To all those who guessed Phoenix... You would be correct! I'm trying to do a more credible spin on canon, but I will say that not ALL the female monsters will attach themselves to Tsuna (cough Ruby cough) and one character is going to be genderbent for fun. Also, I have plans for Mukuro and Chrome to make things a little more interesting.
Just a head's up, Hibari does have monster heritage and will being joining Youkai Academy soon. Special props to anyone who can guess what sort of monster he and Fon are! XD
The headmaster's grand plan to deal with the seal was both simple...and rather manipulative.
Simply put, he was going to 'leak' the information that Kasai Tsunayoshi was a 'human' to the Disciplinary Committee. Kuyou was already irritable that the Newspaper club had reformed and was not only reporting news but was actually making it. If he even thought that Tsuna was a possible human, he wouldn't hesitate to go after him with the full force of his group.
Not only would it 'purge' the school of a weak human, but it would deliver a serious blow to the Newspaper Club and would almost certainly destroy the morale of the members and remind them of their place in the school hierarchy.
Considering the sort of monster Kuyou was, the odds of him actually killing Tsuna were so low it was a joke. Even with that seal on him.
He made sure to alert Nana of the plan, so that she could make arrangements for what would come after. Since he knew what her monster form was, he knew that the boy would need a little extra help to fully recover from that seal being removed so forcefully.
Once she was ready, he brought her to the school and leaked the information to the arrogant fox brat.
Now they just had to watch the fireworks from a relatively safe distance.
Three days later...
Tsuna didn't know why, but his instincts were on edge all morning. They weren't doing anything too dangerous today...just handing out newspapers.
So when the Disciplinary Committee arrived and looked right at him with an expression he KNEW was trouble, he tensed.
This...would not end well.
One moment he was standing there with newspapers in his hand, the next he was sent flying into a tree.
"Tsuna!" cried Moka in shock. The other girls stared dumbly before their minds rebooted ten seconds later.
"A filthy human dares to sully MY school? I'll remind you of your place!" snarled Kuyou.
"Human?" said Moka confused. She knew for a fact Tsuna wasn't human...she could taste the monster heritage in his blood after all.
Tsuna threw up a bit...he hadn't felt this bad since the one time Hibari-sempai personally took him to the hospital after a beating. He never thought he would miss having the shadow of Hibari Kyouya hanging over the populace.
He would not be able to accurately recall what happened during the short, but highly memorable fight with the kitsune. All he would remember was the fire in his veins and the sheer level of power being unleashed all at once when he was struck with Kuyou's fire lance to his heart.
His fierce desire to live translated into pure power coursing through his veins.
He felt fire flowing over his skin, forming into feathers and a sort of armor. His face elongated into a sharp beak, his arms became massive wings of pure flame, and his feet became sharp talons able to rend the pathetic fox into shreds. He felt lighter, cleaner than ever. It was like a fog had lifted from his mind and his soul, allowing his true self to shine after far too long.
A loud piercing cry emanated from his new beak, sending a wave of sound across the earth. He was floating, no, FLYING above the pathetic kitsune who had dared to challenge him.
He remembered the blaze of flame that completely annihilated Kuyou, before the cry of a familiar figure attracted his attention.
It was another phoenix, this one slightly older and female. More importantly his instincts knew this other phoenix.
This was mother.
He followed the other phoenix to an isolated building, and the second he saw the low basin filled with strange ash, he knew what to do. He practically buried himself in the ash and fell into a healing sleep.
"What the hell just happened?!" said Gin, almost hysterical.
It was understandable really... one minute Tsuna was pretty much dead, the next a living coat of flame flowed around him and he turns into a freaking phoenix! A monster so high in the Monster hierarchy that even VAMPIRES had to show deference to them!
Seriously, how did a skittish puppy like Tsuna end up being a phoenix of all things!
Not even Moka expected this to happen. Yukari, however, looked slightly thoughtful.
"You know this explains a lot. Like why he's still alive after having such a sloppy forbidden seal applied to him or why he had such a large amount of Sacred Ashes with him."
"Sacred Ashes?" said Kurumu.
"It's a rare, almost impossible to find item that can accelerate the healing of nearly any injury, disease or illness. Even a pinch of it could heal a nasty illness like cancer. Tsuna had a sizable bag of the stuff," said Yukari. "Rumor has it that the ashes come from the rebirth process of a phoenix, which is why it's so hard to get. Only a very select handful of people are allowed access to it, and they have to be pretty high up in the favor of the Phoenix race to get see it."
"Where did Tsuna go?"
"Hehehe... if you girls want to follow me, I'll show you where he is."
"...Aren't you the bus driver?" asked Kurumu.
"Once it was confirmed he had a forbidden seal on him, the headmaster made a few arrangements. Including bringing a certain person in from the outside," said the driver.
"Wait...so the whole lie about Tsuna being a human was deliberate?!" demanded Moka angrily.
"The only way to remove those seals is if he was thrown into a situation where death is a near certainty. Besides, that fox brat needed a reminder that he wasn't at the top of the pecking order around here," said the driver unrepentant.
Moka fumed, and the other girls weren't that far behind.
When they reached the discreet building a bit away from the school, their first reaction was to rush in.
However they were blocked by a rather pleasant woman who looked rather familiar.
"You must be Tsu-kun's little girlfriends!" she said cheerfully.
All three girls blushed at that.
"Excuse me ma'am, who are you?" asked Kurumu.
"I'm Tsuna's mother, Nana," she said, still smiling.
"Is Tsuna going to be okay?" asked Moka.
"Come in and see for yourself. He's sleeping right now, but he should wake up in an hour or two. I made sure to bring enough ancestral ash to cover him twice over."
Yukari looked at the almost egg-like mound in the center of the shallow basin. The gray ashy coating completely covered the being inside, who was clearly sound asleep. She made sure to stop Kurumu from attempting to touch it.
Moka looked at him with concern.
"Is he alright?"
"Ancestral ash is very powerful. Once he wakes up he'll be right as rain. The whole 'reborn from the ashes' myth isn't too far off the mark after all. Though after all that's happened, I'm more surprised Tsuna hasn't undergone a proper burning day already," said Nana with some irritation.
If she had known about the seal, she would have dealt with it much sooner.
Two hours passed, and the girls stayed close. Finally, the mound began to stir as the ashy 'shell' began to crack and fall apart. The ash began to fall from around the bird's body, and it began to preen it's feathers to insure none of it remained. It carefully stepped out of the circle, and wrapped it's wings around itself into a second cocoon.
Then it began to grow until it was roughly the size of a human, though the height was at least four inches taller than Tsuna was originally.
When the wings opened up, Tsuna looked like a proper fifteen to sixteen year old, rather than the almost thirteen year old appearance he had before. His abdomen had filled out and he had a lithe figure of a runner. He was also completely naked.
Moka and Yukari squeaked a bit, while Kurumu looked at him appreciatively.
Tsuna looked to his mother, who nodded towards the next room which had a proper shower. He left the room to get properly cleaned up.
"Wow...how did he go from a skittish kitten to that?" said Kurumu, gazing towards the direction Tsuna had gone.
"The seal on him stunted more than just his powers...it also stunts puberty, intelligence, and growth," said Moka scowling. "There's a reason it's forbidden."
"So you're saying that's what he should have looked like from the start?" said Yukari.
Nana nodded. The ancestral ash merely sped up the process he would have undergone over the next few months and allowed her son to actually reach the potential he would have lost otherwise. She was still pissed Iemitsu had done this to her child though.
When Tsuna came out, he was only wearing a pair of sweatpants.
"Are you okay?" asked Moka.
"I feel better. My head no longer feels like there's a vice on it," said Tsuna rather cheerfully. "You weren't hurt by that stupid fox, were you?"
Yukari made a strangled noise over Tsuna calling Kuyo a 'stupid fox'. Were he any other monster, that would be grounds for any kitsune to want to murder him as brutally as possible.
As it was, it would take three days before the rest of the school understood that Tsuna really was in fact a rare phoenix, and that some idiot had sealed him as a child which was why Kuyo had mistaken him as human in the first place.
Keito and the rest of the disciplinary committee were suspended from their positions pending further evaluation, as Tsuna wasn't quite sure he wanted to deal with that headache yet.
He was more inclined to track down a certain prefect from back home and dump it all on him with the express agreement that Tsuna and his girls act as the 'angels of mercy' to temper his biting habits.
After all, if Kyouya got his fangs on the rather pathetic members that had grown under Kuyo's rule, he wouldn't hesitate to bite them all to death to display his superiority as a carnivore and instruct them on how to do their damn jobs properly while insuring the rest of the students learned to fear the words "I will bite you to death."
Tsuna would not be surprised if Hibari Kyouya had some form of S-class monster lineage. He really wouldn't.
Mizore was a little bewildered when Tsuna approached her directly and asked her for help.
Specifically he wanted her to put her habit of taking multiple photos of him to good use for the school paper and for the book Yukari was making regarding the limited amount of information that would be allowed out about phoenixes for the general monster population.
The fact he had known she was stalking him and had been photographing him from afar for the past two months was mortifying, in her opinion.
That he had no problem with it and was the one to suggest she join the Newspaper club so that she wouldn't have such sloppy photos for her collection was a surprise though.
The girls had mixed feelings about the matter.
"Tsuna, are you really okay with encouraging her...habits?" said Kurumu twitching.
"So far the only thing she's done is observe me from a distance. I've never seen her try to breach my privacy or discourage the rest of you from being friends with me through malicious harassment. If we encourage her to join us now before her obsession gets any stronger, then we can avoid a headache later by nipping any jealousy in the bud," said Tsuna sensibly.
Yukari looked thoughtful.
"You know, he has a point. Besides, none of us are very good at taking photographs for the paper."
Kurumu and Yukari turned to Moka. She looked at Mizore.
"Are you okay with being part of our little group, or are you more inclined to keep Tsuna for yourself?" she asked Mizore seriously.
Mizore blinked, mostly surprised Moka was the one to ask.
"To be honest, being part of a sisterhood attached to a single mate isn't that uncommon where I'm from. And if he's capable of drawing a vampire on top of a succubus to him and actually holding your interest without any in-fighting, then odds are he's too manly for me to handle solo," said Mizore bluntly.
Kurumu nodded in emphatic agreement that statement.
"Then I have no problem with you being part of this growing harem, so long as Tsuna remembers to get our agreement to any new members first."
"Wait, harem?" squawked Tsuna. "Oh gods, is that why my mom kept crowing about grandbabies before telling me not to get any of you pregnant before we graduate?!"
The girls looked at each other, before breaking out into evil giggles. It was just typical Tsuna hadn't picked up on their romantic interest in him until Moka pointed out what was happening.
"Relax Tsuna. It's really not that uncommon for a stronger monster to attract multiple mates among the Monster race," said Moka, giggling. Even her inner self was cackling at his expression.
"In fact it's often considered a mark of how strong you are, to be able to hold multiple partners...especially if they're of a stronger race like vampires. The fact you drew someone like Moka or myself in on top of Mizore-san is going to be a major boost to your reputation among the older monsters, especially if you can keep up with us in the bedroom," said Kurumu laughing.
Tsuna's face was a solid red, he was that embarrassed. However the fact he wasn't trying to dissuade them from dating him at once spoke well in his favor.
Actually, he was already planning to see if they could visit Namimori so he could direct Hibari-sempai to Youkai Academy in order to take over the disciplinary committee and revamp it to what it was supposed to be. The idea of seeing his former bullies being gobsmacked over the fact that 'dame-Tsuna' had multiple hot girlfriends who were perfectly fine with sharing him and would happily accept additional girls into the group was one that really appealed to him.
Let it never be said he couldn't hold one hell of a grudge over the crap they put him through.
(On the plus side, Mizore turned out to be a major budding photographer, as she took some rather excellent pictures of Tsuna in his phoenix form...and a few shirtless for her own collection.)