I don't know why but the chapters are getting longer. But well, who will complain about that?
I'm already working on the next chapter and I'll try to finish it tonight. So, yeah. Fast updates.

Il Maestro

First Arc

VI

Even if the decision of taking Reborn with him had been a spur of the moment kind of thing, he had decided to take it seriously and do it right.

And so he had used everything that he had under his sleeve to make sure that the boy would be ready.
That was also why he was now in Switzerland (country famous by its neutrality and the fact that a little chalet in the middle of nowhere and far away from civilization wouldn't really catch anyone's attention) training his student.

He soon got accustomed of waking the boy abruptly, finally taking his revenge for all those suffering in his childhood and watching with hilarity the angered faces the teen always gave him. The boy had the cutest glare.

Reborn wasn't like him.

He wasn't like No-Good-Tsuna. Whenever something didn't please him, he always said it and made sure that it changed. Also, he had the pottiest mouth Tsuna had ever heard. He would have never thought that a brat would know so much swear words...

And that was why he had quickly made up rules and, as every rule needed punishments to make sure they were followed, he came up with some punishment that gave his adorable student nightmares for years. Ironically, every punishment had been taken from the hell he had lived under Reborn's rule and that made the irony of the situation absolutely delicious for Tsuna.

However, there were times where, when he found a disrespect of his rules, a faint memory of a prefect's sadistic smile came to his mind and all his strength always left him. Whenever that happened, he just shrugged it off and told Reborn to do some errands.

He knew, thanks to his Vongola Hyper Instinct, that his student wasn't fooled. But he continued holding on such a fragile illusion.
He was okay and so was Reborn.

That was all that mattered for now.

Life went on and a sudden growing spurt surprised Reborn. The latter had always been of a smaller size than the average, getting as such a lot of nicknames from his tutor, and was more than happy to realize that he was going to be taller than Tsuna.

When he pointed out that fact to the adult, the man wrinkled a bit his nose and slightly sighed.

"The Japanese aren't really known as giants," he commented with a small grimace. "I would have preferred to inherit my father's Italian genes for that part..."

Reborn smiled with satisfaction and went to stand next to the adult to seize their difference of size. A mocking snort came out when he noted that there was only an inch left.

"That matter aside," Tsuna grumbled as he glared at the teen. "We need to move out."

Dark eyes widened in surprise while the adult's eyes darkened in worry.

"Why?" the boy asked.

"It's more than time to do it," the adult answered reluctantly. "We have spent enough time here. And you need to buy new clothes."

Reborn slightly blushed as he had noticed his tutor's insisting gaze over his patched trousers that were way too short on him. He rubbed his cheeks insistently to make the blush vanish and walked to his bed so he could gather his belongings.

As they didn't have much, it didn't take them much time to do it and the two men ended standing in front of the tiny chalet that had been their homes for years before they began to walk away. Reborn couldn't help himself and looked behind him, observing the crooked windows and the closed door. That old and dirty chalet had been his home during the last year and he felt strange leaving it. The teenager sighed softly.

A warm hand patted rudely his hair and Reborn slightly raised his head to look at Tsuna. The man was smiling with a small tinge of sadness at him.

"Don't make that face, Reborn," the adult told him with half closed eyes. However, he didn't stop looking intensively at the teen. "We can always come back."

The younger man closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. He turned his head towards the path that slithered in the mountains towards the next village and opened his eyes.

"Where are we going?" he simply asked.

"How about America?" Tsuna lightly said as he raised his eyes to look at the blue sky above them. "I've heard that there are a lot of interesting things there."

The teenager softly nodded and began to walk. He could hear Tsuna's almost silent footsteps behind him.

Reborn didn't know it but he would come back at the chalet. Only once.

To destroy everything connected to his mentor.

The time was going on and Reborn was growing up. He had noticed it, mostly whenever his student came out of their tiny bathroom with a towel that couldn't even hid his body from his eyes. Yet, that towel had been more than enough to cover the teen's whole frame at the beginning of his training.

Tsuna often found his eyes wandering over his student, searching resemblances with his Reborn without really wanting to.

Of course, there were the sideburns, but it wasn't everything. The young Reborn had that annoying habit to always use violence to make himself win an argument. Not that it was dangerous for Tsuna as he was the one who always threatened the boy whenever the latter took out his knife out of his pocket and tried to cut his throat.

One day, Tsuna decided that they had spent enough time as recluses. He went into town during the night, once Reborn fell asleep, and sent a letter to the Vongola to tell them about their imminent departure. Once it had been done, he spent some time wandering in the streets of the swiss village until he decided to get back home just as he met a young woman's doe eyes.

He walked faster as he went up the hill towards the chalet and stopped short when he felt his instinct warn him. Without even thinking it over, he let his habits take the reins of his body and flared his ring right on the spot. A small flame appeared on his forehead and his orange eyes scanned the darkness around him before they stopped on a tree. He narrowed his eyes, raised his hand towards the tree and slowly opened his mouth.

"If I were you, I would come out of my hiding place in the following seconds if I didn't want to die in an excruciatingly pain," he suavely announced.

A soft ruffling of leaves followed his words and a weapon glided through the air before it ended behind Tsuna. The latter had been quick enough to slightly move his head and as such the weapon hadn't touched him.

His aggressor came out of their hiding and the former Decimo observed them with a frown.

"Who are you and what do you want?" he asked while his voice slowly took a threatening tone.

The young woman who had been previously giving him doe eyes in the village merely smirked at him and began to play with her two butterfly knives with deft hands.

"We have heard that the Vongola's best hitman was hiding in the middle of the mountains without a proper weapon with him," she hissed with a deep Russian accent.

"If it is for a vendetta," Tsuna sighed while he briefly closed his intense eyes. "You've found the wrong person. Now, leave if you want to stay alive."

The hitwoman's pale eyes flashed angrily in the middle of the darkness and she hissed like an angered cat while she closed harshly one of her butterfly knives.

"I'm not here to kill you," she growled. "But to hire you. We know that the Vongola don't pay you enough. Not with all the talent you have... If you joined the Bratva, you'll have the fame you really deserve!"

Tsuna sighed heavily and the flame on his forehead vanished. He carefully dusted his arms and rubbed softly his neck that had tensed with the stress caused by the surprise attack.

"I thought that I had already said it," he slowly whispered as he deliberately separated each syllable. "I am with the Vongola because they asked me first. And I'll stay with them till the end."

"So be it," the hitwoman retorted. "If that is your wish, I'll fulfil it tonight! Die, Fiammeggante Hitman!"

Tsuna sighed again and took the woman's wrists with one hand without any emotion. Then, while he looked at her with dull eyes, he broke them harshly and smothered down her cries as he pressed his other hand over her open mouth.

"I did tell you, right?" he slowly whispered as he let the woman fall on her knees and out of his grasp. "Twice. And you ignored those warnings."

The dull brown eyes suddenly shone with a terrible light and the young woman choked on a scared sob when she realized that she wouldn't come out of this alive.

Tsuna observed without a word, his face inexpressive and his eyes pensive, the woman's dead body. He knew that he was supposed to feel nauseated by his actions, he had killed a life. But, whilst he should have been emptying his stomach and crying for his lost innocence, he merely raised his eyes towards the sky full of stars and slightly sniffed. The ghost of Mukuro's eerie and dark smile floated in front of his eyes and he knelt, uncaring of the dead woman's blood that would end up dirtying his clothes.

What would have said Mukuro if he had seen him like this? Covered in a dead woman's blood that he had just killed in cold blood and without even using his flames?

He would surely have laughed at him, with that strange laugh of his, and would have said that Tsuna was still his property, no matter how bloodied his hands were.

And Hibari? Tsuna's lips quirked up a bit as he remembered his former Cloud Guardian and smiled softly as he thought that the easily angered prefect of Namimori would have looked at him with that unreadable expression that he always used whenever the Decimo did something unpredictable. Then, he would have probably ended smiling and commented that he was an herbivore worth watching.

Ryohei, Lambo, Gokudera and Yamamoto were something else. They had never liked watching him like that, covered in his victims' blood and with his eyes' shining light dulling every time he had to kill.

Tsuna came back to his senses and pushed away all the memories of his dead guardians. There was no use in torturing himself with dead people that weren't even born.

Then, like every time that the past threatened to smother him, he shook his head and began trekking towards the chalet. Where Reborn was sleeping.

Alive.

Next chapter will probably up tomorrow night and it will have two really important characters introduced. Will you find out who?