OpalescentGold: I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn.
Future
This is what is to come.
Displacement
Noriko blinks.
One second ago, she was leaving school, mentally agonizing over where her Sky and Storm have gone. There was a screaming sense of disorientation after a bazooka hit her, a paralysis coming over her body so she couldn't move.
Now, she appears to be standing in front of a kneeling Kyoko, who looks just as disoriented, in an abandoned warehouse in the middle of what her instincts maintain is a battle, and she tenses automatically -
"Nori-chan, watch out!" Tsuna crashes into her from the side, throwing them both out of the way of a massive Flame attack that obliterates the place she was standing in and throws up a cloud of dust, the shock wave devastating.
...oh.
Older
Tsuna only catches a split second glimpse of the Noriko from ten years later, standing guard over a Kyoko also from ten years later, before the switch occurs.
It's enough, that brief look.
Older Noriko looked like a regal queen, with flashing blue-grey eyes and white blonde hair wrapped up in a bun with long bangs framing her face, a white and gold Greek-styled gown billowing around her form, proud and strong.
Tsuna is glad that his best friend survives the world into which they were forcibly thrown with her spirit intact and her head held high.
Declaration
"No, Nori-chan. Stay there and look after Kyoko-chan. I promise...I promise I'll protect you both, even I have to exchange my life for yours."
She is painfully torn between hitting the stupid boy upside the head and being reluctantly proud of how far he has come from that cowering child in the playgrounds.
Funeral
When they are back at the base, Noriko does not take the news of Future Tsuna's death well.
She does not care that they are apparently in a war with a rival famiglia. She does not care that the world they now inhabit is such a destructive, violent place.
None of this is new to Cynthia.
But to hear that Tsuna had died...
To hear that Noriko had lost her Sky...
Again...
She can't accept that. She won't accept that.
Role
"Who is she?" Reborn asks after everyone has cleared out for their assigned rooms. "Reiki Noriko in this future."
Lal Mirch narrows her eyes at him, but a smirk curves her lips. "Ah, I heard that Noriko was a mystery to you and the others in her youth. It's rare for you not to know anything, Reborn."
"So she's not an enemy," he concludes, ignoring how her eye twitches. "And you two were fairly close in this world. Was she in the Vongola?"
Lal Mirch grits her teeth. "I forgot how much I hate it when you do that," she grumbles underneath her breath before getting down to business. "Reiki Noriko is - was - the head of the Cervello, the judges of the Vongola."
"Was?" Reborn's eyes are shaded by the brim of his fedora, but Lal Mirch pays him no mind.
"She disbanded the group six months ago," she reveals, tapping a foot on the ground absently. "Said something about corruption among the ranks and dispersed the Cervello to the high winds."
Lal Mirch pauses and shoots a sly look at Reborn. "You know, the Vongola Decimo - that brat's future self - had two advisers."
"Who were they?" he asks, voice unreadable even though he has a good idea of the answer.
"You," she says bluntly, "and her before he went and died on us."
He can throw that girl much farther than he trusts her. "What Flame does Reiki Noriko possess?" He still remembers that unearthly, silvery blaze during the Ring Battles.
She snorts, amused, before turning on her heel. "Figure it out yourself."
Lal Mirch leaves Reborn staring after her with an annoyed frown, dark eyes thoughtful and calculating.
Torture
Noriko fumes when she hears of what Hayato and Takeshi went through, especially when she sees the damage for herself.
While she is happy that they have resolved some of the tension that has lingered in the air between them since they first met, the bantering camaraderie they now share a bittersweet reminder of G. and Ugetsu, it does not change the fact that they were all but tortured for information.
Certainly, should she ever meet this Gamma, he will regret ever having been born.
Still, there is nothing she can do about it now, especially since the future Kyoya wants to talk to her.
...he looks so much like Alaude, it's almost painful to look at him.
Power
"You don't have a ring," Kyoya says, seated in seiza. He sips at his tea calmly and places the cup back down on the wooden table, black kinagashi rustling slightly.
"Yes," Noriko replies, smiling that wild, distant smile that he remembers well from the ridiculous situations she had dragged them into in their childhood, all restless energy and wary preparation for the future.
"You will never find a ring that will work for you," he reiterates, because now that he has ten more years of experience in Reiki Noriko, he can sense the otherworldly power that hums beneath her skin.
"Yes," she repeats, utterly unconcerned even as she smiles down at her reflection in the swirling tea. He is not concerned either, because even at only thirteen years of age, Noriko is far stronger than the rest of their pack right now.
But then, the Moon is not truly merely thirteen, is she?
"They don't know," he murmurs.
"You do," she returns quietly.
"Yes," he echoes thoughtfully and watches as Noriko's eyes become much, much older for a moment, an eternity in the time it takes for a grain of sand to fall in an hourglass.
Kyoya has only ever fought with Cynthia - not Noriko - once.
He has never tried again.