Chapter 13 - Flight

"I'm not sure, Iemitsu," Timoteo says regretfully. "The Gesso have been making… odd movements lately. Perhaps just put off the visit to Japan for a while."

Iemitsu says nothing for a long moment but eventually nods and leaves the office.

.

Tsuna rolls over in his sleep, the tension suddenly leaving him after days of constant warnings. Kyouya snuffles a bit in annoyance at his pillow moving and kicks Tsuna off the bed. The thump Tsuna's body makes as he collides with the floor startles Ryohei awake, but the child just mumbles something about extremeness and passes out again.

.

When Kyouya is patrolling his Namimori in the morning, he finds his purple girl walking down the street with a determined expression on her face. He slides up beside her and follows for a few blocks before finally asking where she's going.

"I want to check on something," the herbivore explains. "We'll have to catch a train since it's pretty far away-"

"No," Kyouya rejects. He despises public transport and any other means that makes crowding a necessity. Instead, he deviates from the concrete path and crosses the road to a parked car that sits there.

Kyouya disappears into a small restaurant nearby and emerges with a bit of blood on his shoe and car keys. He helps purple into the car since it's so much taller than either of them, then moves around the other side and climbs into the driver's seat. He closes the door and puts on his seat belt.

There's a long pause when Kyouya realises that there's no way he can reach the peddles, and even to see over the dashboard he'd have to kneel on the seat.

.

"You didn't think this through, did you?" Mukuro comments through the girl, her presence a quiet watcher in the back of his mind, still a bit sleepy from the early hour.

"I had a vague plan," Kyouya protests.

Mukuro chuckles with a 'kufufufu' and unbuckles his seat belt. "No worries, I'll take care of this."

The mission doesn't need to be rushed so technically they could just go home and plot out another method of transportation. However, Mukuro wants everything in place for when he does escape the Estraneo. He's already decided that he'll wait until he's the strongest they can possibly make him, and only then will he break out and destroy them all with the very eye they forced on him.

Chrome curls around his mind like she's trying to protect him. Mukuro doesn't need it. He's not the one who's going to be in pain.

.

Kyouya and Mukuro hop out of the car, the man they kidnapped still shaking in terror and gripping the steering wheel tightly. Mukuro waves him off and the car screeches away from the curb, quickly disappearing around a corner.

Mukuro glances around and spots a tall building that looks like a hotel. A good landmark in case they get lost. "We'll meet back there at noon," Mukuro says, pointing at it.

Kyouya is already wandering off.

The child walks around for a bit, soon finding himself in a residence district with neat little houses. He jumps over a backyard fence because there's a puppy there and he wants to pet it, but gets side-tracked when he sees the most beautiful wisp of light indigo further out.

Kyouya quickly hugs the puppy then jumps another fence to reach the open bit of bushland that borders this side of the suburbs. Thin trees are scattered about the place, and shrubs take over the ground, somehow growing despite the ground being largely made up of huge rocks. He darts after the faint purple seen between the trees and ends up running parallel to the backyard fences.

Kyouya skids to a stop when he finds that the flame belongs to a tall man in something like a military uniform. The man is gazing at a particular house with a dark expression, half hatred and half excitement.

Kyouya promptly launches an attack because this is the first adult he's seen with flames and Kyouya wants the man for his collection.

.

Daemon Spade, currently corporeal and scoping out the Shimon household for his next mass murder, turns around at the gush of bloodlust that washes over him. He finds a small, black haired Alaude trying to kill him, and it's so nostalgic that he actually smiles.

His next action is completely automatic, a deep-seated habit from his time alive.

Daemon whirls around the airborne child's attack until he's behind it and grabs the boy around the middle with illusionary vines. He then hurls the tiny Alaude as high as he possibly can. He usually did this when his skylark was attacking him, always with illusions of course because by the time you're within arm's reach of the platinum blond, you're already dead.

Daemon glances around, rather embarrassed at being caught off guard like that, but no one is here to see his slip. He calmly brushes down his clothes and looks up, having to raise a hand to block the sun and shade his eyes. He scans the soft blue sky but he can't see the child.

Maybe he catapulted the tiny skylark a bit too far. In his defence, he wasn't really thinking, and he was judging his throwing power according to Alaude's weight plus the man's ability to land and not die.

Daemon wonders if he should just leave and pretend none of this happened.

...

Omake – Skylarks Are Meant to Fly

"So you haven't seen Alaude?" Giotto clarifies, his doubt practically spelt out for anyone to see.

"He might be in the gardens," Daemon suggests like he's just being helpful, but it's obvious that the Mist is trying really hard to not laugh.

Not a second later, the blond drops out of absolutely nowhere, sticking the landing but also cratering the ground from his speed. Daemon is sprinting away in the next moment and Alaude gives chase.

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"Really?" Tsuna deadpans.

"Yeah, I have no idea what Kyouya is doing right now," Daemon says casually, pretending he can't see the rapidly expanding Roll sphere above him.

.

"Do you know where Fon might be?" I-Pin asks.

Daemon shakes his head and does not look up.