morphaileffect
Present for: morphaileffect
Type of present: Fanfiction
Pairing: 8069
Rating: PG-13 for Mukuro being Mukuro.
Author's Note: This is actually gen...XD and I hope my subconscious didn't find some way of slashing them X_X
ALSO, I'M SO SORRY IT'S SO LATE, I haven't been online since the 20th. Sorrysorrysorry DX
He gets a limited number of swings, at this level he can afford to miss some to gain valuable information.
Three strikes.
No, he doesn’t waste them because he can’t hit them. Rather, because the first two will reveal the best way to use the third one. Yes, he’s that good. But of course he doesn’t think of it that way.
“HOME RUUUUUUUNNNNNN!!!! YAMAMOTO-KUN HITS IT OUT OF THE PARK!”
Clean-up. Yamamoto is a clean-up hitter. Always has been and probably always will be.
“With this, Namimori Middle School stays in the lead! Will Kokuyou catch up during the next inning?”
“No way, we won’t let them score even one run, right Yamamoto?”
“Mah, mah.” Yamamoto smiles reassuringly at his teammates, “Let’s just go out there and do our best. That will be good enough to win.” He takes a final swig from his drink.
And with that, they crush their paper cups underfoot and run back onto the field.
“OH? Yamamoto-kun is filling in for the injured pitcher! Really, this guy can do anything!”
Yamamoto patters the ball into his glove habitually as he positions himself properly on the mound. The first batter up twists in a few practice swings before setting his elbows and holding the bat in a ready position.
With that, Yamamoto pitches -- his experience as a batter, as a pitcher, as a baseball player moving his body. It’s really as simple as that, there is no thought process or method. He doesn’t understand why people get so hung up on that.
“Strike one!”
The catcher tosses back the ball, and Yamamoto winds up for another pitch.
“That ball sure was fast, Yamamoto-san.” He suddenly hears the batter say.
Yamamoto smiles, “Not really.” He says as he pitches again.
“Strike two!”
“Your arm was a blur.” the batter says, smiling. “How scary.”
He feels something akin to an ice cube forcing its way into his arm when he pitches. And this time the ball connects with a resounding ring.
“Catch it!”
“Safe!”
“HOOOME RUUUUN!”
“Don’t mind!” Yamamoto calls, before looking toward the batter.
The Kokuyou batter is adjusting his cap and for an instant their eyes meet. The boy’s smiling eyes are blue and red.
Something you don’t see everyday.
And it’s what he thinks of when the game ends, when he takes the team to Takesushi to celebrate their victory.
“Eh? You’re going back to practice?” One of his teammates asks, not really that astounded.
“Heh, yeah, something is bothering me.”
“Was it that one guy who messed up your otherwise perfect game? Who was-”
“He was number 69.” Yamamoto answers almost immediately.
“Oh, yeah, him. Well,” He gives Yamamoto a slap on his back, “Don’t over do it.”
Yamamoto grins, and with that he takes off.
*
Training after a game has never been effective. Yamamoto feels as if he just needs to be there, occupying his energy with the motion of hitting and the sounds of the ball popping from the machine and connecting with his bat.
Panting heavily and still in his post-hit stance, he watches the last ball fly into the dying afternoon sky, the setting sun dragging all the colors along red and gold ribbons.
He promised to be back by nightfall.
And he’s going to have to pick up all these balls by himself. Sighing, he decides to come extra early tomorrow morning to do it.
*
He makes his way to the locker room and pushes opens the door. Warm mist comes rushing out into the chill air outside, “Wow, that’s a lot of steam…is someone in here?”
One of the showers is going. And he sees something shuffle against the wall, jersey number 69 of Kokuyou.
“Oh, hey, it’s you!” Yamamoto calls out to the boy leaning against the wall.
The boy is tossing a ball, leisurely into the air, and then catching it again. “Hit this, Takeshi.” He throws.
That’s fast Yamamoto swings the bat in his hand instantaneously and hits it back. The twang echoes in the small space and the Kokuyou player catches the ball, in such a close proximity, like it was nothing. Yamamoto grips his bat more tightly.
The boy laughs, “So you’re the natural born assassin, huh?”
“Ahaha, well….that’s what the kid calls me…”
“Oh? The Arcobaleno?”
“Yeah, Reborn-san…” Yamamoto adds, “wait, how do you know? Are you playing the mafia game too?
“Mafia…game?” With this, the boy practically roars with laughter, as close to roaring as that very soft voice can get anyways. “Well, what did you come in here for? Continue.”
Yamamoto begins taking off his uniform, “Ah, uh what’s your name?”
The boy takes off his cap and runs a hand through blue hair. “Kufufu, it depends.”
“Ahaha, what do you mean by that?” Yamamoto laughs as he steps into one of the shower stalls to finish undressing. The steam from that other shower is making the whole place almost unbearably torrid, beads of sweat are trickling coolly from his skin.
“Yamamoto Takeshi, do you know how many guys I know who are just like you?”
“Whoa there,” Yamamoto whips around, the voice had been right behind him, “Heh, uh, you’re in my shower…”
Leaning against the slick tiles on the wall, the boy angles his head back, making eye contact with Yamamoto without having to look up, “So I am.” He smiles.
Yamamoto supposes that there is too much steam to really see anything anyways, “ah, what did you mean by how many guys I know who are like me…”
The boy smirks, “Is everyone in your family so calm? I wonder.”
“Oh, talking about the mafia game again? No, everyone always seems to be so serious about it…” Yamamoto laughs, “But it’s funny, they’re interesting.”
“Kufufu,” the boy pushes himself lightly from the wall, “is that so?” he asks, shortening the distance between them.
There is so much mist that Yamamoto really has to wonder how he can tell where the boy is anyways. “Yeah…they are a lot of fun to be with.” A pause, “we’re friends.”
“Like most people who meet you?”
“No…that’s not it.” Yamamoto expression brightens, “playing this mafia role playing game with them, it’s really only part of it.”
The boy stops a hand’s length in front of him, “So what are the other parts?”
“Ah, well…we eat together now, Reborn-san taught me new baseball training techniques with special effects, we met this cool guy from Italy who is also part of the mafia game…”
“So how’d it all start for you, anyways?”
“Well…” Yamamoto trails off, “it’s kind of embarrassing now, but I was in a bit of a funk after I broke my arm before season started.”
“And?”
Yamamoto tries to gain focus in the mind smothering haze around him, he didn’t even know this boy, “Well, I climbed up to the roof during class one day, so no one would see me…”
He sighs, laughing, as if in amused disbelief, retelling a suicide attempt like it was that one time he accidentally called his teacher mommy. Or like it was that one time he took home a stray cat and thought his dad would actually allow it to live in a sushi bar with them…
Or that one time he was practicing extra late and met a member from the team they had played earlier that day in the locker room and didn’t run out clutching himself in violated horror when he was followed into a shower. He is even making conversation with him about friends he’s sure are not mutual. People are capable of the strangest lapses of judgment.
“I was going to jump…But he stopped me.” Yamamoto pauses. Funny, that it was Sawada Tsunayoshi who stopped him.
“What’s wrong, Takeshi? You look preoccupied.”
“Do I?” Yamamoto grins apologetically, “I guess I was just…thinking about it.” So does that mean Tsuna jumped off the roof for him because he had a lapse of judgment?
No way.
“You know what it means to never have lapses of judgment?”
“Wait, how did you…oh never mind, what do you mean by that?”
“Kufufu, you didn’t leak anything.” He finds that the boy is actually whispering into his ear, and a soaked uniform shirt presses against his exposed chest, “Do you know what the difference is between us?”
“…I’m sure I can think of more than one thing…”
That laugh, “Well, I meant in terms of being a killer.”
“Ah, hold on there, I’m not really a killer…”
A warm sigh, very warm, “Then I’ll ask you again when you are.”
And the boy is on the other end of the shower again, leaning against the dripping tile wall, the smile in his lips utterly amused.
Yamamoto finds himself asking, “Will we ever meet again?”
The boy is being swallowed by the mist, “Kufufu, if all goes according to plan,” he says with arcane confidence, “then no.”
Yamamoto steps forward, chasing an illusion he thinks. The mist is gone, and the sound of the shower is clear in the now oppressively silent locker room.
Yamamoto shudders the shudder he has been suppressing and quickly washes. He has no intention of staying in there any longer than he has to.
*
The world of suits, dubious briefcases, blood in exchange for money --
Looks can be deceiving. If nothing, that is the single most important lesson that Mukuro has learned from his various existences. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are -- it doesn’t even matter what you are.
It’s misty, just like it was then. “This world,” Mukuro starts, dragging a corpse behind him through the empty town, “I vowed to take it down.”
Yamamoto says nothing, eyes fixed on the foggy white space before him. He couldn’t even see his own hand.
“Kufufu, seems like the mist is on our side, how lucky we are.”
“Ahaha, I thought it was you.”
Mukuro smirks. “So tell me, how do you feel right now?”
Yamamoto thinks for a bit, “I don’t know…?”
“It was your first hit, yo.”
“Ah, I don’t know…how did you feel?”
"Kufufu," without hesitation, “like God.”
“Ha…really? Why?”
The dead weight thumps over the rocky ground as they walk further and further from the paved streets.
“Simply because any world they end up in…” Mukuro grunts softly as he tosses the body into the river bank “…would be better than this world.”
In the black torrent, they can hardly see the blood on the corpse soak and blend with the water running underneath the bridge. It’s gone before they know it.
“Well, I guess I feel like God too then.” Yamamoto grins, “Except, not really for the same reason…”
“Oh? So what reason is so different from mine?”
Yamamoto takes the time to gather his thoughts, “Well, I was just thinking about how after killing this guy, people in this world might live a little better.”
If a shooting star had made its way across the sky that day -- so many years ago -- then surely they’d see it again today. That’s when Mukuro laughs, because neither of them would have noticed.
“Interesting.” Mukuro mummers, as he walks past his partner in crime, or righteousness, for the night.
Yamamoto turns around and surely enough, Mukuro had vanished along with the fog.
He is left standing next to the tainted river, mind clear as the air around him.
He closes his eyes and inhales. So what is the difference between the two of them? Is a killer really just a killer?
A chuckle tumbles out as he exhales, misting up the cool air before him, because he just held the candle to some one who has been to Hell and returned with the Devil’s own pitchfork-trident-thing. Whatever. He feels pretty cool right now.
Type of present: Fanfiction
Pairing: 8069
Rating: PG-13 for Mukuro being Mukuro.
Author's Note: This is actually gen...XD and I hope my subconscious didn't find some way of slashing them X_X
ALSO, I'M SO SORRY IT'S SO LATE, I haven't been online since the 20th. Sorrysorrysorry DX
He gets a limited number of swings, at this level he can afford to miss some to gain valuable information.
Three strikes.
No, he doesn’t waste them because he can’t hit them. Rather, because the first two will reveal the best way to use the third one. Yes, he’s that good. But of course he doesn’t think of it that way.
“HOME RUUUUUUUNNNNNN!!!! YAMAMOTO-KUN HITS IT OUT OF THE PARK!”
Clean-up. Yamamoto is a clean-up hitter. Always has been and probably always will be.
“With this, Namimori Middle School stays in the lead! Will Kokuyou catch up during the next inning?”
“No way, we won’t let them score even one run, right Yamamoto?”
“Mah, mah.” Yamamoto smiles reassuringly at his teammates, “Let’s just go out there and do our best. That will be good enough to win.” He takes a final swig from his drink.
And with that, they crush their paper cups underfoot and run back onto the field.
“OH? Yamamoto-kun is filling in for the injured pitcher! Really, this guy can do anything!”
Yamamoto patters the ball into his glove habitually as he positions himself properly on the mound. The first batter up twists in a few practice swings before setting his elbows and holding the bat in a ready position.
With that, Yamamoto pitches -- his experience as a batter, as a pitcher, as a baseball player moving his body. It’s really as simple as that, there is no thought process or method. He doesn’t understand why people get so hung up on that.
“Strike one!”
The catcher tosses back the ball, and Yamamoto winds up for another pitch.
“That ball sure was fast, Yamamoto-san.” He suddenly hears the batter say.
Yamamoto smiles, “Not really.” He says as he pitches again.
“Strike two!”
“Your arm was a blur.” the batter says, smiling. “How scary.”
He feels something akin to an ice cube forcing its way into his arm when he pitches. And this time the ball connects with a resounding ring.
“Catch it!”
“Safe!”
“HOOOME RUUUUN!”
“Don’t mind!” Yamamoto calls, before looking toward the batter.
The Kokuyou batter is adjusting his cap and for an instant their eyes meet. The boy’s smiling eyes are blue and red.
Something you don’t see everyday.
And it’s what he thinks of when the game ends, when he takes the team to Takesushi to celebrate their victory.
“Eh? You’re going back to practice?” One of his teammates asks, not really that astounded.
“Heh, yeah, something is bothering me.”
“Was it that one guy who messed up your otherwise perfect game? Who was-”
“He was number 69.” Yamamoto answers almost immediately.
“Oh, yeah, him. Well,” He gives Yamamoto a slap on his back, “Don’t over do it.”
Yamamoto grins, and with that he takes off.
*
Training after a game has never been effective. Yamamoto feels as if he just needs to be there, occupying his energy with the motion of hitting and the sounds of the ball popping from the machine and connecting with his bat.
Panting heavily and still in his post-hit stance, he watches the last ball fly into the dying afternoon sky, the setting sun dragging all the colors along red and gold ribbons.
He promised to be back by nightfall.
And he’s going to have to pick up all these balls by himself. Sighing, he decides to come extra early tomorrow morning to do it.
*
He makes his way to the locker room and pushes opens the door. Warm mist comes rushing out into the chill air outside, “Wow, that’s a lot of steam…is someone in here?”
One of the showers is going. And he sees something shuffle against the wall, jersey number 69 of Kokuyou.
“Oh, hey, it’s you!” Yamamoto calls out to the boy leaning against the wall.
The boy is tossing a ball, leisurely into the air, and then catching it again. “Hit this, Takeshi.” He throws.
That’s fast Yamamoto swings the bat in his hand instantaneously and hits it back. The twang echoes in the small space and the Kokuyou player catches the ball, in such a close proximity, like it was nothing. Yamamoto grips his bat more tightly.
The boy laughs, “So you’re the natural born assassin, huh?”
“Ahaha, well….that’s what the kid calls me…”
“Oh? The Arcobaleno?”
“Yeah, Reborn-san…” Yamamoto adds, “wait, how do you know? Are you playing the mafia game too?
“Mafia…game?” With this, the boy practically roars with laughter, as close to roaring as that very soft voice can get anyways. “Well, what did you come in here for? Continue.”
Yamamoto begins taking off his uniform, “Ah, uh what’s your name?”
The boy takes off his cap and runs a hand through blue hair. “Kufufu, it depends.”
“Ahaha, what do you mean by that?” Yamamoto laughs as he steps into one of the shower stalls to finish undressing. The steam from that other shower is making the whole place almost unbearably torrid, beads of sweat are trickling coolly from his skin.
“Yamamoto Takeshi, do you know how many guys I know who are just like you?”
“Whoa there,” Yamamoto whips around, the voice had been right behind him, “Heh, uh, you’re in my shower…”
Leaning against the slick tiles on the wall, the boy angles his head back, making eye contact with Yamamoto without having to look up, “So I am.” He smiles.
Yamamoto supposes that there is too much steam to really see anything anyways, “ah, what did you mean by how many guys I know who are like me…”
The boy smirks, “Is everyone in your family so calm? I wonder.”
“Oh, talking about the mafia game again? No, everyone always seems to be so serious about it…” Yamamoto laughs, “But it’s funny, they’re interesting.”
“Kufufu,” the boy pushes himself lightly from the wall, “is that so?” he asks, shortening the distance between them.
There is so much mist that Yamamoto really has to wonder how he can tell where the boy is anyways. “Yeah…they are a lot of fun to be with.” A pause, “we’re friends.”
“Like most people who meet you?”
“No…that’s not it.” Yamamoto expression brightens, “playing this mafia role playing game with them, it’s really only part of it.”
The boy stops a hand’s length in front of him, “So what are the other parts?”
“Ah, well…we eat together now, Reborn-san taught me new baseball training techniques with special effects, we met this cool guy from Italy who is also part of the mafia game…”
“So how’d it all start for you, anyways?”
“Well…” Yamamoto trails off, “it’s kind of embarrassing now, but I was in a bit of a funk after I broke my arm before season started.”
“And?”
Yamamoto tries to gain focus in the mind smothering haze around him, he didn’t even know this boy, “Well, I climbed up to the roof during class one day, so no one would see me…”
He sighs, laughing, as if in amused disbelief, retelling a suicide attempt like it was that one time he accidentally called his teacher mommy. Or like it was that one time he took home a stray cat and thought his dad would actually allow it to live in a sushi bar with them…
Or that one time he was practicing extra late and met a member from the team they had played earlier that day in the locker room and didn’t run out clutching himself in violated horror when he was followed into a shower. He is even making conversation with him about friends he’s sure are not mutual. People are capable of the strangest lapses of judgment.
“I was going to jump…But he stopped me.” Yamamoto pauses. Funny, that it was Sawada Tsunayoshi who stopped him.
“What’s wrong, Takeshi? You look preoccupied.”
“Do I?” Yamamoto grins apologetically, “I guess I was just…thinking about it.” So does that mean Tsuna jumped off the roof for him because he had a lapse of judgment?
No way.
“You know what it means to never have lapses of judgment?”
“Wait, how did you…oh never mind, what do you mean by that?”
“Kufufu, you didn’t leak anything.” He finds that the boy is actually whispering into his ear, and a soaked uniform shirt presses against his exposed chest, “Do you know what the difference is between us?”
“…I’m sure I can think of more than one thing…”
That laugh, “Well, I meant in terms of being a killer.”
“Ah, hold on there, I’m not really a killer…”
A warm sigh, very warm, “Then I’ll ask you again when you are.”
And the boy is on the other end of the shower again, leaning against the dripping tile wall, the smile in his lips utterly amused.
Yamamoto finds himself asking, “Will we ever meet again?”
The boy is being swallowed by the mist, “Kufufu, if all goes according to plan,” he says with arcane confidence, “then no.”
Yamamoto steps forward, chasing an illusion he thinks. The mist is gone, and the sound of the shower is clear in the now oppressively silent locker room.
Yamamoto shudders the shudder he has been suppressing and quickly washes. He has no intention of staying in there any longer than he has to.
*
The world of suits, dubious briefcases, blood in exchange for money --
Looks can be deceiving. If nothing, that is the single most important lesson that Mukuro has learned from his various existences. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are -- it doesn’t even matter what you are.
It’s misty, just like it was then. “This world,” Mukuro starts, dragging a corpse behind him through the empty town, “I vowed to take it down.”
Yamamoto says nothing, eyes fixed on the foggy white space before him. He couldn’t even see his own hand.
“Kufufu, seems like the mist is on our side, how lucky we are.”
“Ahaha, I thought it was you.”
Mukuro smirks. “So tell me, how do you feel right now?”
Yamamoto thinks for a bit, “I don’t know…?”
“It was your first hit, yo.”
“Ah, I don’t know…how did you feel?”
"Kufufu," without hesitation, “like God.”
“Ha…really? Why?”
The dead weight thumps over the rocky ground as they walk further and further from the paved streets.
“Simply because any world they end up in…” Mukuro grunts softly as he tosses the body into the river bank “…would be better than this world.”
In the black torrent, they can hardly see the blood on the corpse soak and blend with the water running underneath the bridge. It’s gone before they know it.
“Well, I guess I feel like God too then.” Yamamoto grins, “Except, not really for the same reason…”
“Oh? So what reason is so different from mine?”
Yamamoto takes the time to gather his thoughts, “Well, I was just thinking about how after killing this guy, people in this world might live a little better.”
If a shooting star had made its way across the sky that day -- so many years ago -- then surely they’d see it again today. That’s when Mukuro laughs, because neither of them would have noticed.
“Interesting.” Mukuro mummers, as he walks past his partner in crime, or righteousness, for the night.
Yamamoto turns around and surely enough, Mukuro had vanished along with the fog.
He is left standing next to the tainted river, mind clear as the air around him.
He closes his eyes and inhales. So what is the difference between the two of them? Is a killer really just a killer?
A chuckle tumbles out as he exhales, misting up the cool air before him, because he just held the candle to some one who has been to Hell and returned with the Devil’s own pitchfork-trident-thing. Whatever. He feels pretty cool right now.