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.

WARNING: sexual situations. This chapter has been modified from its original version to meet content guidelines.

[Honesty is the Best Policy]

Day One Results:

Cooking Contest

Appetizer 1: IJYUIN AKIRA & OOKAWA UTAKO (Kragero) def. Kudou Shuuichirou & Kohaku (Impala)
Appetizer 2: SHUUKAIDOU TAKESHI & HIGASHIKUNIMARU KENTAROU (Kragero) def. Ebihara Takehito & Kudou Yukiko (Kragero)
Soup: KURURUGI SUZAKU & LELOUCH LAMPEROUGE (Civic) def. Gingetsu & Ryuu F. Kazuhiko (Kragero)
Salad: HIIRAGIZAWA ERIOL & AKIZUKI NAKURU (England) def. Princess Aska & Sang Yung (Fahren)
Main Course: AKECHI SHIGETAKA & MAGAMI TOKIKO (Kragero) def. Hououji Kuu & Hououji Fuu (Hundhammeren)
Dessert: WATANUKI KIMIHIRO & TSUYURI KOHANE (Hundhammeren) def. Ryuuzaki Umi & Shidou Hikaru (Hundhammeren)

Laundry Contest

Gold: Li Meiling (Xinan)
Silver: Hiiragizawa Eriol (England)
Bronze: Gingetsu (Kragero)

Paperwork-Filing Contest

Gold: Okiura Sayaka (Impala)
Silver: Fujimori Hiromi (Malvek)
Bronze: Yamazaki Takashi (Kia)

Drinking Contest

Current Leader: Empress Kendappa (Malvek)
Second: Kurogane (Malvek)
Third: Ichihara Yuuko (Hundhammeren)

Ghost Story Contest

EMPRESS KENDAPPA (Malvek) def. Nayuki Satoru (Nihon)

~/~

Dawn light flooded into Watanuki's bedroom through the cracks in the blinds. Water running somewhere nudged his mind into consciousness. He even felt rested despite the night on a big puffy mattress, when normally nights away from home (and his nice, sturdy futon on the nice, firm floor, thank you very much!) left him distempered. Maybe today wouldn't be terrible.

The water shut off with a squeak of a handle, and Watanuki vaguely registered footsteps. As he stretched out his morning aches, his hand crept for the fly on his pajama pants to relieve his morning stiffness. He should have felt more chagrin that the first fantasy to leap to mind was of broad hands, tough all over from a sea life's calluses, but after more than half a year (still less than a whole one!) of falling into bed with that damned pirate, he could hardly blame himself for picking up an association between a certain deep-sea scalliwag and sexual gratification, now could he? It was more than an excuse. It was true. It had been true for several months of entirely reasonable masturbatory fantasies, and it was still true today.

And yet he still blushed into the pillows as he cupped his balls, the throb of guilty pleasure building on imagining a chest cradling his back. He hissed, "Doumeki..." not sure if he was questioning his own extremely questionable taste, talking to his ridiculous fantasies, cursing the name of the pirate whose piratey wiles had put him in this position (which was not a relationship!), or some combination thereof.

"Mornin'," a voice answered. Watanuki didn't think he was imagining it.

In fact, he knew he wasn't, and shot up in bed with a yelp. There, standing by the couch near the entryway in the annoyingly perfectly chiseled flesh, was a man with a towel over his head whom Watanuki could nonetheless identify as the very Doumeki he wanted not to want.

While Watanuki sputtered, the pirate said, "I could get used to this indoor plumbing," in his own Doumeki voice, verifying that he was in fact Doumeki. "Hot running water, just by turning a handle? That Imonoyama guy really is a genius."

True. But in no way relevant at this particular moment!

"You're here?!" Watanuki screamed. "In my room?!"

Doumeki dropped the towel, revealing Expressionless Gaze Number Six, which meant the pirate planned to use logic. Watanuki's toes curled in dread. That man's logic always seemed damning, even though because he was Doumeki he had to be wrong, wrong, wrong!

"Is calling my name when you think I'm not around something you do a lot?"

"If I do rarely call your name, it's because I'm irked by the very thought that you exist!"

The pirate gave Watanuki one of his infuriating "Hmmmmm"s and one of those ridiculous soul-piercey gazes that he probably thought was meaningful. Just because the filthy (well, recently showered, so technically clean, but undoubtedly still filthy) brigand meant something didn't behoove Watanuki to take any meaning from it. And Watanuki was strongly contemplating throwing Doumeki's pillow to wipe that look off his-

The pillow was cold. Cold, and undented, and the only disturbance in the bedcovers was the one Watanuki had made himself. Doumeki's side of the bed (and he wasn't thinking about the fact that Doumeki had a side of the bed) hadn't been slept in. Which made sense, now that he thought of it. He'd never once slept through Doumeki waking up.

Letting the pillow go, he muttered, "But why weren't you in the bed?"

"Are you saying I can get in your bed without asking first?"

"What?! You-! I-" And as he met Doumeki's stare (how was it possible to never blink like that?!), it occurred to him what kind of relationship a standing bed invitation implied, and a blush hit him like a wave of hot air coming out of a broiler. "No," he choked. "I never said that."

"Yeah. So I slept on the couch."

"Why, you..." And there were the man's boots by the end of said couch, where it looked entirely possible that he'd used his coat for a blanket and his rucksack for a pillow. Watanuki marched over with his fists clenched so tight, they shook. "Augh!You're the one who's always saying a pirate takes whatever he wants! And what you wanted was... was..."

"Uh-huh," the brute answered. He was impossible, with the way he managed to make a simple "Uh-huh" sound like a full-blown manifesto on trying to date someone who wouldn't acknowledge the dating. Which they weren't doing. Was he never going to be satisfied? Not until he had some kind of formal admission that this was more than a nine-month-plus string of casual liaisons that happened to follow a predictable pattern of sex, dinner, sex, sex, and breakfast, and were now just as likely to start with Doumeki showing up at Watanuki's house as with the two of them meeting coincidentally at their regular bar?

Statistics allowed for that to happen as random, unconnected events. Really.

Jabbing a finger under a freshly-shaved chin (and pulling back an inch before he was tempted to touch, kiss, or otherwise caress the man's stubble-free skin in a point-undermining fashion), Watanuki declared, "I'm going to take a shower, and you're not invited. You're to stay here, within a two-foot radius of this couch and out of line with the windows. Once I'm dressed, I will find somewhere to deposit you where you won't get caught, arrested, or maimed-"

"That's not going to be a problem."

"Is your head made of ping pong balls?! Of course it's going to be a problem!"

He grabbed handfuls of the towel around Doumeki's neck, trying to put the dangers to a pirate in ninja-dom into words he could actually say (since explaining that he was a ninja, not a popcorn vendor, would be worse than awkward, not that he cared). Somehow it came out as a kiss. Probably just as well. Whether Doumeki listened to him was debatable - Doumeki said he did, Watanuki disagreed - but they were both fluent in the conversant arts of making out: distress in a trembling lip, earnesty in not asking for more. The pirate pulled him closer, implying everything would be fine.

Curse his gut trembling when he thought of foreign ninja running Doumeki out of town, stupid feather on stupid hat bobbing, maybe a shuriken or a sword cut taking him down. He'd never liked Doumeki, never, he swore, but somehow Doumeki was like that awful, ugly sweater that you say you wouldn't be caught dead in but wear all the time because it feels so right. And you feel a terror when you see your boyfriend about to 'do you a favor' and burn it. Only it wouldn't be his boyfriend burning his ugly sweater, because the sweater was his b-

No. No, that metaphor had gotten away from him. It would be deemed an unfit metaphor and retired.

But at least he had Doumeki's full attention as he let the kiss fall away. And at least his nerves were settled enough that he could keep his ire to a low growl when the bastard murmured, "Do you enjoy getting worked up over nothing?"

Then someone cleared her throat from two feet to his left. "Kimihiro-kun? Shizuka-kun?"

"Ko-ko-kohane-chan!" He nearly jumped back against the bed by reflex, but Doumeki grabbed his pajama collar to keep him close. And had anyone told Doumeki that he still wasn't wearing any clothes, while there was a young lady of taste in the room?! "Doumeki, get dressed! Are you a complete barbarian?!"

But as the little miss made no move to shield her eyes, instead giving him a withering glance full of incredulous unimpressedness, and as the pirate made equally no move to find his pants, Watanuki couldn't help feeling like the world was coming down around his ears. Things that were never meant to mix were suddenly in one place, and this could only end in flames.

Neither of them were listening. Kohane-chan held out her hand, and Doumeki shook it. "I'm Tsuyuri Kohane. May I call you Shizuka-kun? Any friend of Kimihiro-kun is a friend of mine."

"I'd be honored, milady."

"No, no, no, no, no! This is not someone to be friends with! Wait..." He stopped with his arms mid-cringe and blinked at the girl. "How do you know his name is Shizuka?"

"It's common knowledge," she answered, holding out a stack of documents. "Mistress Yuuko sent me with rankings for you to put on the leaderboards."

Any thoughts he'd had about how today might not be terrible, he retracted in full. Watanuki took the score sheets and sighed, walking toward the bathroom. "I'll need five minutes to shower and change, then we can go." He supposed that Doumeki could be trusted to survive, if he'd made it through last night without assistance.

How he'd even gotten into the building was a security breach to be fixed later.

And from the standings in last night's round of the drinking contest, it looked like Mistress Yuuko had left early. There was no other excuse for her to be in third, with just thirty-seven rounds to Empress Kendappa's fifty-two and Kurogane's forty-five...

A name smack in the middle of the page stopped him in his tracks.

Doumeki Shizuka, ranked eighth out of the top sixteen drinkers so far - tied with Princess Tomoyo for seventh, technically - with a distinctly not respectable thirty-two rounds. Watanuki wheeled back around, and (thank goodness) the pirate had managed to throw on pants and a shirt, but the purple armband Kohane-chan was showing him how to fasten was unquestionably a registration badge for the Hundhammeren team! Which he should not by any evil powers have been able to obtain!

That was where the smug bastard had gotten his confidence that everything would be fine, was it?! And how he'd gotten admittance to the dorms, no doubt. He couldn't have mentioned that before Watanuki had thrown himself at him in apparently unnecessary worry? Not that Doumeki was off the hook for getting a registration badge behind his back, in probably illegal ways (like a pirate would)! And then Doumeki'd gone out drinking with Mistress Yuuko instead of coming straight here?! Oh, he should have never left that reprobate alone!

"Would you care to explain yourself, you miserable excuse of a Doumeki?! Just where the hell did you get that badge,hmm? If I find out you stole it from some-"

"I didn't steal it," the foul creature known as Doumeki said with an utterly insufficiently contrite shrug. "I think your boss just likes me."

~/~

A yell of, "Aaaaaaaaaah! God damn you, Doumeki!" rang through the hallways, and Hikaru stretched herself awake. Who needed an alarm when you were on vacation with Watanuki-sempai around? And how great was it that he got to have his pirate boyfriend in the dorms after all? Mistress Yuuko thought of everything. Which, yeah, was her job, but she did it better than just a job. That made so~o much more sense now that Hikaru'd learned that apparently Mistress Yuuko had been at it for over two thousand years. Who knew?!

But she really was glad for Watanuki-sempai. Now that she'd gotten to see him and his pirate together, they reminded her of how Lantis and Eagle used to be four years ago. Not as far as being themselves - because maybe Captain Doumeki and Lantis were both stoic, but Doumeki was a more ascerbic kind of stoic, and Watanuki-sempai was nothing like Eagle - but they looked at each other like they'd never have permission to just be in love already. Lantis and Eagle used to stare across meeting halls exactly the way Watanuki-sempai and Captain Doumeki had watched each other at the cook-off. And like Kamui-san stared at the distance when he talked about his Fuuma person. Maybe it was a boy thing.

Hopefully they'd work it out, like Lantis and Eagle worked out their issues about two seconds after Hikaru'd confessed she loved them both. Life was too short to have to pick between your job and your lover. Eagle had done exactly that, she guessed, but he hadn't had to. He'd wanted to. They would have worked this out somehow if he'd wanted to stay with the other pirates instead. It was nice living together, though, not to mention vacationing together.

They'd have a whole week with nobody getting sent out, so that was seven days in a row that she got to wake up in her favorite way in the whole world: snuggled between the two sets of strong arms, two broad chests, and completely out of synch breathing patterns that came in a package deal with her two boyfriends.

Lantis trailed a hand down her hip and kissed her hair. He'd probably woken up at the same time she had. Eagle was still asleep on the pillow next to her, his breaths escaping in cooing sighs and his hand cupping her breast. The ways he sleep-groped Lantis were hilarious, but on her it was always the breasts.

"Good morning," she whispered against Lantis's ever so slightly scratchy cheek.

He grunted and stole a lingering kiss before he answered, "Good morning, Hikaru."

She loved the way he talked. He didn't use many words, like how he'd only replied when she'd first said 'I love you' by saying 'Yeah', but it was always with a rumbly vastness that meant oodles more than the words did. She could hear what he was thinking from the pitch and tremor of a grunt, even better than she could understand some people giving whole speeches.

Right now, of course, the press of his mouth into her throat was doing the talking, and the slide of his hand along her inner thigh. It was going to be that kind of morning. Then again, with no battles or missions for the next week, probably everyone at the Games'd be looking for more action in bed to balance it out - herself included.

"Eagle's still sleeping," she murmured.

He "hmmmm"ed with every indication that he wasn't going anywhere, and she skooched her head and shoulders around until she could get at Eagle. Hikaru squeezed his grip on her breast as she kissed his cheek. Right away, his eyes inched toward open, his face turning so she could kiss his lips while Lantis cradled her back. Slow and deep, she kissed him until she could taste his smile.

Pulling back with a laugh, she told him, "Morning sex time. Are you in?"

"How could I refuse?" Eagle darted in to bite her neck, his fingers working into her hair even as his other hand twined with one of Lantis's like a bridge over her body. By then, Lantis's mouth had found her breast. His tongue sent shivers right down to her bones so her body was buzzing like a bell that'd just been rung. The feeling broke her open until all she could think about was which stretch of which gorgeous hunk to caress next.

On days like this, with no rush to get anywhere, they could spend as long as they liked touching and kissing, whispering and moaning, just loving the simplicity of being there together until they collapsed into puddle of orgasmic flux with no idea whose hands were on whose naughty and nice bits. The sunlight turned from a rosy glow to a golden gleam through the curtains, and she'd had nowhere near enough of the taste of sweaty skin or the press of tangled limbs.

"Did I call at a bad time?" Lady Yuuko's voice echoed through the room.

All three of them looked up from the bed. Well, Eagle, being upside-down, tilted his head back over the foot of the bed, but it was the same thing. They saw a floating circle of light backed by a cloud of black butterflies with their boss's lipsticked smirk right in the middle of it.

"Yup," Eagle answered, knowing Lady Yuuko knew exactly how much she was interrupting. Lantis grunted darkly at the exact same moment, while Hikaru offered a, "Nothing you haven't seen before!"

Nobody moved. Lady Yuuko went on with her message, though. "Would you find some time before your first events to help clean up the feathers outside? They've started falling again."

Eagle grinned. "And Watanuki-san has his hands full?"

"As do you, I see. Well, clean-up will keep until you're done here. But after you've screwed to your heart's content, I'll be counting on you!"

Peeking out the window, Hikaru made sure the feathers were the ones she thought they were: white, fluffy, and coming from nowhere. That was them! Those feathers belonged to her second favorite pirate ever! "But are we going to get to see Kamui-san at all? I'd love to say hi."

"That depends on Kamui's training. He might not be in the mood for company."

"Since when has Kamui-san not liked people?!" she laughed. Eagle let out a snerk beneath her, while Lady Yuuko giggled behind her hand.

"I'll let you kids go then. Play nicely!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Hikaru and Eagle chorused, waving at Lady Yuuko's image fading.

~/~

An axe blade swung half an inch from Kamui's nose - at least, he thought that was his nose. There was a metaphysical question to whether "his nose" was still part of the three-dimensional reality that contained the swinging axe, given that he clearly had to be taking up less space than a sheet of paper while scrunched into this goddamned shadow, but all his limbs felt perfectly normal, although the clingy black bodysuit still seemed unnecessary. Maybe it was bespelled to make him melt more easily into the shadows. Maybe it was just because his looser pirate shirt would've caught the breeze and been cut by swishing blades, although if he really was in a different dimension from the solid space of the world, there shouldn't have been anything to cut. Maybe he'd ask a ninja philosopher about that someday when he escaped this hellhole, since pirates sure as hell hadn't thought about that shit. Pirates - like him, for example - didn't rely on cheap ninja tricks for disappearing into shadows.

But if whatever Fai needed him to get was here, and the ninja holding it thought he couldn't make it through their little obstacle course... well, fuck that. He'd show them.

There was nothing he couldn't do.

And lucky for him, Lord Aoki had taught him how to play croquet once, so he didn't have to make stupid guesses about what to do with the wooden ball (carved like a hedgehog, and he supposed he should be happy it wasn't a real hedgehog) or the giant mechanized mallet (likewise flamingo-shaped) hanging from the ceiling. Target the wire wickets, shoot, score. Of course, everything being giant-sized so he looked like a sparrow next to the croquet set wasn't exactly Oxford Association Rules, but then neither were the double-bladed axes swinging through the path between him and the ball.

The number of axes was, as near as he could tell, doubling for every run he had to make. Kamui had to estimate the current number at slightly over two thousand gleaming steel blades, since he sure as hell wasn't going to count them. Maneuvering his flamingo-mallet rig around pendula of death had been plenty stupid when there'd been space to breathe between them. Two thousand axes made for more whistling metal than walking room.

Literally. Each individual axe was thicker than the space between axes. That wasn't hard to see from his current perspective, squished into immaterialness inside the shadows running along the wall - which seemed infinitely more reasonable than trying to dodge individual blades. It was disconcerting as fuck to have sharp metal come that close to his face without feeling any brush of wind. The perils of being insubstantial, he supposed, since if an axe went through him, he'd probably still get cut. Putting a sword through a ninja in a shadow made the ninja bleed. Or die. Right now, he'd probably die. There were a lot of axes.

Kamui inched past the end of the gauntlet, pulling his giant flying croquet mallet after him, and popped back into reality. Technically he'd been breathing before, but now the air felt palpable - almost solid - in his lungs. He'd never thought he'd appreciate air so much.

Lining up his shot was the easy part. Kamui cranked his flamingo-mallet rig down into position behind the ball, pulled the lever, and with an echoing thwock sent the hedgehog ball through the twelfth wicket. He missed the final post, though, which meant one more shot.

He took a deep breath, eyes on the maze-like walls of this nightmare dungeon, and sure enough a gleaming line of oversized axes dropped out of the ceiling to rest in grooves in the floor. If his math held, probably over four thousand of them, with sharp blades on each edge. They might as well have been a solid metal wall sharpened into over eight thousand points.

The sound when they started swinging was like the ring of clashing swords. Metal brushed metal all down the line. Even worse, he could see the edges of the blades striking into the walls entirely - and with axe heads that big, they'd chop him head to toe. No inching just out of reach this time. If he were Fai, he might be able to jump on top of the moving axes and dance across the edges to the other side, but the pattern of handles swinging so fast was already confusing his eyes, like a propeller spinning forward so fast the sees it for spinning backward.

But maybe... If he could focus on the edge...

He leapt onto the frame of his mallet machine. From above, just as he'd thought, he could see the axes following each other in their swings - making a serpentine pattern, sliding into the wall and out of it one after another. If he ran at just the right pace (shrunk to a shadow, because he'd be damned if he couldn't beat the ninja at their own game), he could stay safe in the rolling gap.

Listening only to the strike of the first axe, he counted off his beat in a steady 1, 2, 3, 4. "Why your heart was heavy, I'd no right to ask..." he sang under his breath, testing an old fo'c'sle song against his deadly metronome. "But holding you tightly was my welcome task..." If he was trusting his life to the pace of his steps, he had to know he had a way to stay on the beat. Kamui fastened the croquet mallet up in its hanging frame, pulling it by the handle he'd rigged out of his knapsack so he could test how well he held that rhythm with metal ringing in his ears. "Awash in the gleam of a moonbeam so white, you grew more dear to me - more than I could fight..."

With a good look at how far he could move in a step, Kamui jumped in the next gap, singing, "I knew from my sorrow, there'd be no sleep that night..." No sense taking more time. More time waiting was just more time for his fear to build, or for his tormentors to make this more complicated than it already was.

Step, step, step, step to the side. His voice kept out the maddening clashes, and forced him to breathe. Kept him from freezing when a slash struck close. He felt one blade clip the side of a slipper that went with the ninja bodysuit he'd been forced to wear, and had to suppress a sigh of relief that it hadn't been his boots - they would've gotten chopped for sure.

The balance of sound shifted as he moved. What had started as a roar on his right built up on his left while he approached the center, and finally lightened to a hushed swish past his leading shoulder. The gauntlet was ending.

"Sure as we love, our love measures the pain," he sang, keeping his pace twice as carefully now that the end was so close. Now wasn't the time to screw up. "So toward a tender, strong heart do I strain. Sorrow itself as fond memory sealed..."

He could hear it. He could see it, over the tops of the slashing metal. The last blade striking the wall, and empty air past it, one set of axes past where he stood now.

"Let me test for myself this conviction afield..."

Kamui readied for a dive. Once he saw the gap, he'd need to clear it in two beats.

"For my love of you-"

There it was. His opening. He leapt sideways for the open air and rolled to safety.

"- that I never will yield," he murmured at the ceiling. The rope he'd used to pull his mallet above him was still in his hand, all his equipment following him out to the croquet ball. He'd made it. Kamui screamed, "I beat your fucking puzzle!" at whoever had to be listening, wherever they were.

Their answer was a giant pufferfish popping into existence, hovering over the croquet course's final post. Blinking bright yellow while it made some infernal dinging noise.

"Well, fuck you, too!" Kamui shot back. Then he pulled himself up with the rope on his croquet mallet, lined up his shot, and made all his sharpshooting masters proud. The double-damned ball hit the triple-damned post so hard, the wooden pole fell to the ground. "How about that, huh?!"

For a second, nothing happened.

Too much of nothing. It felt like someone hiding, like the faint buzz of ninja skulking in corners and being just a little too quiet to be natural. So balanced over his toes, ready to move at the slightest attack, waiting tight as a wire.

A figure in white dropped from the ceiling not six inches from where he was standing and yelled, "Icchan go BOOM!"

Reflex took over. Kamui jumped - he didn't remember doing it, but he must have done, since he found himself standing on the winch that connected his giant mallet to the ceiling. And he could feel a blast rushing out from his hand. All this time being careful, not splintering those ridiculous axes because he was underground and didn't want to cause a cave-in, and now he might have blasted his only hope for answers in a fit of panic. Sorata was never going to let him live this down, assuming he lived long enough to see his shipmates again.

The figure in white climbed out of the crater Kamui had made in the ground, wiping dust out of his dark hair. There wasn't a scratch or a scuff on him. His glasses weren't even askew. "Lucky you missed!" the man cackled. "That could've hurt!"

"What the fuck?" Like hell he'd missed. That man had been standing at the center of his blast, and Kamui could count on one hand the people he'd seen dodge or guard against that attack. And, he'd recently learned, all of them were apparently thousands of years old, and functionally demigods.

Maybe he'd make an effort not to fight this guy.

He jumped to the ground, approaching the smirking bastard as unthreateningly as he could. Kamui knew he'd never be as disarming as Sorata, but he could usually manage to say, "I'm not planning to kill you," with his body language. That was good enough for someone who'd spent most of a day putting him through hell. "So are you going to tell me who you are and what I'm doing here?" Kamui growled.

"Me? Oh, I'm nothing important, but you can call me Icchan. And you're here so I can get you ready to use your sword!"

Kamui weighed that answer with a whole shaker of salt and decided not to bite on the obvious lie about being nothing important. "I'm good with swords. I don't need to be a fucking ninja to use a sword I've been using for as long as I've been an officer."

"Oh, not that sword. You're getting a new sword. A you sword. I make them. By the way, I need some of your blood..." Icchan said.

Before Kamui could yell, "Hey!" the bastard was behind him, jamming a needle into his arm. "What?!"

"Sorry I don't have the next challenge ready for you yet. You got through that last one a lot faster than we expected, but I can get the lab set up in no time, don't worry!"

He knew better than to snap that he was more worried about people needing his blood, but that didn't mean he had to take this - even from a possibly superpowered asshole. "I don't need more tests! I need some answers, and some food, and I don't know how long you've had me down here, but you owe me a bed to sleep in, too!"

"A bed? Oh right. You do sleep. I'll make Ogata find one for you. Meanwhile, I can release you onto the food once you finish this over here..." The walls around them rose away from the ground, revealing dozens of terminals filled with blinking lights - most of them operated by what looked like clockwork animals in playing card regalia, and one of them overseen by the lady who'd brought him down here, Hiromi, who'd changed clothes so it had to be the next day. He took his sack of essentials down from the croquet mallet rigging before that disappeared, too.

His tormentor had pulled together a stage filled with toy animals, five barrels, and a very large hookah pipe. Kamui didn't even want to know what it was for. He stayed a good yard back with his pack slung over his shoulder while the man who called himself Icchan looked him over - naturally, balancing a toy bread-and-butterfly on one finger. "Hmm. No. That absolutely won't do. Step on over, step on over... do I need to use the magic word?"

"What won't do?"

"We need to teach you how to hide things," he said, depositing the bread-and-butterfly in the infinitesimal non-space between his hand and his cuff. The toy was utterly gone. "... Or you'll stick out like a sore thumb at the food court. Come on! I promise this one won't hurt!"

"Excuse me if I don't believe you!" Kamui glanced at the red cartridge belt around his hips that'd come with the black ninja bodysuit. "It's the same as shadow walking, right?" He weighed his bag, filled with clothes, boots, his hat, his sword, and a magic writing pad no one would get their hands on, and measured that bulk (plus his pride) against the day-empty growling in his stomach. What the hell - as long as he was beating ninja at their own games, he channeled the feel of going immaterial in a shadow as he shoved his pack at a cartridge opening.

He was as surprised as anyone would be when it went in, but kept his face steeled in a look of defiance as he stared down Icchan. No weakness, even before a possible demigod.

The man stared back for a frozen moment. Then, with a shrug, he said, "Okay then," and opened a door in the stage backdrop. It looked down an alley at a line of festival food stands.

Bustling with ninja.

"What?" Kamui backed away a step. "You can't send me back to that goddamned ninja festival!" Even though he had money to pay for food, that'd be suicide, and probably multiple counts of murder.

Without warning, Icchan was behind him again, adjusting his glasses to peer at Kamui's arm. "No, no, no, you're perfectly right. Perfectly right, I can't do that. Yet. Ogata! Ogata, where are you? I need the thing!"

"Here, sir!"

A man who looked near tears ran in across the room. From the way he was panting, it looked like he'd been running a very long way. He had a scrap of pink cloth in his hand, which Icchan snapped up to fasten around Kamui's arm.

"You were late, Ogata. Your punishment this time is the frog costume - with pudding in the feet and hands - for the rest of the day. Also, would you find this young man a bed?"

"... Yes, sir."

Kamui gaped as the assistant actually pulled a frog costume and a pitcher of vanilla pudding out of his pockets. And poured the pudding into the costume. Was it possible he'd found someone whose life was worse than his own?

"Now, Kamui-san, you're all set for the festival," Icchan said. While he'd been distracted, the asshole had led him to the door. "That badge marks you as a competitor, so no one can kick you out (unless you kill somebody) and the food stalls'll give you whatever you want. Your meal awaits! Grab your destiny with both hands!"

"What?"

He felt a boot to his behind and landed in the alley outside, suddenly aware that he was clad in nothing but skin-tight fabric that he would have previously considered long underwear. He turned to stop the door from closing, but all he saw was a stone wall with one end of a balloon arch tied to a bracket. Icchan's loathsome face peeked around the balloon strings.

"And be back before dark, would you? We have more tests to run."

Then he disappeared.

And all Kamui could do was face down a street full of fucking ninja who were staring at him as if they'd never seen a man appear out of nowhere before, which was a load of fucking bullshit because they were ninja, goddamn it.

"What?!" he growled at them, and stalked toward the nearest place with sandwiches.

~/~

The Great Hall simmered with teams setting up their egg drop machines - more shapes and sizes of gizmo than Sakura had ever dreamed of. The wall of spinning wheels and ramps and pistons and trampolines and such that she and Syaoran had built was out of this world for sure (she still thought the work Syaoran had done on timing the fuses was genius), but there was such chaotic variety spread out all around them! Machines that nearly reached the towering ceiling, machines made on landscaped garden platforms with bubbling brooks like they'd grown the parts from seeds... As she fished one of their precisely cut ropes from their prep box, Sakura marvelled at the room around her.

The closest machine to them was England's, already set up and whizzing, and when she looked over, that Hiiragizawa person who'd built it was looking back with a broad smile and a wave. Over to the left, a girl with a gray Chevrolet armband wound up clockwork teddy bears to crank her mechanisms. By the windows, three cute girls from Kia - one with braids, one with glasses, and one with her hair curled just so - placed panels that spun when the light hit them. Sakura kind of felt bad for Ogata-san in the corner with his pneumatic tubes, though. The machine was working fine, but he was wearing a frog costume, which meant something must have happened with the mysterious Icchan-san who Empress Kendappa said lived in her basement. But if he was at the festival, maybe Sakura could see him for once! Although, right now Kendappa-san was right next to Ogata-san, setting her blown glass funnel on a gold-trimmed sandalwood base with Tomoyo's help, so Sakura wasn't about to go ask.

On their own machine, Syaoran laid his fuses down their channels so his match strikes would set off the fireworks and bombs and stuff. Sakura was just as careful hooking her length of rope from the top pinwheel to the egg elevator below. Even though Hiiragisawa-san was watching her again (which was a little nervous-making, the way he could stare), she kept her hands steady. The slightest miscalibration could cause a disaster (or at least a failed egg drop). Since they might never come back in her lifetime, they only had one shot to do their best.

Her fingers brushed Syaoran's as he finished with one of the fuses. Her stomach jumped in that way she was sure real princesses' stomachs never did. Tomoyo's definitely wouldn't. They both paused. Somehow, Sakura knew Syaoran was deciding if he should pull back, just like she was. Probably because he'd barely said three words to her since yesterday, and he'd turned all red and blushy again. So she decided and acted in the same instant, clasping his hand and pulling it so they faced each other properly.

"This machine is amazing, Syaoran. I'm so glad I could work on it with you."

"Princess Sakura..." He turned so red that, for a second, even the air around him looked like it was blushing. "I... um... The... pleasure is all mine."

"And Meiling-chan seems nice. If you want to have her over-"

"I don't want-" He never raised his voice, but still his tone popped like a cork on a shook-up bottle, and then he clammed it all up again. Syaoran bit his lip, then let her hand go to work on another fuse. "My apologies, Princess. I didn't mean... That is, of course I will extend your invitation to my cousin. I'm sure Meiling will be delighted you want to see her."

"What I want is for you to call me Sakura. Just Sakura." She probably shouldn't have asked, but the zingy, tight feeling when Syaoran didn't say 'fiancée' made her feel like maybe she could. And at least now he met her eyes like he always did. Syaoran even looked like he was about to say something when a voice broke in behind them.

"Pardon me, sir... My Lady..."

It was the boy from England, with the glasses and the friendly smile, bowing like they were at court.

"Hiiragizawa-san?"

"Please, my dear Princess- May I call you Sakura?" She nodded, not quite sure what else to do. "Then, Sakura-chan. I'd prefer if you called me Eriol. I hope we'll be very close."

"E-Eriol-kun. How may I help you?"

He knelt in front of her and took her hand. In that instant, Syaoran snapped into a stance like he was bodily restraining himself from attacking, but Eriol-kun gave no notice. Nor did he look upset when Sakura let out an, "Eep!" and pulled back her hand on reflex.

"Sakura-chan, may I request the pleasure of your company for a stroll around the gardens this evening? I want to show you the lovely view of the moon from the lily path. Just the two of us."

"Her Highness goes nowhere without my protection," Syaoran spat, stepping forward.

Eriol-kun only smiled. "I believe my question was for Sakura-chan."

Sakura interrupted before Syaoran could stick his neck any further out. "The thing is, umm... I kind of got kidnapped last month, so my friends are all worried about me, and even though I'm sure you wouldn't... I mean... well..." She squeezed Syaoran's hand, and a little tension dropped from both their shoulders. "I don't want to worry them by going off alone with someone I just met. And I guess I wouldn't want to trouble you if someone-"

"You could never be any trouble-!"

"Oh, goodness!" Tomoyo broke in. She managed to flutter up to Eriol-kun's side without even looking like she'd been running, although Sakura figured she must've been. "We have a visitor from England! Wherever are my manners?"

"Your Highness Princess Tomoyo. I didn't mean to disturb you. I merely stopped to ask if I might invite your dear Sakura-chan for a more friendly visit." Looking at Syaoran, he grinned. "I've always found the direct approach is best for communicating my feelings."

Ignoring Syaoran's growl, Tomoyo answered, "Well, certainly you must join us all for dinner tonight. I'll see that our chefs prepare their very best."

"You're too kind, Your Highness."

Tomoyo smiled her bright, impossible-to-argue-with court smile. "Now, didn't you have something else on your own machine to set up?" she asked, glancing at the hexagonal tower full of spinning helicopter hooziwhatsits that sat under England's pennant. "Or should I assume you're here to tamper with my ward's machine?"

Just like you couldn't argue with Tomoyo when she was pleasant in that particular way, you couldn't be mad at her either, and Eriol-kun didn't seem like he wanted to try. He took another bow. "I wouldn't dream of it. This evening then," he said, and walked away.

While Tomoyo waved him off, Syaoran turned in the soldier-still way he always did when he was embarrassed, and squeezed her hand tight enough to hurt - until he noticed he was doing it and let go in a flurry.

"I... umm... ah..."

"Huh?"

"I can walk in gardens!" he blurted.

Sakura blinked. "What?"

"If... if you like moons... I mean..."

Silence weighed on Sakura wondering what he meant, and Syaoran's blush turned to sweatdrops on his brow. But just as she was about to ask if he was offering to take her to look at the moon, the proctor called out, "Li Syaoran of Malvek team 2, please report to the judge's table to certify your egg. Li Syaoran, Malvek team 2."

"My apologies, Princess. I'll only be a moment."

"I-it's fine. And moons are... pretty."

Which they were. But it wasn't really what she'd meant. But what she meant, she didn't quite know the words for, and boy was she glad Tomoyo was there to hug her once Syaoran left. Yesterday and today had been so weird! But Tomoyo patting her on the head and saying, "There, there," could make everything better.

Sakura breathed a finally relieved sigh into Tomoyo's shoulder. She still sensed something not quite right, though, as her friend gasped, "Oh my! What in the world could the beauty pageant committee be doing?" Tomoyo was using her fake-surprised voice, and Sakura didn't know why, but sure enough, Magami-san and Akechi-san from Kragero had come in.

"They must be here for the Impala team," Sakura guessed. She ignored Tomoyo dabbing something cool under her eyes and finger-combing her hair back into order. Tomoyo always did that when she got puffy and messy after almost crying. "The lighter haired boy is so pretty he could be an actor, I'd say." He had to be the best looking of the pink armband people.

"Doumoto-san, you mean?"

"Yeah. And they've picked for all the other teams, right?"

"Actually," Tomoyo giggled, "I understand that Doumoto-san, Sayaka-san, and Kohaku-san are in a three-way run off! The committee hasn't decided."

"But then..." Sakura's words fell away as she saw the two judges head straight toward them. And she thought about the gown Tomoyo had made her, and how even if Tomoyo couldn't always predict all the little things, she could usually get her way. "Ho~eeeeeeeeeeee?!"

Akechi-san and Magami-san stopped beside her with huge smiles, though not quite as sparkly as the glee lighting up Tomoyo's face. The man said, "Sakura-san, I heard we could find you here. Congratulations! You've been chosen to represent Malvek in the beauty contest."

"B-but I can't be in a beauty contest!"

Tomoyo spun her around in a dizzy circle. "Don't worry! I have a baton routine choreographed for your talent recital, and all your clothes ready for final fittings! You'll be perfect. Oh, and Kurogane..." she called out, "It's safe now. You can stop hiding."

As the judges walked away, her friend's ninja stepped out of the shadows, leaning against the wall. "That's a relief."

"But Tomoyo! You and Kendappa-san are both way prettier than me!"

"Nonsense!"

Just then, Syaoran had to walk up with his egg and the egg drop judges, just when she wasn't ready for this at all. "Princess Sakura will be Miss Malvek in the beauty contest?"

She flew up to him, grabbing his shirt with both fists. "Syaoran! Tell them it needs to be someone else!"

"But... I can't..."

"Please! I'll be so nervous on stage like that, and I'm always scraping my knees! I'm just not pretty and lady-like and-"

"Princess..." He held one of her hands with the hand that wasn't holding his egg. "Princess. I can't tell anyone not to pick you. I'm sure the judges see the same things I admire in you. And once you get on stage, you and everyone else will be too pretty to judge on looks. This will be about who can rise to the occasion. There's no one I trust to do that more than you."

"Syaoran..."

"I'll look forward to it."

"Then I'll do my best." She wiped away the tears that had started forming again and flashed him her best grin. The one that always made him turn red no matter how cool he was being. "Now let's see how our egg machine does, okay?"

"Okay."

Still smiling, and only blushing a little, he climbed the stairs behind their machine and placed the egg next to the spring launcher on the top-most level. Once Sakura pulled the release to un-spring the springy bits, off it went, gaining more speed as it rolled down the incline toward the pinwheel. The way it whizzed through to the next level was the same as always, but watching it go in front of the real judges made her heart pitch. She counted off nine flippers, one by one, that the egg hit on the way down, each striking sparks that lit a different fuse, and crossed her fingers that the egg wouldn't break when it bounced off the cushion into the cart. Sometimes if the point end hit, it landed on the cart edge wrong and cracked.

But this time, they were safe. The bounce was perfect, and both the elevator rising towards the spinning wheel and the first fuse's timing were perfect, too. The fuse burned through the rope just fast enough to drop the egg in front of the piston when the second fuse set it off. From here, they were home free! The bounce into the falling net had never failed, and the flash fire to burn it off worked like a charm. Sakura danced in place watching the egg spin around the loop-de-loop. Next, it'd tip the see-saw and roll down...

It didn't roll down. Instead of running out of momentum against the curve of the tipping plate, the egg kept going up. It shot straight out the side of the machine, the complete wrong direction for hitting the trampolines they'd spaced out so carefully or the bounce board or the tubes or anything! Dashing for the egg, Sakura caught it just as Syaoran appeared to catch it, too, and they both turned to see the final gate rise on its pulley ropes and the fireworks go off without any egg for them to celebrate dropping.

"What the-?"

"Let me test one thing, Princess?" Syaoran asked, taking the egg. As she nodded, he set the egg on the nearest table and set it spinning. It spun around and around and around in a blur, steady as a top. Syaoran frowned with his brows in deep furrows. "Well, now I know what happened, but not how it happened." He looked at the judges. "I'd like to see the Chairman."

"All competitors results are final."

"I won't be challenging the results. I only want to bring this to his attention."

~/~

The egg Li-san provided spun on the judge's table and Suoh tracked it with ever more dissatisfaction. Like the one that'd fallen from the water screw he'd built with his mother, the wobble that liquid inside the shell would create was nowhere to be seen. "You're right. This is hard boiled. It was raw when you signed it out, and you had it in your possession throughout?"

"I did."

Again, the same as his own egg.

"No chance whatsoever that someone could have switched eggs with you?"

"None. You can see my signature on the end of the shell. It's my handwriting. To do that to an egg without any of us seeing..." the boy said, nodding at the royal party, including an annoyed Kurogane and the Dreaming Princess Tomoyo looking like she hadn't foreseen this, "... That's a level of magic higher than any I've known. It never even got hot."

Suoh kept all of his sympathies off his face, but he felt for the group's concerns. He had them himself. There was something unnerving and wrong about the situation. It was his policy never to ignore instincts like that. But something as otherwise harmless as a hardboiled egg...

Ijyuin gasped, "Does that mean someone's invented a cold-boiled egg?!" and examined the evidence more closely, practically glowing. "I've never seen one before!"

Luckily for all their dignities, the Chairman plucked the egg off the table. "I'll need to have our researchers test this at once to see if chemicals or salts were applied to the shell, or anything else we can trace. With luck, we'll be able to identify a source. My office will consider further measures after we identify the tamperer and his or her motives. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Please, enjoy the rest of the festival. We'll see to this. You have my word."

The Malvek party bowed and took their leave, far more graceful about the failure of their machine than some others had been today. Still, there were prying ears in the area. Suoh whispered in the Chairman's ear in the lowest of voices.

"Sir, perhaps it would be prudent to place Yudaiji under surveillance given his history as a saboteur, particularly in situations under your authority."

"Yudaiji Idomu-kun? I hardly think so. He and I resolved our differences."

It was true, Suoh had to admit. He remembered in painful clarity the tearful scene of Nokoru forgiving Yudaiji for attempting to kill him, and Yudaiji forgiving Nokoru in turn for his entirely imaginary slights. As if that mattered. "With all due respect, Chairman, you and Yudaiji have 'resolved your differences' every time you've met. By the next time you meet, he's always reverted to killing you and destroying everything you love in retribution for his mother smiling at you one time when you were six. He's not stable."

The wordless wince on the Chairman's face was all the approval Suoh needed. Nokoru knew he was right. He didn't want to admit it, but he knew it.

"Just remember, Suoh: I don't want him killed, or detained without hard proof of wrongdoing. He's a guest as well as a friend."

"Of course, sir."

They broke off the conference as Ijyuin greeted another contestant approaching the judging table - one of Yudaiji's team members from Civic, to judge by his white armband. His face wasn't one Suoh had seen often, but the gentleman's name was Nagumo Shinji, if he wasn't mistaken. At present, Nagumo-san had his eyes narrowed at Suoh and the Chairman as if he'd heard the whispers about his teammate, but if he had, he made no mention of it. Instead, he held up yet another egg.

"May I bring a tampering incident to your attention?" Nagumo-san asked.

Would Yudaiji have gone so far as to sabotage his own team's members?

It was Yudaiji, Suoh thought with a sigh. Of course he would.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: If you'd like to see the designs for a handful of the machines in the egg drop contest, including Syaoran and Sakura's, the sketches are available on my Dreamwidth journal.

Also: You may have noticed a character named Kudou Yukiko, from CLAMP School Detectives, who appeared in the epigraph for this chapter (although she is not scheduled to appear in the fic in any substantive way). Given recent developments in Drug & Drop, this week I invested in a Japanese copy of the CSD manga so that I could check the kanji in her name. Those kanji are 工藤, not 栩堂 (the kanji for the Kudou name in Legal Drug, Drug & Drop, and WISH). As such, this character will never come out of the woodwork in my fic as yet another branch on Kazahaya and Shuuichirou's family banyan tree. I make no promises for anything CLAMP will do (although in this case, I do think she was a purely one-off character.)