Chain Messages and Strange Looking Fruits

The path certainly wasn't a path like those man-made cemented ones in the Capital. It could even barely be called a path, it being narrow, so narrow that they could only walk in a single file (with some difficulty), and muddy. Tree branches and thorns from both sides scratched the tennis players as they squeezed through.

Niou, who was in the lead, pushed a few broad leaves away, cringing when he felt the stickiness from a spider web on his face. Poking his head through the gap, he looked left and right.

It all looked the same.

What would you expect from a forest?

Marui poked Niou in the ribs and the silver head frowned, twisting his body around to growl at the red head.

"Why did you stop?" Marui asked, ignoring Niou's growl.

"The path ends here."

"What do you mean?"

"Look." Niou shifted a little, wincing when a sharp thorn poked him in the leg, through his pants. Marui stepped forwards and peered through the gap that Niou had made earlier.

"Eh, you're right." Marui pulled his head back and stared blankly at Niou.

"There wasn't even a path in the first place," Kirihara mumbled, wriggling his nose in disgust at the sight of his favourite tennis shoes being soiled.

"There was so!" Marui exclaimed, pointing behind him, nearly stabbing Kirihara's eye out.

"WATCH IT SENPAI!"

"Guys, guys, stop it." Jackal squeezed in between Kirihara and Marui. How he did that was a mystery, as there was practically no space for the Brazilian to move from behind Kirihara to the front of the younger boy. Marui huffed and folded his arms across his chest. "Don't butt in idiot."

Jackal jerked backwards, nearly hitting Kirihara in the head and the younger boy ducked. When the Brazilian moved out of Kirihara's way, the curly haired boy stood up and muttered under his breath, "Senpai-tachi all just want to kill me don't they?"

In front of him, Jackal and Marui were arguing about who was more of an idiot – Jackal using the words, "Bubblegum idiot," and Marui retorting with, "Bald idiot."

At the back of the line, Sanada whispered to Yukimura, "Are we still continuing?"

Yukimura nodded a few times before tapping Yanagi on the shoulder. "Sanada is asking whether we're still continuing."

"Yu-yukimura!" Sanada raised his eyebrow. What in the world was Yukimura doing?

Yanagi eyed the two before turning his head around, this time, tapping Yagyuu on the shoulder. "Seiichi informed me that Genichirou is asking whether we're still continuing our long journey through this narrow and muddy path, I'm assuming that we're meant to pass this on."

Yagyuu nodded and leant forwards, whispering into Kirihara's ear. "Yanagi-kun told me that Yukimura-kun had informed him that Sanada-kun was asking whether we're still continuing our trek through this narrow and muddy path because he is probably tired and wants to rest, therefore, he is asking whoever at the front this question."

Kirihara made a weird expression and said, "What?"

Yagyuu sighed and placed his hand on his forehead, before repeating, "Yanagi-kun told me that Yukimura-kun-"

"I got that senpai," Kirihara interrupted.

"Then Akaya-kun, would you just pass on the message? It's not very nice of us to leave Sanada-kun hanging like that."

Kirihara rolled his eyes before mumbling, "Whatever, fukubuchou can wait for life for all I care. He never lets me rest when I was tired during tennis practice, in fact, he made me run even more laps."

"Akaya-kun…" Yagyuu's tone changed and Kirihara gulped. It was never a good thing to get Yagyuu angry. The gentleman may not seem like the type, but when he got mad… Oh, he got mad. He could even be worse than angry Niou and angry Sanada combined. An angry Niou when woken up in the morning was as scary as a lion protecting her cubs, and Sanada was equivalent to a fire-breathing dragon good mood or not.

Nodding a few times furiously, Kirihara pulled Jackal by the arm, breaking up his and Marui's argument and whispered into the Brazilian's ear, "Yagyuu-senpai told me that Sanada-fukubuchou is tired and wants to rest, stupid lap assigning demon dares to complain about being tired? But he doesn't know whether we're still continuing on…I heard narrow, muddy…something. There was also something about Yanagi-senpai and Yukimura-buchou. Oh, and something about the person at the front. Yeah. Oh, and quickly pass this along because Yagyuu-senpai is angry."

"What's that about?" Marui asked, curious.

Jackal gave one last stare at Kirihara, who shrugged and pushed him towards the red head. Jackal then sighed and whispered into Marui's ear.

"What are you doing?" Marui asked.

Jackal silenced him with a hiss and passed the message over to the red head.

"What the shit?" Marui asked, after Jackal straightened up. Jackal raised his hands up in the air and shook his head.

"What are you guys whispering back there? I feel left out," Niou drawled.

Marui gave Niou and annoyed look before saying, "Apparently I have to pass this message to you."

"Huh?"

Marui beckoned for the taller boy to bend down and Niou did as told. Marui then passed the message onto Niou, "Apparently Sanada wants to get some relieve time with Yukimura and Yanagi, something about getting muddy in some narrow thing. I don't know, couldn't really understand Jackal. Akaya said something about a lap assigning demon, is he talking about Sanada? Apparently Yagyuu is angry for some reason, so we have to be quick."

When Marui finished, Niou straightened up and the silver head had a confused expression on his face.

"I was just as confused as you are," Marui informed the silver head.

"Is this some kind of chain message?" Niou asked. Marui shrugged. "Because if it is, pass this back down to the end. What. The. Shit? If Sanada wants to get down and dirty in the mud with Yukimura and Yanagi, I don't give a damn. They can do whatever they like. We don't have anywhere to go to right now anyways, since the path's freaking cut off."

"Er…" Marui tried to remember Niou's rant before nodding. Thus, the message was transferred back to Jackal, to Kirihara, to Yagyuu, to Yanagi, to Yukimura and finally, to Sanada. When Yukimura finished telling the vice-captain the message, Sanada's body shook with fury, or was it embarrassment, as his face turned bright red and his cap nearly flew off his head.

"TARUNDORU!"

Flapping of wings could be heard overhead again as birds disturbed from their rest, for the second time that day, flew out of trees.

"NIOU! ARE WE STILL CONTINUING?" he yelled, and Yukimura covered his ears with his palms at the loud volume.

See? Sanada certainly was as loud as a fire-breathing dragon.

.~.

Niou finally decided that he had no idea which way to turn (and also because Sanada was being a lazy douche bag) and led the Rikkaidai regulars out of the narrow and muddy path into a smaller, but circular area in the forest. When the last of the Rikkaidai regulars emerged from the bushes separating the path and the circular area, the eight of them stood in a circle (how else would they stand in a circular area?) and stared at each other with their arms crossed.

"Niou." Sanada glared at the trickster.

"Sanada." Niou mirrored.

"I'm awesome," Marui said all of a sudden, causing the other seven tennis players to stare at him weirdly.

"What?" Marui glanced at each of them. "I'm awesome."

Niou rolled his eyes and continued to glare at Sanada, but the cap wearing vice-captain had his eyes squeezed shut, mind off into la-la land like before.

"Where shall we go now?" Yagyuu asked, breaking the silence. All of them, besides Sanada, turned to look at Yanagi (so, besides Yanagi as well), who was staring intensely at the ground. When the data master looked up, he saw multiple pairs of eyes fixed upon him and lifted an eyebrow.

"What?" he asked.

Yukimura cleared his throat and shook his head. "Sorry, habit."

Yanagi calculated a few data in his head before saying, "You thought that I had the answers again didn't you? The probability of that is 98.5%."

"Yeah, sorry Yanagi, habit," Jackal sheepishly replied. A few mumbles of agreement rose up, and the data master frowned, before going back to staring at the ground, this time, squatting down so that he was closer to it.

"What are you doing anyway, Yanagi-senpai?"

"Collecting data."

Kirihara opened his mouth, and thought for a few seconds, before uttering, "Oh."

"We can always use my genius plan again," Marui suggested, as he twisted his body and plucked a strange looking purple coloured…fruit thing…from a random tree behind him.

"NO!" Kirihara protested. "Never again senpai!"

Snatching the weird object away from the greedy red head, Jackal shook his head and said, "We don't have space to do that. And using such ways is not practical."

"Oh, please, we're in a forest. There are no rules, no laws, no nothing. Who cares what we do," Marui said as he tried to grab that strange looking purple coloured object back from Jackal. The Brazilian chucked the object over his shoulder and Marui pouted.

"Obviously, I care."

"Who cares about that?"

Jackal looked hurt for a moment before deciding to ignore Marui's statement. It was Marui after all. 3 years of being "unintentionally" insulted by the red head was enough for the Brazilian to not take his statements to heart.

Marui twisted around again to pluck another strange looking purple coloured fruit thing from the tree when Niou grabbed him by the waist.

"Hey!" Marui shouted.

Niou kept a firm grip and moved Marui away from that particular tree. "No, you are NOT eating anything weird. If anything happens and you require CPR, I'm not going to be the one to do it."

Marui shoved Niou's hands away and huffed, "I don't need you to give me CPR. I'd rather die than let you give me mouth-to-mouth."

Niou raised his hands up in the air in a surrendering pose and tilted his head. "Okay, I don't care then, go ahead and eat something poisonous like that blue and red spotted mushroom over there."

"Mushroom?! WHERE?!" Marui exclaimed, jumping up and down as he tried to search for the mushroom that Niou was talking about.

"Marui, calm down," Yukimura said. "I don't care if Niou cares whether you die or not, but I would like to see all of us get out of here in one piece, and I do not mean that I'll be carrying a dead body out of this forest."

"But I'm hungryyy…." Marui whined, as he stopped jumping.

"No you're not, you're just greedy," Jackal said.

"Marui probably just wants something to occupy his mouth as he doesn't have a gum to chew on, therefore, he looks for food to satisfy the need to move his mouth," Yanagi piped up, still staring intensely at the ground, however, held between his fingers was a wriggly worm.

Growl.

"Or…Marui really is hungry," Yanagi continued, as he hung the worm closer to his face, observing it.

"…"

"Told you," Marui said.

"…"

"But Yanagi's half right about me wanting something to chew on."

"…I see…"

"So…are we going to eat or what?"

Yukimura looked around and said, "Renji, stand up and stop doing whatever you're doing."

"You seem to love disturbing me when I'm collecting data, Seiichi," the data master said as he stood up, discarding the wriggly worm.

"Sanada, come back to Earth," Yukimura snapped his fingers in front of the vice-captain's face and Sanada blinked, jolting back to reality.

When everyone was paying attention, Yukimura laced his fingers together and had a serious look on his face. "We have a problem. What are we going to eat?"

A real problem indeed.

A/N: Gah, I completely forgotten to write the disclaimer in the first chapter.

Disclaimer: I do not own PoT and this applies for the rest of the story.

Monsters have yet to appear, but they will, oh they will. Don't you just love a game of Chinese Whispers or as I used to call it, Broken Telephone? It always ends up super weird and completely different from the original.