Title: Here Be Dragons

Summary: Reborn is a dragon. The Arcobaleno have seen weirder shit. Nothing much changes.

Background: Dragons exist

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Skull bounds out of the driver seat into the fading daylight and skittered up to the large garage attached to the very first house (more of a shack) he lived in after he left the circus.

The other Arcobaleno pile out of the small van with various wincing and groans of pain after this last bastard of a mission. None of them have slept for three days now, snakes suck, and there is one less Mafia famiglia on this earth. (That wasn't part of the mission, they all just got pissed off.)

Luce couldn't make it to the job because the Giglio Nero famiglia had some kind of information breech and she needed to deal with that. One hundred percent; it was Viper, even if no one can prove it.

Lal is supporting a limping Colonnello out of the van, who is not actually an Arcobaleno but follows Lal around so much they've sort of adopted the blond.

Lal is bloodied, none of it her own, and is still grumbling about losing her shotgun in that one guy's stomach. How did a gun end up lodged in someone's stomach? Don't ask Lal, because she will explain in excruciating detail.

Fon is back to his calm, if a bit wooden smile, because he probably got all that stress and anger out when he lost his shit and disintegrated half a damn parking lot along with the people hiding behind the cars as cover.

Verde looks messed up after taking that rocket launcher to the face. Lightning flames can harden skin, as it turns out, and the scientist is completely uninjured, but it still scared the shit out of Verde.

Viper has several extra limbs, not all of them human, and is taller than they should be. It is not Mist flames, it's just Viper - whatever they are. Honestly, no one has bothered to ask since they don't have enough money to pay for a proper answer.

Skull died. Twice. The others were not happy with him, because he should have been able to dodge that last one.

Either way, Skull is happy now because he volunteered a safe house for everyone to rest at before they head back to Italy. This house (shack) in the middle of nowhere brings back great memories, and the surrounding dirt bike tracks are amazing.

Skull squats down in front of the large and very rusted garage door to pull out the deadbolt. It's not locked since there's nothing of worth in here to steal. He grabs the bottom and hauls up, the metal rattling with a sickly shudder as it rolls over the top of the garage, slamming loudly to a halt.

There is a dragon.

It is pitch black with a honey-yellow underbelly, curled up on top of Skull's oldest and now crushed car, surrounded by big wooden crates and pretty glass cabinets holding enough guns and ammunition to arm a small country.

Skull checks with the others to make sure Verde hasn't drugged him again and they all seem pretty shocked to see a dragon, which is both good and bad news.

Skull shrugs at the other Arcobaleno. "Is that going to be a problem?"

The dragon very pointedly turns away from them and makes loud, fake snoring noises.

Fon spins on a heel. "I'll get our bags out of the van."

"I'll help!" Colonnello volunteers.

"You can't walk," Lal complains. "Come in and sit down."

Skull just goes with it because apparently no one else is concerned, this must be a normal thing.

Everyone else is taking it in stride because Skull is a weirdo, obviously he'd have a dragon in his garage.


Fon tucks his hands into his sleeves, sitting on the roof and watching the dragon pace the backyard, stretching out its wings.

"I see you are a western dragon," Fon calls out. "Are there perhaps eastern dragons as well?"

"I've seen some at a distance," the dragon admits without even opening its mouth, sounding like a human male with a pretty voice. "Hard to travel out of Europe with my hoard."

It -he?- nods to the garage, presumably the guns. "I can't carry it when I fly and everyone loses their minds when weapons get smuggled onto planes, you know how it is." The dragon rolls his eyes, the eyeballs black and half blending with the scales of his face.

"Oh," Skull says from beside Fon on the roof. "You can talk."

The dragon looks up at them and sneers, razor sharp teeth showing. "I'm surprised you can speak, human. You look like someone pulled you out of the trash."

Skull reels back in shock. "Rude!"

"Do you disagree?"

Skull splutters. "Whatever, it's my aesthetic."


Colonnello is sitting on a rickety plastic fold out chair, bad leg propped up on the hood of the squished car and caressing a nice rifle he dug out of a crate. "Are you still growing or are all dragons this small?"

The dragon, named Reborn as they found out yesterday, makes a low hissing noise and sits up on the battered vehicle. "I'm small to fit inside this garbage heap of a house! My true form is the size of a mountain!"

"Like a small mountain?" Colonnello clarifies.

Reborn stares at Colonnello and his chest, the honey-yellow underbelly, abruptly grows to a blinding white from the fire building within.

Before the blond can do much more than tense, the light putters out as fast as it ignited and the dragon lies back down onto the car.

"Like a big hill," Reborn hedges. "Whatever, I'm big enough."

"Can you get even smaller?"

Colonnello is later seen with a palm-sized dragon in hand, Reborn rolled over onto his back and rumbling as the blond pets his tummy.

Reborn kicks his little legs around in the air. "Higher, higher!"

Colonnello scratches up the dragon's chest.

"Yessss," Reborn hisses, tail repeatedly slapping Colonnello's arm.


"Shouldn't you be in a cave, though?" Lal asks, muffled a bit because she's half inside a glass cabinet to pull out the Malvagio series of handguns. "Stop me if I'm being racist or something."

"Caves are fine," Reborn says dismissively, hanging upside down from the ceiling as a person-sized dragon, claws dug into the chipping brickwork. "I just think I deserve better, you know? I want comfort, not a mildly wet tunnel."

Lal comes out of the cabinet with a shotgun. "You seem fine in here and it's not much better than a cave, honestly."

Reborn sighs. "I just need to lay low for a while until that man in the iron top hat stops chasing me."

Lal gestures at her face to emphasize. "Does this man also have a mask with a checked pattern?"

Reborn blinks, eyelids coming in sideways like a lizard. "Yes. Mafia as well, I believe, though I hadn't heard of him before he approached me."

"You're a Mafia dragon?" Lal clarifies.

"I didn't buy all these guns legally," Reborn scoffs.

"I did also want to ask..." Lal raises the shotgun. "Are all dragons cool with people touching their hoard?"

Reborn hums, swaying himself on the ceiling. "My hoard is killing people and collecting their last living moments. The guns are second to that."

"Huh." Lal nods. "Wait, why does a dragon need guns to kill people?"

"It would be kind of suspicious if I stayed in this form," Reborn points out. He releases the ceiling and flips, landing on the ground with a human body.

"Alright then."


"God damn," Viper says. "I could sell you."

A human Reborn is lounging on the couch sipping espresso. He raises an eyebrow. "Thank you?"

"Good skin," Viper muses. "Nice hair. Very attractive. You'd be worth a lot."

Reborn hesitates. "I'm. Going to go fly around."

Viper follows him out of the house. "It could just be renting, to like kill someone. You kill people already, you'd be a great hitman. I could set that up."

Reborn falls forward into dragon form, takes a few steps and then launches into the air.

Viper just floats up with him. "Or if you like being a dragon more, I could sort something out. People love exotic pets."


Reborn shoves his tiny dragon head out of Verde's lab coat pocket and squints.

The scientist has shaded goggles on and is standing with his arms crossed in the backyard, observing the laser attempting to cut through the dragon scale.

There is a sealed glass bottle off to the side, one scale resting at the bottom of the acid and looking shiny as ever. There's a forge a bit further away, as an experiment on melting the scale with fire.

Reborn ducks back down int the pocket and curls up among pens and messily labelled microcentrifuge tubes. "Is it doing anything?"

Verde reaches out and stops the laser cutter. He reaches into the pocket opposite Reborn and pulls out tweezers to nudge the scale around. It still appears solid so he lifts it and pushes his goggles up for closer observation.

Reborn pops out and climbs up Verde's body, tiny claws pricking at the man's skin, then sits on Verde's shoulder. "Nothing, huh?"

Verde frowns. "I have a few more ideas to test."

Reborn scoffs. "Give up. Nothing can get through these scales."

"Do you dragons not fight each other?" Verde questions. "Has no one attempted to capture you? Surely something must be able to injure you."

Reborn swings his tail and looks away. "Maybe. I don't know."

Verde at first tries to twist his head awkwardly but then just sets down the tweezers and lifts the small dragon in both hands so they can meet eye to eye. "How old are you?"

"I'm almost one year old," Reborn says proudly.

Verde raises an eyebrow.

"But I also have…" Reborn tilts his head and hums. "Someone. And they keep me hidden. So I don't really know much about that side of things."

"Is it another dragon?"

"Well…"


"Leon, these are my humans now," Reborn says, sitting up in the backyard in his biggest form, which twice the size of the entire house.

Reborn is leaning sideways against Leon's claw, which is twice the size of him. The sun is blocked out by half outstretched wings, the looming goliath stretching up halfway to the clouds above.

Leon doesn't say anything but his massive tail swings across, creating a fierce gust of wind that shakes the forest. The tail comes down only to gently settle down behind Reborn's body. The rest of the tail, when it is laid on the ground, crushes trees and creates divots in the dirt.

"That means he likes you," Reborn tells the Arcobaleno proudly.

"W-what does?" Skull mumbles, huddled behind Fon.

"You're not dead yet, so he thinks you're great," Reborn clarifies.


.

Other story lines within this one:

1. Reborn does become the Sun Arcobaleno.

2. (Leon does not deal well with empty nest syndrome.)

3. Reborn's dragon form is also cursed to be tiny. None of the Arcobaleno mind this.

4. Sometimes Reborn eats people. None of the Arcobaleno mind this.

5. Tsuna is also a dragon and Reborn teaches him to eat all of his problems.

6. Mukuro scrapes past that part of Tsuna's training but Xanxus loses an arm.

7. Let's not talk about what happened to Byakuran.

8. Reborn is so proud.