Disclaimer: I don't think I own KHR. Wait, do I? Let's see… I can't draw people. I can't draw furniture. I can't draw awesome hot Hibari eyes. Sigh… I don't own KHR.

-Future-

Ryohei sighed as he looked up into the blanket of stars in the night sky and announced to the world, "I am bored to the extreme!"

As per Irie's instructions, he had positioned himself at the halfway point between the two targeted locations half an hour before the start of the operation. Unfortunately, waiting was not the ideal pastime for someone like the Sun Guardian. He sighed again, and tapped his foot impatiently on the slightly sandy pavement before preoccupying himself with crushing a nearby weed growing through the cracks in the cement with the tip of his leather shoes.

"Kyoko better be alright!" He had insisted that they let him go to the main mansion instead earlier, but Irie had assured him that the Varia was more than able to handle that location alone. Ryohei stopped leaning against his car and stretched, yawning, deciding to get back into the vehicle.

"I extremely miss Hana…" he lamented. He leaned on the steering wheel, swinging his keys in a circle repeatedly. "Maybe I should visit when this is over!" He sat up, immediately liking the idea. "Yeah! When we finish, everyone will go back to Japan and drink to the extreme!"

"Is drinking all you think of?" Gokudera's voice suddenly said as the earpiece blasted to life.

"No! I was also thinking of Hana!" Ryohei retorted at maximum volume.

"His girlfriend…" he heard the other's voice, slightly muffled.

"Oh… not flowers… I was getting worried," Ryohei heard Irie in the background.

"Okay," Gokudera seemed to have returned. "So we're going to start moving to the locations now. I want you to reposition to the front of Hibari and Yamamoto's target in half an hour, and make sure they don't see you."

"Huh?" He didn't see this coming.

"Irie and the others will be monitoring everyone's life signals. If anything happens to them, then you'll have to rush in. There's no way you can reach either group in time if you're at the halfway point," Gokudera explained irritably.

"Wait, what about you?"

"We'll be fine." He heard some more muffled talking as Gokudera exchanged a few words with the three scientists before returning. "Okay, so we're moving out now. Make sure they don't see you, especially Hibari."

"Got it." The earpiece clicked. "Yes!" Ryohei exclaimed happily as he turned on the car.

.

The start of the operation went by smoothly enough; dodging bullets from a few inexperienced guards proved still fairly easy for the two previously injured hitmen. It wasn't until the grunts of the Fuoco Family had finally managed to sound the alarm that the "fun" really began.

Yamamoto whipped out one of his defensive forms, a wall of water, just in time to stop an onset of a dozen bullets from the one man before his first Rain Ring finally shattered from the stress. Frowning, the swordsman concentrated his Flames on the other two rings on his second fourth fingers and summoned Jirou and Kojirou.

The Rain Guardian watched in wonder as the two rings also shattered, almost forgetting the battle. Fortunately, the Box Weapon animals both jumped into the onset of bullets, knocking out some of the shooters. Jirou nudged Yamamoto to the side, snapping him out of his distraction and the Rain Guardian rejoined his two new partners, this time with an offensive form.

"Hey Hibari! How in the world do you manage not use up all your Rings in one battle?" Yamamoto asked the whirl of black and purple a nice distance away. As he predicted, Hibari didn't bother answering and instead swung a tonfa at full speed at a man's face; Yamamoto could hear the snap of the neck amidst the chaotic wave of sound. Chuckling, he swung his own katana, blunt end first of course, and knocked yet another enemy down.

'There are quite a lot of them here, and Gokudera said we took the smaller base…' The man fell at his feet, unconscious, and another came to take his place. 'It's like there's an infinite amount of them…' It almost felt a routine: swing, duck, move forward… He saw someone struggling to the top of one of the scattered crates before aiming. 'Hibari knows he's there… right?'

Yamamoto swore that the bullet had just grazed his partner's arm, but in that millisecond of cohesion, the Cloud Flames on Hibari's right tonfa extinguished, and he fell to one knee in surprise at the sudden weakness. Luckily, the closest place of impact was a wall twenty feet behind him, and the bullet exploded there, sending concrete flying into the air.

The men in the building took a deep breath; finally one of their shots had "hit" one of the targets. They prepared to go on the offense, but Yamamoto was quicker than them.

"Hibari!" the Rain Guardian yelled as he quickly swung, throwing a massive wave of water at the gunman to temporarily obscure his view. In a flash, he had managed to "gracefully" throw Hibari over his shoulder and run behind a set of boxes.

Hibari, on the other hand, gave the swordsman a swift whack to the back with one of his tonfa as soon as they reached safety, making Yamamoto drop him. "What are you doing?" he hissed, a frustrated blush building across his face.

"Saving you?" Yamamoto answered confused. Hibari held a tonfa to his throat, pressing him backwards against the storage box.

"Never," he emphasized each word with the poison of a cobra, "do that again."

"Eh, why..."

"I don't need your help."

"Ah..." Yamamoto chuckled. "Sorry about that. Instinct, you know?"

Hibari grunted as he reignited the Cloud Flames on his right tonfa, testing his hand. The bullet had taken a huge portion of his Cloud Flames, he admitted, but that didn't mean he didn't have enough left for the job.

"Shoot, those bullets absorb really well..." Yamamoto chuckled, sensing the lack of Flames on the other.

"Don't get hit," Hibari muttered.

Yamamoto laughed. "Hey, I'm not the one who got hit."

Hibari contemplated giving the other a blow to the stomach but decided against it since he'd rather not have the Storm Guardian complain his ass off later for Yamamoto's death. "Stay here," he hissed. "I don't need your help."

"Hibari... we're all assigned to this mission. If I just sit here, then Gokudera's going to dock my pay."

Hibari almost snorted. "Whatever. Don't get killed."

"Aw, is that a sign of concern?" Yamamoto said hopefully.

"I'll be the one to bite you to death later, after this," the Cloud Guardian returned.

"Ah, okay." Yamamoto watched as Hibari jumped back into the fray before going in himself, Jirou and Kojirou still assisting them on the other side of the room to prevent any attacks from the back. 'That was just one hit…' He remembered the body under the sheet. 'What if… No, can't think of that now!' He gripped his sword tighter. It took nearly all he had left to not flip the blade over.

.

"Even if you kill everyone here, you can't stop what has begun," Arturo told them smugly. "Already, my men are negotiating with one other Family; the blueprints are with them."

"Where might that be, my good man?" Lussuria asked.

Arturo sighed theatrically. "Well… I might as well tell you. It's not like you'll live long enough to report back to your little Vongola friends. It'll just make your deaths all the more pathetic, getting so close to the goal only to have it slip from your fingertips."

"We are Vongola," Xanxus said, emphasizing the second word; Lussuria could almost feel the Sky Flames leaking into the room from his boss, but all was hidden and suppressed.

Arturo laughed. "How can you be Vongola when you fight against it? Come to think about it, now that your dear boss is dead, Vongola doesn't even exist anymore as soon as I kill the remaining Guardians he chose." He shrugged, walking over to his table and pouring himself a glass of wine, taking a long sip. "But enough of that. You want the location? Thirteen miles directly East of here at the port. Beautiful place really; I would buy it when I get the chance."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the mansion, Squalo spoke into his earpiece just as he sliced a set of double doors open, readying a wave of Flames before spotting Fran. "Did you hear that?" Squalo asked.

"Yeah, I got it," the speaker on the other line answered him. "Don't worry; we'll take care of it." The earpiece clicked.

"Ah, thanks for rescuing me, Senpai," Fran greeted Squalo, who almost threw a wall of water at him anyway.

"What the hell? You are so dead."

"I couldn't help it. They used a sleeping dart."

"And you didn't see it? You're Varia!" Squalo couldn't believe that Fran had gotten himself and the other two captured in such a short amount of time.

"Yeah yeah, I'm sorry," Fran said hastily, waving his hand impatiently. "I'll make it up to you. Where are they?"

.

"Don't move," Arturo warned when he saw Xanxus's hand twitch slightly. Kyoko gasped as Leone pressed the gun into her scalp. "Kids these days should learn some manners," he sighed before smirking. "I wonder what I should do with you. Shoot a bullet into your bodies and let your precious little princess here watch as you die by your own Flames? Or should I lock you all up somewhere and make you watch as your so called Vongola allies die in their attempts to take my bases? Hm?"

"They're not weak," Xanxus said.

"Oh of course not; I am well aware of that. You are not weak yourself, but even with all your 'talents' with the Flames, you are still so vulnerable to my creation." He took out a gun, caressing it gently before pointing it casually towards Xanxus's heart.

"No! Stop!" Kyoko cried out before Leone hit her on the head with the side of his gun.

"Shut up already. Women are so noisy sometimes," Arturo said, shaking his head.

Lussuria prayed that the room wouldn't explode prematurely from Xanxus's Flames. 'If looks could kill… I'd be dead even now though he's not looking at me,' the Sun Flame user thought excitedly.

"Even without a talent for Flames, I can still destroy you with one bullet," Arturo continued as Kyoko started to struggle against Leone's grip despite the gun still pointed at her head. "Oh Leone, try not to hurt her," he commented before smirking and returning his attention to Xanxus. "To think you all wasted so much time training when all you needed was a little technology…"

"Xanxus!" Kyoko yelled again as Arturo's finger tightened on the trigger.

Suddenly, all the guns in the room, including Arturo's and Leone's, exploded into hissing snakes, making their owners drop them in fright.

"Oh dear, they don't seem to be too good with illusions. Maybe we could've escaped earlier," Fran sighed, walking into the room.

"Let her go," Xanxus ordered Leone, who still kept a firm grip on Kyoko.

He stepped back just a little when the air around the leader of the Varia turned an angry orange, the Sky Flames licking at the room. Xanxus calmly took out a strange little box, stepping completely into the room from the door frame. In one swift movement, the Flames concentrated on his ring, and he forced the fire in.

After an angry burst of Flames, the liger stood before the head of the Fuoco Family, proud and growling.

"Time's up!" Lussuria told them, grinning.

The room exploded in a torrent of orange Sky Flames, and the last thing Kyoko remembered was a pair of red eyes and strong arms catching her when Leone let go, hands over his burning face.

.

Yamamoto recalled that Hibari had specifically told him not to carry him again, so he did the next best thing when the second shot came inevitably flying towards his precious Cloud Guardian.

"Hibari, behind you!"

The skylark turned just in time to see Yamamoto jump in front of him. He saw the glint of metal from a gun in Yamamoto's pocket as the latter fell, and in an instant, it was in his hands; he fired and caught the Rain Guardian at the same time. The shooter fell to the floor with a bullet between the eyes, and the others found themselves face to face with a huge sphere of growing spikes; Hibari had encased himself and Yamamoto inside one of the hedgehogs.

"Ah! Pull back!" one of them yelled as the sphere continued growing. A few didn't make it out as the hedgehog finally filled up the entire room and stopped its onslaught. The screams were distant to the two inside.

"Yamamoto Takeshi?" Hibari muttered as he saw the location of the bullet entrance and the pool of blood beginning to form on Yamamoto's back. Jirou and Kojirou went over to them worriedly before suddenly disappearing back into their Boxes, unable to stay out any longer. "Yamamoto?" he repeated as he turned the Rain Guardian around to see his face, which was contorted in pain. His breaths were uneven and strained, and he held one hand over his wound in vain to stifle the flow of blood.

"Ryohei, get in there now!" he heard Irie's voice in his earpiece; the scientist was in too much of a panic to remember which switch led to Ryohei's transmitter and turned all of them on.

"What's going on?" Gokudera asked.

"Where are they?" the Sun Guardian asked, obviously also panicking.

"I'll tell you where to go…"

Hibari ripped off his headset and flung it aside. "Yamamoto Takeshi, don't you dare die on me," he told him.

Yamamoto coughed, freeing a collection of blood from his throat onto the floor, his clothes, and Hibari. He managed a chuckle despite the situation. "I… don't really mind… You're safe, right? If you want, you can land the finishing blow like you said earlier…"

Hibari almost knocked him on the head but barely managed to restrain himself, instead hugging the other's head closer. "You idiot. Why did you…"

"You said not to carry you again…" He closed his eyes. "Wah… I'm getting sleepy… Let's talk later over some sake… I haven't visited my old man's grave in a while…"

Hibari muttered, "Okay…" without even realizing what he was agreeing to, his face hidden from the other. He felt his hands shaking. 'This was… my fault?'

Yamamoto grinned calmly. "Now I can't die." Despite those words, Hibari could feel the warmth of the other's Flames continue to ebb away without mercy.

"Yamamoto!" Ryohei had arrived. The Hedgehog barrier shattered, allowing the Sun Guardian to run towards the two as Hibari slowly laid the Rain Guardian on the floor and stood up.

"If he dies, I'll bite all of you to death," he said, looking away so that Ryohei couldn't see what kind of expression he had on his face. Hibari then left, his Cloud Flames flaring up around him, licking his surroundings angrily.

Sigh… Sorry about the late updates recently. A close family member of mine's been in and out of the emergency room and hospital, and it's been kind of hard to write. (Insert determined face here.) But I will finish this story! (Eventually hehe, still a ways to go…)

By the way, I was reading the reviews for the last chapter and thought, "Ah! I forgot to mention Fong! Noooooooo!" Omg yes! The first time I saw that dude, I was wondering if they didn't accidentally switch Hibari in haha! But he has a cute ponytail… (Or whatever it's called; I have trouble with hair style names.)

I'll resume the present arc in the next chapter; I actually have part of it written for this, but if I finish it, it'll be another few days before I post this chapter, so that'll probably not work… ah! I'm so sorry T.T.

Anyways, thanks for reading!