.
Takeru didn't know which emotion to blame the screaming in his head on: fear was a big one, so was anger. He was frustrated and half out of his mind with resentment. It was all balled up together into one tight and tangled knot that was threatening to tip him into the same mental red-zone he'd fallen into in Dumbledore's office and Grimmauld Place. He wanted to scream, cry, and break everything in the room he'd just accidentally fixed. He wanted to run and hide and attack at the same time.
He didn't want to acknowledge it… but he recognized that voice.
The doubts he'd had the whole way from England came roaring to the surface; he'd thought someone in his family had been in on the plan with Dumbledore… had he just found that person? In spite of himself, he'd fostered the small and fragile hope that he'd actually be able to return to the home he'd been so cruelly taken away from and at the very least live a little of the life that had been stolen from him. That hope… dimmed down to practically nothing within the instant the voice spoke out from the darkness.
"What's wrong? Why did you go quiet all of a sudden?" he called out into the darkness, voice light as he relaxed his tightly wound body and pushed all of his screaming emotions to the side. He couldn't afford to lose himself more than he already had; he was just going to have to push it all away until he had the luxury to deal with it, which meant later. He'd been playing the perfect golden boy for long enough that he knew how to do it, Hogwarts had been a learning experience there. "Didn't you want a better look? Come closer, I don't bite, I promise."
Even if the voice that had spoken belonged to his other uncle, Fon.
At least he didn't have to hold his magic back anymore and now that he'd loosened that grip, he was pretty damned sure there was no one else in the room apart from himself and his 'guest'. The downside of that was getting a better taste of that dark magic wafting off his Uncle in waves. What had once felt like a faint magical 'stench' now had a clear source, one that he could almost taste.
Never had he been so grateful that his typical reaction to fear was a poker-face, living with the Dursleys had been good for at least one thing.
He would have preferred to continue spying on his family without being discovered, find out what they were like behind closed doors and out of the public eye. See if their public image matched up to what they acted like in private. He'd just had that choice taken out of his hands but that didn't mean he was completely without options.
He could play his prior show of aggression off on the fact he'd been attacked earlier that night; there was no reason for anyone to suspect he had access to his stolen memories. If Fon was one of Dumbledore's men, (and even if he wasn't), he wouldn't expect to be recognized. He could salvage this and might even get information out of the "horse's mouth".
This was either someone that had helped kidnap him away from the life he should have lived or this was one more person Dumbledore's schemes had harmed. He didn't know which one it was but jumping to conclusions would just ultimately make the truth that much harder to find. He wanted that truth, so much so that it felt like it was burning him from the inside out.
Confronting someone so saturated in Dark Magic was bound to be dangerous but at this point he was close to not caring at all.
He was going to learn the truth of his uncle's part in his kidnapping or die trying.
The first step was to get the man to start talking, about anything. See what kind of information the man dropped. If he moved to pull out a wand he was confident that he could defend himself, his magic would help him; he was that agitated.
He couldn't see the man from where he was standing but he could feel him. A tall figure that was so steeped in Dark Magic that he could almost make out a shape standing in the shadows, an ink-black darkness that stuck out of the shadows like a sore thumb. Takeru swallowed back the bile as it rose up in the back of his throat and wished he wasn't quite so sensitive to magic now.
Because that scent? It was disgusting.
OoO
Fon didn't dare make any sudden movements.
The last thing he wanted right now was to push Takeru into his Dying Will. His flames were already blistering to the surface, brought up out of the depths of his soul in response to the fear practically saturating the air around him.
Takeru had little to no experience with swordsmanship; that much was obvious by how and where he was gripping the hilt of the sword he was holding. In entirely the wrong place and far too tightly. The teenager also seemed to have just about the same experience with hand-to-hand combat, the way his other hand formed a fist around his thumb said it all. A serious hit landed with a fist formed like that and he'd break his thumb, anyone who'd had a shred of formal training or experience with fighting knew that within the first lesson or fight.
Fon wanted to call his sister and tell her where her long-lost son was, a small part of him even wanted to let her deal with the situation because he didn't want to be responsible for the inevitable fallout and pain.
He really was the worst kind of coward.
Yun wouldn't be the best person to confront Takeru right now anyway, not with how defensive he was being. The explosive set of emotions meeting the seething miasma that was Takeru would only end in disaster. He could do this much for the little sister he had so irrevocably hurt; responsibility for the kidnapping lay squarely on his shoulders and if he could atone for even a small part of that then he would. Yun had suffered enough, he would not put this on her; if Takeru's Flames had to be safely defused, who better to do that than himself?
"What's wrong? Didn't you want a closer look?" Takeru asked, his voice lightening up from the feral tone he'd greeted him with into something resembling innocence, a poker-face sliding onto his face with effortless and alarming ease.
Fon knew better than to be fooled into thinking Takeru was in any way calmer than he had been, even as he watched his nephew's body relax into a loose limbed stance. Takeru seemed to have inherited a rather large share of his mother's ability. Only a natural hitman physically relaxed in the face of a threat, anyone else would tense up. He also seemed to have no idea his flames were giving the act away, tinting his eyes into a golden shade and hiding the natural blue he'd been born with.
That meant he had little to no experience with flames, which at the moment was in no way a blessing. One wrong move and Takeru would step into Dying Will Mode unprepared.
Fon's heart ached: how could he ever atone for this?
Takeru's Flames were spluttering and hissing, flaring and flickering, guttering almost completely out and then roaring right back up again in a frenzied and uncontrolled blaze. He wasn't a doctor but he didn't have to be one to recognize the signs of a Scorching. He'd been with the Triad for long enough to spot the tell-tale signs of damage caused by someone caught between two Skies, both of whom had been Pulling hard. It happened often with spies and double agents from other famiglias who got in too far, with Bosses thought to turn said spy native, poach them for themselves. It tore their flame and burned them, and worse still, if done extensively enough it could not be healed.
Rather than shaping Takeru into the potential Guardian he'd been born to be, the constant Pull on his flame had instead turned those natural-inborn instincts in on themselves. Pushed the instincts of a Hitman forward and shredded Takeru's Guardian potential into a mess, he was running on pure survival now. The will to protect that was intrinsic in a potential Guardian had become a Hitman's will to survive and the flames that had once unconsciously explored the world around him were now focused so tightly inwards that it had to be a very uncomfortable if not outright painful.
Depending on how severe the injury to his flame was, there was every possibility that he could slip into Discord at any moment, if he wasn't there already. There was no way to tell if the intensity in Takeru's eyes was fear or the first stages of the madness unique to broken flame users.
What kind of life had Takeru lived that had caught him up against two Skies?
The part of him that wasn't taking in every little detail that he could of Takeru and his condition was mentally ticking through a list of every Sky he'd ever met or heard of. When they got Takeru to a hospital they'd be able to get a sample of the flames that had so injured him. It was a good thing Skies were so rare, it wouldn't take very long to find the matching flames among them.
It was nothing he couldn't… deal with later, he was getting ahead of himself. He needed to defuse the situation and get Takeru to calm down enough so he could determine how bad the damage was. Do what little he could until they could get Takeru to a doctor and get him the care he needed. The first step of which was stepping out into view; continuing to lurk in the shadows would just make Takeru feel even more anxious than he already was, especially if he was reading his body language right and Takeru really was a Natural Hitman.
There wasn't a lot that he could see of the sweet-tempered two-year-old that he had been, but maybe it wasn't too late! Takeru was so scared right now that it was in every line of his body, regardless of how he tried to hide it. Fear made animals of the best of people, how could he expect a thirteen-year-old to be any different? He needed to show that he'd come with no intention to harm, it was the only way to calm him down and it would be the fastest way to bring an end Takeru's suffering.
He'd finally been found and it was time to take him home.
He'd do anything to make it happen.
OoO
"Now that I'm looking at you closer... you're actually, really… cute."
Sawada Tsunayoshi got down on his hands and knees and flattened an ear to the floor so he could get a better look under his bed. The more time he spent looking at the cream coloured ball of fluff that he'd picked up from the river, the more he felt the nervous tension slide out of him. Now that he'd gotten over most of the shock of finding out the fluffy little thing was actually a living, breathing creature, he couldn't quite get his mind wrapped around how cute it actually was.
There really was no other way of looking at the thing now, even with how it was hissing at him.
"It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you~!" He crooned softly, a hesitant grin slipping onto his face as his nerves calmed further.
It hissed at him again.
"… That was the least threatening hiss I've ever heard!" Tsuna laughed softly, keeping his tone and the laughter as even as possible in order to keep the kitten-like animal calm. "It's okay," he repeated, "Come here~!" Reaching out a steady and, hopefully warm, hand Tsuna scooped the little thing out from the corner it had wedged itself into and sat back on his heels.
"There, there." he soothed, cradling it up against his chest so it wouldn't escape back into its hiding place. "It's fine now, I'm sorry for dropping you~! I promise I won't do it again! I'll get you back to your friend as soon as I find him again okay?" he asked the thing as he pet its fur smooth.
"You're just a baby, aren't you?" he asked it, smiling down into baby blue eyes. The growling had even started to calm down. He could hardly believe he'd been so afraid of it earlier!
"There we go, I wonder if we've got somewhere safe for you to sleep…"
Casting his eyes around the room Tsuna gently set the little thing on his bed, carefully cupping his hands around it so it wouldn't bounce away. "I'm sure I can find something…"
There was a shoebox in his cupboard, if he used a hand towel or something would that be comfortable enough? "Just sit here for a little bit? I just need to get something from the cupboard." He waited a breath as he let go of the fluff ball, just to see if it wouldn't immediately jump off his bed the first chance it got, and let out a relieved sigh when it simply sat there staring at him. It looked like it was starting to trust him a little!
"Good boy…" Tsuna murmured as he picked himself up, backing away carefully so as not to startle the little baby unnecessarily. He was about halfway to inching his cupboard open to retrieve the shoebox when a shape swooped in through the open window in a flurry of dark feathers and demonic gold eyes.
"HIIIIIEEEEE~!" Tsuna shrieked, ducking to the ground and covering his head.
There was a loud squeak and the ungodly mass of feathers that had swooped into his room dive-bombed his bed. Before he could even process what had happened, the little ball of cream coloured fluff was snatched up in between the gleaming black talons of the thing that had come in through the window. It was there and gone within one wingbeat and the next, powerful wings sweeping it out of his room with the same swift efficiency it had used to get inside in the first place.
"NO! STOP!" Tsuna yelled after the bird, lunging for the window, panic induced tears pricking up in the corners of his eyes. "Don't eat him!"
He didn't even make it to the window sill; a length of rope looped around him and he was suddenly hog-tied to his bed, the ropes somehow lassoing him to the mattress. Reborn landed on his stomach and the breath was knocked out of him. "You're so troublesome, getting bent out of shape over a powderpuff."
"He's going to get EATEN!" Tsuna wheezed, trying to wriggle himself free of the bindings. "He's just a baby!"
Reborn sighed and hopped up so he could knock the wind out of him for a second time. "Calm down Dame-Tsuna. If you're that worried I'll check it out… in return, tomorrow's training menu is going to double."
"Hiiiiiieeeeeee~!"
OoO
The answers were right in front of him.
Takeru made no move to put away Gryffindor's sword, simply relaxed further as his senses stretched out to map the entire room. He knew that if he had to he could knock down the door behind him and dart out into the hallway if he had to, possibly find a way into the rest of the building. The storage room was spacious but it was also littered with abandoned pieces of shelving, empty crates and rotted cardboard boxes. He didn't like the thought of having to plan out an escape route but if he had to do it, he'd run. He hadn't come this far only to be taken back to the life he'd just escaped.
He was halfway through opening his mouth out to call out to the voice that hadn't responded when the breath caught in his throat; a person had leapt out of the darkness and into the clearest patch of moonlight. Takeru's eyes widened and the poker face he'd been wearing slipped a bit in shock. Given the aura he'd been sensing he'd been expecting a fully grown adult, hell he'd even half expected a teenager his own age! As scattered as his memories were at the moment he was sure he remembered playing games with this particular uncle as a baby… they'd looked the same age when he'd been kidnapped! That had been eleven years ago! Why did his uncle still look the same age?
Slightly curling sleek black hair so similar to his own, partially tied back in a thin braid. Loose red Chinese style shirt. White pants. Everything was the same; it was as if he hadn't aged a day in those eleven years. His Uncle Fon immediately lowered himself directly from where he'd leapt out of the shadows and sat down on his knees facing him. The toddler staring straight into his face with familiar russet-brown eyes shaded with intense regret. Tiny hands reached out from long, voluminous sleeves to clasp together in front of his face, flat palm over fist in a greeting he was only familiar with thanks to Syaoran.
Was he actually going to be able to get the answers he wanted? With the way his Uncle was looking at him… he didn't think getting answers out of him would be hard, he just wondered if he could trust those answers. He thought things would be clear cut and straight, how naïve. Nothing about his situation could be called clear-cut.
"My name is Fon." His Uncle said, head dipping into the same bow Syaoran had given the bank clerk in Magical Tokyo, eyes never leaving his for even an instant. "It is a pleasure making your acquaintance; may I have your name?"
Takeru felt his eyes start to narrow and breathed in slowly though his nose to stop the expression from taking over his face. "Sorry..." he replied, keeping the tone in his voice flat as he let the stress bleed out of him with the word. "I don't give my name out to strangers."
The silence left behind in the wake of his words was heavy. Cold on his part, which was something he really couldn't help. It was either the cold or the heat and he had a feeling if he let even a little bit of the heat out… he wouldn't be able to rein it back in. Cold was good though, just the right side of impersonal to sound like he really was talking to a stranger instead of lying through his teeth.
Shifting his own eyes away from the direct gaze, Takeru made a show of turning his back on his toddler-sized Uncle and waited for half a heartbeat, seeing if he'd take advantage of his 'distraction'. He was fast, faster than he'd been in years. If he was attacked in any way while his back was turned he was confident enough in his own abilities that he knew he'd be able to dodge.
Gryffindor's sword was starting to feel heavy in his hands; could he really use it to spear through a blood relation like he had with Kreacher? The blood… would spread. Just like it had with the deranged house-elf. He… didn't want that. His wand should be enough to deal with someone that size, right? A stunner would be enough to take him down, hell even a minor binding spell like the leg-locker curse, a confundus charm could be just as effective.
"What are you doing out so late at night? Won't your parents be worried for you?" his uncle asked stiltedly, awkwardly attempting to start a conversation. Fon hadn't moved a hair's breadth from where he'd sat down, not even when he'd turned his back. Slipping out of the light himself, Takeru returned Gryffindor's sword into his satchel, taking care to shield what he was doing from view. He didn't think he'd be able to make himself use of the sword, no matter what he thought his uncle had done. It was one thing to accidentally hurt someone, quite another to actually plan on doing so. He wasn't that far gone.
He moved to the door and tested the door handle to give himself a reason for hiding what he was doing and let the satchel return to cuff form. His wand was easily accessible; it was a flick of his wrist away from dropping into his hand, he wasn't defenceless without the sword… he was just a lot less deadly.
The door was locked. Well, it wasn't like he couldn't kick it down, it was an old door. He could pick it too but he didn't want to take his attention off of his guest for that long. Stepping back into view, Takeru kicked the mess he'd made of the evidence box that he'd taken from the police station into a pile and crouched down to shove it all back into the box. "I could ask you that same question, isn't it past your nap time?" Takeru shot back frostily, shoving the lid on the box, just barely stopping himself from crushing it.
His uncle shifted uncomfortably, the first true sign of a visible emotion that Takeru had managed to observe from the painfully polite and stiff toddler. "I... I'm considerably older than I appear. Please, don't go. I just... I would like to talk, only talk," he begged, something very fragile and brittle sounding in his voice. Something that told him, on more than one level, that if he actually left like he'd been half tempted to do, he may very well break his uncle.
Takeru chewed his lower lip as his stomach twisted and clenched. He knew.
Victim or offender. He'd been looking for signs of which of the two Fon was, had been leaning towards the latter upon feeling that aura but now… that had been genuine emotion. Fon knew who he was and he now knew which Fon was. Victim. There was raw desperation in the toddler's eyes, of the same kind he kept seeing every time he caught sight of his own reflection. The magic he'd stretched across the room pulled back and coalesced around his uncle in a thick cocoon. Testing, touching and waiting for some kind of sign the baby-sized man was a threat. If he'd been magical there was no way he wouldn't have reacted, at the very least Fon's own magic would have responded, no wizard was that numb to magic. Fon didn't even react when he purposely shoved his magic into spearing forward, stopping it barely a millimetre away from the toddler's face.
Fon was a victim, very possibly not one of Dumbledore's; the Curse felt nothing like the headmaster's handiwork.
"So talk." Takeru said, letting his magic relax out of his hold and away. He could use the time to figure out where that disgusting aura was coming from, because it was definitely coming from Fon, just not from him directly. "… considerably older than you look? Exactly how much older? Five-ten years?" Takeru asked lightly, straightening up to his feet. The sickening feeling that was wafting off his uncle didn't feel like the Headmaster's magic at all. It felt much… darker. So much darker than anything he'd encountered in Dumbledore's trunk.
"I'll be turning fifty two this year." Fon replied.
Fifty?! That was long before he was even born! There was a possibility that his uncle had met Dumbledore in his younger years but… it made no sense for the Headmaster to target one man. Especially if that man was a muggle! Fon was a muggle that much was very obvious, but there was something magical about him. Or rather something magical DONE to him. He was Cursed, and it was a nasty Curse to boot.
Exactly what was his family mixed up in that had gotten his uncle so thoroughly cursed? A Curse strong enough to make his teeth ache would need some sort of anchor but where was it? Getting to his feet again, Takeru stood in front of his suddenly frozen uncle and stared down at him, trying to pin-point the source of the bile-inducing magical stench permeating the room.
Digging his fingernails into his palms, Takeru forced himself to focus, he really shouldn't be having this much trouble pin-pointing it—
His eyes almost slid right over it; would have if the thing he was searching for hadn't started glowing. The object hanging from a chain around his uncle's neck was the same red as the loose shirt he was wearing and blended into the red fabric. It had been nearly invisible in the moonlight. It wasn't so invisible now. It was glowing a bright golden colour and the aura surrounding it was rapidly expanding.
Without thinking, Takeru pushed forward through the preternatural stench surrounding it and reached out to snatch the thing away from his uncle, there was no way the thing wasn't polluting him! That had to feel horrible on at least some level! At the very least it had stopped his uncle from aging normally! "Why are you wearing that? Can't you see it's Curs-"
"TAKERU! NO!"
His fingers never managed to close in over it. The Cursed object his uncle was wearing sensed the threat to its continued existence and lashed out. He had enough time to see his uncle's face twist into horrified shock before he was blasted backwards by a tidal wave of pure scarlet heat.
He hit the wall with a sickening internal crunch that felt not unlike the time he'd broken his arm so many years ago and felt himself slide down the wall.
That… had been a mistake.
Wheezing as he crumpled sideways to the floor Takeru felt his uncle cradle his head in his small hands, the toddler-sized adult was at his side before he could even fully finish slumping. There was also a figure silhouetted in the light coming in from the ground floor window he'd used to get into the room, another baby his uncle's size. Cutting through the darkness was another Cursed object similar to the one that had just kicked him into the wall, only the other one was yellow instead of red.
"How is that… even possible?" Takeru coughed out, confusion settling in as black spots started dancing across his vision. "It's… linked? Why would he have… bothered…"
"Takeru! No! Stay awake! Takeru! TAKERU!"
OoO
Reborn rarely made mistakes.
As much as he liked cultivating the rumours of his supposed demonic and/or godly origins, he'd had his moments. Who hadn't? In the end he was still just as human as the rest of humanity. He was luckier than some and smarter than most. He could spot a hazardous situation from a mile away and side-step it with all of the style, grace and skill of the World's Greatest Hitman.
Sometimes though, (as rare and as few and far between as they were), he was blindsided by something he couldn't predict and he was buried under the avalanche of all the bad luck he'd been dodging over the years. Like he'd been saving it all up for one massive cluster-fuck, as if Karma had finally decided to cash it all in and pop a gigantic gaping hole in his ego to bring him down a size. Or thirty. The last time he'd made a mistake quite this large, he'd lost that many years in the blink of an eye and 'Sun Arcobaleno' had been added to his collection of titles.
The pacifier might as well have been the medal he'd won for it: his Dumbest Mistake to date. Or rather, it had been his dumbest mistake; he might have just made another to match it.
The only good thing about situations like this was the opportunity to learn from such a mistake, the eye-opening revelations he was treated to. The information revealed to him would be invaluable in the future, if he survived.
In this particular instance… he hadn't known there was anything in the world that could upset Fon. Anger was an emotion that just didn't exist in the man. Thirty years of acquaintance with the Storm Arcobaleno and he'd never once seen the man so much as squint an eye in annoyance. Not even Skull could piss the man off, even when they'd all first met and the then-teenager had actively been single-mindedly targeting him and trying his best to provoke a reaction. Skull had mastered the art of pissing off the wrong people, yet Fon had merely found the teenager amusing.
Fon was the oasis of calm in the middle of chaos that was the rest of the Arcobaleno, the one solid fixture that was guaranteed to stay the same. The human personification of a Polarized Storm, the example held up to all others of what a Polarized Storm should be. Not an actual Storm, but the eye of it. Always calm as everything around him went to hell, back and beyond. Fon had a seemingly eternal fuse to his patience and nothing anyone did ever seem to change that.
Alternative to that, it seemed he'd just discovered Fon's Berserk Button. By stepping all over it. No, bellyflopped. There was no way that had been anything so graceful as a step. Proverbial bellyflop sounded about right though.
His students were rubbing off on him.
Fon was cradling the head of the unconscious teenager Tsuna had been so curious about, sitting in the heart of the vortex that was building up around the man in a steadily increasing tornado of crimson flames.
"Reborn…" Fon's hair-raisingly calm voice cracked through the hissing heat. "Why did you come here?" the Storm Arcobaleno breathed, head tilting up at him and affixing him with his eyes glowing the same ember-red as the heat of his Storm Attribute.
Oh. He hadn't known Fon had the potential, (and quite possibly the ability), to step into Hyper Dying Will Mode. Wasn't that an interesting piece of information? In all the years he'd known the man, Fon had never once had to push himself to his absolute limits. How very humbling. Lady Luck was ever so generous in providing him the opportunity to bring his evidently bloated ego down to size. Again.
Fon's flames were disintegrated everything they weren't burning. Boxes burned away to nothing in a flash, shelving made of metal half-melted and the rest dissolved under the intense pressure. The foundations of the room were rapidly being exposed and the tornado of flames was still expanding. If he didn't stop this then the building would collapse over on top of the two still inside the room and while he was confident Fon would survive it, he wasn't quite so sure of the unconscious teenager's chances.
If this was the way Fon reacted to the boy being injured, he didn't want to see what would happen should the boy die.
Damage control. He needed to do some. Now.
"I know a doctor. I can call him. He's the best doctor I know. We need to get… the boy to safety and... get him out. Of the building. I—he needs medical attention, this isn't the best place to get it—"
The taut silence that stretched while waiting for Fon to decide his next action was one of the longest and most uncomfortable moments of his life. One that was broken by the sounds of oncoming sirens. The lick of flames in Fon's eyes dialled down to a faint ember and the red started to bleed out of the flames fanning the room into a blaze. The building was still burning, but the walls, ceiling and floors were no longer melting.
"If you would be so kind as to call him. I would appreciate it."
Reborn had Leon in hand before the Storm finished speaking. He tried to ignore feeling of sweat beading down his neck and dialled a familiar number. Well, that had been exciting. He didn't think he'd ever been quite so grateful to hear sirens in his life. One of the bystanders outside must have called them, how thoughtful. A gift basket? He should show his appreciation.
It seemed like he hadn't known Fon as well as he thought he did. He'd always wondered why their group had needed a Strongest Martial Artist when they'd already had the Strongest Hitman on the team. Now he knew. Reborn role was to take the enemy apart from a distance; Fon's was to take them apart with his bare hands.
"Shamal? Come to Namimori. Now. I have a patient for you."
Ignoring Shamal's protests, Reborn hung up and leapt down into the room to help get the teenager out of the building and retreated a good distance away afterwards as fire engines came into view. A few more calls and he had an ambulance with a full medic team on the way for Shamal to make use of. Watching the area get cordoned off from his vantage point at the top of a nearby fence, Reborn tilted his fedora over his face and ignored the band of dampness that clung to the inside. He was also firmly not thinking about the moisture soaking his body from collar to ankle with cold sweat.
That had been a rather close call.
He'd always expected to die a shitty dog's death – but death via Fon was about as far from his expected manner of demise as he expected to get.
Takeru, huh?
Interesting name for a Berserk Button.
Reborn shifted his fedora out of the way to catch sight of the handsome black owl that had led him to the building and grimaced. It was sat sleek and elegant at the top of a telephone pole, staring down its beak at him with fearless, unblinking Sun-gold eyes meeting his own with a steady and even gaze. The little ball of fluff was in no danger of being eaten; it was sat pressed up against the bird's claws, lovingly pressing into the magnificent bird's body with a chirr of pure delight.
Reborn tilted the fedora back over his face. Forget doubling Tsuna's training, he was going to quadruple it.
OoO
You couldn't ignore a summons from Reborn.
There were times you could take your sweet time answering said summons; it was all in the tone of voice the Sun Arcobaleno used to convey the order, he could say a lot in a surprisingly small amount of words. A lazy and leisurely tone said, 'As long as it doesn't take you a month', an edge of amusement or anticipation to said amusement said, 'Don't take longer than a week'. The absence of any emotion said something else.
Reborn hadn't minced any words with him this time; a sharp order to come to Namimori now told him that the situation he was about to was either hot and about to get hotter or dire for the patient in question. Quite possibly both. That meant, 'Drop anything and everything. Get here as fast as inhumanly possible'.
The presence of flames in Namimori, (who could miss the lingering after-taste of Storm Flames hanging over the town?) said something had gone down. That meant there'd be no real danger or the danger had been taken out. So, just patients in dire need of quality medical attention? Not too bad.
Well, as long as they were female.
Not exactly surprising, the town felt like it had been hit by a hurricane, had the Seven Storms swept through town? The independent Mercenary team were acquaintances of Reborn's, but they were professionals before that. They wouldn't have backed down from a contracted hit if they'd accepted it, no matter who their opponent had turned out to be.
Barring them, he couldn't think of anyone who could flood the town with this much pure Storm Flame and still have it lingering in the air in the time it had taken him to get here after Reborn's call. There really weren't any other Storm users of that strength that had the balls to go up against Reborn.
His phone rang
"… how did you know I'd made it into town already?" Shamal drawled, answering the phone. "There's no way you could have predicted which train I was—"
"Get to the hospital. Now." Reborn responded, cutting through the question and abruptly hanging up in the next second.
As tempted as he was to dawdle his way there in response to the sharp tone, Shamal didn't risk it; he didn't have to read between the lines here, Reborn would gut him in retaliation. Pocketing his phone, he power-walked over to the nearest idling taxi and knocked on the window.
"Where to?" the taxi driver asked him as he tossed his suitcase into the back seat.
"Namimori General Hospital." Shamal replied sourly as he settled into the passenger's seat.
"Oh, are you visiting someone?"
"No, I'm a doctor."
OoO
He met a Flame-medic waiting for him at the entrance to the hospital, green armband around the sleeve of his medic's uniform giving away his attribute. The man took his luggage and handed him a file, leading him into the hospital and giving him a rundown of the injuries he could expect. A private operating room had been freed up and his patient had been prepped for him. All he needed to do was show up, disinfect and be ready to perform.
A nurse on attachment to the Flame-medics Reborn had to have called in to assist him took the file from him as he entered the scrub room and held it up for him as he prepped for whatever surgery he was being expected to do. He was halfway through finished scrubbing up when the gender of his patient caught up with him.
"Oi, Reborn! You know I don't treat men!" he protested, gritting his teeth in irritation. How many times was Reborn going to pull this kind of shit on him? He did. Not. Treat. Men. Not even the little ones.
The safety of a gun clicked off.
"I am not putting up with your shit this time."
Reborn landed on the sink next to him wearing child-sized scrubs and had a gun levelled at his head. "Treat him." A tense stand-off would have ensued had a soft voice not interrupted.
"Please, if you can make a special exception for just this one patient. He's only thirteen years old."
"I'm always being asked to make that ONE special exception!" Shamal snapped, turning to face the speaker. "What makes him so special that I'll actually MAKE that exception this tim—"
Fon. The Storm Arcobaleno. Whose eyes were glowing with the beginning embers of his Storm Flame. The same feeling of which was currently sitting heavily over Namimori like a storm threatening to break and was starting to swell up into a higher concentration in the room.
"He's my nephew." Fon answered his cut-off question simply. "Please. Heal him."
Fon bowed deep and low, the movement hiding the edges of flame creeping up behind his eyes. "Please."
Shamal felt himself break out into a cold sweat. Well, with a request phrased quite so politely… how could he possibly refuse?
"Ju—just stay out of the operating room, you'll get in the way."
OoO
Hibari Takeru, age thirteen.
If Shamal hadn't had the evidence directly in front of him he'd have thought the teenager he'd been 'asked' to treat was a completely separate individual than the one he'd met at the airport. It hadn't taken very long for him to make it to Namimori from where he had been when he'd gotten Reborn's call, he'd already been headed in the general direction anyway, following up on a lead on the Sun Reborn had told him to track down.
Who was apparently Fon's nephew. Fon's. Nephew. He was still trying to wrap his mind around the idea.
The kid had somehow slipped out of Tokyo without being noticed and had been spotted wandering around a quaint little town about twenty minutes away by train. Shamal had been a little sceptical at the authenticity of the information his source had given him. The kid had practically been a wreck, there was no way he'd have made it to Tomoeda under his own steam, let alone run all over the town like he was possessed. Dying Will Flames might have let you overcome certain limits but they certainly weren't superpowers, they came at a cost.
The most the teenager's flame had been capable of was keeping him alive and upright, that had been it, and he'd been impressed with that alone. The kind of willpower the boy had to have to keep standing after sustaining that kind of damage might have been on a whole other level, but he'd been at his absolute limit. The immature and near-broken flame hadn't, and still wasn't, enough to explain away what he was seeing right now.
The paper-thin and near translucent skin was now pink and healthy, if still pale. He was bruised thanks to the reported knock into the wall but that wasn't anything an application of Sun Flames couldn't fix. Fried nerves had healed. Over-worked and torn muscles had rested. The body that had been a sneeze away from complete shut-down was now in the pink of health.
It was enough to make him second-guess his own recollection, that or wonder if he was finally losing his mind. He had to have gotten medical attention somewhere between Tokyo and here, it was the only explanation. Aside from the bruises and fractured rib, which was also easily fixed with an application of flames under his direction, there was nothing physically wrong with him.
The only thing that gave lie to the boy's apparent health was his flames, and that was really all he needed to understand what kind of life the kid had led. He read the abuse off it like a map, years of starvation and confinement. Of stress and very little rest. No official training yet pitted up against opponents that had left deep injuries that had about a snowball's chance in hell of healing.
"Hand me the sample containers." He instructed shortly to the medical team that had been 'assigned' to him upon his arrival.
He needed to remove all trace of the foreign flames that had caused the injuries before he could even think of trying to heal them anyway. It was an extremely delicate process, but if he did it carefully enough they might even be able to get a usable, and traceable, sample out of it.
"Rain, keep him calm. Sun, concentrate on his ribs and bruises, nothing else. Everyone else keep your flames to yourselves."
He didn't have to say why, they were all trained professionals. A flame injury this severe was obvious to anyone with any kind of medical training. It would be a marvel all on its own if they could get the kid's flame to stabilize before he tripped over the hair thin edge he was hovering over and fell into Discord.
Already he could tell the boy was never going to have a fully functioning flame, at least not in the fullest sense of the word. One day, with the right treatment and therapy, he may be able to learn how to use his flames the way they were meant to be used, to heal or to fight, whichever…
But he'd never know the feeling of a fully realized flame, there wasn't a Mist in the world who had the flames it would take to fully heal him. The thirteen-year-old had half the joy of being a flame user ripped away from him before his flame could even mature. He would never feel Flame Attraction, wouldn't even register Sky Attraction. He would never feel the safety and protection that came part and parcel with standing next to a comrade in arms or the warmth of a lover's flame.
Achieving Harmony would be a miracle.
The two Skies that had so cheated a teenager out of the greatest joy a Flame User could ever experience were going to get what was coming to them, and he was going to help that along. Fon was waiting outside for the results. There were precious few Skies in the world and by the time the Storm Arcobaleno got through them all, there'd be two less than there had been. Luckily the two signatures were so vastly different from each other, it made separating them into their own vials easy, easier than it was extracting them in the first place.
He lost track of how long it took to piece the kid's flame back together and repair what little of the damage done to it that he could; he had to switch places with the Mist medics halfway through for a breather. He'd used his own flame to 'patch' over the areas where the kid's flame channels were damaged; that would hopefully work by tricking the kid's flame into thinking the areas had been repaired by his own system, it was like putting a 'Band-Aid' over the injury. The Mist flames would eventually fade, but by then they'd have coaxed the boy's flames into taking over to complete the healing process, Sun Flame users really did make his life easier in that respect.
The delicate network of flames running through the boy's body was already on its way to healing now. The Mist flames were settling over the broken sections of 'veins' and the interrupted Sun Flames started flowing through them like they belonged there almost immediately. Given enough time, with rest and relaxation being top priority, he'd make quite the recovery. Not a complete one, but enough that he'd no longer be in danger of falling to pieces at the next sharp tug on his Flame.
Thankfully the boy hadn't rejected his Flame. He wouldn't have liked going out to inform Fon and the strangely silent Reborn that the kid had gone into Discord over Rejection.
They'd have eaten him alive.
Spreading his flame out across the rest of the teenager's system, he added an extra layer of protection over the top. Reborn was in Namimori for a reason and given his secrecy and interest in the kid, he was probably training another Sky. Given the purity of the young Hibari's flames, it wouldn't be long before someone Pulled for the kid again. He wasn't completely heartless.
Once upon a nearly forgotten time ago, he'd come dangerously close to the position the kid was in right now, caught between two circling Skies who'd both been attracted to his Mist flame. It had taken leaving the country for a good five solid years and a lot of desperate ducking afterwards to escape their attentions, and he'd only managed that because both had found other Mist Guardians in the meantime. Had he not taken those measures… this was the kind of injury he'd have looked forward to. He'd had the option to escape; Hibari Takeru clearly hadn't had that option. Until now.
If a Sky tried to grab for the kid's flames before they were completely healed, they were going to be in for a surprise and a half. A nice, Mist-inspired, mule-kick to the proverbial teeth.
He didn't like being reminded about that time in his life, didn't like seeing the result of it in others. But so help him if he was going to heal the kid and then throw him back to the proverbial wolves. If Reborn thought he was going to get a Sun Guardian out of this kid for whatever Sky he was training, he was going to have to damn well wait and see if it happened on its own.
If it ever did.
"It's all up you now kid, the choice is all yours." He muttered, stepping back from the operation table and pulling his hands back away from where the worst of the injuries had been: the kid's forehead and heart. It truly was now his choice to make now; without being able to feel any kind of flame attraction, the kid would be able to pick and choose the kind of future he wanted without any kind of flame-based manipulation whatsoever.
If Reborn ever caught on to what he'd done, and he probably would, he could always hide behind Fon. Strongarm him into treating a patient he didn't want? He didn't think so. At the very least he knew Fon would stand behind what he'd done, it was all in the name of the healing he'd asked for.
Let him try to argue around that.
OoO
When word reached him about the accident involving a young teenager and two toddlers being pulled out of a burning building, Kiriyama Toshiya knew he had to check it out. When he got to the hospital, he was informed by the staff that the two toddlers had been cleared as healthy but the teenager that had been brought in at the same time was currently in surgery.
He felt his heart sink.
"Do you have the name of the kid brought in?" he asked the receptionist, heart sinking further when she couldn't provide one.
"I need to speak with his doctor." He said; he wasn't taking any arguments.
"He's still in surgery but you can wait for him in the waiting room with the others." The receptionist responded. "Paediatrics ward, if you go to the receptionist there she'll be able to direct you to the right waiting room."
"Others?" he asked, frowning.
"The two other children brought in with him, they're really quite sweet, they wanted to make sure their friend was alright before leaving." The woman giggled, pink tinting her cheeks. "You'll know them when you see them, they're adorable."
He recognized Satoshi's brother-in-law immediately when he got there; they'd met a number of times previously, nice guy, but thank god neither of Yun's kids had inherited the guy's dwarfism. How someone so calm could be the older brother of Hibari Yun was anyone's guess; the woman was, putting it nicely, a spaz. Fon's companion was a new face though.
"Fon-san, it's good to see you again. Is this a friend of yours?" he asked, looking down at the dark haired and eyed individual sitting on the chair next to Fon's. The one dressed as a doctor. The costume was in pretty poor taste given whom he suspected was currently in surgery. Would it have killed him to show a little tact?
"It is good to see you again as well, Kiriyama Toshiya." Fon responded, bowing a greeting which he freely returned. "This is an old acquaintance of mine, his name is Reborn. We're waiting on the doctor's prognosis. Reborn, this is Kiriyama Toshiya, he's a police detective stationed here in Namimori."
"Nice to meet you." Reborn replied vaguely, hands petting the little chameleon that was resting on his knees.
"Pleasure. I'm sorry about this Fon-san, but I'm here in an official capacity. Are you willing to take a statement here, or would you prefer to go somewhere more private?" Toshiya asked, grimacing a little.
He sincerely, sincerely, hoped that this situation wasn't what he feared it was. That Fon had found his nephew - and then had been forced to drag him out of a burning building. The idea of the kid even being in a burning building was making him break out in a cold sweat at the thought, not only because of how his colleagues would take it, but the kid had been pretty funny in and of himself.
Toshiya had liked him despite his understandable yet unholy standoffish behaviour, that sharp sense of humour had been hilarious. The kid didn't deserve the amount of shit that had happened to him and he most certainly didn't deserve a burning building and surgery on top of it.
He wanted it to be a coincidence, but he knew it probably wasn't. The look on Fon's face was already telling him the answer he didn't want to hear.
"So, I'm just going to get straight to the point, you're here because the boy brought into surgery bears a striking resemblance to Takeru, am I correct? I'm told that you spent some time with him before the accident happened, can you tell me if this is the same boy?" Toshiya asked, producing a printed photograph. One of the ones a certain someone had pulled from the CCTV footage without telling anyone about it, the idiot. They'd had to ransack the jackass's desk for the picture.
Fon accepted the photograph wordlessly, gave it a glance and then gave him a single nod.
Shit.
"Yun called to tell me Takeru had been spotted in Namimori. I found him in that building. He… was so scared. The fire was my fault, if I hadn't-"
"It wasn't your fault." Reborn interrupted. "I'm the idiot that just walked into the situation without thinking, it was my fault."
"Disregarding whose fault the fire is, do either of you think you know how it actually started?" Toshiya interrupted, stopping the game of back and forth of blame-claiming in its tracks. He'd seen this way too many times to witness it again; best stop them before they got started.
Toshiya listened attentively as they walked him through what had happened. Takeru had been in the building, reading through a box of papers. No, they didn't know what was in the box, just that it had been full of files and papers. Did they think the fire had started in the box? No, the fire had started somewhere near the wall. Takeru had tripped and fallen backwards against the wall and had collapsed around the time the fire had started. The box had still been in the middle of the room. Reborn had had a good vantage point, Takeru hadn't started the fire. It had somehow sprung up on its own. Reborn was of the option that Takeru had accidentally hit a light switch when he'd tripped and perhaps the cause of the fire had been faulty wiring? It WAS an old building.
Writing it all down, Toshiya took down Reborn's contact details, snapped his notebook shut and pulled out his phone. "Well, we will be conducting an official investigation into the fire but don't worry, you could very well be correct in thinking that it was an electrical fire. So please, if you could not start playing the blame game until after we figure out how the accident happened in the first place, I'd be very much obliged. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a few calls to make."
To the chief of police for one: to get permission to poach a few uniforms to act as guards at the hospital, a few to go investigate the scene of the fire and relay the findings to him. He was just about to put in another call, this one to the Hibari family when both Fon and Reborn straightened up like they'd been hit by lightning.
A tall, foreign, brown haired doctor was walking towards them, pulling his surgical mask down as he headed in their direction. "You are?"
"Detective Inspector Kiriyama Toshiya, I'm here investigating the circumstances of the accident." Toshiya clarified, moving his jacket out of the way so that the badge on his belt was clearly visible.
"Trident Shamal, Doctor." The doctor nodded, "The surgery was a complete success. He's in recovery now and will be transferred to his room when we're confident he's stable enough for it. His life is no longer in any danger, but he has quite a bit of nerve damage; he's going to need some therapy to get him up and running around like a kid his age should be."
An unreadable look passed between Fon, Reborn and the doctor but as a whole there was a release of tension from the room.
"I'm going to have to take a look at his possessions." Toshiya sighed, slipping his phone into the inner breast pocket of his jacket.
Shamal nodded at the nurse who had followed him across the room. "The nurse will show you where they are, if you'll follow her. I need to ask the family a few questions." He said, indicating Fon with a tilt of his head.
Right. Well, it wasn't like he hadn't had his own questions answered. "Lead the way, nurse."
The boy's possessions were nothing to write home about. Two leather cuffs, one of which looked like a bag if he tilted his head the right way. A small box with a decorative porcelain egg in it. A wallet stuffed with a mix of two different currencies, Japanese and British, but with no identification inside. No library cards, not even a debit card. There wasn't even a stray coupon or receipt. Empty of everything save for money, a large amount of it at that!
The clothes he'd been wearing were a bit different; the shirt had a small drying spot of blood near the collar. He finally had something to work with when he turned out the pockets of the boy's jacket and jeans. Amongst the usual junk you'd expect to find in a teenager's pocket, the crumpled up sweet wrappers, a few bits of candy and a bottle cap, Toshiya found a carefully folded paper. Written on it were nearly illegible notes scribbled in an unholy mix of Japanese and English. Website addresses. Street names in Namimori. Locations of specific landmarks. Namimori Hospital, Namimori Middle School, the Hibari Shrine and... four very familiar names.
Hibari Satoshi, Hibari Yun, Hibari Kyouya and Hibari Minoru.
Toshiya felt the hair rise up on his arms and pressed a palm to his suddenly leaking eyes as something occurred to him. They hadn't found Takeru.
He'd found them.
Takeru had been checking out his family before making a move. Doing the exact opposite of what Yun, Fon and Kyouya would have done. Taking after his father and Uncle Minoru in being careful, sneaky and absolutely certain of what he was looking at before getting involved.
Places were crossed off on the list, like the hospital and the shrine. He'd seen that in Minoru's notes more than he could count, that was an indication of a check done. Exactly how long had Takeru been in Namimori casing out his own family?
A look at another carefully folded bundle of papers revealed a list of scrawled kanji. All of them different spellings of his name, most of them crossed out with only the correct one circled a few times and underlined for good measure. A piece of charred parchment with his name and the meaning of it written down in English right underneath it.
A through and systematic investigation, seemingly starting with a name and branching out from there. If there had been any doubt that they had the right kid here, that this wasn't actually Hibari Takeru, this would have dispelled any suspicion. He was so clearly his father's son it nearly put Kyouya's parentage into question; would have if Kyouya's personality hadn't had the classic and distinct Hibari edge to it.
He knew what he was dealing with now; he had a mix of a mini Minoru and Satoshi on his hands. The resemblance had been so strong back at the station that he hadn't known what to do with it, but now he knew exactly how to approach the kid.
Get him somewhere isolated where he couldn't escape. No handcuffs unless they wanted to drive the kid feral, like it had done with his Uncle Minoru, (who'd gone haring off on his own like an idiot). He had to make it clear he knew who he was and that they were going to have a proper sit down talk. No kid gloves. Being dishonest and pussyfooting around would just drive the kid away. Everything about him screamed run-away abuse survivor, which meant they had to give him the truth, a lot of it, not all of it, but make sure the kid knew that there were some things he couldn't be told about.
Above all, he had to make it clear that the kid had options. Options were important when it came to dealing with the Hibari family; they were an ornery bunch and disliked having decisions made for them more than anything. There was nothing worse than a Hibari that felt cornered and he knew from experience that if they made the kid feel trapped he'd bolt again, perhaps with the chance of never being found again.
"Detective Kiriyama? The patient is ready to be moved now, would you like to accompany him to his room?"
"So soon?" Toshiya asked the doctor who'd spoken.
Shamal snorted, the faint shadow of a crooked grin peeking out from underneath the grimace on his face. "You'd be surprised at how resilient children are, they can bounce back from a lot of the things that would lay an adult flat," he remarked flatly, slipping his hands into the doctor's coat he'd thrown on over his scrubs. "I doubt he'll wake up any time before the sun rises but you never know, the kid might surprise you."
"Like he hasn't already." Toshiya snorted, "Lead the way doctor, we'd best not take the chance. He's already slipped away from me once; I'd rather not give him the opportunity to repeat the performance. The little escape artist managed to get out of the police station without anyone spotting him; we'd even had a guard at the door. Half the office is convinced he phased through the walls."
The doctor whistled in appreciation. "Ninja in the making?" the man joked wryly. Toshiya snorted in agreement as the nurse that had led him to the room gathered up Takeru's belongings and followed behind them. When the nurse went to take the papers off him, Toshiya pulled them back.
"I'll hold onto these for now, got to have some leverage with me when we start talking."
Takeru was still asleep when they made it to his bedside, looking so small in the seemingly over-sized bed he was resting in. He was transferred to a fresh bed when they reached the room he'd be staying in, a private room with lockable doors and immovable double-glazed windows.
A quick phone call and he had the few available men the precinct could spare guarding the lift, the stairwell and standing at attention outside the room. Toshiya himself was sat in a chair at the kid's bedside and he wasn't going to budge until the kid woke up.
Where else was he going to find a more suitable place to talk the kid down?
Here was just fine.
OoO
Chapter END~! Finally. Fon is such a stubborn whore, he's the one who stalled the chapter so long this time.
Also some people seem to think the 'stab-chase' thing in the last chapter was a joke? Uh, no. Not really.
Once upon a time in Australia there was a primary school with a group of teenage boys who invented a game called Stab-chase. One of those teens had a younger sibling who now goes by the internet handle Reighost. Kids would run around with protractors, compasses, pens, scissors and broken rulers, chasing the person who was 'it'.
One day Reighost was buying lunch from the cafeteria when a noise was heard and looked up. The roof caved in and a pair of kicking legs was seen dangling from the ceiling. Someone had fallen through the roof, caught a support beam between the legs and was kicking from the pain. The boy who had fallen through the ceiling of the cafeteria was later caught because while he had no plaster dust on him... he was the only boy in school wearing wet pants.
So ends the story of the creation, (and end), of the game known as stab-chase. I figured if a group of idiot Auzzies did it, then Gryffindors wouldn't be too much of a stretch. Especially given that a quick trip to the hospital wing and all would be healed.
Also its five AM and my eyes are gluing shut and burning at the same time, I pulled another all-nighter for you guys so I hope you appreciate it. XD Ima gonna go crawl into bed. If I make it there. If not I'll just sleep on the floor. Whatever.