Mirror, Mirror
Summary: Fuji falls through a mirror one day and lands in a complete different world. Sometimes, while doing a favor for someone else, you realize that they're actually doing a favor for you.
Warnings: Shounen-ai
Pairings: Atobe x Fuji
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis is not mine.
NUUU! This chapter is a bit shorter than the other ones, but the next one will be long; I promise. Thanks a lot to all my readers and reviewers! I owe you guys a lot! Please read, review, and enjoy!
Chapter 5: The Plan to Get Fuji Back:
"He's asleep!!" Jiroh said repeatedly. "I can't believe I actually did it!"
Yukimura smiled. "Now that he's asleep, we need him to dream of something…this is where you come in, Yuuta."
The younger Fuji brother (though not in this world) was sitting in another corner of the room, scowling with his arms crossed. "No way," he said.
Yuuta's special power worked in harmony with Jiroh's. His power was to make anyone dream of anything, and as long as they were asleep, he could keep them dreaming for however long he wanted, and he could also do other things at the same time. If his target was dazed enough, he could even make them dream while they were awake. Yuuta was able to keep someone asleep, as long as they were dreaming, and he was able to keep them dreaming for much longer than Jiroh was able to keep them just asleep without dreaming. So technically, Yuuta needed Jiroh's power for his own to work, and Jiroh needed Yuuta's power, or else the person would wake up after a short while, especially if they were in another world.
"Pleeeaaasseee????" Jiroh pleaded. Yuuta shook his head again and Jiroh sighed. "If we don't hurry, then he's going to wake up soon!!!"
"Who told you I cared if he woke up??" Yuuta asked. "If you're going to make a plan to get him to come back, can't you just make one that doesn't involve me?"
"But when people dream, they remember it the most!" Jiroh said.
Then, Yukimura stepped into the banter. "I have a good means of convincing him," he said calmly and gestured over to where Atobe was standing. "Help us now or the cloak gets it."
Sure enough, Atobe held Yuuta's cloak in his right hand with two steady fingers and it was dangling into a ball of fire in his left hand. "How the hell did you get my cloak?! I was wearing it two minutes ago!!" Yuuta shouted, jumping up and racing over to Atobe to try and retrieve the cloth.
"Secret," Yukimura said and smiled sweetly. "Oops, looks like it's already singeing a bit on the bottom." Each prince had their own special cloak that was made for them when they were young, awaiting a time when they reached the age of thirteen when they would get to wear it. Each cloak had the prince's initials on it, and it had a symbol that was unique on every cloak. If the cloak got damaged in any way, it was very expensive to get it fixed, and though the boys were princes, and they could very well afford it, their parents would probably kill them for it.
"Give it back!" Yuuta shouted. His arms flailed wildly around to try and grasp the cape, but Atobe only swung it out of his reach every time the younger boy came close.
"Not until you help us," Yukimura said. Finally giving up after many futile attempts, Yuuta sighed and sat back down.
"Fine." He closed his eyes. "What do you want him to dream about?"
Yukimura smirked. "Let's see…"
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All Fuji saw was black. Why had he just fallen asleep? He had been very sleepy very suddenly, and there had been no reason for it. Now, he was wide awake. He tried to wake up, but he found that he couldn't open his eyes. What was going on? He had never fallen asleep like this, actually knowing that he was asleep before. He tried to gather bits and pieces of what had just happened in his mind. As he thought more, the more awake he became, and yet, as hard as he tried, he couldn't open his eyes.
Suddenly, his vision came back, but he wasn't in Seigaku, or any school, or even Tokyo. In fact, he didn't know where he was. All he saw around him was grass and a bright blue sky. He was sitting down, and finally, after a while, he saw a figure walking toward him. He recognized the figure; it was Atobe, but he wasn't wearing a Hyotei uniform, or even something Fuji would figure he'd find in his closet. He was wearing clothes that Fuji had seen before…a white cloak lined with gold…he was wearing the clothes from the mirror world!
How could he ever forget the mirror world if things kept coming back to him? How had he ended up here? He had never even been outside of the castle in the mirror world, besides to the extent of the balcony, if that counted. And what Fuji saw from there, though it was nighttime, wasn't exactly matching what he was seeing here. From his day and a half experience in that world, he hadn't seen a sunny day. He knew he shouldn't judge the climate from only a day and a half's stay, but even then, it made him wonder if they even had sunny days.
Atobe seemed to spot Fuji then and extended a hand to him. "Come back to our world," he said.
Fuji looked up at Atobe, for he was still sitting in the grass, dumbfounded. "I—I can't," he said. "I'm not even in your world now…"
"That's why I, no, we want you to come back," Atobe said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"I don't belong there," Fuji said. "I'll be a bother to you guys…"
"Have we said that before? Have we even implied that you were a bother? At all?"
Fuji shook his head.
"You're our guest, Fuji. No, you're part of our family. You're welcome any time. We want you to come back."
Fuji reached up slowly to grasp Atobe's hand, but then he remembered the curse and jerked back. "…" Fuji said.
"Go ahead, take my hand."
Fuji reached up again and took hold of Atobe's hand. He actually took hold of it!!! Fuji was shocked, and his hand felt warm in Atobe's slightly cool hand. Atobe smirked, and that was the last thing he saw before something cold and wet hit him in the back.
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Fuji's eyes snapped open. A dream? Of course it was. He should've known better than to believe Atobe had actually weaved a way out of the curse. But why had he dreamt about that? Of all things, seriously.
Now, to focus his attention on the coldness that had just hit his back. He turned around with a sweet smile plastered on his face, though fully false. He saw Eiji grinning at him, a water bottle in hand. Fuji's back and the back of his shirt were soaked.
"Finally! You woke up!" Eiji said. "I knew it would work, nya! Seiichi always did that to me to wake me up."
"Seiichi?" Fuji questioned.
"Uhh…I mean, Yukimura!"
Fuji looked at his friend. "And what kind of relationship do you have exactly with him?"
"We're cous—I mean…I see him around sometimes." Eiji quickly changed the subject. "Anyway, you were sleeping for, like, the whole day, nya! You fainted in the morning, and I took you to the nurse's office, and you slept in there for a while. Then, after school, I took you to the clubroom to see if you'd wake up during practice, and you didn't, so I finally just poured water on your back. And that woke you up!"
Fuji's thoughts were automatically diverted from 'Seiichi'. "I was sleeping that long?" he asked.
Eiji nodded his head. "Did you sleep at all last night?"
"Yeah," Fuji replied. "I had a pretty good sleep, too. It's not like I woke up or anything. I just felt really sleepy all of a sudden this morning, when I was walking to school with you."
"That's strange," Eiji said.
"Yeah, it is," Fuji agreed.
"But anyway, you should go home and get some rest. I can't go home with you today because Tezuka told me to lock up, nya."
"I'm quite awake now, thank you very much," Fuji said, glaring at Eiji for a moment. "I'll stay with you."
"No! I mean, it's okay, you should just go home."
Fuji shrugged and left. Everything was a bit strange today, anyway.
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Shizuma looked into the crystal ball that was mounted on a cherry oak stand. "He's finally gone," she said, and all the princes gathered around here, except for Eiji. "How did it go?" she seemed to ask the crystal.
The image of Eiji in the sphere grinned like a cat. "Well! He slept all day! And he doesn't suspect a thing! What did you guys make him dream about??"
"Keigo," Yukimura said, and Eiji snickered.
"Good job, Yuuta!" Eiji said.
Yuuta just scowled and held on to his cloak tighter, which was now safely wrapped around his shoulders.
"How did you get over there, anyway, Eiji?" Oshitari asked the crystal ball. "I missed the whole thing."
"Oh, that's easy!" Eiji said. "I teleported here!" Eiji's power was teleportation, and he could teleport anywhere he wanted, as long as he could picture the place in his mind. If he couldn't picture the exact place, then he couldn't teleport there. If he just thought of street names and/or addresses, then he couldn't teleport there. He had just recently, like many of the other princes, been practicing his power a lot, and he had learned how to teleport to the other world and join with his body in Fuji's world. He could only do this because Shizuma had seen Fuji's face and now she could see where he was at any given time. She could also see a bit of the area around him, so Eiji just pictured that place and he was there. But he couldn't bring the body back into the mirror world without the orb.
"Oh, I see," Oshitari said. "Literally." Oshitari's power was that he could see anything or anyone's thoughts at the moment, as long as he could see their face. He could also see their feelings, their body temperature, their birthday, and their height and weight. He just had to be seeing the person's face at the moment. If part of the face was covered, then he could still see it, but the more of the face that was covered, the less he could see. If the eyes were covered, he couldn't see the person's thoughts, if the nose was covered, he couldn't see the person's birthday, if the forehead was covered, he couldn't see the temperature, if the cheeks were covered, he couldn't see the person's height and weight, and if the mouth was covered, he couldn't see their feelings. Also, if the person was facing away from him, then he couldn't see anything, and if he could see the person's profile, then he could only see half, naturally. His power had a lot of limitations, but it was a great power to have, and very convenient, which was why it had so many restrictions.
"Do you think he'll come back now?" Jiroh asked.
Yukimura smiled. "Not quite yet. We need to bother him some more. Or perhaps scare him."
"Scare him?!" Eiji shouted from the crystal ball. "If we scare him, then he'll never come back!!!"
"Relax, Eiji. What I meant by 'scare' was to have some strange phenomenon occur that will remind him of this world. I'm not going to scare him out of his wits."
"Oh," Eiji said and sighed. "That's good, nya. But who are you going to use for this one?"
Yukimura once again smiled. "That's simple. I'll do it myself. I've been practicing, too, you know."
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Fuji walked along the cement sidewalk in the sunset. He loved walking home in the sunset, because it was always so beautiful, and it was nice to see it every single day. Plus, it provided him with inspiration for projects. If he had a creative assignment to work on and he couldn't think of anything, while walking home in the sunset, something would always come to him. But today, that wasn't exactly what he was thinking about. Why had he dreamt of Atobe? And why had he been able to hold his hand? Fuji kept telling himself to ignore it and forget it, but somehow, he couldn't. He knew that anything could happen in dreams, but there was something about this dream that made it a bit different.
As if to heighten the strangeness of that day, a drop of water fell on to Fuji's head at that moment. He turned around, but there was nobody there. The sun was still shining, or setting, brightly. There should be no possibility, absolutely none, of rain. Yet Fuji felt another drop on his head, and he turned around once again so that he was facing the direction he had originally been facing.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a raindrop hit the ground. But instead of making one dark circle in the cement, the raindrop started sliding across the cement, leaving dark spots as it went along. Fuji looked close, and indeed, he saw that it was spelling something.Please come back, my, no, our little Fujiko was exactly what it read. Fuji was thinking that he was insane. Perhaps it was all a dream. Maybe he was living a dream right now. He bolted on the spot, running all the way home, and surprisingly, not one drop of rain fell again on him.
Running inside, he slammed the door shut and locked it, since no one was home except for him. He ran up to his room and sat down on his bed, resting his head in his hands. He wasn't crying, because he wasn't really distressed or anything, but more like overwhelmed. One day, he just falls into a mirror, leaves, and then the next day, strange things start happening. What was going on? Fuji looked at the mirror quizzically at first, but then his look turned dark. To anyone, it looked like a normal mirror, but Fuji would never look at mirrors the same way again.
Fuji stood up, grabbed a blue sheet from his closet, and draped it over the mirror. Looking at it, he now couldn't see the mirror underneath. For all he knew, he was terrified of it. But he still had a feeling about the mirror, something that terrify could not even come close to describing. He glanced at the mirror once more, and then ripped the sheet off violently. He raised his hand back into a fist, and swung it at the mirror as hard as he could, not caring if it would hurt his hand.
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"AAAAH!!!!" Shizuma cried as loud as she could, in horror, disgust, and surprise. "HE'S GOING TO BREAK IT!!!!"
The cousins ran to the crystal ball again and peered into it curiously. Their faces showed exactly the same things that Shizuma's cry resonated. "HE'S GOING TO BREAK THE MIRROR!" she screamed. And to everyone's dismay, his hand was traveling quickly toward the delicate glass object, and they all shouted in astonishment. To them, though, it seemed like it was in slow motion, since every time something terrible like that happened, it always seemed like it was in slow motion.
Suddenly, the cousins heard Eiji's voice ring through the crystal ball. "Relax, everyone; I've got it taken care of." And for all their sakes, they sure hoped to god that Eiji indeed did have it taken care of.
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Fuji's fist flew through the air as fast as his arm could carry it, seemingly accelerating with every bit of resistance the air tried to provide. He was going to destroy that godforsaken mirror once and for all, and completely forget that he ever fell into it. Perhaps his life would be normal again after that.
Fuji gasped in shock as his right wrist, right before his hand came in contact with the glass, was caught. "Sorry, Fujiko; I can't let you do that, nya!" Eiji's excited voice said from behind Fuji.
WHAT?! Fuji thought. How did he get in…?! But then he couldn't think any more as he was roughly pushed into the mirror, and like before, he fell in head first, his arms going forward to catch himself before forcefully hitting the palace's tiled floor.
Is it considered a cliffie? I don't know. xD;; I think every chapter is a cliffie, though, since you always want to know what's going to happen next! Be courteous and review before you fave/alert. Thanks!