Chapter Text
The thing about Tsuna’s life was that it could never just be normal.
Case in point: waking up when he didn’t remember falling asleep. Alarming circumstances for most people, yet when Tsuna opened his eyes to find himself staring up at the sterile, white ceiling of what could only be a nurses’ office, all he could muster was a sense of dull resignation. Apparently he’d managed to somehow get knocked out on his morning walk to school, which meant Reborn was going to kill him. He’d probably been ambushed, although his hyper intuition hadn’t alerted him to anything out of the ordinary…
Wait.
His brow furrowed as he tried to fight off the last lingering cobwebs of sleep. Why hadn’t his intuition alerted him if there had been danger? Ever since the conclusion of the representative battles a month ago, his innate six sense had been even more hyperactive than usual, pinging an alarm if someone so much as sneezed in the corner of his periphery. He’d been even jumpier than usual as a result and he knew his friends had noticed and worried.
Gokudera and Yamamoto had barely let him out of their sight for weeks, showing up on his doorstep to walk him to school, sticking close throughout the day, then walking him home and hanging around until he had to get ready for bed.
And it wasn’t as if he minded their hovering, far from it in fact, and indeed he understood their concerns only too well, but he’d felt terrible for worrying them needlessly. He’d tried countless times to convince them that he was fine, really, but they wouldn’t be budged. And it wasn’t as if he’d really tried that hard to talk them out of it in the first place, selfishly enjoying their constant presence despite his guilt.
Which was why he’d been so surprised when he’d come downstairs that morning and didn’t find them waiting in his kitchen being fussed over by his mom. He’d been even more surprised when they didn’t meet him at the crossroads between their houses as usual. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen Onii-san and Kyoko headed to school that morning either-
Panic surged through him and his intuition spiked in response as he scrambled to sit up, struggling against sleep-heavy limbs and an odd feeling of vertigo when he finally hauled himself upright. It was beyond strange that he hadn’t seen any of his friends that morning, especially considering Gokudera and Yamamoto had all but sewn themselves to his sides the last three weeks, it was downright suspicious!
Add to that the fact that he had apparently lost consciousness somewhere between his house and school and he didn’t need hyper intuition or an overactive imagination to tell him something was horribly wrong, not when the voice of experience was whispering to him that something was just Not Right about this picture.
Speaking of, his intuition nudged him a heartbeat before a voice spoke up from somewhere around the vicinity of his elbow. “I wouldn’t move around too much if I were you young man. You’ve had quite a shock to the system, near as I can figure.”
Tsuna gaped down at the tiny old woman peering back up at him from the bedside.
She looked...odd. Her long white coat was standard enough for a nurse or doctor, and the color-blocked dress she had on underneath bore a passing resemblance to a uniform of some kind, but that was were normality ended. She was also wearing a pink face-guard with a transparent purple visor, along with matching pink boots and bright yellow gloves like the kind his mom wore to wash the dishes. Her iron-gray hair appeared to be pulled up into a normal enough bun until he realized it was secured in place with what looked like a syringe of all things, not to mention she was so short he was pretty sure even his own unimpressive one hundred and fifty eight centimeters in height would have towered over her if he’d been standing.
‘I know you’re supposed to shrink as you get older but isn’t this taking it a bit far?’ He knew he was being rude, staring at her with his mouth hanging open, not saying a word, but the truth was he was completely gobsmacked. This wasn’t what he had been expecting at all.
The woman’s eyebrows rose higher and higher the longer he sat in stunned silence. Finally, when it became obvious he either wouldn’t or couldn’t speak she sighed and shook her head despairingly. Stretching up on her toes, using her cane for balance, she reached out and tapped two gloved fingers on the underside of his chin. “Close your mouth dear or you’ll start to catch flies.”
Startled out of his stupor, he felt himself flush crimson with mortification as he obediently snapped his jaw shut with an audible click. “Please excuse me ma’am! I didn’t mean-well, it’s just that I thought-or I didn’t think! I’m-! Confused. I am very confused.”
“Well that makes two of us young man.” She turned to pull a wheeled metal tray almost as tall as she was closer to the bed in one smooth, practiced motion.
He’d automatically opened his mouth to offer his help but closed it again without saying a word when he saw she didn’t need it.
She grinned up at him, having understood his intention nonetheless. “I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been alive dear.” She chuckled when he ducked his head, abashed. “But I appreciate the thought.”
Her squeaky voice was as amused as it was kind. He chanced a small, tremulous smile of his own in response when she didn’t immediately begin to scold him, lowering his shoulders from their defensive hunch around his ears. Without his friends around he tended to fall back into old habits when dealing with strangers; namely, always assume the worst. It was nice to be proven wrong every once in a while.
She tapped the top of the tray to call his attention to the items resting on it. With a sick jolt, he recognized his container of Dying Will pills, his contacts, and his wallet with his student ID taken out and resting beside it. There was also a plastic pitcher and a cup but he barely noted that fact as he surreptitiously clenched his right hand into a fist, hidden beneath the blankets. He breathed a silent sigh of relief when he felt the familiar tightening of warm metal across his knuckles, and some of the tension unwound from the knot in his chest. That brought down the chance of this being a Mafia-related thing to almost zero. No self-respecting famiglia would have let him hold onto the Sky ring if they meant to keep him here under lock and key.
“I hope you can forgive the intrusion.” She indicated the items laid out between them. “I don’t normally make a habit of going through my patients’ pockets, but with circumstances being what they are, I’ll admit I had little choice in the matter.”
She continued before he could ask her to clarify her statement. “Sawada Tsunayoshi, fifteen years of age, first year student at Namimori high school, five feet two inches in height, weighing in at approximately-” she ran a professionally critical eye over his slight frame. “One hundred and five pounds.”
She paused to purse her lips in mild, grandmotherly disapproval. “A bit underweight dear, you might want to consider adding more protein and complex carbohydrates to your diet.”
He squeaked, face once more aflame with embarrassment at her frank assessment. “Yes ma’am!”
She nodded once, satisfied, and went on. “Born October fourteenth-happy belated birthday young man-blood type A.” She regarded him levelly through her visor. “But no Quirk listed. Now why might that be?”
He blinked at her, perplexed. “Ma’am? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Well you’re not alone. Quite a lot of that going around today in fact.”
With a small huff of effort, she leveraged herself into the chair located by the bed and leaned her cane, which he suddenly noticed was also shaped like a syringe, against the armrest. Then she simply sat and watched him in silence for a long, long time.
He fidgeted minutely with the blanket, bunching it up and smoothing it out in turns as he waited for whatever was coming next. He had about a thousand questions he wanted to ask but something was telling him to hold his tongue and wait it out. So that’s what he did, difficult though it was.
After a length of time that felt like a small eternity to Tsuna the woman sighed and sat forward in her chair. “You understand why all of this is a problem, don’t you young man?”
He shook his head. “No ma’am, I’m afraid I have no idea what’s going on.”
“We ran your name and fingerprints through the Quirk Identification Database.” There was something sharp and not quite accusatory in her tone when she said this. “You’re aren’t registered anywhere. Moreover, the Principal made more than a few phone calls today to Namimori Town, specifically to the city hall. There is no birth record on you, nor are there any school records on a boy your age under the family name ‘Sawada’ having ever attended school in Namimori.”
“There is no record of a ‘Sawada Tsunayoshi’ having ever been born in Japan in the last fifteen years.”
She kept her eyes trained on his face with grave severity. “Care to explain why that might be young man?”
“What?!” He stared at her in shock, mind whirling as he tried to make sense of all she’d told him. “But that’s-! That can’t-! I-I-I don’t understand! That can’t be!”
“I can assure you Principal Nezu ran the results multiple times. They all came back the same.”
“But-but-but-” he stuttered. “But that just can’t be! I-I’m real, I’m here, I’m me! I have a mom and a dad and-and-and everything! I exist, so what-?”
He flailed his hands uselessly as true panic began to set in. What exactly was going on here?! Was this a test? Some harebrained scenario cooked up by Reborn to, what, test his ability to lie under pressure?
But something told him that wasn’t the case. His intuition or maybe his familiarity with his insane tutor, hard fought and hard won over the last year or so. Oh it was something Reborn would do of course, but there was just something off about it. He didn’t know how to explain it but it just didn’t feel like a typical Reborn plan. It wasn’t high-stakes enough, it was too random, or maybe not random enough. Regardless, something was telling him that this wasn’t one of Reborn’s schemes and he was going to listen to that feeling. After all it had yet to steer him wrong.
He took a deep breath in and let it out slowly in an attempt in organize his racing thoughts and calm his pounding heart. He had to at least try to be rational about this; he wasn’t a kid anymore. He was in high school now for goodness sake, he’d certainly survived much more harrowing battles than this. Hadn’t he stood up to not only Xanxus, not only Byakuran, but Reborn as well during the whole Vindice-Kawahira-Arcobaleno mess? Hadn’t he managed to get them to listen to him, at least a little? Never mind that he still wasn’t sure, exactly, how he’d managed that, the point was he’d done it. Did he really think this petite gray-haired grandmother was scarier than Reborn? Of course not.
He could do this.
“Ma’am there must be some kind of mistake.” He was secretly proud of himself when his voice remained steady despite his fear. “I promise you my name really is Sawada Tsunayoshi, son of Sawada Nana and Sawada Iemitsu. And I really was born fifteen years ago in Namimori. I don’t know what’s going on but if I could just call my-”
He stopped as something she’d said earlier finished processing in his mind. He frowned. “Wait. Wait you said the principal had to make some calls to Namimori?” He looked over at her. “Does that mean I’m not currently in Namimori?”
She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Indeed not. You’re currently sitting in the U.A high school nurses’ office in Mustafu.”
“M-Mustafu?” He repeated, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar word. “I don’t-Yuuei high-? I don’t understand. How did I get here?”
He’d initially assumed he was in the Namimori high nurses’ office, but now that he looked around more closely, it was plain that couldn’t be the case. Even with the privacy curtain drawn it was easy to tell that this room was much, much bigger than any public high school would ever be able to justify or afford.
Preoccupied as he was, he didn’t see the way her brows flew upwards in surprise at his question. “We were rather hoping that was something you’d be able to tell us dear. It’s not every day a boy falls out of the sky directly over our campus you know.”
He whipped his head back around to gape at her. “Fell out of the-?!”
“Oh yes, cause quite a stir too, what with the explosion and all.” The nurse climbed carefully down from the chair, took up her cane, and began to pace. “I daresay if it wasn’t for the quick thinking of two of our Hero course students, young Uraraka and young Midoriya, you and I would not be having this conversation. Or any conversation at all for that matter. If they hadn’t gotten to you before you reached the ground well…it doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Tsuna could imagine. He could imagine only too clearly. He went a bit pale thinking about it actually. Sure he’d taken some bad hits and made some hard landings in previous fights, but that was with his Flames activated and hyper dying will mode engaged. To think of hitting the ground unprotected made him shudder with horror and his stomach twist with nausea.
“I’ll have to make sure and thank them,” he blurted, eager to distract himself from his own morbid train of thought. “Uraraka-san and Midoriya-san right? Those were their names? I should thank them. For saving my life.”
She waved away his words without stopping her pacing. “Nonsense dear, that’s what the Hero course students are here for. Heroics.”
She paused for a moment, tapping one finger on her cane and staring into the middle distance, deep in thought. “None of us were counting on you being as in the dark as we are about this whole situation. My leading theory was Quirk experimentation gone awry, but if that’s off the table...could’ve been caught in the cross fire of someone else’s Quirk perhaps, I suppose that’s as possible as anything.”
She turned towards him so fast he jumped nearly off the bed in surprise, not having thought her capable of such a spry maneuver. She jabbed the point of her cane in his direction, making him let out a soft, involuntary ‘eep’ of fright as she did. “You, young man, what’s the last thing you remember prior to waking up in my infirmary?”
“The last thing I remember was my walk to school this morning. I don’t remember if I got there or not though.” He automatically cast around for a clock. “I left the house around seven fifteen maybe? I was actually on time for once. I’m not sure how long I’ve been asleep?”
“Hm? Oh.” She pushed back one baggy sleeve to check her watch. “It is currently ten seventeen at night.”
“Huh?!”
“Yes you’ve been asleep for almost fourteen hours and I was beginning to worry. My preliminary examination didn’t show any external or internal injuries but you were certainly unconscious when they brought you to me.”
He hurriedly threw aside his blankets and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, placing his socked feet flat to the floor. “I-I have to call my mom! She’ll be-well, no, she won’t but somebody will definitely be freaking out if I just disappeared for an entire day!”
He tried to push himself to standing but was stopped by a dizzy spell before he’d even managed to lift off the mattress. He slumped over with a groan, elbows on his knees and his face in his hands as his head spun and his stomach rolled unhappily.
“Here you go dear.”
He lifted his head with no small amount of effort and forced his eyes open to find the nurse at his side, cup of water in hand. He took it gratefully and drained the glass dry in one long pull, not having realized how thirsty he was until that moment.
She took the glass and refilled it wordlessly from the pitcher on the tray. She passed it back to him and gently pulled his unoccupied hand toward herself. “Have some gummies.” She dropped several brightly colored candies into his open palm. “We’ll get some real food into you in a moment but I have a few more questions for you first. Alright?”
“Yes ma’am.”
He dubiously examined a gummy shaped like an orange slice for a second, internally wincing at the thought of what Reborn would say or do to him if he ever found out Tsuna had blindly eaten something offered to him by a stranger. But. His hyper intuition wasn’t reacting at all, which meant there was no threat currently in the room with him so. He shrugged and popped the gummy in his mouth. It was startlingly citrus-y and really, very good.
“Oh goodness gracious young man, there’s no need for such formality. Recovery Girl is fine.”
“Re-Recov-? I’m sorry, could you repeat that please?” He rubbed the back of his head and chuckled self-deprecatingly. “English was never my strong suit.”
She smiled indulgently. “Shuzenji Chiyo then.”
He inclined his head in a shallow bow. “Thank you for taking care of me Shuzenji-san.”
“It’s what I’m here for dear, no trouble at all. Now.” She folded both hands over the top bulb of her cane. “You said the last thing you remember from this morning was walking to school? Did you notice anything out of the ordinary about the trip?”
He started to shake his head no, then hesitated.
She noticed. “Even the slightest variation could be important.”
“Well...a few of my classmates live nearby and we usually walk together but. They weren’t there this morning.” He tried in vain not to worry about why that might be.
“And you know these classmates well enough for this to be a strange occurrence?”
“Oh, um, yes? Gokudera-kun and Yamamoto have been my friends since our second year of middle school. And Onii-san, ah, that is, Sasagawa Ryohei, he’s a year ahead of us but his sister is in our grade. They’ve lived only two blocks away from my house for my whole life. It was really weird not to see them.”
She hummed in contemplation. “And these boys, what are their Quirks?”
There was that word again. “I’m sorry? I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Their Quirks dear, what are their Quirks? Are any of them capable of teleportation, or warping perhaps?”
He stared at her, jaw slack and eyes wide. “Telepor-?! No, nothing like that!” ‘Warping’? Like what Bermuda could do? His heartbeat sped up. “I-I’m sorry ma’am-ah, Shuzenji-san, but. I’m not entirely sure what it is you’re asking me. What is a ‘quirk’?”
Her head rocked back slightly on her neck, clearly startled. “You...young man are you trying to tell me you’ve never heard of Quirks?”
“No? I mean, yes. Yes that is what I’m saying.”
“Dear, being Quirkless is nothing to be ashamed of,” she said kindly, bewildering him further. “I understand your reluctance, but there’s no need to lie about-”
He immediately began to flail in denial, interrupting her. “No! No, I mean, I’m sorry really, but I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. What do you mean by ‘quirk’? Like. Like Yamamoto’s on the baseball team, if that’s what you mean? Like a hobby? But they don’t usually meet on Tuesday mornings, which. Made it weird that he wasn’t there? To walk to school? Yeah.”
Tsuna cringed at the lame ending to his admittedly garbled speech but the nurse didn’t seem to notice.
She had returned to pacing, faster now than before, and the point of her cane clicked loudly off the tile with her every step. She was muttering to herself under her breath and he only caught bits and pieces.
“Never heard of Quirks, but that would mean...and there were no records but the school ID is legitimate…nothing when we ran his prints but...know they said the warp gate was powerful but surely not...don’t think he’s that good a liar but I am getting on in years...”
Her pacing ended as abruptly as it had begun and she sighed once more. She turned to him, expression apologetic. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a bit longer for dinner young man. Principal Nezu needs to be informed of this immediately. Here.” She pressed another handful of gummies on him which he accepted without protest. “These should help tide you over until then. Can you stand?”
He nodded as he chewed, shoved on his shoes, and carefully got to his feet. The dizziness had vanished and although his muscles trembled with fatigue he was able to stay standing.
“Alright then. Follow me.” She pulled back the curtain and headed for the door thus revealed on the wall opposite the bed.
He took a step after her and paused, glancing back at the tray containing his belongings. “Um, Shuzenji-san, is it okay if I take my things back now?”
“Hm? Oh yes of course dear feel free. No need for us to keep them now that you’re awake.”
Relief flooded through him as he quickly shoved his contacts and pills in one pocket of his uniform slacks and his wallet in the other.
Comforted by their familiar weight, he obligingly followed the diminutive woman out the door and into the hallway.