The Vongola and Reborn were both crazy. That was probably why they had such great synergy with each other, except their interactions weren't a simple addition, but a more complex multiplication. More complex, as in more chaotic and risk of coronary disease elevating for literally everyone else.

That was the basic gist of Dino's thoughts when he was assigned the job of teaching Hibari Kyoya how to fight. The sadistic hitman and the Vongola Family thought that taking civilian teens and setting them in a match against the Varia – the Varia – in a fight to determine who would be the next leader of the strongest Famiglia in Italy and the world was a good idea.

Gods, but it sounded absolutely insane when he said it like that.

But Dino was, for all that they were allies trustworthy enough to be entrusted with something like this, still an outsider to the Vongola and had no say in matters like this. All Dino could offer was his support to make sure their ship did not sink. The Cavallone was outclassed by the Vongola, but what they needed right now was not money, or information, or weapons.

What the future generation of the Vongola Decimo needed more than anything right now, in a very time-sensitive period that could literally make or break them, were trustworthy people. It was a sad day when they had to be careful of people even within their own family in fear of betrayal, and ironic that they had to 'outsource' to allied families instead of their own.

It was, he had to admit, his habit of looking to the bright side something ingrained in his very soul after Reborn was through with him, more entertaining than working on paperwork, and a lot more pressing, too. Xanxus being confirmed alive, and the Varia moving to make him the Vongola Decimo was bad news. If the Vongola's leader became someone as tyrannical as he was, unable to care about the weak and volatile, 'bad news' wouldn't even begin to cover it. Italy would be bathed in blood, and whether the Cavallone stayed as allies or not, they would be affected regardless.

Teaching a problematic kid? The least Dino could do to prevent that kind of a future.

Reborn assessed Hibari Kyoya to be the strongest of the future guardians, and as he faced him, whip against tonfa, Dino had to agree with him. This kid fought for the purpose of fighting. He fought because it was engraved into his very being like the cells that made up his body, and it was his method of communicating, of testing one's mettle. Whether one was worthy of being acknowledged or not.

In terms of appearances alone, he looked like a young prince, a son of a noble, but he was a wild soul, through and through. He picked fights with those who crossed him, living by his own rules above that of social norms and conventions.

And he had the talent to back it up.

"Not bad, Kyoya," he said. The Japanese had a culture of not calling each other by the given name unless very close, he knew when he studied before arriving in Japan to help with Tsuna's education. Not quite like the concept of magical folks being sensitive about their names for safety, but he wasn't Japanese, so who knew.

Hibari Kyoya's eyes narrowed as if irritated, and Dino smirked. He was strong, of that there was no doubt.

But he could be even stronger, and what was the job of a tutor if not to help his student exceed?

"You're too used to straightforward attacks," he criticized. "You need more flexibility."

The whip snapped, its length giving Dino not only reach but also unpredictability.

There was no information on a possible candidate for the Varia's Cloud Guardian. Hibari Kyoya needed to be prepared for the worst so that he came out fine regardless of what he was thrown against.

As if picking up on his thoughts, a tonfa nearly smashed his face in, and Dino only dodged it by an inch.

Unfortunately, Hotaru wasn't able to press Gokudera for more information, because of two specific strangers.

"A blond man and a doctor who looked like Gokudera-san?" Haru repeated.

Hotaru nodded. American television shows had prisoners in orange jumpsuits, and if it hadn't been for the pickaxe and safety helmet that suggested he was more of a construction worker than a prison escapee with an odd attachment to his prison's uniform, that would have been Hotaru's first impression of the rugged man with blond hair cut short, his height taller than even Haruka, who was present in the field where Gokudera was blowing things up with a vengeance.

Well, no, the pickaxe was still weird, but still.

"It's pretty dangerous around these parts," he had said, after he noticed her. Hotaru refrained from telling him that the very tall, muscularly built man in a construction worker's standard clothes wielding a pickaxe was what looked most dangerous to her around these parts, because his eyes, at least, were concerned. He didn't look like an axe-crazy serial killer because of his eyes. "Do you need me to walk you back to town?"

Hotaru looked towards the direction where Gokudera was currently engaged in conversation with a man wearing a doctor's coat. The man had a darker skin tone, like Setsuna, but there was something similar between the two of them, and not just their hairstyles.

Although the identical way they wore their hair definitely helped with that impression, Hotaru added in thought.

There went the half-formed plan to offer more healing to Gokudera in exchange for information on just what the boys were up to. Maybe they needed to have a closer talk with Takeshi or Kyoko's brother. Hotaru was fairly sure that if she mentioned making sushi at home with ice cube trays, Takeshi's father would be so horrified that he'd be summoned immediately to TakeSushi by sheer force of willpower and indignity.

"I'm okay," she said at last, because stranger danger meant she didn't just walk back into town with a strange man, even if he had good eyes. Also, Setsuna would suffer from instant hypertension the moment she saw him with Hotaru, so. "But thank you."

And then, because he seemed to have some common sense in understanding that a field filled with pits from explosions were dangerous, which was probably more than what could be said of half the people in this town, Hotaru asked, "Do you know what they're doing?"

The blond man had an odd look on his face at that, and Hotaru thought there was something about his eyes that were strangely familiar, and not just in the sense that they weren't filled with ill will. Concern, but also a steadiness that wasn't easily noticed at first yet adamantly, firmly there.

Where had she seen that kind of resolve, as obvious as a baseline in someone?

"What do you think they're doing?" he returned with a question.

For a moment, Hotaru felt the urge to be childish and say that she had asked first, but after that moment passed, decided being immature to a stranger wasn't in her best interests.

This town and its cryptic men. It was probably Kawahira's fault, somehow.

"He says he's training."

And that was obvious, but training shouldn't be so self-destructive. She would know, she had to go through a lot of training for not just rehabilitation, but to try and catch up to the others, to make up for her absence of powers.

There was training, and then there was being stupid.

"You don't believe him?" The man sounded amused, and sure enough, the corner of his mouth was pretending to be a compass, pointing northwards.

Hotaru thought about first time she came upon his 'training', the wounds that had littered Gokudera's body, to the point where her first reaction had been to heal before asking any questions.

And Gokudera hadn't even been all that concerned about it.

"He's doing a terrible job of training." It came out a lot more clipped than she intended. Oops.

In her defense, Hotaru was on short patience recently. Half of her friends – the dumb half, Kawahira might say, to which Hotaru would verbally correct as the male half without really disagreeing with him at this point – were playing MIA and being secretive, and if Gokudera was an indication of what they were up to, which he was since she had no other reference points, then they were being very stupid.

"Is he now?"

The stranger sounded like he was asking a rhetorical question.

Hotaru chose not to answer, partly because it sounded like he agreed with her, and partly because she had just remembered that he was a stranger and she didn't owe him anything, not even further conversation.

The thought might have shown on her face, because he smiled sheepishly and offered a large hand for her to shake. "Sawada Iemitsu."

Never mind the manners – nothing against them, just odd that he was treating her like an equal instead of a younger person, a little foreign, especially considering that even the other sailor soldiers tended to be protective about her – but that last name?

Hotaru was probably being rude, but she held off on taking the extended hand to ask a question.

"Do you have a son?"

"I do." There were lines around his eyes, faint but there, and they deepened as he smiled. "Are you friends with Tsuna?"

Hotaru nodded slowly and tried to match Iemitsu's face to Tsuna's in her head. No one would deny that Takeshi was Tsuyoshi's son, but on the matter of this father-son duo, there might be more discourse.

He looked nothing like Tsuna, she thought as she belatedly shook the hand he offered, was still offering like she hadn't ignored it for a while. But he was also here, around Gokudera – who was Tsuna's friend – and the mountain where Tsuna was also training. Insane as that was.

Suddenly Hotaru was very tired. "Is Tsuna doing something as crazy as that?"

Haru hadn't mentioned anything like that, but just to be sure.

Sawada Iemitsu looked at Hotaru's frustrated gestures towards Gokudera with a crooked grin. "No."

Good. Then she just had to check on one other idiot to make sure he wasn't being self-destructive.

"He's doing a terrible job of training because he's mistaking the means and the end." It wasn't just because she was answering his earlier question. She just wanted to vent. Wanted to spill her frustrations on someone who wouldn't know. Poor Sawada Iemitsu just happened to have bad timing and ask her the right – or maybe it was wrong – question at a time when she was just tired and stressed and cranky. "Everyone dies but there's a difference."

A difference between the inevitable and the unfortunate. A difference between a death of old age in bed after a long life and a death in a fight, a murder, a suicide.

Gokudera was too reckless. Sailor Saturn had trained so fiercely for months precisely because of the nature of her powers, that of destruction. She trained because she didn't want to have to pull out her final resort, to end everything including herself. She trained so that she could fight, and at the end still return home with a smile with those that she loved so much.

Life was a gift, and that Gokudera disregarded his own so caustically grated at Hotaru's nerves since the previous day, and she hated that she had been about to take advantage of that.

And that was the main source of her anger, that she saw him being so callous about his life and wanted to use it to sate her curiosity. She was enabling his bad habit.

Was that what Kawahira had foreseen, and tried to indirectly warn her about?

"Heh." Tsuna's father huffed out a short laugh, snapping Hotaru out of a spiral of irritation towards both Gokudera and herself. He looked amused, and freely so, like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. There was a little something in the way his eyes curved that did resemble Tsuna's smiles, Hotaru thought. "You're a good friend, aren't you?"

Was she? Her mood sank further.

"Look a little closer, let's see if we can't appease your worries." He pointed towards the man in the white coat, who chose that moment to give Gokudera a smack. Not one to take something like that lying down, Gokudera snapped back in reply, the exact details of his words muffled by the distance.

"He's quite the character, but that doctor's still a doctor, at the end of the day. He'll set an edgy teenage boy who doesn't fully understand the weight of his own life back straight."

Sawada Iemitsu picked up his pickaxe and set it on his shoulders, like a miner about to go off to work. "And even if he can't reach through, Gokudera has some good friends like you to make sure his head's screwed on properly."

He left with that, and Hotaru stayed a little longer. With the doctor, Gokudera was far less self-destructive, for sure. There was direction in his movements, not just blind destruction that hurt even him.

It stung, a little, and Hotaru didn't want to know why.

Uncle Mori dropped off food for them so they wouldn't starve, since neither Takeshi nor Tsuyoshi had the time to cook for themselves. Tsuyoshi because he was teaching Takeshi, and Takeshi because he was fairly sure he was about to be one with the planks of the dojo.

"Tomoe-chan came by again today," the other chef told Tsuyoshi, loud enough for Takeshi to overhear even through his exhausted collapse on the floor. "Might want to tell Takeshi that if he keeps treating his girlfriend like that, he won't have one soon enough."

His face was hot because of the exertion, Takeshi told himself, putting an arm over his eyes. Or where his eyes would be, if it weren't for the wired mask he wore for protection.

Takeshi's dad chuckled, the first laugh he gave since they started their training.

He was going to have to make up for that. If Hotaru was coming by and worrying, then she was going to be angry when he finally showed his face.

The sound of Uncle Mori leaving reached his ears, and the doors slid open to let his dad in, carrying the containers in his hands. The same hands that wielded a wooden sword with a terrifying strength and skill, one that left Takeshi staring with awe even while he was fighting to defend himself.

A mountain of a man, almost unfamiliar to Takeshi despite having been the person who was in his life the most.

And right now, he was back to being Dad.

"Let's eat, Takeshi," he said, sitting on the floor with a grunt. There was inari sushi, rice, an assortment of what seemed to be the day's leftovers from the store.

Honestly, Uncle Mori could have just brought him the store's trash and Takeshi might have eaten it gratefully. He was starving.

"By the way," Dad added as he handed Takeshi his chopsticks. "He's right, you know."

The words he'd been trying to not think about rushed right back in and Takeshi groaned.

It did absolutely nothing to deter his father. "To be honest I thought you'd end up liking Haru."

"Dad," moaned Takeshi, face burning. "Dad, no. It's not like that."

Tsuyoshi raised his eyebrows. "So you're not avoiding Hotaru because you realized you have a crush on her?"

Takeshi shook his head and cleared his throat to make sure that his voice wouldn't break. Only after he did that did he realize how much more suspicious that would look, but it was too late by then. The faint lines of his dad's face deepened with an amused grin and Takeshi's face, somehow, got hotter.

"I'm training," he pointed out, because that was the priority right now. Takeshi didn't have much time before the scheduled rematch. "And I wouldn't avoid her because of . . . I wouldn't avoid her."

He wasn't avoiding her, he was just making sure that this didn't affect her. Not like it did with the incident back then, with Kokuyo. Hotaru shouldn't have been involved, but she was, and Takeshi could do nothing except watch as she was attacked with acid. Acid.

The thing that their science teacher always told them to be careful about, the liquid that Takeshi never really ever thought as threatening because it was always in a bottle and no one was dumb enough to spill that on each other despite the warnings about accidents happening.

It hadn't been an accident, that day. Hotaru being able to heal herself didn't matter. Truthfully, in that moment, Takeshi had forgotten about the power she had, heart seized with terror for his friend, and him watching from afar through a screen.

Friend. A friend who was not going to be involved with this. Takeshi hadn't known she could heal things like acid burns, and he didn't want to know how well she could heal wounds made by swords. On her or not.

For that, he had to win without any injuries. A flawless victory, just as flawless as the Shigure Soen Ryu.

"Takeshi." His dad was serious, but the words that followed didn't really deserve that kind of seriousness. "You've inherited the best parts of mine and your mother's features. Have confidence in your looks."

His mind, being a traitor, decided to pull up memories from that Valentine's Day when the girls were talking about their types and Hotaru saying that she liked people who had beautiful smiles and he needed to stop now.

"Can we eat?" he asked, deciding to change the subject. Right now, what Takeshi needed to think about wasn't feelings he may or may not have had about his oldest friend, but about feeding himself and getting more training in.

Tsuyoshi nodded, but Takeshi didn't miss the teasing glint in his eyes. Ears burning, Takeshi all but buried his face into his food.

This was more like it, Basil thought as Sawada Tsunayoshi rushed him with an animalistic, almost feral roar. This was more like what Basil had expected, the reaction he probably deserved.

But even in that rush, the primal state of nothing but the overwhelming will to fight death and live, the feeling he was familiar with after going through similar training so he could survive, Basil did not sense bloodlust, or murderous intent, or hate.

Because he doesn't know, whispered the voice of the serpent, forked tongue hissing in his ear like a ghost haunting him. It was Gabriel's voice, like it had been that day when he told Basil about Iemitsu's family and how his existence had ruined the happiness of a happy couple and their beloved son, just like how he ruined Matteo.

'You're a destroyer of family, who robs sons and fathers from their family.'

The efforts of all of CEDEF made it so that Basil was never again alone with Gabriel again, and tried to hammer into him how it wasn't his fault, how none of them resented him, and that he was not, despite what the 'old fart' said, a cursed child.

They were more than he deserved.

Not this family, Basil thought, determined to make that true. No son would be robbed from the Sawada household.

'You must live, Basil.' His master had said that to him, a heavy but warm hand on his shoulder. It was a source of comfort, a shackle that tied him to the responsibility of living in honor of those that had died because of him, and a proof of salvation, what he clung to as his faith for years when he faltered in his path, when he just wanted to close his eyes and stop, to quit.

He had to live, Sawada Iemitsu told him, and so Basil lived because of the words of the man who saved him.

And now, to the person who had hurt the most because of him, who he robbed of something so precious, Basil had a chance to return those very words to him.

"Thou must live, Sawada-dono," said Basil. Live with the will to die.

He didn't seem to have understood the full implications of what Basil said, and that was fine. It wasn't his place to throw Sawada Tsunayoshi into the kind of atmosphere that would require him to fully understand what he was asking of him.

"Thou art willing to die too much."

And Sawada Tsunayoshi could not die.

It wasn't a question of mortality, or whether he could or couldn't die. Everyone could and would die.

But to Basil, Sawada Tsunayoshi was the one person who was not allowed to die – at least, not before Basil, not when there was anything Basil could do about it. Of everyone in the world, the boy who was his age, his biggest victim who didn't even know what Basil had done to him, was not allowed to die.

Even if it meant Basil's own life.

"I thought you were going to show up wearing a mask pretending to be someone else," Reborn said sardonically.

Iemitsu smiled, but it came across more as a grimace. "Yeah. Not exactly father of the year, huh?"

Reborn could have offered words of comfort. He could have told her that given Iemitsu's situation, that was the most realistic and safe decision he could make for his son while keeping him away from the mafia until it was no longer a possibility.

But he wasn't paid to be kind, and that was hardly his nature, let alone job.

Instead, he decided to tell him something both could see coming up on the horizon, at this trajectory. "You're going to regret it."

Iemitsu laughed, but it was more a wheeze, the kind expressed when pained. "I already am."

If it was just that, Reborn might have let him be. But he'd been looking after Tsuna for nearly two years, close to the boy, so he figured he could say a little more.

"Word of advice," he said, because he'd been there, done that, gotten the t-shirt that labelled him 'shitty dad'. "The 'I'll protect the kid from a distance so I don't hurt them with my very existence' isn't as good a choice as it seems in the heat of the moment."

Reborn would know. He had years of regret he was still suffering from. Aria was an angel, and some days he still wondered how he had fathered such a person.

The answer, of course, was that her mother was Luce.

"You're probably right," admitted Iemitsu. Reborn sharply raised an eyebrow at the 'probably' but decided to let it go for now. There was a file in Iemitsu's hands, and the head of CEDEF wouldn't have just come for idle chat.

He extended a small hand towards Iemitsu, who handed over the file. "During our first checks, we missed this because the agent who was investigating didn't make the connection. In the second checks, a different agent was looking into them, and saw the similarities."

Reborn pulled out the papers and froze when he saw the profile picture on the front page. Other than the headshot, there were more candid photos as if to hammer in the nails.

"Unfortunately, that's the only connection. That's why we didn't notice the first time around – we didn't have any reason to be suspicious if we didn't see-"

"Bullshit." The word was hoarse.

But Iemitsu said nothing, as Reborn read through the report. If gazes were physical, the reports would have been shredded into confetti.

Chiba Mamoru was a remarkable person, on paper. He graduated top of his class, having been a model student even while growing up without parents. He graduated as valedictorian in university and became a doctor, and in the hospital, he was a leader without being arrogant, well-liked by his colleagues. He was just, speaking out against superiors when their actions or orders clashed with his moral code, and leading changes in the hospital where it was needed. He started work a few months back with Doctors Beyond Borders, voluntarily entering an unstable country for the sake of helping others. While his assignment was nearing its end, he had nothing but glowing reviews from his coworkers in the organization.

He was, as tall, handsome young doctors even without his kind of personality and achievements were, very popular with female coworkers, but he was happily married and faithful to his wife.

He was, on paper, a perfect man. As if he had walked off the pages of a romance novel into reality.

All of that, however, became suspect. Even as the report concluded with absolute certainty that there was no connection, Reborn bristled like a wounded beast whose injuries had been prodded. This wasn't just Reborn the hitman tutor of the Vongola Decimo candidate – this was Reborn the Arcobaleno.

And both had been hit with a glove to the face.

"You're sure," he said at last, not at all happy about this.

"Positive." Iemitsu's answer was instantaneous. "We even acquired a DNA sample, although we can't compare it, obviously. Think you can manage?"

"I'll see what I can do," he answered, eventually. If anyone could get away with making this ridiculous request to one of the oldest Famiglia in Italy, it was probably him.

Ridiculous, but it needed to be checked. Reborn went over his memory, drawing up a rather sparse family tree. Was there a chance, any chance where there was an unrecorded branch? A bastard child that slipped away?

"It could be coincidence," said Iemitsu, playing the Devil's advocate. So he felt it too, that despite all these coincidences, an infinitesimally small odd that came to be, Tomoe Hotaru was not a threat.

After all, that was life. Coincidences and similarities did happen. Sometimes the long shot was the shot that made it. A coin could land on tails six times consecutively. Lightning could strike twice in the same place.

But there were too many coincidences at play, related to Tomoe Hotaru, and neither of them had survived for as long as they had by dismissing coincidences.

"What does your intuition say?" he asked. At the end of the day, sometimes things were best left up to that of primal origins. Because facts were facts, but Reborn had seen something beyond conventional logic and science far too many times to just blindly follow only what was 'rational'.

He survived by following his gut instincts, and his senses, attuned to danger and threats towards his life, said that despite all this, Tomoe Hotaru was not a threat, even as experience screamed that he would be foolish to dismiss everything as coincidence.

Iemitsu rubbed at the front of his face, the inheritor of another such keen intuition that bordered on the supernatural. "The same thing as all your reports – that she's not a threat."

And wasn't that a thorn in the shoe?

AN: A part of me is worried that readers will have figured out the big secret with this chapter and what's already revealed in Timeline, Trivia and TMI. But that's okay, there's more secrets (this person). As seen in earlier chapters, I suck at writing fight/training scenes so if they seem skimpy, you know why. Unfortunately for me the next chapter is the beginning of the ring battles.

TL;DR:

Hotaru: insane that people are training in mountains who does that.

Also Hotaru: *intense training at Titan Castle, Saturn*

+ﾟ*｡:ﾟ+

Takeshi: I've got to keep Hotaru safe!

Hotaru: *sailor soldier of destruction, bearer of a planet's star seed, second most powerful being in the solar system* What is he even up to these days?

+ﾟ*｡:ﾟ+

Reborn: yeah the 'keep your kid safe by staying away' is a sucky strategy take it from me.

Iemitsu: I'll take that into consideration.

+ﾟ*｡:ﾟ+

CEDEF, Reborn: *seriously suspicious of Hotaru due to circumstances but lacks actual proof, and cannot for life of them feel like she's a threat to Tsuna*

Hotaru: *actually not a threat, at least not in the way they think* ?

+ﾟ*｡:ﾟ+

Sweet Dreams~