A day later he makes it through a full class of gym without tripping once or getting the ball smashed in his face. The week after that, his English homework comes back with a respectable 72%. It's not long after that that people start getting suspicious.

Little girls are made of salt and vinegar and bad intentions.

"What a pitiful body. All those sinew and bones, that faint beating heart." The first one says, in a mockingly loving voice, its hand pressing into the glass until it passes it completely and touches the child. The small form of the baby stills, and the monitors attached stutter for a second before starting again. "I don't know how I will ever fit all of me in you."

Harry Potter goes back in time. Harry Potter goes back in time. Harry Potter goes back in time x20. All Harry Potters who go back in time end up in the same place.

So he sees McCree, and thinks: cast-off loyalty, scented cigars, blood stained grin. He thinks of the feeling of slim muscle under his hands as he corrected a stance, the hollows of too little food and too much activity, that first mission where he brushed bits of bone out of auburn hair. He thinks: I wanted this man at some point. I wanted him.

One day she wakes up, and knows. Knows everything there is to know, or at least it feels like it. It's in her blood, in the air she breathes, it's in the slow blink of her eyes and the almost-panic running through her veins. If she could she would cry.

They pick the bot up a couple miles out of Eichenwalde, a tiny blot of red against the backdrop of the otherwise empty scanner.

The explosion doesn't just take their lives, it takes their memories too.

Reborn enters into the Sawadas' household, but doesn't realize that what was Iemitsu's little boy is now his young daughter.

Something forgotten is remembered. Someone lost is found. Power is only as good as how you use it.

What would it take to sustain a soul?

He stumbles between worlds like a drunk on a Friday, a little sloppy with it. He drags one hand between the stardust space of Limbo and doesn't bother to look at the metaphoric walls he bumps into. There's a split of a second when he's two places at once, a veritable Cheshire cat in a dark coat, and then he lands gracelessly in a dingy alleyway.

He wakes up in chains and the first thing he says into the tense line of soldiers that surround him is, "Not again."

Reborn touches down in Namimori just as Sawada Tsunayoshi leaves it.

Time snaps like a thread. (If by the end of the story, the woman isn't dead so that the hero can triumph over personal evil, the story is a tragedy and the hero dies.)

Your magic comes in early, and it is very very strong. You scream as fire licks the aravel, as it blisters your flesh and sparks up into the sky. Your clan screams with you. Later, there will be talk of death. Of demons. There will be no later for you.

They need her. Need her for the mark and for her power. She smiles and says nothing.