Calling Out – Chapter 2
Disclaimer: I don't own Katekyo Hitman Reborn! This is true for any chapter included in this fanfiction.
Warnings: Summoning!AU/Demons!AU. I don't follow Canon!Ages for any characters, including the humans, nor the age gaps. Casual approval of murder.
Rating: T
Genres: Humor/barely noticeable Hurt/Comfort.
Characters/Pairings: Bianchi, Tsuna, brief mentions of Giotto and G. Past!RomeoxBianchi.
Summary: Tsuna meets Bianchi.
A/N: Hope you'll enjoy!
Tsuna was enjoying his rest, face buried in his fluffy pillow, glad that Reborn, the sadist, was a popular Sin. As such, he was quite frequently summoned and therefore, had to leave the Realm, dropping everything he was doing. That included promptly vanishing during one of his seances of torture that he was, for some reason, giving Tsuna under the guise of training him.
Really, Tsuna didn't understand the Sin. Had he offended him somehow? Was he just a temporary toy to relieve some boredom? Tsuna knew that he wasn't very well-liked in any of Hell's Realms and had been quite bullied during his youth. He hadn't thought that it would continue after reaching adulthood, especially not against someone as powerful as Reborn.
Tsuna sighed as he snuggled deeper, not even aware that the fire around him that had been progressively entering his room had begun licking his heels. He mentally berated himself for thinking of the Sin. He was supposed to enjoy his impromptu rest – not ponder about Reborn's motivations. There was no point in doing so anyway, the demon didn't make any sense.
Just as he was finally starting to drift off, Tsuna felt the distinct tug belonging to a summon. Groaning, he let his surrounding vanish in a sea of darkness. It had to happen during one of his rare rests, right? It couldn't be during one of Reborn's torture session, right? Tsuna yawned and straightened, choosing to sit up instead of stand. It wasn't as if any of his summons mattered anyway. He never got Contracted with any mortal, refusing to consume their souls.
It was another reason demons hated – or despised – him. He was just too nice. And he didn't need souls to live. But it was mostly because he was nice.
When the shadowed veil released him into the inversed pentagram, prompting the candles to light up anew with his flames, Tsuna glanced around in search of his Summoner to leave as quickly as possible. He really wished to continue sleeping while he could. Then again, staying among the mortals was rather a great escape from the Sin. He dismissed the idea, obscurely sure that Reborn would manage to find him anyway and drag him back to Hell. Tsuna would it rather happen somewhere where he was comfortable and away from souls getting potentially devoured on the way.
Yes, a part of him had already given up on the idea that Reborn would cease pursuing him.
Yawning again, Tsuna sniffed a bit as he rubbed his eyes. His nose caught an awful smell, a curious mix of burnt rot and spoilt milk. He made a face at that, wondering where he had appeared now. The stench was so powerful that he could barely pick on the human's smell. It was spicy with a distinct stinging that lingered persistently. It was going to take some time to get rid of it, even after getting back to his realm. Glancing around, he finally noticed that there was a human girl, a sixteen-ish- year-old teen, holding both a candle and a plate in his hands. Without even taking another whiff, he knew that the horrible smell came from whatever was this dish.
The human was watching him carefully, nervousness buried under a composed mask of confidence. Being a demon, it wasn't difficult for Tsuna to pick out the pain hidden in her green eyes, born from heartbreak. He winced in sympathy, agreeing that emotional pain was worse than any physical ones. Her long pink hair reminded him of G, a friend of his brother, who shared the color but with a darker shade, while still too light from being truly red – much to his dismay and no matter his passionate protests.
They stared at each other for a moment in silence, Tsuna absently flexing his leathery wings as the urge to fly began to make him restless. He decided to break the quietness, eager to leave.
"Hello." He settled for a simple greeting. "I'm Tsuna."
"Bianchi." The human replied politely but coolly, gauging him thoroughly. "I invoked you."
"Summoned." Tsuna corrected reflexively. "Yeah, you did. Why did you summon me?"
He asked more rhetorically than anything, not really considering granting her wishes. As he stated before, he didn't need souls. It was apparently the good question to ask because her eyes lit up at his enquiry. She thrust her plate forward, almost letting go of the candle – the only protection she had against him. She smiled at him with a gleeful eagerness that, for some reason, made his skin crawl.
"I need someone to taste this."
Tsuna stared blankly at her. She summoned a demon to have a guinea pig in exchange for her soul. Who would do that?
"For that, you're ready to sell your soul to me?" He asked for clarification.
Her posture completely changed, closing off as she glared at him. She sneered.
"I don't care about my soul if I can get my revenge. Romeo will pay for what he has done to me."
"Romeo?" Tsuna repeated as he took a closer look at her, sensing the sharp fury crackling in her, briefly eclipsing her pain. "What happened?"
Bianchi blinked, surprised. "You'll listen to me?"
The demon shrugged a bit uncomfortably. Well, he was stuck there for the moment. It wasn't as if he could do something else.
"Sure." Tsuna agreed easily. "I'll listen."
It was with a relieved and grateful smile that Bianchi entered the pentagram, plate and candle in hands, to sit down in front of him. Tsuna barely managed to suppress a grimace at the approaching smell. He wondered how she could stand it.
"It won't cost me anything, right?" She checked.
Tsuna would have applauded her caution if she hadn't already endangered herself by entering the freaking pentagram on her own. Nothing could stop Tsuna to grab her and drag her into Hell if he wanted so.
"Nah." He waved one of his hands. "I'm not interested in eating souls. Though, I must warn you that by coming inside like you did, you're basically inviting the summoned demon to kill you."
"Well, it's a good thing you're not interested." Bianchi commented dryly, seemingly amused for another reason that the previous point.
"Yeah." Tsuna nodded towards the candle. "You can snuff this one out, too. It's not protecting you anymore."
She did so, light leaving her features.
"Also," he added with a wry smile, "next time you summon a demon, don't obey them so obediently. That's going to get you eaten."
"I'll keep that in mind." She agreed as she returned his smile with one of her own.
Tsuna mentally gave himself a pat on the back, satisfied to have clear her gaze for a bit, fury letting place to amusement. He would have better appreciated the moment if he wasn't struggling to not gag from the awful smell coming from the dish. Bianchi noticed his glance towards the plate and sobered up.
"I have – had – a boyfriend that I loved deeply, from the bottom of my heart, really." She started, a little bit depreciatively. "I knew that our relationship was going to be complicated, between the rumors that he was nothing but a playboy due to his difficulty to let himself get attached enough to someone to be faithful, and me who comes from a powerful family with strict standards." Her lips twitched in a bitter smile. "You can imagine how my parents took the news when I informed them that I was going out with a boy who didn't share our living status."
Tsuna listened attentively, already able to picture the kind of life she had had until the break-up. It wasn't the first time he heard a story like hers. Some had a happy ending, with the lovebirds truly cherishing each other and breaking free from the chains of their families. Most, however, ended on a tragic note.
"It was hard." She admitted. "My parents were trying everything they could to stop me from meeting him and to discourage me from pursuing. I was constantly fighting them every single day, each time ours eyes met. It was painful to be judged and considered like a lovesick idiot without any brain and screwing up her future just for a boyish grin, by the people that mattered the most to me." She frowned as her free hand fiddled with her shirt in her agitation, eyes looking unfocusedly above his shoulder. "I didn't really care though. I thought that as long as Romeo wanted me, I could stand anything."
Fury caused her to clench her hand in a tight fist as she suddenly glared at something she alone could see.
"Then, I hear that this bastardo was just that." Bianchi spat furiously. "He had always been this fucking playboy, cheating on me while whispering fake love pledges to me. He knew that I was ready to give up everything for him and that I was already alienating myself from my family so we could be together. And him, this asshole, what does he do? He flirts with anything that has breasts and sleeps around and…"
At his point, Tsuna tuned her out, letting her seethe. He didn't need any more details to get the gist of it. Obviously, Romeo had acted like the foolish human boy he was. From what he could hear, the boy was older than Bianchi and deciding that there wasn't any wrong in supposedly satisfying his needs – Tsuna scoffed at that, knowing that sexual urges could be ignored – Romeo had gone elsewhere to do so. He had basically cheated on Bianchi multiple times.
In some way, Tsuna mused, the human had probably cared enough about her to not take her virginity. He still had lied to her face and used her emotionally – and probably financially too – so the demon could understand Bianchi's anger.
"…So that's why I'm going to ask for your help."
Tsuna blinked, emerging from his thoughts. His mind backtracked a bit as he tried to recall what she had said a bit before concluding.
"Wait, you want me to test your Poison Cooking to be sure that it's fatal for a mortal?" He asked in disbelief.
Bianchi nodded.
"You want me to poison myself." He repeated flatly while giving her an incredulous look.
"You're a demon." She pointed out. "It's not going to kill you."
"It's not a reason for me to willingly ingurgitate poisons!" Tsuna protested, baffled by the reasoning. "I do not enjoy pain, you know!"
Bianchi pouted at his reluctance as she thrust the dish just beneath his chin. He leant away without thinking.
"Besides, don't you think that killing him is a bit radical?" He tried.
"He'll pay for playing with my love like this!" She hissed in determination, bloodthirst darkening her vivid orbs. "My feelings are not a toy. I'll show them what happened when they think that they can use me freely without any retribution."
Tsuna backed away at the fierceness, suddenly understanding why she had been able to summon a demon.
"I can't believe I'm considering it." He muttered under his breath. Louder, he added. "I don't need to taste anything to know that it's deadly for any human eating it. It reeks enough."
Bianchi shot him a curious look. She sniffed the air above her plate, not catching anything special.
"What do you mean? I can't smell anything."
Tsuna ruffled his hair with a sigh, sensing that she was saying the truth. Human senses truly sucked, if they weren't able to determine what was edible and what could cause their death in terrible pain. He ignored her question.
"Alright, if I do that, you'll promise me that you'll only use it on this Romeo."
"On every pig that treats me like their plaything?" She compromised after thinking about it.
Tsuna opened his mouth, ready to protest, before closing it as he considered. Well, he couldn't care less for humans, especially if they deserved whatever punishments Bianchi might give them.
"Deal." He accepted, making sure that the promise wasn't spiritually binding, and reaching to take a bite.
Tsuna instantly knew that he wasn't looking forward for the long hour of agony the poison would be giving him, as he swallowed with difficulty the Poison Cooking. He fought his gag reflex, ready to retch to get the substance out of his body as soon as possible. His tongue was coated with the taste of burnt rot and spoilt milk, invading even his sinuses. It was with a livid face and a strained smile that Tsuna turned to Bianchi.
"If Romeo survived that, he's not human." The demon assured her in a raspy voice, his throat seemingly burning up as if he had just swallowed acid.
Bianchi beamed at him happily. "Thank you, Tsuna! I didn't know who I else I could ask without getting into trouble. I'm very grateful."
"It's nothing." He dismissed her words with a shaky hand. "Well, if there's nothing else, I'll be going."
She nodded. "I hope we meet again, Tsuna." She waved as shadows wrapped around him.
I surely hope not, Tsuna thought fervently as he fell down and back into his realm. He took comfort in the multi-colored flames surrounding him as he groaned miserably into his knees, curling into a ball. He wasn't even able to reassure his brother, Giotto, when he burst into his room unexpectedly in one of his unplanned visits.
As he thankfully fell into inviting darkness, he distantly heard Giotto fretting over him while swearing that he would gut alive whoever did this to him and G trying to calm him down before chaos erupted.
And here I thought it was going to be a restful day.
A/N: Thanks for reading and don't hesitate to point out any mistakes! Any questions or requests?
See you next time~
