Disclaimer: I don't think I own KHR. Wait, do I? Let's see… I can't draw people. I can't draw furniture. I can't draw awesome hot Hibari eyes. Sigh… I don't own KHR.
-Future-
"Hey," Yamamoto said softly as he closed the door behind him. The moon shone through the opened curtains, illuminating the life support and the base of the bed sheets. A customary beep from the heart monitor by the bed sang the only song in the room. Yamamoto grabbed a nearby chair and quietly slid it next to bed, sitting down. He studied the other passively; a rather large piece of gauze covered Hibari's cheek, covered slightly by limp black hair and an oxygen mask.
Yamamoto smiled sadly. "I'm glad you're doing well." He looked around the room, strangely void of a bright yellow ball of fluff that would have instantly brightened the dreary hospital room with its presence. "You know, I haven't seen Hibird at all lately." He chuckled. "Well, if I see him, I'll give him some sushi, so don't worry about the little guy, okay?"
The piece of paper weighed heavily in his pocket, and he tried to ignore his nerves, wanting to keep his mind off his self-proclaimed mission for as long as possible. He closed his eyes, humming tunelessly. "You know, I've been talking with the others. We'll all go for a drink when you better, okay? No refusing; I'll pay for yours."
He looked at Hibari's sleeping face again and the bandages that littered his face and head.
Yamamoto pulled the blanket and tucked it just under Hibari's chin, letting out the breath he was holding in relief.
"Man, I can't believe he's still alive." Dr. Shamal tapped the heart monitor lightly. "Is this thing broken?"
The Rain Guardian chuckled. "Yeah, he's still breathing."
Shamal frowned. "Hey, let's not celebrate just yet. Just because he's breathing now doesn't mean he'll stay like that."
"Yup! He'll get better to the extreme and then bite us all to death!" Ryohei cut in energetically.
"Yeah yeah. Well, I'm going to sleep now. The computers will alert us if anything comes up," Shamal said, yawning, and left.
Yamamoto looked Hibari over; he's never seen the other so defenseless before. Usually, it'd be one of them knocked out, and the Cloud Guardian would "just happen" to be passing by and the enemy would somehow "just happen" to be disturbing the discipline of Namimori. The guy was a lone predator in all aspects, always ready to fight and never willing to accept any form of help from the others of Vongola. Now, seeing his crush of ten years dangling off a cliff between life and death, it was…
A hand on Yamamoto's shoulder snapped him out of his thoughts, but he didn't look away from the sleeping Cloud Guardian. "I'm sorry… There's only so much Sun Flames can do." Ryohei tried to lighten the mood a little. "Hey, when he wakes up, he'll be all yakuza-like with scars to the extreme and then he'll…"
"Bite us all to death," Yamamoto finished for him, smiling.
"Yeah!" Ryohei agreed. He looked at the other's face and then turned away. "Ah, I'm going to go change and wash some of this blood off to the extreme. You should rest too; you've had a long day."
"Yeah… thanks…" Yamamoto told him. The door closed behind him, and the Rain Guardian just stood there, allowing the tears to fall freely from him his eyes, down his face, and off the tip of his jaw and chin.
He reached over to move some of Hibari's hair away from his peaceful eyes, but stopped and retracted his hand. 'He wouldn't want me touching him,' he thought, still keeping the smile plastered on his face.
"I have to go somewhere for a bit," he began, wondering if the room had cameras or microphones. He decided he'd risk it. "So don't die before I come back, okay?" It almost came out as a whimper as his voice slightly broke towards the end. He took a deep breath, regaining his composure, and grinned. "I'll be going then. Wish me luck, Hibari!"
With that, he left, the heart monitor still beeping persistently in the silence.
-Present-
"Are you sure you're okay?" Tsuna asked as they walked to school.
"Yeah, I'm okay now. Sorry about that," Yamamoto said, chuckling and scratching the back of his head awkwardly.
"What about your hands?"
"Ah, they're okay too." Yamamoto showed Tsuna his half-bandaged hands, chuckling. "That burn cream they had at the hospital works really well."
"Geez, you almost gave us a heart attack, coming back all bloody like that," Gokudera frowned. "What did Hibari say to you anyway?"
"Ah…" The grin dropped a little as Yamamoto tried to think of a believable explanation for the strange little conversation he had with the Cloud Guardian.
"It's only me that you can't look at, right?"
Yamamoto seriously didn't feel like spending the rest of his school days avoiding Hibari, nor did he want the prefect purposely avoiding him. It was like he was throwing a chain over the skylark, and that notion didn't appeal to him at all; he'd rather have Hibari fly wherever he pleased just like before this entire mess.
"Gokudera-san!" Tsuna said indignantly. He didn't want to pry too much into the situation now; he sensed that the worse wasn't over yet, and the Yamamoto currently walking to school with them was only going to be temporarily in this phase.
"He told me to come back to school, so here I am," Yamamoto answered truthfully. "I'd rather not get bitten to death yet," he added, chuckling.
"Sure…" Gokudera replied, unconvinced.
They finally reached Namimori High School, and Yamamoto threw a curious look back at the entrance halfway into the courtyard. 'He's not guarding the gate today…'
-Future-
Gokudera woke up at 7 in the morning when a seemingly large object smashed into his door, the thump dissolving into continuous pounding. "Okay! Okay! I'm coming! Stop knocking!" he yelled, jumping out of bed and trudging irritably over to the door. He had finally just barely managed to fall asleep due to jetlag, and now some idiot decided to wake him up in such a manner. 'If it isn't something important, I'll…' He opened to the door to find Ryohei jumping up and down.
"Hey Octopus Head! Good morning!" he yelled loud enough to wake up the house.
"Did you realize that I just finally manage to fall asleep?" Gokudera screamed back, already half slamming the door in the Sun Guardian's face. However, Ryohei managed to catch the door before the other closed it. "What do you want?" the Storm Guardian hissed, trying to stifle a yawn.
"Uh… I forgot…" Ryohei said, suddenly looking quite blank.
Gokudera stared incredulously at him, wondering if dynamite or the cat would kill the Sun Guardian faster.
"Oh, I remember!"
'Lucky him…' Gokudera thought acidly.
"Yamamoto's missing!" the Sun Guardian exclaimed.
This response received another short period of completely dumbstruck behavior on Gokudera's part. "What?"
"I looked everywhere! I think he took off by himself!"
Gokudera put a hand to his head, groaning. "That idiot! Okay, do you have the address?"
"Uh… I kind of forgot…" Ryohei admitted, shifting uncomfortably.
The Storm Guardian sighed. "I'm going to pretend I didn't just hear that. Does Giannini have the address?"
"I think I accidentally deleted the file when I took it out of the system," Ryohei admitted nervously.
Gokudera gave Ryohei a blank stare, at lost for what to say. "How can both of you be such idiots!" he suddenly burst out. "If you haven't given him the address in the first place, he wouldn't have left!"
"But I saw him searching for it earlier!" Ryohei retorted.
"He what?" Gokudera had no idea Yamamoto would act so decisively with something like this.
"He would've found it eventually and left without tell us anyway."
"But we don't even know where the damn place is now!"
"We know what he's set out to do though," Ryohei said, shrugging.
"Do you really think he's that type of person?"
"Do you remember what happened after his father died?" Ryohei returned, shutting the other up.
"Ugh, I think I'm going back to sleep. You go figure out where he is, since you were the one who gave him the address." He slammed the door.
"Rest to the extreme before the next mission!" he heard through the wall.
Gokudera stopped, slamming a fist into the wall. "Yamamoto… you better come back in one piece or else the Tenth will never forgive me." He glanced at the picture frame on the bedside table.
"What?" Gokudera looked from the picture to his sister's goggled face, confused.
"Just take it," Bianchi told him, smiling sadly. "You guys never really did take a lot of pictures together, right?"
Gokudera shifted his gaze back at the photo. It was taken during their high school years during one of the firework festivals.
"Thanks…"
Bianchi ruffled his hair, earning a growl from her younger brother. "I know how hard it is to lose someone you love…"
Gokudera didn't answer. Several days ago, they had received news of Reborn's death from the strange rays in the air, and now Tsuna was also gone, reportedly shot down by a surprise attack on the mansion he was staying at.
-Present-
"So, you're Yamamoto Takeshi right? The baseball prodigy?" one of the guys asked sarcastically as his friends withheld snickers. "We heard that you were a little under the weather recently."
'Ah, this isn't good,' Yamamoto thought when he realized that they were slowly surrounding him. He just had to tell Tsuna and Gokudera to go home without him today; he had stayed at school a little longer than usual to catch up on his baseball practice.
"Why don't you stop baseball for a bit? Take a rest," the guy suggested, grinning and flexing his fingers. "So, how about it?"
" Uh…" Yamamoto began, but the nearest one of them suddenly punched him in the stomach, cutting him off. He doubled over, gasping for air, before they all jumped on them, laughing. 'Ah, how'd I get myself into this mess?' Yamamoto recovered and in a flash, expertly grabbed his bat and swung with one fluid movement, effectively throwing off all six of them to the floor.
"Damn, he's too strong," one of the guys hissed, wiping some blood away from his split lip.
"Nonsense, it's six against one, and the brat's not the only one with a weapon," the leader of them said, brandishing a switchblade.
The nearest guy leapt at Yamamoto, but the natural-born hitman instinctively sidestepped and swung his bat at the guy's stomach, knocking him out. Two more came from behind, and he swung again; the bat turned into a katana and ran across the top of their hands, making them drop the blades.
"Sheesh, you guys are useless!" the leader took out a gun and fired; the Rain Guardian dodged that too, leaping to the side away from the path of the bullet.
"Boss!" a strained cry rang out in the air. Unfortunately for the punks, the bullet had found another target in the arm of one of the subordinates. Yamamoto looked at the blood slowly seeping out of the bullet hole, freezing.
"Tch," the punk aimed the gun at Yamamoto, who suddenly remembered that the fight wasn't over yet. He jumped to the side again, except this time one of them anticipated his actions and hand with a knife stood waiting at the spot his momentum was carrying him.
Another flash, this one black and white with a tinge of red and gold, slammed into the waiting danger, hurling the guy away with several broken ribs, as Yamamoto skidded safely to a halt. Their eyes met briefly, and he looked away, instead seeing the blood stained tonfa, which quickly disappeared with their owner.
Yamamoto fell to his knees, trying to calm his breathing as the head of the Disciplinary Committee wrecked havoc on the punks from the neighboring school, and the sound of breaking bones and metal on flesh sounded through the area. Soon, all six were running or limping away, yelling for their lives. Yamamoto looked down when Hibari, covered a little with spots of blood, walked over to him. The Rain Guardian closed his eyes, only to receive a blow across the face from the tonfa, surprisingly not strong enough to knock him completely on the ground.
"You," Hibari emphasized the word, "are not an herbivore. What do you think you're doing?" He stared the other down, eyes still burning with the heat of battle. Hibari wiped some of the splattered blood off his face with his sleeve, before hissing, "Pathetic." He walked away.
-Future-
'Looks exactly like the other one,' Yamamoto thought as he studied the building, checking the address again to make sure. 'Well,' he stood up, stretching. "Let's get started."
"Who's there?" one of the men that Yamamoto presumed was the leader of this particular warehouse group of grunts, yelled out when the Rain Guardian casually kicked the door down. The intruder didn't answer and instead glanced at the many scattered charts on the table.
"Planning to bomb one of our facilities?" Yamamoto asked as he grinned like it was a joke. "Or are you making some new weapon to hurt more people?"
"I… I don't know what you're talking about!" the man started.
"Will you surrender?" Yamamoto continued as if the man hadn't said anything. He figured he'd preserve at least this much of Tsuna's pacifist way of approaching conflicts.
"What do you… Of course not! We haven't done anything wrong!"
The façade fell, his eyes flashed dangerously, and Yamamoto deliberately drew his sword slowly, the men watching their reflections come and go on the blade of the katana. "Then you'll pay for what you did to Hibari…"
-Present-
The next day, Yamamoto found himself in front of the Disciplinary Committee room. Taking a breath, he entered, making sure not to look straight ahead since he knew that the other would probably be either sitting at the desk or lying on the sofa. As predicted, Hibari Kyoya was sitting behind the desk, shuffling through a stack of papers. He looked up when the Rain Guardian entered.
"I was wondering if I could treat you some sushi," Yamamoto said, shifting uncomfortably. Hibari raised an eyebrow at the sudden invitation. "As thanks for yesterday. Just drop by my family's shop anytime, okay?" He bowed quickly and left, effectively avoiding the other's eyes throughout the entire brief conversation.
Hibari stared at the closed door, contemplating the situation quietly as he returned to the paper he had in his hands, but his eyes no longer read the words.
-Future-
"What?" Gokudera gasped, starring at the chart Giannini had managed to pull out on the computer screen. The Storm Guardian had gotten up around 2 in the afternoon, finally awake enough to get changed and grab a bit of food before entering Giannini's workroom.
"Uh… apparently Yamamoto used the address Ryohei took from my computer to track down two other warehouses owned by the Incendio Gang."
"Gang?"
"They're still a small group, so at first I thought they wouldn't try anything against us, but we've had reports of bomb development and a mass accumulation of weapons."
"That might explain why they had all those guns," Gokudera said, thinking aloud.
"I've sent Ryohei and Lambo to check on two of the addresses Yamamoto took, so they'll contact us if they find him. Luckily, we kept a backup on our files, so there was no problem finding the locations," he sighed, shaking his head at Ryohei's stupidity.
Gokudera sighed, sitting down at a desk. "Okay. Man, that guy…"
Giannini began typing on the computer, scrolling through a mass of menus as Gokudera read through the reports.
"How's Hibari by the way?" the inventor suddenly asked out of the blue.
"Still breathing. He'd better still be breathing when Yamamoto gets back or else the Baseball Idiot will probably try something stupider than this," Gokudera hissed.
Giannini chuckled a bit. "Well, Kusakabe sent word to me that he'll be arriving today, so if Hibari wakes up, we won't be bitten to death too badly."
"Was that guy worried too?"
"Oh, he was quite worried, but compared to what I've heard from you and Ryohei about Yamamoto, probably not worried at all."
"I see…" Gokudera stared blankly at the report in front of him.
Meanwhile, Yamamoto lightly tossed a lit lighter on the floor as he walked away, wiping the blood off his katana with a piece of cloth and throwing that in the growing fire as well. He walked away, not even trying to avoid stepping on the random patches of blood on the floor.
-Present-
"Oh, so you're Hibari Kyoya," Tsuyoshi greeted him good-naturedly as the prefect entered the restaurant at eight o'clock that night. "It's quite late."
'He did tell me to come anytime,' Hibari thought irritably as the father walked around the counter, putting his apron back on.
"Sit anywhere you like; Takeshi's in the bath right now. I'll take your order," Tsuyoshi said cheerfully. Hibari wondered if that cheerful countenance ran in the family; the Yamamotos' tendency to crowd with herbivores was quite prominent.
Hibari stared at the menu in front of him, frowning. He began to regret taking the offer; free food wasn't as fun as food received through coercion. He sighed and decided to play along; it wasn't like Yamamoto was in any state to repay him in any other way, especially sparring.
"Thank you for the food," he muttered when he finished, half an hour later.
"No problem! Its thanks for helping Takeshi yesterday; speaking of which…" He looked up at the ceiling towards the second floor. "Where is he? Ah, excuse me for a few minutes; I'm going to check on him."
A few minutes later, Hibari heard a yell from upstairs, followed by splashing. He wondered if he should leave, but curiosity got the better of him, so he got up from his seat and tiptoed up the stairs.
"Ah, how can you be so careless?" Hibari heard Tsuyoshi's panicked voice from behind a door that he presumed to be Takeshi's room. A trail of water from the bathroom marked the Rain Guardian's prior location.
"Wait here! I'll go get something to cool you off!" Tsuyoshi said as he opened the door, nearly walking into Hibari. "Ah, you're still here! Can you try to cool him down; I have to get some ice." Not waiting for an answer, Tsuyoshi ran off. Hibari entered the room, taking care to not step on the wet patches on the floor. A pile of wet towels lay to the side, and the person in question was sprawled out on top of his futon in a loose white robe, breathing heavily. Yamamoto's face was a flushed red.
Hibari grabbed a paper fan lying on top of the shelf and half-heartedly fanned the Rain Guardian, who seemed to be coming back from his dazed delusion.
"Neh, Hibari, is that you?" he asked, squinting at the blurs in his vision as he slowly came back. Hibari didn't answer and instead continued his work. Yamamoto laughed. "Funny, I lost track of time in the hot tub and kind of passed out."
"Herbivore," Hibari muttered under his breath.
"Sorry," Yamamoto sighed, closing his eyes. "Really…"
'Is he delusional again?' Hibari thought.
"I'm sorry that I couldn't save you…"
Hibari stopped fanning, staring at him incredulously. 'Are those… tears?'
"Ah, why am I crying?" Yamamoto wiped his hands with the back of his hand, sniffing slightly. He chuckled, "Ah, sorry, you can leave now. You probably hate seeing people like this."
Hibari stared at the Rain Guardian; someone he had once thought could be a possible sparring partner was now reduced to a little crying herbivore. Yamamoto had hit the spot; Hibari really did hate situations like this where people couldn't contain their emotions. After all, Hibari himself was more or less mostly emotionless. And yet, he couldn't help but slightly forgive the Rain Guardian for at least attempting to regain his composure.
Resuming his fanning with one hand, he moved Yamamoto's hand away from his face. He frowned, the other had appeared to have stopped crying, but the drying trails of tears made his face sparkle. 'Pathetic…' He moved closer to study that face, feeling the other's uneven breathing tickle his nose. 'Tears in the way,' he wiped the remainder of the tears off Yamamoto's face with his sleeve.
"Neh, Hibari?" Yamamoto asked, but he ignored him. His hand moved to Yamamoto's chin; he remembered the older one had a scar on this exact location. He jolted when Yamamoto suddenly caught his hand. "There's no blood on you, right?"
"No…" Hibari answered, annoyed. "Even when there is, it isn't mine."
Yamamoto laughed a little. "Okay." He opened his eyes and squinted a little as everything came into focus in the bright light. He saw intense dark eyes, tainted with bloodlust and a hint of annoyance. He smiled.
Hibari found himself staring into those brown eyes. He recalled the many gazes of his past prey: some were narrow with hatred, most were wide with fear. Yamamoto's looked, for the most part at this point, normal. They held a little tinge of sadness mixed in with the look of a carefree baseball lover who values his friends above all else, and at the very core, a carnivore protector of herbivores, currently in danger of becoming an herbivore himself.
"Hey, you wouldn't have died, right?" Yamamoto asked him. "You're invincible?"
Hibari smirked. "Of course."
Yamamoto laughed. "I'm relieved."
Hibari frowned and wondered if he could somehow manipulate those eyes. After all, it was kind of because of him that they lost their normal goofy herbivore stare; he doubted that sadness would ever disappear. He learned in closer. If he suddenly whacked the other with his tonfa, would those eyes widen in pain and then open again with carefree laughter? However, he concluded that the other already laughed too much and decided to not follow suit with that option.
"Hibari?" Yamamoto suddenly snapped him out of his reverie, and he realized his face was a close four inches away from the other's.
Hibari jolted upward and away, which happened to be a millisecond before Tsuyoshi reentered the room, carrying some ice.
"Thanks a lot for fanning him!" Tsuyoshi said when he saw the fan in Hibari's hand. "Don't worry about him; I'll take care of him. You have Committee duties right?" Hibari nodded slightly in acknowledgement and half ran out of the room.
"Did you scare him away?" Tsuyoshi asked.
"No I didn't!" Takeshi retorted, as his blush deepened. "Hey, can you hand me ice please? I think I'm burning up again."
"What did you do, jump into the bath again?" his father frowned.
"Huh? No…"
-Future-
Yamamoto moved just as the man fired, although his body didn't dodge as quickly as he would have liked it to. He was tired; it had been a while since he'd rested, and with all the fighting he had been doing, his movements had become considerably slower. The bullet dug into his right side, ripping through a few muscles, and flew out his back, bouncing softly off the wall. He rolled behind a box to dodge the rest of the barrage of bullets, surveying the damage with a hand.
'Okay… cracked rib… no problem…' He closed his eyes, grasping his sword tighter. The firing stopped, and he could hear the shuffling of trembling feet as they closed in on him. He smiled. 'So this is what they meant by being able to smell fear, huh?' Yamamoto summoned his Rain Flames and opened his box, letting out the swallow. He heard the others momentarily get distracted by the appearance of the bird as he ushered his body up and took his stance, staring directly into the eyes of the nearest Incendio grunt.
'This should be the last of that group, right?' The Rain Flames built up around him, pouring around the enemy like a silent wave. 'Shigure Souen Style; Thirteenth Form…'
Okay, so I know Yamamoto has at least 11 forms for his Shigure Souen Style and by the time I finish this story, he might even have more than 13, so… uh… lol pretend it's a higher number if dear Yamamoto discovers another 2 forms?
I haven't started Chapter 4 yet as of right now, so it'll probably be up no later then… hm… let's make that Sunday? I know I'm over-guessing, but just in case lol!
Thanks for reading! See you in a bit!