I am sorry I am a bit late on all my other updates. It is May and its also when school throws all the projects at their students. I had this chapter typed down earlier so I am going to post this first.
Thank you all for the support! Hopefully I managed to describe how they would act, tensed up, blinded and all, after Tsuna's death.
Silence.
The clock ticked on to the fifth minute and Reborn decided to prop 'Tsuna' onto the table, getting quite tired of their appalled faces. He had been very much unamused looking at them.
After all, even if 'Tsuna' had not been moving much in Reborn's one arm grip, he was quite uncomfortable hanging from the hitman's hand. Reborn had felt his small fidgets and was a little guilty to have made the child feel uncomfortable.
Wait. Since when had he become so considerate? The hitman thought in slight annoyance as he moved to straighten the clothes.
For Pete's sake, the inner voice said, he was a hitman. He looked at the boy again. If that child was really Dame-Tsuna, he could definitely take more than hanging down like a rag doll- not that Reborn was being entirely careless on the boy, of course.
He sighed inaudibly as he absent-mindedly patted the fluffy hair. 'Tsuna' cooed happily and grabbed his wrist with tiny fingers.
"Right." Surprisingly, it was Lambo who regained his composure first. The Lightening blinked and then opened his mouth, closed it, tugged at his horns a little, and then managed to find his words again. "That's..."
"Jyuudaime..." He was then suddenly interrupted by Gokudera, who finally budged from his initial position. The man then staggered slowly to the toddler, who looked at him curiously with wide-eyes. He came to a pause once more and scrunched up his face, seemingly out of frustration, relief or sorrow, Reborn could not tell.
"Tsunayoshi has a child?" Mukuro finally asked from the corner of the room solemnly. He was smiling coldly, but only Chrome knew better than that. He paused for a moment, fingers over his mouth. "Of which lady was he with?"
"Mukuro-sama." Chrome whispered softly for only the two of them to hear. "Please stop."
However, the other chose to ignore her and continued. "The girl called Kyoko?"
"NOT WITH KYOKO TO THE EXTREME!" Ryohei yelled out, but it was not for a protest out of Kyoko but belief that Decimo was a very righteous man.
"Tsuna-nii never went out with anyone! Much less even… have a child." Lambo snapped defensively, quickly talking over the Sun. He would shudder at the thought of Mafia women he did not personally know; he would not anyway, given the choice. They had a voracious appetite for money, often more than not, tempting men with carnal lust. He always remembered the bland look on the Decimo's face, whenever one of these…things crawled up on to his lap, uninvited.
"Then what is another plausible explanation? His clone?" Mukuro retorted as quickly and demandingly, his tone exceedingly high, a stark contrast to his usual calm and sly demeanour. "I'll go check on Verde if you'd wish so."
Chrome lowered her head apologetically at the flabbergasted Lightning.
"Impossible." Yamamoto sighed, shaking his head. "If that's the case, he would have told us."
"Then what if he chooses not to? Or maybe he never trusted us in the first place? What if he had never trusted you-" Mukuro then turned to Yamamoto, who immediately placed his hand on the hilt of his sword.
"One more word." Yamamoto interrupted, uncharacteristically feral. "I'll make sure you won't talk again."
"You can try-"
"Herbivores." Hibari snarled from the other corner, unsheathing his weapons. "I'll bite you all to death if you start crowding."
Yamamoto narrowed his eyes as Mukuro threw back a laugh, muttering something along the lines of "foolish" and "skylark"- a sign of disrespect and mockery- the Cloud thought in anger and made the first hit at the closest of the two he saw. He then swung his other free hand at the other.
Metal against metal echoed and soon flames manifested. On the third hit, Gokudera turned around, more irritated than ever as Ryohei and Chrome rushed in to try to stop the fight. Both tried to pry them apart by each standing in the Cloud's way, but Hibari was extremely relentless in his blows and the other two, who rarely ever started a physical fight only when prompted, refused to back down.
"You sure it's not your stupid trick on the ten-year bazooka, cow!" The silver head then shouted, as the fight escalated in the room. Lambo, who never took offence from the older man, the one who rarely even bothered with feelings, suddenly felt as if his whole being was insulted and he immediately replied strangely feeling very emotional. Lightning flames sparked from his ring, threatening to blow up.
"Why the fucking hell would you think like that, you damn bastard? That I am disrespecting Tsuna-nii, the Vongola, to this extend, to play a joke on him like that? I had it with your selfish ways. Stop pushing your guilt and the you cannot 'protect him and shit' stuff on me, fucking lapdog!"
Gokudera threw a hard punch in the teens' face before the last word even came out proper. He had to, his mind chanted, he had to.
Reborn pulled a trigger, no one heard the sound. Perhaps Chrome, but she was too busy pushing Mukuro away from an advancing whirl of yellow, blue and purple flames. When the hitman was prepared to make a move ranging close enough to turn them into living Swiss cheese, fuck ethics and morality, 'Tsuna' begun to cry.
It was then the fight came to a sudden halt, like the tires of the car coming to screeching stop, with Reborn wanting more to kill than ever and the room as silent as it was before.
Gokudera rushed to the boy, but Reborn quickly scooped him up, before the guardian's hands could reach him.
"Now listen up, you sorry fuckers. I am going to talk, explain. No interruptions." The hitman hissed visibly, unusual- he would be more impassive or slightly annoyed. The boy in his arms now struggled to bury his face into the nook of his neck. "He, when I found him, had no parents, no connections or whatsoever."
"Name." Hibari then growled, extremely tensed.
"He doesn't remember." Reborn replied. "There are tests I got Verde running now but-"
The Cloud stalked up and it was the exact moment where 'Tsuna' chose to turn around and see the man approaching, in his view, very menacingly. So he started tearing up in between hiccups, in which the hitman turned his body away from the man. Hibari stopped quickly, and it was not just because of that. Everyone had saw that Reborn looked as if he was about to kill.
Then, they saw orange flames erupted- maybe from all the killing intent. Reborn was about to drop the boy, when he realised the flames were not hurting him. He saw the boy all coated in the orange and was only even furthermore convinced, although logically wise he should not think it was Dame-Tsuna.
Hibari came closer and realised that it was a sky flame barrier, a technique only created by the Vongola Decimo.
"Carnivore." He said with great surprise and exhaled. Hibird chirped at the back. It settled on his shoulder and starting singing the Namimori school anthem.
It was not long where 'Tsuna' peeked out from Reborn's shoulder once again and stared at the bird, the flame barrier dissipating. The hitman actually had not want to put the boy down, but the phone in his pocket had been buzzing the fourth time.
"Yes. Yes." He muttered beneath his breath, knowing all was fine now and he put the boy on the floor. He exited the room silently and swiftly- 'Tsuna' had not noticed that and he waddled to Hibari, or Hibird for the matter instead.
Hibari shifted a little as 'Tsuna' fixated his eyes on the bird instead. The man then moved down in a rigid manner, all the Guardians watching intently, as Hibird fluttered onto the brunet's head. It settled down and then chirped happily, settling comfortably in a spot.
Its favourite spot- familiarity. Too familiar. Hibird never settled in so quickly with a stranger.
Hibari knew and his grey eyes widened.
"Carnivore." He said again, some strange thing was welling within him. "Carnivore." He repeated the word like a mantra. 'Tsuna' then bumped on his leg. Hibari felt the side of his lips curling up and in which, the boy, realising what the older man was doing, returned the gesture. He smiled, and in a way like how the carnivore always would.
Hibari knew.
His carnivore was back. Even with whatever logic it defied, he would believe. The blinded rage calmed, the cloud now found his sky.
"Verde."
"If you want me to do a research for you, do pick up the phone next time." The scientist was slightly snappy on the other end.
"I was busy…attending to some things." Reborn said.
"Women." Reborn could hear Verde mutter under his breath and he snorted. Babysitting duties. Again, you mean.
"Well then, World's Greatest Hitman. Why would you send me samples of the Vongola Decimo's DNA?" Verde proceeded to ask. Reborn actually nearly doubled over.
"Pardon?"
"The hair samples you gave me for analysing. You know yesterday, when you broke my lab door while barging in, dumping them in my face and insisted you wanted the reports by twenty-four hours-" Verde then stopped for a second. "Though it is already twenty-four hours and fifteen minutes since you failed to pick up the phone twenty minutes earlier. Have you finally grown senile?"
The hitman ignored the spite in the other's voice. "You said it was Tsuna's."
"Yes." Verde replied, quite annoyed on the other end. "One hundred percent. I tested them three times if you did not know. I'll be going…"
The scientist then paused rather unnaturally.
"What is wrong?" Reborn asked.
"Nothing. Nothing." Verde said as if he contemplated on something whether to tell or not, which he did not and he quickly hung up. Reborn looked at the phone curiously.
However, there was bigger news for now. He then stopped at the door. He felt a little too happy. Too happy. He pressed his hand to his chest and Leon popped up from his breast pocket, slightly confused.
"Nothing." He pushed the gecko down and realised he was grinning, something inside screaming, "Bullshit to every Mafia rule I know!". So uncharacteristic, he thought and felt a little lame. He stilled himself, before entering the room.
He saw Tsuna spinning around, curious as to how Hibird remained so firm on his head. The Guardians had small smiles on their faces.
"Chaos." He said for the second time today and they all looked at him. Tsuna then ran to him, albeit a little unsteady.
"Tsuna." He said, feeling the name so naturally slide for the first time. "Dame-Tsuna."
Tsuna then gave the biggest, brightest smile that anyone would to him.
It took a spilt second for the rest of the Guardians to realise this. They had seen Hibari's reaction, but was a little hesitant still. It was impossible.
Gokudera was the first to come up. Tsuna spun around and looked at the man curiously, somehow knowing the older was not going to hurt him. The man knelt down, wrapped his arms tightly around the boy.
There was something wet gathering around his eyes, his nose stung and his ears he knew, was red. He was saying "Jyuudaime", but in all honesty, he could not really hear himself.
There, he crouched, hugged and cried. Crying as if something broke in him and he did not even know what. The storm within came to a stop, he saw the sky.
Awww.
Anyway onto why Hibari believed so quickly, I always take it he and Tsuna had a sort of special relationship on their own, like Tsuna with Mukuro or Tsuna with Lambo, as seen the Future Arc where Adult Tsuna only gave Hibari the details of his faked death, so I thought there must be some kind of special trust in between them- very different from the other Guardians.
