Warning: Vague references to drugs and drug use

Kyoya bears his teeth in a vicious grin at the men his committee members are dragging out of the building. Even from across the street he can hear the yakuza thugs whimper in fear before they're handed off to a member of the police.

Beside him, his cousin sighs. "Kyoya-chan. Manners."

"I'm acting in the correct manner to terrorize him," Kyoya says immediately, making Taka sigh even deeper.

"You know we're only clearing them out for the family reunion," she says. "It takes too much effort to keep clean when they're only doing storage in Namimori and not dealing. We even gave them advance warning!"

"I know that it would be easier to keep them out if you didn't let them build up," Kyoya says. And after all, look at what he was managing to do with his gang of teenagers. First he'd fought and pushed them away from his turf (which was still his, even if the school wasn't his his). And now his DC is taking down one of the major distribution centers with Taka as the only supervising Hibari adult. "Just make it too unprofitable for them to stay."

"We have our own jobs Kyoya-chan."

"Hibari-san!" a voice calls out, and Kyoya turns slightly to see Sawada Tsunayoshi breaking away from his . . . crowd. Kyoya has to turn away even as Sawada stops next to him. He forces himself to breathe slowly, his palms itching at the group he just saw, because it might not be that much in comparison to the numbers he sees regularly at school, but the emptiness of the street around them make it seem worse.

He inches away from his cousin, trying to make the feeling better. After a moment he manages to push it down, and turns slightly to look at Sawada out of the corner of his eye, trying to keep the rest of the group out of his field of vision.

Kyoya searches Sawada's expression for a moment, looking for the blank look he remembers so well from the hospital. It had gone away and been gone for months before The Person came and it suddenly showed up again. There'd been traces of it lingering on Sawada's face last night, some of Sawada's emotions not quite hitting right after months of getting to know him.

And that should have been Kyoya's warning sign, now that he thinks of it. Kyoya shouldn't have spent so long on Sawada. Kyoya should have taken his report and left once he knew what issue to address about his school.

The blankness isn't there. Good.

"Hello Hibari-san, Hibari-sensei," Sawada says, bobbing small bows in time with their names. "Are you two responsible for that?"

"We're clearing out the yakuza," Kyoya says bluntly.

"Any reason in particular?" Sawada asks. "I know you were getting into fights with them around the school, but they're staying away now."

"Our family reunion happens soon," Kyoya says. He leaves it at that, already tired of arguing with Taka about the matter.

Sawada doesn't seem offended by his shortness, just humming slightly in reply as he watches more yakuza get pulled out of the building.

That's why Kyoya's watching him when it happens, waiting for a response or an end to the conversation. That's why Kyoya sees it happen again, sees Sawada's face blank out, the only real expression of surprise Kyoya's seen him make, and similar enough to his many other blank looks.

Kyoya finds himself instinctively following his gaze, remembering the times he'd seen this happen, remembering sitting on the uncomfortable hospital chair, mirroring it back at him. He remembers leading Sawada to his appointments, ordering Tetsuya to collect he notes from Sawada's classes, thinking he would step back once Sawada was back in school. Kyoya remembers not objecting when Sawada dragged his friends into the DC's room for lunch.

The girl his men are escorting out of the building didn't look special. But then again, that's why she's here. It's much easier to run drugs if you look like a normal, innocent girl. Under the jacket big enough for someone three times her size, Kyoya can make out a generic school uniform skirt, not Namimori or Kokuyo standard.

She looks exhausted, pale, and sickly thin, leaning on the arm of one of her escorts, with dark bags under her single visible eye, and hair poking messily out of her ponytail.

She looks confused, blinking at the sunlight and squinting.

And she looks over at Sawada, meeting his gaze.

"You!" Everything about her presence changes. She still looks exactly the same, drowning in her massive jacket, young, and ill, but it's like one of those pictures that could be a vase or two faces. Kyoya was seeing the vase. Now he's seeing the faces. Her clothes are loose like she's lost weight, but they're clean and she doesn't actually look bad off under them. Her face looks a little hollow, but the shadows don't quite move right as she turns her face, and her hair looks messy, but healthy.

"Yes?" Sawada replies, not really managing fake surprise to cover the glee in his voice, a switch flipped from blank to wanting, like it had when he recognized Kyoya, like it had when he saw Sasagawa Ryohei, like it had when he was fighting the foreign assassin in the school courtyard.

"You're the one who's been calling out!"

"Have I been?"

The girl ignores the DC members she'd been leaning on seconds ago as she tries to stalk towards Sawada for a couple seconds, tugging at their grasp on her arms until Kyoya motions to let them escort her across the cordoned off street.

His skin prickles at another group in close proximity, his head tilting slightly to confirm that Sawada's tagalongs are staying away, and he finds himself scratching at his wrists before he can force himself to stop, clenching his hands into fists. His DC members know the proper distance to keep though, and they stop there respectfully, bowing to Kyoya and his cousin, keeping the girl with them.

The girl is still limping, but that looks real in a way that he suddenly realizes her old limp hadn't, real and old by the easy way she shifts her weight to keep herself moving.

"You have!" the girl says, frowning at Sawada, though after her escorts bow, she seems to accept that she won't be getting any closer. "I've been having trouble sleeping for months! You are- oh my god, what the fuck is up with your mental shields? There is a massive fucking hole, how have you not been possessed? And oh my god-"

"Excuse me," Taka says, stepping forwards, "might I ask what you're talking about?"

"He has a fucking hole in the side of his head!" The girl's eye hasn't moved since she saw Sawada, fixed on the side of his head even as he shift and moves, stepping forwards and more into Kyoya's field of view.

"And do you know how something like this would happen?" Sawada asks, gesturing to his (perfectly intact as far as Kyoya could tell) head.

"I . . ." For the first time, the girl's eye flickers slightly, going to Sawada's eyes before being drawn back to the side of his head, as if magnetized. Her lips purse. "I don't know how you survived that- oh ew! is that your brain?"

"Trying diligently to obey gravity and spill out, yes," Sawada says. His head still looks perfectly fine to Kyoya. "Keep going."

"There's no way you didn't know this happened when is happened," the girl says. "You're doing - very good . . . at keeping your mind in. And I'm pretty certain you would have died without practice. And . . ." She flinches back abruptly, hissing and rubbing at the finger tips of your left hand. "And even better at keeping things out. Or again, possession."

"And what makes you think I'm not possessed?" Sawada asks, and Kyoya feels a jolt of fear, making him turn to fully focus on Sawada, even tough it puts the large group where he can see them.

Taka clamps a hand down on his shoulder before he can do anything, and shakes her head when he looks back at her. "We checked," she murmurs.

"If you were possessed, you wouldn't have a hole in the side of your head," the girl scoffs. "And your brain certainly wouldn't be trying to spill out - possessors get possessive."

"So why say anything?" Sawada asks, sounding amused.

"You have a hole! In the-" The girl breaks off and takes a deep breath. Then she bows. "I am sorry for your loss. It is not something I have seen survived before, and I was curious."

Sawada nods. "As you said, it takes practice to keep my mind in, but keeping others out was a function of how I got this way . . . they were concerned this would happen. I don't have the talent, so they taught me the hard way. and in the end I survived them."

"So?" Taka asks, her grip on Kyoya's arm loosening.

"I'm fine," Sawada says at the same time as the girl says, "He needs a better psychic than I am because not matter how well he's handling this, having a gaping hole in the side of his head is very bad in the long run."

Sawada stares at her for a second. "I'm fine," he repeats.

"You absolutely are not," she says hotly. "You may have been able to keep your mind inside your head, but I've been hearing you for months. Someone's going to come along who's not nearly as nice as I am."

Sawada rolls his eyes to the sky, then he turns to look at Kyoya again. "Hibari-san," he says. "Can I keep her?"

Kyoya bluescreens for a moment. That was . . . not where he'd thought this was going. He blinks, brain starting up and reloading . . .

He contemplates the girl. She'd asked nothing of Sawada that she would benefit from - except presumably that fixing the hole might allow her to stop hearing the "call" and get some better sleep. And he remembers Sawada's expression when she'd first spoken. Wanting and happy.

"List," Kyoya barks, and his two DC members on either side of the girl straighten up.

"She was in one of the runner rooms," the one on the left says. "No drugs on her or in the room, and no records. She'll probably get off."

Kyoya turns to his cousin, who admittedly is more socially aware and possessing of a better set of ethics. Also, as the eldest Hibari in this operation, she's the one with the real power to make the decision.

"I want to keep an eye on her either way," Taka murmurs. "But it should be fine if she goes with Sawada-kun. He's got that arcobaleno with him, he'll be fine."

Kyoya pushes down the rushing feelings that strangle him at the mention of Those People goes to speak to Sawada before pausing and turning to the girl, who's still staring at Sawada with a shocked look on her face.

"Well?" He has to ask a couple times before one of his DC members gently shakes the girl's shoulder and points her in his direction.

"What?"

"Do you want to go with him?" Kyoya asks, feeling his patience dwindle.

"I don't- what?"

Kyoya reminds himself to be patient. An ally with a different area of focus will have a different perspective and might be able to see things none of Sawada's current allies could. The girl seemed to have already proven herself here.

"A room. Food. School. With him." The first three would be provided regardless. But despite himself Kyoya wants this girl to stay very much. He'd had to remind himself why, but now the idea is taking off in his head. There is something he doesn't know, and here is someone who knows and is willing to explain. "Or with Hibaris. Choose."

"I didn't do anything," the girl says warily.

"You made us aware of a problem," Taka replies. "That can be useful."

"And I can't help with it," the girl replies. "My use is up."

"But what about the future?" Taka asks. "There might be other problems we can't find ourselves."

"How do you know I wasn't just lying to get this position?" the girl asks.

"If you were, you wouldn't protest so much," Taka says.

The girl looks a little grumpy at that, picking at a loose thread. "What are my options again?"

"Do you want to go with us?" Taka asks, indication herself and Kyoya. "Or with him?" She indicates Sawada.

The girl's eye flickers between us a couple times, weighing and calculating the options.

"I'll go with him," she says, tipping her head in Sawada's direction.

"Alright," Sawada says cheerfully as Kyoya tips his head to the DC members holding her, and they let her go, retreating back to building for more orders. "What should I call you?"

". . . call me Chrome Setsuna," the girl says, lifting her chin to stare defiantly at him.

AN: Hello Chrome! Welcome!

So Chome's here. I gave her a slightly different name because in canon, her name was just an anagram of Mukuro's. So instead she's Chrome Setsuna! I kept the Chrome part because I wanted to keep something consistent with her name in canon and figured that Chrome works fine as an alias. Chrome's a pretty valuable metal that resists tarnishing, so thats kind of symbolic. And then I used Setuna because it's part of the title one of her character songs. It's a pretty common name in anime I think, meaning a moment or instant, which is how long she thinks this situation's going to last.

And hey, we're getting one answer to the possession question! Two if you count Hibari Taka's assertion that they checked.