Still Waters 3, Book 2, Chapter 16: The Duel
Sunday, June 28th, 2009, The Third Day Of The Festival, Evening
Touno Daichi was a third-year student at the Mahora Boys' Middle School. A long time fan of good music and pretty girls, he had found the ideal combination of both in the form of a local band known as Dekopin Rocket. He was a huge fan of the band, but especially of Kakizaki Misa, the beautiful singer and lead guitarist. Sure, Ako was cute, Sakurako looked like a lot of fun, and Madoka was very, very cool, but Misa...he thought she was the perfect woman, and she had actually turned out to be one! He had actually met her once, just walking along the sidewalk...she had actually smiled at him! At him!He didn't hold any delusion about her even remembering that he existed, but he knew he loved her.
However, at the big yearly festival, when Dekopin Rocket came up on stage to play, something unusual had happened; instead of the regular lineup of Misa, Madoka, Ako, and Sakurako, Ako had been replaced by a new face, an American girl. He didn't quite understand why, but he had been drawn to her from the first instant he saw her. A quick glance at Misa as she spoke into the microphone had confirmed that she was still his favorite, but this new girl was...she was enchanting. Knowing he had to share this mysterious American beauty with the world, he took out his phone and recorded as much of the band's set as he could.
Later that night, when he got home, he transferred the recorded video to his computer and did a little editing. By midnight, it was uploaded to several video sites, and things went on from there.
Sunday, July 5th, 2009, Evening
Jennifer Minindry, skilled mage and often-out-of-work part-timer, opened the door of the apartment she shared with Okochi Akira and fellow American and Mahora Middle School P.E. teacher Max Linell. She paused in the entryway to take off her shoes, idly noting that Akira's shoes were missing. Max's work boots were in their usual place off to the side, so she kicked off her shoes and pushed them over and out of the way, not really caring where they ended up. She could hear the television going...Max had probably fallen asleep on the couch again, she thought, making a catlike grin as she tiptoed into the kitchen with her grocery bags. She quickly put away anything that would spoil and made her way into the living room as quietly as she could. Sure enough, her roommate had fallen asleep on the couch, the stress and worry of the day gone from his face, leaving him looking almost innocent. Almost.
Jennifer's catlike grin grew.
She made her way around to the front of the couch and knelt down there, propping her head on her hands as she looked at him. It was strange, she thought, how different he was when he was sleeping from how he was when he was awake. Awake, he terrified people simply by entering a room; he was extremely tall, especially here in Japan, and while he was far from fat and didn't have the build of somebody like that musclehead Cyrr guy who had been hanging around with Anya-chan since the festival, he was big enough to make two of Jennifer. That, combined with his gruff manner, pale skin, and messy black hair would scare off just about anyone who didn't know him...and, she admitted reluctantly, he looks were mostly definitely not on the bishounen end of the spectrum.
'It's not fair,' she thought angrily as she watched him sleep. 'He's not a monster, he's just...' Her catlike grin returned. "You're just shy, aren't you?" she said, her voice low and husky. He shifted in his sleep and she moved to stand up, but it was too late; his hand found her wrist and closed over it. Jennifer's grin widened further still. "What the hell, why not?" she murmured in her native English before hopping up on the couch with him and snuggling in close. She let out a relaxed sigh as she put her arm around him. His arm went around her of its own accord, and she giggled as she buried her face in his chest. 'You know what else isn't fair?' she thought to herself. "I never get to do this while you're awake," she said quietly. Max's voice rumbled in reply, but she couldn't make out what he said, and he didn't repeat it. "Probably thinks I'm Akira-chan," she said in a teasing tone of voice. He hugged her a little more tightly, but didn't otherwise respond. "'Course, that's fine; Akira-chan's a good girl, I like her too." And she did; Jennifer liked Akira a whole lot, or else she would never have suggested Akira move in with the two of them after her graduation. The girl had a bit of a jealousy problem, but the three of them could work on that...there was no need to be hasty about anything, after all. At first Max had been the only one, but then he had found Akira-chan, and...
Jennifer laid beside him for a few minutes before her thoughts turned from rosy and pleasant to something less so. There had been a phone call from one of the offices of the American division the other day... Jennifer's grin vanished in an instant, replaced by a cold stare. 'If they try to ruin this...' she thought, clinging to Max. 'If they hurt him again, like what happened with Rikki...'
"I'll kill them all," she murmured. Just then, Max began to stir and her expression flickered back once again to the contented catlike grin she had had earlier. She laid there beside him, happy to feel his warmth and his arm wrapped around her, until he abruptly stiffened, then relaxed half a second later. She had known him long enough to read his every move; he had been surprised to find someone on the couch with him, but had recognized her in an instant..."Heh, you're funny, Max-kuuun~" she said, playfully drawing out the honorific.
"Hey," he said, his deep, gravelly voice music to her ears. "What time is it?"
"Seven," Jennifer replied. "A little late for a nap, isn't it? Hmm~?" she said, still clinging to him.
"Let go, I need to get up."
Jennifer grinned. "Make me."
Max heaved a sigh and sat up; Jennifer took the opportunity to wrap both arms around him as she slid easily onto his lap. He ran a hand through his hair to get it to lay flat, but it only stuck up even more.
"Heh~ nice bed head you've got going there," she said wryly. "Where's Akira-chan?"
Max frowned and Jennifer's grin shrunk a little. 'What happened...?' she wondered. If she knew anything about the way Akira had been behaving lately, then it was probably-
"She went to visit that Ava woman again," Max said, glancing around the apartment as he shook off the final vestiges of sleep.
It was as she had thought; Jennifer frowned at that. 'That Ava Woman', as Max called her, had tried to attack him the first time they met...had maybe even tried to kill him. Jennifer didn't like her at all, but Akira-chan...
Akira-chan seemed to have taken a liking to her. Enough of a liking to visit her every day in the hospital, even, while she recovered from malnutrition, influenza, and the thousand small cuts and bruises she had picked up before arriving in Mahora. It was enough to make a person sick!
Jennifer rolled her eyes.
"Come on, I really need to get up," Max said.
Jennifer only clung more tightly to him and refused to get out of his lap. "Make me~" she said again, and stuck her tongue out. To her glee, Max sighed and stood up, taking her with him. He quickly pried her loose, however, and dropped her on the couch.
"Hey...!"
"You asked for it," he said as he stretched to loosen his joints after his long nap on the couch.
"Did you know Konoka-chan is offering protection to some of those youkai that caused such a problem the other day?" Jennifer said after a moment.
"Really?" Max asked as he twisted from side to side and finally bent over backward, looking at Jennifer upside down. His back popped and he made a sigh of contentment as he straightened up again.
"Really," Jennifer said, unable to keep from smiling at him. "It's two fox youkai brothers. Apparently they got in trouble with somebody dangerous and she decided to take them in."
"So that makes four of 'em now, doesn't it," he replied. Konoka seemed to be trying to build a small army, the way she was recruiting...
Jennifer nodded. "Yeah, with those two cat youkai..."
Max grunted. He had saved the life of the eldest of 'those two cat youkai', Yagi Kichirou. Kichirou's little sister Ryoko had lavished attention upon him for weeks afterward...it had all been very annoying.
"How's Setsuna handling-"
Max's question was quickly forgotten when Akira opened the door and stepped inside the apartment, followed by a robed figure.
Jennifer's curious gaze sharpened as it went from Akira's apologetic expression to the shadows hiding the robed figure's face. She heard Max heave a long-suffering sigh, and looked back at Akira. "You didn't." It wasn't a question.
Akira didn't seem able to meet her eyes. "Well..."
"Akira..." Max said, sounding tired even though he had just woken up from a nap.
Akira sighed. "I couldn't just let her sleep out on the street," she said. She looked like she felt guilty about inviting what amounted to a stranger to live with them. "I'm not going to just let her go homeless."
"Of course not," Max said, clearly irritated at the newcomer's presence nonetheless.
"And, well..." Akira said, trailing off as she again looked away. "I feel like I'm responsible for her..."
Jennifer looked from Akira's face to the hooded woman and then down her arm to where she was clinging to Akira's hand. She stalked toward the hooded figure, which backed away a step before moving to hide behind Akira. "You said your name was 'Ava', correct?"
The robed figure nodded even as it shrunk a little further behind Akira.
Jennifer sighed and looked back at Max. "You aren't going to kiss this one too, are you?" she asked, deadpan.
Max looked away, his face a mask. "..."
"I couldn't hear you?"
He heaved a sigh and looked at the wall as he spoke. "Yuuna and Makie were for pactios, you know that," he grumbled.
Jennifer just looked at him.
"And you know all about Akira."
Jennifer just kept looking.
"And the rest."
"..."
"Look, I'm sorry alright? It's not like I kissed them all for no reason!"
Jennifer just looked at him. "Oh?"
Max looked back at her defensively. "Yeah."
"Well that's okay then~" Jennifer said happily, suddenly smiling as she cocked her head cutely to the side.
"Fufufu." Everyone looked at Ava as she tried to muffle her laughter behind Akira.
Max sighed and rolled his eyes. "Is the couch okay for now? We don't have any spare bedrooms."
Ava pulled back her hood and smiled hesitantly, and nodded. "I...I think I understand why Akira-sama likes you two so much."
Monday, July 6th, 2009, After School
"This'll be great!" Yuuna said as she strolled right into Eva's house without even bothering to knock and headed for the stairway that led to the basement. "Heya Chachamaru!" she said, waving to the robot girl in the main room as she headed down the stairs without waiting for a reply.
"Are you sure about this? I mean..." Possum hesitated to continue as she followed along behind Yuuna. She spared a distracted nod for Chachamaru, who made a short bow in return, and followed Yuuna down the stairs. When the two of them were again alone, standing before the series of glass spheres and tubes that made up Eva's resort, she spoke up again. "I mean, I'm a, I-I'm a..."
"A vampire?" Yuuna said helpfully. "Well, remember what that guy from the U.K. said: we don't know what you are. You resisted it somehow, right? So that means you're something different, a new kind of vampire, or maybe not even a vampire at all! Of course, you can always try being like Eva, but I don't think you've got it in you to be an evil overlord~"
Possum looked away and shuffled her feet, unsure of what to say. Sure, the vampire expert the headmaster had had flown in from the U.K. had said she wasn't a vampire, but did that mean she really wasn't one? Or, to be more precise, he had said she wasn't any sort of vampire he had ever heard of before, which, admittedly, she didn't find particularly reassuring. How many kinds of vampires were out there, after all? Still, though...it was something.
"Okay, here...we...go!" Yuuna said excitedly as the magic gate to Eva's resort activated and transported the two of them to the entry platform.
When the dizziness from the teleportation had ended, Possum looked around absently. As expected, they were alone in the entry area but for one of Chachamaru's sisters, who was sweeping around the front door of Eva's private castle. When she noticed Possum looking at her, she bowed briefly and resumed her work.
"C'mon, let's go to the practice range and see if you've got any more power than you had before," Yuuna said excitedly. "Got your wand?"
Possum nodded as she shrugged off the small backpack she had taken to carrying everywhere with her. Her conjure bag, made of red flannel to replace the one whose power the vampire Jonus Hart had destroyed by rummaging around in it, simply wasn't able to give her enough of an edge, so she decided she needed something to hold everything Possum had figured she would need...the type of magic she was learning in Mahora, she had discovered, required more than a few powders or oils or herbs like the hoodoo she was familiar with. The magic wand alone, solid black and with a shape on the end that looked like the 'Spade' suite of cards, was as long as her forearm...not the sort of thing one could put in a conjure bag hidden under a uniform skirt. She pulled out the wand to show Yuuna she still had it, then put it back in and zipped her backpack shut.
"That's good," Yuuna said, her smile wide and friendly and that same devilish flare that made Possum grin in her eyes. Possum knew she herself showed that same flare from time to time; it was likely what had drawn Yuuna's attention to her in the first place...as aggravating and crazy as she could be at times, Akashi Yuuna was a kindred spirit. "Come on!"
The firing range was much as Possum remembered it; not much had changed in the few weeks she had been gone. She followed along as Yuuna led the way and dropped her own pack on one of the many tables that had been put there for just such a purpose. Possum followed suit and put her backpack on the table next to Yuuna's, opened it, and began rummaging around inside. She hadn't had a chance to clean it out since before she was kidnapped...she pulled out her wand and paused for a moment when she spotted her mini photo album. She hesitated a moment, shooting a quick glance over at Yuuna, who appeared to be busy laying out a variety of items on her table, and picked up the photo album. It was just a small thing she had picked up for a few bucks back in the U.S. before coming to Japan, but... She flipped it open and couldn't help but smile at the first picture, one of her and Taro she had taken right after their first meeting. She grinned more widely as she realized how young Taro—how young the both of them—looked. The picture was only a couple years old, but still...Taro's surprised, wary, but above all embarrassed expression in the picture was absolutely hilarious...! She flipped through a few pages of pictures, most of them recording her first meetings with her classmates and the many, many friends she had made since coming to Mahora. There was Kara, happy to meet another girl from the U.S. even though they had nothing in common; there was Ichigo-san, the lady who ran the flower shop downtown, there was Keiji, the tech guy from the guitar shop she liked to kill time in sometimes; there was Jirou, the hotheaded guy who loved to fight, but was nevertheless fun to spend time around; and here was another picture of Taro, her hair all a mess as she sat on the floor, playing a videogame in what looked like a pair of boxer shorts and a threadbare t-shirt. Possum smirked. Taro would flip out if she knew she had a picture of her like this...! It had been a long time since she last saw Taro, or just about anyone else in any of the pictures, and now that she was like this...
"Heh, cute," Yuuna said, looking over her shoulder.
Possum flipped the photo album shut and stuffed it back into her bag. "...don't tell her I have that picture, okay?" she said hesitantly as she looked down at her bag.
"Sure," Yuuna said, agreeably enough. "Of course, you've got to beat me first~ How else are you going to-"
"Hey!"
Yuuna and Possum whirled to face the newcomer; that shout had not been pleasant.
Eva stood there, Chachamaru beside her. She sent a chilling glare at Possum, then spoke to Yuuna. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Possum had to give it to Yuuna: she had all but shriveled up at Eva's glare, but Yuuna stood tall and glared back as if she was facing a mere rival rather than an ancient vampire capable of tearing her apart in seconds.
"What you do mean, what am I doing? I'm taking my student out for some testing before I get back to training her," Yuuna said. Once again, Possum was reminded of the glare she had seen Yuuna give to poor Ayumi the other day in the stairwell, when Yuuna thought Ayumi had pushed Possum down the stairs.
Eva glared back and took a step forward; Possum couldn't help but notice that Chachamaru was starting to look nervous. "She's not your student anymore, Akashi. She's mine, now."
Yuuna stiffened up at that and clenched her fists hard enough to make her knuckles go white. "You are not taking her away from me...!" she growled out through clenched teeth.
Possum took a hesitant step back, and then another as she looked back and forth between the two. She realized Yuuna was holding her wand in one clenched fist, while Eva was starting to grin that same grin she had only seen a couple times before, when someone had had the temerity to do something incredibly stupid in front of her. "U-um...let's not-"
Eva silenced her with a glare, then focused her attention back on Yuuna. "You aren't capable of training her, not now."
Yuuna locked eyes with Eva and stood her ground, a feat Possum had never seen in her admittedly short time being involved in magical matters in Mahora. Possum herself couldn't stand to meet Eva's gaze for more than a second or two when even when she wasn't angry, and even Sachiko couldn't do it for more than then ten seconds or so... Possum watched nervously as the seconds stretched on to minutes, with neither Eva nor Yuuna showing the slightest sign of weakness.
Such a stalemate had to end at some point; luckily, it didn't continue for long. Chachamaru, feeling the need to dissipate the rising tension between the two, decided to speak up.
"Master, perhaps we should involve Negi-sensei in this matter; I am sure he could-"
Eva took her attention off of Yuuna, opened her mouth to speak to Chachamaru, and was interrupted by an open-hand slap.
A shocked silence fell over the firing range as Chachamaru and Possum looked on in shock at Eva, who just stood there, staring blankly out into space, her eyes wide in confusion and surprise as her cheek slowly turned red. She slowly reached up and laid a hand on her cheek, lowered it, and let out a roar as she whirled on Yuuna, a jagged ice spike forming around her hand as she swung it at Yuuna's head. Yuuna raised her own hand to ward off the blow, and the two impacted an instant later with an explosion that sent Possum and Chachamaru both scrambling back out of the dust cloud.
Silence again descended over the firing range as the dust cleared, revealing Eva and Yuuna facing each other, their arms still up in the position they had been before.
"A burst of magic power timed to disrupt the force of the attack; dangerous, but clever," Eva said, her voice dangerously quiet. "Not too long ago, I wouldn't have stopped at just that, you know," she said, barely able to hold back as it was. Her time with Negi had changed her far more than she liked to admit, even to herself; the changes, indeed, were far reaching...as she learned anew every time she passed up a likely victim or a chance to cause mischief.
"You are not taking Possum from me," Yuuna repeated.
"Tell me why I shouldn't," Eva retorted, their gazes still locked.
Yuuna didn't seem to have a ready answer for that; instead, she started to grin. It was not a pleasant grin, in Possum's opinion. "I challenge you."
Possum blinked.
Chachamaru blinked.
Eva blinked. "...what?"
Yuuna stood up a little straighter, that rebellious flare returning to her eyes. "I challenge you to a duel for the right to train Possum," she said.
Eva just looked at her. "...are you crazy? Wait, no, you already proved that when you slapped me. What makes you think I won't just tear you limb from limb right here?" she asked, her expression rather bored. "I could do it easily."
Yuuna shook her head, finally breaking eye contact, but on her own terms rather than being forced to by Eva. "You could...but you won't. I can tell; you want to see what I've got up my sleeve."
Eva stood there for a moment, one eyebrow cocked as she watched the woman standing opposite. She let out a sigh and finally relaxed, showing the most intrigued expression Possum had ever seen her make. "Some idiot comes along every thirty years or so, thinking they can beat me; no one has managed it yet. Fine then; I accept your challenge. I suppose there are some conditions you had in mind?"
Yuuna smiled, her normal gaiety returned. "Yep. First! The duel will be in a field of my choosing. Second! To keep this interesting, there will be no flight, and no wide-area spells allowed, so no freezing the entire field, okay Eva-chan?" Yuuna said, winking at the vampire girl for all the world as if she hadn't just challenged a High Daylight Walker to a duel. "Third! All I need to win is to land a clean hit to your face; for you to win, you have to take...uh...this," she said, holding up a keyring, "from my pocket," Yuuna said, putting the keyring into the front left pocket of her shorts. "Oh, and please abide by the spirit of the rules and don't try to look for loopholes, okay?"
Eva snorted and shook her head in amusement. "Fine, it's your funeral. I agree."
"Oh, there was one more thing," Yuuna said, smiling. "Let's get the others to come~"
Monday, July 6th, 2009, Evening
Negi looked out over the gathering crowd nervously; there were dozens of old friends and old students, along with everyone else. "I am really not happy with this..." he said.
Asuna elbowed him in the ribs even as she carefully noted the bags under his eyes and his pale complexion. 'He's been looking pretty rough lately,' Asuna thought. 'I need to distract him, make him relax...' Luckily for Asuna, there was the perfect source of distraction practically staring her in the face. "Aw c'mon, don't you want to see what Yuuna's up to? It's been a long time since I've really seen her in action, you know. Since before we all graduated..." Negi and Asuna paused a moment as they recalled some of Yuuna's more...notable antics. "They never did figure out how she made that roach so big," Asuna said after a moment.
Negi nodded at the...rather tiring memory. Whatever else Yuuna might be, she sure was different in her manner of doing...pretty much anything, especially magic; she had given the local magic associations fits for almost three years while she was in high school. It wasn't until she had gone on her tour of the world after she graduated that life in Mahora had returned to something like normal, even with the near-monthly attacks by all manner of rogue mages, monsters, and villains of every stripe. Wherever Yuuna went, zany schemes and excitement were sure to follow. "I hope she doesn't hurt herself..." He didn't mention what Eva would almost certainly do to her; he couldn't bear thinking about it...he leaned back against a wall tiredly.
"Well that's what Konoka's here for," Asuna said excitedly as she looked at the series of videoscreens Kazumi had set up. Most of them showed similar scenery: tree tops from above with hints of water or mud beneath, reflecting light back up at Kazumi's pactio cameras as they moved into place before descending through the forest canopy to the lower reaches of the swamp. Two screens, however, showed a different view.
Eva looked back irritably at the camera drone hovering behind her. "Is it time yet? I want to finish this quickly so I can have my afternoon tea."
'Not yet, Eva-chan; the drones are still moving into place,' Kazumi replied from her place of safety back in Eva's castle. Eva felt her eye start to twitch. 'Show a little respect, you brat,' she thought idly as she glanced out over what little she could see of the field Yuuna had chosen. "The swamp..." she said aloud. Sure, it wasn't her most dangerous training area, but she supposed she really should give the girl a hand; she had chosen well. The majority of areas in her resort tended to have lots of big, open spaces, which would lead to a quick bombardment of magic arrows as soon as she caught sight of Yuuna. There were a few other areas with as little visibility as this one, but she knew Yuuna had spent a lot of time training Possum Cade—no, she was The Girl now, just...The Girl—here...it was like home ground to her.
'Okay Eva-chan, it's almost time. Are you ready?' Kazumi asked through the mental network Nodoka had set up. Eva glanced around the small clearing she was standing in one last time, and nodded. 'Okay, good. Yuuna's ready too. Remember the rules: no flying, no area effect spells, abide the spirit of the rules, not necessarily the word. Okay, five seconds. Three, two, one. Start!'
Possum bit her lip nervously as she looked up at the screens and the countdown shown in big numbers on each of them. Each one showed a different area of the swamp training area...she realized with a start that she recognized every one of them from all the time she had spent training there with Yuuna. Speaking of which... She looked at the screen from Yuuna's personal camera drone. Her trainer looked relaxed and content, taking the time to go through a series of warmup stretches as if she wasn't about to risk her life in a match against the single scariest person Possum had ever met. She glanced at the screen showing the view from Evangeline's personal camera drone, and shivered. The vampire just looked bored as she turned and glared back at the screen for a moment.
Possum stuffed her hands into her pockets to give them something to do while she waited, watching nervously. The events of the next few minutes would decide some very important things about her future...she reached up and rubbed her nose, a nervous habit she had had since childhood. She was about to stick her hand back into her pocket when someone grabbed it.
"Hey, Possum. It's been a while," Urashima Taro said from beside her, looking up at the screens.
"Yeah," Possum said, thankful for the contact and Taro's presence. She had been worried about that...she had not yet met up with anyone from her class or anyone she knew apart from Yuuna, Negi-sensei, and several of the women she had seen training in Eva's resort from time to time. How her friends would react to...to what she had become... her fears almost didn't bear thinking about. It seemed Taro, at least, still liked her. "Thanks."
"Yeah," Taro said, standing beside her as the countdown on the screen reached zero. Possum looked up at Yuuna's screen just in time to see her hold up a small device, make a 'V' with her fingers, and press a button.
The explosion made both of them jump.
Eva blinked and tried to wave the swirling dust away as she sat up.
"Well that was unexpected," she said to herself as she stood up and looked over at the crater where she had been standing seconds before. Planting a bomb at Eva's starting area had been unexpected, true; but it was also short sighted. What was the point? Yuuna's objective wasn't to blow her up, Eva thought as she started forward, it was to—
*click*
"Ooh, that one was pretty bad," Asuna said, wincing as Eva stepped on a land mine and went flying, only to land on a second one, which blasted her into a tree.
"What..." Negi said, his inexplicably growing exhaustion over the past week temporarily forgotten as he watched the screen, unable to articulate his thoughts as Eva fell out of the tree and landed on a third landmine. "But, that, I mean...what?" he tried again. He had never seen anything like this before...he figured probably no one had. The sheer strangeness of the situation was enough to temporarily drag him out of the funk he had been in. It was pretty weird to see Evangeline A.K. McDowell, high daylight walker, The Apostle of Destruction, the Dark Evangel, the Tidings of Evil and so on and so forth, being such a sport about it too.
"I must admit, I would have expected her to break the 'no flying' rule by this point," Asuna said, wincing again as Eva hit yet another mine and was sent flying through a method she normally would have avoided.
"She sealed her flying ability—Oooh, that's gotta hurt," Misa said nearby as Eva somehow managed to land on two mines at the same time. "See that dark band around her arm? It's like that time you sealed your magic, Negi-kun," she said, pointing at one of the screens.
"Wow, I wouldn't have expected her to go that far," Asuna said, peering at the magically created tattoo-like marking.
Misa shook her head. "It's not that big of a deal; she said flying comes so naturally to her that she might start doing it without even realizing it and get disqualified. And besides, if she wants to, she can just overpower the seal and break it that way."
Asuna grinned. "Sounds like she was looking forward to this."
Misa grinned in response. "Definitely! She wouldn't shut up about it when I had her help me iron out the details of a new spell I've been working on earlier. She's curious about what Yuuna's got in mind."
"I hope Yuuna doesn't disappoint her," Negi said solemnly.
When the last of the mines had been detonated, Eva stood up silently and looked down at her burnt and ruined clothes, a sneer marring her features. She raised her hand and wordlessly called her shadow cloak into being wrapped around her shoulders, and started off down the trail, her eyes taking in everything as she went. 'I didn't expect that,' she thought, a little pleased as she spotted another hidden landmine and stepped around it. 'Akashi Yuuna has actually managed to surprise me...I'm impressed. I'll be more impressed if she survives. I hope she's more inventive than to rely on only bombs, though...'
Eva began to smile. Then her curiosity was answered as she stepped on a hidden pressure plate and a giant log slammed into her from the side.
"Ooh, looks like that one had to hurt," Taro said, watching Eva pull herself back up. The vampire girl promptly stepped deep into sucking mud, losing a shoe as she pulled her foot back out. She didn't bother digging for it; instead, she pulled off her other shoe and tossed it away, evidently deciding to continue on barefoot.
"The log? Yeah," Possum said absently as she watched Eva make her way over a fallen tree whose trunk was easily four feet wide, and promptly fall into a sticker bush hidden from sight on the other side.
They watched as a branch Eva grabbed to help her balance as she walked along another, far more narrow tree trunk a moment later, abruptly snapped, dropping her head first into the scummy black water below. She popped up a moment later, her head covered in thick black mud from the bottom, her long hair and clothing soaked and dirty.
"She's...probably not going to be very happy about that," Taro said, wincing again as a great sheet of bark slid off the tree trunk as Eva tried to pull herself up out of the water, dropping her back in and showering her with dirt, rotten bark, and bugs. "Man, that Yuuna sure is going all out with all the traps, isn't she?"
Possum looked at Taro. "Huh?"
Taro glanced at her, then back at the screen. "I mean, with those bombs and the log, and then the thorn bush and the mud and the bark just now, how did she know Eva would go that way?"
Possum just blinked at her for a moment before she realized Taro had probably never spent much time in a swamp before. She looked back up at the screen. "Those aren't traps, that's just the swamp; the only traps she triggered were the bombs and the flying log trap; she hasn't gotten anywhere near the real traps..."
Taro looked at her friend for a moment. She could buy that thorn bushes and rotten branches would probably occur naturally in a location like the swamp environment of Eva's resort, but Possum didn't consider bombs or a giant log flying into you from the side to be 'real' traps...? What kind of training was Yuuna making her do?!
Eva, scowling, wet, and bedraggled, walked up out of the water, reached up into the back of her shirt, and pulled out a wriggling larva of some burrowing insect she didn't recognize; she figured it had come from under the tree bark when it fell on her head. She flicked the larva away and paused to take a look around, Kazumi's camera drone floating silently behind her.
"It appears I am going about this the wrong way," she said aloud as she stood at the edge of the water. For almost as long as she could remember, she had always powered through anything that crossed her path; she had plowed right through vampire hunters and wild beasts and flown over dangerous or unpleasant terrain, but this duel was rapidly beginning to show her something she hadn't thought about since before she gained even the power of flight: powering through wasn't always the right answer. She had known it of course; she wasn't a fool...but she had gotten away with it for so long and it worked so damn well when she did it that she had grown used to it. Even during her time trapped under Nagi's curse in Mahora, she had ignored it, mostly on the basis that once the spell was broken, she'd have as much power as she could ever want.
Power... She had it, and Yuuna didn't, not compared to her. What Yuuna did have was a devious mind that looked at the world from a different angle than most people. For that simple fact, Eva had long ago decided not to kill her, but to try and point her in a different direction and see what she would come up with. Yuuna had always been a lunatic, and a lunatic was always able to provide a fresh perspective; a lunatic could keep you on your toes, even if you had centuries of experience on her. Eva took a moment to try and pick out Yuuna's magical signature, a skill she had long ago picked up and all but forgotten about, but, as expected, the overwhelming magical energy of her resort and especially this life-filled swamp area drowned out the crazy woman's presence; no doubt just as Yuuna had planned.
Eva stepped away from the water. Yes, it was time to start looking at things from a different perspective; perhaps, she thought as she walked along, it was time to—
*snap*
Eva fell into the cleverly hidden spike pit.
A startled silence fell over the crowd watching the screens.
"Is she..."
"The spikes, they're..."
"She's not, she can't be...!"
"She's not dead," Misa said confidently as she watched the screen, a knowing smirk on her face. "I've seen worse."
Sure enough, Eva's hand twitched and everyone sighed in relief.
"See? You can't kill Eva with a trap of that level," Misa said, looking as if she had accomplished something herself.
A moment later, Eva had extricated herself from the spike pit, her clothing now even more tattered and shredded than before along with the addition of quite a few blood stains, though her wounds had healed almost instantly.
"You know..." Asuna said thoughtfully, "this is the most damage I've ever seen any one person manage. Ever."
Madoka snorted in amusement from her place beside Misa. "Heh, ain't that right." Madoka had been the previous record holder due to a freak accident during training that had blasted the vampire girl almost in half; Madoka had been forced to run for her life and hide behind everybody else to keep Eva from killing her. Even then, the only reason she hadn't died was because Eva's rage had run out and she had gotten bored plowing through the dozens of girls defending Madoka at the time.
"Konoka's around, right?" Madoka asked, suddenly worrying for Yuuna's safety when Eva eventually caught up to her. A quick glance at Yuuna's screen showed her yawning as she sat on a fallen log and idly kicked her feet.
"I'm here!" Konoka said.
Eva climbed out of the pit and took a moment to force back her unquenchable rage. That done, she took a good, long look around her.
"Akashi Yuuna..." she said aloud. A spike pit? Really? Did those ever work on anyone? She sighed in irritation. Of course they worked; she had just proven it herself.
"I have become complacent," she murmured as she scanned her surroundings. Visibility was roughly thirty feet; trees, bushes, and vines and hanging moss were everywhere, and one wrong step would sink a person into a bog up to their armpits...and then there were the creatures that lived here. Eva was suddenly glad she hadn't brought any alligators in when creating this particular training environment. There were snakes though, as well as any number of insects making a great deal of noise. The whole place stunk like rotting vegetation, while the forest canopy blocked a great deal of sunlight.
Eva made a slow smile. "A perfect place for a predator."
She moved carefully forward carefully, more like a big cat than a heard of buffalo the way she had before. She stepped on something that made a metallic click, and dove out of the way as another log swung down in near-silence, ready to smash any body it came into contact with.
Eva rolled to the side and came up in a crouch, looking, trying to see just what it was that had triggered the trap. It took her a moment to spot it, but there it was, hidden among the dirt and fallen leaves: the merest hint of something that didn't belong in a natural place, a straight line. Now that she had spotted it, she could see the pin that had fallen loose when she triggered the trap, too. Yuuna had taken the time to camouflage it very well, and it had paid off. Now, how to find the next trap? There were—Eva froze in place.
Movement in the trees off to the left.
Something took off running through the woods, so Eva gave chase, running on a course parallel to the mysterious person. Mysterious person my ass, Eva thought. Akashi Yuuna...!
The movement she was chasing abruptly stopped, and Eva realized an instant too late that it was a trap. A metallic clink from under her foot warned her an instant before a series of pointed, foot-wide poles fell from somewhere high above with enough force to bury their tips deep into the ground. Eva scrambled out of the way just in time, only to get nailed in the arm by what looked for all the world like a crossbow bolt. She hissed in pain; it was coated in holy water and a smear of paste mixed with garlic. She yanked it out and tossed it aside, ducked another bolt, and slipped around behind a tree.
Eva couldn't stop grinning. So Yuuna had finally decided to show herself, did she? Interesting timing, though Eva would have waited a little longer if she had been in Yuuna's position...wait.
She risked a peek around the side of the tree, and narrowly missed getting a new nose piercing via crossbow bolt.
She caught some more movement off to her right, and frowned as she worked out where to go next. While she didn't think Yuuna would bring others in to help her, she wouldn't put it past her. In fact-
A crossbow bolt in the shoulder cut that thought off halfway. Eva swore under her breath as she broke from hiding and came face to face with something that looked more like a giant walking pile of weeds than a person. Recognizing the ghillie suit for what it was, she swatted the person aside, and was rewarded with an explosion that knocked her off her feet.
"What the f-"
Seven more ghillie-suited beings emerged from the trees around her and rushed straight at her. Eva rushed to meet them and buried a fist in the first one's stomach; it, like the other one, exploded, throwing her back. The remaining ones were on her an instant later.
The explosion sent a fireball up through the forest canopy.
"Holy..." someone said nearby.
"Did you see that? Where did they all come from?"
"They were magical constructs, surely...?"
"So that's what she wanted them for," Setsuna said to herself.
"Hm?" Asuna asked, glancing at the other woman.
"Shikigami," Setsuna explained. "Paper golems, remember? Several weeks ago, Yuuna told me she wanted some to experiment with, so I gave her a dozen or so. They normally aren't so...so..."
"Explosive?" Asuna supplied.
"Explosive," Setsuna confirmed, nodding. "She must have found some way of modifying them, though that's extremely dangerous..."
Setsuna and Asuna paused, thinking back to the many, many crazy stunts Yuuna had pulled back in high school, and looked at each other.
"She modified them."
"Probably figured out how to overload them or something."
They watched Eva's smoke-filled screen for a moment, then looked over at Yuuna's screen, where she still sat on the log, grinning as she made a 'V' at Kazumi's camera drone.
"...you don't think she figured out how to make her own shikigami, do you?" Asuna asked after a long, long moment. Another, more horrible thought left her pale and short of breath. "You...you don't think she could figure out how to use them to make fictional characters, do you? Like...like from videogames?"
Setsuna's naturally pale skin paled further as she recalled certain games she had heard Yuuna talking about lately... She felt herself start to go faint as she contemplated upon what horrors she might have unintentionally released upon the world. "...I was hoping you wouldn't ask that."
"For the horde...!"
As she dragged herself back upright, Eva looked up sharply toward the direction from which the warcry had come. That couldn't have been...could it?
It was.
Garrosh Hellscream, in all his orcish glory, burst through the smoke, swinging two axes as he let out a roar.
"I never liked World of Warcraft," Eva said, then slipped under his wild swing and sliced him in half. Naturally, both halves exploded before they could hit the ground, sending Eva flying yet again. She barely had time to stand up before a figure in white appeared, carrying a white staff with a curved gold-colored head. Eva recognized the woman and blasted her with an ice spear before she had time to charge up her beam attack.
"Befriended—urk!"
Eva darted away as the woman exploded, only to come face to face with a hulking blueish-gray alien monstrosity with freakishly separated mandibles.
"Pew pew pew!" it said, firing its plasma rifle. Eva blasted it as well and zipped past, only to be brought up short yet again, this time by a warrior in blue armor with a sword and two curving horns on his helmet. Eva blasted him point-blank and jumped backward, propelled by the blast as he exploded.
She paused in a half-crouch, ready to move if any more enemies decided to show themselves. None did.
"Shikigami?" she said to herself as she slipped up to stand beside a tree trunk, taking the time to repair her shadow cloak as she surveyed her surroundings. There was no sign of those who had attacked her save for a few scorched spots on the ground and a handful of shreds of paper. The first ones, the ones wearing ghillie suits, had been bad enough, but if Yuuna had figured out how to make actual, working shikigami of fictional characters, then-
"LAZOR! BWAAAAH...!"
Eva darted aside just in time to avoid a brilliant beam of blue-white energy that blasted through the tree she had been hiding behind. She hurled an ice spear in the direction the beam had come from, and was rewarded with a "Bwaaaa-ark!" and another explosion.
She slipped behind a large tree and froze in place, again extending her senses. "...too much interference," she said, her lips twitching upward into a crooked half-smile. With so much magical interference, she couldn't even detect a shikigami...oh well. She continued on.
"...huh?" Asuna said, summing up the previous sixty seconds for just about everyone present.
"Bwahaha! That was hilarious!" Haruna said, unable to contain herself. "'Befriended'! Bwahahahaha! And then, and then 'Pew pew pew'! Oh, oh! And then 'LAZOR'!" Haruna said, doing a credible imitation of the ridiculous voice in question. "Oh wow, that was just, it was just pure genius! Genius!"
"Um, what?" Misa said.
"Hahahaha! Oh wow!"
"Yeah...I think someone needs to take Haruna somewhere where she can lie down for a while," Asuna said after a moment.
Eva continued on, having made short work of a fat Italian plumber, a green dinosaur wearing a saddle, some weirdo she didn't recognize who kept screaming "ICE CAR!", and a big pink ball with a smiley face that tried to eat her. Naturally, all had fallen with ease. And exploded. Shikigami and other golems were always such a pain...if the one making them had enough power, it was easy to make dozens upon dozens of them in a very short time. Usually, they were based on the creator or some sort of animal, but, as Eva had learned to her regret, when dealing with Akashi Yuuna, one had best not expect the usual. 'At least they're all low quality,' she thought to herself as she walked along until her left leg suddenly sunk hip-deep in an unexpectedly boggy patch of ground, .
Eva, tired of wandering through the swamp, bug bitten, gritty with dirt and soot, and in general pissed off, dragged herself out of the mud again and plodded onward. A ten foot tall red ogre with a club and a horn in the middle of its forehead came through the trees running at her, but it was only a little tougher than the rest; it didn't explode until it had hit the ground with an ice spike through its head. She walked through the smoke and slapped aside the miniature twenty foot tall Godzilla waiting for her on the other side, ignoring the explosion it made as well. She paused to let the smoke dissipate. "...I'm tired of this."
She looked around again. "Akashi Yuuna! Quit wasting my time! Come out!"
She waited a long moment while silence, or whatever was left of silence after the multitude of insects were through with it, permeated the swamp. The not-silence was broken a moment later.
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
Eva's right eye twitched. That overly theatrical laugh...
"Are you having fun yet?"
Eva's eye continued to twitch. Akashi Yuuna was clever, very clever. She seemed to think of everything; she had even somehow masked her voice so Eva couldn't determine which direction it was coming from.
"How do you like the mud? The bugs? Can't neglect that twenty foot line of sight! Oh, and how do you like my little friends?"
As soon as Yuuna asked that last question, a dozen other characters from who knew what burst out of the bushes or jumped out of trees and rushed at Eva from all directions. Eva lashed out all around her with a flurry of ice shards; the explosions of their own allies took care of those few shikigami who survived her attack.
The sound of someone doing a slow clap came from behind her. Eva whirled, preparing an extra barrier as she did, just in case it was necessary.
It wasn't. Yuuna just stood there, grinning in that infuriating way she had that seemed calculated to drive Eva up a wall.
"Well? What are you waiting for?" Eva demanded, her irritation coming through clearly in her tone.
"He~h, wouldn't you like to know?" Yuuna replied, winking at her.
"..." Eva quickly looked to both sides, then turned to look behind her, just in time. She narrowly managed to avoid the jaws of the Tyrannosaurus Rex that had somehow crept up behind her, and jumped backward in an attempt to quickly open some space between herself and the behemoth. Unfortunately, it was far more nimble than its large size had led her to believe; it went right after her, roaring as it came. It lunged at her again, not unlike a heron going after a fish. Eva set herself and punched it right in the nose. The blast ripped the top of its head off, and the whole thing promptly exploded, blowing away her barrier and sending her into a short flight that ended abruptly when she bounced off of a tree. She was up on her feet again an instant later, her mind racing. 'Shikigami? But it was huge...! To create a shikigami of that size would require—' The sight of Yuuna rushing in for the kill forced her to focus on the present threat rather than the absurdity of a shikigami that was fifteen feet tall and fifty feet long. There was no time to call up any of her usual spells, so she took a page from Yuuna's book and pumped magical energy into her fist even as she moved it to block the irritating woman's incoming attack.
Yuuna slapped her fist aside and tackled Eva to the ground, taking her by complete surprise.
Eva let out a grunt as she landed on a hard tree root hidden in the mud and muck, and tried to push Yuuna off. The woman was agile as a monkey; it was all Eva could do just to grab hold of her as the two of them wrestled in the muck until she managed to grab a handful of hair almost by accident. Ever one to take advantage of whatever luck she got, Eva hauled off and punched Yuuna in the face. The woman let out a cry and fell over backward, and Eva was up and on her before she could recover, burying her hands in the pockets of the woman's shorts.
"Where is it?" Eva demanded when she couldn't find Yuuna's keys. "Where is it?" she demanded, giving Yuuna a vicious shake as she tried to find the keyring she was to retrieve in order to win the match. Yuuna only spat out a tooth and grinned in reply.
"Looking for something?" someone else said.
Eva looked up, eyes wide in sudden understanding as she saw another Yuuna leaning against a tree. And another, and another, and another. The one under her let out an amused laugh, grabbed her in a bear hug, and exploded.
"...I almost can't believe it," Setsuna said in amazement as she watched Yuuna's screen. Her old friend was laughing madly as she activated shikigami after shikigami copies of herself, which ran out of view toward what was presumably Eva's position almost as soon as they had been created. "I never gave her so many...!"
"She must've figured out how to make her own, then," Asuna said, watching the display intently as she worked out the possible uses for a tool she had previously dismissed as 'a neat trick'. "How long can she keep it up?"
"She couldn't, not out in the real world," Abe Aiko, Onmyodo specialist and current member of Class 2-A, said. "Shikigami require a constant flow of power to stay animated. Most people can't manage more than a few small ones at once; it takes someone with real skill to manage more than a single human-sized one. The power drain would wipe out most people who tried...especially with something big like that dinosaur. There are ways around the power problem, but they're only temporary and the shikigami won't last long. But..." she shrugged as she watched the dozens of fake Yuunas dogpile Eva. "She's probably found a way to link them to the excess magic in here. Theoretically, they should continue to exist indefinitely as long as they have enough power."
"...well thank you for the explanation, Miss Expert," Asuna said dryly. She had been aware of some of the information Aiko had provided, but as she had never managed to get a shikigami to work at all, she had dismissed them as minor enemies at best and left it at that. Now though... "Yuuna sure is something, isn't she? To figure all this out?"
Possum couldn't help but grin as she overheard Asuna's question. Yuuna was really something else, all right; Possum had understood that within minutes of the start of their first training session.
"Wait, Yuuna's finally getting up! It looks like she's going to make her move!" someone said excitedly, drawing everyone's attention to the
Eva was, for the first time in a long time, utterly flabbergasted. Shikigami like the anime and videogame characters from before were one thing, reproducing yourself with such accuracy, and so many times, was something else altogether. She gathered what power she could manage in the short time she had left before she knew the fake Yuunas would explode, and heaved the whole lot of them off. Yuunas went flying everywhere, many exploding in the air, others hitting the ground and creating small craters as they detonated.
"Enough! Akashi Yuuna!" Eva bellowed. In response, a dozen more Yuunas emerged from the trees and rushed her. She swatted aside the first and second, buried her fist in the third Yuuna's gut, and then the fourth tackled her from the side. She threw that one off just in time for the fifth to throw a handful of powder in her face.
Eva hissed in pain as the garlic powder got in her eyes. "DAMN YOU AKASHI YUUNA...!" she bellowed as she swung her free hand wildly, trying to wipe her eyes clean of the vile powder with the other. Something tackled her from behind when she was off balance and she fell to the ground. She grabbed her attacker by the arm and threw them off in a random direction and scrambled to her feet, clawing at her eyes. Unable to see, she wasn't able to avoid the bucket of holy water someone dumped over her head. She growled at the minor pain it caused and punched another Yuuna in the gut, causing it to explode and blow her backward even as the holy water helped clear her vision. Another Yuuna smacked her in the face with a heavy metal cross, while still another tripped her up from behind. She whirled to face that one when another Yuuna, this one with an expression wholly different from the rest, darted in and, in the best icepick fashion, buried a spike in her chest, directly into her heart.
For Eva, the sudden burst of unexpectedly extreme pain, especially considering that she was only stabbed, was almost unbearable. She hadn't felt anything like this in centuries, maybe ever...not even being burned as a witch had hurt this much! She let out an agonized roar that petered out into a breathless scream and looked down at the...the silvery thing in her chest, to the hand that held it, and up the arm to Yuuna's—the real Yuuna's—face and the triumphant expression she had.
"Silver coated oak," Yuuna said by way of explanation. "Blessed and purified of course, and dipped in a mixture of holy water and garlic, with a little holy incense thrown in for good measure." She shoved Eva up against a tree. "Betcha you can't take Possum away from me now, huh?"
Then she punched Eva in the face.
"And there you go, Akashi Yuuna has just won the duel!" Kazumi announced via speaker system to the group watching the screens.
"That was..." Asuna said, trailing off.
"Wow...I didn't think I'd ever see something like that..." Fuuka said in wonder, wincing as she watched Yuuna yank the anti-vampire stake out of Eva, who slouched to the ground, clutching at the smoking hole in her chest for a moment before staggering back up to her feet.
"..." Negi was speechless, eyes wide as he watched Eva shake off Yuuna's offer of assistance. He had rarely ever seen Eva subject to such damage; sure, Yuuna had blown her up a few dozen times during the duel, but that was different, that wasn't up close and personal, in your face, bloody and violent hand to hand combat. Yuuna had actually managed to personally land what should have been a killing blow.
"That was...that was amazing," someone said. Several others voiced their agreement; Eva suffering a defeat was an extremely rare thing...Eva suffering a defeat so complete was something else altogether.
"Um..." Taro said, getting the attention of several of those nearby. "Hey, uh...Eva-chan just got staked, right? With silver and holy water and stuff?"
Several of the others started looking thoughtfully at each other.
"Well, what I'm trying to say is..." Taro said hesitantly. "Do you think she'll be alright? I mean...that stuff's supposed to kill vampires, right?"
Asuna walked up to Taro and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Taro-kun, you don't have to worry about Eva-chan. She won't die, not even if she's killed." She turned Taro back toward the screens, all of which showed Eva walking along stiffly at a leisurely pace as she headed for the return portal that would take her back to the entry area of the resort. Yuuna walked along beside her, looking as if the weight of the world had been taken off her shoulders. "She definitely won't die from something like a spike to the chest. You can bet it hurt, though...I've never seen her make that face before."
"Yeah..." Taro said, clearly still troubled.
"She...she really wanted to stay my trainer, didn't she?" Possum said, almost to herself.
"Akashi Yuuna," Eva said later as the two of them trudged along back toward the teleporter.
"Yeah?" Yuuna replied, a huge grin on her face.
"You..." Eva paused; she really didn't want to say the words she was about to say. "You are only the second person to ever defeat me in a duel."
Yuuna looked down at her, still grinning. "I had to stack the deck to do it, too, heh."
Eva cocked an eyebrow at her and turned her gaze back to the narrow, winding path they were on. "True, but a loss is a loss. Also, I can't help but notice you aren't carrying that keyring in your pocket," she said, referring to the object she was supposed to have taken to win the duel.
Yuuna grinned guiltily. "Yeah...it's out there in the mud somewhere," she said waving her arm to take in the swamp environment as a whole. "I said I stacked the deck, after all; even I don't know where it is, just a general area."
Eva let out an amused grunt at that and changed the subject. "Those shikigami...how did you manage to create your own? The paper they use doesn't come cheap, and it takes a lot of work to purify it properly."
Yuuna grinned. "Wasn't easy, but if you combine the kind of magic circle that draws in power with a shikigami, it'll run for as long as it's getting power. Really unstable though..." she said, smiling as if at some fond memory. "I don't think it'd work out in the real world, though," she added regretfully.
Eva felt an urge to smash her forehead against a tree. "It's dangerous to combine different magical styles, you know," she said dryly. 'Dangerous' was putting it mildly; more than one mage had burned out or otherwise caused irrevocable damage to himself or others while trying to combine styles in the past. "You also didn't explain how you purified them."
"Yeah, well..." Yuuna seemed to deflate. "That's something I picked up a while back..."
Eva let it drop and they walked in silence for a moment. "Trap," Yuuna said, stepping around a spot that looked to Eva like all the rest. After peering at it for a moment, however, she realized that a very small patch of mud was slightly more disturbed than the mud around it, concealing a tiny pressure plate. By way of explanation, Yuuna pointed up at the branches above them.
Eva cocked an eyebrow as she spotted the string of grenades up there, carefully hidden among the branches...anyone unlucky enough to step on the pressure plate would have a dozen live grenades fall pretty much on top of their head. "That's quite elaborate," she said as she continued along. "I am curious; when did you have the time to set up these traps? You spent a lot of time in here before the duel, but not that much."
Yuuna laughed out loud at that; Eva scowled at her. "No no no," Yuuna said in amusement, waving her off. "It's part of Possum's training. Seriously!" she said, seeing the look on Eva's face. "You should see her in here, it's like she was born for this kind of thing! She figured out how to disarm half the traps I set up in a minute or two, maybe five at most; the ones she can't disarm, she avoids. Even with me adding new traps all the time and changing the old ones, she still hasn't triggered any since that first day. She's good."
Eva nodded distantly as they resumed their walk. During those times Eva had watched or participated in the new students' training, The Girl had certainly seemed quite capable at stealth and evasion, even at point blank range...she had even managed to dodge a series of magic arrows, quite the achievement when they were of the type that homed in on their target. But still...Eva licked her lips. With skills like that even as a normal human, The Girl would make a wonderful student as a vampire. It was rare to find someone who interested her so much; she glanced back at Yuuna. "Why are you so obsessed with her?"
Yuuna's smile evaporated and her face took on an unexpectedly cold expression. It vanished an instant later, but Eva had recognized it for what it was. Yuuna remained silent.
"Something happened after you graduated," Eva said aloud.
"...yeah."
"..." Eva waited a moment, but when it became clear Yuuna wasn't about to explain, she pushed on. "You lost someone...were they that important?" Eva's voice sounded flippant, uncaring...anyone who knew her well would recognize her tone as a rare sign of mild commiseration. The fact that the two of them were alone was the only thing that allowed her to ask the question.
"...yeah," Yuuna said again. "It was...in the Ukraine, in Russia, pretty much a few weeks after I left Japan. It was...it was rough," she said.
"That would be...April or May of 2007. Ah, I see. The ghoul uprising," Eva said.
Yuuna nodded, but didn't elaborate.
"I heard the only survivor was a priest sent from Rome; a whole village was destroyed. It's been covered up of course, but I have my sources," Eva said, walking idly along, apparently careless. Inside, she was watching every move Yuuna made, from the way she walked to the way she kept reaching up to touch her neck to the way her eyes had gone distant, not unlike a soldier with a thousand yard stare.
"It was...it was bad," Yuuna said after a long moment. "Ludmila and Oleg, they..." She clammed up.
Eva looked away. She, too, had lost people who had, at the time, been very important to her. Whatever Akashi Yuuna had gone through, it had left quite an impression on her, and for whatever reason, she had become attached to The Girl. Well, if Yuuna was capable enough to win a duel against Eva herself, Eva supposed she could leave The Girl to her for a while longer. "Possum Cade..." she said aloud, and huffed in amusement.
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009, Midday
Negi Springfield leaned heavily on his podium, only half listening as his student Mochizuki Kagami read a passage from the textbook in halting, badly accented english. When she finished, she remained standing, looking at him expectantly for a moment before he snapped out of his momentary daze.
"Thank you Mochizuki-san, you may sit down." He waited until she was seated before heaving himself up off the podium. 'I'm just so tired,' he thought absently as he turned to the chalkboard and reached for the chalk lying on the rail along the bottom. He had to try three times before his hand found the chalk, and he stood swaying for a moment before recalling what he had been about to write.
"Um...Negi-sensei, are you okay? You look very pale..."
Much to his consternation, Negi wasn't quite sure who had spoken; he thought it might have been Student Number 14, Yoshida Ume, but it just as easily could have been Student Number 2, Yamamoto Kimi. In any case, he was certainly feeling under the weather...Asuna had threatened to take him to the hospital the day before if his condition didn't improve by the time he got back from school. "I'm okay Yamamoto-san," he said, focusing his attention on the board with a monumental effort of will.
"Um...sensei? I'm Sasaki-san..."
"That's nice..." Negi said, trying to recall once again what he had been about to write on the board.
Sasaki Rina looked at Negi-kun with real concern. He looked really really sick...his face was all pale and he had bags under his eyes, not to mention the way he was wobbling back and forth as he stood in front of the chalkboard... The fact that he had mistaken her for Kimi-chan was scary, too!
"U-um...sensei...?" she said again, and squawked in alarm along with several classmates when his left leg abruptly gave out on him and dropped him to one knee, barely managing to catch himself on the chalk rail at the bottom of the board. Rina was so focused on Negi-kun that she barely even noticed the other girls talking worriedly, but she did notice when Ono Ran, who shared the table in front of her with her best friend Inoue Ai, stood up, taking her bag with her.
"Negi-sensei!" Ran barked, loud and clear. She had to repeat herself twice before Negi finally pulled himself to his feet and turned his increasingly pale face toward her.
Rina watched in horror as Ran brought up her hand and made the shape of a gun with her fingers; she shivered as a sudden chill came over her. Ran waited until Negi had turned his attention fully toward her, and spoke one word.
"Bang."
Rina screamed and shot up out of her seat as Negi's head abruptly rocked back, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he fell bonelessly to the floor. With all her attention on her teacher, she didn't notice as Student Number 13, Ono Ran, quickly and quietly left the classroom.
Out in the hallway, Ran shut the door and walked along calmly, carrying her school bag and looking for all the world as if she had been sent on an errand by a teacher. She ignored the rising noise from Class 2-A as she walked along, and had made it halfway down the hall before spotting anyone else; luckily, it was someone she could deal with.
Ran walked up to the janitor, Margarent Gunther, the same woman who had made such a poor showing at the festival tournament. "Hello, Gunther-san."
The woman, who had been looking down the hall curiously as she tried to locate the source of the noisy class, looked down at her blankly for a moment before brightening up and smiling. "Oh, hi. You're Ono-san, correct? Why are you out here? Shouldn't you be in class?"
Ran looked up at her thoughtfully. The janitor was doing a good job of pretending everything was all right in spite of the increasingly panicky sounds coming down the hallway. "Negi-sensei collapsed in class 2-A; I think you should go help him," she said, putting a little oomph behind her 'suggestion'.
Margaret blinked a couple times, looking dazed, then shook her head to clear it and looked back down the hall. "Negi-kun needs my help...? Okay, I'll check it out right away; thanks Ono-san!" she said as she took off at a brisk jog toward the class in question.
Ono watched her go for a moment, then turned around and headed for the stairwell.
Dictionary time!
Bishounen: Pretty boys. You know the type; they're all over anime.
Shikigami: Remember those little paper cutouts they used to make all those copies of Negi early in the manga? That's what these are.
Author's Notes: Sorry for the ridiculous delay; I had a lot of trouble writing this chapter. Questions? Comments? Like the references? Hate the way I handled Eva? Let me know!