[KHR] Becoming Primo's Son

Chapter 1: Painful Beginnings

Tsuna knew that his time would eventually come, but he didn't realize how painful and slow it would be to watch himself and his Family wither away before his eyes.

Flames were largely used in Primo's time, but faded out of existence in the third generation. The usage of Dying Will in battle only came back fully with the Tenth era's invention of rings and box weapons.

Thinking back, Tsuna could laugh miserably. Did they perhaps not realize there might have been a reason the concept of flames in weaponry died?

Tsunayoshi realized that too late.

Lambo died, his heart unable to beat. Hibari died, the injuries in his veins propagating with the blood. Ryohei reanimated his cells until they failed altogether-- and similarly, Takeshi couldn't even feel himself die. Hayato just crumbled, and kept crumbling.

Tsunayoshi felt his own bones grow brittler and brittler. At some point, he was only holding himself together with the flames of Oath, casting himself into the shape of a human to pretend he could still stand as the head.

He couldn't.

He realized that after he lost everything.

-

When he woke up after falling asleep for what he thought was his last time, he knew something was wrong.

He was little again. Small, his fingers thin, and the clothes on his body were ratty and uncomfortable. The wounds on his hands were similar, but they were definitely different.

His skin was no longer crumbling away, and so it no longer needed to be held together by bandages. There were bruises and cuts that ached and— and how long has it been since he's felt pain? His skin was soft— too thin, but they didn't feel like stone. There weren't patches of his skin wrinkled and marred with dead cells.

Instead— the memories flowed into his head, and he knew that this was reincarnation.

Tsuna was living in an orphanage in the outskirts of the country— what was this country? It didn't seem to be the Italy he was familiar with, and there was this memory of magical beasts rather than wild animals that set the terminology in his head to confusion.

(Magic?)

"Aha! There you are!"

He jumped, and his head swirled back around in dread.

The woman was stout but fast, the apron tied around her waist crusted with grease and the deep brown of dried blood. She held a wooden spoon in her hand that Tsuna knew wasn't the one she kept in the kitchen for cooking, and he hated that his body frozen up.

His memories told him who that was.

The matron of the orphanage.

"How dare you try to escape!" She grabbed his arm right on what must have been a sprained wrist Tsuna didn't register, and she yanked him back with a force that left him winded. He's dragged to his feet, and when he saw the wooden spoon raise, he knew what was coming.

(That's right. Now he remembered.)

(This Tsuna had been trying to run away from the orphanage, and Tsuna had dallied too long here trying to gain his bearings.)

He squeezed his eyes shut and ducked his face away.

"I WARNED! You! How! How fucking! DARE! You! You're just Looking! For! Trouble! Are you listening! To! Me!"