Merry Christmas! :)

Katekyo Hitman Reborn belongs to Akira Amano.

The first thing Mukuro thought when he opened his eyes was: 'Damn.'

He groaned. He was in this place again, after fighting so hard to escape. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious, but for some reason, he was alone right now. Nagi wasn't there, and neither were Ken and Chikusa nor Tsuna, Byakuran and Takeshi.

He felt parched, but he sat up to observe his surroundings. The room was dark, but he could make out the silhouettes of a few machines. His right eye throbbed slightly at the effort of squinting into the darkness, and he placed a hand over it.

Ever since they started experimenting on his eye, it would always hurt whenever he tried to look closely at something or if the lighting was too dark or light.

If he could just find a light switch somewhere…

He stood up slowly and cautiously maneuvered around the room to avoid tripping or bumping into anything. He felt around and took slow steps just to be sure. When he felt his hands touch the rough, chipped paint of the wall, he pressed his body closer to it and felt for a switch.

He had to travel a ways from where he first touched the wall before his fingers found something that felt like a switch. 'Aha!' he thought triumphantly. He flicked it, and blinding white lights immediately came on.

He blinked rapidly when his eyes could not adjust to the sudden change in brightness. He covered the aching eye with his palm once again as he tried to resurvey the room. When he turned around, there was one contraption that looked horribly familiar to him…

XXX

Ken and Chikusa stared blankly at the professionalism presented by the Vongola boss, unused to such formality. As soon as he introduced himself, he launched into a (kind of) rant about how the Estraneo were terrible people and that the children there should not be suffering that kind of fate. It was honestly a bit amusing to them, but they didn't want to interrupt the young boss just to inform him that they did not to be told this, having experienced the Estraneo's cruelty first-hand.

A few minutes later, the man seemed to realize what he was doing as he abruptly cut himself off and coughed. "Ahem, my apologies. Anyway, I would just like to be clear, so do you have any questions right now?"

"Nope!" Ken shook his head.

"Alright then, could you please tell us about what happened while you were there? It would really help us."

The Gesso boss nodded encouragingly at them as the chef brought in another plate of cookies as well as drinks for the group. Ken grabbed a fresh cookie and began munching as he and Chikusa began their story. They had no idea what in the world was urging them to comply with the blonde's wishes, but the feeling that they could trust the man was eating at them.

"The two of us met each other for the first time when those scientist guys were planning their projects and assigning guinea pigs." Chikusa started.

"Kakipi wasn't friendly," Ken put in with a pout. "We were with some other kids and we were the only ones without friends, so I tried to get to know him. When I started talking to him, he told me to go away."

"You were a stranger," Chikusa replied. "You trust too easily, idiot."

The boy reddened and glared at his friend. "Whatever!" he turned to face the Vongola boss and continue the story. "Since we were on the same project, he had no choice but to finally talk to me. Man! Was he a crybaby."

"Are you sure you weren't the one crying all over the place after that experiment that made you look like this?"

"Why you-!"

"Wait," Giotto interrupted, "what experiment?"

"The one that almost turned me into a dog!" Ken fumed with his arms crossed.

"I think they were trying to create hybrid weapons at that time. Only Ken was in that one though." Chikusa answered.

Giotto frowned thoughtfully. "Did they succeed?"

"Not really, but they didn't exactly fail either. After all, Ken has half the mind of a canine now, and I'm sure there's some kind of trigger for his more animalistic side, I've seen him viciously attacking a scientist before, but after that it was like nothing happened."

"I see…"

"Okay, enough about that! So one day we were hiding from those guys! And we came across this room that seemed to be empty so we went inside."

"And it wasn't empty?" the Gesso boss guessed.

"Not at all!" Ken replied.

"There were two kids in there. One of them was Nagi." Chikusa said.

"Oh," Giotto remembered the unconscious girl they put in the infirmary. "So that's how you met."

Chikusa reached for the last cookie on the plate between them. "She was there with her brother though I don't think I recall them ever saying what kind of experiments they were going through."

"Her brother was kinda creepy too," Ken said after taking a drink from his glass of milk. "His eyes had different colors. One was red and one was blue."

"Really? Are you sure?"

Ken huffed. "Of course! I'm not blind, you know."

"Anyway," Chikusa continued, "we didn't have much contact after that. The experiments continued on as far as we know. Then earlier today, there was a large explosion in one of the rooms and it left a huge hole. We have no idea what happened, but that's how we found Nagi and got away."

"Oh, then―"

There was a knock on the door. A second later, a maid appeared and bowed. "Master Vongola, the girl is awake." she informed.

"Alright, thank you. You may go." Giotto turned to Ken and Chikusa and smiled, "Let's go see your friend for now."

XXX

"That's…" Mukuro stared at the strangely-shaped machine. Why was it so familiar?

"Let's see…" he remembered he'd been on the receiving end of whatever that was before. But when? How? Why?

'It looks quite painful…' he thought to himself. He walked around the thing to inspect it from all sides. 'Wait a minute, this is―' he was interrupted as a loud crash sounded from behind him. He turned to look, but there was nothing.

"What was that?" he wondered out loud. It had to have been something, or else it would be way too hard to explain the wreckage that was now present where he was facing.

He approached the pile of broken wall and machines slowly. It made no sense. If there was nothing there, how would this happen?

"Huh?" he mumbled. He thought he could see the figure of a grown man flickering close to the wall that had been destroyed. Was he hallucinating?

Just then, a thought occurred to him. He covered up his normal eye with a hand and focused on the spot where the figure seemed to appear and disappear randomly. 'Maybe it's an illusion…'

A grown man appeared suddenly, and Mukuro nearly screamed bloody hell. "What the heck?!" he demanded instead.

The man raised an eyebrow, eyeing him with interest. "So you could see me?" he wondered. He brushed off some dust on his clothes and looked around the room. "Ah, seems like I'm in the wrong room," he said in disappointment.

He turned to face Mukuro. "Who are you, little boy?"

Mukuro frowned. "Who are you?" he retorted.

The man frowned in surprise that someone would defy him.

"...Nice hairstyle," he commented suddenly, a smirk present on his face.

Mukuro was about to tell the mystery man off for insulting his hairstyle, but on good look at the man made him change his mind at the last minute as he smirked as well. "You as well," he replied easily.

A few seconds of silence hung after that, then both males opened their mouths.

"Don't copy my hairstyle."

They looked at each other in surprise again, then the younger boy decided to break the rising tension by introducing himself.

"My name is Mukuro," he said, "now who are you?"

The man was seemingly impressed by this for some reason, as Mukuro continued to look at the increasingly annoying smirk on the man's face.

"I am Daemon Spade."

A/N: I am sorry for this chapter…? It's a bit late, and I have to admit it's actually kinda bad, but honestly, the writer's block I got stuck with didn't do me much help.

Anywho, the contraption that was very familiar to Mukuro was the one that made his eyes all powerful and whatnot. Also, I'm basing the reason he sees Daemon on the experiments. He is, after all a very powerful character, but he has to get his epicness from somewhere, right?

Chapter is unbeta'ed so if you see mistakes, they are unintentional, and please do let me know so that I may fix them right away.

I have no idea what to write next~ LOL.