(warnings: nosebleeds)

You are never as prepared to spontaneously develop superpowers as you think you are.

Tsunami has long since come to terms with the fact that her life is a gag manga that someone is taking far too seriously, but as she stares down at the grooves her fingernails have dug into her palm, she has the distinct feeling that she's the butt of the joke this time.

Six times. She's gone into her Slipspace, squeezed her eyes shut, and played human Find-My-Phone six times with the exact same results. Tsuna was her target of choice, but she'd tried Hana and Nana a handful of times each, always with the same results— A flash of scenery almost too quick to parse and then a bone-deep knowledge of a point on the map.

It's no longer something she can write off as some kind of weird fluke or a particularly vivid hallucination.

...Well, probably not, anyway. She's never actually fully convinced that her life isn't just a coma dream, but that's a rabbit hole she's been down so many times that she barely sees the point of dwelling on it anymore.

The point is, Sawada Tsunami has been the brand new owner of magic powers for about four hours and, in typical Tsunami fashion, has spent the last three of them with her head in her hands trying very hard not to freak out.

One the one hand, sweet, magic powers. She'd expected them to come with a little more fire, but this was cool too? Less conspicuous than combusting in the middle of the backyard, at least. It had practical uses too, assuming she was able to find anyone and not just people she'd hung out with every day for months.

On the other hand, bursting into flames might have made her feel better. That, at least, is a strain of anime bullshit she is well-versed in.

Tsunami takes a deep breath and holds it until the ache in her lungs makes her feel a little more like a human and a little less like a balloon full of bees.

Which flame has the GPS attribute? God, she hopes she doesn't have some kind of super secret eighth flame. Ninth flame? Eighteenth, if you count all the Earth Flames and the Oath Flame and the Flame of Wrath, and wasn't there some game-exclusive secret Snow Flame or something—

Tsunami smothers herself in her hands and whines. Yeah, okay, fuck it, she might have some stupid contrived Ten Thousandth Secret Flame of Midnight Hurricanes or whatever, she's running out of energy to care. Her eyes glow in the dark and her brother is borderline psychic, this shouldn't even bother her anymore.

Tsunami belatedly takes a moment to make sure the door is closed and settles back into the pile of blankets and pillows she's haphazardly tossed on her bed. She doesn't have motor control when she Slips and she's gotten pretty damn tired of coming out of her trances with a crick in her neck.

She screws her eyes shut...

...and opens them again to a world of endless black and pinpoint lights.

She pops to her feet and hops from foot to foot, trying to clear her head and get her hypothetical mental-construct blood flowing again.

She's established her psychic bullshit is a real, actual thing. Next up, experiments.

How far does her range extend? Tsunami's social circle is limited to exactly three people who all live within five miles of each other. It's a start, but it's not a big enough data pool. She paps both of her cheeks sharply and resists the urge to grumble out loud.

There's a set pattern she's discovered she has to adhere to to make her witchery work: A name, a face, and an impression. Without people she knows, people she has some kind of feel for, her options for experimenting are extremely limited.

Her progress with her secret magic powers is being stonewalled because she's an unrepentant introvert. The irony is palpable.

Tsunami closes her eyes and contemplates once again how incredibly miserable she is going to be tomorrow when she has to wake up and face a bunch of gossipy children on less than a full ten hours of sleep. She knows her anxiety well enough at this point to know she's going to be up all night overthinking every single moment in her life that could possibly be construed as foreshadowing for her magic powers, up to and including: her ability to always find the missing sock, the entirety of the thing with Timoteo, her unbroken string of wins at hide-and-seek, and her incredible ability to find all dogs in a two block radius and pet them. If she's lucky, it'll eclipse the back-to-school, everyone-is-going-to-hate-me jitters she has scheduled to torment her well into 2 AM.

Compounded on that is the very real fear of getting her ass kicked by a nine year old Hibari Kyoya in penance for her wanton rule-breaking, despite the fact that she's neither met nor even really heard rumor of him yet. It could just be the paranoia talking, true, but Tsunami prefers to think of it as pragmatism and a sense for self-preservation.

Just because he hasn't struck yet doesn't mean he never will. It's best not to tempt fate.

...

Hang on.

...She has an idea.

Tsunami takes a moment to position herself in the dim space, spinning around until she finds an orientation that feels right. It was a lot easier back when she had Tsuna's star to let her know which way was up, but it still hasn't flickered back into view since the Ninth came to town and she gets the feeling it probably won't until Reborn shows up. Not that she'll ever tell him, but she's privately holding Timoteo responsible for the ten thousand times she's cracked her face on her brother's star ball because she didn't know it was there. One day, she'd pay him back in kind.

Or not, because that's a dumbass reason to get shot in the head, but it makes her feel better to imagine.

Pulling herself out of her revenge fantasies, Tsunami takes a deep breath. She lets herself focus on her brother for a moment, just to stretch. Sawada Tsunayoshi is big bambi eyes and fluffy hair and a penchant for soft things like mittens and hoodies and blankets—

cold linoleum fluorescent lights woman talking bored group project desks in a huddle tap tap

—Row 3, Class 2-2, Namimori Elementary, Namimori, Japan.

Tsunami shakes herself sharply and the vision rolls away like oil on water. Suddenly being punted out of her own head is a feeling that's going to take some getting used to, but after seven odd tries she thinks she's maybe getting the hang of it.

Dropping like a rock onto whatever serves as a floor in the void, Tsunami straightens her back and tries to center herself.

Breathe in for four beats, hold it, and exhale for eight.

Right, her idea. Hibari Kyoya. Right now he'd be, what, nine? She tries to imagine what a nine year old Hibari might look like and the resulting image is more than a little anime and closer to Fon than anything else, but she figures its close enough.

Using what she's learned about the anime-to-realism conversion, she tries to reconstruct what he probably looks like in 3D. Gray eyes, but different than Hana's. The steel is closer to the surface, the set a little less soft. Chubby cheeks, probably, which is only super cute until she remembers that he could probably break her spine like a toothpick anyways.

He's… probably in Namimori. It's a start, at least. That's a name and a sort-of face checked off the list. Next, an impression.

The Hibari she remembers is straightforward, trigger-happy, and more than a little self-centered. He has a worldview he abides by rigidly, even though the rules seem kind of arbitrary to her. He has a thing about animals? Not that she has any room to judge because she does too, but also she's never trained a dog to bark her school's fight song, so, nyeh. Hibari is the epitome of a control freak and coupled with his tenacity and natural physical ability he's

paper walls mats on the floor one two three four pairs of eyes hit it harder why wont it break make it break make it break make it break

in the middle of a dojo, two miles west, Namimori, Japan. The vision is over almost before it begins and Tsunami is left chilly with the echo of the emotion behind it. He isn't... angry, she doesn't think, just focused to a degree she's never been in her life and the shock of the switch is making her head spin just a little. The leftover emotional flavor is the strongest she's felt so far, but… well. It's Hibari. She's not surprised.

It's a little irritating, but it makes sense that she can't get a pinpoint accurate location. She's never actually met Hibari Kyoya in real life and the best approximation she has of his face is a mental screencap from an anime she watched nearly a decade ago.

Which, fine, cool. Tsunami is perfectly fine not knowing what he looks like in real life. Her primary goal is to live past twenty and close encounters of the Hibari kind run directly contrary to that. She spares a moment to wonder why the hell he's at a dojo during school hours, but some things are clearly meant to remain unknown.

It's a good exercise for finding people and she's pleased with her results, but Hibari apparently lives even closer than Hana does (terrifying) so it's not any kind of test of her range.

Tsunami wracks her brain, drumming her fingers on the floor absently. Who does she know of that lives farther out? Gokudera, maybe?

She breathes in deeply, and holds it, trying her best to clear her head.

In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.

Hayato Gokudera as a child comes a little easier to her than Hibari. The boy in her head is maybe a little younger than the one in reality, dressed to the nines in a tiny suit jacket and those snazzy page boy shorts. Silver hair, a little on the scrawny side, and bottle green eyes maybe a little too big for his face. He isn't smiling because even in her head it's kind of hard to picture, but the cantankerous scowl somehow manages to make him look cute rather than unapproachable.

He's… she doesn't really know. At this point in his life he's probably pretty jaded. His piano teacher was his mom and no one thought to tell him until after she was already dead, his sister is passive-aggressively trying to kill him, and no one will take him seriously because he's just a weedy little piano nerd. Tsunami's probably just projecting at this point, but she imagines he's feeling boxed in, lied to, a little invisible-

-̷͎͘ ̷̠͛.̸̳̣̉.̴͎̟̾ ̸̪̍̕-̷͈̥̈́.̸̛̠ ̸̬̽̽-̶̖̼̄.̴̧̭̿̏-̶̧̣̇̃-̸͓̲̈́ ̷̤͆ͅ.̷͍̇͠.̴̜͘͠-̸̣̤̎ ̷͎̳͐̚.̵̧͙̍-̶̻̐.̵̖͑ ̶̦́.̵̫͙̆͊-̷͖̍.̵̹̓.̶̫̦͌ ̵͓͂̚·̸̧̳̋͝-̵̪̊̕·̸̲̐̇-̷̘͚̿·̶̻͔̔-̶̡̧̈́͆ ̸̺͇̂-̸̤͐.̷͇̄-̵̦̉͘.̷̳͙͐ ̵̮̈́-̶̘͎͋̌-̶̬́̀-̴̫̠̅ ̴̥̣̒-̸̙̊-̸̜̑̎ ̵̰̋̈́-̷̫͐·̴̧͊̾·̷͈̎̓-̶̹͐͜·̵̼͈̊ ̶͙̉.̶̖̮͛-̴̻̋̓.̸͆̏ͅ ̴͎̠̾.̴͗̓ͅ.̴̹̓͆͜.̴̟̌-̷͕̦̇-̴̬̫̾̇ ̶̪̮͛-̷̠̈́͂.̷̤̆̅ͅ ̵͎̌.̴͈͍̋̔-̶̤̾ ̵̮̯̅̀.̷͚̮͆͌.̴̖̠̌̊.̸̻̾ ̸͖̾̾-̴̺̿̚.̵̧̛̜-̵̻̻̈́̏.̷͔̻͋̓ ̸̪́̊.̸̯͛̋.̴͚̤́̚.̸̗̖̃͛-̸̼̳́-̵̢̖̆͘

The burst of static punches through her brain like a speaker blowing out and she rears back, cracking her head solidly against something cold (Tsuna's star ball, always, forever, fuck). The physical pain mixes with the mental and Tsunami hunches over for a long minute, holding the back of her skull and cursing with all the creativity she can muster.

Son of a bitch, that hurt. The outside of her head more so than the inside, but her ears are still ringing from the noise she isn't even sure she actually heard.

Tsunami feels a little bit like a rubber band thats been stretched out too far, all loose-jointed and gummy. The space behind her eyes is gently clipping through the roof of her mouth and her tongue feels like it should belong to someone else.

She'd gotten— well. She hadn't really gotten much of anything other than a raging headache, but she was almost positive Gokudera was somewhere in southern Italy. Considering Italy was something like a hundred thousand square miles big, that really didn't narrow it down by much. Also, she's pretty sure she already fucking knew that, thanks for nothing.

"Not worth it," she hisses, trying in vain to massage the ache out of her skull.

She stays curled on the floor for a while longer, waiting for the throbbing to subside. It takes her longer than she'd like to admit, but eventually she feels well enough to straighten out and float for a bit. Every part of her feels wiggly and lord is she tired, but she's unwilling to go to bed with the bad taste of a failure still in her mouth. Gotta get back on the horse, and all that.

On the bright side, gravity isn't real and the floor is wherever the hell she wants it to be. She can just sort of arbitrarily decide that she's vertical instead of horizontal and skip the whole 'standing up' stage altogether.

Tsunami isn't sure if the kickback was due to her reaching for someone out of her range, a faulty impression, or some other factor she hasn't thought of. Maybe Gokudera was immune to spooky esper shenanigans. Maybe her connection with the Finding Planet is being interrupted by fucking birds. No one told her magic superpowers came with so many variables.

Tsunami isn't afraid to admit that she's kind of a dumbass, but school did actually manage to teach her a few lessons she'll hold on to for the rest of her life. If the teacher doesn't show up after fifteen minutes, you are legally allowed to leave. Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

Always isolate your variables.

"Oh, idiot!" Tsunami snaps her fingers and pivots sharply on her heel.

Iemitsu. Maybe she doesn't know a lot about him personally, what with him being a pathological liar and all, but he's biologically her father and someone she's at least spent more than a minute around. If she can get a lock on him, it will prove that familiarity helps her powers work. If she can't, it's likely just a range issue. Probably. Yes, she thinks, this is exactly how science works.

Breathing in deep (in for four, hold for seven, out for eight) she thinks back to the first time she saw star ball, big and bright and brimming with fire. The trauma of that whole day makes remembering the bright, hungry intensity of the flames easier to remember. Tsunami screws her eyes shut and summons up every interaction with Iemitsu she can remember, every time he's kicked down the door singing love songs, every time he's plucked her off the floor like a sack of feathers, every time he's stared at her when he thought she wasn't looking (she is always looking) with something quiet and unreadable in his eyes—

h̶ ̴e̸'̴s̷ ̷l̶a̸t̸e̸,̵.̸ ̸-̶-̵ ̷.̴,̶.̵ ̸.̸͔͗,̶̥̞̅.̷͎̎̕;̵̬̇̕g̴̺͎̕o̷̥͋ͅd̸̘͑͂ ̴̥̪̿͑i̴̩͇̔̋t̸̮́͊'̷̖͔̀̋s̴̥̄̽,̶̛͍̓/̷̭̌͗f̵u̵c̴k̸i̸n̸g̷ ̵c̴o̶l̴d̴

—Тахтамыгда, Аму́рская о́бласть, Russia.

How… how did she say that with her brain. Tsunami's never understood a word of Russian in either one of her lives, but she's suddenly filled with the absolute confidence that she could point to that exact town on a map with her eyes closed. She isn't sure where in Tach… in wherever the hell she just thought Iemitsu is, exactly, but it's a lot more information than she thought she'd get.

The static isn't as sharp this time. It settles behind her throat like a pill that got stuck going down instead of a wardrum in her teeth and she swallows a few times to try and dislodge the feeling. She doesn't need much of an adjustment period— the feelings she got from Iemitsu weren't nearly as strong as the ones she'd gotten from Hana or Tsuna or even Hibari. She chalks it up to the distance because she is a good scientist who does science good.

Overall, Tsunami is pretty satisfied with her progress, especially considering she only just figured out she was a wizard earlier today. She needs a name, a face, and a fairly solid idea of who a person is. Her range is still unknown, but she's pretty sure Russia is super fucking far away so she's not too worried about it. Familiarity with a person correlates with the specificity of the location she gets.

"A name and a face," she says out loud, stretching her arms above her head until she feels like she's all the way back in her body. "I'm a Death Note with good hair."

Tsunami closes her eyes in her Slipspace…

... and opens them again in her bedroom. There's a short stretch of time as all her systems come back online where the sudden intensity of being able to feel with clarity almost knocks her on her proverbial ass. She always forgets how much less present all her emotions are when she's under until they come back to smack her in the face. It's the same shock of coming out of warm water on a cold day, sudden and unpleasant, and she catches herself wishing she could just stay under some days.

Her nose is itching something fierce.

She swipes a hand across her face to soothe it and… hm. She's bleeding.

Tsunami crosses her eyes and looks down like she'll somehow be able to see the blood on her own face and catches a glimpse of her shirt and, oh. Oh yeah. She's bleeding a lot.

Panic seems like the appropriate response for once, but every time she tries to muster up a shit the world reorients itself a couple degrees and she can't remember what it is she was thinking about.

She almost eats shit when she gets up too fast and her skull tries to invert itself. Blinking the spots out of her eyes, she hobbles towards the bathroom at a careful trot because chakra exhaustion or whatever the fuck aside, blood is a bitch to get out of white cotton. She's gotta soak it and then slap down some vinegar or hydrogen peroxide and… something. She's gotta… do something.

She'll figure it out later. First, soak.

Tsunami has been shivering fully clothed under the shower spray for maybe ten minutes before she realizes she's not supposed to soak herself, too, but hell. She was gonna have to scrub the blood off her face anyways, so really she's just being eficient. Yeah, effishent. Efficient?

Words are, sticky. Her head feels a little heavy, like… like it's full of gummy bears. Cotton candy. Got the munchies. Metaphors are escaping her.

There's something she has to. Has to do? Clean, Nanamama said clean. She's already cleaned her shirt and her body and her hair, she's already halfway done.

Tsunami walks into two, maybe three walls on her way out of the bathroom, but it's cool. It's fine. It's good.

Sawada Tsunayoshi is having a weird day.

Day three of school without his sister is still uncomfortable, like losing a limb he never knew he had, but it's better now that it's nearly over. He manages to actually pay attention during class, even if he's pretty sure nothing Aino-sensei's said is going to stick in his head past the afternoon bell.

(It's not like it matters. Hana's just going to drill it all into his brain later whether he wants her to or not.)

Judging by the way conversation suddenly gets hushed whenever he walks into a room, the rumor mill hasn't given up on what happened earlier that week, though Hana's clearly been busy. The girl who sits at the table behind him walks up to them during lunch, clutching her skirt and avoiding eye contact.

"I wanted to say thank you," she begins, face red and voice pitchy. "Yamada is a friend of mine. He told me about how you stood up for him."

Tsuna's first thought is that he has no idea who Yamada is or what Suzume (and is that her first name or her last name? Crap, he has no idea) is on about.

Tsuna's second, third, and fourth thoughts are something along the lines of 'oh my god a girl is talking to me' and it's with much eye-rolling that Hana gently shoves him aside before he has a chance to make a fool of himself.

"It wasn't any trouble," she simpers, sugar-sweet. Tsuna side-eyes her a little for that because yes, actually, it was a lot of trouble. He almost got his face smashed in. Nami got suspended.

"Still." Suzume hedges before bending into a quick bow. "Thanks. Please tell S...Sawada-chan, too."

She's out the door before either of them have a chance to respond. Tsuna rocks back on his heels, feeling a little flushed. He never used to notice girls before school, but now they are everywhere all the time and with the exception of Nami and Hana, being around them is weird and nerve-wracking. Is this how Nami feels all the time? Are they allergic to something?

"...Who's Yamada?" he asks as an afterthought after a long stretch of silence. Hana pins him with a look of mild exasperation and pulls a notebook out of her bag, scribbling something down that he can't quite read.

"The guy in the sandbox, remember?" Barely. Tsuna had spent maybe two seconds feeling bad for him when Ryoma had kicked his tower over and covered him in sand before Hana had gotten sassy and everything went pear-shaped. "You're never going to make any friends if you don't start paying attention to other people, y'know."

"Why would I need other friends? I have you."

"Shut up, don't be weird." She's smiling, though, so she can't be as annoyed as her tone suggests. "And that's not the point. Dad says making connections is important for the future."

"...I guess that makes sense?" It doesn't make sense. Tsuna only talks to two people, three including Mama, and he's doing just fine. Better than fine, actually, since the last time he tried to talk to someone else they knocked him over and got his sister kicked out of school for half the week.

Hana has enough experience teaching him math to know when he's lying about understanding things and pauses in her scribbling, turning her full attention towards him.

"Think of it like this," she starts. "It sucks when people say things about you that aren't true, right?"

"Yeah." The last 24 hours have taught him that much, at least.

"Well, it's easy to believe stuff about someone if you don't know anything else about them. That's why I've been telling everybody what Ryoma did so they know that Nami didn't just go crazy all of the sudden."

"...And?" Tsuna asks, because he knows there's more to this than Hana's telling him.

There's always more. Hana is really, really smart. Smarter than him, for sure. He thinks she may be smarter than his sister, too, because for all the big words and hard ideas Nami talks about, she's kind of a big dumb idiot who gets lost in her head too much to do anything with all the stuff she knows.

"...And, if everyone starts talking about Ryoma, they'll all find out how many people he's been mean to and everybody will know that he had it coming. And then nobody will want to talk to him or be his friend and he'll die alone in rags watching us, his sworn mortal enemies, rule his toppled empire."

...or maybe that's a good thing, and Hana does too much. She's breathing a little hard by the end of her rant, eyes laser-focused on some point he can't see.

"This is just 'cause he called your socks ugly that one time, isn't it?"

"Tsuna, he pushed us! There was sand on my skirt! Nami got suspended!" Hana admonishes, cheeks flushed. "My socks have nothing to do with it!"

Tsuna doesn't even try to stifle his snorts and spends the rest of lunch enduring Hana's huffing and hair-flipping.

Three hours and a pencil to the ribs later, Tsuna walks in his front door and immediately knows something is wrong.

"I'm home!" he calls. He barely has his shoes off before Nami is on him. Her weird pupils are blown so wide he almost can't see the orange of her eyes and she's doing that thing where she makes an uncomfortable amount of eye contact, only it kind of feels like she's doing it because she's forgotten how to blink?

"Hi, how was your day!" It comes out too fast and high to be a question and Tsuna frowns at her, taking in her twisting hands and the way she is standing on her toes, jittering even as she stands. There are about fourteen different clips in her hair and one of her socks is about to give up the ghost and fall off her foot entirely. He makes a cautious move towards the stairs and her hand shoots out like lighting to pinch the hem of his shirt like he's going to run off without her.

Her sleeves look… weirdly damp. He hopes she didn't fall asleep and drool on them or something, that'd be gross.

"I'm gonna go do my worksheets, Mama!" He calls over his shoulder. Mama is still slipping out of her shoes and waves him off with a smile bright with pride at his diligence. Tsuna has absolutely no intention of doing his worksheets for the next few hours if at all, but she doesn't need to know that.

"If you finish up by dinner, I'll make you something special, alright?"

Tsuna brightens. Faking being done with worksheets is easy.

"Hi Mama, welcome home, I love you, see you later!" Nami is dragging him up the staircase almost before she is done, stumbling over the ninth step in her haste to reach the top and nearly taking him down with her. She is a lot more careful after that.

Tsuna's not sure what's got his sister in a tizzy this time, but whatever it is he hopes she gets a handle on it before she accidentally sends him through a window next or something.

"I'm coming up there to check on your cleaning the minute dinner is over, young lady, so you better have made some progress!" Mama calls up the stairs after them, warning clear in her voice.

Once they're back in the room, Tsuna slips his bag off his shoulder and moves to the closet to pick out something more comfortable than his uniform. Nami takes a running leap at his bed and lands with a bounce, ankles crossing and uncrossing as she watches him.

"So!" she prods, eyes still wide. "Your day! How did it go!"

"Fine, I guess? Aino-sensei had us pick our presentation groups today, and I'm s'posed to tell you you're with Hana and me." He pulls out a soft green hoodie and shrugs it on, feeling a thousand times more settled. Behind him, Nami makes a whiny noise in her throat.

"I hate presentations," she sighs. Tsuna nods, agreeing wholeheartedly.

"Maybe Hana will do all the talking?" He offers, tugging on some sweatpants.

"Mm, that'd be nice. Don't like doin' that. Talking, I mean, It's like… I need that air to breathe. Can't… talkin', wastin' it."

Tsuna pauses. He peers a little harder into the closet.

"...Nami, why's there shampoo in here?"

"It was dirty."

"...The shampoo or the closet?"

"Yes!" He turns to look at her, poleaxed. Her legs are swinging in wide figure eights and she's swaying in place, neon eyes darting around like she can't focus.

"Are you okay?" He asks, a little concerned. There's a fine line between Nami in a good mood and Nami in a panic and Tsuna can't quite pin down which side she's falling on right now. She opens her mouth to answer, hesitates, and then closes it again.

"Yes? Maybe. I'm a little…" Nami gestures wildly at her entire body and shrugs like that explains anything at all, which it doesn't. "Just. I dunno, havin' a day. Bein' alive. I cleaned everything."

"Everything," he repeats, a sinking feeling in his chest. He glances over to the desk. It's the first time he's seen it clean in a long time, true, but it's… is that flour? "Is that flour?"

"No!" She rears back, affronted. "It's baby powder! Desk smelled kinda funny. I fixed it. B'sides, flour's combustible. Can't be havin' that around here, you're flameo hotman. Burn the whole dang house down."

Tsuna can only ogle slightly slack jawed as his sister merrily babbles away, uncaring that this is maybe the most he's ever heard her talk in his life. He loves his sister a lot, a whole lot, but sometimes holding a conversation with her feels like pulling teeth.

"... and I scrubbed the whole bathroom, I picked up all the shit— the stuff, I meant stuff, all the stuff on the floor, the stuff in the bathroom, did the laundry to get all the blood out, cleaned under the bed, and oh! I found so many hair clips, Ts'na-fish, so many, you gotta put some on, they're so cute!"

"I— Nami get off, I don't want your stupid hair clips— wait, hang on, blood? What?"

"No, shh, don' worry 'bout it. It's fine, magic did it." He stares at her, incredulous. She stares back, vacant like she is during class or when someone starts talking about sports, before her eyes light back up and she leans forward so fast she almost falls off the bed. Her iris's burn a vivid orange behind the eclipse of her pupils. "BLEACH. Bleach did it, it was the. Fumes. Lotta fumes. I cleaned everything."

Tsunami is a great liar when she's calm. Her words come out even, her body language is sincere, and her excuses are believable if not just reimaginings of the truth. If Tsuna wasn't actually present for half the shenanigans she lies about, he would never know the difference.

Tsunami in a panic is a human disaster and he's actually a little offended she'd even try to pull one over on him.

Tsuna doesn't know if she really did hit her head or if she's just finally snapped from nerves. Still, she's not making any sense and she changes the subject every time he tries to ask what happened, so he decides to leave it alone for now. For the next two hours leading up to dinner, he endures her rambling and, in a stunning role reversal, saves her from cracking her head open on the floor no less than four times. As it turns out, shampoo in the closet is far from the only thing Nami's misplaced in the name of 'cleaning'.

(One weird dinner and a tense review from Nana later, Tsunami sits doubled over in their bedroom with her head in between her knees. Her skull feels like is about to split open, but she figures it's probably an improvement over cotton candy gummy bears and whatever other campy bullshit she was ranting about earlier.

'Note to self,' she thinks grimly, eyes squeezed shut against the suddenly unendurably bright light of her bedside lamp. 'GPS has limits.'

God, her whole family probably thinks she's on drugs at age seven.)

On the bright side, her unexpected foray into short-circuiting her brain knocks her out pretty fast and she's feeling as well-rested as she ever does, which is not at all.

On the downside, she's apparently stepped sideways through dimensions and ended up in the Twilight Zone.

Tsunami had been expecting some kind of… social backlash, to say the least, on her first day back at school. Popularity was never one of her priorities on account of the whole 'children are frightful monsters' thing and her lack of energy or will to make friends outside of her circle didn't help. She'd fully expected to show up to class to indifference at best and unflattering gossip at worst, but upon arriving the first morning after her suspension she gets...well.

A very sharp uptick in people who want to be her friend, for one.

"Good morning, Sawada-chan," A girl she's never talked to in her life greets her outside the gate, smiling shyly before scurrying inside.

The three hamsters who run her brain spin out in their little wheels and Tsunami can't do anything but gape after her. People don't talk to her. She's the awkward outsider with the weird eyes who sleeps during class and beats up kids on the playground and she's okay with that. She likes it, even! Tsunami is the worst person ever at holding a conversation, let alone with a bunch of grade-schoolers she can barely relate to.

"What did you do," she turns to Hana, slightly behind her and looking awfully smug.

"What makes you think I did anything?" Hana sniffs, brushing past her and through the gate. "Maybe she just likes you."

When two more girls and a group of boys from the soccer club also nod to her on the way to classroom, Tsunami turns on her brother instead.

"Tsuna what did she do."

He gives a half-hearted little shrug, hands raised in surrender. He'd gotten a greeting or two himself and Tsunami was caught between pride and abject terror.

"I don't know, she's been saying weird stuff to people ever since you left—"

"Hey! Don't make it sound like I've been talking bad about her behind her back—"

"What, no! I just, I only mean you've been, uh, telling people things."

Tsunami takes a measured breath and very pointedly does not start massaging her temples.

"Hana, please," she whines. "I'm not awake enough for this."

Hana rolls her eyes and doesn't even have the grace to look ashamed of herself for all the terrible things Tsunami knows she's been up to during her three-day absence.

"People had some misconceptions about what happened with Ryoma. I corrected them. You're welcome." She punctuates this with a friendly poke to the shoulder, which does actually hurt kind of a lot because Hana has no concept of doing things in moderation. "You act like people being nice to you is the end of the world."

"...hrgh." Tsunami snipes back eloquently, because Hana going around the school telling everyone she isn't actually just some spontaneous delinquent is sweet actually and makes her feel all fuzzy inside. It's just… she feels like she's dodging consequences, maybe? Like, it's all well and good that everyone knows what an asshole Tatsuzo Ryoma is but she absolutely did kick him in the ribs. That's a thing that happened.

When she voices this, Tsuna's glare snaps to her like a whip. Tsunami is a big girl and the Alpha Twin besides, so she'll deny the way her palms go clammy till the day she dies. Her baby brother is so passive most of the time it's always a little bracing to remember that he's kind of got a temper.

"You said you were gonna stop wallowing," he reminds her sharply.

"You got suspended for three days, idiot. I'd hardly call that dodging consequences." Hana adds, poking her in the shoulder again.

"Stop worrying about it."

"Get over it."

"...It's super unfair when you two gang up on me, y'know," Tsunami sighs. As a naturally affectionate person, she thanks them for their concern the best way she knows how and ducks in for a group hug. Tsuna's too used to her barnacle ways to offer protest, but Hana only puts up with it for a few seconds before she digs her fingers into Tsunami's ribs.

The friendly hallway hellos aren't the end of it. Things escalate slowly through the day.

"Sawada-chan, d-do you want one of my onigiri?" Tsunami freezes, a chunk of karaage halfway to her open mouth. It's Suzume, who Tsunami still cannot hold a conversation with for a myriad of reasons that include not being sure if that's actually her name and just sort of being a big antisocial slug.

"Uh," Tsunami stalls, lowering her chicken back into the box with cautious care. Hana kicks her under the table. "I mean, uh, yes? Do you… want to trade for karaage?"

Suzume goes back to her friends with bright red ears, one chicken chunk richer.

"Are you a wizard?" Tsunami asks Hana seriously, nibbling at her spoils. God, there's salmon in this, this is the best day of her life.

During recess, which all three of them spend inside for obvious reasons, a vaguely familiar boy with fluffy black hair pokes into the classroom and wordlessly deposits three full-sized candy bars on their desks. He makes direct eye contact with each of them in turn, nods solemnly, and walks out the door as suddenly as he'd come in.

Tsunami feels like she's been visited by one of santa's elves.

"What," Tsuna says, eyeing the chocolate like it's going to explode. It's a valid question that Tsunami does not care about in the least and she's already unwrapped hers and is mid-chew by the time Hana finds her voice enough to explain. God, she loves chocolate. Especially free chocolate.

"That's Yamada."

Oh, the sandbox kid. Tsunami's mouth is too full of gooey goodness to say anything, but she hopes her answering hum is enough to convey that she would now die for Yamada in a heartbeat. He's cute and shorter than her and has provided her with candy. He's met all her standards.

"I really only meant to tell everyone Ryoma was mean, you know." Hana muses, staring down at her candy bar. "I didn't think they'd all start assuming you were cool."

"I am cool," Tsunami says, licking her fingers clean because she's not a fucking animal. Tsuna makes a sound of disgust so it's not only her right, but her duty to wipe her hands on his shirt.

After lunch, Aino-sensei tells them all to form groups and puzzle out some math worksheets for a few minutes. Almost immediately, two boys she was previously only peripherally aware existed approach her desk.

'Please have food,' she thinks hopefully.

"You're Sawada, right? Do you wanna join our group?"

"I'm already with Tsuna and Hana, sorry," she declines, disappointed despite herself. Clearly, today has spoiled her rotten. "I'd... be happy to help if you have questions, though?" she adds, hoping to balance out her karma.

Offering feels a little pretentious, but Tsunami fought her way all the way up to AP Calculus at one point. She wasn't, like, good at it, but elementary school multiplication wasn't shit in comparison. Also, she has a documented weakness for puppy eyes and soft cheeks and the short kid with the glasses is in possession of both.

Their names are Ueda and Tsukuda and it turns out they are arguably worse at math than Tsuna is. After the third time the two of them break off from their third to pester her group for answers, Tsunami gives up and tells them to pull some chairs over. Her brother, for his part, just seems happy he's not bearing the full brunt of her and Hana on his own for once.

She's worried for a minute that they'll get in trouble for double-grouping but Aino-sensei looks so honestly pleased that the antisocial kids are finally socializing that she figures it's fine.

Ueda and Tsukuda introduce their third, a freckled girl in braids named Mei, and settle in for what's feeling more and more like an impromptu tutoring session.

"No, Ueda-kun, stop, regrouping is only helpful when you're multiplying by single digits. Just do a box." She leans over and taps his pencil out of the way with her own, sketching in a square divided into fourths. Hana looks up from much further down her worksheet, squinting suspiciously.

"Hold it, what's a box? Is that a real thing or another one of your weird shortcuts?"

"All my shortcuts are real, thanks. Name one time they haven't worked." Hana can't. Tsunami does math like an asshole, but her grades in the subject are flawless and they all know it.

"Boxes?" Tsukuda reminds. She likes Tsukuda, actually. He's pretty chill and doesn't bother her for answers until he's tried a problem himself, unlike Ueda who encounters one single speed bump and gives the whole thing up. Mei keeps up well enough, but has a bad habit of dropping numbers.

She tucks her hair behind her ears so it doesn't drag over the papers and raps her pencil sharply against the desk to get Ueda's attention again.

"So, the problem is 85 x 34. That's four numbers, so you want four squares. 85 is 80 and 5, so you put that along the top here," she scribbles the numbers along the outside edge of the top two boxes, "and 34, 30 and 4, along the side."

She taps the inside of the top left box. "Okay, so here's where the 80 and the 30 intersect, see? 8 times 3 is?"

"24?" It takes Ueda a minute, but he gets there. Tsunami nods and writes it in the box.

"Right. Now drop the zeroes," 24 becomes 2400, "and go to the next box. 8 times 4?"

"32." Tsukuda's already catching on to the pattern and starts filling in the rest of the boxes he's drawn in on his own sheet. "And then drop the zeroes again?"

"Yeah. Same thing on the bottom row. 5 times 3—"

"15," Tsuna says confidently. He still has to manually count out his times tables sometimes because numbers are as flighty to him as historical dates are to her, but he has his twos and fives down pat.

"—and drop the zeroes again for—"

"150. And the next one doesn't have any zeroes to drop so it's just 20." Mei concludes, crowding in to watch her write. "So what now?"

"Now you just add up all the numbers in the box," Tsunami writes them down in a neat little line and totals them up to 2890 with a flourish. "And that's the answer." She sits back down in her own chair and looks from face to face, hoping to see something like comprehension there. Teaching is hardly her strong suit, but hopefully she did well enough that everyone will stop bothering her and she can go back to daydreaming until lunch.

"You sleep through class every day, I watch you do it." Hana accuses, baffled. "Where did you even learn this?"

"I'm naturally gifted," Tsunami sniffs, tossing her hair over her shoulder imperiously. It misses Tsuna's face by centimeters. It's thick and weighty enough that catching a face-full of it can cause mild damage, something they've both found out through various incidents. "Sorry, Tsuna-fish."

"You're actually really chill, Sawada-chan!" Ueda laughs. "I always thought you were kinda prissy, but I guess Hana was right— ow!"

Tsukuda punches Ueda in the arm at the same time Mei slams her foot into his shin and Tsunami can only watch in affronted silence as he weathers a multi-pronged scolding.

"Don't be mean to Nami!" Tsuna defends with a scowl. Ueda rubs his head and laughs nervously, shoulders hunching.

Ugh, feelings.

"Do I really come off as prissy?" she asks Hana quietly, a little chastened.

It's not like she doesn't see where they're coming from. Tsunami goes out of her way not to talk to anyone outside her immediate social circle and tends not to look directly at people so her eyes don't freak them out. They aren't even wrong about the prissy part— she does look down on people a lot. Maybe it's because she's secretly almost two decades older than all of them and starving for actual age-appropriate social contact, but none of them know that.

Hana knocks their shoes together in a silent show of support.

"No, Ueda's just an idiot. You're fine."

"She's right, I'm super dumb! Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude or nothin'." Ueda ducks his head. Tsunami shifts in her seat uncomfortably.

"No, you're okay. I know I don't, um. Talk all that much. I'm kind of awkward?" She offers apologetically. Admitting that you're a cagey weirdo out loud fucking sucks and the slow full-face blush she can feel creeping up her doesn't help. Her hands come up to twirl her hair around her finger out of nervous habit.

"Aw," Mei coos. "You're so cute, Sawada-chan. Like a little doll."

'Thank you, I try really hard,' she doesn't say, partly because that's a weird thing to admit to and partly because machine broke. Come back later. Taking compliments well isn't one of her DM-approved character traits.

"Hng," she replies instead and ducks behind her curtain of hair, brick red.

Tsuna laughs at her. She crushes his foot under her shoe.

bold of you to assume i have time management skills

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