*Sighs* Finally. Sorry for the long gap between updates; I've had a rough couple of months.

As for Chapter 19 of 12LH, I've had a pretty bad writer's block with it. I have point A and I have point E; I need to figure out points B, C, and D.

Jijibebe: Awesome. That was exactly what I was gunning for.
Martial Horror: I'll try not to make Takumi more OOC than necessary.
Tikigod: ...I might be.

Again, My-HiME belongs to Sunrise.

4/22/09

"I thought you were dropping Yuuki-san off before coming here," Fumi said as she invited the two into the Director's Mansion.

"Change of plans," Natsuki replied. "I had to tell her about everything; she's on board now. Sorry I didn't let you know earlier. It was late."

"Ah. In that case, please have a seat in the drawing room. I will need a little extra time to prepare something for Yuuki-san as well."

"No problem," Natsuki answered.

"This way." Fumi showed the way to the room before walking off towards the kitchen.

"Something for me?" Nao asked Natsuki quietly as the two walked into the room.

"We get breakfast for coming in this early in the morning. Don't expect a banquet, though."

Nao shrugged. "Free food is free food. It's a nice little benefit."

Natsuki snorted quietly in a slightly bitter irony. "Yeah. Little."

Fumi soon returned and the three sat down. Nao mostly focused on eating her complimentary breakfast while listening in on what Natsuki and the Director had to talk about. "How did your meeting go?" Fumi asked.

"The meeting itself was fine; it was the all the running and chasing after that wasn't so awesome."

"Were you able to learn anything?"

"He passed this off." Natsuki procured a folder and laid it on the table. Half of it pointed at a raised angle towards the ceiling from having been folded over in Natsuki's jacket. She opened it to reveal a stack of papers.

Fumi leaned closer to pick up one of the sheets. "These are invoices?"

"Could be useful for you, I think."

"Yes, it would be good to know how they are getting their supplies." Fumi dropped the photocopy of the invoice back into the folder.

"Still, that's not the intriguing part." Natsuki shuffled through several papers and removed a floppy disk from the pile.

"What's that?" Nao asked, slightly muffled due to a pastry.

"Hell if I know. I didn't notice it until after I picked it up and by that time the guy had left the bar already."

"You have a computer back at your place; why not use that?"

"I don't know if this thing has a virus or something on it! For all I know it's a ploy to screw up my computer and reveal my location! Ever think about that?"

"Please calm down, Kuga-san. Let me see the disk." Natsuki handed the disk over to Fumi, who looked it over. "There is an old computer in one of the rooms that can read floppy disks. It was disconnected from the Academy network last week, so if there is a virus and it attacks, the damage will be contained."

"Oh, right, the upgrading of the network," Natsuki said. "You sure it's all right?"

"The files on that computer were finished transferring on Friday."

"So if something goes wrong, nothing gets lost."

"Yes. Do you want to try it?"

Natsuki thought for a moment. "Well, why not?"

"Very well. This way, please." The two of them got up and Fumi began walking to the door.

Natsuki, however, hesitated. "Rather convenient, isn't it?" she said quietly to Nao. "A disk with unknown things on it, and a computer ready to take it?"

"What are you looking a gift horse in the mouth for?" Nao replied.

"Gift horses in this business are frequently of the Trojan kind." Nevertheless, Natsuki followed Fumi out the door and left Nao to her food. She began poking at the eggs with her fork.

"Come on, Mikoto. We made a promise." Mai urged along an uncharacteristically sleepy Mikoto as they walked along the path.

"I know, Mai, it's just…"

"9:30 is not that early."

"I still can't believe she ate all that cake," Akane said.

"It was a very well made cake, Higurashi-san."

"Yeah, but the amount of cake she ate would have taken me forever to eat!"

"Is that really such a surprise?" Shizuru asked with a smile. "Besides, Higurashi-san should be blessed that you have an easily-sated appetite."

"Why is that?"

"I have been privy to many tales of woe in regards to a woman's appetite and its detrimental effect on her appearance."

"You mean your fan club?" Mai asked.

Shizuru paused for a moment. "If you wish to describe it that way." She adjusted her hat and sunglasses so that she could see better. "It has been a long while, hasn't it?"

"Hm?"

"Since I have seen Alyssa-chan."

"Yeah, I guess it has. We're lucky her chicken pox wasn't worse than it was; otherwise, you'd have missed her again."

The chapel bell began to ring from a distance. Mai looked at her watch. "We're late already?!"

"It appears so, Mai-san," Shizuru replied coolly.

"We should hurry," Akane said. She, Mai, and Mikoto quickened their pace towards the church.

"It must be nice, being able to hold such faith," Shizuru said quietly to the girls fading from view. Her head tilted downward towards the pavement.

"What are you waiting for?!" Shizuru looked up to see Mai urging her to hurry. "We're going to miss Alyssa-chan sing!"

Nao had just finished off the last of the orange juice when Fumi returned to the room by herself. "Where's Kuga?" she asked.

"She is investigating the files on the disk."

"I take it it's clean?"

"It appears to be." Fumi resumed her old seat. "Yuuki-san?"

"Hm?"

"Do you mind if I ask you something?"

"What?"

"The reason for your presence."

Nao stopped eating. "Kind of early to be doing philosophical musings, isn't it?"

"I mean with Kuga-san. If you were here for the free food, you would have eaten everything quickly and left by now, and I do not believe money alone would buy your services for something so dangerous."

"'Buy'? What am I, a gun for hire?"

"Unless there is some personal reason, Yuuki-san, that is what it would boil down to." Nao made no response, only looking off to the side of Fumi towards the window. "There is another reason, then?" Fumi asked. Nao sighed but again made no verbal response. Fumi, however, did not fail to notice Nao's fist that laid on the sofa clench and tense. For her, that was enough to make an educated guess. An uneasy quiet settled in. Fumi was unsure as to how to proceed with topics like vengeance, and the atmosphere quashed what little inkling Nao had for small talk. The scene persisted all the way until Natsuki returned from her study. "Ah, welcome back, Kuga-san," Fumi greeted. "Was there anything on the disk that proved useful?" Natsuki was nonresponsive as well for a moment. "Is something the matter, Kuga-san?"

"Huh? Oh, uh…yeah, actually…"

"What might that be?"

Natsuki waved a few printouts in her hand. "It, uh…seems they're chasing my father."

"You made it just in time," Yukariko informed the majority-out-of-breath group as they reached the front doors. "They're about to start." Mai looked up and saw the back of Miyu's head three rows from the back, and led Akane and Mikoto over to her. "Hey," she said quietly as they reached Miyu.

"You have arrived," Miyu stated as she effortlessly slid over to make room. Unfortunately, there was only enough room for two, so Akane moved back a row and settled in behind Mai.

"Barely," Mai replied. "Mikoto burned herself out on sugar last night." She took a moment to reposition Mikoto's posture so that it wouldn't be so obvious that she was not quite awake and aware.

"I see."

The group's quiet conversations were smothered with the start of the choir's singing, the only disturbance being Miyu turning her head slightly and acknowledging Shizuru's arrival when she caught up with the rest of the group. Shizuru removed her shades and hat and sat down next to Akane. The chorus of voices began to rise up front and center, but Shizuru's gaze remained on the android, her thoughts floating back to two years ago and the secret that, among those present, only she and Mai knew about Miyu…

"God damn it, why won't they leave us alone?" Natsuki got up from her leaning position looking over Shizuru's shoulder and walked over to a nearby wall to slam her hand into it in frustration. She continued to lean on it with an outstretched arm and sighed.

"And you said you witnessed this happening, Kikukawa-san?"

"Yes, kaichou-san. I was sitting on a park bench perhaps fifty or sixty meters away when I noticed something disappear from the corner of my eye. I did not know it was Harada-san and Senou-san until about an hour ago when I found the recording."

"How did you get a hold of the tape?" Midori asked from the edge of the bed.

"The store manager was distracted by a rather unreasonable customer and I took the opportunity to sneak into the back rooms and find the offices where the recordings are kept."

Midori raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Seems we have a regular spy here."

"While it is fortunate, Kikukawa-san, that you obtained the recordings and discovered who was caught," Shizuru said, "I must ask what made you take such dangerous actions. I cannot imagine that you would do such a thing without a strong reason."

"What are you implying, Shizuru?"

Yukino held up a hand towards Natsuki. "No, it's all right, Kuga-san. Kaichou-san has a point. After the disappearance, I got up and walked by the scene because I had this nagging feeling that this was not a mere specter of my imagination. It became worse when I spotted a journal on the side of the alley with the Academy's logo imprinted on it; that was when I feared one of the students here might have been involved."

"And the rest we know," Natsuki summed up.

"So a feeling became a bad feeling, and the bad feeling turned into a very real and very bad discovery," Midori said succinctly. "Who else knows about this?"

"I don't know yet; I haven't heard any messages of worry about them from anyone."

"Neither have I."

"Nor I."

"Won't stay that way for long, though. The void left by their disappearance will be impossible to hide among their usual chat-"

A knock on the door stopped Midori's talking as everyone's attention turned to it. "Who is it?" she called out as she got up and walked to the door. Shizuru glanced over at Natsuki, whose hand hovered over her right side where her holster was located. Midori glanced back at Natsuki, nodded, and cautiously unlocked the door and began to open it.

Nao, Natsuki, and Fumi leaned over the table and looked over the scattered pieces of paper that layered it. "Well, this explains your knack at spying stuff," Nao said. "It's in your blood."

"Guess so. For an Eastern Bloc agency, the HVA was pretty helpful for the Soviets in getting stuff on West Germany."

"Where does it suggest that Kruger-san is Kuga-san's father?" Fumi asked.

"Here." Nao tapped one of the papers near her. "Says that Kuga's mom met him while she was studying in Munich in June of '86." Her eyebrows rose when she read the next line. "Huh. Seems the two shacked up together a few months later."

"When were you born, Kuga-san?" Fumi asked.

"August of '87," Nao replied after some quick calculations when Natsuki did not answer.

Natsuki eventually nodded in confirmation. "It's possible. I remember her saying once that she spent three years in Germany for postgraduate work."

"I see…" Fumi replied, noting from the delay that the topic of Natsuki's mother was still a tricky one to navigate. Scars of betrayal hurt deeper and linger longer than any other, after all.

"Wait, three years?" Nao asked.

"I would have been, like, two years old when I would have returned to Japan. You think I would have remembered anything about it?"

"You might have at least remembered that you had a dad if your mom was in Germany that long. Or is this guy a deadbeat?"

"Maybe just dead." Natsuki handed Nao another sheet of paper. "Last known sighting by Searrs was in October of '87."

"Where did he go?" Fumi asked.

"Don't know. Doesn't say anything else. I think whatever notes about that were in the corrupted part of the file."

"Hmm…" The noise of questioning from Fumi drew the attention of the other two.

"What's up?" Natsuki asked.

"Please wait a minute. There is something you might be interested in." Fumi left and returned within a couple minutes with a pair of folders of her own. Natsuki quickly shuffled her papers to one side of the table so as to let Fumi show her files. "What's that?" Nao asked, spiriting her breakfast plate off the table.

"Your run-in with Searrs last night has been useful in other ways, Kuga-san." Fumi opened up one of the folders. "One of the facilities that has been tracked since we started to do so has recently seen increased activity. It is an old facility that Searrs used on their attack a few years ago, the one that brought many of the HiME together."

"Oh, yeah, that."

"You guys never shut it down after we kicked Searrs out?" Nao asked.

"It was abandoned after their defeat, and Fujino-san's decapitation of First District headquarters afterwards made goals other than strategic strikes against a weak adversary a higher priority." Nao just blinked blankly, so Natsuki simplified: "They were busy."

"Ah."

"So what about this old base?" Natsuki asked Fumi, returning the conversation to its original track.

"I looked at the files that First District gathered pertaining to the building," Fumi said as she brought the bottom folder to the fore. "It was something like a forward operating base used by Searrs agents before their…muscle moved in."

"And now they're using it again," Natsuki extrapolated.

"Searrs, or whatever remains of it, is the most likely actor, but at the very least, someone is using it," Fumi replied.

"And you want me to find out what exactly's going on."

"Correct."

"Is there a chance that guy'll be there?" Nao asked.

"You're staying away from this, Nao," Natsuki stated flatly while pointing a finger at Nao's face, knowing right away what she was really asking for.

"What? Why?!" Nao protested, slamming her hands onto the table. "You promised!"

Natsuki zoomed her face to within a few inches of Nao's to kill the nascent tantrum. "What I promised is allowing you to help me out. Kicking down the front door and announcing your presence with a shower of bullets is generally counterproductive to that goal."

"What the hell are you talk–"

"You know that you'd do that if you could." Natsuki held her face there for a moment before pulling back into her seat. "Everyone knows you're the type that'd shoot a mosquito with an elephant gun if it bit you."

"Oh, that's what this is about? You think I can't keep my emotions under control?"

"There's a broken window in Searrs's garage that would say so." Nao sighed in defeat.

"I understand your frustration, Yuuki-san," Fumi chimed in, "but Kuga-san has a valid point. You possess only basic fighting skills and have no experience at all in actions as complex as what an action such as this would be. Unless you are willing to heed Kuga-san's advice regarding matters she is more knowledgeable than you are, the prospects of your success in catching that man are bleak at best."

Nao only sighed again in frustration, still upset that she had lost the argument. Natsuki spoke again: "Nao, look. It's one thing to be driven by revenge. I'm not going to stop you from pursuing payback; I've washed my hands of trying to deter you from it. But they even say that revenge is best served cold." Natsuki paused for a moment, coming up with the next thing to say. "You want to do it right the first time? Plan it when adrenaline's not racing through your brain."

A moment passed that held nothing but silence save for Fumi pouring everyone another cup of tea. She not-so-subtly motioned to Nao's cup as a silent suggestion to take a sip and think it over.

"Oh. Hello, you two."

"Good evening, Sugiura-sensei."

A moment of silence passed. "Mmm…what are you two doing out here this late on a school night?"

"We have a proposition. For Kuga-san."

"Uh, what makes you think she's here?" Midori asked, trying to play dumb.

"Please do not insult my intelligence, Sugiura-sensei. I am equipped with thermal scanners that can detect the three other people within your apartment from a range of 100 yards. That plus the Ducati-model motorbike parked outside indicates a 95.2% chance–"

"Midori, let 'em in," Natsuki called out from around the corner. "If she was going to go apeshit on us, she'd have done so by now."

Soon, the two of them were at the foot of the bed, Alyssa seated in a chair and Miyu standing behind her. "So…" Natsuki began, prompting the two newcomers to talk.

"It has come to our attention that two classmates have been abducted." A moment of silence. "Your lack of a strong reaction indicates that you know as well."

"OK, so…" Natsuki said. "Do you know who did it?"

"We have a hunch it's Searrs," Alyssa said. "The way it got pulled off…it seems like their MO. Plus, Miyu says that there has been a lot of infighting among the remnants of it." Alyssa's eyes barely left the ground right in front of the bed; whether it was out of simple shyness or perhaps guilt wasn't known. "Something like this might be a move by one faction to reestablish control over the whole organization."

"How?" Yukino asked.

"Controlling the Carnival," Shizuru replied, no stranger to factional rivalries owing to her experiences in high-level corporate circles. "Maybe they don't know that we've ended it, or maybe they are looking for a way to revive it despite us. Even if some know…yes, even if some of the leaders at the top know that we destroyed the Star, their once-lofty goal might be used as a rallying point to unite the factions."

"If not by words, then by force," Natsuki added.

"Oh."

"So where do you fit into this?" Midori asked.

"Searrs has something we want as well," Alyssa replied. "There is another android model in their possession."

"Like her?" Natsuki asked, pointing to Alyssa's guardian.

"Only big and better. Well, maybe not bigger if what Miyu found is right, but it's supposed to be better at least."

"Why would there be a second android?" Shizuru asked.

"Always have back-ups," Alyssa replied tersely.

"I presume that it was brought into Japan in case I was rendered incapacitated or otherwise lost as a replacement for Mistress," Miyu stated. "It would have been rendered irrelevant when the Valkyries defeated Searrs's attempt to take over the Academy, and presumably placed into storage."

"Right, no Alyssa-chan, no point," Midori said. "Are you guys offering a quid pro quo?"

"In essence, yes," Miyu replied. "We will assist you in recovering Harada-san and Senoh-san if you will help us retrieve the body."

The rest, of course, is history, and Miyu now sat not three feet away with a new body. Though her outward appearance remained the same (the reason it was possible that some of the former HiME did not know about it), Shizuru knew, at least superficially, about the more efficient internal motor, the expanded arsenal of weapons now at Miyu's disposal, and her improved cybernetic systems. Previous conversations with Mai revealed that Alyssa made improvements every few months or so, chiefly to activate some feature that hadn't been activated yet. With Alyssa being the only person who had any real chance of understanding all the techno-babble that came with Miyu's new body, they had opted to start with the essential systems first and work their way up over time.

She was most curious, though, about the android's behavior. Miyu perhaps has a naturally stoic personality (if the word "naturally" can be used to describe an artificial construct), but it seemed to Shizuru that Miyu was no longer as lifeless as she seemed when they first met. There was perhaps a bit more light in Miyu's eyes when Alyssa took center stage up front, a more natural smile that crept onto her face when she began her solo. It reminded Shizuru of how…

Shizuru sighed. She could only avoid worrying about her for so many hours, it seemed.

"…kaichou?" A voice slowly registered in her mind belonging to Mai. "Hello?"

"Ah, yes, Mai-san?"

"Service is over."

Shizuru looked around at the people all walking about, greeting each other and holding conversations. "So it is."

"You all right?" Mai waved her hand in front of Shizuru's face.

"Yes, I'll be fine. Shall we go see Alyssa-chan?" Shizuru nodded her head towards the front, where Miyu was talking with Alyssa. Tonight was going to be one of those nights for the two of them, so now was the time to take them out to lunch and catch up some more. As she went up, though, she noticed Akane looking back towards the doors, as if searching for something. "Is something wrong, Higurashi-san?"

Akane turned to Shizuru and pointed towards the back doors. "You didn't happen to see a girl with long braids in the back, did you?"

Shizuru shook her head. "I'm afraid not."

"Wait...I might have..." Mai went. "I don't know for sure, but..."

"Was there something strange about the girl?" Shizuru asked.

"I don't know, she just...seemed to be paying a lot of attention to us instead of the choir..."

A moment of unease passed before Mai dismissed it. "It was probably just us. Come on, let's go get Alyssa-chan and Miyu."

"Yeah, probably."

"Is something wrong, Nao?"

"Oh, no, um, everything's alright."

"It just seems like–"

"It's fine, Mom. Really."

"Really?"

"Really." Nao then turned around and left the kitchen, heading towards her room to finish unpacking, leaving the older redhead at a loss of words, only able to release a sigh as she glanced at the oven clock to see that it was a little past 5:00. It had been almost a year since Chihiro awoke, and still she could not get over the shock of this new world. So many things had changed in those five years, most of all to her Nao. Long gone was the cheery Nao that she had known for ten years. In her place was one that had seen entirely too much. Her conversation with Director Himeno soon after she had awoken (the Director had been kind enough to come visit her before she was discharged) did take some of the shock out of seeing the new Nao, but even five years of repeated "she's not the Nao you knew" wouldn't have removed the unease she felt once she moved into a new home (with the Director's assistance) and settled into a more normal life.

Would she say that they had grown apart? Not really, no. Chihiro's first coherent image in over five years was of unbridled joy from a teenage girl who looked familiar but she didn't recognize until she focused on the smaller details. The Director's later assertion that Nao hadn't forgotten about her was plain as day. That was last June. It was when August and September came when she realized how Nao had changed more than just physically. She seemed more distant, quite cynical of everything and everyone, especially of men. She tried not to show it to her herself, but she could tell that something had happened to her Nao in the past five years, something that took away the Nao she knew, something that what happened to her the night of April 16th, 2001 alone would be hard pressed to explain. But Nao always went quiet and often tried to change the subject whenever she tried to pry.

Nao's ringing cell phone on the table interrupted her thoughts. Things truly had changed, Chihiro thought as she picked up the phone and began walking to Nao's room, if Nao had the self-motivation to arrange her own cell phone plan. "Nao?" she called out through the closed door. She looked at the caller ID. "Your friend Kuga is calling."

Nao's door opened in an instant and she snatched the phone out of her mother's hands before she could react. "Hello...Yeah, I'll be out in a sec…" Nao's face quickly spun back into the room and at a green bookbag currently on a chair. It must be Nao's friend on the other end, the one Nao said with whom they'd be out for tonight. "Yeah, I got everything…See ya…" She hung up.

"What's the bag for?" Chihiro asked.

"Stuff for doing…friend stuff." That was about Nao's worst attempt at lying Chihiro had seen since Nao broke that vase when she was five years old. The approach of the sounds of a motorbike drew their attention to an open window in Nao's room, where outside a bike approached their apartment and the mostly black-clad biker removed her helmet to reveal Kuga. With a quick, "I might be out late," Nao jogged down the hallway and in a moment left their apartment, the front door emphatically closing behind Nao.

Chihiro, honestly, couldn't make heads or tails of it. The past ninety seconds of activity had all the markings of a classic descent-into-the-wrong-crowd kind of movie plot. Her motherly instincts were just screaming obscenities at her brain, telling her that she should have stopped Nao or at least have been more stiff in asking the contents of the bag. Even six months ago, she might have heeded it. But she looked out the window at Nao's friend Kuga, sitting on the idle bike with a second helmet in hand. When Nao exited the apartment building and approached the bike, Kuga simply handed her the helmet, her gaze meeting Chihiro's as Nao got on the bike. Chihiro saw the slightest nod from Kuga as she put her own helmet on and the two drove off.

It wasn't until Chihiro walked into her bedroom that she figured out what had stopped her from speaking out: those two seconds. Nao had kept her eyes ahead, not looking back or even off to the side at her once she left their apartment. She had been quiet and avoidant of what exactly was going on outside those four walls, as if she didn't want to discuss it. Perhaps Nao hadn't lost any love for her, but she had to revise her earlier statement: they had grown distant. It wasn't really either of their faults; after all, it's hard to have a relationship when one side is unresponsive for years at a time. As much as it frustrated Chihiro, she knew that to expect a teenage Nao would simply permit a strong parental influence back into her life, especially one that was stuck on preteen mode, would be asking too much, especially since Nao was capable of doing things by herself. It hadn't been too long ago that she was one as well.

That led to Kuga. The two had yet to meet formally, yet Chihiro felt strangely at ease when she saw her take Nao on her bike. Ordinarily, the "don't mess with me" aura that she gave off would have set off alarms. But this was different. Most parents don't have to deal with being single and missing five years at the same time. Chihiro's been at it for months without much success; she was willing to give her friend a chance (Nao had always returned in one piece, after all). She would have to meet her face to face one day, of course, but Chihiro would roll the dice on this one.

Chihiro's eyes moved to the file on the nightstand, the name "Yuuki" scrawled on the cover underneath the logo of Fuuka Medical Center. "Besides," she thought solemnly, "there may be no choice."

Credit to Shades of Gray by Tremalkinger for the inspiration to the name of Nao's mother.

Reviews are most appreciated.