"What. Happened."

There was no room for flowery talk. Reborn was well and truly pissed and definitely in the mood to kill someone, preferably the culprit responsible for this mess.

Hikari was in a mafia-affliated hospital being treated for extreme mental and physical fatigue, some rather nasty stomach ulcers and everything that could be associated with being stuck with the responsibility of a bunch of crazy and destructive idiots who apparently didn't get the concept of giving their Sky ONE day of peace and quiet without paperwork for collateral damage (among other things).

Under normal circumstances, Vongola Medical would have been very quick to transfer their Donna back to their care. If only for security reasons.

Except right now they were neck deep in trying to keep her Guardians alive after whatever hit the Iron Fort.

Oh, and the death of Iemitsu but no one was really concerned when their Decimo was in the hospital along with her guardians.

Reborn was going to visit her next once he finally got his hands on the security tapes and figured out what the hell exactly happened here.

Finally, the tapes were located.

And Reborn wasn't the only one staring. Mammon, who had come along with Xanxus to find out who their new possible enemy was, merely sighed.

"I was wondering when she would finally snap."

Reborn looked at Mammon.

"What."

Unknown to most, Hikari had paid Mammon for lessons on how to make a Mist clone with the vain hope that it would help alleviate some of the paperwork on her desk.

She had been highly motivated with the hopes of getting rid of enough of it that she could reasonably take a break and not die from the mountain of paper.

There had been quite a bit of progress on her end, but the clone wasn't yet cohesive enough to do the signature without someone realizing what she was doing.

Mammon rewound the tape, and pointed at a dark mist that came out of the collapsed girl.

Reborn watched in fascination as a strange dark orange and indigo mist flowed from the exhausted woman...right as Iemitsu appeared for whatever ridiculous reason he had come up with to harass his daughter this time.

The second he got within proximity of the mist, it attacked. Rather violently at that, to the delight of Xanxus.

Iemitsu was shredded, but there was no blood as the mist was superheated to the point it seared the areas it tore apart.

Alerted by the fight, Hayato and Takeshi came into the room.

Only by this point the mist had taken physical form, and proceeded to lay the Guardians to waste. To an outside observer who hadn't seen it form, they would assume the Vongola was under attack. Hikari had slid under the desk by this point, completely out of view of the main door.

All the guardians save for Kyouya and Chrome, who weren't in the mansion at the time, were beaten within an inch of their life and would certainly have more than a few scars when they recovered. Lambo was lucky...the mist only gave him a decent concussion and broke his arms and legs.

They watched as the mist flowed into the unconscious girl...and somehow managed to teleport her body to a proper hospital that would recognize the ring on her finger.

Reborn had heard the rest from the very irate staff at the hospital. The 'young woman' had checked in claiming to have stomach issues, had sat down close to the wall and before the doctor could even come to see her had passed out. The staff was very quick to give her a private room once they saw the ring and someone realized they were dealing with an unconscious Sky.

Naturally the doctors ordered a full physical to find out why she collapsed like that and had been spitting nails ever since.

"You're telling me that Hikari's subconscious finally had enough of the crap her Guardians and Iemitsu pulled...and went on a rampage?"

"The girl has the patience of a saint, but everyone has a limit to the abuse they'll put up with. Her fuse was simply longer than most, and the training she was doing with me finally gave the girl an outlet," said Mammon simply.

"So what now?" said Xanxus, almost disappointed there wasn't anyone to kill. On the plus side, Iemitsu was no longer going to be his problem and maybe now the girl might show a bit more spine.

"Now I am going to head to the hospital and find out exactly what the idiots here kept missing when they did her check-ups and find out how badly I am going to be giving Ryohei and Hayato a long talk about the condition their Sky is in. If you want to be useful, find out why the hell her desk was always overflowing whenever I visited and why the only one that does the least amount of damage that requires her to deal with the aftermath was the fucking Cloud," said Reborn flatly.

Kyouya was the most bloodthirsty of her Guardians, and yet he caused the least amount of paperwork to cross her desk. Whether it was because of the efficiency of Kusakabe or because people were too terrified of him in particular he did know, but the unacceptable fact was that her Storm and Sun caused more paperwork to cross her desk compared to the one that was nearly impossible to control. The only times he did cause an abundance of paperwork was usually because someone had royally pissed him off or Mukuro had goaded him into another fight.

A few hours later...

Reborn's openly displeased aura grew even worse the more the doctor gave him a complete prognosis of Hikari's condition.

It went beyond "extreme fatigue and exhaustion". Hikari was working her body to the bone trying to keep the paperwork from overwhelming her desk (Reborn already found the stash of special bullets that Leon made to draw out someone's dying will in a hidden compartment in the desk...he found it worrying that over half of the box was used up) and her flames were dangerously low.

Hikari was only twenty-four years old, and she already had some rather nasty ulcers that would require an operation to remove. It was clear she had never given her body any chance to proper rest or recover from hours of pouring over paperwork, and the doctors had been rather livid upon discovering signs of the bullets being used with depressing frequency. She was going to require a special diet until her weight came back up to healthy levels and that wasn't even getting into how pale she was from lack of sunlight.

She was currently in a coma, and if she woke up at any time within the next three days the doctors weren't even going to hesitate medicating her to insure she slept for another two. It was that bad.

Reborn heard his phone ring.

"Chaos. What did you find out?"

"There's some bullshit 'tradition' among the Guardians to bury their Skies under paperwork so they don't have to deal with Vongola craziness except for small doses," said Mammon flatly. "You know how the Vongola is about it's traditions, and these idiots apparently took it upon themselves to insure that Hikari never made it out of the office by deliberately misbehaving often enough that if she didn't stay tied to her desk there was a chance the room would have overflowed. How is she?"

"If she wakes any time within the next three days, the doctors will deliberately medicate her to put her into a medically induced coma for another two," said Reborn bluntly. "She's going to require surgery and a specialized diet because she's very underweight and hasn't slept properly in over a month."

He was going to bite the heads off her idiotic Guardians for letting it get this bad, much less causing it.

Either way he had time to wait...after all most of them were still in surgery and in 'critical condition' after the ass-kicking her psyche had given them.

Wonder of wonders, Kyouya and surprisingly Chrome came seven hours after Reborn himself had, which was roughly five hours after the mess went down.

"What. Happened."

Kyouya was not happy. Chrome was drawing some rather horrifying parallels between Hikari and what she went through before Mukuro found her.

"What happened is that you idiots kept creating more paperwork for her to go over and never gave her a chance to rest and recover," snapped Reborn.

Chrome wilted at that. Kyouya, however did not back down.

"Unlike the fake carnivores, I at least did my own reports. The other fools were pathetic enough to dump their responsibility on her first," said Kyouya irritably.

Well that explained why Kyouya gave her the least grief, paperwork wise. Reborn turned his eyes to Chrome, who couldn't fully tear her eyes off her boss.

"Hayato was adamant that we keep the boss safe behind and desk and kept trying to locate where she hid the stash of bullets you gave her last time. He was not happy every time we felt her flames flare in a way that said she used one of them up to cut down on the paperwork and deliberately went out to start a fight to make more once it was done."

"That pathetic puppy is so damn territorial he won't even allow the Omnivore to find a proper mate. He keeps scaring them off," said Kyouya dimissively. "The other fake carnivores keep bleating about her 'duty' to the family and producing an heir, but the feral puppy won't let anyone near her. I think she was seriously contemplating getting it done without anyone at all just to shut them up."

Reborn looked pissed.

"Are you telling me that Hayato kept her from relaxing at all?" he said dangerously.

No wonder she was in such bad shape...she had no chance to get any stress relief, and she was so overworked she couldn't take care of the pent up urges herself. Odds are she passed out once her head hit the pillow once she was done.

All that stress resulted in the current mess they were dealing with.

If Hayato was being this much of a problem, then it was pretty obvious he had never harmonized with her at all. Which begged the question if any of them had, if they let things get this bad.

Well...if Hayato didn't learn from this experience and tried to pull the same shit once everyone was back to functional then Reborn had zero issue ending him. He did not put all that work into making Hikari the best damn boss out of a civilian background just for her idiot Right Hand to indirectly kill her through overwork.

(On a completely "unrelated" note, Fon had already proven his flames were compatible with Hikari's own, but he was too polite to try and take Hayato's spot as her Storm. However after this clusterfuck, there was a strong chance there would be an opening he could all but slip into with terrifying ease.)

It had been three weeks since the 'incident', and the one thing that stuck in the minds of everyone who knew most of the true story was that Hikari had gained a terrifying protector/assistant out of the deal.

Even Mukuro was fucking terrified of "Yoru", and that was saying a lot about how much Hikari had been repressing for years now.

Facing Mukuro or Chrome in a bad mood was bad enough, as they had gotten very good at using their illusions to screw someone over without having to even touch them, but Yoru was on an entirely different level.

Yoru had a fascination with medieval torture, and the was able to replicate the experience of being put through said torture without having to actually perform it.

Most terrifying of all was that no one would believe the 'Saint' of the underworld ot be capable of unleashing an alter ego capable of putting someone that made a blood eagle seem tame in comparison...and that was when she was bored.

Reborn was both pleased at the way Hikari had found a way to terrify even the most hardened mafioso into submission and teaching everyone around not to fuck with her...and distinctly unhappy at the fact she had only developed it because her Guardians were idiots and kept pressuring her until something snapped.

Reborn drew the line at the fact that even the Vongola's allies started to give Hikari wary looks, without being in close proximity to Yoru. All because one idiot made a few ill-spoken comments about the Decimo having a 'split personality' and that her other half was 'the unholy love child of the Varia and Daemon Spade'.

Reborn had killed him once he tracked down who said it, but the mafia was full of sharks and the comment was akin to blood in the water in the worst ways.

To make matters worse, the available dating pool that Hikari had to help sire the next generation of Vongola shrunk to nonexistent levels...and it was clear if she did go the 'virgin mother' route then the Alliance would never let her hear the end of it.

"God...why did I agree to be Decimo again?" she whined.

"Because the only other candidates were unqualified due to blood, or far too young."

Hikari blinked.

"And now?"

"Now it's more of a question of you still have two more years before any of them are remotely old enough to hold the Vongola together," replied Reborn.

Hikari's eyes gleamed as a wild, crazy idea took root.

"Tell me...are the idiot scientist trio still messing with Lambo's bazooka?"

Reborn eyed her warily.

"What are you planning?"

"Half of this mess started because Daemon refused to let anyone he deemed 'too soft' to take over the Vongola, and because the Ninth is a complete idiot. So if I were to pick a successor from the current candidate pool and toss them to Xanxus for training..."

"Then you could retire in peace. However you do realize that the underworld will never fully let you go."

"Not in this timeline, no...but what about the time before Luce tricked you into taking on the curse?"

Reborn's eyes widened.

"What?"

"Think about it. I am a horrible boss and there's still a chance I could screw things over the same way my 'future' self did with Byakuran. But there is a precedent for the Primo's line to hand over the rings to their cousins and walk away from it all...however with how prevelant technology is there's no feasible way for me to escape like he did, at least not in this time anyway. Besides, the second I reach the past it will splinter off into a new timeline anyway regardless of what I do."

Reborn looked like he had a headache.

Sadly, the plan she was outlining also happened to be the best alternative they might have to this entire mess. Now that Hikari had an outlet for her pent up dark emotions, there was simply no way for Yoru to go back. And her 'Guardians' were already considerably more leery of her as a result, making it clear that any bonds they might have had were damaged or broken entirely.

Sending her to the past would allow her to heal, and give her a chance to actually flourish without the chains of being Decimo around her neck. The only reason she was chosen was because the Ninth refused to entertian the idea of someone who wasn't an immediate blood relative of the family as the next Decimo, since Xanxus was out because of his bloodline.

The only reason she hadn't 'screwed up' like her so-called future self had was because Reborn wouldn't allow it now that he knew it was a risk. Neither would Xanxus for that matter and any time it looked like she might slip, they came down on her hard.

The simple fact was that her collapse was merely a matter of time.