Composing the Vongola
by AAR
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to their rightful owners

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Spelunking

Tsuna wants to swear, because whatever kind of vacation he had planned to spend with his family in America, it wasn't happening. Really, all he wants is a week off of paperwork, and Reborn pops out to hint that the leader of the Vongola enjoyed spelunking. Spelunking. Of all the things his former sadistic tutor has to lie about, it has to be about his so-called favorite hobby.

So now the Guardians and their leader are now at Southern California, warily looking down the deep pit below their feet. Reborn decides that they shouldn't waste their time just standing in a ring around the cavern, and he pushes Tsuna (or more like kicks the back of his knees, because for all the time Tsuna has spent with his tutor, his reflexes are crap unless he's in Hyper Dying Will Mode) into the cave.

Gokudera follows swiftly afterwards, shouting that he'll save Juudaime. And then Ryohei, Yamamoto, Mukuro with his arm around Chrome's shoulders, Lambo, and then—after a good amount of gazing deep into the skylark's eyes—Hibari grudgingly and gracefully hops down.

Tsuna flicks his headlight on, and he flinches away when he sees a clearly-not-supposed-to-be-there rotting human body suspended in midair.

(This has to be the reason why Reborn has manipulated Tsuna's family here—for lack of a better phrase, something was running amok in the caverns.)

Dying fire

Tsuna's life is like a dying fire—even at the very beginning. It just burns brighter despite its upcoming death, and though Reborn can tell, the hitman refuses to stop teaching him.

Numbers

Gokudera is unsurprisingly put in charge of the extra paperwork the Vongola's leader cannot handle. He doesn't protest against his change of status (because he's Juudaime's right-hand man, and he is not going to whine, damn it, because he's not a hormone-filled teenager anymore). The genius takes care of the rapidly building towers of contracts easily, though, and he takes most of the day off to take half of the Tenth's own work, which is much taller than his.

Sometimes he wonders what would happen if he wasn't the genius of the family or if his Juudaime required him more in the field than at the desk. And then he shudders, because all of the other guardians aren't suited for desk duty at all.

Notes

He slumps against the back of his chair and bumps into the refrigerator. Lambo turns his head lazily and sees quite a few colorful post-it notes. Letting out an indolent yawn, he glances at the handwriting and realizes with a jolt that it's his old notes on the guardians. He swears under his breath and wonders who the hell found them.

The guardian could've sworn he'd hid them well. But no, it's staring at him right in the face, especially that hot pink one (he had seven colors, that proclaims proudly, 'Cloud doesn't eat any bird; chicken!' He groans, because the chance of Hibari already having seen this is far, far too high.

In summary, he's doomed, because at least six other notes—lurid orange, embellished yellow, tranquil blue, garish red, deep indigo—and they all contain embarrassing observations.

'Sky is open and inviting; non-heterosexual?'

He moans and he desperately hopes that Tsuna hasn't seen this yet. Maybe, in congratulations of his twenty-first birthday, he got way too drunk and started pulling stuff out of his hair. Hopefully the other guardians had escaped the dizzy and exhilarated guardian before the event. He didn't need to die before he got a girlfriend.

Fifty percent

Ryohei doesn't do things fifty percent—never, ever does he do things halfway. Except when he was doing his homework back in Nanimori, of course, because those kind of things were tedious and not extreme. And maybe, when Tsuna decided to punish all of his guardians for screwing up that one diplomatic mission (no, Ryohei had protested, he didn't know that sinister looking man was actually the leader), he didn't quite finish all the paperwork assigned to him.

Because that stuff is boring and tiring, and Ryohei cannot comprehend how Gokudera and Tsuna handles it. Taxes, tributes, weapons to be bought for their subordinates, and the money to pay for the amount of DVDs and television series and flowers Haru and Kyoko have bought to encrypt messages in.

No, he normally doesn't do things half way, but for things like paperwork and homework, he can afford to slack off on the extreme for that.

Lucky thirteen

Thirteen isn't unlucky, reasons Yamamoto. It's simply coincidence that the gallows take thirteen steps to ascend because the builders were too lazy to construct any higher than the thirteen steps. (Twelve steps and lower, and you have an intact neck, he vaguely remembers from Reborn's 101 Extermination Training.)

If he had to take it 'to the extreme!', Yamamoto would dare to say that thirteen is quite the lucky number. Once, during a really bad season of baseball (the third time he had been in a baseball team), he had gotten the number thirteen emblazoned on the back of his jersey. They won that season.

Lucky.

Ocean

Hibari is being forced to attend a wedding for some distant friend of the famiglia's. He isn't quite happy with this turnout and the fact that he must be there, because this wedding is on a sunny day, at the beach, and he's wearing a black tailcoat, black vest, black dress shirt, and everything with the color black.

(He's also got a top hat and a cane, jokingly put in there by Mukuro, but he opts to stash that inside his hotel room, because that's just ridiculous.)

He doesn't think the ocean is pretty; it's just water for goodness's sakes. Roll doesn't like it, Hibird didn't like it, and he himself doesn't like such a wide expanse of water in front of him, lapping the fine grains of white sand and pushing wet sand back.

And the seaweed—disgusting plants that redefined the meaning of 'herbivore', and Hibari hated herbivores.

Someone calls out his name loudly, and he refuses to turn and greet the Sun guardian. Instead, he chooses to ask why the hell was he here. Ryohei answered gleefully that he was attending a wedding, and Hibari can't help but shoot a glare at him.

Toys

Tsuna thinks that there are more definitions to the word toys when it comes to the Vongola family. For one thing, Yamamoto loves any presents that have to do with baseball, and he goes into a happy tirade when the Tenth invests in those colorful, childlike baseball toys so they can play inside the house without any shattering glass (because like hell if Tsuna is going to allow that precious vase be shattered by a real baseball, so he also buys foam balls with a hard center).

And then there's Hibari and his Hibirds—it's a must for Hibari to have his little yellow birds, and it's a natural thing to see them fly around the Vongola mansion.

Mukuro, however, has a completely different thought about what counts as toys. In fact, Tsuna doesn't even want to think about the stuff the Mist Guardian (or at least, the one who escaped from Vendicare legally, for once) has squirreled away inside his room.

It's just too ghastly to imagine.

Mr. Mom

There are four female mothers (and one male mother, which is a contradiction in upon itself) inside the very close, tightly knitted family, Chrome believes. Haru, Kyoko, Hana, Chrome, and, of course, Tsuna, who counts as a Mr. Mom, because he's the one who gave most of his life to this family. Without him, there would be no one.

There's another reason why Tsuna is called 'Mr. Mom' behind his back, though. It's because he literally has to take care of all the members of the Vongola, while the other girls tend to only take care of their respective boyfriends.

In Chrome's case, she sometimes has to force Hibari to be domestic—it usually works because Chrome has blackmail and her secret assets. He's always flustered when that usually happens, mainly since the female half of the Mist Guardian(s) is unassuming and not very forceful.

(She indignantly protests about him accusing her of using seduction to make him go out and buy packs of tea in the market rather than sending Kusakabe to fetch it. The man didn't exactly complain when that happened.)

Mr. Mom, chuckles Chrome silently, fanning out her long purple hair. Yeah, that sums up Boss nicely.

Rocks aren't the same

Haru owns a rock collection, or more like a rock pond. It sits smack in the middle of her and Yamamoto's apartment, and the first time he sees it, he gives out an incredulous laugh. She worries for a second but realizes he's laughing because this is so normal, and his life hasn't been normal for quite some time.

They all look the same, he says in between laughter and choking gasps. Haru pouts and slaps his shoulder lightly.

None of them are the same, she retorts, Haru has even named them! She points at a slim smooth one, and she adamantly proclaims it as Yamamoto. He bends over, wheezing out his laughter now. She persists in the fact that every one of Haru's rocks are different, though. That shorter, orange-tinted rock is Tsuna.

H-Haru, wheezes the swordsman, have I told you recently that I really, really love you? He hugs her as she flushes.

Author's Notes: Because I support Haru/Takeshi all the way, and because spelunking is too much of a good prompt to let go. And, I have no clue how baseball works. Just saying. :D