i.

Why, Tsuna thought, whallowing mentally in despair and desperation while dodging a flaming fist towards him, am I the only one who has to deal with Reborn's randomness?

Sighing, he dodged to the left, ignoring the foreign words thrown at him and calculating the distance he could fly away from his attacker. There was literally no point in fighting. Plus, he was kinda hungry, because Reborn thought it was a good idea to send him into another world just for fun.

And probably for training.

Damn that ex-arcobaleno.

This would be the last time the brunette would ignore his Hyper Intuition, because the drawbacks of ignoring his slowly worsening headache were so not worth the fact that someone was attacking him with flaming fists which weren't even Dying Will Flames.

Meanwhile, his pink-haired attacker was getting obviously frustrated. And really? Five minutes ago, he was falling to his death and the next moment, some pink-haired dude started attacking him, spewing some pretty loud words he couldn't understand.

Tsuna sighed again, dodging backwards, letting his Hyper Intuition guide him. This is pretty one sided, he thought, not even bothering to switch to Hyper Dying Will Mode. Nuh-uh, not going to show this person his flames while their hands were literally on fire. This was just asking for a knockdown via Reborn. But this has gone on for long enough, right?

The pink-haired attacker shouted something at him, getting progressively louder and louder.

And then–

A blue cat dropped from the sky, landing beside the pink-haired dude.

"..." Tsuna could feel his eye twitch.

Why was he even surprised.

Maybe he should just let the guy burn him into ash. With that, all his problems would disappear, which were essentially Vongola Famiglia's fault anyway. The boss-in-training would die here, but he wouldn't be a mafiaboss which he didn't want to be anyway. And it would be entirely Reborn's fault. See how that ended, ha.

..Okay, he confessed, slightly disturbed by his own thoughts, maybe this whole 'let's drop Tsuna into another world' is pissing me off more than I thought.

Tsuna shook his head, trying to concentrate on the fight. The cat was talking to his attacker, making some pretty open gestures to him while jumping up and down. His attacker was talking right back and was gesturing just as obvious to him as the cat.

They were arguring.

Tsuna didn't know why. He was pretty sure that he kept his flames on a tight lock since he arrived here. The air here in this world was heavy with.. something. Not bad, per se, just something which didn't exist in his world. It was natural and neutral, all earth and whatever—Enma would probably have a field day—however, it was making him jittery.

It was nothing like the Dying Will Flames, which were the personification of some fucked up shit—because you would have to literally die, what the—and it was all unknown.

Being with Reborn, being trained by him, was skyrocketing his paranoia to a hundredfold.

So the boss-in-training was, of course, very, very wary about these flames the pink-haired attacker was spewing and his cat, which was a talking cat.

And this wasn't even the worst he had ever experienced.

The brunette snapped out of his thoughts, realizing that his attacker and their cat were now silent and staring at him in silent curiosity.

Reborn would have punched him in the face for that tiny slip.

Alas, he wasn't here, so you would have to excuse him, as he blinked at them and tilted his head, not saying a single word.

They waved.

Tsuna tensed, waved back, confused, but mentally filled with relief. He was so done fighting.

The pink-haired one, hesitantly, gestured to himself and said with a rough voice, "Natsu." Tsuna blinked, not understanding, and then nodded silently as he got it a couple of blinks later. The guy nodded back, gesturing to his blue cat and said in the same voice, "Happy."

After that, he repeated his gesture and introduction.

Tsuna nodded, smiling slightly at the impatient look the other was giving him, and pointed to the cat named Happy. Reborn was rubbing a little bit of his schadenfreude to him, it seemed. "Ar-pi," he said, failing the pronunciation by the looks they were giving him. The brunette blushed, noticing that it sounded kinda like English, but not quite. Pointing at Natsu, he gave him a stink-eye, "Natsu." Tsuna gestured to himself, debating if he should tell these people his real name and then, ultimately not caring either way, settled on his nickname. "Tsuna," Rise and repeat. "Tsuna."

Natsu and Happy blinked, probably noticing the similiarities between their names. "Tsu.. na?" the pink-haired guy asked, brow furrowing a little bit and then, shrugging, "Tsuna."

ii .

Tsuna gave a mental curse, trying to form words with more English accent out of his damned mouth, "Nnn, sssss.. sca.. scaletto.." His mouth snapped shut and he nervously inched away from his teacher, all while making sure that he didn't accidently offend the other. "Ssss.. sor–ley. S-Sori.."

Natsu gave an impatient huff, scowling deeply at the brunette. Beside him was Happy, who was laughing and making a bad job to hide it. Between them were stack of papers with various letters and words of this world's language. "Scar–let. Erza Scarlet, Tsuna."

"'M sorrey.." he mumbled, clenching his fists into the earth and, praying that the other wouldn't light the forest on fire like last time, turned away. "Sor–rey. I-I am sorrey." For being difficult, was unsaid, but very much present. "I am sor–ry. I'm sorry." Tsuna bit his lip, careful not to draw blood and sighed deeply. "Sorry.."

Closing his eyes, he wondered, distantly, if he should just give up trying to learn the language of this world. He was such an inconvenience to Natsu, who had the patience of absolutely zero, who gave him shelter, who tried to be as sensible as possible.

And he won't deny it, living in the forest was hard.

However, Tsuna thought, that he began to cherish it. He lived in a house which was pretty much deserted and had garbage in tons, but it gave off such a homey feeling, reminding him of his airhead mother, that he couldn't care less.

Natsu, the pink-haired dude, slept most of his time somewhere else, so the brunette didn't feel too guilty for basically taking his home. It also gave him an opportunity to cook something, because it was literally impossible to cook something for yourself if you lived in the house Sawada.

Admittedly, he still had trouble trying to sleep and realizing that he was truly gone from his world for the moment, after all the days that passed, but it was still better than living atop a tree.

Integrating, however, was still difficult. Tsuna had never ever left his home country before, so he had, he admitted, some really big problems in settling. Some things were the same as in Japan, like a couple of words, names and norms, but other things were completely different. Like some manners, signs, the language, which was a mix between English, Japanese and some really weird dialects, and the whole freaking country.

It's no surprise, he remembered distantly saying, because this is another world.

Tsuna broke down crying after that moment. After that completely lucid realization that he was stuck, that he trusted Reborn with his life, but damn it, are you a complete asshole, you freaking spartan tutor?

Luckily, Natsu hadn't been in the house at that breakdown. Unluckily, his teacher probably suspected something, because he kept shooting him concerned looks when he thought he wasn't looking. Additionally, he had dragged him off after they had seen each other the first time.

Personally, the brunette wasn't too sure what to even think of Natsu and Happy. They were, for the lack of better words, energetic. This, coupled with Natsu's seemingly love for fights, was making them almost as exhausting to deal with as Lambo. Tsuna didn't need to understand with his extremely limited vocabulary that they loved to fight and destroy things. However, at the same time, he could see and partly conclude with his Hyper Intuition, that both of them treasured their friends deeply and sincerely. Both of them didn't say it, because the brunette wouldn't understand anyway, but when they tried to teach him how to say their friends names, both of them would smile.

Smile like they were the most precious things in their world, all while the boss-in-training was more than sure that Natsu and Happy didn't even notice that they were smiling like loons.

So Tsuna was kinda content with, well, living at this house. Even if it was lonely and he missed those shouts and explosions dearly, he shouldn't—wouldn't—give up hope.

Because he wanted to smile like Natsu and Happy, too, when he met his friends later on.

And they, the boss-in-training reflected, softly smiling, are far too trusting.

Tsuna opened his eyes, careful not to look at Happy or Natsu when they glowed a little bit. The Vongola Gear on his finger was warming the tiniest bit up.

He shouldn't let them down, should he?

Tsuna had been crying, recently.

Not always, not even that often, but, Natsu thought frowning, once was more than enough.

It came as a surprise when he came home the first time, checking on his brown-haired freeloader, that there was a small smell of salt. Of tears. Of devastation, of despair and of hopelessness.

Natsu blinked, perplexed and with dread pooling in his stomach.

When he came upon Tsuna, in the house, the other was weakly stirring a pot of soup, orange eyes* shrouded in dark shadows and with bags under his eyes. He didn't even turn around to look at him and the mage had never, in all the days he had seen Tsuna, seen him anything other than absolutely alert and cautious. It was shocking to see the other so out of it, practically screaming hopelessness, that Natsu just froze.

Froze, because the brunette wasn't a friend, maybe, but he needed help as obviously as the plants needed the sun and maybe he was getting frustrated with teaching, he wasn't a good teacher, but he was trying damn it and even if the results were minimal at best, Tsuna was the one who tried to give his all, to learn their langauge even if he was obviously struggling.

Natsu was sure that under all that nervous covering and stuttering, Tsuna was a pretty cool guy.

And, honestly, the brunette was slow with pronunciation, being outright terrible at it, but his reading/writing skills were improving in an insane rate. Natsu didn't know why and he didn't bother asking, knowing that it was pointless. It was a steady progress and then, he could ask the brunette for a straight fight. Maybe even ask for one or two pointers for dodging.

Thinking back, it had confused him greatly when he had met Tsuna for the first time, how such an unassuming guy had made a big crater into the dirt. There hadn't been any whiff of magic, so it had made him pretty excited to meet someone who could do something like that without using magic. Plus, Tsuna's clothes didn't have a speck of dust on him, even when he stood in the middle of the crater.

It had made his blood boil, seeing such finesse, such power over oneself, and he had charged recklessly in.

Later on, he had noticed that it was kinda weird that the other hadn't fought back, at all. Who would do something like that? Just after an incident one week ago, where he had almost burned up the forest, made the message clear that Tsuna wouldn't fight back.

That was why, after he unfroze himself, he hauled his charge away, fussing a little, he admitted, and dragged him to a small lake he knew Happy would be at.

Happy looked up and loudly exclaimed, twitching worriedly, "Both of you look like shit."

The brunette gave a small, startled yelp.

Natsu gave his cat and fellow guildmate a stink-eye, the same one he learned from Tsuna that made you feel like shit. "Shut up," he grouched out, patting the spot next to him and then dragging the brunette down when he gave him a confused blink. For someone who could evade all his fists effortlessly, Tsuna was a slow-thinker. Not that he could argue that he was any better. "Come, Tsuna." After he made sure that the brunette wasn't moving any soon, he turned to Happy, face dark. "He'd been cryin'."

Happy gave him a flat stare. "What'd you do?"

"I didn't do anythin', dammit!" And it was true! After that fiasco with almost lighting up the entire forest on fire, he didn't even dare breath fire near his charge! "He– I mean, just look at him!" he huffed, pointely not looking into Tsuna's direction. "He's obviously, uhh, in agony." He couldn't say pain, because it was one of the words their freeloader could understand. "Agony. Yeah. What'd I do, buddy?"

"I dunno?" Happy made a very unhappy face, but focused his eyes onto the water. "Perhaps he needs fish?" Natsu gave him one nasty scowl for that. "Perhaps give him some time. Let's ask the others!"

"Yeah, no."

"Why?" his cat hissed. "We're useless!"

"'Cuz yar plans suck!"

Afterwards, Natsu would notice that his charge had been long gone after their argument.

"Tsuna?"

Tsuna turned around, half-stumbling and half-fumbling with his pot of hot soup. "Y-Yeah..?" the brunette asked warily and Natsu noticed how the other seemed to be resolutely looking at anything other than him, which made him sigh silently. "Natsu?"

The fire mage huffed loudly, sitting down onto the couch. He ignored the flinch he earned for his fast movements, glancing at his freeloader with a friendly smile. "How are you doing?"

Tsuna beamed, probably noticing that it was a sentence he knew, because it was one of the first ones Happy taught him. Nodding, Natsu observed how careful the brunette tried to pronounce the words he had practiced.

"I-I.. I am okay," he said, smiling after it came out correctly, "h-how abut yu.. umm, you?"

"Not bad," Natsu replied softly, knowing that his loud voice would probably startle the teen. Still, it kinda annoyed him to be so cautious of his own movement, but he will manage. "Tsuna." Tsuna looked up, resignation already entering his eyes like he expected to fail. The Fairy Tail mage rolled his eyes, still smiling. Not getting a rant in his weird language from the brunette, he was making progress. "Good job. You are getting better."

Tsuna blushed and then bowed. "Th-Thanks–"

Natsu fell out off the couch, spluttering, effectively startling his charge and interrupting him. "W-Why are you bowing**?" The mage jumped up, sprinting to the startled brunette and shaking him. "Why, why, why are you bowing?" Tsuna whined and stuttered something back between his shaking, but it was garbled and in his weird language which Natsu couldn't even begin to understand. Not caring either way, he continued to shake him. "Why, Tsuna? Why?"

More garbled stuttering. Why was his language so damn hard to understand? The accent was just plain weird and it made his tongue flop in impossible ways.

Natsu huffed a little flame out, irritated. Getting enough of his shaking, the pink-haired mage let the teen go–

–and promptly found his legs swept under a kick. Shocked, he fell onto his back.

What the heck?

Orange eyes peered over him, blinking. "Um, Natsu..?" the other asked hesistantly, rubbing his neck sheepishly. Natsu blinked back, brain not understanding what the heck happened and what the brunette wanted from him. Tsuna's smile was woobly. "I– sorry. I umm, I-I'm sorry."

Natsu's thoughts were scrambled. The fire mage didn't understand why the other was apologizing. On a more important note, what the heck happened? One moment, he was shaking the daylights out of his charge, the other moment, he laid on the floor like Erza just stomped him into the dirt.

It had happened so fast, his mind was still reeling.

"What the heck," he whispered, looking up into guilty, orange eyes. "What the heck..?"

》to be continued..《

*orange eyes; in the manga, 27 has orange eyes. in the animu, 27 has brown eyes which change to orange when he goes to Hyper Dying Will Mode. idk, both are awesome but i wanna stick to the manga so here i go.

**reference to the meme "why are you running?" just changed it to bowing, ya know, cultural differences and so on.