Speaking of that innocence dust you keep giving off, there is a problem with the sample you gave me. It might have been that the amount of blood was wrong or something like that, because…"

As the doctor's explanation trailed off into silence, she managed to produce a cylindrical, vacuum sealed glass container which was almost completely filled with a dark, blood red liquid. The liquid moved around the container in random direction, completely independent of the motion of the cylinder, making it look like the liquid was alive.

The moment that the exorcist saw this, his countenance fell and a look of complete and total sadness came over his eyes.

"What in the world is wrong with this thing?! How much more blood do I have to give up in order to calm this? I swear… Most dark matter would have been completely neutralized if I had exposed it to even a tiny bit of innocence laced blood. What in the world is so different about this kind?"

The doctor offered the exorcist the cylinder, which he readily accepted with a crest fallen look. The moment the cylinder entered the exorcist's hand the liquid began to move in an agitated manner, though not enough to move the cylinder out of the boy's hand.

Once the cylinder was in the hand of the exorcist, the doctor once again began to dig through her bag. After a few moments of searching, the woman pulled out a medical tube and syringe stopper for the purposes of drawing blood from a vein. Once she had retrieved both from her pack, she offered both of them to the exorcist while gesturing to the top of the container where there was a port for the tube.

"Just prick your arm with the needle and put the tube through the port, and that should be enough to mix your blood with… that thing in the container. And please, for the sake of my sanity, do this outside of the room. The dust you get everywhere just by existing is nothing compared to what you get everywhere when you make a cut on yourself."

The exorcist sighed and once again reluctantly accepted what was offered to him, staring at it with a depressed gaze.

"…I need to ask just to be sure… But can I just ask what it is with this city and my blood? I've lost more blood here in the last day or two than I have in the last few years."

The doctor chuckled for a moment before sighing in a tired sort of way and directing her gaze to Negi, who smiled the moment the woman looked at him.

"Don't worry about your blood. This city has consumed more blood than I would personally say was necessary for it. If anything, the city should be sick of blood by now."

The exorcist looked at the cylinder of blood and sighed himself, starting towards the door with a melancholic look in his eyes.

"If this city were sick of blood, then what would human history be feeling in comparison?"

With that last question, the exorcist exited the room, leaving a rather heavy feeling in the air for the other two people to contend with.

The moment after the exorcist left, Negi began to laugh almost uncontrollably and gestured at the door where the exorcist had just exited through.

"Wow… What a depressing guy to be around. I've seen people who brood over all the terrible things that have happened to them, but he is at least in the top ten whiny ones."

The frog faced doctor sighed in disappointment and gestured the red head magician to get off of the trolley which she about to approach.

"Could you kindly get the hell out of my way for a bit? I don't know what the hell you have done to the body while I wasn't here, but I would like you to not interrupt me and ruin another one of my operations. You've already blown smoke all throughout the room just to piss me off, so you must really want me to mess up this operation."

Negi chuckled at the doctor as he gestured to the room in general, a broad and mischievous grin on his face.

"Aren't you over exaggerating a little, madam 'Fate Killer'? Wasn't that operation that I messed up one that ended up better than even you had predicted? As for the smoke, I have seen that you seem to work better when there is smoke around. Is there any reason for that?"

The doctor sighed at the magician and made a begging gesture towards him.

"Look, if you aren't going to leave the room, could you at least move so that I can get this started? The sooner I get done with this the less time I have to spend with heart attacks."

The magician chuckled yet again and reluctantly got off of the medical trolley and walked over to lean up against a side wall.

The doctor looked equal parts thankful and annoyed as she approached the trolley, a serious air slowly gathering around her. She began to look over the body with a critical eye as she set the bag in her hands down.

After a few moments of silence in the room, Negi looked over at the doctor with a bored expression.

"So… Doctor…What are you planning on doing for mister Tomohisa there? Anything drastic of possibly life changing?"

The doctor slowly turned to look at Negi with a look of annoyance, before sighing in an accepting manner. She reached down into her bag of tools, and began to dig around for something in the bag.

"Well… It looks as if everything about this guy's body is messed up. The muscles have been squished into a fine red paste, and every bone in his body is broken into shards. Why you think I can actually fix this kind of damage is beyond me."

Negi scratched the back of his head as a large grin appeared on his face.

"Are you forgetting the fact that you brought someone back to life before? Surely this is only a tiny bit tougher than that?"

The doctor looked at Negi with a truly angry glare as she pulled out a scalpel, pointing it at him with a gesture full with the intent to kill.

"Listen here you bloody idiot of a magician! You know full well that this is drastically harder than what I did back then! In that case, that body was at least in a relievable state! This one is barely a human body, so much so that it would make more sense to call it human flesh rather than a body!"

After screaming saying that, the doctor turned back to the body and unceremoniously started her operation. Within moments her ungloved hands were covered in blood as she began to cut open the boys shoulder. After a minute, the doctor pulled off the one of the bodies arms, sighing as she saw the lower part of the arm swing around like it was on some sort of spinner.

"There isn't even any cartilage holding the arm in place… How painful was this guy's death? There is no way that he is going to get out of this without being a little bit strange."

The doctor returned to her bloody work, laying the arm down on the trolley and moving on to one of the legs of the body, cutting into it so quickly that blood splattered on her face. The doctor continued to cut into the body with unflinching resolve.

Negi looked at the doctor's work with a bored expression on his face, and sighed and looked up to the ceiling with a melancholic look. Slowly, Negi reached down and began to rub his broken arm absentmindedly.

The doctor spoke out without even turning around to see the magician rubbing his arm.

"Are you still thinking about that student of yours magician? Really now… Shouldn't a teacher be a bit more separated from their students? The close relationship that you seem to have with yours is a bit creepy if you ask me."

Negi looked at the doctor with a bitter annoyed look, his mischievous demeanor completely replaced with one of pure resentment. The magician stopped rubbing his broken arm, and instead began to dig something out of his clothes.

"That very funny coming from you of all people. So… how was Kamijou-chan's body? By the way you were acting it seemed like everything was fine."

The doctor sighed as she pulled the body's leg off, immediately setting it down on the trolley in order to move on to the next limb. As she moved her scalpel to the flesh of the body, she began to answer Negi's question.

"You'll be happy to know that your student doesn't seem to be afflicted with any of the symptoms that you have described, and believe me when I say I did a thorough job looking for those symptoms. When you started talking about crystal growths inside of a human body being symptoms of a disease, it really piqued my interest."

Negi's expression of annoyance did not change at all at the news given to him by the doctor, if anything his eyes grew darker as he finally pulled what he was digging for out of his shirt.

Looking down to the palm of his hand, Negi looked at the pendant attached to the black string that hung around his neck. He moved the blue crystal from side to side and frowned as the shine changed in response to how the light hit it. Sighing, Negi put the pendant back into his shirt before looking back at the doctor.

"Well… If you could, keep an eye on her for an extended period of time, because I seriously doubt that this'll be the end of it all. After what I saw last night, I am having a very nostalgic feeling all of a sudden, and I really don't like that at all."

The doctor suddenly stopped in the middle of cutting the arm off of the body, setting her scalpel and the limb down to turn around and look at Negi with a curious glance.

"Forgive me for asking this oh great Master Magician, but… Do I detect a tiny bit of fear in your voice? Please tell me, what in the world has happened that would make you of all people afraid?"

Negi grimaced at the doctor before producing a cigarette from some hidden pocket of his. Without even asking for permission from the doctor, the magician lit the cigarette and took a single long draw before exhaling a cloud of smoke.

"As to why might be afraid of what happened last night, that is a tale to long for me to recite here. However, I'm sure even you would be unsettled by what happened."

And with that, Negi began to recount his vivid memories.


"… So… Am I to understand that you are the person who called me here about the cult? … Huh… Color me surprised. I had never thought that a magician would do anything about a bad situation unless they would profit from it."

Negi grinned over at the white haired exorcist named Allen as they both climbed up the last step of the stairwell, placing the two men at the top floor of the Misawa Cram School building.

"Oh don't get the wrong idea about me. I did profit from you dealing with those idiots from before in some small way. Those cultists were causing trouble in the city with their antics, and they were stepping on the toes of people who were reporting to me, and… I'm sure you know how these things go. Let's just say that I did profit from the destruction of the cult and leave it at that."

Allen looked over at Negi with a look that was the picture of disbelief.

"Oh I know perfectly how these sort of things are handled magician, and I can tell you that they are never handled like this. Numerous times have I handled similar situations like this one, and never has a local magician given me even a sliver of help in eliminating them. In my experience, magicians don't help unless they can directly profit from others, which is why this is quite strange to me."

Negi grinned mischievously over at Allen, scratching his cheek as the two set off through the hallways towards their destination.

"Well… You could go ahead and say that I'm not like most of those kinds of magicians. In fact you could go as far as to say that I would not even consider myself to be a pure magician. True I do cast magic on a regular basis, but I do not follow that philosophy of using my power only for myself. That is something that I have always had a problem with."

Allen nodded, his face still wearing the expression skepticism towards the magician.

"I suppose I owe you thanks at the very least for giving me the location of this group. If I hadn't been told then they would have most likely gotten away with what they were doing until something terrible happened."

Negi nodded in a bored manner, yawning as they turned a corner.

"Don't mention it. It wasn't any huge sacrifice on my part; it's just a shame that one of my idiot students had to get caught up in this bullshit that came after the cult was dead… Look. There is where those four are. Hopefully that alchemist hasn't gone crazy with their bodies to the point where they are unrecognizable."

Allen said nothing in response to this, but he shook his head in disagreement with the magician's last statement, as if he knew the result without even seeing it.

Negi ignored the exorcist's gesture and walked to the entrance of the room, peeking in to the room to get an idea of what was going on before entering.

The moment he saw the scene that was inside of the room, however, the magician could only freeze where he was standing and look on in a mixture of confusion and surprise.

Allen, who had lagged behind Negi somewhat, looked at the magician with a curious glance as he also walked up to stand outside the door.

"What in the world is wrong here magician? Did that idiot alchemist do something that you find…!"

Allen jumped back in surprise as he saw what the state of the room was in, causing Negi to chuckle at the exorcist's antics.

"What's the matter Exorcist? See something that makes you a bit uneasy? I guess it's safe to say that someone went crazy in this room, but to say it was the alchemist might be a bit…"

The state of the room was an absolute disaster compared to its obvious former splendor. Right in front of the entrance of the room was a charred spot, with a blackened body lying on top of it. The body had every defining characteristic stripped off of it, leaving behind only melted skin, and peaks to the cooked flesh underneath.

The body still had life in it, occasionally twitching and taking shallow breathes, but not showing any other kind of response to the outside world other than that.

A meter or so away from the burned body was an arm of a person, and to Negi the arm looked very much like a left arm. The arm was still twitching, meaning that the limb must have been cut off fairly recently.

Everywhere past the arm on the ground, up to a point before the desk on the far end of the room, there wasn't a single surface that was devoid of blood. Splattered every so often were the intestines of a body, the trail concluding in the waist and legs of another person, the bottom half of the spinal column sticking out into the open.

On the side of the table which furthest from Negi was the unconscious form of Index, his head slumped to the side and an untroubled look on his face, and opposite side from him was…

Negi furrowed his brow as he looked at the person who was standing there with a confused glance.

"Kamijou-chan… Is that you?"

Standing on the side of the desk closest to Negi, the magician's black haired student had her back to the entrance of the room. Spewing from the girl's left shoulder was a steady stream of blood that ran down her side to pool at her feet. In her right hand was the upper half to the body that the legs and waist belonged to, the entrails and skeleton that had attached the two pieces together now dragging along the floor.

The student slowly responded to the magician's question, turning her head to look at the teacher with a blank, completely expressionless glare.

The girl blankly stared at the magician and the exorcist for a good few seconds before showing any reaction at all, only slowly starting to have any hint of emotion in it. A small spark of interest began to form in her eyes, and a small grin began to grace her lips.

"Negi... Sensei... Ah… Well… I would have to say… This is quite a surprise… What in the world are you doing here?"

Negi stared at the student with a look of that was an equal mix of confusion, interest, and a tiny bit of unsettledness. Negi cast a sidelong glance to Allen, and found that the exorcist was also looking over at him, a look of clear confusion on his face. With a sigh, Negi returned his gaze to his student, who he noticed had a bit of blood on her cheek.

"Well… Kamijou-chan… I heard that there was something interesting was going on in this place from my friend here… and I had come to see what it was that was happening…but it seems that the situation is in hand… somewhat…"

Kamijou tilted her head in confusion and looked down at her right hand, and the body that she was holding in that hand. Negi would have expected his student to be fearful; maybe even just surprised at the fact she was holding it.

Instead of the reaction that Negi would have expected from the student, Kamijou instead looked down at the body with an understanding look before looking back at Negi with a smile.

"Ah… Are you talking about this Negi-Sensei? Well… Yeah. I took care of this… situation quite fine on my own. Once I woke up… I was so absorbed in testing myself that before I knew it, this alchemist was dead."

Negi nodded at Kamijou in a gesture of understanding, further gesturing for the student to approach him.

"Okay then Kamijou-chan…How about you just go ahead and lay that body down and relax for a bit? I might be wrong in saying this… but I get the feeling that due to the lack of blood to your brain… well actually, because your arm is missing, I'm thinking that you are acting a bit loopy."

Kamijou smiled over at Negi and slowly nodded at the magician, but did not immediately set the body down. Instead she looked down at the body with a smile.

"It looks like I'm done with you… Now how about you give me back what's mine?"

With a single motion, the student pulled the front of the body's throat off with one hand, letting what was left of the body flop to the floor like a pile of meat. Now instead of focusing on the body, the student focused on what was in her hands with a smile on her face.

Negi briefly caught a glimpse of what it was that the student was looking at so fondly, and them moment he did, he felt his heart briefly stop for a moment when he saw it.

The student was holding onto a blue crystal pendant strung up on a black string that had snapped when she had pulled it off of the body. The color of the crystal was dull even in the full light of the room's fluorescent lightbulbs, but the image reflected in Kamijou's eyes showed it glowing in a strange light.

Negi slowly put a trembling hand over his mouth to hide whatever form his mouth was taking, and pointed at the pendant that Kamijou was holding.

"Kamijou-chan… Could I see that for a moment? That… necklace there reminds me of something… something that I have very… vivid memories about."

Kamijou looked over at Negi with a curious gaze, and, after a few moment of staring at the magician, smiled at him.

"Sorry Negi-sensei… but I think we both know that if I gave this to you, you won't give it back to me."

Negi removed the hand from his mouth, returning the smile to Kamijou in a most normal way.

"Of course I'll give it back to you Kamijou-chan. What sort of person would I be if I stole one of my student's possessions?"

The student continued to look skeptically at the teacher for a few moments, before shrugging at the red head and grinning.

"Fine then Negi-sensei. I guess I'll let you look at it if you really want to. Just make sure you are careful with it… What am I saying? You of all people should know how important these are."

With that, the student tossed the necklace towards the magician, the faintest bit of anger gracing her face once the crystal left her hand.

Negi reached out towards the necklace, his hands trembling just in anticipation for contact with the crystal.

The next moment he found himself being pulled back from the spot where he was standing, right before a colossal force smashed space where he had been towards the ground, cracking it like it was nothing but glass. Once the magician got his bearings back from being yanked back from certain injury, he heard Allen speaking to Kamijou in a dismissive tone.

"Now… forgive me if I'm wrong… But shouldn't a student treat a teacher with more respect than what you are showing? Or is this some sort of special relationship that you two have?"

Negi looked in front of him and saw Allen standing between him and Kamijou, who had somehow reattached her left arm in the moment of time that Negi had been focusing on the necklace. With an almost visible maliciousness, the student smiled up at Negi and Allen as she held the necklace tightly in her right fist.

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that Mister Exorcist. All you have to worry about is how you want your insides to decorate the floor."

The exorcist sighed and turned to look at Negi with a bored expression.

"So are you going to discipline your student at all magician? Unless you really enjoy getting attacked by girl's much younger than you?"

Negi glared over at exorcist before adjusting his clothes which were put into disarray from Allen's lifesaving pull. Then he locked gazes with Kamijou, who was still smiling maliciously at the two men.

With a sigh, Negi shrugged at the white haired boy.

"Guess we don't have a choice."


Next Story: A Certain Level Upper.