Victory Day

[Mirage_GSM]

So, here's the epilogue.
Sorry it took a bit longer than anticipated, but RL (TM) can be a bitch sometimes...

Epilogue
Four weeks later...

After a long and hard fought battle, Hanako moved her armies into Kamchatkta. Damn, now she'd be able to threaten my grip on North America on a second front, and it would be hard to reinforce my armies in Japan. I absolutely had to retake the province on my next turn and maybe try to gain a foothold in North Africa...

I was distracted from my musings, when I noticed, that Hanako wasn't paying attention to our game anymore. I looked up and saw, that someone had entered the room. It was the clumsy Chinese exchange student from her class she'd started to date recently – no doubt after massive encouragement from Lilly. His eyesight was almost as bad as Kenji's, but he still did lots of martial arts training and Hanako sometimes accompanied him to watch.

Hanako bowed slightly - either to greet him or to hide the blush on her face. Then she turned back to me, a question written on her face. Hanako hadn't learned sign language yet, but we didn't need to communicate much to play either Risk or chess. Her question right now was obvious enough even without words.

I nodded at her and waved her goodbye. She smiled, took her boyfriend's arm and together, they left the room.

I carefully picked up the Risk-board and moved it to a table in the corner so we could continue this match another day, then I sat down at my desk to continue my paperwork.

There was a whole lot of paperwork with the New Year’s holidays fast approaching and only three short months until graduation after that. Misha had left to ‘get some help’ a while ago. I wondered who…

The door flew open and Misha burst into the room, dragging a flustered Hisao behind her. Hey Shicchan! Look who’s come to help us!

The visible marks of Hisao’s ‘accident’ had faded by now, but the truth about his exploits had been made common knowledge, and ever since that day, he had been shunned by the whole student body…

Well, the whole student body minus one: Misha had actually felt bad about what had happened to him and had tried to cheer him up from time to time. That girl really is too compassionate for her own good!

As a result Hisao had taken to regard her as some kind of angelic being. He practically deified her, following her everywhere she went, though so far he hadn’t set foot in the council office.

Naturally I was concerned about Misha, so Lilly and I had cornered Hisao one afternoon to make it clear that if he ever hurt Misha again, there would be dire consequences, but the impression I got was that he was more afraid of losing Misha’s favour than of any threats we could make.

Hisao nodded a greeting to me, looking ready to take cover behind Misha at a moment’s notice if necessary. I stood, grabbed a stack of forms and dropped it into his arms. Okay, you can check those for mistakes. I paused, glancing at Misha. Well, if she was serious about forgiving him, it couldn’t hurt to be civil. Thanks for helping out.

He started to reply, but at that moment the door opened again, and Kenji entered the room. I broke into a smile and turned to him.

Hello Shizune, he signed, walking towards me.

I didn’t bother with an answer, I simply encircled his neck with my arms and planted a kiss on his mouth. I felt his arms around my back, drawing me close as he returned my kiss.

From the corner of my eyes, I saw Hisao standing there, looking as if he’d just seen pigs fly. Misha grinned at him mischievously. It seems like the peace treaty between Kenji and the feminist forces has finally been consummated...

[neumanproductions]

I didn't think he would get shunned by the entire student body. Other than that pretty simple epilogue to sum everything up. i'll have to start working on that alternate reality path later on this weekend, hectic test week and all.

[Devon]

Yes. Just yes.

[Katsuu]

Nice ending! You really capture Shizune and Misha as I see them, and it was rather nice to be able to easily see the distinction between the two, as they are very different.

This has definitely been one of my favorite fanfictions ever.

[Mirage_GSM]

Thank you. I'm glad you liked it. I don't understand how anyone could think they are similar...
Frankly, I didn't plan for this ending, but when I wrote Chapter six and asked myself "What would Misha do?", I knew it would have to turn out this way.

[Katsuu]

A little bit of fanart.

[neumanproductions]

I told you I would be making an alternate chapter 6 for your story so here it is.