Disclaimer: Jericho does not Katekyo Hitman Reborn, but...! He does know that the anime is (supposedly) not dead yet, but on haitus, and is apparently coming back spring of next year with a different name. Here's hoping they don't screw it up when they try to english dub it in the time between. Obviously this takes place in the manga-verse, even then a little after/during the current 'arc'. If you're up to date, then fine, read on. If not, and you don't want spoilers...

FREAKING SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! Re: above disclaimer. Don't read this story just yet if you're not caught up. If you do... well, you probably still won't know what's going on, so there. I warned ya.

Generation X: AD

Project Piece: Pilot

If anyone ever thought to actually ask me, I'd say that I was- er, am - normal. By my standards, which aren't that high anyway, I'm actually pretty dull. That guy. The one you try, but you just can't get a read on. It's not because you don't know how to 'see the real me' or because I'm 'so deep' and 'not a little creepy'. It's because I'm a real, live, flaming moron.

Really. Don't believe me? Ask my best friends. They seriously know me better than I care to check, and this is considering that half of them may or may not have tried to kill me before. And that may read out in its own strange way as sarcasm, but it's true. They have to be made of something else altogether to hang around me as long as they have. It's kind of disturbing if I think about it, but I'm used to it by now. So is everybody else in town; apparently, things stopped being weird to them around the time that they realized that it was "Dame Tsuna" running around town in his boxers. Either that, or they just moved away from the general area of my house. Both are possible, and make sense.

After all, most normal and sane people would prefer not living near the resident 10th gen. mafia boss of one of the strongest families in the world. Not that they don't want to live at all, I'm sure they do! And it would be strange that they know I'm potential mafia boss at all... but then, the doctor, cook, and baby hitman 'teachers' that tend to hang around me, advertising the fact, might make it a bit obvious...

Of course, this is offset by its own... problems. For example, the doctor is a pervert that only treats girls, and uses bugs to kill people. The baby is... well, a baby. About five years old, I think. Not that it keeps him from kicking my ass daily and threatening to kill me with bullets that don't actually kill (yet I still take him seriously, for some reason). And the cook is in love with the baby, not to mention specializes in food poisoning. And... nobody else finds that weird, besides me. Even I've stopped freaking out about that... mostly. Okay, not really.

How does this all come back to me being a moron? Uh... hehe, the funny thing is, for once in my life, it doesn't. Yet. Don't worry, it should come around sooner or later.

Strange how things work out, isn't it?

+.+

"I still can't believe you did that. You're sure that didn't violate the rules?"

"If I wasn't, would that change our situation?"

"We'd probably be fighting off Vindice's dogs right now, and be hauling ass for the prison instead of taking as long as we have to drop those guys off and pick up your friends, but... I guess not. We'd still be trying to break into a place that has no record of ever existing, with no battle plan beyond 'kick ass, get our people, get out alive', and we'd still be missing half of the strength we'd need to really do it right." Enma missed the blank stare from the brown-haired teen sitting beside him, and ignored the fact that this was literally the most he'd ever said in one go, and pessimistic nonetheless. "So you're sure staying in that state of Dying Will hasn't, say, affected the judgmental part of your brain by any chance?"

"Adel-chan, is your boss always this chatty when facing the possibility of death?"

"You should have seen him when he was planning what happened back at the ceremony. Rauji almost got around to putting it up online... then Lambo came over to play. Remind me to beat you to death over this whole thing when it's over, Sawada."

"Not if Hibari gets to me first," he muttered, his Dying Will flame flickering at the thought. It flickered again, the only sign that he had heard anything when something exploded, accompanied by the sound of a cat yowling, behind him. "Gokudera-kun, play nice," he deadpanned. It was almost to the point where he could feel a 'true right-hand man' speech coming on…

"If you say so Jyuudaime!" Emotional Mafia Moment averted. "By the way, why is the pineapple-head coming with us?" Alert: Gokudera and Mukuro are about to interact. ABORT. ABORT. Take evasive measures.

"Fu fu fu... if you have something to say to me, Hayato, I would advise you to say it to my face."

"Sawada, shouldn't you have more control over your subordinates? Besides, doesn't it make sense here to attack with all of your forces together?"

"Ah, they aren't my subordinates! And you're welcome to try and convince them yourself if you want to!"

"Fine; what are you doing on our ship, pineapple-head?"

"I'm just here for the basics," Mukuro shrugged. "Taking revenge on the Warden of Vindice, taking my real body back, sending my eternal rival back to the world of the living or finally fighting him face to face in the world of the dead, regrouping with my own family and then... I will proceed with my plans for world domination using Sawada's body. Plus I've never been on a boat before, so there's that. I'm on a boat.^ Why else would I be here?"

A facepalm and a sigh were all that could be heard as two of the remaining four members of the Shimon family stared at the Vongola's mist guardian. Who stared right back at them.

"I take it Katou didn't mention that to you? And to think that I gave him all that time..."

They kept staring at him. Gokudera then turned the spotlight on… himself.

"Okay, one; that's not what I meant by that. I meant that apparently, you have your own way to get anywhere in the world that you want to get to, so why come with us? Two," the storm guardian cut him off with the air of a college professor. "Which eternal rival are you talking about, Hibari or Katou? And three... you are really starting to sound like a pedophile, talking about Jyuudaime's body like that. Considering that you're using Chrome's body to even talk to us right now… that only makes it worse."

Enma thought he heard his friend grumble something about "Starting to? That was him being subtle," but figure that it was to be ignored. He could have just been hearing things, and besides, he didn't want to follow that line of thought.

"I will ignore that first one as it should be obvious, and of course I am talking about our cloud guardian. And how do you have room to talk, stalker?"

"I'm not a stalker."

"You know exactly where Sawada would have gone if he tried to outrun his fate as boss, and you know where he would go to think about it, had the idea occurred to him before more recent events." Tsuna promptly got an itch at the back of his neck as all other eyes (only three sets, but who's counting?) turned to Gokudera, but figured that it had something to do with the fact that even he didn't know where he would have gone. Scary.

"It's my duty as his right-hand man to know that!" A muffled sneeze. "Although that makes me wonder how you know that I know that… but that doesn't make me a stalker!"

"Doesn't it? A stalker is usually an obsessed person that exaggerates on their relationship to someone who they are fixated on, and their feelings are commonly one-sided, with the other half of the relationship developing an acute sense of paranoia over time involving the stalker's stalking tendencies."#

"Listen to the girl with the very melons, Hayato." Mukuro somehow dodged the size 8 leather boot that dented the wall in front of his face, smirk freezing solid for a second. He coughed, leaned to the side to look around it. "Doesn't that make you a stalker?"

"If you ask Haru, no. That just makes me 'dangerously obsessed', in her own words, or a 'fanboy' according to the leeching underlings in my alleged online cult. She, on the other hand, is a super-stalker."

"Haru... that's the brunette that got on with those other girls at the last stop, right?"

"And here we go," Tsuna muttered, Dying Will flame flickering out completely as he sat back. Enma looked from Tsuna to his storm and mist guardians, and back at Tsuna.

"You guys call this normal? I thought that was just an act, you know, since we were just 'the new kids' before...?" He shook his head, paused, and shrugged.

"Except for Sundays and Fridays, I guess. And Fridays are worse since everybody gets together."

"Worse? How?"

"Movie night." The Shimon boss winced in empathy.

"Harsh, but I feel you, man. There are just some things we just weren't meant to see... even if we are epic..."

"Especially if we're epic."

"Amen to that."

^: Apparently Mukuro likes The Lonely Island.

: Is it just me, or do Hibari and Mukuro almost never refer to each other by name? In the anime or manga.

#: ... What? She wanted in on the conversation, so why not?

Note: This was written over the course of a day, and so, should have plenty of mistakes to it. Which is why the chapter title has so many indefinites; whether or not this continues before the anime recontinues itself depends on feedback (not strictly reviews). If enough people just hit this page, even by accident, and if I still feel up to it, Jericho may continue this one. Indefinitely. Thank you for your time... and if anyone can guess what the 'AD' stands for before the tenth chapter, Jericho will try to update faster!

LATER!