I KNOW, I'M SO RELIEVED. |D I would have thrown a fit if he died now.

Heh, I recommend reading a few of mikenno's posts above--she really helped me to understand it a little more, anyway. XD (Though it's still completely flippin' nuts. And people say the twists on LOST are hard to understand. XDD)

Well, part of my reasons for thinking of Gokudera and Irie as being similar are half_sleeping's fault--she was pointing out similarities via her awesome fic before any of us even know that Shou was actually good, let alone the rest of this stuff. But aside from that, they're both nerds, both in the mafia, both particularly determined and stubborn (even before this chapter, we knew that much about Irie; just the fact that he played such a dangerous undercover game with Byakuran for so long all for the sake of helping the Vongola kids says an awful lot), both have domineering older sisters (XD), both wear glasses, and apparently both had musical aspirations at one point. So it's nothing immediately obvious, but yeah, I think the similarities are there.

Ooh, nice catch--wave energies do supposedly run in the family, so if Dera can use more than one, maybe Bianchi can as well. (It might even help explain her apparent immunity to her own poison cooking. XD) Now I'm even more curious.