Disclaimer, ratings, and other legal junk can be found in Chapter One.
Reviewers:
I'm surprised people are actually reading this, so thank you for your time! In return for giving this unusual story a chance, I hope to give readers (however few of you there may be ^_^) a memorable experience. It was my goal to do something original, after all, and this crossover certainly qualifies.
Author's Notes:
I recently learned that Japanese senior high schools last three years, not four. However, since I've already set the story in a four-year school, Seigaku will remain the way it is. I apologize for my ignorance. ^_^;;
~ Dark Rune
-= Level Two: Security =-
The distant, gravelly hum of a car pulling into the driveway attracted eleven-year-old Fuji Syusuke's attention. Smiling as he sat at the breakfast table with his younger brother, who was currently scowling at a cereal box, Syusuke looked out the kitchen window and spotted a black sedan rolling to a stop just outside the house.
"'Nee-san, are we supposed to have guests today?" Syusuke inquired, cheerily scooping food into his mouth.
The oldest Fuji sibling, who was ten years Syusuke's senior, shot her brother a look of surprise as she took the seat opposite his. "Yes, how did you know?"
"They've arrived," Syusuke pointed out the window amiably while 'accidentally' knocking over the cereal box. That action prompted his younger brother to scream with indignant fury.
"HEY! I was just about to finish Pikachu's Shock-tastic Word Search!" Yuuta shouted, tugging relentlessly at his older sister's arm. "He did it on purpose! He did it on purpose!"
But Fuji Yumiko didn't hear Yuuta. With a frown, she stood, peering out the window in an uncharacteristic show of anxiety. "They're already here?" she muttered as she gently pried the now crying Yuuta off her leg with a half-hearted reprimand in Syusuke's general vicinity.
When she disappeared into the living room to greet the visitors, Syusuke smiled benignly at Yuuta and handed his brother the free cereal toy as a humble peace offering. Yuuta, naive ten-year-old that he was, stopped sniffling, beamed at Syusuke, and accepted the gift, completely forgetting that it had been his toy in the first place. Pacified, Yuuta returned to concentrating on his cereal box, and Syusuke resumed staring out the window, curious as to who might be visiting the Fuji family so early on a Sunday morning.
In his experience, black sedans were bad. Passengers of black sedans invariably had some sort of government connection, and that meant that Syusuke, as the first son and heir of the Fuji family, might have to work. His smile withered. He hadn't felt like working ever since he started to play tennis, which was undoubtedly more entertaining than following the orders of boring old men in boring old suits.
Syusuke really liked tennis, and his new friend Tezuka even said he was already pretty good for a beginner. Syusuke grinned as he recalled their match from the day before, and his imagination would have drifted on to images of his winning Wimbledon if the door of the sedan he was spying on hadn't swung open unexpectedly, jolting the daydreaming boy back to the present. His tennis ambitions stifled, Syusuke chided himself for allowing his mind to wander.
Of course, the first person to step out of the foreboding black car, a somber man sporting a business suit and sunglasses, was predictable. The man had Disgruntled Government Lackey written all over his stiff posture, and Syusuke had to chuckle. Why couldn't those government types be less conspicuous? Syusuke was so much younger than they, yet he could do their jobs more efficiently and more successfully. It was kind of sad that Soldats was depending on such incompetent adults.
"What are you laughing at?" Yuuta glared at his older brother, mistaking Syusuke's amusement for derision.
Forcing his attention away from the window, Syusuke shook his head at Yuuta convincingly. "Nothing you need to worry about. I was just thinking of something that happened at school."
While Yuuta had inherited his father's paranoia, he wasn't the smartest member of the household, so he grudgingly accepted Syusuke's explanation and went back to reading his cereal box. Syusuke's smile only grew as he regarded Yuuta affectionately. In truth, Syusuke had no valid reason to prey on Yuuta's gullibility, especially since he had incalculable experience deceiving people many times older and wiser. Manipulating Yuuta just felt rewarding to him because the younger boy reacted explosively whenever he was informed he'd been tricked. On the other hand, the adults Syusuke deceived consistently wound up either dead or unable to recognize their own reflections.
Syusuke resisted the urge to ruffle Yuuta's hair and gazed outside once more. He expected another Soldats lackey to emerge from the sedan, so he was genuinely startled when a short girl, around his or Yuuta's age, stepped out of the car. She wasn't much to look at, really, with her messy brown hair, nondescript facial features, lifeless brown eyes, and a mouth that seemed somehow incapable of happiness. Her white sundress was obviously newly fitted, judging by the way she unconsciously squirmed where she stood, adjusting her shoulder straps every three seconds. In fact, Syusuke would have ignored her altogether after his initial assessment if she hadn't turned her head sharply in his direction and looked straight into his eyes.
He dropped his spoon in astonishment. Again, Yuuta began howling accusingly, claiming that Syusuke must have dropped his spoon on purpose in order to splash milk at his face, but Syusuke failed to notice. This girl, with her eerily hollow expression, stared at him for ten impossible seconds, even though the windows were designed to keep people from spying inside the house. On top of that, Syusuke could only see her from where he was because he had excellent eyesight, good enough to snipe from a fair distance without needing telescopic lenses.
So how could *she* possibly see *him*?
Intrigued and strangely excited, Syusuke wolfed down the rest of his breakfast, dumped his used cereal bowl in the sink, and hurried towards the living room to surreptitiously observe the visitors from the doorway. As soon as he reached the hall, he skidded to a halt, hearing his sister's terse greetings, the low, rumbling response of the man from the sedan, and then the young girl's voice.
"This will suffice," the girl said, leaking not a shred of emotion.
His smile widened. For the first time in his life, Fuji Syusuke had found someone he couldn't understand or categorize, and he was thrilled.
"Do you remember when we first met?" Kirika began, as Fuji locked the door to the Photography Room and carelessly tossed his book bag on a desk.
Startled out of his reverie, he blinked at her, wondering how she had read his thoughts. "Of course I do," he replied, clearing his mind of unprecedented nostalgia.
Kirika chose to sit in one of the desks towards the back of the room, but Fuji made no move to follow. He remained near the front, leaning against the teacher's desk with a subtly unpleasant smile.
"What do you remember of that meeting?" Kirika asked quietly, though her voice had enough intensity to carry across the room.
"I recall a girl who smiled too little," Fuji answered. "What do *you* remember?"
She actually looked amused for a second. "A boy who smiled too much."
He smirked back. "So how, exactly, does this pertain to our current discussion?"
"I just want to prove a point," Kirika explained, slightly ruffled. "I don't believe you're the same person I first met six years ago, and I want you to know that I am also not the same person you saw six years ago."
"So?"
"So I want you to give me a chance to show you who I am now," she murmured, her eyes locking with his, "before you criticize me or discredit what I say before I say it. Please listen."
"All right then. Speak." Fuji's smile was still plastered on even though his voice could have sliced steel. "Why are you here? Why did my sister call you here?"
"My mission is to protect you."
Fuji had to restrain himself from laughing out loud, and he gripped the edge of the table to steady himself. "You? Protecting me? Don't you find that just a bit ironic?"
"I guess..."
"And what would you protect me from? I must be truly pitiful since you consider me incapable of handling myself," Fuji mused, soft-spoken as always, but his normally soothing voice enhanced his biting sarcasm. "Now tell me. Why would my sister call someone working for Soldats when you know very well that-"
"You are mistaken," she interjected. "I do not work for Soldats."
In spite of his impressive control over his outward appearance, Fuji tensed. "You... you quit? I had no idea you were capable of thinking for yourself."
"Yes, I quit," Kirika confirmed, unmoved by his casually thrown insult. "You remember I was working to become Noir?"
"I couldn't forget even when I tried."
Somehow, she ignored his accusing tone. "I found the woman who was to become the other half of Noir a year and a half ago, and we worked together in Paris for a while."
Fuji's eyes narrowed even as he idly traced circles on the teacher's desk with his thumbs. "I'm sure you were quite happy murdering people for a living."
"Not at all," she said grimly. "I couldn't feel anything after I left your family. I didn't remember much in the years following the... incident... and I suppose I must have been under too much stress afterwards because I developed amnesia."
"Amnesia?" he repeated, irritation on the edge of his voice. "Really?"
He knew there was no way Kirika could have forgotten the feel of warm blood splattering her face, heavily soaking her clothes and staining her arms crimson, because even *he* had nightmares about it still.
Kirika shrugged. "I awoke one day without a clue as to who I was, and all I knew was how to kill people..." her voice trailed off and she looked away, but not before he glimpsed the darkness, the echoes of guilt, lurking just behind her eyes. "Syusuke-kun, you have no idea how it... how it frightened me. I think, deep down, I didn't want to kill anyone, but... it was the only thing I could do right."
Fuji's grip on the table turned his knuckles bone-white. Since when had Yuumura Kirika felt guilty about anything? The notion of guilt was ludicrous in her profession, and it was even more doubtful for a murderer of her caliber. "So why aren't you working for Soldats?"
Her eyes refused to meet his. "The more my partner and I fought Soldats, the more I started to remember my past," Kirika said, her voice reduced to a faint whisper. "It wasn't too long before I remembered everything, and after that," she paused, just long enough for Fuji to notice, "we defeated one of the leaders of Soldats. And from then on, my partner and I have been fighting them. Over the past year, we eliminated the majority of their European leaders."
"Yet for all the good you think it does, it's still assassination, isn't it?" Fuji remarked. "It's just assassination in the name of world peace."
Kirika blanched. "You're not... But we..."
"In any case," he said, ignoring her crestfallen reaction, "I don't care if you're here to destroy Soldats. Just tell me why I have to be involved."
Kirika spared a brief, almost angry glance out the window before she stood and approached Fuji, much to his surprise. "Do you know what 'Nee-san and her husband do, Syusuke-kun?"
He frowned, unconsciously leaning back as she drew closer. "I don't know what you're implying, but Fuji Enterprises is no longer controlled by Soldats, Kirika-chan. Don't even think about associating my sister with that filth."
"You're right about Fuji Enterprises," Kirika admitted, stopping just a half-step in front of him, "but you're wrong about 'Nee-san."
"What are you talking about?"
"When the Fuji family severed its ties from Soldats, it did not withdraw from the underworld without consequences."
Fuji almost broke part of the desk he was holding; he didn't appreciate her quietly condescending reminder of what had happened half a decade ago, especially given her role in the bloody affair. "Kirika-chan, if you're trying to make me angry, you're succeeding rather well."
"Unlike you, however," she said, brushing aside the threat in his soft tone, "'Nee-san held her anger instead of letting it go. She's been working towards her revenge for the past five years."
Fuji paled, his underlying indignation now overshadowed by concern for his sister. "What are you talking about? What's 'Nee-san been doing?"
"She's fighting Soldats," Kirika revealed at last, and he fleetingly thought that Kirika seemed apologetic for the briefest of moments. "The extended business trip 'Nee-san and her husband are taking to Kyoto has nothing to do with Fuji Enterprises, Syusuke-kun. 'Nee-san knows very well that she might die within the next three weeks."
"But... she can't..." Fuji tried to slow his racing heartbeat and discovered that, for once, he couldn't control his outward reactions. "Why didn't she say anything to me? I can understand that she didn't tell Yuuta, but she would have told me!"
"She couldn't put you in any more danger than you have been for the last five years," Kirika explained, placing her hands on Fuji's shoulders, but her touch only heightened his agitation. As he moved to shove her away, her hands grasped his shoulders tightly, trapping him, and then her eyes glanced down at his chest. "And you have a different role to play altogether, Syusuke-kun."
What's she looking at? he thought furiously. Out of instinct, Fuji followed her gaze--and only then did he understand. A faint red spot of light was hovering innocently on his black school uniform, much like the beam of a laser pointer, except Fuji knew it wasn't. He would have recognized the sniper's trademark anywhere.
Someone's trying to kill me, Fuji realized, too astounded to react because his world had abruptly deteriorated into the horror he had left behind five years ago. In the space of a heartbeat, Fuji lived through that rain-soaked night again, and he clearly saw the flash of metal, steel clashing upon steel, and a storm of bullets slicing shrilly through the falling rain, tearing through flesh as one of the wickedly grinning blades descended for the kill--
"Syusuke!"
Mother? No...
That was Kirika's voice.
Before he could utter a cry of protest, Kirika dragged him down in front of the teacher's desk. A split-second later, as he and Kirika fell to the floor, he heard the distant crack of shattering glass followed by a familiar whipping noise that sped perilously close his ear. As he hit the tiled floor, part of the desk exploded in a shower of splinters, and Fuji belatedly concluded that that was where he should have been lying, with a bullet embedded permanently in his chest.
He felt nauseated.
Breathlessly waiting for his adrenaline levels to drop, Fuji lay on his back, the shock of being targeted too much to accept all at once. Kirika only silently draped herself over him, her forearms resting on either side of Fuji's head, her face even with his, and the rest of her slender frame covering his body. If this weren't a life-threatening situation, Fuji's nose probably would have bled to no end because Kirika had never been the kind of girl who would concern herself much with propriety, let alone someone else's feelings. Swallowing hard and shutting his eyes for a moment, Fuji tilted his head sideways so he could see the front of the class. He watched the red dot shimmering on the whiteboard for a few indecisive seconds before it abruptly vanished, and he heaved a small sigh of relief.
"You didn't even notice they were there, did you, Syusuke-kun?" Kirika whispered after a minute of tense stillness.
"You're right... I didn't," he admitted ruefully, turning back towards her. "But if you knew they were there, why didn't you say anything?"
"I didn't know it was a sniper," she confessed, looking mildly chagrined, and her relatively extreme display of emotion nearly won Fuji over. "I assumed it was someone sent from Soldats to spy on you, but I didn't expect an assassin."
Fuji smiled wryly. "Aren't you supposed to protect me?"
"Yes," she said, and her cheeks actually turned pink. "And you're still alive, aren't you?"
His eyebrows shot up at her light attempt at humor, and he began to consider the possibility that she may have changed, after all. "My reflexes need a bit of fine-tuning..."
"That's also true. After so long, you never knew how well protected you were," she observed, still not moving from her position on his chest, and if it weren't for her serious expression, Fuji thought she might have enjoyed curling up on him and purring. "'Nee-san went through a lot of trouble to keep both you and Yuuta-kun safe and unaware of the danger."
Fuji nodded. "Even so, she should have told me... I could have helped."
Kirika looked up cautiously, out the windows and towards the trees where she had first spotted the sniper. From his perspective on the floor, Fuji noticed a thin line on her right cheek where the bullet must have grazed her. Although he had believed that the shot had been close to him, the deadly projectile had been much too close to her.
"You're bleeding," he murmured, reaching up with a hand to cup her face and brushing the skin just beneath her cut with his thumb. Regardless of what she had done in the past, Kirika had saved his life, and Fuji had enough honor to show even a little respect for anyone who would risk herself for him. "Gomen, Kirika-chan... I... I shouldn't have doubted you."
When her eyes met his once again, they nearly overwhelmed him with their brooding intensity, but before he could comment, Kirika stood up and offered a hand to help him up. He accepted it.
"It's my job to protect you," she said simply, wiping her cheek with a handkerchief she pulled out of her pocket as he dusted the back of his slacks. "There is no need for thanks. We've had worse injuries before, and this is really my fault for leaving you out in the open. I didn't think they would attack before 'Nee-san left, and I didn't think they would attack at school so early."
Fuji followed her line of sight out the window, which now had a barely noticeable bullet-sized hole. He searched for signs in the trees in the distance but found nothing amiss, as he had predicted. Of course the sniper would have left by now; Kirika didn't even bother giving the tree line more than a perfunctory glance, knowing there was no way to track the assassin at this point. "Still," he grimaced, "it's been so long since I've had to watch myself. I wasn't expecting that."
"You didn't believe my warning," she said, picking the bullet out of the desk and placing it in her jacket pocket. After calmly sweeping the splinters into the wastebasket, she led a more subdued Fuji to a darkened corner of the room, well away from the windows. There, he collapsed on the floor and leaned back against the wall, the strength in his legs wearing thin. She wordlessly sat next to him and regarded him for a moment before turning away again. "Syusuke-kun, as part of my assignment, you will train with me over the next three weeks to brush up on your skills. Just in case 'Nee-san does not return..."
"Of course," Fuji whispered. After a moment, he smiled in his familiar close-eyed manner, though he felt none of the happiness associated with the act. "I understand. I should at least know how to seek vengeance if 'Nee-san doesn't come back."
"Actually, 'Nee-san said you should practice just enough to be able to defend yourself and Yuuta-kun, and that you should seek help from True Noir if she fails."
"Wait... Yuuta is in danger?" Fuji straightened, turning his head to face Kirika.
"He's not in as much danger as you," she replied appeasingly. "He's protected, so don't worry about him. Soldats believes that the Fuji family might be rebelling, but they're not sure the information they have is accurate. That's why they're after you and not Yuuta-kun. Only you know enough to destroy them, and only you might be able to overpower them. Because your family is such a high-profile family, however, Soldats doesn't want to bring attention to you. It's actually fortunate that they suspect you more than 'Nee-san, because she can do her job more easily with you as a decoy."
"So... that's what you meant by my role, isn't it?" Fuji mused bitterly. "I'm the decoy."
"Hai," Kirika answered. "'Nee-san knew you would never voluntarily be the diversion, that you would want to participate directly in destroying Soldats, which is why she didn't tell you anything. That's why I'm here..."
Fuji mulled over Kirika's words for a while as relaxed back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. He needed to have a long talk with his sister as soon as he got back from school, but he would have to catch her before she left for Kyoto. He wanted to yell at her for not telling him anything, for using him as a sitting duck just so she could stab those Soldats bastards while they were distracted. She had forgotten that this should be his vengeance as much as it was hers.
Fuji's smile wavered when he realized that he would have to skip tennis practice if he wanted to have a discussion with his sister. He was already annoyed that she hadn't informed him of anything until Kirika arrived, but missing tennis practice was too much. He sighed. If he had only known what was going on... he would have gone to Kyoto with her.
"Syusuke-kun?" Kirika whispered, nudging him carefully with her elbow.
Fuji blinked. Maybe he *would* follow Yumiko after all. There was nothing holding him in Tokyo anyway, because it wasn't as if he needed to keep going to class to get accepted into a university. The Fuji name was famous enough to guarantee him entrance anywhere he wished, and his home education was advanced enough to secure him top marks on any entrance exam. "I want to go to Kyoto," he declared at last, startling Kirika.
She was quick to recover. "Syusuke-kun, my assignment requires that I stay in Tokyo--"
"Which is why," he interjected affably, "I'm not asking you to come with me."
"But I am required by contract to stay with you," she shot back, without batting an eyelash. "Therefore, you will stay in Tokyo, and you will not go anywhere for three weeks. After that time limit has expired, you may go wherever you please."
His emotions shining through cracks in his smiling mask, Fuji growled, "You can't keep me here."
"Yes, I can. My role as your bodyguard will see to that," Kirika maintained confidently. "Besides, if 'Nee-san herself requires years of preparation to infiltrate Soldats, how do you think you'll get inside their headquarters when you can't even detect a sniper at school?"
Damn. He really hated that Kirika was right. Fuji's spirits deflated because his fighting skills were admittedly rusty after five years of neglect. Holding a tennis racket was just not the same as wielding a katana, regardless of how similar some moves might be, so he wouldn't stand a chance even if he went to Kyoto.
"Your sister wanted you uninvolved for as long as possible," Kirika sighed, rubbing her eyes. "And if you still want to argue with her, you can't, because she already left for Kyoto this morning."
Fuji's face twitched with the knowledge that his sister had fled early just so he would not have a chance to dissuade her. If there was one thing Fuji hated above everything else, it was being manipulated. Before he could speak again, however, the school bell rang, and the protests died in his throat.
There was nothing more he could say anyway. When Yumiko planned something, she planned it well, and so he would be stuck in Tokyo for the next three weeks. Undoubtedly, Kirika would break his tennis arm if he tried to leave because Kirika always followed orders, regardless of how ruthless she would need to be. For a few seconds after the bell rang, Fuji remained seated, feeling muddled as he stared at the ceiling, until Kirika's gentle hand on his arm brought him out of his trance.
"We need to go to class," she pointed out dryly. "Are you all right?"
He nodded. Silently, he got to his feet, and Kirika stood beside him, unmoving.
"We'll continue this discussion after school," Fuji decided, and she nodded as they picked up their bags on their way out of the classroom. He opened the door for Kirika, and she actually smiled at him as she walked past, as if no one had ever treated her with any sort of chivalry before. Not for the first time that day, Fuji was surprised. "Are you coming to tennis practice then, Yuumura-chan?"
The change in his tone was necessary since they were now in a hallway crowded with students. Without a word, she took his hand in hers again, and this time, he managed not to look too shocked. "Yes, I am, Fuji-kun," she responded. "My interest in tennis hasn't changed."
Carefully controlling his blush, Fuji tried to ignore her hand and the electric warmth seeping through her skin and into his. Everyone who knew him was now gawking, so, almost pleadingly, he mumbled under his breath, "Why are you still holding my hand? I thought you were just trying to get my attention the first time."
"Well, there's actually one last thing that 'Nee-san wanted you to know about my role here," Kirika whispered back as they waded through the mass of jabbering students.
Fuji absently caught a needle-pointed paper airplane aimed at Kirika (most likely by a jealous female student) and tossed it carelessly into a garbage can. "And that is?"
"We're, um..." Kirika flushed a little, and he noted her uncharacteristic distress with increasing alarm, "well, you see..."
"What is it?" he asked, just as they arrived in front of their classroom.
Her blush deepened. "Well... it's just that... you and I are... betrothed."
Only Fuji's extreme control and sharp reflexes saved the young man from stumbling gracelessly over his own shoelaces.
Inui Sadaharu scowled. If the data his test subjects, er, *teammates*, had gathered only a few minutes ago were correct, then the Seigaku tennis team might be in serious trouble very soon. However, he had to be absolutely certain this information was true before he could formulate a plan to properly counter it.
"Are you sure about this?" Inui questioned, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose as he looked sternly at the tennis regulars gathered in the empty locker room.
Oishi, Echizen, Kawamura, and Kaidoh were pointedly looking away, but the tell-tale redness of their cheeks showed that they, too, had witnessed what Momoshiro and Kikumaru were loudly proclaiming.
"Well what do you want? Pictures!?" Momoshiro cried, appalled. "We know what we saw! It was horrifying!"
Kikumaru looked as if he was on the verge of crying. "Fuji... we shouldn't have followed them... ARGH!" he shook his head furiously. "The memory! IT BURNS!!!" With that, the acrobatic redhead collapsed into a sitting position on the floor, holding his head in his hands.
"Well, maybe we're wrong," Oishi suggested weakly, reaching out to pat his traumatized doubles partner on the back. "Maybe we just mistook it for something else. We all only peeked through the back door for a second, and we know Fuji wouldn't do anything *that* bad at school."
"*Fuji-senpai* wouldn't," Momoshiro hastily agreed, "but we know nothing about *her*! We don't even know how they know each other! And besides, *he* wasn't the one on top!"
"I see," Inui muttered, taking notes diligently while the other tennis players battled a sudden onslaught of nausea. There was silence as everyone waited for Inui's logical solution, the stillness only broken from time to time by Kikumaru's quietly repeated words, which sounded suspiciously like, "I can't believe he did it before me. How can he beat me at my own specialty? I can't believe he did it before me. How can he..."
Finally, Inui spoke again. "Girls have always been a problem in this team, ever since Oishi acquired one for himself last year and spent 47% more time on dates than working on his weak side."
The captain's ears quickly turned as red as his face.
"After that, the Golden Pair's coordination was thrown off by 12%, dragging the rhythm of the entire team down 6.4%," Inui continued. "To make matters worse, Momoshiro then selected a female specimen from our Fudomine rivals, an act which disrupted our team for eleven straight practice days and resulted in a total of seven belligerent encounters with random Fudomine team members, including the Fudomine captain."
"Ann-chan is NOT a specimen!" Momoshiro yelled hotly, and he was quickly restrained by the struggling peacemakers Oishi and Kawamura.
"Also, I have observed that Echizen's game deteriorates 5.8% whenever Ryuzaki-sensei's granddaughter is around," Inui added, and Echizen sputtered in disbelief, "which may or may not have caused him to lose the first ranking game against Fuji. Badly."
The young Vice-Captain was seething, but he stoutly refused to show it.
"Meanwhile," Inui talked on without remorse, "Kikumaru's tendency to switch from one female subject to another has resulted in a 97% increase in bulk hate mail and a 20% increase in fan mail in the tennis team inbox, which lowers morale 43% whenever the younger team members collect the letters. However, I will congratulate Kaidoh and Taka-san for keeping their respective personal lives from interfering with their games."
Everyone stared at Kaidoh (blushing madly) and Kawamura (smiling shyly) in amazement.
"Well the only reason the Snake's love life hasn't interfered is 'cause he has no love life!" Momoshiro declared with a wicked grin. In response, Kaidoh, whose complexion now rivaled a ripe tomato's, hissed at Momoshiro.
"But the point is, 66.7% of love affairs have affected the tennis club negatively. Fuji is the optimistic backbone of the team, and as he has never indulged in relationships before, the team has always had his full support. Therefore, I cannot predict how this new entanglement will affect our group's play," Inui said, clearing his throat. "In other words, I need more data."
After such a long, humiliating analysis, everyone was dumbfounded by Inui's lack of a plan, but Inui only cleared his throat again as he flipped through Notebook #12D094X.
"So... you don't know what will happen to the team or what Fuji-senpai will do," Echizen concluded bluntly, "and you have no idea what to do about anything."
"Well, I do know that there is an 84.72% chance that a relationship involving Fuji will cause bedlam."
Echizen folded his arms across his chest, disgust clear in his eyes and the downward curve of his mouth. "We're wasting time with your data, then. Ja. I have better things to do, and I still don't like your style, Inui-senpai."
The Vice-Captain stalked out of the locker room, unconcerned, much to the shock of his teammates. The air literally seemed colder without the boy that former Captain Tezuka had called the "pillar of support," and everyone at last understood what Tezuka's words meant.
Oishi was the first to talk reasonably after Echizen left. "You know, he has a good point. We don't know anything concrete. It could all just be a big misunderstanding, so I think we should wait until after school to talk to Fuji and find out what's really going on." The looks on everyone's faces displayed unanimous doubt, but after taking a deep breath, Oishi bravely pressed on. "Besides, Fuji's personal life should be none of our business, and it's not like anyone's getting hurt by it. We shouldn't have been spying on him, so we should all just--"
The bell rang, merrily signaling the end of lunch and rudely interrupting the desperate-looking Oishi.
"We should all go to class!" Kikumaru finished Oishi's sentence as soon as the bell stopped ringing, and he leaped to his feet in a forward flip that shocked everyone. Oishi sighed, knowing his partner's newfound energy was probably fueled by thoughts of this girl in class whom Kikumaru had been eyeing for a while... "Let's go!" Kikumaru chirped happily.
"All right everyone. Meeting adjourned, I guess," Oishi announced, and the tennis players quietly turned to leave.
Pushing his glasses higher up on his nose, Inui watched the tennis team file out the door in a thoughtful, moody procession. He wasn't satisfied by the team meeting because there was still one important person whose opinion he had yet to consult. As he walked to class by himself, Inui took out his cell phone, scrolled through his phone book, found the number he needed, and dialed without hesitation.
Of course, only fifteen seconds later, Tezuka Kunimitsu had hung up. Interruptions just before he went to bed irritated him.
-= End Chapter Two =-
Chapter Started: July 16, 2003
Chapter Finished: July 20, 2003
End Notes:
Special thanks go to sakura2814 for telling me that Fuji's sister's name is Yumiko. I had originally picked a name at random, knowing nothing about her. ^_^ Thanks again!
In the next chapter, I'll focus on Kirika's perspective, since the other half of this crossover is Kirika's, after all. IMO, Kirika is supremely understated in Noir, though she reveals herself early on to be an insanely awesome character (Episodes 1, 3, 6, and 26 come quickly to mind) with tons of potential beyond what was shown. I couldn't resist. ^_^
~ Japanese Translations ~
-senpai – suffix used to address a student/co-worker with more seniority
ja – see you later (informal)
Please review and/or send questions, comments, and criticisms to rune_dreaming@yahoo.com! I love hearing from readers!
Copyright (C) 2003 by Dark Rune. All rights reserved.
Reviewers:
I'm surprised people are actually reading this, so thank you for your time! In return for giving this unusual story a chance, I hope to give readers (however few of you there may be ^_^) a memorable experience. It was my goal to do something original, after all, and this crossover certainly qualifies.
Author's Notes:
I recently learned that Japanese senior high schools last three years, not four. However, since I've already set the story in a four-year school, Seigaku will remain the way it is. I apologize for my ignorance. ^_^;;
~ Dark Rune
-= Level Two: Security =-
The distant, gravelly hum of a car pulling into the driveway attracted eleven-year-old Fuji Syusuke's attention. Smiling as he sat at the breakfast table with his younger brother, who was currently scowling at a cereal box, Syusuke looked out the kitchen window and spotted a black sedan rolling to a stop just outside the house.
"'Nee-san, are we supposed to have guests today?" Syusuke inquired, cheerily scooping food into his mouth.
The oldest Fuji sibling, who was ten years Syusuke's senior, shot her brother a look of surprise as she took the seat opposite his. "Yes, how did you know?"
"They've arrived," Syusuke pointed out the window amiably while 'accidentally' knocking over the cereal box. That action prompted his younger brother to scream with indignant fury.
"HEY! I was just about to finish Pikachu's Shock-tastic Word Search!" Yuuta shouted, tugging relentlessly at his older sister's arm. "He did it on purpose! He did it on purpose!"
But Fuji Yumiko didn't hear Yuuta. With a frown, she stood, peering out the window in an uncharacteristic show of anxiety. "They're already here?" she muttered as she gently pried the now crying Yuuta off her leg with a half-hearted reprimand in Syusuke's general vicinity.
When she disappeared into the living room to greet the visitors, Syusuke smiled benignly at Yuuta and handed his brother the free cereal toy as a humble peace offering. Yuuta, naive ten-year-old that he was, stopped sniffling, beamed at Syusuke, and accepted the gift, completely forgetting that it had been his toy in the first place. Pacified, Yuuta returned to concentrating on his cereal box, and Syusuke resumed staring out the window, curious as to who might be visiting the Fuji family so early on a Sunday morning.
In his experience, black sedans were bad. Passengers of black sedans invariably had some sort of government connection, and that meant that Syusuke, as the first son and heir of the Fuji family, might have to work. His smile withered. He hadn't felt like working ever since he started to play tennis, which was undoubtedly more entertaining than following the orders of boring old men in boring old suits.
Syusuke really liked tennis, and his new friend Tezuka even said he was already pretty good for a beginner. Syusuke grinned as he recalled their match from the day before, and his imagination would have drifted on to images of his winning Wimbledon if the door of the sedan he was spying on hadn't swung open unexpectedly, jolting the daydreaming boy back to the present. His tennis ambitions stifled, Syusuke chided himself for allowing his mind to wander.
Of course, the first person to step out of the foreboding black car, a somber man sporting a business suit and sunglasses, was predictable. The man had Disgruntled Government Lackey written all over his stiff posture, and Syusuke had to chuckle. Why couldn't those government types be less conspicuous? Syusuke was so much younger than they, yet he could do their jobs more efficiently and more successfully. It was kind of sad that Soldats was depending on such incompetent adults.
"What are you laughing at?" Yuuta glared at his older brother, mistaking Syusuke's amusement for derision.
Forcing his attention away from the window, Syusuke shook his head at Yuuta convincingly. "Nothing you need to worry about. I was just thinking of something that happened at school."
While Yuuta had inherited his father's paranoia, he wasn't the smartest member of the household, so he grudgingly accepted Syusuke's explanation and went back to reading his cereal box. Syusuke's smile only grew as he regarded Yuuta affectionately. In truth, Syusuke had no valid reason to prey on Yuuta's gullibility, especially since he had incalculable experience deceiving people many times older and wiser. Manipulating Yuuta just felt rewarding to him because the younger boy reacted explosively whenever he was informed he'd been tricked. On the other hand, the adults Syusuke deceived consistently wound up either dead or unable to recognize their own reflections.
Syusuke resisted the urge to ruffle Yuuta's hair and gazed outside once more. He expected another Soldats lackey to emerge from the sedan, so he was genuinely startled when a short girl, around his or Yuuta's age, stepped out of the car. She wasn't much to look at, really, with her messy brown hair, nondescript facial features, lifeless brown eyes, and a mouth that seemed somehow incapable of happiness. Her white sundress was obviously newly fitted, judging by the way she unconsciously squirmed where she stood, adjusting her shoulder straps every three seconds. In fact, Syusuke would have ignored her altogether after his initial assessment if she hadn't turned her head sharply in his direction and looked straight into his eyes.
He dropped his spoon in astonishment. Again, Yuuta began howling accusingly, claiming that Syusuke must have dropped his spoon on purpose in order to splash milk at his face, but Syusuke failed to notice. This girl, with her eerily hollow expression, stared at him for ten impossible seconds, even though the windows were designed to keep people from spying inside the house. On top of that, Syusuke could only see her from where he was because he had excellent eyesight, good enough to snipe from a fair distance without needing telescopic lenses.
So how could *she* possibly see *him*?
Intrigued and strangely excited, Syusuke wolfed down the rest of his breakfast, dumped his used cereal bowl in the sink, and hurried towards the living room to surreptitiously observe the visitors from the doorway. As soon as he reached the hall, he skidded to a halt, hearing his sister's terse greetings, the low, rumbling response of the man from the sedan, and then the young girl's voice.
"This will suffice," the girl said, leaking not a shred of emotion.
His smile widened. For the first time in his life, Fuji Syusuke had found someone he couldn't understand or categorize, and he was thrilled.
"Do you remember when we first met?" Kirika began, as Fuji locked the door to the Photography Room and carelessly tossed his book bag on a desk.
Startled out of his reverie, he blinked at her, wondering how she had read his thoughts. "Of course I do," he replied, clearing his mind of unprecedented nostalgia.
Kirika chose to sit in one of the desks towards the back of the room, but Fuji made no move to follow. He remained near the front, leaning against the teacher's desk with a subtly unpleasant smile.
"What do you remember of that meeting?" Kirika asked quietly, though her voice had enough intensity to carry across the room.
"I recall a girl who smiled too little," Fuji answered. "What do *you* remember?"
She actually looked amused for a second. "A boy who smiled too much."
He smirked back. "So how, exactly, does this pertain to our current discussion?"
"I just want to prove a point," Kirika explained, slightly ruffled. "I don't believe you're the same person I first met six years ago, and I want you to know that I am also not the same person you saw six years ago."
"So?"
"So I want you to give me a chance to show you who I am now," she murmured, her eyes locking with his, "before you criticize me or discredit what I say before I say it. Please listen."
"All right then. Speak." Fuji's smile was still plastered on even though his voice could have sliced steel. "Why are you here? Why did my sister call you here?"
"My mission is to protect you."
Fuji had to restrain himself from laughing out loud, and he gripped the edge of the table to steady himself. "You? Protecting me? Don't you find that just a bit ironic?"
"I guess..."
"And what would you protect me from? I must be truly pitiful since you consider me incapable of handling myself," Fuji mused, soft-spoken as always, but his normally soothing voice enhanced his biting sarcasm. "Now tell me. Why would my sister call someone working for Soldats when you know very well that-"
"You are mistaken," she interjected. "I do not work for Soldats."
In spite of his impressive control over his outward appearance, Fuji tensed. "You... you quit? I had no idea you were capable of thinking for yourself."
"Yes, I quit," Kirika confirmed, unmoved by his casually thrown insult. "You remember I was working to become Noir?"
"I couldn't forget even when I tried."
Somehow, she ignored his accusing tone. "I found the woman who was to become the other half of Noir a year and a half ago, and we worked together in Paris for a while."
Fuji's eyes narrowed even as he idly traced circles on the teacher's desk with his thumbs. "I'm sure you were quite happy murdering people for a living."
"Not at all," she said grimly. "I couldn't feel anything after I left your family. I didn't remember much in the years following the... incident... and I suppose I must have been under too much stress afterwards because I developed amnesia."
"Amnesia?" he repeated, irritation on the edge of his voice. "Really?"
He knew there was no way Kirika could have forgotten the feel of warm blood splattering her face, heavily soaking her clothes and staining her arms crimson, because even *he* had nightmares about it still.
Kirika shrugged. "I awoke one day without a clue as to who I was, and all I knew was how to kill people..." her voice trailed off and she looked away, but not before he glimpsed the darkness, the echoes of guilt, lurking just behind her eyes. "Syusuke-kun, you have no idea how it... how it frightened me. I think, deep down, I didn't want to kill anyone, but... it was the only thing I could do right."
Fuji's grip on the table turned his knuckles bone-white. Since when had Yuumura Kirika felt guilty about anything? The notion of guilt was ludicrous in her profession, and it was even more doubtful for a murderer of her caliber. "So why aren't you working for Soldats?"
Her eyes refused to meet his. "The more my partner and I fought Soldats, the more I started to remember my past," Kirika said, her voice reduced to a faint whisper. "It wasn't too long before I remembered everything, and after that," she paused, just long enough for Fuji to notice, "we defeated one of the leaders of Soldats. And from then on, my partner and I have been fighting them. Over the past year, we eliminated the majority of their European leaders."
"Yet for all the good you think it does, it's still assassination, isn't it?" Fuji remarked. "It's just assassination in the name of world peace."
Kirika blanched. "You're not... But we..."
"In any case," he said, ignoring her crestfallen reaction, "I don't care if you're here to destroy Soldats. Just tell me why I have to be involved."
Kirika spared a brief, almost angry glance out the window before she stood and approached Fuji, much to his surprise. "Do you know what 'Nee-san and her husband do, Syusuke-kun?"
He frowned, unconsciously leaning back as she drew closer. "I don't know what you're implying, but Fuji Enterprises is no longer controlled by Soldats, Kirika-chan. Don't even think about associating my sister with that filth."
"You're right about Fuji Enterprises," Kirika admitted, stopping just a half-step in front of him, "but you're wrong about 'Nee-san."
"What are you talking about?"
"When the Fuji family severed its ties from Soldats, it did not withdraw from the underworld without consequences."
Fuji almost broke part of the desk he was holding; he didn't appreciate her quietly condescending reminder of what had happened half a decade ago, especially given her role in the bloody affair. "Kirika-chan, if you're trying to make me angry, you're succeeding rather well."
"Unlike you, however," she said, brushing aside the threat in his soft tone, "'Nee-san held her anger instead of letting it go. She's been working towards her revenge for the past five years."
Fuji paled, his underlying indignation now overshadowed by concern for his sister. "What are you talking about? What's 'Nee-san been doing?"
"She's fighting Soldats," Kirika revealed at last, and he fleetingly thought that Kirika seemed apologetic for the briefest of moments. "The extended business trip 'Nee-san and her husband are taking to Kyoto has nothing to do with Fuji Enterprises, Syusuke-kun. 'Nee-san knows very well that she might die within the next three weeks."
"But... she can't..." Fuji tried to slow his racing heartbeat and discovered that, for once, he couldn't control his outward reactions. "Why didn't she say anything to me? I can understand that she didn't tell Yuuta, but she would have told me!"
"She couldn't put you in any more danger than you have been for the last five years," Kirika explained, placing her hands on Fuji's shoulders, but her touch only heightened his agitation. As he moved to shove her away, her hands grasped his shoulders tightly, trapping him, and then her eyes glanced down at his chest. "And you have a different role to play altogether, Syusuke-kun."
What's she looking at? he thought furiously. Out of instinct, Fuji followed her gaze--and only then did he understand. A faint red spot of light was hovering innocently on his black school uniform, much like the beam of a laser pointer, except Fuji knew it wasn't. He would have recognized the sniper's trademark anywhere.
Someone's trying to kill me, Fuji realized, too astounded to react because his world had abruptly deteriorated into the horror he had left behind five years ago. In the space of a heartbeat, Fuji lived through that rain-soaked night again, and he clearly saw the flash of metal, steel clashing upon steel, and a storm of bullets slicing shrilly through the falling rain, tearing through flesh as one of the wickedly grinning blades descended for the kill--
"Syusuke!"
Mother? No...
That was Kirika's voice.
Before he could utter a cry of protest, Kirika dragged him down in front of the teacher's desk. A split-second later, as he and Kirika fell to the floor, he heard the distant crack of shattering glass followed by a familiar whipping noise that sped perilously close his ear. As he hit the tiled floor, part of the desk exploded in a shower of splinters, and Fuji belatedly concluded that that was where he should have been lying, with a bullet embedded permanently in his chest.
He felt nauseated.
Breathlessly waiting for his adrenaline levels to drop, Fuji lay on his back, the shock of being targeted too much to accept all at once. Kirika only silently draped herself over him, her forearms resting on either side of Fuji's head, her face even with his, and the rest of her slender frame covering his body. If this weren't a life-threatening situation, Fuji's nose probably would have bled to no end because Kirika had never been the kind of girl who would concern herself much with propriety, let alone someone else's feelings. Swallowing hard and shutting his eyes for a moment, Fuji tilted his head sideways so he could see the front of the class. He watched the red dot shimmering on the whiteboard for a few indecisive seconds before it abruptly vanished, and he heaved a small sigh of relief.
"You didn't even notice they were there, did you, Syusuke-kun?" Kirika whispered after a minute of tense stillness.
"You're right... I didn't," he admitted ruefully, turning back towards her. "But if you knew they were there, why didn't you say anything?"
"I didn't know it was a sniper," she confessed, looking mildly chagrined, and her relatively extreme display of emotion nearly won Fuji over. "I assumed it was someone sent from Soldats to spy on you, but I didn't expect an assassin."
Fuji smiled wryly. "Aren't you supposed to protect me?"
"Yes," she said, and her cheeks actually turned pink. "And you're still alive, aren't you?"
His eyebrows shot up at her light attempt at humor, and he began to consider the possibility that she may have changed, after all. "My reflexes need a bit of fine-tuning..."
"That's also true. After so long, you never knew how well protected you were," she observed, still not moving from her position on his chest, and if it weren't for her serious expression, Fuji thought she might have enjoyed curling up on him and purring. "'Nee-san went through a lot of trouble to keep both you and Yuuta-kun safe and unaware of the danger."
Fuji nodded. "Even so, she should have told me... I could have helped."
Kirika looked up cautiously, out the windows and towards the trees where she had first spotted the sniper. From his perspective on the floor, Fuji noticed a thin line on her right cheek where the bullet must have grazed her. Although he had believed that the shot had been close to him, the deadly projectile had been much too close to her.
"You're bleeding," he murmured, reaching up with a hand to cup her face and brushing the skin just beneath her cut with his thumb. Regardless of what she had done in the past, Kirika had saved his life, and Fuji had enough honor to show even a little respect for anyone who would risk herself for him. "Gomen, Kirika-chan... I... I shouldn't have doubted you."
When her eyes met his once again, they nearly overwhelmed him with their brooding intensity, but before he could comment, Kirika stood up and offered a hand to help him up. He accepted it.
"It's my job to protect you," she said simply, wiping her cheek with a handkerchief she pulled out of her pocket as he dusted the back of his slacks. "There is no need for thanks. We've had worse injuries before, and this is really my fault for leaving you out in the open. I didn't think they would attack before 'Nee-san left, and I didn't think they would attack at school so early."
Fuji followed her line of sight out the window, which now had a barely noticeable bullet-sized hole. He searched for signs in the trees in the distance but found nothing amiss, as he had predicted. Of course the sniper would have left by now; Kirika didn't even bother giving the tree line more than a perfunctory glance, knowing there was no way to track the assassin at this point. "Still," he grimaced, "it's been so long since I've had to watch myself. I wasn't expecting that."
"You didn't believe my warning," she said, picking the bullet out of the desk and placing it in her jacket pocket. After calmly sweeping the splinters into the wastebasket, she led a more subdued Fuji to a darkened corner of the room, well away from the windows. There, he collapsed on the floor and leaned back against the wall, the strength in his legs wearing thin. She wordlessly sat next to him and regarded him for a moment before turning away again. "Syusuke-kun, as part of my assignment, you will train with me over the next three weeks to brush up on your skills. Just in case 'Nee-san does not return..."
"Of course," Fuji whispered. After a moment, he smiled in his familiar close-eyed manner, though he felt none of the happiness associated with the act. "I understand. I should at least know how to seek vengeance if 'Nee-san doesn't come back."
"Actually, 'Nee-san said you should practice just enough to be able to defend yourself and Yuuta-kun, and that you should seek help from True Noir if she fails."
"Wait... Yuuta is in danger?" Fuji straightened, turning his head to face Kirika.
"He's not in as much danger as you," she replied appeasingly. "He's protected, so don't worry about him. Soldats believes that the Fuji family might be rebelling, but they're not sure the information they have is accurate. That's why they're after you and not Yuuta-kun. Only you know enough to destroy them, and only you might be able to overpower them. Because your family is such a high-profile family, however, Soldats doesn't want to bring attention to you. It's actually fortunate that they suspect you more than 'Nee-san, because she can do her job more easily with you as a decoy."
"So... that's what you meant by my role, isn't it?" Fuji mused bitterly. "I'm the decoy."
"Hai," Kirika answered. "'Nee-san knew you would never voluntarily be the diversion, that you would want to participate directly in destroying Soldats, which is why she didn't tell you anything. That's why I'm here..."
Fuji mulled over Kirika's words for a while as relaxed back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. He needed to have a long talk with his sister as soon as he got back from school, but he would have to catch her before she left for Kyoto. He wanted to yell at her for not telling him anything, for using him as a sitting duck just so she could stab those Soldats bastards while they were distracted. She had forgotten that this should be his vengeance as much as it was hers.
Fuji's smile wavered when he realized that he would have to skip tennis practice if he wanted to have a discussion with his sister. He was already annoyed that she hadn't informed him of anything until Kirika arrived, but missing tennis practice was too much. He sighed. If he had only known what was going on... he would have gone to Kyoto with her.
"Syusuke-kun?" Kirika whispered, nudging him carefully with her elbow.
Fuji blinked. Maybe he *would* follow Yumiko after all. There was nothing holding him in Tokyo anyway, because it wasn't as if he needed to keep going to class to get accepted into a university. The Fuji name was famous enough to guarantee him entrance anywhere he wished, and his home education was advanced enough to secure him top marks on any entrance exam. "I want to go to Kyoto," he declared at last, startling Kirika.
She was quick to recover. "Syusuke-kun, my assignment requires that I stay in Tokyo--"
"Which is why," he interjected affably, "I'm not asking you to come with me."
"But I am required by contract to stay with you," she shot back, without batting an eyelash. "Therefore, you will stay in Tokyo, and you will not go anywhere for three weeks. After that time limit has expired, you may go wherever you please."
His emotions shining through cracks in his smiling mask, Fuji growled, "You can't keep me here."
"Yes, I can. My role as your bodyguard will see to that," Kirika maintained confidently. "Besides, if 'Nee-san herself requires years of preparation to infiltrate Soldats, how do you think you'll get inside their headquarters when you can't even detect a sniper at school?"
Damn. He really hated that Kirika was right. Fuji's spirits deflated because his fighting skills were admittedly rusty after five years of neglect. Holding a tennis racket was just not the same as wielding a katana, regardless of how similar some moves might be, so he wouldn't stand a chance even if he went to Kyoto.
"Your sister wanted you uninvolved for as long as possible," Kirika sighed, rubbing her eyes. "And if you still want to argue with her, you can't, because she already left for Kyoto this morning."
Fuji's face twitched with the knowledge that his sister had fled early just so he would not have a chance to dissuade her. If there was one thing Fuji hated above everything else, it was being manipulated. Before he could speak again, however, the school bell rang, and the protests died in his throat.
There was nothing more he could say anyway. When Yumiko planned something, she planned it well, and so he would be stuck in Tokyo for the next three weeks. Undoubtedly, Kirika would break his tennis arm if he tried to leave because Kirika always followed orders, regardless of how ruthless she would need to be. For a few seconds after the bell rang, Fuji remained seated, feeling muddled as he stared at the ceiling, until Kirika's gentle hand on his arm brought him out of his trance.
"We need to go to class," she pointed out dryly. "Are you all right?"
He nodded. Silently, he got to his feet, and Kirika stood beside him, unmoving.
"We'll continue this discussion after school," Fuji decided, and she nodded as they picked up their bags on their way out of the classroom. He opened the door for Kirika, and she actually smiled at him as she walked past, as if no one had ever treated her with any sort of chivalry before. Not for the first time that day, Fuji was surprised. "Are you coming to tennis practice then, Yuumura-chan?"
The change in his tone was necessary since they were now in a hallway crowded with students. Without a word, she took his hand in hers again, and this time, he managed not to look too shocked. "Yes, I am, Fuji-kun," she responded. "My interest in tennis hasn't changed."
Carefully controlling his blush, Fuji tried to ignore her hand and the electric warmth seeping through her skin and into his. Everyone who knew him was now gawking, so, almost pleadingly, he mumbled under his breath, "Why are you still holding my hand? I thought you were just trying to get my attention the first time."
"Well, there's actually one last thing that 'Nee-san wanted you to know about my role here," Kirika whispered back as they waded through the mass of jabbering students.
Fuji absently caught a needle-pointed paper airplane aimed at Kirika (most likely by a jealous female student) and tossed it carelessly into a garbage can. "And that is?"
"We're, um..." Kirika flushed a little, and he noted her uncharacteristic distress with increasing alarm, "well, you see..."
"What is it?" he asked, just as they arrived in front of their classroom.
Her blush deepened. "Well... it's just that... you and I are... betrothed."
Only Fuji's extreme control and sharp reflexes saved the young man from stumbling gracelessly over his own shoelaces.
Inui Sadaharu scowled. If the data his test subjects, er, *teammates*, had gathered only a few minutes ago were correct, then the Seigaku tennis team might be in serious trouble very soon. However, he had to be absolutely certain this information was true before he could formulate a plan to properly counter it.
"Are you sure about this?" Inui questioned, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose as he looked sternly at the tennis regulars gathered in the empty locker room.
Oishi, Echizen, Kawamura, and Kaidoh were pointedly looking away, but the tell-tale redness of their cheeks showed that they, too, had witnessed what Momoshiro and Kikumaru were loudly proclaiming.
"Well what do you want? Pictures!?" Momoshiro cried, appalled. "We know what we saw! It was horrifying!"
Kikumaru looked as if he was on the verge of crying. "Fuji... we shouldn't have followed them... ARGH!" he shook his head furiously. "The memory! IT BURNS!!!" With that, the acrobatic redhead collapsed into a sitting position on the floor, holding his head in his hands.
"Well, maybe we're wrong," Oishi suggested weakly, reaching out to pat his traumatized doubles partner on the back. "Maybe we just mistook it for something else. We all only peeked through the back door for a second, and we know Fuji wouldn't do anything *that* bad at school."
"*Fuji-senpai* wouldn't," Momoshiro hastily agreed, "but we know nothing about *her*! We don't even know how they know each other! And besides, *he* wasn't the one on top!"
"I see," Inui muttered, taking notes diligently while the other tennis players battled a sudden onslaught of nausea. There was silence as everyone waited for Inui's logical solution, the stillness only broken from time to time by Kikumaru's quietly repeated words, which sounded suspiciously like, "I can't believe he did it before me. How can he beat me at my own specialty? I can't believe he did it before me. How can he..."
Finally, Inui spoke again. "Girls have always been a problem in this team, ever since Oishi acquired one for himself last year and spent 47% more time on dates than working on his weak side."
The captain's ears quickly turned as red as his face.
"After that, the Golden Pair's coordination was thrown off by 12%, dragging the rhythm of the entire team down 6.4%," Inui continued. "To make matters worse, Momoshiro then selected a female specimen from our Fudomine rivals, an act which disrupted our team for eleven straight practice days and resulted in a total of seven belligerent encounters with random Fudomine team members, including the Fudomine captain."
"Ann-chan is NOT a specimen!" Momoshiro yelled hotly, and he was quickly restrained by the struggling peacemakers Oishi and Kawamura.
"Also, I have observed that Echizen's game deteriorates 5.8% whenever Ryuzaki-sensei's granddaughter is around," Inui added, and Echizen sputtered in disbelief, "which may or may not have caused him to lose the first ranking game against Fuji. Badly."
The young Vice-Captain was seething, but he stoutly refused to show it.
"Meanwhile," Inui talked on without remorse, "Kikumaru's tendency to switch from one female subject to another has resulted in a 97% increase in bulk hate mail and a 20% increase in fan mail in the tennis team inbox, which lowers morale 43% whenever the younger team members collect the letters. However, I will congratulate Kaidoh and Taka-san for keeping their respective personal lives from interfering with their games."
Everyone stared at Kaidoh (blushing madly) and Kawamura (smiling shyly) in amazement.
"Well the only reason the Snake's love life hasn't interfered is 'cause he has no love life!" Momoshiro declared with a wicked grin. In response, Kaidoh, whose complexion now rivaled a ripe tomato's, hissed at Momoshiro.
"But the point is, 66.7% of love affairs have affected the tennis club negatively. Fuji is the optimistic backbone of the team, and as he has never indulged in relationships before, the team has always had his full support. Therefore, I cannot predict how this new entanglement will affect our group's play," Inui said, clearing his throat. "In other words, I need more data."
After such a long, humiliating analysis, everyone was dumbfounded by Inui's lack of a plan, but Inui only cleared his throat again as he flipped through Notebook #12D094X.
"So... you don't know what will happen to the team or what Fuji-senpai will do," Echizen concluded bluntly, "and you have no idea what to do about anything."
"Well, I do know that there is an 84.72% chance that a relationship involving Fuji will cause bedlam."
Echizen folded his arms across his chest, disgust clear in his eyes and the downward curve of his mouth. "We're wasting time with your data, then. Ja. I have better things to do, and I still don't like your style, Inui-senpai."
The Vice-Captain stalked out of the locker room, unconcerned, much to the shock of his teammates. The air literally seemed colder without the boy that former Captain Tezuka had called the "pillar of support," and everyone at last understood what Tezuka's words meant.
Oishi was the first to talk reasonably after Echizen left. "You know, he has a good point. We don't know anything concrete. It could all just be a big misunderstanding, so I think we should wait until after school to talk to Fuji and find out what's really going on." The looks on everyone's faces displayed unanimous doubt, but after taking a deep breath, Oishi bravely pressed on. "Besides, Fuji's personal life should be none of our business, and it's not like anyone's getting hurt by it. We shouldn't have been spying on him, so we should all just--"
The bell rang, merrily signaling the end of lunch and rudely interrupting the desperate-looking Oishi.
"We should all go to class!" Kikumaru finished Oishi's sentence as soon as the bell stopped ringing, and he leaped to his feet in a forward flip that shocked everyone. Oishi sighed, knowing his partner's newfound energy was probably fueled by thoughts of this girl in class whom Kikumaru had been eyeing for a while... "Let's go!" Kikumaru chirped happily.
"All right everyone. Meeting adjourned, I guess," Oishi announced, and the tennis players quietly turned to leave.
Pushing his glasses higher up on his nose, Inui watched the tennis team file out the door in a thoughtful, moody procession. He wasn't satisfied by the team meeting because there was still one important person whose opinion he had yet to consult. As he walked to class by himself, Inui took out his cell phone, scrolled through his phone book, found the number he needed, and dialed without hesitation.
Of course, only fifteen seconds later, Tezuka Kunimitsu had hung up. Interruptions just before he went to bed irritated him.
-= End Chapter Two =-
Chapter Started: July 16, 2003
Chapter Finished: July 20, 2003
End Notes:
Special thanks go to sakura2814 for telling me that Fuji's sister's name is Yumiko. I had originally picked a name at random, knowing nothing about her. ^_^ Thanks again!
In the next chapter, I'll focus on Kirika's perspective, since the other half of this crossover is Kirika's, after all. IMO, Kirika is supremely understated in Noir, though she reveals herself early on to be an insanely awesome character (Episodes 1, 3, 6, and 26 come quickly to mind) with tons of potential beyond what was shown. I couldn't resist. ^_^
~ Japanese Translations ~
-senpai – suffix used to address a student/co-worker with more seniority
ja – see you later (informal)
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Copyright (C) 2003 by Dark Rune. All rights reserved.