The Sun Sets and the Moon Rises (Or Why Kyo Shouldn't Write Song Lyrics)

Author Notes: While I love Kyo and Iori's duet "Yuuhi to Tsuki" (The Setting Sun and Moon), I always did wonder how in the world they collaborated to get the song made and not kill each other during the process. XD I also wondered how well Iori would've taken Kyo's lyrics. Now, mix that in with a hypothetical situation after KOF XIII and let the two deal with the mayhem. =D

"Yagami! Yagami!" His front door swung open, slammed backwards, and the booming sound disturbed a now very irate Iori from his quiet breakfast of bacon and sausage.

"What the hell, Kyo? What are you doing –"

"SNKP wants us to redo our song." Kyo's eyes were wide with panic, close to thirty years' worth of fighting experience and steel gone with that proclaimed news. "Our song, Yagami. You know –"

"Goddamn it, Kyo. Shut up." Of course I know. That song, that duet done back in 1996 when they were young, stupid, and desperate. Why now, after a decade later, did they want them to reprise it? Why... Iori placed his fork down before he accidentally facepalmed the prongs into his face. "Did they mention why?"

"Heh...uh..."

"Lemme guess...we have to please the fans."

"Something like that," Kyo said weakly, shuffling over to his lone couch and settling down. The shock on his face still remained, unabated. "They said they'll cut us a nice check like last time –"

"I told you not to write such sappy lyrics," Iori growled. "Who told you you could crash my –"

"Kagura-san told me."

"Damn woman." Pause. "She's out of the hospital?"

"Another week for last-minute follow-ups. Didn't know you cared 'bout her, Yagami. You going soft after what Crimson did to you?"

"Shut up. You're lucky I'm not in the mood to kill you now, Kyo."

"You're never in the mood, Yagami. Don't deceive yourself." A small orange flame flickered, teasing and fickle, on the tip of Kyo's finger. Iori decided he was past his initial shock and had settled into taunt phase. What a goddamn transition. "I'd be dead if you were serious. But you aren't."

"How'd you know?" Kyo was starting to piss him off.

"Because if I die, what would you do?" The flame flickered out, leaving a trail of rising smoke. The sight of it made Iori's throat itch for nicotine, to light up a cigarette and chill out before he killed Kyo on some petty pretext. "Play in your band? Drop dead in another few years?"

He didn't justify that last low blow with a response. Instead, Iori disappeared into his small bedroom, rifled through his drawer for a pack of smokes and popped back into his joint living-dining room. Just to spite Kyo, he lit his first cigarette of the day with his famous purple flames – years of training and hard-earned pain tolerance forcing back his grimace – and blew the smoke towards his rival. The brunet made a face; shuffled back.

"Get your shoes off my couch."

"Heh, oops."

"Oops my ass." The redhead approached his rival, standing – he was taller to begin with and if he stood close enough, Kyo wouldn't have room to stand. So much the better to show the arrogant punk whose place this was. "Back to what your story of the day was...so, we have to please the fans, huh?" Another puff of smoke. "Fan girls?"

"I think?"

Iori inwardly facepalmed. "I told you...not to make your lyrics so maudlin."

Back in 1996...

"Why am I working with you again?" Baby-faced Kyo Kusanagi, heir to the Kusanagi family, wielder of orange fire, slacker extraordinaire and inevitable whiner to boot. "Why am I singing a duet...with you?"

If Kyo was a snake, Iori was sure venom would've hit him straight in the eyes. The irony of that thought was too hilarious to contemplate – would've been – if Kyo wasn't giving him a death glare right at the moment. It would've put Orochi to shame if the god was before them – a fortunate thing he wasn't, sealed away by their ancestors generations ago.

"Oh, I don't know, Kyo. Money? Our backers? Why, didn't they come up to you with a contract and a briefcase of cash?"

"Shut up, Yagami." The teenager could've bored holes with those fiery eyes. "'Sides, when did I give you permission to call me 'Kyo'?"

"You didn't." He allowed himself a smirk. Kyo bristled where he sat, looking ready to rise and punch him two or four ways to next week if he kept up. Iori held back his maniacal laughter, deciding he'll save it for the next fight. "But according to your bio, you write poetry. You any good at it?"

Oh, did that barb go deep! "Of course I am!"

Kyo explosion level one. "Cool it, Kyo." He didn't touch his rival but he did encroach on his space, sitting down next to him on the couch. As if by clockwork, Kyo scuttled to the right, widening the gap between them. Oh well. "Fine. You write your lyrics. I'll write mine. If you need a tape of the accompaniment, it's on the dinner table. You break it, you pay for our next copy, get it?"

Kusanagi's next heir stared daggers at him. "Sure."

"What's this shit about the smiling and the overly sentimental feelings, Kyo?" Iori waved the sheet of penciled lyrics like a flag in front of his rival. "Do you know..." How was he to phrase this? "Do you know how some of our fan base is gonna read this? Do you?"

"It's my feelings, Yagami. 'Sides, your lyrics are gloomy. You're one sad person, you know that?"

"That's not the point!" One point for Kyo, zero for him with that. "We have fans out there that are girls, Kyo. The other persuasion. You even give them a hint and they jump over that like it's White Day with free chocolates. You make...goddamn it...you make it sound like I'm smiling at you!"

"That's sick, Yagami."

"That's what I'm telling you!" He threw the page down in front of the other boy. "Change it or I'm not singing with you."

"Well, you can remove all of that 'I'm so lonely' crap and we're even."

"I'm not removing that."

"Well, I'm not budging, Yagami."

"You know we have to get this done. It says so in our contracts."

"What? You need the money? Didn't know you're so hard up."

"Fuck you." He leaned over; hands in his pockets, his telltale hair over one eye and glared at the obstinate youth occupying his couch. "Unlike you schmoozing off your parents' money, I live in my own fucking apartment that you're now in. I pay for the goddamn rent, the groceries, the laundry bills, and my guitar strings. You, on the other hand, are still in high school at the freshman level and I bet your little girlfriend's gonna graduate while you aren't."

"Leave Yuki out of this!"

"She wasn't the one I was insulting." A cruel smirk curled the corners of his lips upwards. "So, we get this song done. We produce it, probably sing it live a few times, and then forget it ever existed. So write your goddamn lyrics over so it doesn't make us look like a fucking wannabe couple and then I'm washing my hands of it. The rest is up to you."

"Yagami?"

"What?"

"You're an asshole."

"Same to you, Kyo. Now go and write your lyrics and be a good boy."

"I did write the lyrics over, though." Kyo had removed his black leather jacket, slung it over Iori's couch like it belonged to him and had his face in his hands. "I didn't think it'd be misinterpreted that way."

Iori sighed. "When it comes to fan girls, Kyo, you still have a lot to learn." Nervous at the prospect of performing that song again, he quickly worked his way through his pack of cigarettes. Nicotine soothed his lungs – what did it matter since the blood curse was gonna kill him anyway – and it cleared his head. "If anything, it became even sappier. Poetry's not your skill, Kyo. Surprised your old man Saisyu didn't give you a heads up."

"My mom thought it was good."

"Everyone's mom thinks their kid is good." Iori fell silent. Except mine...

"Uh oh...you're getting that look, Yagami. I didn't just step on a landmine, did I?"

He quickly wiped his face of emotion. Damn it. "Never mind. So, we're doing this song, yes? You sure you don't want to go to headquarters and tell them to fuck off?"

"I did that with NESTS. You can go and take care of SNKP if you want. Don't know if you'd be hard up without the cash this time."

Echoes of the past; yet, somehow with the passage of time – how many years was it now? – they've both matured in little ways. Iori finished his last cigarette, dropped it into the ashtray on the table, and joined his rival on the couch. Whether it was because Kyo was more experienced as a warrior now – Orochi in 1997, NESTS in 1999, and their major team-ups down the line – or because he wasn't going to kill Kyo right now, his rival didn't budge. Iori didn't care. For once, it was good to prove that his bio stated correctly that he hated violence. He blamed Yagami-style training and brainwashing for that.

"Are you back to wearing your dress shirt again?"

"What? You missed my last getup?"

"Everyone was talking about your wardrobe, Yagami."

"Funny. I thought everyone was mocking the loss of my flames." Iori scoffed. "Including you, Kyo."

"Hey, it was funny!" His rival's brown eyes were huge in the dim light. "All of this time, we fought with fire and suddenly, Crimson goes and steals them from you like that. Too bad I was out – couldn't see it."

"You can thank my Riot of Blood for that."

"Uh, no thanks?"

"You shouldn't gloat so much. Ash Crimson would've gone for you next." Iori didn't like to dwell on his Riot of Blood. He detested Orochi's mind control and even now, deep within his mind, the annoying little voice derided his "pseudo-friendship" with Kyo Kusanagi. The sun and the moon. That was their song title: The Setting Sun and Moon. One set and the other rose in the dark of night, silent and mysterious. Not an eclipse but that was getting to scary fan girl territory that even he didn't want to think about.

Not to mention, that was a little too poetic for Iori Yagami. He decided not to mention it to Kyo. Kyo considered poetry sacrosanct grounds – there would be a fight if Iori treaded there and one-upped him on that.

Not that it was hard to do. Kyo's poetry simply sucked.

"So, uh...you wanna rehearse?"

"Not right now. You disturbed my breakfast. You staying or leaving?"

"Why the question, Yagami?"

"Because I have enough bacon and sausage to kill a cow and I can't finish it all. So I'm asking you: 'You eating or you leaving?'"

"The great Iori Yagami can't finish all that meat? I thought that was your favorite food on the –"

"Don't push it, Kyo." So we both know each others' bios.

"Well, I am hungry." Kyo looked it, too – a full-grown man with a boyish face and a gaze that kept wandering towards the browned links and crisp bacon piled high on the dinner table. If Iori gambled, he'd bet Kyo's stomach would betray him in a few seconds. He knew his rival too well; he wondered how much Kyo knew about him. "And then we'll rehearse?"

"Maybe."

"Knowing you, Yagami, that's a plausible 'yes'."

"Knowing you, Kyo, I still wonder why you asked me the color of my flames during that one tournament."

"Hey, it's hard to come up with new catchphrases!" The black leather jacket remained on the couch while its owner vacated his seat. Cue the seconds and... Kyo's stomach rumbled, growling loud enough that Iori smirked at the sheepish expression on Kyo's face. "Uh...I'm digging in, Yagami."

"Go ahead."

So off went Kyo Kusanagi, his eternal rival – the bright sun of his clan – humming already the first stanza of their eternally acclaimed duet. After a few minutes of sitting on his couch – his – and relishing the feel of his dress shirt and red bondage pants (he'd missed them), Iori Yagami stood and joined the other man at the table. The bright white moon settling in, aligning next to the sun. Both of them scarfing down breakfast.

Odd.

"So, Yagami – I take it you're not gonna give them hell."

"I'll let them go this time. Next time..."

"Heh. You know, the melody still holds. It's not bad."

"It's not." He smiled and he let that smile hit the one eye that gazed back at Kyo. "Your lyrics on the other hand..."

With a bark of laughter, Kyo shied a piece of bacon at him.

"Hey, don't waste that!"

"Same for you, Yagami. Same for you."