All characters © Amano Akira

Summary: The Guardians of the Vongola react differently to the same things, each in their own, unique way.

Action and Reaction, the Guardians

First Kills

The common practices of law had never held sway of the mafia, then or now. Possession documents, financial lawsuits, and collateral damages were all something normal people had to worry about. The Italian mafia, however, had never done anything conventionally. It had always been a place where killings were unprecedented and unaddressed. Murder, to them, was not seen as a crime, but merely as a necessary procedure (partially because no one in the mafia could seem to get along anyway).

The only difference now was that they were younger.

With the exception of Belphegor, Mukuro, and the young mafiosos trained for the lifestyle from birth, everyone in the Vongola had spent at least one time in the bushes as their insides clenched from the aftermath. Murder was something that no one, least of all children, had a right to bear. But since when was anything in the mafia just?

Byakuran had been Tsuna's first. After returning to the past, Tsuna had dropped five pounds. Only Reborn had noticed that he had begun to wear his mittens during the day; they covered up the bite marks that Tsuna would make during the night, when he would stuff his hands into his mouth to stifle the screams upon waking.

Hibari's hadn't been mafia-related--a folly on his part. His first victim had been one of his classmates, when he was fifteen. He had bitten the student to death, literally. With the assistance of Reborn the school had dropped Hibari's charges of third-degree murder and had paid reparations to the victim's stricken family. But Hibari didn't touch his tonfa for a week afterward, and he had begun to wash his hands raw every day. It was Dino who had approached him then--Tsuna to this day doesn't know what was said, but Hibari had returned to his old, recalcitrant self soon after.

The others' firsts came later.

There was a reason that Gokudera was a mid-range fighter. The results of close-contact dynamite were too ghastly to bear. It was a brawl toward the end of their stay at Namimori, like so many of the brawls that Gokudera had gotten into over such trivial matters. Someone had looked at his precious Tenth the wrong way, or had accidentally bumped into him without apologizing; it was always the same. One time, like Hibari, Gokudera had gone too far, and in a vermilion cloud of anger had forgotten that dynamite should never, ever be used in close proximity. Gokudera's stomach, already weakened by the continuous presence of his sister, couldn't take it. He had to be hospitalized with an IV drip for two days because no matter what he ate, it just came right back up.

Yamamoto's, however, had been purely intentional, and had been carried out with a cold, deadly precision that Tsuna knew he'd need time to get used to. But even wolves in sheep's clothing like Yamamoto couldn't remain remorseless, no matter who the person was. He had eventually sought out the Varia, namely Superbi Squalo, for coping advice. The odd thing enough was that Squalo, for all of his screaming antics and macho repartee, was able to help. Tsuna knew that Yamamoto saw Squalo as somewhat of a role model, and he was secretly glad that somewhere under those rows of fangs Squalo had some sympathy.

Ryohei now had a secret to keep from Kyoko, for the first time since middle school. She didn't like violence, even if it was necessary violence, so in the future Ryohei would simply not tell her when he had to kill. For all of his talk of manliness and glorifying battles, he hated the actual results. The first time he had seen the light leave someone's eyes he felt like he had been punched in the stomach. It was not his own welfare he worried about--in fact, Ryohei didn't even consider his own aftermath. But for the life of him, he didn't know how to tell his little sister that he had killed a man today.

Two decades had transformed Lambo. He had once been a raucous, crying kid in a cow jumpsuit who begged for milk instead of drawing it from his own udders. Tsuna, though he would die before mentioning this to his other guardians, considered Lambo to be the most terrifying Guardian in his family. Two decades had turned him into a killer. Lambo had grown more than any of them, excluding Tsuna himself. It had been to protect Ipin the first time, when Lambo had been seventeen. He had literally fried the threat, with no real damages to his sanity following. His constant childhood mantra of "tolerate" proved to make him the best coper of them all.

to be continued..