Disclaimer: Katekyo Hitman Reborn belongs to Akira Amano and the Legend of Zelda series belongs to Capcom. I own absolutely nothing in relation to either works, except for the idea to mesh them together.

A/N I have one thing to say: I hate essays. Seriously, those things are killers. Why doesn't anyone try to charge 'em with attempted manslaughter?

Special thanks to Nobody of Twilight and Night of Broken Glass for reviewing! And for giving me Link's weapons!

This is the longest chapter I've written yet. I hope it matches your expectations!

Chapter Two – Swallow Your Pride

"Having a bit of trouble?"

My head snapped up. I saw Link jump slightly at the new voice. And there, seemingly unconcerned by the sight of a destroyed gym and two teenagers, one with a visible cut on his head, was a man in his late twenties. He was standing near the gym's exit, both hands in the pockets of his expensive-looking trousers, his right arm carrying a folded jacket over the wrist, and he looking around with only an amused and interested look on his face.

The first thing to come to my head was just a little thought: a complete stranger, especially not a rich one, wouldn't come wandering into a building that looked like it was falling apart. The second thing to come to my head was a different thought: he didn't seem surprised at all, at the holes in the gym, or the flames blazing on my gloves and forehead, or even at the bleeding that Link was trying to stop. And the conclusion of it all was –

He knows something.

In a flash, I zoomed in right in front of him, grabbing the front of his equally expensive-looking shirt with one hand and drawing my clenched fist back. "Who are you? What do you know?"

"Hey, hey, hold the violence. I'm not your enemy." For someone who was being threatened, he held his calm well. That was even more suspicious. "I just happen to know about the one you should be facing, that's all. Where's Master Reborn?"

"None of your business," I shot back. If he was familiar with Reborn, then he should be related the Mafia too – and from the looks of him, he was probably one of the higher positioned ones. At the same time though, that still didn't tell me if he was a friend or foe.

But when did I become so hostile? I asked myself, bewildered. Since when have I threatened someone? Why was I so suspicious?

…No, the answer was obvious. Ever since the little Mafia baby fell through what was so likely, so sickeningly likely, a black hole – now I'm all brawn, but no brain.

A headless lion has to be careful to survive.

"I see you still don't believe me," the man said, bringing my attention back to him, "but will you trust me more if I give you a few legit – pointers, shall we say."

At this point I felt Link tugging on my arm. The one that was still drawn back, ready to smash flat a stranger's face. I let it drop; I also released his shirt, and the man patted it down, smoothing the creases.

"What pointers?" I snapped back. "What can you possibly do to help us? And you haven't even answered my questions. Who are you and what do you know?"

"As for who I am…that's going to have to wait. Being anonymous isn't without advantages, you know." I could almost feel my temper bubbling, ready to explode. Give me some answers already! "As for what I know…how about I start by asking you two to look for something?"

"Look for something?" What did that have to do with what he knows?

"Specifically, a projection in the skies. Something that should not be there."

What? Look for something that shouldn't be in the sky? Now I was just confused. Was he just trying to distract me, delaying my reactions if he attacked me?

Then Link tapped on my shoulder. And when I turned to him, he just pointed his finger upwards. I followed his direction. Saw nothing but the ceiling and the hole that was made earlier. So I shifted and squinted a little, trying to catch a glimpse outside, to what was supposed to be the red-orange sky of a setting sun, but was instead a cloud.

And there, I saw it.

I have no idea who or what was causing it, but there was three purple triangles just there in the sky, a bit to our – south-east, I think, considering the setting sun. The triangles linked together at the corners to create an even larger triangle. Was this a sign of some sort? What did it stand for?

More importantly – "What's that doing in the skies?"

"It's a distress signal. You don't need to know all the details yet – but I can guarantee you that the one you just fought only a couple of minutes ago will be there."

Now that was an answer I needed.

"Link! Let's go!" I started running, but then –

"Vongola Decimo!" The man called suddenly. I stopped, I turned back, and he said, "You know, you shouldn't head in without backup of some sort. Be glad I took the trouble of calling one of your Guardians for you."

I didn't have the chance to ask him for specifics. Because, from the door connected to the main building of the school, a cold, hard, and very much recognizable voice floated down:

"Tell me exactly why my school is damaged, or I'll bite you to death."

To elaborate, it's not the voice I recognized, or even the tone he used. No, it was the way he emphasized the "my", as if he owned the school. Which, in a sense, he completely does.

"Kyouya Hibari," I said, speaking respectfully to the Namimori prefect, the head of the Disciplinary Committee, the leader of a group of delinquents, and the Cloud Guardian of my "family"; more than likely the strongest "family" member I had, besides Reborn. "We were attacked by a complete stranger just a little while ago and a battle ensued. The result is what you see now."

I gestured to the destruction in the gym – the sole tattered desk, the slight crater where it landed, two noticeable holes in the wall and ceiling, and several scorch marks on the ground indicating that someone tried to light a fire – the last one being very far from the truth, but I doubted that the prefect would care.

Said prefect glared at me, but seemed to have accepted my explanation. He then turned to Link and pointed one of his tonfas threateningly, but I jumped in – an unwise move to a person who lusted for violence, but I had to watch out for my friends. "That's Link. He just transferred yesterday, and Reborn was teaching him for a while before that stranger attacked. I don't think he's related much to the attacker."

Hibari glared at me again, and this time he looked at me like he wanted to hit my head clear off my body. I didn't doubt for a moment that he could actually do it with his tonfa, if he managed to make solid physical contact.

So now he turned to the last person in the gym – the other stranger, the one whose name I didn't even ask for yet. In fact, I don't even know what role he has in this incident. Was he one of the perpetrators? Someone who happened to pass at the wrong time? Or someone who's going to work with me?

"And who are you?" Hibari's voice definitely sounded deicidal. Now I kinda feel sorry for the guy, staring cross-eyed at the end of the tonfa nearly touching his nose. What kind of answer can he possibly give to dispel Hibari's ultimate fury?

"I'm just the person who's going to foot the bill for reconstruction to be finished by tomorrow morning," the man said brightly.

So much for Hibari's ultimate fury. Now that I think about it, this was the first time anyone other than Reborn managed to defuse Hibari. That was quite a feat.

Hibari grunted, his only sign of giving affirmatives. He yawned, then turned to leave.

Only to be stopped by my hand grabbing his shoulder. "Hibari, we –"

"Take your dirty hands off me," Hibari snapped, knocking my arm off. "Unless you want me to bite you to death?"

He held up his pair of tonfa again. Not good. Come up with something, fast!

"Reborn was captured!" I blurted out. Hibari seemed to be interested. Yes! "We – Reborn, Link, Zelda and I – were attacked by the same stranger who damaged the school. And now we know where he is. If you can help us subdue him…"

I paused, wondering if it was worth dangling a little prize in front of his face. On one hand, I truly needed his help, but on the other, I was pretty much baiting him with the next comment. It's not only that baiting was a dirty trick, especially to a "family" member, but it was a bad idea to put my metaphorical fingers too close; Hibari bites really hard.

And then Reborn's face flashed across mind.

I'll go for it, I decided.

"If you can help us subdue him, I'm pretty sure Reborn has no qualms to accepting your superiority. At the very least, he'll give you a good match."

Hibari's reaction was unnoticeable for the first few seconds. And then –

"Oh, very well. I was getting bored up on the roof anyways."

I was torn between feeling triumphant and feeling depressed. Triumphant because with Hibari, this would go so much more easier, and depressed because once Reborn finds that I used him as leverage, he was sure to murder me.

Wait, he can't do that. I'm still the only candidate for Vongola leadership. He'll probably just torture me instead.

Pushing any images of Reborn with his bat into the deepest corners of my mind, I turned and said, "We'll be going…now?"

The other man had disappeared without a trace.

As I stared at the purple sign that must've been at least at least a kilometre up high, it occurred to me that it must be created by a Deathperation flame.

How else would two airplanes passing by not notice it? It had been up for over twenty minutes, if someone besides my group had seen it, somebody would've investigated.

At the same time, though, I wasn't entirely sure about the invisibility of my Deathperation flames. After all, every members of my "family" could produce and see it, not to mention many of my past enemies. Plus, the flames from my gloves are material; they produce force and they undoubtedly hurt if one was on the wrong end. But then again, the first few times I've used it, no one noticed the flame that made it look like my head was on fire. At least, no one mentioned anything about it.

I'll have to ask Reborn once we rescue him.

If we…

No, screw that thought. I'm not giving up on him yet.

And now I lowered my gaze, and stared at the house in front of me. If this place wasn't directly under the sign in the sky, I wouldn't have given this place a second glance. Except, the door was entirely purple. The same hue of purple as the three triangles in the sky. I touched it. This one was definitely created by Deathperation flames. Considering that a lot of people pass by the house, the door had to be inconspicuous – but still had to be able to confirm that this was the right place. So, it was pretty likely normal people couldn't see it. But other than that, this house was modeled almost the exact same way as my house.

"Do we go straight in, or should we ring the doorbell first?" I wondered out loud.

Hibari only snorted and raised his tonfa, getting into a combative stance.

Link's reaction was less aggressive. "Go straight in," he signalled. "If the same guy from before is in there, we don't want to let him know."

I was glad I started to get the hang of reading sign language. At the same time, I was mortified that I wasn't thinking straight.

Undoubtedly, Hibari would've preferred to just smash the door down. So I stepped up, grasped and turned the doorknob, and pulled slightly. I found that the door was unlocked, so I opened it wider.

Before grabbing both companions and sidestepping from a huge arrow!

The arrow flew past us over ten metres per second – I would know, I've gone faster. It was bright green, about as tall as I was, had no fletching, and the head was just a sharpened point – so it's a spear, not an arrow. It ended up about half a metre into a tree, burying itself with a solid thud.

"That thing should not be a part of a house," I said.

Hibari wrenched my hand off. "Then we destroy whatever did that to proceed."

I took a quick glance inside the doorway, ducking back out when another arrow – spear – came flying out. This one hit the dead centre of the previous projectile, splintering it and taking its place on the tree, with another solid thud. "Do either of you know a word that's less awkward than saying 'spear machine gun'?"

The prefect, again taking up his tonfa aggressively, retorted, "Change that to 'annihilated spear machine gun'."

Thud.

"If you're about to stroll in there and destroy the machine taking every hit it has the time to give, I'm going to have to ask you to change your mind."

"Do you want to finish this quickly or not? I can still bite you to death with multiple wounds, Sawada."

Thud.

"That's enough," I said sharply. "Hibari, we need you alive and well. We can do this my way or we don't do this at all."

"Are you trying to imply you have a better idea?"

Thud.

"Give me five seconds." Forcing my brain to think, I took a quick stock of the situation. My eyes glanced over to the fifth – thud – sixth arrow that came flying out. And when that happened, the previous arrow splintered from the centre, creating thinner wood pieces that fell to the –

No, it didn't. It disappeared before it could even touch the ground.

Aha.

I took two steps and grabbed the arrow that just hit the tree, before using –

"Zero Point Breakthrough, Custom!"

The arrow flared, burning brighter green, before disappearing in a blink of the eye.

"It's completely made of Deathperation flames – probably of the Lightning attribute. It's not completely solid, so Link should be able to reflect them with his shield."

I smiled at Link. "You're up."

Link determinedly nodded. He lit up his ring on his right and slammed it into the box on his left.

The box opened, and into his hands popped the shie –

"Um." That was the only word that I could say.

Hibari, of course, hadn't seen the weapon that Link had used, so of course he found nothing wrong with the weapon that just came out of Link's box. I had to emphasize 'had' because now, what popped into his hands were not the mirror-like shield that was in the box before, but two spheres that I believed was explosives.

Link, for his part, was gaping at his weapons in shock. His wide eyes flitted over each of the spheres, went back to his now-open box, before coming back onto his weapons again. On his right was a traditional-type bomb, with a fuse that was probably meant to be lighted by Deathperation flames. On his left was a more modern one that I recognized as a grenade – a recognizable nightmare from Reborn's weapons cache. It had a pin that one had to pull to start a timer, at which it should be thrown if one did not want to blow himself up.

I sighed, and took the latter weapon. "Link, please figure your weapon out before I have to change another plan."

It was a harsher comment than it was intended it to be, but at the same time, we were dealing with an enemy that subdued Reborn.

I pulled the pin, threw it inside the corridor as hard as I could, and then closed the door.

"Five, four, three, tw –"

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

"…So it was a three second delay." I proceeded to kick the door fully open, and peeked back inside.

And gasped.

Before, I had only took a quick look at the spear revolver (if that was even a proper phrase) mounted to the side of what I thought was a hallway, so I had completely failed to see that the door led to a stone corridor that lead on past how big the house should be!

I stepped in, and the sound of my shoes on the floor echoed loudly. I winced, and tried to step quieter, but the volume of the noise didn't change at all.

Stepping around the remains of the machine, I commented, "This place looks like a dungeon." The ceiling was low and there were torches hanging from the sides. The corridor itself had a dark and damp atmosphere. As we walked along, the echoes coming from all three of us walking were almost enough to drown out my voice. Anyone can sneak up on us now, we'll never hear them. "How long is this place going to go…?"

I halted, signalling my friends to do the same. I squinted forward – all I could see was torches after torches after torches…

It was because I stopped moving that I heard:

Fwip, fwip, fwip…

"Bats." In confirmation, the animals came slowly into view, heading towards us. These animals as well seemed like they were created from someone's Deathperation flames…which also meant they were someone's box weapons.

Seriously, the first time I've seen box weapons were ten years in the future. Why did they exist now, when only my "family" were the ones who possessed box weapons in this point in time?

Back to the incoming bats. "I guess we should chase them off to move on."

Hibari snarled suddenly, much more loud and feral than before, and I became intimidated. I nervously backed up, motioning Link to do the same, as the prefect once more took up his tonfa, spinning them and then – BAM!–viciously slammed a bat that came too close, snuffing it out of existence. Then – WHAM!–beat down the next one. Spun, then struck into another with excessive force. And another, and another, and another… Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven bats total were destroyed before Hibari finally stopped spinning his tonfa and let down his weapons. "If this is the best challenge you can come up with, Sawada, I'm sorely tempted to fight you here, now."

I chose not to answer, only starting to walk forward again – only to stop when my foot kicked something small, something metal. I leaned down, and from the light of the torches, I picked up a –

"A key?"

"Who cares?"

I glanced at Hibari. He still looked aggressive, yet completely bored out of his mind. He fidgeted with his weapons, as if he wanted to – well, he said it himself. He looked like he wanted to pick a fight with someone right there. I need to relieve him soon. "Who knows? This might just lead into a room full of, say, more box animals to fight."

"If that's the case, get there quickly."

Moving down the corridor, I realized that the passageway was still stretched further along – how long? The silence was taut – especially more so as my two companions were either mute or antisocial. Thirty seconds of straight walking later, Hibari had started spinning his tonfa again…the corridor was still going on, with no end in sight; and how did this place fit inside a house?

Someone tapped me on the shoulder – Link, of course. I glanced, and using one hand he signalled: "This place doesn't feel right. Is there some trick behind this corridor?"

It was because I glanced back at Link that I noticed –

The entrance was still in sight?

"Definitely," I agreed. "But what can we do?"

I regretted that answer as soon as I said them.

Hibari gave another snarl, twirled his tonfa above his head – and SLAMMED them straight into the wall!

CRACK!

As expected from Hibari, it wasn't the tonfa that broke – it was the stone wall. Even though it was easily a foot thick, the prefect had destroyed the obstacle, sent several large chunks of rock flying, and most importantly – created a small hole. He raised his other tonfa, and with another powerful strike –

CRACK! The small hole became a large hole.

Hibari stepped through, barely needing to bend down to pass through his exit. Link gave me a sort of helpless look, gulped and followed him. I grimaced, and also entered.

The room we stepped into was still impossibly large, but at the same time, it was different – it had a door. We were making progress.

I stepped past Link and Hibari, then tested the door. "This one's locked." I then produced the key, inserted it, and unlocked the door.

I wanted to grin at Hibari and tell him "I told you so", but that would just be suicidal of me. Instead, I simply opened the door.

And stared into an empty room. "Huh? Not even a treasure chest?"

Hibari only snorted. Link, disappointed, stepped into the room, looking around.

And then iron bars came crashing down!

Link gave a bit of a gasp and jump forward slightly. I, on the other hand, stepped back. The obstacle was right in between us.

"Link!" I grabbed the bars. "One moment!" I concentrated, raising the temperature of my X-gloves higher, and higher, and higher…but nothing! How?

"Move aside!" Hibari ordered, roughly pulling me out of his way, before spinning his tonfa and –

BANG!

The thin iron bars held. Hibari growled, and – BANG! – struck the bars again. No results.

My attention went back to the blonde. "Link! Stay on guard! Don't let anything jump you!"

My words were barely out of my mouth when suddenly, something dropped nearly on top of Link. Nearly, because Link had managed to roll out of the way. I wondered if it'll make a difference.

The something that dropped turned out to be a creature that I've never seen before. At first I had thought it was just a really big coil of rope, but that hope was dashed when the brown thing started moving. Cylindrical in shape, its top wobbled this way and that, slowly but surely moving to Link, who had his bomb in combative stance. That is, as combative as one can be holding a spherical weapon.

"Link! Hold on! We're coming!"

But to my surprise, he only shook his head. Without taking his eyes off the creature – Reborn was right, Link is a natural born fighter! – Link signalled, "Don't worry. I can beat him."

I had no chance to refute this statement because suddenly, the cylinder monster jumped. Link managed to sidestep out of the say, and from my angle, I saw that the top of the monster had a cavity. I wasn't sure what it was used for, but –

Strike that. I now know what it was used for.

The monster leaned forward, and started sucking the air. No, sucking didn't do it justice – it was more like it's the vacuum cleaner of the imaginative world. I could actually see all the dust and small rocks that were flying into the mouth – I didn't know for sure it was a mouth, but what else could it be, assuming that's how the creature eats?

Even Link, a sixty-kilogram teenager, was starting to lose ground. He shifted his centre of gravity down, trying to brace himself, but it wasn't helping – he was still sliding forward, little by little.

Not good!

I was about to get out my own box weapon when Link made his move. Now that he was close enough, he swung his bomb, and struck the creature horizontally. The blow managed to angle the mouth sideways, so Link took this opportunity to roll off to a safer distance.

The creature jumped to Link again, and started its vacuum cleaner – but this time, Link was prepared. In two motions, Link pulled his right hand back, lighting the fuse on fire with his ring, and threw it straight into the mouth –!

And it missed! The brown animal had stopped its suction, dropped, rolled, got back up, and jumped at Link!

NO!

Link was –

Already throwing another bomb.

Huh?

The explosion was surprisingly big and loud. For a moment I was afraid Link was injured again, but when the gate was raised and I dashed in, he was unharmed. What's more, no remains of the creature were in sight – so it was another box weapon.

Link grinned, and raised his hand. I smiled back, and high-fived his palm. "Nice job!"

He laughed, then turned to Hibari and raised his hand again.

"I will bite you to death."

Link decided to let the prefect be.

"How did you do that?" I asked him. "Last time I checked, you only had two bombs…and one was a grenade. Where did you get the other one?"

Link grinned again, and held up the bomb – wait, where did that one come from? He grasped it with both hands, and pulled.

And then there were two.

"Cloud flames," Hibari theorized, now looking slightly interested. "The bomb is made up of entirely Cloud-attribute flames…that would explain the propagation ability. Impressive."

Link's smile stretched even further, until I leaned in and whispered: "He only says that to people he wants to fight."

The blond's face paled, and he laughed nervously as he started edging away slowly.

And yelped as something else dropped right next to him.

I almost had my box weapon out again – but then I realized that it was a ladder. Looking up, about five metres high, there was a hole that the ladder lead out to. "We'll have to go that way. I'll take the expressway."

Having said that, I accelerated with my X-gloves, shooting straight up and into the hole, leaving my friends to climb up the ladder.

The room I entered was much like the last – wide, tall, spacious overall. I wondered if this was where the creature dropped from – but there was nothing else here. By the time Hibari's head had popped up into the room, I was already examining every inch of the place – and by the time Link clambered out, I found something of interest.

"Look." There were cracks on a certain section. It looked like it could be destroyed, much like how Hibari had broken out from the passageway earlier. "Link, can you use one of your bombs?"

Hibari's cold voice distracted me. "Are you trying to imply that I'm weaker than this imbecile?"

"No, I just need you at full strength." That reminds me… I turned to Link as well. "Link, you already know this, but the person we're going to face is extremely strong. If we meet him here, we need to go all out from the start. Got it?"

Link nodded determinedly, while Hibari gave me a scathing "You don't give me orders" kind of look. It was slightly worrying…but I think we can work together.

Link had already set his bomb alight, and placed it beside the cracked wall. He then ran to the opposite side of the room, and covered his ears. I followed suit, and Hibari just stood there, seemingly disinterested.

After three seconds –

BOOM!

The blast radius was surprisingly small – the explosion from before looked bigger than that. Maybe Link could control the size of the explosion? I was about to ask him, but then the dust reached us and both of us started coughing.

"Ugh," I gasped, coughed again, and spluttered, "l-let's go."

I blindly made my way to the new hole, being careful not to step into the one on the floor. Still coughing and gasping, I managed to feel my way to the warm, destroyed frame and stumbled into the new room.

And froze when I saw an unconscious Princess Zelda and her equally surprised kidnapper.

Both of us reacted at the same moment.

I lit my ring and shouted, "Natsu!" The miniature Sky Lion popped out, just as angered and ready to take out the enemy as I was.

Said enemy quickly grasped Princess Zelda by the arm, and threw her into another hole that he created. He quickly stepped through himself, me chasing after him –

And from my peripheral vision, saw him crash into a wall to my left.

"Natsu! Now!"

The strange man pounded the wall in frustration, then turned and pointed his machine – only to yelp, drop the machine and jump away when Natsu turned it to stone. Hate in his eyes, he raised his hand toward me – but whatever he was going to do was interrupted by Hibari's tonfa slamming across his face. He flew to the corner of the room, crashed into a wall, and went down – only to step right back up again, apparently uninjured.

"Oh?" Hibari started speaking, sounding slightly interested. "You took my attack without any bruises or broken bones. I sense that you're not an illusion, either. Excellent." A scary, scary grin was plastered on his face.

"I've always wanted to meet a human punching bag."

He spun his tonfa at impossible speed, then dashed forward and suddenly uppercut his opponent, who went flying up. Hibari grabbed him by the arm, threw him down, and right when the man landed – SLAM! – the other tonfa found its mark on the stranger's chest.

Said stranger choked, and sank into the ground – another portal! He reappeared right behind Hibari, somehow managing to stand, and tried to grab Hibari's face – "Don't you dare touch me," the prefect said coldly, swatting the arm aside almost casually. He then jabbed the point of his tonfa into the man's stomach, making him double up, at which point another horizontal blow was given, making the victim gasp in pain and back up – only to be stopped, and now I saw that there was a hook and chain attached to the man's jacket, right at the stomach area, where the prefect had struck before. Sure enough, the other end of the chain was connected to the end of one of his tonfa.

Hibari pulled on the chain, pulling the man forward again and then – SLAM! SLAM! SLAM! – delivered two horizontal and one diagonal slashes all on the man's face. The man backed up again, but this time he created a portal that he fell into – though Hibari tried to pull the chain again, the portal had already closed, and severed the metal chain in its termination.

The man appeared behind Hibari again, but before he could even attempt a move the delinquent caught the man by his jacket and threw him over his shoulder in a judo-like move. He then lit his own ring, releasing Roll, his Cloud Hedgehog.

Oh. I think I know what's going to happen next.

Indeed, Hibari gently grabbed his box animal, pressed it against the stranger's chest, and said softly: "How strong is your skin?"

Then: "Needle Sphere Form!"

The hedgehog's spikes grew. The Cloud flame's propagative attribute allowed the little animal's spikes to grow both in size and number, so much so that near one hundred huge spikes attacked the man's chest and neck. He gave a gasp, but none of the spikes broke through his skin – so Hibari gave the animal even more power, even more spikes – still nothing.

More spikes, bigger spikes, both meant that to accommodate such surface area the hedgehog itself had to grow, and it did, bigger and bigger and bigger, so much that in ten seconds the hedgehog had already reached the ceiling and its countless spikes were pressed hard against the man's skin, making him choke. But there was still no blood.

At this point, the man had enough. He sank down into the ground again, but this time reappeared in the far corner, breathing heavily, no longer concerned with attacking the prefect. Hibari in turn made his hedgehog grow some of its spikes so big and so long that it covered the distance to the enemy in half a second – but the man had already disappeared again, reappearing at the other corner. Hibari tried to strike him with his tonfa, but the man went through another portal and reappeared at a different corner of the room. I tried to punch him myself, but he still retreated into a different corner.

Now Hibari scowled. He absolutely hated cowards. The prefect grasped his hedgehog again, but then I stopped him. "I've a better idea. See his chest? The spikes didn't damage him, but the flames did."

We must be pretty good at working together for Hibari to have understood me like that. He gave me a sour look, but other than that he returned Roll into his ring. I faced Link, who didn't quite know what I was talking about – yet. So I gave him the hint: "How many bombs do you think you can make at once?"

Now Link got it. He nodded, set the bomb on the ground, and kicked it. I wasn't quite expecting that, but it worked – dozens of his bombs suddenly separated from the original and scattered all over the room, some bouncing off walls. I then had Natsu come back into my ring, powered up my X-gloves – and swiped the air with both hand, shooting my Deathperation flames and lighting up every fuse!

I wasn't an idiot. There was a method of protection – Hibari. Burning his ring to its maximum, he finally released the technique that he inherited from the future:

"Needle Sphere Form, Reversed!"

It was a perfect technique.

The sole factor that governed our victory was the fact that the man could not use his portals to exit the room. If he had the ability to, he would've done so, not only when trying to escape after Hibari's pounding, but as soon as we had entered the room. Somehow, this place was bringing its occupants together for one final battle before letting anyone out.

One problem remained though, and that was the fact that one singular attack at a time could not reach him because of his retained mobility. Even with the propulsion from my X-gloves, I could never get to the enemy fast enough to attack before he moved to a different location. The only solution to reach him was to attack everything at the same time. Hence, Link's multiplying bombs.

Of course, we couldn't get caught inside the blast ourselves, and that was where Hibari's special technique came in: one that was, for him, unusually defensive in this instance. Its original design was to expand the hedgehog's cloud flames so much that it enveloped both himself and his opponents. The property of the sphere was the creation of a "dome" inside of it, one that was not only airtight because of the limited space and the flame's combustion, but also expelled anything that happened to be powered with Deathperation flames to the outside of the dome. In conclusion, when used as it normally is, it brings about a completely physical fight, no special tools. In this instance, it defended the three of us from the resultant explosions that the unfortunate man had been caught in.

There were only two drawbacks; one was, of course, my own flames. To avoid getting myself dragged outside the dome and into the explosions, I had to snuff out my own flames, turning my gloves back to its usual form, a pair of mittens. The other drawback was that we couldn't actually see anything outside the dome, so I couldn't actually confirm that we managed to injure the enemy. It was actually quite possible that something happened out there that let him escape. Unlikely, but possible.

As it was, when Hibari collapsed the reversed Needle Sphere Form, letting Roll go back into his ring, there were a bundle of burning clothes right in front of us, and in that burning bundle of clothes was the man who attacked Link and I. As I approached, the man's eyes faced me – his face somehow was not burned, but his extremities were, though lucky for him Link turned down the power enough to avoid actually blowing any limbs off. But it was clear that he had no more strength to even stand up.

"W-why?" I finally asked him, my voice uncertain. "Why did you attack me and Link? We didn't do anything to you. A-and who are you?"

It was quiet for a minute. And then the man smiled. Sinisterly.

Before disappearing into fragments.

He didn't use his portal.

"Huh?"

That's when I felt the breeze on my back. And turned. And the scene from the gym replayed in my mind. Except, this time it wasn't Reborn. It wasn't even because the man tried to suck Link in. No, this time it was planned and executed well.

A rip had appeared right beside Hibari and caught him off-guard.

"NO!" I was close enough to grab his tonfa, I tried to accelerate using my X-gloves – nothing! I had snuffed out my own flames!

I was dragged along! I tried to grab anything! Then my fingers caught Link's! We stopped moving! Yes!

"Hibari! Hold on!" I looked up – and I caught Hibari's eyes.

Those eyes told me.

I had to stop him. So even though I didn't like to order people around, I told him, "Hibari –"

I didn't even get that sentence finished.

Kyouya Hibari was a man of principles – at least, that's how I see him. None of these principles allowed him to be saved by the people he regarded as beneath him. So of course he would come to that conclusion. He was a man of principles.

He let go of his tonfa and allowed himself to be swallowed into the rip that closed with a snap.

Originally, I was going to do just this chapter before moving into another story…but what the heck, I can create the next chapter and no one's going to miss something that wasn't made yet.

Please review! I have a feeling I may have been over descriptive…but I don't know for sure unless someone tells me! And I still need more tools, please! Or you can just comment on the plot! Any and all of this can be done with a single click…

Right here!