36 Realms of Influence [set 2]
Hey guys, more 36 Realms of Influence here. If you don't know what that is, it's a set of 36 stand-alone ficlets from 36 AU-verse ideas with Yamamoto and Squalo and this week is parts 7-11, so only five ficlets this time.
One of them was monstrously long, which is why I have to post this twice because I went over the posting limit.
Title: 36 Realms of Influence
Author: ember_alda
Rating: R (for gore in this set)
Characters: Yamamoto, Squalo, various other people form KHR as each story demands.
Words: 11,872
Summary: 36 alternate universes, 36 different layers of relation.
Previous six parts:
I II III VI V VI
Part VII.
Note: Notes: I kinda went overboard this time >_> Succeed the Reaper like, punched me in the face by surprise. So one of the premises ended up being like a full length fic? Hope this set isn’t too long XD
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It’s All Greek to Me
13. Squalo is a rain god who takes up rain god-to be Yamamoto under his wing.
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The villagers are getting anxious. Yamamoto can tell because their mouths are pinched and every time he tugs at someone’s leg to ask what’s wrong their eyes go to the sky, leaden with the weight of water.
Four days of falling rain with no visible end had trampled the earth into a muddy pit, the crisp yellow grass of their roofs to a dull and musty tan. Brown and gray splattered everywhere, and everywhere the boy went whispers of discontent were spoken softly, though never to his face. When the villagers were hidden inside their houses, trying to be dry and warm, Yamamoto ran in wild abandon outside, laughing and jumping, sliding in mud and going off into the river bank, even after it swelled dangerously high. He bathes himself with the fresh water that pours from the heavens and even though he’s soaked he never feels the cold. When he invites the other children out to play they refuse, the watchful look in their eyes as they scan the sky totally different from the unguarded joy in Yamamoto’s face.
The rain, they say, is tempestuous; it fickly decides when to come and go and always, always tries to flood the village.
At the dawn of the fifth day it was pouring like the gods themselves wanted to drown the world, the banks raging with water that threatened to spill out and crush their homes like a pile of insects. Sheets of water pelted from the sky, and Yamamoto was tugged straight out of the school building where he slept.
All around the people gathered at the river’s edge, a mass of brown and black cloaks splotching the bright white rocks of the bank. Cowled heads dripping and soaked to the bone flinched aside as the noise and crash of water deafened them and blinded their sight.
“He’s angry. It’s gotta be you, boy. Sorry, but you’re the only orphan here.”
Yamamoto’s eyes go wide as he tries to stare up into the eyes of the man who clenched his shirt so tightly, but water is running into his eyes and everything is blurred around him. He feels himself suspended in a huddle of people who do not chant or pray, instead throwing him without ceremony into the angry river so quickly he cannot even scream.
White and black and formations of bubbles bloom across his crazed vision as everywhere around him he’s pressed by water. The hard shots of rain scramble the surface of the river haphazardly as he tries to breathe, but liquid fills his mouth as he gulps and his lungs drink all they can hold.
Yamamoto’s vision starts to wander and fade as each limb slowly stops working. Trembling and exhausted, he’s swept away.
-0-
It’s the quiet prickling feeling in his side that wakes him. Squalo yawns, mouth gaping impossibly as his limbs try and stretch out in the cramped little niche. Downriver, he has little to worry about from the storm so far away, but the tiny drips from the leaves of the tree sheltering him warn him it’s almost time to stop the torrent that he’d created this week.
As he gets up he gathers up his sword and fur ruffed coat, wondering what gift the people from the village upriver had gotten him this time. The long blue trail of his robe scrapes across the freshly dewed grass as barefooted, he crushes their fragrance into the air.
Xanxus, that stupid bastard, had thrown a fit when after the succession Tsuna had been chosen for the king of the gods. A good portion of the other side of the world had experienced volcanic eruptions and earthquakes as he made every one of his subordinates miserable in his rage. Squalo had to fucking take six decanters to the head each day since, and no it didn’t matter that it was the nectar of the gods, he was getting pissed off.
So as per order from the irritating man he showered a mother-fucking storm down on hapless villagers and in the meanwhile worked off the extra frustration. Tsuna already found out about what had been going on so after this there were to be no more natural disasters but hey, it was a good run while it lasted and maybe this new sacrifice would be something nice enough to take the edge off of Xanxus’ asshole behavior.
A few more steps bring him to the small inlet in the forest, the smoothly rippling waters showing no sign of the death tide that had almost killed an entire village. Squalo, severely disappointed when he sees nothing of import, the usual spot where all his gifts migrated peculiarly empty, almost works himself up into a fit of rage before his eye catches something hidden beneath the blanket of leaves and branches.
A yellow sleeve of a tunic, brightly colored under the grime of marshy trash calls to him. Squalo overhauls the branch and foliage, exposing the small, curled back of a pitiful child.
“VOIIIIIIIIIIIIII WHAT DO THOSE FUCKING IDIOTS THINK THEY’RE DOING? DO I SEEM LIKE THE KIND OF GOD THAT ENJOYS BRATS?! IF THEY WANTED TO KILL HIM THEY SHOULD HAVE STABBED HIM WITH A SWORD NOT SHOVED HIM IN THE RIVER FOR ME. I’LL FUCKING SLAUGHTER THOSE BASTARDS!”
An enraged foot lashes out and kicks the kid in the stomach, flinging him up in the air before landing down on the soft grass, the sharp impact thrusting the clogged water out of Yamamoto’s mouth in a blinding stab of pain.
“Eheh, uglk.” More coughing sounds out as Squalo cannot believe he just accidentally revived a dead kid, was there a way to re-drown him without Squalo actually having to hold him down?
When Yamamoto opens his eyes finally, sucking in as much air as he could, he’s paralyzed by the sight. Above him long, white and silver hair still bedewed with droplets of water from the rain blinds his eyes in the sunlight of a clearing sky, a jewel blue robe drapes across the man easily and regally, thick silk still amazingly dry. Barefoot, with a gleaming silver blade at his side and a strange ethereal glow, Yamamoto can only think that he must have died and passed on to the underworld.
“Did I die?”
Squalo scowls as he looks down distastefully at the clueless brat. “No, you didn’t die you worthless thing. How can you be so useless you can’t even drown?”
The boy scratches at the back of his head, eyes closed in happy crescents while smiling.
“Haha but I’m really good at swimming. I don’t think it helped though, the villagers threw me in pretty far.”
“Can’t even sacrifice a brat right- next time I’m sending in a fucking typhoon.”
“Y-you sent in the storm?"
Is the brat blind? He’s a fucking god, mortals are supposed to know this shit on sight! If they didn’t they ended up dead, not saved by a stupid foot that apparently can revive drowning victims!
“I’m the fucking god of rain. Bask in my glory, blah blah blah. Whatever, this is the most disappointing year, I’ll have to wait another one and next time it better not be another brat.” And definitely not one as stupid as this one.
“Haha, sorry I disappointed you. I can be a useful sacrifice. I know how to make a kazoo with a piece of grass!”
Squalo whirls around, face incredulous at the spectacular revelation. “What?! How is that useful?! I could have Lussuria play me music with his lyre anytime I like even though all he does are operas and sleazy European techno…never mind.”
A pair of golden eyes shine warmly at the irritated outburst, Yamamoto suddenly filled with a strange affinity. “You’re funny, I like you. The stories aren’t anything like you for real.”
“Who cares?! I’m leaving. You go do whatever it is brats do after gods save them. Oh, and remember to worship me and if you become rich send me some goddamn wine or something, NOT a dead goat what the hell gave people that idea?”
Quickly, Yamamoto scrambles up and tries to tag along the retreating man, the bright blue trail quickly fading away through the foliage. “Wait! Can’t I like…worship you better if I’m with you?”
Squalo tries to hurry up but the stupid kid is following him like it’s some sort of corn maze where getting lost means dying in the stupid thing. He whirls around to hammer in the point. “Oh no, I don’t take charity cases, go suck up to that idiot Tsuna he’s a bleeding heart and Superbi Squalo is not a bleeding heart.”
A small hand reaches out and grabs the draping sleeve and only at that corner, clinging tighter than it ever had before, knuckles white, even though Yamamoto’s face is cheerful and calm as he’d ever seen any brat.
“Ok. How about this, either go back to the village or I fucking gut you.”
A hiss of steel brushes past the boy’s ear, the silver shine so smooth and bright it seemed as if it had been carved out of the moon. It was distasteful to do something so mundane as killing someone with his sword when he’d called up hurricanes and tsunamis with it in his sword dance, but he wasn’t about to tastelessly strangle the kid.
Yamamoto’s eyes go wide as the blade is pressed against his skin, ready to slice open his all too mortal throat.
“W-wow, is that really the Shigure Kintoki? I-I can’t believe it.”
Squalo, beyond being stunned that the brat wasn’t pissing in fear, can’t believe this random kid was reaching out a shaky, reverent hand to touch the blade about to cut him open.
“VOIIIIIII BRAT. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW THIS SWORD’S NAME?!”
Yamamoto quickly drops his hand, not looking very chastised as he scratches the back of his head again, eyes still being magnetized back to the silver blade. “I guess I’ve been raised on you Squalo, haha. My dad told me a lot of stories about you after he made that sword.”
“Tsuyoshi’s brat?”
“I really loved hearing about the rain legends and dad used to tell me sea stories and how you kept order in the sky with a chariot pulled by flying sharks.”
Well, that much was right, he wasn’t going to be pulled around by fucking pansies like turtles or fish. Inadvertently, Squalo lowers his arm, the Shigure Kintoki back at his side as he considers the kid in front of him.
“Please, don’t kill me. I know how to maintenance a heavenly blade, my dad taught me how to polish and fix nicks. I know how to do the rain dance too, all seven forms! I can be useful, I don’t care if I die but don’t make me go back to the village after this.”
Slowly, a small smile starts to spread on Squalo’s mouth. So the boy knew how to up-keep the sword, eh? It means less time dealing with Levi and his stupid ass trying to get him to fix the thing when they hated each other’s guts. If the way the brat hadn’t even flinched when he rushed him full speed was any indication of fearless potential, maybe the villagers really did give him a good sacrifice.
Squalo turns sharply around walking off again into the woods, no time to waste now that he’s decided what to do with Tsuyoshi’s kid.
“You’re going to do whatever I say, kid, whenever I say it.”
The sound of feet clambering after him tells Squalo Yamamoto is eager to please. “Yeah, sure! Anything…can I see you use your sword?”
He stops. Well, the edict didn’t say to stop the disasters till tomorrow. A vicious smirk blows across his face as he laughs out into the wind.
“Ha! Sure kid, why not?”
Part VIII.
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Flipside of the Moon
16. Squalo doesn’t ever send Yamamoto the tapes. Instead, he goes about his mafia business, sending Yamamoto “souvenirs” from 101 hits instead.
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It started with a lock of hair.
Not that he had been alarmed, of course. It was a short hank, glittering white strands curiously tied with a brief length of green ribbon. Yamamoto had opened the small, wrapped jewelry box, curiously turning the present over and over in his hand. He’d thought Squalo was determined never to sacrifice his locks.
There was a note- more like a cream scrap cut into a square, but it had simply said,
“Squalo sends this from Alberti Donte.”
Yamamoto had shoved it in the back of his desk, wondering where in Italy Alberti Donte was.
-0-
It’s a complete surprise, the next time. When he reaches into his desk at school to put back his notebook during homeroom break, he hears a dull sound of something being knocked over. Inside, flipped upside down, is a small box.
Black and silver, no bigger than his palm, wrapped exactly the same as the last one.
Yamamoto blinks, opening it again, slowly like a child playing games with a music box. Nestled in cotton fiber is a gold band decorated with an emblazoned jaguar in emeralds, leaping across the yellow field. The thick shine of metal and the width of it made it look like a grown man’s ring.
Yamamoto laughs; doesn’t Squalo know that his fingers couldn’t possibly be that thick?
He tucks the useless gift into his book bag, throwing away the box. He forgets about it, the expensive piece sinking in obscurity into the depths of his bag.
-0-
The beginning of every month signals another gift. He’d figured that out after the first four. They keep getting stranger and stranger. A keychain of a soccer ball, a simple silver studded earring, a red cell phone, a gift certificate for an Italian bakery, a men’s money clip.
Tsuna asks him to come with him for a summer vacation in Italy. His father had sent him a multitude of tickets, trying to make an incentive for his son to come with his circle of friends, probably in a bid to convince his son to become the tenth.
Yamamoto takes it in a stride. Sure, he says, laughing, he’d like to see Squalo anyway.
His friend is a bit surprised. Squalo being mentioned out of nowhere months after the ring battles have passed seems to Tsuna a non sequitur. The way Yamamoto spoke, there’s a certain warmth that comes from something deeper than mere acquaintance, but as far as Tsuna knows the other man hadn’t even been in Japan after that for them to interact. He hopes that Yamamoto won’t be too disappointed when Squalo opts to charge at him with the business end of his sword.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
The other boy laughs.
“I do.”
-0-
They meet more than once, but the first time they pass each other it’s outside the Vongola headquarters on the street. Yamamoto’s sure their eyes met but with the way Squalo simply glances at him before turning around, leaving with his companions, he’s not sure. Somehow it’s like a vacuum in time occurred, right then and there, and in more than just that slightest movement he felt a vibration of premonition shake his core.
Squalo sends him a note. It’s a plain vanilla envelope inscribed with a time and a place. He expected Squalo’s handwriting to be big and bold, like his shout and his words, but it’s surprisingly neat script. Across the bottom of the page dictate the simple words,
“You’re going to learn something today, brat, and then we’ll have a talk.”
Yamamoto stares at those words, knowing instinctively what the other man meant as he shifts a glance at the katana he impulsively decided to bring with him on vacation.
-0-
That night, he goes out to the bar written so precisely on his paper. He clutches his bamboo sword, unsure why he thought it was necessary at a place where people go for drinks, but as soon as he spots Squalo he gets the feeling he had done what the other man had wanted.
The dim lights showering down on the swordsman illuminates his hair into a beacon, the casual figure of his well pieced leather coat blending well with the crowd. Yamamoto suddenly feels oceans away as he realizes he’s out of place wearing khaki shorts and a t-shirt. A sense of strange de ja vu washes over as the other swordsman looks at him with the same gaze as he did out in the street that first time.
Squalo’s lips twist upward, the bitter, teeth filled smirk burning like a brand in his mind as he watches the other man slowly unsheathe his sword in the middle of a crowded room. There’s no where to run for all the people around them, but none of them are moving an inch from where they stood. Squalo is covered in an indigo glow as he strikes forward through the mass of the crowd. Yamamoto’s limbs freeze as he sees the already bloodied streaks dripping down the flat of the blade.
As Squalo walks up to him, next to him, he automatically swings down his bamboo blade, warping it into metal, for all the protection that it would give him.
“This is a hit, brat. Don’t let mercy get in the way.”
Squalo moves about the room slowly, invisible and shrouded to everyone but him, and now Yamamoto feels in his blood something rising up. He can’t tell if it’s panic or apprehension, fear or disgust or fascination. The invisible man stops at a tall table, nothing but dead efficiency in his eyes as an upward swing of the blade glints soft and vicious in the mottled lights of the room. Diving down and plunging into the chest of a woman sitting closest to the dance floor, Squalo’s blade slides only once, clean and thick.
Not matter how loud the music, the scream overpowers the synthetic rhythm and Yamamoto’s own heart over powers the scream tenfold, throbbing in his brain the sound of his own blood. There is no red, everything is too dark, only a spread of a blotted shadow across the floor pools out as the target scrambles quickly and tries to shoot the gun she had concealed in her jacket pocket, waving around her arm like a worm writhing.
Ten other men had also drawn their guns, heads swerving around while the sights of their weapons gyrated madly trying to pin down the culprit, who all of a sudden is right behind Yamamoto, the near silent whisper of cloth rubbing on cloth brushing vacantly across his ears.
A cold, slippery weight is pressed into his hand from behind. The boy doesn’t turn around.
“You don’t need a box this time, do you?” The shark evaporates into the damp lit streets of the night trailing whispers and whispers and whispers behind him. Yamamoto looks mechanically at what’s in his palm.
He’d seen the bracelet on that woman’s wrist.
-0-
When they fly back to Japan Yamamoto says nothing. Instead, when he goes home he gathers all the things that Squalo sent to him and looks them over, silently. The dull yellow light from his table lamp makes the collection of baubles and trash surreal, filmy.
Like a talisman, he touches each one- rubbing the gold ring under the sparkle of lights, prodding the keychain, caressing the bracelet.
He goes back to that first piece, soft but surprisingly brittle in his hand after he picks it up. When he looks at that tress of hair in his palm something climbs out, and for a moment, claws inside his gut tightly. It hadn’t been Squalo’s hair.
His eyes are drawn together, consternation tensing his forehead as he tries to fathom what it is laying on his skin. It takes hours, Yamamoto’s expression never changing as after that brief clench in his gut, he feels nothing the rest of the night.
The next day he goes out to buy a milk tea from the Seven-Eleven. At school he smiles with Tsuna and Gokudera, never far from them but not quite as near as they were to each other. The words had remained zipped tight in his throat, and even if he had felt the unceasing need to say something, it simply wasn’t possible. Those words, that night, was too fantastical to bear him into the future. He can only force his limbs to carry on like he did before.
Yamamoto never stops filling his mind with mundane things like homework, the new line of sports drink, and going out to karaoke with his friends. Somewhere down the years baseball fades away into the past as other things take its place when he grows.
Yamamoto refuses to become a swordsman. Instead he goes to high school in Osaka, and then crams for entrance exams for College at Tokyo U, going about his life like a regular Japanese citizen.
Squalo never stops sending him gifts. Yamamoto never stops accepting them.
~~~
(ugh, I think I tainted myself with this >_>; After I wrote it I needed to cleanse their characters in my head so I read someone else’s fanfic XD)
Part IX
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Jugular Ploy
9. Squalo, Yamamoto, vampires. In any combination.
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It wasn’t always as easy as battling evil and demons, he found out. Sometimes it was just really fucked up.
“What, brat? Too stunned that your little trick didn’t work on me?”
He didn’t know what to do. Yamamoto had won, fair and square, he’d ran the bastard vampire through and he was still talking, like everything was normal. Hundreds of hunts, hundred of hours spent perfecting technique and in one stunned moment, it collapses on him like a house of cards. What was he doing? Wasn’t this supposed to be the most flawless, invincible, style? What does he do now?
Squalo’s grip on his wrist grows harder as Yamamoto is yanked forward with crushing strength. He stumbles across the remaining feet between them, fingers still gripped unerringly around the hilt of his katana as he feels Squalo impale himself further on his sword.
“Hey, aren’t you going to feel your dirty work?”
A cruel twist dictated Yamamoto’s wrist to widen the bloody hole inside Squalo’s gut, a motion that should have been excruciating in pain only making Squalo’s bloody mouth pull upward into a grin. Another grip wraps around Yamamoto’s free hand, snatching the deadened limb from his side and suddenly, it’s shoved straight inside the gaping wound.
“Wha-”
He gasps at the shock of hot, slippery flesh engulfing his hand and the gush of blood running across his arm which was frozen from the cold autumn air. It startles him out of his defeated daze as he looks up, almost afraid at the vicious smile plastered on Squalo’s face.
“Enjoying your victory? Did you think that something so small could defeat me? Your pathetic attempt at revenge is what’s failed you!”
His hand is shoved further inside Squalo’s guts as he talks, the slick muscles of the vampire’s abdomen moving in time with his speech, the vibrations rippling across Yamamoto’s knuckles.
“I- this isn’t- the Shigure Souen Style is flawless and invincible.”
The self-directed mumbles of the brat only make Squalo laugh, no longer even needing to hold the kid’s sword in place as the young hunter is paralyzed by his own fascination. “Did your dead father tell you that?”
Finally a blaze of emotion rushes into the glassy eyes, a furious glint striking up to meet Squalo’s gaze. He can feel the trembling in the boy’s limbs born of angry desperation long suppressed, even deep inside his own stomach.
“I’ll find them, whoever did it. I will.”
Yamamoto feels an arm snake across his back, shoving him forward till he and the other swordsman are inches close, the mocking glint in Squalo’s eye trapping his vow and calmly, tears it apart.
“So what, you’re just wasting your time doing other people’s hired work in the mean time? Scurrying around like a good servant, killing people who have nothing to do with your petty revenge?”
The hunter’s head is down turned, words slipping out while he tries not to look into his accuser’s face, somehow feeling uneasy as not-quite-guilt floods him. He doesn’t know why he’s trying to explain himself, almost in self justification. “The-they aren’t people.”
Hair brushes past Yamamoto’s cheek as Squalo bends his head, mouth barely moving as he speaks, low and quiet into the kid’s ear, the intimacy of the moment vaguely obscene with how much blood was pooled between them.
“They aren’t?”
A jerk forces Yamamoto’s hand to move and rove around to feel the throbbing flesh of all too human organs. He whimpers at the pressure of Squalo fingers on his wrist, wrapped so tightly the bone in his hand starts to creak while at his neck he feels the threatening pressure of Squalo’s lips bared wide in a vicious smile. The man’s words ring and ring inside Yamamoto’s head as his hand tries to squirm away from the feel of warm, lively tissue.
“Don’t be delusional, hunter. That pathetic display of swordsmanship was worthlessly weak. Either you know what you are doing or you don’t fuck around with swords at all. Don’t try and hide behind your stupid excuses; you’re killing something or you’re not killing something, nothing else.”
He’s torn away from the nexus of warmth, hand suddenly icy cold in the blast of autumn wind, dripping blood as Yamamoto lies fallen on the dirt. Suddenly, his katana is flung to the ground beside him, silver edge stained after Squalo rips it out of his own torso. Yamamoto is still trembling, trying not to feel that he’d somehow missed the entire point of his father’s gift to him, the most flawless and invincible style. Even after the press of flesh is gone from against his skin, he can still feel the secrets of those slashed organs spilling into his fingers, accusing him through touch.
“Figure it out, kid. I hate fighting clueless weaklings more than I do young brats.”
He watches as Squalo licks his own blood from his splattered arm, the dark, wetly gleaming wound ignored as if it wasn’t even there- and maybe it wasn’t.
He might as well have hit air with how pathetically he wielded the blade in his hand. Yamamoto’s mind was suddenly clear for the first time that night- he agreed, he hated clueless weaklings more than anything else.
--------------
Second part of the post: Parts X and XI, plus an extra from "Eye-Candy"
One of them was monstrously long, which is why I have to post this twice because I went over the posting limit.
Title: 36 Realms of Influence
Author: ember_alda
Rating: R (for gore in this set)
Characters: Yamamoto, Squalo, various other people form KHR as each story demands.
Words: 11,872
Summary: 36 alternate universes, 36 different layers of relation.
Previous six parts:
I II III VI V VI
Part VII.
Note: Notes: I kinda went overboard this time >_> Succeed the Reaper like, punched me in the face by surprise. So one of the premises ended up being like a full length fic? Hope this set isn’t too long XD
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It’s All Greek to Me
13. Squalo is a rain god who takes up rain god-to be Yamamoto under his wing.
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The villagers are getting anxious. Yamamoto can tell because their mouths are pinched and every time he tugs at someone’s leg to ask what’s wrong their eyes go to the sky, leaden with the weight of water.
Four days of falling rain with no visible end had trampled the earth into a muddy pit, the crisp yellow grass of their roofs to a dull and musty tan. Brown and gray splattered everywhere, and everywhere the boy went whispers of discontent were spoken softly, though never to his face. When the villagers were hidden inside their houses, trying to be dry and warm, Yamamoto ran in wild abandon outside, laughing and jumping, sliding in mud and going off into the river bank, even after it swelled dangerously high. He bathes himself with the fresh water that pours from the heavens and even though he’s soaked he never feels the cold. When he invites the other children out to play they refuse, the watchful look in their eyes as they scan the sky totally different from the unguarded joy in Yamamoto’s face.
The rain, they say, is tempestuous; it fickly decides when to come and go and always, always tries to flood the village.
At the dawn of the fifth day it was pouring like the gods themselves wanted to drown the world, the banks raging with water that threatened to spill out and crush their homes like a pile of insects. Sheets of water pelted from the sky, and Yamamoto was tugged straight out of the school building where he slept.
All around the people gathered at the river’s edge, a mass of brown and black cloaks splotching the bright white rocks of the bank. Cowled heads dripping and soaked to the bone flinched aside as the noise and crash of water deafened them and blinded their sight.
“He’s angry. It’s gotta be you, boy. Sorry, but you’re the only orphan here.”
Yamamoto’s eyes go wide as he tries to stare up into the eyes of the man who clenched his shirt so tightly, but water is running into his eyes and everything is blurred around him. He feels himself suspended in a huddle of people who do not chant or pray, instead throwing him without ceremony into the angry river so quickly he cannot even scream.
White and black and formations of bubbles bloom across his crazed vision as everywhere around him he’s pressed by water. The hard shots of rain scramble the surface of the river haphazardly as he tries to breathe, but liquid fills his mouth as he gulps and his lungs drink all they can hold.
Yamamoto’s vision starts to wander and fade as each limb slowly stops working. Trembling and exhausted, he’s swept away.
-0-
It’s the quiet prickling feeling in his side that wakes him. Squalo yawns, mouth gaping impossibly as his limbs try and stretch out in the cramped little niche. Downriver, he has little to worry about from the storm so far away, but the tiny drips from the leaves of the tree sheltering him warn him it’s almost time to stop the torrent that he’d created this week.
As he gets up he gathers up his sword and fur ruffed coat, wondering what gift the people from the village upriver had gotten him this time. The long blue trail of his robe scrapes across the freshly dewed grass as barefooted, he crushes their fragrance into the air.
Xanxus, that stupid bastard, had thrown a fit when after the succession Tsuna had been chosen for the king of the gods. A good portion of the other side of the world had experienced volcanic eruptions and earthquakes as he made every one of his subordinates miserable in his rage. Squalo had to fucking take six decanters to the head each day since, and no it didn’t matter that it was the nectar of the gods, he was getting pissed off.
So as per order from the irritating man he showered a mother-fucking storm down on hapless villagers and in the meanwhile worked off the extra frustration. Tsuna already found out about what had been going on so after this there were to be no more natural disasters but hey, it was a good run while it lasted and maybe this new sacrifice would be something nice enough to take the edge off of Xanxus’ asshole behavior.
A few more steps bring him to the small inlet in the forest, the smoothly rippling waters showing no sign of the death tide that had almost killed an entire village. Squalo, severely disappointed when he sees nothing of import, the usual spot where all his gifts migrated peculiarly empty, almost works himself up into a fit of rage before his eye catches something hidden beneath the blanket of leaves and branches.
A yellow sleeve of a tunic, brightly colored under the grime of marshy trash calls to him. Squalo overhauls the branch and foliage, exposing the small, curled back of a pitiful child.
“VOIIIIIIIIIIIIII WHAT DO THOSE FUCKING IDIOTS THINK THEY’RE DOING? DO I SEEM LIKE THE KIND OF GOD THAT ENJOYS BRATS?! IF THEY WANTED TO KILL HIM THEY SHOULD HAVE STABBED HIM WITH A SWORD NOT SHOVED HIM IN THE RIVER FOR ME. I’LL FUCKING SLAUGHTER THOSE BASTARDS!”
An enraged foot lashes out and kicks the kid in the stomach, flinging him up in the air before landing down on the soft grass, the sharp impact thrusting the clogged water out of Yamamoto’s mouth in a blinding stab of pain.
“Eheh, uglk.” More coughing sounds out as Squalo cannot believe he just accidentally revived a dead kid, was there a way to re-drown him without Squalo actually having to hold him down?
When Yamamoto opens his eyes finally, sucking in as much air as he could, he’s paralyzed by the sight. Above him long, white and silver hair still bedewed with droplets of water from the rain blinds his eyes in the sunlight of a clearing sky, a jewel blue robe drapes across the man easily and regally, thick silk still amazingly dry. Barefoot, with a gleaming silver blade at his side and a strange ethereal glow, Yamamoto can only think that he must have died and passed on to the underworld.
“Did I die?”
Squalo scowls as he looks down distastefully at the clueless brat. “No, you didn’t die you worthless thing. How can you be so useless you can’t even drown?”
The boy scratches at the back of his head, eyes closed in happy crescents while smiling.
“Haha but I’m really good at swimming. I don’t think it helped though, the villagers threw me in pretty far.”
“Can’t even sacrifice a brat right- next time I’m sending in a fucking typhoon.”
“Y-you sent in the storm?"
Is the brat blind? He’s a fucking god, mortals are supposed to know this shit on sight! If they didn’t they ended up dead, not saved by a stupid foot that apparently can revive drowning victims!
“I’m the fucking god of rain. Bask in my glory, blah blah blah. Whatever, this is the most disappointing year, I’ll have to wait another one and next time it better not be another brat.” And definitely not one as stupid as this one.
“Haha, sorry I disappointed you. I can be a useful sacrifice. I know how to make a kazoo with a piece of grass!”
Squalo whirls around, face incredulous at the spectacular revelation. “What?! How is that useful?! I could have Lussuria play me music with his lyre anytime I like even though all he does are operas and sleazy European techno…never mind.”
A pair of golden eyes shine warmly at the irritated outburst, Yamamoto suddenly filled with a strange affinity. “You’re funny, I like you. The stories aren’t anything like you for real.”
“Who cares?! I’m leaving. You go do whatever it is brats do after gods save them. Oh, and remember to worship me and if you become rich send me some goddamn wine or something, NOT a dead goat what the hell gave people that idea?”
Quickly, Yamamoto scrambles up and tries to tag along the retreating man, the bright blue trail quickly fading away through the foliage. “Wait! Can’t I like…worship you better if I’m with you?”
Squalo tries to hurry up but the stupid kid is following him like it’s some sort of corn maze where getting lost means dying in the stupid thing. He whirls around to hammer in the point. “Oh no, I don’t take charity cases, go suck up to that idiot Tsuna he’s a bleeding heart and Superbi Squalo is not a bleeding heart.”
A small hand reaches out and grabs the draping sleeve and only at that corner, clinging tighter than it ever had before, knuckles white, even though Yamamoto’s face is cheerful and calm as he’d ever seen any brat.
“Ok. How about this, either go back to the village or I fucking gut you.”
A hiss of steel brushes past the boy’s ear, the silver shine so smooth and bright it seemed as if it had been carved out of the moon. It was distasteful to do something so mundane as killing someone with his sword when he’d called up hurricanes and tsunamis with it in his sword dance, but he wasn’t about to tastelessly strangle the kid.
Yamamoto’s eyes go wide as the blade is pressed against his skin, ready to slice open his all too mortal throat.
“W-wow, is that really the Shigure Kintoki? I-I can’t believe it.”
Squalo, beyond being stunned that the brat wasn’t pissing in fear, can’t believe this random kid was reaching out a shaky, reverent hand to touch the blade about to cut him open.
“VOIIIIIII BRAT. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW THIS SWORD’S NAME?!”
Yamamoto quickly drops his hand, not looking very chastised as he scratches the back of his head again, eyes still being magnetized back to the silver blade. “I guess I’ve been raised on you Squalo, haha. My dad told me a lot of stories about you after he made that sword.”
“Tsuyoshi’s brat?”
“I really loved hearing about the rain legends and dad used to tell me sea stories and how you kept order in the sky with a chariot pulled by flying sharks.”
Well, that much was right, he wasn’t going to be pulled around by fucking pansies like turtles or fish. Inadvertently, Squalo lowers his arm, the Shigure Kintoki back at his side as he considers the kid in front of him.
“Please, don’t kill me. I know how to maintenance a heavenly blade, my dad taught me how to polish and fix nicks. I know how to do the rain dance too, all seven forms! I can be useful, I don’t care if I die but don’t make me go back to the village after this.”
Slowly, a small smile starts to spread on Squalo’s mouth. So the boy knew how to up-keep the sword, eh? It means less time dealing with Levi and his stupid ass trying to get him to fix the thing when they hated each other’s guts. If the way the brat hadn’t even flinched when he rushed him full speed was any indication of fearless potential, maybe the villagers really did give him a good sacrifice.
Squalo turns sharply around walking off again into the woods, no time to waste now that he’s decided what to do with Tsuyoshi’s kid.
“You’re going to do whatever I say, kid, whenever I say it.”
The sound of feet clambering after him tells Squalo Yamamoto is eager to please. “Yeah, sure! Anything…can I see you use your sword?”
He stops. Well, the edict didn’t say to stop the disasters till tomorrow. A vicious smirk blows across his face as he laughs out into the wind.
“Ha! Sure kid, why not?”
Part VIII.
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Flipside of the Moon
16. Squalo doesn’t ever send Yamamoto the tapes. Instead, he goes about his mafia business, sending Yamamoto “souvenirs” from 101 hits instead.
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It started with a lock of hair.
Not that he had been alarmed, of course. It was a short hank, glittering white strands curiously tied with a brief length of green ribbon. Yamamoto had opened the small, wrapped jewelry box, curiously turning the present over and over in his hand. He’d thought Squalo was determined never to sacrifice his locks.
There was a note- more like a cream scrap cut into a square, but it had simply said,
“Squalo sends this from Alberti Donte.”
Yamamoto had shoved it in the back of his desk, wondering where in Italy Alberti Donte was.
-0-
It’s a complete surprise, the next time. When he reaches into his desk at school to put back his notebook during homeroom break, he hears a dull sound of something being knocked over. Inside, flipped upside down, is a small box.
Black and silver, no bigger than his palm, wrapped exactly the same as the last one.
Yamamoto blinks, opening it again, slowly like a child playing games with a music box. Nestled in cotton fiber is a gold band decorated with an emblazoned jaguar in emeralds, leaping across the yellow field. The thick shine of metal and the width of it made it look like a grown man’s ring.
Yamamoto laughs; doesn’t Squalo know that his fingers couldn’t possibly be that thick?
He tucks the useless gift into his book bag, throwing away the box. He forgets about it, the expensive piece sinking in obscurity into the depths of his bag.
-0-
The beginning of every month signals another gift. He’d figured that out after the first four. They keep getting stranger and stranger. A keychain of a soccer ball, a simple silver studded earring, a red cell phone, a gift certificate for an Italian bakery, a men’s money clip.
Tsuna asks him to come with him for a summer vacation in Italy. His father had sent him a multitude of tickets, trying to make an incentive for his son to come with his circle of friends, probably in a bid to convince his son to become the tenth.
Yamamoto takes it in a stride. Sure, he says, laughing, he’d like to see Squalo anyway.
His friend is a bit surprised. Squalo being mentioned out of nowhere months after the ring battles have passed seems to Tsuna a non sequitur. The way Yamamoto spoke, there’s a certain warmth that comes from something deeper than mere acquaintance, but as far as Tsuna knows the other man hadn’t even been in Japan after that for them to interact. He hopes that Yamamoto won’t be too disappointed when Squalo opts to charge at him with the business end of his sword.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
The other boy laughs.
“I do.”
-0-
They meet more than once, but the first time they pass each other it’s outside the Vongola headquarters on the street. Yamamoto’s sure their eyes met but with the way Squalo simply glances at him before turning around, leaving with his companions, he’s not sure. Somehow it’s like a vacuum in time occurred, right then and there, and in more than just that slightest movement he felt a vibration of premonition shake his core.
Squalo sends him a note. It’s a plain vanilla envelope inscribed with a time and a place. He expected Squalo’s handwriting to be big and bold, like his shout and his words, but it’s surprisingly neat script. Across the bottom of the page dictate the simple words,
“You’re going to learn something today, brat, and then we’ll have a talk.”
Yamamoto stares at those words, knowing instinctively what the other man meant as he shifts a glance at the katana he impulsively decided to bring with him on vacation.
-0-
That night, he goes out to the bar written so precisely on his paper. He clutches his bamboo sword, unsure why he thought it was necessary at a place where people go for drinks, but as soon as he spots Squalo he gets the feeling he had done what the other man had wanted.
The dim lights showering down on the swordsman illuminates his hair into a beacon, the casual figure of his well pieced leather coat blending well with the crowd. Yamamoto suddenly feels oceans away as he realizes he’s out of place wearing khaki shorts and a t-shirt. A sense of strange de ja vu washes over as the other swordsman looks at him with the same gaze as he did out in the street that first time.
Squalo’s lips twist upward, the bitter, teeth filled smirk burning like a brand in his mind as he watches the other man slowly unsheathe his sword in the middle of a crowded room. There’s no where to run for all the people around them, but none of them are moving an inch from where they stood. Squalo is covered in an indigo glow as he strikes forward through the mass of the crowd. Yamamoto’s limbs freeze as he sees the already bloodied streaks dripping down the flat of the blade.
As Squalo walks up to him, next to him, he automatically swings down his bamboo blade, warping it into metal, for all the protection that it would give him.
“This is a hit, brat. Don’t let mercy get in the way.”
Squalo moves about the room slowly, invisible and shrouded to everyone but him, and now Yamamoto feels in his blood something rising up. He can’t tell if it’s panic or apprehension, fear or disgust or fascination. The invisible man stops at a tall table, nothing but dead efficiency in his eyes as an upward swing of the blade glints soft and vicious in the mottled lights of the room. Diving down and plunging into the chest of a woman sitting closest to the dance floor, Squalo’s blade slides only once, clean and thick.
Not matter how loud the music, the scream overpowers the synthetic rhythm and Yamamoto’s own heart over powers the scream tenfold, throbbing in his brain the sound of his own blood. There is no red, everything is too dark, only a spread of a blotted shadow across the floor pools out as the target scrambles quickly and tries to shoot the gun she had concealed in her jacket pocket, waving around her arm like a worm writhing.
Ten other men had also drawn their guns, heads swerving around while the sights of their weapons gyrated madly trying to pin down the culprit, who all of a sudden is right behind Yamamoto, the near silent whisper of cloth rubbing on cloth brushing vacantly across his ears.
A cold, slippery weight is pressed into his hand from behind. The boy doesn’t turn around.
“You don’t need a box this time, do you?” The shark evaporates into the damp lit streets of the night trailing whispers and whispers and whispers behind him. Yamamoto looks mechanically at what’s in his palm.
He’d seen the bracelet on that woman’s wrist.
-0-
When they fly back to Japan Yamamoto says nothing. Instead, when he goes home he gathers all the things that Squalo sent to him and looks them over, silently. The dull yellow light from his table lamp makes the collection of baubles and trash surreal, filmy.
Like a talisman, he touches each one- rubbing the gold ring under the sparkle of lights, prodding the keychain, caressing the bracelet.
He goes back to that first piece, soft but surprisingly brittle in his hand after he picks it up. When he looks at that tress of hair in his palm something climbs out, and for a moment, claws inside his gut tightly. It hadn’t been Squalo’s hair.
His eyes are drawn together, consternation tensing his forehead as he tries to fathom what it is laying on his skin. It takes hours, Yamamoto’s expression never changing as after that brief clench in his gut, he feels nothing the rest of the night.
The next day he goes out to buy a milk tea from the Seven-Eleven. At school he smiles with Tsuna and Gokudera, never far from them but not quite as near as they were to each other. The words had remained zipped tight in his throat, and even if he had felt the unceasing need to say something, it simply wasn’t possible. Those words, that night, was too fantastical to bear him into the future. He can only force his limbs to carry on like he did before.
Yamamoto never stops filling his mind with mundane things like homework, the new line of sports drink, and going out to karaoke with his friends. Somewhere down the years baseball fades away into the past as other things take its place when he grows.
Yamamoto refuses to become a swordsman. Instead he goes to high school in Osaka, and then crams for entrance exams for College at Tokyo U, going about his life like a regular Japanese citizen.
Squalo never stops sending him gifts. Yamamoto never stops accepting them.
~~~
(ugh, I think I tainted myself with this >_>; After I wrote it I needed to cleanse their characters in my head so I read someone else’s fanfic XD)
Part IX
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Jugular Ploy
9. Squalo, Yamamoto, vampires. In any combination.
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It wasn’t always as easy as battling evil and demons, he found out. Sometimes it was just really fucked up.
“What, brat? Too stunned that your little trick didn’t work on me?”
He didn’t know what to do. Yamamoto had won, fair and square, he’d ran the bastard vampire through and he was still talking, like everything was normal. Hundreds of hunts, hundred of hours spent perfecting technique and in one stunned moment, it collapses on him like a house of cards. What was he doing? Wasn’t this supposed to be the most flawless, invincible, style? What does he do now?
Squalo’s grip on his wrist grows harder as Yamamoto is yanked forward with crushing strength. He stumbles across the remaining feet between them, fingers still gripped unerringly around the hilt of his katana as he feels Squalo impale himself further on his sword.
“Hey, aren’t you going to feel your dirty work?”
A cruel twist dictated Yamamoto’s wrist to widen the bloody hole inside Squalo’s gut, a motion that should have been excruciating in pain only making Squalo’s bloody mouth pull upward into a grin. Another grip wraps around Yamamoto’s free hand, snatching the deadened limb from his side and suddenly, it’s shoved straight inside the gaping wound.
“Wha-”
He gasps at the shock of hot, slippery flesh engulfing his hand and the gush of blood running across his arm which was frozen from the cold autumn air. It startles him out of his defeated daze as he looks up, almost afraid at the vicious smile plastered on Squalo’s face.
“Enjoying your victory? Did you think that something so small could defeat me? Your pathetic attempt at revenge is what’s failed you!”
His hand is shoved further inside Squalo’s guts as he talks, the slick muscles of the vampire’s abdomen moving in time with his speech, the vibrations rippling across Yamamoto’s knuckles.
“I- this isn’t- the Shigure Souen Style is flawless and invincible.”
The self-directed mumbles of the brat only make Squalo laugh, no longer even needing to hold the kid’s sword in place as the young hunter is paralyzed by his own fascination. “Did your dead father tell you that?”
Finally a blaze of emotion rushes into the glassy eyes, a furious glint striking up to meet Squalo’s gaze. He can feel the trembling in the boy’s limbs born of angry desperation long suppressed, even deep inside his own stomach.
“I’ll find them, whoever did it. I will.”
Yamamoto feels an arm snake across his back, shoving him forward till he and the other swordsman are inches close, the mocking glint in Squalo’s eye trapping his vow and calmly, tears it apart.
“So what, you’re just wasting your time doing other people’s hired work in the mean time? Scurrying around like a good servant, killing people who have nothing to do with your petty revenge?”
The hunter’s head is down turned, words slipping out while he tries not to look into his accuser’s face, somehow feeling uneasy as not-quite-guilt floods him. He doesn’t know why he’s trying to explain himself, almost in self justification. “The-they aren’t people.”
Hair brushes past Yamamoto’s cheek as Squalo bends his head, mouth barely moving as he speaks, low and quiet into the kid’s ear, the intimacy of the moment vaguely obscene with how much blood was pooled between them.
“They aren’t?”
A jerk forces Yamamoto’s hand to move and rove around to feel the throbbing flesh of all too human organs. He whimpers at the pressure of Squalo fingers on his wrist, wrapped so tightly the bone in his hand starts to creak while at his neck he feels the threatening pressure of Squalo’s lips bared wide in a vicious smile. The man’s words ring and ring inside Yamamoto’s head as his hand tries to squirm away from the feel of warm, lively tissue.
“Don’t be delusional, hunter. That pathetic display of swordsmanship was worthlessly weak. Either you know what you are doing or you don’t fuck around with swords at all. Don’t try and hide behind your stupid excuses; you’re killing something or you’re not killing something, nothing else.”
He’s torn away from the nexus of warmth, hand suddenly icy cold in the blast of autumn wind, dripping blood as Yamamoto lies fallen on the dirt. Suddenly, his katana is flung to the ground beside him, silver edge stained after Squalo rips it out of his own torso. Yamamoto is still trembling, trying not to feel that he’d somehow missed the entire point of his father’s gift to him, the most flawless and invincible style. Even after the press of flesh is gone from against his skin, he can still feel the secrets of those slashed organs spilling into his fingers, accusing him through touch.
“Figure it out, kid. I hate fighting clueless weaklings more than I do young brats.”
He watches as Squalo licks his own blood from his splattered arm, the dark, wetly gleaming wound ignored as if it wasn’t even there- and maybe it wasn’t.
He might as well have hit air with how pathetically he wielded the blade in his hand. Yamamoto’s mind was suddenly clear for the first time that night- he agreed, he hated clueless weaklings more than anything else.
--------------
Second part of the post: Parts X and XI, plus an extra from "Eye-Candy"