"Hey," I said, chewing on chip. "Remember those karate and aikido lessons in our previous life?"

Lindsey gave me a look and set down his drink. "It was implied in Chapter 23: Successful Avoidance and Karate that your previous life had nothing like that. You know, the whole 'sloppy fighting style' thing?"

"Never happened."

He turned back to Chapter 23: Successful Avoidance and Karate and raised an eyebrow at me, jabbing a finger at the paragraph. "It's clearly written up right here."

"So?"

"What do you mean, 'So?'? If that happened, you can't just then say that we took martial arts lessons. And deny your visit to the dojo ever happened. And now you're continuing on as if your visit to the dojo did happen. You're not making any sense. What are you trying to do?"

I shrugged. "I have no idea. To be honest, I don't think the author has any idea either."

"Then what was the point?!"

"Dunno."

Lindsey made strangling motions in front of him, as if imagining throttling the person currently typing away on their laptop.

"Why would they do this?" he complained. "Especially if they didn't even have a point to it! And they didn't even do it in the actual story! They couldn't put something like, memories from the previous life that weren't there before being recovered as time went on. No, they just had to write an entire segment just to suddenly announce that Ietsuna/Nada actually did have some form of martial arts training! What's with this terrible retcon?!"

"Oi Lindsey, you might want to stop yelling at nothing. People are staring."

Lindsey dropped his arms and blushed when he realised that yes, people were indeed staring.

"Just why?" he asked miserably. "What is going through our author's head? I'm so confused."

"If it's any consolation, our author doesn't really know what's happening either," I offered, taking another chip from the packet.

"It's not. They're the author. They're supposed to know what's going on."

"Too bad then, lol."

Lindsey groaned and buried his head in his arms. I took another chip from the packet and munched on it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"Don't be a stranger, yeah?" I lightly punched Lindsey's right shoulder.

He grinned and punched me back. "You too, Nada. I demand to hear from you at least once every two weeks."

"Biweekly calls, got it." I paused for a moment, then decided the gossip magazine writer 'discreetly' taking pictures and scribbling in his notebook wasn't my problem and hugged my best friend tightly.

"It was good to see you again," I murmured into his chest (he had two years on me. I'd grow to his height and then some someday). I pulled back slightly and rapped it with my knuckles. "Also, nice pecs."

He blushed but played along.

"Why, thank you. I work out. It was good to see you again too."

My best friend hugged me tightly once more before we separated.

"Don't do anything too crazy without me there to stop you alright?"

I gave him an affronted look and held a hand over my heart in mock hurt.

"Why, Lindsey, one would think you had no faith in my ability to make good decisions."

"You once decided jumping straight off a balcony was better than shimmying down the pipe beside it."

"Hey, that was one time."

"And then there was that time when you decided to test how effective a chainsaw was by cutting up our dining table, and when you almost got us evicted by showing a shrunken head to the neighbours' kid to frighten him, also once when we were playing cricket you-"

"Alright, alright," I interrupted, "I see your point, I see your point. You don't have to worry though. I don't want to draw too much attention to myself if I can help it, because of," I inclined my head towards where Yamamoto and Dino was, "you know."

His eyes flicked over to the KHR cast members. "Ah."

Lindsey looked back at me and frowned. "Also, be nice."

"I'm always nice."

"No, you're not," he deadpanned.

"You're right, I'm not," I agreed easily. He sighed. I smiled prettily at him.

Romario called for me to finish my goodbyes. I nodded to him in acknowledgement and faced Lindsey.

"Well, I guess this is it," he said.

"Don't talk like we're never going to see each other again. I'll give you a call as soon as I get back to Japan," I promised.

We hugged and punched each other's shoulder one more time, and then it was time for me to go.

"Yoohoo~!" I sang, bursting through the front door with my luggage. "I'm back!"

"Nee-chan!" Tsuna appeared at the top of the stairs and started hurrying down. "You're b- ack!"

He tripped and almost flew off the steps. With Lindsey's words still fresh in my mind, I moved and caught him easily.

"Oomph! Ah, thanks, nee-chan."

I put him down and dusted him off.

"You should be more careful, Tsuna," I chastised. "You could really get hurt one day."

"Okay," Tsuna said obediently. I ruffled his hair.

"Well then, I'm gonna go put my stuff away, then sleep off my jet lag." I yawned, grabbing my luggage and moving up the stairs. "We've got one more day 'til school starts up again, so let's go hang out at the park tomorrow, and I'll tell you all about my trip, alright?"

"Sounds great, Nee-chan. Sleep well," Tsuna said.

"I will."

After I had unpacked, I collapsed into my bed and dreamt of a life long past.

Omake - Boss!Ietsuna as suggested by BOSS02109

"Yo, little brother!"

Tsuna immediately spun around in his rather comfortable swivel chair at the sound of his sister's voice.

"Aneki!" he exclaimed, slightly panicked. (He had switched from calling her Nee-chan a few years ago at her insistence.) This wasn't good. He was supposed to be meeting up with the new boss - oyabun - of a powerful yakuza group soon, and he didn't think he wanted them to know about his sister lest they tried to use her as leverage.

He had reluctantly informed her of the mafia world around two years prior, after an assassin had managed to find them on their semiannual sibling catch-up week. Tsuna had been expecting her to freak out, or call him a liar, or something. He had not expected her to simply nod in understanding and call a waiter to replace her cocktail, which had been knocked off the table in the struggle between him and the assassin.

Her existence was kept quiet, with only their closest allied families being privy to the knowledge that the young and powerful Vongola Decimo had a sister, whom he was quite protective of, though only the top tier of the Cavallone, Tomaso, and Simon families knew who that sister was. There had been leaks, of course, but all of them were swiftly dealt with before they could cause any harm. All in all, Tsuna was pleasantly surprised that no one had kidnapped his sister yet.

(There had been attempts, of course, which had all been dealt with by the woman herself, but he didn't know or need to know that.)

"What can I do for you? Actually, um," he glanced at his watch - the yakuza group was due to arrive any moment now, "can it wait for later? I'm kind of supposed to be meeting with a yakuza group right now."

"Oh?" His sister, to his chagrin, did not leave and instead plopped down in the seat adjacent to his. "Meeting with a yakuza group, huh? Are you proposing a peace treaty or an alliance? Or did they overstep their bounds or something? Oh wait, you wouldn't be meeting with them here if they did something offensive so it's gotta be the what I thought first, right?"

"Aneki, you should go, th-"

"Come on, Tsuna, just tell me," she coaxed, patting his hand. "Please?"

"Aneki, I-"

"Please?" she repeated. "Come on, just tell me if I'm right or not."

Tsuna sighed, only mildly concerned with how quickly he gave in to his sister, and shifted through the papers in front of him until he found the one that contained the basic outline of the terms of the treaty.

"Fine, fine." He sighed again, this time at the thought of the paperwork he would have to do if the treaty was accepted. He really hoped they would either accept it fully or reject it outright, because revising it would mean even more paperwork, along with the headache that was sure to come as a direct result of negotiating the terms. That was quite unlikely to happen, but a guy could dream, okay?

"So," he started, ignoring his sister's small smirk of triumph, "you're right, we are indeed looking for an alliance with the Sonohoka yakuza, who control about half of Japan, including the towns right outside Namimori."

"Oh, so they're like the Japanese equivalent of Vongola?"

"You could say that, yes. The Japanese underworld is rather closed off though, so they don't hold as much power with foreign crime syndicates as we do. We plan to use the fact that they'll be pretty much the first ones to ally themselves with foreigners - and the Vongola no less - to make the treaty a more attractive prospect."

"Nice one. What are the terms of the treaty though?"

"Here." Tsuna handed her the sheet of paper in his hand. "I've tried to make the terms as fair as possible despite Reborn's advice. I don't want to accidentally offend them and be banned from Japan or something. There's rumours that their head is actually a woman, so I'm hoping that they'll be more liberal minded about signing a treaty with foreigners as well and- Aneki, what are you doing?"

His sister had read through the sheet, flipped through the rest of the papers, and had just lowered a pen to the last page of the documents.

"Signing the thing. I scanned through it and it seems fair, and I trust you, so," she wrote her name and title with a flourish on the lines she needed to sign, "there. It's done."

"Um." Tsuna was very confused. Ietsuna tilted her head cutely and smiled at him.

"The rumours are right and I am indeed a woman."

"What." His brain still hadn't rebooted itself.

"Tsuna, you just called me aneki. Why are you so confused that I'm a woman now?"

"No, it's not that, just." Tsuna struggled to put his dilemma into words. "What?!"

His sister kept smiling at him.

"Since when?! I don't- I'm so- I have no idea what's going on," he proclaimed. "You're apparently the leader of the most powerful yakuza group, which - if my sources are correct - swore in their current leader five years ago,three whole years before that incident with the assassin, and you didn't bother to tell me?"

Ietsuna shrugged and poured herself a drink from the water jug placed in the middle of the table.

"I thought you knew."

Tsuna carefully lowered his head until it was about five centimetres above the table, then slammed it down hard.

"Why," he groaned, "is my life like this?"

(He regrets ever hoping that the treaty would be fully agreed to.)

no i don't know anything about any country's underworld i'm making everything up don't take anything in this fic as truth. also lmao you can tell i ran out of steam for the main story and the quality of the omake is just so much higher. if her going home seems sorta abrupt, well, i'm sure you guys wanted to finally get to mukuro. we've spent four chapters in italy, and two getting there, so.

also, about the liberal minded thing, i think i read somewhere that women traditionally aren't allowed to be in the yakuza or something. if that's not true, then, well, like i said, i'm just making everything up.

ShadowWolf15: Eh, it's not really love or dedication or anything like that. more like it's something to do that seems fun, and a sort of sense of belonging to a big group that has a cause, and being important to that group, y'know? they'd definitely quit at the first sign of actual danger. that's what i'd do.

Review?