PoT Fic: Recombinant Chapter 1
Aaand here's Chapter 1. I was going to post it on the weekend, but I'd completely forgotten about Labor Day and all the stuff I had to do. ^^;
Title: Recombinant
Author: Dolly (universal_doll)
Rating: PG to PG-13
Characters: Echizen, Tezuka, Fuji (primary); Tachibana An, Tachibana Kippei, Momoshiro (secondary); and the rest of Seigaku.
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, AU (or rather, Alternate History/Timeline)
Summary: “Why couldn't you have been magical girls?”
Previous: Full Story Notes and Prologue
NEW:
Chapter 1
Slender hands ran lovingly across yellowed text, and a single manicured finger came to rest lightly on the top of the page. A small smile pulled at the corners of the girl's lips as she seated herself in the center of the symbols, which she had so painstakingly drawn out on the cold stone floor.
A wave of her hand and a whispered word, and the tall candles were lit all around. Pressing her fingers together to form a sign, she closed her eyes and began to chant.
“Per auctorita fidelis voco orior en terra. Per auctorita fidelis voco orior en terra. Per auctorita . . . .”
And so it continued.
The only movement in the cavernous hall was that of her lips, until a chill wind began to pick up.
~*~
“Oi, Echizen, hurry up! I'll be waiting by the bike racks.” Momoshiro gave Ryoma a friendly if not overzealous clap on the shoulder, and then headed out of Seigaku Tennis Club's locker room.
“Okay,” Ryoma replied as he buttoned his uniform shirt. A slight frown crossed his features as he stuffed his jersey into his bag, recalling how he had nearly been beaten by one of the Fudomine players. Still, though, he thought that sharing a practice with the other team had been kind of fun.
“Wah, those Fudomine players are tough! I can't believe me and Oishi lost a match with them!” Eiji lamented.
“It was only one out of three,” Kawamura said reassuringly. “And it sure was good practice, don't you think?”
“I guess it was pretty fun,” Eiji admitted, grinning. “Did you have fun too, Ochibi-chan?”
“Fudomine's not bad.” Ryoma shrugged, and slipped on his uniform jacket.
“That's the spirit!” Eiji exclaimed, and then threw his arms around Ryoma from behind. Ryoma felt a jolt, and sent Eiji an annoyed look. “You should learn to socialize better with the other teams though,” Eiji said sagely after an uncharacteristic moment of silence. “Like Fuji does! He's always so polite to the other players, though they don't talk to him much. I wonder why?” Eiji carried on, still holding onto Ryoma.
“Eiji-senpai!” Ryoma complained, only to be rescued as Kawamura touched them both lightly on their shoulders, causing Eiji to get off of him. Kawamura looked almost surprised for some reason, though continued on to speak.
“You know, my dad gave me the afternoon off since the shop is closed for repairs,” Kawamura began hesitantly. “How about we go for burgers? My treat.”
“Sounds great, Taka-san!” Eiji replied enthusiastically.
“I can't,” Ryoma said, regretting the loss of an opportunity for free food. “I'm going somewhere with Momo-senpai.” Slinging his bag over his shoulder, Ryoma headed towards the door. As he stepped around the corner of the lockers, though, he nearly tripped over Kaidoh, who was sitting on the floor in an awkward position and appeared to be doing something with his shoe.
The second-year's head shot up at the contact, and he gave Ryoma a strange look before the usual glare settled on his face. “Watch where you're going, squirt,” he grumbled.
Ryoma looked down at him curiously. “You shouldn't play with your shoe laces in the middle of the floor, senpai.” He smirked and made a prompt exit, not bothering to stay to listen to Kaidoh's annoyed explanation. Of course Ryoma knew that Kaidoh wasn't playing with anything, but where was the fun in letting him know that?
~*~
The wind tore through the great hall, yet the candles remained lit. The girl's eyes flew open, and were drawn to the monumental wall in front of her upon which an archway had been drawn in clean white chalk. As she continued to chant, a pale yellow light began to creep up along its lines.
~*~
Ryoma almost headed straight for the bike racks to meet Momo, but then remembered that Tezuka had asked to see him after practice. And Tezuka was probably in the club meeting room in the main school building, doing some of that organizational stuff that he so often did. Ryoma walked slowly through the empty hallways, though the quiet was soon shattered by a familiar shout that never failed to grate on his nerves.
“Aaahhh!” His annoying classmate, Horio, careened around the corner and came running down the hall full tilt, and Ryoma stepped to the side just in time to avoid getting run over. Two other short, black haired blurs streaked by after him, yelling some sort of warning at him.
“Hmph.” Ryoma didn't stop for more than a second, disregarding the hastily given advice. As usual, his curiosity won out over his self-preservation instincts, and he continued in the direction from which his terrified yearmates had come. Turning the corner, the mystery was quickly solved as he quite literally ran into Inui, who was carrying a pitcher of some sort.
“I'm sorry, Echizen, I didn't see you there,” Inui said distractedly, a thoughtful look on his face. “We were just getting ready to test my new Super Taste Juice Version Blue.”
Fuji appeared from behind Inui and offered his hand to Ryoma, who had been knocked to the floor. Not wanting to offend his eccentric senpai, Ryoma accepted it, and Fuji's eyes shot open and he froze for a brief instant before pulling Ryoma to his feet and resuming his usual expression.
“What a shame, I was looking forward to trying that one,” Fuji said regretfully, eyeing the blueish liquid that had spilled onto the floor during the collision.
“Not to worry. I have another batch almost ready,” Inui informed him, glasses gleaming in the afternoon light. “Would you like to try some too, Echizen?”
Ryoma unconsciously took a step away, and shook his head. “I've got to go talk to buchou,” he excused himself hastily, and quickly continued on his way. As he caught something about viscosity and beetle pigments from the pair's conversation, Ryoma thanked the powers that be that the concoction had been spilled, and walked even faster.
Tezuka gave him a brief look as he peered into the club room. He then waved Ryoma into a chair at the table where they sat, presumably to wait until he and Oishi were finished talking with Fudomine's captain, Tachibana Kippei.
The two team captains spent a few minutes in quiet discussion, consulting often with Oishi, and Ryoma propped his head up with his hand as he stared out the window, utterly bored. Normally he found tennis players from other teams to be interesting, especially strong ones like Tachibana. Though the discussion of schedules was anything but.
Finally, they finished, and the three of them stood. “We look forward to practicing with you again at Fudomine,” Tachibana said politely, shaking hands with both Tezuka and Oishi. “And I know Shinji especially is looking forward to playing with you, Echizen-kun.” Tachibana said, offering Ryoma his hand as well. Ryoma took it, and was surprised by the laxness of the other buchou's grip.
“Mada mada dane,” he said, lips curling slightly upwards. “I'd rather play you.”
Tachibana withdrew his hand abruptly and looked down at it for a moment, but then gave Ryoma a knowing smile. “I think you have enough to keep you busy here.” With a small wave, Tachibana left.
“Echizen.”
Ryoma looked inquisitively at Tezuka. “What was it you wanted, buchou?”
Tezuka walked over to one of the desks and pulled something small out of its drawer. “I believe this is yours.” He then pressed it into Ryoma's hand, but paused for a moment before withdrawing his own larger one. “And I have a few books on doubles you should look at,” he added, looking distracted.
Ryoma opened his hand, and reddened slightly when he found a small purple ball with a bell inside it. Pocketing the toy, he made a mental note to keep his tennis bag far away from Karupin's favorite spots. He followed Tezuka over to the bookshelf, and allowed himself to be loaded down with several rather dry looking volumes on doubles techniques.
With a brief nod of thanks - though he didn't know if he should be thankful for such a load - Ryoma turned to leave, but halted as he felt a hand settle on his shoulder. Looking up at its owner, Ryoma wondered what Oishi could possibly be frowning about. The kind smile quickly returned to Oishi's face, though, as he handed Ryoma yet another book. This book, at least, looked interesting.
~*~
The pale yellow light moving up from both sides of the archway met at the top, and burned gold all around. The nebulous outline of a figure began to form inside the archway, and the girl knew it was time to complete her duty. Her lips stilled, and she stood and stepped carefully, reverently, outside of the symbols and towards the archway. Grasping her athame(1) firmly in her hands, she called out the last necessary words.
“Per auctorita fidelis voco orior en terra. Eximo!”
And then, without even an instant's hesitation, she plunged the precious blade into her torso and twisted it, thus completing the final act of the ceremony. Blood splattered to the floor, and was drawn away from her.
She felt herself fall, and the last thing she ever saw was the archway that she had drawn, pulsing a brilliant crimson.
~*~
As he left to go meet Momo, Ryoma had the strangest sensation of something being off and wondered, not for the first time that afternoon, what it was that he was missing. Shrugging the feeling off, he walked over to the bike racks, and found his senpai leaning against his bike and staring off into space.
“Hey,” Ryoma said, waving his hand in front of Momo's unusually pensive looking face. Momo started, and blinked as he saw Ryoma.
“Oh, hi, Echizen,” he said distractedly. “Ready to go?”
Ryoma was somewhat surprised that Momo hadn't complained that he'd been kept waiting, but simply nodded and climbed onto Momo's bike behind him. They rode of in silence, which he found rather uncomfortable for some reason..
“What's with you?” Ryoma asked.
“Huh?” Momo replied with his usual eloquence.
“You're not being so loud,” Ryoma said bluntly. “You're thinking about something.”
Momo looked thoughtful, but in a way that seemed rather wrong to Ryoma on some level. “I guess so,” he replied slowly. “But I don't know what. Its just, a weird feeling, you know?”
“No.”
“Ah, I forgot, you're so cold, Echizen!” Momo exclaimed, a smile making its way back onto his face. “But not that cold, if you were worried about me,” he teased.
“Yeah, I thought all that thinking might be dangerous for you. But I must have worried for nothing,” Ryoma said nonchalantly.
“Brat!”
He could tell that Momo wasn't really mad. “Do you want some burgers?” Ryoma asked. “If we hurry we can meet Kawamura and Eiji-senpai.”
~*~*~
“Not bad at all, for a novice. She completed the ceremony quite nicely.” The woman, tall and tanned, absently flipped back her vivid golden hair as she observed the carefully drawn symbols on the stone floor and the gloriously red archway. “Dare I ask what you did with the body?”
“Slapped a reverse summoning charm on it and sent it back where it came from,” the man said casually. He bent down to pick up the athame, on which the dried blood seemed to blend in with the color of his hair.
“You're such a sadist, Orias,” the woman said, sounding amused. “That girl's parents are probably going to have heart attacks or something. Just please tell me you didn't chop it up or . . . do something to it first,” she said distastefully.
“Of course not,” he replied, as if offended by the idea that he would do such a thing. “I may be a lot of things, but a necrophiliac isn't one of them. And by the way,” he added, sounding a touch miffed, “I'm going by Nanjou Isao now.”
“That name again already?” She sighed. “How the years fly by.”
“But never fast enough, Mara. We've been waiting too long for this already,” he said quietly, a fierce gleam in his coal-black eyes.
She patted him on the arm consolingly. “We've waited millennia, and I'm sure you can wait just a little bit longer. This was merely the first step, and I'm sure that He will reward our patience.”
“Undoubtedly,” Orias agreed. “And I know what I want . . .”
“Don't get too ahead of yourself,” came a melodious voice from behind. A slender figure emerged from the shadowed doorway, and regarded the pair serenely. “That little tenshi (2), sweet thing, might not want to play with a demon like you. Pretty things usually don't. And this one isn't like the first one, I don't think. She might not even know what we are. Then what will you do?” He tilted his head to one side, long white hair swishing against his hips.
“You misunderstand, Adriel.” Orias smiled darkly. “That's part of the fun.”
~*~
Japanese Vocabulary:
senpai - your senior [schoolmate]
buchou - [team] captain
(1)Athame: a double sided dagger, often used in summoning and other magical ceremonies/rituals.
(2)Tenshi: the Japanese word for Angel. I have chosen to use the Japanese word instead of the English one, as I feel that my use of it is closer to the way it is used in Japanese sources than to the traditional Christian meaning. Japan is not a Christian nation, and Christian imagery and religious iconography (including angels) that are often found in Japanese culture do not necessarily have the same meaning behind them that they would in a more Christian culture.
Chapter 1 Notes:
This was primarily a set-up chapter, as you may have guessed, and everything will be revealed in due time.
As you can see, I have introduced several OC's in this chapter. I generally try to avoid writing OC's, but in this case I didn't have much choice as this story needed some antagonists. And as unpleasant as some of the guys in PoT can be . . . they're just not bad enough. Rest assured, though, that these OC's are plot devices and will NOT get a lot of “screen time”, so to speak. The focus will be almost exclusively on our tennis boys in future chapters. ;)
Also, I totally fudged that ceremony. I am not affiliated with any religions/followings that practice such things, so please note that none of the mystical/spiritual stuff in the story will be accurate. And please pardon the terrible use of Latin in this chapter. ^^;;
Title: Recombinant
Author: Dolly (universal_doll)
Rating: PG to PG-13
Characters: Echizen, Tezuka, Fuji (primary); Tachibana An, Tachibana Kippei, Momoshiro (secondary); and the rest of Seigaku.
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, AU (or rather, Alternate History/Timeline)
Summary: “Why couldn't you have been magical girls?”
Previous: Full Story Notes and Prologue
NEW:
Chapter 1
Slender hands ran lovingly across yellowed text, and a single manicured finger came to rest lightly on the top of the page. A small smile pulled at the corners of the girl's lips as she seated herself in the center of the symbols, which she had so painstakingly drawn out on the cold stone floor.
A wave of her hand and a whispered word, and the tall candles were lit all around. Pressing her fingers together to form a sign, she closed her eyes and began to chant.
“Per auctorita fidelis voco orior en terra. Per auctorita fidelis voco orior en terra. Per auctorita . . . .”
And so it continued.
The only movement in the cavernous hall was that of her lips, until a chill wind began to pick up.
~*~
“Oi, Echizen, hurry up! I'll be waiting by the bike racks.” Momoshiro gave Ryoma a friendly if not overzealous clap on the shoulder, and then headed out of Seigaku Tennis Club's locker room.
“Okay,” Ryoma replied as he buttoned his uniform shirt. A slight frown crossed his features as he stuffed his jersey into his bag, recalling how he had nearly been beaten by one of the Fudomine players. Still, though, he thought that sharing a practice with the other team had been kind of fun.
“Wah, those Fudomine players are tough! I can't believe me and Oishi lost a match with them!” Eiji lamented.
“It was only one out of three,” Kawamura said reassuringly. “And it sure was good practice, don't you think?”
“I guess it was pretty fun,” Eiji admitted, grinning. “Did you have fun too, Ochibi-chan?”
“Fudomine's not bad.” Ryoma shrugged, and slipped on his uniform jacket.
“That's the spirit!” Eiji exclaimed, and then threw his arms around Ryoma from behind. Ryoma felt a jolt, and sent Eiji an annoyed look. “You should learn to socialize better with the other teams though,” Eiji said sagely after an uncharacteristic moment of silence. “Like Fuji does! He's always so polite to the other players, though they don't talk to him much. I wonder why?” Eiji carried on, still holding onto Ryoma.
“Eiji-senpai!” Ryoma complained, only to be rescued as Kawamura touched them both lightly on their shoulders, causing Eiji to get off of him. Kawamura looked almost surprised for some reason, though continued on to speak.
“You know, my dad gave me the afternoon off since the shop is closed for repairs,” Kawamura began hesitantly. “How about we go for burgers? My treat.”
“Sounds great, Taka-san!” Eiji replied enthusiastically.
“I can't,” Ryoma said, regretting the loss of an opportunity for free food. “I'm going somewhere with Momo-senpai.” Slinging his bag over his shoulder, Ryoma headed towards the door. As he stepped around the corner of the lockers, though, he nearly tripped over Kaidoh, who was sitting on the floor in an awkward position and appeared to be doing something with his shoe.
The second-year's head shot up at the contact, and he gave Ryoma a strange look before the usual glare settled on his face. “Watch where you're going, squirt,” he grumbled.
Ryoma looked down at him curiously. “You shouldn't play with your shoe laces in the middle of the floor, senpai.” He smirked and made a prompt exit, not bothering to stay to listen to Kaidoh's annoyed explanation. Of course Ryoma knew that Kaidoh wasn't playing with anything, but where was the fun in letting him know that?
~*~
The wind tore through the great hall, yet the candles remained lit. The girl's eyes flew open, and were drawn to the monumental wall in front of her upon which an archway had been drawn in clean white chalk. As she continued to chant, a pale yellow light began to creep up along its lines.
~*~
Ryoma almost headed straight for the bike racks to meet Momo, but then remembered that Tezuka had asked to see him after practice. And Tezuka was probably in the club meeting room in the main school building, doing some of that organizational stuff that he so often did. Ryoma walked slowly through the empty hallways, though the quiet was soon shattered by a familiar shout that never failed to grate on his nerves.
“Aaahhh!” His annoying classmate, Horio, careened around the corner and came running down the hall full tilt, and Ryoma stepped to the side just in time to avoid getting run over. Two other short, black haired blurs streaked by after him, yelling some sort of warning at him.
“Hmph.” Ryoma didn't stop for more than a second, disregarding the hastily given advice. As usual, his curiosity won out over his self-preservation instincts, and he continued in the direction from which his terrified yearmates had come. Turning the corner, the mystery was quickly solved as he quite literally ran into Inui, who was carrying a pitcher of some sort.
“I'm sorry, Echizen, I didn't see you there,” Inui said distractedly, a thoughtful look on his face. “We were just getting ready to test my new Super Taste Juice Version Blue.”
Fuji appeared from behind Inui and offered his hand to Ryoma, who had been knocked to the floor. Not wanting to offend his eccentric senpai, Ryoma accepted it, and Fuji's eyes shot open and he froze for a brief instant before pulling Ryoma to his feet and resuming his usual expression.
“What a shame, I was looking forward to trying that one,” Fuji said regretfully, eyeing the blueish liquid that had spilled onto the floor during the collision.
“Not to worry. I have another batch almost ready,” Inui informed him, glasses gleaming in the afternoon light. “Would you like to try some too, Echizen?”
Ryoma unconsciously took a step away, and shook his head. “I've got to go talk to buchou,” he excused himself hastily, and quickly continued on his way. As he caught something about viscosity and beetle pigments from the pair's conversation, Ryoma thanked the powers that be that the concoction had been spilled, and walked even faster.
Tezuka gave him a brief look as he peered into the club room. He then waved Ryoma into a chair at the table where they sat, presumably to wait until he and Oishi were finished talking with Fudomine's captain, Tachibana Kippei.
The two team captains spent a few minutes in quiet discussion, consulting often with Oishi, and Ryoma propped his head up with his hand as he stared out the window, utterly bored. Normally he found tennis players from other teams to be interesting, especially strong ones like Tachibana. Though the discussion of schedules was anything but.
Finally, they finished, and the three of them stood. “We look forward to practicing with you again at Fudomine,” Tachibana said politely, shaking hands with both Tezuka and Oishi. “And I know Shinji especially is looking forward to playing with you, Echizen-kun.” Tachibana said, offering Ryoma his hand as well. Ryoma took it, and was surprised by the laxness of the other buchou's grip.
“Mada mada dane,” he said, lips curling slightly upwards. “I'd rather play you.”
Tachibana withdrew his hand abruptly and looked down at it for a moment, but then gave Ryoma a knowing smile. “I think you have enough to keep you busy here.” With a small wave, Tachibana left.
“Echizen.”
Ryoma looked inquisitively at Tezuka. “What was it you wanted, buchou?”
Tezuka walked over to one of the desks and pulled something small out of its drawer. “I believe this is yours.” He then pressed it into Ryoma's hand, but paused for a moment before withdrawing his own larger one. “And I have a few books on doubles you should look at,” he added, looking distracted.
Ryoma opened his hand, and reddened slightly when he found a small purple ball with a bell inside it. Pocketing the toy, he made a mental note to keep his tennis bag far away from Karupin's favorite spots. He followed Tezuka over to the bookshelf, and allowed himself to be loaded down with several rather dry looking volumes on doubles techniques.
With a brief nod of thanks - though he didn't know if he should be thankful for such a load - Ryoma turned to leave, but halted as he felt a hand settle on his shoulder. Looking up at its owner, Ryoma wondered what Oishi could possibly be frowning about. The kind smile quickly returned to Oishi's face, though, as he handed Ryoma yet another book. This book, at least, looked interesting.
~*~
The pale yellow light moving up from both sides of the archway met at the top, and burned gold all around. The nebulous outline of a figure began to form inside the archway, and the girl knew it was time to complete her duty. Her lips stilled, and she stood and stepped carefully, reverently, outside of the symbols and towards the archway. Grasping her athame(1) firmly in her hands, she called out the last necessary words.
“Per auctorita fidelis voco orior en terra. Eximo!”
And then, without even an instant's hesitation, she plunged the precious blade into her torso and twisted it, thus completing the final act of the ceremony. Blood splattered to the floor, and was drawn away from her.
She felt herself fall, and the last thing she ever saw was the archway that she had drawn, pulsing a brilliant crimson.
~*~
As he left to go meet Momo, Ryoma had the strangest sensation of something being off and wondered, not for the first time that afternoon, what it was that he was missing. Shrugging the feeling off, he walked over to the bike racks, and found his senpai leaning against his bike and staring off into space.
“Hey,” Ryoma said, waving his hand in front of Momo's unusually pensive looking face. Momo started, and blinked as he saw Ryoma.
“Oh, hi, Echizen,” he said distractedly. “Ready to go?”
Ryoma was somewhat surprised that Momo hadn't complained that he'd been kept waiting, but simply nodded and climbed onto Momo's bike behind him. They rode of in silence, which he found rather uncomfortable for some reason..
“What's with you?” Ryoma asked.
“Huh?” Momo replied with his usual eloquence.
“You're not being so loud,” Ryoma said bluntly. “You're thinking about something.”
Momo looked thoughtful, but in a way that seemed rather wrong to Ryoma on some level. “I guess so,” he replied slowly. “But I don't know what. Its just, a weird feeling, you know?”
“No.”
“Ah, I forgot, you're so cold, Echizen!” Momo exclaimed, a smile making its way back onto his face. “But not that cold, if you were worried about me,” he teased.
“Yeah, I thought all that thinking might be dangerous for you. But I must have worried for nothing,” Ryoma said nonchalantly.
“Brat!”
He could tell that Momo wasn't really mad. “Do you want some burgers?” Ryoma asked. “If we hurry we can meet Kawamura and Eiji-senpai.”
~*~*~
“Not bad at all, for a novice. She completed the ceremony quite nicely.” The woman, tall and tanned, absently flipped back her vivid golden hair as she observed the carefully drawn symbols on the stone floor and the gloriously red archway. “Dare I ask what you did with the body?”
“Slapped a reverse summoning charm on it and sent it back where it came from,” the man said casually. He bent down to pick up the athame, on which the dried blood seemed to blend in with the color of his hair.
“You're such a sadist, Orias,” the woman said, sounding amused. “That girl's parents are probably going to have heart attacks or something. Just please tell me you didn't chop it up or . . . do something to it first,” she said distastefully.
“Of course not,” he replied, as if offended by the idea that he would do such a thing. “I may be a lot of things, but a necrophiliac isn't one of them. And by the way,” he added, sounding a touch miffed, “I'm going by Nanjou Isao now.”
“That name again already?” She sighed. “How the years fly by.”
“But never fast enough, Mara. We've been waiting too long for this already,” he said quietly, a fierce gleam in his coal-black eyes.
She patted him on the arm consolingly. “We've waited millennia, and I'm sure you can wait just a little bit longer. This was merely the first step, and I'm sure that He will reward our patience.”
“Undoubtedly,” Orias agreed. “And I know what I want . . .”
“Don't get too ahead of yourself,” came a melodious voice from behind. A slender figure emerged from the shadowed doorway, and regarded the pair serenely. “That little tenshi (2), sweet thing, might not want to play with a demon like you. Pretty things usually don't. And this one isn't like the first one, I don't think. She might not even know what we are. Then what will you do?” He tilted his head to one side, long white hair swishing against his hips.
“You misunderstand, Adriel.” Orias smiled darkly. “That's part of the fun.”
~*~
Japanese Vocabulary:
senpai - your senior [schoolmate]
buchou - [team] captain
(1)Athame: a double sided dagger, often used in summoning and other magical ceremonies/rituals.
(2)Tenshi: the Japanese word for Angel. I have chosen to use the Japanese word instead of the English one, as I feel that my use of it is closer to the way it is used in Japanese sources than to the traditional Christian meaning. Japan is not a Christian nation, and Christian imagery and religious iconography (including angels) that are often found in Japanese culture do not necessarily have the same meaning behind them that they would in a more Christian culture.
Chapter 1 Notes:
This was primarily a set-up chapter, as you may have guessed, and everything will be revealed in due time.
As you can see, I have introduced several OC's in this chapter. I generally try to avoid writing OC's, but in this case I didn't have much choice as this story needed some antagonists. And as unpleasant as some of the guys in PoT can be . . . they're just not bad enough. Rest assured, though, that these OC's are plot devices and will NOT get a lot of “screen time”, so to speak. The focus will be almost exclusively on our tennis boys in future chapters. ;)
Also, I totally fudged that ceremony. I am not affiliated with any religions/followings that practice such things, so please note that none of the mystical/spiritual stuff in the story will be accurate. And please pardon the terrible use of Latin in this chapter. ^^;;