The aging process for the Arcobaleno was weird. It happened in bursts over a period of years. They went form two-years-old to four-years-old to sixteen. As they approached the ages they were when the Arcobaleno Curse was applied the aging slowed. Skull's last jump had placed him at twenty years old and he knows his next jump will place him at 23- the age he had been before the Curse of the Rainbow, and the age he had been eternally frozen.

In the months before Skull turns 23 a second time, and a year after he pledges himself to Tsuna, he finds himself panicking.

And not just a little bit. He finds himself having panic attacks. His breath catching in his chest, a vice squeezing and squeezing around his chest until he can't draw a breath into his lungs. Until he wants to curl up in a dark room and not come out.

He can't help it.

He'd basked in watching his body age up from a two-year-old, but as he approaches the age where everything had started (where everything had ended) he can't help but wonder…

Will he stop aging for a second time?

Will he be forced to watch those around him age and die again?

To watch his King age and die, his new family pass away while he remained eternal?

He knows the others worry about him, but he can't find it in himself to explain the cause. They know he had been around since Atlantis, but Skull also knows that it hasn't truly dawned on any of them what that means. They think immortal, but they don't associate it with Skull outliving all of them.

All of time.

And then Checkerface- Kawahira- kidnaps him.