Spontaneous fic is sudden and random. Huzzah.
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You are four years old when your life truly begins.
It is movie night, and your mother has listened to your begged requests and rented a movie that is not aimed at children. You don't remember the name of it, or the plot, in the end. All you remember is how your eyes widened when you saw the actors waving their swords at one another, and the way your heart pounded when the villain was vanquished in a spray of fake blood. When she sees you gasp, your mother tries to shut the movie off, citing that she knew it was too soon for something so violent. You beg her not to, but she is adamant, and so you end up sneaking downstairs after she is asleep to watch the movie again, rewinding the fight scene over and over. In the morning she comes downstairs to find you asleep on the couch with the VCR remote in your hand and the most manic grin a four-year-old has ever held plastered across your snoozing face.
From that point on, your mother indulges your desire for violent movies, although she in turn starts hiding the knives in the cabinet above the oven where you can't reach them.
You start making swords out of the sticks on the yard, and you insist on playing with the other children using them. You will spend hours playing with them every day, and you all trade off being the knight in shining armor, the damsel in distress and the evil villain. The others fight over whose turn it is to be the prince, but you always preferred being the villain (except when you were a dragon and not allowed to use your makeshift sword).
When you are five, your mother signs you up for fencing lessons in town. It feels good to hold the sword they give you, even if it has no sharp points and bends like rubber. You don't turn out to be very good at the sport, because even though you can beat all your peers within a month, you can't follow the rules very well. The instructor tells you to keep your feet in place and thrust, when your body tells you to charge foreword and slash. Nevertheless, by the time you are eight you are done witch fencing because even though you keep getting disqualified in your matches you still beat all the other kids every time. There is a school in the next city over that teaches different forms of swordplay, but you know your mother can't afford it, so you never bring it up.
For your ninth birthday your mother gives you, at last, the one thing you have allways wanted. She sets strict rules, stating that you are not allowed to touch it when she's not home, but you're willing to listen to her and even follow them, because the moment you hold the solid steel sword in your hand you know that nothing has ever felt so right.
Since you quit fencing, you end up practicing on your own. You spend hours in the yard, swinging the blade your mother bought you, fighting opponents that don't exist, but you still crave more. A real opponent, a real challenge. None exist for you.
You get a job delivering newspapers in the morning, and use the money to take the bus into the city. You can't afford to go the the sword classes yet, but you find a weapons shop and from the moment you step inside you are in love. Even though you are young enough that the clerks shouldn't let you in, they do anyway, and you every week you take the bus into the city and spend several hours in the little shop, testing the blades of the weapons for sale, even though you've held them all a hundred times before. But the store owner likes you, likes your passion, and teaches you how to take care of blades to keep them in top condition. He even gives you an under-the-table part time job there, paying you a few dollars to come in every week to clean and sharpen the merchandise.
Eventually you can afford the first few lessons in the school of swordsmanship in the city. You bypass fencing entirely, and take lessons in Japanese kendo and historical weaponry, and by the time your savings don't cover the lessons anymore you're close enough to satisfied that you've learned everything they have to teach you there. You wish you could have stayed longer and fought more of the students, and you didn't even get a chance to really fight the instructors, but you feel like you've taken enough from the lessons to teach yourself even more.
One day when you're working in the shop, polishing a thirteen-inch dagger, one of the instructors from the school comes in. He asks you why he hasn't seen you in the weekend classes anymore, stating that it was a waste of talent for you to have quit, and after you've explained the situation you've found that by the end of the day the instructor, store owner, and even your mother have scraped together enough money to keep sending you to the classes for a while longer. It is the first time in your life you find yourself filled with gratitude.
You are eleven years old, and the instructors and students have started calling you Il Piccolo Squalo- The Little Shark. You fight as much as you please, and win almost every time. You have still never spilled blood before, but something in you thirsts for it, and one of the teachers can sense it. He watches you fight, and watches you win with the manic grin that won't remove itself from your face when you hold a sword, and one day challenges you to a fight. He hands you a real sword, and takes up his own. By the end, even though you lost, you have never felt more satisfied. Both of you are covered in bloody cuts and you wind a bandage around your bleeding wounds with a grin splitting your face, and the teacher stands up, wipes the blood from a cut on his brow and asks you if you've ever been afraid you'd kill someone. Your answer is just a twisted grin as you lick the blood from a cut on your fingers, and he nods to himself as if affirming something. The next time you see him he asks you how you like the school you're going to, and after you answer he asks another question, one which you have no idea why he would bring up. He asks you how much you know about the mafia.
You are twelve years old when you change schools. You leave your mother behind in the town you grew up in, but you know she'll be fine. Two weeks before you left for your new life your mother got remarried, and changed her last name to match her new husband's. You have never been attached to your own surname, and so you change yours, too. You know your mother named you 'pride' because she wanted to raise you knowing you should be proud of who you were no matter where you came from, and whether or not you had a father, and you intend to live up to her hopes, carrying your name with you. So when you move to Sicily you take the name your mother gave you, as well as the one given to you by the very teacher who sent you halfway across the country. You are no longer The Little Shark, but instead the Proud one, and that is how you become Superbia Squalo.
You had no idea a school for children of mafia members existed, and you don't know why your teacher had connections to it, but you don't care. All you know is that by the end of your first week there your had killed someone for the first time, and it felt right. There are many students much more skilled than where you came from, and you spend your first few months fighting them all, and you know this is where you belong.
At the school you meet a boy who reminds you of when you were just a child playing in the yard. He has golden hair like a fairy tale prince, but he acts more like the damsel in distress. You have saved him from bullies more than once, and you're not entirely sure why you bother. For some reason, you cannot bring yourself to play the villain to this boy who trips over his own feet and smiles at you like your actually friends.
When you are fourteen years old, you are approached by the Varia. You demand to fight the man known as the Sword Emperor, and it is the most incredible two days of your life. Even cradling your bloody stump of a hand, you are filled with nothing but pride and satisfaction. Dino changes the your bandages every night, even though you tell him not to and that you two aren't even friends. You can't seem to communicate to him that you're proud to have lost this hand, that it is your first real battle scar and for god's sake you're right-handed anyway. He just keeps wrapping the bandages around your wrist and says that even if you aren't friends it's not like you have any real friends anyway, so someone has to take care of your stupid self. You tell him he's an idiot, but let him finish anyway.
It is only a few months later that world changes for a second time. You meet a man about your age who makes all your skill and love of swordplay seem vain and meaningless. You take one look into his eyes and feel like your soul is on fire, like you will turn to ash if you stand near him for too long. Immediately you know that this is your new purpose in life - to stand by the side of this king among men.
Even after Xanxus is trapped in ice, your purpose in life does not change. For seven years life feels emptier than it ever has, but you are still the Proud Shark and you will not allow yourself to sulk. It is only when your boss is freed once more that life starts moving again.
The next time your life changes it is because you taste defeat for the first time in years. You are twenty-two years old, and a Japanese brat who cares more about a stupid ballgame than the finest craft on this Earth, for which he is clearly made, takes you by surprise and knocks you out cold. You know, logically, that if you had been taking the fight seriously from the start this would not have happened, but you don't care. The boy has inspired you to better yourself once more- something you had not striven for since you felled Tyr eight years ago. You will train him into a proper swordsman, and craft him into a worthy rival. That is what you decide when the ring fights are over and Xanxus has no chance of becoming the Tenth Vongola (at least while Sawada Tsunayoshi is still alive).
The ironic thing about the whole mess, you've decided, is that you once again find yourself having your bandages changed by Dino Cavallone. He is still a clumsy idiot that trips over his own feet, but somehow, the roles have changed and he plays the part of the handsome prince to your damsel in distress. You think it would be humiliating if it weren't so damned funny. This time, you don't tell him that he's an idiot for caring or that you're not even friends. This time, you let him do as he pleases, even if it is unnecessary. And, just for a moment, you think that maybe it's nice to have someone actually care. Not that you'd ever say as much.