Chapter Text
Mei is not prepared for the way everything in her lurches once they pass through the Veil of Death. Quite aside from what was reported on the other side, and the number of problems that mean no one is going to be moving whole villages any time soon, not too many people are willing to cross through the Veil.
Not even for a world rich in magic.
As Mei walks through, however—first of her team, because she is the leader, goddamnit—she realizes mere words can’t hold a candle to the truth. Her magic rears up in her, the tide of it almost choking, and everything in her spirit sings home.
A longing, one she hadn’t realized was curled round her breastbone, is sated, as if she’d been missing a limb—all her limbs—and hadn’t even noticed.
Like gaining sight and finally appreciating the ways they’d all been compensating for blindness over the millennia.
Of course, in reality it’s only a few steps through a glowing blue portal.
Mei does not, when she gets to the other side, drop to her knees and weep at the sudden singing in her bones. She steels her heart with everything that makes her a Senior Hit Witch for the International Protectorate of Magic and takes stiff steps off to the side so her team can get through.
Ao shuffles a little, off-balance, looking like he just got punched in the gut.
Chojuro stumbles through crying.
They both reach for him, alarmed, before he can fall to his knees.
Zabuza’s breathing is ragged, and Kisame can only look around in helpless wonder.
Behind them, the portal’s glow fades until it’s wispy shrouds once more.
“I thought about leaving it open full time,” A cheerful voice confides, and half of them turn—Mei included—to the unexpected voice. They’re all on edge and unused to being so emotional out in the field, feel of perfect homecoming aside.
Mei jerks her hand in the signal for friend, straightening up. Her hand had edged to her wand and just the intent had it vibrating like she’d cast several high-powered spells in a row. Now the briefing made sense; they really had been operating at under one hundred percent, compared to the ambient magic in this place.
“You must be Lady Kushina.” Mei says, and her voice is low and gruff as always, but usually she’s able to wrangle some false politeness into her tone if nothing else. They’ve all been thrown off balance, despite doing the reading yesterday and the day before.
The princess who defeated the latest dark lord—and the parasitic abomination that kept making them, apparently—and rediscovered Atlantis.
She had red hair that dipped like a fiery curtain over a compact little body, as muscular as Mei would expect from a soldier. This woman wasn’t one, of course, not in name—but they all knew the story of the Line of Merlin Unbroken and how she’d gone to war.
“No magic until we’ve had a chance to practice regulating power.” She barks to the men behind her. “I don’t want a cutting charm to behead someone.”
Any maiming on part of her team had better be intentional.
“Yes, Ma’am.” They all echoed, if some few faintly.
“That happened to me, once.” Said the Princess—Kushina. “I hadn’t had any dueling instruction at all, of course. Didn’t even realize you could overpower spells like that.”
“How old were you?” Mei absently pats herself down, making sure all their kits came with them and the expansion spells were still working. It seemed as if precast spell effects didn’t go awry if they were set before they came into contact with—the planet itself, Mei supposed.
An entire magical planet.
They’d be lucky to get Chojuro back through the portal.
“Oh, fifteen.” Kushina chirps. “It was during one of the first open conflicts after Orochimaru’s resurrection.”
Orochimaru, she says with fondness. Mei stuffs down the urge to boggle. It wasn’t above her clearance level—anymore—but half the details of that particular war weren’t even known by her superiors.
The data packet had been brief and to the point.
The simple fact of the matter was they didn’t know much of anything about the brave new world that was so very old. It was a part of their history, obviously—it was so much more magic-saturated then they were used to—and whoever came from the fabled sunken city had built the Veil of Death. But how? And more importantly: why?
That’s what her team was here to find out.
“You forced enough magic into a cutter to behead someone on accident at fifteen?” Chojuro rises from his limp state in Ao’s arms, voice sounding like she’d just fished him from the rooms after a three-day breather between cases.
She’d offer to heal him, but anything other than minor injuries was Ao’s ballpark anyway, and he hadn’t actually hurt his throat. His voice sounded wrecked from the pure emotion that had choked him mere moments ago. Most wizards, barely-educated by the time they graduate, don’t understand how much an impact their own magic has on their mental state. Mei’s team does, though, and to see them put on their asses anyway? No wonder they’d been shipped out as soon as the war officially ended, before the clean-up efforts had even begun.
Chojuro cleared his throat, pink cheeked.
“Sure did.” Kushina rocks back onto her heals. She’s dressed in leathers and soft fabric in equal measure. It screams warrior-priestess in a way Mei had never thought to imagine. She wears it well.
Mei straightens to her full height.
It is then, rather belatedly, that grey metal around them resolves itself into something beautiful.
The iridescent blue-white of magelights runs like unmined silver ore through the walls; thin veins that form geometric patterns through the living metal. It was literally made of pure magic, the type of workings long lost to them. It hurt to see, but if they learned anything—recovered any forgotten magic at all—they’d be one step closer to what they once were.
“Like Hogwarts but cleaner, huh?” Kushina asked, and Mei wanted to turn to her and see if she looked as smug as she sounded, but couldn’t tear her eyes away.
The arched ceilings, the designs which seemed so familiar. A resplendent receiving room in silver and blue. The city was alive, of course. How could anybody with magic doubt it? It was like a deep, psychic thrum. It was like music alive in the marrow of her bones, deep and deep and too quiet to hear the words, but beating aside her heart.
There was a reason magical civilizations the whole world over still talked about the fall of atlantis centuries after it faded to legend. It was important to them, to their history.
The city was alive, but nowhere in the reports had it been described as achingly beautiful.
Mei swallowed and after some amount of time, managed to turn her attention back to the princess.
“We’re here for a week at this initial venture.” She said, voice even. “Did you have time to arrange quarters for us?”
Kushina’s eyes were purple. It was a detail that Mei had heard since her own childhood, of the little girl who disembodied the Dark Lord, whom had in his arrogance attacked the last bloodline of Avalon.
Ancient magic protected her, whispered the adults. Looking at her now, standing in the lost city like she’d never been more at home, Mei had to wonder how true it was.
“Three rooms adjacent each other, right? Atlantis was happy to provide.” Kushina waved them follow her, so they girded their loins and did so.
Mei put a little speed in her step to catch up.
“Atlantis arranged our rooms?” She hadn’t missed that. Behind her, Chojuro and Ao oohed and ahhed—well, Chojuro was impressed. Ao cast a wary eye over the unimaginably old structure like one of his unexplored tombs.
“It’s at least ten million years old, Ao.” Kisame ribbed good-naturedly. “If it hasn’t tried to kill us yet…”
Mei let their bickering fade into background noise, unwilling to admit how calmed she was by the familiar antics.
“Mm. I told her what you needed, then she took the rooms out of stasis and ran cleaning protocols. They’ve been stocked with bedroom supplies from storage.”
“What kind of bedchamber things does a sentient city find appropriate?” Mei presses, but Kushina laughs.
“It’s not like we’re the first witches to live here, you know. A city is designed to house.”
Chojuro runs bodily to land his next steps on Mei’s other side, leaning almost around her to talk to Kushina.
“Which is fascinating, of course. The sheer number of things we’ll find out about our ancestors just from where they built this place. Did they decide based on nearby resources? Were there even options to begin with? I can’t imagine the materials to construct the city were found in great abundance. How long did that take, anyway?” He took a deep breath, chin tilting back to examine the build of the hall they walked. “And what did they build her for? Is she built to withstand a siege? Did our ancestors have enemies? What are the defenses like, are we safe here?”
Kushina puts a hand over her mouth, though it does nothing to muffle the smile. Chojuro looks like a fresh Hogwarts graduate, and when he starts talking you’d mistake him for Rowena Ravenclaw’s lost heir.
“You’d never know he’s the youngest Doctorate in Arithmancy in a hundred years.” Mei snorts.
“Anybody who hears this,” Ao gestures in disgust, “Would know the kid’s a nerd. The bit you’d never know is his Dueling Mastery.”
“Oh, he’s done it now.” Kushina smiles fondly, but before they can ask, Chojuro yelps.
They have wands out immediately.
“Oh, look at you.” Chojuro gasps, as delicate as if he’s holding a baby house elf. His eyes blur, going far-seeing.
“Explain.” Zabuza demands, shoveling past Kisame to grab the shoulders of their youngest.
“Don’t worry,” Kushina says, waving both hands. “It’s just Atlantis.”
“You’re gorgeous.” Chojuro says, dazed.
Zabuza shoots the princess an unamused look.
“He had a lot of questions, alright? And Atlantis has been waiting ten thousand years to be asked.”
“The city is talking to him?” Mei clarifies, wand twitching to run a diagnostic. Ao looks positively pissy; no doubt he would like to do the same, but has similar doubts as to how the magical supercharge might skewer a simple medical charm.
Horror stories about the radiation muggles use for their diagnostics come to mind.
Mei isn’t a healer, doesn’t know quite how the simple charms work; it might be arithmantically possible.
“Uh, more like interfacing? She communicates with a very passive sort of legilimency, as far as we can figure.”
“The city is in our heads!?” Ao shrieks. It’s more of a raised voice, but her entire team winces.
“Of course.” Kushina blinks at him. “She’s not going to let just anyone inside her. It’s nothing invasive. If anyone has malicious intentions toward her or anyone in the city, though, she’d either refuse them at the gate or let me know so we can kick them out.”
“I—” Ao stops, torn—likely-- between a medic’s initial wariness of consent and a battle-hardened hit wizard’s appreciation for the security measure.
“It’s like a very intelligent ward.” Kisame shrugs, rolling his huge shoulders.
Ao slumps.
Zabuza pats his shoulder, still keeping one wary hand on Chojuro’s unresponsive, wide-eyed form. He’s starting to drool a little. Zabuza grimaces.
“That’s not a bad way to describe her passive neural net.” Kushina walks over and raps her knuckles playfully on the wall. “Hey, ease up, sweetness. We need him to walk. Focus on speech-based communication instead of overloading him with data packets.”
Immediately, Chojuro stirs. His team’s attention snaps to him unerringly.
“But it’s so inefficient.” The boy whines.
Mei and Zabuza snort. Kisame grins. Ao grumbles.
Mei slides her wand back into the dimensional store at her wrist.
“Lead on,” She instructs the princess wryly.
Chojuro can indeed walk and quiz the city at the same time. He periodically makes ‘oooh’ and ‘ahhh’ noises out loud, reacting to bits of information and facial expression changing every few seconds, despite the fact that he asks all his questions mentally.
Zabuza floats in the shadows as best he can, suspiciously watching for the moment the kid trips, walks into a wall, or tries to walk off to see some of the things the city must be describing.
Mei leaves them to it; it’s their mission, after all, and if the city wants to give everything away? More power to them.
“Where are we?” Ao asks, apropos nothing. At Mei’s look, he protests: “The kid’s going to forget to ask, you know he is. He’s got—” A grumpily amused hand wave. “—all that data and math and shit now. He’ll forget the real questions.”
Mei laughs, a deep throaty chuckle.
“That’s true.”
She turns to find the princess watching her.
“Well? While the data we received mentioned a separate planet, it didn’t specify what conditions Atlantis found itself in. Warming and cooling charms are well and good, but how should my team dress once we venture outside?”
Kushina just looked at her some more.
“Hmm.” The princess reached up and scratched the back of her head. Alarm bells began ringing faintly in Mei’s head. What had they not been told?
The hall they’d been following turned, before abruptly opening up all at once into a wide, high-ceiling’d room.
It was occupied.
Three bodies, Mei notes without thinking. Her side is flush to the princess’ and they do not overreact, they are better than that—unknown territory, Kushina to guide, and she had not reacted with surprise—but they are on guard.
There is a wispy framed wizard at an alter, hair black as pitch. Near him, having just come into the room—from the opposite door to Mei’s party—and still walking the course to the center, his opposite: blonde hair, blue eyes, animated.
The third, trailing behind the blonde, has no urgency to his steps.
“That’s pure conjecture!” The blonde wizard is arguing.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Says the Dark Lord Orochimaru. “It was designed for this purpose, after all.”
“Yes, but it’s been ten centuries.” The blonde pulls a face, like he’s the only sane one in the room. “Any number of things could go wrong. It would be irresponsible at best to just assume everything is still in working order.”
One of the first things in the docket had been about the Dark Lord, who had plagued half of Europe in one way or another for forty years, and his supposed redemption.
Mei is less willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and more willing to trust the information the spies and nerds pass along for mission briefings—they’ve sold her wilder stories.
Still. He moves wrong and Mei will shoot first—what will an overpowered stunner do, with the magical boost?—and ask questions later. She’s hyperaware that the pretty girl next to her—the girl Mei and everyone else grew up hailing as a savior—has suffered under his hand over and over.
She wasn’t even in the country when the war restarted, but Uzumaki Kushina was precious to the magical community worldwide.
A snarl built up in her throat, threat and longing for violence rolled into one. Over her dead body.
The princess snorts, a calm sound that soothes Mei’s hackles. No fool she, one of her hands comes up to rest on Mei’s arm—she’d thrown it out in front of Kushina without even realizing, keeping her back.
Mei inhales, smells healthy woman and calm and amusement.
She is reminded that the princess is a warrior in her own right, despite her age; tales of Uzumaki Kushina’s feats of unspeakably powerful magic had shaken the magical world over and over. Mei’s shoulders relax.
Her shampoo smells faintly floral, painting the air. Her heartbeat is peaceful, unbothered.
Mei slips her arm free, and her team around her—except for Ao, of course, who will be on edge with all the unknown variables this entire trip—they will have to try to accommodate his paranoia, this time—relaxes.
The brown haired wizard watches them from across the room, grinning a little.
“What have you figured out?” Kushina asked, sweeping past the newcomers to linger next to Orochimaru. If the proximity bothers her, she doesn’t show it.
Mei signals Kisame and Zabuza to spread out within the room. Her eyes don’t leave the princess; the focus of her part of this mission, as far as she’s concerned, and if she has to she’ll grab her and leave. Her team will lay down cover fire and watch their backs
“Atlantis thinks we’re ready to breach.” Orochimaru says ominously. Mei tenses, ready to pounce. The hairs on the back of her neck rise.
“No.” Snarks the blonde, who Mei recognizes as the muggleborn Namikaze Minato, brightest Wizard of the age. “Orochimaru wants to see what will happen.”
“I would never put myself in harm’s way if I hadn’t calculated the odds.” Orochimaru returns, just as snide. “Atlantis showed me this system and I’ve spent 30 cumulative hours studying every nook and cranny of it.”
“We should run a diagnostics of the systems just to be sure.” Namikaze says. “Since this is, again, a literally unique and priceless historical artefact.”
“Already ran. So glad to see you agree.” He then very casually ran his hands over the interface, ignoring the way Namikaze lunged in his direction.
“Whoops.” The man says insincerely, as everything around them started shaking. “My hand slipped.”
“Arhshghgh!” A sound of inarticulate rage leaves the blonde’s throat as he shoves the former Dark Lord out of the way, to take his place at the alter—the console, Mei realizes—and start jabbing and sliding his fingers through the holographs that spring up.
“Breach as in birthing?!” Ao screams, diving out of the way as a crushing roar sounds. The walls and the floor vibrate at a dangerously fast pitch. Their footing abruptly becomes treacherous.
And them without the ability to cast magic safely.
“Fuck!” Kisame curses, stumbling. Mei feels the same.
She can’t even take to four feet for balance because of the damage it would cause the priceless historical artefact.
Orochimaru, bright yellow eyes shining, quickly made his way through the far door.
“After him!” Mei snarled, and didn’t pause to see which one obeyed her.
She lunged for Kushina, wrapped a sturdy arm around her waste, and shouted over the rush of—water? Was the entire city moving? A trickle of realization from the logical back of her brain was trying to make a connection, but Mei didn’t have time for that.
She shoved her mouth to Kushina’s ear and said, “Cushioning charms!”
They couldn’t cast, but Kushina’s party had been here for weeks.
Kushina shuffled in her hold, chest pressing tight and safe and reassuring to Mei’s, and pulled her wand. Mei resolved to get her a dimensional store or at least a holster as soon as this mess was over. Then she started spell after spell.
The city started moving. It was like any lift, a sharp tugging upward sensation—a portkey?—but a thousand times worse. They rose but the floor gave great shuddering jolts, which didn’t quite knock them prone but they had to take several wild steps to compensate.
Mei held the princess tighter to her, determined to at least not let her go, wherever they ended up.
Out of the corner of her eye—did Mei say it was like a lift? She meant a rocket, and never had she been happier to be a halfblood because this was all insane—she saw Zabuza clamp tight to the blonde.
Ao had Chojuro thrown over one shoulder shamelessly, arm braced on the violently shaking wall, teeth gritted in a fierce grimace.
That left the brunette, who was conspicuously absent, but she had to trust Kisame had the situation well enough in hand
Everything became more intense, faster, a high-pitched sound rattling through her teeth, and the vibrations reached a near fever pitch.
Then there was the sensation like a cork popping free of a bottle, and the floor lost all cohesion. It lurched left, then right, like a demented carnival ride. They crashed to the floor in various combinations.
Mei took the landing harder on purpose, using what little momentum she could to fall properly. Roughly a hundred and fifty pounds of redhead slammed into her and they both wheezed air out in different-toned “oofs”.
When everything stabilized—thankfully, mere minutes later—she looked up to see the world blocked by a veil of red.
Purple eyes looked down on her in impressed concern.
Her ass ached, but not with the sharpness she was used to—cushioning charms at work—and dainty little hands rested on her shoulders.
Around them, no screams. The smell of lilies pervaded all the air Mei could breathe.
Soft, soft front bits pressed to hers, tits and stomach and a very lovely torso. Strong legs bent around hers, kneeling to keep the weight off—as if Mei didn’t regularly bench twice this—and all she could parse was Kushina.
Adrenaline scented the air, but not fear. Excitement, curiosity, exhilleration—but no fear, and that combination was intoxicating. Kushina was breathless but grinning
The floor gave one last rock, barely tilting them, and Mei recognized it for what it was: a ship rocking on the wave.
She spoke the obvious into the centimeters between them.
“Atlantis was underwater.”
Kushina laughed, shaky but pleased.
Mei’s gut clenched in all kinds of ways.
“The lost city of Atlantis lay at the bottom of the sea.” She confirmed, then snorted, breaking the moment. She clambered off Mei with nothing like grace, too quick and too impatient.
“Not anymore, though!” And she tossed a grin over her shoulder, but didn’t pause before running from the room.
Namikaze scrambled away from Zabuza’s grip and chased after her, smile just as wide.
Mei sat shell-shocked for a few stunned moments before remembering that the Dark Lord Orochimaru lay waiting for them on the other side.
She threw herself to her feet and ran blindly after them, trusting her team to follow.