BLAZBLUE

Critical Anomaly

How had such a routine mission briefing gone so far off the rails, Kokonoe wondered. She reprimanded herself immediately. Whenever Celica was in a room, things went straight to dunceland. She wasn't even going with the other three. Ragna, Noel and Jin couldn't afford to be distracted while taking care of this task.

"Look, it doesn't matter what direction they're facing, as long as you set the transmitters up exactly where I've marked your maps," she said, rubbing her temples irritably. "This is why you aren't going, Celica. Your sense of direction alone would kill this mission entirely."

"You don't have to say it like that," Celica protested.

"Actually, yeah. Yeah I do," Kokonoe said in the true spirit of obnoxious contradiction.

"This prattle is getting us nowhere," Jin grumbled. "Can you just give us the maps? The longer I'm forced to stand around with my brother and this drek, the stronger my urge to stab someone gets."

"Sheesh, take a pill would you," groused the beastkin, "But we are on a clock, so I suppose I can wrap this up. No questions, right?"

"Actually…"

Noel raised her hand, much to Kokonoe's irritation.

"What is it?

"Well, I just wanted to know… will we be working with Tager on this."

Kokonoe sneered.

"Hoping you'll get a chance to slack off, are you?"

What!? N-No! I was just thinking that this sounded like his kind of job, that's all! I swear!"

"Calm down, I know. It was worth asking anyway, because I do have some info that you might find useful in that regard. He's actually running a few errands for me outside of the city, so he won't be available for backup in the unlikely event that you—"

She was interrupted by the sound of someone knocking frantically at the office doors.

"Now what?" she groaned. She stuffed a handful of barbecue chips into her mouth and crunched down on them ferociously. "Come in," she managed to say through a mouthful of food, "The hell is so important that you have to interrupt a mission briefing?"

"To be fair, we were just about to leave anyway," Ragna muttered under his breath, though he knew the professor could probably hear him anyway with her beastkin ears.

One of the doors flew open and Makoto bounced inside, managing to make the usually irreverent movement seem hurried. More surprising however was that Tsubaki followed her inside.

"Tsubaki! You came back!" said Noel. Jin clenched his teeth behind closed lips and massaged his temples. She had always had a habit of stating the obvious, and it was just one more thing he simply couldn't stand about his former subordinate.

"I wish I could say I was just here to visit, but you know what my responsibilities are. Normally the only reason I would have returned would be to kill the Grim Reaper…"

"Sorry, to interrupt, but I'm right here!" grunted Ragna. Meanwhile, Jin's left eye had begun twitching uncontrollably.

"Yes, I see you. Anyway, we have a bigger problem right now."

"Crazy fire monsters!" Makoto blurted. "And that's only part of the problem. Kokonoe, can you get a CCTV feed of it or something?"

"Who do you think you're talking to? Of course I can. I've got security cameras all over this city. We'll only be able to get it at 480p though. I've been having a connection problem lately."

"Just do it! Quick, we can't waste any time."

"Fine, fine! Don't rush me."

Kokonoe opened up some obscure program on her computer and typed in an obscure code, and then an image showed up on her screen: A creature that looked like it was made of fire was terrorizing Ikaruga's shopping district. It was shaped like a nail, or maybe a screw, with four lizard-like heads around the top. It was spinning uncontrollably and spraying fire everywhere.

"See that… uh, thing? It just appeared an hour or so ago and started going berserk. It's pretty resistant to our abilities," Makoto said.

"I'm hesitant to use the Izayoi's full power against a creature so base as this one. I was thinking that Jin might have more success with his ice ars magus."

"Noel has Bolverk," Ragna pointed out. "Whether they'll be of any help against something that's already burning'll be another story, but they're a Nox Nyctoris. Couldn't hurt to try, right?"

"Yes, we can use that," Kokonoe agreed. "This looks pretty serious though, so I'll be sending you with backup after all."

"But didn't you just say that Tager wasn't here?" Noel asked.

"What, do you just think I don't have anyone else available?" snarled the cat beastkin, shoving three more handfuls of chips into her mouth. Jin meanwhile, looked like he was about to have one of his 'episodes.'

"Sorry, but could someone get my brother outta here," Ragna said, noticing the situation, "He's totally gonna lose his shit if he stays in here for another minute."

Tsubaki blushed, almost like she was ashamed that Ragna the Bloodedge had noticed Jin's distress before her. She quickly walked over to him and took his arm.

"Jin, do you think you might be able to come with me for a few minutes?"

"Tsubaki, you realize that I can handle myself," the blond said in protest.

She nodded, but led him toward the door anyway. His eyes said otherwise.

"I know. It's not you I'm worried about. I do know that you've come to see one of my best friends as the bane of your existence since our days at the academy however, and I'd like Noel to stay in one piece if at all possible."

His only response was a noncommittal huff as she took him just outside the room. She was about to gently reprimand him for his odd behavior, from her admittedly limited perspective, when she saw a pair of people she hadn't seen in years.

"Haven't we already had this conversation?" asked the first girl.

"Look, I know we've been over this, but you still haven't given me a real explanation! That's all I'm saying," said the second girl.

"It's really complicated."

"Hey, if I could find a way to explain my gender identity to you, I think that you should be able to discuss your work. Do you think I'll hold it against you or something? I promise, no matter what you've done, my opinion of you won't change."

"Oh, Kajun, there you are," Kokonoe said in her most welcoming tone, which fell somewhere between 'I wish I were anywhere else right now,' and 'get the hell out.' "You brought your friend whatsername with you, right?"

"Mai. Mai Natsume," the other girl said, frowning.

Kajun wasn't dressed in an NOL uniform, opting instead to wear a plain seafoam sweater beneath a thin white jacket that was just a little too short to be called a lab coat, and a pair of leggings. She had lavender hair, held in place by a headband with butterfly wings on one side. She was carrying a journal full of dog-eared pages and colorful placeholders. Ragna squinted at the woman and decided that she had to be wearing makeup, and a bit too much at that. She evidently dressed to impress, but the person she wanted to notice her likely wasn't one of her superiors.

The other girl, presumably Mai, had rich violet hair, and she wore much less makeup than her counterpart. She wore a pair of black khaki pants held up by a belt of the same color with gold trim. Her shirt was a standard issue NOL uniform coat, and her only accessory was a yellow ribbon holding her long hair in a ponytail. A pair of swords hung from her right hip; one was silver, the other a mottled red, like rust, only distinguishable from the real thing by the polished sheen it gave off. Hanging from her belt was a frighteningly wide assortment of daggers.

After silently debating with herself, Tsubaki steeled her resolve and proceeded to rub Jin's shoulders, gently at first, then putting her fingers to work as she realized he was tenser than the atmosphere of a henhouse with a fox inside it. Jin on his part resisted for a few moments before deciding that being touched by her wasn't necessarily a bad thing, though the thought that she probably learned how to do this from that hyperactive squirrel wasn't the most comforting thought. Still, the fervent desire to fillet his brother like a tuna before turning his blade on Noel was receding back into the depths of his psyche, which was probably for the best. At least for the time being.

Tsubaki was just glad that he couldn't see her face, because despite her momentary bout of confidence, her face had gone redder than her hair. Her ears felt like they were on fire.

"What are the two of you doing here?" Noel exclaimed gleefully.

"Well, the two of us were assigned to work for Kagura after we graduated," said Mai. "Though he makes me really uncomfortable due to my, uh, unique condition."

"What condition would that be?" Ragna asked, raising an eyebrow. "You look like a perfectly healthy person to me. It won't be a problem will it?"

"That's not your business, Grim Reaper," Tsubaki snapped from outside.

"Maybe another time," Mai said, "when there aren't quite as many people. In any case, the two of us are in espionage," she grinned, "which is ironic, because Kajun happens to have been a spy for Sector 7 for an unspecified period of time, and still won't tell me how long."

"Look, that doesn't matter right now. We've got a bigger problem. Look at the screen," said Kokonoe impatiently. She took a few more chips out of the bag and popped them into her mouth one at a time.

"What in the world is that?" exclaimed Kajun, watching the footage.

"That's what I'm sending you to figure out. You two'll be joining the strike force we're sending to suppress it. Now, while I'd prefer it if you could bring it in alive, I'm not so unreasonable that I'd make the primary mandatory goal of your mission to capture a perpetually moving creature that also happens to be on fire. If the opportunity presents itself, trap it for me. Otherwise, don't hesitate to terminate the subject."

"Yes, professor," the two young women responded in unison.

"Okay, we've wasted too much time already. Now get moving, all of you, including the two currently having a heavy petting session behind the door," she added with a completely straight face.

Tsubaki, who had still been massaging Jin's shoulders, nearly had an arrhythmia. Had she been enjoying it too much? And how had Kokonoe even called her out on that? It didn't matter. She took a deep breath and composed herself.

"Are you ready to go?" she asked, pivoting around to his side.

Jin answered with a curt nod, and began following the rest of the group.

It didn't take long to track the monster down; it was a simple matter of following the screams, and there it was. It really did look like a molten screw, shooting flames off at random intervals in every direction from four lizardlike heads around the top.

"Yeesh, take a pill!" snarked Ragna as he batted a glob of fire back at the thing's heads with the flat of his blade. It jerked toward the Grim Reaper for a moment, but only in the way someone might twitch after being nudged. Deflecting its attacks back at it wouldn't do them any good.

Instead of going after Ragna, it seemed to be more interested in his brother. Jin narrowed his eyes and loosed a number of icy projectiles at the approaching creature. Unsurprisingly, the Ice Blades proved far more effective. It seemed to stagger, swiveling in a few random directions before finding its center of gravity again, though the speed of its rotations might have been a bit lower than it had been a few moments earlier, though it hadn't slowed down by any significant degree. Now fully focused on Jin, it bean pursuing him, forcing the swordsman to retreat.

Tsubaki tried to stop it from advancing too quickly, giving Jin just a few extra seconds to dodge out of the rampaging… thing's way while Ragna came in from the side, and dealt a sharp blow to the tip of the screw. His effort was rewarded when it tipped over, but it righted itself in midair before anyone had the chance to make an attack of opportunity.

"Damn… this thing is fast!"

Tsubaki was more than ready at this point and executed a flurry of attacks from the Izayoi, launching the creature into the air as a giant lance of energy erupted from the ground in front of her. Jin loosed a number of Ice Blades at it, hitting it in midair and knocking it onto its side.

"Do you think we got it?" asked Makoto. "Actually, don't answer that, it was a dumb question."

The screw jerked itself upright, roared, and began spinning towards Jin. Then Mai stepped up.

"Okay… let's see if this thing is as bad as it looks," she said. She selected a dagger from her belt; a blue one shaped like a wave, then drew her silver sword with a flash of ars magus. "Sword Seal: Wavecrest!"

The silver sword was suddenly enveloped in a shimmering coat of water and she lashed out at the spinning menace. Each strike from her sword cooled the molten creature's body ever so slightly, blackening it.

All four heads roared and started spitting globules of fire in all directions. Noel blasted a pair of them while Jin slashed right through another, raising a barrier of ice to catch one that would have hit Tsubaki. She vaulted over it and used her momentum to stab one of the heads, and let the spinning beast carry her in a circle before bouncing off, landing in a roll.

"Let's see if you can handle another," Mai growled. "Kajun! Let's hit it with everything we've got!"

"Alright!" agreed her partner. "I love it when you're feisty!"

Kajun flipped her ever-present notepad open to a bright blue crest emblazoned on the lined page. She held it out toward Mai and a jet of water burst from the pages, coalescing around her sword, increasing its power even further.

Mai didn't wait a second before she jumped into action, slashing away in a rapid flurry of strikes that trailed water behind them with each swing. Another roar sounded and the fiery monster made a beeline for her.

"Scutum Aquas!" Kajun shouted. A thick barrier of water materialized between Mai and her attacker. The screwbeast slammed into it and rebounded as though it had hit a solid barrier.

With a snarl, it looked around for the source of the ars magus impeding it. It took too long however and Jin was on it, smashing icicles the size of javelins into its heads. It swirled unsteadily but remained upright, though it seemed to be in a daze.

Mai capitalized on that opportunity and continued her assault with Jin flanking it. Tsubaki, not about to be outdone performed a complex aerial maneuver that launched it into the air with her Benedictus Rex technique, knocked it back to the ground with Lux Macto, before swooping down on it with Lux Aeterna. She was disappointed that it didn't have a noticeable effect, but it served as an excellent distraction. Jin and Mai struck at the same time, a column of ice spiraling out of the ground and spearing the monster, which roared in agony. However, it didn't retaliate. Not immediately anyway. Its rotations even began to slow down.

"Did you get it?" Ragna asked.

With the sound of water being sucked into a drainpipe, the enraged creature inhaled deeply and shot two rays of concentrated heat at Jin and Mai respectively from a pair of its mouths, blasting them to the ground. The air around the beams hissed violently, blurring with the heat. As they faded, the monster began twitching back and forth before seeming to decide that between the two opponents that were harassing it the most, Mai had to die first. And to that end, it did something they really hadn't expected of it: It jumped. And no small hop either. Shooting a jet of fire from the point of the screw, the four-headed monster careened high into the air and increased its rotation speed, whirling into a fiery drill. Another shot of flame from the central mouth and it spun towards Mai with all the force of a rocket.

"Requiem Maledictis!"

A volley of swords launched themselves at the creature, and while they didn't do any lasting harm to it, they nudged it off course so that it plunged into the ground a few feet beside Mai instead of searing her eviscerated remains to the pavement. She was still pelted with chunks of mutilated asphalt, but it was significantly better than being ripped apart.

"Thanks for the save, Tsubaki," said Mai, picking herself up and putting some distance between herself and the monster that was most certainly irate about missing its target.

"Don't mention it. Keep on your guard. It's probably going to come after you again."

"Reaping Thunder!"

"Or… Maybe Jin felt jealous of all the attention I was getting?" Mai joked halfheartedly as the monster swerved back toward the Hero of Ikaruga, having taken a direct hit from the Ice Fangs.

"Why won't this thing die already?" whined Makoto, "I can't do anything!"

Noel, still firing ineffectually at the fiery target overheard her friend's complaint and a fully formed idea presented itself to her. "Makoto, come over here and give me a boost!" she shouted, moving in closer and jumping as high as she could.

"Ten seconds of air time coming right up!" the squirrel beastkin followed suit, catching Noel's foot just before she started descending and launched her back up with all her strength. Noel maneuvered herself directly above the creature and shot a fierce barrage into the creature's central mouth. It shrieked horribly and made another jump, butting Noel back to earth, but the damage had already been done. It tried to spin toward her but like a top running out of momentum, it just swiveled awkwardly, losing its balance and tipping over and falling onto its side. It didn't get up this time. It was still thrashing about on its side however.

Jin ended that, driving a lance of ice through its central mouth, impaling the creature from top to bottom. With one last, desperate snarl, it finally stopped moving.

The fighters were suddenly forced to retreat a few steps as the screw rose stiffly to its upright position and the flames spiked in their intensity.

"It's still alive? This is getting ridiculous."

"No, I don't think it is, actually," Ragna said, cautiously approaching the flaming creature as it hung in the air. "Something's happening though."

The flames didn't last. After the initial spike, they began to die down, dwindling until they could just barely see something hovering at the center of the blaze.

"Can anyone tell what that is in there?" asked Makoto.

"Still can't see it clearly," said Ragna, squinting against the heat.

"Wait… is that…" Kajun trailed off as the silhouette came into focus.

"No way…" breathed Mai,

The flames died away, and the object floating in the middle fell to the ground, lifelessly, and burned beyond recognition.

"That thing… it was a person?!" Noel shrieked.

Before they had a chance to properly examine the body, it began turning to ash before their eyes, flaking apart and dissolving in the air, leaving behind nothing except for a scorched piece of metal.

"W-what? A… a frying pan?" Noel asked as the group gathered around the charred skillet.

Kajun knelt down and took a closer look, scribbling in her pocket notepad. Flipping a few pages over, she activated the same symbol she had used to aid Mai during the fight and spilled ice water over the hissing metal. She slid the pad back into her coat pocket, replacing it with a thin plastic glove and felt around the inside of the pan. It was still warm, but not hot enough to burn her anymore. It didn't take her long to find what she was looking for.

"Thought so," she shook her head.

"What?"

"It's not a regular frying pan. It's a grimoire; one that's been made available to the public. This one is, or more accurately, was used to accelerate the cooking process. These are popular items in kitchenware stores. It's just scrap metal now," she went back to recording data in her notepad.

"You could tell all that just by touching it?" Makoto asked skeptically.

"There's a ring of text around the inside. It's impossible to see now that it's all burned up, but I can still feel a slight difference in texture."

"I don't think I'd be able to tell at all," Noel mumbled.

"Don't worry. It's not your fault," said Kajun. "Figuring things out is my specialty." Picking up the skillet, she began walking back to headquarters, and Mai quickly matched her stride.

"I guess we should head back too," said Noel.

They were all startled when Kokonoe's voice started shouting at them out of nowhere.

"Aren't you forgetting something?!" she growled, "You know. My goddamn transmitters! The ones you've been carrying this whole time!"

Ragna shrugged, deciding they might as well get it over with. They set off in their own with the intention of meeting back up later.

Makoto and Tsubaki decided to accompany Noel while she completed her task, following her to the designated location and helping her construct the complicated gadgetry. It wasn't long before the three of them were returning to Kagura's NOL branch. Just before they arrived, they ran into Jin and walked the rest of the way together.

Ragna on the other hand wasn't quite as lucky.

"What the hell is that armless moron doing out there!" griped Kokonoe.

"Kokonoe, be nice," chided Celica.

"Easy for you to say! You don't have to keep an eye on everything going on in the city. Even if two of my devices are set up, it's not enough, especially when he turned his on prematurely and started moving all over the place, which means all my signals are being jumbled!"

"What if he's just helping someone out?"

"Then he should have left them in a gutter and finished his goddamn job before going off to do his own thing!"

Even if she wanted to keep things positive, Celica couldn't keep up with her niece's attitude. She left the room, promptly getting lost in the hallways. And as she wandered around, she happened upon the returning party.

"Hi Noellie! You're back! And so are you guys!"

"Hey Celica. How are things here?"

"Oh, you know. Kokonoe's having another temper tantrum because things haven't gone exactly according to plan, but I'm sure Ragna won't be much longer."

"Kagura hasn't tried anything funny has he?" Makoto asked.

"Nope. I haven't seen him all day. I think he might actually be working on something, because I haven't seen Hibiki anywhere either. Oh, and yesterday he asked me if I was available to have coffee with him this weekend. I think I'll take him up on that."

Makoto's face brightened. She knew what she had to do. Things weren't always so straightforward, so she liked it when they were simple like this.

"Hey, Makoto, are you alright? You look a bit like Tao after she eats too much catnip," Noel observed.

"Don't worry about it, Noellers. Now, if you'll excuse me, Imma go find Kagura and make him regret being a man. It's gonna be a productive afternoon!" she bounded off in the general direction of Kagura's office.

Tsubaki shrugged. Kagura might have been a serial dater, but she had to wonder what he did to Makoto that elicited such a vengeant streak.

Ragna was initially having an easier time setting up Kokonoe's transmitter than he had expected. He'd been forced to put it down when it opened up prematurely, but considering that his only inconvenience so far was a technical difficulty, he found things to be progressing a lot more smoothly than he was used to. After all, he normally attracted the who's who of crazy passersby. Which is why he was only superficially surprised when someone popped up from the other side of the device.

"Heya, Good Guy! Meow!"

"Oh god, it's you," Ragna groaned.

Tao stared inquisitively at the metal box and the several antennas lying on the ground before Ragna. Specifically, her attention was focused on the box.

"Is that a lunchbox, Good Guy?"

"No."

"Are you sure it's nyot a lunchbox?" she pressed, prodding the metal experimentally.

"Yes."

"If it's not a lunchbox, then what else could be inside it, meow?"

The notion that many things besides food could be put inside boxes was obviously lost on her.

"I'd explain what it really was to you," he deadpanned, "but you'll forget in a few seconds anyway, so I'm not going to bother."

Tao squinted at him for a moment, then asked, "Is Good Guy hiding food from Tao in this box?"

"I just told you that I'm not," he growled, inserting an antenna into the appropriate slot, where it immediately locked into place.

"But Tao wants food. Buy me some food, Good Guy!"

"Y'know, I would, but after what happened the last time, I'm afraid to do it again."

"But Tao's so hungry! Meow!" whined Tao.

Ragna shuddered. He was not going to break under the pressure of a mild annoyance.

"Can you at least tell Tao what's inside the super secret box?" she asked.

"Nothing really, just more metal and some wires. Maybe a few tiny ars magus devices and some circuit boards."

"But that doesn't sound like fun!" Tao protested, "Tao doesn't believe you, meow! Tao thinks there's food in there." She reached for the transmitter, only to have Ragna pull it out of her grasp at the last second.

"If you try to open this thing up, any more than it already is, there's a very good chance we'll both die. I got this from Kokonoe, and knowing her, if I break this thing I'm sure I'll activate a very lethal failsafe that'll kill me in a horribly ironic fashion."

The cat girl sighed.

"Okay," she whimpered. "I guess that Tao will just starve to death…right here…on top of your secret box… Meow."

She slumped over the transmitter. There was a click and a beeping noise, and Ragna snatched the device away from her.

"The hell did you do?" Ragna shouted, "Actually, never mind, just go get food from someone else!"

"But Tao's hungry nyow!"

"That's great! Go be hungry somewhere else and let me finish my job, before that crazy scientist decides to electrocute me!"

"Erecto-what?"

Another day, another hour in which Ragna found himself being driven to extreme lengths of frustration by a crazy person. It didn't help that he actually counted this particular crazy person among his closest friends.

Yep. This was his life now.

Finally managing to fold the machine back up, he continued his trek toward his destination; it was the rooftop of an upscale condo tower. According to Kokonoe's intel, none of the residents ever went up there because it was too dirty. So part of his job when he arrived was to thoroughly dust off the top of the vent to which he was to affix the transmitter.

"Good Guy! Come on, Tao wants food. Mew!"

"Trying to be cute will get you exactly nowhere with me."

Tao was bouncing around him like a crazed slinky. She probably had the same mental capacity as a slinky, come to think of it.

He arrived at the target building none too soon. Obviously going in through the front entrance was out of the question. He wouldn't be arrested as an SS Class criminal. In this case, he was just too poor to legally enter the building. So, only maintenance access for him. He opened the nondescript metal door in the alleyway beside the tower and walked inside. Nobody spared him so much as a passing glance. He didn't have any money, and was therefore not actually visible to the residents in this part of town unless he ran into one of them at high speeds.

How Taokaka was managing to scamper around him while walking up the narrow concrete staircase was a feat all on its own, but he really was a lot more impressed with his own ability to keep himself from dropping the device. At least the long journey to the top wasn't boring with her around.

Upon reaching the rooftop, the first thing he did was to begin looking for the designated air vent.

"What are we doing all the way up here, Good Guy?" she suddenly gasped, "Is there a super secret stash of om noms up here?! Meow!"

"No."

"Aww, meow…"

Approaching the vent from the side to avoid getting a face full of hot air, he wiped the metal off with his sleeve, which quickly turned grey from being used as a duster.

"Eww, what's Good Guy doing with all this dirt? Are you collecting dirt, Good Guy?"

"Taokaka, do leave this simpleton alone," came a familiar voice, "While I am certain that he more than deserves the psychological agony you're putting him through, I would be ever so disappointed should Kokonoe decide to murder him for being unable to complete his job."

"Rabbit?! What do you want?"

"Oh? Who says I want anything?" Rachel asked, her voice softer than velvet, "Perhaps I simply came here to chase off a stray kitten?"

"Tao isn't a kitty! Tao's a curvy grown-up cat!"

"Don't give me that crap!" Ragna grunted, ignoring Taokaka's protests, "When do you ever come around without something in mind for me to do?"

"My, such a rude little boy you are. But you are correct. I had hoped you might deliver something to Kokonoe for me."

"And why can't you do it yourself?"

"It seems that Kokonoe has erected a barrier around the NOL branch. I've had some difficulty warping in, as I would otherwise be wont to do. It's ever so inconvenient. Also, I happen to be in the middle of a game of croquet with Valkenhayn, so I really haven't the time to be standing around talking to a foul mouthed creature like the professor."

Ragna shuddered. With his luck, she was going to pull some sort of colossal monolithic pillar out of an interdimensional wormhole and ask him to lug it over to the NOL branch at the top of the city.

"Worry not, I'll not force you to do something unreasonable as you appear to surmise. She merely asked me if I could find her some silvervine. Now, while I'm normally not one to enable addictive behavior, as long as she continues holding herself to such high standards, I think she can manage."

She pulled out a box wrapped up in cloth, probably by Valkenhayn.

"And now I must return to the castle posthaste. It wouldn't do for a lady to keep her servant waiting. Do not fail me, Ragna."

She vanished in a scattering of rose petals.

And surprisingly enough, it appeared as though she had somehow managed to remove Tao from the transmitter when he wasn't looking.

"That damn Rabbit," he muttered, shaking his head.

Without Tao to distract him, initializing the transmitter was almost too easy. As soon as he figured out how to unfold the machine without breaking it, it was more or less a matter of pressing a power button and nailing it to the rooftop.

"What the hell's wrong with you?! You just turned the damn thing off! What the hell were you doing up there, anyway?!" Kokonoe snarled through his communicator.

"Would it kill you to be just a tiny bit grateful for a change?" Ragna stopped talking as a thought struck him, "Never mind, don't answer that, of course it would. Anyway, something tells me you won't be nearly as angry when I get back. I apparently have a delivery for you."

He pressed the power button again, received the go-ahead from the scientist, and made his way back down the many, many stairs.

Tao was dumpster diving in a large bin opposite the door as he left the building. She had tossed aside several non-edible objects including an ancient portable BluRay player, obsolete these days, a notebook computer that had a cracked frame but appeared to be booting up just fine, and a pair of publicly available grimoires, (one was a high-speed rice cooker, the other a multicolor pen that would write automatically based on the primary conscious thoughts of the last person to touch it. It was currently writing on the ground and had several lines going of the following:

Food? Is this food? Maybe this is food? I like food. Food. Tasty. Maybe there's fish in here? I like fish. Fish is food.

And it was.

But sadly, or perhaps fortunately, there wasn't any fish in the dumpster. Which was strange considering the multitude of much more expensive things inside it.

"Come on Tao, I'll get you something to eat."

"NOM?!" she blurted, her head popping out of the garbage pile.

Buy food for Tao? wrote the pen.

"Just… maybe spray yourself off with a hose before we hit a restaurant."

Later that evening, after Ragna had finally managed to get Tao to go take a nap in a nice sunny spot, he found himself getting hungry and headed to the mess hall inside the NOL branch. He happened to run into Noel on the way. He was fortunate enough to hear a few of the horror stories involving her cooking, so he offered to do the cooking. He wasn't good for anything other than instant noodles, but—

"Makoto, what are you doing?!" cried Noel.

The squirrel girl looked up at the two witnesses. She had both hands on Kagura's head, or rather, on the watermelon that his head was currently stuck inside.

"Drowning Kagura in a watermelon. What does it look like I'm doing?"

Ragna grinned, managing to suppress a fit of laughter.

"Well, good luck getting out of this one, Mutsuki. I don't know what you did to piss her off, but I don't see any way for you to escape. Not with her strength."

Watermelon-Kagura managed, momentarily at least, to straighten up, managing to look even more hilarious than he already did.

"It wouldn't kill you to get this thing off of me?" said Kagura, his voice muffled by the melon shell. "Just throwing that out there."

"Who knows, but I say, why risk it? I'm hungry, and I hear a can of pasta calling me."

"Well, this is the third watermelon Makoto's ruined by slamming my head into it, so before she causes any more damage to any more expensive fruits, could you maybe…"

"No. Not a chance."

"Ragna!" Noel cried.

"Hey, she isn't going to kill him."

"I know, but still…"

Makoto sighed.

"Fiiine, I'll stop. But I catch you flirting with any other innocent girls and I'll come up with even more creative way to ruin your life."

"Oh, for crying out loud…" Kagura groaned from inside the watermelon. "And can you at least get me out of this thing?"

"Oh, right," Makoto grumbled. She grabbed him by the head and smacked it against the corner of the countertop, breaking the watermelon open.

"Ow…" Kagura whined, his head covered in watermelon chunks.

Ragna had put a pot on the stove and was waiting for the water to boil, and noticed that there were more watermelons in the walk-in refrigerator. The gears started turning in his head. And Kagura noticed.

"Please tell me you aren't thinking what I think you are…"

"Sorry, but I probably am."

In one swift movement, he had snatched a melon from the fridge and placed it on the counter. Kagura made as though he wanted to run, but he was still dizzy from being inside a watermelon. Before he could save himself, Ragna had grabbed him by the arms and was forcing him over to the large fruit.

"Oh, come on! I just got out! Mercy!"

"You're asking for mercy from the man your own organization dubbed the Grim Reaper," Ragna said, grinning lackadaisically. "You see the irony, right?"

"Yeah, but I always found you to be a pretty swell guy."

"You didn't give me that impression."

Kagura dropped all attempts at diplomacy.

"I won't forget this you traitor!"

"Meh, it's not like we're friends."

—WHACK—

—SPLAT—

"You're a real dirtbag, Bloodedge," Kagura grumbled, once again inside a watermelon. He didn't know if his masculine wiles could work in his present condition, but it couldn't hurt to try. He turned up the charm. "Hey, uh, Noel. You couldn't help a guy out and get this thing off my head, could you?"

Despite her initial protests, Noel failed to suppress a giggle. And she quickly found herself laughing uncontrollably.

"I-I'm s-sorry. Heeheehee! Really! I mean it! It's just… it's so funny!"

"Thanks for coming around to my side, Noellers," said Makoto, briefly popping back into the kitchen.

"I can't help it!"

Ragna went back over to his pot, the water now at a rolling boil. He opened two cans of noodles and poured them in.

"You know, this might be the first time I've actually cooked something for himself in months," Ragna muttered to himself. Considering his lack of funds, he was shocked at how often he found himself eating out.

"Well, I'm certainly not letting you eat here again anytime soon," groaned Kagura. "You just…wait till I get out of this thing…somehow…"

That would be the key word.

Somehow.

Kokonoe shut off her video feed. It would keep recording even with the screen off. She might have to thank Ragna for giving her such hilarious CCTV footage. And for bringing her the latest shipment of silvervine for her candies.

Nah.

Besides, she'd be busy anyway. She was running out of candies and would definitely need to get her production line up and running again soon. She stuck one of her last pops into her mouth and leaned back in her chair as the other monitors turned off. She needed a nap.

Those transmitters weren't easy to build after all.

Author's Note: Welcome to the actual story. You might remember the preview story featuring a pair of gag reels. It's on the second page of the BlazBlue section now if memory serves. I currently have a lot of other things that need to be worked on, so it's unlikely that this story will reach completion any time in the near future, but considering the lack of BlazBlue fanfiction that mostly fits in with the canon, I hope you enjoy this.

The only difference from canon here is that Ragna hasn't lost his memory at the end of ChronoPhantasma after briefly (and catastrophically) failing to contain the power of the Azure Grimoire. So, pretty much everything's dandy except for the rather troubling fact that Izanami and Nine are still at large.

That said, it's unlikely that they will show up anywhere in the very few chapters that this story will contain. Ten at the most. Updates will be slow and inconsistent, but I will hold myself to my usual high standard of quality.

Edit: April 28th, 2016 - Only been up for a day, and I noticed a boatload of typos. And I still haven't fixed them all... What did you just say about quality, Draconic?! What. Did you just. Say?