Name: Sawada Tsunayoshi

Age: 5½

Status: Panicky

(To look at him and know it is he who has taken your place)

Tsuna was nervous – incredibly so. The battles with the Varia had been nerve-wracking the first time around, and now that he knew exactly how dangerous it was going to be, he was a wreck. He certainly couldn't tell them that he knew; Sessu had shot that idea down before it was even fully formed. He doubted that Daiki and Reborn would be willing to take him to watch, but a niggling thought at the back of his mind made him wonder if Daiki would be able to succeed.

There was one thing he was sure of. He had to be at Lambo's battle. The cow-child could get seriously hurt if Daiki didn't step in like Tsuna had. He couldn't risk depending on Daiki's morality and untrained skills with the sky flames.

Therefore, once everybody had left for the rooftop battle, Tsuna pulled on his dark blue parka and snuck out behind Akemi's back. The woman may have been a skilled assassin, but Tsuna was better. A dab of flames here and a little footwork there, and he was out in the rain, running on (mostly) silent feet towards the school.

When he got there, Lambo was already on the playing field, wailing as electricity coursed through his body. Tsuna had to physically hold himself back, fingers clenched tightly on the corner of the building.

Across the field, he could see the cloaked Varia figures, eyes glinting through the streaking raindrops that pattered across the sky. They watched impassively as Lambo was tossed to and fro by Levi, who was swiftly rising up Tsuna's "to kill" list. Finally, Lambo lost it, and removed the ten year bazooka from his curly afro.

Tsuna's fingers tightened around the ten year gun, watching stiffly as TYL!Lambo appeared. He gazed at them with a bored air, mumbling about dumplings, before… grabbing the bazooka?

Tsuna wasn't sure what to think as he watched the bazooka being pulled out nearly three minutes too early, without tears or snot. TYL!Lambo smiled, and drawled "Sorry. But I'm not strong enough yet!"

With a poof of smoke, he disappeared, and a powerful aura washed through the arena. "Yare, yare… I guess it's my turn to play."

Tsuna gaped at the twenty years later Lambo (he was too early!) as the man cried "Elettrico Cornata!" The current streamed out, nearly piercing Levi before the man jumped back. "Geez. What a boring game. This is way too easy."

Lambo leapt forward, ducking under Levi's guard and stabbing him in the stomach, deftly avoiding his swing and pushing the man back, to the edge of the arena. The man-out-of-time glanced up, a lazy smirk on his face. "Game over."

Levi was knocked out of the arena with a sweeping kick, skidding past the rest of the shocked Varia. "Gah!"

'No… This is wrong! Well, it's good, since Lambo is okay, but what changed?!' With a jolt, Tsuna realized that he must have done something. But what?

Twenty years later Lambo ignored the pink haired women as they announced his victory, instead brushing his gaze over the Vongola. His eyes stopped on the tiny little brunet hiding behind the concrete wall of the structure on the roof.

"Tsuna," he called, stepping out of the circuit. "It's me."

'Duh,' Tsuna wanted to say, but he bit his lip as Lambo came to a stop in front of him and crouched down.

"I know everything." Tsuna stared at Lambo with wide eyes, not believing what he had just heard. "We found out last month. I'm not allowed to tell you everything, but we won," Lambo had a look of pride on his face as he said this, and Tsuna knew that the lightning guardian must have done something great during whatever had happened. "I just wanted to let you know that you can trust us. We're your friends. Just remember that." The man smiled and reached out a hand, patting Tsuna on the head. "Take care of Daiki-nii, okay? Yare, yare," he murmured. "What a troublesome kid."

"Well," he yawned, standing up. "I'm tired. I just got back from a mission. See ya." And he disappeared, three minutes later than he should have.

(It will be hard)

Tsuna was brought home by Daiki, where he received an angry scolding from Akemi, which he ignored stolidly. Reborn stayed next to him the whole time, seemingly mulling everything over in his head. Tsuna suspected he would have interrupted Akemi had he not been thinking. Tsuna could almost hear the gears in the hitman's head whirring as he deciphered everything Lambo had said, piecing together the puzzle that was Tsunayoshi Sawada.

The hitman kept his eyes narrowed, though they were usually wide with faked innocence in front of Akemi. Leon mirrored his master's agitation, twisted around Reborn's fedora and changing shapes every so often.

Finally, the scolding was over, and Reborn grabbed Tsuna's arm in a tight grip. The brunet was dragged up to his room, the door slamming behind him.

They faced each other in silence. They stood at similar heights, accentuated by hair and fedora. Whereas Reborn exuded an aura of danger, Tsuna simply had the aura of suppressed strength. There was no threat in it, no suspicion, but Reborn could feel something there, something he couldn't quite place.

Contrary to popular belief, Reborn was not a mind reader, but accomplished at reading faces. However, he could not read Tsuna's at all. The boy had a look of honest innocence on his face, one that Reborn was sure had to be faked. (He was right, but as this is his point of view, he did not know that.)

"Explain," he demanded. Reborn focused his eyes on Tsuna's, pitch black meeting honeyed brown. It was a clash of opposing forces, the strongest hitman in the world and the simple toddler in a surprisingly even conflict of wills.

Tsuna just shook his head, and Reborn noticed that his eyes turned inward slightly, becoming unfocused but still seeing. Reborn had noticed it before but dismissed it to a simple quirk.

Now, he wasn't so sure.

Tsuna had some secret, one that wouldn't be found out until he was twenty five. He had a handgun that could switch him with his older self – and yet, the ten year bazooka was the most advanced time-twisting device there was. So, how could Tsuna have something like that?

(You will see him grow and change)

Tsuna was mentally sweating buckets.

Reborn could be damn intimidating when he wanted to be, even when surrounded by untouched toys and brightly painted walls. It didn't help that Sessu was arguing with him.

"C'mon, brat, it'll only take a second!"

"No! No way! He'll kill me!"

"He won't remember enough to kill you!" You guessed it. Sessu wanted to mind wipe Reborn. Tsuna was, understandably, against it. "Listen, kid. It's not like I'm taking his whole past! Just a couple of suspicious memories. He won't even know they're gone!"

"Yes! Yes, he will! This is Reborn!"

Sessu proceeded to ignore Tsuna, and he could only watch helplessly as a ghostly apparition of violet eyed death advanced on Reborn. The hitman seemed to sense something, as he glanced around suspiciously when Sessu stuck his hand in the cursed baby's skull.

There was a long silence.

"…I can't believe it. His mental shields are stronger than my offense," Sessu muttered, as Reborn's pupils suddenly dilated, seeming to swallow the entire sea of white in which they floated. "This human is the shit."

"Is he even human?" wondered Tsuna, who managed to keep a blank face even as Reborn began to look progressively more annoyed and pained. (Though, it was only visible to those who knew him well. Even Tsuna had a hard time discerning his emotions when the hitman didn't want them known.)

Sessu looked indignant, even with his hand still buried in Reborn's unsuspecting cranium. "He is… I think. Unless some paperwork snuck by when I was dead drunk thirty years back…" Tsuna had the sinking feeling that he wasn't supposed to hear that part. "He probably has one Hell of a headache right now. I'll have to try again when he's asleep. At the very least, he won't want to question you with a migraine. To dangerous - something might slip past."

Indeed, Reborn had already turned away as Sessu slipped back to Tsuna, fading into nothing. "We will continue this tomorrow," he growled. The headache must have been something awful if he was letting his façade slip even a little bit.

"See?" Sessu said smugly. "Just like I said."

Tsuna chose to ignore this comment, choosing not to point out that he had been wrong about being able to mind wipe Reborn's memories. He wasn't at all surprised that Reborn could unconsciously keep out one of the most powerful beings in the universe, even with a pounding headache.

(Taking the Vongola to new heights)

Tsuna tossed and turned, but he was beached on the shores of wakefulness. Unlike the night days before, which had been washed into pastel memories by the stark bloodiness of his nightmare, everything was painted in soft grays. Sessu had drifted off to mind wipe Reborn, despite Tsuna's protests, and now the brunet was left to stare at the garishly orange walls of his new room.

Things were actually better this time around. Even if they lost the next two battles, they would still have a chance. If he assumed that everything went the same way, Hayato would lose, Takeshi would win, and the rest of the battles would go accordingly. He would worry about the little things later.

It was the Mist battle that worried him. Chrome had showed up, right on time, and had taken the position of Mist guardian, but there was no guarantee that Mukuro would win the battle for them. This version of Chrome had both eyes, a home, and a life. She chose to follow Mukuro because she hated her home life, and he had saved her from the accident that had originally destroyed her organs in Tsuna's world.

However, with the double save of the Lightning and Sky rings, losing the mist wouldn't matter in the long run. In the end, none of it would matter – the Gola Mosca would still be the Ninth, and Xanxus would still break the rules.

'Speaking of Xanxus,' Tsuna thought, 'He didn't show up after the Lightning battle. Was it because the rings weren't forfeited?' He decided not to think too hard on it. 'Now that the Sky ring and the Lightning ring are ours, things should go better.'

"Don't jinx it," warned a familiar voice.

Tsuna looked up. "Sessu!" he said out loud, before switching to his thoughts. "When is Reborn coming to kill me?"

Sessu looked mildly insulted. "It's nice to know you have so much faith in my abilities," he said sarcastically. "Go to sleep. Talking like this is troublesome."

Once they were back in the familiar void, Tsuna immediately began to stretch out his wonderfully long limbs. "How bad is it?"

"I succeeded, actually," Sessu replied. "Despite suspicions otherwise, he is still human, and I easily overwhelmed his shields.

Tsuna looked at him suspiciously. "You were gone for three hours."

Sessu coughed embarrassedly. "Well… your sense of time is skewed." He changed the subject. "Spar?"

Tsuna forewent calling him out. "Sure."

The familiar weight of his gloves immediately settled on his hands, and a cold metal feeling poked his chest. He found himself in a black suit, tie loose but still tied expertly. It was his usual fighting outfit as Vongola Decimo, though just in illusion. Tsuna knew it wasn't real, just as he knew the Vongola ring wasn't really around his neck and his gloves weren't really on his hands.

Tsuna was the first to move, feinting up and dropping down to sweep a kick around at Sessu's leg. The god-spirit jumped, landing on Tsuna's leg with a bruising pressure. Tsuna immediately bent his leg, coming out of his crouch and throwing Sessu down. The red haired man flipped back into a fighting stance.

The ex-Decimo lit up his hands with sky flames, even as Mist flames began to flow from Sessu. The god-spirit gave an open mouthed smile, and the flames that rose from his mouth in an eerie swirl looked more like steam.

Tsuna didn't let it deter him, jabbing forward and bringing his knee up to catch Sessu in the stomach. The man didn't even flinch, grabbing one of his Sky-covered arms and throwing him over his shoulder with a hiss. Tsuna landed with a gasp.

"Ouch," Sessu muttered, rubbing the hand that had been enveloped in Sky flames. "Damn, that hurts. You got some high quality shit there."

Tsuna flung himself out of the way, just in time to avoid a spear of Mist flames. He back flipped to his feet, narrowly missing another spear, and caught himself in a handstand, pushing off with his hands and thrusting a leg out to catch Sessu in the solar plexus. The god-spirit easily avoided the kick, grabbing his feet and hooking them over his shoulder. He swung Tsuna up, bending back to slam the Decimo into the floor and stun him.

"Dead," Sessu grunted, pinning Tsuna's legs with his own and holding his wrists with his right hand. His left hand was loosely cupped around Tsuna's throat, Mist flames flickering slowly. "Got yer neck."

"I yield," Tsuna muttered. "Gerrof."

Sessu stood, dusting off his clothes. "Well done. If I'd been a second slower, you would have crushed my ribs."

"You cheated," Tsuna accused, wheezing as he picked himself up. "Nobody can move that fast."

"Everybody cheats, brat. You'd be surprised at how fast some people can move." Sessu snapped his fingers, and the gloves and ring disappeared.

"How many people can land on my leg while I'm kicking and keep their balance?" Tsuna asked, rubbing the afflicted spot.

"Okay, you got me there. But I couldn't resist!" The god-spirit grinned, showing off a row of white teeth, canines sharper than any human. "It was a prime chance!"

Tsuna rolled his eyes and refused to respond to such an obviously ridiculous remark. "What time is it?"

Sessu made a show of checking his nonexistent watch. "Eight in the morning. You should probably wake up."

Tsuna nodded, feeling himself fade away. The world dimmed as Sessu called out one last time.

"I hope you like blueberries! The lady of the house is making pancakes!"

Tsuna didn't bother to ask how he knew that.

(Heights which are perhaps not as high as you could have taken it)

Name: Gokudera Hayato

Age: 14

Status: Victorious

(What's happening?)

A/N – I am alive!

Yes, I know. That was one hella long haitus without warning. I was kicked into action by a couple of recent reviews.

I can't promise there won't be more of those. KHR is not my main fandom anymore. I will, however, finish this story – no matter how long it takes. That, I promise.