Code: KHR-TGTT-MC

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the featured media, the rights go to their rightful owners.

Media: Katekyo Hitman Reborn

Title: The Guide to Tomorrow

Notable Sub-genres: Gen. Exploration of Hyper Intuition.

Rating: "T" for Crude Language and Some Dark Themes including: the Sawada's Bad Parenting, the Mafia, some Violence, Sexual Harassment, Implied Racism.

Chapter: Multichapter

Status. In progress.

Reborn - against popular opinion - wasn't a sadist who'd dedicated his sole purpose in this life to punishing the people around him. Pragmatism had been beaten into him through the harsh realities of existing and growing up Mafia, and Reborn simply didn't place people's sensibilities overly high on his list of things to put into consideration. It was half the reason he had so little issue of pushing and bullying Tsuna into his Flames, the boy had been young but he would either rise to the challenge or the world he'd been thrown into would eat him alive. It had nothing to do with cruelty.

The Dying Will Bullet wasn't something Reborn used foolishly, either. In fact, Tsuna was the first person he'd ever inflicted it on because it was a gamble and the fate of the Vongola were awfully big stakes. Every time he pulled the trigger he was betting against Tsuna's regrets being stronger than the pain, than the humiliation and the fear. People had died because their mental fortitude wasn't up to the strain. Reborn would learn that Tsuna was more tenacious than anyone gave him credit for and it wasn't something to worry about, but it told Reborn something when the Ninth demanded the bullets' use.

There were other ways Reborn could have started Tsuna's training but it had made the message clear: if Tsuna cannot fulfil his purpose than he might as well be dead. It left Reborn with little less to do to keep Tsuna alive but to beat what the Vongola required him to know and to be, into him. Reborn didn't do it lightly but he'd also only taken on two students and one was already lost to the underworld. He didn't relish doing it again: putting time and effort into someone, moulding them and then…after all that, for it all not to be enough anyway.

(And every time Reborn had raised his gun to shot the Dying Will Bullet, it was a time that Reborn could kill his student. His dumbass, thirteen-year-old, barely out of diapers student that Reborn only took on to clear his dept to the Ninth.)

Reborn hadn't cared for Tsuna when he had first met the boy (and his student likely thought even less of Reborn), but when he had agreed to be Tsuna's tutor, he had accepted responsibility for the damned kid. Reborn would do it properly or not at all. He had studied Japanese before he had arrived, talked to Iemitsu (never again) and read Tsuna's file, which was all he could do to prepare.

He didn't get far into Tsuna's evaluation (civilian, civilian mother, terrible grades, no social life, tormented by his peers, hints of depression, scrawny, whiny, unsuitable, nothing to work with -) when he was informed through bad cursive that the boy's Flames had been sealed when he'd been nothing more than a toddler. It had the effect of getting Reborn more on board. The boy with no support system, a possible learning disability, seemed to have poor mental health and had been cut off from his heart of hearts.

Reborn had been in this business all this life; human illness was something he understood, he didn't get surprised by brutality anymore and honestly can't remember a time he did. Still, sat in that private aeroplane on his way to Japan, Reborn found himself sickened with the knowledge that they had crippled the boy because it was more convenient.

Reborn wasn't a good man - had never had the opportunity to be - he had done inexcusable things, things that would no doubt leave him beyond saving, but sealing is repugnant to him. To do that to a child that would be depending on their Flames in order to develop; a Sky, the most complicated of the Elements, was deplorable.

Unleashing Tsuna's Flames was less to do with the Vongola and more to do with Reborn's duty to his student. Reborn had never told Tsuna (and he never would) but Tsuna had been in an awful state. Tsuna's core was blocked; it felt empty, hollow. The scent rafting from Tsuna was dead, with his internal Flames suffocating inside him, trying to reach out, needing to be free, wanting to harmonise, to bond.

It was no surprise that Tsuna struggled with day-to-day life, that the boy would trip on air, could barely concentrate or think in coherent sentences for too long and anyone with a lick of Flame Sensitivity or were Awakened? It was uncomfortable. Tsuna's aura would irritate Reborn's own like an itch he couldn't scratch. The longer Reborn was around him, the worse it got. No wonder the boy drew bullies to him like moths to light.

(Gokudera and Mukuro were the only members of Tsuna's Guardians who were Awakened and knowledgeable enough to understand how ill Tsuna's Flames had been back then, but Gokudera was the only one whose feelings on it were clear. Half of his protectiveness came from that alone.)

In that situation, shooting Tsuna and releasing his Fames was an honest relief. It settled some of Reborn's own tension as the smell cleared, though Tsuna's Flames continued to reach out desperately. Until Tsuna could summon his Flames himself, though, Reborn would be anything close to satisfied. If he had to put Tsuna through all Seven Levels of Hell than so be it. It was for Tsuna's own good, the boy couldn't continue the way he'd been left.

That sort of sentiment - that kind of care hadn't been from any sort of kindness on Reborn's part. Tsuna was his student but he also couldn't ignore such a ruined Sky. It had to be fixed, if only because it was instinct for an Element to help even if they weren't harmonised themselves. Tsuna didn't notice but than the way he had been brought up had been affected by Iemitsu's stupidity, kept ignorant but trapped all the same.

Tsuna should have grown up with his Hyper Intuition and his Flames guiding his way. It was his birth rite from the founder of Vongola and the bearer of the Tri-Ni-Sette. That had been taken from Tsuna instead, stolen, and it would take years to properly build upon now. All the trials and tribulations that Tsuna would inevitably be thrust into meant that Reborn would get him where he was meant to be, but it was still playing catchup when there were other things Reborn needed to teach.

With his other students, he had tailored what he taught around what they needed. Dino, for example, didn't just need to learn how to fight or accept his family, it was finance, business etcetera. Tsuna needed to know his own mind, and beyond his Flames, he had to learn to trust his instincts. Combat was important - lifesaving. Improving his studies and the basics of Vongola and the Mafia were also unavoidable, but Reborn tried to keep it basic. He couldn't throw Tsuna at everything all at once.

In the first year, Tsuna had been made to battle a psychotic Mist and was forced to decide and bond with his Guardians. The second year was a fight for the rings where the broken condition of Xanxus and his Flames was enough to make Reborn feel ill. (He remembered that arrogant kid, once so proud of his heritage and of his family. Seeing what he'd been reduced to, the scars that weren't just physical… The lack of care was enough to diminish his opinion of the Ninth and his generation further and if it weren't for their old relationship, the contract Reborn had signed and his beleaguered faith in his student, he might have just walked away there.)

Then the Future happened before Tsuna was even given the chance to turn sixteen, and Reborn was made to watch his student and his developing family suffer the whole debacle, was made to see the cost of the Tenth's decisions. Being on the run, hunted and hurt was not an easy thing for Tsuna who was still too soft even with the stiffening of his back. Its damages all culminates in Tsuna taking a life.

The situations Tsuna had to deal with; the things Tsuna had had to do were things Reborn would not have allowed, if he had had any say in the matter. His student hadn't been ready; too young, too dumb, too undeveloped. It wasn't even that Tsuna were physically incapable, though he was, it was that Reborn could see the strain, could see Tsuna fraying around the edges as he rose to every challenge, every opponent with the simplicity of: don't die, can't die, don't let anyone else get hurt, they can't get hurt.

More than once, Reborn had wanted to interfere, he had wanted to protect or offer advice and every time he knew he could not. Their relationship was always changing even if nothing altered, it grew stronger while his partnership with the Vongola grew weaker. His teaching arrangements were few but the conditions were plentiful; Reborn had to let Tsuna walk by himself, even if his student could no longer stand. If it left Tsuna crippled, then that were the cost. Reborn had agreed at the beginning and he could do little about it now when they were easily able to find some other tutor, especially with the foundations already laid.

Reborn couldn't do that. Tsuna was used to being left, but Reborn wouldn't add to the number of people who'd let him down even if that left him ineffective, with little recourse. Not when Reborn had worked so hard to prepare Tsuna, not when Tsuna had come to look at him without fear - with trust Reborn had done little to earn. Tsuna listened to him, worried for him and had agreed to fight for him.

(Tsuna had saved Reborn when Reborn had resigned himself to a pointless death; a worthless end that no one would hear about and no one would care about. Reborn had few ties in his life, he hadn't expected Tsuna to be one - he hadn't thought Tsuna would risk everything for someone who'd brought the Mafia into his world.)

His contract with Vongola; the one that bound him to Tsuna and Tsuna to the Mafia, weighed on him more and more. The condition Tsuna had been in when they met became something that Reborn thought of often with the aching desire for someone to be punished, but Tsuna was getting better. His family were growing stronger, Tsuna was starting to harmonise with his Flames; developing into a man Reborn was proud to have taught and his Hyper intuition was growing more and more apt daily.

Reborn took vindictive pleasure in realising Tsuna's progress as a Sky who would reach out to anyone, could connect with even his adversaries. A leader Primo had accepted. A man who let his instincts guide him. His student hadn't started out as much but…there be a fire starter here.

Con/textual Vomit: This is just an excuse for me to explore the development of Tsuna's Hyper Intuition and entering the mafia it was meant to be a one-shot but then I didn't know how to begin so it ended up too long and with me unable to focus as I tried to think of how to go on. I am awful. This won't have many chapters.

Oz