WARNING: This chapter will contain blood and gore. I blame the movie Dawn of the Dead for corrupting me to write such a masochistic scene.
Two… Pain
"VOOOOOOOOOI, pay attention to me you immature brats!" Fran looked up from his new mystery novel while Bel's hidden eyes were aimed at the screen of his PSP.
Squalo frowned at the pair, why was he the one stuck in the base running around and carrying out the boss's orders while these delinquents were out there killing people. Life was so unfair. "Your mission is going to be in Venice. All the information is in the folder so you better read it before you leave."
Squalo whacked Bel in the back of the head before plopping the folder in Fran's empty lap. Fran started to flip through the folder, ignoring Squalo and Bel who were busy yelling at each other. "So let me get this straight," Fran's voice broke through the bickering in a Varia phenomenon, "We're basically going all the way to Italy to assassinate some rich heiress' son who's been killing off people in the city left and right?" Fran peered at the picture in the back of the report, "Hey look, Senpai. He looks just like another version of you!"
Bel snatched the photo out of Fran's hand and stared back at a clone of himself. What do you know; Bel didn't look too bad with silver hair although it did remind him of another Vongola storm bomber. "Ushishishishi, the prince looks much better then this imposter here. You should know better, Froggy." Bel smiled his signature smile as he stared imagining himself dancing in a pool of blood.
"So how long is it going to take?" Fran asked his senior who was busy trying to resist punching Bel.
Squalo blinked as the question aimed at him and forced himself to remember that Fran existed. "It should only take a few days depending on how many bodyguards he's surrounded himself with by this time. He's not that much of a threat but it seems he's very good at pissing off the wrong people including some influential mafia members so naturally it's our job to kill the pest. That should be easy enough for the two of you to handle it so just give us a call whenever you're done. Don't take too long like last time." Fran sighed, he had no clue Bel would be so stubborn when it came to amusement parks.
"Gotcha, we'll make sure to come back alive." Fran added in for a bit of amusement, "So how's it feel to be the boss's bitch?" Squalo twitched, that little green pest! He turned around but the pair had managed to disappear without a trace. Someone should really time those two.
"VOOOOOOOOOOOOI!" Squalo's yell echoed throughout the building, causing a random maid to drop a vase she had been busy polishing. Crap, she was so going to get fired.
"What I'm saying is that I want you to play Rihanna on the speakers! I'm the prince, my word is law!" Bel immediately started arguing with the pilot as soon as he got onto the private jet.
"Sir, there is no central sound system for the whole entire shuttle. There's public docking in the separate rooms so you can plug your MP3 there, but there is no way I can arrange for that to happen," the pilot said, lying through his teeth.
There was a central stereo since the jet was maintained with the best that money could buy but for some weird reason his boss had specifically told him not to allow any of the passengers today to mess around with anything on the plane, especially with the audio. It was a strange rule but it wasn't his place to judge.
Fran picked up his own Ipod touch and started to listen to techno music while playing with a tetras app. Bel was up to his usual thing and Fran knew that interfering would take more effort then it was worth.
Ten minutes of constant arguing later, Fran could hear over his music the sounds of Rihanna singing about forgetting her own name. How predictable.
"I hate Rihanna, you're fired!"
"Ushishishishi. You know you love me, Froggy." The duo had just arrived at the hotel where they would be staying and the Prince had it stuck in his head that his Froggy loved him when the receptionist had commented that they were a "cute couple". The maniac smile Bel rewarded her with two seconds later was going to give her a nightmare for years to come.
Fran repeatedly jabbed at the numbered button as he tried to ignore the deluded prince behind him, why did they have to be on the 78th floor. This was ridiculous. The elevator churned and Fran prayed to whatever deities there was out there that the elevator wouldn't get stuck. When they finally got to their floor, Fran burst through the door with Bel trailing him muttering about a wedding and dresses. A young mother quickly ushered her six-year-old daughter back into their hotel room at the sight of the two strange men.
"So Froggy, what do you say? Will you be my lawfully wedded wifey? I'll even get you a ring pop and everything to signify our eternal love."
Fran sighed, the Prince had a deluded version of reality that depended 100% on cliche children's television. "I would never marry someone of such poor taste as you. Plus, I would be the husband and you would be the one wearing the dress."
Bel cocked his head to the side and gave Fran a weird look when Fran rubbed his head subconsciously. Bel was really rubbing off on him, either that or it was the lack of sleep, why else would he go along with his partner's shenanigans? Bel swung his arm around Fran's shoulder and licked the side of Fran's neck to see if he could get a reaction out of him.
Fran was still mentally sputtering and blushing by the time they reached their door, cursing the hotel for having extremely long hallways. "Whoa!" The Prince darted ahead of Fran once the door of the room opened to reveal a place that actually wasn't shitty.
The childish blond proceeded to jump on the big bed in the middle of the room. Sure, it wasn't a pent house suite but it wasn't a small little closet like their last room was. This was a good sign. Once the Prince was done jumping on the bed, he curled up around a long pillow and fell asleep without a second thought.
Wait a second; Fran looked around the room. There was only one bed without even a couch in sight. Fran grumbled to himself about cheap bosses and perverted gaylords and loud ukes as he went to take a shower, some things never change.
Fran walked out of the steamy bathroom with a relaxed sigh, nothing was as nice as a soothing, hot bath. It didn't matter what his fellow Varia members had to say, there were some luxuries you could not live without.
He wrapped a single towel snuggly around his hips and walked over shirtless to where his suitcase rested next to the table. Fran dug through a bunch of shit before he was able to find a pajama bottoms and an oversized t-shirt. That was the last time he was going to let Lussuria pack his suitcase.
He tugged at sides of the t-shirt in obvious discomfort; he never liked wearing a shirt to sleep even as a kid, but you could never be too safe when sleeping with the resident Prince. Fran pulled himself onto the bed and positioned himself into his own nook under the covers as far away from Bel as possible before attempting to fall asleep.
One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi, Four Mississippi. Fran cracked open an eye and stared blankly at the dark wall in front of him. He swiftly built a fortress of pillows between himself and Bel complete with watchtowers, a drawbridge, and a molt. That would keep him safe overnight.
Fran had this little habit of lying in bed with the smallest bit of awareness that would focus on one thing for ten minutes until he would fully wake up. Today's item of interest had the slightest hint of mint mixed with a hint of candy; it smelled good enough to eat. In the back of his mind, the critical side of his brain began to wonder how something like that had gotten into his bed, but unfortunately that part of his brain was on lockdown in a soundproof room in the corner of Fran's sub-consciousness until the ten minutes were up.
Fran snuggled closer to the object of affection when he noticed that it was nice and cushiony. Maybe it was a pillow; he stuck his tongue out and licked the surface. It could be, it had the texture of cloth but it smelled way too good to be a pillow. Fran shifted a bit until he felt a hand move from his shoulder to his head, petting his hair in a soothing matter. How long had that hand been there?
Fran ignored the logical side of his brain as he rested on his treasure, breathing through his nose to absorb the mouthwatering taste. He gave a sigh of contentment, if only he could wake up like this every morning, Fran would be a happy man.
Fran laid there for quite a few minutes in a cross between contentment and a post-sleep unwillingness to move. After about nine minutes of his silent bliss, he felt something pointy poke his stomach. He groaned from his position where he had flipped over to lie on his stomach while the left side of his face rested on the pillow. Fran buried his face into the material, muttering out something that sounded like "ten more minutes," although it could have been "then the carrots".
Fran picked up the offending object and placed it in front of his face. He stared at it for a few minutes before he realized that it was one of the toy soldiers that he had placed on his pillow fortress to guard him from Bel. It was carrying a mini plastic gun, which was what had been poking Fran in the stomach. He tossed the tiny green toy aside as he prepared to go back to dreamland on his marvelous pillow when he noticed something odd.
He blinked for a while before he realized that pillows weren't suppose to be blue with white lines running across it. Hotel pillows were a bland shade of white, peach at best. At that point, it had been past ten minutes and Fran had gained back all the brain cells that were screaming at him to look at the big picture. He looked up and realized the blue material was connected to Bel. To be exact, it was his boxers.
Fran turned a new shade of red when he realized that he had used the prince's crotch as a pillow for the last ten minutes. "Ushishishishi" Fran's head whipped to the base of the bed where Bel's head was located and giving a sigh of relief as he ignored the reddening of his face. The blonde menace's eyes were closed and he was breathing rhythmically, indicating that he was quite fast asleep. He silently thanked the fact that Bel wasn't a morning person.
"Ushishishi, I love you too Froggy." The prince continued to sleep talk as his object of desire watched on. What a strange man. Fran turned back to his side of the bed before cocooning himself in as many layers of blankets he could find, determined to go back to sleep and forget about this whole accident by the time he woke up again.
One eye popped open under golden bangs and stared affectionately at the wrapped up boy across from him. He smiled to himself before closing his eye again and falling back to sleep.
"Bel-senpai. It's awfully stupid of you to buy a gondola to get to the target's house. Not only is it noticeable, it's also really expensive. The long haired commander's going to have your ass on a platter when we get home." Fran was busy hanging off the side of said gondola, making squiggly designs in the passing ripples of water. "Besides that, there's no way we can drag this thing back to headquarters. Stupid fake prince."
Bel's eyes twitched under his bangs as he listened to his green-haired companion criticize him, "Ushishishishi, it's not like the Prince could just sit with a bunch of commoners. Who cares about dragging it back to headquarters, we have a base in Venice that we can just store it in until we come back. We'll just get the servant to bring it back to the base when we're done with the mission. There's nothing to worry about, little Froggy."
Said "servant" glanced from the grinning blond to his apathetic counterpart and back to the trigger-happy psycho once again. In reality, he was the ferryman who had sold the gondola to the pair. He had been offered more money if he would operate the gondola and take the two to wherever they desired to go in Venice for the day.
It was beyond him how the ridiculous Prince, or so he called himself, had managed to come across enough money to buy one of the most expensive modes of transportation in the vast city of Venice as well as affording the service of it's previous owner for a whole day. He doubted that they had managed upon the money by any means of fair trade and was convinced he was aiding either criminals or drug dealers.
The mafia was always an option but he highly doubted any mafia in Italy would be stupid enough to associate with such a troublesome pair as these too. Somewhere in Namimori, Tsuna sneezed in his sleep before getting hit in the head with a bucket of ice thrown by a snoring Reborn. Stupid time difference.
When they reached the address of their target, Fran decided to put the ferryman into an illusion that rendered him unconscious. It was for the best, there was no telling what would happen if a civilian saw the Varia at work. It usually ended up with years of extreme therapy and a report about the suicide on the front page of the regional newspaper. All in all, it was a messy business to attend to.
Fran placed the body in an upright position at the back of the gondola before putting up an illusion that made it look like nothing had ever been there in the first place. Wiping his hands from touching the stranger, Fran took the leap out of the invisible gondola and onto the porch of their target's house. With the way the houses of Venice were built, there was no way to get into the house through anything akin to a back door. The illusionist made a note to himself where the gondola was and made sure that it wouldn't float off without him before turning back towards the building looming above him.
It wasn't as if the house was ordinary by any regard compared to the surrounded buildings. The building was three levels high and about wide enough to fit three Venice apartments on every floor. The house consisted of large archways wrapped around the balconies with bright windows and balcony doors consisting of eloquent glasswork that screamed of vanity and prestige. The whole look was topped off with twin chimneystack on each side of the house, rising out of the roof like the smoke stacks of the Titanic. On the ground level rested a wooden dock which came out at about ten feet from the house and if they were here on anything besides business, Fran would have sat on that porch and glazed out into the night sky for days on end.
Bel was currently in a euphoric state as he twirled his intricate knives around his finger in anticipation for the blood that would soon cover it. Belphegor was, without a doubt, the messiest killer the Varia had ever seen in the last decade, yet he was also considered one of the best in his profession. He preferred simple plans to an intricate one when it came to getting what he wanted accomplished, but the Prince has managed to prove that he's versatile in any situation, the genius assassin.
When he anticipated his kill, Bel's smile would widen a little bit more then usual as a shot of adrenaline coursed through his veins. His eyes would dilate and focus on the one thing that separated his kill from himself. The Prince liked to keep his cool when completing a kill yet at times, without anyone even realizing it until its too late, the Prince would snap in the middle of his passion and become a mindless killer, hungry for the sight of blood.
True to the observations, the Prince's smile widened a fraction of an inch as he moved to knock on the target's front door. Two seconds later, without warning, Bel stuck one of his knives through the outer peephole of the door and pushed it into the wooden hole. He kicked in the door and proceeded to push his way through enemy territory. As he followed being Bel's path of destruction, Fran peered behind the haphazard door to see a man with blood trailing down his face. The other end of Bel's knife was gorging into the poor man's eyeball as even in death, his body had failed to remove itself from the front door.
He used what was left of the door to cover up the bloody face before he quickly put up an illusion that made the surrounding neighbors immune to the strange sights and sounds that would soon be coming out of the building. Above him, he heard a grown man cry out with a scream of pain in what Fran assumed was his last minute of life before another body thumped to the ground, several feet from where the first man laid dead. The Prince was moving fast in his feeding frenzy as he quickly and effectively killed as many people as possible that stood in the path between him and the target.
Fran finally caught up with the ecstatic blond on the third floor outside the door of the private bedroom. Everyone else in the house was either dead or slowly bleeding to death on the floor. It was a wonder how the owner of the house ever managed to sleep when his whole entire household and staff were busy being murdered in cold blood.
As the door to the bedroom swung open, five men lunged at the two figures in the doorway. In two seconds, Bel had slashed the neck of the first man, stabbed a knife through the second one's heart, and snapped the neck of the third attacker. Before the two remaining guys registered what had happened to their companions, Fran had them under an illusion that left them screaming in silent pain before the last two simultaneously died from a heart attack. Prince the Ripper walked around the discarded bodies lining up the doorway before a flash of white shone through the air, grazing his arm along the way. Bel lifted up his arm to his mouth, licking at the trail of blood leaking down his bicep, before turning his bloodthirsty eyes back to the man who had shot the arrow.
Standing by the far wall of the room with raised arms shaking like the strings of a guitar, was the man the duo had come to kill. Fran felt like he was looking at Bel through a mirror as he glanced between the blond prince and his silver-haired look alike. There was one prominent detail, however, that reflected their roles in this short-lived cat and mouse game. Bel's eyes were dilated at the point of intensity as he peered at his target, muttering about blood at a much faster speed then before, no doubt turned on by his own life energy flowing out of his arm.
On the other hand, the target's eyes were also constricted to the point that Fran began to wonder how the pupils didn't just simply suck themselves in like two miniature black holes. It was obvious the fear that raked across the target's body, causing his otherwise perfect shot to be terribly off and hence ruining his only chance of survival. It was such a cliché thing for the spoiled rich boy to be surrounded by layers of layers of bodyguards and after those protective shields were stripped, to fear death to the level that it would downright pitiful.
Before the target was able to pull out a second arrow, the prince was already in front of the startled youth who attempted to move out of the killer's range, forgetting that to his back was only a few inches away from the wall. By the time the other boy's eyes widened in fear after this new detail made it's way into his brain, he was already dead from the position of the three knives sticking into his abdomen, blood gushing out of the wounds in a sight that would make the strongest of men hurl.
At this point, Bel was too far gone to realize that the life had drained out of the other as he continued to stab the body until it became heavily mutilated. Unsatisfied that the other body failed to function as long as he would have preferred it to, Bel continued to trace lines over his skin with his own blade, taking a few steps away from the target to stare intriguingly at the ruby droplets forming before his very eyes.
Seeing this, Fran quickly snapped into action as he glided across the room to where the Prince stood, not taking a moment to let the Prince realize the change in positions before ripping the knife out of his partner's hand. Before Bel could register the loss of contact with his beloved weapon, Fran grabbed the Prince's chin in one fluid movement and brought their lips together in a kiss that froze the blond like a solid block of ice. Using his partner's inability to move, Fran swiftly brought the knife across the flesh aligning the inside of his forearm, making sure that it drew blood to the surface of the skin.
Without a second of hesitation, Fran replaced his lips with the bleeding wound as he forced Bel to taste his own blood with practiced ease. In a matter of moments, the Prince's eyes refocused to stare into his Froggy's pale green ones as the logical side of his brain was jolted awake. In a moment of weakness, Bel wrapped his arms around the other man, desperate to be reminded that he was still among the living. Fran rubbed soothing circles into his senpai's back with a look of contentment. Another day, another mission.
"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
