From Far Forgotten

A/N: Half this story is writing itself. I hope I can keep it on track! And that I'm not terribly losing people with this horribly made-up fantasy... ;;;

This was really hard to write. ;; Sorry it took me so long! I was attacked by a giant writers block monster from under my bed! See, Ryouma's muse is a bit of a pain. He keeps getting bored with the whole thing.

Chapter 4: Ryouma's Memories (The Challenge)

Without his true body, there was little Fuji could do to counter the malign chains that slowly tightened around him. As the spell caster, Mizuki would gradually gain control over him, more so if he stayed close by. Fuji knew his only hope was to get away, somehow... and so he ran...

He lost himself within the echoing hallways of St. Rudolph. Walls and whispers crept around him, and one particularly effeminate voice called, "Shhh... you're inside my barrier."

Twirling around, Fuji felt his heart melt in a wave of relief at the one who stood before him. Rather than the cold, barren eyes that he feared, the gentle, clairvoyant eyes of an elegant woman looked sorrowfully upon him. Hair bleached and styled, she held herself with the grace and august of Mucha's lady of summer, a vision of hopeful expectation for the accursed boy.

"Neesan..."

For a moment, the two eldest siblings of the Fuji household stood in silence. With wonder Fuji studied Yumiko's faint-hearted expression, her eyes cooing and dismayed in unison.

"Yumiko-neesan…"

His hand lifted to touch her, reached towards her cheek to comfort her from the sadness he saw within her pupils. But before his fingers grazed upon her skin, Yumiko raised her own hand to intertwine with his.

Instead her fingers passed through his, and with horror he saw her gasp and shudder at the frozen sensation of a spirit meeting living flesh. He quickly drew his hand away.

Her eyes fell to the floor, dim and unreadable. Finally Yumiko with a trembling voice, quietly began, "I'm so sorry…"

"Neesan…?" Fuji tried to look into her face, tried to read her disposition as he had always been able to do, since they were children, but for the first time in his life, he just couldn't tell what she was thinking…. He only knew she was so, so sad…

"I'm sorry…I know you're my little brother, and I know you're important to me, but… I'm so sorry, I can't remember what you look like, or … your name."

She sounded so heart broken, as if she were on the verge of tears, but Yumikoneesan never cried, he had never seen her cry and he knew she wouldn't cry in front of him now… surely… he needed one of them to be strong, since he felt his own heart breaking…

I look like… I take after our mother. You always said that, Yumiko-neesan.

Wetness gathered above his lower lashes, but he bit his lip to hold it in, though he knew there was no one to see him cry, but still… he clung to the droplets as if they were hope.

"I only know what the cards have told me, and they told me to come here… I came here to explain to you what has happened. That is my role… my… fate you could say, for being what I am. I've set up a barrier so no one can see or hear us."

She seemed to look at him, but from the shifty haze in her pupils he could tell that she looked right through him, not at the wall behind him, but at the obscure mists of prophecy.

"The curse you are under is one of the most simple and powerful spells known. It is based simply on an idea. Say, if the people who know you forget who you are… then from their point of view, it's like you don't even exist. They have no memories of you, so you might as well have never been born. This curse makes everyone forget you, forget your name, so that you can no longer exist…

"This magic focuses on the power of words. The key is your name. With all my powers, I can remember some things about you, small things, general things, but not the most important things – I can't remember who you are, I can't remember what to call you. There are so many people in this world… so a name is a very important thing, it is what distinguishes you as being yourself rather than someone else.

"The curse attaches your soul to your name… then the spell caster writes your name on a talisman, and keeps it with him always so he will not forget it when all the rest do. Whoever remembers your name can control you…my dear, if only I…"

Her voice choked, and her fingers griped against her forehead, trying to contain the bitter wrinkles that lined into the skin. Somehow, her explanation had made it this far, but Fuji could see she was trembling, her hand clenched into a fist, colored nails digging into the flesh of her palms… he wanted to hold her, but the cold! The cold of this false body, the cold of the curse, the cold of being forgotten…

His name… how could Yumiko forget his name? Every year she had written it out in cream, at the end of February to celebrate his birthday, centering it on one of her prized cakes. Syusuke in big cursive letters. When they were little, Yuuta got mad about all the attention his aniki got, and tried to eat the whole cake by himself, and got really sick. The next year, by Fuji's suggestion, Yumiko put both Syusuke & Yuuta's names on the cake with a big heart around them, which appeased the delighted Yuuta who took it as an invitation to celebrate his birthday twice annually. Then a few years later Yuuta learned the connotation behind two names in a heart and got really angry again, but this time the cake went into the trash rather than his stomach. After that it went back to being just Syuusuke.

Both my siblings have forgotten me... am I the only one who has these memories?

But no... they remember me, just not completely... they still love me, unlike Tezuka...

Tezuka… I really don't exist in your mind… and you're the one that matters…

"Brother, you must understand, to have someone forcefully ripped from your consciousness is a powerful thing, especially if it's someone you don't want to forget.

"There is one thing stronger than a name's attachment to existence. Your body has vanished, but your soul still exists because people still believe in you, they believe in the feelings they have for you. Your friends love you, I love you… we believe in our hearts, we want you to exist. It is so important… it is so important that you believe in something in order for it to exist. If you stop believing in it, it'll stop existing. That's why you can't ever forget…"

She was interrupted when the windows suddenly started to rattle, and the wind picked up through the room even though they were indoors. Chairs and desks with uneven legs started to shake, and Fuji could feel the powerful bewitching presence of Yumiko's force field being pushed.

"He is here – I can quickly send you to another place." She drew in her breath, then produced a talisman from within her sleeve, and scripted onto it what Fuji recognized as 'The Red Puppet'. Blowing hurriedly into the white slip of paper, she held it between her fore and index fingers, closing her eyes and whispering some undistinguishable jargon before flinging it towards his forehead.

The images around him stretched then vanished, fading to a world of white.

Yumiko watched as the apparition before her faded into nothingness, teleported to another unknown place thanks to her simple spell. Sighing despairingly, she dragged herself out into St. Rudolf's hallway.

Falling back against the cool white wall, she slid down till she was sitting, feeling too tired to move on.

Slow, tapping footsteps echoed down the hallway, growing louder with every passing second.

First she saw the shadow, then the man who passed before her, twirling a lose strand of hair airily with his forefinger. Mizuki peered into the room she just existed with a scowl, then continued on without giving her even a glance. Behind him, a tiny paper shikigami pranced flippantly, trailing after him like a lost puppy. It turned it's blank paper head at her, shook a little as if debating, then spun around and continued nonchalantly after his walker.

Hugging her knees, she squeezed her eyes shut till she felt the black aura of the malicious youth fade. Her thoughts drifted back to what she had just done, speaking to nothingness.

Little brother, I'm so sorry… for lying to you…

Unable to choke down her guilt, she buried her face into the bundles of her skirt, and for the first time in fourteen years, she cried at the dark road that awaited him.

The blue sky was boring. If there were clouds, at least he could watch them role by, getting that sensual displaced feeling as if he were the one moving, and the clouds held still below him.

But no, today's spring sky was far too clear. Any condensed moisture was invisible to the human eye, or maybe it just didn't exist. This annoyed him. The grass was clean and cool against his laid out body, but there was little wind so the blades hardly trembled. He'd had a nice, but overall dull nap.

Well, at least he had tennis. That was everything to Echizen Ryouma.

Then again, he probably didn't have the right to say that since he'd ditched the last half of afternoon practice to sleep. But he'd been playing for twelve years, what was one skipped day?

Today sucks, he sighed, tilting his head to the side so the grass would stop poking him. English was boringly easy, he hated math, his father was a monkey, no, a buffoon! The perverted bum wouldn't stop teasing him about riding on Momo's bike to school. He couldn't help but cling to his sempai's shoulders the whole way, if he didn't he'd fall off!

He was just about to sit up when the spiky-haired shadow of his thoughts loomed hotly over him.

"Oi, having fun? Cause you're running forty laps tomorrow." A familiar purple-eyed glutton beamed a toothy smile at him, trying not to laugh… just not trying very hard.

Ryouma humphed a bit – forty laps was less then he expected anyways, not that he really wanted to run any – then allowed his sempai and best friend to help him up.

"Momo-sempai, I'm hungry."

"Ooooh, after that hard, long practice I'm sure you are." Momo rolled his eyes, then broadened his smile. "You treat me to burgers, and I'll go play with you on the street tennis courts."

Che. Ryouma pouted. His sempai knew him too well. It wasn't that he could really go eight hours without tennis – he just hadn't felt like going to practice for that particular part of the day. Tezuka-buchou had been so… egg-headed lately, he just didn't want to be around. He would have gone somewhere to make use of his racket, but tennis was always better played against an opponent rather than a wall or some machine.

They packed up quickly in the lockers rooms, trying their best to avoid Eiji, who had been even more melon-headed than Tezuka lately. His eyes had become scratchy and red-rimmed lately, and he snapped at anyone who pushed at the wrong buttons – which seemed to be anything nowadays.

Momo skipped out to get his bike, then rode around so Ryouma could fit behind him. Soon they were off down the rode, the (boringly) gentle breeze lifting up the younger boy's flitting hair, as he clung to those broad, surprisingly reliable shoulders. Then they were stuffing their faces with burgers, seeing who could down the most fries the quickest without choking on the salt.

Ryouma would rather die than admit it, especially to his father, but he really liked this familiar routine. Sure, he liked burgers, and going fast on the bike, and tennis… but it was more than that. It was all about the company, an upperclassman of his had said. He didn't know anyone better than Momo at being brash, lively, zealous, husky, voracious, whiny, and downright full of himself, all at the same time. It was annoying.

But it was interesting. It kept him going, kept him amused, kept him looking forward to the next day and the day after that, just to see his sempai. Even tennis…

Before Momo, tennis had been everything. Now, tennis was almost everything… but the last couple of days, something had happened. Ryouma wasn't sure what it was… it felt like something in tennis had fallen.… emptied… like the net had developed tennis ball sized holes so the game had gotten too easy to play.

Yes… tennis had gotten easy. There was nothing more boring than that.

It shouldn't have felt that way, Ryouma knew. It hadn't, a few days ago. There was Tezuka… and Atobe… and Sanada… and several more monstrously strong players….

Yet somehow, it just wasn't fun anymore. Either he whipped his opponent off the court, or like with facing Tezuka, found himself so outweighed he couldn't even move. It wasn't fun to simply conquer or be conquered. During his time at Seigaku, he'd learned that the greatest thrill was to be challenged, by someone just barely beyond him, someone who made him struggle, forced him to overcome himself, to outdo and outmaneuver his own weaknesses, to grow, evolve, dead in the middle of the game, to become just strong enough to beat that someone.

But that someone was gone.

He could see himself, standing on a lake, staring out a belvedere at the center of said lake, where there sat a thrown for only the strongest tennis players to sit. He went from stone to stone, hopping closer one stone at a time to that center stage which was his destiny. Yetas he neared the edge of the terrace, there was one stepping stone, just before the edge, that was missing. He measured the distance with his golden eyes, and knew it should have been there. It left one important gap that he knew he could not jump, he only needed that one stone, and he was sure that only a few days ago, he could see that stone clearly.

Whap!

"30-love!" a girl's voice called.

"Oi, kiddo!" Momo shouted, his face puffed slightly red with anger. "Stop spacing out! You're almost as bad as that stupid viper today! Pay attention!"

Somehow, they were already playing tennis. Ryouma hadn't even noticed. His hands and feet coordinated on their own, purely off experience and instinct, without his brain having even a clue.

No one can play tennis like this, he thought gloomily. But nothing seemed to help him focus, even as the score stacked against him, the flying ball and the patterned raps on cement seemed meaningless whether or not he paid attention. And Momo was getting more and more angry. He kept shouting something about Ryouma going easy on him and how he was going to pummel some freshman brat to the court's floor. Ryouma tried to focus, but everything just felt so wrong.

"Like a pauperized Gerbil, scampering about moronically without any talent or baring. It's pathetic, Echizen Ryouma."

Just great. An obnoxious, pompous and all-too-familiar guy was standing by the court insulting him. Ryouma thought his day couldn't get any lousier.

"Che, I'm just not in the mood today," he grumbled, glancing out from underneath his cap at the monkey king who stood pontifically nearby.

"Then you shouldn't bother stepping onto the court. You're defiling it," Atobe charged, dramatically placing his fingers onto his chest. "And as Ore-sama once bothered playing against you, I am also offended."

Ryouma responded with little more than a grunt, placing his racket back in its case while ignoring a chafed Momo who was complaining about the game not being over.

"So, is it just you, or has all of Seigaku degraded to a piteous slump of dirt?" Atobe smirked.

"Hey!" cried Momo, jogging up to them, "Don't lump him in with the rest of us!"

"What does that mean!" cried Ryouma, trying to glare down both Atobe and his sempai at the same time. "I just feel like shit today okay? I should have skipped school and stayed home, that place is worthless anyways."

"Whoa, calm down," edged Momo, looking a little guilty and concerned at Ryouma's rather uncharacteristic outburst. "Sorry okay, I didn't know you were sick. You should have stayed home, I'll take you there."

"Ah... un. Che, whatever." His cap shaded over his golden orbs, hiding them from the others.

"Ore-sama was not aware Seigaku's captain could not determine if one of his players was sick and send them home accordingly," Atobe pined, never missing a pot shot. Ryouma was beginning to begrudge the monkey king's ability for snideness.

Momo scratch at his head, eyebrows scrunched up in thought before saying, "Buchou's gotten kinda... stringent lately. Well more than he used to be, which is sayin' something. Man, practice is hell now!"

Ryouma rolled his eyes. "And then you ask me why I skipped." But an image of his usually palmary captain flashed through his mind. "Lately..." Ryouma said quietly, "... he's become... distant..." He averted his eyes, feeling a little depressed.

Momo eyed him thoughtfully, then grinned in his cheerful, Momo-like way. "Yeah, buchou seems pretty lonely lately. Hehe, he must be feeling jealous at all our labu-labu." And with this he swung a broad arm around Ryouma's shoulders. "So that's why he's making us run so many laps!"

"Whadya mean labu-labu!" Ryouma scowled, blushing indignantly. "And don't lump me in with you, I only run laps for being late!"

The two best friends squabbled on, without noticing the chilly column of air watching them and chuckling with amusement, though even if they looked they would have seen nothing.

Fuji never got enough of his kohai's dilettante flirting, amateurs as they were they never seemed to get any better or realize they had the same feelings. Well, they were still young, they had time, and Fuji vowed to help them along if he could only get out of his predicament.

Though calling this a 'predicament' at this stage seemed an underestimation. He felt it had been a few days since the curse consumed him, but he wasn't sure. It seemed that when you were a ghost, you had no sense of time.

After his sister cast the talisman on him, the world had withered away and he'd found himself in a white sheet of limbo, traversing a white chord like a tightrope walker, which seemed to go on forever. But he kept following the wire until he found a rip in the sheet of un-space, and pulled himself through it till he saw the street tennis courts. Sighing in relief at the familiarity of the place, he glanced around just in time to see Atobe strut to where Ryouma and Momo were playing a game, then proceeded to eavesdrop on the confrontation.

To his pleasure, he found the three snapping insults at each other while flirting at the same time. Really, his kohai were so obliviously cute.

". . . and making your kohai buy you burgers is extortion! Sempai's the one who's always supposed to pay."

"Feh, I'm only your sempai when it's convenient for you! Thanks for the burger, though," Momo beamed, ruffling the much shorter tennis player's hair.

"You ate three," Ryouma growled.

"Hn. Really, you Seigaku people need to learn proper etiquette," Atobe loudly interjected, refusing to let the two ignore him. "The seme should always pay fo- or - ah - ... wha... ?!"

With the way his mouth gaped open, it seemed the monkey king had turned into
a fish. He opened it, closed it, then opened it again, and though Ore-sama
does not point, he had straightened his finger towards what
seemed to everyone else to be an empty space of air.

"That - ... That! - ... what?!" Fuji would have chuckled at the way his
tiny monkey pupils were twirling around his eyes, and the way Echizen was
quirking at him, and Momo kept swinging his head around trying to figure out
what Atobe was oggling at, if he weren't caught in his own cache of wonder.

"Atobe - can you see me?!"

A/N: Does the curse make sense? This is the final explanation; so let me know if it's still confusing. Basically, if you forget someone, it's like he never existed. It's the reverse of saying, if you always remember someone, then he is always with you.

;; Sorry if it takes me a long, long time to get the next chapter out... I will try... but finally I've reached the point I've dreaded ;; I know what happens in the last three or four chapters, I've even gotten some of them written a bit ;;; ... it's just the next chapter or two that I have no clue what to do with. ;;; Maa gambarimasu.

Thank you for the reviews! They are always so encouraging.

ki-ku-maru BEAM: Sorry! And I guess I'm leaving off on another one too XD well at least I didn't cut off after Yumiko's section (I considered doing that since it was written like a month and a half ago, and I got stuck on Ryouma's part) Hehehe

yamatoforever: Ah, yeah ;; Mizuki is just one of the most lovely evil villains in Tenipuri 3 Poor Mizuki, sometime I'll have to write an apology fic for him to give him more love. 3 ... or I could just keep writing him as super evil XD I bet he'd be happier that way, actually, lol.

DnKS-giRLs: I hope the barrier was explained. Yup, Mizuki is eeeevvviiilll, heeheehee. But evil is far more complicated and twisted than it may seem... And yes I love love love you! ;; Sorry for not updating sooner though.

Alaena Flame Dragonstar: Hehehe, Mizuki is the god of obsession, he even wins over Inui (and me when it comes to being obsessed with Tenipuri V)

BabyTears: Poor Mizuki! puts little bits of Mizuki back together Hey, I still need him to be even more evil for the sake of the story, you know? . Fuu fuu fuu. Tezuka better work hard if he wants Fuji back! But it seems to me he's not budging at all / stubborn guy!

Kuroaki: XD Yay thank you! It's not true but I am trying ;; I need to take a giant mallet and smash up the wall called writers black asap!

rabbit: It's a weird concept isn't it? Even I'm not sure where I got it all... it sort of grew out of this and that and here we are. ;;

Slytehrinette: Thank you! hugs

Tora Macaw: Heh, you make him suffer quite a bit XD (and I love it) but I think he's suffering quite a bit emotionally. I mean, he's been obessed with Fuji for like half a year, that's a pretty long heart ache. But right now he's pretty exuberant... evil, evil Mizuki!

dyaoka: Yay, I'm so happy you like it, I should post on lj or something that I'm updating ;;

badluck-ngprod: hehehe, hopefully it's not too late but here's the update! ;; (edges away just incase)