Anyone who finds that particular essay, which Tsuna wrote in his 2nd grade, would heartily laugh into his face.
After all, it proclaims to the world that his dream was to become a giant robot. However, what people don't often ask is the question 'why' that has been omitted from the essay.
Tsu-kun doesn't have to go to kindergarten today. And Tsu-kun isn't sick, so he can fully enjoy the day at home.
Unlike some others that are Tsu-kun's age, he doesn't have to go there almost every day. Tsu-kun only has to go when his Kaa-chan is too busy buying food or helping out her friends. Still, even then Tsu-kun only stays for a few hours and doesn't have to wait long until Kaa-chan comes to pick him up.
Tsu-kun heard it's because Kaa-chan doesn't work like other children's Kaa-chan and Tou-chan. Sometimes, Tsu-kun wonders why he doesn't have a Tou-chan like them, but then Tsu-kun thinks that he only needs Kaa-chan anyway and quickly forgets the matter at hand.
On other days, Kaa-chan takes Tsu-kun with her to visit her friends. Especially the old couple a block away from Kaa-chan and Tsu-kun's home. Tsu-kun is glad he doesn't have to walk too long, because after playing and talking at the old couple's house, Tsu-kun is so sleepy that Kaa-chan has to carry him home.
On the kindergarten-free days, Tsu-kun was allowed to watch a bit of TV, which he always enjoys watching. Afterwards, he would play the story himself with his stuffed toys. Or he draws about it, but Tsu-kun knows that he can't draw as pretty as girls draw. Like his Kaa-chan, the pretty ginger-haired girl in his kindergarten and her best friend with the long wavy black hair. Although Hana-kun – Tsu-kun overheard the ginger-haired girl call her best friend with that – doesn't like to share what she draws with the rest of the group. Tsu-kun is lucky enough to sit near her in the drawing-time, so he sometimes catches glimpses of her drawn pictures.
Tsu-kun suddenly wakes up and rubs his eyes. He must have fallen asleep while thinking about the past. Refocusing his attention to the TV screen, his eyes widen and his mouth forms an 'o' on its own. The channel that is shown on screen is airing a new series about a humanoid toy that grew to the size of a building in order to fight against evil monsters who have invaded the human settlement.
Excitedly, Tsu-kun runs to his Kaa-chan who has been sitting on a nearby couch and knitting. Having drawn her attention towards himself, Tsu-kun points to the screen. She only smiles at Tsu-kun, remarking how cute her son is, and returns to her knitting. Still fascinated by the show, Tsu-kun hasn't paid any attention to Kaa-chan. After a few minutes have passed, he tucks at her sleeve again (unintentionally disrupting her knitting pattern) in order to ask what was happening in a particular scene. Putting her knitting beside her, she describes the scene:
The giant robot shoots a red laser from each of his hands towards the equally giant green dinosaur, thus finally defeating it. Having lost all its energy, the giant robot slowly shrinks to its original size, all the while basking in the cheering of the rescued citizens.
When Kaa-chan caught a glimpse of the clock shown on screen, she turned the TV off and went into the kitchen to make dinner.
Meanwhile, Tsu-kun is still sitting where Kaa-chan has left him in the living room. After the initial excitement, something has caught Tsu-kun's attention. Unconsciously, Tsu-kun walks around the room, gathering his pencils and white sheets of paper, still deep in thought.
Tsu-kun is pretty sure that he has seen the red lasers shooting directly from the giant robot's hands. But the hands itself haven't changed at all. How did the robot shoot the lasers then? Where did the lasers come from? The obvious answer is from the inside of the robot. And that seemed really familiar.
Tsu-kun has drawn a robot with both hands raised, red lasers shooting away from him, but he has also added red in the middle of the robot. Furrowing his eyebrows together, Tsu-kun thought really hard.
Fire.
The red colour of the lasers reminded Tsu-kun of warmth, heat and the fleeting red streaks in a fire.
But no, if it were simply the colour red, then fire wouldn't be the first thing coming to his mind. It is the location of where the warmth comes from. Yes, it reminds Tsu-kun of an incident a few weeks ago.
Fire against Fire.
–– Flashback ––
Tsu-kun was in kindergarten that day and it rained really hard, so no one could go outside. But Tsu-kun was fine with that. Across the room, the bigger kids sat around a table. Tsu-kun knows that they are doing important work. Their teacher always gives lessons to the older kids in order to prepare them for school. Someday, Tsu-kun will be doing that, too.
Tsu-kun usually stays away from the bigger kids. Tsu-kun was afraid of them, because he sometimes sees the bigger kids bully other kids around his age. However, when he had to go past the study group that day, wanting to return a picture book back to the shelf, he got a peculiar feeling.
Looking around, he could pinpoint the feeling to an older boy with white hair. Tsu-kun secretly thought that the boy's hairdo looked like turf. Hesitating, Tsu-kun stood there not knowing what to do. But Tsu-kun felt really bad for some reason.
Therefore, Tsu-kun took all the courage he could gather and silently walked towards the white-haired boy, whose head was lying on the table. As discreetly as possible, Tsu-kun looked around again. No one paid him any attention. The teacher must have walked out of the room while Tsu-kun had still been hesitating on what to do.
Standing directly near the boy, the feeling was even stronger. And the boy's warm feeling was wrong. Tsu-kun did not know how, but he knew he had to help. So he put a hand on the boy's arm and shook. After increasing his shaking, the boy finally stirred. The older boy was still groggily blinking his eyes when Tsu-kun asked the boy if he was alright. But it didn't seem the boy had heard Tsu-kun, so he repeated the question. Finally, the boy seemed to have woken up enough to listen properly.
Seeing the very worried little brunette (who kind of reminded the white-haired boy of his little sister), he attempted to cheer the brunette up by loudly declaring his health and pumping his fists into the air. Unfortunately, it made the enthusiastic boy's world spin, losing his balance, he fell out of his chair and met the ground.
The effect was instantaneous. Everyone around the table heard the 'thump' and looked towards the source, saw the unconscious boy and began to panic. Consequently alerting the younger kids around the room, too. During the chaos, someone was smart and calm enough to go fetch an adult. Arriving to Tsu-kun and the fainted boy, Tsu-kun told them what had happened.
The adult brought the bigger boy to the infirmary, allowing Tsu-kun to tag along. After settling the patient on the infirmary bed, the adult went to get some more adults to help calm the other kids. Tsu-kun still stood at the infirmary's door, shyly peeking inside. He wasn't sure why he followed and if he could stay when he was technically unsupervised, so he remained silent.
Now in the near silence with only the doctor checking on his patient, Tsu-kun could get a better feel of the sick boy's warm feeling. If Tsu-kun could smell or taste it, he would say it reminded him of smoke. Bad tasting smoke with a bit of sourness as well. Tsu-kun didn't like it at all.
The doctor muttered something about 'fever', 'fighting against' and 'activation', but Tsu-kun didn't really understand what that meant. He saw the doctor roll up his sleeves and then put both hands on the boy's chest.
Tsu-kun was so startled, he almost lost his grip on the door, which would have made it slam shut very loudly and reveal his presence to the doctor. Tsu-kun didn't want to get caught and he certainly didn't want to cause an interruption for the doctor. The doctor had to help the older boy! What startled Tsu-kun was the visible yellow glow around the doctor's hands.
Tsu-kun has never seen the warm-feeling, but he instinctively knew that the yellow glow was the warm feeling. The glow around the hands grew and steadily took form. It was nothing solid, but Tsu-kun saw that it was glittering. And it flickered, which looked exactly like fire would behave – a fire just with the wrong colouring. But it neither burned nor hurt the doctor or the boy.
Tsu-kun didn't know how long he just stood there, but at some point, he had closed his eyes. He could imagine how the yellow fire moved, he felt similar movement from where the boy lay. Only, that movement was kind of a frantic moving warm feeling, which slowly calmed down until it matched the movement of the doctor's fire.
Tsu-kun didn't notice when the bad feeling, which he had felt since earlier, left him at some point.
–– Flashback ends ––
Tsu-kun remembers clearly what he learnt that day.
Ryohei-nii's recovery was extraordinarily fast. Before the doctor noticed Tsu-kun, he had left and went back to his group's room. Soon after, Ryohei-nii who looked and felt as healthy as he first proclaimed, came rushing in, grabbed Tsu-kun's hand and introduced himself. Ryohei-nii practically demanded Tsu-kun to call him 'nii-san'. He also added that Tsu-kun would be Ryohei-nii's little brother from now on, since Tsu-kun was "so extreme" to notice him being sick like that.
When Tsu-kun arrived home with Kaa-chan, he asked her about a few things.
You can fight fire with fire.
At least, that's what Tsu-kun understood from what Kaa-chan said. He didn't remember everything, but Kaa-chan affirmed that the one sentence Tsu-kun remembers is not wrong. Personally, Tsu-kun thinks everyone should know that, in case a fire broke out and there wasn't enough water around to fight with.
From what Tsu-kun understood, the doctor was fighting with his fire against the sickness called 'fever'. Kaa-chan agreed with Tsu-kun that fever can feel like fire (or rather feeling as if one is on fire).
But even more importantly, the warm feeling, which Tsu-kun has known all of his life, can do really cool things! If the doctor can use his warm feeling by turning it into visible fire, then Tsu-kun should be able to do that, too. Just thinking about all the cool things he would be able to do already makes him giddy with excitement.
And he has a big brother now, too! It was a really good day for Tsu-kun.
Thinking about it now, Tsu-kun feels like he has finally understood.
The robot has been small, but he grew so huge! He can be a giant robot.
The giant robot has a warm feeling inside itself, too. And it can turn its warm feeling into a strong powerful laser. As far as Tsu-kun knows, laser is something similar to fire, because it's bright and make things burn (at least that's what it seemed like in the series).
The giant robot protects people and defeats the baddies. Furthermore, the people become really super happy after the giant robot has helped them out.
It's exactly what Tsu-kun wants to be! Big and strong, being able to protect, help people out and make them happy. Tsu-kun especially wants his Kaa-chan to be always happy.
Thinking back again – but for the last time today, because thinking so much makes Tsu-kun's head dizzy and he has become hungry, too – Tsu-kun decided something:
From now on, he should call the warm feeling 'Fire'. Tsu-kun thinks it fits the warm feeling much better than simply calling it 'warm feeling' – at least it is like that now, when he can sometimes feel the warm feeling flicker slightly, just like fire.
By the way, the order of the events don't necessarily mean that it's also the chronological order in which the events take place. I'm not even sure yet if I can have them make completely sense.
I try to take it slowly, so in this chapter, little Tsuna tells how he came to associate the warm feeling with its new name 'Fire' (didn't want to immediately jump towards 'Flame').
And he learnt the passive skill to recognize the existence of flames in humans - feels a slight 'movement' that resembles fire. But only a small movement; for example, big movements like a flame flowing from one place to another is still out of his league.
There are also some other things implied, such as Hyper Intuition. Nana doesn't know anything about flames, little Tsuna just asked her a few questions and put his information together into what he then 'deduced'.
A/N:
Thank you all who read, followed, favourite-d or reviewed. I really appreciate it. *bowing*
Hope you guys (and gals) liked this chapter.
(P.S. I went back and corrected some (too complicated and awkward) wordings and added a few things. You don't have to re-read the two chapters, just wanted to note it here.)
Don't hold back on the reviews, tips and ideas for this story are welcome.