Previously…
Tension is rising between the Puniamo, the Cavallone, and the Vongola. Considering how Tsuna shot a Puniamo member, lives on Cavallone territory, and has the Vongola Tenth's protection, Tsuna's in the thick of it. He meets the rest of the Vongola Guardians, who promise to train him to fight.
Chapter 7
~EO!~
They watched as the Rain Guardian drove Tsuna to the Cloud Guardian's home and explained what Tsuna would be doing. They watched as they assigned tasks to each person and as Tsuna agreed to train with them.
They watched as Tsuna's future began to take him to an unknown end.
"Eto…Takeshi, they're going to meet with Lal Mirch and Colonnello now, right?"
"Eh! You're right! This is going to be fun to watch," Yamamoto said with a laugh. He was sitting to Chrome's left while Mukuro was standing behind them, crossing his arms.
"Kufufufu…there was a time when Tsunayoshi was slapped until he was unconscious by that woman."
Chrome and Yamamoto stared up at Mukuro with incredulous faces. Mukuro smirked.
"Mukuro…have you finished looking through the archives already?"
"Kufufu. And there she goes."
Yamamoto looked down to Earth, forgetting his question already.
"You're late!" Lal Mirch shouted at the Rain Guardian when his hover-cycle came to a stop in front of her. They were in a fenced off area that had the sign "DANGER—PRIVATE PROPERTY—DO NOT ENTER" on every entrance. Beyond the fence was a forest and a path wide enough for a four wheeled van. They had come to a stop in a clearing near the cliff.
"Sorry, there was more traffic than I thought there would be."
Lal didn't waste time to call him out on his lie. "There's no traffic to this part of town!" She turned her glare to Tsuna who was following the Rain Guardian off the bike. He squeaked and hid behind the man.
"And you! What noise did you just make!?"
"She seems…scary," Chrome said.
"Yeah, I wonder if she always screams at her friends like that."
"You consider them her friends?" Mukuro asked with a hint of surprise in his voice. "I wouldn't."
"I-I didn't make any noise," Tsuna said and raised his hands over his head to block any attacks.
Lal huffed and looked at the Rain Guardian. "How much time are you giving me to train him?"
The Rain Guardian smirked. "I think a few weeks should be good enough since he needs to learn other things as well."
Lal stared into his eyes, clearing not buying the idea that this brat only needed a few weeks to be fully trained by the Lal Mirch. She returned the smirk and accepted the silent challenge. "Very well. Now leave. I will handle the brat with Colonnello."
The Rain Guardian nodded and gave Tsuna a pat on the shoulder. "Good luck! I'll see you soon."
"If Tsunayoshi will last that long," Mukuro mused.
Chrome swallowed as Lal began to lay out weapons in front of the boy and lectured him on each of them. Whenever she asked Tsuna to recite their qualities, he received a few backhanded slaps for every wrong answer.
Yamamoto winced while Mukuro let out a long laugh. Chrome relaxed when Colonnello came, since he looked as easygoing as the Rain Guardian and would probably balance out Lal's ruthlessness.
"Lal!"
"You're late!"
"No I'm not, I'm just in time for the main event, kora!" Colonnello said, grinning. Lal glared at him but her face reddened when he directed that smile at her.
"You, Giotto! Colonnello's going to show you how to aim and fight with the weapons!"
Tsuna swallowed his nervousness and nodded. Lal stepped back and Colonnello introduced himself to Tsuna.
"Hey Giotto, I'm Colonnello, Lal's ex-student, now partner in crime, kora!"
"Colonnello!"
"I'm joking, kora!" Colonnello cried out while he dodged a bullet. Tsuna took a step back from him and looked nervously at Lal, who still held the steaming rifle in her hands.
"Anyway," Colonnello said and picked up the first weapon. He handed it to Tsuna. "Lal told you what the guns were and how to use them, right?"
Tsuna nodded and showed Colonnello that he knew how to hold the gun and how to pull the trigger.
"Just follow what I do for now, kora!" Colonnello said and raised the gun to eye level. Tsuna glanced at him before doing the same and cocked the gun the same time Colonnello did.
Both Colonnello and Lal suck in a breath in surprise when he did so, since Colonnello didn't really give him time to copy him before the boy did the same.
Tsuna simply waited for Colonnello's next step while he held the gun steadily.
Colonnello nodded and in a blink of an eye he shot at a tree some distance away. "I want you to hit as close to my first hole as possible, kora."
They all stared at Tsuna intensely as he nodded and aimed his gun at the target. Then he squeezed the trigger and jolted slightly.
"Whoa!" he said in response to the jolt he felt.
"You'll get used to it, kora!"
Tsuna nodded and taking pointers from Colonnello, he fired again. This time his shot actually grazed the tree.
Once he got the feel of all the weapons available, he was told to choose the one he felt most comfortable with. Then he practiced with that one for the rest of the day. Colonnello gave him a drive back to town and also drove him back to the training area the next day.
"Maybe the shot in the market was a fluke," Yamamoto said.
"Or extreme circumstances brought out his past memories," Chrome whispered. Which should have been impossible.
BANG!
While they talked, Tsuna had gotten ready and was firing at the actual red and white target ring rather than a tree the target was pinned to.
Chrome fisted her shaking hands. "…Did you see that?" she asked. "Did you see that?"
"He…" Yamamoto swallowed. "Oh."
"Colonnello." Lal's tone was so serious that Colonnello turned to her with weary eyes and saw that she wasn't looking at him, but at the target.
He followed her gaze and his jaw dropped. "That's amazing, kora!" He threw his arm over Tsuna's shoulders and made him stare at his own work. "Look at that, it's almost dead centre, kora!"
"That's not normal, is it?" Yamamoto asked. He looked at his friends nervously and looked back at Tsuna. "It's only his second day of practice."
Mukuro pointed out, "He was this good in the market. There's no reason why it couldn't happen again after being exposed to guns for a longer time."
Yamamoto was shaking his head. "I take everything I said back…I thought that was beginner's luck, but this isn't normal."
"Perhaps Boss…his memories—at least, his muscle memory, hasn't been erased for this mission."
"Kufufufufu. There's nothing to worry about," Mukuro said. "Besides, it's Byakuran's fault for not waiting before sending him off to another mission."
Chrome cringed and scanned their surroundings for eavesdroppers. "Mukuro-kun, someone could have heard you."
Mukuro shrugged with a smirk.
"Do you think the other angels have realized this?" Yamamoto asked.
Chrome frowned. "Katsuro thought Boss was just a smart child when he saw what he did. Others will probably think the same unless they find more evidence of him not acting like a normal thirteen year old boy."
Yamamoto nodded and watched Tsuna take a break for lunch with Colonnello, who had warmed up to him, and Lal, who was not as biting, before he decided to take a short nap.
"Ne, Chrome, Mukuro, I'll be back later today," Yamamoto said with a yawn.
Chrome stood. "I'm planning to do some reading. Mukuro-kun, will you stay to watch?"
"Kufufu. No, I'll be somewhere else. Tsunayoshi is doing well enough without us fretting over his every odd move."
They stretched their large, golden wings and took flight.
~EO!~
One week later…
"Boss!"
Vongola Decimo was standing on his balcony looking over the city when his Rain Guardian entered his study.
"Hey! You're here just in time. Will you join me for lunch?"
"Sure," the Rain Guardian said with a grin. "I haven't eaten yet."
Decimo and his guardian went to the counter that divided Decimo's study from the small kitchen available for whenever he wanted a quick bite to eat without disturbing the kitchen staff.
"Are you craving for anything?" Decimo asked as he stuck his head into the fridge.
"Not really."
Decimo hummed thoughtfully and began to pull out ingredients for a sandwich. "I'll just make us something then."
"Do you want help?"
"No—you stay out of it," Decimo commanded and waved his chef's knife at his Rain Guardian's face, an unconscious habit he picked up from his dear mother, Nana.
It made the Rain Guardian laugh and he resigned to let Decimo make their lunch, since preparing food was one of Decimo's many ways of relieving stress.
"By the way, how is Giotto? You told me he started training a week ago."
"He's incredible—he just absorbs everything you teach him. Well, that started happening after the second or third time he trained with Lal and Colonnello. We already knew that he was a natural at shooting, so it was just a small matter in perfecting his skills and since he has such a strong foundation, it was easy to introduce him to other weapons." We still don't know where he got that foundation from, the Rain Guardian thought.
"We split his time with Lal so that he could learn from our Mists. They're still teaching him basic recon skills, without the use of illusions, since we don't know what flames he could use yet—we're planning on introducing those to him today or tomorrow."
Decimo placed the sandwiches in the mini oven and set the timer as he leaned back to pour them both water. "He's doing well then. It must be because most of you are helping him."
"We can't help it. It's been a while since we've seen someone who has that much potential. Although to be honest, I was hoping that I wasn't imagining the potential, since the only thing I saw him do when I met him was shoot someone. But the way how he did it…anyway, it was only after his training with Lal and Colonnello that we realized exactly how good he was."
"It's weird," Decimo said, "Giotto told you he never shot a gun in his life." Decimo imitated pointing a gun with the chef's knife in his hand. Then he twirled it and pretended to holster it, western styled.
"And yet Lal and Colonnello already gave him a passing mark," the Rain Guardian said with raised eyebrows. "You know from personal experience how hard it is to complete training with those two."
Decimo shivered and glanced at the oven before saying, "It's good that you found him. The Puniamo was shot in the shoulder, you say?"
"Yup."
Decimo opened his mouth to speak just as the windows to his study and the one next to the kitchen shattered inward. The sound of glass breaking jerked the two men out of their thoughts. Though they shielded their faces as the pieces of glass flew toward them, a few of the larger pieces of glass sliced through their clothes. Dark smoke from five different canisters filled the room just as Decimo tried to reach for the only available weapons: the knives. The last clear image he saw was of five figures in grey, armed to the teeth with box weapons, tumbling in from the sky.
A/N: I figured that I would post this, since we were just talking about fanfiction in my lecture this week and it amused me.
Updated 2016-02-26th
-LLM
