You Cannot Put a Fire Out
You cannot put a Fire out—
A Thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a Fan—
Upon the slowest Night—
You cannot fold a Flood—
And put it in a Drawer—
Because the Winds would find it out—
And tell your Cedar Floor—
-Emily Dickinson
X X X X
Your demonic tutor will put you through hell.
You might be forced to run around naked in front of the opposite sex.
People are always trying to kill you. Always.
Those were the three main rules Tsuna had compiled. In fact, the third one had just occurred yesterday, when a strange toddler had almost blown her up. Of course, that kid was now living at her house with Lambo, and her name was I-pin. Damn her and her inability to ignore children! Why couldn't she be more like Kurokawa-san, who hated children no matter what? She pouted.
"TSUNA-CHAN, WHAT MADE YOU SAD?!" came from her left, and Tsuna turned. She had been invited to walk home with Ryohei when both Takeshi-kun, who had baseball practice now, and Hayato, who was sick today, could not escort her. Ryohei had jumped at the chance, and now she was walking home with him, Sasagawa-chan, and Kurokawa-san. She had also been invited to stay an hour or two at his residence, and had sent a quick text to her mom to inform her.
"Ryohei-kun, I'm not sad!" She waved her hands in an attempt to placate him. He did seem rather bummed out at her gloomy face. "That's just my thinking face!" she said, with a proud look at how good her excuse was. Behind him, she could see Kurokawa-san snickering, and glared darkly at her. Unfortunately, this just caused her to fully laugh.
"Nii-san and Tsuna-chan make such a good couple!" Sasagawa-chan squealed, and both Ryohei and Tsuna sprouted an invisible question mark from their heads. They turned to each other, and mouthed confusedly 'couple?' before turning to face the other pair.
"KYOKO-CHAN, as much as I EXTREMELY like Tsuna-chan and wish to date her, were not EXTREMELY dating yet!" Tsuna nodded in agreement with his words.
"Yep, we pretty much just mess around right now. In order for us to be dating, we'd have to go on a few dates, and then Ryohei-kun would have to ask me to be his girlfriend." Ryohei nodded along with her, and the two girls in front of them sweatdropped.
"Man, those idiots really are meant for each other." Kurokawa said, and Sasagawa-chan smiled slightly. "Come on, Kyoko-chan, let's get to your house. It's chilly out here." The two began to leave, and Tsuna and Ryohei rushed to catch up to them.
When they arrived at the house, it became apparent that Ryohei's parents were not home, and were, in fact, still at work. The three of them settled in front of the television, while Sasagawa-chan fiddled with the DVR. Apparently, they would be watching a new horror film that she had wanted to see. Tsuna was nervous, for she did not fucking like scary movies, but she couldn't behave like a coward now.
The entire plot was ridiculous, but it was really scary. Every time a monster would jump out, she would flinch and cower into Ryohei. Not that he minded, that dick. Eventually, he just wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close, in an effort to calm her and be grossly cliche at the same time. Eventually, it reached its resolution, where the monster came back for its final scare. She squeaked, and nestled into Ryohei further. Fucking cliches. Fucking Ryohei. Fucking monsters.
Of course, the girls were laughing their heads of the entire time. Damn them and their courage. Fucking fuck. She glared at them from her place in Ryohei's shoulder, and growled internally. She was acting like a nerd, dammit! ...But she hated monsters. They were really scary and this was not a fun exercise.
"Fuck you guys," she scowled, although she made sure to keep her tone suitably playful. Sasagawa-chan squealed, and Ryohei wrapped his arms around her. Kurokawa pretended to barf, and Tsuna felt she would've done the same if faced with such a sight. Ryohei was woefully affectionate, and didn't care where he was when he showed it. "I wasn't even scared," she grumbled, and this time, all of the others snickered.
Just then, her phone buzzed. Come home now or I'll murder you. Reborn had texted her. What a sweetheart.
"Gotta go guys, or I'll be brutally murdered." she said.
"I'll EXTREMELY walk you home, Tsuna-chan! LADIES SHOULDN'T WALK ALONE!" he screamed passionately, before taking her hand and rushing her out the door. She waved to the two other girls while being pulled out, and hastily adjusted a jacket on her shoulders. Once they were out of the house, Ryohei pulled her close and kissed her hard, which was very unexpected for Tsuna. Her eyes widened as she made out with the boy in public, which had never happened before, and neither pulled away until Tsuna was literally going to die from suffocation.
"Um, damn, I guess." Then, she grabbed his hand with red cheeks, and walked home to the sounds of Ryohei's loud speeches. When they arrived, she was greeted with the sight of many armed men crowding her residence, and she patted Ryohei's arms to quiet his unease.
"I'll see you later, Ryohei-kun. You should head home now," she ordered in a tone that held no room for disobedience. After what seemed like some internal conflict, he left, looking back once in awhile with hurt, puppy dog eyes. Tsuna almost wavered at the look on his face, but stood her ground. Then, she walked up to the guards.
"Yo, I'm Sawada Tsunami." She flashed her school ID at one without letting anyone speak. "Let me in," she ordered, and proceeding to enter her own home. "What the fuck, Reborn." The man stood near the entrance, with a blonde foreigner in tow. She gave the other a quick once-over before returning to her main target. "Who's the kid?" she asked, gesturing to the man beside him. The other looked slightly offended, but she paid him no mind.
"The kid, who is years older than you, is my former pupil, and the tenth boss of the Cavallone Family. Please do not anger him further," Reborn stated calmly, while swatting the back of her head. Well, shit, did she just unintentionally insult a mafia boss? Nice. Reborn was always telling her not to, but it felt sorta awesome. Besides, the guy didn't come here with the intentions to hurt her; Tsuna could sense that, at least.
"Hi! I'm Cavallone Dino, your new big bro!" The exuberance of this kid was mildly off-putting, and Tsuna wasn't really up for that right now. And that big bro thing? Unacceptable. But, she was acting like a good little girl so she didn't get punished by Reborn later, so fuck it.
"Hi, Nii-san," She poured sugar into her voice. "I'm Sawada Tsunami! Nice to meet you!" Out of the corner of her eye, she glared at a surprised-looking Reborn. This was sort of fun, though. Dino seemed pretty endeared, and he seemed to have forgotten her swearing moments prior. He was kinda an idiot. "So why are you here?" her voice dropped to its normal octave, and Reborn seemed relieved. Dino, poor boy, looked really confused, and she pitied him.
Reborn explained his mission, and shoved the two of them into a restaurant where they were the only two patrons. If she didn't know better, she'd assume he was trying to get them to date. She ate her pasta with chopsticks, while Dino struggled clumsily with his requested fork and spoon. She had observed, without his men, that Dino was a real klutz.
"So, ah, what do you do in your free time?" he asked, after the silence had become too long for him to handle. At first, she stared at him blankly, before answering.
"Usually, I am occupied by Reborn's antics, including this event. When I'm not doing that, I hang out with the three, at most four, friends I have managed to acquire in the fourteen years of my life." Her voice was toneless, and Dino wiped nervous sweat from his forehead. Man, this girl was not making it easy for him.
"Cool. I have a turtle." What a ridiculous thing to say, Dino. What are you trying to do, come off as some weird serial killer? In shame, he continued on his awkward, pain-filled path, and pulled Enzo from his pocket. The freaked-out look on the girl's face was replaced with a significantly better, slightly awed one.
"Can I hold him?" she asked, her voice quiet in reverence. Now it was Dino's turn to freak out. What was up with this girl and turtles? Regardless, he passed Enzo gently to her, and she held him lightly in return. With a slim finger, she patted the top of of his head, and Dino was momentarily struck with how pretty Tsuna was when she wasn't scowling.
By the end of their "date", both had stood and Dino attempted to take her hand in a professional handshake. She said "attempted" because as soon as their skin touched, he topped over and landed on top of her in a very provocative position. Damn, that old "trip on to another person and land in a romantic pose" trick got her every time. On this occasion, fortunately, there was only a tiny brush of the lips and no noses knocked together, so Tsuna counted it as a win.
Dino's panicked face hovered above hers, scarlet and wide-eyed. She simply raised an eyebrow. They both knew it was an accident, so it wasn't like she was gonna yell at him or anything. Jeez, was she really that scary?
"You okay?" she asked after he seemed out of it for too long. Had his brain exploded or something? What was the deal? Suddenly, a gunshot rang out, and Tsuna turned to greet the newcomers in the room. "Hey Reborn, Hayato-kun, Takeshi-kun. How's it hangin?" All of them seemed angry for some reason, and she wondered if they knew that this entire situation was an accident. Besides, why were they angry if she felt fine about it?
"Have you two met my friend Dino here? He's a real sweetheart when he's not in shock." She gestured to the frozen man above her, who had not even blinked since falling on her. Suddenly, without warning or apparent reason, he scrambled off of her in such a rush that he fell on the floor next to her. "You know, I reacted that same way during my first accidental kiss accident." She patted the man's shoulder comfortingly.
"YOU KISSED SOMEONE?" was screamed at her by Takeshi and Hayato. Reborn knew, of course, since he had taken a picture of her and Ryohei.
Needless to say, the rest of Dino's visit was a mess, from kidnapping to the boys' hateful glares. After that incident, he also had a hard time looking her in the eye. What a crazy dude.
X X X X
"I'm so embarrassed! My first kiss almost resulted in breaking my nose!" shrieked the skull tattooed on her flesh. Man, this was the closest to embarrassed Tsuna had been in a long time, with a tattoo shouting her most terrible secrets in front of the school prefect.
First, let's tell how Tsuna ended up in this situation. She was walking into school, right beside her two best friends like normal, when she accidentally made eye contact with Hibari. She had been trying to avoid doing that, because he immediately took it as an invitation to start something. So, as she was running around school being chased by a demon, Reborn shot her with a Dying Will bullet. In a very crowded area. Then, before she was completely naked, Hibari grabbed her and carried her into a supplies closet. The last few events occurred in the span of one second.
So now, she was trapped in a confined space with a very strange, mean human, with skulls appearing on her naked skin, and her secrets being told all willy-nilly.
"Fuck my life, man," she sighed, before leaning against the wall.
"I'm so embarrassed! I didn't know how to swim before fourteen!"
"Yesterday, the only food I ate was cosmic brownies and carrot sticks!"
"I'm secretly a nerd who loves classic literature!"
"Hey! That's where I draw the line!" she shouted. No one could know that one! "We're gonna do something about this Hibari." She grabbed the silent prefect's hand, and tried to stride out into the hallway. Before she could, a strong grip stopped her.
"I will not allow public nudity, omnivore," the prefect grumbled, before draping his coat over her in a move that induced a vague sense of deja vu. Tsuna was almost certain this had happened before. "Move."
"I need to find Reborn," she explained, her hand still clutching Hibari's. "Usually, I stand in a dark bathroom and say his name three times. Then, he will appear in the mirror," she said, very seriously. Suddenly, she was pistol-whipped.
"I don't know why I put up with you, Dame-Tsuna," came the cold voice of Reborn. Unconsciously, Tsuna flinched. As much as she liked to pretend to be unaffected, Reborn was hella scary. "You appear to have been shot with the Dying Will bullet ten times, which I've heard results in something terrible. Now, you have Skullitis, and will die in two hours."
"Well, damn. It's been a good run, boys, I guess," she patted Hibari's shoulder, and slipped her hand out of his limp one. "I'm gonna skip school today, if that's cool with you. Wouldn't want a dead body in the hallways."
"I'm so embarrassed! My most treasured object is a Patrick Swayze poster!"
"That's not even embarrassing, skull. Up your game, jeez," she grumbled, before exiting. Or, trying to exit, before two hands caught her wrists. She looked back to find both males clutching her. Both looked more angry than usual, which was impressive, because usually she got the feeling that they both were constantly enraged.
"There's a cure, Dame-Tsuna," Reborn spoke, his words heavy and dark. "And that Patrick Swayze thing is pretty damn embarrassing, honestly." Then, Reborn took the lead in dragging her to some unknown destination, with Hibari still attached to her in a fence of linked people. To the outside observer, it would look quite amusing. Of course, no one would laugh because both Hibari and Reborn were in the human chain.
'I do not feel safe around this boy,' was the only thought in Tsuna's mind, as she worried about being bitten to death. For the rest of the trek, however, Tsuna was surprised that the boy didn't fight at all, and didn't seem averse to being dragged around town after leaving school. Who will bite the delinquents to death? The world had become very strange indeed.
"I keep buying manga to put on my shelf even though I never read them in an effort to maintain my self-created image!"
"The most I've ever done is kissed a boy! I'm going to die a virgin!"
"I let my fear of being rejected keep me from making friends for years!"
"I swear a lot to hide my true feelings from others!"
"Damn, some of these are getting pretty heavy," Tsuna said, as Reborn looked at her with analytical eyes. 'Keep looking, Reborn, I'm not gonna tell you a thing.'
"I can sympathize with Takeshi-kun because I also contemplated committing-!"
She covered the damn thing's mouth before it could utter another word, but that didn't stop Reborn and Hibari's vaguely concerned looks. "Whatever," she muttered, keeping her eyes to the ground below. Reborn suddenly started walking faster as if he had spotted his goal, and Tsuna looked up briefly to see a tanned man badly flirting with a clearly uncomfortable woman.
"I have a deep fear of bugs because I watched a Spongebob episode and a butterfly scared me!"
"Finally, a light-hearted one," she sighed, but neither of her companions responded. Instead, she was ambushed by the tan man, who pulled her from the males' iron grips to rest his hand on the small of her back.
"What an exotic beauty! Half-Japanese, half-Italian!" he exclaimed before kissing her hand. Tsuna was briefly creeped out about his immediate knowledge of her heritage, but those thoughts were soon brushed away when he noticed the skulls on her palms.
"Reborn, is this why you brought me to her?" the man asked.
"Yes. Dame-Tsuna, this is Trident Shamal, a well-known doctor." He leaned in and whispered. "He's also a skilled assassin, so I wouldn't piss him off." Tsuna pouted briefly, before shrugging her shoulders. "Shamal, this is Sawada Tsunami, my student." Shamal's eyes widened slightly. This girl was going to be the Vongola Tenth?
"So, can you cure me?" she asked straightforwardly; she only had about an hour and a half to live, after all. Shamal grinned suspiciously, his form still uncomfortably close to hers.
"Of course, for a price," he said, which worried her. As a middle school student without a job, Tsuna didn't actually have more than a thousand yen and a piece of gum in her pocket at all times. "This time, I'd like a kiss in exchange for my services." He winked suggestively.
"Well, I try not to kiss random strangers on the street, but fine. After you cure me, I'll kiss you." There was a little bit of angry growling behind her, but she blamed it on Hibari's usual irritability. They were in a mildly crowded place.
Shamal pulled a mosquito from his pocket, and she tried her best not to flinch at the sight. Tsuna didn't like any bugs, not at all. But she trusted Reborn and she didn't really want to die that much, so she let it bite her. The skulls faded accordingly, with one last:
"I once bit into a soap bar because I thought it was chocolate!"
Well, that was embarrassing.
"So, the kiss. You do know that I'm underage, right?" she asked, to be certain. Shamal nodded, and over eager look in his eye, and the growling in the background got louder. She stood on her tiptoes, and the man closed his eyes expectantly. She brushed her lips softly against his cheek, and was immediately pulled back into the chest of Hibari, whose growling had reached new carnivorous levels never before seen.
"For disrupting the peace of Namimori, I will bite you to death." All Reborn did was nod approvingly as Hibari went after Shamal in fury. By the time the prefect was done, no one noticed the mosquito that flew onto his neck and bit him. The only sign of anything being amiss was the roughened Shamal smirking slightly.
"Hibari-senpai, what are you doing?" she asked, as he grabbed her collar and began dragging her back through where they came.
"I do not tolerate skipping class, omnivore. You will be spending the rest of the day in my office to serve In-School Suspension." Tsuna was pretty certain that In-School Suspension wasn't actually given at their school, since Hibari beat all the troublemakers up, but she wasn't about to comment that to a demon. No, she valued her body too much, and it was not a priority of hers to walk around aching from bruises.
"Soooooo, what am I supposed to do here?" she asked, after having sit across from Hibari for thirty silent minutes, engaged in a fierce staring contest. She lost multiple times, but it wasn't her fault she had dry eyes that require regular blinking!
"You kissed that man. Why." That was the only response Tsuna got, and she was beginning to suspect that Hibari was actually a UMA, as Hayato liked to say, because he certainly had no idea how to communicate normally.
"Ummm, because if I didn't, I'd probably be close to dead right now? I don't know. He seemed clean enough, so I didn't think I was gonna catch anything from it. Mostly, it just seemed to have more pros than cons, you know?" Tsuna rambled nervously. Hibari's blank stare didn't change throughout her speaking, so she was sorta feeling wrecked right now.
"So kissing means nothing to you, then." Hibari said monotonously, his face as blank as ever. In fact, Tsuna had only ever seen him show emotion in fights or events leading up to a fight. She was sure his only emotion was bloodlust.
"I don't think that's entirely true. Kissing is special, and is meant to be shared between people who feel passionately about it. But, if it's between kissing a stranger on the cheek and dying, I think I'd prefer the former, wouldn't you?" Obviously, Hibari had stopped listening a while ago, and in her anxiety, Tsuna didn't notice the prefect leave his chair to stand in front of hers, his form bent in such a way that his face was parallel to hers. Tsuna squeaked, not expecting him to be so close, and her grip tightened slightly on the arms of the chair.
"Heeeeey?" she said weakly, before Hibari firmly pressed his lips to hers. She was certainly not expecting that. Was she even allowed to do this? Wasn't she already kissing someone else? Did this mean that she was kiss-cheating? Although, Ryohei did say that their relationship was undefined. As her wide amber eyes stared directly into Hibari's own, she suddenly felt very overwhelmed by this situation. Since when did Hibari even like her? Finally, after a full minute of strangely strict lip-locking and intense eye contact, Hibari pulled away.
"Whaaaaat?" was the only response she could correctly formulate. Her face was tinted a dark pink, while her ears flushed red. Hibari smirked, obviously proud of himself, and returned to his desk to file paperwork.
"You are dismissed," was all he said afterward, and, on autopilot, Tsuna exited the room.
"What the fuck just happened?"
X X X X
"Please, don't shoot me with a Dying Will Bullet ever again," Tsuna pleaded, collapsed on the couch after being forced to run twenty miles without stopping. As such, she did not have the time to bring up the subject hitherto. After the emotional stress of that day, she would rather not have a repeat of Skullitis or all that it entailed.
"That's not exactly how things like this work, Dame-Tsuna," Reborn said, sitting comfortably on the arm chair across from her, reading a newspaper and drinking espresso even if it was eight o'clock in the evening.
"Don't care. Don't want it," she said shortly, and had a pillow thrown at her as a result. "Owww," she whined.
"You're such a wimp," Reborn sighed. "But alright. Since your flames aren't sealed anymore, that I know of, you can train your sky flame." Reborn looked her in the eye, his face stony and expression guarded. "This is a long, difficult, boring process, and you need to be prepared for that."
"What exactly does this entail, Reborn?" Tsuna asked, a light sweat of nervousness appearing on her forehead. "Can I die?"
"I'm sure you would manage to find a way, but it's basically a long meditation session, where you try to access your flames the entire time. It doesn't sound particularly difficult in words, but after having your flames locked away for so long, it will be harder for you to get in touch with them than it would be for normal people." In fact, Tsuna had never told Reborn about her warmth's seal and return, but he seemed to have figured it out on his own. How he did it, Tsuna would never know.
"Oh! I used to do that everyday, when I was still…" Tsuna's brow furrowed as she tried to find a word to describe her former state. "Cold," she settled on, and Reborn's face took on the barest hint of concern. Little did she know, but Tsuna's face deadened whenever she talked about her days as Dame-Tsuna.
X X X X
Tsuna had been on her floor every day for little more than two months. By now, Reborn had said, most had already accessed their flames, and were currently training them more. Recently, she had not been able to spend as much time with Takeshi and Hayato as she liked, and she barely hung out with Ryohei outside of their morning jogs. Instead, she spent hours everyday focusing on the warmth within her soul.
It felt very orange, if that made sense, and warm in the way of sunsets and heated apple cider. After years of being stuck outside in the cold winter, to finally bathe in the heat gave her a sense of completeness that she would never get tired of. It was for that reason that she never complained once about the added workload. It didn't matter if she barely had time to do her homework, and that she only slept, at most, five hours a night. No, she was simply thankful that she was not trapped in the shell of her own body anymore.
One day, at three o'clock in the morning, she sat awake on the cold hardwood floor of her room. The temperature didn't bother her, however, because she had allowed her blood to be replaced by lava. Slowly, in the back of her mind, she realized that her room was heating up with the temperature of her body. Beads of sweat rolled off her skin, and with one great exertion of will, she pulled.
And then, all she knew was the fire.
The sweet hum of resolution filled the room, harmonizing with the steady breaths she let out evenly. She opened her eyes slowly, and caught sight of herself in a nearby mirror. She was drenched in perspiration, and it dripped down her chin in a slow beat. Her long curly hair stuck up in odd ways from the unexpected humidity, and it seemed to have gained an oddly golden sheen. Most noticeably, her amber eyes transformed into a shade of molten lava, and a halo of of flames the color of California poppies circled her being. It consumed her forehead, circled her wrists like bracelets, and danced on each of her fingertips.
It was strange to her that she was mostly aware of her surroundings. After being shot with the Dying Will bullet, she had little idea of the events that transpired afterward. Now, however, she was there, there just seemed to be more of her. Like her soul had combined with another, and her resolve had been strengthened to something she had never felt before. In fact, she had suspicions that Dying Will Mode unlocked a different version of herself entirely.
"I did it."
A/N: This chapter was a bit more disconnected than the others, and not many important events or characters were introduced. Next chapter will have the first big arc though! Enter Mukuro.