You're Mine
Summary: AU "Just remember that you're mine." It begins with those words, but rapidly becomes something deeper and far more complicated than a mere promise to get back the boy of her dreams...YohxAnnaxHaoxTamao.
Disclaimer: I own neither Shaman King nor many Shaman King products. Alas. Woe.
Author's Note: I'm late! –cringes- Now, before you all get on me for that, I should say that I've been very, very sick. I had a fever all last weekend (and didn't it feel just great. –scowl-) and coughed my way all through this week. Hopefully next week will be somewhat better for me and I can update everything sooner… I've also made this chapter somewhat longer, partially because there was so much that I had to say, and partially because I was feeling guilty.
It appears that in previous chapters I've neglected to mention one very important difference in my world's AU; Faust's Eliza is alive, and very pretty as she serves as Faust's assistant in his biology class.
You might want to remember this… Why am I saying this? Because.. well.. you'll see. –benevolent grin- In this version, he's still a Shaman, but for different reasons which will be mentioned later.
Votes: 27 Yoh x Anna, 12 Yoh x Tamao, 27 Hao x Anna, 12 Hao x Tamao.
And… it's still tied. –makes face- Good grief, people; I can't make this decision on my own, you know! So I think I'll keep the vote tentatively open for another chapter… try to give me a clear decision this time! –mutters-
But, but – and I neglected to mention this before, so I'm going to badly time it and insert it here—I broke the hundred mark! –beams hugely and hugs everyone- Thank you for the votes, for getting me to here. I'm very grateful for all the feedback that I get. :) Hopefully this chapter makes you as happy as your reviews do me.
Chapter Seven: Never Forget
As Yoh vanished into the crowd, fading easily to the edge of memory, the tension forced upon the lunchtable eased. Conversation flowed deftly from lip to lip, and the exchange of glances now were no longer suffused with a wary determination to attack the opposing side if they should prove malicious. Neither, however, was there anything to keep them bound to that table any longer; with Yoh's disappearance, it was only too easy to notice how the ranks of his own companions far outnumbered those of Yoh's.
"Ha."
HoroHoro, oblivious as ever to the odds, set his ramen bowl down with a thunk.
"I win." He smirked, polishing roughened nails against the pale color of his ever-present winter jacket. "You really shouldn't try to challenge the Master of Ramen, Chocolove." This was flashed as an afterthought to the comedian, who was sprawled along his chair, patting his gorged stomach and groaning faintly with every passing second.
"Congratulations, HoroHoro." A languid voice drawled from the other side of the table. The Ainu's eyes narrowed considerably in wary dislike as he whirled to face Yoh's sibling, body overwrought with some unseen pressure. "But my beloved brother has told me that Ren can do better at times, can't you, Ren?" A lip curled in amusement as he shot this question towards the Chinese shaman.
Caught off-guard, Ren reacted instinctively – with his traditional world-weary contempt.
Saffron eyes flared as their bearer glanced contemptuously towards the evidence of HoroHoro's victory. "Proof that you have a large mouth and a larger stomach isn't anything to be proud of." The Chinese boy said dismissively; an answer to both Hao's statement and the cerulean-haired boy's wordless query.
Brusquely, the easy smirk to HoroHoro's features vanished, replaced by an ominous glower. "Are you implying something, you purple-haired freak?" He demanded, gripping the snowboard that never left his side tensely, eyes thinned with an unspoken challenge.
"Who're you calling a freak, you bloated pig?" Ren snapped intensely, pointed hair seeming to tower over the scene as the two glared at each other. His voice was husky with a thin current of anger that intensified with every moment. "You're the one who ate nine bowls of ramen-"
"Huh, yeah, well, I heard from your sister that you sing Chinese karaoke on the weekends!" HoroHoro retorted desperately, rising to his feet to glare fixedly down at his rival.
The light flush upon the indigo-haired shaman's features deepened in hue. "And what if I do?" The boy demanded sharply. "I still sing better than you ever will! You can't even fight, and you want to try to make fun of my singing?"
"You think that I can't fight?" Danger glinted in the other boy's gaze as he hoisted up the snowboard with a meaningful jab.
Never breaking the glares that had sparked between them, through a silent, mutually reached agreement they rose from their seats and sped off in the direction of the school gym. And the dark eyes that had engineered their departure played audience to their tiny drama with amusement before turning away, to their next target…
"You chased HoroHoro and Ren away." The voice was a childish accusation, placed by a figure with an equally childish face and stature. "Why?"
Laughing, Hao deftly snatched an apple from Manta's lunch tray, grinning with a muted malice down towards the younger boy. "What makes you think that I chased them away?" He questioned indolently, sprawling casually upon his seat, legs splayed with a casual ease – a position that his companions responded to instinctively, accommodating him as a matter of fact. "They went of their own accord – didn't they have an argument going on? It would have been hardly polite to start it and finish it in the lunchroom; most people generally have an objection to being splattered with blood in the middle of their lunch."
"You started that argument-" Manta began sharply, rounded eyes fixed accusingly upon the apple in his conversant's hand. He was tersely silenced as a tiny voice snapped, "Hao-sama not to be questioned!"
Startlement danced across his features as he turned to find Opacho hovering closely to his side. "Hao-sama the best, and knows best." The cloaked figure said firmly in her high-pitched tones. "Manta baka to think he able to question best."
"Baka?" Drawing himself to his full height, Manta glared up at Opacho. "What do you know? Yoh is the best. He's a hero and strong and everybody loves him."
"Manta very baka." Was the inevitable retort, spoken with a curious satisfaction that verged upon insolence. And from his vantage point, Hao smiled, seeing some tiny jest in those words that he alone appeared to grasp.
Infuriated, the tiny boy caught at the child's hand, enfolded in the depths of her rust-hued cloak. "Come on!" He tugged at his newly made companion's hand, eyes filled with an odd, fiery urgency. "I have a whole album of what Yoh's done, and some pictures; I'll show you and then you'll see—" Abruptly, Opacho was hauled off with an almost superhuman strength, fueled by the boy's determination to convert the world to his fandom.
As though Manta's presence had been the last stay to bind them to the table, one by one, each of them drifted away. Faust and Eliza, hands fastened so securely that it seemed impossible to distinguish where her slender fingers ended and his own deft ones began, bounded contentedly off to the library in order to research one of Faust's most recent Shaman history projects. (He had recently acquired a taste for such projects, and his spirit, a deft creature with a talent for locating the necessary information, was only too happy to comply with the needs of Faust's curiosities and those of his wife, Eliza's.) Chocolove followed shortly after, groaning an excuse under his breath about the necessity of seeing Faust for stomach medicines of some sort, or possibly a rapid surgery to remove his stomach entirely.
Lyserg, of all of Yoh's companions, appeared most reluctant to depart. Possibly this was because Ryu seemed inclined to do so, swaying like a weathervane in every direction, indecisive and unmoving from the position that he had taken up when first lunch had begun. It was equally evident that he did not enjoy the excessive attentions that the dark-haired man paid him, and was equally disinclined to dissuade him, lest Ryu mistake the ploy to fend him off as a veiled come-on.
"Feeling a bit too stifled, Lyserg?" Hao inquired lazily, and was not surprised to see eyes like chips of green class flash to him with unmistakable hatred. There had been some tiny spark between them when first they had encountered each other; a glow that had been carefully fanned into a flame of hatred as Hao subtly worsened the trials of Funbari's school for the green-haired boy.
Lips stiffly pressed with anger, the green-haired boy glanced first towards him, and then away in constrained anger. The fury that he did not, it appeared, dare to channel aloud was evident in every single strained motion that he made, from his abruptly rising to his feet to the stride that he employed in moving away from the table, all without bestowing upon the dark-haired shaman a second glance.
"Lyserg, where are you going?" Alarm sparkled in Ryu's gaze as he, too, rose to his feet, stumbling awkwardly after the slender young boy. "Lyserg, was it the pudding? I swear that I won't make you that flavor of pudding again, just please speak to me…"
A tiny curve crooked Hao's lips into a smile as he appraised their departure with approval. "And that's the last of them…" He murmured under his breath, elbow pressing sharply against the smooth bend of the plastic chair. A careless eye flicked to glance towards a remaining cherry-haired figure to his left, and the addition came almost instantaneously to his lips, "Except for you. Yoh's gone," Though he did not look to her again, the comment had obviously been intended for her. "Why haven't you followed him? Aren't you at all afraid that Anna will take him back from you?"
"I…" A furious blush had begun to steal across her features, though her eyes were scrunched up with the effort of suppressing it. "I trust him." She said at last. "I trust him when he says that he loves me, and if he changes his mind, well..." She affected a careless shrug, though her shoulders were too stiff with tension to carry it out effectively. "I will have," the apprentice fortuneteller said softly, "been grateful for the time that we have spent together."
Head tipped to the side in a pose of attentiveness, Hao laughed at her words, though the sound rang without malice, and a direct truth that was rare in any of his actions. "Modesty." The word was dismissed with a careless flick of his gloved fingers. "You really are nothing like Anna, are you…" The bare whisper was less of a question than a contemplative comment. "Interesting…" The shaman said nonchalantly, an eye studying her with bright interest—
"Leave the child alone."
A clarion voice, bell-like with innocent precision, rang over the table. Seemingly emerging from the midst of nowhere, a wheelchair was carefully veered through the narrow twists and turns of the cafeteria to arrive before Hao's own.
It was a curious contraption. Certainly the shape in itself appeared to be that of a wheelchair, for lack of better words to describe it. However, a metallic sheet of thick, worn bronze appeared to have been molded over it, lending it the appearance of a coffin with a smiling figurehead carved where the head of the denizen within must have rested. Ordinarily, the window that allowed the features of the girl within was closed. Today, however, it exposed the delicately appealing countenance of a girl who appeared little more than ten, with silvery tresses that hung past her shoulders with a weight that implied it must reach far past her slender waist at the least, and eyes that were hypnotically colored.
Funbari's prideful child prodigy; Jeanne.
"Seducing children to darkness now, Hao?" The lack of a title-suffix was enough to illustrate the wordless hatred that she, too, seemed to bear for him. And if that were not sufficient, the calm, unswayed venom of her tone would have solidified any certainties on that score. "I did not think that you would bend so low so quickly."
"You know as well as I that no seductions are necessary on my part." The boy said carelessly, fingers still splayed easily over the tip of his chair as he posed in a stance of urbane comfort. "Do not let your irrational hatreds blind you to truths, Jeanne – I thought you had said that that was your business in the first place? Dealing in truths?"
"My business is to correct the warped truths that you create." The tiny figure corrected him tranquilly. "No, Marco—" this was directed towards the tense blond man at her side, who had growled faintly and taken a step towards the shaman at his words "-do not let him disturb you. He means to throw us off of our guard, that's all. There will be a reckoning, Hao," She had returned her attentions to him. Her huge, childish eyes appeared still more childish as she watched him, but in that immaturity was a clear purpose that she would be unafraid to implement when the time came. "Do not think that you can escape the judgment of God."
"Your followers call you the Iron Maiden." He said, a statement that seemed wholly out of place with the pronouncement of judgment that she had newly placed upon him. Careless eyes raked the tiny form with an insolent ease, and the dark eyes fixed upon her features lilted with a cruel humor. "I wonder why that is?"
"Because I know and am justice." She spoke with a quiet conviction, raising her gaze to meet his own. And from the moment that they clashed, those childlike eyes never wavered from his. "I know justice, and will enforce it wherever it is necessary, with the iron hand of God behind me to guide me." Her sharp gaze strayed from his, to wander over the tense group that had surrounded him, and now glared at her tautly, ready to defend their master to the death. All… save one.
Tamao, tremulous and trembling finely by Hao's side, made some small sound of keening distress, a tiny sound that slipped from her tongue awkwardly. Though Jeanne's eyes never left Hao's, the dark-haired boy noticed it immediately, and smiled.
"Now look what you've done." He spoke with a debonair reproach, placing a light hand upon the tips of Tamao's delicately rose hair where it brushed against her wan, slender shoulders. "Do you always frighten young maidens in your search for justice, Iron Maiden?" The title with which others showed the silver-haired girl deferment became little more than a slur upon those faintly sneering lips. "Or is that your justice; something born from fear that goes only a little farther than its beginnings?"
Lifting her head in a gesture of arrogance no less potent than his own, she did not deign to answer, and grinning with silent accomplishment, he swept past her easily, a guiding hand slipping into Tamao's own tiny palm with ease.
His followers, taking his actions as a signal, rapidly diffused into the crowd with long-trained ease, leaving Jeanne and her group to linger by the recently emptied table alone.
"You should not fear her." Glancing with a quick fear upwards, roseate eyes met his own richly silt-colored ones with her usual timidty, and would have looked away again if a slender hand had not reached downwards to grip her chin with resolute firmness, holding her in place.
"But then again," Hao said softly, breath a warm comfort upon her skin, "You fear everything, don't you?"
His tone was oddly gentle, though there was a subtle malice to his words that she, in her careless stillness, did not catch. "That's why you cling to Yoh; because he fears nothing. And that's why you sometimes hold yourself away; because you're afraid of holding him back."
Abruptly, he released her and watched in amusement as she stumbled. "Poor girl." He said contemptuously, his honeyed voice filling her ears and her world as she moved unconsciously, blindly, away. "I don't suppose you know that just by existing, you hold him back. Ah well." And too suddenly he was close again, grasping her hand and smiling as though there had been nothing wrong between them. "You cannot help it, just as you cannot help being late to class if your feet continue to drag so." An amused eye followed the listless trail of her footsteps, and, ears burning, she hastened to match his pace, still silent, though full of the words that he had spoken.
"Are you really Yoh's brother?" She asked caustically, though the sarcasm stuck in her throat and rendered her sharp words a timid whisper. "The two of you are nothing alike."
"Eiha, you've been listening to him too much."
"Why do you think so?" It was a defiant challenge of sorts, masked in the careful disguise of a whisper.
His lips twisted into the faint curve of a smile. "Because we're more alike than he thinks. And," he said delicately, as they rounded a corner, "I think that he'll understand this soon enough, so you need not worry about holding him back."
He offered the girl a smile and, caught off-guard, she returned it with the unusual warmth that Hao inspired in all those he surrounded – though the passion was directed against him, more often than not. A faint blush suffused her features as her mind caught up with her actions, and she glanced down instinctively, away from him.
"You're very pretty, Tamao." The languorous indulgence of that tone was unmistakable, as though he bestowed the compliment upon her without care, and showed the truth of it all the more in that carelessness.
"Th- thank you." The pink-haired girl stammered, and blushed charmingly. Even such a short phrase was difficult to pry off of her tongue in his company; Hao intensified the young apprentice's awkwardness for reasons Tamao could not fathom.
"Why thank me for speaking the truth?" The shaman returned indifferently, though with a fire-bright smile that was simultaneously enchanting and razor-sharp with his usual intensity. "Surely Yoh, even with his penchant for being thanked, has tried to cure you of that little habit." And as the dark-haired boy smiled at her again, regally indulgent, Tamao felt the pulse that lay unseen beneath the milky-whiteness of her throat begin to quicken…
The sound of his footsteps echoed down the corridor, sounding an alarm within her ears long before his presence had darkened the corner in which she had taken refuge. Listlessly, her pace slowed from a run to a bare crawl, and then she did not move at all. If he did not find her now, he would find some opportunity at home to corner her again and to force from her the responses that would soothe his conscience. He had always been overtly concerned with the peace of that train of thought – that much in him, at least, she understood.
"Go away, Yoh… kun." Her voice was a flat monotone, a careless drone that dinned into his ears as he rounded the corner to find her. The title-suffix was added as an afterthought, cynically so; as though she were no longer certain that he deserved it.
She did not look to him as he drew nearer; refused to see the light, hesitant arches of his brows, and the softened curves of his face as he glanced at her in concern. As Yoh reached towards her, however, her body tensed; an unmistakable sign. Ignoring it, he stepped forward slightly, resting a hand lightly upon her shoulder.
"Anna," The boy said tentatively. His words were not laden with shyness as another's might have been, and yet there was some hesitance to it all the same – some unmistakable emotion that stopped his lips from saying more. "are you all right?"
She slapped it away, an automatic instinct that did not require much attention. "Go away." She repeated, resting her head against the wall. "I don't need you here." I don't need you at all. She wanted to say, but it would have been a lie as cruel and dreadful as any that she had ever spoke in order to get him to train, to be what he was now.
"You need someone, and why not me?" He asked reasonably. There was something bitter in the reverse of their situations; he speaking sense and she refusing to accept what had always been.
"Someone. Anyone." Even to her ears, her voice sounded raw. "Just not you."
"Anna!" He was exasperated, and not a little fearful; that was easily distinguished by the raggedness of his breath, the way that his body had folded to ward against any forthcoming blows she might deal. Clasping a slender shoulder beneath his hand again, the words slipped out before he could think better of them and modulate them. "Didn't you ever love me? If you did…" He was on unfamiliar ground now, and trying to get through with his usual carelessness and fumblefootedness that always seemed to put him into the right place. "If you did, I conjure you to tell me so. I ask it." He said the last words gently.
The itako's lip curled.
She whirled upon him, knocking his hand from her shoulder with the sheer force of her movement. In that moment, there was an untamed ferocity to her gaze, a blazing anger that did not permit childish, weak emotions such as forgiveness to permeate her gaze. It roared like thunder, rearing up like a flame, hungry, demanding the sacrifice of the stick-thin boy before her, the boy that she had raised from childhood to become what he was…
"I love you." She said coldly, precisely. But there was something dreadful in her admission, as though by saying it, she made it a weapon, a wielded thing that would cut him, pierce him to the core, even as it gave him what he desired most of her. "Is that what you wanted to hear of me? That I love you?" Though her eyes thrived with glowing anger, the tensely cut lines of her body posed another set of questions entirely: Is that all you ever wanted, to ask that? If you had asked it sooner, would we still be together, would I have kept you, would things have been saved from what they are now? Why do you ask for me to bleed for you when you already have all that you need?
He circumvented the other questions by answering only what she asked aloud. "Yes."
Simple, easy, honest; everything that he had ever been.
The two steps that she took towards him did not echo in the corridor – too softly taken, with a timidity that might have been Tamao's own. A rattling hush had fallen over her; she did not gleam with dangerous edges and a furious purpose any longer. The color had drained from her, as though fire had reduced her to little more than white skin stretched over ivory bones, with not even the security of coursing blood to safe her from that deathly silence.
Yoh…
He did not know whether his name had actually leapt from her lips; he was too occupied in this closeness, this heart-pounding intensity that crackled between them, and the sudden drowning-deepness of her narrow black eyes. He saw her lips move again, but the gradually building roar within his ears did not allow him to hear her words, only to experience the world as it must have been, with its overwhelming silence and stillness that festered the beginnings of war…
She thought, a little dizzily with the weight of her power, that it would be so easy to brush her lips across his own. She'd seen it done on the television, and it seemed a simple enough thing, for all that the actors made such a grand fuss of it. She would do it, and it would be simple and easy and quickly over – but it would remind him of what he had lost when he had given her up, and that was all that she wanted of him.
But she could not.
The memory of Hao's hands against her wrists, Hao's silent, wicked smile drew her back, and subtly, she recoiled against the likenesses to Hao that she could see in Yoh's gentle features, and the childishly sweet curve of his lips that Hao mimicked to perfection. Lost in those memories, she could not remember crying out, but she must have, to have allowed her hands to stray and lash out.
Lost in dreams of his own, he did not see the movement of her hand as it was raised; nor did he see how it accumulated speed and approached his cheek palm thrust outwards, fingers slightly curled so that the nails, too, had been involved in the slap.
Nor could he see how, at the very last second, the hand hesitated slightly before flattening itself, dealing an openhanded slap rather than a sharp one that would leave its mark on his cheek.
The sound reverberated through the empty corridors, and for a moment, they stared at each other, neither speaking, more content in silence than they ever would be in the word-fumbling conversation that seemed would inevitably ensue.
"Anna—" He was the first to break the silence, as he was first to do most things. And for all of her life, she had been content to allow him to dictate her destiny, to become the fiancee that she desired in order to grant her the life that she had thought that she must want.
In these moments, however, things had changed.
Pivoting upon a slender heel, she moved with sharp rapidity down the corridor again, leaving him stranded and not a little lost. A sharp whisper emerged from her lips as she passed him, slicing at the air and destroying all sentimentality in the moment as she strode past him, businesslike and composed again.
I love you, Yoh, but never forget that I can live without you.
Author's Note: This whole chapter was written listening to Hao's Image Song.. It really is one of the best songs on the SK CD; haunting and curiously Hao-like at the same time. Which explains why he gets so much time in this chapter, as opposed to the short little bit with Anna and Yoh at the end. xD
Gah – anybody know when Funbari no Uta (I think that's what it's called) is coming out in English? –dying to read it, but cannot do so at the moment due to a complete inability to read Japanese-
Read and review, as usual. This is probably going to be one of the last chapters where I stick the replies at the end; I'm working on my website, and when I'm done, the replies shall be there instead. But for now, look below. :)
mrsyohasakura: Wai. –cowers- As for Hao having feelings for anyone… well, if you believe that, you're probably going to have a bit of a nasty shock when chapter insertnumberhere comes around. ;) He really is the devil incarnated sometimes – I don't think he'd have feelings unless he thought that he could keep them under control, or if they proved to his advantage.
Wait and see, though.
Koneko-Koneko: -laughs- No worries; you reviewed in the end, didn't you? Nice to hear from you. What does sugoi mean? I've forgotten… -.-
bow-down-to-keiko: He did show total devotion to her all their lives. –pats him- It's why I love the pairing so much, part of the reason. And see, the thing is, in the AU, she never really gave him those moments of fond memory; every episode of their childhood really did always end with him in tears. Anna has been under the impression that he wouldn't take her seriously if he didn't fear her – hence why she doesn't ever relent, and why he finds it easier to retreat into Tamao's company.
Does the clarification help?
asn water: Well, he's lived with the thought that Anna would be his and vice-versa all his life; can you blame him? As for Anna: I adore Anna. I feel slightly less strongly about Tamao, and I love both the Asakura boys; so Anna will definitely be a part of the main pairing, though Tamao should be getting a larger part soon. –pokes her-
Cindy Asakura-winces- I am way late; hope the chapter was good, despite the distinct lack of Hao/Anna in this chapter. (Edited to add: replying to your review made me tack on a certain bit. :P Gah. See if you can spot it. –laughs-)
No-name: Yes, the other two characters need to have their own pairings. Either that, or they can die, but I don't fancy killing off Tamao, Yoh, Hao, or Anna at the moment.
Akira: Glad you like the chapter; how d'you think I managed with this one? It's got the first Hao/Tamao bits in it, after all…
YamiandAnzu4ever: -grins- That pairing's going to go through a lot of angst before getting together. If they get together at all. Ahahaha. I am feeling evil. Thanks for reviewing, though.
Akemi: Yoh/Anna's pretty close to winning, but still rather distant as well, so you'll just have to hope.
Dillpops: Hao and JUN? –laughs- Ren would murder him and make him full of holes. Though it reminds me that I need to have her show up in the fic.. thanks. And yes, I see why Tamao would irritate someone; she's got no backbone. She'll undergo some development, however, as all my characters are probably going to do, so hopefully she'll get more tolerable as time goes on.
Kawaii Koneko92: -nose in air- Not at all. It's an expensive excuse, as now I must buy all the manga and read them in order to keep up to date. –grin-
SquirrelFraulein: Ee.. don't cry, please? I feel the need to offer people tissues when that happens.. –offers tissue-
Pinwheel of The Rainbow: People like you make me feel guilty for not updating faster… which I suppose is a good thing. :) Thanks for reviewing, and now that I'm no longer sick, I'll try to update faster in the future.
Kya: Hao/Anna has a ways to go if it wants to win the poll. –says this dryly-
thefutureMrs.Kaiba: Even if I haven't seen the poll settle on any pairings yet, I'd say that this chapter was definitely dramatic. Hope you liked it. :D
Helena-Jeanne-Chibi: I'm sure your stories are fine. :) And if you don't like your summaries, all you need is a little practice. It took me three years to get mine straight. e.e And thank you for the compliments! Tell me if you ever spot any misspellings; I usually get overconfident and start typoing all over the place right about the seventh chapter of my stuff.
KristiexxNguyen: The voting goes on for another chapter, as it's even again. -.-; If it's even for ANOTHER chapter, I'll just decide myself. Mgeh.
cherri-chan: Okay, okay, you caught me mincing words… -shuffles feet and blushes- And no worries; I'm the pairing's fan, but I'm openminded to all other possibilities… I like Yoh/Tamao because if it happens, it'd be a mutual thing that would probably never fade. Have you read Funbari no Uta? –wants to, dreadfully-
And don't worry about too-long reviews; I think I wrote a page-long review to someone once… e.e
Trisyl: You voted? After everything you said? –resists urge to make sign that says "HYPOCRITE" and hang it around your neck-
..You know I don't mean it, right? And that I don't hate you for tying the sodding thing… again? x3
XCanadianDevilX: Whatever Hao wants, Hao gets… but he's playing it ambiguous in this chapter, see? –evil grin- So yes, Hao gets whatever Hao wants.. but are you sure you know who Hao wants?
Hana: I've always been a bit amused by the fact that Yoh and Anna named their daughter Hana; it's almost like calling Hao back from the grave and saying, "Here, possess this child." Which would make for an interesting fic. Which gives me a weird idea… Thanks for the idea. x3
Bibliomaniac: Tamao may very well break it; it's quite possible, as she's already half-smitten with Hao purely for his charm. And then again, she may turn out to have more sense than she is usually credited for and stay with Yoh. You'll see…
And I have a novel to work on! I don't have TIME for hundreds of chapters… not to mention patience… and creativity…
Alas. I am wretched. –pulls hair out- Although it is a temptation. When this ends, chances are I'll write a sequel just because I cannot stand putting things to rest and leaving them there.
Kali Kamiya: Yoh still cares about Anna, yes, but I think you've been reckoning without Anna's hurt pride… -evil smile-
I'm really enjoying writing this. If only because of the interesting reactions that I get from people.
Kokoromizunokaze: Twelve days after your review. –cringe- I really am too slow with this.
MG8: Aww… poor Tamao. She's wilting from neglect. –pets her- And Anna/Yoh has its good points, but… -laughs- You'll just have to wait and see like everyone else.
Starwing: Alas, o anonymous voter, you shall just have to wait and see whether your pairing will make it.
Cam: Your pairings were in the chapter… sort of. –crooked, evil sort of grin- What'd you think?
I don't know: Your vote has been duly noted, though so has the fact that your muse is part of you and inclined to agree with you when it comes to the important things. Next chapter, hopefully, there won't be another tie.