Clary: Hiya guys~ Clary here~~~~

Lia: And in a much better mood than last time. Oh, the joy.

Clary: Can it, Lia, I know you're being sarcastic. What's got your panties in a bunch?

Lia: In case we haven't noticed, I'm trying to SLEEP here.

Clary: But we just came back from the resort-place and it was super-awesome~~~~~~ Why would anyone want to sleep after THAT?

Lia: It's called being tired. I'm TIRED, Issa, and I don't have much patience to pretend otherwise.

Clary: Ooooooohhhh. Scaaaaaaaarrrrryyyyyy~ (laughs)

Lia: You'd be tired too if you were forced to babysit yourself. So why don't you just focus on your readers and try talking to me when I'm not a walking zombie (and when I'm less annoyed by your presence)?

Clary: Fine, BE THAT WAY. (turns to readers) Here's the fifth chapter guys~ (And I swear, I thought it would actually be a happy one... Oh well~)

DEATH PLAY

Written by: Clary~

Acknowledgements to: Lia (Clary's not-editor), Alatarielf (We're happy we make you laugh~ And we feel so ecstatic~ No one's praised us that way before~~~ Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! We hope you enjoy this, too~), phoenixfirekitsune (-wink- We'll see, won't we? –wink wink-), Shuzuka (-laugh- murder freaks~ yey~ We though Syusuke was cute, too~~~~ Persona's amusing and we actually want to portray those two other characters as people who have no regard for life... :)), Murderous Phantom (thanks so much~), silver starlight serpant (let's mourn not having Sanada in this story together~ Don't worry, we have a plan~~)

V. PERSONA'S PUPPETS

"He wasn't at breakfast, so I didn't tell him anything."

It was noon, and Seiichi was in his room with the obvious intention of not leaving until probably tonight or tomorrow morning. Syusuke liked it when people took care of him, because he was very much a child inside and children liked being taken care of, but he didn't like the pity that crossed Seiichi's face every now and then when he brushed against Syusuke's skin and felt its chilly temperature.

Syusuke tried to ignore it, but it was very hard to ignore it with Seiichi's very, very un-ignorable wince. So he'd asked Seiichi what he told his nii-san, because he wanted a distraction, and even though he still had a few hours before his inquisition, it was smarter to have his story straight now, rather than stumble through it and make a mistake later.

"He wasn't... at breakfast?" His voice came out muffled, though that had more to do with the fact that he was worried than the fact that his head was buried in Seiichi's chest.

The arms around him tightened as Syusuke felt more than heard the laugh. "He is a big boy, he can take care of himself. Don't worry so much. I saw him in class, so he's okay."

"Okay," he replied because there was really nothing else he could do. The smell of the lunch Seiichi had brought up for him wafted into his nostrils, and perhaps it would have been good if he'd just accepted it but he didn't think he could stomach anything at the moment, the mere smell of the food had been enough to make him want to retch again. He buried himself deeper to Seiichi's chest.

They were quiet for a long moment, and Syusuke liked it. For some reason or another, nii-san never held him like this, he had before, when they were little, but he never did now. He didn't know why but it (sort of) annoyed his nii-san so he never pressed, he didn't want to make his brother unhappy.

"Are you going to tell me now why you did it?" The voice was solemn and Syusuke knew that Seiichi was serious now, and while he hadn't demaded answers before, he was doing so now and he wouldn't stop until he got it.

Syusuke thought about telling the truth, but quickly decided against it. "It was a stupid reason," he said, closing his hands into fists and ducking out from Seiichi's all-knowing gaze. "I don't want to talk about it."

Neither of them said anything about the underlying message: Don't you already know, anyway?

Seiichi sighed. "It'd be nicer, hearing it from you, once in a while, Syusuke." He started stroking his hair again. "And you're right, it's stupid."

"I know." It was a very small voice. "... Keigo came over this morning."

Seiichi didn't reply, though Syusuke noticed his grip tightening just a little bit.

"He thinks I'm sulking."

"I told him you were sulking," Seiichi said, sounding terribly annoyed at the subject. "You have every right to be. Did he say sorry?"

Syusuke tried to remember. "No. He seemed sorry, though."

"As he should," Seiichi said with a tone of finality. "Let's talk about something else."

"What do you want to talk about?"

Because Syusuke honestly didn't know what Seiichi wanted to talk about. He certainly seemed annoyed that Syusuke even bothered to bring Keigo up but Syusuke was still very reluctant to talk about his little excursion in death that Seiichi knew so much about. Seiichi always knew so much about everything, 'shadows talk' and they were always right, but Seiichi knew so much more about Syusuke, more than Syusuke probably even knew of himself.

He didn't know whether to hate it or not.

Seiichi lifted his head from where it was buried against his chest and tilted it up so Syusuke was forced to look at him straight in the eye. He was wearing a pleasant smile and his eyes were twinkling. "Kisaragi-chan went to my class today."

Almost instantly, Syusuke blushed. Kisaragi Meiko was the same year as him, was in almost every one of his classes and it was no secret (at all) that she liked him. She was nice and kind and gentle but she was also very, very brazen and was very, very open about her... affection towards him. Syusuke didn't mind it much, she never went so far as to grope him or anything but she certainly had no qualms on hanging on his arm or kissing his cheek or driving away all other girls who so much as looked at him. Seiichi and everyone else found it funny and amusing; his nii-san, however, hated it and did everything in his capability to keep him apart from her.

So, to placate his nii-san and also to keep Meiko from being misled, he kept (or tried to keep) a decent distance between them. He'd told her (from the start) that he didn't really return her... affections because he didn't want to lead her on and get her hurt, but instead of being put off, she had smiled, told him he was such a noble gentleman for putting her feelings into consideration, that he was chivalrous and don't worry, she'd get him to fall in love with her one day.

He didn't know how she managed to spin it so wildly out of proportion, but they became friends, a very odd pair at that, considering Meiko and her very, very open, brazen advances.

"Meiko came to your class?"

Seiichi's smile widened. "Ah, so it's Meiko now. Turn my back on you lovebirds for one second and suddenly, you're on first-name terms with each other and not even afraid to flaunt it."

Syusuke's blush brightened. "Well... You see, she... I mean... I..." He was stuttering. Great. Seiichi would probably take that and give it more than half a dozen (wrong) hidden meanings. "Meiko-san and I are just friends." It was a last-ditch attempt at steering Seiichi away from his thoughts that were nothing good, judging from his smile and it didn't work, just like he had expected it to.

"Oh, just go on ahead and call her Meiko. She didn't think twice of calling you by your first name when she asked about you this morning, anyway," Seiichi informed him, still with a sly smile.

Syusuke looked down, still feeling the blush. "She wanted to," he mumbled, and, even though it wouldn't work, he said, again, "We're just friends."

"She's made it perfectly clear she wants more than that," Seiichi said. "And it's perfectly clear that she's succeeding, too."

Okay, now, Syusuke knew his face was definitely as red as a tomato. "She's not!" he retorted loudly, because it's true, she wasn't, Syusuke felt nothing more for her than he did the day he first met her.

Of course, he shouldn't have expected it to work.

"First name terms, Syusuke," Seiichi reminded him. "She asked about you. Said she was worried that you didn't come to class yesterday afternoon and this morning. Aren't you glad to have such a loving girlfriend?"

Well, at least he tried.

./.

Syusuke slept and Yukimura Seiichi let him.

It was something he badly needed, along with food in his system and since he can't do anything about the latter, he did his best making up for it with the former.

Yukimura was protective over Syusuke to a fault, and it wasn't all that hard to understand why. He'd lost his family, like Syusuke and Tezuka, and Syusuke was the only family he had left. Yukimura didn't have anything else left to be protective to so all his protectiveness (which was a lot) went to Syusuke, and it was a whole lot of protective, he even actually rivaled Tezuka in that department.

He shifted so that his skin came in contact with Syusuke's again. It was still cold, but it was getting on to be warm, or as warm as Syusuke's skin could get, and color was returning, sort of.

He released Syusuke from his hold and stood up slowly so that Syusuke wasn't disturbed from his sleep. The talk about Kisaragi-chan was good for him, it distracted him enough so that he was able to sleep even though talks about Kisaragi-chan were always inconsequential and moot.

Syusuke didn't love her, and Yukimura doubted he ever will, Syusuke only had one heart and he had already given it to someone else a long, long time ago.

He wasn't consciously aware of it, the way he wasn't consciously aware of many other things, but he loved and Yukimura wished he could tell him, but it was something he needed to figure out on his own.

Yukimura stroked his cheek and smiled fondly. He had to leave for a bit, he'll be back shortly, and Syusuke would be fine.

But somehow he wished that when he got back, Syusuke would be much, much happier.

He strode purposefully towards the door, took a last look before he opened and shut it softly.

Just as he expected (or just as the shadows told him to expect), Chitose Senri was there, leaning against the wall beside the door, playing with a neon tennis ball. It was that Shiraishi kid who taught (forced) Chitose to play tennis, to teach him discipline, he'd explained, and now, whenever there was a ball in his hands, Yukimura right away knew that he was serious.

"Syusuke went to Death again, didn't he?" was his first question, staring blankly at the ball in his hand.

Yukimura didn't respond; they both knew the answer. Chitose, though a year behind him, was alike to Yukimura in the way that they knew things, Chitose because he did and Yukimura because of shadows.

"Tezuka doesn't know," Chitose said next. It was more of a statement than a question and Yukimura replied with a bland smile, "Yet."

"Yet," Chitose agreed, tossing the ball up to the air. "He has his own issues to deal with."

"Issues you started, from what I gather." It came out more accusatorially than he expected.

Chitose grinned. "I'm getting tired, watching him dance around the issue. I merely gave him a subtle push in the right direction, I didn't intervene much." He paused and looked at Yukimura from the corner of his eye. "It's high time they know, anyway. When are you going to tell?"

Yukimura glanced at the opposite wall. "I've kept quiet for almost a decade. They need to find out on their own. Besides," he looked back at Chitose, leveling him with a hard glare. "It's not my place. Nor yours."

"Not mine, that's true," Chitose replied, looking straight at him. "But it's every bit your place to. He is your blood."

"Then don't question me."

Chitose shrugged. "I'm just saying, it will be a whole lot simpler if you did."

"Perhaps it would," Yukimura allowed. "Or perhaps it would not."

"It would."

He sighed. He didn't want to talk about the issue, and he knew that they did need to find out all on their own, it would be better that way and he knew it and talking about it like this wasn't making him feel any less older. Besides, now wasn't the time. "I tire of this. Why are you here?"

"Hmm?" Chitose tilted his head to the side. "Persona wanted you. Some stupid idiot broke into the Academy's records."

Yukimura raised an eyebrow, already getting an image in his head, though it wasn't clear, he'd need to be in the place to get the image right from the shadows. "Ah. Did he leave a trace?"

"No, none at all," Chitose replied, mouth pressing into a thin line. "He was good, I'd give him that. But if he expected to not get detected..." Chitose scoffed, the way arrogant, self-assured people did, and Yukimura did not chastise him for it, because he had every right to be. "I think he's trying to insult us."

"Or he might not know just what we can do," Yukimura said, giving one last glance at Syusuke's door before walking in the general direction of the records room. "Come. Who else is there?"

"Ah, well, just Keigo," Chitose replied with a small smile at Yukimura's (involuntary) twitch. "Oh, and Tezuka, too."

They walked mostly in silence, Yukimura with his thoughts on the image in his head that the shadows provided, trying to make sense of the shadows' edgy behavior. As they neared the room, though, Chitose paused, wearing a small frown. "I don't like it, the feeling I get from this thief," he stated, staring into space.

"You're scared?"

"No, but it's... ominous, somehow."

Yukimura could sense it, too, the shadows were becoming increasingly restless in this part of the school, and it bothered him a bit. The image in his head was starting to clear, though. "We'll see."

./.

Persona. Was. Pissed.

Or whatever. He wasn't terribly happy, that's for sure.

He'd spent the entire fucking night awake, looking for a stupid folder, only to find it by early dawn and find out that he'd almost passed over a terribly wonderful, terribly useful alice because its user looked like a fucking girl. And then, he'd been so fucking angry, he'd destroyed his entire damn office and it wasn't fucking easy to get furniture repaired, not when they're broken in a hundred different places, so he had to buy new ones and the trouble with buying new ones was that there'd be people going to his office, moving furniture here and there, putting their grubby little hands everywhere, leaving their horrible, disgusting, human smell in his office. And then, just when he'd been settling to sleep, some stupid brat of a student had almost knocked his ears off, screaming for him because some stupid idiot of a thief had decided to break into the Academy's records.

It did not help to know that he couldn't even go and recruit Tezuka Kunimitsu's younger brother for this because he hadn't had the fucking time to find him because he was stuck in the stupid records room, glaring his head off.

He didn't know what he was fucking doing here, the only person who could get a damn trace on the damn thief was that Yukimura Seiichi, who he'd sent Chitose Senri to fetch more than a half hour ago.

What the hell was the kid doing?

He glanced to where Tezuka Kunimitsu was sorting out the records of the other ability types, trying to find the (very, very) faint left-over aura of the thief. Atobe Keigo was busying himself with the same thing, all the way in the other side of the room. It had been quiet so far, and so far, the aura had only been present in the records of the kids under his jurisdiction and he didn't like what it entailed.

He decided he really did want Tezuka Syusuke in his circle, he'd be a wonderful addition and very, very useful, too, especially for this.

And before he could fully comprehend what he was doing, he'd called, "Tezuka."

The kid turned to him swiftly. "Persona-sama?"

He contemplated on how to say this, but then again, the brother was a Dangerous Type, every bit under his jurisdiction as Tezuka, and he had every right to exploit every alice he damn wanted. And that would include Tezuka Kunimitsu's younger brother, whose damn file, by the way, he'd spent an entire fucking night looking for, he wasn't about to let a sleepless night and an equally sleepless morning go to waste. It's a pity, though, to have to let go of such a good leverage, but no matter, it would still be easy to manipulate Tezuka when he had the brother directly under his wing. Maybe even easier. "You have a brother, yes?"

The kid stiffened. So he knew that his brother's alice would have been desirable to Persona and yet he didn't tell. Instead, he'd made himself invaluable so Persona wouldn't have to look for new people and alices to exploit. He was smart. And quite wily. It was good that Persona knew the perfect strings to pull to make this puppet dance to his tune. But the way this same puppet hid something he wanted from him... It did nothing to improve Person's mood.

He gave the kid a twisted smile as he waited for the reply. Letting out his anger like this was quite... satisfying.

The kid opened his mouth to answer but he was cut off by: "It's a woman."

He gave Tezuka one last malevolent smile (I'll deal with you later) before turning to Yukimura Seiichi, at last.

"A woman? Just a woman?" he questioned, all business now. After all, this was what he signed up to do. The missions, the fights, and the inevitable killings (his favorite part).

Yukimura's eyes were sharp, glancing from one corner of the room to another, where the shadows were. He nodded once. "Not any woman, though."

Chitose Senri had walked up next to Yukimura and was staring in space. "No," he agreed, frowning.

"She's leaking some sort of... strange aura," Yukimura said. "An aura of ancientness and death, like she's been in it several times. Possibly.. Possibly immortal."

Persona frowned. An immortal... He'd just sent the warning to that group, when he'd ordered Tezuka, Atobe and Yukimura to kill those regiments, but apparently it wasn't enough.

And now, they'd broken in and had a look at the files of his puppets.

He didn't like it.

"Was she looking for something in particular?" Atobe asked from behind him.

"No," this time, it was Chitose who answered. "Just looking."

He still didn't like it.

"Yukimura, Chitose, track her," he barked. "I want to know who she is, what she was doing, who she's doing it for." He glanced at Chitose as he said this, knowing what he could do, he was answered with a sharp nod. "Then bring her to me."

They didn't question the atrocity of the order, he trained them that well. He let them leave, watched them leave, before turning back to Tezuka and Atobe, who was looking at him with a quizzical frown.

"Why?" he asked.

"Why, indeed," he repeated, smiling. "She knows too much. I can't risk that. I want her dead."

Atobe's frown deepened. "She's immortal."

"I know," Persona responded, feeling his insides cackle with glee. "And I also know someone who could get the job done for me."

He shifted his glance to Tezuka, whose eyes were widening (very slightly) with realization. "Right, Tezuka?"

He watched Atobe turn to Tezuka with a frown still on his face. So he didn't know. It seemed like Tezuka guarded his brother's ability very tightly. Smart and wily, indeed. "What's this, Tezuka? What does Persona mean? You can kill immortals?"

His face was a rigid mask, but his eyes were filling with horror, the way Persona wanted them to. It was narrowing now, in the kid's effort to keep it in check, but Persona saw it anyway.

He liked it.

"No, he can't," Persona answered for him. "But he knows someone who can, and very capably."

Atobe turned to him. "Who?"

Persona raised an eyebrow, challenging Tezuka to speak. He didn't, just like Persona expected him to. His smile widened and he felt like laughing.

"Tezuka Syusuke."

Clary: Let's say hello to Kisaragi Meiko! (She's OC) She'll play a somehow big role in this fic (or at least I think so) so let's all remember her, kay? Yey~

Lia: ...

Clary: Wake up Lia~~~~ IT'S STORY TIME~~~~~~ Yey~~~~~ (: So we went to this super resort~ I think it was a Korean resort, there were Korean translations under the English writings and there were lotsa Koreans and everything~

Lia: Yep. The president of that resort was Korean.

Clary: OH~ Anyway, there were lotsa cuuuuuttttttteeeee Korean kids and lotsa pools and stuff. There was a wave pool and something they called the Lazy River... or was it the Amazon river...? And there were lotsa slides...

Lia: There were only three, Issa.

Clary: THAT'S A LOT! And then the had cool suite rooms with cool bathrooms that have TRANSPARENT shower enclosures, I don't know how that's possible. But anyway, we stayed overnight and it was uneventful, sorta but then we went down to breakfast the next morning. And IT WAS SO COOL~ There was lotsa food, everywhere~~~~~

Lia: There was an American breakfast station, Korean, one with cereal, one with sushi, one with drinks and you can choose whatever you like.

Clary: There was a dessert station, too. It was Lia's favorite~

Lia: -cough- Anyway, the point is, there were a lot, and I, like the sensible person I was, went and got pancakes and bacon and sausages. But Issa was all: "Liaaaaaaa, we eat those things everydaaaaayyyyyyyyy." So she offed and went to the place where there were all KOREAN foods, and came back with her plate full of "I don't know what it is, Lia. I don't speak Korean, and I can't pronounce it, but it looks yummy~"

Clary: Well, it's TRUE, I don't speak Korean and they DID look yummy. And it's TRUE, we ALWAYS eat pancakes or sausages or egg or bacon or cereal for breakfast. I wanted to try something NEW.

Lia: You should have just went to the sushi table, then.

Clary: I DON'T EAT RAW FISH!

Lia: Okay, FINE, it's not that big a deal. Anyway, continuing on with the story, half of the things Issa filled her plate with turned out to be spicy. And because she's Issa, she didn't get juice in advance, so she ended up flapping her arms up and down like an idiot.

Clary: I DID NOT look like an idiot.

Lia: Issa, people were STARING. Anyway, it was lucky there was a guy bringing a pot of... I think it was hot chocolate... so we got him to pour Issa some.

Clary: It was the WORST thing I ever tasted, I had to dunk ALL the available packets of cream, white sugar and brown sugar for it to be BEARABLE.

Lia: Or maybe it was just the spicy food destroying your tastebuds.

Clary: My tastebuds are FINE, bitch. Nate didn't like it either. Don't tell me you liked it.

Lia: In case you haven't noticed, I didn't ask for it. I drank orange juice, like the normal person I am.

Clary: I don't think normal persons can eat five muffins and a French toast smothered with blueberries in one sitting, Lia.

Lia: -cough- (The muffins were bite-sized, it's totally possible)

Review, please~ Promise we won't make you eat overly-spiced raw fish~