AN: Just a little interlude.
Interlude I
Everything changed when, decades ago, the world discovered Flames.
No. That's a lie. Humanity has always known about Flames.
They've known it since the dawn of time when cavemen found the strength to venture out into a new wide world, filled with beasts bigger and stronger than them. When an old, frail grandmother lifted tons of weight with her bare hands in order to save her grandchild's life. When patients diagnosed with terminal illnesses managed to hang on to life against all odds, determined to do that one. last. thing.
That last desperate regret. That desire that is hovering just out of reach, that wish for which a person will do anything to see it done, even at the cost of their own life, if need be.
I will do it with my Dying Will.
The moment men and women performed extraordinary feats that surpassed human limitation, people knew about Flames. They just didn't have a name for them yet.
Until a young orphan boy in Italy looked at the orange fire flickering around his hands and said Sky Flames.
It's unclear whether it was Vongola Primo's intent to show the world the Seven Flames of the Sky. Possibly, he meant to keep them a secret, a weapon, and a mystery, to be used and talked about only by those who belonged in the Underworld. If so, then the future Boss of Vongola underestimated the Mafia. He didn't realize the extent of its hunger, its greed. It didn't pass through his head that maybe, just maybe, his peers wouldn't be content with what they had already been given. That, perhaps, they would always grasp for more.
Why should we hide in the shadows, when we have the power of fire at our fingertips?
Why limit ourselves to the Underworld, when we could rule it all?
Why not show everyone our might? The strength of our will?
We want more. And we will take more.
A hundred years later, and this is the result.
Italy stands tall as the world's forefront superpower, even after going through three great wars, wherein she was the indisputable victor, with Russia and America coming as close seconds. The three nations are known for having the greatest percentage of Flame Users among its population, with Italy able to exert extensive influence and project power on a global scale through the combined means of flame-technology, as well as military and economic might. Since their ascension to power, the world has been divided into two classes; those that are Mafia, and those who are not. Those who have power, and those who bow their heads and obey, lest they risk losing more than just their livelihood.
But even though they wield unbroken dominion over numerous states, one stretch of land still rebel and oppose their influence.
Japan.
From 1641 to 1853, a policy called kaikin was enforced by the Tokugawa shogunate, prohibiting foreign contact with most of the outside world. It was lifted in the 1850s to allow Japanese youth to go and learn from other countries across the globe, only to be almost immediately reinforced in 1901, after the rise of the Hibaris to power. More than a century later, and Japan, still with their heavily isolationist policy, maintains limited-scale trade agreements and few diplomatic relations. Throughout the decades, it has reached the point where the land of the rising sun has become the stuff of legends, with barely anything about modern Japan being known at all.
This is the Japan Nanashima Tsuna, born Sawada Tsunayoshi, age 23, grew up in. An isolated country policed by yakuza, governed by the infamous Hibari Family, who maintains the peace and order of their home by any means necessary, even if that includes a tonfa to some herbivore's face.
This is the world Tsuna knows outside Japan's borders; a dog-eat-dog world, where no one will help you if you fall down, and if you're not useful, you're just a waste of space.
It's a whole lot worse, then, to be called Dame in here.