No, you decide. You won't say anything that might spoil the joke - at least not yet.
The goal of your little illusion-play was to surprise, amaze, and awe your audience, and on the whole, you've succeeded in that. That a few members of the crowd reacted to your production with fear is unfortunate, but you suppose it just goes to show that you can't please everybody all of the time. If the worries of that small percentage of the assembled monsters and monster-kin become an issue later, you can address them then, but for the time being, you're content to leave the "Legend of Jason vs. the Jedi" as is.
Larry certainly seems to be enjoying it, and let it not be said that you're the kind of friend that ruins your friends' fun.
On that note, your Spell of the Major Image is still running. It's a highly versatile piece of magic, nigh-instantly receptive and responsive to the caster's will, and able to keep running indefinitely, if the caster can only maintain their focus.
And you have other friends in your party, and many houses to go this night.
Over the next two hours, the members of your party take it in turns to try their hands at pranking and counter-pranking the various homes along your route, with you and your magic providing special effects assistance.
At one house, a fire-and-brimstone-spouting Puritan witch hunter finds himself confronted by a half-grown witch and a magical girl, casting spells that paint his unrelieved black outfit a dazzling array of colors, give his resonant baritone a high-pitched squeak that robs it of all menace, and transform the tools of his witch-hunting kit into rubber toys and fluffy animals.
He folds in short order.
At another stop, a zombie rises from its tomb in the yard, moaning for brains, only to blink in astonishment at the fox-eared miko holding a talisman towards it in warning, while next to her, a Western monk all in white holds forth a glowing cross with a look of fierce concentration and a dramatic declaration about "the Honor of the Quincy" - his mother's suggestion, he admits in the aftermath.
Doom approaches a cackling fortune-teller, whose crystal ball suddenly starts showing her images she truly did not expect to see.
Your father gets in on the action when a Tommy Gun-wielding Prohibition Era gangster pops out of one house, with a cry of, "Drop it, Capone!" and a subsequent shoot-out where bullets whine and spang all over the place.
Jedi Blaisdell makes a few reappearances, to the detriment of candy-hoarding pirates, evil witches, and one very grumpy Klingon.
You're not left to handle the special effects alone. Emiko quickly gets in on that part of the fun, using her native powers of Illusion to whip up a few images of her own, and Amy manages a few spells of her own to supplement your efforts. Briar also tries her hand at the fun and games, after she gets back from tagging along with Kokoa's group.
By the time your group completes the full loop, your ongoing success with Illusion-aided trickery has ensured that your buckets are full to the brim. Nobody is exactly puffing or dripping with exhaustion, but Kagome does look a bit winded from the two-hour walk and the added effort of acting, and the weight of Doom's armor is making itself known to you, even through your comfort-enhancing spells and effects.
Gained Armor Proficiency E (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Still, you think, it has been a fun and productive evening so far.
And it's not over yet.
The community center is lit from within by flashing lights as you approach, and eerie, Hallowe'en themed music can be heard echoing through the walls, along with the yells of young children. There is also plenty of movement outside the building, both on the grounds and up on the roof, as different activities are played out.
Recalling the bird-winged figures you saw landing on the roof of the community center when you arrived, and seeing the movement of light-and-shadow up there now, you find yourself curious as to what exactly the monsters have made of that part of the building.
You go looking for a staircase to investigate the matter-
!
*Sniff, sniff*
*GRRRROOOOWWWWLLLL*
-only to pause with your foot on the bottom stair, as your nose detects the scent of something meaty cooking, and your stomach lodges a complaint about having missed dinner.
You can spare a few minutes to eat, can't you? It's not like the roof is about to get up and walk away or anything like that, right?
Right.
Following your nose to soothe your stomach, you shortly find yourself in a large hall that's been made over as a haunted dining room. Cobweb-covered chandeliers hang from the shadow-choked ceiling, tiny witchlights glowing in place of the candles and casting an eerie illumination down upon the chamber below. The snack bar you saw during your earlier wanderings is here, table after table laid out with appropriately ghoulish style: candied apples decorated as shriveled heads; a plate of skinned grapes glazed to mimic eyeballs; spaghetti and sauce, presented as the "entrails" of a larger-than-life body laid out along one table; slabs of meat carved from that same "corpse"; actual bones, which some of the monstrous crowd are cracking open to suck the marrow from; and other delightfully macabre dishes.
The actual cooking, you trace back to a trio of witches who are stirring the bubbling and boiling contents of a cauldron large enough to hold a grown man, and with room to spare. You don't recognize whatever they're cooking, beyond the general description of "stew," but for all that it's mostly purple-black in color, with glimpses of pumpkin orange, poison green, and blood red, it smells fantastic.
You're not the only one who thinks so. A good thirty or forty other party-goers are in the dining room when you arrive, mostly monsters and most of those kids, but with a decent scattering of humans and/or adults to make up the difference.
Among those, you spot Hakuba Ichirou, Miss Suzuka, and Mai, who have - along with four other kids about Mai's age - have claimed one of the tables, and appear to be just finishing off a late supper.
If you pay attention - and you do - Lady Takara's aura is not present, though she does appear to have passed through recently.
Likewise, you can sense that Gyokuro and Kokoa were here not too long ago, as were some of the members of Emiko's family - the twins and their oldest sister, you think. Nobody else of your acquaintance has been here recently enough for their auras to linger in a recognizeable form, and the only other ones who are here are the rest of your trick-or-treating party, who are breaking up to investigate the food.
Obviously, you're going to grab a plate - or two - and soothe the beast in your belly, but what would you like to do besides that?
In the immortal words of Homer Simpson: "Can't talk. Eating."
Leaving your companions and fellow party-goers to their own devices for the time being, you get a plate and slice off and scoop out various parts of the "body" - mostly spaghetti-guts, but with some ham off the flank, as well as a side of garlic bread that's somehow been turned grey in appearance, like tiny tombstones. Once you have a good-sized helping, you take a seat, flip open your masked helm, and settle in to enjoy your meal.
And then for your second serving, you try some of the colorful witches' brew stew, which turns out to be fish. Not the first foot that comes to mind for a Halloween party, at least not to your way of thinking, but on reflection, it's probably the only kind of meat the party organizers could get their hands on in the kind of quantity necessary to feed a few hundred monsters.
Regardless, it's fairly good.
Once you have sated the beast in your belly, you go back for the dessert course, which is mostly various jellies, disguised as additional organs within the body on the table. The "brain" seems to have been particularly popular, as the servers had to wheel out a replacement, and the "heart" - pulsing irregularly, thanks to some mechanism hidden underneath it - is not too far off from needing such a transplant as well.
Popping a skinned grape eyeball into your mouth while considering whether you're more of a brain or a heart man, you glance around at the room.
Most of the younger kids and their minders have cleared out since your arrival, including Ichirou, Miss Suzuka, Mai, and the other kids she was talking with. In exchange, a lot more of those in your age group have turned up, apparently having finished the long quest for candy and felt the same hunger pangs that you did. Most of the rest of the group that was at Castle Shuzen is here, with a few more members of the Hayashi Clan for good measure.
Kagome's family have turned up as well, and the magical girl herself is currently chasing her little brother the gunslinger around the room, yelling something about eyeballs, as the monsters look on and laugh, or cheer. While her children run wild, Mrs. Higurashi - who's wearing a European noblewoman's gown from a few centuries back - is talking with the mothers - and one grandmother - from your extended group, monster and human alike.
This looks like a natural opportunity to talk with some of those assembled, although by the same token, if you were planning on having words with Mai or the still-unseen and only dimly-sensed Lady Takara, it might be your last chance to do so this evening - or even past that.
Of course, you could always leave your compatriots to their own devices for the time being - Kagome seems to be fitting in just fine on her own merits, and the adults have kept Cordelia and Kahlua from trying to strangle each other this far - and take this chance to go explore other parts of the community center without any of your friends tagging along as a distraction.
Part of the reason you originally invited Kagome to this party was to introduce her to some of your non-human acquaintances in the Moonlit World in a neutral, even friendly setting.
"Souta!" Magical Girl Kagome yells, brandishing her adorable wand in a less-than-lovely-and-just manner. "Stand still and take your punishment like a man!"
To this, Young Gunslinger Souta sticks out his tongue. "You'll have to catch me, first!"
"Quick, kid!" one of the older teen monsters says as he moves his chair to one side, creating a path that will allow the boy to keep running straight, instead of going around a couple of crowded tables. "This way!"
Souta takes the opening, calling a hasty, "Thanks!" back over his shoulder.
Kagome shoots the older boy a look of frustration, points her magic wand at him in a menacing manner - the jewel on the tip flashing just so in the eerie corpse-light of the dining hall - and then runs around the table.
"...are magical girls supposed to threaten people?" the teenaged youkai wonders.
The Higurashi siblings are doing well enough on their own that you think you can afford to go looking for Mai before she leaves, and see how she's been enjoying the evening's entertainment.
You make your way out of the dining room, nodding and offering brief excuses to the handful of people who notice your exit over the ongoing entertainment.
"Excuse me, sorry, pardon me- get back here, you brat!"
"Hahaha! You'll never take m-whoa!"
"Watch where you're going, kid!"
"Me?! Can you even see under all of that?"
"Hey!"
You wonder what that's about, but as tall as you are, there are plenty of people here that are taller yet, most of them are between you and whoever Souta seems to have almost run into, and you have an elsewhere to be.
It takes you a couple of minutes to figure out where Mai went, and you find yourself glad that she was with Ichirou and Miss Suzuka, because there's enough youki floating about to make it unlikely that you would have found the girl before she left, if you tried tracking her signature. You've only met her the once, and the youki infused into her aura wasn't all that strong; with a whole clan of kitsune running around to muddle the signature, you could have spent half the night trying to track Mai, to no avail.
But as the girl is with a priest and a miko, both of whom you've been dealing with on and off for the last half a year and more, things get considerably less difficult.
You catch up with the trio in the community center lobby. Mai - who is dressed like a Japanese princess, with not a hint of foxes about her - is just collecting her candy and her coat, and saying goodbye to a couple of the kids you saw her sitting with earlier, one of whom is a genuine kitsune, while the other is the human boy in the kitsune costume.
Ichirou and Miss Suzuka went as a themed pair tonight, he as a "gentleman thief" type with a dark suit, top hat, cane, cloak, and domino mask, and she as a lady cop.
Ichirou notices your approach, and greets you with an oddly-neutral, "Good evening. Can I help you?"
...oh, yes. You ARE wearing Doom's mask, aren't you?
"Doom has come," you begin with an air of deliberate ominousness, as you step forward and raise one hand.
Ichirou and Miss Suzuka straighten up in surprise.
Then you take hold of your mask and flip it open to reveal your face.
"...to see how you've been enjoying the party," you continue in a normal tone.
The young couple stare at you for a moment, and then Ichirou laughs.
"Nice costume, Alex," he compliments you.
"The same to you," you reply.
"Some sort of Dark Lord?" the youngest of the Hakuba priests ventures.
Not a bad guess, really, but it's clear that he doesn't know who Doom is, either. You set about correcting that, and then repeat your original question.
From the perspective of the priest and miko, the evening has worked out rather well. Mai certainly enjoyed herself, both for the candy, costume, and party games, and also the opportunity to meet more kitsune, as well as other humans who know about and/or like kitsune.
The girl herself says as much, once she notices you talking to her adult minders for the evening and recognizes your face.
She also asks if you've seen her Auntie around anywhere, or if "Cousin Akemi" came with you this time.
You haven't actually SEEN Lady Takara tonight, and you haven't summoned Lady Akemi since sending her back to the afterlife - and you say as much to Mai, who is visibly disappointed by the news, but not really upset by it.
You wonder if you should mention sensing Lady Takara's youki in and around the community center. She does seem to be taking steps to avoid Mai's notice tonight, so it might be a better idea not to bring it up, just so that the girl can go home and tell her parents that the nine-tails wasn't around. Plausible deniability, is the phrase you think you want for this.
That aside, you also pick up from conversation with Mai and some inquisitive glances at the two adults that her parents couldn't make it to the party, and mostly likely wouldn't have attended it regardless. That they allowed her to go is a testament to... something, be it trust or ignorance, but they've enforced a strict nine o'clock curfew, meaning that Mai has to be on her way shortly.
Is there anything else you want to talk to Mai, Ichirou, and/or Miss Suzuka about, while you have their attention?
While a part of you is tempted to tell Mai that Lady Takara is hanging around somewhere, the majority realizes that if the nine-tailed kitsune wanted her adopted daughter to know of her presence, she would have revealed herself well before now.
Honestly, it's not like anybody here could have STOPPED her from doing so, short of Gyokuro, Akasha, and Elder Mitsuki getting involved. And the first two, at least, were split up and out trick-or-treating with their daughters.
By the same token, if Takara has decided that she wants to keep Mai in the dark about her attendance, going against her wishes would not be wise for anyone less powerful than those three ladies.
And so you keep your mouth shut.
As you take in Mai's mild disappointment about the absence of her "aunt" and "cousin," a thought occurs to you.
Before you sent Lady Akemi back to her rest in the hereafter those weeks ago, you brokered an arrangement between her, Lady Takara, and the Postman that would see mother and daughter writing letters to each other. You haven't intruded on their privacy, of course - even if you were inclined to do such a thing and could get the Postman to allow it or just work around him, it'd be a bad idea after the added trouble you took to ensure that the ladies would leave YOUR mail alone - but on a few occasions when you've summoned the celestial mail-carrier for your usual business, you have noticed him carrying old-fashioned Japanese-style scrolls with ghostly and/or foxy auras.
It would be a simple matter to add correspondence from and for Mai to the Postman's rounds, if the girl is interested in such a thing.
And when you suggest the idea, she is. She very much is.
Given that Mai's parents are clearly not comfortable with the supernatural, it would probably be for the best if the Hakuba Shrine acted as an intermediary in this matter, handing letters off to Mai and the Postman. You speak with Ichirou and Miss Suzuka about this, and neither of them has a problem with the idea.
That just leaves the matter of payment. Mai receives a modest allowance from her parents which would normally be more than capable of covering simple mail fees, but you know that the Postman prefers to be paid in Rupees - or failing that, precious metals - rather than Earth currencies.
Your own dealings are providing you with a sufficient Rupee income to act as a money-changer, which would give you a small added yen income, but the Postman's rates are reasonable enough that you could just pay Mai's expenses in this matter and make it a gift to her.
Alternately, you could arrange for her to meet the Postman and work out another method of payment. Lady Takara would almost certainly want to be involved in that.
It seems by far the easiest solution for you to just pay the Postman yourself, and you state your offer as such.
"REALLY?!"
If you'd retained any doubts that Mai carried the blood of a kitsune despite her human parentage, this sudden delighted outburst would have laid them to rest. The twists in her aura that accompany the girl's exclamation are such that you can almost literally SEE the fox-ears and tail popping up, to say nothing of the starry shimmer in her wide, hopeful eyes.
"Yes, really," you reply in bemusement.
"Eeee!"
*GLOMP!*
No doubts at all, you think, while experiencing a moment of relief that you chose to wear what is effectively metal armor tonight. Otherwise, you might be in danger of having your outfit rumpled - or even crumpled - by Mai's sudden, enthusiastic hug.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" the girl squeals gleefully.
*POP!*
"Hey!" Emiko calls out suddenly.
Wait, where did she-
"What do you think you're doing to Alex?!"
Mai gives the older girl a puzzled look. "Um, hugging?"
The "duh" goes unspoken, but is no less audible for it.
Emiko's eyebrow starts twitching.
Sensing an impending meltdown, you disengage yourself from Mai and quickly make with the introductions.
Telling Mai that Emiko is a kitsune makes her clap her hands together and squee in delight.
Telling Emiko that Mai is the adopted daughter of Lady Takara does not seem to settle that reflexive tic. If anything, it seems to intensify.
You're not entirely sure how or why it happens, but you end up with Mai holding your left arm and Emiko your right, as you escort the younger girl, Ichirou, and Miss Suzuka out of the building. Mai is all cheerful smiles and happy chatter the whole way, and while Emiko keeps up her end of the conversation, a cloud of frustration seems to hang over her.
It doesn't help that you can almost hear Lady Takara laughing, somewhere nearby.
All in all, you're rather glad to hear the sound of the nine o'clock bus approaching a few minutes ahead of schedule - at least until the vehicle rounds the corner, and you get an uninterrupted sense of its aura.
To the mundane eye, the bus LOOKS like a common public transportation vehicle, one that's seen years of regular service and been sufficiently well-maintained that the according wear and tear have given it a comfortable character, rather than turning the bus into a rolling scrapheap.
Under your enhanced senses, however, the bus glows like a dark sun, a mobile nexus of monstrous power so thick that it makes the accumulated youki hanging over the community center behind you look like a mere fogbank next to a roiling thunderhead.
The bus pulls up with a hiss as the brakes are applied, and a for a brief moment, it just sits there off the curb, engine idling. Then the door opens, a cloud of youki billowing out like mist before parting to reveal the interior.
The driver's seat is occupied by a uniformed man who would be extremely unremarkable, if not for his short mustache, the cigar clenched between his teeth, and the fact that his upper face is entirely lost in the shadow of his cap, save for the eerie red glow of his eyes.
Oh, and his aura - which bleeds into that of the bus so seamlessly, your passive senses can't tell where one ends and the other begins. And you're just a little worried about what you'd pick up if you tried to actively probe.
The bus driver reaches up, removes his cigar from his mouth, and exhales a plume of smoke. Then, grinning broadly, he speaks:
"Hail, Doom."
...
Well, then.
It's the first response that comes to mind, and it's not entirely inaccurate, at that.
Granted, when most people think "ferry," they envision a boat, but the word can be used to describe the use of other vehicles to convey passengers from place to place.
Likewise, when most people think "ferryman" in relation to the supernatural, they're thinking of the Greek god Charon, Boatman of the River Styx, or similar psychopomps.
Considering how much youki is bound up in this bus and its driver, you're not going to bet against the two of them having served in THAT particular role, either.
The Bus Driver seems to be well aware of all of that, because his grin widens at your words.
"It's always reassuring to meet a young man with manners," he muses. "A hope for the future." Then the Driver straightens up, not quite standing at attention as he addresses the small crowd that's formed along the sidewalk. "The nine o'clock bus is now taking passengers. Anyone who's coming on board, please form a line and present your tickets."
At this, Ichirou digs into one of the pockets of his suit, producing three small tabs. He's not the only member of the crowd to do so.
"It's time for us to be on our way, Mai," Miss Suzuka tells the girl.
"I know," Mai sighs. Releasing her grip on your arm, she backs up a step and bows formally. "Thank you for inviting me to the party, Alex, and for offering to pay for the mail."
"You're welcome. I'll be in touch about the letters."
Mai smiles, and turns to Emiko. "It was nice to meet you, Miss Emiko."
"It was nice to meet you as well, Mai," Emiko replies, managing politeness in her answer, if not eagerness.
Mai is untroubled by the response, and turns to join her adult companions in the line to board the bus. They're among a dozen or so individuals to be doing so, and a few more people are just exiting the community center and making for the bus stop; you and Emiko get yourselves out of the way. For all his dark power and eerie appearance, the Bus Driver handles the influx of passengers very professionally, collecting tickets and keeping the line moving with no fuss.
After a couple of minutes of this, the last of the passengers have found their seats. The Bus Driver waits a moment, looking around to see if anyone else is coming, and then nods once to himself before turning to you and Emiko. Everyone else who was out here has either boarded the bus, gone back inside, or moved off.
"Sorry to cut our first meeting short, young man, Miss Hayashi, but I have a schedule to keep."
"Not a problem, sir," you answer.
"Likewise," Emiko replies, bowing.
"Have a scaaaary evening," the human-form youkai adds, chuckling darkly as he steps back aboard his vehicle, the doors of which close behind him with a creak not unlike an ancient gate, and a soft click that somehow conveys the finality of a sealed tomb.
Completely unperturbed by the dark atmosphere of the bus and its master, Mai smiles brightly as she waves to you from her window-seat.
You return the farewell, and then the bus pulls away with a roar.
Is there something you'd like to say to or ask of Emiko at this point?
With Mai, Ichirou, and Miss Suzuka gone, you turn and start back into the community center, Emiko at your side. Previously, you were considering finding Kahlua and introducing her to Kagome, but that was before Emiko popped up again. Seeing as how the fox-girl and the vampire princess were... less than perfectly friendly with each other earlier, you wonder if it might not be wiser to leave off on that idea.
Once the bus full of youkai - and which may or may not BE a youkai in its own right - has disappeared around the street corner, you turn to Emiko.
"So, Emiko. I believe congratulations are in order."
The kitsune tilts her head to one side and blinks in confusion, her expression and bearing a question.
"You snuck up on me without my realizing it a few minutes ago," you explain.
Realization dawns.
"Yes!" Emiko whispers, punching the air in triumph. Almost immediately on the heels of that reaction, however, she coughs and looks away, blushing. "Ah! I, uh, I mean... that is... well, I remembered what you said earlier, about only noticing me following you AFTER we'd gotten away from the auras in and around the building, so I figured that as long as I stayed inside, I should be able to follow you and stay hidden. As practice, I mean. Because I definitely wouldn't stalk you or anything like that. Not that you aren't very interesting and worth stalking-! I mean... um... waaaa... I'm just going to stop talking now."
And now she's hiding her face behind the sleeves of her miko costume.
...you're honestly not sure how to respond to this.
On the one hand, you could just ignore Emiko's behavior. It would be the easiest approach, and should spare her at least some further embarrassment regarding this incident.
On the other hand, she did kind of admit to stalking you, which is... mildly concerning. Emiko's a friend, but she's also a youkai, of a race with a long-established and well-earned reputation for pranks, as well as the occasional bout of full-blown crazy, or worse things. See Lady Takara and Lady Tamamo for examples. You could likely get Emiko to agree to stop "practice following" you by exploiting her obvious dismay over this situation, and some people would argue that you really SHOULD do it, if only to reinforce the idea in one young kitsune's mind that hunting humans is bad.
On the conjured hand, having a friendly youkai "practice hunting" you would give you a means to hone your own awareness, without any risk of death, dismemberment, and/or other un-fun outcomes. Emiko still needs more practice before she can stalk you in normal environments, but as you've just seen, she's fully capable of managing it in a youki-rich area, as long as you aren't actively scanning for her.
"Do you happen to know what's going on up on the roof, Emiko?" you ask, as the two of you re-enter the community center.
"Not really, no," she admits. "I mean, it's pretty common for youkai who have wings or powers that relate to the wind and sky to hang out on rooftops and other high-up, out-of-the way places."
"Like birds."
"Exactly. A lot of flying youkai ARE birds, or at least have bird-like traits, so it just makes sense that they'd behave like birds. And the wind manipulators usually have smaller, lighter builds than other youkai - again, kind of like birds do - to say nothing of how element-users tend to be more comfortable around concentrations of their preferred element." Emiko pauses, clears her throat, and drops the vaguely recital tone as she adds, "But all of that aside, I'm not sure what sort of games or activities they have going on up there."
"Would you like to find out?"
"...actually, now that you ask, I believe I would."
The two of you find a staircase, and head up. This particular set of stairs only goes to the second floor, but you're spared having to spend time hunting down roof access; whoever was responsible for turning this modern building into a haunted house lookalike took the time to clearly mark the way. Various warning signs proclaim "Danger" and "Beware!" even as they direct you to the heavy fire door, which has been deliberately wedged open and outlined with bright yellow crime scene tape, some of which hangs in tatters.
You pass through the door and head up the stairs. In passing, you note that while the spooky decor extends to this stairwell, it's been carefully done so as not to pose any sort of obstruction, even to human children. There may be cobwebs hanging from the ceiling and thick dust in all the corners, but the floor and the steps are clean, unlikely to cause tripping or slipping. The light may be coming from candles, but they're all electric, and brighter than authentic candles would be.
Somebody does good work.
The sounds of merriment drift down the stairs to your ears even before you've started climbing, hooting, hollering, and unfamiliar music accompanied by the occasional gust of wind. When you reach the top of the stairs a moment later, you find dozens of youkai scattered about the roof: some stand on the roof as humans and land-bound youkai would; others perch, birdlike, on the security railing that encloses the rooftop, or on other elevated bits of architecture; and quite a few are airborne, some flying in what could be a game, others simply flying for the sake of flying, and more levitating in place as they chat, eat, drink, or just sit about.
At a glance, you recognize tengu like that boy Ayane defeated back at the World Tournament, some of those women with wings instead of arms and talons in place of feet - Emiko identifies those as harpies - and a number of fairies, ranging from smaller than Briar to about half your height. There are a number of humanoid youkai, whose only obvious indicators of non-human nature are their exotic hair and eye colors and their auras, as well as several human magic-users.
Better than half the crowd are kids, although given the hour, relatively few of these are human and/or younger than you. Leaving aside whatever the fliers are doing - and there definitely seems to be a competition going on up there, though the rules of it escape you - they have a couple of games in progress. One seems to be the traditional bobbing for apples, and why that's being held on the roof, you have no idea. Another game is magical in nature, and involves shooting at targets that are flying around overhead. Said targets are NOT the flying youkai - although you do see a near-miss involving a bolt of blue magic and a screech of protest from one of the harpies - but rather free-floating conjured lights of ever-shifting colors.
There's also some dancing going on, which appears to have caught Emiko's attention.
"Emiko," you begin, "about this 'practice hunting'-"
"I know, I know," she says, hanging her head in shame. "It's creepy. I can stop-"
"Actually," you interrupt, "I was going to ask you to keep doing it."
Emiko stares at you, and spends a moment struggling to find her voice.
"Wh-wha-whaaaat?!"
It seems to be a very great struggle on her part.
You explain your reasoning about how it would be good practice for you to have a friendly youkai pushing you to keep improving your passive sensory skills, particularly in energy-rich areas like the community center or the Shuzen estate, where individual youki auras are harder to make out without resorting to active probes.
Your words appear to help Emiko, as she calms down, recovers her voice, and goes from a nuclear-powered blush to an almost-normal level of rosy-cheeked embarrassment as she swiftly agrees to do her best to help you!
"It'll probably take a while, though," she admits, looking away. "I-I mean, my family lives in a mixed community, so our home doesn't have an aura as powerful as this" - she waves around at the community center - "and we already know that I can't sneak up on you in an environment with lower youki levels. I can try to visit Kahlua's place more often, but that's... not always going to work out..."
Everything on the roof seems to fall away as you focus on the movements of the dancers, and the sound of the music - in particular, the steady beat of the drums, which sets your feet to twitching.
You turn to Emiko, and extend your hand. "Doom offers you this dance, oh priestess."
The kitsune-miko smiles, takes your hand - and then stops, blinking, before she looks you over from gauntleted hand to helmed head to steel-booted toe.
"Um, Alex? Can you even dance like this?"
...
"...an excellent question," you are forced to admit. "Grant Doom a moment to experiment."
You step back and begin testing out different dance moves, and how they interact with your costume.
Your flexibility is lessened, but still tolerable, as long as you don't get too wild.
You're strong enough that the armor's weight is not an issue in the short term, but it will become so over time.
On the other hand, you realize that you'll have to be actively mindful of your partner's feet. Normally, your dancing skills are past the point where you'd step on someone's toes, but your armored footwear gives you a slightly larger, modestly heavier, and decidedly less sensitive tread than usual.
But on the whole, yes, you can dance like this.
And then an amusing image occurs to you, and you begin to perform a series of stiff-limbed, mechanical-looking motions.
"Behold: The Doombot."
Gained Dancing D (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Emiko... doesn't quite seem to get the joke.
But she's happy to dance with you all the same.
You spend two songs' worth of time with Emiko before one of the other dancers, a horned boy about her age she identifies as "Jiro" and greets with a smile, asks if he could cut in. Seeing as how Emiko not only recognizes but is on good terms with her fellow monster, you see no reason to be ungracious, and whirl her away to meet him.
As for yourself...
You're fine with things as they are.
Your sensory abilities are already blatantly ridiculous for someone your age, whether it's in the sheer variety of supernatural energies you're able to detect, the high level of accuracy you enjoy when examining any given form of power, or how well you're able to compensate for high-level interference. And all of that is when you're not ACTIVELY looking for stuff, much less resorting to magical methods.
On top of that, your inability to passively sense youkai that are sneaking around in youki-rich areas is only going to be a problem if you're ever IN such an areas, while there are unfriendly monsters about, and you deliberately let your guard down.
Such a situation is rather unlikely to occur.
The fact of the matter is, while you might like to further your awareness of youki - and regular ki, since they're part of the same energy-spectrum - there's no urgent NEED for you to do so, much less to take steps to accelerate the process.
Besides, less time spent training means less time spent with Emiko. And that would be a shame.
With Emiko occupied in a positive way and the weight of your armor just beginning to tell, you decide to slip away from the rooftop dancers and go back downstairs to seek out your other friends. In particular, you're thinking of tracking down Kahlua and seeing what she's up to.
She IS the one who invited you to this party, after all, and it would only be polite to spend some time with her. Besides, you enjoy hanging out with the vampire princess anyway.
As with Emiko, it's difficult to sort out Kahlua's aura from all the youki given off by the party guests. Unlike the kitsune, however, your vampire friend isn't actively hiding from you, and so you don't need to resort to active scans to find evidence of her distinctive youki. The trail leads you back down to the ground floor-
!
-and into a storm of yelling, screaming, footfalls, and the occasional crash of a body hitting the floor. Or, possibly, a wall.
Oh, dear.
When you reach the front lobby, where the second-floor balcony overlooks the main entrance, you have to stop and stare at the mayhem below.
Kids of all ages fill the room below, ranging from those just a bit younger than you - most of the truly little kids having taken the bus home by this point - to a few adults who really ought to know better. Monsters and humans alike are running around, independently and in small groups, armed with water balloons, water guns, magic items that radiate auras of Elemental Water, and a few spells or inherent powers that give off the same readings, which they are wielding with gleeful energy against anyone that falls into their sights.
You are not in the least surprised to see Higurashi Souta in the middle of the mess, his costume remarkably dry as he dual-wields his six-guns against all comers.
You ARE caught off-guard by the sight of Moka, fangs bared in an expression that technically qualifies as a smile, blasting away at humans and her fellow monsters alike with a large Super-Soaker. Beads of liquid drip from her armor, but you don't see any evidence of the detrimental reaction you know that water is supposed to have on living vampires: Moka's aura is stable and steady; and she doesn't feel any weaker now than she did a few hours ago.
That alone would confirm that nobody down there is actually armed with pure water, if you'd missed how everyone is getting splattered by hues of blood-red, pumpkin-orange, and goblin-green.
Kahlua is... somewhere nearby, but all the wild activity has stirred up the ambient youki, making it difficult to pin down her location. Moka's presence isn't helping; as sisters, their auras have similarities enough even when they aren't blurred by dozens of other presences.
Aside from a few of the little jorogumo, who have once again taken to the walls, the water fight appears to be confined to the lower floor, and few people are looking up. Of those who are - aiming for the spider-girls - none have yet looked your way.
There are at least a dozen examples of magically-conjured colored water being used downstairs, and they're all of a simple nature. The water wands, for instance, all seem to be based on the Spell of Prestidigitation, while the young water elementalists are using their equivalents of the Spell to Create Water.
Your Mage Sight is not inconvenienced in the slightest by the cloud of energetic youki that fills the lobby, and so picking out how those two simple spells were modified to conjured colored water that is "de-purified" enough not to be hazardous to vampires and other water-sensitive monsters takes you only a few moments of observation.
And once you have that information, it strikes you that it would be a terrible shame not to make use of the knowledge.
Doom does not play favorites, however, and so instead of picking out a few likely targets, you decide to go all-in on your opening attack.
The magically-sensitive members of the crowd blink, whirl about, and look up as you cast your spell - less because of the amount of magic involved than because of the results your skill and power allow you to pull out.
In this case, the results in question are several cubic feet of colored water - the same dark shade of green as your costume's tunic - which appear in a thin cloud, spread out across the lobby.
Some of the crowd promptly get zapped for their sudden distraction, but between their startled stares and the shimmering haze of reflected and refracted candlelight that suddenly falls over the room, a lot of the magically untrained and/or untalented people start looking up as well.
You catch Moka staring at you for a moment, before her eyes narrow in warning.
"Alexander Harris," she calls out, "don't you DARE-!"
"DOOM REIGNS!" you reply, as you release your mental "grip" on the conjured liquid.
And with that proclamation, it begins to rain indoors.
The incident is brief - you didn't conjure THAT much water - but the results are glorious chaos, as kids of all ages scramble for cover from the incoming downpour, only to find that there's little to none to be had. Here, a small crowd are trying to shove one another out of the way so they can duck under a rickety-looking, web-draped table; there, people are leaping for the nearest doors and hallways, only to collide with others who had the same idea and create a living jam; and in a few cases, the magically-gifted or water-aligned race to raise defenses.
Then the water hits, to a general outcry of distress, laughter, and several dire accusations.
You don't get EVERYONE, but at a glance, it looks like at least eighty percent of the crowd took some hits.
Then Souta tips back his hat, which bears a fresh smear of emerald green across the brim, and aims one of his guns at you.
"Get him!" the young boy cries.
The monsters, humans, and others are united in their agreement.
Inter-species cooperation at its finest, you suppose, as you consider your next move.
It'll take the crowd a few seconds to navigate the stairs, or walls, to get within water-gun range of you. A couple of the adepts are stealing a page from your playbook, and are working more powerful spells or manifestations than you saw them using a minute ago - at a guess, you'd say that your current location is about to become Ground Zero for an aqueous bombardment. You could run, you could stand and take the counterattacks, you could summon an Emergency Force Sphere to block all the attacks - though that seems a bit much for a water war - or you could try and counter-counterattack.
Whatever you do, you'd best do it quickly. Monsters are fast, and the humans are keeping up pretty admirably.
In a flash of genius that is entirely typical for Doom, you are struck with the perfect idea of how to handle this situation.
Doom never retreats, but he does strategically withdraw from unfavorable positions, or maneuver for advantage, and so you begin by abandoning your current location and backing up into the hall that led you to the balcony - and in so doing, moving OUT of the line of sight of your many opponents.
As you move, you're gathering mana and working out spell parameters, putting together a rather powerful Spell of Illusion. Your brilliant plan calls for an illusory doppelganger capable of intelligible speech, which requires something more than a (comparatively) common Major Image. The Spell of the Persistent Image is much better, though you don't need its extended duration or programmable script.
The resulting spell is fourth-circle, which is pushing the upper limits of your ability to conceal mana, but that ability is very well-developed by this point, and you believe you were successful in hiding your spellcasting - this time.
It helps that at least three different Spells of Elemental Water just came crashing down on your previous location and the surrounding area, leaving trails of excess energy to cloud the scene and confuse the mana signatures.
As the Illusion takes shape before you, your actual body disappears, swallowed up by the image of an empty hallway.
It's not exactly invisibility, but for your purposes, it will serve, as long as you're cautious.
You've just finished your spellcasting when the clatter of young feet coming up the stairs that flank the balcony reaches a peak. Glancing around the corners that mark the end of the hall and the beginning of the upper deck, you can see half a dozen young monsters, armed for water-bear, have reached the top of the stairs, with easily three times their number behind them.
Almost as one, the leaders look to your illusion, raise their weapons, and cry, "There he is! GET HIM!"
You have "Doom" respond by laughing in a suitably-villainous manner, summoning a globe of obviously protective magical force around himself, and taking to the air. Several of the young water-warriors are quick off the mark, getting blasts of variously-colored water into the air, and you frown as you work to adapt the illusion so that all observers believe those shots hit "Doom's" shield and were neutralized, instead of going straight through him to splatter on the walls and floor, as really happens.
If you weren't up against a bunch of kids, it might not have worked - but you are, and it does.
Gained Illusion D (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
"You dare to challenge Doom?" the illusion taunts. "Then so be it!"
And then your doppelganger flies over the edge of the balcony, and begins firing blasts of emerald water from the palms of his armored hands.
The ensuing battle lasts about two minutes. You have some fun with it, making "Doom's" shield appear to be strong enough to repel an attack by any single squirtgun, but vulnerable to concentrated fire. There are a few kids who miss the obvious hint and continue to go for the win on their own, but more - and you are pleased to see Moka and Souta among their number - catch on and start encouraging their peers to work together.
...okay, in Moka's case, it's less "encouragement," and more "glaring at them until they do what she says," but at least she's working with others. Right?
In short order, the cooperative kids have set up little firing squads all over the lobby. Those who can use magic keep doing so as often as they can, while those who have to rely on water guns are working together in pairs, one shooting while the other runs an empty gun to the nearest water source to reload. Several of the elementalists are providing assistance in that regard. Hemmed in by the focused fire, "Doom" takes more and more hits, shield growing dimmer and smaller and shifting colors under the barrage, even as his counterattacks become faster and more varied in response.
Then, caught in a twenty-one gun barrage coming from five different directions, the shield-bubble flares out and collapses.
"No!" your doppelganger protests. "This cannot be!"
Moka and Souta are fast, but one of the wand-waving kids is faster, or maybe just had his attack set up. A blast of pumpkin-orange water-paint takes "Doom" clean across the chest.
"Rrrraaaarrrrgh!"
And then everybody else in the room hits him.
It is a technicolored mess of a supervillain that crashes to the floor of the lobby a moment later, falling on his hands and needs.
There is a moment of silence.
And then, your duplicate begins to shake and spark and smoke.
"I-im... poss... ible... D-Doom... c-c-cann-not-not-not..."
*POP!*
*ZAP!*
*BANG!*
With a small explosion, "Doom's" mask is blown away, revealing a purely robotic visage whose exposed circuits are visibly shorting out.
"Oh, wow," somebody mutters. "He's a robot!"
Moka stares at your creation. "What."
As for yourself...
Take this opportunity to slip away.
There are several dozen kids down there, armed for water-war and primed to consider the face of Doom as their primary target. Seeing as how you would rather not get painted from head to toe in a rainbow of water-colors, you take this opportunity to slip away from the crowd, while they're all distracted by your Illusion-born Doombot.
...though on that note, you decide to exploit the false image to leave one final parting gift to the victors.
A twist of will and a focused thought is all it takes for the shuddering, smoking, spark-spitting Doombot to speak, the exposed circuitry of its eyes and "mouth" flashing in time with the words, which carry the faintly Doppler-shifted quality of a recording.
"You have won this night, warriors," the illusory automaton proclaims grandiosely, "but Doom is not so easily defeated! In time, there shall be a reckoning! Until then..."
You could leave the ominous declaration there, but that wouldn't be entirely in the spirit of the evening. Instead, you will your magic to show the Doombot shaking more violently, spitting sparks and smoke in larger quantities as its systems go berserk. This is followed by an explosion, from which the smoke rises to form a final, lingering message:
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
You're halfway down the second-floor hall when the collective, "EEEEHHHH?!" of confused protest sweeps over you like a wind.
It is good.
Then the hallway, which is empty apart from yourself, is filled with the sounds of familiar giggling.
Emiko phases into view next to you, and chides, "Alex, you are TERRIBLE."
"Doom has never claimed to be anything else." You regard the laughing fox-girl in silence for a moment, and then break character enough to ask, "How much of that did you see, anyway?"
"Well, I didn't notice that you'd disappeared from the roof until after my dance with Jiro was over." Emiko pauses to give you a Look for running off unannounced. "It took a little time for me to figure out where you'd gone, so I didn't catch up until 'Doom' was trading shots with that quartet down by the front desk."
Thinking back, you have no trouble finding the moment in question - it was a little over halfway through the fight, right about the point where the tide really started to turn against your doppelganger. You cannot recall feeling Emiko's presence at or after that point, a detail which leaves you more than a bit annoyed with yourself.
Granted, there was a lot of aggressive youki in the air at that moment, but it's still kind of disappointing that you missed your foxy friend sneaking around again, mere minutes after you asked her to stalk you as a means of improving your sensory skills.
"I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I didn't realize it WASN'T you out there, until the robot was revealed," the kitsune continues.
The admission that Emiko couldn't see through your Illusion salves your ego a little. Still...
You resolve to pay more attention to your passive senses, and then set that train of thought aside to decide what to do next.
You were looking for Kahlua when you came downstairs, but while it felt like she was either in or near the free-for-all water fight, you didn't see or sense her during the impromptu "boss battle." You're reluctant to head back to the lobby to pick up her trail, as that's basically asking to get zapped. A lot. You know, unless you pull out even more magic to avoid notice or tank the hits, but that is really starting to feel like overkill for the evening.
While magic gives you the means to easily avoid getting zapped by a dozen different varieties of colored water, or to casually clean the rainbow smears out of your costume after the fact, you'd still prefer not to find yourself facing down a firing line of underage monsters and humans.
It would kind of spoil the prank you just pulled if you were to turn up in the lobby in the next, say, ten to fifteen minutes? You'd be too likely to convince everybody that "Round Two" of the "Doctor Doom versus All Comers" water battle was on.
Better to give all the participants time to calm down - and more importantly, to put away their weapons - before you make another appearance.
With that thought in mind, you put your back to the front doors and head deeper into the community center, Emiko at your side.
As you walk - not run - away from the scene of battle, you open up your Ki Sense, looking for signs of Kahlua's presence BESIDES the path that led out front. It takes you a few minutes, during which you have to back-track once when the trail of vampiric youki you're currently following has diffused too far to continue registering as distinct against the generic youki that fills most of the building. There are also a few points where you find yourself ducking around a corner or into a side room to avoid traffic coming from the direction of the lobby.
You're a bit worried that the added weight, bulk, and inflexibility of the plates that make up your costume armor will work against your stealth skills in this situation, but while your attire almost certainly DOES have that undesired effect, it's not serious enough to reveal your presence to the kids who walk by, chattering excitedly about their recent battle.
Gained Stealth C (Plus) (Plus)
"If you're that worried about people noticing you," Emiko says at one point, after the latest batch of your fellow party-goers has walked past, "why not just conjure a disguise?"
"What?" you ask with a laugh, before facetiously adding, "You mean put on a sombrero and mustache, and introduce myself as Doom's Mexican cousin, El Doom?"
Gained Spanish F
Emiko considers your words for a moment, obviously trying to picture your current costume with the proposed additions.
"...you're right," she admits. "That wouldn't work."
Well, thank you-
"You'd at least need to add a poncho over everything," Emiko continues. "And maybe some bandoliers and a pair of six-guns, or whatever Dr. Doom - or his Mexican cousin - would be using in their place."
At this, you just HAVE to stop and stare at your friend.
"...what?" Emiko says defensively. "I've been watching American movies."
You're almost afraid to ask, but your own curiosity compels you. "What kind of American movies?"
"You know, Westerns!"
...
Perhaps the scariest thing about this is how innocently she says it.
Either that, or it's how you now have an image stuck in your head, of "El Doom" facing off with "Senor Fantastico," while the theme from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" plays. Only instead of a tumbleweed blowing between the two gunmen at the dramatic moment, it's a Leever that goes rolling past.
Gained Pop Culture D (Plus) (Plus)
There are occasions where the contents of your mind disturb even you.
It's only a minute or so after that... dialogue... that you pick up Kahlua's trail. She's moving towards the back of the community center, where you know from your previous brief tour that there's a large gymnasium, done over as a spooky dance floor. You can hear the music pretty clearly.
Seeing as how you danced with Emiko up on the roof, you probably owe Kahlua a dance as well.
If Briar was here - and at that thought, you have to spare a moment to wonder just where your closest companion is and what she's been up to, since you parted ways - she would tell you that you shouldn't do what you're about to do.
She would tell you that the idea you have in mind is needlessly silly, that it does Emiko a disservice by reinforcing her flat-out incorrect impression of (North) American culture, and - most importantly - that there is no way in the Lost Woods that it could possibly work to fool all the people that are currently on the lookout for you.
It's just too bad that your little shoulder angel is not here to say any of this.
The devilish Briar sitting on your left shoulder cackles and does a little victory dance as you gather your magic again, preparing another Spell of Illusion.
Crossed bandoliers shimmer into existence upon your chest. Instead of conventional bullets, they appear to hold tiny shards of crystal, cut to similar proportions as ordinary ammunition.
An uncommonly-large six-shooter manifests at your left hip, sized to accomodate your armored fingers, while a peculiar, gun-like mystical device made of crystal and wood takes shape on your right hip.
A poncho with mystical symbols along the hem seems to fall out of empty air, to drape neatly over your shoulders. It is followed in short order by a sombrero, which has tiny skulls dangling from the brim.
Next is the crowning glory: a sleek, spectacular mustache that somehow grows through - or perhaps from - the grim visage of your iron faceplate.
As a final touch, you add a short musical accompaniment that you once heard somewhere - just a handful of notes played rapidly on a guitar, and a clatter of castanets.
BWAHAHAHA!
Gained Disguise F
Gained Music F
I want to be happy that he's investigating music, but somehow, I just can't do it.
Emiko applauds, looking delighted.
You cut a bow, and then continue on your way-
!
-for all of six steps, before a group of kids comes around the nearest corner and catches sight of you.
"Hey!" the wolf-faced leader exclaims, pointing at you with a clawed, furry finger. "It's that Doom guy!"
"Nonsense!" you boom. "Any fool with eyes can clearly see I am not Doctor Doom!"
"Then why are your face and hands covered in metal like his?" a human-looking kid calls from the small pack. There is a note of mocking triumph in his voice.
Oh, come on!
"That is because I am Doom's Mexican cousin: El Doom!"
They can't possibly buy that!
...
Your proclamation is greeted by absolute silence and wide, staring eyes.
...for the love of Us, please tell me they're not actually buying it.
Impossible though it should be, you think you can hear a fairy-sized facepalm somewhere in the distance.
"Uh... oh-kay?" the likely young werewolf says slowly, as he backs up a step. "El Doom, then. Our mistake, right guys?"
"Uh, right."
"Wait, what?"
"But that's definitely-"
"Hsst!" The werewolf makes a slashing motion with his hand, urging his friend to stop talking - which the other boy does, with a look of bewilderment.
The wolf turns back to you. "We'll, uh, just be going, then. If that's okay with you?"
"El Doom has no problem with this."
He nods, and leads his friends away.
"What the heck, man?"
"Why are we-"
"You can't seriously believe-"
"Guys," the werewolf says, in a low but firm voice that shuts them all up and carries to your ears. "Yeah, it's probably the same person-"
Whew.
Drat. It appears your disguise needs work.
"-but he'd have to be NUTS to think a cheap disguise like that would work. And he's using it anyway. THINK about that."
There is a pause, as the others do as suggested.
None of them speak, but the werewolf nods. "Like my Dad always says, 'Don't mess with anybody weirder than you.'"
Good advice.
...oh, come on.
You glance sidelong at Emiko. "Cease your giggling, vixen. It vexes El Doom."
"S-sorry," Emiko sputters, hiding her face behind her sleeve.
No, she isn't.
Emiko follows you down the hall to the gym, where you pause for a moment. When your friend makes to enter on her own, you gesture for her to wait, as the music inside seems to be reaching the end of the current track.
Then you throw open the doors with a dramatic flourish.
The scene inside isn't terribly different from the one you saw on the roof a few minutes ago, except that there are a lot few flying or levitating monsters around. In their stead, you find more spider-, monkey-, and lizard-youkai clinging to the walls.
It would be an exaggeration to claim that all eyes turn towards you upon your entrance, but most of those nearby take note of the way the doors flew open. It helps that you timed your arrival well enough to land in the pause between songs.
"Hey, isn't that the guy-"
"El Doom has arrived!" you declare, to another burst of phantom music.
"...oooh-kay."
Once again, you have the impression that Briar is asking the Goddesses, "Why me?"
...actually, from the way your familiar bond is tugging at you, your partner is in here somewhere.
On second thought, you've been trying to track down Kahlua for the last twenty or thirty minutes. You don't begrudge Emiko the company or the dance, but the clock is ticking, and if you mean to spend any time with Kahlua before the party she invited you to in the first place is over - or more accurately, before everyone your age is sent home on account of the late hour - then you really should get on with that.
Besides, Briar can always find you on her own. The familiar bond is very useful that way.
With that settled, you turn your Ki Sight on the crowd, but as you expected, the passive use of the skill returns only a shattered rainbow of clashing auras. Dancing doesn't stir up one's energy to the same extent that aggressive physical competition does, but it does have a similar effect, and there are enough strong monsters in the redecorated gym that you might have a hard time picking up Kahlua's unique presence even without that interference.
The fact that some of those other monsters are vampires just makes it more confusing, especially when two or three of them are Kahlua's blood-relatives. Gyokuro and Kokoa's presences have the same kind of similarity to Kahlua's aura that Moka's energy signature does, only more so - which makes sense, when you stop and think about it.
A quick active pulse of your skill solves the issue, locating Kahlua over by one of the tables of refreshments lining the far wall.
Reining in your senses again, you start making your way across the dance floor.
As you cross the room, briefly acknowledging various individuals and small groups as you pass them, your familiar bond twitches in the manner that denotes an incoming fairy. However, unlike times past when Briar has come flying in to meet you, her progress here is much slower, and oddly indirect. Casting a glance in the direction of the ethereal tug, you catch sight not of your partner, but of a "fairy" that is much larger, if still smaller than you, who is having to walk around all the people crowding the floor that are even bigger yet.
You can hazard a couple of guesses as to why Briar and Kokoa are headed your way. Your partner doubtlessly wants to discuss your costume change and musically-accompanied entrance, as well as whatever she's heard regarding your involvement the Great Halloween Water War. As for Kokoa, you figure that she just wants to spend as much time with Briar as she can get away with.
Regardless, there are enough warm bodies between you that Kokoa is not going to catch up before you get to your intended destination, and Briar doesn't appear to be about to abandon the girl to the crowd. As such, you reach Kahlua with no further distractions.
As is appropriate to her location, you find Kahlua with a plastic cup of orange-colored punch in one hand. The amount of juice in the cup is such that philosophers might argue whether it's half-empty or half-full, but when taken in context, you're coming down on the "half-empty" side of the debate. Kahlua's Lina Inverse costume has that slightly mussed look that comes with a good round of dancing or fighting, and - with all due respect to the efforts of the air conditioning - all these active bodies in the gym have made it warm enough that a cool glass of something to drink would be just the thing, even for those of supernatural constitution.
Kahlua looks up as you approach, a smile forming. "Alex! Where have yoooohhhh what in the world are you wearing?"
And there goes the smile, overtaken by the same sort of confusion that you saw on Moka's face not too long ago.
It would appear that Kahlua missed your entrance - understandable, given the crowd, and a potential source of further amusement.
There's no question that Kokoa's behavior regarding Briar is adorable, but while seeing the two of them struggle to cross the dance floor stirs up warm and fuzzy feelings in your chest, it prompts a much stronger sense of contemplation.
You've had evidence of Kokoa's fascination with fairies before now. She didn't appear to take notice of Briar in their first meetings, back at the World Tournament, but the simple fact that Kokoa had a fairy-scale enchanted house ready and waiting as a gift for Briar when you attended Kahlua's birthday party a couple of months later is clear evidence that the youngest of the Shuzen sisters was more moved by her first encounter with your partner than you'd realized at the time.
Looking back, you figure that Kokoa was just been too suspicious of and upset by YOU and how you'd beaten her big sister for her to be willing to reveal her interest in Briar.
That aside, between the fairy house, Kokoa and Briar's past and ongoing interactions, and the littlest Shuzen's choice of costume for tonight's festivities, it's quite clear that she is very attached to the idea of fairies.
If Kokoa's feelings on the matter have been this strong and this constant for the last half a year - which is an eternity, at her age - it might well be time for you to think seriously about helping her to find a fairy partner of her own.
You make a mental note to discuss it with the girl and her parents, the next time you visit the Shuzens. There are preparations that would have to be made...
You lean towards Kahlua, and raise your right hand to serve as a screen to the crowd as you whisper, "Doom is in disguise."
Red eyes blink once, very slowly, as Kahlua gives your modified costume another look over.
You can see the unspoken questions regarding your choice of disguise in your friend's expression, but instead, she simply asks WHY you felt the need to change your costume.
At that point, you break character and bring Kahlua up to speed on recent events - namely, how you waged a one-man water-war in the foyer, using nothing but a Spell of Illusion and your own flare for the dramatic.
Kahlua is visibly startled when you describe the spell you cast. "Do you mean to tell me that you created an illusion in a room full of monsters and magic-users, and nobody noticed?"
You have to admit that it helped considerably that you cast the spell right as several of those magic-users finished casting spells of their own. Not to mention how it WAS a room full of monsters, and young ones engaged in a very energetic competition before you came along. There's enough energy in the building to confuse YOUR senses, at least when you aren't actively pushing through the interference, and the foyer's atmosphere was particularly thick. Youki and mana aren't the same thing, of course, but when somebody who has the ability to sense both energies is being actively hampered by a massive concentration of one, it does tend to carry over and interfere with attempts to notice the other.
Plus, most kids' sensory abilities are nowhere near as good as yours. Heck, it's not even boasting to say that many ADULTS are less aware of their surroundings than you.
As a final point in your favor, your "Doombot" was flying around for most of that encounter, well out of the way of any potential collisions or "accidental" run-ins with the other combatants. That would have cut down on their chances of noticing the Illusion's true nature.
"And the colored water shooting THROUGH it didn't?" Kahlua inquires with a puzzled frown.
It would have, if you hadn't accounted for that in the parameters of your spell, causing those attacks to disappear from view as they hit "Doom's" forcefield, with much visible and audible evidence, and even an unpleasant burnt electrical stink, to give your audience a reasonable explanation for where all that water was going. That said, even that elaborate misdirection wouldn't have worked if your spell hadn't been powerful enough to cover an area that can basically be summed up as "most of the lobby," and kept the "destroyed" water invisible.
Thinking back on it, you're pretty sure that some of the attacks on your free-floating image DID cross out of your Illusion's area of effect, to spatter upon floor, walls, furniture, and even individuals on the far side. There's also the little matter of how you were up on the second floor balcony, some distance back from the banister; you didn't have a complete view of the battlefield - in particular, the area almost directly below you - and it's therefore likely that you made some mistakes guiding your Illusion that could have been avoided if you'd had a different vantage point.
But seeing as how nobody stood up and yelled, "It's an Illusion!" or "Where did that water come from?" or anything like that at the time, you're still taking it as a win.
Kahlua just seems even MORE startled when you've finished your explanation than when you began it.
Seeing as how your use of Illusion Magic in general seems to be causing Kahlua some discomfort, and because you doubt any of the other kids are going to try and start Water War II in this room where their older relatives are dancing and socializing, you decide that El Doom has served his purpose, and allow the disguise to dissipate.
"I knew it!" someone in the crowd with a young voice exclaims. "He really was Doom all along!"
"...of COURSE he was, you dummy."
"Yeah, man, it was totally obvious."
"Well, uh..."
"Oh, merciful kami; don't tell me you're just NOW figuring that out?"
"What, for real?"
"You're kidding!"
"Um..."
"You're NOT kidding! HAHAHAHA! That's hilarious!"
...you swear, SOME people...
Gained Disguise F (Plus)
Dismissing these distractions from your mind, you bow and extend a mailed hand. "May Doom have this dance, Lady Inverse?"
Kahlua shifts her posture, suddenly smirking in a way that's more in-tune with her chosen costume.
"Well, I don't know," she drawls, looking you over one more time. "Can you even dance in all that metal without tripping over your own feet?"
You do your best to project a taunting smirk through the iron mask of Doom. "Are you afraid to find out?"
Kahlua's eyes widen, and then narrow sharply.
"Afraid? Me? Ha!"
She swiftly drains what was left of her punch, and then sets the cup down on the nearby table with as much of a dramatic slam as she can muster, short of crumpling the plastic receptacle or breaking the table.
Then she grabs your hand. "Prepare to be blown away, Doom."
And then the two of you sweep away onto the dance floor.
In passing, you notice that Emiko disappeared somewhere between your grand entrance and your meeting up with Kahlua. The pull of your familiar bond also alerts you to Briar's presence, which has stopped getting closer, and is now projecting the faintest hint of annoyed frustration down your connection.
Looks like you got out of there just in time to avoid the fairy inquisition.
You're probably going to pay for that later, but that will be later.
Right now, there is dancing.
You're not sure if it's just a matter of timing or because of a difference in tastes on the part of the disc jockeys, but the music playing in the gym has been somewhat faster-paced than the tunes you and Emiko danced to up on the roof. This forces you to push that little bit more to overcome the limitations of your metal costume and keep pace with Kahlua - and while you DO keep up with the vampire princess, on the whole, you think that it's only because you practiced dancing in armor with Emiko before you came down here.
Gained Armor Proficiency D
Once she's satisfied that you can, in fact, dance while clad in armor, Kahlua's Lina-like cockiness fades, and she just starts enjoying the dance.
With this pleasant obligation attended to, what would you like to do after you've finished your dance with Kahlua? You know that Briar and Kokoa were looking for you, and that Emiko is around somewhere. There's enough vampiric youki in the air that at least one other member of the Shuzen family must be in the gym as well, and then there's your father and other friends to consider.
Maybe it's because you danced a couple of turns with Emiko up on the roof and feel obligated to make up the difference to Kahlua, or perhaps it's because dancing with Kahlua is fun. It could be because the dance is sacred to Din, and you want to properly respect that, or it might simply be because you're finding that you really like dancing.
All perfectly good reasons.
Whatever your ultimate motivation, you decide not to immediately withdraw from the dance floor after the first song has ended. Instead, you ask Kahlua if she'd care for another dance.
As it happens, she would.
Once the second song is finished, however, you do stop for a break. You're bearing up well under the weight, stiffness, and heat of your costume, but the last half-hour or so has been fairly busy; you wouldn't object to having a glass of that punch right about now. Besides which, there's something you want to talk to Kahlua about, and the close, noisy dance floor is not really ideal for that conversation.
Navigating back to the table with refreshments, you fill yourself a cup of the orange-colored punch that Kahlua was drinking earlier, flip open your mask, and take a drink.
Huh.
Rather than the pumpkin you were half-expecting, the punch turns out to be a mix of fruit flavors. You can make out orange, strawberry, and banana for certain, possibly a couple of others.
Thirst appeased, you turn to your current companion - who has claimed a new cup of the punch - and start talking.
"So, Kahlua."
"Yes, Alex?"
"Did you happen to see the magical girl trying to kill the cowboy right after dinner?"
Kahlua giggles. "Yes. As a matter of fact, I did. They were... rather hard to miss. Why do you ask?"
"Okay, funny story..."
You proceed to explain how one of the people you decided to invite to the part was a talented young miko-
"How talented?" Kahlua inquires.
"One of her first real training exercises was to try and purify what was apparently the mummified hand of a kappa," you answer. "She basically incinerated it."
Kahlua blanches, and you feel a momentary spike in her youki.
That's... probably not a good sign.
-because you wanted her to get to know the youkai that YOU already knew, in a friendly environment. Initially, it was just you trying to encourage positive relations - or at least non-hostile ones - among your various Japanese friends, but then, through Kagome's letters, you found out that one of her teachers was trying to cultivate a rather... aggressive mindset in the girl, when it came to dealing with youkai. Her grandfather is a traditional sort as well, even if he's got only the barest whispers of spiritual power, and it struck you that giving Kagome and the less-judgmental members of her family a chance to see "the other side" of the Moonlit World in a way that contrasted her elders' opinions would probably be beneficial for everybody involved.
"So I was wondering if you'd had the chance to talk with Kagome yet?" you finish.
"Ah... no," Kahlua replies. "I hadn't."
And while her aura and coloration are more or less back to normal, Kahlua doesn't exactly appear terribly enthusiastic about the prospect.
Considering how vulnerable vampires of her kind are to purification effects, you can see why Kahlua might be reluctant to meet with a powerful miko-in-training. Still, the idea of leaving one of your friends actively wary of another doesn't sit well with you.
It's clear at a glance that Kahlua would really prefer not to go poke the potential purification bomb that is Kagome. You can understand her wariness, and even empathize with it a little; after all, while holy cleansing isn't nearly the threat to you that it would be to a vampire, you do retain some of Ganondorf's memories of getting shot with the Arrows of Light.
There is a REASON why so many incarnations of Link (and the occasional Zelda) used those things in the "final battle" with their nemesis, down through all the ages. They BURNED.
If nothing else, that recollection is a good reminder of why it would be a bad idea for you to go full demon, if you ever got the urge.
All similarities in ultimate ouch-potential aside, Kagome is not Hyrule's Number One Murderbeast and Wrecker of Demon Kings. The Shuzens have done nothing to threaten her, her family, or her home town. Kagome doesn't have the local deities whispering in her ears to guide her on a quest to rid the land of youkai. There is no prophecy of a Chosen One drawing an ancient god-forged weapon and riding forth to do battle with Miss Akasha. Kagome does not have an arsenal of epic artifacts, she doesn't play any musical instruments, and she doesn't even habitually wear green.
...she DID mention learning how to shoot a bow in her letters, but that and her purifying powers are the only real similarities she has to Link.
Nayru, what are you smiling about?
Well, that and her age, which is comparable to some of the Hero's more precocious incarnations.
Oh, nothing much.
...and she does like that old, mystically-significant tree at her shrine...
Suspicious!
The point you were trying to make is that by any reasonable standard, Kagome is not the sort of person whose first response to meeting a non-human is going to be to whip out a sacred sword and engage in extremely anti-social behavior. Hence, trainee priestess or no, Kahlua has no need to regard her as if she were.
It takes you a minute to find the words to express all of this, and suggest that you and Kahlua go and find Kagome for the purpose of making introductions, without making it sound like you're implying that Kahlua is actually afraid of the other girl. Your habitual honesty complicates the issue slightly, but in the end, you DO figure out a polite phrasing.
Gained King of Monsters C (Plus) (Plus)
That just leaves the matter of actually finding Kagome. Under different circumstances, you could just look for ambient youki being purified out of existence, but the last time you saw her, Kagome was holding back her spiritual power well enough to avoid that kind of reaction. At least on a scale noticeable to anyone other than Gyokuro, or you with your active senses pinging away. And despite that unusual spiritual element in its makeup, Kagome's ki isn't strong enough to stand out amid the monstrous energy that fills the building.
The best method that comes to mind is a quick active scan with your Spiritual Sense, but before you can put that plan into effect-
"Alex!"
"Big Sister!"
-Briar and Kokoa finally catch up with you.
"Hey, Briar, Kokoa," you greet the two fairies. "How can we help you?"
"You can start by explaining what that 'El Doom' business was about," your partner says.
"Yeah," Kokoa agrees, giving you a mistrustful look that truly doesn't suit her adorable costume. "And you can also tell me what you did to my sisters!"
Kahlua looks like she's about to say something in response to her littlest sister's remark, right up until she catches the plural.
"Wait, he did something to Moka?"
"Yeah! She's all grumbly, now, and it's HIS fault."
The glitter-polished fingernail of accusation jabs in your direction.
Kahlua eyes you shrewdly. "This has something to do with the waterfight, doesn't it?"
"...did I neglect to mention that my opening shot in the battle was to rain emerald green destruction down upon all the participants?" you ask innocently.
"...you may have left that part out, yes."
"I see." You consider that, and shrug. "Well, I don't get why Moka would still be upset about it. The water was impure enough not to sting her, and it was just conjured, anyway. It should have all disappeared by now."
"It has," Kokoa admits, "and it's not what she's annoyed with you about."
"I caught something about illusions and too many Alexes for the good of the world," Briar notes.
Illumination dawns.
Evidently, Moka is a little tweaked that you made her fight an illusion of yourself. Thinking about it, you can see why she might be upset. Even if it was all fun and games, it's one thing to fight a guy with magic, and quite another when the guy you're fighting was never really there in the first place. Being tricked like that is probably not sitting well with Moka's vampiric pride, which you know she has in significant quantities.
As you give another, more detailed accounting of your recent activities to the girls, you take advantage of your well-honed mental discipline to make a quick, low-intensity sweep of the Halloween ballroom to try and find Kagome. Keeping the spiritual energies involved at a low enough level so that they don't disturb the other guests runs the risk of the technique failing, given all the youki in the air, but you have faith in your own abilities.
Gained Spiritual Sense B (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Spiritual Sight B (Plus)
And it's rewarded.
Kagome is over by the bleachers, which are one of those affairs that fold up and slide into the wall when not in use. They flanking the gym's main door, and the lowest level on each side has been pulled out to provide a place for footsore dancers, kids having a sugar crash, and beleaguered parents to sit down and take a breather, or for the wallflowers to gather.
You don't think you'd describe Kagome as a wallflower, but any of the other reasons are entirely possible, and even probable, given Souta's thus far HIGHLY energetic participation in the night's events.
If you want Kahlua to speak with Kagome, you think you'd better get her over there and start talking, before Mrs. Higurashi decides that it's time for her kids to head home and go to bed.
...on that note, you glance at the spider-webbed clock hanging above the door. It's now 9:36 pm, meaning that the last bus of the evening will be arriving in about twenty minutes.
"Is there something interesting over in the stands, partner mine?" Briar , even if everybody else in the room missed what you were doing - and with Gyokuro around, you're not going to bet on that - Briar still noticed your scan.
One of the minor downsides of the Familiar Bond, as it were.
"Kagome, actually," you answer your partner.
You glance at Kahlua, and when you're sure you have her attention, you nod towards the bleachers, a questioning expression on your face.
Kahlua hesitates, glancing from you to the bleachers, then takes a deep breath, and nods once.
Atta girl.
You turn to Briar and Kokoa, tell them that you're going to introduce Kahlua to Kagome - "another friend of mine," as you clarify for Kokoa when she asks about the unfamiliar name - and ask if they'd prefer to tag along, wait here, or go do their own thing.
Briar responds to this by turning to Kokoa and apologizing, gesturing to you and saying that she's already let you run around unsupervised too much this evening.
The youngest Shuzen nods solemnly, completely understanding and agreeing with your partner's reasons.
You tell Briar to stop corrupting innocent young minds with her fairy tricks and nonsense.
"Yeah!" Evil Briar chimes in, shaking her tiny pitchfork. "That's my job!"
This gives Briar a moment's pause. She looks from her devil-suited doppelganger to her angel-themed costume, and then nods.
"You know what? You're right. We need to switch places."
And they do just that, Angel Briar taking up her usual position on your right shoulder (making certain to fold the material of your emerald-green tunic over on itself, forming a crude cushion to muffle the touch of the steel plate beneath), and Evil Briar zipping over to Kokoa's left shoulder, where she begins whispering to the girl.
Kokoa blinks in surprise, then starts listening.
And then she giggles.
Kahlua shoots you a dry look. "Stop corrupting my little sister, Alex."
"...I didn't tell the Image to do that," you reply slowly. "Briar, tell me that was you."
Briar says nothing.
"Briar, seriously."
"It wasn't me, either, Alex." Briar studies her evil twin for a moment. "I think you may have programmed that illusion better than you realized."
...
Considering some of the magical mishaps you've had in the past, that statement is not as comforting as it could be.
The matter of your over-performing Illusion Magic dealt with, you lead your small group across the gym, taking the long way around the crowded dance floor. You catch sight of a few other familiar faces in the process. Plenty of the kids you were trick-or-treating with are here, as are other individuals you glimpsed in passing during the water fight. Larry is showing off his lightsaber (hilt) to a quintet of fellow Star Wars aficionados, and Tatsuki appears to be taking part in a Power Rangers crossover - she's one of four Red Rangers that you can see through the crowd, each of whom has slight differences in the styles of their respective uniforms.
When you get a clear line of sight to Kagome, you find that your earlier estimates weren't far off. Her family has picked out a spot on the bleachers, daughter, mother, and son all in a row. Kagome has a few hairs out of place, and one of the ribbons of her magical girl costume has either come untied or been torn - you can't tell which is the case from here, only that the ribbon isn't where it should be. Souta, meanwhile, has clearly reached the "not sleepy" stage of a kid up past his usual bedtime, all tired eyes, head hanging low with weariness, and that stubborn determination not to fall asleep while interesting things are still going on around him. Mrs. Higurashi looks far more composed than either of her children, and is talking animatedly with a tall individual standing next to the bleacher.
You can't tell much about this person, because their choice of costume was an ornate suit of European plate, more complete and concealing than Moka's costume. Whoever it is, they've got a large, double-bladed axe stapped to their back, a heavy broadsword sheathed at one hip, and a lance taller than they are, adorned with pennants, held with their right hand.
Like everybody else in the building, this heavily-armored knight's aura is a mystery to your passive senses, thanks to all the youki floating about. A quick active probe would cut through that, if you're curious to see what you can learn about this person, but you've been told before that this sort of thing is impolite, and the knight isn't doing anything that would excuse it.
While the prospect of your magic having gone and done its own thing again is somewhat concerning, you have to admit that the creation of a cartoonishly "evil" illusionary version of your fairy partner is honestly not as frightening as some of the other things you've accidentally summoned, conjured, or otherwise magicked into being. And in spite of her name and visual theme, Evil Briar hasn't actually DONE anything yet, besides act on its - her? - own and make Kokoa laugh.
You're not the kind of guy that would hurt a fairy - or even the animated image of a fairy - just for making a little girl laugh, are you?
No, of course you're not.
Still, you are going to keep an eye on your newest oddly-behaving magical creation and what it - or she - does.
Mrs. Higurashi is a grown woman. She doesn't need your permission or approval to talk to people, and unless or until she asks for your input, or you witness the heavily-armored figure doing something untoward, you've got no justification for interrupting their conversation.
You came to talk with Kagome, not intrude on her mother's social life, and you're going to stick to your plan.
The girl in question is not really listening to whatever her mother and the mystery individual are talking about, eyes wandering about the gym. When Kagome looks your way, you wave, and see her blink twice, before smiling and waving back. She stands up from her seat, makes a quick apology to her mother, and steps down onto the gym floor, circling around the knightly fellow as she comes over to meet you.
The armored figure's ornate helm shifts about to follow Kagome as she leaves, looks directly towards your small group for a moment, and then turns back to face Mrs. Higurashi. In those scant moments where the unseen gaze behind the visor is aimed in your direction, you don't sense any recognition from the unknown, much less any kind of intent, malicious, benevolent, or otherwise.
Either the person under that armor is no one you've ever met, or they're good at hiding their tells.
"Alex!" Kagome says then, as she comes over. "How have you been enjoying the party? And what did you do to Souta? He was going on about unfair flying robots, magical forcefields, and indoor rainstorms." There is a hopeful light in her blue eyes as she adds, "Is it anything I can learn how to do?"
Souta is most fortunate that his sister, regardless of her capacity for the spiritual arts, has no real talent for sorcery, forcing your answer to that last question to be negative.
"Awww..."
You answer Kagome's other questions, repeating your account of the water fight for the third time. You're starting to get the feeling that you're going to be telling this particular story a number of times in the not-too-distant future. Your companions from Sunnydale have probably heard rumors about the "Doombot" taking on all comers by now, and depending on how they approach you for answers, you could end up recounting everything anywhere from one to half a dozen times.
And of course, Zelda is going to want a full report of everything you got up to.
Once you've gotten through answering Kagome, you proceed with the introductions. Kagome is charmed by Kokoa and her choice in costume, which immediately makes her the littlest vampire's new favorite person; it probably helps that Kagome can see Briar and is clearly on friendly terms with her.
Kahlua, meanwhile, is more cautious around the young miko. She's making an effort not to seem nervous, but the tells are there.
Although there is some temptation to bring up the subject of little sisters again - Kagome certainly seemed to be keen on it when talking with Emiko earlier, and you know Kahlua enjoys being the eldest of three - you decide to keep quiet.
For one thing, your goal here is to get the two girls talking to each other, and, ideally, to help Kahlua get over her nervousness at the idea of being around a powerful miko. A three-way conversation could help ease Kahlua into that, but there's also the chance that she might try to hide behind you, as it were.
Also, you know yourself well enough to admit that you're too likely to expound at length on that particular topic, and making the girls to listen to YOU carry on would defeat your entire purpose in arranging this meeting. You've already done a fair amount of talking here as it is, what with explaining your antics as Doom for the third time this evening; you should probably let someone else take over.
Besides, you don't think that Kokoa would thank you for starting up a three-person Little Sister Appreciation Convention. And if the littlest vampire did decide to take issue with it, Briar would probably back her up. Fairy solidarity, as it were, and maybe a certain amount of younger sibling solidarity as well.
While you have yet to meet any of them, you know that Briar has a LOT of siblings. She's never spoken of the two oldest in anything but the fondest tones, but you know that there must have been times when she was less fond of them than normal. That's just the way family works. And Briar hasn't said much of anything about her scores of OTHER brothers and/or sisters, which implies that she's not quite so appreciative of them.
Kids being kids and fairies being fairies, there was almost certainly some teasing going on there. And it may STILL be going on, for all you know, fairy maturation (or lack thereof) being what it is...
"So, Alex," Kagome says, interrupting your train of thought. "How did you and Kahlua meet?"
"He beat her," Kokoa says flatly, giving you the stink-eye.
The phrasing, the attitude, and the delivery all combine to make that technically-correct but decidedly misleading statement far more accusatory than it really needed to be. And from the faintly triumphant glint in Kokoa's eyes, she's perfectly aware of that.
You're starting to reconsider your decision to be nice to her.
As it happens, you are entirely too dignified and self-controlled to do a double-take in response to such a statement.
Kagome and Kahlua do it for you.
"Wait, what?!"
"Kokoa!"
"He totally did," Evil Briar agrees with a nod. "And he didn't pull his punches at all."
That's because she's a vampire, and you were at least ten times less ridiculous then than you are today! She would have pulverized you if you hadn't treated her as a serious opponent! And you are definitely having second thoughts about not dispelling that Illusion right now!
"Seriously?!" Kagome asks.
Kahlua looks torn between laughing and hiding her face.
"And she wasn't even the only one Alex beat up that day," Angel Briar sighs.
It was only three other people! That's not that many!
Kagome is looking positively scandalized by this point. "Alex!"
Kokoa and Evil Briar appear to have reached the limits of their self-control at this point, because they start snickering.
Kagome blinks, and her expression of righteous indignation slips towards confusion. She looks between you and Kahlua, wordlessly asking for clarification, and clearly not entirely trusting the laughing duo - or Briar - to give her factual details.
Mirroring Kagome's reaction, you turn to face Kahlua, and wordlessly gesture for her to speak up.
There is a moment of visible reluctance on Kahlua's part, which you address by glancing meaningfully at the still-giggling Kokoa. Seeing as how it was HER little sister who started this misunderstanding, it falls to Kahlua, as the responsible older sibling, to help clear things up.
Kahlua responds to that with a sharp look at Evil Briar, which is your creation and responsibility, and moreover, was clearly exercising an unwholesome influence over her innocent kid sister.
You allow your face to fall into a flat, frank expression of disbelief at that claim. Kokoa has not exactly made a secret of the fact that you are not her favorite person in the world, even if you do bring Briar with you and have previously discussed the possibility of helping the littlest vampire to get a fairy partner of her own.
Kahlua winces, acknowledging the point.
You follow up by holding your hands before your chest, pressed together at the wrists as if cuffed, in reminder of the fact that you are the accused party in this situation, and your claims are likely to be looked on with some suspicion as a result.
Kahlua glances at her sister and the fake fairy, questioning that statement.
You simply nod. Even if your "accusers" have made themselves look untrustworthy, it only means that Kagome is willing to entertain the notion of your innocence, instead of steamrolling you with shocked accusations. Were you to speak up in your own defense, she'd probably still ask Kahlua for her side of the story anyway.
At this, Kahlua finally sighs and nods in acceptance.
"It was at the World Martial Arts Tournament," she explains to Kagome. "Alex and I fought in the fourth preliminary round, and he won."
"Oooohhhh," Kagome replies. "So that part about 'not pulling his punches'...?"
"He had to fight me seriously if he wanted to win," Kahlua confirms proudly. "And he still only managed it by pushing me out of the ring."
Kagome blinks at that claim, looks Kahlua over, and then does the same to you, obviously comparing your respective sizes.
"I'm a lot stronger than I look," Kahlua says simply.
You nod. "She really is."
You are not certain if the miko fully believes that claim, but whatever doubts she might have, she doesn't express them openly. Instead, she asks, "And the other people you beat up, then...?"
"...were my opponents in the first three rounds," you answer.
With a slightly suspicious frown, Kagome asks, "How many of them were girls?"
"Not a one," you admit easily. "One of them was actually a lot bigger than I am, another was a better technical fighter, and the third was, well, Ichigo." You pause at that. "Did you meet him?"
"The boy all in white, with the orange hair?"
"That's him."
"He didn't look like much of a fighter," Kagome says.
For a moment, you think you can hear Tatsuki laughing in the background, while Ichigo grumbles a complaint.
You feel the need to defend one of your few male friends from Kagome's... inexpert and ill-informed assessment of his martial prowess.
"Ichigo may not look like much-"
And wow, Tatsuki must have found something really funny over there with the other Power Rangers.
"-but he was still good enough to make it to the third round of the preliminaries. By that measure, he'd be in the top..." You pause for a minute, thinking back to the number of participants in your division finals, then doubling that number, and then doubling it again. "The top one hundred fighters under the age of ten in the world."
Gained Mathematics E
Admittedly, that number is kind of misleading. If you wanted to be wholly factual, you'd have said something along the lines of, "Ichigo is one of the top ninety-six fighters under the age of ten who showed up for the Tournament and didn't get sabotaged by the organizers or everything going on behind the scenes," because you know that the people running the show weren't as impartial as they'd have liked everyone to believe, and also that there was quite a lot happening outside the ring that could have easily prevented people from participating in the finals.
Saying that Ichigo is among the top one hundred fighters of his age in the world SOUNDS a whole lot better, though.
Kagome appears suitably impressed by it.
Kahlua looks like she kind of wants to disagree with your statement, but she doesn't.
You consider making mention of Ichigo's relatively recently-developed trick of focusing his spiritual power to punch other people in the soul, but on second thought, such an ability might not go over so well with your current audience. Kahlua has already demonstrated a wariness of spiritual powers this evening, and while Ichigo isn't a priest in training or anything like that, he has enough raw strength of the soul that the lack of divinely-backed purifying power in his blows might well not make any difference, as far as a living vampire was concerned.
Seriously, the guy was able to make YOU feel the sting, and you don't even have any special vulnerability to that sort of thing.
As for Kagome, she's a miko. Punching people in the soul sounds like the sort of behavior she'd be contractually-obligated to object to.
Casting about for a safer topic, you grab on to Kagome's previous inquiry about how many girls you fought before fighting Kahlua.
"Although speaking of the top fighters," you say, "you asked how many girls I fought? Well, Kahlua may have been the only one I faced during the preliminaries, but four out of five of my opponents in the Finals were girls. And one of them came this close" - you hold up your right hand, thumb and forefinger just a few centimeters apart - "to beating me and winning the whole thing."
Kagome frowns. "...really?"
"Really," Kahlua tells her. "I was there, I saw the whole thing. And that last fight trashed the ring."
"What, for real?!"
"Want to see the tapes some time?" you offer.
Kagome looks like she's thinking very seriously about taking you up on that.
While she's considering your offer, movement behind her draws your attention to the armored knight. He, or she, has just saluted Mrs. Higurashi and turned to move away, armor making admirably little sound. It doesn't clank, meaning that it's properly-fitted and well-maintained, and that the owner is well-accustomed to wearing it. There is still a certain unavoidable heaviness to their footfalls, however; as much as a suit of plate helps to support its own weight, so as to limit the toll it takes on its wearer, it DOES still weigh in the neighborhood of fifty pounds. Then there's all the weapons to consider.
As the knight moves off, Mrs. Higurashi turns to her son, now dozing with his head against her shoulder, and gives him a gentle shake.
It looks like Kagome may be leaving the party soon.
You give it some thought, but in the end, you decide that there really isn't anything you want or need to discuss with Kagome, or at least nothing that can't wait for a later visit or your next letter.
And speaking of visiting the Higurashi Shrine, Kagome accepts your offer to borrow the tapes of the World Martial Arts Tournament. She then proceeds to give you a disbelieving look when you pull them out of your dimensional pocket.
"So, wait, you just... carry these tapes around with you? All the time?"
You carry a lot of things around with you all time, of which the Tournament Tapes are honestly far from the most impressive.
In all honesty, that's a habit you might want to look into breaking, some time in the not too distant future. It was one thing to carry your entire mystical inventory around with you when you didn't have anywhere else you could put it, without risking contamination by Hellmouth crud. Now that you have Ambrose's wardstone array keeping your house mystically clean and concealing common to mid-level magical activity within the building, as well as your parents' knowledge of your involvement in the supernatural, it wouldn't take much for you to set up a more traditional storage area.
There's a few things you'd still keep on your person, of course. Those bottles of Spring Dew you bought from Gen won't do you any good if they aren't at hand when you need them, and the Mirror of Shadows is frankly too powerful and potentially dangerous for you to leave laying around. But there's no longer any real need for you to carry all these books and lesser reagents everywhere you go; it's just something you've gotten accustomed to doing.
Regardless, you hand the Tapes over to Kagome, who promises to return them in good order, the next time you stop by.
Temporarily lost Tournament Tapes
Not long after that, Mrs. Higurashi shepherds her sleepy-eyed son over to your group, and tells Kagome that it's just about time for them to be on their way. The Higurashi ladies both thank you for inviting them to the party, and Souta mumbles something that sounds vaguely like, "Yeah, thanks," when his mother nudges him.
You accept the gratitude, and offer to see them out to the bus stop.
Kagome looks like she might like to accept that offer, but Mrs. Higurashi declines, encouraging you to stay with the rest of your friends and enjoy the party.
You glance at the other girls with you, and see that Kahlua does appear to be in favor of the older woman's suggestion. Kokoa would probably be just as happy for you to disappear for a little while, and Briar is resolved not to let you out of her sight again tonight, regardless.
All things considered, you decide to take Mrs. Higurashi's advice, and wave good-bye to Kagome as she dutifully follows her mother out of the gym.
After that, you have another dance with Kahlua, and offer to take a turn with Kokoa, who eyes your armored feet warily for a moment before accepting. Once it's clear you're not going to step on her toes, either accidentally or deliberately, the younger girl loosens up and enjoys the dance.
You also get in a dance with Cordelia when she makes an appearance, though when you ask Amy if she wants to dance as well, the young witch laughs nervously and turns you down, instead dragging a surprised Larry onto the dance floor.
Gained Dancing C
By this time, it's well after ten, and moving towards ten-thirty. A significant portion of the kids around your age left to catch the last chartered bus at ten, and those that remain - at least half of whom are members of your extended social circle here in Japan - are starting to show signs of the long evening and late hour. Supernatural vigor and a nocturnally-inclined nature don't change the fact that Kokoa is fighting drowsiness as much as Souta was, they just mean she's doing a better job of it.
You know that the party is set to continue until midnight, and you suspect that more than a few of the attendees will either keep it going past that deadline, or seek out other entertainments once it's arrived. Still, it looks like your involvement in the night's festivities is at a close.
You are rather pleased with how the night has turned out. Your main purpose in coming to this party, apart from having a good time with your friends, was to try and open up and/or reinforce positive lines of communication between your family and human (or mostly-human) friends, and your monstrous acquaintances.
Not only has that goal has been achieved, you pulled it off without so much as a single punch or kick being thrown in the process!
...that is, unless you include some of the more martially-oriented "tricks" you played on various costumed homeowners. But you don't.
Yeah, it doesn't count if they had as much fun with it as you did.
Or the water fight. That wasn't violence, that was all good fun.
More fun for some than for others.
And Kagome's attempt to kill Souta was completely unrelated, as well as entirely forgivable.
Oh, yes. Younger siblings can be such a pain.
The only thing that remains in order to make it a perfect night is to get everybody home (or at least back to Castle Shuzen), with all the treats, and without running into any supernatural complications along the way.
Don't hold back, Din; tell us how you REALLY feel.
You idly reach out and rap your armored knuckles against the wood of the bleachers for luck.
The adults in your extended party take note of the air of fatigue that's gradually taking over the younger members, and begin gathering all of you up and ushering you towards the exit. As they do so, you note that most of the older humans are looking a bit tired themselves; somewhat ironically, Lu-sensei and Mrs. Blaisdell show the least signs of the lateness of the hour, despite being the oldest.
Akkiko doesn't appear tired in the slightest, something for which you WOULD credit her oni blood, except for the way that Tatsuki - who has taken off her helmet and is carrying it tucked under one arm - allows herself a jaw-cracking, fang-baring yawn.
Naturally, that sets off everybody else, even the youkai.
"Did you have to do that, Tatsuki?" Ichigo complains, rubbing his eyes.
"Yes."
You collect your buckets of candy from where they'd been stashed in one of the front offices. You remember looking into the room in question earlier, and seeing every available surface within covered in open-topped plastic pumpkins, grinning skulls, witch-heads, and other Halloween-themed containers. Now, it's virtually empty of such things, with the last dozen or so holdouts looking increasingly lonely and abandoned as you and yours collect your spoils of the evening.
Goodies recovered, you head outside.
Even with the music still going strong on the roof of the community center, it's much quieter now than it was earlier, when there were several hundred kids running around the neighborhood on a quest for sugar and mischief. The aura of youki that has been clinging to the building all night hasn't dissipated to any meaningful extent; if anything, you think it may have gotten stronger.
Gyokuro called ahead to alert her drivers while you were still assembling the group, and they must not have been parked very far away, because you've only been outside for a minute or so when you catch the headlights of the lead car coming around the corner.
It's as the vehicles pull to a halt on the curb before you and the drivers emerge to do their chauffeur thing that Evil Briar suddenly cackles, spins away from Kokoa's shoulder, and begins to dance and sing:
Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed,
Thrice, and once the hedge-pig whined.
Harpier cries, "'Tis time! 'Tis time!"
"Wait, what?" several people exclaim.
"Alex, what-" several more ask.
"This sounds familiar," Akasha muses.
Round about the cauldon go,
In the poisoned entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
days and night has thirty-one.
Sweltered venom sleeping got,
boil thou first i' th' charmed pot.
Although you do give serious consideration to the merits of dispelling your Illusion-gone-awry, something holds you back.
Partly, it's worry that who- or whatever has hijacked your magic will take offense at having their little performance interrupted, and either take retribution for the interference, or else step up their efforts to reach their goal.
The greater part, though, is your own curiosity.
While you've been considering your next move, Evil Briar continues to dance and recite her eerie little song. The next couple of lines strike you as familiar:
Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
"MacBeth?" your father exclaims in surprised recognition. He turns to you and says, "Alex, when did you see-"
"I didn't!" you protest. You recognize the name of one of Shakespeare's plays, but you really have never seen any of them. You only knew those two lines because they're famous, and have been for a long, long time - long enough for them to turn up in any number of other works, even those aimed at kids who've never heard of Shakespeare.
"It's not me making her speak!" you add quickly. "Something was interfering with my Illusion earlier, but it was nothing like this!"
The more supernaturally-involved adults trade speaking glances.
"Cars?" Lu-sensei suggests.
"Cars," Gyokuro agrees.
They proceed to bundle all of you kids into the nearest vehicles, calling an alert to the drivers, who all but leap back into their waiting seats.
Evil Briar doesn't follow you or Kokoa. Instead, she continues her little mid-air dance, circling around a point in the air about shoulder-high to you, hands extended and fingers waggling over something that isn't there, and periodically throwing her head and arms back and half-laughing the words of her song.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake.
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing.
For a charm of powerful trouble,
like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
The slam of the limo door and the rumble-
!
-make that the stuttery coughing of engines not wanting to turn over should have cut the imaginary fairy off then and there, to say nothing of the raised voices of your fellow passengers-
"What's going on?"
"Shouldn't we be driving away? Like, really fast?"
"Of COURSE the cars won't start."
"Alex, what did you DO?"
-but you can still hear Evil Briar singing. That alone would be worrying, but it's even more concerning that you can hear other voices joining the chant now, a low, moaning chorus that feels like it's coming up from the floor of the uncooperative car and through the bones of your legs.
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravined salt-sea shark.
Root of hemlock digged i' th' dark.
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat and slips of yew
slivered in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe,
ditch-delivered by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab.
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
for the ingredients of our cauldron.
The night sky, previously calm and bright with the countless lights of the city, has grown dark and stormy in a matter of moments. All nearby electrical lights have suddenly either browned out, or gone dead entirely, leaving a handful of jack o'lanterns as the only artificial source of light. The abrupt darkness in no way impedes your ability to see, hear, or feel the power of the storm that has whipped up as if from out of nowhere, and how the elemental forces behind it are at once contesting and yet coexisting with the mass of standing youki built up over the course of the evening by all the monsters that showed up for the party. Lightning discharges in the dark clouds above, providing moments of swift illumination and sudden silence.
In one flicker-flash, you glimpse Akasha aiming a swat at Evil Briar, the Dark Lord's hand wreathed in swirling youki, only to pass through your rogue creation as if she wasn't there.
In the next, you see Gyokuro trying to use a cellphone, to no avail.
The third burst of light shows Catherine Madison and Arisawa Akkiko putting their heads and magic together, working what appear to be Spells of Divination.
Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
then the charm is firm and good.
As Evil Briar's words rise to a piercing shriek, all the noise and power of the storm outside suddenly halts.
For a moment, all is still.
And then the fairy speaks again, in a town that is almost conversational:
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks.
The doors of the limo obligingly unlock themselves and slide open.
"Oh, that can't be good," Larry mutters.
And then Evil Briar speaks one more time:
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
And in the stillness of the night, as the light of the half-moon slowly cuts through the frozen swirl of the stormcloud above, you hear...
For a moment, you think you hear the clatter of hooves on stone - or in this case, pavement - the creak and jangle of a carriage, and the snap of a riding crop.
Then the moment passes, and you're not sure why you though you heard any of that, because it's clear that what you're hearing is the squeal of braking tires on pavement - and only that. The expected roar of an engine is eerily absent.
Light and darkness appear at one end of the street, then, a flickering orange-yellow glow that resolves into the shape of a leering fanged face as the pitch-black shadow on which it's mounted rounds the corner, the squeal of the rubber fading to nothing as the vehicle draws towards the parked cars where you and your companions half-sit, half-stand.
Under the light of the half-moon, the darkness slowly resolves into an all-black motorcycle of a design you don't recognize - understandable, really, as bikes haven't been the focus of your visits to Uncle Rory's garage.
Mechanical Knowledge (Cars) becomes Mechanical Knowledge (Vehicles)
Gained Mechanical Knowledge (Vehicles) D (Plus)
Still, it's a sleek number, low and fast and downright dangerous-looking - or at least it would be, if not for the goofy holiday-themed electric jack o'lantern that appears to have replaced the headlight.
The rider of the bike is much akin to their - her - vehicle. Tall, lean, and clad in a jumpsuit as darker than the night itself, she'd look menacing if not for the two odd protrusions that ride atop her yellow helmet, looking very much like cat ears. The helmet's visor is down, obscuring any hit of the face beyond, and there is a curious blue symbol just above its left corner, somewhat akin to a sideways, stylized "S" - though said style is completely unlike Superman's shield, you must add.
The mystical event that preceded this mystery biker's arrival was proof enough that she is Not Normal, but she still manages to surprise you a little, because the inhuman energy that you can clearly sense swirling around and through her now that she's closer is NOT youki.
It's Fae.
It's not Fae like Briar, or the other little fairies you've met. Nor is it like that bad-tempered little wood-man you met outside the Memorian Outpost. The biker's energy is much more like that of those business-suit wearing individuals you scryed on from afar after your first meeting with Mrs. Lawson, or the angry Fae spirit lingering in the Memorian prison - though once again, she's distinct from any of them, stronger than those people you sicced a Like-Like on, and without the bitter rage of undeath that tainted the shade of that unfortunate Fae.
The black rider cruises slowly along the opposite side of the street, regarding your little convoy of limos and the half-dozen adults standing outside the cars with clear but silent curiosity. When she's directly across from the car you're in, she stops and parks her bike.
"May we help you?" Miss Akasha calls out.
The yellow helmet looks at Lady Bloodriver and wordlessly nods, one finger raised in a silent request for time. Dismounting, the rider unlocks and opens one of the panniers mounted on the back of her bike, taking out a small parcel that's about eight inches by ten inches by three inches. Tucking that under her left arm, she closes and locks the box, then reaches into a pocket and pulls out a PDA, which she begins tapping on with the speed of a well-practiced user as she walks towards Akasha. There's nothing untoward in the biker's advance, just the calm, businesslike posture of someone doing a job.
She stops two arm-lengths from Akasha, and holds up her PDA, the screen clear for the other woman to read.
Akasha blinks, reads, and then blinks again. "...yyyyes," she says slowly. "He's here."
Although no name is mentioned, and Akasha (quite deliberately, you suspect) does not so much as twitch in your direction, everyone else in your car turns to look at you with varying degrees of expectation, concern, and annoyance.
The collective motion catches the rider's attention, and her helmeted head turns your way as well. For the briefest moment, you feel the weight of the unseen gaze behind that shaded visor as she regards you through the open door of the car.
Then the biker does a double-take, and stares not at you, but just slightly off your right, at Briar.
You feel your partner's minuscule weight shift in her place on your shoulder, as she registers the same weight of regard that you just felt. "Uh, hi?"
The biker claps her hands together in delight, and scrambles to write something new on her PDA. Then she hurries over next to the car and holds the device so that Briar can see the screen.
Your partner looks at the screen for a moment.
You are torn.
On the one hand, the Fae biker is pretty clearly directing her communication to Briar. It'd be one thing if she were speaking out loud, for everyone to hear, but whatever her reasons for typing up her words on a tablet are, her choice of medium adds a certain sense of selectiveness to her "words." At least for you and your well-developed manners.
After all, it's rude to read over someone else's shoulder - no matter how tiny - especially without permission.
That said, Briar is your partner. You're used to sharing things and butting in on each other's business in the name of mutual protection - and just plain nosiness - and witnessing one's boon companion being pulled into an unexpected conversation with a strange Fae woman is precisely the kind of thing that a good partner SHOULD worry about and get involved in.
It's not like this is the first time something like this has happened to the two of you. Not even if you limit your sudden communiques with supernatural females to Fae in particular - your first contact with Navi was entirely out of the blue, and her maternal relationship to Briar aside, you didn't know the Great Fairy from a jack o'lantern.
In the end, your sense of etiquette gets the better of your curiosity, and you direct your eyes away from the characters on the glowing screen.
"My name's Briar," your partner says, rising and performing a little curtsey. "It's nice to meet you, Miss Sturluson."
The biker returns a European-style bow, then types up another message.
"Okay, Celty, then."
More typing. You note that this "Celty" is remarkably quick-fingered, especially given how small an area she's working with, and how easy it would be to press the wrong part of the touch-screen. You know you couldn't type out a message with this kind of speed, not without making several mistakes in the process. Some of that, admittedly, is lack of practice, but some is just the fact that you have big hands for your age.
"Oh, that's entirely this guy's fault." You register the faintest of impact against your armored shoulder.
Celty's helmet shifts a little more in your direction for a moment, then turns back to Briar, tilting sideways at an inquisitive angle.
"Yeah, he's my partner. He got invited to a party, and he gets in trouble if I let him walk around on his own-"
"I'm right here, you know."
"-so there wasn't anything for it." Briar's tone is put-upon and long-suffering, at least until she fluffs her angel costume. "Besides, it was a chance to dress up, steal candy-"
Wait, what?
"-and play tricks on people. Legally, even. What kind of fairy would I be to pass all that up?"
Celty shakes in silence, and it takes you a second to realize that she's laughing. The motion is obvious, but the complete lack of sound threw you; there's not even a whisper of increased breathing to betray the woman's amusement, suggesting that she either has incredible self-control - which seems unlikely, given her otherwise unrestrained reaction - or she's mute.
It would explain the use of a PDA, but you aren't familiar with any sort of Fae that completely lacks the ability to speak. Plenty that wouldn't care to, outside of very select circumstances or audiences, but none that are truly voiceless.
Despite her silent outburst of hilarity, Celty manages to type out another message to Briar.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, no problem. Business before gossip."
Celty nods again, and turns her attention back to you. Once more, you feel the pressure of that unseen regard, which is partly cut off when a glowing screen of Japanese characters is held up before you:
::Are you Alexander Harris?::
Perhaps it's Miss Sturluson's posture, which has reverted to that casual professionalism you saw when she approached Miss Akasha earlier. Perhaps it's the lack of any emoticons or chatspeak in her message. Either way, there's a sense of formality to the question that has you answering.
"I am."
Celty types out a quick message, then takes a pen out from somewhere, and holds it out along with the package she's been carrying.
::Sign here.::
The pen, the package, and the invoice attached to the latter all register as mundane to your passive senses, although you do note that you can't see or sense through the parcel, or even into it. The wrapping seems to be blocking your awareness.
You know that you shouldn't accept gifts from strangers, and ESPECIALLY not from strange Faeries. True, Miss Sturluson isn't actually the one giving you the gift, merely the one delivering it, but that fact in itself is more than a little concerning. Leaving aside the fact that one of the greater Fae was even IN Japan to begin with - and there's definitely a story there - how many people would be able to recruit a being of her power as a courier?
You'd be surprised.
Not many, you're thinking.
You'd REALLY be surprised.
But other powerful Fae are definitely on that list, and that makes this package more than a little suspect. As far as you're aware, there's only two, potentially three major Fae (or groups thereof) that would have any reason to send you anything.
Navi would just use the Postman.
The potential group is those Fae in business suits you scryed and messed with at a distance after your first meeting with Mrs. Lawson. It's not impossible that this delivery is from them, but it seems unlikely. They're based Stateside, after all. If they'd managed to get enough information about you to send a message your way, it's more likely they'd have sent it to your home address, via a resident American courier, and you can't see any reason at all for them to wait until Halloween to get in touch with you.
Really, if those particular Fae had figured out your identity, you should have received another polite death threat like that one you got from the evil boss ninja Raidou a few days or weeks after your one and only encounter with them. It's been almost six months, and there's been nothing. Anyone powerful and talented enough to pick out your involvement in that incident after all this time, wouldn't have NEEDED all this time to do so. That makes it seem unlikely that those people are involved with tonight's shenanigans.
That leaves one other possibility: namely, the recipient(s) of that bag of Faerie gold you recovered in the Memorian Outpost, and asked Navi to see back to its proper owner(s).
THIS party, you could certainly see waiting until Halloween to get in touch with you. You haven't been back to Faerie yet, as there has yet to be any results from your search for the Earthside Memorian base with the portal. Your attempts to scry the location have thus far come to naught; it seems that even with the Memorian Map giving you some idea of where to look, you simply don't have a strong enough connection to punch through whatever defenses against detection the base might still have running.
You have high hopes that the magic teacher you plan to summon in a couple months' time will be able to help you do something about that, or that the Drakes and their associates will come through on their end of things... but you're getting off-topic.
Since you haven't returned to Faerie, who- or whatever received the gold from Navi would have had a considerably harder time getting in touch with you. Not everybody can just whistle up a planar portal, or someone capable of doing the same, after all. Waiting until Halloween to send their reply would therefore make perfect sense, because it's one of those times when the barriers between Earth, Faerie, and other places are weaker than usual, and those who might normally be restricted to one world can pass freely between many.
For given values of "freely," admittedly.
And since there is a non-zero chance that this package actually originates with the Fae, you turn to your partner and expert on Faerie dealings.
"What's your opinion, Briar?" you ask, trying to condense all of your concerns and reasoning into those few words.
Your Familiar Bond is very helpful in this regard, but even so, the only reason you think Briar manages to siphon out even a quarter of your intentions is because she's been living with you for years, and has been there to see virtually all your adventures.
Rather than answer you directly, Briar turns to Celty. "Sorry to intrude, Celty, but do you know what's in the package, or who it's from?"
Celty shakes her head, types out a reply, and holds her tablet so that you can both read the screen.
::I don't know what's inside, and the client paid not to be identified, so I can't say much. She seemed nice, though. Kind of spooky, but nice.::
...
You aren't sure how to respond to that, and try to buy some time by reading the invoice.
Nothing eldritch leaps out at you, whether it's regarding the terms or in a more literal sense. The delivery has already been paid for in full, you just need to sign to take possession of it - or to do anything else to it, which would technically include throwing supernatural power at it.
Granted, the terms don't specifically prohibit that, but it would be in the spirit of the words. And Celty, being Fae, is apt to notice and object if you try to poke at - and potentially damage - her charge before you've accepted responsibility for what happens to it.
In an echo of events that transpired in your preschool class almost three years ago, now, you restrain your aura as much as possible before taking up Celty's pen and signing your name on the invoice.
Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary transpires in the process. The pen doesn't try to latch on to your energies, whether individually or as a collective whole; it doesn't drink your blood and use it as ink; and when you've finished your signature, there is no sudden eruption of inimical mystical forces.
All that happens is that Celty tears off the top sheet of the invoice, folds it up, and tucks it away in a pocket, while handing the package over to you.
You consider the object in your hands for a moment. It appears to be wrapped in common brown paper, but if you press on it slightly - and you do - it produces a muffled crinkling sound that reminds you of aluminum foil. Considering how your passive senses can't pierce the wrapping, you suspect that the inner layer is actually a sheet of lead, a mundane security measure that defeats a surprising number of spells from the School of Divination.
The package weighs about what you'd expect for an item of its dimensions, neither especially heavy nor remarkably light - you estimate it to be about the mass of a couple of your school textbooks, give or take a couple of chapters. There are no warnings advising you to "Handle With Care" or "Fragile," so you don't hesitate to give it a tentative, testing shake. Nothing rattles or shifts in response; for all the response you get, the package might as well be one solid piece.
Having learned all that you can without resorting to overt magical means or simply opening the package, you tuck it into your dimensional pocket.
Gained Celty's Halloween Delivery
Celty does a double-take as the package disappears under your costume tunic. She points at you, then turns to regard Briar while pointing her finger at you a second time for emphasis.
"It's just magic," Briar replies.
Celty leans back suddenly, not quite flinching in surprise at your partner's words.
"What, you've never met a human that could use magic before?"
Miss Sturluson slowly shakes her head. For some reason, Briar's question seems to have depressed her, or at least that's the impression you get from the slight slump of the Fae woman's shoulders.
From behind Celty, someone clears their throat.
"Pardon me for the interruption," Miss Akasha says, "but if your business with Alexander is concluded, Miss Sturluson, we do have places to be."
Celty looks over her shoulder and nods to the Dark Lord.
If there is anything else you'd like to say to the Faerie biker, now's the time to say it.
Before Celty departs, you ask if she'd object to exchanging contact information with you. Your reasoning is that she is somewhat more discreet than your usual supernatural delivery service, which could be helpful if you ever find yourself needing to send something to a more mundane recipient in Japan.
Miss Sturluson doesn't object to this suggestion, but she does quickly type up a reply, cautioning you that she does most of her work in and around the Ikebukuro ward, and has a very strict first-come, first-served policy for taking new jobs.
You take her business card, which has her rates listed on the back, and conjure one of your own, which you hand over with a flourish and an unnecessary but impressive-looking burst of extra mana.
Celty appears delighted by the little lightshow, applauding warmly before she takes the card.
Gained Celty Sturluson's contact information
Tucking the card and her tablet away, the Fae biker straightens up and bows to you, Japanese-style, with the perfunctory manner of a professional who has completed a job.
You return the gesture as best you are able.
Then, with a wave to Briar, Celty turns and walks back to her bike, nodding politely to the adults - who are still standing around outside the cars, although you note that they've relaxed considerably since the supernatural light-show ended and Celty showed herself to not be hostile.
Considering how Celty's bike did not produce the sound of a running engine earlier, you expect it to remain silent when she revs it up. In this, you're surprised, because the bike comes alive with the whinny of a great horse, popping up on its back wheel as if that self-same animal were rearing up.
And for a brief instant, that's what you see. Not a matte-black motorcycle that absorbs the light of the half-moon without even a hint of reflective gleam, but a sleek stallion, dark as night, swift as the wind - and completely lacking a head.
And Celty?
Gone is the pitch-black jumpsuit, replaced by a dress of deepest midnight, in a fine style centuries old, tattered as if worn constantly for all the intervening years. In one hand, raised high, she holds that jack o'lantern, although now it does not appear to be electrical at all, but a proper carved-out gourd, lit from within by a single candle.
And like her horse, Celty has no head. Her neck just sort of stops in a patch of darkness, from which issue strange, smoke-like plumes of shadow.
In the face of this sudden and shocking vision, you manage to keep your cool, even though you are having SERIOUS flashbacks to that Disney Halloween special you caught on TV last year, with the Legend of Sleepy Hollow animated short.
"Holy shit!"
Akkiko is less successful in keeping her cool, and from similar exclamations, some of the other adults are just as startled.
Before anyone can act on their shock, Celty and her horse go tearing off into the night, faster than any ordinary horse and rider could go.
You spare a moment to wonder if Khamsin will be that fast, when he's fully grown and trained.
Then the moment passes, as Celty disappears into the darkness. All around you, the energies that have remained frozen since the Faerie rider's appearance begin to move once more. The storm overhead breaks up as quickly as it came, and whatever power forced the local electrical lines to fail relaxes its grip, allowing the lights to come back on.
Also, the engines of the cars finally turn over, prompting brief exclamations of surprise from some of the drivers.
You and your fellow passengers trade looks, and you can see the adults doing the same on the sidewalk. It's your father who is first to speak.
"Okay, I have to ask: has the Headless Horseman ALWAYS been a woman?"
"Well, King Arthur was a girl," you say offhandedly, "so it's not like there isn't precedent for that kind of thing..."
Your words trail off as your father, along with just about everybody else here besides Akkiko, Miss Akasha, Lady Gyokuro, and Lu-sensei turns to regard you with a mix of surprise, disbelief, and incomprehension.
You call for support without a moment's hesitation. "Briar, back me up, here."
"It's true," your partner says, for the benefit of all those with the ability to perceive her.
"She really was," Evil Briar adds helpfully, and to a more general audience.
You glance at the illusion, a little surprised that it's still here after everything that just transpired.
"And it's precisely THAT reaction that makes the whole thing such a good prank," your hijacked devil-fairy goes on, looking around and pointing at all the confused faces with a gleeful chuckle.
Briar glances at her evil twin, and then shrugs. "She's not wrong..."
Your father's response to all of this is to reach under his coat, take out the dented flask he included as part of his private eye costume, and open it up to give the contents a suspicious sniff. Then he holds his empty hand up to his mouth, exhales sharply, and scents the resulting breath.
Shaking his head, your father mutters, "I don't THINK that punch was spiked..."
"Perhaps we should discuss the matter on the road?" Lu-sensei suggests. "We do have a fairly long trip ahead of us, and it would be more private."
When your master punctuates his statement with a glance over his shoulder in the direction of the community center, your own gaze is drawn that way as well. You immediately see what caught his attention, as something like two dozen supernatural types are all but hanging off the edge of the roof, watching your little limo-caravan with unabashed interest. Another six or seven people are standing around near the ground entrance, looking a bit awkward at being noticed; either they were on their way out and all but walked into your meeting with Celty, or they deliberately tried to sneak up on and view the proceedings.
"Master Tze has the right of it," Gyokuro says. "I would so hate to be accused of spreading rumors."
Lady Shuzen doesn't turn her head towards the building, doesn't even give off a warning flicker of youki, but her words nonetheless cause all the watching monsters to quickly turn away and walk out of sight - and in the case of those downstairs, to hurry back inside.
Damn. And you thought you were scary.
Gained Commanding King F (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Intimidating B (Plus)
Your father takes all this in, and then tips his fedora to Gyokuro and heads for the nearest car.
Once again, you find yourself sharing a vehicle with Kahlua, Emiko, Cordelia, and Akkiko - and also Briar and Evil Briar, the latter of whom has taken up her place on your "bad side" and otherwise resumed acting like you'd expect her to.
Truth be told, this does not put you at ease.
"So," Cordelia says. "King Arthur was a girl, huh?"
Neither does the way all three girls in the car are looking at you with the same expression of moderately well-concealed interest. Akkiko's smirk isn't exactly helping.
You wonder how to proceed.
On the one hand, you have a Spell of Illusion that's been hijacked at least once, possibly twice this evening by forces unknown. While your meeting with Celty worked out alright - at least thus far - you're annoyed, intrigued, and concerned by how someone managed to steal control of one of your magical creations right out from under your nose. An examination of Evil Briar is probably in order, though how deep and far-reaching said investigation should be is open to question.
On the other hand, you have three friends, all girls, who now know that YOU know a piece of interesting supernatural lore - you will not use the word "gossip," no matter how accurate it may be - and would clearly like to hear it.
And on your good shoulder, you have a fairy partner who knows as much about that particular tale as you do. Briar could easily bring the other girls up to speed on the truth behind the Arthurian legend; they just might prefer to hear it from you, or at least to have your input to compare with hers.
"Briar," you say to your partner, "would you mind filling the girls in on the whole King Arthur thing?" You glance in the direction of your other shoulder, both for the sake of subtlety and for not sending the illusionary fairy standing there flying by nodding or shrugging too hard. "I have an issue that needs investigation."
"Sure thing," Briar replies with a nod. Wings fluttering, she rises from her usual spot on your shoulder, and beckons for Cordelia to come closer.
A moment of musical chairs ensues, as you and Cordy rise from your seats and move to opposite ends of the limo's passenger compartment. There is some reluctance among the girls to adopt the new seating arrangement - mostly between Cordy and Kahlua - but curiosity about the tale Briar has to tell proves stronger than their mutual dislike.
Also, Emiko makes a reasonably good buffer.
Putting the girls out of your mind for now, you reach up to your still-occupied shoulder, slide your hand under Evil Briar like a moving platform-
"Beep! Beep! Beep!" the little devil chants, at the same cadence as a tractor-trailer or other large vehicle moving in reverse.
-and then bring it and her back around in front of you.
For a moment, you and your rogue creation regard each other in silence. Even at this range and removed from the interference of the miasma that was hanging around the community center all night, your passive senses detect nothing out of the ordinary about the entity resting on your upturned palm. As far as they're concerned, she is a construct of Illusion Magic, nothing more and nothing less. There is no Fae energy in her, nor any mortal ki or its component forces. Some youki clings to the Illusion, but it's the same undifferentiated mixture of auras that was jamming you earlier, totally lacking in the kind of structure and intent that would be required to give a lifeless form even a semblance of sentience. It's also not nearly potent enough to make up for that lack of focus with sheer power.
"Why, Doctor," Evil Briar says, interrupting your train of thought. "What big eyes you have!"
A couple of seats over, Akkiko snickers.
"The better to observe you with, my dear," you retort, before catching yourself. "So, would you like to introduce yourself?"
The fake fairy stands up straight, clears her throat, and takes a deep breath.
"I am Evil Briar! I am Evil Briar~!"
...right.
"And is there anyone controlling you, Evil Briar?"
"No one can control me! I am a free devil-fairy!"
"The reason I ask is because if someone or something has taken control of one of my creations, I must investigate the matter thoroughly, find out how it happened, and make sure it can't happen again, both for my own safety and the safety of those around me."
"I fear no torture!" Evil Briar growls. "Do your worst!"
Well. She asked for it.
You awaken your Mage Sight at full strength and look into, and through, the magic that makes up Evil Briar.
"Oooh, scary eyes."
Instantly, you perceive the matrix of woven mana that gives your little creation shape and voice and animation - your mana, tinged here and there with fading traces of Elemental Magic. Ambient power cast off by the sudden storm that heralded Celty's arrival, you expect. But that wouldn't have caused Evil Briar to go out of control, and even if it did, it still wouldn't account for her earlier moments of unexpected behavior.
There are no traces of any other magic that you can detect, so either they're not there, they've been masked, or they happened long enough ago to have faded from the spell-matrix.
Considering that Evil Briar did her little ode to Shakespeare not fifteen minutes ago, and is still acting without your input, that last option strikes you as unlikely. You are also rather doubtful that there is nothing at all to be found. That leaves masking.
Before you break out your most powerful analytical spells, however, you cast the Spell to Detect Scrying, to see if who- or whatever interfered with Evil Briar is still monitoring her, or you. This is a spell whose magical signature and purpose you should be able to hide - if just barely - and you don't want to throw around your more powerful, impossible-to-conceal magic if an unknown is observing you.
The spell takes shape.
Gained Mana Concealment A
And as it does so, you are struck by the sudden and abiding impression that you are being watched.
The Spell to Detect Scrying has a useful feature that can potentially reveal the location of the caster of any Divination Magic it picks up. This is most reliable if the other person is somewhere very close by, but even if they're not, there's a chance that the spell will at least give you a sense of the direction in which your uninvited audience lies, and the distance that exists between you.
You do not gain any such information on this occasion. Your magic finds the sensor easily enough, but when it tries to follow the magic back to its source, you're struck by a sensation akin to walking into a pitch-dark room without any source of illumination or augmented vision to assist you.
As it happens, the darkness feels familiar to you. You've sensed an aura exactly like it before, and quite recently, in fact, when Mrs. Madison first came over to get her costume fitted.
As for the location of the sensor...
Tiny green eyes glowing with a presence that was lacking before now, Evil Briar loses the expression of mocking challenge and stands as straight and tall as her tiny form will permit.
"It seems the time for pranks is past," she says in a more mature and regal tone than you've ever heard Briar use. "Greetings, Young Harris."
"Hail, Lady Hecate," you greet the Goddess of the Crossroads.
Akkiko makes a strangling sound.
Evil Briar smiles.
Do you have anything you'd like to say to the Mother of Witches?
Your first inclination is to keep quiet and let the scary goddess talk.
After all, regardless of the cosmic injunction against Earth's deities meddling with mortals, or the fact that she's speaking through the tiny and adorable form of a fairy dressed up as a devil, this is a Greek goddess you're dealing with. Members of that pantheon were and remain well-known for being quick to anger, and not shy in the least about expressing their displeasure with those they hold accountable, particularly upstart mortals.
More than that, this is HECATE. You haven't done a huge amount of research on the Greek gods, but as they were appropriated by the Romans and subsequently inherited by the Memorians, you have picked up a few things. If memory serves, Hecate is not just a goddess, but a Titan, one of those who came before the Olympians - and one who not only survived the overthrow and imprisonment of her kin by their successors, but was allied with and honored by the newcomers.
She's also the Goddess of Magic, Necromancy, Ghosts, and Witchcraft - to whit, NOT somebody to mess around with.
Gained Knowledge (Ancient Earth History) F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
And yet despite all of those very good reasons for you to keep your mouth shut, you find yourself forming words.
"While I'm duly honored by your visitation, Lady Hecate, I have to ask: is this going to involve me going on a quest? Because I know I have a history with that sort of thing, but I really have been trying to cut back on it of late."
Hecate laughs in Briar's stolen voice.
Pretty as it is, the sound does little to settle your nerves.
"You may relax, Young Harris. There will be no quests tonight, and no smiting, either."
That's a relief on two fronts.
You're still nervous, though.
"No," the goddess in fairy guise goes on, "all of this is merely my way of saying thank you."
You blink, momentarily surprised and confused, because after all, what have you done recently that benefitted Hecate, much less that she would feel the need to thank you for?
Then you put the pieces together, and realize what the Goddess of Witchcraft must be referring to.
"This is about Mrs. Madison," you say.
Hecate nods. "Catherine has been a loyal follower of mine for most of her life, as was her grandmother before her, but living on the Hellmouth as she does... well, you are aware of the dangers for a practicing magic-user in such a toxic environment." The goddess shakes her avatar's tiny head. "She took precautions, but they weren't working quite as well as she believed, and after so many years, the accumulated corruption was starting to reach worrying levels. A few more years of that, and things would have gotten very bad for her, and her family."
"And then I invited her to this party."
"Exactly. Just meeting you in your own house, and seeing how much more effective that rascal Ambrose's wards were at keeping things cleansed, was a much-needed wake-up call for Catherine. Actually bringing her to Japan with you, to undergo purification and speak with the Hakuba priests, has done her a world of good. And for that, I thank you."
And with that, she bows. It's slight, more a deep nod of acknowledgment than a show of submission, but it's there all the same.
Gained Hecate's Favor F
Well, then.
Do you have anything to say to Hecate, beyond, "You're welcome?"
You could try to deflect the goddess's gratitude, by pointing out any number of reasons as to why it's unnecessary.
After all, you weren't the one who purified Mrs. Madison, and neither did you bring her to the Hakubas with the specific intention of helping her; it all happened as a consequence of your inviting her to join you in visiting the Shuzens and attending tonight's party. The vampires were the ones who set the terms, and the priests did the work of fulfilling them. You were just the travel agent.
And even if you had brought Catherine to Japan with the intent of cleansing her system of the Hellmouth's corruption, it's not the kind of thing you'd undertake with the expectation of PAYMENT. She's a fellow practitioner of the mystic arts and the mother of one of your oldest friends; on top of that, said friend is your first student in the ways of magic. That's three good reasons - three layers of obligation, even - for you to intervene, any and all of which would be reward enough on their own.
But you don't say any of that.
Instead, you simply bow your head. "You are welcome, Lady Hecate."
The goddess hums, pleased by your response. Then she sighs.
"Well, as enjoyable as tonight has been, I'm afraid I can't hang around much longer. The rules may be relaxed on Halloween, and for me in particular, but they DO still apply. Also," she adds, with the sound of a smile, "Bes is throwing his annual Halloween costume party, and I don't want to miss too much of the fun."
Oh, ho!
...who the heck is Bes?
Pack up and pick out costumes, you two. We're going dancing.
"Would you mind if I borrowed your illusion, Young Harris?" Hecate asks then, smoothing out the phantasmal fabric of Evil Briar's outfit. "I've gotten rather comfortable with it, and I have high hopes for it in the costume contest."
Wait, there's a contest?
...gods having a costume contest on Halloween. You honestly don't know how to respond to that.
We need better costumes!
As for the matter of Hecate "borrowing" Evil Briar for her costume... well, leaving aside the little detail that you don't see how you could realistically STOP her from doing so if she really wanted to, there is the matter of how, hijacked by the Goddess of Witchcraft or no, the active Spell of Illusion still carries your magical signature. You've gone to such lengths to avoid leaving samples of your work laying around where random practitioners, demons, and other supernatural entities could find them, do you REALLY want to let a bunch of gods get a firsthand look at it?
Quick, where's the Happy Mask Salesman?!
Maybe if you explain your concern to Hecate, she'd agree to leave Evil Briar with you? Or at least to muddle the signature beyond recognition? She's a Goddess of Magic, she can do that sort of thing.
Din, so help me, if you go as Majora, I will put on the Fierce Deity Mask and KICK YOUR ASS.
"While I don't object to the idea, Lady Hecate," you reply carefully, "I do have a couple of... concerns."
"And those would be?" she asks.
You quickly explain your established practice of not leaving samples of your magical signature laying around for random entities to notice, analyze, and potentially do things with.
Being the Goddess of Magic, Hecate catches on instantly.
"And sending an active magical construct of your shaping into a meeting of gods would blow that policy of secrecy and security as wide open as if it had been struck by one of Zeus's thunderbolts," she concludes.
You can only nod in agreement.
"Well, I certainly can't fault you for having the good sense to clean up after yourself," the Three-Bodied Goddess admits. "Goodness knows, some of my followers could stand to learn that lesson. Fortunately, this is a simple thing to fix."
Evil Briar sort of shimmies in place, and something that feels like the Spell to Mask Dweomers flows over, around, and through her form.
"And there we are," Hecate says. "So, what was your other concern?"
"I was hoping that I might have a moment to confer with my familiar and hear her opinion of this, Lady Hecate," you reply. "It IS her likeness you'd be borrowing, after all, and she might not be any more keen to have her face known to a lot of strange gods than I was to have them know my magical signature."
At this, Hecate laughs softly. "Of course, of course. A girl does have a right to privacy, after all."
You turn to look down the passenger compartment, to where Briar and the girls have (ostensibly) been occupied with hearing the latest Arthurian gossip all this time. From the look of things - namely, the lack of bug-eyed stares, slack jaws, and/or fearful tremors - none of the four have noticed your conversation with Evil Briar. In fact, they're not paying attention to you at all, instead giggling about something Briar just said.
It's only fair, you suppose. You haven't been paying any attention to them since the drive back to Castle Shuzen started.
Also, the timing is fortuitous, since this way you won't be interrupting them in the middle of something.
"Briar," you call out, raising your voice enough to carry and be heard through the girls' amusement, "do you have a moment for a consultation?"
Your partner glances over her shoulder at you, raises one hand to ask for a moment, and then turns back to the girls.
"Give me a minute to see what he wants?"
They nod and make sounds of agreement, at which point Briar turns and flies over to her usual spot on your right shoulder.
"What's the problem? Evil spirit taken over my imaginary twin?"
Oh, she walked into that one.
Oh, you shouldn't. You really, really shouldn't.
But you're still going to, aren't you?
But Briar has given you the perfect opening to introduce the Goddess of Witchcraft, and it would be a shame to let that pass.
Yeah, you're going to do it.
Called it!
Turning to "Evil Briar," you ask, "Are you evil, ma'am?"
"There have been those who considered me such," she admits without delay, hesitation, or shame.
Even through the steel plating of your costume's shoulder pads, you can feel that Briar has gone very still at the sudden discovery that her magical doppelganger is, in fact, being controlled by another being.
"But I'm forgetting my manners," you say then. "Introductions. Briar, meet Hecate-"
"Erk," your partner chokes out.
Gained Pranking E (Plus)
"-Goddess of Witchcraft-" you pause for a moment "-and sometime evil spirit."
"Guh!" Briar coughs, as if she'd been suddenly hit in the belly.
"Lady Hecate," you continue, "meet Briar of the Lost Woods of Hyrule."
Evil Briar gives a regal nod. "Charmed."
"Ahahaha! Likewise, I'm sure!" Briar exclaims nervously. "How can I be of service, your Divinityship?"
You quickly summarize the situation for your partner.
Briar is understandably surprised-
"What."
-that a goddess wants to borrow her devilishly-attired appearance to wear as a costume of her own. And in a case of one partner reflecting the other, she is indeed uneasy with the idea of her face suddenly becoming known to a whole lot of strange gods.
Hecate, who appears to be in a good mood despite the whole "evil spirit" thing - or maybe because of it? - agrees that some cosmetic alterations are in order, and asks you to adjust your creation accordingly. She could do it herself, but part of the reason why she wants to borrow your work of Illusion Magic is because it's not divine in origin, which makes it a better disguise for a goddess.
Also, by "sacrificing" your creation to her, you're technically working within the bounds of those troublesome rules on mortal/divine interactions. That would neatly spike the wheel of any Powers that might seek to lodge a protest over this entire affair.
As if the threat of a trinity AND a three-fold goddess wouldn't already do that.
After a quick consultation with Lady Hecate about her preferences, you make the changes, mostly regarding Evil Briar's facial features and overall pigmentation. Her eyes become crimson instead of green, her hair darkens from your partner's strawberry blonde to night-black, and her skin takes on a coppery hue.
She looks more like a tiny devil, now, or at least like a fairy who went for that added layer of authenticity in her devil costume.
That done, you mentally and mystically hand control and maintenance of your Spell of Illusion off to the goddess.
"Time for me to be on my way, then," Hecate says at last. "Young Harris, Little Briar, it was a pleasure meeting you."
"Likewise, Lady Hecate."
"Yes! Very much!"
Hecate smiles, and begins to fade away. Before she's completely vanished, however, she makes like the Chesire Cat, leaving a few final words and a disembodied grin:
"Enjoy your gift."
Wait, what?
...
"...do you suppose she was Celty's 'spooky lady?'" you venture.
"She'd fit the description," Briar agrees. "On the other hand, she could just be aware of the package, and messing with us."
Also a possibility, you must admit.
Well, you were already planning to open Celty's delivery when you reached Castle Shuzen. You suppose you'll find out then.
The city roads aren't entirely empty, even this late at night, but once you get out of Tokyo proper, there's hardly another vehicle to be seen. The limo drivers take full advantage of this lack of moving obstacles (and witnesses) to coax the most speed out of their cars that they can.
On that note, you don't sense any supernatural forces at work while the muted hum of the engines picks up. A look out the window shows that you're moving at close to the kind of speeds your father has been known to get out of the family sedan, when on the long drive between Sunnydale and L.A. - make it fifty-five, maybe sixty miles an hour.
You wonder, idly, what the speed limits are on Japanese highways, and whether or not the Shuzens have some kind of under-the-table or even official permit for breaking them.
For all the speed your rides are moving at, it's still past midnight when you feel the boundary of the Shuzen estate pass over you once again.
By this time, Emiko has been curled up and conked out in her seat for the best part of an hour, head resting on a grudgingly-tolerant Cordelia's shoulder, and occasionally twitching and yelping softly in her sleep.
Briar has taken a page from the fox-girl's book and grabbed a few winks herself, incidentally claiming Emiko's soft, fluffy tail as temporary bedding, the little opportunist.
Cordelia is visibly fighting off drowsiness, a struggle not helped in the slightest by the presence of the dozing pair to her left. Mostly, Cordy seems to be keeping her eyes open by a combination of willpower and pure spite, the latter aimed across the passenger compartment at a decidedly smug Kahlua, who isn't showing more than the earliest signs of sleep-deprivation.
Vampires have many unfair advantages when it comes to that kind of thing, you think. Superhuman physiology, accelerated healing, a more than slightly nocturnal nature to start with, and supernatural good looks on top of that...
On a tangentially-related note, Akkiko looks even LESS tired than Kahlua does. You expect that's down to a combination of oni heritage and loads more experience with long days and late nights.
As for yourself, you're more emotionally-wearied by this evening's events than anything else.
When the limo and its companions at last pull to a stop inside Castle Shuzen's courtyard, allowing their passengers to disembark, you find that the assorted states of sleepiness exhibited by your immediate traveling companions are fairly constant throughout the group. The humans - most of whom are dealing with magical jet lag on top of everything else - and the children are by and large the worst off, while the vampires and the adults are handling things better. Where race and age overlap, the prevailing trends generally stack, though there is one noteworthy exception.
Kokoa is out cold, which has prompted the single greatest display of maternal behavior you've ever seen from Gyokuro, who's picked up her youngest - being fully mindful of the delicate fairy wings - and is holding her close as she carries the little girl towards the front door.
Speaking of small children, the Castle's avatar has just risen out of the ground next to you to give your right leg a welcoming hug.
Even as you reach down to pat the little elemental on the head-
It rumbles happily.
-you feel Celty's delivery burning a metaphorical hole in your dimensional pocket. You take it out and stare at it for a moment, considering how it came to you, who you think sent it, and what might be inside.
While you strongly suspect that the package in your hands was sent to you by Hecate, you aren't one hundred percent certain of that. All you know for sure is that it was handed off to you by one of the greater Fae, who commented that the person she got the package from was "spooky - but nice."
By most standards, Celty herself was fairly spooky - at least until she started "talking" and revealed that there was a pretty normal person in there, despite the eeriness of her arrival - which says things about the ultimate origin of her delivery.
You haven't gotten this far by taking unnecessary risks, and you're not about to start now, when your father and so many of your friends and their families are around.
...also, you recall Kahlua mentioning something in her early letters about her parents having a place to put "suspect" mail, and examine it to figure out if it's safe or not. If you could borrow the use of that location...
With Gyokuro having already headed indoors to put Kokoa to bed, you turn to Miss Akasha, hold up your gift of uncertain provenance, and ask her if there's somewhere you could go to open it.
"Just in case," you add meaningfully.
"The building that normally screens our incoming mail is located off the grounds," Akasha replies, frowning thoughtfully. "However-"
!
With a motion that starts out looking like a standing high jump, but causes its legs and lower torso to telescope upwards into a pillar of earth and stone, the elemental "leaps" up to grab the package from your hands.
"Hey!"
The wrapped parcel is almost large enough that the tiny spirit could crawl inside it, and as such, the only way the little guy can really take hold of it is by using both arms. The distance involved is too far for those small arms to fully reach around, and so you're left with a mass of living stone half-hugging the package to its body.
Despite the poor angle the elemental has, its hold on the box is quite strong. So is the pull being exerted on the package, although that's as much as function of the weight of your newest little friend as anything else. You can hold it for now, but if this keeps up, you're either going to lose your own grip, or be looking at a broken-open delivery.
You do not let go of the package, but you do shift your grip so that the box isn't in danger of getting torn or crushed by the opposing forces you and the elemental are exerting on it.
Craning your neck slightly to look over and around the delivery, you fix the little place-spirit with a curious, slightly stern expression, and say, "Be careful with this, will you?"
There is a pause, and then the pull on the box in your hands diminishes. Tiny red eyes slowly peer over the top of the box, somehow contriving to project apology even though there isn't much of a face around them to work with.
"Thank you. Now, if I let you have this package-
At this, the elemental's not-a-face perks right up.
"-what were you planning to do with it?"
And now it's frowning. Without a mouth. Somehow.
Letting go of the box entirely, the small spirit begins pantomiming its intentions. First, it "lifts" a large object over its he- er, shoulders, with both hands. Then, balancing the "box" above it with one hand, it briefly points off in the direction of the road, and beyond it, the front gate of the Shuzen estate. This is followed by a brief bout of carrying the "delivery," setting it down in a room - the elemental pauses to indicate walls - and then opening it.
You spare a moment to be grateful to Lu-sensei for all the practice he's given you at communicating without words. It's the only reason you're able to make as much sense out of the spirit's actions as you do, and even then, it takes some out-loud guessing and a couple of comments from your impromptu audience to get the gist of it.
Considering that half of the people gathered here can't even SEE the little guy, existing as he does primarily on the spiritual plane, there's more than a few confused questions about what's going on and why everyone else is staring at a patch of empty air.
"Awww," Kahlua coos. "He wants to help."
The elemental nods as much as it can with no real head or neck, radiating eagerness. Then it pauses and regards you silently, a question clear in its hopeful gaze.
The genius loci's glowing red-eyed gaze of childish hope is a powerful force, which tugs at your instincts as a big brother. You just want to pat the little guy on the shoulders and gush about how adorable, helpful, and responsible it's being about everything.
But you recall that Miss Akasha was in the middle of answering your question about using Castle Shuzen's available facilities to safely open the parcel when the spirit, ah, "volunteered" its assistance. You should probably finish hearing her out before you do anything else.
With an effort, you're able to throw off your first impulse, instead shifting your hold on the package over entirely to your left hand, so that you can raise your right hand, index finger raised.
"Give me one minute to talk to Miss Akasha, okay?" you ask.
The elemental blinks, folds its arms, and bows.
...you're honestly not sure if it's a little upset at not being allowed to help right away, or just acting formal.
"Thanks." With that, you turn to your remaining hostess, who has just similarly pulled her gaze away from the Castle's avatar. "You were going to say something before we were interrupted, Miss Akasha?"
"...I was?" She blinks, casts back a moment in memory, and then claps her hands. "Ah, yes! I was saying, the main building for sorting mail is off the grounds. However, we do have a room here in the Castle that's been set up to handle hazardous deliveries that somehow make it past the first round of screenings." She glances down. "Is that where you were going to take the package?"
The elemental nods to her, and this appears to satisfy Miss Akasha.
"You can let him have the box, Alex." With that, Akasha glances over her shoulder to one of the drivers. "Akira, call ahead and let Security know what to expect."
The driver glances in your direction, sees you handing off Celty's delivery to the elemental, and turns back to his employer. "...ghostly floating parcel, ma'am?"
Akasha gives him a thumbs-up.
"Ghostly floating parcel. Right." Shaking his head, the driver takes out a cellphone, hits speed-dial, and waits a second. "Hiroshi? Yeah, all clear out here. Listen, you're not going to believe this one..."
You lose track of what he says after that. You're busy following the elemental, which is flowing towards Castle Shuzen proper at what is, for you, jogging speed, the package held over its only vaguely-existent head with both hands and an air of triumph.
You're followed by pretty much everybody else. Some of them probably want to see just what is in this box, while the rest, you get the impression are sort of being dragged along out of a kind of inertia, morbidly curious about where this train of odd events is going next.
Even the sleep-addled Emiko joins the procession-
"Waaah..." the fox-girl yawns prodigiously, inadvertently flashing her fangs. "What's all the fuss... hey! Wh-where is everybody- waaa-waaa-waaait for meeee!"
-although she ends up bringing up the rear for various reasons.
A minute or two of hallways, passages, and side-rooms later, you come to a stop outside a modern-looking reinforced door, which has an electronic control panel and lock to one side and a member of the castle's security detail standing by in front of it. The probably-a-youkai gentleman in question is staring blankly down at the brown paper package and the place-spirit underneath it, the latter of which is staring up at him with wordless insistence.
You don't know if he actually SEES the spirit or not, but either he does, or the approach of your not-so-little procession reminds him of the instructions passed on from his counterpart. Regardless, he turns to the lock, inserts a keycard produced from somewhere on his person, and enters a code you can't see.
The door unlocks with a faint *thunk*, and opens smoothly as the elemental marches forward.
"Please wait outside," the guard advises. "Just in case."
As the reinforced door swings shut behind the Castle's spirit and the not-so-great burden it has taken upon itself, you fold your arms across your chest and bow your head slightly, projecting an image befitting Doom one last time this evening as you wait to see the fallout of this decision.
The rest of your companions catch up, gradually filling this part of the hall.
Your father eyes the heavy door with a mix of respect and concern. Turning to Akasha, he inquires, "If this is your SECOND mail room, do I want to know what the MAIN one looks like?"
"Probably not," Akasha admits wryly.
"How often have you needed it?"
"...more often than I'd like," the Dark Lord sighs.
Your father looks like he wants to ask more, but a glance around at the crowd of listening kids has him holding his tongue.
Barely a minute has gone by since the door closed, but it's already swinging back open.
...
"...what," the guard blurts out.
Nobody calls him on his unprofessional lapse in silence, because most of you are thinking the same thing.
For perhaps the first time in its existence, everyone can see the place-spirit, but this is because it looks like it just walked through the paint section of an arts and crafts store while the place was exploding, staggered blindly through where they kept the fancy ribbons, and got mobbed by a swarm of fairies in the aftermath. The little fellow is covered from headless shoulders to mist-wreathed floorboards by a rainbow-colored riot of dripping liquids, trailing streamers, and sparkly glitter.
Despite its condition, the genius loci radiates triumph and satisfaction as it steps forward and raises its paint-spattered hands to you, revealing the contents of the package Celty delivered to you.
Oh, for goodness' sake!
It's some kind of vaguely starburst-shaped orange crystal, which radiates an odd, subtle sort of energy. Not magic, exactly, although magic was definitely used to make it. It's more like a bit of condensed ki, heavy on the spiritual essence and colored by a strong emotion.
Hecate! Stop breaking causality!
It feels like... gratitude?
Local space-time is messed up enough! And it confuses the mortals!
"So," Cordelia says into the moment of silence. "Magic crystal?"
You consider that, and then shrug. "Magic crystal."
Perceiving no threat from the object, you thank the elemental for its help-
There is another of those pleased rumbles.
-reach out to take the softball-sized starburst stone, and put it in your dimensional pocket.
Gained 5 Gratitude Crystals
You'll figure out what this thing is good for later.
Is there anything else you need to do here at Castle Shuzen, aside from changing back into normal clothes, saying your farewells, and teleporting the Californian members of your party back home?
After cleaning up the Castle's avatar so that it doesn't go tracking paint and glitter all over the place, you wrap up your Halloween visit to the Shuzens. Everyone heads back to their respective rooms to change out of their costumes, and afterwards, they begin to trickle into the largest of the waiting rooms just off the entrance hall, where idle conversation is exchanged while those who arrived earliest wait for the rest to show up.
There is more than a little yawning going on among the younger crowd by this point. Now over the rush of energy that came from being almost left behind, Emiko is starting to droop once again. Ichigo is right behind her, and Tatsuki, for all her smirking at her friend and neighbor, is finally starting to show the effects of the late hour as well. Even Moka and Kahlua are just a bit off from their usual behavior, although the elder sister hides it better.
Fortunately, they'll all be going to bed right after you depart.
Akasha is the last of the group to return, solely because she waited for Gyokuro to get back from putting Kokoa to bed and changing out of her own costume, so that there'd be an adult on hand to handle the last of the hostess's duties for the night. Once the Dark Lord has rejoined the group, you waste no time in offering your thanks to Kahlua for the invitation to the party, and telling her you had a fun time.
The sentiment is repeated by the room at large-
"I could have done without the dark goddess turning up," Akkiko says, "but that was entirely HIS fault." She indicates you with a not-entirely-casual jab of her thumb.
"I'd say that you get used to it," Briar sighs. "But I'd be lying."
-with one or two exceptions.
Then you take your leave of the Shuzens, their drivers ferrying your somewhat-smaller group back down to the front gate and outside the demiplane, where you proceed to teleport everyone back to California.
As it's around eight in the morning on a Sunday when you finally drive back into Sunnydale, most of your companions opt to go home and get some sleep. Your father is one among them. You yourself, along with Briar, make use of fatigue-defeating magic to stay awake, as Zelda is VERY eager to hear about your "Halloween adventure."
On a related note, Zelda finally makes up her mind about her costume, and goes trick-or-treating as a "vampire princess" that evening. You are... not entirely sure how you feel about that, and are still pondering your little sister's choice when she drags you along for a second round of candy-hunting.
Not that you put up much resistance on that front; it's free candy, after all.
You spot your Sunnydale friends out and about as well, wearing the costumes you made for them, having much the same opinion as you.
You're out there for about two hours before Zelda finally gets tired and agrees to go home, and nothing remotely unusual happens the entire time. In fact, leaving aside the general aura of corruption, Sunnydale contrives to be utterly ordinary and unremarkable for this one night.
It's certainly not a patch on the neighborhood where you partied with the youkai, and played magical pranks on a number of house owners.
...honestly, you're a little underwhelmed.
Time passes quickly after that. You keep up your usual practices, attending school, training in one way or another what seems like every waking moment, and visiting your friends whenever you can find a few free hours on the weekend.
And then comes the day when you summon a (former!) demon, and conclude a (totally harmless!) pact to learn THE DARKEST SORCERY! (His words, not yours!)
Of course, you'd already been studying magic on your own, with an eye towards developing new spells, or re-developing existing ones that you know of but haven't yet internalized. Just because you can sort-of Wish any magical effect you desire into being with sheer brute force doesn't invalidate the continued improvement of your arcane knowledge and skill, after all.
The only problem is that, without a teacher or dipping into Ganondorf's memories, you have to learn every new spell entirely from scratch. This is an understandable and perfectly acceptable price to pay if you're making up an entirely new magic, but when it comes to the older spells, you're basically stuck re-inventing the wheel, which is a frustrating waste of time. And then there's the little matter of whether or not your new spells are truly that, or if you're just not aware that they already existed.
Batreaux's guidance puts paid to much of the annoyance factor.
Your lessons under Batreaux proceed apace, and you learn much, but not without a few... issues... along the way.
For one thing, despite his bombastic speech and personality, the Risen Demon proves to be a remarkably conservative tutor. Regardless of the level of power you've proven yourself able to handle simply by calling him up, he insists on reviewing the basics of your magical education first, a process that lasts for several weeks.
You DO know quite a bit about magic, and your lessons with Batreaux account for a relatively small portion of each week. You're calling him up as often as you can find the time, with his consent, but even so...
The review isn't wasted time, by any means. Quite aside from giving Batreaux a proper idea of where your skills and knowledge stand, it also lets him identify one or two gaps in your learning. Your basic skills, derived from Ganondorf's knowledge and polished under Briar's guidance, are pretty solid, but at the higher levels where you exceeded Briar's abilities and have since stopped calling on your past life's experience, a couple of errors have crept in.
Batreaux sorts those out as he finds them, and once he's finally satisfied - some time around New Year's, as it happens - he starts teaching you new spells.
Once again, the former fiend's approach to education is slow and patient, building up from the bottom. This doesn't prevent you from having a few breakthroughs in your more advanced magical studies, particularly in the matter of spells that are simply enhanced versions of magic you already know - and doubly so, when it comes to the Schools of Divination, Summoning, and most especially Elementalism, which you'd been focusing much of your efforts on.
There are some limits to Batreaux's tutelage; as he warned you up front, priestly magic is not his thing, and that overlaps with druidism. Fortunately, you have other tutors for that sort of thing.
Also, despite the dark nature of Gerudo Witchcraft and its ties to certain forms of demon-summoning, binding, and creation, Batreaux knows nothing of it. From bits dropped in conversation-
"You mean humans actually LIVED in the desert?! AMAZING!"
-you get the impression that the former demon actually predates the existence of the Gerudo. Possibly by quite a lot.
Despite Batreaux's shortcomings in the field of divine lore, he does manage to teach you three spells of a somewhat divine nature that have been on your mind for a while now.
You're a little surprised to discover that Din's Fire, Farore's Wind, and Nayru's Love are only third-circle spells, at least until Batreaux explains that these are the lesser forms of the three Goddess-given magics.
"The sort of thing taught to the most promising apprentices, or those who lack the skill, inherent power, or the SIMPLE PATIENCE to learn the more significant forms."
...you picture various incarnations of Link, trying to sit through lessons of the sort you've been receiving.
...
Yeah. That particular kind of patience is not something the Hero strikes you as having much of.
In any case, the strong Elemental aspects of these three spells, as well as your high favor with the Golden Goddesses, probably accounts for why these particular magics come so easily to you.
Got it in one.
Learned all 5th-level and lower Sorcerer/Wizard spells from Plan kfrar
Learned all 6th-level and lower Divination or Summoning Sorcerer/Wizard spells from Plan kfrar
Learned all 7th-level and Elementalism Sorcerer/Wizard Spells from Plan kfrar
You also have one little issue with a particular spell, that being the Lesser Spell of the Angelic Aspect. The first time you try to cast this spell... well, it's not an angel that you start to turn into.
Neither you, nor Briar, nor Batreaux got a very good look at just what It was, but the flickers of demonic power that started trying to seep through your aura were rather distinctive, as was the bristly mess it made of your hair. And then there was the ache in your lower jaw, as if some of your teeth were about to fall out - or get pushed out by sudden replacements.
Very LARGE replacements.
You quickly abort the attempt, having exactly LESS than zero desire to turn into a fiendish boar-man.
Also learned the Lesser Spell of the Demonic Aspect
Gained Past Life Experience C
As an aside, your lessons with Batreaux are not entirely given over to pure mystical academia. He's a chatty sort, and seems to appreciate having A CAPTIVE AUDIENCE to talk with.
You consider asking Batreaux about the nature of Gratitude Crystals, but he already explained that when you first met, and his account tallied with what Briar knew about them, as well as what you learned from the Spells of Divination you cast on Hecate's Halloween gift, when you were trying to puzzle out why she'd given such a thing to you. They're solidified masses of concentrated gratitude, given form by strong magic. Nothing more, nothing less.
Instead, you decide to inquire about the process of permanent Demon-to-Mortal and Mortal-to-Demon transformations. You're careful to stretch this questioning out over the course of several sessions, so that you don't sound too eager to learn about it, and also make it clear that your purpose in asking lies in desiring to reverse demonic ascensions.
Batreaux sums up the matter with a single word:
"Malice," he says, devoid of his typical bombast. "While it's entirely possible to do someone harm without intending to or taking enjoyment from it, demons desire to cause pain on a fundamental level, and relish every opportunity they have to do so. That will to inflict harm, to reject the intrinsic worth of others in favor of establishing your own utter, absolute primacy over them, and to REVEL in the suffering that ensues, lies at the core of all true demons."
You scrunch up your face in a frown. If this is true, then how did Batreaux ever manage to WANT to become human, much less pull it off?
"Ah, well. That has to do with the influence of CHAOS, which is the OTHER force at the core of all true demons. Randomness, disorder, unpredictability, mutability, mutation, diversity, and most especially CHANGE - these, too, are essential to the nature of the demon. Indeed, without them, it wouldn't be possible for mortals to BECOME demons, nor the reverse. And because of that inherent nature, that GLORIOUS CHAOS, every so often, there will be created a demon that diverges from the atrocious nature of the screaming hordes. Or, over the course of time, a demon that began as wicked and cruel as any other might learn to appreciate a gentler nature, even desire to attain it."
It doesn't escape your notice that Batreaux does not say which category he falls into.
"As for the process of transformation," your tutor goes on, "it's a matter of gathering enough of the right KIND of emotion, and the karmic weight that accompanies it, and then focusing it all onto a vessel that truly DESIRES, of their own free will, to shed their prior existence for the new one. Combine that with an appropriate outpouring of magic, so often compared to the WILL-DRIVEN ESSENCE OF CHAOS ITSELF, and the change will occur." He tilts his head to the right, thinking. "To the best of my knowledge, it does tend to be easier for demons to transition to mortals, on account of ou-their inherently chaotic nature. That, and the average demon is more powerful than the average human, so the willing sacrifice of that power further eases the change. With humans going the other way, the process can be quite a bit more involved." He scowls. "And SO MESSY..."
He seems reluctant to go into more detail than that.
Regardless, a few lessons on, you broach the final topic that commanded your interest: namely, asking Batreaux what he knows about Demise.
The question has no sooner left your mouth than Batreaux reacts, SCREAMING in shock as he recoils from you, hands raised half in defensive warning, half in supplication.
"HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT TERRIBLE NAME?!" he wails.
Um.
You've revealed your connection to the long-dead Demon King to Ambrose, of all people. If you're willing to entrust that particular wizard, with his mercurial nature and questionable sense of humor, with such sensitive information, even when the strongest bond that exists between you is the fact that you are one of his student's friends, then you can see absolutely no reason why you should hold back from telling your new magic teacher about it.
Indeed, Batreaux's very reaction to the name says that he KNOWS about Demise. Said knowledge could be entirely trivial, or else simply tread ground you have already covered, but then again, it may involve important details of which you are currently unaware - in which case you would very much be shooting yourself in the foot by refusing to come clean with the Risen Demon.
And so, you tell Batreaux the heart of your story. That you are the latest reincarnation of Ganondorf, the King of Evil, and that you have resolved not to walk the same dark and bloodstained path as your past lives. You expound upon the mental, spiritual, and magical methods by which you keep the Great Demon King's essence asleep in your soul, and of your investigations of your spiritual being.
You describe your first meeting with the Raging Boar, which really could have gone better, but has since worked out to a reasonable partnership.
You mention the strange shadow, lurking near the very core of your soulscape, and how the Boar refused to allow you near it.
You explain how you went to a powerful and more-or-less trustworthy wizard, trading on favors owed, services rendered, and the challenge of a tangentially-related mystery-
Batreaux interrupts here, asking for details about that mystery.
You explain the peculiarities of your Summoning Magic, as well as other oddities that have cropped up in your craft, the most recent example being the Spell of the Demonic Aspect.
"Things like that have happened to you BEFORE?" he exclaims in astonishment. "OOOOHHHH, my student! You must TELL me these things if I am to aid you in discovering the reasons why they happen, much less overcome them!"
...fair point.
-and how that, in turn, led to the discovery that a dying curse was rooted in the deepest core of your very being.
You tell Batreaux how you confronted a dark doppelganger of the Hero-
"OOOOHHHH! What a SORROWFUL day, to know that such a thing could even exist! My heart WEEPS for the cosmos!"
...you wonder if you should mention the Mirror of Shadows, and its connection to Dark Link's existence.
-and upon defeating it and driving out the dark magic that had twisted the construct to evil, saw the visage of some dark and terrible being that was so very much like Ganondorf, and yet was clearly NOT him.
You explain how you called upon the Goddesses, through the agency of Briar's mother Navi, for information regarding that disturbing demonic figure, and were told of the ancient Demon King, of his defeat at the hands of the Hero, and of the dreadful dying curse he cast as a last act of spite and vengeance against the Hero and the Goddess Hylia.
You describe how that Curse became the genesis for Ganondorf - and in turn, all these uncounted centuries later, for you.
Finally, you explain to Batreaux Navi's claim that the Golden Goddesses cannot remove the Curse of Demise from where it nests in your soul, at least not with any guarantee of your soul surviving the process, and how - with their knowledge and blessing - you are seeking another way to purge the persistent root of this ancient evil from your being.
Batreaux's reaction to all of this is... not quite what you were expecting.
Throwing his head back and raising his arms towards the reflective ceiling of your Mirror Hideaway, the ex-demon crows triumphantly, "YES! VINDICATION! After ALL THESE CENTURIES, after so many attempts gone SO DREADFULLY WRONG, despite all the DOUBT and NAYSAYERS, AT LAST, there is ANOTHER DARK SOUL walking the path from DAMNATION to REDEMPTION!"
And then he rushes forwards, arms spread outward, a look of joy upon his piggish, squinty-eyed face.
"Uh, actually," you venture cautiously, "Dark Link didn't exactly show up all on his own."
Batreaux glances down at you. "Oh?"
You produce the Mirror of Shadows from your dimensional pocket, and explain what you know of its origins, its intended use, and how that didn't exactly work out for the Sages of Hyrule in the long term.
Batreaux takes this all in, and then buries his face in his hands.
"They did it," he sighs mournfully. "They finally, really did it."
And in the next instant, he EXPLODES from his posture of sorrow and dismay, cape billowing out on a writhing aura of spontaneously-unleashed darkness and fire as he ROARS at the ceiling - and at someone, or someones, beyond it.
"YOU MANIACS! CURSE YOU! GODDESSES CURSE YOU ALL TO THE UNDERWORLD!"
Hey, now. It wasn't THAT bad... was it?
...
I don't know, Sister. HE certainly seems to think it was.
You quietly slip the Mirror back into your pocket, and give Batreaux some space until he's calmed down enough to stop unconsciously radiating dark magic.
You set yourself as if to receive a charge or a tackle, bracing not only your physical body but also your ki for Batreaux's... energetic approach.
*WHAM!*
You're rather glad you did, because the ex-demon hits like a truck, and has a hug that you think could crack unprepared ribs. As it is, he's managed to trap your arms against your sides, making it that much more difficult for you to do anything in response to this latest emotional outburst beyond gritting your teeth and bearing it.
The way Batreaux casually swept you up off the floor and started spinning you around isn't exactly helping matters.
"OH, HAPPY DAY!"
Neither is having the source of his booming voice located right next to your ear. He's not THUNDERBIRD loud, but at this range, you almost wouldn't notice the difference.
Oh, and even if you can't hear her over the noise your tutor is making, you're quite certain that Briar is laughing at you again.
Once Batreaux has stopped ranting and, uh, "un-glowing," you clear your throat and ask what it is about the Mirror of Shadows that brought on his... impassioned reaction.
The ex-demon sighs. "I am so DREADFULLY sorry about that UNSEEMLY display of temper, young Alexander. It's just that, I have spent all these long ages trying to REDUCE the number of demons in the cosmos by PURELY BENEVOLENT MEANS, with scant success and even LESS support from the WISE and LEARNED of Hyrule! And now, you tell me that some of those same SAINTED INDIVIDUALS were experimenting with forces that could SO TERRIBLY EASILY give rise to NEW demons!"
Oooohhhh... so THAT's why...
You note that Batreaux's fists and bulldog-like jaw were clenching as he spoke, and that last exclamation came out as a fang-flashing snarl.
Yes, it does make sense that he'd be... upset about that, doesn't it?
Batreaux catches that as well, and takes a minute to just breathe and try to calm down. It appears to work, as when he resumes speaking, it's in the conversational tone you've gotten used to in your lessons with him.
I'd say he's taking it pretty well. He hasn't even threatened to hunt down the fools and rant at them.
"Shadow, by itself, is not an evil or demonic force, yet it is naturally vulnerable to the POWER OF DARKNESS. And though I love the night and her children," he sighs, "I would be grievously remiss in my duties as your tutor, as well as a fool and a liar, if I did not concede that Darkness is favored by Evil for many reasons, not the least of which is its potential to CORRUPT the unwary, the unwise, or those that are, for whatever reason, simply unable to resist its allure."
That tallies all too well with what you already knew or had reasonable grounds to suspect about the elements in question.
You make an addendum to the mental note you were already keeping, about being cautious in your use of the Mirror of Shadows going forward.
With a slight sigh of exasperation, you allow Batreaux to keep whirling you around without interruption, until he has gotten all of this sudden enthusiasm out of his system.
It doesn't take as long as you might have feared for your tutor to calm down, although that might have something to do with the relatively confined space of your Mirror Hideaway. Batreaux is a pretty big guy, and you're large for your age; gleeful abandon or no, there's only so much room in between the mirrored walls for him to swing you about before one or both of you would risk slamming into the proverbial immovable object, and Batreaux isn't so far gone in his jubilation as to lose track of his surroundings.
You DO swing a little close to one of the walls for comfort before he catches himself, though.
"Ah," the ex-demon says awkwardly, as he sets you down and backs away a step. "My apologies for that, young Alexander. I was, uh, DEEPLY MOVED by your words."
"I gathered as much," you answer dryly. "I take it, then, that I have your support in my efforts to NOT turn into the next coming of the Demon King?"
"ABSOLUTELY! I shall devote all of my not-inconsiderable power and learning to the task! Which is NOT TO SUGGEST that I was not doing so already, you understand! Merely that I shall ENDEAVOR EVEN HARDER to aid you! And if it is impossible to give more than my all, I shall GO BEYOND THE IMPOSSIBLE! HAHAHAHA!"
...you wonder, idly, if you've broken something in your new magic tutor.
You rather hope not.
While you are learning the art of DARKEST SORCERY from Batreaux, that's not the only aspect of Hyrulean magic that you explore during the winter months. You DID summon three priests, after all, and while getting instruction from Elder Terok hinges on facing the Ring of Trials at your upcoming birthday, you have been attending to your deals with Koron (and Vert) and Madam Lanora, and receiving guidance from them.
Learned Arboreal Hammer
Learned Breath of Life
Learned Commune With Nature
Learned Divine Power
Learned Hallow
Learned Heroes' Feast
Learned Pillar of Life
Learned Plant Growth
Learned Spell Resistance
Learned Wall of Thorns
Technically, one or two of the spells you pick up probably fall under Din's portfolio, rather than the domains of her sisters - it IS called the Spell of Divine POWER, after all, and Spell Resistance is kind of about using your own magical potency to throw off weaker effects - but learning how to wield those effects through your own endeavors is in keeping with the Goddess of Power's ethos.
At the very least, it's close enough for the spells in question to work. That's good enough for you, for the time being.
Elder Terok might say otherwise, but hasn't shown up again since your first summoning. He seems to be content to wait for you to face the Trials.
In light of the Goron Elder's absence, is there anything you want to ask one or both of other two about, in between your lessons and your escorting Madam Lanora to her various meetings with local religious and mystical types?
While there are probably some religions out there that would prefer it if their adherents never asked questions or thought for themselves, and instead just did as the priests told them, that's not the way it works with the Golden Goddesses. Nayru, being the Goddess of Wisdom, encourages reflection, questioning, and debate, while Din, with her focus on independence and free will, would not be best pleased by a flock of two-legged sheep.
Mind you, if everyone legitimately AGREED to follow the clergy's lead, and/or the holy people had won that allegiance entirely on their own merits, Din would accept it. But if everyone was going along with it just for the sake of tradition, out of fear, or because somebody had dug up ANOTHER ancient dark relic and started subjugating wills, Din would not be happy with them.
She MIGHT still give the individual in charge a pass, if he was doing everything with his own Power - Din can be a little peculiar like that - but not if evil magic and/or mind control were involved.
In any event, you have questions, and Koron and Lanora are pleased to hear them out.
One of your most pressing inquiries regards the mundane uses of some of your new spells. Is it acceptable to the Goddesses for you to cast the Spell of the Heroes' Feast to help support your family on a regular basis? And if so, what is the nutritional value of the food and drink the spell produces? Are there any downsides to regular consumption?
"Now there are some questions I never really thought I'd ever hear," Koron replies with a laugh. "Mainly on account of most people not having the power to even consider casting that spell every day, much less three meals a day. But I guess that really wouldn't be an issue for you, would it? Yeah, the Goddesses wouldn't have a problem with that - at least, I know Farore wouldn't, and I REALLY doubt Din would object to you just powering through like that."
You doubt correctly.
"Quite," Madam Lanora murmurs. Even as she responds to her Kokiri counterpart's words, she is gazing off into the distance, visibly considering your own inquiries. "Still, one of the immediate concerns with the spell in question is that it is an extended ritual. The food and drink created for each participant must be wholly consumed by that person over the course of one hour, without interruption, for the spell to take effect; if not, it is wasted."
Koron nods. "Yeah, and the stuff doesn't keep like regular food would. It just sort of" - he waggles his fingers - "fades away after the hour is up."
You and Madam Lanora regard the Kokiri blankly for a moment at this.
Koron throws his hands in the air. "It was REALLY good food, okay?"
"It really was," his partner Vert agrees with an appreciative sigh.
"...right," your Zora tutor says slowly, before she turns back to you. "Still, it wasn't the magical benefits of the Feast you were thinking of, was it? Just the worth of the food itself."
You nod, and explain how both your parents work, leaving little time for either of them to cook, even if they were particularly good at it - and Dad's barbecue and Mom's home-made cookies aside, you have to admit that your folks are average at best in the kitchen. Your family's take-out heavy dietary habits are not as healthy as they could be, and your folks don't really have the time, the skills, or the money to make up for that. But if you could, using magic, it would be a worthwhile contribution to the family as a whole.
"That... should be fine," Lanora muses, glancing at Koron.
It should be, yes.
"I don't know about any long-term effects," the Kokiri admits. "I only sat down to a feast like that the one time. But I remember that it was filling enough, I didn't feel the need for more than a light supper that evening, and it never bothered me."
It really never has come up before.
Okay, that's a rousing "maybe?" on the idea of a Heroes' Feast family menu.
Your curiosity about the Spell of Plant Growth gets a much more definite response.
"Yeah, that's fine," Koron says. "I mean, truth be told, I'm not too keen on the idea of cutting down trees." He knocks on his own head, producing a slightly wooden sound. "Kinship, you know?"
It's a reminder that the Kokiri are not, in fact, the eternally childish humanoids they appear to be, but rather a plant-based species as much akin to the Fae as they are to anything living in Hyrule.
"Still," the little druid goes on, "I know humans and Hylians and other species use wood to build, and grow other plants to eat. And the spell works just fine for that sort of thing. Two things you're going to want to be careful of, though. One's the level of nutrients in the soil; the Spell of Plant Growth doesn't diminish them THAT much faster than a regular, non-magical crop would, but there is SOME increase, and as you're living in Demonsville..."
Yeah, the Hellmouth might just muck around with that. At the very least, you can see how it would be a good idea for you to keep your private garden well-fertilized.
You might also want to take the offer of casting Plant Growth to the Southern Water Tribe. It's been a couple of months since you went and helped them harvest wood for ship-building and other purposes, on a little chain of islands quite some distance north, somewhere in the Southern Pacific. You can't do anything about THIS year's harvest - which wasn't too bad, from what Sokka and his father said - but if you got their agreement to try out this spell on, say, just one of those islands, so they could compare the results...
"Number Two," Koron continues, "is that with those Hyrulean seeds you're trying to grow, and magical plants in general, you want to use as little magic as possible on the plants themselves. I mean, you CAN cast Plant Growth and a dozen other rituals to ensure a really large, healthy crop, but it's too easy, you know? Each individual fruit or root or whatever comes of a harvest like that won't quite be as potent as one that fought its way through the growing season. Plus, if the plants get used to having magic thrown at them all the time, they won't grow as well without it."
You consider this information.
"That doesn't mean you can't use magic at all," the Kokiri says. "If there's a drought, by all means, conjure some water. If locusts show up, cast a bug-zapping spell to get rid of them. And if some big nasty beastie starts stomping all over your little friends, you just summon up the scariest spook that you can, and chase him off!"
Above Koron's surprisingly angry expression, you see Vert shaking his head and making slashing motions with his hands. If you looked closely enough, you suspect you'd see him mouthing silent "No"s.
You make a note to discuss setting up a trial use of the Spell of Plant Growth the next time you visit Sokka and Katara. It'll be months before you start seeing any evidence of how your magic is impacting the next lumber harvest, and considering how long it takes trees to grow to a useful size for woodworking, it may well be years before you can fully verify the benefits of this spell.
No sense putting it off until later, then.
While it does sound like there's an interesting story behind Koron's unusual spate of anger, you've long since made a habit of listening to fairy partners - at least, when it's important.
And this feels like it's important. Not "matter of life and death" important, to be certain, but definitely "keeping up good relations with your teachers/the emissaries of the Golden Goddesses" important.
Gained King of Faeries D (Plus) (Plus)
"I'll keep that in mind," is all you say in reply to Koron's outburst.
He nods, fiercely, and appears satisfied to let the matter drop.
Vert may or may not have let out a fairy-sized sigh of relief.
The next major matter that you bring up with the Zoran priestess and the Kokiri druid is a matter of clarification, regarding the differences in the elemental energies that are involved in "Positive Energy" spells like Pillar of Life, "Holy" spells like Hallow, "Light" spells like Sunburst, and "divine" magic such as Miracle.
It takes some doing for Koron and Madam Lanora boil it down, but in the end, you come away with this:
In Hyrulean terms, Positive Energy and Light are both aspects of the same force. Wizards and other more technically-inclined magic-users use the term "Positive Energy" to distinguish spells that specifically deal with pure life-force in the mystical sense - it's not QUITE the same thing as ki, being more the conceptual version of the "reality" represented by that three-fold energy - while "Light" can be used as both a specific indicator for spells that produce illumination, or as a catch-all for the greater element that includes both of these things.
Lanora admits that it's not the most precise nomenclature, but a few thousand years of scholarly inertia are hard to overcome, and almost nobody bothers with the REALLY technical terms.
Holy power and divine power are likewise related to one another, and aren't elements in the sense that Light, Dark, Shadow, and the other usual suspects are. That is to say, they don't represent the naturally-occurring states of matter or energy that make up the universe.
Koron says something about them being closest to the Element of Spirit, but he doesn't go into detail on the subject. Madam Lanora says not a word about it, and Vert invokes the partner's privilege to keep secrets.
That lesson comes later in the training for priesthood.
That little mystery aside, divine power is precisely what it sounds like; the power of divine beings, applied to shape the world around them in some manner. "Holy" power is just a name for that branch of divine power that most mortals (and immortals) associate with the deities that are fundamentally "Good," though it does carry some implications of being more potent, more concentrated, and/or more martially-oriented in nature.
It's kind of like the difference between a Magic Circle Against Evil, and a Holy Smite. Both are considered "Good" spells, but it's the fifth-circle spell that kicks Evil's teeth in that is considered "Holy."
...granted, the Dinnite in you MAY be coloring your interpretation of the priests' words. Just a bit.
There is nothing wrong with this interpretation.
One other significant question comes up, the very day after your attempt at casting the Lesser Spell of the Angelic Aspect started turning you into a demon instead. You want to hear the priests' take on what happened, and you would ESPECIALLY like to know whether or not it will be safe for you to keep studying spells of that nature before resolving the Curse of Demise.
"YOU TURNED INTO WHAT?" Lanora shrieks.
...your first impression is that things are not looking hopeful on that front.
The way the priests cut that day's lesson short, with a hasty, "We need to talk to Batreaux," and "Don't do ANYTHING with those spells until we say otherwise," does not improve your outlook.
Another day of lessons comes and goes, and all that's said about the Aspect spells is, "We're checking with some more knowledgeable people on the other side. Keep not doing ANYTHING with those spells until further notice."
...
The good news is, this doesn't interrupt your lessons.
And really, it's not like you were in any kind of hurry to turn into a boar-demon.
...being a boar-angel might have been nice, though...
When pigs fly.
On a completely unrelated note, your ninth birthday is coming up, and you have arrangements to make... but PRIOR to those arrangements, you had six months in which to work on your backlog of magic items.
You set aside your serious item crafting near the end of February, leaving March wide open for party preparations and related business, just in case. You have PLANS for this year, and you want them to go off just right.
The very first thing you did in the vein of "item crafting" this year did not involve creating any magical equipment at all. Rather, you went to Gen's, and discussed with your partner what sort of equipment would be most useful and practical in a modern magical workshop.
You know a fair bit on this subject from Ganondorf's memories, mostly having to do with Koume and Koutake's potions lab, but that knowledge is all hundreds or even thousands of years out of date. It's possible that practitioners on Earth, with its modern industrial base, have come up with a few things the magic-users of Hyrule either never had access to, or had forgotten about in the long decline from the ancient golden ages.
As it turns out, Gen does have some good advice: the merits of plastic containers versus glass, which you've talked about with him before now; how gas or electrical stoves compare to open flame in the matter of potion brewing; the merits, and drawbacks, of using stainless steel tools; and so on.
Because he is only a dealer in magical goods, and not a magical craftsman himself, Gen's knowledge only goes so far. But he more than makes up for it by laying hands on a few good books on the subject, which he passes to you - for a fair price. Guided by these texts, you're able to conjure up a fair amount of what you need, turning a corner of the basement into your new magical workshop.
You are careful to lay down a couple of Magic Circles around the area, one Against Dogs, and the other Against Unsupervised Little Sisters.
For all that your skill at Conjuration Magic allows you to save a chunk of change in outfitting the lab, you do end up spending some of your store credit at Gen's in order to acquire hot plates and a fume-hood for brewing, and a fair bit more besides to stock up on common reagents, as well as some that are not so common. You also put in an order for the gold-banded ruby-lensed focus required for the Spell to Analyze Dweomers, a useful piece of magic you've had the knowledge and skill to perform for some time now, but always lacked that critical (and expensive) component for.
Gen has to put in a special order for it, and it takes a couple of months before it finally arrives, but when you at last lay hands on it, it's good quality and completely safe to use.
Gained Modern Magical Workshop (Basic)
Once your production area is set up, the first proper item you produced this year is one that you've been thinking about, on and off, ever since you first cast the Spell of Nap Stack. Because really, being able to cut down the amount of sleep you require each night to a mere two or three hours? With no impediment to your health or the recovery of your magic and other reserves of power?
The amount of extra work you'd be able to get done in those freed-up hours would almost allow the item to pay for itself. It could potentially do so literally, if you were rash enough to go monster-hunting on the Hellmouth, but you have no such designs in mind.
At least, not yet.
Of course, once you've got your Restful Blanket working, you immediately create a second one for Briar, because what kind of partner would you be if you ran around five or six hours of the day without her? And what manner of partner would she be, if she wasn't there to lend a hand?
And then, since you were planning to make a few items of this sort as gifts to other people ANYWAY, you go ahead and do so.
Anticipating that your parents might have some objections about you being up and about at most of the hours of the night instead of getting some sleep, and also thinking that they, too, could do with the practical benefits of having more hours in the day, you produce a two-person version of your Blanket for their shared use. It takes some fine-tuning, but you are successful in the work.
When you present the Restful Blanket to your folks, they're a bit disbelieving. Not so much of your claims about what the item can do - they know you've got that strong streak of honesty - but that you made it. To say nothing of the others like it.
They do try it out, though.
Amy's Blanket is no issue to produce, but when you give it to her the following day and explain its use, she politely thanks you, and then says that unless you were planning a lot of sleepovers in the coming year - you and Briar at her place, or her at yours - she's probably not going to get a lot of mileage out of this gift.
"Have you ever been up late at night by yourself, in a house where everybody else is asleep, Alex?" Amy asks. "I have, and it's CREEPY. And if I woke my parents up, well, they wouldn't be too happy with me."
...huh.
You were so focused on the idea of giving your fellow magic-user-slash-student more time to practice her craft, some of the purely mundane considerations appear to have slipped past you.
That also applies to your parents, who - after a few nights of sleeping under the Restful Blanket - are finding themselves a bit at a loss for what to do with the extra time, as well as a little worn by the experience of twenty-two-hour days.
It hasn't really bothered you, but then again, your endurance and energy levels are kind of ridiculous at this point.
Hmmm.
Gained Knowledge (Magesmithing) C (Plus)
Gained Restful Blankets
It occurs to you that you could partially-address both issues by hosting those "sleepovers" Amy talked about, taking the opportunity to further educate her and your mother in the magical arts.
As for your parents' discomfort... the best idea that comes to mind right now is a change in sleeping cycles. Hour-long naps in the afternoon or early evening, then a night of activity, and another hour or so of sleep before sunrise.
You take Amy's offhanded remark about sleepovers and run with it, setting up some "extra-curricular" study sessions.
Of course, you can't hold these extra lessons every night, or every other night, or even every week. You've got a busy schedule, even with the extra time your new creations free up, and the parents on both sides are only going to allow so many sleepovers in a given period of time.
That holds true until you meet Amy's mother for the fitting of her Halloween costume, and find out that she's a witch, while she, in turn, finds out about your magic.
After that, Catherine is all for these overnight study sessions.
You and Amy are still only having mock-sleepovers twice a month, though. You really DO have a lot on your plate this year.
You float the idea of changing their sleeping habits to your folks, and they give it a try. However, it turns out to be somewhat impractical, as your father can't make use of the blanket on his own, and neither of your parents are comfortable with the idea of leaving you and Zelda unsupervised-
Your mother apologizes to Briar about that, who isn't offended in the least.
"I know as well as anyone that Alex takes a LOT of looking after."
"Yeah," your little sister agrees.
...et tu, Zelda?
-because even if it would only be for an hour or so in reality, it FEELS a lot longer than that to them.
Ultimately, your father goes back to the usual eight hours a night. Your mother, on the other hand, takes to grabbing naps in the evening every few days, perking her up enough for additional magic lessons later on at night, after which she goes to bed and makes use of the Restful Blanket's remaining power.
This results in your father getting the equivalent of twelve hours of sleep on those nights, which doesn't do him any harm.
It's not a coincidence that some of your mother's "part-time" uses of the Restful Blanket always line up with those nights when Amy stays over.
Outfitting your lab and producing the Restful Blankets was expensive enough to exhaust your credit with Gen, and even send you a little into debt with him, so until sales pick up in the following months, you're forced to dip into your treasure to fund further item construction.
Fortunately, you've visited New York by this point, which means you can pay Balthazar directly in silver and gold, rather than going through the hassle of converting everything to cash. Not only does this save a great deal of time and trouble, it lets you avoid dealing with the frankly ruinous rates of the fence in Sunnydale.
Balthazar had also previously indicated his willingness to take the jewelry and loose gems you picked up from your little beach-side treasure hunt, once he'd had a chance to appraise them. He's done so, examining a couple pieces of the silver jewelry - one with gems, one without - and one of the gold, and tells you that, assuming the quality of the other pieces is at the same standard, he can give you $8,000 for the lot.
Considering that you need the money if you're going to do any kind of serious crafting, and that it's four times what you've have gotten if you'd gone through Lily's fence, you have no reluctance in making the deal.
Lost 4 pieces of gold jewelry, 18 pieces of silver jewelry, and 3 loose gemstones
You earmark about a third of your earnings for personal use, mainly research and development of mana-infused gems. Most of the rest, you pour into developing practical gifts for your family and friends in Sunnydale.
Lu-sensei gets a self-cleaning, self-repairing Spidersilk Gi of the finest quality you can produce, pristine white but for the colorful imagery of Earth, Water, Wind, and Fire worked into material. As for the representation of the Fifth Element... well, that's a surprise.
Larry gets a Backpack of Holding, so that he can carry any "adventuring gear" with him at easily - or at the very least, haul his school books and gym clothes around with a minimum of fuss and bother.
Cordelia receives a Spidersilk Purse bearing the same enchantment, for the same reasons, though you make a point of also giving the purse the ability to change its outward appearance, so that it can match any outfit she might be wearing.
For Zelda, you make a special lamp that projects a million tiny points of light across her room, mimicking the stars on a clear night.
And since the Restful Blanket didn't go over quite as well as you'd hoped, you grab a set of your Dad's tools and imbue them with the Spell of Mending, to make them that much more effective when he's working.
All of these gifts have been endowed with a Spell of the Magic Aura, to hide their magical enhancements from Sunnydale's supernatural community, and they all go over well with their intended recipients.
Produced Spidersilk Gi
Produced Backpack of Holding
Produced Spidersilk Purse
Produced Night Sky Projector
Produced Tools of Mending
Also, after your encounter with Celty on Halloween, you make a point of conjuring up a set of personalized business cards, so that you'll be prepared the next time you meet a major Fae doing delivery work, a dark goddess, or even a Dark Lord.
Gained Personal Business Cards
It's in early December that you make contact with the three Hyrulean priests and come up with the idea of building a Ring of Trials as part of the festivities for your upcoming birthday. Between that and the impending Christmas season, you take stock of your funds and material resources, and frown.
Between the leftover cash you earned selling off the jewelry from the treasure, your prospective "earnings" at Gen's for the remainder of the year, and the value of your stock of Rupees as reagents and such, you'll have the means to produce all the little enchanted gifts you had in mind for your friends. Afterwards, however, you'll be decidedly low on funds, with only a fraction of your current stock of Rupees and your savings to your name - and your parents would really prefer that you leave that money alone, to help pay for university or the like somewhere down the line.
Perhaps you should celebrate Christmas and/or the New Year this year by going on a treasure hunt?
Although the prospect of acquiring more wealth is tempting, you have to admit, you wouldn't know where to look to find a buried treasure to dig for with any guarantee of striking gold. The closest you have to a likely site is the Earthside Memorian compound, which the Drakes and their peers are still trying to track down.
Incidentally, you asked Mr. Drake about his and his compatriots' progress the last time you visited Altria, and he said the knights had narrowed down the possibilities to a single region - somewhere in southern Germany, as it happens. Their progress since getting that far has been a bit frustrated, however, as that region gets a lot of rain, especially in the winter months (which aren't quite cold enough to freeze, most years).
While Arthur Drake fully expects to have the location of the Memorian base within the next several weeks, he doesn't anticipate unearthing it until mid-spring, at the earliest.
"The ground needs to dry out before we start digging it up," he explains, with the air of a man repeating something he's been told by someone who knows better. "Otherwise we're looking at the possibility of mudslides, collapsing digs, and flooding."
That WOULD be a problem. And while your mastery of Elementalism is advanced enough that you could lend a hand in the process of excavating the ruins, there isn't much you can do about the rain right now - at least not without sending up a beacon to anyone that cares to look that reads, "Powerful magic being worked over here, come and see!"
You'd rather not attract supernatural attention to the Memorian ruin right away. Part of the reason why the Drakes have needed months to find the place is because they're been going slowly, taking the necessary precautions to avoid (or at least minimize) just that sort of notice, to say nothing of mundane curiosity.
In any case, you spend the Christmas season at home with your family, as it's meant to be.
The Christmas gifts you sent to your friends this year were conjured, but otherwise non-magical. You figure the personal touch of crafting everything yourself, from scratch, makes them at least as precious as store-bought gifts with big pricetags.
Out of curiosity, did you have a "theme" in mind for the Christmas presents?
As Christmas passes into New Year's, and then January, your income of store credit at Gen's and Rupees through Hyrulean trade start to pick up again, and you go back to crafting.
This time around, you focus on the SPECIAL gifts you were planning for everyone this year.
For Kahlua, you put together what you're privately calling the Warrior-Princess Bracers, a variant on the classic Bracers of Mage Armor that combines the purely defensive force-field with a minor cleaning charm - because you haven't forgotten how Kahlua complained about getting splattered by an exploding Slime.
For Altria, you think of the trouble she's been having channeling her fiery mana through practice swords without burning them up, and try to create a gauntlet with a natural affinity for Fire Elementalism that will allow it to serve in the role of a Sword Beam instead - only delivered via a punch.
You're not sure how successful you are in this. As far as you can tell, the Dragon's Breath Gauntlet is functional, but in your attempts to tie it to Altria's uniquely draconic-aspected mana - a process eased by having a word with Lucia Drake, and getting a sample of Altria's hair to incorporate into the item - you may have succeeded a little TOO well, because the silly thing won't activate for you.
As a nod to Emiko's cheerful agreement on Halloween to practice stalking you whenever the two of you meet up, you give her an amulet imbued with the Spell of Shadow-Stepping, which will synergize well with her stealth skills.
Tatsuki gets an Amulet of Magic Fangs, to complement her focus on unarmed combat. Hand-to-hand, boot-to-head, head-to-head, teeth-to-whatever - it'll work with anything in that vein, which suits Tatsuki's natural aggression perfectly.
And if she DOES end up growing horns, it'll work even better.
For Kagome, you work with Briar to create an Amulet of Animal Speech, giving the miko-in-training the ability to speak to animals that she showed such an interest in on your second visit.
Sokka receives something you're calling the Baconator Fork, which will make everything he eats with it taste like bacon. You expect this little beauty will earn you his eternal loyalty, as well as Katara's eternal annoyance. On the other hand, if it gets him eating his greens...
Finally, for Hakuba Ichirou, you create a Replenishing Quiver, so that he'll never have to worry about running out of arrows again.
Spent 68 Rupees
Produced Amulet of Animal Speech
Produced Amulet of Magic Fangs
Produced Amulet of Shadow-Stepping
Produced Baconator Fork
Produced Dragon's Breath Gauntlet
Produced Replenishing Quiver
Produced Warrior-Princess Bracers
You'll be presenting these gifts to their intended recipients at your birthday party. A bit of a reversal from the usual, but it fits with that Old World hospitality the Shuzens favor on formal occasions. Besides, you know that you've missed a few people's birthdays this past year, if only because you hadn't met some of them until after their birthdays, or because it took a while for them to consider you a close enough friend to invite.
...you do hope that Ichigo, Katara, and Moka don't take it too badly that they didn't get anything magical from you. You've been advising Shuzen Kokoa and Anna Drake on how to get fairy familiars, so they should be fine; Altria's friend Lance will probably understand being left out; and her cousin Kenneth can go hang.
Or maybe you should dip into your funds, and make something simple for them?
This holiday season will go down in history - or infamy - as the Plush Christmas, for all the adorable stuffed figures you whip up and send to your friends across the globe.
Altria gets a plush dragon, styled after the fearsome creature you saw when you crossed fists with her back at the World Tournament.
Amy is given a plush cat, black and sleek, as a bit of a nod to her mother's witchcraft, her Halloween costume, and her own magical training.
For the spirit of Castle Shuzen, which is celebrating its first Christmas as a conscious entity, you conjure a classic teddy bear. It's almost as big as the elemental's own body, which might be a bit awkward for a human child of the same size, but the young place-spirit is strong enough for the weight to be trivial.
To Cordelia, you give a panther, wearing a modified version of the gi for students of the School of Five Elements. You trust that she'll get the compliment.
Emiko receives a plush raven, standing atop an old-fashioned writing desk - a nod to a certain unfathomable riddle you read about, and a good counterpoint to the fox-girl's fondness for brain-bending koans.
Ichigo got a black cat wearing a ninja costume, while his sisters got matching ninja kittens.
Kagome gets a plush lion-dog, in the style of those protective stone statues found guarding the gates of various shrines and temples. This particular one has its mouth open, as if breathing.
Katara's gift is a plush snowball on a long and sturdy elastic tether, with an attached diagram of its proper use: namely, for beaning a distinctly Sokka-shaped stick-man. You add a note that you didn't think Katara Waterbending at her brother every time he annoyed her would be fair, but that this should more than make up for it.
To Larry, you give a plush shotgun, styled after his grandmother's. You considered including some sort of mechanism that would allow the gun to "shoot" a cartoon cloud of fire when moved, but the only way that really seemed to work was if you fixed the fire to the motion of the underslung sliding forend, so that Larry could rack the gun.
Lily Blaisdell's gun safety lecture started echoing in your ears at that point, and convinced you it was probably not a good idea to encourage poor gun-handling habits in her grandson. So you left that feature out.
The Shuzen sisters are recipients of a trio of plush bats: Kokoa's is dressed up like a fairy; Moka's wears a close approximation of the knightly armor the girl wore at Halloween; and Kahlua's is a baseball bat with little bat-wings.
As for Sokka, you send him a platter of meat, all plush. (Your note to Katara includes an earnest request that, if Sokka tries to eat his present in his sleep, she sends you pictures.)
Tatsuki's present is a pair of plush gloves, shaped like huge green fists. You're not sure if she'll get the Hulk reference, but if not, there's enough big green monsters known for clobbering people in fiction and myth to make up for it. And the purpose of the gift is pretty obvious anyway.
Zelda received a life-sized plush Briar, to give the real one a break.
You haven't seen Ayane and Kasumi in person since the World Tournament, but after some thought, you decide to send them a pair of plush throwing stars. It's a gag gift, admittedly, but it shows you're still thinking of them as friends, despite your closer association with their sort-of enemies, the Shuzens. And it's not like it really costs you anything.
Since you're making so many plush presents, you decide to include various adults of your acquaintance in the gift-giving, as well as the children.
Ambrose receives a plush owl, which you very deliberately fashion to resemble the character Archimedes, from Disney's The Sword in the Stone. You're sure the old wizard will accept this gift in the spirit with which it was given.
Arisawa Akkiko receives your take on an oni, complete with plush drinking jug and squeaky club.
Catherine Madison being a witch brings black cats to mind, but you look up Hecate, and go with a big black dog instead.
Dad gets a plush mechanic, leaning on a Volkswagen, while Mom receives a plush nurse with a novelty-sized needle that has the words "Common Sense" on it.
Mr. and Mrs. Drake receive a matched pair of plush lions, one male, the other female. It seemed appropriate.
Halloween once again inspires your gifts of choice to the Kurosaki parents, with Masaki receiving a small stuffed shinigami, and Isshin a cartoon ghost.
For Lu-sensei, the idea of a plush Enlightenment Stick that squeaks whenever it hits something is tempting, but in the end, you decide to break the pattern - and protect your head - and give your master one of the Hyrulean seedlings that was responding particularly well to your gardening efforts. It's a mundane plant, not reliant on Hyrule's higher levels of magic or your assistance to thrive, which is probably why it adapted so well, and it's got a rather nice scent. It should do well in Lu-sensei's rooftop retreat.
You include a few seeds of that particular breed, in case your master feels like growing more examples of this flower on his own time.
The adult Shuzens receive bats of their own. As with the girls, you fashion Akasha and Gyokuro's presents to look like they're wearing smaller versions of the costumes the ladies themselves wore at Halloween.
Finally, you make a large stuffed bone for Moblin, with a squeaker inside, and a human-sized outfit for Briar to wear, the next time she does her "cousin Briar" routine at Lu-sensei's and/or hangs out with the girls.
Gained Tailoring D (Plus)
Produced Christmas Plush Invasion
You decide to go ahead and include Moka, Katara, and Ichigo in your magical gift-giving. Nothing too elaborate or expensive, just some simple, practical presents.
Recalling how Moka was displeased to discover that your Halloween "Doombot" was just a Spell of Illusion, you make her a pair of Glasses of Magic Detection, to help her identify such things in the future. You make a mental note to suggest that she ask Mrs. Gyokuro for pointers; although your magic probably isn't the same as how the lady vampire's avowed super-senses work, there should be some things in common.
When it comes to Katara, you recall that some of her chores involved repairing clothes and the like, so you conjure up a sewing kit and imbue it with the Spell of Mending. Nothing too remarkable, but it should help her out.
And for Ichigo, you make a high-quality training gi, enchanted with the Spell of Resistance. It should make sparring - in general, but especially with Tatsuki - a little less painful for the boy. Right?
Spent 15 Rupees
Produced Gi of Resistance
Produced Glasses of Magic Detection
Produced Sewing Kit of Mending
You're not entirely sure where the mischievous impulse comes from, but you go ahead and indulge it, putting Lucia's name on the simple card you include with the male lion, while the lioness is addressed to Arthur.
After a moment's thought, you also modify the appearances of the stuffed animals, trying to give each of them a certain resemblance to their intended owner's spouse.
In the case of the lioness, this is easily done. You just give her Lucia's hairstyle, complete with the long bangs and that oddly upright single lock that she and Altria both have in common.
Gaoooo!
For some reason, the final result strikes you as perfectly natural.
Wait, who said that?
Figuring out how to distinguish Arthur's plush counterpart proves trickier. It might have been easier if the man wore a beard or a mustache, but alas, he does not, and so you must make do.
Wasn't me.
In the end, you shade part of the lion's mane grey, echoing Arthur's greying temples.
It certainly wasn't me.
You're giving a bat-themed novelty plush as a gift to an older gentleman who happens to be a wealthy vampire.
There are only two possible choices here, and given the Shuzens' history with the late and unlamented Dark Lord, Dracula is right out.
Which means that it's gotta be Batman.
Though in keeping with the theme of the other plushies you gave to the rest of his family, Issa's present is decidedly more "bat" than "man."
If the reactions of the ladies of the family to your Halloween costume are any indication, there is a chance that Issa might not recognize Batman right off the mark. Granted, Batman is a rather more mainstream character than Doctor Doom these days, thanks to the four Tim Burton movies, so it's only a small chance - but it is there. In theory.
But should it transpire that Issa is ignorant of the identity of the figure you've gifted him, you're sure that Gyokuro will be able to explain things for him.
Gained Comedy D (Plus)
With your magical gift-making attended to, you pass a couple of weeks finally going from theoretical research into practical development of mana-infused gems. For the sake of scientific curiosity, you use a couple of your least-valuable Rupees, testing to see if they take and/or retain a charge better or worse than the low-grade magically-conjured gems you're otherwise using.
This does prove to be the case, but you're not sure if this is down to the Rupees being (mostly) naturally-occurring gems, because they're higher-quality than what you're currently able to conjure, or just due to Rupees being Rupees.
In hindsight, perhaps you ought to have kept one of those gems you sold to Balthazar.
Well, live and learn.
Speaking of which, you discover that while you can get anywhere from five to twenty percent of your mana into a conjured gem, depending on its size, clarity, and assorted other factors, a Green Rupee can hold upwards of twenty percent. You're not entirely sure what the upper limit on the storage capacity of the Hyrulean crystals is, but comparing the progress you make in charging them up, relative to the conjured gems, you suspect it's in the neighborhood of forty percent.
The issue is that you're just not very practiced at infusing mana into things and having it stay there - not without the matrix of a spell, ward, or other magical construct to give it purpose and stability. You'll need to work on that.
Gained Mana Blade E
Gained Mana Infusion E
On other fronts, the Rupees were quicker and easier to charge up than your "homemade" gemstones, only costing you about half again as much mana to fill. The lesser stones ran you two or three times their projected content to charge up, and had a tendency to fracture if you charged them too quickly.
Gained 2 Green Mana Rupees
Gained 5 Assorted Mana Gems (Low Grade)
As for the more valuable sorts of Rupees...
Your attempt to create a "Ki Gem" goes better in some ways than the Mana Gem project, and worse in others. The good news is that, since you had considerably more practice infusing ki into non-living objects than you did doing the same with mana, you were able to store almost forty percent of your ki in the Rupee you tested (albeit at the cost of roughly fifty percent of your ki). The bad news is that the crystal proved unable to retain that energy for very long, bleeding it out over the course of a few hours. Your conjured crystals fared no better - and again, had a maximum threshold of about twenty percent of your energy, while costing at least twice as much to fill.
Gained Ki Infusion D (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
While not the results you were hoping for, it is progress all the same.