"Richie, stay here! I'm going to go after him."

Richie raised one hand and then dropped it as he saw his teacher race through the door after Subaru. "Duncan... what's making you so crazy about this kid?" Richie thought back to the expression he had seen in Duncan's face when Subaru had run out -- it had been the protector roused.

*Another incident from the past is haunting you, Mac. I can feel it... You better snap out of it before it messes both of you up.*

Shaking his head, Richie sat down to wait for the dojo owner to come back, and tried to think of some excuse why he was holding a sword and had blood all over him, without any visible wounds. *Why am I always stuck with the hard explanations...*

"Subaru! Hey kid -- wait up! What's wrong with you? Didn't you understand any of what I told you?" Duncan caught up to Subaru in what seemed to be a small park, and grabbed him by the shoulders. Turning him around, he yelled out, "You'll die, dammit! Don't you understand that if you don't defend yourself, you will have your head taken?"

Subaru looked as if he were about to slip away without saying a word, but some of the raw pain in Duncan's voice reached him. It touched him enough so that he could not descend to the empty place so he could be distant and polite, and not feel anything... All of the frustration, the anger, the confusion that he had been feeling just raged out of his thin frame.

Quietly, but so intensely that listening closely could hurt, Subaru replied. "Duncan-san, of course I know -- I have listened to all that you have said. I understand that if I do not train with a sword, some immortal with a taste for power will come, and try to kill me. But tell me, how long do you think that will take? A month? A year?"

Duncan was about to ask why it mattered, but stopped when he saw Subaru's expression. It was fierce, raging, and within it held terrible pain that revealed the real person behind the facade that Subaru had kept up. "It could be the next day, or the next month. Perhaps even the next year. But there are not so few of us that an new immortal will not be challenged... It will happen, sooner or later."

Subaru smiled at him -- an expression that was more a grimace than anything else. His voice was louder, even more intense, and it rang in the dark night. "And do I have a few months? Or even a month? No! I feel it, don't you see? The final reckoning between him and me... it's coming! Soon... too soon -- I'm not ready, I've been getting myself used to the idea of my death, until you come into my life, telling me that there is no way I can lose! Do you -- do you realize-"

Subaru dropped to the ground, kneeling in front of Duncan. Quieter, in a whisper, he continued, "Do you realize how that makes me feel? To not have the death so close... and yet to realize that if I had just gone and faced him, then none of this would be necessary, my revenging myself on Neesan's death. She wouldn't be dead if I had let myself be killed, but I wouldn't be dead either... Somehow, it's all wrong-"

Duncan was staring at Subaru as a person who can only stand by and listen. He could feel that this was necessary, this letting go of the pain, the anger. But listening to him, only understanding the fraction of the whole, Duncan still felt terrible anger. Anger at the person, or at the thing that had twisted this person in front of him into such a wreck.

"Subaru... hey kid. Come on -- get a hold of yourself. I don't know what this reckoning is, but it can't be so serious that you're willing to risk your life." Subaru raised his eyes to him, and Duncan had to suppress the urge to recoil. The eyes that had been merely human before were now windows into a maddened, tortured soul, in pain beyond humanity.

"You know nothing! Nothing of risk. Do you really wish to know? In a short time -- somewhere, sometime close -- I will fight. My enemy will be the person who murdered my twin sister, the person who I thought was my friend. The person who crushed all the trust and innocence I had, and left me only need for revenge. My enemy is the one who destroyed my life, without any feeling at all."

Bitterly, Subaru snarled out, "Like a glass cup, a thing that breaks if you let it go -- that was all my life was to him." Duncan let out a breath that he had been holding, knowing that there was more to this. There was still a tension... "He was -- no. That's the worst part. He still is... he is the person I love. The person I want..." Clenching his hands, Subaru drove them to the ground. He said in a whisper, as he beat the cold earth, "Seishirou-san... Sakurazukamori..."

Duncan let the young man drive out his anger on the ground, while his mind raced on what to do. *Shit- he's suicidal and in love with a psychopath... He's one seriously messed up kid. How the hell-*

Duncan tried to find something to say to the young man who was now looking at his bloody hands as if they did not belong to him. "Even these wounds disappear..." Subaru's desolate whisper made Duncan act.

"Subaru- hey, look at me." Duncan gently took the young man by the shoulders and lifted him up. "Look at me. I don't know the whole story, but I do know that you don't deserve to let yourself die in any way. You have to accept that you're not going to die -- not unless-" What could he say? That it was going to all right? Duncan knew how hollow those words could sound.

As Subaru buried his head on Duncan's chest to let loose the tears that had been building up, Duncan could think of nothing to do except hold the young man who obviously needed someone to be there for him. Somehow, he knew that it would be a mistake to not be here for him now, before-

"Subaru-kun." A soft voice near them whispered from the darkness.

Duncan cursed inwardly as he got himself ready for an attack. While the person who had spoken was not an immortal, the way he had managed to sneak up on him showed that the stranger was not a novice. "Who's there!?"

The soft voice's owner stepped from out of the shadows. "I think that Subaru-kun knows..."

Duncan noticed that Subaru had just stiffened in his arms. As he gently let the youth go, he was shocked to find that Subaru was shaking. "Se-Seishirou-san. So... you come when your prey is weakest?"

Seishirou laughed gently, and came up to Subaru. Putting one hand under his chin, he forced Subaru to look into his eyes- one seeing, one not. "Subaru-kun, have you found another protector? I feel slightly betrayed... I did think that you would stay faithful to me." Seishirou's smile got a little wider as he gauged the impact of those words on the younger man. "Finding you in another's arms... what would Hokuto-chan say? She was always our biggest fan."

Subaru leapt away from him with an angry glare. "You -- how dare you speak of her to me?" Trying to control his temper, he heard a blade's metallic hiss from behind him as Duncan drew Subaru's new sword from the scabbard. "Subaru -- is this the one you were telling me about? He may be mortal, but he's also a murderer-"

Seishirou's voice answered him directly. "So, you know of my identity as an assassin? Subaru-kun, that was very careless of you. That means that after our fight, he'll have to die as well. What could you possibly have thought telling him would do, except get him killed?" He smiled the predator's smile as he waited for Subaru's reply. It was so entertaining to play with his Subaru-kun for a bit...

Duncan stared at the supremely arrogant assassin for a moment before he started to laugh. He couldn't help himself -- that this presumptuous mortal would so casually claim his life when so many others had tried... Subaru had looked up in surprise at Duncan's sudden laughter, but seeing the irony, couldn't help but join in himself. Subaru's laughter was less amused, more hysterical, but it was true laughter.

"You're welcome to try." Duncan's expression changed to one much deadlier as he stood in the ready stance his body knew too well. "I have no fear of death, from you or anyone else." Duncan stood in front of Subaru protectively, and Seishirou watched this arrangement with interest.

Ignoring the man with the sword, Seishirou went and took out a cigarette from a pack in his jacket. Holding it for a moment, he smiled as the anticipated light was offered by Subaru. "Thank you, Subaru-kun. You realize how bad smoking is for you, don't you? Your dear grandmother must be so disappointed that the thirteenth head of the Sumeragi Clan had such a habit..."

"Well, that's one worry you don't have anymore. Right, Subaru?" Seishirou was not pleased to have Duncan interrupt, and gave the immortal a sharp, annoyed look. Subaru looked away from the man that he had thought would be his killer, and nodded. Satisfied that whatever power Seishirou had over Subaru had lessened, Duncan put the sword back in its sheath.

"Subaru, I think it's time you went back to your home. I expect to see you in training tomorrow at the dojo -- no exceptions! I don't want some excuse about some silly fight -- there's going to be more to your life than that. Come on, I'll walk you home." Taking the younger man with him, Duncan spared one last look back at Subaru's tormentor.

*Never again, you bastard. I'm not letting any of my students go the way-* No, it was not the time to think about it now, though Duncan now realized exactly why Subaru was bothering him so much. *Now is definitely not the time.* Looking back at the strangely powerful man, Duncan knew that whatever he may believe about magic, this one was radiating something deadly and wrong. *This trip has shown me that magic exists, at the very least... and even Cassandra couldn't do that...*

Seishirou's last comment hit both their ears as the assassin also started to walk away. "Subaru-kun. Time's up -- I've gotten tired of playing. You'll know when, and you'll come. Then you will die as you should have those years ago, and you and Hokuto-chan can be together again. The tree is hungry..."

One angry glare back was all Duncan could spare as he herded his student back to his newly rented apartment. *I'm not going to let him stay in that empty place by himself -- not tonight. Too much could happen.* He looked down at Subaru, who had gone into a ominous, too-quiet state. *Now what am I supposed to do?*

As Sakurazukamori watched his prey leave with his new protector, he couldn't help but feel... annoyance? How odd. It was the attitude of that 'Duncan', and the strange things that he and Subaru had been discussing. Immortality? If there was such a thing, only death-dealers like he would know of it.

No, what that foreigner was doing was confusing his prey during his running of the course. Muddling up the responses that Subaru was supposed to make to the stimuli, and making the game less predictable. Not necessarily a bad thing, but when his partner was this hungry...

/Where?/
/He is coming... do not worry./
/Power- food!/
/He will be there soon./

The cherry tree was getting impatient at its required meal being denied. Rarely was it so forceful or articulate. Still, the chase of the hunt was giving it some of the peripheral agony of the victim, before the inevitable feast. Subaru's life ebbing away should feed it for a longer time than most.

Perhaps it would last long enough for him to get some rest from its eternal want of blood. Sighing a bit, he admitted very quietly to himself that while the hunt was of course, exhilarating, it was also tiring. Perhaps it was already time for a new Sakurazukamori? Seishirou shook his head at the thought. No, of course not -- he was at the peak of his powers, and would remain that way for quite a while. Besides, he had no wish to die.

What was making him so... bothered? While it was not a feeling that he had never felt before, it was very... persistent. He did not like it one bit -- it made him feel very odd. Why was he feeling such a thing? Some of it was the tree's annoyance, but most of it was, if he was being honest to himself, from seeing his prey in another's arms.

*Subaru-kun is mine, and only mine to play with. That other man who claims to be his teacher... I am most satisfied that he knows my identity. It shouldn't be hard...* And in the back of his mind, the tree grumbled its want for food, for pain...