Er, this chapter was supposed to be about being sick, and was eventually going to end with everyone getting sick in a rather comical way…but I decided to take a different approach to the story, one that focuses more on Anna and Adam's side of the story. Sadly, the ending had to change in order for the chapter to go the way I wanted it to :(
With that said, I hope you all like this chapter!
~8~
"Ah-choo!" a sneeze echoed inside the Sawada residence.
"Ah-choo!" both Anna and Adam, from the living room, looked up at the ceiling.
"You think Boss is okay?" Adam asked.
"I don't care, as long as he's living we're good," said Anna.
"Ah-CHOO!" the room shook lightly and the twins looked back up at the ceiling.
"Where's mama*?" the sister asked.
"She went to go get cough medicine for Boss," the brother shrugged and looked back up the ceiling, "We were told not to go up by mama, but we owe a lot to the Boss. Right, sis?"
"I guess," she shrugged.
"He did put us under Vongola Protection, and he gave us a home to stay in," Adam continued in a thoughtful tone, "Mama has also been very gracious to us, she treats us like her own children."
"Yeah."
"Anna! We have to help Boss!" he declared.
"Okay then," she shrugged, "What do you want to do?"
"Help him!" he stated with vindication.
"Alright," Anna agreed and said, "We're going to help Boss."
~8~
Meanwhile, on the floor above…
"Ah-choo!" Hide sneezed into a tissue and tossed it into an overflowing waste basket. He pulled his blanket covers over him and mumbled, "Ugh, I feel like my head's going to explode…"
"And whose fault is that?" asked Reborn, who was sitting on Hide's desk in what looked like a lounge chair.
"Yours, I believe," the boy replied and pointed out, "You were the one that shot me with a Dying Will Bullet and made me jump in the river in late November with only my underwear on."
"I didn't 'make' you," his tutor said innocently, "You did it out of your own free will."
"More like Dying Will…" he grumbled and quickly grabbed a tissue to cough into it. His eyes caught a glance at what he just coughed up and he muttered, "Is this supposed to be brown?"
The door then slammed open and Adam ran in, "Boss!"
"Boss," Anna called in a quieter tone as she walked in right behind her brother.
"Huh?" Hide raised an eyebrow as the two entered, "Didn't mom tell you guys to stay downstairs and away from me?"
"Don't worry about it Boss!" Adam quickly said, "Hitmen don't catch colds, right Mr. Reborn?"
"Very good, Adam," the infant nodded approvingly, "You'll turn from assassin to hitman in no time."
What's the difference! Hide gaped.
"Boss, we're going to help you," Anna claimed.
"Help me?" he grimaced and asked cautiously, "What are you going to do…?"
"De-humidify your room," she stated, this did not sound like the greatest idea to Hide as he did not know what 'de-humidify' meant.
"I'm sorry what?" he asked.
"De-humidifying your room will help with your sinuses," she explained in a matter-of-factly tone, "By doing this, your sinuses will clear up and you won't feel all stuffed up and congested anymore."
"R-Really?" he gulped, the idea sounded too good to be true and he wondered how the twins would screw this idea up.
Anna turned to her brother and said, "Bring it in, Adam."
"Okay sis!" he said cheerfully and ran out of the room, when he came back he was carrying a large metallic object** that had steam coming out of it.
"What the hell is that!" Hide gaped at the monstrous machine.
"You simply pour water in it," Anna began as if she was on a commercial; a cup of water materialized in her hands, she opened a small hole in the machine and poured water into it, "And press the button," she did so and the machine immediately began making loud noises, steam poured from out of the machine and into Hide's room; she announced, "You're room is now de-humidified!"
"Why do I get the feeling that this thing was made out of scrap junk metal that you just happened to find," the boy muttered while staring at the machine with silent horror.
"That's because it was," she stated.
"Boss! How are your sinuses?" Adam asked eagerly.
Hide sniffed and said, with mild surprise, "Better, actually. I think this thing is really working.
"Yes!" the foreigner cheered, "Phase one of the plan, complete!"
"What?"
"Anna!" he pointed to his sister, "Begin phase two!"
"There's more than one plan?" Hide gulped.
"Phase, Boss," Anna corrected, "The phase is part of the plan, not the other way around."
"What are you guys going to do?" he asked worriedly.
"You'll see, Boss!" Adam said cheerfully and ran off with his sister before Hide could ask anymore questions.
"Anna, what more are we going to do?" the brother asked immediately after leaving Hide's room, "I didn't know there was a phase two!"
"Weren't you the one that said there was?" his sister asked.
"Really?"
Anna shook her head and said, "Alright, for phase two we're going to call up a specialist in being sick."
"Who?"
"I don't know," she shrugged, "I don't know her phone number, where's your cell phone?"
"Right here," he procured a red cell phone for his sister and handed it to her, "Who are you calling?"
"You'll know," she said while looking through his contacts, "She's a real bomb."
~8~
"Twelfth!" Hanabi cried out when she exploded into the house, her brother came along after her at a slow and lazy pace.
"Oh, there you are, Smoking Bomb," Anna remarked upon seeing her.
The silver haired bomber grabbed her shirt collar and pulled the blonde towards her until she was only a few inches away from her face, "You told me the Twelfth was dying, you blonde-bitch. That better as hell not be true."
"Yeah, he's just got a cold," she said dismissively and asked, "Did you bring the things I asked for?"
Hanabi's eye brow twitched and she was possibly two seconds away from blowing the entire house up, luckily for the sick Hide, Nagi quickly stepped in with a grocery bag in hand, "Right here," he said cheerfully.
Adam quickly snatched the bag away from him and said, "Thanks!"
"Wait a minute, where do you think you're going with my medicine?" she stopped him and inquired, "In fact, why did you even ask for my medicine?"
"The Twelfth's sick," Anna explained, "And we thought that since you get sick a lot when ever that pink haired lady is around, and since your brother is a druggy-"
"Those are medicinal," Nagi claimed.
"Yeah, whatever," the blonde girl raised and dropped her shoulders with careless attitude and continued, "Point is, you guys use a lot of 'medicine', or whatever you want to call it, and you guys must have something that will help with Boss and his cold. So do you guys have something that helps with colds?"
Hanabi thought about this explanation and eventually gave into the idea, after all it was for her beloved Twelfth!
"Fine," she agreed with slight reluctance, "But only because it's for the Twelfth!"
"Yeah, whatever," Anna repeated and took the grocery bag from her brother to look inside it, "Which stuff is the stuff that helps with colds?"
"Give me that!" Hanabi seized the bag away from her and started looking through it until she finally procured a few bottles of pills, she opened each one and started taking seemingly random numbers from each pill bottle, "The yellow ones are for coughs, but he should only take one every twelve hours or else he'll start having hallucinations," she explained, "The blue ones are for headaches, which he should only take two of them; the small round ones are for sleeping; and these orange ones are for vitamin C."
"Can't we just give him an orange instead?" the other girl inquired.
"I guess you could," Nagi shrugged.
"Shut up Nagi," the younger Gokudera told, she looked over to Anna and spoke, "Look here, blondie, I want to make one thing clear: I'm only doing this for the Twelfth, not for you."
"Yeah, nobody cares," she replied and took the medicine, "Come on, Adam."
"Okay, sis!" her brother said cheerfully and followed her up to Hide's room.
"Hey, sister."
"Yes, brother?"
"Do you think it was a good idea to add that much water to that steam machine?"
"It's called a de-humidifier," Anna stated and said thoughtfully, "I only added about a cup or so of water."
"Then why does it look like a sauna in here?"
Upon opening the door to Hide's room, a hot gust of air and large clouds of steam gushed greeted them. The twins stared at this display for a few minutes until Adam asked:
"Sis, what is the effect of hot steam to a person?"
"Hm," she began thoughtfully, "This probably isn't good…"
"That didn't answer my question, sis," her brother paled.
"Brother," she began in a matter-of-fact tone, "I do quite believe now is a good time to get the hell out of here."
"Okay, that really didn't answer my questions.
"Ugh…" someone moaned, they watched in silence as Hide came stumbling out of his steam-filled room, all of his clothes were drenched with a mixture of water and sweat and most of his body was pruned and wrinkled. The boy fell to the ground as soon as he exited the room and became unconscious.
Adam bent down to Hide and asked his sister, "Do you think we're going to get yelled at again?"
"Most likely."
~8~
"You turned my room into a sauna, you left a giant burn mark on my bedroom floor in the shape of that machine-"
"It was a de-humidifier."
"Whatever!" Hide shook his head and continued grimly, "You guys have pretty much ruined my room and possibly the house! Do you know what mom is going to say when she gets home and sees what's wrong with my room?"
The twins stood in silence and kept their eyes focused on the ground of the living room where Hide was sitting on the couch wrapped up in blankets. Their Boss was most definitely not in the best of moods at the moment, even the Gokudera-siblings were completely staying out of this one.
Luckily for the twins, the sound of the front door opening seemed to echo in the house and a cheerful voice rang out, "Hide-kun! I'm home!"
"Look, mom's home," the son said sourly and stared at the twins, "You guys better owe up to this and explain what happened yourselves, alright?"
"Yes, Boss," they both said quietly.
"Oh my, Hide-kun," his mother said when she came to the living room, she was just about to take off the light blue overcoat she was wearing but had stopped and went over to her son to wrap her arms around him, "Oh my, don't look so grim, Hide-kun!" she said cheerfully, "I know your sick, but you shouldn't get down about it, oh my."
"Mom, now's not the time," the boy said with slight embarrassment, he eyed Adam and Anna carefully and said, "Aren't you guys going to say something…?"
"Um…" Adam hesitated for a moment.
"Go ahead, you two," said Reborn, who had just randomly appeared out of nowhere like he usually did, "Tell Mama about what happened."
"Hm?" the mother looked up at them with interest, "Oh my, what happened, Anna-chan, Adam-kun? Oh my, I hope you guys were good to Hide-kun while I was gone!"
"Er, about that…" Anna began nervously.
"Yeah, um, Boss–I mean, Hide's room…" Adam began strongly but his voice drifted off into silence.
"Oh my, speaking of that, why aren't you in your room, Hide-kun?"
At this point, Hide then stared directly at Adam and Anna.
"Th-There's something we need to show you, Mama…" they said while slightly shaking.
~8~
"Oh my…" was all Mrs. Sawada could say when she saw Hide's room.
The once bright and cheerful bedroom that Hide had slept and woke in looked absolutely miserable. The bright blue wallpaper on the walls was now wet and peeling off, the wood that made up the desk was now soggy and if you touched it could have been squishy, and the aforementioned large burnt ring on the carpet that went all the way to the wood. The machine that had left the burn had, earlier, been disassembled and trashed.
"We're very sorry," Adam said apologetically.
"We only meant to help Boss–I'm mean, Hide…" said Anna disappointedly.
"Well…" the mother began thoughtfully and looked around the room again, "Oh my…"
"I-It was an accident!" the brother said desperately, "We didn't mean for it to happen! We'll fix everything, we promise!"
"Mama," she looked down and saw Reborn, who was dressed in construction clothes and a yellow hard-hat.
"Oh my! Where did you come from?" she asked.
"That's not important," he said in a strangely serious tone, "Mama, I've done a close inspection on the house after the incident and found that this, along with many other factors, has made the house beyond repair."
"What!" Hide yelped, "Are you serious?"
"Yes," his tutor nodded.
"Oh my, is that so?" the mother said.
"Mom, you aren't seriously believing him, are you?" her son said with disbelief.
"Why wouldn't I, Hide-kun?" she asked innocently, "He's a professional construction worker after all!"
"What?" he gawked, Does mom not even recognize him!
"Oh my, what are we going to about this?" she wondered aloud.
Hide quickly excused the thoughts of why his mother did not recognize Reborn and asked, "Mom, aren't you angry at Adam and Anna?"
"Not really," she said with a cheerful smile, "As long as they understood what they did wrong and are sincerely sorry about it, then there's no reason to be angry. Oh my, mistakes are all a part of growing up, Hide-kun."
"Thank you, Mama!" the twins said gratefully to her.
"Geez, mom…" Hide sighed and shook his head, "You're way too forgiving."
"And besides," she continued, "You're cold is better, isn't it? Then that means that Adam-kun and Anna-chan helped cure your cold, oh my, you should be thankful to them."
"Uh, then thanks, guys," he said weakly.
"We were happy to help, Boss!" Adam said cheerfully.
"Yeah, whatever," Hide muttered, "But mom, what are we going to do about the house?"
"Hm, who knows?" she said with a happy smile.
"Mom!" he gaped at her in amazement.
"May I suggest," Reborn began, "That you move to another house."
"Oh my, that's a wonderful idea, little construction worker!" she said cheerfully, "A bigger house would be really nice!"
"We'll help build it!" Adam quickly volunteered.
"You're not building anything," Hide stated.
"We'll help buy it!" the foreigner quickly changed his declaration, "We have plenty of money left over from our assassina-I mean, our parents."
"Oh my, you don't have to do that," Hide's mother said quickly.
"We insist!" he shouted.
"Mom, if they want to pay for a house, I think you should go for this deal," the son suggested.
"Oh my, well, I don't really like taking free things from children…" she said doubtfully, she turned around and added, "But if you both insist…"
~8~
The following week, the Sawada residence was moved to a much larger home. It was a two-story red roofed house that was still located about a block away from the old house, so Hide would still be going to the same school.
"It looks wonderful!" Mrs. Sawada exclaimed cheerfully, "Five bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and three bathrooms! It's the perfect home!"
"Ten million yen…" Anna mumbled while looking into her empty wallet, "That's over a hundred thousand U.S. dollars***…"
"Oh my, and now we have a room for you and your brother!" the mother continued, "Hide-kun, isn't this great?"
"C-can I get help carrying this?" he muttered while trembling under the weight of a large bookcase.
"No," Reborn stated while resting on the bookcase, "Now hurry up, there are three more of these things on the truck.
"Mom, why didn't you hire moving men?" the son asked weakly while trying to go up the steps of the building.
"Oh my, that's because Reborn-chan suggested that it would be cheaper if you did it!"she said cheerfully.
"Why does that not surprise me," he grumbled.
~8~
* Both Adam and Anna call Hide's mom 'Mama'
** A de-humidifier is a real thing, in reality though they are actually really small.
*** $113,378.67 to be exact :P
~8~
It's been a long week, I'm so glad it's the weekend now :) I didn't really know how to conclude this chapter, so the next one will be more about the new house Hide's living in and I shall be laying off new characters for a while because I realized that some people might be getting lost with whose who :P