Disclaimer: If Shaman King were mine, I wouldn't need to write fanfics.

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Not another school story, you say! Please, spare us! I would love to, but my invisible writing stalker won't let me! I promise I will skip over the dramatic shonen-ai shojo version, since I know probably no guys would actually do that, but there will shonen-ai! Pairings are still up in the air, but please know the love square before flaming me. The pairings I suggest may or may not be there in the end. And yes, there will be an end!

Chapter 4 – Enter Horokeu Usui!

The phone lying in a pile of dirty clothes started beeping. Next to it was a bed, covered with more clothes, which were cushioning a body with lightning blue hair. The beeping consisted and finally there was movement. A hand reached out and silenced the annoying sound. Horokeu (Horohoro, Horo, whatever you want to say) sat up and rubbed his head. God, morning already?

Shifting in his closet of a room, Horo rummaged around the piles of clothes around him for his school shirt. If Pirka had decided to do his laundry that morning, that girl had it coming.

Oh, there it was.

Sometimes he wished he had a bigger room. But if he had a bigger room, he'd probably be in a bigger house. And he knew his family couldn't afford that.

The Usuis lived in what was considered the slums of the community. There had been gang wars and car crashes on the street they lived on, but ever since the law decided to crack down on the place, it had been relatively safer. No more loitering, no more getting worked up over the strange person standing on the corner of the street, no more worrying about finding crack…

Yeah, life was good.

Horo walked out of his room, which happened to be a pantry in their one floor house. His sister and he decided it was only fair to let their mother have the only bedroom in the place, and Pirka lived in a closet. She had managed to get her hands on some magazines and had decorated her room to actually look like a normal twelve-year-old girl's room…if you ignored the clothes rack above her bed. And the fact that the room was ten times too small compared to a normal room.

Horo had smashed one wall of shelves down and the pile of wood lay ignored in a corner of his room. He didn't have a closet, so who could blame him for throwing his clothes anywhere he wanted them? He considered himself lucky that his mom could get him and his sister cell phones.

She was too worried about her children.

Horo decided to suck it up and stop complaining. He was the only man in the house anyway. He was responsible for the welfare of the place.

His father had died when he was five. The Usuis had been stable up to then, until the death. Then his mother had started two years of drinking, which didn't stop until Pirka had a breakdown and begged their mother in tears to stop. By that time, they were already in debt and were evicted. The drinking stopped and their mother started her uphill climb. After being a cashier for two years, they managed to move into a little house and were happy for a while. Then there was the break-in. After that, it was another three years of hard struggle. At that end of those three years, Horo turned thirteen and they moved to their current residence. Their mother had managed to find a steady job of being a secretary at a law firm, which happened to be the same place where Keiko Asakura also worked. The two women were friends, and finally his mother broke away from her state of depression and finally, the remaining three Usuis were finally on their feet.

Walking straight into the kitchen from his pantry/room, he saw his sister, drinking orange juice as his mother was making pancakes from pancake mix.

"Good morning, onii-chan."

The Usuis had moved from Japan to America once Horo had been born. His father's family wasn't too…well, let's say happy about their son marrying the woman they did. They didn't think a cashier was good enough for their well-off son, but he didn't let that stop true love. Once Horo was born, the Usui side of the family had cut off his father from further contact, and to escape negativity, the three had moved.

"Hey, Pirka."

Pirka, his younger sister, went to public school. He had moved so many times he had been to numerous schools. He tried the public school where Pirka went. His sister fit in perfectly. He didn't. After getting expelled for attacking another student (who had been picking on him based on his family, explaining his fury), the principal had spoken to the superintendent of Mankin High and Horo had transferred.

The reason had been simple. 'We want him to be in a positive environment. He is not a stupid child.'

Horo had a 4.0 in the public school.

"Good morning, honey."

"Morning, mom." He looked at his mother. She was smiling amiss her tangled bed head, her dark hair all over the place. Day 532 his mother woke up with a smile on her face. He was always watching his mother, praying that the day when her face would darken and a shot of brandy in her hand would never come.

He had grown up seeing that and he hoped ever to see it again.

After seeing his sister get on the school bus, Horo started his long walk to school. His family didn't have enough money to buy a car and his mother had to take public transportation to work. No bus going to Mankin High came by his street, but he didn't have a problem with that.

A car drove by and Horo noticed the driver of the car had once been part of the gang he had been in. A few days after the Usuis had moved in, Horo had gone to the nearby store to buy some food and when he was walking home, a gang had cornered him.

Horo knew the brass knuckles his sister had gotten him were pretty good.

Instead of announcing war against this new blue haired street fighter, the leader of the gang had proposed that Horo join them. If not, the gang leader had said, then his family was vulnerable against the random gangs in the neighborhood. If he joined, he reasoned, at least Horo would have some assurance that there was an alliance there to help him protect his mother and sister.

The choice was easy to make.

After the cops started the crackdown, the gang had been dismembered, but he still had friends in the neighborhood. To him, that was all the friends he needed. He didn't need any more in that new disgusting rich kid school.

"I'm Lyserg Diethyl. Is it true that you…"

Lyserg had surprised him. He thought his demeanor had screamed 'LEAVE ME THE DAMN ALONE!', but apparently, someone hadn't gotten the message. Even when he had used a bit of a threat in his explanation of himself, Lyserg didn't seem at all scared.

In fact, that boy seemed even more determined to get to know him.

So, what the hell? He decided to give these kids a try. They'd probably bolt after knowing him for a while. Except that didn't happen. Lyserg seemed even more so convinced they were great as friends and the Usui was sure he had heard a few things about his optimistic green haired friend.

Yoh didn't seem to care, the slacked stoner. Horo had asked if Yoh had ever done drugs, and the boy had just laughed. Strange, but reliable.

Ren…he was something different.

Horo had grown used to living in a dark lit world full of ugliness. He didn't like using the metaphor, but Ren was like a ray of light in his darkened life. A flicker of beauty in his shadowy life. Yes, Lyserg wasn't too shabby in the looks department, but Ren was different.

After Lyserg had practically announced that Horo was now their friend, he and Yoh had somehow disappeared and Horo was left with Ren.

"So, Ren…"

Ren turned to him, looking bored. The boy didn't look at all interested in becoming friends. "What?"

"What do you think about us being 'friends'?" Horo shrugged. "Do you really want to hang out with a former gangster?"

Ren rolled his eyes. "Oh please. I could beat your ass if I tried. Besides, if you're Yoh's friend, then you're mine too."

"Just like that?"

"Is that idea too complex for your head?" Ren shook his head. "I heard people who are all beating and shit like that aren't smart at all. I guess they were right."

"Hey, I resent that." Horo cracked his knuckles threateningly. Of course, he didn't want to pick a fight with this kid. The boy was smaller than him, and that would be unethical. However, Ren turned to him, a smirk on his face.

"Bring it on, sucker."

Before anything could actually happen, though, Yoh and Lyserg appeared again, breaking the tension. Horo had decided then and there that he and Ren were friends and rivals. They'd hang out and at the same time, be at each other's throats.

So now why did he like the kid? Like, like-like the kid?

Before he was ready to kill killorbekilled, defend everything he had at all costs. So why did now, if Ren had asked him to, could he drop everything he was just to become the person someone else wanted him to be?

Annoying, annoying, annoying.

Ren wasn't trying to be, but when Horo really watched, the Tao's every movement seemed to say 'come hither'. Horo figured it was just another enemy-turned-lover situation, like in the movies.

Those sappy, chic-flic movies. God, he was getting soft.

He was just reaching the front doors of Mankin High when he felt someone grab his arm. He turned to see Lyserg, looking quite happy for a Monday morning.

"Hey, Horo! How was your weekend?"

"It was okay."

Despite Lyserg's constant perkiness and optimism, Horo couldn't find him annoying. Maybe because Lyserg sometimes reminded him of Pirka. And Lyserg was sometimes so cute he couldn't be mad at him. Lyserg liked using his looks to make others bend to his will.

Subtle, evil, and efficient.

But Horo was never interested in Lyserg in that way.

"I like your camouflage Berms."

Horo looked down. He was wearing camouflage Bermudas, something Pirka had somehow gotten her hands on. "It's the newest style, go, wear it!" she had said.

"Thanks." Horo ignored the sunny smile Lyserg gave him. They were friends, but Lyserg wasn't his type.

Lyserg was too optimistic. Life wasn't all happy-happy joy-joy. Lyserg was just hiding from reality with his optimism. Horo needed someone who understood that life sucked sometimes, that sometimes you can sink so low you can barely crawl out.

Ren understood that.

"My dad was in the mob for a short time, you know that?"

Horo and Ren were watching Yoh and Lyserg from the school gates. The two had been held back since they had volunteered to help at some expo for the school. This was a few weeks after Horo had transferred.

"Why would I want to know that?"

Ren shrugged. "I'm just saying I understand what you went through."

And that was that. Ren wouldn't say anything else, but Horo understood. The mob was worse than the juvenile gang. There was an older kid in his gang who had been in the mob once. It was an unmentionable subject in the gang, and it must have left the same scars on Ren as it did on the unlucky member.

That unlucky member committed suicide a few days later. Horo attended his funeral and thought he saw Ren standing on the outskirts of the graveyard, but he wasn't sure.

Horo was constantly surrounded by death.

Lyserg was sitting next to him, yammering on about something he wasn't listening to. At that moment, Ren had come in and was currently talking to Yoh. Even from across the room, Ren seemed to be calling him.

Someday, he'd answer it. Someday.

"I know you'll like it here, Mr. Asakura."

"Thank you. I think I'll like it here too."

"You're in the same class as your brother, you know."

"Really? I haven't seen him in years. I'd like to know what he looks like."

"So you've been separated from your brother? Why have you suddenly come?"

"Family business. Not pretty at all."

"Ah. I won't pry then. Your classroom is in here. Class should be starting soon. Do you need anything else?"

"Oh, no, I'll be fine. I can manage on my own."

"Have a good day, Mr. Asakura."

Hao smirked. He would…he would.

Note: I have actually all of this fanfic typed up…it depends on my mood to update it. For all who actually read this, today is a big day! It's my first double update! Why, you ask? Because like I said, I already have the whole thing on my computer, and I'm just building suspense by not putting them all up at the same time! Second, depending on the reviews, I will or will not start typing my second arc of the Mankin Side of Life. Yes, I already have an idea for the second part.

Second Note: hopefully this shed a few glimmers of light on Horo's past. Next chapter…HAO IS INTRODUCTED (but not in as much detail…sorry.)