Disclaimer: All characters belong to Takeshi Konomi
Warnings: Spoilers for the movie, my other story, and mature-ish language
Notes: A companion piece to Eyes of Rikkai. I tend to just write down random scenes, and I put these two together and wrapped it up in a nice fifteen year old frame. And there needed to be something to make some of the chapters in EoR (in my mind, I pronounce it like Eyore) make more sense. Not fond of using dei ex machinis…so was born this one-shot.

Bird's Eye View

by The Honorable Arik Novak

Sometimes Ryoga wished he were cuter.

The cute ones, with the big cheeks and big sad eyes, always got more money. And the girls got more money than the boys, especially when they were carrying babies. The blind ones, the crippled ones, they got more money too, but Ryoga was not yet that desperate.

His looks didn't cut it. His eyes were too piercing, his buddies said. They were mesmerizing, they accused him, but they didn't earn him any money. And his voice wasn't good either, so he couldn't sing like some of the other kids. He tried tennis tricks, but no one was really interested in watching a kid by himself hit a ball around, even if he had a few acrobatics thrown in there.

He didn't hate this life, though. He always had enough to eat. Most of the time. Some of the kids had parents and went to school; begging for money was like a side job. For Ryoga, it was life, a free life. Sometimes he would be up at three in the morning in the clogged New York city streets with a squeegee in one hand and nothing in his other.

"Ya know you ain't gotta stay here," one kid told him. He'd had this conversation before, but Ryoga really had nowhere else to go. America was his home now. He used to entertain thoughts of going to other lands, to Europe, back to Japan, but he had no way of getting there.

Ryoga shrugged, munching on his hot dog. He wasn't sure when he'd get another. He knew some Asian people working at a hot dog joint, but they weren't Japanese. They were nice enough. Catholic. Nosy, too. But he enjoyed talking to them, especially the college girl who always gave him a free soda, when they weren't suspiciously asking him where his parents were and telling him he needed to gain some weight. He just had a high metabolism!

"Dude, Ryoga, you hafta see this!" A friend of his grabbed his arm, but Ryoga managed to save his food from touching the concrete before he was pulled away from the corner restaurant toward some street performers.

"What, man? What was so important that you had to-"

There was one kid with a racket. His hair glinted green under the midday sun and he wore an oversized tan coat. A few meters away, a smaller kid with auburn hair stood with his back to the growing audience, facing a wall with soda and beer cans lining the top. She wore a blindfold and stood on a stack of boxes without a worry of falling off. Ryoga could see she had great balance. Without further ado, the older kid started knocking tennis balls into the aluminum cans, sending them off of the concrete fence with the kind of accuracy Ryoga thought only he and Echizen Nanjiroh had. After all but one of the cans were knocked down flawlessly, the green-haired kid sent a tennis ball flying straight toward the younger kid's head. There were sharp intakes of breath from the audience, but none would look away.

At the last second, the redhead performed a perfect backflip, landing on one knee, just as the tennis ball knocked into the last can. She took her blindfold off and smiled.

How innocent she looked. She would earn a lot of money, Ryoga thought.

"Okay, please pay here!" A woman in nice clothes-they weren't threadbare or out of style like Ryoga's were-walked around with a basket, collecting money. Ah. She was their manager.

Ryoga slipped past the lady and sought out the two kids. They were much younger than him, maybe around Chibisuke's age.

"Yo, we should play a match sometime, eh?" he suggested to the older one. The kid looked up at him, only suspicion in his eyes.

"Sometime," he answered and walked away to disassemble the boxes. Ryoga observed him for a moment, watching how the boy expertly knocked down some boxes and picked up a rather large crate in two surprisingly strong arms.

"Who're you?" the younger one asked. Her eyes were big, much bigger than even Chibisuke's, and she held a kind of innocence that Ryoga hadn't seen in a long while. Probably since Chibisuke himself.

"The name's Ryoga. You?"

The kid broke into a huge grin. "I'm Terence! And this is Thomas, my brother."

"Ah, kimi wa otoko no ko, ne?" Ryoga muttered to himself. He could've sworn that the kid was a girl. But Terence was simply not a girl's name.

Having unstacked the wooden crates, the older one, Thomas, wrinkled his nose. "You speak English pretty well," he said. Ryoga wasn't sure if he was supposed to be offended. He actually had to work to make his English sound good and fluent when Nanjiroh had brought him to America, so he took it as a compliment.

"Why, thank you, Tom. So, about that game?" It didn't matter to Ryoga that the kid was probably eight or so years younger than him. He imagined that if he went home, he'd be able to play a good match against Chibisuke by now. If Rinko didn't glare him out of the house.

The older woman finally noticed him talking to the boys. "Who are you? Scat, go away."

"Auntie, he speaks two languages!" the kid Terry said excitedly.

The woman eyed Ryoga with disdain and said slowly and loudly, "Gooo. Awaaaay. Shoo." Ryoga spent a second or three just laughing at how ridiculous she sounded when she tried speaking in slow motion.

"Damn, lady! I'm bilingual not stupid. Or deaf," Ryoga said with a chuckle and, with no preparation, backflipped to avoid the woman's wildly swinging basket. Some coins spilled and bills fluttered out, and Ryoga didn't hesitate in picking a few up while dodging the attacks of all three. He analyzed his situation, and decided some theatrics were in order since he was getting money from all this.

It didn't take much effort to jump toward one wall and then push off of it to land on the concrete fence. He took an exaggerated bow and winked to the green-haired kid. "I guess we won't be having that game. Maybe I'll see you in a tennis tournament. Or you, Terry? Ja ne!" He took a step back and appeared to fall straight down, but ducked into a roll as soon as he was out of their sight to save his legs from the impact.

Well, he wasn't too hungry, he thought as he was walking away. He had salvaged a few coins and bills-whoa, one twenty dollar bill! These people had been generous. He was sure it was because of that Terry kid, though. He had huge eyes.

That kid had better join some tennis tournaments, Ryoga thought. That was mostly how Ryoga got his income so far, but it would only hold so long. And once he turned sixteen, he could get some better clothes and work as an assistant coach or something. Or if he worked hard enough, he could get into a Grand Slam Tournament.

Whoo!

He could see it now: Echizen Ryoga, up on the board. 6-0, 6-0, 6-0! First to win four, no, ten Grand Slam Tournaments in a row! His imagination went wild as he created his dream. He would become so famous that Rinko would be proud to have him as a son. Chibisuke would look to him as a big brother, and Echizen Nanjiroh would teach him about that last door. Because that last door, he knew, could grant him victory to anything.

Oh, but fifteen year old Echizen Ryoga couldn't have possibly predicted the future. He couldn't foresee that getting into a Tournament would be so difficult. He couldn't foresee that Sakurafukubi, the Californian man who gave him the wildcard, would be so angry and vengeful because of Ryoga's, or 'Oga Eiichi's' loss, never mind that it had been 7-5, 6-0, 7-6 to Rafael Nadal who was a clay court specialist, who played on to win the French Open, who had also never before played in a Grand Slam Tournament. Dammit! No, Ryoga couldn't have possibly seen such an outcome, being indebted to such a crook, Sakurafukubi. Nor could he have known how much his parkour would come in handy once he decided to run away from the fraud...

Sixteen. He thought being sixteen would mean that he could get out of this life. But no, Echizen Ryoga, sixteen year old self-proclaimed tennis prodigy was stuck.

He walked along the streets, thankful to feel some concrete, cobblestone, under his shoes. He frowned. Clay courts had never agreed with him. He grew up playing against Rinko's husband, and they had a grassy dirt court back in California. Then he played, for years, on the concrete street courts in Los Angeles and New York. Never had he ever played on clay.

Ryoga's serves were weakened constantly by the surface, and the slowness of the ball's bounce on such a court disoriented him. He couldn't use that as his sole excuse, though. He could have waited for the other Grand Slams, the ones played on faster green or hard courts. But nooo, Ryoga was impatient and so was Sakurafukubi.

He looked around despondently, having no idea how he was getting back to New York, or if he was even going back. He took a seat on a red plastic chair in the platform, not sure where he was planning to go now. He had no money, and his French accent was abysmal. He had learned English easily enough when he was brought to California, but that had been with Nanjiroh's constant support. Here? He had no one.

"Monsieur," a kid with Asian features said, walking up to him. He had the eyes and the face of an Asian kid, but he had strange hair, what with his hair flipping out on the sides. It was purplish, even. Gray. Maybe it was just a strange strain of blonde?

"Oui?" Ryoga answered, happy to have someone to talk to now,even if it was a kid. Mostly because it was a kid. He was tired of adults.

"Tennis?" the kid asked, pointing at Ryoga's ratty racket. "Tournoi de Roland-Garros. Vous, vous avez concurrencé dans un tournoi. Roland Garros!" He had an accent, Ryoga could tell. It was strange, because it wasn't an American accent. Maybe some other European language. Ryoga was fine understanding some French, but he couldn't speak it well.

Ryoga gave up and settled on a language he thought most kids would understand. "Listen kid, my French is no good-"

"Okay, so you know English. Perfect, I thought so. I'm still working on my French too," the kid smirked. He looked around with the air of a rich kid, and Ryoga wouldn't have been surprised if he were. His clothes were pressed nicely and he had white shoes and a haughty demeanor.

"Hey, are you lost, kid?" Ryoga asked, completely forsaking the French. He'd stick with English.

The boy shrugged and looked around. "I was with my butler, and we got separated. But I'm not lost."

Ryoga chuckled. Of course the kid wasn't lost, he thought sarcastically to himself. "Well, do you know where you're staying?" he asked awkwardly. He really didn't know what he'd do for the rest of the day. Might as well help the poor guy out.

"No," he pouted. His face brightened though, and a sly smile grew. "But...we were going to go to the Tenniseum...maybe they'll look for me there."

Ryoga could tell something was up, but didn't bother to look too deeply into it. He wouldn't mind visiting the Tennis museum. He didn't know when, but at some point, the boy had wormed his own hand into Ryoga's. He didn't move his hand, though. He wouldn't begrudge the kid a little reassurance.

The Tenniseum was impressive. So many exhibits...and Ryoga could see how the kid's butler lost him-he was running everywhere and making such a ruckus! Ryoga found himself chasing the little devil all over the place as the boy sprinted from exhibit to exhibit. Ryoga held a breath as he almost, almost toppled an elderly couple. "Oi! Hey kid, I'm gonna leave if you're gonna be like this!" But the boy ignored him and zipped over to a glass case to awe at the tennis rackets inside.

Ryoga really couldn't leave him...but he couldn't keep up with him either…

So in a desperate move, he grabbed the kid under his armpits and threw him over his shoulder. It was alien to him because Ryoga had never carried anyone like this, but it was effective. He thought people would stare too, but all they saw were two brothers, the more mature one finally getting some control over the hyper one.

"Hey!" the kid complained. He kicked and pounded his fists on Ryoga's back, but it really had little effect. Finally, thought Ryoga. Finally, he found a way to subdue the little brat. He carried the boy all the way outside and wondered if it was safe to put him down without him running all over the place.

He smirked. "You've had enough, alright? I think we should just go to the police, and tell them there's a missing kid."

Ryoga turned his head to see the boy cross his arms and mutter, "Fine. I know my parents' cell phone numbers."

Ooh, this brat! Then why go to the Tenniseum if he knew how to contact his parents? Ryoga was tempted to just drop him, but his temper never lasted long. He carefully lowered the boy to the ground. After a quick look in his wallet, he realized he might not have enough for a pay phone. He had already paid two Euro to get into the museum, and he had little funds to begin with. He playfully glared at the kid. "You're getting expensive," he accused him.

The boy raised an eyebrow. He was probably accustomed to expensive.

WHAM!

Ryoga found himself on the concrete, two black-suited, sunglass-wearing thugs on top of him.

"My baby, oh Keigo, did this bad man take you? Oh, are you alright?" a woman exclaimed in Japanese. The kid was Japanese? Ryoga glanced back to see a woman kneeling on the ground and placing her gloved hands on her son's cheeks. She wore her hair short and didn't seem to mind that her expensive-looking dress was getting dirty, what with her knees on the concrete.

"Kaa-san, this boy was just helping me," he said in flawless Japanese, "Didn't you recognize him? He played against Nadal yesterday." He turned to Ryoga and asked in English, "Are you okay, mister?" Ryoga nodded in answer, rather than speak. The bodyguards lifted him up by his upper arms. He never felt so weak.

"He looks dirty, Keigo," a man said in Japanese, eyeing Ryoga with disdain, "He was a wildcard anyway. Absolutely no tournament wins to his name." He was wearing a suit and wouldn't lower himself to look worried for his son.

Ryoga jerked his arm out of a thug's grip. He put his hands in his pockets and adopted a carefree posture. In his native tongue, he said, "Dude, chill. The kid just wanted to go to the Tenniseum-" Yeah, take that kid. How dare you use Echizen Ryoga...

The woman shot up to her feet and looked down at him from her imposing height. "Keigo! Is that why you were missing?" the mother seemed to growl at the boy, "I told you we didn't have time to visit the museum." But she still hugged him anyway.

The boy's father turned to Ryoga and losing none of his haughtiness, continued in Japanese, "Well, what kind of recompense can I give you? Keigo is a handful, and I suppose we ought to be thankful to you for keeping him safe. Money? I can write you a check for five thousand dollars-"

"Ya know what? A flight to New York would be good," Ryoga interrupted him. The man's eyes narrowed, and Ryoga was afraid he'd ask about his parents and all sorts of hard-to-answer questions. "I can't really change my plane ticket, and I'd rather go home now than later after the French Open ends," he lied. That chance home died when he lost to Nadal.

"Well, that's what he gets for being arrogant, thinking he'd make it all the way to the finals," the man muttered to his wife in French. Although Ryoga's French wasn't great and it took a while for him to translate it in his head, he could still understand the gist of it.

"Sir," he said in Japanese, "Yes, I would have liked to make it all the way to the finals, but I knew it would be almost impossible. I thought I'd like to watch the rest of the French Open, but you see, my mother is sick and I'd rather go home and support her." Ha! The couple looked awkwardly guilty now.

Did it matter that it was a lie and he hadn't had contact with his mother for years? Not at all. And, he had bested the guy in languages twice now. Sure, they were the only two languages he knew besides English, but he had still bested them in a way. He wondered if the man would try another language...Ryoga wish he knew how to say, 'I understand what you're saying,' in every language. That would be perfect.

At least now the man looked embarrassed at having been caught insulting him to his face twice. But Ryoga kept his happy mask on.

"I suppose you can go with Keigo and my wife," he said to Ryoga. The man turned to the kid and put a hand under his chin so they were looking straight into each other's eyes. "I suppose missing the rest of the Roland Garros is suitable enough punishment for manipulating your way to the Tenniseum, yes?" he asked his son with a sort of airy condescension that only studied aristocrats could pull off.

"Yes, Otou-san," the kid, Keigo, said with his head hung.

"Well, I have a meeting for which I am now late," he sent a pointed glare to his son, "So off you go. Enjoy your time in New York, dear."

The woman smiled and nodded. She had a warm smile, the kind of radiance that Ryoga had always looked for, but never found, in Rinko's smiles toward him. She was a sweet lady, a kind lady. The way she looked at them, to her son with love and to Ryoga with...compassion? How long it had been since he'd found something redeemable in the human race. Oh, but she only had eyes for Keigo. And Ryoga? He had his eyes elsewhere, just as he had a year ago...

Yep, fifteen year old Ryoga had no way of knowing any of that a year from the present. Nor could he have imagined that he'd meet Chibisuke (little Chibisuke with the wide golden eyes!) in New York years later, ready for his own Grand Slam.

He sprinted back to the Asian-run hot dog place and ordered another. He had money now, even if it was stolen money. He knew the lady and her nephews had long since lost his trail, so he felt comfortable sitting on the stool in front of his favorite hot dog joint.

"You look happy, kid. Anything special happen?" the woman behind the register asked. She was petite and skinny and, like her relatives who worked there, had an accent that Ryoga hadn't been able to place. She was darker than most Asian people, he thought, and he wondered what it would be like to go around smelling like hot dogs all the time since she worked here whenever she wasn't studying at the University nearby. She had dreams, he knew. She was ambitious, just like Ryoga.

"Nope, nothing really. Just thinking about the future. Crossing my fingers for something interesting!" And did it bother the teenage boy that the future was uncertain? Not at all. That's what dreams were for.

Notes: The title is Bird's Eye View because it's like seeing an overview of Ryoga's timeline...kinda, like if it were laid out linearly.