Chapter 10 tells of medicine and a malfunctioning device

"You guys are late!" Giotto complained and led the two men into the building. "I have been waiting out here for almost an hour already! And, did the two of you remember to bring what I told you to?"

"Of course we did! We are not as unfeeling as a certain someone who sent a person of utterly no importance over to us – not to mention the fact that we haven't even seen him before – barely two hours ago and commanded us to get our asses over here at once, despite it being logically impossible for even super humans to travel past two towns in an hour, and did not even allow us to complain or refuse."

"But you did-"

"But the issue is that even though we actually survived this long and stupid trip, we didn't even get a word of thanks from this emotionally crippled creature in front of us."

Daemon pointed at Giotto for a short moment before pouting and circled his arms around Alaude's neck, allowing himself to be dragged forward by a single millimeter before being harshly flung onto the hard sandy ground.

"Don't touch me, you weak masochist. I'll cuff you to death," Alaude threatened menacingly. The sheer amount of frost present in his voice seemed to turn the surrounding atmosphere enveloping the trio biting cold and Giotto shivered against his will.

The blond quickly reached out a single hand towards his left, directing Alaude and Daemon towards the front door of the inn and tried his very best to keep the wide friendly smile on his face although he felt that he wanted nothing more than to roast the two idiots for walking so slowly.

Besides, Daemon wasn't making anything better by trying to use every single precious opportunity he could find to cling on to his beloved French lover, who couldn't even be bothered so much as to reply to any of his childish antics. It was more than obvious that Alaude wanted to finish up whatever he had to do in this town and return home before night fell. That man was indeed one of the rare few who preferred to spend his nights back at home in his own comfortable bed, not in some small room two towns away from his beautiful mansion.

Once everyone was gathered in the inn, Giotto reached a hand out at Alaude, a gesture to demand for the medicine he instructed the two men to buy and bring along earlier that day. Grumpily, Alaude reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a whole bottle of pills, tossing it over to Giotto who caught the bottle easily.

"They look so bitter and gross! Is there a need for Tsuna to eat all those objects?" Asari asked gingerly. From what he gathered previously, he knew that Tsuna had an extremely huge dislike for anything bitter. "Tsuna has recovered from the fever already and all that is left for him to the road of full recovery is only to rest up. Medicine wouldn't exactly do much at this point of time."

"Don't quote something like that, especially if it has no scientific backing," G retorted, throwing in a glare for good measure. As usual, he was standing in a far corner of the room and was leaning on the wall while smoking.

Asari immediately opened his mouth to argue, or at least say something witty back, but Knuckle interrupted before he could – and the worst thing was that the black haired man was on G's side.

It was a 2 to 1 and Asari had no doubt that he lost – totally. The Japanese man shut his mouth and continued to stay silent. There was no way for him to be able to help Tsuna this time round.

o0o0o

"M-M-MEDICINE?" Tsuna howled, backing away to the far side of his bed – or at least as far away from that evil and disgusting looking concoction. Heck, was it even consumable? "I'm perfectly fine now and there's no trace of the fever left. I swear, I only need one hour of sleep and I'll be as good as new. I don't wan... I mean, I don't need to drink that thing at all!"

Giotto sighed as if he had anticipated that Tsuna would definitely kick up a fuss about the cup of liquid. "Ill or not, this would help you to get better, and it will help you to sleep better too."

Tsuna covered his mouth with both hands and averted his face from the full cup. There was no way he was ever going to drink that. Even the smell alone had the bitter taste in it. If that stuff went down his throat, God knows what might happen to his poor body!

"Haven't you drank any medicine before? It's a nice experience."

Nice... experience? No way! Tsuna could remember all the times he had to drink the foul smelling substance, and never once did it make his condition better – if not worse. And 9 out of 10 of the times he was forced to do so normally involved Reborn and Leon, who was changed into the shape of a gun, together with numerous threats that normally involved tearing him from limb to limb without mercy.

"Tsunayoshi," Giotto warned, eyes glinting dangerously as he held the cup out towards Tsuna. "Drink it. Alaude and Daemon took the effort to come so far to give you this. If you don't appreciate what they did, Alaude would..."

Tsuna squeezed his eyes shut, grabbed the cup and poured the entire concoction down his throat. He didn't even wait for Giotto to finish his sentence because he already knew what the blond was going to say.

If the First Generation Cloud Guardian was like his own Cloud Guardian, Hibari Kyoya – which apparently he was – then the threat he would give would be along the lines of 'biting you to death', and Tsuna didn't feel like being threatened, even when he was in the past.

He was supposed to be spending time leisurely in the past while he still could.

"Good boy," Giotto grinned and placed a hand on Tsuna's head and passed the brunet a cup of water. Tsuna gulped it down greedily – anything to wash out the awful taste in his mouth. "Get some rest and recover fully by tomorrow, I'll go downstairs to welcome the guests."

Tsuna pouted slightly and pulled the blanket tighter around himself. He didn't want to rebuke Giotto, neither was he interested in going downstairs to meet Alaude and Daemon Spade. Besides, Daemon was a man who lived through centuries, maybe he might even recognise him as the Decimo and spill the secret. Tsuna did not want to take the risk.

He couldn't change the history and he had to survive past all of this in order to get back to his time frame.

He had no other choice.

o0o0o

"It's finally completed!" Giannini announced happily, wringing his hands nervously as Reborn evaluated his hard work over the past three days. "It's within the time limit you gave me and with this, we can go find and welcome back Boss anytime!"

Reborn jumped up on the time machine and stared down at the numerous buttons, wondering if he was right to trust Giannini's skills – even though it couldn't be helped that Giannini's father was currently very busy helping out Vongola Nono, Timoteo, back at the Headquarters in Italy.

Giannini gestured to the buttons proudly while trying to show Reborn how to use it. "If you press this button, and this one, together with this – at the same time, you can activate the device and open a portal to the past. And all of us would be able to go back to the past and bring Boss bac-"

Before Giannini could even finish half of what he intended to say, a grenade flew past Giannini and landed on top of the large piece of metal. With his quick reflexes, Reborn managed to leap down and proceed to a safer place before the bomb went off.

However the time machine was not so lucky, and knowing that he was in deep trouble, Lambo sprinted down the corridor as quickly as he could, brawling his eyes out from the sheer amount of killer intent Reborn was emitting.

"Oh no!" Giannini exclaimed in shock and ran up towards his beloved invention which he spent three whole days and nights creating – the only invention that would ever allow Tsuna to return back to his own time frame. "Half of the buttons are busted! There's no way that I can use this to its full functions anymore!"

Reborn glared at Giannini darkly, which was a silent method to stop the latter from continuing his shrieking. Finding out the problem with the time machine and correcting them was currently more important than chasing about a certain kid by the name of Lambo.

"Are there any serious problems? Do you need more time to rebuild that invention? Just to let you know, Tsuna has been in the past for almost a week already and I'm not sure if staying in the past for too long would have any side effects on Tsuna's body so in other words, we are running short on time. You can't spend too much time rebuilding th-"

Giannini looked like he was on the verge of pulling what was left of his hair out.

"It's impossible! There's no way I can ever rebuild a time machine like that from scratch again! I used the ten year bazooka that transported Boss to build this! If I have to build another time machine, I have to use another ten year bazooka, however, there is just no way that two different bazookas will ever break in the exact same way so it is impossible!"

"So is this device useless now? Is there no other way possible for us to ever let Tsuna return back here once more?"

"That's not exactly true..." Giannini trailed off and inspected the condition of the time machine closer. "All is impossible is for us to go to the past now. Another part of the problem is that although we can open the portal five times in total, there is only one time that this device has left to open the portal large enough for Boss to cross. And it will become too difficult for the machine to sustain the portal so the weakening impacts between time frames will only last for an instant. The longest that I can hold the portal up is merely ten seconds."

"Can it be healed? Are the damages on the time machine reversible?"

Giannini shook his head, the slow speed emphasizing the severity of the issue. "I'm afraid it is impossible to reconstruct or strengthen the device. The damages will remain."

Reborn frowned. He clearly understood the entire problem even though what Giannini just said was nothing but merely the muddled and mashed up version of the facts all together. "So what you mean exactly is that we only have one chance to persuade Tsuna to step through the portal to return back here. And if he doesn't want to or miss the opportunity, then there wouldn't be a second chance, right?"

Giannini nodded, affirming Reborn's fears as being valid.

The Sun Arcobaleno looked down and his fedora hat shielded his face, making him appear to be merely deep in thought. "This is very tricky. We definitely have to plan our timing perfectly – if it's too soon, Tsuna might not believe what we tell him and if it's too late, Tsuna might be too attached to the past to want to return."

Giannini shrugged, a slight gesture to tell Reborn to continue giving his commands. He needed a deadline to prepare a safe route for the Boss to travel forward in time.

Author's notes: All of Primo's guardians have finally been mentioned at least once in here. Frankly speaking, I am unsure if I would actually make them appear in the story in later chapters as well, though I probably should and would. Feel free to tell me if there are any specific guardian that you would like to see in the later chapters so I can focus on him more ;DD