Title: Magnetic Deviation
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: G
Length: 1800 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Clef breaking the NSX~ with bonus Geo and Zazu. Set sometime after canon and before the ridiculousness which is Protecting You.
Summary: It wasn’t the first time that Clef had been a passenger on one of Autozam’s ships, but it had been many years since he last travelled on one.

oOo

It wasn’t the first time that Clef had been a passenger on one of Autozam’s ships, but it had been many years since he last travelled on one. And that had been a normal passenger transport, not a military ship; random tourists not being given tours of restricted areas (possibly especially when they were unknown mages who had bartered for their passage slightly less , the first time he had been on one of those was when he came on board the NSX. The technology had altered significantly from what he remembered, although he hadn’t been given a tour of the whole thing back then; certainly not on the bridge. Still, even the displays in the corridors and quarters were holographic more than screen-based, now.

He’d been on the NSX more than a few times in the months since the rebirth of Cephiro, and there had been a number of lessons on the basics of Autozam’s technology; essential for the link they were going to put into place between the two worlds, to help Autozam learn to regenerate herself, using Cephiro as a model – but the connection fastened through a technological interface to give them some measure of control and monitoring ability. Now, though, he wasn’t just visiting. He was going all the way back to Autozam, to set the connection in place.

As Guru, his was the closest connection to the magic and power which was the heart of Cephiro, in the same way as the Soru – the newly-confirmed High Priest, Zafira – was closest to the people, and connected to them. She felt their emotions, their strength – their weaknesses. Zagato had once abused that ability to control or intimidate others; Zafira, cursed with a name a little too close to his for comfort, and a similar height and sternness, was fighting to undo the harm he had done to the reputation of the Priests. The third person in their small trinity of posts at the head of the Council, who had once been the main supporters for the Pillar, was Teru Atenza. The head of the judges was bound in that same way to the laws which governed Cephiro, down to the fundamental rules with which the power at her heart was transformed into the very land itself, and the people upon it.

The rebirth had consisted of so many changes to those deep rules all at once, without warning – and the full weight of them falling onto Atenza, just as the full weight of Cephiro’s magic had landed on Clef and kept him down when Mokona’s presence had knocked him over – that she had been reeling from it for weeks. Zafira had an easier transition; she had stepped up and taken the post in its new form. But Atenza had recovered as fast as she could make herself do so: in the absence of the Pillar, it fell to her to turn into reality each of the changes which were so rapidly needed to maintain this new system of governance.

She and Zafira had hold of their Guilds, now, and the rest of the Council was still over-awed by falling into real power for the first time in several millennia; Clef trusted the Mages to behave themselves, at least mostly, and was happy as he suspected he ever would be to let them take charge for the month or so his trip was likely to take.

Still, it was the first time he would be leaving Cephiro since he had become Guru, and he had to admit he was nervous about it. When Geo asked if he would stay on the bridge while they started their journey, he accepted gratefully, and left the rest of the Cephiran party settling into their borrowed quarters.

(He suspected the seat he’d been given on the bridge should actually have been Geo’s. Eagle was still in no condition to leave Cephiro; he was awake for a few hours a day, now, and far improved on how he had been, but certainly months from taking up his duties again. Still he remained the Captain of the NSX in name, and Geo was Acting-Captain, taking on no new person who might need to be displaced again when Eagle was ready to return.)

The sensation of leaving Cephiro behind was rather like pins and needles, but not quite as physical, or as painful – just colder. A kind of prickling, spreading numbness. Clef focused on watching the road forming ahead of them, the energy and will of Geo and several of the other officers being channelled through the machinery about them into an arc of light along which the great ship slowly started to glide.

He blamed the distraction for how long it took him to realise something was wrong, but eventually the confusion and worry in the increasingly frantic motions of the crew-member just in front of him caught his eye, just before the woman in question raised her hand for Geo’s attention.

“Captain! The guidance system is malfunctioning. I can’t seem to get a fix on our position, or set our course.”

The dials on the display in front of her were spinning in confusion, the numbers listed beside them changing endlessly. Geo swung his seat forwards, and frowned at them. “I’ve never seen anything like that before – do you have any idea what’s gone wrong?”

“No, sir. I can pilot us away from Cephiro manually, but guiding the course of our Road will be impossible once we lose sight of the land.”

“Was there anything amiss on the pre-flight checks?”

“Nothing, sir. All equipment was functioning normally an hour ago – I was checking our course was laid in properly.”

Geo hit a button on his chair, and a floating image of Zazu appeared – not that Zazu seemed to have noticed, as he was busily muttering something about the FTO needing some form of exercise and why would no one let him- “Zazu!” Geo called, and grinned when Zazu flinched and straightened with a bitten-off curse. “We’ve got a problem in navigation – the program was running fine just now, any chance it could be mechanical?”

“Not much of one, let me see, what’s it- whoa.” Zazu blinked, as Geo hit several buttons and presumably sent Zazu an image of the spinning numbers and dials. “That’s amazing! Um. I don’t think it’s going to be a mechanical fault, though… it might be a problem in the translation from sensors to the display, hang on, I’m pulling up the raw feed to… oh.”

Geo frowned. “Oh? What’s ‘oh’, Zazu? Is something broken? We need to know now, if it is – I don’t want us getting lost! We won’t be able to find Cephiro again, if we’re not careful-“

“Cephiro’s always recognisable, you know that.” Zazu said, absently, waving a hand at the camera and keeping his own attention on the readouts before him. “It’s not broken. Or – the sensors are all broken is the other option, but they’d never all go at once, with no warning. They’re picking up interference. Some electrical signal large enough they can’t actually pick up anything else. I’ve never seen anything like it before-“

Clef blinked. “Oh.” He echoed Zazu, blankly, bringing his own attention back to himself – and the way magic was pulsing unhappily under his skin at the separation from Cephiro, the cause of much of his discomfort, and amplified by that same uneasiness. Looking up, he found Geo – and half the bridge – staring at him, and flushed. “I think that might be me.” He took a deep breath, and let it go, taking conscious grip of his power and trying to lock it down into himself.

Geo blinked, and Zazu looked incredulous. “It can’t be! The amount of electrical charge they’re reading would be-“ He stopped staring at the readings on his screen. “What the – the readings are going down, fast – but you can’t be holding that much-“

“Zazu, stop insulting our guest by telling him he’s impossible before I cut off your supply of alcohol for the rest of the trip home.” Geo said, with a grin, sitting back in his chair as the dials of the navigation system slowed in their frenzied spinning, and began to stabilise. Zazu spluttered, but said nothing else before Geo cut the feed and his image disappeared. The dials were still a little shaky, though, and Clef could do literally no more to stop the flickering of power as he adjusted to the distance between himself and Cephiro.

“I’m sorry,” he told Geo, aware he was probably still blushing. “I didn’t realise that my power would interfere with your equipment, or I would have stayed with the others.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Geo waved a hand, and the woman at the navigation controls went back to work, hands flicking across the display in front of her. “Nothing’s broken, and Zazu’s probably already planning how to make a scanner which will measure your magic accurately. Just so you know. I’m curious, though – we’ve never had anything go wrong when you visited before?”

Clef sighed, and glanced at the dials again. “You were never taking me away from Cephiro, before. It seems it requires some… adjusting to? Are the sensors for your navigation system all located close to the bridge?”

“They’re in the cluster just behind us.” Geo pointed back with a thumb at some unrecognisable piece of equipment in the huge bank at the back of the bridge. “It isn’t making you ill, is it? I know you brought one of your healers in your group, but I don’t know if our doctors will be able to help with any magic problems-“

“No, no. It’s just… uncomfortable.” Clef unfastened his belt, going to stand – and noticing how the lights flickered on the arm of his chair when he touched it. “But I should go to check the rest of my party, to make sure they are not too discomforted… and to make sure I cannot interfere with any more of your instruments until we are safely away from Cephiro, and used to the distance.”

“Well- if you’re sure? You’re welcome to stay, if you’d prefer.” Geo offered, and offered honestly, but Clef shook his head.

The pricking numbness was unavoidably present, when he was concentrating on keeping that power in check, and there was a headache beginning to pulse at his temples. He was going to check on his people, and then send himself to bed. “Thank you, but no.”

“Well, you’re welcome back at any time.” Geo said, and then turned back to overseeing his ship while Clef slipped away – with one final glance back at the navigation display, where a tiny green light represented Cephiro.

It was going to be a very long month.

oOo

end