A/N: I finished this chapter after an, at least, 14-hour sleep.
I am not kidding, I went to bed at like… 6 in the morning one day and woke up eight in the evening, like… What? How does that happen? I don't know!
Anyway, this is where things actually start happening, those who have read It's in her Blood knows what's about to go down, though there will be a few smaller differences to the original as I'm sure is expected about now.
Well then, I'll just leave you to it.
Enjoy.
Scene 34:
Disastrous Training
July 16
Thursday 2215
Reborn had given her time off, for the time being, allowing her to do whatever she wanted whilst he made the proper preparations needed to move on with her training.
What those preparations were, she had no idea.
She didn't know what she was supposed to do with her days now. She had been so used to the training schedule that Reborn had laid out for her previously, that not having one left her at a loss to what she was supposed to do.
It was even worse now that they'd entered the Long Weekend. The international six-day holiday celebrating the end of the third world war a hundred years ago.
Exactly, a hundred years ago.
The whole town was in preparation for the world-wide festival come Monday. Four days dedicated solely to it because according to law, these four days were meant for relaxation. All bakeries and restaurants were closed as they had no time to spare for customers, convenience, supply, and grocery stores were still open sure but Tsuna knew first hand that barely anyone visited during these days, most they did was deal with deliveries and stragglers.
These four days were slow.
Then came Monday and all hell would break loose as everyone scrambles to prepare for Tuesday before mellowing out in a long Wednesday were everyone got their strengths back.
You were expected to return to your jobs on Wednesday but it's a SLOOOOW day to ease you back into your normal routines.
Even Reborn had let up on the lessons as of late.
Having the Thursday of the Long Weekend free, completely free from ANYTHING as her mother was locked up in the bakery with a very excited Lambo who happily took Tsuna's usual place as Mother's little helper, she didn't have to spend these first four days surrounded by an assault of heavy sugary of fruity smells that would only make pastries and desserts all the more exhausting on her stomach.
She so, with nothing else to do, she had decided to partake in an activity that she had long-since put on the shelf, taking a back-seat to her training.
Painting.
It was rather later, but the sky was speckled with clouds in different sizes and shades, the sun shining brightly through them, bathing their small town in flecks of slowly expanding shadows.
Sitting on the back porch, Tsuna relished in the methodical movements of the paintbrush in her hand, feeling a sense of relief at finally being able to return to something she actually knew she could do. Not something she was aware she had the potential of accomplishing after several long days of next-to-relentless training.
Training that she knew would start back up soon.
She didn't look forward to that.
A knock on the glass slide door brought her out of her thoughts.
Turning around, Tsuna saw Reborn leaning against the door frame, arms crossed in front of his chest as he looked at her.
A familiar pose.
"Pack your bags." he suddenly said, his voice almost making Tsuna flinch.
There was something in his tone…
"Why?"
Reborn sighed. Shaking his head as though the answer was obvious.
"We can't practice for the third stage inside the house," he said, voice hinting on brief annoyance. "I've arranged for the two of us to stay in a cabin for a couple of days." he pinned her with a serious expression. "We're leaving early tomorrow morning."
Tsuna found herself frowning.
"Won't they notice I'm gone?" she asked, locking eyes with her tutor.
"Not if we're back by Sunday." Reborn immediately shot back. "We should be back by Saturday at the very least if everything goes well."
Running the words over in her mind, Tsuna found herself letting out a long breath, looking away from the man as she gave him a long, confirming nod.
"Alright."
With that said, Reborn turned back into the house, disappearing from view.
For a long moment, Tsuna just sat there, paintbrush still hovering in the air a few inches away from the canvas.
Finally, she let out a deep breath.
So much for it being the Long Weekend...
Shaking her head, she decided not to worry about that as of right now.
She had a painting to finish.
July 17
Friday 2215
Early he said...
They had left before the sun was up.
Where Reborn had gotten the sleek black sports car he'd parked outside the Sawada sometime in the middle of the night, Tsuna had no idea, all she knew was that it had been there when he'd quietly entered her room at 3 a.m and yanked her out of her bed, grabbing her bag off of the floor as he pulled her out of the house with her still in her pajamas, shoving her into the front seat.
Of course, she had momentarily been absolutely terrified when she had suddenly found herself on her bedroom floor, but seeing as it had been her tutor that had pulled her out, she had just gone along with it, allowing herself to be dragged out of her house, most likely looking something like a drunken person in her half-asleep state.
She'd learned to simply go with her tutor's antics a long time ago.
So long as she knew WHY he did the things he did, she couldn't care less about the HOW.
Once in the car, Reborn drove off towards the forest lining the north border of the town, close to the richer area of one of the residential districts. He drove straight into the forest following an old overgrown trail that wasn't on any of the town maps, weaving them deep into the trees as he allowed Tsuna to slip back into sleep beside him.
The rising sun was shining through the trees when she was shaken awake.
Groggily, she turned to look at the bastard that forced her out of her very pleasant dream.
It was already slipping away from her memory but she still had that lingering sensation of happiness coursing through her body.
"We're here." Reborn said, getting out of the car.
Stepping out of the vehicle Tsuna found herself standing in front of a large log-cabin standing on top of a hill, with a zigzagging staircase up to a timber porch looking out over the small yard they'd parked in.
The hill actually wasn't large enough to hold up the entirety of the cabin, parts of the basement peeking out through the grass-covered ground, almost an entire wall built from log pillars and actual rocks that held up the rest of the two-story construction.
It was actually a surprisingly beautiful cabin with boulders artistically lining the stairway, the front door and windowpanes painted a bright red and a large chimney reaching high in the air through the roof.
It looked homey, cozy.
The kind of home that Tsuna could actually see herself living in at some point.
Possibly in her elderly years, that would be nice…
She lingered for a moment at the car after Reborn handed her her duffle bag just staring at the cabin before her legs moved to follow her tutor, walking as though in a trance up the stairs and through that warm red door into the building.
It was surprisingly modestly furnished, the inside looking a lot more like a hunting lodge than anything she would have ever expected Reborn to have arranged. The second floor was open over a larger portion of the first floor, the railing beautifully carved with what Tsuna had no doubt would be a beautiful view of the lounge section of the cabin.
Please, for the love of everything pure, let her have a room on the second floor.
"Make yourself at home," Reborn said as he threw a bag onto what looked like a combination couch and chest pushed up against the wall next to the wardrobe in the foyer.
Dragging her eyes away from the cozy interior design, Tsuna turned towards her tutor.
"Where is…?" she motioned vaguely with her arm around her, hoping her tutor would pull that freaky mind-reading thick she'd come to understand that he possessed and hoped dearly that he didn't use too much around her.
"First door to the left," he answered quickly, pointing to the stairs before immediately retreating towards what Tsuna recognized as a kitchen through a large open archway in the wall.
Yes!
Shaking her head in an attempt to rid herself of some of the drowsiness that still clung to her mind, Tsuna adjusted the hold of her bag as she moved towards the stairs, stumbling a little up the steps in her half-awake body until she reached the landing and blearily making her way to the door Reborn had mentioned.
She tripped in through the door, looking around the room.
It was simple, with one window framed by light pastel-blue lacy curtains over a low cupboard with a cushion fitted onto the top of it for a make-shift seat that looked beyond comfortable, a wooden desk pushed up against the wall with a simple wooden chair and a beautifully carved closet with a mirror mounted into its door.
What Tsuna did find interesting was that the bed was actually built into the wall, a mattress with what looked like a fluffy duvet and pillows covered by a shaggy throw blanket visible through a large opening in the piled logs.
The only color in the room aside from brown was varying shades of blue, white, and gray in the curtains, sheets, and carpets, which Tsuna actually had no problem with. Well, there was a thick pelt on the floor in front of the bed, and she didn't quite know what to think about that.
Dropping the bag on the bed, she wandered over to the window, almost throwing it open.
Leaning her arms on the window-pain, she looked out over the seemingly endless ocean of forest spread out in front of her, breathing in the sweet scent of thriving timber.
Sweet sunlight she wished she could pain this sight…
It was as her eyes wandered over the forest line around the yard around the cabin when she saw it.
A shadow.
A rather large, human-shaped shadow…
She could have sworn she saw it moving through the trees…
She straightened, her face whitened than it had previously been, her hands clenching around the wooden framing as she desperately searched through the trees for the shadow.
It had been there, she knew that it had been, she couldn't have imagined it that's not something that her mind did.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Tsuna jumped at the sudden sound, despite it being a relatively mild one, making her spin around to the door as it opened.
Reborn, of course, it was Reborn, who else would it have been?
He paused in the open door, raising an eyebrow at her reaction before shaking his head, raising a large paper bag in his hand.
"We'll start the training in an hour," he said, walking over to her with long, slow strides, holding out the bag towards her. "You should wear these when we start."
Frowning lightly, Tsuna walked over to her tutor, taking the bag from his hands.
The only thing Reborn had given her directly before had been the ink bottle. If he wanted her to wear something specific, he exchanged them from the clothes she had already picked out for herself, and those changes had so far only been a switch of sizes in her uniform from the larger blouses she usually wore. He allowed her to keep her comfortable over-sized cardigans and sweaters because she suspected he knew that he cozy garments put her at ease and she was grateful to him for that.
But now he was outright giving her something to wear during their training?
For a split second, Tsuna dreaded that she would open the bag and find lingerie inside of it instead.
For a split second.
A thought that she immediately batted away due to just how outrageous it was.
Really, it was laughable.
This was Reborn, that was not something the man would do.
Keeping her eyes on her tutor, she opened the bag.
Thankfully, whilst there was underwear in the pile, it was sports underwear, the least sexual kind of clothes that would fit close to the body, the kind of clothes that Tsuna would actually comfortable walking about in and leave out in the open, and she knew for a fact that she had left sports underwear out in the open on her bedroom floor before so she wasn't too freaked out about it.
In fact, the sets of tailored clothes and shoes she was now holding could all be explained as the man simply picking up her discarded clothes from the floor at one point or another and committed her sizes to memory for this exact reason.
As she looked through the clothes, there looked to be five sets of training clothes, but the material felt strange… it was soft, thick, and stretchy, but it felt almost like a mix of nylon, velvet, and silk when she ran her fingers over the fabric.
And the shoes…
They were light but sturdy-looking things with solid soles that looked to be made of a strange kind of rubbery material, it was like rubber but it didn't feel anything like the rubber soles she was used to seeing on regular training shoes.
There was no doubt in Tsuna's mind that those shoes would feel as though they had been molded to her feet.
The man had probably found the foot molds she'd made to have a new pair of ballet shoe custom made for when she's allowed to return to class after summer.
She glanced back up at her tutor.
"Why are you giving me this?" she asked.
The corner of the man's lip twitched into a half-smirk.
"They're made out of a special fabric," he explained, pulling out the sleeve of the sweater. "It's a special form of fiber freely given by a special type of creature unknown by those, not in the know that's resistant to raw Anima."
Tsuna's eyes flickered towards the sleeve.
A special type of creature?
What kind of creature?
In the know?
Would he even answer her if she decided to ask him any of the questions now flooding her mind?
Probably not…
Hesitantly, she looked back up at the man.
"Thank you..." she said hesitantly.
Nodding affirmatively, Reborn turned around and left her alone to get settled.
Tsuna glanced down at the bag in her arms, not really being able to comprehend everything that Reborn was doing for her. She just couldn't understand why someone like him was putting up with teaching her.
She could somehow tell that Reborn was of high standing somewhere, and yet… and yet he had come to their small town, taken up a position on the teaching staff in her middle-class High-school, actually moved into her family home, just to teach her in the art that came with her bloodline.
Sure, he had said that it was dangerous for a DiLeone to not know of their powers, but something had called him to her town in the first place.
Just who was he?
July 18
Saturday 2215
"Increase the pressure," Reborn instructed as he slowly walked around his student where she stood in the middle of a larger, secluded clearing in the forest, studying her in a manner similar to that of a lion sizing up its prey.
Tsuna's arms were positioned stiffly at her sides, the sleeves of her sweater rolled up to her elbows to show off her skin to the naked, non-flame-infused eyes as her pale forearms slowly but surely started to glow a bright, warm orange under the pressure of her contained flames.
The training clothes she had chosen for that day was an orange tight-fitting tank-top under a black zip-up sweatshirt with matching sweatpants that reached her to the middle of her shins, a pair of orange sneakers on her feet, her favorite of the three pairs she'd been given.
She actually loved the outfits she had been given, surprised at the Reborn's sense of feminine fashion. It was either that or he'd observed the casual clothes she'd picked to wear enough to know what she would be comfortable wearing when training.
The clothes themselves felt almost sinfully nice against her sensitive skin. A reason why she liked her large sweaters so much and preferred loose-fitting clothes to tight-fitting ones was because the fabrics usually chafed or just generally felt uncomfortable when hugging her body, so this was a pleasant change, something that she could see herself wearing more frequently in the future actually but she was not going to be telling the man that anytime soon.
Tsuna's breaths were becoming heavier with each passing second as the heat built up inside of her veins.
"Slowly release the containment." Reborn's voice sounded as though it was reaching her through water, sinking into her brain with the speed of molasses in her fevered head.
Swallowing heavily, Tsuna tried to comply to his instruction.
As the pressure rises inside of her, Tsuna begins to lift the figurative lid surrounding her hands, imagining them thin out slowly under the pressure of the flames.
As it continued building, the amount of liquid flowing out of her pores increased. She could feel her sweat running down her back as the temperature inside her rose, soaking her clothes from the inside.
This part of the training is drying her out more than she had ever experienced.
As the containment thinned, Tsuna could feel a strong resistance in it going further. Something inside of her was keeping her from properly releasing the flames.
She couldn't keep up her concentration.
It broke.
A wave of exhaustion washed over her, she lost all strength in her legs, sending her tumbling to the ground, her hands colliding with the dirt as she fought to keep herself from face-planting.
As an afterthought, she hoped that the dist wouldn't stain the fabric of her pants.
Shaking his head as he crossed his arms over his chest, Reborn walked up to his collapsed student with a disappointed expression on his face.
"You did it again..." he stated, his voice low." "Why are you hesitating?"
Panting, Tsuna looked up at her tutor through her bangs.
"I'm scared of them..." she admitted, trying to control her breathing.
"You shouldn't." Reborn immediately retorted, sounding particularly displeased by this fact. "You won't burn even if you do lose control." he was on the brink of annoyance, she could hear it. "You need to push past your fear."
She knew this.
He'd told her this for hours now.
He'd told her the same thing since the day before.
But no matter how many times he told her to do it…
"I can't!" she found herself screaming, her own irritation reaching its boiling point. How was she going to do something when he wasn't telling her how she's supposed to do it? He kept telling her to just do it, but she needed more than that.
She needed specific instructions.
He'd been giving her specific instructions before, why wasn't he doing it now?
Still breathing heavily, she managed to turn herself around, allowing all her muscles to relax as she crashed down onto the dirt-covered ground, staring up at the cloud covered the sky.
There was barely any sun today, how depressing.
"You aren't even trying," Reborn said, stalking even closer to stare down at her, his eyes almost glaring down at her. "Do it again."
Not trying?
He's saying she's not trying?
When has she ever NOT tried to do something she's set her mind on doing?
"I can't do it," she stated, staring her tutor right in the eyes, almost begging him to figure out what she meant, she usually didn't need to ask him to do something so why wasn't he catching up on her problem now?
Would he even help her even if she did explain her problem?
He wanted her to achieve this thing, but there were so many things he was keeping from her… what if the techniques for pushing past fear was something he felt she wasn't ready to know quite yet?
Who the fuck knew when it comes to Reborn?!
"You can." Reborn insisted with a long sigh, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "If you would just allow yourself to do it you would know that too." he glared down at her again as he lowered his arm. "Now do it again."
Okay, that was the last straw.
"That's easy for you to say!" Tsuna screamed as she forced herself to sit up, glaring at her tutor as she kept consciously kept her core dormant in her chest, allowing her to feel the mixed irritation and fear in her heart. She pointed accusingly at her tutor. "You don't have to light your skin on fire!"
All the man did was raise an eyebrow at her.
"If I would try to do that I would incinerate," he commented as though it was the most casual piece of news in the world.
She blinked.
"That doesn't make me feel any better!" she screamed at him, waving her arms almost frantically at the man.
"Don't worry about me." Reborn immediately returned, sounding very much as though the idea was ridiculous.
"I can't help it!" she found herself forcing herself back to her feet, pacing around in a circle as her frantic emotions just kept getting worse and worse with each passing second, every step she took.
Reborn couldn't help the sigh from escaping his lips, bringing up his hand to again rub the bridge of his nose. He had known that Tsuna was a caring soul, but he didn't think she would get so caught up in the thought of him getting hurt by her flames, she should know that he could withstand them for a shorter period of time, just enough to aid her if she found problems with her flames, but she wouldn't even activate them.
It was just his luck.
Stalking up to his student, he grabbed her by the arm, forcing her to a stop in front of him.
"Calm down," he demanded, giving her a light shake as he tried to meet her eyes. She was making it very hard for him to do just that. "Getting hysterical won't help anyone right now." his hands tightened around her arms the harder she struggled against him.
Probably not his best idea.
She shook her head violently, yanking on her arms with as much strength as her tiny body possessed.
"Let go of me-"
His grip slipped as she leaned back in the force of her yank, her legs weren't stable enough, her feet didn't have a proper hold on the ground. All that coupled with her already poor balance sent her violently crashing to the uneven ground, the side of her head colliding with the dirt.
"Ow!"
Ow?
Tsunako was even more sluggish than before as she peeled herself off of the ground, her hand clutching at the side of her face that crashed to the ground.
A spot on the ground that Reborn now noticed had a relatively large, edgy rock exactly where she'd fallen.
"Tsunako..." he found himself breathing out as he stared at her getting back to her feet, his eyes immediately snapping towards a streak of red running down the side of her face.
His actions had hurt her…
Something he did had caused an actual injury to form on her body…
Something that he had vowed to never actively do happened without him intending it to happen…
He could feel the shame rising in his chest.
If his student had been looking at him at that moment, she would have seen the regret he was freely showing on his face as he cautiously stepped up to her, keeping his presence as light as possible as he approached her.
"Tsunako, let me-" he reached out a hand towards her, his fingertips already glowing a gentle, glittering yellow as they hovered close to her red-covered hand, but she didn't let him touch her.
She took off.
She just started running down their paved path as fast as her legs could carry her, even faster than normal with the residue flames still coursing through her veins.
"Tsunako!"
Ignoring his voice, she just kept running, her hand clasped to the side of her face as she disappeared through the trees, leaving Reborn in the clearing.
Frowning slightly, Reborn fished his gem out of his pocket.
Checking the time, he turned back to look at the path they'd created.
She'd been gone for just over half an hour, and there was no sign or even sound of her returning, even when Reborn really focused on the sounds that surrounded him.
She shouldn't have been gone for this long, according to everything he knew about his student, Tsunako didn't need all that long to calm down from something like this, sure, the two of them had never actually fought before but he doubted that she was the kind of person to stew on something like this for too long before she would storm right back to confront him about what happened, Tsunako was a stubborn young woman that knew how to hold a grudge sure, but she was a young woman that loved the thought of communication, she hated loose threads and despised miscommunication, the proof of that was her relationship with Gokudera.
So why wasn't she back by now?
The walk from the cabin took at most ten minutes.
What was taking her so long?
A worried frown etched itself onto Reborn's brow.
Had her injury been worse than it had appeared to be?
He couldn't stand the wait anymore, his hand shaking slightly as he allowed his gem to slip back into his pocket.
With quick strides, the tutor made his way through the forest, following their paved path through the trees as he mentally went through the many different scenarios to try and make it up for the girl as he attempted to pull her out of the anxiety hovering around her in a better way than how he had done it before.
Not that difficult if he was honest with himself.
The more he thought about it, the more he found that he'd slipped into the training he'd used when he'd taught his previous student, a young man that acted a lot on instinct, a young man that was very impulsive and tended to just do things his own way when Reborn told him to do something, he had known instinctively how his own body worked.
Tsunako was anything but that.
She asked questions, she didn't do anything he asked of her without asking him why he wanted her to do it, she needed detailed descriptions and theory on how to do each of the steps, mental images on how to achieve the things he wanted her to accomplish.
And he'd been stupid enough to just tell her to "Push past her fear" over and over again.
He hadn't given her a method to do so and he expected her to just do it no questions asked?
Had he completely forgotten who he had been talking to?
Tsunako did NOT ask questions!
Half-way towards the cabin however, he found himself pausing.
A branch, a bit further from the path, was broken.
It was too high up for either an animal or Tsunako herself to have caused it, the branch itself was too light to have broken on its own within the past few hours since Reborn had walked down this path, and he most certainly would never have left sigh an obvious sign behind. He didn't need to stand all that close to the branch to see that it was freshly broken.
An idea formed in his head, and not one he particularly liked.
He sped up his steps, hurrying through the forest until he reached the stairs leading up to the porch of the cabin.
There, he paused again.
A footprint.
A footprint at the side of the stairs hidden in the shadow of one of the boulders.
A footprint of a heeled shoe.
Tsunako hadn't brought any heeled shoes to the cabin, Tsunako rarely wore high heeled shoes period because of the way her balance used to be, even with her ballet lessons. The only heels he had ever spotted her wearing were no higher than 3 cm dancers heels or wedge, clog, or square heeled shoes of about the same height, sturdy shoes that didn't threaten her ankles.
She owned stiletto-heeled shoes sure, but they were gifts from her father that she stored high in her shoe shelf in the back of her closet and had most likely forgotten about ever since.
Hence why the sight of the footprint caught the tutor's attention.
On closer inspection, Reborn realized that the shoe-print was too big for it to have come from one of Tsunako's shoes. Her feet were dainty little things whilst this footprint looked to have been made from a grown woman with a much more filled out figure than Tsunako's petite structure.
Understanding filling him, Reborn rushed into the cabin.
It looked almost exactly like it always were, but Reborn had a tendency to look further than the normal person.
Running his fingertips along the walls, he could feel shallow scratches within the fibers that he knew hadn't been there before, he had committed every little detail about the insides of the cabin to memory before they'd left for the clearing that morning.
Why would they be there now?
There was only one answer.
Looking over the room, his eyes fell on the floor.
The rug.
It was moved slightly out of the way.
A rug that was heavy enough and made of a special non-slip material that ensured that it being moved out of the way would need a lot more force than simply running over it...
A loud growl of frustration tore its way through his throat.
Furious, Reborn grabbed the keys he had left on the counter in the kitchen and rushed out the front door within the next couple of seconds.
Tsuna had been abducted.
The girl walked down a road lining the outside of the forest. It was a short-but home and if the amount of bags she was carrying, she really needed one.
She was fiddling with her newly bought gem, automatically going through the multiple steps to make it fully functioning for her use.
Her arms were heavily weighed down by bags filled with a mixture of brand clothing and miscellaneous sewing equipment, multiple large bags holding several boxes of several types of shoes both plain and decorated in several ways. On her back, she had a large basket strapped to her shoulders, filled almost to the breaking point with many different types of fabric, plain, patterned, thick, sheer, just any kind of fabric that she found herself drawn to.
She was already in the middle of planning an outfit on her gem, the first of what she knew to be many to join her already large collection of self-made and altered clothes in her wardrobe.
She was just about to pass the opening to another street when strange sounds reached her ears.
Scuffling of several feet across the pavement.
And the whispering:
"Careful." a female voice warned lowly, sounding almost bored. "If you handle her too roughly she'll wake up, no matter how much of the drugs still in her system."
Haru froze in her steps.
Sneaking up to the corner, she discreetly peeked at what was happening on the other side of the bend.
"Throw her in." a man ordered, getting into the driver's seat of a large black van.
A group of what looked to be ten black-clad people surrounded the vehicle, the majority of them carrying some kind of dangerous-looking weaponry that Haru was sure shouldn't be legal according to the average person according to the World Peace Agreements.
Weaponry wasn't allowed to be out of a code secured weapons locker, let alone used PERIOD during the Long Weekend, what in the world was going on?
Thankfully though, none of those weapons were pointed anywhere close to where Haru was hiding, none of the figures appearing as though they hadn't even noticed that she was there.
She was as of yet hidden, she had to make sure it remained that way.
They must have believed that the forest path isn't worthy of supervision. And they would have been right as very few people tend to use this path, only about two every week. The one that used the road the most, happened to be Miura Haru.
As the girl watched the group, she notices a spot of color within all that black.
It was a figure, a figure dressed in colorful training clothes, sporting a head of familiar messy golden-brown hair. She was being carried rather carelessly between two of the black-dressed men, supervised by another figure, a shorter, more muscular figure that to her obviously was of higher standing than the other black-dressed men.
The girl felt her heartbeat quicken at the sight. Fear flooding her system.
The worst part was, she recognized the girl.
The girl that had scolded her for jumping to conclusions. The girl that had picked up a homeless boy from the street and treated him like her actual younger brother, a boy that obviously looked up to her like she was his actual older sister.
A girl who's family she's insulted, a girl who's close male friend she openly accused of being a horrible boyfriend for the girl.
A girl that looked to be kidnapped right in front of her right now.
Eyes wide, the girl slowly, carefully making sure her bags didn't make a sound, lifted her gem up even higher towards the scene, her thumb quickly muting the device before she activated the camera function.
Making sure both the flash was turned off along with the sound, the girl started taking pictures of the scene playing out in front of her.
The messy-haired girl being hauled into the van by two of the black-dressed figures.
The black-dressed people silently slamming the door shut.
The back of the van as it drove away.
A few moments after the van disappeared around the corner, the girl stood frozen in place, gem still raised in the direction the vehicle had disappeared down, her eyes wide with fear at what she had just witnessed.
She had to tell someone.
She had to show the pictures to someone!
But first…
But first, she would have to actually check-up with the girl's family…
What if she ran to the police with the pictures and it turned out that the girl in question was actually at home? It sounded weird in her mind but she really needed to double-check on this…
She needed to go to the girl's house.
Putting a foot behind her, the girl quickly spun around in place, completely forgetting about her multiple bags, and ran.
Gokudera was having a very slow day.
In fact, the past few days had been pretty slow.
Juudaime had given him a call the day before to inform him why he wouldn't find her at her house until at least Sunday. That she had moved forward to the more practical part of her training, the part that would no doubt to be a lot more dangerous than anything she'd been doing up until that point, and so, Reborn had taken her to a remote location that she admitted she'd slept through the road to where she would have less of a risk of being seen by someone who just, wouldn't understand.
He couldn't help but feel a bit left out of it all.
He was the one person aside from Reborn himself that actually would understand how she could light herself on fire, and he hadn't been told of the training progress.
Juudaime had told him that she would only be gone for as long as it took for her to learn how to activate the flames at will and that hopefully wouldn't take more than a week at most, but that didn't make the feel of abandonment any more bearable.
Growling, the delinquent stepped out of the bathroom.
Dressed in nothing but sweatpants, he used the towel hanging around his shoulders to dry off his dripping locks.
Standing in front of the window, he looked out over the town with a bored expression.
Nothing to do.
Absolutely nothing.
A sharp sound dragged him out of his thoughts.
Turning his head, his eyes locked onto his gem lying on the arm-rest of his couch.
He frowned.
He couldn't recall the last time he had heard that signal. He mostly gets texts, and even those are very rare, the last one he got being from Juudaime herself.
Still frowning, he snatched the communication device from the couch.
Hesitating, he opened the message.
For a moment, his face showed absolutely nothing
Slowly, his eyes widened, widening even further with each word that registered into his brain.
His gem dropped out of his hand, clattering onto the floor.
Fear spreading over his face, Gokudera threw away the towel somewhere he didn't care, grabbing the first shirt that was within his reach, he snatched the gem back up from the floor as he rushed out of the apartment, barely remembering that he needed shoes before he was out the door.
Rushing out of the building, he almost ran into someone.
A certain someone that he actually knew.
Yamamoto had been walking back home from having had the handle of his bat replaced. He'd looked at it a few days before and found it almost completely worn out. How he had not noticed that before, he had no idea.
It had been lucky that the owner of the sports shop liked him and offered to change the handle for him for free.
The bat had been resting on his shoulder when Yamamoto had passed a large apartment building for those with larger bank accounts than he did and he athlete almost crashed into a familiar silver-haired figure rushing out of the large doors.
Gokudera stopped running, his hair damp and all over the place as he turned to face his fellow classmate.
"Wha-" Yamamoto began, only to stop at the sight of Gokudera's expression.
It was an expression of absolute panic, wide eyes devastation and desperation that filled Yamamoto with a sense of dread.
Gokudera panicked?
What in the world could have made the seemingly most hot-headed person in school panicked?
It didn't take much before the answer hit him.
Something must have happened to Sawada.
Ruffling his hair, Gokudera let out a loud growl.
"Come on." he grumbled, waving with his hand in a 'come here' motion.
Yamamoto didn't even hesitate before following the young man that had made it perfectly clear that he hated his guts.
He couldn't dwell on that right now though.
The two teenagers rushed towards the parked motorbike, not even bothering to bring out the collapsible helmets as they got on, Gokudera kicking the engine into a roar before they sped off down the road.
A/N: Before I get any comments on it, I am not a Tsuna x Reborn shipper, I feel like it's weird and I would much prefer it if the two of them remain student and teacher with no underlying romantic tension, I do however approve of them having something of a parent/child relationship. I am not trashing anyone's ship, I don't care who you ship so long as you don't try and force me to ship the same, many potential ships have been ruined for me because I have felt as though it has been shoved down my throat whilst listening to people chanting "SHIP IT! SHIP IT! SHIP IT! SHIP IT!", so if you could refrain from doing that I would be much grateful, shipping is supposed to be fun and if you feel like you cannot read this story because it has a ship that you do not approve of, I fully understand, you can just stop reading, you don't have to give me a reason why I'm not going to suddenly start cramming in ships that I personally don't feel like they fit into the story just because people threaten to stop reading.
Just to put this out there, I haven't put any official ships in this part of the story simply because there is no real shipping fuel that pushes the story forward. There will be plenty of that in future arcs but in this one, I wanted to give the characters proper foothold in their relationships so future developments don't cause it to topple over.
That's the thing with stories for me, I have no problem with romance but with most stories I read, it's only interesting until the couple actually get together, I don't read fluff for the sake of fluff that's just not my preference. Anyway, what I wanna get with this is that if two people happen to get together in this story, don't expect me to spend that much time describing their life as a couple, that is not how I write, they will just BE a couple.
How many long-running stories allow couples to just BE couples nowadays?
I legit wanna know that so I couple potentially check them out, I have on-again-off-again relationships and romances where EVERYTHING threatens the couple being together, that is not realistic.
Anyway, that has been me ranting about romance and relationships in media, please tell me what you think about the chapter and I'll be back with the next one next week.
This has been:
A message from Her Ladyship.