July 25, 2002
4 years, 3 months, 29 days prior to Incident
There was a collection of teenage boys on the other side of the door.
Mikuro wondered what onee-sama would say when she got home. Something angry, probably.
Her onee-sama was an energetic person.
"Damn it, I shouldn't have followed you!" a harsh, angry voice bit out.
Miku thought he sounded like he needed a stress ball. She liked stress balls. They were fun to play with.
The reply was cold and malevolent. "No, you really shouldn't have."
That sounded like the nice man who'd let her sit on his shoulders on their last visit to Osaka. She had several candid photos of him and onee-sama sleeping together.
Miku wondered why he was so unhappy. She was always happy when onee-sama hugged her to sleep.
"Hey guys, calm down. Mello, don't set anything on fire. And, uh, Backup, let's put that knife away..."
Fire? Knife?
Miku thought that might sound like something she should call onee-sama about.
"Don't call me that."
"Alright, okay, B, just… let's keep this violence free, yeah?" There was a nervous laugh.
Oh, 'violence'. That was a key word. Onee-sama had said that whenever there was violence involved, Miku had to call her.
Miku padded over to the phone and lifted it from the cradle.
There was a pink haired girl around his age approaching them, looking none too happy. Was she the reason they were here? Mello took a peek at Backup and balked when he realised the psycho looked almost... pleasant. He could even be mistaken for happy, if you tilted your head exactly 62 degrees and squinted hard.
"Chibi-chan!" the psycho called. His lips pulled into a well-practiced grin.
Mello shivered. He'd walked in on Backup practicing his smiles several months ago, back when they were in the early stages. It hadn't been a pretty sight.
He definitely regretted tagging along with the freak all the way to Japan. He'd only come because the last time Backup ran off, the lucky bastard had met L face to face. Mello couldn't exactly let a chance like that go to waste, especially when Near had never met L before. Any chance to beat Near, he'd take. If that resulted in him meeting his idol, even better.
"Beatus. How do you know where I live? What are you doing here?"
Beatus? What a ridiculous name. Surely she wasn't talking about -
"You told me, remember? I came to see you~!"
She was. She was talking about Backup. That psychopath? A 'blessed one'?
Mello couldn't keep in his scoff.
Two gazes shot to him. One blazed with cold fury and the promise of a painful dismemberment; the other shone with curiosity and slight interest. Green eyes then shot back to Backup, and the first set of eyes looked away too, to Mello's relief. Not that he'd ever admit such a thing.
"Did you just say I told you my address?"
"Yep!"
"When?"
"That last morning, remember?"
The girl's face became blank. "I... told you two my real address? Oh. Oh, shit. Fuck."
A potty mouth?
Mello couldn't say he didn't like it.
Matt observed the tiny girl who stomped up to them. She was cute, sure, but what really caught his interest was the way she was glaring at B. She looked at him as if he was an errant puppy she had to scold, not a psychopath to avoid if at all possible.
Matt knew what was safe for him, and what was safe for him was staying far away from B. And, well, sometimes Mello, but he couldn't exactly abandon his rash friend to who-knew-what. If it weren't for Mello, he wouldn't even be here right now; he'd be safely ensconced in his room, playing Shogun and making all the characters turn into ballerinas as he beat the game without a single death.
So, for his own safety, Matt decided to watch the scene play out for a bit before saying anything that may endanger his limbs and life.
His discoveries were as follows:
A. B was probably not going to maim, kill, or otherwise harm them in the presence of this girl. Probably. Well, they stood a better chance with her than without her, anyhow.
B. Mello was chomping at the bit to know what was happening, and unless he spoke first, they would both be doomed. The blond wasn't exactly diplomatic, to say the least.
C. The girl was cuter up close. And small. Like something straight out of one of those romance visual novels (that he'd never played, if anyone asked). If his Japanese was as good as he knew it was, then 'Chibi-chan' was an apt description of her.
D. She really had no idea how dangerous B was. Matt wondered if maybe he should warn her, or if she was better off not knowing.
E. She also wasn't the brightest tool in the shed. Telling B where she lived? At least she had enough sense to regret it.
Sakura wanted to beat her head against the wall. How could she have made such a rookie mistake? Telling them where she actually lived?
So what if she wasn't a morning person? So what if she kept forgetting that she had been a fearsome kunoichi, once upon a time?
For shame. Shame on her. Shame on her status as a ninja. Shame on her so-called intelligence!
She didn't think Watari-san would do anything troublesome with the information, but it was this guy who was the problem. Sakura sighed and redirected the conversation. "Who are your friends?"
"I don't know who these guys are," Beatus told her cheerfully. He slid his hand into his left jacket pocket, grabbing something she couldn't see. "I can get rid of them if you want?"
The slim blond one exploded. "Like hell!"
"Mello, calm down." The guy in the goggles nervously patted the blond's shoulder. Evidently, he had seen the dangerous gleam in Beatus's eye. "Hi, I'm Matt and this is Mello. We're all from the same… boarding school."
Well, if they'd figured out where she lived, no point in telling them a fake name.
"I'm Sakura. Nice to meet you." She bowed slightly. "I hope you have someplace to stay, because there's no room in my apartment for three more people."
"No, it's fine. We rented a room at a nearby hotel."
"Would you like to come in for some refreshments? I have coke, juice, chocolate milk, and iced tea." She treaded up to the door and stuck her key in the lock.
"Do you have jam?" Beatus asked.
"Strawberry, right?"
He perked up. "You remembered!"
"It's... hard to forget something like that."
From the sympathetic look Matt gave her and the disgusted grimace on Mello's face, she could tell they'd had their own experiences with Beatus's eating habits. Between the suspicious Lee-san and creepy Beatus, she wasn't sure who was worse.
"Anyway, I do. Come in."
Mello was finished his third cup of chocolate milk. Naturally, he demanded another - Backup had doused his case of chocolate in gasoline and then set it on fire, so he'd been chocolate deficient for one whole day.
"Your friend's a bit rude, isn't he?" Mello heard Pinky say. She was staring at his feet, which were crossed on top of the coffee table. He glared furiously at her.
"You wanna fucking say that to my face?"
She turned to him and calmly said, "You're rude."
"If you were a better host and gave me some goddamn chocolate, I wouldn't be so fucking rude!"
She frowned. "Look, can you please stop swearing? My baby sister is in the other room, I don't want her to learn these kinds of words."
"I'll say what I want, you bi -" Mello spotted a little girl, perhaps 4 years old, padding past the doorway. "- butthead."
Matt burst into peals of laughter beside him, and even Backup's lips were pulled into a terrifying smirk. The back of Mello's neck turned hot, and he knew his ears were bright red.
(He pretended it was entirely from the humiliation, had nothing to do with the bright, delighted grin Pinky was giving him.)
"Stop laughing, you twat!" Mello barked in English. He shoved Matt off the couch.
The wanker just tumbled onto the cushioned floor and kept laughing and Pinky hopped onto her feet.
"Chocolate, did you say? I have a whole box full from White Day, I'll go get it."
All amusement on Backup's face was wiped away as Pinky flounced (or bounced or skipped or pranced - whatever that disturbingly preppy way girls walked was called) off to get the box of treasures.
Mello edged away from the psycho as he ground his teeth and hissed, "White Day?"
What was so horrible about White Day? Mello rapidly flicked through memories of various textbook passages in his mind, finding one entry in the section on Japanese Culture.
"White Day (ホワイトデー): a day marked in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China on March 14, one month after Valentine's Day. In Japan, Valentine's Day is typically observed by girls and women presenting chocolate gifts (either store-bought or handmade), usually to boys or men, as an expression of love, courtesy, or social obligation. Handmade chocolate is usually preferred by the recipient because of the perception of sincerity, effort, and emotion put into a home-made confection. On White Day, the reverse happens: men who received a honmei-choco (本命チョコ, 'chocolate of love') or giri-choco (義理チョコ, 'courtesy chocolate') on Valentine's Day are expected to return the favor by giving gifts. Gifting a female with white chocolate signifies the sentiment of friendship, while presenting milk or dark chocolate is the equivalent of saying 'I like you', and chocolate cookies signify a confession of romantic love."
Ah. That's why.
Sakura padded into the room, box in arms. "Sorry, my little brother ate up all the cookies, so there's only normal candies left."
Mello sat up. "How many cookies did you get?"
Beatus leaned in too, apparently also interested in the answer.
"Um." She glanced up and thought for a moment. "Twenty one."
A thunderous expression slid onto Beatus's face, casting his angled features into shadow. "From how many… males."
It wasn't a question, it was a flat out order - an 'Answer me' with an underlying threat of 'And don't even think of lying'. Sakura wanted to punch him, but held herself in check. It wasn't exactly a hard question to answer, after all.
"Fourteen."
Matt whistled lowly.
A muscle in Beatus's jaw jumped. He looked as if he was ready to charge out the door at any moment, as if the only thing keeping him from maiming someone was the lack of knowledge of whom to maim. Sakura, fearing for the safety of all occupants in the building, quickly searched her mind for something that was likely to calm him down.
She blurted, "There's no guy I like at school, so I didn't give anyone a honmei chocolate on Valentines."
There was no guy she had romantic feelings for at all, but she was relatively certain that saying that would probably make him angrier: she wasn't ignorant to the way he acted. It made her angry that he thought of her as "his" but there was nothing to be done for it.
Sakura wanted to live as normally as possible, and he was clearly the stalker type. She didn't want to kill a person for such a trivial reason... not to mention, someone would probably notice.
As the darkness in Beatus's expression faded, he relaxed and leaned back. The roiling maelstrom in his eyes visibly abated to its original state of mild turbulence. He chuckled, and it sent violent shivers down her spine. "Chibi-chan, why didn't you say so? For a moment, I thought I'd have to go get my saw and carve some fucker's dick off."
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Matt flinching and scuttling away from Beatus. Mello didn't openly react, but gooseflesh was rising on his exposed arms.
"A-ah. Isn't it great that you were saved the trouble," she deadpanned. She walked over to Mello and handed him the box. "Have as many as you want."
The blond raised an eyebrow. "There's a lot in here."
Beatus twitched but didn't otherwise respond.
Mello, thankfully, didn't comment on the dearth of white chocolate.
The trio of genii, as she'd quickly found out they were, stood on Sakura's doorstep, the setting sun framing their lithe figures. She bowed. "It was nice to meet you, Matt, Mello. Hopefully we'll see each other again in the future."
Lie. They weren't so bad, but considering the reason they'd met in the first place, it wasn't nice meeting them. She would be happy to never see them twice if it meant she could avoid seeing that guy ever again.
"Chibi-chaaan," Beatus whined. "Do I really have to go?"
"Yes."
"Can I get a kiss?"
"No."
"If you give me a kiss, I'll leave."
"Just go."
"Only on the cheek then!"
"Do you think I'm stupid? You'll just turn your head."
"Oh, I was found out," he said unabashedly. "Too bad."
She slammed the door in his face.
And shivered horribly when she heard his laugh through the door.
Fuyuno Sakura - age 12, 2nd year junior high
BB - age 15, education unknown
Matt - age 12, education unknown
Mello - age 12, education unknown
Fuyuno Miku - age 5, kindergarten
Omake
If you were wondering about the phone call between Sakura and Miku...
"Onee-sama."
"Miku-chan, what is it? Onee-chan's just finished a job in Yokohama, do you want me to get you something on the way?"
"Onee-sama, there's violence in the doorway. The loud men have a knife and one tried to set something on fire."
"WHAT?!" Miku calmly lifted the phone away from her ear and held it at arm's length. "MIKU STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, 'NEE-CHAN WILL BE THERE IMMEDIATELY."
Miku hung up.
Ah, onee-sama is as energetic as usual.
Miku wandered off to have a nap.
AN
Haha, Miku-chan's super cute. No Kaito, 'cos he's at soccer practice.
Sakura's morals are so messed up - she didn't want to kill him because someone will notice. Not because it's wrong to kill. And don't even get me started on how messed up BB is. I'm disturbingly good at writing the kind of stuff that came out of his mouth. (There was a knife in his left pocket, by the way.)
Disclaimer: acting the way that BB does is not okay in any circumstance. This kind of relationship in real life is never, never okay. I'm writing this because it's fiction, and I personally enjoy reading about characters like Beyond, whatever that may say about me, and also because Sakura has magical powers to easily protect herself from Beyond. In reality, if someone is threatening the people around you because you interacted with them at all, inform an authority immediately. However you can, distance yourself from that person as soon as possible.
I took a bit of liberty with the character data, using manga birth years for Matt, Mello, and Near, and anime birth years for everyone else (except BB, whose birthday I made up using my own logic). I need them to be old enough for Sakura, particularly since she already considers boys her physical age too young for her, let alone anyone significantly younger than her...
Guest review replies (SUPER LONG BEWARE)
toolazytologin: Aww, thank you!
Guest (who disagrees with Sakura's Intelligence rating): No, no, 7/10 isn't bad at all! You see, Quillsh Whammy is 7/10 too (according to canon), and he's a genius inventor. Matt is the third smartest person in Whammy House, a house for genii, and he's 6/10 (but I call total bs on that, it's too low. A house of genii!). Mello is 7/10 according to one Death Note character book, though he's 8/10 according to another. It's just L and Light and Near who are super genii. Besides, Sakura's rather intelligent, but she isn't a super genius. She just also works hard, studies a lot, and (this is only in my head canon, since this kind of thing is impossible irl) has a photographic memory. If you really really hate it that much, I can boost her up to 8/10? I don't particularly mind either way.
guest (who agrees with Sakura's Intelligence rating): Indeed! But you can't say Sakura isn't excellent at practical application, since, as upper-case Guest (above) mentioned, Sakura was the only one to finish the written chunin exam without cheating. Also, the series of traps she set up in the Forest of Death does display a fair bit of strategic ability, though maybe not Shikamaru's level.
Guest (who asked about flashbacks): No flashbacks; her original life really wasn't any different from the canon manga Naruto right now. As for the transformation thing - Sakura's chakra is limited. She has to use chakra to speed herself up, has to use it to stick to roofs, has to use it to climb the hotel, has to use it to constantly maintain the genjutsu that makes her non-existent to people's senses, etc. She doesn't have enough chakra to continuously keep herself in a henge and maintain the genjutsu from Tokyo to Osaka. FnS!Sakura has higher chakra levels than she originally had at 11, having done much more training and having used it more often, but she's still a kid.
Being a fly, or something similarly small (which wouldn't require the genjutsu as she can slip unnoticed into a room) would slow her down considerably over such a long distance of travel, and she would have to undo it just before killing the person, since flies can't slit people's throats. In the brief moment after the henge is undone and before the genjutsu can be cast, she's fully visible (flies don't have hands for the seals and Sakura isn't yet skilled enough to do seal-less), which is dangerous for her.
And sure, she could have used henge to become a different person just before entering the room, which she would have enough chakra for, but she doesn't know where the cameras are, or that there even are cameras (no need to waste chakra if it's not 100% necessary). And is she being monitored as soon as she leaves her house? When she's halfway to the hotel? As soon as she's in the city? Around the nearby buildings? In the room?
Changing into a different person mid-journey would be even more suspicious, and Sakura doesn't want the people of this world to know this kind of thing is possible. L, for example, had cameras installed around the surrounding buildings too. If she henged in a nearby alley, he would have seen it. Sakura, being a smarty pants (see above review replies) thought out all of these possible scenarios out before acting as a mercenary.
Sorry for the essay, lol. I know it was supposed to be a simple question, but I tend to be long winded.
Why is everyone 'guest', it's so confusing...
Kidding, thanks for your reviews guys! :)