Target Zero: Reborn?
It was true when people say that their whole life would replay itself if they were close to Death. That was what a young girl had realized when time seemed to stop for her when a truck was about to hit her.
Flashes of her life came to her like wildfire. The fond childhood doing whatever she wanted, her father leaving like a chicken, her mother becoming a total mess, and the painful bullying, she couldn't breathe. It was too early. She didn't want to die yet. She was leaving with so much regret and she still hadn't even fulfilled her dreams, her goals or whatever was left for her do it.
'What if...I should have...I could have...I have to...,' thoughts like these flew into her mind and she felt like crying or maybe she had already started crying? She couldn't tell anymore.
Her eyes closed and her body felt numb. What was there to do anymore?
"WATCH OUT!"
She didn't know who shouted nor did she exactly know how it had happened. The girl could only remember jumping out in front of the speeding truck to save some poor soul that just happened to have stepped out on the street at that exact time.
Well, either that or it was her being hit by the truck herself after she had been too busy trying to escape her bullies, who had decided to have some fun and had thought, 'Hey, why not play tag with her and the loser gets a beating, just for the fun of it? It's not like she's going to be killed or anything.'
Wrong, it was unpleasantly wrong and people could only watch horrified as the poor girl clothed her body in red.
None came to the funeral.
Why would there be people? The girl was nobody, only a girl with no friends. Her mother, driven by guilt, couldn't even bear to acknowledge what had happened to her only daughter and the bullies, who were constantly pestering her day in and day, didn't want to realize their faults and their involvement to the accident.
They said and thought that it wasn't their fault. She was just a weird girl, who was liked anime...well, she didn't just like it. She was obsessed with anime.
Maybe that's why they were so mean to her.
Wasn't it a known fact that boy's pick on girls that they like? So they started picking on her because they liked her, but when she showed absolutely no reaction or interest in return, their actions became more forceful and violent.
But it wasn't her fault that she found the anime men more attractive than men in real life. She even had a crush on one of the boy's in her all-time favorite series. A bad boy of course with black hair and cold gray eyes, but he's got a soft side that every fan of the series know about, and that's exactly what makes him so likable. The girl suspected that the boy had a secret fan-club that stayed in their circle of fans, because the dude would not take kindly if he found out that he had a bunch of stalker ladies after him.
This girl however, was not like those other fan-girls out there.
She had a reason behind being so obsessed.
She lead a horrible life, living with her mother in an old trailer that didn't even work properly, it smelled like garbage because her mother never cleaned up after herself and it's just so much that a girl could take care of on her own. Not only did she have to take care of herself and the place she lives in, she also had to take care of her mother, because her mother sure as hell wouldn't do it.
The world of anime and manga was the only place of which she could seek refuge
She had often dreamed about entering one of those worlds, to be a part of the story as one of the head characters (that had been gender-bended into female) or to be there as one of her own OC's.
But that would never happen.
Earlier that day of her accident, she had been fed up with her mother's carelessness. They had been shouting at each other about something she had forgotten. She was fed up. She just packed her backpack and left, not wanting to live there anymore.
That's when it happened, the reason still unknown but she knew one thing...
She had died immediately after she had flown through the air and hit the back of her head against the pavement.
She knew little of another life waiting for her in another dimension.
"Just look at her," the voice that had spoken belonged to a man, she knew that because it was too deep, dark and masculine to be feminine, but then again, who was she to judge?
"Beautiful, isn't she?" now that, was definitely a female voice.
"Like her mother then," the male voice spoke to the woman. A romantic then?
The girl could feel something large holding her, pressed against her entire back. So either the hand that was holding her up was enormous, or she had all of the sudden shrunk. She was guessing on the latter. There are not that many giants out there in the world, you know.
The girl finally decided that it was time to actually see who it was that was holding her.
"Oh, honey," the man whispered, but she could still hear him. "I think she's opening her eyes." his voice was exited, like he had been waiting for this moment for a long, long time.
"Let me see, let me see." the woman chanted just as excited as the man. The girl could hear some creaking coming from behind her; you know the sound, like the one a bed makes when you jump in it.
Colorful.
That it was. She had never seen so many colors like this and she felt her eyes cringed in pain at being by blinded by them. Brown and yellow were the most dominant among the colors and she wondered where the talking man and woman were.
She couldn't see them against all the colors.
Somehow, even without knowing where they were, she could still feel that they were quite surprised with the way the girl's eyes looked like, and this made the girl wonder, just how her eyes looked like now. She knew for a fact that her eyes used to be hazel, but now...
"What's wrong with our baby's eyes?" the woman's voice asked, sounding a bit worried as the girl felt herself be embraced by another body. Where the body was, she still didn't know. The only thing she noticed was that the brown color was a lot closer than before.
This is when she realized that she was a baby. The girl had returned into infantry.
She had been reborn.
"I'll go get a doctor." the man's voice said and her ears struggled to hear the heavy steps getting softer and quieter. The yellow color seemed to be getting dimmer with every step. It was strange, so very strange.
A hand, or at least the girl thought it was a hand, moved the her and she once again noticed how the brown color was coming closer, mixing itself with lighter colors.
"Blue eyes like your father," the woman smiled, how did the girl know this? Don't ask her! She's a baby for crying out loud! "But it's like you don't have a pupil at all, just two shades of blue." oh, so that's why they are so freaked out?
"Gah!" the little girl bubbled, right before she reached out her small, chubby hands towards the mess of colors in front of her, letting her fingertips stroke over to where she hoped was the woman's face.
Okay, things were just getting stranger and stranger by the minute.
As the girl let her fingers travel over a soft texture, an image was forming from her mind and she was seeing yet unseeing. So she continued, stroking her hands over every inch of her mother's face and before she knew it, there she was, her apparent mother in all her glory.
But she felt something amiss.
The person in front of her looked exactly like her old mother though she knew it wasn't her mother. Was it possible to be reborn like this? She couldn't tell if she was hallucination or not.
There were just messes of colors in the background and she wondered why she was seeing things like this. It was something in a dream.
Something clicked in the little girl's head.
It wasn't possible for the woman to look like her mother and it was impossible to only see burst of color. Having pupils should have made it clear enough and the girl felt stupid for not knowing sooner.
She was blind or more specifically, she had an eye disorder so she could only see beams of colorful lights.
The image, she had seen, was something her mind had registered. She briefly remembered reading how it wasn't the eyes, which registered an object but the brain. Touching something and feeling their texture made her identify the object and her mind supplied additional details because her eyes were unable to see them.
Sadness crept into her heart and she felt her stomach dropped. It meant that she could never know how her new parents really looked like and that she would only see her old mother while looking at her new one.
She might even find a friend in this new life but she wouldn't be able to see what their appearances were like. Then again, she wouldn't be able to see how a person would look like so she wouldn't be fooled by their facade. Such contradicting blessing and curse...
The woman seemed to have moved her hand to stoke over her daughter's head. The girl could somehow 'see' auburn strands falling around her eyes, it was weird. Maybe it had meant that her hair was auburn? Then, it meant that her mother's hair was that of a shade of brown.
Glee found its way to her.
She could still be able to know how people looked like! It was try-and-error method but it was enough for the girl. She was even happy to know that she had a different hair color.
The girl had always wanted to have auburn hair, it looked golden in certain lights, but in the world she had been in before, she had been stuck with boring, straight, black hair.
The woman seemed to have hugged the baby to her chest. Said baby briefly thought that she should stop adding "seem" in her head whenever she felt a movement.
"Do not worry baby, Mama will love you even if there is something wrong with your eyes, and your father will as well," she felt the woman pull her away, seemingly trying to look at her eyes again.
"And those eyes of yours make you look rather mysterious," she smiled even wider. "My baby's going to be a heart-breaker!" she hugged the baby close to her chest while she squealed.
"Nana, don't kill the girl just after she's born," Oh, the man had just entered the room without any of the two females noticing... was the dude a ninja? And was Nana her mother's name?
That was alike to the mother of the main character from her favorite anime.
The man took the girl out of his wife's arms, looking into her eyes. The little girl held her breath and tried not to touch any part of man, afraid that she would see a different image. She didn't want to see her abandoning father in place of this warm and kind man.
"The doctor will be here in a minute sweetheart," he told his wife, right before turning the attention back towards the girl. "In the meantime, we should name this little angel."
The brown woman laughed at her husband.
"True," she nodded. "What do you want to call her?"
The man grew quiet and the girl had a feeling that he was staring at his wife as if she was insane.
"You mean you're letting me choose?" he asked, staring at his wife with wide eyes.
"But of course," his wife answered, getting up on her knees, latching onto her husband's shoulder so that she could look at the miracle in his arms, too. "I'm too tired to think of a name right now anyway."
The man looked at his wife, and then down at the girl in his arms.
He smiled.
"Then...," he lifted the girl by placing each hand under her arms. "Her name shall be Tsunako." he smiled proudly at the name he had chosen.
The woman could only smile.
"Beautiful," she laughed. "Sawada Tsunako," she glanced at her husband. "I have a feeling that you'll have to beat the boy's away from the door one day." she giggled.
The baby titled her head in confusion. She didn't see what was funny but she had a feeling it was her father's reaction. There was a slight beam of yellow lights.
"But of course, I will," the man vowed. "No man in this world is good enough for my little angel."
That was the last thing the girl (now named Tsunako) witnessed the day of her birth, for she fell asleep shortly after her father declared to the whole world that he would never allow his adorable little angel to get married unless she had gotten pregnant, then he would kill the man that did it to his baby girl.
There was one thing Tsunako knew though.
And that was that she's going to like this life, no matter how dangerous it will be.
Nana had often wondered what it felt like to have a child of her own. At the start of her marriage with Iemitsu, she had felt the tiniest envy whenever she caught sight of her friends' children and wished desperately for a child.
Looking at the sleeping baby in her hands, she felt like crying. Her baby was beautiful and she could just imagine many people loving her child. She had a feeling that her child would also be strong. Call it a mother's intuition. Of course, there were the issues of eyes but...
She gently touched the soft skin and wondered briefly if this was what most mothers felt at their first child—pride and mostly, joy. She felt like yelling to the world that this was her child.
Her Tsunako, the child with many bonds...
"She'll be okay, Nana," her husband assured her with that confident smile and she felt the burden of her child's eyesight leaving her. Her hand continued to stroke Tsunako's hair.
When the doctor had revealed that their daughter had an eye disorder, the woman had immediately been filled with guilt. She felt it was her fault because the baby had come from her and she grew worried about how her little girl would live with eyes, which could and couldn't see.
Her eyes dimmed with the faintest hint of sadness and concern. "I don't know, Iemitsu," she muttered softly, not wanting the child to wake up. "I'm worried that other people would treat her differently and that she wouldn't enjoy her life. I want her to be happy and safe, Iemitsu."
'I'll keep her safe. I'll make her have the happiest childhood,' Nana vowed to herself despite her pessimistic words. 'Tsunako, Iemitsu and I, the three of us, we'll be together and be happy together.'
She didn't notice how her husband had become stiff and had showed distress and guilt in his eyes. If she had, then she would have asked with that all too worried eyes that made Iemitsu reveal everything about himself. She might have found out the secret he had been keeping.
But she hadn't turned around. She hadn't seen anything.
"I promise you that you have nothing to worry about," Iemitsu bit his lip from saying anything else. He didn't want his words to be a lie but he knew the unexpectedness of his occupation. His fist clenched in anger.
No, he wouldn't think of it.
Staring at the small fragile life of his daughter, he couldn't help it. Intense protectiveness flew into his veins. Funny, how he would only stop and think about the dangers of being a mafia when he was brought to reality that his family, one of his own blood and flesh and his beloved wife, could really be hurt by his enemies.
What if a rival famiglia found out about his family and tried to kill them?
'Have I been too relaxed?' he couldn't help the trail of thoughts before he closed his eyes, trying to calm down. 'No. I haven't let, even the Vongola except for Nono, have a single hint about my marriage with Nana escape. There's no one from mafia coming.'
He forced himself to not react in front of the woman and slightly clenched his hands. He would rather die than have his family be involved with the mafia. That, he promised.
And they had both fulfilled their promises.
For the consistent five years of growing up, Tsunako had turned into an adorable girl with the cutest smile that could melt the coldest soul. She was a little quiet and sometimes jumpy but the couple figured that her eyes were the main cause of it.
Of course, it didn't help that children her age didn't seem to like her much and find her eyes to be freaky.
Nana tried to help all she could and other mothers had sympathized as well. They tried playing childish dates between the children but there was no success.
Children just didn't have the capability to understand Tsunako's case though the girl seemed to understand it a little and just tended to avoid other children.
It's a mature thing to do but Nana was worried about her child's future. Iemitsu tried to ease her concerns but she just couldn't stop them. An uneasy feeling crept to her heart whenever she simply watched.
"Nana, she'll be okay," the blond man smiled comfortably. "Aren't you the one who told me she'll be the strongest? She's maturing nicely and quickly."
Apprehension filled her caramel eyes. "That's what I'm more worried about, Iemitsu," she said unusually serious. "What if she grows up too fast for anyone to understand? I don't want her to lose her childhood and innocence."
The husband said nothing at what she said. He had a feeling that their daughter wasn't growing just because of her lack of friends or her blindness. He gritted his teeth, seeing another movement in the shadows.
Assassins.
Since last month, there had been an increase of assassins trying to spy on his family and he noticed that this led to Tsunako's paranoid and unexpected maturity. He figured her Hyper Intuition had something to do with this.
The Mafioso tried everything to find the leak in the information about his family but with no such luck. He could only take down the assassins before they attacked. He wondered if it had something to do with the Vongola.
'I haven't been in contact with them since Tsunako's birth,' Iemitsu was tempted to sigh. He had been given the vacation since it was their first child but he was anxious to know what's happening and why it was affecting his family. 'Nono would call me if something's wrong. The leak must be a small mistake.'
"Let's go to the park," he suggested for the sake of relaxing. That was what they needed the most.
Almost as if the problem had been solved, the browned-haired woman smiled blissfully unaware of the current danger they were facing and went to retrieve their daughter, who beamed innocently to the world.
And Iemitsu wanted to keep them like this.
They had the greatest time in the park. He had held her child up in the air and was rewarded with a bell-like laughter and a sunny grin from her. He walked besides his smiling wife. With no worries or problems, they were happily in their own world.
"Up! Up!" Tsunako cried out joyfully as her arms had risen up for the man, trusting him to do as he was told.
The blond didn't think twice and compiled to his daughter's commands. It had been a rather difficult time for him to get close to her. For some reasons, the girl never wanted him close and seemed to be looking at him like she was seeing something else. The doctor explained that it might have something to do with her eyes only seeing colors.
They had suggested that she might be imagining something scary so he had tried his best to ease the child's fear of him. It took a long time but the result was worth it.
"Up we go!" he shouted gleefully and smiled widely. He heard his wife giggling at the corner. "It seems like our daughter likes the sky, Nana."
"Yes," seeing that beautiful smile of hers, he had felt like he was falling in love once more. "We should do this often. I know that Tsu-chan will love to be here to see the sky again."
"We'll visit again," the husband promised.
However, he never did fulfill the promise. They had never gotten the chance to go again and the place was replaced into a school. And the most important reason...
Iemitsu had gotten a call from Nono that night. He had already forgotten his previous thoughts and had thought nothing of the call. He didn't know that the call would be the start of the plot moving forward.
His mistake...
"My first son's dead."
No greetings, just the simple fact. But everyone in mafia had been thought to read through the lines, even someone like Iemitsu.
Something dreadful filled into the man. There had only been one conclusion as to why his boss had called with news like this. He felt himself tremble.
"You want me back," his mouth felt dry just saying it. In other circumstances, he would gladly go back to find out the bastard that did this but he couldn't. Not now, not when his risking his own family. "Nono, I...I..."
He bit his lip and felt like slapping himself. This was no time to be weak.
"Iemitsu," he heard the voice of his boss filled with understanding and sympathy. "I understand that you want to protect your family, especially since because of my son's death, there are files leaked but Vongola needs you here."
"There are assassins here. You know that I can't leave my family unprotected, Nono. They need me," he almost pleaded to stay. He knew his duties but he couldn't walk away from his own family. He just couldn't.
There was a tired sigh on the other line. "I was afraid that was the case," the old man said dejectedly before becoming strong again. "I understand. I will send some skilled men to guard your family. You may visit them from time to time. I suggest that you try to find the killer, not just for Vongola but also for your family."
Iemitsu didn't understand why his boss was adamant in having him came back but he didn't want to. Even when his family would be guarded, he would be more ease if he was with them.
He was ready to protest again when the other continued solemnly and apologetically, "Your daughter is direct line to Giotto, to the Vongola. I hope you didn't forget it, Iemitsu. If my sons died, she'll be next in line to be the boss of Vongola."
His body ran cold. He had forgotten. He had truly never thought of it before.
He needed a drink.
"That was low blow, Nono," he attempted a joke but no one had laughed. His eyes turned bitter and determined. "When shall I leave?"
"As soon as possible, preferably tomorrow... Everything's already prepared your arrival."
They talked for hours about the details of his flight and when it ended, the blond man had gone into the kitchen. He searched for a wine or beer and drunk the bottles he had found. He tried to drown himself in grief.
If he would turn alcoholic, it wouldn't surprise him.
Nana, on her part, oddly didn't comment on seeing him drinking in the morning and the big travelling bag by his side but there was a slight frown in her face that didn't belong there. The man wanted to make her smile but he didn't know how. Not when he himself didn't feel like smiling.
At the sight of her worried daughter, he had forced himself to smile.
"Tsunako, Otou-san's going to be a star!" he said, faking his cheerful demeanour and felt like his heart was breaking at the betrayed and pained emotions that filled her round eyes. He didn't need to look at his wife to see that she wore the same face.
'I'm sorry. I'm sorry.'
There was only much one could do to prevent the plot from moving forward and there was only much one could do to keep that fragile happiness.
And so the next chapter...
Jade-chan: Hello, so I'll be continuing or revising Reborn by dreamqueenhottie and I'll be warning that I will have changes in the story.
Firstly, I made Tsuna's blindness different from the original (meaning the first version, not the canon) because I have something planned for it. Secondly, the OC will think of her previous life more than the original and it will either be seen as Tsuna-centric or KHR-centric (like seeing KHR in other's POV than the original casts). Thirdly, I will add additional scenes or change the whole original scenes for what I have in planned. Lastly, Tsuna and other characters might have more flaws than the original because I wanted them to develop in the future chapters.
I hope that you guys will be okay with these changes and I hope that my writing will be okay as well! Also, this may or may not be a problem in the future so I'm asking now. Will you guys like to have romance or a pairing for Tsuna? Remember she's well reincarnated and will be mentally older than them so I guess it might be a problem... What do you guys think?
Oh yeah, I don't really like Iemitsu but I wanted to give him a chance and don't hate Nono. He's just doing what a boss should do for his family and he also didn't have much choice. Iemitsu is important to the Vongola, after all. I also had a reason why I added the last scene. It's needed for the next chapter. Anyway, the timeline here is OC's death and Tsuna's five years in living.
Trivia: Why is Tsunako the child with many bonds? I researched about it and found out that "Tsuna" means rope, which can be a metaphor for bonds or something and "ko" means child so I thought that her name could mean "child with many bonds" or "bonded child". Tsunayoshi means lucky rope or lucky bond and his/her element is Sky so I thought it fit.