Because I refuse to give multiple points of view on the same part of the same scene in the same chapter. Reborn's POV on Tsuna getting bitten by a venomous snake. I also have a Fon and a Xanxus, neither of which I've cleaned up enough to be publish-worthy.
Also, I don't know how many people are aware of this, but when a cobra is not rearing up, it's hood is not visible. At all.
xxxx
Reborn jolted awake on hearing a startled yelp, his eyes snapping to Tsuna in reflexive alarm before alarm turned to terrified horror. He was no expert on snakes, but one that size—even if it wasn't venomous, from what Reborn could see, it had teeth in a very precarious place.
"Fon, Skull!" he snapped, leaping across to Tsuna's bed to grab hold of the thing's upper jaw—couldn't just pull, that might end up literally ripping out part of Tsuna's throat.
He heard his fellow Arcobaleno cursing as they realized what was happening, and then Skull had a grip on the snake's lower jaw while Fon grabbed the back of its head, their eyes glowing with the colors of their respective Flames. Reborn could see the reflection from his own eyes on sleek scale, and he didn't bother trying to tamp down the reaction.
He was aware of the door slamming open, of Xanxus swearing violently and dropping half-charged X-guns to the ground in favor of grabbing the snake with both hands, keeping its writhing bulk from dislodging Fon, and then he and Skull managed to pry its mouth open—he didn't see fangs, but the cuts dug into Tsuna's skin were deep, bleeding profusely, and heavily inflamed. (He didn't hear himself snap out an order, barely noticed Fon pulling the head away.)
He pressed his hands down into the blood, feeling the unnerving pulse to the heaviest part of the flow—nicked artery—and pushed his Flame into the gashes only for it to slide away, shunting off the wounds like water from gull-feathers. (Xanxus whip-cracked the snake into a wall and snatched up an X-gun, putting a compacted shot of Wrath Flame into it for good measure.)
A second try showed it was no fluke—he brought the full weight of his Flames to bear and only ended up scorching his own hands as the air heated with the rebound.
"Xanxus!" Reborn snapped, and the Wrath was beside him in a heartbeat, growling a low order for Fon to watch the snake in case it wasn't dead.
Reborn ignored Fon turning to obey, "Put pressure on the wound—the venom's repelling my Flames."
Xanxus cursed again as he grabbed the sheet and ripped a thick strip from it, words low and vicious, but hands quick and gently firm as he folded the cloth and pressed it to the injury, sliding one hand around the back of Tsuna's neck to stabilize it.
"Skull, get Ryohei," Reborn commanded, weaving his Flame through the uninjured side of Tsuna's throat in an attempt to get at the wound from within.
Again, his Flames simply slipped aside.
Reborn snarled, feeling utterly helpless. He didn't have a lot of options, and Tsuna didn't have a lot of time.
"Screw the brat-Sun," Xanxus snarled, too, flaring his Flames sharply. An instant later, the Varia Elite were running into the room, and the Wrath didn't even bother to glance up. "Shark, get the fucking medics! Sun, get your ass in here!"
The Varia Rain bolted out at a dead sprint as the Sun scrambled forward to do as he'd been told, swearing violently as his Flames were shunted aside by whatever the hell was in the venom.
Reborn felt a chilling clarity closing over him as the familiar warmth of Tsuna's Flames flickered and dimmed, and suddenly Mukuro was in the room, lunging forward to plant Mist-wreathed fingers on Tsuna's temples, his red eye's pupil flicking between the kanji for six and the kanji for one before he growled, eyes flicking towards the wall where Xanxus had thrown the snake. He glared at it for a heartbeat before his pupil switched to three, then two, and Mukuro went utterly still.
Three seconds later, Tsuna's eyes snapped open and Sky Flame flared out hard enough to send all of them sprawling, and then the snake Reborn had (stupidly) presumed was dead hissed sharply and sprung itself up at the bed again.
(The fear was sharp and hot and sickening, Reborn's reactions dulled by the Sky that had soaked his system as Tsuna woke. He was a Sun, and better off than the others for it, and if he couldn't react quickly enough, how could anyone else?)
Xanxus snarled and snapped a hand out, catching the thing midair and smacking its head down onto the edge of the bed, pinning it with a broad, bloodied, Flame-wreathed palm. "The hell is this thing?" he demanded of no one in particular.
(Sky. Of course the influx would be easier for another Sky to handle.)
"Khe-ti," Tsuna managed, raising a hand to his still-bleeding wound before he wavered and fell back, and Reborn flared his Flames hard, clearing his system enough that he could move.
"Hold still," he ordered as he scrambled back onto the bed, his Sun flickering over his fingers even though it had already proven useless against whatever venom that thing had. Then he blinked, because the formerly Flame-proof wounds weren't anymore.
Relieved, Reborn knitted them carefully closed, "Tsuna, what happened?"
"She—ah, said it was a test?" his words slurred a bit, but he sounded lucid enough. "She'd just decided I passed when Mukuro showed up. She was… kind of impressed with that, said something about 'strong acolytes'…"
Xanxus' Wrath Flames stopped burning quite so brightly, and the snake was obviously unharmed but equally obviously not fighting. "Test," he repeated flatly, clearly deciding to ignore the rest for the sake of his sanity.
Reborn was inclined to agree as he took his time double-checking the side of Tsuna's neck for damage, wiping away blood with what few bits of clean sheet he could find to make certain he'd healed it all. "Welcome to life with Tsuna. The unicorn did something similar."
"Ah, that was just the only way to get the seal off without…" Tsuna corrected, blinking slowly and slurring more as he lost track of what he was saying before trying again. "Venna didn't, ah… Xanxus, can you let her go before she gets annoyed? She shouldn't..."
Three lost-tracks in less than a minute. Tsuna wasn't bleeding anymore, but his blood volume was dangerously low. Reborn cycled Sun into his body, keeping it neutral enough not to Activate anything unfortunate and using it to keep his student's temperature up.
Xanxus looked (quite understandably) dubious, but slowly let up on the pressure and set the snake on the floor when it didn't react other than to flex its neck a bit.
It reared up, hood flaring—cobra?—and hissed, long and low and wordlessly approving.
Tsuna moved to sit again and swayed, and Reborn hopped up onto his chest to knock him back down and give himself a handy surface to work with for Flame-channeling. "You may be in one piece, but you lost a lot of blood, dame-Tsuna. Stay still."
Tsuna subsided, his other Guardians piling into the room in alarm.
Reborn blinked, suddenly realizing that the whole thing had taken very little time. Minutes—three at the most. Squalo had definitely been moving quickly, and he wasn't even back with the medics yet. (The sooner the Varia Rain got back, the better. Tsuna was in obvious need of a transfusion—Lussuria might have the knowledge to stimulate bone marrow to overproduction, which Reborn admittedly did not, but Tsuna was in the sort of condition where that would cause more harm than good.)
Things got briefly chaotic before Xanxus put a stop to it, Reborn trying very hard to ignore how his own limbs wanted to shake as he sat right where he was, square in the middle of Tsuna's chest, focusing on keeping his Flames spread even and quiet and warm. He'd held together under the higher-than-normal ratio of noradrenaline to adrenaline*, but the crash was vicious and retroactive terror not to be underestimated.
Tsuna was not leaving his sight for days.
(Also, there was no way he wouldn't end up reneging on his contract with the Nono if something actually managed to get past all Tsuna's other guards. Not if this was his reaction to seeing exactly that happen. Reborn had thought the unicorn's introduction had been bad, but then Tsuna hadn't been more than just his student and it had been over blessedly quickly.
Feeling Tsuna's lifeblood pulsing out beneath his hands, his Sun Flames useless, having to turn to a new-bonded Element because his own hands were too damn small…
No, he couldn't deny it anymore. Tsuna was his Sky, and that contract had to go.)
xxxx
*This is an actual thing. It is rare, but can occasionally come about due to certain types of training—sniper training, for instance—and even more rarely naturally occurring. The two main types of high-stress reactive chemical that the human body utilizes are adrenaline and noradrenaline, the second of which is both a stimulant and neurotransmitter produced mainly in the brain. The same events that cause the release of adrenaline in the human body also increase the production of noradrenaline, which serves a similar but more aggressive function: predators tend to produce a far higher ratio of noradrenaline-to-adrenaline than humans. Adrenaline is more the 'fight-or-flight' whereas noradrenaline tends to induce an almost cheerful sense of rational calm that's very cat-and-mouse-ish. I possess a naturally higher noradrenaline response than usual, and the backlash to sudden spikes and recessions is truly vicious, generally including actual difficulties in coordination, muscle response, and focus with the sudden lessening of a powerful neurotransmitter. Normal adrenaline crashes do the same thing, of course, but the off-ratio mix of the two apparently makes it more disorienting to human physiology. Fun little side note that was explained by my doctor as mainly speculation, but I'm inclined to believe it as well-thought-out speculation, if nothing else. Reborn seems to have the cat-and-mouse mentality, that one where he is the cat and the unsuspecting 'threat' is the mouse, which I understand a little too clearly for comfort. My brain's scary in that mode, and while the worst that's ever come of it were bruises, I can only imagine a trained assassin's response.