Disclaimer: PoT isn't mine. And that's for the better.

A big thank you to everybody who reviewed! It is always a great encouragment to see that people out there enjoy the odd ideas my mind comes up with, so thank you all very much. Once again, I'm sorry for not being able to respond en detail right now, but I hope you'll still enjoy the following chapter (even after the long wait). As for the rest of the fic, right now it looks as if it might end up being around 26 to 28 chapters altogether...

And the showdown is right about to start. ^_~

Fifteen

Monday passed slowly, in a way only a winter day can. Low hanging clouds swallowed what little daylight the season provided, and freezing temperatures brought all superfluous motions to a standstill.

Even though the dim light outside had Tezuka wanting to stay home, he still made his way through snow-covered streets to school. Patches of ice on the sidewalk posed hidden dangers and more than once he found his feet slipping. The bottom part of his trousers was soaked when he eventually entered the dry corridors, silently glad Fuji had remained home.

Fuji had originally intended to accompany him, but both Tezuka and his mother had firmly convinced him not to. Considering that, while temperatures had risen a little – not enough for the ice to melt yet –, humidity levels had gone up as well. The mixture made for nasty weather coupled with a wind that felt far colder than anything Tezuka had experienced before.

Fuji had still been asleep when Tezuka had left, face flushed and breathing heavily. While it was an improvement over the deathly white pallor he had sported all over the weekend, something had constricted in Tezuka's chest. Buried underneath two blankets Fuji looked too frail, too helpless for his comfort, and Tezuka had had to turn away.

His friend was none of those things – countless tennis matches more than proved the opposite. And that was not even considering how Fuji had stood up to the spirit, urged Tezuka not to give in to the spirit's demands, even at the cost of his own life. His friend was everything, but frail and helpless, and Tezuka found he couldn't stand the impression the scene in front of his eyes created.

"You look tired," Oishi told him before class, passing him the books Tezuka had forgotten about. His sudden departure on Saturday had raised a lot of questions among his classmates and teachers, though luckily Oishi had explained everything away by a family emergency.

"Did something happen?"

Tezuka could see the honest concern in Oishi's eyes and had to swallow before shaking his head. He wished he could give Oishi any sort of explanation – he deserved at least that – yet Tezuka found himself incapable of sharing any of his memories.

"Nothing of consequence," he replied with a heavy heart, while images from that fateful night replayed in his mind. Oishi nodded with a small sigh, accepting Tezuka's silent request to let the matter rest.

"We're probably all a bit under the weather," he said, gazing at the number of empty chairs around them, "About half of our class is sick already, I think. And I heard from Eiji that Fuji called in sick as well."

Tezuka straightened instinctively, while Oishi continued. "I hope it's nothing serious, though Fuji wasn't looking too good last time I saw him. On the other hand, after everything that happened last week, it's not much of a surprise either."

Wearily Tezuka turned his eyes away from Oishi and stared at his textbook in an attempt to block out the memories. Oishi probably had no idea what his words were doing to his friend, yet the worried inquiries were bringing back everything Tezuka was desperately trying to forget.

"Say, Tezuka," Oishi hesitantly continued, "It's not my business, so I really shouldn't ask, but … did they figure out what the entire thing with Fuji's locker last week was about? I mean, for a prank it would have been … quite drastic."

Ice slowly spread through Tezuka's veins. The scene of carnage flashed in front of his eyes; the mangled body, the green ribbon tainted brown with blood. He couldn't find his voice to answer Oishi's inquiry, so he merely shook his head and hoped his face didn't mirror his feelings.

A sigh fell from Oishi's lips. "I just hope nothing like this happens again. Poor Fuji, I'd be utterly shocked if something like this happened to me."

Tezuka forced himself to breathe out.

'It's over,' he told himself. Hasegawa had said so. And Fuji had told him to forget about it.

He ought to trust their judgement.

Tezuka turned to Oishi and mustered all the conviction he could find: "True, but I don't think something like this is going to happen again."

Monday, for Fuji, was a slow affair.

He spent most of the morning asleep, though once he woke up, he felt a bit better than the night before. Some of the bone-deep exhaustion was beginning to fade and the sensation of having warm feet for a change put his mind at ease.

For a few, blissful hours he was able to relax and not to think about anything, neither about what had happened the days before, nor about the finals in the near future. The books piled up on Tezuka's desk made his conscience waver, yet he was quite confident he'd be able to decently pass those exams even if he stopped studying completely right now.

He started growing a little uncomfortable in the afternoon. For once he wasn't feeling tired anymore, yet Tezuka Ayana didn't want to see him up, nor doing anything as stressful more strenuous than sitting up. Studying, too, was out of question and Fuji was stuck leafing through Tezuka's collection of recreational literature or, alternately, staring blankly at the ceiling.

By three he'd learned far more about fishing gear than he had ever wanted to know. Furthermore he had realized that Tezuka's taste in recreational reading was fundamentally different from his own. None of the criminal novels sounded too interesting, and the rest of Tezuka's books were far too intellectual to qualify for a relaxing read.

In the next half an hour he contemplated risking a scolding courtesy of Ayana in order to try and hijack his friends' computer. On the other hand, a small voice that sounded suspiciously like Eiji, this was a wonderful opportunity to find out what things Tezuka kept hidden in his drawers and under his bed. Especially the later had already been subject of more than one lively locker-room conversation.

Momoshirou, Fuji soon discerned, would be disappointed. While there was indeed a box filled with magazines under Tezuka's bed, it wasn't hidden or sealed, and neither was its content incriminating in any way. The magazines inside concerned either tennis or mountains. Fuji ended up going through those, studying the photographs and the landscapes. It would be nice to go and take pictures like those, he thought absentmindedly.

Before he noticed it, evening arrived and with it his sister.

Fuji was glad to escape from the watchful eye of Tezuka's mother. He liked her; usually she was a fine ally when trying to tease Tezuka, but she'd been treating him as he was made from glass. He was glad to breathe in the cold air, once he stepped outside.

Still, a small part of him mourned that he had to leave before Tezuka got home.

He would have liked to talk to him. Just have a relaxing chat about school, exams and tennis. Plan interesting matches for those few weeks of the school year they had left – now that Nationals were over, they were more or less free to play as they liked.

Yumiko's silence in the car alone told Fuji that his sister wouldn't be having a simple chat with him.

The moment they got home, Yumiko ordered him to change and get to the living room. A few minutes later she joined him with two cups of tea and an assortment of biscuits. Fuji had made himself comfortable on the couch, while his sister raised an eyebrow.

"Apparently Tezuka-kun and you had quite the weekend," she stated and settled in the armchair next to the couch, "Tezuka-san was a little vague on certain aspects, but I believe I can piece most of it together from what you told me. Though I wish you'd been more careful. Tezuka-san didn't seem very pleased."

Fuji sighed. His sister had always been adamant not to drag anybody uninvolved into affairs of the supernatural – to the point she'd turned making up cover stories into a true art. Until this day their own father had no idea the invisible friends his daughter had always talked about in kindergarten age had been quite real.

"I'm sorry," he wearily said, "I … well, everything turned out far different from what I expected."

"But you said the affair is settled," Yumiko recalled what he'd told her on the phone the night before.

Fuji kept his hands wrapped around his teacup, thankful for the extra warmth. "Yes," he nodded.

"Well, if you say so. Though, if you don't mind, I think I'd like to know the whole story," his sister continued, gauging his condition with a quick glance and deeming him fit for an interrogation, "What you told me across the phone sounded rather odd and from what Tezuka-san told me, I gather nobody but the two of you knows exactly what happened."

Fuji swallowed. The cover story he'd come up with apparently had been an utter failure – and while Tezuka Ayana had warily accepted it, his sister was far less likely to do so.

"The house we went to belongs to friends of Tezuka's grandfather. Their neighbour – Mori-san – had died rather abruptly a few weeks prior and since the area is sparsely populated they were worried about burglars," Fuji heard his own voice turning scratchy and took a sip of the tea, "So they asked Tezuka to go and have a look."

"Those friends of Tezuka's grandfather – mind telling me their names?" Yumiko interrupted.

Surprised Fuji glanced up. "Nakayama."

A humourless smile crossed Yumiko's face. "Thought so," she muttered, and then nodded at her brother to continue with his story.

"When we went to check on that house, I encountered that… thing for the first time. It was testing the wards, then," Fuji said, leaving out his own fainting spell. Though from the way Yumiko tilted her head she had already sensed the hole in his story.

Fuji's fingers tightened around the teacup, forcing himself to carry on with his adapted narrative. "I lost my student ID then, which was why I ended up going back the next day. That was when the spirit took the form of a cat and attacked."

Yumiko nodded thoughtfully. "So that was the first time you actually saw it? As a cat?"

"Yes," Fuji felt a little queasy as his mind easily supplied him with memories of the cat's body, "However that cat was already dead. It belonged to the late Mori-san."

"Who lived next door and also had died," Yumiko thoughtfully repeated, "Are you certain it was the cat? Or just an illusion made to look like that cat?"

"It was the cat," Fuji answered, then started coughing. Yumiko tilted her head, but when her brother failed to offer anymore explanations, she leaned back. "So what happened then?"

After another sip of tea Fuji's throat felt a little less like sandpaper. His voice remained hoarse. "The cat managed to scratch me. I didn't quite realize it then, but apparently my blood sufficed for it to pass the wards around the house."

"What had been the demon's objective at that point," Yumiko concluded, "Care to show me the scratches you got?"

Obediently Fuji pulled back the sleeve of his sweater. Nothing but faint lines were left and Yumiko seemed satisfied. Picking up the teacup she'd set aside earlier, she went on: "But the story obviously doesn't end there. For some reason you encountered the cat's original owner as well, or so you told me."

"Yes," Fuji sighed, "On Saturday it surprised us near school. It had taken the form of Mori-san, though I'm not sure whether that was an illusion or a real body."

"And that encounter near school ties in with the reason how you managed to cover the distance to Nikko in record time, I guess," Yumiko commented, "Tezuka-san has been rather taken aback at how you managed to get there, and yet nobody at school wondered why neither of you turned up."

Fuji glanced away. "I'm not exactly sure how it was done, though it apparently used water as a medium. One moment we were at the lake in the park near school, the next we were by the pond in the Nakayamas' backyard."

"I see," Yumiko nodded. The tension in Fuji's shoulders told her there were quite some things he wasn't telling her, but for now she wouldn't prod. Experiences with the supernatural were often hard to retell, she knew from experience. Furthermore, she trusted her brother enough not to leave out anything important.

Carefully Fuji placed his cup back on the table, before he continued, starring absentmindedly on the carpet. "It had already been able to pass through the wards around the house, but apparently whatever it was after had been kept in a specially sealed box. To open that, it needed Tezuka's blood… but well, the box was empty in the end. The spirit vanished and we ended up calling Tezuka's parents to pick us up."

He leaned back and glanced at his sister.

"I gather it got blood from Tezuka-kun then," she said, her eyes narrowing, "And since he apparently is still fine, he incurred no dangerous injury."

Guilt blossomed in Fuji's chest. He'd been so wrapped up in trying to make sense of everything he'd forgotten about his friend's injury. Tezuka hadn't spoken of it, so it was probably fine. Yet Tezuka hadn't told anybody about his arm either, and Fuji didn't want to recall how that had ended.

"The spirit cut his arm with a knife. The wound had already stopped bleeding by the time Tezuka's parents arrived," he told his sister, resolving to himself to call Tezuka and inquire about his health once this conversation was over.

Or rather, first thing in the morning, seeing as it was already too late in the evening to place a call.

"Do you know if the injury is giving him any further trouble?" Yumiko questioned, studying her brother's reactions closely, "And the knife used – was it special?"

Fuji shook his head. "Neither. The last time I asked Tezuka he told me the injury was healing, and the knife in question was a normal kitchen knife."

"Well, that all is a little odd. A powerful demon using a kitchen knife of all things," Yumiko frowned. "Anyhow, you've never seen what it was after?"

"Tezuka's grandfather showed us the object later," Fuji replied, recalling the icy air, chilling him from head to toe while they'd been standing in the backyard.

"But the demon never told you exactly what it was after?" Yumiko asked once again and her eyes met Fuji's over her teacup. He could see his suspicions mirrored there.

"No," he replied.

"And you haven't seen its true form either, have you?" she continued, "You only saw it as the cat or as Mori-san."

Fuji nodded, feeling numb.

Yumiko put her cup down and sat back. "All in all, your opponent behaves quite odd. I'd name it a demon, seeing it could drag you all that distance while obviously maintaining an illusion or a possession and only needing a medium. On the other hand, few demons would go to such length as to maintain an illusion beyond fooling somebody,"

Fuji's fingers gripped the blanket tighter. He recalled Hasegawa's words from the night before – an object as such would probably not be of interest for a demon.

"So it might not be a demon after all?" he hesitantly inquired.

Yumiko pressed her lips together. "Judging from the power you described, I'd say it clearly has to be one. On the other hand, the behaviour patterns don't fit."

"Well," Fuji supplied, "The object it was after could be used to create portals, mostly, from what I understood. So Hasegawa-san was rather surprised when I mentioned your suspicion."

"Hasegawa-kun?" Yumiko asked, apparently familiar with the person, "I thought he was too busy with maintaining the family temple to actually take outside jobs. But well, he should know what he is talking about, so if he says the object is uninteresting for a demon and the thing doesn't behave like a demon, it probably is something else."

"What else could it be?" Fuji inquired, "I mean, it's too powerful to be a spirit."

"You mentioned the object probably originated in somewhere in the Middle East," Yumiko said, "Depending on where, there're dozens of possibilities. Ghosts and demons are just what you can find all over the globe, but this wouldn't be the first time, that some other being left its original area."

Fuji nodded thoughtfully, while Yumiko's expression darkened. "It also wouldn't be the first time human meddling caused things to happen that have no business occurring."

"What do you mean?" Fuji straightened instinctively. The amazing collection of books he'd seen in the Nakayamas' library. Their odd interest in the supernatural that Tezuka taken for storytelling.

Yumiko pressed her lips together. "I told you before; I can't really do anything but guess until I actually see that thing. But I'm sure you remember what happened when they first started dragging mummies out of Egypt? And while I don't know the Nakayamas very well, they're known to be avid collectors of rare artefacts."

"Yes, I also thought it might be something they brought home from one of their trips," Fuji agreed, and then he bit his lip. In the back of his head, a theory started shaping, "Say, could human interference influence the behaviour of a spirit or a demon?"

"Probably," Yumiko answered immediately, "What are you thinking?"

Fuji's lips twisted into a dark smile. "I was just thinking that, everything considered, our spirit acted rather human."

Thick, grey clouds covered the sky when Fuji left his house on Tuesday morning. The icy air bit into his skin, but after being cooped up inside for two days, it felt good. A small voice in the back of his head wondered, if finding this freezing air nice implied his fever wasn't gone yet, but Fuji ignored it and took a deep breath instead.

It hadn't been easy to convince his sister to let him go to school today, especially after she'd gotten a good look at him. But after he'd promised to call her to pick him up the minute he started feeling unwell, she'd agreed. Finals were soon, after all.

Fuji sighed, aimlessly studying the leafless trees peeking out from behind snow-covered walls. Spring seemed an eternity away, and he didn't really want to think about everything that came with graduation and afterwards.

Snow crunched under his shoes.

It was a pity exams were so close. They rarely got so much snow in winter and he clearly recalled Eiji mentioning how much he loved snowball fights; and they should have one with the entire tennis club. Maybe invite Fudomine or another rival team from the area along.

Have some fun with everybody.

Had it really been just last week that he'd been making light-hearted plans with Eiji? He couldn't even recall what had been said anymore; not after everything that had happened.

"Fuji," a familiar voice called out and Fuji turned to find Tezuka standing at a street corner, wrapped in a new, black winter coat. His face was barely visible under a woollen cap and a scarf in the same dark, green colour.

"Tezuka," he replied and felt a smile spreading across his face. Although it was subtle, he could see concern in his friend's eyes, and it made his heart a little warmer.

"How are you feeling?" Tezuka immediately inquired.

"A lot better," Fuji answered, "The cough's almost gone."

"I'm glad." A rare smile crossed Tezuka's face, before vanishing immediately. He wasn't sure whether to believe Fuji's words or not, but for the first time in a long while, his friend didn't look like the living dead.

"And how are you doing?" Fuji asked, forcing himself not to mind how the air burned in his lungs, "I've almost forgotten to ask, but how is that cut? If it's not healing as fast as it should, I could ask my sister to have a look at it."

Tezuka shrugged. "It's healing quite fine," he replied, "A week and it will be gone entirely."

Fuji smiled. The frozen muscles in his cheeks protested against the movement. "That's good to hear. I hope the entire affair doesn't bother you too much. I mean, I know everything was happened must have been really strange, but well … it's over and it probably won't happen again."

He could make out one raised eyebrow underneath Tezuka's cap, but other than that his friend's face remained stoic. Fuji found himself a little relieved at the normality of it all – now all that was left to do was to make certain Tezuka suffered no lingering nightmares from the affair.

Which was probably easier said than done, Fuji contemplated. They exchanged few more words on their way to school, due to freezing air that burned with every breath Fuji took. After ten minutes outside, he had lost all feeling in his toes and speaking became difficult.

Tezuka kept a watchful eye on his friend until they arrived at the door of Fuji's classroom, trying to gauge his condition. True to his word, Fuji hadn't coughed during their walk to the school, yet for now Tezuka preferred to err on the side of caution.

He was about to inquire if Fuji truly felt up to an entire day of classes, when Kikumaru had spied them approaching.

"Fuji! Tezuka!" and then the red head had wrapped his arms around Fuji and buried his head in the crook of his neck, "You have no idea how glad I am that you're back, Fuji! Really, you have no idea! Math was hell yesterday, and don't even ask me what happened in physics. It was hell, pure hell."

Fuji patted Eiji's back a little awkwardly, while nodding a goodbye at Tezuka.

"I'm glad to be back too, Eiji."

Math, Fuji thought three hours later, had at least been interesting. The current history lesson didn't manage to hold his attention for longer than five minutes at a time – and his classmates weren't doing any better. Eiji had taken to adding colourful pictograms to the margins of his worksheet, while several others apparently had become thoroughly fascinated with the surface of their desks.

However Fuji didn't feel sleepy, so he found himself staring out of the window, wondering just when the world outside had lost all colours. The tennis courts, the school yard, the streets and the gardens of the houses beyond Seigaku's campus were all covered under a thick layer of white snow. Trees were blackened, dead; and everything else had taken on a lifeless shade of grey.

A shiver ran down his spine.

Usually he didn't mind winter or the cold. Snow-covered fields stretching until the horizon made for a dizzying perspective; glittering ice crystals a beautiful picture motif. But it felt as if this winter had already lasted for too long.

Distractedly he rubbed at the faint lines on his wrist. The scratches were smarting a little, probably from the weather.

If he judged the clouds correctly, they'd be getting fresh snow this afternoon. The air felt ripe with tension already now, so –

Fuji stiffened abruptly.

There was tension in the air; a highly unusual sort of tension. His skin was prickling – but what if it wasn't from the icy air? The burning in his lungs, blackness encroaching on his vision…

Suffocating pressure squeezed down on all his senses, blanketing out reality. Sounds faded, shadows lengthened. The air seemed to flicker, shapes started to blur.

He knew this feeling. Knew this power.

It couldn't be; was the last thing Fuji thought before a sudden, all-encompassing darkness swallowed him whole.

tbc

As always, please feel free to share your thoughts and impressions with me. And just a word of warning in advance, the next two chapters will be quite gory. ^^