"Reborn," Verde begins innocently (or as close to innocent as he can get) when he steps up behind the hitman in the living room. "Do you smell some kind of gas?"

Reborn pulls away from the table where his guns are spread out, taken apart and ready to be cleaned. He starts to take a deep breath to try and scent the air. Verde darts forward and clamps a wet cloth over the hitman's face, making sure to cover the nose and mouth. His other arm wraps around Reborn's waist to keep him upright.

Reborn jerks as soon as he sees the cloth and starts to struggle, trying to push Verde's arms away from him, but he's already breathed it in and the substance is potent. His grip on Verde's forearm slackens and he slumps completely into the scientist's chest within less than a second.

"It should have the faint scent of chloroform," Verde continues casually, keeping the cloth over the hitman's face just in case he's faking. "It's actually an original of mine, so I added a mix of esters to make it smell more like espresso for you… you're welcome."

Reborn doesn't reply because he's unconscious.

Verde shoves the cloth into the ziplock plastic bag hanging off his belt. He closes the bag to keep the chemical scent inside and shifts Reborn until the hitman is hanging off Verde's shoulder. He may not be the strongest but he's taller than Reborn and it makes things easier.

The scientist then strips off his gloves and disposable mask, tossing all of the used equipment into his briefcase on the ground nearby. He picks that up and then backtracks into the last room he was in where an unconscious Leon sits in a glass jar.

Verde picks that up as well because Reborn is going to need incentive to play along.

Reborn wakes up tied to a metal table most often seen in a morgue, with the taste of something powdery on his tongue.

He blinks up at bright lights and turns his head to see a blank room surrounding him, the sparse equipment inside all bolted down so he can't use them as weapons. Verde's alligator is in the corner, curled up around a jar with a sleeping Leon inside.

Reborn lifts his head and finds himself dressed only in light blue pants like hospital scrubs. His bare chest is wrapped in some kind of skin tight plastic film that works as an X-ray, allowing Reborn to see his own heart beat away and watch his lungs inflate. He swallows and his oesophagus ripples.

Metal cuffs encircle one wrist and ankle, different from the restraints that look like canvas but feel as strong as diamond. The wrist displays his pulse and oxygen levels and a few other numbers that Reborn doesn't care about but the ankle cuff just shows three green dots of light.

Reborn guesses that it's the reason he can't access his flames right now, which is unfortunate because he has no way of finding out what Verde has already done to him. The scientist himself is standing over Reborn, scrawling something down on a clipboard.

Reborn sighs and lets his head fall back down. "Verde, I like you so I'm going to give you one chance," he allows. "Let me go and I won't burn down all of your labs."

"You've taken well to the injections," the scientist begins, ignoring the threat. "So now I need a few samples that require you to be consciously working your Sun flames, just to make sure the virus is doing its job, then I'll untie you."

"Virus?" Reborn echoes in annoyance.

The scientist pushes up his glasses. "Every time you use Sun flames, you wear down your telomeres since it's essentially normal healing but sped up."

Telomeres are kind of like bottle caps on the ends of DNA, and every time the DNA replicates (in this case for healing) the caps twist off a little more each time. This is generally why Reborn tries to use Cloud flames for large issues, because it's never a good thing to spill your drink.

The scientist shuffles around the papers on his clipboard and then holds it up so Reborn can see. "I fixed it with a modified virus that entirely replaces your original telomeres," Verde deadpans. "You're welcome."

"Oh," Reborn says, a bit stunned and kind of touched that Verde did all of that. He sits up and swings so his legs are hanging over the edge of the metal table. "That's really sweet - although maybe you should ask next time."

Verde blinks and looks down to the bindings that have been pick locked. Even the flame suppressor has been discarded. "How did you…?"

Reborn only smirks and decides to not tell Verde that the scientist could have been killed twenty times over by now. He does end up going through the lab, destroying all of the data and samples Verde collected when Reborn was out of it (both regarding the virus and for other -far less innocent- projects Verde had been working on).

The hitman cuts out three tracking chips when he gets home, but leaves the one in his thigh because he does like Verde.

A bit too much, if he's being honest.