Disclaimer: Katekyo Hitman Reborn belongs to Akira Amano.

-Impact-

Chrome shudders in the filthy hotel room and murmurs a quiet happy birthday to herself.

No one in the family, not even the boss, knows when her birthday is. Today is the first time the boss trusts her to gather information on her own. Today is her fifteenth birthday. Chrome knows she is too young to truly be experienced. But she is left with no choice but to try and prove her loyalty. She doesn't mind too much. She just hopes she does a good enough job.

"Happy birthday to me." Her lips barely move as she says the words to herself again.

The day is slowly turning into night and the informant she is supposed to be meeting will be arriving at the designated meeting place soon.

She slips on a pair of stiletto heels and tugs at her uncomfortably short skirt before untying her dyed brown hair so that it covered her eye-patch. She cannot use her illusions to hide her in case someone sees through them. Placing illusions upon herself is not her forte. But she still straps a small pouch around her waist that contains her trident folded into its smallest form.

Chrome puts on make-up like Bianchi had shown her and steps out of the dirty room into the hallway with small, quick steps.

Her heels click as she steps into a smoky bar filled with cigarette smoke and reeking of alcohol. A typical meeting place, but she wishes it were a little less dark. She suddenly misses having Ken or Chikusa standing with her even with the frowns they pull as she stutters through practiced threats. Practice never did make perfect in her case.

"You look too young to be here." A grating voice says as she sits down at a small table at the edge of the room. Despite the grating voice, the Italian the man in the checkered black and white suite spoke was sly and oily. His fedora was placed at a jaunty angle to hide most of his face from her. She only sees his thin lips move.

"Yet I am here." She replies. She feels a kind of desperate stubbornness well up within her because she cannot fail. Not today.

Words are interchanged as they dodge in and out between the smoke in the air and the shadows of the walls. The dim lights of the bar flicker.

When Chrome has received that she had been expected to collect, and a little extra she managed to pry out from the strange, checkered man she stands up to leave.

But his hand shoots out to grab her upper arm and his nails dig into her skin leaving half crescent marks.

"Why not stay a little longer?" The voice is dripping with oil now and she notices that his eyes are yellow and feral under the brim of his fedora.

"I would rather not." Chrome murmurs as steadily as she can. She had been doing so well. She cannot fail, not now.

"Come now. Stay a little longer. No one will miss you." Grating stone. Dripping oil.

In her mind's eye she imagines that the man is covered in flames. She imagines the checkers are burning and melting from their neat squares into a mess on the ground. And the man is suddenly on fire. His face is contorted and his fedora is twisted from the heat. The checkers are contorting and flaming.

Someone screams and she bolts out the door as fast as her sharp, high heels and short skirt will allow.

Chrome shimmies out of her ridiculous skirt and changes into a dark, plaid skirt that reaches her knees. She must be as non-descript as possible now. She changes her shirt and her shoes are exchanged for sneakers. Chrome then ties back her hair, and secures a black wig with stiff fingers. Then, she is quickly packing her few carry-on items and rushing out the door. As she rushes out towards the front desk, she throws a few bills of onto the front desk. More than enough to pay for her two day stay, but she knows that the thin woman up front with recognize a bribe when she sees it.

She sits very, very still in her plane seat and tries to sleep. The thoughts rushing through her head are hurting her temples. They pound and mash and whirl around in strange cadences, and speak with words that jumble and mumble. She really hates being in her head sometimes. She tries to whisper little snippets of poems to herself to try and calm her frazzled nerves, but it's no help at all. Later on, she tries focusing outside of herself, and tries to distract herself by calculating how long the person next to her takes to turn a page of a book. But the time her eyes are just about to close from sheer exhaustion and boredom, she hears his quiet murmur whisper through her mind.

Does he know how hard she has been working to make him proud? She hasn't seen him since the battle for the Vongola rings and she misses him. Some part of her hopes that if she works hard enough to become a good illusionist he will realize how much she has been trying and whisper something to her once more.

My cute little Chrome…you did well…

She shudders a little as she catches a glimpse of his mismatching eyes and smells the scent sakura blossoms and hears a brief crunch from bare feet on green grass. She dreams of his garden, it is a beautiful place full of illusions and she lets herself believe for many moments that this dream is a reality.

Because an illusion is only as strong as an illusionist wills it to be.