The next morning, Hide found himself half naked in the woods, covered in dirt and scratches from, he assumed, running through the forest all night. He stumbled around further before finally encountering Yaani and Reborn, each appeared to be enjoying a morning coffee that had been brewed with the help of a campfire.
"You're back!" Yaani raised her coffee cup as if to cheer him, "Good job finding all that fish and water last night! We now have plenty to make it at least five days!"
Hide squinted his eyes as he slowly recalled finding a nearby stream and creating a make-shift fishing net to catch a ton of fish last night. He fell to the ground in embarrassment since he was still in his underwear.
"At least this time it wasn't in public," he groaned inwardly.
"No time for napping, Hide," Reborn commanded as he dumped coffee on Hide's head to wake him up, fortunately it was not scalding hot, "You only have two weeks to get strong enough to beat up your cousin."
"Please don't phrase it that way," Hide grimaced.
"Plus, it's time that you show Yaani here what your weapon is," the tutor continued, "Her background may prove to be useful."
"Her background?" he looked up at the woman who was taking out several small yellow boxes and putting on several rings of varying sizes but all had yellow gems on them. She flashed Hide a smile and looked up at him expectantly.
"W-Wait, I didn't bring the boots!"
"Already ahead of you," Reborn placed the white leather cowboy boots, which Hide could have sworn that he had buried in his backyard while Reborn wasn't looking.
Yaani was already closely examining the boots and then walked around Hide as if taking in his still half-naked physique. She sighed and shook her head in disappointment, "I see, now I know why Mr. Yuuto had me come all the way out to Japan. Unfortunately, Reborn, I can't do much with this. He doesn't even know how bring out his own flame."
"We'll work on it," Reborn explained, "By the time two weeks is up, Hide will have mastered being able to use his flame on his own. I even made a training schedule as well."
Yaani reluctantly looked at the schedule and shrugged, "Fine, but don't blame me if you don't get the results you want."
As she held the schedule in her hand, Hide caught a glimpse of it and gawked.
~5-6AM: Warm-up
~6-8AM: Special training with Yaani
~8-12pm: Strength training with Reborn
~ 12-4pm: Lessons on Dying Will Flame. Bring out your own flame, stupid!
~4-8pm: Strength training again
~8-12AM: Night time strength training
~12AM-5AM: Sleep
"Wait! I'm only getting 5 hours of sleep!" Hide yelped, "And when am I supposed to eat!?"
"Do it when you sleep," Reborn flatly responded, "We don't have the luxury of breaks with the short time span we have been given."
"Going by this schedule, then now is my turn, right Reborn?" Yaani asked.
"Ciaossu," he nodded in affirmation.
"Very good then," she smiled cheerfully as she tossed the schedule aside and performed an impromptu pirouette, surprising Hide as he swayed backwards from her sudden position, "Hide, how about a dance lesson?"
"D-Dance?" the boy yelped, "How is that going to help with my fighting?"
While still in the pirouette, she turned into a spin and leaped into the air, seeming to hang for a moment before gently and gracefully landing on the points of her toes. From her posture to the way she held her arms to the serene smile on her face, at that moment she appeared as graceful as a swan.
"I used to be a ballerina, you know," she spoke as she began moving to the opposite side of the room while spinning. "It gave me poise, balance and strength!"
Upon finishing her sentence, she did a final spin with one of her legs out, hitting a tree she was heading to. The tree shattered into splinters the moment her leg kicked it, briefly horrifying Hide at how powerful her graceful movement was. He also realized that she was wearing white armor on her legs that was covered with a glistening, brilliant, yellow flame.
"See? We have more in common than you think!" she defiantly grinned.
~8~
When Megumi arrived at school that morning, the whole student body was abuzz over the chaos that occurred the day before in the downtown area. She glanced around for her friends and was disappointed when she didn't see them.
"Where could they be?" she muttered to herself. She recalled that Morita had left a letter saying he would be at a special training camp for the next two weeks. This was odd considering that she was the box club's manager and hadn't heard anything about a special training camp. It was even more strange as the school year had just started the day before.
"Maybe they're already in class," she wondered aloud as she approached the classroom.
Huh? Megumi blinked as she looked around the classroom, Their all absent! Hanabi-chan, Hide-kun, Morita-kun, Suzuki-kun, and even the Grandhart twins are absent!
"Good morning, everyone!" the door swung open and a bespectacled man stepped through, he ushered all the students to get to their seats as he approached the podium at the front of the class, "Get to your seats please! My name is Sawada Yuuto, I'll be your substitute teacher for Kurokawa-sensei!"
"Substitute? It's only the second day of school!" someone joked.
Substitute? Sawada? Megumi carefully watched the substitute teacher as thoughts began flowing in, Is he related to Hide-kun?
"Sawada-sensei! Are you related to Hideyoshi-san?" someone asked.
"That's right! I'm his dad! I hope you all continue to treat him well!" he merrily proclaimed. Now that she thought about it, he looked awful similar to Hide: messy blonde hair, brown eyes…there was something else, but she couldn't quite place what it was.
Hide-kun's never mentioned his dad before, or that he was coming to visit, she thought while carefully watching the man.
"Alright! Let's get homeroom started! We'll do rollcall!" he announced while holding up a clipboard in his hand with gusto, "I already see that quite a few are missing! It's only the second day of the school year! I guess I'll have to talk to my son about this when I get home…"
The class laughed at the joke, Megumi gave a nervous 'heh'. She looked back down at her notebook and absentmindedly started to write in it. Where was Hide-kun and everyone else? What happened yesterday? Is their absence related?
"…-naka…"
She glanced upwards and saw the substitute teacher in front of her, he looked down at her with an uncanny look on his eyes that seemed to be able to look straight past her. She instinctively rushed to put a hand on her notebook, which she had been jotting down her thoughts onto. For some reason, she felt an omnious air about the teacher that frightened her for a second.
"Tanaka Megumi," he leaned over her, "If you're gonna sleep in class, at least wait until after roll call."
"Y-yessir," she stammered, embarrassed to have been caught off guard.
"Good," he flashed her a smile and turned to head back to the front of the class, "Now that we're done with that, let's go over the agenda today!"
She looked back down at her notes and paled, "Eek! A snake!"
She jumped out of her seat at the sight of a wriggling snake that was on her arm. In one swift movement, Sawada Yuuto spun around and leaped across several desks, grabbing the snake by the head and freezing in place. Time seemed to stand still as the man slowly held the snake up to her face and smiled at her.
"It's rubber," the snake was, indeed, now a rubber toy, "Next time, please pay attention to what is going on in class, Tanaka-san."
So fast! She stammered to reply, "Y-yessir…" Wait, didn't he place that snake there?
"Wow! You're so fast, Sawada-sensei!" the students remarked.
"Of course! I'm the greatest teacher in the world after all," he declared with a smirk, the class laughed at his bravado. Megumi sat back in her seat in stunned silence.
"Um, Sawada-sensei," she began uncertainly, "Do you know where Hide-kun is? He's not the type who skips school…"
Yuuto gave her a knowing smile before replying, "He's on the moon!"
"The…the moon?" she was at a complete loss for words now.
"Just joking," he laughed, the rest of the class joined him, "His grandfather was in need of help, so Hide is helping out with the family business now."
The sushi restaurant? She recalled the friendly old man that Hide had referred to as his 'gramps'. That doesn't seem like a good enough reason to leave school…if it was a family emergency, wouldn't Sawada-sensei not be here too then?
"Let's get on with rollcall," the substitute resumed once again calling out names. What happened throughout the day might as well have been a circus. Sawada Yuuto would pull elaborate pranks on all the students, winning each of them over throughout the day. Megumi would have let this slide if she hadn't noticed that every time she started to write down her thoughts in her notebook, a new prank would occur.
It was the end of the day when she saw him for the last time at school for the day. She was returning homework among the class that was meant to be due.
"There were some students absent today, so please tell Kurokawa-sensei that he'll likely get them tomorrow," she explained as she handed off the stack of finished homework to him.
"Kurokawa isn't coming tomorrow," the teacher blithely said as he looked through the assignments, "And neither are those students."
Megumi blinked and stared at him questioningly. Hide was one thing, but how could he know that everyone else was going to be absent the next day? He seemed to catch on to this and looked her up and down before asking, "Tanaka-san? Are you alright?"
She was taken aback for second and replied with a pleasant smile, "Yessir! I'm fine! I was just wondering where my friends were!"
"Your friends…as in those absentees?" he seemingly continued going through the assignments in an absent-minded manner, but he was so quick with his pen while marking them up that Megumi felt as if she as watching a computer at work. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, Tanaka-san. Sometimes people have family circumstances that they can't get out of. It's unfortunate, but all you can hope to do is just be there for them when they ask for help."
It was solid advice that he had given, but Megumi felt that it was somewhat forced as she had not been looking for advice to begin with. What she wanted were answers.
The teacher paused from grading the assignments and looked up at Megumi with a playful smile, "Did you come here for something else, Tanaka-san? Perhaps career advice? Do you have anything you want to do in the future? A journalist? A detective? A policeman?"
"To be honest, I haven't thought about it that much," she admitted sheepishly.
"I see," this answer didn't seem to satisfy him as he nonchalantly placed the stack of papers and his pen down on his desk, abruptly standing up and stretching, "Well, those are all graded. Time to go home!"
Megumi's mouth fell open, "You already graded them?"
"Yes, while we were talking," he said coolly.
It takes hours for Kurokawa-sensei to do the same amount of work! And sometimes I have to help him finish! She thought to herself but then presumed that maybe Kurokawa was not the best example of a teacher.
"I have to say, you are quite the diligent student, Tanaka-san," the substitute grinned as they walked out of the school together, "You've got good grades, you're class rep, and manager of the Boxing Team…no wonder Hide's taken such a shine to you! So tell me, are you dating him yet?"
"S-Sensei!" she yelped, "We're just friends!"
"What a pity." The words seemed to hang in the air as Megumi got more tense.
Sawada-sensei is such a character… why hasn't Hide-kun ever mentioned him before…?
"It's strange, Sawada-sensei," Megumi carefully picked her next words, "Hide-kun never told us his dad was a teacher…In fact, I assumed you were a businessman since you've never been around whenever we came over…"
"Don't you know? Substitute teachers travel around a lot!"
Enough to not be home for long periods of time? Megumi doubtfully thought to herself.
"They do!" he firmly insisted, as if reading her mind.
Did he just read my mind? She wondered after getting over her surprise, He also seems to have an answer for everything…
"Tanaka-san, don't you have to get home soon?" he suggested while walking the girl to the outside gate, "I heard that something dangerous happened downtown. You're still a young girl, you shouldn't be out too late by yourself."
"Right, thank you, Sawada-sensei," she politely bowed before setting off home. Her head was still abuzz with a thousand new questions. The one that kept getting to the forefront of her mind though was: How does he know they will all be absent?
"Tanaka Megumi, huh?" Yuuto mused to himself as he watched her leave, "Hide sure picked a dangerous girl."
~8~
"Gah! I don't get it!" Hanabi shouted in frustration as she crumpled a handful of loose paper that she was using for notes.
"Like I said! First you need to put in about 90% more effort into 'X' and then plug that into 'A'!" her grandfather proclaimed with the same degree of frustration as he gestured to a whiteboard covered in scribbles and thumbtacked notes
They were holed up at the local Namimori Library studying at a desk with a whiteboard that Gokudera Hayato had found and commandeered for the sake of teaching his granddaughter. They were both probably too loud to be in the library, but the libarians were both scared as well as enamoured by the handsome pair yelling at each other.
"Do you think they're filming for a drama?" one of the librarians whispered to the other.
"There's no cameras though!"
"They must be practicing!"
Hanabi shot a glare at the onlookers, who quickly backed away and went back to their jobs. She then looked down at her notes, which seemed like a jumbled mess along with the notes her grandfather was trying to teach her.
"How much longer are we going to be here?" she asked and eagerly picked up the box weapon before her. "I know the basic concepts, I can use the Storm Flame and open box weapons without a problem!"
"You may know the basics, but you have to master technique," her grandfather sighed as he pulled up a chair to sit in. He then crossed his arms and stared at her scrutinizingly, "If you didn't want me help, why did you come to me then?"
Hanabi looked away and grumbled something that was too quiet for him to hear. She had come to her grandpa on the basis that Rosario had recommended it, and she knew deep down her best chance to help the Twelfth was with his assistance.
"Quit grumbling!" he slammed the table so that her attention was no back to him.
"I just want to get stronger!" she rolled her eyes and gripped her pen with both hands, "If only I was strong enough to defeat that swordsman and flying man…"
"Is that all?" Gokudera rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "Well if you want to be strong enough to defeat that Varia swordsman, I think you could do it."
She looked up at him with a surprised expression on her face. "Really?"
"Yeah, you just need to think about what they can do and what you can do," he nodded in affirmation while still rubbing his chin, "However, you aren't going up against that guy. You're opponent is much different."
"Eh? Then do you know who I'm going up against?"
Gokudera shrugged his shoulders, "I suppose I do, considering all that's happened so far."
"What happened?"
He eyed her up and down before leaning back in his chair, his arms were once again crossed, "You used to play chess, right?"
She raised her eyebrow and frowned, "I used to, but that was a while ago."
"Didn't you play with a kid who was much older than you? He was in the Varia too."
"Auggie?" she grimaced upon remembering the Varia assassin, "What does that creep have to do with getting stronger?"
Gokudera gave a disappointed sigh before leaning forward and tapping her notebook. "Being the Vongola Storm Guardian doesn't just mean that you're super strong and can defeat anyone. You have to use your brain too. Your Boss will not always know what to do and want you're input, so its important as their right hand to guide them as best as you can while still protecting the Vongola. That's what it means to be a sword and shield."
Hanabi slowly absorbed all this in and felt more confused.
"Strategy will be your friend for your fight," he tapped his head now, "So you have to use your brain in this case and not get lost in the heat of the moment."
"Right," she nodded and picked her pen again, "I think I get what your saying…Then lets talk about what's next! The fight ahead!"
As the pair continued to discuss strategies, they could be seen through the windows of the library. A distinct figure of a blonde-haired bespectacled man wearing a teachers outfit was on the opposite rooftop looking into the library with a pair of binoculars but poised as if he was ready to snipe them at any opportunity. Sawada Yuuto smiled triumphantly as he watched the pair talk with each other.
"Looks like all is going well on their end," he noted to himself while jotting something down in a small black book he had. He then began scanning the reset of the town through his binoculars before finally finding his target. "The only ones who haven't found a tutor yet are those twins and the illusionist…the illusionist is one thing, but the twins are going to be more difficult to get to cooperate..."
He placed his binoculars away and pulled out a phone which he immediately began texting. "I'll have to call in more favors to get those two here…"
~8~
"That robot woman gave us these rings, but I want to trade," Anna pestered her twin brother, in her hands was the Thunder Ring and on her brother's finger was the Cloud Ring.
"No way! I want to be the Cloud Guardian!" he stuck his tongue out at her and backed away from her before she could steal it from him, "If you didn't want to be the Thunder Guardian, you shouldn't have just agreed to the robot lady!"
"That's before I knew which ring I was getting!" she grumbled. They were currently walking through the warehouse district of Namimori.
"What are we doing here again?" Adam asked as he followed his sister as she inspected each warehouse building's exterior closely.
"We're looking for materials to use for Box Weapons," she explained, "I heard there was a warehouse owned by a mafia family here."
"Shouldn't you two be in school?" a voice called out to them, they both looked to the source and saw a man wearing large round glasses and a Cheshire grin.
The pair acknowledged him for a moment before turning back to their original task.
"I'm hungry, when can we go for dinner?" Adam loudly complained while dramatically holding his stomach.
"You can go whenever, I'll just continue to look until I'm satisfied," Anna shrugged.
"Fine," he sighed and then turned the bespectacled man who continued watching them, "But first I want to get rid of this guy."
"Ok," she shrugged again, but this time when she did a pair of tasers appeared in her hands from within the sleeves of the hoodie she wore, "But so do I."
Sawada Yuuto laughed as the pair jumped towards him with murderous intent. Within minutes they were both thrown onto the ground, disarmed and completely in shock over what had just happened.
"Who are you?" Adam groaned as the twins attempted to get back to their feet, "Are you after the Twelfth?"
"After him?" the man mused with a smirk, "Actually, I'm looking out for him. You could call me his guardian angel! You can call me Yuuto."
"Guardian angel?" the twins looked at each other uncertainly.
"You both know what the Ring Conflict is about, right?" Yuuto continued. "As you are right now, you're more likely to fail and lose against your opponent."
"What did you say?" the twins grabbed their weapons again and glared at him.
"Now, now," he waved his hands dismissively, "Cool down, you two. I know just what you two are lacking?"
"And what is that?" Adam wondered as he continued to glare at the man uneasily.
Yuuto's eye flickered off to the side for a moment before he grinned and held up a hand as if to show them something, "Experience."
As soon as he finished, a pair of small children jumped down before them. One was a dark haired girl wearing a yellow rain coat and red rubber rain boots, she dragged behind her a white-haired boy wearing a white button up shirt with black suspenders. He was loudly complaining about having to be dragged along by the girl. Adam and Anna immediately recognized them as Ahiru and Nico.
"Ahiru-chan, good to see you!" Yuuto knelt down and patted the girl's head.
"Sorry Ahiru was late, Uncle Yuuto!" the little girl apologized and held up the fluffy white-haired boy with little effort, "This weak sheep was hard to find."
"Let go of me!" the child hollered as he scrambled to get away from Ahiru, he soon found himself under her red rain boot though.
"Quit running, you know you can't escape," she sighed.
"Nico-kun, I have permission from the Bovino Family to get free access to the 10 year bazooka for the next two weeks," Yuuto waved a letter in front of Nico's face, it had the insignia of the Bovino Family on it.
Nico groaned upon seeing the letter and pulled out a large purple bazooka from seemingly nowhere.
"You want us to fight those childrens' 10 year later selves?" Anna concluded.
Yuuto haplessly shrugged and shook his head at them, "Well, that was the original plan. But with how you both just came at me, you're nowhere near ready for that."
The twins felt an urge to argue back but neither could think of anything that sounded convincing. This strange man had been the one that wiped the floor with them just moments before.
"I know!" the man put his fist onto his hand as he came to a realization, he then smiled playfully at the younger children, "Ahiru-chan, Nico-kun, how about a game of tag?"
"Tag?"
"You want us to chase those children around?"
"You chase them? Goodness, no!" Yuuto quickly shook his head, "But them chasing you sounds much more fun! How about it, Ahiru-chan? Nico-kun? How about both you be 'It'?"
The small children seemed to light up at this suggestion and eagerly looked up at the older children with wide-eyed wonder.
"Why would we play with these little kids?" Adam asked while crossing his arms, "And what does a game of tag have anything to do with training? Don't you think its unfair for us, professional former assassins, fight a pair of little kids?"
"Haha, they might be little, but they're probably just as strong as you two are," Yuuto laughed while patted Nico and Ahiru's heads. "If you want stakes, then how about if you two get caught, you have to play the game again. If you two win, then you can graduate to going up against their ten-year selves."
"What's wrong with getting caught by them?" Anna asked while raising her eyebrow.
The strange man smiled eerily at the twins and then nodded to Ahiru expectantly, "Ahiru-chan? Why don't you go all out for this? Don't hold back!"
"Are you sure?" the little girl asked with concern while glancing quickly at the twins, "Grandpa said Ahiru needs to hold back with herbivores."
"Well I have special permission from your grandpa!" he cheerfully quipped, "Plus, we're trying to help those two big kids graduate from herbivore to carnivore!"
"If grandpa said it was ok, then ok!" Ahiru nodded enthusiastically, she then turned to Nico and childishly scoffed, "The weak sheep doesn't have to come with."
"I'm not weak! And I'm not a sheep! I'm strong!" Nico argued, "I'll show you! I'll catch those big kids before you!"
"You can go all out as well, Nico-kun," Yuuto encouraged cheerfully before turning to the twins and looked at them expectantly, "Well? If you don't want to lose, then you better get your head start."
Adam and Anna hesitated for a moment before running the opposite direction, with one leaping over a building and the other quickly turning a corner. While they didn't want to cooperate with what this mysterious strange man wanted from them, they also didn't want to give up and lose a game of tag to a pair of kids that were barely in elementary school!
"Adam chose the high route, whereas Anna decided to keep to the ground," Yuuto remarked as he noted these things down in his small black notebook. He then nodded to the children and cheerfully announced, "Ready or not?"
"Here we come!" Ahiru and Nico jumped forwards and after the twins. Ahiru chose to go after Adam first while Nico followed Anna's route.
Yuuto sat down and continued writing in his book, "They would have done better if they stuck together, but going different routes isn't a bad strategy. Either way, they'll fail and get caught."
~8~
Adam hopped from rooftop to rooftop among the warehouses until he finally got to one of the tallest ones and rested there. He reached into his jacket pocket and felt a familiar cube-shaped object in it. It was just for emergencies but he had always kept it on hand ever since his sister gave it to him.
He doubted that a little boy or girl would be able to reach him all the way up here, it was the equivalent to being on a 6th floor building and there were no stairs or ladders reaching up to here. There was something nagging him about how nonchalant the strange man that he had just met was.
"Found you!" he heard the sing-song voice of Ahiru from behind him and he looked up, surprised that the girl was jumping down from an unimaginable height towards him at great speed. He was even more surprised when she landed and created a hole in the warehouse roof with a pair of purple tonfas that she was now armed with, a purple gaseous flame was coating them. She looked up at the older boy, her wide eyes filled with excitement, "You dodged it! That means, Ahiru really can go all out then!"
Adam nervously gulped and narrowly dodged another attack from the small, excited girl, which also left a wake of devastation on the warehouse.
~8~
Anna looked around upon hearing what sounded like a building crumble not too far from her. She peaked out a nearby window to see a cloud of dust and debris emerge from somewhere not too far off from her. She was currently hiding amongst several crates on the first level inside a warehouse with limited windows and doors,
"What a helpless brother," she rolled her eyes and took out a small green cube attached to a key chain, "Perhaps I should go get him?"
"You're too loud!" before she could move, the wall of the warehouse crumbled down with explosive force and she found herself on the otherside of the building moving pieces of crates and rubble off of her. Anna was shocked to see that Nico, now wearing a white helmet with green sparks thinly coating it, was behind the explosion. He was holding the helmet on tightly for fear that it was about to fall off.
"The great Nico-sama has found you!" he declared proudly.
"You can use Flames!?" she gasped as she tried to get to her feet.
"Of course! This is only child's play!" he used the helmet to headbutt the ground before him, creating a large crack in the flooring that extended all the way to Anna, who could not get out in time. "Heeheehee," the boy stood proudly over her as she struggled to hold onto the ledge so she wouldn't fall into the crevasse.
~8~
"Good job, you two!" Yuuto clapped his hands together to applaude the small children once they had gathered back together. He then smugly looked down at the twin assassins, both were beaten and bruised over what had just happened.
"Ahiru had a lot of fun! When can we do it again?" she asked while jumping up and down excitedly.
Adam looked over to his sister and asked, "She threw a building at me, what happened to you?"
"He went through a concrete wall and broke the earth," she grumbled with her arms crossed. She then looked up at Yuuto and asked demandingly, "What is the point of this? How is this going to help us get stronger?"
"You two are certainly strong, but you're lacking experience," Yuuto explained, "To be more specific, you're lacking battle experience."
"And you have us going up against these two?" Adam gestured to Ahiru and Nico. Ahiru was currently bullying Nico as she wrestled him to the ground.
"Children don't know their limits and have a hard time controlling their movements," the man pointed out.
The twins looked at each other and then looked at the younger children uncertainly.
"How long do we have to do this?"
"Until you can catch them," Yuuto separated Ahiru and Nico by their scruffs and placed them back on the ground, "Now then, are you ready for another round?"
"What if we refuse?" Anna asked.
Yuuto paused as he thought about this while tapping his chin, "Well, you wouldn't want to disappoint Hide, would you?"
Upon hearing this, the twins immediately looked at each other and then glared at the man.
"How long is our headstart?"
"Same as last time: 3 minutes!"
"And then we try to catch them?"
"If you can!"
They both nodded to each other before departing, this time together.
~8~
"Like this," Yaani twirled into a pirouette before stopping in a pose that she referred to as 'fourth position'. She then looked expectantly at Hide, who stumbled into a mockery of the same position. In response she sighed with disappointment, "You're quite hopeless, aren't you?"
"I've never danced before!" he yelped in embarrassment, he then saw Reborn glide over to them in a tutu and wearing a ballet hair bun in place of his signature fedora.
"Excellent glissade, Mr. Reborn!" Yaani enthusiastically applauded and then looked over to Hide with pity "No one's expecting you to get to that level…"
The boy gawked at his tutor in shock before turning back to the ballet teacher and asking, "How long are we going to keep doing this dance lesson?"
"Once you can do a demi-plie that satisfies me, we can move on," she said while also doing a similar gliding move to what Reborn had just done. "You have the 5 basic positions down, all you need to do is work on your technique. Afterwards, we'll work on your balance with temps-lie." She seemed to demonstrate this while rocking from one foot to the other, Hide winced as she kept en-pointe with almost each step.
"Am I supposed to do that all on the tips of my toes?" he worriedly asked.
"That might be too much for me to ask from you, but eventually you should work yourself up to it," she explained and then went back into what she had called 'first position'. "Your biggest challenge is going to be building up enough muscles to help with your sense of balance."
He attempted to replicate her as well but soon found that his legs were being forcibly positioned by Yaani.
"What are you doing? This is your first position?" she asked rhetorically as she got up and straightened his back, "Keep your heels together! Toes apart! Put your weight over your heels! Stand up straight! Put your shoulders down! How can you be this awkward!?"
Hide looked over to Reborn as she continued to berate him. The tutor was doing a pirouette while continuously spinning as he spoke in a mocking manner, "It's not that hard."
"Exactly," Yaani nodded enthusiastically in agreement before clapping her hands and yelling, "I said, stand up straight! Straight! Straight! Quit bending your knees like that! Don't you now how to hold your arms!?"
Hide wondered how he was going to make it the next two weeks with such harsh scrutiny against him.