I never was satisfied with the fact that everyone seems to have forgotten that Tsuna had killed someone! If they did not than that means they are all sociopath - now that I remember, wasn't there a strong theory back in the Simon arc days that Tsuna was a sociopath? I am not sure how the fandom lead things after that but I do remember that it had a lot of support.

Anyway, I loved the scene were Byakuran was a celebrity in hell for killing billions. dude, even I was creeped out. Reborn was particularly hard in this fic, good choice.

*blinked* Huh? Who killed who? Who and who, who got killed? *blinked* I know but I'm sure that I still don't really understand! I am confused!

Are they talking about Byakuran who got 'killed' by Tsuna?

*loading*
I guess... I understand now.

omg i nearly cried at this
THIS IS SO SAD
TSUNA BBY IT'S OK ILY COME TO ME BBY, COME TO ME 3
good job haha!

Ooh, very nice. I felt the integrity of the thing was damaged by the need to defend the patently absurd premise of the series, which came in at the end, even if you did so valiantly and with style.

Of course, if we take Reborn's remonstration to imply that he doesn't intend to pressure Tsuna to kill anyone who doesn't deserve it, who doesn't have a heap of referrals and all that, that's /hugely/ comforting, since the blood-drinking dream wasn't just 'being one who commits the act of killing' but 'being one who lives upon taking life and wellbeing,' and the mafia are fundamentally both parasitic and violent. Not /all/ bad; in many ways merely atavistic, but inescapably violently-parasitic, and when patronage networks and illegal trade are insufficient or encounter snags, people get cleared out of the way. If it were just the Byakurans he was going to hurt, this resolution would work, but telling someone socialized as a modern Japanese boy to think of killing people for business reasons as perfectly acceptable is not a good sign, and the question of 'right to torture self with guilt about this' and 'right to object to the idea of this confirming the start of a trend to the Dark Side' are rather different.

Reborn being, after all, the personification of Tsuna being forced against his will to become a part of this, his treating of the situation as inevitable, while completely in /character/, seemed to cheapen the excellence with which Tsuna's emotions were depicted. I mean, mixing seriously examined emotional backlash and a universe that runs on a combination of gag and action manga conventions is necessarily awkward, and it's not that the final sequence didn't flow excellently. It's just that the later segments didn't actually resolve the difficulties raised in the first part, and yet acted like they did.

Mind you, this is following a source material wherein the girls' very reasonable demands to be told where the hell they were and what was going on was resolved by shaming them back into service as mindless enablers and objects, so...yeah.

Lovely stuff, and I really appreciated the mileage you got out of the concept of termination as 'referral.' Did you originate it? Was cool. (When the number of Byakuran's referrals first came up I thought for a moment it was somehow referring to his multiuniversality, which I think shows principally that I hadn't slept in 26 hours.)

Apparently either Hades is all one as in the classical model, or the plural destinations pool their referral data. And yes, I realize it's a symbolic dream. . At least I was quite satisfied with it as a resolution to the specific guilt over Byakuran, if not over his horror and fear of self and future and what Reborn is forcing him to become. The genre shift never really came to terms with the issues that starting as a gag manga left in the blatant slapstick horror of the story, so what can you do besides live in denial or throw your hands up?

I loved this!

The referral thing is pretty interesting way to address the guilt issues Tsuna probably did have. They never show it in the manga though, it just switches right back to daily life before the next arc starts.

I liked it very much. In fact the dark, rather philosophical side to this piece was what really caught my attention and the dreams, with the referrals, were very well written. The title was well chosen also. I hope you'll write more KHR stories.

~Iris

Best Angst KHR story I've read, so far - and that's saying something!

It's brilliant :D

Very good~ ;)

:')

This was a sad, simple little story, and it really deserves more reviews than it has at the moment. For all his issues, psychologically speaking Tsuna is probably the most normal out of almost everyone in Reborn, and his reactions-the denial, the guilt, the fear of losing himself, the eventual resigned acceptance-ring very true and real. Anyway, great job.

This story is absolutely epic. I really love how you described Tsuna's nightmares, especially the part with Byakuran. And Reborn's line really hit me hard.

I really liked the ending too. Keep up the awesome work! :)

I really enjoyed this story. It had always bothered me that Tsuna didn't seem to feel anything when Byakuran died.

... Oh.

That referral dream was... whoa. I don't know what to say, it was both original and powerfully meaningful.

Loved the little bit of humor. Cosplay! and then, bam, right back to the angst.

"In that case, the next time you kill someone, I'll have an incineration squad ready to get rid of that corpse too, so that you can continue to pretend it never happened."

nghh that hit so hard, whoa. Nice. o.o

"…Why did it have to be me?"

Reborn's gaze is not without sympathy, but his response is absolute.

"Because you're the boss."

And this part is perfect T_T

The ending was great, tying it all together. Much much love. Adding this to my faves!

You did a great job of portraying exactly how Tsuna would feel and react to killing Byakuran :) I really liked it.

One thing though... I haven't finished the future arc and...

Uni dies?

I really need to pay more attention to the spoiler warnings... I didn't notice it till after I read the story :(

Still a great story though~