Disclaimer: If I owned Shaman King, 4Kids would have never removed it from their Saturday schedule, those cretins. They wouldn't know quality television if it came up and kicked them in the head, which should be considered, if only to bring them to their senses.
Author's Note: I wrote this chapter the evening that I posted up Karaoke Part One, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Come on, who doesn't love drama?
Chapter Thirteen: Visions in and of the Future
"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."
At this, Anna's gaze – already inscrutable with the narrow blackness of obsidian, reflecting distorted shadows of the watchers back out as grotesque beasts – went blanker still, as though the soul that ordinarily resided behind her gaze had vanished, and no power on earth would bring it back again. She would not step back – such would have indicated a retreat, and she did not do such things, though others might – but her face was small and white and a little fragile in the crack of luminescence that shone out from behind the slitted open door.
Instinctively, Yoh's eyes snapped to her, and he took a half-step forward before the realization of the recent events occurred to him and he froze in place, momentarily uncertain. His hand, which had extended itself instinctively for her, snapped back as though it had been bitten. As though in defiance of his movement, she recovered then; her head straightened to erectness, chin lifting with the calm assurance that the itako had always borne, her hands dropping from Hao's grip with a boneless grace to fold neatly before her. She stared at him blackly, defying him to mention what he had just seen, what had passed between them.
Hao, catching the subtle loosening of her hand, released it and allowed his own fingers to fall to his side. His eyes glinted with something like amusement as he surveyed the both of them and the silence that rang on between them, thick with the accusations and the words that went unspoken. Then, with the great exaggeration of deliberated movement, he curled an arm about her waist, his eyes level upon that of his youngest brother's. But before the latter could react, there was a snap.
Anna stepped to the right; a small, almost unnoticeable shift of her weight, distinctly away from Hao. (His possessive grip fell away, and for a fleeting instant, there was something like surprise in his eyes.) Her own expression was brittle with frost, and her eyes glowed like malice, though it seemed impartial and did not seem to care enough for the boy that she had spent the evening with to loathe him.
Her voice, as she spoke, was quietly vehement, laden with the sting that was uniquely her own. She behaved as though Yoh had not spoken of the tradition, and Hao responded to her cue with a laconic indulgence that kept it sharply within min that he could bring it up again if he so desired.
"I do not belong to you." This was spoken calmly to Hao, who seemed at ease until one noted the faintly widened circlets of his irises. "Neither do I belong to Yoh.. kun. But I made a promise to Yohmei-dono long ago, when I was first engaged to Yoh—" her eyes flickered to him coolly, then back again, "—and I will not break it now."
"Promises are made to be broken." Hao appeared faintly entertained by this development. He watched her, nevertheless, and his eyes seemed like to made of obsidian; gleaming and icy with its perfection, with things like shadows and secrets not meant to be seen to be seen in his eyes if she looked too closely. (And so she did not.) "The fact that you need someone to make a promise means that you're not as sure of them as you'd like. A promise makes sure that it's less a fact, engraved in stone, than a chain made by the hands of humans."
"This was my promise." The itako asserted, her eyes boring coldly into his. "Are you implying something, shaman?"
He glanced at her, the threat promised within those wiry, firmly set arms. "No…" He murmured, and there was a hint of a mocking smile curled about his lips. "No, I wasn't."
Abruptly, his spirit flashed into existence – or perhaps it had always been there, only shrouded with the blackness of burnt coals in the shadows. But it was not as it had always been; its size had diminished to something conveniently petite. This, however, did not lessen the threat that glimmered from every line of that hard, coruscating body; it seemed as though by rendering itself small, it had concentrated its existence into the space that it occupied, and now was rife with the force of its life and subsistence.
Like a familiar, it flew to his shoulder with the quickness of a bird, hovering there in an absurd reversal of roles; he now the carrier where it had carried him.
He did not look back as he stepped past his brother towards the door, though he did offer a quick glance to the side. His eyes slid to clash neatly with those of his younger brother's, and for a brief moment, something like sparks danced between them as a tiny war raged.
"Good evening, otouto." The dark-haired shaman whispered at last, his eyes heavy on Yoh's, as if nothing in the world were wrong. Then, with a soft laugh, he turned back to Anna. (The Spirit of Fire sparked on his shoulder; a tiny luminescent curve that drifted across the air before fading into a crisped black and falling soundlessly to the floor.)
"You may change your mind." He said, warmly so that it carried into the curve of her ear. But there was disdain in those words, disdain in the curled lip and the faint enjoyment of the new turn of events that was in his lightless look. Half-shrouded by the shadows, he looked like some dream half-wakened, his hair still faintly shambolic from that brief, lingering embrace that rested between them like faith. "I offer you that; the opportunity to change your mind if you so desire it. You don't need to answer my offer now—" he added, for already she had opened her mouth to speak what could only be words of condemnation and contempt for what he spoke. "—but you may hold it until you need me."
His gaze said what his smiling lips did not: You will need me.
Then he swept past her in a brush of a cloak the color of sunlight (it wrapped about him tightly like a lover's embrace; as warmly as her own arm had slung about his neck a few moments ago, though she would not think of that now) and a blaze of fire, and was gone past the door, into the house.
"Tamao, what are you doing out of bed?"
The girl squeaked in fright, catching at her elbows in obvious fear as she turned slowly. She had thought that she recognized the voices, and her hesitance solidified into certainty as she encountered a certain fox-spirit's elongated features, alongside the rotund racoon that served as his companion. They stared at her with a kind of baleful amusement, though she was pale enough, distracted enough so that she did not recognize their looks – she was accustomed to it, after all. They served her not out of pity for her, or love for her, but because Mistress Kino had threatened to exorcize them if they didn't protect her. And in the face of that fate, probably they would do anything.
"Ponchi," she whispered in pleased relief, though she bent her head in an abrupt storm of shyness; even – and particularly, for they were prone to making jokes that she didn't understand and turned her cheeks a fiery crimson – with her spirits she was rather timid, "Conchi. I'm not doing anything, really. I just…"
Conchi peered at her with something like mild interest within his gaze. As an animal spirit to a rather dull fortuneteller-in-training, he had honed his skills of seeing trouble (and therefore, amusement for him!) at a great distance since he had taken up with her. And the way she looked now, the way she blushed, shouted TROUBLE at him all over.
The thought pleased him, and abruptly he snickered, his cheeks spreading into a broad, malicious smile. "What did you see, Mistress?" He inquired with the silkiness of evil curiosity. "Was it a vision? Is anyone going to be dead?"
"No." Tamao murmured in an undertone, and clutched her sketchbook to her chest in a furious denial of that thought, though it was more of desire than of certainty. "No, no… he cannot die. He will not die…"
"Hm?" Ponchi eyed her musingly. For a girl who didn't do anything aside from training and going to school, Tamao knew a surprising amount of boys. The spirit put it down to all that association with those chattering, bullying girls that she went with at school – the ones that she stolidly refused, despite having all the backbone of gelatine desert, to allow him to harm – who tended to attract men the way clothes attracted moths. There could only be a few, however, that she spoke of in that way – and only one that she would think of at such a ridiculous hour of the night.
Really. After all, even spirits needed their beauty rest, and the Great Spirits knew that Conchi would need all that beauty sleep if he was ever going to improve his looks.
"Are you speaking of Yoh?" Conchi inquired artlessly, his grin extending far beyond the regions of his cheeks in a grotesque smile that only ghosts, who could rearrange their appearances with effort and practice, could manage.
Tamao's blush intensified. "Don't… speak of him so familiarly." She murmured, the blood hot in her cheeks. Her fingers tightened about the notebook in which she kept her divinations as well as rudimentary sketches that she had attempted to draw of him – she had shown him neither, despite his wry tuggings and pleas. It was difficult enough for him, probably, to love her with all of her shyness and her flaws, and her heart ached at the thought that he might be driven away if he saw how truly flawed she was – how dependent she was on him, starved for the sight of his smile and his happiness.
She had not begrudged Anna Yoh's engagement, though she had wished desperately during those years that it were herself to whom he was engaged. Nevertheless, she thought that she could not stand it now if Yoh went back to her; if Yoh returned to what he had been. Anna knew best, of course, (it was what she had always been taught) but Tamao could not help but feel a faint surge of an unTamao-like anger at the remembrance of the scrapes and bruises and the wry comportment with which he had borne them; toleration intermingling with something like a wistful affection.
Conchi rolled his eyes. "You've been apprenticed to his family since nearly you were born." He pointed out, sardonically. "It's about time you started calling him something other than Yoh-dono, Yoh-kun, Yoh-san." He mocked her obeisances with a stretch of his mouth, allowing his tongue to loll out in an extravagant grimace.
Tamao shut her eyes furiously, mustering up a glare, though it appeared more of an effort not to burst into tears. Her eyes stung with salt, and watered faintly, though she refused to believe that she had been prompted into tears by her own spirit's words. "You be quiet." She said, vehemently. "Yoh-kun deserves all the respect, because he is the heir to the Asakura traditions; the only one who can carry it on. And he's more than worthy of it!"
"Conchi didn't say he wasn't," Ponchi said, a little worriedly. Tamao did not act like this – she was quiet and easygoing and about as difficult to walk over as a carpet. This was not something Tamao would do. But something in her dreams seemed to have hardened her resolve now; her eyes flared with it – the power that Mikihisa might have seen in her all those years ago when he had first taken her as an apprentice.
She did not reply, only turned upon her heel to stride down the corridor with all the huffiness of any other girl – down to the familiar room of fortunetelling. Shivering with something like to unease, the two spirits followed. Although they were not worried enough to snicker as it dawned upon them that she had been in such a hurry to leave her bed that she wore only the skimpy nightgown she had always worn; the fragile cloth that she had received at eight that had been too big for her then, and too small for her now.
Ponchi began to hum "Tamao's quite a ba-abe, Tamao's quite a ba-abe," under his breath. But because of that unnerving reception he had received earlier, he did it quietly. That reminder that she was a fortuneteller, and thereby a person of power, unnerved him slightly, and he did not feel inclined to go through that process again.
The pink-haired girl stepped into the room, and stopped for a moment as the power crashed over her in a wave of strength, surging into her as though she were only a conduit for the powers that resided within that fragile frame. And perhaps she was.
In only moments, she had set up the softly lit room with her own crude fortune-telling things – the notepad was laid carefully on the floor, in the holy circle painted and re-painted on the floor for all of the time that the Asakura house had existed. Dropping to her knees, she held a coin level between her index and third finger for a few moments before dropping her hand to the paper. Mutely, with only Ponchi and Conchi hovering behind her as quiet guardians and witnesses, as they ought to have been, she traced out her question.
And watched, in horror, as her fingers moved without her will, but with the will of something beyond, tracing out the answer that she had prayed she would not see.
Her heart contracted with an unnatural tightness, and her throat went crackling dry with uncertainty. As the answer was completed, her hand dropped to her side, hanging there with something like to despair.
Oh, Yoh…"Anna?" His voice was familiar with the rich warmth that, she had thought, might someday inspire a veritable army to follow him wherever he might ask. But it did not charm her now – she had seen the sweetness, seen the awkwardness turned into a knife-edge that had abandoned her and would not take her back, even now. That stinging knowledge hung foremost in her thoughts as she faced him: he had not wanted her. That was what had started all of this. He had not wanted her. "The promise that you made to my grandfather…"
"Will be kept." She said with her level monotone. "You do not need to worry of it. You will be Shaman King."
His smile was a little awkward, eyes creasing into something like an expression of embarrassment. "That wasn't what I meant, and you know it."
"No," she said in her cold way, watching that smiling awkwardness fade into something like puzzlement, "I don't know. And I don't want to. I made a promise to your grandfather, I will keep it, and that is the whole of the deal that was sealed between us."
"No," said Yoh suddenly, and the smile had vanished into something like a birdlike solemnity. His eyes did not move away from her head, which had turned away as though she could not stand the sight of him. "That wasn't the whole of the deal."
"You broke that other portion of your own accord." If her voice had been chilly before, now it encompassed an entire glacier of ice. "It has nothing to do with you anymore." Her tone was one of diamonds encrusted within the arctic floors of winter. "Consider the remainder, the agreement that I would be the one to train you, a contract that I made with your grandparents if you like; protection and training in exchange for training of my own. I've had my training. You'll have yours. I expect to see you up at six tomorrow morning. Goodnight." The words were spoken in a blaze as she swept past him and was gone as well, as swiftly as his brother had been, but with something that ached still; with puzzlement… and regret.
He stood stock still upon the porch for a few moments, reflecting and reviewing the whole of his evening before giving a sudden, dry groan. After having annoyed Anna so, he had, at least, a little to look forward to in that he would no longer be forced to train. But here it was, the torture camp that he had sought to avoid for the majority of his life, back again, and he didn't even have the guarantee that he would be needed as her fiancée to survive the experience…
This year was not shaping up to be a good one. And to think, it was only a few more weeks until school let out, as well.
Training all summer, the sun scorching his back until it turned black from overtanning. Hao, lounging about on a beach watching him run his thousandth lap with a small, contemptuous smile. Anna, devoid of sympathy, with a whip in her hands and claws as her nails and a demonic gleam in her eye.
That was it. He was entirely dead. He would simply have to pack his bags, procure a false mustache, and move to America before Anna caught up with him and dragged him back to Japan by the ear for his training.
On cue, a thick splatter of something dropped onto the house's front steps in a nearly silent movement that nevertheless drew his attention. With the wary alertness of a fighter, Yoh turned to glance sharply at the sound.
A figure loomed over his doorstep with a stature that seemed to block out the moon and all that was light in the evening. A great shadow, it presided over him, silently menacing as its arms extended and something far thicker than water dripped onto the porch again. Glancing down, Yoh realized, with a dull, slow horror that in the moonlight it appeared black, but the open door that Anna had left behind her shed light onto the scene, and the light turned the liquid into the biting dark crimson of blood…
Author's Note: Who's dripping blood on Yoh's nice clean porch? Do you know how hard it is to clean bloodstains out of wood? …I hope you don't from personal experience, but at any rate, I rather doubt you'll guess in any case. (Even if you do know from personal experience.) Still, you're welcome to try.
I won't be posting chapter previews this time, since that would spoil the whole theme about surprise. But here's a hint. The character…
…
…is from Shaman King!
Brilliant hint, huh?
Reviews and critiques are always appreciated – even just a little note to let me know that you've dropped by and read this would be appreciated. Thank you! And now for the review replies…
Review Replies:
Satori-chan: Nice to see I was added and all. :) And of course she does; I wrote it with the assumption that her voice was still being played by the same seiyuu who plays her in the Japanese anime. ;) Aah – I'm not used to being honoured; thanks. :P
Hana: -is hugged- :3 Thank you! I hope you'll be able to endure as many chapters as it'll take to finish this and restrain yourself from killing me before the end.
Rumia: Just remember the arcs; either way you get your pairing, even if you change your mind halfway.
Pendulumxswing: I suppose – although I still don't understand. –guilt-
Azimataiji: Don't beg. I'm not sure I could stop anyway. I adore the cast too much to leave them hanging.
hannami08: Well, let me put it this way: if FnU doesn't get translated I will be the first of the line at Shonen Jump's office to beat them over the head with a hockey puck. :D I've got up to chapter four of the French version, I believe, although I haven't had enough time yet to read them. I think they mentioned that he was Yoh's son, though. (Alas for suspense or lack thereof!)
Dillpops: -laughs- I based a small piece off of your question's inspiration: it's called Out of Canon and Fiction. I'm… really not sure how I feel about him. He's just Hao; king as his name implies and beyond judgment.
anime-obsession260: Obviously we have different taste. ;) I think the chapters coming up are better. Of course, they're more narratively fun.
cherri-chan: Don't worry about it; I ditched it for a bit during the school year myself. Things come up, and we can't help but go in our way to meet them.
Also, Ren's you can listen to; it's his image song he's singing, after all. It's pretty strange and jazzy, and I love it. :D And of course Anna was displeased – consider the situation from her point of view! ;)
You seem to be attracted to all the GRUMPY Chinese bishies, then. xD And I like Paku Romi's voice – she does a lovely job as Ed from FMA.
Lincel: This AU fic's just a bit AU; what might have happened if the choices that the characters had made were changed just so. What would happen if Eliza were still alive. What would happen if Hao decided to stay and watch over the progress of his little brother rather than training from afar. What might have happened if the Shaman Fight were a little more well thought-out and decisive in the name of a king who has not just strength, but strategic schemes that can go on for more than the minutes that a Shaman Fight takes. Probably never going to show you what Hao thinks, no, because then he'd lose everything. Not to mention I really have no idea.
I've been considering various pairings for Chocolove. I think people may kill me if I focus too much on him, though, so I won't mention too much about it. As for Lyserg and Manta – you'll have to wait and see. ;)
Video tape. Hm. ;D
neoKOS-MOS: I realize – it's partially why I'm being productive now, to make up for what school has done to dent my schedule and put me off. Thankfully mine let out a few weeks ago. Plans are still in the works, but it's hit about twenty-odd chapters and shows no signs of slowing anytime soon. Don't kill me if I'm wrong, but I'd say that this is going to be thirty to forty chapters. Maybe more if you count the fact that at some point they have to break into arcs to satisfy the pairings.
I currently have an addiction to parentheses. –guilt- I really should break myself of the habit but it's just so much fun.
-coughs- Yes. Well. Hao is. Um.
I'm trying to put Tamao in as much as possible, but she IS like sand – slips out of the limelight from right between your fingers, and doesn't look special in it unless you use a microscope. Thankfully she consented to be in this chapter.