OpalescentGold: I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn.
Showdown
This is how they fare.
Ticket
Tsuna would probably rather have Noriko somewhere else, but she's fine where she is. It helps that Kyoko and Haru are here as well, seeing as the rules that Byakuran have laid out are best left unbent.
Noriko personally thinks that it's for the best. For all that she would dearly love to Judge Byakuran at the moment, she cannot deny that she doesn't want to miss this.
For the briefest moment, when everyone has gathered, when everyone has activated their Vongola Box Weapons...
It's almost as if nothing has changed.
(Everything has changed.)
Referee
When the Cervello arrive, Noriko does not react. It's just as well, for suddenly Reborn, Byakuran, Shoichi, and Mukuro are watching her either blatantly or from the corners of their eyes, gauging her expression.
She gives them nothing to go on. She may as well know nothing about the Cervello, and soon enough, they turn away, other matters calling for their attention.
Noriko catches the two referees' eyes when no one is looking. They nod, respectful and acknowledging, and it is only then that she turns away.
Foolish as her organization has been, even they cannot be so stupid as to judge unfairly right in front of the first and only true Arbiter.
Matches
Noriko watches her family fight with a smile that doesn't disappear even when it's proclaimed that the Vongola have lost. Chrome casts her strange looks and Hayato grumbles at her, but she is thinking of past times, lounging under the sun and pulling a ragtag group together into a team and sparring while the waves crashed and the light burned.
Nostalgia hums in her heart, even as she makes a note to expose Tsuna to more illusions in the future when he stumbles from here to there without noticing the problem. From the annoyed twitch of Mukuro's eye, that sentiment is echoed.
Giotto never really had that problem, not when he had to stand firm through Daemon's worst hissy fits. Noriko pushes the thought away. Now isn't the time.
She doesn't care that they have lost. Not particularly, because her boys are safe and sound, despite her Sky's kicked-puppy look, and her Cloud's mildly homicidal look. They have not been injured too badly, not like the Ring Battles, and that is honestly the best outcome she could have foreseen.
The defeat doesn't bother her. The consequences do.
The Vongola Rings...they're her family's. They're Vongola's, they're Tsuna's. Those heirlooms are pieces of her past, glimmering gems of love, life, and loss, and there is no way in hell Noriko will let Byakuran have them.
She is fully prepared to interfere when Shoichi's favor doesn't work. However, when a little girl in white clothes, an orange pacifier hanging from her neck, steps forward, it turns out that she doesn't have to.
Yuni
Noriko is...uneasy on the subject of Yuni of the Giglio Nero Famiglia. She understands that Yuni has had strenuous situations, has been coerced or brainwashed or something like that, and she is not so far gone as to be unsympathetic or outraged, but...
Family is everything to Noriko. She let herself break - Cynthia let herself break - when their family crumbled way back then, and ever since she has found Tsuna in this life, she has been steadily rebuilding their family.
Maybe they will never be what Cynthia had. Maybe they will never even be Vongola, never be the Decimo and his Guardians. Maybe, but this, what they have right now, fireworks in the sky and bickering at lunch and adventures in the woods, it's...enough for Noriko.
More than enough. If she can have this for the rest of this life, she will be content.
But...Yuni is the Boss of the Giglio Nero. She is their Sky, and she is willing to let them all die for the sake of the Greater Good, and Noriko cannot, will not, understand that, accept that, emphasize with that.
Tsuna can't either, she knows, despite his decision to take Yuni under his wing, and subsequently, the Vongola's protection. He values their family as much as she does, if a bit more obliviously and naively, and he has never had the heart to make such choices.
And maybe it is the correct choice, in the long run. The Moon knows of choosing the lesser evil, of being trapped between a stone and a hard place. She is the Judge, after all.
Still, even in the end, Cynthia chose her family, chose to spare Daemon.
It is a regret of Noriko's, but she thinks that if she could do it all over again, she would make the same terrible mistake.
Kawahira
Noriko is not ashamed to admit that Kawahira unnerves her.
It is not his demeanor, so friendly that Tsuna, trusting as he is, finds nothing wrong with letting the white-haired man handle everything with his Hell Ring. It is not his mysterious abilities or unknown motives or suspicious deflections.
Her wariness stems from something more primal, more pure. This is not an individual Noriko or Cynthia would wish to fight under most circumstances, and that...
That is a problem.
She lets Kawahira make his excuses and disappear without comment. When Hayato, of all people, turns to her with a concerned tilt to his head, she smiles comfortingly and helpfully redirects the conversation to future plans.
Tsuna dithers, Hayato and Takeshi start arguing, Mukuro smirks eerily while Kyoya's hand twitch for his tonfa, and Ryohei starts to shout something about extreme! Lambo sniffs and eats his candy, and Noriko turns to Reborn.
They exchange a look, on the same wavelength for once. As usual, Tsuna, the Decimo, their Sky, is their rallying point.
Kawahira is definitely someone to watch.