As Yamamoto used water from one of the boxes and a sword to fend off the attacks with ease, Hayato admitted that ten years had changed people.

He had nothing against it, really, because if someone didn't change for ten years, then that just meant they were useless and incompetent. Ten years of time and not a single improvement? They had to be stupidly lucky to not have died.

Miura Haru and Yamamoto Takeshi had changed. For the better? Hayato would grudgingly admit that maybe they had. Haru was no longer the clueless girl who focused on the weirdest things, and Yamamoto, for all that he had failed the most important thing, was, well, stronger. That much was obvious in the ease with which he held off their attackers.

Whereas he kind of wanted to meet his own future self, paradox of existence be damned, and punch him in the face because he had failed his duty to the Tenth, and left behind some useless junk and cryptic-ass messages.

"Wait, that's not how that works," said Haru when Hayato punched the hole in the box left in the bag and nothing happened, which, no shit. "Takeshi, stop showing off and actually teach him!"

Hayato pushed down the instinct to bristle at being taught by Yamamoto. He needed to push his pride aside for now.

"It's resolve, Gokudera," Yamamoto said calmly, holding one of the boxes up. Not the ones that had been in the bag he found – those, he still had on him – but one of his own. "You have to light your Flame with your will – otherwise, you'll be outdated."

Hayato was ready to snap at him at that – who the hell did he think he was, calling him outdated? – when, with the obnoxious popping sound, Yamamoto was engulfed in smoke.

"Oh, what the fuck," hissed Haru, right before she too was swallowed by smoke.

Not too far away from them, I-Pin – who had been behind Yamamoto, backing him up – also poofed into the familiar child that she was in his time.

His time.

As in, the three of them had changed into their selves from Hayato's time.

"Gokudera?" asked the idiot, with a fucking baseball bat in his hand.

"Hahi?" said Haru, looking around with increasing disbelief and confusion growing on her face.

Haru – the Haru of the future – had it right.

"Oh, what the fuck," swore Hayato.

"Gokudera-san! Language!" snapped Haru at that, because of course the dumb woman focused on weird details. Unlike her future self. "Also, where have you been? Where's Tsuna-san and Reborn-kun?"

Not that their confusion and sudden switches mattered much to that jackass in the sky.

"When the hell did you have time to change clothes?" the dumbass asked. "Well, whatever."

"Move!" he roared, grabbing Haru and pulling her to the side just as a barrage of red fire descended upon them. Haru screamed, but her voice was swallowed by the sound of destruction.

Lambo ran into the warehouse.

"Young Vongola!" he hissed, though his shoulders slumped when he saw him and Kyoko. "You found her. Good – we have to get out of here."

Tsuna tried as incongruously as he could to make gestures towards Kyoko, who was clearly from the past and not the Kyoko that the current Lambo should have expected.

"Tsuna-kun?" asked Kyoko, because Tsuna was not as subtle as he wanted to be, and she was probably super confused too. But then she smiled. "Thank god! Everyone's been looking for you, and Gokudera-kun and Reborn!"

"There you are."

Lambo whirled around and tried to do something, only to yell and fall back with a splurt of blood flying in the air. Kyoko gasped, and Tsuna just barely bit back a yell of surprise.

The one that had been looking for them earlier was back, and this time Kyoko hadn't been able to hide them, because Kyoko didn't know what was going on.

Tsuna grabbed at his gloves and the pills that Basil had given him. His hands were shaking, and he nearly dropped them, but right now he and Lambo were the only ones that could protect Kyoko. And Lambo was bleeding.

"It's okay," he said, forcing his tongue to move. "It's okay."

His attempt at optimism was rewarded with Lambo also being engulfed with smoke, and becoming his five-year old self.

It was like the entire universe was telling him that it was not okay.

Kyoko wished she could say she was dreaming.

Unfortunately, two things kept her from saying she was dreaming with absolute certainty. One, she'd lucid dreamed before, and it did not feel like how she felt now. Two, she was sitting on the cement ground in what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse, and while she would never enter such a place usually – and hadn't, at least not out of her own free will – she could feel the cold hardness and the gravel and garbage littered around on her skin.

And in front of her was a familiar head of spiky brown hair.

"Tsuna-kun?"

He looked just as surprised to see her as she was to see him. Odd, but he was a relief to see, because he hadn't gone home last night, and his mom was worried about him. She and Haru had been on their way to grab Yamamoto and start a search for Tsuna when she was suddenly in a warehouse with him.

Before Kyoko could get too deep into thoughts about Haru's theory that Tsuna had been kidnapped by aliens because he was too good for this earth, an unfamiliar man's voice made her snatch her gaze away from him.

"Well, well," he said. Kyoko didn't recognize him from anywhere, but she could guess a few things about him. One, he was a foreigner. Two, he was carrying a weapon – a scythe, but he didn't look like a farmer who liked to work the old-fashioned way. Which led to three – he was smiling, but it was a dangerous grin, like he meant them harm. "Looks like I nearly missed the jackpot."

What?

"I'm not all that fond of killing young girls," he said, and Kyoko really didn't like the sound of that, "so just close your eyes – it'll all be over in a second."

Fire, red and almost unreal, spread across the long blade of the scythe, and he swung it towards them.

Oh, said a distant part of Kyoko. He reaps people instead of plants.

The distance between them should have made that impossible, but the scarlet flames followed the path drawn by the sharp edge that didn't physically reach them and leapt across the space separating them.

Something scooped her up, holding her under her back and legs, and Kyoko's head nearly snapped back before she was cradled close. The sound of an explosion too close by made her flinch.

When Kyoko blinked and her eyes were able to focus, she was in Tsuna's arms,

"Tsuna-kun?" she said, because his head was on fire, and he was holding her in his arms. As for which one of the two were more surprising, Kyoko couldn't quite say. On one hand, Tsuna's head was on fire, but he did that sometimes. While also wearing only his underwear, which, thankfully, he was not this time.

On the other hand, it was also the first time since she was a very small child that someone had just lifted her like this, and Kyoko had no idea what to say or think about that.

"It's going to be okay."

Tsuna was no longer shaking. He sounded – not confident, because Kyoko knew what confidence sounded like. Tsuna's voice was too calm, too serene for just confidence. More – certain, and not because he knew something, but because he was quietly going to make sure that his words would be true.

It might not have been ambitious or confident outright, but that gave Kyoko more reassurance than anything.

"Okay," she whispered, lest she do something to ruin his focus. Right now, there were priorities, and she could figure out the details of just what was going on after.

Then, the man who attacked them flew into the air – at this point Kyoko pinched herself to make sure that this actually wasn't a dream, and found that unfortunately it still was not – and Tsuna put her down gently before also flying into the air, orange flames streaking behind him like a comet.

All in all, Reborn reflected when Tsuna and the others had returned, albeit with their group's average age decreased dramatically from when they had first left off, not as bad as it could have been.

He wasn't being optimistic. It was just genuine fact. No one had died. Tsuna was knocked out as soon as he arrived, but it was just exhaustion, nothing some rest wouldn't fix. Gokudera had learned how to use the Box Weapons of the future. Yamamoto was younger and also now injured from being suddenly changed into his past self in the middle of a fight and getting swept up in the fight he was switched into without any warning, but it was nothing he couldn't recover from.

The girls also being younger – alright, so that did give him a bit of a headache. Haru was with CEDEF, and a competent agent at that for hacking and data analysis. Kyoko was officially unaffiliated with the Vongola except by her brother, but unofficially she was a liaison with the Namimori Foundation and also an illusionist. Maybe not on par with the likes of Rokudo Mukuro or Chrome Dokuro, but one who could use illusions and crack them nonetheless, and given their sparse resources, an invaluable ally to have.

That the two had been reverted to their selves from ten years ago was a blow, especially because the girls of ten years ago were actual civilians who didn't know what was going on.

Reborn tapped at his protective suit. Did any of them know what was going on, though? Was it worth the time to remove that veil over their eyes? Sometimes, the struggle for survival brought out some excellent and unexpected results.

Haru had begun to cry after her initial denial, and though Kyoko was trying to comfort her friend, she had the pallor of a person in shock herself, and couldn't offer much in ways of comfort.

Understandably, the first thing Tsuna wanted when he woke up was to send them back.

There were a few kinds of people who excluded themselves from the possibility of death, and while Reborn was quite fond of correcting such erroneous assumptions usually, he made an exception this time.

Tsuna had raised his voice. Not out of fear or denial like he usually would when Reborn pushed him into danger, far out of his comfort zone, but anger. He was worried for the girls. For his friends, for himself. A weakness, some might think, to be so worried for the sake of others instead of just himself, and maybe not ideal in self preservation, but it was a strength in other ways, Reborn knew that.

It needed to be a strength now, a fuel to feed the Flames for his resolve. It needed to be strong, because otherwise they all could very easily die.

When the girls came, Tsuna calmed himself, or certainly struggled to do so, anyways. His poker face needed work, a part of Reborn noted, but the girls did not press, recognizing the situation to be stressful and unusual. When Reborn requested they leave the room so he could talk, they did so without arguing.

They were all kids, and they were scared and unsure. And though Reborn's poker face was far better than Tsuna's, he also had his fair share of trepidation as well. Not just because of his own assessment and observations – though that was, as always, the primary reason behind his line of thinking and decision making – but also because of Lal, and what she informed him of regarding the future they were in.

"We can't stay here," gasped out Tsuna. "We have to go back. We have to!"

He was agitated, on the verge of an anxiety attack, and Reborn stayed calm because appearances mattered. He needed to be an absolute, something Tsuna could look at as familiar and unchanging.

So when Tsuna shouted at him to forget the damn guardians and rings, Reborn merely laid out facts. If he wanted for them to all go back to their own times, then the fastest and safest way was going to be to focus on the guardians, and gathering them.

"That's right, Tenth!" Gokudera pulled out the letter encrypted by the Gokudera of the future, and read it out loud once more.

"'Gather the guardians, use the Vongola Rings to defeat Byakuran. Remove the man in glasses. Everything will return to its place.'"

Short, and some room for interpretation once the G-script was decoded, but Reborn could think more on that later. The Gokudera of the future had left that message to those coming from ten years ago, specifically using a cipher crafted by the Gokudera of that time to ensure they would know it, and so double and triple encryption was less likely.

"I thought they were instructions meant for my future self," said Gokudera, whose brain was working far better now that his anger had stopped clouding his mind. "But Tenth, remember what Yamamoto said earlier? The Vongola Rings - "

"Were broken," Tsuna realized as well. Which meant the letter was addressed towards those who would still have them. Reborn smiled at their piecing things together. It had distracted Tsuna from his near-panic attack, and now offered him a goal.

Reborn put a target on that objective, so that Tsuna would pursue it with everything he had.

"In other words, this is for all of you that came from the past. If we follow this message, gather the guardians, defeat Byakuran and remove the man in glasses, then we can return to our time."

And Lal Mirch had already identified the mysterious man in glasses.

"Remove him?!"

Tsuna was focusing on the moral issue of murdering someone, which Reborn took as a good sign. It meant that he had enough peace of mind to be considering luxuries like that.

"We'll chastise him," he lied through his teeth.

Tsuna very clearly did not believe him, but Yamamoto's cheer shone through.

An arm thrown around his shoulder nearly knocked Tsuna off-balance, but that same arm kept him upright.

"Relax, Tsuna," said Yamamoto. "You're not alone, remember? We're all here, and we'll all get out of this mess together."

Reborn could see the exact moment when Tsuna's mind brought up the fact that currently, Yamamoto's father was killed. His face blanched and he nearly bit his tongue stuttering out words. "Y-Yamamoto! Your father . . . ."

Yamamoto Takeshi's mental strength and resiliency was pretty remarkable. He had his moment of hesitation, back when he hadn't quite been able to see what would make him stronger, but he had come to learn how to overcome that. The boy who had once stood on the roof of the school wondering about his own end was far stronger now, strong enough to support his friend, despite the blows his own sources of strengths had taken.

"I'm glad I'm here. Or, now, I guess? The future? Whatever here and now is."

"Huh?" said Tsuna, confused not at the question of whatever the proper terminology to use in their case was, but at why he was glad to be in such a terrible future.

"If this is the future," said Yamamoto, eyes unwavering. "Then it means we have a chance to change it with our own hands and make it better."

That was something Tsuna needed to hear – the promise, unsaid but strong, that he was not alone in this, and that there was something they could do to get back to what they wanted.

As if Yamamoto's words had set off dominos, Gokudera snapped at Yamamoto, falling into their usual one-sided argument, and then Haru and Kyoko and the younger ones came stumbling in – still scared, still unsure, but also not willing to just lie back frozen with fear.

"I asked them to look after the kids," Reborn told Tsuna, who was staring at the transformation the girls had undergone in that short time. The human mind was relatively simple, in that it was easily distracted. The greatest fears looming over them, if not directly in front of their eyes, could be shuffled back a little in priority when faced with a suitable distraction. Like, say, a hyper child who was active enough for five other children in his peer group.

A distraction wasn't exactly worth losing Lambo and I-Pin in more useful ages with higher chances of survivability, but if that was the trade-off needed because of the rings, then Reborn would have to take it. And so would Tsuna, if he wanted to survive. If he wanted all of them to survive and return.

Tsuna's objective was set, as was his motive. And now, his resolve hardened.

Good. They needed every last bit and then more to pull off a miracle.

Happy New Year to everyone! I did not get many updates in 2021 so here's hoping I'll do better this year (how the hell did I once manage weekly updates on this story)

+ﾟ*｡:ﾟ+

Sweet Dreams~