At the end of Road 203, north of Clayhurst, British Columbia (a kilometre west of the Alberta border and 45 kilometres east of Fort Saint John)…
"I'm back!"
"Welcome home, Harri! How's the new body?"
Harriet smirked as she closed the front doors and locked them before she turned to accept the warm embrace of the brown-haired and brown-eyed Japanese girl who had been waiting for him after her low-orbital flight over the Atlantic and North America from England. "Working like your sister promised me it would, Tariko," she said as she kissed the cheek of one Tariko Moroboshi. "And as of now, the 'boy-who-lived' is no doubt a cold cadaver somewhere in Saint Mungo's."
Tariko took that in with an understanding nod; she had done pretty much the same thing when she allowed herself to be transformed from Ataru Moroboshi weeks before (though, in Ataru's case, there had been no body for a coroner to examine). Remembering that, she then waved Harriet through the vast living room of the Raeburn home — after taking in the beautiful building on her (as Harry Potter) first chance to see three years ago, Harriet believed the term "mansion" would be a far better way to describe the building on a drumlin overlooking a circular lake in the Peace River watershed of northeast British Columbia — into the kitchen, where another woman was seated at a small kitchen table. She was currently gazing at the screen of a laptop computer as her fingers flicked over the mouse to scroll down the list of files that had been transmitted to her by the Specialised Warfare Regiment of Canada.
"I trust the matter with Thomas has been resolved," Negako Moroboshi stated, not looking up from the screen before her to gaze on the just-arrived Jewel Warrior.
"It has," Harriet said as she took her seat to Negako's left, Tariko relaxing to the other woman's right. "We've got three of his horcruxi back into his head. I think he'll go along with the idea of getting the rest of them restored to his mind soon enough. As for afterward…" She then shrugged. "Well, it's no longer any of my business." A smirk then crossed her face. "Except for the will reading, of course."
"Arrangements have been made?" Negako asked.
A nod. "They have been."
"Splendid." Negako then paused as she double-tapped a link to bring up a particular file. As her dark eyes gazed over the information there, she nodded. "Excellent."
Harriet and Tariko leaned over to gaze on the screen. "Who's this?"
"A potential candidate for your troupe, Harriet," Negako stated. "She was raped by her father several times before she killed him in self-defence while she was in middle school, then hazed and abused by her classmates until such time as she fell under the guidance of a senior student there and was taught how to defend herself."
Harriet and Tariko made faces when they heard that. "Poor kid," the latter hissed, and then she perked. "What's with the multiple names, Onê-san?" she then asked Negako; everyone spoke English here, though Tariko always addressed Negako by Japanese terms.
"She is a tôshi. Currently attending the Kyoshô Academy," Negako explained.
Harriet blinked. "'Tôshi?'"
"Directly translated, 'fighting soldier,'" Negako explained. "All martial artists of considerable skill and experience. Almost all of them alive now, these days, are of high school age and are currently attending seven separate private schools located throughout the Kantô region of Japan." She manipulated the laptop to draw up a picture of the person that had caught her interest. "As you can see from this one's example, all tôshi are marked by ebony mesonium earrings shaped in the form of magatama worn off the left ear. Each earring bears the soul imprint of a prominent warrior from the latter stages of China's Hàn Dynasty to the early stages of the Sänguó period."
"'Ten'i,'" Tariko read the kanji that was on the screen. She then hummed as her mind tried to call up where she had heard that name before, and then she perked as it came back to her. "Oh, wait a minute! I've heard of this one! Wasn't he the guardian of one of the kings in control of the northern part of China back then?"
"Wêi Diân," Negako said the real name in Western "family name last" order for Harriet's benefit. "His current 'incarnation,' so to speak, was born as Somumi Sakan. According to what the Observation Unit in Tôkyô has learned, Somumi's mother died sometime before she was forced to kill her father. She is currently in a hospital in Odawara." The bare hint of a smile touched her lips. "Lost her right arm at mid-humerus, right eye was punctured and multiple slash wounds throughout her body." She gazed on Harriet. "When you go see her, Harriet, ensure you obtain a blood sample."
Harriet nodded…
An hour later, Harriet was seated seiza on the floor in the circular atrium located on the east side of the Raeburn home, her hands crossed in her lap as she meditated. The Power Jewel wrapped around her neck pulsed as it infused energy into her, allowing her new bioroid body to get used to the massive influx of energy a Jewel Warrior would be called upon to perform whatever tasks she needed to perform.
A Jewel Warrior…
Harriet tried not to smirk too much as she felt her growing metasenses reach out from her body to sense what was around her. When Doctor Wysynski had first introduced a wide-eyed Harry Potter to the concept just before he began attending Hogwarts four years before, he at first wanted to dismiss it as being some weird version of the "magical girls" that had popped up in Japan and other places over the last decade or so. But when Harriet first sampled the total power of her Jewel when she finally switched her soul into her new body just before the Third Task of the Triwizard (she had manipulated Harry's old body by psionic remote control while she herself had been watching events in the maze behind a magic- and visually-defeating cloaking screen the Jewel had provided her), she realised that the level of power she commanded now was several orders of magnitude greater than anything that had been attributed to groups like the Sailor Senshi, the Pretty Cure partners or the Wedding Angels.
Though she doubted the Japanese news media had got ALL the details about them.
In effect, her Jewel ran somewhat on the same general principles as a Green Lantern's Power Ring. It drew its power from the qì that existed in all things, living and non-living, around it. Since it wasn't dependant on daily recharging via something like a Lantern's battery (themselves each linked to the Master Battery on the planet Oa), a Jewel had potentially infinite power to call upon, only subject to the willpower of the Jewel's chosen Host. At that point, things between a Jewel and a Ring differed greatly. A Power Ring projected out from the Green Lantern to do what it was required to do. A Power Jewel projected into a Jewel Warrior's body to give her the power and skill sets necessary to carry out what she wanted to do.
Harriet smiled. Unlike the Guardians of the Universe, who — while acting for very honourable reasons — restricted the use of the Power Rings to ensure any Green Lantern wouldn't stray as Thaal Sinestro had done years ago; the long-deceased creators of the Power Jewels — a mysterious race of omnipotents called these days by the term "Seekers" — fundamentally knew that a whole UNIVERSE was not run on ONE strict set or morals or values. Each sentient race developed differently because each planet that did (or could) bear life developed differently. It was the basic law of Existence. To force a Jewel Warrior to conform to real-time "control from above" as the Guardians enforced on their Green Lanterns was something the Seekers would not contemplate for their many inheritors. While there were two large masses of mesonium somewhere in the universe — the planet Yiziba being one such place; the other was locked away in a pocket dimension known to the local space-faring races as "the Outland" — Jewel Warriors throughout the universe were effectively independent, ultimately answerable to their own consciences and personal morals.
That suited Harriet quite fine. She had personally reached her tolerance limit when it came to so-called "wise" adults who believed that, just because they were older, they knew much better than a mere "child." The person who had been born Harold James Potter nearly sixteen years before could write whole volumes when it came to the overwhelming sense of abandonment, of betrayal, of being used and abused by those who thought themselves "better" and "wiser" than he. From school teachers and principals in primary school who vowed to investigate his home life with the Dursleys (and never followed up) to senile magical headmasters who did everything supposedly for some nebulous "greater good" (yet never explained why this had to happen) to fair weather "friends" who saw him as some icon for something he really had no control over (and then turned their backs on him when they realised he was human after all)…
"Dobby?"
Pop! Harriet tried not to grin too much as she found herself embraced by a madly gushing house elf dressed in very mismatched clothes and with a pile of socks and a stack of toques on his head. "Ah! Mistress Harriet!" Dobby gushed out. "Master Harry is now Mistress Harriet! Dobby is so happy that Mistress is safe!"
Harriet chuckled as she drew Dobby into her arms. "Enough, Dobby," she urged to calm him down, and then she gazed intently into his wide green eyes. "Was Winky able to get Uncle Barty away from the school and over to the Magister Maximus to be healed?"
Dobby nodded with excitement. "Yes! Winky is so happy to be with Master Barty again! He takes her back in when she gets him to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named! He says to Winky to tells Dobby to tells Mistress Harriet that he is very happy to be away from Hogwarts and silly bad Headmaster who cares not for Mistress! Winky is safe now!"
"Oh?! You fancy her?"
Dobby awked, and then he leapt onto the floor as an embarrassed blush crossed his face. "Winky is a pretty elf! Dobby likes Winky a lot! But Dobby cares for Mistress Harriet much more since Mistress will brings Protector of Life back home again and Mistress always cares for Dobby, even more so than silly Granger girl!"
"So I hope to do," Harriet noted. "Tempus Locus!"
A ghostly clock appeared before her, reporting the time to be 2:23 PM. Humming, she then called out, "Tempus Iaponicus!" The clock changed again to show 6:23 AM. "A little early to go visit Miss Sekan," she mused. "Finite!" The ghostly clock disappeared as she relaxed herself. "I'll go over there when it's ten o'clock."
Dobby nodded. "Dobby will goes makes good meal for Mistress Harriet and Mistress' friends! Makes good food also for Mistress Strong Lady when Mistress Harriet meets her!" And with another pop!, the overactive house elf was gone.
Harriet watched her go with a grin as we…
(Posted Sat, 03 Apr 2010 20:31)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.