SOME NOTES
- Reborn/Saki (Sird) otp
- POKÉMON TEAMS:
    - Hibari Kyouya of Altomare: sandopan f, perappu m (Hipera), kirikizan m, ratiasu, ratiosu -- (ice/flying)
    - Miura Haru of Celadon: kireihana f (Hana-chan), sabonea f (Sabocchan), doredia f (Dore-chan), manene m (Manekkun), pacchiiru f (Pacchan) -- (dark/grass)
    - Yamamoto Takeshi of Pewter: daikenki m (Musashi), kyamome m (Kojirou), haaderia m (Jirou), kurobatto f, nyorozo m -- (water/steel)
    - Dokuro Chrome of Hearthome: mikaruge m (Rokudou Mukuro), fuwaraido f, gengaa f, pururiru f, derubiru m (Ken/犬), kagebouzu/jupetta m (Chikusa/千種) -- (ghost/bug)
    - Sasagawa Ryouhei of Saffron: ebiwaraa m, garura f (Garyuu), hariteyama f, mimiroppu m (Bunny), mainan f -- (fighting/rock)
    - Sasagawa Kyouko of Saffron: kapoeraa m (Lucky), chaaremu m, kinogassa f (Mica), nyorozo f, purasuru m (Cherry) -- (electric/ground)
    - Gokudera Hayato of Saffron: rentoraa m (Uri), fuudin m (Shamal), marumain (Ringo), oobemu (Enban/円盤), jibakoiru (Budou/葡萄) -- (poison/fire)
    - Bianchi of Saffron: betobeton m, gamageroge f ([gamagaru]), serebyi (Reborn), rabukasu m, dorapion f, baibanira f -- (poison/fire)
    - Spanner of ライモン: porigonz (Crysis), goruugu (GUNDAM), rotomu -- (steel/electric)
    - Irie Shouichi of Lavender: porigon2, neitio m (Mirai/未来), masukippa, teppouo -- (ghost/electric)
    - Basil of Viridian: sakurabisu f,
    - Superbi Squalo of Pacifidlog: samehadaa f (SAME), sutoraiku m (TORA), oodairu m (DAI), bakuongu f (BAKU), garagara f (GARAGARA)
    - Lussuria: sawamuraa m, kairikii m, kojondo m, dokkoraa m, ringuma m
    - Belphegor: burungeru m, nidokingu, yadokingu f, koikingu m, sheimi (Viper/Mammon)
    - Franc of Sunyshore: nyorotono f, mikaruge m (Rokudou Mukuro)
    - Levi A Than of Mauville: mantain,
    - Dino: gyaroppu m, zeburaika f, kingudora m, abagoora m (Enzo)
    - Glo Xinia: dokukurage m, yorunozuku m
    - Fuuta of ソウリュウ: hitokage m (Kage-nii), mokoko m (Lambo), biriridama (I-pin)
    - Sawada Iemitsu of Pallet: rizaadon m, dosaidon f, fione (Lal Mirch)
    - Sawada Nana of Pallet: redian f
- TRAINER TYPES:
    - Black Belt Ryouhei and Crush Girl Kyouko; Sasagawa Crush Kin
    - Channeler/Psychic Chrome
    - Baseball Player/Athlete Takeshi
    - Lass/Idol Haru
    - Super Nerd Spanner
- POKÉMON TRAINERS (500 YEARS EARLIER):
    - Rokudou Mukuro of Holon: yorunozoku δ (water/psychic) m, juputoru δ (fire) f, neitio δ (fighting/ground) f
    - Joushima Ken of Holon: mizugorou δ (fire/steel) m
    - Kakimoto Chikusa of Holon: acchamo δ (water/ice) m
    - Giotto of Altomare:
    - Ugetsu of Pewter:







Tsuna doesn't remember anytime between meeting Reborn and the third time he woke up small, yellow, and made of metal.  He knows the first time he remembers was the third time, though, which worries him in its detail and its omissions.


Reborn deposits Tsuna in Altomare like a bad check and vanishes.  Somehow he has a feeling that that's a good thing -- no Reborn -- but mostly he'd like to know where he is.  That's a bit difficult, though: no one in Altomare speaks the dialects he's familiar with and while a few people speak Hoenn dialect, Tsuna might as well not understand anything, their accents are so thick.

Still, something draws him down an alleyway and up a side street.  He follows one of the canals more out of convenience than interest, but he's not entirely sure <i>why</i>.

It's just ... what he should do.  What Reborn would want him to do, he thinks, and while he doesn't trust Reborn as far as he could throw him, it seems ... proper.

He stops walking at an old fancy house.  It's abandoned, and looks like it's been abandoned for a while, but he walks up the front steps anyway and tries the door.  It opens, but whether that's a good thing or a bad thing he's not sure.

It just is.

The floor creaks with the wind, and Tsuna smiles faintly as he steps carefully to avoid the more mildewed boards.  He thinks he'd like to know how he knows, but he can't bring himself to quite care.

He stops in the back room.  More accurately, he stops after he glances up at the old tapestry hung on the far wall in the back room.  It's faint enough that it's a bit hard to tell exactly what's on it, but he recognizes someone who looks faintly like one of his old friends, and a rock containing the pokémon of wishes, and -- well.  Someone who looks remarkably like how Tsuna himself would if he'd dressed formally, and not just formally but in the styles of one of the regions other than his native Kanto.

It surprises him more in his lack of surprise.  There's no reason he can think of that there would be an old -- and by old he means <i>old</i> -- tapestry of, of <i>him and that boy from Pewter</i>, and yet all he seems to be able to think is 'that's a pity, then.'




<i>Be at the Ilex Shrine in one hour,</i> the letter states, and who is she to ignore it?  She doesn't <i>quite</i> recognize the handwriting, neat and elaborate as a clock face, but the signature is a finger-painted clam and it's been decades since she last saw it.

Reborn wants a favour.  And, given the letter's mysterious appearance on her desk, he's likely willing to use some of his -- resources.  (She hasn't needed extra time in a long while, but he's helped her in subtler ways when it suits him.)  There's no reason not to go, at least; no one should know of their agreements and in the unlikely circumstance that it's faked, the only people it'll inconvenience are the culprits.  He is not known for his patience for those who would damage his reputation and he is <i>never</i> late.

She goes.


"You're late," the small child says as he adjusts his fedora.  It'd be amusing if she hadn't seen him defeat an irritated salamence with his left hand.

"I am exactly on time, you will find," she states calmly and waits.  He looks at her levelly, then smiles, sharp as a spearow beak.

"I would like you to pass off an -- anonymous tip, shall we say."  He hops up onto her shoulder and explains.  It's not glamorous, but she's sure he has his reasons and -- it's easy enough.  Why not?

She hasn't heard anything notable about this 'Gokudera Hayato' anyway; Reborn tends to pick unknowns as the targets for his machinations and turn them into assets.  Her current employer likely wouldn't mind, assuming he found out (and she has no intention of letting him find out; while Reborn's request is probably harmless, her -- agreement with him <i>isn't</i>).

Still, she considers rejecting it, if only because she has better things to do than be his errand girl.  Of course, she has better things to do than risk losing his favour, particularly if something falls south and Sakaki-sama gets a clue.  But assuming not all of her luck leaves her, it'll be at least weeks before that happens and by then it won't matter.  No, there's no good reason at all to turn him down.

So she doesn't.


According to legend, the wish pokémon jirachi awakens for about a week every thousand years.  This is not entirely accurate; they typically average three wishes granted over a millennium, but if they were only awake for a week in a thousand years, there likely wouldn't be any legends about them.  Records don't tend to last that long, and the ones that do tend to serve <i>political</i> purposes.  No matter how much someone may revere the various pokémon who can shape the world as they see fit, the odds of any of the rumors even approaching accurate are impossibly minute.

And of course, people need to learn the legends somewhere.

Now, if one person wished for immortality, then they might tell others of the small metallic star pokémon and its ability to grant wishes, but that would be silly; if it grants wishes so rarely, why would one tell everyone of this chance for wishes?  Three wishes can be written on its tags and it grants them when it awakens.

Three wishes.

One thousand years.

The odds of any one wish being fulfilled within the wisher's lifetime are astronomical.  While the xatu may know when and where jirachi will awaken, they are not known for their outgoing natures.  They are pokémon, after all, and one of the most important facets of the pokémon psyche is this: do no harm, which then means information is shared on a need-to-know basis, and usually no one needs to know.  Certainly not most humans, and even the most trustworthy humans have difficulty with the idea of 'do no harm'.  (Which is not to say that pokémon are rather better about it; they tend to underestimate the fragility of those who do not live by tooth and claw, and the pokémon of legend often fail to grasp the realities of truly living.  Suicune's ability to purify water sources sounds wonderful if the fact that the food chain rests predominately on filter feeders is ignored.  There are reasons the pokémon of legend rarely show themselves to others; their abilities can destroy entire ecosystems by accident.)

This assumes there is only one jirachi, which is very nearly true, but the difference between 'is very nearly' and 'is' can be like night and day.



Tsuna wakes up fifteen minutes after his alarm goes off and ten minutes after the mareep sits on his face.  As far as mornings go, this is very nearly a good day for him!  -- though the mareep is nuzzling his hair and still sitting on his face.

The mareep is also sticky and smells like artificial grape.  "Lambo, get off," he says, or tries to say: it comes out more as "rrmbb gff" and so the mareep is entirely justified in ignoring him.

"Puriririri!"



It takes Hayato at least an hour after he's arrived in Azalea (<i>thank you, Shamal, for not being a complete deadbeat</i>, he would say if he had less pride, or perhaps if the alakazam cared) before he realizes something important: while Saki-san had said that a jirachi would awaken somewhere near Azalea in the next week, she had not actually told him to do anything about it.  He hasn't dealt with her before -- he usually avoids working directly with Team Rocket, though he must admit that their gadgets are <i>awesome</i> and he wants them <i>all</i> -- but he's heard that she makes her expectations very clear.

She did <i>not</i> say anything along the lines of catching it, or even what to wish for, assuming the legends about it being able to grant only three wishes were accurate and that it even had wishes left.

Now, he's fairly good at ignoring loopholes -- he doesn't really want to risk being blacklisted and there aren't that many people with both a pokémon that's <i>good</i> at controlled detonations and a pokémon that can ensure he can, you know, check to make sure it exploded while keeping him safe, particularly not in Kanto -- but ... it's a jirachi.  It might not actually exist, but it's a jirachi and he has options and <i>if she didn't want him to consider abusing loopholes, she shouldn't have left them in.</i>

Decisions made, he checks that Shamal and Enban are out and about and settles in for the evening outside the Ilex Forest gatehouse.


He realises after a while that it might be a good idea to have his magnezone out, too.


The <i>problem</i>, when you get down to it, is that Azalea is a fundamentally boring town.  Nothing interesting happens in Azalea.  The pokéball maker -- Hayato can't be bothered to learn his name; apricorn balls are usually inefficient, Hayato does <i>demolitions</i> not pokémon captures, and the old geezer isn't known for his love of the ethically questionable -- lives there, to be sure, but he's the only person of note in the whole damn town.  The local religion and mythos focus on <i>slowpoke</i>, and if that isn't an indicator that he's in bumfuck nowhere, Hayato can make like his name and fly.

It'd be a great place to send someone you don't particularly care for on a snipe hunt.  And while he'd like to follow that train of thought, there are a few main problems with that.  One, Saki-san had no real incentive to get him out of the way.  While it didn't take a genius to figure out that he'd be with Team Rocket for exactly as long as it took to find someplace better (or until he had to actually face what it is most of them actually <i>did</i>, but he'd been with Silph for long enough to know that Team Rocket had enough legit branches to last indefinitely) he's good at what he does.  Two, no one with half of a brain would try anything shady near Azalea.  The pokéball maker is <i>nasty</i>.

Most importantly, it's the Ilex Forest.  He doesn't expect most people to understand the significance of it -- kids these days have no respect for legends (and if there is any irony in this statement, Hayato wouldn't see it) -- but the home of the shrine to the fairy of time is <i>important</i>.  Jirachi is not Celebi, of course, but the granter of wishes awakes for a week every thousand years.  The guardian of the forest travels through -- and manipulates? -- time.  He wouldn't be surprised if there was a connection.  It would be <i>logical</i>.

Heh, logical.  As if pokémon had any truck with human logic.  Anyone who expected a pokémon to act like a person would be sorely disappointed, and the pokémon of legend were odd even by pokémon standards.  Still -- even if pokémon tend not to work by <i>human</i> logic, that's usually a point in their favour; humans often shape their reasoning to fit emotion to a much greater extent than any pokémon would dare.


He doesn't notice the boy slinking out of the forest until the kid pauses at the checkpoint door.

"You're out late," Hayato says easily as he drops off the tree branch.  He's taller than the boy by at least a head, though he thinks they might be close to the same age.  There's something about the kid's physically implausible poofy light brown hair and his large vapid eyes that makes him look younger, though.

The kid looks up at him like a startled sentret, ready to run as soon as the coast is clear.  Belated, Hayato realises he might look a bit intimidating: he's wearing incredibly awesome leather and jewelry and he thinks he looks fucking badass.  He briefly feels bad about worrying the kid, but then decides he doesn't care.

"A-ah," the kid manages.  "I wanted to talk to a -- friend.  I'm going home."  If he was any more obvious, he'd be wearing safety orange.  Stupid kid probably thought Hayato'd want to waste his time beating up ... well, someone who'd probably fought their lunch and lost.

"Huh," is all Hayato says as he waits for the kid to leave so he can get back to waiting for the alakazam or magnezone to find something.  (Where is Shamal, anyway? he wonders, knowing even as he thinks it that he's probably off getting drunk somewhere while hitting on everything female that moves.  It's usually a safe assumption, and whenever it isn't Hayato probably doesn't want to know the details.  Some things are best left mysteries.)

The kid starts to open the door, then pauses.  Starts again.  Turns to look at the magnezone in confusion.  Sighs.

Hayato is just about to ask what's taking him so damn long when a small child -- a bit older than a toddler, but not significantly -- in a suit and a fedora walks in, hands the kid a chrysalis on a stick, and smirks as the kid <i>bolts</i>.  "Ciaossu, Gokudera," the small child says suavely.

<i>What the fuck,</i> Hayato thinks, but for once he doesn't actually say it.  "Come again?"

The kid jump kicks him in the face.  "Ciaossu, Gokudera.  I am Reborn."

"That's fucking wonderful, but I'm a bit busy right now," he snaps.  And promptly regrets saying that as the kid -- Reborn -- kicks him in the face again.

"No backtalk.  You are one of Saki's, correct?"  Well, Hayato wouldn't <i>say</i> that, but he thinks if he said as much the kid would kick him again and that <i>hurts</i>, so he just nods.  "I would like you to challenge my student."

"... Huh."  It's not what he came here for, but he has a feeling that it's relevant.  To something, at least.  (Reborn probably learned his name from Saki-san -- why else would he bring her up?  Don't answer that, latent paranoia. -- in which case it was at least a possibility that he'd know of what she told Hayato.)  "Who's your student?"

"Sawada Tsunayoshi," Reborn pronounces distinctly, "who is almost entirely useless and looks as though he lost a fight to a hair dryer.  You just met him."

Bad luck, or possibly Reborn's just an asshole, and while he's heard of 'never attribute to malice what could be attributed to ignorance', he's rarely gone wrong in assuming people are assholes.  That's okay, though; he can deal with assholes.  "So, what do you want me to do?"

"Find him and battle him.  Do what you want.  I don't care."

"He just left," Hayato states, slightly baffled.

"That isn't my problem."


It takes Hayato a depressingly long length of time to wonder why someone who looks about three would refer to someone in their early teens -- fairly eloquently, he might add -- as his student.

He then feels <i>incredibly</i> stupid when he realises that wait: legendary pokémon can probably disguise themselves.  Most of them supposedly sleep most of the time, but he knows for a fact that suicune, raikou, and entei wander Johto for a year or so every other decade, and given that they haven't been caught (as far as he knows, anyway; he is very nearly right) they are either amazingly skilled at evasion or moderately competent at disguise.  More to the point, jirachi is probably one of the more humanoid ones; he doesn't trust the sketch Saki-san gave him but it's a baseline, even if it's likely inaccurate.  While suicune, raikou, and entei probably couldn't disguise themselves as humans (he'd assume they'd pretend to be growlithe or houndoom, though that may be difficult for suicune and raikou.  On the other hand, humans can't usually sense a pokémon's elemental affinity, and pokémon rarely betray pokémon to humans), jirachi ... might be able to manage it.

Shamal is right; he really is an idiot.  The kid said he was <i>meeting a friend</i>.  In Ilex Forest!  Who lived in Ilex Forest, anyway?  No one, as far as he knows.  No one human, anyway.  Now, celebi ... celebi would make some sense, except for why a celebi might know Saki-san.  (It also made a lot more sense that a fucking time fairy would kick him in the face rather than a tiny kid.  Not to mention it was less embarrassing.)  He decides to ask about it if he ever sees the asshole again, but he figures he probably won't.


Somewhere, Reborn and Shamal are sharing a drink and congratulating themselves on a job well fucked up.  At least the dumbass probably would never realise that it's their faults that he made the right mental leaps within the next <i>month</i> much less the same day.


Once he figures out what he should do, finding the Sawada brat is absurdly easy: he takes out the luxray's pokéball, presses the button, and tells him to hunt down the kid that'd been right -- <i>there</i> earlier.

"Toraa?" Uri says, swishing his tail back and forth while looking at Hayato like he's an idiot.

<i>He doesn't know who you're talking about,</i> Shamal says, mental 'voice' slurred slightly.  The alakazam is sitting safely in a tree, though his feet dangle down right where Hayato wants to grab one and tug.  He doesn't, though.

Instead he frowns at Uri, and then at Shamal, and says slowly, "There was a kid here earlier.  Enban should have seen him, as did Budou.  Find him."

The luxray turns to the alien and UFO duo and whines softly.  They blink slowly in response, sort of like a nod, and Uri tries zapping Hayato lightly like a jerk.

<i>They say you're a dumbass, Hayato.  That wasn't a kid,</i> the alakazam translates deliberately.  His -- mustache, Hayato assumes, wiggles in what might be a laugh; Hayato's arms wiggle in what might be sheer frustration.

"Then what the fuck was it?"


"<b><i>WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T ANY OF YOU SAY ANYTHING!?!</i></b>"

Reborn sips his espresso with glee and decides that next time he sees Shamal, he's paying for the booze.  He deserves it, or at least he briefly deserves it just for Gokudera Hayato's reaction.

Maybe he'll even hang around long enough to actually take care of the bill.


Tsuna looks at the cat pokémon with a strange expression on his face.  Not quite fear, exactly, and certainly not confidence; more like the knowledge that whatever happens, he'll've done his best.  Very reassuring, except that he's sure that whatever his best <i>is</i>, it's not going to be good enough, and he is very nearly right.

"Have you, um.  Have you considered reconsidering?" he says eloquently.  <i>Great job, No Good Tsuna,</i> he thinks, <i>that will definitely impress Mr Scary Punk Guy.</i>

The guy -- Gokudera Hayato, he supposes; he might as well actually try to remember the name of the scary guy with a scary cat ('The foe's LUXRAY's Intimidate halved its attack!' he almost wants to blurt out; he's been playing too many video games lately) -- looks at him like he's wearing a pineapple hat on his head.  "What?"  Apparently this guy seems to have subscribed to the Sawada Tsunayoshi Magazine of Eloquence; he should charge fees.

"I'm.  Um.  Really not interesting!" he says quickly.  "It's true!  There is absolutely nothing of interest about me!  Move along!"

"... My magnezone trapped you," he states flatly.  This is in fact a great deduction and for a moment Tsuna has to wonder if he came up with that himself.  ... He feels a bit bad about thinking that, though.

"I stepped in glue," he says instead.

The jerkity jerkface smirks slightly.  "My luxray said, and I quote the goddamn alakazam, that you smell of 'rust and bent dreams'."

"It's cheap bodywash."  This sounds stupid <i>even to Tsuna</i> but he really can't think of anything better right now <i>pressure is bad pressure is bad</i>.

"And like you would be delicious to crunch on."

"Your luxray is <i>a psychopath,</i>" Tsuna says fervently, as said luxray snaps his tail back and forth in anticipation.

From the looks of it, Gokudera has to admit this is true.  Still, he charges on: "Your tutor is apparently a three-year old."

"That's a lie!  Reborn sometimes wears diapers."  ... ... ... congratulations, Tsuna.  Oddly, Gokudera looks thrown by this information.  ... Tsuna is never going to feel proud of himself again.


Eventually, his amazing abilities at stalling run out and the guy finally gets around to ordering, "Uri!  Fire Fang!" and it's at that point that Tsuna <i>really</i> starts to hate his life.  His very first pokémon battle!  A crazy man with a <i>giant lion thing with teeth!</i>  Teeth that are on FIRE.  He is clearly about to be eaten by a freaking cat thing from <i>Sinnoh</i>.  Not even one of the civilized regions!  Sinnoh.  And, to top it all off, someone named it 'melon'?  Really?  Sob.

Somewhere in his tiny idiot brain, something approaching battling instincts fights past the self-pity and into the fray.  That's the only explanation he has for <i>punching a luxray in the nose</i>, anyway.  It's a viable strategy!  -- Only from the luxray's expression, it'd been punched in the face harder by its lunch before.  Which isn't to say that half of his mind wasn't screaming <i>it's going to eat me it's going to eat me it's going to eat me</i> (and if he runs into Lambo again he is never going to mock him when he baas loudly at the sight of dangerous predators, like pidgey).  For all he knew, he totally was lunch.  But anyway.  Back to vain attempts at punching.  The whole problem with the 'punching lions' concept was that ... it's Tsuna's first pokémon battle.  Certainly the first where he was the one trying to run away and sucking at it.  From the luxray's battle scars, it had been in <i>battle</i>.  A lot.  While the one time Tsuna had been in a pokémon battle ... well, let's just say the pidgey had an overwhelming victory.

So he punches it in the eye instead and feels very proud of himself for the whole second before the luxray decides really, enough is enough.  Stupid tiny pokémon should eat electrical discharge.

For reasons involving a lot more science than Tsuna understands, steel types are not resistant to electric.  It's a character flaw.  (Or possibly it's for similar reasons that one does not put forks in electrical sockets.  Given that Tsuna has had difficulty with the concept of 'forks do not belong in electrical sockets even if it makes awesome sounds and sparks a little', it is perhaps not a surprise that he doesn't know why electrical attacks work perfectly well against steels.  It's a bit more of a surprise that he hasn't yet managed to fatally electrocute himself, however.)

On the plus side, it is difficult for him to stop being able to feel his legs.  On the minus side, he instead feels slightly like his head was hollowed out and replaced with steel wool, or possibly Lambo, or maybe even blue cheese.  He likes blue cheese.  Blue cheese is awfully ... blue.  And blue's a lovely colour, isn't it?  Except on luxray.  He feels very strongly about that for some reason.  Blue is good, luxray is not so good.


... Gokudera, while entirely unaware of Tsuna's extraordinarily eloquent internal monologue, <i>does</i> notice that the kid -- now clearly a jirachi, thankfully; that fell apart as soon as it started shrinking away from Uri (and while he'd love to be able to mock him/it for being scared of a <i>cat</i>, Gokudera knows full well that Uri is a force of nature) -- staggers backwards, its head safely out of the luxray's mouth (pity; according to his calculations that should've been more effective than it was).  It's still conscious, though, so he feels absolutely no qualms about taking an empty -- level should do -- level ball or three from his pocket and tossing one at the fairy.

The jirachi in question says something along the lines of "Raa?" or possibly "Aw, fuck," (he's not entirely clear on the distinction; the jirachi is probably making like a psychic and projecting, he figures) and pops into the ball.

Wiggle.

Wiggle.

Wiggle.

... and then the world explodes.


As far as Tsuna is concerned, that explosion?  Completely unplanned.  He knows he thought -- well, a lot of things, really -- and then that he was in a ball and he <i>did not want to be</i> and then -- what?  He can't think of anything he did that'd make something explode....

"Well done, Tsuna," Reborn says from a corner Tsuna is <i>sure</i> was unoccupied a few minutes ago.  He's sitting on the shoulder of some alakazam that Tsuna's pretty sure he's never seen before in his life, but given how Reborn operates that means nothing.  Reborn could be having coffee with that alakazam every Thursday for years and Tsuna could know nothing about it.  Of course, Reborn could've met the alakazam just now and simply act like they'd known each other forever; people had a tendency to think of Reborn the way Reborn wanted them to think right then.

The alakazam in question nudges the unconscious luxray and the half-conscious kid with his foot, then raises an eyebrow at Tsuna.  <i>This yours?</i>

... Oh.  Whoops.  Tsuna stares at the cat and trainer for a moment, then half-nods, focusing on undoing some of -- whatever he just did.  Not in Reborn's sense of 'undoing' -- it'd still have happened -- but more ... making things a bit more like they were a few minutes earlier.  Simple wishes.  Simple Wishes, even.

"... What?" Gokudera mumbles, staring blearily at Tsuna and thinking for a moment that he really should've worn goggles today.  ... Then he notices that his contacts aren't <i>damaged</i> or anything else that might be an immediate problem, they're just mysteriously absent.  Much better, though he's going to need new ones...  "... What," he says again as Tsuna, Reborn, and Shamal's presence registers itself in his brain.

<i>Hayato, I feel that I should reiterate this: you're an idiot.</i>  The alakazam's crossing his arms and nudging Gokudera with his foot some more.  It'd nearly count as kicking, if only it wasn't an alakazam doing it.  As it was, Gokudera tries to ignore it for a few seconds, then grabs the alakazam's foot and bites it.  Om nom nom Shamal's spoon in his eye.  It's all Shamal's fault anyway for being a jerk.

"Reborn, what exactly just happened?" Tsuna asks, trying his best to ignore the impending fistfight between the alakazam and the crazy guy; this is easy given that Tsuna's biggest and most used skill is denial, and hard given that the two fighting idiots are loud, idiots, and fighting.  There are also two of them.

The celebi waits for the alakazam to be clearly winning -- which takes slightly longer than he expects; apparently Tsuna's Wish (a very familiar if mostly useless one: 'I wish for half of that guy's health to be restored in six seconds!') took effect and Gokudera was able to shove Shamal in the shoulder, but at the end of the day Shamal is infinitely more competent than his idiot protégé -- before kicking Gokudera in the face and reclaiming his perch on Shamal's shoulder.  "Wait, useless Tsuna.  Gokudera Hayato, you are an idiot."

Gokudera stands up slowly.  "Okay, why the fuck am I an idiot?" he snaps as he tries to figure out if all of his limbs are in the right general locations (they are) and are the right general colours (they mostly are; his arms are a lovely shade of off-green, though).  Oh, and if that headache is going to go away anytime soon (no).

<i>Because throwing pokéballs at pokémon that can blow them up is a bad idea.</i>  Shamal sighs, shaking his head in Tsuna's general direction.  <i>Particularly if it's not actually that weakened.</i>

"I didn't know it was going to explode!" Tsuna bursts out.  "I just --"

Reborn grins, not entirely kindly.  "It is good that I now know you <i>can</i> use Doom Desire.  I was concerned; you had seemed entirely incompetent.  Gokudera, I would like your assistance in training Tsuna."

"Um," said the two involved.

<i>You going to look after Hayato, too?</i> Shamal says, folding his arms behind his head and looking pitying.  <i>Have fun.</i>

"<i>Um.</i>"

"That's settled, then."

"<i>What.</i>"


While Gokudera's few remaining reservations vanish the moment that Reborn actually explains who Tsuna <i>is</i> (and doesn't that worry Tsuna a little; here is a kid who he met only <i>hours</i> ago and he is fully willing to devote his life to Tsuna's), Tsuna's are magnified by at least seven and possibly closer to seventeen.  The guy is an idiot, and not the sort of idiot Tsuna is; no, he's very intelligent and knowledgeable about all things not requiring common sense or skepticism or self preservation.  Unfortunately, things involving common sense and self preservation come up on a day to day basis and Tsuna isn't sure he'd understand the concept of running <i>away</i> from danger if it put on a fedora and introduced itself to Gokudera with the name 'Reborn'.

No.  The guy is an idiot and he is somehow going to bring Tsuna into a world of pain.  Not intentionally, of course -- Tsuna has already found out that if he tells the boy to jump, he doesn't ask how high: he jumps as high as he damn well can and then apologizes profusely for not jumping high enough and possibly considers suicide and/or homicide (of whoever is currently Tsuna's enemy in Gokudera's perspective) to regain his honor -- but the guy is an <i>idiot</i>.  There is no way Tsuna can stress this enough.

... though.  Tsuna is a bit surprised at how good the boy is at <i>not</i> repeating anything Tsuna asks him not to repeat, and more importantly in gathering the supplies Tsuna thinks he'll need soon without drawing attention to himself.  He's also shown knowledge of <i>everything</i>, from places to people to pokémon (both normal and mythical), which Tsuna finds impressive up until he realizes that almost every shred of knowledge Gokudera has ties itself in with Team Rocket in some way.

Now that's <i>creepy</i>.  Tsuna nearly wants to find some way to ditch Gokudera and find -- he doesn't know, not really.  Some childhood friend (ha, what friends?) who wouldn't be terrifying.

Unfortunately Gokudera himself seems to be unwilling to be shaken off, and Reborn likes him, which basically means Tsuna is doomed.


But on the plus side, Tsuna is pleased to discover that Gokudera's electrode is nothing like Uri, or, indeed, Gokudera himself.  It -- she, possibly, as much as an electrode has a gender -- stares at Tsuna quietly until Gokudera -- does what, exactly?  gestures silently? -- and then she grins.  It even reaches her eyes, and Tsuna realizes something that is very rarely true with pokémon: this is a grin like a human's grin, not a baring of teeth.  Noticing that, he smiles back and reaches out to pet her --

-- Gokudera looks over and <i>squeaks</i>.  "Ah, tenth, please don't --!"

Too late.  As soon as Tsuna's finger touched her eyebrow, she exploded.  Tsuna is mostly unharmed, courtesy of being a. a pokémon and b. a steel-type pokémon, at that, but where Ringo was is ... a pile of red and white shards.  "I'M SORRY," Tsuna yelps.

"ARE YOU OKAY," Gokudera manages, hyperventilating more than a little as he visibly restrains himself from leaping to Tsuna's aid.  Tsuna's head bobs up and down in more of a pidgeot impression than a nod, but Gokudera accepts it as one anyway.  "She, um.  She does that."

"... she'll be okay?"  Tsuna finally stops staring at the pile of electrode shrapnel.

"Yeah.  She just -- gets excited.  She'll be fine in a day or two."


Uri and Tsuna get along like -- well, like a territorial cat and a timid Tsuna.  It's about a week before Tsuna finally decides that he might want to make sure that Uri tolerates him, which is good in that Uri'd already concluded that the kid's not leaving anytime soon and bad in that Uri'd figured out that the kid has no idea what to do about Uri.

Tsuna's fighting with the campfire and, more importantly, the teapot in vain while trying to not get burned, or light something important on fire, or <i>whatever</i> horrible thing is going to go wrong today, when Uri notices that Gokudera is temporarily out of earshot and decides to straighten out a few details.

"<i><b>My</b> human,</i>" the luxray hisses as he prowls over and carefully sits on top of Tsuna.

Tsuna predictably flails and tries to counter this -- this <i>undeserved attack</i>, but only manages to convince Uri that it's a good idea to zap him.


Tsuna is just about used to the idea of spending his time hanging around Gokudera-kun when Reborn kicks him in the face one morning and declares that he needs to make more friends.  And while Tsuna is not opposed to the idea of making friends -- he actually surprisingly kind of hates being a complete loser -- he has a gut feeling that Reborn's idea of 'making friends' is going to be absolutely terrifying.

He is very nearly right.

"WHERE ARE WE GOING," Tsuna shrieks, as he has asked at least four times in a normal person voice in vain.

Reborn ignores him.  ... Again.  Tsuna is not sure why he is surprised by this development, but he is anyway.  And while he was grateful <i>earlier</i> that Reborn had not had him bring Gokudera-kun along, right now there is nothing Tsuna would like more than someone to care about his pathetic life.

The worst thing is that he is positive that Reborn could have teleported them at any point in time, but no, they're hitchhiking and sometimes just hiking.  Currently, Tsuna's clinging to a pidgeot's crest for dear life and hoping against hope that maybe <i>this</i> is the last pokémon that he's going to have to ride on today.

Luckily for him, it is.


Pewter City is a beautiful place, or at least it's beautiful for anyone who is more than a bit motionsick and also scared of heights.  The closest thing Pewter City has to a height is a few two-storey buildings, and Tsuna's climbed higher trees than that.

But the most important thing Pewter has is <i>rocks</i>.  Tsuna has never considered him to be much of a rock person, but the Pewter Museum is awesome from what he remembers and hey, maybe he'll take pictures for Gokudera.  Gokudera certainly seems like the type to like it.  Tsuna scans the area carefully to try to see if Reborn's nearby -- he doesn't seem to be -- and then, since the coast is clear ... he goes to the museum.  Because it's there.


While Reborn is many things -- bold topping the list -- he is not suicidal.  It is with that in mind that as soon as he decides that Tsuna should collect Yamamoto Takeshi, he decides to visit Yamamoto Tsuyoshi and <i>ask first</i>.  Which is more than he did for Iemitsu and Shamal, to be frank, but Iemitsu is not an assassin and Shamal would not start a fight with Reborn over his adopted student.  Tsuyoshi, on the other hand, dotes on his son as much as he can.  Which isn't as much as he'd like, most days, but it's still remarkably impressive.

There's only so much he can be expected to ask, though; rather than knocking he simply teleports to the Yamamoto household kitchen table and waits.  He doesn't have long to wait, which is just as well: Reborn has better things to do than worry about wasted time.  "Well!  Good afternoon, Reborn!" Tsuyoshi says cheery as ever after he checks that Takeshi is either up in his room or out of the house.  Given the hour, it's probably the latter; Reborn recalls hearing something about the baseball team.  It isn't important.

"Afternoon, Yamamoto Tsuyoshi," Reborn says as he glances at the wall of trophies.  Mostly baseball, from a first glance, but more importantly he sees the sword.  "I want to borrow Takeshi," he states, voice not flat but cheerily opaque.

"What for?"  Tsuyoshi's had at least as much practice with 'cheerfully opaque' as Reborn has, which irks him when he remembers to be bothered and pleases him the rest of the time.  Reborn's better at hiding it, though.


The Pewter Museum is about as interesting as he remembers;


One of the downsides of hiring the younger Yamamoto over the older is that Takeshi has not been formally trained in the art of the sword.  This doesn't quite bother Reborn, however; Tsuyoshi has not had cause to practice in years and Takeshi is skilled at anything he puts his mind to.  The only problem is finding him a reason to want to work with the <i>sword</i>.  He adores his pokémon, especially his wingull and crobat, and thinks they will always be there to protect him.

Maybe he's right.  Reborn doesn't want to check, though, and the easiest way to get to a pokémon was through its trainer.  And Yamamoto is by far the more useful out of Tsuna's pet guardians thus far, so he'll assume that anyone who means Tsuna harm will go through Yamamoto first.  And he is probably right.

But how to convince the boy to pick up shigure souen?  He is not a killer, and he does seem to have something approaching a conscience (though Reborn thinks he's usable and is very nearly right), so while he clearly would if Tsuyoshi asked him to, he doesn't seem the type to try on his own.

And Tsuna's not the right person to ask.

Reborn will just have to find some swordsman to challenge him, then.


Reborn didn't actually set up Squalo's first casual encounter with Yamamoto, not that Tsuna would ever believe it.  He took advantage of it, of course, but he didn't <i>set it up.</i>  ... Though he might have asked Sawada Iemitsu for suggestions for who Yamamoto should fight.  But that's just common sense; why have friends if you don't plan on using them for your own benefit?


Tsuna would like to be surprised when someone <i>rises out of the seas on a giant flying shark.</i>

He would like to.

It would be <i>great</i> if he was surprised.

Unfortunately, he is not.  He is even less surprised when Yamamoto takes one look at the <i>crazy man riding a sharpedo (WOULDN'T THAT HURT?!)</i> and yells, "Haha, hi, Squalo!"

"SWORD BRAT!!" the man <i>screeches</i>, with the sharpedo throwing in an enthusiastic "<b>HADAAAAAAAA!</b>" which he interpreted to mean: 'GOOD MORNING, LUNCH!!'

(Tsuna thought it was very nearly possible that SAME was <i>even more obnoxious than her trainer</i>.  At least Squalo didn't usually consider biting to be an acceptable greeting.  He also didn't usually keep yelling <i>in his sleep.</i>  Tsuna didn't care if Yamamoto bribed him with the world's greatest poffin; he was <i>never going to a sleepover party with Squalo again.</i>)

Tsuna looks at Squalo.  Tsuna looks at SAME.  Tsuna looks at Yamamoto.  ... Tsuna takes a strategic step backwards.

Yamamoto, of course, does not take the hint.  "Haha, Squalo, want to battle~?" he says easily, drawing his sword and a pokéball in one easy motion.  Squalo, unsurprisingly, does the same (he's pretty sure SAME just swore profusely about being passed over in favour of the scyther <i>again</i>, but Tsuna's never claimed to be fluent in pissed off shark.)

He's 99% sure that usually, when people say they want to battle, they <i>just</i> mean pokémon.  Unfortunately, he's also pretty sure neither of them got the memo, so he carefully sidles out of the blast area to watch as the two idiots duel while TORA and Kojirou eye each other warily.  The scyther has a significant -- everything advantage, but the wingull wants to <i>win.</i>  It's not going to be even by any means, but -- it could be interesting.

The mantis doesn't even bother lifting off the ground; he waits for a moment to see if the gull plans on attacking first before surreptitiously turning his head to watch their sparring match with one eye and the wingull with the other.

"STOP STARING AT THE DAMN THING AND KILL IT," Squalo finds time to yell in between parrying Yamamoto's blows and trying to hit him over the head with his hilt.

The scyther considers this.  On one -- scythe, TORA liked feeling appreciated and Squalo always bought him plenty of steak whenever he won.  On the other, his opponent is a stupid bird.  A tiny stupid bird.  It shouldn't even count properly as a snack.  "<i>Fuck this,</i>" he says eloquently as he turns to watch his trainer and his trainer's pet idiot monkey (if Yamamoto knew the scyther thought he was a pet monkey, he would -- actually, he wouldn't care.  But Tsuna would feel bad knowing that TORA thought he was an idiot monkey.  Monkeys have more common sense than that).

Unfortunately, he had not considered his opponent.  The small gull waits patiently for TORA to acknowledge his existence, then less patiently.  After about thirty seconds of being <i>completely ignored</i>, Kojirou squawks a short 'kyeh' before screeching as loudly and as high pitched as he could manage.  The faint ringing tone echoes over the beach (particularly at Tsuna's head, not that he notices; he's accustomed to a faint safeguard at all times) and while the two humans don't notice it, the scyther definitely does.

"What the fuck," he states more than yells, words slightly slurred (not that it matters; SUTORRAI means the same as SUTRRAI to those who listen, and those who don't wouldn't understand TORA anyway) as he tries vibrating his wings to at least distort the sound to stop <i>hurting</i> it rings it rings it rings and it won't shut up.

This works wonderfully, except that Kojirou -- not being satisfied for a mild headache in exchange for being <i>completely shunned</i> -- changes pitch slightly and, more importantly, vibrating wings means flapping wings and flapping wings mean <i>moving</i>.  And he is too distracted to notice that his feet aren't -- quite -- touching the ground and as he moves to <i>stab the damn bird</i> he realises -- oh

-- Kojirou did not wait for him to try eviscerating gulls.

Kojirou moved.

TORA still stabbed something.

The bird pauses in his screeching for long enough for what TORA just did to reach his brain: that's his scythe, and that's the bird, and his scythe is in something, but it is not in the bird.  His head would hurt less if it was the bird.  His <i>pride</i> would hurt less if it was the bird; he thinks he hears it cackling at him.

What is he stabbing?


Tsuna feels rather proud of himself for not completely fleeing as soon as it looked like the battle was not going in the scyther's favour, even if TORA was a complete <i>jerk</i> who would probably have no qualms about bullying a skittish little -- boy.  (He's pretty sure the scyther hasn't realised his status as a fellow pokémon, and if he hadn't, Tsuna wasn't going to be the one to tell him.)  Still, he considers bolting as soon as he sees the scyther <i>stab SAME.</i>  There is no way that could end well, he thinks, and he is very nearly right.

"<i>WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR</i>," she roars, and even if Squalo and Yamamoto are a bit busy trying to fight each other (possibly to the death) there is only so much one can do to ignore an incredibly loud and pissed off shark.  Particularly a shark with a mouthful of confused scyther arm (it was the scyther who was confused, not the arm) when a wingull is laughing hysterically.  That fell firmly in the realms of <i>completely fucking obvious,</i> along with Squalo (and his pokémon's) multiple psychoses and Yamamoto's raging hero-worship/crush on a psychopath.

(Tsuna prides himself on his ability to recognize psychopaths.  He's been making a list of people he's met since his life started sucking more than usual who aren't possibly going to cause the end of the world whether by accident or on purpose.  So far, he had one person on it: himself.  And even that was questionable on bad days.)

Squalo, likely because he hadn't actually understood a word the sharpedo was saying, seems to feel obligated to top it: "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, YOU DUMBASS!?!  KILL THE FUCKING <i>BIRD</i>, NOT THE FUCKING <i>SHARK</I>, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!"

After a moment, TORA recognizes what he did wrong (attacking the wrong water type; they were probably all fish anyway so it's not like there was that much of a difference, right?!  And it was loud!  Loud like BAKU on a bad day, not loud like his trainer or like SAME, who were the good kind of loud: even if they burst your eardrums, it's just from sheer force of volume.  Besides, he was the <i>favourite</i> so even if he accidentally stabbed the jerk shark <i>Squalo would love him best.</i>  It would mean he was an EVEN BETTER fighter than SAME, and Squalo loved SAME like he loved meat.  Even better than he loved meat; Squalo only fought meat on Thursdays.)

Unfortunately, while he would <i>really like to stop stabbing the shark</i> (while he likes the idea of stabbing SAME, he has something against leaving his arm in her mouth), the world keeps moving a little and -- SAME won't shut up.  Which means she is biting.  Which means --

-- Kojirou lands on the scyther's head and chirps a victory theme.  Yamamoto looks on for a moment -- probably thinking that was slightly uncalled for -- then says, "Haah, Squalo, why not just call it back?"

Because then Squalo couldn't try to beat his idiot sharpedo and idiot scyther over the head with a sword and a tuna (where did he get the tuna?), that's why.


Uri does not <i>like</i> the


[picking up the pieces and putting them back together, rearranged]

Hayato has <i>no idea</i> how the stupid baseball idiot (he also doesn't see any problems calling someone a stupid idiot; he's not exactly the most observant person ever) talked him into travelling with him.  No idea at all.  All he remembers is that the baseball dumbass asked him if he'd want to hang out with the Tenth (of course he did!  what kind of moron did the dumbass take him for?!) and --

Somehow he's back near Celadon with the baseball idiot and while Tsuna is probably around somewhere, he hasn't seen him for at least an hour and he's starting to get worried but Reborn <i>said</i> it was okay and --

Breathe.

"Haha, hi, sempai, Kyouko-chan!" the idiot yells as he looks over the hill and waves.  Hayato considers finding a way to blow up the baseball idiot <i>and</i> the boxing idiot, but dismisses it as probably upsetting the girl that the Tenth sort of likes and there's no way he could easily hide it from <i>her</i>.  (He carefully does not think of the fact that she's almost certainly a lot better at self-defence than he is; he probably wouldn't be able to get her out of the way when Ringo exploded and she wouldn't exactly move out of the way herself.)

From the sound of the baseball idiot's grunt, Lawnhead just tackle-hugged him and possibly nearly broke a rib or three, but Hayato <i>does not care at all</i>.  You could ask him and he'd say it's true.  And then you would know.

"WE SHOULD HAVE AN EXTREME BATTLE!" Lawnhead yells, sounding slightly like he wants to get into a screaming contest with an exploud.  (Hayato has see this once, to his misfortune; he is never going to let the baseball idiot drag him along for his weekly spar with Squalo.)

"That sounds fun, haha!"  "Good idea, onii-san!"

And then all three of them are looking at <i>Hayato.</i>  Like he clearly wants to participate in their stupid double battle.  It's a stupid idea and they're stupid for thinking he's going to and now the stupid baseball idiot is looking like a sad poochyena in the rain and -- goddammit.  "No," he states.

The baseball idiot scratches his head.  "It's not a proper double battle if it's just me against sempai and Kyouko-chan, Gokudera.  Please?"

Hayato is <i>unphased</i> like a lunatone.  "<i>No,</i>" he states, rather more emphatically.

"It's okay, Hayato-kun.  We'll just do a -- what were they called again, Takeshi?" the Sasagawa girl says.

"Rotation battles!  I saw them in Isshu.  They're pretty interesting, haha!"

"<b>No,</b>" Hayato <i>growls.</i>

From his pokéball, Shamal contributes a terse, <i>You're an idiot, Hayato.</i>

From Hayato's expression as he realises as he just sort of agreed to participating?  He really, really is.


In retrospect, entering into a pokémon battle with the Sasagawa siblings was an <i>incredibly bad idea</i>, and not just because he's on the same side as the baseball idiot.  Actually, the baseball idiot demonstrated a rather surprising level of competence given his typical stupidity.  His crobat had no difficulties distracting the siblings' cheerleading rats, and Musashi was remarkably skilled at tanking, even if he <i>did</i> shell blade the girl's poliwhirl and <i>Hayato was never going to assume the idiot had any skill in battling whatsoever again.</i>  (That Hayato's magnezone and electrode scarcely did better is <i>never going to be mentioned ever</i> on pain of dynamite in uncomfortable places.)

No, the real problem was that the Sasagawa siblings battled with each other frequently.  They had <i>teamwork</i>.  They had <i>synergy</i>.  They even had what could probably pass for strategy in the boxing idiot's empty head (did the girl work out that thing with the lopunny?  She'd've had to, wouldn't she?).

Hayato and the baseball idiot did not.

Hayato and the baseball idiot were both entirely competent trainers in their own rights (yes, he could admit the idiot had some skill even if he was <i>dumber than the vast majority of rocks what the hell is wrong with him</i>) but ... Hayato does not play well with others.

Hayato definitely does not believe in training in teamwork.

Hayato thinks everyone should be perfectly competent and self-sufficient.

And that is how a girl who'd only started battling within the past year and only because her brother wanted her to travel along with him used Hayato as a mop.

And none of this will be spoken of again.


[six steps to the edge of tomorrow]

Tsuna has a bone-deep feeling that quite possibly it is not the greatest plan he has ever had to visit Goldenrod.  On one hand, it's right near Reborn's home town so it can't be <i>that</i> dangerous, right?  Reborn wouldn't approve of visiting anywhere with enough of a criminal presence to make it downright dangerous, right?

Damn right he would, and Tsuna knows it.  Still, Gokudera thought it was a good idea!  And so did Yamamoto!  And they wouldn't intentionally bring him to someplace he really shouldn't be!  -- but they <i>also</i> trust Reborn, and they don't seem to understand that Reborn is a sterling example of moral depravity in the form of a <i>tiny green time fairy</i> and he is <i>NOT TO BE TRUSTED EVER.</i>  Bianchi likes him!  That is not a good sign!

But no, Tsuna's vote to stay in the magical happy land of ... of ... of <i>Oldale Town</i> (never mind that he's not sure he's ever even <i>been</i> to Oldale, but he's heard it is nice and quiet with hardly any mafia at <i>all</i>) was overruled by Reborn, and Gokudera and Yamamoto were the worst assistants ever and followed Reborn's lead.

Thankfully, Gokudera doesn't drag him off to the Radio Tower: Tsuna claims the radio waves give him a bit of a headache, and that might even be true.  It's definitely true that they echo off his head and if he could stay well away from radio towers then he definitely would.

Unfortunately, Gokudera then <i>absolutely had to see the Game Corner.</i>

It's a Game Corner!  If Gokudera wanted to play slots, he could go back to Celadon!  (And hopefully go without him; he is definitely sure that <i>Celadon</i> is a wretched hive of scum and villainy and also mafia.  Mafia is bad.  Tsuna does not like mafia.  There's mafia in mafia.)

With his mind filled with <i>all of the horrible ways this could end that he can think of</i> (and that doesn't even include the ways he <i>doesn't</i> know about, like, say, the radio tower suddenly broadcasting Pokémon March on every channel, or Apollo deciding it would be a good idea to introduce Goldrenrod to that one concept known as 'martial law'), he steps into the Game Corner, looking for Gokudera.

The Game Corner is <i>not</i> a brightly lit building filled with slot machines and noise and people and all sorts of related things that Tsuna does not like in one place.

The Game Corner is a small room with a creepy man sitting at a table with Gokudera and that alakazam that Gokudera travels with.

Card games are involved.

"What the --" Tsuna says intelligently.

<i>IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK,</i> Shamal says urgently.

"I'm only going to play two more rounds!" Gokudera says defensively.

"...," the creepy old man says conclusively.


Team Rocket's most insidious plan ever created was not making the most powerful pokémon in existence.  It was not mining Mount Moon.  (In fact, their exploits in Mount Moon may have been the closest thing they have ever done to a public service; it set back the impending invasion of the Clefairy Empire by at least seven years.  But that is a story for another time.)  It <i>certainly</i> wasn't chopping off delicious slowpoke tails and selling them on the black market.

No.

Their most insidious plan ever created and enacted was replacing the Game Corner's slot machines with Voltorb Flip.

Apollo and Athena will burn forever in the fires of a thousand houndoom for their sins.  They will also be knighted.  Both of these fates are good and proper.


Tsuna doesn't know what Shamal thought he thought was going on, but he decided he didn't want to and supposedly promptly forgot that there was something Shamal was concerned about.  This is for the best.


It is a lesser known fact that the alakazam Shamal and his Gokudera Hayato are banned from entering most towns and cities in Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, and West Isshu.  While evidence has a tendency to disappear in short notice, rumour has it that the boy functions as a distraction while the alakazam finds all female pokémon who might possibly fall prey to a red string and an Attract and, shall we say, is later found with eggs and wallets.  This is not entirely true.  Gokudera would do his best to eliminate anyone who believes that he would <i>ever</i> serve as an accomplice to his -- questionable companion, and the idea that <i>Shamal</i> would ever deign to steal on <i>Gokudera's</i> behalf is simply laughable.

Trident Shamal works for no man.

He does, however, have a tendency to fall for everything that moves, and Gokudera is as always a convenient scapegoat.


[reflection, refraction]

Nagi does not trust the spirits possessing the rock she found left behind by her classmates.  They were all friends, she thinks.

The spirits are <i>not</i> friends and she does not think they ever will be, but -- there is one louder than the rest.  The others bicker at the edge of her hearing, not quite hearing, but the loud one waits and says one soft word and they fall silent.  It introduces itself as Mukuro.

Good girls don't talk to ghosts, good girls don't listen to spirits, good girls don't give their names to corpses.  She is in some ways a very good girl, even if she thinks her parents wouldn't agree.  She can wait.

It will wait for her.

He will wait for her.

Mukuro will wait for her.

And when it is time, he will give her a name, if she will not give him hers.


She keeps his stone in her bag always.  She doesn't know if he approves, exactly; he speaks in sighs and whispers and never quite lies but he does not tell the truth.  And that is how it should be, from what she understands; she is not experienced with the medium's arts but she looked for books, once he spoke, and she thinks she may know what he is.  She does not think he would harm her, but the one hundred and eight spirits bound within his rock are not known for their love for humans.  There are reasons they are bound, after all.

Still.  Still.

The monster is hers, in some ways, and she thinks she could rely on him, if she were to leave on a journey.  Her mother would <i>not</i> approve, of her journey or her choice in pokémon, but she does not expect her to.  She is not the daughter her parents wanted.

And that may be fine.

But Nagi will stay at home.


She keeps up her life as Nagi for a remarkable length of time in her eyes: it is nearly a month with the rock before she decides it is best to leave.

"What is my name?" she says on a whim to the spiritomb.  It sounds deep and mysterious to her ears, and for once she understands why people think she is -- odd.

His face stops spinning for a moment in thought.  <i>Your name, indeed.</i>

"Yes."  She waits.

<i>... ... ... You are Chrome,</i> he announces.  Perhaps she is.  クローム, a reflection built off his identity in replacement to her own, someone who might travel as she pleases.  Someone defined by a person sufficiently disturbed to be bound in a keystone for five hundred years.

"Thank you."

The sages wouldn't approve.  She hasn't met any in years, however, and cannot quite bring herself to care.


[arc 4, part 1; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts; moving clouds on the river's surface]

It takes weeks from the first sudden appearance of a litterer in the hospital before the lati twins find the one responsible.  Bianca is worried, and so Latias is worried, but Latios seems more concerned about the possibility that the authorities might blame the fight on the lati twins.  Even if their existence is mostly a secret, Latios makes a point of introducing himself to the head of the police department as a sort of warning: <i>protect my city or face me in single combat.</i>  It's never been necessary so far, but he sees no need in ending it.

He need not have worried.  Latias drops the half-eaten remains of a pitaya into a canal as a sort of test and whistles as a boy -- stalks, might be the word; he is very clearly prowling for prey -- out of an alleyway, tonfa at the ready.

<i>I found him, found him~!</i> she says to Latios as she focuses on showing him the human boy.  Unfortunately, she's focused enough on alerting Latios to the culprit that the boy barely misses hitting a wing -- he could sense where her wings are?! -- and she's too distracted to bolt.

She does anyway, dropping from Bianca's form to invisible and dashing as fast as she can.  She doesn't know how to battle!  -- and while relying on her brother's ability on his advice had seemed like a good idea, the boy (maybe Bianca's age?  She's not sure; humans are <i>weird</i>) seems to know exactly where she is and possibly where she's going and he definitely doesn't seem inclined to let her go.  Fortunately, her brother manages to land right between her and the boy.

Unfortunately, his disguise flickered just briefly enough for the boy to spot his nose and hit him with a tonfa.  "You are in my way, herd dragon," he states, voice flat as a dunsparce.

<i>You will <b>not</b> touch my sister,</i> Latios states more as a matter of fact than a demand.  His feathers glow with a strange sheen.

The boy does not seem to care.  "The other herd dragon left <i>trash</i> in my canal."

<i><b>Your</b> canal?</i> he says, disbelieving.  <i>Little human, we have cared for our city for longer than you have been alive.</i>

"Altomare is <i>mine</i>," he growls, "and I do not tolerate herbivores fouling it."

The latios <i>looks</i> at him, then releases a light luster purge.  To his dismay, the human does not even flinch, though he does glance at the two dragons speculatively.

"Hn.  <i>Are</i> you herbivores?"

<i>We eat fruit!</i> Latias says quickly, eyes bright.

<i>I do not think that is what the human meant, sister.</i>


In the city of Altomare, there is a superstition: do not litter, lest the protectors of the city bring vengeance upon you and your family.  While good advice, it is not strictly accurate; the lati twins do not particularly enjoy inflicting harm upon their citizenry.  It tends to disturb the peace in some ways and Latias is well aware of Bianca's dislike of fighting.  She doesn't completely understand it -- she doesn't particularly <i>like</i> fighting, but Latias knows her brother and their new friend do, so she doesn't <i>mind</i> it -- but she'll oblige the girl.  Bianca is nice, so Bianca would want Latias to also be nice, yes?

-- but Kyouya thinks Latias should be strong.  Latios also thinks Latias should be strong, but her brother would protect her if necessary, while Kyouya would just pummel her until she fought back.  Latios does not quite approve of Kyouya, she thinks, but Kyouya likes to fight her brother and her and she thinks he might like to fight him.

So it is known to the citizens of Altomare that one does not litter.  Hibari Kyouya does not allow it, and what Hibari Kyouya does not approve of has a tendency to not happen.  That is the way it is, and that is how it should be.


No one should be or feel alone.  This Latias knows to the depths of her soul -- how could she not?  she is of the city but more to the point the lati twins are never alone and the idea is simply <i>wrong</i>, like water falling upwards -- but for some reason, Kyouya seems to be.  She's never seen him complain about being lonely, but as far as she's concerned that's just because he'd have no reason to complain about something that's always been that way.  And that's ... sad, really.  If he's never not been lonely, of course he would fight off efforts to make him less lonely.

That just means she has to try harder.  With that in mind, she perches on the edge of a roof, adopts pidgeot guise, and leaps.  It's a long flight to -- to Ilex, she supposes, unless the celebi has adopted a new home, and while she's never met that celebi before, she knows that the twins before her knew that if they asked a favour of him, he would consider.  And it is a little thing, really, to find a friend for a friend.  She can find ten friends a day, if she looks, but Kyouya seems to have higher standards; that's fine, though, because with help she'll definitely find him a friend.


Latios wonders where his sister has gone, but assumes that she would tell him if there was a problem.  She would, wouldn't she?  It would be quite unlike her if she didn't ... but she has changed and he has changed and they all have changed, with their notice of that human boy.  Kyouya would likely not let her go into danger alone if he knew -- while he has no interest in assuring her safety, he would not pass up the opportunity for a decent fight and if the fight was not close enough to fair he would intervene on her behalf: no sense wasting a competent sparring partner -- but that assumes he knew.  Which is not always a safe assumption -- she is very good at rushing off on a whim -- but then again, Kyouya has a desire to know what happens in his territory that borders on obsessive.  Which is not to say that Latios does not understand the finer details of defending one's territory, but he feels confident in the assertion that <i>humans</i> don't.  Just as they do not understand so many other concepts that he grasps like he breathes.

He does not like humans, and he will continue to not like humans, but for now -- maybe Kyouya is more pokémon than human.  What species, he cannot tell (the boy is sometimes wind and flame and the promise of rain, though he fights nearly mundanely; his elemental affinity is clear even as he stands still, simply breathing), but he <i>understands</i> him, understands and likes and wants to teach.  Wants to show the joys of being part of someone's life so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.


It's luck, or possibly fate, that it's Tsuna who first notices the -- pidgeot.  And while he can see no real reason for him to doubt that it is a pidgeot -- the illusions of a lati have few flaws, and lack of attention to detail is not one of them -- there is something that makes him spot her and note her and want to ... he's not quite sure what he wants to do.  Run, possibly, though the skin on the back of his neck twinges at that thought: there is a creature of power in <i>his</i> territory.  Which is quite frankly ridiculous; it is Reborn's territory, not his, and why would he be concerned about territory in the first place?  He doesn't <s>want</s>, <s>need</s>, <i>want</i> any!

Still, there is something that makes his upper lip curl and his body tense and it reminds him of Gokudera, really, always bristling.  And as he says, "Um, hello," there is very little part of him wants to do more than blast the bird out of the sky.

The pidgeot lands carefully in front of him, head down slightly in a posture of submission, and extends her wings behind her.  <i>Oh, hello,</i> she seems to say, and what exactly is a pidgeot doing with a psychic voice?  <i>I did not want to worry you, but -- do you know a pokémon who goes by the name of Reborn?  I would like to speak to him, and ask of him a favour.</i>

Tsuna looks at her, relaxing slightly.  "What are you really?"  She makes a pleased chirp, hops into the air, and hovers, feathers shimmering as she stops pretending to be a large, pink dragon.  He doesn't recognize the species, but he nods in acknowledgement and walks inside the house that's either Reborn's or claimed by Reborn; he's still not sure of the specifics.

"Um, Reborn?" he calls, glancing up at the ceiling.  He doesn't see anyone up there, which just means exactly what he thought: he doesn't <i>see</i> anyone there.


Altomare is big and loud and busy and the first thing Tsuna notices is how <i>silent</i> the back of his head is.  He's been feeling the boundaries of territory for years, and recently even the type affinities of the territories (it's something like scent, he thinks, only the scent's mostly not there unless the territory belongs to something that has to visibly <i>mark</i> it, and the species that do that are so few and far between it might as well be an aberration) and -- he can't sense any boundaries within the city itself.  Something has control over this city, and it's something other than the twin dragon guardians: their scent is faint but ever present, a footnote to the paragraph of whoever owns the city itself.

It's almost like the segments of cities near the pokémon gym, except even there he can faintly sense the type of territory it is.  Elemental affinities leave their marks, and while the affinities of humans are much subtler than those of their pokémon compatriots, they're still there and easily identified if there are enough similar people in one place.

Where certain parts of Celadon reek of grass and poisons, Altomare tastes slightly flat.

And that's just ridiculous.


His first thought as he sees the true ruler of the city is: <i>I'm going to die, aren't I</i>.  His <i>second</i> thought is much more intelligent; <i>what is a human doing with control over a dragon-tamed city?</i>  Altomare has been historically owned by the latis, and yet ... it currently isn't.  And from what he knows, humans rarely claim territory without their pokémon also claiming ownership.  This is very clearly Hibari Kyouya's.  This Hibari can't even be using weapons to subjugate the pokémon of the cities; pokémon do not treat anything that is not clearly an extension of one's body as a factor.  One could rightfully claim territory from a pokémon by beating them with a stick or something along those lines, and occasionally bows were acceptable, but rifles?  Never.  And what kind of person could claim the city from the hands of the lati in melee?

It's with that in mind that he searches the rooftops for an archer and accidentally steps too close to one head of the Altomare Disciplinary Committee.  (Current estimated membership: Hibari Kyouya, Latias, Latios, Kusakabe Tetsuya, and a few hopeful murkrow.)  That's a lie, actually; Gokudera Hayato stubbed out a cigarette on a bridge railing and that was sufficient to earn Hibari Kyouya's undying ire.

And then Tsuna's face had a tonfa in it.

Thankfully, Tsuna's sometimes a bit quick on the uptake and he starts to prepare -- what was it again?  Future Sight? -- but unfortunately Gokudera's faster at sending out Uri to move Tsuna out of the way and his attack fizzles out.


The problem with having a catchphrase -- particularly one as ... descriptive ... as 'bite to death' -- is that every once in a while someone expects you to take it literally.  Thankfully, Hibari is very good at biting people who question his catchphrase to death -- with <i>tonfa</i>, not with teeth -- so it's pretty rare that someone actually asks him about it.

But this is one of those days.  Latias is watching him carefully while preening her wings, and she's usually naïve and innocent, not <i>stupid</i>, but she still wants him to explain why he never actually bites people.  And then Hibari has an important dilemma:

Does he bring up that humans tend not to have useful bites, or does he leap up to try to tear out her throat with his teeth?

For the record, latias feathers taste <i>awful.</i>


Tsuna has no idea whatsoever why <i>Hibari Kyouya</i>, of all people, has a trainer's license.  It's probably not legitimate, of course (or at least he <i>hopes</i> no one would actually be stupid enough to give Hibari-san one), but he has a trainer's license and he has <i>pokémon</i>.  Given that he has never seen Hibari-san in an actual pokémon battle with pokémon and everything, he considers himself entirely justified in asking Latios about it.

Unfortunately, Tsuna had apparently forgotten the main difference between the lati siblings: one wants to be everyone's friend and help anyone who asks, and one is much like a bigger, poofier Hibari-san.  Thankfully, the latios only chews on him until Tsuna agrees to never ask him stupid questions again, but it's still a terrible way to start the day.

... though Tsuna can't really think of a good way to start the day he's seen in <i>months.</i>

He asks Latias a bit later, though, and she at least directs him to Hibari-san's discarded pokéball belt.  He considers briefly the possibility that Hibari-san will punish him for daring to touch it, but -- he <i>hates</i> being trapped inside, and he at least has never been left in a ball for very long.  Some things are worth risking Hibari-san's wrath.

He presses the buttons on the balls and prepares to bolt.  The sandslash and chatot that pop out, though, simply look at him, silently inquiring: <i>where is Hibari-sama?</i>

"A-ah, sorry," Tsuna mumbles as he rubs at the back of his head.

The pangolin glances at her claws and smiles, predatory as her trainer.  "<i>Foolish bug,</i>" she states, tensing but not attacking.  She reminds Tsuna of Uri when he's captured a pidgey and plans on making it <i>last</i>.  He doesn't quite back down, though.

The chatot, however, simply lands on the sandslash's head, and chirps a short, "Hibari, Hibari~!"

The person in question drops down from the ceiling and hits Tsuna in the head, which is just as well.


Tsuna hates pokéballs.  This isn't exactly anything unexpected, or even new; it's difficult to break out of balls, particularly if you're not quite used to it, and (un)fortunately Tsuna has never had occasion to get used to it.  It doesn't help that there have been many, many cases of humans leaving a pokémon in a ball for extended lengths of time and Tsuna wants nothing of it.

Unfortunately, unowned pokémon are fair game for whoever wants them.  And while most trainers are understanding about the whole 'only keep pokémon that want to be with you' thing ... there are a few who aren't.  It's a pity that there's a significant overlap between people who would probably want to capture him and people who would ignore him if he said he didn't want to be captured.  And while he supposes he <i>could</i> ask Gokudera-kun or Yamamoto to technically capture him, he doesn't like spending more time with Gokudera-kun than necessary and if Yamamoto caught him, Gokudera-kun would pitch a <i>fit</i>.  Not to mention that Gokudera would likely try to keep him in a pokéball as much as possible for his own safety.

Reborn reminds him occasionally to consider getting a pokéball just in case, and though Tsuna's never seen it in use (and likely never will) he's heard that Gokudera-kun's older sister is technically Reborn's trainer.  Given that Reborn is just about friendly enough to only whack Tsuna on days ending with y, he doubts that Bianchi has ever done something actually trainer-y for him, but that's okay.

Reborn's arrangement actually sounds like a good idea to him, really, but he doesn't get around to remembering it until <i>after</i> he's visiting Latias and Latios and one of the balls from Hibari-san's pocket rolls out and hits Tsuna in the head.

It's just his luck that he doesn't notice, either.  Not until he's already in the ball and it's clicked, at any rate.


It's at least an hour before Hibari Kyouya notices that he left a pokéball on the ground and deigns to pick it up.  (This is a lie; Kusakabe Tetsuya noticed and handed it to Hibari and no one will ever mention it.)  He notices that it's actually occupied almost immediately, though it takes him a moment to decide if he'll see what's in it: abandoned pokéballs are not something he cares about particularly.  It is probably his, though; Tetsu found it near the latis' den and other than Tetsu and Bianca (neither of whom keep pokémon) Hibari is the only human who wanders there.  If there is anyone else, he will bite them to death.

So he presses the button and frowns at the small, baffled jirachi.  "What are you doing?" he says flatly as he takes out his tonfa.  There is no acceptable explanation for this, particularly not when he can spot the little kanji on the pokéball where he wrote his name (or, more accurately, Tetsu wrote Hibari's name; the distinction is meaningless to Hibari and can safely be ignored).  Had the herbivore stolen it?  He probably wasn't that stupid....

Sawada cowers.  "N-nothing!"

Hibari revises his estimation of the herbivore's intelligence downwards.  "Why were you in one of my pokéballs?"

"IT WAS AN ACCIDENT I SWEAR," he squeaks as he backs up and tenses in preparation to run.  Fortunately, there is nowhere for him to possibly run <i>to</i> and Hibari is faster anyway, so he calmly hits the jirachi in the head.

The faint ringing sound echoes off of the more metal bits of his skull.  Hibari smirks slightly.  "Unacceptable."


If it was all up to Dino, he would never have been recruited by Reborn to go help train (and recruit, probably) some of Reborn's latest student's ... allies.  And Dino uses the word 'ally' generously; he too remembers Reborn's idea of taste, and more importantly of good underlings.  It's fortunate for everyone that Reborn rarely takes up students without being asked by either -- Aria, was it?  He hasn't needed to keep track of the false jirachi -- or one of his few more respected ... questionable ... contacts.  If Reborn could be swayed by money, the world would be a very different place.  Dino's mostly just glad that Reborn hasn't decided that he could take a break from business to do gruntwork for him and his current student.

Who is his current student, anyway?  Dino hasn't had an opportunity to meet him yet; the Cavallone have better things to do than putter around the more temporary false jirachi.  It's not quite decent and more importantly Reborn has a tendency to force anyone he likes to follow his current pet project.

Unfortunately, Dino isn't quite able to deny Reborn's statement that he would help train Hibari Kyouya, which is why he is in Altomare, trying hard not to look suspicious.


The Valley Windworks are haunted.  It's common knowledge that a drifloon wanders the property on Fridays, but -- ghosts are not known for their wide ranges.  More likely, something about Fridays convinces the drifloon to show themselves.  Perhaps the spirit who attracted the drifloon died on a Friday.  Perhaps the drifloon merely understands five day workweeks.  She's not there to find out what it is about the place that attracts the spirits of departed balloons, though; Mukuro-sama had said that she would need a method of transportation and she agrees.

It's Wednesday, so she walks into the building to go to the front desk, keystone safely in her bag.  "Excuse me," she mumbles.

"Yes?" she says without looking up from some paperwork.

She pauses to gather her thoughts (and ignore the spiritomb's muttered slights upon bureaucracies, sciences, and likely many other things; he seems to have strong opinions on many subjects that she ignores).  "... Where does the drifloon appear?"

She looks up from a summary of power output to meet Chrome's eye.  "Right outside by the front bench, but it's Wednesday; it won't be there until Friday."

Chrome nods slowly.  "That's all right."  Visible is not the same as present, and noticed is not the same as visible, and she has no pity for those who conflate the three.  "Thank you," she says belatedly, and she leaves.


The bench is cheap plastic, which means that as far as useful surfaces for minor summonings go, it ranks fairly high: she can engrave a small circle on it with no one being the wiser.  She'd have to worry about someone watching and possibly stopping her, of course, but Mukuro doesn't worry about little details like eyes or blind spots and she's fairly sure her hearing is good enough to catch anyone Mukuro-sama can't sense, even if her field of vision's significantly reduced.

The drifloon does not respond to a drop of blood.

Perplexed, Chrome turns to the rock and mutters, "Mukuro-sama?"

<i>Give it more strength,</i> he says blandly, so she clears her mind and focuses on convincing any spirit haunting the area to manifest.  No result.  There is a chronic lack of drifloon.

Maybe the researcher is right; maybe it really won't be there until Friday.  But that doesn't add up with what she knows about spirits --

Mukuro does something she doesn't quite catch, but she has a faint image of her mind of what she thinks might have been his human form once -- a boy, a bit older than her, with dark blue hair in a messy and slightly ridiculous hairstyle, with a long trident and a smile that has seen the world burn -- smirking suggestively at ... something .. and doing what some might call a sashay.

This mental image is ridiculous and she tries to forget it immediately.

However, for whatever reason, Chrome <i>does</i> then see a drifloon.


The problem with Mukuro having lured out the drifloon with his <i>masculine wiles</i> (and probably a captivate attack) is that the drifloon is now lured by his masculine wiles.  In particular, she has been trying very, very hard to lift up his -- rock whenever he is too tired to suggest that she let it wait until there isn't a human around.  There wouldn't <i>be</i> a human around if she could just carry him off, after all!

For once in his life, Mukuro pities himself for his many charms and sheer inhuman attractiveness and manly manliness, even if he is stuck in a rock.


Haru comes across the slightly-odd girl in the Fallarbor Pokémon Center and immediately decides that she needs a friend.  She seems all lonely in the corner with just a rock for company!  So she walks over and announces, "Hi!  I'm Miura Haru, from Celadon City!"

The girl hurriedly puts the stone back in her backpack, then looks at her quizzically.  "... hello.  I'm -- Chrome," she says, slightly hesitant.  New trainer?

"It's nice to meet you, Chrome-chan!"  She grins, as does Manekkun from his vantage point on her shoulder.  The mime jr is so cute!

Chrome nods, clearly preoccupied.  "Are you ... a pokémon trainer?"

"Yep!  Are you?"

She glances back at her backpack, then smiles half-heartedly.  "I ... am, yes.  Would you like to battle?"


Haru's already grabbed the pokéball for her first choice -- she hasn't used her new spinda yet but she's so <i>cute</i> and Haru's going to make her her very own namahage costume so they can be namahage together~~ -- when the girl finally stops rummaging through her bag for a pokéball and just takes out a rock.  It's a very interesting rock -- it's sort of wedge-shaped and it has a little face on it, how cute~ -- but it still looks like it's just a rock.  ... It's a very <i>big</i> rock, though; how does Chrome-chan manage to lift and carry it?  It looks like it might weigh significantly more than Chrome, though that doesn't look hard; Haru decides that Chrome-chan needs a sandwich.  Maybe she can recruit Kyouko into Operation: FEED CHROME....  Kyouko likes cooking, and Haru just decided that she and Chrome will be best friends for as long as is convenient.

She looks at the rock, eyebrow furrowed slightly, then nods.  "I'm ready," she says.

Haru smiles and presses the button.  "Pacchan, go!"  The small panda pops out of the ball with a splashing sound and does a little spinny dance ending with a bow to the rock, which she seems to recognize as a pokémon.  Haru isn't quite sure how she can <i>tell</i> -- it's a rock and it doesn't look like anything other than a rock; maybe it's a foreign pokémon?  If it <i>is</i> a pokémon....  "Who goes first?"

She looks at the rock, then says, "You may."

Haru <i>grins</i>.  "Pacchan, teeter dance!"  The spinda takes that as her cue to start her strange, wobbly dance.  A step to the left, half-spin, wibble wobble and yet she never quite falls down -- and Haru starts to dance along.  She can't quite hear the music, though she's heard that teeter dance's compulsion sticks a tune in one's head for anyone with any psychic sensitivity at <i>all</i>; part of why teeter dance is usually so devastating is that it creates an earworm that won't let go and resurfaces throughout the battle.  Trainers of teeter dancers either need to be sensitive enough to have learned to block it out or completely resistant.  It has something to do with type-affinities; Haru doesn't remember the details.  What matters is that teeter dance is <i>fun</i> and she's heard that it's stronger the more people participate -- and if you're not around a lot of people who are either naturally good at resisting or trained to resist it, you can get a <i>lot</i> of participants -- and even if she doesn't get the full force of the compulsion, she can still do her part.

She remembers to pay attention to the actual battle after a moment, and thankfully Chrome hasn't ordered anything.

The rock sits there, completely oblivious to the spinda's efforts.  Chrome, for her part, staggers briefly but otherwise ignores the teeter dance.  Interesting.

"Mukuro-sama?" she says clearly, watching the rock.  And after a moment, the rock -- <i>flickers</i> a pale green, though it still mostly looks like a normal rock.  She has a distinct impression of <i>intelligence</i>, however.

Pacchan pauses briefly to glare at the stone, then wobbles a bit more furiously.  ... until she's sent flying by a faint indigo blast in her face sent by the rock.  Haru hears a faint <i>kufufu</i> but doesn't care; she's already bolted to pick up and hug the spinda.  "Hahi--?  What was that?"

Chrome looks at the rock with faint admiration and walks over to also pick up her pokémon and hug it.  "Dark pulse," she says, preoccupied.  "Mukuro-sama is very impressive."

Satisfied that the spinda is mostly okay (if irritated by teeter dance's failure and also the fact that a single attack sent her flying; what is up with that?), Haru nods hesitantly.  "What kind of pokémon is -- it?"  And what kind of person called their pet rock 'corpse', much less treated it respectfully?

The rock seems to be looking at her.  "A -- spiritomb," she says, "a type of ghost from Sinnoh."

Huh.  Sinnoh.  Haru's not been to Sinnoh yet, though she's heard it's very ... different.  Different enough for normal ghost trainers?  "-- Would you like to travel with me?" she says, mostly on a whim.

The girl looks stunned and more than a bit confused as she looks down at her rock -- her spiritomb, Haru supposes, not just a rock -- then frowns.  "I need to go -- someplace."

"I don't have plans," Haru says quickly.  "Could I travel with you?"  <i>You look lonely,</i> she wants to say.

"... yes."


Adventuring with Chrome, Haru discovers, is very odd.  Oh, not because Chrome has weird habits or anything (if anything, it's Haru who's weird there), but because the girl is very quiet.  It's not significantly different from traveling alone; in fact, sometimes she nearly thinks she <i>is</i> alone since Chrome-chan wanders off so frequently.  Haru doesn't know where the girl goes, but she has little interest in asking; Chrome shrinks from most conversation she doesn't have a set response for and Haru worries a little whenever she sees her looking to her spiritomb for advice.  Pokémon don't talk, or at least not usually, and the people who understand them tend to be a bit ... off.

Given that Haru's heard that ghost trainers are <i>weird</i>, if Chrome-chan isn't getting a double dose of weird, Haru doesn't know how she could handle either of them.  At least Chrome is completely adorable; it's a pity she doesn't seem to like people that much, since Haru thinks she would make a <i>great</i> Pokémon Idol.  Not the sort who do a lot of exhibitions, though Chrome-chan could probably manage that, but the ones who earn their fans through sheer force of cute.  That drifblim?  One of the most adorable pokémon ever, particularly when -- she?  Haru thinks the drifblim's a she... -- works on carrying Chrome-chan and Haru around.

She nearly wishes that she'd been to Sinnoh just so she could have her very own balloon pokémon.  Look at that face!  It's so cute!  -- and then Chrome-chan had explained some of the ... idiosyncrasies ... of the balloon pokémon.  And of her Mukuro-sama, and the more Haru learns of the rock the more she wants to throw it/him in a pond somewhere and explain to Chrome that it's not good to befriend pokémon who like trying to kill people.  Not that the drifblim has tried to hurt anyone, to her knowledge, or that the spiritomb's done anything to Chrome, but it's the principle of the matter.  It's like trusting a shuppet; sooner or later it's going to want to see how to turn <i>you</i> into a good source of food, and no one's going to be particularly happy about that.  (Except the shuppet, but the shuppet's thoughts don't matter.)

Now where was Chrome now?


Chrome's a bit glad that she got Haru off of her tail, however briefly.  She's a very nice girl, Chrome will admit readily, but she's so <i>weird</i>.  Why did she care?  And Mukuro had said something damning about Haru being a busybody and likely a control freak, but Chrome wasn't sure if it was quite accurate (though she didn't doubt it enough to question it) and anyway the girl certainly seemed nice, so...

... she waited until the girl looked away, and then she left.  Oh, she'll return to their campsite soon, but for now, Mukuro-sama has work for her to do.  Somewhere around Mount Pyre should be two pokémon waiting for Mukuro-sama together.  He didn't say what their species should be, but given that he's been locked in a rock for probably around five hundred years, Chrome can't blame him.  Knowing that they had likely reincarnated -- she is rather sure that Mukuro was human in his previous life, and it was rare for a pokémon's loyalties to last beyond one life and few species lived long enough to wait five hundred years for someone who might never return -- didn't mean that he would know what they would reincarnate <i>as</i>, and she would not be surprised if he would omit the details if he did know as a test.

So it would be her, the drifblim (she assumes she has a name, but she doesn't know it and for now she has no intention of naming it herself), and Mukuro-sama working to find two pokémon who might not even be visible.  And Mukuro-sama had indicated he wished to nap, so it was entirely possible that it would just be her and the drifblim.  It is good that even if the drifblim must follow the winds, it can choose to follow the strange winds of spirit instead and so travel hundreds of miles in a day.  She would -- and does -- slow it down, but even so; ghosts do not have to follow the rules of the physical world if they do not want to, and today neither the drifblim nor Mukuro want to.


When Chrome returns with a houndour and a <i>shuppet</i> and introduces them as Ken and Chikusa, respectively, Haru wants to punch something.  <i>Yes, Chrome-chan, go befriend two symbols of misfortune!</i> she would like to say, <i>This is a good idea!</i>

What she actually says is this: "Huh.  Why?"

And Chrome-chan's response is as simple as usual: "Mukuro-sama asked me to."

Haru is going to cry now.  And then she is going to do her best to find some relevant books on cultural notes about spiritomb, because the one Chrome travels with is a terrible, terrible influence and if that one is at all normal she is going to wonder forever why Chrome thought it was a good idea to listen to it ever.


Hayato senses something odd about the girl -- the annoying woman's friend?  They seem friendly, at least -- as soon as he meets her.  He can't put his finger on it, quite, but he attributes that to ghost trainers <i>always</i> being a bit ... off.  Still, there's something distinctly weird about her, even for a ghost trainer.

"Hey, you," he says, trying hard to sound non-confrontational and not particularly succeeding.

The eyepatch girl turns and looks at him blankly.  "Yes?"

"What's in the bag?"

Somehow, she manages to look even <i>more</i> blank and slightly vapid.  Creepy.  "Nothing of interest," and if that silky tone didn't mean that was a <i>complete lie</i> then he would spend the weekend with the Sasagawas on a camping trip.

So he crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow.  "That so?"

"Indeed."

"You're lying."

She tilts her head slightly and smiles, not kindly.  Her smile reminds him a bit of a gengar, actually.  "Is that so, Gokudera Hayato?"

<i>Definitely</i> creepy.  He is 99.973% sure he never introduced himself to her.  And he's also pretty sure that the annoying girl doesn't know his last name, and the boxing dumbass and his sister might but don't ever use it, so it couldn't have been them, and the tenth is good at not sharing other people's personal information.  "Who the fuck are you?"

"No one of consequence, Gokudera Hayato," and she walks away, backpack bouncing with her step.


He asks the tenth about her later, but he has no idea who he's talking about.


Kurokawa Hana does not believe in pokémon training.  Well, she believes it <i>exists</i> -- she's not stupid! -- but the whole idea of adventuring out in the wilderness for months at a time, with only your pet giant fire breathing monsters to protect you?  <i>Not</i> her cup of tea.  If it was up to her, she'd have nothing to do with pokémon most of the time.  They are large and capable of mass destruction and when they say things, <i>people don't understand any of it.</i>  Which she'd normally be okay with but -- pokémon are intelligent and analytical and fundamentally not human.

Unfortunately, Kyouko loves her pokémon and her brother, and her weird friends love pokémon (though she's not quite sure about that one girl -- Chrome, was it?) and so Hana feels obligated to tolerate them, if only briefly.

Haru looks at her expectantly.  "What do you think of my Hana-chan, Hana-chan?" she says, holding up the bellossom lovingly.

The pokémon Hana-chan waves in a manner Hana thinks many people would find cute.  Unfortunately, she is well aware that the flower pokémon is capable of, say, leveling small buildings with <i>flower petals</i> for crying out loud, not to mention the rampant destruction all of Haru's pokémon can cause with a little dance.  One teeter dance and no one within range of the telepathically-transmitted music can keep themselves from dropping everything to polka.

She shivers a little, but scratches behind the bellossom's left ear.  "She's very cute, Haru-chan."  Much cuter than that disgusting gloom Haru paraded about before she found a sun stone, at least.

... From the bellossom's baleful glare, she'd almost think it understood what she thought of it.


<i>You should change your hair,</i> Mukuro says one day, mostly on a whim.

Chrome looks over at him -- his rock -- questioningly.  Her hair's a lot shorter than it was when she first started traveling; Haru decided she needed to get a haircut and she acquiesced, mostly because she didn't care but also because it'd probably make the strange girl happy.  Still, her haircut's not particularly distinctive and she doesn't mind if she changes it again, if it'd make someone else happy.  "...?"

He describes something that looks -- rather a lot like she thinks his used to, actually, parted down the middle and straight and short and a bit poofy in the back.  Like a ludicolo put together all wrong.

She doesn't want to define herself by him, or at least not entirely, but -- there are few, maybe none, who would know what it meant.  It is anonymity, of a sort; the ghost is and she is and while the two are always and must stay distinct (she has heard stories, of what can happen when the living trust the dead, or the not quite dead, or the stubbornly should-be-dead, and they are never pleasant) there are ... allowances.  And there is no strength as great in battle as the knowledge that your opponent believes something that is very nearly true.


She goes to the Lavender Pokémon Tower partly because Mukuro wants her to -- she tries not to wonder why; if she does not know, she cannot reveal anything to him and she can remain a useful pawn -- but mostly because it is useful practice.  A ghost trainer must be able to sense ghosts themselves; those who cannot tend not to last long and while the spiritomb currently values her assistance, Mukuro seems the type to leave her to fend for herself if it is convenient.  Spiritomb are not known for their goodwill, and Mukuro, at least, has shown no inclination to change this.

The building itself is remarkably huge; she has to consciously keep her expression blank as she looks it up and down, judging size, and again as she steps inside.  The upper floors seem to be -- clouded, possibly, shrouded in the little distortions of space that the restless dead are so skilled at creating.  What strikes her most about the first floor is not the sheer number of markers, or even the few people mourning their lost pokémon.

There is no shrine in a discreet corner to the dragon of boundaries, of forgotten places and the places between worlds.  This is not Sinnoh, with its 'quaint' traditions of remembrance and respect to and for pokémon in general and the pokémon of legend in particular.  This is Kanto, and Kanto's dark side spawned Team Rocket.  Which is not to say that Sinnoh is without its issues, but --

She suddenly feels very alone.

In the back of her mind, she hears a faint <i>Kufufu, terrible, is it not?</i> and for a moment, she nearly agrees.  But just because it's <i>different</i> doesn't mean it's <i>bad</i> and perhaps she will adjust.  (Perhaps she doesn't entirely <i>want</i> to adjust, but if she decides she doesn't want to adjust she might as well return to Sinnoh and that is <i>not</i> on her immediate to-do list.  If Mukuro asks, she will, but -- she doesn't think he wants to remain in Sinnoh, either.  He doesn't sound like a Sinnoh native and more to the point it likely reminds him of the rock.)

The people in the Tower are kind enough, she supposes, but there is an underlying sense of <i>disturbance</i> about the place.  Not recent, or at least not recent enough for the echoes to reverberate across the building (and in a place with so many sensitive as Lavender, it actually could have been as recent as last week but the aftershocks have been dealt with enough to make dating it impossible) and she does not want to ask for more information.  If Mukuro judges it necessary, he will tell her or tell her to ask, but otherwise she can wait.

She slowly climbs up the building, pausing briefly on each floor to judge the atmosphere.  It is quiet, or nearly so; the faint susurration of the wrongly dead is barely audible over the silence of the satisfied ghosts.  The ghost trainers waiting in the building glance in her direction, meet her eyes, and nod.  They pay no attention to her beyond that; she wonders why for a moment and realises that they think she is like them.  Perhaps she is, but she finds that unlikely; they stink of gastly and of dreams left behind.  She senses something faintly earthy for a moment, but it passes.

On the fourth floor, she senses a patch Mukuro <i>does not like</i>: consecrated ground, more likely than not.  The channeler keeping watch from the safety of her circle's eyes are less blank than most; perhaps many of them have lent their power to their ghost pokémon and lost something of themselves?  It's possible.

She finds a corner outside of that channeler's line of sight, but only barely: she wants her to be able to do -- something, anything, really, if what she plans on trying goes wrong.  Which is not to say she expects anything approaching failure; she lets Ken and Chikusa out to watch for and guard against -- well, not really guard, but at least make note of -- anything possibly dangerous, sets Mukuro down a few feet from her chosen spot (<i>definitely</i> out of where that channeler would be able to see; Chrome doubts that any respectable ghost trainer would trust a spiritomb as far as she could throw it, and the rock weighs at least 100 kg without Mukuro's help so throwing it is difficult), and sits.  She isn't good at meditating, exactly, but she can clear her mind easily enough and simply -- think.


Most of the ghosts pass her by: while they can sense her type affinities -- that she could likely bring them into the physical world if she willed it -- they can also sense that she is otherwise claimed.  Mukuro's influence reeks to those who can sense it, and no ghost who would try to bring her under its control would have the courage to ignore the warning.  While they likely had never sensed a spiritomb before, a lust for vengeance leaves a mark and she smells like his territory.

One of the gastly does come to examine her, however, and a shy cubone trails behind.  The gastly, she carefully ignores (she has seen them before and the surest way to convince one to leave was to ask it to stay; they are contrary creatures and while they are honest in thought and deed, they are tricksters, first and foremost, and masters of the unsaid word: their words are true to the letter and no further), but she takes out a few pieces of beef jerky and holds them out to the cubone.

"Nn... kara?" the cubone mumbles, eyes wide.  She doesn't understand it, not really, but she waits and eventually it scarfs them down and offers her its bone.

She accepts it, holds it up closer to her eye, admires the smoothened edges and the hint of a serrated blade on one end of the femur.  Cubone claim their bones from their dead mothers, she's heard, but seeing one up close drives home an oft-ignored point: the cubone are dead, too.  Have they always been dead or only recently?  She'd like to know, possibly ask Mukuro and verify with -- verify with whom? -- if their forms are a token to the adaptability of pokémon or simply a biological footnote, never worth mentioning.

The gastly is in her hair, and she thinks she might keep it: it clearly likes her and there is no immediate sign that the gastly wishes her ill.  It moved past Mukuro, after all.


Chrome thinks that if her mother or stepfather or even her classmates were to see her now, they would not recognize her.  It's not that she's changed her appearance -- though her hair is usually up in Mukuro's preferred style, and her eyepatch is no longer <i>subtle</i> -- but more that she carries herself differently.  She doesn't try to fade into the background anymore, though she still doesn't try to be the center of attention: it's more that she doesn't expect acknowledgement.  She is there, and she is comfortable with being there, and there is nothing anyone can say to change that.

So as time passes she stops dressing in the ways she remembers people expecting of her and inches towards practicality.  Her flimsy little shoes are long gone in favour of waterproof black boots, while she's traded out her old miniskirts in favour of shorts and knee-length skirts: Haru's expressed concern about Chrome possibly coming down with hypothermia, particularly since she doesn't usually seem to display enough sense to build a fire and stay by it on cold nights, so in lieu of changing her habits she simply tolerates Haru's efforts to guide her wardrobe.

She rarely wears the venusaur green sweater Haru gave her, though.


While Tsuna has mostly trained himself out of expecting any given thing to <i>not</i> happen on any given day (Reborn likes to ensure that Tsuna's life remains <i>interesting</i> and he is never going to get into a fight with a magikarp again: they hit hard) he still didn't expect to run into Yamamoto and his friends on one of the weekends he actually ventures away from Pewter or Azalea.  But there Yamamoto is, with his smile and his innocent-looking duffel bag over his shoulder, and people Tsuna assumes are probably his friends.  (He's sure he's met the Sasagawas before, though he doesn't think Sasagawa Kyouko is likely to remember his name....  The two girls standing near Kyouko-chan are unfamiliar, though.)

He's pretty sure that they haven't spotted him and Gokudera yet, so he nudges Gokudera enough that he walks closer to a bush so Tsuna can hop off his shoulder and disguise himself again.  Gokudera thankfully doesn't say anything for once in his life: he probably trusts Yamamoto's friends about as far as he can throw them, and he has little spindly arms so that's not far at <i>all</i>.

"Hey, Hayato!" Yamamoto yells after a moment (Tsuna has his suspicions that Yamamoto's <i>completely aware</i> of Tsuna's true form, even if he pretends not to be; every once in a while his timing is close enough to perfect to let him keep up the charade and sometimes Tsuna notices things <i>after</i> Yamamoto does, even with the slight edge from pokémon senses).

Gokudera gives him the finger, which is a lot like hello as far as he's concerned, but then he remembers that Tsuna's there so he should pretend to be polite: "'sup, dumbass."

"Haaahi!?" the brown-haired girl squeaks.  "You shouldn't be so rude, Gokudera-san!"  <i>They've met?</i> Tsuna thinks; he doesn't remember the girl and he's still a little bit thrown whenever Gokudera apparently knows random people: for such an antisocial (and while Tsuna doesn't know the difference between asocial and antisocial, he'd still go with antisocial if he did) guy, he certainly seems to know a lot of people.  "Especially near a kid!  You're a <i>bad influence, Gokudera-san!</i>"

"Pssh, fuck you," Gokudera says intelligently as he flips her off, too.  "The tenth's not a kid!  And he doesn't mind anyway, right, tenth?"

Tsuna nods, hesitant (while he'd like Gokudera to get along with people better, siding with this person he's never met before would probably just drop him into his incredibly defensive and sulky mode, and then he'd be even more irritable once he sort of snapped out of it).  "Um, hello!" he manages tentatively.  "I'm, um, Sawada Tsunayoshi."

Yamamoto grins.  "This is Miura Haru --" Haru waves cheerily, forgetting that she was glaring at Gokudera like she wanted to light him on <i>fire</i>. "-- and Haru's friend Chrome --" Chrome stares at Tsuna fairly blankly, though she bites her lip and he notices that her eyepatch has a lotad on it.  "-- and these are Sasagawa Kyouko and Ryouhei, haha."

Kyouko-chan adopts an extraordinarily obvious thinking pose: "Haven't we met before?"

Tsuna stops breathing, which would usually be a bad thing except that he rarely needs to.  "<i>Yes,</i>" he says with as much emphasis as he can muster.

Kyouko, for her part, simply shrugs.


It's not until Haru and the Sasagawas are asleep that Chrome finally says anything to Tsuna.  She sits a meter or two away from Yamamoto and Gokudera and Tsuna's sleeping bags, rock in her lap, and waits.  Tsuna wakes up within seconds of her sitting down, though he's not quite sure why (and so does Gokudera, actually, though he feigns sleep with some skill).

He can, however, recognize ill intent and the rock has plenty of it.  "... yes?" Tsuna says blearily as he slides out of the sleeping back enough to see.  "What is it?"

She frowns slightly, then nods¸ some decision made.  "Do they know who you are?" she says, barely audible even to Tsuna's moderately improved hearing.  He notices that her lips barely moved.

"I don't know what you're talking about!!" Tsuna says, arms flailing.  He's not a very good liar.

"You're not -- entirely human," she says, somewhat sympathetic.

He sighs.  "Gokudera-kun and Yamamoto know, yes."

"But not the others?" she presses.

"... no."

And after a moment, she sits up indeterminately straighter and laughs a cold "kufufu."  She smirks at his frown, and says, "Do you have no intention of accounting for your predecessors' shortcomings?"

But he's not quite what she means by that, and he senses something odd about the air, so he simply goes "... hm?" and the girl leaves him be.

He almost thinks for a moment that he saw her right eye as she left, but that would be silly; her eyepatch is as opaque as ever.


"Reborn, why don't you like Chrome?" Tsuna says after the girl -- and her rock -- leaves and he's alone with the celebi and Gokudera.  He's still not entirely sure about the boy, but Gokudera seems like a good enough sort, if terrifying, and his knowledge of -- everything, really, has already been useful, so he doesn't mind if he's there to listen.

From his grimace, Reborn did <i>not</i> want Tsuna to ask that question.  "She's an idiot.  Did you notice her name?"

Of course he noticed her name!  He just said it, didn't he?!  "Ku-rou-mu?" he says anyway.

"She carries around the rock that contains what's left of Rokudou Mukuro."  From his emphasis on the name, he clearly expects Tsuna to make some sort of connection.

And he doesn't.  "I don't get it," he states, arm already raised in case he decides to kick him in the head.  (Reborn does, of course, but he moves as to kick the <i>back</i> of Tsuna's head, likely as a comment on his terrible blocking skills.)

"Mu-ku-ro.  Ku-ro-mu," he states, and this time Tsuna is smarter than a dead furret.  "Rokudou Mukuro was sealed about five hundred years ago for ... certain things," he says specifically.

"Like...?" Tsuna says pointedly.

Reborn waves dismissively.


Mukuro's crimes are many and varied, but the underlying theme is this: he did not (does not) approve of humanity stepping in where it does not belong, and he believed (believes, will continue to believe) that it is his right to do as he wills because he must.  There is no one who would gladly take his position so the world may be reborn (purified?  the distinction is important but it blurs as he wills it to; rebirth is in itself purifying but the nature of life is to be cyclical; break the cycle and perhaps the world may change) in what's left of the old.

There are even fewer who would decide that the world needed to be reborn in blood.  Mukuro attributes this to naiveté, but that might be a bigger statement on <i>Mukuro</i> than on anything else.


<i>Shit shit shit,</i> Hayato thinks intelligently as he leaps over the fence.  The tenth is around <i>somewhere</i> but he isn't entirely sure where and if he doesn't know Levi can't follow him to find out but <i>that means he doesn't know</i> and --

Tsuna doesn't have a pokéball and hasn't for weeks, hasn't since that guy from Altomare finally decided to release him, and with that realization Hayato switches from berating himself mentally to swearing incoherently under his breath.  He <i>should have thought of that</i> but if he's lucky, then maybe Xanxus's minions haven't realised that the tenth is technically wild.  He'd've had to be an idiot.  (<i>The loud asshole knows how the baseball idiot thinks,</i> he realises briefly and pushes under; not HELPING.)  If he's <i>really</i> lucky, the tenth is still hidden (can he trust the eyepatch girl?  better yet, can he trust the spiritomb?  Hayato <i>doesn't know</i> and if he doesn't then the tenth almost certainly doesn't) and -- wait.

The tenth had said that he can sense and sometimes grant wishes if it's exactly in line with one's heart's desire (and what a stupid concept that is, Hayato thinks, and he is nearly right) and he can hear it.

Jirachi is a <i>psychic-</i> and steel-type.

Hayato is very loud.

He grabs this chain of thought and runs with it: <i>I wish for the tenth to remain uncaught.</i>

The resulting explosion as the tenth's doom desire blows up in Levi and Squalo's faces is both terrifying and gratifying; the tenth listened to <i>him</i>.


[continuations of a long-held tradition]

It's Wednesday, as far as Reborn is considered, and that means it's time for their weekly card game.  He looks over at the alakazam to see if he wants to come along -- he doesn't -- and then vanishes in a flash of light green.

There are two dragons and a stuffed animal of a third sitting at the table when he takes his seat on the corner.  (He's rather shorter than his opponents, so they've arranged that he sits on the table instead.)  One of the dragons (a large blue monster with giant horns and a gem on its chest) gestures towards the deck and says something along the lines of 'will you ever stop giving me more work to do?', but Reborn just smiles, picks up the deck, shuffles.

Six rounds later, the stuffed animal is firmly losing (as it is a stuffed animal, Reborn and the dialga look over at its cards and decide what it will do) and they've all resolved to collect more money from Giratina.  It's her fault for being bad at card games, after all.

(It's their fault for banning her from the room, but that's what happens when you're a cheater and you always win in foot races.  If by foot races you mean races to grow feet.)

As usual, Reborn is clearly winning, though that might have something to do with being the only member of the group with hands.  He is also a cheater, but Palkia likes that he annoys Dialga and she has no reason to vote against him when the dialga suggests again that Reborn be barred from their games.  Or that they play games that are easier without hands.


[but sometimes it's the puzzle that's all wrong]

Hayato thinks of trying the local coffee shop ('White Sands' is the current name; he'd yell at his sister about it if he wasn't fairly sure she <i>still</i> had someone else technically owning the place) after checking three different candy shops and seeing no sign of the guy he's looking for.  He hadn't met up with Spanner for <i>weeks</i>, but the engineer is a creature of habit first and foremost; there's very little reason for him to have changed his routine without incentive.  But with Team Rocket's slight downturn ... it's possible he'd lost his job with Silph and he might have even <i>moved</i>.  Unlikely, however, which is how he ends up sliding into the cheap (and crappy!) coffee shop and sitting down next to a pale engineer, who seemed more preoccupied with patting a sobbing -- Hayato can't tell what he probably does, but given that he's wearing a shirt for ABBRA, he's probably a nerd of some sort, unless Spanner somehow developed social skills (and even Hayato can tell that is never going to happen).  Well.  Anyway.  Patting an upset kid on the back in a manner probably intended to be comforting.  He didn't even know the asshole was able to care for people!  Amazing.

Having seen a feat of nature he never would have expected, Hayato waits for Spanner to finish speaking ("It's okay, Shouichi.  I like your time machine.") before tapping him on the shoulder and smiling brightly (or in a way he hoped was brightly; he actually resembled nothing so much as the friendly neighborhood carvanha) at Spanner's friend.  "Spanner," he says as a greeting.

Spanner slowly turns to look over at him and says a short, "Hayato."  (His idiot friend -- did he say Shouichi? -- meanwhile stares at Hayato like he is the most terrifying person he has ever seen.  <i>You know Spanner, kid, and you're scared of ME?</i> he sort of wants to say, though he knows he's not good at appearing friendly (UNDERSTATEMENT.) and anyway he looks like he's having a bad day.  No reason he can't make it worse.  ... Or is that better?)

"I need to ask a favour."

"Trade?  Shouichi here's funding's gone."  Shouichi <i>glares</i> at Spanner briefly, before looking down to clean his glasses, put them back on, and return to glaring.  (Glaring is much more intimidating when you can actually see the person you're glaring at.  This is why Hayato makes sure he wears his contacts whenever he's not currently doing what he does best: making sure things blow up.)

He glances around the room briefly -- no one who'd care, good, nor anyone who'd realise that Hayato'd been <i>mysteriously absent</i> for months (though from what he'd heard from Reborn, Saki-san might've taken care of that...) -- and hands Spanner a small notepad.  "I need the specs for anything Robotics has churned out recently.  What's your friend do?"

"Spanner, you're not --" what, writing out the details on each of the giant robots he's worked on since last time Hayato asked for an update?  "Why am I asking, of course you are.  Who the hell are you?"

Hayato rolls his eyes and lets Spanner take care of it: "Shouichi, this is Gokudera Hayato.  He used to help me with ballistics for my mosca.  Hayato, this is Irie Shouichi; he does interesting work with parallel worlds and alternate timelines.  Make friends."

"Team Rocket's no longer interested in time travel; last I heard the fuckhead who got that pokéball maker to even <i>help</i> with that Ilex project -- er.  Fuck."  He tries not to look guilty and mostly succeeds; Reborn asked for his help for where and when to leave him to get Team Rocket <i>out of Azalea</i>.  He's not sure if his suggestion was the best one he could think of -- Reborn liked and used the one to leave the dumbass upside-down, in a tree, without pants, surrounded by incriminating photos and a sign saying 'FREE ROCKET GRUNT FOR A LOVING FAMILY', on top of the Lake of Rage base (the really interesting bit is how the incriminating photos got there) -- but it was certainly ... effective.  "Galactic's been up to something weird; if you're up for moving to Sinnoh and you think you're badass enough to kick one of those losers off Pluto's team, you could try that... and Cipher's <i>always</i> interested in getting celebi, though if they think they're going to get <i>anywhere</i> with that they're even fucking dumber than I thought."

Spanner nods, considering, while Shouichi watches Hayato blankly, then frowns as he realises he's not joking.  "You can't be serious.  I do legitimate work!"

"For <i>Silph?</i>" he scoffs.  "Silph hasn't changed <i>that</i> much since I left, has it?"

"Your father's still on the board of directors," Spanner says, shaking his head.  "Less overt than it was a year ago, but -- still corrupt."  He sighs.

"It's a fucking paycheck, eh?"  Spanner looks at him, sniffs and pours out his (how sad!  ... It chews away at the table.) cheap tea and nods.  "Look, ki-- Shouichi --"

"Irie.  I don't know you," he snaps.

"-- Fine, asshole, 'Spanner's friend'.  Silph's been a front for Team Rocket for <i>years</i>.  Well, not all of it," he amends, "I heard the president's got some pet project or another and I'm pretty sure as far as he's concerned, Silph Co is completely above the table.  But -- you didn't hear this from me, right?"

The woman at the register looks over at the group, smiles, and goes to lock up, her pet [gamagaru] following behind.  "You're still clear, Hayato," she says as she starts making some muffins.

He doesn't acknowledge her.  "If Team Rocket needs something done, they look to Cinnabar and Saffron first.  Most of their fucking <i>big</i> projects are in Celadon, but -- Silph, those 'abandoned' labs in Cinnabar, and whenever they have a convenient front, that fucker Masaki up by Cerulean?  They've got a <i>lot</i> of guys to do their fucked up 'science' -- and I'm sure we all know they don't give a damn about anything other than whatever's best at blowing shit up, no artistry at <i>all</i> -- and at least half of them think they're doing something other than gruntwork.  I don't know details about much outside of Kanto, but... fuck it.  Why're you still dealing with this shit, Spanner?"

"Habit," he says shortly.  "Habit and giant robots."

"At least the fuckers still like mechas, huh."

Shouichi stares at his own coffee -- thankfully perfectly safe coffee; Spanner checked (Spanner likes this particular coffee shop mainly because Bianchi doesn't tolerate anyone Hayato explicitly hates, and Hayato has a tendency to only despise people bad for people he likes at all's health, though he would like it a lot more if the food and drinks were reliably edible) -- and sighs.  "But the 'fuckers' -- as you so aptly put it -- don't like time travel anymore?  That so?"

"'s far as I know.  Haven't had a damn thing to do with them for months, but they'd have to be damn stupid to still be blatant about it.  Your best bet's either Galactic -- they're mostly legit, though if you do go that route stay the fuck away from anyone in charge not named Pluto; there's something fucked up going on there -- or I know some guys in Johto.  Dunno what they'd think of you, but they can't fucking stand Team Rocket and you seem to have morals enough to satisfy some of them."


Introductions were surprisingly easy: "Tenth, this is Spanner; he's a friend and he makes giant robots for a living.  And this is Irie Shouichi; he's a fuckhead.  Spanner, Fuckhead, this is the tenth."  And then Spanner handed the tenth a lollipop, while Irie made stupid faces like a stupid stupidhead, and all was well.

Well, that's a lie, actually.

For the following month, every morning at six AM, Tsuna wakes up to Reborn's boot in his face and completely fails to notice that there is a refrigerator magnet stuck to the back of his head.  First it's little image macros of varying hilarity, then logos for bands like De La Solrock, then pithy phrases, and finally:

refrigerator poetry.

[this] [head] [is] [magnetic]

[do] [you] [believe] [in] [life] [after] [robot][s]

[listen] [up] [here]['s] [a] [story] [about] [a] [giant] [robot]

[I] [for] [one] [like] [giant] [robot][s]

[and] [green] [tea]

[Japan] [is] [cool][,] [too]

[johnny] [was] [a] [chemist]
[but] [johnny] [is] [no] [more]
[what] [johnny] [thought] [was] [H<sub>2</sub>O]
[was] [H<sub>2</sub>SO<sub>4</sub>]

[a] [senryuu][:]
[feraligatr]
[anti][feraligatr]
[annihilation]

[a] [haiku][:]
[autumn] [leaves] [drift] [down]
[your] [room] [is] [a] [gray] [toaster]
[refrigerator]

[my] [name] [is] [wrench] [and] [if] [I] [ever] [put] [another] [refrigerator] [magnet] [on] [the] [tenth] [I] [am] [going] [to] [find] [myself] [up] [a] [creek] [with][out] [a] [paddle]

There were no more refrigerator magnets found on Tsuna's head after that.


Some days, Tsuna has <i>no idea</i> how he's gotten so many -- friends, might be the word, though he doesn't actually get along with half of them and they tend to be more friends-of-friends.  (He isn't sure how to classify Gokudera-kun; on one hand he's not any other word he can think of but Gokudera scares him more often than not and he'd be happier if Gokudera was elsewhere most of the time, really.  And yet whenever he vanishes for a week at a time Tsuna can't help but worry about him, even though he's fairly reliably turned up in better shape than he left.  And he dragged Spanner and Irie back last time!  -- though Tsuna isn't sure he likes Spanner or Irie; they're weird and they keep sort of wanting to <i>study</i> him.  It's creepy.)  But there's a definite sense of <i>people</i> hanging around in Yamamoto's house in Pewter.  (He'd feel bad about imposing, but he got the impression that Yamamoto and his father liked the company and they certainly didn't seem to <i>mind</i>.  ... And he definitely didn't want to set up operations in his mom's house.  That would go from interesting to creepy in seconds.)

Which isn't to say that <i>everyone</i> stays at Yamamoto's house, of course.  Irie-san seems to only stay in the area if he has absolutely no time to return home, and given that the xatu -- Mirai? some thematically fitting name like that; the xatu answered perfectly well to 'xatu' -- usually teleports rather than flies between Lavender and wherever he spends his time, that's rare; it's mostly been when he and Spanner (and Gokudera and occasionally Haru, though Gokudera pretends he doesn't care about Irie-san's 'pet projects', while Haru simply doesn't have the patience or the background knowledge to contribute on a regular basis) are up to <i>something</i> and don't want to pause it for sleep.  Even there, they rarely pick Yamamoto's house if there's any chance of, say, Bianchi-san's coffee shop remaining open; she doesn't seem to mind explosions in her basement as long as the building's standing in the morning, and given that Reborn seems to have no qualms about reverting it to how it was the day before if necessary, that effectively means that they can use it for whatever they want.

It's odd, how much his friends will put their usual lives on pause if he or Reborn ask them to.  Also creepy.  But mostly odd.  Every once in a while he finds the room to think about it and it always throws him a little; has he ever been devoted to one person?  He loves his friends like they're his family, but there is no one he would willingly discard the rest of his life for.


Tsuna doesn't like being left alone in the same room as Spanner or Irie for any length of time.  Which isn't to say he doesn't trust them!  He does!  (Really!  Even though Spanner is one of Gokudera's weird friends and while he knows logically that Gokudera <i>does not trust people</i> -- which is how Tsuna prefers to say 'is fucking paranoid' -- there is something very fundamentally wrong with that guy.  Not the sort of wrong that makes Tsuna think he's going to end up hurting somebody, but one day Spanner is going to end up in notable physical danger and he is not going to have enough braincells wired together right to get himself out okay.)

But ... he's definitely not comfortable with them.  He's more comfortable with Spanner, oddly, even if he does think the guy's going to end up dying horribly somehow; most of his interest in Tsuna is purely academic and revolves around giant robots.  Tsuna likes giant robots.  He's a bit worried by Spanner's tests on exactly how magnetic Tsuna's head is, or on the likely composition of his metal deposits, or on any of a half-dozen other things, but at least Spanner definitely means well and he seems benignly creepy.

Irie-san, though....  Every once in a while, Tsuna gets a feeling that Irie could be very, very dangerous.  He's a nice guy almost all of the time, but his vindictive streak is right below the surface and he seems to be the type of person who needs someone to hate.  And he doesn't appear to have a current target, either.  He seems like he'd be safe enough if Tsuna knew exactly what direction he was aimed in, but Tsuna has no clue and he doesn't think Irie does, either.


Hayato feels completely and utterly justified in his current plan, and with that in mind, he barges downstairs to the room that Spanner and Irie have claimed and knocks.  It's not a nice knock; it resounds through the wall and he wouldn't be surprised if the people upstairs heard it.  He doesn't really care, though.

"WHAT," Irie says politely as he opens the door.

"Hey, asshole, I want to borrow your fucking xatu," Hayato says likewise.

Irie closes the door.  ... Hayato stares at it for a moment before banging on it again.  Irie opens the door.  "I don't like you."

Hayato crosses his arms and glares.  "I don't give a fuck."

Irie looks at him for a moment, then shuts the door again and storms into the room.  "Spanner, would you mind telling Obnoxious over there that I don't want to give him Mirai?" he mock-whispers.

Spanner grunts in response, walks back to the door, and opens it.  "Yes?"

"I want to borrow the fuckhead's xatu," he says, relaxing slightly.

"... He said he doesn't want to give you the xatu."

Hayato glares at Spanner, who merely shrugs.  "I don't want the xatu.  I want to <i>borrow</i> the fucking xatu."

"MIRAI DOESN'T LIKE YOU ANYWAY," Irie yells from somewhere in the makeshift lab.

He bangs on the wall again for good measure and says, "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK.  ALSO YOU ARE LYING."

"I DON'T LIE.  MIRAI, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT ASSHOLE."

"Neiti," the xatu says cheerfully.

Spanner frowns at Hayato and Irie and even the xatu a little and says, "I'm going that way."  He does.


Hayato's efforts to borrow the xatu continue to be unsuccessful until he asks the tenth if <i>he</i> would go ask the fuckhead for his xatu.

"Um...  Irie-san?" Tsuna manages while staring at the minor dent Gokudera left in the door.  ('That's not a very nice thing to do to Yamamoto!' he'll say later, and Hayato will do his best to look sheepish and apologize profusely but never to anyone other than the tenth.)

"Oh, hello," Irie says as he opens the door and glances down a bit.  Tsuna is so depressingly short!  And he feels like he will never grow.  It is unfair.

He rubs at the back of his head, and says, "Gokudera-kun asked me to ask you if he could borrow your xatu."

Irie looks unimpressed, but also a wee bit sympathetic.  (<i>He should look MORE sympathetic,</i> Hayato thinks, and as far as he is concerned he is completely and utterly right.)  "What the hell does he want with my xatu?"

Tsuna shrugs.  "I have no idea.  He'll give it back, though."

Irie raises an eyebrow.  "You're sure?"  (<i>OF COURSE THE TENTH IS SURE!</i> Hayato wants to yell; even if he wanted to keep the xatu WHICH HE DOESN'T if the tenth asked, he would give it back.  It's that simple.)

He hesitates for a moment, then nods.  (Hayato promptly forgets that the tenth didn't know for sure.)

Irie strides back into the room and rummages through a desk, eventually procuring a pokéball.  He tosses it into the air, and --

The xatu floats more than flies, but she lands easily and stares blankly at Tsuna.  She poofs up her chest feathers and shakes out her wings after a moment; Tsuna's past has happened and was made to have not, while his future -- his future is undetermined, even for a future.  Perhaps one day he will regain his past and continue his life.  Perhaps he will not.  It is not the sort of thing a xatu should be expected to have to interpret; most lives are easy predicted.  Most people, too.  Interference on that level ... happens rarely enough as to never happen at all.  Or perhaps it never happens, or will have had happened, or -- the xatu bows to Tsuna clearly, wings outstretched and held parallel to the ground, and chirps the traditional greetings of a Watcher to one who may control the Watching.

Tsuna listens carefully, then nods deliberately.  "Thank you," he mutters, feeling strangely inadequate.

Irie looks more confused than anything else (as does Hayato from his vantage point of the ceiling) but he's slightly thankful that he doesn't quite understand what just happened; from what he understands, xatu are strange even by pokémon standards and while Tsuna usually makes sense and operates primarily on human logic, every once in a while he <i>doesn't</i>.  (Hayato, on the other hand, is well aware that people who understand pokémon are a bit -- odd, and doesn't think he would be one of the ones capable of feigning sanity.  It is a small thing, to not intuitively understand the complex interplays of dominance and ownership and respect to those who may disrupt the hierarchy at their leisure, in exchange for the ability to traverse territories without <i>expecting</i> displays of power.)


The xatu looks to Hayato for guidance as soon as they're at where he planned to go: his current treehouse in the Viridian Forest.  It's not particularly respectable, even as treehouses go, and very little of it is secure enough that he would be willing to leave something there for more than a day, but he scouts it for recording devices frequently (he's found two, which means he feels his paranoia is justified even though two over the course of at least six years <i>near a Team Rocket base</i> isn't actually that many) and he feels fairly confident that it'd work for what he wanted the xatu for in the first place.

"Can you put these papers back together?" he says as he dumps the contents of two trashcans onto the floor.  Little pieces of shredded paper scatter about everywhere, but he's rather sure that they could rearrange back into a few reports; the only people in Team Rocket he can think of who would consider ensuring that the remains of anything potentially <i>interesting</i> (or, ideally, incriminating, though Hayato has reservations about the possibility of actually helping law enforcement handle Team Rocket: they're not too competent and he's not sure if they'd know about <i>him</i> and anyway he knows for a fact a few Junsa-san aren't exactly legit) make their way into a fire.  Ideally one they are watching.  And then the ashes are <i>scattered</i> just in case a particularly skilled xatu gets to them.

(This is absolutely no defense against a determined celebi, but Reborn has something approaching standards whenever it's convenient and none of the others like to get involved with human affairs.)


As soon as Gokudera was safely far away in -- Sinnoh, Tsuna thinks, while he was <i>all alone with only Yamamoto to protect him</i>, the vultures descended.  That's an awfully dramatic way to put it, but as far as Tsuna is concerned it is entirely appropriate.

"Would you mind helping us with a few things?" Irie-san had said, and Tsuna had agreed, and he had followed Irie-san into his current lab, and now he feels like he will <i>never make his way out ever.</i>

Currently, they're trying to figure out what exactly Tsuna's head was made of.  Given that Tsuna's head still has a Tsuna in it, Tsuna is not particularly amused: "ARE YOU DONE YET."  Unfortunately, Irie-san at least doesn't even seem to notice that Tsuna said anything: he's got his headphones on and Tsuna's pretty sure he hears part of Stealth Rock's latest album emanating from it.  Jerk.

Spanner notices, though, and says, "No."  Infuriatingly, he doesn't even have the decency to look concerned about it, or even care particularly that Tsuna DOES NOT APPROVE OF THIS NONSENSE, because he just takes out a different scanner and tries seeing if he can get a reading on the composition of Tsuna's right tag.

Tsuna's sort of perversely glad that he can't, but also a wee bit disappointed because <i>it means Spanner's going to keep trying</i>.  Irie-san, for his part, just keeps typing up some readings on -- on psychic energy?  On something related to time travel?  He hasn't even explained what he's doing.

And the worst thing about it is that Tsuna knows for a fact that Reborn is aware that the two nerds are studying Tsuna and ignoring Tsuna's complaints and Reborn has not lifted a finger.  He's a jerk.


"Here are the reports you asked for."

"Good work, Irie Shouichi," Reborn says, and he actually means it for once.


Tsuna remembers liking the beach as a small child.  It was warm, and bright, and filled with sand, and there was water he could try to swim in and barely avoid drowning.

It's still warm, and it's still bright, and it's still sandy, and he still can't swim, and now he definitely doesn't like it.  His head keeps reflecting the sunlight more than he can fake, so it looks like the kid he pretends he still is has incredibly shiny knees and the sun's always in his eyes.  The sand is also in his eyes, but for some reason that doesn't bother him today.

Maybe it's for the same reason he uses steel wool to trim his nails.  (It's not like anything else scratches but does not melt, and <i>yes</i> he's tried.  The main redeeming quality of his nails these days is that he doesn't usually need to trim them.)

Unfortunately, neither Yamamoto nor Reborn seem to be entirely satisfied with his decision to not swim so now he is stuck in the water trying very hard not to sink.  While this was difficult when he was -- ha, little -- he at least then wasn't <i>made of metal</i> and more importantly he was about a meter tall.  Which he is not now.  But when Reborn gets that look in his eyes ... he might as well listen.  It's not as though he has any other options, or at least ones that aren't immediately painful.

So he looks over at where Gokudera is sitting on the beach, bored, and waves hesitantly.  "Um..."

Gokudera's head snaps up, as expected, and he bolts over.  "Yes, tenth?" he says hopefully, the book he had been reading completely forgotten.

"I, um. <small>can't swim</small>."  He looks down, blushing furiously, which means his actual face is <i>definitely</i> in the water but right now he doesn't really mind that much: he's not sure he needs to breathe.  At least, he doesn't quite feel like he has to, and usually he would've inhaled some salt water and choked by now.  Nothing.

On cue, Gokudera brightens and quickly says, "I'll carry you, tenth!!" as he dashes over to Tsuna and holds out his hands hopefully.  ... Tsuna glances around to see if anyone's likely paying attention (as far as he can tell, no), then hops into Gokudera's arms, drops his illusion, and tries to remember what it was that Reborn and the latias had said about trying to look like other pokémon.  He can remember what it was like being his old self almost perfectly, so that's easy, but faking anything other than Sawada Tsunayoshi or the jirachi is ... is foreign to him.  It's an odd concept.  He might have to work on that; if he doesn't on his own he'll probably be forced to by Reborn eventually.

Gokudera grins widely and a bit stupidly and hesitantly places the jirachi on his shoulder.  <i>Best day ever,</i> Tsuna thinks he might be thinking, and he's probably right.  ... For once, he doesn't think he minds Gokudera's obsessive nature: Gokudera is having at least as much fun with a jirachi head in his face as Tsuna is not getting wet.  Besides, Gokudera's smile's bright enough (though rare towards anyone other than Tsuna; he might have to work on that...) to be infectious.


Gokudera Hayato is so pleased by this development that he doesn't even mind that Tsuna's head apparently heats up incredibly quickly.  He's sure the tenth didn't mean to and even if he did <i>he got to carry the tenth this is the greatest day ever</i>.  The sunburn (and a bit of an actual burn) is a slight downer, though.



He doesn't mind living with Hayato, usually; the boy required little incentive to keep his true desires <i>quiet</i> and he was certainly devoted to Tsuna, but every once in a while he <i>slipped</i> and Tsuna was left with the pieces.  It's not difficult to reject wishes, and certainly not difficult to reject anything fundamentally impossible -- and there are few things Hayato wishes for that Tsuna can grant; control over others and control over one's self are difficult at best and potentially incredibly destructive at worst.  And while Hayato is nothing if not destructive ... Tsuna at least would prefer to keep the blast radius to a minimum.

No.  Tsuna's dislike for remaining near Hayato when Hayato's feeble attempts at meditation fail and fail <i>badly</i> is not because he's worried about accidentally granting his wishes.

It's because Hayato wants so, so little for himself and none of it is something Tsuna can fix just by wanting to.  And if that's selfish -- if that's selfish Tsuna doesn't quite <i>mind</i>.  He'll come back to be Hayato's friend after he calms down enough to not want to take it out on exactly the person he shouldn't.


Takeshi, in comparison, would make a good trainer.  He would even make a good trainer in the long run: he's satisfied with taking life as it comes as long as he has some form of direction, and that's Tsuna.  He doesn't display a thousand and one reasons for Tsuna to hate certain segments of humanity and he doesn't remind Tsuna how completely <i>pointless</i> borrowing a segment of Jirachi's power is.  The one problem with planning on staying with Yamamoto indefinitely is that he <i>doesn't</i> remind Tsuna of all he can and can't do; Takeshi is content to let Tsuna be who he is and at the end of the day that's not quite what Tsuna needs.  And so he keeps track of Takeshi always and he travels with Takeshi often and he never hangs around.

And that's the way it should be.


Hibari Kyouya is not the sort of person Tsuna would like to know.  Unfortunately, Tsuna is only able to have any ability to act on his opinions like that on alternate sundays, which more or less means that he's not going to be able to <i>avoid</i> Hibari-san, or at least not for any notable length of time.  Which is unfortunate, Tsuna thinks, partly because Hibari-san is incredibly dangerous and violent and territorial but mostly because Tsuna is partial to not getting in fights.

Tsuna is <i>definitely</i> partial to not getting into fights he's going to lose.

Neither Hibari-san nor the lati twins entirely understand the concept of sparing one's opponent.


"It's Team Rocket!!" some kid yells, and like an idiot Hayato goes to investigate.

... He doesn't see anyone other than some stupid kids, so he simply says, "Where?" and tries to sound polite.  He mostly fails; he just manages to keep out the note of 'if you are wasting my time I will hurt you', which means that he now has six more points than he did before and maybe someday soon he'll be Tsuna's favourite forever.


"What the fuck, guys," Hayato says as politely as he can manage as he looks over the du-- trio's outfits.  White pants or skirt, white shirt, giant blatant red R, leather gloves and boots.  "Who the hell wears <i>white</i>?"

"It's much more fashionable this way!" the red-haired one states, and the blue-haired one nods decisively.

"And it also keeps blood stains like you have no idea."  Or possibly they do know how visible blood is on white; they're Rocket grunts.  ... But could a grunt afford what their laundry must cost?  Unlikely.


While Spanner completely understands why Hayato was complaining for hours about the useless Team Rocket who didn't even understand that white is not a good colour for organized crime, really, honest, it stains like  as far as he is concerned <i>all is forgiven</i> once he sees that they're using his giant robots.  His!  Someone actually used his giant robots!

(He tries not to think of what it means if Team Rocket sent his robots to their most useless members.  He doesn't like focusing on depressing things, and such a gross undervaluation of his work can be nothing but depressing.)


Iemitsu leans against the doorway and stares at Reborn levelly.  The -- baby, he supposes, though he's perfectly aware of Reborn's open-secret identity -- seems to be focusing intensely on Tsuna, and Iemitsu has a very bad feeling indeed about this.

The kid in question -- he's probably about five now, though Iemitsu keeps forgetting his birthday and what year he was born (he's busy, okay?!) -- is playing with the baby mareep Nana had gotten him as a present a few days earlier.  The mareep keeps zapping him, of course, but it's a mareep and it doesn't mean any harm and anyway Tsuna seems to like it just fine.  That's an understatement, actually; the Tsuna tries not to leave the mareep's sight.  Which is sweet and all, but ... at the end of the day, it's a mareep.  An irritable and insecure mareep, but a mareep.

"What are you looking at?" Iemitsu says as the kid grabs the mareep's tail and <i>bites</i> it, hard.  The sheep -- Lambo?  Something like that -- simply baas in response and turns to look at Tsuna hopefully: <i>let go...?</i>

Reborn smirks.  "He's usually scared of pokémon, isn't he?"  And many people, he doesn't say; that's not directly relevant to the issue at hand.

He nods slowly.  "He tolerates Nana's ledian, though."

"... which shares his territory, while the mareep is new so it doesn't <i>have</i> any territory."

"Tsuna is a nice boy," Iemitsu states, his <i>bad feeling</i> amplifying by about 150%.  He <i>owes</i> Reborn, owes him like a fish owes water, and he thinks Reborn might have found a way he can repay him.  He's very nearly right, too.

But "Hn," is all Reborn says, and that's all that gets brought about the issue for years.


He finds the girl sitting on a swingset near the fighting dojo and decides that he might as well try to make friends.  "Ciaossu," he says from the top of the swingset, tiny wings fluttering occasionally as he adjusts his grip.

She looks up.  She's probably around ten or so -- he's not very good at telling human ages -- and her face looks red.  "... What are you?" she asks, probably trying to mentally reconcile the appearance of what looks like an adorable pokémon with the fact that he just <i>said something</i>.

That's okay with him.  "A celebi," he says nearly accurately; why lie when most people will lie to themselves just as easily?  He floats down next to her and glances at her lap meaningfully; she picks him up and sets him there.

She makes a small noise of acknowledgement and simply tries petting him, first by the wings (he grumbles a bit) and then on his head, and eventually she scratches at the base of his antennae.  "You're pretty cute," she says out of a lack of anything better.  He's sure she just wants something to distract herself, but he's okay with that.

"I am."  Just in case, though, he glances sideways at her to figure out where she keeps her pokéballs and then presses the buttons on her pokéball belt.  He prefers to have an advantage in case someone decides that today would be a good idea to do something stupid and probably suicidal, and the girl's grimer, [otamaro], [banipucchi], and skorupi all look at him expectantly, then defer to his slight smirk.  They at least have no interest in fighting him, which is good because they would be completely outclassed.  "You have pokémon from Isshu?"

She frowns.  "My father got them for me," she mutters, and isn't that interesting: she doesn't sound pleased at <i>all</i>.  Though from the looks of the [otamaro] and [banipucchi] it's certainly not out of dislike for the pokémon.  "I'm Bianchi, by the way.  Nice to meet you."

"I'm Reborn.  Likewise."


A long time ago -- about five hundred years by how humans measure time, but time is fluid, particularly when the pokémon who change worlds get involved -- there was a man, and a flute, and a rock.  The man was no musician, though his friend Ugetsu was, but he knew the lore of Lavender and the Tower and even some of the old towns of the regions -- the stories of Ecruteak and its dragon and phoenix, ever fighting until their battles ruined and <i>changed</i> three innocent pokémon, the stories of the dragons and Mount Coronet and the beginning of the world, his own city's legends of the twin dragons -- and he thought he knew how he could use one legend to accomplish something important.  He was very nearly right.

He found the stone -- a meteorite, really, or possibly a chrysalis -- and asked that his friend begin to play.  The thin layer of rust slowly vanished, and the creature inside woke and spoke:

"Who the hell are you?"

Undeterred, the man calmly recited the proprieties carefully learned and memorized from the few pokémon who still followed them religiously (for he had the gift of true speech, and the cycle of the world was no longer in the right phase for the pokémon of myth to roam): <i>you of the first comet, you who may shape the world as you wish, you who wakes but once a millennium: I request of you a favour</i>.

To which the fey pokémon responded, "I was taking a damn nap.  It had better be important."

"The world is broken," Giotto (for that was his name) stated.  "The lords of land and sea have awoken, and a man from Holon has been --"

"I don't give a damn about petty human conflicts," the jirachi said.  "Ask again in five hundred years."


According to the myths of Sinnoh -- and of much of the world, though the old stories are forgotten by all but a few away from the shadow of Mount Coronet -- people and pokémon used to be nearly interchangeable.  This is true, except for one minor detail: it's not quite a 'used to' thing.  Few pokémon these days have the power to shapeshift, or pretend to shapeshift to a great enough extent to pass as human, and humans have never been as skilled at leaving their lives behind as pokémon were and are.  The gift of true speech is rare, particularly outside of the old towns, not least because those who can speak like pokémon also tend to think like pokémon (and pokémon who learn human speech tend to lose themselves, as well) but also because it is so, so easy for those who understand pokémon to go -- off.  At best they are wary, quiet people, aware of so many ways to offend and rarely able to internalize the mindsets of the non-predatory, or they simply get along with pokémon preternaturally well (which often displays itself as a particular form of strength of personality; many don't consciously realize they understand their pokémon's desires perfectly and intuitively), but every once in a while, someone is <i>off</i> to the extent that to the trained observer, they might as well be a pokémon.  But pokémon do not understand forethought.  Humans do.

And there are dangers with this, particularly when something potentially destructive is going on nearby.


Mukuro dislikes the radio tower with an intensity born from living with the faint ringing in his ears for all his life and a bit of the one directly before it.  He's not quite certain of what the tower <i>does</i>, though he knows most of the bastards are out to research mew (and he remembers enough to know that trying to control the pokémon of myth is often suicidal and always stupid; they are not content to obey a human trainer for more than minutes and most have pride enough to destroy those fool enough to try) and -- something went wrong.

His head hurts, though it always hurts these days; he has spent too long away from the company of the stolen magneton and its (their) ability to disrupt whatever it is that slowly warps Holon, slowly warps the people -- humans and pokémon -- to be <i>different</i> from what they are.  Which is not in itself a bad thing but -- he has never seen a pokémon that wasn't manmade anyway that matched the typing given in the standard trainer manuals.  (Not that he'd deign to become a trainer, but it's the principle of the thing.)  More to the point, the pokémon weren't even consistent; the few fully-evolved pokémon he'd found were nearly always steel-type and often were completely different types from others of their species, or, indeed, themselves in previous forms.  Formally normal pokémon would evolve to be strange and foreign, once brought to Holon.

It's with that in mind that he takes out a pokéball, tosses it into the air, catches it, presses the button.  The grovyle looks to him for advice for a moment and hops off after a slight nod.  She quickly scouts the building -- he's proud for a moment of how good she's gotten at judging where to burn to drop a building easiest -- and glances back for his okay before directing a fire punch at a support beam for the roof and leaping out.  It's not quite what he <i>really</i> wants to do, but destroying one of the transmitters is a step.

Maybe he'll go for the researchers later.  It's not like they're all innocent.


Ken's mudkip is on his head again.  Chikusa nearly wants to comment -- Ken tends to do such useless things -- but it's not worth his energy.  Mukuro-sama doesn't say anything, either; he just wears his inscrutable smirk and watches the mudkip mock Chikusa's torchic mercilessly.

The grovyle eyes the mudkip and torchic silently, expression just as cold and fey as her master's.  She's sitting by Mukuro-sama's feet, and her leaves are charred.  She has not recovered from being twisted to fire noticeably since her evolution, and Chikusa thinks that it's possible that the corruption has worsened over the weeks.

Useless.  But she too has her reasons to follow Mukuro-sama, and he seems to value her, in his way; neither Ken or Chikusa pride themselves on their skills at carefully burning things down and destroying exactly as much as was decided and no more.  Which is not to say that Chikusa prides himself on much of anything; he is who he is and he is Mukuro-sama's to do with as he pleases.  Or ... <i>not</i> to do with as he pleases; Mukuro-sama has not required his particular talents in over a week.  And while Chikusa would not dream of interfering with Mukuro-sama's wishes ... he would like to be useful and at this moment he is not sure if he is.

The grovyle glances at Chikusa momentarily, then stands up and beckons to Ken, smirking faintly: <i>let's you and I fight</i>.


Mukuro hadn't actually meant for it to go that far, or at least not in that direction.  That was the sad thing, really; he planned on disrupting life across Hoenn (and who knows?  Maybe the rest of the world needed some ... <i>change</i>... as well) and he certainly wouldn't mind if humanity was wiped out, but... one of the idiots tried stealing the orbs from Mount Pyre and then it all went to hell in a handbasket.  (That's a lie, really; Mukuro has seen hell and the world of humans is often worse.)  What he wanted, and what Ken and Chikusa were so wonderfully devoted to him for, was to destroy the institution of pokémon training completely and utterly.  While he was at it, sure, why not destroy some of the cities?  Humans are foul creatures.

(He remembers the xatu, its wings broken and its feathers plucked, as it looked to him for guidance.  It spoke to him of the winds, and of the strange people from foreign lands who would twist the world's pokémon to their own ends, and of the famines from flood and drought.  It was not a good year, not for anyone, and for those who live on the edges of the world even less.  And the next year, and the year after that, and the year after that would also not be good years, and the foul monsters who would destroy lives for their own gain would grow even stronger footholds, and --

There was nothing to be done, not really, besides take advantage of the turmoil to burn out the infection; the xatu was turned out by the few foci of power that could change it peacefully.  And what were a few casualties in the face of remaking the world?  'From your kind we will take our toll, for it must be done.')


Giotto wakes up with a sensation like the world itself is trying to give him a migraine.  Everything aches, from his toes to the tips of his hair, and any moment from now he'll realize that hair shouldn't be able to feel anything.  His hair definitely aches, though.  He moves as to get out of bed -- but he's not in it.  He's where ... he found jirachi?  That certainly sounds right, but he can't remember meeting it.

<i>If you want my power, go ahead.  I don't give a fuck.</i>

He tries to stand up, but ... everything is so much larger than he's used to.  And every moment he feels the echo of a wish ungranted, and possibly the knowledge of how to fix that, if he wanted to.



The first sign Tsuna has that something is wrong is that Chrome -- Mukuro -- <i>growls</i>, loud and feral and reminiscent of that aerodactyl Tsuna had the misfortune of meeting.  (That's a lie; his <i>first</i> sign is his sudden and bone-deep knowledge that something is <i>invading his territory</i> and will not ever submit.  But Mukuro's sign that he truly is human no longer and possibly never was is a close second.)

There is something in the sky, and it bodes Tsuna's -- he doesn't know the word, though he knows that Hibari-san would label it <i>pack</i> -- ill.


Chrome <i>looks</i> at the creepy man and his tentacruel levelly.



Sawada Tsunayoshi, Pokémon Trainer.  That was who Reborn had asked Tsuna to pretend to be (... again?  He'd never really trained pokémon; he'd just fed Lambo regularly and shaved him whenever the stupid mareep didn't fight him) and while that isn't quite <i>difficult</i> for him, he still feels incredibly awkward walking around Pallet Town again.  He hasn't seen Ookido-hakase in years, but -- what if he'd notice that Tsuna's hair colour changed?!  (Or that he's now even <i>shorter</i> than he used to be, sob.)  Well, he hasn't been back to Pallet in months and he's still not entirely sure what his mom thinks about the whole ... never visiting thing ... or the vanishing mysteriously thing ... or really all of his life since he met Reborn.  His dad said he'd tell his mom that he was travelling, though.  (... And how far does Tsuna think he can trust Iemitsu?)

(A small part of Tsuna's head says that if he's that worried about how his mom is doing, he should <i>go visit her</i>.  He's in Pallet anyway.  She won't be mad.  He shoves this down, though, with the justification that Iemitsu must've told her and if she could handle <i>his dad</i> vanishing for years, she'd be fine without him.  He at least left a message.)

He looks up the hill at the familiar old building and starts to walk.  Reborn's on his shoulder, or possibly hovering, and watching the flocks of pidgey scan their territories.

Tsuna glares at the door with something approaching extreme prejudice and resolutely does <i>not</i> open it.  It opens anyway, and he flinches a bit at the sight of Ookido-hakase.  (Which he tries very hard to justify to himself as <i>not</i> at all related to that time that he'd found Tsuna stuck in the fence and Ookido-hakase's spearow, but unfortunately all he can think of as a better reason is that he's a pokémon and a <i>collectible</i> one at that and there is no way he is getting out of this without Reborn kicking him in the head.)

"Oh, hello, Tsuna-kun!" the pokémon professor says, smiling widely.  He looks friendly and Tsuna nearly wants to believe it, but he remembers the man's spearow and dragonite and more besides.

"<small>Hi,</small>" says Tsuna audibly.  Reborn kicks him in the head, which is just as well.


Tsuna's half-asleep and still stunned by <i>Kyouko-chan</i> offering him some cake when a young boy falls out of the sky and lands on his head.  (He feels pretty bad about that, really; his head is <i>hard and spiky</i>.)  To make matters worse, the kid is followed by a crazy screaming man clinging to a scyther for dear life.  "HEY, FUCKER!!" the man on the scyther screams, "STOP RUNNING AND GIVE ME THE GODDAMN POKÉBALL!"

Sawada Iemitsu puts his hard hat back on and glances up at the Canalave Gym.  Reborn had <i>said</i> there was someone he should meet there, and Iemitsu has little reason not to trust Reborn; even if he <i>did</i> ensure Tsuna's ... disappearance ... he asked Iemitsu if he would mind first.  (He does mind -- and did mind -- but there was little to be done; if not Tsuna then <i>who?</i>  Tsuna did have the speech -- more, he had the speech and lacked a lust for power -- and the world does not have room for another vengeful member of Giotto's line.  Iemitsu would offer himself for the role, but ... he lacks idealism and his dedication would waver; a jirachi who is inconsistent might be more dangerous than a jirachi who is merely absent.)

He steps inside, and does a double-take at the sight of Tsuna: he's blonder and shorter than Iemitsu remembers, but still recognizably <i>Tsuna</i>.  How?  Why?  He sets that aside for the moment; there will be plenty of time to analyze later.  "Hey," he says, smiling faintly and looking for all the world like the harmless miner he pretends to be.

Tsuna jumps and Iemitsu thinks he spots a faint blue glow around his hands.  "<i>DAD</i>?!" he squeaks.


It's just about a normal Thursday morning as far as Tsuna is concerned when he walks to Yamamoto's front door and opens it to find a small, brown-haired child.  (By which he means someone a <i>bit</i> shorter than he is, but not significantly; Tsuna is sensitive about his height.)

"I'm looking for Sawada Tsunayoshi," the boy says, fidgeting slightly.  His poofy (though not Tsuna-level poofy, just a bit poofy) hair looks fairly disheveled, and if he hadn't been in a hurry, Tsuna had a toadstool on his head.  (And while that was true earlier, he's <i>checked</i> to make sure the paras left.)

Tsuna looks at the kid and sighs.  "I live down in Pallet, actually," he says helpfully, hoping that the boy will go down to Pallet and look <i>there</i> and not notice the 'I'.

No such luck.  "Oh.  ... So <i>you're</i> Tsuna-nii?"  The kid smiles brightly; something in Tsuna's spirit dies at the thought of saying no to <i>whatever</i> he's going to ask.  And of course he's going to ask something.  But for now: "I'm Fuuta!"

"Nice to meet you, Fuuta-kun.  Um, why were you looking for me?"

Fuuta's explanation is long and long-winded and Tsuna understands very little of it; the kid had some form of trouble and apparently Sawada Iemitsu helped him at some point and sent him to Tsuna's mom for some reason or another and if the kid understands it he certainly doesn't explain it in some way that Tsuna can follow.  But Tsuna's father came back the day before and told him that he should go look for Tsuna in Pewter, and he had given Fuuta an address.  (That it was <i>Yamamoto's</i> creeped Tsuna out a little; why did his dad know where he'd been staying?!  It's not as though <i>Tsuna</i> would've told him, and he's pretty sure that his mother doesn't know....)

"And why did you?" Tsuna asks, out of a lack of any better questions.

Fuuta grins.  "You're the --" and he uses a word Tsuna's unfamiliar with; maybe he's from one of the other regions? "-- least likely to refuse a request!"

While Tsuna <i>does not doubt it</i> -- he is the first to admit he is a bit of a loser sometimes -- he does wonder, "How do you <i>know</i> that?!"  He tries not to sound strained and mostly fails.

"The ranking planet told me!"  ... Tsuna decides not to ask any more questions and just let the kid finish his story.

Apparently the kid's something of a pokémon trainer, or that's what he says, anyway; Tsuna doesn't quite doubt it since he's heard of Ookido-hakase handing out licenses to underaged kids, though it was very rare indeed that the kid's first pokémon was actually whatever it was supposed to be.  (Tsuna has a trainer's license somewhere, too, though it's out of date and he never received an actual starter.)

Tsuna forgets about not wanting to ask any questions: "Who are your pokémon?"  (He doesn't notice the word choice, and if the kid does, he doesn't mention it.)

In answer, the kid tosses out three pokéballs, containing a small, worried charmander, a slightly-familiar voltorb, and a <i>definitely</i> familiar flaaffy.

"GYAHAHAHAHA," baas the flaaffy.

"Nice to see you, too, Lambo," grumbles Tsuna.  "And I-pin!"

The voltorb just says a soft "biribiri" and smiles, which is more than Tsuna expected.  He hasn't seen her in months and he barely knew her in the first place, after all.



Reborn waits until Lal Mirch is on watch -- by herself, of course; it's raining and no matter how much Iemitsu thinks she'll listen to him if it matters, even he'll acknowledge that Lal doesn't need a partner in the rain -- before dropping down from a tree.

Lal's already looking in his direction as soon as he finishes deciding to move; he doesn't care about stealth today, which simply means that no one who he wouldn't want to see him will see him.  "What do you want, Reborn?" she snaps as she waves around her gun irritably.

"What do you think of Tsuna?" he says.  She looks at him blankly -- had Iemitsu stopped showing off pictures of his family at every opportunity? -- so he elaborates: "Sawada Tsunayoshi."

Lal frowns, or possibly scowls.  "Iemitsu's boy," she states.  Reborn nods.  "He's seven."

From Reborn's smirk, that's not much of an answer; "Timoteo is willing to keep his position for a few more years."

"You're going to get him in this mess at <i>his age?!</i>"

"He will endure," he declares, "just as Basil will.  Or is Iemitsu not already training his replacement?"

She glances over


Tsuna doesn't trust the arcobaleno as far as he could throw them, which is likely a good idea; while they too live more by human mores than pokémon (though they're <i>much</i> older than he is) he does not hide his nature any more than necessary.  More importantly, he does not plot to change the world piece by piece through -- he doesn't know.  Reborn is violent, but he knows little of the other arcobaleno.

Which may be why he followed along, a nearly-pacifistic guest to a meeting of pokémon that aren't and their entourages.  He glances down from the roof (that being the only place he didn't feel trapped) and watches the small green creature with the fedora meander through the crowds.  Reborn steps in between -- Tsuna supposes it might be Aria's party -- and smiles as he tells the man following Aria herself something.

It worries Tsuna, knowing that something big is going on and Reborn does not want him to take part alone.  And he had not brought his own friends with him.

He considers gloomily that Reborn might have just wanted him there as a prize, to say 'look at the human I have acquired and changed', to show that the line of false jirachi continues strong.  And yet Reborn would likely not use Tsuna for something <i>quite</i> that petty.  He wonders why he is there.

Aria looks up to him and meets his eyes for a moment and Tsuna thinks he understands, or will understand, and he is very nearly right.


As terrifying as Lal Mirch is, her student is often worse: while Lal Mirch is a much harsher teacher, she is also less dangerous as far as sheer power is concerned.  Lal Mirch's body is damaged from the warm seas, and possibly from other things (Tsuna does not believe in prying when he knows for a fact that it will earn him nothing but physical pain) and more to the point she does not believe in misleading you as to her intentions.  Which is not to say that Colonnello is a <i>liar</i>, but he has a tendency to sound friendly and helpful while Lal Mirch has perfected informing people of impending pain down to an art.

It doesn't exactly take Tsuna very long from learning that Lal <i>taught Colonnello</i> to figure out where all of his good luck went: it went towards ensuring that Colonnello is the one of the two who would in a fight without weapons.  Of course, a Lal Mirch without weapons never actually happens, and Colonnello would not dream of trying to actually <i>defeat</i> his master, not when it's more or less his fault that she's not as strong as she should be, but it's the principle of the thing.

They're both preferable to Verde, however; Verde reminds Tsuna faintly of Irie Shouichi except with fewer morals and more dangerous overall.  ... This is not preciously accurate; Verde reminds Tsuna of the people he's reminded of in Mukuro's past and also of the few survivors from the Cinnabar Labs he's ever met.  But those are not on his side, and Verde should likely be on his side, and some day Verde's skill at travelling through time was going to get a lot of people in trouble.

If he knew exactly how accurate he was with that statement, he would probably have a nervous breakdown right then and there.


Hayato hasn't paid attention to tanabata for years, but he supposes if he's to follow the tenth he might as well.  It's in Jirachi's honour, after all, even if the tenth isn't quite the same thing.


Tsuna is fairly sure that barring Chrome and Mukuro themselves, he's the only one in his circle of friends who can identify who's who.  Today, though, it's a bit more obvious:

"Um, Mukuro-san," he mumbles cautiously, "your yukata is folded backwards."

"No, it isn't," Mukuro states as he looks down at the fold on Chrome's yukata.  It's right over left, which Tsuna doesn't understand at first, but ... Mukuro's name is apt for more reasons than one.  If he wants it to be fitting enough to include a flipped kimono, Tsuna won't -- well, Tsuna <i>will</i> judge him, but he understands to an extent.

It takes him at least three encounters with Chrome and Mukuro in yukata to notice that while Mukuro's is folded for the dead, Chrome wears hers properly.  Given that it's the same yukata and they rarely leave his sight while trading ownership of Chrome's body, Tsuna wonders absently if Mukuro is more skilled at illusions than he seems.


Jirachi wakes rarely and considers fulfilling his duties even less frequently.  He has better things to do than listen to the Mew ramble and plot about their current agenda for hours on end, like sleep or watch grass grow.  Still, he's sure that she will want an explanation for his actions when that irritating human interrupted his nap, and so he waits below the cliff for her to come.

She does, though she's in the form of a long, dark blue weasel, and rather than try to get his attention in any polite manner, she just spits fire in his face.  "You owe me," she says, examining her paws and more importantly her flame-charred claws.  He does, so he simply nods and follows.


He is not the first of their ilk in recent memory to gift certain humans with fragments of their power, but his line is the only one that consistently willfully gives up their power.  Humans tend to hoard their strength, and the Mew's chosen spend their power much as she does: only when necessary, but the definition of necessary is flimsy and easily changed.  Out of her lines, only the false jirachi passes along her power, and even then strictly from mother to daughter.  (He wonders briefly if perhaps the tendency towards generosity, or, failing that, ennui is linked to the jirachi form; he's certainly not reliable by any reasonable definition of the word and he's the only one other than the Mew who has ... <i>agents</i>.  Not even the other mew have split their power.)

It's slightly funny, he thinks, that the most reliably moral (by human standards, anyway, which he pays attention to only to the extent that he'd rather know when he causes offense) of the false legends are also the ones who last the shortest length of time before stopping.


Not that Viper would ever say any of this out loud, but -- eir least favourite thing about being a pokémon, <i>absolute</i> least favourite thing, has nothing to do with eir sudden weakness to pokéballs and everything to do with the useless <i>species</i>.  It's hard to be an intimidating assassin when you're not-so-secretly a foot tall and your first instinctive reaction to anything remotely carnivorous is <i>don't eat me</i>.  The worst thing about it is that e still remembers being unflappable, being the one who could always find the way to turn any situation profitable.  And e still has that, of course, but -- the little bits of shaymin brain fight em tooth and claw.

"Aah, Mammon, sulking again~?" Belphegor purrs more than says as he reaches over and lifts up Viper, careful not to <i>quite</i> nick em or eir cloak with a knife; he has better things to do than start a fight right now.

Viper just smirks and subdues the little bit of shaymin that doesn't like sharp objects; e has power and in a fight between Bel and emself, the victor is obvious.  The shaymin's thoughts are neither necessary nor wanted.  "Muu, simply reminiscing."

Bel looks over in Viper's direction, smirking slightly.  "The prince wants a fight~" he sings as he moves to throw the shaymin to the table, but Viper has no difficulties in switching to sky form and landing perfectly.

Only fools require sunlight.  "Umu?  You're not worth my time," e states, and he simply replies by tossing a small bag of coins.  It's not <i>much</i> money, but ... Viper is bored.  "That's not nearly enough."

"The prince doesn't need to pay you, greedy riccio," he snaps, though he does take out his wallet and give it to the shaymin.  It's habit, or possibly friendship, though they neither need it nor desire it.

It's just the way it is.


Franc hates the Varia.  This comes as a surprise to no one, least of all himself, but it's worth repeating.  Franc hates the Varia, and he hates Tsuna and his friends, and he hates Mukuro-san and his minions, and yet he's still there.

It's a bit depressing, putting a hero like him in with a bunch of clear villains, but there's nothing for it.

With that in mind, he goes back to folding paper airplanes like his life depends on it.  (Given that he's planning on throwing them at Bel-senpai at his next opportunity, it's more accurate to say that his life depends on <i>not</i> making airplanes.  However, that would involve actually letting Bel <i>win</i> and Franc is not going to let that happen anytime soon.)


Chrome's not fond of the boy with the frog hat, which is both an overstatement and an understatement.  He's useful to Mukuro-sama, but so is she, and Ken, and Chikusa, and even some of Haru's friends (though more by accident than intent; she's noticed their dislike of him but found it unimportant), and none of them are honorary Varia.  Then again, his association with them makes him differently useful.  It's a thin balancing act he plays, and while she dislikes his game she can scarcely criticize him for his while she plays hers.  Though ... her allies in her game would not ever consider turning her against Mukuro-sama; there is no such guarantee for the Varia.

She watches him warily as he slowly convinces the one with the knives to leave him be, comfortable in her perch up a tree.  The knife man might've noticed her, but if he did he gives no sign: she's not prey and she's not interesting for him to fight and she's certainly not a direct threat, so it's quite possible he has no motivation to acknowledge her.  This is fine.

The one with the knives finally strolls off after Franc takes out a pokéball, releases a large green frog, and tells it to sing: not even Belphegor is willing to tolerate the song of destruction.  Even if trained politoed rarely sing long enough for it to be fatal -- the politoed itself is not immune to the song -- it still isn't <i>pleasant</i>.

She smiles; he learns quickly.  "Franc," she says softly as she slides down, making sure her skirt continues to cover all it usually does; though she understands <i>why</i> Mukuro-sama expects her to use sex appeal, she's still not quite fond of the idea.  It's impractical.

From the slight quirk of Franc's expression, he knows what she's thinking and agrees.  "He's a disagreeable sort, isn't he," he says in lieu of a greeting.

"Hn, perhaps," is all Chrome says.


It takes three consecutive weeks of the sword brat claiming the Varia living room as his own before Squalo finally resolves to get an answer as <i>why</i>.  Unfortunately, Yamamoto Takeshi is not known for his forthcoming nature.  He smiles and apologizes and spars and does everything except give a straight answer; he's as slippery as the rain and twice as stubborn.  Squalo nearly considers asking him as to why he's <i>rain</i> and not <i>mist</i>, but the answer to that is simple enough: where the rain is opaque, the mist is contrary; the rain dodges questions by being overly blunt about entirely the wrong things, rather than simple evasions.  It's disgusting, really, and with that in mind Squalo finally decides to pass up an opportunity to fight the brat.

It's Belphegor who fights him instead.


While Squalo supposes that Xanxus is <i>technically</i> a pokémon (in much the same way that Mammon is rational; while the description is accurate the connotations are all wrong) he has a bit of an aneurysm at the idea of someone actually trying to <i>have a pokémon battle with him.</i>  Someone would have to be incredibly stupid to try to challenge him and then not actually fight.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are terminally stupid, and Squalo has never learned not to account for other people's fuck ups.  That, more than anything, is why Squalo draws his sword and screeches, "VOOOI!  BOSS, <i>FIGHT ME!</i>"

Xanxus gives him the finger with one hand while tossing a fireball straight at Squalo's hair.  Squalo dodges, but that's more because Xanxus let him than anything else; the fuckhead doesn't seem to like taking advantage of his incredible accuracy and his fireballs when it's more satisfying to go over and kick asses directly, more power to him.  Which is probably why Squalo throws a hissy fit after the victini growls a curt, "Fuck no."

Squalo glares at him, yells "THAT RIGHT, FUCKHEAD?!" and throws a bucket of water on him.  (The astute reader will wonder where Squalo got said bucket of water.  While there is an answer to this that fits conventional physics, it's much simpler to explain it as a talent.  Squalo has many talents, and this is his fourth most useful one.)  In another world, or even a few years earlier, this would simply ensure that every single one of Xanxus's murderous impulses (of which there are many) in the next hour would be directed at Squalo.

(Un)fortunately for Squalo, Xanxus is a fire-type.  Pouring water on a fire type <i>hurts</i>.  In this case, pouring water on a fire type ensures that Xanxus will do his level best to inflict fiery death upon Squalo.

And Squalo couldn't be happier.  (This is a lie, but that's okay.)


In a one on one fight between Xanxus and Tsuna, the victor is obvious: Xanxus wins, courtesy of a flamethrower to the <i>metallic head</i> and enough patience to watch it melt.  (That Tsuna is able to recover from this given six seconds to himself is not worth mentioning; Xanxus <i>won</i> or won for long enough for Tsuna's recovery to not matter.)

Unfortunately, one on one fights have a tendency not to happen around Tsuna.  Oh, Xanxus can get Tsuna alone, and he can definitely force the kid into a fight, but for some reason the kid's aggravating pet monkeys keep showing up and interfering like the aggravating dumbfuck monkeys they are.  It's just not <i>decent</i>: a fight to the death is a fight to the death and what kind of dumbass actually ran into the way of overwhelming strength?  The stupid kid's monkeys can't even cleanly beat Xanxus's monkeys, and at least Xanxus's monkeys are self-sufficient.  And when the platinum blond idiot with the bombs runs into the fray to keep Xanxus from tossing off a fire blast ...

... Xanxus wonders how the <i>fuck</i> the dumbass lived long enough to get the chance to run into <i>fire</i> while <b>covered in gunpowder</b>.

All in all, it's a bit of a pity that both the stupid kid and that asshole Reborn are more than capable of ensuring that the dumbass is okay.


The most ridiculous thing about the whole arcobaleno affair, Viper would say if anyone paid enough to ask, is that e's one of the few who <i>isn't</i> a psychic-type.  Colonnello's lack of a psychic affinity was completely predictable, but given that Viper had been trained in the psychic arts as a human, it was an obvious bet that e would still be psychic after the transformation.

But fate is not kind, and so e finds emself naturally <i>outclassed</i> in certain areas by the likes of Reborn.  Even eir boss is expected to be more competent at illusions than Viper, and that worried em very briefly.  But one of the <i>interesting</i> things about the false legends is that they keep their old abilities.  Colonnello is still able to overcompensate with weaponry, Reborn still has impeccable aim and atrocious taste, Verde still has no tact... and Viper is <i>still</i> one of the greatest psychics in the world, even if eir supposed elemental affinity doesn't quite match.

No one expects a shaymin to be an illusionist.  Which is not to say that people tend to expect a shaymin at all -- they're provincial creatures, or at least the real ones are, and Viper doubts that eir predecessor was the same species, and so it's astronomically unlikely that anyone less than thorough would even know the basic abilities of a shaymin -- but an illusionist is probably even rarer.  Viper even has the advantage that e isn't directly hampered by encountering bugs.

E has no idea what to do when e looks for the false jirachi's counterpart illusionist and can't find anything beyond 'CD'.  Though the psychic arts are nothing if not powerful, there is little a psychic can do about the stench of darkness.


While Mukuro has supposedly been contained in a pokéball before -- primarily as a precaution against theft and the false pokéballs sometimes adored by Team Rocket -- it is not his ideal choice of vessel.  He cannot quite leave the rock under his own power -- the stone is sealed against forced entry and exit, and it dislikes having more or less than one hundred and eight spirits contained within -- but he can still use little tokens.  Little objects that were his in life, or symbolized him and his ilk, or even symbolize him <i>now</i>.  And that is why Chrome carries his trident, and Franc a vial of what should have been his grave dirt (tacky, he knows, but it still helps), and Ken and Chikusa whatever they can find of their old lives; even if they can't quite release him, they can still pull enough of him out to <i>work</i>.

It's not ideal, but it's a start.


Chrome still remembers how she got her trident -- Mukuro-sama asked her to make it, so she did -- and she cares for it with all the devotion of a confused nun, but it's not her first choice of weapon when she needs one.  <i>That</i> honour goes to the crowbar she's kept in her bag ever since she noticed that the fractures in Mukuro-sama's stone aren't nearly as stable as she'd expect.  She can't quite pull the rock apart, and she doesn't think she'd quite want to even if she could, but she still stresses it and checks to see if it'll break.

It hasn't yet, but that just means she'll need to keep trying.  Releasing Mukuro-sama might not be the smartest idea, but she's already decided that she'll follow in whatever he decides to do.  And he's likely more dangerous inside the rock than outside: at least the spiritomb provides a consistent physical form as protection and a place to call home.

She keeps her promises, after all.


Reborn and Colonnello have made a point of fighting at least once a week for as long as they've known each other, which is ... a rather significant length of time.


Chrome doesn't remember how she lost her eye in the first place.  Well, that's not entirely true; she remembers <i>how</i> (accident with a stray shinx; she thought it needed rescuing and it disagreed) but she doesn't remember it actually happening.

So when Mukuro asks her <i>How do you know it did?</i> one day, she isn't sure how to reply.


Aria is never going to follow Reborn's advice to throw a party again.  While she supposes that he might be right about everyone getting along so much better when there's more alcohol than even the arcobaleno can handle available (and that's pretty difficult; even if she and Viper don't drink, and Feng has enough sense to not get completely and utterly plastered, Reborn could outdrink almost anyone by himself and adding in Colonnello and Lal Mirch is just overkill), there were at least four explosions within the first hour and it seems like it's just going to get worse.

At least Reborn brought his student with him today.  "So!  How are you?" she says brightly as she adjusts the giant poofy hat she always wears, even if she is usually small and jirachi-shaped.  It's traditional, you see.

Sawada Tsunayoshi makes a sad meeping sound as he edges away from the table and, more importantly, Verde's attempt at demonstrating why acid vats are a vital component to any plan.  "I'm, um, okay?" he says hopefully.  "-- Are these your friends?"

"Unfortunately, yes," she sighs.  Even if she's supposed to be the one who keeps the peace ... there's only so much of, well, everyone she can tolerate before her temper starts edging its way in.  "They're doing pretty well today!"  Given that Skull is currently trying his level best to kill Reborn (which works up until Reborn kicks him in the face) and more importantly screeching things like, "I WILL END YOU, SENPAI" and all around making a complete idiot of himself, that doesn't mean very much.

At least the attempts at homicide are all friendly at the moment.  Verde hasn't even taken out his latest death ray!  Very good of him.  The boy's confidence in, or possibly dismay at, Aria's assertion is entirely visible as he rubs at his face before managing, "Are they always like this?"

"Oh, no," she says, "usually Reborn decides it's time for a traditional Vongola drinking game five minutes in and then Feng and I moderate enough to keep everyone mostly civil.  No, this is pretty good.  Lal hasn't even brought out her rocket launcher yet."

Tsuna just sort of crumples.






#10 - Weddings -- He's not exactly sure who Kurokawa Hana is, but ... he wishes her and Sasagawa Ryouhei well, and if anyone catches some emphasis when he says it, it's not his fault.

Ryouhei and Hana's marriage is happy enough; they fight rarely and Hana tolerates Ryouhei's idiotic attempts at affection, and more importantly his frequent absences and his <i>pokémon</i>.  She's still not fond of them, not really, but at least Kangaryuu leaves her alone when she asks her to and Bunny spends his time training to spar with Ryouhei and his strange friend.

And while it sometimes seems like she's the one making most of the sacrifices -- Ryouhei still travels frequently, and usually with Haru and <i>her</i> strange friends -- every once in a while she spots something ... weird.  Not weird like that time Gokudera-san 'accidentally' blew up Bianchi-san's coffee shop, or when Yamamoto threw an orange and it exploded, or when Haru dressed up as a walrus for Christmas, but weird.  Weird like ... weird like glass not breaking when she drops it, or better yet when <i>Ryouhei</i> drops it.  It takes a while before <i>anything</i> in the house breaks, really, and Ryouhei usually has no difficulties going through a set of tableware in under a week.  He's done as much up until recently.

It's a bit weird, but not unwelcome.








ALTERNATES:
#18 - Balloon -- While he still has doubts about leaving the ground, hopping in that meowth-shaped hot air balloon with Gokudera and Yamamoto was a <i>great</i> idea (though he'd be mortified to learn it was stolen).



#01 - Comfort -- The luxury ball seems to stare at him, even as he raises his head to smash it.
#02 - Kiss -- He didn't care if <i>Hibari-san</i> asked; he was <i>never going to fight a clefairy again.</i>
#03 - Soft -- Whenever he sees Lambo (which usually ends up being whenever he sees his father, coincidentally) he always flops back on the mareep and hopes that one day, Lambo'll be able to leave home for more than a day or two.
#04 - Pain -- Reborn wants him to battle at least a <i>little</i> (or so he tells himself; Reborn wouldn't actually be satisfied until he could destroy a salamence in a single move), but he feels sick for a week whenever he <i>wins</i>.
#05 - Potatoes -- Tsuna can't cook, and as he finds out in the Stew Incident, Gokudera-kun can't, either; it's not until Ryouhei-sempai and Yamamoto wander over with a basket of potatoes that they manage to put together an edible soup.
#06 - Rain -- He waits in the rain for Yamamoto once, but he decides not to do it again after feeling some rust on the back of his neck.
#07 - Chocolate -- He is never offering Lambo a wish again; 'I wish for everything to be chocolate!' <i>indeed</i>.
#08 - Happiness -- Happiness is the knowledge that no matter what the day brings, Gokudera and Yamamoto and Ryouhei and Kyouko and Haru and Chrome will always be there if he needs them, and he usually does.
#09 - Telephone -- "Um, Tsuna...  This is really embarrassing, but could you leave the room for a bit?  I think your head's blocking my reception."
#10 - Ears -- His hearing's improved since he stopped being Sawada Tsunayoshi, which sounds like a good thing until one realises how many soft songs one ignores over the course of a day.
#11 - Name -- He's pretty sure he used to have a last name, but he can't remember it and his mind feels fuzzy when he tries.
#12 - Sensual -- Every few months, he asks Yamamoto to clear off his rust; no one else he's asked is good at scraping it off with steel wool without also removing bits of Tsuna.
#13 - Death -- He pops out of the pokéball one afternoon to a gut feeling that Reborn is late.
#14 - Sex -- "You know," Yamamoto says one day, "my pokédex isn't sure if you're a boy or a girl."
#15 - Touch -- He goes with Yamamoto and Gokudera to the tanabata festival more out of tradition than of any real interest and finds himself clinging to them both like he'll never see them again.
#16 - Weakness -- As much as he likes Hayato, Uri still worries him; he can't help but recall the cat's fiery bite and <i>what kind of electric-type actually used fire as its first choice, anyway!?</i>
#17 - Tears -- Tsuna hates letting anyone touch his tassels; they're sensitive and <i>fragile</i> and he has no idea what would happen if one ripped.
#18 - Speed -- He's not entirely sure why he tries to race his friends sometimes; at the end of the day, it doesn't quite matter how fast you are if it takes ten of your steps to equal two of your opponent's.
#19 - Wind -- What the wingull lacked in physical strength, he more than made up for the first time he beat his wings and <i>wished</i> for the power to do more.
#20 - Freedom -- Hibari-san is the best out of the trainers Reborn has offered him; he expects nothing and wants nothing and gives nothing but the sky.
#21 - Life -- He doesn't care how good Uri says it feels: no matter how much of his pokémon instincts he absorbs and uses, he is <i>not going to lick his crotch</i>.
#22 - Jealousy -- "Gokudera, I <i>promise</i> I'll be back by Sunday, really!"
#23 - Hands -- He tries holding Gokudera's coffee as a favour and ends up clawing through the cup; from then on, Gokudera carries both his drinks and Tsuna's.
#24 - Taste -- Pizza used to be his favourite food, he thinks, but all he tastes of it is rust.
#25 - Devotion -- He learns of Giotto and his friends in twisted little pieces -- Reborn will not tell him and cannot show him -- but what strikes him most is how close his tastes in friends run to Giotto's; they might as well be the same people at times.
#26 - Forever -- He doesn't think he'll ever want to be properly <i>caught</i>; no time passes in pokéballs.
#27 - Blood -- He feels like he's going to throw up the first time Mukuro visits him in his dreams to show what Mukuro has done, what Tsuna's line has done, what Reborn has done; it is all so, so, screwed up and Tsuna doesn't know the first place to start to fix it.
#28 - Sickness -- Some of the downsides of traveling for months on end is that there's no easy health care for humans around; Tsuna only finds out that Yamamoto should've gone to a doctor weeks ago when he collapses with pneumonia.
#29 - Melody -- Haru is beautiful, he realises belatedly, but her pokémon all dance to a melody he can't hear and it hurts him to try.
#30 - Star -- "STOP PUTTING ME ON TOP OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE!!" he yells, but it is and shall remain futile.
#31 - Home -- Tsuna's visited his mother a few times since meeting Reborn, but only when Iemitsu drags him; the sad thing is that he knows from asking Basil that Iemitsu only visits his mother when he takes Tsuna.
#32 - Confusion -- He tries to join Manekkun and the rest of Haru's squad and doesn't know what happened the rest of the day.
#33 - Fear -- "You <i>will not hurt my friends,</i>" he growls and it's more a statement of fact of territory than a threat.
#34 - Lightning/Thunder -- "I AM NOT A LIGHTNING ROD," Tsuna blurts out, and of course then Reborn has to prove him wrong.
#35 - Bonds -- He hates pokéballs, really; for all he appreciates the ability to hide in plain sight even from those few who resist illusions, he knows his new form's built for the expanses of space.
#36 - Market -- He drifts through the stalls searching quietly for gifts for the Sasagawas; he settles on scarves and gloves and little pendants of meteoric iron.
#37 - Technology -- Every once in a while, Tsuna gets this <i>nagging feeling</i>, and it's usually because Spanner just stuck a refrigerator magnet to the back of his head again.
#38 - Gift -- "I made you something," Kyouko-chan says, and Tsuna spends the next week with the good luck charm dangling from a tanzaku.
#39 - Smile -- He notices eventually that most of Yamamoto's smiles don't <i>quite</i> reach his eyes, but he has a feeling that he should not ask why.
#40 - Innocence -- His smile is just as bright as it has ever been, but every once in a while he thinks of what his life would have been like without Reborn, and he's wistful for the next week.
#41 - Completion -- "This is Jirachi," Reborn says, quiet, and Tsuna sees who he never will be and smiles, finally sure.
#42 - Clouds -- As much as he loved Altomare -- the wind, the canals, the people -- there was nothing he could do about the soul-deep terror at the sight of the twin dragons and their protégé.
#43 - Sky -- Every once in a while, he sees what Reborn sees; he is of sky and will and nothing can bring him down.
#44 - Heaven -- Heaven is the knowledge that all of his friends are there to be friends and to be happy, no obligations necessary.
#45 - Hell -- Mukuro is twisted, and deeply so; Tsuna looks into his heart and sees nothing but blood and hatred and regret for choices lost.
#46 - Sun -- Ryouhei is never there when Tsuna expects him, but he shows up whenever he <i>needs</i> him and that'll just have to do.
#47 - Moon -- It's a good thing the Clefairy Empire considers jirachi to be a minor deity!
#48 - Waves -- There's no weather in space, but there IS rain dance!
#49 - Hair -- While he'd finally found a form of spraypaint that'd actually stick to his cap enough for him to illusion it into actual <i>hair</i>, there was nothing he could do to make it look less like he used an entire bottle of gel.
#50 - Supernova -- He doesn't like to sleep; he keeps dreaming of what would happen if he let go of Doom Desire.

#01 - Walking -- When he sits on Gokudera's shoulder, he feels every bump in the road and every noise Gokudera hears, but Yamamoto's shoulder simply drifts on, up and down but never changing, never considering the terrain to be worthy of his acknowledgement.
#02 - Waltz -- While Haru's pokémon are terrible (or possibly extremely good; he's not entirely sure of the difference some days) dancers, Haru is ... well, <i>worse</i>.
#03 - Wishes -- He hates wishes, most days; he can't grant any of the important ones and the rest cost too much.
#04 - Wonder -- Altomare is a beautiful city with beautiful water and beautiful pokémon and beautiful black eyes courtesy of one Hibari Kyouya; Mukuro decides to visit monthly.
#05 - Worry -- It takes him a while to realize that just as Bianchi safeguards Reborn's pokéball so that no one else could capture him, his father controls Lal Mirch, and he does not understand how that could ever be preferable to letting her leave.
#06 - Whimsy -- Tsuna wakes up one Tuesday morning wearing a tuxedo and a fedora and carrying a water gun, while Mukuro laughs and laughs and laughs.
#07 - Waste/Wasteland -- The future Reborn brings him to mostly by accident is empty in all the ways that matter.
#08 - Whiskey and rum -- Tsuna doesn't drink -- there'd be no point -- but Gokudera collects alcohol, ostensibly so he can light it on fire but actually so he looks more like a punk.
#09 - War -- He hears of Giotto in bits and pieces, mostly from Reborn, and shrinks away from Mukuro's details; as much as he would like to side with his distant ancestor he cannot.
#10 - Weddings -- He's not exactly sure who Kurokawa Hana is, but ... he wishes her and Sasagawa Ryouhei well, and if anyone catches some emphasis when he says it, it's not his fault.
#11 - Birthday -- "Happy birthday!" he hears one day, and while he's pretty sure that was the day before, Reborn chirps a pleased, "Thank you."
#12 - Blessing -- The girl at that one coffee shop that Gokudera-kun usually goes to is so <i>generous</i>, Kyouko notices, that she doesn't even mind that the cake is beyond terrible.
#13 - Bias -- "You can do it, Tsuna-sa~n!" Haru yells, while Gokudera cheers him on less than coherently; Tsuna stares at an irritated Hibari and meeps.
#14 - Burning -- He watches Gokudera do his old job every once in a while, when it's been long enough that either Gokudera does some contract work for Team -- Rocket, usually, though Tsuna's seen him work for Galactic or Magma depending on where he is right then -- or his old contacts stop keeping in touch; Gokudera's delight in watching things blow up worries him but only in contrast to his refusal to even <i>consider</i> helping train Tsuna with explosives lying around.
#15 - Breathing
#16 - Breaking
#17 - Belief
#18 - Balloon -- It is lucky, or possibly fate, Tsuna supposes, that Hibari finds it difficult to pop the drifblim; he does not tolerate the spiritomb and his ilk in <i>his</i> city.
#19 - Balcony -- While littering in the city of Altomare is punishable by Hibari (Hibari being a punishment by himself even when he does nothing), every once in a while little bits of Hibari Kyouya's house fall off and onto the street as he trains his pokémon the only way he knows how.
#20 - Bane -- Hibari Kyouya is allergic to sakura, Tsuna finds out mostly by accident, but unfortunately his allergy just pisses him off more.
#21 - Quiet -- Traveling with Yamamoto, he's pleased to discover, is usually quiet; Yamamoto often talks but only when he has something to say or there is some reason he relies on small talk, and Tsuna is comfortable with silence.
#22 - Quirks
#23 - Question
#24 - Quarrel -- Haru and Hayato are always fighting, Yamamoto notices, whether it be over Tsuna or Fuuta or proprieties or anything at all, but they never seem to mind.
#25 - Quitting -- Hayato used to smoke, or he used to pretend to, but he'd been near too many electronics to keep up the habit and he never starts back up.
#26 - Jump
#27 - Jester -- It's an inevitable Halloween costume, really; his head's roughly the right shape as it is and Kyouko-chan lets him sit on her head for the evening.
#28 - Jousting -- While Yamamoto is an amazing swordsman, Tsuna learns one day that he should leave the horse riding to Dino.
#29 - Jewel -- Hibari Kyouya guards the Soul Dew, and it's with that realization that Tsuna decides that he will never enter Altomare again unless he absolutely has to.
#30 - Just
#31 - Smirk -- Haru is the only one of Tsuna's friends who legitimately <i>enjoys</i> Chrome's company, and even she is unsettled by her constant companion.
#32 - Sorrow
#33 - Stupidity
#34 - Serenade -- Mukuro is a surprisingly good singer, but unfortunately his material isn't surprising at <i>all</i>; after the third time Mukuro and Chrome belt out a resounding KUFUFU, KUFUFU, KUFUFU NO FUUUUUU~ Tsuna finds himself looking for a mute button.
#35 - Sarcasm -- Tsuna is never going to ask Reborn for his opinion again; the celebi has a tendency to take what he says entirely too literally.
#36 - Sordid --
#37 - Soliloquy
#38 - Sojourn
#39 - Share
#40 - Solitary
#41 - Nowhere -- Tsuna can't stand staying underground for any length of time; he feels an ache down to his bones for the knowledge of just how insignificant the world is, when compared to the skies.
#42 - Neutral
#43 - Nuance
#44 - Near
#45 - Natural
#46 - Horizon
#47 - Valiant
#48 - Virtuous
#49 - Victory
#50 - Defeat

#01 - Ring -- He dreams, sometimes, of a world where battles are settled in wind and will and flame, and wakes cold.
#02 - Hero
#03 - Memory
#04 - Box
#05 - Run
#06 - Hurricane -- Gokudera'd once been known as the Hurricane Bomb, and Tsuna can still see it: when it's just him and his pokémon, he can direct each little blast so he only needs <i>one</i> match, and the magnezone's magnetic fields supply the wind; Tsuna's never spotted any rain in Gokudera's little storms of science but he's sure he could add it if he wanted.
#07 - Wings -- Yamamoto's a better fit for the title of 'hurricane' some days; he's rarely in the same place twice and he and his wingull rain destruction as they please, or as they don't.
#08 - Cold -- He's pleasantly surprised to find that he doesn't actually feel the cold, or at least he is until he's frozen to Yamamoto's jacket.
#09 - Red -- Irie wakes up one morning to find a bouquet of poppies and snapdragons on his desk and hopes he doesn't know why.
#10 - Drink
#11 - Midnight
#12 - Temptation -- Tsuna glares at the bowl of marshmallows with extreme prejudice, though he isn't sure why, and wants to light them on <i>fire.</i>
#13 - View
#14 - Music -- He dreams sometimes of Ugetsu's flute and spends the next week confused as to who Yamamoto is.
#15 - Silk
#16 - Cover -- Chrome has shown what lies under her eyepatch once or twice: a pale glass eye, painted red and with a hurriedly written 六 on it; she does not explain.
#17 - Promise -- Yamamoto watches the setting sun, twitching slightly, but Tsuna calls him back home every evening.
#18 - Dream -- Tsuna dreams of what happened, Irie dreams of what may have happened, and Chrome dreams of what will happen, but at the end of the day none of them truly understand what's happened.
#19 - Candle -- Chrome eyes the foxfire pokémon in disdain, but for once Tsuna spots it, recognizes it, and pulls it into his house.
#20 - Talent
#21 - Silence
#22 - Journey
#23 - Fire
#24 - Strength -- Tsuna understands now why Pallet has always been the town that produces trainers: there is more strength in numbers.
#25 - Mask -- The first time Gokudera knows that Yamamoto's sword cut someone <i>down</i>, he can't manage to look at Yamamoto's smiling face for a week.
#26 - Ice -- Snowpoint is <i>cold</i>, and unfortunately Tsuna's head often functions as a frozen pole.
#27 - Fall
#28 - Forgotten
#29 - Dance
#30 - Body
#31 - Sacred
#32 - Farewells -- He'll live longer than them, assuming he doesn't find a replacement, so there is only one thing he truly fears.
#33 - World
#34 - Formal
#35 - Fever
#36 - Laugh -- Tsuna listens to Mukuro in his dreams, hears the girl and her servant-master-friend-self speak silently to him and whoever else may listen, and can't get the resounding kufufu out of his head.
#37 - Lies
#38 - Forever
#39 - Overwhelmed
#40 - Whisper
#41 - Wait
#42 - Talk
#43 - Search
#44 - Hope -- They haven't seen Reborn in months or the tenth in years, but they do as they always do: they train and they wait and they take care of the little details the tenth can't.
#45 - Eclipse
#46 - Gravity -- "<i>Gravity</i>," Yamamoto hisses, nearly ordering, so Tsuna lets the pokémon take over and -- the people who were threats aren't.
#47 - Highway -- The Cycling Road is closed to foot travel, but that's okay: Gokudera can drive motorbikes and there's a reason the gang's called the <i>Storm</i> of Cycling Road.
#48 - Unknown -- "There are pokémon mimicking your codes," Tsuna says quickly as he tries to decipher how to tell them that his friend's wishes are <i>covered</i> so they can <i>leave</i>.
#49 - Lock -- The pokéball he's finally kept in is one of those old ones, closed mechanically rather than digitally, and more importantly it's one he <i>can't leave</i>.
#50 - Breathe -- He doesn't need to, or at least he doesn't need to whenever he forgets, but it still feels <i>strange</i> when he doesn't, like he's made entirely of rust.