A/N: Thank you so much to every single reviewer/favouriter/follower! I was ecstatic that my story was so well received and I think my friend is sick of me spazzing out so much and so suddenly XD But nevertheless, KEEP THEM COMING! HOHOHOHOHO (Merry Christmas!~) Oh and, I forgot to mention that my (other) friend (in real life) helped to beta that first chapter! So thanks to her :)) She's really like the queen of vocab. I would tell y'all her fanfic username, but then she'll swat at me and declare me 'evil!' so I can't xD Reborn arrives in this chap; Ienashi fights Mochida! Hope y'all enjoy ^^ (There's so little Tsuna in here though... *sob*)

Dedication: to OwlfieOver for being my first reviewer. Ever. You're awesome! I know this isn't all that much so... here. Virtual cookie. :) *presents awesomely wrapped and utterly delicious cookie*

Warnings: Reborn's sadism, some violence, un-beta'ed… nothing much actually, since Gokudera the Sailor has not arrived yet :P

Disclaimer: Don't own! But this is a fanfiction site… isn't that quite obvious?


The next morning at breakfast, Tsuna listened to his mother and brother go on and on about one thing or another, laughing occasionally and generally forgetting (ignoring, in one case) the fact that he was there at all. They talked about things like school and baseball ("Y'know, kaa-san, now that I think back to a few months ago, I think I've improved!"). His mother also mentioned that she would be reuniting with some of her high school classmates a few days later, and that Ienashi would have to make his own dinner.

Ienashi would probably eat out that night; he could never bear being in the same vicinity as Tsuna without someone else around.

Suddenly, the conversation switched to a different track as Nana announced cheerfully, "Nashi-kun, I hired a home-tutor for you!"

The boy choked on his fried omelet and caught Tsuna's attention as he sputtered intelligently, "W-WHAT?!"

"You heard me, Nashi-kun - a home tutor," his mother smiled happily as though it was not all completely out of the blue, "The thing is, I found an interesting flyer in the mailbox this morning. It said 'Will raise your kid to be the leader of the next generation. Grade doesn't matter. -Reborn.' And, all he needs as payment is food and accommodation! Doesn't it sound great? I've never seen a promotion like this before!"

Ienashi hurriedly gulped down a glass of water to dislodge the food in his throat, and exclaimed, "It sounds like a scam! Besides, kaa-san, you know I don't need a home tutor!"

A new voice interrupted them - a squeaky but somehow deep voice, "With an average score of 70.2 marks for your tests, I believe you do. It is unbecoming of a Mafia boss to have such horrible grades."

Three pairs of eyes landed on the baby hitman, and blinked simultaneously. Then Ienashi sputtered another eloquent 'W-W-WHAT?!' while Nana moved one step beyond that, picked up the infant and cooed, "Aww, such an adorable little boy! Are you lost?"

Barely a beat later, she set Reborn down on one of the vacant seats and hurried off to set the table for one more, apparently forgetting that she was supposed to receive an answer. Nevertheless, the hitman answered calmly, "No, I am Reborn, the home tutor."

The younger twin openly gaped at him and said, "You're kidding." The older one regarded him with a blank expression, but something about him told Reborn that he believed the infant wasn't exactly what he appeared to be.

Several seconds later, as Ienashi lay on his back some distance away from his original position and heard an indignant, squeaky 'I'm not', he was inclined to agree.

"Ohh, is Nashi-kun taking a nap? But that's odd; he just woke up!" Nana returned with a plateful of omelet for the baby, successfully ruining the intimidating atmosphere surrounding the three tutor-and-tutees.

Reborn made a point to step on the brunet's face as he hopped onto one of the chairs, declaring, "Yes. He is tired, so he fell asleep and tumbled off his chair."

Nana accepted that without question, while Ienashi tried to get up from where he was flattened to the ground.

When Tsuna muttered a barely audible 'ittekimasu' and received a likewise barely perceivable nod from the tiny tutor, he felt his esteem for the fedora-wearing ...male increase considerably. Despite his physical appearance, the brunet was sure that Reborn was not a baby in any sense of the word other than his size. And Tsuna would not make the mistake of expecting him to be.


As soon as Ienashi peeled himself off the kitchen floor, he rushed to save the remains of his breakfast from Reborn's evil clutches. Downing the omelet, he realised that Tsuna had already left, and took that as his cue to leave, as well. (It happened the previous day too, so Reborn assumed that it was a routine.) Yelling a loud 'ittekimasu!', he ran out the door and hurried in the direction of Nami-chuu. This time, his mother called back a cheerful 'Itterasshai; don't come back too late tonight!' before pulling the front door shut.

Reborn, meanwhile, was walking on the wall beside Ienashi's head, deciding that he would test the younger brunet first. Hence, it was much to his sadistic pleasure when he saw that Ienashi had a little something for the school's idol, Sasagawa Kyoko, when she stopped to coo at his "cute little brother". Keeping a frighteningly bloodthirsty grin off his face, Reborn settled for a simple smirk as he declared that it was time for Sawada Ienashi to die.

Needless to say, the teen panicked, got shot, leaped up with a booming cry of 'REBORNNNNNNN' (What?! Is that a street performance or something? some passers-by asked), got hit by a truck, bounced off a fence, landed coincidentally in front of his crush, and confessed to her. All in the space of five minutes.

The girl ran off with tears in her eyes because, well, Ienashi was in his boxers and looked very much like a pervert right there and then. She was horrified and frightened, and it did not occur to her that the confessor could just be joking. (Really, he wasn't. Really.) This resulted in her current boyfriend Mochida challenging Ienashi to a kendo fight ("Be at the gym at lunch, and I'll make you pay for what you did to Kyoko!"). Briefly, the brunet wondered how that would make him want to go to the gym at all. But then Reborn arrived, explained how the Dying Will bullet worked, congratulated him on his confession and hurried him off to class before he could say anything else. To be honest, though, it just took one word - 'Hibari' - and he was off like the wind.


Lunch saw the younger brunet in the gym, afraid of what Mochida would do to him but even more so of running away. He was sure that if he ran, his sempai would be more pissed than ever, and that surely did not bode well.

Therefore, with quivering knees and sweating palms, Ienashi stepped into the gym and a whole bleachers-full of students greeted his eyes. Some of them cheered for the brunet, while others yelled for Mochida to kick Ienashi's ass instead. Honestly, Ienashi just wanted to get in and out of the blasted place fast, and hopefully with minimum injuries.

As Mochida explained the rules of the match ("If you get just ippon from me, you win!") and declared Kyoko to be the prize, Ienashi cursed Reborn silently in his head. He hadn't wanted to confess! The baby had forced him into it. (With a gun, no less.) If only the infant didn't have that totally unfair and abnormal strength, Ienashi would shake him until it got into his head that the twin did not like the Dying Will bullets at all. At all. And getting shot was certainly not something that he considered a privilege.

Some extremely heavy kendo equipment was dumped into Ienashi's arms then, snapping him out of his starting-to-get-rather-murderous musings ('I'm gonna strangle him with his own tie which is no doubt very expensive and really high-quality and wait am I starting to get jealous-'). He was plenty sure that kendo gear was not supposed to be this heavy, but before he could voice his complaints, the random kendo club member who was acting as the judge for the match shouted 'START!' and it was all Ienashi could do to throw on the weird gear thing before Mochida charged at him.

He soon proved himself to be sufficiently horrid at the Japanese sport. In fact, he could hardly lift the shinai, much less land a hit. With a startled yelp and Mochida's wooden sword to his head, the brunet fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Soon enough, almost all of the students in the gym (even Ienashi's supporters) were yelling for Mochida to stop the match and just accept his victory, because it was becoming more and more like a beat-down than a respectable duel between fellow sportsmen. But Mochida merely ignored all the pleas and continued, still unsatisfied with the number of times he had bonked Sasagawa Kyoko's confessor on the head.

Somewhere between struggling to use his weapon and laying dazed on the gym floor, Ienashi managed to spot three familiar faces in the crowd. These three had almost identical sneers, and one of them was shaking a fist threateningly while another was mouthing something along the lines of 'get up and fight or this might just be your unlucky day'.

Gulping, the brunet tried harder than before and somehow - somehow - managed to get back onto his feet. He was hurting all over and honestly didn't think his chances were too good, but he was terrified of what those three would do to him if he didn't follow their instructions. (He seemed to be feeling that a lot that day.) Simply put, he was afraid of Mochida, but even more so of those mean-looking bullies.

As he desperately tried to pull his shinai into position (it had to be made of steel for it to weigh that much), Mochida ran at him with his shinai easily raised above his head, a battle cry of 'HYAAAAAAAAAAA!' escaping from his lips. Ienashi threw his weight backwards and, letting out a pleasantly surprised cry, miraculously jerked his weapon upwards.

And jabbed Mochida in the torso. The sempai said something that sounded like 'BLURGH', sent spit flying everywhere, and keeled over, clutching his stomach.

The black-haired boy had to be sent to the infirmary, so Ienashi was declared the winner (he had gotten ippon from the coincidental jab), much to the relief of the tired brunet. As he walked out of the gym amidst congratulations and pats on the back, he supposed it wasn't too bad a thing to get shot with the Dying Will bullet, if it meant receiving the attention and praise he was being showered with now.

Also, it turned out that the shinai was made out of steel after all. (Mochida was a cheating jerk.)


As the younger twin exited the school gym, Reborn pulled his fedora downwards and disappeared into one of his secret hideouts to ponder over what he had observed. The hitman decided that meanwhile, he would finish up the secret hideouts and pathways that he had already begun to set up the previous day.

He recalled what he had found out about the twins the previous day. Tsunayoshi was the quiet one, the non-existent one. He suffered from bullying so severe that it was no wonder he was so broken. And broken was really the only adjective appropriate enough to describe him. His dull, lifeless eyes and the defeated slump to his shoulders; the lack of confidence in the way he walked and talked and moved; the absence of any display of emotion other than occasional (physical) pain, and even then, Reborn got the feeling that it wasn't quite right - Tsuna was like a broken robot that had only one setting: continue.

Ienashi, on the other hand, was the "normal son". He struggled in terms of academics now and then, but always managed to pass his exams. He had a proper social life and a healthy amount of friends, and was even the vice-captain of the baseball team and good friends with Yamamoto Takeshi, whom Reborn instantly recognised as a natural-born hitman. At first glance, anyone would choose the younger twin, Sawada Ienashi, to be the Decimo.

But when Reborn approached them that morning, his opinion changed rather greatly, and he was reminded that first impressions could be deceiving. (He mentally chastised himself for forgetting that; it was very important not to expect anything from anyone but rather everything from everyone.) For instance, something that managed to surprise him was the fact that Tsuna had turned to look at him right at the moment that he entered the room, instead of when he had begun speaking - a moment earlier than the rest of his family did, and a moment earlier than his brother did. Reborn considered for a bit; it could only be that Tsuna had the Vongola's famed Hyper Intuition, or that the boy had great skill in detecting the presence of others. Reborn believed it to be a mixture of both. Perhaps the latter had been honed by years of avoiding bullies and tormentors.

His thoughts then switched to Ienashi. This brunet was a whole different case. He seemed so shallow when he met Reborn - automatically assuming that he was just like any other baby, though he was wearing a suit as expensive as all the furniture in the Sawada household added together, and a fedora. Ienashi had missed the hitman's dangerous aura, the way he held himself that was most unlike an infant, and the unmistakable age that swirled deep within his onyx eyes.

And then there was the incident that had just transpired. He had not missed the exchange between Ienashi and the three bullies - Ukami Yuuko, Asa Techiban and Derutochi Garaki. Those three were feared by the whole student population (except Hibari because he was Hibari, and Tsuna because he couldn't feel) and were given a wide berth by everyone.

So, what was their relationship? Why would Ukami Yuuko order Ienashi to get up, of all things?

Reborn frowned as several possibilities ran through his mind. He soon decided on the most probable one, as a hitman of his calibre should, but it was not something concrete. He knew better than to jump to conclusions. He would have to observe his student's behaviour for a longer period of time before reporting to Nono.

But still, the Arcobaleno couldn't shake off the feeling that there was something wrong about Ienashi. Not in the shattered, off-kilter way that Tsuna was, but in a completely, 180 degrees different kind of way. It was as though he was only pretending to be who he was…

And Reborn could already feel the telltale signs that he was leaning towards the older twin. Just slightly, but enough. He knew he trusted Tsuna more. (Not that he trusted either of them; the hitman wasn't so dumb as to trust someone whom he barely knew.) Because while the older brunet was extremely cold and unfeeling, he also seemed almost infuriatingly honest. He couldn't hide something if he wanted to, and the fedora-wearing baby got the distinct impression that he wouldn't want to do something like that in the first place at all.

Suddenly, Reborn stopped his thoughts in that track. He had to remain objective and unaffected. It wouldn't do to take sides so early in the battle.

After all, he had just been reminded that morning that first impressions could be terribly deceiving, and he was still very much in the 'first impressions' stage with his students.


A/N: Well... I'm not too sure but I feel that this wasn't really up to standards. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I didn't want to stop and was still typing it up at 4+ a.m. with a sleep-deprived brain. Haven't slept in the past 23 hrs... :P Or maybe it had to do with the lack of Tsuna in this chapter (I did type up that 1st chapter quite some time ago though.) Hopefully I made it up with the length, and the fact that I looked through it twice! Do tell me what y'all think, and thank you AGAIN for all of your support! :)