Star of the Circus
Chapter 21
I'm not a good tourist. I don't like tourism.
Joe Sacco
"Is hitchhiking always this easy?" Tsuna wondered aloud, shuffling around a bit to get better situated between the cages of chickens he was wedged between.
Whacking the lone goat so he would hopefully stop trying to eat her hair, Leora gave a shrug. "I have no idea. Never hitchhiked before. But if I had to bet on it, I'd say no."
"We are not doing this again." Kyouya grunted, stubbornly not looking at the noisy cage of pigs he was sitting next to. "Ever."
"Beggars can't really be choosers." Leora pointed out, scooting further away from the goat. "We're lucky enough that this guy was stupid enough to believe our bullshit."
"Your bullshit." An annoyed huff, "I really need to learn Chinese." Tsuna muttered sullenly, a cloud of doom forming around his head at the reminder that he had had no clue what that conversation was about until Leora had translated.
Leora threw a handful of hay at him.
"Stop sulking. You helped enough by getting the guys attention."
"I tripped and fell down the hill onto the road in front of his truck. I nearly died."
"But you didn't and we got a ride out of it. You helped."
"Are you sure we can trust this man, little animal?" Kyouya asked, giving in and moving so he was away from the pigs and pressed arm to arm with Leora, scowling the whole time. Leora patted his head in sympathy. Kyouya tried to bite her.
Kyouya may be more openly receptive to physical touch than he was in Namimori – which was leagues above how he was in the manga – but being crammed in an enclosed space with about fifty animals and their cages along with three people was pushing it, even if he did like the humans.
Tsuna nodded.
"I'm pretty sure."
"No weird feeling or voice in your head telling you otherwise?" Leora pressed, because they really couldn't risk another incident like their original kidnapping.
His face went flat. "No. And stop saying it like that. You make it sound like I'm crazy."
Leora tilted her head. "We're all mad here." she informed him solemnly, not bothering to duck the fistful of hay chucked at her.
"And stop quoting things I don't know."
"Throw something at me again, little animal, and I will hit you." Kyouya growled, spitting out the hay that had gotten in his mouth from the poor assault. Tsuna flailed.
"But I wasn't aiming at you!"
"Poor aim is not an excuse."
"My aim is not that bad!"
"If you two start chasing each other in here all the animals are going to get loose," Leora pointed out mildly, lips twisting up slightly as the two boys froze, "It'll be chaos. Kyouya will probably put a hole in the side while Tsuna will set something on fire. We wouldn't be able to explain it without proving you can set yourselves on fire which could scare the farmer. The farmer would get mad at us for all the chaos and then we would never get the food and hot bath he was going to provide."
All of which was bullshit, this guy was dumb enough to believe pigs could fly as long as it was said respectfully, but it was funny watching their reactions.
Bath was apparently the magic word because while they both had been still before, the mention of losing their much-anticipated bath time had them locking up, faces set into comical expressions that only anime characters could pull off, before slowly settling back into their seats.
Sulking, Kyouya decided that napping would be a better way to pass the time than talking to the other humans sharing his space. Flopping over so he was using Leora's lap as a pillow the Cloud dropped off damn near immediately, which was frankly impressive with how bumpy and noisy the trailer was.
Deciding to follow Kyouya's example Tsuna crawled over so he could lean against Leora's shoulder, because the brat couldn't go for more than an hour without some form of physical affection.
Leora gave a twitch at the contact but didn't bother commenting on it.
Commenting lead to smothering.
"Where are we heading again?" Tsuna asked once he had gotten comfortable enough.
"A city called Chengdu… eventually. It's going to take at least two days. So out of Tibet and back into China proper."
"Is that a good idea?"
"I honestly don't know." Leora admitted, "I had originally planned on taking us through India but if you feel going back through China is the way to go, then it's probably the best way."
"I don't know anything either." Tsuna reminded her nervously, to which Leora just shrugged. As much as she was able to anyway.
"You still have better instincts and they haven't proven to be wrong yet."
"Walking back into a place that could be full of Chinese criminals who might also want to kidnap us seems pretty wrong to me."
"Then we'll just stay out of sight." Leora dismissed, shuffling around a bit. Her legs were starting to go numb but she wasn't sure if it would be a good idea to actually pick Kyouya's head up. He had a habit of punching first, and with his Cloud flames propagating the force behind his hits Leora was likely to lose her head or break a couple of ribs for trying.
"How do you do it?"
"Do what?" Leora replied absently, tensing her legs to try to get some blood flow back into them.
"Stay out of sight. You said you stole money from people to pay your rent," Tsuna reminded, aggravation creeping into his voice before he forcibly pushed it away, "How do you not get caught?"
"There's a lot more to it than just 'not getting caught'." Leora replied after a moment's pause. "And pickpocketing is a different scenario than what we're going to be doing."
Tsuna jabbed her in the ribs with his elbow. "You're still not answering the question."
Leora stared back flatly, "I've created a monster."
"The monster wants his question answered." Tsuna shot back, smiling happily, albeit sleepily, and completely unrepentant. Brat.
"Rooftops." She informed him blandly, causing Tsuna to blink in surprise, "When moving around town when I'm not with you or Kyouya I stick to the rooftops."
Tsuna frowned, "Isn't that dangerous?"
"Trained acrobat, remember? I've got the strength and the balance so it's actually safer than if I just walked on the street.
"Like a normal person?" the little Sky snarked back.
"Normal is an illusion." Leora drawled, "What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly. And if you're this cranky just go to sleep already. I'll take first watch."
Tsuna's cheeks puffed up in outrage and he looked like he was debating whether or not he should follow Kyouya's example and bite whatever he could reach.
"Seriously Tsuna, just go to sleep. It'll make this ride go a lot faster."
"Promise you'll wake me up when you get tired?" he asked eventually, slurring slightly and wiggling around a bit to make himself more comfortable leaning against the carney, barely able to keep his eyes from drooping shut.
Leora barely held back a snort.
She was always tired.
"I'll wake you up when I need some sleep."
Tsuna managed to crack open an eye, "Promise?"
Leora leaned her head against his instead of answering.
"You didn't wake me up." Tsuna accused crankily, pouting once they'd finally arrived at the farmer's house and helped unload the animals. The boys had slept like the dead for the five hours it had taken them to arrive and had only woken up because the squeal of rusty hinges was loud enough to practically dig spikes into their ears.
"I didn't need to sleep." Leora waved off, because really, she didn't. She was used to running on practically nothing by now.
Tsuna wasn't convinced. "You look like you're about to keel over and die."
"Thank you for reminding me that I look like shit. I had honestly forgotten." Leora quipped dryly, sending the boy a withering look. Tsuna had the decency to wince even if he didn't really look guilty. "Besides, you needed to sleep more than I did."
"You look worse than we do."
"Well yeah, but I'm older and I'm used to this. You're not."
"You need to rest properly." Kyouya cut in, voice booking no argument and narrowing his eyes as he clamped a hand down on Leora's shoulder, careful to grab mostly the fabric of her shirt. "You will be sleeping."
"I was planning on it. Just not when we were in the back of a strange man's trailer with no real idea where we were going."
"But we can trust him." Tsuna argued.
"I trust your intuition." The carney reassured, "But I'd rather not take stupid risks. I'll sleep once we secure where we're going to be sleeping and take a bath." Leora rubbed absently at her chest before reaching up to rub at her eyes. "Hopefully the bath will be warm." She muttered under her breath, barely loud enough for the two boys to hear, but they did hear it.
They tensed, exchanging a look, nodded, and then Kyouya was hauling Leora over his shoulder like a sack of rice and carrying her into the house the farmer went into, Tsuna half a step behind him.
Leora went ridged.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
"You are tired."
"I can walk." Leora gritted out. Kyouya ignored her.
"You're still recovering, Leora." Tsuna reminded while Kyouya talked to the farmer in Mandarin, who didn't seem to have a problem with the boy carrying someone else around. "It's best if you don't push yourself too hard."
"The house was only seven meters away."
Tsuna smiled. "But it feels a lot farther when you're tired, right?"
Tsuna might not have been able to understand the slew of German that poured out of Leora's mouth, but he knew it wasn't nice or happy.
Tsuna's smile got more innocent.
"The bath house is around back." Kyouya reported, already heading out the door with Tsuna trailing after him. "His wife has already heated water for us."
"It's going to be great to finally get clean." Tsuna added in his two cents, eagerly bouncing on the balls of his feet.
There was no sign of his previous embarrassment from when Nana had made the two take a bath together, Leora noted. With Kyouya's animal obsession, the Skylark probably wouldn't care who he was bathing with as long as they didn't crowd him too much.
Leora didn't particularly care who saw her naked – even as an adult she didn't have much of a sense of body shyness, which drove Amma Eva insane – but she did care about her privacy.
Very little of it remained since they'd gotten kidnapped, and now that the boys were intent on bathing together, Leora just felt resigned.
The two of them were clingy now that their flames were active and Leora didn't see that stopping anytime soon.
It was only a matter of time before Kyouya found her apartment back in Namimori – if she even still had one by the time they got back. She knows she missed her rent and the bitch she was paying didn't seem like the lenient type – Leora could kiss her privacy goodbye.
She still refused to live with Tsuna.
Spending the night every now and then was okay, but if Tsuna tried to push it the closest his ass was getting to her was the distance between the street and a roof.
"We still smell like animals." Kyouya grouched, glaring down at his clothes.
"Well what else did you expect?" Leora asked, not looking up from the money she was counting, "We never got a chance to do laundry and we had to ride in the trailer again to get to this city."
"We should have stolen more clothes."
"Wouldn't that have attracted more attention?" Tsuna piped up, counting out his own pile of money after Leora showed him how Chinese currency worked.
"We stand out with the clothes we're wearing now." Leora pointed out, "I'm obviously foreign and we're all dressed like we're straight out of Tibet."
"We did come straight out of Tibet."
"Which isn't a good thing. Kyouya's right, we do need new clothes but I'm not sure how we're going to get them." Leora admitted, mouth twisting down at the corners in annoyance.
"We can, you know, buy them?" Tsuna offered, waving his portion of money in the air for emphasis. Kyouya shot that idea down pretty quickly.
"We would have to go into a store to buy clothes and people would take notice of our appearances. Stealing would be a better option."
"Unless you see any kids around our size to mug, it's not an option at all." Leora countered, still not looking up from the money, "Wearing bad fitting adult clothing would make us stand out even more. And again, I'm not Asian. I'm going to stand out either way."
"So, we'll need to cover your face?"
"Face and hair. Curly hair isn't really a thing in Asia, so my rats' nest will give me away faster than my face will. Your hair isn't exactly subtle either Tsuna, so we should probably get you a hat or something too."
"And how are we going to get the hats?"
"From the idiots that noticed us counting money and thought it would be a good idea to try and rob us." Leora informed him blandly, finally looking up to stare balefully towards the mouth of the alley they were squatting in.
Hastily shoving his money into a pocket, Tsuna whipped his head around at the same time Kyouya detached himself from the wall to stand in front of the other two, hands in his pockets.
Leora wasn't wrong, there were about five teenagers blocking the alley. Two of them were smoking, three of them were wearing hats, all of them wearing smug, mean smiles that Tsuna automatically linked to his bullies back in Namimori.
Nothing was telling him that they were dangerous, not like back in the woods. Mild-threat-Cloud-here-no-danger- was all he was getting, but years of being cornered and beaten up had him making himself as small as possible, edging away from the faces that had always meant pain.
That bit of instinctive fear and unease apparently transferred to Kyouya because the older boy's head perked up as the rest of him relaxed, feet shifting apart into a now familiar stance as Kyouya glare went up a couple of notches into something that would have had everyone back in Namimori running away screaming in terror or begging for their lives.
Leora went back to counting the money she'd managed to get in the few hours they'd been in Chengdu.
"Keep the screams to a minimum and try not to get blood on their clothes. They're skinny enough we could pass as wearing hand-me-downs as long as we tuck in the extra fabric."
Bloodthirsty glee shot through him – glee that did not come from Tsuna, no matter how frustrated he was with this entire situation – and Kyouya advanced on the group of delinquents that had no clue their doom was walking towards them.
Tsuna went back to helping count the money.
"Once we change, do you think we could go to an actual restaurant? I'm tired of having to hunt and forage for food."
"Probably not, but I bet we could find some kind of street stall. Can you eat spicy things?"
Sounds of pain and the distinctive tone of begging rang out behind them.
Tsuna wrinkled his nose. "I don't know? I mean, Mama doesn't make spicy things very often."
"You're not going to find much of anything that's not spicy in this region. I guess we'll find out."
"Do you like spicy food?"
"I don't mind it, but I'm not particularly picky. I'll eat anything." Leora paused in her sorting, looking contemplative, "Does Kyouya like spicy food?"
"I have no idea. Hey Kyouya!" Tsuna called out, ignoring the guy Kyouya was holding by the collar, "Do you like spicy food?"
"I can eat it." Kyouya confirmed, before his face screwed up in a scowl. He punched the guy he was holding across the face, knocking him unconscious and making his jaw stick out at a funny angle. "I refuse to eat Mapo Tofu."
"Easy enough." Leora mused. Stacking the money, she shoved it behind the holster where she kept her throwing knives.
"Are you almost done, or do you need a few more minutes to vent?"
Kyouya's response was to throw the biggest of the five thugs into a wall.
"We should give him a few more minutes." Tsuna decided, edging away from his violent friend. "He looks like he needs it."
"Is all Chinese food that spicy?" Tsuna asked. Well, more like garbled. It was hard to tell what he was saying since his tongue was stuck out and he was frantically fanning it.
"You didn't have to eat it." Leora pointed out, still working her way through a serving of pork buns that both boys insisted she eat after she finished off the dan dan noodles she'd gotten first.
She still wasn't hungry, but she didn't feel completely hollow anymore so she guessed that was a good indicator.
"Stop complaining, little animal." There wasn't any bite or annoyance to the order like the previous times.
Beating the shit out of the thugs in the alleys was apparently cathartic as hell because Kyouya look more content than Leora had seen him in over a week.
Shirts, hats, and their wallets aside, those assholes had been genuinely useful for something.
That contentment must have spread to Tsuna because the same could be said for him.
He looked happy. Bright. Like they were back in Namimori in the park instead of the middle of China on the run and by themselves. He wasn't bringing flowers and sparkles into existence yet but it was close. There was also the fact that over the last couple of days, as far as Tsuna was concerned, Kyouya could do no wrong
Leora was blaming that on his Harmony and new bond with the Cloud. Potentially anime bullshit, but she would put money on the bond.
She's only seen this level of contentment and Zen under circumstances as crazy as this when that person was higher than a fucking kite on a windy day.
"I don't think I'll be able to taste things for a while." Tsuna muttered, but obligingly stuck his tongue back in his mouth. Then he blinked curious eyes between the Skylark and the carney.
"Anyone have an idea what we do now?"
"Get to a port." Kyouya supplied without hesitation, sticking one of his own pork buns in his mouth and scowling when the juice dribbled down his chin. Leora passed him a napkin.
"I know that, but how do we get there." Tsuna helped himself to one of Kyouya's bun while he was distracted and positioned himself on the other side of Leora, pretending he didn't hear the way Kyouya was growling and happily chewing on his treat. "I don't think we could hitchhike the whole way."
"We are not hitchhiking again."
"I agree with Kyouya." Leora cut it before Kyouya could take a swipe at Tsuna's head, placing one of her buns in with Kyouya's basket to placate the little shit. "We might've gotten lucky but it's still a stupid risk."
Tsuna thought it over for a bit. "We could take a taxi?"
Kyouya snorted, "Not across the whole country."
"We should be able to get a bus." Leora mused.
She'd been to Chengdu in her world. It had been pretty good business even if it had made Sifu Yaozu twitchy. Master Philip had insisted everyone learn the bus and plane routes to get close to their final destination in Hangzhou just in case their trucks decided to cock up. Again.
If things transferred over between dimensions there should be an international commerce city bus station that could take them to Zhejiang. From there they could take a taxi to Hangzhou if they didn't mind paying through the nose for it, which would put them relatively close to Japan.
Either way they were going to be paying a shit-ton for it and they needed more cash.
"Getting the money we need will take a few days unless we get stupid lucky – bus tickets are cheaper than plane tickets but they still aren't cheap Tsuna – but I'm pretty sure we could take an international bus to get to a port city."
"So we just keep pickpocketing people?" Tsuna summarized, and he didn't sound even remotely upset about their means of getting money unlike a few days ago, which didn't make much sense to Leora.
She decided she wasn't going to question it. It may confuse the hell out of her but it was so much easier to just not question it. Like just about everything else in this shit show of a dimension.
So she shrugged. "Basically. It might attract attention like earlier, but Kyouya can keep beating the thugs half to death so we can rob them blind. We can't do it too often so we don't draw the attention of the Triads, but a few odd incidents should be okay."
Kyouya's grin was vicious, full of teeth, anticipation, and bloodlust, eyes flashing purple as he ripped open another pork bun.
In comparison, Tsuna's simple eager grin, like a kid about to enter an amusement part, seemed even more intimidating.
"The sooner we get the money the sooner we can get home." Tsuna practically fucking chirped, "So what are we waiting for?"
Leora was definitely blaming this on the bond.
Higher than a fucking kite, the both of them.
Author's Note: Not much happening, but they're one step closer to going home! Thank you guy for clicking those favorite and follow buttons and a special thank you to those who reviewed. Reading those made my day.
Reviews are love. Ciao~