Author's Note: It's amazing how for some subjects – no matter how hard you study – you just end up being bad at it. Another round of exams are over and I need a miracle for my math based classes. On a lighter note here's another chapter! Sorry it took me a while. My muse ran away and I had to forcefully drag it back. Thank you to anyone who favorited, followed, or reviewed. Hope you like. Ciao~

Chapter 9


Life is a circus ring, with some moments more spectacular than others.

Janusz Korczak


It turns out that the old man really was a doctor, and slotted for retirement that he had apparently been putting off for a few years like he'd claimed, at least according to the nurse that came to check up on Tsuna.

Tsuna himself had confirmed that the man, Saito Hideo, had been his doctor as long as he could remember… a few hours after the nurse and once he was conscious anyway.

The brat had nearly given himself another concussion when he woke up and realized that he was hugging a rather irate looking carney, and launched himself from the bed head first with another one of his signature shrieks.

Saito-sensei had been less than impressed.

Leora hadn't been that thrilled with his actions either, but that was mostly drowned out by the relief of no longer being hugged and the ability to get up and move. Never before had she been so happy to go to the bathroom.

Tsuna wasn't anywhere near as clingy as he was the day before, but he still got really uncomfortable and fidgety when Leora got farther than six feet away from him, even if he didn't seem to realize it. He looked just short of having a seizure when she had gone out of his line of sight on her trip to the bathroom.

Seeing as Tsuna might have an actual seizure if she left the building, going back to her apartment wasn't an option until he calmed down a bit.

So to pass the time she was seated cross legged on a hospital bed across from Tsuna trying to improve his skills at counting cards with another game of poker. The only dessert the hospital seemed to have for patients was jello cups – not even the green kind but the disgusting cherry stuff that tasted like cough syrup – but they were stingy enough that they wouldn't give the two kids enough to play with and Leora didn't really have enough motivation to try to raid their supplies.

Instead they settled for emptying out a box of gloves that were kept stacked by the door.

Expertly shuffling the deck one of the nurses had been kind enough to provide them from the gift shop, she doled out the cards.

"Alright, remember what I told you?"

Staring intently at his cards, Tsuna nodded his head, eyes scrunched up in concentration. "There are fifty-two cards in a deck with four suites: spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs. Each suite had 13 cards," He repeated dutifully.

"Right," she praised, sending him an approving look as they both threw in their bet and revealed their cards. "Now, how many kings are left in the deck?"

Tsuna stared hard at the cards she'd spread out in front of her, then at his own cards as he mentally tried to do the math.

"…two?"

"Good," Leora nodded approvingly, "Now how many threes?"

"Four." He answered with a bit more confidence than before, straightening up a bit when he got it right. He sank in on himself like a deflated balloon when he got the next count wrong. Leora's entirely mature response was to toss a handful of gloves at him.

"Don't get so depressed, this takes time and you just need more practice," Doling out the next hand she missed Tsuna's bewildered looked at the reassurance. "Seeing how you have an unknown number of days to be imprisoned here you'll be getting plenty, unless you have a better idea of how to pass the time?"

Tsuna shook his head.

"Then lots of poker we shall play. I'll raise you four gloves."

"I believe gambling is illegal." A gravelly voice piped up from the doorway, one that Leora mostly ignored, but caused Tsuna to flinch guiltily as Saito-sensei strolled up to the bed to get a better look at the cards.

"It's only illegal if you use money." Cutting her eyes towards the doctor that still made her feel slightly on edge, the carney gave him a bland smile, "I was unaware synthetic gloves were now a currency."

Saito-sensei huffed out a laugh. "Cheeky brat."

"Damn straight."

"Language young lady." Turning his attention back to Tsuna he gave him a brief once over, noting the clear eyes, lucidity, and the healing black eye that Leora had already catalogued this morning. He was still holding himself a bit awkwardly due to the bruised ribs, but they didn't seem to be bothering him as badly as they did the day before. Leora would've called bullshit on that if she didn't know anime healing factors were weird, and that Tsuna as he is now couldn't tell a believable lie if his life depended on it.

Another thing she was going to have to work with him on apparently. The Art of Bullshitting and Getting Away with It had helped her a lot over the years in fortune-telling and with general confrontations. It would most definitely help a mafia boss in the long run. Basic acting too since that tended to go hand-in-hand with the afore mentioned lesson. Poker could help him keep a straight face and bluff, but it could only do so much.

He was young enough that she could make the lesson into a game to make things easier on the both of them rather than sitting him down and lecturing. Amma Eva had done something similar when she was young and Leora had always enjoyed those lessons. At the very least it would be something else to do in the hospital when they inevitably got tired of poker.

It would be slightly more productive than planning revenge on the assholes who put her in the position where she had to protect him now, anyway.

Yeah those brats weren't getting off that easily. It didn't happen very often – Leora could and would become a vindictive bitch if the situation called for it – but now she was an angry vindictive bitch, and what happened to Tsuna she wouldn't let slide.

Leora didn't get angry very often. Irritated and annoyed were a given, but she never really got angry because, for the most part, she just didn't care. She'd always been a bit indifferent and detached to her surroundings, even when she was an actual child, and it had creeped out many a people before she found her way to the circus. It didn't help that the circus had a pretty much communally accepted policy of 'Not my Circus, Not My Monkeys' when it came to the rest of the world. In a way it was like hanging from a lyra; you see everything going on around you, you recognize it, you acknowledge it, but are never really a part of it. The world is just below your dangling feet and the most you do it observe it. What's going on down below doesn't affect you, so why bother getting too upset over it? The only people that mattered were the ones at the other end of the cable holding you up, and those were the ones she got emotionally invested in.

After yesterday Tsuna had managed to get firmly placed at the end of her cable. He needed her, and to be perfectly, grudgingly honest, she needed him too. At least for now.

She was loath to admit it, but ending up in this place had caused her cable to fray. Only a single thread was keeping her from falling to a messy demise, and she was desperately trying to hold it together until she managed to make a new cable and hypothetically bolt it to the rigging so she wouldn't need anyone on the other end.

So, a bloody and painful revenge was going to happen no matter how long she had to wait the fact that the source of her ire were kids be damned, but planning it at a hospital in front of an extremely skittish child wasn't a good idea. Leora the Angry Vindictive Bitch had a scary scheming face.

The scratching of a pen brought the carney out of her musings, focus back on Saito-sensei as he scribbled something on a clipboard looking satisfied with whatever he was writing.

"If you are still feeling decently enough you will be able to return home tomorrow Tsunayoshi-kun. But you will need to be mindful of your ribs and take care not to get injured again. I would prefer it if you would stay home for at least another week so you have adequate time to heal."

Oh, thank god. Guarantee she would be able to leave soon. She didn't think she would be this happy for a chance to go back to her crappy apartment and block out the rest of the world, but the allure of the place was almost heavenly compared to the cramped private hospital room. AND she wouldn't have to worry about Tsuna getting more injured while he was basically under house arrest.

That left her with a week to get her hands on the alcohol her landlady required, but more importantly, she had a week to get shit faced drunk and stay drunk in an attempt to accept the fact that she was willing turning into Tsuna's babysitter for the next unknown number of years.

At least with how small she was now she wouldn't have to stock up on much.


It was with almost palpable relief that she parted ways with Tsuna the next day. Tsuna obviously wasn't happy about it if the near death grip he had on his mother's skirt was anything to go by, but he wasn't losing his mind over it so he could just suck it up and deal with it for a few days.

She wasn't going to get the whole week to herself like she planned – Nana had been insistent on her coming over sometime this week and Tsuna had latched onto that with all the tenacity of a bulldog until she agreed, which had honestly surprised the carney – but four days to herself was more than enough time for what she had planned.

So it was with a spring in her step that she parted ways with the Sawada family, firmly not looking back at the anime style cloud of depression that had actually formed over Tsuna's head.

She didn't need more reminders on her new place of existence.

What she did need was another group of teenagers trying to get drunk in some side alley so she could filch their liquor and run like hell; she couldn't exactly waltz into a store to buy what she needed. She could probably find what she needed in the warehouse district, but she was leery of running into the yakuza again so soon after getting chased all over the damn town. With how her luck was going she would run face first into the guy she kicked in the crotch.

Back alley scavenger hunting it was then.

A quick glance around the street showed no one looking her way, so Leora wasted no time in ducking into the nearest alley and scaling the nearest drainpipe, wincing slightly at how less coordinated and graceful it was compared to her adult body.

Pushing back the little wisps of hysteria that always blurred the edges of her thoughts at the notable physical differences between this body and her older one, the carney set out across the rooftops as quietly as she could so as not to draw attention to herself.

She didn't have much luck. Finding any liquor that is. The few people that were in the alleys she checked didn't even notice she was there and weren't really worth her time. A handful of people taking out garbage, another yakuza shake down – one she was sorely tempted to interrupt by dropping some of the loose heavy weight shingles on their heads in a form of petty revenge – and a group of teenagers like she was looking for, but they had already drained their poisons of choice if the empty bottles were anything to go by and were more interested in smoking.

Perched on another light post that was located on a side street with little to no traffic, Leora tugged her hands through her short cap of curls and repressed the desire to curse. Loudly.

Instead she sighed, slumping down as much as she could without losing her balance and propped her head up on a fist.

She knew that scavenging didn't automatically mean you'd find something you were looking for. It was statistically impossible. But she was still mentally eighteen, and it exacerbated her that she couldn't just buy it like she usually did and instead had to settle for skulking around on roof tops for a chance to swoop in a and steal like some kind of overgrown seagull snatching chips.

The fact that she was even comparing the actions she needed to stay alive in this place to a feathered rat with wings was depressing.

Glancing at her watch, she debated whether she should just call it a day or spend a few more hours looking around and hope she got lucky.

Then promptly ducked as something whizzed by a few inches from her head. Losing her balance, the carney hooked her legs over the light, hands coming up to grab the metal she was hanging from as a precaution in case she had to yank herself out of the way of another projectile.

Position secure, Leora gaze snapped down – or was it up when you were hanging upside down? – at the scowling face of Hibari Kyouya. Sans one tonfa.

Leora said the first thing that came to mind.

"You shouldn't throw your weapons unless you have a way to pull them back to you immediately after the fact. It'll leave you at a disadvantage and potentially give your enemy a weapon."

Almost immediately after the words left her mouth Leora wanted to bang her head against the post. She had spent way too much time around Afi Viktor and Sifu Yaozu if that was the only reaction she had to being attacked, and lecturing the Cloud wasn't going to get her any brownie points.

Not to mention she was trying to not make herself a point of interest for the Skylark. Just because she was going to watch out for Tsuna now didn't mean she was immediately going to start going out of her way to interact with every character she came across.

Kyouya blinked, eyes widening slightly before falling back into a scowl.

"Fight me, herbivore." He demanded.

"It hasn't been a week yet." The carney pointed out blandly, watching dispassionately as the kid's glare intensified and… was he sulking?

Leora had to keep her lips from curling in amusement because yes, yes he was.

The Demon of Namimori was sulking like a child who'd been told they couldn't have dessert until he finished his dinner.

In his defense he was a child and probably hadn't earned that title yet, but Hibari Kyouya and sulking were two things she'd never thought would go together in the same sentence. Never mind the fact she shouldn't have to be in a situation where she had to in the first place.

Tilting her head so she could see him from a better angle, Leora had to admit that he was kind of adorable at this age. He didn't have anything on Tsuna's baby rabbit look, but he was still cute. Like a baby kitten that was soaked and glaring murder at everything but people still cooed at it.

Maybe a baby tiger would be a better analogy, the carney mentally corrected. Adorable he may be, but he was still capable of dealing some damage. The Yakuza that he beat the shit out of a few days ago were proof enough of that, and he'd only keep improving the more he 'hunted'.

That train of thought sparked an idea, one Leora turned over in her head a few times before grinning down at the Skylark with what was probably a few to many teeth.

"Hibari-san," Leora all but purred, "How would you like to make a deal?"

He narrowed his eyes, but she could easily see the interest. "What kind of deal?"

"You know the group of kids that go to the park early in the morning?" the Cloud showed obvious distaste at the thought, but nodded his head. "They got it in their heads that they were pretty high up on the food chain and collectively beat the shit out of my friend, giving him a concussion and bruised ribs bad enough to warrant a stay at the hospital."

Kyouya was looking well and truly pissed now, though whether it was from the audacity that crowding herbivores thought they were better than they were or the injuries they inflicted on Tsuna the carney couldn't tell.

"I broke one of their noses to get him away, but disciplining them isn't my place since I'm not from around here." Her grin widened another notch. "If you put them in their place, I'll fight with you as often as you want for an entire week after I finish moving in. Do we have a deal?"

Leora didn't want to. She really didn't want to. Her reflexes were horribly off at this size, she had little to no muscle that would be useful in an actual fight, and she knew she was going to overreach her punches every single fucking time. She was just asking to get the shit beat out of her, but this was a guaranteed way to completely get used to her smaller body and start getting it back up to snuff.

The fact that Kyouya could actually get away with beating the little monsters within an inch of their lives was a very nice bonus.

If the blood thirsty grin he was giving her was anything to go by, he liked the idea too.

"Two days, herbivore. Meet me at the park." With that he turned and stalked off, somehow doing a rather impressive impression of a cat.

Leora didn't bother hiding the wince as Kyouya turned a corner. Now she only had one more day to get her landlady's liquor, and she would most likely show up at Tsuna's the day after black and blue. Possible with broken bones. Not that Nana would notice, but she was pretty sure Tsuna would lose his mind.

Sliding down the light post, Leora dusted herself off slightly before jogging into the next alley so she could climb the drainpipe and get on the roof. Going home wasn't really an option anymore, and she'd honestly have a better chance of finding something once it was dark.

Pausing long enough to scoop something up and stick it in the waistband of her pants, Leora idly wondered if Kyouya wanted his discarded tonfa back.

Probably.