Disclaimer: No, I don't. End of story, period, amen. Don't ask me who did, I can't remember his name to save my life at the moment, period, amen.

Chapter 3: If Destiny is Pre-determined, then Smeg Only Knows What It Is

Dinners at the Hinata were always either very calm or oddly awkward affairs. When everyone was gathered around to enjoy steaming hot samples of Shinobu's culinary creations, all conflicts seemed to go on hold, all other engagements were postponed, and "incidents" were usually nonexistent, at least for a time. Depending on the day, it could be an easy truce or an unsteady one, but so long as there was food on the table the truce stood firm.

That night, over steamed buns and rice, fresh beef stew and plenty of extra helpings to go around, all else could be temporarily delayed or forgotten. More accurately, it could be selectively ignored for a time.

Considering the hypersensitivity of several of the girls to anything concerning the kanrinin's behavior toward one of their own (or vice versa), it was a miraculous reprieve.

Between the conversations about Naru's shopping trip (which interested everyone but the lone male at the table) and Sarah's account of the trip to the zoo (Motoko was always less forthcoming, and Su's attention was wholly and undividedly paid to the rapidly disappearing food put in front of her), there was enough to keep their eyes off the awkward, furtive glances Keitaro and Kitsune kept giving one another for the entire meal.

The good karma of the filling meal gave Keitaro just enough leeway to escape afterwards as well; when he left the building for the nearest general store (claiming he'd "lost" his broom the previous night, and leaving unsaid exactly how he'd done so), there hadn't been so much as a snide remark from the peanut gallery thrown his way. The rest of the night, it would turn out, would be injury-free for the weary kanrinin. A good thing, too; he'd need more than a few hours rest to properly deal with more hard knocks.

Unfortunately for him, the price of his temporary reprieve was yet to be paid for the night.

Oddly enough, it would be paid for in a contest over a remote control. Specifically, the television remote for the commons room and the ensuing battle for its control.

It started as a minor engagement between Motoko and Kaolla Su. The swordmaiden was watching the news; her young friend, however, had an eye on watching an anime. Mitsune, on her way back to her own room to ponder, plan, and peruse a fresh bottle of sake, paid little attention to the proceedings at first; however, the snippets of news that came one every time Motoko regained control of the remote suddenly caught her attention, and she stayed a moment to listen.

Zhzhzhzhzht!

"—kyo evening news. And now, for a recap of our main headli—"

Zhzhzhzhzht!

"—was just…that he was all alone…no one to share the game wi—"

Zhzhzhzhzht!

"—nd authorities are still puzzling over a case of vigilante jusice that took place late last evening nearby the H—"

Zhzhzhzhzht!

"—one big steaming puddle of goop. Yet there is something special that makes it a stew. And do you know wha—"

Zhzhzhzhzht!

"—ight members of a notorious gang responsible for a laudry list of serious crimes and felonies, including grand theft, rape, and murd—"

Zhzhzhzhzht!

"—uddy, take a hike, were closed…huh?*WHOOSH SMACK!* Uuugh…"

Zhzhzhzhzht!

"—pparently was the work of a lone individual who, according to reports from police questioning the felons brought into custody, came to the rescue of a young wo—"

Zhzhzhzhzht!

"—and you take too long to take a shit!—"

Zhzhzhzhzht!

"—no clues as to who the woman was, nor as to who the man that came to her aid; however, police wish to send their congrat—"

Zhzhzhzhzht!

"--are you!?...*whoooh…whiishcachink!* Just a humble bounty hunter, m—"

"—iant tortoise, a noble creature with extraordinary longevity, can live for many decades…"

At this point, Tama-chan had flown between them and somehow gained control of the remote. The stares of the Shinmei-ryu warrior (angry and detestful) and the Mol-Molian princess (annoyed and hungry) at the swooping form of the reptile lasted all of three seconds, and Mitsune realized instantly (as did Naru and Shinobu, though not Sarah) that now was an excellent time to be leaving the vicinity before all hell broke loose. As the living room became an instant warzone, with three people and one flying turtle battling for possession of the remote control, Mitsune moved quickly back to her room, still thinking about the fragments of the news report she'd seen and thanking whatever twist of fate had cut out the more specific details from being generally heard. '

By the time Keitaro had returned about an hour later, the only one left in the common room was an exhaused but triumphant Kaolla Su watching her anime, and the only two objects not either destroyed, upside down, torn to shreds or otherwise out of place were the television set and the remote control. He sighed to himself almost dejectedly, pulling the new broom out of its packaging and setting it immediately to work for what was going to be a long night.

At least the anime itself had been pretty decent to watch, he later thought.

**********

Sunday began relatively calmly, at least for the Hina-Sou.

So might the weather in the month of March, for all it would soon turn out to be.

Mitsune arrived at the diner she'd told Keitaro to meet her in a little early, and went alone; if they had gone together at the same time, she figured, someone would notice for sure and give him hell about it. She'd picked this particular spot quickly though carefully for several good reasons. She'd been here before, and liked both the food and the prices at the time; the somewhat out-of-the-way eatery was not unfamiliar to the kanrinin, either.

She had been seated in one of the corner tables less than five minutes when she heard what sounded like a low flying jet fly overhead. At first she didn't think anything of its oddly off-pitch sound, at least not until Keitaro walked in ten minutes later covered in grass stains and bits of dirt with the slightest of limps as he moved to sit down across from her.

He seemed to be relatively okay, though, and reassured her of as much when she realized he'd arrived much earlier than she'd expected coming from the wrong direction entirely! Still, she noticed he sat rather gingerly and carefully at the table she'd picked for the two of them.

"You sure you're okay, Kei?" she asked him again, not convinced.

"I'm fine, really. I landed in some fresh sod. I try to aim for it when I can, though I don't always get that lucky. Anyway," he noted, brushing a blade of grass from his hair, "it was only the one hit; last time it was three, and I wasn't expecting to get caught on a branch with my broom."

Inwardly, she cringed to herself; the way he casually talked about his injuries the way someone else might talk about rush hour traffic went a long way to show her just how used to such abuse he'd become. Chuckling mildly, she heard him say, "I don't think I broke anything major, this time, anyway."

"Anything major?" she asked him with a raised eyebrow. She did NOT like the sound of that at all.

"Well…nothing got sliced open or yanked out or busted in half along the way… nothing that…well…shows, at any rate." He shrugged, a little nervously. "Just minor stuff; you know, some scratches and bruises, maybe a crack in a rib or two. They'll be okay by tonight, and definitely by tomorrow morning if I get some sleep."

She paled, looking at him. A broken rib was serious business to her; to him, it was as commonplace as a papercut in a post office! "Doesn't sound very minor to me, Kei!"

He shrugged. "Believe me, you get used to it after a while."

A thought occurred to her. "That reminds me: how DO you do that, anyway?"

"Do what?"

"Heal yourself like that," she stated matter-of-factly. "What do you do, exactly?"

Keitaro thought about it a moment, quietly, as though debating what he should say. "I can tell you how, sort of, but…it's not exactly the sort of thing that's very easy to just describe."

She nodded her agreement. "I guessed as much, seeing as how it isn't something you see people doing everyday!"

He smiled, looking away absently. "No…I guess it isn't." Taking a deep breath, he decided on a way of approaching the subject that might make sense. "You've seen Motoko use her secret techniques before, right?"

"Yeah, I've seen them," she replied thoughtfully, thinking of the regular, near-supernatural displays of power the swordmaiden executed on Keitaro in particular. "They don't look very safe for fixing things up, though, if you ask me."

"They aren't, not like that anyway. Her techniques are a manifestation of her ki, channeled and focused for a specific purpose. Namely, blasting me into the stratosphere and back." He chuckled slightly before continuing. "Anyway, you've seen how strong they can be, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, that same power can be used in other ways as well. You see, ki is only an extention of your center, or hara, which generates the energy and with training can control its end effects. Everyone alive can and actively does generate their own ki, whether they know how to focus and use it or not. In fact, we're both doing it right now, whether we realize it or not."

Kitsune looked at him skeptically. "You're telling me I'm making the same sort of vibes as Ms. Kendo Samurai Extraordinaire and I don't know I'm doing it?"

"Yep, basically, but…you don't know how to feel it, or control it. However, there's a simple way to show you how." He got up and moved next to her for a moment, holding out his arm to the side, parallel to the ground. "Try bending my arm. I'm going to do it two ways; the first is to resist you bending it physically, and the second will use ki."

She looked at him incredulously, but agreed. "Okay, Kei, I'll give it a try. But don't go sending me through the windows or anything!" she teased.

"I wouldn't think of it, Kitsu-chan; I don't want to hurt you," he replied honestly.

She blinked, a little taken aback by the certainty of his response. Recovering quicky, she reached for his extended arm, grabbing the wrist in one hand and the elbow in the other. It bent more easily than she thought, though she could see his muscles straining to resist her.

"Good! Now, that was just physical resistance, and as you can see it didn't help keep my arm straight. Now, this time, I won't resist you directly; instead, I'm going to do a simple ki extention through my arm." He extended his arm again, almost loosely, and looked somewhere off in the direction it was pointing. "Now try it."

So she tried. She pulled, pushed, stained, practically hung off his elbow, but his arm didn't budge, didn't bend, and barely moved at all. The thing was, he didn't even look like he was trying to resist her, and his grin only widened as she tried everything she could think of to no avail. She finally gave up, out of breath and confused. She noticed he hadn't even broken a sweat!

"Alright, I give…how…how'd you do that?" she asked.

Keitaro chuckled heartily. "Quite easily! You can do it, too. Take a moment, though, and catch your breath." He waited, and a few seconds later she was ready. "Alright, now. Extend your arm, like I did."

She complied, sticking out her right arm. "Just to show you what the difference is, we'll do it the same as before. I'll try to bend your arm, and you'll try to resist first." Her arm automatically tensed up, muscles ready to resist anything set against them with all the strength she could muster. Keitaro reached over and bent her arm. Her muscles strained, but to no avail; with two fingers at the elbow and two at her wrist, he bent it like a wire coat hanger. "What the…?" She looked at her arm, dumbfounded. Either he was a lot stronger than she thought, or she'd missed something here.

"Alright, now…now you can see, that it isn't a matter of strength or anything," he said, letting go. "Now, we'll do it again. This time, I want you to just look to where your fingers are pointing, and pick a spot somewhere on the wall. Relax your arm, though; don't focus on keeping it straight."

She looked over at him incredulously, then down the length of her arm, and noticed a dark spot in the pattern where she was pointing. "Alright, I'm looking, now what?"

"Now, instead of resisting me, I want you to reach straight toward that spot, and beyond it. Focus on reaching toward it, like your fingers can go through it from where you're standing. Literally act like you're trying to reach something beyond it, and keep doing that. Just that. Don't even bother with trying to resist, just keep reaching."

She reached as he spoke, focusing not on her arm but on what he told her to do. It felt weird, like she was wasn't even holding her arm up or straight so much as out. She saw Keitaro grab her arm, but kept reaching. She felt him strain against it every which way with strength she didn't know he had, saw muscles bulging under his sleeves, yet realized as he did that her arm didn't move, or bend, or even feel strained at all! It was like she wasn't even trying, as though someone had put a solid steel bar that weighed nothing through her arm that refused to let it budge an inch.

Relaxing, Keitaro told her, "That, Kitsune, is an extention of ki. And you just learned how to use it."

She blinked, as though coming out of a trance. She looked at him with surprise. "But…how did I do that?" she asked, arm still reaching as before.

"When you tried to keep your arm straight physically, you tried to keep it in one place, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Think about it: if two people push with the same amount of force in opposite directions against each other, neither moves. If someone else then pushes the pair in either direction, or another entirely, they both move that way, because they cancel each other out. Holding your arm straight is kind of the same thing: the muscles on either side of your arm pull against each other to keep it straight, and to hold it straight they must do so evenly."

She glanced at him, realization beginning to dawn. "You mean…when you push on my elbow, my muscles are too busy playing tug-of-war with each other to stop you?"

"Exactly! But, if instead of keeping it straight you try to reach outward that way," he said, pointing at the side wall, "then the situation is just the opposite: all the force I exert on your elbow is in the wrong direction, even though nothing else has changed. Your ki is what lets you reach out with that force, and is what keeps your arm straight. I can't bend your arm unless I push against it instead, and push toward the elbow in the other direction." He demonstrated this, and to her surprise her elbow bent as he pushed against her wrist, though with more difficulty than she might have thought.

Kitsune contemplated the idea a short time, and decided it sort of made sense. "So…it's not so much that my arm's not bending, but that the ki keeping it straight isn't being pushed against?"

"Exactly. So long as you keep the direction fixed, then all the force I apply does nothing. Anyway," he said, sitting down again, "that's just one small aspect of it. There's a lot more to it, but that'll give you an idea."

She thought about it for a moment more. "So…what does all of that have to do with destructive sword blasts and healing?"

He paused again, thinking. "I guess that really comes down to who you are, what you learn, and how you use your ki. You see, recognizing it and controlling it are just the first steps, like understanding how a lever works by looking at a see-saw. But the same lever can be used to crack a nut open, or pry metal, or lift a lot of weight with a little strength. Everyone here is generating their own ki to some extent; just how much, and how they use it, has as much to do with their state of mind and level of training as it does anything else. Motoko is a warrior, well-trained and very aggressive in many ways. She has learned to channel tremendous amounts of her ki into a narrow, focused path, especially in and through her sword. As such, it manifests destructively, as you and I have both seen."

"Whereas you do it differently, I take it?" she asked astutely.

"Very much so. I channel it inwardly, and focus it in a constructive way. On a wound, it means the same energy goes to accelerating the process of healing and regrowth, accomplishing in moments what would normally take days or more for my body to do on its own. It hurts like all holy hell, though; frankly, it's like compressing almost all of the pain down into the same, short span of time as well. The less time it takes to fully heal the injury, the worse it hurts. But it also fixes me up a lot faster and better than I'd normally heal, can keep me from sustaining excessive blood loss, and when I focus enough beforehand, it can also help me cushion and prevent a lot more injury from a fall, for instance, than I normally would experience."

She looked at him in surprise. "You mean…you survive all that crap manually?"

"Pretty much. Part of it is in keeping myself from getting too badly hurt, and part of it is fixing what I can't prevent," he finished quietly, "like I did last night."

Shuddering, she asked. "What would happen if you didn't?"

He snorted slightly, looking away. "If I didn't, I'd be dead by now."

"Couldn't you…" she stopped, struggling for the right words. "If you can do that, why not…stop it before you get sent halfway across town? At the very least, show that you can."

He smiled sadly. "For one, I might hurt the person attacking me, and you already know I don't want to do that. For two…" he sighed, looking at his hands. "if I tried putting someone through a wall like they put me through them, it would be a lot messier than when they do it to me."

While she thought about his words, they ordered their lunches from a waitress busy making rounds to a growing number of tables. When she had left, Mitsune looked at him again. "How could it be any messier than it is when you get put through it? Why not have one of them go through it, for a change?"

He sighed. "For starters, I have a very high level of ki to begin with, at least when I'm actively using it; though it's not as naturally aggressive a form as Motoko's is, I'm quite capable of doing what she does and a lot more besides, I assure you. Besides, her personality fits her strengths, particularly her level of attack power. I…don't like to get angry very much. I'm really good at healing, though, mainly because it's in my nature to care, to fix, and to help. Yes, I could use a great deal of power and destroy things with it. I could probably put someone through the entire building, corner to corner, from the outside. But there's no use in that! When you break something, you can't really use it until it's either fixed or replaced. Trust me, setting something right can be a hell of a lot harder than setting it wrong, but as far as I'm concerned, the end result is worth the effort. Imagine, for instance, what would happen if Naru or Motoko were to do what they do to a regular guy. They'd either cripple him, or hospitalize him, or kill him, just for doing what comes naturally to them. They'd end up in trouble with the law, in jail, or even dead! And then there'd be not one person that would be hurt by their actions, but several. I care about you, all of you, too much to let that happen. I can use my own abilities to survive it, painful though it is, and prevent them from killing someone in the process. I know it sounds foolish, but…there aren't all that many 'me's out there that can do that, and there are fewer still that would be willing to. Sure, they might learn not to do what they do to me if I stopped them or let them face the consequences themselves, but what good does that do for someone in prison for the rest of their lives? What good does it do to the person that gets killed in the process? None at all, right?" He paused, collecting his thoughts. "It's my job to keep my tenants safe, housed, and taken care of; believe me, I'm reminded ten times a day at least. I don't plan on failing that job, even if I do it badly."

Kitsune really had to think about his words. She could see where he was coming from; none of the girls at Hina-Sou were exactly well-suited for the kind of self-control that would keep them out of trouble in the regular world. Hell, Naru alone would probably take someone's head off one day if she didn't have Keitaro to aim at all the time. Now that she really thought of it, the number of times their kanrinin had kept them from destroying themselves or others by taking the brunt of their wrath alone was staggering, and the rate at which he had to repair things on his own was equally over-the-top. Anyone else, she knew, would have had them thrown out, arrested, or sued at least a hundred times over for what they put him through in one week. By putting himself in harm's way, intentionally or unintentionally (as it often was the latter), he'd kept the world out of their lives and let them deal with their problems their own ways, in such a way that they wouldn't wreck their own existences permanently in the process. Still…

She looked at him again, remembering his scars, the injuries, the stains and pains he bore even now, and wondered how long he'd be able to withstand it all. In spite of his willingness to bear that kind of burden, she was worried about him. That alone said a lot, since Kitsune wasn't the type to worry about anyone other than herself if she could help it. Whether or not he could physically fill his role didn't matter to her now, not so much.

What worried her was that Keitaro Urashima, though resilient and determined, was still only a human being. He, just like anyone else, had limits.

"Kei…I get that, now. I wish I'd understood it better, and sooner; I might've been able to at least go a bit easier on you."

He shook his head. "It's not your fault, Kitsune; it never was. I just…never wanted to burden anyone with all that, not if I could bear it myself."

"But…what happens if you can't bear it? Then what's gonna happen?" she asked.

He looked at her, curiously. "What do you mean?"

"Well…what happens if they don't grow up and cool out? You're strong, Kei, I can see that now, but you're made of flesh and blood. You might live until they get it, but they might not get it, too, and you might not last long enough for that to happen, either. I know I didn't get it until just the other night, and that was accidentally and only because I was willing to let myself understand what the hell was going on! Think about it: by the time they were willing, you could be dead! What I'm saying is…you can look out for us, but who's going to look out for you?"

Keitaro stared at her in confusion. "For…me? Why would anyone want to? I'm just a ronin that happens to own and manage a girl's dorm, and I'm not really good at it, either. What's there to look out for?"

"How about an outstanding young gentleman with a heart of gold and enough nuts to keep crawling in a den of merciless tigresses for their sake, not to mention a hell of a fighter with abilities I can't even begin to imagine! What, you think that's not worthwhile, but someone that flirts, finagles, and drinks like a fish is!? You saved my life, Kei-kun!"

"But…"

"No buts! I know you don't see yourself that way, but I do. And I don't want to lose you while you're breaking your back and wearing yourself out 'till you drop dead of exhaustion! I never really got that 'till yesterday, Kei-kun. And I sure as heck don't want you to go back into that mess on your own again. I don't think I can stop you from going, but I think I can help you when you do. I'd rather be a Fox that watches your back than one that walks you to an early grave."

He blinked, a little surprised as the implication of her words started to sink in. "Y-you mean…!"

She leaned in closer to him, an almost suggestive smirk on her face. "I'll tell ya what: this Fox will follow you in there and make damn sure you come back out alive, 'cause if there's any chance of kissing and holding you again it would be worth it a hundred times over to her." She looked at him pointedly as what had to be the mother of all blushes made itself known on his now slack-jawed expression. "That is, of course, if you wouldn't mind it too much," she added with a smile.

For a moment, he blinked and stared, like he couldn't believe his own ears. "N-not at all, actually," he finally managed to admit to her, a smile bigger than any she had yet seen growing on his face. "In fact, I…I'd like that very much!"

The delight on her face became unmistakable; that was all she needed to know. Closing the remaining gap between them, she let all other considerations and worries be and began sealing the deal with him directly.

When the waitress had returned with their food a few minutes later, they barely noticed her arrival until she'd coughed loudly to get their attention. "Will…uh…that be all for you two for now?" she asked, suppressing a girlish giggle at their startled and flushed expressions. "Or…will you be having dessert later?"

**********

The meal (and the admittedly unnecessary but time-buying dessert that followed) was a much closer and more personal affair than the time waiting for it had been for the both of them, and ended up being shared and interrupted repeatedly. Well over an hour after they'd arrived, they finally paid for the food and left, walking down the street in the direction of the Hina-Sou slowly. They hadn't spoken much, and hadn't needed to; in fact, their lips had been otherwise occupied with each other for quite some time already. As they came toward a street corner arm-in-arm, Keitaro posed the question he'd been meaning to ask since they'd agreed to be closer an hour before.

"I'm not sure if this will sound redundant or not, but…do you think this makes us…a couple, now?"

Kitsune tittered to herself; oddly enough, the question hadn't yet crossed her mind as such! "You know what…I guess it does, doesn't it?" She smiled, squeezing him to herself a little tighter. "Well, I suppose I wouldn't mind having a nice, kind, handsome guy like yourself to call my boyfriend."

Keitaro blushed a bit again, though only mildly this time. Perhaps after an hour of making out with a girl like Mitsune in between eating a good meal, he was slowly starting to get a little more used to the idea himself. "Neither would I! And I'd love to call a sweet, smart, beautiful lady like you my girlfriend, myself." His smile fell, slightly, as a different thought crossed his mind. "But…how do we tell themthat?" he asked in a low voice, nodding pointedly in the direction of the distant but slowly growing shape of their destination. She looked at him questioningly, before he added, "I mean, they might let you get away with having a boyfriend and all, but as for me…"

"…they'll look at you holding me, jump to the wrong conclusions, and send you halfway to the next island," she finished with a groan. 'Dammit, and I was so comfortable like this!' she thought to herself. She stopped walking briefly, trying to think. She HAD promised to help him survive, and as much as she wanted to announce their new relationship to pretty much everyone that was willing to listen to her (complete with full demonstrations, if necessary—she was far from shy about showing her affections, after all), if ANY of them saw him even holding hands with her, he wouldn't survive long enough for her to explain it to them, much less get them to believe or accept that they were even together! And while they could probably go out like they had just done again, they wouldn't be able to leave at the same time together, nor return safely at the same time, either.

"I guess," she said, after a moment, "we'll have to figure out what to tell them later. I think either you or I should return first, and the other should go around and come back in the other direction, at least for now. Then, we'll meet later, either in my room or yours, and figure out what to do from there."

Keitaro thought this over carefully. "Not my room; if Naru were to pop in through the hole in the ceiling like she often does, we'd be sunk in an instant. Yours will have a better opportunity for escape if the door is kept shut and we're relatively quiet."

She smiled. "Good thinking! Then, I'll see you in my room at around 10ish tonight, maybe, for a drink? Everyone should be settled out and minding their own businesses by then anyway."

"Okay, I'll see you then! And Kitsune," he said, looking at her seriously, "thank you. For everything."

She smiled at him, mischievously. "Don't thank me for everything just yet, not until I've had the chance to give you something to thank me for!" she told him with a wink, giggling all the harder as she saw the look on his face and the drop of blood already beginning to dribble out his nostril. 'He's still the same Keitaro, at any rate!' she thought to herself as she leaned in to give him a long, deep, goodbye kiss.

The desperate blast of an out-of-control bus's horn marked the beginning of five seconds that would change their lives beyond recognition.

Keitaro saw it first, just as the horn began to blare. The bus was moving up on the sidewalk toward them extremely quickly, and he had scarcely two seconds to react. With one arm, he pulled his new girlfriend behind him and out of the way; with the other, he concentrated the sheer mass force of his ki into the heel of his palm, and hit the tilting side of the bus about to run straight into him.

The force of the impact went far beyond his physical strength. Almost in slow motion, he watched the metal ripple and dent where he hit it, the entire bulk of the bus shifting course away from them at the last possible instant from the sheer power of the hit. The side of the bus missed them by inches, where before it had been set to run straight into them.

The bus still did not stop for the light, its brakes having failed half a block away. To his horror, as he watched, a huge semi traveling on the crossing road plowed into its side, mangling the bus's door and knocking it over on its side. The back end jackknifed toward where they stood, and without hesitation he grabbed hold of Kitsune and leaped out of the way with her just in time as the behemoth automobiles spun and crashed and fell over, plowing through everything in their path.

Keitaro rose first, helping a stunned Kitsune. "You okay?" he asked.

"Y-yeah, I think so," she answered back with a shaky voice, too stunned to register her own fear. They'd been that close to being killed! Had Keitaro not done what he'd done, and moved them both out of the way that fast…

The bus was now mangled shut and on its side, its passengers flung around inside and trapped. Something in or on the bus had begun to burn as well; the driver of the semi was stumbling out, alive but badly shaken and staring at the scene in horror.

Keitaro thought fast, then turned to his new girlfriend. "Find a phone, call every ambulance you can get, the fire department, the police, everything! I'm going to help get those people out of there if I can."

Mitsune looked at him, surprised by the sudden fierceness of his demeanor in spite of the chaos around them. "What about—"

"Never mind! Go! Hurry!" he urged, and she started moving toward the nearest shop behind them.

As she arrived at the door, she turned back in time to see Keitaro grabbing hold of the bus' twisted and mangled shut door, wrenching it as hard as he could. In spite of the smoke, the fire, the growing craziness, for a moment she saw only him, hunched over and pulling it like a strongman hefting up a huge stone. With an almost animal-like yell, he began pulling it so hard she wondered if he would pull his arms off his own body. Incredibly, the metal in his grip bent with the grating, prehistoric-sounding clamor of metal on metal, the wrought-iron and thick aluminum edges slowly but surely giving ground and peeling away, until with a final wrench the enire thing came off! Keitaro tossed the twisted metal far off to the side, and immediately dove down to begin pulling out shaken and bloody passengers, one after another. A few in better shape helped him with the others the moment they were free, but the smoke was getting worse by the minute.

Her mind couldn't process it all, not yet. They needed help, and fast. She ran inside and demanded a phone before her newly rampaging thoughts could overwhelm her.

A.N.: This was a tougher chapter, but a bit more up to what I wanted from it than the original had been. Major credit where credit is due to Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door, from which I got the lines for the "anime" at the beginning of the chapter. (I also got one of Keitaro's attacks from that movie, come to think of it...well, that and a friend of mine that actually tried it once in self defense. More effective than you'd think, apparently.) Other references include Red Dwarf (for all that predetermined destiny smeg). Coming up: heroics, explosions, and smoke inhalation (oh my).