CHAPTER 2: THE DEFINITION OF STRENGTH

Tsuna walked through the empty hallways of the Vongola mansion, yawning and stretching his arms sleepily. The sun had barely peeked out to take its place in the morning sky, coloured in hues of pastel blue and pink. The entire mansion was silent, except for the usual morning chatter coming from the kitchen. He gently pushed open the doors, revealing the sight of his guardians at the table having their breakfast, while some of their box animals and Lambo were running around, refusing to settle down.

"Good morning, Tenth!" Gokudera stood up from his seat eagerly, as the others smiled and greeted Tsuna, with the exception of Hibari, who had never liked crowding around at any time of the day.

As Tsuna sat down to join his friends, Iiya strolled into the room, yawning and blinking her eyes, as if she had just woken up. She was still dressed in her sleepwear, namely an oversized long-sleeved shirt in a shade of lilac, as well as striped cotton socks that reached up to her calves. Her face looked a little damp, as if she had only just splashed water on her face. Not noticing Tsuna and his guardians staring at her with confused looks on their faces, she opened the door of the refrigerator and squatted down in front of it for a moment, before grabbing a carton of strawberry milk.

"Oh, good morning guys…" Iiya mumbled, upon noticing the dumbfounded looks on everyone's faces. "What's with that look on your faces?"

"Haha, it's nothing really! I think we just didn't expect you to be that kind of person in the morning!" Yamamoto laughed, leaning back in his chair.

"Haha," Iiya laughed, slightly more awake than she was a minute ago. "I may be the boss but I'm still around your age, so don't expect me to behave too differently from all of you!"

All of a sudden, Uri jumped off from the table and ran towards Iiya, trying to climb up her leg.

"URI!" Gokudera shouted at his misbehaving pet. "Stop that!"

"It's alright, Gokudera." Iiya giggled, picking Uri up and cuddling the tiny kitten in her arms, giving it a little kiss on its forehead. "She's so cute. Remember to bring her later for training!"

Gokudera groaned and shook his head, recalling the numerous times Uri had fought with him and clawed the life out of him.


Tsuna's family assembled in the training room, hidden underground below the Vongola mansion. According to Dino, this training area was top secret, reserved only for the leader of the Vongola and his guardians to use, and guarded by DS55. Iiya looked much more awake now, dressed in a pair of navy blue high waisted shorts and a white tank top. She tied her dark green military jacket around her waist, completing her outfit with black boots and a silver bangle worn high above her elbow. Braiding her hair loosely, she glanced at Tsuna and his guardians, as the people she had called in to assist her slowly took their places beside her.

"Well it's nine in the morning, so lets begin." She nodded at her watch. "Reborn, take Tsuna and make sure he runs the circumference of this training area at least a hundred times in Hyper Dying Will Mode, in forty-five minutes."

"WHAT?" Tsuna shrieked, falling to his knees instantly.

"Get up No-Good Tsuna!" Reborn kicked Tsuna hard, before gripping him by his shirt collar and dragging him out for his laps.

"Ryohei, you'll be running the same route as Tsuna. Fifty laps in 1 hour. Colonello will follow you. GO!"

"YES! TO THE EXTREME!" Ryohei instantly bolted out of the door, with Colonello following after him.

"Chrome, go to the third room on this floor to find Mammon. I'll call you in when I'm done with Hibari."

"Ok!" Chrome tightened the grip around her weapon, running off to find Mammon, who would start her off for the morning.

"Squalo, bring Yamamoto to the second room on this floor and start him off."

"Fine." Squalo huffed, not used to doing insignificant things such as training. "By the way, the damn boss wants to…"

"I'm not seeing him." Iiya snapped, her tone of voice darkening instantly.

"VOI! Stop making things difficult for me! It's not my fault the damn boss keeps asking for you!"

"Tell your boss that I'm not going to find him after what happened that time. And not to expect me to talk to him ever again."

Snarling, Squalo stormed off the the second room, with Yamamoto following behind him.

"Gokudera, I want you to answer these questions." Iiya spoke, handing him a small stack of papers filled with diagrams. "It'll help you with upgrading Sistema C.A.I. and your dynamites as well. I'm not too sure if it'll work well with the dynamites honestly, I only thought it up last night. You can do this in the observation area in this room. Also, please help me look after Lambo, I can't have him running into this training area while I fight Hibari."

"I have to babysit the stupid cow?!" Gokudera protested.

"Yeah."

Sighing, Gokudera picked Lambo up and headed into the observation area within the room. Placing Lambo on the sofa, he put on his glasses, tied his hair up and began looking over the diagrams Iiya had given him. "I can't believe she knows this much about Sistema C.A.I. and she can even provide points of improvements for itHow could she possibly figure so much out? What kind of person is she?" He pondered to himself.


With the arena cleared, except for Dino who was watching on the side, Iiya slowly turned to face Hibari, who was all ready with his tonfas in his hands. Fishing into the back pocket of her shorts, she took out her black half-gloves and slipped them on, before taking her weapons out.

"What kind of weapon is that?" Hibari enquired, having never seen a weapon like that before.

"I call it a crosscut. I wield both weapons on my hands, just like you do." Iiya said.

"Interesting."

At an alarmingly high speed, Hibari rushed towards Iiya, sounding the first clash of metal of the day. His tonfas were shrouded by his massive Cloud flames, as he struck Iiya relentlessly, attempting to strike his enemy down. However, Iiya kept up with him perfectly fine, countering his every attack, her crosscuts lighted with sky flames. The battle appeared to be a stalemate, neither one of them faltering in their steps.

"She's not even going all out on him yet. Don't get cocky now, Kyoya!" Dino thought to himself, as he watched his junior fend against Hibari's vicious attacks effortlessly.

"Let's go a little faster, shall we?" Iiya grinned.

In an instant, Iiya sped up her attacks, finally getting on the offensive. She struck back at him, going at such a high speed that even Hibari was beginning to show signs of a struggle. Finally, she landed her first hit on him, knocking him backwards and sending him flying towards the wall. As Hibari flew backwards, she ran after him, landing her heel on his stomach mid-air and plunging her weapon downwards, stopping just as the rounded top of her weapon came into contact with his neck. Two sharp spikes shot out from the curves of her weapon, landing squarely on the floor, barely missing his neck.

"Just so you know," Iiya said, a murderous glint in her eyes. "You would've died if this were a real fight. Once I release the spike in the middle, it would've gone through your neck and severed your cervical spine."

Slowly getting up, she pulled her weapon out of the ground and kept it. Motioning to Dino to come, she stared at Hibari as he lay unconscious.

"Lusting for a fight won't make you truly strong. Find your true reason to fight, Hibari Kyoya."

"AHHHHHH! HIBARI-SAN?" Tsuna screamed as he saw Dino helping an unconscious Hibari out of the training area. Hibari did not look very beaten up, but he was motionless and unresponsive.

"He got knocked out by Iiya." Dino shook his head. "She's even stronger than I remembered her to be."

"WHAT?"

"Yeah. I knew that she wouldn't lose to Kyoya, but still… I didn't expect her to be able to catch him off guard so quickly and take him out without doing much."

"What a fearsome person… I'm so glad I didn't have to fight her in the representative match…" Tsuna thought, sending a shiver down his spine.

"You'll probably have to fight her eventually, Tsuna! So be prepared!" Reborn snickered.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"


"She took out Hibari so quickly… How is it possible?" Gokudera muttered to himself.

"That's because I know how all of you fight."

Gokudera instantly turned around, coming face to face with Iiya.

"Hmm? I didn't know you wore glasses." She blushed. "You look nice like that."

"Umm!" Gokudera instantly panicked, his face turning bright red upon hearing that unexpected compliment.

"Anyway, did you figure out the diagrams I gave you?"

"Yeah, I did." Gokudera nodded. "Basically, you want me to use my Sun flame attributes to be able to help Uri grow whenever I need to. The Lightning flame attributes are to strengthen my defences, especially for the loops. Also, you want me to use the Cloud and Rain flame attributes to propogate and tranquilize anything within an extended area, so as to increase the reach of my system."

"Yup, that's right." Iiya sighed. "I'm so glad you didn't disappoint me by not figuring it out!"

"Well, I'm the Tenth's right-hand man, I need to do whatever it takes to get stronger!"

"Alright then, I want you to keep working on this and report your progress to me. I'll give you three days to figure all of this out."

"Yes!"

"That's the spirit."

Iiya walked over to him and gave Gokudera a hug, causing his face to burn up immediately at her unexpected gesture.

"I think… You'll be a great help to Tsuna."

Stepping out for a moment, Iiya quickly dialled the number she hated most, grumbling as she left a message on his voicemail.

"Xanxus? I'm not going to repeat myself again. I'm not coming back, and that's that."


AUTHOR'S NOTE:

I hope you have been enjoying the story so far :) I'll be trying to pick up the pace of the story, but for now it's a bit too early to rush into the romance aspect since they've just met each other :)

Next chapter, Xanxus will finally make his appearance and Iiya isn't going to be too happy with that. She and Gokudera will also get a bit closer, so there's that to look forward to!

Thank you for the support on this story so far! Please leave a review to tell me what you think :) Thank you so much and stay tuned for more!