A.N: Hey y'all! Here's another week where I managed to weedle in some time to work on this and frankly it baffling how my head keeps coming with ideas besides audits and formula.

And thank y'all once again for stopping by! And D C JoKeR H S and seryuTammi, it's amazing to see you guys still up and about with you lovely reviews. I really don't deserve you T^T

Disclaimer: I do not own the familiar characters, unfortunately.

WARNINGS: Mentions of assault. If yaoi is not your thing, please steer clear, thank you, next, next...


A thousand scenario had run through Tsuna's head as he rushed through the corridor. While Xanxus had been pretty compliant, which was strange in itself ever since stepping foot in the Sawada residence, Tsuna couldn't shake the fact that perhaps he had finally reached his breaking point and had decided to blast the entire school.

If he were honest with himself, a year before, Tsuna would have happily followed the Ninth and his mom into the emergency exit. Despite the vision his Intuition had helpfully provided him, Tsuna feared the unknown waiting for him beyond the long corridors.

But nothing in the world prepared him for this; Tsuna gasped as he halted beside his dad and Gokudera, who seemed to be gaping at the damage before them.

Where once the men's restroom and the locker room stood, the whole space was now in shambles. The door and the wall had been blasted of while the cracked pipeline flooded the broken marble floor; sparks flew from the shredded wiring haphazardly close to the fire sprinklers which sprayed water like nobody's business.

"Those sprinklers are not going to help." Tsuna muttered beside himself with worry. The storm flames scattered all over the floor, the wall and dripping like molten magma from the ceiling failed to deter Tsuna from his cautious steps towards the source of the havoc who was sitting hunched over against the wall.

Finally snapping out from the trance they were caught in, Gokudera and Iemitsu immediately cautioned Tsuna with Gokudera rushing forward to grab hold of Tsuna's wrist. "J-Juudaime…" he stuttered, a bit of trepidation and worry coloring his voice, "What are you doing here? It's dangerous!"

"Tsuna" Iemitsu seemed to add with a little hesitance as if knowing of what had occurred, letting go of his childish nickname for once "He's not himself right now. He won't take to your presence kindly."

"I know what happened." Tsuna spoke more for their benefit than his.

"Then you should know that approaching him is not a wise move." Iemitsu continued, ignoring Gokudera's questioning look, "I've contacted the CEDEF and once the rampant flames have been taken car—"

However, Tsuna shook his hand free of Gokudera's grip and stepped towards Xanxus with the stealth of a man nearing a wounded animal. He held out his hand towards Xanxus while signaling Gokudera to stop from approaching him.

He felt his Will flood through his body and color his voice as he carefully hunched down in front of the cowering man. He was trembling, Tsuna noted, and shrinking away from him. The urge to pull him into a hug was overwhelming which Tsuna managed to hold down for now.

"Xanxus…" he tentatively called out, reaching over to place his hand over tensed shoulders.

Wrong move, Tsuna belatedly realized as he was abruptly shoved against the wall with Xanxus straddling him and a fist burning with the Flame of Wrath mere centimeters away from his face.

"Juudaime!" Gokudera gasped in alarm as he tried to run to his boss' side only to be held back by Iemitsu. "What the hell are you doing?!" he growled. "Can't you see that bastard manhandling your son?!"

"Calm down." Iemitsu merely looked down on him and Gokudera realized with a start that both Iemitsu and his boss had spoken at the same time with the ring of the Will echoing their voice.

Taking a deep breath, Gokudera spared a glance at his boss to see that somewhere during his squabble with Iemitsu, Tsuna had reached over to grasp Xanxus' flaming hand within the tender folds of his own.

"Calm down." He heard Iemitsu and Tsuna's command synchronize again and marveled as the Flame in Xanxus' hand slowly died down. A delicate smile graced Tsuna's face as he grabbed hold of Xanxus' other hand and slowly but surely pulled the other man into a hug.

"You are all right now." Tsuna's voice coaxed gently like a loving mother consoling her cub after a nightmare. "We've got you."

Gokudera watched with mixed emotions as Tsuna held the trembling body with one hand while the other gently stoked through lush, black hair of the gun freak's head that was now neatly tucked in the crook of his boss' neck. Jealousy was a very bad feeling, he decided.

"My own." He saw Tsuna whisper against Xanxus' ears; and in the stillness of the hallway, the protective, warm and loving voice echoed with conviction and pierced straight into Gokudera's heart.

"We will never hurt you." Tsuna continued, "We are family and you are my own." The echoes of Tsuna's Will seemed resolute. "And we won't let him touch you anymore."

Gokudera watched in fascination as Xanxus' back tensed ramrod for one last shudder before relaxing lax under Tsuna's Will. For what seemed like hours, nobody moved or seemed to breath, before Xanxus finally pulled away from Tsuna's embrace and stood up on quivering feet.

And Gokudera struggled to withhold his horror when he got a good look at the Varia boss. His hair was mussed and the buttons in his shirt seemed to be ripped off the cloth; but his face…

His lips looked obscenely wet and slightly swollen and those red hues on his cheekbones did nothing to hide those damn dilated pupils that seemed to slowly come into awareness. And were those teeth marks and blood staining his neck and shirt?

He looked positively stoned and violated. That was when the full meaning behind Tsuna's words caught up to him. 'And we won't let him touch you anymore', his boss had promised.

And just like that, gone were the hint of jealousy and longing in his heart; instead fury and vengeance burned in the pit of Gokudera's guts at the vulnerable state of the once strong and proud man.

His family. Somebody had hurt his family and gotten away with it. His fist trembled with the need to reach out and check the man for injuries and to reassure him of the words his boss had pledged him. He felt like a witness to a cause and the entire foreign feeling overwhelmed him.

"Gokudera" he almost flinched as the elder Sawada's voice pierced through the deafening silence of the hall. "Why don't you take Tsuna and Xanxus to the HQ while I deal with this mess, eh?"

Fighting down his urge to protest and demand to find the culprit that had brought this chaos, Gokudera nodded before walking towards Xanxus while the latter observed him with tired, resigned eyes. He was almost beside him when those eyes suddenly snapped to attention and immediately glared outside the window.

"Oie, what is it?" Gokudera was instantly alert as his eyes subconsciously darted towards Xanxus' line of vision. He felt his boss and Iemitsu immediately scramble to his side.

Gokudera scanned the surrounding rooftops while taking a subliminal step against Xanxus' side and almost did a double take when his eyes landed on a lone figure on the adjacent building; an eerily familiar figure which seemed to be looking right at him.

His mind struggled to comprehend the presence of this ancient creature that had decided to grace them with its presence. Iemitsu seemed just as shocked as him while Tsuna seemed frighteningly furious and before the group of four could apprehend the impeding doom in front of them, Xanxus had pushed past the broken window pane and had all but hurled himself with his Flame towards the target.

And the seriousness of the situation came crashing onto him as Iemitsu swore vehemently under his breath and immediately took off after the distant silhouette of his ward. That monster was trying to isolate him, Gokudera concluded. Xanxus had recklessly chased after death reincarnate, he knew that, but his legs refused to follow after him.

"Gokudera-kun…" he heard his Juudaime hesitantly call him out and Gokudera belatedly realized that he had broken down in cold sweat.

For there was no denying that 'the Black Death' of the mafia, with the destruction and death of countless families for ten generations under his belt, has finally set his eyes on his next prey, the Vongola.


The adrenaline and the rage he felt rushing through every fiber of his being was nothing like he felt before. And within his line of vision, he could see the being that had caused his shackles to rise mock him with its eyes. It jumped and gracefully glided across rooftops like the autumn wind, throwing a smirk over his shoulders once a while.

It made Xanxus bristle with barely contained fury. He had let this creature shame him, control him and force him to submit physically and emotionally. It had exposed him as a whimpering and blabbering fool in front of his nemesis, Sawada and his pipsqueak squad. The only penitence to his humiliation was that bastard's blood!

"Oie, Teme!" he growled against the wind when the man turned around a corner, "Fight me, coward!" He knew he was being egged on, but boy was he mad! His face burned when he recalled how he had desperately clung on to Tsuna-fucking-yoshi like a toddler.

And to top it all, the scum had called him 'my own!', as if he were a damsel! The nerve of that jackass, Xanxus grinded his teeth, fighting against the flush of embarrassment and shame that flooded his face. My own, my own…those words just seem to reverberate in his skull.

He gritted his teeth when the figure seemed to suddenly halt and hover beside a building complex. That son of a bitch was taunting him! Xanxus roared and propelled his body towards the ground, his plan to all but headbutt that asshole's face into the pavement!

He was a foot far from collision when that smug face twisted into a sneer and suddenly the man disappeared into the shadows leaving Xanxus a second to comprehend his velocity as he crash-tackled a petite figure and her shopping bag onto the ground.

The sound of egg cartons crashing beside him and the feel of sticky milk oozing underneath his hand did nothing to lighten his mood. And he cursed when he slipped on a tomato on his way up and crashed back on the scrawny thing sprawled out under him.

"And to think that you managed to overthrow me the last time…" he heard a velvety voice tsk in front of him. "What a shame…" he looked up and saw the man giving him a mock salute before taking flight again.

He would have caught him if it weren't for him crashing onto this unsuspecting scum who seemed to be squirming against his weight. And he was just about to share his piece of mind with that bitch when his blood red eyes met gleaming violet and suddenly his words seemed caught up in his throat.

He scrambled up in haste and all but hurled his wallet at the girl on the pavement before giving chase to his initial target. All the while, he refused to think about the desolate, lonely and miserable pair of eyes with shades of poverty and longing that had stared into his own a minute ago.

And he refused to accept they looked like his own when he had laid waste in the slums, longing for love.


"Cartons, check, ammo, check, water canteens…" he drowned out Lambo's monotonous voice in favor of listening to Gokudera and Xanxus bicker at a distance.

"It's called an SOS system, ya dumbass!" Gokudera seemed to barely restrain from throttling a smug-looking Xanxus.

"More like 'save my sorry ass' system…" Xanxus snickered, refusing to take the said watch with a trigger button from his Storm's hands.

"What's wrong with having this damn thing around your wrist anyway?!" Gokudera spat out.

"It's orange." Xanxus pointed out.

"So…?" Gokudera forced through gritted teeth.

"It doesn't match with my jacket, Stupidera" he helpfully pointed out.

Before his furious Storm could tear the mischievous assassin a new one, Tsuna subtly stepped in and diverted Gokudera with last minute security check-ins' and effectively managed to calm him down.

"Advise him, Juudaime." Gokudera leered towards Xanxus before stomping away.

Xanxus for his part, rolled his eyes, muttering about over-bearing allies and excessive molly-coddling of a mafia family before bolting the cargo space shut.

"Should anything happen, you will immediately call us, won't you?" Tsuna smiled when Xanxus groaned aloud and scowled at him.

"That's like the hundredth time you've asked me that!" he threw his hands up in the air and shook his head in exasperation. "Isn't that why you are discreetly monitoring us constantly?"

"And yet here we are with you blatantly disobeying my command every chance you get." Tsuna ended with a huff casually strolling towards the annoyed youth.

"Yeah, so whatcha gonna do about it, Sawada Tsunayoshi?" Xanxus added coyly, dusting his hands against his cargo pants and signalling Lambo the go-ahead. "Are you going to discipline me, oh great mini-boss of mine?" he grinned at Tsuna and blinked when a predatory gleam shone in his eyes.

"Eh, Tsunayoshi-kun?" he stuttered when Tsuna pushed him against the body of the cargo space, trapping him between his hands on either side of his head.

"Don't make me…" Tsuna whispered, his bangs conveniently covering his eyes from Xanxus' scrutiny.

"Eh?" Xanxus blinked and cocked his head to the side, confused. "You've been acting strange, you know?"

"Xanxus…" Tsuna breathed in the scent of musk and cinnamon that seemed to constantly shroud him. "I-I wanted to tell you..." he gritted out.

"Yeah?" Xanxus leaned in, mere inches away from touching Tsuna's forehead with his own.

"I…" Tsuna breathed in, "I wan—" and he immediately deflated in his attempt when he saw Xanxus beam like the sun, his beautiful eyes solely focused on someone behind him.

Tsuna sharply exhaled as Xanxus ducked underneath his hold and swooned towards the newcomer. Tsuna made sure to school his expression and turned around to smile at the pair who were now locked in a chaste kiss.

"Oh yeah, you were telling me?" Xanxus sounded breathless as he broke the kiss, giving Tsuna a sheepish smile.

"I wanted to tell you to be careful regardless of the countermeasures." Tsuna lied smoothly.

"Sure thing, Boss." Xanxus supplied cheekily before muttering a goodbye to the gorgeous lady beside him, pulling her into one lasting kiss.

"And hello to you too…" he casually waved when the couple finally parted and Xanxus literally skipped into the truck like a crushing schoolgirl, "Chrome-chan."


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