Chapter Four:

Tsuna's POV:

Life is short. And because of this, I had decided to make the most of it; to gather as much life experience as possible. Having a hole in your body covered half of the experience that anyone can ever get.

Ok, I'll admit it. It hurt. Like, a lot. It felt like someone ripped my skin off and squeezed ice cubes into my flesh and organs. No, I'm being serious here.

Blood poured out of the wound and created a clear pool at my feet. I coughed and a few drops of blood joined the pool.

Wait, what? My blood is like water?

Unable to hold myself up any longer, I slumped to the ground, my white and green clothes soaking up the thick liquid.

I temporarily forgot about the blood and I looked up at Natsu's face. Shock was written all over it. Why? Why did I do this? Oh, I don't know. The leader side of me took over, I guess. Oh look, I'm beginning to develop a sense of leadership and care for strangers now. Hahaha, haha, ha.

Sigh, sorry Reborn. Sorry Gokudera-kun, Yamamoto, Mama, everyone else.

A tear slid down my cheek. To leave the world like this, without saying thank you to Gokudera and Yamamoto for being such good friends to me, without ever confessing to Kyoko-san normally (that memory still haunts me sometimes), without even trying to reach my desire of an exciting life, without seeing dad again, without…without…accomplishing anything…

My fist uncurled as my energy leaked out of me, and everything turned black.

Black.

Nothingness.

The thing I've always feared that I'd become.

Natsu's POV:

…what…

What.

WHAT.

He didn't.

No.

No no no no.

He couldn't have.

We barely know each other!

And yet…

Why?

Why did he do this?

He…

Oh damn. To be saved as disgracefully as this.

'Tsuna-san!' That was Lucy. What. Lucy. The Raveno's eyes glowed slightly, once again.

From then on, everything played in slow motion. My head turned slowly, seeing Lucy running towards Tsuna with one of her arms outstretched.

Gray and Erza recovered from the Tsuna incident and their attentions were then directed towards the girl running with no guard against a fatal threat which was standing two metres away from her.

Another feather flew.

This time, Erza had requipped into her Flight Armour [1] with her sword slashing at the end of the feather, trying to make it rebound back to the Raveno. But that wasn't enough. It only moved its target by ten centimeters and it scraped Lucy's shoulder.

What! No way!

I mean, that was Erza!

And –

Words cannot describe how impossible that was. But it's no longer impossible; it happened right before our eyes, leaving us staring, unable to deny the 'impossible'.

Erza's POV:

Just by catching Natsu's movements out of the corner of my eye, I could tell that he was as surprised as I was, if not, more.

Lucy screamed behind me and clutched her shoulder, where she was damaged.

Her blood started leaking out from behind. Blood. Not the thick icky red liquid. It was see-through; like water, but it was evident it was blood, for some reason.

'Lucy! You're blood! It's –'

'I know! Just focus on the Raveno! I think the feather may have some kind of poison on it, so avoid it. I'll take a sample of this blood so we can study it a bit later.'

Gray opened his mouth to protest but changed his mind. 'Ok, let's do this thing.'

At that, Natsu and Gray leaped at the monster, shouting out their war-cry, as it seemed, 'LET'S GO!'

I stayed behind, waiting for my turn to attack while Natsu and Gray launched their attacks at the Raveno.

'Fire dragon's roar!'

'Ice cannon!'

Two feathers flew out and the two barely dodged it, but the sudden change in movement lowered the effectiveness of the attacks, which weren't really effective in the first place.

It seemed that Natsu's attack had more damage than Gray's one. So fire worked better than ice? I wonder what will happen with other types of attacks. Ok, time to do some experimenting.

I quickly exquiped into my Lightning Empress Armour [2] and jumped into the battle swiftly to fill in the gap in our defense and attack.

I struck the monster with blue lighting and using its body as a scaffold, pushed and jumped back to where I was originally standing, leaving a few wisps of smoke on its body from my attack.

The smoke cleared and I saw what was underneath; nothing. Nothing. Shocked, I leapt at it again, spinning in mid air quickly, with swords in my hands. The spin allowed the swords to hit the Raveno like a chainsaw, I guess. During that spin, I managed to exquip numerous times, before a feather sprang at me and having no choice but to abandon attacking, I dodged it.

'Hey guys!' That was Lucy. 'The feathers are coming from its tail! I think you should attack the front of it, instead from behind!'

We nearly forgot about Lucy there. Being a by-stander, she had more chance to observe the enemy's movements.

'Thanks, Lucy! Keep watching for us please!'

'No problem!'

But to attack straight on. Oh wow.

Lucy's POV:

'Natsu, you attack with Erza from the front! Gray, try and freeze the feathers; that might stop them.' They turned to me and nodded. Ok, my turn. I reached into my pocket and pulled two keys out – Cancer and Aries.

A crab-like man and a sheep-like girl popped out, answering my call. 'Cancer, that bird's tail needs fixing up. I don't think the feathers would fly out when they're detached. Aries, try and stop the feathers from hurting anyone. The feathers are strong, so be careful. Are you willing to fight?'

'Yes-ebi'

'Yes! I'm sorry!'

I smiled, 'Good luck'

And they, too, leapt into the battle field. I'm counting on you.

I took out my water bottle and poured its contents out. Water was the least of our problems now. We needed a cure for this poison; we might encounter it again. Plus, we might have a chance to save Tsuna-san as well. Wait, we're supposed to be capturing, right? He doesn't seem too bad, though. We'll ask Master when we go back today. That is, if we ever get back.

I crawled on all fours to Tsuna-kun and inspected his wound, with the feather still in it. I placed one hand firmly around the wound and gripped the feather.

As fast as I could, I pulled the feather out and tore a long strip of fabric from Tsuna-san's shirt to use as a bandage. His shirt didn't really matter right now; he still had a chance to live.

After tying the ends of the cloth neatly and tightly together, I looked up at the ongoing battle, with my hand at my wound, trying to stop the poison from spreading.

Natsu's POV:

Something I've noticed is that the Raveno's eyes always glow before a feather is released. Is it because it is essential for the action to be made? Or could the glow only be a habit? Should I test it out? No, we need to go back as quickly as possible. My eyes wandered to Tsuna who laid limp on the floor in the strangely clear blood. Why are helping him? We've never discussed it before, but somehow we have all agreed on helping him, and ditching the job request, but not until we heard his side of the story, that is.

It seemed that Erza was thinking of something along the same lines of what I was thinking, but with different opinions. She slashed at the one of the Raveno's eyes and yelled out at me to take out the other one. Mental debates ran though my head and side that complied with Erza won. It's Erza. Nothing can go wrong if it's her…right?

So, we both lunged at the eyes at the same time. The fiend's eye unexpectedly glowed much stronger than before, 'exploded with light' would be better explanation, and six million feathers came flying at us. Ok, maybe not literally six million, but it was pretty close. Gray, Ebi-spirit (I don't know his name, ok? Don't give me a bad time) and Lamb-girl did their best at trying to stop it, but there was too many.

I had no choice but to fall back but Erza had summoned half of her Adamantine Armour's[3] shield and held that up to protect her while still charging forward with a sword in another hand. Well, as expected.

With a fluid flick of the wrist, Erza pierced the monster's eye, and a thick black liquid oozed out and I saw Lucy looking away quickly out of the corner of my eye. The sight definitely wasn't pretty.

Erza had a pretty deep dent in her shield. Some blue liquid was sliding down her shield. That must've been the poison.

Once again, the eyes of everyone who was watching widened. It was the Adamantine Armour. 'Adamantine' meant 'unbreakable'. Wow, this freak monster never stopped giving us surprises.

So, it's best if we took it down as quickly as possible.

'Gray! Come over here and help! Aries, Cancer! Can we leave that to you?' Erza screamed out, reading my mind.

'Yes-ebi. It is good training.'

'Um…yes! I'm very sorry!'

Ignoring the very out of place apology, Gray and I jumped at the other eye, trying over and over again to damage that bright eye, but made no progress. Too many feathers were coming at us. Lucy summoned a few more of her spirits, but that didn't help.

Gray yelled out to her, 'Try summoning Aquarius with the blood; that might work.'

Lucy nodded, but thought over the consequences that might have come later, but decided that their lives were more important.

It seemed that it worked. 'You single moron! Why did you call me out now! I was on a date with Scorpio! And you called me out of that! That! Blood!'

Just then, another shower of feathers came and having to defend herself, Aquarius sent a giant wave, stopping them.

'Tch. I'll deal with you later.' Aquarius faced the creature. 'So I just have to stop the feathers from going to them?' she eyed Erza, Gray and me.

Lucy, looking delighted as ever, smiled and nodded.

What happened next was over in five seconds. Again, Gray and I attacked the eye. Erza stayed at the back watching us. Aquarius did her job perfectly. No feathers came. But it snatched Gray in its beak.

Gray's POV:

Slimy. Slimy as. That was the first thing I could think of.

I stared at Erza and Natsu, frightened, I assume. Natsu reacted immediately, attempting to destroy the eye. But, once again, failed.

Completely unexpectedly, an arrow was shot and it hit the Raveno's eye right in the middle. Screeching with pain, the monster dropped me, and doing a couple of flips, I landed perfectly on the ground.

While the Raveno fell to ground and burst into a dazzling light that nearly knocked us off our feet, Erza turned around to Sagittarius and complimented him with an encouraging smile.

'Thanks, Lucy! You really helped me back there!' I yelled out to Lucy, and she smiled tiredly back at me.

'Ok! Now, where are the jewels?' That was Natsu. Oh how fast he recovered.

'Over there, in that corner.'

'Oh, ok. I knew that. Haha.' Natsu limped towards the chest and lifted the rotten wood carefully. A creek from the chest's rusty metal joints echoed around the cave.

By then, all the celestial spirits returned to the Celestial World and everyone except for Lucy was gathered around Natsu curiously.

I blinked a few times, hoping that the image displayed in front of me was not a hallucination. There were only three gems in the chest, and the reward for completing the job was three gems. What?

Erza's POV:

So, if there were only three gems and the reward was the three, the whole point of this job was not to get the gems, but to kill the Raveno. Why would they want it destroyed so badly, though? It lived all the way out here; barely a nuisance or a threat. My sense told me that all I need to do was to wait; the answers will all come to me soon, even the ones about Tsuna.

A/N:

[1] wiki/Flight_Armor

[2] wiki/Lightning_Empress_Armor

[3] wiki/Adamantine_Armor

So...sorry about the late update; really sorry. School was busy as and all my free time was taken away from me. Yeah. Sorry, again.

Thanks for reviewing! ^.^ I'm kinda glad you actually think that Tsuna is going to die, but (SPOILER ALERT) he is not. Yeah…

Also, to DMCP: thanks for finding my mistake! :)

I know I should've done this ages ago, but:

Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail nor Katekyoushi Hitman Reborn, and I don't really care whether I do or not because I don't, and that's reality.

Until next time,

~at the end of the rainbow