Everyone stared into the parcel.
"You didn’t actually ask what they did?"
"Oh, come on, Koenig always names the boxes bizarre things."
"Yes, but… ‘Purple Ecstasy’?"
"Yeah, these aren’t exactly… I mean, can we return them or something?"
"To an underground arms dealer?"
"But these aren’t arms!"
"Maybe he needed more funding; I mean, if anything sells better than weapons…"
"We’ll figure something out," Tsuna said firmly. "Later."
There was a pause while everyone looked at each other. It was Ryouhei who finally said, "So. Should we see what they actually do?"
"You really shouldn’t be looking at this kind of thing," Lambo muttered, trying to unwrap the box… box thing.
"Oh, quit being so stingy." I-Pin elbowed him. "I want to see. Girls like sex too, you know."
Lambo winced. "I didn’t want to hear that!" At least not from a girl he’d grown up with, who was practically his sister.
"Never mind, and just open it!" She bounced on the bed.
Lambo wondered if he was going to wind up psychologically scarred from this, but decided that, if his life so far hadn’t done it, probably not. "All right, all right." He took a breath and called Flame to his ring and, with some trepidation, fed it to the box.
It opened in his hand, revealing… another ring?
Kind of a large ring.
I-Pin poked at it with a slender finger, frowning. "You can’t be supposed to wear that. It’s way to big, even for a thumb ring."
Lambo cleared his throat. "Well, I guess, um. It could be, um. Well."
I-Pin eyed him, and eyed the ring and obviously considered the shipment it had come in, and her eyes widened. "Really? You wear things there?" Then she tipped her head, thoughtful. "Why?"
Lambo tried frantically to think of a way not to answer without getting hit for holding out on her. "Well, um. It’s, um. You see…" And then he trailed off and frowned, too. "But why should that be a Lightning box?"
"Hmm. Yeah, that does seem… odd." I-Pin nibbled a nail. "Unless it’s…" She, too, trailed off, and started to turn pink, mouth twitching. "Um." She finally broke into helpless giggles and dove for his pillow to muffle them.
"What?" he asked, warily.
She looked up at him with dancing eyes and managed to squeak, "Lightning attribute!"
He blinked. "Hardening, what about—" His eyes widened and he nearly bit his tongue. "Oh."
As she dissolved into gales of laughter he couldn’t help wondering, ruefully, if even a box would be able to do anything against the memory of this particular moment.
Ryouhei held the unfolded directions insert in one hand and the glove that had come out of the Sun box in the other. "Hmm. Hm. Uh-huh. Place gloved hand on body part…"
He shrugged. Seemed straightforward enough, and since most box items with the Sun attribute healed, after all, he didn’t think there would be any problems. He pulled the glove on fed his Flame to it and, when nothing unusual happened, decided to go for it. Nothing ventured nothing gained!
When he closed his gloved hand between his legs, his eyes rolled back in his head from the wild rush of heat down every nerve. Only three thoughts managed to make it through the sensation.
One was that he should have remembered that the source of healing was "activation".
The second was that he really should have taken time to undo his pants, because these would need to be dry cleaned about a second and a half from now.
The third was that he was keeping this box.
Chrome poked her abruptly enlarged breasts with a cautious fingertip. "It’s very convincing, I suppose." She twisted, trying to get a good look at the outfit the illusion box had provided her with; it looked like some pervert’s idea of a maid’s uniform.
Ken seemed to be at a loss for words, for once, and was just staring. Chikusa was shaking his head, probably at Ken.
Mukuro-sama was laughing, in the back of her head, too hard to speak.
Chrome smiled, wryly. "I think it gives a whole new meaning to cosplay."
Ken made a slightly strangled sound, and she laughed softly.
Oh please. Mukuro-sama’s delight sparkled in her mind. I have to see the look on Hibari’s face.
Chrome shook her head over their leader’s penchant for teasing the Cloud Guardian. "You have bad hobbies, Mukuro-sama."
I know. He sounded downright gleeful, and she couldn’t help smiling.
"All right. But you get to wear this thing." She had no objection to showing off her legs, but she really wasn’t sure what to do with all this chest.
Of course, he purred, and a wicked smile lingered in the back of her mind.
"Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just for a jar of lube," Gokudera grumbled, pulling Yamamoto down against him.
"Well, let’s see what it does, then." Yamamoto’s smile was cheerfully interested and Gokudera rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah, fine. Go ahead."
Slick fingers stroked his entrance, gentle, and for a moment it was just slippery and a bit chill, like any lube on the face of the earth.
And then it wasn’t.
Gokudera’s eyes widened as his muscles eased, relaxed, turned warm and pliant without any intention on his part. It was… kind of amazingly intimate, with Yamamoto touching him. "Oh…"
Yamamoto’s eyes were intent on him. "Hm. Tranquility, huh?" He smiled, slow and hot.
Gokudera’s arms tightened around him and pulled him closer, and he said, husky, in Yamamoto’s ear, "More."
And moaned as long fingers opened him.
"Okay," Dino murmured into the sheets, "not that this isn’t really good, but why bother with a box dildo? I mean," he gasped as Kyouya drew it back and pressed it in again, "the regular ones already move and light up and all that." And this one seemed a little on the small side, actually. Nice, but small.
"Mm. Not quite the way this one is designed to, I believe." Kyouya thrust it in slowly again, not seeming in any hurry to demonstrate.
"And how is that?" Heat walked up Dino’s spine with the easy slide.
"Are you sure you want me to show you?" Kyouya murmured, so perfectly serious Dino knew he was teasing.
"Yeah… ahh… I think I do."
"Well, if you insist." He could hear Kyouya’s tiny smile. "Consider. It’s a Cloud box. And the attribute of cloud is…?"
"Propaga… oh shit." Dino’s breath caught and then left him on a low moan as the dildo grew inside him, getting bigger and thicker, slowly but just quickly enough to make his nerves tighten and tingle. "Kyouya…!"
Kyouya drew the enlarged dildo back and pressed it in again, smooth and hard, and Dino groaned.
"God." His eyes were half lidded, and want and command twined together in his voice when he said, "Do that again."
Kyouya laughed low in his throat and fucked him harder.
Tsuna flopped down into one of the library chairs and pressed a hand over his eyes. "How," he asked, "am I supposed to get any work done around here ever again?"
"People already ordering new boxes?" Gokudera asked from his own chair, looking up from his book, glasses sliding down his nose a bit.
"Yes," Tsuna groaned. "It’s all a plot to bankrupt Vongola, is what it is."
Gokudera chuckled, which Tsuna thought was unusually heartless of him, until he said, "Don’t worry, Boss. That’s where my new box comes in."
Tsuna sat up, frowning. "Um. How?"
Gokudera smiled at him, serene, with only a tiny hint of a gleam in his eyes. "Well, the Storm attribute is degeneration, right?" The gleam got a little stronger. "What’s better suited to stop the action of the new boxes? Or at least," he added, "the action of the people using them."
Tsuna blinked. "You mean it…" He imagined a sudden, er, wilting throughout the base and his mouth twitched. "I, um, see."
Gokudera adjusted his glasses calmly and leaned back in his chair, ankles crossed. "Just say the word."
"I’ll keep it in mind," Tsuna murmured, amused by Gokudera’s ruthless cheer.
Gokudera sat up again. "Oh, hey, I forgot to ask. There was a Sky box in there, wasn’t there?" He scratched his nose. "I was actually kind of curious about that one. I mean, the Sky’s attribute is to encompass, and that doesn’t seem like it would lend itself to anything I could think of off hand."
Tsuna turned red as a beet. "Ah, well, yes but I, um, put it away. It’s not really—"
"Tsu-kun."
Tsuna flinched and looked around. Kyouko was standing in the door and her eyes were as chilly as her tone. "Um. Yes?" Oh, he was in so much trouble.
She held out an inflated… well, best to just call it an inflated body part, dangling it between two fingers, and raised a brow.
Tsuna held up his hands. "It wasn’t me!" Though, in retrospect, he should probably have taken the time to put the thing more away, no matter how embarrassed he’d been.
She studied him for a moment. "Hm. Well, then, I think you’d better tell me all about it." She turned and stalked toward the door again.
"Psst, Boss." Gokudera slipped another box to him. "Figured you guys might want this. It’s a Sun box, but you should be able to use it. She’ll forgive you more if you share, right?"
"I really hope so," Tsuna said, fervently, following after her.
Inside a year, all inter-Family feuds subsided for lack of people paying attention to them, all the potential evil masterminds were too exhausted to take over the world, and everyone lived happily ever after.
Very happily.
End