To think this tale ended up starting as a budding fake M:TG set I was working on to vent ideas out of my head...heh. While I don't expect any pairings to come out of the woodwork, you all know how stories can sometimes go a different direction on both author and reader. Let us see how this tale reads out, shall we?

I don't own anything from the M:TG universe outside of maybe my portrayal of varying characters. I only own three characters for certain, characters you all will soon see... This story is technically a crossover story, but since the only crossover aspect is the origin behind certain characters, I didn't flag it as such.

Crossing Paths

Chapter 1: What Just Happened?

The streets around the Embassy were lively that day and the man dressed in blue knew he wasn't the reason for it this time. He walked through the crowd under the shroud of illusion, looking to be just another face in the crowd to anyone that saw him.

It made him glad to see at least a part of Ravnica like this, to see the men hugging their ladies, the children playing tag with one other before running to their mothers for treats and even the occasional pet scurrying across the dusty streets.

Speaking of children...

He pulled a few coins out of the coinpurse that hung from his belt, counted the amount that he pulled out before kneeling in front of one group of kids, dropping his illusion to only them.

"It bwu man," one of the younger children managed to say before five children of mixed genders, ages and species surrounded him. A grin forming on his own face at seeing them brighten up from his appearance, the man gave each of the children one of the coins he pulled out.

"Dank yu, blu man," another child cried before they ran off to their parents to tell them what happened, however he simply began to continue walking just before trying to point him out. He couldn't help but chuckle at the look of confusion when they saw that he had vanished from their view.

"Seriously, Jace, only two days and you're doing this?!"

And he couldn't help but stop in his place when he heard the name in that outcry, not recognizing the voice it came from. He blinked his blue eyes a few times in his confusion at the fact that he just heard his first name, which Jace was sure he didn't give to anyone that sounded like that.

"Can't catch me, Neos!" A young boy suddenly busted through the crowd near him at that point, the first thing of notice being his bright-yellow eyes as he carried a small box in his small arms. The kid had zipped past him before Jace could notice anything else other than the short brown hair and the white scarf around his neck.

It was the man chasing the kid that caused him to suddenly dive out of the way, however...

"Seriously, Jace, only two days and you're doing this?!"

A tall man in bright attire ran through the crowded streets, his head over most of the average-height humans in the area. Keeping a yellow-tinted hand over his wide-brimmed yellow hat to keep it from blowing off as he ran, the stranger kept chase after the child in white and brown attire, whom only looked back with a grin on his face and a mischievous glimmer in his yellow eyes.

"Can't catch me, Neos!" With this did the kid look forward again as he ran, which caused a mute growl to emerge from his own throat.

"Arceus-dammit, kid," the stranger, Neos, muttered under his breath as the kid he was chasing, Jace, ran past someone. His sense of smell alerted him to the faint smell of someone of higher standards being close by, and it became more noticeable when he almost bowled into someone that only moved at the last split-second. "Stay out of my way, idiot!"

Recovering from the delay in his dash, Neos scanned the surrounding area for whom he was chasing with his neon-green eyes, narrowing them as he realized he lost sight of his target. "Arceus-dammit, Jace," he almost roared before closing his eyes briefly then reopening them. Behind the neon-green irises and dark-green pupils glowed a light-blue light, though they did not cover his eyes.

Ravnica, to those with a particular kind of sight, is a colorful place to behold. The energy of the place was a literal rainbow of colors blending into one another, though there were still noticeable differences between who projected what colors. Not everyone was varying shades of the rainbow, however. There were those among the crowd that was a blend of two colors that managed not to overlap to create new colors, mostly blue and white energies or red and white energies that seemed to be sourced from people standing on guard in this particular area.

The man he past, however, was weird compared to everyone else. Unlike everyone else, correction everything else in this place, he had a solid yellow energy emerging from him with a blue light centered in his chest that spider-webbed through the rest of his body. While Neos wished he could find out why someone would emit that kind of energy, he knew he had someone to pursue and quick.

And his eyes fell upon a sliver of solid red running further in the distance. "Found you." His appearance began to shift rapidly between visible and not before disappearing a second later, reappearing in front of the young Jace, causing him to fall backwards onto his small rump. "I finally find a way out of that ass-backwards place for all three of us and you're already starting trouble for me here." The blue light had faded from his view, allowing Neos to glare down at the boy with narrowed eyes that barely held back a storm.

"But they're pretty," the young Jace whined before opening the box, revealing a set of five crystal shards within. Red, Green, Blue, White, Black.

"I don't care, I'm pretty sure there was a reason for their price tags, Jace Cort," Neos remarked, only barely keeping in his anger before grabbing the kid with a strong right arm. "Now, we're going back to the store, you're gonna return the gems, you're gonna apologize for taking them and you're going to do whatever else the man requests you do. Understood?"

The kid struggled for a bit before yielding, realizing he wasn't getting out of Neos' grip. "Fine..." Just like when Neos disappeared, both the kid and the man flickered rapidly between visible and not before disappearing a second later. Neither one of them had realized that the person the strange man almost bowled over had been watching them from a distance...