Hello to my fellow fanfiction readers thank you for clicking on my story after reading my fail summary *bows* This is my first KHR posting and first (hopefully) multi-chaptered fic and I do hope you enjoy it 3
Author: SecretsTellNoLies
Rating: T (to be safe)
Pairings: None at the moment (romantic, platonic or otherwise)
Summary: Returning from the future was supposed to have been followed by a break from the chaos that had pervaded Tsuna's life since Reborn appeared. Key words, supposed to, something has followed from the future and enemies are swarming like flies. It's just one thing after another and Tsuna has to find a way to deal with it all, with or without his Family's help.
Warnings: Fail attempt at light humour, Tsuna is abused (repeatedly) and no apologies are forthcoming.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately Amano Akira (bless her muse) owns the lovely Katekyo Hitman Reborn and all its characters not me, because I don't know what I'd do with all of them at my fingertips *innocent smile* I do own the plot and my own characters however.
A/N: This story is set after they return from the future, I don't remember if they stated when exactly this happens, in regards to month and/or season so I will be setting it during their winter break because they still had school after they returned?
Italian being spoken is represented as bold italics. Thoughts are 'italics in apostrophe's'.
Foreboding skies
He can feel a presence, dark, serrated and constant.
Whenever he steps outside the base and whenever he is deep in its confines, there is that ever present sensation of someone close – even when it seems he is alone.
The presence watches him at times and at other times it dims until it's just a mere whisper at the back of his mind.
But it is always, undoubtedly, there.
Turmoil; anger and grief and hate and pain. Intense, the feelings are too much and he feels suffocated whenever it comes near.
Reborn's useless advice echoes in the space of his concern. "If it hasn't hurt you Dame-Tsuna you should stop worrying about it"
But he isn't worried about that. He knows the presence won't hurt him, how can it? When all of its anger points furiously in the direction of another. No, all he wants is to soothe the presence.
Reborn had smirked upon hearing this "Then go find it. As a boss it is your responsibility"
He can feel it now. Watching him. Where is it? Why can't he find it? What has caused it to fall into darkness?
But as he turns corners and opens doors it turns tail, flees until he is frantically searching. Find it…find it…find it! He has to help! Can't ignore the way his sky flames demand the harmony. Can't ignore Reborn's order.
'Come back! Why aren't you letting me help you?'
Silence is its answer. Determination is his. He runs and he runs and he runs until the breath in his lungs are no more than gasps and the muscles on his legs are hardened mud.
There! Right in front of him – face covered in shadow – the presence!
Exhaustion catches up to him then, drags him down until the cold floor is pressed against his weary limbs.
If he can just…reach it…it won't be….in pain anymore.
He struggles till the end. Reborn would be proud.
"Wake up Dame-Tsuna"
If Reborn's voice, let alone words, weren't enough to send Tsuna flying out of bed and face-first into his wall (which they definitely are) then the 100 pound mallet aimed at his stomach certainly is.
"Ittteeee! Reborn! W-what was that f-for?" the small brunette shrieks, rubbing his throbbing stomach and red face. The remnants of his dream buried by his irritation.
The sadistic tutor ignores the boy, holding out his Leon gun instead and letting the bullet speak for him. It grazes Tsuna's cheek before flying harmlessly out the open window.
"It's time for your morning run"
And by run he means 10000 kilometre sprint.
"B-but Reborn-"
Another shot has Tsuna scrambling. Shoving his clothes on haphazardly, he manages to put his shoes on the wrong feet, his shirt on backwards twice, and trips over the flat surface of his floor more than a dozen times before he is finally finished.
During all that time Reborn has emptied his Leon-gun four times and is nearly ready to just launch the boy out the window. He doesn't though, enjoying the pitiful sight of a 14 year old boy failing to dress himself properly, too much to do so.
Chilled air and a sky tinted with the faintest hints of dawn is what greets the two as they step outside. They barely make it five steps however, before the baby's sharp senses pick up on a lurking presence.
"Reborn? What is it?"
Tsuna, while not picking up on anything other than the ordinary, does sense that his tutor has.
'I-It's not mafia out to kill me is it?'
With barely a glance Reborn kicks the back of Tsuna's head, jumping off the boy's shoulder in the process.
"Stop jumping to conclusions." Reborn smirks at the comic horror plastered on the others face "I have some business to attend to. Don't slack off on your run, I'll know if you do"
With a shriek and an image of insect minions the brunette dashes off, not wanting to provoke the sadistic baby in any way.
'I already have enough bruises for now!' he mentally shrieks. Despairing because of course more will appear later.
Reborn watches Tsuna disappear around the corner before turning to face the Vongola messenger. For a reason that evades his expert clutches, the mere sight of the man and not of a letter in the mailbox causes uneasiness to squirm in his guts. It is not a feeling the number one hitman enjoys.
"Ciaossu" Reborn greets, pushing aside his unease to be pondered over later.
"Greetings Master Reborn, Nono has sent me to deliver a very urgent message. He also requests" and the way the word is said makes it sound more like 'beseeches' "your immediate presence along with those of Vongola Decimo and his guardians. None of them are to be spared this appointment"
The messenger proceeds to open a briefcase, that not even Reborn knows where he pulled out from, revealing a single letter resting on the dark blue and gold velvet cushion.
With a barely raised eyebrow, and Leon shifting on his hat to peer at the small bulge in the folded paper, Reborn takes the letter out of its…unusually extravagant container. Tsuna can wait, he decides, and returns to the boy's room.
When said boy returns to said room, drenched in sweat and body odour and panting like a dog – 'stupid Reborn…hah…and his…hah…stupid devil training' – it is to see his tutor sitting at the desk, calmly sipping from a cup of steaming espresso.
Except, there is something about Reborn's movements - tensed and twitchy - that Tsuna's hyper intuition can't help but notice. His Spartan tutor – and this terrifies Tsuna - is troubled.
"R-Reborn?" Tsuna whispers, not really having the breath to do otherwise and unsure if he should say anything at all.
Turns out he shouldn't have, when a gun is trained on him in the next millisecond and Reborn's sharp onyx eyes are boring into his.
"HIIIIEEE" but by the time Tsuna has finished screaming, the gun has morphed back into a green chameleon and Reborn is observing the trembling boy with an unreadable expression.
As the seconds tick by and nothing is said, beads of sweat start to trickle down the boys temples.
"Pack your bags, we are travelling to Italy. Nono's orders"
Due to his relief at the silence finally being broken, Tsuna fails to grasp what Reborn has just told him to do. For a while at least.
"HIIIEEE! Why are we going to Italy? What about Kaa-san? Gokudera-kun? He's going to be worried" a massive understatement, but hey "What abou-"
As funny as Tsuna's expression is, Reborn growls lowly, tired of his panicked ramble and shuts him up. One ton mallet style. If it also saves him from answering a question that he doesn't know the answer to (as much as he detests this fact) then who has to know but himself?
"A boss doesn't panic like a little school girl Dame-Tsuna. I've already sent the news to all your guardians who will be accompanying us. We leave in five hours"
"…WHA-"
His shocked yell fails to finish before a foot connects with his head and he finds himself, once again, flying towards the wall. In the time it takes him to collide with the solid annoyance (walls hate his very existence you see) he resigns himself to the fact that apparently, he will be travelling to Italy in a handful of hours.
He just hopes that the feeling stirring in his gut is only because of his own apprehensiveness, and not because something is wrong with Reborn's reaction to the same news.
Tsuna wonders what is so urgent that his grandfather has to call them over so abruptly.
It is ten in the morning before everyone has gathered at the airstrip. Those of them unfamiliar with planes (*cough*Tsuna*cough*) stare dumbly at the private Vongola jet that is their form of – extravagant and not wholly unexpected – transport.
One confined cabin plus Tsuna's guardians times Reborn equals….well.
Looking at his guardians, the more violent, unruly ones in particular Tsuna just knows that he is going to touch down in Italy with a deathly fear of any and all flying mechanisms that does not include sky flames and his gloves.
Not a mere five minutes into the ride and Mukuro and Hibari are going at it like rabid dogs, or maybe that was rabid pineapples?
Whatever the rabid creature/fruit, Kufufu's and I'll bite you to death's are being thrown back and forth like one of Chikusa's yoyo's.
When the two manage to literally destroy half of the jet, giving Tsuna a heart attack as they are immediately caught in a powerful, sucking vacuum. Chrome's quick reaction – too quick in fact almost as if the illusion was hovering, ready to take effect – saves their lives.
Hibari and Mukuro, with a nearby but silently observing Chrome, utterly disregard this fact and continue their antagonising of each other (more one-sided than anything because Hibari just wants to kill) and Tsuna decides to steer clear of that whole situation because, to be honest, he is terrified of getting in the middle of them.
On that note, Gokudera is not and barges his way into it, furious because they had nearly killed the Tenth and (without a mention of his own wellbeing) proceeds in trying to blast them to pieces with his dynamites as punishment.
Until Ryohei, with no little surprise to Tsuna, steps in and shouts in a rare moment of sound judgement, that he extremely shouldn't be lighting up explosives unless he wanted to extremely be responsible for destroying the other half of the plane.
And that's when Hibari and Mukuro's 'Lecture of the Right-Hand Man done in Righteous Fury' (screams of anger because they're stupid pineapples and bloodthirsty skylarks) dissolves into an equally loud argument with the annoying turf-top.
Yamamoto, being the peacemaker he is, tries to quell both situations, only managing to make it worse. Inevitably he gets sucked into Gokudera's and Ryohei's insult-fest and now Tsuna has two unruly groups that are making far too much noise and scarring him with every bang, scrape and slam that lands on the small space around them.
Of course, there is also the added hassle of one, lighting guardian Lambo. The two year old, with his afro full of dangerous weapons and that blasted bazooka, has spent the entire time trying to assassinate Reborn. Seeing it as an opportunity since the hitman has nowhere to run.
The cow baby manages to exasperate the only person who is kind to him on that plane, and call back his future self a record of three times in twenty minutes. Reborn finds his entertainment in egging Lambo on with scathing insults and moments of ignoring his very existence.
Before even getting halfway, Tsuna is traumatised, frightened and just plain annoyed. He endures it though, too scared to do otherwise and trying to avoid anything that might destroy the plane for real this time. Even though he knows that Reborn won't tolerate Tsuna (yes this is all his fault) letting his guardians wreak havoc.
It all goes relatively well – despite the beatings that Reborn delivers – until three things happen simultaneously. Looking like a scene from a horror movie, playing right before his eyes.
Lambo, crying and wailing for the umpteenth time, pulls out his abused bazooka, misfires and shoots Mukuro instead. Only achieved because Hibari had just knocked him off balance with a precise blow from steely tonfa, due to his loss of balance his trident accidentally knocks one of Gokudera's lit dynamites completely out of his hand and towards a window, before the pink smoke tugs him ten years into the future.
Ironically, the dynamite heads towards the only window that sports a sizeable enough crack in it, so far not thick enough to invite that deadly vacuum force back into the cabin.
All that is changed when the, small but powerful enough, stick of doom explodes and shatters what is left of Tsuna's patience and sanity.
With a strength honed by Reborn's Spartan training, his gloves find their way onto his hands and two pills into his mouth. Utterly disregarding the almost instantaneous loss of air, and the forceful tug against his body, Tsuna surveys the situation in one sweeping glance.
The older Mukuro is his most unaffected guardian, sat comfortably in one of the chairs with a red-faced Chrome held securely on his lap and his usual mocking smirk aimed benevolently at the chaos he has arrived in.
As for the rest of them, they have grabbed onto whatever is nearest, or in Hibari's case, dug his tonfa past the plush carpet and into the metal floor of the plane.
Reborn, at the front of the plane, is sleeping soundly. Securely held in his throne-like chair by a Leon harness, an oxygen mask over the lower half of his face.
The blaze of sky flames on his forehead flicker as amber eyes – calm and deadly – focus on that troublesome broken window. His flame engulfed hands rise to position.
"Zero Point Breakthrough: First Edition" despite the lack of oxygen – Mukuro has only bothered to create illusory air for him and Chrome – Tsuna's voice is smooth and controlled.
Ice forms over the small hole and his guardians, bar the obvious three, drop to the floor. Breathing deeply in relief at the air that Chrome has supplied them with.
Before the majority of his guardians can start bickering again – and really? After being deprived of oxygen and nearly sucked out of the plane a second time, they were going to start arguing again. Really?! – orange eyes snap over to them.
Jaws click shut and dread dances gleefully down their spines as their kind, timid boss looks at them with what only can be described as his HDWM 'you're going to suffer' glare.
By far more frightening than a Gokudera or Hibari glare can ever be. In fact, only one of Reborn's glares or an angry Chrome glare can rival Tsuna's HDWM ones.
Which is why it doesn't come as a surprise when those gloves are directed at them and "Zero Point Breakthrough: First edition" leaves Tsuna's mouth. The only person to escape punishment is his female mist guardian, the male mist somehow ending up in front of her (as he would explain later). Not that Tsuna had been aiming at her in the first place.
Warm, brown orbs return and Tsuna can't decide whether to grin in relief because he can finally rest peacefully or 'Hiiieee' in terror of what awaits him when he melts the ice, Gokudera's apologies included. Chrome makes his decision for him as she forcefully tucks him into his chair-turned-bed and kisses him on the cheek.
With two hours until they reach Italy, it is much needed rest for the exhausted brunette. So he decides to worry about his ice-cubed friends when he wakes up.
After that exhausting and terribly traumatic plane ride – one which Tsuna will never, ever be repeating because he was right in all aspects; he now has a fear of flying and upon melting the ice was bitten to death, caught in his nightmares and apologised to – they arrive at the Vongola mansion and the brunette ends up gaping in awe at the sheer, sprawling magnificence of the estate.
Old bricks set together create the towering main building, rising up and up, and ending in rounded towers and spires that belonged to old medieval castles. The windows – large and arched – sparkle happily, reflecting the sun in a myriad of colours. There is green; vines, ivy and moss, crawling its way up the sides of this masterful piece of stonework, adding to its ancient and powerful feel.
Off to the sides, within acres upon acres of nature more structures lie; man-made but beautiful gardens growing everything from rose bushes to tiny snowdrops, concealing stone statues and fountains and wooden benches and marble gazebos.
Building after building – all built with stone and spires with green scaling it's walls - disperse amongst miniature forests and large pools and even an orchard or three. Movement is everywhere, the hustle and bustle almost tangible in the air, an aura of calm resting like a warm hand over everything.
'Primo's house' Tsuna thinks. Majestic and wonderful and welcoming, he wouldn't mind living here even, with the easing comfort the sight delivers.
Managing to pick his jaw off the ground, he follows as they are led into the large entrance hall that all visitors are initially directed to. Standing right in the middle of the black-and-white tiled floor is his jii-chan, and Tsuna can't help but hurry across the room to the old man.
Somewhere in between his excitement and relief (he shouldn't let his imagination run wild, of course his grandfather wasn't on his death bed ready to hand over the whole of Vongola to him) his steps falter and a large frown creeps its way onto and settles darkly on innocent features.
There is something wrong here, he can feel it, his grandfather is smiling at them but…it is off, stretched taut and the gesture stops short at that grim upturning of lips. Quite frankly, it scares him, pushes away all lingering warmth he has carried in from outside.
"Tsunayoshi" Timoteo greets.
Wrong. His hyper intuition is writhing. It's all wrong! Where is his usual gentleness? Why is there a… heaviness in his grandfather's heart?
"J-jii-chan. W-what's wrong?" Tsuna can't help the trembling in his voice, can't help the seeping fear.
A familiar weight settles onto his shoulder, lacking its inherent comfort and only inciting further foreboding dread. The usual kick to the head would give him security, tell him things are all right. He misses the gesture.
Behind him, there are scuffles and quiet murmurs as the guardians take in the tense atmosphere in the room. A dark, sombre aura around Vongola Nono and distress radiating from their kind, timid friend (boss).
It agitates them, has them warring between protecting him – in their own way – and destroying the object of his discomfort. The latter unachievable because they don't know the cause. See if that stops them.
"Please follow me"
Nothing else is said before the old man turns and leads them deeper into the mansion, his uneasy grandson following hesitantly behind him.
TBC
A/N: Hmm, so I was going to make it a light, fluffy and crack-ish story at first but then I decided to make it a more serious story with some light humour – I probably failed?
Hehe, so I tried to get them as IC as possible which is why I have hardly any dialogue for the guardians as of yet – I'm sort of testing the waters to see if you guys think I have portrayed them adequately, but I also have my own take on things so they might not totally be IC anyway. I'm contradicting myself aren't I? As for Tsuna, I'm giving him a little more spine and maturity outside of HDWM because well I like him like that, and he has matured since returning from the future.
Well anyway, that's the first chapter. Comments, criticisms, constructive criticisms and whatever else are welcome. I would love to hear from you all :3 Also any tips you might have that could improve my writing, I'm still only an amateur and would greatly appreciate any help.
I extremely hope to see you in my next chapter.