My information on psychological trauma and complex post-traumatic stress disorder and their effects comes primarily from the relevant wikipedia pages, although I do have a measure of personal experience as well due to not being neurotypical.
Pick up the pieces (and take stock)
Thankfully what looked like rain clouds overhead didn't pour on them as they were getting off the plane in Namimori, but it was evident that it certainly could happen at any moment if the weather didn't move on; they had landed sometime around two in the afternoon local time and the difference in temperature from Sicily was evident. If it was more than ten degrees Celsius then Squalo would be surprised; chilly for early March, for all it was the day before his birthday.
Boss actually drove their rented vehicle for once, despite making Squalo do the paperwork for it; Squalo wouldn't trust Bel behind the wheel, Luss could drive but no one sane wanted him to because Luss had quite the record of trashing vehicles not made to handle how Suns –and Clouds– tended to drive and therefore the swordsman had to deal with being stuck in the back seat with Bel, trying to not murder his fellow Officer or end up with the back of the vehicle covered with knives and slashes. The promise of sushi at least kept Bel well-behaved on the way to Namimori –meaning his knives stayed in his hands and were not embedded in car leather– as the small town didn't have an actual airfield within city limits.
Sure, they'd only be in Namimori for about fifty hours total, but that was more than enough time for Squalo to fit in a day of sparring and some shopping; not just for himself –his tea stash was rather depleted after his bout of flu– but for Luss' birthday on the fourth of April and maybe something for Delfina as well, as her birthday was the twenty-fifth. His sister was easy to shop for; Luss on the other hand was stupidly difficult unless buying something for one of his various hobbies, which Squalo felt was a cop-out.
Checking into the hotel was delegated to Luss, so once the key cards were obtained and their luggage moved into their rooms the Officers pretty much scattered to do their own things. Boss stayed inside, which wasn't surprising as he was clearly looking for bugs and the like; it wasn't the same room as the last time and a completely different hotel to the one they had stayed in on previous, more official visits to Namimori but it paid to be careful, especially with Reborn having been in Namimori for years now. Other organisations could also bug local hotel rooms in the hopes of picking up Vongola inside information, no matter how unlikely it seemed.
Luss fussed about, doing inventory of what was in the suites while doing a quality check of the furnishings –whether there were enough towels and so on– and Bel flat out disappeared the moment he'd dumped his go-bag, which was never a good sign as it implied that Prince the Ripper was up to no good, of the 'what do you mean, we don't know how many bodies yet?' variety. Then again, the wayward menace could just as easily be stuffing his face at the restaurant. Unless he was hunting down the Mist-brat from the fake-future; Tyrant was seeing to the brat's apprentice education by post at present –brat was ten– but Squalo was sure the baby Mist would ditch Chew Toy's contingent in a few years time and join the Varia proper, just as soon as he wouldn't be the youngest person in the building. The only way the brat could have ended up in the Varia in the fake future was through clear pre-existing ambitions, considerable skill and relentless drive, so there was no doubt he'd end up in their ranks for real given time.
Sharing a glance with both Boss and Luss followed by an uncaring shrug from them both, Squalo let them have their privacy and left the suite. He didn't know what they were going to talk about once he was gone but it was probably something Medical-related and possibly connected to Boss's physical health, since Florrie had been working miracles on Boss' mental health recently. Mental and physical health tied into each other, so at least Boss was doing something constructive about his problems there; Squalo still felt that things were going a little too smoothly though. That wasn't just pessimism speaking, but over a decade of experience watching and leading the nutjobs that made up the Varia and how they tried to make themselves less broken in the name of pursing Quality. Boss hadn't had smooth sailing, but the setbacks so far seemed to have been pretty minor, bar the occasional bit of teenage over-dramatics. Well, that Squalo had noticed at least; Boss was good at hiding personal shit.
The Rain Officer left the hotel lobby and set out in a random direction for a stroll, noting absently that the more upscale area of Namimori they were in might have something for his sister, provided he was willing to browse the shops at this point. He wasn't, having been on the plane for longer than he would have liked as a few squads had embarked and disembarked at a couple of different airports along the way. The Varia Officers might have their own cabin on the plane but it wasn't large enough to walk more than a few meters in, so he was stretching his legs and re-acquainting himself with the area, as he hadn't done since the mess that cost him his original heart.
Then somebody stepped out of a grocery store and almost rammed into him.
"Vooi! Watch–" Squalo spun and paused; first of all that was not a Japanese face; secondly he recognised it. "Poison Scorpion?" He asked in Italian.
The pink-haired teenager scowled at him. "Watch where you're going! I almost dropped my ingredients!"
"You walked into me!" Squalo retorted.
The girl sniffed and stuck her nose in the air. "What are you doing here anyway, Squalo Superbi?"
"Sparring with Yamamoto Tsuyoshi," the Rain Officer drawled, keeping a weather eye on the bags of food hanging from her hands. Cecilia Bianchi had been dubbed 'the Poison Scorpion' due to her Flame-talent for turning perfectly good food lethal; proximity was enough. The hitwoman was Active but didn't use her Flames at all except in her cooking, leading Squalo to suspect she didn't actually know she was Active or that her special ability was Flame-related. Considering her father was an Alliance Don, it was fairly suspicious. "You?"
The teen beamed, her expression utterly besotted. "I'm supporting my lover, Reborn, while he tutors the Vongola Decimo."
Squalo felt all the hair on the back of his neck stand up; Poison Scorpion was five years younger than he and Bronco were, making her nineteen. Reborn, according to the miser, had been thirty-two when they'd all been Cursed back in nineteen-seventy-six. Yes, the hitman had then had his memories modified, but even if you then took his 'birth' as the date of the Curse he was still thirty-one. Technically the Sun Arcobaleno was sixty-three, a decade younger than Nono was.
The Rain Officer knew the Poison Scorpion had been declaring herself madly in love with Reborn for at least four years now, since she'd attempted to murder Bronco back in his final year of being tutored by the Sun Arcobaleno for 'trying to take her beloved away from her!' or at least that had been what Dino had said at the time. She'd been fifteen then; Squalo had rolled his eyes and dismissed it as a silly crush at the time, but clearly it was considerably worse than that.
Physically Reborn had been two then; he was still a pre-schooler now. Yet Poison Scorpion was declaring herself romantically attracted and calling herself the hitman's lover, a blatantly sexual term? Squalo rather wanted to run away instead of dealing with this level of crazy.
But he couldn't, because he was a Varia Officer and Quality and it would be pathetic.
"How long've you been in Namimori now, voi?" he asked instead, turning and falling into step beside the teenager as she set off down the road, presumably back to the Sawada household; it was in this direction.
"Three years," she said airily, confirming that yes, she'd been sixteen and Reborn had been encouraging her delusions for far too long. "Reborn and I took hits together for almost a year before that and I've known him since we were children together."
Squalo fitted that into his own knowledge of the Sun Arcobaleno's activities –he'd stopped actively tutoring Bronco a month or so after horse had turned twenty despite the occasional visit thereafter– and felt his stomach roil queasily at the realisation that Reborn had been letting this nutcase tell everybody they were lovers since she was fifteen. The hell had the hitman been doing with her?!
"Not been home since?" He fished.
"Oh no, I've been far too busy."
"Not met your little sister yet then, voi." Don Bianchi had announced the birth of his youngest about three years ago, shortly before Reborn got dispatched to Namimori; the timing was about right for the teenager to have left home to become a hitwoman either just before or just after her stepmother got pregnant.
Considering her specialisation and that past Varia observation implied Poison Scorpion was unaware that all her cooking was toxic, it was entirely possible that her father had 'encouraged' her to leave home so she didn't accidentally give her stepmother a miscarriage. Which implied in turn that Donna Bianchi had miscarried before as a result of eating her stepdaughter's cooking; possibly more than once. The whole mess was a textbook example of why it was important to educate all the Flame-Actives in a Family, not just the ones the Don wanted taught. Also that Don Bianchi had seriously warped priorities, but that wasn't relevant right now.
Don Bianchi's first wife had died when his daughter was two and he'd eventually quietly remarried –to his children's nanny– when his daughter was seven and his bastard son was three. Considering her other issues, it was entirely possible that Poison Scorpion didn't realise her ex-nanny and stepmother wasn't actually her biological parent; she probably hadn't put together that her nanny had only been thirteen when she was born –and was in fact the bastard daughter of one of her mother's uncles whom her mother had taken in a few years before marrying– fifteen when Don Bianchi made her fully responsible for raising his daughter and barely twenty when her employer married her a little over a decade back. Donna Bianchi was twenty years younger than her husband, in fact.
"No I haven't, but my parents sent me a card and I sent a cake for Agata's first birthday," Poison Scorpion said cheerfully, clearly unaware that the cake had probably been disposed of by a hazmat team. "She looks much more like Father than Hayato or I do; we both take after our mothers." The teenager sighed. "It was so hard finding the right ingredients for a cake though! Namimori's not got at all the kind of produce you need for proper baking."
"Only stocks what you need for local cookery?" Squalo guessed. That was a problem the entire Varia was extremely familiar with; even the basics like bread varied dramatically between countries, despite being made of the same type of grain.
"Exactly!" the pink-haired hitwoman complained, gesturing dramatically. "And really, it's the oddest things that you can't buy here! I couldn't find any dried figs or the right kinds of nuts for Bucellato!"
"It's the same everywhere," Squalo sympathised, "unless it's somewhere with a large foreign population. I mean, it's not like there're places back home that stock Japanese ingredients is it?" Which was why food smuggling was so very popular among Varia.
"I suppose not," Poison Scorpion sighed, "but I so wanted to make my darling Reborn a proper cake for Christmas! It's a lover's festival here and it's so romantic so I thought I could make him a traditional cake to remind him of the good times we've had together, but there wasn't anywhere with proper figs so I had to make substitutions and improvise!" She sighed again, pouting. "And then that idiot student of my darling's knocked it out of the window right before I could serve it! All my hard work wasted! I had to buy a cake!"
Squalo suspected that Reborn had ensured the demise of that cake entirely on purpose. "Have you introduced the brat to much Italian cuisine yet?" he asked, wanting to change the subject away from Poison Scorpion's obsession. He was getting the impression that her father had encouraged both her obsession and her ignorance in Flame matters in an attempt to orchestrate her death, since she was the current Heiress to the Bianchi Family and quite shockingly unsuited to the position.
If she was still alive in a decade's time Squalo would not be at all surprised if a discreet mission came through from her father, requesting an 'accident' be arranged so her half-sister could inherit without complications. Possibly 'just' a crippling accident –Don Bianchi had supposedly loved his first wife to distraction– but it would still ensure that his youngest daughter would be the only one of his offspring eligible to inherit. Although with his second wife being so much younger than he was, there was a decent chance she'd manage to give him a son in the next few years.
The teenager side-eyed him. "Why the interest?"
Squalo reminded himself that crazy-obsessed or not, nobody survived a year keeping up with Reborn on hits without being smart. "Like I said," he shrugged, "not like you can get the ingredients for Japanese food back home and he's going to have to move there soon enough. May as well get him used to the food first so he can appreciate it properly; has he ever eaten pasta that hasn't come out of a packet, voi?" Hand-made pasta could put a person off the shop-bought dried stuff for life and rightly so; the different in flavour and texture was significant.
Poison Scorpion looked horrified. "Oh no I've been neglecting my responsibilities!" she wailed. "My beloved asked me to teach his student home economics and I've not taught him anything about proper Italian cookery yet!" She turned around and dashed back towards the shops. "I have to buy more ingredients at once!"
Squalo stared after her for a second, then turned down a side-street so he could circle back around towards the hotel; well, that had been exceedingly unsettling but would hopefully have the effect of keeping Squeaky Toy thoroughly preoccupied for the next few days and well away from Boss. The trash might not even find out the Varia were in town until after they'd left.
He desperately needed a drink though; would there be anywhere that sold alcohol open at this time of day?
Turned out that there was a tiny hole-in-the-wall teashop-cafe that was willing to sell a little bottle of alcohol alongside a small plate of dango to a foreigner in the middle of the afternoon, once he had explained to the frowning owner that he had received some bad news concerning a member of a family that his family had known for generations. Which wasn't quite the truth, but close enough that the baa-chan keeping a weathered eye on the cafe had banished her serving girl to the kitchen to keep her from prying, so Squalo was able to eat his dango in peace and come to terms with the fact that Poison Scorpion was further off her rocker than a lot of Varia, for all that it was a miracle she wasn't dead; Active Storms either learned control or died young and there was no doubt Cecilia Bianchi was Flame-Active for all her Flames felt odd.
Admittedly being crazy could do that to Flames, but he had a feeling that wasn't all of it.
Squalo made a note of the location of the obscure and more traditionally-styled cafe –in case he wanted to come back later– and decided that since he had a few hours free –they were due to meet up at Takesushi a bit before seven– he would do some shopping and see if he could find something suitable for Luss's birthday.
Two hours later he had refreshed his collection of teas and expanded it further, had managed to stumble across a pair of metal tessen in a pawn shop that just needed some refurbishment and a bit of work –the current cloth backing was stained and wouldn't suit his sister's colouring– and actually found something for Luss that wasn't fashion-related or some kind of craft material.
Carrying his shopping back up to the hotel room and stowing it away took a matter of minutes, so since he had the suite of rooms to himself Squalo made himself a cup of tea as he unpacked and examined all the things that had happened today and confirmed to himself that both Don Bianchi's elder children were deeply unsuited to become a Don or Donna. Poison Scorpion was crazy. Delusional, obsessive and some form of paedophile as well, for all that Reborn was at least mentally twice her age despite his memory adjustment when she started such behaviour; he had physically still been a toddler then and that was all kinds of creepy. Even if the attraction wasn't sexual it was still profoundly inappropriate, and considering Reborn was letting her use sexual terminology there were unpleasant implications concerning what exactly lay between them.
On the other hand, Camillo Bianchi –Gokudera Hayato– besides being illegitimate did not have the sort of personality needed in an effective Don or any kind of leader; Vongola Guardians weren't allowed to become Alliance Dons, which while good for his Family was probably going to turn out badly for the Vongola. Chew Toy's Right Hand was an effective enough accountant and diverter of funds –based on what the Rain Officer could remember of the fake future– but did not really have what it took to be a respected leader within the Vongola, as that required social skills, some emotional awareness and tact. Smoking Bomb's fake-future self had been feared yes, because the Storm wasn't shy about making threats or following through with them as soon as Chew Toy was looking elsewhere, but not really respected for that or anything else. Having a highly customized and personalized box weapon and a personal training room complete with expensive virtual reality technology being finished in a remote underground base even before all the plumbing was in place said enough about his priorities there; they weren't centred on the Family. Never mind the lack of defences around that particular base, the sheer size of the private training room and all the wasted space it had added, taking up more of the limited resources.
Unfortunately it was unlikely the Varia would ever get the request to accident 'Smoking Bomb,' despite it clearly being for the betterment of the Vongola. At least the tea blend he had been talked into buying was good, if a bit sweeter and more floral than he'd be comfortable drinking most days. Florrie or Luss would like it more than he would; he'd set it aside for when he visited or had guests.
Making tea was a calming ritual but he still finished off the second half of the small bottle of sake in the aftermath of dealing with the day's realisations, before realising he probably shouldn't have since sake tended to have more alcohol in it than wine. While the start of a buzz was nice it was also unprofessional, for all it meant he currently wasn't thinking about the impending disaster that was the Vongola Succession or any other related potential succession crises now. He downed the rest of his now-cold tea –it did taste better cold– then did the Flame-trick that helped to burn off alcohol faster. It meant he needed to piss after taking the long shower that was completely necessary after so long in a plane, which resulted in his hair dripping everywhere while taking care of business before he could wrangle it all into a towel to get most of the water out. He washed his hand, got his hair in order and got half-dressed, then dried up all the water on the floor with another towel. Once fully dressed in casual clothing he left the hotel and took a more roundabout walk to Takesushi. He still had time to kill and the clouds had passed over, leaving the sky clear and surprisingly bright despite the sun having just set.
Somehow Squalo wasn't surprised that his walk took him close by Namimori Middle School, which the Cloud was currently within from what he could sense. He still didn't know what Iemitsu and Nono had been thinking making the heir of the local power Chew Toy's Cloud Guardian. The Cloud Guardian traditionally had a longer leash, but it was expected that they would at least devote their time and energies to the Vongola or the protection of it and their Don by proxy, not ignore it in favour of their own projects. Skirting away from the school Squalo ended up in Namimori's local park, where it seemed that his part-time student was playing a pick-up game of baseball with a few others he suspected were part of the local baseball team along with whoever else they'd found willing to join in.
Settling down to watch the 'game' Squalo soon realized he knew shit-all about baseball, but he still suspected that both teams were short players. He did however notice that the younger Yamamoto was playing with members of that Famiglia that had mucked up the Inheritance Ceremony and had apparently manipulated by the ghost of Primo's Mist. He recognized the 'boss' of it, the red hair and Active Flames standing out amongst the civvies also in the game. Kid was good at using them for being self-taught, but being hopeless if he was unable to move his hands as Bel had proven nearly a year ago said he still had a long way to go. Lots of things could change in a year though; might not be so vulnerable anymore.
Kid had some strange Flames, as did the rest of his famiglia from what Squalo could tell personally and what he remembered from reports last year. Of course once he was noticed by the younger Yamamoto he couldn't just go on watching peacefully, as sword-brat tossed off a few excuses and made a beeline straight for him.
"Squalo-san! Did my father send you to get me? I hadn't realized it was that late..."
Squalo shrugged. "Figured we'd walk over together, voi." It wasn't seven yet and they were all off-duty, so 'meet a bit before seven' translated to 'we'll be sat down and started ordering by eight.' No rush.
"Alright! Let me get my equipment and things and say goodbye. Just a minute or so."
Squalo watched as Yamamoto made his excuses and avoided or deflected questions as he extracted himself from the game. He said something else to the redhead, something that eased the tension that had been building in his odd Flames since Yamamoto had drawn his attention to where Squalo was sitting. What was his name again? Emma of the Simon? Shimon possibly, although it depended on the pronunciation of the European surname that they went with. Was it even Emma? Enma? Surely no one would name their kid Enema... Whatever; Squalo offered a lazy wave to the other kids as his part-time student did so more enthusiastically and they started walking towards Takesushi. It'd only take fifteen minutes or so to get there at this speed and that was plenty of time to talk in.
Because Squalo could see that the other Rain had questions and concerns. Thankfully the streets were pretty empty, but it still wasn't that hard to muffle any potential sound around them with Flames. No need to be overconfident after all.
"Spit it out already, voi."
"We're all, Tsuna and Gokudera and all the rest of us aren't really as good at this mafia business as I remember thinking we were. The future we went to showed us that and while we stopped Byakuran we're not really as prepared as we think. Tsuna's future self just dumped Byakuran onto all of us without asking or warning or providing any details and that's not responsible. Dino was here after New Year explaining how the traditions went for various holidays and while we had fun roleplaying it wasn't done right and no one really seems to care about our future in the Vongola or what we'll actually be doing for Tsuna."
"Told you they were blind."
"Chrome gets it."
"Of course the girl who timeshared her body and probably still shares headspace with the genocidal mass-murdering anarchist is the only one that sees the issue," Squalo groused. "Is Mukuro doing anything about that? Nooo, because it suits his plans to destroy the mafia. Has Chrome done anything voi?"
"She's tried to bring it up a few times and the only one who sort-of listened was Hibari."
Which suggested that the Cloud was smart enough to understand that there was political shit afoot and decided to go 'not my business.' Still, the girl was trying which implied she cared even if Mukuro didn't; that was something.
"Well, Hibari was successful in his own establishment in that fake-future, which benefitted the Vongola." Hibari's Foundation had been superior in quality to the CEDEF by the ten-year mark because Iemitsu 'probably dead and not on a cruise with his much-ignored and therefore also probably dead wife' Sawada had thoroughly ruined the intelligence agency; never mind that the so-called Decimo had been more than willing to not give the CEDEF anything but misinformation out of spite for his dear old dad, although he'd been more passive-aggressive than actively destructive there. "People might grumble about it but international and global business are some of the few areas of active revenue growth in the Vongola Alliance."
"Like the Varia?" Sword-brat asked. Never let it be said that the kid wasn't sharp.
"Killers make a killing." It didn't look like as much as it was in the books or the cash-flow because a lot of it was tied up in investments, but the Varia and everyone in it was very comfortably off; not everybody paid them in cash.
"That's..."
"The way the world and society is. People have had crime for as long as society has existed. Most murders in the world are committed by people who know each other, voi. Same thing for assault, rape and theft. The Varia makes more money off of accidents or 'natural causes' than clear murder or assassination because any skilled freelancer can do the latter but both accidents and 'natural causes' need to be able to fool the people doing an investigation. Especially if someone clearly benefits from that person dying." Or disappearing, but that came with its own share of complications.
"Ah. That's..."
"A lot of things: how the Varia makes a lot of profit despite considerable expenses; a fact of life; evidence your dad did a great job raising you in a town protected by a murderer that you go to school with."
"Hibari?"
"Hibari. Unlike the rest of you lot, he's well and truly blooded." And had been even before Reborn showed up. "Any other questions?"
Sword-brat was quiet for a minute as they walked. "Do you think that Chrome and I could visit Dino for part of the summer and meet some of these Alliance people? It seems like it'd be important to meet them before Tsuna becomes their Boss."
Proactive and sensible behaviour? Well worth encouraging. Sure, Chew Toy was a thorough disappointment but getting introduced to capable enough Guardians would reassure the Dons that he might not be too terrible to bear for a few years, especially if some other heir could be dug up through a bastard line or something in the meantime. Why would Nono and Iemitsu bother to make the effort to hunt those down when they already had a legitimately born candidate from a background they approved of, one they could manipulate as they pleased?
And it would be a nice way to pre-empt Smoking Bomb out of the Right Hand position's actual responsibilities, as Chrome would clearly be the Left to all they were introduced to; sharing headspace with a genocidal lunatic and all. Smoking Bomb's claims to the position would 'obviously' be a smokescreen; he would assume his given workload was appropriate and make a lot of noise about being Right Hand while Yamamoto quietly got on with the nitty-gritty in the background and kept the Family afloat.
"You speak Italian?"
"I learned some the last time I visited Dino and Chrome's fluent, so I've been practicing with her and Bianchi as Bianchi says Chrome sounds too northern to be proper Vongola."
"Better than nothing." And telling that sword-brat was learning from Poison Scorpion instead of her brother, who as a classmate and fellow Guardian should have been his first choice. "You know any Sicilian or Vongola history?"
"Mostly who was who of the Vongola Dons, not what they really did or even all their names. Reborn's not that great at history I think, since he hasn't shared a lot of it."
More that Reborn was an independent operator with an intentionally messed up memory and so not enough of an insider to really know any of the facts. "I'll call my cousin and see if he can get a local history text translated and have someone write up a basic primer of the Vongola. Reborn's a freelancer so not really privy to all the details as he's not part of the Alliance, but the basic stuff that most people learn by the time they're cow-brat's age? Easy enough." Cow-brat would be six or seven now and in school.
"Really? Thanks Squalo!"
"Thank my cousin in person if Dino agrees. He's Heir Superbi and one of those important Alliance people that you're likely to meet first. The Superbi and Cavallone are neighbours."
"I didn't know that you and Dino were neighbours..." Sword-brat commented and Squalo wasn't sure if that was more fishing for information or genuine bullshit. Brat had a good bullshit face.
"I'll tell my cousin to include a map." Because there was no way that a foreigner could work out who ruled what without one. "And you're joining us for sushi; practice makes perfect."
Now to see what was worse, Dark Horse as a collective learning a new language or a teenager who'd been learning it for the past few months from two divergent sources?
Xanxus had stayed in the hotel suite for an hour with Luss working on his scars –the ones on his back this time– before heading out to wander around town. Florrie had really enjoyed the origami paper he'd bought her last time he was here, as well as the sweets, and he'd noticed that one of her relatives had sent her a book of Hiroshige fan prints for Christmas that she'd really enjoyed, so vintage art was clearly another viable angle.
Getting her into a kimono was something that would have to wait until she was more used to being a Guardian and everything that entailed, so wouldn't baulk at the amount of money being spent. A yukata though? She'd probably wear it as a dressing gown to replace her current rather old and ragged towel dressing gown, but that wasn't a reason not to buy one. All the more reason to do so, in fact; she'd be wearing it nearly every day, which was the whole point of clothes in the first place.
By half-past six he'd bought a range of bits and bobs he thought Florrie would like including a children's calligraphy book –she'd shown an interest in Japanese when he translated some of the sections of her origami book for her– and some different sweets, so he headed back to the hotel to stow them in his luggage before setting out to Takesushi.
He was paying for the food tonight since it was the shark's birthday treat; if Bel had been there since early afternoon then Prince the Ripper would have to shell out for that himself. Not that Bel would hesitate; brat had a very fuzzy idea of the value of money, it gave the miser conniptions and was the most glaring proof there was that Bel had grown up rich. The kind of rich that didn't bother looking at their bank statements, because they were never going to run out money.
Bel wasn't anywhere near that rich anymore but he still shopped like he was. Mammon grumbled about it, but Xanxus's Storm Guardian was a smart brat and had never gone into the red so the Varia Boss let him be.
Changing into something more casual and local-looking, Xanxus removed the raccoon tails and longer feathers from his hair then set out to Takesushi at a comfortable stroll. There wasn't any hurry; it wasn't even half seven yet.
"Oh, hi there Xanxus-san."
The Varia Boss raised an eyebrow at the shark, who was sitting next to his part-time student and who promptly cuffed the teenager around the head the moment the sword-brat stopped speaking.
"Vooi, speak Italian!" the Rain Officer snapped in that language before turning back to Xanxus. "Kid wants to visit Cavallone along with the Mist-girl come summer, meet people and learn more about the Alliance."
It was a good plan; sword-brat was clearly the smartest and most invested of Chew Toy's Guardians, so introducing him to the Family early would be beneficial all around. Xanxus didn't know much about the Mist-girl, but if shark was in favour then it would probably be for the best. They could subtly push sword-brat into occupying the actual Right Hand position, which left Mist-girl as Left Hand; that fitted with her mind-share with Rokudo the ex-Vendicare inmate and genocidal lunatic, which were appropriately terrifying attributes and would keep people in line.
"Everybody's on holiday in summer," he pointed out, sitting down and getting comfortable. "The Japanese school year ends soon; could come over for a fortnight then. More practical; meet people in a professional context and all."
Shark frowned. "Setting up meetings takes time though."
"Can have mine," Xanxus pointed out easily; he had a dozen or so lunches and afternoons with various Dons and Heirs arranged in the run-up to Easter and none of those people would mind if rather than the Varia Boss they ended up meeting with the Decimo's Right and Left Hand, even if it meant adding Don Cavallone to the guest list.
"True." Shark switched to Japanese to order his food and make the suggestion of a visit to Italy in the upcoming week for his son to the sushi chef, then back to Italian to explain to the sword-brat why Xanxus showing up at a quarter to eight despite the table having been booked from six-fifty was not only acceptable but expected under Sicilian social norms. Which led into Bel mentioning that the further north you went in Italy, the less leeway there was on timing; around Milan things generally started a quarter of an hour after you said they would, in Rome that stretched to half an hour and in Sicily nobody thought anything of being an hour later than scheduled for social events.
"So I arrive at different time in different place, even if all meetings are arranged at same time?"
"Longer vowels, brat," Xanxus drawled, "and adjectives conjugate with the nouns they refer to; tempi diversi, not tempi diverso."
"Thanks, er, Mr Xanxus?" Sword-brat was clearly uncomfortable with the lack of polite forms available in the language he was learning; he'd get over it soon enough.
"I'm not a Mister," he informed the teenager, mostly just to make him squirm.
"You can just say 'thanks' and leave it at that; it's not rude," Luss offered helpfully. "If you're not sure how formal to be just avoid using names entirely."
"Okay."
"Have your friends covered Italian polite speech yet and when it's appropriate?" the Sun continued considerately. "It's the third person singular feminine as most formal –Lei– for speaking to doctors and professors and priests and the elderly, and the second person plural for people you don't know very well or who are higher placed than you are in the workplace. That's Voi, by the way."
"Voi is formal?" Bel snickered at the way sword-brat side-eyed the shark there.
"Formal enough to not get accused of poor manners," Xanxus said dryly, "but not quite as formal as some people would prefer." Dons generally expected to be addressed as 'Lei' unless the people talking to them were also Dons; Squalo having been de-facto Varia Boss for years had been in a grey area and had taken every possible advantage of that. Still did; Xanxus hadn't made him stop so nobody else dared comment. Shark called everybody 'voi,' his little sister included, and got away with it because nobody wanted to accuse the second-in-command of the Assassination Division of being insufficiently respectful when he was already being politer than the Varia Boss ever bothered to be.
The first course of sushi arrived and there was a pause as everybody dug in; sword-brat made a surprised face as shark shoved one of the dishes at him, but did start eating it.
"I have questions about the future," sword-brat ventured after a few minutes.
Shark gestured with his chopsticks, his mouth full of sashimi.
"In the underground base–"
"That was not the future," Luss interrupted firmly. "That was a possible future based on the desires and goals of all the Flame-Active people alive at the time of the Bovino Bazooka being triggered and all those individuals within its immediate sensory range. It was a construct, not a reality."
That was something Xanxus had ordered looking into shortly after he'd befriended Florrie, because she hadn't featured in that fake-future at all. They'd already known the fake-future was fake, but getting the details out of the Bovino Famiglia hadn't happened until fairly recently. After all, nothing that had happened differently for the Vongola since getting the fake-future memories could possibly have influenced Florrie into coming or not coming to Sicily for her year out, but here she was in reality and she hadn't been there in the fake-future. Which implied that the Bovino Bazooka worked with a limited number of variables rather than modelling what went on with the entire planet's population and all their respective everyday decisions.
"Oh." Sword-brat looked completely thrown. "I didn't know that."
"Not like the calf knows the science behind his favourite toy," Bel commented between mouthfuls.
"But, the Boxes?"
"Arcobaleno Pacifiers can do some weird shit," shark said shortly, "including resurrect people. Are you really surprised they managed to turn Mist-constructs into genuinely physical objects?" Never mind that most of what made a Box Weapon work was the wielder's Flames, which had been real for all the brats returning from the fake-future; they'd all become Active during that time, even the cow-brat.
Of course the Varia hadn't got that short-cut; they'd had to reconstruct their Box Weapons independently. Which they had; Xanxus had done most of them himself, with a little help from the old ghoul Talbot to turn them into rings rather than keep them as boxes. Xanxus knew how to do the ring-conversion himself now, but that lesson had been expensive.
"So that wouldn't have actually happened in real life." Sword-brat was sharp.
"No," shark replied; "only reason Byakuran could play the system like that was because it was fake. It also doesn't take into account the actions of civilian bystanders, so it lacked the random element; never underestimate how badly a passing civvie can send your plan to shit without even noticing."
That was practically a Varia Rule; there were dozens of variously hilarious stories about Varia Missions that had gone wonky because some random stranger was in the wrong place at the wrong time for the Varia doing the hit.
"So, my father?"
"Your father wants to be a chef and retired from fighting," Xanxus said easily, "so that is his current desire. But if he was attacked by people who meant you harm, don't you think that would change?" The chef was an assassin, retired or otherwise, and he would take an assassin's view on threats to his son. Which would be to eliminate them with extreme prejudice.
"I understand." Sword-brat grinned. "Thanks."
There was a pause as Tsuyoshi arrived to take away the cleared plates and bring the next course, along with more drinks.
"So if the false future was built on the desires of the people in the present who have Flames," sword-brat asked eventually, "does that mean it shows how those people will become, even if the rest was inaccurate?"
"It's not guaranteed," Lussuria cautioned, "but it's likely. More likely the older the person in question is now; adults rarely change once settled in themselves, teenagers are a little more flexible and I would not take anything said or done by anyone currently a small child as indicative, and anyone younger than ten doesn't even exist yet so is entirely theoretical."
That last bit was the really unsettling part; in the fake future Yuni had been eight or so. She hadn't existed in the real world at all until Chew Toy and his brat-pack had returned, and then she'd killed Donna Aria somehow and replaced her without the Giglio Nero objecting; if the interloper hadn't done that then Donna Aria would have lived another six or seven years, possibly longer if the Arcobaleno System being scrapped had still happened. Yuni had appeared first as a child, then as a teenager during the Arcobaleno Mess; the Varia Boss still wasn't sure what or who she really was and what part she'd played in fake-Byakuran's insanity, but he knew she'd been heavily involved. The only reason the lunatic had possessed the Mare Rings in the fake-future at all was that they'd been given to him by the Giglio Nero when he was in his late teens. Via the Cervello of course, but that meant less than nothing.
Sword-brat chewed on that revelation for some time, his smile notably absent; clearly having to consider a few hard truths there.
"Squalo? When did you do your tour?"
"When I was your age," the shark said easily, grinning wickedly as the sword-brat fumbled his chopsticks. "Wait, you're nearly sixteen now, right? So I started when I was six months younger than you are now. Took me most of two years."
"You looked older."
"You mean I looked foreign," shark corrected the sword-brat, but not unkindly. "It's hard to judge age in people of a different ethnicity to what you're used to."
Another pause; Bel filled it with a monologue on all the ways Byakuran's various world-domination schemes would have been sabotaged by the random element if he'd tried them in real life, from thrill-seeking hackers through power outages, freak weather events and advances in civilian technology to pest problems in various underground bases; be as fancy as you like, but there would be rats and they would chew on the wires unless you had a Mist on site to Ward every single one or invested in some kind of pest control method. Warding could be done, but chances were that it wouldn't because various Mists had different specialties and levels of skill in different aspects of their Flames, never mind the limitation of reserves; Mammon's current GM was a good example of someone great at Warding –and Territories– but severely hindered by limited reserves.
Sword-brat's father brought out more food –and granted his permission for his son to visit Sicily during the upcoming spring holidays– including Buri Daikon for the shark. The pleased grin on his Rain's face at getting an entire platter of his favourite food to himself only got wider when Xanxus casually elbowed Bel off-balance for trying to steal some of it, prompting Prince the Ripper to complain loudly about the indignity and then pointedly sulk over his Karei.
Sword-brat didn't have any more questions about the fake-future that he was prepared to voice, so the rest of the meal passed in a to and fro instruction from Xanxus's Guardians on various cultural things, correcting sword-brat's pronunciation and grammar and teaching him new words. All in all, it wasn't a bad evening.
When they showed up at the dojo the next morning it turned out Tsuyoshi had closed his restaurant for the day and sword-brat was skiving off school; shark was completely delighted at the prospect of an entire day spent sparring with the two of them. Xanxus was less enthused; joining in might have been fun but his swordsmanship was mediocre at best and watching for hours on end didn't really appeal. So he watched for an hour, then left to wander around town for a while and do some more shopping; the previous afternoon he'd bought a lot of cheap stuff but only browsed for more expensive shit.
He did eventually buy the yukata that had caught his eye the previous day; traditional indigo and white, patterned with waves and foam and much more expensive than it looked due to being hand dyed rather than a cheap industrial print off a bolt of factory cotton. Xanxus didn't care about the price though; it was well-made, would look excellent on Florrie and wouldn't fade or fall apart after a dozen washes. He then took it back to the hotel –rather than carry it around for the rest of the day– before heading back to wait for the shark to decide it was lunchtime.
Xanxus spent the rest of the morning lounging in the shade outside the dojo, relishing the feel of the shark enjoying himself. When the sword-crazy contingent broke for lunch Luss and Bel showed up with bento –shop-bought since their current suite lacked a kitchenette but high quality regardless– and the Varia Boss sat back as Squalo expounded at length about various sword-styles and techniques with glee and enthusiasm, not letting Prince the Ripper's occasional eye-rolling deter him in the slightest.
After lunch his other Officers left again –probably to do whatever they personally considered fun that was possible in Namimori, although Xanxus rather hoped Luss wasn't stalking the boxer-trash... on second thought he probably wasn't since boxer-trash would be in school– and the sword nuts returned to the dojo for more sparring. Xanxus considered his options, decided it was good napping weather –today was sunny and the wind had dropped– let Bester out and used the liger as a pillow on the dojo's porch; the building was tucked away on private property with a screen of trees to hide it from the road, so he didn't need to worry about any civvies seeing Bester and calling animal control.
It was a good way to kill a few hours.
The sun was starting to get low in the sky when Xanxus noticed a couple of Flame-Actives approaching the dojo; Chew Toy's girl Mist –Chrome Dokuro– and the not-quite-Sky who'd been Skull's representative during the Arcobaleno Mess. Enma Kozato, who'd made a mess of the old fart's attempt at an Inheritance Ceremony January before last along with the rest of his Family, due to being yanked around by Daemon Spade's ghost.
"Afternoon," he said without either opening his eyes or moving from his spot. "Using your Flames all the time makes you easy to spot for anybody with decent senses, Chrome Dokuro."
There was a brief sense of cringing from the girl, swiftly quashed and replaced with determination. "Good afternoon, Xanxus-san," she said softly; "Enma-kun and I noticed that Takeshi-kun was not at school today, so we brought his homework."
Xanxus switched to Italian; the girl definitely knew it, what with having shared head-space with Rokudo for months. "I'm sure that you sensing the presence of several powerful Flame-users had nothing at all to do with it, right?"
"Takeshi is our friend," The depressed-feeling almost-Sky said in heavily accented Sicilian, the consonants and stress entirely distinctive and nothing at all like standard Italian; oh how interesting.
"He's having fun with his father and my Rain, getting comprehensively thrashed and improving himself," Xanxus drawled, finally opening one eye to look at the interlopers. "Sit down; they won't finish for a while yet."
Both teenagers looked very uncomfortable with the invitation, but did sit down. Seeing how they moved around each-other and communicated in little glances made it clear the two were friends; good friends.
A few seconds of awkward silence made it clear that neither one was going to start a conversation; Xanxus considered whether or not he cared, then decided to be generous. After all if Mist-girl was going to make a good Left Hand then she definitely needed a fix for her little organ problem; something more reliable than a Mist-patch.
"You use Mist to fool your body into thinking it never got eviscerated," he said bluntly, still in Italian, "but that makes you stand out. You're decent with illusions but you're never going to be able to fool anybody with even mediocre Flame-senses because they'll always be able to pick you out and look past your work. You're Vongola now, you can get transplants; you won't even have to take immunosuppressants for the rest of your life, since my Officers worked out a way to convert transplanted tissue to match the host." He glanced at the not-quite-Sky; "the Vindice weren't kind enough to restrict themselves to non-lethal hits on some of us."
"Your Rain's heart?" The redhead asked as the indigo-haired girl stared at him in confusion.
Xanxus hummed agreement, glancing back at the Mist. "Took less than a month to sort out; you'd be much less of a liability."
"Where would you get the organs from?" The girl asked eventually, her crisp accent making it abundantly clear she'd picked up the language from her former mental hitchhiker.
"Pick a terminal coma patient," Xanxus drawled, waving a hand lazily. "Being able to convert the cells means compatibility doesn't matter, so whenever you're ready." He paused to let that sink in. "Sword-brat's coming to Sicily for a fortnight come the end of the school year to meet people; he said you'd be coming too." That was less than a week away, but it wasn't like she had parents to fob off and a lack of passport wouldn't stop a Mist.
Girl clearly knew what he was referring to as her spine stiffened and she nodded firmly. "Yes, I will be."
"Can fit it in then, if you like."
The girl bit her lip. "Later, maybe?"
Xanxus shrugged; no skin of his nose. "Whatever; not my problem either way." Luss and Mammon would be pleased for the opportunity to refine the process regardless of when she caved and the range of organs she needed would enable them to prove that the process was as reliable as it appeared to be. About the only issue they might have would be the size of the organs since she was so small, but honestly teenagers had road accidents all the time so that wasn't as large an issue as it might be and puberty was going to take a while to get wrapped up, considering her body lacked half the necessary glands. Stress was also an issue there; she was putting a lot of effort and energy into fooling her body it was healthy, so that effort and energy wasn't going into helping her grow. Besides, it wasn't like everybody who got into car crashes were young men and there were plenty of short women about.
Sword-brat then emerged from the dojo, a bruise over his eye where it was evident shark had punched him with the prosthetic fist. "Hi guys!" he said with a cheery grin.
Xanxus promptly closed his eyes again and ignored the attempt at coded conversation; they weren't fooling anybody, he knew they'd come over to offer back-up in case sword-brat had gotten ambushed by Varia assassins. That was why not-quite-Sky-brat had his hands free and Mist-girl was the one holding the worksheets. Although it was possible that the boy had made an effort to counter that weakness since having it taken advantage of last spring; it wasn't like he could check. Not unless he asked, which he didn't care to do. That was the redhead's problem, not his.
Interesting that the redhead spoke Sicilian though; more proof that they really were descended from an old ally of Primo's that had emigrated out here. Ironic though that Primo had himself moved to the area shortly after but the two men clearly hadn't been in contact. Primo deliberately shunning the other man, or had the former Don genuinely not known that his old ally had settled within visiting distance of his new home?
Dīs had wrangled precedence on visiting Boss's Cloud Guardian for his Squad on the basis that Dark Horse was an Immortal Squad, he was a Cloud and letting Hawkeye take Marvel Squad to be her introduction to the Varia was just plain irresponsible. Varg had objected that The Pack was also an Immortal Squad led by a Cloud –a Cloud who had been Varia longer than Dīs had– but agreeably subsided when Este of Aurora Borealis dryly pointed out that Dark Horse was the original Immortal Squad, so had seniority regardless.
So here he was, with Alastor, Nycteus and the new Aethon and Orphnaeus that he'd not even had for a year yet, visiting Boss's Cloud Guardian. Boss's very civilian Cloud Guardian; he'd lost heavily in the betting pools there, not having expected Boss to take up with somebody so… soft.
He still wasn't sure what Boss saw in her, to be honest. It wasn't sex –she was one of those Clouds who plain wasn't bothered and Boss had never liked being panted after anyway– it clearly wasn't combat skill or affinity for languages either; the woman was bilingual and moderately competent in another two languages but that was it. Dīs wasn't sure what else Boss could be interested in really; she wasn't anything like his other Guardians.
Well, being offered drinks and bread fresh from the oven might possibly have been a factor; she'd certainly won over his Squad in minutes and they were all cheerfully telling her stories of fun things that had happened on missions. She'd make a damn fine soft interrogation specialist; everybody wanted to be listened to after all, so somebody offering food and a non-judgemental ear was always going to get more out of a person than any torture could achieve and at several times the speed.
"So, why kill people?"
Of course the brazen fearlessness was also something Boss would appreciate. There was none of that lead-up or beating-around-the-bush hemming and hawing that Dīs and most of his fellow Clouds lacked patience for.
"It's our job?" Orphnaeus pointed out.
"I guess I just don't understand why somebody would pay somebody else to commit murder," the Cloud Guardian sighed, thumping the dough she was kneading on the countertop. "I mean, yes if they're dead they're out of the picture, but it doesn't resolve any of the underlying issues and it means you're only catering to the people rich enough to afford your services. Why can't people pay you to ruin their enemies instead? Everybody's done something –we're all human after all– and the kind of people who acquire the kinds of enemies who are willing to pay to see them dead tend to have more sins than most. Besides, isn't it more fun to see your enemy kneeling shellshocked in the ruins of everything they've ever built or owned, their worldview shattered, their family disowning them, their so-called friends standing well back and whispering about how they always knew there was something wrong with them, bailiffs closing in and the press circling like vultures?"
Well the propensity towards ruthless psychological torture was something Boss would enjoy as well; on second thoughts she fitted right in with the other Officers. Lussuria in particular; this kind of thing would be right up the Sun's street.
"I mean, a lot of people would actually commit suicide after that," his fellow Cloud went on blithely, as though she wasn't the centre of attention of an entire Squad of fascinated assassins, "and the ones that didn't would most likely have a breakdown or a religious epiphany, possibly while serving time in jail, and be disinclined to repeat whatever it was that got them on someone's hit list in the first place. Plus if you do that, the person who commissioned it gets to enjoy feeling virtuously vindicated; what's not to like?" She glanced over her shoulder to smile at them. "Plus you can take your pay out of the target's money, enabling you to expand your customer base into lower income brackets."
"I like you," Aethon said abruptly, scratching one of the floral tattoos decorating his neck.
"The Varia used to do sabotage back when it was founded during World War Two," Nycteus volunteered, slathering butter on another slice of warm seeded bread, "but it kind of fell by the wayside in the years since then; nobody's asked for it since so it's slid out of practice."
"I bet there's a lot of money in sabotage and industrial espionage these days," the woman mused, folding finely chopped candied peel into her dough lump. "All the computer stuff and high-grade electronics, never mind the pharmaceutical industry. Hell, the optics industry is one big black hole with a single multinational making the entire world's spectacle lenses; you could make a killing on theft of intellectual property and open up the global market on the side."
And there was why Mammon liked her; a solid appreciation of the power of money, along with the basic financial sense that had got her a job doing data entry for the Mist Officer well before she became Boss's Guardian.
"You think murder's thinking too small," Alastor said thoughtfully, "don't you?"
The Cloud smiled apologetically at them, setting the dough aside to rise again. "I'm sorry. It just seems… petty. That's merely my opinion of course; I think that anybody who despite wanting someone dead lacks the commitment to do it with their own two hands is just… trash, really. If you're not prepared to risk yourself and shoulder the blame, why are you even bothering? Does that person's death really mean that little to you? Is it just cheaper or easier than the alternatives? I mean, I can see some situations where a person might not be capable of doing it themselves –if they're elderly or ill or disabled or something– but otherwise?" She shrugged. "They're just deluding themselves that they're civilised, paying somebody else to do what they're too cowardly to attempt."
A very valid point, but not one Dīs would have expected from a civilian. Even a Cloud.
"Financial ruin on the other hand," she smiled again, the expression wicked and full of teeth, "well that really does require a deft and professional touch, doesn't it? To disassemble a person's life in such a way that it doesn't look like a personal attack, simply a series of unfortunate events leading to shocking revelations splashed over the press, charges being brought, money going missing…" she sighed, shaking her head. "The skill it would take to pull something like that off, in the face of prolonged public and governmental scrutiny, is several orders of magnitude more challenging than mere murder, don't you think? People get away with murder all the time."
Boss's Cloud was a damn tease and knew exactly which buttons to press, despite never having met a single Varia assassin –other than Boss and the Officers– before today, and he doubted Boss had ever talked business with her. Dis was reluctantly impressed; he knew she was doing it on purpose but he still wanted to prove to her that yes, they could damn well do all that too.
"Think Mammon would go for it?" Aethon asked quietly, glancing at his Squad Leader as the woman went to wash her hands.
"Wouldn't hurt to ask," Dīs admitted; he was pretty sure the Mist Officer would be all in favour of diversifying their portfolio a bit, considering that Chew Toy was a total coward and there was a good chance they'd be out of work come his ascension to Don Vongola. Well, perhaps not entirely out of work, but there'd likely be a significant drop in mission requests from within the Alliance as various Dons tried murder-unrelated kinds of problem solving for size and experimented with what worked for them. Branching out into non-lethal services that required a Quality touch would improve their resilience and Boss could phrase it as 'returning to the Varia's roots' since sabotage was where they'd started.
He adjusted his opinion of his fellow Cloud again; Boss likely hadn't told her much about the succession mess but she'd still come up with a solid business strategy to keep the Varia afloat in the face of the upcoming crisis. If this was the kind of thing she brought to the table then Dīs was all in favour of her; unconditional support and an outside perspective were good to have and she wasn't trying to get Boss to dump the Varia entirely for offending her civilian sensibilities. Just wanting to change it a bit, but without wasting their talents or condemning any of the people who belonged to it.
This was much more than he'd been expecting; he really shouldn't have doubted Boss's tastes when the Sky had proved time and again that he had an excellent eye for people. Dīs just hadn't thought he'd find this kind of brutal pragmatism in a civvie teenager fresh out of high school; he should have remembered that Quality popped up in all kinds of unexpected places.
Squalo couldn't say he was surprised that Boss had dumped the whole 'introduce Chew Toy's two semi-competent Guardians to the Alliance' mess into his lap and fucked off to visit Florrie; it had been him bringing it up in the first place and it wasn't like they could bring Bronco in on private Alliance shit, so it was up to him to take the kids to most of the meetings, introduce them to people and make sure neither one put their foot in their mouth too badly. Which wasn't really what he wanted to be doing in the fortnight before Easter, but also wasn't as bad as it could have been. For one, Don Vongola apparently hadn't noticed that two of his successor's Guardians were in the country yet so he wasn't trying to meet them and fill their ears with garbage. For another making nice with the brat pack created the impression that the Varia was strongly supporting the succession process, which was very convenient and would give Boss leeway to say shit he wouldn't otherwise get away with in his own rescheduled meetings later.
He was starting off with his own Family –which was favouritism but expected so nobody would comment– then taking them to see the Lanza and the Alliata, who were as Vongola as the Alliance got. Then the Visconti, the Rocca, the Scarlatti, the Zanasi and the Prizzi in no particular order, and that was all the major land-owning Families covered. After that it was a matter of who was free when and possibly crashing a few events being run for or by the younger generation; he should ask Lessi to get her little brother to set something up since he had recently turned sixteen, so was in the right age bracket and had the right connections, attending the Academy as he did.
He was going to have to ask Delfina to stay clear though; he didn't want his little sister getting dragged into Chew Toy's shit. Not when it was guaranteed to wind up being a total disaster inside the next five years, even with his part-time student and Mist-girl doing their best to mitigate the damage.
Squalo would probably have to tell her exactly how bad the fake future had got and the mechanics of the Bovino Bazooka, but it would be worth it if she kept her head down. He wasn't going to say anything about the possibility of hunting down alternative Vongola Skies but Delfina would probably come to that conclusion independently, so if she did end up doing a little genealogical detective work on her own initiative it would not be his responsibility.
Of course his cousin Pantera guessed exactly what he was up to the moment he called to inform the asshole cat that rather than Boss coming to visit, the Superbi Heir would be hosting two of the Decimo's Guardians, and called him out on it.
"So I take it this is more damage control, Squalo?"
"Voi, these two are at least trying," Squalo protested, "and with how much effort Nono's put into ensuring his nephew's son will inherit the Family it's much easier to go with it and persuade the Decimo to take our concerns seriously afterwards."
"Such as having him step down in favour of a more qualified candidate," the Heir Superbi mused. "Well, with the Varia advocating for them I'm sure the Decimo's Right and Left Hands will face very little opposition. I'm getting those books sorted out for you," he added, "but it's going to take a while. I'll try to have them ready before your guests go home but it might end up taking a little longer than that, especially with the Alliance information required."
"I'm planning on having that book Warded, voi," Squalo assured his cousin, knowing that the reason all the relevant information wasn't collated in the first place was to ensure nobody could steal it. "It's going to be blood-locked to the kids, both the text and the actual information; that way Rokudo can't get into it without asking us first." That was the main hazard right now, although Squalo very pettily wanted Chew Toy and Smoking Bomb to have to face up to their arrogance and wilful ignorance and ask Boss nicely if they wanted to know anything about the Family they were assuming they'd get to lead. Well, Smoking Bomb was assuming a degree of authority and leadership as self-proclaimed Right Hand; Chew Toy was still running for controlled failure.
"Well if contingencies are already in place then I can hurry matters along a little," Pantera said airily. "By the way, thank you for distracting the gossips; your dating the Scarlatti Heiress has prompted everybody to speculate avidly on her father's reasoning for refusing to consider the match rather than approaching me with personal questions about your health."
"Oh?" Not quite what Squalo had had in mind, but at least he was now being left alone by both vultures and matchmakers.
"A surprisingly large contingent is convinced you have to have been born on the wrong side of the sheets for Don Scarlatti to be so adamant about not giving his blessing to his daughter's liaison with the second in command of the Varia," the cat continued lightly. "Current speculation points towards you being an accidental byproduct of Delfino and his wife spicing up their marriage; your grandparents haven't denied it yet, which is keeping things amusing. Nobody seems to be considering the possibility that it might just be Ottone taking the whole Scarlatti-Superbi falling-out over Quinto's ascension a century ago a little more seriously than most."
Well that was Don Scarlatti all over, wasn't it?
"See you tomorrow cousin; Delfino's already invited himself along." Pantera finished, hanging up before the Rain Officer could bellow at the damn cat for letting his grandpa crash the party.
Damn the old man, he was going to deliberately embarrass Squalo in front of the brats just because he hadn't been visiting enough for his and Grandma's tastes. He'd have to call Grandpa now and arrange to visit over Easter with his sister if he wanted to keep his dignity; probably set up a bunch of other visits too, both before and after the annual family reunion.
Well, look on the bright side: Delfino had originally been planning on crashing Pantera's meeting with his Sky, so at least this way Boss wouldn't be gleefully exchanging blackmail material with his grandfather behind his back and then ambushing him with it.
"So how do you think it's going, voi?"
Sword-brat looked up from his notebook and the map he was poring over and chuckled, rubbing the back of his head. "Ah, well." Across the table from him the Mist-girl had her nose buried in a copy of the local history book that Pantera was having translated into Japanese; it was actually written in Sicilian, not Italian, so for the girl to understand it either she or her mental eavesdropper had copied the language from someone in the past few days. Probably without asking first; he'd have to mention Mist-etiquette or have one of the Varia's Mists go over it for them at some point before Chew Toy officially took over.
Squalo pulled out a chair and joined them at the table; Bronco had given his nominally-Vongola guests an entire guest house to knock about in and had even explained the politics and practicalities and implications of doing so. Mainly so they wouldn't protest; there'd been a whole lot less protesting of what was being offered them by various Allied and Alliance people as the week progressed.
"Just ask," the Rain Officer suggested, pouring himself a drink from the water carafe on the table. "I'm one of maybe four people you can ask right now without either getting incomplete information or it costing you." Mainly because Squalo was currently more invested in the stability of the Vongola than in getting ahead and practical enough to recognise that in order for 'getting ahead' to mean anything, the Alliance needed to not go to shit due to poor leadership.
His part-time student smiled tightly. "The Vongola is really big."
It wasn't a question but Squalo could hear what the brat meant. "Yeah, it is; Alliance covers an area inhabited by over a million people and while most of those people aren't mafia, they're still affected by what we do. They shop at our businesses, use the roads we maintain, sell to our exporters and work in our companies and factories. And while over half of that's in the hands of the Alliance Dons, the Vongola does personally administrate a lot of it through underbosses and other subordinate dons, who basically lease Vongola land and are required to look out for Vongola interests as well as their own while tithing to the Family." The only Alliance Families with a significant overseas presence were the Superbi and the Visconti; everyone else was doing all their business right here in Sicily.
"Reborn never mentioned any of this."
"Not his job to," Squalo replied dryly; "External Advisor or Don Vongola's job. Reborn's job is to turn" –don't call him Chew Toy– "Sky-trash into a half-decent Heir-candidate. Actually teaching him what being a Don is about is Nono's job; Reborn's just there to make sure brat's got a solid base to build all that on. General academic knowledge, basic business studies including fundamental accounting principles, a bit of local and international law and history, the basics of creating and cultivating an image; not the details of the politics, not the people or how those people are connected, not why things are done a certain way or how various things are organised within the Vongola." Pantera had been the one to actually explain what a Mafia Home Tutor was responsible for and it made Squalo's blood boil that neither Don Vongola nor the External Advisor were bothering to fill in the other half of Chew Toy's education or even appoint somebody else to do it. Not that Reborn had exactly done his bit either –combat skills weren't everything and critical thinking should definitely have featured somewhere– but he wasn't being as negligent as Squalo had initially assumed.
"Shouldn't Reborn still have told Tsuna that?"
Squalo sipped his drink. "You sure he hasn't?" He honestly didn't know, but then again Chew Toy wasn't exactly making an effort to ask either.
The look on the kid's face made it clear that he didn't know either and that he also knew exactly how keen on responsibility his Sky wasn't. Yeah, good luck with that.
"What does Don Vongola actually do?"
Ah, now they were getting into the real Right Hand questions; nice to see his part-time student stepping up. "Referees internal Alliance squabbles and acts as primary negotiator between the Alliance and external parties, both for setting up business contracts and dealing with misdeeds committed either by or against the Alliance," he listed easily. "Also oversees Vongola Territory by appointing underbosses –other than the Varia, we're got a dispensation to appoint our own Head– and keeping tabs on the various minor Families belonging to the Vongola, directing the priorities and behaviour of the various Vongola Houses and approving their funding, choosing the direction taken by Research and Development, considering appeals made by the rank and file and keeping an ear out for trash trying to play the system."
"Sounds like running a business, haha."
Squalo raised an eyebrow at the bullshit grin on sword-brat's face. "It is one. Crime gets done by the rank and file; the Don's job is to make sure everybody in the Family is getting what they need and that no external parties have the means to harm the Family. Which yes, does mean the occasional show of force, but that's mostly to reassure the Family that they're being looked after and to intimidate outsiders so there aren't too many assassination attempts."
"Tsuna mentioned taking the Vongola back to its roots."
Squalo groaned. "God help us."
"What's wrong with being vigilantes?"
The Rain Officer glared; brat was definitely bullshitting him now. "Rokudo was a vigilante, you do know that don't you?"
"Ah?"
Clearly not; did any of these brats bother looking into what words actually meant? Squalo wanted a dictionary to beat them over the head with. "A vigilante is somebody who decides that the law isn't working and imposes their own law. Like Rokudo massacring all those Families up north –including half their kids– for the crime of belonging to the Underworld, or like Hibari beating people up for 'crowding' at your school. What's Sky-brat planning on doing, running around and beating up everybody who offends his civvie sensibilities?" Squalo huffed sourly. "Most of the criminal stuff the Vongola does is tax evasion and smuggling, and the smuggling is often shit that can't go on the open market, like Flame-attuned pharmaceuticals and Flame Tech. The rest's stuff that's legal in some places and not others or has heavy levies applied, like foodstuffs that don't travel well, banned books, electronic appliances and alcohol."
"Tax evasion?"
"Voi, Sicily is an autonomous region and already spends all its tax money locally. Just because we'd rather do the upkeep ourselves instead of put money into the pockets of the politicians and bureaucrats doesn't make us criminal; it's practical. We're keeping people employed and it's quicker and less expensive since we don't have to wait months for the self-absorbed assholes in the bureaucracy to settle on whoever's cheapest or most closely related to them to do the work so they can pocket the difference." Never mind that Flame-related health problems meant Vongola Medical catered to a significant chunk of the local population, taking pressure off the civvie hospitals. Of course everybody in the Alliance paid some tax –it did go into important shit and the Vongola couldn't do all of it– just not quite as much as they perhaps were supposed to by law. Although a lot of Alliance Dons went into completely legal tax avoidance rather than evasion, exploiting loopholes and so on. It wasn't hard; the tax laws had after all been written by rich trash who didn't want to pay their taxes either.
"What about the Varia?"
Squalo sighed. "Guess why the entire Underworld cares about what the Vongola thinks, to the point that over half of it avoids drug-dealing and human trafficking on our say-so. Proper Underworld, not the low-level scum running gangs around the edges and barely getting their feet wet."
"They're afraid of you."
The Rain Officer nodded. "The Vongola's the only Mafia Family on the planet with its own standing army and we're basically special forces equivalent with Flames on top of that. So the Vongola gets to dictate standards to everybody else, because we've got the big stick. Vongola Allies get to hire the Varia, so everybody wants to be Allied."
"The Vongola polices the Underworld." Sharp, sharp brat was going to cut himself at this rate.
"Not officially," Squalo contradicted mildly. "We're just powerful enough that nobody wants to piss us off. So long as we're powerful and involved in the Underworld, we get to shape it. We lose that power or leave the Underworld entirely and somebody else will step up to fill the power vacuum left behind. Like the Millefiore did in the fake future."
"Why did the Vongola do nothing about the Estraneo?" Oh, so Mist-girl was joining the conversation now. On her mental tag-along's behalf, but still.
"Intelligence on Families outside the Vongola Alliance is the CEDEF's responsibility," Squalo said, cheerfully throwing Iemitsu under the bus. "They said the Estraneo were all dead. I could point out that the Estraneo were experimenting on their own family members, thus making it an internal matter anyway, and they weren't even selling the results of their experiments, so it's not like anybody in the wider Underworld was profiting from it or even knew it was going on. Rokudo taking control of his Family by killing those who had been hurting him and his put an end to it and that would have been that if he hadn't decided to go off and slaughter a bunch of completely uninvolved people for the hell of it."
Well he'd done it because he was a child and a Mist and massively traumatised, but that didn't excuse any of it. CEDEF really should have noticed that happening well before the Vindice got involved. Rokudo had killed off several smallish Famiglia and the CEDEF damn well should have noticed by at least number four or five; three was already a pattern and it wasn't like the massacres had taken place abroad. There really should not have been any delay in relaying the information or it making its way to the top of the priority list, so it not having gotten noticed was all on the CEDEF analists, just like those damned invisible assassins six months after Rokudo's arrests had been; the Vindice had at least done something after the seventh Family got slaughtered, for all that they'd clearly misjudged who exactly had been running things.
"So you're saying it wasn't your business?"
Hello there Rokudo. "Dealing with people killing their own kids is the law's responsibility," Squalo said calmly. "We're not the law." If anything it was the Vindice's fault, since they were the only people presuming to actively police the Underworld and they clearly hadn't made any provisions for this kind of thing. "Interfering with the private lives of its citizens is something only governments presume to do; anybody else doing so is, guess what? Illegal."
He could feel the eavesdropping ex-Vendicare inmate seething just behind the girl's Flames; it was hilarious.
"Also, if you want to get technical the Estraneo left the Underworld after the Possession Bullet debacle," Squalo went on in bored tones, "so they weren't actually part of the mafia when they were doing their human experimentation; civvies do illegal shit all the time too and that's not our problem."
There was a growl, a flurry of Flames and the three of them were alone in the room again.
"Sorry," Mist-girl mumbled.
"It's not your fault that Rokudo's a self-centred moron," Squalo said flatly. "Yeah, he was nine when he started out and nine-year-olds are all convinced the universe revolves around them, but you'd think the time-out in jail would have given him the opportunity to discover the existence of logic and sense."
Sword-brat laughed. "Haa, Mukuro's always angry," he said breezily, waving the entire confrontation aside. "What's planned for this evening?"
"I'm introducing you to Heir Scarlatti, who's about your age, and he's taking you out for the night with his school friends," Squalo informed them both. "He should bring you back around four in the morning; Cavallone's arranging a car. Don't get drunk, don't promise anybody anything and for God's sake don't start any fights." Finishing fights was proof of skill, so they could do that as much as they liked.
His part-time student beamed. "We won't make you look bad, sempai," he promised cheerfully.
"Vooi!" What a brat!