Before dismissing your Shadow, you ask him where his partner is, and if he thinks she'd like to share her memories with Briar.

"Playing with the twins," Shadow Alex replies, indicating the house behind him by pointing a thumb over his shoulder. "And... I honestly don't know. Suppose I'd better ask."

Despite his words, he makes no move to re-enter the Kurosaki residence; instead, you sense a faint pulse of energy pass down the Shadows' equivalent of your familiar bond.

"A summoning!" a familiar voice calls from inside. The living room, maybe? "I am summoned!"

"Ooooh!" two little voices exclaim in unison.

Shadow Alex facepalms.

"Been like that the whole time?" you inquire. There was a rather large period of blurring in last night's memories from dinnertime on, broken only by the image of your Shadow calling up the entrance to a Mansion in the Kurosaki living room. With his current air of defeated weariness, it was a bit suspicious, and now you believe you're seeing - or rather, hearing - the cause.

"Just about," comes the sighing reply.

You give yourself a pat on the back. "It's almost over, man. Just hang in there a little longer."

Further conversation is derailed by the soft thunder of little feet, growing audible as it passes through the kitchen and nears the back door.

"What the-?!" Ichigo exclaims.

"Sorry, Ichi-nii!"

That was Yuzu, you think.

"Outta the way!"

And that's Karin.

And then the door swings open to reveal Shadow Briar, still in her human-sized form. Right behind are the twins.

"Ah-ha!" the fairy exclaims, pointing the Finger of Discovery at... actually, is she pointing at you, your Shadow, or Briar?

"Ah-ha!" the girls echo in chorus, as they catch up and mirror the currently taller fairy's posture and tone.

"Briar," your counterpart says immediately, "do you want to share memories with your other self before we go?"

From the look on Shadow Briar's face, the answer is a definite "yes," but before she can speak, there is a complication.

"Awww," the twins whine in dismay.

"You're going already?" Yuzu asks, looking up at the fairy with wide, sad eyes.

"When Mr. Ishida gets here," Shadow Briar replies firmly. "But you'll be off to daycare then, won't you?"

"Don't wanna," Karin grumps.

"You could come with us!" Yuzu offers excitedly.

"Yeah! We could inter- intru- you could meet everybody!"

They're quite enthusiastic about the idea, and it takes a minute - plus the appearance of "Cousin Briar" - to distract the twins long enough for Shadow Alex to go through his partner's memories and create a copy to pass on to the original Briar.

As they sort that out, you spare a moment to be grateful that the Spell to Share Memories is versatile enough to transfer information between two people OTHER than the caster, even if it does have to be cast twice and pass the memories through said caster's head in the process.

Once that's sorted out, Shadow Alex looks terribly relieved.

Sensing what he's about to do, you quickly thank him for staying and keeping an eye on things in Karakura for you.

He nods, and then dismisses himself with a puff of shadow-stuff, which quickly dissipates in the morning sun.

"Tch; rude." Shadow Briar sighs, shakes her head, and then puts all thoughts of her absent partner aside as she turns back to the twins. "Well, come on girls! We've got a few more minutes, let's make them good!"

"Yeah!"

And then they grab Briar and drag her along.

"Wait, what- whoa!"

You eye the back door of the Kurosaki home warily, as if it will suddenly sprout more little girls to drag you to a terrible doom if you get too close.

You pause on the threshold of the Kurosaki residence, but when no little people materialize to drag you laughing screaming to playtime your doom, you open the door and head inside.

From the look of things, breakfast is largely over, and Isshin has since commandeered the table to read the morning newspaper. He's got a half-empty mug of coffee and a plate speckled with crumbs to one side, but the table is otherwise cleared, and Ichigo is just finishing up the last of the rest of the morning dishes.

There's a great deal of whispering, squeaking, and giggling coming from the living room.

"Hey, Alex," the orange-haired boy greets you. He looks past your shoulder, and then adds, "The other guy took off, huh?"

Yeah, he's not the most social sort, and after the better part of a day spent hanging around other people - and some very energetic individuals, at that - he seemed to have hit his limit.

Ichigo doesn't quite snort. "I think I'd be worn out, too, after spending half a day with Mister Hat-and-Clogs and that old guy with the beard. That Brake guy you brought with you didn't seem nearly as bad, but..."

But he wasn't exactly offsetting Urahara and Ambrose's general... them-ness.

"Yeah, that."

Also, it's "Blake."

Ichigo frowns and tries to repeat the name a couple of times. The treacherous l/r consonant keeps tripping him up.

You encourage him to keep at it. After all, the alternative is trying to say "Balthazar" in Japanese, which...

"Yeah, no."

"For the record, Alex," Isshin says then, "I completely understand the value of expert advice on obscure or complicated subjects. That said, I'm kind of worried the world is going to end because you introduced Kisuke to some new conspirators."

You can't blame the man for that when you've had similar thoughts on the topic. The best you can offer is that you didn't leave Urahara and Ambrose together unsupervised, and neither your Shadow, Briar's Shadow, Navi, Batreaux, or Balthazar would be party to any potentially world-ending shenanigans.

That image from last night's dream comes back to you, of all the aforementioned individuals standing atop an office building, screaming in glee as Karakura rockets through the Astral Plane.

You reluctantly add that there still might BE shenanigans, just not apocalyptic ones.

Probably.

"Strangely, that doesn't reassure me," Isshin sighs.

Again, you can't really blame him.

"But hey, speaking of apocalypses," the doctor says with fake cheer, "I don't know how you or your walking dark side managed to convince him to do it, but Ryuken will be along any time now."

You glance at the kitchen clock, and find that it's 7:43.

"Punctual sort, is he?" you ask.

"To the minute," Isshin agrees.

That fits with the secondhand impression you got of the man. Perhaps you should meet him in kind, not wasting anyone's time? Or would it be a better idea to give him a few minutes to attend to the obligatory social niceties of calling on relatives this early in the day?

You don't really feel like letting yourself get dragged into events in the living room, so instead, you grab one of the empty seats at the Kurosaki kitchen table.

"While I'm waiting," you say to Isshin, "do you feel like talking about medicine?"

"In what sense?"

"Well, you're a doctor, and I'm sort of kind of a healer."

Isshin's expression says it all. "'Sort of kind of,'" he repeats in a dull tone.

"I've learned a number of healing spells in my studies," you clarify.

"Such as?"

You go through the list. The Spells to Cure Wounds and of Restoration, the Spell to Stabilize and the Breath of Life, the Spell to Remove Blindness and Deafness, the Spell to Remove Diseases, Detect Poison, Delay Poison, and Diagnose Disease, and of course your ongoing study of the Spell to Heal and the Spell to Regenerate...

When you look at your repertoire like this, it's kind of funny how many of these beneficial spells are technically witchcraft. Sure, priests and druids can cast them as well, but THOSE versions aren't the ones you actually learned.

Isshin doesn't seem the least bit shocked or surprised by your diagnostic spells or the ones that are at least primarily meant to address battlefield trauma and the complications that can arise from it. You wonder what his reaction would be to some of the less combat-specific applications.

That said, mention of Regenerate definitely catches his attention.

You can guess why. Modern medicine's capable of doing a lot of things, but reversing organ or nerve damage isn't among them as far as you know, and when it comes to prosthetics, something as cool, functional, and affordable as Luke Skywalker's replacement hand is still very much in the realm of science fiction. With magic, however...

You've really only barely gotten started on the topic when there is a firm knock at the door. Masaki makes a brief appearance from the living room as she heads to the front door, and that's followed by the murmur of conversation.

"I think that's your cue," Isshin notes.

"I think you're right," you agree, before getting up and heading out of the kitchen.

Ishida Ryuken is standing just inside the door, talking quietly with Masaki as you enter the hall. There's little if any difference between your secondhand memories of meeting the man and doing so in person; the only genuine change is that, instead of a lab coat over a dress shirt, tie, and slacks, he's wearing a full suit in light beige over a pale blue shirt. He's wearing a tie as well, a darker blue against the fabric of the shirt, and covered with little white crosses.

There is a brief flash as Ryuken turns his head in your direction, light reflecting off of his glasses. His looks, the way he holds himself, and even the manner in which he absently - yet precisely - adjusts his eyewear once again reminds you keenly of your few meetings with Uryuu.

You find yourself disappointed that Yoruichi is out of town, and then again when you realize that the odds are in favor of the older Quincy having already met the Shinigami cat.

"Good morning, Mr. Harris," Ryuken greets you. "A pleasure to meet you in person, as it were. I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long."

"I only arrived a few minutes ago myself," you reply. "And likewise."

"Shall we be on our way, then?"

"Let me just fetch my partner," you say, ducking into the living room.

Behind you, Masaki asks, "You're sure I can't convince you to stay for a coffee, Ryuken?"

"Yeah, you could stand to take a load off!" Isshin calls from the kitchen.

"From what the young man's counterpart said yesterday, it would be best if we left promptly," Ryuken says in response to the lady of the house. "There's quite a bit to be discussed with our American kinsmen, and I for one don't fancy being caught on the streets of New York City after dark, if it can be avoided. Also," he adds, not raising his voice but changing the pitch slightly so that it carries better, "punctuality is a virtue, and one that certain individuals could stand to display more of."

"Hey, I'm plenty punctual!"

"Arriving at the last second is not punctual."

"It's called making a dramatic entrance!"

"Most of my patients could stand to have a little less drama in their lives, Isshin. I can't imagine yours are any different."

"That's..."

You find yourself wondering if these guys dislike each other and just make nice for Masaki's sake, or if they've just got the sort of friendship that can only be expressed through snark, argument, and periodic acts of minor violence.

It takes a couple of minutes for you to extricate Briar from the twins. It helps that Shadow Briar is present to provide a partial distraction, although there's one point where she's got a twin tucked under each arm and is trying to pull them away from Briar, whose arms the younger girls are holding tight to for all they're worth.

Eventually, however, you return to the backyard, partner back to her usual size and riding on your shoulder, and a Quincy in tow.

Slipping his shoes back on, Ryuken steps onto the porch and closes the back door of the Kurosaki house behind him, more or less in Isshin's face.

"Aw, come on!" you hear through the door, before Isshin opens it up and sticks his head out. "I want to wa- I mean, to be ready to help if anything goes wrong!"

Hey, now. That's a slight against your magic he's making there.

"And I've heard things about your teleportation at that island, and again last night," Isshin retorts. "Plus, unless you've been hopping around with Souken or Uryuu, this'll be the first time you've ever teleported with a Quincy passenger. Who knows what sort of horrible reaction there might be?"

The worst thing that is likely to happen is that Mr. Ishida goes a little nuts from seeing that green presence-

"A little nuts?" Ryuken repeats.

-and you can easily prevent that with a simple Spell to Calm Emotions.

"Please do," the man says. "I prefer to have my mind intact, again, unlike certain people."

"Hey!"

You notice that Isshin doesn't protest that he's sane.

"HEY! No fair tag-teaming!"

You cast the first spell quickly, scaling down the unnecessarily long range and using the freed-up mana to increase the duration. That done, you make with the Ritual of Teleportation, reaching out in the last phase to take hold of Ryuken's hand-

-flying/falling/sinking through a strange space/medium/awareness filled with familiar shapes/alien geometries and faint/loud chorus/discordance and a near/distant green energy/presence surprise/curiosity/another new presence focus/examination/interest/something different about this one mark/echo/claim?-

"What."

-and then you're standing in the alley across from the Arcana Cabana, and Ryuken has his free hand out, a silver star dangling from his fingers at the end of a chain with an aura of spiritual energy wrapped tightly about it, primed and ready to act.

"It was LOOKING at me," Ryuken says in a level tone.

Yeah, going by the psychic impressions, you think it noticed Yhwach's mark.

Congratulations, that's the most attention it's ever paid anyone other than you!

"...is that really something to be pleased about?" Ryuken wonders, seeming a little off-put by the tone of your response.

You're choosing to believe so. At the very least, nothing bad has happened to you because of your intermittent contact with the green entity, and you've been blipping through its field of awareness for a couple of years, now, and with increasing frequency over time, at that.

While Ryuken muses on that, you take a quick look around. Once again, no one that goes on two legs is out in the alley, and that cat you've bumped into the last couple of times is absent as well. That might have something to do with the hour, however; it's close to seven in the evening, here, and while it's not yet dark enough to have tripped the automatic lights, that just means that the shadows cast by the buildings are unbroken.

You make a note to keep a little more alert than normal for sounds or movement from the darker corners you pass over the next couple of hours, or however long this visit ends up being.

That resolution made, you dismiss the Spell to Calm Emotions and ask Ryuken if he'd like you to cast a translation spell now. Shadow Alex made the initial offer during their meeting yesterday, but Ryuken's only response at the time was that he'd think about it.

Here and now, the man says in accented English, "I believe I can manage. You can always cast the spell later if it proves necessary, correct?"

You can, and his accent is pretty good.

Ryuken doesn't quite smirk, but you sense that sort of attitude about him. "Languages aren't one of my better skills, but I do get more practice with English than some."

...you're pretty sure he's referring to Isshin there.

The three of you leave the alley, cross the street - quiet at this hour, but not wholly empty of traffic - and enter the Arcana Cabana.

Balthazar is over by the shelf of chained books, and looks up from one of the volumes at the ring of the bell.

"Ah, Alex. And this must be Mr. Ishida. Balthazar Blake, at your service, sir."

"Likewise, Mr. Blake." Ryuken takes a moment to look around at the musty, slightly cobwebbed interior of the shop. "Will we be meeting my distant relatives here, or elsewhere?"

"The Archers asked to meet at their residence," Balthazar replies, nodding as he closes the book-

be more gentle

-puts it back on the shelf, and re-secures the chain.

"'Archer,'" Ryuken repeats. "That is their... family name?"

Balthazar nods.

"Actual, or assumed?"

"As I understand it, a bit of both," comes the response, as the sorcerer moves behind the shop counter to fetch his coat and hat. "It evidently used to be an assumed name for one of the ancestral branches of the family tree, back when they still lived in Europe. Then a daughter from that line married the third son of a family that had customarily been at odds with them, and her husband adopted the pseudonym in place of his father's name to avoid sparking an outright feud. Or at least that's the family legend," Balthazar adds, setting his fedora in place.

Ryuken nods. "Very romantic, I'm sure."

"It ended better than Romeo and Juliet, not that that's a particularly high bar to overcome. Shall we, then?"

The four of you exit the shop, and Ryuken's stride slows at the sight of the "stretched" Rolls-Royce Phantom II sitting next to the curb, in what was an empty spot just a minute earlier. It may not have been the soundless arrival of the car that surprised him, though, for there is a figure dressed like a chauffeur standing at attention next to the vehicle, an entity which appears human yet is clearly not. You sense no ki, no spiritual or psychic presence, and no spells to bind a summoned creature; instead, there is only an aura of Conjuration Magic, similar to but distinct from the Spell of the Phantom Steed.

"Thank you, Royce," Balthazar says. "I'll be driving."

'Royce' tips his hat to the sorcerer, nods to the rest of your group, and fades away.

"That was not a ghost," Ryuken says mildly.

"I didn't think that binding a soul to my car just so that I could say I owned a Phantom driven by a phantom would be in good taste," Balthazar replies wryly, as he turns to lock up the store. "But having a chauffeur is a useful cover for when I need to move the car around, so I modified an old spell that creates a temporary driver for carriages and the like, and enchanted the car to be able to produce it on command."

"I don't remember seeing a spell like that in the book of Car Magic," you observe. As you speak, you fetch your Augury Sticks and one of the conjured pieces of Gold Incense from your pocket.

"The author might not have known the Phantom Driver spell," Balthazar says absently. "It was a bit obscure. Most people who could afford carriages could afford to pay drivers, as well, and they were more versatile as servants; the Phantom Driver can't really do anything BUT operate the vehicle it's intended for, and its presence makes animals uncomfortable, besides."

Ryuken adjusts his glasses. "That seems like a serious and potentially deadly oversight, when dealing with horse-drawn vehicles."

"It's only really an issue when the animals can see, hear, and smell the Driver, and realize that while it looks like a man, it doesn't have the scent or all the little telltale bodily sounds of one, like breath and heartbeat. The distance between a horse and a carriage driver is enough to throw them off, especially once they get moving. Blinders helped as well."

It takes you a minute to complete your little ritual; Balthazar is finished locking up well before that, but he and Ryuken wait patiently as you perform your magic, seeking to know if the discussion you mean to have will drive any of the Quincy you're shortly to meet to betray their fellows.

The fall of the Sticks suggests that a positive outcome is likely, at least within the next half hour or so; this magic can't see much further into the future with any sort of accuracy.

"Good, bad, or indifferent?" Balthazar asks.

"Good, for the next thirty minutes."

He nods. "Then let's not waste any of them."

You and your companions pile into the Phantom, with you-

As Balthazar navigates New York's evening traffic - which is low in his neighborhood, but starts to worsen as you travel - you ask him and Ryuken if there's any matters of ettiquette you should keep in mind, whether about Quincy in general or the Archers in particular, to avoid making a scene.

"For starters, don't turn into a monkey," Balthazar advises dryly. "It won't help."

Ryuken gives the two of you a suspicious look at that, as if not quite sure you aren't having a joke at his expense.

"Aside from that, not much comes to mind that we hadn't discussed yesterday." He pauses, then adds, "You are younger than some of the Archers' grandchildren, and Mrs. Archer has been known to pinch cheeks and offer cookies to people she's not related to, so don't take it personally if she does."

What about a regard gift? It didn't occur to you before, but should you have brought something of that sort?

Balthazar shakes his head. "They're not nearly that old-fashioned."

Ryuken bows to the personal experience of your local guide in this matter.

Although you are tempted to call shotgun, you let Ryuken go ahead and pick which seat he'd prefer.

After a moment's consideration, Mr. Ishida pops open the passenger-side front door and climbs into the seat.

Mildly disappointed, you hop into the back seat and make yourself comfortable.

As he buckles himself in, Ryuken notes, "I'm not usually one for cars, but this is a very fine vehicle."

Balthazar smiles. "Thank you. Magic or no, I've put a lot of work into keeping her in good condition." Glancing at you via the rear-view mirror, the sorcerer asks, "All set back there, you two?"

"Ready," you reply.

"Ready!" Briar calls from your shoulder.

Balthazar nods, the Phantom's engine rumbles quietly, and you pull away from the Arcana Cabana.

...are they good cookies?

Thanks to the rear-view mirror, you're able to see Balthazar blink at your question. Ryuken actually turns his head far enough to glance over his shoulder at you.

"This is important information," Briar agrees. "Are we talking sugar cookies, butter cookies, oatmeal cookies, or something else? Do they have chocolate chips, raisins, sparkles, frosting, or what? And are they homemade or store-bought?"

"...the last time I saw her get out the cookies, they were sugar cookies with a bit of colored frosting," Balthazar replies after a moment's pause. "I couldn't tell you if they were homemade or not. That was... almost six years ago, so she might have changed recipes."

But were they any GOOD?

"All I can say is that the kids seemed to enjoy them."

Hmmm.

"Hmmm," Briar hums back at you. "Restrain judgment until we have further evidence?"

Looks like you'll have to.

Ryuken huffs, but it sounds both amused and - somehow - oddly reassured.

Thanks to the evening traffic, it takes you almost twenty minutes to reach the neighborhood where the Archers live. As the fifteen minute mark approaches and then passes, you start feeling a little on-edge due to the fact that half the time period covered by your earlier augury has been effectively wasted just getting to your destination.

Sure, knowing that nothing is likely to go catastrophically wrong in the first ten minutes of your meeting with the Archers is nice, but you were kind of hoping for a longer-term reassurance when you performed the Spell of Augury.

However, you can't simply perform the ritual again and expect to get a different answer. Jokes about the definition of insanity aside, a known quirk of this magic is that when the same caster asks the same question of an augury, he invariably receives the same result. There's a long-running debate as to why this happens: some say it's because the gods, the fates, or the universe itself have already planned out everything which will ever happen, and that said plan cannot be altered; others believe that looking into the mists of the future "locks" the first observed outcome into place, turning what was previously mere possibility into iron-clad certainty; and another school of thought states that the Powers which answer the inquiry just refuse to fork over new information without being compensated for their trouble, or greater magic being used to force the issue.

The neighborhood to which Balthazar brings the Phantom consists mainly of townhouses, done in an architectural style that seems a few decades younger than the Arcana Cabana and its nearest neighbors, but several decades older than the Stutler residence. At quarter after seven in the evening, there are a number of cars parked along both sides of the street and a lot of lights turned on in windows, though it still isn't dark enough for the street lights to have tripped.

You pass an older gentleman walking a dog, a man around thirty just getting out of a recently parked car with what appears to be a couple of bags of take-out, and another fellow hauling a bag of trash out to a bin. Aside from that, the sidewalks are empty.

Finding nowhere convenient to park, Balthazar pulls up in front of one particular townhouse. While hardly identical to its neighbors, there isn't all that much to distinguish it in mundane terms, and a quick glance on the mystical spectra reveal nothing obvious there, either. Maybe there's a bit less ambient spiritual energy clinging to the structure, but if so, it's barely enough of a difference to be worth noting, and not nearly enough of one to be indicative of anything.

"Is this our stop?" you wonder.

"It is," Balthazar replies, undoing his seatbelt and opening the door to exit the Phantom.

As you follow suit, the OTHER Phantom reappears, taking form in the rear passenger seat across from you. The Phantom Driver lets himself out of the car, nods to his "employer," and slides back into the driver's seat. Once you, Briar, and Ryuken have exited the Rolls-Royce, all the doors close smoothly of their own accord, the idling engine growls a little louder, and the car heads off down the street.

Balthazar leads the way to the unremarkable house, and as you get closer, you notice a single telling detail: there's a Quincy Cross worked into the arch over the front door, the symbol carved small enough to go unnoticed at a casual glance, or even by searching ones from too great a distance. Even those who spotted it might think it was just part of the decor, if they didn't know enough to recognize the mark for what it is.

Balthazar rings the doorbell, setting off a series of soft but clear electronic tones that strike you as at odds with the appearance of the place, and then waits.

Much like how the building itself lacks any obvious telltales to being a residence of a Quincy family, there's nothing in the mundane appearance of the man who answers the door that suggests he might be one of the ghost-hunting archers. He's about Souken's age, with a heavily lined face, a lean but wiry build, and solidly grey hair that's turning white in places, but nothing else speaks of a possible kinship. Light green sweater and blue slacks replace the mantle and white cassock-like uniform you saw Souken and Uryuu wearing, and he wears no glasses - the first male Quincy you've met who you can say that for.

And he IS a Quincy, that much is clear from his aura. His stance is a bit different, and the energies of his soul are not quite so tightly controlled as the members of the Ishida family, but they have far more in common than they lack.

"Balthazar," the man says roughly.

"Miles," the sorcerer replies.

Keen blue eyes glance past Balthazar to study Ryuken for a moment, and the two Quincy trade nods of acknowledgment. Then the gaze of the man you presume to be Mr. Archer drifts over and down to you. The old man's brow furrows as he frowns at you for a moment, before glancing back to Balthazar.

"You're serious?"

"I did tell you he was young."

"Yes, but I thought you meant university age, or at least high school. This kid looks like he's, what, twelve?"

Ah. Ha-ha.

You have a strong urge to say something - hinting at your actual physical age, outright revealing it, or just establishing that your abilities are the real deal, regardless of your appearance, and you can prove it - but you restrain yourself.

It can be argued that trying to prove one's maturity is the surest sign one lacks it. Better to let your actions, your dialogue, and the information you bring with you dispel any doubts about your competence on their own.

"Not going to speak up, kid?" Mr. Archer says after a moment. His expression is mildly surprised.

You shake your head. "I don't see how it'd help at the moment, sir."

His surprise increases slightly.

Before anyone can say anything, a voice issues from further inside: "Miles, is that Balthazar?"

"It is, dear," Mr. Archer calls over his shoulder.

"Well, don't just stand there with the door open, then! Ask the old man if he wants a coffee."

Your Sunnydale instincts twitch slightly. That wasn't quite an invitation to enter, but it was close enough to be a bit concerning. True, it's not dark enough for vampires to be out yet, but you know there are other things on the streets of New York than vampires, at least some of which would also fall under the "can look human, but need permission to enter a home" category, and could be moving around in the fading light of day.

And no sooner does that thought cross your mind than you realize you have a small problem, because one of those things is Briar.

Your partner's access to YOUR home hasn't been an issue for a while now, because it's implicit in her status as your familiar. Your supernaturally aware friends have all long since granted her permission to enter their homes as well - but most of them were able to see Briar, or sense her presence in some other fashion. Mr. Archer hasn't given any indication that he's able to do either, and in light of his age and that whole selective invisibility thing fairies have going on, he may well not be able to.

While you're considering how to deal with this issue, Balthazar has admitted that he could use a coffee.

As Mr. Archer steps back to allow the sorcerer and the rest of you to enter, without actually inviting any of you in, he turns to Ryuken - who looks a bit bemused by Balthazar just walking into the man's home - and inquires if he'd care for a coffee as well.

"I would, thank you." He adds a short bow. "Ishida Ryuken, at your service."

"Miles Archer. Pleasure to meet you." The man of the house then turns to you, still standing on the doorstep. "And what about you, lad?"

"Alex Harris," you introduce yourself.

"And this," you add, gesturing to the air above your right shoulder where Briar hovers, "is my partner, Briar of the Lost Woods."

Miles Archer's eyes follow the movement of your hand, but his subsequent reaction is one of mild confusion rather than realization.

"She's invisible, and very, very small besides," you explain. "I can make her visible, or she could take on a human-sized and visible form, if you'd prefer."

Mr. Archer frowns, and steps forward slightly so that his form once again fills the doorway - which you realize also puts him in a good position to draw a glowing bow and start shooting arrows of charged spiritual particles at anyone or anything on his doorstep.

"Go ahead, then," the man says levelly.

Given Mr. Archer's wariness and lack of a more helpful response, you decide it would probably be best to reveal Briar's normal, decidedly unthreatening form first. With that in mind, you quickly cast the Spell to Purge Invisibility, centering the effect on your partner and doing what you can to minimize the sphere of power it creates.

At your current level of ability, you could make that sphere a hundred and fifty feet across, which would be enough to encompass the Archer residence, most of the next two homes on either side, and a good chunk of the street behind you.

You don't feel like testing your luck as to how many invisible things might be present in that large an area. Knowing your luck, there's probably at least one ghost or city-spirit nearby.

This still leaves Briar surrounded by a bubble of enforced visibility ten feet across. Most of that space proves to be empty, but where the sphere intersects with the Archer home, spiritual energies shimmer into view, at first appearing like a heat-haze and then resolving into a layer of warding that hugs the outer layer of the residence like a second sk- like a coat of paint. The "haze" that clings to the smoothly curved lines of blue-white light that mark the edges of the ward is ambient spiritual power, its course carefully altered as it passes over and around the building, rather like a river passing through a dam or some other area of human construction.

Mr. Archer doesn't seem to notice when the door frame and walls around him start to give off flickers of spiritual "flame"; his attention is fixed on the center of the sphere, where Briar has - from his perspective - just popped into view.

"Hello, Mr. Archer," your partner says calmly. "I'm Briar. Nice to meet you!"

There's a pause, and then...

"'I do not believe in fairies'," the clearly dazed man half-states, half-quotes.

"And that's why you couldn't see me normally, or even with your spiritual senses," Briar replies patiently. "Also, fair warning? Saying something like that when there IS a fairy around is usually an open invitation to be pranked."

"Usually," the man repeats.

"Unlike some of my relatives" - she doesn't quite sigh at that - "I understand humans well enough to realize it would be counter-productive to annoy you when you're about to sit down for a long talk with my partner. Also, I'm hoping you'll invite me in so I don't have to sit outside the whole time, and pranking somebody who MIGHT be about to be your host is another bad idea. Especially when there are cookies involved."

That last bit prompts a snort from Mr. Archer. "Somehow it doesn't surprise me that my wife's cooking is involved."

You perk up at that, and can feel Briar doing the same. As far as fairies are concerned, homemade beats modern store-bought nine times out of ten, and that taste has rubbed off on you a bit.

"You say you want an invitation," the Quincy says then. "I take it this is a similar business as with the bloodsuckers?"

"Different reasons, but the same end result, yes," Briar admits. "I might be able to enter your home without an invitation, because of my link to Alex, but it would be... uncomfortable."

That admission turns Miles's attention back to you. "But YOU don't need an invitation to come in?"

You shake your head. "Magic or no, I'm still human."

Mr. Archer steps back from the door again, wordlessly challenging you to prove that statement.

You do so, matching his gaze the entire way, and after you've been inside his threshold for a few seconds, you glance at your partner and wait, expectantly.

"Briar, was it? Come in, then."

And she does. "Thank you, Mr. Archer."

Seeing as how there are homemade cookies involved, and because hot chocolate feels like it might be too much of an imposition, you inquire if the Archers have any milk.

As it happens, they do. Closing the front door, Mr. Archer turns towards the kitchen, but abruptly pauses and looks back at Briar.

"Would... you care for a drink as well, Miss Briar?"

"I could go for some milk," your partner agrees. "And since you're offering, just to make things easier for everybody..."

She drifts towards a clear area in the front hall, and assumes her human-sized form.

Mr. Archer blinks, and then nods. "That IS more convenient."

As he turns to amble into the kitchen, you dismiss the no longer needed Spell to Purge Invisibility and start taking your shoes off.

As Mr. Archer heads for the kitchen, he tells you all to "make yourselves comfortable" and gestures to the first room on your right. Following Balthazar and Ryuken in, you find a living room with a couch, one of those upholstered reclining chairs, and another plush chair arranged along the far side of the room from the door, so as to give all the seats a good view of the television that sits on a table next to the door, without putting anyone's back to the large window that overlooks the front yard. The couch has a small coffee table in front of it, and an end table with a lamp on each side; a side table with another lamp sits between the two chairs, and bookcases fill in the corners.

Balthazar looks at you, Ryuken, and Briar, and gestures at the couch with a questioning expression. Ryuken nods and takes a seat on the far cushion, leaving the other two spots available.

Mr. Archer returns a minute later, carrying a tray with three steaming coffee mugs, a silver sugarbowl, and a matching creamer. Behind him comes his wife, who has a second tray with two tall glasses of milk and a plate of what appear to be classic chocolate chip cookies. While the latter are not fresh-baked, you count at least half a dozen, and of respectable size, too - slightly larger than the palm of your hand.

The lady herself is similar to her husband in terms of age, build, and moving like an experienced distance fighter. Where his hair is mostly grey turning to white, hers is still mostly dark turning to grey, and she wears a white blouse, dark blue skirt, and thin-rimmed glasses over bright brown eyes.

"Hello again, Balthazar," she greets the Merlinean master with a smile.

"You're looking well, Alice."

"And you always look the same, you shameless old man," she returns easily, before looking at the rest of you. "So, who are your companions?"

The introductions are repeated-

"My, such a handsome boy!"

-the cheek-pinching is empirically confirmed-

"And what a lovely young lady!"

-and also proven not to be gender-specific.

There does appear to be an upper age limit somewhere, as Ryuken doesn't have his face threatened.

You console yourself with a bite of one of the cookies, which is still nicely soft and chewy even if it isn't straight from the oven, and goes down very well with a sip of the cold milk.

The three older men sort out their coffee, with Mrs. Archer having nothing to drink herself, but "sneaking" a cookie before making herself comfortable in the non-reclining chair. Her husband settles into the other seat, and takes a long sip of his coffee.

"Before we get started," you say, "and speaking as a resident of an area with a much higher-than-average incidence of vampire attacks, you have my complete approval for your home safety practices. I have to wonder, though; have you had trouble of that nature in the past?"

"I doubt there's anyone involved in supernatural affairs who DOESN'T run into the bloodsucking corpses eventually," Miles Archer replies dryly. "But they haven't been a noteworthy issue for our family."

"For soulless abominations, they're remarkably vulnerable to a well-placed Holy Arrow," Alice Archer agrees with the sort of smile you'd expect to see on a Gerudo grandmother. She mimes taking aim with a gun, squinting one eye. "One straight shot to the heart, and poof! No more vampire. And even if you can't make quite THAT fine a shot, they're just amazingly combustible."

They can do that with their arrows?

"We can."

Huh. You hadn't noted any particular Fire or Light affinity in Souken's arrows, but if you consider that there is a trace of divine power carved onto every Quincy's soul, then, yeah, corpse-demons catching fire from "nonlethal" hits would make sense.

"But enough about the walking corpses," Mr. Archer says, looking around at your group of visitors. "When Balthazar asked for this meeting, he said that 'a certain young overachiever' had stumbled across a potential and serious threat to the lives of anyone with Quincy blood. He didn't go into detail, only saying that he'd confirmed the danger was real, and that his source needed to speak with my wife and I directly before we could warn the rest of our family." Expression grim, Miles leans forward and stares you in the eye. "I'd like to hear what you have to say."

You imagine he would.

You lean forward in your seat and set your quarter-empty glass of milk down on one of the coasters that the Archers brought out from the kitchen with the drinks. Then - cookie still in hand - you begin to explain the series of events that led to you being here tonight.

You start by providing some background, such as your association with the Kurosaki family, how you first met at the World Martial Arts Tournament over a year ago, and how you progressed from a former opponent to penpal to occasional visitor - which naturally requires a brief exposition of how you regularly travel from California to Japan under your own power.

Ryuken and Balthazar both confirm that you have the ability to perform such a feat, and can bring along passengers besides. Your fellow sorcerer - who has remained standing rather than conjure or otherwise fetch a seat, and leans casually against the wall next to the door - adds that from his observations and calculations, you should be able to handle as many as five adult human-sized passengers without issue.

That's about right. You could go as high as six adult passengers if you used ritual casting to boost your performance, more if you were teleporting small people, and of course, Briar doesn't count against your limit.

You briefly mention your ninth birthday party, stating that the Kurosakis were among the guests, as was Briar's mother. Following another digression to describe the healing abilities of their particular kind of fairy, and how they grow over time, you state that you realized Masaki had suffered a major spiritual injury, and that when it was brought to Navi's attention, she was willing to do something to help.

Ryuken speaks up then, explaining for his distant relatives that Masaki was wounded by a Hollow in her teen years, and saved from spiritual collapse by the efforts of "a pair of annoying exiled Shinigami" - his words.

Miles Archer scowls at the mention of the little death gods, while Alice frowns.

"Why would they help a Quincy?" the lady of the house asks.

"Having maintained a non-hostile working relationship with the pair of them for the better part of twenty years," Ryuken replies, "I can say with complete confidence that Isshin is just that kind of self-sacrificing honorable idiot. Masaki was injured saving his life; he would not, and could not have let her die when it was in his power to assist her."

Sensing that there's going to be another aside, and one that you won't be directly reponsible for, you take another bite of your cookie, and reach for your glass of milk.

"And the fact that she's a lovely, strong-willed young lady likely didn't hurt," Balthazar adds, sipping at his coffee.

Ryuken spares a sidelong glance for the Merlinean master, but makes a sound of acknowledgement.

"And the other one?" Mr. Archer presses. "What was his motivation?"

"Urahara is harder to read," Ryuken admits, shifting his glasses. "As a scientist, I don't doubt that the opportunity to test an experimental treatment appealed to him, and the chance to put in debt a powerful Shinigami who would actually honor his obligation likely factored in as well. I've since learned that there was also a personal element to his reasoning, one which I would prefer not to go into detail about. Suffice it to say that Urahara and Isshin have a mutual enemy who was directly responsible for their ejections from the Soul Society."

...you pause in mid-sip, because this is news to you.

Miles Archer snorts. "Reaper politics, huh?"

"As ever, conducted with swords," Ryuken says in much the same sour tone. "So Urahara was likely also motivated by a certain degree of sympathy for a fellow victim, and spite towards their foe."

Ah, spite; one of the great motivators.

And you're not just saying that as the reincarnation of the King of Evil, although Ganondorf could have written books on the subject.

Swallowing, you set your glass back down on the table and resume the main narrative, covering how your attempts to heal Masaki resulted in the discovery of Yhwach's mark on her soul.

The Archers' reaction to the name of the ancient Quincy overlord is interesting.

Alice looks politely confused, evidently not recognizing the name - for all of about a second, before her attention turns entirely to Miles, who nearly choked on his coffee.

"How do you-" The man pauses, coughs once, and thumps his chest.

"For Heaven's sake, Miles, slow down and take a breath!"

Mr. Archer waves off his wife's fussing - though he does pause to breathe a couple of times, cough once more, and set his coffee to one side - before focusing on you again.

"How do you know that name, kid?"

"Initially, I didn't," you reply. "I'm kind of ridiculously good at Divination Magic-"

"Fair assessment," Balthazar murmurs.

"-but when I tried to identify the source of the symbol on Mrs. Kurosaki's soul, all I got was a creepy song about a 'Sealed King.'"

Alice's expression brightens with recognition at that.

"Masaki vaguely recognized it, and went to Mr. Ishida's father for more information. He's the one who gave us Yhwach's name."

"He shouldn't have," Miles grumbles. "It's not something for outsiders to know about."

Alice frowns at her husband. "Apparently, it's not something for women to know about, either."

"...er..."

Although you do consider giving the Archers a minute to address this particular failure of communication, you're a bit concerned that if you do pause, there's going to be a digression entirely unrelated to the topic at hand. Possibly a lengthy one.

Besides, the impending argument feels like the sort of thing a husband and wife should have out in private, or at least not in front of three people they've JUST met. Balthazar might get a pass, given how long the couple have evidently known him for, but definitely not the rest of you.

On top of that, Souken told you a LOT more than just Yhwach's name. If the Archers are going to have a spat over this, they probably ought to hear the whole story first.

As such, you treat the last minute or so as if you'd gone selectively deaf and forge ahead, going over Souken's account of Yhwach's life, death, and legacy in some detail, as much to bring Mrs. Archer up to speed as to demonstrate the extent of your information. You also note that when you combined elements of that tale with the scant information you already had - namely, the marks on the souls of the living Quincy, the reaction of the mark on Masaki's soul when she was healed by a foreign power, and the words of the Song - they formed a very unpleasant picture.

"If it were just a matter of an ancient ruler returning to life, I'd have fewer objections," you state. "Maybe not NO objections - all the information I have says Yhwach was a conqueror, and I'd prefer not to be conquered, or have my family and friends in danger of such - but less. The problem I have is with the manner of his return."

"And you think you know how that will happen?" Miles asks disbelievingly.

"'Kind of ridiculously good at Divination Magic', remember, Miles?" Balthazar says. "More to the point, I've confirmed Alex's information myself, as have several other spellcasters whose capabilities I respect - and some of them are getting their information from a rather powerful divine trinity, who took offense when that sliver of Yhwach's power in Mrs. Kurosaki's soul tried to reject their efforts to heal her."

Yeah, looking back at it, that was definitely the moment when Yhwach screwed up, even if it WAS only by proxy. Had his soul-fragment not "objected" to Masaki's assimilation of that Heart of Spirit and so drawn Din's ire, odds are that you wouldn't have gotten interested enough to look into the origins of that mark on all the Quincy souls. Without that investigation and everything which flowed from it, the first you would have learned about all of this is very likely to have been when Auswahlen came down, or shortly thereafter.

That is a decidedly unpleasant thought whose implications you've been trying to avoid acknowledging for a while now. Though, speaking of implications...

"Oh, come off it, Balthazar," Miles snaps. "You're claiming that there are GODS mixed up in this, now? Do you seriously expect us to believe that?"

You frown at Mr. Archer. You can understand him being frustrated by the knowledge that Quincy secrets have been revealed to non-Quincy - and you make a mental note that if he's reacting this badly just to your knowledge of Yhwach, it might be best not to bring up the Wandenreich or Souken's former association with them - and you can accept that, having lived his entire life in a world where the gods have collectively, if not entirely willingly, agreed to limit their involvement in mortal affairs, he's got reason to be doubtful that any of them would be taking a hand in this particular bit of business.

That said, as a faithful adherent of the Golden Goddesses, you're a little offended on their behalf by this show of disbelief.

One might even say that you find his lack of faith disturbing.

Minus the Force Choking, of course. That would be entirely inappropriate, not to mention a violation of the Archers' hospitality. Still...

"If you're that doubtful, Mr. Archer, I could summon a servant of the Goddesses to address your concerns."

Miles frowns at you. "A servant," he repeats. "Like what, an angel?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of a priest," you reply. "They're better suited to deal with things from the... mortal perspective."

Also, the beings the Goddesses employ as their equivalent of angels could not be summoned without the use of spells too powerful for you to suppress, to say nothing of their own radiant presences. The Archers' wards could probably cover for some of the latter, but if you called up a Light Spirit, the glow would be perfectly visible to anybody that looked through one of the windows of the Archer residence. That's more attention than you want to deal with, let alone force your current hosts to endure.

And then there's THUNDERBIRD, who is really just too big to summon inside most human-scale houses, and would probably blow out the windows, the TV screen, and the coffee mugs the first time he opened his mouth besides.

"You're allowed to do that?" Alice Archer asks curiously. "Just... call up a priest whenever you feel like it?"

"Maybe not any time," you admit. "They do have other things they could be doing. But I did strike a deal with three of them in exchange for lessons a while back, so that gives me some wiggle room about when and why I call them up."

"What did you have to pay?" Miles demands flatly.

The suspicion in his tone and expression have ratcheted up to open mistrust, but this time? You don't blame the man. There are entirely too many demons running around this planet making deals with the ignorant, the careless, and the desperate, and it would be far, far too easy for many of them to take advantage of the kid you appear to be and lead you merrily down the path of corruption and damnation.

So it's with a certain cheer that you reply, "One of them wanted me to plant a garden."

There is a pause, during which the only sound is Balthazar sipping at his coffee again.

"A garden." That's Ryuken.

"He's a forest spirit who follows a Nature Goddess," you explain to your Japanese companion. "And he's not from Earth. He wanted to see if some of the plants from his home realm could grow here."

"What sort of plants?" Alice asks.

"Mainly the sort of fruits and vegetables people try to grow in their gardens, some nice flowers, that kind of thing."

"Nothing... magical?"

"There are a few that are used as ingredients for potions and other things of that nature, but if you mean anything that has active powers of its own? Then no."

Not unless you count Snappy, anyway, but he wasn't part of your deal with Koron, and you weren't planning to mention the little biter anyway.

"What did the other two want?" Miles inquires, more calmly than before, and still a bit bemused from hearing your Kokiri tutor's price.

"The second one is a lady from an aquatic race, who follows the Goddess dedicated to knowledge." Among so many other things. "She wanted to talk to all the scholars, mages, and priests I knew, Balthazar among them."

"It was a very interesting couple of conversations," the sorcerer agrees.

"The last of the group is a cranky old rock-man whose favored Goddess expects her followers to go out and do things under their own power, instead of relying entirely on her. In that spirit, he wanted me to prove myself by beating up a bunch of monsters."

"At your age?" And now Alice is scowling again. "What was he THINKING?"

Um.

"I think," Mr. Archer says carefully, glancing at his annoyed wife, "that we would like to meet one of these priests, young man."

Okay.

Given your desire not to draw attention to the Archers' home, you opt to go with the Lesser Spell of Planar Binding. That will limit you to a single priest, but that's probably all you should be calling up when you're in someone else's home. As you lay down the requisite Magic Circle of "burning" mana in the Archers' front hall, you consider which of the priestly trio you ought to ask for.

You were planning to call up Elder Terok, both as a matter of personal preference and because he's the oldest of your three spiritual advisors, and so the most likely to be taken seriously by the Archer elders, but Mrs. Archer's reaction to hearing about your Trials has you wondering if that would really be such a good idea. You're reluctant to summon Koron, because while he's older than he looks, he still acts a great deal like the Hylian kid he resembles; also, you're not quite sure how Vert would react to being summoned into a home that isn't yours, and which you technically can't invite him to.

All in all, Madam Lanora seems like a fairly safe option.

Yeah, there's no need to go borrowing trouble by putting three cranky Elders in a room together. Especially not when one of them has a bone to pick with the second, and the third would likely feel obligated to back her up, or at least not get in her way.

Rather than deal with that hassle, you go ahead and call Madam Lanora.

The Zoran priestess materializes within your summoning circle without issue, and upon finding herself in unfamiliar surroundings, once again looks around in interest. Others might be thrown off by the fish-like elements of Lanora's appearance and assume that was the extent of her emotional response, but you've known the priestess long enough that you're able to spot a certain growing wariness in her expression as she takes in her surroundings.

"If I remember correctly," the blue-skinned woman muses, "this was the evening you were planning to speak with the Elders of the Archer family."

"You remember correctly, Madam."

"And judging by the level of light outside," she adds, peering at the deepening twilight that can be seen through the windows in the front rooms, "as well as taking into account the time difference between Sunnydale and New York, you probably haven't been here much longer than an hour."

Technically, you've only been in the Archer residence for about thirty minutes, a third of which was given over to casting the Spell of Planar Binding. But if you count the brief stop at the Arcana Cabana, and the travel time from there... yeah, an hour is about right.

"And now you're calling for backup." Lanora sighs. "Well, it's neither the fastest nor the worst breakdown in diplomatic talks I've heard of. That's something, anyway."

Your diplomatic skills are just fine, thanks. The issue is that the subject of divine intervention came up, and given how hands-off the local gods are required to be, Mr. Archer at least is having some trouble buying the story.

"So you called me." Lanora regards you wryly. "You do realize the irony in this, I would hope."

Yes, yes, asking a priest to provide empirical evidence of the existence of god, it's hilarious. Help, please?

"Alright, alright." Stepping out of the circle, Lanora asks, "Introduce me to our hosts, would you?"

You spare a moment to dismiss the Magic Circle of mana, and then turn back to the living room to do as requested.

The Archers handle the appearance of a nearly six-foot-tall blue-skinned fish-woman in their home with only a minimum of blinking. Mrs. Archer offers to fetch her a drink, and Madam Lanora eagerly inquires if any of "that wonderful-smelling coffee" is left.

While the lady of the house attends to that, you glance at the seating arrangements, and wonder what, if anything, you should do about them. Would it be better to give Madam Lanora your seat, or have Briar revert to her normal size to free up a spot? Should you join Balthazar in the "Standing Room Only" Club, grab a spot and levitate, or conjure up a seat?

...or, you suppose you could just ask Mr. Archer if you could bring a chair in from the dining room or something, but where's the fun in that?

Sorcerous solidarity summons you, and when Mrs. Archer returns from the kitchen with Lanora's coffee, it's to find you standing on the other side of the living room door from Balthazar, milk in hand.

You do manage to resist the impule to mirror the master's movements and sip from your glass when he does the same from his mug.

On a related note, Ryuken seems to be somewhat at a loss to find himself sharing a seat with a Zora, but even more so when Lanora takes an appreciative sip of her coffee.

Once everyone has their drinks and seats (or stands?), the conversation resumes. Simply calling up a celestial priestess wasn't enough by itself to satisfy Miles Archer's doubts about divine involvement - and it's a fair reaction, as for all he knows, you're merely calling her a priest. Even having Lanora demonstrate some minor priestly abilities wouldn't resolve that faint suspicion, as you know that there are plenty of higher and lower beings capable of powering such magic themselves.

Nayru's priestess seems to have anticipated that, because rather than provide that kind of "proof," she instead engages the Archers in a debate about the status of mortal/divine relations on Earth. Lanora asks first what the two of them know, and then explains how things worked on "my home world," as well as on Earth in the past. From there, she branches into information she's acquired from her conversations with local experts, covering the injunction against divine intervention and the Powers' gradual withdrawal from purely mortal affairs the world over, a process that lasted for some centuries and is technically still ongoing today.

The state of supernatural affairs in Japan over the last century or so come up as an example of that. The island nation was one of the last major holdouts against the current global paradigm, and the decline of its native priests and arcanists is rather better-documented than many of the earlier transitional periods. Europe, for instance, went through those changes a millennium ago, and what records of those times have survived to the modern day are few and fragmentary, with the diminishment or outright loss of certain protective magics compounding all the usual issues of age, accident, and intentional destruction.

After accounting for the current state of affairs that hold back the gods, demons, and other great Powers from acting openly on Earth, Lanora points out that the Golden Goddesses are outsiders to the entire arrangement, having had no interest in this world until very, very recently, and as such, no reason to operate under its rules.

"And while the former state of affairs has changed," Lanora says, "it is very unlikely that the Goddesses will change their minds about the latter any time soon. Din, by her nature, rejects the very idea of limitations, while Farore tends to regard them as challenges."

She's not wrong!

"And of course, ALL the Goddesses have... issues... with the idea of allowing demon lords and their ilk an equal voice to the divine in the state of world affairs."

That is putting it mildly. While the events of your birthday provide strong evidence that the Goddesses are willing to play nice with people who have demonic ancestry, even those of sufficient personal power to qualify as Dark Lords, the idea that they'd accept a similar arrangement with true demons is... well, you just have to look at your fractured memories of Ganon's rampages - specifically how they inevitably end with a gold-glowing arrow or sword to the brain - to see what the Goddesses think the proper way to deal with a Demon King is.

Your musings are interrupted by Miles Archer asking the obvious question: "What was it, exactly, that made these goddesses take an interest in Earth?"

You lean back against the wall and take another sip from your milk, content to let the acknowledged expert on matters divine explain why the Goddesses took an interest in Earth-

"Oh, that's entirely their fault," Madam Lanora replies easily, waving to her right in a gesture that takes in both you and Briar.

-and manage to avoid choking on your drink at the priestess's blunt response.

Mouth full of chocolate chippy goodness, Briar frowns and makes sounds of annoyance at the Zora, waving a cookie with a chunk bitten out of it at her.

Lanora brushes off the vaguely menacing gesture and proceeds to offer a version of the story you were considering. She explains how the realm of Faerie exists alongside many mortal worlds, including Earth and Hyrule, and can be used as a means of traveling between those worlds by those who have the knowledge, the power, and the simple guts to do so. She then explains that the process is rather easier for Fae creatures, even those that are native to mortal realms, such as Briar and her family.

From there, the Nayrian priestess notes that Briar made her own way from Hyrule to Earth by wandering through Faerie some decades ago, only to get trapped on this planet when someone sealed the natural portal she'd used, and then spend many years trying to find another way home before finally meeting you. This then leads into a sideline about the ancient custom of fairies partnering with the Kokiri, and how the comparatively recent example of the Hero of Time caused that practice to spread to children of other races, as well as the occasional adult sorcerer.

"Forming a partnership with a boy from another world was really just the next natural step," Lanora states.

"And that got your goddesses' attention?" Miles asks sceptically.

"By itself, it normally wouldn't have. Most of the little fairies of Briar's sort are... well..."

"Idiots," Briar says firmly.

"I was going to say 'absent-minded'," Lanora replies diplomatically.

"You could also have said, 'unable to keep more than a single thought in their heads at a time'," you offer.

"That sounds familiar," Alice Archer murmurs absently.

"The point is," Lanora continues, "Briar was somewhat more mature and sensible than most fairies of her age even before she got lost on Earth. Having grown up in Hyrule, she absorbed some of its culture, including a layman's understanding of the local religion - although she would have known more than most, due to the fact that her mother is one of the Great Fairies of Hyrule."

"And that means...?" Mr. Archer inquires.

"The Great Fairies are minor goddesses in their own right," you explain. "They're usually guardians of places of natural power, certain sacred relics, or magical forces in general, all of which make them some of the beings most likely to interact with the Golden Goddesses. And Briar's mother was the fairy partner of the Hero of Time when she was still a little fairy, so she's been on the Goddesses' radar for a long time."

"Since Lady Navi played such a significant role in the Goddesses' service," Lanora continues, "her children were figures of some interest as well, meaning they were more likely to get noticed for, say, swearing an oath in one or more of the Goddesses' names."

Briar does do that on occasion, you admit.

"So do you!"

Yes, but you didn't START doing it until after you met her.

Briar pauses and thinks back, likely to your first year together.

Slowly, her eyes widen. "He's right. Oh, Nay- I mean, Godd- I mean, I taught my partner to swear! And I've been doing it around his friends and little sister! I'm a BAD influence!"

You're not THAT bad, kiddo.

While you take a minute to calm and reassure your partner, Lanora finishes up the explanation. Briar was your first tutor in magic, and the magic she taught you was in the Hyrulean style, meaning it came packaged with a fair amount of Hyrulean philosophy, including religious belief; indeed, even among the explicitly arcane spells you learned in that time, there are many that invoke the Goddesses, and while you're powerful enough not to need their support for your spellcasting, using that magic could still have drawn their attention all on its own. Casting such spells in the presence of someone the Goddesses already had a reason to look in on made it much more likely they'd notice you, even if you HADN'T been Ganondorf's reincarnation, and when you actually DID call upon them...

Well, if they weren't paying attention to you before that, they definitely would have been afterwards. Though your attempt to deal with your uncle's taxidermy collection might not have gone as well as it did, to say nothing of other events.

"So technically," Miles Archer sums up, "the boy's been praying to these goddesses for years, and they've been answering."

"Very technically, but yes," Lanora agrees. "He's also made a point of studying up on Hyrulean theology and learning how to PROPERLY invoke the Goddesses, rather than faking it with overpowered sorcery."

Miles blinks, and turns to Balthazar. "You can do that with sorcery?"

"Depends on the sorcerer, and the divine magic in question," Balthazar replies. "In the end, though, energy is energy; creating a specific magical effect is largely just a question of having enough power and the knowledge of how to apply it. Gods simply have more power and knowledge than the rest of us."

"Speaking of knowledge," you interject, "is this enough to convince you of the Goddesses' interest?"

"In you, maybe," Mr. Archer replies. "And if the Sealed King's power really did try to reject the aid your goddesses or their agents were providing to this Misaki woman, I could understand why they'd be aligned against him, or in support of her. But what is it about the rest of us that's so important to them?"

By "the rest of us," you realize that Miles is not just refering to himself and his wife, but the Quincy in general.

"In a word?" you reply. "Auswahlen."

"'The Selection'?" Alice looks from you to her husband. "What's that?"

This time, Miles doesn't seem to know any more than his wife.

You take a deep breath.

Having braced yourself, you tell the Archers that explaining what Auswahlen is will require a little more context, specifically as to how you heard the name. You follow this with a quick summary of the workings of the Spell of Communion, and how it compares to similar magic like the Spell to Contact Another Plane or the Spell of Divination. Balthazar and Lanora chime in to provide support.

When Miles Archer notes that you used the word "divination" before, there's also a brief discourse on the distinction between the SPELL of Divination and the SCHOOL of Divination. You have to admit that whoever named that spell doesn't seem to have been trying very hard, though it's also possible they were one of those magic-users who tried to name a spell after themselves, only for their identity to fall out of use somewhere along the line.

Getting back on track, you state that when you used the Spell of Communion during your investigation, you received several pieces of information from the Goddesses that all tied together in a very nasty fashion. You shared your findings with experts, including Balthazar, Lanora, and Ishida Souken - a fellow Quincy Elder and a former member of the Wandenreich; dropping that name earns a start of surprised recognition from Miles Archer, and has Alice giving him another irritated look - and all of them have agreed that the conclusion you reached was, unfortunately, the correct one.

"And that conclusion is?" Mr. Archer asks.

"To put it simply, Auswahlen is the name of a power possessed by Yhwach. He's going to use it on June 17th, and when he does, nine-hundred and ninety-nine Quincy will die."

Miles's face goes as white as a sheet. "That's not... that can't be right," he protests weakly.

"'His power recovered from impure lives,'" Ryuken recites bluntly, causing the Elder to flinch. "Though perhaps 'reclaimed' might have been a more accurate translation..." He shakes his head, and continues. "By the old ways of our people, the Gemischt families are called upon to serve the Echt bloodlines with their lives, even to the point of sacrificing themselves in order to preserve their supposed betters. From my father's account of the culture of the Wandenreich, they not only adhere to that aspect of our traditions, they consider themselves to be the only true Echt, making the rest of us utterly expendable. And if such values truly date back to the lost Empire of Light as our history claims, it seems likely that Yhwach himself would share them. He is, after all, our King; are we not bound to serve him?"

Miles doesn't have a response for that.

Alice, meanwhile, has been looking more and more like she's about to explode.

"Which brings us to the reason why we requested this meeting," you press on. "Once we realized what was going to happen, we started looking for a way to prevent it, or at least reduce the cost in lives."

Miles stares at you. "You... you CAN'T be seriously suggesting attacking the King."

You appreciate the implicit vote of confidence in your abilities, but you're not quite at the level where you'd feel comfortable attacking a god-king in his own fortress all on your lonesome.

Unlike a certain someone?

There is, after all, a difference between courage and recklessness.

Zing!

No, the reason why you set up this meeting is because you've decided to try undermining Yhwach in another manner, by placing as many of the Quincy as you can somewhere that you hope is "out of range" of his power, and putting them under magical wards tuned specifically to counteract Auswahlen, besides.

"You can do THAT?" Miles blurts out.

In theory, at least. Like Balthazar said, energy is energy, and you've got a LOT of power to throw around, plus an exceptional grounding in the School of Abjuration - which you clarify for your audience is magic that primarily deals with warding against and casting out unwanted forces and entities. So you have power and knowledge covered.

That said, you have to admit that the spell you have in mind is one that will be testing the limits of your ability, particularly when used on the kind of scale you have in mind, and may not be sufficient to block Yhwach's power. That's why you're also planning to move the Quincy to a location you hope Yhwach won't be able to reach.

"And where would that be, exactly?" Alice asks. "I'm not an expert on the old stories, but from what I remember, the Sealed King was supposed to be able to observe any location on Earth that he wished."

You nod, saying that Souken mentioned that. Which is why your intended hidey-hole is on another plane of existence, one that is neither the Spirit Plane where Yhwach currently rests, nor the Material Plane where the endangered Quincy population reside.

"By any chance, would that be this Faerie place you mentioned before?" Miles asks.

No, definitely not. While it's true that Faerie is almost as far removed from the Wandenreich as the demiplanes you've hired Navi to create for you, in terms of the number of planar boundaries that need to be crossed to reach one realm from the other, it's still closer to the danger. One more border may not sound like much of an advantage, but the more of them that lie between Yhwach and his would-be victims, the better. Of greater concern are the dangers of Faerie itself, which most modern city-dwelling humans wouldn't be prepared to deal with, to say nothing of the possibility of old grudges existing between Fae and Quincy that you or even the Quincy themselves haven't heard of.

It would make little sense for you to save these people from Yhwach, only for them to get eaten by primordial animals, tricked into a deal with one of Fair Folk, or meet any of a hundred other dire fates right out of the old fairy tales.

To explain where exactly you're going to stash the Quincy, you ask the Archers if they would object to you casting a spell to demonstrate Summoning Magic. Once you have their tentative approval, you cast a modified version of the Spell of the Magnificent Mansion, sacrificing most of its duration and all of its effective range to weaken the magic enough for you to hide its use. The portal thus opens up just beyond the tip of your finger, filling the doorway that connects the living room to the front hall.

Out of curiosity, how did you design the interior?

Ryuken eyes the portal with some interest. "Would this be an example of the spell you used to house your birthday guests for a weekend?"

"The same, although this one will only last about fifteen minutes." You turn to the Archers and bow slightly, sweeping your arms dramatically towards the portal. "After you."

You are tempted to go with something in the Hyrulean style. It's familiar and comfortable for you, it would be exotic enough to the Archers to help make your point, and seeing as how Navi is the one designing the demiplane where you're going to hide your Quincy rescuees, it would probably give Miles and Alice some idea of what to expect in the not-too-distant future, if only visually.

But after a moment's thought, you decide to go with something a little closer to home for both parties. As such, when the portal to the Mansion opens up, it reveals an entrance hall that leads to a wide foyer, in a style that tries to blend late Twentieth Century American architecture with the sort of high-class aesthetic you've encountered at the Drake and Shuzen residences, but doesn't quite succeed. The end result is still impressive in its way, but is a little too obvious in how it relies on the sheer size and showiness of the rooms, the obvious expense of their construction and furnishing, to make up for a certain lack of history.

You pause to review that thought, and wonder if you've perhaps spent too much time around old money families of late.

While you're contemplating the influences of certain individuals on your thought processes, the Archers are tentatively making their way through the portal. At the sight of the first of the servants, Miles gives a start and moves into a shooting stance, only to pause, energy bow still "undrawn," as he fully registers that the translucent, uniformed figure before him lacks any sort of spiritual presence and has made no hostile move.

"The hell is this?" the older man wonders.

"The servant's a construct," you reply from outside the Mansion. "Kind of like a magical hologram, but with enough solidity to interact with physical objects, and programming that lets it carry out direct orders and anticipate simple, on-task requests."

Given how the portal is designed to close if you enter, you've opted not to go in, lest you alarm your hosts. Ryuken went in ahead of his distant relatives, however, and is currently standing in the center of the foyer, looking up and around with the air of a man trying not to let on how impressed he actually is.

"Not a person, then," Miles ventures.

"Not even close."

Over the next ten minutes, the Archers cautiously explore the Mansion, one of them staying in the foyer and within line of sight of the portal, and the other, presumably, staying in view of their partner while exploring one of the adjacent rooms. There are a number of discoveries along the way, some of which draw comment.

"I saw this painting in a movie," Miles declares from one of the side rooms at one point.

"Really?" you call back, picturing the room in question and the image he should be looking at. "I based it off of a print owned by the parents of a friend. What was the movie?"

"'The Thomas Crown Affair'."

"I don't think I've seen that one."

"There's a full-course banquet in here!" Alice exclaims a little later on.

"Is the food fake, too?" Miles wonders with a look in your direction.

"No, it's real. It won't spoil while the spell lasts, and it'll disappear with the rest of the Mansion or if you try to take it outside" - at least without some supplementary spellcasting - "but if it's eaten, it's just like regular food." You pause, considering the sort of spread the Magnificent Mansion produces, and add, "Actually, make that, 'it's just like really expensive food.'"

"You could feed a small army with all that!" Alice declares as she walks back into your field of view.

That was probably the intention.

Towards the end of the spell's abbreviated duration, you have the Archers step back into their living room, and then enter the Mansion yourself while Ryuken is still inside, closing and concealing the portal in the process. You wait for a minute before reopening the entryway, at which point you find Mrs. Archer standing in the open portal with both arms spread wide, as if she'd been trying to locate it by touch.

"Huh," she remarks. Lowering her arms with complete unconcern for how she appeared, Alice continues, "Once the door vanished, I couldn't even sense you boys."

"Nor I, you," Ryuken replies, now looking quite interested. "This magic alone might be enough to hide us from Yhwach, or other enemies."

The latter, maybe, but you're not convinced that the Mansion's ability to restrict access to chosen guests will work against the Quincy King, since you'd implicitly be inviting pieces of his soul inside along with the individuals hosting them. You also don't trust that someone with Yhwach's attested clairvoyant powers wouldn't be able to spot the invisible portals, or that he couldn't remotely dispel the magic and dump the occupants of the extra-dimensional spaces back into the Material Plane. Otherwise you could have just cranked up the duration, dropped a Mansion in the home of every Quincy family you could find, and called it a day.

Once everyone has returned to the living room and you have dismissed your spellwork, the conversation turns to the matter of the demiplane. Your casual demonstration of high-level Summoning Magic appears to have convinced the Archers that you know what you're talking about, although they still ask for details about the Spell to Create A Demiplane. Fortunately, even if you can't quite cast the spell yet, your study of it is far enough along that you can speak with some authority on the subject.

You see no real reason to withhold this information, particularly not when you and Lanora already mentioned Navi while explaining the involvement of the Goddesses in this affair, or when there's a strong possibility that the Archers will meet the Great Fairy in the not-too-distant future.

Besides, what does the admission really cost you? A minute or two of conversation; a couple of people knowing that when it comes to one particular feat of magic, your capabilities aren't quite as ridiculous as they could be; and that's... pretty much it? If anything, the truth should improve the Archers' opinion of you, by demonstrating that you are mature enough to seek help when you recognize that a task is beyond you, and that you have the means to actually acquire the aforementioned help, even when it comes to an issue of this scale and seriousness.

And so, you cap your explanation of the Spell to Create a Demiplane by saying that you've outsourced the actual work to Navi, who has a strong moral objection to the mass murder of innocent people, the power to do something about it, and motivating factors that range from setting a good example for her kids to honoring a bargain made as one of the greater Fae to just genuinely wanting to oppose an act of capital-E Evil.

"I'm fairly sure I remember hearing something about how it was a bad idea to go in debt to a fairy," Alice mentions.

"That is true," you agree. "Even breaking an arrangement with the Little Folk is a bad idea if you've got any sort of reasonable alternative, and the consequences only get worse as the stature and power of the Fae involved increase. That said, I'm paying Navi for her work on the artificial planes by doing her a couple of favors of equivalent value. You don't and won't owe her anything when all is said and done."

"But we will owe you," Miles notes, regarding you keenly. "And we've dealt with Balthazar often enough, both personally and as a family, to know that a sorcerer's aid doesn't come for free."

That is also true.

It's not that personal profit was ever a serious consideration for you in this whole affair, but if all goes well, some sixty Quincy are going to owe you their lives - their very souls, even. This is classic and literal life-debt territory, which is a BIG deal in mystical terms, especially for the people who didn't know you before this. The Kurosakis would have owed you somewhat less for your help, thanks to your pre-existing friendship with Ichigo and how that influences things, and a good portion of the remaining debt would have been discharged by their introducing you to Urahara, whose services have been quite beneficial to you. The Ishidas could lean on that friendly bond a bit, thanks to the familial connection through Masaki, but what's truly covering their obligation to you is Souken's decision to allow you to use his stolen Key of the Sun, both for all the scrying you did previously and for the upcoming invasion.

Actually, thinking on that point a little further, if the Shinigami assault on Silbern succeeds in neutralizing Yhwach before he can invoke Auswahlen, the Earthbound Quincy would abruptly owe you far, far less for your aid, because the danger you would have been saving them from was just... gone. No threat means no debt, or at least nothing that couldn't be covered by the opportunity given you by Souken's Key to observe Shinigami and Quincy in battle, potentially put some of the former in debt to you, and maybe raid the latter's archives.

That said, there is always the possibility that the Shinigami raid will fail, or that Yhwach will awaken prematurely because of it, which means the Japanese, New York, and Brazilian Quincy would be back to owing you their lives. How do you put a price on something like that? Do you even WANT to? And can you really afford NOT to, without revealing that you've arranged for the Soul Society to invade the Wandenreich?

"I'm not in the habit of bartering for people's lives, Mr. Archer," you state frankly. "My main concern here has been to save as many as I can, because I think it's the right thing to do with the power I have, and I don't want the guilt of deaths I could have prevented to be on my conscience - particularly not my friends and the immediate family of my friends."

"Yes, thank you for that," Ryuken murmurs.

You nod.

It sucks that you can't save more of the Quincy, but the fact of the matter is that their doom was set into motion a thousand years ago, and you only found out about it at the proverbial last minute. That you've managed as much as you have in that short span of time is a testament to your abilities, connections, and resolve, but there simply isn't time to do anything more.

"But you're correct," you continue. "Whatever my personal feelings on the matter, the fact remains that, mystically speaking, accepting my aid will put you in my debt. And considering how we're ultimately having this meeting because someone with a claim on your people is planning to abuse it in the worst way possible, I can understand why you might be particularly wary of a situation that ended with you and yours owing someone else."

"Thank you for your understanding," Miles says, inclining his head. "So, how do we square this?"

You consider it.

"Well, for starters, I'm willing to swear an oath before this group and the Golden Goddesses that I won't intentionally abuse the debt, use it to cause harm to those under obligation to me, or sell it on to another party."

Balthazar regards you keenly. "Alex," the Merlinean master says slowly, "when you say 'oath,' are you speaking in terms of a mundane promise, or are you thinking of taking a geas?"

You blink in surprise, and then turn your head to one side with a "Huh" of consideration.

That actually IS an option, isn't it? Enchantment Magic isn't one of your better schools, but you're still skilled enough to cast a normal Geas and have it last for a couple of weeks. In fact, since you'd be swearing this particular oath yourself, you could adjust the parameters a bit to ensure the magic would stay in effect permanently - or rather, until such time as the Archers cleared their debt - and you'd even have enough magical capacity left over to go with the divine form of the spell, invoking the judgment of the Goddesses.

True, you'd need to cast another spell to hide the fact that you were under such a compulsion, but Greater Magic Aura is in your repertoire and could easily be extended in the same manner. And you can't really see how swearing this particular Geas could hurt you: it's not like you have any intention of breaking your word about mistreating the Quincy; and if a situation came up where it was somehow unavoidable, you have been studying the Spell of Limited Wishing for some months, now.

Still, the idea of having a Geas hanging over your head is uncomfortable. They're supposed to be downright crippling when broken, and for all that you don't intend to do so, you live in a world of monsters, demons, amoral magic-users, and less-than-friendly gods. There's plenty of room in there for someone - or something - to figure out you're under a magical oath, learn the terms, and take advantage of them.

Following an explanation of what a Geas actually is, you get into the matter of how the Archers and the other New York Quincy might repay you for saving their lives.

"If you want to square us I take payment in esoteric lore, instruction in useful skills, friendship, and any reasonable form of wealth. If you don't pay me off, I'll probably show up some day asking you to assist in some kind of ridiculous endeavor, like opposing a genocidal god-king." You pause, and then add, "Though to be fair, I do that to people who owe me nothing, too."

"Can confirm," Balthazar agrees.

The Archers seem to accept your general sales pitch, but they would like more specific terms, so you try to give them those.

You'd be most interested in a new source of information about Earth-native spiritual forces, entities, and the traditions that have arisen to deal with them, or in getting a chance to study those wards - or any other examples of spirit-based enchanting the Archers might happen to have around, come to that.

The idea of studying the Quincy's powers directly is not without some appeal, but it's also a project whose practical applications would be a bit limited, since Yhwach's soul fragments seem to be the foundation of everything the Quincy do, and that's one influence on your soul you very much DON'T have. True, you might be able to adapt the remnant energies of the Triforce within you to work in a similar manner, but honestly? You kind of don't want to. Quincy are reputed to be able to destroy souls; that's not the sort of ability you either need or should be pursuing, especially when it would involve twisting the divine power of the Goddesses (even at a couple of removes) to an abhorrent purpose.

A much more applicable area of interest to you is the matter of spiritual stealth. The Quincy have been living under the radar of Soul Society, Hollows, and Goddesses only know who or what else for centuries, and the wards on the Archer residence can't be the whole of how they've been doing it, or else they'd barely be able to leave their homes. Given your own circumstances, an opportunity to improve your Spiritual Concealment wouldn't be unwelcome, and could be a life-saver, whether you're in Sunnydale, Karakura, or just walking some remote corner of the Earth. Of course, you aren't exactly a newbie to this aspect of the spiritual arts, so any training you received would be somewhat less valuable, relatively speaking.

Another possibility would be to have the Archers act as references for you in future incidents. You are very much still in the process of making a name for yourself on the supernatural side of thing, and if you get involved in another mess where lives are on the line, having people who could attest to your abilities in the field of general life-saving would be helpful. On the other hand, this leans back towards the "vague" side of things, and could potentially leave the Archers' debt hanging in limbo, unresolved, for a very long time as well.

If none of those options are palatable, or just not sufficient for the Archers to feel they've repaid you... well, you could always use archery lessons.

When you mention that last part, Miles gives you the sort of wryly suspicious smirk that only an experienced grandparent can. "You're not just saying that because of our last name, are you?"

And if all else fails, tasteless as it would be to put a pricetag on human lives, you do accept gold, silver, gems, or cash. If they were to pay you the value of the spells involved, it would be more palatable, though potentially pretty expensive. Eighth-circle magic does not come cheap.

Balthazar visibly relaxes at your answer. "Good. I just wanted to be sure you weren't going to go overboard."

The idea honestly hadn't occurred to you until he brought it up, which does make you wonder why he did that.

"I do business with magi on occasion," comes the initially seemingly extraneous reply, "and some excessively clever magus figured out how to invoke geasan through written contracts ages back."

You blink in surprise at that, and then consider what you know of magus culture, and how the ability to put magically binding deals into writing would likely manifest there.

...

You wince.

Balthazar nods. "The story goes that he used his little creations to entrap the heirs of at least two other families, and was setting up his own little fief within the Association when someone figured out what he was up to. They took their evidence to the Lords, the geas-maker was given a Sealing Designation, and information on 'self-geis scrolls' became common knowledge shortly thereafter. These days, they're mainly used to enforce important deals between magus families, writing the terms of the agreement and the essence of the geas into their Crests so that they can't be dispelled, but since a Magic Crest is assembled from Magic Circuits harvested from past bearers, it wasn't exactly difficult to create a version of the standard geas that works on regular Circuits."

And since every human with magic, and no few without, has at least one Magic Circuit...

Well. That's an important and unpleasant bit of knowledge you're (un)happy to have acquired.

You make a mental note never to sign ANYTHING handed to you by a magus without reading it extensively first, and possibly to brush up on your legalese.

Miles's expression changes to one of mild interest. "'Other' Archer, you say?"

"It's not his real name," you explain, while reflecting that you don't actually know what Archer's name is. "More of a title. And he's a magic-user, not a Quincy, so he's probably not related to you. But the coincidence is kind of amusing."

Leaving that aside, the Archers consider the various possible methods of repayment you laid out for them.

The purely financial approach is within their family's means, though considering the potency of the magic involved, it won't exactly be pocket change. Greater Spell Immunity is functionally a ninth-circle spell for you, and only castable if you use the ritual method or shave off some of the usual duration, besides; the latter is a very tempting option for this business, thanks to the timeless nature of the demiplane where you'll be hiding the Quincy, but it would cut into the amount of mana you'd be able to divert to increasing the number of targets per casting. Odds are you'd need three separate castings to cover all of the Archers. Death Ward can be shortened and spread out in the same manner, and the cost of the planar travel spells will be shared among groups by default, putting the overall price at over a thousand dollars a head.

Right around the "new car" range, then. It's better than paying the cost of a new house or something, and it seems a perfectly acceptable price for not getting the souls of most of your family ripped out, particularly given the level of magic being brought to bear.

Of the non-monetary methods of repayment, the Archers are understandably reluctant to yield up Quincy secrets and family heirlooms, but they also admit that archery lessons wouldn't begin to cover what they'll owe you.

Helping you refine your spiritual stealth is a nice middle-ground, but again, won't cover the entire debt.

All in all, the Archers are almost certainly going to end up paying you two, maybe three different ways. The Elders are leaning towards a mix of money, stealth training, and archery lessons, but they'll have to discuss the terms with the family before finalizing the deal.

And that brings the conversation around to the big reason why you asked to meet these two privately, instead of sitting down with all the adults in the extended Archer family at one time.

Miles is not the least bit surprised when you voice your concerns about younger members of the family potentially leaking the fact that you know of and are working against Yhwach's impending awakening back to the Wandenreich. In fact, he looks guilty and dismayed.

Alice gives her husband another of those flatly unimpressed looks. "Miles Archer, I swear, if you say one of our boys not only knew about this 'hidden empire' nonsense when I didn't-"

"I wasn't thinking of our boys, Alice," Miles interrupts. "I'm more worried about my nephews."

As an aside, you can't help but notice that he didn't say whether or not his sons know of the Wandenreich.

For her part, Alice suddenly has the look of someone putting a lot of puzzle pieces together. "So THAT's why your old man didn't kill your brother for not going to college."

It wasn't phrased as a question, but Miles nods anyway. "The Wandenreich recruited him right out of high school, assigned him to their New York branch when he was twenty-six, and made him the commander ten years later. He ran the place until the day he died." Mr. Archer grimaces. "Pops was always proud of him."

You glance at Balthazar, who nods. "Those were the gentlemen I got the concerning auguries for."

Alright then.

You decide that it isn't really your place to say anything about how the Archers and the rest of their extended family should deal with the potential vipers in their midst. You've alerted them to the danger, and the elders have clearly recognized the problem; actually dealing with these two nephews will be an internal matter.

That said, you do ask Miles and Alice to exercise their best discretion going forward, reminding them as gently as you can that theirs isn't the only family that will be at risk if word of your activities gets back to the Wandenreich.

"Also," you add, "please keep in mind that I know a number of harmless methods to disable potential troublemakers, and I'm sure that Balthazar has a few of his own."

"A few," the Sorcerer of the Seven Hundred and Seventy-Seventh Degree agrees easily.

"If you're suggesting we turn them into toads or something," Miles begins, only to trail off as you shake your head.

"With all due respect to the classics," you state, "I'd rather not take the risk of something going wrong while we were trying to corral and catch a couple of angry amphibians." Also, while you do have a fair bit of Transformation Magic in your repertoire, the Spell of Baleful Polymorph isn't one of those you've learned yet, while most of the shape-changing spells you DO know either require willing targets or wouldn't be helpful. "I was thinking more along the lines of the Spell of Sleep, or the Spell to Hold A Person."

Maybe more Deep Slumber than Sleep, actually; based on the life-forces and spiritual energies of the adult Quincy you've met so far, Miles's nephews could probably throw off the latter spell, unless they've been skimping on their training.

With that little addendum, you have pretty much reached the limits of what you can currently discuss with and offer to the Archers, in regards to the upcoming Selection. They need time to think about what you've said, discuss it between themselves, and figure out how to approach the other adults in their family with what they've been told this night.

A glance at the clock on the VCR underneath the Archers' television shows the time to be 8:48 pm, and shifting about in your seat to look out the living room window reveals a street that's more shadowed than properly dark, as the light pollution of a major city blunts the edges of the sort of nighttime you're used to seeing through your window at night.

It's just a shame that all that light won't be more than a mild annoyance to any corpse-demons or most other photophobic predators and parasites wandering the streets.

Aside from exchanging contact information with the Archers, is there anything else you feel is necessary to discuss with them this evening?

You exchange phone numbers with the Archers, thank Madam Lanora for her time and dismiss her, and take a few of Alice Archer's cookies for the road: one for you; one for Briar; and one more for Zelda. Then you thank your hosts for their time, and follow Balthazar outside to where the Phantom waits, engine quietly rumbling. Ryuken lingers for a couple of minutes to have a private word with his fellow Quincy, before catching up with the rest of you.

Gained Contact Info (Alice and Miles Archer)

It's twenty minutes after nine when Balthazar pulls to a stop outside the darkened facade of the Arcana Cabana. A quick sweep of the street and alley by multiple sets of senses reveals nothing to be concerned about, although that cat you've run into a couple of times slinks past you, clearly on the prowl for something. Balthazar sends his car off with its Phantom Driver to be parked, wishes you all a good night - or day, as the time zones would have it - and then gets to work disarming his front door. While he's doing that, you make with the Greater Spell of Teleportation-

-flying/falling/sinking through a strange space/medium/awareness filled with familiar shapes/alien geometries and faint/loud chorus/discordance and a near/distant green energy/presence recognition/acknowledgment marked/echoing/claimed one-

-returning Ryuken to Karakura with plenty of time to spare before lunch. Then you repeat the ritual-

-flying/falling/sinking through a strange space/medium/awareness filled with familiar shapes/alien geometries and faint/loud chorus/discordance and a near/distant green energy/presence surprise/curiosity/that was quick/why such a hurry?-

-to take yourself home for a slightly-late supper.

Zelda enjoys the fresh-baked cookie for dessert.

A couple of days later, you have a similar meeting. It starts with another trip to Karakura to pick up Ryuken, who shows up at the Kurosaki residence carrying a bag full of stark white winter gear, which you end up supplementing with a Spell to Endure the Elements out of concern that it may not be heavy enough.

Teleporting to the Southern Water Tribe village, you meet up with Elder Tiriaq and spend half an hour or so scrying out the location in Brazil where the shaman has gotten his Quincy friend's agreement to meet you. You also slip in a precautionary Augury to see how this meeting is likely to go, and are heartened when the results come back positively.

As foretold, the meeting goes well - better than the one with the Archers, you think. Some of that is down to the fire-forged friendship between the two old men, as opposed to Balthazar's more distant association with the New York Quincy, but then it comes out that Mr. Nicolau Muhlfeld, though of Echt lineage himself, chose to marry a non-Quincy - the same cranky medicine woman that patched him and Tiriaq up after their encounter with the peuchen, way back when. She's since passed on, leaving behind a single daughter who is now a grown woman with three kids of her own, of whom the youngest is about sixteen, while the eldest is married and expecting her first child.

Given that his more traditional relatives stopped talking to him before he married and have actively rejected all attempts at mending fences, "Nico" - as Tiriaq addresses him - is understandably keen on hearing the details of a major potential threat to his daughter, grandchildren, and soon-to-be great-grandchild.

He also goes off on a tangent of profanity aimed at "bloodline nonsense" in general, which does interesting things for your magically unlocked proficiency in Portuguese.

Gained Contact Info (Nicolau Muhlfeld)
Gained Portuguese E

With that business out of the way, you find yourself returning to Japan the following afternoon, this time dropping in outside the Shuzen domain-

-flying/falling/sinking through a strange space/medium/awareness filled with familiar shapes/alien geometries and faint/loud chorus/discordance and a near/distant green energy/presence alert/recognition/alarm/incoming/watch out!-

"Why is there a BUS on the Astral Plane?!" Briar screams, as the youki-supercharged public transportation vehicle you saw last Halloween comes barrelling at the two of you through the silvery void like an unholy comet. Through the bloody haze of power, the windshield, and the thick smoke that surrounds him, you can see the driver's glowing eyes go wide as the cigar almost falls out of his mouth from pure shock.

Reflexively gathering your ki, you

hitch a ride?

You're not sure what comes over you in the split-second before your body goes from recognizing the threat to acting on it, but instead of buckling down and reinforcing yourself to the limit or simply trying to get the heck out of the way, you leap/fly/will yourself up and back at an angle, trying to match the trajectory and velocity of the incoming scarlet-shrouded bus.

There is a bizarre sensation as the field of your not-yet-resolved Spell of Teleportation first comes into contact, and then overlaps with the aura of youki that wreathes the vehicle flying through the green-hued silvery void of the Astral Plane. With a feeling like a static discharge crossed with the sound of the world's largest xylophone being struck by a falling chorus of bells, you are sucked up and dragged along by the dimensional "slipstream" of the bus.

-Shock/alarm/incomprehension/WHAT?!-

-and the next thing you know, you're back in the familiar environment of air and sun, ki-reinforced fingertips clinging to the roof of the bus for dear life as the driver hits the brakes and sends the vehicle into a sudden, tire-screeching deceleration. By some miracle, you're not flung from your precarious perch as the bus spins approximately 150-degree along the road, leaving broad black smears of rubber across the tarmac before finally coming to a halt, rocking on its axles.

For a moment, all is still, but for the hiss of some overstrained mechanism within the bus.

Then the front door squeaks open, and you hear the Bus Driver's dark, dazed voice call out, "Any survivors out there?"

"I'll let you know," Briar replies, faintly at first, but with rising volume and temper as she continues, "just as soon as MY HEART STARTS BEATING AGAIN!"

"I believe I still have all my limbs, and my breakfast," another dark voice declares cheerfully, still inside the bus. It's vaguely familiar, but you're a little too distracted at the moment to place it, trying to focus on calming your ki, relaxing your grip, and freeing your fingers from the divots you appear to have worked into the roof of the bus.

Gained Evasion B (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Ki Grip F (Plus)
Gained Ki Infusion C (Plus)
Gained Ki Strike E (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Strength B (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

Also, your hands kind of ache. A lot. Nothing's bleeding or obviously broken, but Ki Enhancement or no, you're pretty sure you strained a few things with that stunt. Might want to have Briar take a look at that later.

You know, after she's calmed down.

"What the HECK was that? Huh?!" your partner demands. "A bus! A freaking BUS! On the Astral Plane! How does that even WORK?! How did we even SEE each other?!"

"This is a new one by me," the Bus Driver admits, as he steps down from his vehicle. Out of the corner of one eye, and past the edge of the roof, you can see him starting to look the bus over for damage. "I normally don't see anyone when making jumps like that, much less almost hit them." There is a brief pause. "At least, I don't THINK I hit them; hate to imagine I'd run some poor sucker over by accident..."

Something about the way he says that makes you wonder what he'd say about hitting people intentionally.

"It's unlikely," the second voice intones, still annoyingly chipper after the near-collision. "One of the little benefits of teleportation magic is that travelers are not truly on the Material or Astral Planes while in transit, and hence can't hit anything that IS fully on one side or the other. Collisions along the Astral Border aren't an issue, either, due to how the differing points of origin and other factors play into the trajectories... or at least, they're not SUPPOSED to be." The robed and hooded figure of Mikogami steps down from the bus and looks in your direction. "Ah, young Mr. Harris. I thought I recognized that aura."

"Fancy running into you here."

Two pairs of glowing eyes blink in the shadows of their respective headgear.

"Or, you know," you add with a weak laugh, "the other way around."

Mikogami throws back his head with a great bellow of laughter, and even the Bus Driver pauses in the middle of his vehicular inspection to snicker.

While those two are busy being amused, you straighten up, flex your fingers again, and take a moment to look around. You aimed your Spell of Teleportation at the usual spot on the border of the Shuzen estate, but this isn't where you've ended up; instead, you're down the road from a tunnel that cuts through a hill that you don't recognize.

You haven't experienced a teleportation mishap in ages, so this evidence of one is somewhat worrying. Not as much as it could have been, admittedly: you landed ON the road, rather than IN it; and while you're too far from the signs hanging over the mouth of the tunnel to read them clearly, the shape of some of the writing is definitely Japanese, so you at least ended up in the right country.

Leaving those dark speculations aside, you eyeball the distance between your current position and the road. If your hands were less sore, you'd just lower yourself over the side of the bus and drop the rest of the way; as it is, you're not so high up that you can't simply jump down, and so you do, reinforcing yourself against the shock of the landing with a quick surge of ki.

Bending your knees a bit and cycling your energies again to work out the impact, you turn to the other two, who have recovered themselves. This is only the second time you've encountered these individuals, and while your meeting with the Bus Driver was just last Halloween, you haven't laid eyes on the Exorcist since Kahlua's last birthday.

Speaking of which, she's turning ten in a few more weeks, and hasn't said anything to you about a party as yet. Something to ask about, once this afternoon's meeting is over?

Back on topic: the last time you were in Mikogami's presence, he registered as lacking any sort of aura that you were familiar with. Your assorted senses have grown considerably in the intervening year, however, and you've gained familiarity with energies beyond ki and arcane magic, besides; as such, while you know better than to actively probe at the white-robed figure before you now, a passive read reveals a few things.

First of all, he's under some kind of seal. The masking aspect of the work is very good, subtle enough that you can only faintly detect the power flowing through whatever device is involved - he's wearing it under enough layers that you can't make its form or location - a mix of mana and spiritual energy that fits the work of a divine spellcaster, mingled with hints of youki. The ongoing suppression and purification of that last type of energy prevents you from identifying the exact type of monstrous life-force involved, but you're pretty sure it's not vampiric in nature; after all the time you've spent around the Shuzens and occasional weaker vampires on their payroll, like Miss Cruz, you think that you'd recognize a sealed member of the species when you met one. Even with only smothered and burnt-out traces to work off of, Mikogami's energy is clearly that of some other sort of monster, which doesn't feel like any creature you've encountered to date.

Gained Ki Sense B (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Spiritual Sight A

Second, while the seal is draining so much youki that Mikogami appears to have none, you can still clearly make out a mix of mana and spiritual energy underneath. It's suppressed at least as well as your own magic, making any estimate of power iffy at best, but that is definitely the aura of a divine spellcaster - and the same one that created the sealing device Mikogami is wearing, at that.

Third, as far as you can tell, Mikogami is neither wearing nor carrying any other enchanted items. Even the silver cross hanging from his neck is non-magical, though from the energies that cling to it, it's been used extensively as a spellcasting focus.

"So, young Alexander," the Exorcist says, drawing your attention away from matters of aura, "do you have any idea what happened just now, to cause our separate methods of travel to intersect?"

You are quite certain that part of the problem lies in your abnormal teleportation magic. However, for all your prior experience with the strange no-time of the Astral Plane and the glowing presence therein, this is the first occasion where you've encountered other travelers there that you didn't bring along yourself.

Thinking on it, a suspicion forms in your mind, leading you to ask the two monsters if they were traveling to the Shuzen estate for the meeting. When the Bus Driver confirms that, the suspicion grows, leading you to believe that because both parties were traveling to the same approximate location at the same time, you were close enough - extra-dimensionally speaking - for the energy fields of your respective teleportation methods to overlap and entangle. That's why you were able to "ride" the bus out of the Astral Plane to a location you hadn't intended.

In different company, you might have speculated all of this out loud, but as noted, this is only the second time you've met these two beings. You do not - and to an extent, cannot and should not - trust them as much as you would more familiar people. But Mikogami is one of the Dark Lords of the Orient you're scheduled to meet today, and this would be a chance to impress the extent of your magical learning on him. As for the Bus Driver... who knows?

With that thought in mind, how much of your thoughts on the subject do you want to share?

Also, will you teleport the rest of the way to Castle Shuzen, or would you rather take the bus?

You explain your theory of entangling teleportation effects to the two monsters, leaving out the detail about your own magic being a little wonky in this particular field.

It is, after all, only your second meeting with this pair, and you're not quite comfortable with explaining the oddities of your teleportation spells to them just yet.

Mikogami hums thoughtfully as he hears you out. "I will admit, I can't think of the last time I heard of two people teleporting to the same destination, at the same time, using different spells," he says thoughtfully. "Nor is teleportation magic one of my personal specialties. Something to research, then."

"In your copious free time, you mean?" the Bus Driver snarks.

"If it affects the operation of the bus, it affects the running of the Academy," the Headmaster points out gravely. "In which case," he adds, eyes glowing brighter and a more menacing tone entering his voice, "I will MAKE time to investigate the matter, if I must."

"...point."

Then the robed monster turns to you, and adds, "And when you feel ready to trust me with the rest of your suspicions on the matter, young Alexander, I'll be waiting to hear them."

...

You ask the Bus Driver if he'd be averse to giving you a lift the rest of the way to Castle Shuzen.

"There's always room for one more," he agrees with an unnecessarily wide, toothy grin and ominous tone. "Just let me check to make sure that everything's in working order, and maybe figure out where we landed, first."

So saying, he gets back aboard his vehicle, drops into the seat, and starts peering at and fiddling with things on the dashboard. After a couple of minutes, you see the Bus Driver nod, after which he revs the motor - which had been idling quietly since the emergency stop - and seems to listen to the sound.

"Alright, we're good!" he declares. "And only about ten kilometers off course, too!"

You let Mikogami board the bus first, then follow him up the steps with Briar drifting along behind you.

Sunnydale doesn't have much in the way of public transportation, mostly just the big yellow school buses and the depot that runs regular trips to and from L.A. You've only used the former on school trips, and have never ridden on the latter, only seen them from a distance; still, that's enough to say that this bus is a fair bit nicer than those. The seats are upholstered, cushions thin but soft, and lacking the sort of wear and tear that results from twice-daily, five days a week use by hyperactive grade schoolers and moody middle-schoolers. Nobody's taken a pen or marker to the walls, and you'd be willing to venture there's little to no gum stuck under the seats. No advertisements hang from the ceiling; instead, that space is given over to luggage compartments, hinting that this bus sees use for more extensive sorts of field trips than the usual day visit to the zoo.

Not surprisingly, every inch of the seating and a good portion of the walls besides is covered by a persistent aura of youki. Dozens of signatures, if not hundreds, from almost as many different species, all mingled together and sunken into the structure of the bus until it almost radiates a distinct aura of its own.

If this vehicle doesn't become a tsukumogami in the next century, you'll be honestly shocked.

Mikogami has taken the first seat behind the Bus Driver. Seeing no particular reason not to, you claim the matching seat in the opposite row.

"Please remain in your seats and keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times," the Bus Driver announces cheerfully, as he closes the door behind you, "especially if we get sucked into another plane of existence again."

And with that, he makes for the tunnel, an aura of Summoning Magic building up within and around the bus as it advances.

You have a few minutes before reaching Castle Shuzen. Is there something you'd like to discuss with Mikogami, the Bus Driver, or Briar in the meantime?

"Yes, sir."

Mikogami grins, nods, and lets the matter end there.

For your part, you're left wondering how he saw through you enough to realize that you were holding anything back about the teleportation mishap. Then it occurs to you that in addition to being a powerful monster, he's also a professional educator - meaning he not only deals with the supernatural on a daily basis, but kids, specifically supernatural kids. And given he runs an entire Academy for monsters, he's probably been on that particular career track for a while, and hence likely has extensive prior experience with kids trying to keep things from him.

So... yeah. Bit of a type disadvantage, there.

As the bus rumbles along, you decide to use what time you have until you reach the Shuzens discussing Youkai Academy with its Headmaster.

No sooner have you broached the subject than Mikogami reaches into a pocket, pulls out a brochure, and hands it over.

"When Akasha called to arrange today's meeting," he explains, "I realized that I'd promised to send you one of the Academy's brochures, back at Kahlua's birthday party, and quite forgotten to follow through on that. Do forgive me."

Honestly, you'd kind of forgotten about that promise yourself. It's been a busy year.

Gained Youkai Academy Brochure

Continuing to talk as you thumb through the handout - which is a fairly substantial thing, more of a booklet, really - a more complete image of Youkai Academy forms in your mind.

For starters, while the word "academy" generally refers to a facility for secondary or post-secondary education, Youkai is a much more comprehensive institution, covering everything from daycare through elementary and middle to the high school level. These aren't all located together, instead being scattered around some place called "Pentacle City," which exists largely to help support the schools. The brochure doesn't mention exactly where the city is located, and Mikogami clarifies that it exists in a pocket dimension not unlike the Shuzens' own.

The Exorcist grudgingly admits that Youkai Academy is not the most academically outstanding institution in Japan, but he attributes at least part of the shortfall to the fact that one of the Academy's founding principles was to provide a modern education to those who otherwise could not afford it, be they youkai, magic-wielding human, or foreign non-human.

"We have, on occasion, admitted young demons who've passed a rigorous screening process," the Headmaster admits, "as well as the rare human who doesn't fit into the public education system. We try to keep that quiet, though. Demons are neither liked nor trusted by most other members of our little community, if for admittedly good reasons, and it's just easier for them to integrate with the student body if the majority remain ignorant of their nature. As for humans... well, if you recall my conversation with your teacher...?"

You do, vaguely, and you can fill in the bits you've forgotten easily enough. By and large, monsters are predators, and for many thousands of years, humans were the preferred prey species, or at least one whose only real defenses were numbers, appeasement, and the rare presence of more powerful "protectors": inhuman rivals; mortal magic-users; heroes. That has changed in recent centuries, especially the latest one, but the habits of millennia and the instinct of eons are difficult to change, and the average modern unarmed civilian is no less vulnerable to monstrous aggression than most of his ancestors would have been.

No less prey.

There is more than one reason, Mikogami notes, why the school mandates that all students and staff must remain in their human forms when in public.

Getting back to the question of curriculum, if Youkai Academy isn't setting any records for oustanding scholastic achievement, it isn't setting them in the opposite direction, either. All the required courses are offered, and there is a large collection of extracurricular activities that runs the gamut from athletics organizations and sports teams to the school newspaper and hobby clubs. Work programs are available in the upper years for those who are interested or in need, and while the Academy lacks its own post-secondary education facilities-

"Even if every monster in Japan were interested in pursuing that level of education, the funding just isn't there," Mikogami sighs.

-it does offer preparatory programs for several reputable (if unremarkable) universities and community colleges, as well as a number of trade schools.

While the two of you have been talking, the bus has made only one teleportation jump that you've noticed, and then only because of the Bus Driver's laughing advice to, "Hold on to your soooouuuuls!" as you entered that tunnel. Nothing went wrong, and even paying attention, your passive senses noticed only a smooth and fairly subtle transition along the planar boundaries - at least for a vehicle of this size - before you emerged from an entirely different tunnel, which you shortly recognized as being the last one on the road to the Shuzen estate.

At the very least, then, you didn't break the bus.

Now the Bus Driver pulls to a stop outside the pocket plane's border.

"End of the line," he intones with creepy cheer.

As you make your way through the outermost layer of the Shuzens' home security, you notice that most of the guards are exhibiting a mix of nerves and overt respectfulness. Much of this behavior is directed towards the Headmaster, who cheerfully addresses the guards by name, asks how their personal lives have been going, and just generally carries on like a teacher who's proud of a student and doesn't care who knows it, but you suspect there's at least some deference to a known Dark Lord in there as well.

The Bus Driver gets a few bows as well, for reasons you are less certain of.

Your musings end abruptly as you cross over into the demiplane proper, and the castle's spirit promptly manifests in front of you for a hug-

"My word," the Bus Driver muses, "now what have we here?"

-and promptly ducks behind you in surprise. After a moment, the place-spirit leans to one side, looking past you at the newcomers with an air of curiosity and no real fear.

"I did tell you that Akasha mentioned the castle manifesting a genius loci," Mikogami reminds his associate.

"Yeah, but you left out the part where it has the faintest sense of a kami about it, or that it'd like the kid, here, so much." The Bus Driver emphasizes his words by gesturing your way, the freshly lit cigar in his hand leaving a trail of thick, rich-smelling smoke in its wake. Regarding you and the spirit with glowing-eyed interest, he says, "What's going on here?"

This is one mystical mystery you don't see much point in trying to conceal the details of: the knowledge is harmless enough; and if you refused to talk, these guys would just go to Akasha for the information, meaning you'd have snubbed their interest for no benefit. As such, while your party is being driven up to the castle proper, you explain for the Bus Driver and the Headmaster how an unforeseen interaction between the ambient energies of the demiplane, Akasha's particular youki, and your own Power accelerated the ongoing (super)natural evolution of Castle Shuzen from a mere physical existence into something a touch more spiritual.

The two monsters listen intently.

"Fascinating," Mikogami declares, eyes bright. "I wonder if the same thing would happen if you were to visit the Academy...?"

...you can't guarantee that it would, but you can't guarantee that it wouldn't, either.

"I think I'm going to have to ask you NOT use this 'Power' of yours on or around my bus," the Bus Driver says, giving you a frank looking. "Not unless it's a real emergency."

Not ready for it to come to life?

"Oh, don't get me wrong, kid." The Bus Driver grins around his cigar. "I'd LOVE to see what would happen, and I certainly wouldn't object to the company. It's just that the last time we had a newborn vehicle tsukumogami driving around the countryside, it made a glorious mess. The government wouldn't be happy to have a modern update of that on their hands." He snickers, adding, "I'll grant you, that's almost reason enough to do it anyway, but I did give my word to some people I actually respect that I'd help prevent disruptions of the secrecy pacts like that."

For better or worse, that's when the car pulls to a stop inside the castle courtyard, preventing you from asking about this "last time" and leaving you with a vision of a self-driving bus with eyes in its front window and a grinning bumper.

Akasha is waiting for you in the front hall, but while she's welcoming Mikogami - with an air somewhere between formality and familiarity - you notice the Bus Driver wandering towards one of the doors by himself.

"And where do you think you're going?" Akasha calls, not even turning her head.

"I was thinking I could use a drink," comes the casual reply.

"It's eight in the morning."

"I'm thirsty!"

You wonder if you should say anything. On the one hand, it IS sort of customary for the adults to have access to alcohol when you have these little meetings, but on the other hand, that's mainly because Ambrose and/or Akkiko are usually present. Also, you don't THINK you're going to be dropping any major brain-benders...

Speaking of which, aside from bringing the Dark Lords (plus one?) up to date on the outstanding Quincy issue, and discussing the possibility of using some of your stock of Gratitude Crystals on that woman who Mikogami is looking out for, after she was unwillingly turned into a demon by Dracula's meddling in the last Grail War, is there anything you feel needs to be included in the conversation?

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" you ask mildly.

The adults turn to you, wordlessly expressing puzzlement (the Bus Driver), curiosity (Akasha), and interest (Mikogami).

The castle's spirit echoes the majority.

"Drinking and driving is bad," you point out in a tone as close to innocent as you can manage, channeling years' worth of public service announcements. "And that's just with ordinary cars. I have to imagine it's a lot worse if teleportation magic is involved."

Akasha turns to the Bus Driver with a look of not-quite-smug triumph.

"I suppose that much is true, for humans and monsters who can't hold their drink," the Bus Driver replies. "I, on the other hand, have an outstanding tolerance, and plenty of experience with alcohol." Almost preening, he adds, "Why, I'm practically a professional drinker!"

Akasha scowls. "That is NOT something to be proud of."

Her answer is another of those broad grins beneath glowing eyes.

For your part, you consider this response, and then nod. "Fair enough."

"...eh?"

"I mean, Ambrose always needs a drink after I do something he thought was impossible," you explain to the startled Dark Lady. "So he's earned it."

Impossibly, the Bus Driver's grin widens. "Yes! I definitely have."

"I could use a nice stiff drink, myself," Mikogami admits.

Akasha looks around, and then sighs. "What happened?"

"Alex was being himself again," Briar grumbles, before flying over to recount the teleport mishap.

While the ladies engage in a moment of feminine solidarity, the Bus Driver turns and ambles off in search of that drink. You call after him, cautioning that the spell of sobriety isn't free.

"Only lightweights need magical support while drinking!" he calls back, laughing.

The room that Akasha has had set aside for today's meeting is one that you haven't seen before. It's not too dissimilar from the sitting room where you sat down with the Shuzen adults, Lu-sensei, Ambrose, and Akkiko to discuss Dracula almost a year ago, with wooden paneling, plush carpet and furniture, bookcases, and paintings to soften the stone construction. However, part of one wall has been slid open to reveal a fair-sized video screen, modest stereo speakers, and the controls for several devices; one of the castle's staff is present when you arrive, remote in hand as she watches the monitor, where an unfamiliar emblem turns slowly around its vertical axis.

"Is that supposed to be a bat?" Briar wonders, tilting her head.

There are definitely bat-wings involved, but they're attached to what looks... more or less?... like a humanoid body.

"Maybe it's a vampire?" you offer.

There IS a vague resemblance to the winged form Akasha used back at the Trials on Bali Ha'i, although the stylized figure has only the one set of wings, and the shape of the body gives away no indication of gender.

"Actually," Mikogami offers helpfully, "it's the symbol of Fairy Tale. And while it is vampire-themed due to Lady Gyokuro's control of the organization, it's intended to be a fairy."

You and Briar look from the Exorcist to the screen to each other, and then turn back to Mikogami.

"The hell it is," the fairy says bluntly.

"What she said," the fairy's partner agrees.

While you're trying to wrap your head around someone's idea of artistic liberties, Akasha speaks with the servant. You overhear "Touhou Fuhai," which you recall as being the name or title of the third Dark Lord of the Orient, and also catch the words "on hold."

Looks like you're going to have your first teleconference. That's kind of neat.

A minute later, the not-a-fairy emblem disappears and is replaced by-

"Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?"

-an extreme close-up of a dark glass lens, behind which you can make out an eye looking about with some confusion.

"Touhou Fuhai," Akasha greets the stranger warmly. "Good morning."

"Ah, Akasha! Good morning, dear lady! Always a pleasure to hear your lovely voice, and even more to see you!"

The eye pulls back from the camera that must be on the other end of the line, revealing a tiny figure clad in Eastern-style robes, smiling face as wrinkled as a prune, with pointed ears. Tinted spectacles cover his eyes, and a long-stemmed pipe hangs from his mouth, but even so, if not for the slightly pale Asiatic skin-tone and long white hair hanging straight past those diminutive shoulders, you'd almost think you were looking at Yoda's real-life cousin.

"Six seconds before he started flirting," Mikogami idly notes, in a voice pitched to carry. "That has to be a new record."

"When confronted with a vision of such beauty and grace, it is my privilege- nay, my DUTY as a man to shower her with the compliments she has well-earned!" the Undefeated of the East replies grandiosely. Then he snidely adds, "Not that a thug like yourself ever understood such things, even before you became a celibate."

Mikogami's eyes narrow. "Big talk coming from someone so very... small."

Withered brows narrow as the ancient jaw clenches around the brim of the pipe. "...do you dare?"

The Exorcist grins. "I speak only the truth."

"OOOOHHHH!" The little old monster fairly explodes with fury. "Mikogami, so help me, I will REACH THROUGH THIS SCREEN AND TEAR OUT YOUR-"

"BOYS!" Akasha interjects. "NOT in front of the child!"

Two gazes turn your way.

(Shielding the spirit.) "Yes, he's at an impressionable age."

You punctuate your remark by giving the little old monster on the video screen a sour look, as you shield the castle-spirit's ears against further imprecations - or rather, since it doesn't really HAVE ears the way most organic life-forms do, you clap your hands protectively over the sides of its head, about where ears would be on a human or monster.

The spirit reacts to this by mimicking your action, clapping its own hands over your own.

"...um," Touhou Fuhai responds. "Is there a particular reason why you're holding empty air, young one?"

But it's not- oh, wait.

You look to Akasha, and ask, "That camera doesn't pick up spiritual energy, does it?"

"I'm afraid not, Alex," she says with a faint, wry smile.

And since the elemental isn't currently physically manifested, that means he might as well be invisible - and inaudible - as far as the third Dark Lord is concerned.

Well, shoot; there goes a perfectly good joke.

"Foiled by technological shortcomings," you mutter, lowering your hands.

"Don't worry about it," Akasha assures you. "We've ALL been there before."

"Hmmm," Touhou Fuhai murmurs, squinting at the image being shown on his side of the call. "I take it, then, that there's a fifth party to our little reunion I'm not aware of."

"Seventh, actually," Mikogami corrects. "Though one-"

"And that's my cue," the Bus Driver proclaims as he enters the room, a tall glass mug of some golden liquid in one hand and a rice ball in the other. Behind him come a pair of slightly harried-looking servants: the first carries a tray of several empty glasses and numerous drinks, most of which are alcoholic in nature, though you spot a couple of soft drinks as well; and the other's tray is weighed down by a range of snacks.

"-never mind," the Exorcist corrects himself.

Akasha gives the Bus Driver a look of mild annoyance, to which he grins unrepentantly.

It takes only a minute or so to explain to Touhou Fuhai who and what else is in the room that the electronics aren't letting him see. He is quick to apologize to both Briar and the spirit for not acknowledging them, then to you for raising his voice around such a young spirit; he also congratulates Akasha on Castle Shuzen's development, and asks her to pass his compliments on to Issa and Gyokuro.

Having a genius loci on such close positive terms with your family is worth some bragging rights, it seems, or rather, it will be, once the spirit in question gets past the book-throwing stage.

With all of that sorted out, everyone takes their seats. You end up sitting at the "head" of the room, directly facing the screen, with a fairy-sized seat for Briar on the small table to your right, and Mikogami and the Bus Driver further on. The spirit of Castle Shuzen settles in on your left side, with Akasha taking the seat on its far side, and once the servants have set down their burdens and made sure the guests all have what they desire, they excuse themselves from the room.

For your part, you took one of each.

Once everyone is settled, you get on with business.

First up is the matter of the Quincy Genocide. When you originally broached the subject with the Shuzens, you weren't really asking for help, more just doing them the courtesy of providing intel on a matter that will eventually affect them, as well as taking the opportunity to vent some stress to friendly ears. This time around, you're dealing with a priest, plus whatever the Bus Driver and Touhou Fuhai are; while you still aren't exactly asking for help, the possibility exists that they might be able and willing to offer it.

The Exorcist soon puts paid to that notion.

"Quincy and youkai have a somewhat uncomfortable history," he explains, in the tone of voice you've often heard teachers use in the classroom. "While most of us usually don't eat souls, we were and to a great extent still are predators of humans, and Quincy beliefs are generally more concerned about protecting the living and avenging the dead than reaching any sort of balance or detente. Combine that with the fact that your average Quincy has enough spiritual awareness to pick the average disguised youkai out of a crowd, can muster enough firepower at a moment's notice to pose a significant threat, AND that the youkai either doesn't know this or doesn't want to admit it, and will generally react badly to being threatened or injured by what appears to be a mere human in any case..."

"It wasn't quite a guaranteed recipe for disaster," the Bus Driver chimes in, "not in every case. But there were still some messy incidents way back when the Quincy first came to Japan, and plenty of grudges on both sides grew out of them."

Akasha frowns. "Why is this the first I'm hearing about any of this?"

"It's my understanding that the Quincy have always stepped lightly around strigoi," Mikogami replies. "They rely on ambient spiritual energy to fuel their powers, but your youki tends to contaminate those same energies, especially in combat. Drawing on such a 'tainted' power source wouldn't be healthy for those who are, in the end, simply variant humans, and most of them wouldn't have the skill to filter out the youki fast enough to fight."

"I can't speak to events overseas," the Bus Driver adds from within his cloud of cigar smoke, "but most of the local unpleasantness between Quincy and monster was settled a century or two before you came to our fair islands. Enough of the hotheads on both sides had been maimed or killed for the survivors to figure out that pursuing the grudge any further wasn't worth the cost, particularly when they all had other enemies to think about. The Quincy generally stayed in the spiritually rich territories where the kami were strongest, monsters generally stayed out, and anybody who crossed the line in either direction knew he was taking his life into his own hands, even if he might have misattributed the reason for it."

"That roughly parallels how matters developed in China," Touhou Fuhai agrees.

Gained Chinese History F (Plus) (Plus)

"And then, of course," the little old Dark Lord continues, "there was the purge enacted by those overbearing samurai psychopomps of yours. There was a considerable decline in Quincy/monster interactions after that."

"I'd hardly call the Shinigami 'ours'," Mikogami grumbles sourly. "Their mandate covers human souls, not monsters."

"Not that it stops 'em from sticking their noses in anyway," the Bus Driver growls.

Touhou Fuhai makes a similar noise of discontent.

Huh. So that's two pretty good arguments for leaving the monsters out of your efforts to save Quincy lives, whether by moving them to your (hopefully) safe haven or joining in the attack on Silbern.

Is there anything you'd like to say at this point?

One of the little things you like about visiting the Shuzens is that they have both the means and the motivation to accommodate your partner's presence.

As such, while you're picking out a drink and a rice-ball for yourself, you're also able to grab appropriately sized servings of each for Briar as well.

"Tiny rice-balls!" the fairy cheers. "Score!"

With your curiosity aroused by Mikogami's remark about the Quincy having difficulty using spiritual energy contaminated with non-human power, you inquire how prevalent that issue is. If it's only a problem for the weak or unskilled, then that's as far as it goes, but if it affects more powerful and experienced Quincy as well, you might be able to leverage that weakness for the raid on Silbern.

"My information indicates that sensitivity to spiritual contamination is something of a universal problem for the Quincy," the Exorcist replies. "Evidently, it's one of the reasons why they use crosses and other tools as focuses for their powers, rather than exerting their spiritual abilities upon the world directly. Those focuses are built to filter out common toxic elements, but since that unavoidably reduces the flow of spiritual energy, there are numerous variations on the basic design, making trade-offs in efficiency, safety, output, or cost as the maker saw fit."

...so he's saying it depends on their tools?

"To a degree," the robed figure clarifies. "Personal power and skill would still be factors, though: an inherently stronger soul would be more resistant to foreign energies; and a sufficiently skilled Quincy should be able to reproduce the basic effect of their tools. As to how widespread such strength and skill are these days... well, you'd have to ask a Quincy to be sure."

Good thing you're on speaking terms with a couple of Quincy, huh?

Shifting gears, you ask the Dark Lords if they have any information about the Wandenreich. While you reckon it's a bit of a long shot, given the isolated, extraplanar nature of the Hidden Empire, the fact that youkai and monsters have at least some history with the Quincy makes it worth the asking.

As it happens, the answer is yes, they do have some information - just not much. After you first explained about the existence of the Wandenreich to Akasha and Gyokuro, Akasha told her two peers and former battle-companions, while Gyokuro directed some of her subordinates to look into the matter. By running down recent accounts of encounters between Quincy and youkai, and then comparing where they'd taken place to where Quincy families are known to reside, the Dark Lords and Fairy Tale have identified Tokyo, Osaka, and Hong Kong as likely locations for Wandenreich outposts. They haven't actually FOUND those facilities as of yet, however, and once again, the question comes up of what, if anything, they should do about them, if and when their locations are known.

"That's up to you," you say to the Dark Lords, "but I should probably mention that I've been informed Amaterasu has taken a personal interest in this whole thing."

Akasha winces. "Yes, the Hakubas told us that their kami's petition to Takamagahara had been heard. That was all they could say for certain, though; do you happen to know how it was received?"

Mikogami does a double-take at that.

A startled "Wait, what?" blares from the speakers.

"Only that it's got the Shinigami taking the matter seriously," you answer honestly.

Touhou Fuhai sputters, managing not to choke on his pipe or the smoke. "Are you- how could you even know that?!"

The discussion of Quincy matters is just about done. Regarding the talk about Gratitude Crystals...

"I know some people," you answer Touhou Fuhai. "More precisely, I know a guy who knows a cat-"

In the corner of your field of view, you see Akasha's eyes narrow slightly.

"-but that's about as much as I can say without giving away other people's secrets." You make a gesture that is one-half apology, one-half resolution.

The Dark Lord of Hong Kong frowns, but nods, clearly understanding your decision to protect a source, even if it frustrates his own curiosity.

"Are your contacts trustworthy?" Mikogami inquires.

"They are," you state. "At least for this matter. I was also able to verify the information I got from them against a second source," you add, thinking of the comments the Goddesses made during that part of the meeting of the mystical minds at Urahara's. "For a given value of 'verification', anyway."

"Oh?"

"Words of agreement and support from the Goddesses I follow," you explain, glossing over the not-so-minor detail that you can sometimes hear Din, Nayru, and Farore speaking.

"Auguries, or Communion?" the monster in priest's robes inquires.

"Closer to the latter."

"Ah." Mikogami nods, taking the implication that there were limits on the information passed to you - which is true, if not quite to the extent he likely suspects. "That will do, then."

Before getting down to business about the Gratitude Crystals, you inquire if the Dark Lords would be willing to grant you a few minutes to call in an expert.

"And who would this 'expert' be?" Touhou Fuhai wonders.

"My sorcery tutor," you explain.

"I don't mind," Akasha says, "but will you need permission from Kahlua again?"

It wouldn't hurt.

"'Permission'?" Touhou Fuhai repeats abruptly, expression suddenly intent. "Akasha, are you suggesting that the boy plans to summon his tutor?"

"Yes," you and the Dark Lady say in unison.

"In that case, I vote in favor of a short recess, and would very much like to see the young sorcerer's technique in action."

You've summoned Batreaux and others with an audience before, so you don't have any particular objection to that request. Looking around, you note that you'll have to move some of the furniture to clear a space big enough for the summoning circle you require to get Batreaux in here - and then another chair after that. A scaled-down application of Telekinesis is more than sufficient for the task, and you clear a space while Akasha makes a couple of calls over the castle's intercom.

The little spirit is eager to help your redecorating effort, but he's not strong enough to move big plush chairs like the ones you're currently using around on his own yet. Even so, you play along, letting him "push" the seats back while you provide most of the lateral movement and all of the lift with your magic.

When the task is done, the elemental raises its hands in a victory pose.

You quickly lay down a circle of mana, and almost immediately have to start fielding questions from Touhou Fuhai and Mikogami. The former has much more to ask and say about summoning, quickly leading you to suspect he's something of an expert in the field, but the Headmaster isn't exactly a slouch in this field of magical theory himself.

For once, Kahlua doesn't show up to see you in person, instead giving you permission to summon Batreaux over the intercom. Evidently she's in the middle of a lesson, and history seems not to be her favorite subject, meaning the tutor is particularly determined to see her complete the assignment.

You wish her luck.

After that brief talk with your friend, and once the two curious Dark Lords have quieted down, you get on with the spell.

Ten minutes later...

"I RISE AGAIN!"

*KRAKATHOOM!*

The Bus Driver, who has been fairly quiet for a while now, grins. "I like him already."

You introduce Batreaux to the three monsters that he hasn't met yet, and explain that you've called him over the matter of the Gratitude Crystals and the half-demon, for which he readily agrees to take part in the discussion. After he's stepped out of your conjured summoning circle, you dismiss it and start moving the furniture back into place.

"Care for a drink?" the Bus Driver offers your teacher while you're working.

Batreaux holds up a hand. "Thank you, but it's a bit early in the day for me."

"Can't say I've ever had that problem, myself, but to each his own."

Once everyone is settled, you and your teacher begin by explaining what Gratitude Crystals are and how you go about collecting them. This involves a certain amount of "show" to go with the "tell," with you taking out the Gratitude Crystallizer and holding it up to the nearest light to reveal the mass of condensed emotion that it's been holding and growing for you. At this point, the solidified gratitude fills over half of the Crystallizer's interior volume, and it glows a warm orange when the light hits it.

"Out of curiosity," Mikogami inquires, "is it possible to collect other emotions in a similar manner?"

"In theory, yes," Batreaux replies. "In practice, the only emotion other than gratitude that I know to have been materialized is love, which can produce Heart Containers."

Akasha blinks. "I think I recall one of the priests mentioning that Heart Containers were SYMBOLS of love, but you're saying they're actually MADE out of it?"

"Sometimes, yes, although I am given to understand that the ones manifested from romantic love are a bit different from those handed down by the Goddesses."

This of course requires a short segue to explain what Heart Containers are, for the sake of the three monsters who weren't invited to your birthday party. The idea of a great warrior gaining strength from defeating powerful enemies comes as absolutely no surprise to them, although Touhou Fuhai notes that in many Earthly traditions, such power boosts are usually gained in a more... visceral manner.

Batreaux grimaces. "I am familiar with such VILE practices. They are... not unknown in the darker forms of sorcery. The ancient demons that invaded Hyrule so long ago held a similar custom, and some of their descendants have held onto or rediscovered the practice - as much for the sake of mocking the Goddesses and their gifts as for any potential increase to their own power, I suspect."

Getting back on track, your sorcery tutor recounts how he tasked you with collecting Gratitude Crystals as the first part of paying him for his services as a tutor, with the intention of using them to help a demon that wished to become closer to mortality make the transition.

Mikogami straightens up in his seat at that point. "They can do that?"

"When used to fuel the proper ritual for a willing recipient, yes," Batreaux answers. "And young Alex has informed me that such a person is in your care: a young lady whose demonic heritage was forcibly awakened just a few years ago?"

The Exorcist looks from your tutor to you. "How did you know about that?"

"I don't know if Miss Akasha told you, but the Shuzens and I have been looking into the events of the Fourth Fuyuki Holy Grail War, along with some other interested parties. One of them, a wizard by the name of Merle Ambrose-"

You pause to see if there is any recognition of the name.

"I know of him," Mikogami says, a touch impatiently.

"-gave us a fairly detailed summary of the participants, events, and aftermath of the War," you continue, "including the fact that you took custody of the woman in question."

"Oh?" Touhou Fuhai says from the monitor. "What happened?"

You glance at Mikogami, and when he doesn't object or make to speak, you recount what you know of the unfortunate woman who was transformed into a gargoyle-like demon due to Dracula's actions.

"...I was aware that stubbornly undying wretch had been summoned as one of the Servants," Touhou Fuhai says after a moment, scowling darkly. "I hadn't known that he left behind problems like this. Is the woman in question the only one, or...?"

"No, but Miss Boley's was the most severe reaction, at least in the immediate wake of the Grail War." Mikogami lets out a sigh of frustration. "I've done what I can, but demonic blood is difficult for my methods to safely suppress over the long term, and her reaction to the transformation, while entirely understandable, has NOT been helpful." He looks at you and Batreaux. "If you believe you can assist her in recovering more of her humanity than I have managed, I can safely say that we would both thank you for it."

You spend the next few minutes discussing options with Mikogami for meeting and helping Miss Boley. Given your committment to protecting the Quincy, having Shadow Alex join the attack on Silbern, and clearing your remaining debt to Navi for her help beforehand, you aren't going to be available to work on this particular project until after June 17th at the earliest, but that is no particular issue for Mikogami, who expects it will take him some time to convince the woman to agree to meet with you in the first place.

Mikogami is also on board with your stated desire for Batreaux and yourself to meet Miss Boley and assess her overall condition, to get a better idea of how the unique circumstances of her transformation and the Exorcist's efforts to counter it will impact the ritual you mean to perform, before you start making promises about restoring her human form.

"It would be a cruel thing to tell her that you could help her, and then allow some overlooked variable to ruin the entire process out of simple carelessness," he observes.

While a certain delay is acceptable, you don't want to leave things too long, and not just out of any sense of kindness; assuming Roderick Pritchard's estimate was correct, you'll be visiting the Earthside Memorian Base on or around the 1st of July.

Mikogami says he'll get in touch with you through the Shuzens, once Miss Boley has made up her mind.

On a related note, you ask the assembled Dark Lords (plus one) if they're aware of any other half- or full demons that would want to undergo the same ritual. It's taken you months to gather the Gratitude Crystals you currently have, which are just enough to help a half-demon make the shift to human; if there are other people out there who want or need to shed their demonic heritage, it would be best for you to find out as soon as possible, so you can try to arrange your schedule for a more active gratitude-collection effort.

For better or worse, none of the four powerful monsters have any names to offer you. The number of living demonic individuals that the Dark Lords of the Orient are currently on non-hostile terms with is quite small, and of those few, none have ever mentioned being uncomfortable with their lineage, or acted as though they were.

Then, having reached the limits of that particular topic, you inquire about those non-visceral methods of gaining strength from fallen enemies that were alluded to.

You consider phrasing it as an academic interest, but while three of the attendees of this meeting might buy it, you're quite sure neither Batreaux nor Miss Akasha would.

Speaking of whom, Lady Bloodriver reminds you of the totem spear you received from Shaman Tiriaq, and points out that collecting trophies and relics of past victories, such as the spear was meant to hold, is one of the "less messy" ways of pursuing that sort of empowerment.

"At least as long as you aren't cutting off parts of your enemies' bodies to BE those trophies," she adds, "which is, admittedly, not uncommon. But taking an enemy's favorite weapon, a piece of their armor, or some other item of power they held works just as well - even just a fragment of any of those can do the job."

"Of course, that method has its own downsides," Touhou Fuhai continues, "the main one being that, if you lose a trophy, you lose whatever strength it granted you. That becomes a particular issue if you have a trophy that is or was part of a magic item unto itself, especially if it was one of renown. Such things tend to attract attention, when they aren't powerful enough to free or restore themselves on their own."

"Another option is to put your defeated opponents to work for you," Mikogami offers. "Generally, that one relies on both parties having a sense of honor and obligation, or else the use of magical bindings, but even in the latter instance, it's more about increasing your authority than your personal power. Well, barring some truly black arts, which I do NOT recommend using."

Ah. Like, for example, killing your enemies and then raising their corpses as your undying army of evil, stealing souls, and other classic Evil Dark Lord stuff?

"Exactly. Although," Mikogami adds, leaning forward, "try not to mention soul stealing around Touhou Fuhai. He gets cranky."

"I'd like to see YOU keep your composure after a few centuries of having to deal with that walking atrocity Shang Tsung," the most visibly aged of the Three Dark Lords growls around the stem of his pipe.

Huh. There's a name that hasn't come up in a while.

While you take no pleasure in leaving an unhappy individual to suffer any longer than she absolutely has to, the fact of the matter is that Miss Boley's forced demonization took place half a decade ago. If she's lasted that long, asking her to wait a couple more weeks on top of the hundreds she's already endured is statistically unlikely to cause her to suffer a breakdown - especially not when Mikogami's said nothing to make you suspect that the lady's condition is anything other than stable.

Besides, practicality forces you to admit that you're probably going to be busy in the immediate aftermath of Yhwach's big day. If it were just a matter of your magic reserves, you've got plenty of mana potions and other recovery items, and you'll have a time-altered demiplane to speed your recovery further - at least for a little while. But it's not that simple. You'll be taking responsibility for sixty-odd lives, working alongside an order of divine warrior-spirits (if by proxy) to try and save hundreds more, and contributing (further) to the defeat of a powerful and dangerous being.

Simply put, no matter what the outcome of "A-Day" is, there will be Consequences in the aftermath, and since you've chosen to involve yourself in the whole affair, odds are you're going to have to deal with some of the fallout in person.

Best to take the time to clear up as much of that as possible, before you turn your attention to other matters.

"Eh?" The old monster's ears twitch. "You know him?"

"Of him, anyway," you reply, before explaining how you found a copy of Flawless Victory in a magic goods shop, and the generally negative things Lu-sensei had to say about the author then, as well as on later occasions when his name was dropped.

Touhou Fuhai considers that before answering your original question. His family, the Huangs, are longtime residents and one of the current major powers in Hong Kong's branch of the Moonlit World, but Shang Tsung has been active in that area and the nearer parts of mainland China for the last half a millennium. As one would expect from an ancient warrior-sorcerer, he has extensive contacts in the martial arts community and the Moonlit World, but he also deals with the criminal underworld, and through it has dealings in the realms of politics and finance.

"The old wretch passes the decades between Mortal Kombats by making money and spreading misery," Touhou Fuhai grumbles, "and after five centuries, he's gotten annoyingly good at both. What's even more irritating is that, as the Grandmaster, the Elder Gods afford him a measure of protection as long as he upholds the duties of his office; between that and his personal power and resources, he's essentially untouchable outside of the tournament."

"What about inside the tournament?" you ask, having noticed the obvious loophole.

"In theory, Shang Tsung can be challenged like any other Kombatant," comes the answer, "but in practice, there are a number of complicating factors. First of all, because of its nature as a competition between different realms of existence, Mortal Kombat can only occur at places and times that the borders between those realms are thin. That creates an environment which is simultaneously hospitable to the inhabitants of all the realms, yet doesn't provide any of them with a particular advantage over the rest."

Basically how a Hellmouth allows demons that might normally be unable or just unwilling to live on Earth to survive and even thrive in its environs, then.

"The merging of the realms also interferes with many supernatural powers," the elderly Dark Lord continues sourly, "particularly magic of the School of Summoning. If someone doesn't have prior experience with those conditions or fails to adapt quickly, they're left fighting at a major disadvantage - and since EVERY Kombatant must fight at least once each day they remain in the tournament, and usually more than that, a lot of magic-users, youjutsu specialists, and other exotic energy-manipulators get weeded out early on."

You frown. Given how widespread external spellcasting styles are on Earth, having the rules change like that would indeed be a problem for many local magic-users, and with the fifty-year interval between tournaments, any human who had prior experience in Mortal Kombat would have to be in his sixties at least. It's true that magic and ki both have ways to address the complaints of advanced age, but doing so for a fighter in his sixties would require the Spell of Age Resistance - and that's a sixth-circle casting, which is by no means a common level of power. You doubt the equivalent ki techniques are any more widespread.

"Second," Touhou Fuhai goes on, "gods, demon lords, and other such beings are forbidden to interfere with the tournament. They may attend, they may advise fighters, and they are even permitted to participate if they limit themselves to mortal levels of ability, but using their powers on the Kombatants is grounds for immediate expulsion and penalization."

This time, you wince. That would further screw over a lot of Earth's spellcasters, both arcane and divine.

"The third issue is that entry into the tournament is by invitation only. That's not to say that others capable of making the trip don't turn up and fight, because they do, but since they're not official participants, they aren't protected by the rules of the tournament, only Shang Tsung's twisted sense of hospitality. And that's no protection at all."

You would imagine not.

"Fourth, unless Shang Tsung deigns to challenge someone himself, the rules prohibit him from BEING challenged until after the reigning Champion is defeated - and the current Champion, Goro, has held that title for the last nine tournaments."

Okay, ow.

"Finally," Touhou Fuhai states, "there's the little matter of an outstanding prophecy. Supposedly, Shang Tsung is destined to fall at the hands of a descendant of the warrior-monk Kung Lao, who defeated the sorcerer ten generations ago and was in turn slain by Goro during the following tournament."

Gained Knowledge (Mortal Kombat) E

Well, then. That was quite a divergence.

Do you have any thoughts or questions about what Touhou Fuhai just said?

Once more, you ask the obvious question: "Does Kung Lao have any living descendants?"

"Almost certainly," Touhou Fuhai replies. "Prophecies tend to work out that way. The problem is finding them. While it is true that the order to which Kung Lao belonged permits its members to marry, there is no record of him ever doing so - yet that is hardly conclusive proof. Shang Tsung's enmity alone would have been cause to hide the existence of a wife and children, never mind all the other enemies and rivals Kung Lao would have made for himself by becoming Champion of Mortal Kombat or acting as one of the defenders of the Earth-realm, and if the method of concealment used was capable of thwarting a soul-stealing sorcerer... well."

Yeah, that would take some doing. Assuming Shang Tsung took Kung Lao's soul after the latter's death - and you can see no reason why he WOULDN'T, evil sorcerers are evil and sorcerous like that - he should have been able to use it to lead him to anyone that Kung Lao had a strong emotional connection to. Beloved family, honored teachers, cherished students, trusted comrades; any and all of those would have been at risk, and their souls in turn would have led Shang Tsung to more victims. That's assuming he even HAD to go looking for them, and couldn't just curse and kill them all remotely.

Blocking such efforts would not be easy, but you can see how it might be done: Nondetection, Mask From Divination, or Mind Blank to prevent attempts at scrying or tracking; Death Ward to shield against more directly lethal effects; and some sort of floating blessing to counter attempts at long-distance cursing. That's mostly mid-level magic by your standards, and fairly casual use besides, but for people lacking your particular freedoms in the realm of spellcasting, the protections would be rather more difficult to put together. They might need two or even three spellcasters of separate traditions, all of respectable levels of ability.

So difficult, but doable.

"Even if Kung Lao had no lineal descendants or surviving students," the Dark Lord goes on, "he might have had other relatives. He was given over to a temple of the Order of Light as a young boy, and raised by the monks thereafter; there are no surviving records of who his parents were, why they gave him up, or what became of them afterwards, so it is entirely possible that he had siblings. I would even say it was likely, as it would have been very unusual for a family in that region and era to give up a firstborn son, save at great need. If those siblings had children who Kung Lao never met, and who went on to have children of their own, the addition of other bloodlines would have eventually weakened the familial ties to Kung Lao too far for Shang Tsung to trace, stolen soul or no. Particularly after some seventy years, and the deaths of all those in Kung Lao's generation or earlier."

That also makes sense. You know a little about magically tracking ties of blood, thanks to the Spell to Detect Relations, and in the process of learning that spell, you gained some understanding of how closely related members of a family are - and sometimes, aren't. Links between parent and child or two full-blooded siblings sibling are pretty clear, but the further out you go along the family tree, the more tenuous those connections become and the harder they are to trace. Having living relatives makes it easier to bridge the gap between two individuals, but conversely, as common ancestors and close kin start dying off, the gap widens. More powerful magic could still make a connection, of course, but the precedent is there, and once again, it's entirely possible that someone warded the bloodline against detection.

Granted, calling such a family "descendants of Kung Lao" would be getting a bit generous with the term, but there WOULD be a kinship, and Shang Tsung would probably want them dead anyway, just to be sure. Or maybe just to be spiteful; you can't ever rule out petty vindictiveness as a motive for ancient evil sorcerers.

Touhou Fuhai waits a moment to see if you have any further queries, and when you remain silent, he resumes speaking of Shang Tsung, admitting that the main reason he knows as much as he does about the sorcerer's weaknesses - or lack thereof - is that his family have spent the last half a millennium feeling out the soul-stealer's limitations. An assassination attempt here, a curse-calling there, even a couple of entries into Mortal Kombat, all for the sake of finding a weakness that could be exploited to eliminate their rival.

"I was actually preparing to enter the tournament myself when I first met my two old friends," the wrinkled monster admits.

The other two Dark Lords look surprised.

"You never mentioned that," Mikogami says.

"Well, of course not. I was young and over-proud, then, and it WAS something of a family matter; why would I share it with effective strangers? Especially when I was still deciding if I should kill you for standing in the way of my eternal happiness with dear Akasha, or let you live to witness my inevitable victory."

You blink at that admission, and glance at the Dark Lady, who is... actually smiling faintly, and a little sadly, at Touhou Fuhai's words.

"I see I may have hit you too hard in the head back then," the Exorcist replies, absently cracking his knuckles. "Or maybe not hard enough..."

Touhou Fuhai scoffs. "Please! We both know you never laid a hand on me that I didn't allow."

This is answered by a toothy smirk. "There's a certain crater on the Academy grounds that says otherwise."

"YOU-!" Touhou Fuhai cuts off suddenly, choking on pipe-smoke.

"I've kept it warded against weather, plants, and intrusion for all these years," Mikogami continues, grin widening. "You can still see the imprint of a certain face-"

"LIES AND SLANDER!"

"I can confirm that, actually," the Bus Driver speaks up. "There definitely is a warded crater on the grounds."

Sputtering echoes from the speakers.

"Of course," the shady cigar-smoking monster adds, "I don't think I've ever seen a FACE in there-"

"The budget's going to be a bit tight this year," Mikogami observes offhandedly. "Certain luxuries might have to be cut back..."

"-but then again, it IS warded off, so I've never gotten particularly close, and what do I know about geography, anyway?" comes the hasty addition.

Akasha clears her throat then. "You were saying something about planning to participate in Mortal Kombat, Fuhai?"

"...yes, I was," Touhou Fuhai replies, after one more glare at the Exorcist. "But then Dracula went mad, and I was too injured and too busy helping the thug and the Shuzens make sure he was sealed and going to STAY sealed to attend. My older brother went in my stead, partly to save face, but also, I fear, in response to my newfound fame as one of those who halted Dracula's rampage." The Dark Lord of Hong Kong sighs, as only an old man full of regrets can. "He never returned. Damn fool; as if I would have challenged him for the succession..."

"...I'm sorry, Fuhai," Akasha says softly.

"It was not your fault, dear lady. And there was a small silver lining; my brother's last match was early enough in the tournament that Shang Tsung could not attend all the bouts, and for whatever reason, he had chosen not to attend that one. So while my brother may have lost his life, his soul, at least, was safe." Touhou Fuhai shakes his head. "After we were certain Dracula's body was as secure as we could make it, I returned home and learned of my brother's fate. I had planned to enter the next Mortal Kombat to avenge his death, even if our parents would not give me their blessing, but then the First Opium War occurred, and I had to take over leadership of the family after my father was injured in the fighting. The next thing I knew, I had a beautiful and wise fiancee, who became a wonderful wife, and then we had children, and how could I possibly leave them while they still needed me?"

Gained Chinese History F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

Something passes between the three Dark Lords, then, a mutual acknowledgement that you can see, but can't quite understand.

"So that was TWO potential entries that passed me by," the Dark Lord continues, "and unlike certain monsters, by the time my children were old enough to take care of themselves, I was starting to get a little creaky, and having to lean more on my youjutsu than my physical abilities. I still might have tried to make the third tournament, but" - and here, he looks at you, while gesturing at Akasha and Mikogami - "as Dark Lords, even if not the GENUINE article, we're all powerful enough to be subject to a certain loss of power if we enter Mortal Kombat. Combine that with my physical limitations, and I was... unsure of my chances, especially since I'd become aware of that little destined doom hanging over Shang Tsung's head, and that I did not qualify to bring it to him." The old one shrugs. "In the end, I chose not to go, and that was my last real opportunity to do so."

You nod, and glance at the other two Dark Lords, wondering if they have any history with Mortal Kombat or its reigning Grandmaster.

You decide to inquire if Akasha or Mikogami have been involved with Mortal Kombat.

Akasha shakes her head. "I honestly hadn't heard of the tournament until about a decade ago."

You get the feeling she's leaving something out, there.

"I had," Mikogami says, drawing your attention, "but like Fuhai, I missed that one opportunity due to Dracula's rampage. I did manage to arrange things so that I could attend the following tournament, but I'm fairly sure Shang Tsung seeded my bracket with the strongest competitors he could find. Combined with that 'Dark Lord handicap,' I took more hits than I could really afford, and hadn't fully recovered from them by the finals." He grins. "Still broke two of Goro's arms and one of his ribs before he blasted me off the mountain, though."

"The way you say 'two of his arms' instead of 'both of his arms' makes me wonder," you note.

"Goro has four, in total," Mikogami tells you. "He's a Shokan, a race of half-dragon warriors from the realm of Outworld. Enough strength and pure mass to shatter stone and make the ground shake, sheer durability to stand up to that sort of punishment, and greater speed than you'd expect from something nearly two and a half meters tall and weighing a quarter of a ton. Not to mention the fire-breathing."

Behind dark glasses, Touhou Fuhai narrows his eyes at his counterpart. "I was given to understand that Goro habitually kills his opponents, or beats them near to death and offers them up to Shang Tsung."

"He does," Mikogami agrees grimly. "I saw both happen."

"So why did they let you live?"

"Well, at first, they thought that the fall had finished me off," the Exorcist explains with a shrug. "It was an honest mistake - we WERE quite high up, and I did lose consciousness for a bit - and when Shang Tsung found out that I was still breathing, he offered me the choice of continuing the match or yielding. I honestly wasn't in any shape to keep FIGHTING at that point, but I had enough left in me to make a solid go of taking Goro down with me, or at least maiming him for the next tournament, and I'm quite certain the sorcerer knew it."

"Thus, the offer," the smallest Dark Lord concludes. "And you never went back to try for a rematch?"

"I considered it, and Shang Tsung did send an invitation, but much like yourself, I had other obligations by then."

As they talk, you consider all that's been said thus far. You ask if Mortal Kombat is the tournament that was mentioned during your first visit to Castle Shuzen, which members of the family have occasionally taken part in with Lord Raiden's blessing.

"It is," Akasha tells you. "Why do you ask?"

"I was just thinking... even if magic is less effective than usual during Mortal Kombat, there's nothing really preventing it from being used before the tournament, is there? Not to cheat or anything, just to help the fighters train and prepare."

"There is the little matter of figuring out which fighters will actually be selected as Kombatants," Touhou Fuhai says. "That information is generally known only to the gods, until Shang Tsung sends out his missives."

"I can talk to gods, though," you point out, trying to make it sound as non-boastful as possible. "Some through spells, others through their agents" - you gesture at Batreaux, who has been sitting quietly and listening intently for a while now - "and I've even had a couple of face-to-face meetings."

"...what."

"What are you getting at, Alex?" Briar wonders, as the elderly Dark Lord fumbles for words.

"I've got a lot of magic I can use a lot more freely than most spellcasters I've met," you state. "I was wondering if it might not be a bad idea to contact Lord Raiden with an offer to help provide training or gather resources to help out Earth's next batch of representatives."

Briar sighs. "Alex, HOW many projects are you trying to juggle right now?"

You pause, and start counting.

After a moment, Briar says, "Yeah, no, if you have to think about it, that's already too many. And now you're suggesting taking on MORE work? No. Just no."

"I have to agree with your partner, my student," Batreaux says firmly. "You have a number of outstanding obligations that really should be resolved before you take on new ones, let alone involve yourself further in the affairs of the gods."

It was just a thought.

The conversation peters out after that. With the major topics you asked for this meeting to be held over now covered, and the minor ones that came up in discussion as settled as they can be, this seems like a good time for you to bow out and let the Dark Lords talk privately.

So you do that, leaving Batreaux to dismiss himself and the Bus Driver to... keep drinking, smoking, and snacking, you guess. Briar, as usual, drifts along in your wake.

It's coming up on a quarter after nine a.m., local time, when you see yourself out of the sitting room. That makes it five-fifteen in the evening back home, and leaves you some time to spend with Kahlua - assuming that she finishes or otherwise escapes her morning lessons, of course. From a quick use of the intercom by Akasha before you departed, that doesn't seem to be the case, so you decide to take this opportunity to check up on Jasmine again.

Kahlua isn't the only one of the sisters to have classes this morning, of course; from personal experience on past visits and grumbling or bragging in Kahlua's letters, you're aware that all four girls start their daily lessons at the same time. They may study different topics - or at least different levels in the same topics - and they may not all finish at the same time, but if nothing else, being sent to meet their instructors at a common hour seems to give the sisters a sense of solidarity in suffering, while also cutting down on protests of how unfair it is that one of their number gets "free time" to herself while another is made to endure lectures and tests, as well as reducing the amount of time they're left to their own devices with nobody to play with.

As the eldest sibling and also the newest of Castle Shuzen's residents, Akua is afforded somewhat more freedom in her lesson plan than the other girls. Some of that is due to the privilege, acknowledgement, and expectation of her being mature enough to make some of her own choices; some was simply a grace period while she was adjusting to living in her father's home, which has been steadily reduced the longer she's lived here; and some of it is simply the fact that, when it comes to youjutsu, Akua pretty much HAS to practice by herself, as her original teacher didn't accompany her from China, and the family has yet to retain a tutor to oversee her studies.

They might not. In the times you've interacted with Akua, you've noted that she is not the most open or trusting person, even by vampire standards, and you know from your own magical studies that trust between teacher and student is important. It's probably even more so for vampires, and more delicate besides, given their generally prideful and aggressive nature.

It's also possible that Akua has advanced far enough in her youjutsu training that she doesn't truly NEED a master anymore, and is expected to make her own way in the art. You don't know enough about the overall tradition, or Akua's personal style, to make a solid statement in that regard.

Regardless, you are once again directed to the spellcasting chamber that Akua has claimed as her own. You pause in the hallway before the door, reaching out with your senses to determine the state of the wards and the room beyond.

"Still in use," you note aloud, for Briar's sake.

"Grab a seat and wait?" your partner proposes, drifting meaningfully towards a nearby chair-filled nook, one of the many you know to be scattered about the castle.

"Might as we- wait!" you call out in concern, as the spirit of the castle, which had quietly followed you away from the meeting, now forges ahead. Wall and wards pose no obstacle to its essence, and it fades from your sight.

You think you hear a girl yelping in surprise.

You DEFINITELY hear the subsequent explosion.

Then the elemental comes back out of the wall, looking up at you with an air of triumph and clear expectation of praise.

When Akua opens the door a moment later, wearing an unimpressed look on her face and trailing wisps of smoke from her clothes and hair, she finds you-

-gently scolding the castle spirit.

"No," you say firmly. "Bad place-spirit. Naughty."

Glowing eyes blink in surprise.

"I appreciate that you wanted to help me," you tell the elemental, "but you shouldn't have interrupted Akua while she was practicing her youjutsu. That put her in danger, and depending on what she was doing, it could have put YOU in danger as well."

The little spirit bows its head sheepishly.

"Now," you continue, half-turning towards the smoky vampire standing in the open doorway, "I think you owe someone an apology, don't you?"

The castle's avatar shifts awkwardly, looking very much like an embarrassed little kid. Then it straightens up, looks Akua square in the face - as much as it can, when the top of its head doesn't even reach the line of her shoulders - and bows deeply.

For a long moment, Akua regards the elemental in silence, the normal violet of her eyes shaded more towards purple, thanks to the reddish tint of her temper - or maybe just because they're bloodshot?

Then she speaks. "Stand up straight, and pay attention."

The elemental twitches, but does as it's told.

Akua raises her right hand and gathers youki about it, a scarlet "sleeve" that casts the nearby stretch of hallway into bloodstained light and shadow. Though it's impressive to the naked eye, your ki-based senses pick up a dangerously erratic flow of power, as well as a feeling of intense strain.

"For the record, this is what I was working with."

Akua turns and half-steps back in the room behind her, arm lashing out in a sweeping, sidelong strike.

The youki wreathing her limb destabilizes almost immediately, leaving an arc of crimson hanging in the air behind it while ragged bolts of energy fly shrieking in all directions. Several streak backwards from their points of origin, arcing around Akua's body to discharge into the nearby floor and walls-

!

-and one comes hissing towards the open door, only to impact on an unseen barrier that absorbs the energy, scatters it across its surface, and grounds it out in the doorframe in a second-long flash of red and black.

Good wards, you reflect, even as you relax from the evasive posture you reflexively assumed.

When the lightshow clears, Akua turns back around - right sleeve smoking more heavily than a minute ago, you notice - to regard the now wide-eyed elemental.

"And that is about what it looked like when you surprised me," she says flatly. "Only there was a lot more youki involved that time."

The elemental cringes in dismay, and then bows again.

Once again, there is a pause before Akua tells the spirit to straighten up.

"I will accept your apology, Little Spirit-"

Her left hand lashes out-

*POKE*

-and the elemental flinches back from the two-fingered forehead smack.

"-but don't do it again," Akua says flatly. "Understood?"

The somewhat shapeless head nods hastily, even as one oversized hand comes up to rub the spot where Akua thwapped it.

"Good." Some of the tension bleeds out of Akua's stance, and the red from her eyes, as she turns to you. "I don't have any prior experience in the field, but I swear, there are times when this one is like an annoying little brother."

But speaking of siblings, you explain to Akua that since you were visiting, you decided to take the chance to check up on Jasmine. It's been about a month since you first almost woke her up, and a little less than that since you last cast the Spell of Restoration; it's a good time to see how she's doing, and whether or not her condition has improved on its own since your intervention, worsened, or just held steady.

Akua has no issue with any of this, and you quickly cast the Spell to See the Invisible.

The little vampire girl's spirit is still hanging onto her older sister's back, eyes closed and not-breathing slow, soft, and steady with the rhythm of deep sleep. The phantasmal echoes of her clothes still bear those unsettling bloodstains that speak of some horrific trauma, and she's still too small and thin, but seeing as how this was the state you left her in after your last examination, it's... technically a good thing?

She hasn't gotten any better, but her condition hasn't worsened, either. So that's something.

Is there anything else you want to say or do here, before you go looking for Kahlua?

You have to concede that Akua's assessment is pretty accurate, though you might not use the word "annoying" to describe the elemental.

The eldest Shuzen daughter regards you blankly. "Say that again after he's startled you into blowing yourself up."

...okay, that's fair.

When you explained your desire to check on Jasmine again, Akua allowed you into her spellcasting chamber. Having completed that examination and caught the older sister up on the lack of change in the younger's condition, you let your spell lapse and take another look around at the room, paying particular attention to the scorch marks scattered about the floor, walls, and even a couple of places on the ceiling.

"What were you trying to do, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Extending my reach," Akua replies, with deliberate vagueness.

"That says 'ranged attack' to me," you reply after a moment. "Or 'telekinesis.' Or, you know, both."

The vampire girl huffs. "Well, yes. You may have noticed, but vampires have... issues with long-range combat."

You had noticed that, actually. While they're more than strong enough to throw rocks and other objects that happen to be at hand - or to shatter existing structures to produce such ammunition in the first place - if the environment doesn't offer any such ready-made material, living vampires don't really have a ready-made method of compensating for the lack. There are exceptions, of course: Akasha was able to create bows and arrows from the substance of her own body, as well as fling around droplets of exploding blood; Gyokuro can throw lightning around when she activates that creepy "eyes in the palm of her hands" transformation trick; and even Issa demonstrated the ability to produce sonic booms by clapping his hands. But of those, the ladies' techniques seem to be unique to them, while Issa's isn't really sufficient for the level he fights at.

Granted, the Shuzen patriarch's ability to focus the shockwave so that most of its energy was aimed at a specific target, rather than dispersing through the air in all directions, was actually pretty impressive, but the fact remains that he hit a withered-up old woman head-on with that move and did little more than inconvenience her.

"Generally, it isn't a problem," Akua continues. "We're fast enough and strong enough that we can usually close with an opponent that prefers to fight at range without taking much damage, and most creatures that specialize in ranged combat to the point where they'd be truly dangerous to us aren't nearly as capable in close quarters, whether by nature or as a consequence of focusing their training elsewhere."

You nod in complete understanding, for the weakness Akua is describing is one of the classic vulnerabilities of traditional magic-users.

"I have always been confident in my ability to deal with such opponents," Akua says proudly, before sighing. "And then I attended those Trials of yours, and witnessed monsters capable of overpowering my little sisters at range, others that could contest with my father and his wife, and some that gave even Lady Akasha problems." She frowns at you. "I hope you understand that I did not care for that part of the experience."

That round was arguably the biggest offender in the area of the younger vampires being out-ranged by their opponents, and it was certainly a very flashy and memorable example, which is why you cite it now.

Akua merely nods at your statement, conceding the point.

"Besides," you add, "the Trials WERE meant to test the limits of the participants, and by extension, to show us where we needed to improve. Passing them all isn't the expected outcome."

These words draw a similar reaction, right up until the last line, which leaves Akua regarding you with a frown.

"And if I were to ask you if YOU expected to defeat all nine of YOUR challenges, what would your response be?"

...um.

"In my defense," you hedge, "I'd already fought and beaten over a third of the opponents I faced in my Trials before."

Akua pauses. "What, really?"

You nod.

"...which ones?"

You rattle off the names: Arrogante; Searfang; Dark Link; and Gohma. Technically, you'd also "faced" Xander before, and fought what was basically a different version of Evil Alex and/or Shadow Alex, but the former encounter was resolved without fighting (at least between the two of you), while the latter two went very, VERY differently from your encounter with the preteen reflection of Ganondorf.

"Ah. But you hadn't faced any of the remaining creatures, correct?"

"That would be a 'no'," you admit. "Leaving aside the similarities between different 'reflections' of myself, at least."

Akua nods. "I will rephrase my question, then: when you first entered the Trials, before knowing what you were up against, did you or did you not expect to defeat all nine of your challenges?"

Yeah, she's kind of got you there. You concede the point, that your words about victory not being expected are undermined by the fact that you went in with pretty much that exact point of view, to say nothing of how you DID end up defeating all nine Trials.

Getting back to the original point, then, you inquire what sort of ranged attack Akua was trying to create.

She is cagey about the details, but when you start offering comparisons to the various classes of projectile attack spell you're familiar with - as a spell-by-spell breakdown would take FAR more time than you have to spare right now - as well as your own ki attacks, Akua unbends enough to exchange some information.

You know from personal experience that vampiric youki has a tendency to cling to the body that generates it - either a natural consequence of their ability to channel that aura into physical power, or the reason FOR that very talent - which is why the entire species doesn't have innate ranged attacks. Barring the thus-far unique abilities demonstrated by Akasha and Gyokuro - the former of which doesn't truly overcome that limitation, so much as it shapes parts of the body into forms useful for ranged combat - the only times you've seen a living vampire project his or her energy into the environment are when they undo their seals, have been exposed to a purifying agent, or were using youjutsu.

Basically, Akua was trying to create a cross between a Ki Blast, Elementalism, and Necromancy, using the spell-like nature of youjutsu techniques to tap into and channel away some of her pre-existing energy reserves.

Your magical abilities within those two schools are advanced enough that you're able to offer some tips, but don't really learn anything new yourself. While your overall expertise in Ki Projection is still good enough to make you something of an expert, you do get some ideas for certain less-developed techniques.

Gained Ki Aura F (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Ki Beam F (Plus) (Plus)

Discussing theory is all very well and good, but perhaps Akua could do with a practical demonstration as well?

While you can't speak to whether or not Akua had ever seen a Ki Blast before coming to your birthday party, you know that she's witnessed them at work several times since then. That said, most of the ki techniques that were used at your party were in the Ring of Trials, and hence not in an ideal position to be analyzed.

Even leaving those aside, you know very well that seeing a technique in use at combat speeds only permits one to discern so much of its function, and then only as much as one's grasp of the theory and practicals involved will allow.

It's possible that a drawn-out, non-hostile demonstration of How To Form A Ki Blast is something Akua has never seen before, so you offer to show her one now, in addition to a few spells.

She pauses for a moment, and then accepts your offer, gesturing for you to "take center stage" as it were.

It actually takes you a few attempts to get the technique to work properly: the first time, trained reflex has you going too fast for Akua to make out much; and on your second try, you actually go too slowly, bleeding away too much of the ki you'd gathered for the remainder to form a stable blast. The result of that looks like a plume of gas bursting from a volcanic vent, and it disperses in much the same way.

On the third attempt, you hit a reasonable middle-ground.

Gained Ki Beam F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Ki Blast C (Plus)

Then you switch over to magic, casting such Necromantic spells as Disrupt Undead and the Ray of Enfeeblement, a simple piece of Elemental Magic in the Ray of Frost, and then a somewhat more complex working in the Spell of Shouting. That one, you actually cast twice, for while the area-affecting nature of the spell isn't what Akua was aiming for with her little project, you remember how you once used ki to enhance the effects of this spell, when you'd been unsure of your ability to cast it properly while facing the Hawaiian Sorcerer all those months ago.

Idly, you wonder what happened to that guy and his monkey. The lack of any follow-up on his end suggests that the slaying spell you hit him with just as his familiar teleported them both out of the volcano-top battlefield was successful, but you have too many of Ganondorf's memories - and too much exposure to pop culture - to trust that an enemy is truly dead without a corpse to confirm the kill.

Regardless, you are mindful of the ghost in the room, and keep all your spells aimed away from Akua and Jasmine, just in case.

Gained Ki Shout F (Plus)

With the echoes of your thunderous bellow still ringing in your ears, you turn to Akua to see if that fusion of mana and ki helped her out any.

From the way she's shifting a crackling mass of reddish-black power back and forth in the palm of her hand - with a fair bit of spillover crawling along her fingers, over to the back of her hand, and up her forearm - you've at least inspired her to try again.

Then she turns her hand over, palm forward, to make a pushing gesture.

Red lightning once again hisses out in all directions.

The older girl sighs in clear disappointment.

"No good?" Briar ventures.

"Unfortunately, no." Akua frowns. "I'm not sure what I'm missing..."

Neither are you, but there's no sense beating your head against a wall... when you aren't currently in the form of an Earth Elemental or something...

You have to stop for a moment and marvel at how that saying breaks down when a sufficiently powerful magic-user is involved.

Magically undermined metaphors aside, you figure you've done the best you could reasonably be expected to, in order to help Akua with her project. Maybe if you had more time to spare, you might see some progress, but it's somewhere past nine-forty, and you DO want to spend some time with Kahlua before you depart the Shuzens' for the day.

You wish Akua luck in her training, and receive a polite thank you for your assistance in response.

"Off to visit Kahlua?" she guesses.

"I was, unless you think she'd still be occupied with her morning lessons?"

Akua considers that, and then steps over to the door, sliding aside a rather solid-looking section of stone to reveal another of the castle's intercoms. A quick check with the staff confirms that Kahlua is still with her history tutor, although whoever Akua is speaking with adds that they should be finished shortly.

"If you would like me to take her a message, miss...?" the servant offers.

Akua glances at you.

you'll meet Kahlua as she leaves "class."

It's only a couple of minutes' walk from Akua's spellcasting chamber to the room where Kahlua has her history lessons; there, you spend another seven or eight minutes sitting in one of the nearby alcoves, cooling your heels as you wait for the lesson to be over.

As you relax in your chair, one hand resting atop the head of the elemental - half affectionate head-pat, half gentle retraint - you wonder how Kahlua will decide to spend the next hour or so you have available before you need to head home. Based on prior experience, you're leaning towards "spar," but you can't rule out the other possibilities; maybe a good movie or new anime series got added to the family collection?

While turning those thoughts over in your mind, you idly reach out for the traces of youki lingering about and leaking from inside the classroom door, trying to get a sense of who's in there besides your friend, and what they might be. Kahlua's aura is obvious and easily filtered out by dint of familiarity, and the ambient energies of Castle Shuzen are similarly simple to ignore. What's left is...

...hmmm. Feels like there's another vampire in there. Not anyone you've met before, you think, or at least not anyone you've been formally introduced to.

Not too long after that, the auras shift, the door opens, and Kahlua doesn't quite come running out.

"Hey, Kahlua," you greet her brightly. "How was class?"

"Ugh, don't even start," Kahlua groans. "So BORING."

"Now that hurts, young lady," an older male voice wheezes.

Looking past Kahlua, you see what appears to a man in his twilight years, with a positively pallid face covered by wrinkles, in contrast to the papery-thin skin that seems pulled taut across the rest of the nearly bald head, which bears only a few thin strands of hair of a shade paler than fresh snow. Between his embroidered tunic, breeches, cloak, floppy hat, and pointy-toed shoes, he looks like he's stepped off the stage of some Shakespearean production; a silver chain hangs about his throat, the obvious seal fitting the style of the costume perfectly fine.

"Truly," the ancient-looking vampire rasps, "it hits me right here." A small ruby flashes as he clasps bony, claw-like hands over his heart.

Kahlua pouts. "Must you, Uncle?"

"I must!" comes the grand, gasping declaration. "For so battered and decrepit is my funny bone, that subtle humor no longer tickles it. Surely, dear child, you would not deny an old man one of the last amusements of his fading years?"

"You've been 'fading' since DADDY was my age," Kahlua shoots back.

"Even so!" Then the old one pauses. "On that note, are you going to introduce me to your friend, or would you rather I-" He makes an odd gesture that involves waving his bony arms, making the cloak hanging off his back billow in what's probably meant to be dramatic fashion, but just comes across as silly and a bit sad.

"Alex, Briar," Kahlua sighs, "this is Elder Boris Blutberg, an old associate and honorary member of the Shuzen Clan. Uncle, these are Alex Harris, my friend, and his fairy partner, Briar."

"Pleased to eat you," the elderly bloodsucker proclaims with a grandiose bow.

"It's a pleasure to stake your acquaintance."

There is a moment of silence after your remark, during which Kahlua and Briar both slowly turn to face you. While you can't make out Briar's expression, feelings of emotional pain and a despairing "why?" echo down the familiar bond from her; Kahlua, meanwhile, is looking at you like she has just suffered a grievous betrayal.

Elder Blutberg, on the other hand, hunches forward, closes his eyes, and begins to shake, while making a wheezy sound.

"Alex," Briar says worriedly, "if you've killed a vampire elder..."

"Oh, it's much worse than that," Kahlua sighs.

Indeed, while it took you a minute, you've recognized the noise old Boris is making as laughter.

Gained Comedy C

"Finally!" the old vampire gasps out. "After all these decades, someone who not only gets it, but plays along!"

"Rough crowds?" you venture lightly.

"Oh, perpetually," Boris replies, with a sigh like the last breath of a dying man. "For as long as I've known them, the Shuzens have always been such a SERIOUS bunch. No appreciation for a good joke."

"That was nothing like a good joke," Briar mutters.

"Certainly not after the fiftieth time you've heard it," Kahlua adds wearily.

"Young Akasha was like a breath of fresh air in a tomb," the elder goes on, ignoring or perhaps legitimately not hearing the quiet commentary. "She never failed to have a smile or a laugh for an old man's efforts. I had such hopes she would help the rest of the family lighten up, but then Little Moka turned out so DOUR..."

"I know your disappointment, Elder," you commiserate.

"Not my pain?" he inquires.

You pause and consider that. While you have no doubt that Ganondorf got as old as this vampire truly is, and most likely considerably older besides, he never visibly aged to the extent that Elder Blutberg has - at least not that you can casually remember.

The advantages of Power-granted immortality and demonic transformations.

Past life experience aside, you've also never turned into an old man in this lifetime, though it occurs to you that you COULD, using the Spell of the Threefold Aspect. On the other hand, you recall that spell didn't affect your clothes the last time you cast it - or at least, you weren't sure if it would - so you might not want to cast it in front of Kahlua AND a near-total stranger, no matter how good his sense of humor.

Actually, maybe BECAUSE of that. Talk about making yourself the butt of a joke...

You DO know a few other spells that can make the target seem older - all Gerudo witchcraft, as it happens - and while the Spell of the Wizened Appearance only grants a seeming of old age, the Spell of the Sands of Time can produce the actuality, given a few castings.

"No, not your pain. Only nine."

"...huh?" Kahlua exclaims.

Uncle Boris once again wheezes in amusement. "Oh, good one."

"Oh, Goddesses," your partner groans. "They're starting to develop a form of communication based on puns. This needs to stop." With that declaration, Briar assumes her human-sized form-

"Goodness!" the old vampire exclaims. "It's been a while since I met a fairy that could do that!"

-and grabs you by the shoulder, before turning to Kahlua. "Kahlua, help me out here?"

"Alright..."

"Now just wait a minute," you protest. "I don't-"

"Sorry, Alex," Kahlua interrupts, catching your other shoulder in spite of your efforts to avoid her grasp. "But you really do."

You could put up a fight, but it's funnier if you fake struggling to escape, while pleading for the Elder to aid you.

Boris responds to your entreaty by shaking his head and chuckling like a dying man. "Ah, my lad; in a few years you'll look back on moments like this with an all-new appreciation. Think better of an old man then, eh?"

Then he wraps his cloak about his frail form, and with a flash of red light, a crack of dark thunder, and a hair-curling surge of youki, turns into a cloud of hundreds of bats. The swarm circles about for a moment before flying off down the hall, squeaking in clear amusement.

The display of metamorphic power has you leaving off on the "doomed victim" routine and turning to Kahlua. "Does he do that a lot?" you inquire, nodding after the last of the departing bats.

She nods. "He says it's easier on his joints and his heart than taking the stairs."

"...how?" you wonder.

"Apparently, his bat-forms are younger, and the effort of exerting them doesn't carry over to his actual body?"

Your friend speaks as if asking for confirmation, and you turn the data over in your mind for a moment before slowly nodding. True, low-level polymorph spells like Alter Self and common shapeshifting powers don't have that sort of effect, but that's because no matter what form(s) you impose on it, the target still has the same singular body. There's a certain conservation and even continuity of form at work, which is - along with psychological factors like shock and self-image, or magical ones like curses and omens - part of the reason why injuries to one state tend to carry over to another, instead of being casually shifted away.

A werewolf's heart may get bigger or smaller as he changes forms, but it's always going to BE his heart; it won't suddenly turn into a set of lungs or something.

The more advanced one's grasp of Transformation Magic becomes, however, the less two forms need to have in common. If you were to turn yourself into a dragon, for example, certain organs like the heart and lungs would be common to both forms, and so exertion of them in one form would tend to carry over to the other. But you don't have the particular organs that enable a dragon to breathe fire or acid or what have you, and would essentially be growing those from scratch, along with all the other extra mass and specialized parts a dragon's body requires. Getting the magic to send that extra mass back where it came from, and to take along any damage it incurred while you were using it, would be entirely possible; it's just a question of having the familiarity with both forms to recognize how they are and aren't alike, the skill to describe what you want the magic to do, and the good fortune not to accidentally banish your spleen to another dimension or something similarly inconvenient.

You don't think Elder Blutberg was creating mass, but he definitely wasn't splitting his heart a thousand different ways, either; small as those bat-forms were, you're pretty sure there were too many of them for a single human-sized heart to have enough mass to go around. And if you're transforming existing matter far enough to turn bone, non-living cloth, and other such things into cardiac muscle, you can certainly transform it into a healthy young version of said muscle - and then transform it back to what it was to begin with, leaving elevated heart rate, fatigue, and other factors to go pester someone else.

Shaking your head, you note aloud that you need to introduce Boris to Batreaux at some point-

Briar groans.

-and then inquire of Kahlua if other elderly members of her extended family do similar things, or if it's just the one.

"It's just Uncle," Kahlua admits. "Some of my relatives say he's embarrassing the family by carrying on like that, but HE says he's old enough not to care about silly things like pride anymore, and enough of the other elders like him well enough that nobody else wants to make a big deal out of it." Then she abruptly changes the subject, shifting her grip on you so that she's got you more properly by the arm, and smiling. "So, now that I'm out of class, what did you want to do?"

You were going to ask her that.

"Hmmm... I don't think I've shown you the new Vampire Hunter D movie, yet..."

Sounds like you're going back to the movies.

The movie Kahlua has picked out for you today proves to be a dark fusion of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, shot through with bloody violence. The main character is the titular Vampire Hunter-

"Oh, ew!" Briar exclaims. "Why does he have a FACE in his hand?"

"It's a symbiote," Kahlua explains.

-who is hired by a human nobleman to rescue his wayward daughter from a vampire that has abducted her, or, if she has been turned, to kill her. At the same time, the missing girl's brother hires a team of bounty hunters (four brothers and a sister), while the vampire noble recruits a trio of "monsters" as bodyguards.

The tale runs for over an hour and a half, throwing a couple of plot twists at the audience, some more surprising-

"So, wait, they're actually in love?" Briar wonders at the revelation that the "abduction" was nothing of the kind.

"Isn't it sweet?" Kahlua gushes.

Maybe, but given the tone of the movie thus far, you have a bad feeling about how it's going to play out.

-others less-

"Well of COURSE he's Dracula's son," Briar notes. "Why wouldn't he be?"

You generally agree, though you do have to wonder if Miss Akasha or her old friend Lord Tepes have seen this movie, and what one or both of them might have to say about it. Then again, given how popular a character Dracula has become for certain genres of fiction, you suspect this movie would be FAR from the first encounter either vampire has had with a character purporting to be his offspring.

In the movie's defense, it's based on one entry in a series that started way back in the early Eighties, so it's not as trite as some more recent franchises.

-and seeing the deaths of almost every major character along the way. The ending isn't completely depressing, but Briar and Kahlua are both visibly saddened by the outcome of the star-crossed romance, whereas for your part... well, if you were a normal nine-year-old, you'd probably get a couple of good solid nightmares out of the whole thing, but as it is, you've seen enough nasty stuff by this point - whether in dreamed memories or in waking life - that a little animated gore and sorrow has less of an impact than it otherwise might.

Between the length of the movie and the time it takes you to make your departure from the Shuzen estate afterwards, you're racing the sun from the moment your teleportation spell drops you off. While the sky has not quite gone dark by the time you get home, it's dim enough that you find yourself on guard, probing the tainted atmosphere of the Hellmouth for the (presumably) more concentrated presence of demonic beings. All the while, you wonder what exactly you ought to do, should you cross paths with one of the corpse-demons - and while that doesn't happen tonight, the question continues to nag at you.

What WOULD you do, if you were out late in the 'Dale and had a chance encounter with one of those so-called vampires? What SHOULD you do?

The next day, you get up and go through your usual morning routine, and then find yourself having to stop and adjust to the fact that, while your friends in Japan still have classes, Sunnydale Elementary has let out for the summer.

You wonder briefly what Altria and the Water Tribe siblings are up to, education-wise, before going about your day.

Seeing as how you can't address matters in Japan until later this afternoon, and are still waiting to hear back from Navi regarding the quality of the Ore Samples you gathered, you decide to spent some of your suddenly abundant free time continuing that analysis of the Fae-crafted gear you plundered from the grimstalker.

You've already conducted a non-destructive analysis of the Grimstalker's Armor, Bow, and Sword, but you're reluctant to perform destructive testing of the equipment in the confines of your lab or your Mirror Hideaway: the extra-dimensional space has its virtues, but an abundance of space and expendable air are not among them; and while your basement workshop is a bit better, it's got a lot of breakable and/or sensitive stuff laying around. You figure you'll want somewhere with lots of open space and a nice heavy object to hunker down behind before you go seriously stress-testing the grimstalker's gear.

With that in mind, you make sure the door is firmly closed and magically locked against curious little sisters and lazily inquisitive dogs, don a pair of goggles, a facemask, and elbow-length protective gloves that you acquired from Gen while outfitting your workshop, and finally cast the Spells to Delay Poison and Find Traps on yourself as additional good-sense precautions.

Then you take out the Grimstalker's Belt and start going through the pouches.

Somewhat surprisingly, only three of them are booby-trapped.

Less surprisingly, you find some three dozen different types of powder, leaves, flowers, fruits, and liquid substances stashed in the belt, almost all of which register as poisonous to your spell. You have to fall back on Divination Magic to figure out what most of them are, which boils down to poisons (variously contact, inhaled, injected, and/or ingested in nature), antidotes, several things that can be either depending on the circumstances, and a skin of the freshest, purest water you've seen since Bali Ha'i.

Gained Grimstalker's Poison Kit
Gained Trap Sense E (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Trapbreaking F
Gained Trapmaking F (Plus)

You only spend the early hours on your research; around mid-morning, you pack everything away and head out to meet Larry and the girls for a pre-arranged lazy day around town, one of the few you'll be able to have before everybody goes their separate ways for the break. While your family doesn't have any vacations or training camps on the agenda, unlike the Chases or Madisons, you have enough plans of your own this summer that Larry is going to be kind of lonely for the next couple of months.

Taking a little of that newly freed-up time to show a friend that you aren't forgetting about him feels like a worthwhile use of the hours.

As the day starts to wind down, you make your way to afternoon class at Lu-sensei's, and then head home. Following dinner, and with your parents' permission, you make a quick trip to the Hakuba Shrine, to set something up with the caretakers.

You'd previously decided that you owed the resident kami an offering for passing your warning about the Wandenreich up the celestial chain of command and on to the Soul Society. While considering how to demonstrate your gratitude, you recalled that the shrine has a shed full of mystical objects, ranging in nature from malevolent to merely odd, and that the Hakubas don't know the full history of everything they have in there.

You ALSO remember how you'd previously offered to help the priests sort out their collection, and how the one attempt you made to divine the history of a certain sword gave you such a nasty psychic shock that you sat down and worked out a new spell to prevent future recurrences. For various reasons, you haven't made a second attempt since, but perhaps it's time to change that?

You can only make the offer, and see how the Hakubas feel about it.

As it happens, the Hakuba Shrine caretakers are generally in favor of accepting your offer.

You say "generally" because Miss Suzuka has heard about the psychic backlash you experienced when you cast the Spell of Vision on that cursed sword, months and months ago, and has understandable concerns about your safety if you go poking at the other items sealed in the shed. Granted, they're somewhat minor concerns - the miko has ALSO heard about your other feats of magic over the intervening period - but you still take the time to address them, explaining how the Spell of Literary Vision lets you side-step the risks of its predecessor by offloading the information to a book.

You offer to cast the spell on a random, non-hazardous object from the shrine to prove its safety and effectiveness, and somehow end up targeting the donations box.

As you lay down the necessary focuses, Ichirou glances at them and notes, "Been working on your ivory-carving?"

You glance at the tiny statuettes of the Golden Goddesses that you have set before the box, and the Triforce Emblem that rests between them, and think back to the crude, faceless figurines you conjured when you cast the Spell of Vision before the eldest and youngest Hakuba priests. Your Magecrafting skills have indeed improved considerably since then, and this new set of figurines - which you crafted this morning in anticipation of this very need - came out much better than their predecessors. There are actual faces on each of the mini-Goddesses, Din's bracelets are distinct from her arms, Nayru's instrument is easily recognizeable for the harp it is, and Farore carries a tiny ocarina instead of the book you went with last time. The Triforce Emblem also bears the symbols of the Goddesses, copied directly from the Hyrulean Holy Books.

If Din looks a bit like Twinrova's combined form, Nayru like Princess Zelda, and Farore like Briar or Navi... well, you haven't actually SEEN a proper avatar of any of the Goddesses, and even the pictures in the books were somewhat generic. Call it artistic license.

I think they're cute.

I have no objections to this association.

Eh, I'll allow it.

Regardless, you're hoping that the improvement your overall magical abilities have undergone over the last year, especially in the field of Conjuration Magic, is enough to make these conjured focuses reuseable. They're functionally indistinguishable from regular ivory; the issue is how long the magic that created them can endure, particularly under the strain of high-level magic. Goddesses willing, they SHOULD be permanent creations, but this will be the acid test.

You set aside your doubts, lay down the Conjured Book, light the sticks of Gold Incense, and cast the Spell of Literary Vision.

Pages promptly fill, and after a few seconds' pause to give the magic time to finish working, you pick up the Book and hand it over to Miss Suzuka.

She reads.

And reads.

And... pauses to give Ichirou a bemused look?

"You got trapped in the box?"

"I did not."

"He did," Koujirou says, nodding.

"Grandfather!"

"'Save me, Grandpa!'" the miko recites from the Book. "'The box came alive and tried to eat me!'"

"I was five years old! Grandfather, stop laughing!"

Koujirou does not, in fact, stop laughing. Even Ginta cracks a smile at the recounting of his son's childhood misadventure.

While the clergy are amusing themselves, you check the condition of your ivory figurines. You see no discolorations, they're no warmer to the touch than they were when you set them down, and when you open up your mystical senses a bit, they appear structurally sound and devoid of any magical build-up. You'll want to cast that spell a few more times to be sure, but the evidence at hand suggests you've finally got a set of focuses that will last.

That'll be a time- and mana-saver, going forward.

Gained Visionary Focuses

In any case, with Miss Suzuka's concerns addressed, there's nothing more to delay you from starting in on the Hakubas' collection.

Do you have any particular preference for the order in which you examine the items?

You make a mental note to touch up the figurines later. While it won't impact the functionality of the Spells of Vision, Literary or otherwise, if you're going to be using homemade likenesses of the Goddesses as focuses for that particular form of magic, it seems only proper that they be of the best quality you can personally produce.

While you are tempted to get the most potentially hazardous items in the collection out of the way first, you end up deciding to do things the other way around. Partly, this is because it's the common-sense approach, but there's also the matter of manners - for all that the Hakubas are in support of this project, you DID kind of drop in on them with it unannounced. You haven't forgotten from your first attempt at examining the shed's contents that the head priest's presence is required to handle the objects within, and Koujirou does have other things he was planning to do today. So do the rest of the family, for that matter.

All things considered, it's for the best that you limit your work today to the objects least likely to require divine intervention, and give Koujirou a chance to fit the project into his personal schedule.

With that sorted out, you settle in to do some spellcasting. The Hakubas have previously stated a desire not to have a massive beacon of magical activity flaring over the shrine grounds if it can be reasonably avoided. The Spell to Analyze Dweomers would normally be a concern in that regard, being a sixth-tier magic, but since Koujirou is only going to remove one item from the storage building at a time - for reasons of security as well as ceremony - you just dial down the duration and number of expected targets as far as possible, leaving the magic no more mana-intensive than a second-tier spell. You could cast any number of those with no one the wiser, so long as they weren't observing you with Mage Sight.

The Spell of Literary Vision is more of a problem, being seventh-tier and effectively unalterable, but you took the precaution of casting the Spell to Create A Private Sanctum before you called up the "vision" of the donations box, so even multiple castings of your high-level Divination Magic won't attract attention.

That said, as Koujirou is fetching the first of the items for your consideration, you do wonder if you should cast the Spell of Literary Vision ritual-style or not. There will already be a few minutes of "travel time" for each examination, as Koujirou needs to undo and restore whatever non-portable seals and physical security measures there are on the items in question, in addition to just ferrying them back and forth. Adding a seven-minute ritual on top of that would sharply limit how many items you can examine today, as unlike some other spells, you can't start casting Vision-variants without the item or creature you're investigating at hand, but it would also save you a considerable amount of mana.

In view of your plans for the next couple of weeks and the amount of mana they're going to call for, limiting your expenditures in this side-venture might be wise...

There is also the minor matter of where, exactly, you're recording the information from your Literary Visions. You've always used your Conjured Book for that purpose, erasing and overwriting the text as need be, as much for convenience's sake as anything else, but that's not an option here. You are engaged in creating a (hopefully) permanent record of these items for the Hakubas, which you'll be leaving with them, so you'll clearly need another medium.

In Koujirou's temporary absence, you turn to Ginta as the senior member of the shrine family, and inquire if they would have any objection to you keeping a copy of what you learn about their collection.

The middle-aged priest frowns thoughtfully and rubs at his chin, eyes going momentarily distant. Then he shakes his head. "I can't think of any particular reason to refuse. That being said, part of the reason why we agreed to your proposal is because there's so much about those items we've either forgotten or never knew to begin with. And while I don't think there's anything that truly needs to be kept secret..."

"...you can't be entirely sure that there isn't," you finish, earning a nod from the man. "Alright, how about this? I'll make two copies of the information, and leave them both here until you've had time to go through them and edit out whatever you can't or shouldn't be sharing."

"That seems entirely reasonable," Ginta agrees.

With that settled, you start the Spell of Creation, and conjure yourself a couple of empty books in the same simple style as your first Conjured Book. Given the increase in your magical skills since you pulled that particular text out of the ether, these new volumes exhibit a higher level of quality and feel more "real" to your senses, stable enough that only a total disjunction of magical forces could damage them.

By the time you're done with your magical bookbinding, Koujirou has returned with the first of the items from the shed. Ginta speaks with his father about your request, and the elder priest expresses the same general sentiments as his son.

"Not that we think you're going to go spreading around anything you learn here-"

"Thank you."

"-you're welcome. As I was saying, we don't expect that you're going to go telling tales, but we do have a responsibility to our forebears to honor any promises they might have made on behalf of the shrine as an institution."

You nod, getting the gist of the argument. If a Hakuba priest of generations past swore that certain information about a particular object would be kept secret by the shrine, then the Hakuba priests of the modern day are obligated to uphold that vow, as long as they can reasonably do so.

And as this is quite a reasonable situation, they can. So they will.

You turn your attention to the first of the objects from the sealed repository, which is - or rather, was - one of those fancy ringed staves carried by Buddhist monks. This one is very badly damaged, with the staff proper having been snapped off a couple inches below the head, and most of what remains being blackened as if by fire. The head is likewise discolored where it was touched by flame, though the heat involved doesn't appear to have been enough to melt or warp the metal.

While there is a definite spiritual aura about the relic, you sense no magical effects bound to it, just the lingering aura of the wards on the shed. Just to be sure, you don your ruby eyepiece-

"My goodness," Miss Suzuka murmurs. "Where did you get that?"

-and after a brief segue, cast the shortened form of the Spell to Analyze Dweomers.

Peering through the residual aura of Abjuration Magic, you find no arcane enhancements or active spells on the staff-head, but you do detect a curse, one which resonates so naturally with the spiritual energy imbued into the metal that there is no doubt they were both created of the same source. Possibly the same person.

Letting that spell lapse, you pick up one of the empty books and write down a quick, technical summary of the magical effects you detected. Then you hold the book out over the arrangement of ivory pieces sitting on the ground before you, and raise your left hand over the remains of the staff as you cast the Spell of Literary Vision.

Ink begins to fill the first page of the conjured tome, and shortly turns the page to reveal a third line of text already forming on that side; the rest of the page and most of both sides of the next one follow in due course, and you keep your attention directed elsewhere for the duration, to avoid reading anything by accident.

Or "accident."

Once the Literary Vision has run its course, you take up the second book and cast the Spell of Amanuensis, copying the results. Fortunately, you don't need to understand the words you're copying, just glance at them.

While you're doing that, Koujiro calmly picks up the staff's head, takes it back to its resting place, and returns with another relic.

The whole business takes maybe five minutes, and establishes the pattern for the remaining hour. By the end, you've gone through ten items, including a a bone wrapped in cloth, a modern magazine-

You couldn't quite stop yourself from giving Koujirou a disbelieving look at that one.

In response, he simply nodded gravely.

-and a set of four small clay urns, presented one after the other, each so similar to the last that you began to wonder if Koujirou was playing a joke on you.

Everyone else wandered off at some point in the proceedings, Miss Suzuka murmuring about chores, Ichirou mentioning a morning appointment, and Ginta merely nodding to you and his father and leaving you to your task. Even Briar abandoned you for a bit, saying she was going to chat with Suzuka.

After the tenth artifact - a fair-sized wall scroll, which you left in its case, though only after asking Koujirou to open the latter enough for you to examine the rolled-up paper within without interference - you call it a day. Closing the books, you pocket your Visionary Focuses, and put out the incense, reminding yourself to conjure more of it when you get home, to replace the significant amount you used up today. A minor spell of Wind Elementalism helps clear the air of the heavy scent of fragrant smoke, after which you cast a Spell to Dispel Magic to clean up the lingering mana of your intensive spellcasting, and finally dismiss the grey fog of the Private Sanctum.

When Koujirou rejoins you this time, you hand over both of the books as agreed. He flips through their filled pages - somewhere past sixty, not that you were counting or anything - and says that he'll need a few days to finish "proofreading" and editing, mainly because of the other demands on his time.

That's fine by you. You've got other tasks of your own to attend to in the meantime.

Proceed to...

...setting up some Mansions in Karakura. (June 6th-8th.)

When you return home, you head down to your workshop to get the last of the day's spellcasting out of the way. It takes only ten minutes to replenish your supply of Gold Incense, after which you spend the next hour performing the Spell of Masterwork Transformation on your Visionary Focuses.

The ritual magic consumes a few material reagents, which you make a note to replace the next time you visit Gen's, but when it's finished, the tiny Goddess figurines all look that much better. The lines of the carvings are smoother, the proportions more life-like, and the finer polish of the ivory almost shines.

White isn't really our color, but the effort is nice.

"Spent" $30 of Credit at Gen's
Upgraded Visionary Focuses

With that done, you pocket the Focuses, put away your materials, and turn off the basement light as you head upstairs to read for a while. You get through another portion of Twentieth Century Sorcery before calling it a night.

When you awaken the following morning, it's somewhere past three. Laying there in the dark, you muse to yourself that for all its usefulness, the magic of your Restful Blanket does have that one minor drawback: after about two hours of regular sleep, on top of the two magically assisted hours that equate to "a full night's rest," there comes a point where your body just refuses to remain idle any longer.

Taking stock of your internal reserves, you find your mana to be just over two-thirds recovered from yesterday's spellcasting session. A careful round of calculations informs you that, if you were to take the day off from magic use and not overly exert yourself otherwise, you'd be fully recovered by... some time this afternoon, actually. Towards five o'clock, if you're counting correctly.

Huh. That would make the timing just right for you to head over to Karakura after supper, and set up those magical accommodations for the out-of-town Quincy.

Funny how that works out.

Shaking your head in bemusement, you quietly get out of bed, pick up one of your current lot of reading materials from your desk, and then tiptoe down the stairs, leaving Briar and the rest of the family to their sleep. In the living room, you pause to make sure the blinds are down before turning on one of the smaller lamps, taking a seat, and checking which book you grabbed.

"Weave of Magic," huh? And judging from where you left off, and how long it took you to get there, you might be able to finish this one before your folks wake up.

Alright, then.

You settle in to finish reading about magical textiles, and the making thereof, and by the time the night is done, so is the book.

You consider doing more reading today, but after you spent most of yesterday hanging out with your friends, shutting yourself up in your workshop, and otherwise not doing things with your little sister, when Zelda finds out that you're taking (most of) today off from "the magic stuff," she's somewhat insistent that you owe her a few hours.

The rest of the morning passes in a whirlwind of cartoons, games, much easier reading than you did after waking up, and a walk to the nearest park for a picnic lunch.

It's summer, after all.

Zelda manages to thoroughly tucker herself out, and has to be carried part of the way home after lunch, before being put down for a nap. You spend the next hour and change attending to your penpal duties, and then head out to spend another stretch of time checking on your garden.

As this is the first summer for your transplanted Hyrulean specimens, you've been almost as concerned about their water intake as you are their levels of magic, since - outside of the Gerudo Desert and the area around Death Mountain - most of the kingdom sees more precipitation than southern California. Thus far, most of the plants are doing alright, but there are a couple of specimens that might be in the first stage of browning... or maybe that's just your overcautious nature talking?

Either way, you give them a little extra water today. Just in case.

By the time you're satisfied that there is nothing more to be done for your garden today without resorting to magic, the terrible little sister monster has risen from her slumber once again. She stands nearby, fidgeting, as she waits impatiently for you to be done with the "boring part" of gardening - a part that you may or may not be taking extra slowly today, keeping up a one-sided conversation with the greenery as you fuss over each individual stem, leaf, and petal.

Gained Herbalism E (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

Eventually, the monster's patience is exhausted, and she jumps onto your back, insisting you do something interesting.

"Like teach me kung fu!" she says brightly.

That gives you a moment's pause. Your parents did say they would let Zelda start taking lessons at Lu-sensei's once a week if she behaved herself until her next birthday, which is coming up in August. For all her complaining about how "that's forever away!" Zelda has been pretty good about being good in the interim, and your big brotherly instincts say she's earned a little indulgence.

On the other hand, unless you count all the sparring you do with your friends, you've never tried to teach anybody martial arts before - certainly not from scratch, which is about where Zelda is starting, save in the field of amateur wrestling. Maybe you should leave that to the professional kung fu master? Or perhaps, instead of worrying about strikes, stances, and the other "martial" elements of the art, you could try to limit your teaching to basic physical conditioning? Stretching, flexibility, stamina, that sort of thing.

Yeah, you'll leave the business of teaching actual martial arts to the actual martial arts instructor.

Having said that, as both a student of the School of Five Elements and a big brother, it would be irresponsible of you twice over not to help Zelda prepare for her future lessons with Lu-sensei. She's young and physically active, and in reasonably good shape as a result, but BECAUSE of her age, her physical activities tend to manifest as short bursts of frenetic energy, coming on almost at random and proceding with little to no direction or guidance, before burning out as quickly as they began.

Lessons with Lu-sensei tend to call for a more measured level of activity, over an extended period of time.

There's also the matter of flexibility to consider. Zelda's as prone to stretching out and twisting around for laughs as the next kid, but there is a difference between that and the sort of maneuverability needed for martial arts.

And quite aside from the physical aspect, there's the mental and emotional side to consider. Zelda is a rather willful little girl, used to doing things at her own pace and because she enjoys them - and only for as long as she continues to find them entertaining. Your sister hasn't had any serious problems listening to the daycare attendants, or at least not that you've heard of, but once again, there's quite a difference between what you recall of daycare and Lu-sensei's instructive style.

Daycare always tried to discourage kids from anything that looked like fighting, even when it was just in the name of fun. Lu-sensei only tries to discourage NEEDLESS fighting, and as a master martial artist with one foot in the Moonlit World, his standards for such are a little different from that of your average person.

It's true that your master is entirely capable of getting new students up to speed, or getting them to admit that kung fu lessons are more work than they're willing to put in. He's been doing this sort of thing longer than you've been alive, and you could just leave it all to him - but as one of his students, if you can ease your teacher's workload a little, does it not behoove you to do so?

More than that, as Zelda's brother, you want her to do well when she starts taking lessons. It's not even a question of family pride - well, not JUST that - but one of simple safety. Even with no knowledge of martial arts, being in better shape will only make your little sister better equipped to deal with the world's many dangers, from the mundane to the magical. And once she DOES start learning how to fight, better conditioning will let her apply those lessons more readily and to greater effect when she truly needs them.

And if this happens to give Zelda a leg up on her classmates in the bargain? You certainly aren't going to complain, and you're sure your parents won't, either.

"So the little girl wishes to learn the ancient secrets of kung fu, does she?" you drawl, as you haul Zelda off your back and set her down on her own two feet.

"Mn!" she affirms.

"Very well, but know this! Before one can learn how to kung fu one's opponent so hard that their ancestors feel it, one must first train the body and the mind to handle the great power and responsibility of kung fu!"

"I'm a'sponsible!"

"We shall see. For now, we shall begin our training with the First Great Kung Fu Responsibility: Falling Down Without Getting Hurt!"

Zelda blinks. "...huh?"

"Watch closely, my student, and be amazed!"

And with that, you fall over on the grass-

"Ah! Alex!"

-catch yourself, roll into a reverse-somersault, and end up back on your feet.

"...oooh."

Gained Gymnastics F
Gained Martial Concealment E (Plus) (Plus)

The rest of the afternoon is eaten up by Zelda's first "kung fu" lesson, wherein you test out the limits of her physical abilities, her patience, and her willingness to listen. She proves moderately attentive, as long as you remember to keep up the Wise Old Master act, and finds entirely too much amusement in the act of falling down. It no doubt helps that she is young and bouncy, the grass is springy and probably in need of a mow, and the soil underneath has good give.

Later, you also test your mother's patience, when Zelda comes running in covered in grass and dirt stains, babbling, "Mom! Mom! Alex showed me how to fall! Look!"

And then she falls over backwards-

"Ooof!"

-discovers that the floor is somewhat less forgiving to new arrivals-

"I'm okay!"

-but quickly waves a hand from where she lies to demonstrate the success of her new "secret kung fu technique."

Fortunately, once you've explained what you're actually teaching Zelda, your mother is fine with it, saying something about how anything that helps tucker out the inexhaustible ball of energy is welcome. She does ask Zelda to wear something that won't stain as easily next time, though.

"Ooo! Ooo! Can I get a uniform?"

"For your birthday, sweetie," your mother says firmly.

"Aw..."

Following an early bath for Zelda, and then dinner, you check your mana reserve again-

Gained Mana Recovery D (Plus)

-and then, having confirmed that you are back at FULL POWER, you head out to Karakura.

Landing in the Kurosakis' backyard again, you probe at the house and find half a dozen auras inside, of which you recognize only Isshin's and Masaki's. The former seems to be with a patient at the moment, while Masaki looks to be handling a small crowd of patients-in-waiting. Two of those are kids, who feel different enough from one another that you doubt they're related; each is with their own adult, both of whose auras are similar enough to their respective ward's to suggest a family connection.

The absence of any Kurosaki children reminds you that Japanese schools don't let out for summer until late July, and you quickly call up a disguise before doing anything else.

Your plan was to see if the resident Quincies were available, but Masaki is a little busy at the moment. You could wait, or you could just call... wait, no, you actually can't call the Ishida residence, you never got their number OR their address. Bit of an oversight, there, but one easily corrected by scrying magic, if you really feel the need. Stopping by the hospital to see if Ryuken is available probably isn't a good idea, though, at least not without a pre-arranged appointment.

You think that offering a quick magical fix to this little problem might send the wrong message to your sister, and decide to hold your tongue.

Though you do make a note to talk to your mom about applying a minor enchantment to the training outfit Zelda eventually gets, to make it more resistant to stains and damage in general, and easier to clean. She'll probably appreciate that.

Today's business with the Ishidas isn't anything that can't wait half an hour, or even a day or two, if it needs to. That said, it's probably going to be a while before Masaki has time to spare for you, so you decide to spend the wait productively.

Rather than walk around to the clinic and take a seat, you pick out a comfortable-looking patch of grass and settle in to not-quite meditate, as you once again attempt to attune the energies of your soul to Karakura's spiritually dense environment. Your last attempt at making this technique function in this town didn't really work out, but you DID spend most of that time wandering around with Ichigo and Tatsuki on an impromptu sightseeing tour. Maybe if you stay put in a reasonably familiar location and focus on the task, it'll go better?

...

As you work, you keep one proverbial eye on the living auras within the Kurosaki clinic. Isshin finishes up with his first patient in about ten minutes, and while that person is making their way out of the building, the flaring of the other two unfamiliar adult auras suggests that the parents are having a bit of an unspoken struggle over whose kid gets in to see the doctor first.

You're not sure who's winning the contest when one of the kids' auras suddenly shifts in an unpleasant manner. A moment later, you hear some yelling and quick, heavy footsteps as everybody starts running around, with Masaki's aura leading the way as that kid's parent all but carries their child, not into the clinic per se, but to the nearest bathroom, oh dear...

Not wanting to look too closely at that, you let your attention drift to Isshin, who seems to be speaking with the familial pair still in the waiting area. Whatever is said, he ends up showing those two into the clinic proper, where they spend a couple of minutes by themselves while Isshin does... something... out front, undoubtedly involving clean-up. Once that's taken care of, Dr. Kurosaki moves to attend to his current patient, which only takes another ten minutes or so.

The other kid stays in the bathroom the entire time and then some, with their mother or father either waiting just outside the door or in there with them, while Masaki moves between there, the back of the clinic, and the laundry room. The sense of unpleasantness radiating off the kid eases after the first minute or so, but it doesn't go away, and it's joined by an air of misery and shame.

You wince, feeling kind of bad about witnessing what's clearly a bad day for that kid.

Eventually, maybe ten minutes after the other patient has left, the unhappy child emerges from the bathroom and enters the clinic. They spend another fifteen minutes there, and feel a little less awful (both physically and emotionally) when they finally depart with their parent.

Shortly after all the patients are gone, Isshin strolls to the back of the house and opens the rear door.

"You can stop hiding now, Alex."

Incidentally, while you didn't manage to fully synch up the emanations of your spirit with those of the greater Karakura area, you did reduce your profile a bit. Progress!

Gained Spiritual Attunement D

"Busy day?"

"Thanks," you reply, as you get to your feet, dusting off your pants as you stand up. Once you're satisfied that you won't track any dirt or grass into the Kurosaki home that way, you look at the doctor and inquire, "So. Busy day?"

"Eh," Isshin replies, making a so-so motion with one hand. "Even with the messy interruption, seeing four patients with relatively minor individual complaints back-to-back isn't a huge deal for us. Heck of a day for that last kid, though."

You frown. "Is he going to be alright?"

"Yeah, he'll be fine in another day or two. The little guy's just caught a stomach bug that's been going around."

Ergh. Well, that would fit with the sensation of queasy distress...

Making a mental note not to wander too close to the clinic or the bathroom nearest to it, you set that matter aside and get on with your actual business.

Masaki hears you out about the idea of setting up temporary residential accommodations for the Quincy who come to town next week, and mentions during the conversation that Souken has received confirmation that at least half of those invited to the cover event you collectively came up with will definitely be turning up. The remaining potential attendees are split between a few "will try to be there, other obligations allowing" types, those who'll probably only show up for the "main event," and assorted refusals of varying degrees of politeness and reasonability.

"Uncle's been arguing with himself about whether he ought to respect their choices, or if he should just hand you names, photos, and addresses, and then take a step back," Masaki concludes with a wry smile.

Plotting abduction-by-proxy for their own good, is he? Well, you can't blame Souken; if there was an existential threat to YOUR relatives looming in the near future, you'd want to save them, too, even if it involved stomping on some toes - whether in the metaphorical or literal senses of the phrase. Better they be upset and alive to yell at you about it than the alternative.

Something to discuss with Souken over the next couple of days, then.

For the time being, Masaki makes a call to the Ishida residence to see if Souken is available to speak with you, and is told by Kanae that the eldest Ishida is actually just coming up the street, returning home from his usual morning outing: one part a visit to various old friends; one part a casual sweep for Hollow activity and rowdier-than-normal ghosts; and one part an ordinary round of exercise. If you'd care to give him a quarter-hour or so before you arrive, you're welcome to stop by.

From what Masaki tells you, the Ishida residence is a little further than fifteen minutes away at a respectable walking speed, so you have no problem giving Souken time to cool off and maybe grab a quick shower before he speaks with you.

Incidentally, given the steady flow of patients the Kurosaki Clinic has already seen this morning and the certainty of further visits - Isshin mentions they've got one appointment scheduled for before lunch, and three more in the afternoon, plus any walk-ins - Masaki won't be accompanying you to the Ishidas' place today.

Is there anything else you want to consult the Kurosakis about, while you're here?

When you stopped by to pick up Ryuken on the day you visited the Archers, you spent some time discussing magical medicine with Isshin. You'd gotten onto the topic of the Spell of Regeneration and its possible applications when Ryuken arrived and brought an end to the conversation, so you have some idea of how useful that particular magic would be.

At the same time, there are obvious difficulties with the idea. Fiscal cost actually isn't one of them, because while it's a seventh-tier spell and so certainly not cheap, Regenerate doesn't require any fancy material components that would crank up the price of the service, which would come out to a bit over $1,600 American. That's chump change compared to procedures that can easily run into the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, let alone when you're providing a service modern medicine might not be able to match.

It's that very unfeasability or downright impossibility that is the problem, though. Healing certain kinds of nerve and organ damage might go unnoticed, if the initial problem wasn't too severe or too obvious, or if the results could be rationalized away with some argument like "the doctors caught it early enough for treatment" or "this new prescription works wonders." But more serious disorders? Organ failure? Limb loss? Those almost can't help but draw attention, and their disappearance would bring even more scrutiny.

With that in mind, you wonder if there are lesser procedures, things medicine can do with some difficulty, which could be done more safely or conveniently through magic, and kept quiet in the aftermath.

You spend perhaps ten minutes talking with Isshin about this notion, as well as the reasoning behind it. He agrees with your concerns about getting noticed if you start throwing the Spell of Regeneration and other high-tier healing magic around too casually, though at the same time, he admits that the medical professional in him is frustrated by the obstacle to providing treatment to those in need.

"And then there's the part of me that's worried you might put my clinic out of business," he adds, half-jokingly, half-serious.

That's... probably not going to happen? If only because people are always going to be getting sick, and you can only be in one- or rather, two places at a time. And even then, you'd only be able to treat so many cases before you used up your available resources. Well, unless you got into crafting permanent items with medical uses-

Isshin makes a funny sound that blends interest with mild concern.

-but that would come back around to the issue for potential exposure.

"Also," Briar chimes in, "my partner's not taking on any more big projects until he's done with some of his current ones."

Also, that. But this was just a theoretical discussion anyway.

"Uh-huh. Well, how about we table it for now, and get moving? The Ishidas are waiting."

True enough. You say goodbye to Isshin and Masaki, pause in the genkan to put your shoes back on, and then head outside.

Ten minutes later, you cross paths with another five-man-band of local thugs.

"That's one of 'em, bro!" a vaguely familiar-looking punk says, pointing one finger up at your illusory face. "He was with the old guys that freaked out Toshi!"

Uh-oh.

"No way, Hachi," comes the reply from a second teenager, whose lanky, bleached-blond hair also strikes a chord in memory. "That guy must have been pushing thirty, and he was huge! This guy's way too young."

"Then he's his little brother or somethin'!" 'Hachi' shoots back. "I'm sure of it!"

The apparent leader of the group - one of the larger specimens of thug you've seen during your visits to Karakura, coming in at maybe an inch over six feet, and heavily built besides - turns to the blond punk and raises one eyebrow inquisitively, the piercings there glinting slightly.

"That, I'll buy," the blond agrees.

The leader nods, and turns to you. "So. Care to explain why one of our guys has the heebie-jeebies about the Men in Black?"

You make a show of regarding the leader for a moment and then glancing at the other four thugs, as if considering your options, hands hanging at your sides but fingers waggling in a clear sign of nerves - and so hiding the necessary gestures to shape the mana you have been quietly gathering.

Your act wouldn't fool a practitioner of any caliber, but these guys read as thoroughly mundane, aside from the higher-than-average spiritual presence you've gotten used to seeing in Karakura natives.

There are just enough punks arrayed before you that the standard Spell of Hidden Presence can't accommodate all of them in a single casting, and you have to spend a little more mana on top of that to account for the lack of chanting - since if you started speaking arcane formulas, they might feel offended enough to attack, or intimidated enough to run. Those two factors, combined with Hidden Presence's nature as a spell of witchcraft, are enough to inflate the cost to that of a fifth-tier spell; since you'd like to avoid revealing your use of magic, you shave off some of the duration, bringing the spell back down by one level, thus allowing you to cast it without blaring your efforts to anyone in range with the right sensory skills.

To the punks, you say, "For the record, I'm Alex Harris, Division Six. I'm afraid your friend saw something he shouldn't have. And now," you add, as the magic takes effect and you seem to fade from existence before their very eyes, "so have you."

The leader's eyes bug out, and he staggers back a step from what seems, to him, to be suddenly empty space. "Wh-wh-what the HELL!?"

"It's a ghost!" one of the punks you don't think you've met before wails in alarm, grabbing his nearest companion.

"It's gonna eat our SOULS!" the other one shrieks, hugging right back.

The one named Hachi just stands there, staring and pointing at where you used to be, a broken stream of single syllables spilling from his lips as he sputters in shock.

"RUN, YOU IDIOTS!" Bad Bleach Job yells, having already turned and started to beat feet.

Good instincts, you reflect, as you walk past the rest of the group, but too slow. And unlike the Men In Black, you don't need people to look at a flashy thing in order for you to remove problematic memories.

Your mana cycled while the thugs were freaking out, and now you're ready for your second spell, which you cast without hesitation. A couple of extra tiers' worth of mana accounts for the number of targets, and since Blondie isn't far enough away to merit further expenditure, you're able to fire off the Spell of Memory Lapse in the form of a third-tier spell.

All at once, the thuggish quintet blink, stumble, and - in the case of the running blond - stagger to a halt.

"...dude, why are you hugging me?"

"...I don't know."

The leader looks around in clear confusion. "What the fu- oi, Kenta!" he says, noticing Blondie off by himself. "Where are you going all of a sudden?"

"That... is a very good question," Kenta replies. "Um... does anybody else feel like they just got five years scared off their life?"

Wary glances are exchanged, followed by grudging admissions that "somethin' don't feel right."

"Aw, man," Hachi whimpers, clutching his head. "It's just like Toshi said, bro! We got jumped by the Men In Black, and now we can't remember what happened!"

"I'm starting to worry about you, Hachi."

"Yeah, you've been watching too many movies, man."

Satisfied, and with the reduced timer on your selective imperceptibility running down, you turn your back and pick up the pace as you continue down the street.

"Not that it wasn't funny," Briar says after a moment, "but what brought that on?"

"The power of Will Smith compelled me."

"Yeah, I kind of got that with all the 'Men In Black' references," Briar sighs. "Been waiting to use that one for a bit, huh?"

You may have been inspired when that other punk - Toshi, was it? - ran away from you, Balthazar, and Ambrose, yelling about the Men In Black. Maybe. And by Akkiko's prior mention of the Shinigami having access to memory-altering magic.

"Hm. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

How so?

"Truth in fiction, that kind of thing. Maybe the whole Men In Black business got started because somebody saw Shinigami at work and managed to get away with their memories intact, but didn't have context for what they'd seen."

You consider that, and have to admit that you can see how there might be a connection. On the other hand, you're not sure if the "men in black" of the conspiracy theories and urban legends that ultimately inspired the recent movie are a thing in Japan.

Whatever the case, after breaking contact with the thugs, you experience no further delays in your walk to the Ishida residence, which turns out to be a fairly large and somewhat old-fashioned house. The architecture is Western rather than traditional Japanese, and as you get closer, you start to sense the same sort of slightly below ambient average spiritual aura that was around the Archer residence. This being Karakura, said "average" is quite a bit higher than normal, but the wards on the house seem to have been adjusted to account for that; if you didn't know that this was a Quincy home, or that they used suppressive wards, you could have walked right by without blinking.

...well, unless you got close enough to see the Quincy cross over the front door. That's kind of a giveaway, if only to those who know what the symbol means.

As you step onto the property, Briar ducks behind the wall surrounding it and assumes her human-sized form. The two of you then proceed to the door, where a press of the buzzer is promptly answered by a woman about Kanae's age, wearing a classic maid's dress.

"Yes?" she asks.

"Alex Harris and Briar, here to see Ishida Souken," you offer.

The maid nods. "You are expected. Please come in, both of you; the Elder and the Mistress are waiting."

You're shown to a room towards the back of the house, where Souken is sitting at a small table with a fresh cup of tea and a plate of light snacks before him. Kanae is present as well, and just pouring herself a cup.

Souken looks up, and smiles. "Ah, welcome! Come, have a seat. Can we offer you some tea? A light snack, perhaps?"

Once everyone is settled, you explain the purpose of today's visit. Souken asks a few questions about the Spell of the Magnificent Mansion, split between mundane concerns like the number of guests each could accommodate and how comfortable they'd be, and more arcane ones such as how difficult it would be to hide the presence of the active spells.

Souken is pleased when you mention how you can use the Spell of the Private Sanctum to cover the creation of the Mansions, and that either the Spell to Mask Dweomers or the Spell of Magic Auras should be sufficient to hide them while they remain active. He's also quite pleased when you explain that you can make a Mansion large enough to house half a dozen people in downright luxurious comfort, with food, bedding, and other necessities attended to.

"One of the little stumbling blocks to our plan is that there aren't many areas in Karakura our various relatives would consider secure," he says. "This house, an apartment safehouse, a storage facility or two... possibly Urahara's, if we could convince the others he was trustworthy."

Good luck with that.

Souken chuckles and tips his teacup your way, acknowledging the Shinigami shopkeeper's shady nature.

"Still," he continues, "if I could honestly tell everyone that we had arranged for secure shelter, it would likely convince a few of the more reluctant types to attend after all."

"I do worry about how crowded it would feel, Father-in-law," Kanae notes.

The only assurance you can offer about that is to cast the spell and let her see how large the Mansions are.