A Nascent Kaleidoscope

After Kunou's birthday, the days seemed to pass by quickly. It was rare that I wasn't running around doing something, I mostly just stayed home making sure the time I spent together with Yasaka and Kunou was memorable before she went off to school.

Yasaka was…..well, she put up a nice façade infront of Kunou, but I caught her crying more than once in the interim. For the longest time, it was Yasaka and Kunou only, and now they were going to be separated.

I couldn't fault her for a small breakdown every now and then, but she held herself together rather well. To her credit as a wonderful parent, Kunou never noticed anything amiss and Yasaka never once even hinted at stopping Kunou from attending.

But, the day finally arrived.

Kunou was currently running around the house, doing her last minute 'packing'.

That included trying to grab a lot of random things she thought she would need.

We had to step in when she came up from the house storage holding a few weapons, trying to add them to the pile of stuff she wanted to bring.

Admittedly, it was fun watching her go around in a rush trying to grab anything she could.

I think the past week or so we've spent together did a lot to soothe the worry for both of them.

"Are you marching off to battle?" Yasaka deadpanned because Kunou also summoned all of her weapons.

That is to say, she was wearing the arm protectors from Raikou, the spear from Scáthach was in her hand, she had her magic sunglasses on, and her aura was flared up and even her twice critical was summoned. Among other random bits and ends she picked up.

"Do you have your wand?" I asked.

Kunou went still and her eyes widened as she frantically started searching, both physically and inside her storage bracelet.

I still couldn't help but admire the craftsmanship on that thing, Medea truly outdid herself there. Granted it was created from the feather of a literal Phoenix, a mythological beast that had some claims to divinity based on the origin and often fought with Dragons in legends, but still.

"No! I can't find it!" She dropped all her stuff.

"Stop giving her a panic attack." Yasaka nudged me with a snort.

I flipped my hand over, holding her wand. "You left it on the counter a couple hours ago." I held it out for her to take. "Remember not to lose it in the future, never let it leave your sight if you can help it. If it's not in your hands, make sure it's inside your bracelet." I gave her a little bit of advice.

For a beginner Magus, Mystic Codes that assisted casting weren't uncommon. In Rin's instance, she has her Azoth Dagger and her Gems always within proverbial Reach, and that's not considering Ruby.

Especially where she's going, Wands are treated as another limb for the Wizards and Witches there.

I believe I heard the Ollivander mention that Wands were historically very personal. To the point where in the past, it wasn't rare for spouses to not even let each other touch them.

I could understand the sentiment, I get very protective of my treasures and only let those close to me touch them.

Kunou started wildly swinging around her wand to show off her 'magic skills'. That is to say, she was casting Lumos on and off because that's the only spell she learned so far. Well learned from this branch.

She had a few random spells she picked up from school here but they don't focus on real magical lessons here considering Youkai who use Magic are rather rare in comparison.

"Is it finally time?" Scáthach walked into the room, joined by Venelana at her side. "Remember my lessons, little one."

"Stab them in the heart!" Kunou jabbed her wand aggressively.

Yasaka let out a sigh. "As a last resort." She clarified. "Kunou, tell me the rules we discussed."

"Uh….no hurting other classmates too bad?" She tilted her head.

"…..and?"

"No killing classmates unless I have no other choice?" She added.

"And we mean no other choice. We're trusting you with a lot of dangerous things, Kunou. You're growing up and you deserve to take on some responsibility, we only hope you realize what this means." Yasaka took a stern tone despite trusting her daughter completely.

Scáthach gave a warm smile. "She has a good heart, if someone ends up dead, it will be with a clear conscience. But remember, little one, taking a life is easy, living with the weight of such a decision is hard."

Right, all of us here have so much blood on our hands that it's easy to forget the first time we had to take a life. It was perhaps easiest for me considering my circumstances, I was disillusioned rather easily when I left home.

I only hope that Kunou retains her innocence for as long as possible.

"You specified classmates, what about adults?" Venelana asked.

"Momma said that if an adult tries to kill me then I don't have to hold back." Kunou replied.

"And what else?" Yasaka coaxed her.

"…..but go get Auntie Medea if I can run away."

"Good girl." Yasaka's tail swept out, grabbing Kunou, making the little girl giggle and whine simultaneously as she was pulled in for a big hug.

"Dare I ask that you talked about things a girl her age should know as well?" Venelana whispered.

Yasaka's expression darked. "We had that conversation. If something like that is in the cards, well, a dead body will be the least of that places concerns."

I think I did rather well to stop myself from letting my anger boil over at the thought of someone doing that to my daughter.

"Oh, before I forget. A small delayed birthday present, it took me until last night to finish it and I didn't really think about it until afterwards." Venelana's eyes lit up. Without warning, she took out an older looking camera and quickly snapped a picture of all three of us together. Immediately, the Camera made some motorized noises and the pictures popped out of the bottom. "A picture before she leaves." Venelana laughed, then took out a decorated book, opening it up to reveal all kinds of pictures and slid it into an empty slot. "I thought it might be nice to have pictures of everyone in case you're home sick. Also, you can show off your home and family to any friends you make." She passed it over to Kunou.

Kunou quickly opened it up, flipping through the pages that were filled with photos. It wasn't just our rather extensive and dysfunctional family, it was views from all over Youkai Kyoto, various scenes with all different walks of life represented in our little corner of the world.

"Thank you, Auntie Grandma." Kunou closed it and quickly dove into Venelana for a hug. "I love it."

"I can see why it took awhile to put together." Yasaka whispered. "You didn't have to go through the trouble."

"As long as she likes it, I don't mind." Venelana just smiled, accepting the affection from our little fox.

With all the fantastical elements of our lives, I honestly never considered something so simple as a photo album. Ironic considering one of the dates I took Raikou on was to make exactly that for us.

"Why don't you take the camera too, make sure to take lots of pictures so you can fill up the photo album and show your parents when you come back." She also gave it to Kunou without a second thought. "It's magic, so it should work fine."

She really is a wonderful 'auntie' to Kunou.

[Do you think the fact that she's both the girl's Aunt and Grandma means that she double dotes on the little dragon?] Ddraig asked.

A question for the Sages.

Funny enough, I think both Aristotle and Confucious are alive in some capacity in their respective Factions.

Scáthach let out an uncharacteristic sigh. "I have nothing further to give you, little one. But if you require help or tutelage, I will always be available."

I wonder how Cu would react knowing that our teacher was being so gentle. I knew for a fact that any 'teaching' here would not involve the copious amounts of beatings that we had to endure.

Unfortunately not everyone could be here, but everyone already said their goodbyes last night, this was just the last few moments before we headed over.

Speaking of, I looked at my phone and realized our time had come.

"If we want to cross over in the right time frame, we're going to need to leave in the next few minutes." I spoke to the room.

"Don't let us hold you up." Venelana was quick to answer.

"Go along." Scáthach gave a little smirk to Kunou. "Go cause all the trouble you can while you're still young."

"Shall we?" I held my hands out to both Kunou and Yasaka.

"I'm ready!"

"Let's go send our daughter off." Yasaka smiled warmly.

I opened a portal and we walked through.

[***]

"Oooh?" Kunou looked around excitedly.

"An actual Train Station, I'm surprised they set something like this up." Yasaka joined her as we walked out.

"King's Cross Station, a rather famous one in London, but they managed to section off a portion for their own school's train." Otherwise we wouldn't have just so blatantly deposited ourselves here. "Well, we have a little bit of a walk to the part we need to go to."

We were essentially in an empty waiting area.

Rather quickly, people – Wizards and Witches were popping in and out of space using that abhorrent method of teleportation.

Some of them stared at us, mostly Kunou and Yasaka but not all of the looks were the negative ones.

It's a fact of life, they were exotic to the people here in England, they were going to get stares.

"Daddy, we need to find Platform 9 and ¾." Kunou held up her Hogwarts acceptance letter.

Of course there is no 'real' platform 9 and ¾ there should be some kind of doorway there or something.

"Is it okay for us to walk around like this?" Yasaka asked.

"It's fine, there is a subtle perception filter over this entire place. Rather large, but not very powerful. If I had to guess, it just makes people ignore anything out of the ordinary." The size of it is a detriment to its power it seems. "As long as you don't shout about your tails or ears, no one is going to pay it any head."

Probably smart considering how many magical kids come through this place when they want to hide themselves from mundane people. And from the peeks at the culture of the witches and wizards here, it's probably needed since they would have trouble integrating into mundane norms easily.

Kunou ignored all of that and pulled both of us along, counting the platform numbers until we came up to what appeared to be our destination.

I could tell because there were spatial fluctuations. An illusion cast over an Archway that led to an adjacent space.

However, it was sealed for some reason.

And we weren't the only ones trying to enter as there were a couple young boys fallen over with carts full of luggage. I would question their destination if it weren't for the owl one of them was carrying in a cage.

They seemed rather confused as they pushed against the spot that should be the entrance.

"Excuse me, boys. This wouldn't happen to be the entrance to Platform 9 and ¾ would it?" I asked them, breaking them from their growing panic.

A young orange haired boy, a proper ginger not like Ichigo. And another black haired kid with an interesting scar on his forehead. For some reason, I vaguely recall something about a boy with a matching scar.

Well, I'm sure it's not important.

"Blimey, they have tails." The Orange haired kid blurted out, seeing Yasaka and Kunou.

"Ron!" The black-haired one said under his breath. "I'm, erm, sorry sir. Yes this is the entrance to platform 9 and ¾ but….huh, we can't go in for some reason, it turned solid?"

"Ah, thank you." I ignored the rude outburst, he was a young kid after all. And I walked up and put a hand on the brick archway. "Looks like someone sealed it up haphazardly. Let me give you a hand." I held out my index finger and pushed it into the brick. And like water, ripples pulsed out and I dragged my finger downwards, reopening the pathway. "There you are, it should be ready to go."

"…wicked."

I shot them a little grin and twisted my hand, making sure their carts were pulled upright and all their luggage was deposited back into their carts. Just a minor application of telekinesis.

They looked Kunou's age, or thereabouts, so I maybe wanted to show off a little for her potential classmates.

"Thank you, sir!" The black haired kid said with a tone of genuineness.

"Well, aren't you a polite young lad." I paused taking another look at him and particular at his scar because I felt a very faint sensation from it. "I hope this isn't rude of me, but your scar…..?"

The black haired kid seemed to slump and look nervous.

"That's right, he's Harry Potter!" The Orange Haired kid said proudly, apparently on his behalf.

I tilted my head and then I remembered. "Right, I heard there was a famous kid in this country." I nodded in understanding. Something about splattering a dark lord when he was an infant. Very impressive. "But, uh, that's not what I meant. Your scar is cursed rather malevolently." At Least I think it was a curse, it's rather old so it sort of merged with his normal 'aura' so to speak. "You might want to get that checked out. You're going to Hogwarts, right?"

"Cursed?!" His eyes widened.

"Wait, how do you know it's Cursed? Dumbledore never said anything!" The Orange haired kid said rather bluntly.

I simply shrugged, I have no idea what Dumbledore would be thinking. "Feel free to ask him about it. There's even a new teacher there that could help you. Just mention that I sent you and she will sort you out." I said simply.

Well, I could probably fix it as well, but if he was going to see Medea in the next few days, no need for me to waste the time here as it didn't seem immediately life threatening.

"Is that why it hurts sometimes…?" He put a hand to his scar and whispered.

I stilled for a moment and my bleeding heart won over. I withdrew a Talisman and held it out. "Here, if it starts hurting, slap that on it and it should help."

He blinked, taking it with a hint of confusion and a mild thanks.

Oh well, he probably doesn't understand the intricacies of what's going on.

"Are you all done, dear?" Yasaka held Kunou's hand as they finally joined, apparently giving me a moment.

"Yup, just helping these two young men." I smiled, standing up straight, taking Kunou's other hand. "Let's go inside."

The two young boys were still confused and standing there seemingly in their own stupor as we three went inside.

Kunou shot them a look but didn't say anything.

It's cute, she's a little shy.

"That was nice of you." Yasaka leaned over and kissed my cheek.

"What can I say? I have a soft spot for kids." The area changed rather quickly. In fact, we were closer to the countryside now. And the Train was in full view.

It was a nice looking train, the kind that puffed smoke.

Made me remember that this world wasn't even into the 21st century yet.

"Ronald Weasley, I take my eyes off you for one minute and look at you! You nearly missed the train! And poor Harry, you nearly made him just as late!" A woman with a familiar shade of red hair ran up towards the entrance as the two boys entered a couple minutes after us.

I just chuckled and didn't pay it any mind.

"Now they're letting actual animals in." I heard a scoff as a man with blonde hair so light it looked nearly white walked by with a woman dressed nearly as elegantly as he was and a young boy that was nearly his mirror, if shorter hair.

Ah, there's the racism.

Both the woman and young man also turned up their noses in disdain.

Kunou's ears flattened as she apparently was able to tell they were talking about both her and her mother.

Yasaka had a smile on her face that never wavered, but she turned to look at me and I could understand the look despite her expression not changing.

One of the purposes for Kunou going here was to learn to deal with some small hardships on her own. Racism thrown her way, while abhorrent was something she would have to experience unfortunately as many humans are not accepting of non-humans.

However, she wasn't at school just yet.

I slid my foot across the ground and cast a quick spell sequence to analyze the tiled flooring and then altered it ever so slightly.

Right in front of the man's foot, the tile rose up just enough that he tripped, pulling down both – what I am assuming is his wife and child.

There were quite a few families around and they all seemed to look the man's way chuckling and laughing at his expense.

He seemed embarrassed enough to scowl and almost lose his temper under the attention of the ones gathered around.

Asshole.

"That was very impressive, I've never seen someone cast wandless magic with their feet before." I turned around to see a young girl looking up at me with a strange expression.

I quirked an eyebrow. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Did she really notice? If so, that is rather impressive.

"Don't worry, I won't tell." She just smiled happily. "Mr. Malfoy can be very vindictive if someone does something he doesn't like. My daddy once wrote an article about him and he threatened to sue if we didn't retract it."

"A newspaper?" I hummed, processing this new information as I recognized the name from somewhere. "What did this article say?"

"Oh, we were just revealing the truth that Mr.Malfoy is actually a woman and that Mrs. Malfoy was actually impregnated by Dragons, which is why they named their son Draco Malfoy and he's really a Dragon, but his animagus form is a human."

…..well okay then.

Those were certainly words said together.

She seemed to lose interest in me rather suddenly. "Hello, I'm Luna Lovegood. I'm a first year student. My favorite color is purple and I think pineapple doesn't belong on pizza. What about you?" She looked at Kunou.

"Ah?" Kunou blinked. "Pineapple on pizza is icky." Kunou bleched once she regained her wits.

"Wonderful, that means we can be friends." Luna just nodded.

"Friends!?" Kunou's ears twitched.

"I had a fortune teller tell me that I was going to make a new friend today." She smiled. "They said that I just had to wait here."

"And you think that's me?" Kunou tilted her head.

"Well, I don't know honestly. It was actually just my dad in a wig reading fortune cookies, but I decided to try anyway. And I thought your tails were pretty so I wanted to come introduce myself."

"You….think my tails are pretty?" Kunou's ears stood rather tall.

"Very much, yes. I have this strange desire to grab them, but I think that would be quite rude." She just seemed to blurt out her thoughts without a filter.

Kunou blushed ever so slightly. "I'm Kunou S-Schweinorg, I'm a first year too. And….I would like it if we could be friends." She ended with a smile.

"Okay, what do we do next? My daddy said that I'm supposed to ask people to be friends, but I've never made it this far before."

"….I don't know either." Kunou said quietly.

The Train whistled rather loudly, as if to quiet the area. "All aboard!" A loud voice echoed across the platform.

"Oh, it looks like we should get on. Do you need help with your luggage?" Luna asked. "I hope it's not invisible, that would be quite inconvenient."

"No, um' it's already put away."

"Okay then, shall we go?"

Kunou looked back at me and Yasaka.

Rather quickly and stepped up and gave us both a big hug.

"Love you momma and daddy." She said softly.

"Go, don't be late." I rubbed her head as Yasaka was choking up.

"Goodbye Mr. and Mrs. Kunou's parents." Luna waved.

She is….quite the character.

She looked back at us once more before boarding the train and disappeared into the crowd of students joining her in hopping on.

Yasaka's tail grabbed me tightly as we just stared at the train.

The smoke coming from it started puffing up even more and just as it started moving, a pair of fluffy ears appeared in one of the windows and Kunou waved at us with a big smile.

Kunou was off on her own adventure, and who knows what she's going to get up to.

[***]

A/N Next up, Kunou's first adventure. Also, Fae War started in earnest over on the p.a.t.r.e.o.n.

Sorry for the delay, I had to go to the urgent care yesterday for a medical issue, I'm on some medication that's making me very drowsy so it was hard to finish up the chapter.

If you want to read 10 chapters ahead or support me, visit my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / astoryforone

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