A pair of heavy leather gloves smacked the table, almost immediately followed by an irritated stream of curses. Sari planted her hands on her hips and glared at the offending piece of machinery.

"Something wrong?" Fai had ducked through the doorway from shop to workroom just before the rant, a box of cables precariously balanced in his arms.

"The engine's working."

"Shouldn't that be a good thing?"

Sari didn't answer his question. "Just turn off the steam."

Fai deposited his cargo carefully and reached over to spin the wheel that closed off the steam pipes.

All of Sari's previous prosthetics had operated using the torque that could still be generated by severed muscles if they were attached properly and the mechanisms were designed cleverly enough. That process provided very little throw for large movements, but was certainly a step up from losing the limb all together.

Mokona's appearance had sent her off on a tear to design a miniaturized engine that would provide more power and, therefore, could support a much more functional prosthetic. She'd rerouted one of the heating pipes in the house to provide steam to her workbench so that she could test out her prototypes.

The particular one she was working on was about half the length of Fai's forearm and included both the piston and the electronics needed to convert the mechanical energy to electrical to move the metal appendages. A thick cable ran to one end, carrying the steam into the chamber, two ran from the sides to drain the expended steam into a bucket by her feet, and a pair of twisted wires connected the opposite end to a meter propped up on the workbench. While steam had been running through the system, the meter displayed a reasonably constant current.

"It's producing electricity." Fai leaned against the table and stretched one hand towards the canister, only to pull back when he felt the heat rising off it. "It's getting fairly hot, though."

"That's not a problem." Sari tapped the bucket with her foot. "I can reroute the condensed water to run around the outside and that should keep it cool enough to bury it in the center of the limb with some insulation. The whole arm wouldn't be much warmer than body temperature. Actually," She grinned for the first time in the last several hours. "It'll probably be a bit of a step up. Mika doesn't have any prosthetics, but I bet they feel pretty weird. Particularly a metal one like your husband's."

His brain happily supplied the memory of a cool metal hand splayed across his stomach. Fai tended to toss in his sleep vigorously enough to work his shirt well up his chest by the morning. It was usually not a problem, but he usually didn't share his bed with anyone else. This particular morning, he'd woken to Kuogane's arm thrown wide across the bed and resting on his bare abdomen.

"Ayaa, you're blushing!"

He hadn't realized it and immediately struggled to suppress it.

Sari leaned around to peer up into his face. "My word, you're really blushing. What on earth have you done with that arm?"

"It's the heat." It was a reasonable excuse. Sari's workshop was doing a fair impression of a sauna. Every inch of exposed skin on both of them had taken on a decidedly ruddy tone several hours ago, but the heat rising in Fai's face, particularly given the last suggestion, had little to do with the ambient temperature.

"Of course it is." She pushed heavy dreads off her face. "But to answer your question – yes, it is a good thing that it's producing energy. That's not the problem. The problem is that I need to input a large amount of steam. Someone would have to wear a boiler," She shoved her hand out at waist height to demonstrate the size. "Just to keep it running. No one's going to trade up for larger range of motion if they had to carry something like that around."

"Some of the riders might. They could mount the boiler on the side of their bag and only rely on the engine when they're riding. The rest of the limb should work like your old designs, right?" Fai was only half-listening to what he was saying. Another idea had struck him.

"Mmm, maybe…. What are you looking for?"

"Just a piece of metal about this big." He held up his index finger and thumb in a circle. Sari's etching tools resided in a kit at the end of the workbench, and he fitted the finest tip he could find to the router while she fished around for the metal. "And something to write with."

A marker landed on the desk next to him, and only a few seconds later Sari tossed a chip of metal along the same path. "Is that big enough?"

"Should be." Fai bent his head close to the surface and began sketching across it. Once the black lines were completely laid out, he went back over them with the router, carefully etching the pattern into the hard surface.

Sari hovered over his shoulder, curiosity rooting her in place though it took him almost ten minutes to finish. "It's very pretty." She offered once he'd sat back to study his work.

"Do you mind if I…?" His gesture encompassed the metal bucket that was currently half full of water from the previous experiment.

"Sure, go ahead."

The top of the workbench was well insulated, and the wood floor was not, so Fai lifted the bucket to the top, grasped the disk between his hands and channeled magic through it. The inscribed lines glowed silvery-blue for a second before fading, and he dropped it into the water before it completed the spell.

"What was…?" The water roiled from the intrusion of the stone and continued to roil. A few seconds later, steam began to rise off the surface. Sari leaned forward, eyebrows rising in amazement. The metal glowed red hot under the surface of the water.

"Ah, that's probably a little too warm. It'll need some fine tuning." He spread his hand wide above the surface of the water. The easiest way to stop the magic would be to grab the token itself, but that clearly wasn't an option. The glyphs rose at the pull of his magic and faded away. The water would cool eventually and he could remove the chit, alter the inscription and try again.

Sari gaped. "How…. How?"

Fai grinned broadly and stretched his arms wide, very literally a magician revealing a trick. "Magic."

"Very funny." Sari frowned at the contraption, as if she was trying to figure out where the trick was. When Fai didn't offer an explanation, she finally turned towards him. "You're serious, aren't you?" At his nod, she folded her arms tightly under her chest and breathed out "I'll be damned."

Outright acceptance was the last thing he expected, though it would be hard to argue against such a blatant demonstration.

"The only people who really benefit from something like this are the ones that have full limb replacements. They're fairly uncommon here, even given the number of amputees we have, so I wouldn't need many…."

"They'll stay warm forever." Fai volunteered. "I can probably make you ten or twenty before we leave."

"Brilliant. That's just brilliant. We'll have to figure out how to attach it. It can even be a closed system. The water's heated to steam, runs the piston, travels the outside to cool it – and it'll even help for efficiency because it will be partially heated by the canister before encountering the heat source – and comes back into the heating chamber." While she spoke, Sari yanked a large sheet of paper from below the counter, tossed it across the tabletop, scattering wires, connectors and writing implements, and began sketching furiously.

For several minutes, they stood with their heads together, bouncing ideas off each other and pointing and gesturing excitedly as they worked quickly to capture the design.

With a grandiose sweep of her pencil, Sari began to define the outlines of the prosthetic around the engine, and Fai straightened. He could offer very little assistance in this bit, and the heat in the room was beginning to get to him. He retreated to the kitchen to retrieve a pitcher of water and a couple of glasses. If he was suffering in the heat, he could only imagine how oppressive it must feel to Sari in her long skirts.

The curtain between store and workroom was swinging slightly when he returned. He shot it a quizzical glance as he handed one of the glasses over to Sari.

"Customer. He's got replacements on his left leg from mid-thigh down and four – no, five – fingers. I see him fairly regularly for tune-ups, so he knows to come back here if I'm not in the front. Good thing, too." She grinned sheepishly. "I didn't even notice him until he was leaning over my shoulder, let alone hear the bell when he opened the door."

"His whole leg? Sounds like he'd benefit from this."

"Absolutely! I've just got to get it working." She dropped several bolts onto the corners of the diagram to keep it from rolling up. "I need…the six and seven gauge wire rolls and the half inch tubing. Should be somewhere in the store."

Fai nodded and turned to retrieve the supplies while she began retrofitting the engine prototype.

OOOOOOOOO

Kurogane thumbed the paddle under this right hand, closing off two of the vents to the central piston. As the pressure decreased, the piston slowed as did the bike, and the machine's hum gave way to a slow, rhythmic clunking. He stuck a foot out to touch the ground occasionally to keep balanced while the bike crawled forward.

Ahead of him, Mika had slowed as well to navigate the throngs of people streaming into the arena. Shouts rang out on all sides. Bets were placed in a snippet of conversation from the right. A young girl on her father's shoulders waved two flags – one with Mika's name emblazoned on it. Mika caught his gaze. "The other flag is for her mother. She's a good rider, but is really just coming into her own now that she's got her wife's financial backing. A few more wins, and she'll be competing at my level."

Most of the crowd parted before Mika, and though Kurogane was clearly not as well known, he received some good-natured claps to the shoulder and wishes of good luck that seemed to spill over from those offered to Mika.

They slid to a stop next to a group of other riders, and Kurogane craned his head back to study the massive door looming in front of them.

"Rider's entrance." Mika called over the noise. "They'll open it up in a minute and then we'll go through to the holding area. Only those in the current race are allowed to be out on the track, but this end has a smaller loop that you can ride around to stay loose before your heat and some cranes and lifts so that you can do basic maintenance. Course it won't matter for you, since you'll be in the first heat with the rest of the beginners."

A jet of steam blew from the top edge of the door, and pulleys began to spin, slowly rolling the door back. Mika gunned his bike, easing through the narrow slots between other riders.

Kurogane followed him, but didn't miss the glares aimed his direction that Mika didn't receive. Apparently he was guilty of something other than cutting the line.

Mika pulled to a stop by the metal lockers that lined the interior space, kicked the bike stand down with a toe and climbed off. His eyes followed Kurogane's, which were currently locked in a death glare with a slender man who was almost his height and sporting a long, black ponytail.

"Don't take it personally. Most of them won't eat tonight if they don't at least place in the race." Mika tossed a bundle of cloth in his direction. "They're just pissed because you're already a step up 'cause you've got one of my bikes."

Kurogane grinned. False modesty was something he'd never found any use for in himself or others. The bike Mika had leant him may have been old, but it was well cared for, and any idiot could tell at a glance that it was head and shoulders over the rest of the junkers waiting outside.

Mika paused from peeling off his overcoat. "Dunno why Yaro'd have a beef with you, though. He's in the next level up from yours, so you won't be racing each other."

In retrospect, Yaro's gaze held more speculation than animosity, and Kurogane eased back on the enmity - just because the other riders were behaving like assholes didn't mean that it had to spill over on the one's who weren't.

"You're gonna want to put those on." Mika pointed to the clothing he'd just tossed at Kurogane. "The piston's aren't all that well insulated, and when you're riding on the street it's pretty easy to avoid resting a leg on them. Out here on the track, you're going to want to be able to lean on it to make some of the corners."

Kurogane shook out the heavy leather chaps and buckled them on over the tight black pants he'd been wearing up until this point. Yasha's standard armor had included something fairly similar to keep clothes from wearing down against the scaled skin of their mounts.

Thoughts of Yasha's camp brought back a flood of memories. He had known Fai's skill – had seen it in him from the very beginning and had watched him apply it to his strange approach of half-hearted evasion – but to see him do battle was truly a thing of beauty, and it had been in Yasha's camp that Kurogane had realized just how deep his feelings for his infuriating companion were beginning to run.

Though they shared no common language, he had willingly sought out Fai as a training and even drinking companion, commonly eschewing the company of most of his compatriots with whom he could actually hold intelligible conversations. At first, he believed that pity motivated his actions. After a couple of months, he was insisting to himself that it had to be pity driving him to spend time with Fai even though it was clear that Fai was managing to communicate just fine through a complex series of pointing and hand gestures.

A month or so later, Kurogane had to admit that that he was choosing Fai's company and, perhaps even more surprising, that Fai was choosing his, given the number of soldiers that invited him drinking that he turned down.

Fai was far too intelligent to be hamstrung by something as insignificant as a language barrier, but it had taken Kurogane half their time there to realize just how much Fai understood, and he'd cursed himself for not having put in the effort to learn any of Fai's language – he still wondered how much Fai had told him during that time. Even though he had learned the secrets of Fai's past since then, he still suspected that Fai had admitted things that he had never voiced either before or afterwards.

Worry for the kids. Perhaps true, unbridled desire to live, despite his typical actions. Maybe even something about Kurogane himself…

Fai frustrated him in a way that no other human being had ever managed – even Tomoyo, who had certainly pushed every button she'd ever discovered in his psyche on multiple occasions – and most of that irritation derived from the dichotomy between Fai's actions and words. Why couldn't he just say and do what he meant?

Why was he only ever honest when no one could understand him?

A spike of pain drove the thought from his mind, and he subconsciously grabbed his shoulder with a grimace, rubbing at the skin until it subsided to a dull ache. Thankfully the arena was hot enough to loosen and ease the knotted muscles.

Unfortunately, it was so warm that he was already coated in sweat, and he'd barely been inside for five minutes. He tugged at the hem of his shirt.

The shirt came off remarkably easier than it had gone on a couple of mornings ago, and he was intensely grateful for that. Getting caught in his shirt around Fai had been embarrassing but ultimately inconsequential. In competitions like this, however, intimidation was a highly motivating factor, and he was fairly certain he would loose any status with the rest of the riders if he couldn't take his own shirt off.

He rolled his shoulder, feeling the black, sleeveless shirt catch slightly on the attachment cables for his arm. A quick tug pulled it back away from the artificial limb, but the point where skin met one of the cables must have been bleeding because blood had dried to the shirt. The scab was yanked away along with the cloth, and the wound began to ooze. He snarled a curse under his breath and searched for something that wasn't his white over shirt to mop it up. With his vast experience of bleeding on all assortments of colors and fabrics, he knew full well how hard it was to get blood out of white cloth. Their hosts would probably not be amused by having to clean that up.

"Here."

A fairly clean piece of gauze appeared under Kurogane's nose. He took it and pressed it to his shoulder, nodding in thanks to Yaro.

Before turning away, Yaro studied his shoulder for an almost uncomfortably long amount of time.

The prosthetic was of strange design for this world and had drawn several hours worth of examination from Sari over the last day, so his interest wasn't entirely unusual, but something in his expression set Kurogane on edge.

Music blared suddenly out of the speakers mounted in the corners of the room followed by a call for the riders in the beginner's race to approach the start line, and it knocked all thoughts of Yaro out of Kurogane's mind. He fell into line with riders of all ages – youths just beginning their careers and older riders who hadn't ever won enough races to move to the more competitive groups, all with bikes that looked like they'd been put together at the scrap yard.

Though very little rested on him winning or even placing in this race, he was, by nature, a competitive person. His vision narrowed down to a tunnel focused on the track, and his lips quirked up in the bloodthirsty smirk that always seemed to affix itself to his face right before a battle.

OOOOOOOOO

A deep thrumming rose from the far end of the arena followed by a wave of noise from the people gathered in the stands. The races drew crowds from all of the neighboring towns, and the arena had been extended to accommodate raised stands around the racetrack simply to make enough room for the observers.

Fai paused halfway up the stairs and turned to follow the gaze of the gathered masses. The riders had appeared at the start line – several stood high on the foot pegs, waving wildly or pumping closed fists in the air. Kurogane was easy to spot, one long leg kicked out in front of him, the other folded against the side of the bike, and his arms draped idly over the handlebars. Even from this distance, Fai could see that the red eyes were narrowed and focused on the track before him.

Cheers rose around them. Syaoran cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Good luck, Kurogane-san!"

Mokona quickly echoed him, but its voice didn't carry over the background noise.

"Waii, Kuro-tan! Good luck!" Fai shouted out of a purely knee-jerk reaction - the exuberance did not reach farther than his tone and expression.

In depth analysis of Sari's new designs had kept him up into the wee hours of the morning. When he'd finally sought out their bed and crawled in under the covers, Kurogane had fallen into a deep sleep. He had thankfully been sleeping on his back – one of the few positions that didn't seem to bother his arm.

Fai'd stretched out carefully on the small strip of mattress left vacant at Kurogane's left side. The minute he'd settled in, a cold metal arm wound around his waist and pulled him against Kurogane's broad chest. If he hadn't been so warm and very comfortable, Fai would have shoved him back onto his back.

But he had been very warm, very comfortable and very tired, and it hadn't been as if Kurogane was lying on his prosthetic, so Fai'd let himself drift off.

He'd been curled into a ball in the center of an empty mattress when he woke, and there had been a couple of faint streaks of blood on his shoulder right next to the imprints left by Kurogane's metallic arm. Kuro….

"Fai-san?" Syaoran was at the top of the stairs, looking back over his shoulder at Fai. "Our seats are up here."

Fai shook himself out of the memory, glad that he had been staring blankly out at the track rather than the floor or the people around him, and smiled brightly. "Coming!" He took the stairs two at a time to reach them. "Looks like Kuroi can beat any of the people out there, doesn't it?"

"Mmhm!" Syaoran nodded, studying the other racers.

As they took their seats right up against the railing that divided the track from the audience, Fai firmly shoved the worry into the back of his mind. Even though a source for a new prosthetic had quite literally fallen into his lap, Fai had no money in this world, plus it would require removing Kurogane's current limb – something that he wasn't sure any of them could even manage. A trip to Piffle might leave him exhausted for a few days, but it would be a small price to pay.

Plus Kurogane had gone to great lengths to hide his infirmity from Syaoran and Mokona ever since they'd first arrived in Clow, and Fai was not going to let his anxiety spill over and make the other two suspicious.

"It's starting!" Mokona vaulted to the railing, its voice drowned out almost instantly by the sound of the horn starting the race.

The bikes leapt forward, kicking dirt out behind them, and screaming as their riders brought them up to full power and slid alongside their competitors, jostling for position. The first group whipped by their spot so fast, that had Fai not noted the color of Kurogane's clothes and bike, he would not have been able to separate him from the rest.

Five laps around even a rough, hilly track like this at that kind of speed would take only a matter of minutes. The bikes whined as they climbed out of a depression and hooked a sharp corner to pass back over the start line.

Two laps later, and the race was going well. Kurogane had put almost an entire half lap between him and the closest racer, and Fai found himself on his feet cheering with the rest of the crowd. The same thrill that had gripped him during the Piffle races filled his heart for brief seconds before a sudden feeling of dread settled into his stomach.

What was wrong? False premonitions simply did not happen with his magic. No one was near Kurogane, and his bike appeared to be operating normally. Something…. Something…. The magic pounded up the back of Fai's skull, screaming to be acknowledged. The audience? Fai looked around frantically. Perhaps it had nothing to do with Kurogane.

An individual who could only be described by the cliché 'tall, dark and handsome' moved purposefully in his direction, tucking a strand of long black hair behind his ear and aiming a piercing gaze on Fai.

The magic was throbbing now, faster even than his heartbeat, and it pulled his attention away from the man advancing on him just long enough for an iron grip to snap around his wrist with enough force for the man's nails to bite into his skin. If the magic would just shut up for two seconds, Fai would politely remove the offending appendage, possibly without even breaking all of the man's fingers.

But the sick feeling brought on by his premonition was too severe for a simple harassment. It had to be something else. Fai started to look around, choosing to deal with unwelcome attention later, but the grip on his wrist shifted, and he was yanked forward until he was nose to nose with the man.

"Do you really think you can get away with treating your husband like that?"

A collective gasp rose from the audience, lifting the hairs on the back of Fai's neck, and he just couldn't seem turn his head fast enough to see what had happened.

OOOOOOOOO

The front wheel dropped into a deep rut as he revved the bike over the top of the hill. The course banked sharply to the left, the apex of the turn rising steeply to the base of the stands. Kurogane gripped the handlebars and tried to wrench the front around to make the turn, but the groove deepened as it cut straight across the corner and the bike remained firmly locked into it. It was likely left over from a frantic braking attempt during a practice run, where a locked up tire churned into the soft soil.

He reached to the switch on the body of the bike that reversed the direction of the piston, slapped it into reverse and slammed the insulated vents from the heat source closed. Unfortunately, the interior cavity of the engine was far too warm to stop converting water to steam in short order. Combined with his momentum, the bike would not be able to stop before reaching the observers. The brakes clamped down as well, buying him a few seconds, but not making enough of a difference.

Kurogane reversed his grip on the left handlebar and yanked hard and fast towards his body while pushing away with his right hand. Something snapped with a metallic twang, but the wheel finally broke free. Pain ripped through his left shoulder when the resistance was finally released and his elbow snapped back. Off balance and no longer in a functional orientation, the bike tipped, dumping him onto his side. He slid across the dirt and slammed into the wall lining the racetrack.

He lay there for a minute, gathering his wits and then slowly raised his head. In the blurry periphery of his vision, he spotted someone who was probably Fai given the general shape and size, which was all he could make out, sprinting across the loose soil towards him. A low-grade ache started in his right arm due to a combination of scrapes from the slide and wrenched muscles, but he was more concerned with the pain screaming up the nerves in his left shoulder.

Three of the attachment cables had snapped loose from his skin. The metal muscles in the biceps had not broken altogether, but looked decidedly frayed in some spots. The biggest issue was the long attachment from elbow to wrist. The wires were exposed and sparking, and the set of metal fasteners the conveyed forearm signals to the delicate tendons in the hand had snapped straight across the center.

The pain spiked the minute he tried to sit up, and darkness bit at the edges of his vision. He fought it because Fai had just skided into view, dropping to his knees beside Kurogane and reaching a hand towards him.

"Kurogane!"

The scared look plastered across Fai's face burned back the pain and impending unconsciousness. "Stop worrying, mage. I'm fine." Several other people had reached him, and he felt hands touch his back and sides, stabilizing his injuries as they rolled him onto his back. He would have said more, but Fai was shoved back by the press of people, and the relentless urge to pass out overwhelmed his self-control.

OOOOOOO

The stark white sheets made Kurogane's skin look darker, but Fai could still see just how pale he was compared to normal. Kurogane's arm and his fingers were roughly the same color – something he hadn't seen since Nihon. The injuries from the crash may have been superficial, but the damage to Kurogane's prosthetic was irreparable. The only option now was to remove it once Kurogne's condition had stabilized. Fai pillowed his head on his crossed arms, leaning on the bed next to Kurogane.

He'd thought they were past this. None of them had sustained any injuries more serious than a few cuts or bruises after leaving Clow. It was a pleasant change and had lulled Fai into a sense of safety. He could have easily gotten used to not having to worry over whether or not one of them was going to die.

His eyelids drooped, and he fought back the warm embrace of sleep. Kurogane was still in critical condition. If something happened…. If something….

Exhaustion took over, and he fell into a fitful sleep.

Incoherent voices yelling in the hallway startled him awake. He jerked up, hand tangling with Kurogane's as he yanked backwards. He stared blankly at their entwined fingers, caught between confusion as to when he'd taken Kurogane's hand and elation that he'd woken up before Kurogane and could safely extract his hand without Kurogane being any the wiser.

Sari's voice became intelligible. "….and the damage to the prosthetic was due to the crash. You have no right…!"

"The skin around that attachment point was bruised, scabbed and even freshly bleeding in a couple of places before the race."

That was the same voice as the man who'd grabbed him in the stands. Fai had quite literally ripped his arm out of his grip when Kurogane'd crashed, though he had been far too worried to really enjoy the curse of pain that had elicited.

"Are you officially asking to file this report?" That came from someone he hadn't met yet.

"Yes."

"I can't believe you're buying this!" Sari was clearly furious. It seemed like an overreaction to Fai. The door whipped open, and she stormed through and slammed it with enough force to shake the lamp on the adjacent table.

He pushed slightly away from the bed. "What's going on?"

Sari leaned against the inside of the closed door and pressed a hand against her face. "Yaro is calling for a challenge."

"What does that mean?"

"He is calling into question your suitability as Kurogane's wife. It's a very old law that was originally intended to give the wives' a means of escaping a bad or loveless marriage. Though we don't have rights to initiate a divorce on our own, a friend or family member could issue a challenge. In reality, it's an antiquated and relatively pointless law. The husbands can leave whenever they want, but they don't because they need us, and most wives won't enter into a marriage agreement unless they're certain. We don't have any imperative to make it official earlier rather than later, so the law is very rarely used under its original intention. Unfortunately, there's an addendum to a subclause to a…a…note that was stuck in between the pages that allows for riders to quite literally steal wives." Her eyes finally lifted to meet Fai's.

"Steal?"

"I don't know why it was added – probably because some higher up had the hots for someone else's wife. We've been fighting to get it removed for years. Basically, it calls for a one on one race, winner take all. But it can only be enacted if the wife has demonstrated a lack of care-giving for their husband."

"That doesn't make any sense – why would anyone want to abduct a wife that was not taking care of their husband?" His fingertips came in contact with the Kurogane's forearm before he'd even made a conscious decision to move. This is my fault. It came about because I chose to turn a blind eye to how much he was hurting.

"Of course it doesn't make any sense," She shook her head. "But it doesn't have to. The rules are clear, and, whether or not the motives are logical, our hands are tied by the letter of the law."

"How…" Fai trailed off and shook his head, changing his mind as to what question he wanted to ask first. "Why is he after me?"

"I can think of a few reasons. First off, look at you. Exotic and beautiful."

His gaze followed Sari's gesture, dropping down to stare at his too thin body and lanky limbs, disbelief plastered across his face.

"You'd be a status symbol for anyone who had you as a wife. Second," She ticked the points off on her fingers. "This particular rule doesn't usually work very well because the riders with wives almost invariably win against the riders without – they simply have better equipment. But with Kurogane injured, Yaro's almost guaranteed to win. Third, Yaro, like all of our unmarried riders, is desperate for any wife he can get his hands on. He does very well in the races, but that only means he's been bumped up in competition levels quite quickly. If he can't refurbish his bike to a higher level, he won't be able to place, and he'll be broke, even though he could have kept winning at a lower level. Plus his prosthetics take a huge chunk out of his wallet." She paused, her face looking ashen. "His prosthetics. Oh god."

"What?"

Sari sank down on the edge of Kurogane's bed. "You remember the customer who stopped in when we were first working on the new design? The one with the leg and finger replacements?" She waited for Fai to acknowledge it. "That…. That was him. I was so excited, and he was so interested, I just couldn't help talking about it."

"Why does that make any difference?"

"Don't you see?" She moved from the bed to the chair next to him, leaning forward with the intensity of her words. "With you, he gets the best of all worlds. Status, money, demonstrated potential just from the few days you've been at my shop, and the possibility to do impossible things."

It took him a minute to piece together what she meant. "My magic."

"I'm so sorry. Yaro's always seemed to be an upstanding person, I never thought…."

Fai closed his eyes. Water under the bridge. He repeated the phrase to himself several times. Given that he'd spent most of his life trying to change the past, it was excruciatingly hard to learn how to take that phrase to heart. "So what happens?"

"They will have to race within two days from the point when the challenge was issued."

"He can't race like this!" The chair rattled, knocked backwards when he leapt to his feet.

"I know." Sari put a hand against his shoulder and pushed him gently back down in the chair. "We're going to get him fixed up."

"What happens if he doesn't…?"

"If he doesn't race – either because he can't or because he refuses to accept the challenge, though that's just a formality – Yaro will be considered the de facto winner. He will take Kurogane's bike, all of his money, and…his wife."

He can refuse to accept the challenge? In Kurogane's condition, with a new arm or not, another race would only serve to damage him more. The best solution would be to simply forfeit. Mokona would be able to take them out of here soon, after all. It couldn't possibly be that bad, and it would keep Kurogane from getting hurt anymore.

Sari was staring speculatively at him. "You're not really married are you? You wouldn't be even considering doing what you're thinking about if you really were."

He initially buried the urge to tell her the truth until he realized that there was not reason to keep up the subterfuge."If we're not married, then this whole thing is moot." He trailed off when he noticed that she was shaking her head.

"We don't have much in the way of ceremonies – not enough time. You've got his beads, so you're as married as you can get in our society."

The beads were rough under his fingers, and he jerked his hand away as soon as he realized he was touching his hair.

"Why did you tell us you were married if you're so willing to throw it away?"

"It's just a long-standing joke." He snorted sadly. "I can't even remember when it started, but it always gets a rise out of him, so it became a habit for Mokona. Then after the incident with Orin, it seemed prudent to simply keep up the ruse. Kuroi must have thought so to, or he wouldn't have ever…." Fai brushed his fingertips against the beads again. "Here I thought it was a good insurance of protection."

"He wouldn't have?"

"What?"

"Never mind." She waved the question off and leaned in to examine the attachment point of Kurogane's broken prosthetic. "We should probably get to work on a replacement. How did he lose his arm?" At Fai's puzzled look, she waved a hand. "Not trying to pry, it just helps to know how to make the connection to the muscles if it's smooth, jagged or even both."

"Smooth. It was cut off by a sword…. He cut it off with a sword." Fai clarified, though he wasn't sure why he felt the need to ensure she understood that it was not a weakness or error on Kurogane's part that cost him his arm.

Sari's head jerked up and she stared at him. "He cut off his own arm? Why?"

"To save me." Fai started. He hadn't intended to say that out loud. He had never stated Kurogane's reasons for his behavior in Celes out loud, even when Soma had demanded an explanation after they'd arrived in Nihon with Kurogane broken and bleeding.

Sari chuckled quietly, her gaze softening and turning back to focus on Kurogane's arm. "He wouldn't have, huh? You're an idiot." She murmured.

OOOOOOOO

The drug-induced haze only faded back under a severe force of will. Kurogane had honed his skills over his entire lifetime, and every internal sensor was telling him that he needed to be awake now because there was someone standing over him, and that person was none too friendly.

His eyelids finally responded and peeled open enough that he was able to make out a figure leaning over his bed. He tried to push himself upwards on his left arm out of sheer reflex, glancing down only when it refused to respond. All the pieces below his elbow had been meticulously removed, and the remaining parts of the prosthetic had been wrapped in some sort of stretchy mesh to hold them together and keep them from snagging on the sheets. A hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him into a seated position.

"Sucks, doesn't it? But that fancy prosthetic that you've got is head and shoulders above anything that we've made here. You have – had, I'm sorry – fine motor functions with those fingers, whereas I can only just manage to shift gears on my bike with the fake leg I've got."

"Yaro." Kurogane croaked.

"You remember my name? I'm flattered. You'll probably be cursing it in a minute." He leaned in close, hand still tight on Kurogane's injured shoulder, and hissed into Kurogane's ear. "I'm taking your wife. I don't know what you did to luck into possession of something so exceptionally useful and unique, but he's not going to be yours for much longer."

Red tinged the edge of his vision, and he lunged forward with an incomprehensible growl, lost somewhere between flatly refusing to turn Fai over to this man and insisting that Fai was in no way a possession for anyone to own.

The grip on his shoulder tightened, pain flashed up the raw nerve endings, and darkness opened its welcoming arms to him and pulled him back down into its murky depths.

OOOOOOOOO

My word, is something actually happening in this chapter? I do believe it is! ^^ Enjoy!