Shortly after the new year, Hotaru was returning home from the library when she heard a man with a rough voice shout in the alley.
"Kill him, he's just a kid!"
Perhaps a little recklessly, Hotaru ran towards the sound. She couldn't have done anything, she would later think. Saturn's powers were out of reach for who-knew-how-long, and she was physically a ten-year-old girl without much strength if she couldn't become Sailor Saturn.
But in that moment, with the possibility of someone in danger, she moved just like any one of the guardians might have.
Hotaru ran expecting to see a young boy being threatened with physical harm if not outright death by two or more people. She ran in expecting to cause a distraction of some sorts, maybe take the boy and run into the safety offered by broad daylight and the public eye.
She saw instead a sight so unbelievable she stopped dead in her tracks, and nearly rubbed at her eyes to confirm that what she was seeing was not a trick of the light like she had immediately assumed.
In the alleyway, dark and seemingly an entirely different world from the brightness of the open street that it opened into stood a young boy, maybe one or two years younger than her physical age of ten. His back was to her, but in his hands he held two blunt weapons, a little like clubs or batons but with perpendicular handles.
Ahead of him, further down the alley, were two young men. No, Hotaru corrected herself, upon catching sight of the uniforms they wore. Middle schoolers, from one of the local middle schools. Namimori Middle, if she wasn't wrong.
Between the young boy with the blunt weapons and the students were three more students, lying on the ground. From the groaning sounds they were making, they were still alive – though in pain.
Hotaru hadn't expected this. She had no idea what to do, with all her hastily-made plans not applicable to this situation.
One of the two still on their feet yelled – more of a shout of terror than a battle cry – and charged.
The younger boy lunged, and with the blunt sound of something solid being hit with a great force, slammed his weapons into his opponent. A blow to the side of the head later, he was down.
Then – and Hotaru pinched herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming the sight in front of her – he jumped, one single lunge enough for him to clear the distance between where he had been and where the last middle school student stood. Two swift blows later and he was the only one left standing.
Essentially, what she was witnessing could be summed up by 'five middle school students, against one prepubescent boy, with the latter coming out on top'.
At this point Hotaru had no idea what to say, or even what to think, let alone what she was supposed to do in this situation. It was a very one-sided violence, but it didn't add up in the logical aspect of things.
The boy turned around after lightly kicking at the middle schoolers a little, almost like a cat pawing at a toy with fading interest. He had a face that was delicate in his young age, fine-boned and aristocratic. Dressed primly in clothes that were best worn in sun-lit rooms for playing instruments or reading books, he looked like an heir to a wealthy family, and that made his standing in the dark of the alley among the evidence of violence so contradictory.
The disconnect between his appearance and the scene before her, however, became less so when she saw his eyes for the first time. Even in his young face his eyes, the color of steel, were sharp. They flickered over her and Hotaru almost called for her powers as Saturn. Her magic might have been out of her reach, but her instincts as a living being warned her to be on guard. Those were the eyes of someone looking for a fight, who lived for it.
He evidently found nothing worth his time in her, however, because he tucked his blunt weapons away and began to walk towards her with the determined pace of one who did not and would not stop for the sake of any obstacles in his way. Not towards her because he had business with her, but because she happened to be in the way of his exit.
"Move," he ordered her curtly as he approached, not even slowing his steps.
Hotaru did so unconsciously, still stunned. Had she seen things wrong? A glance towards the still-groaning, nearly unconscious middle school students told her that no, she hadn't.
The better question to be asking, then would be: was he human?
By the time she had accepted and realized that yes, what she had witnessed really had happened, the boy with the melee weapons was gone from her sight.
"Kawahira-san says he's a child of the Hibari Clan," Hotaru ended her daily report with that. The one he had mentioned in passing before when showing her around Namimori. He had not been joking when he called him violent.
"What the hell," Haruka muttered, and was followed by the light sound of a slap reprimanding her for her language. "Ow."
"Language," scolded Setsuna. "Michiru, what do you know about that family?"
Of course Michiru would be the one to know. Hotaru listened.
"The Hibari are . . . odd," Michiru said, with an audible hesitation.
Kawahira had said the same. Something about the family guarding Namimori for reasons. It was odd that they seemed to send their young children to fight, Hotaru could say now that she had seen for herself.
"It's more than that," Michiru explained. "They . . . well, it's kind of an unsaid secret that they have ties to the yakuza."
"Um," said Hotaru, because those were words that usually never boded well. Also, that both explained a lot and simultaneously brought up more questions.
"Not in a bad way," Michiru said hastily, though how one could have ties to the yakuza in a 'non-bad way', Hotaru wasn't too sure. "They're more like . . . vigilantes, in a way."
What she next described was a family that was called eccentric for being legal – mostly – and having more of an obsession with keeping their 'territory' under their protection.
"You must have met the second son of the current clan head," Michiru said, as Hotaru thought about this new information. "It was fairly big news about ten years ago when the head got remarried to his current wife because she was a shrine maiden, and about a year later, I think, they announced the birth of a second child."
She kept it simple, but all of them picked up on the potential for more details that would likely turn the story into something as sensational as a morning drama.
"You seem well-informed," Setsuna noted. None of them were very interested in gossip or sensational drama.
"There was talk about the first son being engaged at the time, and since he was around my age my grandfather considered the match." Hotaru couldn't see her, but she could almost hear the elegant shrug that Michiru did when she smiled that secretive smile. "I wasn't going to let that happen, but I still picked up on the gossip going around."
"Cheers to that," Haruka murmured, voice lowered with fondness.
Hotaru smiled. Even over the phone, they never changed. Distance between them and circumstances aside it was like old times, and familiarity brought comfort.
"I refreshed my memory and looked into it some more when I learned where Hotaru was going," Michiru added. "They might be a weird family and have unorthodox methods in doing things, but they protect their own."
Unorthodox. Thinking of the young boy and the swift brutality with which he had wielded his weapons, Hotaru thought that was a mild way of putting things.
"It'll do," Haruka grunted, as if she found it unpreferable but not completely unacceptable. Given Haruka's own preferences to let her fists speak on her behalf sometimes, Hotaru wasn't surprised.
"It seems odd, letting their son go around beating up people in their territory," Setsuna pointed out. "Are we sure it'll be safe for Hotaru?"
"Hotaru said he beat up middle schoolers in an alley," Haruka replied. "In my experience, that's the age when idiots start doing the stupidest things and find themselves in need of a good beating to get some sense into their heads, and if they were hanging around an alley like wannabe gangsters? They probably weren't up to anything good in the first place."
Hotaru, remembering what the middle schoolers had shouted, had to agree in some parts. Terrified or not, to think that it would be okay to kill a 'kid'? It didn't speak positively for their characters.
She had looked over the people in the alley briefly, after the young boy had departed. No one had broken bones, or signs of permanent damage. Just bruises – both literally on their bodies and figuratively to their prides, both things they could recover from.
"He didn't hurt Hotaru," Michiru added in the young Hibari's defense.
"Fair," agreed Setsuna. "But Hotaru, are you okay with this?"
Hotaru could guess the reason why Michiru had only now told her about this. She wouldn't have not known, as evidenced by how she had been able to immediately provide information about the Hibari Clan.
Likely, she had believed in them to be enough in keeping Hotaru safe. Or, at the very least in keeping an environment clean enough for Hotaru to live in without concern. If Hotaru hadn't asked or run into the young Hibari boy, then she could have gone on living without knowing about the clan that kept Namimori safe through their unusual ways.
And now that she knew, Michiru wanted to let her know the whole story, or at least as close to the whole story as she could get and was checking if she was uncomfortable with the perspective.
"I am," she replied. She – they, in general, as sailor guardians – really had no room to be looking down on unorthodox methods of preserving safety. "Besides, I just wanted to know if he was an alien we didn't know about."
Haruka quietly muttered half-hearted curses towards the Sailor Starlights. She didn't really mean it, Hotaru knew, but at the same time it was a matter of pride as a sailor guardian protecting the solar system from outside threats. Refugees and peaceful intentions aside, pride sometimes meant something more than amends. Fond grudges that were more things to be ribbed about at what could be considered friendly comrades that had once fought together rather than actual resentment.
"Your communicator should alert you – and us – if you ever ran into a visitor, approved or not," Michiru reminded her. "We're keeping a very close eye on the signal."
"I know. I just . . . wanted to make sure." Because what she had witnessed earlier that day had been movements Hotaru would have said were impossible on a regular child his age. But maybe she shouldn't have been so quick to say something was impossible. Eight-year old boys could take on middle schoolers in a fight, and more importantly come out victorious. Sure.
What an odd town, Hotaru thought, not for the first time. The way she thought it, mildly fond and exasperated, was a testament to how she was beginning to grow used to living in Namimori. The height of average, perhaps, meant that everything was average to the town, and therefore not to be fussed about.
Hotaru would think the same thing a month later, when she went out early and witnessed another boy around the same age as the unnamed Hibari boy with short white hair shouting 'extreme' at the top of his lungs while dashing around town. At that point in time she wasn't even confused or bewildered, but simply accepted the sight of him as another quirk of the town. Hotaru was growing to be quite the model citizen of Namimori, able to see anything and take it in as it was.
AN: earlier plans had Hibari be a cousin of Rei's but that was changed because of reasons (one of which is a red pacifier Arcobaleno). So in Petrichor canon Rei and Hibari are not related / know each other. And Hotaru's second friend she makes before canon starts is not Hibari.
Sweet Dreams~