This chapter was written under the influence of bad music and the fumes from 100ml of surgical alcohol I spilt on the floor an hour ago.

Thank you to Is a weirdo and proud of it, Raikimluva22, Catsdon'tcry , brattyteenagewerewolf, Kagay Daydreams, Gaxxy, SongOfTheShadows, iikiwiii, ShortSweet'NToThePoint, Atamashi, NyxSerpent, Dreamaker401, The Awesome Sugar Sparkles, Unknown Varaible, srebnywilk, demoneyeskyoko, New Eclipse, Cirque du Lune and Imotochan13. For all your favourites, watches and reviews ^_^

This is the boring chapter. The next two will be better.

The Italian smiled a little more broadly as the gun was removed from his scalp and the safety was replaced. He turned around to make a smart comment about what an excellent idea holding your new boss at gun point was, but his voice stuck in his throat as he saw the man who was now wondering around getting ready for his day.

"You're a beast!" Feliciano half spluttered, "A German beast!"

His new bodyguard, for however long said individual held the position, was, in his own way, utterly edible. The muscles that flowed from his broad shoulders were sharp and defined beneath milky pale skin. The ridges of his abdomen were the pattern the waves leave on the white sand after high tide has receded, framed by a strong rib cage and a nipped iliac crest. The muscles must have flowed uninterrupted beneath the flimsy blue cotton, because they continued seamlessly into strong, cabled thighs and calves. Feliciano wondered idly what it would be like to be held to that sculpted body by those strong arms before prompting himself back to the business at hand,

"You got a name, amico?" the Italian snapped, hoping to pull the German's attention from his socks to himself.

"Ja, Herr Vargas. Beilschmidt," Ludwig answered, pulling on a pair of black dress pants. He didn't look up.

"Ve~ that come with a first name?" he probed, hoping to get something a little more than, 'yes sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir.'

"Not during business hours, Herr Vargas," was the only comment the giant German made as he buttoned up a white dress shirt. It was plain and simple; efficient.

"Call me Feliciano. Why are you getting dressed? It's three in the morning. Business is from nine to five."

"Since you woke me up, Herr Vargas," Ludwig said, calmly knotting his tie and pointedly ignoring the instruction of informality, "I assume you have something that you need me to do? Unless you would prefer that I perform whatever task it is in my undergarments? My business happens whenever it is needed," Poor Feli could only assume that God was testing him; why else would he send this ridiculously serious, ridiculously delectable man who was offering to 'perform tasks' in his underwear!

"I need to test you reflexes and your abilities in general," the Mafioso said ticking off the things he needed to check mentally, strength, marksmanship, speed, agility, endurance and intelligence.

"I need you to shoot something,"

"Anything in particular, Herr Vargas?" was the only answer. No quibbles about the time of day, the location, the neighbours, or the strangeness of the request.

"Pick your least favourite object in the room and shoot it," Feli said carelessly, "I'll put it on my tab."

Casting and eye about the room, Ludwig selected a rather hideous vase on the mantelpiece. He would have preferred to get a bullet in Feliciano, but that would put him out of a job, no matter how strange the boy was. Walking over to the dressed, he squirted hair gel into the palm of his hand and began running it through his hair.

A little startled by this sudden disinterest in firearms, the Italian opened his mouth and began to complain,

"Ve~ where do you get off doing your hair whe-"

Blam, Blam, Blam

He blinked repeatedly as the tinkle of falling china sounded in the deafening silence that thundered in the bullets' wake. He could have sworn that he had not seen the man who was now combing his ice-blond hair back into a severe style that made him look like a cross between an accountant and a General pull a gun out of the drawer, fire two shots with his left hand, toss the gun into the air, catch it with his left hand and shoot the vase again, barely glancing at his target.

"That was Rococo," was all Feliciano could say. Tick for marksmanship. . .

"I was Revolting," Ludwig said, shrugging on a black blazer and walking over to the pile of powdered ceramics to inspect it. He hummed in disapproval as he picked up the largest remaining fragment of the vase; it was about five centimetres squared in terms of surface area.

"I should have aimed better," he turned to face his employer, "anything else?"

"Pick me up," admittedly it wasn't a traditional test of strength, but it was something necessary; if Feli was incapacitated and needed to be removed from the area, he needed to know that Beilschmidt could do it. There may or may have been a little wish fulfilment in that request, though the German's personality and doubtful humour were beginning to sorely grate his nerves.

"Fireman or bridal style?" Was this man for real? That was the only question he asked?

"Ve~ let's try both," Feli sighed. He could feel a headache coming on.

In a stride, Ludwig had crossed the space between them, placed his hands on the Italian's sides and lifted him into the air. Feli tried not note that the large, pale hands covered almost half of his ribcage before he was slung over a broad shoulder in much the same way as a Viking would sling a maiden he intended to ravage. Ludwig walked a few experimental paces, but stopped dead when he felt something creeping lower down than was strictly necessary,

"Bitte, Herr Vargas, if you could remove your hands from my rear?" the hands were removed, and Feliciano giggled a little,

"Schön arsch!" he laughed as he was slid down to be cradled against the firm chest.

"Danke, but your accent is terrible; Gilbert should have taught you better,"

"Ve~! How did you know it was Gil?" Feliciano asked, perhaps this could count as a test of intelligence? Though he doubted it would.

"Well, unless you speak German, which by your horrific butchering of those two words alone, you do not, I see no other reason for you to have contact with a German other than my brother. He is also the only person I know who would teach an Italian to say 'nice arse' in Deutsch."

"There's logic! C'mon, I need to make you run laps and lift weights," Feli trilled, skipping out of the room ahead of the hulking German man, his cherry-red skinny jeans and white long-sleeved shirt glowing in the golden light of the hotel's halls.

~=====oOo======~

"You can lift 250 kilos easily, you can run 100 metres in 12 seconds, your marksmanship is excellent, you passed the T-Test in eight seconds and you passed the Vmax test with flying colours," Feliciano rattled off, consulting his clipboard. It was now seven in the morning, and he had been running Beilschmidt through his passes since they had arrived at the gym, which had been opened early for a couple of hundred Euros.

"You'll do," the Italian concluded, looking up to see Ludwig re-buttoning his shirt, which he had taken off for the exercises. Once the German was fully dressed, Feliciano turned to him. He hated to admit that he had gotten sweaty just watching the amount of physical labour this man could do, but he had, and now he needed to go home, have some cannelloni, a shower and sleep before plotting his most strenuous test yet; covert operations. Given the bodyguard's size, it was going to be the most challenging. And he could get Nonno to run any prior intelligence tests when they had The Meeting the day after tomorrow. Seeing that the large German was standing patiently to attention, Feli motioned to the door of the changing room and the outside world,

"C'mon, Beast. We need to get you into something clean and neat, and show you to your new home."

"Beast, Herr Vargas?" Ludwig asked, following his new employer dutifully none the less.

"Ve~ You won't tell me your first name and I can't just go around introducing you as my associate 'Beilschmidt' it doesn't have the same ring to it."

"It is my name, Herr Vargas," the German said a little reproachfully.

"Ve~ you don't know much about my family, do you?"

"Not really, no. I can't say that I've ever worked for the mafia before today.

"Well the first thing you need is a new suit."

"I don't think that's necessary, Herr Vargas," Ludwig said feeling decidedly uncomfortable with the direction they were heading in. He didn't need a new suit; admittedly he needed to change out of the one he was currently wearing was drenched in sweat in the same way a forest is singed after a fire-storm. The material was so wet it was almost dripping, pulling stares from women and men alike as the duo walked down the pier to where the Maserati speedboat was docked.

"Ve~ Hold on to your seatbelt, Beast! We need to get to Gennaro's before lunch time! "

"What happens at lunch time?" Ludwig asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"Ve~! You must really do things differently in Germany! We eat!" Feliciano crowed, going much to fast around a hairpin corner, almost capsizing a gondola as he went.

After ten minutes of the most hair-raising driving the bodyguard had ever encountered – and he had driven and ambulance with an injured soldier, a crate of eggs and two newborn children through a minefield in Afghanistan while in a high speed chase. Don't ask – they arrived at a tiny, hole-in the wall tailor.

Feliciano jumped out of the boat and pressed the buzzer with much aplomb.

"C'mon, Beast!" he called, "Gennaro can't take your measurements in a boat!"

Thinking that he had got himself into decidedly more trouble than this job was worth, no matter how much it may or may not pay, Ludwig hauled himself from the boat and up the pier to the little shop. A man of about sixty opened the door, his creased face trembling slightly as he beheld the unlikely pair before him. Worryingly, Ludwig noted that the old man shook more when he saw Feliciano than when he saw the German. When your five-eight, smiling boss scares people more than you do, it's possibly time to find a new line of work.

"Ve~! Gennaro! Buon Giorno! E 'stato troppo lungo," the Mafioso greeted the man, who was obviously Gennardo, with a kiss on each cheek, "Ho portatoun amico!Il suo nome èBestia.Faraigli si addice, sì?" I brought a friend, his name is Beast. You'll make him a suit, yes?

"Sì, posso farlo, il signor Vargas," Gennaro agreed miserably; yes, I can do that, Mr Vargas. At this point, though only a few minutes and sentences had passed between the two Italians, Ludwig felt his head beginning to spin; he didn't understand a word of Italian and he could understand now how this was going to present a very serious problem.

"Bene! Andiamo allora ad esso. Prendere le sue misure, e io vi dirò cosa fare."Feliciano said, with worrying relish, Good, take your measurements and I'll tell you what to make. Trembling with fright, the old man motioned to Ludwig,

"Vieni qui per favore, signore," he said, come here please, sir.

"He wants you to stand there and be measured," Feli translated gleefully, knowing the slightly bemused look on his employee's face as that of one who didn't speak a language they were suddenly immersed in. Gerrano muttered something and dragged a small stepladder over from the corner of the room. Feliciano laughed,

"He says that you are too big to be a man, so it is good that you are called Beast!" Ludwig sent up a silent prayer to whosoever should deign to watch over him that, should aforementioned unnamed deity get him out of this mess in one piece and without a new suit, he would make a decent man of himself. However celestial beings obviously had a cruel streak, or at least a twisted sense of humour and a taste for human suffering, because twenty minutes later the German was still being stuck with needles while the two Italians gabbled away, happily or unreasonably terrified depending on which one you were talking about. Occasionally Feliciano would translate whatever Gennaro was saying, but with a smile on his face that lead Ludwig to think that the old man had said otherwise.

With finality in his grip, after almost forty-five minutes of being pinned, prodded, bedecked in the multi-coloured streamers of measuring tapes and being forced into several different styles of jacket, Gennaro squeezed Ludwig's bicep and beckoned Feliciano to a small counter with an antique cash register and a state-of the-art credit-card reading facility. Feli swiped his shiny plastic rectangle through the machine, which beeped cheerfully and told the Italians that the purchase was official.

"Voglio che il tuxedo da domani," the red-head said, no argument brooked, I want the tuxedo by tomorrow.

"Ma, signore! Non è possibile!" The elder man quaked visibly and Ludwig could tell that he was not happy to be saying what he was. But, sir! It's impossible!

"Io non sono irragionevoli, Gennaro. Voglio solo il tuxedo," Feliciano's voice was soft enough to be mistaken for politeness, even friendliness by those unused to it, but deadly enough to fell an elephant should the need arise. The German knew that tone well, he had used it many times himself, I'm not being unreasonable, Gennaro. I only want the tuxedo.

"Sì, signore," the old man folded miserably. A little hope, a little pleading crept into his voice as he asked, "E i miei Sophia? Come sta?" And my Sophia, how is she?

"Oh, sì. Bene bene." Oh, yes. Fine, fine. With an airy flutter of his talkative hands and a serine smile on his lips, Feliciano walzed out the door. Ludwig made to follow when a wrinkled hand shot out and grabbed his sleeve. Gennaro was looking at him with a look so desperate it would have made Hitler's heart bleed. Unfortunately for the Italian, had the Third Reich been under the command of Ludwig Beilschmidt, the world would presently be speaking German. Choosing not to acknowledge the look of distaste the larger man now wore, Gennaro spoke in broken English,

"Signore, my daughter, mio Sophia. You are big man. Protect her, per favore! Il Diavolo Sorridente, he have mio Sophia! She is youngest girl. Per favore signore, show some mercy to a father? I no work, he kill her, per favore!"

With eyes as cold and icy blue as the deepest parts of a glacier, Ludwig appraised the quivering man, who now had large, tears splashed across his face and snot dribbling unchecked into the whiskers of his upper lip. A small smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

"I was a father once," he said, using the same tone of voice Feliciano had earlier. Gennaro was familiar enough with that tone to fear for his life, and doubly so for that of his youngest daughter.

"What happen?" the Italian asked, hoping against hope that he wasn't actually going to be told.

"I shot her."

As Ludwig walked out of the shop he heard the little man behind him break down utterly. Perhaps this job was going to be more fun than he had first thought.

DUNDUNDUNDUN.

I did warn you this was going to be dark stuff. And apparently all the chapters ARE going to be this long. Anyway. You guys have no idea the shit I'm getting into for writing instead of working, what with finals coming up and all, and I spent all day drawing dumb fanart.

Again, anywho, thank you to all me reviewers, I hope this didn't bore you too much. And a special thanks to my very own Prussia and Germany, who kick my North Italian butt into actually working/writing/not failing high school and who help me with ideas. Onward to the fun chapters. ^_^

~RutheLa