A/N: This will be a collection of short stories that are A/U and unconnected to each other, in no particular order, unknown number in total, and updates completely random, whenever I'm motivated to write another. As in, "And now for something completely different…"

Tale the 1st: Arthur Chooses a Mage-Guard

"Leave your helmet in the hover, Arthur."

His father's voice is impatient, almost harsh above the air-swooshing of the hover- and rocket-carriages. Arthur almost turns his heel on the dura-crete curb to toss his helmet onto the front passenger seat of his father's sleek vehicle before the airlock hisses the vertical door down and sealed. The helmet bounces to the foot-gap and he bites his lip, looking up through his lashes to see if his father will scowl and scold. If he's old enough for a mage-guard of his own, he's old enough to remember to leave his helmet behind in the hover. In a few years, he won't be required to wear one at all – but the law's the law, his father says, even though their driver's never had an accident over the road or in the air.

But his father only reaches to pull one corner of Arthur's shirt-collar out of his over-tunic. His eyes are occupied with other thoughts, that Arthur's mistake hasn't distracted him from. Which is good. Behind his father, Mage-guard Gaius in his not-there-gray uniform raises an eyebrow – in sympathy, not blame.

"Are you ready for this," Arthur's father says, looking through Arthur's forehead. "It's a big responsibility. Training your first mage-guard."

Arthur holds his breath, worried that his moment of excited inattention has caused his father to rethink the morning's activity, but his father turns toward the building without further hesitation.

"My first?" Arthur feels safe and curious enough to say, skipping to keep up with his father's longer stride, over the sectioned dura-crete of the walkway before the mirror-building towering a full hundred stories above them. Other people walking give way before them for his father, who ignores everyone as usual.

"Well," his father says, pausing to allow Gaius to punch in the door-code. "You can't expect to keep the same mage-guard all your life." The door makes a sighing noise as it dematerializes, and Arthur's boots clatter over the slight suck of the entry-rug, cleaning any dirt that might have stuck there between the hover-carriage and the building.

Arthur had expected that, actually. "Why not?"

His father makes an impatient noise, flashing his hiero-badge at the nearest armed attendant, who nods to allow them to pass to the banks of vertical personnel transporters across the lobby.

"People with magic do not age at the same rate as people without," Gaius tells Arthur neutrally. Arthur glances at his father, who's evidently going to allow the walking tutorial this time; he doesn't always, though Gaius knows everything about everything that interests Arthur. "It depends upon the amount of magic, and its rate of use."

Arthur steps carefully over the dark line of the scary gap between the polished floor of the lobby and the rough-knobby floor of the vertical transporter.

"Is that why you look so old?" he asks Gaius.

Who glances at his father over Arthur's head, before answering in the same emotionless tone. "Yes, Arthur. My skill is minimal, and I am called on to use it frequently. Therefore I appear to have many more years since I was made, than is fact."

Arthur ponders that, as his father programs the transporter. It makes sense, but he thinks there's probably more to it. Why wouldn't his father want Gaius to be more powerful, especially if he makes his mage-guard use magic all the time? Why would he allow Gaius to be used up more quickly? He'll die sooner that way.

Gwen's cat died, all stiff and lifeless under her soft fur, and Gwen cried, and Arthur didn't want that to happen to Gaius. He can't imagine life without his father's mage-guard – but of course, he might feel less attached to the old man after he gets one of his very own.

The vertical transporter begins to move, distracting him – downward, so Arthur realizes the building had underground stories, too. He likes the sensation of descent best of all transporter directions; he jumps off the floor to feel that extra half-second of weightlessness before his boots settle.

"Arthur," his father says, stern but still thinking of something else.

"What do you think you might like to name your mage-guard?" Gaius asks him.

"I don't know." Arthur thinks about how his class at school argued over a name for the Komodo dragon in its glass tank at the back of the room, and it wouldn't even come or notice or care. "Don't mage-guards come with names?"

"Some of them do."

Arthur's father turns his head to look at him, and the discussion of names makes Arthur feel faintly guilty, like he's done something wrong. His father lectured him for hours, before deciding to let him choose a mage-guard, on the proper treatment of that particular menial. Training was important, like a pet. Like one of the big military were-dogs, something powerful and dangerous, but if handled correctly, it would die before biting the hand that fed it.

When his father said that, it made Arthur think of his best friend at school, Gwaine, when it's his turn to spoon vegetable mash into the baby's mouth at dinnertime. He sometimes stays with Gwaine's family after school; Gwen's family more rarely because even though their living quarters are all in the same building, Gwaine's father works with Arthur's father, while Gwen's father works for Arthur's father, and there is a Difference.

The vertical transporter slides to a stop, thudding the last inch into place before the door hisses open, hidden-smooth in the wall. Arthur follows his father onto the polished floor of another hallway, and watches the reflection of overhead lights move past them, sometimes hopping as they walk to avoid stepping on the glow-spot.

He wants a mage-guard with enough magic that Arthur can keep him his whole life. That way, he won't be used up and die, and he won't be killed on accident like Gwen's cat, who ate Arthur's portion of their allotted snack from the kitchen when she brought Fluffy to their apartment, and died of poison. He wants a mage-guard who isn't a pet like a slow-deaf lizard or a lazy-careless cat or a fanged were-dog. He wants a mage-guard who will talk to him like Gwen and Gwaine do.

Not a pet. Not a servant, like Gaius is to his father, but not even a friend. He decides – without telling his father – that he wants a mage-guard who will be a little brother, and that means, enough magic so he won't outgrow Arthur. Gwaine has three little brothers – four counting baby Mordred, who always spits the squash on his self-washing bib. Why can't Arthur have at least one?

"Wait here, Gaius," Arthur's father commands, pausing at an unmarked door that looks like wood but isn't.

"As you wish, my lord." Gaius sets his feet and folds his hands as if he can wait all day without getting stiff and sore – and his faces looks as if he doesn't mind it.

Maybe he doesn't; Arthur isn't sure. He is sure he doesn't want his mage-guard to pretend to like him, as some of the kids at school do because their parents want them to be friends with Arthur's father's son.

His father flattens one hand on the translucent panel next to the door, and it shimmers pre-arranged permission, dematerializing to let them inside.

Inside it looks like the medical clinic and the school science lab, all at once. Arthur looks around curiously at screens and banks of buttons and toggles and levers – and one clear full-length flexi-glass window panel. His feet move without his meaning to, and he peers into another room that seems bare but for a floor-to-ceiling column, wider than he could put his arms around, and full of murky-pearl liquid. A man in a white tunic and trousers moves into view from behind it, scrutinizing it and type-swiping the vid-tab propped against his other forearm. The man has long hair tied into a single short thick curl at the back of his neck, and a beard; he looks a little like Gwaine's father, but isn't.

"So this is the young master?"

Arthur is startled by the voice of another technician entering the room; it sounds like gravel and needles mixed together. The man is only as tall as his father's shoulder; he's completely bald, his lips are wrinkled and pinched, and his cheeks sag off his jaw, but his eyes are piercing yellow-green.

"This is my son, Arthur," his father confirms, and he sounds so proud Arthur twists around to look up into his face.

"Normally I would say, seven is too young." The bald technician reaches for Arthur's wrist and draws him to one side, the column in the next room disappearing from view as they move. Arthur's father says nothing, so Arthur follows the technician obediently. "But for your son, sir…"

"Exactly so," Arthur's father says.

"Now, Arthur, let's begin." The technician taps a screen to life, and angles it so that Arthur can see better – a human figures is central. It appears naked, outlined by a spidery white grid, but isn't clearly boy or girl.

That makes him blurt a question as soon as it occurs to him. "Can I have a girl?"

Arthur's father gives a hard sigh. The technician's lips pinch, but he answers without consulting him. "No. We can't make mages of a gender different than the master. You're a little boy, so he will be a little boy."

Well, there went the possibility of a little-sister mage-guard.

"Now," the bald technician continues, "what color would you like his eyes to be?"

Arthur stares at the vague screen-figure, fascinated by the possibilities. "Blue, like mine."

The man's fingers, bent like claws, stutter over the screen, and the two-dimensional figure opens blue eyes, delighting Arthur. This is more fun that he thought.

"Hair color? Yellow, like yours?"

His tone sounds like when grown-ups make fun of children, and it makes Arthur hesitate. No, he doesn't want a mage-guard that looks exactly like him. The eyes are fine, but since his hair is light – "Dark. As dark as… black."

"Good choice, little master." The tech type-swipes another moment, and black hair sprouts from the screen-figure's head. "Like night and day you'll be. Now – figure?"

"What?" Arthur is confused.

"Do you want him to be tall, short, skinny, fat – what?"

"Tall," Arthur says without thinking.

His father clears his throat. "Skinny, not muscular. I do not want him to be able to physically overpower anyone."

"Well, sir, he will still be male, if you see my meaning, but…" The fingers crawled over the screen, and the figure adjusts subtly. But it isn't ugly, so Arthur doesn't protest. He plans to have muscles someday like the were-dogs' handlers, himself – even if his mage-guard isn't going to be a pet.

The technician is explaining how personality will develop with time, along with speech patterns and intelligence, depending on the training. He has a hold of Arthur's wrist again, coaxing him to lay his hand out on one of the screens like the lock-panel of a door.

"This is the only part of the process that is uncomfortable, young master," the bald man tells him, like he's trying a little too hard to be reassuring. Arthur looks over his shoulder at his father. "But it is necessary to bond the mage to you – he'll have half your fingerprints and a match to your genetic code, which will limit alterations to your choice, and make theft or copy virtually impossible…"

Arthur doesn't understand what the man is saying, and stops listening. His father crosses his arms over his chest and watches him back.

And then something – cold, wet – seizes his wrist with a sharp sudden sting like when he put his finger in the stitcher last year. He jumps – from not expecting it, not from it hurting – and turns back to see two shiny pincers retracting into the sides of the screen. For a moment two drops of blood glisten on either point, before they're sucked inside, and the pincers themselves disappear.

The technician turns Arthur's hand, ready with two synth-pads, holding them in place over spots that begin to throb, body-heat and pressure fusing the pads over whatever puncture-marks the pincers made.

"If you'd like, you can watch your mage-guard forming, just there." The tech points to the flexi-glass window. "It will take several moments, but it's an interesting process."

Arthur squeezes his wrist and feels it throb. He steps to the window, feeling a little unsteady from the needles and trying not to let his father see it; he's glad when his father moves closer to the technician playing his banks of controls. Arthur is careful not to touch the clean, clear material separating one room from the other, and notices that the second tech has disappeared.

There's an almost-flash in the column of pearly liquid, like cloud-lightning. And it starts to swirl faster, like stirred paint. Arthur holds his breath so it won't fog the flexi-glass, and imagines he can see arms and legs and a head with black hair – and then he can, as the silvery sheen gathers into a glowing shape, leaving what looks like clear water behind in the column.

Arthur has a moment to wonder about that color – if the mage-guards' clothing is part of them, or if that color is chosen because of how they're made.

And then, he's aware of tension at the other end of the room.

"What's happening," his father's voice demands. "Why is it doing that. I said I didn't want –"

"I'm sorry, sire, I can't - The magic generator seems to be spontaneously overloading. I'll try a reduction of the quantity gauge, but that never –"

"Do something!"

"I can't – I can't! It's in the red, now… it's in the black… it's going to –"

Arthur is aware of an odd excited thrumming in the air, vibrating the flexi-glass just a little bit hazy. He can't look away from the column in the other room and the shape inside it – he doesn't know if he wants to –

Time grinds to an abrupt and audible stop.

Then explodes in light and sound, blinding and incomprehensible.

Arthur gasps, ducking and shielding his eyes as the window shivers, then stills. He feels pressure against his body like the air-swooshing of a passing hover-carriage, and when he drops his hand and blinks glittering bits of light from his eyes he sees that the column is gone. It's a stump in a sea of glinting glass-sand, rippling away to the edges of the white room with the splash of released liquid.

The tech and his father are both speaking at once, too fast and too loud; Arthur ignores them to stare at the figure floating like a hover-carriage above the stump of the column, unfolding its legs and lifting its head.

Black hair, blue eyes, a skinny little boy appearing a few years younger than Arthur. The boy looks right at him, and doesn't smile exactly, but his eyebrows are up, and he's alert. Arthur lifts his hand, slow and deliberate, and lays his palm on the flexi-glass between them; he supposes cleaning fingerprint-smudges isn't going to be a big deal to the adults after whatever just happened.

The boy blinks, and light flashes again, brief and contained in his eyes, though gold rather than silver. And the flexi-glass hisses into the wall like it's a door.

It sounds to Arthur like the tech is still trying to give his father an explanation – to find an explanation, maybe – and neither of them is paying him any attention. Arthur steps through the gap of the window, and the boy – dressed in the silver trousers and tunic of the mage-guard, form-fitting and without wrinkle – springs up. Off the column, his bare feet dance over the floor without care for the broken bits. Maybe he misses them, stepping between them, or maybe they just don't cut him.

Arthur wonders about magic, and then the boy is in front of him. His head comes to Arthur's chin, and he tips his own up to greet Arthur enthusiastically.

"Hi!"

"Hi," Arthur says, elated but uncertain. "You're… my mage-guard." The boy blinks and grins – his eyes are undeniably blue, and Arthur wonders if he was wrong about the flash of light he thought he saw. "I think I'll name you –"

"Merlin! Hi!"

Arthur knows what a merlin is, from natural-science class. And the little boy does have a certain birdlike quality to him. But, "No, I want to name you…"

"Merlin!" The boy bounces on his toes, swinging his arms.

Arthur scowls. He's decided just that moment that he doesn't want one that comes with a name, he wants to choose what to call his mage-guard brother. "No, I said. I want to name you something else, like…"

Delight oozes out of the boy like air from a pricked balloon. His shoulders slump under the tunic, his chin drops to his chest, and his hands dangle. His eyes only just manage to hold Arthur's and plead. "Merlin?"

Arthur now remembers how often Gwaine complains about his little brothers. He says grumpily, "Fine. Merlin."

Fresh joy explodes from the littler body, and the boy – Merlin – flings his arms around Arthur, pinning his arms to his sides. Arthur panics, uncomfortable and worried that his father will come to the window-space and see.

"No, Merlin!" he hisses, struggling to free himself. "No hugs! Not ever! Men don't hug!"

Merlin releases him, cocking his head questioningly. "Hugs?"

"Yeah. You can't." Arthur reconsiders. Maybe it will be okay for Merlin to hug other people. Like Gwen, or Gwaine – or baby Mordred, who always reaches with sticky fingers. As long as they're okay with it. "We can just shake hands. Like this." He demonstrates where Merlin's fingers should go in relation to his.

Merlin seems to be more interested in the synth-pads on his wrist, picking at the edges stuck to Arthur's skin; Arthur cringes, but the pincer-pokes don't hurt anymore at all. Merlin says, "Men?"

"Yeah. We're going to be men someday, me and you. Me first, of course, I'm older." The thought of differing rates of ages due to magic quantity and usage drifts across his memory and doesn't linger. "No, keep those fingers together, and straight."

Merlin tries to obey, but his fingers are like unruly twigs, sticking out where they don't belong. "You?"

"I'm Arthur." The boy beams into his face, forgetting about their fingers, and Arthur retracts. "But I think my dad will want you to call me my lord."

"Arthur!"

"Or maybe sir, lots of people call my dad sir, and probably they'll call me sir, one day…"

"Arthur!"

He's tempted to stamp his foot. Merlin isn't listening, and that will get him into trouble – but Arthur doesn't want to hurt his feelings; his cheerfulness makes Arthur happy, even if he can't show it.

Then Arthur's father steps into the opening of the window, and he turns; Merlin presses against the back of his left arm, but he's wary now, not eager. Arthur folds his hands in front of him, squeezing his wrist to make himself properly serious again – but he can't find the covered cuts to make them hurt.

"Well?" Arthur's father says impatiently, studying them both.

Arthur's mouth is dry; he doesn't know the right answer. But he realizes he isn't expected to when the unseen technician responds.

"The physical process is complete, as you can see, sir, but the sensors on the magic generator are dead after that… whatever that was. Power surge. So it's impossible to quantify the magic this one possesses – it could be a negligible amount, or it could be… more."

Arthur thinks of the flash in the boy's eyes, and the way the window disappeared, rather than shattering like the column did. He squeezes his wrist, and it feels fine.

His father grunts, narrowing his eyes. "What do you think, Arthur," he says. "We can come back next week and make another one…"

A very brief thought flickers through Arthur's head – what happens to this one, then? – and he's very aware of his fingerprints and blood that they'd already used, that had come to life in the shorter boy crowding his elbow. He thinks about personality development, and their introduction, their handshake, and that wide cheerful grin.

"No," he says, as decisively as he can without crossing the line into disrespect. "I want to keep Merlin."

"Merlin, huh?" his father says, and his lips curl just slightly, as if he doesn't think much of Arthur's choice of a name. Arthur is never going to tell him that Merlin is one of the ones that come with a name already. "Well, we'll see. Between you and Gaius, you'll have to make sure of his training, or else –"

"I will," Arthur blurts. Maybe he'll have to treat his little mage-guard like a were-dog after all, rather than a sibling, if he's going to make sure his father will keep allowing Arthur to keep Merlin. "I promise."

"All right, then." Arthur's father looks around the wet shards glittering on the floor; he shifts and a few smaller bits crack under his boots. "I expect a follow-up report, once this incident has been investigated," he tells the technician. "I don't want to be held responsible for any malfunctions later on."

"Oh, but sir –" the technician sputters, but Arthur's father seems to have forgotten him already. "Let's go," he orders Arthur. "I don't want to be later to work than I have to be, after this morning."

He turns to lead them out; Arthur glances back to be sure Merlin is going to follow.

The younger boy's blue eyes dance.

"Hugs," he whispers.

Arthur almost chokes on a giggle, and bites his smile back into the expanding warmth in his chest. He takes Merlin's hand and says sternly like his father, "No."

Merlin clings to his hand and skips to the room's new doorway. Arthur knows already how Gaius' eyebrow will quirk. How Gwen's eyes will light up – how Gwaine will tease. There's so much to show Merlin – to teach him – to share with him. Arthur can't wait.

They cross the tech-room to find Arthur's father already starting down the corridor toward the vertical personnel transporter. Gaius uncrosses his arms and prepares to follow.

"Hi!" Merlin says cheerfully, releasing Arthur and holding out his hand to shake Gaius' like Arthur showed him. "I'm Merlin!"

Gaius raises his eyebrow, and Arthur enjoys the laughter bubbling in his chest, something he can't remember feeling before, or at least so strongly. Maybe it won't be so hard after all, to teach his little brother how to please his father.

For the first time he can remember, he thinks his life might actually be fun.

A/N: It occurred to me as I reached the end of this, how similar it might be to Humans. But I honestly was only thinking of the video games where you can create your own avatar… Whatever impression I evoked, I hope you enjoyed!