"Tsuna, can you answer questions yet?" Shamal asks.
"Sorry, Shamal-sensei, still not allowed to answer questions," Tsuna says, not even looking up from the book on Japanese cryptids he's reading with the boy currently calling himself Gokudera Hayato.
It's not the first time Shamal's asked that question since he came over to the Sawada house after school let out, expecting to do his follow up, Tsuna's answers had changed over that period of time, getting less and less automatic sounding. Shamal had noticed it too if the way he was jotting down the replies was any indication.
Hibari Taka, sitting in the corner of the room with her laptop gives no indication that she's hearing anything, only occasionally glancing up from her screen.
The rest of Tsuna's friends are here too, having rushed here together after Hibari Taka pulled Tsuna out of school, and just stayed here, gathering together and drifting apart as they all waited for Tsuna to be ready for questions. Other than Macbeth- no, Bianchi's brother, who is sitting with Tsuna, Tsuna's friends are all together right now, talking about their different training plans.
And Reborn is here too, waiting for Tsuna, and trying not to sulk. He knows that it's petty and undeserved. He knows that the freedom he had to teach Dino was unprecedented and that he'd perhaps gotten a little arrogant. But Madonna Maria knows that he'd gotten used to it. He winces a little, thinking about his next call home.
'Oh, Aria, I was just doing my job, training my student, making him learn the structure of the mafia, ensuring my suicidal student cannot receive adequate mental health care by obstructing his therapist's access to knowledge about factors that have a proven negative affect on mental health, how have you been?'
He doesn't need Giglio Nero Divination magic to know how badly that call is going to go.
He shakes his head and turns his thoughts to Tsuna.
Watching him lean over the book with Bianchi's brother, Reborn wonders . . .
He doesn't have as much experience with edge cases as Shamal does, but as he'd been hired as a flame tutor for several heirs, he did have more experience with consistently working with a person from their first activation to sparking a flame without going full out, and more experience with first activations from being hired for that one shot.
The first bullet he could have excused as a bad reaction. He's seen it before, there's a reason people are willing to pay his fees for access to just one bullet, and even then, they sometimes have bad reactions because the name Dying Will Flames wasn't a joke.
Or it could have been an accident - some impurity in the composition of the bullet. It would be a dangerous accident if that was true - dangerous enough that even waiting as long as he dared, he still knows that he'd pulled Shamal away from his patients too soon, and that people might die. A dangerous accident given that bullets were supposed to be safe.
Or it could have been a side effect of the seal because it's not like there's any research into the affects of seals on children; or it could have been a side effect of Tsuna's attempt at suicide because like everythign else that has to do with death, members of the Mafia are quite proficient at commiting suicide when the urge strikes them.
If that had been everything, Reborn could have excused it. He could think of enough excuses that couldn't be confirmed that he could have forgotten it.
But that wasn't everything.
Tsuna knew the mafia heir handbook well enough to quote it back at him, even though he'd barely used it as he assessed Tsuna, trying to decide how best to teach him.
He'd claimed to know Italian even though there was no reason for him to have learned it.
He knew the Mafia - he knew Vongola - well enough that Reborn was burning through his lesson plans, and had started just asking his post lesson questions outright instead of teaching because Tsuna already knew practically everything about the overview. When Tsuna printed out those wikipedia pages to wave in Lambo's face, he hadn't had to read anything. Without blinking, Tsuna could look him in the eye and detail Vongola structure and history like he'd grown up learning about it. And when he was done, he would sit there and watch Reborn watch him.
And then there was his skill in fighting. Emotionally fragile though he may be at the moment, Bovino Lambo has received extensive combat training, and he fights well enough that the first thing that happened after Massimo was confirmed missing were orders to send him to the Varia. He'd grown up knowing that he was intended to be Massimo's guardian, and he'd gotten the training to match.
With the control that the Hibari family has over Namimori, there was no way for Tsuna to have the fighting skill he has, even if he'd been running with the small fry Momokyokai Yakuza that the Hibaris hadn't bothered to squash yet. And Reborn doesn't know how Sasagawa and Yamamoto didn't notice the absurdity of Tsuna's statement.
"Tsuna, can you answer questions yer?" Shamal asks, and Tsuna sighs.
"Yes I can answer questions now, are you happy?" Despite the snarky words, Tsuna sounds more tired than anything else, and Reborn straightens.
"Tsuna."
"Hibari-sensei," Tsuna says, turning to see Hibari Taka where she's settled in the corner.
She watches him for a moment, then smiles slyly, closing her laptop. "So, Kyoko-chan invited you over to her house for dinner tomorrow." She wipes away fake tears. "I'm so proud of you, my little Tsuna-kun already going to meet the parents."
"I've met her parents before," Tsuna says.
"Yeah, but that was with Ryohei-kun," Hibari Taka says, standing up and shooing Bianchi's brother and his book away from Tsuna so she can settle down next to him. "This time it's Kyoko-chan that invited you over." She produces a pen from thin air and holds her laptop on the crook of her arm like it's a clipboard as she puts on a voice. "And how does that make you feel?"
"Like my therapist needs to get a life," Tsuna says.
Taka just laughs, but Reborn can see the way she's watching him carefully. Her laughter dies down as Shamal settles down awkwardly on the floor in front of them, attempting a Westerner's best approximation of a seiza before grimacing and just sitting cross legged. Her expression turns serious.
"Tsuna," she says. "I know that you've told me that until you've fully recovered, you cannot give full consent."
Reborn feels something inside himself go still. He told her? When had Tsuna been like this before? He shouldn't have been able to access his flames with the seal still intact.
He sees Shamal straighten too, and his mind flashes to Shamal's words last night.
Shamal said that Tsuna was stable, it was the reason why he'd put off calling in everyone who might be able to help despite the fact that nominally Tsuna as heir should have priority, but if Hibari Taka knew about this - if she knew about so well that she knew Tsuna's feelings about consent while in this odd post-Dying Will Mode state - she must have seen it before. Which meant that Dying Will Bullets aren't the only things that can push Tsuna over the edge to access his flames, which means god only knows what for how stable he actually is.
Shamal's eyes meet Reborn's.
"However, as your therapist, I believe that it's important that Shamal, as your family's magic specialist, and Reborn, who is acting as your magic tutor, know what I know about your current condition. Do you consent for me to talk with Shamal about your medical history as it relates to flames and how I have observed they affect your mental state, and can you explain your reasoning," Hibari Taka says, her finger moving in lines on the air between them, leaving behind columns of black floating text that record her words.
Tsuna reaches forwards when she's done and touches his index finger to hers before moving as she had done to the next column. "I do consent. While my decision making is impacted for around forty eight hours after-" He pauses for a moment, his brow furrowing. "After that, I had decided to ask that Shamal-sensei consult you on that basis prior to-" Tsuna pauses again. "Prior."
"Then this contract is accepted, subject to amendments at a later date?" Hibari Taka asks, moving to touch a point in the air under the black letters, where a red seal blooms from her fingertip.
"Contract accepted," Tsuna says, his finger moving so a second red seal appears in the air.
When they move their hands back, the text disappears.
Administrative magic. Nice. Not a specific variation Reborn's seen before, but common enough.
"Alright," says Taka firmly before Shamal or Reborn can speak. "I have to run down the checklist first, before I say anything else. Tsuna, current emotional state?"
Reborn bites down on his protests and settles back to watch Hibari Taka ask her questions, but it really is just a quick checklist before she steps back.
Shamal asks his questions next, and Reborn listens to these, recognizing them from what they'd talked about last night, but in all honesty he hadn't really talked with his students about Dying Will Mode so he doesn't know what the answers should sound like.
"Well?" Reborn asks Shamal quietly, moving away from where Hibari Taka's talking with Tsuna again.
"You're going to have to train him to work his way up the hard way," Shamal says. "You said that his reactions remind you of a long time user of Dying Will Flames? Well that's exactly the impression I'm getting now that I can question him more. I don't think this is a problem with the bullets. I've seen . . . something like this before, when we get someone back after an extended period imprisoned by another Familia. They know how to keep us from using our Flames. And when you don't use your flames, your resistance atrophies."
"How does that cause this?" Reborn asks. "I get that Tsuna seems to be burning out like that, but what does that have to do with skipping Dying Will Mode?"
"People drop Dying Will Mode as soon as they can. the second they manage Hyper Dying Will Mode they drop normal Dying Will Mode like a stone. No one likes the loss of control that comes with normal Dying Will Mode. We tried to separate the methods used to achieve Dying Will Mode and Hyper Dying Will Mode, but the truth is that after people manage Hyper Dying Will Mode the first couple times, it doesn't matter. The Dying Will Mode is artificially induced so they can't escape that mindset by going back to no flames, but their minds don't like it, so when they have an escape route - Hyper Dying Will Mode - which they can get to, their mind will automatically launch them into Hyper Dying Will Mode, even if they were only attempting to induce Dying Will Mode."
". . . And you think that happened to Tsuna," Reborn says, something clicking in his mind. "You think that he managed Hyper Dying Will Mode, and then the seal Timoteo put on him stopped him from using his flames so his resistance atrophied, but he's still shooting past Dying Will Mode."
"I'm saying that's what it looks like," Shamal says.
Reborn purses his lips, reaching for Leon, who obligingly turns into a stress ball. He has . . . two problems.
"Shamal," he says slowly, trying to decide which problem is more important. "Do you think . . . Is . . . Is there even any way to fix that?"
"Oh definitely," Shamal says immediately. "Like I said, you'll have to walk him through Dying Will Mode the hard way, and you might need to call in someone from the older generation before we switched to Dying Will Bullets, but I've done it before."
Reborn lets out a long breath. Good. That's good. Then, "Shamal. Is there any way to prove that the person sitting over there really is Sawada Tsunayoshi?"
Alright, here's the next chapter, I hope you like it! It ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, so let me know what you think! What's Reborn going to do?