Facing the Unknown
For the hundredth time in the last few days, Tsuna sighed. She had never meant to say all that to Hibari, but she couldn't-wouldn't-take those words back. She had already told Reborn she would find her own cloud guardian. Reborn had said nothing, merely smirk, and now that smirk was haunting her. The arcobaleno was certainly up to something.
"Hey, Tsuna," called Yamamoto. She smiled at the baseball player as he moved towards her desk. "Are you still working on the kid's assignment."
"The kid's…? Oh, you mean Reborn's request," she said, nearly sighing again at the last word. Reborn would certainly find some way to make her life worse if she called it anything else. "No. Not anymore."
"So we can have lunch together again?"
"Get away from la principessa, baseball idiot," yelled Gokudera, imposing himself between Tsuna and Yamamoto. "You just want to eat the tenth's precious lunch."
"You missed it too then."
"I'm not you, baseball freak!" Gokudera protested, but his cheeks took on a reddish hue. Tsuna smiled sadly. Gokudera had probably had to physically restrain himself to keep away from her while she was fulfilling Reborn's "request." Her tutor probably helped, knowing him. And then used Gokudera in some sort of torturous training session with Yamamoto and Ryohei. Not that the other two didn't also miss her in their own ways. Ryohei had to be distracted after school so she could end up at the gate on time since he would not quit trying to get her to join the boxing club despite her gender. Yamamoto had helped distracted the boxer and had more than once pulled the silver-haired bomber away after their two-hour afternoon time together, but she had known that the layback teen hadn't liked her leaving either by the almost hidden worry in the swordsman's black eyes.
"Don't worry. I brought enough to share," she said, ignoring the shadow nearby. She didn't want to know his precise location. She had already been using a subtle sky flame to strengthen Yamamoto's rain flame and keeping her two closest guardians from noticing him. Otherwise, he would have been detected long ago. Stealth wasn't his strong suit, but in his defense, he hadn't had to use such methods often. He was too straightforward a person for covertness. She frowned. Not that she should spend too much time defending a hypocrite.
"Hm. You okay, Tsuna? "
"Huh? Oh, I'm fine."
"What about your cheek then?" Yamamoto asked in a voice Tsuna knew only sounded upbeat. She unconsciously reached up to touch the bandage on her cheek. No one had wounded her in single combat for quite a while, so she had forgotten about it.
"Oh, um…well, I was cooking and…well…I made tamagoyaki."
Yamamoto gave a rare eager smile while Gokudera looked torn between anticipation and guilt at his supposed greed. She would never understand what about such a simple cheap egg dish make them so happy. She thought about Lambo, I-pin, and Fuuta. She had actually gotten home early enough to cook for them. All three had been hyper, following her around the whole kitchen and babbling a mile a minute and barely letting her work. She smiled at the memory. She hadn't had too much time with them, so she had shared their enthusiasm. She shook her head, determined to forget the shadow and just enjoy her day. Unfortunately, the shadow persisted. It followed her as she ate with her three guardians out in the field, when she was trying not to fall asleep in class, and when she parted ways with her friends. Frustrated, she stopped and finally pinpointed the shadow.
"I think I already know the answer, but I'm going to ask anyway. What do you want, Hibari?"
The prefect jumped out of the tree had been watching her from, and if the moment had been at any other time or contained any other person, Tsuna would have laughed. Hibari had leaves and branches tangled in his hair and his uniform somehow looked neat and mussed at the same time, as if it wanted to be impeccable but fell short. Apparently, he had no real clue how to spy on someone. His face, however, forbid any mention of his state. She couldn't help but crack a small smile though.
"Fight me," he said, almost too flatly, mechanically. Tsuna blinked. His eyes looked bloodshot, and he had dark bags under his eyes. She blinked back her shock. How had he gotten to this state in one day? If he was Mukuro, she would have half expected this to be an attempt at manipulating her into a fight. But she knew better. Hibari was nothing if not blunt and straightforward.
"No. I don't fight someone without a reason," said Tsuna, trying to match his bluntness. She sharpened her eyes. "And it wouldn't be wise to give me one."
In an instant, Hibari pulled his tonfas out of his jacket and rushed towards her, but she merely dodged him. Immediately, she noticed his movements were far sloppier than yesterday. They weren't at all calculated, she noticed as she ducked under yet another tonfa strike, and he hadn't pulled out the chains. Using all the experience she had piled up since her fight with Xanxus, she started dodging the wild strikes automatically and set most of her mind to analyzing her opponent. Besides his sloppy style (though to be honest, even in this state, Hibari could probably still knock down a whole Vongola squadron before being scratched) and semi-mussed uniform, she noticed that the tonfas bore several new nicks. When she had fought him yesterday, she had taken note that Hibari took excellent care of his weapons; both the chains and tonfas themselves bearing a polished gleam. Today the tonfas looked old and worn. And his hands didn't look much better. But the worst part was his eyes. The usually sharp, cold eyes lacked their ferocity and looked glassy and flat. And they weren't looking at her. Not once in their first fight had Hibari ever taken his eyes off her until she had forcibly distracted him, so intense was his desire to defeat her. Now, he wasn't fighting her, not really. So then what was he fighting?
Her feet slid to a stop as the answer made itself clear to her. She grabbed the tonfa swinging broadly at her, stepped into the strike, shouldered Hibari's weight, and flipped him over. To her surprised horror, he hit the floor fully, his glassy eyes widening in something too close to shock. Before she could completely process what she was doing, she grabbed his tonfas from the prefect's momentarily loose grip and stepped back. He immediately sprung up again, a new fire lightening his eyes, but the desperation, for now she knew what had made those eyes so flat, still remained. He swung at her barehanded, but she sidestepped him and ran. He chased her, but she wasn't going to make following her easy. He certainly hadn't.
"Give those back," commanded Hibari in a cold growl as Tsuna reached up and flipped onto a fire escape of a nearby building.
"Give me your word you won't swing them at me anymore."
Hibari growled wordlessly, and Tsuna ran on to the roof knowing all too well that he was right behind her. And so the next hour passed. She ran across roofs, through crowded streets, in underground sewers, back and forth across the river several times, and finally into a dead end. If Reborn was watching, and she was almost certain he was, she knew her torture regimen would increase by at least an hour. Tsuna groaned at the thought of a 2 am wake-up call as she once again dodged the mindless beast that was Hibari. She had hoped he would have reached a negotiable point before this. She had hoped that holding his tonfas hostage would at least allow for some conversation, but she had miscalculated somewhere. He had only gotten more and more determined (mindlessly angry really), and now she had no idea what she was going to do. He kept charging at her. Suddenly, he was right in front of her. In a split second, she had a tonfa in her hand and was spinning away from the prefect and behind him. The tonfa met the back of the prefect's head full force.
Tsuna stared between the unmoving Hibari slumped on the alley floor and the tonfa still in her hand, and she sighed.
