Disclaimer: Reborn is not mine. Since I'm unable to edit the story's ratings, I'll just say upfront that this story has turned into an M-rated one.

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Viral NanoBio-chips: (P.) n. A.k.a. viral bio-chips. Converges to consume and alter strings of DNA of any organism. A bio-engineer's dream, the evolutionary tool allowing genetic enhancements via rapid mutation. Manufactured inside living humans which results in zombies, titans, and very rarely, a Pantheon god. Was once called the God Complex.

Zombies: (P.) n. A still-born of the virus, theoretical dead-ends of the evolutionary tree. Spreads like rats. Shares the virus' hunger for DNA but nothing else. The nanobio-chips have never manifested in them.

0101010

"You have the fledgling's fever," Hibari commented. "Not bad yet but in ten minutes or so, the bio-chips will start cannibalizing your own cells."

Tsuna whimpered as the heat Hibari was emitting was burning him up faster, choking what little breathe he could inhale. The world around him was beginning to spin gently and the nauseating emptiness was leeching the rest of his strength slowly but surely, his legs teetering on his tiptoes like an exhausted tightrope-walker. "The soldier…is he okay?"

Hibari wandered over to the man and kicked him. The man didn't stir. "Dead."

Tears falling fast and blurring his vision, Tsuna wept for the bravery the man.

For his wasted life.

Hibari had moved on to prodding the monster with his foot. "Tch. Dead too. Good job, though."

For a few seconds, Tsuna was quiet, trying to gulp air back in past the blockade of grief in his throat, shifting from one strained upturned foot to the other as pinpricks of pain jabbed his muscles. Then because Hibari still hadn't stopped kicking at the monster and because Tsuna was quietly losing his grip on the chains, he asked "Sempai…what did you mean? By fever?"

Hibari stopped kicking the monster and gave him another pleased smile. "It's been a long time since someone called me sempai." Then he tapped his chin and added, "But I like Hibari-san better."

Promptly, Tsuna said, "Hibari-san." The handcuffs clinked as Tsuna's fingers clawed at them to maintain his balance.

Hibari gave him a strange look. "…Hey. Can you sing the Namimori School Anthem?"

Sweat was dripping down Tsuna's face in buckets and the ground was slowly looking miles and miles below him in a hallucinatory vertigo and the soldier was dead, the hero was in his grave, and it was all stupid Tsuna's fault. For the moment, the non-sequitor threw him off and Tsuna slipped, the chains clanking and his arms suddenly bearing his entire body weight. Tsuna quickly scrambled up to his toes and could only ask "W-what?"

"Sing it."

Tsuna made a little crying sound, a sob. He was so hungry, so hungry that the feeling was crawling up his chest, his hands, and his head like red ants under his skin until he realized that he was mixing the pain of hunger with the feeling of muscle cramps. He didn't want to sing, not when it felt as if his throat was drying up in the desert and that his head was drowning in muck and blood.

Hibari pursed his lips then sighed. "Fine. I'll make a deal with you. Sing the whole Namimori Anthem while standing just like that. If you do that, I'll help you through the fever. But in exchange, I get some of the ladon."

It was an exorbitant request but at this point, Tsuna would have promised anything to stop the migraine and the fever and the hunger and his racing pulse. It was overwhelming Tsuna and he had the ominous feeling that if he didn't stop this fever within its tracks, he would collapse again into shock. Permanently, this time.

Biting his lip, the fresh burst of pain woke him from the fog for just a little bit more.

He swallowed the thick sludge of saliva that had built up and opened his mouth to sing. "The green that trails Namimori…"

For a few minutes, Hibari watched Tsuna croak out the Anthem in his chains. Tsuna's voice was raspy, a little off-tone in some parts and an uncontrollable tremor had shaken his limbs and his voice. Twice, he'd nearly forgotten a line and had lapsed into silence until Hibari prompted him with a word. Tears of exhaustion were slipping from his blood-shot eyes and a reddish tint of the fever was branded across his cheeks. By the last words of "Let's walk together, Namimori Middle School." Tsuna was practically gasping.

Then Hibari bent down next to the monster he called ladon and tore a large bite from the pale flesh.

He stood up, chewing.

Then he grabbed Tsuna's hair, cradling his head and kissed him open-mouthed. Tsuna gagged but Hibari's tongue was pushing the meat forward and his fingers were digging into Tsuna's jaw to keep his mouth open.

Tsuna swallowed, throat working against his gag reflex, the uncooked meat and Hibari's saliva going down with a strange sweetness.

Hibari ended the kiss with a bite at Tsuna's lips.

"There. You'll last another hour before we get back to my headquarters." Hibari released the slack on the chains and Tsuna slumped to the ground in a daze. The older god bent down again and ripped a sizable thick flank from the ladon. It was twice his size but Hibari merely carried it with one arm and a smirk directed at Tsuna. He walked a few paces away from Tsuna where he'd parked a motorcycle in the distance. He wrapped up the meat in leather and dumped it into the passenger sidecar.

For Tsuna, the air pressure had decreased, returning to an almost normal level. The hunger had its edge blunted off and was now only a dim murmur. But the fever hadn't stopped. He was rubbing his arms and legs, soothing the twitching muscles but it felt scalding to the touch. Worse, his skin now felt hypersensitive to the granules of sand that was stirred up by the wisps of wind. It rubbed him raw like sandpaper.

Then Hibari picked him up and slung him over the god's shoulder. "I took enough meat for us both. Any more will just rot. Now, let's go."

Staring down Hibari's back, Tsuna clutched the god's white shirt. He mumbled.

"What?"

"…Thank you, Hibari-san."

Hibari smirked again then climbed onto the motorcycle. Candidly he said, "A deal is a deal." Then he slid Tsuna to the front of the seat so he could use both arms to bracket Tsuna to reach the handlebars and keep the fledgling from falling off. But before he could start the engine, Tsuna mumbled again into his neck.

Feeling slightly annoyed, Hibari replied, "You'll owe me more for this."

But he did as Tsuna asked and went back to the soldier to bury him.

0101010

This was a sequence of events occurring on that day, guaranteeing Reborn's absence and ensuring Hibari's involvement.

Without even one of them, there were a million little ways for that day to end in a catastrophe; alternative futures where Hibari and Reborn clashed and killed each other, where Tsuna died in a desert alone, where Lancia himself killed the feverish Tsuna in an act of self-defense, where Reborn slaughtered every soldier under his command. A million futures and only one ended right—or at least with the minimum amount of casualties.

One, on that day, Naito was assigned to the Pantheon facility as a scavenger scout for the electrical department. And that in exhaustion and depression, Naito had swiped a bundle of wires that included one particular wire with a tiny sliver of a cut in its rubber casing and had handed it to his manager without inspecting it much.

Two, that the engineers were overhauling the wiring of the security system of the Pantheon prison for three days in a row without much sleep. And that one of them had picked up that wire with the cut and inserted it into the framework of wires and closed the metallic lid and had gone off to nap in the cafeteria. So that when one of the engineers did a test-run, the wire with the cut immediately short-circuited the whole system, melting bits of other wires and disrupting the entire power grid monitoring the Pantheon facility.

Three, that the five mentally unbalanced mutations from the Heinlein Hospital were on lock down but had been starved by the negligence of one of Dr. Irie's harassed interns, whose only mistake had been misfiling the papers for the mutations. They were starved for a whole week and had already mutated far enough to become full-fledged titans.

Four, that Reborn had been starving himself too, in preparation of the feast he would share with his hatchling, Tsuna's first feeding. Which greatly crippled his own energy stores.

Five, that when the security system failed because of the cut wire, the five imprisoned experiments watched their cell doors sliding opening. And found food scurrying around in army green uniforms.

Six, that Pvt. Lancia woke up from a nightmare starring Tsuna held down being raped in a scientific experiment. He'd simply snapped and stolen the key access card for the army truck containing Tsuna's glass tank and stolen it to drive beyond the territories of the Pantheon, beyond even the known quarantine boundary, into Hibari's lands.

Seven, that Reborn would be so busy containing the five escaped titans, he would miss his daily dopamine imprinting moments with his hatchling, missing the thief in his crime by only an hour. After he'd systematically cut down all five, he would head back to his own rooms and leave the cleaning up to Dr. Irie and Byakuran. He would fall asleep on the floor of his own room in exhaustion, blood and pieces of flesh still stuck to his uniform.

Eight, that when Reborn went to see Tsuna three hours after, he would only find an empty incubating port, the glass egg missing. In a fit of rage, he would then release the ladon and order it to hunt down his hatchling by smell and to devour the thief in strips and pieces. When Reborn finished imprinting the command on the ladon, he would then collapse again, having exhausted the last of his reserves on that imprinting. Only a few seconds later, Byakuran would most certainly have stabbed him in the back if Coll. Nello and Dr. Irie hadn't found Reborn first.

Nine, that Hibari would be bored and hungry and roaming around on his motorcycle on that particular hour when Pvt. Lancia was attempting to open Tsuna's tank.

And lastly, that it would be Sawada Tsunayoshi, a former student in Namimori School.

All 10 were merely coincidences. But maybe that was all it took.

0101010

"Stop crying or I'll eat you alive."

Tsuna just sniffled, trying to physically bury his head in Hibari's shoulder. The wet patch of tears and snot had gotten bigger on Hibari's shirt. Normally, he'd have beaten the crap out of Tsuna already just for being a soppy little creature chewing grass. But now, he just revved the motorcycle faster and ignored the warm weight of Tsuna's head. There was a certain pleasure in having something small and soft depending on him.

Maybe even devoted.

No, Hibari did not mind the wet patch.

He did mind the silence though. "Are you dead yet?"

Tsuna shook his head but otherwise remained stubbornly quiet in crying.

Hibari frowned.

Already, they had made some progress into the empty city-district of Namimori. Here and there, a stray zombie lurched with a broom in hand.

Hibari tolerated their crowding his city.

At first, he had exterminated them for hanging around. But more and more showed up and they never seemed to learn. Worse, they did humdrum things repetitiously. One had opened and closed the post office door over and over again. Another one had turned the pages from a yellow book, back and forth. There had even been one who swept leaves around with no apparent notion of what to do with the leaves afterwards. Even dead and chemically altered, the body remembered too well its habits and routine.

Then one day, playing around with one of them, he ordered it to gather all the books in the city and to dump it in front of the school.

He had felt a brief electrical static on the skin where his horns protruded.

The zombie had stopped its tedious kicking of a ball and had walked off. The other three zombies within hearing distance had also stopped rolling their dull shopping carts and had lumbered off. Bored, Hibari had gone back to hunt for some amusement. When he'd returned to his school, there were piles and piles of books in front of the gates.

Now, though Hibari paid his dead servants no mind as he rode the motorcycle nearer the gated Namimori High.

The school was a convenient safehouse. There was a kitchen with a room-sized freezer, a library, working bathrooms, a few trees to nap against, and a disciplinarian office with a couch to sleep on. There was even a fully-stocked nurse's office and a back-up generator (he was studying to prolong shelf-life) and the principal's office where he'd found the keys to every door in the school. The roof was an even nicer spot to sleep in and was a vantage point overlooking most of the city.

But he would have to haul in a whole bed, Hibari mused. Something nice and expensive.

Later.

He needed to fulfill his end of the bargain. He turned off the motorcycle as the school gates behind him closed automatically. He checked Tsuna's temperature and deemed it safe for a few more minutes. He dragged Tsuna to the steps to the main doors of the school building. He laid the fledgling against the wall in the shade but when he moved away, Tsuna clutched at his arm in panic. Hibari ran his fingers through Tsuna's hair and Tsuna blinked at him, eyes milky with fever.

"I need to put my bike away."

Tsuna let go reluctantly, curling up in on himself against the wall.

Hibari frowned again.

He went back to the bike, picked the meat up, and dropped it off near Tsuna who avoided looking at it. Then he rolled the motorcycle into the shop classroom where he kept most of his tools and oil containers for the bike. He ignored the mess of chairs and tables in the classroom and just propped the motorcycle beside the teacher's desk.

Heading back, he carried Tsuna to the disciplinarian's office. Then he had to go and get the meat, which was a bit troublesome already as flies were already swarming around it. He swiped at them, killing the whole swarm and dropping each fly to the ground.

Still, the sight of Tsuna staring up at him in sweat-slicked hospital pajamas on his leather couch was rewarding enough as he entered the office.

Hibari threw the meat on the low table, near enough for him to reach. He loosened the black necktie while he said, "I'm not going to fuck you. Not yet. Not like this."

Tsuna furrowed his eyebrows but his fever was increasing again, the fog thicker than before, now completely blotting out memory and sadness and leaving this irrational boiling heat in his skin. He squirmed miserably under the assault of the rough cotton of his pajamas.

"But I will enjoy this," Hibari said as he casually ripped Tsuna's pajamas into tatters

Tsuna's breath hitched as cold air hit his naked skin.

Hibari snagged Tsuna's ankles and lifted the fledgling (who squeaked) off a bit from the couch he could sit down. Then he adjusted Tsuna on his lap, facing him with the fledgling's legs comfortably wrapped around his hips. He grunted as Tsuna shook in his arms, inadvertently grinding down. "Stop that."

"…hungry," it was a low delirious whisper against Hibari's chin that went straight to his cock.

Tsuna's eyes had slid down half-mast, a devout disciple praying for mercy from Hibari.

He cupped Tsuna's face even as Tsuna nuzzled into his hand.

Hibari reached out with his other hand and cut a piece from the flank with his claws. He chewed the strip of meat, his saliva killing bacteria and germs on it. He opened Tsuna's mouth again and sealed their lips together. Just as he was passing the masticated meat, Tsuna blinked awake then bit him and shoved him away.

Attempted to, anyway.

If Hibari hadn't prepared himself for that little rebellion, if he hadn't gripped Tsuna's waist with vice-like strength, Tsuna would have tumbled headfirst into the table and broken his neck. As it was, his lip was bleeding and Tsuna was spitting out perfectly good food in horror on to his couch.

And crying again.

Blubbering about how he wasn't a cannibal, he wasn't one of those grey corpses, he wasn't a monster, he wasn't a monster, wasn'tWASN'T—

Hibari kissed him again, halting the stream of words. His hands rubbed comforting circles on Tsuna's quavering hips. The fledgling had grasped onto his biceps and was squeezing tight, nails digging in. Then Hibari started to hum, a deep vibrating sound from his chest. Tsuna rocked against him, desperately hard and aching. Hibari broke free from the kiss to lick at Tsuna's ear and murmur to the fledgling. "You need to eat. Why won't you eat?"

Tsuna shook his head and repeated his earlier mantra, "—not a monster, not a monster, not a—"

Hibari laughed huskily at the fledgling. "Dame-Tsuna. Haven't you ever heard of Spinoza? A creature follows its inherent nature as intended. A lion hunts and kills because it is in his nature. A carnivore eats animals because that is how he lives and nobody begrudges him his feeding habits. You are not a monster for having to eat flesh; not when it is in our nature."

"…not a monster?"

"No. Now, eat." For the next hour, Hibari fed Tsuna by mouth, his cock rigidly pressing against the soft swell of Tsuna's butt.

Twice, Tsuna rutted against him as lust overwhelmed his fledgling and he came on Hibari's abdomen. Hibari wiped it away and fed Tsuna more strips of meat, and eating some himself. Tsuna occasionally surged forward on his lap to eat the meat directly from his hands, lapping at his fingers. Impatience was something he expected from the fledgling.

Tsuna's fever was infecting him too but its effects were different for him. His saliva increased, responding to the fledgling's need for a parent's fully integrated viral bio-chips with his own DNA. The titan meat only provided raw bio-chips. That potent mix of integrated DNA with processed viral bio-chips in his bodily fluid would incite Tsuna's own cells to imitate the absorption process. It was, technically possible for Tsuna to absorb the raw bio-chips without any help. But at this stage of the fever, that was impossible. Tsuna needed Hibari's saliva with the meat.

Another side-effect, if Hibari had bothered to notice, was their synchronized neurological activity. Dopamine flooded their synapses to foster any bond between them, even if it was only to mirror each other. So that Hibari could faintly feel Tsuna's own desperate hunger and Tsuna could subconsciously borrow some of Hibari's own strength in his time of need.

After Tsuna had exhausted himself on a third orgasm and stuffed himself full, Hibari let the fledgling cuddle his jacket as he finished the rest of the meat and then jacked off, watching the sleepy Tsuna. Then he let the fledgling sleep on his lap as he dropped off to a light doze.

0101010

Hibari's eyes snapped open. He scanned his office then glanced down.

Tsuna was snoring on his thigh and had cut off the circulation in his leg. Hibari felt Tsuna's forehead with the palm of his hand. No fever. If Hibari had been that kind of man, he would have sighed. As it was, Hibari lifted the sleeping fledgling into his arms bridal-style. They both stank of sweat and lust and bloody meat. They needed to shower.

He added it to his mental list of duties, procuring both a bed and a tub and some clothes.

The school's common showers would have to do for now.

0101010

Tsuna woke up to the patter of water on his shoulders. He yawned and was surprised to find he was pretty well-rested and that he had slept without nightmares for once. A leanly muscled arm was curled up around his belly and another one was rubbing conditioner into his hair. Tsuna tilted his up and back to meet Hibari's grey eyes peering down at him. "Good morning, Dame-Tsuna."

A shy smile bloomed on Tsuna's face. "Morning, Hibari-san."

"Face down and close your eyes."

Tsuna did as he was asked and Hibari continued what he'd been doing. Hibari's pianist fingers carded through his brown hair, a sharp scent of oranges and cream filling Tsuna's nose. Then Hibari grabbed a plastic bucket filled with water and poured it over Tsuna, the suds swirling on the tiles to the open grating a few inches away.

"…Why did you pick me up, Hibari-san?"

"Would you like me to kick you out again?" asked Hibari, a bit amused. He picked up a washcloth, squeezed bath gel onto it, and started scouring the grime of chemicals and dust off Tsuna.

"No! I just, I mean," said Tsuna as he stared at his scabbed knees. "It's just, you seem different. From before." He added lamely. I remember you being a violent over-controlling prefect, for one thing. But Tsuna would have died of shame before he said that. Hibari who had controlled the fever, who had stopped the nightmares, who had ended the hunger.

Tsuna bowed his head and blushed, fiercely hoping his bangs would hide it.

Hibari grabbed Tsuna's jaw and tilted his face up, wanting to see his expression. "I was bored." Hibari had been bored of the silence, bored of the grey monotony of the walking corpses. Bored enough that he'd even gone crazy and went out and killed a lot of things. Then one day like a stroke of luck, like a fortuitous star, he found darling dame-Tsuna on his territories. And Hibari considered Tsuna his. Like the Namimori city, like the lands contained by the quarantine line, they were his possessions. Therefore, it was his duty and responsibility to take care of them. What he owned, what he considered his, were precious and were to be honored and held up to the highest standards.

It meant he was both owner and ruler.

"Oh." Tsuna didn't seem to understand and had dropped his eyes in disappointment. Then he yelped.

"Ah, Hibari-san, I can wash down there, um, but thank you very much."

0101010

The older god handed him a folded Namimori uniform and Tsuna gratefully took it. As he pulled out the black uniform pants, a black lacy panty fell out. A bit strangled for words, Tsuna could only say "Um."

"What's wrong?" Hibari was pulling black boxers on as he looked at the furiously red Tsuna. "Don't tell me you forgot how to put on clothes."

Tsuna couldn't very well scream out that it was a pair of panties. He also couldn't just put the panties on, like it was normal. But maybe, Hibari really didn't have many clothes in this place and had just taken whatever he'd found? And really, it smelled and looked clean. But it was a tiny pair of black lacy panties with a little silver bow on top. Worse, it looked as if it would fit him.

"The ribbon goes on the back." Hibari said as he donned his black slacks already. He stopped as Tsuna was still holding the panties awkwardly in his hand. "I'm giving you two minutes to put on your clothes before I force you to go around naked."

Well, that decided it. Tsuna quickly pulled the panties up and jumped into his clothes as fast as possible lest he annoy Hibari. And anyway, it wasn't as if anyone was going to see him wearing panties. It was underneath his pants after all. So it was okay. For the moment.

Hibari's lip quirked up.

Just as Tsuna was buttoning his shirt, Hibari said, "You should get rid of those."

Without another second of delay, Hibari broke the steel biofeedback handcuffs riveted to Tsuna's wrist from his stay at the Pantheon.

Tsuna hissed but the puncture holes on his skin were closing up already, the skin re-knitting itself with unnatural speed.

"They don't suit you." Hibari crumpled the handcuffs in his hand like it was made of paper. The Pantheon logo on it had warped into the folds of metal. "I suspect you have some questions. I'll ask that you hold them off for the moment as I intend for Kusakabe to answer them."

"Who's Kusakabe?" asked Tsuna as he slipped on flip-flops.

Hibari swiftly tied a black necktie around himself as he replied, "The Foundation's Vice Chairman." He paused to look at Tsuna's feet.

Tsuna, likewise, looked down to his feet. His toes wriggled. They looked clean enough. He wondered what Hibari was thinking then chastised himself when he could just ask. "The Foundation? And why are you staring at my feet?"

Hibari ignored the question and said, "Mm. Come. I have chores for you to do." Hibari fixed Tsuna's clumsy attempts at the necktie. "If you stay, you work."

0101010

Tsuna's first chore was to collect the books from outside the gates on the street. He was to bring in all the books and into the library and to organize them in alphabetical order. And he would have to list all the books into an organized index card catalog. It was going to take him forever.

And there were other chores too, like watering the plants in the school yard. Sweeping the halls of the school. Cleaning the bathrooms. Organizing and listing the contents of the kitchen pantry although Tsuna did wonder who the food was for. Hibari told him that he didn't expect it all to be done this day or even tomorrow. As long as he was working productively, Hibari wouldn't bite him to death. After the first day, Tsuna had barely even dented the piles of books on the street.

The sun was setting and the city was depressingly empty from street corner to street corner. Tsuna stretched the kinks out of his back and yawned. He'd wondered why there were even books outside but he didn't ask any troubling questions from Hibari and was content enough to distract himself with mind-numbing work. He didn't want to leave the books outside to the mercies of the weather and humidity but there were just too many books.

Tsuna was tired.

He glanced at a spot under the shade of a knotty oak tree. A nap would be okay, wouldn't it?

After what felt like an interminable stretch of time in darkness and ruin, this day was his first peaceful one. Before he knew it, Tsuna was leaning against the tree and his eyelids shutting down and he was gone in sleep.

A few minutes later, Hibari walked out of the school doors to pick him up. He didn't seem surprised that Tsuna had fallen asleep as if he'd been routinely checking on Tsuna through the window. He'd already dragged in a bed and a bathtub while the fledgling was busy. And a few other things.

0101010

When Tsuna woke up on the bed, it was still dark outside. A starless sky greeted him as harsh winds howled outside. His face was squished into Hibari's pectorals which he could faintly see through the uniform and his arms had snaked around the older god's solid abs. It was a bit too hot but Tsuna didn't mind. It was comforting, the heat.

What was odd was something circling his neck. He fingered it, wondering what it was. It felt like leather. With a tag on.

"A collar is better, hmm?"

Tsuna's eyes snapped up and met Hibari's drowsy face. He felt another terrific blush creeping up his neck. "Um."

"Is it too tight?"

"No, um. What does the dogta—I mean the tag say?"

"Just the Namimori School address." Hibari gave him a neutral expression. "In case you get lost. Now sleep. It's late."

Tsuna did just that, somehow anchored by the collar, no longer adrift in an empty universe.