A Question of Survival

A MSN AU starting at the end of volume 18 / end of Term 1.

My alarm goes off, I stop it, and groggily sit up in bed. I haven’t been sleeping well at all this week, but it wasn’t a surprise. So much had been happening in the last little while. Just thinking about it made my head feel a bit wobbly sometimes.

Finding out that one of our classmates had planned an attempt to expose the secret of the magical world: and I hadn’t even known there was a magical world before the start of this term.

Fighting with a Cerebus-like dog and being sure I was going to be killed by it on the way to save my teacher.

Jumping in front of a bullet meant for my teacher, even if it was just going to send me forward three hours into the future.

Sometimes it’s all a bit much. I’m shy and quiet, and clumsy. I study hard when I can. Before this term, I was a normal girl. Well, a normal bookworm anyway. I suppose that the library where I spent so much time was strange, and a bit dangerous, but I don’t think I’m a very adventurous girl.

Now, my class rank is probably dropping. I’m still studying hard, but now it’s magic, not schoolwork. I’ve been involved in some adventures that, looking back on them, I find hard to believe.

And with sensei… it seems that he is at the center of all these things.

I think the times I’ve been proudest of myself have been when I’ve been with Negi-sensei. I used my pactio item to help save him from Kotaro-kun the first time they met each other and fought.

In a way, I still don’t believe that I really confessed to him. Twice even.

Maybe it’s really only troublesome for him, and a real bother, but now I can always encourage myself. If something is hard, I can always think “Miyazaki Nodoka, you are an ultra-shy girl, but you confessed to Negi-sensei, the boy you love. Do your best!”

And it seems to work.

Of course, it maybe would have been nice for him to respond. Yue telling him that I would wait until the end of school… well, of course I’ll happily wait for him. But I can’t help but feel that the others, if it takes another 3 years, another girl will be his love.

I may have been the first to confess to him, but compared to the other girls in the class, I’m nothing special. I’m not as smart as some girls, or even Yue. I’m nothing like as athletic as some of the other girls. I’m not beautiful, or refined, or rich, or artistic. I certainly can’t fight the way that some of the others can.

So, I can’t help but feel that other girls will become his partners as well, and even if I love him more now, once the others become more interested in him, it will be one of the special ones that catches his eye.

Even Yue, when she talks with him, can have discussions that make me talking with him about books seem shallow. The sort of thing a little girl would do.

And then sometimes I have thoughts about him that don’t seem right for me to have, because he’s young, and I’m young too, and maybe I should be more of a lady somehow. But…

Hee hee…

A week after, and thinking about the kiss I have him at the festival, and I still blush.

Eh, but look at the time! I have to hurry now, or I’ll be late.

Ok, Nodoka, try your hardest again today!

When I get to my locker, I open it to take out my shoes, and a letter falls out. It’s silly, but my heart leaps up into my throat, because it’s from Negi.

It’s asking me to meet him at Evangeline’s Cottage to discuss something important. Other than the location, this is strangely like a dream I had one day when I fell asleep next to the lockers near the start of term.

But it’s an odd request. Maybe it’s the recent betrayal of Chao, but I can’t help but feel a bit suspicious.

Still, if it really is Negi, I don’t want to be late. So I slip my outdoor shoes back on and hurry out towards Evangeline’s cottage.

When I arrive there, I find most of the rest of the class milling around outside: confused, and talking loudly.

“Umm… ummm…” I try to get someone’s attention, but other than Yue, the rest ignore me.

“You got a letter too, Honya?” she asks.

“It seems that I did. And everyone else?”

“Mmm…” she indicates, looking around.

“Maybe, maybe one of us should go and try to find Sensei, or another teacher?” I ask.

She looks around and gestures to me “Let’s go Honya, there’s something strange happening.”

We turn and start to walk away, back towards the school. As is usual with our class, I don’t think anyone sees us leave.

I turn to Yue as we walk, but I see something flash out of the corner of my eye.

I throw myself in front of her before I know what I’m doing.

Sometime later, I slowly open my eyes, and find myself looking up at the ceiling of Evangeline’s cottage, and a small ring of faces.

“Thank goodness, Honya, you really scared us,” says Konoka.

“What… what happened,” I mumble. My head hurts and my shoulder feels like it’s on fire. It seems I have a temperature as well.

“You were attacked,” says T. sensei. I’m a bit surprised to see him here.

“Actually, it was me that was attacked,” says Yue. She’s kneeling next to me, holding onto my hand. “Until you threw yourself in the way, you idiot.”

“Ohh…” I smile at her. “I’m glad you aren’t hurt.”

Her grip tightens on my hand.

“Idiot! If Konoka hadn’t been right there to heal you, you might have died.”

“Died?” I say, weakly. I feel my head start to swim, and I close my eyes.

I hear the others murmuring, and people walking away. But I still feel Yue holding my hand.

“What’s happening, Yue?”

I feel her leaning a bit closer.

“We’ve been trapped. Most of the other girls are watching a movie on a big screen somewhere in a basement to keep them inside. But the girl who kicked you, she’s from the future like Chao was.”

“Why has she trapped us?”

“Chao just wanted to expose us all, this girl wants to kill Negi and all of the rest of us. Something about cleansing the time stream, but I couldn’t hear her very well.”

“K… kill us?” I stutter. “Where’s Negi-san?”

“He’s trapped here too,” Yue mutters. “He’s inside the time compression room, training.”

My heart sinks. “So… ummm… how’s this girl intending to… K…kill us, then?”

“Well, we’re inside a set of techno-magical wards that the girl keeps adding to, and they’re collapsing in on us. T sensei and Negi-san and the rest exhausted themselves trying to break through them, but she just sat outside and laughed, and then added another two layers of wards outside.”

“So Negi-san is resting?”

“I think he’s training to get stronger, but I’m not sure. Evangeline was pretty secretive about what’s going on, but she’s in the time compression hideout with him.”

“S…so.. what’s going to happen?”

“We need to break out, but we need to prevent the others from finding out about magic. We’re in a real pinch,” she says with a tiny smile.

I shut my eyes and smile too. I remembered ***** saying just that before we found out the dog was an illusion. Maybe we’ll get out of this one too.

I hear footsteps, and open my eyes again. It’s T-Sensei.

“Nodoka-chan,” he says, “you need to know your target’s name before you can read their mind, correct?”

“Y..yes, I do,” I say. “Sorry!”

He smiles. “Don’t worry, it isn’t your fault. We were thinking that it would be a real help to get inside this girl’s head, but it shouldn’t be a problem.”

I hear him walk away again.

“I’ve heard,” whispers Yue, “They think they need to find the weak point in the wards. If they don’t, even if Negi and T-Sensei can break them, the energy backlash from the second set of wards will incinerate anything inside them. I think Evangeline-san is studying them, but I’m not sure. They’re nothing like anything in my magical encyclopaedia, I’ve checked.”

I nod a tiny amount, and drift off back to sleep. I think Negi will save us.

I wake up again, and my head is clearer. My shoulder isn’t hurting either, so I take a deep breath, and let it out again.

Ok, Nodoka, time to stop being a burden for people.

And I open my eyes.

I’m inside the time compression training area. I sit up and look around. There’s a few people. Asuna seems to be arguing with T-sensei and Evangeline-san.

Yue sees I’m awake, and runs over to me.

“Nodoka-chan,” she says, breathless, and grabs my hands in hers.

“Ah, you’re awake, weakling,” says Evangeline.

“Ahh…” I slump a bit. She doesn’t need to be so blunt, does she?

“You’re going to have to get up. We’ve found a solution to our problem, and you’re it.”

“W… what?” I stammer. Everyone else has fallen silent, and their eyes are on me.

“One,” says Evangeline, “we need the ward’s weakpoint. Two, to get that, we need you to read this girl’s mind outside.”

“B..but without her name,” I start.

“Shut up, I’m getting to that,” says Evangeline. “Three, you’ll need a power boost to be able to do that, it’s simple. Four, training probably won’t help you, because it’s an entirely new ability. That’s why you aren’t in training with Negi-bozou.”

There’s a pause.

Evangeline walks over.

“Five, the way for you to gain more abilities with your artefact is for you to make a contract with that kid.”

“But, I have a contract….”

“We mean a full contract, Nodoka-chan,” T sensei says, quietly.

Yue’s hands tighten their grip on mine.

“Wha… what…” and then I remember about formal contracts. You become a partner of the mage, get a physical powerup, and an increase to the abilities of your artefact.

But there’s usually only one partner unless a mage is really strong.

A partner for life.

Usually you get married.

I…

I can’t think.

Evangeline slaps me.

“Look, there’s no time to space out, idiot. The wards have collapsed so far that in about 15 minutes time, as it’s passing outside this training room, they’re going to start crushing my house, and soon after that, it’ll be us. Negi-bozou will be here in a couple minutes, and we’ll do one of the partner bond rituals with the two of you. It should leave just enough time to refine your ability, get out, and take down those wards.”

Partner?

I look towards Yue, I can feel tears starting to well up in my eyes. Maybe it’s from the slap.

I’m hurting all over.

Yue has tears in her eyes as well. She must have been expecting this.

Contract?

I’m not ready for that. I can’t replace everyone for him. I’ll just be useless, and hold him back, and he’ll resent it, and hate me.

But he would be mine.

I jerk to my feet, and look around wildly. But it seems that even though there are plenty of my friends around me, at the moment I’m very alone.

Even Yue is looking at me like I’ve just stolen something from her.

I suppose I have.

All of a sudden, I hear footsteps running up behind me. It must be Negi-sensei. Yue-chan’s eyes widen in shock, and so do Asuna’s. Konoka looks impressed and giddy. Setsuna looks sick.

Negi-sensei.

I turn around, and then look up at him.

Up.

It looks a bit like he’s wearing his more mature ‘Nagi’ form, but it isn’t quite right. He’s a bit more gawky, and his face isn’t as thin.

“N…N…Negi-sensei,” I stutter, and then my eyes meet his.

I think my knees almost gave way just now. Hwa… he’s cute.

He smiles at me in a tentative sort of way, and blushes.

I… I think my face is glowing.

I almost miss the angry growling from Asuna as she stomps towards him, but she brushes past me and grabs the front of his shirt.

“Negi, you IDIOT!” she screams, and swings a massive punch at his face.

I don’t really see it, but all of a sudden he’s under her guard, and hugging the stuffing out of her.

“Hey, Asuna, it’s so good to see you! I really missed you!” And then he pops away over to the others, leaving Asuna wobbling unsteadily.

He hugs the others one by one.

He picks Yue up and spins her around in his arms, laughing, leaving her eyes swirling, and an uncertain smile on her lips as he runs back over to me again.

“Eva-Sensei, T-Sensei, we should begin straight away,” he says, and grabs onto my hand, pulling me into the center of the room, and almost off my feet.

My feet don’t seem to move right.

He turns back to the others.

“Asuna-san, normally I would have let you punch me. I know I sort of deserve it,” he says, and reaches up nervously behind his head. “But we’re on a pretty tight schedule now, so you’ll have to do it later on.”

He pulls me over to where Evangeline has already set up a series of magic circles on the floor.

This is Negi-sensei, I keep telling myself.

But it’s… scary too.

I see T-sensei herding the others out, and I look down at the intricate rune work on the floor.

Then Evangeline starts the ritual.

Nobody has even asked if I agree to this.

“You… you’ve been training with a higher time compression?”

“Yeah. It was a bit lonely, but I’ll only get one shot at this, and if I made a mistake, or didn’t have enough power… Well, it wouldn’t be just me. The whole class would end up dead, and I can’t take any sort of chance with that.”

I start to feel Negi-sensei’s magic around me.

“I’m sorry, Nodoka-san, for imposing this on you.”

“I really meant that I would do anything to help you,” I reply, and smile at him. He’s the only one who has said sorry to me at all about this.

And then, all of a sudden, I’m drowning in a sea of magic.

When I surface again, I’m cradled in Negi-sensei’s arms, still in the magic circle.

And I can feel him all around me and inside me. My body is buzzing with his magic, and my mind is somehow full of his mind. My arms are around him, holding him tightly, but it just feels right. I don’t know if I could let go, even if I wanted to.

I tilt my chin up and look at him. He looks down at me, and feelings swirl through me, mine and his.

I even feel an echo of the pain when Eva smacks him on the side of his head.

“This is sickening, you two. Get yourselves under control, and then get out there and do what you need to.”

I focus on her, feeling the rush of centuries of memories just under the surface of her consciousness. Feel her desperate love for the Thousand Master, and her growing awareness of his son.

She blinks and lurches towards me with her fist rushing towards my face.

“Get out of my mind you little… yaaa!”

She screams when I grab her wrist and flip her high in the air over my shoulder.

I stare down at my hand, feeling the echo of my new strength, and a swelling feeling of pride from Negi.

I smile at him. I think that I can be his partner after all.

It doesn’t take us long to get outside. We rush past the others out onto the small part of Evangeline’s lawn that’s still inside the shrinking wards.

I look up at the girl. She’s young, maybe our age.

And maybe she struggles a bit to keep me out of her mind, but it doesn’t work.

I feel the desperation that led her to come here.

And I rip her understanding of the wards out of her mind, along with some diagrams and schematics. I think I hear her howl in pain, but I feed the knowledge on to Negi.

His magic aura snaps out.

He targets the weakest rune in the ward and a huge lance of light burns through it like a knife.

The second, third, fourth, and fifth wards soon follow.

And the girl from the future flees, disappearing in a flash of light.

I run my hand over Negi’s where it’s holding his staff, and give him a bright smile.

“I knew you’d do it, Negi-kun.”

“I couldn’t have…”

I know he’s saying more, but my head starts to spin, and my ears ring. I thought I was done with fainting for the day. I just wanted to spend some more time with my…

When I wake up, it’s night time. I’m in my bed at the dorms.

The feeling of connection I had with Negi isn’t there anymore. There’s a huge hole inside me where he was before. I can feel he’s there, somewhere. He certainly isn’t dead. But I just don’t feel connected anymore.

I’d think what happened was a dream, but Yue is sitting looking at me with sadness in her eyes.

I start to cry.

Not sobbing, but tears gather in my eyes, and then stream down my cheeks.

I’m supposed to be stronger than this now, but it’s just too much.

I know that we saved everyone, but just how much did everyone loose?

Eva might seem a bit mean here. But she’s spent the last few years training her cute apprentice alone, and now, all of a sudden, she has to hand him off to Nodoka. So yes, she’s resenting her, and it’s making her grumpy.