Will move this to its own thread when the next part gets written. Shouldn't be long. It'll finish the SoD mini-arc neatly.
Two: Kamikaze Kaitou Katz
It's only when something you've taken as a given has gone away that you miss it. This is the honest truth.
I realized it was such when I started missing hamburgers. And showers. And let's not forget plumbing.
Not bloody likely, what with the smell and all. Gah. I'm reconsidering the whole 'not an outdoorsman' thing I've got going.
Don't know if it's not worse that I'd gotten acclimated to it by the time a week and change were up.
It wasn't as much of a problem as it would have been if I were _all_ human and not just 'mostly'. Not having to worry about infection, sickness, or other exceedingly unpleasant things like that which seemed inevitable given the local conditions was something I was infinitely thankful for.
Still, there was only so much of the local 'culture' that I could handle.
Hence my desire to get the hell out of dodge as soon as I could.
I could have likely come up with some sort of bull reason for my haste to get the hell on my way other than my level of personal comfort being less than I was generally prepared to accept ... in retrospect, that was as much bull than any other reason. I'd been stuck in a D.D. Battlemover for longer than I cared to remember, which was about rock bottom as far as personal comfort could go, and hand't gone entirely mental during that time.
Well, never twice for the same reason, in any case.
Trying to make myself believe I was worried about Anri and Sylvie wasn't about to work. Both were highly competent, and had the equivalent of a small army with them last I could recall. One more pair of hands to shoot a gun wouldn't make a difference.
I _missed_ them, which was another thing altogether. Alright, not entirely, but by enough of a margin.
Same thing about Shizuru and Natsuki, save the army maybe.
They could take care of themselves, often more effectively than I could say the same of myself.
Which led me to skulking in wait, under cover of trees, waiting for an opportune moment ...
But I've gotten ahead of myself again.
I could start from the beginning, but that would make an already slightly lengthy retelling into something far too long and boring to bother with. Let's just say that before I managed to hunt down my first rabbit I found a type of berries that managed to give even my physiology indigestion.
The immediate reason for my cheap burglar imitation, staking out the very place I'd come out of the Crossing into at night and waiting for my momentary partner's 'go ahead' was the same one as always when I pulled something similarly ... odd.
Call me an easy dupe, but on the off chance of there being something here that was rumored to have a serious magical 'kick' to it - one that I had high hopes I could harness to let me Cross again - I was willing to go out on a limb to help steal said item.
After all, I doubt they'd be willing to part with something dubbed the 'Staff of Destruction' if I came up to the gates and asked for it. Especially not with the way I left last time I was one the premises.
And again, I get ahead of myself.
The 'they' in question were the staff and students of the Tristania Academy of Magic. Tristania being the name of the country I'd ended up in.
Irony of ironies, even without the Gift of Tongues every human/Angel hybrid seemes to have manifested in one way or another, I would have been able to get by.
The other countries around were both familiar and not at the same time. Germania, Gallia, Albion, Romalia ...
I'd not only landed in history, I'd landed in alternate history.
Halkeginia was an equivalent of Europe around the 16th Century AD, with more than just a pinch of the supernatural thrown in for good measure.
As to how I'd found out about that?
It turned out that I hadn't needed to go out for information. It had come to me on its very own.
Looking as I did, that wasn't too surprising.
That is to say, I got mugged.
Or, well, they _tried_ to.
Considerate, though. Gave me enough information to let me at least get oriented, and threw in some money to sweeten the deal.
Just for that, I stayed happy with leaving off at broken bones.
After all, whatever healthy 'fellow' brigands were around the area, not to mention the local wildlife - oh, was that a wolf's howl I hear? - would be far crueller that I to them. Consider it poetic justice, if you will.
Given that information, I could blend into the populace somewhat well. The eyes and hair weren't something a cowl couldn't hide, most of the time, and even they didn't draw too much attention. Though there were a few times during which I did wish I had been able to pick up Gabriel's little shifting trick way back when ... oh well. Live and learn.
I moved from town to town, consulting the occasional mage about the peculiarities of their craft and trying to ferret out useful tidbits.
Technology wouldn't be getting me out of this jam. I knew that much.
Well, not unless Shizuru and Natsuki managed to hunt me down. I wasn't going to remain idle and just wait for that to happen, or to see whether it occured at all.
Hence the research about the local magic.
Manipulation of external energies by those who had the talent, split into several element based classes and ranked according to the complexity of the weave they could create ... not par for the course, exactly, but not so unusual as to give me too many problems with comprehending the basics of how they did things.
Sadly, that alone wasn't enough.
Magic had pulled me here, magic could put me back on my path ... but unfortunately, the farther I got - which, admittedly, wasn't all that far - in my research, the more I realized that whatever happened had been a bit of a fluke.
So instead of trying to rely on something this unstable, I prefered to go and see about a tried and true method of travel.
At the barest of basics, it was still energy. My Field could work with that. Could maybe even harness a considerable enough reservoir thereof, which would allow me to attempt a Crossing on my 'own power' for the first time since End of Evangelion.
As I could hardly afford to pay for that sort of energy expenditure, or the sort of item that would likely come with it, there seemed to be only one thing to do ...
Causality seemed to conspire in my favor, since a week after I'd decided that I was contacted by a local of considerable renown in that line of work.
She called herself Fouquet, the Crumbling Dirt - the latter being her so called 'runic' name, and signifying that she was a mage.
Earth element specialist, too.
See? I'd learned a bit by that time. Not just that I didn't enjoy the gruel that seemed the universal breakfast food at most inns. Well, the sole one I trusted to any extent, anyway. Call me pedantic and picky, but I prefer quality in my meat. Sadly, expenses ... well, you know.
"You are Katz," she'd stated. Really, no need to ask. I was sort of distinctive, even in this land of odd haircolors. Case in point, Fouquet, with her _green_ hair. Lime.
She'd caught me at breakfast, as the case was, and in a mood that wasn't exactly enthusiastic so my answer, unneeded as it was, consisted of a brief nod and a return to my ale. I'd just gotten done with the gruel.
Better that than what passed for 'clean' water here most of the time, and the wine they served was too damn sweet for me to stomach for long. Hence, ale.
It had been kind of growing on me, though. I wondered what Albion imports tasted like.
Fouquet sat herself opposite me, and laid out her spiel. Thankfully, the chamber was mostly deserted _and_ the inn was known for its ... discretion.
Just the reason I'd picked it, really. Damn Germanian brigands. You put down two or three bands for a quick buck, and they give you annoying nicknames and start spreading silly stories that would likely draw the local mages' attention if I stayed too long in one place.
Basically, it had to do with a powerful magical item being kept within the vaults of the Tristanian Academy of Magic.
Well informed woman, that, to have caught my asking about similar items of power ... or I'd just gotten sloppy. Hadn't really had too much of a reason to seriously interrogate someone lately and all.
Trust her?
Oh, hell no.
Still, she was obviously well prepared, familiar with the place the item was held in, and capable.
After some discussion, during which I'd found out that what little I'd used of my apparent brand of magic - what the locals had taken my Field for, it seemed - had been noticed and relayed to her. Hence the offer, since the item in question was under some sort of expert warding that she thought she'd need help to get through.
We agreed to split the proceeds for cashing the so called 'Staff of Destruction', and I think I did a fair bit of bargaining. Enough, at least, to make it appear as if I wasn't going to snatch the damn thing at the earliest possible instant and use it for my own devices.
You know, like she seemed intent on doing.
You see, I'd known opportunists during my life. Been one myself, on occasion. And I'd known professionals. Also been one myself, though not quite as often as the latter.
She was most definitely the latter.
I wasn't _certain_ that she didn't just want to do this for the money. I had reliable doubts about it, though ...
Oh, well. Makes it a bit more fair to plan to double cross the double crosser.
At least she wasn't a cross dresser.
There really wasn't much preparation to be done, and she'd mapped out the defenses around our target very well, making the whole thing simple.
Far too simple.
If I didn't know better, I'd have said that she'd had inside help.
Oh. Wait. I didn't know better.
The culmination being me sitting there, brooding, as I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And considered that, next time I do something like this, I ought to bring by a book.
Then Fouquet's signal came. A shudder of the ground, a cloud of dirt and dust rising from the opposite end of the Academy compound to that which I was watching, a feeling of a spell going off from that direction.
Deception is the mother of all warfare, or somesuch, and Fouquet had drawn the attention of pretty much every mage in that complex with that display.
It was time to get this party started.
*grumble* And I've actually got a follow up plot.
Katz has been known to mess with minds. And to mess up minds. Rip apart minds? Stuff like that. Well, part of his trying to get in good with at least some people at the Academy would happen to include his first try at _fixing_ one.
I'm shaking my head and alternately crackling madly and sighing in surrender at the inevitable ramifications of that bit.
Also, being his usual tactless self and faux pax waiting to happen would get him mixed up in local politics.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
Two: Kamikaze Kaitou Katz
It's only when something you've taken as a given has gone away that you miss it. This is the honest truth.
I realized it was such when I started missing hamburgers. And showers. And let's not forget plumbing.
Not bloody likely, what with the smell and all. Gah. I'm reconsidering the whole 'not an outdoorsman' thing I've got going.
Don't know if it's not worse that I'd gotten acclimated to it by the time a week and change were up.
It wasn't as much of a problem as it would have been if I were _all_ human and not just 'mostly'. Not having to worry about infection, sickness, or other exceedingly unpleasant things like that which seemed inevitable given the local conditions was something I was infinitely thankful for.
Still, there was only so much of the local 'culture' that I could handle.
Hence my desire to get the hell out of dodge as soon as I could.
I could have likely come up with some sort of bull reason for my haste to get the hell on my way other than my level of personal comfort being less than I was generally prepared to accept ... in retrospect, that was as much bull than any other reason. I'd been stuck in a D.D. Battlemover for longer than I cared to remember, which was about rock bottom as far as personal comfort could go, and hand't gone entirely mental during that time.
Well, never twice for the same reason, in any case.
Trying to make myself believe I was worried about Anri and Sylvie wasn't about to work. Both were highly competent, and had the equivalent of a small army with them last I could recall. One more pair of hands to shoot a gun wouldn't make a difference.
I _missed_ them, which was another thing altogether. Alright, not entirely, but by enough of a margin.
Same thing about Shizuru and Natsuki, save the army maybe.
They could take care of themselves, often more effectively than I could say the same of myself.
Which led me to skulking in wait, under cover of trees, waiting for an opportune moment ...
But I've gotten ahead of myself again.
I could start from the beginning, but that would make an already slightly lengthy retelling into something far too long and boring to bother with. Let's just say that before I managed to hunt down my first rabbit I found a type of berries that managed to give even my physiology indigestion.
The immediate reason for my cheap burglar imitation, staking out the very place I'd come out of the Crossing into at night and waiting for my momentary partner's 'go ahead' was the same one as always when I pulled something similarly ... odd.
Call me an easy dupe, but on the off chance of there being something here that was rumored to have a serious magical 'kick' to it - one that I had high hopes I could harness to let me Cross again - I was willing to go out on a limb to help steal said item.
After all, I doubt they'd be willing to part with something dubbed the 'Staff of Destruction' if I came up to the gates and asked for it. Especially not with the way I left last time I was one the premises.
And again, I get ahead of myself.
The 'they' in question were the staff and students of the Tristania Academy of Magic. Tristania being the name of the country I'd ended up in.
Irony of ironies, even without the Gift of Tongues every human/Angel hybrid seemes to have manifested in one way or another, I would have been able to get by.
The other countries around were both familiar and not at the same time. Germania, Gallia, Albion, Romalia ...
I'd not only landed in history, I'd landed in alternate history.
Halkeginia was an equivalent of Europe around the 16th Century AD, with more than just a pinch of the supernatural thrown in for good measure.
As to how I'd found out about that?
It turned out that I hadn't needed to go out for information. It had come to me on its very own.
Looking as I did, that wasn't too surprising.
That is to say, I got mugged.
Or, well, they _tried_ to.
Considerate, though. Gave me enough information to let me at least get oriented, and threw in some money to sweeten the deal.
Just for that, I stayed happy with leaving off at broken bones.
After all, whatever healthy 'fellow' brigands were around the area, not to mention the local wildlife - oh, was that a wolf's howl I hear? - would be far crueller that I to them. Consider it poetic justice, if you will.
Given that information, I could blend into the populace somewhat well. The eyes and hair weren't something a cowl couldn't hide, most of the time, and even they didn't draw too much attention. Though there were a few times during which I did wish I had been able to pick up Gabriel's little shifting trick way back when ... oh well. Live and learn.
I moved from town to town, consulting the occasional mage about the peculiarities of their craft and trying to ferret out useful tidbits.
Technology wouldn't be getting me out of this jam. I knew that much.
Well, not unless Shizuru and Natsuki managed to hunt me down. I wasn't going to remain idle and just wait for that to happen, or to see whether it occured at all.
Hence the research about the local magic.
Manipulation of external energies by those who had the talent, split into several element based classes and ranked according to the complexity of the weave they could create ... not par for the course, exactly, but not so unusual as to give me too many problems with comprehending the basics of how they did things.
Sadly, that alone wasn't enough.
Magic had pulled me here, magic could put me back on my path ... but unfortunately, the farther I got - which, admittedly, wasn't all that far - in my research, the more I realized that whatever happened had been a bit of a fluke.
So instead of trying to rely on something this unstable, I prefered to go and see about a tried and true method of travel.
At the barest of basics, it was still energy. My Field could work with that. Could maybe even harness a considerable enough reservoir thereof, which would allow me to attempt a Crossing on my 'own power' for the first time since End of Evangelion.
As I could hardly afford to pay for that sort of energy expenditure, or the sort of item that would likely come with it, there seemed to be only one thing to do ...
Causality seemed to conspire in my favor, since a week after I'd decided that I was contacted by a local of considerable renown in that line of work.
She called herself Fouquet, the Crumbling Dirt - the latter being her so called 'runic' name, and signifying that she was a mage.
Earth element specialist, too.
See? I'd learned a bit by that time. Not just that I didn't enjoy the gruel that seemed the universal breakfast food at most inns. Well, the sole one I trusted to any extent, anyway. Call me pedantic and picky, but I prefer quality in my meat. Sadly, expenses ... well, you know.
"You are Katz," she'd stated. Really, no need to ask. I was sort of distinctive, even in this land of odd haircolors. Case in point, Fouquet, with her _green_ hair. Lime.
She'd caught me at breakfast, as the case was, and in a mood that wasn't exactly enthusiastic so my answer, unneeded as it was, consisted of a brief nod and a return to my ale. I'd just gotten done with the gruel.
Better that than what passed for 'clean' water here most of the time, and the wine they served was too damn sweet for me to stomach for long. Hence, ale.
It had been kind of growing on me, though. I wondered what Albion imports tasted like.
Fouquet sat herself opposite me, and laid out her spiel. Thankfully, the chamber was mostly deserted _and_ the inn was known for its ... discretion.
Just the reason I'd picked it, really. Damn Germanian brigands. You put down two or three bands for a quick buck, and they give you annoying nicknames and start spreading silly stories that would likely draw the local mages' attention if I stayed too long in one place.
Basically, it had to do with a powerful magical item being kept within the vaults of the Tristanian Academy of Magic.
Well informed woman, that, to have caught my asking about similar items of power ... or I'd just gotten sloppy. Hadn't really had too much of a reason to seriously interrogate someone lately and all.
Trust her?
Oh, hell no.
Still, she was obviously well prepared, familiar with the place the item was held in, and capable.
After some discussion, during which I'd found out that what little I'd used of my apparent brand of magic - what the locals had taken my Field for, it seemed - had been noticed and relayed to her. Hence the offer, since the item in question was under some sort of expert warding that she thought she'd need help to get through.
We agreed to split the proceeds for cashing the so called 'Staff of Destruction', and I think I did a fair bit of bargaining. Enough, at least, to make it appear as if I wasn't going to snatch the damn thing at the earliest possible instant and use it for my own devices.
You know, like she seemed intent on doing.
You see, I'd known opportunists during my life. Been one myself, on occasion. And I'd known professionals. Also been one myself, though not quite as often as the latter.
She was most definitely the latter.
I wasn't _certain_ that she didn't just want to do this for the money. I had reliable doubts about it, though ...
Oh, well. Makes it a bit more fair to plan to double cross the double crosser.
At least she wasn't a cross dresser.
There really wasn't much preparation to be done, and she'd mapped out the defenses around our target very well, making the whole thing simple.
Far too simple.
If I didn't know better, I'd have said that she'd had inside help.
Oh. Wait. I didn't know better.
The culmination being me sitting there, brooding, as I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And considered that, next time I do something like this, I ought to bring by a book.
Then Fouquet's signal came. A shudder of the ground, a cloud of dirt and dust rising from the opposite end of the Academy compound to that which I was watching, a feeling of a spell going off from that direction.
Deception is the mother of all warfare, or somesuch, and Fouquet had drawn the attention of pretty much every mage in that complex with that display.
It was time to get this party started.
*grumble* And I've actually got a follow up plot.
Katz has been known to mess with minds. And to mess up minds. Rip apart minds? Stuff like that. Well, part of his trying to get in good with at least some people at the Academy would happen to include his first try at _fixing_ one.
I'm shaking my head and alternately crackling madly and sighing in surrender at the inevitable ramifications of that bit.
Also, being his usual tactless self and faux pax waiting to happen would get him mixed up in local politics.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm