Xanxus' Adventures in Parenthood Piracy by InsaneScriptist

Beta'd by the superlative Umei no Mai

Summary: Xanxus could only blame the damn scientists for stranding him in an alternate dimension. However Xanxus could only blame himself for allowing that woman to foist her child onto him. Drabble fic.

Career

Sansetto and Squalette returned to the Clyde's home rather later, where once Xanxus mentioned he was a freelance assassin as opposed to one kept by the World Government the rest of the Clydes were happy to have him continue to mooch food, despite the business dinner earlier.

Again, the people here were freaking weird. Normal civilian people should have more of a reaction to having an assassin in their homes. At least a little more fear, or wariness. They weren't living in Nana-fantasy land since Squalette's ran cons and scams instead of expecting money to appear; she was actually pretty good at them and they weren't the low level cons of 'crying child' or 'help my baby' or any of the lower level traps. Acting, props, costumes, collaborators and preparation placed the younger Clydes as mid-level scam artists, if on a small scale; the only thing really holding them back from a grander scale was that they were young and undereducated. Both of those problems could easily be fixed, which made them a decent find.

He still couldn't quite understand how they were so welcoming to a freelance assassin. Then again, they hadn't seen him kill anyone, had only seen him as courteous and intelligent with an ambition in business who was recruiting Squalette for that and nothing else. Him being a serial food moocher, talented gunsmith and sharpshooter apparently took precedence over his 'former' profession when they'd never actually seen him commit violence. Rage they'd seen, but no actual injuries or deaths.

Then again, in a world where piracy was always an option and stupidly common, dealing with criminals all sorts especially in a weapon business would be something you learned to deal with. They lived in Lougetown, which was the last stop for anyone in East Blue heading for the Grand Line; the town was used to pirates, even if they were from East Blue which was the 'weakest of all seas.' In comparison to the variety of criminals piracy allowed, an assassin is at least a professional criminal interested only in death and not much more than that unless being paid to care.

This world's naivety was a bit endearing when it wasn't being frustrating.

Assassins were made and stayed assassins until they died. Even those who had 'retired' into the Varia's Housekeeping Staff still identified themselves as assassins first and foremost mentally. They'd do that until the day they died.

Assassination was a career that stayed with you and supplanted everything else. An assassin could retire, start a business, build a life, have a family and still identify themselves as an assassin before they said they were a proud parent. Retired just meant that you weren't accepting killing requests and were probably training up a replacement, deliberately or subconsciously.

Being an assassin wasn't like being an accountant, a shopkeep or anything else. You didn't leave work alone when you went home and expect it to leave you alone. It was like being an artist, with murder the medium and death the commission. An artist lived and breathed their work until it was the core of their being and never left their consciousness. Much like any artist, color seeped into their surroundings, spread with careless ease and made them neurotic to varying degrees.

And people wondered why the Varia was full of freaks for all that those same people were unknowing or willing patrons.

Charts

He left the Clydes a little overstuffed in the way that those from America called 'full.' While Xanxus would to admit to enjoying the fusion of flavors that sometimes resulted from the mixing of cultures -Louisana's Gator Gumbo was surprisingly good- he didn't enjoy their portion sizes or what they claimed was 'Italian' food. It wasn't, and would not ever be. Gorging yourself was never a pretty sight, nor was getting sick from eating too much.

Rationing resources was the way to go as you could still escape the table at full speed if necessary; that is when the Varia ate at tables together. Most of the Varia took meals in their rooms, some had them delivered to where they were currently at and more just frequently visited the cafe, as a set of rooms near the kitchen came to be called. Properly it was the servant's dining room and a few conjoining rooms back when the castle the Varia Headquarters were based in was used by nobility and royalty alike. The formal dining rooms were never used as they was intended to be; getting that many assassins in one place with food would turn the room into a battlefield since unlike the cafe which had little tables spaced well apart from each other. The only formal dining room used as such had a lengthy and massive dark table with a number of stuffy chairs.

It would be all too easy and tempting for Bel to steal someone's food or for someone to 'accidentally' poison someone else. The largest formal dining room -which was the only one not turned into apartments or some other room- was still set up for formal dining purposes but Xanxus preferred to eat in his office. The formal dining room had maybe been used for formal dining three times since Xanxus took over the Varia.

Once was due to his own 'welcome to the Varia' party thrown by Housekeeping, which is how he learned that hordes of assassins and formal dining don't mix. The other two events was the retirement party of his Cloud Officer and later, for her child's christening as she had wanted Father Gregori to be the one to do that. The dining room and furniture somehow survived those two events, but Xanxus was more certain it had to deal with the fact that the few women of the Varia and Luss were determined to host the events; much like the other recreational events they created Xanxus didn't particularly care so long as it didn't interfere with work. Complaints about hostage-taking, threats to manhood and other crap like 'explosives placed in everyone's rooms!' were ignored; if they could force attendance and good behavior, that just meant that clearly they knew what they were doing and were keeping their skills sharp. The last part, he approved of since them keeping their skills sharp meant that the trash knew where they failed and had motivation to improve.

Still, he had to find charts and other goods, even if just to send back to the idiots who got him in this mess in the first place so they'd know where to drop people off. He didn't want to wish being stranded at sea on any of his people; the stupid scientists were a different story of course.

So accurate charts... looked like he'd be stealing things from the Marine Base again. Oh, and star charts too. Knowing the maps wouldn't be worth much if you didn't know where you were at; maps were inherently useless if you didn't know where you were in relation to everywhere else, especially when civilization could be days of sailing away.

Civilization was such a joke anyway and most people didn't understand the punchline.

Materials

Xanxus picked up all he thought he would need as he organized his presentation in his head. Charts of the Blues, star charts, and other goods. What he needed to say, when he needed to say it and to whom; no reason to drive up the tension between Kawahira and the Acrobaleno in attendance by forcing them to spend more time together if he didn't need to. There was also permission he had to give for release of files and missions if he actually had to press certain things or have people press issues for him. Squalo knew them all after all, but some things he didn't have permission to do something about.

After organizing that in his room, he supposed he had better pack. He was going to be leaving soon after all.

Then he noticed that he lacked something to pack everything in; clothing would be easy enough, extra flame-proofing materials could be dumped after he exorcised his sword, the guns however would have to be packed up properly alongside what ammunition he had. He had taken two copies of maps from the Marine store; they had enough surplus there that it wouldn't be noticed, although the missing star charts might eventually be noticed as there were less of them, despite the dust he kicked up uncovering them.

Then there was knocking on his hotel door.

Surprise

Long trained reflexes had him refusing to answer the door on principle; instead he escaped out his window, broke in on a lower level and circled around, then went up the stairs.

Spying Rosso and Seta in the corridor told him that it was not an over-reaction. Then he noticed a few other things that added up to one conclusion; Rosso wasn't there, and this was Cotone, as Seta was even more protective of the young body, which was expressing lots of vulnerable body language. Not exactly vulnerable but under-confident and overly anxious added up to the same thing.

Stilling his heart and adrenaline into a calm state was something that was easy with enough close-calls and near-misses; his physical overreaction was due to surprise and lack of action. Not surprising when he went from intense deadly spars full of lethal intent and frequent missions to just sneaking around like a shadow wraith for several months.

Keeping his footsteps silent anyway was easy enough, as was sneaking up on the duo. Seta noticed him first, but only after he was leaning against the wall opposite his door.

"Ah, Xanxus, my apologies for bringing up memories best left undisturbed the last time you visited. Cotone has finished the rings you commissioned and brought them to you."

Cotone, unlike the sly, confident and always performing Rosso was very... shy, was the best term for it. Rabbit-like in that she froze, still and stiff like that.

"Um... delivery is um, free of cha-charge." She held out a case, the size of which told Xanxus it was full of rings.

"Thank you, Cotone." Xanxus replied truthfully, as even if they were cursed the rings could be very useful to him; it wasn't that hard to remove mild and moderate curses after all.

Cotone blushed, eyes dropping to stare at her feet.

Packing

"By the way, we still have one other matter pertaining to what's stored in the basement." Seta reminded them.

"And that's not a conversation to have in the hall." Xanxus replied, as he used Mist Flames to open the door without touching it. There was a reason why security systems were complete and utter failures against a well-trained and talented Mists. Prisons were just a teensy bit harder, even if that prison was Impel Down. Vendicare had fallen to a sufficiently talented Mist before and probably would again.

They then saw the mess his room was in, from his preliminary packing which was more of organizing what he was taking and what he wasn't. Then because Xanxus was being paranoid, he used those same Mist Flames to seal the room from any possible eavesdropping, both physically and psychically.

"Rosso!" Cotone, looked on the edge of having a panic attack, and then damage started appearing on her; using his own Mist Flames Xanxus quickly assessed the amount of damage and set up his own illusion to keep Cotone from dying; illusionary organs weren't exactly hard, as they were a mid-level skill, although the trauma of the incident that had Cotone becoming a refugee from death had probably broken her emotional equilibrium and general confidence outside her area of expertise; that explained a lot of her shyness. Xanxus could keep those fake organs going for a few hours easy although maintaining them with ease was something only actual Mists could do, or maybe Deserts.

He had judged the relationship between Cotone and Ross correctly, except unlike the Sawada-brat's duel Mists, there was less teaching going on. He might have to actually teach her how to hold them on her own, and that could be done quickly using the memory transfer technique although the difference between Mist Flames and Desert Flames meant she'd have to puzzle out the differences and still practice more until she could hold the illusions in her sleep.

Judging by what he saw of her injuries, Rosso had bonded with Cotone within minutes, if not seconds of the incident; otherwise Cotone would be dead. It was not the slow death of hours that Sawada's lady-Mist would face as her body couldn't keep her alive without the fake organs but a relatively quick one taking only minutes. Mist Flames could replace organs but if the body thought it was fine it would never naturally heal either, which explained why Cotone remained 'young' for years on end. Defying the effects of time on the body could also be done if you were a powerful enough Mist; Xanxus knew he was good at fixing mild to moderate damage but that level of damage was beyond him. Lussuria and Mammon together could fix the worst of it in a few sessions but they weren't here either.

"Cotone, you need to breathe calmly or I will use Rain Flames to calm you."

The shy Desert then regained control of herself, mentioning that 'she was just surprised.'

Xanxus explained that he didn't want to see Rosso, he wanted to meet Cotone, which had her blushing again. Xanxus was certain that if he saw Rosso within the year, he would find it very hard to control his temper. He tried to forget about that part of the visit, as that trash pissed him off.

Seta interrupted, by asking, "Do you need something to pack all this in?"

Xanxus gave him a withering stare, to Cotone's shy giggles.

I have finally finished my Roger met Xanxus chapter from Roger's perspective for Pirated Perspectives. It's going up after this. By the way, what's with the lack of reviews? I want to hear from more than five or so consistent reviewers and three semi-consistent ones about what they like, dislike and why. Especially the 'why.' Constructive reviews help me write better.