Another Path Part 24 : That doesn't have good public transportation

Arcobaleno.

This Verde was a bloody Arcobaleno! The baby-like appearance with an adult's mind, the green pacifier hanging from his tiny neck, everything was there to prove it!

Of course, when the green-haired fake infant arrived on stage and introduced himself, most of the audience had reacted with dismissive outrage at the perceived impersonation. But Verde had only snapped his fingers once, and the most outspoken of the protesters had been immediately arrested by the security and dragged out of the conference room. The tiny scientist had then summarily explained that he suffered from a rare disease that prevented his body from growing normally, before he went into a detailed explanation of a physics theory that Tsuna didn't understand at all. That had served as proof of his identity and had more or less appeased the adult scientists in the room, so the conference started normally.

Of course, the four members of Caeruleus in attendance knew better. When protests had started, they had remained in their seats and watched the scene with disbelief -except for Byakuran, who Tsuna would have sworn was snickering under his breath. Who would have thought they would meet another Arcobaleno in a civilian, perfectly legal convention?

Spanner had only observed the situation with a single raised eyebrow and kept sucking on his lollipop despite the no-food warnings plastered on every exit.

Thankfully, calm eventually returned to the audience and the actual lecture began.

As expected, everything went way over Tsuna's head, but he didn't mind. The looks of fascination and joy on Hayato and Shoichi's faces -as well as Spanner's but he wasn't nearly as close to the blond- was well worth it, as was the amused interest displayed by Byakuran. He could deal with two little hours of boredom to keep his friends happy.

Half an hour went by without a hitch, when suddenly Tsuna's Intuition flared for no reason he could pinpoint. There was a sense of urgency in the warning, so the Sky worriedly looked around the conference room to locate the problem. Try as he might, he couldn't find anything amiss.

That's when he caught Verde's next words. Truthfully, he had zoned out some time ago, when it had become explicitly clear that, try as he might, he would not understand anything of the lecture, but that one sentence rang alarm bells in his mind.

"One such new energy can theoretically be produced by specific humans, which this device has been built to identify."

Now, Tsuna was no scientist, in fact, he was much more inclined towards human sciences and languages than physics or biology, but his instincts were sharp, and that he understood at once.

Flames. Verde was talking about Flames and he was currently waving a device that supposedly showed people who could wield them; despite the fact that Vindice would fall on anyone who outed that secret to the world.

Verde probably assumed that no-one in the room was Flame-active. Flame users were extremely rare, and the overwhelming majority of them were in the Mafia, or other illegal organizations. The odds of there being even one individual with even a modicum of active Flame in the two-hundred or so scientists in the audience were astronomically low, so it was no real risk on his part.

But that was without counting on Tsuna's ridiculous ability to land face first in dangerous or compromising situations.

He shared a glance with Byakuran, who had actually followed the whole lecture so far. From his concerned face, Tsuna understood that the white-haired teen had arrived to the same conclusion as him. Hayato and Shoichi, on the other hand, were so engrossed in the conference that they had not realized the implication of Verde's words.

They could not leave the room right now. They were all located in the middle of their row with at least eight adults on either side. It would take too long to make their way out, and Verde was already lowering his tiny finger towards the button that would start his device.

There was only one real solution left. "Crouch down on the floor!" Whispered urgently Tsuna to his friends. Luckily, they all heard him, and obeyed his instruction at once. Even Spanner followed his order, although it was clear from the look in his eyes and his raised eyebrow that he didn't understand why. Shoichi and Hayato sported the same bewildered expression, but their silent inquiry was answered when Verde's machine finally started.

A brilliant Flame flickered immediately on all four of their chests and over their hands. Tsuna's and Byakuran's were orange, Shoichi's was yellow and Hayato's was mainly red, with wisps of blue, yellow, purple and green.

Spanner -whose body had not lit up since he was not Flame-active- was looking at them with awe and curiosity. Thankfully, he was smart enough to understand that now was not the time to ask questions.

Since they were all crouched and curled up on the floor between seats, the light of their fire didn't really reach the other spectators, so nobody noticed the Flames. The people seated in the same row as the group looked at them weirdly, but barely saw a glow and assumed the children were doing something on their cellphones, which explained them crouching on the floor to hide the shining screens. It earned them some disgruntled and judgmental glares, but their secret was safe.

Soon after, the Flames died down by themselves and the children tentatively returned to their seats, with sheepish smiles to their offended neighbors. Spanner's eyes were brimming with silent questions, but that would have to wait, and his rather innocent curiosity was not what alarmed Tsuna the most.

From the stage, Verde was looking straight at them, although his mouth kept automatically voicing his lecture as though nothing had happened.

Tsuna was getting a bad feeling from that unwavering, piecing gaze, but he reasoned that even if the scientist had understood or seen what had taken place, it was not an issue. Verde was an Arcobaleno, so according to what Fon had told them, he had to already know about Flames.

The other issue would be that he somehow recognized them -him- as the target of Vongola's and Iemitsu's search. But from what he had gathered, Verde was a reclusive man -baby- that was only interested in his experiments and had little to no contact with the outside world. With some luck, that included the Mafia, and the Lightning Arcobaleno either would not identify him as Iemitsu's lost son, or wouldn't care and would not inform anybody.

The rest of the conference went by without anymore incidents, but Tsuna was still tense, and even his friends' enthusiasm was severely dampened. Verde kept looking in their direction all through the lecture, and the brunet couldn't wait to leave.

Finally, the two hours were over and the members of Caeruleus with Spanner were among the first to leave the room. Still, the brunet couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching them, and after looking around the area, he realized that the impression came from the many surveillance cameras. Surely, there was nothing unusual about being watched through cameras in such a place, and the unease he felt only came from his shaken nerves. The same went for his buzzing Intuition: it only hummed in his head without any focus and was probably a side-effect from the earlier scare.

Tsuna offered to keep looking at the stalls, but nobody's heart was in it anymore, and Spanner was obviously waiting for them to be alone to bury them with questions about the strange fire he had seen escaping their bodies. They called it a day and followed the blond to collect his 'Mosca' from a nearby back alley.

The robot was still in its crate, and from the lack of bloodstains or dead bodies, they all assumed nobody had tried to steal it. Small mercies.

The crate was about a meter tall, and half as large, which reassured Tsuna a little. From the was Spanner had described his machine of death, he had expected it to tower at two meters at least. And this way, they could transport it on its wheels without being too conspicuous.

The bus stop was completely deserted, but that meant nobody was there to hear the blond's questions. Still, Tsuna asked him to wait some more until they were all safely between the walls of their home before explaining what had happened during the conference.

The bus home arrived early for once, which was welcome. Apart from the driver, it was empty, which Tsuna thought was odd. It was 6.30 pm and a Thursday, surely people would be coming back from work at this hour, no? But once more, he didn't look a gifted horse in the mouth and settled quietly in the back of the vehicle. His Intuition had been buzzing aimlessly nonstop since the incident during the lecture, so he didn't pay any mind to it.

It was only ten minutes later that he really began to worry. "Isn't that the wrong road?" Asked Shoichi as he looked out. Indeed, the countryside they saw was not the same as they had seen that morning. "Did we take the wrong bus?"

"I don't think so." Replied Hayato before turning towards the front of the bus. "Hey, mister driver, is this the bus to Napoli?"

The driver didn't so much as hint that he had heard the question, so Hayato asked again, louder this time. Still no reaction.

The silveret's short temper led him to go directly to the front of the bus to talk some sense into the rude driver. But when he finally got close enough to look the man into the eyes, he only blinked and turned towards his companions. "Fuck, I think we have a problem, guys."

As if finally hearing his words, the bus suddenly stopped. The teens all gathered next to Hayato to see what the issue was and why they were no longer moving. That's when they had a good look at the driver for the first time and understood why the Storm was so concerned.

The driver was a robot.

A well-crafted one, at that. From afar, he would not look strange at all, but from up close, you could see that his eyes were unnaturally still, staring fixedly at the road, and that his 'skin' didn't have the various shades and colors that real flesh sported.

"I think we should get out." Muttered Shoichi in fear. There was something very wrong afoot here, and he didn't want to stay to see what it was. Never mind that they would have to make the trek back home by foot.

The door was easy to open -Byakuran just pressed the button near the driver, who didn't bat an eye, literally- and they all left the vehicle as one. They took a look at their surroundings.

They were on an empty, and clearly unused road, with a forest on one side, and endless fields on the other. Apart from the dirt road beneath their feet, there was no trace of civilization around. The sun was slowly setting over the tall trees, and the growing shadows only made the scene even more eerie.

It was the perfect setting for a horror movie, thought Tsuna distantly (and he blamed Kyoya for his familiarity with that type of movie. The Cloud loved watching them, sneering at the 'foolish herbivores' that got killed off one by one, and mocking silently the lack of realism when someone was butchered. But since everyone watched these movies together most of the time, Tsuna had refused to allow the raven to buy more accurate ones; I-pin and Lambo were fine with watching sprays of red paint fly over meters, but they were still too young to see anything more graphic -former baby hitmen or not).

And as if hearing the Sky's thoughts about horror movies, killer robots suddenly jumped down from where they were hidden on the roof of the bus. And yes, they really were killer robots; not as bulky as Spanner's Mosca seemed to be given the size of its crate, but the blades and guns built on them were pretty telling.

There were four of them. In the split second before they rushed towards the five boys, Tsuna noticed that the robots looked very top-of-the-line. They were shaped like humans, their edges were smooth, and all the 'insides' were protected by metal panes that didn't hinder their moves.

And god did they move fast! Tsuna and Byakuran barely had enough time to pull Spanner and Shoichi respectively out of the way before two bladed arms fell exactly were they had been standing. Hayato was quick to use one of his smokescreens (one of the few non-lethal weapons that the more peaceful members of Caeruleus had managed to convince the silveret to carry, although they still had no idea where he stored them) to hide them all from the two robots that had remained behind and were taking aim, and the five teens rushed to take cover behind the trees.

"What the hell is happening?!" Shoichi whispered loudly while holding his stomach. His stress-related pains had become much less regular these days -Kyoya's random surprise attacks to keep them sharp and trained did wonders, for all that they were terrifying; or rather, because they were terrifying- but they had all been high-strung since the conference, and this was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

"Fighting robots." Stated Spanner with his deadpan face, although his eyes were shining with awe when he looked at the smokescreen. Hayato seemed to have caught it too, because Tsuna could feel him at his right building up his indignant rant about useless answers and misplaced feelings of admiration.

"We need to destroy them." Cut in the Sky before his Storm could explode. "They're too fast to outrun, and we don't even know where we are anyway. Any ideas how to take them out?"

"Can't we just blow them up?" Asked an impatient Hayato, who already had plenty of dynamite in his hands.

"They look a bit too advanced and synchronized for that." Shot down Byakuran whose infuriating smile was still there, but had dimmed. "You saw how they moved, they aimed straight at the two weakest members. They know enough about us to decide on a strategy, and if we just rush in without one, we're going to get turned into mincemeat."

"And they're waiting for us." Added Shoichi, who was still bent over with his stomachache. "They have had all the time in the world to get out of that smoke by now, or to shoot in the direction they saw us leave. They're waiting to see what we're going to do, and you can bet that they're prepared for whatever we're going to throw at them." He analyzed. The red-head had always been very good at making a strategy. "We need to do something that they are not expecting, or we're in trouble. Those robots look too complex to fall for a straight on attack."

Hayato nodded his agreement. Now that he had time to cool down, his smarts were back and he could look at the situation clearly; his friends' assessment was correct : these robots were after them specifically and were likely to know how they usually fought. They would have to figure out who had sent them later, once they were safely back home.

The silveret looked at the only boy that wasn't part of their group hesitantly. "With Spanner here, can we still..." He trailed off.

Thankfully, his wonderful Boss (although he wasn't allowed to call him that) understood what he meant. "It's not like he hasn't seen our Flames before; and we were going to tell him about them anyway after what happened during the lecture. There's no need to hold back now, but I think the robots will be expecting this. There's no reason for anyone to attack us if they don't at least know that we're Flame-active."

They all fell silent after that, each of them trying to think of something to catch the robots by surprise.

"My Mosca is still over there." Eventually said Spanner.

"You can check if it's fine after we deal with the fucking robots trying to murder us!" Dismissed Hayato angrily. Why couldn't civilians get their priorities right, for fuck's sake?

"What I mean," Spanner whispered patiently. "Is that it could be the distraction you're looking for." All four members of Caeruleus looked at him in interest from where they were taking cover, so he kept talking. "My Mosca has a voice recognition system. It's not yet very elaborate yet, but it can understand a few prerecorded commands, like 'Shoot down the enemies'. It will shoot at anyone it doesn't recognize until it is manually turned off, or any threat is down, which means you will be targeted as well, but it should be enough to take the attention of the robots off you for a couple seconds." He shrugged. "I just though this was something that we could use."

Some part of Tsuna really wanted to know why such an order was among the few recorded ones, and why there was no vocal order to make it stop. A much larger part of him didn't want to know, so he let it go and quickly planned their attack with Shoichi, Hayato and Byakuran. Spanner was no fighter, and unlike Shoichi, he didn't even have some basics or a weapon, so he would remain hidden and only order his Mosca from afar.

The smokescreen was already pretty much gone by then, so they promptly put more space between each other, to have some room to dodge any bullets, and Tsuna waved at Spanner to begin. "Mosca, shoot down the enemies!" Shouted the blond.

Immediately, the crate fell open, gunfire was heard near the bus and the members of Caeruleus finally saw what Spanner's personal death robot looked like. Its head looked like some kind of gas mask, and was placed on a bulky, almost round body covered by black cloth and a few scraps of metal to keep the cloth down. Instead of legs, it moved with what strongly reminded Tsuna of 'tank wheels', and two stubby arms that ended with guns instead of hand were aimed at the enemy robots.

Said enemy robots turned around to get rid of the new threat (although its bullets were unfortunately not able to pierce through their defenses, it still did its job of attracting their attention), and Tsuna rushed ahead and called his Flames. He immediately fell in Hyper Dying Mode, as Fon had called it (he still though the name sounded really stupid) and targeted the head of the closest robot.

Thanks to the Mosca's distraction, he managed to reach it and with the help of his Sky Flames to enhance his punch and to melt the metal, he neatly decapitated the first enemy who fell lifelessly and didn't get up. One to go, three more left.

The three remaining robots at once decided that he was a greater threat than the Mosca who had not managed to harm them, and turned to face him, as did Spanner's invention, who didn't recognize the brunet as an ally.

But that had been planned, and this was the moment Hayato and Byakuran entered the fray. The youngest threw explosive after explosive at the most isolated enemy. His Flame-enhanced dynamite didn't do much against the thing, who had evidently been built to resist explosions, but it still managed to dent and bump its protective armor. As a result it switched targets to the silveret, who kept attacking and dodging. Hayato was more suited for taking down large amount of relatively weak opponents, not single, powerful ones, so it had been decided that his job would be to keep one busy until Tsuna or Byakuran could take care of it.

Meanwhile, Byakuran was facing off against another killer robot. Tsuna and the others had only vaguely seen what the older teen could do, since he only rarely participated in their training sessions, but they had seen enough to know that he was a powerful and skilled fighter. Indeed, the white-haired boy was managing to keep up with his opponent, while evading its bullets and the Mosca's. He himself was shooting some Sky Flames -which were white for some reason, but clearly felt 'Sky-like'- at the robot. He was making some progress, but most of his attacks needed him to focus and charge them to be at their most efficient, and he couldn't find the time to concentrate to build them up while dodging bullets and sword swipes from all sides. Unlike Tsuna, he was not a physical fighter and relied almost solely on his Flames, in fact, he didn't even have any kind of weapon.

Tsuna himself was at a standstill with the third robot. Those things either adapted very fast or had knowledge of their fighting styles beforehand, because after the beheading of the first enemy, his current opponent was making sure to keep the brunet at a distance. Like Byakuran, Tsuna had a few powerful long-distance Flame-based attacks, but they needed a little time to charge, and he didn't have said time when he was kept on his toes by the killer robot on one side, and the large area bullet rain of the Mosca on the other (he would really have to have a few words about security measures with Spanner once everything was over).

But all killer robots were either down or kept busy, and that had been the plan all along if they couldn't defeat them easily enough one-on-one.

Because while Spanner was taking cover in the woods, and Tsuna, Hayato and Byakuran were distracting the three enemy robots, who were the only ones elaborated enough to select a target based on threat, Shoichi was not being idle.

He had used one of the many gadgets he always kept with him : an expanding umbrella that he had tweaked to double as a shield when powered by Flames. Lightning Flames were the most efficient, of course, but Sun Flames did the trick as well. Once the four most dangerous robots were distracted, that left only the Mosca to take care of.

Shoichi didn't really have the reflexes, instinct or speed to avoid bullets, but since there only was one unmoving robot aiming his way on and off, it was no problem to protect himself with his umbrella. He took a long detour to make sure to avoid the three one-on-one battles, but he easily reached the Mosca.

Spanner had explained earlier in the day that, although his Mosca had been primarily built to be autonomous, he had added manual commands behind his robot to control it. With the blond's instructions, it was fairly easy to stop the rampaging machine and instead aim it directly at one of the enemy robots' head, specifically, the one fighting against Tsuna.

With the Mosca shooting only one robot rather than jumping from one target to another and aiming at a single point, the bullets that had been useless so far started to have some effect, and slowly started to distort the metal. Given enough time, it was clear that it would eventually pierce through.

Suddenly, the killer robot was facing not one, but two opponents, and it was now loosing. Its attention was divided, and its reaction time was worsening. Tsuna was slowly closing in, step by step, and between on dodge and the next he was finally within striking range. The head was already under heavy fire by Shoichi and the Mosca, so the Sky hit the torso with his Flame-covered fist, melted the protective armor, and yanked out as much wire and components as he could.

The robot crumbled to the ground.

Shoichi aimed the Mosca at Byakuran's opponent, while Tsuna immediately went to help Hayato, who was still throwing his dynamite at his robot to keep it at bay.

Working together, with the Storm attacking relentlessly to make an opening for his Sky, it only took a few minutes to behead the third robot. Tsuna stayed back while the silveret went to support Byakuran and give him enough time with Shoichi to focus his Flames and unleash a powerful enough attack to pierce right through the last robot and leave it with a large hole where his stomach would have been had it been human.

Tsuna distantly kept an eye on his friends' battle, but his attention was elsewhere. Now that the danger was dealt with or almost dealt with, his Intuition was telling him something else and he was trying to pinpoint what.

Once the last killer robot fell down and didn't move for a moment, they all breathed a sigh of relief. Spanner gingerly came out of his cover in the woods and joined the other teens to slump down on the side of the bullet-riddled bus.

But Tsuna wasn't able to relax as much as his friends, no matter how much he wanted to. His Intuition was still ringing in his ears, not because of a threat, but it definitely wanted to bring something to his attention. He let his eyes wander, hoping to catch whatever it was that was setting off his instincts.

The top of the trees shifted a bit, brushed by the winds, but the brunet noticed one tree stayed suspiciously unmoved by the breeze.

Ah, so this is what it was trying to tell me, realized Tsuna. He gathered his will, accidentally making his eyes shine orange once more, pushed himself up and looked straight at the too still tree.

"I know you're here." He said, loud enough to be heard from the top of said tree. His friends jumped in surprise, but quickly took on their battle stances. "You can come out now."

This is finally done! Writing this chapter was like pulling teeth, and I'm not even satisfied with it. I like the way the fight went, but I absolutely hate the way I wrote it, but since it has been a while since my last chapter (two months), I figured you guys would rather I post it anyway (please tell me if that's not the case, I'll work on it).

Also, just for the record, I will not write about the Simon (Shimon?) Family. There just isn't enough material (manga or fanfiction) about them for me to not write them as cartoonish characters with no depth. Not that I'm saying that the other characters I've added so far are not cartoonish, but I'd like to think I've somehow managed to add some kind of depth to them. Let me have my dreams, people!

Anyway, thank you all for your reviews, they are what give me the motivation to keep writing, even when the story doesn't want to be written, and I hope you are not too disappointed by this chapter (all in all, there's not much that happens in it...).