Ryohei stepped through the gates of Kokuyo Land along with Sawada, Gokudera and Reborn, tension running through his body like the finely tuned violin Kyoko played. While he looked calm on the outside, inwardly his blood was roaring for action. He was focused, his mind was clear and he knew what he had to do.
When Sawada swung by his hospital room a day or so after his last visit, he was pleasantly surprised since he was bored out of his mind in the room after his latest failed attempt at escaping from the hospital to do boxing training. Since he injured his own leg in the fight against those Kokuyo students, he unfortunately didn't make it far before a nurse found and assisted him back to the room again.
Sawada blurted out his explanation for his visit as soon as he stepped into the room, stumbling over his words with a strange rush of nervousness and determination, but Ryohei honestly heard nothing of it. Instead, he was watching Sawada's face. The first thing Ryohei noticed was the worry that etched into the lines of Sawada's brow that seeped into his every word, which elicited a sense of protectiveness within him that was usually reserved for Kyoko.
Sawada worried easily and was jumpy all the time, but Ryohei figured this was something different. People always claimed Ryohei never listen and that was true, if only because he preferred seeing things for himself since people weren't always truthful. Plus, he also did have a too short attention span to listen to people blabbing.
In Ryohei's opinion, people need to go straight to the point. Life was never as complicated as some people make it out to be. For example, Ryohei liked boxing and so he was in the boxing club. It was as simple as that. For the same reason, he would continuingly recruit people to join his small club, even though most of the time people reject his invitations.
In this case, it was obvious that Sawada was troubled over something. The explanation wasn't really necessary at that point. Since Sawada was in trouble, all Ryohei had to do was get rid of the problem.
As soon as Doctor Shamal gave him some kind of injection (something about a mosquito?), Ryohei's injuries felt better. The doctor was still speaking, saying something about side-effects, but Ryohei didn't hear it as pure energy and will burned through him. It prompted him to start doing something, so he simply turned to face Sawada, Gokudera and Reborn and told them to lead the way.
They stopped by Yamamoto's house for a bit and met Yamamoto's dad, and while Ryohei honestly didn't understand the purpose of that, he still greeted Yamamoto's dad enthusiastically. They promised Yamamoto's dad that all of them would rescue Yamamoto and Ryohei couldn't help thinking, Of course they would.
Although Ryohei didn't know Yamamoto too well due to different class, age, and sports – Ryohei had a tendency to focus on boxing so much that he ignored everything outside of it and Yamamoto obviously wasn't in the boxing club – he knew of Namimori Middle's baseball star. Ryohei respect Yamamoto for his dedication to baseball, his sportsmanship and personality that was much like Ryohei and most of all, he was Sawada's friend, which made Yamamoto his friend.
The thought that someone took Sawada's friend to get to Sawada himself made Ryohei's blood boil in a way since the time some dishonorable opponents took Kyoko to lure Ryohei into a trap after losing to him in a match. Thinking of that time, the scar above his left eyebrow that he received from that incident twinged, reminding him of his promise to his little sister not to fight anymore because Kyoko feared it would cause him more harm. Yet, Ryohei knew this wasn't something he could back out from, not when a friend was in trouble.
The air in the abandonment of Kokuyo suddenly whistled, bringing Ryohei out of his thoughts. His head jerked up, trying to see what caused it and caught sight of the yo-yo that shot towards them.
"Juudaime, watch out!" Gokudera called out, even as Sawada let out a "Hiie!" and stumbled out of the yo-yo's path. The yo-yo slammed into the ground with a loud crack, chipping the asphalt upon impact, before whirling back towards its owner again.
Ryohei's eyes followed the path of the yo-yo to a teenager around the same age as them dressed in green. Something in the back of his mind niggled.
"Why you! How dare you attack Juudaime!" a voice shouted and Ryohei looked to the side to see Gokudera rushing forward, dynamites in hand and already lit.
"How extreme!" Ryohei laughed loudly, wholeheartedly approving Gokudera's fighting spirit.
"Be careful, Gokudera!" Sawada called out. Gokudera turned around to give him a thumbs up, before throwing himself to the left just as a yo-yo slammed into where he was previously standing.
"Do you really have time to be distracted?" The yo-yo guy asked, sounding a little annoyed as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Ryohei squinted at him, his previous thought coming back to him: something was familiar about him, but what?
"Tsuna, stop the fidgeting," the little guy suddenly spoke up. Ryohei pulled away from his thought to see Sawada was wringing his hands and looked like he wanted to both interfere into the fight and not. "You're going to make Gokudera worry about you instead of concentrating on his battle."
Sawada dropped his hands to his sides at Reborn's words and bit his lips. "I know," he said after a moment, "but I can't help it." He winced as an explosion went off in the background.
Ryohei turned his eyes to the fight between the yo-yo guy and Gokudera, before turning back to Sawada with a grin. "Don't worry, Sawada!" Ryohei said, slapping the younger teenager on the back. Tsuna let out an 'oof' that Ryohei entirely ignored. "He is fighting his Extreme best right now! Just believe in him!"
At Ryohei's words, Sawada's eyes widened slightly, before at last giving him a small smile. "I guess onii-san is right. I should just believe him in."
Ryohei nodded his head firmly, agreeing with Sawada's words. That was the attitude a fighter should have!
They watched Gokudera fight for a few minutes, before Ryohei finally realized why Gokudera's opponent seemed so familiar.
"Ah! It's him!" Ryohei shouted. Besides him, Sawada jumped. "He was with the extreme wolf-guy that fought me and landed me in the hospital!"
"Eh?!" Sawada exclaimed. "Then -" Except Ryohei wasn't listening anymore as he hurried forward.
"Onii-san!" Sawada dimly shouted after him, but Ryohei had a one-tracked mind. Normally he wouldn't interrupt someone else's fight, but...
"Oi! I want a rematch with the wolf-guy!" Ryohei shouted at the yo-yo guy as he headed towards the fight.
"Fuck off, lawn head!" Gokudera yelled as he threw two sticks of dynamite into the air. His shirt was scorched and bruises bloomed across his skin. "This is my fight. Ask him afterwards!"
"But I extremely need a rematch now!" Ryohei insisted, because why fight later when he can do it now? There was no point of delaying it, after all. The sooner the training or fight, the better!
"Argh! I don't have time to deal with -" Gokudera threw himself to the left as a streak of blond and green almost slammed into him, and Ryohei quickly stepped forward and knocked away the yo-yo that headed towards where Gokudera just landed.
"What the hell?!" Gokudera declared, but a wide smile spread across Ryohei's when he saw who it was.
"Miss me, Kakipi?" the wolf-guy said, on his face a sharp grin that revealed his fangs.
"Like a fungus," Kakipi replied without missing a beat. "If only you were a split-second faster, we could have gotten him, Ken."
"Eh, whatever," Ken said, digging his pinky into his ears. "I'm here now, ain't I, byon?"
"Hey, fight me!" Ryohei shouted with a grin, not caring that he was interrupting.
Ken looked over at him, before canting his head to the side in a dog-like manner and sniffing. "Hey, I fought you already, didn't I? Beat you up pretty badly too, byon."
He looked over to Kakipi for confirmation and received a nod in return.
"Yeah, but I'm stronger now!" Ryohei declared without a hint of shame. "So fight me again!"
"I'll just beat you up again. It's no fu -" Ken skidded back as he blocked a punch from Ryohei.
Ryohei's grin widened when Ken's eyes sharpened immediately afterwards. "Let's have an extreme fight, alright!?"
"Heh," Ken said, interest appearing in his face. His hand reached into his pocket and Ryohei perked up because he knew what was there. Ken withdrew a set of fangs. When he slipped them into his mouth, his nails and his fangs began to enlongate. "If you want to lose so badly!" he declared and rushed towards him, but Ryohei was ready this time. He knew he could win.
Ryohei casted one last look at Sawada, hoping he would remember his words - "He is fighting his Extreme best right now! Just believe in him!" - and received a nod in return, so Ryohei turned to his opponent and concentrated fully on him without a worry.
He won, even if half-way through, his leg started hurting him again, Ryohei managed to pull through. In the end, Ryohei and Gokudera were left the last ones standing.
Ryohei managed to grin, give his friends double thumbs up, and said, "That… was awesome, my friend!" before his legs gave out on him and his world blackout.
Xxx
Mukuro glanced down at the typical-Japanese looking teen unconscious by his feet, looking for all intent and purposes like he was just sleeping if his brows weren't scrunched up in discomfort and pain. He eyed at the thinly smeared blood trail formed on the dirty floor from Chikusa dragging the teen up, before nudging the teenager's body over so the teen was lying on his stomach.
The back of the teen's shirt had a huge splotch of blood, explaining the bloody smear left on the floor. While the bleeding stopped, the wound definitely wasn't clean and was probably painful. Mukuro squatted down to examine it closer and his lips curled when he saw it was Ken's work as he had previously thought.
His hand reached out and brushed against the wound, his smile widening when the prone body let out a series of minute shudders before stilling again. Mukuro tutted and repeated his action. The dirt and small pebbles in the wound fell away, revealing the wound was not nearly as bad as all the blood suggested.
It seems like the teen's instincts saved him once again, Mukuro thought absentmindedly as he dragged a few fingers through the wound that was bleeding once again, and pressing a little deeper each time. He leaned forward so he was on the balls of his feet with his knees pressed against the side of the teen's lower back, able to feel closely and intimately every time the body shuddered a little more. Ken's not the type to hold back during a fight and the wounds he inflicts are usually worse than this.
Mukuro was drawn out of his thoughts when the teen let out a groan. He looked down, eyes unseeing for a moment before focusing on the tip of his fingers that were inside the injury. He lifted his hand and stared at the blood-soaked fingers, before looking over at the visible side of the teen's face, still lined with pain despite slackening. Mukuro lowered his bloody fingers back down again, resting lightly on the wound and felt the body shivered ever slightly. Huh.
He deliberately rubbed his fingers around the wound, circling it but never directly touching it, watching as the boy's face twist as though it struggled to decide whether or not it was a threat. His lips curled for a moment, before he abruptly gouged deep into the wound.
The startled, pained scream that followed was as wonderful as he imagined.
Mukuro wove an illusion directly into the teen's mind. His arms were heavier than they actually were, legs stiff with fright and pain, back aching from the wound and who knows what, throat feeling like it had swallowed a boulder, and mind distorted with panic from waking in an unfamiliar place after being knocked unconscious. In his mind, the room was darker than it was, but he would have no trouble seeing a deceptively young adult leaning over him, face wide, open, innocuous and yet undeniably twisted and dangerous with one of his eyes gleaming red, the character six inscribed within it.
"Why, hello," Mukuro greeted casually and the teen's head whipped towards him, eyes blown out wide. Mukuro could almost hear the irregular beats of his heart, pumping and pumping, fast like if it did so it could keep him alive a moment longer, and Mukuro couldn't help smiling as he stood. The teen's gaze followed him as Mukuro went over to face him directly and didn't leave him as he squatted down again. "I'm Mukuro Rokudo. You're…?"
The teen's head snapped up. "You're the one who was attacking our students," he breathed out in understanding. His brows furrowed a second later. "But the picture…"
"You didn't really think I'll allow myself to be photographed now, do you?" he asked. "You, on the other hand." Skimming bloodied fingers along the other's jawline until he reached his chin, Mukuro tilted the teen's head up to face him. "You have a pretty face," he said, "I would hate to ruin it, so why don't you tell me what you know about Vongola's heir and we'll call it a day?" Mukuro smiled innocently, as if the teen's blood wasn't on his fingertips and he wasn't holding the teen hostage.
The teen's face went blank.
"I don't know who you're talking about," the teen croaked out, but there was a undercurrent of doubt in his own voice, and wasn't that interesting? Could the teen not know his companion was the Vongola heir and only now he was beginning to suspect?
"Are you sure? I believe he goes by the name… Tsunayoshi." The teen jerked out of his hold, a telling sign even if Mukuro didn't see the image that flashed across the teen's mind at the name: a young boy with his baby fat, fluffy light brown hair and the most expressive of faces. "Ah, so you do know him." Not what Mukuro imagined as the future Vongola at all, but that just meant controlling him would be much easier than he thought. Mukuro crossed his legs and sat down, resting an elbow on his knee and his chin on his curled palm. "Tell me about him."
The teen glared up at him, abandoning the pretense of not knowing anything. "No."
In the silence of their surroundings, the sound of the backhand Mukuro delivered to him was loud. The teen let out a gasp, as Mukuro subtly influenced his mind a little more. The sound of impact was louder than it actually was, the pain shaper, the hit harder, his body considerably weaker. Strength sapped out of him with that one hit and along with it, perhaps his will to fight. Mukuro leaned in and in the teen's mind, shadow danced across Mukuro's face and piercing through all the darkness, his red eye gleamed. "Care to try again?"
The teen lifted his head, despite the fatigue that Mukuro made sure weighed down his limbs and dragged down his eyelids and the empty pain that stabbed at his stomach. "No."
"Well, you're more resilient than most," Mukuro commented, grabbing the teen's neck with a hand. He let out a choked noise that Mukuro entirely ignored. "I can break you eventually and even control your mind, just like I did with the Ranking Prince, but that's going to take too long." Mukuro could feel the multiple illusions that he was holding up slowly draining away his energy. "Instead, why don't we go with something more physical? Which body part should I break first, hm?"
Fear flashed across the teen's eyes and along with it, a scene. Sweat trickling down his back, a sense of camaraderie, his muscles aching and smiles flashing everywhere as cheers rose.
"Ah," Mukuro said, a smile splitting across his face. He released his hold on the teen's neck, ignoring his coughs and splutters, and stood, walking until he was standing just behind and out of the teen's view. Almost gently, he pried the teen's hand off from where it was cradling his bruised neck and pulled it back.
And back.
And back.
The teen let out a noise that was like an injured animal when pressure slowly began to build from the angle his arm was in and understanding dawned what Mukuro's next threat was. Mukuro almost regretted not being able to see the teen's eyes as this happened, but there was thrill in stepping on the teen's back wound to hold him in place so he could not interfere with what was about to happen as well.
"So," Mukuro prompted, leaning towards the teen with his foot still pressed upon his bleeding wound. "Baseball or your friends?"
Xxx
"Is Onii-san fine?" Tsuna asked, and there was an odd quality in his voice that made Reborn look up at him. Tsuna was watching Gokudera carry Rhoyei's unsconscious body to a nearby tree, eyes strangely intent as they darted about, cataloguing – Reborn followed the gaze of his eyes – the injuries on both his friends' body. Seeing the visible ones and undoubtedly, accounting for the ones that were hidden beneath clothes.
"He'll be fine," Reborn replied neutrally. "The Trident mosquitoes' side-effects aren't devastating. His body just needs time to heal." He watched Tsuna relax at those words, eyes clearing, and decided to take a calculated risk of giving Tsuna a metaphoric push. He added, "And Gokudera's alright. He definitely experienced worse."
At those words, Tsuna's lips pressed to a thin line – a sign of defiant instead of breakage – and Reborn knew the risk paid off. Tsuna's distaste at the thought of his friends hurting, his inability to condone what the Kokuyo Gang had forced his friends into, and the growing thought that something had to be done will be his driving force for change. It will make instead of break. His rose-tinted view of the world already cracked and this was Tsuna taking a look at the surface of what the Mafia World had to offer, in all its danger, threat and disruption to any possibility of a peaceful life, and coming to the conclusion that if he didn't like it, then Tsuna himself would have to do something about the situation. The seed already budded, and now Reborn will just have to nurture it to full growth.
"They shouldn't have to," Tsuna said quietly, almost to himself. His eyes focused at the scene in front of him again as Gokudera – there was no other way to describe it – deposited Ryohei's body near the base of a tree.
The pensive, intent air instantly around Tsuna vanished.
"Gokudera!" Tsuna wailed as he hurried forward, comically looking like Gokudera with Tsuna every time an incident occurred around them, hands and eyes frantically examining Ryohei to make sure he was fine. "Please be careful with him!"
"Yes, Juudaime," Gokudera replied rather automatically, because the day Gokudera disobeyed Tsuna was the day hell froze over, before a smirk slipped across his face. "Lawn head's skull is tough, though. He'll be fine."
"Still…" Tsuna replied, gazing down at Ryohei, and there was a look in his eyes again. He stepped forward and leaned down until he was at level with him. "We'll be right back for you later, Onii-san," Tsuna said told the boxer, before standing to face Reborn and Gokudera. "Where do we go next?"
"Seems like there's only one path to follow, Juudamine," Gokudera commented. "After all, no one will try to go that way, unless they're idiots," he continued, pointing at the obstacles that littered the rest of the possible roads.
Elsewhere, Hibari and Yusuke sneezed.
This chapter took entirely too long. I'm never writing from Ryohei's POV again and omg, I'm sorry for doing this to you, Yamamoto. On the up side, things are finally moving!
My dear beta-reader has kindly finished betaing this chapter for me even though she has succumbed to an illness brought on by a clam. *Applaud for her dedication* THANK YOU, AORI.
And of course, thank you dear readers for following and continuing to read. Any comments or questions, please leave them below ^^
Deleted Scene:
"… Here to rescue you, Kakipi. No 'thank you'?"
Ryohei heaved a breath and pushed himself up, hardly noticing the hands that assisted him as his eyes landed on the familiar grinning blond.
"I didn't need your help," Kakipi guy said emotionlessly, bloodied fingers pushing up the cracked glasses that barely managed to cling onto his nose. "You're late, by the way. Did the guys from before give you so much trouble?"
There was no smirk on the Kakipi's face; it didn't need to be. It was all in his tone, the faint glint in his eyes.
The blond guy bared his teeth in reply, fangs showing. "I was just playing with them – " He swerved right, feet darting over the ground as he dodged jab from Ryohei.
"Fight me!" Ryohei exclaimed.
There was a beat of silence, before the wolf-guy grinned with all his fanged teeth showing and said, "Sure, if y'all want me to beat you down again. Watch me, Kakipi."
"Idiot," Chikusa replied, and then their battle started once again.