"Hey. Hey kid, wake up."
"Mmmno," Nevon mumbled, rolling away from whoever was shaking him. He curled up, barely possessing the mental faculties to notice that his bed was hard as concrete, much less to wonder why.
"Hey, kid."
"Mmgo'way..." he mumbled, reaching for a blanket which, strangely enough, wasn't there.
"Hey, you think he's all right?"
"I don't know...he looks okay, but why's he sleeping in a place like this?"
Nevon swam back up out of unconsciousness, he finally registered the fact that he was most definitely not in his bed at home, his eyes flashed open, and he found himself curled up on the concrete surface of an alley. He scrambled to his feet and swayed woozily; he would have fallen over but for the help of one of the two older youkai who had woken him up, who quickly steadied him. He looked at them blankly for a moment. Both were members of the Black Fox Tribe and quite a bit older than he was himself; they also looked like the sort of youkai you didn't mess with, like they were both capable of taking care of themselves. He shook his head to clear it of the haziness that just wouldn't go away, and staggered, clutching his head.
He had a killer headache.
"Ow, my head," he mumbled as the taller of the two strangers helped him sit down again next to a wall. What was going on...? It felt as if someone had reached into his head and mixed everything up. He could recall only vague images of a...cute girl... Memories abruptly began to flood back in.
"Hey," the shorter of the two, who was also noticeably older, said, squatting down in front of him and peering closely at his face. "Are you okay?" Nevon flinched away as the stranger shined a small flashlight into his eyes. "Pupils look okay; you don't look like you've been taking drugs and even though you bumped your head, you probably don't have a concussion. Why were you sleeping there?"
I kissed a cute oni girl and...what?
"I...don't know," Nevon said honestly as he shrugged off the other youkai's help and stood up straight, thinking back to what little he could recall about the incident. That had been pretty much the first oni he'd ever seen up close. The girl's eyes had been so green, seemingly impossibly so, and...and outraged...and... "Oh no," he said, collapsing back down to his knees. The two strangers rushed to grab him before he could faint again.
"What is it? What's wrong?" the taller one asked, shaking him.
"Hey kid, just relax; here, sit back against the wall and-"
"Oh crap!"Nevon bellowed, surprising the two strangers with his vehemence. "I am such a freaking idiot!" Why had he even done that? He groaned in exasperation at his own stupidity for forcing that kiss on the girl and smacked himself in the forehead.
The two strangers backed away a step or two and looked at each other before the shorter, older one squatted down to put himself at Nevon's current eye level. "Look kid, are you feeling okay? You look pretty pale...I think we should probably take you to the office they've got set up here. Do you even realize your ears are showing?"
Nevon just looked at him blankly.
"Your fox ears. They're showing. Your tail too," the man pointed out.
Nevon blinked at the other youkai, looked down at his tail, and blushed profusely as he promptly hid it along with his ears. How humiliating...!
"That's better. Here, let me help you up," the older youkai said, again helping him to his feet. Nevon realized they were about the same height, just under six feet tall, quite large for Nevon's age, but a little undersized for someone like the older youkai, though the Black Fox Tribe did tend toward the lower middle area of the height spectrum. "Are you here with your family? Not that you don't look old enough to be on your own," he added, knowing the sensitivity of young youkai around the proper age for the coming of age ceremony; those who had undergone it were usually very prickly about being seen as adults, while those who had yet to undertake the ceremony were more often than not even worse; the members of the Gold Fox Tribe were particularly bad about it, especially since they sent their children through the ceremony at such a young age.
"They're in the city," Nevon said, not really paying attention to the older youkai's words. He had to find that oni girl again! He had to apologize to her for what he had done! "I am such an idiot!" he said again, covering his eyes in exasperation at his own idiotic actions as he leaned back against the wall again.
"Yeah..." the younger of the two strange youkai said as they looked at each other.
The older one sighed. "Look, are you going to be all right? Do you need us to help you get back to your family?" he asked seriously.
Nevon shook his head despondently. "No...I'll be alright. But..." he looked shyly up at the two of them. "You guys haven't seen an oni girl around here, have you? With bright green eyes? She's...she's really pretty," he said, looking away in embarrassment as his whole face went red.
The older one raised his eyebrows. "An oni girl? Whoa kid, you'd better be careful. You're Gold Fox tribe, right? Some of your people don't like that kind of thing."
Nevon's blush intensified as he looked away.
The older one sighed and shook his head, then let out a snort of amusement. "Oh well. Just so you know, kid. Come on Onyx," he said, talking to the other youkai. "We've got things to do."
Nevon listened absently to their conversation as the two strangers walked away. Something about watching a tournament...? They were long gone before he realized he hadn't even thanked them. But that oni girl...why had he done such a thing? He didn't even know her name...!
"I am such an idiot...!"
"Here, do it. Call her," Adept Amos said, holding out the cell phone over the table, his aged eyes showing nothing but kind, grandfatherly warmth.
Rale squirmed in his seat, his hands gripping the edges of the seat of his chair, and averted his eyes. "I...I can't-"
"Don't give me that!" Adept Cort barked suddenly from in front of the window where he had been angrily pacing with his arms crossed. Rale flinched back in the chair. "You know what this will mean for us," he said threateningly.
Rale focused his gaze on the edge of the table before him to avoid looking at either of the two adepts who had been tasked with leading the little group in hopes of retrieving the only vessel capable of containing the now-slumbering soul of the founder of The Children of Gilgamesh, known only as The Daughter of Gilgamesh, or The Daughter for short. Wreathed in prophecy, The Daughter was supposed to usher in a new age for the world, first by protecting it from destruction, then by spreading 'The Truth', a pleasant euphemism for the idea that, since Gilgamesh, the legendary divine King of Kings, had owned the world, so, by divine right, did his children. The fact that others who were not his children were currently in possession of these things was an unpleasant detail, one that many among the leadership of The Children of Gilgamesh wished to fix, through fire and ruin if necessary.
And, of course, The Daughter would lead them to victory.
Rale squirmed in his seat, looking at the cell phone Adept Amos had placed on the table in front of him. "Do I...do I have to...? I mean...Ako-san-"
"The Daughter," Adept Cort said severely, crossing his arms over his barrel chest. Rale shrunk further into his seat; Adept Cort was by far one of the most frightening adepts in the whole order. Not only was the man's dark, hairy, wild appearance frightening, but he had a temper to match and had been known in the past to bodily throw awkward students and other annoying people through doors and windows. Even worse, the man had been a mercenary before joining The Children of Gilgamesh with his friend Braden Xyrely, who now sat on the council. As far as Rale, a farm boy from a rural area in the far north who had never seen any fight more serious than a couple of drunk farmers dusting it up behind the town's single tavern, the man was absolutely terrifying, and the subject of more than a few nightmares.
"The Daughter," Rale corrected helplessly. "She...what will happen to Ako-san, to the soul inhabiting the vessel?"
Adept Cort glowered for a moment, but turned his attention to the window again and remained silent; it was Adept Amos who took a seat across from Rale. "Initiate Rale, I think you already know the answer to that. But you must remember that this life is not fair. Good people die, bad people live, and sacrifices must be made to ensure the greater good. For example," he said, standing up to better gesture as he spoke, "animals must be sacrificed to provide us with meat, plants must be sacrificed to provide us with bread. And sometimes, sadly, a person must be sacrificed for the sake of us all. I am sorry, Initiate Rale, but the vessel must be acquired. You have no choice; it is for the best."
As Adept Amos sat back in his chair, smiling kindly at him, Rale, for the first time, thought seriously of escape. 'He thinks he's right...!' he realized in one terrifying instant. Adept Amos was crazy! He looked at Adept Cort, hoping to get a dissenting opinion, but Adept Cort simply stood there beside the window with his arms crossed and his teeth clenched, looking out through the glass. His expression betrayed only the merest hint of disagreement, but he remained silent.
After an awkward moment, Adept Cort excused himself and left the room, and Rale looked back to Adept Amos, who sat there a few feet away, smiling with all the kindness of a doting grandfather as he gestured at the cell phone.
With no other choice, Rale picked it up, that little tune Ako-san had kept humming the whole time they were together on their date the day before absurdly running through his head.
The crowd welcomed her with a roar as Yuuna strutted out onto the long walkway that led to the main stage where each match of the actual tournament would take place, currently occupied by the first two contestants. She waved as she went, soaking up all the attention she could get, her eyes bright, her smile wide as she reached the stage and climbed up with ease.
After one final wave to the crowd, she raised the microphone to her lips and began. "The first match of our tournament is going to be a good one! On this side, we have a girl commonly called in by the police for help with missing persons cases, a girl who has played a big part in building up the St. Ursula High School Knife-Throwing Club, a girl who has even assisted the legendary hero of Mahora the Ace of Spades, the seventeen year old American beauty, Liliana Rosario! Everybody, give her a hand!" Yuuna said into the microphone, gesturing wildly the whole time while Liliana's face went redder and redder.
When Liliana had managed a faint wave to the audience, Yuuna brought the microphone up and spun in place to point her finger at the second contestant. "And facing her in this corner! From the dark depths of deepest Tokyo, an understated beauty appeared! Turning twenty this year, she also likes silver jewelry and strong guys, so you guys out there who want to-" Yuuna jerked the microphone up and out of Madoka's reach before she could snatch it away, pushing lightly on the shorter girl's head to keep it out of her reach. Laughing, she barely even noticed a quick movement from the first contestant before the microphone was snatched out of her hand.
Madoka and Liliana yelled something the crowd couldn't quite make out while Yuuna stuck her tongue out and took the microphone back. "Okay," she said, holding the microphone up and grinning while the crowd laughed, "I'll get to the point. Anyway! You no doubt know her as the 'do-anything-but-sing~' member of Mahora's own Dekopin Rocket, Kugimiya Madoka!" Yuuna said, swiftly drowned out by the roar of the crowd, mostly locals who had seen or at least heard of the band at some point in the past six years.
Yuuna waited for the commotion to die down before stepping back to the edge of the tournament stage. "Each match will have a time limit of ten minutes! Defeat will be determined by being down for a ten-count, going out of the ring for ten seconds, giving up, or for any reason being unable to continue the match! In the event of a tie, the decision will be handed down to the audience. Also, no weapons or choke holds allowed! Other than that, anything goes! Are the participants ready?" she asked, looking from Liliana to Madoka and receiving a nod from each. "Okay, fight!"
Madoka took a few steps forward, watching Liliana's every move and nodding her approval. "You've gotten a lot better from the time we first met."
Liliana smiled, her eyes bright. "That's right. You've taught me a lot, Madoka-sensei, and I'm thankful for it. But I'm a lot stronger than I used to be; I won't go easy on you!" Liliana said, darting forward.
Madoka slipped aside and took a swing that hit empty air. Liliana snagged her arm before she could recover and performed a classic hip toss, throwing Madoka hard to the stage floor, unfortunately losing her grip on the woman. She went for an arm bar, but Madoka shoved her back and worked her leg up and around Liliana's head, forcing it back while she went for her own arm bar.
"Owowowowow!"
"Oh, looks like Madoka-chan has grown a lot since her middle school days," Albireo said as he watched the woman square off against Liliana on the fighting stage.
Eva set down her tea cup and leaned over to look at the display Al had created. He had invited her here to his underground castle beneath Library Island in order to watch the tournament, a tradition begun several years before when Eva grew too annoyed with the huge crowds aboveground, which had only grown each year. Sometimes the headmaster attended as well, but this year he had begged off to take care of some last minute problems with a small cloth golem in the shape of a 'skinned man', who was apparently running around the middle school at night and scaring the maintenance and security crews. Eva had just grinned when she heard the news.
"Hmph," was Eva's reply to Al.
"Now now, you aren't still angry that she refused your training, are you?" Al replied, eyes alight as he paused to watch the match while Eva sent a glare in his general direction before picking up her teacup again. The match was over by the time she had raised his teacup to her lips.
"I can't believe she went with Ku Fei and Sakurazaki Setsuna instead of me; me!" she said after she had taken a slip, smacking a hand to her chest and spilling some of her tea. "I could've made her into a monster of a fighter! Stupid little girl, doesn't know what's good for her..." she grumbled, sitting back as the fire went back out of her. Truly, Kugimiya Madoka's refusal of her extremely rare offer of training had been extremely galling. She knew what it was; she had been getting too soft, spending too much time with The Boy and not acting like the magnificently evil true blood high daylight walker that she was. She had only ever trained two or three others before meeting The Boy, and the last had been well over a century ago. Then she meets up with...with his son and goes all soft...disgusting. Utterly disgusting. True, the sheer number of people with high potential around The Boy was insane, not to mention the fact that the mere thought of all those powerful, young, and above all impressionable girls made her all but salivate as she considered which would be the best followers for her, but...but that didn't mean she should offer to train people left and right! She had Misa to train, and one was enough...! ...even if she did let the others use her resort all the time and actually only upgraded it because of the training possibilities inherent in having dozens of different environments to train in just a short walk away, along with the fact that The Boy had asked her to do some of it...while smiling at her...with that face that looked so much like his...
"It was just to keep them out of my hair!" she declared to Al, who, having not been party to Eva's internal rambling about trainees and a certain red headed teacher, quirked an eyebrow and let his ever present smirk grow slightly as he watched her.
"Is that so?" he asked, smirking at her.
Eva just glared.
Yuuna blinked a few times and looked at the timekeeper, who shook his head in exasperation. Yuuna brought the microphone up. "A-and that was our first match! C-congratulations Kugimiya Madoka!" she said. To be honest, she was quite annoyed. Didn't Madoka have any sense of showmanship? Honestly! Ending the first match of the most anticipated tournament all year in just nine seconds...she sighed and squeezed the bridge of her nose while said winner helped Liliana, who was clutching at her elbow, climb down out of the ring.
Yuuna waited until they were gone and the next contestants had made their way out to the fighting stage before she once again raised the microphone to her lips. 'Well, let's hope this one lasts a little longer than the last one,' she thought when the introductions were over and the two contestants, her missing (but confirmed alive) student Possum Cade's big sister Lucy and her old classmate Narutaki Fumika went at it.
"Ah, you got me again, sempai," Liliana said, wincing while a nurse tended to her sore elbow.
Madoka smiled crookedly as she looked at the girl she had had a hand in training for the last two and a half years seated on the edge of an examination table in the temporary nurse's station set up to tend to injuries suffered by the participants in today's tournament. "I guess I've been a little too lax in my teaching, haven't I?" Beside Liliana, Madoka's other trainee, the mute girl Nelle, nodded at her in response to the remark about Madoka's lack of teaching ability, and Madoka heaved a sigh. "Guess I'll have to make that up to you two, huh?"
Madoka and Nelle stood there quietly watching while the nurse provided Liliana with an ice pack and instructions on what to do with her elbow for the next few weeks, and then left them alone to check up on a man who had badly bruised his leg when he fell from the bleachers in the pre-match excitement.
When they were alone again, Madoka eyed the ice pack Liliana held on her elbow for a moment. "Sorry about the elbow, I didn't mean to pull that hard..."
Liliana rolled her eyes and gave Madoka a look that simply screamed 'You're an idiot.' "It'll get better. The nurse said it's only a minor case, since I tapped out so fast." She kept looking at Madoka.
Madoka sighed and rubbed her forehead while Liliana gave her a blank stare. "Okay, how am I going to have to make this up to you?"
"Convince Negi to take me with him to the magic world this summer," Liliana replied instantly.
Madoka cocked an eyebrow and glanced over at Nelle, who was smiling at her, then back to Liliana. "Both of you, huh?" They nodded, and she sighed again. "It'll be dangerous, you know? That place isn't like Earth."
The two of them nodded. "We know," Liliana added. "We're not stupid, sempai."
Madoka heaved yet another long-suffering sigh. "All right, I'll talk to him about it. But you two have to start coming to Eva's resort to toughen up! I can't believe you went down in ten seconds, Liliana," she said, scolding the younger girl.
"Well yeah, I mean I was fighting you. At least I lasted longer than any of your regular opponents, Miss 'Ace of Spades'."
Madoka groaned.
The crowd let out a simultaneous "Oooh!" as Fumika, hurt and winded and on her last leg, threw one last desperation punch. Lucy, already recognizing that she couldn't get out of the way of the attack in her current condition, simultaneously started her own punch that whipped over Fumika's. Both fists landed at the same instant with a devastating impact, resulting in both fighters collapsing to the ground.
"Ooh! C-cross counter...!" Yuuna shouted into the microphone, her free hand clenched in a fist and fire in her eyes as she shot up out of her seat, like most of the audience at this point. "I've never seen such a devastating example! Who will win? Who will lose? Who will drag their bloody, beaten body up before the ten count is over? Who, I ask? Who? Who? WHO?" she demanded while the crowd roared in excitement over the tremendously exciting match.
For a good five seconds, neither combatant moved. By the time the counter reached seven, however, Lucy had pushed herself up on her hands and knees, obviously favoring her left arm, and by the time the ten count was over, Fumika was still lying on the ground, out cold. Lucy stayed up just long enough for the match to end, and collapsed again, this time falling unconscious as well.
On the heels of this triumphant example of a real crowd-pleaser of a match, Yuuna called out the next competitors, the unknown masked fighter 'El Buho', and a Mahora local and regular tournament participant Daigouin. The timekeeper rang the bell to start the match, Daigouin did some fancy flips and spins and martial arts moves in an attempt to show off to the young female masked fighter opposite, when said young female masked fighter abruptly ran toward him and performed a quite nice dropkick, launching him off the edge of the fighting stage. By the time he climbed back up, she was waiting for him, did some spinny-flippy thing Yuuna couldn't even begin to name, and half a second later had Daigouin face down on the fighting stage in an ankle lock.
"I...will not...surrender...!" Daigouin ground out between clenched teeth, trying to fight back the pain. The masked girl twisted his ankle a little harder. "OW OW OW I GIVE UP I GIVE UP OWWW!"
Yuuna smacked her forehead into the tabletop in front of her. Fifteen seconds! Fifteen freaking seconds! She stood up with her microphone. "And there you have it! The winner of the third match of the first round is the mysterious masked fighter El Buho!" She trotted up to the masked fighter before she could leave and blocked her way. "How about a word from our winner?" she asked, then shoved the microphone into the masked girl's face.
The masked girl looked around nervously, her eyes darting around as she tried to find a way out, and hesitantly began to speak. "I...I-" She froze up when Yuuna's eyes suddenly sharpened in recognition of her voice, and she slipped around the announcer, running back to the backstage area before Yuuna could catch her.
Yuuna, for her part, rolled her eyes. 'I think I can feel a headache coming on,' she thought bitterly as she trotted back to the middle of the fighting stage and announced the next pair of fighters.
The fourth fight was nothing like the previous three. The participants, a big, dangerous looking man named Rex faced off against the girls' middle school janitor Margaret Gunther, a woman Yuuna knew well due to the woman's placement by the American Division soon after Max and Jennifer's abandonment of their previous magic association. Because of this, Yuuna figured the odds were in Margaret's favor, no matter how dangerous Rex looked.
It was a bloodbath.
Margaret, unable to land even a single hit, was beaten mercilessly, and it took Yuuna herself climbing up onto the fighting stage to get Rex to stop. He smirked and spat on Margaret's still, badly beaten form, performed an obscene gesture in the general direction of the crowd, and strode away to the backstage area without a care in the world.
"Are you sure that was wise?" a man wearing a set of fake fox ears asked when Rex returned to the space designated for him after he had won his spot in the tournament.
Rex snorted. "Does it matter? They're just humans; they don't even know what they're seeing. And besides, Masashi said I can do anything I want as long as it doesn't interfere with his plans." He sat down and unwrapped his fists. "But anyway, she'll live," he added as an aside.
The other man's 'fake' fox ears twitched. "You're attracting too much attention; Masashi isn't going to like this..."
The crowd's mood, subdued after the sheer brutality of the previous match, was beginning to worry Yuuna. Luckily the next match, between Misora's pactio partner Cocone, now grown into a beautiful, exotic young woman, and a foreigner who went simply by the single name 'Cort', was a tremendous spectacle of a match, full of daredevil acrobatics, brutal power, and a pure love of combat on the part of both fighters that was blatantly obvious to the crowd. When Cocone ultimately emerged the victor just after the nine minute mark, the crowd went wild and it seemed, to Yuuna, that things had gotten back under control.
Then came the sixth match of the first round.
"And in this corner we have Narutaki Fuuka. This athletic young woman has spent the last six years training under the knowing eyes of a former champion of this very tournament, Nagase Kaede!" Yuuna waited, grinning, until the cheering died down and Fuuka stopped posing for the crowd before turning to the other contestant. "And on this side, all the way from Hokkaido, we have the mysterious aloof beauty Kakizaki Hatsune! Nothing is known about her skills or who she may have trained under, but as she showed in the qualifying round she is not to be taken lightly!"
Little did Yuuna know just how right she was.
As Fuuka eyed the strange woman facing her, she decided she sort of resembled one of her friends, Kakizaki Misa. 'Same last name...I bet she's her sister. Maybe I should go easy on her,' she thought, grinning as she eased into a stance. Much to her surprise, the other woman failed to respond in kind and simply stood there, watching, with her arms hanging loose at her sides. 'Isn't she even going to try to defend herself...?'
Disturbed, Fuuka decided to try and see if a little maneuvering would get the woman to react. She began to circle, but the woman's only response was to turn smoothly to remain facing her, her eyes focused on Fuuka's every movement.
"Hu~" Fuuka grinned wide at the woman as she shifted into a more comfortable stance in preparation for her first attack. "You're going to have to do something if you don't want to get beaten~"
The woman's lips twitched, as if she was holding back a smile. "Don't worry about me."
"I warned you!" Fuuka said as she rushed forward with a vicious kick to the midsection that would have dropped just about anyone...had it connected. Fuuka quickly darted away out of reach as she tried to figure out what had just happened. 'She was standing there, not even moving, even to the point where I could have sworn I was about to connect...she dodged? Light on her feet, huh? I guess I'll have to bring out the big guns...' She stood back, struck a fancy ninja pose she had seen once in a movie, and cried out "Waaaah, hi-yah...!" as she launched herself at the other woman. Her first attack, a straight jab to the stomach, was batted aside, as was the followup hook to the face and even the knee to the gut. When she tried for a trip, the next thing she knew she was flat on her back, looking up at the woman looking down at her. Something in the woman's mild almost-neutral expression was really starting to get on her nerves; it took a moment, but once she had recognized it, the very idea of someone, anyone, dismissing her as a non-threat, after all her years of training and the effort she had put into it, was insulting in the extreme. Not only was she being dismissed, but as the student of her best friend Kaede, Kaede was being insulted as well, and she didn't like it. Not one bit.
For the first time in a long time, Fuuka began to get angry. She clenched her teeth and climbed back to her feet. If there was one thing Fuuka was proud of, it was the skills she had learned training under Kaede, who was even now standing in the audience with her arms crossed and a carefully neutral expression on her face. Fuuka clenched her fists. It was time to show this woman just what it meant to underestimate a student of Nagase Kaede...!
"It seems as if you are finally serious," the woman said, watching her. "Good. Let's end this."
Fuuka didn't even have a chance to reply before the woman charged at her, down low. Fuuka leaped to meet her, knee first. What happened next was so utterly unexpected that Fuuka had no time to react.
Hatsune, coming in low and fast, ducked lower still, lower than Fuuka thought possible for someone so tall, and bobbed back up under Fuuka's knee, grabbed hold around Fuuka's upper thighs and, still running and taking Fuuka, never a heavy person, with her, raised up to her full height, almost six feet, jumped, and dove down toward the surface of the fighting stage, positioning Fuuka to take the full impact on her back and shoulders.
The impact was horrific; Fuuka, unable to do anything to defend herself due to the sheer speed and unconventional nature of the other woman's attack, folded up like an accordion as the entirety of Hatsune's weight rocketed into her torso. Hatsune used the momentum of the unusual technique to roll back to her feet, facing her opponent. A needless action, as Fuuka lay, arms and legs flung out, utterly still but for the rise and fall of her chest. Hatsune waited for the ten count and, when the match was declared over, climbed down from the fighting stage and walked to the back without a single look back at the woman she had left unconscious on the fighting stage.
Fuuka opened her eyes some time later, her head still ringing from its impact with the fighting stage, and promptly closed them again, groaning.
"Welcome back," someone said softly from somewhere nearby. "How do you feel?"
"Kaede-nee...?" Fuuka asked.
"I'm here too..." A worried voice; Fumika must have been watching the fight on one of the monitors in the recovery area; Fuuka and Kaede had been sitting with her until it was time for Fuuka's own match.
Fuuka eased her eyes open and tried to move into a more comfortable position on her cot. "Ow."
"Oh ho, looks like you'll be fine," Kaede said.
Fuuka remained quiet for a moment, listening to the sound of the crowd outside waiting for the next match to start. "I underestimated her; I'm sorry I lost..." she said, looking up at the ceiling. She knew better than to make excuses, and she had most definitely underestimated her opponent. The woman's fighting methods had been astonishingly swift and unorthodox to the highest degree...it was no wonder she'd lost. It was still embarrassing, though, especially after how awesome Fumika's match had been.
"You'll do better next time," Kaede said, smiling crookedly.
Yuuna was jumpy. After the brutal match that had left her old friend and classmate Narutaki Fuuka unconscious on the fighting stage, she had just about had enough of fighting tournaments for the day. Still, she was getting paid to work the crowd, and paid handsomely at that... The tech passed her a piece of paper with instructions for the next match, and she quickly scanned over them. 'Okay, there are just two matches left in the first round; almost half the fighters are already eliminated. It won't be much longer...I just have to hold it together until the break.' She took a deep breath and shook her head to clear it, took up her microphone, and stood up to introduce the next two fighters.
"Coming from the Girls' Middle School, our next two fighters are friends in the same class! First, we have the class representative of Class 2-A, Nakamura Sachiko! Give her a hand, everybody!" Yuuna's exuberance was starting to have an effect on the crowd, so she kept going. "And facing her, a girl whose presence on the streets has halved the crime rate and nearly put the police out of a job," she paused at this point while most of the crowd laughed, "The Street Sweeper, Urashima Taro!"
Taro walked out, dressed in an unusual getup involving bluejean shorts, a white headband, and a ridiculous short black shirt and short white jacket combo, trying not to look at the huge crowd as she walked up to the fighting stage in her ridiculous getup, where Sachiko was already waiting, oddly enough wearing her school uniform. Taro climbed up without difficulty and made her way to her corner while that crazy Yuuna woman who often spent time acting as Possum's trainer winked at her, made a few comments to get the crowd fired up, and climbed down out of the way.
The match started, and Taro took a few steps forward, eying Sachiko warily. Out of all the people she had faced, Sachiko had consistently given her the most trouble; she had yet to defeat the girl in a real match...even Asuna-sempai sometimes had trouble against Sachiko! The root of this, Taro knew, was Sachiko's unusual fighting style. An offshoot of Capoeira, it involved lots of spinning, lots of kicks, knee strikes, and the occasional elbow strike, and was hard as hell to predict; Taro never failed to be surprised by the kick that came from down on the outside when she had expected a kick up and on the inside. She knew if she wanted to win this, she'd have to calm down and think rather than act on instinct like she usually did. Taro took a few deep breaths to steady her nerves and tried to ignore the crowd, many members of which were screaming her name. "Hey Sachiko."
Sachiko nodded at her. "Taro-san."
How the heck was Sachiko so calm? Taro's heart was beating a mile a minute, but Sachiko was just standing over there, looking almost like she was just standing up in front of the class instead of in front of several thousand screaming strangers.
"Should we start?" Sachiko asked in a tone that to any mere acquaintance would have sounded bored and devoid of emotion but which to Taro, who had trained alongside her for so long, seemed to be dripping with amusement.
"Whenever you're ready," she said, easily falling into the seemingly lazy stance she was famous for. While to the average person it wouldn't even register as anything but a somewhat lazy slouch, to those few who had knowledge of the ancient Urashima-ryu style of close combat, it was the sort of thing that could make a person want to run and hide.
Sachiko's almost invisible smile widened slightly, and she shot forward, ducked down as she came close, and Taro caught a quick flash of white from the tennis shoes she was wearing as a kick came rocketing toward her shoulder. A quick jerk of her body took Taro out of danger, but Sachiko was already out of range by the time she was in position for an attack of her own. The crowd exploded in excitement as the two of them stood watching each other.
Taro couldn't help but make a toothy grin.
Sachiko's smile widened a little more.
The two of the darted toward each other again.
"Ooh, that was a close one," Al said, peering at the display. "Wasn't it, Kitty?"
"Call me that again and I'll kill you," Eva said absently as she watched the screen, mentally picking apart each competitor's fighting style to better instruct them later, even though Negi was officially their trainer. She grumbled something under her breath about stupid trainees and glared at the image. "Nakamura is just playing; if she had been seriously trying to win, she would have gone for a kill shot from the beginning...she would have gotten it, too. Urashima doesn't even know the danger she's in," she said dismissively.
Al raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Sachiko-chan would win? You certainly seem confident; why?"
Eva gave him a deadpan look. "Killer instinct, idiot."
Al grinned like a parent indulging a child, a smile carefully calculated to annoy his guest. "But surely you have noticed Taro-kun's potential, haven't you?"
Eva sat back in her chair and propped her feet up on Al's table as she crossed her arms. "It's not as if she's ever going to learn to tap into it; she's an idiot. Nakamura isn't; I think the winner of this match is obvious."
Al's grin widened further. "I see. Would you like to...make a bet?"
Eva's eyebrow twitched. "What did you have in mind?"
Several minutes had passed, and Taro was starting to get desperate. No matter what she tried, Sachiko had an answer for it. The other girl had even landed several hits already, though none of them had been good ones. Taro hadn't made contact even once.
Taro-kun.
The voice's intrusion into her thoughts was so completely unexpected that Taro tripped over her own two feet as she tried to dodge one of Sachiko's attacks and barely managed to stay upright, while Sachiko gave her an odd look.
I must say, that was amusing. Now, if you don't mind not playing the clown...? Good. Close your mouth, don't speak; you'll just look crazy. I am speaking directly into your mind with a certain spell; don't worry, the specifics do not matter. What matters is you and your unusual ki...
Nakamura! Listen up and listen good! I hereby ORDER you to win this match! If not, you will suffer the most humiliating punishment I can imagine.
Sachiko's eyes widened slightly and her throat went dry as she recognized Eva's voice in her head.
Now listen up. If you lose, you will be forced to work in a maid cafe downtown all day tomorrow, and that will be the very LEAST of your worries. If you win, well...you won't. Understand?
Sachiko nodded.
Good. Now win.
Eva sat back and made herself comfortable in her chair, surreptitiously watching Al as he lounged in his own chair. He noticed her looking and waved in a teasing manner. She glared and turned her gaze back to the screen, which currently showed the two combatants standing in the ring, staring at each other but otherwise not moving.
'Bastard; he's cheating,' she thought reproachfully; Al just couldn't help himself when it came to giving young girls help telepathically, the...cheating...cheater...! Cheating was her right, not his! 'Stupid bet...' She knew she shouldn't have made that bet with Al... 'Stupid pride.' He had been playing her from the very beginning; she should have known. There was no way, no way she was going to dress up in a skimpy cat costume tomorrow and crawl around like a kitten during the last day event with everyone watching...! No way in hell. NO. WAY. IN. HELL. "Come on Nakamura, kick her ass!"
Urashima Taro was, to put it simply, quite confused. Ki vortexes? What the heck was a ki vortex? Asuna-sempai hadn't mentioned anything about that...! And all that stuff about magic blood or something was just weird, not to mention that whole thing about enforcing one's will upon the world. She was so wrapped up in what the weird voice in her head was telling her that she didn't even realize Sachiko had moved until she caught the other girl's shoe with her face, utterly unprepared.
She went down like a ton of bricks.
Al simply sat back and smirked slightly while Eva pointed and laughed and taunted him about his end of the bet. He calmly took a sip of his tea. To be completely honest, he didn't really care about the results of the bet. If Eva lost, he could tease her about the costume she would have to wear; if Eva won, he could freak her out with the costume he would be forced to wear. It was a win-win situation. He grinned mysteriously at her again. 'Savor that feeling, Evangeline~' he thought to himself, and couldn't help but let out an amused little 'heh'.
The crowd was getting restless by the time the fighting stage was cleaned up and ready for the next match; Yuuna was just glad that the upcoming match was the final one of the first round, marking the middle of the tournament...it was all downhill from here.
Yuuna took up her microphone yet again, swigged half a bottle of water, and again climbed up on stage, noticeably lacking the sheer pep she had displayed in the beginning. She raised the microphone.
"Okay everybody, next up is the final match of the first round! First up we have the newest teacher at Mahora Girls' Middle School, Sasaki Makie! Everyone give her a hand!" Yuuna said, clapping as Makie came out to the stage, wearing a form fitting shorts and shirt combo designed for ease of movement. She climbed up onto the fighting stage with ease and beamed at the crowd, waving.
When the crowd had quieted down, Yuuna again raised the microphone. "And facing Sasaki-sensei," Yuuna said, barely managing to hold back a giggle at the bizarre thought of anyone calling Makie of all people 'sensei', "the successful young businesswoman who owns that delightful eatery Natsumi's Diner, down on the square just past the theater, Yukihiro Ayaka!"
Ayaka strode purposely down to the fighting stage in the sort of clothing she usually wore during training: black shorts and a light shirt, along with knee, wrist, and elbow protection and a pair of short black boots.
Yuuna climbed down from the stage and the match began. Ayaka and Makie both began circling, each trying a feint or two in order to draw the other out, but neither woman fell for it.
"You've gotten good; I'm glad you're paying attention to your lessons," Ayaka said.
Makie smiled. "It's all thanks to the training from you and the others, Ayaka! I'll do my best to be able to go with Negi-kun this summer."
Ayaka smiled slightly and nodded. "I'll look forward to seeing the sort of supporter you become," she said, darting forward and aiming a kick at the side of Makie's head. Makie cartwheeled aside, but Ayaka was right behind her, grabbed her around the middle, lifted the smaller woman high in the air and slammed her down to the ground. Makie let out a pained grunt at the impact, but squirmed out of Ayaka's grip before she could capitalize, and dropkicked her as she got to her feet. It wasn't exactly on target, but it did leave her staggering for a moment, so Makie backed up to open some space, and ran at Ayaka. She jumped, did a handstand on Ayaka's shoulders, and dropped down so she was riding on Ayaka's shoulders from behind before Ayaka could shake her off.
Ayaka staggered under the other girl's unexpected weight, barely managing to stay upright. "What in the-" Her question was cut off when Makie's legs tightened around her head and the ex-gymnast flipped backwards, taking Ayaka with her. The only thing that saved Ayaka from a knockout blow to the head was a last minute twist, a desperate, instinctive sideways jerk that, while clumsy and severely lacking in style, was nonetheless effective in keeping her from getting a concussion and losing the match right then and there.
Ayaka and Makie were up almost in the same instant, rapidly backing out of each others' reach.
"You really are getting good," Ayaka said, suddenly seeing Makie in a whole new light. The Makie of two or even three years ago, back when she was still training hard, would never have been capable of such a thing.
Makie grinned sheepishly, rubbing the back of her head. "Heheh, well..."
Ayaka smiled and closed her eyes. "I can see I will have to take this match seriously..." When she opened her eyes again, they were harder, sharper, and Makie began to get nervous. "I'm sorry Makie, but you're too dangerous. I'm going to be the one to win the prize!"
Ayaka darted forward as she spoke, and it was all Makie could do to block the flurry of kicks and punches that followed; she was far out of her league, and she knew it.
Ayaka knew she had to give Makie credit; the girl was holding up well, and though there was no question of her avoiding Ayaka's attacks, she was blocking them or turning them aside surprisingly well. 'She must really want to come with us to Mundus Magicus,' Ayaka thought, a warm, friendly feeling running through her. Makie really was trying her best to catch up to the others; Ayaka knew that in addition to taking training from her, Makie had also been seeing Ku Fei, Madoka, and even Max-sensei, and she was quite certain Makie had learned that reverse frankensteiner move from Setsuna...Ayaka had seen Setsuna perform similar moves many times in training or against real opponents. Yes, she really had to give Makie credit...but that didn't mean she was going to let Makie win.
Ayaka slipped through Makie's defense and landed a knee in her gut, and Makie automatically doubled over. Taking the opportunity provided by Makie's diverted attention, Ayaka swiftly moved back to open some space between them in imitation of Makie's earlier actions, waited an instant for Makie to start to stand up straight again, and ran forward. She jumped up, caught an instant of panicked recognition in Makie's eyes as she realized what was about to happen, and landed on Makie's shoulders. While Ayaka was no trained gymnast, her agility was easily on par with Makie's, and her physical strength was much greater, due mainly to the fact that while Makie had neglected training for almost two years due to the disastrous arranged marriage she had been forced into by her mother, Ayaka had never let up, even when her mother had forbidden her from what she called 'frivolous wastes of time'. Ayaka's legs tightened around Makie's head, and she heard the girl let out a yelp as she flipped backward, taking Makie with her.
Makie hit the ground hard on her back and bounced, driving the air from her lungs, and had just barely managed to sit up when Ayaka was on her. With a knee in her back and her arms pulled back painfully, Makie let out a cry and gave up the match.
Omake
A door marked 'Storage Closet' was kicked open and Eva darted out, eyes wide open and horrified, slammed the door shut, and leaned back against it, as if holding it closed. A second later, someone started banging on the door from the other side.
"You're not coming out!" Eva shouted.
"But Eva-tan~ I look so pretty in my ski~rt~!"
"Gah! I want to rip out my eyes, but then I'd just remember what I saw and...and..." Eva said to herself, shuddering at the memory as she wondered if there was such a thing as bleach to remove unwanted stains from the brain.
"But I jush wanna come out an' give you a wittle huggy-wuggy Eva-tan~"
"No!"
"Puh-wease?"
"HELL no!"
"You mean you would deprive the world of this beauty, the amazing fit of this uniform shirt and the way this pretty, oh-so-girlish skirt sways when I walk?"
She could almost see it. Eva shuddered, much more strongly this time. "Hell yes!"
"You're so me~an to me, Eva-tan~"
"Damn it Al, if you don't take off that uniform this instant I'm never letting you out!"
"B-but we barely know each other~! You're so forceful, Eva-tan~"
"I'm gonna kill you, Al!"
"Oh my~"
"GRAAHHH...!"
"Um...master...?" Chachamaru said, having been attracted by all the banging on walls, yelling, and loud threats of violent murder. "Why are you holding the door of that storage closet closed? And why do you look as if the weight of all your years of doing evil has finally come back to haunt you? What are you hiding behind that door?"
Eva looked at her, eyes wide and unseeing and her face locked in a rictus of horror as she recalled the terrifying sight. "Behind this door are things no mortal man should ever see; horrors far beyond the likes of Cthulu."
"Is Chacha-tan out there? Kyaa~ What should I do~?" Al said on the other side of the door, no doubt squirming as he did.
Chachamaru's eyes widened and Eva shuddered again. "J-just...go. Save yourself," Eva said in an uncharacteristic display of self sacrifice, possibly the first in her long, long life. She snapped her head up and caught Chachamaru's worried gaze. "Go! I won't give you a chance like this again!" Chachamaru, wishing to preserve her sanity functions, swiftly left Eva to her fate.
"Eva-tan~"
"Damn it Al, if you don't take off that school uniform..."
"Oh my, aren't you a scary one, little Eva-tan~"
"DAMN IT AL!"
Author's Notes: Yes, Hatsune performed a running powerbomb on Fuuka, El Buho's a luchadore, and Ayaka and Makie pulled off several moves commonly found in pro wrestling.
Also, in case you didn't realize it, in the match between Taro and Sachiko, Taro is wearing the same costume as Subaru Nakajima (from season 3 of Nanoha), the character she was most closely based on, design-wise. If you look up a picture of Subaru, you'll know about what Taro looks like.