Disclaimer: I don't own KHR. Although, if I did, there'd be a live action already and Hibari would be hot(ter than he already is).
Edited: 12.12.15
"You think I care? I could go out there a marry some other whore and have her give me some other kid. You two are disposable. If you wish for the right to live, you will earn it."
Silence.
"Do you understand, woman?"
A loud slap.
"DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"
"Y-yes."
Lux smiled happily as she waddled around her play area, attempting to perfect her motor skills. Her mother was in the kitchen making breakfast, and her father had been sleeping the last time she'd bothered to check. Since neither of her parents had been in the room with her, she had thought that it would've been okay to walk
...she thought wrong.
Moments after the raven haired child had gotten up, the door to her room had swung open and her father stormed in, face red with anger. The child froze, eyes widening in shock.
Lux's poor mother had her small hands wrapped around the man's bicep; she was trying and failing to pull him away from her child. The woman was crying and shaking her head, shouting all kinds of curses at the man.
But he only rolled his eyes and shook his wife off, "Why should I do you any favors, hah?"
"I'm your wife! And she's your child! You can't do this to her!"
"She's MY fuckin' kid! I do what I want, bitch!"
The child watched the scene unfold with terrified eyes. She knew that her parents fought often, but not once had they done it in front of her. Lux felt her knees buckle under her tiny body as she tried to process the things going on around her. She fell to her bum and tears welled up in her eyes.
"Mama!" She cried, raising her small hands up to signal that she wanted to be held. She wanted to be with her mother and she wanted the fighting to stop. Seconds late though, she had found herself crying even harder as her parents continued to ignore her.
"You cannot take her to that training facility!"
"Aah? Who says?" Her father questioned, crossing his arms across his chest.
"I say!" Leora shouted, glaring up defiantly, "I have a say in what happens to my child!"
The older man stared down at his wife, face devoid of any emotion.
When she was still glaring up at at him seconds later, the man threw his head back and laughed.
"When did you become so confident, woman?" He asked as he turned around and approached his crying child.
"What? I-" The woman paused, eyes cautiously assessing the situation, "JUST WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" She screeched as the man picked her child up by the back of her shirt.
"What do you think?" He scoffed, "I'm taking her to the training facility, obviously. She can walk now, can't she?"
"What?" She asked incredulously as the man proceeded to walk to the front of their home, ready to leave with her offspring, "NO! DIDN'T I TELL YOU NO?"
"And didn't I make it clear that I honestly do not care?" He grinned as he opened the front door.
The door slammed shut and all the children jumped slightly. All eyes were now focused on the big-muscled blonde man. He flashed the children a large grin, showing off his shark-like teeth.
"Hello, young Bovinos. Before we start, I'm going to need those of you who can speak at least a sentence or more to go through that blue door to the right. I'm assuming those who are left over can't understand me or can't speak very well."
The children looked at one another and shrugged, all apparently on the same page. What have they got to lose?
The ones who understood the blonde man followed his instructions while the ones left over were herded like sheep into another room.
"What's gonna happen to them, mister?" A young boy tugged on the man's pants.
"They're going to go through further training to develop their skills. You kids get to skip that step."
"What are we going to do, mister?" Another boy asked.
"Where are we going?" A young girl wondered.
"I WANT MY MAMA!" A child wailed.
The man only chuckled at them, having heard all of it before.
He said nothing.
Only after many, many, long minutes (a time that felt like days to the kids) of walking, he stopped in front of another metal door and opened it, revealing a very large...bedroom?
The room was humongous, and long. The walls were painted gray and void of any windows, and all four of the walls (excluding the area around the metal door) were lined with beds.
"Choose your beds wisely, you'll be sleeping in here from now on. Things will be explained in the morning."
"What? Why can't I sleep in my room?"
"Mister, are you going to read us a bedtime story?"
"Yeah! My mama ALWAYS reads me a bedtime story!"
"Are my parents busy? Do they not want me anymore?"
The man rolled his eyes, "Just shut up and GET. IN. THE. ROOM." He roared, his deep voice blasting into the ears of the children.
All of the children shut their mouths immediately and the chorus of voices ceased. They entered the room in silence...many even had their heads casted downward, too afraid to look up.
The man's eyes darted around the room, counting the children and nicknaming them in his head. After he confirmed that they were all there, he shut the door and locked it.
The artificial lights shut off, and small, dim nightlights lit up throughout the room.
Lux sighed and climbed into the first bed she saw, diving under the shuddered, feeling the hard, cold bed below her and thin, scratchy blanket above her. She didn't know how she was going to survive for so long.
The other kids watched curiously, and when they saw that the bed hadn't eaten her, they followed her example. The crowd of children dispersed and they each crawled into their own beds, though some of the ones who'd already known each other crawled into the same beds to comfort one another.
Some kids began to cry. They wanted their parents. They wanted to go home.
Other kids were indifferent. They either didn't care or didn't understand.
And Lux? She held her tears.
She knew what this place was. She'd overheard papa talking about it with some of his subordinates before.
They trained children here.
And they also got rid of the ones who they thought were weak her.
Lux would not be disposed of.
She was strong. She was going to be strong for Mama.
The next morning had been wild. The children had awoken to the same bulky man from the day before, clanging and crashing pans together. Lux opened a single eye, curiously examining the scene before her. A few of her peers were wide awake, but some were still stumbling out of bed. A handful of others were squirming their tiny bodies having only just awoken, while others still were stubbornly sleeping and going strong.
Lux rolled her eyes before kicking her blanket off of her body and hopping off her bed. She had gotten up too fast, and had to hold onto the sides of her bed to keep from getting too dizzy and falling over. Lux blinked rapidly, rubbing her eyes for good measure. Once she was sure that she was awake, she walked to the line of children. She stood behind a boy who looked a little older than her, maybe about a year. He had longish pale blond hair, a nearly white color, with thin bangs that covered the both of his eyes, though they were still visible behind them. His eyes were a beautiful dark blue color. Lux decided that the boy looked really girly, and could've easily passed off as a girl had he been wearing feminine clothing.
Upon feeling an unfamiliar gaze, the blond child turned around and eyed the ravenette. He grinned happily when he saw the the girl was shorter than him. "Hiya! I'm Angelo!" He had introduced and stuck out a hand, "Nice to meetcha', stranger!"
Lux blinked, surprised by the sudden introduction. She flinched at the boy's loud voice, but placed her hand in his nonetheless. "...Bo...Bovino Lux…" She said quietly, a bit shy as this was the first time she'd ever talked to someone outside of her parents.
"Woah! Bovino?" The boy's grin widened, and it was then when Lux noticed the boy's sharp, shark like teeth, "As in the Boss's family Bovino? Are you related to the boss? Does this make you a princess?"
Lux smiled, now noticing the boy's cute lisp, "He's...my papa, actually," she answered, pausing to think about the next question, "...I don't know if that makes me a princess…"
"Well, my papa taught me how to play chess once, and he said the the king is like the boss and the queen is his wife, so if you're their baby, then obviously you're a princess." Angelo chirped, "I'm gonna call you princess, is that okay?"
Lux blushed at the title and shook her head, "No...just call me Lu-"
"Fantastic!" The boy interrupted, "Princess it is!"
The girl had opened her mouth, probably to correct the boy, but her speech was interrupted by a loud, thunderous clap and a deep voice.
"Listen up, kids," The man from the previous day had started, "My name is Frediano. I am this 'class's." he had said class's with his fingers making quotation marks in the air, "instructor. I'm going to make you guys strong."
The children looked at each other, many of them having no clue what the fuck the guy was even talking about. Angelo looked at his new friend from the corner of his eyes, and his eternal grin stretched even further after noticing the way her hands had clenched into fists after the man had said that he would make them strong. Angelo had been receiving training from his parents since before he could walk, and they told him about the mafia all the time. They had explained to him where he was going and what he was going to do when they sent him away, so he wasn't very shocked by what the man had been rambling about. He was just intrigued by the fact that another child had been aware of what was going on as well.
Though it didn't really surprise him that the other child was the bossman's daughter. It was only fitting that the strongest man in their famiglia had a strong kid as well.
"Mister Frediano, sir," a random kid interrupted, "I'm really hungry!"
Murmurs of agreement echoed throughout the room and the bulky man smiled broadly.
"If you want breakfast, then follow me." He turned around and flung the door open. The children followed behind him in an unorganized crowd.
Angelo walked with Lux, her smaller hand held tightly in his. He had grabbed it a while back, while Frediano had been speaking, and she hadn't removed her hand yet, so he assumed that it was okay. Smart kids got nervous too, you know? "Hey," he started, "Where do you think we're going?" he asked.
Lux looked up at the taller boy and shrugged, "Who knows…" She turned her head back to the front of her so that she could continue walking without bumping into some poor soul, "I can think of a few places...he'll either take us directly to the cafeteria," she guessed, "Or, since he's our training instructor, he'll make us do exercises to 'earn' our breakfast, but really to just see how developed we physically are."
The blond boy blinked after thinking her answer over, impressed by the girl. "Hey, how old are you?"
"Nearly two years old." She smiled, "How old are you?"
"Almost four." The boy's default cheshire grin had returned, "My parents got permission from your father to keep me home for a year longer."
"How kind of him," she said in a deadpan voice, "Surely he didn't do it for free."
Angelo was about to deny what she said, but as Frediano began to explain some exercises, just as the girl had predicted, Angelo had settled for shaking his head.
"If you want breakfast, you'll have to earn it." The man explained after all the children had entered a very, very large training space. "Run as many laps as you can in forty-five minutes...if you get below eighteen, you won't be eating."
Lux smiled, remembering from her old life that eighteen laps around her high school gym had been a mile. Her P.E. coach had only given them twelve minutes max then, but she supposed it made sense that Frediano had given them so much more time considering their current ages.
The girl looked up at her friend to see his reaction and he looked back at her with his usual grin. "Eighteen plus laps around this place in that much time?" he threw his head back and laughed, "Ushishishishi!" Lux had the lingering feeling that Angelo might've been related to a certain prince, "Easy~"
Lux smiled and nodded, agreeing with his comment, "Then let's get started. Time is ticking."
Needless to say, Lux and Angelo had both caught their instructor's attention with their results.
They were the first ones done, afterall. Eighteen laps in twenty minutes, and neither of them were out of breath. They were the first ones of their class to eat breakfast that day.
At three years old, Lux had successfully climbed to the top of the food chain. And it wasn't just because the instructors were lenient with her, taking her position as the boss's daughter into consideration. No, it was because she was really quite strong.
Though, she was not physically strong.
She was a three year old. So she was strong for her age, maybe, but that was not what impressed the other children and even the instructors.
She was smart. A genius, the other instructors had called her. She spoke fluently in four languages; Italian, Japanese, English, and Vietnamese, and she knew many things. Her abilities in math, science, and reading were also far above the level of her peers. The girl and her friend, Angelo, had also been moved up a few classes since they were so advanced compared to their original classmates, and they were keeping up with almost no problems.
They thought she was a genius, a prodigy, but in actuality...
She was only carrying over the skills of the past.
But they didn't need to know that.
Besides...the Bovino cleaned out their useless trainees once a month. She didn't want to be a part of those 'useless trainees.'
It was a cruel practice, but what could she do? This was the mafia.
"Don't think you're so big and mighty just because you got the top scores this time." An older girl approached Lux, glaring down at her. "My scores will be better than yours next time. I refuse to be second to you."
Lux smiled, "Is that so?"
She laughed.
"Then prove it. I have no time to deal with chihuahuas like you. All bark and no bite."
"You little bitch!" The older girl swung at Lux.
She dodged. What the three year old lacked in strength, she made up for in speed.
"Lay a hand on me, I dare you."
The older girl attempted to kick the younger. But was stopped midway by another child, a boy. Her leg was trapped between his hands and he was grinning widely, his revealing his sparkly teeth.
"Uishishishi~ Malvolia, no need to get so violent!" He chirped cheerily, eyes curled up into slits.
"Angelo? You want to go?" The eldest of the trio challenged, slipping on her brass knuckles.
He laughed, "Shishsishi~ Any time!" He took on a defensive position and fanned his hands out in front of his face, revealing multiple different colored darts. "Will you join us, Princess?"
Lux hummed, "I think I'll sit this one out."
"What, you think we're not good enough for you?" Malvolia roared.
"Precisely."
"That's not very nice, Princess!"
"You act as if my words actually wound you."
"Shishishi~ Don't you know, Princess? They do!"
The buzzer went off and the lights flashed on. The two girls squinted at the brightness, trying to make out what had been going on. Lux had one end of her kusarigama pointed at the crimson haired girl's throat, and had the chains tightly wrapped around her other hand. Her right foot was placed on top of the other girl's chest, while she knelt on the ground with her left knee.
"The spar is over," their instructor announced, "The victor, is Lux."
Malvolia scowled and shoved the younger girl off of her. She limped toward the sidelines and stood next to her younger sister who mother henned her as soon as she was within a safe distance. She glared as she watched Angelo carry Lux out of the room and to the infirmary. The six year old's foot was at least fractured, if not broken.
Angelo was frowning uncharacteristically at his friend as the medic treated her foot. "Princess...it doesn't hurt, does it?" he poked the girl, concerned for her wellbeing.
"I'll be fine." she smiled, "It's not that bad. I just gotta keep this wrapped up for a few weeks and I'll be completely fine afterwards. No worries."
Angelo narrowed his eyes, not believing her, but let the matter go knowing how stubborn the girl was.
"Fine," he sighed, "Let's go get lunch." he held out a hand which Lux accepted graciously.
After a while of walking in silence, the sounds of flushing and water running flowed through their ears. Angelo blinked.
"Shishishi~" He grinned, "The Princess doesn't mind waiting on her guardian angel for a bit, does she?" He asked as he let go of her hand and nodded toward the men's washroom.
She rolled her eyes and nodded, "Go ahead, Angel. I'll be right here."
"Thank you, Princess~" He sang as he pushed open the door and disappeared inside.
Lux sighed, leaned against the wall opposite of the washrooms and picked at her nails, waiting for her friend as her boredom reached its peak.
It'd been about five minutes when Lux was about ready to charge into the men's washroom, uncaring for whatever embarrassment she would cause the boys in there to experience, when suddenly the wooden end to a nunchuck smacked her across the face. Lux heard a loud crack and felt a sharp pain at her jaw. She raised a hand and held it gingerly before turning around to take a look at her attacker, seven year old M.M. She glowered at the older girl, eyes flashing in anger.
M.M. was unphased. She giggled and continued her assault. Lux tried to unravel her kusarigama from around her waist, but the older girl just wasn't giving her enough time. She had to resort to dodging and blocking, and fuck damn blocking those nunchucks hurt like a bitch. Lux let out a short, shocked sound as another attacker hit her from behind, and after feeling a single punch, Lux knew exactly who it was. M.M. kicked the ravenette straight in the gut and the younger girl was sent stumbling toward an even older girl. Malvolia grinned as she grabbed the youngest girl's long, black hair and pulled it up, raising the ravenette to her eye level.
"You...I fucking hate you." She growled and she threw the girl at the wall behind her. Lux's eyes clenched shut for just a few seconds and she hissed in pain as her head made contact with the wall and slid down, leaning against it. "I don't get what's so good about you." The older girl grinned as she stepped on Lux's dominant hand just to make sure she wouldn't try and reach for her kusarigama, because all three of the girls knew that the moment Lux got her weapon, she would win the fight.
Lux's eyes opened as soon as Malvolia threw her first punch, brass knuckles and all.
Right. At. Her. Eye.
The ravenette screamed, alerting a certain blond of her distress.
Lux thrashed around as the older girl continued to punch and punch and punch and assault her face, the third girl standing guard just in case authority would come and get them in trouble for fighting without permission. The men's washroom door was suddenly kicked open, and M.M. released a shout of surprise. Behind those doors stood an enraged Angelo, the storm flames practically rolling off of him, not that any of the children knew what that aura really was.
"What do you think you are doing?!" He shouted and threw some darts that had come from seemingly no where toward the two girls assaulting his best friend. The two girls were forced to dodge and the darts stabbed into the metal wall behind them.
Lux stood, now released from their hold, and she was angry. Her right eye was still clenched shut, a trail of red streaming from it, making it look like she had been crying tears of blood. Her lips were turned down into a scary frown as she unravelled her kusarigama from her waist and hrew one side of it at Malvolia. The blade had missed the girl, but a good chunk of her red hair had been cut off. "You," Lux growled, a deranged scream bubbled from her throat, "HOW DARE YOU?!" She shouted as she continued to swing her chained sickles at the girl, successfully giving her cuts at this point, as Malvolia wasn't fast enough to dodge attacks from the younger girl.
On the other side of the battle, Angelo was fighting M.M. who wasn't really the best at playing dodging games. He threw his darts at her, making sure to scratch her with the tip of each one. While his black tipped darts were normal, his other ones weren't. The green ones slowed his opponents down, his orange ones would eventually paralyze his opponents, and the yellow ones made his opponents extra sensitive to pain. His purple ones were poisonous and his blue ones were soaked with a drug that would eventually make his opponents hallucinate. His red ones exploded upon stabbing something, but he had yet to use any of those. Angelo grinned as M.M. began to breathe heavily, the effects of his darts kicking in. He threw a dart at a point in her neck which made the girl's eyes roll to the back of her head. He laughed as she fell over.
"Shishishi~ Sweet dreams~" he hummed.
Angelo grinned and turned to watch his friend's fight. She wasn't dominating the older girl or anything, but she certainly was winning. Malvolia's clothes had many holes and rips in them and her hair had been chopped very unevenly to about shoulder length. "Uishishishi~ Looks like you got a haircut, Malvolia~" he chirped as he pulled out one orange dart and one yellow one. "Looks like my Princess still needs help though, and what kind of guardian angel would I be if I couldn't provide it?" he asked rhetorically as he took aim.
"Byebii~" He sang as he threw the two darts and the red haired girl, both of them stabbing into her arm. Lux slashed a good one, right across the older girl's chest and down her torso, Malvolia screaming bloody murder all the while. The red head fell to the ground, writhing in pain.
Lux smiled angelically, or as angelically as she could with a bloody eye and scratches and blood all over her face. "Goodnight." She whispered and she kicked the side of the older girl's temple, knocked her out. Lux raised her uninjured foot and stomped on the girl's right hand, grinning as she heard the familiar, sickening crack. The stomped on the girl's left hand too for good measure.
Immediately after doing so, loud footsteps could be heard rushing toward them. Angelo and Lux sighed, knowing exactly who those footsteps belonged to and how they were going to be punished for knocking out two fellow trainees outside of sparring.
They had fucking bathroom cleaning duty for at least two weeks.
Swing, swing, swing, throw.
The blade penetrated through the practice dummy. Wooden chips flew in all directions.
Lux tugged on the chain, pulling the blade out of the dummy and swung the blade on the other side of the chain at the dummy, wrapping the chain around its 'neck'. Then she pulled. Pulled so hard that the dummy's head snapped off. She watched silently as the wooden head rolled across the floor and hit Angelo's foot. He turned around and blinked at her practice dummy, cracking a smile at all of its stab wounds and missing head.
"Who pissed you off today, Princess?"
She swung her chains at him.
He grabbed the base of the sickle and threw the blade back at its owner. She dodged easilly. It wasn't as if he was really trying to kill her.
"Mal. Fucking. Volia." Lux grunted.
"Ahh, of course, what'd she do this time?"
"She's," Lux channeled lightning through her chains and began whipping and stabbing at her practice dummy.
"They're letting her graduate next week and won't promote me too!"
Usually, the children at the training facility "graduated" at age fifteen. But if they completed the set amount of missions before that, they could graduate early.
Malvolia was graduating at nine. And it wasn't fair because Lux had done the same number of missions and still wasn't allowed to graduate.
Lux glared down at the dummy.
"MAMA IS HAVING BABY NEXT MONTH AND I WANT TO BE THERE TO SEE HIM, DAMN IT!"
Angelo poked at the charred dummy with the tip of one of his darts and cringed when he heard it sizzle and saw smoke coming out of it.
"Shishishi~ Why don't you just use your 'I'm the Boss' daughter' powers and demand an early release?"
"You think I haven't-"
The door of the practice room was suddenly opened, revealing tall men in black suits. The two children whipped their heads around to look at the intruders, weapons held up defensively. Lux eyed the men with curious eyes. They didn't have visitors very often, and judging from their appearance, these men were from the general corps. They marched into the room.
"Bovino Lux." The man in the front center scanned the room, looking for the child.
Lux blinked. Then she slowly approached the men, hands still holding tightly onto the chains of her bladed weapons. "That is I. May I ask for why you may need me?"
The men looked down at her.
"Bovino the Seventh has retaken his previous position. Bovino the Eighth has died in battle."
Silence.
"My father...?"
"Yes. Donna Leora has also gone into an early labor. The shock was too much for her to handle." The man informed her with an emotionless, robotic voice, "By the request of Donna Leora and Bovino the Seventh, you will be leaving the facility at once and you will go to your mother."
Lux's jaw dropped.
She turned to Angelo and their eyes met. He grinned at her, though she could tell from the look in his eyes that he was sad she got to leave without him.
Lux frowned at him for a few seconds before an idea sparked in her mind.
"I will leave under one condition," She turned to the men in black.
"Angelo will be going with me."
The men glanced at each other before looking back down at Lux, "We do not have the authority to-"
"As the future Bovino Ninth, I use my authority to. Grandfather will only be taking over the famiglia until I am of age, correct?"
The man's lips curved downward, but he nodded.
"So Angel can come with me, right?"
"I'll take your silence as a yes," She ginned and waved the boy over.
He was her best friend and she was not leaving without him.
She was too late. Mama was gone.
Angelo stood behind her, grasping tightly onto her hand. He didn't know how it felt to lose a loved one, but he did know that it must've hurt.
"You can cry, princess." He poked her cheek with his free hand, "I won't laugh."
"I don't want to cry." She sniffed, and hugged the bundle in her arms tighter.
"Why not?"
"I have to be strong. For mama...and Lambo."
"Princess, even mafioso know when to cry."
"I don't want to, Angel."
He sighed. And Lux smiled softly at the resting baby in her arms. Bovino Lambo, he was called. Mother would not be able to watch him grow and teach him and protect him like how she protected Lux, but that was okay. Lux would protect him. She would protect him from this horrid, evil, vile world and if she couldn't, she would die trying.
Lambo would not have to go through the horrors of living in that disgusting facility.
She didn't care what grandfather said. This was where she would put her foot down.
Lux leaned over and unclasped the necklace that her dead mother wore from her neck, clasping it again over Lambo's. The necklace resembled that of cow horns.
Lambo wiggled a little, he began to cry.
She hugged him and hummed a little lullaby to help him sleep.
"I'm sorry, Lambo."
She didn't know why she apologized.
But she did.
Omake: Fat
"ANEKI!" The twenty month old Lambo cried, reaching for his eight year old sister.
"You know, it's pretty weird to teach an Italian child to speak Japanese as his first language, Princess." Angelo commented as his friend bounced her child brother on her knee.
She rolled her eyes, "Mama was part Japanese." She explained, "Besides, Lambo can understand and somewhat speak Italian too. He just doesn't like it."
Angelo shrugged, "It's still weird," he handed her her brother's bottle of milk, "...and why is your brother so fat?" He asked as he poked the nearly two year old baby.
"All babies are this fat.." Lux defended, "...I think.." she added a bit later, as her brother continued to chant "More!" even after drinking all of the milk in the bottle.
"Maybe my brother's just a special case."
"Ya' think, Princess?"
"But then again, we are the cow family. I think after a few years, Lambo'll be fine. I'm pretty sure I was this fat too when I was younger."
Angelo eyed the girl up and down before sniggering behind a hand.
"What?" Lux frowned, "Why are you laughing at me?"
"You? Fat?" Her friend laughed, "I don't believe it."
"Mmm," Lux hummed, "You'd be surprised." She bobbed her head toward the right of her before motioning at the bookshelf with her free hand, "Go pick up that red photo album and have a look."
Although he was still skeptical, he was also a bit curious about what his best friend looked like as a baby. He stood from his seat and located the photo album his friend had been talking about. He pulled it out.
"Go ahead," Lux smiled.
The boy grinned and opened the album. Moments later, his eyes were bulging out of their sockets. "S-seriously, Princess? You were three times the size of Lambo!"
"I told you, Angelo. We come from a family of cows. Such fatness is a norm. I bet you were really fat as a baby too."
"Wouldn't know~ No one in my family takes pictures."
"God damn it."