Disclaimer: Apart from Maso, I don't own any of the characters mentioned below.

The Golden Canary

Intermezzo: Uno

It took another five minutes for Tsuna to blink awake, all fuzzy and bleary. Then the memories of a giant man grabbing him made him bolt, only to be jerked back by a seatbelt.

"Took you long enough."

His head whipped around to see an older man with black hair and smirking eyes, although his mouth wasn't smiling. Every warning bell in him tingled with alarm, and he started struggling to get the seatbelt off, only to have a rough hand clamp down on his own.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, unless you plan to jump out of a moving car."

He caught the threat in the stranger's voice and froze, too frightened to even breathe.

I'm gonna die, he's gonna kill me and otou- and okaa-san were right why didn't I listen? and I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry–

"Oh relax, I won't throw you out." The man chuckled to himself, but Tsuna failed to see the joke. "But if you want to live, I suggest you do everything I tell you to do."

Oh god. That did not sound any better to the six-year-old boy, but he could only nod with a pale face and wide eyes.

The man's hand moved back to the steering wheel, but it didn't make him feel any safer. He kept getting sidelong glances from the stranger, and he shrank back as much as he could.

"Didn't know you'd be the quiet type. Or are you just slow?" The man frowned. "Do – you – understand – me?"

Now that was just rude, and Tsuna swallowed back some of his fear.

"Who…who are you?"

His voice came out as a squeak, and the stranger huffed out a laugh.

"Wow. Are all Japanese kids as girly as this?" He sighed as if disappointed. "Oh well. I'm the one who picked you, and beggars can't be choosers. Anyway, you can call me oni-san."

"B-but I don't have a brother." Still gir- squeaky.

"Well, you do now. And I'll hit you every time I hear you calling me anything else."

Tsuna's eyes widened to saucers.

"You-you can't! Ow!" The pain registered before the shock, and Tsuna's hand flew to his now-bruised shoulder.

"I warned you. Now, what are you supposed to call me?"

Tears pricked the corner of his eyes, and he hugged himself tight to try to stop them from falling.

"O…oni…san."

"Can't hear you."

"Oni-san." Just listen to the bully, Tsuna. At least until you can go home, and otou-san can make him go away.

"Good."

His 'oni-san' nodded in satisfaction, eyes back on the road.

He sniffed, and he tried to steady his wobbling breath, but the overwhelming wrongness of everything made all the walls he tried to put up come crashing down as he started to sob.

"Oh for the love of – what is it now?!"

"I-I-I w-w-want o-okaa-san a-and o-o-ot-tou-san!" Tsuna was wailing by now, and the hiccups caused by a full-blown panic made it difficult to talk. "I-I-I w-wanna g-go h-h-home! W-where're y-y-ou – w-where is o-o-oni-s-san t-t-taking m-m-me? W-w-what does o-oni-san w-w-want f-f-from me?!"

He dissolved into hysterics, and the older man heaved a sigh of frustration before pulling to a stop on the side of the road.

"Stop that crying. Now."

His voice was soft yet had a dangerous edge to it, and Tsuna tried his best to calm himself. He scrubbed his eyes and nose with the back of his hands, and gave the man a teary look. The stranger's expression softened a little, then he sighed.

"Look. I'm sorry, but you have to come with me for a while. This oni-san is in some…well, a lot of trouble, and only you can help me."

"W-what? B-b-but Tsuna isn't good at anything!"

"That's not true. I heard you sing."

"S-s-singing?"

"That's right. All you have to do is sing really well, and if your singing makes my boss happy, I'll let you go home."

Tsuna was too relieved to be suspicious, and he quickly nodded his head.

"P-promise?"

"I promise. Now," he dropped a packet of tissues in Tsuna's lap, "Clean yourself, and let's go on a little holiday, shall we?"

"A holiday?" The boy paused to blow his nose. "Where?"

Oni-san smirked.

"Italy."

The next three days were a whirlwind of activities. Tsuna was a wrench in Maso's plans, but if used correctly, he could turn him into a useful tool. First, he stopped at a department store to get some shoes and clothes ("You said you're six, but I got you stuff from the four-year-olds' section." "B-but okaa-san says I'm still growing!" "You'd better start eating your veggies then."). Then, he ran into the issue of how to smuggle a passport-less kid to Italy without getting caught. Stuffing the child into his suitcase was a tempting idea, but he knew it wouldn't pass security checks.

It took him a good three hours of burning the midnight candle while Tsuna slept on his hotel room's sofa, but after a lot of wheedling, deal-making, and bargaining, he managed to persuade the forger who worked for his famiglia into making a counterfeit Italian passport and mailing it to him via express shipping. He just needed to send the forger a picture, name, and birth date, and convince Tsuna into adopting a new identity.

Piece of cake.

"Why do I have to change my hair colour?" Tsuna asked for the third time, and Maso gritted his teeth with thin patience.

He was currently combing through Tsuna's hair with hair bleach and gloved hands, and he was quickly discovering that children were very squirmy.

"I told you: my boss really, really hates Japanese children. We have to change your hair colour so you look Italian, and then you'll have a higher chance of making my boss happy. But if you don't sit still, the hair dye will go into your eyes and make you blind."

That made the boy stop wriggling, but he still had a small frown on his face.

"Oh, alright." He lapsed into silence, watching Maso work around him. It was interesting at first, but Tsuna's nervousness made him fidget. "What colour is oni-san using?"

"Purple."

Tsuna's eyes widened in abject horror.

"Just kidding. You should be blond by lunchtime."

The horror didn't fade.

"...What's 'blond'?"

"Seriously? Yellow. Like Germans or Americans."

"Oh. Ooooh. I'll look like otou-san then. Hee."

"Hm." Maso finished applying the bleach, then stripped off his plastic gloves and dumped them in the toilet before closing the lid and flushing. "And now, we wait."

He gestured to Tsuna to sit on the toilet seat cover while he leaned against the dirty sink.

"While we do, we can come up with a new name for you."

"Eh? But Tsuna's always been Tsuna."

"Kid, I suggest that if you ever wanna go home, you need to stop thinking so much and just do as I say. Capisce?" He levelled a look that made the boy shrink. "As I was saying, we need to change your name."

"…H-how?"

"All I have to do is write your new name on your passport, and you'll pretend that's your real name."

"Oh. B-but I can change it back later, right?"

"…Sure. Whatever." Tsuna smiled in relief. "You will now be called 'Piccolo'." Tsuna's smile dropped.

"I don't wanna be named after a weird green alien!"

The kid was so easy to rile up.

"How about 'Mario'? Or 'Luigi'?"

"…"

"Too good for you. Baldasarre?"

"Bal-what?"

"Mm. Too long."

All joking aside, they were on a tight schedule. He cast his eyes around the bathroom, then his hotel room, and paused on a forgotten book on his bedside table. He'd brought it with him to kill time on the flight from Italy, but he didn't have time to finish due to his all-consuming search in Japan.

"Il Codice Da Vinci…Leonardo?" He looked at Tsuna, and Tsuna looked back. "Leo?"

"L-Leo?"

Maso nodded.

"Leo it is."

It took another hour to finish the hair, half an hour to snap a passport photo, and two whole days to send the photo to the forger and for the passport and plane ticket to arrive, but all that extra work and money spent made relaxing on the flight to Italy that much sweeter.

At least, until a blond Tsuna – now Leo – realised it was a twelve-hour flight.

AN: This is the first interlude. I will have one every few chapters or so; they're more "behind the scenes" than main chapters and will tend to be a little shorter. Because of this, the next chapter will come out a little earlier.

It took me longer than I want to admit to find a suitable fake name for Tsuna. But while looking through the Italian name directory, I came across a few interesting ones that made me laugh, because I can't imagine many parents wanting to name their child after such an established fictional character. Unless they were HUGE fans of said character.

One more thing: blond Tsuna = a younger-looking Primo. Ha! Anyway. More relevant characters coming up soon!