Ripples in the Sea of Time: Shark Tales by InsaneScriptist
Beta'd by the organized Umei no Mai
Summary: Choices have consequences. Going to the past to destroy the future? Ambitious. Starting at twelve or so? Not impossible but unlikely. Good thing that Squalo's audacious enough for it.
The driver pulled up behind his father's vehicle, blocking that car in the driveway; it would probably get moved later, once his grandpa had left, since there was no reason to block him in and have to move things around again. Most of the guards that worked here and for the various neighbors carpooled together on a rotating basis if they actually owned a car, traveling to and from one of the apartment buildings that were mostly clustered a little over a kilometer to the west of the school where most of the guards and other staff like cleaners and gardeners and so on actually lived.
But what had prompted his grandpa to visit? This hadn't happened before. Delfina's birthday was the 25th and so was next week Sunday; it was '93, so she'd be all of two. His grandpa being here today didn't make much sense to Squalo, but there wasn't much he could do about it other than find out what prompted a random visit and how that tied in to his father being back early or taking the day off. His father was something of a workaholic and when he wasn't working he was using work as an excuse to sleep around. Him being home on any day that wasn't a Sunday was unusual, even though he technically did not need to go into work on Saturdays.
It made no sense, as his grandpa wasn't one for random visits; he had his own business as a luxury importer to manage, even if he was mostly retired from that these days. Which yes, likely did involve quite a bit of smuggling and tax evasion on the side but that wasn't surprising. The Superbi were from pirate stock, so that was practically Traditional.
Leaving the mystery for later, Squalo grabbed his books off the car seat, determinedly shoved it out of his mind and headed upstairs towards his room; he could ask later. He placed the history text on his desk, along with the civic studies notebook and the German homework too: he had blitzed through it, so it'd be best to check that he hadn't forgotten a workbook page or wrote stuff on the wrong line. Getting a failing mark because of what amounted to a paperwork error would be embarrassing. Also to make sure he hadn't meandered into some other language halfway through. The Varia didn't care about that but the teachers would bitch about the extra work involved in having to mark it, if they didn't just give it a failing mark on principle for not being what they'd asked for. Squalo knew they did that from experience; it had happened a lot his first time in high school.
He really would have to see about if he could test out of the language classes in high school; it would save him so much time, effort and frustration. Because he'd rather avoid failing a test because he accidentally wrote it in a different language, much less four of them and half of that in code he had no reason to know at all.
He'd rather not deal with the fallout of that, thank you.
He had checked through three pages of German homework by the time one of the younger maids told him that he was wanted downstairs, so Squalo abandoned his books, tromped down a floor and around towards the small home office his father had. His mother had the official and more impressive one upstairs, because she could actually work properly from home even without Internet. A benefit of working real estate compared to... to. Shit, he had forgotten what his father did at work, Director of something or another that involved a lot of people, scheduling and so on. Director of Human Resources, that was it; for some company in Palermo, so adjusting schedules, hiring temps and the like without physically being there would be impossible until the Internet and computer networks really took off...
Opening the door he saw both his father and grandpa were in the tiny office, as expected. It looked just a little bit surreal and that was because of his grandpa. Squalo could see the similarities in their faces, coloring and all but his grandpa looked like he could pass for his father's brother. Older brother because of the slightly deeper fine wrinkles around his eyes and mouth but also the prettier brother, since his father's hair was thinning and his grandpa had his full and still-brown hair pulled into a low tail. Plus general disposition helped, since his grandpa held himself more casually so looked more approachable.
Squalo's father looked disgruntled, but he always did whenever he had to spend any time with his own father. He said nothing though. Great. No help there.
"You're here, good. Squalo you're with me until after dinner." His grandpa informed him, the words crisp and sharp; like it was an order.
What? "I have homework," he gave as an excuse. It was a feeble excuse and they all knew it.
"You'll have time to do it later, I promise. Go grab your sword. I'll be outside."
And now Squalo was confused -he was being encouraged to carry weapons around outside of training?- but why not? This was certainly new for him. At least it would be interesting.
The engine of the '69 corvette was loud and powerful. The sort of sound that said the classic car had been lovingly taken care of from the day it was first acquired. There was something the Americans did to give it such a sound, but fuck if Squalo remembered what it was that caused that. Maybe something to do with horsepower, which fucked over the fuel mileage too -something about American gallons being smaller too, so less fuel per gallon screwed with the distance estimates that were from rigged and mocked-up tests anyway. Cars were not his specialty; the only reason Squalo knew the names and looks of most of the classic models was because his grandpa collected them.
Squalo was pretty sure his grandpa had bought the corvette new way back when and drove it mostly to flaunt the fact he had it and annoy everyone from sheer envy. How had it not been stolen? Probably because it was too distinctive.
Damn, it was gorgeous piece of machinery and engineering all around. Squalo just enjoyed the ride. It would be a joy to be allowed to drive it. More fun to race it. He had to grow up some before then or else he couldn't reach the pedals without some serious adjustments to the seats.
The residential build up on the outskirts of the Castellammare del Golfo area came up far too soon and with it the end of the ride, as his grandpa turned off to another smaller road. A leisurely ten or so minutes and several turns later had them pulling into the open doors of the garage where there were more sports cars, locally made or not, all sitting pretty in full view of the road. Part of his mind was screaming about the possibility of drive-bys, how sturdy the garage was and what could it stand up to so as to protect all the expensive vehicles inside it.
A rather blatant show of wealth, he noted, but the suburbs of Calatafimi-Segesta around mafia school were all upper-middle class and didn't have the room to sprawl and show off massive amounts of wealth. It made it easy to forget how loaded his relatives were. One of these cars was probably worth more than some people earned in their entire life. Especially to a collector.
Not that the value of the vehicles prevented his grandparents from keeping a hand in doing things, as his grandma was proving, since she seemed to be taking some parts out of a fiat. Oh, radiator hose replacement, he realized after a moment. He was rather sure that his grandpa didn't own that one though. The body color on that fiat was an obnoxious yellow, so was probably for a client or relative who was avoiding going to a proper mechanic shop either for legal reasons or because grandma would do a better job anyway. His grandma did this as a hobby and she was good at it.
Squalo followed his grandpa for lack of any instructions, so was treated to the disgusting display of affection between his paternal grandparents as his grandpa handed the keys over.
The keys disappeared into one of his grandma's pockets and then he had to deal with his grandma cornering him and fussing. "Well, haven't you turned out pretty, Squalo. Ah, growing up so fast, soon you'll be driving. You better let Nonna Anna teach you how, so many people can't drive nowadays." Squalo nodded, because he didn't see any reason not to. Also because he had a wrench pointed at his face and waving inches from his nose.
"Darling-Anna, if you do that, the boy will have speeding tickets before he gets his license." His grandpa teased. "Didn't you just get one last week?"
His grandma very maturely stomped on her husband's foot and changed the subject. "See, I knew that marrying you all those years ago would result in pretty grandchildren, Delfino."
"And here I thought it was because I was prettier than you were back when we were teens." Delfino practically drawled, face far too amused to be deadpan. "And that I could speak German which let you be the shy friend, so we could blow things up on the mainland together without being suspected."
Squalo found that tidbit interesting as there were all sorts of 'mafia against the oppressive fascist regime' stories floating about in the wider Vongola if you paid attention. Most of the people featuring in those stories were in Nono's generation or older, which his grandpa did count as no matter how young he looked. Squalo called bullshit on said looks being entirely natural because his grandpa was around Nono Vongola's age and looked younger; he really did look young enough to plausibly be Squalo's uncle or even his father. His grandma also looked nearly as young in that sort of timeless classic way, but her hair was at least dyed blonde which might be to hide grey hair rather than just for fashion's sake. But really, he was bored and was about to go wander off in search of food since he was hungry. He was almost a teenager after all and he had a lot of height to grow yet. He was so much shorter!
He currently didn't care enough about old history to delay lunch for it.
"Meet you in half an hour for lunch, Squalo and I have a bit to discuss first."
Oh, so he was going to find out why he'd been brought out here. Fucking finally.
The garage had a basement firing range that they walked past the entrance to; the sheen to the 'observing windows' said they were bulletproof glass. The range looked like it went fairly deep; some several hundred meters at least. They walked down a hall that headed towards the house. Squalo knew that somewhere under the house was a gym and there was an armory too -the majority of the firearms had to be be kept somewhere- but there were more than just guns in there and that most of the 'historical' pieces were in full working order. Squalo followed his grandpa into what looked like a cleaning supply closet and was that and more, being rather large. There were buckets, cleaning solutions, mops and spare lighting, extra targets for the firing range and even ammo. Spare 'glass' took up most of the back wall. Nothing was at all out of the ordinary and everything was demonstrating a proper attitude to preparedness.
Except it also had an illusion in the corner that Delfino had just walked through. Said corner wasn't bare either; there was one of those lists of do's and don'ts -mostly involving the cleaning chemicals- that had been extensively scribbled on and looked ancient.
Squalo followed through the illusion and ended up on a staircase made of concrete that seemed to tunnel deeper down into the bedrock. The air was mustier here, the lights had to be flicked on individually and they came on grudgingly and dimly. Creepy. Clearly this place didn't get used all that often.
A few flights of stairs later his grandpa led on through one of the doors on one of the landings and into a hall. Squalo wasn't sure how much deeper the stairs went, but it was probably 'enough' that jumping down through the central well the concrete steps spiraled around would be a bad idea. What was all this space even used for? The chosen door led to another hallway, which was also musty if somewhat better lit. The fluorescent bulbs were larger and brighter but one bulb was flickering off and on. That was irksome.
Squalo followed his grandpa into one of the rooms in the hall and immediately realized exactly what this room was -it was a room for Flame Training. The stale Flame-traces and scorch marks that had been painted over told their own story. This would explain maybe half of the space if a lot of the rooms were made for that.
"So why am I down here?" Squalo growled out; ugh, he sounded like a pipsqueak. Then again, twelve, so he was a loud pipsqueak.
"You are down here because leaving someone with Active Flames untrained in school is irresponsible, especially if they've already demonstrated hostile intent towards others and don't connect well or at all with their peers."
Flames… shit, he had originally received all his formal Flame-training at the Varia after killing Tyr. Going back in time meant that… that meant training his Flames were under the purview of his famiglia and family. The mafia academies pointedly did not teach them, although they had some leeway built into the system for various Flames and so on. Being known as a Rain meant his teachers hadn't exactly been worried about him prior to that and it wasn't like Rain Flames were that dangerous to any teen experimenting with them -not a high enough chance of death, crippling or severe injury to require an immediate teacher to prevent someone from committing suicide in new and interesting ways by trying out an idea.
"Flames?" He asked to buy time. How was he to play this off? Most people had shit for Flame-senses, so they tended to go off patterns of behavior to identify them until they saw said Flames in use; it wasn't like he hid the fact he was a Rain the first go-round, which meant the teachers did harp onto him for no acting as a Rain normally did. "What do you mean Active Flames?" Body language defensive, ready to attack, still curious though. Maybe they thought wrong? Most people's behavior was not due to innate personality but a result of their environment. He was rather aggressive for a Rain, so maybe they were thinking something else like Storm or Cloud. He had enough relatives that were Storms or Clouds to justify that sort of thinking.
"I could lecture a whole day on the subject and half of it would be wrong if I followed the Vongola script. At the moment Flames are the reason you're never going to live a civilian lifestyle because people will notice them and you'll be targeted if you don't know how to defend yourself."
"I've got a sword, and I know how to shoot." Squalo refuted the accusation of weakness. "Not defenseless." Not weak. A Cloud's approach to things would be easier to pull off long-term, which the next few years would make it so. Plus more leeway; people let Clouds do what they wanted more often than not.
"That's fair enough, until bullets dissolve before they hit. When you walk into a trap and can't move, when someone moves faster than you can react and hits hard enough to break concrete walls. When your brain lies to you because someone else has tricked it and you walk straight into someone's line of fire." His grandpa responded. Nice speech, Squalo was appropriating it for use later.
"So.. Flames do that." Squalo narrowed his eyes as he continued to feign ignorance. What was a good Cloud response that was in-character... "Sounds like a challenge."
"There're limits and techniques and practice that's required for such techniques to be useful rather than just wasteful or pointless, but first we have to know which type you have. There's tests for this, mostly to determine aptitude to see if it's possible for people to use them. Mental discipline is key to first managing to bring them out, but you've already lit them once. It's easier the second time and gets easier so long as you practice and remember your resolve."
"Uh-huh." Squalo nodded, already bored. "Get to the point."
"So impatient. Normally your parents would do this or a tutor would, but as my oldest son failed to find the mental discipline required for Flames when he was younger it was decided to keep him as civilian as possible, so Baleno can't. So upon discovering you were Active the school contacted me, as the head of this branch of the Superbi."
Made sense for the school; not that this branch of the Superbi was that large. It was just Squalo's immediate first-degree cousins and his father's siblings who were all named after aquatic life. Hazard of being the newest branch. At least they hadn't had to go species specific yet and likely wouldn't for ages yet.
"So the plan of action is to try and create one type of Flame you have before lunch and then after eating we can practice with them until dinner; then I drop you off home after. You've got a couple of teachers convinced that you're a Cloud so we'll start off with that."
A Cloud? They really thought he was a Cloud? Then again, he fit a lot of the 'classical' signs so it wouldn't be much of a hard sell. They'd thought Delfina was a Cloud too; maybe somebody on his mother's side was and that was shaping their expectations, since his father was a Rain. Unless his mother was a Cloud, but well, civilian; sensing Latent Flames was a lot harder than some people made it look, especially if the Latent's reserves weren't that great. It didn't matter though; what mattered was that he might be able to fool people into thinking he wasn't a Rain and thereby save himself a load of hassle over 'not behaving properly.' Fuck, that had been so annoying. All 'use proper language' and 'adjust your attitude' and 'be more respectful.'
After all a lot of people had shit for Flame-senses. He could fool them about his Flame type there. A few Mist-tricks might even help, but he'd have to play that part by ear.
There were a few ways to get used to calling on Flames that Squalo knew of; conductors that would help until the person learned the level of focus and resolve needed to go without, specialized drugs and bullets, going through numerous life or death situations or plain old meditation. Those were pretty much the only ways unless you had a trusted Mist about and they knew how others used their Flames to short-cut the teaching part, if not the practice part. His grandpa wasn't a Mist though. Delfino was a Rain, the faint gnawing sensation in the depths of his aura like a deep-sea current to his Flames was telling of trained Storm Flames. His grandma on the other hand was a Sun and if she had a viable secondary Flame, Squalo wasn't sure what it was.
Delfino wasn't fond of jewelry since he wasn't wearing anything except his wedding band, he had specified a limited time frame and the bullets and drugs were Vongola secrets. Delfino wasn't young enough to chase a half-grown grandchild around and wasn't obviously armed, so that left -in theory- meditation.
Except not, because Squalo ended up listening to his grandpa verbally walk him into a trance-like state. Not that Squalo was at all peaceful during it, but he was open to suggestion and yeah, this one was a new one to him although it did seem similar to the Mist-option. Also disturbing in different ways and Squalo broke the flow of it no less than three times just to make sure he could before finally letting his grandpa get to what seemed to be the Cloud-specific part. He was pretty sure they were already late for lunch.
"You have the focus, you have the will and with it you'll enforce what order you wish. Your will is to enforce order, the focus is on what is claimed as yours. What you will protect and maintain with your will till the end of your days. Place that will, focus your resolve into the hands you'll do this with."
His grandpa was doing something with his voice, Squalo knew that, but he let himself be swept under the spell. The Vongola Ring had rejected Boss, so not Boss as Decimo, but the next best thing. Boss as head of the Varia, the Vongola headed by someone that wasn't Sawada's brat and the Family stronger for it. Delfina happy and healthy and laughing, no longer imposing distance between herself and the world. That's what he wanted; plain and simple and he would make it happen. He had the ability to see it done and he would.
And then he realized he had summoned actual Cloud Flames in his hand.
The fuck? His secondary was Mist! He was a Rain first and foremost! His irritation spiked and the Cloud Flames flared and then lost cohesion as he lost focus. So out went the Cloud Flames. The fuck, kept repeating as a litany somewhere in the back of his head. Fucking Cloud Flames. He hadn't been able to summon and use Cloud Flames before he had come to the past and-
"Ah, you lost it. It's alright, we need to go up and eat lunch. Otherwise we're going to be late and I prefer my food warm."
"What the hell were you doing with your voice?" Squalo demanded first. That was something that the Varia hadn't come up with! And due to the Varia innovating and keeping records of how and so on had a vast library of techniques! Rain Flame being used for fucking hypnosis was entirely new to him!
"I did say that the Vongola's script was half-wrong didn't I? The Vongola says Rains like myself are peacekeepers, diplomats and so on, due to the property of the Rain Flame being Tranquility." The emphasis on 'Tranquility' made it sound like a curse and as something disgusting that you didn't even want to touch with a ten-foot pole. Squalo could understand that part; Rain Flames could do a hell of a lot more than keeping things 'peaceful.'
"Isn't Tranquil a synonym for peaceful?" Squalo snarked back. "Handy for those terse meetings and keeping people from killing each other?"
"Yes, but Tranquility is the wrong word for everything Rain Flames are capable of. The word you're looking for is Compliance, the bending of the environment, its objects and others to your will. Once that happens, don't you agree that things are peaceful?" His grandpa asked, clearly getting the last word in as he walked out of the room.
Ah shit, Compliance really did explain a lot more about Rain Flames as a characteristic and ability of said Flame than fucking Tranquility did. It truly did. The ability to hinder weapons coming towards you in the air, the defensive properties that Rain Flames could hold and how they worked to enforce 'Tranquility.'
So decades of Rain-lore built on a misunderstanding as fundamental as what Rain Flames did.
He took a moment to process the sheer magnitude of such a misunderstanding within the mafia that knew of Flames and that misunderstanding being standardized as fact in the mafia for generations. Then the moment was over and he left for lunch. He had to eat if he didn't want to stay a pipsqueak forever.
"VOI! Don't run off!"