Afura and Makoto on Love by Eponymous (Note the letter "o" in that sentence. Not the ones in "Makoto" or "love", mind you, but the one that keeps the phrase "in love" from appearing in the sentence. As can be plainly seen, the title is not meant to indicate any romantic attachment between the two, but rather that they shall in this story be discoursing on love.) (Note the complete lack of any innuendo in the previous sentence. I mean it. There's none. Discourse is nothing dirty. It is merely a form of social intercourse. That is all Afura and Makoto will be doing in this story. Intercoursing, socially.) (Why are you all looking at me like that?) "-but this 'Ignore it and it'll go away' plan of yours simply isn't working!" finished Afura, having been joined already in progress. "I know, but what else can I do?" asked the apparently-not-so-dense-as- we-thought Makoto Mizuhara. "You could try telling them outright." "I've tried, believe me I've tried." Of course, he didn't have to ask for her to believe him. He was Makoto. The boy exuded honesty the same way a musk ox exudes ox. "But you think *I* can play dense? You haven't seen anything until you've seen Shayla pretend to be so engrossed with finding the exact decimeter where the blue part of the flame meets the red that she can't hear me. And Nanami suddenly noticing stuff around my lab in the middle of my every sentence. 'What does this do? What does that do? How many protons in that molecule? Well would you count them for me? Hey, look, a UFO! And there's a fish flying it!'" he mimicked. "That's positively tragicomic, in a bathetic sort of way," Afura thesaurized. "After that I tried being mean to them to drive them away, but the minute I got the opportunity to say something cruel, my throat would lock up. So then I tried just staring at them angrily." "And?" "Nanami asked if I needed glasses. Apparently my angry stares leave something to be desired." "Well, you could try proclaiming your love for Ifurita to the heavens. They'd be hard pressed to ignore it if everyone knew." "Yeah, but once Ifurita got back and heard about it, she'd think I was an obsessed geek." "Makoto, you have an A-triple-plus average in every subject and you spend every waking hour in your laboratory, excepting trips to the lavatory. Now what does that tell you about you?" "I don't know, but you forgot to mention my unhealthy case of denial." "So I did. Makoto, I think what you have to realize is your inability to tell them you don't love them comes from the fact that you love all of them." Makoto's eyes brightened. "Is polygamy legal in El-Hazard?" "Only if you're royalty." "I can pass for royalty!" Makoto perked. Afura kicked him in the crotch. "If I had a cup..." he wheezed, "Agh! Ow! Darn it! Curse it! Consarn it! Confound it!" Afura had a childish urge to kick him a few more times to see how many non-swear words he could come up with. Fortunately for the Mizuharas of the future, she did not. "Alright, what we have here is a failure with communicating," Afura explained to Makoto as the redness gradually left his face. "The next logical step is to resort to ridiculously outlandish schemes to make them lose interest in you, or failing that, make you disappear without a trace." "But then I'd miss them." "Makoto, as dogmatic philosophy has plainly taught us, you cannot have your cake and eat it, too." "Sure you can. You just bake two cakes." Afura stopped. "Okay, you've broken my brain." She sat down and thought. "Why is it you and Nanami didn't get together before you came here in the first place, anyway?" "Well, the truth is I was only one of the guys she was interested in. But, since I'm the only one who came to El-Hazard..." "Then there were other boys she liked." "Sure. The name 'Hayashi' springs to mind for some reason." "The if we brought Hayashi to El-Hazard, she could chase him instead." "That's a brilliant idea!" "You think so?" "Absolutely!" "It's copyrighted." "BEEEE-GUILE IT!!!" "Anyway, like I was saying before you shattered my sense of reality, you love all of them. But, and this is the part that rules out group sex, you don't love them romantically. For example, you love Nanami as a sister. It's only natural. The two of you grew up together, you played together all the time, you knew her better than anyone. It's only natural that you'd develop a sort of brotherly affection for her." "Well, actually, I did used to have a crush on her." "You sick little monkey!" Afura shouted, leaping to her feet, "You twisted, incestuous gibbon! What the hell is wrong with you?! You see Gowcaizer one too many times?! By which I mean once, but that's beside the point. Where was I? Oh, yes. Want to screw over your family's entire gene pool?! Ever hear of a little thing called anemia?! What kind of love are you on?! Wait, don't answer that, I don't want to know!" "Afura, you're lost in your own metaphor again." "Oh. Sorry. Okay, you love Nanami like a second cousin, then. And you love Shayla like..." "Like you love Shayla." "Is it that obvious?" "Huh?" "Er, I mean - huh?" "That's what I said." "Well you were copying off of me." "Oh. Where were we?" "The complete lack of any sexual tension between myself and Shayla." "Right. So how do you do that? It's an ideal I strive towards." "For starters, whenever she needs help, I turn a blind eye. Of course, it helps that I can only ever see out of one eye. Damned bangs." "You know, if only there was a convenient gust of wind to keep your hair blowing all the time. Like the guy in that music video many years ago." "I kissed a girl." "That was the one." "No, I was trying to confe- oh, never mind. Anyway, the key is to act like you don't care about anybody." "But I'm Makoto!" "You're right, it's impossible." "No, I can't give up. Please, teach me not to care." "Oh, right, you never give up either. You're just a fount of good traits, aren't you?" "I'm Makoto," he summed up. "Yeah, and if you were a woman I'd marry you. Anyway-" "My ears are burning," said Fatora, springing from nowhere. Afura plunked the girl's head into a nearby fountain to douse them and continued. "Okay, let me think," said Afura, plainly ignoring the sign Fatora was waving that read 'I AM DEAD, GIVE ME CPR.' "As I see it, you're the alpha-male. You're smart, you're nice, you're brave, you're nice, you were in a band, you're nice, you like animals, you're nice, you have an evil twin-" "'Had' an evil twin it would seem," said Makoto, noticing that Fatora had stopped moving. "Oh yeah." Afura took Fatora's head out of the water and used her wind powers to pump oxygen back into her lungs. "ALIVE!" shouted Fatora. "Now to renounce my lecherous ways in an orgy of newfound humility! Hang about, an orgy! That sounds like an even better idea!" She charged off to recruit many people whose 23rd chromosome pair matched the two letters that had been in her eyes a moment ago. Wait, that isn't funny at all. Let me try again: She went to find XXers for an XXXish evening. Better. "Now then, as the alpha-male, you are plainly the best person in all of El-Hazard. So all you have to do is realize that, and boast about it incessantly. And to do that, you have to think higher than highly of yourself. You have to believe that you are the best thing since toasted bread!" "You mean sliced bread." "Feh! Where's the skill in that? Put sharp thingy into bread until bread is in two pieces, repeat. Getting those slices burnt just enough to make them crisp but not enough to make them charcoal, *that's* difficult. Toasted bread, that's the hard one to accomplish." "No it isn't, you just put it in a toaster." "AGH! My brain!" "Okay, so I am the best thing since... bread." "Bread good," said the still-recovering Afura. "I am the greatest thing since bread. I am greater than bread. Wheat itself is as chaff in comparison to me. Even maize is astounded by me. In fact, not even rice-" "Don't mess with rice. Rice could kick your ass." "Backing away from rice now. Don't want some, not gonna be none. Absolutely no truck with rice. But bread is no match for me. I eat bread for breakfast. I'm not even gonna butter it up; bread is spongy and weak. And I... I AM MIGHTY!" "It's a start." Afura paused. "Wait, what about Kauru?" "I dunno. Last I heard he had an unhealthy run-in with Unit 01." "No, other Kauru." "Oh, her. I guess she married Kenshin or something. I kinda lost interest after the Kyoto storyline." "No, other other Kauru. The priestess of water." "You mean Qawool?" "Apparently I do," said she who a long time ago in a land far, far away had been Afura Mon. "What of her?" "Why haven't you mentioned her lovestruck hijinks?" "Oh, she's not in love with me, that's just a popularly held misconception, reinforced by the fact that she's naturally affectionate and I've seen her naked. But really, it's entirely platonic between us. Although, we *have* been discussing taking our relationship to the next level." "Socratic?" "Right." "Like our relationship." Makoto looked back at the string of questions and answers between the two of them. "Good lord, you're right! Aw, man, not another one..." "Don't worry, I'm a lesbian." "Oh, that's good to - WHAT? NO!" "Well, you took that I suppose," said Afura, her brain's speech center still recovering. "I mean, I suppose you took that well. Wait, why are you so upset?" "Don't you get it? You're supposed to be the exception that proves the rule! The one beautiful heterosexual girl who isn't in love with me! The one who proves it isn't just plot contrivance, there really is something that's attracting every other girl! If you're only uninterested in me because I'm a guy that throws the entire formula out of whack! Wait! Oh no, is Kiyone from Tenchi Muyo!-" "How the windy hell should I know?" "Well, I thought she might have mentioned it to you. You do shop at the same headband store." "Oh. You've got me there. Tell you what, I'll ask Linna from Bubblegum Crisis. But let's get back to turning you into an egomaniac. Let's hear you assert your superiority to dairy this time." "Uh, okay. I will not tolerate lactose. I will not allow it to turn our Kodak moments into Maalox ones. Milk... is bad..." Makoto sighed. "I can't do it, Afura. It's not me. I just don't think this plan will work." "Nonsense, you're already up to thirty percent more self-absorbent. Just listen to yourself. '*I* can't do it.' 'It's not *me*.' '*I* just don't think this plan will work'... oh. Well, great, it won't work then." "It won't?" "No. If you're convinced you can't do something, you can't do it because you're convinced you can't do it." "Is that a Catch 22?" "Catch 11, more like. 15 and a half, tops. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to sit down and sigh in defeat." "I'll join you," Makoto offered. The two of them plunked down and sighed. "We might as well face facts, Makoto. As long as you're in any way available, you're going to be pursued by lots of gorgeous women who want to steal your heart." "If only Ifurita were back..." Makoto dreamed, dreamily. "An indestructible demon god girlfriend *would* make a good anti-theft detterent. How long do you think it will be until you fully understand the Eye of God?" "Years. There's so much to be done. Translating the texts, deciphering the programming language, reverse-engineering the technology, maybe growing my hair out... But then, a device that can send objects through time and space is *bound* to be complex..." "What I don't understand is why you don't just wait until you understand the Eye of God, recover Ifurita, then send her back in time to the day she left." A lightbulb appeared above Makoto's head. He frowned drearily. "Well, I couldn't do that without disrupting the timestream. Although, if I figured out a way to send things back to the *present*, and tested it successfully, like with a lightbulb or something..." The lightbulb dropped on his head. "SUCCESS!" he yelled, jumped to his feet and held his arms out. Ifurita dropped from the sky and landed in them. "Makoto, it's you... again!" she proclaimed. "Don't worry, the hair really works on you." "Yay!" Makoto said, and they embraced. And there was much rejoicing. Afura watched bemusedly. And there was -Much Rejoicing-. "Oh, right," Afura remembered. "Wa-hoo." Wa-hoo indeed. Wa-hoo, indeed. FIN Wa-hoo.