Waking up in her four year old self was not as disconcerting as one would think. She was used to this crap by this point.
For Tsubasa Sawada, her life had been nothing but a headache. And the less said about how difficult it was going to be to hide her absolute hatred of her sperm donor the limited time she had to be around that ass, the better.
Which was why she was going to firmly rewrite this particular script and force the Vongola's hand. If she did this right, then she would finally be free from the worst of the nonsense she had to deal with every time this happened.
The real trick would be the timing, but after she had confirmed something the last time this happened, she was confident it would work.
Now she just had to wait...and discreetly set things up so that she would be removed from her mother's custody in such a way that Iemitsu couldn't simply use the Vongola's influence to claim custody of her himself.
She had only gone through that once, and she had sworn never again. He had only seen her as a tool to further his own influence, never as a daughter.
It was after the last time that her hatred of him solidified to the point she could no longer stand to be in the same room as him. In fact if she had even half a chance she would make his death as slow and painful as possible.
Not killing him was honestly going to be the most difficult part of this headache. Well, that and hiding her loathing of Iemitsu in general.
Pretending he didn't exist was likely going to be her best bet to avoid a straight up massacre.
Tsubasa patiently waited for the day to come. Once Timoteo and Iemitsu showed up, the countdown began.
Timoteo's expression upon seeing Tsubasa could only be classified as "calculating". He might put on the persona of a kindly grandfather, but there was no mistaking her resemblance to the Primo. She stamped down her sky flames as much as possible, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Iemitsu she avoided by keeping books handy and acting super shy around him since he was almost never around. Avoiding his eyes was easily done, as all she had to do was stay around her mother long enough for them to start up again.
When Nana went to get some groceries for a specialty dish Iemitsu asked for, Tsubasa kept half an ear out for what the two men were saying. Naturally, they assumed a Japanese child wouldn't understand a word of Italian.
"Are you sure you're alright with this? Sealing a child could ruin her flames," said Timoteo. Though he pretended he cared, Tsubasa knew damn well he didn't. She was a potential threat to his reign, and he could always unseal her later if it became necessary.
"It's for the good of the family. Besides, she won't need them this young anyway and once she's older we'll find a good husband for her," said Iemitsu.
Bastard. As if she didn't need more reasons to despise his very existence around her.
She came into the house, and they pretended all smiles. She waited for Timoteo to come into range before she gathered up her sky flames and prepared for what was next.
She could only hope it would work, otherwise she was going to have to haul ass to Kawahira's real estate office and hide there. Being the Sky Arcobaleno was a pain in the ass, but at least she knew how to break it.
His hand glowed with a pathetically weak flame, as he prepared to seal her own. Her hand lashed out and her forehead went alight from hyper dying will mode as she solemnly intoned...
"Giudizio del trono del cielo (Judgment of the Sky Throne)."
The shock on his face was almost comical. The reaction the ring had to it was not.
The Vongola rings were part of the Tri-Ni-Sette. Once her soul had been imprinted on the ring, it stayed there regardless of what her age was. She sometimes wondered if that was the reason why Timoteo had never attempted to pass on the rings to his sons.
As a Donna imprinted on the ring, and as the reincarnation of the man who it originally belonged to before Daemon screwed things up, she had limited access to the Sky Throne inside.
And right now she was attempting to avert being dragged into the Vongola's nonsense before she graduated high school this time around.
The ring blazed with sky flames, and a heaviness filled the air. It was so thick you could almost choke on it.
Suddenly Timoteo cried out in shock and pain, as the ring began to reject his claim on it. His right as a Vongola Don had been judged, and he had been deemed unworthy to lead the family.
Fortunately for her, Kawahira was both a paranoid bastard and happened to be very close by. She knew he would likely sense what she was trying to pull and if she spun this right then he would likely help her.
She wasn't attempting to escape her fate as the one to inherit the rings. She was just trying to have an actual childhood before that cursed mantle fell to her.
Kawahira, in his Checkerface persona, knocked both men out.
"And what exactly are you trying to accomplish?" he asked mildly.
"An actual childhood without the headache of knowing these two morons will attempt to force me into a position I hate before I even graduate high school," she deadpanned.
Checkerface stared at her. She stared flatly back.
"Give me one reason why I should help you?"
"I'll take on the responsibility as Sky Arcobaleno so Aria will be spared," said Tsubasa without hesitation. She knew how to break the curse after all, it would just be an annoying few years for the solution to be put into place.
"Your time was imprinted on the ring. You will not be able to escape your fate," said Checkerface.
"No, but nowhere does it say that I can't delay it," Tsubasa countered. "Look, I just want to have a real childhood and actually have a life before I have to clean up their damn mess again. It's not like anyone but whoever gets stuck as 'Decimo' is going to know they're actually the Eleventh don and not the Tenth."
Or that the real Decimo was a child right now.
Checkerface seemed to search her for something. Then he looked at the two unconscious Skies.
"I'll only help out directly this once. After you take on the pacifier you're on your own."
"Deal. I have a plan for that issue anyway," said Tsubasa.
Namely it had taken her a full lifetime to track down her mother's side of the family and to learn her grandparents had been ALIVE until shortly after her sixteenth birthday. They had disowned Nana for marrying her father, and it would be easy for the time-displaced donna to convince her poor mother to at least try to contact them during the times Iemitsu was gone.
So long as she could get in touch with them before her seventh birthday, she was confident she could spin a yarn that would convince them to take her in. After all, it wasn't like the braying jackass had ever been there for her childhood.
Checkerface altered their memories, but the fact remained that the ring would no longer respond to Timoteo. He had been deemed unworthy and would have no other choice than to hand over the rings.
If she had done it right, then it would skip her entirely for a while. If not, she was going to have a long list of choice words on the matter.
The amount of relief she felt upon learning from Checkerface that Enrico had successfully managed to become the "Tenth" don of the Vongola could not be adequately described in words. Even if it came with the annoyance of having to be the Sky Arcobaleno again.
It was beyond weird, staring at her maternal grandparents. She barely knew Iemitsu's side of the family, since he had basically ditched them in favor of the Vongola. They had mostly cut all ties with him, for obvious reasons.
They seemed nice, but the second Nana brought up her "darling" and attempted to get them to reconsider accepting him, they shut her down so fast it would have made anyone else's head spin. And they were painfully polite about shutting her down by changing the subject to something far more acceptable. It was clear they really, really didn't like Iemitsu.
Tsubasa liked them immediately. Sure, they were a bit traditional minded, but she could work with that.
"So how do you like Namimori, Tsubasa-chan?" asked Haruhi, her grandmother.
"It's okay," she said quietly. "But the other kids aren't nice to me at all."
"How so?" asked her grandfather Itsuki.
"They call me Dame-Tsubasa, and make fun of me because I prefer boy's clothing. Mama likes the frilly stuff, but it's really hard to move in," said Tsubasa.
She hated frilly crap. It was a side effect of having to keep a bunch of alpha-male morons who were so used to seeing her trapped behind a desk answering for their antics to really respect her. She had to go the way of Lal Mirch just to get any respect from those idiots.
On a related note, she could often be found commiserating with the former de facto leader of CEDEF and asking advice on how to keep her batch of idiots in line without trying to murder them in the process.
It really, really didn't help that the only other females she had frequent contact with were generally noncombatants (save for Chrome) and that she was surrounded by guys most of the time. Reborn had despaired (once or twice) that so many people mistook her for a GUY because she preferred male clothing, since the dresses women normally wore rarely suited her fighting style.
Still, it didn't take much to convince her grandparents to look closer into the situation with their daughter and grandchild.
And what they found was nothing shy of appalling.
The newly renamed "Haruka" was very pleased at this turn of events, because thanks to a few well places comments and carefully forged bits of paper, her grandparents came to the correct conclusion that Iemitsu was even worse for their daughter than they originally assumed.
Sure, they thought he was Yakuza and had only used their child as a 'breeder' to insure his line continued, but it was close enough to serve her purposes. After all, it meant they took the risk of Haruka being forced to marry into another criminal family very seriously, hence why they changed her name after they firmly claimed custody over her.
Nana was a lost cause, as she still firmly loved the idiot and refused to see the issue with his long absences.
Haruka had long since given up on her, even if she did suspect that Iemitsu had done something to Nana shortly after they were married.
In Italy...
Enrico gasped as he went through the official inheritance only known to the highest of the inner sect of the Vongola. It was one thing to wear the rings...it was another for the rings to accept your claim and allow you access to their full power.
Timoteo looked at his son with a solemn expression.
"Well?"
Enrico stared at his father in disbelief. He had found the source of why the Ninth's claim had been blocked alright, but it wasn't like he could explain the truth.
Inside the Throne of the Sky, he had accepted the Vongola's Sin. However, there was an anomaly that he had noticed almost immediately.
Instead of the nine dons he expected, he had found ten.More importantly the 'extra' if one could call it that was a woman. As if that wasn't enough, the unknown Donna bore a terrifying resemblance to the Primo himself.
More importantly, the mystery Donna wasn't standing like the rest...she had clearly taken the place of the Primo on the throne itself.
"Who are you?" asked Enrico.
"You may call me Ciel," she replied.
Enrico wasn't exactly amused, but he kept a polite face.
"Why are you in the Throne of the Sky? I thought only the Vongola dons could access this place?"
"That's not the question you should be asking," she said patiently.
"And what question should I be asking?"
She smirked.
"You should be asking what the Ninth did to piss the rest of us off enough that we renounced his ability to use the rings. I didn't go through all that effort to avoid being dragged into cleaning up his mess just to see his son repeat his mistakes."
By the time he heard the half of what his father had done as the don, Enrico could understand why the Ninth was effectively booted out save for his imprint.
The main thing he took from the conversation was that he was not the Vongola Decimo. He was actually the eleventh don of the Vongola, and was essentially keeping the family from self-destructing from the Ninth's complacency and the general bullshit Iemitsu pulled on a daily basis.
He was not looking forward to the paperwork. If what even half of what he was told during the trial was true, he was going to be in for what could only be described as hell.
However the image of the true Vongola Decimo was imprinted on his mind. He would recognize that woman if he saw her again.