Konnichiwa minna! Welcome back to RuroKen and the Philosopher's stone. I want to thank Crazy Hyper Lady for her review. I'm glad you liked the last one. And on the demands of Blah, who merely reviewed to say 'UPDATE NOW!' I have done as asked. I can't disappoint someone who obviously likes this! So here you are – a new chappy update! I hope you like it!
Disclaimer: all rights belong to Watsuke-sama and JK Rowling, who are probably earning millions for their genius. I, CK, own nothing.
Last time on RuroKen and the Philosopher's stone:
Kenshin got a shock as a letter arrived by owl, when Kenshin has been thought dead for five years, telling him he is accepted into Hogwarts. Kenshin is doubtful, but Hiko isn't lying (for once)…
Chapter FourThe Portkey
A few months had passed since Kenshin found out he was a wizard and that he would be going to Hogwarts School of witchcraft and wizardry. But Kenshin wasn't thinking about the trip to the school just yet. It was almost noon outside, the sun high and warm in the summer sun of mid-June. However, neither Kenshin nor Hiko could be found outside. Kenshin watched as his master rummaged through a pile of letters in such a way that they fluttered to the floor in a snowstorm. Kenshin watched the comical scene as Hiko delved deeper into the stack of letters; afraid his master had completely lost it.
"Now where is it?" muttered Hiko as he disappeared amongst the white paper storm.
"Um…why do you have so many letters, Shishou?' Kenshin, who was standing right behind Hiko while trying to read one of the hundreds of letters his master was shuffling through, asked curiously. Nothing much had changed about the redhead's appearance over the months since the letter came, other than that his hair had become slightly longer and now needed tying back in a small fox-like ponytail. Without warning, Hiko threw a crumpled up letter at his apprentice's face with some force. Seeing the ball of paper as if it were moving through jelly, Kenshin kept his eyes on it and moved his head out of the way when the paper was mere millimetres away.
Hiko saw his dodge and nodded respectfully (so Kenshin couldn't see, of course). His apprentice had improved quite quickly in Ki reading. As he turned back to the letters he said smugly "I haven't always been a hermit, you know. Do you think someone who looked as good as I did wouldn't get any letters from girls?" He smirked. "And seeing as you have obviously got better than using paper balls, perhaps I should start using rocks again, ne?"
"B-but...those hurt, especially since you throw them,' Kenshin whinged slightly as he winced at the prospect, thinking of the bruises he got before Hiko decided that rocks were to be saved for the time when Kenshin was faster.
"Yeah, that might not be a good idea…yet,' Hiko relented. 'Ah, here it is,' Hiko said triumphantly, finally finding what he was looking for.
"Oro? What's it?' asked Kenshin, glancing over Hiko's shoulder. He was holding an envelope similar to the one Kenshin received several months ago made out of yellowing parchment. Hiko's name, written in the western way, was in an extravagant hand, composed in emerald green ink
"This, Baka Deshi, is the letter telling us how we're getting to London," Hiko answered, shrugging Kenshin away from his shoulder. Kenshin stepped back a little to let Hiko stand again.
"Oh, yeah," Kenshin said, remembering that his school supplies were going to be bought in London. 'So, how exactly is this 'Porki' going to get us to London, shishou?"
"One, it's called a 'Portkey'; two, I'm not exactly sure how it works," Hiko said reading over the letter. "It says we just touch it and we'll be whisked away to someplace in London."
Kenshin took a moment to contemplate the concept. "Well," Kenshin said after a minute with a small smile. "If it works, I guess I'll just have to believe that magic exists. So, how come you believe in magic, Shishou? Did you get any proof?" Kenshin added inquisitively.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I did," Hiko said.
After waiting almost ten minutes while his master kept reading the rather long letter and still not getting a better answer than that, Kenshin decided to expand on his question. "Ano...so, exactly what kind of proof did you get, Shishou?"
Without looking up from his letter, Hiko replied "I received this letter a few months after I received one from the same sender, Albus Dumbledore. As you can imagine, when I read the letter that was tied to an owl's leg, I was every bit as sceptical as you are right now about this whole magic business. But this letter told me that if your powers were left untrained, as strong as they are, they wouldn't just go away. They would probably become more powerful, and without the training, you would have no control over them and probably cause a lot of trouble for me, thus ruining the quiet life of solitude I had. I wouldn't want to take any chances with that would I, so I wrote back to him saying I wanted some kind of proof. A few weeks or so later, he sent another letter saying that he would pay me a visit at a certain time that would convince me if I just stayed inside my cabin warming up to the fire in the fireplace. I ran you ragged with your training and tricked you with the sake, remember? So you would be asleep when it was time for him to arrive," Hiko seemed to have finished reading his letter then and looked up at Kenshin with a grin
"I knew you were up to something!" Kenshin blurted out angrily, remembering that day that he had made him do the most ridiculously impossible tasks, then got him drunk on Sake.
"Yeah, well, while you were asleep, I was sitting in front of the fireplace, re-reading the letter, waiting for something unusual to happen," Hiko began again. "I wasn't disappointed. Sure enough, at the exact time Dumbledore said in his letter, the fire became green. Even stranger was that a man – a very old man judging from his hair and beard – stepped out of the fire. Though I was not stricken with awe or fear as a lesser man would be, I was absolutely convinced of the existence of magic in this world. Dumbledore wasted no time - said he had pulled a few strings and called in quite a few favours to be here and couldn't stay long – So he gave me a letter, this letter I'm holding now, the exact instructions we would have to follow to get to where we're going."
"Ano..." said Kenshin, who had been lost ever since the part when the fire turned green. "Can you... repeat everything you said since the green fire part, Shishou?"
Hiko sighed. "A... man... named... Dumbledore... stepped... out... of..."
"Not like that, shishou. Please, just repeat it."
"Alright, a man named Albus Dumbledore - who is your headmaster I think - stepped out of the green fire. He only had a limited time to be here so he gave me our instructions in here," Hiko said, holding out the letter. "And then he left."
Kenshin fell silent as he thought about this and realised something strange about the whole thing. "Why is it so important that I go to Hogwarts when I haven't shown any magical talent, Shishou? I mean, I'm not psychic or anything"
As if he was expecting this question, Hiko immediately answered, "You did do something magical. Last year, the pottery I accused you of throwing away, you made it disappear magically,"
Any other time, Kenshin would have loudly objected at his master for blaming him for something Hiko had known wasn't his fault all along, but this time, something still was bothering him about the whole thing. Something that just didn't seem to add up.
"So when did Dumbledore - I mean, Professor Dumbledore - visit you, Shishou?" Kenshin asked quietly, looking up at his master through red bangs for his reaction.
"Last year."
"No, I mean the date. Which month did he come?"
"February 14th, why?" Hiko eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"But, isn't that during the school term?"
If he hadn't been looking for some sort of retain, Kenshin would have missed the small flicker of hesitation flash across Hiko's eyes before he answered, "Yes."
"So why would Professor Dumbledore, the headmaster, leave school just so he could convince you to let me go to school? Was the job somehow too important to entrust to someone else, Shishou?" Kenshin asked, still watching his teacher.
This time however, Hiko's eyes were stony and gave nothing away. Damn! "You're being paranoid, Baka Deshi. Why would convincing me to let you go to his school be too important for anyone else? He probably had a little free time and wanted something to do." Then, Hiko smirked, With an air of arrogance said, "Of course, ensuring that my quiet life went without interruptions is very important indeed. Maybe it was too big of a job to leave to someone else."
Kenshin decided to stop interrogating him before he started blowing his ego out of proportion, thinking he would get nothing else out of it – except perhaps a headache. "Hai, Shishou," Kenshin said wearily.
"It's getting late, Baka Deshi," Hiko declared. "Don't you want to know what we're supposed to do before we have to do it?"
"Hai, Shishou," replied Kenshin, sitting up attentively. He had forgotten about the Portkey. "So, how exactly do we use a Portkey?"
Hiko pointed at the letter still in his hand and said, "It says here that we have to find it before noon on June 21st, which is tomorrow. It will be an old trainer with no laces. We should find it right out next to an oak tree in the forest if we..."
"A trainer, Shishou?" Kenshin interrupted incredulously. "How is a trainer with no laces gonna get us to London?"
"It's magic, Baka Deshi," Hiko said reprovingly as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "It's only in the form of a trainer so other people won't touch it at the right time and accidentally go where we were supposed to go."
"Ohhh," Kenshin said, realising the logic of the statement. "Gomen. Go on, Shishou'
"Where was I? ...Oh yes, we will find the boot next to an oak tree in a clearing that we will find if we walk straight forward from the front of the cabin…"
When will you admit that it's a shack and not a cabin? Kenshin thought idly.
"…And, if we're touching it by noon, it will take us to London."
"Okay," said Kenshin. After a few minutes of total silence, another thought struck him, "Uh, Shishou, how exactly are we going to get the money to buy my supplies?"
"We can exchange our money for wizard's money," Hiko replied.
"'Do we have any money, Shishou?"
"How do you think I buy my sake, Baka?"
"You sell the pottery you make, Shishou"
Hiko sat back with an air of authority. "That's right, so what's the problem?"
"You haven't sold any pottery ever since I made half your collections disappear, Shishou, but you keep buying sake every week." Kami, he could be so dense sometimes!
"Oh."
Kenshin and Hiko sweat dropped as the looked at each other. Finally:
"Deshi?"
"Hai, Shishou?"
"Go to town and sell the pottery."
"Hai, Shishou."
Kenshin gathered up the pots and sniggered slightly at his master. "And no laughing!" grunted a disgruntled Swords-master. Kenshin laughed outright and sprinted away before Hiko could catch him.
It felt like Kenshin had barely but his head down, but he was about to be in for a rude awakening. "ORO!" Kenshin exclaimed, at once leaping out of bed in response to the ice-cold river water.
"Get up, Baka Deshi," Hiko told Kenshin while he threw another bucket's contents over whatever part of Kenshin the cold water didn't get to yet.
"Ah, Ah, Ah!" Kenshin yelled in response to the scalding water hoping about as if he stood on hot coals. In just a few moments, the different temperatures nullified each other though Kenshin still felt the after-effects tingling through his skin while they walked out of the shack. Glaring at Hiko with looks that could kill, Kenshin growled, "That was unfair, shishou. You could have just yelled at me."
"Oh, but I tried to tell you to wake up, but as my voice was so strangely delicate this morning, I could only manage to get a whisper out," Hiko smirked. Kenshin's look told Hiko exactly what he thought of his "delicate" voice, which served only to amuse Hiko more. Stupid teacher. However, he dropped the subject… for now
'What time is it, Shishou?' Kenshin asked.
"Dunno, before noon I think,' Hiko answered, looking into the sky. Kenshin remembered that Hiko only could tell time by the sun and moon's positions in the sky because he did not own a clock, watch, or any kind of time-teller. Why the heck didn't he just buy one – he got enough money from making pottery. "We'd better get going now if we want to make it in time."
"H-hai" Kenshin said, suppressing a yawn. Vaguely walking toward the direction the shack was facing, Kenshin groggily set out.
"Baka Deshi!" Hiko called out from where he still stood next to the remains of the campfire. "I didn't send you to sell my pottery just so we would forget it!"
"Oh, yeah, Gomen," Kenshin mumbled sleepily. The effects from the water had worn off by now.
"Perhaps I should throw ice on you this time," Hiko said. "Just plain water won't work I see."
Kenshin froze on the spot. Ice? "N-No, Shishou," Kenshin squeaked while he instantly sped up. Within seconds he had got the considerable amount of money he gained last night and was standing next to Hiko. "That won't be necessary. Water works just fine."
Hiko suppressed a chuckle. Perhaps he should use this threat more often. "Don't forget your letter also; your supply list is in there along with the note we're supposed to give our guide in London."
"Okay, Shishou," said Kenshin who sped into the cabin and back again without complaints, not wanting to get ice thrown at him.
"Good, we're ready, Baka Deshi,' Hiko said, when Kenshin handed him the bag of money and the letter. "Let's go."
For about half an hour or so, they walked in silence. And then, Kenshin finally noticed that there was still an extra weight on his side and stopped walking. "Um, Shishou, we still have our swords with us," Kenshin told Hiko.
"And your point is...?' Hiko replied, also stopping to look down at the boy.
"But Shishou, didn't you say that most people don't carry weapons, much less swords, around with them anymore and that its been illegal to carry a katana since the Meiji era?'
"Yes, I seem to remember saying that. What are you trying to say Baka Deshi?"
"Well won't we be a little... erm… out of place with our swords worn in plain view?' Kenshin asked, bewildered at his master's supposed ignorance.
"I thought I taught you to not care about how other people think of you."
"You did, shishou - it was how I survived living with you for so long," Kenshin added in an undertone, before he said. "But, won't the local police try to arrest us?"
"Us?" Hiko repeated in amusement. "They'll probably arrest you. I, on the other hand, have this mantle to hide it within, so the won't even think of arresting me"
"What!" Kenshin yelled "Then what about me!"
Hiko laughed "Don't worry, Baka Deshi. If anyone tries to arrest us, they won't be able to catch us anyway" Kenshin pause.
"Oh"
Hiko slapped his forehead at his apprentice's stupidness this morning
It wasn't long until Master and Apprentice reached the clearing described in Dumbledore's instructions. Sure enough, they found the old trainer hidden among twenty-or-so other old objects including an old boot with a big hole and missing buckles, a patched coat that was beyond use and an old newspaper dated back to 1982. However, there were no other trainers in the pile. Kenshin could only guess that the other stuff was there for extra camouflage. Hiko looked up into through the leafy canopy to try and see the sun's position.
"Looks like we have an hour until noon, give or take a few hours," Hiko said while Kenshin mentally cursed him for not getting an accurate watch. "Of course, if Dumbledore was talking about London time, then we would either be already a day late or a day early. I'm sure he was talking about our local time though, Baka Deshi," he added when he saw Kenshin's very frustrated face.
"Well, Now what?' Kenshin said through grinding teeth to prevent him from saying a few choice words about his master's personality; his patience with his master's jokes was wearing thin.
"I guess we should touch it and wait until we've been transported to London," Hiko said with a shrug. Then he grinned. "If it hasn't whisked us away by the afternoon then we'll just try tomorrow. Maybe my calendar is a little inaccurate."
Kenshin mutter something about what he could do with his 'Inaccurate calendar' before picking up the trainer and called, "Hurry up, Shishou, or we'll be late."
"Always so impatient," Hiko muttered as he too walked over and grabbed one side of the shoe.
As they stood there holding a mangy old trainer in silence as a chill breeze swept through the trees, the apprentice was feeling a little bit awkward. It occurred to Kenshin how odd this would look if an outsider were to walk through the trees and see them just then. A giant of a man in a long white mantle looking as if he had just stepped out of a Samurai Manga and a tiny red haired boy in training gi and hakama, a katana slipped into his obi – both clutching a smelly old trainer – the picture was just laughable.
Finally, Kenshin couldn't stand the deafening silence much longer and opened his mouth to speak with Hiko about what else the letter had stated about their trip to London when something happened that Kenshin would never forget. Kenshin felt a sudden jerk, as if a hook had just lodged itself behind his navel and had pulled irresistibly forwards. He was being lifted up and pulled along at an incredible speed while the hand still on the Portkey felt as if it were glued magnetically. They were speeding faster and faster that colours whirled around them, the wind howling loudly as onward they shot and then-
Bam! His feet slammed with incredible force that it jarred his knees. Gasping, he stumbled and fell on the ground with a thud. "Oro!" However, Hiko, though windswept, remained standing.
Kenshin sat wide-eyed. Though he was expecting it, the sight that greeted him astonished him. He and his master were no longer standing in a small clearing surrounded by trees. Now, they were standing on a large, secluded hill overlooking a very large city. It was late evening now, due to the time zone difference, and also...
'Welcome teh London,' boomed a voice.
Kenshin looked up and gasped.
To be continued…
Chosha's notes:
Well, another Chapter over. I'm sorry for the slightly cliff-hanger ending, but it seemed a good place to stop. So, Kenshin finally has proof of Magic himself. Now the story should be getting interesting. Well be meeting some of the Harry Potter people next time, so I hope you keep reading. Also, please Review. You'll make Chosha-chan really happy! Constructive criticisms also welcome.
Next time on RuroKen and the Philosopher's stone:
Who or what met Kenshin and Hiko at the other end of the portkey? Kenshin has more undeniable proof of magic. But what is worrying Hiko so much? Find out next episode, The Keeper of the Keys
Ja ne for now!
Chosha Kurenai xXx