Through the Cracks Ch3 bit – Meeting mages

~ crossovercreativechaos

:And a left, and a right, and – this way?: Kaoru asked, tracing her way through halls she hadn’t set foot in for over a year.

:That way,: Megumi confirmed. :If I hadn’t seen them take it over, I’d never have believed this was the old Guard barracks. Do mages have to complicate everything?:

:Megumi.: Kaoru tried not to roll her eyes. :The elf-knots were years ago.:

:So?: Her Companion snorted, projecting the wincing memory of just what it had felt like to comb and cut the mass of tiny knots out of mane and tail. :If young mages want to practice tangle-cantrips on fine strands, they should try the Court ladies’ embroidery circle!:

Kaoru sighed, thinking of the Haven weaving competition that had come within inches of going drastically wrong. :I suppose it doesn’t matter that they missed?:

:NO.:

Kaoru shook her head, taking a deep breath. You can do this. Master Sejanes isn’t an Imperial anymore, he’s part of the Alliance. He is not going to eat you. And Kenshin said he’d stay put. He’s got the laundry, the garden, and the children to look after, Sanosuke’s looking in on him, you know he’s smart enough to stay inside today and let the fuss die down…

Unless, of course, someone got into trouble near the Kamiya dojo.

16 thoughts on “Through the Cracks Ch3 bit – Meeting mages”

  2. Unless, of course, someone got into trouble near the Kamiya dojo.

    *groans* You just had to think it, didn’t you?

    Haven’t you learned by now that Kenshin is just as prone to being wherever there is trouble as a Herald?

    Probably the only people in the multiverse with the same size sign on their backs taunting Murphy is Daniel from SG-1, Blair from The Sentinel, Duo from Gundam Wing, and allthe King Candidates in Magi (through Alibaba and Sinbad seem to have been given most taunting of the signs in that category) . . . okay so most heroes seems to have that sign but those particular examples are especially prone to being in exactly the wrong (right?) place at exactly the wrong (right?) time.

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    1. Kenshin, Blair, Daniel, Duo, Alibaba, and Sinbad had somehow managed to end up on Kolvir when Brand’s bad stuff made him crit fail his attempts to damage The Pattern. Instead of Martin, he trumped in a Martin shaped Great Old One who has instead bound The Pattern as a personal artifact.

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      2. Zelazny’s Great Book of Amber, with elements of the Amber Diceless RPG, Lovecraft and the Xianxia genre.

        I am really bad about multicrossing everything into mush.

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      4. Well, it takes some liberties with canon and sorry for lack of a spoiler warning.

        I’m pretty sure it might be a fun adventure to run.

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      1. Poor Kaoru. She’ll find out!

        Yes, she will. Poor dear.

        I think the only person who wouldn’t be surprised by how much Kenshin manages to just stumble across, be in the vicinity of, or just plain manages to somehow get himself into, is Hiko.

        Some people will probably wish that Herald or not, he was wearing whites simply so they’d know immediately that he is a trouble-magnet. Besides other considerations, another reason he’d be adverse to the idea is that he is visible enough with his hair. He doesn’t need to add white clothing on top of that.

        Of course, one could argue given how eye-catching Companions are, that it doesn’t matter what the Heralds are wearing. They are not going be unnoticed.

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    2. The color is kind of appropriate even in that context if you consider what the Companions are . . .

      Through to be the fair, the primary reason the Heralds’ uniforms are usually white is because it is difficult with their level of tech to keep things pristine white – which makes it difficult for people to replicate the uniforms. Bards were scarlet and Healers bright green is because the dyes to make those particular shades are very expensive which again makes them difficult to replicate.

      Now, granted, Heralds have their Companions to prove they are what they they say they are. And it is difficult to mistake a Companion for anything else. On the other hand, they do have to keep reminding people they are not horses.

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      1. actually, there was a very interesting short story in one of the anthologies, where a couple of Heralds are tracking a con artist who’s pretending to be a Herald… problem is, they don’t know that at first. They’re tracking down a woman who (spoiler: believes) that her father was Chosen, went off to Haven, and never came back. When they come to see her, Maya’s not just bitter about that, but her con-man ex, and they enlist her to track the guy because she still knows him better than anyone. When they do track him, they can’t understand how he’s managing to fake being a Herald; much like in many huge-range cons (or most eps of Leverage), they can’t understand the depths a grifter (or illusionist) can go to in order to set up the right ‘fantasy’… or why anyone would go to that much trouble in the first place. It’s Maya who points out all the things her ex is doing, and comes up with ways to counter the fakery – the one I like best is where she hits the two companions and the grifter’s white horse gently with a big smear of tanning dye, and the two Companions can make it vanish on the spot, and the other horse can’t.

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