Another comparatively shorter chapter, but oh well.

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As Alessandro fell, all he could think was oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.

Of all the scenarios he had expected, being pushed from the cliff by the person he was supposed to have captured definitely wasn't one. He screamed like he never had before, screw sophistication. He was about to die, goddammit!

This is all Boss' fault!, he thought savagely, getting the urge to cry or something; he did not want to die!

Red gloves, warm and familiar, wrapped around each of Tsuna's palms as he saw through light orange. Astute, he looked at each of his classmates who weren't, oddly enough, blaming him for their impending doom—then again, they were screaming their lungs out, faces pale, terror evident in their wild, wide eyed gazes.

Not allowing a moment to go to wastage, he propelled himself forward towards Arashi and knocked the boy out cold. Calmly, as if he was used to the routine—which, in retrospect, he sort of was—he, with equal calmness, knocked the others, save Alessandro, out cold. Hibird and Lichi were still perched on his head and shoulder, respectively, while Falco was flying down, towards them. Oodako was using himself as a parachute, which wasn't really that surprising seeing that chameleons were capable of turning into guns, but it still made Tsuna pause and stare at the pet incredulously.

He grabbed Takahira and Hinata by their arms, sweeping down towards the ground and placing them gently there. He darted towards the direction of the sky, doing the same with Kaneda and Hanabi, closely followed by Arashi, until finally he found himself flying towards Alessandro.

"Put your arm around my shoulders."Tsuna ordered the Italian, glad to see how the other immediately and happily obliged.

"You know, Decimo," Alessandro started, still pale, only to be cut off when Tsuna, with another massive usage of Flames, sent them propelling towards the ground.

They landed on the ground, and Alessandro, after extracting himself from the Decimo, spent a few minutes clutching the area above his heart rather tightly. His legs felt like jelly.

"You," Alessandro barked out in Italian, "are fucking reckless."

Tsuna gave a sheepish laugh to that, and Alessandro took a moment to recall what exactly he had said and who exactly he had said it to.

Eyes widening immediately, fearing his face or something being burnt by the other, he broke into learned litanies of apologies, "I am so sorry, Decimo, I did not mean to—"

A frown marred Tsuna's face, "No, it's alright. Besides, I do not plan to become the Decimo or anything of that sort, and I guess I will have to just figure out a way to repay my debt or something. I mean, you are elder to me, aren't you? So it's okay, really!"

"But Decimo—"

"It's alright," Tsuna insisted, "And don't call me 'Decimo' or anything like that, okay? Just Tsuna is fine."

"Decimo—"

"Tsuna," Tsuna pressed on, stubborn.

Pursing his lips, Alessandro gave the brunette an odd look and nodded, smiling unconsciously, "Tsuna it is, then."

Tsuna beamed brightly, making Alessandro blink at the genuineness behind the action. Oodako landed a few feet behind the brunette, practically gluing its body to Tsuna's a few seconds later. Tsuna patted the animal's head again, making it purr or do something like that.

"What do we do now?" Alessandro asked, picking himself up.

What Alessandro would have liked was to direct the Decimo towards his Famiglia, but he knew that he could not be too insistent. It would definitely lead to suspicion being culminated in his general direction.

"For now we get as far away as we can from them," Tsuna replied, jabbing his thumb in the direction of the cliff.

"What about the students? They are unconscious."

Tsuna looked at his watch, frowning subtly, as if trying to recall something, "They'll be getting up…" he tapped the glass of the watch, "…right about now."

Five bodies stirred awake.

"Are you guys alright?" Tsuna asked worriedly, jogging up to the five.

Arashi fixed a wild eyed gaze at him, "You pushed me from a cliff!"

"…Of course I did not."

"And you can fly!" Takahira shrieked.

"…no I can't."

"You can!" Hinata insisted, red faced, "And you hit me!"

"…I didn't."

"You did!" Kaneda disagreed, "I saw you! And you were flying!"

Tsuna feigned nonchalance, "How can a human fly?"

"I don't know!" Arashi said, "But you fucking pushed me from a cliff."

"Yeah, what the hell was up with that?!" Kaneda added

"What else did you expect?" Tsuna retorted, "Getting shot? Being kidnapped, and then killed? At least you guys are alive now; be satisfied."

Unsurprisingly enough, that shut every one up. The shock of Dame-Tsuna retorting and being sensible while doing so had them going into temporary shock. Arashi and Takahira gritted their teeth—being bested by the brunette was not good for their ego.

"But… how are we alive? That fall should have killed us!" Hanabi pointed out.

Tsuna waved his hand dismissively, "The trees broke your fall."

"We aren't injured," she mentioned.

Tsuna shrugged, "You guys were lucky—that's it, really. Questions aren't important now; we need to get out of here."

Hinata frowned, "Why?"

As if to answer her question, Flames shot down at them from above, raining green, blue, yellow, indigo, red and purple. Tsuna glanced up briefly and cursed under his breath. Thankfully, though, the Flames were far away from their group, but at the rate of which they were following followed by the sheer amount of the Flames, they could easily incinerate the students.

"Get out of here!" Tsuna ordered immediately, rushing towards them and pushing them away, "Alessandro, take them and run!"

Alessandro nodded, getting into the role of being someone from Vongola. He couldn't see or sense the Flames, but he had heard enough on how the Decimo was sensitive to impending doom.

"Follow me!" he ordered.

"Eh? Why?" Hinata questioned, ignoring Alessandro's order, staring at the brunette.

"And why should we listen to you?" Arashi demanded, recalcitrant.

"Don't think you can just order us around, Dame-Tsuna!" Takahira added.

There was a short moment of silence.

Tsuna took in a deep breath. Calm down, he reminded himself. Fact was, he couldn't be calm. The whole situation and its future consequences was something his brain had informed him of a few seconds prior—much to his own regret, because the situation was clearly not in their favor. The students were incapable of fighting—with the exception of Takahira, who Tsuna was aware, learned judo, but that was useless against Flames and the type of dirty fighting the Mafia performed.

And Tsuna's conscience still hadn't quite let go of the fact that he had left Lal alone to fend for herself.

Granted, she was insanely strong, but still. She was family and abandoning family was something Tsuna would never be good at.

"Listen," he said lowly, eyes narrowing as he met each and every one of their gazes, including Alessandro's, "you will be following Alessandro and getting out of here, you hear me? This is for you; if you want to survive with the given the circumstances, all I can say with a hundred percent certainty is that the one experienced in this particular field is me."

He could feel himself slowly easing into what Onii-san and Yamamoto joked and called 'Boss Mode', which probably explained why their faces had paled. It didn't matter now if he was scaring them (though he hoped he wasn't), but they needed to escape, and that was what mattered the most.

"H-How would you know?" Arashi tried to demand with a brave voice—it failed spectacularly under Tsuna's unwavering gaze.

"I just do." Tsuna replied dismissively, "Now: run."

Unconsciously the boy stepped back, sweating, and the others followed. Alessandro, who was trying not to faint at the sheer amount of fear that had taken hold of his heart, ordered them to follow him. Slowly they turned around and disappeared into the forest, and Tsuna gave out a breath of relief.

Well, at least that was taken care of.

Flames fell in the form of narrow arrows and Tsuna swiftly froze all of them. Minutes passed during which the same attrition continued—Tsuna's response to the attacks also remained the same. And then a huge ball of Cloud, Mist and Rain Flames came falling and Tsuna froze that, too.

Two minutes later, Tsuna stared blankly at the huge chunk of ice, almost half the size of the cliff, easily towering the trees and murmured:

"Okay, this will be really difficult to explain."

The ground shook a few minutes after they had started running.

Arashi turned around, and stared disbelievingly at what resembled an iceberg in the middle of the forest.

Okay, yeah, an octopus in the middle of the forest, he could understand. But an iceberg?

What the fuck.

Exactly three minutes later, Tsuna emerged wits his 'entourage' of animals and smiled at them.

"Did you do that?" Kaneda asked.

Tsuna gave them a convincingly innocent look, smiling, "Did what?"

"That." Arashi snapped irritably, pointing up and behind the brunette.

Tsuna followed Arashi's line of sight. When he looked back at them, if Arashi had known, he would have given Tsuna the Best Actor's Award.

"How could I?"

"But you were there!" Arashi pointed out, "The ice is where you were!"

"I don't know what you are talking about." Tsuna said in confusion, still smiling, "Are you sure you did not hit your head too hard during the fall?"

Arashi looked helplessly at the other five, wondering why the hell they weren't supporting his statement, only to realize that their faces were pale. It was then that Arashi took notice of Tsuna's smile and promptly dubbed it as the scariest smile of the century.

"We need to find Colonello," Tsuna declared, smile wiping itself away from his face, "There are still people after us and we need protection."

Plus, Tsuna was planning to leave them under Colonello's and Alessandro's care and then try to find Lal. Ryohei was with Colonello which eased Tsuna's worry a bit more.

"Colonello?" Hanabi asked.

Tsuna glanced at her, replying, "Remember the leader of the other group, the person with blue eyes, blond and carrying a gun? He had her," here he lifted his arm so that Falco could stand on it, "as a pet? Him."

"Wait, wait, wait, wait," Kaneda protested, "We're searching for an infant?"

"Yep."

"You're kidding me. How's he going to help? He's a baby. Are you crazy?"

"Mm, I think so." He wasn't lying. "But what I can say is that Colonello's someone we can trust—someone we do need."

"By Colonello, you mean the Rain Arcobaleno," Alessandro questioned, hesitant. He had enough of ex-Arcobalenos after his meeting with one Lal Mirch.

"Ex-Rain Arcobaleno, yes," Tsuna confirmed, not bothering to not use unfamiliar words around the students. It was not as if they were going to question, anyway.

"You can't just order us around, Dame-Tsuna," Kaneda snapped.

"Why should we listen to you?" Arashi demanded again.

Tsuna gave him an incredulous look. Really? After his previous explanations, they were going to go around in circles?

Tsuna took in a deep breath. Different tactic, then.

"Because I know what I am doing. Your survival is up to you—I am not forcing you to follow me, and I am not going to. But I will be protecting each and every one of you, even if you do not want me to."

"We don't need your protection!" Arashi bellowed, "We can take care of ourselves."

"Arashi-kun's right," Hinata said, staring disapprovingly at Tsuna, "Do not get so full of yourself, Dame-Tsuna."

"Exactly. We aren't like Gokudera or Yamamoto!" Takahira put in, "They are the ones weak enough to want protection from the likes of you."

"Yeah, actually. What's up with them anyway? Remember the whole suicide thing Yamamoto pulled of a year ago? If all it took was Dame-Tsuna to not kill him, I'm pretty sure that all that drama was just for attention."

"No kidding," Kandeda snorted, "And Gokudera. He follows Dame-Tsuna like a dog. It's pathetic."

"And Chrome-chan!" Hanabi put in, "She's such a bitch. Pretending to be innocent and helpless all the time!"

"Ever looked at Enma, though? I mean, he's so fucking pitiful—"

His voice came to an abrupt halt. Chills went down their spines, even Alessandro's, who, after having first-hand experience on how the Decimo got whenever someone insulted anyone from his family, had been slowly inching away from the six. The air was heavy and choking, stale and downright terrifying.

"Shut up," Tsuna's voice was insanely cold, eyes suddenly glowing orange, a few nodding distances away from looking murderous, "Shut up, or I swear that I will fucking make you regret. Don't you dare insult my friends," he looked calm, however, abnormally calm, and that made it infinitely worse, "Insult me all you want; I don't care. One word against my friends, however…"

The threat hanging in the air as six heads vigorously nodded. Takahira looked just about ready to pee in his pants.

"Good," Tsuna said, his demeanor abruptly shifting, turning facetiously cheerful, "Let's get out of here, then, okay?"

Six heads nodded again and the respective owners of the said heads dutifully followed the brunette.

Extremely Leaderly Tsuna in the next chapter!

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