Title: The Biography of Fujiwara Syuusuke - Up in Flames

Mod you're writing for: Sweet Obsidian Rain

Writers: ezylrybbit （chapters 1 and 2）, The Night Owl is Addicted and doroniasobi （chapters 3 and 4）, mysteriously. memorised（chapters 6 and 7）， HaveYouNoMercy and Crysalice Bell （chapters 8 and 9）; with help from Peppermint Kiss.

Beta(s): crassreine.

Genre(s): N/A

Pairings: Thrill Pair (FujiRyo), Perfect Pair (TezuFuji）； these are the main pairings)

Schools: N/A (It's AU)

Wordlength: Multichapter

Summary: This is the twisted， desperation-driven histoire of Fujiwara Syuusuke。

Author's Notes: （ezyl here） Rea~ You know we love you。 Here's to all that hard work as our mod at Pointless but Original. See if you can catch all the JE references! XD．

The Biography of Fujiwara Syuusuke – Up in Flames

－CHAPTER ONE－

We're not going anywhere tomorrow

Do you hate that?

On the night Fujiwara Syuusuke came into the world, thunder wept out loud and scattered no tears.

It was the night witchcraft enthusiasts would later worship as Painted Sky, and superstitious mountain folk would shiver and recallas Night of the Fire from Hell. It was a night where the clouds of the heavens dyed themselves an unmistakable bloody red, and the dark whispers of the spirits were said to be heard amongst the dead streets of the Imperial capital.

They said that God in heaven had finally dealt punishment to the villains of the Imperiate, that from then on, a new nation would rise, one lead by the citizens. They said that a demon from the center of the Earth had risen to torment those unfortunate enough to stand in his way.

None of it was true, of course.

You know how people talk, Fujiwara senior dismissed it with an uncomfortable grimace..

Divine judgment placed high in the hearts of commoners. The reality was far from glamorous. The north stable of the Imperial palace had caught a stray lightning bolt. The hay used for horse bedding picked it up like a wild prairie fire and fed it until it burst, shooting tongues and limbs and startling horses into the main chamber. Everyone in the palace could swear they'd all seen the first spark light up the hay of the northern stable. (Though when asked, no one could place the exact position of combustion. The one true witness had gone up with the flames. A stable hand's bones were dug up underneath the near-fossilized soot four-hundred years later during a treasure hunt by a group of Osaka High School judo freaks with a metal detector.)

Syuusuke's parents had been a little more than dismayed. While the occupants of the palace evacuated the scene, dragging along screaming children and bawking chickens, the baby Fujiwara did not cry, but smiled, smiled politely as one would during the climax of a tea ceremony. Disconcerting, to say the least.

An omen, they'd all agreed. That boy will bring misfortune to us all. It'd be better if they drowned the infant in a bedpan.

But Fujiwara's wife had taken one look at the child, peered into his glassy, half-closed eyes, and fallen in love with him, "My little Fuji-chan," she smiled, cradling the baby in her arms, "You'll be what makes this family great." And so, in fear of his wife's hot-blooded temper (and still bearing long finger nail marks on his back from a fight not too long ago), Fujiwara senior could not find the heart to take him away.

The little Fujiwara was to stay.

Eyes facing neverending lands

What do they reflect?

He was genius.

As a child, Syuusuke was charming and manipulative. He was clever and precocious in the face of his parents and members of the higher class, joking and tacit with the few friends he could make. At eleven years of age, he knew how to manipulate people, sweet talk the maids into letting him out of the Imperial grounds with a shy smile and an extra inch or two of skin above the waistline. He was familiar with simple law conjectures and could hold a place in court, learned Go maneuvers that kept even the members of his father's cabinet puzzled and nodding their heads in approval.

He had his controversies, as well—the popular ones always have more difficulty avoiding these.

His friend Yuushi, who lived with the magistrate as his son/secretary-page-in-training, thought it would be a laugh to go around scaring the chambermaids with a rumor that Fujiwara's son was a changeling with a knack for breathing fire and turning into a naked girl during a full moon—the latest rumor he had concocted during their daily calligraphy lessons together. While copying lines from Higuma Otoshi, Yuushi's pen had slipped and he'd picked it up and unthinkingly written down the words Fire Queen instead.

Syuusuke proceeded to pin Yuushi on the ground, threatening blackmail and manslaughter before he got what he wanted.

"So I told a few people a few lies," Oshitari shrugged, rubbing his shoulders with a pained expression, "It's not as if anyone will actually believe me, right?"

The tales spread, and pretty soon they stretched to the ears in the court entertainer's house (essentially the Imperial Cheerleading Squad, where they keep all the insane ones with a talent for cartwheels and human pyramids).

"I'm Kikumaru Eiji," said a boy, sticking out a cocky hand, "and you must be that Fire Queen Oshitari keeps talking about."

"And you must be that enigmatic son of the court harlequin and the Emperor's third concubine," Fuji smiled back serenely, "I wonder why you're still hanging around here. They usually kick out the illegitimate ones by the second year…"

Kikumaru made an indignant expression, but perked up immediately after approximately ten seconds. "It's because I can do backflips. I learned by the time I was two. They need me for the Sakura Festival events," and he showed Fuji. They spent the whole day trying to get Fuji to learn how to do one. The task remained unaccomplished, but Fuji made an uncanny friend who always dropped by to give him a hug and call him Fujiko in honor of the Fire Queen. He's also got a backdoor out of the Imperiate grounds. Eiji's alternate job when he wasn't back-flipping was night-guard of the alleys in the north stables section. Since Syuusuke's birth, it had been hastily rebuilt, and supposedly haunted. No sensible servant wanted to tread anywhere near it in a twenty-meter radius.

(Neither of them would know it now, but Kikumaru's ninth descendant would later work in an all-male prison as a doctor's aid in drag. It is still unclear as to whether this has any relation to the influence of the nurse's ancestor nine generations prior.)

There was Oishi Syuichirou, too, uncanny-friend number two. Fuji had encountered Oishi while falling into the shallow end of a pond. He had been unsteady all day after trying to hazardously do so many backflips and tripped on one of the mossy rocks at the rear end of the garden pond. Ten-year-old Syuichirou had proceeded to call over a law enforcement department, the entire house of Imperial paramedics, his father's cataclysmic squad, and the local morgue. (Twisted as fate can be, Oishi's eighth descendant ended up working as Kikumaru's ninth descendant's doctor's aid's doctor, in the same prison. This, at least, was expected of him.)

The next year, he met Tezuka Kunimitsu.