I've actually been struggling a little bit the past few chapters so I would appreciate any input on if anyone reading this feels the plot is coming along okay. My main goal is to successfully have a plot, meaning a full story that will come to an end and not just random fluffy rambles. So I'm slowly trying to incorporate actual plot points of V Force even though I've changed parts of the timeline.

I really appreciate that people have actually taken the time to read my silly rambles of fangirlness (I have literally shipped these two since before I even knew what yaoi was) and have been having a lot of fun writing. It brings back a lot of memories from when I was younger.

Thank you all!

Chapter 13

In most cases, being woken up in the morning involves being poked or shaken awake, maybe on occasion having a pillow thrown at you. If you've ever been in boarding school and forgotten to lock your door, there's a significantly high chance you've been awoken by having your mattress flipped while still on it. A harmless but definitely not pleasant prank. When sharing said mattress with another person, you might experience what I did, which was being woken up by not only being flipped off a mattress, but also having another persons body land directly on top of you and going face first into a wall before finally hitting the floor.

"What the fuck?" Wyatt groaned as I pushed him off of me.

The three idiots stood over us laughing hysterically. Although confused, he appeared to be fine, which was to be expected seeing as I'm the one who took most of the blunt force trauma.

"It's almost 10 o' clock!" Avery yelled as they put the mattress back on the bed and helped both of us to our feet. "We signed for you guys at breakfast but we were starting to worry you died in your sleep or something. If you're only gonna oversleep because you stayed up too late having sex, we may as well have some fun with it."

"What are you talking about?" Wyatt groaned. "Why was my door even unlocked?"

He still didn't even seem to realize I had slept here last night.

"Sorry…" I sighed quietly, "I think I forgot to lock it. You let me in last night but I don't think you ever actually woke up. I had a feeling you wouldn't remember it."

Taking a moment to pick his own subconscious before simply shrugging it off, he chased the three of them out of the room, promising we would sign ourselves in during lunch and dinner.

"I won't be at dinner." I told him, sitting on the bed and coughing slightly aggressively into my elbow. "I'm staying at Tyson's tonight. Kenny has some things he needs to go over with us so that we can start training once spring starts. I already got permission to be off school grounds, his brother is supposed to pick me up."

Wyatt looked at me uncertain before sitting down next to me and putting the back of his hand to my forehead.

"You have a fever." He said.

"I have a cold, I'll be fine."

Actually, I was having trouble focusing my vision since my eyes appeared to experience intense displeasure at being forced open and it felt like an ice pick was being jammed into my skull.

"You need to go see the nurse and then go back to bed. I can talk to your team for you, if you know any of their numbers I can just call them."

"I told you, I'm fine."

"You're burning up."

My body still ached the same as last night and although I still felt exceptionally cold I was sweating through my clothing. It's not like I had never been sick before, though. After my very memorable near death experience during the world championship in Russia I spent about a week pretending I didn't have a cold and I made it out just fine. It was a part of life.

"I'm gonna shower." I told him, making my way out into the hallway. "I'll see you at lunch. I'm sorry I forgot to lock the door last night…"

I wasn't interested in having a debate about my health, something that I was confident I knew best. We were getting close to the time we should be figuring out a training regiment and since Rei wasn't here I was really the only person I trusted to keep track of everything. Kenny could handle the mechanics but he didn't exactly have the street smarts to keep everything else in line. Or everyone else.

Walking back to my room, I unlocked my door and rummaged through clothing.

That whole thing about how I ran naturally warm? Yeah, that on top of growing about three inches the past month meant I didn't have a lot of options when it came to warm clothing.

Managing to find a sweater, I made my way to the shower room and undressed, letting hot water run over my head and down my face. For the first time in my life I kinda wished we had a bathhouse, a bath actually sounded great right about now. Instead I opted to stand under hot water for about 20 minutes before I even bothered to wash my hair and face, letting my eyes rest. Then ringing my hair out as much as I could, I dressed and walked back to my room, choosing to lay back down in bed for a bit instead of drying my hair.

I wasn't hungry during lunch, disregarding the fact that I hadn't eaten yet today and instead sipping on unsweetened green tea and ignoring all conversation happening around me.

At least I was ignoring all conversation happening around me up until Wyatt poked me in the side with a chopstick, his current favorite was of getting my attention.

"Will you quit doing that!?" I yelled, not currently in the mood for his antics.

"Only when I find something else to entertain me, and to be honest I don't think anything will beat learning that you're ticklish. It's just too fun to exploit."

"In what world is shoving a chopstick into someones side the same as tickling them?"

"If I actually tickled you, you would hit me."

That was true.

I rested my head on my hands, propping myself upright on my elbows and letting my eyes rest. Fuck table manners.

"Do you still have a headache?" Wyatt asked, brushing my damp and untidy hair out of my eyes gently.

"I told you, I'm fine."

I could here Avery and the other idiots cleaning their table spaces and got up with them, finishing my second cup of tea before going to put my dish away. Wyatt didn't budge from his seat, taking me by the arm as I attempted to walk past him.

"You really don't look well." He stated. Emile approached me as well, touching the side of my head by my temple.

"Wyatt has a point." He said. "You're like, really warm and you're more pale than usual."

"You guys can survive a day without me." I rolled my eyes, trying to stifle a cough. "I'll be back tomorrow."

"I really think you should see the nurse." Wyatt insisted once again as I took my arm back and began putting my jacket on.

I shrugged, absentmindedly hugging him goodbye before realizing what I was doing and pulling away again. Although his look of concern didn't fade, he blushed slightly, the tiniest hint of a smirk now visible on his lips.

Throwing my bag over my shoulder, I walked quickly away, handing the outdoor security my pass before finding a bench to sit on. Although there was sweat beading down the sides of my head, I continued to shiver from the cold, eventually pulling my hood up over my head and sticking my hands in the pockets of my coat. Thankfully we hadn't gotten any snow. One of the few memories that had started coming back to me was of the cold. Growing up in Moscow, we normally would have snow relatively quickly once the cold made its way to us, the wind blowing everything in its path directly into your face like a frozen sand storm.

My wandering mind was brought back to reality by Wyatt sitting next to me, touching a cold bare hand to my knee.

"If you're really content on leaving for the day I think I should go with you." He informed me, taking back his hand and crossing his arms stubbornly to his chest. "Just to make sure you're alright."

"For fucks sake, Wyatt…" I groaned, "I'm fine. Besides, you don't even have permission to be off school grounds for the night."

"I can get it, though. I can just meet up with you guys, you're team should really know that you aren't feeling well. It's going to get to below freezing tonight and I'm not sure I trust you to take it easy on yourself. I know you better than that."

I stood up, turning away from him and grinding my foot into a patch of dirt that had made its way onto the sidewalk.

"I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I've been doing it since I was a child."

"Kai, I'd hate to break it to you, but we're still children."

"I'm not."

"First of all, you're voice still cracks when you talk too loud." He smirked.

I turned around and glared at him. In regards to the eyes of the law, he was correct. The fact that I wasn't sixteen yet was actually making my life significantly more difficult than it should be. I had been told more than once I was wise beyond my years… something that adults liked to tell traumatized kids in order to put a positive spin on our shitty upbringings.

"Shut up."

He didn't say anything briefly, instead standing back up and fixing his scarf.

"I know you're getting annoyed with me and I know you don't like feeling out of control. If you're mad at me, I'll live."

"I'm not mad." I lied.

"You do this every time someone tries to tell you what to do. You're gonna overcompensate by pushing yourself too hard." He placed a hand on my shoulder. "I just want to have a set of eyes on you to make sure you're alright. You go ahead and I'll figure something out."

I grunted, waving him off as a car pulled up beside me and rolled the window down.

A younger man with light blue hair peered over his sunglasses at me.

"You're Kai, right?" I merely grunted in response, walking around to the passenger door and getting in. "I've been warned you're not much of a talker." He continued. "I'm Tyson's brother, Hiro."

"I kinda picked up on that already."

He chuckled to himself and I was pretty sure he had rolled his eyes at me, which I ignored because my current main concern was that if this guy was anything like Tyson was then I should maybe reconsider being behind the wheel of a car with him.

"You can sass me all you want." He shrugged. "I'm used to teenagers, the angsty bullshit doesn't work on me."

Although he appeared to be calling me out, his smile never dropped from his face. He seemed to at least have Tyson's attitude.

"How old are you anyway?" I asked, trying to coax myself to relax and leaning back into the car seat.

"Twenty six, ten years older than my brother." He also seemed under the impression that I couldn't do simple math. "Before you ask, he was the accident, not me."

I smirked slightly, making a mental note to use that joke to my advantage later. Since Max was the product of a teenage pregnancy, it felt too below the belt to mock him for being an accident. Tyson was fair game, though.

I leaned my head back, resting my eyes for a moment as he drove before a question popped into my head.

"How many times do you think Tyson will fail Drivers Ed before they just tell him he's never to get behind the wheel of a car?"

Hiro covered his mouth in an attempt to stifle his laughter.

"At this point I think he does it on purpose." He smiled. "He doesn't want to lose his ability to mooch off of everyone else."

Although it was legal for sophomores to have their license as long as they were sixteen, my school didn't permit parking passes to anyone other than seniors, meaning unless you were actually from the area and had a house to go to no one bothered with learning to drive. Not to mention half the school didn't have citizenship.

Pulling into the dojo, Hiro turned the car off and got out, which I followed.

It was nice not having a big group this time, our current head count being only myself, Tyson, Kenny and the girl I couldn't currently remember the name of.

Removing my outdoor shoes but keeping my coat on (along with cussing at myself for forgetting my indoor shoes and needing to walk inside in only my socks), I joined them on the floor silently.

"You look exhausted." Tyson said with a smile. I ignored him, giving only a brief grunt of displeasure.

"What's this about exactly?" I asked. I understood that we were hear to go over our training and figure out when to start, but with Max still in New York and Rei still in his village it seemed oddly pointless, even for these two.

"Right," Kenny exclaimed, getting straight to the point. He opened his computer, pulling up an email he had gotten from Max. "This is surveillance footage from a battle Max took part in. He explained in his message that this girl approached him seemingly out of nowhere and asked if he would be willing to take her on."

"Max isn't gonna say no to a cute girl." Tyson laughed.

"Yeah, he said the same thing in the email… anyway, according to Max, he hardly even had time to do anything before she wiped the floor with him." He looked up from his laptop. "His words, not mine."

Although I still wasn't completely sure what this was about, Tyson now looked concerned. His eyes hyper focused with concentration as he read over Kenny's shoulder.

"So that means..." He began before being cut off.

"Yes. You and Max had the same outcome at the same time." He replayed the video, pausing on the blade that Max had battled. "And look at this."

"The same light!" Tyson yelled. He attempted to grab the laptop as Kenny flung it under his arm, using a free hand to keep Tyson away.

It was a well known rule. Don't touch Kenny's stuff.

Regaining control of the situation, he adjusted his glasses before focusing his attention on me.

"That's why I wanted you over here, Kai." He stated. "I also wrote Rei a letter. I don't think this is a coincidence and I want to make sure the both of you have your guard up. Something strange is happening. I don't trust these people."

That seemed a little dramatic. We had all lost a fight as some point or another, it didn't necessarily mean there was someone after us. I wouldn't have been surprised if Tyson lost due to his own over inflated ego and it was also possible Max's infatuation toward a cute girl talking to him had caused him to bring his guard down.

Nice to know I wasn't the only one being affected by puberty.

Still, Tyson and Kenny's concern appeared genuine. I stood up, turning away from them.

"If someone wants to try their hand at beating me then by all means." I stated. "I'm not afraid of some hooded stranger, besides, an opponent who I'm equally matched with sounds like a good change of pace after coming back from the world championship."

I looked over my shoulder toward them. Although Kenny still looked uncertain, Tyson nodded at me, now grinning with determination.

Walking towards the door, now fully prepared to once again train as hard as I could, the feeling of standing up too quickly suddenly overtook me, bringing my mind back to the fact that I was both freezing and sweating uncontrollably. Suddenly beginning to lose my balance, I heard them both call out to me with concern, asking if I was alright before everything around me went black.

Although waking up was met with confusion, I was able to recognize relatively quickly that I was in the hospital, which seemed a tad bit over the top if you asked me. The fact that there was an IV in my arm felt unnecessary.

Blinking a few times until my vision cleared, I originally thought I was by myself until I caught sight of Wyatt using a row of chairs as a makeshift bed. Where the hell did he come from? What even happened?

I took a medical instrument I didn't know the use of and threw it at him. Although I aimed at his body, the metal device instead hit him in the head, causing him to make a noise you could refer to as a mix between a yell and a squeak.

"What did you do that for?" He asked out of instinct before it dawned on him that I was awake. Quickly he dropped everything and practically leaped to his feet, throwing his arms around me. "You're awake!" He yelled, burying his face in my shoulder. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. What the hell happened?" Actually I didn't feel fine at all, but he didn't need to know that.

As if my hatred toward attention on me couldn't get worse, Tyson and Kenny walked into the room a moment later, causing me to push Wyatt off of me without warning.

"And he awakens!" Tyson giggled, pulling up a chair which he sat on backwards. "You can thank me for catching you at any time, I might have saved you a concussion."

As I stared at them in confusion, Kenny seemed to finally reach the conclusion that I had no idea what any of them were talking about.

"You passed out." He stated, causing me to blush in embarrassment.

"I told you that you were sick." Wyatt grumbled in annoyance. "I knew you were gonna overdo it."

"I didn't do anything." I said truthfully. I had been driven to Tyson's house, we had talked, I got up too fast and then everything just went dark. I can't go overboard when I don't do anything in the first place.

"You overheated." He explained. "You were burning up, but because you felt cold you kept putting more layers on. We got here right after you and you had a fever of 40ºC."

For a moment I said nothing, not wanting to admit that I had fucked up and that he was right, until something dawned on me.

"Hang on..." I stated, "How did you even know about this?"

"I'm your stalker, it's my job." He smiled, playfully smacking me in the back of the head. "I told you I was gonna figure out a way to get out of school and come keep an eye on you. I couldn't get a hold of my parents so I just signed out with Avery and Marcus and then ditched them. When I heard an ambulance go by I just had a bad feeling that something had happened to you."

Tyson shook his head at me.

"Why am I not surprised to hear that this was caused by your own stubbornness?" He smirked.

Wyatt bit his lip, pausing for a moment to choose his next words carefully.

"Maybe don't piss him off right now." He told Tyson shyly. "I'm already about to make him mad."

"What did you do?" I groaned. Wasn't there supposed to be a doctor or nurse or someone in here? Anyone who could take this goddamn thing out of my arm before I resorted to doing it myself?

Wyatt blushed slightly, avoiding direct eye contact.

"I kinda told your case worker what happened."

I pulled myself forward, making the hospital bed move slightly.

"Goddammit, Wyatt!" I yelled.

"She would have figured it out, anyway. Your teammates weren't just gonna refuse to give any information about you. Besides, I don't really trust you to take care of yourself now."

"That or we could hire you a babysitter." Tyson interrupted.

As I was about to tell him to fuck off, an actual doctor finally came into the room, shooing all of them out and bringing Ono-San in.

Fuck.

"I'm fine." I immediately told her, keeping my gaze downward. "I just overheated."

The doctor removed my IV so that I could sit up properly, bringing my legs off the side of the bed.

"You're friend informed me that you didn't look well and that he suggested you stay in your dorm and rest. You ignored him while knowing you had a fever?" She asked.

"It's not like I've never been sick before. People go to work and school when they're sick all the time, what's the difference?"

"You aren't in trouble, Kai." She informed me. "There are just some concerns regarding your ability to take care of yourself in this kind of environment. We agreed to not put you with a foster family but one of the terms was that you needed to be capable of looking after your own needs. If you can't do that we'll need to find an adult for you to stay with."

"Absolutely not." I shot back. "I feel fine, it was just a fluke thing that happened."

There's no way they can possibly pull me out of school and put me in a foster home due to fainting. It wasn't an uncommon response to being sick and there was no way I could have known about it.

"You're not being removed." Ono-San continued, "Mostly due to school having a positive effect on you and what pulling you could do to your mental health, but you need to do better."

This was the point in our conversations I stopped responding, a tactic I had started doing in order to control my anger.

Informing me that she would be bringing Wyatt and me back to school, I got up silently and left with her, grabbing Wyatt by the arm while he was in the process of using the vending machine.

Not the best punishment, but I'm petty.

I waved Tyson and Kenny off, trying to hide my own embarrassment and trying to ignore the way they looked at me when I left. I had worked hard to avoid being viewed as the orphan kid but you couldn't really ignore watching me leave a building with a CPS worker.

This fucking sucked.

Wyatt walked up to my room with me when we got back, pulling me into another hug as soon as I sat down on the bed.

Even when I was angry at him my stomach still fluttered when he touched me, a feeling I still hadn't become completely accustomed to.

"I'm really glad you're okay." He said, squeezing me tightly.

"I outta cough on you." I elbowed him playfully, I wanted to be angry with him. I honestly was angry with him, but for some reason I still seemed to want him around.

Going into his bag, he pulled his laptop out and set it on his lap, pulling open a few files before getting up and setting it on my desk.

It took me a moment to realize he had put a movie on, sitting back down with me and letting my body rest between his legs, holding me close to his chest. Actually I really didn't watch television that often, a thought I decided was best kept to myself in order to appreciate what he was trying to do.

He brushed his fingers up and down my wrist for a moment before taking my hand and bringing that sensation back into my chest and stomach. He liked holding my hand, I had noticed that awhile ago, and when we were alone I didn't mind. Honestly, in public I didn't mind as long as there wasn't anyone I knew nearby. The whole blog post about me had made me a bit paranoid. Rumors about myself had never bothered me much, it was something you gradually got used to when you had a life in the spotlight.

The affection I felt toward Wyatt felt different, though. He was a secret I held onto tightly not for me, but for him. My team and I didn't have a typical life and as silly as it sounded regarding something as simple as a world championship, there was danger involved. Our lives had been threatened.

Now I had a new goal.

Keep him safe.