[Fic] Reborn!: Cure for Shock
12 Days of Christmas Meme
DAY 07
Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!
Prompt: 6918, Culture Shock
Requester: runesque
Warnings: UNEDITED, very little dialogue, tense issues?
___________________________________________________________
Title: Cure for Shock
Series/Characters: [Reborn!] Mukuro/Hibari (blink-and-you-miss... like all my recent attempts at pairings gdi), Reborn
Disclaimer: Property of Amano Akira. Am only screwing around.
Word Count: 2,206
Notes: Will be going over the writing with a fine-toothed comb at a later date, but I needed to post this now before I ran out of time. Felt a lot more in tune with this fic, and was actually having fun with it for the first part! But I think I went ahead and lost it somewhere during the second part and then it all went to hell. |D;;; Also feel like I had some tense issues (over usage of past imperfect really eff'd up my sense of tense normalcy... and continuously worrying over it didn't really help, methinks.) CRITS WELCOME.
ALSO. I don't actually hold any of the views I've written Hibari to have. I'm sure Italy's a lovely country. Hibari's just biased and Namimorisexual like that. |D
Summary: Hibari doesn't like Italy, so when he finds himself stuck there on a mission for 3 months and becoming increasingly irritated, he takes matters into his own hands.
___________________________________________________________
Cure for Shock
by kasugai gummie
___________________________________________________________
Italy, Hibari decided, was an utter waste of time and space-namely his time, and continental space. The inland cities were hot, humid, and teaming with people; the beaches were crowded in a manner that set his teeth on edge. A “popular destination for tourists during the summer” the airline travel brochure had lauded, next to the iconic photos of half-assed ruins and tacky Romanesque villas, all of which Hibari had processed with great displeasure as “crowd-magnets.”
If it weren’t for Reborn, he would have never even bothered stepping foot in the godforsaken airport, much less board the plane. But the baby had suggested that it’d be in his best interest to visit the peninsula during the summer vacation season alongside Sawada and the rest of his herd.
And so Hibari went. He went, he saw, and just the sight of the architecture killed any instinctive desire to conquer.
Italy was nothing like Namimori, or anywhere else in Japan for that matter. Too gaudy, too historical, too religious, too many illegal displays of romance in public, too, too, too much of everything and anything. It offered nothing of worth note to Hibari, nothing at all (save, perhaps, the superfluous title of the baby’s “motherland”).
This country, this country with its oddly cadenced language, poorly disciplined law enforcement, pretentious criminals, and unnecessarily ostentatious buildings left Hibari so unimpressed he couldn’t even be bothered to demonstrate his usual form of disdain.
But perhaps the most infuriating offence that had the dubious honour of affronting Hibari during his short (and not short enough) sojourn was the absolute lack of normal eating utensils everywhere. Having to use a fork for every single cheese-olive-and-garlic infested meal, on top of having to eat cheese-olive-garlic or some combination thereof for every meal was akin to adding insult on top of an already laundry list’s worth of injuries.
Honestly, it was probably a good thing that classes at Namimori resumed in three days. A very good thing, perhaps, for Hibari and Italy both.
And when it came time to depart, Hibari was certain that he’d never have to set foot in Italy again.
___________________________________________________________
… there was a callout to Murphy’s Law in there, somewhere.
___________________________________________________________
Five years after what should have been his first and last visitation to a country whose lack of proper dining utensils nearly drove him into outfitting his tonfas with remodelled equipment of mass destruction five years early, Hibari was back. Only this time he was back for a mission as the Vongola’s Cloud Guardian per Sawada’s request -a mission, of which was originally scheduled to take place in Hong Kong and last no more than two weeks tops.
But somehow due to a series of unforeseen complications one week in (and Hibari swore to find out those responsible for said complications and hunt them down like the condemned vermin they were), the once supposedly short and simplistic mission became not so simple. As a matter of fact, the entire operation had to be relocated to Rome while the execution timetable was grossly extended to some indefinite number of months as opposed to weeks.
To say that Hibari was merely irritated would have been the understatement of the last century and the next. Only Sawada’s desperate promise of adding another zero to the end of his payment balance for every additional month spent on the mission kept Hibari from simply catching the next flight back to Tokyo.
The fact of the matter was this: despite whatever Reborn and Cavallone insisted upon, Hibari still considered himself more of an independent contractor than a permanent member of the Vongola payroll.
In those first few months after he’d finally relinquished his hold on Namimori’s high school (but only in exchange for a newer, more official one on the entire town itself), Hibari had set aside the annoying clamour that seemed to follow the Vongola ring wherever it went in favour of more important pursuits- such as annexing Kokuyou and all its assets under Namimori’s jurisdiction. During that time he’d paid little to no attention to the antics of Sawada and his so-called famiglia. He’d seen little of those herbivores then, and, though regrettable, even less of Reborn. It wasn’t until two years later when Sawada and the rest of his herd graduated high school that the arcobaleno approached him once more with an offer that he couldn’t quite bring himself to refuse.
And yet Hibari Kyouya still retained his own counsel.
For the most part, the Vongola left him well enough alone to do his own thing (i.e. as of late, the physical and network expansions of both Namimori and his Foundation). Gokudera only contacted him with requests he and his Foundation were most suited to fill-and even then it was always begrudgingly as a result of his precious Tenth’s urgent behest.
Now, Hibari would be loathe to admit it, but the first week of the relocated mission wasn’t entirely horrible. Not as bad as what his far-from-fond memories of Italy had predicted.
But that was just the first week.
Not long after he’d settled down with the instructions to flush out every last member involved in the Hong Kong deal-gone-wrong, Hibari soon found himself... piqued. On edge. Inexplicably upset, 24/7, all hours of the day, and even during sleep.
By the third week he’d managed to completely subdue (though perhaps “terrorise into submission” would be a more accurate term) Rome’s police force in between the periodic killing sprees assigned to the mission.
Whatever temporary relief there was to be had in subjugating Italy’s law enforcement was far from enough to cure that itch in his teeth, however.
By the second month, that proverbial itch had grown into an ache in Hibari’s bones and it was only because of a careless comment about home-sickness from Kusakabe after one particularly bloody battle that revelation struck.
Because while Hibari simply didn’t do home-sicknesses (only herbivores would succumb to such a weakness and the former Disciplinary Committee chairman was no such thing), something was bothering him.
And he wanted to know what.
So he’d gone out that night and, while walking through the lamp-lit streets littered with their shops and infernal restaurants, came to a realisation.
It was Italy in general that irritated him. The unfamiliarity of its cities, its people, its language.
The quaint air of many of the Italian constructs was particularly offensive, he decided.
Thus, during his next battle, he took his tonfas to the buildings and streets if they hadn’t already fallen casualty to the heat of battle.
Unsurprisingly, Hibari did feel better afterwards.
Of course, Sawada wasn’t too happy with him after he received word of Hibari’s extracurricular activities. Not that Hibari cared. Not even when Sawada began sending his other guardians to Hibari in an unsubtle attempt to minimize the increasingly extensive, increasingly expensive topographical damage.
Sasagawa was the first, and was also called back almost immediately when it became clear that partnering the enthusiastic Sun Guardian with the mercurial Cloud Guardian would only serve to exponentially increase the amount of unnecessary property damage.
Yamamoto was next, and while he was a capable enough partner who did a good job of clean-up in addition to executing mission objectives, he also didn’t bother with getting in Hibari’s way when the older man went about with his stress relief.
Gokudera was the third and, well... Hibari smirked at the memory of the ever-zealous demolitions expert trying to accomplish the task handed to him. Gokudera had failed miserably, of course, in that he only ended up contributing to the ever growing amount of wreckage and ruin when his patience for diplomacy finally wore thin.
By the end of the second month, the mission still had one more month to go, and Hibari was contemplating taking his hunting grounds into the Vatican City.
That was when Reborn paid him a special visit.
___________________________________________________________
Hibari had been hoping that Reborn would be the fourth.
___________________________________________________________
“You’re looking well,” said Reborn mere moments after joining Hibari at his personal table much to the consternation of the establishment’s owner who’d been witness to what happened to others who did the same when Hibari first came to his restaurant two months ago.
“E ’stato un po’,” Hibari returned calmly. The last time they conferred in person was almost a year ago, when the curse over those in possession of the pacifiers finally broke.
Reborn smiled slightly at that. “Your Italian has improved too.”
Hibari shrugged. “It was hard to avoid,” he said dryly. Then he straightened in his seat, betraying a trace of the customary eagerness that always accompanied the prospect of fighting the arcobaleno. “Did Sawada ask you to come too?”
Reborn chuckled low in response. “Not quite. Tsuna has not yet asked me to intervene in this case just yet. And frankly, as long as you don’t involve the Holy City, I don’t particularly care what you do in your free time here.”
“Then why the courtesy call?”
“Mukuro’s sentence has been changed,” Reborn answered shortly, albeit indirectly. “The Families have agreed to grant him probation with high-security supervision.”
Wao. But Hibari only tilted his head as the single visible concession to his interest. “And?”
“And, more than two-thirds of the representatives requested for you to be his parole officer,” Reborn said, allowing the curve of his smirk to curl even further at Hibari’s rarely seen stunned expression. “Actually, he’s waiting outside by the car. For the rest of this mission he’ll be-”
Hibari was out of his seat before Reborn could even finish, tonfas releasing and a feral cant in his stride.
Out the front door, and there he was.
Hibari spun his right tonfa absently, catch-and releasing the spikes on the left. He took a moment to relish in the surprising surge of aggressive anticipation that came with merely seeing that irritating, nonsensical tuft of hair, those mismatched eyes, the polished black and steel of that oversized pitchfork.
“Hou, looks like I owe Reborn twenty euros,” Mukuro said from where he leaned against the polished hood of a non-descript black sedan. Leather clad fingers curled in a playful greeting. “You came out faster than I expected. Just couldn’t stay away, hmm?”
And here, here just by looking at the illusionist bastard, Hibari could feel the ache and the itch and the need to just bite him dead bubble viciously to the forefront again, as if Mukuro was the embodiment of everything he despised about Italy.
Mukuro only appeared delighted at the sudden increase in murderous intent, however. “Oya, oya. Missed me that much?”
Hibari sneered his answer. “It’s been a while.” He struck-just as their surroundings jerked and shifted in that hair-raising manner he’d come to associate with mystics and illusions. And he was prepared, he was… only not really.
He stumbled to a stop, tonfas lowering as if in a dream, and Mukuro’s smug face smirked only inches away from his. From the Namimori middle school’s front gate plaque.
This was an illusion. He knew this was an illusion. He could feel it with every breath he took.
Hibari took an unconscious step back. Two steps. Another half-step before he forced himself to a standstill. He closed his eyes to steady himself and brought his will to bear on his other senses. If he concentrated hard enough he could hear the too-fast-to-comprehend babble of Italian, the stop and go of non-Japanese cars underneath the more familiar trill of birdsong and school bells.
When he opened his eyes again, it was to the sight of the school’s grove of sakura in full bloom.
“Fufu, well, it’s obvious you missed something.”
Hibari made a mental note to add another zero to Sawada’s bill. Then he tonfa’d Mukuro in his laughing face-but made sure to not damage the illusory bricks around them.
___________________________________________________________
When Tsuna saw the results of Mukuro’s and Hibari’s “reunion,” he almost cried with relief. (He couldn’t though; not with Reborn standing over his shoulder.)
By transforming whichever battlefield they were fighting in into the likeness of Hibari’s beloved town, it appeared that the collateral damage to the Italian public could be significantly reduced.
Seriously, he didn’t know how much longer he could stretch his monthly budget at the rate Hibari had been going.
___________________________________________________________
One year after the memorable (for everybody) mission in Italy, Hibari was back. Only this time (as opposed to the previous two) he was there of his own volition. Because even though his opinion of Mukuro was on the same level as what he held for a vegetarian, sometimes, sometimes, the long-haired illusionist inspired some half-decent ideas.
Hibari looked over his clipboard of blueprints before making a few adjustments with his pen.
“You’re aspiring to become a feudal lord, I see,” Mukuro said from behind and came to a stop next to him on the miniature cliff overlooking the vast expanse of land Hibari had just purchased.
“The tithes were their idea,” Hibari said.
“Ah, of course,” said Mukuro without a single trace of (detectable) sarcasm.
And so Hibari looked back to the construction progress of Nuovo Namimorio with a touch of satisfaction.
___________________________________________________________
Fin
Completed: December 19, 2009
___________________________________________________________
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DAY 07
Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!
Prompt: 6918, Culture Shock
Requester: runesque
Warnings: UNEDITED, very little dialogue, tense issues?
___________________________________________________________
Title: Cure for Shock
Series/Characters: [Reborn!] Mukuro/Hibari (blink-and-you-miss... like all my recent attempts at pairings gdi), Reborn
Disclaimer: Property of Amano Akira. Am only screwing around.
Word Count: 2,206
Notes: Will be going over the writing with a fine-toothed comb at a later date, but I needed to post this now before I ran out of time. Felt a lot more in tune with this fic, and was actually having fun with it for the first part! But I think I went ahead and lost it somewhere during the second part and then it all went to hell. |D;;; Also feel like I had some tense issues (over usage of past imperfect really eff'd up my sense of tense normalcy... and continuously worrying over it didn't really help, methinks.) CRITS WELCOME.
ALSO. I don't actually hold any of the views I've written Hibari to have. I'm sure Italy's a lovely country. Hibari's just biased and Namimorisexual like that. |D
Summary: Hibari doesn't like Italy, so when he finds himself stuck there on a mission for 3 months and becoming increasingly irritated, he takes matters into his own hands.
___________________________________________________________
Cure for Shock
by kasugai gummie
___________________________________________________________
Italy, Hibari decided, was an utter waste of time and space-namely his time, and continental space. The inland cities were hot, humid, and teaming with people; the beaches were crowded in a manner that set his teeth on edge. A “popular destination for tourists during the summer” the airline travel brochure had lauded, next to the iconic photos of half-assed ruins and tacky Romanesque villas, all of which Hibari had processed with great displeasure as “crowd-magnets.”
If it weren’t for Reborn, he would have never even bothered stepping foot in the godforsaken airport, much less board the plane. But the baby had suggested that it’d be in his best interest to visit the peninsula during the summer vacation season alongside Sawada and the rest of his herd.
And so Hibari went. He went, he saw, and just the sight of the architecture killed any instinctive desire to conquer.
Italy was nothing like Namimori, or anywhere else in Japan for that matter. Too gaudy, too historical, too religious, too many illegal displays of romance in public, too, too, too much of everything and anything. It offered nothing of worth note to Hibari, nothing at all (save, perhaps, the superfluous title of the baby’s “motherland”).
This country, this country with its oddly cadenced language, poorly disciplined law enforcement, pretentious criminals, and unnecessarily ostentatious buildings left Hibari so unimpressed he couldn’t even be bothered to demonstrate his usual form of disdain.
But perhaps the most infuriating offence that had the dubious honour of affronting Hibari during his short (and not short enough) sojourn was the absolute lack of normal eating utensils everywhere. Having to use a fork for every single cheese-olive-and-garlic infested meal, on top of having to eat cheese-olive-garlic or some combination thereof for every meal was akin to adding insult on top of an already laundry list’s worth of injuries.
Honestly, it was probably a good thing that classes at Namimori resumed in three days. A very good thing, perhaps, for Hibari and Italy both.
And when it came time to depart, Hibari was certain that he’d never have to set foot in Italy again.
___________________________________________________________
… there was a callout to Murphy’s Law in there, somewhere.
___________________________________________________________
Five years after what should have been his first and last visitation to a country whose lack of proper dining utensils nearly drove him into outfitting his tonfas with remodelled equipment of mass destruction five years early, Hibari was back. Only this time he was back for a mission as the Vongola’s Cloud Guardian per Sawada’s request -a mission, of which was originally scheduled to take place in Hong Kong and last no more than two weeks tops.
But somehow due to a series of unforeseen complications one week in (and Hibari swore to find out those responsible for said complications and hunt them down like the condemned vermin they were), the once supposedly short and simplistic mission became not so simple. As a matter of fact, the entire operation had to be relocated to Rome while the execution timetable was grossly extended to some indefinite number of months as opposed to weeks.
To say that Hibari was merely irritated would have been the understatement of the last century and the next. Only Sawada’s desperate promise of adding another zero to the end of his payment balance for every additional month spent on the mission kept Hibari from simply catching the next flight back to Tokyo.
The fact of the matter was this: despite whatever Reborn and Cavallone insisted upon, Hibari still considered himself more of an independent contractor than a permanent member of the Vongola payroll.
In those first few months after he’d finally relinquished his hold on Namimori’s high school (but only in exchange for a newer, more official one on the entire town itself), Hibari had set aside the annoying clamour that seemed to follow the Vongola ring wherever it went in favour of more important pursuits- such as annexing Kokuyou and all its assets under Namimori’s jurisdiction. During that time he’d paid little to no attention to the antics of Sawada and his so-called famiglia. He’d seen little of those herbivores then, and, though regrettable, even less of Reborn. It wasn’t until two years later when Sawada and the rest of his herd graduated high school that the arcobaleno approached him once more with an offer that he couldn’t quite bring himself to refuse.
And yet Hibari Kyouya still retained his own counsel.
For the most part, the Vongola left him well enough alone to do his own thing (i.e. as of late, the physical and network expansions of both Namimori and his Foundation). Gokudera only contacted him with requests he and his Foundation were most suited to fill-and even then it was always begrudgingly as a result of his precious Tenth’s urgent behest.
Now, Hibari would be loathe to admit it, but the first week of the relocated mission wasn’t entirely horrible. Not as bad as what his far-from-fond memories of Italy had predicted.
But that was just the first week.
Not long after he’d settled down with the instructions to flush out every last member involved in the Hong Kong deal-gone-wrong, Hibari soon found himself... piqued. On edge. Inexplicably upset, 24/7, all hours of the day, and even during sleep.
By the third week he’d managed to completely subdue (though perhaps “terrorise into submission” would be a more accurate term) Rome’s police force in between the periodic killing sprees assigned to the mission.
Whatever temporary relief there was to be had in subjugating Italy’s law enforcement was far from enough to cure that itch in his teeth, however.
By the second month, that proverbial itch had grown into an ache in Hibari’s bones and it was only because of a careless comment about home-sickness from Kusakabe after one particularly bloody battle that revelation struck.
Because while Hibari simply didn’t do home-sicknesses (only herbivores would succumb to such a weakness and the former Disciplinary Committee chairman was no such thing), something was bothering him.
And he wanted to know what.
So he’d gone out that night and, while walking through the lamp-lit streets littered with their shops and infernal restaurants, came to a realisation.
It was Italy in general that irritated him. The unfamiliarity of its cities, its people, its language.
The quaint air of many of the Italian constructs was particularly offensive, he decided.
Thus, during his next battle, he took his tonfas to the buildings and streets if they hadn’t already fallen casualty to the heat of battle.
Unsurprisingly, Hibari did feel better afterwards.
Of course, Sawada wasn’t too happy with him after he received word of Hibari’s extracurricular activities. Not that Hibari cared. Not even when Sawada began sending his other guardians to Hibari in an unsubtle attempt to minimize the increasingly extensive, increasingly expensive topographical damage.
Sasagawa was the first, and was also called back almost immediately when it became clear that partnering the enthusiastic Sun Guardian with the mercurial Cloud Guardian would only serve to exponentially increase the amount of unnecessary property damage.
Yamamoto was next, and while he was a capable enough partner who did a good job of clean-up in addition to executing mission objectives, he also didn’t bother with getting in Hibari’s way when the older man went about with his stress relief.
Gokudera was the third and, well... Hibari smirked at the memory of the ever-zealous demolitions expert trying to accomplish the task handed to him. Gokudera had failed miserably, of course, in that he only ended up contributing to the ever growing amount of wreckage and ruin when his patience for diplomacy finally wore thin.
By the end of the second month, the mission still had one more month to go, and Hibari was contemplating taking his hunting grounds into the Vatican City.
That was when Reborn paid him a special visit.
___________________________________________________________
Hibari had been hoping that Reborn would be the fourth.
___________________________________________________________
“You’re looking well,” said Reborn mere moments after joining Hibari at his personal table much to the consternation of the establishment’s owner who’d been witness to what happened to others who did the same when Hibari first came to his restaurant two months ago.
“E ’stato un po’,” Hibari returned calmly. The last time they conferred in person was almost a year ago, when the curse over those in possession of the pacifiers finally broke.
Reborn smiled slightly at that. “Your Italian has improved too.”
Hibari shrugged. “It was hard to avoid,” he said dryly. Then he straightened in his seat, betraying a trace of the customary eagerness that always accompanied the prospect of fighting the arcobaleno. “Did Sawada ask you to come too?”
Reborn chuckled low in response. “Not quite. Tsuna has not yet asked me to intervene in this case just yet. And frankly, as long as you don’t involve the Holy City, I don’t particularly care what you do in your free time here.”
“Then why the courtesy call?”
“Mukuro’s sentence has been changed,” Reborn answered shortly, albeit indirectly. “The Families have agreed to grant him probation with high-security supervision.”
Wao. But Hibari only tilted his head as the single visible concession to his interest. “And?”
“And, more than two-thirds of the representatives requested for you to be his parole officer,” Reborn said, allowing the curve of his smirk to curl even further at Hibari’s rarely seen stunned expression. “Actually, he’s waiting outside by the car. For the rest of this mission he’ll be-”
Hibari was out of his seat before Reborn could even finish, tonfas releasing and a feral cant in his stride.
Out the front door, and there he was.
Hibari spun his right tonfa absently, catch-and releasing the spikes on the left. He took a moment to relish in the surprising surge of aggressive anticipation that came with merely seeing that irritating, nonsensical tuft of hair, those mismatched eyes, the polished black and steel of that oversized pitchfork.
“Hou, looks like I owe Reborn twenty euros,” Mukuro said from where he leaned against the polished hood of a non-descript black sedan. Leather clad fingers curled in a playful greeting. “You came out faster than I expected. Just couldn’t stay away, hmm?”
And here, here just by looking at the illusionist bastard, Hibari could feel the ache and the itch and the need to just bite him dead bubble viciously to the forefront again, as if Mukuro was the embodiment of everything he despised about Italy.
Mukuro only appeared delighted at the sudden increase in murderous intent, however. “Oya, oya. Missed me that much?”
Hibari sneered his answer. “It’s been a while.” He struck-just as their surroundings jerked and shifted in that hair-raising manner he’d come to associate with mystics and illusions. And he was prepared, he was… only not really.
He stumbled to a stop, tonfas lowering as if in a dream, and Mukuro’s smug face smirked only inches away from his. From the Namimori middle school’s front gate plaque.
This was an illusion. He knew this was an illusion. He could feel it with every breath he took.
Hibari took an unconscious step back. Two steps. Another half-step before he forced himself to a standstill. He closed his eyes to steady himself and brought his will to bear on his other senses. If he concentrated hard enough he could hear the too-fast-to-comprehend babble of Italian, the stop and go of non-Japanese cars underneath the more familiar trill of birdsong and school bells.
When he opened his eyes again, it was to the sight of the school’s grove of sakura in full bloom.
“Fufu, well, it’s obvious you missed something.”
Hibari made a mental note to add another zero to Sawada’s bill. Then he tonfa’d Mukuro in his laughing face-but made sure to not damage the illusory bricks around them.
___________________________________________________________
When Tsuna saw the results of Mukuro’s and Hibari’s “reunion,” he almost cried with relief. (He couldn’t though; not with Reborn standing over his shoulder.)
By transforming whichever battlefield they were fighting in into the likeness of Hibari’s beloved town, it appeared that the collateral damage to the Italian public could be significantly reduced.
Seriously, he didn’t know how much longer he could stretch his monthly budget at the rate Hibari had been going.
___________________________________________________________
One year after the memorable (for everybody) mission in Italy, Hibari was back. Only this time (as opposed to the previous two) he was there of his own volition. Because even though his opinion of Mukuro was on the same level as what he held for a vegetarian, sometimes, sometimes, the long-haired illusionist inspired some half-decent ideas.
Hibari looked over his clipboard of blueprints before making a few adjustments with his pen.
“You’re aspiring to become a feudal lord, I see,” Mukuro said from behind and came to a stop next to him on the miniature cliff overlooking the vast expanse of land Hibari had just purchased.
“The tithes were their idea,” Hibari said.
“Ah, of course,” said Mukuro without a single trace of (detectable) sarcasm.
And so Hibari looked back to the construction progress of Nuovo Namimorio with a touch of satisfaction.
___________________________________________________________
Fin
Completed: December 19, 2009
___________________________________________________________
ad;flkasdjfasldkjffffff