Translations, mostly from Wikipedia because somehow I ended up using them and then I forgot to take them out and then it was just easier to put this here than edit the entire chapter and risk rewriting it again:
Isola de Gorgona: The Island of Gorgona, a penal agricultural island about 19 nautical miles off the coast of Italy.
Marina Militare: The Italian Navy.
Ammiraglio di Divisione: Divisional Admiral, (OF-7). In the United States Navy an O-7 is a RDML or Rear Admiral Lower Half, but I am not sure if this is an exact rank translation, however.
Pensionato: retired
Ministero della Giustizia: The Italian Ministry of Justice
Someone pointed out that my spelling of the Chiavarone has connotations of, er, hookers, and all I can say is- oops? I spelled it the way the Wiki has it, and if I ever go back and edit, I will correct it, but for now I will keep it consistent. Thank you for telling me, though!
It took them a further two weeks to finish planning the Aosta, Assisi, and Messina raids, (conveniently giving Hikaru and Yoichi just enough time to take their term exams early), and there had been many, many threats passed around when the two had boarded the flight to Italy with Romario and Dino.
(Well, mostly it had been Kyouya threatening Dino with Kyou-chan sitting on Kyouya's shoulder and staring intimidatingly, while Hikaru had said his goodbyes to the others.)
Tsuna's eyes had been teary, "You'll come back, right Hikaru-sempai?"
Hikaru had smiled gently and ruffled Tsuna and Hayato's hair, (the latter had his arms crossed and was staring off into the distance as if he couldn't care less, but he was still a little too young to keep his body language from giving him away), "I promise. You have to keep Kyouya from doing anything crazy, alright?"
Tsuna sniffled miserably, "I-I'll try."
The older teen huffed and pulled them both into a hug, (ignoring Tsuna's flailing and Hayato's half-hearted protests with practiced ease), before he moved on to Tetsu, "Everything set?"
"Yes. The plane is scheduled to take you straight to Italy where you will be met by Dino-san's men, Romario-san confirmed the time with them this morning."
Harry smiled and clapped the boy on the shoulder, "I don't know what we'd do without you, Tetsu. Thanks."
Tetsu's lips curled up in a pleased smirk, "You're welcome, Hikaru-sempai. Come back safe."
Hikaru opened his mouth to respond but-
"-he will or he will be bitten to death for disturbing the peace of Namimori." Kyouya cut in, apparently having threatened Dino sufficiently, judging by the smirk on his face and the fondly exasperated look on Dino's.
"Isn't Namimori quieter when I'm not here?" Hikaru wondered out loud.
Kyouya's lips thinned and his tonfa fluidly slipped into his hand and buried itself Hikaru's gut in a blink of an eye- Ooof. The hell, Kyouya!- "You are expected back for the last week of summer, and if not that then for school, before you are considered late, Experienced Carnivore."
Hikaru rubbed his sore abdomen and noted the tension practically radiating from Kyouya's frame; apparently his flippant comment had really set the younger boy off. "Naturally." Then, just because he was the older brother, Hikaru reached out lightning-quick and wrapped Kyouya in a hug, letting the other go and dancing out of reach before the younger could retaliate. "See you then!" He chirped brightly as he ran off towards the plane, Blaise cackling beside him.
While the raids in Aosta, Assisi, and Messina would yield properties for Hikaru's people and Dino's people to mingle and share intel and what-have-you at, Hikaru still needed strictly magical properties that could be used until they could figure out a way to blend Flame and magic together in such a way that they could coexist in the same houses without breaking Omertá or the Statue in such a way that would bring everything down around their ears.
(They were skirting both with clever wordplay at the moment, but it would only stretch so far.)
Towards that end, Hikaru had actually contacted the Mediterranean Magical Authority and legally purchased a few Old Blood Estates that resided in their Authority, despite their repeated cautions against the action.
The issue was, while they could get general locations and rough estimate of the sizes of the properties, the Estates themselves were sealed with Old Magics due to the family dying off or something of the like, and they only went up for sale after they lay dormant for seven hundred years without contest. Normally no one bothered with such things, not even Gringotts, as the work to get into such places was intricate and painstaking and usually yielded little reward for such toil.
However, Hikaru had the Family Magic of several Most Ancient and Most Noble Houses at his beck and call, not to mention brilliant minds such as William Weasley and Barty Sinclair, (the former who was desperate to escape his mother for the summer and the latter who was an adventure nut to the extreme), and most importantly nearly twenty-five people that he needed to keep busy for the summer. So he had deputized William and Madam Cassi, (Call me Bill, Adriano, please. Don't think that I'm going to miss out on this, brat!), and sent them off shortly after Madam Cassi had confirmed the sales had gone through.
Of course, because nothing in Hikaru's life ever goes exactly to plan, Fon had gotten wind of things from Reborn and had informed Kyouya's uncle during one of their infrequent-but-not-unheard of teas of the upcoming expeditions into the closed Estates. The Hibari Clan Head, sensing an opportunity, had cheerfully dumped nearly fifty fully trained Eastern reiki users between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five onto Hikaru and told the teen, via Fon, that he was responsible for them for the next two years.
So, now Madam Cassi and Fon had met and Hikaru wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel about that, honestly. Well, it was more to the fact that Madam Cassi and Fon had met and had access to his Papá with a small army at their beck and call that worried him.
(Apparently the Shrine Master who had provided the Ceremony for Hikaru back in '91 was actually Shrine Master for the Hibari Clan as a whole and therefore was over all of the Shrines in the Hibari Clan's Authority and the man had recently been complaining to the Clan Head about having a surplus of fully trained apprentices who were itching to get out and see the world, but lacked a real reason to do so and were reluctant to leave their respective Masters behind, despite the Shrines having plenty of help.
Let it not be said that the Hibari Clan were anything less than lightning-quick on the uptake.)
The Estates that Hikaru had purchased were going to be interesting if they held anything of value beyond their wards and land. There was the Raptis Estate, with confirmed properties in Sicily, Greece and Crete, thought to have its roots back to Ancient Greece and have some relation to the tailoring profession. Then there was the Lavigne Estate, which had properties confirmed in France, Switzerland, Spain, and Italy- with tentative ones on Corsica and Malta, and one obscured at sea- the name was thought to be French in origin and related to vineyards. The final Estate was the Velius Estate, and all of its properties were in mainland Italy, the name being thought to be Roman- or Latin- in origin and related to being concealed.
(Hikaru had been surprised that there had been so many properties still standing despite the low magical population of the region, but apparently the manors that had actually survived the Inquisitions and the Crusades were pretty much self-sustaining behemoths even when the families died out, but they were just sitting empty because no one was interested in unravelling their fearsome protections.
Apparently no one else had a father who shadow ruled entire continents, creating a surplus workforce.)
The entire assembly of nearly eighty people had been outfitted quite efficiently by Tetsu's protégé, Eddie Carmichael, (who had just finished his Fifth Year and due to his test scores and the new laws was permitted to use his wand unrestricted and hold employment), and they were going after the property of the Lavigne Estate that was thought to be about forty nautical miles straight out of Livorno.
By the nonmagical maps the area was just the Ligurian Sea, but their investigation, (the group had been posing as tourists, fortunately it was summer and Livorno was a popular enough destination for the group to blend in fairly easily), yielded information that between the Isola de Gorgona, (the island being an agricultural penal colony since 1869, after the unification of Italy in 1861 caused the ownership of the island to shift), and the coast there were many conflicting, superstitious stories about that particular stretch of water, which would make sense if there were Old Blood Wards active.
(Not that the nineteen nautical miles between Livorno and the Isola de Gorgona were to be traversed without the expressed permission of the Ministero della Giustizia , but Hikaru's people had no interest in disturbing the penal colony.)
Hikaru had last heard from them nearly ten days ago, when they had set sail and they would probably be out of contact until someone made it back to the mainland, due to lack of technology and the magical interference preventing long-range magical communication. Fon was a Flame user, but even the Flame tech wouldn't work without supporting relays in place.
"Heavy thoughts?" Dino asked from beside him when he sighed, causing Romario to glance up at them from where the older man was reading reports across from them, and Blaise to look up from his book, (or whatever he was actually doing, Hikaru usually didn't ask).
Hikaru grinned at Dino and Romario wryly, "Not really, just wondering how the magicals are doing traipsing around in uncharted territories."
Romario snorted, "Knowing Madam Cassi, she's having the time of her life."
Dino laughed brightly, "Yeah, heck of a lady, that one."
"She's like, Kyouya in lady form."
"Oh my-Vongola Primo Adriano! You can't just say shit like that!" Dino yelped as the sixteen-year-old snorted the sip of water that he'd just taken through his nose.
Adriano grinned unrepentantly, "This is why I'm amazing."
Dino coughed and tried to blink the tears out of his eyes, "Hell, Adriano. Shut up."
Romario just laughed at the duo and went back to his paperwork; Blaise's grin was suspicious, however.
Hikaru suspected that his comment would come back to haunt him, somehow.
In the Ligurian Sea, the Palmaria glided through the waters obediently according to her Captain's will. The Palmaria was a decommissioned Cassiopeia-class Patrol vessel, being captained by the son of an old acquaintance of the Madam Cassi: Argilio Giacomazzi, Marina Militare, Ammiraglio di Divisione, pensionato.
(Argilio Giacomazzi- or Comazzi- was a man in his late forties, about six feet tall, his chocolate brown hair greying at the temples, sky blue eyes, and his olive skin tanned from all the time he spent in the sun. His career in the Marina Militare had been cut short less than five years ago when his patrol had run afoul of some Libyan pirates, his patrol ship poorly equipped to deal with the situation. Through tenacity, will, and ingenuity they had managed to thwart the attack, and he had managed to keep his ship patched together and afloat until backup had arrived.
Unfortunately the Libyans had been backed by some warlords out of Somalia and had employed the same tactics as their progenitors, and Comazzi had been badly injured during an early skirmish when they had tried to board. By the time all his crew had been taken care of and Comazzi had finally consented to being seen the injury had been too old to be healed to the point where he could continue to meet the physical requirements his position demanded, and so he had been allowed to retire as he had enough years of service to qualify, though he'd been promoted for his exemplary conduct.
With no family left that he still talked to and the sea being the only place he felt at home, he had managed to buy the ship that he had ended his career on when the Marina Militare had decided to scrap her. It had taken most of his savings to buy the Palmaria, but the true cost was the absolute loss of direction the absence of Marina Militare created in his life.)
The vessel hadn't more than essentially seaworthy a month ago as all of the tech had been reclaimed by the Marina Militare and Comazzi hadn't put more than the basic navigational systems in since, but with the resources at Madam Cassi's disposal and Captain Comazzi's willingness to overlook strange occurrences, (much like his father, that one), that issue had been quickly rectified.
The biggest obstacle had been the fact that Captain Comazzi was obviously nonmagical and some of the modifications that were needed to even find the Estate property were definitely magical, but Madam Cassi skirted that issue neatly by producing a contract that the man hadn't batted an eye at signing.
After that, it had been a mad rush of work to get everything ready for the expedition.
The Palmaria was nearly eighty meters when measured along the waterline and with the modifications that had been made she could now comfortably hold the nearly eighty members and their supplies. The vessel originally had been made to hold six officers and fifty-four enlisted with a rather measly thirty-five day endurance, she now boasted three new internal levels- not including the very-much-reinforced-and-improved orlop deck- in addition to her original ones, which had been expanded and improved as well.
It wasn't as if their eighty-meter ship was a floating luxury continent or something ridiculous, as space could only be expanded so far before it failed, but there were definite advantages to expanding space that had been made entirely by nonmagical means as none of the components had been touched by charms or spells prior to Madam Cassi's arrival, which had allowed the group to maximize the potential offered to them. The ship project had also allowed the two groups to mingle, breaking the ice and giving the young adults a reason to start to share ideas and brainstorm together, which would only assist in their upcoming expedition.
The main deck had been converted, the inner portion that wasn't dedicated to navigation or functionality was more like an outdoor café, while the outer edges were mostly open and secured according to Captain Comazzi's procedures. The lower decks were comfortable enough that most of Madam Cassi and Fon's 'group building' activities were taking place there, and all of them had duties to attend to, but there was still time for the young adults to mingle on their own.
While the ferry ride to the Isola de Gorgona only took about an hour and a half, trying to find a hidden property in open waters while also making sure to steer clear of the penal colony and ensuring that they stayed far enough away from Corsica to not attract undue attention was annoying, although the Captain seemed to be enjoying teaching his new minions how to properly operate the ship's controls.
(They'd had to rig the controls to either work on magic or be done the old-fashioned way as too much magic tended to destroy the small amount of navigational tech that they had on board, and the new magical tech that had been in development for the past few years wasn't entirely ready for production just yet.)
"Ah, Madam Cassi! Thank you for coming!" Captain Comazzi greeted the stern woman as she entered the bridge, "I see you brought Master Fon with you as well, good."
"Captain." They greeted, Madam Cassi being privately amused by the amount of enthusiasm the man was displaying.
"By the information that you provided me and what I've observed, the interference usually occurs in approximately this area and the ships get blow off-course by a few degrees before righting themselves and continuing onwards towards their previous destination. Looking back, I believe that I have experienced this phenomenon before as well, and we have just had to readjust our course several times- minute adjustments, but they still would have altered out course- but we've managed to maintain our original goal," the Captain told them in an even voice. "I believe that we will start meeting heavier resistance from here on in, you might want to get ready, Madam."
Cassiopeia Black grinned, fierce and sharp and predatory, and called the members of expedition to her, "Everyone to your posts, and keep your eyes open! As of this moment, it is no longer us or them but ours- and we will not fail!"
"Adriano!" Marius called happily as the other teen entered the home Dino had grown up in.
"Marius!" Adriano called back, rushing forward to sweep his friend into a warm, friendly hug, "You look great! Everything been going alright?" He asked as he let go and pushed the other back so he could run a critical eye over his oath brother's form.
Blaise snorted from behind Adriano and gracelessly shoved him out of the way- artfully ignoring his offended squawk- as he greeted Marius with a friendly arm around his shoulder as they watch Adriano sulk on the floor, muttering about abusive jerks.
"Glad to see some things never change." Shamal interjected dryly as he detached from the wall he'd been leaning against and heaved a very put-upon sigh as he reached down a hand to Adriano.
"Yeah, the fact that they're always going to be jerks." Adriano grumbled with a grin.
"Always and forever." Blaise quipped.
"Amen." Marius echoed solemnly.
The three stared at each other for a moment and burst out laughing while Shamal sighed and rolled his eyes.
They had been battling against the Outer Wards for nearly sixteen hours, having anchored just outside where they thought them to be the previous day and started at first light, and by now it was nearing midnight and everyone was exhausted.
It was only the concentrated, unrelenting efforts of the stabilization groups that kept the whirlpools that were forming due to the clashes in force from ripping the ship apart.
Cassi's brow furrowed as her mind raced, knowing that they were almost there, but it wouldn't be enough if they didn't break through soon because they wouldn't last much longer, despite their considerable power and size.
She could see the flickers when the Wards wavered, see the outline of the island that lay beyond the Wards for the briefest of moments before it blurred out of existence once again, but that merely spurred her onwards, even if it was just an island, she wanted to see it with her own eyes in the daylight.
"Cassi-obaa-san!" called one of the Eastern students, "We think we've managed a clean crack!"
"Make a hole!" She bellowed as she tossed people to the side as she made her way over.
She skidded to the stop just off the bow, Fon, Bill, and Barty arriving just moments later as they put their heads together and planned one final push.
Please let this work.
Adriano preferred fighting with his hands, honestly. Maybe with gloves to protect his knuckles occasionally, (Tsuna read a lot of manga and had gotten Adriano some Kakashi-style gloves from Naruto as an early birthday present for him before he left Japan, Adriano adored them), or with a short blade if he needed a weapon, but most of the time he enjoyed fighting with his hands because it allowed him to use his empathy.
This sort of mission wouldn't be the time to employ such a thing, however.
In honor of his first mission as a Guardian of the Chiavarone Decimo, Reborn- whose most beloved gun was a ČZ 75, which was Czech-made and one of the 'Wonder Nine' weapons- gave Adriano a Reborn-customized ČZ 75, and it fit into Adrino's hands almost perfectly, (naturally his father had left just the right amount of room for his hands to grow into the weapon).
Adriano had been taught to shoot over the past few months, but he wasn't particularly thrilled with the idea of using a gun to end a life. He knew that the people they were up against weren't going to go easy on them, however, and his short blades would only carry him so far, and Adriano will cut off a limb before he makes himself a liability.
Blaise was a Mist of considerable skill who also had an extensive knowledge of poisons. He could construct a weapon behind his target out of a poison in his possession and make the weapon disappear or move on to the next target after the deed was done. It was taxing and had limits, but with his magic to support him, he was a dangerous enemy.
Marius, under Shamal's tutelage, had learned many things, assassination techniques included. This might seem odd for the formerly known Neville Longbottom, but when he'd had to end the life of his own father as a mercy something inside him had broken, and Marius- while not enjoying killing- would never again see the world in the black and white shades that the boy Neville once had enjoyed.
Being a Rain-influenced Storm, Neville had learned to kill with nothing more than a solid push of his Flame in critical areas. A solid push to the heart would kill someone almost instantly, while a glancing blow to the lungs would cause them to drown.
(These boys were truly amazing, their Flame Purity, access to information, and their relentless practice allowing them to achieve things that most never even dream of accomplishing.)
Dino had his whip that had been made from Leon, and it made him a fierce opponent at both mid-and-long range, and Reborn's Spartan Training, (and it deserved the capital letters!), made sure that Dino was dangerous at close range as well.
Romario was a traditional Mafioso in that he used a gun, but the man was also a brilliant tactician, able to use his surroundings to his advantage in almost any circumstance, the people in them included.
Three days into Italy and the original plan went out the window as Intel reported that all their main targets had congregated, and the way the plan ended up falling into place, they would hit all three location simultaneously, but separately.
Dino sat at the center of the table, his hands loosely clasped in front of him as he eyed the papers scattered around him contemplatively, "All right." He said finally, "I know we haven't been together long, but this is how we're going to do this. We are fortunate in that Dr. Shamal has agreed to work with us, so please give him the respect that he is due. I will lead the assault on the Assisi base, Dr. Shamal will lead the assault on the Messina base, and Adriano will lead the assault on the Aosta base."
The room broke out into chaos.
"He's just a kid!"
"You can't be serious!"
"Are you trying to get us all killed?"
"Enough!" Dino roared, surging to his feet and letting his Will seep into his voice, "Adriano is a Guardian, this doesn't make him infallible, but it does mean he outranks you. I am your Boss, trust that I know what I'm doing."
The room went silent for a long moment, but then one of the older members stood up and headed for the door.
Dino's heart sank, "Matteo?"
The older man threw a glance back over his shoulder, "What, Boss, I thought that we had shit to do?"
Reborn tipped the brim of his fedora down over his eyes.
Cassi staggered back as the Mastery of the Wards settled over her, the flashes and snatches of history that passed by her too fleeting for her exhausted mind to comprehend.
Still, as her back slid down the rough wood of the cabin and she tilted towards unconsciousness, she smiled fierce and sharp and predatory, as she allowed victory to carry her to dreams.
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