I must say, jetlag is not fun at all. The past week has been exhausting despite the fact that all I've done is sleep. As always, thank you for all the reviews/favourites/follows! Your support is greatly appreciated. c:
(Also, a moment of appreciation for everyone who got my Grease reference. Y'all rock.)
Disclaimer: FANfiction. I only own the OC. Any changes to the original canon story is due to the fact that this is fanfiction.
Warning: May contain coarse language.
"Where-,"
An ebony-haired figure clad in a wrinkled, white button-down shirt and an ivory skirt stopped all movements. One foot was resting on the ledge of an open window, and the other stayed rooted to the tiled floor. The brunette turned around; green eyes behind a pair of tinted goggles had guilt and annoyance in them as she acknowledged the person who had spoken to her.
"-do you think you're going, herbivore?"
Riko made no move to step away from the open window. Her foot was still perched on the windowsill, and it seemed that her European upbringing was very evident in terms of her modesty — she barely seemed to notice that her skirt was hitched too far up her thigh.
Hibari Kyoya did not care.
However, Kusakabe Tetsuya did. "Yang! Would it kill you to be a little more decent?!" he hissed from where he stood beside Hibari, "This is an institution of learning!"
The assassin raised an eyebrow at the senior's chastisement, and her lips formed a humorous smirk that spelled trouble rather than fun. "Oh? And what's the problem here? Never seen a girl's underwear before, have you?"
"That is besides the poi-!"
"Kusakabe, shut up."
At the mention of his name, the pompadour-haired senior immediately clammed up, and stiffened beside the impassive head prefect. Hibari pulled his chilling gaze off his righthand man, and focused his attention on the green-eyed girl who was matching his withering look with an equally stormy glare.
Kusakabe swore he could hear the sparks flying from the tension.
"Cutting school is prohibited. You are a prefect now. Do you not see the example you're setting for the rest of the school, herbivore?"
Riko furrowed her brows at his words, and a corner of her eye twitched in annoyance. "First of all, this-," she roughly jerked her arm to brandish the crimson-hued band that Hibari himself had pinned on, "-stupid shit was not my idea. I never fucking said that I would be your lackey! Did the words come out of my fucking mouth? No!"
"I never said you had a choice, herbivore."
"Well-!"
"VOI!"
At the loud interruption that echoed down the corridor, a grimace crossed Riko's face as she drew back from the open window to look down the hallway. Kusakabe jumped at the shrill voice, while Hibari merely expressed annoyance at the fact that he had once again, been interrupted during what he liked to call a 'hunt'.
Heavy footsteps resounded along the lengthy hallway; both prefects and Riko could feel the vibrations caused by the weighted stomping beneath their feet. Well, in Riko's case it was just one foot. A panicked expression momentarily flashed across her face as she grabbed hold of the window frame again, and hoisted herself up onto the ledge.
Hibari's head quickly snapped back to pay attention to the fleeing teenager. "Did I give you permission to lea-?"
"RIKO!"
"Fuck."
The curse slipped out as a tall, silver-haired man came into view. Hibari only vaguely remembered him, but his charcoal raiment nudged some semblance of familiarity within his subconscious. He had definitely met this man before. He radiated an aura of power and terror, the latter of which was currently being directed at the recalcitrant teenager perched precariously on the ledge of the open window.
"Sei in ritardo!" he growled, immediately addressing the Varia mascot, completely dismissing Hibari and Kusakabe.
"Non è colpa mia!"
There were, as it was common knowledge, many things Hibari Kyoya did not like. Foreign languages being spoken in his presence was one of them, with the reason being that Hibari liked feeling in control, and not understanding the situation around him was definitely not being in control.
"Speak Japanese."
His order went unheard, because his soft voice had failed to pierce through the escalating volume of the Varia captain's argument with his underling.
"Se non è colpa tua , allora perché cazzo sei ancora qui!?"
Riko scoffed. "Chiedi a lui!" she jerked her head towards Hibari's direction, suddenly remembering that he was still very much present.
And then her blood ran cold.
Hibari, unused to being ignored as if he were a common herbivore, was quietly seething with fury. The corners of his mouth were slightly turned down. His steely eyes flashed maliciously; the majority of his attention focused with laser-like precision on the girl. Riko could practically feel the murderous intent crawling underneath her skin, and that was when she conveniently remembered Hibari did not like being ignored.
Because she was petrified by the chilling glare of the head prefect, she could not dodge the hit delivered by Hibari's tonfa. The wind was knocked out of the girl as the metal rod connected with her abdomen, slamming into her body. The next thing she knew, the wind was whistling in her ears as she fell from the third floor.
The third. Fucking. Floor.
xxxx
At exactly the same time when Riko was knocked out of the third floor window, Kusakabe muffled a very uncharacteristic squeak that threatened to squirm its way out of his mouth. Severely injuring recidivist students was a common practice that the school usually turned a blind eye to due to their fear of their disciplinary committee's head prefect, but actually killing one!?
An expression of hysteria registered itself on the prefect's face when he realised that both Hibari and the silver-haired man were merely looking out of the window with identical expressions of mild, clinical interest. The strange man had even nonchalantly smashed open a window so as to be able to put his head through to get a better look down the side of the building.
Why wasn't anyone panicking!?
He stiffly marched himself as quickly as he could without seeming openly panicked (because Hibari would beat him if he sensed weakness, obviously) towards the window next to the one Riko had been knocked out of. Pulling the latch open, he slid it aside, looking down and expecting to see a grotesquely contorted body lying in a scarlet pool.
He was wrong.
His mouth parted in shock.
xxxx
The time it took for Kusakabe to get over the initial shock of Hibari shoving her out of the window, and hasten himself to check for a corpse was, in reality, the span of approximately twenty seconds.
In the first three of those twenty seconds, Riko knew she was going to die.
On the fourth second, she gave a resigned sigh.
Come the fifth second, instincts that were second nature to her immediately kicked in.
She pulled her knees towards her chest, tucking her legs securely against her torso. An image of a ball flashed in her mind as she closed her eyes, and began counting.
Eleven…
Twelve…
Thirteen…
Fourteen…
Blinking her eyes open, she immediately extended her legs and in one fluid motion, and bent them at the knee as they made contact with the solid wall of the building. Arching her feet as well, the combination of readjusting her legs and feet absorbed most of the shock that would've otherwise caused the bones of her legs to fracture beyond repair.
In the next split second, she propelled herself towards a large tree, her hands grabbing a sturdy tree bough. She circled around it a few times, before releasing her grip. She tucked her body as it somersaulted through the air, before she landed in a crouch. Heaving a sigh of relief, she then stood up, straightened her back and raised her hands with a flourish.
"Ta-fucking-dah!"
Grinning up at the three faces standing by the open windows, Riko could see that only Kusakabe was, for lack of a better word to describe the priceless expression on his face, awestruck. (Or at least that's what she liked to pretend it was, anyway) Hibari, on the other hand, remained impassive to her display of acrobatic ability, but from where she stood, she failed to capture the slight quirk of the prefect's mouth, and the slightly arched eyebrow.
The herbivore was finally starting to become a new level of interesting.
Squalo, on the other hand, was entirely unimpressed. "Che," he snorted as he folded his arms across his chest haughtily, "Circus bitch."
Circus? Hibari looked askance at the Varia captain as his sharp ears caught Squalo's dark mutter. The Italian craned his head out of the window.
"VOI! YOU'D BETTER FUCKING STAY PUT UNTIL I GET THERE!"
With an irritated twitch of her eyebrows, Riko responded with a, "GEE, THANKS FOR YOUR CONCERN! IT'S SO FUCKING SWEET OF YOU!"
Furrowing his silver eyebrows, Squalo muttered several Italian phrases under his breath as he climbed out of the window. With a single shake of his left arm, a glistening blade of steel emerged from underneath his sleeve. Then, before Hibari could capture him for 'breaking the school rules for possession of weapons', Squalo jumped off the ledge, breaking his fall as his blade cut into the wall of the building as he slid down.
Riko stared at Squalo. Her lips pulled back into a sneer as the man walked towards her. "Couldn't use the fucking stairs, could you?"
"We're fucking leaving, bitch."
The acrobat yelped as Squalo grabbed the scruff of her neck, and roughly dragged her across the compound. Deciding it was better to not resist lest she wanted to be stabbed by the swordsman's lethal blade, Riko looked up to see Hibari observing her from where he stood on the third floor.
A thought suddenly crossed her mind, and she groaned.
Squalo looked down with a scowl. "What's your fucking problem?"
"It's Kyoya," Riko explained glumly, "He's going to 'investigate' me when I get back to that shitty school, and by investigate I mean torture me until he's satisfied with what he's discovered."
She was not looking forward to it.
Many of you have been asking about the extent of Riko's abilities, and yes, while she is quite obviously weak in terms of physical strength, she does have skills that are worthy of being branded with the Varia Quality. Surviving a three-storey fall isn't the whole of it, so don't worry too much. c: I hope you enjoyed this chapter! (Frankly it was hard to write D:)
Translations
Sei in ritardo! - You're late!
Non è colpa mia! - It's not my fault!
Se non è colpa tua , allora perché cazzo sei ancora qui!? - If it's not your fault, then why the fuck are you still here?!
Chiedi a lui! - Ask him!
Reviews are always appreciated, and any questions will be welcomed!
Delphoxi