"Miya, she's my mother." I said.

"And she's an MBI employee. I won't have any of their kind in my household." Miya responded.

I sighed as my conversation with the landlady about having Takami over for dinner continued to go nowhere. It had only been a short while since Akitsu and I had gotten back from downtown, but I had spent just about all of it arguing with about letting my mother into the Izumo House. "I already told her to come over, so can't you please make an exception just this once?"

Miya simply raised an eyebrow at this. "Well, then maybe you should have thought to ask me before making such a promise. Besides, you just had lunch with her," Her eyes crinkled shut, her tone taking a teasing quality. "Should a man of your age really be spending that much time with his mother?"

I frowned. "I had to cut it short lunch short because of some information I learned. I was going to gather the household together to tell them about it after we were done talking, but since you need a reason to let Takami in how about this: the organization of magi that are hunting me are now present in the city and abducting Sekirei, so I need to bring her up to speed about magic."

Miya's eyes at first widened at this revelation, and then narrowed at me. "I… see. Do you happen to know just how they found out about my kind?"

I looked away from her, the small twinge of guilt still present in my gut. "I can't be sure, but it's likely that they found out about the Sekirei while hunting for me." I looked back at the landlady, my voice becoming more resolute. "I said this before and I'll say it again: most of the Sekirei are nowhere near prepared to deal with the threat posed by the Clock Tower. MBI has already encountered them a few times, but they have no idea what they're dealing with. If it really comes down to it, as much as I hate MBI myself for what they're putting the Sekirei through, they're still only just being cruel and uncaring. The Clock Tower will be outright hostile to them, and you do not want to know how the subjects of their experiments so far have ended up."

Miya looked changed to one of concern. "You may be right, but I'm hesitant to simply go with the lesser of two evils. How can you trust MBI not to capture you if you tell them about your… 'unusual' abilities?"

"Because the person I'm telling is my mother." I replied flatly. "Look, Takami isn't just some cog in the great, evil machine. She happens to hate the Sekirei Plan and would likely love to see Minaka pushed of a bridge for what he's done. I trust her enough to tell her one of my greatest secrets. Don't' you think you could give her similar trust for just this evening?"

The landlady looked down and considered it for a moment before replying slowly "I suppose if she is against the plan as you say..." She looked back up at me. "Very well. I would be important for mother to know about this. However, I will insist that she follow the rules of the house while she is here."

"Deal." I said with relief. "Now let's get everyone together so we can let them know what's going on."

And so a few minutes later, the occupants of the Izumo House had gathered in the hall to hear what I had to say. All the occupants except one that is.

"Wait a second, where is Troper?" I asked, looking among the assembled Sekirei and Rin.

Miya frowned to herself. "Now that I think about it, I haven't seen Troper-kun in a while. The last I saw him I had asked him to get the mail, but that was over an hour ago…"

I looked the rest of the people present, but they all just shook their heads. Before I could get worried though, I heard the front door crash open behind me, and then a voice quite similar to mine yelled. "Why did no one tell me he had a crazy Yandere stalker?"

Sure enough, when I turned around, Troper was standing in the doorway, though he looked to be in pretty bad shape. He was leaning against the door frame, looking somewhat flushed and breathing heavily. His cloths were torn in several places and some of it was stained with blood. However, for what I could see of his bare flesh, he only had a few angry red marks across his body. His copy of Avalon was likely healing his wounds, though it appeared it wasn't quite done yet. The odd thing was that in spite of the damage to the rest of his cloths, his longcoat was perfectly fine. Maybe it has some kind of Avert Clothing Damage spell on it?

I ignored the return of my mental hyperlinks and said "Good lord! What happened?"

Troper staggered into the hallway, Rin running up to support him. "Oh, hey, your back. How was lunch? Did you learn anything from Takami? Did you fail to mention that there's this Sekirei with a katana who can't seem to decide if she wants to kill you or have sex with you? Because I'm pretty sure I can answer one of those questions."

I sighed. "I guessing you met Karasuba."

"Was that her name? I didn't really catch it amid all of those attempts to dismember me." He replied dryly. "Also, why was she calling me Minato? She nearly took my head off when I didn't respond because I thought she was talking to someone else."

"Minato was my birth name. She likes to tease me by calling that rather than Shirou. She doesn't stop unless I try to kill her at least once." I explained sheepishly.

"Yes, I got the impression that was your general rapport with her," he continued in his dry tone. He briefly turned to Rin to reassure her that he would be fine, before turning back to me. "By the way, she going to have some rather interesting ideas about what you're capable of the next time you meet."

"You didn't-" I began in alarm.

"Nothing too overt." He said quickly. "The worst she might be wondering about will be some Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics and where I managed to get bullets that travel at mach 6. Too be honest though, I'm not sure I could have beaten her even if I did use my more overt Tropes…"

"What about… that thing you did with the Enforcers?" I said vaguely, not wanting to go into the details of Reality Marbles in front of my flock.

Troper just shook his head. "I'm not that good at it yet. It takes all of my concentration to pull it off, so I normally can't do it in the middle of combat. The last time we just got lucky." He then waved his hand dismissively. "But that's not important right now. Before she started making with the staby-staby, she made mention of fighting against some people with… interesting abilities. I'm thinking-"

"That the Mage's Association is in Shin Tokyo?" I interrupted. "I know. Takami told me." Karasuba coming here to tell me this was troubling, especially with her violent encounter with Troper. I didn't think she would start a fight that would escalate to the level of harm apparent in Troper's clothing just because he behaved a little differently than she thought. That meant she was planning to fight me regardless, likely to see if my unknown abilities were anything like the magi she had been fighting of late. I would have to remember to get a fully run down of the fight later to see what she now thinks I'm capable of.

"What?" Tsukiumi exclaimed. "When were you going to tell us this?"

"I was just going to!" I said, turning back to my flock in annoyance. "Look, here's the short version: The Mage Association is in Shin Tokyo and abducting Sekirei in order to study and experiment on them. MBI is doing all they can to stop them, but they don't know who or what they're dealing with. I've invited Takami over for dinner tonight to explain everything to her so she knows what's going on."

There was a stunned pause at my sudden bluntness at the danger currently facing the Sekirei. After a while, Uzume spoke up. "But won't that reveal to her that you're a magus too?" she asked.

I sighed "It's doesn't matter. Takami found footage from street cameras showing me, Akitsu, Troper and several Enforcers going into Osaka Park, and only the 3 of us coming out. She's already suspicious about what I have to do with these people, and whatever I may have wanted before, she needs this information if she's going to help the Sekirei."

"Right, you know what that means ladies," Troper said, ignoring the indignant squawk from Homura. Not missing a chance to be overly dramatic, my counterpart set himself standing tall and proudly (well, as proud as you could with half your cloths in shreds) and declared "Tonight, we dine at the table of Exposition!"

"So who are they and what do you have to do with them?" Takami asked almost as soon as she sat down at the table.

I sighed at my mother's directness. When she first walked in the door she had immediately started to demand Troper to identify who he was. Needless to say, she was not amused by his Time Police explanation. It took Miya asserting her authority to get her to back down long enough to get to the dinner table. "Before I go into who they are, I think it would be best to first explain what they are and what they can do." I said.

"Fine, start talking."

I thought carefully about how to proceed. "The first thing that you should know is that these people are human, with no technological or genetic modification whatsoever. While some people may disagree with this," I look pointedly at the landlady, he merely returned a patronizing smile. "I can assure you that you won't find anything different about them using normal means of analysis." I decided to ease her into it, try to appeal to her scientific nature before I dropped the M word. Thankfully for me, Musubi was far too busy eating Troper's delicious food to give ill timed interruptions.

"Are you saying we don't have the right equipment?" she asked.

"That's... true, I suppose." I said after a moment of thought. "The thing is everything they do is based on a completely different system than modern technology."

"Alright, fine, what's the system it's based on?" Takami growled out, clearly not being satisfied by my very general answers.

Running out of verbal room faster than I had hoped, I said "It's based on the use of human will to gather, transform and release energy in accordance with a person's imagination." Really, that wasn't too bad of a definition of magic, if a ridiculously oversimplified one.

Takami, however, did not appreciate my elegant explanation and closed her eyes, rubbing her temples as she did so. "Shirou, that doesn't make a single damn bit of sense. You can say that all technology basically falls under that description, modern or otherwise. And you can't possibly be speaking literally, because then it just sounds like bloody magic!"

Having swiftly run out of creative ways to talk around the subject and her saying the magic word (no pun intended), I decided to just bite the bullet. Rubbing the back of my head sheepishly, I said "Yeah, that's probably why they call themselves magi."

Her eyes snapped open and locked onto mine. "Wait, what?"

"They're magi. The organization is named the Mage's Association."

Takami just sat there for a few moments, blinking in surprise at my clearly unexpected response. She then slowly narrowed her eyes at me, palpable sense of doom creeping up my spine as she did so. "Shirou, you're making it sound like these people actually can use magic powers. Since that is clearly impossible, I suggest you start your explanation over again in a way that makes sense. Otherwise, I just might have to risk Miya ire at breaking her no violence policy." She said, cracking her knuckles as she did so.

It seemed now was the time to go for broke, unless I wanted to end up with a concussion. I said "I'm sorry Takami, but the truth is magic is real. I know this because," I put my hand out over the table, and Traced an iconic looking wizard's staff. "I'm a magus myself."

Takami's eyes went as wide as saucers, and her mouth dropping open at my (apparent) violation of conservation of mass. After a few seconds I dismissed the staff and waved my hands in front of my mother's eyes. No response.

Huh. This must be what a person suffering from a Divide By Zeroerror looks like.

I went back to eating after a bit, figuring she just need some time to process the knowledge that her world view was fundamentally incomplete. It was a solid three minutes before she started to blink again. Another two after that she finally spoke. "S-so when I said you winged Akitsu using tantric sex magic..." she said with her eyebrow twitching.

I winced. "You... made a really lucky guess." I said in embarrassment, and I felt my face heat up.

"EH?" My entire flock said at once, and I cringed even more. I had forgotten that I had yet to tell my flock exactly how I had managed to wing Akitsu. Considering the looks that some of them were giving me, I had a feeling Miya was going to have a much harder time defending my chastity now that my flock learned that sex with me was literally magical. Troper and Rin had a different reaction though, first looking at me with surprise and then at each other with uncertainty. I think they weren't sure how to feel about this revelation, but I'm not sure why that would be the case.

After the excitement died down (with some help from Miya's Hannya), I began the long process of telling my mother about my past. It was a little more coherent and comprehensive than when I told the same story to my Sekirei, as this time I had time to think about it beforehand. I ended up giving much more detail to my time in England, as that was what was most relevant to our current situation. It was a good hour before I finally finished, and my mother did not look amused.

"So let me get this straight," Takami said as she cradled her forehead in her hand. "You're secretly a mage who participated lethal magic tournament for a magical wish giving cup which you had to destroy to keep the world from being consumed by evil, you used to work for a organization of magi whose grasp on scientific ethics would make Mengele blush, and now you're on the run from said organization for making some kind of super magic, leaving behind your two girlfriends, who are in turn a mage and a 'pseudo-spiritual entity resembling a force of nature'?"

"I'm also incredibly good looking, too." I responded without thinking. Stupid Memetic Mutation. This is all Troper's fault.