It was very apparent to Watari that their second day of class would be their last. It was unfortunate for their education to be denied as such but he would very much rather spend his time tutoring them than to send them to their deaths.

It was terrifying when the second that Shuan released his hold of their sky's flames, the girl crumbled into the ground in tears. Dread flooded her veins to the point of completely overwhelming her senses.

"There was something there, someone listening!" she sobbed out, thin threads of flames spreading out chaotically through the room. "I'm scared—I'm so scared for them. It felt like Bianchi's flames, like Hayato's flames, like Fon's flames. It wasn't right, it was burning him!"

Watari gathered the young girl into his arms and tucked her under his chin, they believed that her flames and intuition were connected somehow but they believed that the suppression allowed her to feel nothing. They were clearly wrong in that fact.

He sent comforting waves of warm flames over the girl's skin and her hyperventilating slowly calmed to deep breaths. The condensed threads melting into a comfortable soft flame.

If compressing her flames only lead to accumulation of the experiences with regards to her intuition, they should never do it again. With the situation as it is, it would only lead to terrible things, it would run her to insanity.

It was the second day of class and just the news and dread of the Vongola situation threw her intuition into agony.

His concern spread to not only his young ward but to all her friends along with the 9th generation lightning and especially that mist.

Croquant Bouche was one of Watari's staff at an earlier point in his life and despite the deep hatred his boss seemed to hold for him, the feeling hadn't spread through the sky's bond. Despite that, he tended to stay away for the sake of preventing unneeded chaos.

None of them wanted that mist to die, he didn't deserve to be killed by his own elements.

"He won't die," Shuan spoke up, easily attracting attention to himself. "He came to me to explain what we were supposed to do. He told me that they would try and conceal us from the other Vongola and for us to train and grow strong so we could protect ourselves."

Verde took a sip of his drink and gave the cloud-mist a considering look, "And you gave him your watch."

"—and I gave him my watch, yes. Don't ask me why it just felt right to do so."

An aggravated sigh escaped the lightning arcobaleno, "What part of 'Don't ever take it off' do you brats not understand?" he grumbled under his breath. He knew that what the young cloud had done was good, trusting your instincts was always a good idea yet the scientist couldn't help but feel a little spiteful that he had given away that piece of quality technology so easily.

"He was a good man, he obviously wanted to help Ganauche to conceal us from his boss." The boy tried to reason.

Fon lifted his gaze from his tea, "Though, it was likely for both his own sake and for his fellow guardians."

Shuan took a brief look at his sleeping sky, her cheeks were pink and he eyes sagged, evidence of exhaustion and crying. He gritted his teeth, "I know but when goals align, so can allies. Ganauche clearly cares for Lu to an extent and Croquant Bouche would never do something that could ruin a relationship with another element."

Watari hummed, "Go eat some dinner, Shuan, Kyoya. I will take her to her room." He stood up slowly with the girl in his arms.

"Don't think about it too much. Like you said, with the watch, he will not die. We will discuss this further tomorrow morning."

Croquant returned to the mansion through his own flames and immediately landed directly into his office.

It was eerily silent, which it should not be. He glanced at his wristwatch, mansion staff should be sweeping the halls at this very hour as they had done for decades.

He hated pure silence with a passion. Nothing should be completely silent, humming, buzzing, breathing, there were endless possibilities for background noises yet the room was completely silent.

He could hear his own footsteps clicking against the carpet as he walked towards the door with a sigh, he would have to deal with the slacking staff.

The mist twisted the knob open only to be rewarded with a click. All blood dropped from his face and he went as pale as a sheet.

He knew that noise and that was not something that the door typically made.

The usually stoic man erupted into bitter laughter. He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, how the fuck did they find out so fast?

"Hahahahaha... Fuck me."

He let his body fall back as the explosion of storm flames flooded his senses and flames, dropping his consciousness into the void.

Luculia was suffering and they were clueless as to why.

The girl was curled up into a fetal position in the centre of Watari's bed. Tears were dribbling down her cheeks and her breaths were left worryingly shallow and rapid. Her mind trapped in dreams and visions.

'Fuck you, Coyote'

Who…? Why was this happening, it was hurting, it was burning. She didn't know why he was hurting her!

Even with the rain-induced sun flames that Watari was attempting to comfort the girl with, she was still in a clear panic. She couldn't stay still, a cold sweat broke over her body.

'Storm flames…' her mind hissed in grim anger. She felt angry and betrayed but the worst of all... she felt resigned.

The air in the room was grim as the residents of the house could only watch the sky suffer helplessly.

Shuan sat at her side and probed at her mind hysterically trying to break his sky out of her dreams. Viper had attempted to influence her mind with mist but was quickly struck away, but luckily for them, Viper and Shuan's psychic abilities were vastly different in characterises.

He would never miss a chance to attempt to help but he wasn't getting through at all either.

She started screaming and clutching and scratching all over her skin. It bUrNED, it HuRT. Watari desperately pinned her arms to her sides to prevent any further self-harm.

Her skin was gone, the all-consuming red flames were taking her limbs apart. She felt agonizing pain and couldn't feel nor hear anything other than the overflux of flames and pain.

She was melting.

She couldn't even hear herself scream.

The thick atmosphere was slit by the sudden ear-shattering screech of a warp, a suffocating amount of storm fighting mist flames flooded the room.

'Her body burst into a million pieces, the pain subsided into numb pulses, the mocking and gleeful laughs of that man forever echoed through her mind.'

Watari's eyes forced wide, "Croquant…?"

Luculia was hyperventilating and Mei ran comforting circles on the girl's back in hopes of calming her down.

A gasp escaped Croquant Bouche, he was still barely, but conscious. His legs, mid-thigh all the way down, were gone and the flames were not stopping.

He shook himself out of his shock, "Viper, Shuan!" he hissed out in a panic.

The mists took a moment to take in the situation and immediately worked their flames against the storm.

This was not something any of them had seen before, Watari had his suspicions but it was never a defined fact until the ex-Vongola mist appeared on fire, the two flame's characteristics were bleeding over each other running back and forth.

Verde watched the scene with calculating eyes and lips pressed tightly together. Dying will flame elements had advantages over others and were weak against another.

For the powerful mist to get to the point where he was to be force warped to safety meant that the offending storm assailant must have been significantly stronger or something else happened.

They wouldn't know until the victim of the attack confirmed it himself.

The overpowering creation characteristics of the mist shortly forced all traces of the offending storm out of the man's system. The benefits of the cloud propagations with Viper's expertise over his flames left the enemy storm flames with no chance at all.

Croquant Bouche was taken quickly to the infirmary by Viper and Watari.

Shuan stared in horror at the now legless man as his blood left a horror-worthy trail of blood in his wake. The same man that powerful man that was completely fine a couple of hours ago when he left school. The man who was so obviously more powerful than he was... yet there he was, on the border of bleeding out.

It struck him hard how easily lives could be dismantled and destroyed and how valuable and necessary power, smarts and skills were to survival.

Roaring red flames were devouring the mist sector of the Vongola mansion and Ganauche watched in horror as it raged over the building.

It was horrifying and that was not something he wanted to see when he arrived home from work.

His face went blank when he realised, did… did someone hear something?

Is that why…?

He powered forward into the crowd with heavy steps, the mansion staff were all gathered after evacuation in the courtyards facing to the centre of the crowds and not to the burning flames.

He pushed himself through, only to see Nono and his guardians were present there too…

Sans Croquant Bouche.

He stormed forward and to his so-called sky. "Nono!" he called out with agitation noticeable in his tone.

The sky was in complete shock, he was seated down with his hands clutched at his head in agony. His eyes were screwed shut and it was obvious by the groans that he was doing everything he could to hold himself from screaming.

The other guardians were desperately trying to figure out what was wrong with the man.

Ganauche stopped beside the older man, his breaths coming out as pants as he just stared at the man.

"…What happened to the mansion?!" He asked the other guardians urgently.

Coyote pulled back to look at the young man was a dark glare. Ganauche suddenly felt like a child again.

"Croquant Bouche betrayed us." He hissed out. "And Nono is suffering the consequences."

The lightning's heart dropped, "…and Croquant, what did you do with him? The mist unit is in flames! Storm flames! Why did you find it necessary to blow a portion of the house up to subdue him?!"

The 9th generation storm stared blankly back at his fellow element.

"I didn't subdue him, Ganauche. I killed him."

He knew Coyote well enough to know that putting out such a blaze of his own flames would just as easy to evaporate for him as quickly as they started. He didn't only kill a primary guardian, he burned his corpse and potentially any and all of his subordinates under the suspicion that they were all traitors.

The innocent lower mist sector workers that knew near to nothing about anything that happened in high ground.

He gritted his teeth. It was disgusting and Ganauche wanted to scream.

When Luculia woke up she felt exhausted and traumatised. She wanted to cry.

It was extremely early in the morning, about 2 am when she awoke and she had Kyoya snuggled up to her side.

She rolled over and tugged the boy closer to her body in a hug, she wanted all the comfort she could get. Her eyes welled up with tears and she silently sobbed into his hair.

Nono was rushed to the infirmary when the flames subsided. Rain users flooded his system with tranquilising flames to numb the pain, but nothing was being affected.

They tried everything from the point that he keeled over in pain to the second that he awoke once again after his symptoms vanished.

In the end, nothing worked, and the boss opened his eyes visibly exhausted from having endured the event.

His subordinates fretted over his state.

Kyoya shifted awake and simply stayed quiet. He shuffled her body to hug the girl back, he was plenty willing to be a source of comfort after the pain she had gone through.

Lu felt numb, the lingering feeling of being burned to death felt awful but her body was in fine condition. She didn't know who was experiencing it, or if it was a dream but she never wanted to wish such a fate on a person.

Verde entered the room shortly after with a grim expression on his face. He quickly climbed onto the bed, "Brat, how are you feeling?"

She rubbed at her eyes furiously to try and clear her vision and stifle her sobs.

"B-better…"

He presented her with a sharp nod. "That's good. Croquant Bouche is alive, disabled but alive and we will be allowing him sanctuary here for a good while. I thought you'd want to know."

Her hands clenched at Kyoya's clothes.

"…was he the one that was on fire?"

Verde's eyes went wide. "How much do you know? How do you know? You were unconscious the whole time."

She stuffed her face into the little cloud's hair to conceal her tears and slowly resurfacing sobs.

She breathed in shakily, "I-I know because..." her eyes welled up with tears and her limbs pulsed in agony at the memory.

"…because I was burning too." She hoarsely whispered.

Verde turned on his heel and bolted from the room with a distinct urgency, Watari needed to hear about this.

"Are you alright, Nono?" his storm asked him from his bedside.

The man gritted his teeth and his hands clenched around the fabric of the blankets that covered him. He, but all, hissed at the other man. "I was burning, Coyote. I heard you laugh as you watched him—me die, as his body disintegrated. It was mortifying, disgusting and terrifying."

The storm flinched away.

"I know that you watch over famiglia research, if anyone knew this would happen, it would be you. I am furious and offended that you would ever subject me to this."

Panic rose in Coyote's eyes, "I didn't know—"

"—Do not make useless excuses with me and do not fail so terribly again in future. You are dismissed."

His storm clenched his jaw and breathed in sharply through his nose. With a hard expression, he bowed his head in respect, the shadows concealing his frustrated expression.

"…of course, Nono."

As the sun arose later in the morning, Lu dragged herself out of bed. She wanted to go check on Croquant Bouche.

Kyoya released a small whine concealed within a grumble when she left. She picked him up and cuddled him both with her flames and physically in her arms before she left the room.

Her body was exhausted, but she still easily found the strength to carry the young boy with her. It felt so foreign to have her flames free and about, she slid her vision to see the stars and was pleased to see the familiar colourful balls of flames hovering around the house.

She sighed and swapped back to reality before wandering to the infirmary. The warmth of Watari's flames slowly growing warmer by the second.

She bumped into Mei leaving the infirmary when Lu was about to enter. The woman was surprised but quickly morphed her expression into a smile and patted her head, then Kyoya's before scooping the boy from the girl.

Even as a civilian, Mei was observant and intelligent. She knew the signs of exhaustion that presented themselves over Luculia and chose to make it a bit easier on the girl. Kyoya took to the transition easily.

"Good morning, Lu-chan." The woman greeted kindly, "Are you here to see our new visitor?"

The sky bobbed her head owlishly.

Mei stepped to the side and let the girl in, "I made some cookies that are in the kitchen, you should come and have some after you finish your visit."

Lu paused mid-step and smiled appreciatively at the woman.

"Okay, I'll be sure to come by. Thank you, Mei-san."

She gave the girl a curt nod before walking off with her son in her arms.

Luculia walked down the short, and white-clad corridor of the infirmary towards the only occupied room. She stood silently watching from the other side of the glass as Watari and the arcobaleno discussed some things around Croquant's bedside, that she couldn't hear through the soundproof material.

She clutched onto the windowsill with her bare hands.

From the corner of his eyes, Fon was the first to notice their sky's appearance and greeted her was a serene smile. The rest of the group soon followed suit before Watari moved to join her in the corridor. Her eyes followed his form as he exited the room.

"Little flower," He greeted, "Why don't you come inside?"

She blinked slowly, transferring her attention back to the unconscious mist.

"It feels like I'd be intruding…" she whispered. "It didn't feel right."

Shuan entered the corridor from the outer entrance, Mei had likely told him that Lu had woken up and had made her way over to the infirmary.

He halted when he saw the pair on the wrong side of the glass.

"Why're you both out here?" He asked, the expression she made told him everything.

"Croquant Bouche isn't weak, y'know. Not emotionally, not flame-wise, not physically and you know better than anyone that you weren't the one that hurt him."

Her eyes lowered to the floor as if somewhat guilty, "I know that" she reasoned quietly, "but it still feels like there was something I could've done more."

He gifted his sky with a soft grin as he dumped his arm over her shoulder and lead her towards the patient room door. With a knowing smile, Watari pressed the button to let them through.

"A-ah, Shuan!" she whined in panic.

"It's okay," he assured her, her averted gaze spoke wonders of how she still didn't believe him.

He stopped walking halfway through the room and grabbed her upper arms. "Oi, look at me." He demanded lightly.

The girl dragged her eyes to meet his, "Really, it's okay. Thanks to your suggestion about giving them gadgets and equipment, I was able to give him my watch which saved his life. If you didn't say that then, then he wouldn't be here at all. You contributed to saving his life, Lu. Don't discredit yourself so quickly."

Her cloud released his hold on her and joined the arcobaleno at the ex-Vongola mist's bedside.

Verde smirked at the boy after seeing Luculia visibly start rethinking while staring silently into the palms of her hands.

"Nice."

Shuan rolled his eyes, "Oh thanks, oh gracious one."

Lu followed him a few long moments after he left her side and stood silently next to the unconscious mist.

She was careful to concentrate really hard on holding her flames back away from him in case she might hurt him. She knew that she could easily slip up and do so to those she wasn't harmonized with.

Her elements could feel her actions when their sky's comforting flames no longer coated the air of the room.

"You don't need to do that," Watari informed her. "We believe that you already created a minor bond with Croquant and that was why you felt the effects of his near-death experience."

Verde nodded, "Your flames may be really strong with regards to pure power and extremely large in volume, but it seems that you also have a high level of sensitivity in your flames as well. That would essentially explain why you feel other's emotions so much easier, why your control is so good and why your temperament changes so drastically when your flames are compressed."

Her shoulders sagged slightly as she released her flames. Several discrete sighs of pleasure and relief escaped the occupants of the room as the sky's flames flood their systems once more.

The sudden flush of sky flames must have urged the man awake as his eyes slowly peeled open.

Lu fell into a panic and started fussing over the man that was very well about 9 times her ages. Her arms were waving rapidly in front of her as her head snapped around the room looking for something, but she wasn't exactly sure what.

So, she ended up reverting back to her consistent back-up plan, "W-Watari! What do I do?" She cried.

The old sun chuckled and dropped a hand on her head, "Calm down, little flower. He's just fine, he's in no danger of dying nor should he be in any pain. He is simply tired."

"O-oh… okay…"

The tanned man blinked a few times to adjust himself to the light, Watari moved behind him to press a button to sit the hospital bed upwards.

"How are you feeling, Croquant?"

The old mist's breathing easily smoothed out, "Fine, thank you." He replied politely.

Lu poked her head out from behind Watari to peek at the man. Her mouth formed an 'o' when she saw that he was comfortable and in no noticeable pain.

She tugged at Watari's sleeve urging him to lean down which in turn, he did so. She cupped her hands over her mouth to whisper in his ear but like any well-trained person from the mafia, basically, everyone in the room heard her.

"I'm gonna go get some cookies from Mei-san, I'll be back with a bunch, okay?" He smiled at the girl who pulled back and gave him a serious and determined nod and a thumbs up before slipping out of the room.

Once the girl had left the room, Croquant breathed in sharply through his teeth after shifting his body.

"…he really burned my legs off, huh?" he asked rhetorically, his face grim.

"That won't be an issue." Verde cut in. All eyes were on him. "With how stuck you are right now, you'll have plenty of time for me to put you to work. Use that creative mist brain of yours to come up with some design of prosthetics for yourself then refer it to me for checking."

He pulled out the retractable desk that was connected to the hospital bed and dragged it out then laptop out of no-where that was already connected to its charger and dumped it on the desk before placing a wireless mouse and headset beside it.

The mist watched silently, the stunned look that appeared in his eyes was the only thing that broke through his poker face and stoic façade.

Verde pointed at the items one by one, "My old laptop, don't need it anymore since I have a perfectly good desktop and a spare laptop. Luculia-brat's spare wireless mouse, she won't care if you use it, she takes perfectly fine care of her first one. The headset is new though, we didn't have extras, but it wasn't all that expensive, like $200-ish which wouldn't leave a dent in any of our banks sans the children's."

He hopped off the hospital bed to head out the room, but not before sending their new resident a smug smirk, "Good luck, have fun and don't touch anything in the labs once you get yourself around. It'll usually make our resident sky cry if something blows up."

He bumped into Lu exactly at the point where she bumped into Mei. The sky was holding a piece of Tupperware full of the sugary treats.

"—Oh! Sorry, Verde. Want a cookie?"

Verde replied in the form of grabby motions, "Yeah, give me like 4. I'm going back to my office."

She peeled the box open and handed the cookies to him inside of a napkin that she somehow had on her person.

"Thanks, brat."

Class 5S was rather gloomy for that day of school.

Ganauche didn't go to class, he called in a sick day and a relieving teacher, who was severely less accepting of them, came to teach the class for the day.

Neither the sky bunny nor cloud ass appeared at any point of the day and it was making Bianchi and even Squalo worried. With how serious the conversation from the day before was, they were worried that something went wrong.

When the bell for first break rung, the chaotic duo went straight to the greenhouse to see if anyone was there. They had hoped that maybe another one of the 9th generation Vongola was there to meet them as Croquant Bouche had, but they were disappointed when the place was completely empty with no signs of there ever being a presence there after they had left the day before.

Their next destination to check was the primary school. They were looking for the mini-cloud, Hibari Kyoya. They knew from their last visit that the boy hated crowds with a passion but their first point to check was the classroom in the case that their class was let out late but the younger kids had already begun to group up and go to their snack spots just before they arrived so they wouldn't have known if he was there.

Hayato's eyes widened when he spotted them lingering around, he waved them over. Something he probably wouldn't have done for his sister prior to yesterday but she had acted so caringly and had stopped cooking for him after they got home so he decided to give her another chance and let her in.

"What's wrong? And where's Lu-nee and Shuan?" he asked innocently and with genuine confusion and concern.

Squalo pursed his lips together, "They didn't come to class today, neither did lightning ass so we came to see if the mini-cloud came to class."

The smaller silver-haired boy shook his head side to side with an apologetic expression.

"Sorry, but Kyoya didn't come to class today either."

Bianchi looked down sadly and Squalo released an aggravated sigh, "Oh, come on!" he groaned in frustration, "What the fuck happened?!"

He huffed and stormed off once again out of the building and this time to the cafeteria, maybe he would be able to overhear something fucking useful for once.

Bianchi quickly caught up with him and Hayato trailed along soon after.

"Did you see that cute transfer student?! I think it was love at first sight for me!"

"Ehh…? Did you get a photo? I wanna see!"

"I tried to, but I was worried that he might see me, I'll point him out if I see him again though! The school isn't all that big so it shouldn't be too hard."

…Squalo wanted to pull his hair out. He didn't want to hear this shit about a guy (probably Shuan) he wanted decent information. Bianchi was soaking the gossip in with great pleasure, though. Hayato facepalmed at her antics.

"—Hey, did you hear? Apparently, there was a huge storm flame explosion that happened at the Vongola mansion."

The trio snapped straight back to reality and barged in on the table's conversation.

"Of course I heard it, Dino. It was my house that was on fire."

With a growl, Squalo dangled the boy by his collar. "Tell me every fucking thing you know about this Vongola shit, kid."

The blond boy with a terribly tied tie, that the guy that Squalo was dangling in his grasp had called Dino, was panicking from the sidelines.

"O-oi!" he attempted to protest but was immediately shut down by the patronizing glare from Squalo.

Their "friends" all abandoned ship when the top two combatants and chaos creators (i.e. the delinquents of the mafia) made a move.

Bianchi glared them down, just asking them to try and report them. A silent but effective threat, they wouldn't be saying anything.

The poor boy flailed in his hold in a panic, "O-okay, just let me down please."

Squalo dropped the kid to the seat but paused when he saw all his "friends" gone. Oh, damn, now he felt kinda bad for the guy but no friends better than fake friends, I guess.

Dino was also visibly upset at the fact that his table was empty, that his friends abandoned him with the scary kids of the school.

Squalo hovered awkwardly around the guy, "Uhh… wanna eat with us then?" he rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. Bianchi snorted at the sight which earned her a hefty glare.

The boys exchanged eye contact with each other. Neither of them were the best at social interaction but they both had images to uphold too.

"Yeah, you both can come." Bianchi agreed, "Once you help us find Lulu and Shuan then we can talk permanent status' but for now, you'll stick with us."

"O-oh, okay." The blonde stuttered out.

"Nice doing business with you, blondie. The hell is your name again?"

"Oh, I didn't tell you before. I'm Dino Cavallone."

"And, you? Kid that lives at the Vongola mansion?"

"Oh, I'm Federico Ferrino."

"Right!" He grinned at the pair, "It's a pleasure, Cavallone, Ferrino. Let's see how long it takes us to get you guys transferred into 5S."

I hope this chapter both Frozen teen and yupino's questions.

I have to say though, it was my first time playing around with scene flashes between Nono and Lu (thanks to Mitsu21 for pointing out that they weren't flashbacks haha, I had been treating them like that though) and I'm still trying to find a style that makes it fit well with the atmosphere. I hope I did alright with this one.

yupino, though. You're so cute! ( ´ ▽ ` ) It already makes me super happy that you spent the time to write a review at all, it doesn't need to be long at all! (and don't worry, I'll be sure to kill some people off before I leave ^^)