Sorry for the long and really unnecessary wait, mid-year exams are rearing their ugly, deformed heads next week and I shall be busy studying for stupid APBIO :C. But enough of this! Enjoy this chapter!

~8~

The snow was great at first, with the first couple of inches and all but, as Suzuki Kouhei observed, it was now piling in massive heaps on the streets and sidewalks.

"I wonder how much it is," he mumbled thoughtfully and took a good guess, "Probably two feet or something like that."

The baseball player sat cross-legged in front of the window in his apartment, he had been sitting there for possibly a good hour watching the snow fall down in a mixture of slow and fast. He finally stood up and stretched his legs out before bracing himself to go out there.

"I'm so sick of staying here and sitting," he grinned to himself and wondered aloud, "I wonder if Mr. Yamamoto will teach me how to use that bat-sword thingy."

Suzuki pulled on two boots before heading out the door and being greeted head-first with nature's own snowball. He trudged out of his apartment and walked a few blocks before finally seeing a safe spot to rest away from the snow, Takesushi.

"Hey, old man!" he hollered after shutting the door and pulling his dark grey hat and scarf away from his face, he brushed the snow off of his coat and stomped his boots before moving onwards.

"Suzuki?" Hide poked his head out from the kitchen and greeted his friend, "What are you doing here? I thought you had the day off?"

"Yeah, I did but I was getting bored being walled up in my apartment," he said sheepishly before asking, "What about you? What are you doing here?"

"Reborn convinced my mom to have me stay here for a few days for 'special training' from my Gramps," he sighed and said, "I actually just got here too, so we haven't even started this weird training yet."

"Training?" Suzuki brightened when he heard the word, "Like sword training?"

"Possibly…" he said warily as he recognized the look in the baseball player's eyes, "Gramps used to be some kind of swordsman after all…"

"Can I join?" he asked.

"I think that would be a wonderful idea," said Reborn as a ceiling tile above their heads moved aside and he jumped down from there, "I'm sure Yamamoto will be happy to take you on as a student."

"That's great!" Suzuki cheered.

"Are we not going to address the fact that he just fell from the ceiling?" Hide questioned.

"But where is the old man?" the dark haired boy asked curiously.

"I guess we aren't…" the boy muttered and told Suzuki, "Gramps said that he would be in the basement with clothes to train in."

"There's a basement?"

"Oh yeah, you've probably never seen it before," Hide realized before shrugging, "Oh well I'll warn you now, down there's much nicer than up here."

"Wow, it is nicer down here," Suzuki paled a little at the Japenese-style dojo that was floored almost entirely with tatami mats, "And it's bigger too."

"Yeah," Hide sighed and shrugged, "I don't really understand why gramps put more money into building a basement down here to make it an expensive looking dojo instead of using the money for his failing restaurant."

"I didn't even know this place existed," the baseball player said while walking around the dojo slowly.

"Here," the other boy handed him a bundle of clothing and said, "Let's hurry up and get changed before gramps gets back."

A wooden screen door on one of the walls slid open and revealed Yamamoto in full dojo uniform with a few wooden swords under his arm. The elderly man looked surprised when he saw the two boys standing around in the dojo-esque basement.

"What's this?" he asked with a hint of excitement in his voice, "Kouhei's here too?"

"Hi, Mr. Yamamoto," the boy said diligently.

"Gramps, Suzuki's interesting in training with us," the grandson began, "Is that alright?"

"Sure! The more the merrier!" he grinned and put down the equipment under his arms, "I've got some uniforms and swords for you guys to start with right here."

"Cool! Thanks, Mr. Yamamoto!" Suzuki said before he and Hide went to get the equipment from underneath his arms.

~8~

After they were through with changing into a similar uniform that Hide's gramps wore, the two boys took up some of the wooden swords that Yamamoto had handed them and stared at them uneasily.

"Come on, boys, don't look at them like that!" the elderly man slapped the two on the back causing them both to fumble the swords.

"Sorry gramps," Hide gulped while keeping a cautious eye on the sword, "But I'm not really comfortable with holding a sword in my hands."

"Yeah, I'm not that great either," Suzuki admitted sheepishly.

"They're fake swords, though," he pointed out and added, "And besides, you'll both barely use them today since you're just starting out."

"Okay then," they both relaxed at this.

"Now then, let's start with the basics," Yamamoto took his own wooden sword and held it out with both hands on the hilt, "Get in this stance you guys, remember to spread you're feet apart like this with one foot in front of the other."

They both copied him warily.

"That's good!" he smiled brightly at them and raised his sword, "Now raise you're sword like this and put it down in a slicing motion. But don't just thrust it down with all your strength, do it lightly and hard at the same time, you know?"

"Aren't these directions a bit vague?" Suzuki whispered to Hide.

"Are they?" the blonde haired boy questioned innocently, "This is the way that gramps normally teaches me stuff."*

"Go ahead and do it you guys, like this," his grandfather thrust the sword downwards and looked at them with his usual flashing style, "Go for it!"

The two boys did so. Hide did it successfully, however Suzuki didn't. The sword that he had been holding onto somehow ended up going from his hands to his face.

"Suzuki!" Hide yelped and gawked in horror at the sight, "A-Are you alright?"

"Y-Yeah," Suzuki muttered while rubbing his nose where the sword had hit his face.

"I thought this would happen," Yamamoto sighed.

"I thought you said you were good at baseball," said Reborn, who had been watching from afar this entire time.

"I said I played it and that I was captain of the baseball team," Suzuki said sheepishly while blood ran down from his nose, "I didn't say that I was good at it, there's a reason that this school's baseball team is the worst ever."

The infant was silent for a bit before looking at Hide and saying, "You said that he was the best baseball player in Namimori."

"I wasn't joking," the blonde said innocently, "Suzuki is the best player on the team, but you just have to look at the other teammates to know that he's probably the best. The whole team has no talent."

"Yeah, that pretty much sums everything up," the raven-haired boy shrugged.

"Then why are you on the baseball team?"

He shrugged again and said, "Because I like it, do I need any other reason?"

"Okay then."

"Wait," Hide began cautiously, "You're not going to hit me?"

"No, but since you said so," Reborn jumped up and kicked the boy in the gut.

"Ow!" he yelped in pain," I didn't mean that it was okay for you to hit me!"

"You need to stop sending mixed messages then," he said while he twisted Hide's arm behind his back.

"That didn't mean for you to twist my arm!"

"Stop playing around now," Yamamoto called to them.

"It's not playing around, gramps," his grandson mumbled, but the elderly man was too busy to take notice of this comment.

"Suzuki, did your nose bleed stop yet?" he asked.

"Hm?" the raven-haired boy looked up and felt his nose, "Oh yeah, I guess it did."

"Then let's get back to practice," he nodded.

"Okay," they both agreed as they got up from their new wounds and continued training.

~8~

"Well, I would say that you both did pretty well for today," Yamamoto said while grinning sheepishly at the two boys who had both managed to get bandages all over them.

"Seriously?" Hide muttered, "Suzuki kept on getting himself hurt and Reborn kept on getting myself hurt."

"Heh," his gramps chuckled and rubbed his chin, "You guys must be hungry, I'll make us some food."

"Okay," they said in a sing-song voice as he went upstairs to the kitchen, thus leaving the two boys and deadly tutor alone in the dojo-basement.

"This is getting tiresome," Hide mumbled softly while staring distantly at the wooden sword he had been practicing with, "I have those boot things, I don't see the point in learning how to use a sword…"

"A hitman knows how to adapt to any situation," Reborn declared.

"How in the world is that supposed to apply to me?" he grumbled.

"Hide, you want to try sparring with me?" Suzuki asked suddenly, he had been focusing on his practice sword the whole time since Yamamoto had left them.

"You sure you want to do that?" his friend asked worriedly and pointed at his forehead, "You knocked yourself on the head pretty hard."

Suzuki lightly touched his brown-bruised forehead with his fingers before grabbing his wooden sword with both hands and grinning, "Come on, I want to try something."

"Fine," he sighed and got into a stance.

They started. They finished. Rather quickly too, after sparring for only a few moments the sword flew out of Suzuki's hands and fell to the ground.

"That's weird," he muttered and rubbed his head again.

"I think you just need to rest," Hide suggested, "You're probably tired."

"No, not that," the raven-haired boy shook his head and bent down to grab the wooden sword, "I was just thinking about back then, during the summer, when we were at that old place that was rotting to the ground and changed a lot of times. For some reason I was good at using that surprise-bat there."

It took Hide a few minutes to realize that this 'surprise-bat' that Suzuki was talking about was the rusted, blue baseball bat that belonged to his gramps and, for reasons Hide couldn't even begin to conceive why, turned into a katana sword at some point.

"Maybe it's because you felt you were in danger?" the blonde wondered, being around Reborn and learning about the whole Dying Will-thing caused him to wonder if Suzuki may have activated his 'Dying Will' on his own.

"No," he shook his head, "I tried getting into that mood again when I was sparring you, and I did get into it. But something's missing."

"Maybe the problem isn't that something is missing," Reborn began, he stood with his arms to his back and was staring up at the baseball player with his black, beady eyes, "Maybe there's something that's there that wasn't when you were fighting back then?"

The two were silent for a few seconds before Suzuki said flatly, "I don't get it."

"I think you lost us, Reborn," Hide began warily.

"Suzuki," the tutor said to him, "When you're tone deaf, but you know how to play many instruments and can sing, right?"

"Well, my mom made me memorize each and every chord of every single instrument," he admitted with a shrug, "And she put me in voice lessons when I was four."

"And when you're playing an instrument or singing a song," he inquired, "What do you think about?"

Suzuki paused and said thoughtfully, "Um, nothing…now that I think about it."

"Do you really think of nothing when you're playing?" Hide whispered.

"Yeah," he shrugged again, "I just play, I don't really think about anything other than that."

"Then that must be it," Reborn concluded, "You're often distracted by other things that are going on around you, but when you focus you become better at it."

"Are you saying he has A.D.D.**?" Hide questioned.

"Sure."

"Don't say that so bluntly!" he yelled.

"That would explain a lot…"

"You're not supposed to accept that so easily!"

"If its A.D.D. then I just have to make sure I focus, right?" Suzuki asked and held the wooden sword with two of his hands, "Then let's spar until I get focused, right, Hide?"

"I don't think it works that way," Hide mumbled but gave in when he saw the determined look on Suzuki's face, "Okay, fine."

"We'll start on the count of three then!"

"Fine, fine."

"One!" Suzuki called out.

"Two!" Hide did the same.

"Three!" they both yelled and swung the swords.

~8~

"Did you tell Kouhei that he had A.D.D.?" Yamamoto asked Reborn at one of the tables in the restaurant, he had come back from the kitchen after putting the two boys in made up beds.

"I didn't tell him anything, he made that conclusion on his own," the infant said slyly and poured himself some tea out from a kettle.

"Now, that may be true," the elderly man began as he sat down in a chair at the table Reborn was at and took a cup of tea that had been poured for him earlier, "And it would explain an awful lot about the boy, but his mom will probably get angry at me if she knew that Kouhei self-diagnosed himself with A.D.D."

"I didn't tell him anything," he stated again.

Yamamoto took a sip of the warm tea and said, without even glancing at Reborn, "Did you notice?"

The hitman was silent for a bit before saying in a deadly calm tone, "Yes, Hide's growth is going faster than I expected him to, today was fact of that."

"Heh," the elderly man smirked and let out a small chuckle, "You know, I don't really take to this whole 'my grandson's the future Boss to an infamous and powerful mafia family'-thing very well."

"If you have a problem with it, then you should have taken that up with stupid-Tsuna," Reborn pointed out, "He is your grandson as well."

Yamamoto sighed with a sad smile, "It's times like these that I miss Domeki and his strange bunch," he shifted in his seat and continued, "Ever since Hide became the next candidate, I've heard that people have been slowly coming around to approving him when they start to hear good things about him, and then they start comparing him to the past candidates."

"That's never good," he frowned and asked, "Heard anything negative about Hide with these comparisons?"

The owner of the restaurant moved his shoulders up and down sadly, "They say that he's small and weak, like Sora. But they say that he's also nice and, in many ways, acts like Domeki."

"He'll grow into the role," Reborn shrugged at these comments, "And he'll never be as good as Domeki would have been."

"Who knows," Yamamoto grinned, "I know how long you've been around, Reborn, but even you must get surprised by ordinary things. People can change, Reborn, even in an extremely short amount of time, if they believe they can a person can change drastically."

Reborn grew silent again before saying, as if summing up his own thoughts, "We'll see."

~8~

*If you remember from the chapter about going to the beach, Hide has the weird ability to learn things the same way his gramps, Yamamoto, does; which is being taught vague and obscure directions about what to learn.

**Attention Deficit Disorder, it's a disorder where someone is easily distracted, inattentive, disorganized, forgetful and hyper-active.

~8~

Weeeeiiiiirrrdddd chapter! I don't even know what I was thinking when writing this chapter…I wanted it to show that in contrast to Yamamoto-who is pretty much talented at everything he does-Suzuki fails at almost everything he does. Which I thought would be a hilarious twist to a character whom I have previously perceived as a person that is completely perfect.

And for those that haven't noticed, I revamped some of the chapters of Skywards, including deleting the first chapter, A beginning, and replacing it with the second chapter, Sawada Hideyoshi; the to the first chapter remains the same though and so does the first paragraph and a few others from the first chapter. There have also been some changes and re-editing on my part for a most of the chapters that have been changed and I shall give a cookie to those that catch it ;)

Another tidbit! All of the Al Cielo extras I have been writing will be DELETED….and be published into a NEW story on ! I have decided that these chapters will be 7 chapters long and there will also be re-editing done to them as well, but not too much to change the chapters that I have already written. One chapter, of the already written ones of course, will be posted once a day for the next few consecutive days.