Amy: Thanks, and a healthy Merry Christmas to you too!
I don't own KHR. As usual.
Chrome's eye widened as they entered the store. As soon as Knuckle had declared that Ryohei and Hayato were healthy enough to go to town after their morning check-up, Elena had rounded them all up and took them to town in a limo. If the limo hadn't been comfortable and luxurious enough, they were now also in a department store that was so...gigantic and...full of fancy and beautiful items that Chrome was rendered speechless.
And judging by the looks on the faces of most of her siblings...she wasn't the only one.
"Holy baseball," Takeshi said in complete awe as he looked all around him.
"This is so big," Tsuna added softly.
"Extreme," Ryohei agreed with a nod as he shifted Lambo in his arms.
"If only..." Mukuro muttered a bit wistfully as he glanced behind him. Chrome looked behind her and saw that Mukuro was glancing at Asari, Knuckle, and Daemon. While they never talked about it out loud, Chrome had a feeling that Mukuro had pondered the idea for them to escape during this shopping trip. But obviously due to the mafia men, they couldn't do that.
Hence Mukuro looking like he wanted the men to just disappear from thin air.
"Well, let's get started!" Elena exclaimed excitedly with a clap of her hands. "Now if I remember correctly the kid's section should be right over...there! Everyone follow me!"
"Yah!" Lambo cheered as he raised his fist high in the air like he was an army general.
"Yes Commander Lambo, let us follow Elena to the extreme!" Ryohei cried exuberantly as he quickly went after Elena, who was already heading to the right end of the store, where a big sign hanging from the ceiling had the word 'Kids' on it in big bold letters.
"What's the matter Kyoya?" Asari asked her older brother after a minute or so of them walking through the store.
Kyoya didn't answer right away, choosing instead to continue to glare at his surroundings while twitching his fingers.
"There's too many herbivores crowding here," he finally muttered as he particularly glared at a man passing right by them while talking loudly on his phone.
"Mufufu, yeah, you're ultimately Alaude's little doppelganger alright," Daemon commented, making Knuckle let out a boisterous laugh that made Kyoya glare at them instead. Chrome found that she kind of agreed with Kyoya. There were a lot of people in this department store and while Chrome didn't nearly have as big of a hatred for crowds as her brother, even she was beginning to feel a bit claustrophoic.
She wasn't going to go around biting people to death though.
"Alright," Elena said when they finally made it to the children's section. "Why don't we all split up and look for clothes and when you find some things you like, you can come to me and we can try them on!"
"You mean...y-you're letting us pick out our own clothes?" Tsuna asked with wide unbelieving eyes.
"Of course sweetie," Elena assured him as she bent over and rubbed her hand through Tsuna's brown, unruly hair affectionately. "How else am I gonna find out if you like red fire engines over robots or not?"
"Robots, definitely robots," Tsuna replied back so quickly that Chrome suspected that he spoke on impulse.
The slight blush on her brother's cheeks only cemented her suspicions.
"Hehe, now I know," Elena said with a wide smile as she ruffled Tsuna's hair one more time before straightening herself. "So, what we are waiting for? Disperse!"
Not to her surprise, none of them immediately followed the order. True, Ryohei took a few small steps in one direction and Tsuna took a timid step in another direction but none of them actually left until Kyoya sighed and strode off determinedly in a third direction.
After that, everyone else stopped hesitating to disperse. Ryohei, along with Lambo, headed towards some exercise shorts off in the distance, while Takeshi, Tsuna, and Hayato (who could finally walk by himself, albeit slowly) went off to find some t-shirts.
Chrome herself headed towards some girl skirts she saw in the distance and to her surprise when she got to the rack she saw that Mukuro had followed her.
"I'm not leaving you alone," Mukuro told her before she could even say anything. Then he looked back where they had came from with a small frown. "I can't see the others from here..."
"Don't worry, I'm sure Kyoya is keeping an eye on them" Chrome assured him as she started to browse through the different colored skirts.
Mukuro muttered something that Chrome's ears couldn't quite catch but he stopped trying to look for their other brothers so that was something. Now if only he would loosen up a bit around Elena and the others. She understood that after everything that had happened to him, it was going to be hard for him to even consider the possibility that the Vongola might be actually good people. She really did.
At the same time though, Chrome wanted Mukuro to at least give the Vongola famiglia a chance, to at least try not to see everything they did as a part of some big evil scheme.
She knew she was.
Then Chrome's eye landed on a purple skirt with a simple yet pretty frill at the bottom. Chrome took it off the rack and held it against her waist, smiling a bit when the end of the skirt touched her knees.
It looked like to would fit her.
Chrome then moved on from skirt rack but before she could start looking for a top that would go with it, she saw something out of the corner of her purple eye. Chrome stopped and turned to see a display of various fluffy stuffed animals.
And one of them was a black-and-white kitty.
Chrome was brought back to the time when she was still living with her single mother in a small but well-kept apartment. She was walking to school from said apartment one day when she heard a faint cry from the nearby alleyway. Chrome immediately started searching for whatever made the sound, a bit nervous because whatever made it, sounded distressed. It didn't take her long find a black-and-white cat sitting all alone in a cardboard box.
Its fur was almost just like the stuffed animal, except the toy had a white stomach and white paws, while the cat had white spots all over its black fur.
Lost in thought, Chrome silently went over to the display and carefully picked up the toy without disturbing the other stuffed animals. As soon as she had saw the cat in the cardboard box, she immediately picked it up and gave it a hug. And...the cat let her, even going as far as to snuggle against her.
To a young child who had yet to see any love directed towards her, this meant a lot.
Eventually, she had to put the cat down so she could get to school on time but Chrome didn't feel sad, but rather excited and hopeful that the cat would still be there when she returned. She was so hopeful that she saved some of her lunch that she had brought at school to give to the cat.
As soon as the final school bell rang, Chrome raced out of the building and to the alleyway where she had found the cat. Then, just when she was afraid she had accidently ran past the alleyway, she found it. Chrome would never forget how happy she felt when she ran into the alleyway and saw that the cat was still sitting forlorned in the cardboard box.
Though the cat looked less forlorned when it noticed her, especially when she gave it her food.
After that, it became custom for Chrome to visit Kouki (after she found out that the cat was a male, it only took her about a minute or so to decide on a name) to and from school. She would give Kouki hugs, played with him, unmatted his fur with her mother's broken comb, and give him food whenever she could.
Their relationship grew to the point where that Kouki would jump out of the box and walk towards her as soon as he saw her.
But then, one day, her mother married her stepfather. Not long after that, Chrome and her mother moved to her stepfather's house. Which, while still in Tokyo, was too far away for Chrome to walk to the alleyway where Kouki was. And her mother stopped giving her money for lunch and instead just gave her very cheap lunch sets from the nearby convenience store (because the lunches at her new school were too expensive for a worthless girl like her). This meant that she couldn't just buy a bus ticket.
As a result, Chrome never saw Kouki again.
Chrome smiled sadly as she wondered if Kouki had managed to find a new home, or whether if he was currently missing her while sitting in that cardboard box.
She really hoped it was the former.
Chrome, deciding that she had wasted enough time delving into her past, moved to put the cat back in its previous spot. Then, just when the cat was only a few inches away from being put down on the display, a hand placed itself on her hands, effectively stopping her.
Chrome, surprised, looked up to see that the hand belonged to Elena, who was smiling softly down at her.
"You know...I believe that every little girl should have a doll, or a stuffed animal in this case," Elena told her as she took one of Chrome's hands and placed it on top of the stuffed animal before gently shoving the toy to Chrome's chest.
"Wait...no, I can't," Chrome protested as she tried to push the toy away from her chest. "You're...already doing so much, I can't-"
"It's okay Chrome," Daemon assured her as he placed a hand on her shoulder. "Our famiglia is not wanting for money and even if we were, we would still do it just to see you smile. Because sometimes, a smile is all the reward you need."
Chrome felt...overwhelmed. She didn't know exactly what emotion she was feeling right now, only that it threatened to make her cry. But even though she had to fight to keep any sign of tears away from her single eye, she...couldn't say that she quite disliked the feeling. Quite the opposite actually.
The eight-year-old glanced at Mukuro and while she couldn't really read his expression, she was able to tell that he was completely speechless.
"Not to mention," Daemon continued. "That my dear Elena can be very stub...um...steadfast when she wants to, so it may be a losing battle to convince her to not give you the toy."
For a second or two, Chrome just stood there, looking at the toy kitty in her hands. Then she smiled.
"Okay...thank you," she conceded as she clutched the toy to her chest, making Elena and Daemon give off the brightest smiles she had ever seen on them. At the corner of her eye, Chrome saw Mukuro smile slightly as well.
"You're welcome," Elena replied as she finally took her hands off the stuffed animal.
"What about you Mukuro?" Daemon asked as he turned to her brother. "Is there any toy that you would like?"
"No," Mukuro answered bluntly with a firm shake of his head, which only made Daemon laugh.
"Too old for toys huh? Well, that may be true, but one thing is for certain: you're not going to find any clothes that would fit you in the girl's section."
Daemon, without any warning, then wrapped his arm around Mukuro's shoulders and started to push him towards the boy's section.
"I'm-" Mukuro started to protest as he tried to both stop walking and to get Daemon's arm off his body but to no avail.
"It's okay Mukuro-sama, I'm good, really," Chrome called out. Mukuro glanced behind him and whether it was because of something he saw on Chrome's face or it was because of some personal revelation, Mukuro sigh and stopped resisting against Daemon. As Daemon continued to lead a still clearly reluctant Mukuro away from them, Chrome smiled happily as she hugged her new toy.
Because reluctant or not, Mukuro was still more or less giving Vongola a chance. Which was great especially since Chrome had finally decided whether she should trust the famiglia or not.
They really were like vigilantes more than anything.
"So, what are you going to name it?" Elena asked as she gave her a tender smile. It only took Chrome a second to think of a perfect name.
"Kouki Jr."
Fun fact, Kouki means light or hope. I'll leave it to you to figure out why Chrome named the cat and the toy that. And don't worry, this isn't the only shopping chapter. Also, I'm going to put up a poll soon regarding what Elena's flame type should be. I'm leaning towards Lightning or Storm but I'm open for suggestions. And in case you're wondering...
Yes, Elena might need to use her flames soon ;)
So...what did you think of the chapter? How were the character interactions and did their actions/reactions make sense? Please leave me your thoughts in a review and I will update next month.
Till then, Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year