Authors Note: Since people put this on Alert and also PM'd me about wanting more, even though I said it was probably going to stay as a one-shot, I really couldn't help but writing another chapter as soon as I had finished the second chapter of Illusion Skies.

Please ignore the part in the first chapter where I mentioned that Ryohei has Powers. He doesn't!
But he still knows about Kyoko's and Tsuna's Powers.

This is a Mukuro-centric chapter, beware of a little blood.

Also, I consider this a sort of "interlude" between chapter 1 and chapter 2, which is why this is called chapter 1.5

Katekyo Hitman Reborn © Akira Amano

If something happened in a village, it would take at least five days before the closest neighboring village heard about it. News travelled slowly even with the help of horses. That was, of course, if you were an ordinary human.
The witches and warlocks, the people with Powers, had their own Network easily accessed with a simple spell and their element. Therefore the news about Tsunayoshi's burning had reached almost everyone in the country who had Powers, before the village next to his even heard a whisper about it.

Most didn't care, saying that it was yet another young warlock not being careful enough with his Powers. Some, mainly the ones living in the villages close to Tsunayoshi's, started moving away. Every time someone was burned, a witch hunter would come and search the villages nearby just in case the witch or warlock in question had survived and fled to somewhere nearby to heal.

Very few had known Tsunayoshi personally, and those who had mourned the loss of a friend and fellow warlock. Rokudo Mukuro was one of them.

Mukuro was a warlock specializing in illusions, possession and manipulation. His relationship with Tsunayoshi was simple; He gave Tsunayoshi information, and he gave Mukuro herbs.

The information given was mostly new spells, news that were "off the network" and the like. The herbs received were healing herbs that Sasagawa Kyoko grew, without her knowing it of course. Mukuro couldn't grow the herbs himself because of his constant travelling, and he always needed them since his physical defense wasn't really something he could brag about. Being a user of illusions, he didn't do much physical work other than travelling and even that didn't give him much exercise since he mostly preferred to travel through mist.
Tsunayoshi had called him lazy on several occasions, but Mukuro always laughed it off.

When the mist whispered to Mukuro that Tsunayoshi had been burned, Mukuro's world turned up-side-down. The relationship he had with Tsunayoshi was the closest to some kind of emotional attachment he had to anything, or anyone. To have that attachment forcibly pulled from his hands and his heart didn't sit well with the illusionist, so he did the only thing he could think of. He killed.

A small village that he had been passing through met its end by his Powers. He killed, he burned, he destroyed. Guided with blind rage he didn't leave a single soul alive, not a single house untouched. Everything burned before his eyes and he laughed as he stabbed the last villager with his trident, blood splattering around him and on him. He didn't care. All he cared about was the fact that his only not-enemy was dead and would never call him lazy again. Never heal him, never give him herbs, never laugh with him, never repeat his promise of eternal friendship.

The blue-haired male collapsed on his knees in the middle of the burning village. He stared up at the sky and smiled sadly.

"Sweet dreams, little sky," he mumbled, closing his eyes.

When someone with Powers does something that oversteps the legal boundaries by miles and no longer can be subdued by the witch hunters, the Vindice stepped in. They were otherworldly entities, older than magic itself, and no one could escape their bindings and seals.

Mukuro knew that the Vindice would come after him as soon as the news of his massacre of the village spread over the Network, but he just couldn't care. He stayed in the middle of the burning village, covered in the blood of his victims, and waited. Once the first Vindice showed up, Mukuro attacked. He engaged the Vindice in a fight while laughing manically and an aura of bloodlust and pure malice surrounding him.
Tsunayoshi had died, and with him the last small piece of Mukuro's humanity.

Mukuro fought the Vindice with no restrictions, no fear and with movements so fast and unpredictable that he barely registered them himself.
The illusionist would later be known as the only warlock who had ever managed to kill a Vindice.

After the fight, more of the Vindice appeared and captured the rampaging man. They sealed him away on the bottom of a holy lake, leaving him immobile and Powerless but still alive. He was to remain there for the rest of his life. It was a worse fate than killing him, according to many.

Short chapter, I know, but please don't kill me. The "real" chapter 2 will be up very shortly!