We left the party well before midnight, pleading my bedtime. The next morning, after I entered the kitchen, I found that my youth had been a great blessing last night, namely that unlike the two missing males, I was unhungover. Baked beans simmered in a pan, while bacon and eggs were frying in a skillet. I helpfully made coffee and tea, while Oregano plated breakfast. Lal was hidden on top of the fridge, not that I should be able to notice that.

"Sir was drunk yesterday." I reported, a glass of orange juice in hand. "I managed to force sir to catch his paperwork up by a month."

"Lucky ass." Lal grumbled, and I jumped in response, "I can't get drunk, and Oregano doesn't like how it inhibits her mind, so we have to deal with bullshit stone sober. He'll be hungover this morning, so we get another window of time in which he is sufficiently incapacitated. Oregano?"

"I am not dealing with that." She replied darkly. "I washed him and put him to bed last night, I'm not looking at him today if I can help it today. Besides, I'll have to retrieve Turmeric from whatever one-night-stand he went home with."

Turmeric. One night stands. As the norm. Well, he needed to drop the stoic façade and destress sometime.

"I can!" I was, naturally, peppy and starry-eyed, not yet disillusioned about sir's nature.

"That could do." Oregano said thoughtfully. "Finish your breakfast first, Basil. More jam?"

Oregano's plan was obvious: stuff me full of enough sugar to make me hyper, then set me on a hungover sir. I was very much in favor of it.

Lal taught me how to pick locks with Mist Flames after breakfast.

"It's a matter of belief." She told me bluntly. "If you believe your key will unlock the lock, then it will. The rest of the matter is holding the form in your mind and keeping your flames under your control."

"Alright." I nodded, and poked a tendril of the indigo through the lock she had produced. Tumbler, tumbler, twist--curses, dropped that.

"Stop it." Lal hit my hand. "You aren't making lockpicks, you're making a skeleton key. Try again. More confidence. Imagine Sawada's watching, and you don't want him to start trying to 'help'."

"Sir isn't--" I protested, as I automatically straightened and twisted the key that I had subconsciously formed. The lock clicked and opened. A pox on sir and his ancestors, all the way to thrice-accursed Giotto who was terrified of raw seafood.

"Practice, and then unlock Sawada's door. I'm off to see if he's broken anything valuable yesterday." Lal stomped off, not that I blamed her. Given my experiences interacting with the rest of Vongola, I foresaw a great depletion of available gifts for the youngest Vongola Sky.

I threw open the curtains, letting glorious sunlight shine onto sir's comatose form, and like the child innocent of the horrors of overdrinking that I was, cried out joyously, "Wake up, sir!"

There was a whimper from under the covers. "Merrrrcyyyyy!"

"Nope!" I said cheerily, dropping onto the bed. "It's time to wake up! Oregano said that she won't stand for seeing more than one naked male body a day, which I think is a threat to emasculate you, so, I'm here instead! Do you want breakfast?"

I was milking my sugar high for all it was worth, and being as disgustingly perky as possible. I tossed sir's bathrobe onto the bed, then went back to bouncing off the walls while sir dressed.

I then slammed a tray full of paperwork in front of sir. "These need to be completed posthaste, sir. Breakfast is greasy, so it must come after, lest it stain the paper and necessitate a rewriting. Lal hasn't taught me how to keep dishes from going cold, so you should hurry!"

I plunked down beside sir, keeping up a stream of cheerful chatter until sir finally picked up his pen just to get me to shut up. As a reward (not that he realized), I poured him a cup of water, and provided useful assistance. I could do no less as sir's faithful apprentice.

Until, "Basil."

"Yes, sir?"

"What is this?"

Sir seemed to be quite efficient, given that he had gotten to the bottom of the pile, where I had snuck in the requisition form for the cellars. Turns out that hunger, in combination with a hangover sapping his will to resist worked wonders.

"I want to send a thank-you present to Signores Xanxus and Squalo."

Sir started wailing about how he had failed be since he wasn't my favorite person anymore, and that he would make it up to me, he promised. I sincerely doubted that.

"Signores Xanxus and Squalo were kind enough to keep me safe, and their Harmony gave others more things to focus on in your absence than the emergence of myself." I gave him an unimpressed look.

Sir looked like he was drowning in the depths of despair, but he signed anyway. Does this count as terrible parenting?

I brought sir his breakfast, then sat facing sir, hugging my knees.

"Basil!" Sir declared suddenly, "You're six! That means you should have something cute to play with! Since I haven't been a good teacher, today, we're going to the zoo and getting you a pet! "

I hoped that he meant the two things as separate ventures, but given Turmeric's horror stories, odds were, sir meant that he was going to force me to take care of something he stole from the zoo. Sadly, I had no way of stopping him.

"Alright, sir." I nodded assent. Given that sir was the norm for the blood of the Vongola, I pitied Squalo. Maybe a nice seventy-proof whiskey? I could only hope that sir's hangover didn't clear up.

Unfortunately, that was not the case. After breakfast, sir became terribly energetic. Sir packed lunch, showing that he wasn't a complete fool and wasn't about to risk death by poisoning, accidental or deliberate. Then we went down to the garage and into a nice, generic car after I talked sir's ear off for wearing an A-shirt and got him into more decent casual clothes.

"You should learn some more languages, Basil!"

"Yes, sir." I remembered what Lal had told me about Mist Flames. "But can't I just get Misted into having those languages?"

"Nope!" Sawada Iemitsu went into his lecturing mode. "You are CEDEF, Basil-kun! That means that you're an agent ! To be an agent, you have to blend in with a culture. If you get everything downloaded into your head via mist flames, then, not only are you cheating, which is unmanly, you don't get to experience and understand the culture of that language! For instance, if you learn Japanese, you'll know how kanji function, their evolution through the ages, and why they function like they do. Take hamaguri, 蛤 , it's composed of the kanji for bug and the kanji for close, so, as you can see, the bug that closes is the clam, since the ancient Chinese considered clams to be wugs. See ? You wouldn't know that if you were cheating! Shishou will teach you all about the profound depths of Japanese culture as he teaches you the language! "

That was a combination of surprisingly reasonable advice and complete and utter rubbish--dear kami, even brief exposure to Xanxus has left me copying his speech patterns. I'm going to pretend to take his word as gospel though. It might guilt sir into being nice to me, and if not, it'll be an interesting experiment in how outrageous sir's lies can get.

"Wow!" I looked up at sir with starry eyes, "I'll learn quickly sir! I promise! Can you tell me more about Japan?"

"Hehe!" Sir scratched his head with one hand, leaving only his left on the wheel. I surreptitiously took hold of my seatbelt, even if intellectually, I knew that as the exponentially more annoying version of James Bond, sir did have decent drivign skils. "I grew up in Japan, Basil-kun, so there's so much I can tell you! This will be important for your Mafia education as well, since Vongola Primo retired to Japan after he founded Vongola. Your shishou is descended from him!"

If that was true, then I would have to look at Ricardo's biography in a new light. "But Giotto was scared of seafood!" I protested, "Ricardo said that he named Vongola Vongola because it was the most intimidating thing he could think of! Why woud he go to Japan, the iconic food of which is sushi?"

Sir laughed nervously, "I'll tell you another time, Basil-kun. Let's talk about Japanese customs first."

I listened with false eagerness as sir described my former life's world, it's Kabuki plays and household implements--wait a second. Mizu was a feudal state. Japan shuld be modernized with the rest of the world by now. Sir was lying again. But since I was already taken by the lie, I couldn't show that I had seen through it without showing myself to be more than a six-year-old boy. Curses. I can't wait for the zoo. Then I could behave knowledgeably about the natural sciences. Normal children liked cute animals, right?

Sir bought us both icecream once we got into the zoo.

"Can't we get just get a dog, sir?"

"We aren't getting a canine!" He told me decisively. "Dogs can be scary."

If so, he didn't act like it as we passed dogs on leashes, leaning down to ruffle their ears while chatting with their owners , whose eyes slid over me.

I kept a tight hold of sir's shirt, just in case my lack of presence started acting up again. We meandered through the park as sir made increasingly outlandish suggestions.

"Do you want an owl, Basil?"

"They're nocturnal creatures, sir. Caring for one would alter my sleep patterns and inhibit my growth." I conveniently left out the fact that some species were diurnal.

"How about an alligator?" Sir asked as he pointed to what was clearly a crocodile.

"No, sir. It will grow indefinitely and I will become depressed when I realize it will outlive me." My tone was dissonantly cheerful.

"A fennec fox?"

"It looks a bit like a chihuahua." I lied.

"I know! Let's get a lion!"

Definitely not. I was beginning to realize, once again, that sir's determinded obliviousness meant he was getting his way, no matter what (unless I was about to pull out the big guns, but those were either reserved for emergencies, lest Iemitsu develop a resistance to them, or the sort of things the use of which on non-hostiles was Not Done).

So, I wanted something that sir wouldn't make me keep in my room. Something nice and trainable and sensible, so that my time wouldn't be a complete waste. Preferably aquatic, to tie in with the fact that Matatabi was called Rain, and associated with the sea.

I held great respect for Uzumaki Naruto's first sensei, Umino Iruka. "Can I get a dolphin, sir?"

Sir's face split into a blinding grin. He picked me up and swung me in a circle. "Terrific idea, Basil! You're so smart! A dolphin is nice and friendly, just like you, and dolphins can kill sharks, so it'll protect you against Squalo!"

I assumed that I was expected to have a rivalry with Squalo since, in some mirror dimension that the Mafia believe to be reality, he usurped my place in the Vongola. I could only muster up respect.

In retrospect, a dolphin did represent what I was in this life--friendly, playful, utterly adorable, and a vicious killer underneath, as well as a foil and counterpart to Squalo.

Sir kidnapped a calf, and through means which I will not describe out of horror at their eldritch nature, managed to deliver it safely to a giant saltwater pool in the CEDEF headquarters, where it swam, unperturbed by its sudden relocation.

I slipped into the pool too, and it nuzzled me with surprising affection, given that we were strangers.

Sir grinned at my expression. "Well, Basil-kun, what do you want call your dolphin?"

I already knew what I wanted to call it. "How do you say dolphin in Japanese, shishou?"

"Irukachan, Basil-kun!"

I giggled as the calf splashed water onto my face. "Iruka it is then, sir!"

Sir drooped at that, but I wasn't going to be tricked into calling Iruka Iruka-chan. Poor thing needed whatever dignity it had left.

Iemitsu's usually a morning person, so holding coffee hostage doesn't work, especially since he's usually the one to wake the whole household/upper echelon up with his terrible singing in the shower. Iemitsu is a halfway decent teacher when it comes Bond stuff, and Basil is a living surveillance device: plonk him somewhere, and he'll pick up all the info within earshot since people don't realize he's there, meaning the more languages Basil knows, the better. Basil is from the Elemental Nations, so he sometimes slips into believing Iemitsu's descriptions of modern Japan, since that's what he remembers a Japan-esque place to be. Iemitsu doesn't want to get a dog because he is trying to be a decent father for once in his life and not make Tsuna deal with something that traumatizes him. Iruka is like Basil, harmless at first sight but a vicious killer inside. He will grow up to be the mafia dolphin that chases Tsuna around when he learns how to swim.

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