Katekyo Hitman Reborn! Aruru

**Disclaimer: I do not own (however much I may wish to) any part of the KHR universe at all. All I own are these words. And the OC of the story. **

* * *

Her lungs felt wrong and strange, yet despite this the girl sucked in a deep breath of air only to be greeted by a broken - feeling pain in her chest. She tried to stop breathing, discovered she needed to do so and was confused. She'd never had to breathe before, she thought. Then, when she tried to recall the time she didn't need to breathe, she found only blackness. Nothing. Her memories had completely gone. _That's probably a bad thing._

Something wasn't right about the way she was breathing, apart from the shooting horrible pain felt every time she tried it. Actually, she realised as feeling slowly crept back into her body, something wasn't right about the way her body was sitting, cramped and curled up in a small and tiny space, some form of cool substance sneaking into her lungs and causing her to cough. A violent cough in an attempt to get the horrible substance out of her lungs, which only succeeded to make her chest feel full of broken glass and raise more of the stuff and suck it back in.

_Ash._

The word came into her mind unbidden and she realised that her memories weren't completely blank as she had thought. However, that didn't change the fact that her body was still cramped in an uncomfortable position, knees to her chest, arms crossed above her head. Her head was throbbing, blood pulsing in her ears.

_Am I upside down?_

Then another thought:

_Perhaps I should try moving._

She tried to stretch out her legs. A wave of pain shuddered through her, a horrible burning stretch that felt as if she was dropped into a volcano, the heat drying out and shrivelling her skin, the horrible raw burn she felt tearing it away. She tried to cry out in pain but found that she couldn't because ash was coating her lungs, causing a violent fit of coughing that sent waves of the burning pain and broken glass pain throughout her body. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't move, she was injured - _she had to get out._

In a panic she began to struggle, trying to find the edges of her prison, wishing to smash her way through them. She couldn't... the pain was too much, the ash slowly sapping her energy... she couldn't get out...

She tried to cry out again, maybe there were humans nearby, maybe they could help her - _Wait, if I'm addressing them as human, what does that make me?_ - not important, the ash was choking her, the only sound she could make was a pathetic gurgle. Panic was setting in now - _strange concept, panic_ - and fear - _why does being afraid make you stronger...?_

She had to get out, she had to, so she thrashed and kicked the inside of her prison, finding cool curved sides, but her strength was too little... It faded as more ash made its way into her lungs and the burning fire all over her body increased in volume.

Barely on the edge of consciousness now, she felt as if her whole world was tipping, falling, as if to invite her into nothingness. Was she to die here?

She felt the refines of her prison break apart as a resounding crash assaulted her ears and her body attacked by the cool air that now surrounded them. It hurt, it stung, but she didn't care, she was free dammit - she coughed a glob of ash from her lungs and collapsed onto the cold stone floor. Her burning body she pressed against the cold ground. Her lungs continued to hack up wet lumps of ash, the movement agitating her tender burned skin and broken feeling ribs. She wished for that blackness she had escaped from to come and take her again, if only to relieve her from the pain. However, her unconscious bliss refused to come so she settled on attempting to figure out where she was.

Below her the stone was smooth and cool and smelled of thick, compacted earth. The smoothness was only broken by the shattered pieces of her confines - irregular and sharp, some of these pieces were digging into her body, but she ignored them. _The pain of moving is far worse_. Ash drifted down from above and settled on her body, but she reasoned if she didn't move too much it wouldn't trouble her. She could feel a frigid draft coming from somewhere to her right.

Everything around her was shrouded in darkness. There was no light to see -

_Oh wait, still got my eyes closed._

The girl slowly and delicately attempted to pry her eyelids apart - it felt as if they were glued together. When that didn't work, she applied more force, causing pain to shoot across the skin of her face. Finally, her eyes slowly opened, revealing that everything around her was still shrouded in darkness. _Well that was extremely disappointing_.

Wait, there was a glimmer of something to her right - a small sliver of something luminous and radiant. She could barely look at it it was so bright, but she could still make out the faintly strange shape it had - a thin oblong._ A door...?_

That seemed to be the case, as suddenly she heard a scraping of metal against metal and a long low creak, the oblong of light growing and brightening to outline the shape of the door. Her eyes felt as though they were being pierced with spears, and she squinted through them at the shape that had now appeared in the door. The shape was making a rather annoying noise, loud and wailing. _Do I really look that bad...?_

The girl tried to tell the shape to shut up, but found the place where her voice was supposed to come from still inactive and raw, capable only of gurgling. Her ears remained assaulted by this being's high pitched scream as her eyes adjusted and figured out that the being was a human girl, short and brown haired. The girl sank to her knees with a small sob.

Ears finally free of the horrible wailing, the burnt girl could concentrate on looking at her surroundings. Her vision was blurry, but she was still able to make out the basic details of her surroundings. The floor beneath her was white, struck through with veins of grey and black. Marble. The walls around her were covered with shelves, all holding small ceramic jars of some sort, a small metal plaque with a name engraved on it under each one. She could just focus her eyes long enough to read one of the plaques from her position on the ground: _Alonso Estraneo_.

What she could also see were her arms.

Blistered and burned, the wounds looked raw and fresh, and yet the girl could not remember how she had gained them. Her arms were thin and stick like, stretched out awkwardly before her. _My whole body looks like this, doesn't it? _The girl sighed then remembered that was a bad idea as the broken glass pain of her chest shot through her body. From then on, she resorted to taking very shallow breaths.

Another shape joined the first in the doorway, presumably drawn by the brown-haired girl's high pitched wailing. He was tall and built athletically, and had the same brown hair as the girl. They were probably related. The man cursed in some form of language (the girl could tell it was a curse from the way he said it), and ushered the brown haired girl away from the area, slowly approaching the burnt girl as his relative fled.

"Che cosa sei?" he asked, cautiously, grasping a shape around his throat. The girl focused her eyes and saw he was holding something on the end of a necklace.

"Che cosa sei?" he repeated. The girl felt as though she should be able to understand the meaning behind his words, and forced her brain to work.

"Che cosa sei?" he said again, this time with far more force. The girl's brain finally understood his meaning: _What are you?_

Noticing that the man's stance was rather aggressive, the girl decided to try to speak, but only a rasping moan was extracted from her throat. The effort shot the broken glass pain through her chest again, and she had to stop herself from gasping in pain.

"Sei un demone?" he questioned aggressively. _Are you a demon? _ The way he said it made the girl realise that if she was a demon that would be bad, and she desperately wanted to say no to avoid conflict, but she couldn't use her voice so she had to settle for a barely-discernable shake of her head which cause blinding pain to ripple throughout her neck. She did notice the man's position relax slightly.

"What is your purpose?" was the next thing he asked, the girl's brain no longer delayed in understanding his meaning. She didn't even try to answer that since she figured by now the man should have figured out that she couldn't speak properly.

"What is-" he repeated, much to the girl's annoyance, but he was cut off in the middle of his sentence (much to the girl's relief) as men in black suits barged through the door, surrounding the girl and pushing the man outside. One of the men approached her, an old man with kind lines set into his wrinkled face, though at the moment his face was riddled with caution and uncertainty. He leaned down to look at her more closely. The man had grey hair and a bushy moustache and warm brown eyes and spoke with a voice of authority, so the girl figured he must be the leader of the group.

"This needs to be taken back to the mansion to be properly examined," he announced. "Secure it, gently."

One of the men in suits approached her and slid something long, sharp and cold into her neck. She felt the liquid being injected into her system and welcomed the dark bliss it brought to her pained body.

She awoke in a very bright, sterile smelling room with two people in weird green clothes and masks bent over her chest. Her eyelids fluttered a few times, taking in the scene, and then stayed shut as she pretended to be asleep while they talked.  
"Amazing," one of them said. "With wounds like that, it's a miracle her lungs are still working."

"Entire ribcage shattered and three stab wounds to the chest... How is this thing still alive?"

"Do you reckon she could have been one of the experiments?" The voice was male, she realised, low and questioning.

"It's possible," replied a now obviously female voice. "She was in the jar containing unidentified bodies, and the victims of the Estraneo are usually those with no family ties..."

The girl had no idea what they were talking about and was very frustrated for it.

"Nah, it doesn't make sense," said the male voice. "Three stab wounds. Could have been a trident. Why would he kill her if she was an experiment? I doubt she would have been on the doctor's side."

"But what if it wasn't a trident? This girl's speciality is obviously healing. Maybe they were testing her abilities just before he went berserk, and he left her for dead." The female's voice carried certainty with her theory. "Her healing capabilities must take a while to kick in, or she'd have been up in less time than 6 years, judging by the current rate. Should have been 4, by my reckoning."

_Six years? _Thought the girl. _I was unconscious for six years? _She supposed it didn't really matter since she couldn't remember anything anyways, but now that she thought about it... Wasn't she supposed to be looking for something?

"That fits," said the male. The girl fluttered her eyelids and saw that they were both prodding gently around in her chest with tongs, gently rearranging bone pieces and sticking her shattered chest back together with specially made metal plates. "It's astounding," the male doctor said, "Like this her ribs should be fully healed within a month. And to come back after being burned to ashes..."

"That really is something," the female doctor agreed. The girl idly wondered why she couldn't feel any of the pain she should surely be feeling with two people prodding around in her chest. That didn't seem right, she was sure she should be in agony right now.

Wait, there it was. Slowly the pain came rolling over her in steadily growing waves, causing her to gasp for breath and open her eyes in shock. The two doctors quickly yanked their tools out of her chest, one grabbing something and jabbing it into her neck. The girl heard one of them say, "I guess we should have figured the tranquiliser would wear off more quickly," and unable to tell whether the voice was male or female, she descended back into darkness.

She was still lying in the bed when she awoke, but this time the room not filled with the two doctors but instead with the old man who had approached her in that strange marble room full of jars (who now sat in a chair next to her bed) and two men in suits standing by the door. She glanced down at her chest and discovered it was covered in bandages, and glancing around the room she discovered it was full of strange machinery and items. One of which was reflective.

Her face was horribly burnt and stretched over her skull. Her lips were almost completely burnt off,, the muscles of her mouth plain and visible as black, charred lines. but even as she watched the blackness seemed to fade little by little, and the muscles when she stretched them felt nowhere near as bad as back in the strange building (although that could just be whatever chemical the doctors had injected her with).

She felt no emotion towards her appearance and she thought it was probably strange that she didn't care. She turned back to face the old man, who had been watching her intently.

"Do you find your appearance shocking?" he asked, since it was probably hard to read emotion on a face so burnt. The girl tried her voice again, to discover she could make a wider range of sounds than previously. Rather than just a moaning rasp, she discovered she could now make a not-moaning rasp. She might even be able to form words.

Electing to choose the shortest possible answer, the girl replied "Meh."

The old man raised his eyebrows at this, then grinned, shaking his head. "The Estraneo really did manage something special, didn't they?" he muttered before focusing his attention back on the girl.

The girl, now irritated that she seemed to have no knowledge of this "Estraneo" thing, scraped a selection of sounds out from her voice box to form the sentence, "Who... Estraneo?" She figured she didn't need the middle bits to get her point across, so she didn't speak them as talking was still painful.

The old man seemed a little surprised by her question. "You don't know who they are?"

"No."

He looked curiously into her face. "They were a mafia family who experimented on people to create human weapons. We think you were one of their subjects. Don't you have any memory of this?"

The girl, having absolutely no idea what the man was talking about, simply shook her head and wished she'd said "No" instead since the motion caused a burning sensation all along her neck. Pain was also starting to creep back into her face and ribs.

The man's curious expression was replaced by one of shock. "Oh! How terribly rude of me, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Timoteo Vongola, 9th boss of the Vongola famiglia," The girl sensed large amounts of pride coming from that statement. "And you are...?"

The girl thought for a minute. _Names. Yes. Names are important._ She frowned (somewhat painfully) and made to bite a lip that was no longer there. Then her name came to her, hidden under waves of confusion at her new surroundings. She really didn't understand anything about this place at all.

The girl made to say her name, then realised she didn't want to. It was a small, inherent fear that if she told this man her name he could do something terrible. Yet looking into his eyes she could see that he was honest and one to be trusted... He had told her his true name, after all. She was fairly certain of that.

"Aruru," she whispered, just loud enough for the 9th Vongola to hear. She was not so trusting of the guards. "Tell no one," she added.

The 9th Vongola saw Aruru's fear and decided perhaps it was better not to question it considering what she had been through. He simply replied: "I won't. But, I can't call you nothing. You need a new name, then. How about Elsa?"

Aruru mulled it over for a second before nodding. She liked the sound of the name. It would protect her true one nicely.

The 9th Vongola made to leave. "I should let you get your rest, Elsa. Before I go, is there anything you would like me to get?"

Aruru thought for a moment, trying to remember that sensation she had felt before that told her she should be looking for something. Something... blue? She couldn't quite grasp the image, it was fuzzy in her head...

"Blue... pineapple?" she inquired.

The 9th Vongola's face assumed a strange expression for a moment before softening back into a smile. "I'll try," he said before leaving and taking the two guards with him. Outside, Aruru heard him confer with a muffled woman's voice. "I think she should be moved to Japan," she heard. "This girl needs a place of kindness to properly recover, and support her when her memories return."

She could not make out the muffled female's response.

_Blue pineapple_, she thought, turning the phrase through her mind. _I wonder what that means._

* * *

**First chapter's over and I hope you enjoyed it, please leave a review if you want more since it helps me not be a lazy ass and motivates me to write :D**

**Onwards to the next chapter! **


End file.
