Chapter Sixty (Medaka Box)
Hakoniwa Academy was a big school. All things considered, with how the Flask Plan was integrated and everything else prepared, it couldn't be anything less that enormous. There was a certain sense of nostalgia, all things said, but it quickly passed. This wasn't the time for nostalgic sentiments.
No, all things considered, this wasn't the time for anything of the sort.
The Election Management committee was doing its best with Zenkichi's form, but he remained unresponsive. How could he be anything else after all?
This was the kind of Plane in which he died after being bitten by snakes, because the poison spread just a tiny bit faster than expected.
"There's nothing we can do once the heart stops," one of the masked students said, even as everyone else tensed up at Medaka's reappearance. I calmly walked past Medaka, my Pennon Blade in hand as I allowed the flag to flutter quietly even without a breeze.
I snapped my fingers as shining White Mana burst into existence to slam home into Zenkichi's chest, waking up the blond-haired delinquent-looking boy and settling his soul back inside his body. His body shuddered, and then his eyes widened as sight was restored to him. I watched the countless screws come barreling for me, and yawned as they were all deflected back into the walls, melted until nothing remained behind of them.
"Hello!" Kumagawa spoke, his face crisp and clean as if he hadn't been touched by anything, his smile dauntingly provocative. For a split second, his face had contorted with rage and hatred, but it had soon passed. He tried to smile a bit more, but it soon fell down. "Who are you? Bringing in someone outside the roster for battling doesn't look fair, but we are Minuses so I suppose losing was always meant for us," he sighed.
I raised a finger, and then cleanly wiped his upper torso out of existence.
There was silence as his lower half fell with a dull thud on the ground.
"There," I said with a sigh. "This way, he won't bother us for a while."
Everyone's eyes were on me within the next ten seconds flat, but I didn't really bother. I passed a hand through my hair, and then shrugged. "He'll get back on his feet soon enough," I remarked. "To kill him, you have to make him realize life is nice and fluffy," I snorted and rolled my eyes. "Now," I continued, "I will be taking my leave shortly," I began to draw Red Mana, gathering enough to form a compact sphere of energy. "I have a final important lesson for you, Miss Black God," and as I said that, the sphere detonated and vaporized everything and everyone in the immediate borders of the Academy, leaving behind nothing but scorched ground.
Medaka's eyes were wide as I merely stared at her with a bored expression. "Obey my laws," I snapped my fingers, and the very scene of hell reverted back to how it was mere seconds before. "Understood?"
Medaka looked to her friends, who stared back with a puzzled expression. Something had most definitely happened, but they couldn't understand what. Only Medaka had felt it on her skin, and seen it with her eyes. "What was that for!?" she yelled.
"Telling someone to obey, and ensuring they understand the consequences of disobeying are two different things," I explained quite plainly. "Should you ever begin to think that everyone else is below you...then know that no matter how below you they are, you are even further down when compared to the likes of me," I chuckled, and made a mock bow. "Now, go back to doing whatever it was that you silly children are doing around here," I turned to leave, extending a hand only to suddenly stop as a female figure wearing a typical Japanese dress of pure white with red linings grabbed hold of my wrist and turned her wide eyes to stare at me with a look akin to wonder.
She was also salivating.
No, honestly, the salivating part was perhaps the less problematic part of her entire being. She had no screws left on her body. Perhaps I shouldn't have vaporized Kumagawa only to later bring him back. I should have left him in a corner to sulk at his lack of an upper body for a while longer. My teacher would complain that my mercy was a bad point for being a Tyrant. How can you let someone truly learn to fear you, if you never actually leave their loved ones dead?
"Are you my fated white prince?" she asked with her eyes shining with tears.
"No," I answered curtly.
"Say it again!" Ajimu yelled, excitedly giggling. The fact was, I was the only one barring Kumagawa to know of her existence at this precise point in time. To everyone else, the already muddled situation had simply grown even more befuddled. "Say it again! Make this battle manga degenerate further! Shatter the fourth wall and destroy everything again!" she laughed brightly, clutching with both of her hands my arm and trying to make me spin, only to fail miserably. "I can't even begin to fathom the depths of your existence! No! No don't leave yet! Bring me with you! If everything is a lie then you're the one spinning the weave and being the weave at the same time! Come on! Bring me with you!"
I smiled gently. "No."
Her body flew past the Earth's point of Lagrange at a speed faster than that of light, my own breath evening out as I once more moved to open a rift, only for a pair of arms to encircle me from behind, and the side of a face to rub itself against my back.
"Oh! So mysterious! So dark! You didn't even waste time with monologues or rants! You came, you blew everything, you brought it all back in a single panel! Nobody even saw anything happen! Come on, I can cook, clean, and do the laundry! You look like you need a female figure in your life! I can be that girl! I can be any girl! Bring me with you outside the pages of this manga! You're the only one who can do it!" she cried out as she hugged me tighter still.
Out of everyone, it was the pissed off Kumagawa that actually came to my rescue. Well, he came to my rescue in the form of driving enormous screws into Najimi's body, pinning her on the floor with the most pissed off expression he could ever manage.
He then smiled as if nothing had happened. "Well then, isn't this sad? Love has blossomed like a rose and now it has to be cut." He was crying tears that were without a doubt both mocking and heartfelt. "I don't know how it happened, but just get back to being sealed."
The next second, the sandal-clad foot of the billions year old young high school student slammed home into Kumagawa's face, sending him to careen against the ground and hit the wall on the opposite side of the room.
The figures of Youka Naze and Hitomi Hitoyoshi, Zenkichi's mother, stood by the sidelines trying to understand just what the hell was going on.
"Just shut up! This is my one and only chance out of an infinity and I will never, ever, ever, let it go!" Ajimu snarled, "No amount of skills, abilities or abnormal mentality will work, so only my tender youth and tear-filled gaze can possibly alter the rock heart of my roguish White Prince!" She turned towards me once more, "If I need to beg and prostrate myself I will! A thousand lashes on my flawless white skin? Countless nails driven in my gums? Tell me what the price is and I'll pay it!" she was outright crying. "Bring me away from this manga world! Bring me out of here!"
I coughed, and then looked at Medaka.
Medaka stared.
She understood implicitly that she could do the same, and she knew fully well her abilities would eventually allow her to travel into other worlds. If I left Ajimu here, in this Plane, with this Medaka...
Next time, rather than a ten second waste of time with a simple enough spell, I'd spend hours with a ground invasion as I did with Genryusai.
Why did I never learn? You give people a finger, they take the whole arm.
You give someone like Ajimu a glance, and she marries you in secret and wastes centuries of your life sightseeing the Multiverse.
There won't be a second time. The Queen's thoughts arrived menacingly into the back of my head.
Ajimu began to cry.
Tyrant. Not. Again.
"All right," I said in the end, admitting defeat. "You can come with me, Najimi."
"Yes, dar~ling~," she said, her body gluing itself to my left side, her arms holding on firmly to my own as she rubbed her cheek against my shoulder. "Let's go, let's go, let's go," she continued in a set of frenzied whispers.
You never take me on dates around the Multiverse.
Q-Queen! You're the size of a small moon!
Did you just say I'm fat?
The better part of valor was, in the end, to know when to shut up and leave with one's own victories.
Because clearly, I had won the day, hadn't I?
