Disclaimer: Akira Amano owns Katekyou Hitman Reborn, not me!
This is probably going to be the finally chapter, I may add something Kyoko related though…Maybe…
Last Shot
The sky above Namimori's forest was clear of clouds and the fog of yesterday was nonexistent. The sky—even with the light from the sun—did not give off the fresh, clean, and inspiring feeling it normally did.
The small villa the Vongola had in Japan was no different from that sky. The interior was almost devoid of life with the exception of one particular area in the east wing of the villa. On one side of the door, a silver-haired man pounded on the door with a taller black-haired man behind him; the two men were surrounded by a multitude of subordinates in uniform suits. "Tenth! Please open the door! If you don't, then we'll bust it down ourselves!"
There was no reply and the silver-haired man turned backwards to his taller companion, giving a quick nod. The man understood, readying a sword in hand, and forced the door open with a tackle of his shoulder. Inside, the Vongola X was in the corner of the room that the light from the balcony couldn't reach. His head and back rested against the wall and his amber eyes stared up at the ceiling as if in a trance. Beside him were several empty bottles of wine.
Through dry lips, a tiny voice whispered, "Close the door."
The silver-haired man, who was now behind the swordsman, did so then walked up to the wrecked man, kneeling beside him. "Tsuna, how much did you drink?" he asked quietly.
There was a light laugh, "You can count, right?"
"Tsuna, what are you doing?" the black-haired swordsman asked, stopping at the feet of his broken friend.
"What does it look like?"
The two exchanged worried expressions and the silver-haired Italian spoke first, "Tenth…We know that Rokudou's death must have been hard on you, but that's no reason to be like this right now. You've got to pay attention to the present."
Tsuna closed his eyes, dark bags rested under each. "I'm sorry, Gokudera. It's just not time for me to cheer up yet."
Yamamoto pounded a fist into the wall; Gokudera looked up at the man, whose unblemished tan face was twisted into anger, sympathy, and sorrow. Tsuna only revealed his amber eyes, listless. "Don't act like one death is the end of the world. Rather than worry about what's missing, why don't you concentrate on what you still have?"
The brown-haired man stirred slightly as his friend yelled at him but remained silent, staring up at Yamamoto with sorrow-heavy eyes.
Yamamoto averted his gaze from the amber and stomped to the door, kicking it open. Several unsuspecting subordinates were swung onto the floor by the force. "Look! These are our friends, our comrades! They've all come here worried about you!"
"Takeshi…" Gokudera mumbled in awe. Tsuna felt a wave of guilt run through him.
He looked at his subordinates, their sadness, their worry. Then the empty bottles around him entered his vision. Realization flooded over him. His head bent over. "I-I'm—what am I doing? Sitting here and moping like 'Dame Tsuna'…Reborn would have my head for it."
Gokudera placed a warm hand on his shoulder, a soft and comforting smile spread from end to end. Tsuna's head lifted up enough so he could see Gokudera's sincere, enchanted smile. "Even if you mope, you're not 'Dame Tsuna'. For all of us, you are our very precious person, our beautiful sky that unites us all."
Yamamoto knelt down in front of Tsuna's legs and took pale bandaged hands in his tanned ones. Tsuna watched as Yamamoto carefully unbound the white strips, revealing scarred tissue on the palms. The swordsman slid his thumbs over the wounds on each respective hand, eyes captivated by the wounds.
"After my father's death, I felt like killing myself," he announced to the quiet, the spectators, and his close friends. "For me, my life was too tragic to bear any longer. And as I threatened my friend that I'd kill myself, he interfered. As a result, he stopped me from making a wrong and irreversible choice." Yamamoto's toffee eyes looked into Tsuna's amber eyes, which were slowly regaining their former light. "The scars that he now has, serve as a reminder to me that I never want him to be hurt."
The swordsman pressed his lips against the scars on the right hand. "Tsuna, you told me at that time before Christmas—not even more than two months ago that I should face adversity head-on, that if life threw me something I didn't like, I should hold my head up high and persevere."
Admiration and gratitude shown in Tsuna's eyes and his vision began to blur with a thin film of water. "Yamamoto…"
"We're all here for you to share your pains—Yamamoto, me, all of our friends and comrades," Gokudera smiled. Yamamoto grabbed Tsuna and Gokudera in the crooks of his elbow; his goofy smile had finally made its revival.
"That's right, Tsuna!" Yamamoto's smile nearly blinded Gokudera and Tsuna. But Gokudera couldn't help but feel thankful—for the first time—that Yamamoto's arms were wrapped around both of them. The strength of the half-covered tan arms warmed all three of them.
"We'll be here and there and everywhere with you! Through thick and thin! That's what friends are for, right?"
The smile's rays reached Tsuna and his persuaded him to smile. Tears of gratitude fell down his cheeks. "Thanks, Yamamoto, Gokudera, everyone."
While happiness is what surfaced, it was only half of what Tsuna was feeling in his heart. Hearing Yamamoto and Gokudera's concerned words boiled guilt.
'Don't throw your life away from something like this with a high probability of your death and failure. Would you prefer to see everyone who cares about you in pain?'
Tsuna finally realized what Hibari was trying to tell him, what he didn't want to accept. While his death could save the world, it would harm the very friends he didn't want to see dead, didn't want to see hurt, didn't want to see in tears. They were the very people that he wanted to protect and share laughs with.
The tears of happiness soured, but Tsuna's mask remained fixed as a smile—the only joyful part of what he felt internally that was allowed to overflow and stay.
Miles away, a Cloud Guardian was sitting in a silent room, sipping tea, his personal farewell party before he left Japan in search of rare box weapons and Cloud Attribute rings. It wasn't much of a party. There was no noise and there were no crowds, just as he preferred it to be.
As he drank his tea, flashes of a broken boss and memories of hearing of the Mist Guardian's passing played in his mind like a haunted broken record-player. The room darkened slightly and he looked towards the window. Sitting at the sill was a yellow bird that began singing.
The man set his tea cup down on the table and walked over to the small bird. As he approached the yellow fluff, he extended a finger as a perch, which the bird then jumped onto. The Cloud Guardian sat at the sill, leaning against the pane with one shoulder. "'Sakura Addiction'," he whispered, looking at the bird's beady eyes at the same level.
The small squeaky voice of the creature recited the lyrics of the song he had stated. "Sakura saku mai ochiru…"
At the sound of the singing, the Cloud Guardian let out a sigh and closed his eyes momentarily. His stress dissipated.
He opened his eyes again at the feel of something watching him. His bird companion kept singing as if nothing was wrong. "Hakanakute yasashikute…" The Japanese man, dressed in traditional clothing, turned and looked out the window, searching for what was trying to make him, the predator, into prey. In the shade of the tree, he spotted white. Upon closer inspection, he made out the stalker to be a snowy white owl emitting a very low amount of indigo flames.
A smirk crossed the Cloud Guardian's face and he couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of the blue-eyed predatory bird. Then he leaned his head against the frame of the window, face upwards and eyes closed, but the half-smile never left his lips. "If this is some idea of a joke, it's not funny…"
Knock. Swoosh.
The paper door separating the room with the front of the shrine slid open. A man in a suit with a black pompadour had his head lowered in a bow while seated in seiza position. "Kyou, your bags have been packed and your plane tickets have been bought. Preparations for your trip have been finished."
The Cloud Guardian shifted slightly and the small bird took off, flying out the way it had come in. "Thank you, Kusakabe." He walked over to the suit that was folded in the basket and began changing. "I'll be out soon."
"Yes, Kyou," the man deepened the bow and was about to close the sliding door, but his employer stopped him.
"I have a favor to ask of you: take care of Hibird while I'm away."
He bowed again, "Yes, Kyou." Kusakabe was about to shut the paper door closed again, but again he was stopped.
"And remember," the Cloud Guardian reminded, "if you see any signs of Mukuro still alive, be sure to take a picture and ease the Sawada's grief."
"Understood. Is that all, Kyou?"
"That is all," he answered as he made his way to the paper door, fully dressed in his suit.
The clock hanging in the office at the Vongola's villa read ten minutes before noon. At that moment, Gokudera came into the room with folders and papers in hand.
"Giannini has informed me that our new hideout has now been set up with state-of-the-art equipment in medicines. He's also requested that I find out when you want to move the Family underground."
Tsuna smiled, "That's good news. Just have him set up furnishings and appliances put up in case of an emergency. We can't be too careful, right?"
"Understood," Gokudera bowed, "I'll tell him that immediately. Excuse me." Then the Storm Guardian left, glad that Tsuna was able to smile properly again.
The phone on Tsuna's desk started to ring and he put it onto speaker. "Yes?"
"There are some people from the Millefiore Family requesting entrance to the villa, should we let them in, Boss?" a voice asked through the intercom.
The brown-haired boss froze.
"Boss?"
Reality settled in and Tsuna could feel his blood rush and pain clench at his heart and stomach. "Yes, send them in. Oh, and when they enter, please have someone take them to the garden for our conversation."
"Yes, Boss."
Tsuna felt shivers run through his whole body; his intuition told him to call off all orders and evacuate his family. But he went against what his mind ordered and slipped on a pair of white mittens.
A white-haired man stepped out of the eighth of nine vehicles, followed by a man with red hair and glasses. "So, Shou-chan, are you ready?" the white-haired man asked his companion with his fox smile.
"Yes," he answered.
"That's good." The man and the mix of white and black that followed him stopped after he did. A man dressed in a suit of black and a white collared shirt stood in front of the door leading to the villa's interior.
"I've been told by my boss to bring you to the rose garden. Please follow me."
One of the subordinates behind the white-haired man snapped his fingers. Instantaneously, a wave of gold scratched the man and he was covered in yellow spiders. The man fell to the floor, motionless in seconds. "Naïve, how naïve…what makes you think that we came here to just listen to you Vongola?" the subordinate that had snapped his fingers scoffed.
"Now, now, Gingerbread, that wasn't a nice thing to do. Mr. Sawada's not going to be a happy man. What do you plan on doing if he attacks us?" The smile on the white-haired man's face didn't fade even as he spoke to his subordinate.
"Why, I would use self-defense by all means," Gingerbread answered, tipping his hat over his eyes in a fashion similar to a certain hitman.
"I guess that's the route we'd have to take now, isn't it?" The sinister aura from the fox smile grew. "Oh, well. Then let's just annihilate the rest of this weak family. Then that poor underling won't be lonely, right?"
"Of course, Byakuran-sama," Gingerbread replied.
"Boss! They killed Giovanni!" a man came rushing into Vongola's office, which held a paling Tsuna.
"They killed Giovanni?"
He nodded, "Yes, and they've—" The man stopped, red spread like a blooming flower from his chest and only stopped spreading when the man fell to the floor, eyes wide-open.
"Nicolas!"
"It's too bad that he couldn't survive such a weak attack," Byakuran smiled as he entered the office.
Tsuna glared at the man from his seat. "Byakuran," he greeted, biting back his anger and anguish. He couldn't afford letting his guard down this dangerous man.
"Hello, Mr. Sawada. I'm sorry about what happened to your subordinates." His smile was reconstructed to perfection.
Boom!
Byakuran turned backwards for a second then back at Tsuna, "You should really teach your subordinates some manners. They're just thoughtlessly destroying your villa."
"I take it this is your 'formal' meeting," Tsuna kept back most of his growl.
"'Formal'…" Byakuran walked up to the desk and took a seat on the wood, looking down at Tsuna on the other side with purple irises revealed through a slit between eyelids and cheek. "I guess you could call it that," he whispered. He took a gun from the holster that hung from his waist and prodded the open-ended part under Tsuna's chin, lifting the Vongola bosses head with the tip. "Now, how about we have a 'formal' and 'peaceful' negotiation over the conjoining of the Millefiore and the Vongola?"
An orange flame sprouted from Tsuna's foreheads and lighted the brown-haired boss's gloves. As he spoke smoothly, he grabbed onto the gun, deforming the weapon to a useless shape. "I'm sorry that you had to come all the way down here, but I don't like conducting business with the killers of my Family."
The eerie calmness in Tsuna's voice made the temperature drop another few degrees in addition to Byakuran's menacing air.
Byakuran's eyes closed again and his smile grew darker, "I see. Well that's unfortunately to hear." Behind him, his subordinates filed in holding three unconscious Guardians: Rain, Storm, and Cloud. "Are you sure about that?"
Tsuna averted his gaze from the captive subordinates and looked out through the window behind him. The garden below him was structured like that of the one back in Italy. Roses of all colors of the rainbow decorated the well-kept bushes.
"Well, Mr. Sawada? If you don't say anything, I'll take your silence as your certainty with your answer."
The Vongola boss glared at the Millefiore boss from the corner of his eyes. "By all means…" He grabbed the white-haired man by the stiff collar of the uniform and dragged him to the window, forcing the man through the glass and into the center of the flowery courtyard with force added from his X-Gloves.
Petals, dust, and leaves rose into the air, floating in the space surrounding the two bosses.
Byakuran laughed, "Then you've ordered the death of your Guardians as well?"
"Did you think I would fall for a stupid illusion like that?" Tsuna asked, his countenance remained unchanged and impassive. The X's on his gloves morphed into I's and the flame on Tsuna's forehead flickered out. Ice slowly crept over Byakuran's pinned shoulders.
Then, there was a click and a bang.
"Get Alfred somewhere safe!" Gokudera ordered from behind a support pillar. Blood, ash, and debris littered Gokudera's clothes and stuck his hair together in clumps. In his hands, he held several bombs, which he skillfully flung at a group of Millefiore subordinates shooting from the opposite side.
A blond man, bleeding from a cut on his forehead, looped a comrade's arm around his neck and shoulders. "But what about you, Mr. Gokudera?"
The explosives set off and dust rose into the air. Stones and shards zipped through the air and cut at Gokudera's suit. "I'll be fine. Just take Alfred somewhere safe; I'm going to make sure Tenth is safe."
"A-Alright," the blond man nodded and limped away with his friend.
Gokudera ran from his pillar up the staircase, throwing several more dynamite at the enemy. "Damn it…why now? Why today?" he growled as he rushed to the large double doors of Tsuna's office. As he approached the vicinity, the number of the fallen rose and he spotted several Mosca guarding the entrance to Tsuna's office. Without revealing himself to the humanoids, Gokudera threw seven rocket bombs, one for each target.
The smoke cleared and revealed each Mosca in pieces.
Slink.
A metal bullet fell to the velvety red carpet of the staircase in six pieces in front of the crouching Storm Guardian. On the staircase, Yamamoto stood with Shigure Kintoki unsheathed. "Shibuki Ame."
The Japanese swordsman's toffee eyes glared at the enemy that had attempted shooting at Gokudera. The shirt of his suit was in tatters and blood seeped from the small lines that decorated the revealed tan skin. The red flesh on his chin was cut, the result of barely evading a bullet minutes ago.
"Show-off," Gokudera grumbled, pushing himself off the staircase. He barged into the office just in time to see Tsuna push Byakuran through the window. His green eyes widened and he ran to the edge of the broken window, smashing shard of glass into even smaller pieces.
Swoosh.
Yamamoto sliced at the Millefiore's invisible illusionist using Shinotsuku Ame. "Sheesh, be more careful, Hayato," the swordsman sighed. "If you act that reckless, you'll get hurt."
The silver-haired Italian completely ignored Yamamoto and ran past him, yelling out the name of his beloved friend and boss, "Tsuna!"
The swordsman wandered to the window sill calmly. What he saw in the rose palace broke that calmness and he ran after Gokudera.
Byakuran smirked from beneath the wide-eyed Vongola boss. Crimson splattered onto the Millefiore's dusty white uniform and Byakuran's pale face. The I's reverted back to X's on Tsuna's gloves and the orange flame returned to his forehead, but in a smaller flame than had originally been there.
Sticky red dripped from the wound in Tsuna's chest onto the dirt and Byakuran's cheek, making it seem as if the masked man was crying tears of blood. The smirk on Byakuran's face widened until it was insanely large.
"I always get what I want in the end, Vongola Decimo," Byakuran whispered as the man collapsed onto the dirt. The Millefiore's leader that Tsuna believed to be underneath himself faded. The last words that came out of this fake Byakuran were towards the man that shot the Vongola boss. "Thank you so much for that excellent display of self defense, Shou-chan,"
Irie stored the gun into his waist holster with a hard sadness in his eyes. "Grazie mio amico," the man bowed. "Sayonara." Then the red-haired man bolted for the exit, passing by Gokudera, who was more concerned about Tsuna's current state than revenge. Without any problems, Irie made it to the cars, calling a retreat to the remaining Millefiore.
Gokudera crashed down at his knees beside his boss. "Tsuna…no…" he mumbled. He wanted so much to touch his boss, but without proper paramedic actions, it could only worsen Tsuna's condition.
"H-Hayato…" Tsuna stuttered. The piercing pain in his chest added to the ache caused by worrying his childhood friend. It was getting harder to breathe. He probably only had five minutes before his world would go black. "I'm…leaving you in…charge—" he coughed, blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. "I wanted…to avoid…it, but…Lambo, I-pin…have to…fight."
"Tsuna, please don't speak," Gokudera begged. Small droplets fell onto Tsuna's cheek, sliding off just as fast as his own would have. "It'll only make it worse. Please, just hold on until we get the paramedics."
Tsuna smiled weakly at Gokudera and extended a feeble, frail arm with a gloved hand at the end. He swiped away a tear with his thumb at the source. "N-No tears…And… please…don't let Kyoko…or…Haru know…what…happened…not yet…"
He closed his amber eyes; only a sliver of the Dying Will flame remained, but it gradually grew smaller and thinner until its heat and light died out.
Gokudera screamed. It wasn't "no", it wasn't "Tenth", it was only a scream. A scream that released his anger and pain all at once. His boss—his closest and best friend—had lost his light.
A late swordsman stopped in his tracks. His legs refused to move towards where his savior and friend lay. His rain built up and broke through the gates of the ducts. He bit back lip lower lip, holding back the urge to yell. Perseverance. That's what he needed right now: to persevere.
In the center of the forest, far from the public and a ways off from the Vongola's new living accommodations since the Millefiore's attack sat a jet black coffin. Inside this eternal bed of slumber was the Vongola's Tenth Boss, surrounded by hundreds of white roses.
Gokudera stared blankly as the case was lidded, enclosing Tsuna in his final resting place. Beside him was Yamamoto. They were the only two that attended this makeshift service.
"Takeshi…" Gokudera mumbled. The toffee-eyed swordsman didn't look up but responded with a small grunt so that the right hand man knew that he was listening. His voice was dry, "I found out from some notes that Tsuna made that the recent disappearances and deaths were people all related to the Vongola or Arcobaleno. Because of this, I will be sending Ryohei to look for Tsuna's parents and check on the Varia. You, however, are to resume your missions until further notice."
"Okay," Yamamoto agreed; his eyes were red and swollen and his voice croaked, "And Hibari?"
The Storm Guardian scoffed, "That guy doesn't care; he cut off all ways of communication with us after he left on his 'treasure hunt'."
"The last wish Tsuna told me was to make sure we don't tell Kyoko and Haru what happened, so don't, alright?"
"Understood…then…I'll head back first," Yamamoto announced. "I'll be busy for the next few days; I'll call in when I have time."
"Yeah…" Gokudera responded. He knelt next to the coffin and put a stick of dynamite on the cover. "I'm sorry I don't have flowers, Tsuna, so please take this as substitute for now, mio amico."
End Chapter Seven
Well, that's it because you guys should all know what happens next, right? Well, if you don't, here's a mini summary:
Thirteen year-old Tsuna comes to TYL time, freaking out because he wakes up in a coffin. When he meets TYL!Gokudera, he finds out that he needs to kill Shoichi when he gets back to his own time, but he never goes back to his own time. Then, Gokudera comes and they meet Lal Mirch and then TYL!Yamamoto. From there on, they begin the adventure in Byakuran's almost realized perfect world.
Reviews please! Especially for this last chapter! =~=