Disclaimer : I do not own Prince of Tennis & the hot tennis princes inside, although like everyone else out there, I really wish I did.

Note to all : Read & Reviews are greatly appreciated, thank you! This is another unfinished product of my stupid imagination, which goes rather wild and uncontrolled, especially when I'm alone in the bathroom worrying about bugs dropping on me. Rated T for the moment, might change to M according to how things play out. The usual pairings, but this story will be centered around the Silver & the Platinium pair. Alternate Universe alert! Don't read it if you can't stand how I place the characters. A little bit of Shishido OOC at the start, but he returns to how he is a little later. Once again, thank you for reading!

Part 1 : Silver moon


The night was cold and calm, a silent blanket spreading over the darkened forested area, disturbed only by the occasional ruffling of leaves as summer winds raced each other among the trees. The moon was out there, shy as it always had been, hiding behind its shield of thick and dark clouds. However, somewhere within this serenity of the nature, a pair of brilliantly amber eyes could be spotted glaring forward into another pair of equally bright russet twinged irises. Shishido Ryou closed his eyes as the corners of his mouth tugged slightly, his lips parting in an unfamiliar manner as he tried to speak..

A sharp, almost child-like but still distinctly beastly howl tore through the woods, loud and clear. It was shortly silenced by an equally deafening and heavy crunch, though. As unexpected and unneeded as it had been, these short moments were all that was needed to destroy the duo's hopes to stay as hidden and ignored as possible.

"OI, Ouch! Hiro-"

"Ryou-chan.."

"No, no, please, can we get out of here? Please, Hi-"

"I've told you, Ryou." The older, taller boy started with a sigh. "I just need a while more to see if I can spot anyone willing to join us, at least for tonight. Taka-san needs as much information as possible, and I need to provide him with that much. And please, if you're planning to blend into the culture here, you have to start getting used to calling me Yagyuu-Senpai or Yagyuu-san, by my first name, not Hiro-kun or Hiro-san. You can't go around calling me by my given name."

"Can we discuss this after we're out-"

"Just a while more, Ryou-chan. Be patient. And while you're here, use Japanese. English will attract too much unwanted attention."

After hastily circling the spot he was standing on a couple of times, Ryou sank into a graceful but comfortable kneeling position on the ground, his lips pouted as he turned his head away from his senior's direction. It was useless to try to argue against Yagyuu Hiroshi Senpai when the older boy got serious, and he wasn't going to be naive enough to try that ever again. Eyeing his furry paw miserably as his head dropped lower and lower, Ryou whimpered quietly under his breath as he tried to ignore all those leaves and branches stuck in his long, silky hair. He knew he was going to have hell in the showers later if he wanted to get all of these debris out, and Hiro-san is going to yell at him later for spending too much time in the showers again..

He just didn't like to know that his hair was in any condition worse than how he had kept it before he left the house.

"Neh, Hi- Yagyuu-Sen- Yagyuu Nii-san.."

Ryou's nose twitched habitually as he was greeted by a gentle breeze that brushed past his cheeks, his ears picking up a soft clicking of tongue - Hiro-san's usual indication for him to continue his sentence. It seems as though the older boy was willing to accept Ryou addressing him as 'Yagyuu Nii-san', too. Exhaling the stale huff of breath he had been holding in for quite some time, Ryou shut his eyes as he dragged a specific memory back to the surface of his mind.

"About that silver-mane I-"

"I've told you to forget about him." Hiro-san's voice was suddenly cold and harsh as he cut the younger boy off mid-sentence, and Ryou felt as though the temperature around him had dropped by a couple of degrees. The tense atmosphere was pressing against him, but Ryou knew that if he didn't demand to know everything from Hiro-san right now, the older boy would never bring up the topic again.

"But he could be an ally, he could be on our-"

"No."

Awkward silence fell between the duo, stretching and taunting at the younger boy as his eyelids started to flutter uncontrollably. Ryou snapped his eyes opened in irritation, wanting to glare at his senior again, but he ended up taking a sudden step backwards as his irises focused. Hiro-san's face was mere inches away from his own, and the older boy was studying him with an intense but agitated flare in those russet irises.

Ryou caught his breath hastily, still trying his best to lean away from the other. He couldn't understand why he hadn't even heard Hiro-san's entrance, and they were so close together that the tips of their noses almost touched, everything was making Ryou as uncomfortable as it could get. Hiro-san glared at him with an intensity that almost too fierce for him to withstand, and Ryou knew that the older boy was studying him - As though he was a lamb in a lion's den, just like how he would scrutinise his own prey. 'Uncomfortable' was probably an understatement. This was almost an unbearable torture.

His breath still trapped in his throat, his mind urging him to escape, Ryou averted his eyes to his side, searching for anything else he could focus on - That, in itself, was already a challenge, for it seemed like Hiro-san was almost everywhere in front of him. Jumping when a pair of strong hands landed on his shoulder, Ryou found that he was held steadily in place, not that he had had any chance to escape in the first place.

"Look at me, Ryou-chan, please! No, look at me. Forget about the silver-mane. You have to-"

Ryou had wanted to close his eyes, but the sudden change in the other boy's expression caught his attention - Hiro-san's usual composed mask was gone, replaced by a look of shock, fear, and more distinctly.. Anger. Before he could react, however, a sharp scent hit his nose, and Ryou found his eyes widening like how the older boy's had, except he wasn't sure whether he was feeling the same way his senior did.

It was a strong scent, sharp and almost too sweet, a scent that clouded his mind and his senses almost immediately. Ryou found himself oddly at ease, as though it was only natural for the honeyed scent to be around. Somehow, after casting his thoughts about the odd scent aside, all Ryou could worry about right then was the pained and controlled expression on Hiro-san's face.

"Nii-san..? Why.."

It was then when he - The both of them, saw him again.

Up in the sky, a full moon had finally made its debut for the night, after hiding behind the curtain of dark clouds for so long. A crystaline orb now hung in the middle of a lonely darkness, extending gentle rays of moonlight towards the two half-human, half-wolf forms crouching low on the ground. However, it wasn't all that captured the two teenage boys' attention.

Up in the skiy, very purposely settling in the centre of the full moon in that instant Ryou glanced upwards, a figure was suspended in mid-air - It was distinctly a human form, with its arms spread out as though it was trying (and suceeding, surprisingly) to fly without wings, its form held in a rigid forward-leaning position as it soared through the air. Due to the light from the moon, the figure was cloaked in darkness, and even with his naturally-gifted eyesight and ability, Ryou found that he couldn't make out the figure's features.

That aside, Ryou had no difficulties spotting the long, flowy hair at the back of the figure's head, an obvious gleam of silver. There, the silver-mane he was trying to ask Hiro-san about. So.. This scent is the silver-mane's? It's so.. Deliciously sweet..

Shifting his gaze off the figure now gliding past the full moon, Ryou's eyes widened as found himself studying Hiro-san's expression, and he almost shrank back to his previous position before the silver-mane appeared. Hiro-san was obviously holding his breath, his form arched in a stiff but steady position as he shifted his gaze regularly from the silver-mane to Ryou himself, as though expecting Ryou to just suddenly run off towards the silver-mane. Ryou had never seen Hiro-san as angry as this before; It frightened him, and all he could think of right now was that he didn't want Hiro-san to remain angry..

His moment of being distracted had caused him to miss almost everything. Hearing the sudden, loud and heavy 'thud' sounding from a distance, Ryou averted his attention and glanced up into the skies again, and was shocked to find that the silver-mane was no longer there. Hiro-san, too, seemed to have noticed it, for the next moment, the older wolf boy had picked himself up, and is tugging urgently at Ryou's arms, urging him to break into a run.

"Now, Ryou-chan, we have to leave-"

"That silver-mane, did he crash..?"

"We don't have to worry about him, please, Ryou-chan, trust me! We have to run!"

"But we can't just leave another fellow creature- What if the silver-mane's a werewolf like we are?"

Ryou couldn't help but to raise his voice a little, panic taking over his senses as he tugged in the opposite direction to that which Hiro-san was urging him to run towards. He didn't understand - What if the silver-mane was indeed one of their own? To fall from such a great height, even if they had bodies which could tolerate more than average humans could, that still doesn't mean that a wolf would be able to survive the impact.. Why isn't Hiro-san like his normal self, why isn't his Senpai bothering to help?

"Because that silver-mane cannot possibly be a werewolf, Ryou-chan, trust me please! I've never heard of a silver wolf before.."

A ripple of shock and fear ran down Ryou's spine as Hiro-san's words finally started to make sense to him, and the younger of them two finally stopped tugging himself away from his senior. Eyes widening, head shaking in slight denial, Ryou glanced upwards at Hiro-san, as though silently asking for the older boy to tell him that he was actually joking..

However, Hiro-san's grim expresion was all he needed to know he had been wrong all this while, and that the silver-mane he had admired so and long wanted to meet.. Is among the type hunters that had murdered his whole family..

"That silver-mane's a vampire, Ryou-chan.."