A/N: Birthday fic for my friend who LOVES OP-Hyper Intuition Tsuna. One-shot for now, I might make another chapter or two if inspiration calls. (I... Might change the cover, eventually. I was just too... I couldn't be bothered this time, really. And I don't like using the same cover for multiple stories.)

WARNING: Blatant disregard for canon!Hyper Intuition and absolute bending of KHR reality. This is bordering crack-humor. (Though it was a lot more amusing in my head. :I)

I don't own Katekyo Hitman Reborn.

Tsuna was five when he had experienced the first instance of his "paranoia."

It occurred a little over a week after the strange old man and the weird-blonde-that-liked-to-pick-him-up-and-spin-him-around-against-his-wishes visited.

Now, Tsuna had always been a bit of a clumsy, scatter-brained child—something that only worsened as he grew older, gained longer, gangly limbs and took on more responsibilities—so it stood to believe that he was rather well-acquainted with the streets surrounding his home.

Literally. As in, face-to-concrete familiar.

It was terribly unfortunate, this. Because not only was five-year-old Tsuna prone to clumsiness, but he was also quick to tears.

And a week after the strange pair's visit, on his way to the local park while his mother spent time with her friends, he tripped.

Panic welled up from within him as the world seemed to slow, and he could almost feel the painful result of his clumsiness—even before he actually hit the ground.

But instead of the inevitable happening, instead of falling to the concrete in quiet acceptance, something sparked. And before Tsuna even realized what was happening, he moved.

Pivot. A shift. His right foot planted itself on the ground firmly, followed by his hands before he vaulted over in a roundoff, landing on solid feet with his arms held stiff in the air, eyes wide in shock.

He hadn't fallen. He hadn't hurt himself. He hadn't fallen and hurt himself.

What just happened.

So overwhelmed with the surprise, utter shock, and elation that he hadn't tripped, Tsuna did the only thing his emotionally overwhelmed self could think of.

He cried.

(Passersby would mention the strange incident in casual conversation. The poor boy had babbled half-hysterical words of "I didn't trip! I didn't TRIP! I DIDN'T TRIP!" in complete and utter heart-wrenching confusion, and they would be betwixt wondering if the brunette had a history of abuse or if masochism was starting young.

What was with the younger generations. Seriously.)

Tsuna, of course, hadn't thought much of the incident after he calmed down.

He was just lucky. His kaa-san said that people could be lucky sometimes. So yes, it was just luck, it had to be—he hadn't been able to replicate what he had done, and the strange sensation and event eventually faded into the back of his mind.

The second incident starring his paranoia happened a year later, when he was six.

Tsuna had been walking to the primary school with his mother in tow, the latter fussing over him—"Do you have your pencil case, Tsu-kun?" "Yes mama." "What about your water? You need to stay hydrated." "Yes mama." "Oh, you have paper right? Not just your notebook paper? You have extra, right?" "Yes mama."—when that familiar spark in the back of his mind struck him.

Tsuna abruptly ground his heels into the ground and froze, his eyes darting around wildly. His kaa-san didn't understand why her Tsu-kun had suddenly stopped, and looked back at him with concern in her eyes.

But Tsuna wasn't paying attention to her. His eyes, instead, darted up towards a tree several meters away.

And he ran.

Nana's shocked calls for her son went unheeded, even as they turned to fear when she watched her little Tsu-kun—her dear, precious, but invariably clumsy son—

—Run up the tree.

And when a blur of brown suddenly flashed downwards, Nana darted forward, prepared to catch her son. (It was to no avail; her son had been so fastand she hadn't reacted in time—she watched in horror as he fell, approaching the ground faster and faster—)

But instead of impacting the ground with a cry, Tsuna flipped over and landed on his two feet with the flexibility of a cat.

And, perhaps ironically, within his small arms was cradled a tiny, mewling kitten.

As the strange adrenaline of whatever that was wore off, Tsuna felt his legs turn to mush—he had done it again, that weird… That weird thing that he did a year ago—and he was wrought with a frightening tremble, heedless to the way his mother patted him down in shock and worry.

But his gaze drifted down to the small kitten in his arms—large, innocent, emerald eyes peering up at equally innocent chocolate-brown—and through the shock and tremulous fear of what he had just done, Tsuna felt an odd warmth seep through him.

He still didn't know how he had known, but he knew that the creature in his arms had been just two seconds from plummeting to the ground, resulting in a severe injury—or possibly—death.

But Tsuna had saved it.

He had saved a life.

It was at that moment that Tsuna thought that, maybe, the weird spark wasn't so scary.

Ever since the kitten-tree incident (as dubbed by a six-year-old Tsuna, only for the name to stick as time passed) Tsuna had taken to becoming something of a vigilante in the neighborhood.

He paid more attention to his "hero-sense" (dubbed as such during his seventh year of life) and by the time he was eight, had made it a sort of habit to try and help the people he could.

His "hero-sense" did not always work. Sometimes it would work for other people—for instance, it had notified him of his mother almost injuring herself as the two of them gardened the other day—and sometimes it wouldn't. It seemed like it didn't work for people Tsuna didn't have a strong connection to, which, while okay, made him feel a little… Bad.

The only times his hero-sense worked without fail was when it directly involved him and a potential danger. All in all, it was a rather selective sense that wasn't really reliable, but relied upon nonetheless.

By the time Tsuna was eight, he had become completely enamored by his self-proclaimed status as the sort-of protector of his neighborhood.

It was cool. He had a "sense," a super-power, just like the heroes he saw on those TV-shows! Tsuna could be a hero, he decided, if he was responsiblewith his power.

Tsuna could be a hero.

It wasn't meant to be.

Everything was fine, at first—sure, he was sometimes bullied at school for his "fake-sense," but by the time he was nine it occurred often enough for him to prove that, no, it wasn't fake. The results ranged from awe to fear, splitting the total of those that called it "hero-sense" along with him and "freaky-sense," the latter being used by those who feared it.

He continued using his hero-sense as he could, trying to help as many people that he passed on the street as he could—ranging from quietly picking up a dropped pair of keys and slipping them back into the owner's pockets, to leaving a note for one of his mother's friends to not make senbei that day.

(One thing about his hero-sense that baffled him was that, for some reason, it made him wary of revealing to the adults that it was him doing all of these things. It was okay to tell his peers at school, however mean they could be, but not the adults, apparently. Tsuna listened.)

By the time he was nine, his hero-sense had saved him from multiple embarrassing incidents—getting accidentally drenched with paint when he walked under the gymnasium banner some students were working on—and life-threatening incidents—taking a different route home because his sense had warned him to before finding out the very next day that there was a stabbing on his usual route—alike.

Heck, it only got better when his sense started letting him know what days he would have a test or quiz in class (which, by then, "hero-sense" had changed to simply "sense" because he had started to waver from his hero-stage).

Overall, it was actually quite a boon, and Tsuna had come to appreciate his sense. So yes, everything was fine, well and good, at first.

But good things never lasted.

When Tsuna was ten, his sense had given him a vague warning that somehow involved hamburger steak.

Bemused, he went to the convenience store, bought the specified item (and how weird it was, because his sense was usually either vague or specific—never both, like in this case) and headed off in the general direction his sense was guiding him.

What he came upon froze the blood in his veins.

A dark haired boy stood in the park, wearing what appeared to be a school uniform, with his arms crossed and eyes closed. But that wasn't what shocked Tsuna.

The boy, who couldn't be more than a year or two older than Tsuna, was standing on top of a literal mound of dead bodies.

… Wait, there was a twitch. Near-dead bodies, then.

But why the heck did his sense lead him to this place!?

Cold, frigid grey eyes slid over to chocolate brown, and Tsuna flinched. His sense buzzed incessantly in his ears, for some reason telling him to give the hamburger steak to the scary boy but Tsuna didn't want to and what kind of warning is this you stupid sense—

A quiet growl broke through the silence.

It hadn't been a vocal sound. It had not come from Tsuna. And the pained sounds-of-the-dead the pile of not-dead bodies were emitting were a distinctly different kind of sound.

The scary boy stared. Tsuna glanced at the hamburger steak still held in his hands.

He flung the box at the older boy and ran like the devil was on his heels.

That had been the first incident of a faulty, rather useless warning from his sense.

He had thought it was just a fluke, that even his sense could give false warnings. But it only got worse.

It had taken a year for him to realize, but it wasn't that his sense was getting worse per se, or even faulty. Instead, it was getting stronger—identifying the most minuscule of problems that were harmless and otherwise useless to be warned about.

It, at first, involved only a small circle of people. There was Yamamoto Takeshi, a boy that was in the same class as Tsuna when they were eight, Sasagawa Ryohei, a senpai that was rather loud, and the scary boy (that Tsuna had later identified as Hibari Kyoya) from before.

During his eleventh year of life, he had brought shoe polish to Takesushi, bandages to the Namimori gym, a packet of baseballs to school to hand to Yamamoto, and had on various accounts saved both Yamamoto and Sasagawa… Money, via discounts, at the convenience store.

(All the while, he completely ignored his sense's constant warning about buying hamburger steak because NO. The second time where he was held at the end of a tonfa and questioned about his odd "offerings" was enough, thank you.)

(… At least, he tried, but then he found out the consequences of not listening to his sense, the next time he ran into Hibari. Tsuna would swear he still has the bruises from that particular beatdown two years later.)

And still, his sense didn't stop there.

It gradually grew, got even stronger and further reaching, including more and more of the people surrounding him to his warnings that were the most petty of nature. It got to the point that he knew when Yamazaki-san's prized flower pot was about to fall off of the window sill, when his kaa-san had forgotten her discount coupons at home before leaving to go shopping, when Yamamoto-san the elder was about to use the wrong seasoning for his rice—all while Tsuna was still in school.

Tsuna may not have been the most diligent of students, but he did try to pay attention in class and not fail. His stupid sense letting him know about all of the most useless of things while buzzing in the back of his head worse than a hive of aggravated hornets did not help.

By the time Tsuna turned twelve, it got so bad to the point where, unless literally everyone in the neighborhood was asleep, Tsuna couldn't.

Because more than once, he had been woken by his sense telling him that Aoki-san down the street left the burner on, or Miyamura-san left the gate open and her dog might run away, or Kaede-san needed to remember to press and iron her dress shirt because she had a major corporate presentation the next day.

And hadn't that been weird? Tsuna didn't even personally know these people!

In general, it wasn't just his awareness to situations that grew. His awareness to the people themselves grew—it was almost like, for some, he knew exactly what they were doing at parts of the day, and when sitting in class, he couldn't not notice how the girl in the third row was cheating, or the guy three seats to the left and four up was mumbling something in his sleep. It was a horrible cacophony of information being received and processed by his feeble mind that already had a difficult time focusing on algebra. It was like his "sense" quite literally heightened his actual senses, making him hyper aware and hyper in-tune with his surroundings and the people around him.

And as a result, hyper-done with all of this.

(He considered becoming a hikikomori. If he didn't have contact with people, it probably wouldn't be so bad, right? But his mother would be sad, so the idea, however compelling, was tossed from his mind.)

Life with his "sense" was stressful, to say the least, and there wasn't anything he wouldn't give just to make it stop. His mother had long since started calling it a "gift," and while Tsuna had initially agreed with her four years ago, that was not the case anymore. He had even been taken to multiple different doctors and specialists to try and figure out what was wrong, and was eventually saddled with medication for extreme anxiety.

(Which he stopped taking after it proved useless. If anything, it only made him sleepy.)

Oh, and he had also gained the nickname "Weird Tsuna," because of his sudden bouts of frustrated groaning and slamming his head into the desk whenever his "sense" decided to notify him on the latest, newest, most useless update on the citizens of Namimori. No, he didn't want to know that Osamu-san should choose the left choice for good luck and NO, he didn't want to know that Kawamura-san five seats over might need something for her "girl problems" oh my god.

WHY.

"Sense" no longer cut it for the nagging hell that it was, so he took a page from the third psychologist back he had went to, and renamed it. "Pain-in-the-ass" was considered, but Tsuna wasn't really much for swearing, and that was too long. "Prediction" sounded too mystical for his tastes, and held a positive connotation—as if this thing was good.

Thus, by Tsuna's thirteenth year, his sense had gained it's newest name, "paranoia."

And then Reborn arrived.

Tsuna stared at the impeccably dressed baby (not a baby, his paranoia provided, and had it not had a history of being accurate, if way to overzealous, Tsuna wouldn't have believed it.).

That morning, he had woken up especially early, his paranoia for some reason telling him to clean up his room and prepare himself for the day. He hadn't really questioned it—curiosity was there, sure, but it wasn't the most asinine and seemingly strange warning his paranoia had given him, so he just went along with it.

But when his mother had mentioned a home tutor, Tsuna's paranoia had sparked almost violently, and Tsuna's eyes darted around in panic at the presence he felt but couldn't see.

And then the not-baby literally appeared out of nowhere.

"Ciaossu."

His paranoia told him that, somehow, the not-baby was the reason for its acting up that morning. The not-baby was also a threat, something powerful, and Tsuna contemplated his options: run away, or wait and see what happens.

He decided to wait.

"I'm Reborn, the home tutor," the not-baby said in such a bland, unreadable tone, that Tsuna was hard-pressed to not believe that the not-baby was actually a robot in disguise. "I'm going to train you to become a Mafia boss."

Tsuna blinked. Waited. His paranoia didn't point out a lie or a joke. The not-baby wasn't lying. The not-baby was actually going to train him to be a Mafia boss.

A Mafia boss.

He blinked again, looked at the not-baby. Nodded.

And then he walked up the stairs back to his room, because he had long since stopped questioning the hell that was his life.

It was best just to go along with his paranoia.

Reborn stared after his retreating student with a blank gaze.

That… Had not gone as he had expected.

The reports had indicated that, while somewhat skittish and with abysmal grades, Sawada Tsunayoshi was a relatively normal teen. He had a few nicknames—"Dame-Tsuna" and "Weird-Tsuna," though the former was most often used due to his natural clumsiness and overall uselessness. So yes, relatively normal, according to the reports.

But normal teens didn't hear that they'd be tutored by a baby, be trained to be a Mafia boss, and then accept it like was the most normal thing in the world.

It was unexpected.

Of course, he was Reborn, so not long after Tsuna had disappeared up the stairs, Leon transformed into a gun and Reborn made his way up as well, following after his student. He wasn't finished talking, after all, and it was rude to leave in the middle of a conversation.

Reborn slipped into the room of his student (which was strangely clear of clutter and orderly for a teenaged boy, he noted) with ease, gun cocked and ready. When he was standing a foot away, he lifted his gun and pointed it to the back of his distracted, idiot-student's head.

"Dame-Tsuna," he said, smirking at the way his student quite literally jumped in surprise. "I wasn't done talking. It was rude of you to leave."

Reborn waited for a response as his student gawped at him, jaw working up and down as though trying to speak to no avail.

"... You…" Tsuna began eventually, eyes still wide and disbelieving. Whether it was due to the fact that Reborn was holding a gun, that he was Tsuna's tutor despite his appearance, or that Tsuna was to become a Mafia boss, he wasn't quite sure.

"You… You snuck up on me," Tsuna seemed to settle for, with wide—and was that awe?—eyes. "You... You managed to sneak up. On me!"

Reborn only lifted an eyebrow, hiding his slight bemusement. "I'm the world's greatest hitman, of course I—"

Reborn's mouth abruptly clicked shut, because Tsuna suddenly stiffened and started moving, twitching, in choppy, erratic movements.

Reborn just stood there and stared.

And then, Tsuna dropped to the floor in a dead faint.

Reborn stared at the unconscious form of his student with unveiled confusion, feeling out of his depth for the first time in decades. Only three words ring out within his mind.

What the hell.

The story of Tsuna's life, really.

And it was only going to get worse.

A/N: I have no idea. This idea was seriously WAY better in my head.