When Tsuna ended up in the future and saw exactly how bad off it was, his first reaction was "Where's Obaa-sama?"

His second reaction, upon learning of the radiation killing off the Arcobaleno (it had taken out Reborn! That alone was terrifying!) was to worry about his adopted Grandmother and the others.

The final straw came when Future Hibari didn't bite him for grabbing his sleeve and demanding to know what happened to Viper since he didn't believe one bit about the woman killing herself in despair.

Viper was more stubborn than any other person he knew. If there was ever a point that she was that suicidal or depressed, it was long before she met the other Arcobaleno and brought the Black clan back to the strongest it had ever been. She would not kill herself, not while the family was still there to support their matriarch.

Hibari looked at Tsuna when he said this, eyes wide with realization, before he calmly lead the entire group deeper into his section of the base and revealed a capsule.

Inside it was a silver haired woman with pale skin, familiar markings on her face, and a gaunt figure. It was the face that had Tsuna crying in horror and worry.

He knew that face anywhere.

"What happened to Obaa-sama?" he asked, looking at Hibari with worry.

Hibari...no, Kyouya, sighed.

"Losing Fon was bad enough, but being unable to save Colonello was the last straw. She ripped out most of her Mist and shoved it into the pacifier before teleporting here with the last of her strength. I found her in the garden and you put her under a revised Zero Point Breakthrough so she would live until we found a way to fix this mess. The only ones who know she's still alive are your future self, Xanxus and me. Everyone was kept in the dark so that Byakruran wouldn't find out and kill her, since she was a major thorn in his plans."

"Why is she in her adult size?" asked Reborn.

"Because whatever she did to rip off her Mist caused the Pacifier to fall off and revert her to her previous age when she was cursed. We put her under almost immediately when the Mist twins couldn't stop the hemorrhaging of her flames."

Losing so much of her Mist nearly killed her, and if not for the fact it was only her Secondary she would have been dead. As it was, she was hanging on only barely at this point.

"Is there anything we can do?"

"I've been combining my flames with Ryohei's to give her an even balance of Sun, Mist and Cloud. Even with Mukuro and Chrome's help it was barely enough to keep her stable. If we had someone stronger to share Flames with her..."

Reborn hadn't even hesitated, and neither did Lal.

"Try using ours," they said.

Tsuna was quick to share his Flames, as did a much younger Chrome and Mukuro when they showed up (Mukuro had the Mist ring, though Chrome did the paperwork and acted as Tsuna's secretary). Between their flames and the sheer amount of magic they were also adding into it, Viper went from "barely stable" to something closer to "functional". Though she was still going to be hemorrhaging her Flames as her magic was barely keeping at stopper in the missing hole where her Mist was. The added bonds were going to keep more of them in, but it wouldn't be enough.

It was with baited breath that they released her from the capsule Verde had made before his death, which Tsuna had used to keep her alive until now.

She looked tired. So very weak and frail. Her hair no longer had any color, but was closer to Squalo's silvery color than black or the occasional hint of red. (It was something of an inside joke that Viper was a closet red head. The one time she bleached it, it came out a vibrant red that had Fon smug for weeks.)

The only thing that was missing to show her real age was the wrinkles. Despite her somewhat youthful appearance, Viper was well into her sixties and approaching seventy fast.

Witches, particularly those of the Black family, tended to age well enough that it was difficult to say how old they really were after forty and that wasn't helped by the Arcobaleno curse.

Viper smiled tiredly as she accepted Tsuna's hug and Kyouya's relieved smile. He would hug her later in private...he missed his grandmother.

But it's the reaction of Squalo and Belphegor when they call the base that said volumes.

Belphegor completely dropped his arrogant attitude the second he saw her face and started openly crying.

"You're alive? I knew it! I told the boss there was no way you would die that easily, Mammy!"

It was pretty obvious that the Ripper Prince was going to make a beeline to Namimori, war with the Millifiore be damned, the second he found out where Mammon was.

Next to Xanxus, her grandchildren (which included Tsuna), Belphegor had always been close to her.

Hibari rolled his eyes.

"Give me a text when you're in the vicinity of Japan and I'll deliver you and Squalo straight here. You'll be in charge of making sure Obaa-sama stays put, since she still has those bad habits of hers," said Kyouya.

"Shishishi... As if you needed to ask!" said Belphegor with glee. He wanted his Mammy back.

Within a week Belphegor and Squalo were in the base. Within seconds Belphegor was hugging Mammon and there was no sign of him letting go.

"You left," he said with a broken voice.

"I was dying, and I knew that if I didn't do something then I would have left all of you alone," said Viper quietly, patting him weakly on the head. Most of her strength was being used to keep herself conscious. "And going back would have meant exposing weakness."

Weakness in the Varia was a call sign to the lower ranks that they could rise to "officer" if they played their cards right and took out the current one. And given how weak she was when she lost her Mist, she would have been dead within days.

Faking her death was by far a better option.

Belphegor was cuddling with her and definitely not letting her go anywhere.

He always reminded her of a particularly proud Kneazle.

Tsuna said nothing about the interaction... he understood completely where the Storm Officer was coming from, and he wasn't nearly as close to her as Xanxus was.

As it was Tsuna would forever have the mental image of a large cat, possibly a tiger or panther, whenever he looked at Belphegor. The way he was curling up against Viper just screamed "large predatory cat" to him.

In fact he would openly swear to anyone who asked that he heard the man actually purring as Viper ran her fingers through his hair, careful not to dislodge his crown.

Tsuna had also noted a long time ago that when Belphegor called Viper "Mammy", it sounded far more like he was calling her "mommy".

Hearing Viper hum seemed to sooth most of his worries and relax everyone in the room.

"Why didn't you use your animagus form, Obaa-sama?" asked Kyouya.

"If I did, then it's an almost guarantee that I would undergo a burning day and that meant risking cutting off whatever connection I have to the other Arcobaleno...including Fon. It would forcibly reconnect me with my Mist flames, but I will not risk losing whatever bonds I have just to save myself. Even if it would remove the curse from me completely."

Reborn and Lal stopped and stared at her.

"What."

"I could have removed the Arcobaleno curse from me from the very beginning. I just chose not to because it wouldn't have been fair to any of you and would run the risk of losing the Guardian bond. I would rather live and die with my Guardians than save my own skin," said Viper simply.

"What do you mean you could have broken your own curse! How?" said Lal upset.

Viper sighed.

"I'm a phoenix animagus, and with that comes the ability to undergo a burning day. I get an extended life span, a limited ability to heal considering my exposure to basilisk venom when I was twelve, and I can teleport damn near anywhere so long as I have a reference point and it can't be easily blocked. Do you know why a phoenix is considered an immortal bird?"

Reborn blinked, before he got it.

"You would die and be reborn from the ashes of your old body, thus removing all ailments, impurities, or curses."

"Like I said, it ran the risk of cutting the bond off since I wasn't sure if it was strong enough to withstand the fires of a burning day. That...and I wasn't about to risk that bastard Checkerface finding out I could have potentially thrown a wrench into his ridiculous system because he was too damn lazy to make it work properly. He could have stopped me and I'm not about to challenge a demi-god. It would take something major for me to do a magically binding ceremony to insure these damn pacifiers all fell off when I go under a burning day," said Viper flatly.

"...Demi-god?"

"He's not properly worshiped or acknowledged and I have yet to find any references to Arcobaleno or this damn curse in any magical history texts and believe me I've looked extensively on any I could get my hands on. For all I know the bastard is a remnant of Atlantis who decided to do something about the collapsing leylines around the world and failed to do it properly. Which means he's either a pure blood with delusions of godhood or a failed god who lost a good chunk of his power and is now stuck with demi-god status," said Viper without a hint of hesitation. Her face scowled. "That idiot wouldn't know what hit him if he actually did something to piss me off enough that I would confront him for the crap he's put us through. Until I know what the final effects of the curse are I'm withholding my judgment on the matter."

Hayato latched onto one fact.

"Atlantis was real?" he asked, perking up.

Viper chuckled.

"Real and capsized because one of their leaders was on a power trip, went mad and tried to kill anyone without magic, and then in a great big 'fuck you' to the people trying to stop him decided to take the whole magical continent with him to the grave. Merlin was one of the survivors, though there's no clear indication as to what really happened to his body. There's no clear consensus as to what the old bastard looked like, only that he was magically powerful, old as hell even before Atlantis sunk, and that he helped to raise the four founders of Hogwarts before he vanished."

Hayato looked like he wanted to ask so many questions.

Viper looked at him tiredly.

"Ask my younger self to look into the family library for the history books. Odds are she won't care much if you happen to find something interesting. Those that do no learn from history..."

"Are doomed to repeat it," said Hayato, understanding the hidden meaning.

Viper sat down and a full body shudder went through her.

"Are you going to be okay?" asked Tsuna with open concern.

"You need to finish this, soon. I won't last a month, even with the donation of Flames. If the others are revived, I can attempt to remove their pacifiers once you leave and hopefully rid myself of this. Though I doubt my hair will go back to the way it was. No doubt there will be consequences of what I'm planning as well."

"What are you going to do?" asked Reborn, already sharing his own Sun Flames with her. It helped to stabilize her condition, but he could tell she was running on borrowed time. Time that was rapidly running out.

"Considering the state of this world, it's doomed anyway. Without the Tri-Ni-Sette being in the state of balance, things are either going to get worse or fall apart completely. I wouldn't be surprised if it was destroyed and this future removed from the timelines."

Tsuna was wide eyed with horror.

"What about our world?"

"Your time will be fine. The balance between the three sides is still existing, even if you were temporally displaced. However I noticed before that our time as Arcobaleno is coming to an end, fast. And that means the Administrator will start moving again."

"What exactly do the pacifiers do?" asked Tsuna seriously.

"Essentially they are conduits. They drain a steady supply of one specific Flame from each victim, with Sky having to deal with the drain and keeping the other six from being drained too quickly...it's why they tend to die first, and are passed along before the current set is too old to maintain them. The problem is that when they are about to be passed on, the pacifiers will create one massive drain on the Flames, which will kill the ones holding them. I have no idea if any survived or not, but I have my suspicions considering I got a good look at the Vindice when they came to claim Mukuro from me."

Reborn didn't like the sound of that at all.

Tsuna however looked thoughtful.

"What if enough Flames were donated so that when the pacifiers fell off, the vessel wasn't completely empty?"

Viper smiled at him.

"Now you're thinking along the right track. There's a reason I was waiting for the Administrator to get involved before I forced the pacifiers to chose new hosts."

"You can flood them until they fall off," said Reborn, staring at her.

"A phoenix is neither alive nor dead, especially during a burning day. I can sacrifice more than enough Sky Flames to flood the pacifiers so you're merely knocked out when they are finally removed, rather than killed. The issue is that such magic always comes at a price."

"I knew you were a closet Once Upon A Time fan!" said Tsuna.

It did a splendid job of breaking the tension.

"Regina is hot," chuckled Belphegor.

"I prefer Hook, though I will admit she does have good taste," said Viper without thinking. "And I completely empathize with Swan... that woman's happiness gets screwed over as much as mine did before I changed my name."

"Obaa-sama... can we break the curse and save Reborn and the others?" asked Tsuna.

"If we can get through this long enough to send you lot home, I have strong hopes we might. A Black never backs down from a challenge, especially the crap this damn curse has put us through. And if not... well, at least I'll be with Fon and the others again. I trust your other self to be able to hold everyone together, if only until everything settles into a new normal."

Reborn frowned.

"I thought Tsuna was killed."

Viper's grin was evil.

"He's my grandson. You really think we wouldn't come up with plans on top of plans? He's sleeping under the Draught of the Living Death right now, waiting for his younger self to clean up the mess."

"Which is the only reason none of us have gone into Discord," Hibari added dryly. "Though he is going to get a tongue-lashing from the others for his prank."