Ending C

The regulars picked up Ryoma at the back door of the bank, and with a swift u-turn their van headed for Black Jack's house. The mission was complete. Perfectly. The people at the bank were still happily enthralled by Kaidoh's amazing singing skills, and had no idea that there was a theft. Even when they finally discovered the loss of the 50 million dollars later, it never occurred to them that it might have something to do with Kaoru's cooking class, the mysterious cat in the backyard or the two starved little boys. Inui's plan was that good.

Black Jack was as good as he was famed to be. He sneaked into the hospital in the dead of the night and fixed Oishi's wounds like he promised. He bid the Seigaku regulars farewell under the moon, his cape flapping in wind.

"Your friend will recover very soon."

"Thank you so much for your help," Tezuka said solemnly.

Black Jack waved, "No problem. Take care until we meet again!" Then his figure disappeared into a narrow alley.

"I wish we will never meet him again," Kawamura said thoughtfully, watching him leave.

They couldn't agree with him more.

Poor Mr. Imai was fired by the bank, even though it wasn't his fault. He found a job as janitor in one of the hospitals near his house. When he was patrolling the sidewalks one day, he saw two familiar faces. He remembered them as the two friendly students of Seigaku that had interviewed him for their civics report some time ago.

He also thought that the two boys who were laughing and walking with them looked strangely familiar. One of them was a loud and sunny youth, one of them had his cap shadowing his face.

Mr. Imai wondered where he had seen them before.

Black Jack's expectations were fulfilled pretty soon. Oishi, who had been declared brain-dead by the doctors, shouted "I AM REBORN!" and sat up in bed suddenly one day, giving his mom such a shock that she fainted right into Tezuka's arms.

Oishi felt dazed. His head hurt, his feet hurt, his tongue hurt, and he had no idea what was going on. Waking up to see his own mother in Tezuka's arms was not helping.

"Syuichiro!" His father ran over to hug him. Oishi, though still confused, was touched that his father, usually not one to display strong emotions like all traditional Japanese men, was actually hugging him tearfully.

"Syuichiro!" His grandmother cried and ran over to hug him too. Oishi was touched because his grandmother was on crutches and running anywhere was a great feat for her.

"Syuichiro!" Fuji cried and ran over to hug him. Oishi cringed in fear and tried to run away, discovering that he could already run in the process.

"That Black Jack guy is seriously amazing," Momo said aside to Ryoma, as an embarrassed Oishi came back to his bed and sat down.

"Um… thanks for coming to see me," he said after some hesitation. He still had no idea exactly what had happened to him. He felt like that he had been to some place far, far away, and as he looked at the beaming faces of all the people around him, he knew that no matter where the place was he was definitely glad to be back.

Momo exclaimed happily, "This is not something you should thank us about, senpai!" To express his meaning he whacked him heartily on his shoulder.

"Don't whack him, he might break his arm," Kawamura quickly warned.

"There's a lot more things that Oishi-senpai should thank us about…" Ryoma muttered aside, of course not letting Oishi hear.

Oishi looked gratefully at the flowers, the food, the video games and the Legos that his visitors had brought him. He then looked gratefully at his visitors. There were more relatives than he could count, even his great-grandpa (who was, by the way, already dead, but he just had to be there), and all his friends from the tennis club. Well, most of them.

"Fuji, where's…"

At this moment Eiji, who had gone out to buy junk food, flung open the door. "Oishiiiiiiii!"

Fuji informed him, "Eiji, you have missed the exciting moment of Oishi sitting up and shouting, 'I AM REBORN'!"

"I did? No fair! I've been waiting for this moment for days! I skipped all my classes so I could stay here and he had to choose the few minutes I was gone to wake up… Oishi, shout REBORN! again for me please? I wanna hear!"

"Uh…" Even though Oishi was very moved that Eiji had skipped classes to stay around him, it's still stupid to shout REBORN! again in front of so many people. Including his parents. And his grandparents. And his great-grandparents. It did not help either that from the looks of it his friends and his relatives seemed to be on pretty good terms due to the time they had spent together at the hospital. In fact, Ryoma was playing Super Mario with his grandfather on his father's side, and Kaidoh was cooking with his grandmother on his mother's side.

"Well, you don't have to do it now," Eiji said, seeing that Oishi looked so embarrassed, "you can do it some time later. Hey, when you are ready, we can all go shopping together!"

"Sure," Oishi said, smiling.

So they all went shopping together the next day because they figured if Oishi was well enough to run away from Fuji he would be well enough to walk on streets. As Oishi surveyed his surroundings, he discovered that in the few days that he was unconscious, he had missed quite a lot of news.

"Hey…" As they passed the window of an electric appliance store, Oishi stopped, noticing that one of the televisions on display was having a show called Kaoru's Cooking Class, "This guy looks awfully like Kaidoh! He even has a bandanna!"

Kaidoh blushed furiously and pretended to be amused with a passing cat. Not that he wasn't really amused.

"That's impossible," Momo burst into laughter. "That stupid viper's too ugly to appear on television! "

"But he really looks like Kaidoh…" Oishi said, trying to get a closer look, but was dragged away by Eiji.

"Don't watch boring cooking shows, Oishi! Let's go get ice-cream!" Eiji pleaded.

"But… wait! Look, there was a robbery in the bank across our school days ago!" Oishi said, noting the news flash on another television on display. "That was horrible… 50 million. Right across our school!"

"Yes. We all heard about it," Tezuka said without any change of expression. The righteous Tezuka Kunimitsu had become quite a skilled liar these days.

"Oh dear, thank goodness that you guys are all right. If you ran into the robbers and they had guns…"

Eiji waved his worries away, "Come on, Oishi, the chances that we will run into the robbers are extremely low. You worry too much."

"But it happened right across our school…"

"Don't worry. I will never let my teammates do anything dangerous," Tezuka said. He was lying so skillfully that he almost believed himself.

"Yeah, there's nothing to worry about with Tezuka watching over everyone." Oishi smiled. The accident seemed so far away now. It did not matter anyway. All he wanted now was to spend his afternoon happily with his teammates.

"I'm hungry! Let's go get sushi!"

"Fshuu…When have you ever been not hungry, idiot…"

"What did you say I was? Say it again!"

So Kaidoh said it again, "Idiot."

"Want to fight?"

"Fshuu… Good! Let's!"

"Hey…" Oishi sighed, holding his stomach, "please don't fight…"

Oishi loved life that evening. The sky was especially beautiful that evening to him, because of the people he was with when he saw it.

Together, he knew that they would see many more beautiful evenings to come.

The End.

YAY! Finally finished. Thanks for reading! And thanks for all the reviews, they make me so happy. I really, really appreciate them.

forgotten hyoshi: Well, actually there is already a sequel in Chinese. I've already started translating it. I'm glad that you wanted a sequel! Thank you and all the other people who wanted a sequel for wanting a sequel! (That sounded weird...)

terrfomp92: Ahh, it's all right. The longer the better. You guys are interesting. In fact, I think best friends who write things together are always interesting...

shourin: Thank you for liking the last chapter (because it's my favorite) and for noticing that there was "hope" in it (because I was rather worried that nobody would notice). I can't bet with you, because if I do and it doesn't reach 100, you can make it reach 100 by reviewing anonymously, and I will lose the bet. :D Thank you for understanding what we wanted to express perfectly!

Anyway, thank you mysticLegend11 for beta-ing for me, I hope my grammar has improved a little! (I'll need it, I am hoping to study abroad or something in the future.) And thank you again everyone for reading!