Never Forget (where you'll go.) - arurun (2024)

Chapter 1: A Deal with the Devil (The Greatest Hitman Reborn)

Chapter Text

“Look, Tsu-kun! Someone put a flyer in the mail. They’re an aspiring young man looking for work as a home tutor, so I called them right away. Isn’t that great? You were just saying the other day you needed some help in English—”

“Wait wait wait wait wAIT—”

Tsuna snatches the paper from his mother.

“Mom. This says ‘Greatest Hitman Reborn tutoring services. Will train your son to be a Mafia Boss. This is my number’. This is the sketchiest thing you could have probably called in, he didn’t even quote any rates—”

“Yeah! He says ‘Greatest Hitman’, so, doesn’t he sound promising?”

“Mom??”

So,

There was a day when everything changed.

A day where the earth shook, and not only did the world shift on its paranormal axis, but everything that had once been hiding in the cracks leapt out into existence for just an instant. Then, they hid away again, and reality went on.

Nowadays, people in the world have put the Great Earthquake behind them, and the world has long moved on to their new normality once more.

But Namimori, the quaint city at the center of its tremors, has never forgotten.

Even today, it masquerades its semblance of simplicity. But all its citizens know that just a closer glance toward the shadows of the streets and its true face glances back.

Tsuna’s gaze remains on the utility pole for a long moment. The flyer for a lost pet dog has been weathered so deeply into the rust, it’s no longer readable. It’s overlaid with a phone number for a mental support group, and overlaid yet again with a civil warning for an increase in robberies in town.

Tsuna tears his eyes away.

The dog in the flyer has eyes that follow his departure.

Tsuna shifts the toast in his mouth to take another bite, and promptly drops the rest on the ground. He doesn’t watch what happens next, but when he turns the corner, he knows the bread is gone.

Well, it’s not his business.

Tsuna looks at his watch. He’ll make it to school early today… That’s a good thing.

“That flyer mom called in wasn’t for real… right?”

He dearly hopes so. But, he never really knows with his mother. She attracts weird things sometimes, and unlike him, it’s not because she’s an easy target. Quite the opposite. Anomalies seem to like her just a bit too much.

At least they won’t hurt her—

“Good morning, Sawada!” A pat on his shoulder makes him jump with an indignant yelp. He tries to ignore the way Sasagawa Ryohei obviously flicks something over his shoulder before grinning. “You’re up and early today again, that’s an extremely good habit for you! Wanna join me on my run?”

Tsuna jerks away, flustered.

“Oh— Kyoko-chan’s big brother,” he addresses, “Uhm… no thanks, I… no thanks.”

“That so? Alright then!” he grins. “See ya around!”

He proceeds on his way, not before stopping once more.

“Oh, and,” Ryohei says, “don’t go out alone at this hour. That’s extremely unsafe! And don’t wear shiny things around your neck, it attracts the magpies.”

Tsuna chuckles at that.

“Thanks for the concern, Kyoko-chan’s big brother,” he says, laying a hand by the silver dove pin at his collar, “but I think I’ll be fine.”

The crescent moon hangs overhead upon the dawning sky.

This year was a strange year for Tsuna, even without considering the town’s abnormalities. Namimori High School— a fairly new, very necessary addition to the roster of Namimori buildings— finally takes in its third cohort of students.

This meant that most teenagers of Tsuna's age, who up until now went to various schools a station or two away, finally converged back in Namimori once more. And that meant a full dish of ‘Namimori uniqueness’ was all finally in one place. And Tsuna had to spend the next three years coping with them.

It never gets any less weird around here, unfortunately.

Hibari Kyouya sleeps upon a tree near the yard again today. There’s a sign nailed to the ground before him: [Disturb at your own risk!]

Tsuna stumbles into the school building— it’s fairly empty, and he hopes it stays that way. Unfortunately, some people will always be earlier than him on any given day.

Even sports clubs haven’t started morning practice yet, but Mochida Kensuke is here at the lockers. Tsuna crosses his row of the lockers to the first year’s—

—and suddenly, there’s a shinai two inches from his head. Tsuna swerves sharply aside to look back— and his shoulders ease.

“The hell? Dame-Tsuna,” Mochida frowns. “You’re not usually here at this time. You wanna die or something?”

Tsuna grimaces at that. “No…”

“Don’t break routine unless you’ve been possessed or some sh*t,” Mochida says. “Consider that a warning.”

“I’ll try…”

Mochida turns away. His bag isn’t on him, and he holds his shinai over his shoulder with a sigh, tucking his free hand back in his pocket.

Tsuna hears him mutter irritably as he goes.

“Walk like a human, at f*cking least. Unbelievable. I’ll kill you next time, I really will.”

(Quite ironic of him to comment on another man’s footsteps…)

He’s such a scary senior. It was pretty okay in the other town because the school was much bigger, but back in home grounds, everyone’s so territorial. He just can’t get used to any of this at all.

“Sawada Tsunayoshi, fifteen, first year in Namimori High, class 1-B. Grades sit just barely in the top fifty in his junior high school finals, but every other record has him below average. He went to— ah,”

Standing upon a tree and watching the classroom from a branch, the Greatest Hitman Reborn peruses the file with amusem*nt.

“—that’s interesting,” Reborn chuckles. “He received the Special Youth Division Military Designation: Emergency Squad E for his services in March.”

Last year, there was a case near central Japan regarding an international terrorist threat— and Vongola Ninth had issued a statement to allied hitmen to stay out of it. The government had been heavily involved, so the big names of the mafia deemed it wiser to not interfere, lest they drag the name of the underworld too far into civilian lights.

And that decision had been right.

It made national television in March this year, and nearly thirty kids (their names never released to the public) were thanked by the military for their work.

So Sawada Tsunayoshi, only remaining eligible heir to the Vongola, just happened to be one of them… it’s a good coincidence, all things considered.

(Maybe this rumoured ‘Dame-Tsuna’ he was here to meet would be fun to train. At the very least, someone who’s dipped his toes in the underworld at least once before wouldn’t be too jarred by the idea of inheriting, right?)

(Though, there’s the problem of all this data gathered over his lifetime no longer being accurate in the slightest. Hard to fault anyone for it– information from Namimori has been hard to get, these few years.)

(That’s fine. Reborn’s always been more of a hands-on guy than a data-centric operator.)

Reborn had to quickly duck away into the foliage as Tsuna, who up until now had been struggling to focus in class, turned in his direction with a frown.

Tsuna turned back toward the board after a moment.

Reborn peeks his head down again, and he doesn’t miss the way Tsuna’s pen stills. He tries to look natural by shifting his elbow to the desk and his palm to rest his chin, but Reborn can tell from the way Tsuna had unconsciously chosen to incline his head in a direction away from the window—

Yeah, Reborn can tell that he’s been spotted.

This is a very interesting kid.

“Haru found a suspicious living thing!”

Reborn looks to the side and, on the branch, crawling toward him like a cat, is a high school girl, leaning closer.

He tries not to make note of the ears on her head or the tail swishing under her skirt, but she looks at him with all the adoring glimmer of an overexcited puppy and—

—yeah, nevermind.

He’s starting to remember why he tended to avoid Namimori.

Tsuna’s having a very… complicated day.

“Morning, Sawada,” Sugaya, the one that sits behind him in class, greets cheerfully. Then, a moment after staring him in the face exasperatedly, “you never change, do you? Fell down the stairs?”

Tsuna nods, miserably. He’s almost ashamed, but there are new purpling bruises around his arms and he’s in the middle of stitching a tear in his pants close. The first aid kit is on the table as Tsuna tries his best not to look too pathetic. But there's nothing to hide the huge bump on his head.

“I swear something always trips me up on the second-to-top step. I swear, okay,” he pleads his case with all the weariness in his heart.

“Leave it to you to find something to trip over even in a normal school building. I thought you grew out of the Dame phase?”

“Some things are chronic, I guess.”

That was really a downer.

Not as much as watching Yamamoto Takeshi come into the classroom, look at Kurokawa Hana, and beam like the sun itself.

“Good morning everyone! Oh, and hi Hana,” he says, “you still not in the man-eating kinda mood, right?”

Takeshi started his day 1 in Namimori High with that exact same greeting and he’s never stopped since. It’s driving Hana crazy.

Hana, who everyone in school very clearly and vividly knows hates his guts with her very soul at this point, raises a middle finger at him.

Beside her, Sasagawa Kyoko giggles.

Takeshi beams brighter. “I’m here if you change your mind!”

Everyone wondered at first, is he volunteering? What the hell? But they then direct their eyes to the shinai holster on his back and unfortunately, experience in this city has taught them it’s probably exactly the opposite. There’s a reason Hibari also scowls (harder than usual) at the sight of Hana, and no one’s looking forward to finding out why.

And then, he saunters the rest of the way in the classroom. “Oh, morning, Tsuna!” completely nonchalant. “What happened to you?! Haha, dude, you look crazy!”

“Stop talking about it!”

Tsuna wails.

He’s lucky, honestly. Here in Namimori, people dismiss the paranormal in the spirit of ‘live and let live’— which is why they don’t ask a single thing about Tsuna’s experiences in Junior High, his alleged military rank, and any relevant bad press.

But they’re definitely not letting him live down the Dame-Tsuna thing. Even making it to national news as a supposed trained combatant didn’t erase the inherent clumsiness in his very soul, which is exactly why it’s so much funnier to everyone.

But, it’s a sign of peace.

(If people can make fun of their clumsy and eccentric classmates every day, then that means Namimori isn’t completely hell on earth just yet.)

Tsuna notices the presence in the trees eventually. It was pure luck and honestly a whole morning of a migraine-like anxiety before he finally connected the dots (it’s very, very good at hiding,) but once Tsuna noticed it, he just didn’t want to do anything. It’s just how it is in Namimori— you learn to ignore the eyes in the bushes, the breaths in the trees, the shadows that hung just a little too far in the sunset—

You just learn to ignore them.

But right now, it’s very specifically watching him.

But why?

(And how does Tsuna get it to stop? He hopes it doesn’t follow him home, Mom would probably invite it in for dinner.)

“Sawada. Read the next passage.”

Ah.

He rises quickly, fumbling over his book. He’d heard where the previous person stopped, but where was it? Why were there so many words on this page? Wait. Calm down. Skim. Nevermind, he’s been staring awkwardly at the page for too long that now it’s obvious he wasn’t paying attention. Where IS IT??

There’s a loud dramatic crash and squeak and everyone in the classroom jumps in surprise as something huge seems to have fallen out of the tree adjacent to their classroom.

A step toward the window identified the problem— Miura Haru had been perched on it, and now she’s toppled and was whining about the fall, clutching her head and her sides and making kicked puppy noises in the bushes.

“Haru-chan?” Kyoko calls out, “shouldn’t you be in school? Midori High is a few stations out.”

There’s a distinct holler of “Haru heard weird footsteps so Haru followed! She found it but now it’s gone!” that was so vague no one quite understood, but there’s a chime of laughter in the classroom, as well as all other classrooms along this side of the building.

“Haru,” a boy hollers from above, “Hibari-san’s incoming, you better go now.”

At that, Haru bounces back up. “Okay, Yuji!” she beams, “Haru will continue her search for the mysterious footsteps!”

“GO TO SCHOOL,” her big brother, Miura Yuji, howls indignantly.

There’s another round of amused laughter as even the teacher joins in on the endearing display. Haru scampers off with HIbari arriving just a second later, and by then, everyone has retreated into the classroom, leaving HIbari obviously miffed by the tree.

Tsuna chuckles, too, still standing awkwardly at his seat. Looks like the thing watching him got watched, too.

“Sit down, Sawada,” the teacher calls, and that’s the cue for class to continue. “Sugaya?”

And Sugaya stands up in a hurry, picking up where the previous person left off.

Tsuna gives him a nervous and apologetic glance, and Sugaya meets his eyes briefly, clearly an indication of no worries.

Tsuna sighs deeply. This is a horrible day already. He’s going to lay awake spamming the regret button in his mind.

But, in a way— he appreciated that he could still be Dame-Tsuna here. Haru could be as eccentric as she wanted to be, too. Despite the jarring differences between everyone in this city, despite the supernatural occurrences and separations— they could all be themselves and still live in harmony. That matters most.

Nevermind.

“Ciaossu! I’m the World’s Greatest Hitman, Reborn, and I’m going to be your private tutor from now on until you inherit the Vongola.”

Where, on earth, should Tsuna begin with unpacking the absolutely confusing situation before him? Somehow, the fact that it’s a toddler in a suit is the least jarring thing about it all right now.

“I can’t,” Tsuna says.

“Refusal is not an option.”

“Do I at least get a billion dollars out of this?”

“No, but you get the entire Vongola Conglomerate, which has a net worth of more.”

“It’s the exact same situation but worse!” Tsuna wails, head dropping heavily onto the table with a loud clunk, “can’t I have a year of normality without assassins and hitmen coming after my head? Just one year??”

“Oh, so you already know exactly what you’re in for,” Reborn says, “great, that makes it all go faster. So, first, let me explain to you exactly why this is going to last for the rest of your life. It starts with your family tree…”

“Let me go through my stages of grief before you go on! PLEASE!”

So apparently, his great great great grandfather is the founder of the esteemed Vongola Mafia Conglomerate. The recent moon incident has left the mafia world in disarray, especially when it’s been deemed that it was caused by the government trying to stick their hands into the underworld— saying the Vindice are enraged would be an understatement.

There was a big rebellion and culling and pretty much a minor underworld war, and now, Tsuna was just about the only legitimate successor left.

“...what about, you know,” Tsuna begins hesitantly, “I’m pretty sure I have a dad.”

“Your father’s situation is… complicated,” Reborn says. “Technically you’re only legitimate by factor that you were born in this world. You’re a very unique case.”

Tsuna had to take a moment, but Reborn’s already moving onward.

“We have to pull some strings here, honestly, but you also look exactly like Primo, so— what?” Reborn pauses when Tsuna promptly descends into freak-out-session of the day part five.

“W-W-W-Wuh?! What do you mean, because I was born into this world?”

Reborn’s head tilts in a way that definitely means he’s just f*cking messing with Tsuna at this point. “Did you not know that your parents are legally aliens?”

Tsuna stares in stilted silence.

Then, “MOM?”

From downstairs, a very cheerful, “yes, dear?”

His father— super an alien, very much alien— received Vongola blood artificially in order to survive in this world. And since his original blood is recessive to the atmosphere, and Nana’s blood is also incapable of being passed down for some reason, by theory Tsuna is very legitimately Vongola because that’s all he’s inherited from them, biologically speaking.

This is a very weird way to find out you're an alien.

“You’re asking for people to target me,” Tsuna pleads, “everything you just told me just reeks of a ‘he’s not REALLY legitimate I don’t acknowledge the new boss’ type of coup d'etat scenario within the mafia world. And you know I’m also unwillingly affiliated with the government which you say is another big reason the underworld is really angry right now. Why would you put me in this situation?”

“They say struggle breeds character,” Reborn shrugs.

“And you’re bringing this all into Namimori…” Tsuna moans into his hands and curls up into a fetal position so he may ignore the world a little longer. “I just got threatened for breaking routine just this morning. You’re going to turn the entire town of secret affiliations against me. Have I mentioned the Hibaris yet?”

“Oh, someone threatened you? That can’t do,” Reborn says, putting down the family tree to pick up a gun, “let’s go establish dominance.”

“No!”

“Then die.”

Tsuna has to abruptly straighten so the shot, which was uncomfortably aimed for his lowered head and would have plunged into his chest if he did anything less— soars right past and drills itself into a spot deep in the far wall.

“...That’s a REAL bullet?!”

“You thought it would be fake?”

“Why is the gun GREEN then?”

“Oh, meet Leon.”

“What the f–!!”

“Sugaya.”

“Well,” his seatmate chuckles, “you come at me with that look on your face and you immediately drop a book on my table. What do you need me for, Sawada?”

“I need you to draw this logo I saw yesterday. The key design is a crest with a bullet shell in the center, and a clam with wings—”

“La Famiglia Vongola, yeah, I know how to draw that. Why do you need it?”

“...should I be surprised you know instantly?”

“Did you skip the class on— ah, right. This was a field trip exclusive class, and you spent it hurling up your organs. I’m pretty sure Nee-san can tell you everything to know about it,” Sugaya is already starting on the sketch, “if you need an in, though, we already have all the tools necessary to infiltrate. What’s the occasion?”

“...no, no infiltration necessary. Just promise me you won’t make fun of me for what I’m about to tell you.”

He made fun of him. A lot.

But at the very least, Tsuna gets to enjoy Reborn’s baffled silence as Tsuna levels him with an exhausted look.

“The Vongola, currently the most influential and similarly most infamous mafia syndicate in the entirety of the underworld,” Tsuna says, deeply concerned, “they have allies and offshoots that range from similarly light-inclined communities like the Cavallone, to their personal squadra killer automata, VARIA.”

Reborn is very silent.

Then, “well, I’m glad you’re independent enough to do our own homework.”

“Reborn! What makes you think I want any part of this?! I’m fifteen!” Tsuna throws his hands into the air in exasperation. “Are you telling me you’re going to throw all this responsibility onto the shoulders of a fifteen-year-old just because there are no blood relatives left?”

“Hey now,” Reborn says, “you’ll be eighteen when you succeed, at least. Even then, the youngest ever recorded was about ten when he had to succeed. Because everyone in his family was killed except for him. He’s about your age now, so you guys can be besties when the time comes.”

Yes, that is clearly not a screaming red flag.

“Reborn,” Tsuna says, “I dearly, dearly hope the Mafia know that children should not be leading terrifyingly influential underworld powers. First of all, they’re very easy to target.”

Reborn brightens right up.

“Then you better get to training, yeah?”

Tsuna cries into his pillow.

Very soon after arriving, Reborn knew that Namimori would be full of surprises.

Tsuna was an enigma of its own, and the town he’d only ever glimpsed before. The disciplinary committee being the local ruling is a good host for future allies, and the girl who’s treating him like a cat with her newest favourite toy is absolutely jarring, but the most prominent surprise had to be Sawada Nana.

“I did learn that you had married Iemitsu from Vongola Ninth, but I was still rather surprised to see you here,” he says. “Rather, I didn’t believe it was you from the rumours, but seeing the garden, I had to stop doubting.”

Nana giggles.

“I’m flattered, Reborn-kun,” she says. “I’d ask if you want flowers to go, but I always place flowers around the house, so you’d have to see more of them than you’d ever know what to do with.”

While Tsuna is off at school, they share a cup of coffee as they reminisce on old times.

“It’s very nice to see you haven’t changed.”

“You as well.”

Reborn had thought that ‘Sawada Nana’ would be a name kept behind closed doors, an unsuspecting Madame of the soon-to-be Vongola base in Namimori. Harmless, docile, and loving— the keeper of the home base. No one would ever see her as a threat, but she’ll always be protected.

Unfortunately, Sawada Nana— formerly Yuuri Nana, owner of Sevenlilies, the daytime florist; nighttime underworld rest stop— would be far more of an asset than he could’ve ever fathomed.

(No one could ever dare antagonize her or put her in harm’s way.)

(Unless they wanted the entirety of the underworld coming for their heads, no one would ever dare treat her with anything but the highest honour and respect.)

Definitely, the best possible asset Vongola could have ever taken in.

(Though, it would be naive to think Vongola managed to get her through any whim but her own.)

“Tsuna-kun!”

“K-Kyoko-chan?!” Tsuna flusters immediately upon Sasagawa Kyoko being in his vicinity. The stack of books in his hands (mild punishment for being unfocused in class) disallowed him an immediate escape route.

Kyoko giggles, but doesn’t offer to help carry them.

“Hi, Tsuna-kun,” she greets, sweetly, fiddling with her fingers and hiding them behind her. “Is it okay if I take some of the stuff from the first aid kit on your desk? It’s nearer than the nurse’s office…”

“Oh! That, uh, o- of course,” Tsuna bumbles through his speech, clearly averting his eyes like his eyeballs are birds that have never learned how to perch in their lives, “uhm. Take it, of course, go ahead!”

“Thank you!” she beams. “I’ll make sure not to mess it up, thanks!”

“R- Right! It’s okay even if you do—!!”

Reborn watches from a distance. The lovestruck types are always the most hopeless, and it’s just his luck that Tsuna already has such a glaring weakness. Get a cute girl to assassinate him and he’ll probably be too flustered to do anything.

On the other hand, though, Kyoko seems to know exactly what she’s doing. She’s clearly cultivating an army of boys who will die for her on command. What a vixen. Reborn wants her in the Family like, right now.

Reborn suspected nothing, at first.

Even when Tsuna had a military title, it was obligatory, and the result of a group effort, and not many people fully understood the End Class situation beyond ‘some alien dragged these kids into the underworld to seek death, and if the children didn’t kill them first, the Vindice would have done it anyways’.

So, Reborn expected little from Tsuna.

Little, as in ‘just enough to not be completely hopeless’. He may be clumsy, but he had reflexes, he had training, and he had the wariness and well-honed expectations hardened by life in Namimori.

He expected something similar to Dino. Someone with the exposure, but generally unpolished.

It’s rather fascinating how easily Tsuna dodges or deflects any attempt of being shot by Reborn, whether it be by madly scrambling for his life, quickly ducking under tables, or lifting something up— like a book— to block it with.

He stops doing the latterest when he realizes Reborn’s bullets go clean through paper shields, though.

More than a few times Tsuna lunges for the gun, even knowing the natural human reaction to jumping a gun is to either shoot or flinch— so Tsuna jumps at an angle and gets halfway into the action of twisting a wrist before he realizes Reborn’s body is way too damn small for that manoeuvre. Every time, Reborn promptly grabs his sleeve before hurling him out of the window for his insolence.

(Who the hell taught him the first reaction to a gunman was to disarm? Damn it, military, this kid’s going to get killed at his first bank robbery.)

Reborn also notes the way Tsuna always lands, as safely as he can, no matter which way he’s thrown.

“There’s quite extensive self-defense ingrained into him,” Reborn murmurs, “but his personality leaves much to be desired in a Boss.”

He’ll eat his own words very quickly.

Reborn honestly, sincerely didn’t expect this, but he’ll never say that out loud.

Tsuna is ‘Dame-Tsuna’ to the town, but it’s almost alarmingly affectionate. Reborn initially thought it was an indicator of just how much of a pushover Tsuna was, that he’d simply allow that nickname to spread, how he’d simply let his friend tease him one-sidedly, and how he’d simply say yes to any favour or heel to every threat.

Upon review of Tsuna’s capabilities— he’s unremarkable. Slightly above average grades, slightly around average in sports, no real motivational drive to do more, and no particular extracurriculars of note.

And then, well, and then, he does stuff like this.

“Sawada Tsunayoshi!”

Kurokawa Hana kicks his desk and demands a battle. For some reason.

It’s lunchtime and half the class is out, but the other half has turned to watch. This includes Sugaya, who is sketching at his desk, completely oblivious to Tsuna’s plight.

“Eep! What– I’m sorry?” Tsuna clutches his book tightly. He glances down, Hana has her leg planted on the edge of his desk, it’s very risen, she can see the stockings and immediately averts his eyes, unable to hide the red bursting onto his face, “w-w-what?!”

And Hana clicks her tongue in disgust.

She does not put her leg down.

“Why is Kyoko wearing bandages completely smothered in your scent, you feral mongrel?” she threatens. “How dare you claim your territory under my watch. You wanna die, huh?”

Huh.

“Huh— huh?!” Tsuna winds his gaze to her, then to Kyoko, who’s peeking out cheekily behind Hana, and then back to Hana again. “HUH?”

Kyoko’s hands are wrapped in orange kinesiology tape, and that’s normal, her hands are really delicate and chap easily, she’s always got the tape on and that must be what she borrowed from Tsuna’s first aid kit.

But huh?

She giggles.

And Tsuna’s mind goes three miles a minute.

“Kyoko-chan?”

“Do not address her!” Hana snarls, and Tsuna almost thinks her hair rises like its alive, ready to snatch her up like a hair monster and— “explain yourself right this instant.”

There’s nothing to explain.

Kyoko sticks her tongue out and mouths a ‘sorry’ in his direction.

“Kyoko-chan…” Tsuna is near tears at this point.

The next thing Kyoko mouths is, ‘good luck, Tsuna-kun!’ with some excitable light punches to the air like she’s a cheerleader.

Tsuna makes a sound akin to a cry as he leaps out of his seat, ducks right under Hana’s leg, and takes advantage of her disbalance to snatch her right up by the waist and deposit her in his chair.

He then ducks behind Kyoko and covers his ears.

Right on time for Hana to realize she’s been moved and start incoherently screeching out a “you f*cking MONGREL—!!” only to sharply stop once she realizes she’s yelling right in Kyoko’s face.

Kyoko is still beaming unfalteringly brightly.

Tsuna ducks behind Kyoko, holding onto Kyoko’s shoulder and using her as a shield.

“I mean, w- w- we’re friends, right?” Tsuna squeaks, looking at Kyoko and back, genuinely terrified of Hana at this point, “Kyoko-chan lent me bandages before too. It’s like, an exchange thing! Right?”

“Riiiight~” Kyoko sings along, swaying as she teeters in that sugary demeanor of hers.

“Who let you become friends with HER, huh?!” Hana growls, “and since when were you two ever close? Kyoko, I’ve seen mongrels who seize girls for less, and that’s a piece of cloth with his spirit all over it! You’re basically signing ownership to him, take them off!”

“I mean,” Kyoko pouts, “I don’t really understand, Hana, but, it’d be such a waste. I can be Tsuna-kun’s for one day, right?” She looks at Tsuna. “As long as you give me back by curfew my brother won’t mind.”

“Please don’t,” Tsuna pleads. What is she even trying to imply?

“Absolutely not!” Hana slams a fist on the table.

Kyoko now puffs up her cheek, “you never let me do what I want!”

“If you had an ounce of self-preservation in your life I would.”

Clearly, this has something to do with Hana’s side of the world. But Kyoko is feigning ignorance because her main sustenance in life is orchestrated chaos, and she’s absolutely using Tsuna as the unwilling wrench to get her way.

Reborn watches this all from the window.

He doesn’t know what’s more impressive— Hana’s assertion, Kyoko’s crafty nature, or— well, he’ll focus on Tsuna, since he’s the main client. He’d never shown that amount of capability anytime else, and he’d swapped between it and his no-good nature so seamlessly, it was weaved into his personality perfectly.

Much more, no one in class had been even the least bit surprised by that sudden boost in prowess. Impressed, maybe, but not taken aback the same way Reborn was.

Everyone in class knew he could do it. Kyoko even knew how to make use of it.

Tsuna, too, was part of the Namimori abnormality, and no one thought it strange. (Maybe Reborn’s the one that still needs to adapt. This is such a weird position for him.)

Reborn’s very spoiled for choices in Guardian candidates.

At the end of the day it’ll most likely come down to how they interact with Tsuna, but there are many people that could become interesting assets to the Famiglia even without being Guardians.

Of course, there’s Sasagawa Kyoko, first of all. Not Guardian material, but her antics would definitely be something Lal Mirch would adore. CEDEF would crave her in their ranks.

The same could be said for Miura Haru, who, honestly, Reborn’s annoyance for her impressive stalking is starting to turn into admiration. How is she doing this, and how does Reborn immediately sign her up for Varia without making it too obvious he just wants her ten thousand miles away from him ASAP?

Kurokawa Hana is also an interesting choice. The burning territorial instincts of a Cloud roars within her, but her loyalties are too frayed for Tsuna.

If he’s choosing a Cloud, though, there’s nothing that can beat the roaring cumulonimbus up top. Reborn finds Hibari Kyouya a rather fascinating adversary— the face he wears raised expectations, and everything about him is just as advertised, too. But Clouds are fickle and hard to control, and Reborn has a headache imagining that face with that flame coexisting. He hates dealing with them individually, much less in coalition.

Sugaya Sousuke. Clearly Tsuna’s best friend in the classroom, not really remarkable in much except artistic capabilities. He’s a reliable supporter in many situations, and he doesn’t ask too many questions— but he’s more a guy in the chair than anything else. Reborn half-suspects he’s the source of Tsuna’s information on the Vongola.

That’s about it for Reborn’s immediate field of view. Haru’s the oddball in the equation, but if Reborn were to scope out anymore in the classroom—

—Yamamoto Takeshi.

Tsuna’s struck gold with this one.

Yamamoto Takeshi spends the early mornings at either the Kendo Club or the Baseball Club. He’s only a temporary member of the former, but he attends the practices often because he’s maintaining good terms with Mochida Kensuke. There are whispers of Takeshi becoming the Captain after Mochida graduates, but he clearly doesn’t have the drive. He’s much more a baseball guy.

If he’s at neither of those locations, he’s helping his father with morning prep for TakeSushi, the local go-to for Japanese cuisine.

“You’re always so busy, Yamamoto,” Tsuna sighs as they wander back to class after tidying up the supplies for the volleyball game, “don’t you ever take a break?”

And Takeshi’s smile doesn’t fade.

“I’m just trying to live as much of my life to the fullest, as much as I can,” Takeshi says. “I aspire to treasure all the time I have left.”

It’s a solemn thing for a teenager to say.

“I honestly think it’s fine to take it easy sometimes,” Tsuna sighs.

“No,” Reborn interrupts with a sharp kick to Tsuna’s jugular, sending him hacking and hurtling to the ground, “you take things TOO easy! You’re wasting so much time every day just staring into walls. Very unbecoming of a mafia boss.”

“I said I’m not gonna be a mafia bossss!!” Tsuna wails, laying bonelessly on the ground as if Reborn was a child and they were playing godzilla and Tsuna just dearly wanted to be defeated already.

Takeshi has shifted to hold his shinai bag like a kendo sword, facing them both— and he takes pause— Reborn simply stands on Tsuna’s forehead, very disappointed in how Tsuna hasn’t bothered to recover and assume a defensive stance yet.

Tsuna has so much prowess when threatened by his peers, and yet, when Reborn does it, he just goes limp.

He must be treating Reborn like a child. Reborn wants to shoot him dead.

“What the— oh, you’re the kid,” Takeshi says, returning his weapon to hang on his back as his shoulders immediately ease with a laugh. “Nice to see you again!”

“You KNOW him?!” Tsuna jumps up so quickly. Reborn has to hop off.

“Oh? Uh, yeah?” Takeshi chuckles, hand unconsciously resting at the gnarly scar at his neck, “I’ve seen him around, I guess.”

Tsuna gets back up to his feet so quickly it’s a parkour maneuver, and he grabs at Takeshi’s front collar like he’s very, very desperate— he doesn’t notice the way Takeshi tries to back away only for Tsuna to clutch harder—

And then Tsuna hisses in the sincerest tone in the world, “how do I get rid of him?!”

Takeshi bluescreens.

“I’m the worst person to ask,” right out.

“Noooo!”

Well, wasn’t that fascinatingly fearless of Tsuna. Reborn is going to start making him wake up at three in the morning for runs around town from now on.

The first thing Reborn looked out for when he arrived was the worst bits.

To assess the state of a kingdom, go first to the slums. To assess the quality of the talent in a town, first discover the scars they try to hide.

Reborn’s more the kind to believe scars are a sign of weakness to be ashamed of, rather than boasted about and shown off. Unless you’re using it as a show of bravado, they’re pretty much a sign that you’re weak enough to get that close to death to begin with.

(There’s a reason Reborn didn’t get along with Viper at all.)

There are exceptions, though. This town is mostly filled with exceptions.

Tsuna hides the worst of his physical scars, a deep burning passage of what must have been a rather large bullet through his shoulder. But the lichtenberg figures that plagued his upper arms in what clearly are fairly recent lacerations— he doesn’t hide them, because hiding them would only make them stand out more.

He falters up stairs and things jump out of his hands when he isn’t focusing— most of it isn’t just clumsiness at work. He doesn’t wear the school blazer for sleeves, opting for the comfortable sleeveless vest over the button-up and taping down the worst of the shaking. He’s clumsy enough that the surplus of medical supplies aren’t a weird sight on him, and he’s even the class’ go-to for an accessible first-aid kit.

And Tsuna’s among the tamer ones around.

Sasagawa Kyoko keeps her hands bandaged at all times, and it’s easy to see why. Her nails are soft and broken and just barely grown back, all short and stubby and unbecoming of the ‘perfect school madonna’ she is in all other ways. Reborn has never seen any other scars on her, but then again, Sasagawa Kyoko doesn’t let anyone see much of her at all.

“Geez, Onii-chan, you’re always like this,” she whines, snaking up her brother’s arm as he yelps, because he’s sweaty and gross, “it’s like you love spending time with the sandbag more than you do me.”

And Sasagawa Ryohei balks. “Of course not, Kyoko! Never, ever! You’re my extreme first priority, I would never leave you even if the sky were falling!”

Kyoko giggles. “You always exaggerate.”

“I’m extremely serious!”

Brother and sister are intimate and dear, almost too lovely a sight in what Reborn understands of reality. And yet, they’re just that— a perfect pair of siblings that care deeply for each other, two teenagers living alone in a reality where they only have each other. No parents in sight, and no authority to come and question that missing guardianship.

(They’ll be a package deal no matter what, and that may be more a liability than an asset in the long run.)

Reborn will really have to choose wisely.

Sasagawa Ryohei is straightforward, headstrong, and burns brightly. In every Famiglia there’s always a necessity for a simple, straightforward heavy hitter, especially one with as radiant a sense of protection and dedication as this one. He’s earnest to a fault, and he looks out for everyone. He prioritizes Kyoko, of course, but Reborn hasn’t missed the way he keeps an eye out for Takeshi’s limp when he descends stairs, and of course—

—the signboard.

[Disturb at your own risk!]

Hibari Kyouya wakes up, finds it by him, and promptly kicks it into the dirt with magnificently pissed vigour.

Kusakabe Tetsuya, the vice president, simply stares in defeat as Kyouya leaves the area with an angry lift in his march. Tetsuya then picks up the pillow he’s left behind— also something Kyouya didn’t initially start out sleeping with, how is Ryohei getting these? There’s a kitten on it still sleeping soundly, and Tetsuya decides to rest it on his shoulder before following the Disciplinary Committee president on his way.

Ryohei likes to make Kyouya comfortable— as a prank is what everyone hopes, but there’s the terrifying possibility this may be Ryohei’s innocent attempt at genuinely caring for their resident narcoleptic grump— all it’s managed to achieve is compel Kyouya on a warpath to ‘how the hell do you get close to me while I’m sleeping without me noticing, f*cking fight me’ and that’s the daytime routine here.

Speaking of scars, Hibari Kyouya has quite an ensemble himself.

There was a time people thought he wouldn’t wake up again, but years ago he survived being in the hypocenter of an earthquake and made a full recovery. And then, he never let anyone know a single one of his weaknesses ever again. So, Reborn has difficulty finding any loose seams.

He’s barely seventeen and he’s already walking with the gait of a soldier.

(But then again, who in this town didn’t?)

“Haru found Reborn-chan agaiiiiin!!”

Damn it, she caught him. Reborn would rather die than admit it but the girl’s cornered him. He walks with the steps of more than just a hitman with decades of experience, he’s walking with all the breath of an expert shadow, and still, Haru finds him.

“Haru loves your footsteps! They’re small, but they’re powerful, and they’re warm and toasty, like the sun! Haru loves it!”

“Wha— Haru!”

Oh, there’s a possible saving grace. Miura Haru is on an errand with her older brother, Miura Yuji, and he is definitely against the idea of his sister serenading her adoration for an infant in a weird tiny suit today.

(Miura Yuji: unremarkable, quiet, unassuming, an average boy with no achievements or pasts of note. End analysis.)

“Haru, put him down.”

Haru is cradling Reborn like a toy. “No!”

“Let go.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“If you put him down, I’ll get you cake.”

Haru frowns, and deeply, deeply considers this. Finally, she gives in, putting Reborn down like an apprehensive child then lunging for her brother, clinging to his shirt and running golden retriever circles around him.

“Alright, cake! Yuji promised Haru cake, so Haru wants a Mont Blanc! Mont Blanc, Mont Blanc!”

“Okay, okay, settle down! Sit!” he urges, still holding the groceries they went out to pick up, He reaches out a hand and Haru clutches it obediently, promising not to go stray.

Ah, distract the puppy with something else if they don’t want to let go of the first toy. Classic dog manipulating behaviour. Splendid. Haru isn’t human even to her own older brother. Fascinating. What the actual hell?

Yuji glances at Reborn and, to Reborn’s surprise, bows out an apology.

“I’m very sorry about her,” he says. “I hope you find it in yourself to forgive her impulses.”

Reborn glances up, curious. Usually people treat him like a normal infant, cooing and baby-talk and all. Underestimation is the most common reaction, they all think he’s a cosplaying child playing a mafia game.

(Of course, in Namimori, only Tsuna is brave enough to point out how discrepant Reborn’s appearance is to his experience and actions. This is all part of the Namimori code to look and gawk but never take action if it doesn’t involve them.)

Tsuna’s seen Reborn as an annoying threat the second he’d arrived. Then there’s Nana and Yamamoto, who’s always known him anyways, and Kyoko, who treats him just like she treats anyone else.

But Miura Yuji treats him like someone to be respected.

Even though he’s no one at all, and he hardly has the same doglike senses as his sister— he instinctively understands that despite Reborn’s size, he must be someone of strength and note, and he positions himself very scarcely.

Yuji acts entirely humble and amiable, ensuring nothing he does offends.

As if he’s used to facing creatures stronger than him, and coming out alive on wit alone.

He positions very subtly, way too naturally as if he’d done similar plenty of times— keeping his dominant hand free to clutch something in his pocket. And when he turns to leave, he makes sure his body covers Haru from view as they go.

It’s like he’s wary of Reborn attacking. He doesn’t think it will happen, but he can never be too careful.

Ah, there’s not a single normal kid in this place.

Reborn is so distracted by everything around Tsuna, but he hasn’t lost sight of the goal just yet.

“Where have you been, Reborn?” Tsuna groans when Reborn shows up after dinner. “At least tell Mom if you’re not eating with us.”

“Oh? Sorry, Maman.”

“It’s okay, Reborn-kun,” Nana sings, “have you eaten?”

It’s homely. Namimori is so abnormal, that normality blends right in and beocmes part of the hodgepodge. It’s a place any and everything may thrive, and Reborn honestly thinks he’s going to have so much fun here.

Reborn sits down for supper and Tsuna sighs deeply.

“I’ve told you many times, I’m not becoming a mafia boss,” Tsuna says, ignoring the fact his mother is in the room. And there’s a weird way he intones ‘mafia boss’, as if there’s a word that should fit there better, but it just hasn’t crossed Reborn’s mind yet. “Just— you can find so many more capable candidates out there. Who cares about blood?”

“Blood is important, for the Vongola,” Reborn says. “We’ll need to have that lesson soon.”

“Reborn, I don’t care.”

Tsuna’s hand remains on the table, His gaze remains on Reborn.

And Reborn doesn’t lift his head to meet it.

The air had turned so abruptly frigid, Reborn paused, instinctively turning inward to assess the yet unseen threat. Is there a sniper? Is there someone hiding out, about to ambush?

This bloodlust is so palpable, so cutthroat, it’s refined, yet juvenile.

And Reborn quickly realizes that it’s not hiding at all. There is no sniper, no enemy, and it isn’t even Nana, showing her rare anger.

This sharp, baby lion’s blade has been in front of him this whole time.

He finally lifts his head to meet burning amber eyes, and Tsuna taps slowly on the table, one hand folded over his wrist.

Tsuna is staring down at Reborn with all the murderous desire of a trained killer, and his declaration of I am not becoming a mafia boss, and I do not care if my blood matters ringing out deeply through the searing gaze.

Reborn stares back.

And his lips curl into a smile.

Has he been hiding this? Is everything— from the clumsiness in his movements, to the smile on his face, to the meekness in his steps. His kindly nature, his friendships, his crush on the school madonna— were they all lies?

No. They’re all part of him, genuinely, but he’s found a way to use even his chronic anxiety as a mask. His heartbeat is a tool, his chronically shaking hands a perfect shield against expectations. Every bit of him is real, but every bit of him is a step towards making other people underestimate him.

Reborn’s fallen for it too. Tsuna’s just so natural to feel at ease around. And now, Tsuna had even made use of Nana’s presence to lure Reborn into a sense of security. All to drop this bomb on him.

Nothing he does is useless. Everything sets him up for the minute he peels away into the kill, and by then, Reborn’s too far into the game to escape.

(That’s the missing word—)

(Tsuna is not a mafia boss. That word doesn’t fit him, not yet at least.)

(That’s because right now, Sawada Tsunayoshi is one thing that Reborn has spent his life embleming the antithesis to. Reborn is the Sun that stands in the spotlight and throws his name as the Greatest Hitman in the World.)

(Sawada Tsunayoshi is the antithesis of that— someone that walks under the glow of the moonlight. Someone who looks up to that permanent crescent in the sky and lets it guide him to success.)

(An assassin.)

And Reborn laughs. He laughs, loud and sharp and boisterous, and Leon morphs into a gun right as Tsuna backs up, flipping Reborn’s teaspoon right off the desk— but Reborn shoots it out of the way before it can be seized.

“That’s perfect!” Reborn declares.

The smoking bullet hole gouges into the far wall.

“I’ll make you a Mafia Boss. Whether you like it or not,” Reborn says. “Drag you out into the light, and you’re getting on that damn throne.”

Sawada Tsunayoshi had hidden his bloodlust so well, Reborn took far too long to understand exactly why the Special Youth Division Military Designation: Emergency Squad E had to be shoved under so many wraps and raised confusingly up a pedestal with that convoluted name. It was buried like a mummy in a pyramid.

Of course the government would never openly admit this.

How could the f*cking country tell the world they raised a group of teenagers to become professional assassins on that mountain? And then they so naturally, carelessly released them all back into the wild society, just like that? It’s madness!

Reborn’s lucked out.

Reborn’s lucked out so, so much. He gets to turn one of those child assassins into a first-rate Don.

The key difference between hitmen and assassins are the ‘missions’ they’ve set out to do. Hitmen clean up a location, extract information, rinse out a kink in their workings so no obstructions get in the way again. An assassin simply kills with no strings attached.

“My mission is to make you a Leader,” Reborn says.

“I don’t get paid to do this, and I’m not stupid enough to think I can take you in a head-on challenge,” Tsuna says, “would it make a difference if I prove I’d rather kill you than do any of that?”

Reborn grins.

“Then, try.”

Leon returns to being a chameleon on his fedora. Tsuna stands aside, wary, but his shoulders at ease. His hands are in his pockets, and Reborn knows there are hidden weapons in there.

What an impatient child.

“Try. You don’t need to face me head on— you’re an assassin, fight like one. Kill like one. Try your best,” Reborn challenges, returning to his seat as Nana casually hands him new cutlery like nothing’s even happening around her. “But if you become a great Mafia Boss first, then I win.”

Tsuna sighs deeply.

“Sure, I’ll take that bet. When did you say I’d inherit— eighteen? Three years then, that’s the deadline,” he relents. “But if I kill you or your desire to make me a boss before then… you’ll disappear and we’ll pretend nothing ever happened. Deal?”

A single hand lifts for an agreement, and Tsuna takes it.

“Of course. On my name as the Greatest Hitman in the world.”

And so the game begins.

-

-

[EXTRA #1] Chat name: E7 Dinner at the Sawadas?

SAWADA:

My life sucks

SUGAYA:

Obligatory: that’s rough buddy

KARMA:

HASHAHAHAKSLASLaksljasldead

SAWADA:

I hate you Karma

KARMA:

Nice! Double entendre

SAWADA:

I hope Hibari exiles you forever

KARMA:

leGASP

MIMURA:

And here we witness the rare
appearance of angry Tsunaemon-sama

KURAHASHI:

Sawada-kuuuunnnn!!! ❤ (ɔˆз(ˆ⌣ˆc)
Is someone bullying you???
Whut’s wrong? ( : ౦ ‸ ౦ : )
You can call me if you need to talk!

SAWADA:

Karma passed by
Laughed in my face

KURAHASHI:

୧((#Φ益Φ#))୨ KARMA!!!

KARMA:

What was I supposed to do!?
Kusakabe updates me about everything
How do I NOT laugh my ass off

SUGAYA:

Karma has a point

SAWADA:

You’re disowned as bff

SUGAYA:

Devastating

KATAOKA:

??? what? Something happen
In Namimori without us?

SAWADA:

How’s dorm school, Kataoka-san?
Is it better than hell?

KATAOKA:

You’ve seen the light, alright then

MIMURA:

Lmao peace lasted two months ig
Update us commuters pls

SAWADA:

I wish to perish

KURAHASHI:

That rhymes!ヽ(>∀<☆)ノ

SAWADA:

Please bury me beside Korosensei

MIMURA:

Uh?? But we didn’t bury him?
There’s no grave either??

OKANO:

Are you sure, dude?
You’re gonna be thirdwheeling
In Soul Society I hope you know

SUGAYA:

So remember when I posted
The Vongola crest in the 3-E chat
And asked about it?

KURAHASHI:

Yep. Super not subtle
What happens in Nami stays in Nami

MIMURA:

Fuwa was conspiracy theory-ing
The hell out of you
I had to listen to her the whole time

KATAOKA:

You really should keep that
Stuff to this chat.

OKANO:

So I think I can guess, but,
Who’s the lucky bastard?

SAWADA:

I wish I was a lucky -bastard-

KURAHASHI:

What does that mean???

KARMA:

It means that our Lord & Saviour
Tsunaemon-sama is a pureblood!!
°˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°
No illegitimacy to worry about!
Congrats you have no escape.

KURAHASHI:

Wait what? I don’t get it
But Run boy RUN

SAWADA:

Mafia

KATAOKA:

Mafia???
I’m so sorry Sawada

MIMURA:

How do you find this out
EXACTLY two months
After you intensively finished
Training to be an assassin?

OKANO:

Like, deadass?
Our baby fluffy Tsunaemon-sama??
Deadass??

SAWADA:

Please don’t call me a baby anymore
I wish that word meant the same
Thing to me as it did 24 hours ago

SUGAYA:

He gained a tiny hitman stalker

KARMA:

Hear this
He’s the Greatest HITMAN

MIMURA:

Achievement unlocked!
Get taught how to kill by living legends
In the killing industry while staying
The local cinnamon roll (2/?)

SAWADA:

I sure HOPE it’s 2/2
What ELSE is coming??

SUGAYA:

Oh hey, you share the
Achievement with Nagisa+Okuda!
Nice

SAWADA:

I’ve never wanted an
Achievement less

KURAHASHI:

Pretty sure Bitch-sensei also counts
For her four favourite students.
So I’m sorry Sawada it’s 3/3 for you

SAWADA:

I hope all of you know that
I’m sobbing into my pillow

OKANO:

I’m buying lotto tickets
With your birth date.
This is some sign from god

SAWADA:

50/50

OKANO:

60/40 cinnamon roll tax

SAWADA:

30/70 being mean to me tax

OKANO:

Ok. fair

MIMURA:

Would it be the weirdest thing
We’ve seen in Namimori though?

KARMA:

So, funny story,
Kusakabe had no idea that babies
With advanced speech weren’t normal
I don’t even wanna ask

KATAOKA:

I thought he was the sane one
In the Hibari hierarchy?

KARMA:

He is

KATAOKA:

I am no longer accepting answers

KURAHASHI:

Is that why Haru was quarrelling with
Me about if stalking stalkers would
make you a stalker too?

KARMA:

Please tell her never to stop.
She drives the tiny hitman crazy amd
It’s the funniest f*cking thing to witness
At 5am every morning on the dot.

KATAOKA:

There are three concerning
things in that statement, Karma

SAWADA:

Bitch-sensei is going to
Hold this against me forever

KURAHASHI:

Oh! Wasn’t Okuda’s Nee-sama
Part of the Vongola??

SUGAYA:

She is!

KATAOKA:

I suppose you should expect
assassination attempts soon

MIMURA:

Oh how the turntables…

KARMA:

If you see my buddy Grip
Tell him I said hi!

OKANO:

HahahAHAAA I see
No legitimacy problems?
Yes coup d’tat problems!
You can’t catch a break

SAWADA:

I hope Karma laughs
himself nto a seizure

KARMA:

Rest in Peace! Don’t worry
I’ll build your shrine for you <3

SAWADA:

Karma you live in a temple
Isn’t that blasphemous

Chapter 2: Befriending the Transfer Student (Right-hand Man)

Chapter Text

Tsuna regrets his entire life already.

“Why me,” he sobs into the encyclopedia-sized book he’s using as a pillow, “why is this my life? What did I do wrong in my past life to be cursed with this fate?”

The encyclopedia doesn’t literally answer him.

Instead, he glances over to where Reborn is sleeping in his hammock— yeah, Reborn’s sleeping in Tsuna’s room because that’s how much he’s being underestimated. Damn it all.

Tsuna sighs, turning on a nightlight, and opening the book, deciding to make his way through the latter half of it. WIth how thick it is, he’s honestly quietly hoping for a page to tell him what to do when he ever gets scouted to become a Mafia boss.

He sighs.

Class E are in quite a precarious spot when it comes to discussions of the Mafia— they’re simultaneously involved in the underworld, yet not.

None of Tsuna’s former classmates (aside from those that live in Namimori, of course) will come to know about him unless it breaks containment. It should be a while before that happens, since this is, after all, Namimori— Namimori, the town that runs on the unspoken slogan of ‘don’t talk too much’.

He’ll be fine. He won’t be alone, but he won’t have company, either. Everyone has their own lives to get to and their own futures to worry about— Tsuna’s chaotic derailment isn’t any of their business and shouldn’t be.

It’s just something they should laugh about together, rather than be weighed down with worry for. That’s how it should be, and that’s how it’ll stay.

And he’s fine with that. Stepping out on your own and being strong to face the unknown future is part of growing up. And ‘choosing your own path’ is part of the process, too.

(Tsuna’s not going to be a mafia boss.)

(The people that taught him how to kill never wanted this. They didn’t rebuke the talent, but they wanted them all to live proudly, in a job they will truly bask in.)

(And Tsuna genuinely doesn’t think the path of one of the most cruel and bloody mafia syndicates is for him. He’s hardly a ‘boss’ type, he’s not even an Active Assassin, he’s a Support— and most of all, he hated the sight of blood in his hands.)

(Tsuna just wanted strength to protect and to survive.)

(He didn’t want to be the one to call death upon others, or make others do evil work for him. He’d rather do it on his own and shoulder the burden himself.)

Tsuna’s not going to be a mafia boss.

He’ll kill that future with his own hands.

Morning begins rambunctiously, explosions roaring through the building as Tsuna is literally chased out of his room for a lap around Namimori. The homicidal toddler is dressed as Mario, riding a Toad Kart, blaring the Bowser theme on double speakers, and throwing shell-shaped bombs at him.

He can’t f*cking make this up.

By the first junction in his neighbourhood, Haru is already blowing a whistle at him from atop the wall, pointing a red card at him.

Their local guard dog never sleeps, does she?

“Sawada-san! You’re under arrest for speeding violations on a school street, unregistered vehicles, destruction of property as well as unregistered firearm possession, and general public disruption during nocturne hours,” she hollers, following him on the path still perfectly on the wall, “I’m sorry, you’ll have to come down to the station with me and Mister Goto will take your statem—”

“Haru,” Tsuna begins, “In what exact way do I look like I consent to having bombs thrown at me as I run for my life at three AM?”

“Well,” Haru yips as she hops right from one wall past the junction to the next wall, soaring clean over the road, to keep up with Tsuna without so much as a change in breath, “you’re not running full speed yet, and you don’t believe your life is in danger.”

Right.

Haru can determine a lot of information, from forensic level-analyses to psychological hypotheses, with just the sound and rhythm of your footsteps.

Very inconvenient.

“What about him?” Tsuna offers. “You’re not telling me he gets a total pass on whatever laws he’s breaking. You’re not telling me he’s not breaking any laws.”

“Unfortunately,” Haru says, “Reborn-san is above Haru’s pay grade.”

“You literally chased after him the whole day yesterday!”

“That was a hobby! Haru is instructed by Papa to keep work and hobby separate!”

Very convenient.

Tsuna groans deeply. The reasonable tactic here is to turn around and leap toward Reborn. Catch the tiny car off guard, and buy some time as he’s reversing to get more distance and lose him.

Knowing Reborn, though, he probably wouldn’t flinch.

But Tsuna had to try, anyways. It’s pretty scary to think of jumping right into lethal blast range of these explosives (Reborn was taking extra care to make sure these bombs were always just far enough to miss him, while still getting him caught in the aftershocks,) but it’s fine. Chronic baby deer limbs tremble no worse in an earthquake.

“Good morning!”

Tsuna yelps and ducks under a wildly swinging baseball bat, and spins around to see who it was, catching himself on all-fours. His gaze comes around just in time to see Yamamoto Takeshi shift his swing just so and smash the Toad Kart into magnificent pieces, momentum flinging the debris miles into the air in a splendid home run.

It even explodes in the distance like a mighty firework.

Reborn, who had of course ejected in a very timely manner, parachuted down onto Takeshi’s shoulder. The baseball bat is now being used as Takeshi’s crutch as he accepts the presence on his shoulder like it’s a normal occurrence in this everyday world.

“Ciaossu, Yamamoto,” Reborn greets, like Takeshi didn't just attempt to murder him.

He barely even falters when the remaining bomb that detached before being flung off suddenly all exploded at once, earning a startled shriek from Haru who accidentally hopped right off the wall.

Tsuna also makes a startled squawk, though, and his hands move before his head when Haru falls in his direction, both of them toppling over each other into a clumsy heap on the ground.

“Don’t go teasing Tsuna so much,” Takeshi chuckles, “he doesn’t like loud sounds, okay? Neither do Haru, or Hibari, or a lot of people in Namimori.”

“It’s to make him stronger,” Reborn says, petulantly.

And Takeshi huffs, “Oh, is that so? Sorry for interrupting, then.”

“Not forgiven. Continue the lap with him.”

“Alright!”

“Wha—” Tsuna has to balk, getting up with Haru still cringing from the noise, “Reborn, you can’t do that! Yamamoto-kun’s leg is—”

“Still capable of ensuring his survival,” Reborn interrupts. “But if you’re so worried, how about you pick up Haru, get Yamamoto on your back, and start running before Leon’s done loading?”

Tsuna pales.

Leon is taking the form of a gatling gun, and Reborn is loading up very real metal bullets into the magazine and pointing it toward them.

Takeshi laughs, “well, that’s something you certainly don’t see everyday!”

Tsuna heaves up Haru in his arms so quickly she actually stiffens with surprise. And then Tsuna’s barking at Takeshi, “get on! Hurry!”

“Huh? Uh, Sure?” Takeshi’s baffled but very obliging.

Haru’s eyes are twinkling, “Princess Carry!” she exclaims, “Haru is a princess!”

Alright, power to you.

It’s clumsy, with Takeshi being taller than Tsuna, but he’s a good sport, so their bulldozing through the neighbourhood is filled with lots of merry cheering and lots of Tsuna suffering.

“You’re surprisingly strong, Tsuna!” Takeshi beams as Tsuna makes his way up the hill, with his passengers. Reborn’s still hot on their heels. “Ah, incoming, duck left.”

Tsuna grunts as he heaves leftward, trying his best not to jostle Haru too much because dropping her on the stairs is asking for all of them to go painfully rolling. At least she looks like she’s enjoying herself.

“This is exciting!” Haru beams. “Tsuna-san’s legs can go further!”

“Well, yeah,” Tsuna grunts, “I climbed the E-class mountain every day… Namimori shrine is way less height than that… though I’ll admit, I’ve never had to carry two people with me before.”

“It’s training!” Haru’s eyes twinkle.

“The view from here’s cool!” Takeshi says, looking back. “Man, I didn’t think I’d ever willingly come up here again. Haven’t come up here since before— oh, Hibari.”

Tsuna freezes.

Hibari Kyouya casually bats aside a grenade that comes flying at them. It explodes sharply to the right, leaving a char in a tree. The cat on Hibari’s head lifts her head, alarmed by the explosion, but quickly cuzzles back into its little donut sleeping position.

Takeshi beams, “oh, there you are, Yasakani-no Sushimaru!”

The cat purrs.

“You didn’t come back for dinner last night, you shouldn’t do that!”

A whiny, crickety meow.

“Yamamoto, priorities,” Tsuna wheezes.

Reborn also stops his pursuit as Hibari levels them all with a very sleep-deprived glare.

“Crowding, disrupting the peace, and the worst offense of all—” ground out so bitterly, “explosions in my town. You will all be bitten to death.”

Tsuna goes five shades paler. Haru clings to his neck tightly and Takeshi’s hands tighten around Tsuna’s shoulders, shrinking in like some silly attempt to hide.

Kyouya nods.

“Herbivores,” he deems, “you have three seconds to explain yourselves.”

One second each.

To which Haru immediately barks “HARU IS AN OMNIVORE” for some reason, burying her face into Tsuna’s chest.

Tsuna squeaks in the middle of trying to give an explanation as concise as possible, but unfortunately, he is still at heart Dame-Tsuna, and this is why all he managed to say is “KILL! REBORN! ME!”

Takeshi is the last to go, so he does the wise thing and says, “we sincerely apologize.”

Kyouya looks past them— and Tsuna also turns around to realize that Reborn has made himself scarce, utterly vanishing in the three seconds it took for them to prove themselves complete human disasters.

“...well,” Takeshi says, “I guess now is a good time to start running?”

“Hold on tight!” Tsuna calls to Takeshi and Haru, cutting into the forest, “and if I don’t manage to get us all out of here, please get bitten to death with me!”

“Go go Tsuna-san!”

“Woo-hoo!”

Kyouya gives chase very quickly, but he’s surprised when Tsuna kicks off the side of a tree, to the next, and uses the momentum to curl up and slip right through a gap in the branches. He shimmies himself off into the bushes, and easily slides down slightly muddy tracks and heads deeper into Namimori Mountain.

“This is awesome!” Takeshi laughs.

Haru squeals, “unstable footing! Unstable footing!”

But Tsuna is very, very stable. He’s focused. When he signals for Haru to jump, he launches her with all the precision of a gymnastic maneuver, and she responds in kind. He seconds her up to free his arms, loops them all past some trees, and catches her just in time to land heavily in a slide.

Kyouya stares, still on the shrine steps, and sighs deeply.

“Ungrateful herbivore,” he mutters.

He shouldn’t have let Tsuna in the Shrine Mountains last month. He only did it because his younger adopted cousin— who he actually decently tolerates— asked for it because of some government mission or some crap. It’s his greatest regret.

Now Tsuna knows the damn place better than Kyouya, and there’s no chance he can catch Tsuna if he runs into the woods. Small animals always find a way to skitter off faster than predators can get them.

“Heh.”

Kyouya turns around to see Reborn on the steps, already free of all his weapons.

“I knew that brat was underestimating me.”

Tsuna knew exactly where to go to escape from Reborn immediately, and yet, he’d chosen disadvantageous routes anyways. Tsuna had deemed Hibari Kyouya a greater threat than the literal Greatest Hitman in the world and Reborn deeply wonders if Tsuna is actually trying to taunt him.

“Ciaossu,” Reborn turns to Kyouya, who’s still trying to figure out this strange creature, “you’re interesting. Wanna become one of Tsuna’s Guardians?”

[Rule #18 in the Hibari Clan clauses: If some strange person with odd clothing choices comes by asking you to be a ‘Guardian’, refuse.]

“You shall be bitten to death,” Kyouya declares, arming himself.

“Ah, of course,” Reborn says.

They hide out in TakeSushi.

“Oh! It’s an Extremely good morning, Sawada! You had an awesome run, I saw, it was the most extreme thing I’ve ever seen!”

Surprisingly, Ryohei is here, gorging on some daytime sushi despite the shop not being open yet. Tsuna’s honestly surprised that Ryohei isn’t the only customer here. Apparently, TakeSushi still serves meals before it opens?

Tsuna genuinely didn’t know that.

“You made such a damn racket,” Mochida grumbles from the seat at the further end of the counter. Clearly, he was on his way to morning practice. That’s how early it is.

“Ah uhm. Right,” Tsuna turns to Tsuyoshi, who’s putting down a dish before a girl with Butterfly pins holding up her twintails, “I’m really sorry for the noise. Are we allowed to be in here or…?”

Is this place reserved, or something?

“Of course,” Tsuyoshi assures. “You haven’t had breakfast yet, have you? You’re still wearing home clothes. Have a bite, then, I’ll give Nana a call.”

“Thank you so much…”

“I’m home, dad!” Takeshi beams, “I found Yasakani-no-Sushimaru, she’s at Hibari’s place again.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Tsuyoshi says. “Her kids are there, after all.”

“Good morning!” Haru salutes to the restaurant, “Haru is intruding! Namimori has many new steps today, she will be busy and now is leaving. Thank you!”

“Right, right, thanks for your service, Haru.”

“I’ll walk you to the station,” Takeshi follows, “I need to get to morning practice anyways. Mochida-senpai, you coming?”

Right on cue, Mochida gets up, picking up his shinai holster and licking his hands clean of the vinegar rice. He uses the shoulder of the man beside him to get onto his feet, and gives him a curt wave before excusing himself.

“Yep. Thanks for the food, Tsuyoshi-san.”

“Have a safe trip, you three,” Tsuyoshi calls.

“You can sit here with me, Sawada!” Ryohei calls from the counter, beaming, “breakfast is the most important meal of the day!”

“Ah— alright, Sasagawa-senpai.”

No one in the restaurant does more than glance their way curiously before returning to their meals. The butterfly girl at the counter has already moved on from all the noise, deciding to use all her time to study the college-level textbook by her food; and the man Mochida was eating with— who has a lot of scars to go with his head of shock white hair— simply sips his tea in solemn silence.

Tsuna sighs.

This is a good place for a peaceful meal, but he’s not that naive. From today onwards, anyone in any establishment could be an assassin sent for him.

“Don’t be so tense,” Ryohei chuckles, setting down a bowl of miso soup for him. He’d gone to help himself from the stove. “Extremely freaky thing you’ve got attached to you this time. But just eat, yeah?”

Smiling and deliberately ignoring the worrying part of that sentence, Tsuna enjoys the soup as it warms up his stomach and his heart and everything about existing on this horrible Tuesday morning.

No one can harm TakeSushi for the same reasons no one would ever harm Sawada Nana— why would you, when it’s the one place in the world with unconditional warmth, love, and safety? You don’t even know who exactly you’re angering when you harm this store, so why would you risk that?

Tsuna feels rather honoured to be able to share this space.

“Oh!” Ryohei suddenly brings up in the middle of Tsuna’s mackerel, “Hana’s in your class, right?”

Tsuna chokes.

First name basis.

He shouldn’t be surprised, she is Kyoko’s best friend, but Ryohei has never been on first name basis with anyone before, much less the girl in class that calls everyone relatively masculine a mongrel.

“She’s been saying this weird guy keeps bothering her,” he says. “Something about how he keeps asking what she eats? That’s extremely rude.”

Second round of choking ensues.

“That might be Takeshi,” Tsuyoshi says, “I’ll try telling him to stop, but… Hana’s not the man-eating kind of demon, is she?”

Tsuna doesn’t miss the way the other two occupants of the restaurant tense. He’s just a little busy suffering from water down the wrong windpipe at the moment.

“Uh…” Ryohei looks magnificently stumped. “She… is? But she hasn’t eaten any other people ever since she and I, you know.”

Third round of choking.

“Oh sheesh!” the girl with the butterfly pins finally turns around. “Go easy on the kid, Ryohei, you’re killing him!” She gets off the chair and goes for the self-service water, filling one up for Tsuna quickly. “You couldn’t have picked a more misleading way to phrase things!”

“It’s misleading?” Ryohei asks. “But I extremely didn’t say anything! It’s been a problem with people assuming things about her, but Takeshi is lucky! She’s better now! Hana used to have a temper when people asked, like, with Mochida.”

This time the white-haired guy on the other end of the restaurant spits out his tea and slams his cup on the table, “SHE’S the one that did that to Kensuke’s leg?!?”

Defensively, Ryohei claims, “don’t worry, Hana and I started sharing nutrients so she stopped eating other men!”

Tsuna dies instantly.

Tsuna should know the drill by now.

He shouldn’t be surprised they’re getting a transfer student. He really shouldn’t. This is his third transfer student counting last year. He definitely shouldn’t be fazed when this guy is obviously not an average joe. He’s obviously a hitman, but at least he’s probably not going to be artificial intelligence or a human weapon, right?

And Tsuna knows, very well, that despite the colourful ensemble in this classroom, there’s only one head in here that’s worth getting paid to assassinate.

Yeah. Me.

Gokudera Hayato makes… quite an impression. He wouldn’t stand out if he were in any other part of Namimori in a busier season, but in a classroom, he sticks out like a sore thumb. Unfortunately, this is the only school in this town.

His hair is swept aside to make way for tattoos that crawl from the tips of his fingers to further up his skull than can be seen from where Tsuna sits. The scars burned deeply into his skin's a devastated wasteland, filled in with a full sleeve of seasonal to cultural ink etched into every fitted space.

He’s wearing the uniform haphazardly.

Namimori had fairly loose uniform rules and options, but Gokudera Hayato had managed to find a way to go the next mile. He was wearing the button-up like a coat over an unassigned shirt. The multitude of silver or metal accessories and rings were already alarming, especially with all the shine on that belt that certainly isn’t in school colours either.

He had a wrist warmer with a stylized skull upon it, and that surely set the rest of the theme. Even the headset resting around his shoulders— also technically not a thing you should bring to school— had skulls emblazoned around the muffs.

This guy walked right out of Edgelord Academy to find himself in Pony Meadows and he’s making it very, very clear that he hates it here.

Hayato’s eyes find Tsuna’s and Tsuna’s book is up to obscure himself from view very quickly.

It doesn’t stop Hayato from stomping over and hoofing the edge of the table into Tsuna’s gut, though. Tsuna manages a slightly pained wheeze before the boy’s marching off to his new seat.

“What, you know him?”

“...no…”

“Scary! Sawada, you’ve got pushover energy, no wonder you got targeted immediately.”

Bullies aren’t really a thing in Namimori. Everyone just lives and lets live, and there aren’t really popular or unpopular cliques to begin with. School life is an outside farce for most of the students, so they try their best to make school hours a nonchalant experience— unfortunately, outsiders, which include transfer students that don’t usually understand much about them— will likely cause shifts in the formula.

It’s strange enough that they allowed someone to transfer in, to begin with. Namimori hasn’t been very inviting ever since the earthquake.

Tsuna’s in quite a pickle, since he’s clearly the cause of this sudden influx of visitors. A lot of things being kept hidden might break containment, and that’s the last thing anyone wants.

Well, Gokudera Hayato better prove himself to be more than a stereotypical overdesigned punk. And he’d better learn soon to adapt.

Because if he doesn’t, he’s in for a lot of humbling.

Gokudera Hayato has crawled his way up the underworld with bloody fingers and scraped knees, and just as he’d finally found his golden thread—

—it falls apart, just as he’d expected.

“The Vongola is having a new heir very soon,” his source had told him. “One that’s forming independently from the current workings of the Vongola, and one with ten generations of destiny and expectations upon his shoulders. If you want to cut your name from your father once and for all— serving him is your best shot.”

The Greatest Hitman, Reborn, had been the one to give Hayato that information. Of course, he’s going to take it and go for it, because Hayato’s got nothing to lose at this point. He can finally be rid of that damn chain of a family forever. Finally, there’ll be a real reason for them to never contact him again. Finally, they won’t be able to get him anymore— finally, he can go home—

So why?

Why is the soon-to-be Tenth someone with such a meek, flickering soul, whose presence is subdued by his own design, and someone who lets others walk over him? Why such a prideless, unwillful creature?

Hayato needs someone upfront, charismatic and powerful. Something he can latch on and use as a shield, to justify finally discarding the Gokudera name and becoming just Hayato and yet…

…and yet, he gets this. There’s no way anyone will ever buy it.

(He has to start over. Again. He’s so tired.)

“I’ll never accept you as the Tenth,” he grounds out, cornering the boy in a less populated corner of the school’s yard. “But I can’t back out without good reason, they talk enough sh*t about me already. I should at least kill you before I go…”

“Eh?” Sawada Tsunayoshi yelps, clutching his books like a security blanket, shrinking into himself. “Ehmmm… please don’t?”

Hayato rolls his eyes.

Information about Sawada Tsunayoshi is widely sought after right now in the underworld. Public information identifies him as the civilian unwillingly caught up in the Moon Anomaly, and a little digging gets them his apparent military title. But everything else is utterly consumed by coverups.

Hayato can’t figure out the truth of the Creature that Destroyed the Moon, (that’s something mafiosi respectfully stay out of with the determination to bury forever, so) anyone that wasn’t here when it happened had no right to know.

But, he didn’t care about that.

This kid is tiny, meek, cowardly as a squirrel. While his body is decently fit, clearly trained, chapped fingers, scars of battle— but ultimately against the general roster present in Namimori, he’s nothing remarkable.

There are many in this school with above average physiques, innate fire, and utterly hitman-worthy charisma… Sawada Tsunayoshi wouldn’t ever make a shortlist.

It’s as if Tsunayoshi has smushed all of his soul into a tiny ball barely the size of his palm— and never opened his hand since.

Typical bully victim mentality, it’s something even a civilian can instinctively pick out.

(But somehow, Hayato feels uneasy about this kid. He’s seeing him, but at the same time— his soul is indiscernible, and as Hayato confronts him— he can’t help but feel that the tiny little light in front of him is a decoy, and he’s already so far in a trap he’s only alive because of poetic irony.)

So, he does the obvious thing and just loses his temper at the kid.

“Shut up!” Hayato snaps, snagging Tsuna’s collar and shaking it in frustration, “agh, dead. f*cking death of my time, pain in the ass… come on. I’ll make it look like an accident. You just gotta take it.”

“Ehh?!” Tsuna squeaks, “uhm. Is it going to hurt? I’d rather not die… I mean,” he offers, smiling anxiously, “I don’t want to become the boss either, so, it all works out! Unless you’re going to get disowned if I don’t take you in or something…?”

Huh.

Is he trying to empathise?

Hayato doesn’t fall for it, though. “Damn, I f*cking wish the bastard would disown me!” he snarls, “you were my one damn ticket out of there and look what a f*cking disappointment you are! Now the only choice I have is to cause such a huge scandal he’ll have to disown me anyways.”

“Ehhhhh, why’s your family so messed up?!”

(Only way that could go worse is if they do the exact opposite and chase him down to kill him, but Hayato won’t think about that right now.)

Hayato groans loudly in frustration, shoving Tsuna back onto the ground, turning around to muss up his hair and decide his next move. Bullying what’s pretty much a civilian doesn’t sit right with him, anyways…

First, a cigarette.

“Look, kid, how about I just make a mess and you just pretend to be traumatized by me the rest of your life?” he decides, turning around, “it’ll give me an opening to run o—”

He freezes mid-turn.

“Oh, do you need a light?”

Tsuna’s hand is there with a lit lighter up to his face.

And Tsuna has already straightened out his creased clothing, picked his books back up, and taken two steps forward to reach up.

His voice is even.

Not a hint of shakiness.

And worst of all, Hayato realizes, that’s my lighter.

“Smoking’s not allowed on school grounds, so be careful, Hibari-san might show up soon,” Tsuna chuckles, nonchalantly. “Uhm, and, yeah, I think that plan’s fine. I’m like this, so I guess the mafia world will definitely buy the excuse of me being so terrified of you I pissed my pants on the first meeting and ran with my tails between my legs.”

Hayato retrieves his lighter but Tsuna doesn’t even take offense to the way-too-harried snatch. He just lets Hayato take it.

That one second of contact is enough.

Tsuna’s hands are scarily calloused. The skin on Hayato’s hands had long burned off, but he could still feel the wiry bumps on Tsuna’s fingers, the firm way they held themselves up.

That’s not a civilian’s hands.

“Ah, would Reborn be okay with it, though?” Tsuna asks. “I mean, you know he’s watching, right?”

Hayato freezes.

A spin around and no, he doesn’t know.

Reborn’s presence is hidden so thoroughly, and Hayato isn’t surprised by that— he’s the Greatest Hitman in the World, of course he has a way to hide so thoroughly, even someone as sensitive to souls as Hayato would find difficulty noticing him.

Tsuna turns toward the tree beside them, “I mean, you did say compatibility is important with Guardians and Famiglia. Clearly Gokudera-kun already hates me, and you know I’m not very confrontational. Won’t you let Gokudera-kun peacefully go home, Reborn?”

Hayato’s being underestimated.

And,

This kid is bad news.

Bad, bad, bad f*cking news.

And all of Hayato’s very soul screams out the one reasonable thing to do in a situation he’s very clearly at a disadvantage in—

—fight.

He throws down those dynamite so quickly, leaping back.

(This guy is dangerous— and as instincts in the underworld are always so important— the second you feel yourself in danger, you better f*cking be ready to survive with your dying will.)

Sawada Tsunayoshi isn't a meek, harmless squirrel.

He’s got fangs and claws, and Hayato is jerking back with all his survival instincts because what the f*ck, what the f*ck, what the f*ck.

Honestly Tsuna is freaking the f*ck out too.

Even on the mountain, explosives were always done under controlled conditions. They were too loud and arbitrary and thus unsuitable for frequent or subtle assassination, and thus they were always used under supervision by the teachers, and usually as a one-and-cut sort of last resort measure.

Tsuna’s never had to deal with multiple dynamites coming at him as if they were throwing weapons instead of traps, all designed and aimed to harm rather than instantly kill. It’s as if Hayato wanted to drag this fight out, to intimidate Tsuna, to drive him into a corner— rather than actually go for the final hit.

He doesn’t have the resolve nor the intention to kill.

What a shame.

Honestly this is a surprise. With how eager Reborn is to kill Tsuna— Tsuna would have thought all the mafiosi coming at him would be just the same.

…maybe there was a point to Reborn chasing after him with ‘firecrackers’ this morning.

“W- wait!” he panics, “you really can’t do that here! Hibari-san really hates loud explosive noises!” Tsuna squawks as something destroys the wall beside him and the burning sensation crawls up the arm he’d used to cover his face with—-

—oh, that was close.

“Come on, Dame-Tsuna,” says Reborn, affectionately, from his spot on the magically unharmed window. “Dodge with your dying will.”

“If I die, so does your job and all your credibility!”

“Absolutely not. You’re not that important yet,” Reborn says. “Maybe if you became the boss you’d damage my reputation just a tiny bit, but fat chance right now.”

“REBORN.”

Can he disarm him? Not when he’s in rapid-fire mode— how is Hayato so fearless, anyways? He’s not even trying to create any distance as he throws, instead, he’s closing in. No fear of misfires, misjudging distances, nothing, and he’s definitely getting slightly singed too but he’s not even flinching.

(Oh, right. That’s why Hayato has headphones. It’s a miracle this boy’s not deaf yet.)

It’s rather wild how he’s lighting his dynamite with that cigarette, though it’s clearly a movement that’s slowing him down. It’d make more sense for him to light them with the lighter— but then again, the time between each ignition might be the time he uses to decide exactly where to throw his dynamite in a way that won’t hurt him.

At least, with the mid-ranged battle style he has, he’s adjusted the firepower of his dynamite to match.

That means Tsuna just needs to gain an equal amount of distance that Hayato has to his own attacks, and he’ll come out of this alright. Just keep calm, take careful strides, be aware of his surroundings, and—

—Tsuna leaps up to the tree, hooking a knee over a branch and swinging down when Hayato aims for the treeline immediately. He drops into a roll, and closes the distance—

—snatching up Hayato by the wrist holding the dynamite, pulling it forward and holding it past his back. Then in the same movement he swings out to kick away the rest in Hayato’s other hand.

There.

The primary weakness of mid-ranged and long-ranged weapons is that they can do nothing once the enemy gets too close. That’s why assassins are always trained in more than one expertise, so they have a backup plan.

Tsuna’s keeping an eye out, but Hayato doesn’t seem to have any weapons except bombs. He’s a one-trick pony.

(He has no second blade.)

“Uhm… well,” Tsuna chuckles, “I think we should stop now?”

Hayato looks mildly surprised, but it’s not flustered. He actually takes another drag of his cigarette and— catching even Tsuna off guard, he blows it all right in his face.

Tsuna flinches— and realizes his mistake.

The dynamite in their hands— it’s been lit. Even though Tsuna was so sure he’d taken it away before the fuse touched the cigarette.

Tsuna lets go, coughing, and jumps back, but Hayato makes no move to do a thing. Doesn’t even attempt to throw it.

He simply stands there, holding up the dynamite as the fuse burns out, staring Tsuna straight in the eye.

Because they both know it’s too late to run from it now.

“Oh, nice. You shrugged off your vest last second and used it to protect your face,” Reborn says, when everything stops ringing and the air’s slightly cleared of smoke. “Your instincts and reflexes are good, but you’ve got a ways to go when it comes to experience if you fell for a trick like that, Tsuna.”

Tsuna coughs, rolling himself up into a sprinter’s start, just in case he needs to defend again— but he doesn't.

Hayato’s on the ground, and he’s staring at the burns on his hand— the one that was holding the dynamite when it blew up— thank f*cking goodness it wasn’t a fully powered dynamite, because at least his hand is still in one piece— and he sighs, like he’s disappointed.

“That didn’t get you either?” Hayato groans, “I can’t tell if you want to fight or not.”

And then, his hand— the hand that bled so red and burned, the flesh that gouged through the whites of bones— casually reached for a new cigarette, comfortably lighting it before going toward more dynamite.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Tsuna genuinely didn’t mean to sound so angry. Reborn had ducked away, but he’s still there, and Tsuna really hated the guy right now.

Hayato raises a brow. “You don’t want to continue?”

Tsuna’s fists tighten. “You just—” he’s so baffled. Even the assassins of the past weren’t like this— “you just blew yourself up! What do you mean, do I want to continue, just look at yourself!”

Tsuna’s vest is shredded and his clothes are singed.

Hayato is heavily injured.

And his gaze furrows.

“What, are you pitying me?” he scoffs in disbelief, “what a pathetic attitude toward someone that just tried to kill you...”

It’s not that Hayato wasn’t afraid of getting hurt. It wasn’t that he was so skillful, he was guaranteed to never get hurt by his own weapons. It’s that he didn’t care even if he did.

“I hate people like you the most,” Hayato snarls. “Why are you feeling sorry for your own assassin? You’re so confident in yourself that you’ve got pity to spare? Don’t f*cking look down on me!”

Tsuna balks.

Hayato’s eyes are fueled with visceral hurt. A hurt and frustration for being looked-down upon for your efforts. An apathy borne from everything you do never being enough.

(It’s a feeling Tsuna is intimately acquainted with.)

“That’s not what I’m—”

“I don’t want to hear it!”

The next cigarette is lit.

Tsuna’s fist closes over a fistful of soil and he chucks it forward. Hayato jerks back, pulling out handfuls of dynamite— but Tsuna gets right in front of him in an instant.

It’s instinctive, for Hayato to clutch his dynamite tighter, so it doesn’t get taken.

Tsuna doesn’t go for them.

Instead, gentle fingers caresses Hayato’s chin, trailing tenderly across his cheek—

“Wha—?!”

—Hayato turns around to see Tsuna’s behind him now, his packet of cigarettes and his lighter salvaged from his pockets. Tsuna extinguishes the cigarette by the tree and inspects the lighter with a sigh.

“Smoking is bad for you,” he says.

Hayato belatedly notices the sweet taste in his mouth.

He spits it out immediately, catching it by the end and— holy sh*t. He didn’t hear a wrapper, so how?

“At least lollipops won’t get you in trouble with Hibari?” Tsuna offers weakly, turning back around to face Hayato. “Okay, I took your lighter, so no more explosions for today. Hibari really doesn’t like them, okay?”

Hayato is baffled.

What in the actual f*ck.

The brat was acting like a harmless kitten this whole time, and this is what’s hiding underneath that facade. Hayato couldn’t even react.

“So, you know,” Tsuna begins once more, and though his voice is calm, his tone is laced with something icy. “You seem to be very confident and fearless, but you’re lacking something vital when it comes to killing.”

Wha—

—he’s lecturing Hayato? Now?

Hayato wants to protest but he freezes.

Tsuna’s eyes gleam a sharp amber, and though the smile is on his face, there’s a clear anger in them. A clear note of disapproval.

(And deep, piercing bloodlust that makes Hayato’s blood run so frigid he can’t move.)

(Ah, he remembers this fear. He remembers this fear as five eyes and a million fangs breathing down his neck in the throes of madness and he can’t breathe—)

“If your assassination attempt puts your own body at risk, then you’re doing it all wrong,” Tsuna says.

Hayato’s anger boils over, exploding forward in a spark of fear so seizing he shouts.

“Shut the f*ck up! I’m not weak, of course I know how much of my own damn bombs I can take!” he raises his voice, “don’t you dare look down on me, I know exactly what I’m doing! I’m fine even without your fake pity!”

“Is that why you’re covered in scars?”

Hayato’s fist tightens.

“You’re covered in burns all over. And you have so many tattoos. Clearly, you put them on to hide those scars,” Tsuna says. “Are you ashamed of them? Because they proved you were once weak and now you’re trying to wear them like emblems of honour? Everything about you is exactly the same— flashy bravado chaotically shoveled over a composure that’s full of holes.”

That’s it.

He’s had enough of people pretending they understand him.

(He’s had enough of being looked down on.)

“An assassin that fails to prioritize his own well-being doesn’t have the right to call himself an assassin,” Tsuna says. “Until you understand that, you don’t have the right to kill me.”

Huh?

The right to kill him?

It’s not something he’s ever thought of before.

Hayato falls silent as Tsuna takes his cigarettes toward a tree and calls for Reborn, before entrusting it to the infant for safekeeping.

“Of course I can’t keep it on me! Throw it away,” Tsuna says, a whine in his voice not unlike the slightly whiny, meek tone he’d been using before. “Hurry up, Reborn, Hibari-san’s coming soon, I don’t know what’s holding him up!”

Hayato’s fist clenches beside him.

Maybe. Maybe this isn’t the intimidating, charismatic figure Hayato expected when he was told to hide here… but maybe, he can perform just as well.

Maybe this incoming Tenth boss is someone he can place his bets on.

Maybe.

(No, not maybe.)

(He has to be.)

(Because otherwise, Hayato’s at the end of his ropes.)

“What the hell are you?” when Hayato asks that, Tsuna turns around with a squeak, shoulders tightening up once more like a weak animal.

“Well… even if you ask me that… I wouldn’t really know what to tell you. People don’t usually ask that question and expect answers in Namimori.”

Hayato frowns.

He’s heard that from Reborn, but he didn’t quite understand.

This town is complicated, and he’s far from understanding it. Reborn insists that not understanding is quite the motto here.

“Now that you’ve lost,” Reborn says, cheekily peeking out of the branches, “that means your life now belongs to him, Gokudera.”

“HUH?” Tsuna squawks.

But Hayato shrugs, “that’s how it goes, but I haven’t lost yet.”

Tsuna whines loudly, “no way!”

“I’ve been told to serve the Tenth generation boss, so I can’t refuse without a good reason,” Hayato says. “Either you let me kill you, or I serve you. I’m not too sure of either of those just yet.”

Tsuna makes a disgruntled expression.

“Is nothing I do going to change your mind?” Tsuna says, deeply miserable. “I don’t even want to be the boss. If you’re stuck here anyways, can’t we just all get along? I don’t want to be served, and you don’t want to serve me, doesn’t that just work out?”

Hayato rolls his eyes. “I’m not here to grow complacent. Unlike you, I have a place to secure in the underworld. I have to fight for my place, it’s not just f*cking handed to me.”

“But you don’t like the underworld either, right? You fight like the kind of guy that’s here against your will.”

“Don’t f*cking profile me, you don’t know me!”

“But I’m not wrong…”

Neither of them want to be here. But the world doesn’t work in a way where they can just pretend nothing happened.

“Ah— that’s right!” Tsuna brightens up, “I know now. How about we do it like this…”

He places a hand at his chest.

And his eyes, a gleaming, rich orange in the daylight, burn with an authority and bloodlust that no civilian should ever have. It’s a honed, deeply ingrained instinct that just sends shivers down Hayato’s spine.

Not in a bad way.

“You can try to kill me just once every day,” Tsuna says. “I’ll accept your challenge anytime, but let’s limit it to once a day, so we don’t cause too much trouble for the town. But it’ll keep you just busy enough to make sense, right?”

Hayato’s brow raises.

Is a deal being made right now?

“So here’s the catch:” Tsuna says, “if you succeed in landing a hit on me, you can go all out. I’ll play along your big plan to make a mess of my reputation, so you can leave victoriously to the rest of your mafia business, with new notoriety to kickstart your path upward. You’re fine with that, right, Reborn?”

Tsuna looks toward the infant as he says this.

That’s fair. It would be like honour duels, and no mafia would dishonour an agreement like this one.

It works out for Hayato, too. He can buy as much time as he wants living here, he has an excuse for his father if anyone dares to ask what he’s doing— and most of all, he can leave whenever he wants.

“And what if I don’t land a hit on you?” Hayato asks.

There’s got to be a catch. No one acts without reason. Tsuna may be a pushover outwardly, but he must want something. If it’s something like asking to be his servant just as Reborn wants, then there’s no way he’s playing into those hands—

“But if you don’t land a hit on me, then, for the rest of the day,” Tsuna extends a hand, “will you just be my friend?”

It’s as if a storm brewing in his mind suddenly breaks apart, clearing so furiously he has to squint in surprise when the sunlight hits him.

He couldn’t believe the sky was blue, he couldn’t believe the air could taste so light.

“...what?”

Hayato can’t believe his ears.

“Ah, and, since I won today, I guess the deal starts now,” Tsuna says, hands still extended. “I’m Sawada Tsunayoshi. It’s nice to meet you, I hope we get along.”

Like preschoolers in a playground.

Hayato doesn’t understand how to interact with such a meek creature. So gentle and tame, and yet, it’s not as if he had no claws.

Tsuna keeps his claws sheathed and chooses not to use them. Because he’s a father lion with a fondness for anyone seeking solace, and he wishes to devour none of them even if they actively antagonize him.

Hayato doesn’t understand any of this.

But he understands that this is it.

This is a boss he has to work under, because this is a boss that will inevitably take the entire underworld by storm. And Hayato would be hard-pressed to be presented with as amazing an opportunity like this ever again.

He has to take it. He has to take this chance and get an in. This is the salvation he’s been praying for, for so long.

Tsuna is eccentric, incomprehensible, and most of all—

Hayato can’t f*cking win against this guy.

He’s so easy to underestimate, and yet, Hayato can’t see any openings. This isn’t just a good gamble— this is the shooting star of the century, a winning lottery ticket covered in mud, falling right into his lap. He finds it so difficult to truly swear fealty to this boss but he can work that out later— he would be f*cking stupid to turn this away.

“I’m Gokudera Hayato.”

He takes Tsuna’s hands in both of his own.

“Looking forward to the next year together, Sawada Tsunayoshi.”

“Since I'm your subordinate for today, I’ll refer to you with respect. Just for today,” Hayato says. “Please take care of me today, Tenth.”

“What? No! Absolutely not, you’re not a subordinate, you’re a friend!” Tsuna says, “what friend calls me Tenth?! Call me by name! You agreed to be my friend, right??”

“...well,” Hayato grimaces, “uhhh.”

“Oh, don’t be like that, Tsuna,” Reborn says, “Gokudera’s the kind that will get attached if he calls someone by name. He doesn’t want to admit defeat yet, you know?”

“SHUT UP, REBORN,” Hayato howls. “Dammit! Tsunayoshi, do not believe his nonsense, he specializes in playing mind games!”

“Ah— okay,” Tsuna’s honestly very taken aback by that. Nevermind that Hayato is very right, especially because he somehow didn’t even realize he was falling right into Reborn’s taunt in the process of warning Tsuna against it.

Hayato marches off with a vigour back to class, and Tsuna ends up feeling just a little victorious and very, very content with himself.

He made a friend! That’s awesome.

“But why straight to first name?” Tsuna wonders.

“Gokudera’s also not had a friend in a long time, I believe,” Reborn says. “Before he returned to the world of mafia, he was in a school in Vegas. First names are the norm there.”

Well.

That’s fascinating information.

“Meanwhile, most of us have never been out of Japan…” Tsuna sighs, “Gokudera’s really out of place in Namimori, huh?”

Up on the roofs, Hibari Kyouya clenches the side of the fence, scowling down at the scene under him. He was just about to leap down when—

“Ah, found you!”

Sasagawa Ryohei slams the door to the roof area open.

“Hibari! We know you always run outdoors when you hear loud booms, but the roof is extremely dangerous!”

“Go away before I bite you to death.”

Ryohei huffs. “You’re always up here when there are sounds! It’s like you’re expecting an extreme air raid with how you’re looking around like that.”

He doesn’t miss the way Kyouya’s hands clench over his tonfa.

“I’ve been reading!” Ryohei says, like anyone even asked. “Being spooked by fireworks, hating planes and helis, I think I’ve extremely figured out what’s up with you, it was in this medical book I read. And I’ve come to the very extreme conclusion that the kittens were not enough! YOU NEED THERAPY.”

“Don’t meddle.”

“I’m not meddling, I’m just extremely CONCERNED!”

Kyouya levels him with a glare that clearly contemplates a form of murder, but Ryohei doesn’t even notice.

He did think it was weird when Ryohei barged into the shrine half a year ago with a box of kittens, declaring that TakeSushi’s mascot had a litter they couldn’t handle. What this guy is thinking, really, no one ever knows.

“Don’t read things that don’t suit you.”

He should just focus on boxing or whatever. Why is he dabbling in the most educational-intensive labour of pretending he knows anything about healthcare? He’s rock bottom in grades and detention records.

“I’m extremely trying my best!” Ryohei says, “I need to figure out how to help Kyoko one day too, so I thought I’d start with you.”

“Just leave, do you want to be bitten to death?”

“But then again, it’s extremely hard to find anything about this Borderland syndrome you have. Maybe I’m just dumb at Googling, but everyone keeps thinking it’s not real, which is weird, because if it’s not real, why do you have it?”

“Alright,” Kyouya relents, “come at me, you’re dying right now.”

And Ryohei punches the air enthusiastically, “EXTREME DUELLING TIME, YEAH!”

At least he’s obnoxiously loud enough to be a good distraction.

“Congrats on your first Famiglia member, Tsuna!” Reborn says, almost too happily.

“He’s my friend, Reborn,” Tsuna responds, sourly. “Please do not turn him into something else.”

“Now we just need to get Yamamoto and you’ll have your left and right hands secured.”

“You’re not listening to me!”

“The first generation of the Vongola also began with a man and his best friend,” Reborn says, a smug grin on his face, “so, you’re only talking yourself into a corner.”

Tsuna rolls his eyes.

“The beginnings of a mafia syndicate should hardly be summed up as ‘two friends nonchalantly going about their everyday lives’,” he says.

“And you would be right,” Reborn settles on Tsuna’s head, and he’s very pleased by how people only glance over, express fascination, and proceed to ask absolutely no questions about an infant on top of Dame-Tsuna’s head in the hallways at lunchtime, “the Vongola began as vigilantes. They were friends that gathered to become a force to help the vulnerable in the war-prone era they lived in.”

Tsuna’s brows furrow.

“Then what happened to it?”

Reborn hums.

“I don’t know. What happened to Namimori?”

Tsuna falls silent.

Yeah. Of course, the answer was simple: life. Life happened to it, chaos occurred toward it, and then it was never the same again. People adapted and moved on.

It’s just how it is now.

“You know, I think you can make Vongola change again,” Reborn says. “I’m looking forward to it. To see the Vongola that comes under your command. You’ll definitely be interesting, and I think Gokudera sensed that too. You’ll bring a change to the underworld, a change that everyone’s been looking forward to a very long time.”

Tsuna scoffs.

“I don’t intend to become a Mafia Boss, nice try.”

There’s another snicker, but Tsuna decides he doesn’t want to hear the rest.

“That’s the funny thing, Dame-Tsuna. The First didn’t intend to become a Mafia Boss, either.”

-

-

[EXTRA #2] TakeSushi at the Break of Dawn.

“I’ll be intruding, Tsuyoshi-dono.”

“Coming in.”

Tsuyoshi smiles, “welcome, Aoi, Sanemi. The usual?”

Two affirmatives come in response, and despite coming in together, they split off in two directions, Aoi choosing to sit before Tsuyoshi while Sanemi took the far corner of the counter.

“Kensuke’s coming too,” Sanemi murmurs.

“Got it.”

And in comfortable silence they settle, the sound of crickets and the flipping of a textbook between them. Tsuyoshi’s knife clods rhythmically upon the chopping board, and the sound of the oil is frigid in the morning air. There’s the worrying sounds of something rapidly exploding in a chain in the distance, but this is Namimori. Bombs are unusual, but something must have happened. And unless it comes any closer, it’s not any of their problem.

—at least, until steps are heard coming from upstairs, and Takeshi stumbles into the restaurant with his shinai, clutching the railing of the stairs instead of using his crutch.

“Oh! Morning,” he beams, and there’s just no way anyone could not smile back at him. “Dad, I’m heading out. I’ll come back for breakfast.”

Tsuyoshi gives him a skeptical raised brow. “You sure?”

They all can guess what Takeshi’s interested in at this early hour— the bombs. People in Namimori tend to have to figure things out themselves, so the most anyone knows is that the Sawada kid is involved again. He’s in a dangerous spot, especially after making live television last year, so for the more secretive ones of Namimori, they’ve all deigned to stay away.

“Hey, we said no morning practice until at least another month,” Aoi frowns at him, reaching up to tidy up a strand of bedhead. “I don’t care if you’ve got Hashira-level recuperation, even Kensuke took half a year off when he lost his leg. And don’t think your neck’s any better.”

Takeshi chuckles, a hand reaching up to self-consciously obscure the scar on his neck. “I know, I know. Only to watch.”

Sanemi scowls at the sight. “If you’re going to get involved, don’t regret it. You’ve got a lot of years if we’re thinking positively, but don’t waste them.”

And Takeshi’s smile eases a little sadly at that.

“I know,” he says.

As he stumbles his way to the front door, the three watch him go.

“But when that kid is around, things are always fun,” Takeshi says. “I can’t miss out, you know? He always knows where the best places are to play!”

And he leaves, on a jubilant note.

“Ah, I'll figure out where Sushimaru went too! I’m off!”

And comes three responses of “have a safe trip” behind him.

Tsuyoshi sighs, “he can’t really be helped, huh? A total nutcase, that son of mine… even though no one will hold it against him if he never holds a sword again…”

“He’s just like Kensuke, but worse,” Sanemi scoffs. “At least Kensuke wants to come on a trip around the world with me after he graduates. Takeshi’s hopeless.”

Aoi chuckles, “but he never changes, huh? That’s always refreshing!”

Many things have changed for the Demon Slayers after the defeat of Kibutsuji Muzan. Most of them are positives, of course— peaceful, quiet nights, safety— but not all of them adapt well. There’s just no way all of them could meld back into civilisation bearing what they did, missing so many friends and pieces.

And of the few that still had the mark burning somewhere on their bodies, it’s Sanemi that’s reaching his deadline the soonest.

He’s already decided what he wants to do with the time he has left.

Takeshi seems to still be wavering and teetering on the edge of fun, but that’s much more his style, so it’s fine.

“But what’s with Bonri, anyways?” Aoi says, “he just showed up dressed all modern with a tailored suit and everything! Did he think we wouldn’t notice?”

“Well…” Tsuyoshi had to hold back a snort, “he’s always been like that, even in my day.”

And Sanemi chokes, “how long has that infant been around?!”

“Don’t question it,” Aoi prays to her soul, hands kneading into her face, “don’t, please, Shinazugawa-san, you know better than to ask about the weirdest Kakushi in the force. Oyakata-sama took the secret to his grave and it’s infuriating to get answers from the source. Trust me, we’ve tried. We do not speak of it.”

“What?” Sanemi snaps, a show of his old temper bubbling up once more, “now you’re making me curious!”

The door abruptly opens.

Mochida Kensuke walks in on all of that, and while the two sober up instantly in embarrassment, he glances between the two of them with all the confusion of the century.

Tsuyoshi smiles at him like nothing happened. “Welcome, Kensuke, the usual?”

Sanemi and Aoi have retreated to their seats and refuse to look at each other.

“How did I not know they were close?” Kensuke asks.

“We’re not!” in absolute unity.

“Oh, Kensuke, you didn’t know?” Tsuyoshi sets down the teacup beside Sanemi’s seat, “these two came from the same Final Selection Generation.”

“What??”

“TSUYOSHI-SAN, SHH!!”

Things have changed so drastically, they now chatter and delay through the breaking dawn. None of them are in any urgency to leave. They laugh and quarrel about nonsensical things, and they reminisce about the past, not in sadness or grief, but with fondness and nostalgia.

They’re no longer demon slayers, but still, they breathe for the same hope.

Chapter 3: Unexpected Coalitions (Babies, Big Brothers, and More)

Chapter Text

As it turns out, Namimori’s tendency to not ask questions toward each other is borne of apathy, not empathy. They’re not entirely cold toward each other, but they wouldn’t go out on a limb to help, either.

That’s why Hayato could mess around all he wanted, and Kyouya only took action when his matter with Tsuna was clearly dealt with. If he had caused Tsuna any genuine harm that day, not even Kyouya would have done a thing until it was over.

Because it just wasn’t their business.

Reborn didn’t know if he hated this, or liked it because it was certainly convenient for his work.

Reborn tests the waters.

“Reborn! What’s with this list?” Tsuna slams it down on the living room table. “You can’t just make a hitlist of our students, that’s crazy!”

“It’s not a hitlist, though, it might become one in the future,” Reborn says. “That’s a list of candidates to be recruited into your Famiglia.”

Not yet the Guardian candidates list, because he’ll need to narrow it down further.

“Don’t go dragging all these people into the mafia!” Tsuna groans, “Gokudera-kun is one thing, but Haru is literally a licensed member of the police force!”

“And you’re a licensed member of the military, what’s your point?” Reborn says, petulantly. “It’s not as if she’d be the first puppy of her kind to be involved in the mafia, so what’s the big deal?”

“Have you not considered she is living in such an out-of-the-way town like Namimori for a reason? Like, you know, not needing to be involved in as many dangerous cases?”

“You don’t buy a hunting dog to keep her indoors. We’re taking off the leash.”

“You’re trampling all over the very fine line of dehumanization there!”

“Funny you say that, because her species only got human rights like, a year ago.”

“What?”

“A few of them are still imprisoned, you know. They were deemed too feral for society.”

“What?!”

“That aside. Do you have any other complaints?” Reborn diverts the topic. “I even graciously left Kyoko out of the list and you’re too picky to appreciate that.”

“Don’t you dare!”

Tsuna groans longsufferingly, looking at the list. Not only was it full of absolutely terrifying names like HIbari Kyouya, he just couldn’t bear the idea of any of them being approached by Reborn and coerced into this nonsense. He’ll be ten feet under by Monday.

“Why Haru’s older brother?”

“He’s got potential if we train him a bit— that’s the kind of talent we’re looking for the most,” Reborn says. “You’ll be surprised how difficult it is to find simple, earnest workers with a good sense of responsibility like him around. Of course, prodigies like Yamamoto are priority, though.”

Tsuna purses his lips at that.

“Alright, I understand Hibari-san on this list,” he admits, “you do not want Chief Karma on here. He’s rarely in the city at all, so how the hell do you know him?”

“It’s not every day you notice the local commander has a younger cousin that can go toe-to-toe with him but is three times less morally aligned.”

“Oh you’d like that morally unaligned part of him won’t you…” Tsuna sighs, “but I’m gonna warn you, you definitely shouldn’t think Hibari-san is the more rational one. One of them is actually making his way up to become a kinda-upstanding member of society, and it’s not the one with black hair.”

“Hah. I’ll see when that changes.”

Tsuna already wants to perish. He’d take Kusakabe over any of those two any day. “Leave Karma alone, he has no intentions of staying in Namimori more than necessary. He doesn’t even go to Nami High.”

“Well, then he’s a perfect Cloud isn’t he?”

“Wha—” Tsuna gives up and switches gears. “Can’t you at least take Mochida-senpai and Yamamoto off the list? I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with them, honestly.”

“Because he’s perfect as a candidate,” Reborn says, his tone light. “You underestimate them both because of their disabilities, but they’ll be very capable in the underworld.”

“Of course I’m worried about their legs,” Tsuna groans. “But it’s also because Mochida-senpai wants to graduate and leave town once and for all. Everyone knows that. If you drag him into this business, he’ll be stuck again. Don’t do that to him.”

For some, Namimori is the only place they have, because they can’t afford to run anywhere else.

They can’t live alone outside for one reason or another, and Namimori is a haven for people who just need to hide. So, Mochida is waiting, desperately, for the day he turns eighteen so he can move out. As a legal adult, he’ll be able to live outside this town without anyone questioning his origins.

Tsuna is one such person, too.

The second he steps out of Namimori, he knows, there will be eyes. Eyes that his former classmates are enduring but he’s hiding here from them all.

Eyes of false pity, of attention, of judgement— Namimori might not be the best place, but it’s at least free of people asking if he truly was manipulated by an alien and brainwashed to adore and then kill him.

Mochida and Yamamoto are not like Tsuna.

Once they overcome their educational obligations— they’re truly free. They no longer have to be tied down by their connections— they can truly go out into the world and try to discover themselves again.

“You have a point, but Yamamoto was always meant for a world like this,” Reborn says. “His love for baseball gets in the way, but he’s always meant to juggle the importance like this. It’s nothing new to him, and he’ll probably have fun with us, too.”

“Have f—” Tsuna balks, “I can’t believe I’m saying this to you, but being mafia isn’t fun!”

“Okay then, I’ll take Sugay—”

“HANDS OFF SUGAYA!”

Being mafia isn’t all fun and games, and everyone should know that. Of course, Yamamoto Takeshi does, too. He just doesn’t care.

“Oh, a Family initiation test for your Mafia game, Tsuna?” he grins. “Sure! Count me in!”

And despite Tsuna’s protests of “it’s not a game!” Takeshi aces it. With Flying colours.

It’s at Hayato’s behest, because “I can’t acknowledge someone like this, he’s not taking this seriously at all, and that’s going to get us all killed one day!”

To which Takeshi calmly replies, “now now, it hasn’t gotten me killed before, and I’ve got ten years to spare. It’s a good bet, isn’t it?”

“Huh?! You think you’re only being Mafia ten years, you punk?!” Hayato wants to strangle Takeshi and it’s very obvious. “I’ll have you know it’s way damn harder to get out of the mafia than you think!”

Takeshi laughs. “Awh, I can’t retire?”

“At twenty-five?! What early-ass retirement are you thinking of, you stupid Baseball-obsessed Freak?”

Takeshi pauses briefly before laughing again, “it’s not that unusual, isn’t it? I know someone who retired at five years old.”

“Stop making sh*t up!”

“I’m not, I swear!”

Tsuna offly wonders if their banter is a sign of immediate chaotic convention, or if it’s a horrible omen for things to come. Strangely enough, they might not be mutually exclusive.

“See?” Reborn says, cheerfully. “Worked out fine, didn’t it?”

Takeshi hits a dynamite out of Hayato’s hand and it blows up the goalpost.

“This is a disaster,” Tsuna says. “I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve here, Reborn. They get along like water to an oil fire. I’m going to be the poor sod that’s standing by the gas.”

Reborn nods. “You’re the boss, who is supposed to put the lid on it. Now, go!”

Tsuna doesn’t see the sharp kick to the back coming and that is why he plunges directly into the next blast with a terrified shriek.

“Ack— Tsuna?!” Takeshi yelps.

“Woah, crap!” Hayato balks, “Tsunayoshi, you okay?”

Tsuna is so tired of all of this.

Tsuna barely makes it to the weekend full of new injuries and annoying bruises, but he’s not allowed to relax. Reborn watches him work through his homework— and in home tutor fashion, he’s actually helping Tsuna go through future material ahead.

“You do well in class, surprisingly,” Reborn says, “nothing remarkable, but you’re definitely not below average. I’m almost rather disappointed.”

Tsuna frowns at his math homework. “It’s just normal. I don’t work too hard outside of exam season. I’m just keeping up.”

“Well, that’s not enough for a Mafia Boss. Do better.”

The gunshot comes so quickly, Tsuna barely dodges it because Reborn wasn’t particularly trying to hit him.

“Sheesh! At least put a silencer on it, you’re disturbing the neighbours!”

“Get the next one wrong and I’ll detonate this.”

“We said no more explosives!”

With a deep sigh, Tsuna works through the next question, but it’s hard to focus when Reborn is smirking down at him with all the anticipation of a serial killer. He’s really waiting for the slightest smidge of a wrong number and he’ll strike. Tsuna’s going to crumble under pressure, of course he is. All this sucks.

“Stop staring at me like that, you’re creeping me out!” Tsuna protests.

“Well, you have such a shiny target on you,” Reborn says, “I can’t help it.”

Tsuna stares down at where Reborn’s looking— the front of his shirt, where a single silver brooch of a dove was pinned. And he shrinks back with it protectively, “oh come on, you’re not a magpie!”

“And you’re not particularly well-off, so don’t go showing off something like that so front and centre,” Reborn says. “Wear your jewellery on special occasions like the normie you are.”

Tsuna scowls, “no. This isn’t just jewellery, it’s proof.”

“Proof? Of what?”

Tsuna huffs, turning back to his homework, “acknowledgement. You should know, you people of the underworld are possessive and stubborn. You have a claim, you lay a stake on it. You tell the world about it.”

Ah, Reborn thinks. Fascinating.

Tsuna doesn’t wear that out of remembrance of his assassin background– he wears it as a mockery, to remind Reborn that no matter what he does— the first thing in Tsuna’s mind, the forefront of his heart, will always be peace.

As long as Tsuna may help it, Reborn will not be able to take a similar spot in his priorities. It’s a mark of resolve.

Reborn likes that challenge.

“If you know very well that we of the underworld are like this,” Reborn chuckles, “then you better not be hoping I’d give up anytime soon.”

Tsuna groans into his palms. “Of course.”

“It’s not that difficult of a question! How’d you get stuck on it, we just went through it in class today!”

In the end, Tsuna calls Hayato and Takeshi to his house to get work done. Because Hayato has time to spare on a lazy Saturday, and Takeshi is at risk of his third detention of the week for not finishing his work on time. (So, as Reborn says, a good boss would help them—)

Takeshi simply laughs off the insult. “Tsuna, you understand this? Cool! Your grades really shot up, huh?”

Tsuna nods mildly, “I’m just barely keeping up. You missed so much school last year that I’m surprised you graduated.”

Takeshi hums, “it feels so weird to come to school every day.”

“You’re both unbelievable!” Hayato snaps. “If you’re going to skip, at least keep your grades up! You’re lucky remedial classes in Namimori are so lenient!”

Takeshi simply laughs, but Tsuna sighs.

“That can’t be helped, either…” Tsuna says, “we’re kind of a school that only exists for the sake of it, after all…”

Namimori literally can’t punish their students too badly— because most students are always busy with their personal matters. Detentions can’t be enforced, and expulsion is out of the question for some students. If too many people stop attending, they’ll go on in life to not have a school record, and that may entice investigation in the future.

It’s complicated.

“Gokudera-kun, Namimori is a bit, well, unique in that regard, so you’ll have to understand,” Tsuna says, sympathetically. “Yamamoto-kun though, you really ought to catch up on your work.”

“I hate this town,” Hayato grumbles, “nothing makes sense.”

Takeshi hums, “I’m more the ‘cram before exams’ kind of guy.”

“Come to think of it, didn’t you miss the final exams for our third year?” Tsuna raises a brow. “You graduated with credits instead of grades.” Something people in Tsuna’s class couldn’t do, because they didn’t have an athletic record, student body title, or any good word to help them squeeze through.

“Yep, I completely missed it all! Was dead last in the entire grade.”

“You’re unbelievable!” Hayato snaps.

Takeshi beams, “I had nothing to lose!”

Tsuna sighs deeply. He knew this would happen. They’re getting absolutely zero work done because the first thing Hayato does nowadays when he sees Takeshi is just go for the throat, no holds barred. If there's hate at first sight, this is it.

“Huh?” Tsuna pauses at the next question. “Hey, Gokudera-kun, does Question 11 sound a little weird to you?”

“Huh? Tsunayoshi, you’re having trouble, too?” Hayato sounds mildly annoyed, but he turns to the book anyways.

Takeshi hums, still on Question 3 and blissfully uninterested in the problematic question that seemed miles away.

“Yeah, that’s weird,” Hayato frowns, “the question stops making sense halfway through. Maybe it’s just phrased by a dumbass, but we’re missing half the information we need, and the other half we are given seems utterly irrelevant…”

“I don’t even know where to begin putting the x in this…” Tsuna says, “is this even High School level math?”

Eyes glanced toward Reborn, who’s fast asleep on his hammock. Some Home Tutor he is…

“No, no, it should be, this is a high school workbook in a fairly low-level school,” Hayato says. “There’s no way I don’t understand it. It should just be the weird Japanese. Usually when you encounter a question like this the answer’s stupidly simple, we just didn’t understand it on the first read.”

Tsuna whimpers, “I hate math…”

“Don’t give up, Tsunayoshi! Are you going to lose to a bunch of words and numbers? Huh??” Hayato groans, frustrated now after his third read and still not understanding the damn question.

“Math is terrifying, you know. Sometimes they’re dinosaurs, other times they’re eldritch monstrosities…”

“...what? You’ve just lost me there.”

“Have you ever fought a sauropod brachiosaurus in a math exam?”

“What??”

“Yeah, it caught me off guard, too. You usually expect them in History Finals instead. You usually get Cthulhu in Math. Have you ever prepared to fight Godzilla but you’re looking at King Kong instead?”

“Tsunayoshi, I think it’s time for you to take a break,” Hayato says, laying a hand on Tsuna’s forehead, “I’m getting worried.”

“Gladiators and golems in science…”

“Alright, take five!” Gokudera declares, “take five!”

“Yay! Breaktime!” Takeshi throws his book and pen into the air.

“Not you!’ Hayato snaps, “at least get to Question 5 before you even think of letting go of that pen, you Baseball Freak! You spent more time staring at my tattoos than actually doing work!”

Takeshi whines, “I can’t help that!”

Namimori has easily arrived at the point where no one even bats Hayato an eye for all his tattoos. But Takeshi’s easily distracted, so Tsuna often catches Takeshi’s eyes unsubtly trying to follow the line of the seasons on Hayato’s skin.

Hayato is clearly used to attention, but he hates that it’s Takeshi’s attention he’s getting.

Question 11 still didn’t want to get solved, but luckily, the gods of conveniences brought Haru in to help.

“Haru came by to help Nana-san take in the laundry!” she announces, and that’s when the boys notice Nana had gone out for groceries. “She heard the footsteps of worry! Are you guys having trouble up here?”

“That’s freaky, what are you, a stalker?” Hayato says, “we barely even walked.”

“Haru can hear footsteps from the other side of town!”

“That’s the opposite of assuring, thanks.”

“Welcome, Haru,” Tsuna says, his voice very tired at this point, “I know Mom told you to let yourself in anytime, but do you want some tea?”

“No thank you!” Haru beams, “Haru is still tracking down a mysterious footstep today. Haru determined it was coming this way, so Haru must be on full alert!”

“Huh?”

“What—”

In the moment it takes the boys to realize what Haru was trying to say, Reborn had gotten up from his spot in the hammock, swinging out a baseball bat just as the window cranks open and a grenade comes flying in.

“HAH! FOUND REBORN, NOW DIE!”

The grenade gets swatted right back into the assaulter’s face and they both go flying into the tree beside Tsuna’s room window. The giant explosion is sure to get the Disciplinary Committee at their door soon.

Tsuna shrieks, “Reborn, that was a child!”

To which Reborn petulantly protests, “but I am a child.”

“Oh wow, I only saw it for a second,” Takeshi says, appproaching the window quickly. Whatever that was that just got blown up, it’s smouldering now, on the ground.

“That’s a strong explosive,” Hayato says, “how did they smuggle that into Japan?”

“You immediately assume he’s not Japanese?”

“It’s a Bovino Grenade,” Hayato opens the window and says it like it’s obvious.

“We saw that thing for half a second!”

“Very clearly a Bovino shell,” Haru says, and that shocks Tsuna speechless, “the way they explode is very distinctive.”

“Wha—”

“Anyone who can’t recognize a Bovino Signature Unit from a mile away isn’t a hitman worth their salt,” Hayato says. Then a glance at Haru, “or in the case of this weird mutt, law enforcement.”

Haru nods sagely. “On the topic, Reborn-san’s bombs are all of the rather rare Haganezuka Series. It’s harder to get a hold of their explosives! They’re usually very commission-based. Their construction is flawless though!”

“Oh?” now Reborn’s interested, “not many know of my brand. You’re good, Haru.”

“Haru knows everything!” she huffs, proudly.

Tsuna’s in distress, “you guys’ common sense differs so basically from mine!”

No one even noticed Takeshi going out, but he’s already back in, cradling the still smoking child-sized creature in his hands with a smile.

Takeshi beams. “Hey, I went and took him in, do we have sweets or something?”

“That was WAY too quick!”

Thankfully, Tsuna is not alone when he retorts. Haru and Hayato are equally as exasperated by how easygoing he is.

“Yamamoto, he just threw a bomb at us unprovoked and you brought him in??”

“Absolutely not, you Baseball Freak, put that back where you found it!”

“Oh, is he not one of your friends, kid?” Takeshi turns to Reborn.

“No, never met him in my life,” Reborn says, coldly.

Tsuna has the first aid kit out, trying to tend to the burns on the child’s skin. He’s honestly impressed that this kid is completely unfazed by the cloth that’s charred into his skin— what kind of pain tolerance is this and how worried should he be?

Despite being mid-treatment, Lambo shrieks, “yeah, because I’m here to KILL YOU, REBORN!” and throws three grenades at him.

He promptly gets it all deflected back at him with a fork.

Cue screaming child.

Tsuna yells over the noise, “stop wasting my supplies! And NO MURDER AT THE DINING TABLE! All of you!”

It’s been a chaotic day with absolutely no math homework getting done, and now Tsuna has a child to babysit on top of all that.

“So, your boss sent you all the way here from Italy to kill the Greatest Hitman in the world?” Tsuna says, and Lambo nods, still inconsolably sniffling into his milk. He pats the child on the head sympathetically, “you sure have it rough, huh…”

Takeshi is brewing up some coffee and tea for everyone. Hayato is still perusing the damn math question, Reborn’s enjoying tea, and Haru is happily obliging teatime, swinging her legs and humming a random tune.

“Is there any way to send you home?” Tsuna wonders, “or is the mafia going to kill this kid too if he goes home without your head?”

Reborn sips on his espresso.

“I’m sure you know,” Reborn says.

Tsuna curses into the sky.

“Hey!” Haru snaps, “language!”

“He threw bombs at us! He can handle some profanity!”

Lambo’s gawking at him, “Dame-Tsuna, you can bypass the BLEEP filter!” he yells, “that’s so cool! What’s a KUSO?”

Everyone stares at him.

“...Tsuna, you’ve corrupted a child,” Takeshi says, dryly.

“How did this child grow up in the mafia without ever knowing sh*t?” Hayato murmurs. “Might as well go all out now, Tsunayoshi.”

“Absolutely not!” Haru yells.

“I’d say go ahead,” Reborn says, “start your villain era early and you can acclimate to the Vongola easier. We can handle the moral balancing later on.”

“Shut up, Reborn!” Tsuna slams his hands on the table.

Lambo beams. “Lambo knows how to bleep! πουτάνα! mαλάκα!”

“Why do you know how to curse in Greek of all languages?!” now even Hayato is impressed. Holding up the worksheet, “hey, kid, can you do math?”

“Gokudera, don’t foist our math homework on a child!”

“Lambo can’t read Japanese!” he cheerfully reports, “but Greek bypasses the Bleep filter when written down. Lambo doesn’t know Japanese curses.”

“But you’re impeccably fluent without even an accent! That makes no sense!” Hayato groans, “who on earth is handling your education? This is unacceptable, and you said you’re in the Bovino Family? How low in the hierarchy are you, they’re literally infamous for how damn smart they are!”

“Lambo is smart enough already!”

“Holy sh*t!” Hayato gasps, “wait— are you illegit, kid? Because that would explain so much. If you’re legit that’s kind of worse.”

“Lambo is Lambo?”

“How old are you, anyways?”

“Lambo’s six!” he says. A long pause. “Seven? No wait, what year is it? Eight!”

“Holy sh*t, you don’t know your own age,” Hayato says, “Tsunayoshi,” he implores, “when you become boss, destroy Bovino first. And outlaw child neglect in the underworld, please.”

“I’m NOT becoming the boss—” Tsuna had to take a moment to rework his own composure, “there’s law in the underworld??”

When the doorbell rings, Lambo is halfway through the candy cabinet and Takeshi is still struggling on Question 4 (with Hayato going very close to dangerous levels of high blood pressure) while Haru folds the laundry. Tsuna washes dishes while contemplating his life decisions, trying to figure out how Reborn is just calmly sipping espresso in the midst of the madness.

The doorbell rings.

“Hey, Sawada?” someone calls toward the backyard, because of course they let themselves in, “sorry to intrude. Is Haru here?”

Haru perks up at the same time as Lambo, and twin calls of “Yuji!” chime through, and there’s a rapid spur of footsteps before the glass sliding door is dragged open.

The senior stands there holding a few boxes from a pastry shop downtown, and Haru’s eyes twinkle with delight.

“Yuji-niichan! Did you get Mont Blanc for Haru?”

To which Yuji responds with restrained fury, “I came to remind you to come home! Do you stay with literally anyone that feeds you?”

“Yes, Haru does!”

“I wasn’t encouraging you!”

Hayato looks over in confusion, and Takeshi chuckles amusedly. Tsuna sighs, because of course, with how friendly his mother is, everyone’s very comfortable making themselves at home in his house.

“Yuji!” Lambo exclaims, happily bouncing over to him.

“Oh, Lambo,” Yuji responds in stride, and this is when Reborn, Hayato, and belatedly, Tsuna, pause in confusion. “Huh? I didn’t get anything for you… you’re fine with a fruit tart, right?”

“As long as you take the kiwis!”

There’s a moment of environmentally-freezing confusion that seizes Yuji then. He’s midway taking off his shoes to enter the house, Haru’s already taken the cake boxes away from him, and Lambo is almost scaling him—

—and then, Yuji unleashes an absolutely taken aback screech.

“Wait, Lambo?! Why are you in Japan—” then, somehow this is what sets him off even more, “are you speaking Japanese?”

That activates Tsuna, “how do you know him?!”

Hayato jerks upwards, “suspicious! Get away from him, Tsunayoshi, he might be from an enemy Famiglia!”

“Don’t attack Yuji!” Haru snarls, getting in front of her brother and absolutely growling at Hayato.

Hayato isn’t fazed at all, hissing threateningly back at her.

The dynamites are out, Takeshi is frantically looking between everyone and back and forth in utter confusion, and Yuji is flabbergasted as Lambo manages to get up to his shoulders and he has to hold him.

Right. Tsuna has had enough.

“All of you!” he slams the spatula on the side of the kitchen counter. “SIT DOWN AND HAVE A PROPER CONVERSATION! THAT'S ENOUGH!”

Tsuna hates the smug look on Reborn’s face when he gets all of them on the table. He looms over them with the spatula still in his hand and apron still worn— hey, the pot’s still boiling for the flower dyes mom spent the entire morning making. He's not letting these buffoons mess with that schedule, okay?

They crack open the pastry box.

“How old is Lambo?” Yuji grimaces, “uhh, eight… it’s still 2004, right? Right, so he’s eight. And I’m… eighteen. I’m still eighteen. Yeah.”

“What do you mean, still?” Tsuna asks, sincerely.

“What are you, trapped in a time loop? Alternate dimension where time flows at a different rate from the outside?” Hayato murmurs. A pause when everyone stares at him. “What, you’ve never stepped into eldritch monstrosities and absolutely messed up your sleep cycle before?”

“Oooh,” Takeshi sings through his mug of hot milk, “fair point.”

“What was a fair point?” Tsuna is genuinely concerned now.

Yuji just shrugs. “I don’t know what you mean by enemy Famillia or whatever— but I met Lambo… online, I guess. We play the same game often,” he turns to the child sitting in his lap, patting him on the head, “why didn’t you tell me you were coming to Japan? Are you alone?”

“Lambo was told to come here yesterday in real world time!” he declares, “and I’m independent, so I’m on my own! Lambo couldn’t find Yuji, but I told Aria and Tomomi!”

Reborn’s paused from drinking his espresso. By the time he picks his coffee back up, Tsuna has already noticed that falter.

“Tomomi knows Lambo-chan too?!” Haru squeaks, clear envy in her voice, “no way! My best friend! I feel betrayed!”

Yuji groans into his hands, “that explains why Hibari hasn’t kicked you out of the city yet. You’re here under the Kusakabe Invitation.”

“Wait, Tomomi, as in,” Tsuna’s baffled, “Kusakabe Tomomi? The younger sister?”

“Hold on, you guys are using your real names online?” Hayato is bewildered, “are all of you utterly uneducated on internet safety?”

“Gokudera-san, you can’t talk,” Haru doesn’t even miss a beat, “you’ve been offline for half your life and speedread a book on online safety before you booked a flight ticket to Japan.”

“Shut up, privacy invader!”

Yuji pleads his case. “In our defense our names were common enough we thought spelling it in romaji was enough of a pseudonym. Plus Yuji and Tomomi are common names!”

“Eh, really?” Takeshi chuckles.

“Yamamoto Takeshi, you’re the least qualified to comment on this,” Yuji mutters sourly, “there’s somehow no other Yamamoto Family in Namimori, but there’s literally a Takeshi in my class.”

“Wait, there’s another Takeshi in Nami High?”

“Yes,” Haru says, “Katou-san doesn’t talk much but—”

“Reborn, you know something, don’t you?” Tsuna groans, “are you sure this isn’t one of your dumb plans to explain my underground affiliates, because if that’s true, I’m kicking everyone out of my house right now whether that defies everything my mom stands for or not.”

Takeshi, Hayato, and Haru make very worried whines, “don’t kick us out, we’ll behave!”

“Promise!”

“Let me enjoy Mont Blanc!”

Reborn’s smirk is infuriating to look at.

“No, nothing of that sort,” Reborn assures, though Tsuna doesn’t know how much of it to trust, “hey, I’m learning new things today too. I’m not omniscient, tragically. I really didn’t expect you to be such a natural at bossing your subordinates around already.”

Tsuna wants to throw him in a pot of curry. No one will know.

In the end, a fight broke out, which resulted in Haru biting Hayato, Lambo throwing bombs, Takeshi batting those bombs out the window, and Yuji trying his best to contain the chaos. In the end, Takeshi and Haru are on timeout in the corner, Hayato is getting his burns salved by a slowly growing irate Tsuna. And Lambo is wailing in Tsuna’s lap. Yuji, the only saving grace, is helping to clean up the scorched furniture.

When the doorbell rings, Haru excitedly perks up.

“Sit down!” Tsuna barks at her, and she collapses right back onto her knees without even a squeak.

She then flushes bright red in embarrassment, belatedly realizing she’d reacted exactly like a dog. Hayato is slightly afraid now. Takeshi is staring at the wall sitting upright like a school student, quiet like his life depends on it.

Reborn, ever the opposite of a pacifist, hops off his chair to go see who it is. For some strange reason or another, the Sawada Household just can’t stop having uninvited guests over. Tsuna wished he could enjoy just one weekend of his life, but alas.

“It’s an extremely noisy day out today, isn’t it? It’s nice to meet you, Master Pao Pao!” exclaims the loudest boy in town, “I extremely burned down my house’s kitchen! So Kyoko and I will be having dinner here!”

Tsuna can hear him from inside the house.

“What’s ‘Master Pao Pao’?” Tsuna murmurs in disbelief. “What is Reborn telling him out there?”

“To avoid strangers, weirdos, and accountability: the fake name tactic,” Yuji says.

Takeshi nods sagely. “The kid’s got a lot of those.”

“Everyone knows he’s Reborn, anyways, so why?” Lambo’s confused.

And Hayato nods too, a little more grimly, “as expected of the greatest hitman in the world, he has good instincts. Who’s the loud freak out there, anyways?”

“AH!”

For some god-forsaken reason, Reborn has let Ryohei into the house.

And now Ryohei is loudly pointing at Hayato, screeching, “you’re the Octopus Head that’s been throwing fireworks everywhere!”

Silence.

“WHO ARE YOU CALLING OCTOPUS HEAD, YOU LAWN-LOOKING MOTHERF–”

A new adversary was added to the timeout corner.

“Fireworks are extremely not allowed here!” Ryohei says, very clearly miffed, “Kyouya is scared of them!”

“He is?” Takeshi asks.

Haru nods. “Hibari-san is, yes, but he gets mad when you say he’s scared of something. Haru would recommend the term ‘wary’, it does not upset him as much.” She takes out a book, “unfortunately, fireworks are not illegal in Namimori. Haru would know, Haru recites the legislation every morning.”

“Are you mentally sound?” Hayato asks, fully sincere.

“Unfortunately not,” Haru’s also fully sincere, “last I heard, my species are all considered clinically insane.”

Hayato’s so baffled by that response he can’t even quip back.

“If you yell that, Hibari-san will throw you off the roof again, Nii-san,” Tsuna says, dryly. “I really don’t want him sensing the disruption in the peace and coming here, so please don’t say that again.”

“What? Why?” Ryohei seems bewildered, “it’s not his fault fireworks spook him!”

To which Hayato’s eyes narrow. “I now know the weakness of the strongest man in this town. That’s good, you lawn-haired dumbass.”

“Don’t you dare!” Tsuna, Ryohei, and Haru yell at him in unison.

“What?!” absolutely scandalised, “it’s common sense to capitalize on your enemies’ greatest fears when trying to win against them!”

“You’re cruel!”

“Extremely underhanded!”

“Evil!”

“I am literally a HITMAN?!” Hayato is f*cking flabbergasted.

“You’re a what?” Yuji asks. “That’s where Namimori is at now? Literal mafia? Oh Dijisus…”

Tsuna mentally groans. There enters another uninvolved soul into the mafia potluck.

“Lambo-san is mafia, didn’t you know, Yuji?” says the very innocent child gorging on cake in his lap.

Yuji freezes in the middle of messing with his curls. “I… didn’t.”

Takeshi sips on his tea, “well, it’s fine, isn’t it? If you need to figure out someone’s weakness to fight them, there’s a good chance they’re more dangerous if you try to use them. Have you tried holding a mirror in Mochida-senpai’s vicinity before?”

To which Haru gasps, “the Mirror Decimation incident!”

“What?” Tsuna asks.

“You were kidnapped when it happened,” Haru explains. “Mochida-senpai broke all the mirrors and windows in town. He was delirious, but he also did it as a protest because he and Yamamoto-san were slated for retirement. They changed their minds after he threatened them.”

“Wait, what?!” Ryohei yells. “I mean, we all know about Mochida and Yamamoto, but Sawada??”

“You were kidnapped?” Takeshi asks. “How did I not know about that?”

“How did you not know?? A kid in your town was taken!” Hayato is equally taken aback. “And what’s this about retirement?”

“The question is,” Tsuna says, grimly, “how did Haru know? It was a national secret!”

“It was a WHAT?” Hayato’s not handling any of this well right now.

Haru simply smiles, “Haru knows everything!”

“Anyway!” Ryohei yells, “no more fireworks!”

“They’re not fireworks! Is your brain made of grass too or what?!” Hayato snaps, “they’re dynamite, dude, dynamite! And no, we’re not moving past the retirement bit, you’re fifteen! What’s with that??”

“I’m sixteen already. And Mochida-senpai is almost eighteen.”

“Not the poi—”

“Haru can defuse time bombs in ten seconds and Haru’s just turned sixteen too!” chirps the happy puppy, “Haru holds the Secret Doberman record in Japan for it!”

“No one asked, bitch!”

“Gokudera-kun, you’re so uncouth!” Haru gasps.

Hayato snarls at her. “Stop changing the subject! What was it about the mirrors??”

“Oh, Mochida-senpai and I almost got decapitated because of a mirror, so he hates them now,” god bless, Takeshi.

“IS THAT WHAT THAT SCAR ON YOUR NECK IS???”

“Yep! He has a matching one on the other side!” Brightly.

“HOW ARE YOU NOT DEAD??”

Takeshi seems confused, “because we 50-50’ed the wound?”

“People usually DIE from getting HALF their neck cut off!”

“Eh, we were fine. Didn’t make it to graduation though.”

“Gokudera-kun,” Haru says, “humans usually also die from being in the epicenter of a nuclear bomb, but you’re here as well.”

“My situation is different— HOW THE HELL DO YOU KNOW THAT?”

Tsuna sighs longsufferingly. Takeshi stands up to mediate, hoping to laugh the situation off. Ryohei is still arguing intensely with Hayato, and Haru is somehow unable to read the situation to any degree at all.

Yuji, on the other hand, has mastered the art of babysitting. Because not only is Lambo entirely calm and talking about their monster-collecting game together, Reborn is also invested in the tales of King Adrianna’s Legendary Farm.

There’s a loud twack as Ryohei’s fist lands somewhere, and Haru’s voice hitches into hostile combat mode, and Tsuna finally decides to face the situation before him.

“Guys,” he begins, loudly, “don’t make me go over there.”

The way they instantly scramble back to their seats is equally insulting and satisfying.

“You better get used to this,” Reborn turns over from his espresso, “you’ll be dealing with them every day even after you become Boss.”

“I’m NOT becoming a Mafia boss, Reborn!” Tsuna finally raises his voice, fist slamming on the table.

“But you’re doing such a good job of keeping them in line,” Reborn says, petulantly.

“No I'm obviously doing a crap job, they’re fighting every two seconds!”

“Sawada, watch your language,” Yuji says, hands covering Lambo’s ears, “I’ve gone through extensive lengths to keep Lambo from learning any Japanese curses and you’re not ruining my progress, alright?”

“Huh?” Lambo looks up, “Lambo knows ‘KUSO’ now, though.”

“Sawada!” comes the yell.

Tsuna proceeds to bash his head against the table in frustration. “Rather than a Mafia Boss, I feel like an overworked mother. I hate this.”

“You’re wrong,” Reborn says, “clearly, Yuji is the mother here. You’re a father.”

“I don’t remember marrying someone that would curse around my child,” Yuji grumbles sourly. “I want a divorce. And custody of Lambo, you can have the others.”

“Please don’t play along, Yuji-san!” Tsuna pleads. And right then, he jerks his head up to Hayato and Haru, “I know you guys are making faces at each other behind Yamamoto-kun, I’m clumsy, not dumb!”

They squeak.

Ryohei nods sagely. “I don’t know what fathers are like, but you’re extremely father-coded, dude.”

Honestly, Tsuna doesn’t know what’s worse, the fact that his mother welcomed the entire posse of chaotic monsters without even any surprise; or the fact she’d bought enough groceries to feed them all without any dent to their fridge.

“Are you sure, Mom? Are our finances okay?” he whispers, helping his mother chop the veggies as dinner gets started.

“It’s okay~” Nana sings, happily grinding up the spices in a mortar, “there was a sale today, so I bought too much. Isn’t it great that you brought friends over? It worked out, all according to destiny.”

“Mom,” Tsuna warns longsufferingly. “Why did I not inherit an ounce of your good graces with the God of Luck?”

“He’s not the God of Luck, dear, he’s just God. He likes daisies.”

“You’re making me feel worse.”

That wasn’t an answer to his question at all, but that probably just means Nana isn’t going to deign him with an actual response.

Yuji has managed to cajole everyone to a very intense Mario Kart tournament in the living room. Lambo is very excitable about it, and Hayato is unhealthily competitive. In contrast, Haru is fascinated and excited just to do her best. Takeshi is winning without even breaking a sweat. Ryohei is cheering intensively.

“Oh, you guys are stuck on this?” Yuji says, finding the discarded Math homework. “It’s kind of a bizarre one. Here, I’ll show you guys how to solve it. Only saying this once.”

Takeshi and Hayato all pile over as Ryohei takes a controller and Reborn seizes the other. Lambo shrieks as he gets blue then green shelled in tandem, and Haru cheers, taking over the lead.

“Ah, teach me too!” Tsuna hurries over from the kitchen.

“Are you actually smart?” Hayato raises a brow at Yuji. “Haru’s one thing, but you? You don’t even know your own age!”

“Oh, my age aside, math is easy for me,” Yuji says, picking up the pencil, “it’s something you just kind of pick up, especially when you sometimes have to code your friends back into existence or risk losing them to digital wasteland forever.”

“What?” Takeshi isn’t sure he caught that right.

“Excuse me?” Hayato’s baffled.

“I mean,” Yuji shrugs, “when you get brainwashed and possessed by a virus for a couple years, basic arithmetic and calculus becomes super easy. I don’t recommend it though. It gets annoying to keep track of your age when you’ve been eighteen for the past six years. And seventeen for the… ten before that? Time is a social construct.”

“Time isn’t real, the sun is a lie,” Lambo roars, crashing his Bowser Cart into Ryohei’s Princess Peach. “And reality is none of my business! The only thing that matters is CAKE!”

“You’re so right,” Yuji says, agonized, “even everything in the local pastry shop can’t beat the taste of DigiCake on Training Peak…”

“What,” Hayato’s voice hitches to a very concerned pitch.

“Oh, no no, we’re not unpacking any of that,” Tsuna hurries to clarify for the entire room, “just teach us how to get past Question 11. Please.”

Dinner that night was magnificently chaotic, with Kyoko the only light shining in the horrible tunnel of Tsuna’s life.

“Tsunayoshi,” Hayato warned, “if she’s the light at the end of your tunnel, that means you reach her and you’re dead. You know that, right?”

“I said what I said, Gokudera-kun.”

Gokudera Hayato becomes mildly apprehensive of Tsuna’s mental health from that day onward, but what he doesn’t know is that Tsuna was not suicidal. He simply would never have enough lives to get involved with Kyoko— and that’s considering his current mafia madness.

And then Lambo gets shot off into the skyline by Reborn reverse-gunning him with the bazooka and Tsuna wonders if he’ll eventually have a daily counter for how many sighs he makes in a row.

“I didn’t know people could even fly that far,” Tsuna murmurs.

“He’s at the Namimori General Apartments.”

Tsuna turns to look at Yuji. He has a game console-looking device in his hand, a vague map on the screen with a blinker presumably tracking Lambo’s location.

“What is that, and how the hell do I get one because I really need one in anticipation for the future?”

“Go put a tracking device on him like the normal person you are,” Yuji says. “Ah, but no promises it’ll last. Everything electronic gets fried when we play our game.”

“What on earth kind of game are you playing with that child, Yuji-san?”

“And why wasn’t Haru invited?!” Haru whines.

Yuji levels her with a dry, “you’re microchipped. I’m not replacing that every time you play.”

“Microwhat—” Tsuna’s bewildered, “like a dog???”

“Ordained by the state. Her human rights are a bit shaky in Japan right now. They’re working on it.”

“It’s okay! Boss promised he wouldn’t bomb the Government Office in Tokyo again!”

“Haru! Dad told you to pretend you know nothing about that.”

A moment of baffled staring later, Tsuna gives up and slips on his shoes to head outside. Pulling on the hood of his jacket, he sighs.

“Fine. It’s been a while since I’ve done this,” he looks around the house walls, “I’ll be right back, mom.”

“Have a safe trip, Tsu-kun!”

“Tsuna-kun, you’re going out?” Kyoko’s been gazing into the night ever since Lambo became a twinkle in the sky, “wouldn’t Haru be faster?”

“It’s extremely dangerous at night!” Ryohei says. “Haru will probably not be able to hear well at night, so no!”

“Isn’t it supposed to be quieter at night—”

Haru’s nodding vigorously, “soooo noisy. Everyone’s hunting at night. I haaaate it.”

“Hunting?!”

“Ah, you need an access card to get past the lobby,” Hayato says, remembering through a mouthful of rice. “You want mine?”

Tsuna did not know that Hayato lived there, but it was good to know.

“Uhh, no, it’s fine,” Tsuna refuses the card, “it’ll be faster to get in from the window.”

Hayato stares at him, confused.

Takeshi nods, “always faster from the window.”

Haru nods, too, “especially if you don’t have a warrant.”

“Eh,” Yuji grimaces, “I can open it from here if you need me to. I have access to all electronic locks in Namimori.”

“Darn, even the bank?”

“Of course.”

Hayato whirls around, “I can’t believe I’m the one saying this, but don’t you know going through the front door is the polite thing to do?”

“Don’t forget to bring goods to compensate for the noise,” Reborn says. “A good boss always picks up after his subordinates’ mistakes!”

“YOU caused this!” Tsuna yells. “And he’s not my subordinate!”

“Son?”

“NOT THAT EITHER!”

Nana, however, claps her hands together as if in realisation. “But he’s right! It would be rude to show up without a gift to apologize for the trouble. How about we bring some flowers from the garden, Tsu-kun?”

Tsuna freezes.

“But those flowers are— Mom!” he doesn’t manage to stop her from making her way into her precious garden and scouring the options. “Mom, I can go pick something up from the store. We don’t need to take anything from here!”

“Nonsense,” Nana smiles, “what use are flowers if not gifted and marvelled?”

Judging from the trajectory of the launch, Tsuna finds the balcony fairly quickly. He leaps over from one roof to the next, sliding down emergency stairs, before diving onto the top of a car, hopping off onto the nearest tree, and scaling the rest of the way up to the right window.

“EEeek!! Another one came!”

“Ah, yes,” he decides wearing shoes is the wiser thing with all the broken glass, “I apologize for intruding… uhm, has a child, about eight years old, wearing cow prints, come by, perchance?”

He says, like he’s asking about a ding-dong ditcher and not a kid being pitched across the skyline to the other end of the neighbourhood.

“...yes?”

Irie Shouichi is apprehensive, half-hiding behind the wall, and very wary of him. Of course he is— any normal person would be.

So, Tsuna does the obvious thing to put people at ease— be Dame-Tsuna.

“I- oh goodness, I’m really sorry for the trouble!” he bows low, looking near tears, “just, he and this other kid in my house got into a fight, and— something just exploded and— I hope no one’s hurt! Just, they—”

“Ah, it’s fine, it’s fine!” Irie steps forward, flustered, “you don’t have to explain.”

Stuff like this happens a lot in Namimori. It’s not necessary to explain— everyone has their bizarre circ*mstances, after all. It’s etiquette to just let bygones be bygones.

“Ah— my mother offered these to apologize,” Tsuna presents the bouquet, a garner of white and yellow flowers— lilies and orchids— with a bashful smile. “Of course, if you would extend any repairs to us as well, we’re more than willing to pay.”

“Oh, we couldn’t possibly—”

“It’s Dame-Tsuna!” Lambo beams, through a mouthful of ice cream, scampering from the corner. The eight-year-old’s cheeks are stained with tears and he clearly sniffles, “Lambo-san definitely didn’t cry! Didn’t hurt at all!”

Tsuna wonders why he even tries.

Stepping over the glass, he picks up Lambo on an arm, resting him on his hip. Lambo has no shoes on— definitely because he was shot out right from the dining table— and he holds onto Tsuna instinctively once picked up.

As if he’s used to being handled like this by people bigger than him. That’s a good sign. Maybe his parents aren’t as hopeless as Hayato assumed.

“You really should stop trying to fight Reborn like that,” he says, “he doesn’t pull his punches. Look at you, burn wounds everywhere… you’re just like Gokudera-kun, but worse. Tone down the explosives in Namimori, people really don’t like them here.”

Lambo puffs up his cheeks, “but defeating Reborn is Lambo’s mission! Can’t go back to Italy without completing it!”

“Well, you like Mama, right?” Tsuna offers. “Won’t you like to stay here longer with Mama instead of hurrying back so soon?”

Lambo seems to really consider this offer deeply.

Satisfied, Tsuna looks toward Irie, who had been staring curiously from his side, holding the flowers carefully.

“Ah… again, I’m really sorry for all this,” Tsuna says. “We can come by another time to apologize to the rest of your family properly and talk about the money—”

Irie stiffens.

“Uh, no, it’s fine, I live alone,” Irie says, and that genuinely bewilders Tsuna.

Hayato’s an exception, but Irie’s been around for a very long— Tsuna even sees the mother and daughter around town, as recently as last week at the grocery stores.

But they don’t live together anymore.

(Tsuna has met Irie once before. Last year, near graduation— he’d looked frazzled, grief-stricken, and exhausted then, when Tsuna saw Irie at the Namimori Shrine.)

The surprise must have shown on his face, because Irie chuckles.

“I mean— I’m a basket case,” he says. A common way to say deeply scarred and unsuitable for life outside Namimori. “On the bright side, the Hibari family will give me any monetary support I need. So neither of us have to worry about anything.”

Tsuna falters.

He supposes it’s none of his business.

Tsuna smiles. “Please enjoy the flowers,” he says. “I’m sure my mother would appreciate knowing they’ve been received well.”

“Please take care as well,” Irie says. “You, and Lambo-kun. It’s a good thing no one was grievously hurt.”

It’s a brief meeting between two people who should have little to do with each other. Not their first encounter, but the first conversation. They haven’t even exchanged names yet, but with their mutual notoriety in Namimori, they knew each other well.

Irie Shouichi, one of two Namimori citizens who were in the epicentre of the great earthquake, and survived through a coma with a weird mental condition as a scar.

Sawada Tsunayoshi, military-approved, assassin student, whose mother is the house for solace, and whose family is being increasingly entangled with the mafia.

This will not be their last encounter, not at all.

They both know that.

It wouldn’t be until the next morning when both of them noticed the supply of special Bovino time-travel ammunition that had been left in the Irie house.

After one fell off the shelf by accident, none of them would ever be returned to the Sawada household. Perhaps, this is the beginning of a long road toward something yet to come in the far,, far future.

(“Hey, Mom, why orchids and lilies?” Tsuna asked, when his mother prepared the bouquet. “Aren’t those usually for graves? Wouldn’t it be rude?”)

(Nana had giggled. “Flowers always mean different things in context.”)

(“And what context is that now?”)

(Tsuna later thought she knew it was Irie, somehow— she always just knew things— but that only made the whole gesture so much ruder. How could you give grave flowers to someone who struggled for months on life support and barely made it out with his life?)

(Nana, however, held only kindness and melancholy in her heart.)

(“Destiny,” she revealed, perusing the white orchids in her garden, melancholically. “It’s an inevitable encounter, Tsu-kun. Like a hero is destined to defeat the villain in cartoons. You’ll understand one day.”)

[EXTRA #3] Platinum-rank Tamer, YUJI, has entered the Digital World.

“I’ll be intruding— huh?”

Yuji peeks into Lady Adrianna’s Farm to find no one inside.

“Aria? Lady Adrianna?” not in the kitchen, the basem*nt— not anywhere in the immediate vicinity. His Cyberdramon comes up empty when he searches the perimeters of the Farm, too. “Andante, where’s the Tamer King?”

ToyAgumon shrugs from his spot, working on the fruit orchard.

“She suddenly had to leave. Family matters in the real world, apparently.”

“That’s unusual.”

It really is. In all of the years Yuji has been a Tamer, he can’t remember a day when Aria hadn’t been around. She never leaves, choosing to spend her life with Digimon instead. No one, not even the Ancients, disagreed with the choice to crown her as Tamer King.

“No helping it, then,” Yuji sighs. Turning to Cyberdramon, “I guess it’s up to the Platinum Tamers to hold down the fort… Sai, has an announcement been made?”

At the shake of a head, Yuji frowns.

She’d left so suddenly, that she couldn’t even leave instructions? Weird. Very weird.

“Let’s go to Central,” he checks his Digivice to see who else is currently in the Digital World, and then he makes a call. “Tomomi, where are you right now?”

They’ll have to split up and maintain the security of the Digital world, since the King’s gone.

“Oh, Lambo?” Yuji chuckles, working the portal gate to direct to his destination, “he’s doing fine with the Sawadas. Seems like something crazy is going to happen outside for us, too. Better wrap up that expedition you have, because I think we’ll have our hands full outside from now.”

It’ll be a while before Yuji can go back out to the human world— and once he returns, he won’t be able to come back to the Digital World for a long time again. The time difference between the worlds has gotten smaller in recent times, but it’s still ridiculous.

With everything brewing up in Namimori, he and Tomomi may have difficulties coming back. If Aria is going to be gone, too… that’s far too many high-rankers gone at once.

Come to think of it, that guy is online too…

Somewhere in the Network, wandering the web of code and data, a young boy sits on the shoulders of a Lotusmon. Slipping through a gap in the cybernetic layer, they break through the borders of the firewall and into the skyline of the Digital World.

He notices the incoming call, but he holds onto Lotusmon as they descend.

“Oh, Yuji, that you?” he’s holding his Digivice, “when did you get back? I just got out of Core Field. The exit closed again while I was inside…”

With a flick of his finger, a mask forms around his head, taking on the shape of an apple, wrapping around his teal hair.

“Sure, I can take care of the Digital World. Looks like you adults have things rough,” he hums. Then, “what do you mean, I should go out sometimes so I’ll grow up too? Nuh-uh, I’m an immortal Puddingmon. You know Puddingmon don’t age.”

He blatantly ignores the exclamation that puddingmon do not exist.

“I know, I know the rules~ Don’t get dirty, come home before dinner, and—”

He leaps off Lotusmon and spreads his arms out, hollering.

“DON'T LEAVE ANYTHING BEHIIIINDDD!!”

Lotusmon pursued him indignantly, snatching up the Digivice that’s blown out of his hand with the velocity.

“Fran, no!” she yells. “We got stuck lost for so long in the boring Core Field scenery that it’s driven him crazy! Agh— he aimed toward Packet Swamp for maximum mud! I’ve gotta go catch him, see you at the farm, Yuji!”

Chapter 4: Two Sides of One Coin (Poisons and Medicines)

Chapter Text

Tsuna might act frustrated, impatient, or scold him every once in a while— but Reborn hates the way he never takes anything seriously. He doesn’t run with all his might even if he’s complaining about being tired. He never fights back even when kicked. He never tries to do more than half-heartedly attempt to disarm Reborn.

It’s clear Tsuna does it to taunt him, never fighting back in any way but verbally. He’s a bit of a pushover, but making him take things seriously is a button game that Reborn can’t quite find the correct equation to yet.

Tsuna never even gets seriously angry at Reborn. He’s a tough contender.

So, when Reborn finds out, it’s by complete accident. He wasn’t even trying.

It had been time to switch up the variety of alarm clocks for Tsuna, and he’d just thought a good electric shock would be the obvious second option to dumping a bucket of ice water on him.

He could definitely tell Tsuna would have a unique reaction to it— electric burn scars on his arms and all— but it was a gamble which end of the spectrum he would fall. A civilian would have a horrible reaction, but Reborn was more honed on the underground, so he expected Tsuna to be resistant to it, like Lambo was, and barely feel it at all.

He did not expect electricity to switch on instant-kill mode.

The knife under the pillow was almost hilariously cliche, but Reborn had to admit he was caught off guard by the tranq needle under Tsuna’s tongue. How did he sleep with that?

(Who taught him that?)

He was not expecting to have to run from a sleep-addled, rabid assassin that had a ridiculous amount of hidden weapons in his room out of even Reborn’s sight— On the bright side, they finally got to feel that raw, expertly-honed bloodlust for the first time in a while.

Reborn has come to understand that Namimori will always be full of surprises, no matter how much he figures out. No information broker in the world will ever try to decipher the secrets of Namimori, and maybe it’s because you’d lose your mind simply experiencing the chaos of this town for more than a month.

“You seem on edge today, Tsuna,” Takeshi notices first on their walk to school.

Hayato, who hasn’t tried his daily duel yet, visibly hesitates. Tsuna’s obviously not in a good mood, not in a depressed way but in an annoyed way, so he didn’t think it was right to make it worse.

Tsuna made a noncommittal noise, cracking open his canned coffee. “Yeah… it’s Reborn again. Seriously, he doesn't know when he’s crossing a line.”

Takeshi chuckles, “of course.”

Tsuna takes a sip.

And immediately hacks it up.

That sends all alarm bells ringing in Takeshi and Hayato’s heads. While Hayato flusters, “what the— what’s wrong, Tsunayoshi? Hey!”

Takeshi whirls around, hand reaching for his shinai as if he thought there would be an enemy approaching. But other than Reborn stalking them, there was no other presence in the vicinity.

Tsuna chucks the can away so violently it ricochets off the telephone pole and rolls across the ground.

The liquid spilling out of it left little acidic indents on the ground. Both Takeshi and Hayato’s jaws dropped open for different reasons— but Tsuna only wipes his mouth against his sleeve and grimaces in disgust.

Hayato stares skeptically at the can, swearing by the gods they all saw Tsuna buy that from a vending machine with their own eyes. Is the entire machine bad? Is that okay? He is very worried about Tsuna’s mouth right now.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tsuna spits. “She found me already?”

Synchronously, the two around him ask, “She?”

“You having a bad day, Sawada?” Sugaya asks, when they spot each other on the road to school, just a few turns from the front gates. “As usual, huh?”

With deflated shoulders and the look of misery on his face, Tsuna zombies over to him with grabby hands and sobs.

“Sugaya-kun, help! Nee-san found meeeeeee!!!”

“Oh. It’s Dame-Tsuna mode today, huh.”

Tsuna wails into Sugaya’s lap, half on the ground as he indulgently pats him on the back, chuckling dryly. Takeshi and Hayato stood around awkwardly.

“Well that’s nice,” Sugaya looks toward his phone, ignoring Tsuna’s exclamation of what do you mean, nice? To text, “it’s been a while since we saw her. You can ask her about your Vongola predicament while you’re at it, anyways.”

The way Hayato stiffens makes Sugaya laugh.

“How does this civilian know about the Von—”

“Oh, Reborn offered me his business card,” Sugaya says, “something about how my art skills are useful? He’s commissioned a few costumes from me so far.”

“YOU made those wacky disguises?!” Tsuna gawks. “I thought it was Haru!”

“Haru and I are costume-workshop besties, don’t you know?”

Jarring revelations aside— Hayato stares skeptically at Sugaya. What other backdoor recruitments is Reborn doing? Sure, that’s his job as the scout to train the next heir, but as the official first Family member (at least until Tsuna’s usefulness is over) Hayato is very unsure about the choices. From Takeshi to this weirdo, they’re all… weird.

Not like he could talk, but come on.

Hayato didn’t know what else to look out for.

Namimori was spoiled for choices in eccentrics that may do well in Mafia once honed in that direction— but there were too many unpredictable elements. Yesterday he kicked a can on the streets and someone rang his doorbell twice in the middle of the night. No one was outside according to the security cameras. He’s not scared sh*tless he swears.

“What do I do?” Tsuna wails, “she’s going to be everywhere. I won’t be able to eat or drink anything ever again. She’s after my head now!”

Ouch. Being targeted by a poisons specialist is such a pain, and he understands that feeling very, very well.

“Stop whimpering, Tsunayoshi, you look pathetic,” Hayato says.

“Ehhh,” Tsuna doesn’t get up, but he does lift his head, “but I’m tired of all this! Why did all this have to happen to meeeeee! I don’t wanna be involved in the mafia!”

Hayato sighs longsufferingly.

He has a lot of things to yell. Do you think anyone wants to be stuck in the mafia for life? Especially those born into it? But he understands getting unwillingly dragged back into something you’ve cut off, more than anyone else he sympathizes— so, he can’t help but keep all that bottled in.

“Who’s this Nee-san?” Takeshi asks, “you don’t have a big sis, right?”

“Technically she’s the Nee-san of everyone that was in Class E,” Sugaya says. “She just showed up one day during a field trip, adopted our class’ poison specialist, and we’ve been having extracurricular poison training with her ever since.”

“Cool!” Takeshi beams, taking it all in stride.

“I haven’t had a relaxing day since,” Tsuna groans, bitterly.

“What civilian school has a poison specialist?” Hayato asks, “you’re from a civilian school, right? …Dude? …Right?”

Takeshi just smiles instead of answering.

Tsuna sobs, “I had a hard enough time with Bitch-sensei, but somehow, because I’m sensitive to poisons, Nee-san zeroed in on me too. Why is my life like this?”

Hayato is very worried about the standards of schooling in Japan.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but if it’s just poison, wear one of these then.”

Tsuna seems pretty resistant to it, but if it’s just for an ease of mind— Hayato takes off one of the silver rings on his fingers and flicks it at Tsuna, who catches it clumsily.

“It’ll turn black when there’s poison,” Hayato says.

“Isn’t that just for sulfur-based poisons?”

“These are special. Reacts to a whole range of poison mixed in food. Should be good enough,” Hayato says. “You’re on your own if it misses, though.”

Tsuna stares at the ring. Then at Hayato.

And then his eyes water and he’s lunging at Hayato for a hug.

“YOU’RE SO NICE TO MEEEE!!!”

“Agh, let go! Tsunayoshi, you’re embarrassing us all! LET GO!”

Hayato ends up on his back on the ground and he has absolutely no idea when he got judo flipped, just that he did.

Tsuna sighs, clearly more composed now, dusting his hands.

“But why do you have so many of these, anyways?” he wonders, perusing the ring. He put it on. “Do you need it a lot in hitman life?”

Hayato groans, getting up.

“No, I need it to ward away my bitch of an Aneki. She’s been getting persistent lately about family time or some sh*t. I don’t know how she does it, but she keeps finding me,” he grumbles, “can you imagine being harassed with poisonous cookies from your older sister your entire childhood.”

Takeshi laughs, “that’s rough! Reminds me of when I had to recuperate in the mansion. If you misbehaved when in treatment, you got the poison treatment so you’d stay down.”

“Yamamoto, what the hell?” Tsuna blurts.

“It’s to build up immunity.”

Hayato grimaces, “when I misbehaved when in treatment I would wake up with a screw in my skull, dude. Why would you antagonize doctors, are you an idiot?”

“Neither of those things are normal experiences with doctors!” Tsuna squawks, “what is wrong with you two’s upbringings?!”

They stare at him.

Miserably, Tsuna buries his hands in his face.

“Yeah,” a grim admittance, “actually, please don’t tell me.”

“Uhhh,” Sugaya raises a hand to pose a question, “can we reroute back to the part where your Aneki harrasses you with poisonous cooking? Is that how a mafia family is like?”

“No, no, we’re unconventional even for mafia,” is Hayato’s easy answer. “She’s crazy. I was at the point where even eye contact with her would make me experience phantom symptoms.”

Takeshi laughs at that, but Sugaya and Tsuna pause.

“Wait…” Tsuna has a really bad feeling about this, stepping toward him. “Gokudera-kun, could your Aneki be— is her name—??”

He gets interrupted.

“Oh, what a coincidence. I thought I’d have to finish this job quickly to find you, but it looks like you’re already here, Hayato.”

Tsuna and Hayato spin around, terrified.

Poison Scorpion Bianchi— in all her elegant, burgundy-haired glory, stands there in a leather jacket and gloves. The goggles sit well on her face, but her eyes run over the two boys contemplatively. She has a cake box in her hand, the corner of which is dissolving strangely into sick purple goo.

And she hums, not even giving the very confused Takeshi a glance. Sugaya offers an awkward wave that she also does not bother returning.

“Aneki?!”

“Nee-san!”

They freeze. Turning to each other, astonished, “you’re kidding, right?”

Wasting not another second Hayato bolts, taking Tsuna by the collar.

“But first, run!”

“Ah wait— Yamamoto!” Tsuna doubles back to grab him, “ESCAPE!”

“Huh?!” Takeshi stumbles through the shinai he was using as a crutch. “Uh–”

“Bye, Sawada, see you at school!” Sugaya, the traitor, hikes himself over the nearest wall, onto the ledge, and immediately ducks away into the trees.

“You’re DITCHING us?!”

“I have morning duty!”

Hayato screeches, “is everyone in Namimori a parkour master?!”

Takeshi whines, “I wanna jump on the walls too, no fair!”

“YOU just focus on run–” Hayato growls, snatching him up by the shoulder Tsuna isn’t holding, “Tsunayoshi, I get his shoulder, you're getting his legs!”

“Yeah he’s too tall to reasonably piggyback all the time,” Tsuna murmurs, hiking up Takeshi’s feet to his shoulders and basically ferrying him out of there.

“Sorry for not being portable.”

“SHUT UP, TALL MCGEE,” Hayato snarls.

“At this point, just make him a palanquin,” Reborn comments from his little scooter on top of the wall. “You know you guys can just leave him behind, right? He’s not Bianchi’s target.”

“SHE CORRUPTS PEOPLE. WE’RE NOT RISKING IT, DUDE!”

“Since when the hell have you been there?!”

“The whole time. Who do you think called her?” Reborn drops the revelation like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Though, her being acquainted with you is news to me. You’ll be getting many more assassins from now with or without my megaphone to the community, so brace yourself.”

“Reborn!” Tsuna roars into the air, speeding up in his run and making Hayato stumble because since when can he run that fast? But he’s keeping up, actually, “fine! Bring it on, I’m never becoming a Mafia boss!”

If you haven’t already caught on, Tsuna’s having an exceedingly bad day.

First, Reborn rips him out of a nightmare with a stun gun— and great, the nausea for the rest of the day aside, the shaking in his hands just got worse. At least it didn’t affect his heart rate, but in the name of the moon he wished he could kill that infant before his blood pressure skyrockets more than his bloodlust.

Then Nee-san showed up.

“She… well, saved my life a while back, I guess,” Tsuna admits, grievously, “poison-related incident. Something about how I’m unnaturally susceptible to poisons, and because that caught her interest, she’s been harassing me every time she’s stopped by Japan.”

Hayato pats him on the shoulder, “I ran away from her and her poison cooking when I was eight. She finally tracked me down sometime last year and I’ve been stuck in this hell since. Seriously, can you believe her? Poisoned me daily for years and suddenly she wants to reconnect? To a family that treats me like sh*t?”

Tsuna averts his eyes.

Hayato squints, confused by the reaction.

Still averting his eyes, Tsuna sighs deeply, grimly, and miserably— then he slowly, gradually, shifts to his knees, head on the ground.

“I’m very incredibly sorry.”

Hayato is stunned for a long moment before shrieking, “YOU GAVE HER THAT IDEA?!”

“We thought it would put her mind off poisoning me! And she looked sad! I’M SORRY!” Tsuna can’t even look up. He is the most apologetic he’s ever been in his life.

Meanwhile, Takeshi, who has just come back from the vending machine with Sugaya and some properly vetted and poison-tested juice packets, stares at the scene in utter confusion.

Takeshi beams, “Gokudera, you’re just as weird as the rest of us, huh? You’re fitting in very well here in Namimori!”

There are various voices, including Sugaya and most of the eavesdropping goons in class which included an exhausted Hana and a cheerful Kyoko, yelling back at the bloke: “That’s NOT a compliment, Yamamoto!”

“Were all of you listening?!” Hayato exclaims.

“What? Of course not!” Haru swung elegantly upside down into the window. “No one heard anything!”

“You don’t even GO to this SCHOOL!” The way Hayato sped over and cleanly slammed the window in her face made Tsuna sigh longsufferingly.

This is an awful day, but every storm cloud has silver linings.

“Ah, can I keep the ring though?” Tsuna asks, looking at the ring on his left middle finger. Having something in there could get in the way of sleight-of-hand, and even worse, it conducts electricity. But the former could be seen as an opportunity to improve, and the latter could be useful in other cases. He’s over sensitive to a few traumatizing elements, after all— “it’s kinda cool.”

It’s a simple, sleek silver ring, flat against the base of his finger. No decorations, no embellishments, but there were a few scratches from wear. It’s surprisingly humble for Hayato— his intricate tattoos, gaudy accessories, punk fashion sense— this ring seemed plain in comparison.

Hayato turns to Tsuna, anger easing, “oh, that? Yeah, take it. It’s not a set with the others on my fingers anyways, so I’ve been looking for a reason to ditch it.”

“Oh? Then how’d you get it?”

“Well…” Hayato looks away, settling by the table as Tsuna finds himself back on his seat. If Tsuna had a better angle, he’d have wondered if Hayato was actually blushing. “Bought it with my first paycheck when I was eight.”

Hayato reaches for his cigarettes, but Tsuna already has them set on the other side of the table, under his hand. Hayato has to take a moment to reel, because what? When?

Tsuna continues to stare at the ring.

This ring is a memento of Hayato’s life, when he’d run away and found independence. The memory of the freedom he wanted, that he couldn’t have yet as long as the mafia was concerned, of the freedom he yearns while hiding under the blanket of Tsuna’s new notoriety, away from the eyes of those that chain him down.

Tsuna nods. “Okay, I get it.”

This ring is a promise to mark the freedom Tsuna can regain for him.

“I’ll take good care of it. Thanks, Gokudera-kun.”

Home Economics is a very weird experience.

They don’t have a Home Ec teacher. Just an agenda written in by whatever teacher has time, and the students are expected to handle themselves.

Reborn is pretending to be a crockpot on a high shelf, but Tsuna’s trying to ignore him. He’s pretty sure anyone else sane in the classroom is doing the same thing, but he can’t trust anyone to have sanity here.

There are a number of people banned from kitchens in Tsuna’s class. Exactly, two, actually, and it’s the school jock and school Madonna themselves, because they’re utter disasters in the kitchen.

“Isn’t he like,” Hayato jabs a disgusted chin at Takeshi, “the son of a sushi chef?”

“He’s not trusted with actual blades in school,” Sugaya says, dryly. “Not after someone accidentally threw a potato at him once and discovered he goes into fruit ninja mode when things are thrown at him.”

“For real?”

“It was really amusing, but we had to stop when he sliced right through a cutting board.”

“What?”

“We had to stop when–”

“No, I heard you. What?”

Tsuna is decent at cooking, as much as a normal clumsy person with shaky hands can be— not the best, and he cuts himself sometimes, but he’s alright. Hayato lived alone and cooked for himself for at least seven years, so of course he can cook. Sugaya is a normal high school student that can cook a normal high school student meal.

Meanwhile, Hana is staring at the pot like it’s personally offended her.

Takeshi is staring at her, beaming brightly.

She snarls, “don’t f*cking say it. Don’t you dare.”

Takeshi fears nothing. “I won’t say anything! I mean, you’d probably prefer raw meat rather than anything cooked, right?”

A steaming hot ladle goes flying through the air, “I DO NOT EAT HUMANS!” she screams as Takeshi dodges the thing. His kitchen ban is also a ban from touching any kitchen utensils, including if they are used to assault you. “I just don’t see why I have to make human food! Humans should be serving me food!”

Tsuna chuckles dryly.

Hayato leans over, “am I still supposed to pretend we don’t know she’s not human? She’s literally yelling it to the entire school right now.”

Tsuna nods. “Yes, Gokudera-kun. The answer is yes.”

Kyoko hums from her chair, elbows on her lap and chin in her hands as she watches everything happen before her. She’s not trusted in the kitchen because she’s probably more of a danger to herself than cooking could ever be, but she’s very content sitting at the side.

Takeshi laughs, sitting beside her.

“Don’t tease Hana-chan so much,” Kyoko pouts at him. “She’s doing her best, you know? She’s only here because Onii-chan asked her to look after me.”

“I know, I know,” Takeshi sings back. “But it’s an old habit for me. I’m trying to break it, I swear~! I’m definitely not mad about what she did to Mochida-senpai’s leg or anything.”

“Mochida-senpai already said he’d let bygones be bygones,” Kyoko says. “It’s not like she did it to yours, or anything.”

Takeshi’s smile is stiff. Kyoko’s is twitching into a smirk. There’s a chair’s space between the both of them.

“I’m allowed to be mad when someone rips my partner’s leg off,” Takeshi sneers, eyes closed, smile thin.

Kyoko grins back, teeth and all, and lilts, “well, god forbid women do anything.”

There’s a moment of very thick, intense silence. Takeshi’s eyes open into a narrow glare, humour gone— and Kyoko huffs, tauntingly.

“What’s going on, guys?”

The interruption comes so smoothly, both of them jump— suddenly realizing the extra figure between them that certainly wasn’t there the second before.

Tsuna’s on the ground, between both of them, resting a first-aid kit on the chair as he smiles up at them, warmly. He opens it and finds the burn salve, closing the kit, and standing up. Seamless, casual, and without a sound or a rustle.

There is no breath.

“It’s rare for either of you to be mad. Get along, okay?” Tsuna says, softly. He looks them both in the eyes with a smile that’s much more serene than his usual— a smile that is kind, and yet, not at all gentle. He pats them both in the shoulders with hands that are carefully firm, and speaks in a tone more placating than anything else. “All that bloodlust is a healthy sign, but don’t go too far.”

Neither Takeshi nor Kyoko move an inch.

Tsuna turns and leaves, and the spell is gone. “Kurokawa-san, don’t move that hand, please!” going toward Hana who’d burned herself on the pot by accident and was running her hands under the tap. He clumsily fusses over her despite her offended yelling of not needing his help.

Takeshi is so stunned, he can’t even react.

Kyoko reaches up to her face, rather appalled.

“Hey, Yamamoto-kun,” she speaks up again in confusion, “did I look angry or anything?”

Takeshi doesn’t know, honestly. Kyoko’s facade of a perfect girl is flawless— so flawless, Takeshi had been a little annoyed that she had no bloodlust in her soul. Her words dripped with sarcasm, sweet witchery, spiteful honey— but it always came off as the empty threats from overconfidence. She did not have a bloodlust, charisma, or a visibly imposing demeanor that could invoke fear in anyone.

“No…” Takeshi admits. Then, with an amused sigh of relief that definitely wasn’t borne of apprehension, “he snuck up. On me.”

Kyoko nods.

“Hey, Yamamoto-kun,” she wonders. “Was Tsuna-kun… always like that?” It’s a silly question. But it’s in these moments that people find themselves staring straight in the face of what’s under that Dame-Tsuna facade, and it’s so jarring, you can’t unsee it.

Her hands are still shaking.

Takeshi looks away, chuckling as he rubs at his neck nervously. “Damn, he’s scary when he’s mad…”

Tsuna sighs, finally sitting down to enjoy his team’s curry. Hana’s really so stubborn, but she’s like a feral jungle girl that’s vehemently hating the fact she has to adapt to human society, and he’s not really sure how to handle it.

“I’m not thanking you,” Hana says, cheeks red and looking away, mortified by her disgraceful display after finally calming down from the ordeal of cooking a meal.

The class laughs heartily at that.

Everyone sits down, including Takeshi and Kyoko, as the curry is ladled onto dishes and everyone has lunch together in the classroom.

Tsuna pauses as he stares at the curry on the table, alarm bells ringing in his head.

He looks at the ring— not turning black. He brings a spoonful up and smells it. No, nothing’s wrong. Then what’s this incessant unrest crescendoing in his head, making his vision waver, making his head ring—

“Thanks for the food!” and the class echoes.

He’s off his seat and lunging for the next table faster than the last person can say ‘food’, and a swing of his foot takes the entire pot of curry right off the stove.

“Sugaya!” he yells.

Hayato and Takeshi’s eyes are wide, but in the confusion of the moment, despite knowing there’s a threat— they do not know what it is, and thus, they only sit in their chairs, unable to respond in any way.

“Oh, for real?” Sugaya sighs, almost disappointed, but he grabs his plate by the edge like frisbee and whips, taking off an entire row of dishes to startled shouts. His fork goes toward someone that has the bowl lifted, and he slides his glass right into the last one right across from him, spilling orange juice right into his food.

In the process, Kyoko and Hana, absolutely mortified by the destruction, get to witness Tsuna casually reaching over their shoulders and upturning their curries right onto the table.

That’s enough to stop the entire class and make them all gawk.

But explanations aren’t needed.

The pot that had spilled onto the table and the floors— began to corrode, dangerously black smoke and a stench that made Hayato and Takeshi run for the windows wafted out. It melted through the polished tables, the paved floors, and even a chair. Slowly, it began to melt the pot itself, too, and there’s a terrified squeak from everyone else.

Tsuna sighs in defeat.

“Oh come on,” Tsuna whines, “I watched every step of that curry being made! Where did it go wrong?!” he claws at his hair, “Nee-san, I know you’re there, WHERE ARE YOU?!”

Reborn starts laughing.

The high shelf under him also starts giggling.

“Sorry, sorry.”

Bianchi says, stepping out of the fake side of the high shelf that should have been full of spare rags. She’s not wearing her goggles, which makes Hayato jerk out of his spot by the window and try to jump out— Takeshi grabs him and now Hayato’s ducking inconspicuously behind Takeshi, staring out warily.

Takeshi looks back at him, earns a glare, and decides to be the human shield he is and stand.

“I was just testing out my newest poison cooking— remember last time I managed to make anything I touched poisonous? I touched that pot before everyone came in. It only started working now, so I’ve learned a new skill,” she reports cheerfully, “delayed poison utensils! Anything cooked with it only starts being poisonous after an hour.”

Something inside him snaps, and Tsuna shrieks, “DON’T GO UPGRADING YOUR FREAKY LOGIC-DEFYING POWERS! MY BLOOD PRESSURE IS GONNA TAKE ME OUT BEFORE ANY POISON DOES!”

“But you knew instantly!” Bianchi says brightly, like she’s not being screamed at, “as usual, you’re so fun, Tsunayoshi.”

“For the last time, Nee-san, stop using my trauma as a poison detector!! Mister inconspicuous vintage crockpot! Don’t pretend to be deaf over there Reborn, I’m talking to you too! It’s NOT FUNNY!”

“That’s untrue. It’s absolutely hilarious. And incredibly amusing.”

At this point, Sugaya has managed to re-serve all the people whose dishes were ruined, and everyone has decided to just continue eating.

No one even touches the melting pot and table and floor, they just scuttle aside and eat, because it’s a poisonous hazard that shouldn’t be touched. Hayato is doing breathing exercises in the corner, and Takeshi is having seconds.

“Sawada’s got it rough, huh?” someone murmurs.

“Oh well, not the worst thing I’ve almost eaten in my life.”

“Close call though. Thanks, Sugaya.”

“Though I think you could’ve done all that with a warning.”

“Shame we couldn’t eat your curry, Hana-chan,” Kyoko says, already moving on.

“Yeah.”

Tsuna and Bianchi continue their one-sided argument until Hibari Kyouya kicks the door down to make them shut up.

“See, you guys?” Reborn finds himself in the innocent spot with Takeshi, Kyoko, and Hayato. “Sugaya reacts immediately, without even a question, because he trusts Tsuna’s instincts. That’s how an ideal subordinate should react.”

Hayato clicks his tongue. “I had my bombs out. Tsunayoshi didn’t make it clear what was the threat, how was I supposed to know?”

Takeshi chuckles, “now now. That was definitely really cool!”

“Isn’t everyone just bullying me?”

Tsuna ends up with his face planted on Takeshi’s lap in the classroom, hiding from the world. Takeshi feels like it’s an obligation to pat him on the head.

“Sorry about him,” Sugaya says, “his biggest weakness is that he’s a mommy’s boy. So the girls in our class last year did that as a joke at first, then eventually it became a habit as the year went on. We spoiled him because his Dame-Tsuna mode is way too funny. To be fair, he was working twice as hard as everyone to keep up.”

Takeshi chuckles, “it’s fine, I don’t mind.”

For Takeshi, peace is fleeting, like the breeze. It comes and goes, but never stays, like the rain. He enjoys calm moments of pampering and warmth, but he can never shake off the feeling of unease to truly enjoy it.

So, patting Tsuna on the head as he clings and cries is soothing to him.

“After all,” Takeshi pats Tsuna on the head even as he looks up at him, curious whether Takeshi’s disgusted by him or not— he’s not. Instead, he smiles down, indulging as always. “Crying when you’re overwhelmed is a right everyone deserves, after all.”

Hayato looks over from the seat in front of Takeshi.

“Seriously, Tsunayoshi— are you bipolar or something?” He murmurs.

Takeshi hums, “honestly I have to ask that question as well, Tsuna.”

“Sawada-kun, don’t cry,” Sugaya says, reading the textbook and holding up some brushes, “I’m the one that has to do your ‘I am not sleep-deprived, and I have definitely not been crying’ makeup every time you ruin your pretty face.”

Of course, Tsuna starts bawling harder.

“Isn’t he just so cute?” Bianchi chuckles. “Tsunayoshi and Hayato both. I can’t believe they’re together in the same place now. It’s like a dream come true.”

“Reign in some of that, Bianchi,” Reborn says. “You’re smiling so silly, it’s creepy.” With a perfectly hypocritical toddler smile on his face.

They stand by the edge of a building barely having a clear view of Namimori— Reborn has Leon out as a rifle by his knee, and Bianchi leans out comfortably.

“I can’t help it,” Bianchi lays a hand on her cheek dreamily, “they’re both little brothers of mine that are trying their best. I can’t help but want to hold onto them.”

Reborn chuckles, fond.

“Though, if even you know of Tsuna so well, I’m surprised by just how many people are out for him. He’s only a civilian, but his black market bounty is rising even higher than Skull’s when he started out as Arcobaleno,” Reborn says. “Someone out there’s selling information.”

“It’s because he’s in Namimori, the hotspot of enigmas,” Bianchi says, taking out a cigarette, offering one to Reborn, and lighting her own up when Reborn refuses. “Emergency Squad E has taken down many hitmen in the field that many can’t even imagine antagonizing. Of course he’s a hot topic.”

“You've been earning some petty cash on the side?”

“Of course. Would be dumb not to sell some info, they’ll find out anyway. Nothing important, though.”

Bianchi turns around, and leans back, looking up at the crescent moon.

“They took down the God of Death, too,” she says. “Everyone always said he was your only equal in our world. No one knows what happened in Class E, who taught them to be such threats to the balance of the underworld— and their involvement with the government complicates things. No one wants you anywhere near the Decimo. They’re all afraid of the monster that’ll come out of all this.”

Reborn scoffs.

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” he mutters. “The God of Death grew weak. It was his dream to be killed the way he went— The government will not be a threat to us, and the balance to the underworld has always been shattering. If you’re afraid, you were never meant to last.”

“Is that pride talking?”

Reborn chortles. “I’d hope you’re not taunting me, Bianchi.”

Bianchi simpers. “Oh dear, I would never.”

Leon shifts back into a chameleon, crawling into his hat.

“Well…”

Reborn turns around, to the crowd of dead bodies, sprawled over the entire rooftop space. Bodies mangled, blood pooling, walls corroded with sick purple custard.

He glances at Bianchi, “at least we know that you jaywalking down the infiltration hobby didn’t leave you rusty. Can you believe the amount of upstarts that think they even have a chance? I can’t even laugh at this, it’s too pathetic.”

Bianchi giggles, and Reborn finds himself remembering that Bianchi, despite her voluminous experience, cold-blooded work ethic, and impeccable kill record—

—she’s still only twenty.

And she’s the coming Matriarch of the Gokudera Famiglia, set to officially inherit by the end of this year.

“Of course not!” she swoons, “I’m working hard, absorbing all I can, becoming the multi-talented hitman the world expects me to be. You haven’t forgotten your promise to marry me once I’m of age, right?”

Reborn is so baffled that he laughs.

“What promise might you be talking about? I don’t remember any promises.”

Bianchi puffs up her cheeks, “you promised me twelve years ago that when I became a great mafiosi, you’d marry me!”

It happened when Bianchi was eight. When she’d been starstruck at first sight of Reborn and threw down a marriage proposal right then and there in the middle of an underworld leader meeting she wasn’t even supposed to be in. It was the cutest thing.

Reborn had been so amused by her determination, inborn dying will, and talent— that he simply nodded and dismissed all she said, thinking she’d forget by the time she grew up. He even thought it would be amusing blackmail material once she started being self-aware. Clearly, he’d underestimated her. Even after going through puberty, dating, and travelling— she still had her sights set on Reborn.

He had to respect her tenacity, if nothing else.

“Unfortunately, Bianchi, I really don’t remember,” he says. “Maybe when you become the Greatest Hitman in the world, I’ll have an inkling.”

Bianchi huffs, receiving the message but still rather miffed.

“You’re such a tease.”

They descended the roof, stepping down over the bodies without even giving any of them a glance. Like a pair of coworkers returning to the office after a smoke break on the roof, they left the building, and went on about their day.

“Do you think Tsunayoshi can become a great Boss?” Bianchi asks.

Reborn smirks.

“He has it all— Primo’s love, Primo’s devotion, Primo’s resolve, and Primo’s intuition too. Why would he be anything else? And I bet my title on it, there’s no way I’ll lose.”

Tsuna may be an expert at assassination, but Reborn’s an expert at gambling.

It’s not very hard to notice Hayato being very avoidant of his sister. Apparently, she’d settled in his apartment against his will, so he now takes her to have meals at the Sawada Household. He does not trust her in his kitchen, or alone at his apartment.

Apparently, they’re essentially strangers under the same roof over there, only humming and hawing when either of them has to leave the house. They’re not hostile or anything— Bianchi wears the goggles all the time in the house, and Hayato gives her a blanket when she’s asleep.

Every sibling relationship is different, so Tsuna supposes he can leave them alone.

The issue, however, comes with the occasional poison in his breakfast.

“So, Tsuna, I see you’re taking your first-aid kit openly everywhere now,” Reborn says, calmly, over his espresso.

The only purple miso soup is the one laid out for Tsuna. Mom, notice already, please. Hayato is averting his eyes apologetically. He doesn’t want to be the next target.

“I’m unnaturally weak to poisons, please,” Tsuna pleads, “I nearly died from food poisoning on a field trip last year. My body isn’t made for building up poison immunity or whatever you’re trying to train into me, so please stop.”

Reborn hums.

“Nonsense. There are a variety of reasons why your body should be much stronger after that poisoning incident, rather than weaker,” he says. “The only reason you automatically spit out anything that tastes strange now is because you’re afraid. That can’t remain if you want to survive in this industry.”

Tsuna scowls.

So what if he’s afraid? He’s allowed to be afraid of collapsing and throwing up blood. He’s Dame-Tsuna, he’s the good-for-nothing, always two-steps-behind assassin that is more careful, more meticulous, and more observant than anyone else.

He doesn’t have to be invincible— no assassin isn’t afraid of death, and the ones that fail to acknowledge that are the weak ones.

(Fear isn’t a weakness. Fear is the crutch of Tsuna’s strength.)

“Don’t worry, Tsuna,” Reborn says. “My job is to make you a Mafia Boss. Whether you like that or not, there’s no way I’d let you die.”

Tsuna hates how reliable he sounds.

Reborn’s job is to make Tsuna into a capable Mafia Boss— so even if he throws Tsuna into gunfire, into pits, off buildings, or puts him before deadly substances as a parlour trick— he will never allow Tsuna to die.

If there’s one thing Tsuna wholeheartedly respects about Reborn, it’s his pride as a professional hitman that does his job right.

And Reborn is right about one more thing— it’s something that’s essential, not just as a Mafia Boss, but in this industry. As an assassin, having something as useful as resistance to poisons is an invaluable asset.

Even more than throwing up and fighting for his life over a glass of poison, he’s much more afraid of one day ending up incapacitated by poison and leaving his friends to fight his battle for him again.

He’s much more afraid of being a liability.

“Alright, then,” Tsuna sighs, picking up the goopy purple miso soup and sitting down, smiling tauntingly. “But if I die from this, I guess you failed your mission and I win the bet?”

Reborn scoffs. “In your dreams.”

Hayato makes a startled shriek as Tsuna downs the entire bowl like a shot glass. Bianchi makes a very impressed noise.

“TSUNAYOSHI!” Hayato cries in despair.

“Oh my, my,” Nana sighs.

Tsuna ends up having to stay home because of food poisoning.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Reborn,” Tsuna groans, the migraine and weakness overcoming him as he lays on the bed, “An assassin that risks his own life to fulfil a mission isn’t an assassin worth his salt. I knew I wouldn’t die.”

“So you willingly took a losing bet?”

“No,” Tsuna grumbles, “you guaranteed my safety, so I took a step back. With this I’ll gain more blades that I could eventually use against you. It’s all part of a long con, a step towards a long-running facade where I’ll inevitably win in the end. Just wait.”

Reborn has to admit, Tsuna’s amusing. He sits on the backboard of the bed, watching over Tsuna as he tries to rest.

But Reborn’s very curious. “Is that something he taught you?”

Tsuna’s eyes turn toward the window, to the crescent moon faintly visible in the daytime sky. Then, he averts his gaze to the bedside table, where a silver brooch collar pin lays.

“Half of it,” he admits. “He taught me everything. But that second half, specifically, comes from the dove.”

Reborn scoffs. “No wonder that part’s half-baked.”

Tsuna laughs. “But you think the first part’s okay?”

“Respectable, I can admit that much,” Reborn says. “I have to. He was the only man to ever become my equal, after all.”

Tsuna’s smile evens out sadly.

“The World’s Greatest Hitman and the World’s Greatest Assassin,” Reborn snickers. “Aren’t you unlucky? You won the craziest lottery in the world to be trained by both.”

Tsuna turns around and groans into his pillow.

“I told you,” muffled into the pillow. “I’m not becoming a Mafia Boss.”

Reborn chuckles. “I’m sure you didn’t want to be an assassin either, but look at you now.”

Always so annoying when he’s right.

“Eh, so Tsuna’s sick home? That’s unusual,” Takeshi says, somehow ending up walking along the school’s corridors with Hayato. Hayato looks like he hates every second of this.

“Yeah… it’s my Aneki’s fault again. My bad.”

Takeshi snickers. “He’ll be all better after he throws up, it’s fine!”

“What? No,” Hayato’s stunned, “I mean, yes, but, no? You do know that poison corrodes you from inside out, right? I’m surprised his organs are okay.”

“It’s fine,” Takeshi snickers. “I taught him before how to breathe to get the poison through your bloodstream with the least amount of damage. He’ll get through this.”

Hayato doesn’t even know what he’s hearing.

“That’s not physically possible.”

“You’re not true, Gokudera. If you don’t want to die enough, you’ll manage it somehow.”

“That’s the most simpleton explanation of the dying will I’ve ever heard.”

“Dying will?”

“You’re not serious. You’re literally flame active, how are you not dead yet?”

“Well, as I said. If you don’t want to die enough, you’ll manage it somehow.”

They make their way to the nurse’s office, because Tsunayoshi wanted to replace some of the medication here that’d run out. There’s no nurse in their school— there are barely enough teachers— so neither of them expected to see someone wearing a lab coat inside of the room.

The window’s open.

The guy’s smoking.

He turns around. “Huh? What… disappointing, just a bunch of guys.”

Hayato gasps, “wha– Sha—??” but Takeshi already running forward, his shinai out of its holster and—

The clash of wood and metal is a sharp clang in the quiet nurse’s office.

Hayato’s eyes are wide as Hibari Kyouya deflects Yamamoto Takeshi’s sword swing with a pair of tonfas. He frowns, when the twist of his wrist doesn’t manage to dislodge the weapon from Takeshi’s hands.

A lunge forward to bring the tonfa at Takeshi’s neck— Takeshi steps back evenly, ducks down, and reaches up to curl a fist around Kyouya’s shirt front, twisting into a grip.

Kyouya reacts immediately, elbows locking down to nail Takeshi right in the shoulder.

That makes him let go, but Takeshi immediately drops his sword to the other hand, thrusting his shinai in a stab forward.

Kyouya swerves aside, bringing up a leg just in time to lock over the doctor’s neck and bring him down just enough to avoid the shinai as it pierces through the open window. The force of the strike makes the branch nearest to it scutter violently.

Everything stops.

Takeshi and Kyouya have their eyes affixed in a hostile glare for all of a long moment, before Takeshi steps back first, retrieving his shinai as Kyouya rebalances himself and fixes his collar with a gruff sigh.

“Sorry, Hibari-san,” Takeshi beams, like he didn’t just attempt murder, “I attacked immediately because I thought there was an intruder!”

Kyouya scoffs. “Try to damage school property again and I’ll bite you to death.”

But Hayato’s eyes aren’t on either of them.

He’s looking at Doctor Shamal, laid comfortably against the wall. Through the entire confrontation he neither flinched nor jerked in the slightest. His eyes never faltered, and even when he was shoved aside, he was unperturbed.

Shamal takes another drag of his cigarette. “Damn, kids are scary these days.”

And immediately sidesteps the coming tonfa in the guise of reaching for his cup of coffee on the table.

Kyouya snarls, “no smoking on school grounds.”

Doctor Shamal promptly puts it out on the ashtray.

“I know, I know, don’t be such a prick, Kyouya,” he glances over at the door, eyes locking— “it’s been a while. You look well, Hayato.”

Hayato jumps at the sudden address.

“Shamal! How did you—”

He doesn’t finish the question. How did he know where Hayato was? Why was he here? How did he know the Disciplinary Committee president? Why was he sitting in here, just waiting for them to arrive? How did he even know they’d arrive? Or is it all a coincidence? There’s too many things to ask.

(Did you come here to take me back?)

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m here on business,” Shamal says, leaning half out the window as Kyouya scowls at them all. “Had a few house calls to make. I am a doctor, after all. And since three’s a crowd, dodge.”

Hayato whirls around quickly.

Hibari Kyouya slams Hayato’s skull with a loud thwack of his tonfa, and he doesn’t have time to react. Takeshi’s moving quickly, though shinai swinging between Hayato’s limbs— only to get his wrist caught by Kyouya’s second tonfa, and the hilt is slammed into Hayato’s eye.

Takeshi yelps, “crap! My bad, Gokude—” he gets whacked in the nose by the tonfa and makes an utterly incomprehensible noise as he sprawls back into the curtains and the heel of the infirmary’s bed.

Hayato cringes in agony, doubling over.

“Tattoos are not allowed as per school rules, but since you’re a transfer student, you may be overlooked by covering them up,” Kyouya warns, sternly. “Your face can remain as is.”

Hayato’s appalled. He has so many tattoos including on his face that even the teachers gave up on regulating that for him, but here it is— the stickler in the mud that’s desperate to get on Hayato’s case.

By the time he can lift his head again, Kyouya’s gone.

When he turns back around again, Shamal, too, has left through the window.

Hayato lets out a breath he hadn’t even realized was stuck tight in his chest. “...Namimori’s a freaky place.”

Takeshi nods, “yeah,” he agrees, clearly still tearing up from the whack to the nose he got, “but trust me, it wasn’t this bad until this year. We didn’t have a high school until then, so most of us used to be scattered outside town. Now though, everyone’s home— of course it’s chaotic.”

“Why did he even attack us, anyways?”

“Oh, we were crowding.”

“Huh? What is he, a kid throwing rocks at pigeons on the sidewalk?”

“That’s the weirdest way anyone’s ever described it,” Takeshi sheathes his shinai. “Everyone thinks he’s scary too, but we can kind of understand his reasons.”

Hayato raises a brow at that, prompting Takeshi to continue.

“Namimori is a place where people come to hide,” Takeshi says. “If we stop being able to hide, we get erased, for everyone's sake. Gathering all the high schoolers back home is risky enough— lots of dangerous elements are coming together. So, be careful, Gokudera… if the balance isn’t maintained, they might decide to retire Namimori itself. The entire town…”

Hayato doesn’t know what that means.

“Who’s they?”

But Takeshi leaves, and Hayato doesn’t get answers.

Don’t ask too many questions is the code of Namimori. It’s a place where those that do not belong in society gather as their safe haven. No governmental influence to get in the way of morals, no human touch to reveal their secrets to the world. Everyone here, in some way— has a connection to something deeper, darker, and unimaginable.

It makes perfect sense that someone like Shamal, who’s travelled the world, makes house calls in this place. Why wouldn’t he? The question is— what else? And how many more are just waiting for a chance to congregate here?

That is why Tsuna, who made sensational news coverage last year, can live as a normal student here.

In here no news makes it outside the perimeters.

But there’s no way Tsuna’s the first one to catch the attention of the outside world. There’s no way that no one else has made that mistake before.

What happened to all the rest?

(Hayato thinks he’s better off not knowing, but eventually, he will have to learn what retirement means in this town.)

For now, though…

“Reborn, that asshole… he didn’t tell me how crazy the competition here would be. Good thing I got close to Tsunayoshi first.”

Also, it took him very long to register this, but: Shamal and Hibari Kyouya had been in the same room? But for what reason? Shamal whined his way through treating the male species, and why would the most stubborn carnivore of the town turn to a perverted doctor for anything? What’s their connection?

…And does Hayato want to know?

“I’ll be intruding, Maman!” Hayato calls into the house, “I got the milk you asked me to get from the stor—AAAAHHH!!!”

Doctor Shamal is in the kitchen.

“Oh hey Hayato, short time no see.”

“WHY ARE YOU HERE?!” indignantly, Hayato trips over the couch and goes sprawling into the living room table, interrupting a card game between Lambo and Bianchi.

“This is my second last stop of the day,” Shamal explains.

There’s a slap mark on Shamal’s face that looks eerily similar in size to Bianchi’s hand.

“Get away from my sister, you perverted freak!”

Bianchi gasps, tearfully, “Hayato, you love me that much?”

“No, I just would rather get excommunicated one more time than have this creep as a brother-in-law!”

“Rude,” Shamal murmurs. “Is that how you talk to the man that raised you?”

Lambo gawks at that new revelation.

“You didn’t raise sh*t,” Hayato grounds out.

“And who’s the one that gave you pocket money when you finally decided to run back to the world of the living, huh?” Shamal says.

“Blame Bianchi for that because I wished I stayed in Death City every day,” Hayato snarls at him. “No one asked for your help!”

Shamal scoffs. Turning to Bianchi and bringing up a new question like the weather,

“People always say I’m his bad influence, but the tattoos definitely didn’t come from me. Is it the needle?”

“f*ck off! My tattoos are my f*cking business!”

“Yeah, but with all the Japanese inspiration in there, you look like yakuza instead of mafia. Super misleading.”

“The idea is that I’m neither!”

Shamal sighs deeply.

He pats him roughly on the head.

“Wha—!?”

“I’m leaving. I’ve got more house calls to make,” Shamal picks up his suitcase. “Man, this job sucks. No hot chicks, and people keep making me treat the male species. I hate everything.”

Hayato blinks at that in utter confusion.

The door shuts.

“Oh dear, did Doctor Shamal already leave?” Nana wonders, but smiles fondly, “I’d have wanted to invite him for dinner. What a shame.”

“Maman,” Reborn says, “we know you love inviting everyone for dinner, but let’s not taint your house with him. He spreads diseases everywhere he goes.”

“Oh dear,” Nana rests her cheek in a hand, “perhaps some flowers, at least?”

“Maman, you don’t own a florist anymore. Don’t need to give a creep like that anything for the road.”

“But…”

Hayato gets up, suddenly realizing what it means for Shamal to have shown up. Reborn is one thing, Bianchi is another— if Shamal is moving, doesn’t that mean the core of the mafia is starting to focus its activities in Namimori?

It’s expected. The coming of the Tenth heir of the Vongola is huge news, after all. Enough to change the formula of regional hitmen dynamics altogether.

But isn’t this too soon? It’s only been some months since Reborn arrived. Everything’s moving so quickly that if Tsuna were a normal person, he’d have stood no chance in this tidal wave of the underworld.

Also…

“Did Shamal willingly treat a guy?”

Reborn hums. “Yeah, but don’t worry. I wasn’t the one that called him, so I definitely wasn’t the one that paid that pretty penny.”

Upstairs, Tsuna sits on his bed, sitting against the backrest, a single leg pulled up to his chest, the silver dove pin between his fingers.

“She really didn’t have to,” he sighs. “Who tattled on me anyways? Sugaya?”

(“I’m never one to turn down a request from a pretty lady,” Shamal had said. “But you know, kid, you’ve touched the world of medicines and poisons, barely scraped their surface— now you’re trying to dive into them? You’re stupid.”)

So what if Tsuna drinking that poisoned miso soup was stupid on all levels?

He worked harder than anyone else— what doesn’t kill him makes him stronger, and that’s even more true for Tsuna. He works harder and harder, grinds through the process step by step, trying countless times to get to his goals.

His bloodlust (dying will) is not a bursting, innate explosion.

His bloodlust (dying will) is a culmination of his efforts every single day, a gradually cultured sprout that’s painstakingly watered day by day. A potent furor only patience and resilience can garner.

(“But you know… I can respect that,” Shamal said. “I can respect you, since we’re both collectors. I’m weak, too, just like you. That’s how I survive, you know— I collect favours, so no one can ever kill me. Because I’m too valuable.”)

The single mosquito rested on the back of his palm, and they all watched it do its work.

Slowly, Tsuna will gather antibodies. He will gather blades. He will steal from as many people as he can— and turn them into his arsenal. Like a thief, cape billowing under the moonlit sky, with too many possibilities all tucked under his sleeves.

He is not meant to be a Boss that leads and lives in the light.

He’s always meant to live under the moon. That’s what he truly believes.

(“So, this is insurance,” Shamal laughed, “but don't forget— you owe me one now, and I expect the day will come when you’re not my enemy. That’s the only reason I’m willing to help out a dumb kid like you.”)

He reaches for the glass of water at his bedside.

When he picks it up, the silver ring on his finger turns black. If he wants to survive, he has to keep getting stronger. Even after the assassination classroom has ended, he had to keep soldiering on against the winds.

Life stops for no one.

“Might as well make use of it.”

He chugs it all.

[EXTRA #4]: The Last Stop before the Border.

“Well, the good news is, if you keep this up, I’ll never have to see you again. Because you’ll be dead.”

Bashfully, Irie Shouichi tucks his scarred stomach under the covers, baggy sleeves riding past the deep scars on his hands. He hugs his own figure, looking aside.

Shamal huffs. “Stop acting like that, you brat. You’re healing well, which is more than I can say for most of us Borderland Survivors. Nothing we can do about your malnourishment with a hole in your gut.”

Irie nods.

“Have you seen Hibari-san yet, Shamal-san? He’s—”

“Developed insomnia and narcolepsy at the same time, because he’s an idiot. What of it?” Shamal flips through the magazine of current hitman hot topics. Sawada Tsunayoshi is on the front page. “The path you’re headed? Straight for the same outcome. You’re even worse, because you seem to want to add ‘hikiNEET’ to your equation.”

Irie slouches on his chair, miserably sulking at his pills. “I see her, you know? When I try to sleep. When I play chess. Everything I do… I see her. I hear her. The Queen of Diamonds.”

Shamal rolls his eyes.

“But I can’t stop playing,” Irie says. He curls up on his chair, hugging himself firmly. “I see her when I stop, too. No matter what I do… I feel her behind me. She knows my next move, so I can’t lose focus for even a second. I know what she’ll do, and I know I can win— but I don’t want to. I don’t want to, Shamal.”

It’s an addiction that he hates. He plays chess to cope with everything— with the Borderlands, with the lives he’s failed, with the lives he’s taken— but it’s also the vice that reminds him of it all.

It’s because he’s such a mental wreck that his mother and sister abandoned him, refusing to have anything to do with him.

“I’m not a therapist,” Shamal says. “I don’t know what you should do except live. And maybe redecorate, your decor sucks.”

He stares at the broken glass while he says that.

“Have you even thought of your future?” Shamal asks. “You’re young. You’re a civilian. You can go the rest of your life never seeing the Borderlands again— isn’t that what you want? How about you find something to pursue, finish your studies, find a boring desk job or something?”

Irie looks down.

“What good am I? I can’t even go to school. All I know how to do is play chess,” Irie says. “I’m not like you, or Hibari-san, or even Fon-san—”

Shamal huffs.

“Please, don’t compare yourself to those crazy guys. How about you pick up Othello again? You said you were better at that.”

Irie grasps his hands together in a prayer.

“I don’t want to be good at it” he whispers, brokenly. “Do you think I’ll become like her one day? The Queen of Diamonds, she took everything from me. And then, I killed her.”

She sat there, on her throne, orchestrating Irie’s demise. And she had the gall to sit there and smile so satisfied, when Irie finally brought the release of death to her.

She was a great villain that threw all that weight, all that pain onto Irie— all to cultivate her personal monster that would finally dethrone her and send her to hell.

(Irie always, always, always regrets forcing her into a checkmate, on that chessboard, in the match of life and death.)

(Irie never forgets how warmly she smiled at him as she plunged to her death.)

(Irie never forgets. It haunts him, forever.)

“Why did it have to be me?” Irie sobs into his hands. “I’m just a normal kid. I just wanted to be a normal kid. Why did she have to choose me to take all of this? Why did she have to choose me to lose to? Why couldn’t I have lost that match? I wish I did. I wish I did!”

She wanted to die.

It could have been anyone.

Irie was just unlucky, that’s all.

“You have a way of reaching people, Shouichi,” Shamal picks up his bag, and makes to leave. “A way of reaching people who just want to be seen. A way of seeing the human, the redeemable, even in monsters. That’s why she chose to lose to you.”

Irie doesn’t want to be someone like that.

“I only offer my shoulder to pretty ladies,” Shamal says. “I have no interest in comforting wimpy little boys.”

Irie sniffles. “I’m surrounded by monsters. Monsters, all of you.”

“And I just told you why,” Shamal then slams the door shut. “Find your purpose, you softie. Weaklings find their own way to survive, and no sense in changing who you are when you’re already doing great enough.”

Weaklings survive their own way.

Irie Shouichi is burdened, but he, too, is a soldier hardened from battle. There are things only he can do, even now.

He clutches at himself harder.

“I just have to keep playing. I have to keep playing…”

The chess board on the table is set up in the middle of a game. When he looks over, he sees her— he sees her, her long silver hair, her motherly smile, her elegant winter coat.

She’s waiting for the final move. The move that will put her king in checkmate.

He blinks, and she’s gone.

“...and then I have to move on, right, Miss Lavina?”

Chapter 5: Aborted Countdowns (Bombs and Bazookas)

Chapter Text

“Seriously, what the hell’s your problem with me?”

“Nothing! Just asking in case you ever get the urge, you know?”

The school day begins with Hana ready to finally plot Takeshi’s murder in mysterious circ*mstances. Tsuna doesn’t know what to say about it— Hana’s got Takeshi cornered against the blackboard and Sugaya is respectfully pretending they don’t exist, focused on something in his sketchbook.

Tsuna sighs longsufferingly.

It’s his job to break them up, right? Right? He wants to cry.

“Now, now, Hana-chan, it’s okay. I’m sure Yamamoto-kun doesn’t mean any ill-will,” surprisingly, it’s Kyoko that steps between them. “He just has a strange way of making friends! Aren’t we all different people? I’m sure we can come to an understanding.”

She smiles like an angel descended from heaven, and Hana falters.

Takeshi, however, stares at her from above (because he’s just a whole head and more taller than her) and cheerfully clarifies, “no, I’m just making sure she’s not a threat to humanity. Can never be too careful, after all.”

Hana shrieks, “threat to humanity? You’re a threat to my sanity SON OF A BITCH—!”

Hana’s fist goes shooting over Kyoko’s shoulder toward Takeshi— and Kyoko sighs. She doesn’t move, the blow isn’t aimed at her, after all. But Takeshi reaches to get her out of the way, so he’d have more space to catch the blow coming forth.

What happens is neither impact nor disaster.

A bright flash of light sparks before Hana’s fist can even reach Kyoko’s immediate vicinity, And Hana’s hand bounces back so violently off the force field she’s thrown out of balance. The ricochet twists her arm in an angle that could not have been natural, and her fingers are a blooming red, as if burned.

Hana stumbles back, startled. She holds her arm— it’s trembling, to no will of her own—

Even Takeshi is taken aback. His hand never reached Kyoko’s body, and he was rather sure he wouldn’t have if he tried.

Tsuna and Hayato watch this from the doorway, but neither of them understand what they’d just witnessed. Sugaya’s pen freezes, stunned.

Kyoko’s expression is still kind and sweet, as it always is.

“I said,” Kyoko speaks up, “no fighting, Hana-chan. And Yamamoto-kun,” she tilts her head back, leaning back to Takeshi’s chest, patronizingly. “That’s enough.”

Takeshi and Hana’s responses are weak.

“...Yes, ma’am.”

Tsuna stares at the entire scene and sincerely, wholeheartedly thinks with the depth of his soul, ah, yes, I absolutely have a big fat idiot crush on her.

“What’s your problem with that Hana chick anyways?” Hayato murmurs over a mouthful of his yakisoba bread. “Isn’t your whole thing a ‘likeable dumb baseball idiot’? Harassing a girl all day seems like a weird hobby.”

Takeshi laughs. “First time I’ve heard someone phrase it like that!”

Tsuna wonders why Takeshi has so much patience for Hayato’s baffling rudeness, but spares none of it for Kyoko or Hana. It’s definitely not a girl thing— he’s perfectly fine with Haru— and Kyoko is one thing, they’ve known each other since childhood; it’s Hana that he has a weird personal vendetta against.

Hana didn’t even show up in Namimori before this year.

(Yes, she just showed up one day. And Namimori just accepted her existence, because that’s what they do here.)

“Didn’t you used to get along with Kyoko-chan?” Tsuna wonders. “I always hear you two in the same sentence in middle school. School jock and school madonna, childhood friends, the perfect duo, this and that.”

Now there’s a visible furrow in Takeshi’s brows, even when his smile is firm.

Hayato and Tsuna’s eyes meet behind Takeshi’s back. The plan begins.

“What, she your ex or something?” Hayato asks.

“Hey now,” Takeshi begins, and if they were less focused on his reaction they’d have missed the slight twitch of annoyance in his brows. “Kyoko and I get along fine.”

Magical. Even the school jock gets offended by the implication that he’s dating someone he clearly hates with all his guts.

“Come to think of it, Kurokawa-san’s pretty much a helicopter parent for Kyoko-chan,” Tsuna says. Takeshi’s only ever bickering with Kyoko when it involves Hana. “As if her big brother isn’t overprotective enough already.”

Two overprotective people hounding over her all day like that can get very overbearing, right?

Hayato frowns at that. He’s barely acquaintances with Ryohei and Kyoko— they shared a dinner table at Nana’s place, but that entire conversation was focused on argument and nothing more.

All of them also seemed to converge on Kyoko like she’s glass. Hayato doesn’t get it. In her he sees signs of a warrior— rough hands, keen eyes, and a firm resolve that could make her a prominent enemy on the field. She’s someone that’s seen death, fought beside death, and fought death to survive.

(A lot of people in Namimori have those eyes.)

(So, Hayato’s not surprised by them, just by how everyone treats her like a flower.)

“I don’t have a problem with Kurokawa,” Takeshi sticks a straw in his juicebox and just lies to their faces. A very bold move for the epitome of good boy syndrome in class.

Tsuna sighs. “I’d just hope Hana would try and at least tolerate the boys a little more.”

“What’s with her calling us ‘mongrels’ at the time, anyways?” Hayato wonders. “I’m not sure if she sounds out-of-touch or rich.”

Tsuna grumbles. “The same way I wish you two could get along with the girls a little more…”

Hayato grounds out, “I get along with girls just fine, thank you.”

Pause.

Tsuna and Takeshi spin to him.

“You do?”

“Gokudera-kun, you get along with someone??”

Hayato hisses, “one of those questions was much ruder than the other! Are you picking a fight?!”

Takeshi whistles.

“I never get tired of seeing Tsuna do that.”

Hayato groans, wondering not for the first time in these months how he’s getting so easily judo-thrown. He’s been trained in hand-to-hand combat for so long— definitely longer than Tsuna, and he’s been keeping up with his training— so why does it feel like day by day, he’s getting weaker?

Yeah, that’s weird. Sure he’s not eating as well, and he doesn’t have access to as many weapons as before, but there’s no reason for his fighting prowess to actively deteriorate like this. It’s getting frustrating.

“How about you try getting thrown then, if you’re so amused,” Hayato grumbled sourly.

Tsuna dusts his hands. “Absolutely not.”

Takeshi tries not to look too disappointed, but he’s actively deflating. “I’m jealous, Gokudera, Tsuna doesn’t fight with me like you do.”

“What? Why?”

“Uhh,” Takeshi has to guess, “my leg, maybe?”

Hayato glances over. The prosthetic stands out, definitely. Takeshi can play baseball with it, run and dive just fine, but that’s with special permission, and he clearly adapted to doing all that while making use of the less control he has on that side.

But whenever Takeshi gets dragged into shenanigans with Reborn, Tsuna specifically keeps him off his feet. He’s just not adept for long-distance running (just short sprints), and with the noise it generates, there’s no sneaking around either.

“It’s not that,” Tsuna insists. “I know when I’m outmatched.”

Hayato jerks up, “EXCUSE ME?”

Did Tsuna just casually imply that Takeshi outclasses both of them? On his pride as a hitman he is morbidly offended on many fronts.

“On skill alone, you’re stronger than me, too,” Tsuna says. “But this isn’t your battlefield, nor is it your way or fighting, that’s why I can keep winning. The same thing goes for Yamamoto-kun… honestly, I never want to fight Yamamoto-kun. He’s nice, so he’ll back down first when we fight, but when things are serious, I won’t even stand a chance.”

He has a point.

Hayato’s battlefield is war. The core of an advanced party, somewhere in his endless, streaming supply of bombs, his quick fingers, his manoeuvrability— all of it blooms the brightest in a large, urban landscape, between the folds of artillery assault.

Of course he’s getting rusty, if all he’s managed to get in Namimori are one-on-one duels.

Takeshi’s battlefield is one-on-one combat. Specifically, the kind of battle where the outcome is decided the second you falter.

Whether against a pitcher when he’s up to bat, or standing before an opponent in kendo— he goes straight in for the kill with all the focus of taking down his enemy in one decisive strike. The only thing between everyone and Takeshi’s blade is the fact that they pose no genuine threat to him, so he will never draw his sword out of its sheathe.

(In contrast, he deemed Shamal as a threat that day, and if Kyouya hadn’t interefered…)

Of course. Tsuna, who excels in catching people off guard, who excels in subjugation, diversion, and pacification— he stands no chance against someone with a rock-iron will to kill, like Takeshi.

So Tsuna sits down and curls up, sulking. “Yamamoto-kun is really scary, you know. When he’s serious.”

Hayato squints. He stares up at Takeshi, who’s frowning back.

In unison, they address Tsuna, “you know, you don't have room to talk when it comes to that.”

Tsuna makes an insulted squeak. But he huffs, “look, Gokudera-kun. In Namimori you can’t just pick fights with anyone. Between Hibari-san and Yamamoto-kun who would accidentally kill you—”

“Hey,” now Takeshi’s offended too.

“Haru is a gymnastic prodigy trained to subdue actual criminals, so trust me when I say you don’t want to fight her,” Tsuna continues, though he looks very concerned when Hayato gives a sceptical raised brow. “Mochida-senpai almost mistook me for an intruder when I came in early to school once.”

Almost demurely, Takeshi says, “that’s because you walk weird, Tsuna.”

Tsuna then casts a longsuffering look at Hayato. Hayato nods, understanding very deeply now that something is very f*cking wrong with their heads.

“Then what about that weird prefect?” Hayato says, “I kind of get the dog-girl’s deal, and I’ve given up on this baseball idiot— but what’s stuck up the ass of that guy with the two juttes? Isn’t he the reason I keep getting chewed out for my bombs, you know, the guy that’s scared of firewo—”

Tsuna and Takeshi don’t even get to respond.

Heck, how did Kyouya sense the disturbance in the force and launch himself up here from the other side of the roof? And of course the tonfa soars magnificently across the air to squarely bowl him over the skull.

“YOWCH!”

“Hibari-san?!”

Hayato’s bleeding over the head now but Kyouya rests one foot on the ledge, the other well-settled on the ground for balance. And he levels all three imbeciles on the roof with the smirk of a battle junkie.

“Herbivores— you’re crowding and you’re being loud.”

He doesn’t need to finish the sentence. Tsuna’s already abandoning friendship today for the great escape, dragging Takeshi to his feet, who's tugging an unmoving Hayato by the shoulder sleeve.

(Hayato’s probably not unconscious. Just flummoxed.)

“I’ll bite you all to death!” Kyouya’s ready— but the grind of a motorcycle’s engine makes all of them pause.

A glance back and a single, toddler-sized motorbike zooms vertically up the roof and overhead of all of them.

“Ciaossu, Tsuna!” Reborn greets, after landing smoothly. Leon, a helmet, turns back into a lizard chameleon.

The most reasonable reaction here is obviously:

“What the actual f*ck, Reborn??”

“Obviously, I’m clearing the hitmen creeps out of Namimori,” Reborn says, like Tsuna is supposed to know anything. “Some of them get past Haru’s initial screening. Knew I shouldn’t have trusted a cop werewolf.”

“I’m being targeted—” Tsuna balks, “is that what Haru’s been busy with? Oh come on now I owe the Miura house a gift basket as an apology for her overtime!”

“Seems rough. Anyways, most of them gave up. Though, one of them seemed interesting, so I brought them back to be your practice partner,” Reborn says, getting off the bike like he’s supposed to be cool but he’s two heads tall. “I’m doing tutor things. Be grateful.”

“Stop acting like this doesn’t concern you!”

“She’s coming.”

“Who is— WOAH!”

The foot that’s launched his way doesn’t have a warning— and definitely not a motorbike engine to call forth its arrival. Whoever this— child— is, they’d scaled up all floors of this building with their bare limbs and finished with a clean somersault axe kick aimed right to the head.

Kyouya knocks away the heeled boot in a movement so seamless, he twists the ambusher right off the course of their momentum and sends them sprawling to the ground.

It’s a very young girl.

She’s in a deep red, samfu top— clearly a foreign assailant hailing from— China, most likely. Her hair was wound up in braided and looped buns. A tattoo of a single mahjong coin sat in the back of her palm, and a skull was drawn on the black sash around her waist. She recovered her balance quickly, assuming offensive position and levelling Sawada Tsunayoshi with a challenging gaze.

Kyouya scoffs.

“Disturbing the peace of Namimori… and then not even looking at me? Insolent herbivore.”

Tsuna can’t really think straight, so shaken by how young this hitman is. She couldn’t be any older than eight years old.

She has her target set on Tsuna, and Tsuna only. Even when it was Kyouya that disrupted her attack, she pays him no mind.

“Wha—” Hayato finally peels his face away from the ground.

Hayato gets immediately stomped back onto the cement by Reborn.

“She’s a hitman commissioned to kill you, Tsuna,” Reborn says. “I dealt with the ones that’ll give you trouble, so you deal with this one. You have to learn something.”

“Reborn, I’m not fighting a child—”

Tsuna gets heeled up the jaw by the aforementioned child.

“Don’t underestimate her,” Reborn says. “She’s been a hitman since birth, trained to be a human weapon. She’s less of a threat than the other ones after you, but she can and will kill you.”

“I’d have appreciated the warning EARLIER!”

“Don’t complain. I’ve been nice to you,” Reborn says.

“HOW? Eeek!” Tsuna has to vault halfway over the roof and run along the ledge to avoid the next series of manoeuvres, god, this kid’s fast— when she launched off Yamamoto’s shoulder to change her angle and corner him he honestly got so impressed he froze— but Tsuna doesn’t have to avoid the next palm strike aimed for his chest.

Because Hibari Kyouya gets there first, and with only the bend of his arms, he deflects the strike perfectly, diverting the impact off course— locked down the girl’s arm, and twisted her body’s center of gravity onto an unceremonious fall heavy on her shoulder.

Without even using his tonfas.

Yeah. No one starts a fight in Kyouya’s presence.

It’s hard to remember with his dictatorship going on, but the Hibari family is, in fact, an esteemed martial arts sect. This girl infiltrated Hibari’s home grounds boldly challenging his family art like some kind of dojo crasher and she doesn’t even know it yet.

Takeshi had been watching the whole time, amused, but he stepped in at the last moment, shinai drawn, and held it above the girl. Not quite pinning her down, just warning her against moving.

She looks up and her brows narrow in frustration.

Tsuna sighs deeply.

“I’ll bite you to death later, herbivore,” Kyouya warns Tsuna, and he tenses, “for inviting disharmony to the school.”

“But it wasn’t even my fault,” Tsuna protests weakly.

“Well, you failed,” Reborn says. “You have to rely on your Guardian candidates to protect you from a simple threat. I guess this at least means they’re reliable, but you’re so useless, Dame-Tsuna.”

“Stop testing me!” Tsuna yells. “I am trying to be a normal high school kid!”

“I refuse to be named a Guardian of anything, infant,” Kyouya growls at Reborn. “Would you rather be bitten to death first?”

“You can try, but I think you have better things to worry about.”

Just then, a chime rings out between them— a look towards the Chinese hitman girl answers their question and raises more at once. Her eyes gleam white through the irises, and there’s something on her forehead.

Mahjong pieces.

A ping, and the number of mahjong pieces go from nine to eight.

“Ah,” Takeshi says, “well… that’s not good.”

“What is this time-bomb-like scenario?” Tsuna balks, “Reborn, explain!”

“It’s the Pinzu Time Bomb. As you might have guessed, she blows up after a countdown. One of the strongest weapons in hitman politics at the moment, many fight to hire her for guaranteed assassinations.”

A gigantic bomb-firework-bomb setting off one meter from Hibari Kyouya? Absolutely not. Tsuna will have the Hibaris after him for eternity to the ends of the earth.

“Thanks for the very concise explanation for once!” Tsuna shrieks, picking her up by the collar only for her to latch on with all limbs like a determined limpet, “WHAT’S THIS?”

He’d been planning to throw her.

“When it activates, she clings to the nearest target.”

“LEAD WITH THAT!”

He tries to shrug her off to no avail. Takeshi picks her off but then she hugs him straddled forefront and now Tsuna’s panicking. Kyouya picks her off by the scruff and tosses her away but she lunges at him, hugging him from behind.

“The count! The count’s at three now! STOP HER!”

“Uhhh—!! Tsuna!” Takeshi calls, reaching for his bat, “hold her out, I’ll swing this!”

“HUH? That’s not okay!”

Even Kyouya seemed to have trouble getting her off, which was reasonable, seeing as she wasn’t being much of a threat except ‘annoyingly clingy’. Clearly, he didn’t want a bomb blowing up on him either, and none of them knew what to do about it. Hitting her didn’t seem right, but and also she’s a bomb—

“Reborn, get off me already!”

Hayato finally snaps, swinging wildly at the insolent toddler on his head. Reborn hops off, and Hayato winds around to take in the chaos.

“What’s going on there?!”

Tsuna wails. “Gokudera-kun, no! Don’t make this situation worse!” Even if Hayato’s a bomb specialist, clearly, this girl’s got a vendetta against any mafiosi in vicinity. She’s going to take them all down with her in an explosion that’ll put festivals to shame.

Hayato gawks, taking in the madness of the scene.

They’re trying to shrug off the girl and Tsuna’s running away as much as he can. Takeshi is struggling between swatting her away and jumping, but the girl’s also become a master dodger whilst in countdown mode. She dodges every swipe, punch, and slash with the ease of a drunken fist master that isn’t drunk.

Even Kyouya hasn’t managed to land a hit. He’s clearly getting very offended.

Then, just as the count turns to two— Hayato loses it.

“What the- f*ck– he– OY! Sto— I-PIN, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?! Discard!”

Her numbers stop. Colour bleeds back into her pupils. She freezes, caught off guard.

Long enough for Takeshi to accidentally bat her skyward with his shinai.

Obviously, Takeshi didn’t expect that emergency shutdown code either, which is why he yelps the second before his swing reaches its target, and he’s mortified when the girl goes flying so perfectly upward into the sky, so high they actually can’t see her because of the sun.

“Oops… hey, wait,” Takeshi says, once the girl’s reached the peak of ascent and is slowly descending, “the swing didn’t feel like it broke any bones.”

“Why do you know what that feels like, Yamamoto-kun?” Tsuna asks, warily.

Takeshi doesn’t answer.

“Don’t worry, a swing like that can’t hurt her,” Hayato assures.

Hayato carefully steps around, looking upward— and then he spreads his arms. Right on cue I-pin plunges right down into him, and he spins a little in the catch before setting her down. The girl had the gall to giggle cheekily.

“Do that again!” she keeps her arms up, jumping, “I-pin wants to go high high again! Hayato hasn’t done that in so long! Missed you, missed you so much!”

She speaks, so bubbly and childlike, Tsuna is sent reeling at how unexpected it all is. Her accent comes on strong, but she can speak Japanese well, just as Lambo had. She beams, like an adorable little girl, like she didn’t just try to kill all of them. And yet, she’s a human weapon?

(What is the mafia doing? If this is a mafia thing.)

“No more!” Hayato snaps, with all the exasperation of a big brother that’s been babysitting for too long. “What are you doing, coming all this way? What were you trying to do?”

Tsuna is— well, flabbergasted wouldn’t explain it. He doesn’t think he has the right to be surprised that Hayato knows this hitman girl, but come on.

Kyouya grimaces, clearly on the verge of attacking something to get the annoyance out of his system— but Takeshi smiles, seemingly just relieved the situation seems to have tided over well.

But when Tsuna glances over to Reborn, it’s clear from the infant’s unamused expression that he, too, didn’t expect this.

I-pin jabs a hand in Tsuna’s direction.

Everyone stares.

“I-pin heard that Vongola the number ten is making Hayato his servant!” she declares. “No, no! Hayato is free! Unforgivable! So, Vongola number ten should go die and Hayato can go home with I-pin forever.”

Yeah, there’s a language barrier making her words rather unexpectedly terrifying, but Tsuna gets the idea now. Hayato has an overprotective guardian angel that’s about three heads tall and she wants to kill Tsuna for stealing Hayato.

When Hayato was the one that needed the refuge in the first place and Tsuna can’t get rid of him if he actively tried?

If there’s a god above, please, grant him release. Why is he being caught up in so much consequence when he never even wanted to be a boss?

“No, I-pin,” Hayato begins, patiently, “even if Tsunayoshi dies, my father and my sister still won’t let me go home.”

I-pin frowns.

“Then I-pin should kill Hayato’s father and sister!” I-pin makes a deep whiny protest, face scrunched up with displeasure. She stomps her feet and turns away, “Hayato is free, Hayato is free! Hayato is I-pin’s partner!”

“No, don’t kill my sister,” Hayato says, very dryly, “I’ll end up inheriting the family, and that sucks.”

Very wise, Gokudera, Tsuna thinks with all of his heart. Very very wise.

“Hayato’s dead?” I-pin suddenly asks.

Hayato nods grimly, “wish I could be, but not yet.”

Worryingly suicidal conversations, ah yes, part and parcel of Namimori life.

Also, there is something very poetically ironic about a bomb expert being former partners with a human bomb. But in hindsight, wherever the hell Hayato grew up, he really shouldn’t be all that surprised about how bizarre Namimori is. No wonder he adapted to this place so quickly. Should’ve known he wasn’t normal.

Hayato sighs deeply.

“What happened with your master, I thought you went back to him?”

“I-pin completed her training! Now on pilgrimage!”

“Ah, so you’re free. Then, you can stay here in Namimori with me to make up for all the time we’ve lost, how about that?”

She brightens considerably at that suggestion.

She raises her fists and pumps them in the air in excitement, giggling ecstatically, hopping in her spot. She leaps at Hayato for a hug which he returns, and it’s a heartwarming scene.

(Belatedly, Tsuna notices something. The Mahjong piece tattooed in the middle of I-pin’s hand— Hayato had one too, the tattoos on his hand circling down into a single pin at the back of his palm. If they held hands, they’d make a two-sided coin.)

Hibari Kyouya clears his throat.

“If you’re quite done,” he growls. “For disrupting the peace of Namimori, all of you shall be bitten to death right this instant.”

Hayato and I-pin pale instantly. Tsuna buries his face into his palms and lets out an audible whimper of defeat. Takeshi, at this point, just laughs.

Reborn smirks, hopping back onto his bike.

“Alright, my job’s done here,” Reborn declares, “See you at home, Dame-Tsuna!”

Tsuna will get his revenge one day. He swears.

I-pin, the new addition to ‘weird occurrences around Sawada Tsunayoshi’ was pretty easily accepted— people seemed more concerned for her than of her.

“What are you doing, I-pin?”

“Helping this nice granny with her groceries!” she pipes up at Tsuna, cheerfully. “I-pin will be home for dinner because Mama’s cooking is delicious!”

She still slips into third-person pronouns sometimes, but at this point, Tsuna thinks it’s a stylistic choice for someone who, according to Hayato, knows too many languages to give a sh*t about every different way each language is structured. She’s cute, so it’s fine.

For a long moment, Tsuna didn’t know what to say.

All he can manage with a straight face is, “alright, be careful, alright?”

And he bids them goodbye like a coward because how the hell is he supposed to tell I-pin there’s no old lady standing beside her? That she’s holding what looks like empty air and not an old lady’s hand as she crosses the road? Yeah, he’s not about to get started.

“If you need any help, maybe you can ask Sasagawa-niisan. If you yell as loudly as you can, he’s probably around.”

“Okay! I-pin will keep that in mind!”

Tsuna is a responsible citizen, he promises, but he’s also Dame-Tsuna, and Dame-Tsuna desperately does not want to deal with the supernatural on top of everything else already on his plate.

“Wait, didn’t you say that I-pin was commissioned to kill me?” Tsuna realizes, “then wouldn’t she be in trouble for failing?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I know who did it,” Reborn says. “Honestly I think he just sent her here because he thought it’d be funny to harass me. Don’t worry about it.”

“I am worrying, Reborn. I am worrying so much.”

“If you have any complaints, you should complain to Hibari then.”

“WHY?”

It’s unnerving how quickly Hibari grew to tolerate I-pin.

“I-pin? Is that name uh, Mandarin?” Sugaya asks. “Then, it checks out. They’re like, Chinese somewhere up the bloodline. Haru can tell you more about it.”

Tsuna didn’t know how to retort to his friend right now.

The vital explanation of ‘I-pin is probably an adopted daughter of some Hibari, which makes her and Kyouya cousins or something’ isn’t ever said. Tsuna just had to gather all the pieces by himself.

“I’m sorry, why do you know so much about the Hibari genetics?” No need to question Haru, she’s an all-knowing hunting hound, period— “hold on, doesn’t that mean that Agent Devil is also—”

“I’m a master of disguise, Tsuna, I need to know these things,” Sugaya replies, like that’s something a high schooler would unironically say while spinning a pen between his fingers. “And no duh? There’s some hierarchical war going on in that family.”

Tsuna has never seen another Hibari in Namimori. At least, not one that uses the Hibari name. Which… in hindsight, was odd, considering how much influence they have in the town. They’re supposed to be a big family, and yet, only Hibari Kyouya is ever in town.

Tsuna has seen Kyouya’s father before, sometimes around when Kyouya was still recovering from the earthquake and all— but never anytime else.

“Everyone other than the direct heir, adopted children included, changes their name and doesn’t use the surname to avoid seeming like they’re fighting for inheritance,” Sugaya tells him, like this is supposed to be common knowledge and Tsuna should really stop being surprised now. “Did you think I-pin was her real name? Heck did you think Karma was a real na—”

Oh now Tsuna’s offended. “Do you blame me, we had a guy named Justice in our class!”

“Oh that’s just not relevant.”

“Yes it is! I’m also named after a Tokugawa Shogun, do you think I have the right to judge other parents’ naming choices??”

“Eh, it’s a decent name, even if it's old fashioned.”

Hibari politics is kind of scary. Kyouya’s just a high schooler (technically, legally disabled too,) and he’s in the epicentre of this mess.

…maybe epicentre is a word in bad taste to use regarding him.

“Apparently it goes even further up,” Sugaya continues. Tsuna ponders shutting him up before he regrets it, “apparently even the Hibari was a name change. They came from a much bigger, more influential family in Kyoto, and the hereditary war there is even worse. The Hibari situation is just a subset of that.”

Tsuna regrets having ears.

“If you want to know more, you can ask Sasagawa-senpai. He was pretty involved in it up until last year, I heard,” Sugaya says, “I don’t know a lot.”

“You know plenty!” Tsuna regrets having a voice too, because he just blurts, “and who?! Why is Sasagawa-niisan’s name coming up in this conversation about Hibari-san?”

Sugaya squints, “you… do know that they’re distant cousins, right?”

“No?? This is not common knowledge!!”

“What, it definitely is.”

“No! Don’t gaslight me! Hell no it is not common knowledge!”

“Oh! Sawada, I have something of yours!”

He does not, Tsuna hopes he does not, but he nods anyways. Ryohei seems to be jogging as Tsuna does an evening grocery run, and Tsuna just wants to go home before anything creepy comes out.

Tsuna also tries not to let his recent revelation of ‘the Sasagawa and Hibari are cousins’ disrupt his ability to function. He finds it insanely difficult to comprehend where the genetics went wrong up there- to make two families that could not be any more different. Where does Kyoko sit in this family disaster? Also, is that why the Sasagawa parents are never around?

“I couldn’t bring her with me, but Hana has her right now. Are you fine to take a detour?”

Hana? At this hour? He might as well tell Tsuna to go jump off a bridge. That would take less courage and have a greater survivability rate.

Nevermind.

It is completely bizarre, and yet, it is not unusual at all— but there’s a giant willow tree in the middle of Namimori’s central park. There are no other willow trees in town, there’s only this one, and no one can recall when it appeared at all.

That’s normal in Namimori. Things just appear one day and disappear the next.

But this would be the first time Tsuna actually gets some kind of answer to one of the many mysteries here— mainly, ‘what’s with the comically large willow tree, and why do people feel naturally afraid of it?’

And, additionally, ‘why does Sasagawa Ryohei not allow anyone to sit under its shade?’

Well, Tsuna gets the answer.

Hana sits in the cavern of that tree’s trunk, Kyoko by her side and I-pin on the other. They sat across a picnic mat with cakes and tea, Haru draped across the side of it laid on her stomach.

They’re having a girl’s day. Chatting adorably and everything.

Even Hana looked like she was enjoying herself, Kyoko driving the conversation as I-pin chimed in and Haru enjoyed the sweets and the attention.

“...are you sure it’s safe to approach?” Tsuna asks. “Like, socially, physically, and psychologically?”

“Nope!” Ryohei says, brightly. “Hana’s vitality will kill us if we take a step closer. Usually she holds back around me, but right now with all the other girls around I’ll die too.”

Tsuna understood none of that.

“What did you need me to do?”

“For now nothing, but can you tell the kid to not to walk around alone?” Ryohei says, “the spirits of this town like her too much. They’re going to spirit her away.”

Tsuna stares.

And stares.

“Ah no, don’t worry,” Ryohei is quick to clarify, “Hana is extremely not included in that group to be concerned about. She doesn’t eat humans anymore. She promised.”

Oh, so she at least had humans in her diet at one point of her life. Horrible to know.

“And I’ll ask Kyouya to do something about the other spirits, too,” Ryohei says, and Tsuna nearly has a heart attack because he’s never heard anyone invoke that name before, “so don’t worry about getting on the higher-ups’ nerves!”

Tsuna instantly lost all cheer.

With how much chaos Tsuna was bringing to Namimori, it was only a matter of time before they put a stop to it all. Or maybe, this chaos will be the trigger to finally let Namimori’s secrets loose.

There could only be bad things happening after that.

Tsuna sighs, looking up to the crescent moon.

“Then again… this was probably always bound to happen,” he supposes. It’s not as if anyone in this town believed that they could keep these secrets up forever. It’s lasted long, but it’s spilling over.

One day, these secrets will destroy the town from the inside out, and no one will be able to do anything about it.

They’ll just adapt, as they always do.

It’s up to the rest of the world to keep up.

If anyone had asked Takeshi last year, where do you see yourself in ten years? He would laugh and probably say he would be playing baseball for the pro leagues.

His father was fine with it. He didn’t need to take after the dojo and no one expected him to do anything else. He would say, with weight in his words, that in ten years, the world would be at peace, and he would be playing baseball with friends and family in the crowd, cheering for him.

That was his dream.

But if someone asked early this year, where do you see yourself in ten years? He would give an awkward, strained chuckle, and avoid the question.

He probably wouldn’t be around in ten years. That’s what all the doctors said.

“I knew the moment I saw the kid again,” Takeshi had talked to his father, just once about it. They weren’t saps, they weren’t ones to open up often. But once in a while, Takeshi would say something, and his father would listen and nod.

That was all they needed.

“I knew that the next time I saw that kid again…” Takeshi’s words were even, because it wasn’t as if he was a very emotional sort anyways. “That I’d be using up the last ten years of my life doing something amazing and fun.”

Tsuyoshi would listen, and he would nod.

And he would plate up a dish of leftovers, and watch his son eat.

“I’ve never had complaints about what you choose to do, Takeshi,” he assures. “So do whatever you’ll like.”

Takeshi beams, “knew you’d get it!”

His son would die before him— that’s what everyone believed, and that’s what no one doubted. That was the price they had to pay for peace. He would never be able to play baseball professionally, because his body will weaken more and more each day. And even if he did make it up there, he would look into the crowd and see no one there.

Because everyone else was older than him, and they had their deadlines set all the same.

But it’s fine.

This was all the price they gave up, for the peace of the next generation.

“By the way, that kid really doesn’t age at all!” Takeshi remembers, over a mouthful of food. “Even Lambo and I-pin grew taller over the month they were here.”

Tsuyoshi’s brow raised. “What, Bonri’s been sticking around?”

“Yeah, he’s Tsuna’s new home tutor. Didn’t you know?”

“Takeshi, my running theory is that he gets a single centimetre shorter every year. What makes you think I know anything about him at all?”

Takeshi gawks. “Damn, no wonder he keeps climbing on me.”

To Takeshi, he would honestly be satisfied if he could finish the day by putting down his sword and sincerely telling himself, ‘well, that was fun!’

So, he tried not to think about his deadline.

He tried not to think about it, even if it felt as if everyone was leaving him behind in life.

And here it was.

Athletic Festival season. It’s a touchy time, especially since most Namimori students aren’t always physically available for these events.

“In the years before, we were out of town for schools,” Tsuna explains to Hayato, “Nami High was only instated about two years ago. So technically, this is the first Athletic Festival where we have a full three grades, and with as many Namimori residents in one place as possible. So, to put it bluntly, this is going to be a freakshow. Brace yourself.”

Hayato winces.

“It’s going to be worse than usual?”

“You’ve hardly seen anything yet. You should be grateful Haru’s on security detail instead of actually being a participant,” Tsuna has never been more relieved that Haru goes to Midori High. “She’s been specially trained to defy logic sometimes.”

“I don’t think you have room to complain about that, Tsuna,” Takeshi comes up behind them.

“Oh, Yamamoto-kun,” Tsuna greets, blissfully ignoring the hypocrisy from their resident man who owns a traditional dojo, “are you cleared to participate?”

“Yep. They decided why not,” Takeshi grins, “they didn’t wanna bother setting up a paralympics category for anyone that needed it, since they’d have to set up a ‘clearly inhuman’ category too. And what about the ‘human but you’ve got professional training you cheater’ category? So we’re all just running together.”

Tsuna had a feeling Takeshi was quoting the Festival Committee debates for those points. Takeshi’s part of the committee, after all, even if he’s just the mascot.

“So it’s a free for all,” Tsuna nods.

“You mean a massacre,” Hayato begins, but no one’s acknowledging his dry remarks.

“Hold on,” Tsuna realizes, “am I included in that last category?”

“Obviously,” Takeshi beams. “But Mochida-senpai shot down the suggestion, so don’t worry, you’re running with the rest of us.”

“...including the one about the inhuman ones???”

“Hey, do you want segregation or not?” Now Takeshi’s pouting and Tsuna feels bad about it. “And technically I’m in both the ‘people outside would judge us so hard for making you participate’ category and the ‘professional training cheaters’ category so, it’s gonna be a mess to decide which one I go for.”

“You’re absolutely right Yamamoto-kun, I'm sorry for asking.”

Hayato absorbs their absolutely bizarre exchange and promptly restrains himself from jumping toward the nearest bridge and screaming expletives to the mist.

“This town has some… tough accommodation situations…”

Both Tsuna and Takeshi turn to him with a groaning, “riiiiight?”

Despite his apprehension, the Sports Festival was actually— fairly nostalgic, to Hayato. He had a few years homeschooled in Italy, and then he was slotted into Mafia Academy for some stupid years—

—but Namimori’s students resembled Death Vegas more.

Primarily, how well they handled themselves in sports events. While Mafia Academy had shoot training, negotiation classes, and gun assembling speedruns— everyone grew at a fairly decent pace and often neglected their physical prowess..

Namimori, however, was at least trying to look like a normal school. Up until the point where there was nothing normal about the students participating in it, and then they just gave up completely and said ‘do whatever you want, cameras off’.

Yeah, exactly like Death Vegas.

Hayato didn’t actually think he would actually need to go all out in the gymnastics category ever again once he returned to the Mafia world, but oh Shinigami-sama, did he put his whole goddamn soul into that flip.

“f*ckin’beat that, bitch!” he yelled at the girl that was from the gymnastics team, and she despaired when she saw the score.

“That is so not fair! You weigh nothing or something!”

Hayato raised his middle finger.

Okay, maybe he was getting too competitive in a high school sports fest but bitch, these civilians (probably) had no right being better at death-defying somersaults than him, okay? Absolutely zero right!

“Oh dear,” Takeshi chuckles. He then hollers, “Good going, Gokudera! And Naho-chan, you did great too!”

“Shut the f*ck up Baseball Idiot!”

“Takeshi-san, get revenge for me!”

“No can do, he’s not cleared for The Dragon of Change,” Mochida yells with his soldier voice, and they all begrudgingly deflate. He blows sharply on his whistle and signals at the other committee member at the starting line. “We need to close the gymnastics category before Haru senses the disturbance in the force and infiltrates. Next!”

Hayato scoffs.

He hated the implication that Takeshi might pose a challenge to him— that lanky, oversized figure with a heavy prosthetic would absolutely not be a threat, mind you! Hayato is not f*cking losing, he didn’t spend his developing years spinning around a gigantic scythe to lose in gymnastics now!

“Ah— right! Tsunayoshi!” he gets the most brilliant idea in his life right now, when he sees Tsuna lined up to go next. “Let’s make this our once-a-day duel, how about it?”

Tsuna smiles nervously, “okay.”

Hayato loses.

To Tsuna.

He despairs on the ground and Mochida is pweeting that whistle in a rhythm to try and make him get through his depressive episode faster.

“This makes no sense!” Hayato yells.

“I’m sorry,” Tsuna chuckles, “I’m not an expert at gymnastics by any means, but I did unwillingly have to attend a gymnastics crash course late last year. So I did have exactly one national-class routine to use… uh, don’t worry! Please! They only ranked me higher because of the judging system, in real life mine’s completely useless for anything other than to look pretty!”

And now he’s comforting Hayato!

Hayato is going to crawl into a hole and never surface ever again.

“Don’t worry, it’s just him,” Sugaya clarifies, “you just happened to challenge him in one of the things he went through trial by fire for. On that note do not challenge him to motorbike riding, ice skating, parkour, and guitar either.”

Hayato thinks Tsuna, as an existence, is unfair.

“Hold on, even guitar?! Absolutely not! Music is my thing! Tsunayoshi you’re not allowed to touch a guitar ever again in your f*cking life!”

“Calm down Gokudera-kun,” Tsuna says, “I’m sure you’ll beat me in something, we have a lot of events together today. Though we’re in the same class, so you’re not supposed to be competing against me…”

Hayato did win against Tsuna in several categories— namely, in most of the absolutely unconventional events that were added in the spirit of all the athletic clubs rather than tradition— so, stuff like archery and the obstacle course.

“I can’t believe you won against me in the obstacle course,” Tsuna whined. “That was my best one!”

“I lost to Miura Yuji anyway,” Hayato grumbles, if the category wasn’t open to all years then he would’ve won it all. “That guy isn’t human, what the f*ck. Are we sure he’s not at least a little werewolf?”

“No, Haru’s adopted. Yuji-senpai is fully human,” Tsuna assures, unassuringly.

Takeshi laughed, “Tsuna won Tag against you though! That was really cool, I expected you to win the whole thing, but…”

He glances at Sugaya, who held up his gold medal for the Tag category, “if you fall for a decoy I set up in about a minute, it’s on you. Good thing the last round was a five player free-for-all, I had plenty of time when you were distracted by the other guys.”

“Dude, who makes a f*cking human-sized mannequin in that little time?” Hayato groans.

“Have you tried doing it in darkness, hiding behind cramped cinema seats, in complete silence?”

“Huh?”

“Exactly.”

“HUH?”

“You need to stop asking questions, Gokudera-kun.”

Honestly, the most unexpected category would likely be the last-one-standing ‘no weapons allowed’ ring fight.

Yeah, Hayato looked at it and thought, are we even trying to appear normal? But the answer was of course no. What was the school thinking?

It’s not wrestling, or karate, or judo— it’s all of them in a boxing ring until one person’s lest standing, because it takes too much time to make a separate fight tournament for every category. As long as there are no weapons and the participants agree to house rules before they begin, it’s all good.

Which means everyone gets to see Sasagawa Kyoko sitting in the middle of the ring, eating a castella cake, while everyone around her is desperately trying to get a single punch or kick or anything to land on her.

Except, they also have to get through her guard dog, Sasagawa Ryohei, and he’s the boxing club prodigy. The judo club president gets trapped in a suspension hold and is desperately tapping out by the time the referee’s stopped gawking to call the match.

“I AIN’T LETTING A SINGLE ONE OF YOU TOUCH KYOKO!”

“Dammit Sasagawa we can’t even hit her if we TRIED!”

“HOLY sh*t! The glove I threw bounced back!”

“HOW DARE YOU THROW A GLOVE AT KYOKO—”

“GYAAAHHH!!! RUN! SASAGAWA’S FERAL!”

“OWOWOW I SUHWRENDREE ‘ELPME!”

“REAL MEN DON’T RUN FROM FIGHTS!” Ryohei bellows, “get back here and face me, you prideless fools!”

“STOP, SASAGAWA, STOP!”

Hana, meanwhile, is laughing her absolute ass off in the corner.

Tsuna is absolutely enamoured at the sight of Kyoko just calmly enjoying her cake as if her brother isn’t rampaging across the ring. He wonders if he could just get on his knees right now and propose. How could a woman be so perfect?

“What is this, Capture the Flag, except the flag’s a princess?” Hayato says. “This ain’t no free-for-all!”

“Bets that this was Kyoko’s idea,” Takeshi begins dryly.

Hana, Tsuna, and Sugaya’s hands all went up.

“I mean,” Sugaya begins. “I can imagine it went like this - Kyoko wanted to join, Senpai said hell no, so now we have a game of Fight the Dragon and retrieve the Princess.”

Hana’s wheezing from laughing too hard. She’s clutching her stomach, tapping desperately at the ground for mercy.

“It’s better than actually having Kyoko-chan fight though,” Tsuna sighs, “it’d be so one-sided it wouldn’t be a match.”

Hayato grimaces, “It doesn’t sit well with me at all. Of course she’d lose against all the athletic club captains, but this way, how’s it fair if she wins?”

Tsuna glances at Sugaya before grimacing.

“Gokudera,” Sugaya sincerely informs him, “she’s the one winning.”

“Huh?”

“Sasagawa-senpai is up there because if he wasn’t, if Kyoko picks up the damn boxing gloves, we are going to get scolded by the hospital again for unnecessary cause of injuries,” Sugaya says.

“HUH?”

“Trust me, Gokudera-kun,” Tsuna begins, “Kyoko-chan is a creature that naturally gravitates toward chaos.”

Hayato looks at them in bewilderment. He knows seven languages, but bullsh*t isn’t one of them.

“Yeah…” Takeshi clarifies, voice cold and sincere, “remember that thing Tsuna said about how everyone fights better in different situations? Let’s just say. I definitely don’t want to fight her ever.”

“...what the hell are you guys going on about?” Hayato grumbles. “She’s just one girl that’s like, half your size, with little to no muscle definition or weight. That’s a third the size of the rest of them! She’ll fly if they land a punch!”

“Oh she will fly if you land a hit on her,” Takeshi seems insulted, “Everyone knows if you hit her once in the stomach she’s done.”

“And why doesn’t everyone just do that?”

“Because that’d be attempted murder, Gokudera-kun,” Tsuna whispers loudly. “And even before that, you do not want her to be flying. She’ll leave a crater when she lands and Hibari-san gets mad.”

“If you can land a hit on her I would pay to watch it,” Takeshi whispers just as loudly. “I’ve never seen anyone actually land a hit on her and I’ve been stuck with her since elementary school.”

“Yamamoto,” Sugaya says in a normal volume, “your secret, deep-rooted unbridled hatred for Kyoko-chan is showing.”

“I don’t hate her,” Takeshi lies to their faces.

Hayato looks at Hana and sees her still doubled over dying of laughter, and he sighs in utter defeat. These guys are somehow dead f*cking serious. He wants to be dead.

Tsuna chuckles.

“Around first grade and stuff, everyone was saying Kyoko-chan was a more talented fighter than her brother,” Tsuna thought about it, “but she just wasn’t interested in boxing, so she never got into it.”

Hayato doesn’t get it. Are they talking about a girl or a natural calamity?

So she was a talented fighter. A threat, even— until something happened that essentially crippled her for life. She’s still picking fights and causing mayhem, though, and that makes everyone even more afraid of what she can do at this point.

Hayato considers that. “So she’s like Reborn?”

“Like what?” Tsuna’s baffled.

“Oh! Yeah, exactly like the kid actually!” Takeshi cackled. “At this point you have to wonder. Is Senpai protecting her, or is Senpai protecting us from her? They’re a little overbearing, don’t you think?”

“Excuse me??” Hana jabs into the conversation. “How dare you,” she seethes, “Kyoko’s been through sh*t! I ain’t letting anyone hurt her ever again, even if it’s coming from you, you Sweat-stinking Mongrel!”

“See?” Takeshi ignores the threat and looks toward Hayato, “overprotective.”

Hayato’s reeling at this new information.

All of this isn’t even considering the fact that there’s obviously some kind of force field around Kyoko. Anything intending to injure her gets blown back with a spark, and everyone’s just been politely ignoring it.

“She likes to call it her pretty privilege,” Hana says.

“And it suits her,” Tsuna says. “After all, if she sits there, and simply lets everyone protect her after she spins herself into some kind of trouble… she can still have fun in her bizarre way, and stay perfectly safe and secure. That’s a good thing.”

If there’s anyone in town that should live literally secured inside her bubble while thoroughly enjoying a spoiled, mischief-making lifestyle— it would be Kyoko. Sasagawa Ryohei is more than happy to make that dream of hers come true.

(This is Namimori, after all.)

(This is where people live, however they wish, because things like this would never be easily dismissed outside.)

Hayato remembers, each day, how little he understands of this place.

Takeshi did baseball and kendo just fine. But he would never be able to participate in official competitions, at least not easily, with that prosthetic foot.

In this town, very little would pursue sports professionally, if only to avoid the attention it could bring on a national level. The only exception is Haru, and she’s got her police dad backing her up.

Takeshi chuckled, “honestly, we were so lucky back then!” he turned to Tsuna, who wilted at the attention, “if your whole thing during graduation didn’t catch so much attention, both Kyoko and I would’ve been made to retire.”

Tsuna huffed in amusem*nt. “Well, I’m glad it helped you guys.”

“Sorry if that was insensitive—”

“Ah no, it’s fine. I mean, it was a crappy time for me too, but I wasn’t at risk of retirement like you guys, they could easily explain that bullet hole in my shoulder because everyone knew the military was around there at the time.”

Hayato whirls right over, “the government shot you??”

“Ah no, technically a pseudo-alien did,” Tsuna responds easily.

Pause.

Hayato blurts out again, “Aliens are REAL?”

“Gokudera-kun, you’ve met Kurokawa-san,” Tsuna honestly doesn’t know what the big deal is about aliens when they’ve met all sorts of weird creatures thus far. “And Haru, and…”

“That’s different, youkai and human experimentation is of this world! Aliens are extraterrestrial!”

“Oh if you’re looking for those you could just ask Yuji-san. Or Lambo?”

“Huh?!”

The Speedrun-anything course is essentially a talent show that’s judged by a board of totally unbiased committee members based on time, execution, and difficulty.

At this point, what even are these competitions?

“Can I speedrun assembling and disassembling a gun?” Hayato asks the committee member completely straight-faced, just to see what would happen.

The guy doesn’t miss a beat to say, “oh, of course! Do you need us to provide the gun or do you have your own?”

That’s it. Hayato is going to stop reacting to everything. He isn’t going to last. This town wouldn’t give a sh*t if Hayato blew up the school. (Could he speedrun blowing up the school? Ah nevermind. Hibari.)

“This could be good practice,” Reborn says, emerging from the woodworks and landing on Tsuna’s head. “Tsuna, go for the gun assembly speedrun, too.”

“No!” Tsuna groans. “I’ve never handled a real gun before!”

“So you’ve handled plenty of fake guns, thanks for confirming,” Reborn nods to himself, “don’t be a whiner. Iemitsu is the legend of reassembling artillery in the Vongola; he can build a tank from scratch if he was commanded to.”

“This is not something I wanted to learn about my father,” Tsuna pleads. “Either way, I’m not joining. Yuji-san is speedrunning a college math textbook and we all know he’s a computer!”

“Ah yeah,” Reborn nods, “the only one who can beat him at speed-math would be Haru and the anthology of footsteps in Namimori. Too bad she’s on guard duty.”

And Hayato has to ask, sincerely once more, “are we sure he’s not also werewolf???”

“Kyahaha! Go Yuji!”

Parents were allowed to come watch this freakshow today, so of course Nana brought the menaces to society. Nana had a picnic mat set up with flowers and bento and everything, with Bianchi keeping her company.

“Lambo sit down!” I-pin yells, as Lambo starts trying to cross the line where parents were secluded for their safety. “I will gyoza kempo you!”

Bianchi sighs, sipping on her tea. “It’s very lively.”

Nana was just enjoying the chaos. With as many secrets as Namimori has, they never get chances to show off like this outside of town. So of course, they’re giving their all here, in this safe zone for abnormals.

Takeshi, with a sigh, makes his way over to Nana, trying to get away from the fervent arguing and debates going on at the Speedrun section.

The judges were all trying to figure out if it was harder to recite Pi endlessly or recite the full book of the law, and then Yuji decides he’ll speedrun the binary coding of Dragon Quest if they don’t let him win, and it’s a whole thing over there.

“Ah, I’m tired. Hi Nana-san, can I have some of that?”

When he settles down, Lambo and I-pin making way for his foot to rest, Nana hands him a cup of tea and he drinks it with relief.

“Is it that interesting?” he asks, when I-pin and Lambo gawk over his, for once, fully exposed prosthetic foot.

“Uhn!” I-pin says, “back in Shibusen it was better not to replace limbs, because it affects resonance with your partner! I-pin rarely sees this.”

Takeshi hums at that. Shibusen must be wherever she’s from— was it the language barrier, that she said ‘resonance’ with a partner? It must be something like having good teamwork— or matching up in battle, like himself and Mochida.

“It’s the opposite for me,” he humours her. “My partner had one weird leg already. So I got this to match him! We wouldn’t have won that fight otherwise.”

Lambo’s head tilts in confusion. “Why didn’t you two just fuse then? That’s the best way to synchronize.”

“Uh,” Takeshi has to take a moment to utterly not know how to respond to what he just said, “sorry, Lambo, I don’t know how to do a fusion.”

Lambo scoffs with amusem*nt, like Takeshi was being silly.

“Oh you’re so dumb, Takeshi!” he grins, “fusion is easy! You should learn it quickly, so you’ll never have to give up a leg ever again! Right?”

Takeshi decides he’s cute enough to be indulged. “Yes, Lambo. I’ll do that.”

Nana tops up his cup of tea, and Takeshi thanks her.

“How unusual. You’re the one usually livening up the group, and yet, here you are,” Bianchi’s words are laced with a fondness. “You’re the one to tire out first today?”

Takeshi chuckles, sheepish at that. “I’m a little jealous, honestly. I can’t keep up with all that anymore, I… well, I’m in Kendo and Baseball later, at least.”

It’s easy to understand. They can see Kyoko coming their way too, needing a break. Compared to everyone else, they just couldn’t handle it all too much— they tired much easier than they used to, and they couldn’t hold up against the expectations that used to be placed on them.

“Oh dear,” Nana notices something, “is your usual cheering squad not coming today?”

Takeshi shakes his head. Usually he had a group come cheer him on each year in the crowd for competitions, but this year they’ll be in Namimori, and with all the mafiosi unrest there just wasn’t leeway for them to make it in here.

“What happens in Namimori stays in Namimori— I can’t invite them,” he says.

He’s a little bitter though. They all made the big promise to be at every match from now on, because none of them could promise they could do it forever. Unfortunately, he can’t compromise everyone else’s secrets in this school just for his own satisfaction.

“What a shame,” Nana sighs, “with what’s ahead of us, there might not be a chance to see them again in a while.”

Takeshi falls silent at that.

No one knows the depths of the secrets in Namimori. It’s hard to guess what everyone’s hiding, and no one can really fathom how deep the rabbithole goes.

Except Sawada Nana.

If there’s anyone people can say ‘most likely knows everything happening in this town’, it would be her.

Takeshi’s smile is stiff on his face. “I don’t want to start living like my time’s limited… at least, not yet,” he says. “Can’t I take it easy a little longer? Everyone else is trying to figure out what they want to spend the rest of their life doing— but I just want to be here. I just don’t want to think about it. Isn’t that fine?”

Can’t he live lackadaisical for just a little longer?

Nana doesn’t judge.

“You’ll be alright, Yamamoto-kun,” she says, with an assurance that sounds more definitive than optimism. “After all, in this world… If your will to live is strong, you can do anything. You have my word.”

Takeshi sighs. “And that will brought me here, didn’t it? To a dead end?”

Nana responds easily, “sky’s the limit, so start climbing. And even then, there are footprints on the moon.”

Takeshi’s eyes find Mochida in the distance, how he’s working seriously despite himself. He’s mellowed out from his days as a delinquent, now dulled down to a somber senpai and respected captain of the Kendo Club— and yet, he’s doing everything dutifully like he’s trying to give his all one last time.

One last time, because they both know this is going to be Mochida’s last sports festival, ever. Once he graduates…

…it’s unlikely Takeshi will meet him again.

“I just want us to stay like this forever, in a place where things won’t change,” Takeshi says. “Is that selfish?”

Nana smiles. “No, not at all,” she promises. “It’s not selfish at all. But, are you sure that’s what your heart wants?”

“What, Yamamoto, you don’t wanna grow up too?” Lambo asks. He giggles. “You’re just like the King! She doesn’t want to grow up too. She said she doesn’t like getting older. But Lambo thinks that’s silly! The Adult you is so cool!”

Takeshi wonders which part of that sentence he should dissect first.

He wouldn’t say he’s afraid of growing up, though. He already knows he won’t grow up. His deadline’s set exactly ten years from now, and that was a mark he couldn’t rescind.

So instead he asks, “the Adult… me?”

“Yeah!” Lambo then produces this oversized purple bazooka from his— head? Afro? And strings it across his shoulder. “You’re tall, and you have this katana, and you always play with me! Maybe you should go there and see how cool I am in the future!”

“Wait, what are you talking about, Lambo? And what’s that bazooka?” Takeshi eyes it warily with a laugh, finding himself chuckling louder when he spots Tsuna and Hayato in the distance freaking out as they spot what Lambo has produced.

“This is the Ten-Year Bazooka!” Lambo declares. “You can go there for five minutes, isn’t that cool! Babbetto gave it to me!”

“Oh, that’s a fun setting,” Takeshi indulges, amused, in the same way he takes the mafia revelations in stride. While it was nice for Lambo to tell him he’d be cool in ten years, there’s no way for Lambo to know that ten years from now, Takeshi would actually be at his physically weakest. “I wonder if there are flying cars? Or have androids taken over earth by then?”

Lambo snickers, “You should go see for yourself!”

“Ah, no better not—” Takeshi holds up his hands, but Lambo is already pointing it at him. Takeshi works to get up, but flinches when he puts too much weight on his bad foot, “that’s a dangerous thing to be pointing at people—”

There was a poof, mixed in with Tsuna’s yell of,

“LAMBO, NO—!”

When Takeshi opened his eyes to a carpeted hall he didn’t recognize, a familiar sword in his hand, and a teenager grimacing before his eyes—

—he wondered if he was in an illusion of some sort.

Then he wondered if he should take off his shoes.

“Sheesh,” the teenager huffed, resting his weight on his other foot, “did the younger me aim the bazooka at you? I thought I stopped doing that after Frankfurt got gatling guns for hands…”

Often, Takeshi wonders what life would be like, to grow old and continue playing games with his friends, until their backs were bent with age. But Takeshi gave it all up for the world without much of a second thought.

So, this was just a glimpse of what he couldn’t get… right?

“Ah— that’s right. Takeshi-nii,” the teenager was supposed to be Lambo. Of course he was. Older, that tall and lanky gait, those tight curls. Even if he seemed more weighted with teenage angst than the jolly child they knew, Takeshi knew from the way he blinked, from the way his shoulders had a specific, twitchy way of responding as if he were ready to push buttons the second any danger appeared—

—that’s definitely Lambo.

Even grown up, Takeshi could see the resemblance.

“We have five minutes,” Lambo pulled, and Takeshi found himself getting slotted on the teen’s back. “You don’t have automail, so you’re not allowed to run. We’re doing the future world introduction speedrun with you on my back. Hold on.”

“What?” is the only thing Takeshi manages to say before they’re zooming right off.

“LAMBO WHY DID YOU SHOOT HIM?!”

Tsuna had, after first hearing what that purple bazooka was from Reborn, immediately banned its use in the house.

Thankfully, Yuji stopped the first incident before it was ever fired in Namimori. (Apparently, Yuji had a lot of experience handling trigger-happy children that were enamoured after suddenly attaining guns for hands. Whatever that meant.)

But of course, Lambo decided to fire the allegedly time-travelling bazooka at Takeshi, of all people. Seriously, if there’s a few people in Namimori you should never subject their inevitable futures to, it would be the ones that were already on the retirement shortlist.

Unfortunately for Lambo this time, even Reborn seemed displeased with what happened. His telltale smirk wasn’t on his face, instead he was wearing an expression as if deep in thought and tinged with curiosity.

“What happened?” Mochida Kensuke came by after the commotion, needing to know if this was something they had to pause the festival for.

“The stupid cow shot Yamamoto with a time-travelling bazooka,” Hayato, who has lost his filter after a day of exasperation, said.

To Mochida’s credit, he only froze for a second.

Then, “like, forward or backward?”

“Ten years into the future, apparently,” Hayato says. “Don’t worry, it’s not permanent. They just switch spots for five minutes.”

Mochida’s grimacing, “what happens if there’s nothing to switch with?”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Mochida turns, whistle going toward his mouth, “I’m going to evacuate the children. I’m hoping he’s in the skeletonized stage of decomposition, because it’s the least traumatizing—”

“Hey now, now,” a hand reaches out through the pink smoke, larger and full of callouses— patting down gently on Mochida’s head. A soft laugh reaches their ears as Takeshi— ten years older Yamamoto Takeshi— pulls Mochida back, “don’t go killing me off so soon, Senpai. I’ll have you know my due date got extended a while back.”

Jaws drop.

Takeshi is taller, of course. Unimaginably so, considering he was already the tallest in their group right now. In ten years, he’s definitely grown much more accustomed to that prosthetic foot— actually it’s what Mochida turns to look at first.

Because whatever the hell that thing is on Takeshi’s foot, it’s some high-tech nonsense they can’t make sense of.

“Where the hell are your shoes?”

“Cut me some slack! We were indoors,” TYL!Takeshi laughs, looping an arm around Mochida’s neck. He turns until he finds Tsuna, and grins, “you’re all so tiny!”

Everyone turns and gawks.

“Oh Death,” Hayato’s jaw is agape, “do you ever stop growing?”

Somehow Takeshi doesn’t miss a beat to quip back, “I’ve been told there’s some kind of bet I’ll start aging backwards any day now.”

“Huh?!?”

“Yeah, I don’t know either, but it’s kind of funny seeing the amount increase,” Takeshi beams, “I mainly think everyone’s just trying to annoy M’kuro though, he somehow hates the insinuation that I’m going to age down starting from twenty-five and maybe magically age back up once I turn into an infant? I don’t get it either.”

“Alright, I need you to stop talking,” Hayato holds up a hand at his face, “forever. You’re going to cause a time paradox.”

“Oh, sorry. That ship’s sailed.”

“Shut uuuuuup!!” Hayato yells, “Tsunayoshi, go get some duct tape! They were using some for the ground markers at the relay!”

“On it!”

“Tape won’t stop me, Tsuna!” Takeshi hollers, “trust me, tape won’t stand a chance!”

Takeshi finds Reborn and his smile widens.

“Hey, kid!” he greets. “Good news— I’m still here.”

Reborn huffs at that. “That’s good,” he says, evenly.

“LET GO OF ME,” Mochida grunts from Takeshi’s hold, but he’s rock solid, “don’t underestimate me. I swear to hell, water will NOT win against wind! I swear!”

Lambo is laughing boisterously. “See? Big Takeshi’s so much cooler than current Takeshi. I just don’t get why he’s so low-HP all the time.”

“There you go with the gaming terms again Lambo,” Takeshi chuckles. “I’m not low-HP because I want to be, okay? It was kind of a sacrifice-HP-for-MP kind of thing. And I only managed to slow it down, we’re trying to figure out if I can somehow get the infinite-HP glitch to work with—”

“Holy sh*t,” Hayato eyes him like he’s grown another head, “he’s gone gamer-literate on us in the next ten years!”

“Oh nah,” Takeshi winces, “I just went on a life-changing field trip to the island of immortals, that’s all. I’ve still got a ways to go.”

“Stop treating this like it’s a normal situation to be in!” Tsuna finally yells, frustrated.

“It’s just time travel Tsuna, don’t freak out,” Takeshi chuckles.

“Yeah, it’s just time travel, don’t freak— SHUT UP,” Hayato howls, “holy sh*t you’re worse than Excalibur.”

“Hardly,” Takeshi doesn’t miss a beat, “we had a Vongola’s Most Annoying pageant last year on Tsuna’s birthday. I lost to Haru because she teamed up with her brother. You won’t believe how many cans of worms were opened that day. We nearly caused the Fifth World War.”

“The fif—?!?” Mochida gets interrupted,

Hayato snarls. “The fact that you were even nominated onto the roster is proof enough! And hell, Yuji isn’t that annoying—”

“It wasn’t Yuji-senpai though—”

With a mighty poof, the chaos incarnate was gone. Present Takeshi stumbled into place, landing squarely on his bad foot in surprise, crashing into Mochida in utter confusion.

There’s silence.

Then, Reborn finally pipes up with “welcome back. How was the future?”

Like it’s the weather.

Tsuna throws his hands into the air in defeat.

“Uh well,” Takeshi seems slightly shaken like he’s seen some horrors in the past five minutes, “it was cool, I guess. Adult Lambo introduced me to god. Also I just learned that I’m not dying when I turn twenty-five.”

“You what,” Hayato invokes.

“That’s great,” Reborn nods.

“What,” Mochida’s flabbergasted.

“Yeah.”

Takeshi probably isn’t sure what he’s affirming either. He looks around him— most people have looked at their bizarre time-travelling shenanigans in amusem*nt and promptly dismissed it— the hurdling races are still going on, after all.

He regains his bearings and says, sincerely, to Reborn with a content sigh, “for now I think I’m going to play baseball, run like hell, and scream.”

Hayato had to admit. Reborn’s next response was likely the most appropriate possible response for the situation.

“Understandable, carry on.”

The dumbass was just told he’s not cashing out his life insurance after all. Let him do whatever the hell he wants at this point.

Anything as long as it doesn’t involve his future self coming back over here. The town is not going to last.

Hayato grumbles, “What’s with that reckless idiot? I think that took ten damn years off my life.”

“Oh is that so,” Tsuna implores, “maybe you should go on that life-changing field trip he was talking about. I hear it extends your lifespan.”

[EXTRA #5]: Theme of Gokudera Hayato.

“Hayato!”

Hayato hasn’t heard her voice in much too long. She’s grown up in the years they’ve been separated, and that leaves him bitter.

He was supposed to be by her side.

He was supposed to watch over her, grow up with her, because they’re partners. But he left without telling her, and now, she doesn’t even hold a grudge.

Ah, he’s so pathetic.

“What is it, I-pin?”

She reaches up with an open hand, and Hayato knows what that means. Of course he does— they may have been separated, but their resonance still holds so true, they can read each others’ minds like second nature.

That’s why I-pin knows that Hayato wants to be comforted by her presence. So she offers a hand, and lets herself be walked home jovially.

“I’m walking home with Hayato~ Walking home with Ha-ya-TO!”

She’s taller now. Eight years old. Now Hayato doesn’t need to bend down slightly in his walk when they hold hands. Now, she’s not too practical a size to sit on his shoulders, though she doesn’t deny that he would pick her up all the more easily.

So, Hayato does.

Hayato uses the handshake as leverage to spin her up onto his shoulders, and she squeals with excitement to find herself, thighs around Hayato’s head, hands clutching awkwardly to his hair but adoring all the same.

She kicks her legs out as she hums and he walks, to the home they already know they’ll share from now on.

Just as they used to.

“Oh! Here, Hayato needs to hear too,” I-pin puts something in his ear— an earbud. From the light spikes tickling his ear canals, he knows, this is something from home. From Death Vegas. The stupid skull-shaped casing of the earpieces basically confirms it, where else would make such an impractical shape into earphones?

And then he hears the music.

Jazz, the furious piano mixing with the buzz of the bass, harmonizing with the strum of the guitar with a light note of a violin—

—ah.

“...it’s my favourite song,” he says.

I-pin beams. Hayato must be looking at her like she’d brought the sunlight back into his world and she’s damn proud of that.

“Soul-senpai gave it to me when I went! Said it was the remastered version, the remix, the ultimate!” she boasts, chest puffed up. She hands him the music player— an old-fashioned thing, of course. It’s from Death Vegas too.

But it’ll sound better on an authentic record. She probably has that version too, they can play it on the record player Hayato has at home.

But for now, this MP3 version will do.

“Thank you, I-pin.”

The title of this track is the Theme of Gokudera Hayato.

What a sap. He hopes those guys are doing well at home, and he hopes they’ve unkempt their home. One day— surely, one day, Hayato and I-pin will be able to go home. Soul would probably be so angry, especially with how they separated. But Hayato would take it. Maybe argue with the Thompson Sisters again. Throw Fire and Thunder in the air. Get hugged by Sid-sensei. Be captured by Stein and get a screw fitted in his head.

It would be nice.

“Hey I-pin. When we get home, wanna put this on and dance?”

I-pin squeals, “yes yes yesss!!!”

He’s complete again.

Chapter 6: (Interlude) Town Memorial Day

Chapter Text

“Huh? What do you mean, school’s out today?”

Hayato arrives at the Sawada Household only to see utter chaos. There was hustle and bustle in the streets, every window and door was open for a major cleanup, and people were gathered in any other space to delegate the workload.

“I wasn’t informed of a townwide spring cleaning,” Hayato’s baffled.

Isn’t it standard to have tons of flyers out when the time approaches to advertise the effort? Time, date, nothing?

Heck, aren’t there more people in town than usual? Even more than the sports meet. It’s like a festival.

“It’s Namimori Memorial day,” Takeshi explains, “people who are out of town also return to help out, that’s why it’s full of people. We spend the first half of the day cleaning up the town, the latter half visiting.”

Ah, there were posters for that. Like, one or two on town billboards. Usually just a reminder of where to locally get flowers, food, and supplies, and where the meeting spots were. Also where to go if you need formal permission to take the day off.

“With how minimal the advertising was, I didn’t think it was this huge thing,” Hayato admits. You’d usually see flyers on trees, walls, cars, restaurants, tables, even on the floor after they fell— especially for something so grand, you’d think the promotion would be permeating the landscape for the entire season.

“I mean,” Takeshi chuckles, “Namimori doesn’t really do big, gaudy advertising of any sort.”

That, too, is rather bizarre. How are the marketing teams of anything around here surviving? Got to leave it to the town of secrets to be inclined to keep to themselves even in fields of promotion.

“So… am I supposed to help out too?”

Apparently, no, he didn’t have to help— but he still did it anyway, on account of 1, I-pin spearheading cleaning efforts among the children and 2, he lost his daily duel against Tsunayoshi and he’s been sentenced to help Nana with trimming the flowers in the garden.

Nana’s garden was odd. Not just because there were way too many flowers, but also because half of those flowers aren’t in season at all. She had lilies— she’s trimming them now for grave bouquets— then there were zebra flowers, ivy, orchids, bellflowers, wood sorrels, and even cosmos.

Hayato only recognized them after a lot of reading in Death Vegas, he got too curious in the library once— but still.

“See those, Gokudera-kun?” she talks about her flowers like they’re her children, “I planted those cosmos when Tsu-kun was born. Do you know what they mean in the language of flowers?”

Hayato frowns. He doesn’t.

Nana giggles.

People were going to come by at noon to pick them up, and Nana couldn’t handle the preparations on her own.

Usually in small towns, cemeteries are out of the way, further away from civilisation, and shared between several cities. It’s the same for Namimori, though the local one’s mostly filled with Namimori residents after the earthquake years prior.

The earthquake, huh.

Hayato sighs.

“That earthquake really cracked up the entire world, huh…” Hayato murmurs, looking over a carnation in his hand. “It was messy enough it gave me an opportunity to leave the house, so I’d never really thought about how the ground zeroes would’ve been.”

Nana hums, “Namimori struggled to pick itself up, after all of it. But now, we just look back upon it fondly, to remember how far we’ve come. Though it's a memorial day, to us, it’s a celebration.”

Hayato thinks that’s very fair.

Everyone in town, without exception, had someone to mourn because of the earthquake. Except Hayato perhaps— even if he wanted to, it’s a trip he can’t make. However they wanted to deal with their grief, it was up to them.

Though, he does wonder why Nana is the local flower provider but she doesn’t even have a florists’. She’s just a stay-at-home-mother with an absolutely unhinged garden. What a waste of potential income.

“Where’d everyone else go, anyways?”

Townwide memorial day is busy for many people. Hibari leads the Disciplinary Committee around to ensure the cleanup efforts are proceeding smoothly and will wrap up on time— while everyone else pitches in to help clean, provide refreshments, and solve any issues that come up.

Haru keeps a Disciplinary Committee radio at her belt.

“Hibari-san,” she calls into it, “southeast of you, thirty steps down— we have an intruder.”

“I’ll bite it to death,” comes the response.

As secretive as Namimori is, this is the time of the year it’s most condense, and people go in and out of it frequently. Many have taken the chance to infiltrate even though train stations and public transport are closed, just to get a peek of what’s behind the veil of Namimori’s well-hidden mysteries.

They can’t afford anything like that. One time a news reporter staked her life on an article and no one, not even Namimori residents, could prevent the next article featuring her death in mysterious circ*mstances.

“Ah— Kusakabe-san. Stop that lady you just went by. She doesn’t live here. Her sister, who already told us she can’t make it, does.”

“Roger that.”

“Tomomi-chan, could you take care of— ah, nevermind. Reborn just shot that one. Coast is clear.”

“I’m sorry, did you just say they were shot?”

“Yes! I’m happy that Reborn-san and Bianchi-san are still handling the hitmen. They are all congregating now, because we are busy inside.”

“Goodness,” Tomomi sighs, “no wonder we’re getting hacked like crazy.”

“Oh! Haru cannot help there.”

“Don’t worry Haru, Yuji’s helping me with this one. He’s gotta use his Platinum Tamer license for something.”

“Huh?”

“Ignore that part.”

Tsuna hums with interest as he passes by Haru, he’s on the way to the town dump with two barrels of full trash bins. She loiters about the walls like a cat, not particularly looking any direction but her feet— and yet, she knew the city’s current condition, as if she were overseeing dozens of CCTVs at once.

She’s always been strange.

When she first came here, she’d announced to everyone that she was a trained police dog— she had dog ears, a tail, a licence, and she accompanied her father, a private investigator, on official missions. The ears disappeared at some point.

Tsuna suspected she was a spirit or youkai, of some kind. Maybe half-blood. But then he met Hana, an actual youkai, and he realized they were nothing alike. Haru wasn’t human, but unlike Hana, she wasn’t supernatural.

She was scientific. A product of human experimentation, used to further the advance of— in this case, criminal investigations. She could hear the entire town’s footsteps, track them, and identify them so precisely, she was better than any security camera system in the entire world.

She was an amalgamation of human greed and science.

(Just like his old teacher.)

“Tsuna-san!” Haru calls, “please stay away from the town CCTVs! Tomomi says they are trying to find pictures of you.”

Tsuna’s shoulders sag in defeat.

“Yes, yes, I’ll do it…”

Sneaking around has always been part of his assassin repertoire, after all. Might as well get some training in while he can. God knows he’ll need it in the days coming forth.

There’s not many places Hayato can hide for a smoke break in Namimori, especially since Hibari’s very strict about school rules and there’s not many smoking areas that’ll let a minor have a cigarette—

—but it seems he’s found his spot today.

He walks in on Kusakabe Tetsuya smoking by the riverside.

Kusakabe glances up and realizes he’s caught.

Instead of doing anything the Disciplinary Committee Vice should be doing, he raises his Winstons toward Hayato, “gonna have one?”

Hayato supposed this guy always looked like a delinquent anyways. The only reason he’s working security is because the president’s scary as f*ck.

“I usually smoke Death,” Hayato stumbles down the hillside toward him, “but I’ll have it.”

Hayato hasn’t been around these parts of the town before. The river goes through a section of Namimori, but the further you head down, the closer you get to the haunting Great Bridge that leads to nowhere.

It’s rather isolated here. Around the bridge entrance there’s a barricade. After a flight of stairs, there’s a fence, bolted and locked— a guard post, with no one there. And then it just goes, far and beyond the horizon, into the fog.

No one knows what’s beyond it.

Everyone in this area— rivers, grasslands, forest, and then, a few old-fashioned shops and houses— treat the bridge as if it’s not even there. None of the houses look like they’ve been tended to for a long time.

On a day like this, it’s haunted, almost.

Except for Kusakabe Tetsuya.

“This is my usual spot. Kyou-san doesn’t come this way,” Kusakabe explains. “It’s better not to come too often, though.”

Hayato digresses. If the locals tell you a place is bad news, then a place is bad news. No use trying to prove whatever they say otherwise.

But if Kusakabe’s trying to tell him this is a good place to hide for a smoke, then he won’t refuse the kind information source. Delinquents have to stick together in the face of Hibari Kyouya, reformed or not.

Sharing a smoke break together might be the most they’ll ever interact.

But Hayato knew that look on Kusakabe’s face. It was the look of someone who was so brokenly homesick, but they had resigned themselves to the fact that they’ll never be able to leave the new hole they’d dug themselves into.

It was the look of someone who allowed themselves, just a day, to mourn the life they used to have.

(Hayato doesn’t interrupt. He just finishes his cigarette and leaves.)

Most shops are closed today. This includes Takesushi, Hayato finds, when he passes by.

What a day. Everything’s shut down, people are working together to get things done, and nowhere in this town of mysteries is silent. Even the animals are restless.

“Oh, Gokudera-kun,” Kyoko greets. “You’re helping Nana-san distribute flowers? Can I come with?”

Hayato blinks.

He’s not close with Kyoko at all, but well, what’s the harm?

“Good timing,” he takes out his delivery list, “Nana-san informed me to send these out to graves without visitors… I just can’t find where the ‘retiree site’ is.”

Kyoko’s permanent smile eases into melancholy.

“Great. I’ll lead the way.”

The retirees, Hayato finds, are just off the centre, in the part of the cemetery that’s on Namimori borders. Each grave is without a picture, only a name carved and inked red for the deceased, and simple headstones with neither embellishments nor polish. The ones in charge of cleaning the cemetery overgrowth had weeded the shrubs, but that only served to make the graves look more desolate than before.

Retirement.

In Namimori, clearly, that means more than Hayato knew the word to mean. He doesn’t know if he should ask.

“You see, Gokudera-kun,” Kyoko begins, as if she’d read his mind. She takes out the small arrangements from the cart and sets them carefully before each one. “Whatever happens in Namimori stays in Namimori.”

It’s not that Namimori is hard to find information about. It’s not that information never gets out. Tsuna, for example, made news late last year. The higher-ups of the town didn’t like it, but they let it go because it didn’t happen here, but in the neighbouring city.

They let it go, just that once.

What happens if they don’t?

“Sometimes, something terrible happens, and nothing can cover it up,” Kyoko says. “The only way to prevent any leaks is to cut the problem at its roots, don’t you agree?”

And all of a sudden, Hayato understands.

The easiest way to make the world stop chasing you is to die. He knows that better than anyone else, how convenient it is to be dead to the part of the world you don’t want to remember exists.

(Everyone buried in this part of the cemetery are people that had to die to preserve the town’s secrets.)

(Sacrifices.)

Kyoko lingers, just a little longer, upon the grave of someone named Yokogawa Nagi. She sets down a bouquet of sunflowers on that grave, and it stands out oddly against the white chrysanthemums and lilies. She smiles, warm and mournful, before lifting her eyes away and moving onto the next.

“Even we don’t know how they’re doing now,” she says. “Whether they truly died, or they're alive out there, somewhere— with a different name, face, and identity. But they were forsaken by the town of Namimori, and thus, they can never return.”

Hayato couldn’t help the way his stomach sank with horror at that.

This is a place where vagabonds and eccentrics gather— but it is not at all welcoming, hospitable, and most of all, a single person is worth nothing against the importance of the town as a whole.

Namimori is a cruel place, and he would do well to not forget that.

Hayato wonders where Tsuna went. He seemed to be running errands for Nana, but those were done, he had gone off toward his own agenda of the day. Now that Hayato was also done, he was a little lost.

“You’re looking for Sawada?”

Hayato had just finished his final delivery— to a house with a wisteria symbol at the doorplate— when Mochida Kensuke walks out of the place and overhears him murmuring to himself.

Hayato blinks in surprise. He barely knows anything about this kendo senior, just the fact he’s weaker than Takeshi and has a prosthetic foot to match, but the person following Mochida is alarming.

He reeks. Of a certain kind of madness Hayato knows intimately.

The man with a shock of white hair has scars so crassly across his features he couldn’t possibly get a job if he searched the sketchiest places on earth. Hayato rarely sees someone like this out in society… much less one that isn’t involved in the mafia, and somehow is living a reclusive life here in Namimori when his face screams ‘I cagefight for a living’.

So why is this suspicious guy out with an unassuming schoolboy? He’s mafia material, but… heck, he’s not even in Reborn’s shortlist!

(Then again, can you really call anyone in Namimori an unassuming schoolboy?)

Hayato barely remembers through his observation to respond, “yeah. I’m looking for Tsunayoshi…” maybe a local would know better.

“He’s probably at Kunugi Mountain,” Mochida says. “Go up Namimori Shrine, keep walking into the forest until you’re lost. That’s Kunugi Mountain.”

Hayato scowls. What is Tsunayoshi thinking? He’s still the target of countless assassins in this heyday, and of all things he’s in a mountain now? Going toward the adjacent town, too? He’s literally ditching the top tier security he’s in!

“But you’d better keep off. That place is private property,” Mochida says. “I’m sure they won’t mind, but you’re better off leaving them alone, it’s memorial day.”

Ah, right.

Sometimes, graves are at resting places, and resting places aren’t always cemeteries.

Maybe Hayato should just stay home today.

“This is Amazing Ape. Reporting in from the sad white birch, there’s silver hair I’ve not seen before.”

The girl inspects the silver locks between her fingers that were caught between some branches. It doesn’t seem bleached.

The communicator crackles in her ear, and she lifts her hand into her hood to adjust the frequency.

“Report?”

“Terminal Perv and Box’o’Moe is trying to get a visual of the target. Womanizing Scumbag will join you in three beats.”

“Womanizing Scumbag here,” someone drops in beside her. “I noticed a weird cologne on the way. It’s expensive, but nothing the adults in town wear. And there’s a tobacco smell too… it’s the one Tomomi-chan smells like sometimes.”

“Ah, her brother smokes it,” Amazing Ape says. “But her brother doesn’t have silver hair.”

“Artsy Bean Pole, any clues?”

“Artsy Bean Pole here,” from the communicator, “pretty sure it’s Gokudera.”

“I got eyes on the target.”

“Don’t engage, Tsundere Sniper! Justice, head to the pool and get Lord Tsunaemon. He doesn’t have comms on.”

“Sure. Terminal Perv, do you have your coordinates? I’ll send him your way.”

“Gokudera-kun!”

Hayato had been wandering this mountain for a while, so he’ll be honest. He’s very offended that he’s lost. Sure Mochida did say ‘go there, go get lost, you’ll find the spot’, so he’s horrifically offended that it actually worked.

So, of course, he had to release his frustration on Tsuna.

“Tsunayoshi, you bastard!” Hayato raises his voice, and Tsuna eeps. “I demand a rematch of our once-a-day duel! Right this instant!”

“Ehhh,” Tsuna whines, “you can’t rematch it, it’s a one and done thing.”

“Today has already felt like a goddamn year for me! You’re rematching me right this instant!”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Tsuna says. “Then, uh… I can race you up this tree?”

“Tree climbing?!”

“Is that a no?”

“Absolutely not! It’s game on, you piece of—”

He lost.

“Okay, how about you stay and help us out a little. We got quite a bit of cleanup to do on the mountain, I can introduce you to my former classmates,” Tsuna beams, leaning upon half the tree branches as Hayato chokes on a breath, unable to believe he just lost.

“I hate you,” Hayato spits. “I have superhuman physical prowess. You’re not real.”

“Well Reborn did say I’m an alien, so I suppose you’re right,” Tsuna mutters dryly.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. Anyways, look that way,” Tsuna points to the distance. They’ve scaled one of the tallest trees in the mountain, so they see quite a fair bit of the entire place. “You see up there, there’s a clearing? There’s a building there, and a field. How good are you at free-running?”

Hayato miserably admits, “I can’t do this. I shrivel up and lose a bit of my sanity in the presence of bugs. I hate forests.”

“Oh, you’re afraid of bugs?”

Hayato dissociates into the distance. “I’m not dealing with this, I’m going home. I’ve had enough.”

Tsuna chuckles fondly. “I’ll walk you.”

Hayato decides against refusing the offer. He doesn’t want to be lost any longer. He’s reached the limits of his patience today.

“You see, this is where I went to Junior High,” Tsuna tells him as they walk back. “It was a very weird time for me, but it was the best time of my life. That’s why everyone in my class comes here on Memorial Day to clean up, and to remember what happened. We can’t do it in Namimori, so we do it just outside its borders.”

Hayato huffs.

Everyone has a weird emphasis on mourning the dead. Maybe because no one else would mourn them. Because Namimori is a safe haven, but it is not kind.

“Usually for mourning day anywhere else we’d light fireworks,” Tsuna says, “but in Namimori, we release lanterns and we tell stories to remember those who have fallen. You can join any of those conversations tonight. I’m sure everyone would love to tell you about their old friends.”

Namimori lives upon the ironclad rule of ‘don’t ask questions’.

That’s why just for one day, one vulnerable day for tears and mourning— they’ll drink and make merry, and use that as an excuse to say as much as they want without care.

Because as much as they don’t want you to ask questions, they so desperately want to be known and remembered.

The paper lanterns light up the night.

In the cemeteries, lit up by lamps and candles, are groups of people chattering. They’re all reminiscing, about old friends, their departed comrades, and keeping their memory alive as they catch up over tea and cakes.

There were people who came from far out of town for this occasion. So, they definitely were people just trying to catch up with old friends.

“You don’t understand this stuff, do you?”

Hayato doesn’t have to look over. Bianchi settles beside him by the ledge of Namimori High’s rooftop area. It seems I-pin is making herself useful by serving people drinks and food, and they’re welcoming her dearly, sharing her a story, then she goes to the next spot.

“People die,” Hayato says. “In Death City, we just moved on. Or people come back to life, but we don’t make a deal of it. We definitely don’t group in circles and talk about their funny moments one by one. It seems callous.”

“Well… that’s not how we see it,” Shamal tells him.

Hayato scoffs. Of all the people that don’t want to mourn today, he didn’t expect Shamal. He always seemed to want an excuse to drink, so why isn’t he down there stealing alcohol?

Even Hibari is there somewhere. Sitting around one peculiar group. He’s not talking with them, but he’s seated behind that grave, a hand occasionally reaching out to dryly join a toast or ask for a refill of his drink. Even he put aside his usual qualms for crowding to mourn the dead.

“You see, those circles of storytelling weren’t always a tradition,” Shamal begins. “In Namimori, no one else will remember us when we die. No one is allowed to mourn you outside of this town— but these poor, unfortunate souls? They’re still all afraid of being forgotten. So they gather around every year, just to be under the stars again.”

This is a town where people refuse to die, but their dying wills burned to the very last moment only to fall helplessly against fate. This is a town that treasures that last spark, because they understand so intimately how crushing it is to fall in their circ*mstances.

This is a town where as long as your dying will burns bright, you will remain a beautiful phosphene in the eyes of the people you gave that flame for.

In this town, no one forgets how beautiful the stars are.

How ironic. This town has only barely touched the mafia world, and yet, they probably understood the spirit of the dying will more intimately than any mafiosi in Italy.

“Anyways, I’m not for this sh*t,” Shamal says, looking up into the sky just as something dark flickers across the moon. “Ah, there’s Takeshi. Little sh*t’s been hiding from me.”

Hayato’s brow raises. “Why are you looking for the Baseball Freak?”

“The what?” Shamal extinguishes his cigarette and goes on a rant, “you mean the tall kid at the Sawada House? The one Reborn’s pretty much manually keeping alive because I’ve never seen a kid that young overexert his dying will to that degree, seriously, when I find out who forbade him from resting so much his body’s forgotten how to live with a normal amount of output— agh. His name’s Takeshi too? You’re kidding. He needs to give me some of that will to live so I can shove it at this other one.”

Hayato has so many questions about whatever the hell Shamal just said, but he knows he won’t get any answers.

“I’m heading off to a deserted island full of dead people next. Classic sh*t for illegal doctors like me,” Shamal chuckles, and though he’s trying to seem miserable, he speaks of the place with the same fondness he speaks of Hayato. “Have fun in this hell, Hayato. I won’t be back for a while.”

Hayato clicks his tongue, “don’t ever show up again, dipsh*t.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I-pin’s having an odd time in the cemetery. People party around the graves, drinking and eating, talking fondly as if they were reminiscing with old friends and old ghosts. Even the spirits of the town seem to be enjoying the festivities. At times, I-pin realized she wasn’t walking to a person, but the ghosts adored her just the same as the living.

Ah, Master always said to not talk too trustingly to the spirits. She should be careful, they might spirit her away on a day like this.

“I can’t believe you actually let us crowd today, Kyouya!” says a woman with a boisterous laugh, her hair entwined in dreadlocks as she curled her fingers around I-pin’s hair to make braids, too.

I-pin misses these tight braids. Back in the Academy, Hayato would make these when she asked, so she could match with their friends at the time. But after the radiation bomb incident, Hayato’s hands were always a little too shaky to make them as pretty as before, and he always apologized for it. So I-pin stopped asking for them. Her hair looked pretty in buns, too.

“Don’t test it,” Kyouya groused.

“Only because we’re at Tatta’s grave,” the one beside him chuckled. “Oh, Tatta… if we could hear him, he’d have the greatest bragging rights, you know? Hibari Kyouya’s using his gravestone as a backrest!”

“Shut up, herbivore.”

“Now, now…” Irie Shouichi soothes everyone, “the town’s been noisy recently. I think we’re kind of building up a new tolerance to it.”

“Yeah, it’s gotten pretty loud. I got here a few days early and I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

I-pin looks around this group and thinks it’s all rather homey. Everyone here was severely injured at one point in their lives— clearly, a similar point in their lives. The woman braiding her hair had a prosthetic hand and deep burn scars.

Burns were common among them. As were big stitches, physical disfigurements, and missing limbs.

This was the group that had been most severely injured by the earthquake those years ago— though most of them have moved out of town, pursuing jobs in town or continuing further education, they lived strong like soldiers bearing battle scars.

I-pin respects that a lot.

“Too bad the King of Hearts couldn’t join us,” the woman says. “Arisu and Usagi too! Oh! Did you guys know that Arisu’s and Usagi’s kid is already three years old??”

“What? No wayyy! Baby Otogi was born yesterday. I refuse to believe it!”

“No dude, it’s been three years, isn’t that insane—”

“Oh, I-pin. Nice hair,” Takeshi greets her when she comes by this edge of the cemetery, where a lot of eccentric figures have gathered wearing traditional clothing. Even Takeshi donned a haori today.

“My, that’s adorable!” one of the older ladies sitting on her husband’s knee beams at the sight of her, “did someone do that for you?”

I-pin nods, her dreadlocks swinging with the movement, “the nee-san over there helped I-pin do this. It is pretty.” It was tied up into a half-bun near the top, so it would keep out of her face while she moved.

“Come here,” one of the girls, with a blind eye and a butterfly hairpin, beckons her over.

“Are you helping out the teaworkers?” one of the men asked, taking the tray from her to help distribute the tea. “Even though you’re so young. You’re so helpful.”

I-pin hums. “I-pin is from out of town, so I-pin doesn't have anyone to mourn. But she will help! Everyone worked hard today, I-pin will contribute!”

“She’s so cute!” one of the older ladies swoons once more.

“No Suma,” the lady beside her chided, “we can’t have her. We already have Takeshi.”

“We can always adopt another,” the third assures, arms locked over the shoulders of a boy in yellow that’s slightly tipsy, “we’re kind of trying to fight Grampa for custody of this one, anyways.”

The boy in yellow squawked, “you’ve been WHAT?”

“Hey hey,” Mochida sighs, “you can’t have I-pin. You either have to fight Gokudera or Hibari for it and both are sucky options.”

To which a scarfaced-guy beside him mutters into his alcohol, face flushed slightly tipsy, “they can bring it the f*ck on.”

“Oh dear, it would be troubling if we had to fight the omnyouji house,” says the youngest of the group, who looked almost I-pin’s age. He was dressed traditionally and looked almost like a porcelain doll, “they’ve always had disagreements with my father about the differences between demon and ayakashi.”

“If you want to start a turf war, do it in Kyoto,” says the girl with her hair up in butterfly-pinned twintails, a scowl on her face. “Leave me out of it, I need to get into college before you guys drag me into your nonsense again.”

“Oh that means we can do it once you get out! Yahoo, we’re busting this joint!”

“Have some self-preservation, guys.”

“Please not Kyoto,” says the guy that smelled like charcoal, “I’ve heard they’ve been through a lot just like us this past year. The town deserves to rest.”

“Nah, I have like, two years left on my warranty, I get to do whatever the f*ck I want, you guys prepare my grave for me.”

“Hey, I thought we agreed we weren’t doing any ‘I’m dying young’ jokes!”

“Did you just call your remaining lifespan a warranty, bro?”

“Oh speaking of that,” Takeshi beams, “I recently figured out I’m probably not going to immediately die at twenty-five!”

“Quiet, Glass-half-full sushi idiot!” Takeshi gets showered with all the contents of someone’s clay teacup. “Hah! Finally! I’ve finally gotten revenge on you for my rehab training two years ago holy sh*t—!”

And that’s when everyone erupts into an argument of who gets to pick a fight with local authority first.

Through this, Takeshi just laughs.

I-pin looks up at the lady who’s pinned a butterfly clip into I-pin’s hair. The girl with one blind eye smiles sweetly at her, and I-pin grins back gratefully.

“Thank you, nee-san!” I-pin bounces back onto her feet. “I-pin will go now! Master will get mad if I get adopted. He said I shouldn’t let anyone, living or dead, take me away. Only Hayato is allowed to do that.”

“Awh,” the group pouts, “bummer.”

Oddly enough, I-pin doesn’t see Lambo around today.

“Oh, Lambo? He’s with Yuji-niichan, they’re talking with their Net Friends,” Haru says. “That’s a cute butterfly hairpin! Did you get it from Kanzaki-senpai?”

I-pin’s head tilts. She didn’t know Haru knew them.

“Oh, you didn’t. You got it from her little sister,” Haru deduces. “You see, Kanzaki-senpai goes to my school, Midori High. It’s a very prestigious school, and she’s the only one in her family living in Namimori right now so she can attend. It’s so nice that everyone from out of town is here this week.”

I-pin sits down beside her, looking out into the forests beyond.

“Haru doesn’t have anyone?”

Haru blinks at that. “Haru has Papa, and Haru has Yuji,” she says. “But Papa needs to drink with his old work friends, and Yuji’s got his role in his world. Haru’s job is to watch over the town until everyone’s ready to come home.”

She’s a guard dog. That’s what she was born to do, and it’s what she has always done.

I-pin repeats her question, “no one else?”

Haru looks up at the crescent moon, and considers that question.

“I-pin, you have someone you can’t meet right now too, right?” she says instead. “Your Master sent you here, because where he is, it’s dangerous. So he sent you here to be with Gokudera, where it’s safe.”

I-pin considers that.

And she understands what Haru’s trying to say.

Haru does have someone else that means the world to her— but she can’t be with them. The circ*mstances have split them apart, and there’s little she can do but sit and stay.

I-pin understands that heartrending sadness very well.

“But you’ll meet again one day, right?” I-pin says.

“We’ll meet,” Haru says. “Even if I don’t think we should.”

Now she’s confused again. “Why?”

Haru smiles bitterly, “because Haru is a guard dog of justice.”

“Oh my. You’re so adorable, little girl!”

“Onee-san, are you by yourself?”

I-pin finds it rather odd there’s a single lady wandering about. She’s put down a vase before a memorial— For the Deadmen who lived proud ; we are no longer caged birds— and no one else has put down flowers.

“Yes. I’m by myself,” she said, sitting down by the memorial, cracking open a can of beer. She takes one of I-pin’s offered candy boxes with gratitude. “There’s only two bodies buried under here, you see. And the only person that would come visit is in jail right now. I’m visiting in his place.”

I-pin found that sad. No one visited, even on memorial day.

But maybe it made sense. Maybe whoever was buried here was an irredeemable bastard, and that’s why everyone else memorialised here doesn’t get visitors either.

“We were all in the same prison when it came crumbling down, you know,” the lady told her. “I think it’s silly at this point, to still hold a grudge.”

I-pin wondered what crime they committed, and if it was all worth being forgotten this way. On a day of remembrance like this, in a town filled with people that just wanted to be known— how sad was it, that people refused to remember what you meant?

“But maybe this is for the best. We all hated being known,” the lady said. “A flashy memorial like this doesn’t suit us. We hated all that absurdity— we just wanted to be normal. We just wanted to be treated like normal people. That’s why I believe everyone whose names are here? They’re fine never having visitors. It’s proof that we’re living strong, putting that birdcage behind us.”

(Is wanting to be forgotten something to be happy about?)

The lady then laughed, pushing aside her long,dyed locks across her other shoulder. She pretended her makeup wasn’t smudged, and this wasn’t her third beer of the night.

“Oh sweetie, I’m sure you’re tired of my rambling. Do you want to hear a story?”

I-pin sat and listened.

“Back when I was on the stage, they called me the Peaco*ck— ah, have you ever been to a drag show honey? I’ve been thinking of sneaking off my day job to participate in one, it’s been a while. But that boss of mine is such a slave driver!”

“You’re not going home?”

I-pin notices Ryohei drinking under the giant willow tree, and approaches with her refreshments. Hana is there too, she notices belatedly.

“Nah,” Ryohei says. “I decided I wouldn’t go see them again for anything other than emergencies. You could’ve taken this chance to head back to Tono, you know? I’m sure they all extremely miss you.”

Hana scoffs. “Nah, you won’t survive too far away from me. I decided the next few decades of my life will be with you, so I’ll stay. I can always go back to them once you’re dead.”

“That’s extremely concerning for me!” Ryohei declares, but chases no further.

Hana’s smoking on a pipe. I-pin finds that interesting, because she’s never smelled anything of the sort on her. Just today, Hana felt different. Her hair seemed a little longer, her traditional kimono draped over her figure seemed to bleed into the ground. It exposed the tree-ring-like tattoos across her bare legs, marks of the sun against curves of stormclouds decorating her pale skin.

It reminded I-pin of Hayato’s tattoos. But they felt so much more sinister and haunting.

Odd. I-pin hasn’t felt so apprehensive in a while— she likes Hana, and yet, Hana felt like a witch at the moment and that set off alarms in her head.

And I-pin didn’t dare step forward from her spot at the bottom of the hill. Something in her very nerves advised her against going any closer— and she knew she had to listen to it. She decided against refreshments in this direction, turning away.

“So that guy’s doing weirdly well these few weeks,” Hana brings up. “I’m not getting any aches in my eyes anymore. Usually he annoys us every once in a while… Think it’s got to do with Sawada business?”

Ryohei chuckles. “I’m sure it does! He was having fun with those dangerous friends of his in Italy, last I asked. Looks like we’ll meet again soon, I’m extremely excited for it!”

“I suppose it’s better for us to be in proximity, I suppose. If he weren’t what he was, he’d be dead already.”

“Now I’m extremely concerned.”

Lanterns are released into the sky.

“Oh. I-pin.”

Hayato finds her sometime during the lantern ceremony, gazing up where the paper lanterns gleamed little warm ambers in the night sky. I-pin looked entranced, almost.

“It’s different from the stars we usually see in Shibusen. In China with my Master, we didn’t get such beautiful skies, either.”

Hayato finds himself chuckling at that.

They sit at the veranda of the Sawada house, where no one else was home because Nana was visiting graves too— and simply enjoyed sitting side by side.

“Yeah. This is what the real night sky looks like,” Hayato tells her. “That’s how high lanterns can actually go. And the moon? It’s so far away, isn’t it?”

I-pin nods vigorously at that. “I can’t hear him laugh! It’s so weird!”

Hayato laughs harder, “the real moon doesn’t have laughing syndrome, I-pin.”

“That’s so weird!” I-pin sprawls over his lap so she can lie back and look toward the ever-expanding sky that seems to go on forever.

“You’ve only been out of there a few months, I-pin,” Hayato tells her, “you can’t see stars in the places your Master brings you. I’m guessing he didn’t teach you about constellations, either?”

“Se-i-za?” her head tilts.

“Alright, first…”

They chat into the sunrise. It reminds them of home.

“Have we identified the issue yet?” Yuji pushes up the goggles on his head, pushing aside the floating menu screen to bring video calls to the forefront.

All across the web, various faces emerged before him.

“This is Phil and Ellie reporting in from Hard Mountains! We’ve secured the area.”

“Kain here. I’ve defeated the guy, so I’m about to head back if nothing else’s come up. It’s f*cking hot here in the Lava River…”

“Tomomi here in the Tropical Isles! Enemy data’s all in my Digivice now, no signs of reformation.”

“Yohoo~ It’s me! The Undersea Drive is free of terrible tro-codiles with gross teeth! NEVER again! Seriously why would you send me here, don’t you know crocodiles eat Puddingmon!? This is attempted murder, Acting King Yuji!”

Yuji sighs in relief at each report.

“Good job everyone, you’ve all done well,” he tells them, “I’m the only one in the Union right now. Make sure the Four Holy Beasts don’t hear anything of this. I’m still awaiting a response from—”

A screen pops up, Lambo’s face saluting brightly in.

“HEYAA!! It’s me, the Great Lambo!”

Yuji can’t help the relieved noise he makes. “You did it!”

“Of course I did, who d’ya think I am? Sky Palace is pretttaaayyy today! No Beelzemons around, nuh-uh!”

“Come back right away, alright?” Yuji urges him. There’s a new message right away. “We’re down to just Two of the Seven challenges. We can do this.”

We can do this. He says it once more, just for himself.

He’s nervous. Of all the times for the Seven Great Demon Lords to attack the Tamers… if they lose a single one of these battles, they’d lose the entire Network. This can’t be happening while the Tamer King’s gone.

(King Adrianna hasn’t left for more than a second since they’ve all known her. What brings? Why now?)

“Yuji?” Tomomi asks, because he’d been in a daze.

“He wants me in Core Field,” Yuji reports. “I’ll go. I need the rest of you to come here and stay on standby. Once I win, the last one will show up, and we’ll take them on together. Got it?”

“Got it!”

Yuji can’t help but think it’ll be a long while before he sees his sister again.

Somewhere in eight different parts of the world, there’s a silent conversation occurring between the glows of their pacifiers in their hands.

“It’s never a good day when the Vindice are unhappy,” Reborn says. It’s more an annoyance than anything else.

“What happened this time?” groans the familiar woman’s voice through a Blue light.

“Another jailbreak, hey,” it’s also a Blue light, but full of amusem*nt.

“Seriously?” this time it’s indigo. “I’m not paid enough to care about their sh*tty security anymore. At this point just give the prisoners to me I’ll take care of them.”

“Not everyone can pay your crazy prices!” Purple has a death wish.

“Now now,” Red seems fairly amused by the situation. “It’s not as if the Vindice haven’t been letting out some prisoner behind our backs these years.”

“That’s the problem, you fools,” Green is just as done with their nonsense as Reborn is. “He’s letting whoever out there, they just don’t like it when it’s not their decision to.”

“I’m not paid enough to care who’s free,” Indigo replies curtly. What did they expect from that one? “I’m busy, can I go?”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Red chuckles, “are you still looking for the child of stars from the other day? A shame that the rift opened up right when you found him.”

“Shut up. I’m leaving!” And Indigo really did.

There’s a moment before the conversation starts up again, annoyance growing in everyone. Now they’re one person down to deal with this utter mess.

“Oh so it’s our job to fix it?” Blue grumbles.

“Hey, we’re technically supposed to maintain the balance of the powers,” other Blue says. “Whose turn is it?”

Silence.

Then, “I see,” Orange sounds rather tired and resigned. “I suppose it is my turn. I apologize, I’ll handle it how I can. Reborn?”

Reborn blinks as he’s addressed.

“I believe Vongola may be affected by this, considering who’s involved,” Orange tells him. And her prophecies are perfect, so this only bodes terribly. “I’ll clean up on this side, but be careful on your end.”

The meeting adjourns quickly after that.

Reborn is left within the trees with that situation. Namimori would be back to normal after today— town memorial day, where the doors are opened, yet no one is allowed in. It’s a day where everyone allows themselves peace.

Peace. What a foreign thought.

It’s just placebo, because so much effort is put into making sure it looks like it’s fine. Just thinking of the outsider purge this morning gives him a headache.

It’s all temporary.

Especially now that there are escapees from Vendicare, and they’re headed straight for Namimori, the underworld’s no man’s land.

[EXTRA #6]: LAST RECORD OF THE DIVINE TREE.

※ CLASSIFIED

I hope you’re doing well. It’s memorial day back at home, so I hope you’re not thinking too deeply about me. Recently I’ve found a way to move on, and with the way things are going, I think I might finally be able to have something for myself again.

Please don’t mourn for me. I love you, and I want you to be happy. I’ll try to be happy, too, because I know that’s what you’ll want for me.

I’m sorry I can’t be there for you anymore, but I look forward to the day we’ll meet again.

Thank you for the sunflowers. They’re beautiful.

Y.N.