Skull wasn't sure how this had started.

Well, no, that was bullshit. Skull knew exactly how it had started.

It started, when he was six, and he first discovered the pretty purple fire. He had kept it hidden of course, people weren't supposed to spontaneously catch on fire, but that was the start of his inevitable path, because no one who could use Flames was permitted to wander for long.
Skull never said anything to the Arcobaleno, but his first foray into the Mafia was not the day he met them at 19. Skull was 16 years old, ten years after he had discovered his Flames, when an older man in his sixties saw him using his Cloud's Flames.

The older man had had ties to the Mafia, and had been the one to explain what he was using, and the rules and regulations that were enforced about Flames. Skull remembered thinking the fact that civilians were dragged kicking and screaming into the mafia whether they liked it or not was ridiculous.

And while Skull appreciated the heads up, he would not bow to expectations. The condescending mafia man had no idea who he was dealing with. Just because Skull had not been a part of any Famiglia, was not bound by Omerta, and held no loyalty to any organization did not mean he was entirely ignorant of what the mafia did, and what tended to happen to those they considered 'theirs'.

Skull would not be bound by this man, nor any man that tried to cage him. If he would be pulled into the shadows of that world, it would be on his terms and no one else's.

So Skull fell back on skills he hadn't thought he'd have to use again after making it big as a stuntman. The skills from his life before, the skills of a street brat. He dove into the mess, got rid of all his identifying habits, dyed his hair black, wore colored contacts, put on a t-shirt and jeans after tearing them up and getting them dirty, rubbed dirt into his skin, let some of his scars from his time on the street show.

And then he went digging for information.

So that was where the shitstorm started for real. He went digging, and discovered all these 'rules' these expectations, these 'rules' about Flame Users and their actions. It was...ridiculous. What kind of society limited themselves like that?

Skull didn't understand, so he'd chosen to dig deeper. It was while he was doing this, that he found his first information treasure trove. Underground Flame Fighting. No one said anything to the dirty homeless brat that stuck to the edges of the traveling group that ran the fights. Everyone in the fights was there willingly, and it allowed Skull the chance to observe Flame Users that were not the general 'normal' using their Flames offensively and defensively.

A good chunk of the fighters were more like an odd kind of family. Some of them were wanders that just came to fight, but the core of this unit was a family. The ones that changed the locations and set everything up, the Suns that healed the fighters at the end, the Storms that disintegrated any and all evidence of their presence once they were ready to move, the Mists that made sure no one undesirable got anywhere near the operations...

Skull would find out later that 95% of the Flame Users running the fights had started out civilian. At the time, one of the Inverted Clouds in the family decided to take in the homeless kid that had followed their operation, sensing he was the same Flame type.

Skull laughed about it later, but he had panicked when the strange female approached him. He hadn't been bothered much by the fighters after the initial realization that Skull wasn't up to any kind of underhanded stealing or plots.

After the first two months of Skull following the troupe, he had been accepted into the fold really, offered food and a place to sleep. He had seen the woman that would offer to teach him staring at him often, a considering look on her face, but he wouldn't realize until much later that she was contemplating the offer she would come to make.

Still, she had chosen to approach him, and once he had stopped panicking about one of the core members of the group approaching him, and listened to what she was offering to do…

Only a fool would turn down someone offering to teach rare skills.

He learned control exercises, was taught that his teacher's way was not the only way, taught to think and fight, taught that family shared what they learned when his teacher brought in other fighters, with different Flames and had them teach their control methods, and fighting skills to Skull, in case he would learn better another way.

Skull had written what he learned into a journal to better remember, so that he could go back and look over everything whenever he wished. He had slotted into place easily after that, happy with this family of fighters that had taken him in and welcomed him. And when the time came that he had to leave so he could learn more of the world he was being forced to join it was with the knowledge he would be welcomed back whenever he returned.

O~O~O~

It was inevitable that Skull would find helpless usually homeless civilians who got dragged into the underworld and had no idea what they were doing. Most ended up dead or forced to join Famiglia against their will.

Skull may have taken them back to his teacher and family.

Possibly.

And it may have started a trend, causing the family to grow and expand as Skull took back those who needed a home, needed teachers of their own. He explained what his family did, explained what he knew of Flames, pulled out his journal and allowed the others to read his experiences as he brought them home.

And there was a very strong possibility that in doing what he did, he created a civilian-turned-Mafioso Famiglia.

So, Skull knew exactly how this had all started.

It started with his disgust with the mafia and their practices when it came to civilians-turned-Actives. It started with his reaction to those practices.

And it grew from there.