this came about because mochaholic gave me a copy of Alter Bridge's new album and mentioned that "Wayward One" really reminded her of Reborn. now it reminds me of Reborn, too ^^

Take them back to the start
Let the purest of heart
Know their worth is still spoken

As they fight to exist
We neglect and resist
Let this circle be broken

The song is on YouTube if you want to sample it, over here.

...

Arcobalenos = Time Lords. Makes perfect sense to me.





If They Hadn't Found Each Other



- A young man with a childish face works quietly behind an office desk. He says "yes" to every request and never oversteps his bounds. He always comes in late, but never too late, and because he has a tendency to screw up even the simplest things, he always leaves late as well. No one really cares.

The young man with the childish face runs through his daily routines in a daze, as if he is living a long and boring dream. He does not desire conflict. He does not desire glory. In fact, he does not desire anything. He does not even know he has the right to want anything for himself.

He's never even confessed to the girl he's liked since junior high - and now she's married with children, and he sees her walking down the street sometimes and she flashes him a sunny smile and the "Good morning, Sawada-kun" that somehow makes everything brighter and better and oh so painfully real.

He's living the life of an innocent bystander. He will never know how strong he is, or how precious his own existence can be. He does not know what can bring out the savior in him. It is not until the not-so-peaceful end of his peaceful life that he will truly know what it means to have a dying will.



- A young man walks the streets of Tokyo, avoiding everyone's gaze. He can disappear here, where his Asian looks are commonplace, where his penchant for jewelry and leather clothing could only be considered "trendy" and not attention-catching punk.

The world's police are out hunting for him. But all they have so far are leads - a false name, the flash of a single silver earring, cigarette ashes found near the debris, proof of genius-level intelligence and a patent hatred of organized crime. Explosions in Rome, the headlines read: Mafia-run Drug Ring Eradicated, Slavery Den Exposed: Traffickers Dead from Dynamite Blast, Gambling Hotspot Blown to Bits.

The young man's identity is protected by his father, who is - ironically enough - enjoying a high position in the mafia. However, the young man doesn't work for his father. He works for himself, on his own, resisting every attempt at being recruited to any group.

He knows that someday, his own father will betray him; he is prepared for it. He trusts no one. No one could take anything from him. Everything he has, he only gives away freely.

And he has never felt like giving anything away to anyone.



- A tall boy, aged 14, stands at the rooftop of his school, outside the wire fence that keeps students safe from falling to their deaths. He stands facing the horizon, ignoring the pleas and the cries of alarm coming from below.

His one good hand holds on loosely to the wire fence. His broken right arm starts to hurt again. He's taken painkillers, maybe a little or a lot more than his doctor prescribed, but the pain is still there, mocking him.

He's heard that at the end of one's life, one starts to have regrets. He's expecting that he's going to regret this. He's waiting for someone to say something that would change his mind and show him what a stupid idea this is - how there are more important things than baseball, how his life is valuable even if he may never play anymore. How young he is and how there is so much for him to look forward to and how it's a mistake to even think about this.

But as his hand lets go of the wire and he pitches himself forward and his feet touch air, he realizes he has no regrets, not a single one. He always tried his best, even if he failed most of the time.

And he has never been more sure of anything in his life.



- A young man finds himself climbing fast to the top of the boxing world. He was chosen for this sport, he knew; he was born to be a champion, and he's wilfully bent all his waking hours to fulfilling his destiny.

But he doesn't like to think about anything else. He doesn't like to think, for example, of how empty his own life is outside of boxing. How he comes home to a lifeless apartment, eats bland training food, watches a few videos, then goes to sleep at the scheduled hour, only to wake up the next day at the scheduled hour.

He looks at his own hands and thinks, How ordinary. How weak. Even when bloodied, they could still belong to any other athlete. There's nothing inside them that could be used for anything besides fighting for other people's entertainment.

The young champion doesn't like to think about it. But when he's not in the ring, he can't help but feel there's something more out there, something even bigger and more important than boxing. But it hasn't chosen him.



- The young teacher stands at the rooftop, outside the wire fence, right on the spot where a promising 14-year-old student had killed himself, a long time ago.

He doesn't need to hold on to the wire; he will never fall. He surveys the school grounds and thinks the world has lost its mind... but if there's going to be a scrap of sanity left anywhere, it's going to live and flourish here.

He knows deaths are occurring. That the violence out there is so much worse than the controlled violence that his "prefects" employ. His spies are everywhere, and they're telling him that underworld "families" are becoming more and more creative with their ways of killing each other and whoever happens to be in their way. It only matters to him when their spats come close to his territory - such as when the head of the Millefiore clan informed him quite nicely that he had every intention of taking over the land on which the young teacher's school is built.

Everything must be in order where he stands, the young teacher says to himself; the rest of the world can go to hell.



- There is a young man sitting on one of the bar stools, chatting up the lady of the evening and looking deceptively bored. Everyone in that place knows that he isn't as easy a target as he seems; he may look like a wimpy, pimply young gigolo, but he could kill you with an electric shock if he caught you looking at him funny.

The bored and deadly young man's only loyalty is to the Bovino family... which no longer exists, because he was never that loyal to that family to begin with. To put it simply, the Bovino family allied itself with the wrong people. And the young man simply said "You're all crazy. I want no part of this," and disappeared.

Everyone thinks it's cowardice. He knows it, but he doesn't care. He has no interest in being thought of as a good fighter, especially since there is no good cause to fight for.

The young man thinks: those mafia idiots can go kill themselves, taking the rest of the world in the process. In the end, he's going to live.



- Living is easy when you're the strongest: the person in the Millefiore clan head's uniform knows it. If you take them young, you can enjoy all the perks of energy and good health until it's time to leave it for some other shell. Survival is the only game and death is the spice of life. He wishes more poor bastards out there would know this...

Then he wouldn't be so restless. Or driven to cause trouble. As any psychic creature capable of corporeal possession knows, war brings out anyone's true strength; fighting to survive drives people to abandon their placid upbringing, their petty niceties, push themselves over fences, and reveal themselves to be the villains or heroes that they actually are.

And as much as Mukuro hates to admit it, this body is getting older and harder to appreciate. He's not as strong as he used to be, but no one stronger has exactly come running up. He has put entire superpower nations to waste, yet he has not yet found anyone with a body or will stronger than this. If he isn't careful, he would die with this body, and be called "Byakuran-sama" up until the very end.

Still, he isn't too worried.

He has time.



- The young man in the pinstripe suit and the wide-brimmed hat looks at all of this. He watches the world spiraling down. He sees the old glory that was his family falling into nothing due to greed and betrayal and all things familiar to him, because he has been in the mafia all his life. Through the flames and a haze of red, he watches

...the innocent bystander lie dying from a sudden explosion in the building where he happened to work. He has a few seconds to breathe, to remind himself of all the things he never did, before the fierce light, brighter than anything else this world could offer, fades in his eyes.

...the bomber walk away from the wreckage, heading back into the silence of his own space, unaware of the forces that had led him to do the deed. He throws away the cigarette he was smoking and lights another one, not caring this time if the stub is found and his identity is traced.

The explosion was done late at night; there should not have been anyone in the building. And if there were, they were probably mafia anyway - word on the street is that the Millefiore family uses this nondescript building to store part of their artillery. The young man sticks his hands into his pockets and puts the incident out of his mind, thinking Now the Millefiore will know who they're messing with.

... the champion boxer who was jogging home from the gym, rush in to save someone, anyone, from the wreck of the building, while a heavy iron beam overhead threatens to give in. His strong hands are pulling out the corpse of a stranger with a childlike face, thinking it's still alive, imagining it's still breathing (how could it be dead with eyes that desperate to live) when the beam breaks and the roof comes crashing down.

... the young teacher in a nearby school clench his fists as he hears the news. He's no fool. The explosion of the commercial building was a warning from the Millefiore family: next time, they're coming to his school.

He got the message. He would be ready for them.

... the bored young man sigh heavily upon hearing about it on the television, in a hotel just on the outskirts of Rome. By setting off that bomb in Millefiore territory, someone has just declared war on the Millefiore family's Japan faction. Perhaps, he thinks, it was done by a volatile craftsman with inferior intelligence, manipulated by the great Byakuran-sama into causing trouble. He wouldn't put it past that one to sabotage his own resources just to make his men take up their arms.

But it's too early in the morning to be disturbed by news from half the world away. And there's a soft body beside him and no reason to stay upset. The fact is, he tells himself, he just doesn't care. He buries his face in the pillow and counts the seconds until he could start snoring again.

... a smile form on Rokudou Mukuro's borrowed lips.



The young man in the pinstripe suit mirrors that smile. And with a determined gleam in his eyes, he says to himself:

"I'm going to change it all."