An Incomplete Potter Collection ch The Ashikabi Series Collection Chapter 1
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Crossover: (Harry Potter) / (Sekirei)
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The Vagrant Ashikabi
Not an Ashikabi
The Runaway Ashikabi
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Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
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Story: [The Vagrant Ashikabi]
Summary: They met in a park, and broken and odd though they might be, they enjoyed the company. Neither of them had anywhere else to go anyway.
Genre: Adventure? Humor?
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Harry was eight. And he was lost.
A new city, a new country, and suddenly no Dursleys. Abandoned.
Still, he wasn't any hungrier than usual, he wasn't any more tired than usual, and he wasn't any more sneered at by the locals than usual. All in all, he was doing alright. He was a little worried that he'd end up falling asleep somewhere bad or catching a cold, but so far that hadn't happened, so he was doing alright.
In comparison to the girl wearing nothing but a bloodied shirt, he was in fact doing absolutely spectacular.
But, despite what the Dursleys would have the people around him believe, Harry had always probably been just a little bit too nice for his own good. So instead of turning tail and avoid getting caught up in whatever the beautiful girl was involved in, he'd decided to talk to her.
It took him nearly half-an-hour before he had a good idea of what had happened, and from there on out, he couldn't just leave her there. She was too much like him, except... he still didn't believe the Dursleys when they'd called him a 'freak', and this girl had long since learned to believe that she was 'useless'.
And so it was that Harry met Akitsu.
It was a meeting that would serve to give quite a number of people quite the substantial amounts of headaches in the future.
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When it came to things other than fighting, Akitsu was actually quite slow, and more than a bit forgetful. So it'd come as no surprise that Harry had been the one to fall into the category of 'the brains' in their odd partnership.
However, it wasn't as if either of them had any real reason to seek help, to find a job, to find a place to stay.
Akitsu didn't really get cold. No, that was wrong. She was always cold, but she would in fact get severely uncomfortable when exposed to heat for any longer stretches of time. Her body-temperature was simply reflective of how comfortable she was in cold weather.
Harry on the other hand did get cold, and as such had good cause to finding shelter from cold weather, but he was also not exactly a trusting kind of person, and believed that living on the street for anything but the harshest of weathers, was a perfectly acceptable precaution to avoid other people.
Together, they wandered aimlessly across the city of Shin Tokyo, until they found a way to sneak on a train leaving said city, then they wandered around a new city, until they found a new train to sneak aboard.
They wandered, they might've begged for cash once or twice, they might've found a conveniently resilient harmonica and figured out a way to play it, they might've stolen clothing and food, they might've severely injured someone in self-defense, they might've visited soup-kitchens once or twice – but made sure never to stay for long, not wanting to deal with the way people always got iffy about realizing that a kid lived on the streets – and they might've gone garbage-diving a few too many times for a regular person's peace of mind.
Their lives weren't the easiest, but it was comfortable in a way that they both enjoyed. They both had someone to rely on, and they both had someone who relied on them, and even if their lives were strange and probably more than a bit illegal – apparently, police officers didn't approve of people escaping custody at first opportunity – they were happy.
Of course, like any vagrants, they had places that they visited more often and places that they visited less.
Shin Tokyo was one of those places, not so much because of it being the place where they'd originally met, and more due to a certain landlady who'd generally lend them her bath when they dropped by. Even if she usually complained about it.
Miya was a nice woman, if a bit scary at times.
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Miya hadn't known what to make of them, the first time she'd found that human boy and the Scrapped Number. But despite how volatile a Scrapped was likely to be, she couldn't just leave them. They'd looked too pitiful, huddling together in that alley.
Still, that had changed rather remarkably over the years.
They were still dirty, and rarely seemed to have been eating well, but there was a certain kind of... 'confidence' to them now. Back then, they'd been improvising more often than not, but with enough experience apparently even the streets of Japan was a perfectly decent place to live.
Minato and his flock had never much gotten along with them, and Miya supposed that there was some jealousy from some of the Sekirei in regards to how she usually allowed the vagrant-couple to share a single bath. On the other hand, forcing them both into the bathroom at the same time tended to minimize the risk of them stinking up the whole inn, and they'd apparently grown so desensitized to each other's nudity that they didn't even seem to register it properly anymore, so it wasn't really as if she had any reason to classify their behavior as 'lewd'.
Of course, with the inn being the closest thing they had to a reoccurring home, it was to her the letters seemed to arrive, more often than not.
Apparently, the owls couldn't quite find them as consistently as they should've. In part due to the distance that said owls would've been forced to travel, as well as their inability to stick around a specific sleeping-spot for more than a single night.
Which was why, when her doorstep was bombarded with parchment again and again, Miya finally resigned herself to the improper behavior of opening another person's mail.
And found herself skeptic. Heavily skeptic. 'Wizards and witches'? 'Magic'? Really?
Classifying it as an attempt to tempt the duo into a trap, set by someone who wanted a Sekirei to study – Scrapped Number or no – Miya rather sensibly set Homura to burning the hundreds of letters in the backyard.
And she kept on ordering... 'her' – the issue with the former-host's gender was still a bit of a switch to get used to – to do so, right up until a very stern woman appeared on her doorstep.
At which point Miya gently scolded the woman about harassing innocent people with letters.
The fight had really been inevitable.
Though she must admit that she hadn't been expecting the almost Sekirei-like abilities displayed by the older woman. Still, Miya wasn't exactly weak enough for a little bit of surprise would be enough to defeat her.
The fact that the woman had managed to force them into a draw-... That had actually been quite impressive. Especially since the more she thought on it, the more she was forced to admit that – though the woman had been the first to resort to violence, apparently in retaliation to her perfectly harmless scolding – the only reason Miya had been able to drive her off had been because Minato and his flock had decided to take her side.
Unfortunately, the woman returned the very next day. And this time, she'd brought reinforcements.
In the ensuing violence the Sekirei were forced onto the defensive, and their chances of victory were looking slim at best when suddenly the vagrant-duo themselves had wandered into the fray with their usual level of absentmindedness.
And after it'd become obvious that Harry was quite vocally on the inn's side of the argument, the attacking party had attempted to start diplomatic negotiations.
Which was when said party first ever learned about where exactly the Boy-Who-Lived had spent the last few years of his life. And where he was planning on staying for the rest of his life, if he could manage it.
Harry and Akitsu were both quite happy living on the streets, wandering where their legs took them, never owning more than they could carry – and probably a bit less than that, legally, anyway – and never having to bother with following anyone's rules but their own.
They were fiercely independent, and even if it seemed as if the attacking party might actually not have been lying scumbags after all – and Miya refused to feel guilty about that, since they'd been the ones to resort to violence first – the duo had absolutely no interest in attending a school out in the middle of nowhere. Magic, or no magic.
They'd survived without magic for this long, and whilst it might've been nice to know, they would've rather have cut off their own arms than subject themselves to the multitude of rules and regulations present in the average school, let alone a boarding school.
So, their offer of studies was summarily rejected.
All in all, the greatest part of the day was the realization that at least those buffoons wouldn't be sending her any more letters.
Miya counted that as a win.
XXX (Omake) XXX
Harry opened his eyes.
Tilting the water-proof and wonderfully warm blanket to get a better look at their surroundings, Harry felt his nose scrunching up.
He should've known it'd been unusually cold lately. And now it was snowing.
Glancing over to where Akitsu was sleeping, he was unsurprised to find that her coldness-aura had joined forces with the weather and she was now a small pile of snow on top of her head. She really did look fantastically ridiculous like that.
Grudgingly curling out of the protective warmth of his blanket, Harry counted them lucky to have found a place as protected from the element as they had. Sure, he seemed peculiarly immune to freezing to death for some reason – with Akitsu around, it hadn't been surprising that he would've ended up figuring that out fairly quickly – but the last time he'd been caught outside on a proper winter-night, he'd still suffered frostbite.
Though, again. His frostbite had been perfectly willing to heal up after a few hours in front of a radiator or fire.
In hindsight, he should probably have been a lot more worried than he was about how many laws of nature his body would randomly decide to violate. But then, he spent most of his time with a woman whose body-temperature was probably closer to the insides of a fridge than that of a mammal. In comparison to that, a bit of random weirdness wasn't exactly noteworthy.
However, his lack of permanent damage from frostbite aside, it wasn't exactly painless to experience it, so Harry was glad that he'd been able to dodge it this time around.
Stretching a bit from where he'd curled up underneath the heat-vent, Harry wondered how they'd spend today.
They were running a bit low on food, but not drastically so, and begging would probably be a bit more effective with the population than usually – it always seemed more urgent to provide food and shelter to someone who could potentially freeze to death in the weather – but it'd also probably end up a bit more obvious that that was what they were doing, as well.
Weighing the possibility of spending the night at some place where social services tried to steal them away to, Harry dismissed the begging-idea. They'd saved up enough food to last them a few days, and it'd be a shame to spend the first snow of the season dealing with police officers.
Harry tilted his head as a sudden thought struck him.
No. It wouldn't necessarily be a waste.
Grinning to himself, Harry bent down to gather together the snow that had fallen into a ball, before turning to his partner. "Think fast!"
Akitsu didn't open her eyes, but still managed to block the snowball to the face. Or rather, he ice did that for her, so she didn't have to bother.
Harry pouted exaggeratedly at her, before his grin reemerged. "Only snowballs allowed, how much chaos can we cause for the cops on a day like today?"
Akitsu opened her eyes to stare blankly at him for a long moment. "... A lot."
Harry's grin turned a little bit vicious as he remembered the trouble that the cops had caused them last month. "That's the spirit, let's go!"
It was a day that would go down in local history as the Snowball Massacre, and would serve as a deterrent to provoking the duo's ire in close proximity to winter. On the grounds of not pissing off the party with the home-field advantage.
It was also the day which the local schools would remember as 'that one day when classes ended up canceled and a giant snowball-fight started between every school in the district'. The kids had a great time, the cops, not so much.
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Story: [Not an Ashikabi]
Summary: Sekirei and Ashikabi. But she'd never actually been a Sekirei, and he wasn't an Ashikabi.
Genre: Humor, Family
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She must've told them a hundred times, and – considering how utterly dense some of them were – Miya sincerely believed that she might be forced to say it a few hundred times more. Possibly all the way until her dying day.
Sekirei and Ashikabi, that was how it worked. Except Miya wasn't a Sekirei. She was close, probably the closest thing that existed, but not quite.
She was the one who watched over the Feathers. They originated from the same place, they'd traveled together, and she was responsible for them all. But she wasn't a Sekirei, and never would be. She was what she was.
So when she'd fallen in love, there had never been talk of 'being Winged', even as the others from the Disciplinary Squad looked at her funny and wondered how she could be happy without it. How she could marry someone who wasn't her Ashikabi.
There'd always been friction between her and the Sekirei who'd stood by her, too similar and too different. Never quite the same, but close enough for the contrasts to become uncanny.
She remembered her late husband once talking about dolls, when he'd tried to explain to her why so many horror movies featured the silly inanimate pieces of plastic. The makers had tried to make them look just like humans, but had never quite managed to capture it, forcing every human that encountered them to instinctively realize that 'something was wrong' about it. It was a phenomenon labeled as 'the uncanny valley', and it was probably the closest thing to an explanation as Miya would ever be able to find.
She wasn't a Sekirei, but those around her felt that she should be, and that made everything twist uncomfortably.
She could admit to having once or twice wondered and maybe even wished to have been one of them, to have been a Sekirei – a Feather – through and through. But fanciful daydreams wouldn't change the facts of the matter, and even if her heart still ached at the memory of her late husband, she was-... 'content' was probably the closest word for it, even if it sometimes came closer to 'resigned'.
She was who she was.
So when the boy had stumbled into the courtyard of her inn – skin and bones and dirt and exhausted hunger – she'd decided to help, because it'd been the decent thing to do.
And even if she might sometimes wish she hadn't, from all of the times she had to keep reminding them all that he wasn't her Ashikabi, if she'd had the opportunity to do it over, she would've done the same thing again.
He was a scrawny little thing, and once she managed to adjust to speaking English proper enough to be understandable, Miya quickly realized that he had a very sharp tongue. Quite often sharp enough that it ran off without him even realizing it.
He was wary and skittish and never ate quite as much as his body probably needed him to, but aside from his sometimes caustic remarks he was also fiercely loyal and oftentimes carefully respectful. An interesting person, if generally not that special.
She was a widow, he was an orphan. If she hadn't already had 108 different Feathers to watch over – though it was a relationship that probably fell closer to babysitting than to parental care – it might've been a classic tale of loss and healing hearts.
As it was, Miya was glad that he didn't need her watching him like a hawk every hour of the day, even if he'd always try to find a way to skip out on his Japanese lessons if he thought he'd get away with it.
It was an easy relationship. Not exactly distant, more like owning one of those cats who mostly wandered about on their own.
Neither of them expected affection from it, neither of them tried to force affection out of it. They were both scarred in their own ways. Her from lost love and despair, him from hatred and scorn.
It wasn't until Uzume mentioned it that Miya had even realized what it might look like to the Sekirei of Izumo Inn.
Miya, the 'Number 01 Sekirei', and a young human boy. Obviously she must be Reacting, and it was only a matter of time until she'd convince him to Wing her.
Except Miya wasn't a Sekirei, and she couldn't be Winged even if she would've wanted to be. And she was fairly sure that Harry didn't even have the potential for being an Ashikabi in the first place, so that was just another layer of ridiculousness to go with the rest of it.
To humans it looked like a childless widow taking in an orphan to replace the hole in her heart. To Sekirei it looked like a Sekirei finding an Ashikabi.
Miya guessed that it came fairly close to the 'human' impression of things, though she'd never really welcomed him into her heart. Their relationship sometimes slipped towards the parental side of things, but it never really seemed to feel like Miya imagined a parent would feel.
Harry wasn't her child, Miya wasn't his parent. They were compatible, in their own way, but it was more that neither of them stepped on the other's toes, than due to some kind of deep connection between them.
It might've sounded callous, but then it seemed that precious few of Miya's barely-existent relationships could manage even that much.
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Harry wasn't entirely sure if he was insulted or just resigned by the realization that Kusano – who barely knew how to string two words together at the best of times – was about on the same level as where his own ability with Japanese was.
It wasn't as if he wasn't learning. It was more that he didn't understand what kind of sadistic bastard had had the brilliant idea to make it necessary to learn thousands of letters just to enable a person to read the newspaper. It was ridiculous.
Though, admittedly, Harry might've been slacking off rather severely on his studies once he'd realized just how frustratingly complicated the language was. He was only human.
Miya didn't seem to mind beyond being exasperated, and he could usually string enough words together to make himself understood, even if it made him sound like an absolute idiot. He could be witty in English, and that was quite frankly enough for him, even if it was a bit disappointing sometimes.
Still, he wasn't entirely sure what the whole Sekirei Plan was about, other than that it had something to do with 'fighting' and 'love'. Supposedly, there was also a prize mixed in there, but Harry wouldn't believe it until he saw it. Crazy magical powers and the ability to grow wings notwithstanding, Harry sincerely doubted that the whole thing was as cut-and-dry as Musubi seemed to be making it out as.
Then again, perhaps he was just reading in too much about the reaction of the other Sekirei staying at the Inn. It was possible that they were nervous about winning, and not doubtful of the whole thing being without some kind of horrible catch.
A horrible catch that wasn't merely the 'beating up other people to win the prize'-part of the equation.
Then again, from the way Miya spoke about MBI – or, perhaps more accurately, didn't speak of MBI – then having serious doubts about their apparent altruism was probably just common sense.
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Minato wasn't sure what the deal was with Harry.
On the one hand, he was a little kid living at an Inn all by his lonesome. On the other hand, the landlady was a widow, and even if she looked young-... Minato hastily interrupted his thoughts before Miya used her probably-not-existent-but-you-never-know freaky-alien mind-reading abilities to read his mind, and then get upset about him implying that she'd be old enough to have given birth to a kid that was now older than Kusano.
Then again, Harry was British, and spoke really funny-sounding English. He also had a different surname than Miya, and didn't actually resemble her in any way shape or form – which thankfully included the inability to manifest that terrifying demon-mask-thing.
Still, the boy had to have been in Japan for a reason, and Minato honestly couldn't figure out what it might be. Even if he was probably a bit too distracted by the beautiful girls who kept throwing themselves at him for some inexplicable reason.
Kusano seemed to enjoy lording her 'mastery' of the spoken language over him, Musubi didn't seem to react to him enough to have an opinion beyond a general 'nice person' feeling, Kazehana avoided him because she was terrified of what Miya might do to her should she judge her a 'bad influence', Homura enjoyed talking to him in English every now and then, Uzume treated him much the same as she did Kusano, and Matsu was a strange mixture of polite and familiar when she talked with him.
Considering that Matsu had probably already been living at the Inn when Harry arrived, perhaps that might mean that the 'brain-type' Sekirei had some knowledge of how this is where he'd ended up. But she'd never offered to tell him, and Minato had no intention of asking.
It would be rude to just straight-up ask the boy why he was living at an Inn in a foreign country all on his own.
Which, in hindsight, might've perfectly explained why Yukari had done exactly that barely five minutes into what had been her own meeting with him.
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Harry stared at the loud girl.
"Pity." He finally answered with a shrug. "I wasn't in a position to refuse." And, apparently having said his piece on the matter, he turned back to his food.
Miya sighed, shaking her head. "I'd prefer 'human decency'." She corrected him halfheartedly, before turning a sharply polite smile at the girl. "Some topics do not make for appropriate dinner conversation."
Matsu was very studiously still focusing her own attention on her plate, not looking up to meet anyone's eyes; Homura looked a little uncomfortable, fidgeting as if both worried and curious; Musubi, Kusano, and Tsukiumi were all clueless; Shiina looked as if he was trying to use willpower alone to force his Ashikabi's mouth shut, a feeling that Minato felt a lot of kinship with; Uzume and Kazehana both looked a bit grim; and Yukari looked ready to start praying for the earth to swallow her whole in order to escape the unexpected response her carelessness had brought.
All around, it was a very uncomfortable dinner.
But by the time it was finished, Harry simply rolled his eyes at the lot of them. "My relatives dumped me on the street and then fled back to England, I nearly died, and then Miya took me in." He scoffed derisively. "Bloody hell people, it's been over a year, I'm not made of glass."
The mood remained awkward after that, but by then Harry had thankfully retreated from the scene, and so he didn't have to pay attention to it.
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Miya had never really approved of the Sekirei Plan. In no small part because she wasn't overly fond of the thought of her young Feathers fighting each other, hurting each other, in order to achieve the 'grand price'.
She'd long since bowed out of arguing against it though.
The Sekirei and MBI would do as they pleased, and Miya didn't overly care as long as nobody interfered with her inn. She'd lost too much already to willingly risk growing too attached to things that she couldn't protect.
Harry was probably the closest thing to an exception that she entertained, but even her relationship with the British boy was fairly distant, and they were both comfortable with that.
Still, she'd never liked the Sekirei Plan, and so when Minato went up and beyond what she'd expected from the young man, and actually managed to disband it before it did too much damage-... Well, she supposed she was quite grateful to the young man.
Harry didn't much notice the difference, having never been involved in the first place, and – though he had some understanding of what had happened – he was still too caught up in dodging out of doing his own homework to bother with being overly awed by Minato's accomplishment.
But then the letters started arriving, and everyone who lived at Izumo Inn was somewhat struck by the realization that not even Harry would invent a scheme crazy enough to try to stage the existence of a school of magic in order to get out of doing math.
Well, most of them believed that. Tsukiumi was still suspicious.
The main reason why Miya herself believed that the letters came from an outside source could be laid at the feet of Harry's first words upon reading his 'acceptance letter'.
"I'm not sure if this is the shittiest scam ever thought of, or just genius." He then wandered off to his room, where Matsu was willing to admit that he was indeed trying to make his own version of the letters – carefully making sure that his at least sounded remotely believable.
If he went to a school that just so happened to not have homework that anyone at the Inn except for himself could understand, why that was just perfect, wasn't it? That way, nobody could guess if he was half-arsing it or not, and as long as he convinced everyone that he was definitely totally going to school, then nobody would complain about him growing up to be a Seo-like bum.
In the eyes of the eleven-year old, it was an image of heaven.
Miya didn't exactly approve, but his gleeful willingness to adapt the idea privately for the sake of future plans – rather than try to convince anyone of the authenticity of the original letters – meant that he wasn't responsible for the letters. He was kind of ridiculously easy to read like that.
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"I'd rather not."
The world seemed to stop, as – despite the chaos of learning that magic was very much real – Harry rejected the offer.
"Who the hell would volunteer to live at a school?" He continued, shaking his head in disgust.
Miya – who'd admittedly been expecting a reasoning more in line with not wanting to return to the country where his relatives had lived before dumping him on the streets – put her face into her hand, because yeah, that didn't actually sound out-of-character at all.
Desperately struggling to keep herself from bursting out laughing – it'd be rude – she couldn't help but wonder if the boy's reluctance towards school reflected badly on her, since she was the closest thing that he had to a parental figure.
The shocked expression on the stern-looking woman's face wasn't making it any easier to keep from laughing in sheer hilarious exasperation of him.
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Story: [The Runaway Ashikabi]
Summary: Once hurt, twice shy. Why would he come to her, when she's telling him to go away?
Genre: Drama?
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Harry startled awake.
That dream again, with the woman. The angry woman who spoke the same language as everyone else.
He didn't know what she was saying, but she was angry, and she was angry at him, to the point where he could swear that she'd tried to attack him more than once.
He really wished the dreams would stop. He didn't want to meet the angry woman, and she didn't want to meet him, so they should both just agree to stay out of each other's heads, and he'd be on his way to someplace far far away.
Though, again, he wasn't entirely sure how he was supposed to get away, considering that he didn't have any money with which to pay for a ride out of town, and didn't speak the local language well enough to beg.
If Harry hadn't already disliked the Dursleys as much as he did from what they'd put him through, Harry could've easily learned to hate them over the course of this last week. Apparently, eating out of garbage cans was very effective in turning people against those responsible for their plight.
The woman who was keeping him from getting a good night's rest – even on those rare occasions where he could actually find a place to sleep in – certainly wasn't making his life any more pleasant.
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Tsukiumi frowned.
She wasn't sure who this supposed 'Ashikabi' of hers was supposed to be, or what they looked like, but they seemed disgustingly pathetic. There was never any sort of attempt to defend themselves from her accusations – verbally or not – nothing except disappearing as if running away.
She was going to be the winner of the Sekirei Plan, and she was going to do it without an Ashikabi to chain her down. That was what she'd decided long ago. The ridiculous degree of uselessness from the Ashikabi that she was 'reacting' to just reinforced that decision.
It wasn't consistent, when and how the two of them would end up sharing dreams, but it would happen a few times each week, and every time her Ashikabi fled rather than even try to confront her.
If her Ashikabi had put up a fight, argued, done something, then maybe she could've admitted that her reluctance to be Winged was in no small part due to a competitive streak. Well, that and the idea that she would have to-... to do that with someone she'd only just met. There was no way she'd let that happen. No way in hell.
Maybe if her Ashikabi had had a bit more of a spine, she would've felt something other than disgust at the idea of it. At the idea of binding herself to something that weak.
But that point was moot. She was going to remain un-Winged, and she was going to win the Sekirei Plan.
XXX
Minato had helped rescue her from that completely uncouth Ashikabi who'd tried to force her into being Winged by him, and Tsukiumi felt a brief flicker of something a bit like curiosity as she watched Musubi happily cling to her Ashikabi.
Minato had told her what was actually needed to Wing a Sekirei, and – whilst definitely embarrassing – it wasn't nearly as bad as she'd been assuming. And she felt a tiny prickle of guilt at the memory of how she'd been so confrontational in regards to her own 'destined Ashikabi'.
They probably hadn't deserved quite that much violence and vehemence on her part.
But that didn't mean she wanted to be Winged by some weak coward who didn't do anything except run away when confronted with danger. She was going to be the winner of the Sekirei Plan, and she couldn't very well be asked to drag around an Ashikabi who kept trying to run away at the sight of her battles. That would be too pointlessly cumbersome.
No, better to remain un-Winged, than be bonded to someone so weak of will. Even if they were marginally better than the disgusting Ashikabi who'd tried to force himself on her.
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Homura sighed, feeling a most pressing need to crawl back into bed and not emerge again for a month.
Out of all the people she could've decided to follow back home, it had to have been Minato.
Sure, it was better than leaving her alone and an easy target for some really unpleasant characters, but he would've much rather seen his self-proclaimed rival running off to actually meet up with her destined Ashikabi instead of hanging around at Izumo Inn and randomly trying to challenge him to a fight.
He knew that she'd learn quickly enough that 'violence was prohibited', and that that rule was quite terrifyingly enforced by Miya. But the problem was that Homura was quite certain that that would just inspire the Sekirei to get inventive about trying to challenge him to a fight.
So he wasn't exactly happy about her moving in.
XXX
"Frankly, it's amazing how healthy he is."
"Healthy? He's skin and bones!"
"Yeah, but he's not ill. I mean, eating garbage isn't exactly a good way to avoid food poisoning, but there aren't any traces of him suffering from something like that. Or even a cold, for that matter."
"I guess... but he sure doesn't look healthy."
"Well, he's been dumpster-diving for weeks without showering, of course he's going to look a mess."
"Fine, fine. So, what do we actually know?"
"Caucasian male, definitely not from Japan, doesn't speak Japanese, seems to react to English, shows signs of abuse, possible runaway, possibly abandoned, clear distrust of authority-figures, and a problem with nightmares."
"Nightmares?"
"He avoids sleep, and when he does sleep, he usually startles awake within a few hours."
"Has he said anything?"
"Not a word. About anything really. He keeps his mouth very much shut. It's possible that running his mouth has gotten him into trouble before."
"Covering for someone, maybe?"
"It's a possibility, but I doubt it. Seems more like it has to do with his problems with authority-figures. Might be related to why he was on the street in the first place, or it might be something that he just thinks is related to it."
"Believing that he's to blame for his own situation?"
"Well, who knows? But it happens, and it seems to fit pretty well."
XXX
Harry wasn't exactly happy about finding himself under the tender care of the Japanese government after someone had reported his regular scavenging for food.
He was even less happy about the realization that whoever these people were – he wasn't sure if they were police or social workers or what – it wasn't an impossibility that they'd try to get him back to the Dursleys.
He might not be exactly happy to dig through garbage for food, and he might consider the Dursleys as a somewhat better alternative to living on the streets, but he'd survived this far on his own. It felt as if he simply returned to the Dursleys, all that he'd achieved in keeping himself alive would simply crumble away into dust.
Going back meant that he'd lost.
Oh, this excursion wasn't exactly voluntary on his part, and he would've much rather completely avoided it and remained indefinitely at his relatives' house – or at least until he was old enough to move out and live on his own through a scholarship or something – but now that he was already here-... He wasn't sure how he could go back, he wasn't sure how to even begin to try and imagine going back.
His life was now a life away from the Dursleys, and he was going to do his damnedest to keep it that way.
So, no. He most definitely wasn't going to be sharing his story or any names or possible ways to identify his connection to the Dursleys, because he didn't trust these people not to send him back there.
Though he would've preferred it if they'd decided to take him to a 'holding area' that was at least in a new city. He got the feeling that maybe the dreams of the angry woman would stop if he got far enough away from her.
He'd really like to be able to sleep uninterrupted without having nightmares about her trying to attack him.
XXX
Tsukiumi really wished that her 'destined Ashikabi' would just stay out of her dreams.
She didn't want to meet him, and he just cowardly ran away anyway, so what was the point with him searching her out like this all the time? Stupid human.
She did kind of wish she could actually get a good look at him though. She was sure that she'd recognize him if she ever met him – and she was sure that he was a he – but she couldn't really remember enough to describe him beyond a vague impression of black hair.
It was annoying.
Maybe it was because people had a hard time remembering what they dreamed about, maybe it was because – despite the sort-of-assumed solidity – dreams were far too 'fluid' for her to get a good look at him, or maybe it was just that the coward had figured out a way to harass her in her sleep without ever revealing his face to her. She wasn't sure, and nobody she asked about it could come up with a good answer either.
In the end, she just tried to chase him out of her dreams as quickly as possible, and then get on with actually sleeping. She had a Sekirei Plan to win, and she couldn't really afford to be distracted.
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A/n: Yes, I've been sitting on these for a while now, and they've all been aborted even more thoroughly than is usual for this "Ashikabi Series" of mine, so I decided to combine them into one chapter.
Below are the author notes for the actual stories themselves.
AKITSU:
I could imagine Harry and Akitsu meeting, I could imagine them getting along (despite the lack of a proper Bond, or maybe even because of the lack of one), and (since they're not Bonded) Harry and Akitsu would have no reason to be included in the Sekirei Plan, meaning that they'd be kind of free to go wherever, really. And with that in mind, I just can't see them accepting an offer to go to Hogwarts, after so much time living where they've been. They're happy where they are, and have no reason to change their minds on that matter.
Obviously, Dumbledore and company are probably not going to take that 'no' for a proper answer, since they desperately need their BWL, but I don't want to write a story about that and all the potential halfway-blackmail that would be likely to occur in it. It's been done, the concept is quite often enough to leave you incredibly pissed off at someone (whether the characters or the author, it can vary), and it feels like too much of a hassle for my muse to deal with it.
As for why Minerva attacked first... Well, Miya used her demon-mask-thing on her during the 'scolding', and (even if the magical world could replicate the illusion) they wouldn't really use them for something as insignificant as scolding a person for sending them letters. Thus, Minerva interpreted it as an attack, and reacted accordingly.
MIYA:
Yes, I refuse to try and screw about enough with canon for Miya of all people actually being Winged. If she could be Winged in the first place, it would've happened with her late husband, and then she would've deactivated upon his death (just like a normal Sekirei would).
As for Harry's blatant rejection of Hogwarts, well... if Harry knew that Gringotts had a vault full with money, he might be a bit more willing to join Hogwarts (not wanting to be a financial burden and whatnot), but since he doesn't know about that-... It kind of means that beyond learning magic (and he would've seen enough Sekirei-magic to probably be somewhat inured to the stuff by now) he has quite literally zero reason to jump at the opportunity to go to school in a different country, and a lot of hesitations and reasons to avoid doing so.
TSUKIUMI:
I don't mind Tsukiumi and Harry as a couple, they might be pretty interesting together, but I just can't imagine the two of them getting a relationship off the ground. Harry is too willing to 'get lost' and Tsukiumi is too willing to bluntly say just that to his face.
The only way I can see this going is Harry taking off to Hogwarts with no intent of ever returning, and have Homura try and piece Tsukiumi back together once she realizes that the Ashikabi she's been threatening has been a child that's been living on the streets. I'm saying 'piece back together' because if she ever realizes what her misunderstandings and hostility has caused the boy, I'm fully expecting her to suffer a guilt-triggered BSOD.
And really, that sounds way too miserable for me to want to try touching it, so I'm stopping here.