In don't think I'll ever get Yamamoto's and Gokudera's characters right-or anyone else, for that matter. But I really, really tried.

I hope you enjoy this, and please tell me what you think.

Chapter 9: What Happened on the First Day (Part Two)

Anything that can go wrong no doubt will. Yamamoto had learned this from years of hanging around the unluckiest person in the world (read: Tsuna).

No one said he couldn't get fun out of it, though, so he'll just keep on smiling.

(This often freaked out Gokudera, because who on earth laughed while cutting people in half? He could understand Mukuro, but Takeshi... Oh. He needed some painkillers.)

Nisa had no idea what was happening, but she did know it was bad. Nothing good happened around the police, that's what she learned from years of dealing with the fat pricks.

Thirty kidnapping cases? Same victim? Same pursuers? You'd think they would have caught the culprits by now, but no, neither fair nor hide of her kidnappers had been found and locked within bars. Hmp.

Because of that, Nisa felt it was justified to feel neither happiness nor security with them around, ruining her beautiful day.

"What happened?" she asked one of her friends, Mayu, who was looking out the glass windows with a worried expression on her face.

The girl looked at her and nearly broke down. "Oh, my God, Nisa-chan. It's so horrible. There was an old woman who was killed outside and the police wouldn't let us leave. Sensei is talking to them right now, and, I don't know, it's just so horrible. Why would anyone kill—oh, gosh, oh, gosh." And then she was holding her face in her hands and muttering "oh, gosh" again and again.

"Uh, what?" Nisa said, shocked. She looked at her other friend, Asahi, who was looking at the pair of them amusedly.

"Nah, she's exaggerating. As usual. Some big shot old lady was mugged is all, and the police is making a huge deal out of it. No one died. Promise," the dark haired girl said, laughter evident in her eyes.

Nisa loved Namimori. She also dearly loved her friends, especially Mayu and Asahi. However, there were times when she couldn't help but wonder if going there was the right decision, after all.

She sighed. Nothing she could do about it now.

Holding her crying friend to her chest, her gaze flicked around and found most of their classmates in a state of unrestrained chaos. A few were tapping on their phones indifferently, but most were either having a food fight ("Monkeys," Hana said, rolling her eyes.) or just being rowdy in general. In this chaos, it was easy to notice Yamamoto and his group who each had their phones on their ears mouthing off something to someone. She could see Yamamoto's hand holding the hilt of his wooden sword while his eyes ran over and over from the windows to the door and back again.

He smiled and said something to Gokudera, who yelled at him in Italian, but despite the normalcy of it, Nisa couldn't help but notice they were more tense than usual

(Earlier they were a gloomy bunch, now they were tense? Nisa really couldn't understand those people.)

Their tense postures and alert gazes made Nisa feel secure the way the police didn't, though. It was strange, but if Nisa still wasn't used to strange by that point, she would have fled from Namimori and run home to Tokyo during her first week.

She held her friend tighter and waited for everything to normal.

Sadly, while Nisa knew enough not to question most of the strange things that happened around Sawada and his group of friends (cue bombs and bamboo swords that turns to metal plus animals with strange flames that came out of nowhere), she didn't know them enough to not expect 'normal' from them at any time.

(I mean, normal? Pfft. What's that?)

If she did, she wouldn't have been so surprised when things turned from bad to worse, and was quickly turning to the worst event possible.

She swore after the knife was miles away from her throat, she'd use her Dad's connections to transfer her to another section. One without a Gokudera or Yamamoto in the roll, and, by extension, a Sawada.

If they managed to save her from here, though, maybe she'd change her mind.

Asahi was right, but Mayu still wouldn't stop crying. Nisa swore she didn't hear a word either of them said—'No one died, so please stop crying'—and she was nearing the end of her patience. The police, having utilized about half of their manpower running after an amateur mugger who was barely out of school age, vacated their spot outside of the café and allowed Nisa and her classmates to leave after an hour.

She found out the all the fuss was because the old woman was supposed to be some big shot CEO or something, which just screamed bias, considering this was Italy and there were mafia everywhere. Why the hell would they move half of their force to catch a mugger that wasn't even all that experienced anyway?

It made Nisa's head ache, and if she knew Italian as well as Japanese, she'd have chewed out the police for detaining them for no reason. Doing that has got to be against the law, right? Unfortunately, the only Italian phrases she knew were 'Buongiorno' and 'Buona notte', and she wasn't even entirely sure they were right. (Were they?)

At this time, Tsuna's Storm and Rain Guardians, along with Kyoko and Hana (Shoichi, Spanner and Haru were in a different class because they were geniuses. Gokudera was supposed to be with them too, but God forbid anyone tried to keep that bomber man from his boss.) were getting instructions for an emergency mission. They were to act as back-up reinforcement to a Vongola warehouse that was being attacked by enemy Mafioso which had a lot of things they didn't fancy in enemy hands.

After their talk, Gokudera yelled at Yamamoto to contact Chrome, and the baseball player did, laughing while at it.

A few minutes later, Chrome came wearing her Kokuyo uniform ("Why the hell are you wearing that?" "..." "Ugh. Nevermind. Just do your thing already!") and replaced both Yamamoto and Gokudera with illusions while both boys donned their weapons and ran to the warehouse.

Nisa was outside the cafe, waiting for their ride back to the hotel, trying to calm her still hysterical friend ("It's alright. No one died. There's no blood on the pavement. Oh, for Buddha's sake, there's no dead body there!") when she saw the shadow of Yamamoto and Gokudera running past them.

She frowned, "Huh?" and then, in a sudden bout of impulsive curiosity, left her friend-who didn't notice her-and ran after them

Worst decision of her life, right there.

Yamamoto and Gokudera felt her presence the moment she stepped to follow them. Yamamoto wondered what the kid would have done if they didn't. Maybe he'd kill them for real. Not too farfetched, considering.

Gokudera snorted. "What the hell is that woman doing?" They turned a corner and jumped simultaneously, hopping off to the roofs to get her off their trail.

"Maybe she wants to play too?" Yamamoto suggested with an innocent smile that turned sheepish the moment Gokudera focused his glare on him.

"This isn't a game," Gokudera said, more out of habit than anything.

Yamamoto hummed.

Of course it wasn't, but it was fun, so it might as well be, right?

Nisa saw the two shadows turn a corner and followed them. She was a decent runner, had a lot of practice running from her tutors and kidnappers, but those two were ridiculously fast. They were like a blur! Who the hell ran like that?

Oh, well. No use pondering, she would just follow them and interroga—wait.

Where were they?

She rounded a corner and looked around, sure they were hiding somewhere. After ten minutes of searching, she yelled indignantly and huffed. "Damn you, weirdos!"

That was when she felt a presence behind her. Thinking it was her targets she turned and opened her mouth to chew theem out, but she never did get around to doing that, because next thing she knew, something soft was being pressed to her nose, and then she was out.

She had the mind to criticize her captors' methods, though. Classic, she thought. No originality at all. Like, chloroform, really?

While Nisa was busy insulting her captors lack of creativity while passed out and tied to a chair, (Again, classic.) Gokudera and Yamamoto arrived to their destination, which was an old, underground warehouse directly underneath the Parco Archeologico della Neapolis which was illegally made, but what did you expect? There, they found Hibari who had already laid waste to half of the place, destroying both the enemies, and the stored goods at the same time.

One question popped into their heads: Who the hell called Hibari?

Somewhere in the city, Reborn smirked and Tsuna felt a shiver run down his spine.

The next question they thought of was: Why would anyone send for reinforcements on Hibari?

Gokudera cursed in every one of the languages he knew—which was a lot—while Yamamoto did his usual thing and smiled like an idiot. It was visibly fake. "Maa, maybe we should get back, Gokudera. I—I don't think it's a good idea to let Hibari see us."

Gokudera cursed some more, already walking away. Yamamoto laughed.

Outside, they both breathed a relieved sigh.

They were alive.

Once they were a good kilometer away from the fearsome prefect, Yamamoto and Gokudera donned identical smirks, already planning the demise of some poor soul who had witlessly sent them on a mission that had nearly taken their lives.

Back in the cafe, the bus finally arrived and the students of Class 3-B were being boarded. Stepping up, Mayu noticed (at last) her friend's absence.

"Where's Nisa?" she asked.

When it was apparent that no one knew, and the girl was indeed missing, Hirakawa-sensei cursed. He wasn't chaperoning on school trips after this, no matter if it was in London or China.

First day and already too much problems. Nope. He really wasn't doing this again anytime soon. Or ever.