Deimon Daycare: Orientation

Eyeshield 21 © Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata

Thank you:

Nightmaric, Baka-no-desu-21, Stargazer, Nekokratik, Bar-Ohki, Kuraihikaru, Grissini, Sachiel Angelo, .sora, pianomaestra, inclement, RoxasIsReal13, peanutz, and Suzu no Miya.

Thank you for all of your patience.

Apparently, Agon's name could equate to "agony" because the very first thing he did was throw Sena into another room and growl at him, "Watch them." By now, Sena was sick of finding himself in unfamiliar rooms and at the mercy of more intimidating and muscular men than himself that, after summoning his reserves of courage and self-esteem, he curled up on his side and whimpered, "Okay."

Sena closed his eyes just as Agon slammed the door and wished he was back home, underneath his sheets and cuddling his kitten Pitt. Seconds ticked by before reality literally kicked in by means of a tiny, yet dirty sneaker. "Oi, is he even alive?" An equally tiny voice drawled, accompanied by two other high-pitched sounds.

"Let's hit him and see what happens!"

"Hn."

A sudden barrage of punches and kicks was enough to send Sena from his recumbent position to a more appropriately alarmed one. "Wha—hey! Ouch!" His eyes wide, the brunet scrambled for some purchase until a whoosh sound caught his ears and his eyes tracked the end of a baseball bat. It was hurrying toward his head, and just as Sena was about to dodge, he saw head of hair in the line of fire. There really was no way to avoid the weapon, unless he wanted a broken child in place of his broken head. The choice was easy make, and Sena's body seemed to move on its own.

A cracking noise split the air like a burst of thunder.

During the resulting silence everyone stared at Sena.

"Whoa…so cool," gasped a dark haired child with odd fish-like lips. The two blonds next to him nodded, eyes wide in amazement, though one with a cross-shaped scar on his cheek was quick to retract the sentiment, replacing it with an impassive face.

Sena hesitantly opened his eyes, and his mouth dropped at the sight.

Luckily, the bat had caught the watch on his wrist, fracturing the glass face, but otherwise left his wrist mildly stinging, skin intact and not bruised. Unluckily, he had just broken the watch gifted to him by his friend Panther, whom he had met as a foreign exchange from America, and to whom he promised to return the gift when he eventually travels to the other's mother country.

Kids are strong these days, he lamented the loss of the watch. I'm so sorry, Panther.

Shortly after delivering a mental eulogy to the broken timepiece, Sena was literally slapped out of mourning by a small, pudgy hand. "Wha—" He blinked the stars away from his vision.

"FUGO," came an exclamation from his arms, and Sena looked down at the child, really a rather round baby, he apparently rescued. "HERO," shouted the baby, and he grinned a gummy smile up at the brunet. Sena practically melted.

"Aww! Now what's your name, little gu-GYAA!" Sena yelped as the wooden bat from before was pointed at his face, the fish-lipped toddler grinning at him from the other end.

"THAT. WAS. REALLY. COOL," he breathed, barely containing his excitement. He lasted nearly twenty seconds before he exploded in action, violently re-enacting Sena's 'daring' rescue. "You were like—and I was like— swoosh and foom –then you went zoom, like a, a—"

"Hurricane?" Prompted the blond boy with the cross-shaped scar.

"Bullet?" Offered the other blond from behind a copy of Shonen Jump Weekly.

"GHOST," the fish-lipped boy finally decided, and his two friends shared a look of well-experienced exasperation.

Sena smiled, although it appeared as half a grimace, as he gingerly stopped and eased the wooden bat from the child's hands, nodding patiently as the boy continued to run his mouth while struggling to keep a firm grip on the squirming baby in his arms. Sena had learned from his younger brother that anything near an excitable child with a baseball bat was susceptible to severe property damage. Over the years, Sena had grown sick of compensating for it.

"Um, well," Sena surveyed the group of children around him, some staring at him in awe, others seeming indifferent to his existence, and he attempted to curb his cringe into something resembling a friendly smile.

"Let's start with introductions," Sena said, once he finished rounding up his charges into a semi-circle-and/or-oval. "I am Kobayakawa Sena, and I am your new head teacher." A hand shot up in the air. "Yes?"

"Have you went to jail?" The fish-lipped boy questioned, and the other two boys flanking him raised their eyes in similar curiosity.

Sena blinked. "Um, no, I can't say I have." All three of them looked severely disappointed. Sena tried to ignore that. "So, what about you guys?"

"Yukimitsu Manabu," piped up a boy to his left, and Sena wondered if he should be worried about the receding hairline the four or five year old already sported. "Please take care of me, sensei."

Sena smiled, touched by the polite note in the boy's voice. He returned the bow, "Please take care of me as well." Leaving Manabu-kun with a bright smile, Sena eyed the next boy with expectant eyes.

"Satake Yohei," murmured the boy, too absorbed in throwing a small basketball in the air to pay Sena any more attention. The next boy quickly introduced himself, pink lightly dusting his cheeks, "I'm Yamaoka Kenta…"

Kenta-kun fidgeted, which Sena took as a sign that he had more to say, and Sena smiled in encouragement. The boy grinned, cheeks blazing, and blurted, "Sena-sensei, you look like Kago Ai-chan when you smile!"

It took Sena several moments to calm down the resulting laughter and comfort a sniffling Kenta-kun, who was being tormented because of his apparent preference for older women– and Sena. ("Kenta-kun, it's okay to like like Ai-san, that only shows your…mature taste.")

After the… unique introductions of Omosadake Futoshi-kun, an overly fed child who deemed it too tiresome to even open his eyes, Komusubi Daikichi-kun ("DAI!" exclaimed the baby from his spot on the floor), and Taki Natsuhiko-kun, who promptly displayed his flexibility through weird contortions of his body, Sena finally reached the trio.

"Togano Shozo," grunted the glasses-wearing blond. He raised the open magazine, though his eyes never left the pages. "I like manga, especially Shonen Jump series." Sena smiled in greeting, though inside, he wondered why a four-year old would need tinted glasses inside a building.

"Kuroki Koji," crowed the fish-lipped boy, who proudly thumbed his chest in his depiction of a strong pose, "Master of Mario Kart, Triple Gold Medalist of the Sonic Olympics, and the King of Games!"

Sena grinned at the prideful declaration, despite Shozo-kun grunting his disapproval ("The King of Games is Yugi, numbnut.") while the other boy with the cross-shaped scar rolled his eyes.

The last child stood up, and even though he only came up to his shoulder, Sena was taken aback by the sheer challenge burning in his eyes. The boy folded his arms, and Sena envisioned the child several years down the road, in the same pose, but as a fully recognized delinquent. "I'm Jumonji Kazuki, and I don't like you."

"Um…" Feeling surprised and a little more than appropriately fearful for a man of his age, Sena edged back, only to softly collide with a hard object. Startled, he broke eye contact Delinquent-kun, er, Kazuki-kun and widened his eyes at the boy he had knocked to the floor. "I'm so sorry," Sena apologized, reaching a hand out to help the child up, "I didn't see you."

The boy rubbed his shaved head, giving Sena a weary smile. "It's okay, sensei, it's okay. I'm used to it." Then he bowed, "My name is Invisible—I mean, Ishimaru Tetsuo. Please take care of me, sensei."

As Ishimaru sat down, Sena made a quick head count. "Oh, there are only ten of you," he observed with relief. He wouldn't be able to handle another student.

Then, Manabu-kun popped that bubble.

"Actually, there are two more students. Raimon Tarou, or Monta-kun, is sick at home after he ate some expired banana pudding, and the other student—" There was a tense pause where Manabu-kun took a shuddering breath, and a weird emotion shot down Sena's spine, a feeling that was part primordial fear and part apocalyptic. Then, as Manabu-kun shifted, the lights in the room casted a flash upon the boy's shining brow, and in that flash, Sena glimpsed a flashback of his life. Or maybe it was just the firing end of a spark gun.

BANG. And Sena was sent tumbling halfway across the room at a speed only reached when one was either extremely determined or shit-scared out of his mind. It was easy to guess which of the two the brunet currently felt.

"Kekeke, I am Hiruma Yoichi, you fucker." A child grinned down menacingly at the sprawled man. Their eyes met, and Sena thought he just saw the eyes of Satan, but the thought quickly passed as the brunet recovered.

Reclining into a crouch, Sena tussled his brown locks, messing with the already tangled spikes, before holding out the other hand to the apparently unimpressed five-year old. Even if he was more than marginally cowed by Hiruma-kun, Sena still believed in making a good first impression.

"Hello, Yo-kun –" Hiruma's pointed ears twitched at that. "My name is Kobayakawa Sena, and I'm the new teacher here." Sena replaced the fear hanging on his face with a genuine, if slightly shaky smile. "Please take care of me." Hiruma, in response, merely popped a mint green bubble. Sena wanted to hazard a guess and believe it was the child's stamp of approval, despite Hiruma's critical eyes stating the opposite.

Finally, Hiruma grinned, and Sena felt a light weight placed in his hand, then a quick shake, before Hiruma cackled away.

"Welcome to Deimon's Devil Bat class, kekekeke!"

Sena smiled softy, almost endearingly at the speeding child, ignorant of the lingering weight still clutched in his hand. Oh, he's not such a bad child after all –

The mini-grenade exploded and threw Sena across the hallway in a ringing boom.

A number of children screamed and ran, turning the daycare center into a wild menagerie as some kids hid and cried like Kobanzame ("Osamu-kun, please come out from under there. Mizumachi-sensei is not a hiding place."), hollered in aptly timed sequence ("HA?" "HAA?" "HAAA?"), or cowered on impossibly high landings, refusing to come down unless certain demands were met ("Ikkyu-sama needs oni-comfort, from an oni-cute girl sensei!").

Among the chaos, Sena blinked away the ash that he assumed was a composite of the bomb and his singed flesh. He thanked whatever deity who cared to listen that the bomb had only been one of those do-it-yourself types, made from papier-mâché and flammable chemicals. Then a hissing noise invaded his ears, and Sena turned his head to notice the small, spherical ball rolling past him, its wick rapidly shortening.

Sena guessed it was about time to fill in some life insurance forms.

Note: All the daycare kids will be addressed by their first names after their initial introductions, unless they share the same first names (I can think of one case already), but if you guys, the reviewers, think it's easier to read if the kids' first names are used only in dialogue but addressed by last names in the narration, please tell me so in your review or PM. :)

Obviously, Hiruma is the exception (bias? what bias?).

As for pairings... does puppy love count? ;)