Author's Notes: As much as I love him, I don't own Rurouni Kenshin, or any of his good buddies from the Meiji. All hail Watsuki-sama!
Kaoru rolled out of bed, dragging her blankets with her and knocking her wrist against the corner of her end table before smacking to the wooden floor with a "thump" and a "mou!" It had been another bad night.
She was an apprentice Banisher, and rapidly approaching her graduation into the league of vigilantes that ensured the safety of their kingdom against the wild and unpredictable Seasonal Mages. Bright light poured through the thin curtains of her dormitory window, and she could already hear the younger girls in her wing being ushered to breakfast. Grumbling to herself about the early hour (though the water clock at the end of the hall was set to chime in five minutes), Kaoru set to brushing through the thick mass of tangles that was her hair, shooting dirty looks at her roommate, who was still snoring away under her blankets, with only the tip of her nose and the tail end of her long braid peaking out from beneath the heavy wool. She slept on as Kaoru sorted through her thick mane, braiding it back and pinning it up, and then through the loud gong of the clock. She overslept for exactly five minutes, when she vaulted out of bed, black braid snapping behind her like a whip. She began to struggle into the long, loose and ugly grey gown that was the twin of Kaoru's, thanking her lucky stars under her breath that her hair was already braided.
"Do you really have to do this every morning, Misao?" Kaoru snapped, rising from her watery mirror and jamming her feet into the 'sensible shoes' that were required by the Academy. Misao just ignored Kaoru and breezed through the door as she did every morning. According to Misao, Kaoru wasn't worth speaking to until she had her breakfast. Kaoru followed her slowly, snatching a pile of papers off the corner of her desk.
The lines had been struggled through, breakfast had been grabbed and wolfed, and Kaoru was finally awake enough to talk without grouching. Misao glanced at the hourglass counting down the minutes until classes started and swore.
"Crap! I forgot my papers in the room and we're tutoring the first year class today!" Misao was beginning to knock her head against the tabletop when Kaoru slid a sheaf of papers in front of her.
"Mi-chan, what would you do without me?" Kaoru's eyes glinted playfully as she teased her best friend, and Misao, who, having resigned herself to the teasing after forgetting her papers, simply smiled. As they forced their way upstream through the crowds of boys on their way to breakfast, she continued. "Now, the question remains—How exactly are we going to settle down a bunch of ten-year-olds so we can try to force the most basic of history into their little heads?"
"Oh, goody," Misao muttered. "So do we give them the most paranoid, addle-pated theories of the High Priests or do we corrupt their darling little minds with something closer to the truth?"
"Mi!" Kaoru half-shrieked, "Are you telling me you don't believe what the priests say about the Doctrine?"
Misao sighed. Kaoru came from a conservative family, and the Academy hadn't made her any more open-minded.
"Never mind, Kao…You just start the lesson and I'll follow your lead,"
"C'mon, kids, pay attention!" Misao chirped, bouncing on her heels in front of a class of noisy ten-year-olds, who, recognizing their favorite teachers, settled down quickly. "Now, today Mistress Kaoru and I are going to teach you some very important things, and I want you to pay very close attention. There's going to be a test," she added in a stage whisper, eliciting a few giggles from the braver students.
"What we'll be teaching you, you might already know. These are old, old stories, and some of you might have heard them from your parents or grandparents, or even from the Doctrine Leaders,"
"I'm sure you know all about the Doctrine, the sacred list of everything that is, has been and will be, and how it both listed and created everything at the moment of creation, as well as the Gift that the Doctrine gave us when we were created, the supreme beings of creation and custodians of the world: Deltography. Though many people think of this as magic, we of the Academy and the Priests all know that it is simply the act of minutely changing the laws of the universe to do good works for the Doctrine's sake. We're not here to just talk about Deltography, though—we're here to talk about those who misuse the great gift of Deltography: the Seasonal Mages,"
"When the world was young, it was perfect, and humanity prospered a flourished. There were no seasons, but it was always the perfect temperature for growing crops and raising animals. Night and day were equal, and there was no change in the seasons; it was always perfect for growing crops, and humanity prospered." Kaoru's voice took on a dreamy quality as she described the perfection of the beginning of the world, but suddenly her voice grew harsh and ugly with anger.
"There was, however, a group of greedy, lazy people who grew bored with the way the Doctrine had created the world for us. They decided to change things to make them more 'interesting'. These people were gifted with the power of Deltography, and should have been more pious, because that greatest gift is the power to change the shape of the Doctrine minutely to heal the sick or defend the innocent, or other noble goals," The idealistic girl's voice grew thick with scorn, as if she disdained to even speak of the blasphemers from so long ago, her face slowly turning red with anger. By now, all the whispering among the students had stopped, in awe and fear of their beloved teacher's transformation.
"They sought to change the world 'for the better' by ignoring what the Doctrine had already put in place for us. In their supreme arrogance, they strove to introduce 'variety' into our world, never thinking of the consequences. A great group of the heretics assembled, convincing themselves of their own holiness, and brought their powers together as a whole to corrupt the entirety of the world for always. What they did was a most heinous crime, and many innocent people suffered and died because of it!" Kaoru was shaking with her rage, hands clenched into such tight fists that her fingernails had dug into the skin of her palms, adding what would be yet another set of crescent-shaped scars. The children were dead silent, staring up at their teacher with wide, frightened eyes. Misao, who had been standing in a corner of the room the entire time, chewing on a knuckle and repeating her order of non-interference (from the Dean himself!) over and over like a mantra, finally stirred into action, taking Kaoru firmly by the shoulders and leading her to a chair in the corner and smoothing the disheveled hair away from her face. Once she was sure Kaoru was calm enough to be left alone for a moment, she turned to the children in the room. One of them, more sure of himself with this calmer teacher, spoke up in a high, thin voice.
"But…Mistress Misao…what exactly did they do?" Misao sighed, nudging her own hair back out of her face and looked tiredly at the class.
"They tilted the world on its axis, away from the perfect symmetry of the Doctrine, and caused the seasons to change. The descendants of those people are the Seasonal Mages of today. Class dismissed,"