Author's Note: Happy birthday, Hao-sama! (Oh, and Yoh, of course.) The next chapter that comes up will be the freebie karaoke that I promised you guys, really. It's just that this chapter insisted on being written first, and I couldn't resist because I needed to practice my canon Yoh. I don't think I pulled it off all that well, but it's to the best of my ability, and so I must abide by it.

Disclaimer: I own the idea for Mankin birthdayfic! Oh, well, maybe not. But still. I must own SOMETHING.

Chapter Twelve: Trials

The phone rang.

Its echoes resounded through an empty house, another patent reminder that Anna was not present. The itako was always swift in grasping the black handle and answering its caller when she was in residence. Now, however, Yoh skidded into the room, to an awkward halt some two feet too far from the phone. He darted back, his eyes blank as he surveyed the thing momentarily (what is this thing? Why isn't Anna--) before plucking it from its hold.

"Hello?" He said politely into the receiver.

There came no reply save a dull crackling sound, the fizzing of a television that had been on for far too long.

"Hello?" The shaman repeated into the phone. His fingers wound about it, cradling it neatly to his ear with his usual smiling laziness. That smile vanished abruptly into a diffused bewilderment, however, as he felt something cool and thick drip against his ear. Something like…

"YARGH!"

In his hurry to discard the phone, it was tossed into the air and landed with an awkward thunk upon the wooden floor. Scrambling gracelessly to fetch it again (Anna, he thought with a cringe that came instinctively, would have his head on a platter that he himself would be forced to pay for if he had broken it), he froze as a second sound emerged from the background seas of the first. The voice rasped through the speaker like something dark, dredged from the shadows of a sewer and a bad dream. "Seven days…"

The shaman's eyes narrowed a moment before relaxing into their typical carefree semicircles. "Cut it out, Grandpa." Yoh said, scrambling to his feet as he placed the phone between the narrow lines of his cheek and his shoulder again. "Have you been watching American movies again?"

The diminutive creature that had appeared through the receiver made a derisive noise as its luminous button eyes turned to regard him. In the soft glow that was cast from its form, its shape was defined and acknowledged as one of his grandfather's creatures – the tiny things with which his grandfather had trained him when he had been very young.

Rising to hover gently within the air, it ascended to a level even with his head, and smacked him resoundingly about the skull.

Apparently those youthful days weren't as distant as he had thought it was.

"What was that for?" He demanded, half-wincing into the telephone.

His grandfather's voice emerged from the receiver with a sparky crackle, comfortingly familiar in the empty darkness of the rented house. "The Americans based their Ring movie on one of our creations, foolish boy! And it is always good to quote from American movies, although that was not the point of this call."

Dimly, still caressing his much-abused skull, Yoh said, "It wasn't?"

"I see you haven't changed much from when you were young." His grandfather's voice was sour. In the candlelit shadows of his own home, he leaned comfortably against the plush seat, kicking up his feet against the setting as he gazed musingly into the distance. "Do I have to beat every word into your head as I did then? I still have power enough to send plenty of the earth-spirits over the phone."

"I'll listen." The young shaman – although he had done nothing other than exhibit potential as of yet – promised hastily. His mouth twisted hurriedly into a wry, boyish smile. "So what were you calling for, then?"

Yohmei said the reason.

He went on speaking for a while into an empty silence as the color in Yoh's eyes diffused into shocked circlets, and the pupils widened into an expanding darkness…

"WHAT?"

He knew somehow, when they came home at last, with instinct that came of years learning to distinguish Anna's own powerful presence from the crowd (not a difficult thing; she shone with a striking brilliance, if with her own peculiar cast of luminescence) and to discern when it was near. And though it was not hers alone, he thought little of it. They had been out together, they came in together, Hao doubtless sporting a few bruises from the experience. With the significance of the news that his grandfather had told him, he could not conceive of a scenario in which neither person would be in a position to care. This was not only news, but news that would influence the whole of the shaman community.

Yoh stepped towards the front door, the distracted intensity of his concentration rendering him childishly gawky, his angular bones more evident than ever in the moonlight, which did not refine his countenance as much as it intensified that which made him most Yoh.

His fingers sliding the screen door open, the dark-haired shaman turned to lift his head towards the figure that stood at the door, his lips already sliding open to exclaim the news, that—

It was only then that he realized that the figure was not one, but two.

She had wound her arms around him, tight with the constraint that made her herself, but that this had been granted at all burned like a shock, resting bright against the hollow of his throat, tempering his patience and flaying it to the quick. His hand had drifted to the small of her back, the other placed as a light caress against hair that shone like ivory in the night. Probably she hardly felt it, did not see it at all, but Yoh caught it immediately, his gesture of possessiveness acknowledged with the kind of disbelief that the young shaman had never been good at dealing with.

He had always believed that everything would work out, that everything must work out, for this was how life was, with its neatly trimmed endings and the corners that were always lined with silver or gold.

Was this, then, how things were destined to work out?

Hao opened his eyes. He had maneuvered it so that Anna faced away from the door, her back to Yoh and his blackly sceptical stare, or perhaps it had simply been his fortune. But whatever it was, nothing could deny that his eyes gleamed with mischief and something like triumph, his calm, sliding stare tainted with amusement and the worn threads of contempt. (If he had been careful enough to study his brother, to assure himself of what he had seen, he might have caught something else as well – the first undercurrents of a body making its demands, and the look of a soul that was not entirely in control…)

As though she had felt the change in his body (and perhaps she had; she was certainly close enough for the thought to be plausible), Anna turned as well. Her expression was ordinary enough, her dress unmussed so that Yoh could assume that this had been their first. But even the moonlight could not obliterate the memory of a flush within her pallid cheeks, or the slight, distracted, disorientation within her gaze.

"Yoh." She said. Her gaze was inscrutable, so that he could not be certain of the thoughts that passed through her mind, but her fingers were twisted up with Hao's own. The shaman bent over them with an exaggerated benevolence, presiding over the moment like a shadow.

"It was an accident." Hao said, before either of them could speak, but the upturned curve of his lips mocked whatever possibilities the sentence might have had. "She tripped," he suggested, eyes curving like sickle-blades with the mirth that was evident in every ion of his body, "and fell on my lips."

"An accident?" Anna said coolly, and returned her attention to him as though Yoh had never been. "Is that what you'd like to call it, then?"

"An accident," beamed Hao, although his own urbane assurance had reinstated itself. "of the fortunate sort. And one that I should hope will occur more often in the future."

"I wouldn't count on it, if I were you." Anna said in her dry, matter-of-fact way, pulling her fingers from his grasp. But even as she did so, the long-haired shaman caught at her fingers, bringing them to his lips in a swift movement that gave her no time to react. He did not touch them, however, only breathed out a kiss that warmed her fingers peculiarly and sent a daze of something through Yoh.

Then, he turned his attention towards his younger brother. "Ototo?" His smile was burnished with a malice that it appeared only Yoh could see. "Was there something that you had to tell us?"

This is not the time for your teenage dramatics, your petty jealousies, his grandfather had said, and the words echoed back to him now in an uncanny repetition. Tell her of what is to come, so that she might be prepared.

"The Tournament is coming." He said simply. The news was delivered with the calm gravity that Yoh reserved for all things for which he could not demonstrate simple pleasure in living, but his entire visage was imbued with something stronger than merely seriousness, though he could not say it.

Anna raised her eyebrows. "And?" She said. Her voice was inflexible, taut as a bowstring. "We've known that it's been coming for a while. It's why you came to the city to train, after all."

"No." He shook his head. The brown strands before his eyes wavered with the gentleness of the movement. "You don't understand."

"What?" Said Anna, and now the softness of her voice was permeated with a subtle threat as well. "If I don't understand, then explain."

"The Tournament." Said the dark-haired boy. "It's coming soon."

The black of her eyes remained flinty, unyielding. "The Tournament?" said the itako. "The fight to become Shaman King?"

"The one where there are two kinds of battles; the long and the short ones." Hao said, with an exaggerated courtesy that furthered the sweet sensuality of his smile. He lounged against the woodwork now, eyes fixed amusedly upon his two companions. "The long ones take place over a week, perhaps more – opponents may choose everything short of an actual physical confrontation between the two humans to get the other to surrender, or be rendered unable to battle. It depends on subtlety as well as skill, not to mention timing and luck. And then, of course, there are also the short battles, which is a direct confrontation between two opponents, pitting furyoku against furyoku until one of them runs out and can no longer maintain Spirit Control."

"I know." Said Anna, her voice coldly precise. The strands of diluted gold that swung across her features did not obscure the freezing clarity of her gaze, or that she would not look at Yoh. "But that Tournament isn't expected until the Star of Destruction passes over the skies – and that's not for several years yet."

Yoh shrugged, though his gaze was no less puzzled than the diminutive fragments of bemusement that he could see reflected behind her iron control. "Apparently the star decided to come early." He said.

Her eyes narrowed in a sudden flare of anger, and she rapped him sharply across the forehead with her knuckles. Instantly, electricity jumped from his skin to hers in that single, brief touch so that her eyes were lanced with shock, and she withdrew her hand immediately. "Stars don't decide." The blonde said, and the unwavering quality of her voice masked the startlement that she had encountered at the spark that had apparently not yet died between them. "But why are you saying this now?"

The question was a reasonable one; though he was an Asakura, one of the most prestigious Shaman families in Japan, he had not yet acquired a spirit of his own. This was possibly due to the fact that he was more interested in solving the problems of their afterlife, which thereby left them unbound and free to go to Heaven. Certainly no one – perhaps not even Yoh himself, though he had never told – knew whether his strength was palpable, or merely a weak thing that bore no consideration.

Said the dark-haired boy, calmly, "I'm going to participate." And indeed, he looked entirely certain of himself, not unlike Hao in that moment. Anna took the moment to study him and evaluate the changes that were present now where they had not been before. The lines of his profile were as clean and sweeping as ever, the mouth familiar and endearing with its slight, boyish crook. His eyes had not changed either – though they had gathered intensity of vision, there seemed nothing else about his expression that differentiated from when he had still been hers, with an absolute assurance that made her throat ache now, for reasons that she did not understand, or refused to acknowledge.

Yet he had changed. He must have. Or had he always been so?

Silence reigned for a fleeting moment. Then--

"You? In the Great Tournament?" A smattering burst of careless, indulgent laughter – adult laughter directed with cavalier lenience towards an uncomprehending child. It was difficult to ascertain whether it was amusement or disdain that colored the older twin's gaze as he studied his sibling, only that it was not pleasant, and not a little predatory. "Does Yohmei want you dead, ototo? It's not a sight for children."

But Yoh stood a little straighter now, and there was an odd light that glinted through his eyes. "I'm sixteen." He said quietly. "I can make my own decisions now."

"Don't be a fool, Yoh." Anna's voice was harsher than Hao's. Her gaze was snappingly focused, vibrant with the potency that had always composed the majority of her persona. "You'll die." She said, and it was not certain from the tone whether she enjoyed the thought or feared it – her eyes had gone flat with the inscrutability of a cat.

He tipped his head to the side and smiled, with the heartbreaking sweetness that his brother could easily summon, and sincerity, as well, that rang true. "Will you miss me, then?"

But she gave no reply, only watched him as Hao did, with a studied force that restrained a tidal wave with its careful restraint.

Hao was the first to speak again in the interval of quiet. "You're not saying something. There's something else that Yohmei, your grandfather, told you that you haven't mentioned as of yet."

"My grandfather didn't say it." Yoh said quietly. His brother threw back his head (hair inky black tendrils in the shadowed moonlight) and laughed again, the sound ringing and clarion like a bell being struck.

"Playing word-games is my habit." Said Hao, and his smile was distinctly tender, lending salt to the wound. "There was something else that you were told, and if you were told, then I must be told as well. After all," he remarked, with a little smile as he extended his hand, palm up, towards his twin, "You're my brother, aren't you?" The smile broadened, sweet and unkind. "You're a part of me. What you know, I must know as well."

"My grandmother said it," Yoh's eyes were cuttingly black, and ordinary enough until one looked and saw that he was careful to avoid even the slightest glance towards Anna as he spoke. Indeed, it did not seem that he looked towards anyone save a distant point upon the horizon.

Anna did not look at him, did not contemplate what thoughts were within his mind lest the intimations about his posture conjure up the thoughts of a young pink-haired girl again…

"Kino?" said the dark-haired shaman carelessly, disregarding the mounting tensions that carried on about him. His eyes gleamed like jewels in the dark, and there was a suggestion of laughter about his mouth as he curved an arm about Anna. Though the itako stiffened and moved slightly from his embrace, neither did she break free entirely. "She's still alive then? A pity. What did she say?"

"She wanted to remind us," said Yoh calmly, as though he had not seen Hao's casual gesture of possession, "of the tradition that Shaman Kings throughout the past, and Shaman King Candidates have also adopted—"

Hao's mouth curled amusedly. His own countenance looked older than ever in the evening, and there was something narrow and adult about his expression. "Will you speak, or will you simply dance about the subject all evening? I have better things to do than to watch you squirm." Things, or people, the lazy seductivity of his expression implied, and the possessiveness of his stance clearly indicated who it was that he had in mind.

His brother's gaze was a clear, lucid ebony, opaque and inscrutable in a way not unlike Anna's for the first time in his life.

"She wanted to remind us," he said precisely, "of the tradition that they had." He paused. The awkwardness within his expression returned in full force as he spoke the next words.

"Of each Candidate's selecting a Shaman Queen."

Author's Note: Hurrah! Although there was no Tamao this chapter – I want to develop her character! Rage at the horrors of school and the idea that I may actually have non-fandom writing to attend to! Fury!

Here're some snippets from the chapter after the karaoke (No, I will not give anything away about the karaoke, except that if someone can effectively capture a picture of Hao from one scene in this chapter I will LOVE YOU FOR LIFE.)

"I do not belong to you."

"I made a promise."

"I've had my training. You'll have yours. I expect to see you up at six tomorrow morning."

Leave a review at the tone. Come on. Please? You know you want to. :D

TONE.

And now for my review replies…

Bow-down-to-keiko: Thank you:) And the seven days thing... the Ring... it's just one of the many strange mental images crawling around my mind.

pendulum-swing: Murr! I've just never been very good at the narrative – let me know if you're still confused, and if so, what over.

Kawaii Koneko92: -nibbles on cookie, looking distinctly pleased- Nuu… chapter –fourteen- is climatic. If not at all romantic.

TenkunoMeiou: Heh. It's the Yoh/Anna romances that I'm going to have trouble with.

Norimaki Sandwhip: Well, this chapter really wasn't anywhere as subtle as I had hoped that it could be. Woe! I'm hoping the next one will be better.

Trisyl: I wanted to give something swift and dramatic. Present tense seemed best way. This chapter's a lot simpler, however.

pendulum-swing: That's rather the point – I'm not sure that I can get her to change sufficiently in time, but I want to develop her character. It's the ultimate challenge! –pose-

BabyKaoru-Sama: I have. :D

anime-obsession260: Yes, he was. –pokes him- Poor sweetie…

Yuki KIKI: Thank you:D I wouldn't say that my style is all that beautiful, more like unnecessarily elaborate, or whatever it was that Trisyl said. But I appreciate the compliment all the same.

And… could you really? I've been a bit worried that Yoh, especially, is OOC beyond all belief or conception. I think I managed to get Hao out of character this chapter too. -.-

As for long reviews – I like long. They tell me that someone actually cares more than just the usual amiable "good work", and they want me to get better. :)

Dillpops: Thanks. ;D Hmm… Chocolove, Ryu, Manta, Tamao, possibly the Ly Five, although they're not really manga-canon – anyone else?

Ketone: Thank you!

Inulover4eva: Aren't you the least bit sorry for Yoh at all? –hugs him madly- He caught them! On his own porch!

Bibliomaniac: She was maneuvered a bit in this chapter – I rather prefer her in the next chapter, as there's much more fun.

Hee. 3 It never actually shows what he's thinking, I don't think. This is both to cover up my shortcomings as a Yoh-writer and because it's simply more fun that way.

Well, Hao HAS had a thousand years experience. Perhaps he's learned to deal with women during that time?

I'm not sure about Hao POV, but scenes with him are plentiful in the chapters to come.

Thanks, as always, for a critical review.

Janis: Thank you:)

BBShadowCat: Hao-sama would hit all of us over the head and burn us to a neat crisp before he kissed us. -.-

Pandorac: Thankee! –bows-

asn water: Yes – poor Yoh. –pets him- He doesn't really deserve this abuse. I need to write in more Tamao.

cherri-chan: Yoh got a major part in this chapter – I hope that he's in character here… And, well – things happen, things change, but some things (i.e. Anna running around slapping people) will always stay the same.

It means that I don't really go to Chinese school, and I don't know that much Chinese, but I can speak it fluently and I'm overall good.

That's next chapter – I needed to get this one up first.

bunny angel: Yes! Behold the tension! I love the stuff – addicted to it. ;D But Hao's so beautiful – how could you kill something of such beauty? And you know it's going to end Yoh/Anna, don't you?

laughs- That he doesn't have the capacity for love is entirely the point.