Taming the Skylark (A Katekyo Hitman Reborn fanfiction)

Standard disclaimers apply. I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn, Amano Akira-sensei does; though, of course, the OC is mine.


"I don't want to see you die."

These words echoed in her mind in a succession of throbbing pain.

"Sawada!" Nanami reached out to Tsuna, her stretched out hand dropping a single spike that she had been holding on to, before her vision blacked out.

The moment her weapon bounced off the floor, purple flames came bursting from the ground. Thorns emerged from the small rod of steel and continuously grew branches until the entire arena was enveloped in an enormous, metallic briar patch.

Everyone instantly stopped fighting to focus on destroying the expanding thorns, but their attempts were rendered fruitless against the propagation ability of the Cloud Flame.

Levi panicked when it started destroying the walls. "The ceiling will collapse at this rate!"

Clicking his tongue, Belphegor faced Hibari. "If you didn't get in the way, I would have given her a new limiter."

Hibari frowned at his words. The prince snickered. "If we all die, you have yourself to blame, Vongola Cloud Guardian."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the hall, a certain dark-suited infant was able to evade with ease, all while calmly analyzing the situation.

Watching the almost unbelievable rate of growth of the branches, Reborn easily surmised that a Cloud user was behind the attack. He immediately searched for the female brunette and, as if to confirm his suspicions, found her at the root of the branches, unmoving and unscathed.

Noticing her brown eyes devoid of emotion as if in a complete trance, a sudden realization came upon him.

Of course, it had to be the calling!

He immediately turned to his student, who was busy destroying the metallic vines along with Yamamoto. "Tsuna, tell Senritsu that you're alright!"

Tsuna gave him a look of surprise. "Eh, why?"

"Just do it!"

The boy nodded and screamed, "Senpai, you're alright!"

His head was almost immediately hit with a stone.

"No, you fool! Tell her that you're fine!" Reborn readied another set of stones in case his student messed up again.

Tsuna looked at Nanami. Upon noticing the roots on her feet, it did not take him long to realize that she was behind the attack. He did hear her call out to him when Xanxus held a gun to his head. Maybe, if his intuition was right, she was doing all of these to protect him?

He took a deep breath and shouted at the top of his lungs—

"Senritsu-senpai, I'm okay! You don't have to worry anymore!"

As if on cue, the branches stopped their advances, and slowly withered away in flickering purple flames before disappearing without a trace. Everyone, except for Hibari and Xanxus, heaved sighs of relief.

Nanami limped forward, and Gokudera, the one closest to her, jumped to catch her before she could fall to the ground. He scolded, "Crazy woman, you almost killed us!"

It was only then, upon getting a closer look, did he notice the injuries that covered her entire body. Just imagining the trouble that his upperclassman had to go through made his usual stern gaze soften with guilt and pity.

His loud voice awakened the brunette. "Gokudera," she mumbled dazedly. "Why did you all come here?"

He frowned at the disappointed tone in her voice. "To save you obviously, idiot!"

"What about school?" she asked worriedly.

"It's Saturday!" He let out an exasperated sigh. "Seriously, what is with you and Hibari fussing about skipping classes?!"

"But you're at the top of your class."

Oh, so she was worried about him in particular. Touched, but embarrassed, Gokudera harrumphed like a child. "I don't have to attend lectures all the time to be number one!"

A strained smirk graced her lips. "What a show off."

Still exhausted from having lost control of her flames, the brunette was unable to stand without assistance. However, before Gokudera could lift her up, an invisible force had her pulled away from him. Nanami landed in the arms of a certain prince.

"Okay, we have our winner! And that's me and my representative, obviously!" cheered Belphegor.

Squalo shot him a look of annoyance. "The hell are you saying?! You ruined the competition!"

"Well, Senritsu Nanami did fulfill the requirement of not losing to Hibari Kyoya," defended Mammon. "That makes her the winner of this Banquet."

"Yes, and she has Varia quality!" Lussuria exclaimed with a loud applause. He gestured to the barely holding out walls. "Look, she almost killed us all! I give her a 10 out of 10!"

The frown in Levi A Than's face only deepened. "Isn't she an acquaintance of Sawada Tsunayoshi though?"

"Who cares?" Belphegor scoffed. "She won so she belongs to us now."

"Hey," muttered Nanami, her voice, despite weak, obviously hinted irritation. He gave her an acknowledging hum. "This is not what you promised. You said you would return me to Japan if I win."

"That was a lie, duh."

Her eyes widened at his revelation. "Since you won, you are to live with us as the Cloud Guardian of Varia. Anyway, even if you lost, I had no plans of returning you."

Aware that she could not escape, Belphegor placed her down to reach for a certain accessory in his pocket. Endearingly, as if a child playing with his toy, he clipped the accessory on her hair, on the same side where his own tiara rested. "Because, Nanami-chan, you are a property of this prince," he cooed with a manic grin. "The Vescotti family belongs to the royal family. So, for the rest of your life, serve me as my slave."

A moment of silence lingered as Nanami gazed at the blonde prince with an unreadable expression.

"I'm sorry, but—" she pushed something against his chest. He looked down, and the smirk on his lips instantly faded at the sight of a familiar dynamite.

She smiled at Belphegor as a long chain wrapped around her waist.

"I'm already taken."

A loud explosion resounded in the hall, and Nanami was dragged away to safety by a certain skylark. Her landing was a problem, however, as he refused to catch her. Thankfully, a certain male brunette seized her before she could crash on the wall.

"Are you alright, senpai?" asked Tsuna. She noticed that he was not in Hyper Dying Will mode. Catching her at full speed might had been painful.

Nodding with a smile, Nanami placed a hand on his head and declared with profound determination, "I do not know this Vescotti you speak of, but the Senritsu clan serves the Sawada family, and them alone!"

"EH?" Dumbfounded, Tsuna started panicking. "Senpai, what are you saying?! You don't have to be my servant or anything!"

Reborn dropped a kicked on his arm. "Shut up, Dame-Tsuna. Don't ruin this chance for us to get away."

However, Belphegor could no longer hear them since the point-blank explosion had knocked him out. It was even a miracle that he lived and remained in one piece.

Lussuria approached the unconscious prince as soon as the smoke cleared out. He waved a hand at his face. "Oh my, he's completely out of it."

"There you have it," announced Reborn, gaining the attention of every person in the arena. "Senritsu Nanami had just pledged allegiance with the Vongola X. You can no longer have her in your assassination squad."

Squalo growled, displeased that, of all darn things, the winner of the banquet just had to reject Varia for Sawada Tsunayoshi!

He nervously glanced at their boss, afraid that her action had trampled his pride. Indeed, Xanxus was furious, though the reason behind his anger was not the female brunette, but rather on having the competition end up as a complete waste of time.

"Bunch of trash," he hissed at everyone, the executives of Varia included. "I'll reduce you all to ashes."

Xanxus strutted towards them with hands on both guns. Immediately after, high-pitched screams filled the hall.

—and those were the last things that Nanami heard before passing out.


"This is my castle."

Spoke a boy casually, as if the declaration did not make his chest swell with pride, though the visible grin on his face had made it known anyway.

The girl standing on his side gave him a surprised look, directly and rather fearlessly meeting his cold and royal eyes despite the difference in social status. "You mean, you own it entirely?"

"Yeah, because I'm a prince," he shrugged.

"But, you're only 10."

He chuckled at her argument. "I'm rich. Like, very rich. And I guess I have you, peasants, to thank for since your taxes go to the royal family. You basically work to pay for our living expenses."

The girl frowned, finding many faults in his rebuttal.

"You're not a prince, then. You're a freeloader."

"VOI! How long do you plan to sleep?!"

A loud scream accompanied by a kick on the stomach brought Belphegor out of his slumber. He was sent flying outside the window, towards a bush of roses, where he landed in a painful crash.

"What the hell?" he hissed, upon feeling countless, little thorns stab his back. He may possessed sadomasochistic tendencies, but getting stabbed right after waking up never put him in the mood.

A shadow hovered above him. Lussuria, who was previously tending to the plants, appeared before him with a water hose in hand. He smiled. "Oh, you're awake, Bel?"

The prince clicked his tongue. "No shit, old hag!"

Slapping away a helping hand from Lussuria, Belphegor begrudingly stood up as he brushed the leaves from his striped pajamas. His entire body remained covered in bandages as he was still recovering from the point-blank explosion that his representative gave him as a parting gift.

"You've been so angry lately," Lussuria pointed out. "Are you still hung up on that girl?"

Damn right, that ungrateful wench. Belphegor promised to return her the favor, tenfold!

"If you wanted your proposal to have succeeded, you should have asked her to be your princess instead of a slave," argued the Sun Guardian, shaking his head. "Geez, men are so useless nowadays!"

"Kaching. I was not proposing to her!"

Before the prince could summon a set of knives, the previous Indigo Arcobaleno appeared behind Lussuria.

"Hey, Bel," greeted Mammon, before turning to the other member. "Since he's already up, shall we start packing our things?"

"Oh, you're right!" Lussuria dropped the hose, and the pressure inside made the equipment bounce off the floor. The water hit Belphegor in the face.

...

After the banquet ended in a failure, Varia decided to hold another competition—a single-round battle royale, where Lilian Hong emerged as the winner, thus making her the new Cloud Guardian.

Though the original agreement was to grant the winning executive a vacation, everyone collectively agreed (even Xanxus) to go to Hawaii and ditch all of their work to Belphegor as his punishment for ruining the original banquet.

"See you later, brat," jested Squalo as the rest of the members gathered in front of the gates.

"I'll make sure to smell the fresh blue waters for you!" he added in a snicker, upon remembering how the Storm Guardian once mocked him.

Soon, everyone left, leaving Belphegor alone in the headquarters. Taking in a deep breath, he screamed at the closed doors.

"I swear, I'll kill all of you when you get back!"


The Cloud Guardian of Varia Arc

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Author's Note:

Yey, I finished another arc! (/^▽^)/

My thoughts about this: I never expected that I would enjoy writing about Varia so much since they never stood out to me in the anime and manga. Damn, how could I fail to realize that they were this fun? If I have the time, I would make a special what-if chapter where Nanami agrees to join Varia! (What about the calling, you say? NAH.)

So, about Belphegor, our beloved prince. He was just a kidnapper in my initial draft, but when I wrote the lines, the chemistry between him and Nanami just exploded! Holy shit, I never planned for it to be that way? I also started shipping them midway OOPS SORRY, but I tried my best not to stray from the original plot. Anyway, you can ship him with Nanami, but he'll never be the main guy. I think he can be a great love rival, though, especially since he seems to be the one who is most aware of her situation. At least, for now.

Again, thank you for always leaving reviews. I hope you had fun in this Varia Arc!