Brilliant fire erupted over the Episcopo castle unremittingly. It fractured the dismal black sky into cuts of radiant light. Flaming crimson storms, crystal blue raindrops, electric green sparks, blazing saffron shouts, and shining golden stars exploded across the night. Far below the fireworks display, two Guardians danced with utter glee.

"Mine next!" sang Lambo elatedly. The boy quickly concentrated a dense ball of Lightning Flames in his fist and catapulted them into the yawning sky where they sizzled into the shape of a cow.

"I'll do one better!" thundered Ryohei, shooting his Sun Flames into the form of a boxing glove. The other Guardian's rockets where abandoned in the instant.

The two discharged their Flames of the Sky into the air so recklessly shouting and shrieking with such delight that they didn't notice Yamamoto bearing Ran, incensed from the white-hot pain still burning on her charred arm, until they were practically beside them.

"Lambo-kun! Sasagawa-san!" The Rain Guardian called to the animated pair. "New orders! Lambo, relocate one click southwest." He laid Ran gently down in the dewy grass and gestured urgently in the direction of the corrupt estate, where even from this distance could be observed signs of the chaotic battle. "Intercept any enemies and direct any injured to Sasagawa and I. Gokudera-san will meet up with you when Sawada has the inside under control."

The crybaby Thunder Guardian's lip began to tremble and fat tears welled in his eyes instantly. "I don't want to go with mean octopus head!" he bawled, "I want to play with the fireworks."

"We can't really call him that until his hair grows back you know," Yamamoto observed amusedly, coating his hand with cool, soothing Rain Flames and switching his focus to Ran. "This will only deaden sensation," he explained. "Sasagawa-san will take over from there."

"He'll always be an octopus head," pouted Lambo. As he wined he slowly edged toward the powder keg of Rain, Sky, and Storm Flame rockets. "I'm not going anywhere!" The boy's hand shot out and he clenched a particularly large Storm Flame firework. The missile ignited at his touch and launched into the sky, Thunder Guardian still attached.

"Gyupaaaaa!" he wailed, the sound growing fainter as he was flung further from the impromptu medical station and closer to his newly assigned location. The remaining Guardians and Ran started wide eyed until he was out of sight and then burst out laughing.

"Well I guess he's fulfilling his purpose to 'draw damage away from the rest of the Famiglia, serving as a lightning rod,'" gasped Yamamoto between bouts of laugher. Ran chucked and Ryohei positively roared with laughter, but when Ran abruptly stopped and clenched her teeth from lingering pain the two left their unfortunate colleague to his fate to tend to her.

Hibari's tonfa shot into his eager hands from the sleeves of his suit jacket with an explosion of purple flames. He had been holding back all night, hindered by the inconvenience of the covert nature of both the herbivores' mission and his own recently fulfilled objective, and then the unsuitability of the encountered enemies. Now, now an outlet for his mounting irritation and barley restrained brute strength. Moreover, the frequent appearances of his despised enemy and Chrome's heated defense of that pineapple head's blatant ill treatment of her had the surly Cloud Guardian positively wrathful.

In true Cloud Guardian form Hibari stormed the Episcopo deep laboratory solo, Yuni and Chrome alarmed and quickly moving in behind. This dungeon was not lit by the eerie glow of suspended animation tanks as the previous holding chamber was, but washed in the light of hard, cold, fluorescent bulbs that intensified the glaring whiteness of the tiled floor and walls and illuminated two erect figures seemingly expecting the trio. One, the pinched, fox's face of the perverse Glo Xinia, and the second entirely encased in metal and wires.

A mosca, Hibari scoffed inwardly. He'd dealt with these pathetic machines in the past. In his fixation to duel Xanxus during the Vongola Tournament he'd crumpled the Varia's Gola Mosca in one move.

"Perish, invertebrate," he snarled, lunging at the mash of metal, wires, and flesh. His tonfa clanged resoundingly against the dense steel shell. He drew his arm back violently for another strike, but found his weapon immovable.

With some upgrades it seems, Hibari mused bitterly. Some magnetic interference. Even as he extracted himself from close quarters his tonfa remained anchored to the point of attack. He had no desire to waste time on any lesser enemy while his target was further on, he could sense it. Mukuro Rokudo would evade him no longer.

A flash of violet blurred past him to the enemy beyond. Chrome. Intent on locating her savior and rescuing her degenerate companions no doubt. She had become a distinct being to him since her flight to Vongola Headquarters. Had risen from a puppet chained to the infirmary bed by his box weapon, a mere sleeve to be inhabited by that illusionist of his loathing. The vessel, previously in Hibari's mind, had no consequential psyche independent of that distant and imprisoned Mist Guardian. A negligible placeholder until Rokudo manifested, which at least stirred some interest in the Cloud Guardian with the ever-present promise of combat.

But the girl evolved into something greater since that cutthroat fight on the day her possessor's sentence was served. No, it began earlier than that he knew. Her ferocity born of desperation and fear in that moment though, so unstable and made tangible in erratic black flames, embodied her on this mission from the ferocity of love. She loved fiercely; her adoptive family of Guardians, her ruthless trashy Kokuyo troop, and especially, disastrously, that damnable illusionist Mukuro Rokudo. She had a mind, and that mind chose to attach itself to that man's. Hibari didn't know which was worse, the empty doll unwittingly abused by Rokudo, or the blazing girl who would absolutely and vehemently stand with him.

That underdeveloped voice in his head nagged that she was not the only one with undesirable connections after all. Though he had just terminated his last one, that didn't change what he was, where he'd come from. And she was beginning to suspect.

"Kyoya!" Her voice pierced his roiling thoughts. Almost too late he registered a company of assassins converging upon him. His rage spiked at this near fatal oversight. He cursed his departure from the solitary life he'd kept to now. Associating with a pack only hindered his pursuit of that which was truly important: power.

He purged his mind of its atypical interference and locked arms with the first attacker in a battle of strength, the two pushing against each other like wild rams…or so it seemed. Hibari feigned the deadlock, tricking his foolish opponent into committing his full strength to the struggle. Redirecting the assassin's force into the ground with his firm stance, he circled his arms out of the deadlock, bringing them down with little pressure onto the enemy's elbows, crumpling the outstretched limbs. The body followed, completely off balance now that there was no opposing force to push against, and Hibari brought his knee up making sharp contact with the man's head, finishing him expeditiously.

The next assailant already rushing him, Hibari merely stepped forward, hooking the woman's ankle and trapping it. Employing limb-versus-body techniques, he leaned forward, the pressure of his whole weight hyperextending the captive knee with little exertion on his part. She cried out, but Hibari wasn't finished with her. He swung his back leg up and round, bringing it down on the assassin's already injured knee and breaking the leg. She rose, persistent, but he finally delivered a sharp jab to her throat, felling her instantly.

Yet another enemy drove his fist forward, trying to catch the Cloud Guardian in the jaw. Hibari grabbed the outstretched limb and smoothly stepped behind the attacker, delivering two bone-shattering blows to the ribs and skull.

Another punch as the man in front of him crumbled to reveal another of the seemingly endless supply of Episcopo assassins. He snatched the offending wrist, bent it back to its owner, and wrenched the entire limb to the side and back. The Episcopo flailed only for an instant in his lost balance before his movements were quieted.

A vicious roar, "I'll bite you all to death!"

"Mukuro-sama? Mukuro-sama!" Chrome pressed his limp hands tightly, but he did not stir. He was supposed to be waiting for them here as Yuni had said above in the ballroom. He was already at the mission-end site, she's assured her, he was already at the...

And then it all fell into place. Only illusionary projections since his release, the absent telepathic connection, that final urging command she vaguely recalled from his partial possession at the lab door: "hurry."

He had been one of the captives all along.

The female Mist Guardian looked sharply to Yuni, crouched on Mukuro's other side. "You knew." Her tone mingled with hurt and disbelief. "How could you keep this from me?"

"Chrome-chan, I'm sorry," the Arocaboleo princess grasped the full import of such a betrayal, as a true leader would, imploring her friend to understand. "No one else knew either, I only figured it out just before the mission. Tsuna and everyone came because of the potential dangers of any research from here getting on the black market, you came for the Kokuyo members, but him...he would tell no one he was here, and you know he would never openly seek any rescue no matter the condition."

I can only carry one person, Chrome remembered Yuni's teasing words to him from the espionage portion of the mission.

"If you knew," Yuni continued pleadingly, "you wouldn't have agreed to go to Mafia Land at all! That didn't end up succeeding, but this is the most dangerous place for you! We couldn't risk you falling into their hands too."

"Too late." A syrupy ravenous voice. Yuni cringed at Glo Xinia's hot breath in her ear. "I'll have you all yet."

Oh no. Chrome rose instantly, turning back to the battle she'd sprinted past at seeing her counterpart so splayed against a wall. Hibari was distancing himself from the mosca-like enemy but all around him now—

"Kyoya!" She had only time to send him a warning cry. Even as she shot the last syllable of his name from her lips she pulled thick illusionary vines from the blindingly white tiled floor to encased Glo Xinia. Her biological ropes demolished the artificially perfect surface and wrenched Glo Xinia back away from Yuni, his saliva coated tongue still lolling from his mouth.

"So you came to get him out of here." Chrome faced Yuni, still at Mukuro's side, while summoning Daemon Spade's Devil Lens. They shared a perceptive look. "Do what you came for then," she said with her eyes, before leaping into action, charging toward the battle.

Kyoya.