Reborn watches the Varia assassin slouch down the hallway next to Lambo Bovino.
He taps a key to change cameras as they exit the field of one, and not for the first time, he wishes that he was smaller. Was it really too much to ask that if he had to be shrunk down, he could be shrunk down to something useful? Five years old isn't useful - he's nowhere near tall enough to be mistaken for an adult (or tall enough to at least reach the counter without a step stool), and he isn't small enough to crawl through walls (that aren't meant to be crawled through. If he was two years younger, he could have made tunnels through the walls and trees of Namimori and and snuck around behind Tsuna like he'd snuck around behind his different students in their secret tunnel laden palaces in Italy.) He - wait. He's just distracting himself.
He taps a key to change cameras again. He was distracting himself from Timoteo.
Timoteo. God, Timoteo. He should have seen this coming. He should have seen this coming for years now. Not to mention Enrico. Timoteo may have had him older than was customary, but Enrico is almost forty. Was. Enrico was almost forty. And Reborn knows that he wasn't around for most of Enrico's training, knows he was mostly around to activate Enrico's flames in the safest way the Vongola knew, but is this what Timoteo did to Enrico?
Did he send assassins after his fourteen year old son?
(Did Enrico's guardians die protecting him? Reborn tries to remember Enrico's potential guardians. There had to have been more than Sianchi, Shamal, and Romeo - Romeo was four years younger than Enrico, and Biachi couldn't have been born until Enrico was twenty.)
And then in more recent years - well. His sons; Enrico, Xanxus, Federico, Massimo. All dead or missing in a three month period. Xanxus especially - the rumors that he was planning to take out Timoteo to make way for Federico went silent suspiciously soon after his death. His daughter Sveva and their polite but chilly relationship, even under the Fabrizia Vespa's wing. The fact that he went and sealed a five year old who managed to naturally unseal their own flames. The fact that his current heir is a suicidal civilian after he went through every person of Vongola descent he could find, leaving mass chaos in his wake for the CEDEF to sort out.
And now he's distracting himself from his student. He taps the key to change cameras and watches as Lambo slides open the door to the classroom. On the middle screen, he can see the classroom from within, and he switches his attention to that as Lambo and "Gokudera Hayato" walk in. It's fairly early, early enough that Sasagawa Ryohei is sitting on Tsuna's desk and chatting with him, while Yamamoto Takeshi sleeps with his head pillowed on his fellow athlete's leg.
(There are one or two fangirls in the corner of the classroom who are spying on Ryohei and Yamamoto. Reborn is entirely sure he's seen the surreptitious glint of a camera lens one or twice, but by his reading of the fangirl excitement meter, the scene isn't too unusual for Ryohei and Takeshi.)
Tsuna and Ryohei turn when the door opens, and even Takeshi rouses himself from his stupor to glance up. Takeshi returns his head to Ryohei's lap after a moment, deeming the pair uninteresting, the he does lift a lazy hand to wave at Lambo.
(The fangirls in the corner, on the other hand, go ballistic. Their previously discreet cameras come out in full force. One of the two even takes out her clunky Nokia cell phone, fitted in an obviously custom case with cherry blossom petals surrounding the characters for Namimori on a pink background to start texting. They are entirely here for the exotic foreign bad boy who already knows the hometown popular students and the other foreigner in residence. He has silver hair, Himari, silver hair.)
Reborn is quick to turn up the audio from the bug that he'd placed under Tsuna's desk as Lambo and "Gokudera Hayato" approach his student. He also winces and turns down the audio from the corner that the fangirls are in. Why did they have to squeal so loud?
"Gokudera Hayato" comes up to Tsuna's desk. He stares at it for a moment. More accurately, he stares at the things (Ryohei's legs, Takeshi's head) which cover it. He clears his throat. He coughs. By this point everyone in the room is looking at him, even Takeshi who'd sat up, and Tsuna and Ryohei, whose conversation had trailed off.
Lambo had buried his face in his hands, and Reborn could just make out his mumbling about over-dramatic prideful idiots, and how he should have known that changing things up would just make everything worse.
"Gokudera Hayato" glances around and sneezes as delicately as a cat before he decides that he had enough attention. He levels an accusatory finger at Tsuna. "Hello. My name is Gokudera Hayato (for the moment). I am here to kill you. Prepare to die."
Then he frowns and turns to Lambo. "Does saying the whole 'killing you' bit twice sound repetitive? I mean, I was trying to copy Íñigo Montoya, but I think saying that I'm going to kill him twice kind of kills it."
Lambo wheezes and flaps a hand in his direction.
Tsuna, meanwhile, is staring at Gokudera like a brick wall just hit him. "You're a nerd." He says it wonderingly. Then, "Quick, what do you think of Tobiah's Marvelous Adventures."
"Er-"
"Wait, no, you're Italian, have you heard of the Lariosauro?"
"How did you hear of it?" "Gokudera Hayato" demandes. "You're Japanese!"
"Are we extremely going to ignore that he declared he was going to kill Tsuna?" Ryohei asks, the mic barely picking up his voice under Gokudera's enthusiastic outpouring.
"I can tell you right now that he wasn't killing," Lambo says, before he freezes in bewilderment as Takeshi ruffles his hair.
"Relax. Tsuna's going to take over the town," Takeshi chides Lambo. "He won't be taken down by one measly teen."
"Ale- Gokudera is an assassin. Granted, he's being really obvious about this because he doesn't actually want to do it, but he's a member of the best assassin group in the world," Lambo exclaims.
Reborn feels a vague flash of pride at the paranoia that he's managed to pound into Lambo's head in the short time he's had him, but it's quickly overwhelmed by his annoyance at how casual his student is acting.
(He also glances at the fangirls to make sure they haven't caught anything. They're both muttering to each other, but a quick quick audio check reveals that they're just trying to think of cryptids so they can impress the new boy.)
"Lambo," Takeshi says, the tone catching Reborn's attention. It's not quite the same tone he used a couple of days ago, when Lambo was laying in the dust, but it's not too far off either. "How would you say you compare to Gokudera?"
"Um," Lambo says, casting a glance at "Gokudera Hayato", who is still right next to him.
"Or we can do this later," Ryohei says, glancing at the door at more people start to file into the classroom. "I extremely need to go."
"You're just going to leave us here," Lambo says despairingly. "Alone. With an assassin."
"Lambo, there are three of you, and one of him. You'll be fine," Ryohei says as he slides off of Tsuba's desk. Reborn doesn't really approve of that attitude - Tsuna and Takeshi don't even know what "Gokudera Hayato" can do - but he will admit that that isn't a subject that should be discussed there.
Tsuna briefly pauses in his argument about whether the Loch Ness Monster is real to say goodbye to Ryohei as he leaves. Reborn shift with a sigh as the school bell rings, and settles in to listen to a teacher repeat things he learned ages ago.