Irregular Mage

"Merlin, I hate flying in tin cans," Harry muttered to himself. He blearily looked in the tiny mirror above the tiny sink, then almost fell over as the plane shook in the air. He lunged toward the metal bowl to the side and retched.

"It is almost over, my lord," Diarmuid's voice was soft so as not to rattle Harry's head any more than the turbulence already had. "I checked in the cockpit. They were contacting the ground terminal for landing clearance."

"Thank Heaven for that."

The walls and floor jumped, sending Harry's stomach reeling and making him gag, and an announcement to buckle seatbelts came over the speakers outside the toilet. Harry was shuddering and wetting a paper towel to lay against his forehead when a rapid knock sounded at the door.

"Excuse me?" A polite voice called to him. "Everyone must return to their seats and buckle up. We'll be landing soon, please hurry!"

Harry groaned and closed his eyes. He hated planes so much.

"If you're ill, I'm afraid you'll need to use the bag provided at your seat sir," the voice said loudly, though not unkindly.

"Could I have another bag?" Harry asked weakly. He tore out a few more towels and wet them as well before coming out.

"Of course sir," the hostess greeted him, her nose wrinkling only a little as she smiled. "Please take your seat and I'll bring more for you right away."

Harry nodded weakly and tottered off down the aisle to his seat. His row companions did not look pleased at his return, but Harry didn't blame them. The hostess from earlier brought him another waxed paper bag as he sat down before hurrying away, reminding everyone to buckle their seatbelts.

"We're very close, my lord. Just hold out a little longer."

Harry moaned morosely and buckled up before placing the wet towels on his face. Twelve hours of rocking and nausea and the constant worry of dropping out of the sky like a rock. He really hoped Diarmuid appreciated what Harry was going through for the sake of his "honorable battles" or whatever. Especially since the spirit didn't have to deal with the motion sickness!

The spirit had offered the occasional comforting words to Harry during his worst bouts of vomiting, but really, Diarmuid had seemed rather excited to be flying. Harry had felt as the spirit roamed about the plane, investigating passengers and the plane itself with an air of wonderment. If Harry hadn't been so sick, he might have enjoyed his playful attitude.

Harry heard the speakers come on again as the captain announced their descent, then the plane began rocking and pitching so horribly, he opened the bag he'd been given and gagged into it. He'd long since emptied his stomach, but the urge to vomit never left and he still managed to spit up bile every now and again.

With his face hidden in the bag as he retched, he focused on Diarmuid's steady voice, softly telling him of the plane's progress as it circled through the air and, finally, landed. He couldn't wait to get off this thing.

Harry managed to get off the plane intact, but while most passengers hurried on to customs, he veered off to a restroom to wash his face and sit on the cool tiles until his head cleared. He could feel Diarmuid hovering somewhere over him, flickering with concern.

"Has the air-sickness passed yet?"

"Yeah. I just need a minute." Harry leaned his head against the wall behind him, his knapsack propped next to him, and just breathed slowly. The restroom was immaculately clean and echoingly empty. It seemed his was the only plane at the terminal for the moment, so this bathroom wasn't in much demand. He closed his eyes gratefully and relaxed.

"Once we leave this airport, we will head to Fuyuki?"

"Well, first we'll need to work out some money. I don't have much left after buying that ticket." He only had around 50 pounds left, barely anything, and much less than he was comfortable with, but he'd used most of his meager savings buying the first available ticket to Tokyo. He wished he hadn't needed to do so on credit, because cash would have made everything so much easier, but using several hundred pounds at once would have drawn too much attention. "After that's sorted...well, er, where exactly is Fuyuki?"

Diarmuid was silent for a moment. "In Japan."

Harry opened his eyes. "Wait. You mean, you don't know?"

"I apologize, my lord," Diarmuid sounded upset. "I should have realized I was missing information and found out before-"

"Wait, wait, wait!" Harry closed his eyes and stood up with a wince. "You got everything you know from the Grail, right?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Then it's that damn thing's fault we have no idea where to go," Harry thought with a shrug. He turned to the counter and ran cool water over his hands to splash his face. "At least we're in the right country. We'll just have to look at some maps, or...actually, we're in an airport. We could find a travel agent and ask."

"Of course, my lord." Diarmuid seemed to mentally fidget for a moment while Harry dried off and walked out. "I still apologize for my error."

"Don't apologize for things you can't control." Harry grabbed his bag and settled it on his shoulders. "You'll never stop otherwise."

There was silence while Harry walked down the long halls, following signs in Japanese, English, and several other languages, until he caught up with the crowd from his plane still waiting in line through customs. Then, as Harry joined them and quietly waited his turn to present a charmed booklet as his passport, a soft chuckle brushed through his mind.

"Sage advice, my lord. I shall take it to heart."

"Er, sure." Harry scratched his head as he moved in line. Surely it wasn't that special a thing to say, it was only common sense.

Harry counted out what little he'd been able to exchange. He sighed and tucked it away. Chatting up a very friendly bi-lingual travel agent had gone much more happily, but he knew before he entered the exchange counter that this would happen.

"Is it not enough, my lord?"

Harry glanced up at the ceiling as though he could see Diarmuid above him. "Not nearly. The exchange rate was pretty poor, and I didn't have much to start with."

"If need be, I will find a way to earn you money, my lord!"

Harry laughed. "Don't worry, I have a plan. It just would have been easier if I had more to start with."

"A plan?" Diarmuid sounded curious. Harry grinned at empty air and started walking for the down escalators.

"Yep. First step, charm a rich business type into buying an extra train ticket for us." Harry hoped he could find a good target. So early in the morning he had no idea if the right sort of person would be around, and he didn't want to take advantage of someone who couldn't afford it.

"Then we head to Fuyuki?" Lancer asked.

"No, then we get some money in Tokyo, and then we head to Fuyuki."

"Is it wise to leave scouting the battlegrounds so late?"

"We don't have to win this war, remember?" Harry frowned. He wasn't looking forward to reaching Fuyuki nearly as much as Diarmuid was. The spirit was very eager to prove his skills to Harry. "And anyway, I'd like to keep my money raising spot as far away from my money spending spot as possible. We kind of lucked out that Fuyuki is at the other end of the country from Tokyo."

Somehow, it sounded as though Diarmuid was frowning.

"Why is that, my lord? Is this something dangerous?"

Harry snorted and stepped off the escalator then wandered over to a corner to watch people lining up at a ticket machine before entering the Narita train station. He studied the station map on the wall beside him to appear distracted.

"Only if I get caught. I'm going to duplicate every paper bill I can get."

There was silence, and Harry caught sight of a very well dressed older man with leather bags hurrying to the end of the ticket line. Perfect. He strode over and managed to snag the spot behind him, then focused on the man and pointed at him from his coat pocket. Imperio!

The man barely twitched as Harry's spell settled onto him. They both continued waiting in line as if nothing had happened. When it was the man's turn to buy a ticket, Harry let him make his own purchase first, then directed him to buy a second ticket to a different stop he'd picked out from the map to the side. Once done, Harry had the man leave the second ticket in the machine and walk away. Harry stepped up, pretended to purchase the ticket he pulled out of the machine and headed off to a different end of the station.

He could feel Diarmuid's gaze on him throughout the whole event, and wondered what the Heroic Spirit thought of it. But when he spoke, the spirit made no mention of Harry's actions to get a train ticket into Tokyo.

"You are counterfeiting."

"Basically." Harry shrugged as he leaned against a metal post to wait for the train. "The duplicates I'll make will be perfect replicas. No one would be able to tell the difference between the copy and the original. But, money now has unique serial numbers. If two bills show up with the same number, obviously everyone will think one is a counterfeit, even if they can't tell which."

"I see." Diarmuid seemed to turn Harry's answers over in his head. "Why...did you not do this with your money in Britain? If I may ask, my lord."

"You can ask whatever you like." Harry grinned and gave a shrug. "It's because I didn't want to draw too much attention after revealing myself as a magic user to Archibald. I didn't have time to take money out of my account, duplicate it, and put it back. And if I'd bought the plane ticket at the airport with hundreds of pounds by hand, it would have stuck in people's memories."

"So, you can only duplicate something physical? Not the numbers floating in the machines and cards everyone is using?"

"Yep. Magic doesn't mix well with electronics. If I just wanted to break the system, that'd be easy, but changing the information stored is pretty much impossible."

A recorded bell and voice came out of the overhead speakers. Harry couldn't remember enough Japanese to know exactly what it said, but knew it was announcing an incoming train. He just had to match up the name on his ticket to the announcement when the train's doors opened, and he'd be good to go.

"Also, I do need the thing I duplicate to be physical, but that has some limits as well. Especially with money."

Harry straightened up and resettled his bag as the train pulled in. Once it stopped and the doors opened, another recorded message announced the train and destinations, and Harry boarded.

"I'm not certain I understand my lord." Diarmuid's voice was blandly quizzical. Harry wondered if the spirit actually cared how his magic worked, or if he was just feigning interest for 'his lord's' sake.

"Money's kind of an abstract thing. It's got a physical form as cash, but it's more of an idea than anything." Harry found a seat by a window and sat down. Diarmuid hovered near him. "If I wanted to make a copy of something like a chair, I'd just make it and then walk away. The fake chair would last for as long as I lived, with no need for my attention or anything. Because a chair is a real, physical thing. Everyone knows what it is, and what it does to the point that even a chair would know. When I make a copy of a chair, that sense of realness gets copied too."

"I see…"

Harry really wondered if he did.

"Money's less real, because people always place a different value on it. Not just in different countries where everyone is trying to figure out how their currency compares to a different one, but even in the same country, with the same currency, different people put their own personal values on it." Harry sighed as the train shuddered into motion. He leaned back and shifted so he could watch out the window. Trains were so much better than planes.

"The more something depends on people to make it real, the harder it is to copy perfectly. It's just not real enough on its own, that all the truly real stuff in the world around it start to move through it. So, it wears out. A duplicate chair would stay a chair forever, but a duplicated piece of money will start to fade and disappear."

"But, you're going to make this vanishing money," Diarmuid said worriedly. He seemed to be paying more sincere attention at least. "Won't you get caught?"

"Heh, if I tried to copy coins, then yeah. But paper money- paper is so light, so barely there, that people don't notice it even when they carry it. It takes longer to fade than coins because it's close to the same amount of realness the original has, and once it starts vanishing, it might not be noticed."

"Even if it is a large amount?" Diarmuid still sounded concerned.

"If it vanishes in a bank, all put away and already counted with the hundreds of thousands of other bills, then it's just pocket change," Harry thought with a soft chuckle. "I just have to be sure that wherever I spend the duplicates, they have a higher chance of going to different banks, or large businesses, or machines. The more people and money moving around, the less a few vanishing bills among hundreds will be missed."

"Ah, people will assume someone miscounted, or that the bills were misplaced."

"Yep, and no one will look at me for the missing money." Harry looked away from the scenery flashing past the window and glanced up with a smile. "So, are you less worried now?"

"I did not mean to imply I doubted your abilities, my lord." Diarmuid was quick to reply and Harry got the distinct sense that he was somehow kneeling- without a body.

"I didn't think you did," he thought with a frown. "It's perfectly normal to ask questions, and I'm sure you've never seen anyone use magic like me before."

Diarmuid didn't answer for a moment, and Harry switched his gaze back to the window, wondering if he'd upset the spirit somehow.

"I… I have not seen any Mage use magic as you do, actually. The magic knowledge the Grail granted me is mostly on the nature of mana transfer and the ritual used to summon me."

"Well then, you can ask whatever questions you like and I'll answer the best I can." Harry shifted awkwardly. "Although, you should know, my way of doing things is pretty unique, so there's a lot about other people's magic that I may not know."

"Mages tend toward unique spell classifications." Diarmuid said neutrally. "I- thank you, my lord."

"For what?" Harry blinked.

"For trusting me. I swear, I will not betray your craft secrets." Harry could feel Diarmuid doing that kneeling-without-a-body thing again.

"It's not that big a deal." Harry hunkered down sideways on his seat. "We're supposed to be teammates, right? It doesn't make sense not to cooperate."

Diarmuid chuckled. "As your sworn knight, I am not owed any explanations of my lord's plans. I need only follow your orders."

"That doesn't make sense either," Harry muttered, only mostly to himself.

The spirit's laughter tickled Harry's head. He huffed and shrugged against the seat. He was finally beginning to wind down after twelve hours being sick on the flight here, and a whole day before that worrying about the Hallows mark, and following Archibald, and then finding out about Diarmuid and the Grail and everything. He was exhausted, and lulled by the train's rumbling and the soft cushions, Harry finally slipped into sleep.

There was warmth and flickering light from a dying fire. Quiet voices murmured from the shadows, the scent of charred fat and spilled beer was so heavy it made the air hazy. Men and women were all around the large room, some sitting at tables and drinking as they spoke and laughed lowly, others wrapped in blankets propped against walls or spread out on the floor by a great fireplace.

A group close to the door were softly singing and nudging each other, clearly drunk and still going. One of them had a familiar face, smiling happily as the man tried to remember lines to a song that everyone was humming in a different tune….

Harry woke with a gasp. Diarmuid was calling him.

"My lord, we have passed two stops for Tokyo already, I am not sure which one you intended to use."

"Oh. Oh!" Harry rubbed his eyes and straightened his glasses. That was a weird dream. He could have sworn it was a memory. "Shinagawa, it's Shinagawa."

"Then you should ready yourself, the announcement already said we were approaching that station."

"Right. Thanks for waking me."

"Of course my lord."

Harry sat up, neck cricking, and his stomach growled. He hoped his money making plan didn't take too long. Definitely the first thing he was doing once he had funds, was getting food.

The train slowed down and a cheery jingle sounded before a recorded voice announced the Shinagawa station and line transfers. Harry got up and was first out the doors when they opened. He hurried up the escalators and joined the rush of suit-clad business men and women swarming through the shiny station. Soon, he was stretching in the sun on the street outside, the noise and the colors of Tokyo whirling around him as people and cars raced about their business.

"This truly is an interesting age to be born in," Diarmuid said. Harry felt the spirit flitting above him like an invisible snitch, trying to take in the masses and billboards and the skyscrapers all at once.

"Busier than ancient Ireland?" Harry asked teasingly.

Diarmuid gave a snort. "By far, and yet, it does not seem strange at all."

"Because the Grail already told you about it?"

"Yes. It filled my memory with so many images, this vast city seems no more than commonplace." The spirit didn't seem terribly pleased about that.

"So is it no fun then?"

"Fun?" Diarmuid laughed. "Fun will be had when I face a worthy knight in Fuyuki, and fight for my lord's honor!"

Harry rolled his eyes and looked around. "Of course." There were plenty of restaurants advertised nearby, and lots of signs for businesses in the tall glass scrapers, but what Harry was looking for would be much more eye-catching than all those respectable places. A garish, eye-searing explosion of color-Ah! Harry grinned and started walking down the street around the crowds lining up for buses.

When he finally reached the place he'd been looking for, Diarmuid at last made a comment.

"Do...do you truly need to go into this place, my lord?" he asked hesitantly.

Harry smothered a cackle in his hand, pretending to sneeze. "Is it too loud? You can wait outside if you like." The walls and windows were covered with bright red adverts and gold numbers, and as soon as he walked through the doors, the sound of bells and electronic whistles and whirring mechanics rose up like a wall. Cigarette smoke hung in the air and stung his eyes, and lights flashed and blinked rapidly from lines of machines filling the large room, until everything felt too close and not enough space to breathe.

"No! I...should stay by your side, it's just…" Harry could feel a wave of confusion and vague annoyance coming from the spirit. "What is this place?"

"This," Harry thought with amusement as he walked up to a change machine and inserted his few bills to get coins, "is a pachinko parlor. It's a...hmm, I guess a gaming hall."

"Like a gambling den?"

"Sort of." Harry took his coins and a small rectangular plastic bucket from a stack beside the machine, and wandered past aisle after aisle of flashing, ringing rows of game machines. It was pretty early in the morning, but there were still a surprising number of people at the parlor already, smoking at machines up and down every aisle and blankly watching their machines spin and shriek. He finally picked an aisle with only a handful of people and sat down. "Technically speaking, gambling is illegal in Japan."

"Then...how will this make you money, my lord?"

"Because it's gambling." Harry grinned at the frustrated silence Diarmuid probably didn't mean for him to sense, and started putting coins into a slot. For every coin, a dozen shiny silver balls poured out into the bucket Harry put under the hole below, which he then poured into a catch feed on the machine in front of him. After using all his coins and depositing all the balls, he pulled a knob and the machine whirred to life.

"It's pretty funny actually." Harry sat back to watch as silver balls rained down from the top of the machine's glass face, and a brightly lit wheel with flashing bubbles and springs began spinning inside. Music started playing, and exciting dings and drumbeats sounded every now and again. "Gambling for money is technically illegal, but...gambling, or playing rather, for prizes, is perfectly okay."

"What prize would be worth this…"

"The noise?" Harry laughed to himself, keeping careful track of the silver balls. "The smoke? Or just the constant flashing lights?"

"...All of it, my lord. I cannot think this is good for your health," Diarmuid responded only slightly mulishly. Harry shook his head and focused on the balls behind the glass.

"There's some small amount of skill involved in timing when you send the balls through," he said as his eyes tracked some of the balls bouncing against metal pins as they rained down. At the bottom, small levers opened and closed like wings, either widening or blocking a hole with lights around it. Most of the balls were missing this hole and bouncing toward other, unlit holes. "I never got the hang of that. I get a headache. But, there is something I can do."

The balls Harry was tracking finally clinked toward the bottom, just as the levers were closing. Harry muttered "Aresto!" under his breath, and the levers froze. The balls fell past them, and Harry released the spell. He sat back as the machine beeped and shrieked and a number wheel in the middle started spinning. That Harry left alone, instead opting to track more balls and make sure they made it past the moving levers at the bottom. Music played, the whole machine lit up, and silver balls poured out of the machine into a bucket below.

"So...you are playing to collect the balls," Diarmuid was saying. He seemed to be hovering beside and inside the machine, and occasionally flickered off to other nearby pachinko players. "But...then, won't they simply give you money for the balls? That is simply gambling for tokens!"

"Nah, the thing is, you can only trade in the balls for prizes, not money." Harry started playing more with the balls inside the machine, adding a few Wingardium Leviosa's to move more balls into the proper hole. The machine was whirring and blinking quite a bit. "They're mostly things you can buy anywhere, although there's some expensive stuff too."

Diarmuid was getting more frustrated. Harry looked up from the machine and let it finish the last celebration song. He stretched and looked up at the ceiling. "Do you want to know how Japan gets around its own gambling laws?" he asked casually.

"...I would my lord," the spirit's voice was perfectly even, but Harry still gave the air a sympathetic grin.

"It's actually very clever, and it's not something that you can easily figure out just by looking." He glanced toward the front of the parlor, where a counter and shelves were covered in the "prizes" that could be won. Snacks, toiletries, electronics, towels, knick-knacks...honestly the prize counter looked more like an eclectic outlet store. "There are certain prizes that have very high values when you trade them in, but...they aren't anything. Just little figures or bits of metal, all wrapped in plastic. But once you trade in your winnings for them, you can take them somewhere else, and have them bought off you."

"You...trade your winnings in somewhere else then. So, you aren't gambling in the building, but…"

"But everyone here is totally gambling for money," Harry grinned and turned back to the machine. He still had a pile of balls in the insert feed, and he needed to change the bucket down below. "There's just...an intermediary step between the game and the payout."

Diarmuid said nothing more, but Harry could feel much of the annoyance from before turn to amusement. An hour or so later, after he'd filled six more buckets and his stomach was growling non-stop, the spirit eagerly interrupted him.

"My lord, I believe that man at the front is collecting a prize that can be traded in for money. Should I follow him?"

Harry blinked and sat up to glance down the aisle. He couldn't see whoever the spirit had spotted, but he didn't doubt the man was there. "Yeah, it would really help to know exactly where to go instead of having to look for it. Good thinking."

"I shall return swiftly, my lord!" Diarmuid said, and then he was gone. Harry could still feel him, like sensing the warmth of sun on his skin, but moving away and changing direction at odd moments.

He yawned and looked down at the floor around him. He had seven buckets filled and one only about a quarter filled. Judging by how many balls he'd got when he paid for them, around 100 balls should be worth ¥1000, or at least close to that. The buckets didn't quite hold 1000 balls, definitely a couple hundred less than that… so, he probably had between 4000 and 5000 balls. That should be enough for now, at least until Harry had something to eat.

"I have found it, my lord!" Diarmuid came back with an excited whirl, stirring the smoke in the air like a gentle breeze. "The place to get your money is very close, but far less noticeable than this place."

"It would be." Harry sneezed and reached around the machine to press a button. He started scooping the last balls he hadn't used into the bucket he pulled up from below. "Alright, I'd say we're good for the moment. We have enough to get some food at least."

"Wonderful, my lord!" Diarmuid cheered. Harry thought the spirit was happier about leaving the parlor than he had any right to be, considering he admitted he couldn't actually hear the noise or smell the smoke. Apparently he could only sense the "spiritual nature" of the business, and found it unsavory.

Hah! Harry had to sit in all that unsavoryness after an agonizingly long flight and with an empty belly.

Soon enough, a man in a black suit came down the aisle with a tray. He bowed his head at Harry and asked something. Harry nodded back and smiled, holding the mostly empty bucket up and gestured at the pile of full ones. Luckily, this seemed to be good enough for the man, and he began collecting Harry's buckets and arranging them on his tray, taking the last one Harry held up before leading Harry off to the prize counter.

"I believe those small gold and silver tokens in the clear boxes are what you are after, my lord."

Harry looked behind the counter at a glass locked case where a line of the thin, square tokens in thick plastic boxes were arranged. The gold tokens were worth 5000 balls each, and the silver were worth 1000 balls, definitely the money exchange items. He waited for the counter assistant to finish pouring his collection into a counter and hand him the printed receipt of his winnings, then pointed toward the tokens. Harry was surprised to find he had just enough on his voucher for one gold token, with a little bit left over. After some looking around, he got a toothbrush set and a pack of kleenex.

Then it was a short walk around the building with instructions from Diarmuid, and Harry walked through a paper plastered glass door into a tiny room with just enough space to stand before a counter blocked off with a wall and bars. He passed the token through a metal dip under a glass window, and a man on the other side took it, counted out some bills, and passed them back through. Harry put them in his wallet quickly and left.

Once back on the street, Harry sighed and headed back to the train station. There were a lot of cheap food shops there. As he walked down the alley, he pulled his wallet back out and flicked through the five bills nestled within. Recreo! He pulled the real bills out, put his wallet away, and pulled his pack around to stick the money in a pouch inside.

"Will we head to Fuyuki now, my lord?"

Harry pulled his bag back on straight and rubbed his neck tiredly when he stopped at a street crossing. "Er, no. We have a lot more than I thought we would get-yen is doing really well right now-but it's not enough to last us a week, even if I duplicate it and no one notices."

"And you would not feel safe enough to do that."

"Nope," Harry thought as he walked with the crowd toward the station. "Governments get really mad about counterfeiting, and I do not want to have to flee a manhunt."

"Especially when you do not know the language well," Diarmuid said thoughtfully. "Very well. Then we shall have to earn more funds. Will it be at the same place, or shall I hunt down another not-a-gambling-hall for you to use?"

"A different one-hang on!" Harry stopped before a directory and frowned. "How do you know I don't know Japanese? I've been getting around alright!"

"I meant no offense, my lord, it is simply…" Diarmuid sighed as if he just realized he'd said something he shouldn't have. "You... just now, when you were collecting your winnings at the parlor, you were asked very specific questions about what you wished to do with your voucher, and some items were suggested, but you only smiled and pointed."

"No offense taken. I just didn't realize it was that obvious," Harry said with a shrug, then began actually looking at the directory. "It's not like I'm completely lost-I can read alright, and I do sort of know what most people are saying. Just...it's been awhile."

"I would have told you what was being said if I thought you truly did not know anything, my lord."

Harry hummed as he located a convenience store on the map, then blinked and looked up. "Wait a second- you understand Japanese?"

"Well… yes. I suppose I do."

"How?! You're Irish! You've been dead for ages!"

"The Grail gave me the knowledge," Diarmuid said simply.

Harry sputtered and turned away from the directory with a huff. "Well, that's bloody useful!"

"Forgive me, my lord, I should have told you-"

"No, no, not-I mean-you're a spirit!" Harry rushed to stop Diarmuid before he could do the kneeling-without-a-oh. There he goes. He sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I don't mean you've done anything wrong, just-this Grail seems to give you a lot of random information!"

Harry felt Diarmuid hesitate and seem to look up at him. He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked off through the station with a huff.

"I mean-it told you the name of the city the Grail War takes place in, but didn't tell you exactly where that was! It gave you knowledge of Japanese and stuff that's in the modern world, but didn't tell you how everything actually works! It just seems really haphazard to me, that's all. And it's not your fault!"

"I see."

Harry worried his lip while he found his way to the convenience store-a Seven-11-tucked away with an entrance on the street and an entrance to the station. He started browsing the large fresh pack section of box lunches and microwaveable foods while Diarmuid watched.

"My lord...perhaps the Grail gave me only enough information to...compliment my Master's own knowledge."

"What?" Harry frowned as he was picking up some triangle shaped rice balls wrapped in seaweed and plastic.

"It seems that everything I do not know, you do or can find out," Diarmuid said slowly. "And what you do not know, I do or can find out. We...are working well together, with what the Grail has gifted us."

Harry juggled the stack of food and went to look for a basket, thinking hard. "I suppose. But what you know would be more useful if you could walk around…"

Diarmuid was quiet while Harry tipped his items into a basket, then went searching down another aisle. "I could…" he said uncertainly.

Harry looked up from studying a line of bottled drinks. "You could...Oh! You can go back to your physical form!" He blinked, then laughed and reached for the cold case door to pull out two large tea bottles. "I'm sorry. I've been running around and got so tired, I actually forgot you came in a body in the first place!"

"Then...you would not mind if I assumed physical form, my lord?" Diarmuid asked hesitantly. Oh drat. Somehow Harry had managed to ignore the spirit into feeling like he had to stay in spirit form all the time.

"Not in the middle of a crowd!" Harry said hurriedly. He turned to take his basket to the checkout line. "Hmm, and your clothes are pretty weird for this era, so we'll have to go shopping first, but… yeah! Once we get somewhere quiet, you can change back, and we'll get you some modern clothes." He hoped the spirit didn't take offense over what Harry said about his outfit. "It would be a lot of help to have someone in person who can fluently translate if anything comes up."

"I would be honored, my lord!" Diarmuid only sounded excited and pleased. Harry smiled and made his purchases. When he left, he veered off to an out of the way corner and put everything into his pack. The new bills he'd received as change got the same treatment as the ones he got from the token exchange. As soon as everything was in its proper place, he stood and grinned at the air.

"So, why don't we go find a department store and get you some clothes then?" He could eat on the way, then they could find another pachinko parlor nearby.

Diarmuid laughed. "With pleasure, my lord!"

Harry strode off, looking for a station directory, with the spirit following happily behind him when,

"My lord...what is a department store?"