A/N: Hey, all. This is the first chapter (obviously) of my epic, two-years-in-the-making fic. The next chapter may take awhile to come out, as I'm moving to Osaka for the semester and I'm also simultaneously writing another story in the Naruto fandom (probably a bad idea, but oh well.) But rest assured there will be a next chapter. I love this story too much not to finish it.

Anyway, on to the fic. :)

Harmony of the Spheres

Chapter One:

Threads of Fate

Mithos brushed his bangs out of his eyes and glanced out the window with a sigh. The storm had abated somewhat over the past hour, though it was still drizzling steadily. The bright flowers outside were drooping their heads under the weight of the rain, water dripping off them until they hit the ground to form rivulets in the mud. The occasional half-hearted gust of wind sent the leaves rustling in a lonely susurration.

All in all, not good weather for one's birthday.

"This is the worst kind of rain," he mused to his sister Martel, who was drying dishes by the sink. "There's none of the excitement of thunder and lightning, and all that's left is the gloom."

Martel put down a plate with a clink and turned to Mithos, smiling gently. "But when the sun comes out afterwards, everything's fresh and green!"

Mithos cracked a lopsided grin, enheartened by his sister's good cheer. She always seemed to see the silver lining of the dark clouds in his mind. "Yeah, but what if you hate the color green or something?"

Martel put her hands on her hips in mock-indignation. "How could anyone possibly hate a color, much less the one that gives life?" she asked rhetorically, a smile still on her face.

He shrugged. "I dunno, I hate the color orange."

She looked suddenly thoughtful, and put a finger to her chin. "Hmm, then I suppose you won't like the gift I got you..."

His eyes widened minutely. "You got me a present?" he said excitedly, face flushing in embarrassed pleasure.

Martel's smile widened into an outright grin, and she bent down and retrieved a small wrapped box from under the counter. "Of course I did," she said, placing it on the table in front of him. "I would hate to break the tradition."

He looked into her eyes and smiled gratefully, then centered his gaze on the box. It was indeed wrapped in orange tissue paper, and despite his professed dislike of the color he unwrapped it slowly so as not to tear it any more than necessary. He set it aside and stared at the delicate object now in his hands. It was a carved wooden Arshis, the rare animal that evolved as it grew. It was really called a Protozoan, but that name had always sounded cold and clinical to him; this particular form, and its name, reminded him of the dogs that ran freely around Heimdall that would always stop for him and allow themselves to be petted. Protozoa were now extremely rare, and some thought them to be extinct. The figurine was similar to the ones Martel made to be sold in general store they lived over, but far more detailed; it was clear it had been carved with special care. One paw was lifted up, and the head was raised to sniff the wind. The solid wood seemed to ripple like fur even as he watched it.

He looked back up, and realized belatedly that he had tears welling in his eyes. He blinked in a desperate attempt to hold them back. "Thank you, sis," he said, touched. "It's beautiful."

Martel merely smiled, looking as happy as if she had been the one to receive the gift herself.

They sat there for a few minutes as Mithos meticulously folded the wrapping paper, as he was wont to do. Thunder rumbled in the distance, but it was no longer the ominous sound it had been hours before. The siblings were simply content to sit in the warmth of their apartment, listening as the rain pattered on the roof.

Suddenly Mithos realized there was another pattering added to the rain; someone was coming up the stairs. Martel got up, a curious look on her face, and opened the door before their guest could knock. An older man stood there, panting slightly with the exertion. He looked from sibling to sibling and finally said, somewhat worriedly, "I think think you two had better come downstairs." The two followed after their landlord, dread weighing heavy on their hearts.

The shop was dark from the storm, unlike their cozily flickering home above. Normally it would have been bright and filled with customers lounging about and exchanging gossip, but the rain had driven the normal denizens away. The room now only contained two sodden strangers standing next to the grave-looking mayor. A quick, nervous smile flitted over the mayor's face as he saw Mithos and Martel enter, but it was soon gone as he turned to his guests.

"I believe these are the two you were asking after," he said to the hooded faces. "Martel and Mithos Yggdrasill?"

One head nodded, the hood dipping in what would have been his eye-line had his face been visible. "Yes, we have a matter of some importance to discuss with them." Mithos noted with alarm that the man had a cultured Kioto accent -- an accent he had heard only once before, but it would forever be engraved in his mind.

The other drew back her hood, and her curved human ears only confirmed his suspicions. "We are from the Bureau of Immigration, and we need to see your papers for the yearly inspection."

Mithos felt Martel stiffen behind him. "All right, but I'm afraid our papers aren't quite in order," she said softly, taking on the voice she used with those who held authority.

A strange look entered the other woman's eye. "We'll judge that for ourselves, thank you."

As Martel returned upstairs to retrieve their files, Mithos fidgeted uncomfortably, trying to stare at the humans without being too obvious. The man lowered his hood and shook out a shaggy head of hair while the woman appropriated several chairs. He glanced at the two elves in the room, but they wouldn't look him in the eye. He had a sneaking suspicion the mayor at least had known the humans were coming.

He heard Martel's soft footsteps on the stairs behind him, and then she was in front of the humans, handing them several folders with a slight bow. The woman put on a pair of reading glasses and the man drew a bound notebook out of the folds of his cloak. For five minutes they went through the minutiae of the two half-elves' lives, laid out for them in black and white on official documents, occasionally glancing back to the notebook.

Eventually they closed the folders and spoke quietly with each other for a few minutes, and then the man looked up to the others. "I'm afraid there is a...problem."

"What kind of problem?" asked Martel, though they both knew exactly what the problem was.

"According to this -" He tapped the folders meaningfully. "- after you, Martel, became your brother's legal guardian, you failed to acquire living permits for a non-designated area." He looked sharply at the shopkeeper. "You have been boarding them for the last seven months?"

"Yes, but I assumed -"

"While Heimdall is out of Kioto's jurisdiction, the half-elves are not," the woman interrupted. "The tracking devices in their ears are property of the government, and by the Border Act of 1935, it is legally sound to pursue government property into other countries."

"I..." The shopkeeper alternated his gaze between the officials, the mayor, and the siblings, and finally looked at his shoes in defeat. "...I wasn't aware."

"A fine of 400 gald per month should be reasonable," the man said, writing something in his notebook, and turned back to the half-elves. "But your friends are in a somewhat more dire situation."

"Dire?" Mithos managed to get out, his fear finally overcoming his decorum.

They thankfully ignored him completely as the man continued, "By midnight you must be out of Heimdall. Unless you fancy being beggars, I suggest you go to the Kioto Office of Employment and get yourself a permit to look for a job." He glanced back down at the files, and smirked. "Make that two permits -- the boy is old enough to have a job."

"It should be the first thing you do upon arriving," the woman put in, removing her glasses. "As you may know, unemployment is a punishable offense."

Mithos let out a hiss of "Bureaucracy" that thankfully went unnoticed as the two officials gathered their things. "I'm afraid we must leave," said the woman, handing Martel the files, "as we must be on our way back." She pulled her hood back up.

"Have a nice day." And the two departed, rain briefly making its way into the shop before it was blocked by the door again.

There was a moment of silence as the shopkeeper and Martel stood in shock and Mithos and the mayor fumed. Finally the mayor whirled on them.

"I'll probably get voted out of office for harboring two illegal half-elves," he growled. "I should never have let you two into my city." With that he stormed out as well.

The shopkeeper sagged and fell into one of the recently-vacated chairs. "I'm sorry, guys," he said, resting his head in his hands. "I thought I could protect you, but..."

"It's all right, Mr. Ingvi, you did your best," Martel comforted, though she couldn't keep the tremors out of her own voice.

"What are we going to do, Martel?" Mithos asked, managing to keep himself from tugging on her hand anxiously. No, she needed his support now, not some child to burden her.

She collapsed into a chair of her own. "I..." She turned her head, and Mithos knew she was wiping away tears she didn't want him to see. She turned back, her face a bit too cheerful. "I guess we'll just have to go to Kioto, then."

"Kioto," Mithos very nearly growled, slumping to the floor beside her. "That place is filled with nothing but bureaucratic bastards."

"Mithos," Martel admonished weakly, but Ingvi cut her off.

"Not everybody," he said, looking thoughtful. "It's not much, but..." He looked up at them, hope suddenly in his eyes. "My wife's family lives in Kioto. If you mention me, they might let you work for them without a permit."

"You have a wife?" Mithos exclaimed even as Martel said, "You wife lives in Kioto?"

"Well, she used to, anyway," he said, answering the second question.

"But I thought all the elves lived in Heimdall," said Mithos, confused.

Ingvi nodded at him. "Your assumption would be correct. My wife is a human." At their twin expressions of surprise, he explained, "Why do you think I took you two in?" Now he looked wistful. "Our children were half-elves, after all."

Choking down the instinct of repeating his assertion, Mithos asked instead, "Were?"

He nodded, eyes on the floor. "Yes. They died in the Kioto riots." He switched his gaze to the ceiling, as if unwilling to look straight at his charges. "We parted ways after that. We thought it would be for the best."

As Martel offered belated platitudes, Mithos's thoughts turned inwards. His hand reached up to his right ear, where his tracking chip was embedded. He could feel it through the cartilage, a constant reminder of who and what he was. When he was in a particularly bad mood he would scratch at it until he bled, but the device was implanted as such that it couldn't be removed or destroyed. It was a part of him, now.

Now he just rubbed at it irritably and let his hand fall back into his lap. Just another way that he was different, then.

He glanced up, realizing that he was being spoken to. "What?"

"I was just saying that we'd better get packing," Martel repeated, eyes soft, as if guessing his thoughts.

Mithos nodded and two headed upstairs, up to the room they could no longer call home. In near-silence they packed their few belongings into several spare duffel bags. If they could afford a wing pack, they could take all they wished, but such things were luxuries and they were forced to leave much behind.

As they made their way out Mithos passed by the kitchen table and noticed among the discarded wrapping paper the carved Arshis that he had been so excited about only half an hour earlier. Now he was so angered by the situation they were forced into he was tempted to smash the thing, but one look at his sister's smiling face squashed that impulse immediately. Instead he placed it carefully in a pocket inside his poncho, where it would be sure to be safe.

They slowly plodded down the stairs, to where Ingvi stood, holding an umbrella and a bag of canned food. He handed them over wordlessly and quickly escaped into the back room, unwilling to see them leave.

"Thank you," said Mithos to a now-empty room.

The streets of Heimdall were quiet but condemning, a muted hostility radiating out from the windows where curious elves peeked around the curtains to stare. The siblings looked straight ahead, eyes on the city gates, heads held high. A gust of wind blew raindrops in their faces, leaving water dripping from their eyelashes and trailing down their cheeks.

They passed through the gate with nary a word from the guards and set off northeast. A silence trailed behind them, a melancholy parade in their honor.

The slanting lines of rain blurred their figures until they disappeared entirely, alone in the wilderness.

--

It was a ratty flier taped to a wall in downtown Fensalir that got his attention. The face looked familiar, but it wasn't until he caught a news reel in the window of an electronics store that he recognized him -- the rogue Kioto knight, up for a bounty of fifteen million gald.

Yuan leaned forward, his breath fogging the glass a bit. That would certainly solve his money problem -- or his living problem, if he wasn't careful, but when your living depended on money, it was worth the risk.

"Half-elf!" the brash call resounded behind him. His hand nearly rose to his right ear self-consciously, but he managed to suppress it, the movement only manifesting itself as a slight twitch.

If he could pass as a human, getting out of town would be a lot easier.

Rough hands grabbed his shoulders and turned him around. He found himself looking up into the red face of a police officer, dark mustache dominating his face. "Half-elf!" he repeated. "You're out of your sector. Where's your pass?"

Yuan recalled years of training and said, contempt dripping from each word, "Excuse me?"

"You deaf? I said -" The officer paused. Yuan had casually raised his left hand and was running one finger along his ear.

His rounded, human ear.

The officer let go and stepped back. "I -- I apologize sir," he said, bobbing his head nervously. "But from behind, you looked -"

Yuan curled a strand of aquamarine hair around one finger. "An unfortunate genetic trait," he said darkly. "Now if you please..."

"Yes, sir." The officer left with another bob of his head, and as soon as he had turned the corner, Yuan quickly made for the sidestreets. It was high time he left.

He hadn't lied about the hair, really. The color was common among half-elves, and extremely rare among humans. He could always dye it, but when money was running low food generally took precedence. Brown hair with blue roots was far more suspicious than blue hair by itself.

But if he managed to catch this guy, he could finally live in comfort -- at least for awhile.

--

The newspaper clipping in his hand crinkled as the cold winds buffeted him. Kratos had hitched a ride on a supply truck from Hokke, but this far south he was on his own. So far he had managed to navigate the archipelago by crossing the numerous rusting bridges, but now he was faced with a gap he wasn't sure how to cross.

The sign read "Bridge Out," and it didn't look like it was going to change anytime soon.

He pulled out his GPS unit, looked at it, and sighed. As he thought, this was the only bridge that lead to the island that housed Nidhogg Industries, Ltd., and his cell phone's crystal had run out long ago. He would either have to get across the strait, or backtrack ten miles and hope for another truck to show up.

He sighed again, resigned. There weren't many places that would hire him these days, and he wasn't about to pass up a chance like this.

He glanced around, hoping for some secret helicopter pad, or at least a payphone. A thought occurred to him, and he began to scramble down the bank to where the derelict bridge was anchored into the ground. As he expected, there was a computer terminal on one of the support braces, for use of technicians and maintenance workers. He found the power button and puffed out a small cloud of warm air as he waited for the screen to load. Why they made it so difficult to get to their building, he had no idea.

Eventually a status screen popped up, and various meaningless statistics scrolled past -- the only one he understood was that the bridge wasn't due for repair for another three weeks. He tapped a few buttons randomly until a menu screen came up. Among the options listed was one that said only "Call." When nothing else useful made itself known, he hesitantly selected it.

The screen went black.

He hissed a few choice words until he realized that a voice was crackling out of some hitherto unnoticed speakers. "Security Office, what's wrong?"

Kratos decided to get straight to the point. "How do I get across with the bridge out?"

There was a pause. "Who's speaking?"

"Someone who wants to take up the job offer."

A sigh of annoyance. "Name, please?"

"Kratos Aurion."

For a moment Kratos wondered if his name had elicited an unwelcome response, but he was then told, "We'll be sending over a helicopter immediately," and the line went dead.

He left the computer on, just in case. This was all very suspicious, but a major weapons manufacturer was entitled to heavy security. He was probably just being paranoid.

Still, it was best to keep on his guard, he mused as the whirring of helicopter rotors grew louder.