A/N: I'm back from the dead... aha.. ha.. ha..? *quickly avoids the bricks and bullets*
Summary: Between trying to balance a normal life and a secret identity, having distant younger brothers and an oblivious mother, everything goes completely FUBAR when a baby hitman arrives at the Sawadas' doorstep. Well, Tsuna will still do his best to protect what's his anyways. Hacker!Tsuna, not!Decimo!Tsuna, AU, gen.
[ Chapter 1 : Injustice ]
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A young child's curiosity is never infinitesimal but unlimited. They often question the littlest to the silliest of things and adults are usually baffled by them, but they don't show it and responses usually consisted of sentences along the lines of "I don't know", "questions like these don't get you anywhere" or even "I'm not sure, why not ask your teacher?" and etcetera, maybe to avoid humiliation on their genuine perplexity.
A wise man once said, "Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why." and you're left to ponder on the fact that yes, Newton decided to ask a simply why and thanks to that, we learned what gravity was.
The curious human beings are usually the ones to evolve and create something society has never seen or heard of. Obviously, there are things in life that exist yet you can't see it, like the wind as a prime example. The curious will continue to learn, work and discover because they are willing to indulge and satisfy their endless curiosity.
That's probably why Sawada Nana always thought that her oldest son would grow up to become a great person, always willing to see what the world has hidden from him and always willing to find out why. Nana is, by heart, an open-minded and adaptive person, so it doesn't bother her when her son asked questions that can test even the most patient person on earth.
Sawada Tsunayoshi, often affectionately called Tsu-kun by her, asked things like, "why is tomato pronounced as toe-may-toe instead of toh-mah-toh", "why weren't tigers vegetarians" and which she also quotes, "why wasn't grass orange because orange is a better color than icky green" and also so much more that could be compiled into a three-series book if she said anymore.
The Sawada woman knows she can't be much of a help to her son when it came to this, so she often said, "Tsu-kun, why not ask your teacher?", not because she wanted to pass the buck but the fact that she couldn't provide and didn't want to sabotage her son's knowledge.
The loving mother snaps out of her thoughts when Tsuna leaves after asking a question ("Mama, why do people find it easier to fight instead of talking?", in which she replied, "I'm not sure, Tsu-kun, but maybe that's why we had too many wars in the past and now that we are smart, we try to understand each other before jumping into action."), looking at the back of her child running off into the distance, then joined by his younger brothers, who were twins and a year younger than Tsuna; Ietsugu and Ieshige, running, although it was more of waddling, since they had short, baby legs, towards him while oozing childish wonder and excitement.
The three were playing a game of tag in the backyard, laughing wildly like the kids they are and running after each other. Then, Ieshige falls down and bawls his eyes out. Her youngest son isn't hurt, so Nana doesn't need to interrupt, especially when Tsuna and Ietsugu stop their tag fest to run towards their baby brother and fuss over him like little angry chicks, protective of one of their own.
She smiles fondly and hope that her family stays this way forever. Happy, free, smiles and always full of joyful laughter. Never unhappy, constant frowns and unwanted tension. She doesn't want this to be taken away from her, not when she can do everything in her power to stop it.
It would only be picture perfect if Iemitsu was back, thought Nana sadly before wiping away the tears that prickle at the corner of her eyes. She would stay strong even though her husband was nowhere in Namimori but in another country doing his rather questionable job. But this is good. Not the best, but good.
She just hopes that she does have enough power to do what she wishes to protect her semblance of normalcy and paradise in a boring, sleepy town with a looming threat to disturb what she holds dear.
However, hope is never enough.
That's because the world is not nice.
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Tsuna learns that the world is not nice.
His Mama always cries when she thinks him and his younger brothers aren't looking, little sniffles and choked sobs that are stuck in her throat like a rock in a crevice of the sidewalk. She doesn't notice he's there, looking at her, observing her, with his warm brown eyes staring into her soul to unravel the causes, the how's and the whys.
He knows that his Mama is often inattentive to the world around her, to the reality that wraps around humans, because she likes to envision a perfect family with perfect little children to dote on and a perfect loving husband she can hug, adore and see every day after work hours.
But at the same time, this makes her so kind and lovable to the point that not even little Tsuna can hate her.
It is impossible to make Tsuna hate his family, no matter how much of a pain they can be at times.
Yet, the world is not nice and his Mama is not blessed with her only wish — a perfect family. She is cursed to have a withdrawn older son that the entire town knows as "Dame-Tsuna", two little twins, Ietsugu and Ietsuna that are burdened with the bad reputation of the Sawada family (the oldest and the father; useless men of the household, unable to contribute to society) and a husband who she has only seen less than ten times in the long years they made their marriage vows.
Sometimes, Tsuna thinks, that the world they live in is unfair and cruel.
He tries his best to not be seen as a loser and not be bullied, but he is weak at the knees when the idea of hurting others is mentioned. He wants to be strong, yes, but he does not want to become the same like his personal demons who torment him day after day.
It is completely true that he tries even if he knows of the high chance of failures, but he can't stand seeing his innocent brothers being hurt for his own flaws and his mother more tired than ever thanks to the constant comparisons of the other housewives, their sons to useless little Dame-Tsuna, to show who's the top dog.
The young boy believes that no one is better than each other, because they breathe the same air and bleed the same deep red. They can feel the same emotions, like happiness, anger, love and sadness and they can get hurt like everyone else. Simply put, Tsuna doesn't see the point in thinking you're on top of the food chain if you have a better living environment, have better belongings than others, and have good looks or good grades. He doesn't see the need to feel smug about being a king, because as long as you appreciate yourself, whether it be good or bad qualities, everything will be fine.
Sadly, the rest of the world and the world itself doesn't share his ideals.
By then, Tsuna learns that the world does not spare fairness and either he stands up for himself, or fall and fall until he can never stand up again and everyone forgets that he ever existed.
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Tsuna was barely grown up when he saw his mother in tears and absolutely miserable, on her knees holding what looked to be like one of those expensive, shiny water toys that their next door neighbor's bratty ten year old son had gotten from his rich uncle who worked in a big corporation located in the heart of Tokyo. At that time, the small brunet did not understand the significance or the severity of the situation, for he was just a six year old boy looking for a pack of band aids as his youngest brother, Ieshige, is more accident prone than his older twin, Ietsugu, especially when it involves grassy fields of pebbles and bushes, and had stumbled upon the not-so-quiet sobs.
The problem was that it wasn't a transparent, colorful and harmless water gun used in water fights.
It was a sleek, black and a hundred percent dangerous real gun that could shoot bullets and kill people.
But young Tsuna did not know what a gun was and Nana desperately wanted to keep it that way. Even though Tsuna was good at asking, simply because his curiosity could get the better of him at times and Nana could be a sneaky woman when she wanted to be. So, she used it against his son without him knowing.
"Why is Mama cry?" asked Tsuna with a pout on his pudgy baby face and hands holding the door, so it was slightly ajar and he could peek into the room without entering it. "Is Mama sad? Pain?"
The older Sawada member slowly slid the gun under her bed, not allowing her oldest son to see more of it or else he would get too curious and come over to inspect it. Her knowledge on guns were from daytime drama shows and yakuza myths at best, so she didn't want to risk of accidently pulling the trigger if the safety notch wasn't working or wasn't on.
Worst of all, she didn't want her son (or any of her sons, really) to see her have a mental breakdown in her bedroom, so she blinked the tears away and quickly reverted to her old self; cheery and unfazed by the obstacles of life.
Even if this was the hardest so far.
"No, no, Mama isn't sad or hurt." She forced herself to smile, even if it came out a bit weak and Tsuna might catch onto it. Her son's intuition was scarily accurate at times, even if he expressed his feelings awkwardly with his sparse child vocabulary. "Mama just needs a band aid to heal her boo boo, that's all!"
Her words made Tsuna remember what he wanted to do in the first place, before getting distracted by the sound of crying and his mother's state. He flung open the door when he saw the small package of colorful band aids on the bedside in the room, making a beeline for it and had not noticed Nana's harsh flinch of surprise.
There was still a gun in the room, after all.
Her oldest son took out an orange bandage and peeled off the white paper to stick it right onto Nana's collarbone, further away from where the heart was supposed to be. But the thought counted and once again, Nana was right about her son.
He could be scarily accurate at times.
"Mama hurts here," Tsuna pointed it out and patted his palm onto his chest, again away from where the heart was, though she supposed it was good enough.
As knowing as her son was at times, he wouldn't know where the heart was without learning it at school. Which was good, because if her son was always right without fail, she'd feel a little afraid.
"So, sticky to make pain fly away!" He smiled, showing his teeth and innocence of a child and hands raised to emphasize 'fly'.
Nana really wanted Tsuna to stay as a child forever.
But Tsuna wanted to grow up as soon as possible, to protect his mother.
Not that she knows, of course.
So Nana ushered her oldest child out of the room after convincing him that she wasn't in pain anymore and placed the gun back where she found it.
Yes, everything would be back to normal if she pretended she didn't find the gun at all.
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No one needs to know that the Sawada family owns not one, but more firearms, hidden in their house.
No one needs to know that Tsuna finds out what's a gun the day after.
No one needs to know that Tsuna isn't as innocent as he is anymore, after that.
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Tsuna is a little slow compared to his classmates when it comes to learning, but he already knows what "injustice" means.
Injustice wasn't the same as unfairness. The latter sounded childish and petty, like that ridiculous bully Kosuke when he whines to his older sister about the ownership of his toy robots and cars. The former, however, rang in his head like the loud bell from the local shrine, echoing within the recesses of his mind.
However, for unfairness, anyone and the right people would help you. If you lost your pet? The local police would help you, or even your neighbors. Your friend had cheated in the exams because they peeked at your answers? No problem, the teacher could just hand out punishment to the rule violator.
Injustice meant that no one, not even the policemen, would be able to help you, despite what his mama says. In fact, injustice could even mean that no one wanted to help you. Maybe it was because of fear, or maybe it was because it was too complicated that nothing could be done about it.
Unfairness was used when people whined and complained about something, often trivial and easily solved, but injustice?
No one used injustice in those situations, did they?
He knows that the adults, especially his teachers, would tell him that "injustice" and "unfairness" were the same words, that he was looking into it too much, but they were wrong. The only reason those two words were even categorized as the same was because the general gist of their meanings were similar. But those two words were entirely two different things, like saying that water was the same as fire.
He remembers learning that the world is not nice. That's not true at all, because the world was suffering from terrible injustice.
Tsuna can see the injustice of the world all around him, like when he was at school, when he was at his housing area, when he was at the shopping mall and right now.
Right now when he was being kidnapped in broad daylight.
Actually, there is no one at the road he was walking back home from school, strangely enough, so he can't exactly call it out as an injustice. But, there was one policeman who had been bribed to "keep his mouth shut" and two women who were threatened to leave without making a fuss, something along the lines of, "I'll hunt you down" and "make sure you regret even breathing".
While it is a great concern of Tsuna that someone would even regret breathing, he has bigger and worse things to worry about.
Like how he was being blindfolded, gagged, tied up, shoved into a bag and thrown onto something hard. He can't help it if he lets out a scared girly shriek and now, muffled screams. He can feel the vibrations of a moving object, so it means he's in a vehicle, like a car, which is driving to god knows where.
He is confused, scared and almost crying. There is really nothing else to describe what he feels right now.
Who wouldn't be scared if they were getting kidnapped by scary, weird, non-Japanese men and the local police had ran away because he was given green paper? Was he that worthless to the residents of Namimori, sans his family?
It's definitely injustice, especially in the case of that policeman. No wonder that senior who constantly frowns, glares and avoids crowds always take matters into his own hands, with violence and metal sticks.
So, in all of Tsuna's childish, seven year old vocabulary, all he can think of is that, "it sucks" and "it's scary". There isn't much to describe the situation either, especially when Tsuna is so tiny, he can't fight back – they were as huge as mountains! –, so weak and most of all, a child.
He tries to escape by squirming and wiggling like an earthworm dug up from the soil, but it fails and only serves to annoy the scary and weird men even more. To be honest, Tsuna wasn't sure what he was even doing and it's their fault for kidnapping him when he hasn't done a thing to them in his short life, but when the man speaks, Tsuna instantly shuts up and stops moving. He even almost stops breathing, but quickly continues doing it after his chest hurts and he feels dizzy.
Suddenly, he can understand why when one of them said, "make sure you regret even breathing". Tsuna is so scared, too scared, to even breathe. Again, he almost cries.
It's scary and also ridiculous.
"Stop movin' or I'll put a hole through your head!" the man hisses out and Tsuna finds his usage of his mother tongue very strange.
At least Tsuna can tell that this man isn't Japanese, not even Asian like Korean or Chinese, but then again, it gradually means danger for him, because they might take him out of Japan and he would never see his family again. Never see mama, Ieshige or Ietsugu ever again. Never be able to meet papa and ask why he never visits. Never find out why his family isn't really complete.
"Good boy, knows what you're doing." says the very same man, but this time with more humor and a breathy laugh tacked at the end. Tsuna doesn't find this funny at all. "Boss'll definitely reward us for finding out this kid belongs to the head of the CEDEF! Out of pure luck too!"
Now, this, Tsuna finds funny. They're definitely foreign, which means they speak another language, like English or whatever languages there are, but here they are, speaking Japanese. His main language, the words he knows and understands.
Even if he doesn't really know what is this "sedef" thing and how he's related to all of it. He did say that Tsuna (kid) belonged to "sedef's head", so… it meant his dad? It couldn't be mama, since she never went out of Japan before and wasn't associated with foreigners. Well, it means that he would have to, or will find out sooner or later. It wasn't good to make quick conclusions.
Sawada Tsunayoshi is seven, but he isn't exactly a stupid kid either. So he listens and tries to find out why he's kidnapped. He knows children get kidnapped all the time, but this one seems pretty… personal, like it has a reason to it, even if by all means, it should be a very bad one.
"Too bad he's not a potential heir." the man sighs like he ran out of chocolate in his secret snack stack. "Maybe would'da be worth a few millions, but Nono has four sons and we all know either Enrico or Frederico is gonna succeed as heir."
"Haha, yeah, that angry brat Xanxus got no chance." Another man chortles, the one who bribed the policeman since he was the most civil amongst them and looked less threatening. But Tsuna's… well, you could say, his instinct, was telling him that he was the most dangerous one. "We all know he's left out of Nono's will!"
Then the rest of them laughs and hollers like it's the funniest thing in the world.
Tsuna doesn't get why, but he does hate these people for making fun of others and kind of pities this Xanxus person, even if he sounds like he has major anger issues the size of the sun.
"Well, let's make the exchange happen at the warehouse area in downtown Tokyo." Another says and this one, Tsuna doesn't recognize though his instinct his telling him that it's the driver. "Most of them are abandoned anyways, not like anyone will notice 'nyways, 'cause Bernardo snooped the area and not even cops come around!"
"Hell yeah, profit for us and promotion from the boss!"
"Cheers!"
When the men start saying, "something-millions", to decide Tsuna's price, Tsuna himself tries to calm himself down and think carefully.
He wasn't stupid, but he wasn't going to be able to escape men who could, in their words, "put a hole through his head". He likes his head a lot, thank you very much.
There was also no way he wasn't going to stand up to this.
This was a form of injustice, even though it's scary and Tsuna still feels like crying.
He's not stupid, but he's only a seven year old child.
A/N: So, I end it here, because writing this one goddamn chapter, the freakin' introduction, was harder than I thought it should be. Why? Because, hey, fun fact, the rewrite of this had six drafts (which I have angrily backspaced them or trashed into my recycle bin) before I decided on this one. Urgh.
To all the readers of King of Rejects; thank you for coming back! I welcome you all back and thanks for sticking with me even though I'm such a sad bum. As you can tell, most of the stuff have been revamped, like the summary, the plot and even the way I wrote it. FYI, it's gonna be some time (aka I don't know how long, yay) before I get into canon. Fun stuff. I'm sorry for making you guys frustrated or wait so long, because I had so much trouble writing this and I hated KoR so much that I wished it never existed. Thank you for your endless patience with me!
To new readers; welcome too! You don't need to read King of Rejects to understand this, because this is the rewrite and (hopefully) the better version of it.
Well, I'll go off now and hide now before I have other thoughts about posting this. _