AN- So there will be OCs, but I wanted to play with some of the minor characters in the series first.

WARNINGS: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Gore, Language, Character Deaths, OCs, and angst

ADOPTED from wolfsrainrules

Disclaimer- Reborn isn't mine. This idea wasn't even mine.

Chapter 2

Tsuna woke up to bright silver hair in his face. The face connected to it looked vaguely familiar, though Tsuna's pounding head did nothing to help him remember why.

"Thank you for keeping Kyoko safe and bringing her back to me!" the boy screamed in his face, and Tsuna fought to keep the wince off of his face as the volume caused his head ache to spike. He was thankful to whoever thought to put him by a wall so he could use it to prop himself up because his muscles felt like someone had taken a cheese grater to them for a couple of hours.

"You're welcome," he croaked out to the boy that he struggled to remember the name of, who grinned sunnily and bound off, probably to Kyoko now that their short interaction was done for now. Tsuna's warmth whispered that he would be back, that there was something special about that boy in particular.

Tsuna ran a hand through his hair as he glanced around the near empty classroom that he had been placed in, noting the few other people that were laid out and fast asleep as well. He shakily pushed himself into a standing position and slowly made his way out of the darkened room, flinching against the light in the hallway.

Most of his memories of the day before were blurry and he struggled to piece them together because he knew that they were important. He leaned against a wall and tried to steady his rasping breathing, and caught a glimpse outside of the window.

He reared back at the sight of the mass of bodies pressing against the building and even from his distance he could make out the smears of blood on them and on the ground around them. A memory of him crushing a skull between his fingers flashed through his mind, and his stomach churned. As he slowly recalled what had happened yesterday, he collapsed, his legs no longer able to hold his weight and he curled into himself.

The warmth in his center became frantic, trying to remind him that those things out there weren't human, that he wasn't a murderer. It tried to remind him to breath as his vision tunneled.

Tsuna! Ts-una!" another voice cut into his panic, and his head snapped up with wide eyes fighting back tears. Yamamoto stared back at him, his own eyes wide as well. The other boy reached out and gently pulled Tsuna's hands away from where they were practically tearing out his hair, and grinned shakily.

"I'm pretty sure that we have scissors in the supplies somewhere," Yamamoto said, trying to be cheerfully, but not quite making it with the way that his voice shook like his smile. "It's a much more comfortable way to cut your hair."

Tsuna sighed, dropping his hands to his sides, and closed his eyes. His head leaned back against the wall, and quietly he said, "Thanks Yamamoto-san."

He knew that the other boy was trying to lighten the tension, and he was thankful for that even if all he could really think about was how easy it was to tear human bodies apart, the motions replaying in his head over and over again.

A nudge to his shoulder snapped him out of his spiralling thoughts and he blinked slowly when he realized that Yamamoto had sat down next to him so they were shoulder to shoulder. The other boy's grin grew a little bit more steady when he noticed Tsuna looking at him.

"What you did yesterday was awesome," Yamamoto said, turning back to look ahead of them. They were low enough that they couldn't see out the windows behind them, or through the door across from them. There was a low murmur of voices away from them that Tsuna assumed came from where everyone else in the building was, and he fought down nausea at the reminder of his ruthless trip across the town.

"You managed to keep two non combatants safe!" Yamamoto rambled on, and Tsuna felt himself start to relax at the fact that he was being praised for the fact that he had protected people rather than they way he was fought. "Even Hibari struggled with keeping everyone safe when it first started, but you made it look easy!" Yamamoto laughed, "You should have seen the look on everyone's faces when we realized you were making your way over! I don't think I've ever seen everyone so surprised."

Yamamoto rambled on as Tsuna slumped almost bonelessly against him. He wasn't really listening to what was being said, just the cheerful tone of voice and cadence that he could focus on until he didn't feel like he was going to fly apart at any moment. Mentally, he could understand that he did what he had to do yesterday, that he had acted in the defense of others. But he struggled with it emotionally, leaving him drained.

Tsuna snapped awake at a sudden change in the atmosphere around Yamamoto, his half lidded eyes narrowing in on the baseball player. He didn't say anything, just stared at Yamamoto, his eyes glowing a bright amber as the warmth directed him once more. A part of him wondered why he was even listening to it, but he stomped down on it. The warmth was what had kept his mother and Kyoko alive. It was what was allowing them to survive right now, and if it wanted him to wait for Yamamoto to talk then he would be willing to wait for days.

Yamamoto shifted uncomfortably at the look in his eyes, and shrugged. "I just- I hope that my dad is alright."

It hit Tsuna like a punch in the gut. He was just sitting on the ground feeling sorry for himself and worrying about his actions, but at least everyone he cared about was safe. He was being selfish and unreasonable when most of the other kids, teachers, and people who were now living in the school building had no idea if their friends and family were even still alive.

He clenched his fists, heedless of the strange look that Yamamoto sent him, and heaved himself to his feet once more.

Yamamoto blinked and scrambled after him as Tsuna made his way down the hall. Tsuna could barely make out his reflection in the windows they passes, and caught up in his Resolve to help didn't think anything about the color his eyes had changed to. His swift steps echoed in the near empty building and Yamamoto flinched when Tsuna turned bright amber eyes on him.

"The supplies that we brought?" Tsuna asked, unaware of how his voice had changed, that he was holding himself differently, ignoring the pain in his muscles and moving as if it wasn't there. "There were three bags. Where are they?"

"They would be with the rest of the supplies, where most of the survivors are," Yamamoto answered, half a step behind Tsuna. "But why? Tsuna? What are you doing?"

The smaller boy didn't answer, following his ears to the classroom and sliding the door open. All of the conversation stopped as Tsuna stepped into the room, scanning it. His eyes caught on the pile of cans and bags, striding over to it calmly. He plucked the bag he was looking for from it ignoring the protests and questions, upending it so all of the weapons fell out. The clatter of guns, knives, and ammo covered the gasp from that he assumed was from his mother.

He selected two of the longer knives and offered them to Yamamoto hilt first. "I believe that these will suit you more than a gun will."

Yamamoto stared at them for a long moment before something lit in his eyes and he took them, giving them a couple of test swings as Tsuna took a step back.

The baseball player laughed, his eyes too cold for the wide grin on his face. "It can't be too different from baseball or cutting fish for sushi right?"

"Tsu-kun?" Nana asked, stepping away from the group of girls she had been talking with to approach Tsuna .

He turned to look at her and nodded, "We are going to look for more survivors."

The room exploded into noise. The teachers protested the danger of it, while several of the kids asked if he would look for their parents, friends, and family. Tsuna took it all unflinchingly, and instead turned to Hibari who had materialized in the doorway. Part of him wished that he could save everyone that they wanted him to right now, but he needed to take it one step at a time. There were just too many, and it killed him to think about it but it would be impossible to make it to everyone in time.

"How many survivors do we have right now?" he asked the Committee leader in a normal tone of voice, but with enough power that he could be heard over the clamour of the room.

The question and answer clearly rankled the dark haired teen, his hackles raising, but he bit out a, "39 with the new herbivores you brought in."

Tsuna nodded as a somber tone fell over the room. Namimori middle had never been a large school, but it wasn't small either. It held an average amount of about 250 students a year, with a solid 45 faculty members. Hearing how little of them survived the first onslaught was disheartening to say the least.

Tsuna cast his eyes around the room again, noting that there were only four adults total to offset the thirty five kids. It was nowhere near enough people to restart any sort of life when they finally found their feet.

He nodded his thanks to Hibari and tried to move past the teen, who solidly put himself in the way.

"What are you doing Omnivore?" Hibari demanded, his arms crossed over his chest. Tsuna cocked his head to the side and tried to figure out what Hibari wanted. The normally apathetic teen was well know to only care about Namimori as a whole rather than the individuals liv- Ah. It clicked for Tsuna. Namimori as a whole was practically gone, overrun by inhuman things and her citizens at their mercy. The Middle School and the people in it were the only things left that the prefect could protect. Losing anyone now would be a failure on his part.

Tsuna cocked his head to the side. "I am going to protect Namimori's future," he said, caught in between serene and resolute. "How long do you think a small group like this will survive? Longer perhaps than a larger group, less danger in smaller numbers. But how long until people lose hope? How long until we can't progress any further forward?"

Tsuna didn't know anything about running a town, or being a leader, but he knew that this was important. That people worked harder if they had something to work for, if they could live rather than just survive. He wasn't going to let anyone feel what he did every day of his life.

Hibari dropped his arms, and pulled out his tonfas from where ever he kept them. Tsuna made no move, something telling him that Hibari wasn't going to attack.

"Now wait a minute," a voice cut in, and Tsuna flicked his eyes over to see Mochida stalking over to where the three other males hovered in the doorway. His hands were shaking from fear most likely, but the kendo player was resolute. "You both can't be thinking of leaving!" His tone reached a higher level at the end of his sentence, and he took a visible fortifying breath.

"What if something happens to you?!" he continued, clenching his fists. "What something happens here?! What would the rest of us do?"

"And only a monkey like you would suggest that we only send two people out," another voice cut in again, and Hibari bristled at all the intrusions. The dark haired girl walked over, her arms crossed, and Tsuna recognized her as Kyoko's best friend, Hana. "I can understand drawing the line at three, the absolute minimum and maximum we can send out right now."

She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, her eyes daring anyone to contradict her logic. "Two is too little because if something happened, then they'd be stuck and have no way of letting us know that something went wrong. Three means that one person can be sent back for help while the other two find a nearby defensible position. Any more than three right now, and we lose too many people when we can't afford it."

Yamamoto's laughter cut through the tension like a knife, and he grinned at them all. "Wow Kurokawa-san! I don't think I could have thought of that!"

She scoffed, "Of course not. You're all monkeys."

Hibari scoffed as well, but tucked his tonfas out of sight and stalked away. Tsuna took that to mean that he agreed with Hana's logic but didn't want to say it out loud.

"But that means we still need one other person to come with us," Yamamoto continued as if one member of their conversation hadn't just up and left, and one of them had insulted his intelligence.

Both Tsuna and Hana turned to stare at Mochida, who rolled his eyes and threw his hands in the air.

He snarled. " Fine. Fine! I'll go. I am one of the best at kendo after all. Do try to keep up." He stalked out into the hallway, before stopping and crossing his arms. "Where are we going?"

Yamamoto laughed again, and bound after the other teen, leaning an arm against his shoulder. Mochida shrugged him off, and snapped something to the baseball player, who only laughed.

Tsuna turned to look back at the room again, at the students huddling together in groups, and the few adults trying to comfort them despite their own fears. He took a deep breath, and walked over to his mother to give her a hug before turning to leave. He clenched his fists near the doorway and declared quietly, almost to himself, "I'm going to save as many of them as I can."

He hurried to catch up to Mochida and Yamamoto, unaware of the way the view of the people behind him shifted. Had they not seen him rip through the undead themselves they may have doubted it. He was only Dame-Tsuna after all. But he had already saved other people, something only he and Hibari could claim. They had seen what he could do, and not one of them doubted that he would continue to do it. He was supposed to be the lowest of them all, the weakest and the least capable, but he was already doing more than them.

"You know," one of the boys, Ushio, murmured from his spot near his older brother, "the only place from rock bottom is up."

Tsuna took the lead once he caught up to the other two, and turned down the hall towards the staircases. He stopped at the sight of Kusakabe, who stood with something wrapped in white sheets in his arms and a tired slump of his shoulders. He nodded at them, and shoved the thing at Mochida.

He stepped back when the other teen took and sighed. "The remains of the Committee have finally set up blockades that will last for more than a few hours. It would be appreciated if you didn't ruin that. We will try to have a way for you to get back in if you come back though."

Tsuna nodded ignoring the if included in the statement, and Kusakabe turned his attention to Mochida who had pulled the sheets off and was running a hand over the shinai.

"We managed to grab a couple of them before we were forced to retreat to the higher floors," Kusakabe explained. "Kyouya mentioned you were leaving and I thought it would help." He nodded at them and wished them good luck before disappearing in the direction they had come from. Tsuna hoped that he was going to take a nap with how tired he looked.

"Well Dame-Tsuna," Mochida said, holding the shinai by the handle. A portion of his usual confidence and arrogance seemed to come back to him now that he had his usual weapon in his hands. "How are you proposing we leave now?"

Tsuna simply pointed up instead of down. "The roof," he said, turning to head up the steps as Mochida gaped at him and Yamamoto chuckled.

"That's insane!" the kendo captain protested, "It's way too high up and there's no other building close enough to even think about roof hopping. As if we could do that in the first place."

"Come on," Yamamoto cheered as he followed after Tsuna, "It'll be fun. Almost like a videogame!"

"Life isn't a videogame!" Mochida snapped, but stuck with them anyways, "Life has actual rules that need to be followed. We could die doing this!"

"Is your Resolve stronger than death itself?" Tsuna murmured, wondering where he had heard it and why he thought it was a good response to Mochida's worry about death. He thought that it was from some sort of shopkeeper but he wasn't sure.

The moaning that assaulted their ears when he pushed open the door to the roof killed any sort of response the other two had. Mochida tightened his grip on the shinai, and Yamamoto's grin fell. Tsuna walked to the edge of the roof and pushed on the fence until he found a section that was rusted and fell away underneath his hands.

Two hands raced out and snatched him from the edge when he stumbled, and Tsuna nodded at Mochida and Yamamoto, both of whom had gone white. He leaned over the edge slightly, ignoring the noise that came from Mochida's throat and glanced down the side of the building. He pointed that the window sills that he could see.

"A controlled fall from here," he said confidently, "Grabbing onto the first, second, and fourth sill will get us to the ground safely. I can go first and clear the landing area."

He didn't wait for the other two to answer, the warmth reassuring him that they would follow, and vaulted himself off the roof. Wind rushed past his ears, whipping his hair and drowning out the moans for a second before he reached out and scraping his hands on the brick was wrenched to a stop as he clamped down on window sill. He hung still for a second, his momentum causing him to swing.

Tsuna glanced down at the undead who were starting to congregate towards the spot he would land and let go, aiming for the next window sill. His fingers scraped again, bits of his skin peeling off and his shoulder felt sore on top of everything else, but Tsuna was busy calculating the best angle to fall at in order to take out the most of the creatures.

He sailed past the third sill and held onto the fourth for only a fraction of a second, barely long enough to slow himself down before he hurtled to the ground. He twisted his body and lashed out with his feet, landing in a crouch on top of one of the creatures and not taking a moment to catch his breath,

The creatures charged him, and Tsuna lashed out, focusing on clearing the area around the windows. There was a thump behind him, with some heavy breathing before a wooden shinai was swung past his side to help him fend off the creatures.

"I am never, ever doing something like that fucking stupid again," Mochida grit out through his teeth as he took a place beside Tsuna. "That was recklessly dangerous, and I had a heart attack Dame-Tsuna. I'm fifteen! I shouldn't have heart attacks!"

Tsuna's reply was to speed around him and smash one creature's skull against another to keep the kendo captain from getting bit. The captain yelped, but brought his weapon down on another one, and a distant muted part of Tsuna noted that this was easier than fighting them alone.

Another yelp echoed above them, and they both glanced to see Yamamoto lose his grip on the building, starting an uncontrolled fall. Tsuna's eyes flickered over to Mochida, whose jaw jumped as it clenched, but even as pale as he was he increased the vigor of his attack.

Tsuna took the opportunity to pull himself away from the combat and raced towards the building at top speed, planting his foot against the school, and propelling himself upwards as far as he could. His arm reached out and grabbed Yamamoto at the same time the baseball player reached out for him.

Another kick against the building sent them hurtling towards the ground at an even faster speed, but at a more manageable angle, and Tsuna's feet slammed to the ground with a jarring impact.

He dropped Yamamoto, his hands ripping at a creature's jaw as it lunged at his face. He kicked it away, and idly tossed the jaw back into the mob of writhing creatures, and crouched over Yamamoto, ready to defend the other boy until he could defend himself.

Slightly behind him, he could hear Mochida swearing as he tried to make his way to them. "This is such bullshit! I know that was against the laws of physics! You should have broken your damn legs!"

Tsuna blinked at him before starting to carve his way through the creatures towards the street. Yamamoto laughed, pointing out how awesome that jumped was while Mochida covered their backs, groaning about their insanity all the while. Tsuna didn't mention that while he hadn't broken his legs, the fall had damaged them, but his Will to help Yamamoto pushed him forward past the pain. He had to get the baseball player to his father and nothing would stand in his way, let alone non-serious injuries. He was so focused on that, he missed the impressed but worried looks the other two sent him.