Chapter Text
“You’re quite strong,” Reborn spat out some blood and rolled his neck, “I’ll admit that. You’ve probably fought thousands of fights.”
Chuya’s hand wavered as he stared at the other who threw off a blood-stained coat to the side. He was supposed to be a big threat, the largest threat, but right now he appeared to be weaker than Chuya. His eyes narrowed, that wasn’t possible. This should have been a hard fight, incredibly so, one that Mori believed he would likely not survive if he accepted to go. He watched carefully, not sure if he should attack or stay back, maybe he had some hidden card up those sleeves.
The man that was looking back at him had a smirk that was reminiscent of the one that Dazai would wear for the people he manipulated. The people he conned of their lives. There was nothing nice in how he smiled, how he looked at others as though they were things he could use to do something, get somewhere. His hat shaded his eyes just well enough so that Chuya couldn’t see them without some degree of focus, but the white shirt underneath his coat was stained with a painful red that didn’t seem to have a starting point.
Reborn’s body seemed to glow a faint and soft yellow as a bruise on his cheek disappeared and his eyes sharpened. The small chameleon once again turned into a gun as Chuya stared. Guns and bullets were already proven to not work. He circled the other again – he only needed to stop Reborn long enough for Mori to locate Tsunayoshi again and they would be fine, he would be fine.
He watched as injuries receded and a scarless smirking face taunted him.
Chuya cursed because the fucker had a regenerative ability to rejuvenate himself.
What the hell.
He went in, legs flying in for a kick, only for it to be dodged.
No punch followed; no shots were made.
Chuya flew in again, faster, harder, forcing his bones to withstand the strength of his gravity. The hitman wasn’t unaffected, smile turning somewhat grim as he calculated beneath his hat.
His foot crashed a crater into the concrete road and Reborn tilted his hat, still amused.
Several fists hit the air as he tried to make contact with Reborn only for him to dodge every hit, always missing by just enough to avoid physical contact. Chuya jumped back and stopped attacking. They would have been stuck in a stalemate if he continued.
But there was no such thing as a stalemate.
An insurmountable wave stood in front of Chuya.
“… Sadly, I’ve already fought thousands, no tens of thousands of fights,” Reborn shot two shots into the ground, “And at least two gravity manipulators, so you’re nothing new.”
He shot forward and all Chuya could see was a blur before two bullets penetrated his stomach, pain bursting in dizzying amounts. His eyes were blown wide as the gun met him in close range. He activated his ability, but another five were already in him, one somewhere that felt lethal. He felt something warm, something impossibly warm seep through him as it dripped onto the ground. There was pulsing pain as some part of him seemed to have fallen off in impossible agony. Chuya pushed the bullets out of him and another six went through him. His ability flickered on and off, always staying in-between going wild and going under.
“I want you to stay alive,” Mori’s hands were held behind his back, “This is… a request. Not an order after all.”
Chuya sighed into the ground and collapsed. In the distance, he could see some of the detective members arriving, just in time to see his eyes lid and his blood drain. The stupid bandage asshole wasn’t among them. His eyes were closing when he saw the doctor, her ability activating with a shout as he felt his stomach closing and his pulse returning. The injuries he sustained disappeared and he stood, once again fully well. His hands flexed around broken gloves, and for once, he wondered if he could beat the other as his eyes widened a fraction.
“An instant regenerator,” Reborn’s gun was back in place, “And a gravity manipulator.”
“I don’t know how the fuck you pulled that off,” Chuya growled, “But I’ll fucking stop you.” Several more bullets punctured him and he fell back, surprised, only for the wounds to heal again. More wounds, more heals, again and again in a cycle as death seemed merely inches away from words being shouted, screamed. The cycle was endless as he found stability in its endlessness. He reached out, but Reborn was already gone. He disappeared to the doctor, whose cleaver stood between them. Her heels were missing and the butterfly in her hair was tangled up in a mess. Chuya was already next to them, but it didn’t seem to matter.
“But you both fall to the same error,” His hand caught the cleaver, “I just need to be fast. Faster than you think. Tsuna could beat you two considering he doesn’t think. At all.”
The doctor’s lips quirked up as she looked up at Reborn, face shedding away to reveal an illusion as snow seemed the fill the area. A look of annoyance seemed to cross his face as he dodged Chuya’s fist, only for another one to come up from another direction, seeming to lock him in place. And then Reborn shrunk, down into the size of an infant as he simply hopped over their fists and landed on the ground behind them. His hat had flown off as spiked hair just barely missed Chuya’s grasp. A single hit, he convinced himself, a single hit was all that he needed to overcome the other.
It was just one connection that was needed.
Reborn shot two bullets into the ground and started to grow again, hitting a height that was just shorter than Chuya. The image was perfect, completely natural, but Reborn saw through it as he dodged right and once again shot the real Chuya through the head at point-blank range three times. Only one of the bullets managed to reach the other as the other went through his neck. He was revived and a cleaver lodged itself two centimetres from his foot. There was a kick above and the swing of the cleaver below when he once again became a child, bouncing on top of the cleaver to force it to go against Chuya’s foot.
He activated his ability and the cleaver and everyone on it was shoved against the ground. Reborn regrew again into a five-year old and shot a lone yellow-covered bullet against Chuya who stopped it with his finger. Two bullets shot out from below as Chuya’s eyes widened as his hand suddenly grew tumorous, bulbs hammered open his glove as his fingers grew disfigured and exploded. The wound resealed itself as a stub. He jumped back to avoid another bullet. He wondered if he could recover from something like that with the Agency’s precious doctor.
Reborn shot another five, aimed at his arms and legs as the cleaver appeared behind him again and he parried it with his gun before catching the real cleaver before it met his head, knife sharp against his fingers. He shot the user in front of him and again at Chuya. Chuya closed in for close combat as the bullets reached his face and he was shot. The doctor revived him again, only for Reborn to locate her alongside the illusionist nearby. He struck the illusionist on the head and kicked him to the side, as he slammed against a nearby wall, blood stained his backs as he slid down.
His body glowed yellow again.
Chuya’s receiver remained silent and he cursed underneath his breath.
They still hadn’t located the lost decimo.
~
Tsunayoshi fiddled with his fingers, with the ring – not his ring, it wouldn’t be his in soon time – and with his pencil, spinning it around the backs of his knuckles in a manner that was awkward and unlike the smooth cyclic patterns that Gokudera would coax out of the utensil. There was an art to being as clumsy as him, both feet disagreeing on their direction, back tilted enough to cause a chair accident, body too short and too tall to move around a room. He was simply imperfect in the cluster of students and teachers and others that floated around, meandering with the ease of a ghost through a door.
Everything was improper.
Everything was improper in that his hands would fit in his pockets unevenly and his hair would flutter about some mornings and remain impertinently up other mornings. His shoes were always untied, not his shoelaces, but his shoes, with each and every fibre holding onto some fiction of a hook, tripping him on air, on his footsteps. His footsteps were light and hard, running onto the sidewalk when he was supposed to walk across and walking when he needed to sprint. He tumbled around into class and out of class, into his home and onto his bed, before being dragged out again by Reborn.
Then there was Reborn. Reborn, who was consistently chastising him, always smacking him with a five-ton or ten-ton hammer. Within the timeframe of a few months, he managed to grow just a bit, outgrowing his clothes and buying new ones from some extraterrestrial ship for suits, or at least, that was what he supplied as an excuse. Except, nothing would ever be an excuse from Reborn – it was all just orders. Do this, Dame-Tsuna. You’re going to become that, Dame-Tsuna. Let’s go there, Dame-Tsuna.
It would have been cute if there wasn’t the constant threat of a gun pointed at his back or head or face.
His fingers tightened around his pencil and the tip broke, breaking evenly as it hit the person in-front of him. There was a distinctive ‘ow’ as the entire class turned to face at him as he apologized sheepishly. He was in his last year of Namimori-chuu, and the view of Dame-Tsuna hadn’t changed one bit. Tsunayoshi thought that it would have been boring sooner or later, but the endless source of amusement he brought with his recklessness seemed to have no end.
Gokudera and Yamamoto didn’t wiggle into his class for once. It was surprising considering that Reborn would often always find a way to rig everything in their favour. Perhaps Reborn wanted something out of this. He was always trying to get something out of something, always trying to aim for a goal that no one could see, but him. Maybe that was why he was so successful in convincing Tsunayoshi to do what he wanted, regardless of whatever method he chose to undertake – be it force, or just a twist of words. Maybe it was age, age that brought on such methods of trickery that would make Bianchi blush tomato and apples, throwing the remainders at anyone who would dare look at her in the state.
Tsunayoshi’s attention flickered to the window where he could already sense his presence. The way how the trees seemed to bend, the shadows, and the sun all seemed as indicators, but narrowing it down, it was just Reborn. His attention flew back to the board, on it some nonsensical English phrase that the teacher had broken down into its components. The subject, the verb, and the object, written clearly in both Japanese and English. Tsunayoshi would soon rather admit that there was some source of demonic pleasure in the creation of the language as he stared at his textbook, the letters fumbling into another system of lettering that he simply couldn’t read.
It was hard enough that Reborn was already forcing him to start learning Italian.
His knee twitched and knocked against his desk, which shook, knocking his pencil case to the floor, as it flew open, comically throwing its insides out onto the floor with the clacking sound. It was a perfect arc, Tsunayoshi hummed, as he picked up his utilities, nodding apologies all the way as the shadows grew ominous. If there was one thing in his life that he could be proud of is that Reborn never managed to punch, slam, shoot, or kick the clumsiness out of him. He would perpetually be Dame-Tsuna. Sometimes he wondered if Reborn purposely let Tsunayoshi bump and hit everything just to keep him as such.
But then it wouldn’t be a win, so Tsunayoshi promptly ignored that thought.
The sun was setting into the classroom windows, dying everything into a pretty orange that reminded him of his lit hands, always warm in comparison to everyone else’s. How many students noticed the sun-dipped room when they left in a hurry, trying to reach their extra-curriculars? Tsunayoshi wouldn’t know, but he enjoyed it nonetheless, even as the teacher called on his name and he mispronounced his way through some sentence or phrase. He already knew that it would be something that no one would know – the teacher would just pick on him to embarrass him, so he long gave up trying.
He sat down amidst the burning laughter of his classmates, as he focused on the small wood inscriptions on his desk. The way the lines would join together only to separate. His grades actually improved to something average, not excelling, but not doing so poorly that it was as sad as eggs that plopped down on the stove before curling up from oil and heat. Dame-Tsuna had improved to simply being Tsuna at some point, and Dame-Tsuna was really just a pet name, some old joke that no one truly understood. When did everyone become so comfortable just calling him Tsuna or Tsunayoshi. He was still Sawada Tsunayoshi, not some nameless bastard that was born out of wedlock who didn’t deserve a name like some soap-opera like drama.
The bell rang and the class became devoid of students as Tsunayoshi slowly packed his things and left. Gokudera had joined the archery club and Yamamoto was still a part of the baseball club. Sasagawa had graduated and Hibari was simply Hibari. He should have expanded the number of friends he had, except it was exceedingly hard to talk to Kyoko or Haru or Hana – not because they were girls and there was some mysterious hormone within him, but because the reality they would face would only increase in disparity.
He felt as though his friends were either miles ahead of him or miles behind. He thought back to the way how Yamamoto could just accept everything with a smile so easy that it had rendered him stupidified. It wasn’t simply a swing-your-bat-and-win game, and he knew that, but somehow, he ended up accepting everything far easier than Tsunayoshi. Sometimes, Tsunayoshi thought that Yamamoto hadn’t accepted it. That he didn’t want to accept it for its true weight.
There was the thump of a weight on his shoulder and Reborn knocked his head with his fist.
“Come on, Tsuna,” He had small hands, still tiny enough for Tsunayoshi to hold both in one, “Let’s go.”
His hands were small, tiny really. They grasped onto him lightly as he started walking, his body being only a little weight on him. It would only be a few more years before he wouldn’t be able to sit on his shoulders with such ease. Reborn’s fingers knotted themselves against Tsunayoshi and his hat brushed his head, always low enough to just tap his ears from time to time. He looked around stupidly and Reborn forced him forward with a pinch.
Go where? He wanted to ask, but his legs were already going back home. He was locked in a tiny town for the time being and for some reason, all he wanted to do was leave. But he didn’t want to go to Italy, like Iemitsu or Nono wanted. He didn’t want to go to Italy where suddenly everything was placed on his shoulders and he had to bear the weight of something he didn’t want.
“I don’t want to go.”
He didn’t want to go to Italy, now or then.
“I thought your whining phase was over,” Reborn responded quickly, it was as though he already knew what he wanted to say, “I don’t want this, or I don’t want that. Just do it. There’s no choice in the matter.”
“There was never any choice in the beginning,” Tsunayoshi whined, his voice taking on a higher pitch that he knew neither of them was fond of, “Reborn… You just came and dragged me through all of this! What choice was there?!”
There was a light knock on his head and then there was silence. Maybe all the hits and bruises that shaped him against the backs of his enemies were truly apologies for the future that he was laying on him. An apology for bringing him, pulling him into a life that would have in on the run. Stuck in a mansion in a city that would not accept his existence. Surrounded by his family, or his responsibility for all of eternity. Trapped in a loop of undying principle and lavishness until the gold of the world was spent on them, rules collapsing on him – because that, he supposed, was why he was there. To squander the world’s resources at
He already had a slew of gifts.
Reborn threw them out, saying that half of them were poisoned and the other half was useless fodder that he didn’t need. Sometime he wondered if Reborn just threw them out because they would take too much space in the small room.
“I think I understand why you like math so much now,” Tsunayoshi sighed, “And that’s really horrifying, you know! Really! Scary! What kind of monster did you make me become to like math?!”
“Considering you still do terrible at it, a weak and pathetic monster,” His voice was squeaky, “Clearly not monster enough. You have the world’s greatest mathematician beside you and you can still find a way to barely pass.”
“I thought you were the greatest hitman.”
“I am, don’t be annoying and walk faster.”
Tsunayoshi walked faster. He was scowling, but he knew it would be the closest open compliment Reborn would give him. It took him three weeks to realize that Reborn saying that his grade was ‘alright’ was genuinely ‘amazing considering your level’. He had at first pinned it to some manga-level tsundere-ness, except the mere look on his face when he saw Reborn warranted a slam to the top of his head, hard enough to make him see stars.
“It’s alright because you can do better. Think something that stupid again, and I’ll make you regret your existence.”
Tsunayoshi wondered where Reborn got his infinite supply of Tsunayoshi-can-do-better wisdom because it was truly endless.
“It’s because you exceed your technical capacity.”
“What?”
“And don’t call it Tsunayoshi-can-do-better wisdom,” Reborn responded, “That’s stupid.”
“And what is a technical capacity?! Can you even measure that?”
Reborn turned to the side, ignoring him as Leon transformed into a phone, “Mama is telling us to buy some salt. Sea salt.”
“She- She doesn’t need actual salt from the sea!”
“Maybe… We should get both in case.”
“Reborn! No one needs actual sea salt! I’m not running all the way there! She needs it fast. Fast! Quickly! Uh- Ra-Rapido!”
“Then get it fast, Dame-Tsuna.”
From under the brim of his hat, Reborn hid the small smile that burned onto his face as his student raced across Namimori.
The town glowed under the sunset sky.