Author's Notes: This piece is dedicated to all of the people in Japan. I simply cannot comprehend their suffering and loss. But their integrity and strength is so awe-inspiring and moving, and I pray for their recovery. They can make it—they will pull through.
Disclaimer: Katekyo Hitman Reborn belongs to Amano Akira.
Summary: When the earth heaves and the world collapses around him, Tsuna immediately starts his search for his loved ones. He must find them no matter what, because regret would be too painful to bear.
Determined, for Blessed Memory
Tsuna uncurls from his position and gingerly steps around the rubble. He turns his head back and is relieved to see Gokudera and Yamamoto standing right behind him, dusty but unscathed.
But as he looks around at the piles of ceramic tiles, of shattered window panes and split wooden beams, this endless trash heap that was a quaint street of Namimori just a minute ago, he can't help the furious pounding of his heart. He turns back and his feet thud heavily on the cracked concrete as he stumbles back in the direction they had come from, Yamamoto flanking his left and Gokudera his right.
They arrive at Namimori Middle School—what was once called Namimori Middle—no, just its remains now. They rocket past the sports field and to the once-boxing club.
"Onii-san!" He calls out desperately. "Onii-san!"
—lying in the bed of the sterilized white room, head wrapped in thick bandages and empty air where there was once teeth, announcing with a roar that he is alright—
And he breathes a sigh of relief as he hears that energetic response he knows all too well.
"Sawada, is that you?" A human figure emerges from the fallen wreckage as crumbled plaster and wall slide off a large pyramidal mound. Boxing gloves roll off his head and body as the pile scatters in the mess around them. "That was EXTREME!"
He manages a brief smile before he flies off again to the main school building. It has been stripped of its exterior and many of its support beams, but some sections of the once-building was still standing precariously upright.
He starts calling again. "Hibari-san!"
Soon, his shouts are joined by a high-pitched warbling chorus of "Hibari, Hibari, Hibari."
—bones broken, crumpled on the floor because of the effects of the Sakura Disease, but he stubbornly gets up and staggers to the lair of the Kokuyo, swinging his tonfa at the teenager who dares to damage his property—
He glances up and sees a yellow feather ball flapping its small wings above his head. Hibird adjusts its beating rhythm and flaps back to a languid teenager sitting on top of the largest pile of rubble.
"What is it, herbivore?"
Cold steel eyes pierce chocolate brown before those frigid orbs look away and he starts walking, leaving the group behind without waiting for a response. Tsuna panics—Hibari-san shouldn't walk any further in, the remnants of the school seem ready to fall at the lightest touch of a passing breeze, and he could be crushed in there! He opens his mouth to tell his Cloud Guardian to stop, stop, don't drift away now, but the Sun beats him to the chase.
"Sawada, look for the others! I will deal with Hibari to the extreme!" He dashes after the aloof teen. "Oii Hibari—!"
The trio pause for a moment before they spin on their heels and run back, back to the Sawada household.
His house is flattened like all the others in his neighborhood, but he doesn't think of that. No. He flings himself atop the wreckage as he tosses stone and rubble behind him. "Okaa-san! Okaa-san, are you alright?" Please, please be okay.
—he recalls sleepless nights, curled on his bunk-bed as he softly whimpers into his pillow and pleads for his mother, his mother who he doesn't know if she's safe or even alive in this dark dark future—
A muffled sound drifts up from the dark shadows. "Tsu-kun?"
Together with the help of his Storm and Rain guardians, they manage to lift a slab of wall aside. They see her now, and Tsuna's heart wrenches. They lift the kitchen cupboards that are crushing his mother's left leg, and he winces at the sight of the bleeding appendage. His bites his lower lip and casts a worried gaze at his mother, but is stunned a bit by the look his mother returns, tired perhaps, yet still, still sparkling with that all-embracing warmth. Alive, he thinks. She is alive, and she will be fine. He looks down towards her mother's arms, each cradling one shivering youngster.
—crackling sparks of electric green, lightning striking and passing through the rod on the school's roof, the piercing scream of a baby in agony that reverberates into the stormy night—
Lambo. And I-pin. Shifting to the right, he see's Bianchi, who had shielded Fuuta—
—a small boy at the edge of the woods, eyes staring pointedly at his low feet, as he says in a heart-wrenchingly soft voice, "I can't go back anymore, Tsuna-nii."—
—and Reborn. They're alright. His beloved family.
"Reborn," he mutters solemly. "Please look after them."
The baby lowers the brim of his fedora and nods. "Of course, Dame-Tsuna."
He then addresses his friend standing at his left. "Go look for your father, Yamamoto-kun."
Yamomoto nods and immediately runs off for his own house. Tsuna also runs, but in the opposite direction. He, also, still needed to look for the others.
He dashes to the abandoned amusement park, stumbling clumsily over the endless debri strewn about, and skids to a stop before the rubble that was once the derelict building where the Kokuyo gang resides. He sweeps the surroundings with large brown eyes, searching for any signs of life of his Mist Guardian—
—sprawled on the gym floor, he watches in horror as the girl coughs up blood and her stomach, her stomach literally caves in—
"Bossu?"
He spins around and his eyes fall upon her gentle violet eye. And behind the girl in green uniform with shopping bags in hand, is—
"Hahi? Tsuna-kun! I was so worried, I'm so glad you're alright and you came for us!" She exclaims as she pounces onto Tsuna, giving him a ferociously tight hug.
—Haru. He sighs again with relief, as he glances back and forth between the two.
"I'm glad you two are alright."
He's found most of them, almost all of them. His friends, family, and the kids.
Almost all of them, almost. So close so close, but there is still one person he can't seem to find, one person that he has yet to reunite with in his search around their Family's favorite haunts.
He couldn't find her.
And he can't help it, the surging waves of panic that are starting to sweep him away, the cascading flood of dread that churns and tears his chest apart—
—a girl terrified, suffocating as she is trapped in the Kokuyo ruins by the dark purple tendrils of mist that make up that spiteful Guardian's illusions—
Not here.
—an abandoned warehouse, a dark mercenary with an ominous scythe, and her, her normally smile-adorned face wiped with a blank expression as she trembles in terror on the floor—
Not here.
—the bottle of acid that begins to tilt, inches above that angelic girl's head—
Not here!
Not at school, not in his neighborhood, not at her own house, not at the shopping mall near Midori with Haru, not there at Kokuyo land to visit Chrome, not at the bakery situated at Namimori's Main Street—
"Light the Ring flames, Sawada! You can't rely on the same stroke of luck from your previous fight to save your ass in battle!"
Not here or there or anywhere! Where?
"Are you alright, Tsuna-kun? You're pulling such a long face!"
Where could she be?
"That is an impressive amount of self-loathing. It's time for you to die."
She had to be here somewhere, somewhere. In some part of Namimori, also safe and sound.
He unleashed X-burner from his gloves, determined to obliterate the enemy before him. Byakuran.
He left them with their forced smiles as he launched into the sky, swallowing two spherical pills and speeding away from the forest. He couldn't fail them anymore; he couldn't worry her for any longer.
Like everyone else, she must be alright.
His guardians, his friends, are poisoned, and he clashes his own Sky Flames against the Flames of Wrath that the Varia leader possesses.
He is hurled back by the force of the blasts from twin gun-shots. Fingering the blue tuna-charm deep in his pocket, he finds the will to stand up again, so that the Flames from Reborn's Rebuke Bullet do not fade away.
It must be so. It must. She must be well, with her beaming smile, that smile as brilliant and heart-warming as the morning rays of the sun—
He is standing before her in nothing but his boxers, orange flame burning wildly on his forehead, as he makes his oh-so-impressionable confession before the entire student body, courtesy of Reborn's Dying Will bullet.
The last slivers of light dissipate as night falls upon the land torn asunder. Suddenly, he imagines fireworks bursting forth and illuminating the night sky as he and all his friends watch below the canopy of sakura blossoms. He recalls everyone's smiles and light-hearted laughter, and lets out a cry of despair as frustrated tears threaten to leak from his eyes, because there is one person from that memory who is missing now, missing—
He curls his fingers together, the cloth—the black steel gloves dyed crimson and drenched in the metallic tang of blood—of his wool mittens preventing nails from biting into skin. What good was it, what good was it all?
"Let me handle this," Reborn calls to Lal as he strides forward to his student who is staring forlornly at his Vongola Ring. "It's simple. Dame-Tsuna, when you were fighting back then, what were you thinking about?"
He looks into beady obsidian eyes. "I wanted to protect...Kyoko-chan. I want to protect my friends!"
The flames finally light up.
Killing Byakuran. Defeating Xanxus. Avoiding possession by Mukuro. What was it all for?
He fixes his face in a smile as he looks back from the railing to Kyoko. "I'm fine! Just worried—"
He's wearing such an expression because he is nervous, worried sick for everyone and himself over the Ring Battles. But he won't tell her that. He won't let her get hurt with the knowledge of the dangers her brother is facing. He'll guard her innocence, protect her from the horrors of the mafia with his life.
"—about my boxing match later."
The Vongola, the boxes, the rings, the hours upon hours spent training under Lal, under Reborn! What was the point of power—what was the point—if they couldn't revert back to a peaceful life! He was useless, useless, wimpy Dame-Tsuna, but this—
"KYOKO! I LOVE YOU! GO OUT WITH ME!"
—this, he couldn't bear, he couldn't accept. He could accept getting twenties and tens on his exams, he could accept the constant bullying and sneering remarks, he could even accept his own defeat, but this—
And for the very first time in his life, Sawada Tsunayoshi enters Hyper Dying Will Mode by his own willpower, glowing orbs overflowing with resolve as Sky Flames burn a brilliant shade of orange on his forehead.
No Rebuke Bullet. No Dying-Will Pills. Just him, him and his X-gloves, Version Vongola Ring, as they too are lit with bright orange flames as he launches into the starry sky.
He could never allow himself to give up.
With an aura of grave purpose, he delves deep into the night.
He would keep looking.
Looking.