AN: This is pretty want of a nail that came into my head, not completely sure how I'm going to go with this and may end up shifting the order of the first few chapters if I get the inspiration to plan this out properly.
Reborn stood under a complicated machine that looked like a giant silver disc built into a wall. It hummed softly inactive. It was a time machine to send Tsuna and his guardians back to their own time, ten years in the past.
He smiled remembering the sight of them standing together as allies, friends, and family. Tsuna had grown quite far from his beginnings as a pathetic no good kid who didn't have the confidence to go to school.
He peered at the orange haired young man fiddling with the interface of the machine, Shoichi Irie, the former captain of one of Byakuran's squads before defecting to Vongola, revealing that he was a mole planted by the Tsuna of the future.
The volume of the humming increased, signaling that Irie was finished with his preparations.
Irie turned to Reborn and said "Thanks for your help in sealing the Mare rings, without you and the Arcobaleno, Byakuran in your past would start everything over."
"It's not a problem, It's my job to take out threats to the family." Irie nodded and pressed a button.
"Alright, time warp, start!" He shouted. The silver disc began to shine with a blinding white light and a pale green sphere formed around Reborn. He could feel himself changing into a glittering green light before turning into a beam that entered the machine.
He didn't know how long he was traveling through time, his senses were muddled and could only wait before he would materialize in Naminori, Japan to return training Tsuna to become Vongola's tenth boss, Decimo.
He couldn't see anything as he drifted further and further from his ride back home.
A golden light pierced through the veil on his vision. He looked down and saw his pacifier, the object that marked him as one of the Arcobaleno, one of seven individuals cursed to a baby body, glowing, the flames inside leaking outside and into his body.
Reborn body erupted with paralyzing pain. His body felt as though it were thrown in molten fire. His limbs were stretching, his muscles contorting, and his bones were growing. Though he kept a straight face, Reborn was paralyzed and could do nothing more but wait it out.
"Tch" He grit his teeth and growled. The sound started as a cry that would make people think of a troubled toddler, but soon developed into a deep gravelly sound fit for a grown man.
Finally the pain eased enough for Reborn to lift his arms up where he could see them. He stared at his arms and hands, many times bigger than what they should have been.
Impossible.
Reborn slowly craned his neck to look down towards his legs. No longer were they tiny limbs only a couple of inches long, but full grown legs measuring at several feet.
Maybe I'm delusional from the pain. Reborn looked over what he could once more, his vision didn't swim and replace what his fully grown limbs with tiny stubby ones.
This was his adult body, the one that he lost that fateful day on top of the mountain.
Suddenly, no longer was his world filled with only the golden light of his pacifier. His senses returned to him one by one. The wind howling in his ears, the feeling of gravity and finally his sight as he materialized. He was suddenly at a height of what his brain reflexively calculated as 60 feet from the roof of a warehouse.
40 feet. Reborn began maneuvering the position of his head towards his chest while stretching his arms out in front and bending his legs as though he were to squat in order to turn right side up.
20 feet. The world's greatest hit man is not going to be in the obituary with suicide as the cause of death. Willing his flames to burst from his hands and the soles of his shoes to push against the force of gravity. Reborn slowed his descent and landed safely on the warehouse.
No longer in danger of cracking his head open, Reborn looked around him, wherever he was, from his perch and saw what appeared to be the docks of a nearby city. There were several other warehouses as well as many stacked storage containers scattered throughout his vision. Not that he could see very far with the poor illumination due to the cloudy night.
Reborn noticed that a good portion of the container were dark blue with the words "Schnee Dust" imprinted on them with a snowflake insignia in between the words.
"Leon, binoculars please." The fedora atop his head wriggled and from underneath it came a green chameleon. Looking at Reborn for a few seconds, it licked his hand and soon transformed into a pair of green binoculars. Reborn peered at the docks now with his extended vision and turned a full 360 degrees.
Several things stood out. For one, there were several unnecessarily large landing pads at least double the size of what the average helicopter needed. There wasn't just two of these pads but six divided along the length of the docks. He never heard of any Coast Guards that needed so many large choppers.
Reborn looked around again to estimate the amount of containers. There were only several hundred of them in the port. This was a small port from the looks of it. Ports along the Mediterranean routinely handled thousands of containers a day with thousands more left for whatever cargo ship to take them.
He needed more information. "We're going undercover Leon." The binoculars Reborn was holding transformed back into a lizard and Leon climbed up Reborn's longer arms and jumped on top of his fedora. Reborn jumped down from the top of the warehouse and began briskly walking down the road towards the city in the distance.
As he walked, he took hold of the pacifier tied around his neck. It still shone with a warm golden light, but it's vibrancy felt muted.
"What is going on..." He muttered. It had been so many years since he was able to walk without having to look up at people. The feeling of so much weight on his sides and legs was almost completely unfamiliar to him. He caught himself before he crashed into a bollard and walked around it.
I can't tell if this is a dream or a nightmare that I'm supposed to wake up from.
Wandering inside the city Reborn noted that the language followed conventional English, even if there were words and names from various cultures and languages such as Chinese and German. Jumping over a fence into a closed park, He sat on a bench underneath a tree and opened the newspaper he swiped from a sleeping drunkard.
Using his flames as a light source, Reborn scanned the publication. The paper was called "The Vale Post" and the date was July 3rd. Reborn quickly scanned the headlines. "Village of Mobray found decimated", "General Ironwood announces exhibition of the improved Atlesian Knights", "Faunus protest Schnee Dust Labor Practices."
Reborn flipped to the page that covered the article and quickly began reading.
"Mobray, a tiny village set up several years ago by a clan of nomadic people was found empty and decimated by a team of huntsmen who were undergoing a regular census on the people outside the Kingdoms."
"The Huntsmen reported strong evidence of a slaughter and could not find any survivors after several hours of searching." "Mobray is the sixth village to have been found destroyed in the past two years."
"Experts from the Grimm Monitoring Center noted that Grimm attacks have increased."Reborn lost interest and began to skim through the rest of the article. The Grimm were described as monsters in the shape of massive beasts in the shapes of wolves, bears, snakes and birds. Huntsmen were the warriors that were trained to kill them.
He noted that the Grimm were described as blood thirsty animals, but he had never heard of wild animals being a threat to entire villages or towns. Reborn made a mental note to look into it.
The next article of was about a planned exhibition of robot soldiers. A General Ironwood extolled the benefits of android soldiers as a method to reduce casualties of Huntsmen and Huntresses in battles and planned to show them off to the public before they were officially put into service. The article ended with a quote from the general.
"The Kingdom of Atlas leads the way in humanity's endless struggle with the Grimm." His expression turned grave. The Kingdom of Atlas most certainly did not exist on Earth. Moonlight peered through the canopy of the tree and Reborn looked at a patch of clear sky.
He was not amused. The moon had a hole blown through it and from this park Reborn could see little bits of asteroids orbiting the shattered astral body.
When did I take up Shamal's offer to test his new batch of psychedelic drugs?
Reborn looked back to the paper, unsure if he wanted to continue into his apparent insanity. Steeling his resolve, Reborn flipped to the page regarding the protest.
Animal people-Faunus- complete with ears and tails were apparently a thing. Still he had not missed the words Schnee Dust Corporation when skimming the article. It was this world's major producer of a substance called Dust, which seemed to be a substitute for energy. The protest was aimed at conditions in Schnee Dust quarries which the Faunus decried as de-facto slavery and demanded improvement.
Taking a moment to inspect the thumbnail of the protesters to make sure his eyes were not lying to him, Reborn could confirm that there were indeed animal ears, tails, and even eyes on all of the Faunus.
If this wasn't a powerful illusion or hallucination, then Reborn had to prepare for the long term.
First, Reborn had to quickly adapt to life in Vale, before he could even start gathering funds, which meant figuring out what was considered common knowledge to the people here.
Standing up, Reborn made way for the streets to find suitable shelter.
AN: I hope you found this at least somewhat entertaining, leave a review to point out any flaws you see because I need another perspective on this idea and my writing.
I feel as though I'm using too many words to describe actions and events that only need minor mention.
I edited out the part with Reborn stealing information from Junior because it felt arbitrary and inconsistent with Reborn's character.
Using force is all and good when it's your enemy, not when it's someone who has plenty of value. Reborn is also used to being a criminal and it wouldn't be a good idea to antagonize the one guy in town who knows the important crime bosses.
The scene won't be entirely scrapped, but I still need to figure out what Reborn should be doing in Remnant.