What happens when you aren't looking? When you blink, does the world stop? Or does it keep on turning, no matter what?

Dawn rose over the horizon, and the sky shuddered a light, baby blue. The air was cold like winter, though it hovered in autumn yet. Breath was cold, the chill flowed down people's spines, and something ancient, something old and ageless and heady settled over the city.

A boy woke in bed, and turned his orange eyes toward the new dawn, a sense of foreboding hovering in his mind. Something was wrong. Very very wrong. But what?

The flowers grown across the wall glowed with gentle light, shifting in an unseen wind. The world was quiet, as if they were trapped between one breath and the next. The shadows lay still, the land did not shift. And yet, something moved, something other than ethereal flowers grown on a plane unseen by mortal eyes. It moved and slinked and hid and shot and Tsuna, as he sat up in his bed and did not move his gaze from the distant dawn, felt it, knew it (like winter knew frost, like summer knew sun), and waited.

Rebon did not wake, asleep amidst his traps and tripwires, did not move. In another room, two children slept (where fire burned so bright and she who was reborn eternal and he who skipped through time rested together), and in one more room entirely, a final one slept. The mother. So nurturer, the watcher, the one who waited and waited and waited, listening to faerie song-

"Death?" Tsuna whispered, feeling creeping dust and cracking bones inch across the floor, leaving rot and mold behind. He breathed and felt the being around him, surrounding him, comforting and terrifying all at once.

"They come," the being whispered, before they vanished into the ether, ash clouding around him, frozen, drifting, in pale sunlight through the window. Like the world was in slow motion, why was everything so slow? Between one frame and the next.

Where was the bird song, the laughter? The whispers heard where whispers shouldn't be?

(Run, something in him said, a voice he could not ignore, yet could not hear. Run)

And so Tsuna threw the covers from his bed aside, fire burning beneath his skin, things were dangerous.

He grabbed a sweater and slid it over his pajamas, not bothering to change further. He walked down the stairs, quickly, and still the world was silent bar his steps. He went to the front door, slipped his shoes on, and walked out into the streets.

It was like seeing the world through a grey film. Like someone had taken all the color and color and color and bled them until they were but a pale imitation of what they once were. Of what Tsuna had always known them to look like.

(Run, something whispered. Run)

Creatures once parading down the streets, ribbons and and banners and flags behind them, scuttled off into the side alleys and the corners and the cracks. Ghosts which once screamed and wailed their woes, then whimpered and faded. Beings, life which loved the town and the air and the sky, all seemed to vanish. Gone. As if they had never been there.

Tsuna ran.

(Run)

Down his home street and past the garden where gnomes liked to have tea he ran, passed the hidden wizard's house (no spell smoke, no crashes, no lightning, no flames?) and the chittering bush he ran. Through the knight's alley, under the red leaves canopies, around the joker's hideaway he ran.

Gold sprung up around him, the sky faded in and out. It went and went, and slowly, so slowly, the sound of someone singing began to echo in his ears. The world vanished slowly around him, and with it, he gave himself to the Past.

"Elena!" He called out, tripping over a stray stone and catching himself before he fell. He grinned, right wide, and made his way to the old tree in the middle of the field of yellow flowers.

"There you are!" A woman said, looking quite annoyed with him. A crown of hope rested on her brow, its trails of silver so pure trailing down her back. The strands shone in the light and mixed with her hair, and he thought she was beautiful. Apple blossoms grew along her arms, thin branches reaching across her dress. She stood from the root of the tree she was seated upon and brushed off her skirt, her eyes bright and happy.

"And G?" She asked.

"Distracted as can be," he replied, without really knowing why. It escaped him, the reason, slipped through his fingers like smoke.

The woman grinned and started walking, expensive brown shoes stepping through pale flowers and roots. "Off he go, then!" She exclaimed, hands lifting her skirt so as to keep it off the ground.

"Oya? What's this?" Someone spoke, and Tsuna turned, the vision leaving him. He caught a glimpse of feathers before the figure, too, vanished.

"Oh," Tsuna whispered, the smell of rot reaching him, the gray world returning. ("Off we go!" Her voice sounded in his head, like memories not his own) The house before him was unfamiliar, and the door stood open a crack. He stumbled forward, drawn by some power beyond him, a force beyond his comprehension, and pushed the door open.

"Oh."

Then, from further in the house, someone screamed.

…

The police station was buzzing around him, the officers running to and fro like annoying flies. Hibari Kyoya stalked forward, jacket flaring out wide behind him, and slammed the door to his uncle's office open, moving quickly towards the figure seated in front of the desk. He walked with all the power he held at his fingertips raging and swirling beneath his skin, a tempest barely restrained.

"Tsunayoshi," he said, reaching out, without really thinking about it, and placing a hand in the small animal's hair. It was soft, so soft, and Tsunayoshi looked up at him with wide brown eyes.

"Kyo-san?" He spoke and Kyoya resisted the urge to growl. Tsunayoshi trembled slightly under his touch, and Kyoya knew the look in his eyes, knew it, and despised its very presence.

"What happened?" He asked, ignoring the curious and sometimes frightened looks of the officers around him. The herbivores didn't matter. They never had, so long as they continued to stay in line, knowing their place. Tsunayoshi mattered. Tsunayoshi was pack.

"Something was calling me," Tsunayoshi answered, getting that faraway look that he always bore when he spoke of something that Kyoya couldn't see, something of that strange other world that overlapped with his. "Drawing me towards that place." He hesitated. "Death warned me."

Tsunayoshi's mouth drew into a thin line, eyes darting towards a blank piece of wall before looking back at Kyoya once again.

He looked scared. There was little that could make Tsunayoshi scared.

"Things are getting dangerous," Tsunayoshi whispered, so quiet, Kyoya almost couldn't hear.

"Kyoya?" A voice sounded behind him, and Kyoya resisted the urge to growl when he turned around to see his uncle standing there, a suit jacket slung over one shoulder and a coffee mug in his free hand. He had files tucked under his arm. "Here for Tsunayoshi?"

"What happened, Herbivore?" Kyoya questioned, not deigning to answer such an obvious question.

"There was a corpse," Hibari Satoshi answered, sighing and moving to sit in his seat behind the desk. He drapped his jacket on the chair and set the files down on the desk. "Rotted. Gruesome sight, certainly. Looked to be at least a week old. How it got to be in the entrance hall of the Mochida residence, I haven't the faintest clue. We're not even sure who the victim is yet. No ID on the body, and all the Mochidas were accounted for up until yesterday. To make matters even stranger, the son Kensuke vanished during the night. No one's seen him since yesterday evening, when he came home from his date. We'll have to question the girlfriend later." He sighed again and took a long swing of his coffee. "It'll take a bit to get more information. Until then, I recommend you take Tsunayoshi home."

Kyoya frowned, but did not protest. He looked back to the small animal, only to find he was staring at something in the distance.

"You won't find her," Tsunayoshi said, the words ringing louder in the room than they otherwise should. "Chaos has taken her."

"Chaos, huh?" Satoshi muttered. "Fantastic. More madness. Why is it that this happens every time you get involved with a case?" He sighed once again, this one far more dramatic than the last two.

Kyoya sent Satoshi a sharp look, before taking a step away from Tsunayoshi so the small animal could stand. Tsunayoshi got to his feet and wavered a moment before setting off, Kyoya following close behind.

Just what was going on now?

AN: I'd apologize for the long wait, but I'm honestly too tired to. My interests have been elsewhere, my health has been all over the place, and there's been irl drama all around. Good news is that this chapter is finally done! Bad news is I have no idea when the next one will be. Nevertheless, I will be typing away and making an attempt at completing this and all my other works as well.