WNW III: Skull Is A Street Racer

Or Wherein Skull Has A Motorcycle Fetish Couple With Being An Adrenaline Junkie

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Part 1

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The first motorcycle Skull ever owned was a Sokół 1000; it was an old, decrepit thing with faded coloring that occasionally was spattered with patches of rust, an engine that looked as it had been crushed, something that looks astonishingly like bullet holes and missing tires- those were the things that really stood out.

(Even now, Skull doesn't know why he decided to try and fix a bike when he knew nothing about it but he knows that it was one of his better decisions.)

It takes Skull an hour and the help of a kind older man driving a truck to get the ruined bike back home, his mother takes one look at the mess and tells him to keep it out of the way, that anything he wants to fix the thing he has to buy himself. So he drags the old bike around to the back, settling it in the far corner that isn't taken over by his mother's garden before heading right back out in pursuit of a job and someone to tell him how to get started on fixing the bike. Four days later- in that time he erects a kind of tent around it and spends his afternoons haunting the local library to find out what bike he might have gotten- he gets a job at a mechanic's through a combination of persistence, begging and bribery (he also starts learning how to cook from his mother who flatly refuses to spend all her time making lunches for a group of men she does not know).

Sandy, as he'd affectionately dubbed the bike, was fully functioning before he turned fifteen and one of the guys at work taught him how to ride. He learnt while in a full body suit and helmet his worried mother had insisted upon, she had, perhaps as an apology for her rather public scolding of trying to ride Sandy without protective gear, bought sets that had an image of a skull and crossbones- earning him the nickname 'Skull'. Two months after turning fifteen, one of the younger men at the shop prodded him into a street race- strictly motorcycles only- to 'test' how well he learned to ride.

He comes in eleventh place of twelve but he doesn't care, he's a bit in love with the concept- with the speed and adrenaline, and he already agrees to another race before he even knows where or when. His second race he makes eighth and in his third he barely manages seventh- he and Sandy don't get a fourth race because the third turns out to be a trap and every single racer ends up arrested.

His mother picks him up.

(It's the last time he sees his mother lucid and alive, it might be his biggest regret that the last thing in her mind- aside from pain- before her death is that he had disappointed her.)

He's not quite sixteen when he mounts Sandy, a pack of everything important slung over his shoulder, and just drives until he runs out of gas- he walks the bike until he reaches a relatively sheltered place to sleep for the night. He wakes to a knife in his gut and a man cursing Sandy over not starting, Skull watches blearily as the man slams a foot into his beloved bike before taking off at a run, he pulls out the knife and turns to watch the stars as he bleeds out.

Then he dies and wakes up the next morning to birds.

(It the first time he really, truly hates himself- he wonders why he survives when his mother, who is so much better, did not.)

His shirt has a hole in it but is black so the blood doesn't matter beyond wiping clean the skin that the hole shows, Skull stands and hesitates a moment before adding the knife to his pack and walks Sandy to the nearest gas station. He fills her up completely before repeating yesterday- it a process he repeats until he's run out of money, then he kind of just lays sprawled on the side of a road.

(He has no idea what he would have done if the Festival of Fireflies hadn't passed by and stopped for him- maybe he'd still be laying there?)

It wasn't the intention, Skull didn't think, of the Festival to keep him- the circus folk had only intended to take him to the next city but then the mechanic, Lucas, asked about Sandy and Skull just had to talk about his best girl. It was only when the man in charge, Jakub, humorously asked if he was staying then that Skull realized that he spent what was basically an entire day talking to the mechanic about Sandy then engines in general.

The Festival became his second home, another chance at family; they found him when he felt that there was nothing left and took him in, let him find his feet- let him discover stunts at his own time. Then it all, literally, went up in flames, leaving him to pick himself and continue when he should have been dead.*

(He has never really been sure what happened that night, he only knows fire- knows burning – and shrapnel from his bike stabbing him then waking up to what seemed like the world on fire and the wail of sirens.)

Skull loved stunt work- the adrenaline, the showmanship and the satisfaction of doing something the audience thought impossible- but he could not do it anymore. Not with the death of his second family.

He drifts from place to place, taking labor intensive and temporary jobs to get by- more often then not, he has to leave because he ends up in a lethal accident that has him walking away. It's not until he winds up in Czechoslovakia, working as a supply unloader when truck arrive to deliver a new shipment, that he does more then wander aimlessly through his apparently immortal life.

He is sixteen and seven months when he gets his second bike, a JAWA 250 Perak that he dubs 'Erica'.

He is sixteen, seven months and fifteen days when he take Erica to the underground for a street race.

(He was sixteen, seven months and twenty two days old when he first sees his Flames- managing to stay awake for the first time, to watch purple fire knit his wounds closed once more.)

He is sixteen and eight months when he finds out that the underground calls him Skull de Mort as a nod to the crashes that he ends up in and still walks away from.

He is sixteen, eight months and five days when he learns about Dying Will Flames- learns that the purple fire that knits him back together are called Cloud Flames.

(Even now, Skull does not know how he was able to use them that first 'death'- or any after, it wasn't that he was all that resolved to live. He tentatively hypothesizes that he activated them as a young child- likely in a lethal accident with how they keep him from death- and they just grew stronger as they help heal him from each accident- he always did heal quicker then normal but his mother never cared, was only relieved so he never questioned it- until they were strong enough to make him effectively immortal.)

He is sixteen and nine months the first time he duplicates something, it's a sock that is missing it's other pair but the act is something that amazes him and gets him to try to make clones of other things- some work better then others depending on size and complexity.

(To this day, Skull can't copy the taste of food all that well but he's managed to make it so the copied food retains its nutritional value so he's satisfied.)

He is sixteen and eleven months when Erica dies and is replaced with a 75cc Laverda Tourismo Prototype dubbed 'Avery'- it's also when he tries his hand at racing cars along with bikes.

Skull is seventeen and two months old when he meets Checkerface and is invited- blackmailed, honestly- to going to a meeting of the World's Strongest, I Prescelti Sette.

The meeting of I Prescelti Sette is unlike any Skull has known before.

He's the fourth to arrive and it's to two women speaking in Italian while a green haired man shares their table even as he ignores them in favor of reading. The woman wearing a ridiculously poofy hat- he honestly thinks it might be some kind of mutated mushroom and marshmallow hybrid- pauses their conversation to smile at him and say something.

It's a full sentence, he knows, but for all he understands it comes out as "Hello. -….wait…others….Call me Luce…Lal…Verde….you." If she had not gestured to the two as she said their names, Skull probably wouldn't have known which was which.

"Skull," He introduced before, with his meager Italian, saying, "Sorry. I don't know much."

The other woman, Lal, makes a dismissive noise and says, "You-….in Italy."

…It would probably be safe to assume she was insulting him- probably his intelligence?- for agreeing to meet up with people in Italy without even knowing the language. Which, well, was true but it wasn't as if he had planned on going to Italy- he'd heard far too many stories about it's underworld to want to ever try and enter it- and when he had been forced into coming it wasn't even a month ago.

Honestly, he was rather proud of how much he managed to learn in two weeks with no actual teacher.

(Of course, Skull knows Italian now, Reborn took it as a personal insult that he hadn't and took it upon himself to 'correct' that- violently. Does that make Dino and Tsuna his kohai- or 'little brothers'- if he was taught by Reborn first?)

Not that he could really say all that to Lal, he'd rather not try explaining it in a language he does know since he has a feeling an attempt will only make it worse, so he just has to deal with her dismissive attitude- Luce at least offers him an apologetic look before returning to her and Lal's conversation. He glances at Verde, whose eyes flick towards him then away dismissively as they return to the book, and sighs before pulling out a deck of cards.

He's never been the best at card tricks, that had been a label given to Anya, but he knew enough to keep himself entertained whenever he had to wait so he usually had a deck on him. This time, though, he was seated at a table so there was nothing stopping him from waste time playing a game of solitaire; some time during the second game, a man who introduced himself as 'Fon' arrived while 'Viper' just seemed to appear after the fifth game.

(Skull is still not entirely sure about Viper's gender; he usually used the Mist's name or Flames when referring to them with 'they' and 'them' replacing 'he/she' and 'him/her'. Viper's never expressed displeasure over it so he assumes it's the right thing to do.)

He's shuffling his deck by the time the seventh member arrives, a well dressed man in a hat with sideburns that are curly. It's as weird as it is terrifying because those side burns are iconic, an identifier of the World's Greatest Hitman.

…just what kind of job is this!?

"Now that we're all here," Luce says, thankfully in English which is a language he actually knows (he grew up in a twinned town so he knew quite a few languages, just…not Italian). "Why don't we introduce ourselves? I am Luce, Sky Flame user."

Skull paused his shuffling, wondering why she deliberately mentioned her Flame type, perhaps to prompt others to do so? Well, it wasn't as if it was a secret even if he never spoke of his Flames. "My name is Skull, I have Cloud Flames."

The Sky beamed at him.

Introductions went like that with few variations, it was odd though, and a bit concerning, that they all had different Flames (Lal – Rain, Verde – Lightning, Fon – Storm, Viper – Mist, Renato – Sun) but maybe it was I Prescelti Sette for a reason?

"So," Renato said and it was honestly difficult not to just stare at the man's sideburns, especially when he pulled on one and it sprang back into place. Skull was kind of jealous. "We have a job."

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A lot of fanon- or maybe just what I read?- is that the Arcobaleno are so dismissive towards Skull because he was a civilian and didn't know about Flames, so I gave my take on how things might have been if Skull wasn't a civilian and did know about his Flames.

FFN doesn't allow for list stories so here's a bit of the WNW list;

#Circus
Wherein The Mafia Are All Circus Performers

#Wizard
Wherein Skull Is A Wizard And NOT Harry Potter

#CloudSwitch
Wherein Hibari Is An Arcobaleno And Skull Is Tsuna's Guardian

#SurprisinglyUsefulSkills
Wherein Certain Circus Skills Come In Handy

#BoundCurse
Wherein The Arcobaleno End Up With A Bond