CLAMP School Kurogane
Suwano Kurogane
A first grade student and a Suwa ninja. He was sent by his family to CLAMP school because of a prediction of their resident dream seer Tomoyo that he would find his "one" there. Kurogane is a very talented fighter and athlete despite his age, but is somewhat short-tempered. He believes he is a strong warrior and hates it when he is looked down upon and treated like a child (or a puppy).
Fai D. Flowright
A fifth grade student. He is a foreigner and is reasons for being transferred to the school are not clear. All that is known about his family life is that he was raised by a person named Ashura and Ashura's bodyguard and friend Yasha. Fai is shown to be brilliant in almost all arts from painting to culinary. He is well mannered and appears to be from a well-to-do family.
Imonoyama Nokoru
A sixth grade student and president of the Elementary Student Council. He and Fai are very similar in nature as they are both always ready with a smile and a kind word. He is the youngest son of the head of the Imonoyama zaibatsu. He is very charming and intelligent and is always ready to help a damsel in distress.
Takamura Suoh
Fai's classmate and Nokoru's long-suffering secretary. He is also a ninja and his "one" is Nokoru. He is shy and quiet, except when he is forcing Nokoru to finish his student council paperwork. He is almost always by Nokoru's side. He has a crush on a kindergartner named Nagisa.
Ijyuin Akira
A fourth grade student and Nokoru's treasurer. He is (not so) secretly the thief 20 faces at night. He is very cheerful and seemingly naïve. He always supports Nokoru's exploits and is a very talented chef.
Case 1: Li-sensei's Doppelganger
Part Two
Ninja pride would not permit Kurogane to admit that he had lost the person he was supposed to be shadowing so he didn't ask Nokoru where Li-sensei was. When Suoh tried to contact him, he was too embarrassed to even talk to the older ninja so he gave the communicator pin to Fai who didn't want to leave him alone during the mission.
"Here, you hold on to this and keep tabs on what that president has to say," Kurogane told Fai. "I'll come back here with Li-sensei so stay put."
Fai, surprisingly, obeyed. Kurogane was barely out of earshot when Fai answered a call from Suoh.
As Kurogane ran down the path Li-sensei appeared to have taken, he found himself standing by a crossroad marked by signs that pointed to different key locations in the school. One location was the amphitheatre and it was far off. The thought that there was actually a doppelganger and that Li-sensei was on his way to his doom made Kurogane run faster so that he nearly missed (but still conveniently ignored) the sound of Fai calling out butchered versions of his name.
"Li-sensei!" Kurogane shouted when he found the math teacher on his way to enter the performance area. His trained red eyes quickly scanned the perimeter and found the doppelganger coming out of the amphitheatre. Because the teacher's attention had been stolen by the boy's cry, he managed to avoid his untimely demise by meeting his own doppelganger. "Li-sensei, don't look that way."
"What way?" one thick brown eyebrow rose, confused. But, he kept his eye on the ninja, anyway. By this time, Kurogane was close enough to lunge at the man.
The doppelganger, however, appeared determined to kill the educator and called out to him, "Li-sensei!"
"No!" Kurogane, thinking quickly pulled off his jacket and threw it over the educator's head and knotted the arms together to create a makeshift blindfold. "Don't look at it!" He growled and stood between the two look a likes. This stunned and stopped the doppelganger. "Stay away from him!" He launched an attack.
At that moment, Fai caught up to Kurogane, as well. "Kuro-kiki!" Kurogane did not even slow at the sound of his name, but the doppelganger easily blocked the punch he threw with an almost reflexive defensive kick. "Wait!" the blond was not even winded despite trying to keep up with the smaller and well-trained ninja boy. The Suwano child mentally took note of it and decided that this fact made the fifth-grader a bit more interesting. He pushed those thoughts aside as he realized from that brief exchange that the doppelganger was more than capable of fighting him. Maybe the doppelganger's skills were a reflection of Li-sensei's fighting prowess.
But, Li-sensei could not fight the doppelganger without the risk of looking at it, so it was up to Kurogane to—
"What're you doing, Suwano?" Li-sensei demanded as he removed his blindfold.
"Suwano-kun!" Suoh also came running from the general direction of the student council office. "Please settle down!"
"Manager?" a female voice came from the amphitheatre. "What's going on?"
"It's nothing, Sakura-chan," the doppelganger replied, setting his leg down. He kept his guard up, though, convinced that the little boy with intimidating red eyes was a little bit unsettled.
Said unsettled little boy soon realized that he was in the middle of a very confusing misunderstanding. One that he decided he could have saved himself from had he stayed with the fangirls.
-
"...Suoh finally managed to find out that Kinomoto-san was the doppelganger and quickly contacted us. However, we were too slow in contacting Suwano-kun, so we apologize sincerely for all the trouble we have caused," the elementary student council president finished his story by bowing deeply for the two men who looked exactly alike. Suoh and Ijyuin quickly followed suit. Seeing that Kurogane was still digesting matters and was not as responsive as he usually was, Fai placed a hand on the younger boy's head and guided the two of them to their own apologetic bow.
"Is that what happened?" Li-sensei nodded his head, his expression still stern and directed towards Kurogane as he heard the tail end of Nokoru's explanation of what had happened.
"It's quite amusing, if you think about it," the doppelganger, who was apparently not a doppelganger but rather was Kinomoto Syaoran, the manager/body guard/childhood friend of pop idol Reed Sakura.
Li-sensei kept a neutral face as he said, "But still, people could have been hurt by your rash actions, Suwano." When he saw the look on Kinomoto-san's and Sakura's faces, his eyes instantly softened. "I remember reading that you're part of the Suwano clan and that you're a very strong ninja and not just for your age. You must think before you act."
Kurogane did not rise from his bow so he missed the meaningful exchange of looks between the twins, "Yes Li-sensei, I'm sorry, Li-sensei."
"Perhaps your time away from training is not doing you any good," Li-sensei continued. Fai and Suoh quickly looked up to check the teacher's expression, worried that Kurogane's punishment might be harsher than they expected. When they saw the small smile on the older man's lips, they relaxed. Kurogane was not tempted in any way to read the teacher's expression so again, he was taking the situation a lot more seriously than everyone else. The little boy held his breath. "So, if you will accept it, would you like to be trained by Kinomoto-san and myself here, within CLAMP school?"
Kurogane shot up from his bow and blinked. "Li-sensei? Kinomoto-san?"
"I wouldn't mind having something to do," Kinomoto-san added, glancing over at Sakura. "After all, Sakura wants to stay here in CLAMP school so she can take up Music Theory."
"I will have to ask my father about this," was all could Kurogane say, not truly certain of what was going on. Even after he got his father's approval for supplementary training from the twins, things had not sunk in.
That evening, they were seated in the front row of Sakura's performance and Nokoru leaned over and whispered into his ear, "It has become rather interesting, ne?"
And Kurogane found himself agreeing and deciding that going with Nokoru was not such a bad idea, after all.
-
After Sakura's performance, Fai and Kurogane headed back to the dorms together as the council members claimed to still have business to settle and the three adults went off for a long dinner meant for catching up. As expected, Fai opened the conversation.
"You look less bored," the blond commented, glancing at the younger boy out of the corner of his eye.
Kurogane's red eyes fixed themselves on the stars. "I'm not bored," he confirmed.
"But you were," Fai pointed out. "When I first saw you, when I had lunch with you at that time," he sounded wistful, almost, as he spoke. "You were nothing but annoyed and bored. You weren't happy to be here."
The ninja did not need to be any older to detect the sadness in the older boy and he found himself remembering how Fai cried at night. "You didn't seem happy to be here, either. But, I don't think it's because you were bored like I was."
Fai looked surprised. "Kuro-wanwan is a very smart boy," he managed to recover quickly, sounding teasing.
"It's Kurogane, you idiot!" the first-grader growled.
And they stayed in that mood, Fai teasing and Kurogane getting annoyed, until they parted ways for the night.
-
Author's Notes:
I'm so sorry for not updating. I kinda thought no one was reading this fic so I was ready to drop it. Now that our Net connection's a bit less intermittent, hopefully I can update quicker.
Thanks to all those who reviewed and favorited (is that a word? Let's make it a word) this story. Reviews are always appreciated. Requests are accepted. Flames will be...uhm...read.
Hope you all enjoyed this part.
-paris