Kyandi: Hello, my lovelies!
Roksana: Kyandi-sama is happy.
Kyandi: Because the future arc is over and I'm about to start the first of two mini-arcs I have planned.
Roksana: Someone asked if we were going to get a little fluffy rest before jumping into the next arc, well...
Kyandi: Tsuna and the others will get a rest. Roksana has work to do.
Roksana: Not so sure it'll be fluffy, though.
Kyandi: The end of this chapter has some fluffiness to it, though. Just a tad.
Roksana: Then shall we get on with it?
Kyandi: Yep! Everyone, enjoy and review.
Roksana: Kyandi-sama does not own Katekyo Hitman REBORN.
Chapter 48 Back to the Past
Roksana caught the pacifiers as they fell, gathering them up in the folds of Yuni's cape as she fell to her knees, cradling them in her arms. Tsuna landed next to her then, reaching out to touch the orange pacifier that had belonged to Yuni.
"Yuni...!" Tsuna breathed.
"The Arcobaleno aren't reviving!" Fuuta exclaimed out of concern.
"No, the flames should have been properly absorbed. It'll take a little more time." Reborn replied.
"Leave this to me, Tsuna." Roksana told him, cradling the pacifiers in one arm while she laid her left hand, bearing her Vongola ring, on top of them, her flames igniting her ring and spreading to the pacifiers.
"No, Roksana!" Roksana looked up at Tsuna in surprise as he grabbed her right bicep, fixing her with a stern expression. "We already loss Yuni and Gamma! We won't lose you, too!"
Roksana stared at him for a moment before she calmly reached up and took hold of his wrist, prying his hand off her arm.
"Tsuna...what have I told you about orders?" Tsuna's eyes widened as Roksana looked up at him, not with anger, but patience. "Yuni did most of the work, so my life won't be in danger. Don't worry about me and focus on Byakuran."
Roksana released his hand and returned her hand to the pacifiers, focusing her flames back on them. Tsuna didn't think she was lying, but he didn't have the time to think about it.
"Hey, you! What have you done?" Tsuna turned to face an extremely angered Byakuran. "You killed the final piece of the puzzle that I'd been searching so long for. You've put all my efforts to waste. My dream to awaken the Trinisette and make this world far greater than any dimension is ruined all because of your little friendship games. Do you know what this means!?"
The explosion of flames that burst outward from Tsuna, had Roksana curling in around the pacifiers to keep them from being blown out of her hands. Byakuran, on the other hand, was blown back by the intensity of the flames.
"Who do you think it was that killed Yuni? Because you made this world the way it is...Yuni died!" Tsuna snapped, turning an angry glare on Byakuran. "I won't forgive you, Byakuran!"
"Hm? You won't forgive me? Haha! Ahahaha, what nonsense! You're a joke of a human being! I'd understand if you saw value in her as a powerful device! After all, Yuni was an item that I needed in order to become an invincible god! But to see her as a woman of all things! It can only be a momentary intoxication of hormones that you'd think you could oppose me with humanism! If that's your answer to living obediently trapped inside the human society, then it's pathetic! Hypocrisy could never win against the ugly desires of humans! That's how this world is made!" Byakuran snapped.
They all watched as roots sprouts from Byakuran's legs, anchoring him to the ground to stabilize him.
"Roksana...I need you to hold on and don't move." Tsuna told Roksana as he stood up, Roksana at his side. Roksana didn't question him. "Operation X."
Roksana looked up, knowing that was the code to activate the contact lenses in his eyes that helped him stabilize his X-burner.
It was about to get real windy.
"You really ruined everything for me! That doll with the pacifiers was my ultimate toy!" Byakuran yelled.
"Don't you dare insult Yuni anymore than you already have! You don't even deserve to say her name!" Tsuna replied.
The intensity of the colliding flames from the two, had the barrier crumbling around them. Roksana curled in around the pacifiers, expanding her won flames in order to provide some kind of anchor and defense. When Tsuna let lose his X-burner, there was nothing in the world that could have saved Byakuran. In his last moments, Byakuran couldn't help but smile in the face of Tsuna's blinding resolve.
When the smoke cleared, only Tsuna and Roksana were left in the very center of it all, Roksana sitting up straight. Cheers exploded from their friends as they swarmed the scene. Tsuna, now completely exhausted, collapsed, Gokudera and Yamamoto catching him before he could hit the ground.
"You did well, Tsuna." Reborn told him.
"Gamma...and Yuni..." Tsuna turned towards Roksana, the silver glow around the girl still going strong while Tarazu and Nosaru crouched beside her, crying over the clothes left behind from Gamma and Yuni. Settling the pacifiers in her lap, Roksana reached out, laying a comforting hand on Tarazu and Nosaru's heads while still keeping her flames burning around the pacifiers. "It's not just Gamma and Yuni. This battle has hurt so many people."
Everyone turned as the members of Varia threw Kikyou to the ground, the man a bloody mess.
"Shi, shi, shi, shi. Your boss went and kicked the bucket." Bel snickered.
"And next, it's your turn." Levi added.
"If you have any particular method you wanna die in, we're all ears." Fran remarked.
"Wait, what are you doing!? We don't need anymore damage!" Tsuna told them.
"Why do you care about this scum? This is a creature who only knows how to kill!" Levi told him.
"You're wrong. They were all once normal humans." Irie said, approaching the group using a crutch to stay on his feet.
"Irie Shouichi." Kikyou growled, for once not grinning.
"About time I saw that face without an annoying grin or smirk. You have my praise, Levi." Roksana remarked, Levi grinning to himself while Kikyou glared at her.
"At the time when Millefiore was gathering up strong forces, I was there to check on every country's mafia, military, and assassin groups, but I never saw them. Which means that they were normal people that aren't listed in the register." Irie told them.
"Haha...Normal people...that's certainly a cheap way to put it. In the parallel worlds, we were all humans that reigned over our worlds. But in this world, things were different due to misfortune. Byakuran-sama was the one who changed our weaknesses into strengths!" Kikyou declared loudly.
"Shut up."
Roksana winced when Xanxus pressed the barrel of his gun to Kikyou's temple and fired.
"Xanxus!" Tsuna gasped.
"Shut up!" Xanxus snapped at him, walking away.
"It'll be alright. I'll keep him alive!" Lussuria assured Tsuna, using his box weapon to heal Kikyou's wound before it killed him.
Tsuna, whether from relief or something else, toppled over then, landing on his butt.
"So many people were hurt in this battle. Yamamoto's dad, Roksana's dad and step-mom, and people from other parallel worlds have died. We've won, but everything is so messed up...was there any meaning behind this victory?" Tsuna asked.
"Of course there was, dammit!"
All eyes turned towards Roksana as the silver glow of her flames was replaced by another, brighter light. Roksana squeezed her eyes shut, turning her face away from it. When the light faded, Roksana found herself sitting there with Colonello in her lap, four more infants, Mammon included, standing on either side of her.
"You all did well, dammit!" Colonello told them, holding Yuni's pacifier in one hand. He turned to look up at Roksana, grinning as he reached up to pat her head with one small hand. "Especially you. You put a lot of energy into bringing us back."
Roksana wasn't exactly sure how to feel about being praised by a toddler. She was sure that it looked ridiculous, a teenage girl sitting there, getting her head pat like a child by a toddler standing in her lap. One side of her mouth twisted up as the other four turned to look up at her.
"I'm not exactly sure how to feel, sitting here letting a toddler pat my head like I'm a child." Roksana remarked. "So, if you wouldn't mind...could you please stop now. I didn't do it to be praised."
"No, you did it to save your family." remarked one of the others who, oddly enough, somewhat resembled Hibari in the face.
"Yeah, and now I'm thoroughly exhausted." Roksana replied, putting the end to that conversation.
Reborn walked up to them then, Colonello turning to look down at him.
"You're all late." Reborn remarked.
"What did you say, Reborn!?" snapped one of the others wearing a helmet.
"Chill it, Skull." Colonello told him before holding up Yuni's pacifier. "We all know the situation. Yuni communicated with us through the flames that went through our pacifiers."
"Yuni?" Tsuna asked.
"Yes. Yuni also informed us of what influence Byakuran's defeat would have on the world." said the infant name Fon, who resembled Hibari. Ryoka and Marc had come running up to Roksana by then, Ryoka now hanging off Roksana's neck, watching the infants before her. "By Byakuran being defeated and the Mare rings losing their power, all the damage in the parallel worlds caused by the mare rings would be erased from the past."
"In other worlds, all the evil deeds done by Byakuran would disappear without a trace, dammit!" Colonello added.
"Eh!? Does that mean that Yamamoto's dad, Roksana's dad and step-mom and the people killed by Millefiore will come back?!" Tsuna asked, Marc and Roksana perking up.
"Their deaths will be erased too, I bet." Colonello said.
Roksana turned to look at her brother then.
"Hear that, Marc?" Roksana asked.
"So Mom and Father...?" Marc asked, looking at his sister with tears in his eyes.
"Yeah, you'll get to see them again." Roksana told him. A grunt left Roksana as her brother threw himself at her, wrapping his arms around her neck so that she now had two people hanging from her neck. "Okay, love you, too, but I'm seriously starting to have too many people crowd me at the moment."
Instead of making Ryoka or Marc release Roksana, Colonello jumped down from her lap, giving her some space.
"Wait, I'm sorry to damper things, but is rewriting other dimensions even possible? Can you even calculate such things?" Irie asked.
"You fool. The phenomenons caused by the Trinisette are far beyond human knowledge. Humans can accomplish nothing by tapping away at their computers when it comes to this. With what knowledge we currently have, we can explain the cause of the Trinisette as "a miracle", or "the will of someone"."
This came from a bespectacled infant by the name Verde.
"Are you sure you're not an old man with Benjamin Button Syndrome?" Roksana asked Verde as she looked down at him.
Verde merely clicked his tongue at her in annoyance while Skull and Colonello laughed at him. Even Reborn cracked a smile.
"But what'll we do if someone like Byakuran appears again, and they try to use the Mare rings?" Tsuna asked.
"Yuni sacrificed her life in order to prevent that from happening." Fon replied.
"Huh?!"
"With the aide of the Arcobaleno's revival, Yuni wanted her "flame of life" to be undying. This way, she would be able to seal away that Mare rings in the past-or in other words, your time, forever." Fon explained.
"It is possible...to seal the Mare rings in the past?" Tsuna asked.
"Yuni entrusted that task to us." Colonello replied.
"She sacrificed her life in order to create eternal peace." Fon added.
"Yuni did say you would be able to return to "a peaceful past"." Reborn said.
Tsuna shared a look with Roksana and the rest of his friends, all of them smiling. They would be able to return home to a peaceful time now, thanks to Yuni.
"Now it's your turn to make your wish come true." Irie said.
Finally, they could go home.
"Great. I'm going to go to bed for the next week." Roksana said, finally getting Ryoka and Marc to let go of her so she could get to her feet.
It was then that she caught the glare that Hibari was directing in her direction. She didn't know what she had done this time to anger him, so she merely rolled her eyes. As long as she had a bunch of people crowded around her, he wouldn't willingly approach her, so, for the time being, she was safe.
That is, until Mukuro opened his mouth.
"To actually get to see you in person after so many years of knowing you were dead...I was shock to hear you were killed over a child." Mukuro commented, looking down at Roksana with a grin on his face.
"And you look even more like a arrogant pansy in person. You have a point here?" Roksana retorted.
"I still haven't met anyone who could force me out like you did. I can still remember the feeling of you ripping me out of your body." Mukuro remarked. "Shall we see if you can still do it?"
Roksana wasn't quiet sure if he meant it as perverse as it sounded, but it was enough to trigger Hibari, who proved her wrong about thinking she was safe in a crowd. A loud groan left the exhausted girl as he scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder. She was far too tired to fight over this and merely pushed herself up away from Hibari's back, throwing a glare at the smirking Mukuro.
"I really hate you, Mukuro." she snapped as Hibari carried her away.
After being told that the Arcobaleno would be taking them home through the machine Irie had used to contain their future selves, they were told to say their final good-byes. Roksana, after finally getting Hibari to let her go by taking a shoe Marc threw her to whack him over the head, had just finally found a moment to herself, her mind going in several different directions.
"Are you going to heed Yuni's warning?"
Roksana raised her head, turning it to find Colonello and Fon standing not far from her, Reborn with them.
"I take it you got that through the flames, too?" Roksana asked.
"You are, indeed, a very intelligent girl." Fon told her.
"Intelligent enough to know you're not really babies." Roksana retort. When all three shared a look before fixing their eyes back on her, Roksana smiled. "You don't have to worry. No one has told me anything. I'd have to be stupid not to figure it out on my own. None of you talk or act like infants, and I've pieced bits of information together enough to form a usable picture."
"You aren't going to ask how we became like this?" Reborn asked.
"Nope." Roksana pushed herself to her feet, dusting off the back of her shorts. "I don't press you for answers, you have no right to press me for answers. I am well aware that you, like everyone else, wants to know who Nicoli is, but trust me...all of you are better off not knowing."
"So you're not going to heed Yuni's warning, dammit!" Colonello said.
"I didn't say that. I would have to be a fool not to take a warning from a reliable source. Like I've said before, I'm well aware that I will die someday by the hands of an assassin, but now that I've seen what the future could hold for me...I'll damned if I let it happen before I'm old and gray." Roksana said simply as she turned to walk past them. "Don't worry about me. I'm going to be around to tease and annoy everyone in the Vongola Family for a long time yet. I'm going to say my good-byes now."
Reborn, Fon and Colonello watched as Roksana hooked her fingers into the back pockets of her shorts as she walked away. Just judging from the expression they had seen in her eyes, they knew...she was going to fight come hell and high water, to keep that vow.
Roksana continued her way back towards the hatch leading into the Foundation hideout. In his rampage, Zakuro hadn't managed to destroy that part of the hideout. It was on her way there, that someone else stopped her.
Roksana came to a stop, taking a step back to avoid the knife that came flying at her head. Instead of hitting her, it embedded itself into a tree. Turning her head to the side, Roksana was confronted with the sight of Xanxus and his men. Roksana raised an eyebrow at them.
"Can I help you?" she asked.
Xanxus stared at her for a long moment before turning his nose up at her and turning away from her.
"Idiot trash. You caused a lot of issues when you died." he told her.
Roksana leaned her head back, peering over at him. She could almost swear that Xanxus was showing just the slightest bit of concern. Just a teeny, tiny, microscopic bit. So maybe his heart wasn't a withering black hole threatening to suck in everything around it.
"If you're expecting an apology, you're not going to get one. But...I'm happy to see you're alive, too." Roksana told him, waving a hand as she walked away. "By the way...the hair looks better longer. The buzz cut on the sides was awful."
Roksana leaned to the side to avoid the shot over her shoulder Xanxus took with his gun, a grin spreading across her face.
He really was too easy to mess with.
With that, Roksana returned to the Foundation hideout finding Hibari there, Ryoka sitting in his lap. The child seemed to be perfectly content in her father's lap while Marc and Kusakabe watched from the side.
"You know, I never took you as the type to tolerate children. Not even your own." Roksana said, coming to a stop beside him. Hibari didn't even bother looking up at her. Roksana merely shrugged her shoulders. "They're just about ready to send us back, so it's time to go."
Ryoka and Marc both jumped at Roksana then.
"Don't go, Mama!" Ryoka cried.
"You can't leave again!" Marc added.
"Calm down, you two." Roksana said, knelling before them. "Look, things around here are going to change. I might not have died due to something Byakuran did, but now that I have the warning, I'm not going to let it pass. I promise you two...I'm not leaving you."
"You swear?" Ryoka asked.
"To the heavens and back." Roksana replied.
With that assurance, Ryoka and Marc finally calmed down enough for them to leave. Kusakabe saw them out with a call to them to be safe. Ryoka and Marc went with Roksana and Hibari to meet up with the others.
"Alright! Everyone here? It's almost time, but first...I want everyone to leave their Vongola boxes here. Please remove them!" Irie told them.
Roksana pulled off all of her box weapons, looking at the wolf, leopon and phoenix that had made up her personal little team. She bid all three goodbye before handing them over to Irie. Everyone bid their box weapons goodbye before handing them over.
"Thanks for everything, Lal!" Tsuna called to Lal.
"I only watched over you kids, really." Lal replied. "Become a great boss, Sawada."
"Egh? I told you, I don't want to become boss-"
"Colonello!" Lal called, cutting off Tsuna's protest. "Make sure you properly take them back to a peaceful past!"
"Of course I will, dammit! These people saved our lives, after all!" Colonello replied.
"I usually don't use my powers unless I get money for it, but this time, I'll make a special exception." Mammon remarked.
"Once it's over, I'll come back, Lal." Colonello added.
"Idiot! In a place like this...!" Lal snapped, turning her back on Colonello.
Roksana crouched down next to Colonello, leaning down close to him to lower her voice.
"That would be cute...if you weren't in an infant's body." she told him lowly.
Colonello looked up at her and Roksana gave him a wink before she stood up straight once more, Colonello grinning.
"Okay, we're starting the time warp! The Arcobaleno will return once they've finished sealing the Mare rings of the past!" Irie called to them. "Now then...thank you for everything!"
"Goodbye!" Tsuna told Irie.
"Irie, you take care of my daughter and brother." Roksana told him.
"I will." Irie promised before hitting the button to send them all home.
During the warp through time back to their time, the Arcobaleno gave them a few different gifts. The first was the sealing of the Mare rings. The second gift they were given was that the Acrobaleno shared all the memories of what happened in the future with the past counterparts of everyone who had been there. The last was the gift that Roksana like the most. Even after having them leave their box weapons behind, the Arcobaleno gifted them back to them, but in the shape of rings this time around.
Roksana was even gifted with ring version of both Belyy and Notte, on top of Tsukuyomi. That brought her total ring count to five and saw to it that her hands resembled Gokudera's with all the rings, but Roksana was alright with that. All thoughts about the rings, though, were pushed aside when Roksana landed right on her front porch and she was confronted with the fact that they had been sent back right at the time they had disappeared. To those who hadn't taken part in the future fights, it would seem as if nothing happened.
Leaning back on her hands, staring up at the sky, Roksana heaved a sigh, taking a moment to breathe easy now that she was home once more. But she only allowed herself a moment before she pushed herself up. She had a lot of work to do if she wanted to insure that the personal future she saw for herself, didn't come to pass.
She wasn't going to go down without a fight.
-0-0-0-0-
Back in the future, Irie, with Marc and Ryoka at his side, was there to greet the adult counterparts of the Vongola Decimo generation as they were released from the machine. Ryoka let out a loud cheer of "Daddy!" before she threw herself at Hibari, the man catching her and lifting her easily.
"Welcome home." Irie greeted as the Arcobaleno joined them.
"We did shake up the ground a bit, but everything went well!" Colonello reported.
"Good work!" Irie told him.
"Oh...looks like now that they've gone back to the past, these guys have woken up from the machine." Colonello remarked.
"By the way," Gokudera started.
"Where's Tsuna?" Yamamoto finished.
"Ah. He'd gotten back before you. He should be up there." Irie told them.
Ready to see their boss again after all that had happened, they all headed for the surface. They found Tsuna standing over the coffin in the middle of the forest that had started the whole thing. Ryoka cheerfully started waving from her father's arms, cheerfully greeting Tsuna.
"Uncle Tsuna!" she called cheerfully.
Tsuna turned to greet his friends, though, his eyes traveled over the group, one face missing from the bunch.
"She's not here?" Tsuna asked, concerned.
"Yuni warned her. From there, it's up to her." Lal said.
"Well, there's only one way to find out if it worked." Yamamoto remarked.
Tsuna nodded.
"Let's go home." Tsuna said.
With Tsuna in the lead, they headed back towards the entrance for the untouched part of the hideout. All of them were anxious, praying and hoping that at least this one part of the future had changed. They cleared the trees and drew closer and closer to the entrance of the hideout. It was when the entrance came into view that they spotted a figure standing there, waiting. They closer they got, the more features they could make out.
The mature curves and lean frame, clad in form fitting pants, knee-high boots, and a purple halter top with a black leather jacket over it. Twin belts around a thin waist held the familiar shape of a pair of sansetsukons. The familiar curl of a grin, the stick of a lollipop poking out from between a pair of full lips, silver-blonde hair cut at chin length, all of it swept over to the left side, and the familiar twinkle of green-streaked, blue-purple eyes.
Ryoka, upon seeing this woman, wiggled until Hibari placed her on her feet. Her lips spreading wide in a hopeful smile, Ryoka started forward, but stopped half way when she noticed the more mature face, the scar that ran up from her collar bone and up the right side of her neck. Smiling at the sight of hesitation in the child, the woman crouch, holding her arms open.
"I told you I wouldn't leave you."
Hearing those words that had been spoken to her less than an hour before, hearing that accent-thick tone she had grown use to hearing over the last few weeks, Ryoka couldn't stop the tears that welled up in her eyes before she threw herself forward.
"Mama!"
Ryoka ran the rest of the way, throwing herself into the woman's arms. Wrapping her arms tight around the child, the woman stood, holding Ryoka close. Waiting on baited breath, believing the scene before them to be too good to be true. Raising eyes too unique to be a coincidence, the woman fixed her eyes on the rest of them, a smile curling her lips.
"Long time no see, guys. You just going to continue standing there, looking like you've seen a ghost?" she asked. "Unlike Hibari, I swear I don't bite."
Grins and smiles spread across their faces before they were all rushing forward.
They didn't know what she had done to change her future, they weren't sure what exactly the threat had been. They just prayed that the past Roksana could make this future, where she was alive and happy with them, come true.
After all, the family wasn't whole with Roksana there.
END
Kyandi: I just had to add in that little future scene.
Roksana: Sadly, that doesn't mean that's the future I'm going to see.
Kyandi: Nope. I just couldn't leave little Ryoka without a happy ending.
Roksana: All of you will just have to keep reading to find out what happens.
Kyandi: It's sure to be quite the ride.
Roksana: I suppose. Though, I can think of one person who didn't going to be happy with the next arc.
Kyandi: Oh, well. Hibari will get over it.
Roksana: I doubt that.
Kyandi: ...I kind of do too. Anyway, everyone enjoy and review!
Roksana: We'll be back tomorrow!
Kyandi: Bye-bye!