DISCLAIMER: All CLAMP stories were created by CLAMP. Characters have been adapted without authorization or approval, and I am making no profit from their use.

"Let the Games Begin" is the seventh story in my Pirates vs. Ninjas alternate universe, "Fifteen Mokona on a Dead Man's Chest". Reading the previous stories is not required. That said, if you would like to read the stories in order to take advantage of the continuity, details are on my profile page.

[Things Better Left Unsaid]

Faced with a festival full of ninja, time to kill, and nothing to get done, Doumeki at least stuck around to see the rest of the opening ceremonies. He hadn't known it was possible to turn a giant balloon into a rose-shaped fountain in mid-air. Apparently that could happen. Too bad Watanuki disappeared out of his part of the stage before Doumeki could say hello, but finding his particular ninja in the massive crowds of ninja couldn't be too hard. There weren't many sneaks who spazzed as much as Watanuki did, and his lover's voice tended to carry.

The announcement board at the edge of the square was probably as good a place as any to start. It'd have a map, he hoped.

It did - standing a foot taller than Doumeki himself, a bright green and gold rendering of the city of Kragero, with its five main streets crossing in the shape of a star - and more besides. For three feet of board to the left, there were sign-up instructions and brackets for each day's main events, some of them filled in and some not (laundry today, an egg drop thing tomorrow, a trivia contest, a beauty contest, a music contest, some kind of mystery event, and then flower arrangements). For three feet to the right of the map, there were brackets for big events that'd take the whole week. The drinking contest and the bonfire ghost story contest both had nothing filled in yet, with notes to see the proctors on how to qualify, but all thirty-two entries for the cooking contest had been printed onto the outermost bracket.

With the name "Watanuki Kimihiro" (him and an "Ijyuin Akira" whom Doumeki didn't know) pre-filled all the way to the finals. He'd seen people favored to win before, but that was...

Evidence that the Kragero ninja had good taste, Doumeki decided. Watanuki had been cooking him dinners and breakfasts and packing him off for the boat with a lunchbox for months now, and anybody who didn't think that man made the best damn food in the world needed their taste buds examined. The things he could do with rice deserved their own religion.

Doumeki smiled at the board with a feeling something like pride, for he didn't know how long. He got cut off before he was done when one of the people with laundry carts (he guessed they were competing) stopped on the track and called out, "Um, Mister... Pirate, sir?" It was a slip of a girl with long hair and a blue skirt staring at him with abject confusion. He supposed the orange band on her arm meant she was from Ceres. "Are you lost?" she asked.

Sweeping off his hat, he walked to the ropes. "Point me at the cooking contest, milady?"

She blinked a few times. Doumeki wondered if there was a magic word he had to know, but at last the girl pointed to a street on the right. "It's in the coliseum, just past the planetari-"

A whip cracked not ten feet away. A blond - Doumeki recalled the announcer saying she was the Queen of Hearts, hard to mistake in her leather top, thigh-high boots, cape, and not much else - had appeared in the way only ninja could. The girl in the blue skirt backed away from the ropes in a panic.

"Miyuki-chan!" the Queen hissed. "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean!"

"Y-yes, Mistress!"

Not many people could break into full chase wearing six-inch spike heels. Doing it while cracking a whip took some impressive coordination. Still, if this was a laundry washing contest, Doumeki had to wonder if the dust clouds the two of them stirred up around the cart would end up biting them in the ass when they got where they were going.

"Faster!"

"Yes, Mistress!"

Neither of them seemed fussed about it, though, and he had a cook-off to watch. Sure enough, there was a coliseum down the street the girl had pointed to, with twelve portable kitchenettes around a podium draped in cloth, and standing at a stove at the north end was a lanky figure wearing black and fishnet, plus Doumeki's favorite apron (the kappougi, with the full sleeves), calling instructions to the teenage girl behind the counter.

"We're on desserts, so we'll want the standing mixer. Let me know if it's too heavy?"

"It's all right, Kimihiro-kun. I've got it." She cocked her head at Doumeki walking up behind Watanuki, but didn't say a word about it.

"Ah, Kohane-chan, it's such a relief to have you as my sous-chef this year! Last year-"

"Hey," Doumeki said.

In the space of a second, his ninja switched from the sweet voice he'd been using with the girl to the bellow Doumeki found more familiar, screaming, "My name is not 'Hey'!" as he whipped himself around. The fox spirit who liked to tag along in inconvenient places flew out of Watanuki's sleeve and pulled them together. Just like that, he and his ninja were against the counter. Watanuki wasn't trying to get away. Doumeki might have tried to kiss him (at three other kitchen units, co-competitors were kissing, so no one could mind), but the parade of reds on Watanuki's face was backed up by a look of real concern in his eyes. When he got calm and sharp like that, not twitching at all, Doumeki knew he wasn't in the mood to be messed with.

So he murmured, "Do I say good luck, or congratulations on your win?"

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" Watanuki said in a tone that managed to be one part growl, one part hiss, and three parts screech, all while staying in a six-inch voice. Not that six-inch voices mattered to ninja, who could probably all hear if they decided to listen in. "Why the- how are you even here?! And don't try to tell me you're docked in the city by some kind of coincidence! Even if I weren't contractually obligated to disbelieve coincidences, we are miles from any kind of ocean, you... you... you-!"

He looked like he was trying to find a way to avoid saying 'pirate' or any potentially incriminating synonyms, so Doumeki helped by cutting him off. "I walked. Is this some kind of popcorn vendor's convention?"

"You walked?! What kind of- And no, this is not a popcorn vendor's convention! It's the annual-" The ninja covered his own mouth with his palm, taking a wary glance at the girl arranging their kitchen. It was cute how he worked so hard not to spill any ninja business to an 'enemy'. "It's... the annual Kragero Career Fair. It's obviouslyfor introducing college students to prospective careers, and not whatever you were thinking. Obviously."

"So you've got a booth for talking people into vending popcorn. Can I see it?"

"What? No! I- Stop changing the subject!"

"Watanuki-sempai, way to go!" a female voice yelled from the other side of the stadium. As the fox spirit scrammed to let Watanuki bolt around the counter (arms and legs flailing everywhere, as usual), Doumeki saw four girls walking in the far door, all of them with purple armbands that matched Watanuki's. The one with straight blue hair letting out a wolf-whistle looked like the one who'd yelled, while a smaller girl with a long red braid dashed ahead. Sauntering behind them both were two smiling girls, one with shorter, blond hair, wearing a green skirt, and one with longer, more brownish hair. The black-haired, broad-shouldered ninja man was the one who'd stopped by Watanuki's apartment with Eagle a couple weeks back. Doumeki hadn't caught the guy's name, but nobody forgot a face like that.

Watanuki's spinning limbs landed with him pointing both arms (one over his head) and a knee at Doumeki. "Pay no attention to the man in the feathered hat! He's a method actor from a traveling theater troupe who has taken an oath on his life to never break character, so while he may sound like a pirate, and look like a pirate, and smell like a pirate, he is not actually a pirate! Don't let him fool you!"

As the girls approached, the blue-haired one laughed out loud. "You should have said earlier that feathered hats were your kink! We could've hooked you up!"

"That isn't what I meant! Gyaaaaaaaaah!"

The red-headed one bounced to a stop in front of him with her hand held out and an enormous smile on her face. "You must be Captain Doumeki! Watanuki-sempai talks about you all the time." Almost everybody ignored the high-pitched whine Watanuki made as he clutched his hair. His sous-chef handed him a towel, in which he promptly hid his face. "I'm Hikaru, and this is Lantis, and Umi-chan, and Fuu-chan, and Fuu-chan's sister, Kuu-san! Nice to meet you!"

"Oh, Hikaru," he answered shaking her hand. "Lord Shirou's friend?"

Her eyes went wide and sparkling. "You know Kamui-san?!"

"He's my boss."

"You have to tell him I said hi!"

"You can tell him yourself, once he's done with his business."

"He's here?!" She turned in four directions at once to tell all her friends. "Captain Doumeki says Kamui-san came to the festival! Isn't that great?"

The others shared a silent glance, looking not so sure that was the best turn of events, but that was as far as it went. Watanuki bowled into Doumeki a second later with a carton of steaming popcorn in his hand. How he managed to keep that stuff hot and fresh in ninjaspace, but never ever burn it, was even more of a mystery than how ninja everywhere could pull stuff out of nowhere to begin with.

"Here! Eat this, and don't talk because talking with your mouth full is rude. You can sit over there where I can keep an eye on you until this is over. Then there must be somewhere on this campus where I can hide you so you can stay out of trouble!"

"I figured I'd stay with you."

"That would definitely get you in trouble! Now sit!"

Well, he wouldn't say no to front row seats and the best popcorn on the planet. Besides, from here he could watch Watanuki's cute butt wiggle in his panic dance without getting hit.

Lantis sat down next to him, giving him a wary eye.

"We're not here to cause trouble," he promised the ninja, and held out Watanuki's offerings. "Whatever he thinks. Popcorn?"

The man, the monolith, nodded silently, taking a handful of popcorn but giving Doumeki the impression that he'd better keep his word. Well, he wouldn't have said it if he hadn't meant it. Anyone who trusted Eagle Vision could sure as hell trust him.

"Watanuki-sempai!" Hikaru punched the air in challenge, and Doumeki's ninja snapped straight to attention. "It's you against me and Umi-chan on desserts!"

The blue-haired girl crossed her arms over her chest with a smirk. "I hope you brought your A-game. We won't let you take this easy."

"Hah! Well, I never do less than my utmost. Let the best pâtissier win!"

The blond one waved to her friends, following the brown-haired one to the other side of the arena. "My sister and I are challenging Magami-san and Akechi-san on the main course," she said, pointing out a woman and a man wearing gold Kragero armbands. "Wish us luck!"

"Good luck!"

As the teams settled into their stations, the same announcer who'd worked the opening ceremonies stepped onto the raised platform in the center, waving to the cheering crowd.

"All right, everyone! Are we ready for the first heat of the first round of our championship, to see whose culinary skills are a cut above the rest?!" The crowd answered with a roar. Handfuls of them even held up signs cheering on their favorites. Doumeki counted 39 for Watanuki at first glance, and 37 for Ijyuin - who, if he had to guess from the cartoons on the signs, was the black-haired one in the chef's hat, standing next to a girl with a bobbed haircut, looking like they were running for a Most Wholesome Couple award. He'd admit he was biased, but Doumeki preferred the kerchief Watanuki had knotted over his hair to the full-on puffy chef's hat. It framed the face better.

"And now for our secret ingre- Wait a moment..." The announcer looked down at an empty kitchenette, marked with a salad flag under a royal blue pennant, next to the spot where Princess Aska of Fahren and a boy in a tasseled beanie had a bowl of arugula ready to go. "Wasn't there supposed to be a team from England in this round?"

"Right here!" From the West Entrance, the same bespectacled kid from the opening ceremonies ran in dragging his (now empty) laundry cart. A skinny kid with long hair and a dress came running behind him, wearing a matching royal blue armband. At first, Doumeki figured that was the end of the one-ninja-in-England theory, but he didn't need long to rethink. Doumeki wasn't good with mystical things like his grandfather had been, but even he could tell the second member of England's cooking team was a construct - not born of any of the six realms, definitely not human. A damn good construct, but a construct all the same.

He had a bad feeling about all of it. In the interest of staying out of trouble, Doumeki thought maybe he'd avoid Hiiragizawa Eriol for as long as he was in these parts. Although, if his eyes were working right, the squirt from England looked like he could have been Watanuki's twin brother, if Watanuki had been a little younger and a lot calmer. Talk about weird.

Hiiragizawa turned to Doumeki and smiled - a creepy, slick smile with his glasses glinting - almost like he could hear the pirate thinking. Doumeki shivered.

Yeah. He'd never have to worry about mixing those two up.

"Okay, all contestants in place? Then let's go ahead and reveal our secret ingredient! Today you'll be cooking with..." The cloth in the middle of the arena fell away to reveal a heap of yellow and red fruit. "Apples! A~and...begin!"

~/~

So close! Hikaru thought their bread pudding with the apple and fig bits was actually really tasty, but how could they compete with Watanuki's perfect little fruit and cream tarts in the perfectly flaky pastry, with the perfect homemade whipped cream and the perfect sprinkle of powdered sugar on top? He'd earned that win fair and square. She wished she'd had more time to congratulate him before he'd grabbed his pirate and run off, but she knew how busy he was.

She smiled at Umi-chan as they cleaned up the pan. "Isn't it great that Watanuki-sempai kicked his allergy to pirates? Now he can spend more time with his boyfriend!"

Umi-chan froze for an instant, then wiped her hands on a towel and smothered Hikaru in a hug. "Oh my god, I love you. Never change."

"Huh?"

"Watanuki-sempai's pirate allergy... It's... um. Psychosomatic."

"So? It's still good he's over it!" Sex wouldn't be any fun at all if your boyfriend made you break out in hives, even psychosomatic ones. And when he'd pulled Captain Doumeki out of the coliseum, Watanuki-sempai hadn't had any hives or rashes or any of the stuff he'd always said he got when pirates were around (and hadn't they been cute, with Watanuki-sempai dragging him by the collar, and Captain Doumeki munching tarts like they were the best thing ever).

Fuu-chan walked up smiling despite her and Kuu's apple-glazed chicken losing out to the Kragero team's stuffed pork loin. That one, at least, had been a close call - even though Akechi-san was Ijyuin-san's uncle, and his whole family were great cooks. "Should we all meet in the food court around dinner time? I have to take the preliminary quiz for the trivia contest."

"That sounds perfect," Umi-chan answered. "I'll run off to audition for the music contest. Hikaru, you've got tryouts for the ghost stories, too, right?"

"Yep! But Eagle's next door washing laundry right now, so I figured Lantis and I'd go cheer him on for a bit first."

Lantis was at her side as soon as the judges signaled that non-competitors could enter the arena, and they all set off for the West Entrance, making bets on whether Watanuki-sempai or Ijyuin-san was going to win their annual showdown, and trying to figure if anyone could challenge the Duklyon boys for third. They were almost out the door when Fuu-chan and Kuu-san's opponents flicker-stepped in front of them, and they all had to forcibly restrain themselves from drawing weapons. This was a festival after all. People mostly kept their ninja techniques to themselves, to keep anybody from having a misunderstanding that might turn bloody, but not having misunderstandings meant not being provoked as much as not provoking.

"Sorry, we didn't mean to surprise you," Akechi-san said. The doctor held up his hands, eyes friendly behind his horn-rimmed glasses. "Tokiko-san and I wanted to catch you as long as you were all here together."

Magami Tokiko-san's black hair fluttered in a breeze that came out of nowhere as she stepped up. Hikaru made a note not to underestimate her if they ever did get in a fighty situation. Run-of-the-mill ninja nurses didn't generate aesthetically convenient wind. She reminded Hikaru of something or someone she couldn't quite place at the moment, actually. But she'd remember if it was important! And this lady had a really pretty smile, too! Hikaru smiled back, since nobody seemed to be attacking.

"We're with the committee to select entrants for the beauty pageant. Ryuuzaki-san, Lantis-san, you're our finalists for Hundhammeren and, well..." The two Kragero ninja laughed as Umi-chan and Lantis raised eyebrows at each other. "Shall we flip a coin again?"

Lantis held out his hand without a word. He had his, 'Let's get this over with,' face on. Akechi-san handed him an official coin-flipping coin with the Imonoyama crest on one side and a pufferfish on the other. With a shrug, Umi-chan called, "Heads," while Lantis spun the coin into the air, caught it, and slapped it onto his other arm.

Hikaru giggled at her su~uper hot boyfriend's grimace when he saw the star, then pulled him down so she could kiss his cheek. "Congratulations, Mr. Hundhammeren." The committee's decision was absolute. Eagle was gonna be so proud.

"Oh, relax," Umi-chan told him. "I'll get it next year. Now are we going to watch people washing piles of sheets in giant vats, or are we just gonna stand here?"

~/~

There were days that were bad, Kamui considered as he hopped off one steam engine making its way around the giant chessboard that'd popped out of the floor in this godforsaken darkness and onto another. Then there were days that were inexplicably bad, and then there were days when projections of dancing pufferfish told you to solve logic puzzles or risk falling onto a floor that released ridiculously painful electric shocks. In a sane universe, there wouldn't ever be days like that, but this wasn't a sane universe. This was his life.

He'd checked the gelatinous cubes and the milky liquid for toxins before he'd ingested them, so he was pretty sure this wasn't a pre-death hallucination. Evidence pointed to them being magic, since after he'd eaten and drunk, a life-size projection of his body had appeared next to the pufferfish, showing his internal organs and blood vessels along with readouts for his pulse, breaths per minute, and five other statistics (and why anybody would need that, he didn't want to know). Then had come the chessboard - with squares as wide as he was tall, topped with two trains running lazy circuits at first, sparks jumping between their wheels and the ground - then the white rabbit holding a watch had risen just past one of the bishop squares.

Because of course there was a white rabbit holding a watch.

At any rate, he could take a hint, and balanced on the engine of the first train until he could step to the engine of the second train, stepping off of that when it passed the rabbit, at which point three things happened: the rabbit printed out a card that said, "Make", the two trains broke into three running at a slightly faster speed, and a blue caterpillar statue rose up next to a knight's square on the other side of the board. The caterpillar's card had said, "a wish", and oh if Kamui had been the kind of person whose wishes came true, he wouldn't have been balanced on the nose of a hurtling locomotive, about to make the sixth of nine train changes to get from the smiling cat to the mocking faces of Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee.

The eight rounds of this game he'd cleared so far had won him a deck of cards that read, "Make a wish, count to three. Pass the tests..." - plus a growing facility with stepping from one speeding object to another without losing his balance, for all the good that would ever do him in the real world. As the train he was on neared the path of the train he needed to step to next, Kamui balanced on his toes, and combined the motion of stepping with a sideways push. If he did it right, he could match his body's momentum to his destination. No jolt when his foot committed to metal, no wobble throwing him to the floor. Just a tight, lightning fast step, which used different muscles than his normal leaps and bounds.

He was going to be sore as fuck in the morning.

Kamui's current train was a two-car deal rocketing from one edge of the third row to the other, and back again, in a four-second round trip. The last train was just an engine, no trailing cars, running in a circle from the king's square to the king's rook's square, then across the pawns' row to start again. He rode the whole cycle three times to be sure he had the timing right. It wasn't easy to propel himself in a split second from flying left to flying right, but he didn't falter, and even managed to disembark on the Tweedles' statue on his first ride around.

It printed a card that said, "And". Kamui had a strong urge to set it on fire.

As one of the trains that still had two cars broke into singles, bringing his train count to eleven, all the engines changed to new courses and kicked up to a yet higher speed. The statue for his next destination rose. Behind the black king's bishop's square back on the other edge of the board, there was now a gangly, gray creature he didn't remember from any version of any Alice stories, but who actually gave a shit? Not him, not right now. The trains were whizzing so fast, trying to plan his route was a nightmare. He could barely track them all, and certainly didn't have enough brain power left to think this through. But as long as he could ride one, study where the next was, and take this one step at a time-

The wall over the gray statue started counting down from thirty. Because suddenly he had a fucking time limit, and he had no intention of learning what the hell happened if it ran out. Kamui shifted to his first train the next chance he got. His next three switches weren't pretty, not having time to plan. He nearly fell once. By the time he reached the statue, though, he'd got his sea legs under him at last, leaping from one train to the next by instinct. His feet hit the statue's base just as the timer hit zero, and all the trains screeched to a halt and tipped over.

The floor erupted in a shower of sparks he was all too glad not to've been part of. When they righted themselves, he finished the twelve-car trip to the raven on the writing desk behind the white queen's square well within the twenty seconds allotted. The thirteen cars he needed to traverse in ten seconds to reach the mock turtle behind the black queen's square were racing so fast, all he could see were blurs, but he made it with three seconds to spare and a lunatic cackle. He was starting to get the hang of this.

Then he read what the last few cards he'd collected said. "Pass the tests... and you'll go free." Kamui's laughter turned into a snarl. As if anyone could keep him here the minute he decided this farce wasn't worth his time. And he'd been moving so fast, time felt like mud while he waited for the next target to show itself.

A Jabberwocky statue rose up. Behind the black queen's bishop's square.

Just one square over from where he was right now.

Kamui looked at the now-fourteen trains that were little more than lines of motion, that would take him on a circuit of the board and back again, and used his quick-step push to clear that one-square distance instead. Fuck the trains. The Jabberwocky handed him a card that said, "To", and Kamui readied himself for the next statue.

This one was a white rose half-painted red, behind the black queen's rook's square. Just two squares down, like it was taunting him. Without thinking, he took the dare, rocketing off the Jabberwocky's podium toward the rose, and was still reeling from his surprise that he'd made it when a dodo bird statue appeared behind the black king's square. The ledge to land on was small, no more than three inches across, or he might have tried a long jump on that distance. But his feet had developed a habit now, and while he focused on his end point, he stepped, and his destination appeared under his feet. Four squares in one step, he thought as he took the card the dodo bird printed. Four squares, a distance four times his own height, in one instant.

This fucking game had taught him how to flicker-step. Like a ninja.

Fuck.

As much as he wanted to turn the board into a crater, he wasn't ready to risk dying in the electrical fury it'd cause - not when there was still someone somewhere he could make pay, and he hadn't even found that person yet. A person who was quickly rising in Kamui's estimation to 'nearly as annoying as Clow Fucking Reed'. He growled his way through reading the cards again, including his newest acquisitions.

"Make a wish, count to three. Pass the tests, and you'll go free. To open the door..."

He looked up to see a doorknob with an oversized keyhole rise up behind the white king's knight's square on the other side of the board. Those were all the words he had on the cards, but the rest of the rhyme was easy enough to guess.

"To open the door, find the key."

Well, if someone could trick him into flicker-stepping four squares, he could damn well flicker-step eight on his own terms. Ignoring the seventeen separate train engines whistling around the board, Kamui let out a roar and shot himself forward. He appeared on the ledge in front of the doorknob. Reaching for the statue, he fractured the stone with an unleashed bolt of power and yelled, "Whoever's watching this - I know you're there! How about you open this up before I blow it up, and show you how much I hate riddles?! One... Two..."

Behind the white queen's bishop's square, a pig statue's jaw hinged open and a key flew over. Kamui grabbed it out of the air.

"Now that's more like it."

The tiny room past the door that opened when he turned the key was a plain white, just as bright as the previous room had been made of darkness (and chessboards from hell). When the door closed behind him, the wall was completely featureless. It was as if the portal had never existed. There was no way out that he could see.

"Okay, what's next?! Take your best shot!"

Finally a segment of the wall flipped. It clicked into place with a one-piece black bodysuit hanging from a peg, and plain black shoes on the floor. A black dialogue box blinked next to them that said, "Wear me!"

After all he'd done, after his threats (which he'd thought had worked), after everything... there still wasn't anyone here he could yell at. Or who could answer questions. It was like this was all according to someone's evil plan, and nothing he'd done had even gummed the works.

Kamui sank into a heap against the wall, burying his face against his hands and knees. He'd earned a rest, hadn't he? And after he'd spent a few minutes (or seconds, maybe, since he had nothing to count time but the beat of his heart, and that was racing) with his eyes closed, seeing nothing, saying nothing, not giving whoever was doing this the joy of seeing him jump to their commands, he pulled the magic communicator he'd won fighting Hikaru from his bag.

For him, Clow Reed's communicator orb had turned into a writing pad on a thick block of wood. Even though theDragon of Earth was far from Kragero - much farther than had ever been within the communicator's range before - Kamui dashed off a note to Fuuma. He had to do something or he'd lose his mind.

"Dear Fuuma: I hate everything," he wrote. "Why can't I be where you are?"

The paper folded itself into a dragon and flew off, dissolving as it reached the wall.

He didn't expect a response, but just writing it made him feel a little better. Even the goddamn feathers that fell out of nowhere whenever he lost control (or used this communicator thing, so now they were extra thick falling in a fluffy pile all around him) didn't seem so bad at the moment. At least they were a familiar annoyance. Kamui rummaged in his pack for a chunk of bread to eat. With some food in his stomach, he'd feel more human, and then he could handle whatever the fuck these ninja assholes and Fai the Feckless had to throw at him.

Then, as he chewed, he saw the best thing in the entire world.

Brown ink letters forming on his magic pad of paper. Fuuma was writing back to him from wherever the Dragon of Earth was sailing right now! The neatly written lines read, "Because where I am is full of sociopathic jerks, which doesn't usually appeal to you. Where the hell are you right now? Is it really that bad?" The last sentence scratched itself out, and Fuuma wrote, "What's going on?" instead.

Kamui picked up his pen, so happy he could cry. But he wasn't crying, he swore. The drips falling on the paper were just sweat from running all over a chessboard at ridiculous speeds. And Fuuma didn't need to know he was dripping anyway. He scratched down, "I'm in some kind of fucking secret training ground run by sadists under Kragero. If I die in this Wonderland-themed hellhole, I'm counting on you to kill Fai for me. It's all his fault."

"And I'm counting on you not to die, but it's a deal. Hang in there."

"I love you," Kamui wrote, because it was one of those things he liked to tell Fuuma before he stood up to strange and deadly ninja menaces. He waited for the usual, 'Do what you've got to do, I'll watch your back,' sort of answer, but this time the page stayed blank. He didn't think the connection had broken. The paper turned to dust when that happened.

Maybe Fuuma was starting to notice that Kamui wasn't sure that Kotori was the one he was in love with. God knew the tabloids spent three columns every issue wondering why he hadn't proposed to the Princess yet. Because he did love Kotori. But maybe Fuuma had noticed it wasn't that simple, and wasn't interested in poaching his sister's presumed boyfriend, but didn't want to say so because he couldn't think of anything that'd make things more awkward between the three of them.

In a heavy, deliberate hand, Kamui put down, "You're the best friend ever."

After another pause, while Kamui willed the paper to still be working, his heart beating like a loose sail in a storm wind, the words started again. "Kotori and I will always be here. I -" One more second of Kamui holding his breath, and Fuuma's pen scratched out the first person pronoun to revise it. "We love you, too."

For that, Kamui thought he could survive anything. Even a ninja festival.

Even the falling feathers that'd now piled up to his ankles, on their way to his knees.

~/~

Stepping away from a laundry line, Suoh took one of the white feathers that'd begun raining out of the sky. He would have remembered if anything like this had been scheduled, or even proposed. It wasn't interfering with the festival, but it was unexpected. And inexplicable.

Suoh didn't much care for the inexplicable.

"Another of the Chairman's displays?" one of his fellow laundry judges asked - the court crier from Malvek, according to his file. "The Imonoyama really pull out all the stops, don't they?"

With a calm smile, Suoh lied. "The Chairman does enjoy things like this. Rose petals, usually, but I'm sure he had a reason to use feathers instead."

In reality, there were very few reasons for a shower of feathers. The Chairman might have imported an enormous volume of loose plumage without anyone on his staff, including Suoh himself, noticing that he'd done it - but that was the sort of thing he did for surprises. The Games and everything to do with them were no surprise, and this moment was hardly a focal point of the event worthy of one of the Chairman's grand gestures. Suoh supposed he couldn't rule out a natural occurrence, but that was unlikely as well. For this many feathers to fall at once, he'd expect a flock of birds to drop with them. Unless his memory of birds failed him, every single one of these feathers was a secondary plume from the wing of a pure white ptarmigan. The thousands falling just where he could see would require vast swaths of birds to have spontaneously moulted half their wings at once. 'Unlikely' was an understatement.

If the Chairman hadn't done it, and there were no flocks of birds to be seen, the remaining possibility was that someone else had done it. If so, someone had set up a frankly enormous payload and a delivery mechanism without Suoh noticing it, on his campus. For the sake of his sanity, he hoped - hoped, but didn't expect - that the Chairman would take responsibility when Suoh next had a chance to speak with him. In the meantime, he'd ask one of his units of security officers to recheck every corner of the campus. Discreetly.

A light wind blew ripples through the sheets on the nearest line, leaving gaps where he could see through to the next row. Through one of the gaps, Suoh saw an all too familiar purple-haired man staring straight at him, eyes glinting like cold steel. The Civic armband looked particularly stark against his navy blue sleeve, as if he'd bleached it to something more blindingly white than the soft floral white specifically selected by the Chairman to be warm, inviting, and complementary next to nearly all colors of clothing. That man might have done it, too.

Yudaiji Idomu.

If only the Chairman would let him bar that louse from the town, or search him when he came through the gates, or anything of the kind. But they were, alas, a just and forgiving city. His orders were to leave Yudaiji alone until the man did anything that required intervention. Scowling across the rows of laundry, Suoh went back to tallying clean sheets.

"What's that face for?" the other judge asked. "Aren't you having fun?"

"I'll have fun once I've prepared for all eventualities."

"Prepare for what? You've already done so much. It's amazing how well organized this whole festival is. What could possibly go wrong?!"

Suoh said nothing about ensuring that whatever plan Yudaiji had this time to shame and kill the Chairman would fail. Instead, he considered explaining how one should never ask what could possibly go wrong. Ever. The words were barely on his tongue when the light wind blowing across the field broke into a roaring gale, whipping more than half the sheets into a whirlwind. A net launched by one of the trebuchets on the city walls caught the flying sheets, of course, but credit for them was lost to the competitors. If you couldn't protect the work you'd done, you didn't get any points for it.

The wind was gone as fast as it had come. It had the feel of magic all over it, and all of the ninja on the drying field looked equally bewildered as they tried to grapple their laundry - even Yudaiji - without a hint of who might've done it. Everyone knew that any stolen advantage anyone could get away with was fair game, and it was up to the entrants to interfere if their competitors tried to cheat, but that was the most blatant attempt Suoh could recall from any Games he'd heard of, let alone attended.

"Time is up at sunset in five minutes," he told the official at the tally table. "Let the competitors hold their laundry in place if there's another gust. Other than that, stick to the plan. I'm going to find the Chairman. When you know who won, we'll be at tonight's Ghost Story contest, and I want to know immediately."

"Yes, sir."

Suoh flicker-stepped across the rooftops to keep from alarming any of their guests on the ground, and found the Chairman exactly where he was supposed to be - thank goodness. He'd finished judging the auditions for the music contest, and was about to leave the concert hall to see that the bonfire was properly begun. The blond noticed him immediately, nodding toward a shadowed corner where they could meet without attracting attention.

"That's not a festive expression, Suoh. What happened?"

"Particularly obvious cheating in the laundry competition, sir."

A bemused sparkle overtook the Chairman's blue eyes, bright even in the darkness. "Cheating, Suoh? We have ninja here from every corner of the globe! Well, a representative sample of all corners, given that corners on a globe only exist as an abstraction taken to infinity. But the point is, of course someone's cheating! What else would ninja do?"

"This cheat didn't strike me as sporting. I have a bad feeling about this."

"Far be it for me to discount your bad feelings. You're looking into the situation?"

"Of course."

"Then what could possibly go wrong?!"

If anyone else had said that just then, Suoh would have scolded them. Because it was Imonoyama Nokoru, he only sighed, and tried not to smile too much when the ever so charming bane of his existence kissed him on the cheek. Because the Chairman knew how much he hated those words, and he knew how much the Chairman loved trouble.

"Chairman, please allow me to see you're safely escorted to the bonfire?"

"That sounds lovely, Suoh."

~/~

Enjoying a roaring bonfire complete with toasted marshmallows wasn't as easy as Doumeki liked when the only person here he wanted to see was spending the whole time terrified that they'd get caught together by somebody who had a problem with it. Most days, he could ignore Watanuki's histrionics, but Doumeki knew he'd accidentally crashed into his lover's professional life, where there was a real chance someone official might find him persona non grata. He wasn't the kind of asshole who made a habit of interfering with his boyfriend's work. Especially when he knew his boyfriend was lying about what he did for a living, and being a pirate at a ninja party was kind of like wearing a prettier dress than the bride at a wedding.

Generally considered bad taste. Likely to start problems if you seek out attention.

He didn't know when Lord Shirou would be done with his errand, but it was starting to look like Doumeki would need a place to spend the night, and he didn't like his chances of getting between his lover's sheets (wherever his room was) when Watanuki was on the clock. Didn't mean he wasn't gonna try. There were no situations where sleeping with Watanuki was going to lose a cost/benefit analysis. Not for him.

Watanuki was in slightly different circumstances, and he could live with that.

He'd never been allowed to understand what his lover did when he wasn't hanging around bars, complaining about pirates, and keeping house. Now he could see it with his own eyes from his spot on the benches, looking up at the platform for the heads of state. Watanuki wasn't just any valet who orbited his mistress like a moon as he catered to her whims. They were a binary star, two of a kind. When she bossed him around, if you were looking just right, you could see her watch him like a mother lion watching her cub scuffle with a gazelle.

He couldn't help remembering how that woman had said Watanuki belonged to fate, and Doumeki couldn't take him away from it. Well, he wasn't gonna ask anybody to back down from a fight, but it was his choice if he wanted to stay close enough to make sure Watanuki came out the other side in one piece. Doumeki had lived his whole life knowing what was right and where he was going. Watching his lover berate the Dimension Witch for going through booze and snacks too fast, seeing Watanuki meet his eyes and blush for just an instant before he went back to work, Doumeki had a feeling like this was the first time he'd really known what he wanted, and right and wrong didn't matter. Where he was going wasn't so clear anymore, but he'd bet his life to make sure Watanuki was part of where he ended up.

The Dimension Witch winked at him, and mouthed silently, "It's rude not to listen!"

Right. The ghost story contest. The Empress Kendappa was up on a stage at the head of the fire, narrating some thriller she'd called an old family legend - an uncle or something generations back who'd kept a locked room no one could enter, very Bluebeard, except that he'd never killed his wife. You'd think, given the fame of the Daidouji emperors and empresses, everybody would've heard of this creepy old uncle if he were real, but Doumeki didn't know the story. Like he'd been told, he turned away from Watanuki to give the bright-eyed Empress dripping in red silk the proper attention. You didn't argue with mother lions.

The audience gasped as Empress Kendappa described a thud ending the sobbing and scratching sounds coming from the locked room (which the uncle had called wind through the rafters, like anybody believed that), leaving the house in silence. The storyteller curled her lip in a hint of a smirk. "But no matter how many people asked to see inside the room, he kept the only key on that chain around his neck, and never shared it with a soul. Until... years later... their kingdom fell into civil war. The old king was slain on the field at the hands of his enemies, breaking their world in two just as his sister had prophesied before she disappeared. His family mourned him, laid him in the ground as all families do, but even they could not honor his command to never open the Locked Room. Before the first sun had set on his grave, they took the key they had pulled from his neck, and they climbed those steep, curving stairs to the highest hall in the East Tower - the room that had now been silent for so long. They opened the door.

"With no light but the torches they'd brought, they saw little at first. Two beds in the corner, long unused. A broken table, with the plates from a long-past meal scattered on the floor. A feather dark as midnight lying on a discarded book under the window. It wasn't until they closed the door behind them that the woman's skeleton fell out of the shadows and they saw the long scratches of her fingernails around the knob on the door, stained red with her blood - and years though it'd been since the young prince had seen his aunt, he still recognized the tattered rags the skeleton wore as a dreamseer's robes. She was none other, he declared, than the old king's sister herself, locked away here for all those years she had been lost.

"As they approached the body, however, the shadows revealed one... last... thing. Above her skeleton, there was a note scrawled on the wall in letters a foot high, perhaps in ink, perhaps in age-darkened blood. It said, 'Dear Father - I couldn't save Mother, and nothing will save you.' Although, search as they might, a second body was never found." The Empress blew out her candle, leaving her face in shadow as she stepped down. The onlookers burst into applause.

"That's not what the prophecy was," someone murmured by Doumeki's ear. He hadn't even noticed the guy sit, and he couldn't see an armband to say where he was from. Just dark hair, plain clothes, and a grin.

"She said it's an old story," Doumeki answered. "That happens. Who are you?"

"Oh, nobody. Stay sharp, loverboy."

Nobody, his ass. But he let the man walk away, and tried to commit his face to memory.

On stage, the announcer stepped out front. "And to follow up that harrowing scare from Her Imperial Majesty... Representing Nihon - Nayuki Satoru with his tale, 'The Wandering Spirit!'"

The pale kid who came up next, holding a freshly lit candle, had a certain strain to his smile that spoke to a lack of confidence that he could beat the Empress. All the same, he took a game breath, and launched into his bit with a practiced storyteller's voice. "They say that every school has seven mysteries, and most are never more than myths..."

Yeah. Poor kid had bad luck on the draw. He wasn't winning this one.

The next person to slip in by Doumeki's side, he noticed immediately. Like he'd miss seeing Watanuki holding out a tray of smores fixings. Doumeki stole a marshmallow and popped it right in his mouth.

"You won't even wait long enough to cook your food before eating everything in sight?!"

"Can you stay, or do you have to go back to your boss?"

"I suppose I can spare a few minutes to keep an eye on you. But I'll-"

Watanuki's mouth tasted like ire and milk chocolate when Doumeki kissed him. The ire melted fast. The chocolate was nice and long on the finish. That little groan when their lips broke was, like always, the best part.

"Did I say you could do that, you bastard?"

"Not today."

"Look, I need to get you out of here before somebody catches on to you-"

"If this is a career fair, maybe I should open a Piracy booth."

"You will absolutely do no such thing!" The way his lover could get vocally strident, even in a whisper, never ceased to amaze. "Now if you insist on staying-"

"I'm staying."

"-I've arranged a bunk for you to sleep in. Outside the North gate, there's a thicket, and you'll find a cabin in it. I'll bring you breakfast in the morning."

"Is there a problem with your bed?" As long as mysterious strangers were picking him out for vague warnings, he damn sure wanted Watanuki sleeping close.

"The problem is with you!" Watanuki pointed to the purple band on his right arm. "Registered invitees only are allowed in the dormitory. So unless you want all the leaders of the civilized world up in arms over the sight of your gloomy face-"

"Then how do I get registered?" Doumeki asked.

"You don't! No way, no how! You will take the cabin I have so graciously prepared for you, and you will be thankful for it! Now, Mistress Yuuko is almost out of snacks. I have to go bring her some more, and if I don't see you before you leave..." For once, Watanuki seemed to trip over his own tongue. His face settled into an exaggerated pout. "Just... don't get caught."

"I won't."

Watanuki shoved the tray of marshmallows onto his lap. "Good," he muttered, walking off toward his mistress. "That'll save me some trouble, anyway."

Doumeki smiled. Reading between the lines to hear his boyfriend say he cared was one more thing he'd gotten used to. Not that he'd say no to hearing it straight up someday.

The audience clapped - not for them, for the kid who'd just finished talking about his school's ghost, ending tonight's round - and the attentive quiet around the fire broke into more of a party atmosphere. Off on her platform with the other leaders, Ichihara Yuuko cheered, "Let's break out the booze!" The sound of Watanuki pointing out that she'd been through three bottles of sake already tonight pierced right through the rumble of the laughing crowd. As Doumeki watched, the woman shooed Watanuki off somewhere (he stomped away with his hands clenched in fists), and she joined a parade of ninja world leaders headed for liquor. None of them so much as dissolved into a shadow, so even a person like him could track 'em.

Last time Doumeki had checked, fortune still favored the bold. He followed a block behind the whole way, and when they went into a posh-looking bar, he went right after.

"Doumeki ahoy!" someone greeted him straight off, whom he already recognized as the Dimension Witch from her voice despite not having known her long. She made an impression. She also made every eye in the room turn to her seat at the bar where she was waving. The blue-haired and pink-haired girls from before were dancing nearby, chanting, "Ahoy! Ahoy! Doumeki ahoy!" while table by table the whole rest of the room fell silent.

It wasn't long before all the eyes watching Yuuko-san turned to him, with a feather in his hat, a hook on his hand, and a weapon on his back. Feeling the weight of near fifty top-rank ninja and most of the heads of state in the ninja world staring him down - no doubt wondering why a pirate had wandered into their crowded (really crowded, starting to seem claustrophobic) bar - Doumeki braced himself for Watanuki to jump up yelling that this was exactly the kind of situation he'd been trying to prevent. True enough, that wasn't the kind of entrance Doumeki would've preferred to make. But Watanuki seemed to be somewhere else for the moment. He saw Eagle, Hikaru (on Lantis's lap), and the blond one named Fuu waving from a table to the right of the door, while the girl named Umi was trying not to choke on the Blue Sapphire in her glass; he saw the damsel who'd given him directions earlier, gaping at him as she drank tea with three ladies in lingerie - one with a hat, one with rabbit ears, and one with mouse ears; and he saw at least two wolves, growling from their spots on the floor (a gray one next to the Snow Princess Shirahime, and a black one next to a girl in leather armor).

No Watanuki. Just his boss yelling from the bar, "Show a leg, Cap'n! Step smartly now!"

Doumeki swept off his hat. "Aye aye, ma'am," he answered, and walked up to meet her. Wasn't much point in arguing, he figured, although he wasn't gonna take off his hook tonight.

"Here. Catch." She threw a scrap of purple cloth at him. "That's what you want, isn't it?"

Eyeing the armband, he asked, "What's the price?"

"Paid in full! Consider it your reward for being such a good boyfriend. I put you down as Watanuki's +1 when we registered."

Worked for him. Seemed to work for all the big wigs at the bar giving him needle-eyes, too - being the purple-haired lady from Civic, the old woman calling herself Sumeragi, and Imonoyama's blue-haired shadow, all of them off to the left with their friends. Doumeki let out a breath he wasn't ashamed to admit he'd been holding, and tried not to think too hard about the implication that she knew he'd be coming. "I think I might need a drink."

A younger voice spoke up. "Here, Captain Doumeki. Why don't you take my seat?" Next to the Dimension Witch, Hiiragizawa Eriol was sitting with the same slick grin as before. And, for some reason, a small black cat in his lap. "I've got a long day tomorrow, after all. Turning in early wouldn't be a bad idea. It's been lovely, Yuuko-san. Come on, Akizuki." The construct kid who'd been at the cooking contest kicked off the stool on his other side and ran for the door.

"Don't get into too much trouble, Eriol," Yuuko told him.

As he left, Doumeki stared after with an uneasiness he couldn't put a name to. He met Old Lady Sumeragi's eyes mid-glare. She seemed just as suspicious of the Englishman as he was. Good to know it wasn't just him. And he was glad enough the little blue-haired and pink-haired tykes took the chairs Hiiragizawa and his sidekick had vacated, leaving the one on the Dimension Witch's right for him to fill. It didn't feel right taking a seat from the person he couldn't help thinking of as Watanuki's evil twin.

Comparatively, the glare he got from Kurogane on his other side was no problem.

"Hey," he told the red-eyed ninja.

"So you're Watanuki's Doumeki?"

"So you're the Pirate King's Kurogane?"

The ninja grimaced, then waved for the barkeep. "Oi! Bourbon for me and my friend." Then he murmured. "That guy ain't showin' up, too, is he?"

"I think he's going to keep an ocean between him and Death Shirou right now."

"Yeah. His kind of party, though."

The bourbon was perfect - high class stuff - and not so strong that it should've been a problem. It must've been the atmosphere, pulled tight as a knot in a wet rope, then, because twixt that moment and the one when the Dimension Witch's two tag-alongs pointed him through an unmarked door in a dark building, Doumeki didn't remember too much of what happened.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: A quick note on characters who are not clearly male or female, of which there may be a few in this fic.

As a genderfluid person, it's very important to me that these characters are described in terms that reflect how I see them present themselves and how others react to their presentation in the original manga.

1) Since the question of whether Hana from Gate 7 is male or female is kind of a running characterization point, I'm planning to have people refer to Hana as "he or she" during any appearance (such as the unnamed cameo in Chapter 1) with clearly stated confusion from the onlookers about Hana's sex as appropriate.

2) Akizuki Nakuru, in this chapter, was more of a conundrum, since the only clear expression of gender identity for this character within Cardcaptor Sakura was an off-hand comment that Spinel Sun makes to opine that a boy's uniform would have been more appropriate for Akizuki. Akizuki's response, that the girl's uniform is better because it's cute, isn't the same as saying conclusively, "But I'm a girl!", and I agree with the general assertion that one can see the character as essentially genderless. That doesn't help much with pronouns. Is this character an essentially genderless person who identifies as female? A genderless person who identifies as male, leading Suppie to make his comment, but likes to wear dresses? A genderless person who couldn't give a flying hoot, and just likes cute things? I chose to make the determination for pronoun reference based on Nakuru's name and speech patterns. The kanji for "ru" in Nakuru can be used for gender-neutral names, which have sometimes been used for men historically, but that name form skews far more feminine in general. In speech patterns, the vocal tonality, use of feminine particles like "wa" to add emphasis to some sentences, and use of the personal pronoun "atashi" all point to a deliberately feminine self-presentation, not someone who likes to wear dresses while having an even remotely masculine persona. As such, I will use gender-neutral language whenever possible, and default to "she" if I need to use a pronoun.

3) If Kohaku from WISH ends up making a large appearance, I will have to go back to the Japanese manga to check pronouns and speech patterns, but given Kohaku's reaction when Shinichirou uses the term "girl" and the parallelism with Hisui (who clearly presents as male while acting as Kakei in Legal Drug/Drug & Drop) I expect to use as much gender-neutral language as possible to reflect the prevailing sexlessness of angels, defaulting to the pronoun "he" if I need a pronoun (official American localized translator's decision to make all angels into girls be damned - let's not with the default heteronormativity, shall we?).

I think that's all the ambiguous characters who may appear in this particular story. If any others come up, I'll address them at that time. Thanks for reading!