*Takes a peek in the reviews.*

Ahh, so my first "Challenge" has no time limit. Okay then. That's great, it means I can experiment and flex it a bit. A thousand and five hundred words is perfectly fine to try for, although I may end up making it a bit longer out of new found habits...now, where the heck are my headphones? I got the darn things last week...ahh, there they are. I'm set.

Konoka is underplayed. I did that a bit on purpose, as a kind of distance to the prevailing "KonoSetsu" fics out there, but I did plan on bringing them into the story bit by bit.

Ever heard the song "Lithium" by Evanescence? This is what I'm using right now to set a mood for myself, it's not the song for the chapter, no, but it's what I'm using to write it.

I do not own Negima.

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Challenge One: The Untimely Grave.

In that one moment, all of time seemed to stop.

She could still see the red sheet of hair that had flown into her vision, the figure sending a powerful kick right into her stomach, blasting her backwards, away from the beam of magic, a powerful, prevailing blast of consuming blood purple. At first, she had thought Asuna had pushed her away, but the form was too small.

He didn't even look back, only rose a solitary arm with gun in hand and began to fire, his feet planted firmly in the ground. The wind from the blast blew his hair back as it came, the gun a lone spark of defiance against it.

It ate him up. From the bottom of his shoes it burned them away, and travelled up, to his clothes, ripping him apart bit by bit, until there was only that flowing hair, which disappeared into the light, which consumed all. He was gone, just like that, he had been swallowed whole by the realm that was death.

Konoka could barely see through her own hair, but she managed to see the brilliant blast that consumed the boy who had kicked her out of the way. That same little boy who acted like a grown, bitter, old man, brushing her off and bristling at attempts of friendship, had turned into a sacrificial figure, stepping in to take the blast meant for her.

Purple filled her entire vision, and the only thing she could see was that sheet of red hair. It disappeared right in front of her eyes, leaving behind nothing but a singed pile of clothes and his gun.

Nothing but ashes were left of the boy who had just been there, taking a blast that was meant for her.

How old was he? Six? How old was she? What had she accomplished in her life, compared to him? Yet, he was the one burnt to the ground, not her. A budding redwood cut before it even had a chance to show it's shine, and she was what, a Japanese maple? A tiny thing.

That same boy had yelled at her when she attacked him to pry into his bitter memories, that same boy had taught her countless things, superseding simple English. He had laid down his life, for her, like Set-chan had done once before...

Why?! Was it always her who had to be saved by the strong, why did they always take the hits she could not?! Setsuna had almost died that day, and she could not have been much older than sensei had been...what was so special about her that people died to keep her alive?!

Ashes.

She stared at them. Asuna picked up the gun, a marvelous thing that shone in the light. Singed, yet the noble weapon still fired. Once, Twice, Three times, four, she lost count as her long time friend seemed stuck in a rut, endlessly cascading a hail of bullets upon the fallen stone figure until Yue, the voice of reason, yanked her arm down, yelling that it was already dead.

Dead.

The word resounded in her head. Dead. The boy was dead, because he had tried to save her. She who had tried to break him, she who he had always brushed off, and he had extended her life by sacrificing his.

Someone pulled her up, she couldn't tell who. Her hair flowed to cover her face before whipping back, revealing that it was clean, blank of emotion. Her turmoil was inside. She had killed him, just as certainly as if she had taken the gun he held to his head and pulled the trigger. She was weak, and it was his job, as the strong, to protect the weak. She had always been weak.

It only made itself clear now just how weak she was. Hiding behind a mask of kindness, of happiness she didn't even feel half the time. Always the high spirited one, they always looked to her, the sun when the sky was filled with clouds. You fake it until you make it, and she was a classic faker.

The boy didn't do that. His one true joy was teaching, but when outside it, he wasn't afraid to show his feelings, to feel his pain. To live with his deeds and weaknesses and improve upon them, in the end, he, from the very time he had walked through the door, had proved stronger, braver, than her mask of happiness.

She remembered walking in on him with his hair free, mistaking him for a girl and latching unto him, all cheer, and his angry yet comical reaction. She saw him, every day, loosen up a little tiny bit, and had thought, just this morning, that maybe he would finally open up soon. He had tossed her a green tea then and told her to stay safe in the surveillance team, but she had insisted on coming.

She could still feel that tea in a pocket somewhere on herself…she should have listened to him.

If she had, he would still be alive. Alive to open up to others, let go of his bitter, sorrowful past and be happy for once, alive to see the good the world could offer. She had taken that away from him with one stupid blast of purple and red light. No, he could not be alive. He had stood right there, and she had seen him disappear from the ground up.

No one survived something like that. Not even the strong. The strong could die, no one was invincible. Life was not a video game, if was like chess in its own twisted way, and Sensei had just been checkmated.

Someone tugged her away from the scene, a few students rallied to begin a search, Asuna leading it. Her main ammunition being the fact that there was no body...but, the clothes...the body would have been...

Disintegrated...

A while later, Konoka found herself staring at a pot full of water, but her body was frozen, her mind blank. What had she come here to do again? She really thought it was to cook, but what? Just the day before, Sensei had put aside some ingredients to try a dish he had not had time to try since coming to Japan, but she didn't know how to cook it, she couldn't even remember it's name...

Again with that boy. It wasn't that she loved him or anything...just she felt..connected to him now, as if risking one's life and dying created a bond of souls, in which could not be severed no matter how hard she tried. She just could not push the boy from her mind, even as she forced herself to grab a stalk of celery and start chopping it.

Sensei held his hands a bit further along the stock, and his chops had more force, making his cuts smoother, but the shapes were slightly less symmetrical than hers....the way the boy did his cooking suggested a need not for beauty or precision, but necessity.

Again, she forced him from her head, this time physically, shaking her head violently to rid it of any trace of the diminutive red head. She managed to finish her meal without thinking of him once, but she could see Yue-san staring at her from time to time, and in those large eyes, she saw her own, which held a darkness that had not been there before.

A soul leaves behind a small piece of themselves when they die violently, or so the suspicion goes. Would she forever bear these new, darkened eyes as a memento to her sin or weakness?

Night and day..

They were both the same now, there was no difference. In this land of eternal sun, time meant little, and Konoka found herself once more in the kitchen, sifting through the ingredients the boy had left in the fridge, she forced herself to look at them. Enough hiding. Get over the damn thing already.

That word was a favorite of the tiny sensei....damn.

Asuna called out into the darkness of Konoka's mind, poking her gently in the ribs and making her spin, knife still in hand to face her. Her knife almost cut the girl's left pigtail off, but Asuna's hands were faster than her whirl.

"Holy hell, I just poked you because you looked....spaced out... I found something, a way out I think. You don't have to go giving me an early hair cut about it!"

Asuna, her best friend since...well, since Set-chan distanced herself. The girl was brash but kind, yet she could still be incredibly dense. Couldn't she see the killer of the boy she sought so hard to find was right in front of her? Yet she comes to her first to tell her she has found a way out.

Konoka left the girl be, half heartedly yelling out to all who cared that Asuna had found something as she turned back to put her knife away. She wouldn't need it anymore it seemed. They were leaving, and they were leaving with one less of their number. What would they say to the others?

The walk wasn't long, and her classmates, once reaching what seemed to be a door etched in stone, began their usual banter, but Konoka paid them no mind. She walked up to the door and felt it with a hand while they talked. One of them read the inscription on it, she had no idea which one, perhaps it was even her. Yue spoke up, a knife of sensibility into the darkness of confusion, and the door split open, crumbling away to admit a figure she had not let herself think about for nearly two days, or was it one? It stumbled, and almost grabbed unto her, clinging for dear life.

"Why...do you hate me?"

That simple sentence echoed in her head for almost an eternity; "Why do you hate me?"

Did she hate him? Why should she? Because of his strength? Because of his complete difference from an ordinary child? Maybe he thought she would hate him for allowing her to think him dead? Perhaps...Did he think she hated him? Her mouth issued a classic sound of confusion, but her cut her to the chase.

"Answer the question! Why do you hate me!?"

It was then the answer came, even as her sense of reality returned. This was her final test. He had survived and come back from the dead, just to give her a final test into this circle of acceptance. The weight of having killed someone, of being to weak to stand on her own, was slowly lifted as she answered him, finally.

"I don't hate you Sensei..."

It was a small victory, but it was, for now, enough.

+---+

I don't like the way this turned out, I suppose I wasn't in a dark enough mood today. Yet, I know I had time today, so I did it today. I must stop though, I reached my limit...I think. It looks like fifteen hundred words at least.

Oh, it's over two thousand, oh well.