“Mutsu? You have a frowny face.”
Mutsu blinked, and grinned a little at his worried Ashikabi. “Well, I know you’re upset about quitting the game….”
“I am!” Mikogami pouted up at him; his usual gold, white, and lace abandoned for a pink shirt, tan slacks, and vest that con-goers had variously identified as Quatre or Han Solo narrowly escaped from Ponyland. “If we don’t play, how can we get Yomi and Mitsuha back? Quitting and still trying to rescue them, well – it’s almost cheating.” The pout thinned into a more serious frown. “But that’s not why you’re worried, and I can feel it.”
And for all Hayato’s other flaws, that made him a good Ashikabi, Mutsu reflected. Mikogami didn’t just accept the empathy their bond imparted. He drank it in, like a wilted plant soaking in rain, spreading leaves wide to shade his Sekirei from the blows of emotions around them. Shelter they’d desperately needed fighting the Chitauri; Mutsu could still almost feel ghostly acid where the mass mind had pressed against their bonds. The Chitauri had been one vast scream, and Mikogami had held them safe against it all….
Well, he tried, Mutsu amended, remembering how Akitsu had leapt gracefully roof-high, speared three flyers with ice – and then crumpled like frosted tinfoil. He’d had to blast chunks of the hotel parking lot to give the other girls cover enough to grab Akitsu out of the air and drag her back to them. She was Mikogami’s Sekirei by choice, but she had no bond, no way for him to protect her-
Or so he’d thought. Mikogami had latched onto Akitsu’s arm like a limpet, not letting go until the ice Sekirei’s eyes blinked clear. Even then he’d kept hold of her sleeve, so she could fight while he buffered her by sheer sparkles.
The minute the flyers had crashed out of the sky, Mikogami had fainted.
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
“If we don’t play, how can we get Yomi and Mitsuha back?
IF you win and IF Minaka keeps his promises . . .
The later especially sounds like an awfully big IF to bank on.
Especially when you consider that this battle royale BS was NOT the first stated plan. He might have been thinking about doing it right from the start but that’s not what he said at first. He only sprung that part later, when it was would be too hard for Miya and the rest to escape with all of their fellow Sekirei and had already attracted the attention of dangerous people like HYDRA so that they needed Minaka’s help.
Remember, Minaka is crazy, not stupid.
. . . Quitting and still trying to rescue them, well – it’s almost cheating.”
If it were just a game with no greater consequences, I would agree. But it’s not, kid. Lives are at stake.
Even if Minaka wasn’t prone to changing the rules whenever it suits him or outright lying . . . what if he wasn’t lying about the winner getting to stay with their Ashikabi?
You remember just how badly it hurt to have Yomi and Mitsuha taken away from you? To feel that bond go silent, a hole in your mind where their emotions-thoughts-energy should be? That kind of damage doesn’t just disappear. And you have inflicted it on every single other Ashikabi and their Sekirei in the game.
And that’s IF you win. What if you don’t. Do you want to spend the rest of your life with the stumps of those bonds bleeding in your head, that terrible empty silence. Because you’ve gotten used to having them in your head, feeling their emotions. Now imagine it all gone. Forever. You will never see them again. Never feel their mind’s touch ever again.
Isn’t that awful? Is that an awful thing to do to people who, if they had had a choice, the vast majority would have never done you or yours any harm?
But I doubt that Minaka is telling the truth about that. One key question to ask is what he was planning on doing to all of the Sekirei were deactivated but not killed. Somehow I don’t think the answer is keep them in stasis.
Probably he’d wait. And reactive them and start this Game over again. You’d have to earn the right to keep your Sekirei with you again. And just like last time, you might lose.
Or something worse. Because it can always get worse.
Also did he promise to restore your fallen Sekirei? Or it just the ones who managed to survive to the final round with you?
DO NOT TRUST PROMISES FROM HIROTO MINAKA – THEY ARE LESS SOLID THAN SMOKE AND VAPOR. HE WILL ONLY KEEP THEM AS LONG AS IT BENEFITS AND/OR AMUSES HIM TO DO SO.
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Interesting point.
Apparently he has a BA or something from a US school. If we are talking something like a BA in Business, that he takes Minaka at face value shows that his grasp of human madness and evil does not match other portions of his intellectual development. No wonder his parents have him in high school. (Okay, there are perhaps better ways, but the parents are probably in over their heads.) That’s what they want him to get, that’s the advantage they still have over him that lends them the moral suasion to make it stick.
(It might have been better if they’d had him get an entry level reporting position working the crime blotter. On the other hand, child labor laws.)
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And this would be why Mutsu is hiding Mikogami in a con. 😉 Mutsu is no dummy.
My personal take on Mikogami is that he was too smart for his own good, sheltered in some unhealthy ways, and possibly too empathic for his own good on top of it – in the sense that he may have been reaching for feedback normal humans couldn’t give him. From the bits we see in canon, the longer Mikogami’s around Sekirei the more he seems to grasp people-as-people (instead of annoying) better. Give him a little time around more sane people and out of a deathgame, I think he’d get better.
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And mikogami gets a moment of awesome too-which is good, i have seen fics use his childish behavior and amplify it to bash him with it-sometimes using it to justify vilifying him and causing him to get a terrible ending.
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“Quatre or Han Solo narrowly escaped from Ponyland.”
*snerk* Must not… laugh out loud… coworkers already give me enough looks… *snicker giggle*
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*Halo*
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But can Sandrock fit on the Millenium Falcon?
If it can’t, the Star Wars/Gundam Wing/MLP crossover should happen much earlier in Han’s career, before he wins the Falcon, when he is using some other freighter.
Of course, the bunnies are also talking about Yu-Gi-Oh/Star Wars, because /Millenium/ Falcon.
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*continues to ‘innocently’ brush fox, as she licks her chops*
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From the manga (which has its differences from the anime) Minaka’s really using the Sekirei plan as a pressure cooker to create a power couple.
Even the whole effort to secure and heal (via the medics and helos sent for the defeated) is a solid indication that Minaka wants the Sekirei surviving and thriving after the plan is over. Likely to track what happens with the kids.
However he has a primary goal and is willing to play hard to ensure it happens. That he gets to have fun with it is a secondary benefit
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Don’t know about Vathara but I’ve only seen the anime so that’s where I get my impressions of the characters.
With that in mind . . . I don’t really buy that explanation for his actions. I buy that might be what he genuinely believes he is doing but as established, Minaka is crazy. And crazy people don’t operate on a logic that makes sense to anyone but themselves.
If the Game Plan is his idea of helping, then Hiroto Minaka should never help anyone. EVER. Because his methods suck and likely only “worked” despite his methods, not because of them.
That might just be my bunnies’ usual reaction to any explanation given either in-story by the characters or later by Word of God that makes no sense and/or contradicting previously established continuity in a way that rubs us the wrong way . . . they roll to disbelieve. Reject that reality and substitute their own. Which is probably why I like AU and canon divergent fic so much.
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I look at it from the perspective of, what would explain Takami not even admitting to Minato who his father is? “That is his idea of helping” would be the perfect reason to never let those two near each other….
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…I’m afraid I lean toward Minaka is just plain nuts.
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Me too. Just plain nuts. And evil.
Through I must remind myself that Minaka probably doesn’t see himself as crazy. Because crazy evil rarely see themselves as either. (There is a reason those “It’s for your own good” / “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you” villain types are so much scarier than your average mustache twirling villain)
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