On the plus side, it had been the most successful Mahorafest ever. It even had brought illustrious visitors from overseas.
As Bruce Wayne rested on his back on a rooftop, barely able to move and looking up at the nocturnal sky, his costume reduced to black tatters and half a mask, his usually bright and highly strategic mind only could think of how zeppelins were much cooler in Gotham. Dark gray, sleek police zeppelins patroling the skies, a far cry from the lime-green extravagant monstrosity floating high above him and the rest of the school, with a bold 'CHAO BAO ZI' written in huge red characters on its sides.
"It's funny, huh?" Evangeline Mc Dowell mused, sitting at his battered, fallen form's side on the rooftop. "You come all the way from America, once again, to meddle into the affairs of a community you detest..."
"... I don't detest... the Japanese... You are... projecting..." the Dark Knight grunted.
"I'm talking about the magical community," Eva huffed, waving a hand in a circle. "And all of it for what? For once, you've been out-gambited, and now the fate of your precious world rests in the hands of a simple boy... whom Yours Truly happened to train into what he is now, mind..."
"Good. So whatever happens next is your fault," he grunted, vainly trying to get up once more.
"I guess it is," Evangeline said, her green eyes fixed on the zeppelin.
"It's truly amusing, in a way!" the petite but fit and athletic black haired girl with fair skin and rosy cheeks laughed softly, suspended in the nocturnal air charged with electricity, as if she lacked any weight. "Before this, I had never truly known a single moment of peace. Now that I stand on the edge of losing everything for good, however, I feel finally at ease, as if nothing of what drove me before mattered that much anymore. Except because it does, but now I can see that for what it is, with a clear mind. Thank you helping me realize that, Negi-bouzou."
Standing on the top of the zeppelin, with a long gray coat wrapped toghtly around her and her long black hait flapping on the furious winds, occassionally slapping her back on the face, Skuld shouted angrily at her. "Chao, stop toying with him already, will you?! You still can stop him, if you put all of your power into a decisive attack! Don't hold back anymore!!"
"The last two years have been fun," Chao told Negi Sprinfield, stoically blocking Skuld's demands with a small bitter smile, "but it's all a faint dream to me now. And I'm waking up."
The boy floating before her, standing on his wooden staff, said nothing.
This seemed to piss her off, for once. Her unflappable smirk was replaced by a dark frown. "So, the discussion is over. Fine with me, then." She raised her hands and chanted, "Last Tale My Magic Scir Magister! Heed our contract and serve me, tyrant of flame!"
"Ras Tel Ma Scir Magister!" Negi shouted. "Come, O wind spirits of lightning!" Gesturing violently with both hands, electricity crackled around his fingers.
Chao clenched her teeth. And a massive ball of fire came to be between her hands. "Come, flame of purification, yer fiery broadsword!" Jumping up into the sky, she tossed the flames down at him. "Fire and brimstone, surge forth!"
"Let the southern storm blow with lightning!" Negi screamed, just as dramatically, and the ray flew up from him, directly towards her.
"Sodom ablaze, to the dust of death with the sinners ye cast!"
"Jovis Tempestas Fulguriens!"
"Ouraniā Phlogōsis!"
And their respective spells collided in mid-air, illuminating the night as much as the Sun would have for a moment, causing a lot of panic and awe across the campus that waited expectantly under them. There was a deafening boom, and both fighters were sent reeling back across the air, yet they promply regained their pose almost instantly, before they could plummet to their dooms. Negi had to latch onto his father's staff right at the last instant, but as soon as his hand had a firm grasp on it, he threw himself back on it, quickly reaching the necessary balance once again. He breathed heavily, however, and the long drawn battle's toll was finally evident on his hunchbacked, bruised figure.
Chao, suspended in the middle of the clouds like a limping doll, her clothes badly shredded, her long braids undone and letting ebony hair cascade over her bleeding face and shoulders, smiled sweet, vacantly at him. "You win. Negi-bouzou," she fondly said before closing her eyes and allowing herself to fall.
She had failed. No matter how much, how hard she had tried, she had failed. Again. But at least, this would be the last time. Now she would rest from her ultimately pointless, insane self imposed Sissyphean task. And the cold air hitting her face as she spiraled down felt actually nice, like harsh caresses.
Then she was reminded Springfields weren't supposed to be quitters. And all it took was that small, yet steely hand tightly closing around hers, stopping her freefall. Chao cringed as the whiplash of the abrupt stop sent a massive wave of pain through her neck, but both she and Negi knew that wouldn't be nearly enough to kill her. Crashing down on the grass from that height might have done the trick, though. Not that she would get to learn that that night.
She opened her large, round, now utterly sad eyes again to stare at the battered boy floating right above her, and holding for her as much if not more as he held to life itself. "So," he dryly rasped, interrupted by a short fit of cough, "I get to choose my prize, then. And that will never be your death, Chao-chan."
She cracked a smile that was literally painful for her. "... chan?"
He smiled back, pretty much the same way.
Akamatsu Ken created Negima and Kodansha owns it, but you already know that.
Others created the other things mentioned here. I don't own or make any moolah from any of those other things either.
Unequally Rational and Emotional Special.
Where There Was Fire...
Once again, the Mahora night was decorated by beautiful lights, but now the atmosphere was peaceful and sedate, contemplative even, as Ala Alba and their allies gathered near the World Tree, to see Chao Lingshen slowly ascend towards the colorful lights, in a perfect vertical line, with a small, sad, lingering smile.
"So long, Negi-sensei, everyone," she softly said.
"Chao!" Negi said, now suddenly running towards her, startling Satomi and Skuld, who had been standing at each side of him.
"Let's meet again!" she added, waving a hand up.
"Chao!" he cried, trying to reach up into the light, for her. "I've changed my mind! I do have something to tell you!"
The raw emotion in his voice further shocked Ayaka, Haruka, Misa, Chisame, Mami, Touko, Yue and Natsumi, long enough for a sighing Asuna, shaking her head to herself, to be able to take a hold of the alleged Linsghen Family Tree they had been fighting for, and for her to throw it into the lingering fire of some nearby battle rubble.
"Chao, I need to confess this!" Negi screamed at the top of his lungs. "I l--!"
Then he was as surprised as everyone else when someone fell from the middle of the lights, from far above Chao, landing on her head with a sharp heel and keeping her other long leg doubled, presumably to spare Chao the pain of having yet another heel trying to puncture her skull. How kind of her. "--CHAO!" Negi yelled.
Chao, who was now on her stomach on the grass, rubbed the small fresh wound on her head with a hand. "Owie owie owie, what was the big idea, you--!" Then, as she lifted her face to get a good look of the seething woman standing over her, holding a very long staff, she actually grinned widely. "Ah? Ritsuko-san! What are you doing here?"
"And why wouldn't I be!? You were just about to slip away to break even more laws of continuum preservation, enough is enough already!" the angry woman with short, blonde hair in a Sailor Senshi uniform who had just dropped onto Chao grabbed her by the collar and began rattling her back and forth, only making Chao lugh dumbly. "And stop giving my identity away, will you?!" the woman yelled at her. "Haven't you had enough with all the times you've changed the timestream? Do you have any idea how many times I've nearly been erased out of existence nd replaced by the elders because of that?! What do you have against me?! Why do you want to ruin my job and my life so much?!"
"Erased out of existence, you say?" asked Itoshiki-sensei, blinking in interest.
Chao chuckled, a major drop of sweat on her head. "Come on, you know I was sorry, I had been sorry, I am sorry, I have been sorry, I will be sorry, and all the other verbal times they haven't invented yet... But I obviously haven't changed the timeline enough, so you're still alive and rocking at your job, and it all ended up more or less okay, right? Well, except for my future, so I'm the only real loser at the end of all of this, but who cares about that anyway, right--?"
"No more, Chao Lingshen, I said no more!" Akagi Ritsuko, Sailor Pluto, growled on her face, her ever-present cold and calculating attitude replaced by sheer anger born from stress and despair, a quite ugly purplish vein protuding from a temple of pale delicate skin. "Starting now, you're forbidden from traveling through the timestream again, are you listening? You will have to sleep on the bed you've made! Stop trying to fix what wasn't broken in the first place! And then making it broken! We don't want any more of your timequakes around!"
"... you're aware Future Me will find a way around that, right?" Chao asked. "Also, if I didn't have enough of a good reason to believe the future wasn't broken, I wouldn't have--"
"FINE, SO YOU CAN'T GO BACK TO THAT FUTURE, SO YOU WON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT IT ANYMORE! HAPPY NOW!?"
Ookuchi Akira walked closer to the duo, calmly greeting the older woman. "Good evening, Pluto-san. Nice to meet you again, but please unhand my classmate before I am forced to strike at you."
Chao blinked, genuinely moved. "Ahhhh! Would you really hit her for me, even after all I did?"
Akira nodded sedately. "I might end up accidentally hitting you as well in the proccess, but that wouldn't be because of any grudges I might hold against you. All the same, Pluto-san, if you left her in this time period, wouldn't that end up causing more paradoxes than simply letting her go?"
"THAT'S CLASSIFIED INFORMATION! Ahem, I mean, sorry, I meant that's Classified Information, how do you do," Pluto said, acknowledging Akira's presence with a small nod, and lowering her voice, although not Chao, in respect. "All I can say is it would be far less problematic to address any further damage this troublemaker could cause from the future than keeping her in a les advanced era."
Chao smiled. "Or is it that I've changed the future after all? Oh, my timeline doesn't even exist anymore, neh? That's so good to hear, and you even saved me from heading into a void...!"
Sailor Pluto glared darkly at her. "If I had just done that, which I'm not saying I just did, I would be inwardly kicking myself like no woman has ever done right here and now," she icily told the time fugitive.
"It is greatly appreciated," Akira said, "but, what truly worries me is not so much Chao-san's presence, but that I'm afraid our friends won't stop pressuring her on the topic of things they really should not learn yet."
"..." said Ala Alba.
"I'm sorry," Akira quietly told them. "But you have all but tried to kill each other over a simple family tree of Sensei."
"Killing is too strong a term," Chisame groaned, "crippling is probably more accurate, and some of us had no interest on the stupid thing itself but on--"
"What Chisame-san is trying to say," Ayaka interrupted, forcefully stepping between her and the others, and raising her voice over Chisame's, "is that we only wanted to calm our companions' spirits through judicious application of strenght, but should Chao-san stay for any long after this, we would all be mature enough as to respect her secrets and the reasons behind them! We all would understand the need to allow events run their course naturally, and we already know who is the woman fated for Negi-sensei anyway..."
"They will have me tortured and quartered in a mad bid for info before a single week is over," Chao matter-of-factly told Ritsuko. "If this is your idea of ensuring my demise with the addition of untold pain and suffering, congratulations, it has worked out much better than abandoning me to a void."
Negi embraced her tight and protectively then. "No, I won't let them do anything to you, Chao!"
"Hey, why are you hugging her, now?!" Misa demanded. "She's our granddaughter, remember?!"
While Skuld sighed and facepalmed, and a giggling Ku Fei ran past Negi to tightly hug Chao after Sailor Pluto finally dropped her into Negi's arms, Batman appeared right behind the perplexed Chisame and Tsunetsuki Matoi. "Hnh," he said. "I suppose I can tell Booster everything worked out, then..."
"AH!" Matoi gasped. "You were there?!"
"Yes, always."
"... okay, that's not cute at all when it's a grown man in black body armor doing it..."
