Title: Failure and Success

By: Sissy

Warnings: Major OOC! And nothing belongs to me except one idea.

Part One: It's not terribly bad today

The summer was hot in Kisaragi City. For some reason, today ended up being the hottest day of the summer. And the students who were doing summer classes, due to their low grades, could do nothing but complain. The heat made it impossible for them to concentrate. And the only reason they were getting so angry was because the air conditioner had decided to up and die on them.

"It just had to be today…" Akira Mido was tired as he slouched back into his chair. He so wanted to get out of his clothes and be in his boxers, but that would mean that Aoi would kill him. Although he wasn't paying much attention to the class, he really wanted to go into a pool.

"Mido! Listen to class or you'll suffer to a worse fate than this heat!" Aoi Matsumura yelled at Akira, surprising him so much that he fell back from his seat and hit the desk behind him hard enough to knock him unconscious.

"Akira!" The last thing he heard was Mika Nozaki's voice calling out to him and then he was gone.

… … …

"I'm not coming out. There's absolutely no way you're making me go out in this heat." Atsuki Saijo refused to step out of FORT headquarters. It was too hot outside to go anywhere.

"A little fresh air every so often will be good for you." Nöla Döbereiner smiled at Atsuki, much like a big sister with evil plans would. And that scared Atsuki.

"It's too hot Nöla!" Atsuki was losing his composure. The heat was reaching him in here.

"Atsuki darling! Let's go out! Let's go out! I have permission to go out!" Natsuki Venefskuja jumped on top of Atsuki from behind, surprising him enough to lose his footing.

"Ah!" Nöla screamed from shock, bringing the attention of the people around the entrance, but Atsuki was long gone. He couldn't hear anyone for the moment.

… ~.~ …

"Where am I?" Akira looked around him to see a maze with a bunch of doors and stairs. "I know I fell back. But the last thing I remember is hearing Mika's voice. Did I blank out or something? And…where the hell is this?!" Akira was freaking out, but tried not to hyperventilate too much. "Anyways, this has GOT to be a dream. Now how do I get back to reality?"

Trying to think too hard was not Akira's specialty. So he soon found himself getting dizzy. All of a sudden, he heard footsteps. Feeling only slightly crept out from this dream, he looked around in silence, then found the direction of the sound. Staring in the direction of the sound, Akira soon found himself face to face with a strange silver haired male. What was really strange was the fact that he was wearing a pair of hair matching cat ears and tail.

"Ah, there really was someone this way." Atsuki was surprised, to say the least. He felt a confused Shinen coming from this direction, so he only followed it on a whim, since there was nothing else to do.

"A cat-boy?!" How Akira knew a phrase like that, the world would never know…

"So says the guy with a dog fetish." Atsuki pointed to Akira, who noticed the hair matching dog ears and tail he had.

"EH?! How did this happen?!" Akira was incredibly confused.

"I don't know. I woke up here in the same way." Atsuki was maintaining a level-headed conversation.

"Where's the exit?! More like, how do I wake up?!" Akira asked, grabbing Atsuki by the shoulders when he got close enough.

"Ah!" Atsuki yelped with a surprised tone and quickly backed away from the baffled Akira.

"What was that?" Akira asked, his eyes wide with disbelief.

"That's what I want to know!" Atsuki yelled and turned around. "Anyways, this is too odd! You're a real person, right?! Not a figment of my imagination, right? But I've never met you before!"

"Are you talking to me or yourself?" Akira wondered those same things himself.

"This has to be a dream. I'm definitely dreaming!" Atsuki seemed determined to believe it was a dream. 'There's no way that I… For someone I've never met! This has to be a dream!' He yelled inside his thoughts.

"But if this is a dream then all we have to do is wake up, right?" Akira spoke as if it was a simple thing.

"That's… True…" Atsuki began to speak to him again. "But before that… How did this happen?" He wanted to solve this piece of the puzzle.

"True. If you're real and I'm real, then this is odd. Or maybe we're just remembering each other. That'd mean we've met before." Akira seemed to be thinking much clearer for him.

"I already said I've never met you before!" Atsuki was getting angry, but then quieted down. 'What's wrong with me? Why am I so angry? Have I been infected with Silent?'

"Alright, alright." Akira tried to smile and thought to himself, 'Why am I so calm? I haven't felt this calm in a long while… It's strangely relaxing.'

"So what are we supposed to do now?" Atsuki was feeling restless.

"How about we look around? And we can talk about what happened before we got here." Akira suggested with a smile and Atsuki nodded.

"One of my companions was making me go out of the office to accompany her and another one shopping. But it was too hot and I refused to go out. Then the other one came from behind me, I felt an impact and woke up here." Atsuki was calming down a bit more as they walked forward into a corridor.

"Then it's similar to me. I was taking summer classes when I slipped out of my chair and fell backwards. I think I hit my head before I woke up here…" Akira rubbed the back of his head with a frown.

"That's…not possible…" Atsuki was remembering something he'd rather not remember just as Akira stopped in front of a door.

"What isn't?" Akira asked opening the door very slowly.

"Wait!" Atsuki tried to stop him but was too late.

"Aaaah!" A familiar scream was heard and Akira froze, not looking behind him. He stared at Atsuki's pale face, which kept getting whiter and whiter.

"Sorry!" Akira screamed and closed the door without looking inside; fearing that he would find what he thought might be in there. He now felt a bit nervous.

"This can't be happening!" Atsuki was freaking out and ran towards another door, opening it to be sprayed with blood.

"Atsuki?" The familiar man looked confused and Atsuki immediately closed the door.

"This is turning out like that novel Natsuki showed me!" Atsuki screamed with a freaked out look.

"Hey, are you alright?" Akira asked, feeling a bit worried.

"The only way out is falling asleep…" Atsuki declared, feeling a bit tired as he slumped down on the floor.

"How do you know that? And is that blood?" Akira asked, paling a bit.

"Ah, forgot about this." Atsuki brushed off the blood as if it was dust and Akira looked surprised.

"How did…?" Akira was confused and sat down next to him.

"This is nothing more than a freak accident… It has to be…" Atsuki was determined not to fully accept this 'reality'.

"So, how are we supposed to fall asleep? I don't know about you, but I'm not sleepy at all." Akira said, leaning back against the wall.

"That's true…" Atsuki felt the same way. For some reason, he wasn't sleepy at all.

Akira noticed Atsuki's tail tapping the floor slightly. Now that he thought about it, their appearances were probably a bigger mystery. He recalled how Atsuki's ears and tail moved to his reactions, but hadn't really paid much attention to it at the moment. He wondered if he was the same. Were his ears and tail reacting in accordance to his emotions?

"Your tail is wagging." As if reading his mind, Atsuki noted the tail's movement out loud.

"I seem to be excited. This is really interesting after all." Akira smiled aloofly and Atsuki quickly turned his head around.

'Damn it, why?!' Atsuki felt more nervous than ever as he kept getting confused. 'Am I really infected with Silent?! But this is odd… This feeling is of…'

"By the way, we haven't introduced ourselves. I'm Akira Mido." Akira grinned but Atsuki wasn't even looking at him.

"Atsuki Saijo." Atsuki sighed softly, fearing what he might find if he turned to look at Akira.

"Hey! You should look at people when they're talking to you." Akira grabbed Atsuki's shoulder and forced him to look at him, but the sight he saw left him dumbfounded.

"What?" Atsuki didn't seem to notice how red his cheeks were.

"No, nothing." This time, Akira was the one who turned away. He turned with his whole body so Atsuki was left staring at Akira's back.

But Atsuki noticed the dog boy's tail curl up to his side and his ears flop down in what seemed to be fear. What had this guy scared? Moving in a crawl next to Akira, Atsuki tried to look at the male.

"Something seems to be up. Your fetish is giving you away." Atsuki told him, but Akira didn't flinch.

"It's nothing!" Akira yelled, but wasn't angry. Atsuki was a bit surprised and realized something. 'It's like staring at myself…' he thought then decided to stop thinking about that line of thought since it was scary as well.

"It's not nothing." Atsuki told him as his tail moved to Akira's cheek and brushed against it.

"Ah!" Akira lifted up his face and Atsuki saw the complex face he had. Part of him looked in pain and another part was blushing slightly.

"…" Atsuki wasn't sure of how to tread further when he felt a rising emotion. Turning away quickly, Atsuki sat down behind Akira with his back against Akira's while his tail curled against his leg. 'Crap, crap, crap, crap… Why am I feeling like this?! I want to pounce something!' Atsuki was trembling.

Akira, in the mean time, returned to hiding, not realizing that Atsuki was feeling like him. He wanted to lower his hand and quickly. It was an extreme pain that did not want to subside. And then, a thought floated up.

"We're dreaming, right?" He asked softly.

"I think so." Atsuki replied, trying to control his tail, which was moving up and down his leg in impatience.

"Then, when we wake up, we'll probably not remember anything, right?" Akira asked and Atsuki was somehow beginning to follow his train of thought.

"That might be true…" He replied and kept quiet.

Suddenly, both teens moved to sit up and grabbed each other's collar shirts. Fiercely locking their lips, they fell onto a bed. Akira ripped open Atsuki's shirt and Atsuki mimicked him. Staring at Atsuki's chest, Akira moved his hand to Atsuki's chest and began licking, then sucking. Atsuki moaned loudly as his tail trailed over Akira's belly. Twitching, Akira grabbed the tail and put it in his mouth.

"I knew you had a fetish…" Atsuki told him with low gasps as Akira grabbed the tail with his hand now and used it to trail over Atsuki's lower region.

"I wonder who has the bigger fetish? You're twitching so much from your own tail." Akira smirked and lowered his body to kiss Atsuki when…

"AKIRA / ATSUKI!!!!" A scream was heard and both males opened their eyes.

… … …

"Are you okay Akira?" Mika asked as Akira sluggishly sat up on the infirmary bed.

"Why am I in the infirmary? And why does my head feel likes it's cracking open?" Akira asked, staring at Mika with a curious look while he rubbed his head.

"Ah, you hit yourself pretty hard when you fell in class. We were pretty worried." Mika told him with a smile. "Are you feeling any better, though?"

"Somehow…yeah, but…" Akira wasn't sure how to go on. It felt like he had a pretty intense dream.

"Good. We were getting worried since it looked like you were having some kind of nightmare. You kept tossing and turning." Mika told him as the nurse, Honoka Hino, came into the room.

"If you're feeling better then head home. Nozaki, go with him to make sure he gets there safely. If your head starts hurting badly, go to the hospital for a checkup." Honoka warned him and he nodded, following Mika out of the infirmary.

Once Akira arrived at his house, he was left in his room while Mika seized the chance to get free cake. Slumping down on his bed, he felt extremely agitated as a blush crept over his face.

"Something definitely happened in my dream. For some reason, my body remembers it well." He told himself, making a mental note of his lower regions' high emotion.

… … …

"Natsuki?" Atsuki quickly asked, getting up from the bed. He looked around to see he was in Fort's infirmary.

"You had us so worried Atsuki! You wouldn't budge no matter what and I kept feeling a Silent infection from you but Liu Yee and the others couldn't find anything on you at all! It was like looking at someone else's brain that couldn't be touched because it wasn't really there! It was really scary!" Natsuki held onto Atsuki for support.

"Are you feeling alright Atsuki?" Nöla asked with a worried look.

"Yeah. My head hurts, but other than that, I'm okay." Atsuki was sincere.

"Can you remember anything?" Nöla asked curiously, making Natsuki get off the boy.

"No. But it feels as if I was feeling the emotions of someone else for a while." Atsuki felt a bit tired for some reason.

"Then just head to your room and sleep. It's better to rest when something strange happens." Nöla spoke with a warm smile and Atsuki nodded.

Standing up, Natsuki helped Atsuki to his room. But before he parted with her, he said just one thing. "Natsuki, that book you lent me the last time…"

"Yes?" Natsuki tilted her head curiously.

"Burn it." Atsuki told her before closing his door. "Something tells me that's the root of my problems." He told himself, a blush all over his face. Sighing, he tried to control the heat rising from his lower region.

To Be Continued…

Sissy: Nyahahaha! XD
Kody: Calm down and explain this fic already.
Sissy: Ah, sorry, sorry. Well, this fic is made as a reward for my good mail buddy GintaxAlvissForever (whom I shall unofficially call gaffy for now), due to a driving test. I won't go into details, but I wanted to tease gaffy with this fic. (starts laughing uncontrollably)
Kody: (hits with paper fan) Get on with the story!
Sissy: Buuu… Well, first part is Failure. I started it after gaffy mentioned studying for the exam. Hope I did okay with not traumatizing gaffy.
Kody: And stop before you start rambling on about the fic's idea.
Sissy: But the central idea was something I spoke to gaffy about. Atsuki as a kitty and Akira as a puppy. (threatening atmosphere…) Anyways! Second part is Success and is set after the "game". That's all I'll mention. (runs away)
Aoi: (ahem) Well, then. You all know the rules by now. Please review your thoughts if you-
Sissy: (runs back) I remembered! The idea for the dream is something I was using for an original story. Haven't continued it for a while though. Point being that it's based on a simple overused thought: dreams are connected. (runs away again)
Aoi: And on that note, we invite you to read the second part. They were posted at the same time since Sissy wanted to post the first part earlier but didn't have enough time to do it before gaffy-san gave us the results of the test.
Kody: And on that note, we congratulate gaffy. Driving tests make one's nerves get on the edge, so-
Sissy: (runs back again) CONGRATULATIONS!!! (runs away again)
Kody: Hey! Come back here and go to sleep as well you idiot!
Aoi: We'll see you in the next A/N!