So apparently, I'd neglected to write for so long that my Document Manager was completely empty. (laughs) So, about this chapter: I'd gotten such demand for a sequel on the first one that I felt slight forced into it. But that's okay; I'd never do anything if I wasn't compelled to by people like you. Also, I promised someone I'd upload this chapter once I finished it (it was only partially completed at the time).
FYI, most of this was done before I started NaNoWriMo. Just not the ending and a bit at the end.
"Tsuna-kun, I'll see you at school later!"
Tsuna looked up from his breakfast with a surprised look upon his face. "Eh? Why, Mom?" he asked, confused. Had he missed something?
His mother merely smiled cheerily. "Don't you remember, Tsu-kun?" she asked, a tinge of excitement coloring the sentence. "Today is Parents day! All the parents and siblings and other family members will be showing up at school!"
Tsuna's already pale face visibly blanched. All family members! ? This was horrible! His mother was the only one, because his father and grandfather were always away on business, and his other grandpa, the one who had named him and with whom he shared almost identical looks, had been missing for some time (though Tsuna had a sneaking suspicion that this "disappearance" was another one of his father's jokes). And knowing his luck, people would comment all day on his similarities to his mother.
Oh joyous day.
"Y- you don't have to come!" Tsuna insisted, but his mother was persistent. In the end, the poor boy had no choice but to head to school normally, dreading the allotted time when students' family members would be showing up.
On his way, he ran into Yamamoto; the two lived near each other, and, both having consistent late records, often ended up walking to school together. "Yo, Tsuna!" the taller boy called, running up to clapping his classmate on the back. "Aren't you excited for today? Hahaha, my old man's coming, but my uncle couldn't make it! Ahaha, and it was a shame, lots of people say that the three of us look alike! What about you?"
"E- eh?" Tsuna squeaked, surprised at the extroverted greeting. "O- only my mom…"
Yamamoto chuckled merrily, as was his signature nature. Always laughing. Suddenly, a thought seemed to dawn upon him. "Oh, did you hear?" he asked, "Apparently we'll be joining with the sixth-graders today! Except, not our aniki and aneki groups… so we'll be meeting with either 6-B or 6-C then, I guess, huh?" He laughed again, not noticing the sudden paling of Tsuna's face. "Oh! We should hurry now!"
Grabbing Tsuna by the wrist, the boy sped off, dragging the brunet behind him. It wasn't particularly enjoyable, but it got them both to school on time. Call it intuition, but secretly, Tsuna had the smallest gut feeling that Yamamoto-kun recognized something in Tsuna that made him feel like more than a friend; he had never gotten anyone else to school with his superb running except Tsuna.
Call it intuition… or, you could call it the jealous, heated stares of several girls hiding behind street lamp poles and the like, boring holes into his neck with enough intensity to fry oil.
Tsuna hurried inside, Yamamoto already chatting with other baseball club members and leaving him. Being alone in that kind of situation just might be dangerous… just maybe.
Tsuna hurried into the classroom, still feeling like he was being watched. Shaking it off, he went over to his desk. The teacher wasn't here yet and they had a few minutes; maybe if he just stayed quiet and tried to study or something, the-
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" he screamed, upon looking on his desk. Hibird was sitting cutely, ready to greet him. Greet him with a pile of bird poop, that is. Disregarding the white puddle he had created, the bird chirruped and flew over to land on the boy's head. "Why, Hibird?" he groaned half-heartedly, before heading to the bathroom to get some paper towels so he could clean it up. This was going to be a long day.
The teacher that day was a substitute, on account of the regular teacher being hospitalized for several cracked ribs, a broken jaw, and some other things that no one cared about. Unfortunately for him, he was to be met with one child in the back scrubbing furiously at his desk with a bird on his head, another throwing what appeared to be short, thick sticks out the window at random, yet another balancing a baseball bat on his head while hopping on one foot, and in general, a class in disarray. Now feeling slightly nervous, he tried clapping to gain everyone's attention. "Morning, class!" he said cheerily. "On account of your regular teacher being hospitalized, I'll be your substitute homeroom teacher until he gets better!"
"In that case, can we go beat him up some more so he doesn't?" one of the more rash male students called out.
"Er… please don't," the teacher replied uncertainly. Raking a hand through his messy blond hair, he took one stick of chalk and began writing in (relatively) neat katakana. "Anyway," he said, still writing. "My name is Dino-"
"Dino-sensei!" One of the girl's hands shot up on the stage (er, teacher) left of the room. "Where are you from?"
"-Dino Cavallone. Hn?," he finished. Turning around, the whole class was surprised to see that he had managed to pretty much coat both his hands, half of his left sleeve, and part of his face with a fine dusting of chalk powder. Appearing not to notice, he gave a broad grin. "Italy," he said. "I'm still working on my languages, so please don't be too hard on me. I'm sure it's going to be a fun few months. Also, I don't care whether you call me by my first or last name, so whichever one you prefer."
"D- Dino-san!" Tsuna called from the back row, raising his hand.
The young man blinked at him, before turning to a seating chart on his desk. "Sawada, right?" he asked. "Did you need something?"
"Y- yes… Sawada Tsunayoshi," the brunet mumbled loudly. "Um, is it true that we're going to be joining with another class for Parents day today?"
Dino blinked again, before leafing through his papers again. Pulling one out, he scanned over it, before turning back to Tsuna, and informed him, "Yeah, I think it is. You guys have 6th grade buddies, right?" The class nodded collectively. "Well, we're not going to be joining them, just so you know. Apparently we're with… 6-B, I think that says."
He looked up in surprise when a chorus of outraged roars, terrified squeals and general unhappiness circulated about the room. "Is there something wrong?" he asked nervously.
All but two people in the class roared simultaneously. "Hibari Kyouya is in that class!"
"Hibari… Kyouya?" Dino asked, blinking again. Then he laughed. "Ha ha ha, Kyouya's not that bad of a guy. I used to be his tutor… in a way. Oh, and… Tsuna, was it? Any particular reason you have a bird?"
Tsuna looked up, bewildered and confused. First: Dino-san had tutored Hibari? Unthinkable. Second, bird? Bird, bird… oh, Hibird! (Somewhere along the line, he'd stopped thinking of the little feather-ball as a bird, and more as an actual species of animal called Hibird.) "Th- this is Hibird," Tsuna stuttered, looking down at the avian hopping about curiously across his desk. "K- Hibari-san said I had to watch over him."
"Haha, guess Sensei's right!" Yamamoto laughed good-naturedly. "They say there's no bad people who like animals, so that's got to mean something, right?"
One of the boys raised his hand. "Sensei!" he shouted out, not waiting to be called upon to speak. "I think we should evict Dame-Tsuna out of the class and send him as a representative instead of all going, because he seems to be friends with Hibari!" A chorus of "agreed!"s circulated about, mostly from the boys and a few of the girls who were desperate for a reason not to go.
"W- We're not friends!" Tsuna stuttered, blushing. "I- I just owe him, is all."
"Sorry, can't have that!" Dino laughed, saving Tsuna from further embarrassment. "We're all going! So I'm just going to pass out these memos to go home, and then you can have ten or fifteen minutes of free time inside the classroom, 'kay?" Gathering the papers, he firmly tripped over his own feet and fell with a loud thud to the floor, a flurry of loose sheets escaping from his hands.
"S- sensei!" one girl, Kyoko, called out. "Are you alright?"
"Hehe, sorry about that!" the teacher apologized, scrambling about to catch the escaping memos. "I have really bad balance sometimes! Anyway, here you go!" He passed the sheets out in stacks to the front member of each column, enough that every person got one, stumbling several times in the process. This continued for a few minutes, before the blissful words: "Okay, ten minutes of free time! Starting… Now!"
A rush of female students washed toward the front, intent on asking the young foreigner lots of questions. Curious things, they were, really.
And with the teacher being busy, Tsuna was soon circled by a group of other boys, all of whom were quite content to embarrass the brunet with a questions and comments session about his relationship with Hibari until his face exploded with red.
…
Dino clapped his hands again. "Alright, everyone out into the hallway! Quiet, single file line, please!"
Naturally, no one listened. Chattering animatedly, they flowed through the doorway into a large clump, having seemingly forgotten all about 6-B and its most infamous student.
"Hey!" Dino called. "Quiet, please! It echoes in the hallway." After a minute or two, the class successfully managed to organize itself into a single-file line, in alphabetical order, boys first. "Alright, off we go to 6-B!"
For a moment, no one moved, suddenly remembering why they had been dreading this moment so much. But the silent spell was quickly broken by a certain brunet and whoever was standing behind him in line…
"Oi, Dame-Tsuna! Get that disgusting bird away from me!"
"Hibird's not disgusting! Hibird is perfectly clean and nice!"
"Hibari! Hibari!"
"It's probably trained to kill! There's bound to be dried blood in its feathers!"
"Not 'it!' He! I'll beat it into you if I have to!"
Dino immediately sprung into action, separating the two with a strained smile upon his features. "Hey, hey, don't fight! I'm sure that… Hibird… isn't disgusting at all. And Tsuna, I'm sure you didn't mean that, right? Apologize to each other, both of you." The entire class was silent, inwardly contemplating the sharp, violent tongue that had sprung into the Loser's mouth. What was even more daunting was that right after uttering the sentence, he had gone into an even weaker state than usual. What were they dealing with when they called him "Dame-Tsuna"?
A slow clapping filled the silent space. "Well done," a lazy voice interrupted. "I must say I'm impressed." Hibari's black and white attire came into view, a small smirk forming at his lips. "Sensei said that I should come find out what's keeping this class. I'm glad I didn't miss that little… spectacle." Still smirking, he turned upon his heel and stalked off toward his own classroom, gesturing with his hand that they follow. Hibird took flight and perched snugly upon the boy's shoulder.
No one dared fall out of line as they marched, both literally and figuratively.
…
Upon entering the classroom, it was revealed that all of the family members, mostly mothers while the fathers worked, were already crammed in the back. "Eh… As such, we will be having class 4-A join us for the day," the teacher droned, apparently just finishing some speech. Many of the parents clapped as the students filed in, taking the desks that had been laid out in the back of the overly large room that had been prepared for the joint. All of 6-B were sitting in their regular order, and so Hibari took his seat next to the window.
There were a few moments of silent scrambling as fourth-graders fought each other for desks as far away from the raven as possible. As natural selection dictates, the weakest found himself closest to danger. Tsuna half-reluctantly took the seat directly next to Hibari, as everyone knew that to sit anywhere behind him was suicide. Everyone else scooted their desks in the opposite direction, but Tsuna simply stayed put out of respect.
"Well," Dino began, standing at the front of the class. "Because this is a joint class, we're going to be doing this a bit differently than most years." He held up two boxes stacked atop one another, and continued, "Here we have to boxes, one for each homeroom. Now, what we're doing is, we'll pick someone at random from 4-A, then from 6-B, and back and forth. So, you don't know who's going when! Any questions?" Not a single hand went up, and Dino smiled. "Alright, then, who wants to draw first?"
The first (not to mention only) hand to rise went up rather dramatically in the front row. One hand slammed onto the desk, the other shot up like a punch (actually, it was a punch), and the chair toppled over as the boy stood up. "I extremely will!" he roared energetically.
Dino quailed a bit a the waves of energy radiating off the sixth grader. "Er… sure. What's your name?" he asked.
"I am Ryohei Sasagawa to the extreme! Everything I do is extreme! My favorite word is extreme! "
Cowering, Dino held out the fourth-graders' box. "Just pull out one, okay?"
The boy very nearly punched the lid in with his ferocious grabbing method. "Tsunayoshi Sawadaaaa!" he roared, loudly enough to make everyone within a 1.5-meter radius (not to mention several people outside of that) cover their ears in shock. He issued one last fist to the empty air, before righting his chair and sitting obediently.
The blond teacher was simply dazed by the sheer volume of the student. "Uh… well, thank you, Ryohei-kun. So, Tsuna, and whoever among his family is here, come on up." He slunk off to the side to lean against the wall and watch. That first sixth-grader had somehow taken a lot out of him.
Amid the claps of the parents in the back of the room, Tsuna slunk miserably forward. Alone. "Um, Mom?" he called once he reached the front. "Are you he-"
Suddenly the door slid open. "I'm so sorry I'm late!" Nana Sawada beamed, coming in. "I misread the time schedule!"
Several students snickered and giggled at the mother-son similarity. Tsuna, on the other hand, wanted to take a spoon and stab himself with it. This was partly why he hadn't wanted you to come, Mom! Ignoring the despairing vibes that her child sent out in waves, Nana all but skipped to the front.
Shaking his head to clear it, Tsuna began in a stuttered voice. "U- um… my name is Tsunayoshi Sawada, or Tsuna, and this is my mother, Nana Sawada. Er…" What else was he supposed to say? Had they even been briefed on what to say?
Unfortunately, Tsuna's mother took her son's silence an entirely different way. Meaning, she took it as her cue to continue the introduction. "Hello!" she called, waving. "Tsu-kun already said it, but I'm Nana Sawada! I hope you'll all be nice to Tsu-kun, because he's just shy and fragile! So picking on him is just terrible, alright?"
Another round of amused snorts circulated about the room, louder and more frequent this time. "M- mom!" Tsuna yelped, flushing. "I am not fragile!"
A hand went up toward the back row. "Tsuna-kun! I have a question!" Kyoko called out, before waiting quietly to be called upon. When Tsuna had given the okay, she put her hand down. "Can I stop by your house later to pick up something I left with you by accident?"
"Absolutely!" Nana replied, before Tsuna could even get his tongue under control. "A girl as cute as you can come by any time you want."
At this point, recognizing how embarrassed the student was, Dino stepped in. "Alright! You've got quite an interesting mom, Tsuna! Who wants to draw from the 6-B box?" Once again, Ryohei's hand shot up like a rocket. "Er, you've already gone, Ryohei," Dino sweat-dropped. "Tsuna, since you just came up, why don't you pick?"
Timidly, Tsuna stuck a hand in, withdrawing one slip of paper. "H- Hibari-san?" he squeaked, reading the name.
Abruptly, the older boy stood up. "They're not here," he declared firmly. While everyone else just looked at him, confused, Tsuna alone (possibly Dino as well, but probably not) knew exactly what this was about.
Unfortunately for Hibari, a rock clacked against the window. Grabbing the handle, he pulled it open. "Go home!" he shouted irately at whoever was down there.
"What do you mean, 'go home?' I'm supposed to be here. Or did you forget?"
Tsuna immediately recognized the voice. "Is that… Kyo-san…?" he asked no on in particular incredulously.
Hibari glared him into silence. "I'm telling you to go home! And don't come back!" he hollered back down.
"Kyouya, I'm jumping up there in five seconds. I suggest you move. Right now."
Resigning to the fact, Hibari moved a few paces away from the window (other students moved several desk-scoots away from him and the window). There was a whirring noise, before two metal grappling hooks clacked upon the window sill. Shortly, they were followed by a suit-clad man. "Hey," he said nonchalantly, hopping down from the dangerous position. "I'm sure you don't mind me entering."
"K- Kyo-san!" Tsuna shouted. Swiftly, he clamped both hands over his mouth, but the damage was done. Idiot, idiot, idiot; you're not supposed to know!
Kyo turned his head to look at Tsuna. "What do you know?" he smirked. "It's Tsunayoshi Sawada."
Grabbing the older man's sleeve, Kyouya glared fiercely at Tsuna. "Alright, you came in, now leave," he growled, attempting to drag Kyo to the door.
Reaching over with his other hand, the latter hoisted his younger brother up by the back of his shirt. "Now, that's no way to greet someone, is it?" he asked, still smirking. "Besides, I heard you're up next? Leaving now would be rude." Managing to wriggle free, Kyouya dropped to the ground and pounced.
Carefully, Tsuna wove through the now well-skewed corridors between the columns and rows of desks. "U- um, Kyo-san, Kyouya-san!" he attempted to shout over the noises of clanging metal, while keeping a safe distance away. "Maybe you shouldn't fight in here?"
"Sawada-san, do you mind if I ask what's going on here?"
Tsuna yelped in surprise, and his head snapped to the side. Fong stood there, smiling calmly as always. "F- Fong-san!" the boy sighed in relief. "You scared me!"
"I'm very sorry," Fong apologized, bowing. "Now, about Kyo and Kyouya…"
"Oh, Right!" Tsuna swallowed nervously. "Basically, Kyo-san came in through the window, and Kyouya-san was upset about it… so they started fight-"
Suddenly Alaude appeared between the two battlers (where the heck did he come from?). "Kyo, I said absolutely no fighting today! Kyouya! Behave better!" he growled irately.
"Go ahead and make me, old man!" Kyouya growled rebelliously. Way past the point of being pacified, he continued going at it once again with Kyo.
The latter, on the other hand, was more wary of their father's murderous aura. Slowly, he lead the battle toward the window, before executing a backflip out of it. Growling menacingly, Kyouya soon followed (albeit far less gracefully).
"W- Wait, Kyouya-sa-!" Tsuna began, running to the window. He watched helplessly as the two continued fighting all around the courtyard. "Um, Alaude-san, is there anythi-"
"Move over," the blond ordered, and Tsuna obediently scrambled. A gray blur shot past him, disappearing out the window.
Tsuna resumed his post at the sill, Fong taking the space next to him. "Fong-san, is this okay?" Tsuna asked uncertainly. "I mean, what with the fighting and how angry Alaude-san was, and-"
"They'll be fine," Fong reassured him with a pat on the shoulder. "Perhaps with a few broken bones, but all three of them will live to fight another day. They might as well be Death Gods. Although I do hope you don't mind this."
The brunet looked up in surprise. "Don't mine wha- ah, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" Fong had grabbed him be the arm roughly, before picking him up easily and jumping out the window. With grace akin to that of a feline, the Chinese man leapt safely into a tree. Tsuna's head was the first to appear above the foliage. "Fong-san, what was that for! ?" he pouted. "I thought I was going to die!"
Fong's head resurfaced, as if they were both floating in the ocean. "As I said, I do hope that you didn't mind that," he smiled. "I merely had a feeling that it would be easier to deal with this if you were here."
Tsuna was sorely tempted to scream lies!, however, he managed to suppress it. One more person angry at him was not what he needed right now. Instead, he took a deep breath, and sighed.
"Hey, Tsunayoshi," Kyo called from below, blocking another attack from Kyouya. "Come down here for a second."
"Eh?" Curiously, Tsuna clambered down awkwardly from the top. Partway down, his foot slipped, and he bounced the rest of the way with a yell. He shut his eyes tightly, anticipating a nice, face-to-face reunion with the dusty ground.
Instead, he was saved by Kyo managing to catch him somehow. "Nice job," the older man smirked. Without warning, he threw Tsuna, before darting around the tree to escape from a fast-approaching Alaude.
"Hiiiiiiiiiiiiie!" Tsuna screamed, once more expecting a harsh visit to Mr. Hard Earth's doorstep. And once more, he was saved.
"Herbivore, get off of me. Right now," Kyouya growled irately. Scrambling, Tsuna jumped off. He had plowed straight into the upperclassman, bowling them both over on top of each other.
"I- I'm sorry Kyouya-sa- ow!" Tsuna flinched, as a spiky ball that looked suspiciously like a chestnut fell from a tree and bounced on his head.
"Kyuu!" it squealed cutely, unrolling. Barinezumi sneezed once, then snuffled and crawled onto the brunet's shoe. "Kyuuu–!"
Tsuna lifted up his foot and attempted to balance on one leg. "B- Barinezumi!" he squeaked, looking at the rodent. "What are you doing here?" In reply, he only received a large amount of hiccuping and yawning.
"I think he drank or ate something odd," Kyouya said, not watching the two. He seemed to be winding the handle on a small purple box. "He's been like that since this morning; it's like he's drunk or something."
"Um, Kyouya-san?" Tsuna asked tentatively, staring at the box in the upperclassman's hands. "What is that?" A jack-in-the-box...?
"Micro Hammer in a box."
"… Eh?"
Kyouya sighed. "A micro hammer is a pretty much a mini-baseball with spikes on it. When propelled using this spring-loaded box at full tension, it can be launched fast enough to snap a full-grown tree in half." He stopped winding it, and pointed the one end with a hole in it toward the two other battle contestants. "This isn't at full, but it'll work. As a side note, it's based off of Roll."
He pressed a button on the side, and the Micro Whatever-it-was shot out. For an instant, Tsuna was able to see it clearly, before it rocketed away. Indeed, it looked like a tiny baseball with vicious metal spikes on it. Alaude saw it coming, for he seemed to suddenly disappear once the thing was shot (crazy old man with his disappearing acts). Kyo had a more narrow escape, as he jumped upwards into the nearest tree. The Micro Hammer hit the ground where they had been just a moment before, and promptly caused a small explosion, big enough for a dust cloud and a small crater (it looked rather like an anthill, he thought).
"Did I mention that some of them contain small amounts of explosives?"
Tsuna blanched. "K- Kyouya-san…" he stuttered, "I… uh… don't think that's legal…"
Kyouya gave him a skeptical look. "Did I ask you?"
Why don't the authorities catch this guy! ?
Two figures, one red and one black, dropped out of the nearby tree that Barinezumi had come out of, and one backflipped and cartwheeled away nimbly as the other focused on attacking and moving forward. As Kyo and Fong moved past the two elementary-schoolers, the former stopped for an instant and pointed a tonfa at Kyouya. "Get rid of that thing," he barked sharply, "I'd rather not have to go to the trouble of biting you to death for that."
Tsuna squeaked again, as he found himself hoisted up by the back of his shirt. "I'll be confiscating that, Kyouya," Alaude's voice rumbled from behind his ear, as the man plucked the box from Kyouya's hands with his free one. Tsuna broke out into a cold sweat of terror. "At least until you find something else to use for your ammo." He had picked them both up using his right hand, and used the left to pop the box into one of his many coat pockets.
"Um… Alaude-san?" Tsuna asked tentatively, feet still dangling above the earth. The blond raised an eyebrow, grunting softly. "Do you… uh… know any way to get Kyo-san and Fong-san to stop fighting?"
"Of course I do," Alaude scoffed, as if the mere thought otherwise was stupid (of course it was). "But I choose not to because I see no reason to get involved."
"Then let me!" Kyouya almost whined, struggling to be freed. "I will gladly finish this up!"
Alaude only gripped his shirt tighter. "Oh no you won't," he grumbled, free hand in his pocket, "You're going to make this worse. Let Fong deal with it."
Kyouya crossed his arms and hung there, pouting, as the three watched the fight continue. Fong never attacked, only evading and countering each strike that Kyo continued. Clearly, the latter refused to take "no" as an answer.
Finally taking an initiative, Fong blew what appeared to be some kind of smoke in Kyo's face, who stumbled backwards, clutching his nose, before collapsing. The autumn breeze blew the smoke lightly in the trio's direction, and Tsuna realized too late that both Kyouya and Alaude had taken a deep breath and held their noses, as the awful stench threatened to overtake his sense and throw him into a state of unconsciousness. His vision fazed in and out dramatically as he hung limp in Alaude's grip, stunned.
The perpetrator sauntered over, smiling as he chewed contentedly on a steamed dumpling. Behind him, he dragged a stunned Kyo by the back of his black suit jacket, disregarding any concern for his eldest son. "I'm sorry that took so long, Alaude," he said, smiling, "Oh, is there something wrong with Sawada-san?"
Still holding his nose, Alaude nodded his head toward the brunet. "Go on, take a guess. It just might have something to do with your food."
Kyouya growled, and took action, in the sense of whacking Tsuna upside the head, who yelped in pain. "K- Kyouya-san!" he shouted, "What was that for! ?"
"Idiot," Kyouya muttered, "You breathed in the Gyoza Essence, didn't you?"
"… Huh?" Tsuna asked, blinking at the older boy. "I breathed in the what?"
"The smoke, Sawada. Did you or did you not inhale it?"
"Uh… accidentally, yeah."
Fong took the chance to intrude on the conversation. "That's the concentrated essence of various spices such as garlic and ginger. Mostly garlic," he explained cheerfully, "I think it tastes and smells wonderful. Everyone else disagrees."
"It tastes fine," Alaude cut in, looking away as he suddenly found interest in several falling leaves, "But I'm not saying anything about that smell. Ever. It will mess with your nervous system."
Tsuna visibly paled and hung his head in his hands, as Fong continued. "Anyway, you're going to have to get some medical treatment for that, especially if you're getting a headache."
The two adults began heading out the gate, as Tsuna flailed. "Wait wait wait!" he shouted, "I have to let my mom know! A- and and and school's not over ye-"
Alaude snapped a golden pocket watch shut and tucked it into his breast pocket. "You can call your mother when we get there; that is the reason why household phones exist. Would you rather not be saved from possible symptoms of Choreia or even Hemiballismus in the near future without your mom knowing? And guess what, school's already over for you. The parents are supposed to stay for a meeting, but Fong and I already know everything they're planning on saying, so there's no point in staying."
"Bu-"
"No ifs, ands, or buts about it."
"Wait! I still- I left- But- I think this is considered kidnapping, Alaude-san!"
"Problems?"
"H- hie! None!"
"Good. I thought not."
Hmm… that ending right there may or may not warrant a third chapter… (shrugs) Either way, the next chapter (if it happens) would be an omake of sorts (there's no real plot to this, everything's an omake) using an idea for a short comic that I thought up a month or two ago.
"Tsuna and Tsunayoshi and Natsu and Giotto's Four Men Family Lifestyle." ← something like that. It would only be an "omake" because it would take the same basis as these past two chapters (crazy families), but the story itself would have no real relation.
So here's a real omake: a small expansion on Giotto's (I hope you all realized that was Giotto) grandfatherhood to Tsuna. (As a side note, I'm working on a story that takes that kind of situation into detail. Kyouya-niichan type thing.)
Nana opened the door, admitting a rather handsome blond man. The latter bowed, flashing a dazzling smile that matched his beautiful sky-blue eyes. "Good morning, Nana," he said, his Japanese fluid with only the barest trace of an Italian accent. "I hope you don't mind the intrusion. How's Tsunayoshi?"
The woman giggled in response to the blond. His name was Giotto, though he had gotten a legal name change to Ieyasu Sawada after moving to Japan and raising his family. "Father, you've never aged a day since Iemitsu and I got married. How do you do it?" she laughed, shaking the hand that was offered to her. "Of course we don't mind, silly! Any family of Iemitsu's is welcome anytime, you know that. Tsu-kun is-"
"Grandad!" a squeaky voice interrupted. Both adults turned to look at the tiny 6-year old bumbling his way down the hallway excitedly. The tiny brunet tripped again, and yelped as strong arms scooped him up before he even came near to hitting the ground.
"How are you, Tsunayoshi?" Giotto asked humorously, ruffling the boy's hair affectionately. "Doing good?"
In response, Tsuna clung to the front of Giotto's short-sleeved dress shirt with tiny fists, nuzzling his face into the thin shoulder. "Really good, grandad," he mumbled into the shirt, smiling. This blond man was his father's father, the always-cheerful man who seemed to little Tsuna almost godly, and his look-alike relative. The two were identical, save for Giotto's blond versus Tsuna's milk-chocolate brown hair, and their eyes, the grandfather's being bluer than a sapphire and the grandson's, clear amber. And because of this, when the boy was born, the grandfather had been given the honor of naming him. It was soon clear that the Sawadas would have a family tradition: the first boy was to be named after a Tokugawa shogun.
Giotto smiled broader, if it was possible, and managed to extract his feet from his shoes while still keeping a tight hold on the boy's frail figure.
"Would you know?" Nana laughed quietly, clapping her hands together at the adorable sight. "Tsu-kun's been so excited since last night. Like he knew you were coming today!" She went to get a camera, and snapped a quick picture of her son clinging happily to his grandfather, before she escorted them to the living room. "I'll go get some snacks," she promised, leaving the room momentarily for the kitchen.
It was only when Giotto sat down on the plush green couch that Tsuna dared to let go. He bounced happily on the old man's knee, smiling fit to burst. "Grandad, I haven't seen you in… in… forever!" he chirruped happily. "And Dad's hardly ever home, and then I never get to see the other Grandad 'cause he's always in Italy!"
Smiling back, the blond poked Tsuna's nose gently. "Well, I'm here now, aren't I?" he asked playfully, tickling the child.
