It was a scene that would have Squalo checking for Mist-trickery, because he was not expecting to come across his Sky actually crying so openly.

"...What the hell did your Sky show ours that would result in that?" demanded Mammon to Arashi.

"Hotaru-chan can see into the past, and show it to others. She has actual pictures of Reborn and the others as adults, and has taken to observing Daniela in her prime to better emulate the woman. She is merely showing Xanxus what his mother was like before she became a prostitute and the few good times he had with her, since odds are he has forgotten them," explained Arashi. "It's part of the reason why the Vindice like her so much."

"Voi... she can see into the past? How the hell can she pull that off?" said Squalo in shock.

"To put it simply, magic. That and she has a rather strong affinity for scrying into time, but the future is simply too hazy to bother with," said Arashi shrugging.

The Ten-Year-Bazooka merely followed the most likely path to the future, rather than actually borrowing from it. The main reason the Bovino couldn't make it work for more than five minutes was because the future was always in flux, and reliably borrowing from it for too long was impossible. They were lucky that the device managed to avoid the whole paradox issue by switching the one hit with their past selves. It prevented them from canceling each other out.

Seeing into the past and present was simple, compared to that.

"Just so you know, I can take pictures by freezing the image," said Hotaru helpfully.

Xanxus perked up at that. He had no pictures of his Ma from before, and anything he might have had would have been destroyed or 'lost' after the coup. The Ninth didn't exactly want to encourage the chance he would 'remember his roots' after all.

"How much?" asked Xanxus. He'd happily pay any amount.

Hotaru smiled at him, and he subconsciously started to relax. Her flames weren't trying to force themselves on him, just offer a safety blanket of sorts.

"It's free. After all, I would rather have a casual and friendly relationship with the Varia than anything remotely similar to the way the Ninth has been treating you. Besides...I highly doubt you have any pictures of her to remember her by," said Hotaru honestly.

Xanxus...didn't know how to feel about that.

"Can you find out who my actual father was?"

"Difficult, considering her profession. But I'm sure if we did some digging we could get a few leads on who to check for a paternity test, considering the gestation period for humans," commented Arashi. "Is there any chance your mother was a Sky or Storm?"

"She might have had flames, but I have no idea what type," said Xanxus.

His ma had to have some connection to the Cosa Nostra for her to be so certain of the Ninth being his father. He had no idea who her famiglia was, or even if she had Flames before her mind became so addled, nor did he have any idea where to look.

"By the way, what was the loophole you found that would allow you to break away from the Vongola?" asked Reborn.

"We found a rule written by the Secundo that basically states if there is a question of the succession that the Varia was allowed to remove itself from the famiglia until a new don is appointed and manages to stay in power for at least five years. It was to keep the heirs from trying to drag us into what would only become an internal conflict, thus weakening the famiglia," said Squalo.

"Since the old fucker won't release that I'm adopted to our allies, that means we can legally remove ourselves citing that I want to make a serious bid as a potential heir to the throne and I don't want to cause a conflict of interest when the next Boss is chosen," said Xanxus bluntly.

Reborn smirked.

"Sneaky. He either tells the other families that you aren't his son, thus invalidating you to the Vongola throne, or he has to accept you as the heir and give you an honest chance to lead anyway. Either way he's backed into a corner where his own power base is weakened considerably," said Reborn with approval.

"I don't care who leads the Vongola, so long as they quit trying to force me into a role I don't want and they leave me the hell alone," said Hotaru sharply. "I want absolutely nothing to do with them after what Iemitsu and his boss put me through."

Xanxus eyed the way Arashi and Hotaru interacted and hid a smirk. Seducing her was firmly off the table, considering he had doubts the Storm would back off if he tried to show any interest in courting Hotaru as a woma. While she had a fire in her that he could approve of, he had the distinct feeling Arashi can and would fight for her.

And if Arashi really was Fon like he suspected, then that would be more trouble than it was worth.

Besides, that meant actually giving the old bastard what he wanted, which was regaining control over the Primo's bloodline. Considering the only reason he had released Xanxus was because he had discovered the girl had managed to get out from under his thumb, and had threatened his Elements if he didn't cooperate, Xanxus was in no mood to humor his demands.

With the Varia...

"Voi... Boss, what do you think of her?"

"She's not trash," said Xanxus simply. Which was a very high complement considering he called everyone trash.

Squalo snorted.

"Daniela would have loved her...right before corrupting her to the point that she had a mini-me running around," said Squalo.

"Did you see the way she treated her Storm? You might have some competition there boss," said Lussuria.

Xanxus rolled his eyes.

"Like hell I do. Not worth pissing off the Storm Arcobaleno over a woman. Would rather have her as an ally instead."

"What makes you think Arashi is Fon?" asked Mammon intently. Though they had privately come to the same conclusion themselves.

Arashi acted and spoke far too much like the annoying martial artist had to be a coincidence. There were some behaviors that were impossible to replicate, no matter how close you were to the other person.

Arashi wasn't trying to imitate the little queues that Fon had. Queues Mammon had memorized a long time ago because Fon found it amusing to disguise himself in order to annoy them and occasionally one-up Reborn. Why he bothered, the Mist had no idea but it was very annoying when they realized that the food vendor they were talking to was Fon and not some random Asian.

"Storm is too experienced and was far too adept at removing his Sky from Vongola control. That and the way he kept glancing at the pacifier around Reborn's neck every so often without realizing it," said Xanxus flatly. "I bet you anything if we did a DNA sample between him and Fon it would come up as an almost perfect match."

"You think he managed to break the curse," said Mammon.

Which pissed them off because they had been looking into that for decades and only barely managed to find a way to disguise the 'warning' system the pacifiers had whenever another one of them was around.

"Only explanation."

Considering who they were talking about, it came as no surprise when Arashi visited them on the sly the next morning.

Arashi was entirely calm about the fact Mammon got into his face with an irate expression on their face.

"Talk, or I will make your life hell."

"I was already under a curse before Luce's betrayal, and the events that lead to the pacifier falling off are nearly impossible to replicate. It was simply easier to fake my death than explain what happened...besides, I had no idea where you were and this meant I could troll Reborn."

"..."

Okay, trolling Reborn was a pretty good reason to keep quiet on the matter. The Sun was a complete ass who deserved it.

Still hurt that Fon managed to escape their curse and they couldn't.

"What do you mean you were already under a curse?"

"Have you ever heard of Clow Reed?"

Surprisingly enough, Belphegor recognized the name immediately.

"Are you taking about the peasant who created the Clow Cards?!"

Arashi stared at him in disbelief.

"You've already met Cerberus in his conservative form. After I stole them, I was cursed with his counterpart Yue. The Moon Guardian didn't want something as ridiculous as the curse Luce put on us to keep him from doing his job, so he used his Cloud flames to propogate my Storm until the pacifier overloaded and fell off. Of course by doing so I was left weakened and my Flames took a few months to resettle with a new secondary, but I'd say the result was worth it."

"...You stole the Clow Cards?" said Belphegor incredulous.

"They went to their intended owner anyway, so there's no harm done. From what I understand, young Sakura is almost finished converting them to run off her own magic, rather than the remnants of Clow's power," said Arashi. "...Even if she does have to create two new Guardians afterwords. Though considering Clow's reincarnation is in the area the last I heard, odds are he'll assist her in their creation. He wasn't too happy when he found out that the cards were missing the spirits that he had trapped into them."

Yue was, for reasons they had yet to figure out, able to jump into the body of Sakura's Rain guardian Yukito. Arashi didn't ask questions he didn't particularly care to learn the answer to, especially with something as headache inducing as the subject was.

All he cared about was that he could occasionally get some peace and quiet in his head...and that Yue was apparently a bit of a voyeur with a thing for Sakura's older brother and Cloud guardian Touya.

That had been an awkward time for the two, but they had learned to adjust because Yue was very good at respecting boundaries... and the two apparently had a wing kink. Arashi was never going to ask.

"So that's how you broke the curse...you combined magic with flames to overload it," mused Belphegor.

Sensing the intense interest of Mammon on the subject, Arashi held up a hand.

"There is a possibility that magic might be able to help remove the curse from you. But as I said, the circumstances which turned me into a teenager again without the pacifier are unique and I had Yue inside my head for well over six years before we were gathered as the next set of Arcobaleno."

Either way Mammon was definitely not letting this go.

"By the way...would you like to join me in trolling Reborn until he figures out who I am?"

"God yes," said Mammon without thinking. "Let me get a few cameras."

Arashi grinned.

"He knows something is up with me, but he has no idea I'm Fon. For all his 'mind reading', he hasn't figured it out yet."

Mammon cackled. This was going to be hilarious.

Reborn glared at Arashi, or rather Fon.

"I knew there was something off about you!" he said accusingly.

"But you never figured it out, did you?" said Arashi smugly. "Besides, I prefer being Arashi over Fon any day."

Reborn seethed, but he couldn't blame the Storm for faking his death in order to remain close to his Sky. If the Triads had known the truth, they wouldn't have hesitated to try and get their claws into Hotaru just because she had Fon.

Faking his death was one of the best ways to insure her safety, and by this point things had settled enough that all of Fon's previous contacts had been switched over to his "son" anyway, who had none of Fon's commitments as a member of the Triads.

That being said, he was somewhat annoyed that Fon played him for close to a year.

He would have his revenge.

A few days later...

It was just an idle 'prank' from Reborn that sparked it. He bribed Mukuro (via the thought of the chaos it would cause) into giving Kyouya cat ears for an entire day, leaving several nosebleeds from his discreet fan base in their wake. Of course since the resemblance between Kyouya and Arashi was so close, it hadn't taken much for Hotaru to wonder what Arashi would look like in cat ears.

Chrome had blushed at the idea...likely because she was imagining Mukuro with cat ears...before giving the storm a pair of black panther ears that were roughly modeled after Kero's true form.

The effect was instant, and Hotaru experienced her first proper nosebleed at the sight of it. She was barely able to hide her reaction to the sight from Arashi, though she had the distinct feeling he knew what she was thinking anyway.

She was a teenage girl with a lot of very nice eye candy to look at, and Arashi had zero qualms about doing his katas without a shirt on and only a pair of loose pants. Add in the effect of black cat ears that twitched like normal ones and the 'tail' that was actually his braid, and it was enough to stir up some very...interesting... dreams.

Arashi smirked, and proceeded to act like a very...affectionate... cat around Hotaru, making it worse. Without having a shirt on.

Mukuro, sensing chaos and a chance to finally nudge the two into an actual relationship (that and to be a troll in general), took over the illusion from Chrome and continued to give Arashi cat ears for a week.

He also kept his own cat ears, because he found flustering Chrome very amusing.

Reborn was darkly amused at the chaos he created with a 'simple' suggestion.

Even if it meant watching the teenagers finally start to properly pair up with one another.

Hotaru and Arashi were finally making strides as a couple, Mukuro had staked his claim on Chrome, and Meilin had taken one look at Kyouya with cat ears before pouncing on him...after surviving an entire hour of a less than amused Kyouya's ire of course. He would never accept anyone weaker than he was.

At least Arashi was willing to wait (and frustrate the hell out of Hotaru) until his Sky was sixteen before making a move on her.