The alley incident, with its terrifying display of unknown power and the flood of vivid, traumatic memories, left Ren Takakura shaken to his very core. The impossible had become real. He had unleashed some kind of energy, and he remembered, with chilling certainty, a death that was not supposed to be his. He managed to pull a still-terrified Kosaki Onodera away from the scene as the two thugs began to stir, their groans a painful reminder of the violence he had somehow, inexplicably, unleashed. The two of them ran, a desperate, panicked flight, until their lungs burned and the dangerous alley was far behind them. Kosaki was crying, and Ren wasn't sure he wasn't on the verge of it himself, his mind a chaotic maelstrom of fear, confusion, and a dawning, horrifying understanding.
That night, sleep was a lost cause. Ren lay in bed, staring at the unblinking eye of his ceiling, replaying the eruption of orange light, the fragmented memories of another life, another death. It was real. He'd done something… impossible. And he remembered dying. The questions swirled in the darkness, offering no comfort, only a deepening sense of dread and profound disorientation. How could he be here if he had died there? What was this power that had burst from him?
The next morning, a Sunday that felt anything but restful, his parents announced, with an air of cheerful surprise, that they had a visitor. "A new home tutor for you, Ren," his father said, beaming. "Professor… Reborn, was it? He comes very highly recommended. Apparently, he's a specialist in bringing out a student's hidden potential."
Ren blinked, his mind still struggling to process the events of the previous day. A home tutor? For what? His grades, while not stellar, weren't that bad. And "Professor Reborn"? The name sounded like something out of a particularly odd manga, or perhaps a low-budget spy film. He had a bad feeling about this. A very bad feeling.
And then he walked in. Or rather, was carried in by his mother, who was cooing at him.
He was a baby.
A literal, honest-to-goodness baby, dressed in a dapper little black suit, complete with a miniature fedora tilted at a jaunty, almost arrogant angle. He couldn't have been more than two years old, if that. He had a mop of curly black hair, big, unnervingly intelligent black eyes that seemed to see right through Ren, and a pacifier firmly planted in his mouth. Perched on his fedora, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, was a small green chameleon with beady, observant eyes that seemed to follow Ren's every move with an unnerving focus.
His parents, Ren noted with a growing sense of surreal detachment, were completely oblivious to the sheer, mind-boggling absurdity of the situation. They were fussing over the infant, offering him juice, commenting on how adorable and clever he looked.
"This is Ren," his mother said, gesturing towards him with a proud smile. "Ren, this is Professor Reborn. He's going to help you with your studies and really bring out your best."
The baby – Professor Reborn – looked Ren up and down, a slow, deliberate assessment that made Ren feel like an insect under a microscope. A glint of something far too knowing for an infant flickered in those dark eyes. Then, he spoke. His voice was high-pitched, as one would expect from a baby, but the words, the cadence, the sheer, unadulterated confidence behind them, were anything but.
"Ciao-ssu," he said, a tiny, almost imperceptible smirk playing on his lips around the pacifier. "So you're the new boss, huh? Bit of a late bloomer, I'd say, but we'll work on that. Plenty of raw material here, just needs a lot of… shaping."
Boss? Late bloomer? What on earth was this baby talking about? Ren's mind, already reeling from the previous day's revelations, struggled to keep up.
Before Ren could articulate any of the thousand bewildered questions screaming in his mind, before he could even point out the rather salient fact that his new "professor" was still in diapers, the chameleon on Reborn's hat suddenly transformed. With a fluid, impossible motion, it shifted and elongated, its green skin hardening, reforming into a sleek, perfectly proportioned green… pistol? Reborn, with a casualness that was utterly terrifying coming from a toddler, plucked the chameleon-gun from his fedora and took aim at a delicate porcelain vase on the nearby table, a family heirloom Ren's mother was particularly fond of.
"Don't worry," Reborn said, his voice still unnervingly calm, the pacifier bobbing as he spoke. "This is just a Dying Will Bullet. Special Vongola technology. It'll help you… embrace your destiny. With a little push."
And then, before Ren could react, before he could even scream, Reborn pulled the trigger.
Ren's life, which had already been teetering on the brink of utter insanity, took a running leap straight into the abyss. The next few weeks were a blur of pain, confusion, more pain, and the dawning, horrified realization that this baby was not only serious but also terrifyingly competent. Reborn, the sadistic baby hitman tutor from hell (as Ren quickly began to think of him), was relentless. He informed Ren, in between brutal training sessions that often left Ren bruised and gasping, that he was, in fact, the heir to something called the "Vongola Famiglia" – a powerful, shadowy Italian mafia family. Which was, Ren thought with a hysterical internal giggle, exactly the kind of news that would make any ordinary Japanese high school student question their life choices, if they still had any.
Reborn also explained, with a chilling matter-of-factness, that the orange light Ren had manifested in the alley was his "Dying Will Flame," a powerful manifestation of his life energy and resolve, awakened by moments of extreme crisis. Apparently, Ren was a "Sky Flame" user, a type Reborn described as exceedingly rare and incredibly important, destined to be a leader, a "boss." Lucky him.
His training methods were… unorthodox. And by unorthodox, Ren meant they usually involved Reborn shooting him with various types of special bullets (each with a different, usually painful, effect), placing him in meticulously orchestrated life-threatening situations, or just generally making his existence a living nightmare. There was a lot of getting beaten up by Reborn (who, despite being a baby, could move with impossible speed and hit with the force of a freight train, often using his chameleon, Leon, who could transform into various weapons), a lot of accidental (and sometimes not-so-accidental) property damage (mostly Ren's), and a lot of Ren screaming internally (and, on occasion, externally, much to his parents' bewildered concern, which Reborn always smoothly explained away as "intense academic breakthroughs").
He tried, repeatedly, to tell Reborn that he had the wrong guy. He was Ren Takakura, average student, not some long-lost mafia scion. He was nobody special. But Reborn would just smirk, his pacifier bobbing, and say, "The Vongola bloodline never makes mistakes, Dame-Ren. It just sometimes produces… fixer-uppers." He'd even given Ren a demeaning nickname: Dame-Ren. "Good-for-nothing Ren." Charming. Utterly charming.
The memories of his past life, the truck accident, they kept resurfacing with increasing clarity and frequency, especially during Reborn's more intense training sessions. Ren started to piece together a terrifying, impossible theory: he had died. And then… he was here. Reborn. In this body. In this life. Was this some kind of reincarnation? A parallel world that operated on rules he couldn't begin to fathom? The thought was so outlandish, so utterly beyond anything he had ever conceived, that he mostly tried to suppress it. But it lingered, a persistent whisper at the edges of his consciousness, adding another layer of profound unreality to everything he was experiencing.
His school life, needless to say, suffered immensely. He was perpetually exhausted, often covered in bruises he had to concoct increasingly elaborate lies to explain, and his grades were plummeting at an alarming rate. Kosaki Onodera was deeply worried, constantly asking if he was okay, her gentle concern a stark, painful contrast to Reborn's brutal, unyielding tutelage. Chitoge Kirisaki, meanwhile, continued to be a source of daily irritation and intimidation, their paths crossing frequently, usually resulting in some new disaster for which Ren was invariably, and often unfairly, blamed.
Then came the Stray Devil. It happened one evening when Reborn had "assigned" Ren some ridiculous training exercise that involved him retrieving a specific, supposedly valuable item from the notoriously haunted old church on the outskirts of Kuoh Town. "A test of your courage and resourcefulness, Dame-Ren," Reborn had said, before vanishing in a puff of smoke (or maybe he just crawled away really fast under the furniture; it was hard to tell with him when he wanted to be stealthy).
The church was creepy, no doubt about it. Thick cobwebs draped the decaying pews like macabre shrouds, dust motes danced in the slivers of moonlight that pierced through the broken stained-glass windows, and an oppressive silence seemed to swallow every sound, even the frantic beating of Ren's own heart. He was already on edge, expecting Reborn to pop out from behind a crumbling statue and attack him at any moment as part of the "test." What he wasn't expecting, what nothing could have prepared him for, was the thing that emerged from the deepest shadows of the altar.
It was vaguely humanoid in shape, but its skin was a sickly, mottled grey, its limbs too long and thin, its movements jerky and predatory, like a puppet controlled by unseen, malevolent strings. Its eyes, twin points of crimson light, glowed with a palpable, hungry red light in the gloom. A low, guttural growl rumbled from its chest, and a wave of pure, unadulterated malice washed over Ren, colder and more terrifying than any physical blow. This wasn't one of Reborn's elaborate pranks. This was… something else. Something undeniably wrong.
"A Stray Devil," a small, calm voice said from beside him. Reborn. Of course. He was perched nonchalantly on a broken pew, looking entirely unfazed by the monstrous apparition, his tiny legs dangling. Leon, the chameleon, was on his fedora, its head swiveling slowly. "Got separated from its master, or perhaps killed them. Now it's just a feral beast looking for prey. And you, Dame-Ren," Reborn added, his tone almost conversational, "look particularly delicious tonight."
"You knew this thing was here?!" Ren shrieked, scrambling backwards as the Stray Devil lunged, its claws extended, its fanged maw open in a silent snarl.
"Of course," Reborn said calmly, not even flinching as the monster landed where Ren had been moments before. "Excellent motivation for you to use those Dying Will Flames properly, don't you think? Sink or swim, Dame-Ren. Or, in this case, burn or be eaten."
The Stray Devil was fast, terrifyingly so. Its claws raked across Ren's arm as he dodged, drawing blood. Pain, sharp and hot, lanced through him. Panic, cold and suffocating, threatened to overwhelm his senses. But then, an image flashed in his mind: Kosaki's terrified face in that alley, the desperation he'd felt, the overwhelming urge to protect her. He remembered the feeling of that orange light, that impossible power.
"Flames…" Ren muttered, clenching his fists, his knuckles white. "Come on, work!"
With a surge of desperate effort, focusing on that protective instinct, on the memory of Kosaki's fear, a flicker of orange light sputtered to life on his forehead, just between his eyes. Not as strong as it had been in the alley, not as overwhelming, but it was there. The Dying Will Flame. The Stray Devil paused in its advance, its glowing red eyes narrowing. It seemed… wary, almost hesitant.
"Not bad, Dame-Ren," Reborn commented from his perch, his voice betraying no emotion. "A bit anemic, but it's a start. Now, fight it. Or it'll eat you. And then I'll have to find a new student, which is always so tedious."
The fight was a clumsy, desperate, terrifying affair. Ren had no formal training, no idea what he was doing beyond what Reborn had brutally drilled into him in their "sparring" sessions. He threw punches and kicks, sometimes managing to ignite his fists with brief, uncontrolled bursts of orange Flame, but the Stray Devil was stronger, faster, and clearly more experienced at whatever monstrous combat it was used to. It clawed, it bit, it slammed him into crumbling walls with brutal force. Ren was getting torn apart, his body screaming in protest, his newly awakened Flames flickering erratically.
Just when he thought he was done for, when the Stray Devil's fanged jaws were snapping inches from his face, its fetid breath hot on his skin, a different memory surfaced. Not from his past life this time, but from the alleyway confrontation with the thugs. The feeling of that overwhelming, concussive blast of energy. Protect. The word, the feeling, the absolute necessity of it, echoed in his mind.
With a desperate, primal roar, Ren pushed outwards with everything he had, focusing all his will, all his fear, all his desperate desire to live, into his hands, into the burgeoning power within him. And this time, it truly worked. A sustained, powerful blast of Sky Flame erupted from him, a torrent of brilliant orange energy that engulfed the Stray Devil completely. The creature shrieked, a horrifying, inhuman sound that seemed to tear at the very fabric of the old church, as the orange energy consumed it, leaving behind nothing but a faint, acrid smell of sulfur and a rapidly dissipating dark mist.
Ren collapsed to his knees on the dusty stone floor, gasping for breath, every inch of his body screaming in protest, his clothes torn, his arm bleeding freely. But he'd done it. He'd actually beaten that… that thing.
Reborn hopped down from the pew, Leon, the chameleon, giving a little, almost imperceptible nod from his fedora. "Acceptable, Dame-Ren," Reborn said, his tone as neutral as ever. "You managed not to die. And you even landed a few decent hits before resorting to the big flashy finish. Progress, I suppose." That, Ren was learning, was high praise, coming from him.
The incident with the Stray Devil was a brutal, terrifying turning point. It proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the supernatural wasn't just limited to Reborn and his bizarre mafia weirdness. There were other, darker, genuinely monstrous things lurking in the shadows of Kuoh Town. And it proved that Ren's Flames, however erratically they manifested, however little control he had over them, could actually do something against these threats. But this new knowledge, this hard-won, bloody victory, only opened the door to more questions, more fears. If Stray Devils were real, what else was out there? And how, in all the hells that might exist, was he, Ren Takakura, supposed to handle any of it? The path ahead seemed to stretch into an abyss of unknown dangers.