Title: Fictional Truth
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: not mine, cool? cool.
"I don't like it." The air was still sticky and humid, even though the sun had set an hour ago. Yagyuu's statement didn't need much of an explanation - Niou felt the same.

"Me neither, but when the three of them decide on something, what can we do?" Niou stuck his hands in his pockets, letting his shoulders curve forward while he walked.

"I just don't buy their reasoning. Our match is scheduled to start before Seigaku's. There's no way they'll finish in time to watch doubles one." Yagyuu kicked at a pebble. Niou wanted to laugh. Yagyuu, frustrated enough to kick a pebble? That certainly wasn't an everyday occurrence. He understood how Yagyuu felt, though. "Yanagi's up to something." When the Master had a plan in mind, no one could avoid being his puppet. Even though Niou could usually read his opponents ten, twenty moves ahead, he never could read into any of Yanagi's plans.

"Isn't he always?" Niou followed Yagyuu up the driveway to his house. They were going to do some homework. Yagyuu didn't allow him a single day's break from doing work, claiming that regularity was the key to understanding and success. He sounded kind of like Sanada when he said things like that, all disciplined and whatnot. It was kind of hot, but Niou didn't tell Yagyuu that - not yet, anyway.

Two hours later, Niou uncrossed his legs and lay back flat on the floor, stretching his stiff and slightly sore limbs. "No more," he whined, curling up onto his side and wrapping his arms around his head. "Tired. Early practice tomorrow."

"Stay over."

"What?" Niou blinked, looking up only to find Yagyuu standing in front of him.

"I'm asking you to spend the night."

Niou rolled onto his back, silently looking up at Yagyuu for a heartbeat, two. "OK."

Aside from pulling out the guest futon for Niou, Yagyuu's parents pretty much left the two of them alone. To their knowledge, it wasn't anything unusual. Niou had stayed over before, when they gotten too into their discussions of tennis and lost track of time. Yagyuu's parents didn't need to know that Niou didn't crawl into the guest futon until dawn, opting instead to spend the night entangled in Yagyuu's arms.

In the morning, as they were changing into their uniforms before leaving for practice, Niou saw an official looking folder on Yagyuu's desk. "What's this, Hiro?"

"Huh? Nothing, that's nothing." Yagyuu's voice sounded weird. Niou picked it up and studied the cover a little more, wishing he paid more attention in English class. "London... School of... Ec..."

"Economics. London School of Economics." The foreign words fell smoothly from Yagyuu's lips as he fixed his glasses. Niou's mouth felt dry. He swallowed and opened up the folder. Yagyuu's neat handwriting stared back at him from the forms inside.

"Are you applying?" Niou stared at the forms, looking at all the perfect scores Yagyuu had filled in for the standard exams. He didn't even know Yagyuu had taken those - when did he have the time to study? It felt almost as though he didn't know the Yagyuu on these papers, as though the application was for another Yagyuu Hiroshi.

"Yes." Yagyuu didn't even pause before answering. It kind of hurt. Niou flipped through the rest of the application before speaking again. It was mostly filled out and ready for submission - it looked like Yagyuu had already planned through the whole thing.

"When were you going to tell me?"

"When it came up."

"In other words, never." Niou closed the folder, setting it back down on the desk.

"I probably won't get in anyway; it's very difficult to get in as an international student, and Japan's a very competitive nation." Yagyuu's words sounded practiced, as though he'd been saying them to himself. It didn't sound like he believed them, though.

"What if you do?"

Yagyuu didn't respond for several minutes. They both knew Niou's questions was valid - Yagyuu's statistics were impressive no matter how you looked at it. Niou's weren't even close - he doubted even Yanagi's numbers were as high as the ones on Yagyuu's application form.

"Forget it. We should go before we're late. We'll talk after practice."

That day, Niou and Yanagi tried playing a practice match against Sanada and Yagyuu, with Yukimura, Jackal, and Marui all looking on. "Six-games-all! Tiebreak!" The referee was a second-year who was far too afraid of calling any of the outs and really just relied on Yukimura's signals to actually make calls.

Niou wiped some sweat away from the nape of his neck. He hated to admit it, but Yanagi was a better player than Yagyuu or himself. He and Yagyuu never could tie with the Sanada-Yanagi pair; switching the pairings was kind of like a balancing of powers. That was why Yanagi, Sanada and Yukimura had been Regulars since summer of their first year, but he and Yagyuu had only gained their spots at the end of their second year - their levels were too different.

That was also why he and Yagyuu first started playing doubles, actually. They used to specialize in singles as well. When it became obvious that singles would be locked up for the next three years though, Niou had propositioned to Yagyuu that they form a doubles team. The rest is, as they say, history. He didn't want to think of that partnership ending - certainly not as soon as the end of Nationals. Suddenly, the finals were close, too close. He wanted more games before the finals. That was why Yagyuu was more upset by having to play singles in the semifinals than Niou had been. Niou bent, staring across the net at Yagyuu, who was preparing to serve.

"Stop." Yukimura walked onto the court, stopping Yagyuu just as he tossed the ball in the air. "I've seen enough - this is definitely the pairing we're going with in the semifinals. Niou, Yagyuu, help Jackal and Marui practice returns. Renji, Genichirou, I want to speak with you."

Niou grabbed his water bottle and took a quick gulp, his eyes never leaving the trio as they stood off to the side, no doubt discussing something about lineups. "Helping" Jackal and Marui practice meant feeding them balls, sometimes several at once, and calling out what shots they should be returned with. "That corner." Niou pointed at a spot to his left before hitting three balls in quick secession at Jackal. "Cross, cross, smash." Jackal performed the demanded shots with perfect accuracy.

By the time Yukimura returned, Sanada and Yanagi flanking him like a guard, Niou had already gone through his basket of about a hundred balls. Jackal hadn't missed a single shot - he was in top form. Nationals had better watch out; Rikkai was coming with all its power. As they watched, Yanagi climbed into one of the referee chairs. Yukimura and Sanada each picked up their rackets.

"Is this going to be an actual match?" Jackal spoke the very words Niou was wondering. Yukimura had rallied a couple times, but if Yanagi was reffing, it was probably going to be an actual game. Yukimura hadn't played a full set in a long time, and his first opponent was going to be Sanada?

There was one thought on everyone's mind as the game began. "Is Yukimura recovered enough for that?"

Fifteen minutes later, there was not a doubt left in any of their minds. "Shit." Niou's mind was still reeling from the match they'd just seen and couldn't think of anything more eloquent to say. He remembered learning something about how absence made the heart grow fonder because as the memory forgets, the mind replaces with idealizations. Either that was false, or Yukimura had improved more than Niou could imagine.

"Ditto." Marui, apparently, was in much the same speechless state.

"Fukubuchou got owned."

Out of the corner of his eye, Niou caught Kirihara licking his lips, his eyes shining with a flame that hadn't been there since the previous year, when he'd lain, defeated, on the courts in front of a strong and fully healthy Yukimura.

"Who told you guys to stop practicing?" Yukimura didn't even sound winded.

"Yes, Yukimura-buchou!" If it were possible, the already intense training became even more intense. Far from letting the relax, Yukimura's return only fired up the will in all of them to be even stronger as a team. They would win Nationals three years running. They would, because they were Rikkai.

He just didn't want to think of it as the last time they'd win as Rikkai.


>. I like sending Yagyuu out of Japan. This actually wasn't supposed to come up until later in the fic, but I needed it here for the pacing. Meh.