Mechanical Bonds

Summary: Tsuna decided to appoint new guardians after becoming the Vongola Decimo officially. He does not give the rings to his friends. Instead, robots were appointed as guardians for the first time in the entire Vongola history. No one can do anything to change Tsuna's mind, not even Reborn. Then something goes wrong with the robots and Tsuna faces death. Will human bonds win over the programmed robots?

Chapter 5

War

Author's Note: Apologies for the long stop in between since the last update. I'm a little lost with what I wrote since it was supposed to be a short series. I guess I have no talent in writing short series if they are fandom things. It's either a one shot or a long one. I got enrolled for the degree course and also landed myself a full time job with an accounting firm. Time is going to be a luxury from now on and updates would be even more irregular than it is now. Thank you for staying with me and the reviews were lovely. I hope more people would come to know of this story and also leave a few reviews to keep me happy ^^

Xxx Destiny Aitsuji xxX

Shamal cursed. Reborn loved to make life difficult. Even being the best doctor there is Shamal could find no means of identifying the Decimo's health problems from his habits. Reborn had suspected something and was working on finding out what the boy was thinking. On the other hand, everyone probably knew the answer but was still in denial. The reason why the Ninth approved of Tsuna's decision had not been made public. Rumors of a succession plan had been circulating for a while but no proof confirmed it. Unless the doctor had a sample of the boy's blood, he would be unable to draw a conclusion to anything.

Shamal sighed. Reborn was not going to like this.

Xxx Destiny Aitsuji xxX

Mukuro heard of the assassination attempts through the weird series of happenings. He had also gotten information from the Cavallone Don who heard it first hand from the demon prefect. Things did not make sense. Chrome had also reported what she saw firsthand. The Sun arcobaleno had called for a meeting with the ex-guardian candidates along with a few others. Mukuro had declined. He had Chrome to go in his place instead.

He had a little investigation to do and the first visit would be to the creators for those dumb guardians.

Xxx Destiny Aitsuji xxX

Hibari was annoyed. From what Irie and Spanner told him, it was highly possible that someone was controlling the electronics of the car and also the fan. It had to be programmed beforehand or had the virus transmitted from an already infected device. If it was programmed beforehand, Hibari would know. He already went through the record footages in the hospital that Tsuna was in. No one tinkered with the fan.

That leaves the possibility of transmission. The question left is which device. Many devices come to mind and Hibari knew it would be ridiculous to remove the ones high on the suspect list. He no longer had the power to do anything about the brunet's decision. He was no longer a guardian. This is one of the rare times Hibari wished he had the ring.

The table cracked under pressure as Hibari slammed his tonfa into it, clearly frustrated at having his hands bound behind his back. Being powerless was not something the prefect took kindly to.

Draping the black jacket on his shoulders, the disciplinary committee chairman made his way out of the office. He would attend the meeting despite the crowding.

Xxx Destiny Aitsuji xxX

Tsuna was shifted from the hospital back to his home. Today, only Arashi was with Tsuna. Ame was in school helping Tsuna to take notes from class and Taiyo was under maintenance checks after his slow reaction. Spanner had insisted on a check even though they had done it only a few days before. There was a high chance of a defect somewhere. Irie advised the Vongola boss to have some human bodyguards in case the same malfunction applied to all the mechanical guardians and until they find out what it was, Tsuna would be in high possibility of danger.

The brunet denied though. He did not want his previous efforts to go to waste. Keeping his friends as far as possible from him was his decision. Even if his life was in danger, Tsuna refused to get them involved again.

Reborn was out and so was Nana. Arashi was the only one at home. Tsuna smiled faintly. It had gotten really quiet once all the kids were gone. Bianchi went back to Italy as well. The house felt relatively emptier and Tsuna smiled sadly. He really wondered if Lambo was well. Maybe he would be happier back in Italy. Tsuna didn't really know. It was a fine day so far with the exception of his leg in a cast. He looked at Arashi who was doing nothing and then recalled how his painkillers were running low.

"Arashi… could you make a trip down to the pharmacy for me? I need a new supply of painkillers."

Arashi smiled and nodded before leaving. Now that Tsuna was truly alone, he sighed. Having his privacy compromised for his safety was really something he could do without. It was weird how peaceful it was. Tsuna could hardly believe he was enjoying a little time by himself. A genuine smile could be seen on his face as he relaxed. Not as Vongola Decimo but as Sawada Tsunayoshi.

He closed his eyes and was halfway through dreamland when his hyper intuition flared to life. It urged him get out of the house but Tsuna was too comfortable to move, not that he could when a leg is in cast. However, the urge burned so badly Tsuna was forced to open his eyes.

He wanted to curse his bloodline but before even he could do that, he smelled something akin to smoke. His eyes watered and it became harder to breathe by the minute. Tsuna coughed and scrambled to open the window. By now, his room was thick with black plumes. The fire was spreading. The leg in the cast hindered his movements and Tsuna's clumsiness set in with his panicked state. At that point Tsuna knew he was going to die.

The faces of his friends flashed in his mind as he lay on the floor, drained of energy. He did not want to fight any more. A smile formed on Tsuna's face as he closed his eyes. "Thank you for being my friends. I hope with this, you can all be happy. Sorry for being selfish, I couldn't bear losing all of you another time. I got the memories of my future self and my parallel selves… I'm not strong enough to go through it in this world. I'm not as strong as I am in other worlds. Please forgive me…"

Xxx Destiny Aitsuji xxX

Mukuro was making his way to Tsuna's house for a chat and also to place his tag on the brunet. The mechanical robots were things he did not trust. According to Irie and Spanner even though they had designed the guardians to an intelligence that should be impossible to contaminate with virus through interaction with other devices, there could be a slight chance that they would be infected if the virus was not one that they knew of. In other words, two criteria must be fulfilled if anyone wanted to corrupt the mechanical beings. Firstly, there has to be a physical contact to transfer the virus into the system and embed it in a hidden program so it would not be detected by normal scans. Secondly, it has to be encoded by the programmer and the encryption was not a pattern code that currently exists. In other words, they had to be geniuses to do so and only a few people better than Irie and Spanner existed.

Mukuro frowned. Something felt off. He heard screams and turned to look in that direction.

Black smoke.

Fear gripped his heart painfully. It was in the direction of Tsuna's house. Mukuro rushed over immediately, composure damned.

He arrived at the scene quickly. Someone had called the fire department but nothing would be done before that. Mukuro grit his teeth. He could sense the brunet still in there, life weakening greatly.

Without thinking about the dangers of running into a burning house, Mukuro broke through the window on the second floor. He scanned the room for the brunet and found the boy on the floor, unconscious with a faint smile on his lips. Mukuro felt hurt. Did the boy really think he could die happily after tormenting them so much? There was no way Mukuro was going to let the boy die, not after dragging him out from the pits of hell.

By miracle, Mukuro made it out with the brunet in his arms unscathed. The boy was out of the fire but then Mukuro's heart nearly stopped when he realised something.

Tsunayoshi wasn't breathing.

Mukuro suddenly felt the chill seeping into his heart. It had been a long time since he felt this way. It was the feeling of dread. Forcing tears back, the man activated his eye to find Tsuna's soul while he teleported to the hospital with the corpse, rigor mortis setting in slowly but surely.

Xxx Destiny Aitsuji xxX

Author's Note: Sorry about the cliff hanger here. I'll try to write the next chapter asap… do leave reviews. I really do wish to see at least double digit reviews for this series ^_^