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Dying Will Research Entry # 94:

It's the Winter Solstice, a day feared by every Dying Will Flame user for it is commonly known as the Eve of Judgement. Where ever they are, they gather together, some at grand functions that the Vongola Famiglia hold for their Allies to attend in witness to who is found guilty of which of the Seven Vices, or called the Deadly Sins. There are Families that prefer to keep such an events private, leaving those outside of the Famiglia to create a rather impressive betting pool concerning whom among those closed off Famiglia affairs would be affect and by which of their Sins out weight all the others.

As the Winter Solstice is feared, the Spring Equinox is a day of hope, yet, it's also dreaded in its own way. It's known as the Eve of Return as those who finish serving out their punishment are returned to their rightful physical forms, what's dreaded learning what cost to the Returned's mental state their time punished had been done upon them. After all, the minimum punishment endured is the time between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, it's often a taste for first time offenders but the time spent in an inhuman shape, forced to live a life far different then the one a human is born to lead, leaves it's marks all the same. Recovery takes time and a lot of patience with those that Returned.

There's plenty of regional tales concerning the origins of the two events, Eve of Judgement and the Eve of Return. The fact that few dispute concerns that the first to ever experience the Eve of Judgement is Giotto, who is better known as the Primo of the Vongola Famiglia. It's well documented that the event that likely caused the Judgement to settle upon the man has to due with the Massacre of the Sinclairs that saw not just the men put to the 'Flame' but the elderly, toddlers, children, teens, and women. None fully know why Giotto had been so vengeful in the regards of the Sinclairs but, come the Winter Solstice at the Inn they'd been staying at, its said that the Sky had sensed it coming, for throughout the daylight hours, Giotto had been filled with nervous energy and found it hard to stick to a single activity.

As the sun goes down, Giotto seems to collapse upon the floor in the middle of pacing before the window. Before his Storm Guardian and fellow vigilantes eyes, they witnessed the Sky's hair and teeth fall out before his head began to alter, a beak beginning to grow out of the mouth. Giotto's finger nails did as well before the arms began to warp into wings. Giotto's body began to shrink, warp as it goes, with the beginning of feathers spreading about the skin that the men could see. Within minutes, where there was once a man, there was a peacock struggling to get out of the cloths that the former man had worn.

Giotto wouldn't regain his birth form until that Spring Equinox but the effect of having witnessed the Judgement saw many men leaving Giotto's band of vigilantes. It also wouldn't be the last time Giotto would experience Judgement for his conduct in pursue of his justice for the common people. Giotto would undergo the losing of his humanity three more times, his second Judgement would see him transformed into a horse for roughly two years, his third would be a magpie for roughly three, and his final recorded Judgement would see him transformed into a stag for roughly five years. The Sins he committed would be Warth, Lust, Greed, and, finally, Pride.

Among his Guardians, they would all end up receiving being Judged at least once in their time at Giotto's side. Although the most well known member of the Primo's Guardians would also serve to show that some Judgements can be final, it would be Deamon Spade, who's second Judgement saw him transformed into a stag, it had been the year that saw the passing of the reigns of the Vongola Famiglia to Ricardo, more commonly known as the Secondo.

Looking away from the page of information, Skull rummages around until he finds a section documenting the species of animals that Flame Users have been transformed into. "Elk... Mule Deer... Reindeer..." Beyond the listening of deer is snakes.

He wonders if he'll find the answer to his question among these old reports and entries. He might have been looking for a week but already, it seems nobody knows the answer to his off handed idea of if they would still be Cursed if they Returned after experiencing Judgement. After all, surly they can't be exempt from getting Judged, right? There has to be documents concerning previous Arcobaleno committing Sins and thus receiving Judgement...

"There should be records of previous Arcobaleno at least?" The Cloud murmurs to Oodako, who's clinging to his back like a backpack. The Octopus gives him a light hug, clearly getting the downward spiral of his thoughts and emotions at the lack of answers or records of former Arcobaleno.

"Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Wrath. Rabbit, snake, magpie, horse, deer, squirrel, and peacock." Skull mutters as he frowns as he considers the off handed idea of his that's become something of facial point for him six days. Since none of the other Arcobaleno answered that simple question, which should have been easily answered with either a yes or no.

It's been six years since they've been given the title of Arcobaleno, that they've been Cursed into their current looks. For all that they look like toddlers, they weren't. They kept their adult mental state of minds, that's never changed, not like those who are Judged and are transformed into beasts.

Not that I know what that's like. Muses the Cloud as he gently causes the stool he's sitting on to slowly turn around in circles. "Never did anything that warranted getting Judged for." Skull admits with a sigh.

"Not that I actually want to do something that bad, of course, but..." Is it something I want to gamble my humanity over? And if it doesn't work... Will I still be me? It's something that Skull has observed over his time pre-Arcobaleno and post Arcobaleno.

What's the point in getting free of the Curse if he won't be fully himself? Fully human? Skull gets the feeling he's at something of a crossroads, he can roll over and accept that he's Cursed into the shape of a toddler or he can do something desperate but could affect him.

"Although, it kind of feels like... I'm missing something? That it's kind of..." Skull knows himself fairly well and suspects that in hindsight, it'll be something he'd curse himself for overlooking, that it's something so simple...

He stops himself from spinning the stool one way only to begin having it spin the other. All the while, he has Oodako keeping him company as he sits upon a stool in Verde's paper archives.

] - = Time Passes = - [

"I received a request that might be something you'd be interested in." Viper's voice states upon him picking up his phone. Skull blinks at the blunt statement before asking, "How much is this going to cost me?"

"How about wager? I heard of your little inquiry concerning Arcobaleno and getting Judged." The Mist remarks and he blinks before nodding, stating, "Well, it's not like I could find anything saying we're immune."

"What would the wager be?" He asks after a few seconds of no reply to that little statement. It's early in the morning and he's pretty sure that the sun is only beginning to show itself given that the alarm clock says it's a bit over four am.

"Two parts, one, you can create a Mist Contract that would be the effect of a Scapegoat or Sin-Eater. The second would be answer your question of, what happens if an Arcobaleno was to undergo Judgement." Viper explains. "The odds of the first one working would be one in a hundred while the other would be one in seven."

He tries to figure out just what it is Viper means by those odds. "So... if I accept some guy's Sin, I'll get...?" The Cloud asks.

"Upon signing it, you'll get twenty-five percent of the payment up front. You end up Judged, you'll get the rest." Viper states before continuing on. "And if you do get Judged, I'll fork over seven times that upon seeing the results."

It might be due to how early it is, but that doesn't sound like a bad deal. Mostly, he'd be getting money for doing something he'd been thinking of doing away way. Even if this contract fails, he'll at least have money to fund whatever dubious crime he kind of plans to put into action at sometime in the future, even if he's still not decided on anything. "Any idea what Sin it is? And the duration?"

"Also, I'd want Oodako looked after if I end up an animal." He states. "I'll be happy to make those arrangements, I'll have a contract ready for the meet up for my services." With that, Viper ends the call before him verbally agreeing to any of it.

Skull lies on his back as he stares at the phone in his right hand, blinking a few times as he mentally tries to figure out just what the hell happened. In the end, he puts the phone back on its receiver and moves onto his other side. "Too early for this shit." He murmurs as he then does his best to ignore how wide awake he is and tries to let his mind drift off into lala land.

] - = Time Passes = - [

"Huh, it's been a while since we'd have an Arcobaleno seek a cure viva being Judged." Remarks a man with fairly dark skin with black hair in corn braids and yellow hazel eyes. "Never mind one who never committed any of extreme acts in order to do so."

Skull tries to speak but his body seems rather... unresponsive. "I believe you'd call me a Cloudy Mist? We're in a Territory of a sort, more pocket dimension then a step outside of time." He does manage to blink and then, he's on the floor.

Looking around, he finds everything smaller... "So, explanations... I assume you want to hear a few of those, huh? Like, who am I? Perhaps, what's up with this Eve of Judgement? Maybe even asking why we never did anything about stopping you and the others from getting Cursed?" The man muses while he's busy staring at the body that's in the middle of transforming into a magpie. There's still a few teeth in the air while the arms were beginning to grow feathers.

"Well, I and nine others, we're fairly old and well... The Eve of Judgement thing is more aimed at the last surviving bastard, it's been that way since he'd set up the Curse on those pacifiers, you see." The man rambles on for sometime on the subject and Skull just lets it wash over him as he does his best to collect himself from the experience of what had been going on, at the sight of proof of what had been happening to him.

"I'm sorry, but what?" He focuses in on the man with a frown, he couldn't have heard what he actually did, right? "Hmm, which part? The fact that in two months, some clone will 'hatch' and he'll never make the connection concerning the Eve of Judgement? That he'll start the process of cloning himself like he'd been cloned?"

"The original Checker Face has been dead for...?" Skull knows Mist Flames are a capable of a lot but the idea of a series of clones living less then a year... That each of them end up transformed and often times killed by the succeeding copy...

"Before the creation of this criminal empire composing of Soul Fire welders." The man admits and it's clear that he's doing some mental counting. "Let's see... That civilization fell to inter conflict about mid way into Julius Caesar's reign of Emperor... The survives would cut up those stones... Oh, about, three hundred years after... The Betray of Trust happened with the thirteen generation of what would become Arcobaleno... Leading to that generation and all after getting Cursed... Not sure if the Mist ever fest up to his temper getting the best of him on hearing that refusal from two of the selected candidates..."

"It sounds like that's over two thousand years, give or take." Skull decides to comment and the man blinks before looking at him. "Sure, that sounds like a decent estimate." The man agrees and the Cloud finally gets up off the ground, taking in the fact that he's got nothing covering his upper body.

"So... the pacifiers weren't always Cursed?" He asks and the man nods. "The Curse is the caster fuelled type instead of having an ending clause, which means you'd have to kill the caster or, in this case, the whole line of copies. Not that I can't get why most find it hard to kill them, the Curse affects pretty much all of humanity, after all, and the nature of Curses being what it is..."

"I am confused..." He admits and the man seems to smile in an understanding fashion. "Yea, I would assume so. Let's just say, the so call Flame system that you were used for? It's a degraded privilege system, it's purpose is to allow only a select portion of mankind access Soul Fire, it's also only allowing half of the Soul Fire aspects be available as well."

"Not that some of that other half hasn't slip out into the world, the dam as it were, has it's leaks since it took a while for them to get around to designating a group who's authorized to possess Soul Fire. Which, I'm pretty sure, you know what kind of people have been given access to it." He nods, it makes a kind of sense, in a out of left field way as to why Dying Will Flames users all seem to drift into the criminal underbelly.

"So... now what?" He asks his... Host? The man hums a bit before beginning to walk away from the sight. Skull follows after a few seconds.

"Now? Whatever you want. You're free, I really do mean it." The man explains. "People are going to forget that there ever was a Cloud Arcobaleno by the name of Skull. In fact, that Contract you sign is going to vanish and the actual person who committed those crimes is going to be receiving what they sowed."

"Unlike the others before you, you won't be spending any time transformed as you didn't commit any crimes." The man explains. "Oh, yea, I totally forgot, I never gave you a name to call me by, huh? Suna, it can be translated into Time but also into Desert. Just call me that!"

"Why not just call yourself Chronos?" He asks Suna. "Best not invoke powerful Titles, after all, you never know what you find yourself settled with. Relics of bygone eras aren't just in the form of items, someone powerful likely inspired certain myths, were the base of legends."

"Once the system is gone, it's going to be chaos and having ancient Titles waiting around for people to claim them? Not going to be helping overly much." Suna remarks with a shake of his head.

"It's lasted this long." He points out. "I might hold strong for centuries to come." Skull points out as they continue to exit out of the Iron Fort.

That provokes a chuckle from Suna for a few minutes. "Ah, yea, I didn't mention how the other half of those stones ended up, huh? I mean, the pacifiers were created from half of the stones that had been used as... Ah... Oh yea, hardware? The concept that they are whole is more... Software? Like a program?"

"Ok, other half ended up getting made into these rings. One set of rings were given the concept of Time while the other was given the concept of Parallel? The Parallel is like a balancing pole to help make it exist without swaying over and having it all collapse downward as it were..." Suna does try his best to expand on the Parallel concept and mentions these Mist Territories that make up the 'pole' that's being used to balance out the system.

It's... rather descriptive and he does find it easy enough to imagine how hard it must be to try and simplify just what this Parallel function is. They are out of the Iron Fort by the time he finally asks, "What of the Time rings?"

"Those? Oh, yea, those. Yea, Giotto's pretty much the one responsible for why this system is going to be crashing soon." Admits Suna and he blinks as he tries to wrap his head around that statement. "How?" Skull asks.

"Oh, that's simple, he cut the effect of the Time in half. The concept of Time isn't operating at its fullest. Never mind the fact that they tied it up with a Blood Seal with a set of requirements when it comes to who's allowed to take the post." Suna explains. "Families end all the time, officially documented bloodlines came be wiped out in any number of ways. The requirements for the Vongola Rings are generally, have the Second in their family tree as an ancestor and be legitimized, with documented record of tracing their connection to said man."

"Don't they need be a Sky as well?" He asks and Suna snorts. "No, as long as the descent of the Second is wearing one of the rings, it'll function. Being a Sky wasn't an issue, I doubt they ever could have coded that into the Blood Seal in any case, that's more tradition then actually how it works. It was likely hard enough coding the rings to accept the Blood Seal."

"I'm hoping that I win the pool." Suna changes the topic once they have come to an inn. "After all, I doubt he thought he needed to set up a back up Cloud."

"Eh?" He pauses ever so slightly. "You didn't do crime, remember? He likely didn't see how that Sin-Eater Contract was a threat to this age old system. He couldn't get a warning from the simulations about it going through, after all, this animal Vices doesn't register with the clones but that doesn't mean that it doesn't give warning that an Arcobaleno did something that threatens the stability of this system."

"And he just became an animal himself." Suna adds and Skull very much pauses at the thought. "And there's not going to be a Checker Face around until..." Skull trails off and Suna nods.

"Still, won't know until some point next year. Never know if there was an old back up of some kind just waiting around to come into play." Suna admits with a sigh. "You'd be surprised at how often we think it's going to come to an end only for something to pop up. After all, that system use to do a heck of a lot more then just block access of Soul Fire outside of the designated group. At least, once upon a time it did. They had to create some kind of pressure control for that dam."

Skull recovers enough of himself to continue to follow Suna up the stairs of the inn. He's found a information source and answers, there's a lot of things for him to think on, none the least of which is... What's the world going to be like if everyone has access to Dying Will Flames?

This is the End

Author's Note: Yea, no internet on my computer and I end up writing this... The idea had been kicking around in my brain since reading a story called Medicine from the Moon by Felinis, which can be found on AO3 and, well, it's rather... Well, the story possesses Body Horror tag along with You get horrific body transformation, And you get a horrific body transformation, Everyone gets a horrific body modification tags. It's written in the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation world and... I can't seem to not check it daily to see if there's been a new update.

Just a list of what cause which:

Envy = Rabbit

Gluttony = Snake

Greed = Magpie

Lust = Horse

Pride = Deer

Sloth = Squirrel

Wrath = Peacock