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House of Cards

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I do not own Sword Art Online, nor do I own Katekyou Hitman REBORN, both are owned by their respective creators and publishers. I'm just playing in their sandbox and adding my own spin to things. I make no monetary or material gain from these works.

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Nana promised her son a new game if he got over 80-percent on his next test. She would regret that promise for the next two years as her world came crumbling down, like a cheap house of cards. SAO-survivor!Tsuna, pre-Reborn, Character-development!Nana.

No pairing

Warning
Character death, Original Characters, Original Plotlines, Canon-derailment, AU, slight Iemitsu!Bashing.

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EPISODE ONE
Tremor

To say that Sawada Tsunayoshi was dreading his mother's reaction would be like saying Hibari-senpai was a little violent. True, but an understatement. She had been really getting on his case about his grades lately, and he was worried about how she would react when she saw this latest in a long string of failures. He had always tried to tell her that Sensei just went too fast sometimes, that he couldn't keep up and missed things and didn't understand, but the words would dry up, turn to ash and rest bitterly on his tongue, never to be spoken when she turned her attention to him. Just like they did when he tried to ask the Sensei to slow down, or explain something a little more clearly.

And then she would sigh, full of disappointment, and give him a hug, all the while saying that she didn't care if he never got perfect grades, just that he tried his best.

But this...

He looked down dismally at the glaring red three on his paper, marked with thick juicy pen and a mocking frowny face, the characters for 'See me after class' bleeding through the paper. He had been forced to sit there and listen as his Sensei told him that if he didn't buck up his ideas he would have to be kept behind another year, or perhaps go to summer school because his grades were just unacceptable – he had the lowest class-ranking of their entire year group. Lower even than those Yankii delinquents who never attended.

His mother was going to be so upset.

He wasn't wrong.

"Oh Tsu-kun," the chocolate haired woman sighed, the picture perfect Yamato Nadeshiko, soft and sweet, motherly and obedient who kept her house in order and cooked the most delicious food. She affixed him with a stern eye and Tsuna fought not to flinch, she wasn't upset, she was annoyed, and that was somehow worse because his mother just didn't get annoyed with him, not often. That was how he knew he was in deep trouble. "This is your lowest grade yet!" she scolded, waving the sheet of paper in the air, "What did Yugito-Sensei have to say?"

He recoiled into himself a little at her tone, "...I might have to go to summer school... or repeat a year if they don't pick up," he mumbled in embarrassment.

Nana sighed gustily, pinching the bridge of her nose, "Tsu-kun, I love you. But this isn't acceptable," she told him softly after a moment, her hand dropping to card through his hair, "Do you not understand the work, or are you just having troubles in class? You can tell Mama anything, Tsu-kun, you know that, right?" she soothed gently and for a moment he entertained the idea of telling her about the small legion of bullies that trailed at his heels, pulling him down, laughing and jabbing. About how he was always assigned classroom duties while they ran off, how what little allowance was demanded for snacks and treats for them, how if he brought anything new into school it would be inevitably taken off him (he would never see his toy Gundams again, he was pretty sure he had seen Mochida-senpai melting one with a lighter behind the bike shed). But he couldn't. His dad had always told him that he was a man, and he had to handle his own problems, he couldn't bring girls into it, especially not his mother.

He shook his head silently, unable to verbalise the lie, the familiar bitter tang of unspoken words filling his mouth.

"Tsunayoshi."

His full name, uh oh.

"Tsuna... look at me, please." Obediently, with great reluctance, he did as he was told. His mother stared down at him thoughtfully for a moment before nodding to herself. "Tsuna... I want you to make a trade with Mama. If Tsu-kun can get over eighty-percent on his next test... Mama will get him a game from his Birthday Wish List."

His breath froze in his lungs. His Birthday Wish List? She would be willing to let him have one early?

"Do we have a deal? One eighty-percent for one game?" his mother asked seriously, holding a hand out to him.

Tsuna didn't think he had ever grabbed her hand so fast before in his life, pumping it up and down in his two tiny palms and nodding his head like a bobble-toy. "Yes! Yes, Kaachan! I'll do it! I promise!"

"Deal," Nana declared happily, and sealed it shut, in her eyes, by planting a big wet kiss to her son's cheek.

000

In one life, Tsuna would fail his next test and be denied the game he wanted.

In this life, Kikuri-Sensei ate a funny piece of sushi and was too unwell to come into class. As there was a test listed in his notes, but no examples, their substitute sensei, Ine-chan as she told them to call her, created her own.

They were to write a short story, using the five prompts on the board, it could be about anything but at least three of the prompts had to be used. They had until the end of the lesson to do their story and they were not to put their names down. She would mark a number at the top of each story and lay them out on her desk for everyone to come and collect, once everyone had their stories, she would then give out their marks – no one would know whose number was whose unless they were told.

The prompts were: Fantasy – magic – cute – octopus – sand

Tsuna knew that Taka-kun wrote his story about a magical octopus that liked to flip the skirts of cute girls, but that was only because he liked to do it himself (he was a pervert and an enemy of women if Kurokawa-chan was to be believed).

Tsuna wrote six pages about a fantasy world in a desert, how the son of a knight had to grow up and become a man and rescue a Princess from the Sand-Kingdom because she was the daughter of the Octopus Queen, she was able to use water magic and bring green things and life wherever she walked which was why the Sand-Kingdom kidnapped her. She promised to bring the green life if the young Knight would help her get back home. So he did, and she did as she promised, the Octopus Queen was so impressed that she turned the Knight into a merman and made him the captain of her guard and her daughter's bodyguard. They were bestfriends forever after that.

It was his highest scoring 'test' yet.

92

The only reason it wasn't 100, Ine-chan assured him, was due to the spelling errors and lack of sentence structure. If he got the technical aspects of writing his story properly, he would have scored his first ever 100 percent.

He rushed home and burst in through the front door, crowing his victory.

"I did it! I DID IT!" he shouted as he scrambled into the kitchen, falling over as he kicked his shoes off and nearly broke his skull open on the doorframe.

His mother jolted and nearly dropped the bowl she was washing, "Tsu-ku - "

"I did it, Mama!" he shouted, barrelling into her, babbling excitedly as he waved his story at her. "I did it! A Ninety-Two!" he shouted.

It took a second for his mother to catch the black ink on his paper and the smiley face before she swept him up in a tight hug, pressing kisses across his face, "Oh Tsu-kun! I'm so proud of you! Your first ninety-two ever!" she gushed, running her hands through her beaming son's hair. "This means celebrating! Oh, I'll have to cook all of your favourites! Well done, Tsu-kun! Papa would be so proud!" she exclaimed even as she set more kisses on his face and quickly moved away to the fridge to see if she had any hamburgers. Sadly, hamburger steak was pricey so she didn't buy it very often – ergo, there was none in the fridge, or the freezer. No matter. She quickly pinned the 92 onto the fridge with a few magnets (92 – her Tsu-kun a 92! She could just burst!), and made her way to the hall.

"It looks like Mama will have to go to the store in order to get some hamburger! Is there anything else Tsu-kun would like?" she asked brightly as she once again kissed her son on the forehead. Oh she couldn't wait to tell Iemitsu about this! He would be so proud of his son! A 92!

Tsuna fidgeted, "A-ano... C-could I please have mint chocolate icecream as well, for dessert?" he asked.

"Of course!" Nana chirped as she pulled on her purse. She paused noticing Tsuna fidget further before frowning slightly – she was forgetting something.

Oh!

"Tsu-kun... upstairs on Mama's bed is your reward, just as we promised," she told him with a smile as she bent forward and kissed his forehead. She had queued for several hours this morning to get it, she had originally been planning on getting a different game but when she finally got into the game-store she noticed that this one title was underlined several times on Tsu-kun's list. It had been released that exact day, much to her luck she decided as she requested one of the non-reserved copies (there had only been three left!).

Tsuna's eyes went wide and she could see him visibly fighting off the urge to go tearing off upstairs immediately. She laughed and kissed his forehead again, "Go. Mama will see herself out. Now, it's hamburger steak and chocolate mint icecream, yes?" she clarified with shining eyes as her son nodded once again.

"Y-yes! Thank you, Okaachan!"

She smiled, watching him turn and scramble up the stairs. Slipping her shoes on, she stepped out of the house, closing the door behind her and double checking she had her purse as she made her way towards the front gate.

She jolted as Tsuna's voice burst out from the window over her head, "MAMA! MAMA! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!" he shouted down to her, his face shining and flushed with excitement. "I LOVE YOU! THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!" he shouted, flailing both arms, one of which clutching a game-box in a white knuckled grip.

She laughed, "Be careful Tsu-kun, you don't want to drop it!" she scolded, watching as he squealed and quickly shot back into the house, not even closing the window behind him. Ah to be young and excitable.

She hummed happily to herself as she walked down the road to the supermarket – the convenience store wouldn't have chocolate chip mint icecream. It was a long walk but it was also a beautiful day so she didn't mind. Though she did have to side step a small commotion going on outside an electronics store as she reached the shopping district. The supermarket was surprisingly quiet as she got a basket and began her familiar trek through the isles, picking up sea chicken, panko flakes, miso, dark soy, more rice, some crab sticks, and then what she came in for, hamburger steak and icecream – she even decided to get some cherryblossom icecream for herself as she was in such a good mood.

How strange, she decided on her way home, that there would be even more of a crowd outside the electronics store than before. All of them wearing such facial expressions too. Had something happened?

"Ano, excuse me, what's going on?" she asked as she approached the fringes of the large group.

A young man in a beanie hat answered her, "Seems like there's been some kind of huge gaming incident. Over seventy people dead and the number's climbing every few minutes," he explained with a frown before shifting aside to let her in closer.

"Ah, thank you," she said as she squeezed between the anxiously shifting bodies and squinted at the large screen, which thankfully had subtitles as it was mut-

Ninety two dead in what is now being dubbed the Sword Art Online Incident

Everything shuddered to a halt.

More confirmed reports rolling in of individuals, regardless of age, gender, and nationality, mysteriously dying when disconnected from their NerveGear while running the newly released VRMMO 'Sword Art Online', also known as SAO. Thus far there has been zero response from creator Kayaba Akihiko, but ARGUS Online has released the following statement to assure all friends and family of the now deemed 'trapped' players of SAO -

The shopping slid from her fingers as something rose in her throat.

Someone was screaming and it took a moment before she realised it was her.

She – she had bought that game only earlier today!

Sword Art Online had been underlined so many times on Tsu-

TSUNA!

She tore away from the group, shoving the young man in his beanie hat aside as she sprinted back home, leaving her shopping behind.

Please! Please, Kami-sama! Please!

DON'T LET HER TSUNAYOSHI HAVE STARTED TO PLAY THAT GAME!

She banged into the front door, bouncing off it and almost falling even as she scrambled for her keys, breaking and bending back her nails as she stabbed herself with them in her haste, she didn't notice even as she flung the door open and sprinted up the stairs – leaving the door open behind her in her distress.

"TSUNA! TSUNA!" she screamed as she stumbled down the hallway to her son's bedroom and shoved it open.

Her heart dropping down to her toes when she saw him lying limp and still on his head.

That death machine on his head.

000

Looking back, Sawada Nana couldn't honestly say what had happened. Sometimes she had memories of frantically running her hands over her baby's face, sobbing into his chest and screaming for help until someone outside tentatively answered her distress by entering the house. Other times, she could have sworn she remained sitting, limp and silent on the floor in her son's doorway, staring at his tiny form, her heart, her soul slowly crushing under the weight of her horrified grief until the police and the paramedics arrived.

She couldn't remember. She didn't know what had really happened.

She remembered clutching her baby's tiny cold little hand as they rode to the hospital in the ambulance, that horrible machine still upon his head, hooked up to a portable battery-pack and software device, she didn't know what it was, she didn't keep up with such things. She just knew that this little grey device was keeping her son in that horrid game, and stopping that evil helmet from snuffing the bright light that was her precious baby's life.

She remembered that he was in a large ward, filled with other children wearing similar helmets, sobbing mothers and distressed fathers, confused and anxious siblings. There was one salary man shouting at a tearful nurse to get his son out of the game, he had highschool entrance tests next week and didn't she know who he was? Could her tiny little underdeveloped mind not understand how important he was?

Nana didn't remember what she said to him, she was completely at the end of her tether and witnessing this sorry excuse for a man shouting at the tearful nurse who was just trying to do her job, his wife sobbing harsh, bitter, terrified tears that only got more ragged the louder and more abusive he got – she found herself unable to stay silent as she sat beside her precious baby. Either way, the man subsided into red faced twitching silence before leaving. Abandoning his sobbing wife and his unconscious son.

More and more people were brought into their ward.

None of the nurses or doctors could talk to them, police were milling around with men in suits and one or two individuals who wouldn't have looked out of place as a Drama based Hikikimori-Hacker. They were talking in low voices, carrying expensive looking custom laptops, fingers flying swiftly over the keyboards as they examined a patient here or there.

She spent the night there. And remembered none of it.

The next morning, they were told that they would all be transferred to another hospital, one for long-term care. The woman whose son was next to her baby broke into fresh tears, her face already blotchy and tear-scalded.

Nana had a vague memory of holding her tightly, letting her sob against her shoulder and wail about her baby.

They were all in the same boat now.

She remembered organising the mothers, the siblings, arranging for phonecalls to family members.

She also remembered the heart tearing scream of one mother when her son's monitor flatlined and the blinking light of his helmet went dark.

She felt her legs go weak, sending her sliding limply to the floor as the woman clutched at her son, as the doctors and nurses rushed her, shoving her aside to reach her son. Chest compressions began immediately, one doctor actually climbing atop him as the hospital bed was rushed out and to a separate wing, a nurse remaining behind to deal with the hysterical mother who in the end needed to be sedated when she tried to physically attack one of the doctors.

The bed did not return.

The police drove the shell-shocked woman home.

She left, clutching her son's night clothes in a numb white-knuckled grip.

Her baby boy was dead.

The Death Game was real. It wasn't just unplugging their children, unplugging them wasn't the only way for their children to die.

The game itself could kill them

Her hands were shaking too much. She dialled the wrong number three times now.

Finally she connected, and she waited, shaking from head to foot, twisting the coiled telephone cord between her fingers anxiously as it rang, and rang, and rang, and rang – and went to Answering Machine.

She sobbed a little then, "A-Anata, I-Iemitsu," she gasped, her voice breaking, thin and high with pain and fear. "Th-there's been an a-accident. Tsu-Tsuna's in the hospital, he's – he – I ne-need you, Iemitsu. W-we're at the Nosaka Namimori Long Term Care Hospital, Ward K. Come home soon?" she begged before she hung up.

She returned to Tsuna's side and held his hand for the rest of the day, stroking his tiny soft palm with all the love and support she could muster, and prayed that it reached him in that awful game.

Iemitsu did not call back.

Nana assumed he was already on his way home and did not hold it against him. She waited.

Two more young boys in the ward flatlined, and each time was just as heart-tearing as the last.

One of the nurses suggested that she go home to change, have a bath and get something to eat. Nana smiled and politely refused, she couldn't possibly leave her baby alone at a time like this. Please don't worry, his Papa is on his way. When he got here she would allow herself to get cleaned up but until then she wasn't leaving his side. Mollified and understanding, the nurse left her to it, but she did return a little while later with a tray of tea and coffee and biscuits for all the parents within the Ward.

Iemitsu did not come.

He probably hadn't got her message.

Nana called her mother and asked her to watch Tsuna while she went home to clean up and call him again. Perhaps the unknown number from the hospital didn't get through to his phone and was redirected? Overseas telecommunications were often unreliable, or so Iemitsu had often told her.

She called and left another message before returning to the hospital. She wasn't quite as bright and chipper as usual, but she decided that being doom and gloom would help no one and immediately got to work helping the other mothers. She sat with their boys while they got a bite to eat at the restaurants downstairs, she made sure they all had blankets when they stayed the night, she helped the nurses when it came to cleaning or anything she could think of.

But the days wore on.

And her calls to Iemitsu went unanswered.

And he did not show up to sweep her off her feet as he once did, he didn't appear and make everything better as he once promised he would.

She left endless messages on his answering machine until the day when the phoneline just refused to connect, leaving her staring at the hand-device with an expression bordering on betrayal and confusion.

She looked up Vongola Construction Ltd online and tried their main office, only for the phone to tell her the call could not be connected.

She wrote instead. It was her only address for him.

But he never came.

And in the time since this horrible incident occurred, she came to learn the identities of everyone within their little closed Ward. She befriended the mothers, made nice with the fathers, played with the children and watched over their most precious and helpless babies in their horrible game. And they in turn came to love her as a dear friend.

But Iemitsu never responded.

Half a year.

She... she was falling apart at the seams. She hid it well. But her son was a thread away from death. Lying like a cold, still, fish upon his gel-bed. And he wouldn't even grant her the courtesy of a phonecall.

He didn't have to come in person – she just needed to hear his voice, he just needed to tell her it was all going to be okay, that she wouldn't lose her baby like Kimiko-chan had just lost hers. She just... she couldn't be strong anymore!

The final straw was on Tsu-kun's birthday. He would be turning eleven today...

Nana didn't know how to feel as she stared down at the disgustingly cheerful little postcard in her fingers, the image of a baby marmoset monkey grinning back at her and the words: Happy Birthday – keep hanging in there. Love Papa written across the back – with no return address as per-usual.

"Keep hanging in there..." she echoed dully.

Oh.

So this was what pure unadulterated seething rage felt like.

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First chapter from Nana's point of view! Next one will be from Tsuna's.

Yep, I have always wanted to give Nana some character-development, she could be an interesting character if given half a chance but since she's been pegged the air-headed perfect Yamato Nadeshiko, she isn't allowed to be given development either in canon or fanon. She has to either be so stupid/oblivious that she's borderline abusive, or so perfect as a housewife that she knows all about Iemitsu's secrets and supports them and even knows how to use guns.

Nope, not happening here. Nana is going to be a human being, not a caricaturised ideal of anything.

Same with Tsuna.

As for the rest of the Vongola... They're a long way off. I want to play with Aincrad first. A lot of it will be my own original ideas as a lot of the lower levels are never explored (I still think the series would have been better as a shounen action series instead of a romantic one XP).

Also, it's my birthday today, so I figured I would upload this, another chapter of Storming Skies, Devil's Bride, and another new story called The Hand You're Dealt, a KHR centric story with a OFC in Gokudera's body, handles Transphobia issues and what not, so it isn't a comedy play going 'hurr hurr lets gender swap and have some crack in there'.

Check 'em out if you like the sound of it 8DD