Things change, people change, but sometimes…things stay the same. A story is about to unfold, a story that is fifty years after the events you have seen…

You see a small infant dressed in a black suit and a fedora with a chameleon on the rim of the hat. He turns around and you see that he is not an image like the ones you have seen because he is staring straight at you and he grins from underneath his hat.

"The events you see here…" he speaks in an almost comically high-pitched voice, but his tone is deadly-calm, "If you're ready to face them, get out and open your eyes skywards."

~8~

Sawada Hideyoshi. Short. Plain. Concise. A name that tons of people in Japan have. Especially the 'Sawada' and 'Hideyoshi' parts; it's a name that's nothing special, nothing remarkable, and the owner of the name wasn't all that grand either. In fact, he was normal, almost remarkably normal.

He lived a normal life with one mother and one father. He was an only child and had a normal childhood. He had normal friends and he went to a normal school in a normal town. It wasn't that the town or the school or his friends were boring, they were just normal and Hideyoshi, also known as Hide, was perfectly content with all this.

In fact, Hide's grandfather used to tell him stories about how he (the grandfather that is) used to be bullied a lot and had a lot of very strange friends, Hide was a little freaked out by these stories of his grandfather's childhood, not to mention that his grandfather was a bit of a strange man himself. Hide then concluded that this was because his grandfather had not been normal to begin with, so Hide had become almost determined to lead a regular life. He promised to himself that he wouldn't stand out in athletics, or get the best or the worst grades, or gain an extraneous amount of friends or enemies. It was much harder than it looked for Hide, he actually had to do calculations on how many friends he had to keep, which turned out to be about twenty, and how to get a passing grade average that was well…average, but the athletics thing wasn't too hard to begin with.

Right now Hide was having a very normal lunch with his very normal friends in his very normal school. Three guys, which was a good average of friends to have in class and to have lunch with. Not only that, but Hide also had gotten bread from the cafeteria, something that average middle schoolers had for lunch. Today was a good day, perfectly calm; Hide took a bite out of his bread and noticed that his normal friends were giving him a strange look.

"What?" he asked and looked around in case he had missed something.

"Nothing, it's just that you look more peaceful today, Sawada-san," said one of his friends.

"Yeah, you're normally looking at everything very closely," joked another friend.

"Huh? Do I?" he asked, this time with a bit more urgency.

"I guess," shrugged the first friend that had spoken, "But you're normally very bland Sawada-san, being so bland only makes your other characteristics stand out more."

"R-really?" Hide asked, this was all news to him, "But I let you guys call me 'Hide' and not Hideyoshi, that counts for something right?"

"Yeah, but nobody really calls you 'Hide', Sawada-kun," said the second friend.

"I guess you're right on that…" Hide said thoughtfully and mumbled, "Bland, huh…?"

"Ah, we didn't mean that you were bland though, Sawada-kun!" said his other friend urgently.

"Hm?" Hide looked over to him and gave him a questioning look that nobody else seemed to notice.

"Yeah, we're sorry if we offended you or anything," said the first friend.

Dang it! Hide thought to himself, Am I supposed to take offense now or something? Should I just pass it off or should I crack a joke? Geez! What would be normal!!

"Don't worry about it," Hide smiled and almost laughed, "You were probably joking around right?"

They all looked at him in a silence that seemed to last forever to Hide, then they all started laughing and went on to the next conversation topic like a show that was the night before.

That's good, they didn't seem to notice, Hide sighed in relief.

This was how Hide spent his school days; this was a good start to his school year too since this was the first day of his first year in middle school. And he was determined to keep everything as it were.

~8~

When Hide had arrived to his home he had been greeted rather violently by a pair of small feet to his face.

"What was that for!?" he yelled while rubbing his nose.

"Sawada Hideyoshi," a squeaky voice spoke, he looked around and saw no one, "Down here."

Hide looked down and saw an infant in a black suit and matching fedora standing in front of him. A tiny, green chameleon was creeping on the brim of his hat.

"H-how can a baby talk…?" Hide began warily.

"That's not important," the baby said, "My name is Reborn, I'm your new tutor."

"Tutor? I don't need a tutor."

"Oh really? Says here that you were failing math last year," said Reborn, he had somehow gotten his tiny hands on a report card that was from Hide's elementary school.

"So what? Everyone was failing that class," he replied.

"I see," Reborn nodded and put the report card in his hat.

"Well whatever," Hide shrugged, he did not feeling like asking questions where the baby had gotten the report card so instead he stood up and picked the kid up to examine him, "What's up with you, kid? Are your parents lost or something? You should get going home now."

"I told you, I'm your home tutor," the baby stated.

"Yeah, yeah," Hide started towards the door while saying, "Why don't you be a 'home tutor' to your brothers or sisters or something."

Hide let the baby down outside his house and started walking back when he was kicked in the back of the head.

"What the hell!?" he tried turning around but was pinned with his arm behind his back, "W-WHY!?"

"You shouldn't treat your tutor like that," the baby said grimly.

"You shouldn't treat your elders like that!" Hide stated.

"What was that?" Reborn questioned while pulling at Hide's arm.

"Ow! Ow! Ow! MOM!" Hide yelled as he squirmed beneath the child's iron grip.

A woman with short, straight, black hair and wearing an apron came running out of the house and saw the situation.

"Oh my! What's happening here?" the woman asked.

"Mom, help!"

"Well you please look at this miss?" Reborn handed Hide's mother an envelope which she opened while bashfully saying "Miss? Oh my!"

She read the letter for a few seconds and clapped her hands together once she was done and exclaimed, "Oh my! You're Reborn-san? I didn't know you were coming today!"

"A letter should have come about my arrival," said Reborn.

"Really? Oh my, I'm so absent minded sometimes, Hide-kun can you check the mailbox for mother?" she asked sweetly.

"Does it look like I can!?" her son yelled from the ground and quickly got slapped on the head violently.

"You shouldn't talk to your mother like that," Reborn scolded.

"WHAT'S GOING ON!?"

~8~

"Sawada Hideyoshi; age: 12; height: 155 cm; GPA: 84.05 points," Reborn cited.

"And…?" Hide asked tiredly and was immediately smacked on the head by Reborn.

"I wasn't finished," he stated and continued with the statistics on a clip board that he had procured out of nowhere, "Athletic ability: none; favorite sport: baseball; favorite food: meat balls; favorite girl-"

"Wait, you can't say that-!" Hide tried to argue.

"Tanaka Megumi."

"Hold on! What's this supposed to be for again!?" the boy yelled. They were now sitting in the living room of the Sawada Residence. Hide sat next to his mother on one side of the coffee table while Reborn sat on the other side reading off of a green clip board.

"It's an evaluation."

"What does who I like and what kind of food I like have to do with anything?"

"Nothing, it's just interesting."

"Wait! How do you even know all that stuff!?" Hide yelled and then looked at his mother, "Who is this person anyways!?"

"He's Reborn-san, Hide-kun," his mother said as if this was a fact, "Reborn-san is going to be your new tutor! Apparently he is a very prestigious tutor, he only teaches the best of the best, and your grandfather wrote a letter of recommendation to him and he accepted! Isn't that great Hide-kun?"

"But I don't need a home tutor!" the son argued, "My grades are just fine!"

"Grades aren't the only thing that's important," said Reborn to Hide's mom, "There's also personal fitness, and responsibility; Miss, I teach all my students how to excel not only in school but in life too."

"Oh my, really?" the mother was overjoyed at this.

"Mom, I think you're overlooking a really important factor…" her son spoke, "Like, I don't know, the fact that he's A CHILD! Not even a child! An infant!"

"Oh my, Hide-kun, we all have our own flaws that we have to live with."

"HIS IS MORE THAN A FLAW!"

"Miss, if you do not mind, could you please excuse me and Hideyoshi?" Reborn asked.

"Oh my, of course Reborn-san, and you can just call me Sawada-san," the mother said bashfully, "Come and get me if you need anything."

The door shut and Hide shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The baby was strangely quiet for a few moments as he looked through the things on his clipboard, and then he looked up to Hide.

"Yo, Hide, why are you so lazy?" Reborn asked suddenly

"H-Huh?" Hide blinked, didn't the baby just call him Hideyoshi a few minutes ago? And wasn't he being all formal and polite too?

"You heard me," the baby replied.

"I-I'm not being lazy," Hideyoshi said, and he ran through the number of choices that would make him seem like a normal kid, "Now can I go? There's a new game out that my friends told me about."

"Really? What's the game?"

Hide was silent, he had not planned on Reborn asking what the game was.

"You're badgering," said Reborn.

"No I'm not!" he stammered, "W-What are you talking about?"

"When I showed your report card from last year, you weren't surprised," the infant spoke, "A normal middle schooler would have screamed and tried to make a grab for the card or at least asked where I got it, instead of that you just said that everyone else had the same grade."

"S-so?" Hide went pale but tried to make himself sound indifferent.

"Not only that, but your grade point average is normal in all your classes," Reborn continued, "I was actually surprised to see that you were passing, because I expected you to be more like Tsuna."

"Who?"

"Doesn't matter," Reborn shook his head and continued, "Actually, he was an old student of mine, and I expected you to be like him for…specific reasons, but the only way you are like him is that you suck at athletics and you like the most popular girl in your school."

"How'd you know Megumi-san is the most popular girl in school?" Hide asked, the green clipboard in Reborn's hand turned into a gun which he pointed at the boy's head.

"Because I'm your home tutor." And with that, he pulled the trigger.

Hide suddenly felt an overwhelming mixture of emotions as he fell to the ground, there was shock, surprise, and fear; once those feelings were over with there was...well, anger. Anger towards Reborn for shooting him out of no where, anger at his grandfather for hiring this insane baby, but mainly he was angry at himself for not being able to live, not being able to ever speak to Tanaka Megumi, and not being able to have real friends, people who might actually miss him and then remember who he was afterwards as not being some bland and boring kid. What surprised Hide most though, was that after anger, he was sad and he regretted not being able to do the things he wanted because of his stupid wish to be normal.

And then Hide hit the ground and he closed his eyes only to open them to an almost realistic world, it was like he was floating when he stood up, stripped of all his clothing except his underwear (blue with green polka dots btw) and he felt like screaming at the top of his lungs. And he did. He yelled at the top of his lungs:

"REBORN!! I WILL BE KNOWN EVEN IF I WERE TO DIE!!!"

"That's the spirit, Hide," Reborn nodded in approval as Hide busted through a window, thus shattering it, and running out of the house and into the town, "I haven't felt this thrill in a while."

~8~

Katekyo Hitman Reborn belongs to Amano Akira