Title: Projections
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 3500ish
Content notes: None
Author notes: Several years post-canon, technically-gen, Clef and Umi and some friends. Also apparently I have come up with a whole new set of magic in the background of this which is only vaguely alluded to (Chimneys Are Important???) but I'm going to have to poke at and do something with at some point in the future.
Summary: Clef and architecture are not friends.

oOo

Clef was focused on the new plan for the academy, sat out in the castle gardens in the hope that decent light would make the annotations more legible. It wasn't being as helpful as he'd hoped; of the half-dozen sets of writing on the blueprints, the only one he was having much luck with was Lantis's, and that was only through many years of familiarity.

He wasn't expecting anyone to come barrelling around the corner and start swearing at the sight of him, let alone for that person to be Umi, and yet there she was yelling "Clef, duck!"

"What?"

"Duck!" Umi waved her hands at him, rapidly getting closer to the bench he was on, and then something large and bright shot around the corner behind her, casting flickering shadows among the hedges.

Clef had just time to blink and then throw his hands up, opening his mouth to throw a shield spell up, when Umi swore and slammed straight into him.

They tumbled to the floor in a flurry of parchment, Clef yelping as he was shoved firmly off the bench, and managing to get his arms somewhere the other side of Umi as he yelled 'Cresta!' just in time for something to whack straight into his shield-spell.

For a moment, a shrieking noise filled the air around them, vibrating back through Clef's hands as whatever-it-was tried to drill through the shield, though all he could see was Umi's hair and part of her shoulder as she curled over him. But with one final wail the other spell burned out, and Clef let his hands and the spell fall away.

Silence dropped over them, broken only by Umi's rasping breath as she slowly collapsed down on his chest, and then started giggling. Clef managed to shake his head until he got her hair out of the way at least, and then lay there, staring up at the sky and trying to work out what had happened.

"Umi?" He managed, plaintively. "What are you doing?"

"Never, ever challenge Hikaru to make a self-guiding spell," Umi giggled, finally managing to roll off him, though she was still trapping his arm against the grass.

"Self-guiding?"

"It was chasing me," Umi flapped a hand at him. "It was a little too good at following, sorry."

He pushed up on one arm, looking with no little distress at the crumpled mess of the main plans sticking out from under Umi's back. That wasn't going to help him interpret "If it was chasing you, why did you slam into me?"

"Well, I thought that if I ran past you, it would probably whack into you-"

"Then why not run the other way!" He tugged on his arm and she rolled away, and seemed to actually notice the crinkling underneath her for the first time. "Instead of flattening me and - don't stick your hand down on that! You'll rip it!"
"Sorry, I turned down here without realising you would be here - it's not that crumpled, look-" she picked up one of the sheets and shook it out, then lay it on the bench and tried smoothing it out. "I was trying to loop about to find Hikaru and hide behind her - what is all this?"

"Plans for the new Academy." He picked up the largest sheet and tried shaking it out, sighing at the grass and mud stains now smeared into it. "We're meant to be looking at how best to set it up so it can be used by a number of the Guilds, not just the mages - there should be another couple of pages-"

"Oh, over here-" Umi vanished into the ornamental shrubbery and reappeared a moment later with two more sheets of parchment, bringing them back and staring down at them as Clef tried to flatten them again. "Sorry. What's with all the writing on them?"

"Comments from the other Guilds and a couple of other people involved in the project," he said, with a sigh. "None of which were very legible even before you ran into it. I guess now I have an excuse to ask for a fresh copy."
"Who else has one?"

"Presea's holding the originals, she's agreed her current class working towards their mastery can probably do most of the construction."

"Well, she should be in the main forge this time of day, right? I'll go ask her for another-"

"No!" Clef grabbed Umi's hand as she started to shoot off, and then flushed when she stared at him. "Sorry, but - I think they should be lodged with the Clerks ahead of our meeting tomorrow, I'll ask them to make me out a copy."

Umi blinked, slowly. "Not Presea?"

"I don't want to bother her. She's got enough to do."

Looking down at the papers, Umi frowned. "...Why wasn't this copy legible? Clef, can't you read Presea's handwriting?"

"The only writing I can read on this is Lantis's, and that's only because I spent years deciphering his homework." Clef sighed, and Umi started laughing.

"What, not even your own?"

"I scrawled on these things halfway through the night," he said, before realising he should have said of course he wasn't counting his own notes, when sadly he mostly was - but only because there had been so many additions and underlines added by everyone else- "Look, if I get a copy made by one of the clerks, it will make more sense, I'm sure- there's just a lot about, load-bearing- things?"

"Uhuh," Umi stared at the sheets, lips twitching. "Are they trying to make you understand architecture?"

"I understand how buildings go together!" He flushed. "Walls, floor, ceiling! It's not that hard!"

"Clef, you built a castle shaped like a broken weapon full of details like pillars that don't touch the floor." Umi patted him on the shoulder, and she was absolutely grinning at him now. "Maybe you should trust someone else to look after this. I mean... I think Presea understands that, you know, things should have foundations and be structurally sound, and things like that?"

"I still have to sign it off! They won't let me just-" Pulling a face, he poked Umi on the arm. "I need to be able to understand how the building and the shielding will go together," he said, sounding a little more together and less like he'd been staring at these plans for an hour getting more and more of a headache.

"Is staring at the plans for ages without understanding them going to help?" Umi cocked her head at him, and he really wished she didn't have a point. Then she darted forwards, grabbed the plans, and shot off down the garden almost as fast as she'd appeared in the first place. "I'm borrowing these!" she shouted, as he stumbled a few steps after her, bewildered. "Don't worry! I'll be back!"
"Umi!"

"Go have some tea or something!" echoed back to him, as she vanished around the corner.

Clef sat slowly back down on the bench, feeling more like he'd had the wind knocked out of him more than when Umi had literally flattened him.

He would be lying to himself if he claimed his lack of understanding of how buildings worked was at all a secret - it wasn't something he'd ever had to worry about until the entire population was inside a building of his making, at which point it was fairly obvious that he was just relying on magic to hold it up, for anyone who did know how things were meant to work. Presea had given him a few quiet comments which helped make it less disturbing to the general population when first put up, and since then it had been modified here and there and he wasn't the one solely responsible for it anymore, much to the relief of - a lot of people. Himself very much included, as he didn't enjoy tasks he didn't understand.

It still didn't feel good having to admit he didn't understand something. Which he knew was a flawed attitude - he'd talked so many students out of that same hole, afraid to ask for help because they didn't want to admit a failing, but he hadn't managed to extend himself the same courtesy.

Of course, he hadn't realised it was going to be that much of a problem until he found himself faced with a set of plans he had no understanding of, compounded by handwriting he couldn't read in part because everyone was using terms he didn't recognise and couldn't work out.

Well, whatever Umi was up to, she couldn't exactly make it worse in any meaningful way. And her having run off with the plans gave him a good reason for a break, anyway.

Sitting back on the bench, he took a breath and let it blow out and then looked up at the sky.

oOo
A little while later, he heard footsteps charging back towards the garden; unmistakably Umi. "I thought you were going to get a cup of tea?" she demanded, as she skidded to a halt next to the bench.

Clef blinked his eyes open; he'd been almost drowsing in the sunlight, enjoying the warmth on his face for once while he literally couldn't do his job. "Just because you told me to get one doesn't mean I want one," he said, eyeing her. She didn't have any papers in her hands. "Dare I ask what you did with the plans?"

"Come with me," Umi demanded, grabbing his hands and pulling him up.

"Where are we going?" he asked, not helping, and Umi had to lean all her weight back to drag him upright, which amused him a little too much - she could just explain herself, but of course she wouldn't.

"Oh, just - it'll help, I promise. But I thought you would be inside, so everyone is waiting-"

"By everyone, you mean... who exactly?"

Umi let him drop back onto the bench so she could stick her hands on her hips and glare at him, and maybe he was being childish, but hey, so was she. "Oh, just - Presea and Hikaru and Fuu, and- please?"
He got up, and brushed down his robes, which were a little green in places now - white fabric didn't take kindly to being slammed onto the lawn. But Umi's first instinct had been to shelter him, apparently, and whatever she'd done might help, so...

Following her into the castle, he found himself being led not to the forge or any of the rooms Presea normally frequented, but up to one of the private halls, where Umi had scrawled her name on the booking slip outside to claim it for the whole afternoon, by the look of it. Inside, Hikaru and Fuu sat sharing a cup of tea from a very large teapot with Presea and Lantis, both of who looked up and looked very much like they were trying not to smile too hard as Clef was led in.

He couldn't be too upset at Umi's choices, though he was startled to see Lantis there. "Weren't you on shift last night?" he asked, as Umi dragged him over and pushed him into one of the spare seats - ones which had probably been called up by Presea, as they actually had legs. The normal soft furnishings in here had been banished somewhere - possibly because they took up a lot of room - and there were only the six chairs in a fairly wide circle.

Lantis shrugged. "I'd just woken and was coming to find Hikaru when Umi ran into us," he said, easily enough. "Eagle had a message he wanted me to pass on, and I slept long enough."

The status of the relationship between Lantis and Eagle and how it might involve Hikaru was one of the things Clef tried very hard not to think or ask about, as long as they all seemed to be happy. They were all adults, after all, but Lantis was a little too much like Clef's sibling after all these years to really want to know any details, so he turned quite fast to Presea. Before he could greet her, though, Umi was barrelling into the conversation, now, bouncing into the seat next to him.

"So, I messed up Clef's version of the plans a little bit by going and charging into him to save him from Hikaru-"

"My spell wouldn't have touched Clef," Hikaru said, sitting back in her chair. "I'm pretty certain it wouldn't have, anyway."

"-to save him from Hikaru," Umi repeated, louder. "And they looked really interesting and I wanted to know what they meant and what all the scribbling was about. Which I figured was relevant for all three of us! So I stole Presea to show us the plans because - Clef's are a bit, uh, muddy, and I can't read them anyway."

Clef sat back in his chair. "Also, you ran off with them," he murmured, and Umi stretched out one leg to kick him, though she did it pretty gently.

"Anyway some of the notes were Lantis's so I figured he could come along. And, uh. Presea?"

Presea smiled at them all, and if she knew Umi's real motive, she was at least polite enough not to mention it. But she clapped her hands and called the master-set of plans from the storage-gem at her chest, and the various layers of parchment settled in the middle of the floor, in a neat pile. "I'm not generally gifted at illusions," she said, and the air was starting to thrum slightly as she gathered power. "But a projection from a plan is something we're taught as a part of training to be a Smith - it's important to be able to share the ideas with the client, in most cases." She smiled at the Knights. "Sometimes the form of an item has to be dictated by the materials and the user, of course - but for things like buildings and furniture, which are less personal, it's not quite the same. You'll be learning how to do this yourselves at some point next year, if you are still attending the general studies courses by then."

"Hopefully in the new building," Clef murmured, as Presea spread her hands towards the sheets of parchment, and they rose up through the air, splitting themselves out - each sheet was a different floor, and they hovered in order, while between them faint lines connected them and drew out the shape of the building until there was a complete, gently-transluscent version of it before them, all nine levels showing in great detail, and the keystones and chimneys which would carry the spells binding the structure and keeping student's spells from leaking from one area to the next all showing in a glimmering silver. Clef leaned forward to inspect them as Presea explained to the Knights what they were seeing.

"This is the original version of the plans, before any of the suggested modifications are made," Presea added. "Clef, you were the first to make suggestions, and most of ours are responses to yours - would you like to explain the problems you saw?"

The problems were all flooding back now he could see the thing in front of him, and he nodded, pointing first at the junction where two chimney stacks merged into one - unfortunately, they were going to be carrying strands of power which were not likely to resonate well against each other, and could do with being kept seperate, as he explained, and Presea twisted her hands and showed what he'd suggested - just continuing both stacks seperately through the building. But that, as even Clef could see now it was in front of him, ran them very close to the chimney coming from the main hearth of the smiths teaching rooms - and Lantis explained his suggestion, before Presea took over and ran through the rest of them, and before she could let the building fade away Clef left his seat and started to poke at the one area which was still problematic.

"Could we move this entire stack?" he said, looking to Presea, pointing at the offending item. "If it could come to the centre of the building…"

"Isn't that where you are intending to teach shielding?" Lantis asked, leaning in. "You wouldn't want that so close to the pin for the main shield spells, it's far too likely to end up with their being interrupted, isn't it?"

"The building and its shielding is complicated enough I think it warrants a ban on practical experimentation of that kind inside," Clef said, wryly. "There are going to be outdoor practice fields; if we build in an alarm to warn against anyone trying to cast a shield, accidentally or otherwise, then no one would be able to do it by accident, at least. Theory can be inside, but if we ban the practical application and move this- ah, thanks, Presea." He shot her a smile, as she altered the model to show his suggestion. "Then pull this one around a little more which would keep the potential sparks and creative overflow from the smith's hearth away from the off-gassing from the potions hearth - I know they're within the generally accepted limits, but if we have a breeze and both areas are on a heavy teaching day…"

Presea leaned in, humming thoughtfully. "That would put the keystone for the shields at the centre of the building. That's not common practise anymore…"

"Only because it makes maintenance easier," Clef pointed out. "Centring it has always been more stable, for the sake of a few minutes more each time you need to access it - we're going to need to do maintenance outside of normal hours anyway, on this building, so it won't make much difference- Lantis, what do you think? You've been involved with the maintenance on the current Castle shields-"

"Which you locked to a keystone at the centre of the foundations," Lantis said, nodding, a hint of a smile twitching at his lips. "It makes sense to me. I think that would solve most of the issues which have been raised so far - Presea, can you get a modified version of the plans off this projection?"

"I can if someone would run and fetch some parchment to take it on," she said. "I didn't think to bring any with me, and if I let this go we'll have to work through the adjustments again. Umi, would you run down and ask at the Smith's office for nine sheets of plan-ready parchment?"

"Sure!" Umi bounced to her feet, and shot out of the room.

Shaking his head, Clef smiled after her, before returning to his seat. "That should make tomorrow's meeting easier. I can't see much left to object to."

"I'm sure we'll find something," Lantis said, but he was also sittign back in his chair, looking pleased.

Hikaru, on teh other hand, was looking apologetic. "I'm sorry I made Umi run into you, even if it's somehow been helpful," she began, but Clef waved to cut her off.

"Umi could have run off in another direction or let me put a shield up. It's not your fault. And… it has proven useful." Presea's explanations had given him the vocabulary he would need for the rest of the meetings, and he understood this building a lot better.

He also knew that the next time something like this came up, he was just going to find Presea and have her pull a projection like this so they could look at it, because this was so much easier. It was also something he didn't know how to do himself. Looking across the room, he grinned. "You said that how to throw a projection like this is part of the next year's teaching you have planned for the current Academy class?"

Presea nodded. "Yes, preparing the parchment, creating the plans, and using them for projections are all second year work. Are you… thinking of attending?"

"If you wouldn't mind me sitting in."

"You'd be welcome," she said, and laughed. "Though I might insist you and Umi sit on other sides of the class!"

"That seems reasonable," he agreed. He would look forward to it. "...No one tell her?"

Across the room, Hikaru giggled, and Fuu grinned. "We'll keep it a secret," Fuu promised, for both of them, as Lantis and Presea nodded. "I'm sure she'll enjoy the surprise."

oOo
Half a year later, Umi's face when he walked in and sat down at the desk next to her was fully through surprised and into bewildered, and Presea laughed so much she didn't make him move, even when they started arguing over what the instructions had been on preparing the parchment.