All Purpose Negima Fanfiction Thread

"Setsunaaa! Heeeey! Over heeeeere!"

Her enthusiastic greeting shakes me back to reality. "Konoka Konoe."

I return her cheery call with a sedate wave, even as I scan the street for potential threats.

I don't see anything amiss today, but after what happened in Kyoto, I can't afford to slip up again.

Her smile dims. "Setsuna? What's wrong? You seem down today."

When I stabbed that woman in the leg... she smiled at me. "You're imagining it."

"Oh, you're such a naughty one, aren't you Setsuna? But then, that's why I love about you. You're so much more.... aggressive than most."

Tsukuyomi Aoyama. She is... twisted, distorting the goodness and peace out of this world by her very existence.

"Setsuna, your hand!"

I stop, abruptly, and look down at my hand. Without realizing it, I clenched my fist so hard it broke the skin...

"Here," Konoka anxiously says while producing her new practice wand, "let me fix you up."

".....sorry."

Konoka pauses, looking up at me. "What for?"

I glance down at my hand. "I made you worry."

After a moment, her smile returns, as small and kind as a mother's.

"—please stop! why are you doing this?!" The gun in my hand fires twice, and the woman falls down.

"Oh, Setsuna.... you've been my friend for years, now, and you've always been protecting me. I actually kind of like it, when I can do something for you sometimes."

I want.... to protect that smile, and the kind words that are accompanying it.

But as long as the world remains twisted, peaceful moments like this will never be able to last.

As Konoka heals my hand, I half-consciously re-adjust the wrapped-up sword on my back. "I will..... cut out the twistedness from this world."

_______________

Another Side, Another Story

The princess of Azadistan looks at me with a tenderness that I haven't experienced in years — since before I was exiled from Japan — and with an awe that I've never experienced period. "Setsuna, I.... I don't care what anyone else might have to say about it. Your wings are beautiful," she says.

As she softly envelops me in her arms, and the world starts to seem like a warmer place, it's all I can do to try and restrain my tears.

Last night, she’d been introduced to the clergy of the god Cayden Cailean, given a mug of ale and help up the stairs to one of the finer rooms. Even the drink they gave her was excellent. She introduced herself and excused herself on account that she was tired. And much to her astonishment, the room was virtually soundproof without her interference.

She could only remember sleeping in a bed that soft from before… her relocation. As much as she disliked it, her slave Gracknir had to dress her, on the basis that she was a noble now, and ‘nobles need help getting dressed, to save their energy for their daily duties.’ But Gracknir wasn’t here now and she had to get dressed herself.

While getting dressed in more relaxed clothing provided by Sarenrae’s church for her, she thought back at Gracknir. The little kobold had been bold when they first met, and her claiming him as her own was approved by the drow. Personally, she hated the idea of having slaves, but seeing how slaves were treated generally by the drow, she couldn’t bring her to let him go. Someone else could feed him to the giant lizards or use him as a training dummy. She wondered how he was faring now.

Probably beaten by her master and punished for letting his mistress out of sight.

Nodoka found a mirror and inspected her new outfit for traversing the Parthenon (a name she settled for since it housed all the gods of the new pantheon), and found that it was a lot more fancy than expected. It was a brightly colored dress with a flowing water pattern and metal stitching of celestial bodies, like the sun and the stars. They even got her some fancy shoes. She wasn’t crazy about shoes, but these were really nice.

If only she didn’t have a broken-

Wait.

Nodoka prodded her broken leg with her fingers. It barely felt painful. In fact, the only pain she felt there was… from the fingers. She set aside her crutch, undid the splint and removed the bandages. And then she stomped with the leg.

...nothing. No pain, no immediate cracking… or anything.

For the first time in a long time since living with the drow, she could allow herself a big, almost tearful smile. “Oooh, She’s a sneaky one,” she told herself and left the crutch where it was to head down for a happy breakfast.

The proprietors were happy to provide her with a private table along with a ham sandwich, two pears, a roasted fish and a jug of apple juice with a glass. The ham sandwich was to celebrate the healed leg. That and, Nodoka had gotten a fair bit of gold over time so she had money to splurge.

As for her first stop of the day, she really didn’t have one, save get a brief overlook of the deities. Of course, the Parthenon didn’t exactly hand out brochures about the place, either. So she would have to wander and ask around for these gods, too.

Course, she could always stay here and talk to the priests of Cayden Cailean, as well. That’d be a nice start.

That’s round about when a young man came up to her. “Read the news?” He handed her a… newspaper? They have newspapers here? “You’re on the front page.”

She checked and found that she was. The story of Madivh Baenre had apparently spread through the Parthenon, of a girl who had come looking for a new patron god after being ripped away from her old one. The details were mainly glossed over, and her life had been ignored, but the main issue of her stay was revealed. “Really?” She asked. “I’ve only been here two days and I’m on the front page right away?”

“Well,” he said and sat down opposite her, “faithless aren’t well known round these parts and you have made it clear why you’re here.”

“Yes. I’m here on penance as well. Can’t go beyond the walls,” she clarified. “...on the other hand, I may have better luck getting some of the churches here more open for… evaluation.”

“Evaluation?”

“Yeah, I know, stupid. Closest I could get.”

He chuckled a bit at that. He must have found it funny. “So, pilgrimess,” that made her smile as she put the paper down. “Where are you going first?”

“Don’t know,” she answered honestly, “haven’t decided yet. And there’s no brochure to help, either.”

“What’s that?” He asked. She explained. “Huh… Abadar would sound pleased about having something like that. Might even attract more pilgrims here.”

“Maybe. But I’m not in a rush to make one, nor do I know where everyone is.”

“But you’re in Cayden Cailean’s church right now,” he pointed out. “Surely you could start here?”

“Sounds a bit lazy,” she complained.

“Hey, no one said that you have to work all the time, now did they?”

She snorted. “And I assume that you’re a priest here?”

He shrugged. “You could say that. We don’t have a hierarchy ourselves.”

Nodoka merely looked at him. “Okay, first off, I think I need to hear about Cayden first in general.”

“Uh uh, it’s Cayden Cailean. Always with the surname,” he insisted. “Okay, first… Cayden Cailean is an Ascended.”

“You mean that he was mortal once?”

“Yes, hence the surname. He was a mercenary, living on the skill of his blade and on the nourishment of wine and ale.”

“There was probably a bit more than that he had to stay alive,” Nodoka had to point out.

“Maybe, but I daresay He won’t say what He had. Wine’s more famous. He’s also quite fond of personal freedom. Not one for many rules, that One.”

Hang on, hang on,” Nodoka interrupted, “if He doesn’t have rules, then how can you be organized as an official religion? Uh, no offense.”

“None taken, it’s an often asked question,” he replied. “We prefer simple tenets, and we mostly are common folk who prefer simple contentment in our lives, have a drink with our friends. Leave the hard work to the other gods, we appeal to the enjoyment of life itself day by day.”

Nodoka managed a small laugh. “I know of someone who would enjoy your church very much.”

“Of that, I have no doubt,” he told her with a flirtatious tone.

“No,” she bluntly told him, “but wait, you guys don’t commit to fighting evil?”

“Oh we do,” he told her. “Our mighty fine boys out there are more than happy to fight evil wherever it rears its ugly head.”

“Nagi Springfield would certainly like you guys.” She sighed. She hasn’t given thought about the Thousand Master for years now. She could probably find him with her scrying now, but still. First she had to get back home. “I’m not fully sold on the whole lack of rules for my part.”

“We find rules too overbearing. There simply is no justice in a law that oppresses one person to benefit another, and laws in general can choke the people for the benefit of their rulers and thus sometimes it is better to live without rules.”

“Yeah, but at the same time, some people find themselves in need of rules for their own protection. If there were no rules at all, then it would be anarchy. People could live in fear of one another, not knowing whether or not they could turn out good or bad. You can’t simply say that rules are bad, period, when the same thing can be said about there being no rules,” Nodoka pointed out.

“Hmm, true,” he scratched his chin. “Suffice to say, Cayden Cailean doesn’t believe that there should be no oppressive laws, that’s all. When people have had enough of laws that puts them down in favor of the privileged few, that’s when we turn up for them.”

“And when the oppressors have been sent running for the hills and the people are free of the bad laws, what then?” She asked. “Do you try and do something or do you prefer to leave that to someone else?”

“As I said, leave the hard work to the other gods,” he replied.

Nodoka sighed. “Well, that’s good for you, I suppose.” Her tone was suggested with disappointment and a lack of relief from hearing the words.

“Shame,” He said.

“What?”

“You’d make a great crusader for the oppressed.”

“Yes, I would, but I’m not sure Cayden Cailean is for me.” She got up from her seat and went for the door. She had a good day still to see another temple. But just before she opened the door, she turned around. “By the way, how did Cayden Cailean become Ascended?”

He just shrugged it off. “Even He doesn’t know?”

“What.”

“He took the Test of the Starstone on a drunken bet. He has no memory of what happened.”

Nodoka just stared. And then she shook her head and walked out.

Standing her own ground by his side and holding four shiny jewels in each hand, Tohsaka Rin began answering, “Well, Emiya-kun, judging from—What the hell, Emiya, that’s no Servant! Something that ridiculous looking couldn’t be a Servant!”

“Your Servant is a talking duck,” she was reminded by the smug, slimy bastard with purple seaweed hair standing by the hanging Sakura, his arms folded.

“My Servant,” Rin indignantly said, “is a sleek, stealthy creature of the night, a boogeyman perfectly suited for urban warfare. He just happens to look like a duck! This thing, on the other hand, is just plain idiotic looking!”

“Fumo fumo fumoffu! Fuuu!” Bonta-kun said, raising his weapons and opening fire.

Sagara Sousuke’s mind felt like it was burning. Raised to become the ultimate soldier since he could first remember, he’d been educated with an unyielding sense of mental discipline and fortitude. As part of his hellish training in the harshest jungles and deserts of the planet, he’d been conditioned—most would say downright tortured—into resisting pretty much any sort of brainwashing inflicted upon him by an enemy.

However, those were methods of resistance taught by humans—if such a term applied to the child’s instructors—and to be used against ‘normal’ humans. Sousuke’s trainers and teachers were not magic users, and there was nothing they could do to prevent magical trances and hipnosis from being imposed on him.

Still, the basic principle still applied to some degree. All forms of mental subjugation, magical or not, rely on bending the victim’s willpower. And Sagara, through too many long nights of physical and psychological damage, had emerged with a terrifying willpower that wouldn’t make him quit in battle. Unless said battle was one he wasn’t intended to be taking place in the first place. Sagara’s subconscious, right now, was more concerned on fighting the influence applied on him than on fighting his enemy’s enemies.

That was the sole reason why his shots missed as they flew over the heads of the quickly dodging Shirou and Rin. Nimble as they were from years of training of their own, they still would have been perforated multiple times against an expert shooter armed with precision fast handguns. There was, after all, a damn good reason why Kiritsugu had earned a life out of shooting magi dead, and why all Mahora magical teachers but Takamichi, Negi and Itoshiki chose avoiding contact with Tatsumiya whenever possible. You never knew.

“Kill them, Bonta-kun! Kill them!” Shinji cackled, waving a fist in circles joyfully as Sakura clenched her teeth and worked harder on undoing her binds. Rin, grunted, tried a leg sweep at one of the Bonta’s thick, chubby legs, but felt herself like kicking on a brick wall. They were too close for her to feel comfortable using her best attack spells, but the plus side was now they’d gotten close enough to avoid being shot at, for the most part.

Shirou swung from a side, bashing Bonta-kun’s temple with one of his sticks, but other than shattering it into splinters and dropping the mascot’s hat, he achieved little to nothing. Bonta-kun easily countered by placing one of his guns right under Shirou’s chin, but in the nick of time, Rin pushed her fellow Master aside, so when Sagara pulled the trigger the bullet simply flew harmlessly through the ceiling instead of Shirou’s skull.

Taking half a moment to whisper a “Thanks”, Shirou reached for one of the nearby display telescopes and reinforced it to replace the lost stick, then jammed it into Bonta-kun’s prominent belly. Again, it seemed to have no effect whatsoever, as the telescope simply bashed against the thick layers of padding filler in the suit, but that give Rin enough time to rise with a flying kick to the mouse’s face.

“C’mon, Bonta-kun, you’re a natural born killer! King of the jungle!” Shinji gestured vehemently. “Stop playing with them and do ‘em already!”

Sakura snarled, almost done, snapping another line of rope before going to work on the last one. She could see her sister and Sempai working together to bash the guns off the Bonta-kun’s hands, but just as quickly, Sagara replaced the pistols with two large knives that seemed to pop from the suit’s wrists, and he swung them with stabbing intent. One of them cut Rin in a shoulder, making her hiss in brief pain, while Shirou could block the other with his telescope. Shinji was gnawing on one of his thumbs now, contemplating the scene with growing apprehension, and completely oblivious to his captive by now. Good.

Sakura could hear heavy noise, thuds and crashes, coming from way below in the building. It sounded like Vigilante and Monster were bringing the house down around themselves, perhaps literally, which was quite worrying in its own right. Should the observatory collapse at any point, Sakura knew well nobody but the Servants would survive it. She only hoped that, should the worst come to pass, Vigilante could be adopted by Negi-sensei or someone else in his team… but this wasn’t the time to think of that.

Bonta-kun was forcing Rin and Shirou back, but then that only gave Rin more room to use spells without hurting herself or Shirou. She snapped her fingers, shouted something drowned by the sounds of the battle below, and a small blast of radiance flew from her fingers into Bonta-kun’s eyes, making Sagara stumble back for only a moment, before retaliating with a spinning kick that caught Shirou in the chest, crashing him against a wall.

It took all of Sakura’s willpower right then to restrain herself from shouting “Sempai!”