One Moment in Time

The banging sound of the heavy raindrops throwing themselves at the fragile plastic roof above our heads tried its best to block out all other sounds, but no matter how hard I tried to concentrate on it, I still heard his sobs.

His breathing had calmed down a bit, and he wasn't crying out loud like a child anymore, but I could feel how his whole body shook next to me. Normally I wouldn't allow this kind of contact, but it was freezing cold in the rain, and I understood he needed me to be here. Hell, deep down I knew I needed him to be here with me. I had killed before in self-defence, but never like what we'd done in the warehouse. We had slaughtered those guys. With the explosives, the guns… they never had a chance.

I pressed my eyes harder together in an attempt to force the images out. All that blood… the fire…

I shook my head and hugged my knees harder in front of me. The fabric of the suit was slightly burned, we'd just made it out in time. The explosion had been a big one. The building on the other side of the open space was still burning.. I relaxed a bit, let my head fall back and hit the hard wall behind me.

He moved beside me, noticing my change of position. For a second I thought he had pulled himself together, that he was ready to get going again, but he soon sank back down next to me and let out a small sob.

It felt weird seeing him like this, I pondered while fishing out a cigarette from my pocket. It had always seemed impossible to phase him. Whenever I'd insult him or try to pick a fight, he'd always just laughed it off and grinned. Even when we grew older, got into more serious crimes, joined the mafia, he'd always stayed happy. Goofy, almost.

But at the same time he'd always been so strong. Always taller than me, great at baseball and all other sports when we were in school. Popular with everyone…

And those few times when he showed that serious face that seemed so unlike him, it became clear he was not joking around, and meant what he said. Everyone listened, no matter what the subject was. And the time he hit me, told me to shape up and stop screwing around, start cooperating with others…

So strong.

And now here he was. Sitting on the ground up against a wall next to me. Forehead on his knees, arms hugged around his suit-wearing legs. Crying.

I took a long drag from the cigarette and lazily let the smoke rise up and curl around the edge of the half-transparent plastic roof sticking out from the building. The raindrops smashing themselves on the other side made circular patterns that I gazed at. They faded away as suddenly as the appeared. Leaving nothing but drops too small for me to see and room for more patterns to appear...

Faded away like the lives of the men we'd killed in the warehouse.

My head fell down and I turned to look at his short, dark hair.

This had been his first kill.

Takeshi Yamamoto.

----

We had gone out to the warehouse early in the morning. Early enough for them to be unsuspecting, but still late enough for them all to be there.

The tenth had given us the order two nights ago. It had been simple.

"Wipe them out."

This group of drug dealers had been working in our territory for a while, and they had ignored all attempts to negotiate. The boss had decided to do something. And the two of us where the ones he ordered to take them out.

We had stopped outside the entrance before beginning. Guns, sword and bombs ready.,

"Hey… baseball-freak." I had said quietly as we stood there. His stupid face had been stuck in serious mode ever since the tenth had given us the order. By insulting him, I was vainly hoping for one of his carefree laughs.

He didn't even blink. I sighed.

"Are you ready for this…?" I cut the chase and got down to business. "…I know this is your first-"

He cut me short and turned towards me.

"Don't." His face was like stone. Empty and hard. He put his right hand on his sword. "Got the explosives ready?" I swallowed.

"Yes." I readied the bombs in my hands, preparing to light the fuses.

"Then let's go." He said with a cold voice. Although I'll never admit it, he scared me.

Wasting no time he kicked the door open, and like speeding bullets we burst into the small warehouse. It was a rectangular room filled with men packing, weighting, sorting and in other ways handling drugs. A truck in one corner was being loaded with wares.

As we'd planned studying the map, we split in two directions, he immediately charging them with his water-styled way of the sword. I lit up my bombs and threw them in wide arcs towards a large group of men standing by the truck. When they exploded three seconds later, I had already jumped over a table stacked with heroine bags, kicked in the face of the guy packing the drugs and flipped the table over on its side for cover. In the chaos caused by the explosions, Yamamoto cutting down our targets and said targets trying to fight back, I forced my bag off my back and pulled out the complex bomb I'd been carrying with me.

Two big men came around the table for me, yelling but with a flick of my wrist I got them both with the gun I'd carried strapped to my ankle.

I turned my attention towards the bomb on the ground in front of me and began connecting the wires. Barely looking up I put a bullet in the head of a slim man leaning over the table, trying to sneak up on me. The sound of him falling backwards drowned in the smatter of my companions weapons and the screams of our enemies.

I set the time on the bomb, three minutes, and started getting up on my knees to see how far we'd come. But something slammed into me from behind and knocked the bomb out of my hands as I crashed through my cover.

"That was my brother you asshole! My brother!" A rough voice screamed at me as I rolled around on the floor to get up quicker and decrease the impact. I looked up.

A big man with dark hair was standing protectively over the corpse of the slim man I'd just shot in the head. He screamed out his grief and rushed at me like a mad bull, drawing a knife. I barely had time to react before we both hit the ground. My gun slid across the floor.

For a moment, we wrestled over the knife there. Each trying to slit the others throat, the sound of fighting flooding our minds. And with an unfair knee to the crotch, I managed to gain control and finished him.

I stood up, panting. Throwing the knife away I ran back to the bomb. I needed to make sure it wasn't injured and…

01.47

I stared at the bomb.

01.46

"SHIT!" I panicked. Somehow I must've started the timer when being knocked over! We needed to get out of here now!

I cursed and got up. I needed to get him so that we could run for it!

That's when I noticed, all was quiet.

Around me lay dead men, blood covered the floor mixed with thousands and thousands worth of heroin. The truck I'd aimed my first attack towards was flipped over and burning against the wall. The corpse of a driver hung out from the side door.

And in all this, he stood. In front of him stood a middle-aged man on his knees. My companion had his belt gun aimed right at the man's head.

"P-please sir! I have a wife and children!" The man on his knees stuttered. Tears where streaming down his face. Yamamoto did not move.

I ran up to them and grabbed my friend's shoulder.

"We've gotta go! The charge will go off in a minute!"

No reaction.

"Can you hear me!? In one minute we'll be-!" I stopped shaking him when I saw his face. His eyes were wide open, locked on the man at the end of his gun. His mouth was clenched shut and his lips white. I now noticed that his left hand was balled into a shaking fist.

For several seconds I couldn't say a thing. I just stared at the scene in front of me. It was one of the most emotionally loaded things I'd ever seen. Then I remembered our situation and shook Yamamoto's shoulder again.

"We've got to-" I went silent as he lowered his gun. I looked at his face.

The first tear I've ever seen him shed rolled down his cheek as he in one motion raised his weapon again and shoot the man on his knees in front of him. Right in the head.

I had to give him a hard push to make him start running. It felt as like we ran in slow-motion as we fled towards the door. And I can swear I heard the tick signalling that the timer of the bomb had reached zero.

The force of the explosion sent us flying through the door and we hit the ground outside hard. I forced him up and we continued running. I knew how my own explosives worked, there would be a second blast. A stronger one.

It had started raining, and it was pouring down, so the force of the final explosion made me stagger and slip, but I managed to stay upright.

We stumbled in under a plastic roof sticking out from a small building, giving us shelter from the rain. I turned to look at the burning warehouse, but my head snapped back to my side when I heard a choked sob.

There he was. Tears streaming down his face, mixing with the rain. He had walked up to the wall and fallen back against it. He slid down and hit the ground hard. His sobbing became louder. I could only stare as he started to cry like a child.

"I killed them!" He managed to choke out. "I killed them!"

I stared at him. Stared at how he cried. The stone hard façade he'd showed the latest days was gone. Here was the Yamamoto I knew. But he wasn't laughing. He was crying.

I walked up to him and slumped down beside him, my mind empty. He just continued bawling his eyes out, pressed close to me.

I stared at the burning building.

Killed them.

---

I took a drag of my cigarette. We'd been sitting here in half an hour now. Half an hour since we killed those people.

I shook my head. No. there was no use in thinking of it now. We'd followed orders, and the tenth was always right. I looked down at the ground. Picked up a small pebble and scraped it across the asphalt. Besides, the men we'd killed where bad men. Drug dealers. My hand stopped moving.

The men we'd killed.

Just villains… I tried, and started scraping the stone against the ground again, but my hand went to an halt.

"Then let's go."

His cold face.

The shocked look on the faces of the men by the truck as the first bombs flew towards them.

The crunching sound of the packing-guy's face braking.

I clenched my fist around the pebble and bit down hard on my lower lip.

The blood gushing out from the bullet wounds.

The sickening slicing sound of his sword.

"That was my brother you asshole! My brother!"

I dropped the pebble. Clenched the fabric of my suit, tightly shut eyes began watering up.

The warm flood of blood flowing from the big man's throat.

The corpses strewn on the floor, soaked in blood and heroin.

"P-please sir! I have a wife and children!"

I felt like I was breaking. I opened my teary eyes and stared at him.

"We've gotta go! The charge will go off in a minute!"

His clenched mouth, his shaking hands. His wide eyes.

That first tear.

"I killed them!"

Then I broke. The tears finally cut the chains and began flowing down my cheeks. I began sobbing, just like him. My shoulders dropped and I pressed myself tightly towards him for comfort as I cried. And he let me, he hugged me back as we both wept over what we'd done.

During that one moment in time, we allowed ourselves to forget all about who we were or what we did, what lifestyle we lived. As the rain swept over us, we just sat there against the rough wall and let ourselves be human.

----

The characters sisn't have any names at first, but I decided to make them Yamamoto and Gokudera. Why is Tsuna such a cruel mega boss? *shrug*