Finn leaned onto the railing of the cruise ship and watched the waves below lap against the hull in passing. It seemed too perfect, but no amount of disbelief dissolved the dream-like surroundings. Even pinching himself didn't work. He was actually on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean.

For nearly an hour, he walked around the deck in a daze that only deepened each time he turned a corner. Before he'd woken up in his assigned cabin, the last thing he remembered was Maverick warning him to survive Hell Week. This didn't seem like a Hell Week, though. Would Hell Week include girls in bikini's playing water games in the upper-deck pool? Would it include a full gym with access to complimentary satellite cable? What about the tiki bar and the flyers for a midnight costume party for adults? And the kids-!

Seeing a pair of fourteen-year-olds laughing on their way to the pool, Finn stumbled over to a shaded bench and collapsed into it. Nothing was making sense!

"Isn't waiting like hell?" a passerby in Hawaiian clothing commented. Finn's confusion must have been amusing, because the gentleman laughed at his bewildered expression and took a seat in the neighboring bench. When he smiled warmly and clasped his hands over the end of his cane in a patient manner, Finn jumped at the opportunity to ask the questions bothering him.

"Where are we? How did I get here?"

"Where is fairly obvious," he replied. "You're on a cruise ship. As for how you got here, I think you already know the answer to that question, as well. Why don't you ask the real question that's on your mind? Something like, 'where are we going' or 'what's going to happen'." Finn opened his mouth to confirm his curiosity in the questions, but he stopped himself. Those weren't the questions he really cared about.

"What am I supposed to be doing?" Finn asked. The stranger's smile widened even more and he nodded softly to himself in satisfaction.

"You'll have to forgive an old man," he said. "To answer your question, I'll have to give you a history lesson. It really begins with another Family, the Vongola Family, and their Tenth Generation Boss. He had a child who grew up and chose to restart the Family under a new name-the Sawada Family. Now, the Vongola Family was over four hundred years old and they had many traditions. One of these traditions was a 'Hell Week' which allowed the Family Boss and his Guardians to test the mettle of new recruits before allowing them to officially be part of the Family. However, when Vongola was reformed under the Sawada name, Vongola the Eleventh and her husband, Sawada the First, decided the old tradition needed an update for modern times."

"What does that have to do with me being on a cruise ship?"

"Everything," the man replied. "Mafia life is much like life on this boat. There's innocent people, allies, and even enemies. There's also nowhere to run."

"But that doesn't tell me what I'm supposed to be doing," Finn said.

"You have to figure out some things on your own, Finn. I've given you enough hints already. What you do from here is your decision." The man stood before Finn could reply and pointedly ended the conversation by walking away. Finn considered chasing after him, knowing it'd be easy since the guy had a limp, but he stopped himself.

Mafia life is much like life on this boat. There's innocent people, allies, and even enemies. Following a stranger didn't seem like such a great idea when Finn didn't know which category he was in. A shiver of fear ran through him at the thought and he slowly stood with growing horror. Looking around, the man's echoed in his ears. Mafia life is much like life on this boat. There's innocent people, allies, and even enemies. Were the girls playing water games really as innocent as they seemed? What were the guys in the gym hiding behind their pleasant smiles? Was the tiki bar's bartender an enemy? What about the midnight costume party for adults? What dangers would be hiding behind those masks? And the kids-! Oh, God... the kids... Finn prayed they were really the innocents they seemed like, but how old did someone have to be to join a Family?

He couldn't trust anyone, yet he was going to have to spend an entire week on a boat with complete strangers. He could see why it was called 'Hell Week'. He was tempted to run back to his cabin and hide. But he didn't. Mafia life is much like life on this boat. If he ran and hid, wouldn't that tell the Family that he was useless?

Determined to keep such a thing from happening, Finn calmly collected his scattered wits, took a deep breath, and picked a direction. He walked aimlessly at first to keep himself from becoming a sitting duck. As his mileage increased, he began exploring methodically until he reached his own cabin again. Ducking inside, he frowned as soon as he saw a map framed next to the entrance. It wasn't a typical map intended for tourists to get from their room to the upper deck. It was a blueprint showing even the engine rooms and the location of the captain's cabin.

Finding it suspicious, he pulled it off the wall to inspect it more closely. Writing on the back rewarded him for his paranoia.

B, 5, 401

Figuring it was a location since it was on the back of a blueprint, Finn turned the map over and searched for deck B, section 5, room 401. Once he memorized it, he put the map aside and decided to search his own room instead of running ahead like he was in a scavenger hunt. Ten minutes later, he had an array of clues laid out on his bed including a small, loaded revolver with "C, 5, 601" written on the bullets, a screwdriver with "C, 5, 89" on the shaft, a pen with "B, 5, 22" hidden inside, and a fire-extinguisher with "D, 5, 35" hidden in a false bottom. He also had a chair leg, the inside of his pillow case, a fork, a shoe, a gym bag and several other miscellaneous items, but he couldn't figure out what they were trying to tell him. Was he only supposed to pick one location and wait there for further instructions or was it some sort of sophisticated code? If it was only one location, then how was he supposed to know which one was the right one?

Rather than agonize over it, he stuffed the items into the gym bag and headed out the door to do some reconnaissance. No one in the hallway looked at him twice since a man with a gym back wasn't abnormal, but the the direction he went in wasn't the gym. It was Deck B, where five of the items sent him.

Deck B's main hallway left him feeling claustrophobic and it had nothing to do with the floor-plan. Dozens of people were squashed into the same area. Some were oh-so-casually walking in circles as if they were 'just passing through'. Others were leaning up against walls and checking their watches as if they were waiting on someone. Even more were locked in a verbal dance where they attempted to receive more information than they gave from the other people standing around.

Taking the 'just passing through' approach, Finn made his way down the hallway while keeping his eye open for the rooms he was aiming for. When he finished going through every section of Deck B without seeing a single one, he understood why so many people were milling around. If the rooms didn't exist, the code had just gotten a whole lot harder to solve because the rooms were shown on the blueprints.

Hoping one of the other rooms did exist, Finn searched Decks C and D for confirmation. The rooms on those Decks didn't exist either, although he did run into many more recruits. Actually, there were so many recruits spread between the decks that Finn began to grow more suspicious. Finding the clues had been a little too easy and he had to question why every clue sent him to a 'section 5' - the same section where other recruits were sent.

It couldn't be what he suspected. Why would the Family choose such a round-about method for-

"It's a meet-and-greet," a familiar voice whispered in his ear. Spinning in place, Finn's mind went blank upon seeing his father. "I've asking around for the past hour and a lot of others have come to the same conclusion," he said with a forced nonchalance. "The last number in the clues are a red herring. Some recruits probably wouldn't have come out of their rooms without something specific to search for. Don't-" he said when Finn finally opened his mouth to ask how he'd gotten out of jail. "As much as I want to tell you everything, I don't think you want to give me an opening to ask my own questions." Finn's mouth snapped shut and his father grinned. "It's good to see you, son."

"I-It's good to see you, too," he replied.

"We'll talk again later," he promised. "I'm sure you don't want your old man cramping your style." Finn felt frozen as his father walked over to join a group who were slowly overcoming their suspicions enough to talk to each other.

The obvious questions answered themselves almost as quickly as he could think of them, leaving Finn only one thing to think about. Regardless of his father's presence or what his father said, he didn't think the Family would use a red herring to lure everyone into the same hallways together. If anything, how easily people gave up at the first obstacle would help them cut down list of recruits. There had to be something he was missing.

Biting his lip, he left his father behind and began another circuit through the hallways in search of a clue. When the hallways came up empty, he began searching each room in hopes of finding a hidden doorway or a secret passage. The walls were mostly identical in size and manufacture, but there were two or three instances where he felt the need to count his steps across a room to ensure it wasn't smaller than it should be.

Going into the third room on Deck C, he found that he wasn't the only person to have continued the search. Welsh, the strange man who'd passed the initial screening at the bakery with him, was staring at the ceiling while counting tiles.

"That's it!" Slapping himself on the forehead for missing something so obvious, Finn shut the door before anyone else could catch on to the secret. "It's the ceiling tiles. Isn't it? That's the last number in the code."

"I thought so, but I may be wrong," Welsh replied without looking down. "Some numbers be large, but there be nothing in such quantity except the ceiling tiles. Yet, I have counted twice and there still be no six hundred one." Finn's shoulders sagged in disappointment. It'd been a good theory, but not good enough. Unless-

"Did you try subtracting the numbers from the other Deck B clues?" Finn asked. Welsh's attention snapped downward, his question to count ceiling tiles forgotten.

"What other clues? I only find the revolver." Grinning, Finn blocked the door to keep anyone else from entering and waved Welsh forward to look through his bag of clues.

"Since I recognize you, we can solve this together," he said as Welsh carefully examined the objects. Picking them up one at a time, he cradled them in his over-sized hands until he found each of the hidden codes. "I turned my room upside down several times to make sure I got all of the numbers. And since your revolver had the same number as mine, I think we can assume we're all supposed to go to the same place."

"If you right, the real code be 'deck B, section five, tile forty-six,'" Welsh replied, calculating the numbers faster than Finn could. Yet, Finn shook his head.

"It can't be that easy. Since we were misled to believe the last number was a room number because of the blueprints, I have to wonder if we're really supposed to go to deck B, section 5."

"If you subtraction theory be right, the letter might only say which numbers go together," he replied with a slow nod. "Let us sort these. Perhaps the reason for number '5' be clear after?" Happy to know Welsh was taking his suggestions seriously, they focused on sorting until the reason for the number '5' did come clear. "Five items per letter, but 'D' has four only."

"Let's try this-" Sorting further so the items were arranged from largest to smallest, Finn grinned at the grid-like outcome. "I think I recognize this," he said. Welsh raised his eyebrow in confusion. "It's a logic game they put on IQ tests. See, the letter tells us what column to put the item in and it has to stay in that column. The five gives us a clue so we know there's supposed to be five of each. If we rearrange the rows so the numbers match when we add the last numbers of each code together, we'll know where the missing item is supposed to go-"

"Ah, I think I see." Welsh laughed at the puzzle and began rearranging things before Finn could think about finding a calculator. Less than a minute later, the arrangement was done and the result gave them even more to think about. By knowing what the other rows added to, they were able to find the code of the missing item-but they didn't know what the number was supposed to tell them. "Room fifty-two?" Welsh guessed.

Assuming the Family expected them to jump to the wrong conclusion at first, it made sense for the information to be useful later. Checking the blueprints, Finn grinned. "There's a room fifty-two on Deck A," he said, pointing out the room in question. "It's a storage area behind the kitchens. Since none of the codes have 'A' in them, I think we've found our winning ticket."

"They would not want people go there by accident," Welsh agreed. "Let us go."

Quickly packing up the clues, Finn slung the gym bag over his shoulder and followed. The hallways seemed less cramped with Welsh leading the way. People moved out of the way as if a steam-roller was passing through, although Finn didn't particularly understand why. Welsh was bulky, but he wasn't particularly scary. It couldn't be because he was a foreigner, either, since a large portion of would-be recruits weren't even speaking English.

Leaving the mystery as a mystery, Finn decided not to care. He wouldn't have figured out the clue if Welsh hadn't made him think outside the box. For that alone, he was worth befriending. Besides, at least the guy had a familiar face.

Welsh paused when they reached A Deck, looking back at Finn with a bewildered expression. "You not tell your Papa? He look for you earlier."

"I had it a little easier," the pink-haired Maverick said. "Too easy, almost. Like I said, my dad's an idiot. When I tried to tell him what I wanted to do, he just smiled, said I didn't have to tell him, and taught me how to use a sword. To this day, he still tells people I'm just a baker and, sometimes, I think he really believes that baking is all I do."

"No," Finn replied. "As much as I'd like to tell him, I think I need to do this on my own."

Welsh nodded sagely, accepting Finn's troubled explanation at face-value, and picked up the pace again. As they neared the kitchen, they were distracted from the abstract concern by the growing number of people heading in the same direction. Unlike those on the other decks, these people were tensed for battle. Revolvers were tucked into their belts for easy access, their eyes darted around in suspicion, and their pacing was intentionally slowed in poor attempts to hide their desire to rush.

The main galley was everything he expected to see out of a ship kitchen, but the chefs pointedly ignored their presence. Finn ignored them in return and went straight for the storage room with Welsh.

"I think the term be 'bingo'," Welsh said as soon as he opened the door. Looking past him, Finn smiled at the sight of an almost-empty hallway. A man in a black suit and sunglasses stood at the far end, directing recruits either left or right before marking something down on a clipboard. He waved them forward as soon as Finn shut the door behind him.

"Name," he prompted.

"Welsh."

"Finn."

"Welsh, the Rain room is to the left," he replied with an absent gesture. "Finn, the Sun room is the third door to your right. You'll receive further instructions inside."

"Good luck," Finn said, tossing Welsh a smile in farewell. Welsh smiled back and fearlessly headed down the left corridor. Finn was a little more hesitant going to the left.

The door to the Sun room was easily identifiable, having a stylized sun stamped into the heavy steel surface, but Finn's hand trembled as he pushed it open. But he needn't have worried. Inside was nothing more than a single blond man lounging in a chair with his feet up on a desk.

"Another one?" he asked without looking up from his hand-held video game. "Whatever," he continued before Finn could respond. "Come in, shut the door, and listen for two seconds, pyon. I'm supposed to tell you that I'm the Family's Sun Guardian, Ken. By making it this far... something, something, something... We'll be in Mafia Land in four days... something, something, something... Oh! Survive, do what you're told, and don't make an ass out of yourself. Got that? Sucks for you if you don't. Go through there."

Taken aback by Ken's lax attitude, Finn decided against asking any questions and went straight for the only other door in the room. Opening it, he expected to find another room or a new corridor. Instead, he found a closet holding something that froze him in his tracks.

A man hung from the ceiling by a rope around his neck. His body had been beaten, the skin of his legs had been torn off, and his stomach had been ripped open. The room was covered in smeared blood and it was filled with the stench of decaying flesh.

Finn knew he should be sickened, but he wasn't beyond the initial chill. The gruesome sight, even when he looked at the corpse's frozen expression of terror and pain, was nothing worse than he'd seen in horror movies. It was difficult to think of the body as an actual person. It looked more like a stage prop, right down to the intestines spilling out of his stomach.

Looking back at Ken, Finn asked, "Is there another door past this?"

"Trap door underneath," he said with his focus still on his game. The dead body in his closet didn't bother him at all. "Shut the door before you go down."

Following instructions, Finn shut himself in the closet before pushing the corpses' legs aside so he could get to the trap door. He paused before descending to listen and look around. There were voices and the sources weren't hard to locate in the well-lit room below. Scattered around the unfurnished pit was nearly a dozen men who'd arrived ahead of him.

"About time," one man called up as Finn shouldered his bag of clues. Grabbing onto the step-ladder provided, he pulled the trap door shut behind him before climbing down in a rush. No one moved forward when he touched down. The other recruits kept their backs to the walls and spoke from the spaces they'd laid claim to. "What information did he give you, kid?"

Turning to the self-named spokesman for the group, Finn raised his eyebrow at the guy's bright blue mohawk and facial piercings. On their own, Finn could have overlooked them, but seeing them on a wrinkled old man was enough to make him stare.

"The guy upstairs told all of us something different, so we're trying to piece everything together," he explained with a gesture to invite Finn to the wall beside him. "So far, we know that this is Hell Week for the Family. In the old days, they used to go on a hike through dangerous territory, but Sawada the First changed it to a trip of some sort. Three of the guys were told we've been split into teams depending on our Flames-whatever that is-and we're supposed to make it through challenges together. That guy over there said he was told we'd only have one challenge a day, but the challenges will get harder as we get closer to our destination. I'm guessing from the gatekeeper hanging upstairs, some people will be cut from the list because they have weak stomachs. What information did you get?"

"Four days until Mafia-Land," he answered slowly. Several guys stiffened in surprise at the tidbit with a light of excitement growing in their eyes. "Other than that, he only said to survive, follow orders, and not to make a fool of myself."

Everyone considered the information carefully for a full minute.

"He said to follow orders and our orders were to go down here, so I say we wait," one man said.

"I still think this is a survival game and we can't leave until only one of us is left."

"Don't be stupid, stupid. He said we were in a team together."

"Who're you calling stupid, you idiot?"

"Non combattiamo, per favore!"

"Here we go again," the wrinkled old man said with a sigh of resignation. A moment later, the far side of the room devolved into a fistfight with a short foreigner attempting to break it up by yelling gibberish. Several others were unable to ignore the commotion and were drawn into the fray, thereby escalating the incident into an unsightly mess of flying fists and childish insults.

Finn ignored it as something tame compared to the incidents he'd witnessed while trying to find sponsors. He was far more concerned with the room itself. It seemed odd that they'd be stuffed together without being given any directions. If they were just supposed to wait, wouldn't there have been chairs or a note on the wall? Then again, abandoning his post to get further directions didn't seem like a good idea, either.

"What's in the bag?" the wrinkled man asked as the fight began to break up on its own. The men slowly returned to lean against the walls with sour expressions on their faces and a surprising lack of injuries.

"The clues," he replied. Looking more closely at the wall behind himself, Finn searched for a seam and came up empty-handed. If the room held another door, he couldn't see it.

"What clues?"

Finn paused and looked at the old man again. It seemed impossible, but the old man's expression was honestly bewildered. He had no knowledge of the clues. "How did you find this place without the clues?" Finn asked. The old man shrugged.

"I saw someone with a revolver and I got suspicious, so I followed him here."

"I wanted to know where the hell I was and I found this place while I was searching the ship," another man offered.

"I bribed the bartender at the Tiki Bar to tell me where to go. Bartenders always know the good stuff."

Seconds later, it seemed like another fight would break out as every man wanted to be next in telling how they'd found the place. By the time they calmed down again, Finn felt like he was in a barrel of monkeys. Not a single man had used the clues. Even the ones who'd found the revolver in their room hadn't noticed the markings on the bullets.

"Where are you from?" one man asked when the conversation began to die out. "I'm from Florida." Again, everyone tried to speak up at once. Finn waited until everyone had their say, offering up places from Texas to places as far as Hong Kong, before giving his own answer.

"Las Vegas." Everyone in the room grew still and the old man next to him coughed sheepishly.

"So, uh, kid... Have you actually met any of the Family yet?"

"Haven't you?" Finn asked. The old man's jaw dropped at the question, but the conversation ended at the sound of the trap door creaking open again. Looking up with everyone else, he averted his eyes as soon as he saw a length of leg extend down the ladder.

It was a girl!

Pulling the trap door shut behind herself, she actually jumped down to the ground instead of climbing down. "Hello everyone!" she said as she bounced back to her feet. Finn quickly became one man in a line of gaping monkeys when she threw out a peace sign and posed. "Mori-Mori here for her third attempt at Hell Week! Who wants to fight? Eh? No one?" Dropping out of her pose, she helplessly shrugged in disappointment. "How boring. Oh! You-!"

Mori-Mori pointed straight at him and Finn's eyes bulged over being singled out.

"You're the one who saved Bridget! Papa Tsuna told the whole Family how you beat up that pervert who wanted to marry her!" If Finn's jaw could drop any further, he would have been eating off the floor. "Oh no!" she yelped before abruptly crouching into a ball on the floor. "I wasn't supposed to know about that," she whispered. Abruptly, her mood shifted and the blood rushed out of Finn's face when she looked at him with the evil eye. "It's all your fault. You tricked me into saying that."

Finn's jaw dropped further while he searched for some way to respond to such an outrageous accusation.

"You-!"

"Stop making a scene, Morrigan." Giving himself whiplash, Finn's attention snapped to the left side of the room where a previously invisible panel slid away from the wall to allow several people to enter the room. Sawada the First walked at the front with his wife beside him and Hibird on his shoulder. In the group that followed was Ken, alongside several people Finn had met in passing during his initial attempts to join the Family: Mr. Orinato, Dr. Sakura, and Lady Chrome. "If you're really going to try this again, stand at the wall with everyone else," Mrs. Lee said.

Mori-Mori pouted, but retreated quickly to stand beside Finn.

"For those who don't know, I'm Chin Lee, the First Boss of the Sawada Family," the First said as he came to a stop in the middle of the room. Finn thought the introduction was unnecessary, but there were several people who apparently needed the identification before they straightened up respectfully. "I apologize for the wait, but there was an incident in the Storm room and we had to keep the ship from sinking."

"Let's keep this short, sweetheart," Mrs. Lee suggested. "I don't think the people in this particular room would appreciate a lengthy explanation."

"Of course," he nodded. In unison, the entire group closed their eyes. When they reopened them, colored Flame flickered to life on each person's head-except for Chrome, whose indigo Flame sprouted from under her eye-patch. Almost the entire rainbow was present. Even Hibird had purple Flames rippling though the short feathers on its head! Ken had yellow, Mr. Orinato had red, and Dr. Sakura had blue. The only missing color was green.

"You've probably heard of the Sawada Family's Flames," Sawada the First said. "These are those Flames and each of you have a Sun Flame like Ken's within each of you. The Sawada Family can teach you to harness them. I'll skip a lot of the finer details since this is the Sun Team, but I will tell you this. Your mission is to make it through the rest of the week until we arrive at Mafia Land. There are people on this boat-"

"You're making it too complicated, Boss," Ken grumbled. Sawada the First glanced back, smiled, and gestured for him to take over the briefing. "Fine. I'll tell them in a way these blockheads can get it. Everyone, listen up, pyon. We're the Sun Team. Four days, four challenges. Today we have to find a bomb and destroy it before the other teams can destroy theirs. Ignore any bombs that don't have a Sun on it and don't let anyone get in your way. Got it?"

A chorus of confident agreement rang through the room, followed by a stampede as soon as Sawada the First dismissed them. The only people from the Sun Team who didn't immediately rush for the exit were himself, Mori-Mori, and the old man.

"I guess this makes us the only people on the team with brains," the old man said with a smirk.

Finn paled, his hopes for the future completely squashed.