Disclaimer: I do neither own Weiß Kreuz nor anything about the Myth-series.
Notes: Based on a dream I once had and my favourite books. Loosely following the plot-line of the Myth-series with the cast of Weiß Kreuz. Please think of Aya as if he´d be still Ran (before that whole sister/Takatori incident happened). Thanks to Shiva, kaoru, Pandora.81 and Akeru for reviewing. ´`´`
Warnings: Alter universe, OOC-ness, maybe some spoilers
Please notice!!: This chapter is actually taking place before the first one. It tell´s how Ran met Schu.
Chapter 1 – I just dropped by
There are more things between heaven and earth,
than your book learning may dream, Horatio.
~Hamlet (quotation)
There are different advantages of teacher. One of them is that you can occasionally trick them. The disadvantages of them are that they also sometimes can trick you. Just like it happened today to me.
Well, actually it was myself who tricked me. After all it was me who forgot about the practise today and left my katana at home in the rush. So it happened that I was there at time, but without my mostly needed tool.
I rounded another corner, grumbling to myself about the injustice of the whole situation. I mean, Dad didn´t had to lecture me like that. Everyone within fife miles must have heard him!
Okay, so I lied to him. I didn´t practice the lection I´ve been assigned to do. I actually practised something much more useful. And it wasn´t like I was doing something unforgivable.
I just tried to make some money with my skills. What´s bad about catching some smaller animals from the forest and selling them?! At least I´M making money! In contrast to somebody else who I won´t name here.
I have arrived by now in the street we are living in. The whole street is nothing out of the ordinary. Normal houses with normal people living in them and- A loud bang rips me out of my litany. I cast a quick glance in the direction the it was coming from and see the expected.
As much as you can expect a house to suddenly loose the half of it´s roofs tiles...Eh...Well.
Did I say that there were nothing out of the ordinary in our street? Normal people living in normal houses? Let me remedy this statement. Normal people living their normal life in normal houses AND mister Kingall. Mister Kingall was a shriveled up old goat who loved to terrorize kids. He was also a self-promotioned master of magik. If you ask me this old guy just enjoyed to scare little children to tears and call other people names.
It looked like he was on one of those strange magik-ritual of his again. Out of curiosity I followed the path until I stood in front of his demolished house. He actually broke it at least once in a month. I´m curious what he made this time. The last time I looked he did some part wrong and dyed a goat bright blue. (I dunno where he got it from but it was so hilarious I laughed tears.)
When Kingall performed magik it was always worth a look. And a laugh. All thoughts of my dad and task forgotten, I approached the now slightly unhinged door and peeked inside. A sight of utter chaos greeted my eyes. Everywhere were the strangest sorts of things lying around, from a pair of old underwear (Ew!) to a little metal pot filled with some unidentifiable boiling liquid.
"Hello, mister Kingall? Are you there?" I asked more out of politeness than anything else. The man had already been old when I was a little child. Now I´m nineteen and he´s still as lively as back then. Nobody answered my call. Slightly worried that he´d probably finally managed to kill himself I entered the house.
"Ya lookin´for anything in special laddy?"
I jumped. The question had come right from behind me. As I turned around mister Kingall was standing behind me, eyeing me suspiciously. "Or are ye just trying to find something precious in my humble hut, what you could take with ya?" What did I say? A really charming person.
I tryed to put my best rueful smile on him and feel myself fail miserably as I said. "O-of course not mister Kingall! I just heard the explosion and was worried about your health-" He cut me with a hump-ing sound of. Stepping beside me inside the house he quickliy checked his belongings, As if I´d ever take such stuff., and turned then back to me.
Kingall pointed an accusing finger at me. "Worried about my health, feh! You just came ´cause ya wanted to laught at me! Hah, I´m knowing you Fujimiya Ran, don´t think you can make a fool of me just cause I´m old!" So he noticed me back then. Still his accusation made me angry. I was really worried about him! Not for long, but I was. So what was he thinking he was to treat me like a cheap thief?!
Eyes ablaze, I returned not lesser lovingly "I don´t have to! You are already doing a fine job doing it yourself! All I wanted was to help!" For a short instant we were glaring at each other, each one equally furious. I was often told that my glare was scaring, but Kingall was the unbeaten king of glares. The more was my surprise when he was first to carve in. He turned around, showing me his back and started leading me into the house.
"Do you know what ye´re lacking, boy?" The sudden change in his voice surpriseed me.
Suddenly he wasn´t sounding like some old slavering goat anymore, but like someone who had seen and experienced far much more than a human maybe should.
I got told that Kingall had once been a great magikan, but I´ve never believed it. Till now. Involuntary I followed him trough the house. Kingall answered his own question without to wait for an answer. "Control, boy. It´s Control. It is control over your feelings, control over your power, what can make you big." The sound of his voice, even his whole way to go and keep himself had changed. Now I was following an old, wise man who was knowing of all the secrets in the worlds and would probably tell me if I kept following him.
I was so deep sunken in my own thoughts that I nearly missed that Kingall was speaking again. He had stopped now and I realised that we were standing in what would be his working room. It was full of old books, candles, bottles of mysterious liquids and everything else one could imagine in a magikans room. It was looking like it had been ripped out of some fairy tale book and been made real. Seeing my surprised expression Kingall laughed. It was a strange hacking sound as if somebody was choking.
"Surprised laddie? Not everywhere are magikans feared and mistrusted! Not everywhere is magik only practiced behind closed doors." I formally clung on his lips now. " There are places where a man with knowledge and a keen mind can make a living of it. Everything you´ve ever dreamed of, boy. Wealth, fame, influence, all that and more can be archived by you. I can see the fire burn inside you, lad, but if you can´t handle it it´ll burn you. Control, Ran, Control is the most important part of it."
Why had he to insinuate about my looks now? I was known in the whole city for my bloodred hair and my violet eyes. That nobody else of my family had it, wasn´t exactly making it better. Being called devil-child just because your looks was bad enough. It wasn´t like I was going to make an utter fool of myself by trying to become a magikan. One crazy old one was enough.
That was taking a lot of my trust into his talking. Probably he was really just some old crazy guy who was a good actor.
As if he´d read my thoughts Kingall whirled around, trusting one of his skinny fingers in my face, nearly touching the tip of my nose. "Ya don´t believe me, don´t you?! Stupid boy! I´m trying to teach you one of the most important lections about magik!" The fire in his eyes reawakened for an instant, but died out again.
Now he was sounding like an old man, exhausted from his years. He chuckled slowly. "But you young people won´t listen to us elders, ne? Have to go yaself and burn ya fingers. Have to see it with your own eyes to believe it, hm?"
To be totally honest I was at loss of words at that. What was he actually trying to do? Making me his apprentice, or what? Kingall wasn´t paying any attention to me at all now. The old man was shovelling trough stacks of every possible bits of stuff, finally tuggin´ out a little bag filled with what seemed to be salt with a satisfied grunt.
"Ah, here it is. Come on, boyya!" And with that he grasped my hand and tugged me outside. Surprised about how strong he was, I let myself being tugged into the backyard. Kingall let finally go of my hand for a moment, I thought that he was trying to yank my arm off, and swiftly drew a pentagram onto the gras. I watched with awe as he placed candles on the points of the star and, after a scrutinizing look, whistled loudy.
At the whistle one of the pots with boiling liquids in it, the one from the first room I think, came running out of the house loud clanking and placed itself in the exact middle of the pentagram.
Yeah, you read right. I said running. On it´s little metal feet.
Slowly I started doubting if I was still right in my mind. Pots didn´t run around in the area, jumping over smaller obstacles! They just didn´t do that!
Obvious to my distraction Kingall griped my hand again and yanked me next to him in the direct front of the pentagram. I decided that I wasn´t liking it to be threatened like a ragdoll.
"Hey! What are you thinking you´re doing here?" "I´m going to show you how important control is, Ran. I will now summon a demon who would be strong enough to rip us all into tiny peaces." Immediately I backed away. If this old goat was about to suicide he could do it alone! A steelen grip on my wrist stopped me before I cloud make it far.
"Don´t be such a fool!" Kingall growled. "I said: would be. It´s no danger at all! See that pentagram there?" Reluctantly I nodded. "It´s keeping the demon caught inside. As long as it isn´t destroyed, he won´t be able to harm us at all." Another hard yank sended me staggering back to the front of the drawn sign. "Do you understand Ran? He´s strong, but as long as the pentagram stands we´re the ones who control him. He won´t be able to do something against it, don´t talk about us." And with that he started chanting.
*****
Oh, shit!
Who´d ever tough that they would even follow me on a rooftop?! I certainly not or I´d never climbed on it.
But there they were, climbing not even ten metres under me and just all too eager to get me in their shooting range.
Those fuckin´Takatori-bastard! Telling me that they couldn´t climb! All a big heap of bullshit!! And if those here could climb!
It was slowly time that somebody brought this little bastard of Takatori jr. up to date! I´d love to do it after I´d broke this little traitorous neck of his. If I´d survive that long, that is.
A quick glance down proves my apprehensions. They were catching up on me. Great. Just absolutely great! I was struck here on the up most point of a rooftop of a fife-storied house, together with a bunch of Takatori´s little, deformed pets tight on my heels and no way out in sight. Isn´t life beautiful?
A screech attracted my attention and I looked just in time down to see how one of my pursuers vanished together with a handful tiles. I feel a smirk creeping over my lips. Next stop: ground level. Obviously they weren´t such good climbers as they´d like to. Still smirking I turn to the others and realize that there isn´t much to grin about.
Shortly before the first reached the top I decided to act.
Okay, I admit that throwing tiles wasn´t really fitting to my reputation but, hell, who cares! Desperate situations are calling for desperate deeds! And I was goddamned desperate! Those things had gotten awfully near in the meantime. If I´d at least been able to use my powers against them! Of course I just HAD to be chased on a rooftop from a bunch of monsters who weren´t just only immune to my powers, but also able to rip me into tiny bits with one of their hand tied to their backs!
I managed to soot another two down but slowly I was running out of tiles. I quickly glanced down and grimaced. I could forget the tough about jumping. If I´d jump down there I´d end up as a ugly smatch of Schu-Schu ketchup on the pavement. And as if to complete my luck the first of them had reached to top and was now carefully trying to get into shooting range.
To make it short, I was really in deep shit. And then suddenly a wave of power ran over me, making my skin prickle. Somebody was opening a gate! I casted a last glance over my shoulder, took a deep breath and jumped.
The only thing I could do was to hope that it wasn´t going too deep down on the other side.
*****
I just stood there and stared while the lines of the pentagram started glowing. A very stupid thing to do, if I think about it now.
Anyway, Kingall had finally let go of my hand and was chanting like crazy. I automatically sidestepped to prevent this from happening again. Kingall had a really painful grip. And then my foot collided with something. I looked down and saw that I had knocked one of the candles over. It had promptly went out and scattered some of the lines.
The whole sign stopped glowing. I sweatdropped. Somehow I was sure that that wasn´t a good sign. Not good at all. I was standing halfway in the pentagram, the sign to prevent the demon from killing us, which wasn´t working anymore and Kingall was still chanting.
It began to dawn to me that I was literally standing on the dinnerplate of whatever monster was there to come.
Before I could do anything the air above us started to waver like it was burning. The demon was coming!
"Catch!!!"
And with this outcry something VERY heavy landed right on top of me. We went down.
In the same moment I registered a whizzing sound and a muffled thud.
The weight on me groaned and started moving. The demon was jumped right on top of me! He´d gonna kill me! Panicking I started trashing around, effectively ruining every attempt to untangle our bodies. "Hold still, willya!" A voice growled.
Of course I tried even more to free myself. Why was Kingall not helping me?! I was more than panicked by now. From somewhere within our middle-muddle of bodies I could hear a cry of pain, followed by some very colourful curses in a language I couldn´t understand.
"Finally stop trashing around, or do I have to rip your throat out first!?!" That worked. I froze immediately. It took the demon some time to finally untangle our limbs from each other.
From what I could make out he was humanoid and had a mane of bright flaming red hair. He didn´t look like he really could rip my throat out. Still I didn´t had the longing to actually try and find out. Why was Kingall not doing anything?! Despite the disgruntled demon in front of me I started searching from him. What I found wasn´t exactly what I hoped to see.
Kingall was lying on the ground, a bolt jutting from his chest in silent finality.
Okay... that was a good reason not to help me. So there I was, alone with a lethal demon on the loose and a dead magikan. Gosh, had I a luck.
The demon had in the meantime started to examine his surroundings. Carefully not to disturb his thoughts I slowly climbed to my feet. Hoping that I´d probably be able to back my way out of here when I was just careful enough I started to retreat. Of course the demon noticed.
"Hey you!"