Disclaimer: I don't own KHR plzkthx
"underline" = italian speaking
'italics' = thoughts
"normal" = japanese speaking
"Tsuna, we're about to leave." Within his haze of drowziness, Tsuna could vaguely hear Gokudera's voice.
"Lal's coming with with a gun. A loaded gun," Basil added. Gokudera winced at that statement. In his head, he could already hear the sharp crack of a gun going off and a bullet lodging itself way too close for comfort.
"Tsuna, you should get up now."
Sensing the new urgency in Gokudera's voice, the brunette willed himself to get out of bed. A quick glance at his clock told him that it was the ungodly hour of four A.M. He couldn't help but mumble a string of incoherent complaints as he took Basil's outstretched hand. Gokudera took his other free hand and together, his two companions dragged him out into the brightly lit hallway.
The weight of drowsiness kept his eyelids in a half closed state and tempted his consciousness to have lapses in awareness. Before he knew it, he had already been loaded into a car with his head slumped against Gokudera's arm. The fabric-covered appendage really didn't make as much of a good makeshift pillow considering the constant bumps the car seemed to hit.
"Hey, kid, don't fall asleep, we're almost there." Lal called out. There was a hint of warning in her voice that promised consequences, but Gokudera had already pulled Tsuna into a more comfortable position with Tsuna's head on the older boy's lap. A hesitant hand stroked his hair, bringing a smile to the burnette's lips. Resisting the call of sleep seemed worth the risks, because the arm over his shoulder and the feeling of security brought by his new makeshift family - even though he was in a car operated by Lal, and that should have brought up so many warning signs by itself - felt so nice. So nostalgic.
And then Lal slammed the brakes and the car door opened, unleashing a blast of cold air. Tsuna shivered, bringing the warm mittens that covered his arms to rub against his shoulders.
"Out, now."
Lal's voice wasn't in her full out commanding tone, but there was still the underlying authority that he always associated with her voice. He brought himself upright and blinked a few times in an attempt to fully wake up. It was only after Basil began to pull him out of the car that he noticed that Basil was wearing a much more casual outfit than he wore at the base. The suit was replaced for a sweater over a plain blue t-shirt with slightly worn out jeans. Gokudera even put on a hat to hide away some of his attention-drawing hair color. They were dressed to blend in.
And then it hit him. They were at the airport.
He was going back home.
Check-in went smoothly. No one questioned the three boys, especially with their escort - a bulky man who introduced him as Turmeric - helping them part their way through the crowd with a professional-level of confidence.
"Excited, Tsuna?" Gokudera asked, placing a hand on the younger man's shoulder. The plane was due to arrive in less than an hour and the two were comfortably resting in the seats that lined their flight terminal.
"Mm," Tsuna nodded in agreement. He looked straight at Gokudera and shot him an honest smile. "Thanks for coming with me Gokudera."
The other boy seemed to grow a bit more red, flustered by the attention. "I-It's no problem. There's nothing to do here anyways and...and...you're my friend after all."
The word "friend" brought an even larger smile to Tsuna's face. Gokudera was truly his first friend, someone he felt he had a connection with - because who wouldn't feel at least a bit connected after suffering through ridiculous training sessions together? - and it made the whole wayward trip away from home worth it. He would even dare to say he wouldn't have wanted events to work out any other way. And it wasn't so bad to be away from his mother, not when he had a different sort of family to tide him through. "Yeah, friends."
Basil watched the two from afar, already having said his farewells a while ago. Now he was on a full-time monitor duty. They had done their best to keep Tsuna under the radar so far, now it was time to see how successful their efforts were.
"Target spotted."
"Understood, proceed with caution to procure the specimen."
A bad feeling settled in Tsuna's stomach while he and Gokudera stood in comfortable silence. He was being watched. He could feel the eyes on him, but he couldn't locate them - not in the thick crowd of people in one of Italy's most populated airports. Even if it was early in the morning, today seemed to be particularly packed. He shifted closer to Gokudera.
The silver-haired boy easily noticed his companion's discomfort. "Something wrong?"
"I think...well...It's nothing. Just nervous."
Gokudera gave him a disbelieving look, but they left it at that.
"Basil, I've caught suspicious activity near terminal twelve."
"What kind?"
"A small time family, but they might be here for other business."
"Keep an eye on them."
"Wait, they're unloading a device. It's...emitting smoke? I'm making contact."
Already alarmed, Basil rushed to Tsuna and Gokudera. This reeked of foul play to come. Tsuna was the first to notice him coming, surprise evident in his eyes - they had thought that he had left already.
"Tsuna, we're leaving." He announced solemnly. Tsuna furrowed his brows as his face flashed from confusion to betrayal.
Gokudera was the one who was the first to break into anger though - he had always been the more hot-headed of the two. "What? He was looking forward to this all month! How can you just call this off!"
A shot rang out in the background, and screams began to erupt. Gokudera's arm grabbed Tsuna's left hand, and Basil quickly took the other. "I trust you don't need more explanation," Basil grimly replied as he quickly pulled Tsuna behind a pillar. Gokudera quietly cursed under his breath as the smoke began to reach their area of the airport.
"I'm going to punch whoever's behind this," Gokudera swore. More gunshots rang out.
"Safety first. Don't breathe more than you have to. Someone else is handling it."
The three were running quietly as possible with Basil leading the way, presumably towards an exit. Adrenaline rushed through their veins, and all three were visibly nervous. It was hard to navigate under all the smoke which obscured their vision - but thankfully, it was a two-way factor. It hid their enemies from them, but it also hid them from their enemies.
Tsuna briefly imagined hearing Gokudera's rapid heart beat and his own blood rushing through his ears. The light pattering of their footsteps sounded so loud to his hypersensitive awareness, and he wondered if the enemies would hear it too. He tried to step softer, to move faster. The enemy was coming closer - he could feel it.
"We're almost at the exit." Basil had released a short breath - a sign of hope and relief, Tsuna noted. But he frowned, this was easy. Too easy. Like one of Reborn's lessons that would end up exploding in his face in the end.
The radio hidden under Basil's sweater flared to life. "Basil! They're using sleeping gas! Are you out yet?"
Then, everything happened all at once. The one sound was all the enemy needed to track them - a gunshot rang out. A cry - Gokudera's. Tsuna immediately caught his friend who clutched a bleeding leg. Another shot rang out, and Tsuna's body reacted out of instinct to pull the two down. The bullet whizzed right over them.
They needed to move, now. Using all the strength he built up in the last few months, Tsuna dragged Gokudera to a nearby pillar. Cover was always essential in a gunfight. He just wished that Gokudera wasn't so heavy, weighing down his body and making their escape seem painfully slow. It was a wonder that they managed to dodge the next few bullets that had gone wide off mark.
Basil was missing, but he didn't have time to be concerned. Gokudera was bleeding and groaning in pain.
"Shh," Tsuna whispered, tightening his clutch on his friend's shoulder in empathy.
Gokudera clamped his lips shut, but the expression on his face was enough to let Tsuna know the agony he was going through. Trials of blood covered the floor. "T-Tsuna. You need to g-go. Leave me."
"Gokudera!" Tsuna whispered angrily - a scandalized tone evident in his voice. They had already gone over this. "We're friends." And as if to emphasize that last point, he pressed his hand a bit more harshly than needed to try to stem the outflow of blood. It wasn't doing much good. There was so much blood. Gokudera looked paler, his breath growing ragged. Tsuna's heart raced even faster.
'He's going to die...'
'No, he can't die.'
'Please, don't!'
He glared angrily at the wound, willing it to disappear. His mittens were soaked in red.
'PLEASE!'
And then, Tsuna blinked because he swore his gloves were glowing. Apparently Gokudera noticed the same thing, a "wha?" escaping from his lips. Flames engulfed Tsuna's hand and the boy almost retracted them in alarm if his instincts didn't tell him to keep still. Surprisingly, the flames didn't hurt.
For him at least.
Gokudera, on the other hand, let out another groan of pain which finally prompted Tsuna to move his hands away. The blood had stopped, sealed by the flames - although he was slightly disgusted by the smell of burnt flesh. He looked at Gokudera whose eyes had shut closed from either the pain or the sleeping gas.
Tsuna bit his lips, he wasn't quite sure how he was going to move his larger friend out. And he was getting sleepy himself. The sharp cracks of more gunshots were the only thing that kept him awake and alert - it was almost an instinctual response now.
"BRATS, ARE YOU THERE?"
Tsuna tried to look around for the source of the too-familiar voice. "LAL?" He shouted back.
More gunshots. The sound of shoes meeting against tile. A click, reload. They were not too close, but not too far away.
"STAY PUT!"
"GOKUDERA'S HURT!"
A string of Italian curses pierced the air, half of which Tsuna still couldn't understand.
More footsteps, increasing in frantic activity. Tsuna clutched Gokudera closer towards him. The flames on his hand seemed to die down - now they were less visible than ever. But the footsteps were still drawing close.
He checked the time - 6:35. His flight would have arrived in five minutes. His trip home had been so close to his grasp, but now he would just settle for getting out of this alive.
"There you are," another familiar voice called out from behind. Tsuna whipped around, and relaxed somewhat when he saw the face of his escort earlier, Turmeric. The look in his eye didn't feel quite right though.
"Where's Lal? And Basil?"
A large arm reaching out for him was the man's only response. His body movements were jerky, ungraceful, and obvious - allowing Tsuna to read the move seconds ahead of time and scramble out of the way. Something was definitely wrong.
"Turmeric?"
"Not quite, kid. Just renting this body."
Tsuna didn't quite understand, he was nowhere near fluent in Italian besides for the bits and pieces he had picked up from his companions. It didn't help that the voice seemed muffled under the heavy temptation of sleep that fogged his mind. His eyelids drooped halfway closed.
'No! Stay awake!' He chided to himself in vain. Another grab, this time successful, captured his shirt and dragged him towards the larger man. He doubled his struggle and cried out as much as possible in hopes that someone, anyone, would come.
And in his panic, he didn't quite notice his gloves light up again. The other man screamed in pain and threw him backwards onto the floor. Darkness took over.
When he came to, he was once again greeted by the familiar sight of long metal rods of steel - a prison cell. His head was throbbing with pain and his wrists were encircled with something cold and metallic. The feeling of bad bad bad quickly sharpened his mind into alert.
"Oh? Kufufu, it seems like the newest arrival is awake."
A/N: So sorry for the delay in this! I had a ton of computer problems and I lost the file to the chapter, so I had to re-write it which is always frustrating for me. Especially action scenes, since I'm always super nervous about writing those.
Before anyone asks, no, Mukuro did not kidnap Tsuna. He's still about 9-10. Not quite old enough to do his own kidnapping yet.
As always, feedback/reviews are always good motivation-fuel and remind me that "oh, people are still reading this, I should probably update." Thanks for reading!