AN: Vongola's Triad of Evil VS hula-hula!Tsunayoshi. To celebrate my discharge from the hospital. Thank god for modern medicine. Dedicated to my precious readers who were kind enough to wait for my sickly carcass to get better.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Tsuna woke up, snorting.
Brown hair flopped lazily over a Hawaiian outfit that consisted of a grass skirt and (thank god it wasn't coconuts) a strip of colorfully designed spaghetti top tying into a ribbon at the back of his chest. He flipped the brown strands over a sweaty neck then paused. Something seemed very wrong here…
He patted at his chest. Okay…It was flat. That was normal.
He patted at his…down there.
…
Why was it flat too?
…
And why was he wearing a Hawaiian outfit?
The door suddenly cracked, stretching a dark line in the middle towards the wall. Three metal points stuck outwards from the crack. They disappeared and smashed again at the door, opening more cracks and lines.
Tsuna screamed and scrambled towards the window.
Screw dignity.
The trident (it was a trident, Tsuna had a feeling) quickened, finally splintering the door into debris onto the floor. A little girl with a skull eyepatch stood there, holding a trident three times her size. Tsuna paused from putting his right leg out the window.
Oh.
It was just a little girl.
She squeaked out, "Hi. My name's Chrome. Wanna play?"
He opened his mouth and an answering squeak came out, "Er."
"So? Wanna play? Wanna? How come you're wearing a grass skirt and I'm not? Where'd you get it? Can I have one too? What's your name? You never told me, you know?" She paused to take in breath, "Let's play house, okay? Kitty—your name's Kitty from now on—You'll be the housewife and I'll be the disgruntled businessman who's married to you. How come you're not wearing a pink bikini top, Kitty?"
Faced with this sort of onslaught, Tsuna could only say, "…But my name's Tsuna."
Chrome ignored him and pulled his hand—and why were they the same height?—and tugged him outside of his room.
There was something wrong here. And Tsuna planned to play detective.
Er.
"WATCH OUT!"
Tsuna ducked and pulled Chrome with him.
A baseball whizzed over their heads and knocked over a vase—shattered it—and finally lodged itself into the wall, in a sizzling crater.
White-knuckled and teary, Tsuna watched a lanky boy in a baseball uniform run into the hallway where they were. He stopped and scratched his head and laughed. "Sorry about that." He walked over and pried the charred remains of the baseball from the wall. "Name's Yamamoto. What're you guys doing?"
Chrome bared her teeth at him, while holding tightly onto Tsuna's hand in jealousy, "I'm Chrome and this is Kitty—"
"—It's Tsuna! My name is Tsu—"
"—and we're playing house. You can be the dog if you like," and Chrome nodded graciously at Yamamoto like a queen.
The baseball kid made a face then said, "I dunno. I don't really want to be the dog. Actually let's just play baseball. I need other people too anyway."
"What! No, yuck," Chrome stuck out her tongue while Tsuna was staring fixatedly at Yamamoto's toothy grin. There was a gap between his front teeth. There was something really familiar about these other kids…Chrome turned and saw Tsuna staring at the other kid.
She glared at Yamamoto. "We're girls. We don't play boy sports."
"Er," Said Tsuna. He was a girl? He patted at his chest again.
Yamamoto raised an eyebrow at him then laughed. "Don't worry. I'm sure it'll grow."
Tsuna and Chrome flushed (for very different reasons). Tsuna clapped two hands over her (his!) red face and mumbled helplessly. Chrome shook her head then squinted at Tsuna's chest then scowled at the baseball boy. "You pervert."
"By the way, housewives don't wear grass skirts." Yamamoto said.
Chrome tsked while Tsuna nodded her head desperately. The skirt was kind of itchy.
Then Yamamoto continued, "You should wear an apron over it."
They decided Yamamoto could come and be the son from a previous marriage of Chrome's. More or less, Yamamato agreed since his baseball was gone and Chrome needed a human shopping cart and Tsuna was forced to follow along.
Tsuna was still trying to decide why she felt awful wearing a grass skirt (aside from the itchiness).
Chrome pushed Tsuna into the kitchen and demanded that she cook them the wedding feast to celebrate their anniversary. Then the self-declared businessman grabbed Yamamoto's hand and declared they were going shopping for clothes.
Tsuna turned and faced the suddenly taller counters and table and kitchen appliances.
Why had everything grown bigger?
Obviously he was a girl. Or she was a girl.
Otherwise, why would she be wearing a grass skirt?
Okay, that problem was solved (and Tsuna ignored the slight niggling doubt inside his head because the alternative was so much more difficult).
Now, where were her parents and who were those two other kids and why was the house bigger?
She stood on her tip-toes and fingered the bowl on the shelf above the kitchen counter. It slipped and almost dinged her head. She held it in her hands and wondered how to cook a cake. It couldn't be too hard, could it?
Chrome threw another silk sheet on top of the pile Yamamoto was carrying. There was business to be done here. "See, we, meaning me and Kitty (It's Tsuna!) had this agreement, you know? A mutual economical agreement where I would support her finances for an extravagantly fabulous shopping life and she would give me a wedding kiss everyday—"
Yamamoto interrupted, a bit muffled from all the sheets and clothes he was carrying up to his face, "—a wedding kiss? Do you even know what a wedding kiss is?"
Chrome paused from perusing a closet drawer full of frilly dresses. She turned a serious face to the older kid and said, "It's like this."
Then she puckered her lips and stuck out her tongue and wiggled it around.
"That's a wedding kiss. Me and Kitty haven't done it yet, but we will, you can be sure of that. So anyway, to be a good businessman like me, your dad, you have to have a good eye and ooh, look at this." She brought out several wrapped perfume bottles.
Yamamoto rolled his eyes behind their pretend shopping. Girls. At least the brown-haired one was quiet. He crinkled his forehead for a bit and wondered if he could get infected with girl cooties. Probably not, he decided.
Maybe he could convince Tsuna to play a game with him. Shopping was kind of boring.
As they circled the bedroom they were in, they never noticed the pair of gray eyes watching them from the window.
So, that was a wedding kiss, huh?
Tsuna shoved the bowl of sugar and water and pancake mix into the oven. Thank goodness there was that box of pancake powder. After all, everyone knew pancakes were just undecorated cakes. Then she looked at the mess of bowls and plates and measuring spoons on the table. Oh well. She hated cleaning anyway.
They (meaning the two devils that put her in an oversized apron) weren't back from whatever they were doing.
This was a perfect opportunity to look for information.
She wandered outside the kitchen, still in a grass skirt and an apron.
Yamamoto was planning a take-over.
This game was boring and it needed spice. It needed excitement and blood and action. And he was already eyeing a couple of neckties and a fedora hat. Yamamoto smiled, eyes crinkling and mouth sweet as ever.
He was now the infamous ruthless mobster Yama out to steal the business empire right underneath Chrome's nose.
A little cute brown-haired assistant wouldn't go amiss of course.
Dumping the load on the floor and sneaking away while Chrome was rubbing a velvet skirt to her cheek, Yama was pleased to note that his usual predatory grace was still intact even after being used as a porter for all of Chrome's dumb stuff.
Girls.
Chrome stopped play-pretending when she noticed Yama had escaped already. She glanced over at the window, no longer seeing the pair of gray eyes from before. So he'd gone in then? A devious smirk spread on her face.
All of the sharks were here to play.
The story goes like this. Many many years ago, a weary businessman traveled half-way around the world and landed himself in Hawaii. There he saw the loveliest hula dancer and decided to marry her right on that spot. After their honeymoon, they came back to Chicago only to find that the mafia had slowly invaded the area.
Then the CIA decided to get involved.
Tsuna caught sight of the note on the table on the living room then smacked herself on the forehead. Mama always left notes in case she had a shopping spree emergency. Pops would probably be off in Italy. She checked the note. Yep, same words—Ma out for shopping, Dad out for business.
That was one mystery solved.
Those other kids…wait, she didn't really wanna go near them to ask them any questions.
Well, on to the last mystery.
She backed up a bit, her hair on her neck rising. What if this was all the workings by some mad midget scientist out to make everyone shorter than he was? She thumped her fist. That could be it! That evil scientist had invented a shrink ray and had shrunk everyone in the whole world. He would never get away with it, the FIEND.
She sure was smart. Watching all those Scooby-doo's hadn't been a waste of time after all.
Sadly the hula dancer was a few coconuts short of a coconut tree.
Now, all Tsuna had to do was find the insane inventor and kick him between the shins. Whatever shins were of course. And then she could say she honestly had saved the world. Hip hip hooray!
Something grabbed her shoulder and she let out an ear-splitting screech.
"Calm down, calm down! It's just me, Yamamoto, remember?" Well, the boy was sort of distinguishable beneath the brim of the fedora hat that occasionally slipped to cover his crinkled eyes. And the green and black striped necktie, which Yamamoto wore, looked easy-made to strangle him if he…well was the inventor. Tsuna sighed in relief. "Oh, it's just you, Chrome's son."
Yamamoto frowned, "Nah, we changed games. I'm a mobster now, Yama's the name, and I'm here to kidnap you. Oh, hey, got some cookies?" He rubbed a bit at his rumbling stomach. He was a growing boy after all.
Chocolate popped into Tsuna's brain and her mouth automatically opened to say yes.
"Well then, come on. Lemme get them," Yama the mafia-man gripped her wrist and dragged her back to the kitchen where a faint stream of black smoke was already emitting from the doorway.
Oops.
Still, this was a good chance to interrogate one of the suspects, Tsuna thought. She had Yama alone and she could easily put the spotlight on him while they were eating cookies. That was the PLAN.
Yamamoto parked the brunette onto one of the chairs, hauling her by her hips then went off to sniff the oven with the burnt pancakes. Tsuna filed the questions in her mind while Yama threw out the pancakes and then sniffed out the cookie jar. Wow, maybe he could be a dog like Scooby-Doo!
"So, Mr. Yama," Tsuna took a bird bite out of the chocolate cookie handed to her by Yamamoto, "you don't happen to do any inventing do you?"
And even though his mouth was full of cookie crumbs Yamamoto still answered, "Mno, 'm mobfer—" he swallowed, "remember?"
Tsuna scratched her head and took another bite, "Well, if you don't invent things then why are you in my house? How come you're not at your house?"
Yama cocked his head at the girl. "Well, my baseball went into your house and then you guys pulled me into a game of house."
She flushed at having forgotten, "Oh yeah."
Tsuna took another bite only to find a mouthful of feathers.
"Bleck!"
Outraged cheeping and a yellow furball floated in front of her face. Good god, Tsuna had almost eaten one live bird. She gagged, hoping there were no lice on the canary. It had probably perched on Tsuna's cookie about to partake some of the crumbs when Tsuna had chomped down without looking. Meanwhile, Yamamoto was laughing and asking how the bird had tasted and if Tsuna was secretly one of those cannibal savages he'd seen on Discovery Channel.
Tsuna could feel embarrassment race up her face and slow fat tears trickle down her face.
She hated being made fun of. Especially since it happened everyday at school.
"Y-you…big big pile of STUPID!" She scrambled away from the stunned Yamamoto.
And the infamous mobster got a slap to his face by one Hawaiian hula girl.
Tsuna ran out of the kitchen, out the hallway, and out to the garden then hit solid rock…which was actually the small chest of a black-haired weirdo staring at her intensely. He was probably friends with baseball jerk and was wondering where his friend had gone off. All boys were the same.
She spat out, "Your friend's inside, so go and get him already."
A yellow little furball was cheeping and flying around the guy's head.
Tsuna's eyes rounded. Had she accidentally (almost) eaten this guy's pet bird?
Then the guy grabbed a hold of one of Tsuna's brown strand of hair and tugged painfully. "OOW!" Fresh tears sprung and Tsuna's face pinched because that hurt.
The weirdo smirked then tugged again.
"Aah! What do you want? Oow, what is it? Is there something on my—aargh—hair?"
Finally hair-tugger paused and said, "My name is Officer Hibari and I'd like to know why there are several under-aged minors running around a house alone without adult supervision?"
Tsuna gaped at him then ouched again and then said, "…but you're almost the same age as I am and you don't have adult su-supewhatever."
Hibari ignored it then pulled even harder.
"Yiaaow—my mama went out shopping and it's fine becaOowse I'm already a big girl."
The officer or Tsuna snidely thought as pretend-officer looked at her contemplatively while keeping a hold of her hair. He shrugged, "Okay, then." Then his stomach grumbled, a loud echo in the backyard. Hibari leaned forward and sniffed, giving Tsuna the heebie-jeebies. What a creep.
Then Hibari glared at her. "I smell cookies."
"Yeah…? So what?"
Hibari frowned at her then like a lightbulb turning on, pulled even harder on Tsuna's hair who, in retaliation, screeched into his ear.
Then he spoke calmly like he was talking about the very nice weather they were having these days (sunny with a bit of a tropical wind, actually), "What is the color of your undergarments?"
She stared at him blankly. "What?"
Hibari repeated it, "What is the color of your undergarments?" His voice remained smooth, neutral.
"…Why you're asking me that?" Tsuna said.
The boy paused and looked at her like she was an idiot. "So we can coordinate of course. Can't have a proper wedding without proper garments."
"…What?"
Hibari rolled his eyes, annoyed. "I need a wife who'll cook me lunch. Let's get married already and do the wedding kiss then you can make me lunch. Anyway, I saw what you did to Hibird. You owe me for not beating you to a pulp for that. As your new (and only) husband, you have to listen to everything I say and do what I ask." And that was what marriage was to Hibari. One was the boss of the other. One was in power, the other wasn't. Carnivore and prey.
Tsuna stared at him a little bit more, unnerved.
Boys were weird.
She stomped on his foot.
Then ran for it.
Hibari watched her go, muttering under his breath, while hopping around on one leg. That had hurt. She would PAY in pounds of cookies. She would be baking cookies for him until her arms dropped off.
It seemed it wasn't just the hula dancer who was short a few crayons of a crayola box. The CIA agent was a control freak on a power-trip of his life.
And by the way, little Hawaiian girl had totally ditched that creepy businessman.
Tsuna squirreled past the kitchen, ducking her head. Hopefully, the three creeps had left her house already. Even though, Tsuna sort of liked having other kids play with her. Too bad they were all freaks. She climbed the stairs onto the small hallway, and then holed herself up in her room (as much as a little girl can without a door).
It was a pretty Spartan room, she noted.
She wanted to change so she opened the closet then stared.
…
Why were there boy's clothes in it?
Maybe, this was her big brother's room…She gasped!
Her big brother was the Scientist.
She turned a dark glare on the clothes. Where was the shrink ray then?
"Tsuna-kitty~" Chrome sing-songed while padding around the hallway on the second floor, poking her head in several closets and bathrooms and under-the-bed spaces. "Your productivity's not up to standards, you haven't even given me one kiss this whole day!"
Plans were brewing in her cute little head. First, by using Tsuna's abysmal cooking skills in making (almost) poisoned pancakes, she would then feed them to the two other boys, to undermine and incapacitate the dunderheads in front of Tsuna. Then Kitty would realize how awesome Chrome was compared to the two twits and she could finally convince Tsuna to sign a few binding legal papers—if not, Chrome could always forge the signature. The plastic ring from her cereal box, Lucky Charms, would have to do for now.
After that, Chrome would dispose of the single-IQ dorks in the black market and sell them for a fortune. Then Tsuna and she could live comfortably on a modest little house on an impenetrable mountain with eagles for guards. Then they could raise three cats and one smelly dog named Whiskers and eat cherry popsicles whenever they wanted even in the morning.
That was her real plan in bringing in the other two. A suitor needed rivals to show the heroine how totally awesome he was. Then he could beat them to a pulp for trying to touch his heroine then sell them off for money. Chrome had watched all about it in her soaps.
Chrome rubbed her palms together, sniggering under her breath. "Fufufu."
Cherry…yummy.
She tripped.
The baseball bullet whizzed over her head and shot right through the wall, leaving a smoking hole right next to the first baseball-made crater.
"Whoops. Guess I missed again, huh?" Yamamoto tapped the baseball bat against his shoulder in contemplation. He grinned at the gawking Chrome. "Sorry, but you're kind of in the way. I have some (personal) business to settle with hula girl. So, either you get out of the house now or I'll have to force ya."
She materialized her trident and sneered, "How dare you try to hit a pure-hearted little girl?"
Yamamoto bared his teeth in a smile, "You're not a girl."
Metal clanged against metal as Yamamoto's bat (metallic) and Chrome's trident met in fierce battle. And locked in. Neither gave way. Two people of the same kind couldn't interact normally at all. A shark wasn't a pack animal, after all.
"Why don't you drop the stupid act, eh?" growled Yamamoto even as he maneuvered the bat at an angle to make Chrome lose her grip on the trident.
Chrome turned her nose at him, "Why should I? Kitty likes me like this. I'm soft and safe and not at all scary like a snot-nose boy like you." In turn, Chrome countered his move by twisting the trident in the opposite way. Locking them in again in conflict
Yamamoto's face smiled then and Chrome suddenly felt wary. "I wonder if Kitty knows you're lying to her. I mean, a boy pretending to be a girl is possibly the worst, right?"
Chrome's face grimaced and that moment of hesitation cost her. Yamamoto heaved forward and sent Chrome tumbling backwards, the air flickering around her, the illusion breaking down. She or he landed on his feet, skirt fluttering, hands digging into the carpet where skid marks had ripped right through. His right eye bled red. "I don't lose. Ever."
Yamamoto felt his hair rise and he readied himself to dodge anything this he-Chrome would throw at him—until a shrill whistle shattered the air had both of them clapping their hands on their ears.
"This pathetic crowd had better disperse. Loitering on my property. Unforgiveable," intoned a black-haired delinquent with a bird whistle in his hand and a tonfa on the other.
"So you're here," tittered the transgendered Chrome.
Yama smiled pleasantly at this new intruder even though a dangerous tick was forming on his left eyebrow. "It figures that Chrome would know you. Birds of a feather, after all. Question is, who are you and why'd you think this place is yours when it's clearly mine?"
A black eyebrow rose. "I am Hibari Kyoya, banchou of Namimori, and I don't know that cross-dresser. This is Namimori property. And my wife's. Therefore, mine."
Chrome burst out laughing. "Hah! I'm the first one who got married to Kitty. So nyah, nyah, nyah, you can't have her."
"So her name is Kitty," wondered Hibari.
"Yeah but you haven't done the official ceremony yet have you? You don't even have the ring yet," accused Yamamoto.
Chrome stopped laughing and her eyebrows drew together in worry.
At the mention of the ring, all three kids suddenly became troubled by dark clouds in the horizon. A picture of a twirling Kitty/Tsuna in her hula-hula skirt came up at the same time in their minds. And how she would react to a wedding without a ring. The image of Tsuna crying prettily and pointing an aggrieved finger at them and saying, How could you? A bride deserves a ring, at the very least. I thought you loved meee—And the dream broke into a million eeny teeny meeny pieces.
"Aaargh, I forgot the cereal ring back at my house," wailed Chrome.
"A wedding requires a ring?" asked an uneasy Hibari.
"Yeah, that's what makes it official, aside from the kiss," nodded Yamamoto knowingly.
Mafia, CIA, and the business sector clashed with their respective leading titans at the helm of a turf war over Chicago.
Then there was a short burst of girlish screaming at Tsuna's room at the end of the hall.
On instinct, all three ran.
"Ahaha—" Tsuna twirled around in her hula skirt and punched her fist into the air. And winked…at a corner of her brother's empty room.
She'd found the shrink ray gun. It was on the tree branch right next to the window. In fact, she would have probably seen it (when she was stepping out of the window to run for her life) if Chrome hadn't first dragged her out of the room to play house. It was right there.
But she had to climb out of the window to grab at it.
And then the inevitable happened when a tree and a klutz in a hula skirt were combined.
She screamed while her pudgy fingers gripped at the tree branch.
The door shattered in a million billion wooden flakes as all three boys burst into the room. And saw Tsuna the housewife hanging perilously from a conveniently placed branch on the tree, teary-eyed and clutching a strange bazooka gun.
"Ah, a damsel in distress," crowed Chrome as he leapt in the air to save his Hawaiian love, his skirt flapping. Only to have his ankle pulled back by a grim Yamamoto and his body swung like a metaphorical baseball bat right into Hibari's waiting tonfa. He crumpled to the floor, bloody and unconscious.
Now, only Hibari and Yamamoto were the only ones in the cowboy showdown and both faced each other as the sun set outside the window.
Hibari smirked, "It seems the cross-dresser is finally quiet."
"Good, but I don't suppose you'll quietly go away, will you?" Yamamoto slitted his eyes. "I mean, I have a bit of responsibility over Kitty."
Hibari grunted. "She owes me cookies. She almost ate Hibird. She's going to smell like flour and sugar and chocolate chips after I'm done with her." Grey eyes narrowed right back. "And how did my wife earn such loyalty?"
Tonfa and metal bat collided against each other in lightning speed blows at multiple counterpoint angles designed to test the other's strength, endurance, and speed. They both backed off again.
Yamamoto whistled. "Impressive. But I'm afraid as a gentleman, it's only my duty to take care of her after I made her cry so much."
"You're not the only one who's made her cry," said Hibari in a low voice even as he kicked a study chair towards baseball-freak's head.
Yamamoto swung his bat to adjust its trajectory towards a crawling Chrome who'd been about to reach the window and promptly passed out again. But it was a diversion as Hibari swept in low after the chair and managed a critical hit against a vital spot on Yamamoto's elbow. Yamamoto only barely managed to change the angle of his arm to render the blow only slightly less critical. He reeled from the blow but brought his other arm up and down for a punch at the prefect's face.
The handle of the tonfa caught his wrist but Yamamoto had already planned that and kicked at Hibari's other hand, the other tonfa spinning outwards and under the bed.
Infuriated, Hibari twisted the tonfa to strike at the throat.
Meanwhile, helpless Tsuna's fingers were slowly becoming clammy and sweaty in their hold. "I'm slipping!" A deep chuckle caught Tsuna's attention and she looked from her red and raw fingers wrapped tight around her lifeline, the branch.
"Fufufu, I knew their brains were pea-sized but I didn't realize they wouldn't even notice." Chrome was sitting astride the window ledge and already reaching towards Tsuna's thin wrist. His red eye was glowing and had a strange kanji on it, the kanji of the number one. "It's a pretty good illusion, neh, Kitty?" He hauled Tsuna over, unmindful even of the weight of both bazooka gun and hula-hula girl. "There, there, you're safe now."
Tsuna shrieked in bloody murder as Chrome's comforting patting grew a little too bold around the small of her back.
Which effectively broke the illusion over Hibari and Yamamoto.
They both looked up and saw a cheerfully laughing Chrome cuddling a red fuming Tsuna who was pushing his wandering hands away. Hard to do it, of course, with a bazooka gun cradled in her arms.
Snarls of frustration erupted and both Hibari and Yamamoto dove to pull the two apart. At which point, Tsuna's uselessness and general clumsiness sparked up again in a strange subconscious self-defense mechanism and she slipped her hold on the bazooka gun and it fell to the floor, swinging around and around as both Tsuna and Chrome looked in horror and Hibari and Yamamoto unable to pull back from their momentum as they hurtled towards the incoming ground zero.
The bazooka gun hit the floor and the trigger clicked.
Light bloomed in a radius reaching up to the doorway. And exploded.
All three heavy bodies had piled on top of Tsuna to protect her. Which had grown significantly heavier. She pushed them off.
Or in this case, he.
Even as all of Tsuna's memories returned.
He stared at the bazooka gun, which belonged to Lambo. Which was, he realized now, decorated with a band of sticker chameleons.
"Damn it, Reborn."
Tsuna sighed and looked around at his various injured Vongola famiglia members.
He stood up, dressed out of the tattered hula-hula outfit and into jeans and a hoodie, and grabbed the first aid kit.
And began patching up his sort-of-friends.
Hating that he had to do it, but feeling bad anyway since they got dragged in something stupid again, Tsuna started cooking. He just knew it would bite him back on the ass but a whole afternoon had passed by and the three would be hungry. And his mother hadn't come back yet. And the four leeches would also be coming home around this time, namely: Reborn, Bianchi, Lambo, and I-pin. Maybe even Fuuta.
He started cooking dinner.
Hula girl finally decided, Screw this shit. This luau is way too crowded with weirdos and nutcases. Time to say ciao. So she did. And she went on to follow her dreams of making cookies in a quaint little French store in Paris.
Of course, sentimental girl that she was, she still sent unmarked, brown boxes of cookies to all three.
"Hmm…fried chicken, smells good."
Tsuna whirled around, kitchen tongs held high in self-defense. Oh, it was just Reborn in a yukata and drinking tea right on the middle of the table. He lowered the kitchen tongs. "You want anything else?"
Reborn thought about it and added, "Some vegetables will be good, loser student."
Tsuna sighed and went off to find some broccoli to steam.
Reborn watched him, eyeing the training of Bianchi and Haru and Kyoko instilled in the inept student of his. Cooking was an underappreciated art nowadays. People severely underestimated how much food and drink could bind people. After all, wasn't it a gesture of courtship if a girl made a guy a bentou of food? And here was Tsuna giving away pancakes and cookies and dinner for all and sundry.
After all, Tsuna couldn't resist pathetic dogs scratching at his door. It was no wonder the boy picked up strays all over the place.
He added dryly, "Your helplessness wins again. I saw Hibari, Mukuro, and Yamamoto out in the living room in bandages."
"It wasn't my helplessness, it was your meddling again," bit out Tsuna. "You messed around with Lambo's bazooka and used it on us."
The baby grinned. He'd messed around with it just because.
He was a bastard like that.
"Yeah, but you got all of them and yourself back to normal, didn't you? Even, if it was an accident. But hey, I got some pictures out of it of Tsuna in a hula-hula skirt. Now I can sell it to Iemitsu, who has a secret daughter complex, in Hawaii."
"I said I'm not a girl," said Tsuna for what felt like the hundredth time.
"Pfft. You think he cares?" Reborn thought for a bit. "I have to thank you though. Because of you, the three twits back there were sharpening their skills on each other in an attempt to prove themselves. They've just leveled up the amount it would have taken in two weeks of training in only one day. Voluntarily too." It was practically ingenious, Reborn laughed to himself again.
He wasn't the best of the Arcobaleno for nothing.
Mukuro burst into the kitchen, again in a skirt. He grabbed Tsuna's hand and looked imploringly into his brown eyes. "My lovely kitten! You made me dinner. You've made me the happiest man on earth." He twirled both of them into an off-beat waltz. "Of course, you're production values are really sucky. Not one kiss this whole day."
Tsuna smiled even as a twitch started ticking on his left eye. "Yeah, go sit down and we'll eat."
Mukuro didn't move but his face seemed to get closer, wearing an almost shamed expression. "You…you don't mind, right? T-that I wear skirts?"
Tsuna stared back at him, a bit dumbfounded. Really now. That kind of stuttering…reminded him of his old self, of the old Dame-Tsuna. And because Tsuna was still Tsuna, he could only say, "Of course, I don't mind. If you like wearing skirts and it makes you happy, then you should do it." After all, it wasn't hurting anybody and Tsuna didn't like that look of nervous self-loathing on Mukuro's face, as if he wasn't good enough, wasn't ever good enough.
Mukuro smiled and it took Tsuna's breath away because he had a niggling feeling that it was the first real genuine smile he'd seen from the illusionist.
Then something snagged at Mukuro's green army polo shirt at the neck and he choked. "Ah, sorry Boss but Ken and Chikusa are waiting for Mukuro-sama," said the real Chrome who'd come in through the open window. She grabbed a Tupperware box and shoveled in some fried chicken and continued pulling on Mukuro's shirt to drag him back to Kokuyo. "Bye Boss." She stopped by Tsuna and dropped another kiss on his cheek and left with a sputtering Mukuro in tow, bemoaning the ruined moment.
Tsuna pinched his nose. "She just took almost half of what I cooked."
"She does have three growing boys to feed," tutted Reborn.
Tsuna muttered darkly as he took more frozen chicken out of the freezer.
At which point, a polite yet sheepish knock on the door interrupted him. How a knocking sound could be polite yet sheepish was only something Yamamoto could manage as his broad frame filled the kitchen door.
"Hi, Tsuna." He grinned helplessly. "Sorry about the," he waved his fingers around, "you-know-what. But I hope we can play more games like that later on." Then boldly he exclaimed, "It was fun. I liked the apron housewife look more, of course."
He grabbed a drumstick from the bowl of already-cooked chicken and bit into it. "Gotta go. Pops is calling me."
Yamamoto paused by the door again and turned around, eyes only ever serious and sharp as when he intercepted a baseball throw from the enemy and turned the tide of the game into a winning streak for his home team. "I really am sorry for making you cry. Even though, you cried really prettily," he said earnestly. Then he left.
Tsuna could only protest at the empty doorway, "I said I'm not a girl."
"There, there," comforted Reborn in a distracted manner as he blew on his tea.
Tsuna dumped more oil into the deep-frying pan and started up the fire for the other pot filled with a bit of water. He put in a metallic colander in that pot and filled it with chopped broccoli. The water didn't reach the broccoli but was enough to heat up and steam through the vegetables.
Reborn poured more tea into his cup and poured another one for the stressed out Tsuna.
Just as Tsuna's fingers closed around the teacup, did Hibari snatch it from him and take a long gulp of tea. The prefect sighed. He glared down at Tsuna. "You owe me cookies." Then he looked thoughtful. "Your underwear should also be regulation Namimori colors."
Kusakabe appeared in the kitchen. "Hibari-san. Please, the paperwork for the patrols isn't waiting."
Hibari handed the teacup to Tsuna and muttered at him, "Drink. I will get the ring this weekend."
"…What?" said a perplexed Tsuna even as Hibari disappeared with Kusakabe. He drank, since the teacup was in his hand anyway, without realizing that he'd placed his lips on exactly the same place Hibari had on the rim of the teacup.
"Mating season for sharks is marked by their extreme territorialism, jealousy, and aggressiveness. Biting, too," remarked Reborn. "At the very least, hula-hula girls should learn to be wary of man-eating sharks. Now, where's my dinner, loser student?"
"Yeah, yeah, it's coming."
Hula-girl just didn't realize that all three could now track her down via the unmarked boxes of cookies and were now flying into Paris. Of course, a wonderful assassin had swept her off her feet already and would be waiting in the shadows to kill all three.
There was a picture of Reborn drinking tea as Tsuna scooped out rice for him in an apron.
-Reborn's picture story book, $5,000. Filled with pictures of little Tsuna-chan in a grass skirt being chased around. Packaged in a simple brown box to arrive in Hawaii in Iemitsu's safehouse.
Reborn liked to torment Iemitsu once in a while with these things.