The Cloud That Bites The Skies
Summary: A scary person with a fearsome reputation finds Tsuna and Co on a normal, sunny day, bringing news of an assassination plot on Don Cavallone. Insanity ensues.
"What could possibly get the Cloud that bites the Skies involved in such petty matters!?" The leader of the assassins asked practically hysterically as he stared at the lethal Japanese man standing protectively in front of the Vongola-Cavallone (and one Disciplinary Committee member) group with steel tonfa lit with Cloud Flames held in his hands on either side of his body, relaxed and casual in the face of the upcoming fight.
"I will bite you to death."
"Kyoya!?" Dino Cavallone said in disbelief, immediately recognizing the man for who he was, ten years older than the one he knew or not. Dino Cavallone would never not recognize Hibari Kyoya. There was no force in this world that would mask or hide the Chairman from him, for only Hibari Kyoya could make his heart beat like crazy in his chest by his mere mention or presence.
Tsuna, Yamamoto, Gokudera and Ryohei could only gawk, unable to believe they hadn't recognized the prefect, their Cloud Guardian, when now it seemed so obvious just who 'Alaudi Kumo' was. It was all there. Hibari Kyoya had not changed all that much in ten years. He'd gotten taller, of course, and his face had matured, sharper without the clinging baby fat of his teen years. His hair was just a bit shorter, looking a bit wilder and the suit really shouldn't have been such a throw-off, even if they had only ever seen the Disciplinary Committee's leader in his school uniform. Actually, the missing red and gold armband was probably the weirdest thing.
But the silver-blue eyes were the same. The features were the same. The way the other walked, talked and acted was the same, even if the man seemed more tolerant of some behaviors than his present-time self would ever be.
It was, without a doubt, Namimori's scary prefect, Nami-chuu's protector and the Chairman of the Disciplinary Committee, Hibari Kyoya.
The Tenth Generation Vongola Guardian of the Cloud Ring.
The Cloud that bites the Skies, as it would seem.
Kusakabe Tetsuya drank in the image of this older version of his Incho like a man in a desert, so many parts of his being finally relaxing. Because while the Disciplinary Committee knew perfectly well their Chairman was strong - stronger than almost anyone else and definitely far more resilient - he was also human and they feared his lifestyle might lead him to an early grave and they, his loyal Disciplinary Committee, would have to be the ones to bury him. To have tangible proof that the Chairman will live and grow up ... The relief was so great that he nearly allowed himself to pass out. But he couldn't. Not now, when his Incho was here.
Reborn relaxed as well, upon seeing the visiting version of Hibari Kyoya, his new drinking partner for whom he'll have to wait for a few more years before they can have a repeat of Sunday night, here and perfectly fine. Really, he was only a little worse off for wear, which shouldn't be a surprise at all. These people had thought that they had given him a poison strong enough to kill him, why should they bother beyond that poison dart hitting? Of course, it made Reborn wonder just how someone with the title of 'the Cloud that bites the Skies' could possibly be so underestimated or remain unrecognized. Hibari wasn't a person easily overlooked, even when he wasn't in the mood to bite people to death. He spoke to that instinct-driven part of the brain, the danger wafting off of him in waves. It's what first drew Reborn's attention to the teenager, when he had first seen Tsuna off to school over a year ago and saw the prefect for the first time.
Maybe Reborn should talk to someone about his choice in friends, because it can't be good for his health - especially in this form - to worry about them so much when something may happen to them.
"Kyoya, why are you older than me!? What's going on!? What happened to you!?" Dino asked, almost scrambling over to the older Hibari if not for the hedgehog sphere which intercepted him.
"I'll deal with you later, Bucking Horse. For now, I have a bunch of herbivores to bite to death."
"Don't be hasty, Kyoya!" Admonished the Italian in worry. "They're not nearly as weak as you might think!"
"Oh, but they are," the ten-years-later Hibari said, glancing over his shoulder with a confident smirk which looked almost serene if his eyes weren't flashing dangerously. "I could take them all down with a single D class ring, but, unfortunately," he turned to the assassins, frowning in annoyance. "They stole the rings I brought with me, even the high purity ones my Bucking Horse sent, which pisses me off." The Cloud Vongola Ring on his finger flared with an overwhelming amount of pure Cloud Flames, making the assassins all start backing away in horror and the Box Animals start growling warily, some hunching over, some trying to appear imposing to challenge the new predator. "I had no choice but to resort to using my Vongola Ring, which just makes me want to bite you to death more."
"W-what are you doing?!" The assassin leader growled at his underlings, pointing a finger at the future version of the Tenth Generation Vongola Cloud Guardian. "Don't cower! If we all fight, we can take him!"
"You are aware that I regularly bite Xanxus and his Varia to death, yes?" The older Hibari said condescendingly. "Sawada Tsunayoshi has taken to evacuating northern Italy whenever I feel bored enough to visit them."
"You won't intimidate us, bastard," the leader said, trying to appear confident when, in fact, Hibari had indeed already more than intimidated him. Hibari's reputation is bloody, he is a man feared far and wide, known to tag along for suicide missions with the Varia, taking down whole famiglias on his own or running off with the Arcobaleno when he gets bored. He is the strongest Vongola Guardian and one of the strongest Clouds in recorded history. True to a twenty two year old Dino's prediction not long before the Cloud Ring Battle, Hibari Kyoya's growth was indeed proving to be limitless, as it took very little for the man to pick up new skills and amp up his strength each time one of his fellow Guardians or one of his Skies see him again after whatever period of time he chose to go under the radar at any given time. The new leader of CEDEF, the founder of the Foundation, an advisor to three other Skies, the Storm Arcobaleno's nephew and the Sun Arcobaleno's drinking buddy, Hibari Kyoya was not a man to be messed with.
And that is widely known and acknowledged to be utterly, stupidly suicidal.
As was threatening or damaging anything that he considers his. (Clouds were known for being rather possessive or territorial. Hibari Kyoya was shamelessly both. He was a true Cloud, after all.)
Namimori and especially Namimori Middle School. (His roots.)
Sawada Tsunayoshi and the Tenth Generation Vongola Guardians. (They were his. His Sky and his Storm, Rain, Sun, Lightning and twin Mists.)
His Disciplinary Committee which evolved into his Foundation. (His.)
Hibrid and his Box Animal Weapon, Roll the cute little Cloud hedgehog. (His treasured precious partners.)
Fon, the Baby and the other Arcobaleno. (His fellow carnivores who can still teach him so much and provide him with marvelous spars.)
Marshmallow-head. Xanxus and his Varia. (They were entertaining.) I-Pin, Bianchi, Haru, Hana, Kyoko, Basil, Fuuta. (Little animals, the lot of them, in need of protection. Not like the little animal, the omnivore, but still.)
Bucking Horse. (His Bucking Horse.)
Kyoya had killed several famiglias and organizations that had dared to directly target Bucking Horse. These herbivores were far from the first. Of course, he'd done the same for the other things/people/animals on his list, but whenever someone went after Bucking Horse, it turns very personal. It didn't even matter that these herbivores had managed to inject him with some pretty strong drugs when he had been passing through their territory and accidentally discovered the warehouses on the border with Cavallone territory. That had hardly impeded his further journey or the hundreds of corpses he had left in his wake, though he'd ended up needing a Roll sphere to take him a part of the way to Bucking Horse's mansion because it became uncomfortable and unbearable to walk with a boner between his legs and his head spinning from both the aphrodisiac influence of the drug and the high it was trying to give him.
Dino had been furious when he'd seen his condition, even more so to hear that it was happening not on the borders of his territory but behind the new borders set not a month before with that same bastardo famiglia in exchange for money since they seemed to be deep in depth and were selling territory to pay for it. Hibari had pouted for a week once the drugs wore off and he heard Dino had stolen his prey. The Bucking Horse had at least known that would be his Kyoya's reaction and had prepared for it, having the cooks prepare all of the Japanese man's favorite meals for the duration of his stay, purchasing him a new car and even showering him in high purity Cloud rings.
(Really, Kyoya could just use the Vongola Cloud Ring, since it's the only ring that won't break no matter how much Flames he channels through and into it, but it's always much more fun to see his prey's reaction when they see even A class rings shatter after a single use. They always get oh so deliciously panicked, because it is known far and wide that only the one Cloud who can take on any Sky that might come at him in battle can do that to rings with a single use. Hibari has spent quite a few years making his reputation such that even the hardest of mafioso started shaking at the knees at the sight of him, so his mere name would have people fleeing in the other direction, desperate for their lives. It truly was great fun, even if only one (two if you counted the Gesso boss) of his Skies agreed wholeheartedly.)
Of course, Dino had aimed to teach them a lesson, not erase them from the earth the way Hibari would have done, which ultimately brought about this problem in the first place. Kyoya guessed it made sense that he'd somehow found himself Skies that balanced each other out. Even though Sawada Tsunayoshi was the one whom he shared the strongest Harmonization with, it was only by just a little. They all shared an almost equal bond because Sawada Tsunayoshi was a strong, pure, all-encompassing Sky who welcomed and embraced even former enemies into his fold. (Byakuran still couldn't believe he and his famiglia were made into equal allies to the Vongola after he had tried to completely destroy them and kill the Decimo. Xanxus had accepted that his 'adopted' little brother was a strange little omnivorous animal and that it was best to just go along with it. Besides, after everything that happened and after Sawada Tsunayoshi gave Varia more freedom from the Vongola boss' position, Varia became a valuable and irreplaceable ally to the Vongola once more. It helped that the one who directly oversaw their madness was someone who understood their destructiveness, i. e. Hibari Kyoya, a battle maniac to equal them in skill and strength and bloodlust. They got along swimmingly, Varai and Vongola. Vongola and Gesso.)
Xanxus and Byakuran would have gladly wiped the three opposing famiglias right off the face of the earth and then salted the ground out of pettiness.
Sawada Tsunayoshi and Dino Cavallone rarely, if ever, resorted to such measures, preferring to try the peaceful approach, teaching a lesson at most. (Still, they too, at times, agreed that they should just send out Kyoya to deal with it.)
The strange bond they shared that made them a huge family - because, yes, the other Elements somehow got roped into it, too, through their bonds with their Skies - was balanced between mercy and mercilessness, which also made Kyoya a lot less aggressive over the years due to Dino's and Tsunayoshi's influence.
It was weird and no one outside of their strange group could ever hope to begin understanding it, but that was nothing new. The Tenth Vongola Generation is the wildest, weirdest one as of yet. And Primo had Daemon Spade to deal with, so that's saying something.
Anyway, in short, Kyoya did not like it when one of his herbivores/omnivores/carnivores/little animals was endangered and these people had not only dared go after one, but after Bucking Horse and then through the loss they would aim for the others.
They alone were at fault for the fact that they will now be bitten to death.
Encouraged and emboldened by their foolish, herbivorous leader, the other herbivores all charge into a united assault which greatly insults Hibari, because not only does he still hate crowds, he's offended that they think such a weak attack could do him any damage. He doesn't bother to dodge, instead raising his left arm and channeling defensive/protective Cloud Flames into that tonfa to the point that the Flames were big enough to nearly block his entire body when the attack lands. All the attacks that try to come at him from the side are easily dealt with by Roll or by the long chain he releases from the bottom end of his free tonfa, finishing off nearly half of the herbivore herd in that one move.
His herbivores were all already making a ruckus at his strength, but Kyoya was not even warming up from this. Numbers would never be a problem for him. Or for any true Cloud, anyway, since their specialty is propagation. If they cannot handle a greater number of enemies, then they are a weak Cloud. Hibari was not a weak Cloud.
More attacks came, but Hibari just let his Roll spheres take the brunt of it while he jumped from sphere to sphere so he could reach the flying herbivores first. It's always best to eliminate any air support before dealing with the ground forces. Not that taking care of the few that had flying equipment took long, and even the Box Animals were easy to deal with when he had Roll go into Cambio Forma and propagated the handcuffs until he had enough to trap all of them, squeezing until they returned to their boxes.
Really, dealing with these 'assassins' was far too easy. It was disappointing and embarrassing that he had had to allow himself to be taken to their hideout so he could take out all of their forces in one fell swoop. Only the poison had actually turned out to be strong enough that he had to take the new, experimental Sun Healing Pills the Vongola scientist have been making and that stupid pill kept him under way too long in an attempt to let his body recover. He'll be handing in his complaints about the product to the scientists once he gets back. They've earned his ire this time because he had woken up to these herbivores about to bury him in the middle of the abandoned Namimori warehouse district.
"Die, bastard!" Yelled the leader as he and several others charged Kyoya, who finally had enough with having to deal with such weak herbivores and swiftly cracked all of their skulls open, one by one in quick succession across the impromptu battlefield, until no one moved or so even as twitched.
"Tch," he grumbled, waving off the blood from his tonfa before allowing them and Roll to return to their Boxes. "They didn't even last five minutes. How boring."
"No way," whispered Tsuna, not able to believe his eyes. None of his fellow combatants were any less stunned, either. They had been fighting for almost half an hour and they had only lasted that long thanks to Reborn and Tsuna then hiding them in a Zero Point Breakthrough First Edition dome. And yet this future Hibari had just casually stepped in and took down all those enemies within a couple of minutes! With not a scratch on him! No, not just that, but not a chance to land a hit on him!
"As expected of Hibari," Reborn said with a smirk, walking over so he was standing in front of the man from the future. Hibari returned the smirk.
"Were you surprised?"
"Not at all," the World's Greatest Hitman replied, completely sincere and rather smug about it. "Though I will admit to a faint worry."
The black haired man snorted, looking completely unconvinced. "You panicked for a moment, didn't you." It wasn't even a question. "No worries, I am rather familiar with that. Even after ten years, people still panic if I suddenly don't return home even though I'm supposed to that day, week, month, whatever. Though the future you has resorted to hunting me down and making me have a drink with you as payback for making everyone panic."
"I should do that now, since I doubt I'll have a chance for quite a few years."
"Wait, what's going on?" A hopelessly confused Dino asked, stumbling over to his former tutor and staring at Kyoya like a drowning man lost at sea finally seeing a ship coming his way to save him. "Is it really you, Kyoya?" The blond looked almost drunk as he boldly, brazenly, reached a hand out to cup the older Hibari's cheek. To the surprise of everyone, especially Cavallone himself, Hibari let it happen and even leaned just the tiniest bit into the touch.
"I knew this was the reason you didn't want Dino to catch sight of you," Reborn said with something like smug triumph. Hibari just closed his eyes, that dangerous smile of his gentling just the tiniest bit. Fond and amused instead of lethally attractive. "You knew he'd recognize you at first sight, so you hid yourself while dealing with the issue."
"But of course," a voice identical to Dino's said from behind the group and they all whirled around once again to see the new newcomer. Even Hibari's eyes snapped open and he peered over the startled Dino's shoulder in something like astonishment as he caught sight of the blond hair, green jacket with a fur rim and a bright smile. "There's nothing in this world that could possibly make me unable to recognize any version of Kyoya, no matter what. It drives illusionists insane." The new blond laughed, completely ignoring the stunned expressions and wide eyes trained on him all around. He had his own eyes, a beautiful hazel in color, trained only on sharp silver ones.
"Bucking Horse ... ?" Hibari asked, barely a whisper.
Tsuna winced. "Is now a bad time to say Lambo told us that the future Dino-san delivered the schematics for the device to future Verde and might be coming after you?"
" ... I'll bite you to death." Two voices, near identical, said and the future Vongola boss let out a shriek.
"Hibari-san!?"