They weren't trying to be subtle when they raided Russia, but it may have gotten a bit out of control. The entirety of the Bratva are out for their heads and now so are the actual police, which was not intended.

Reborn may have also said some rude things when he got into that scuffle dropping Luce off at the airport. Not his fault, because they started it first, Reborn was just responding.

So, in the end, they lingered too long and overstayed their welcome to the point where the borders are closed on them…

"We're driving down past Kazakhstan and into China to then catch a plane back," Lal explains.

"No," Reborn says immediately. "That sounds horrible. You can all suffer, but I'm going to put on a dress and sneak past border security."

Colonnello places a heavy hand on Reborn's shoulder. "Friendship means suffering together."

"Who said we were friends?"

The car is a seven seater – two in the front, then three, and two at the back with no trunk space.

Colonnello is driving because he won rock paper scissors and gets more room at the front – which is definitely necessary because he's the second tallest. Reborn and Fon both only come up to his jaw at their slightly above average height.

Verde is shoved into the passenger seat because his legs are too long for anywhere else for him to be comfortable. He's at two meters, Colonnello coming up his mouth while Reborn and Fon can tuck themselves under his chin with room to spare.

Skull, Lal and Fon lie the second row – Lal in the middle because she's rather small but she doesn't look happy about it. Fon has broad shoulders and his sleeves go everywhere while Skull spreads himself and tends to cling to people near him. Skull is an average height but he slumps and stands next to people like Colonnello so he looks small.

The back row is Viper and Reborn. Viper is halfway between Skull and Lal in height but they're skinny and don't want to be squished in the middle so they've retreated to the back. Reborn is there because he loves stuffing himself into small spaces and, to be honest, no one wants to deal with him.

They get two hours in and there's shifting in the backrow.

"No," Lal sighs.

"Yes," Reborn insists, seatbelt already off as he leans over the divide.

"No," Fon pleads, twisting to try and shove Reborn back. "You picked your seat, stay there."

"My legs are asleep," Reborn complains, sliding into Skull's lap and then stretching out over Lal and Fon.

Viper starts stretching as well but Lal bails out of the second row and crawls back with Viper. Reborn moves to the middle seat and shoves his legs through the gap in front.

"Feet off," Colonnello says warningly. "This is a manual - and I wasn't here but I know what you did the last time."

Last time, Reborn kicked the shift and nearly forced them off a cliff because he wanted to see how good Skull's reaction time while driving was.

Reborn bends his knees and twists his legs so his feet are on Verde's lap, then he flops over onto Fon.

"Stop," Lal demands.

"I'm fine," Reborn mumbles into Fon's thigh, trying to behave himself. "Just bored."

Verde sighs. "Fine. Let's play a game."

Reborn perks up a bit but he's wary. "Is it the quiet game?"

"What speed are we going?"

Reborn pushes up and peeks out of the window, tracking the trees that go by for a long moment. "Eighty-two."

"Range?"

Reborn purses his lips. "Three?"

"Four."

"Damn it."

Skull slams his head back against the headrest. "You are so nerdy that it hurts listening to you. Are you seriously calculating that?"

Colonnello abruptly spits out, "You gelatinous fuck!"

Skull blinks. "Uh."

"Not you," Colonnello huffs. "This half sucked mango that cut me off. Dive off a cliff, dickhead!"

"Want me to shoot them?" Reborn asks.

"Not now," Colonnello huffs. "Lie down, baby, the next stop is still three hours away."

They stop at a shitty dinner attached to the back of a petrol station. Lal and Fon are doing stretches outside while Verde is slumped sideways on top of Skull's head. Everyone else is perusing the one menu they have.

"I'm getting a salad," one woman says from the table behind Skull.

"Did you want to share it?" her friend asks.

"Yeah, I'd never eat that much anyway."

Reborn taps his chin with a finger. "Hm, maybe I'll get the salad."

Viper leans forward. "Let's split one with the whole table."

Colonnello huffs. "Of course we're splitting, I'm not a pig."

Skull shrinks down in his seat, Verde dropping with him, because he can feel the women attempt to pierce their stares right through his brain.

Some piece of shit entry-level Audi overtakes Reborn only to then slow down below the speed limit by twenty kilometres. Reborn is firmly of the opinion that if someone can't drive well at night, they should get off the road.

Reborn flicks on his high beams to annoy the car in front and keeps them on until the next overtaking lane comes up, the road splitting into two lanes again, and he quickly pulls in front.

That fucking Audi overtakes him not five minutes later and slows down again.

Everyone snaps awake at the sound of a gun shot and watches as the car in front careens off the road and slams into a tree going a hundred and ten.

"Oh my," Reborn murmurs. "There must have been something very sharp on the road to rip that tire."

"Pull the fuck over, Reborn."

Colonnello looks around from the passenger seat. He glances at Skull next to him, then out of the window, and then through the side mirror. A look into the back of the car reveals that everyone is sleeping. It's so early in the morning that everyone just crashed after dragging themselves out of the hotel they stayed the night at.

Colonnello frowns. "Um, that turn just then, were you allowed to do that move?"

"Yep," Skull says lazily.

"Are you sure?"

"I know my road rules."

"Really? Because every time I'm in a car with you, I never see you display this knowledge."

Colonnello abruptly starts laughing. Lal looks over Fon's head to see a truck pulling in front of them.

"Trucky-boy," Colonnello wheezes. "What are you doing on the take-over lane? You're not that fast."

"He's definitely trying," Verde mutters from the front seat, squinting at his hand of cards.

Viper shifts around beside Lal, trying to take a peek at her cards. "Do you think they're drag racing?"

The speedy boy truck is neck and neck with another truck so Colonnello is just trapped behind them.

Reborn is already leaning over Skull, lowering the window with a gun in hand. Fon quickly confiscates the weapon before the hitman shoots out some tires.

Reborn blinks awake, tucked into Verde's side and not really understanding why he woke up. Verde snuffles a little and then starts snoring again. Ah, that's why Reborn is awake.

Reborn pulls back and realises everyone else is asleep, Skull still driving along an empty stretch of highway with another caravan off in the distance ahead of them.

Reborn shuffles around a bit and, definitely by accident, elbows Verde in the side. Reborn quickly pretends to be asleep, head slumped forward with his chin resting against his chest. Verde startles, blinks sleepily and then goes right back to snoring in a matter of minutes.

Reborn frowns, straightening up. He reaches out and gently pushes Verde's jaw up to close his mouth. Verde's teeth click shut but his lips are parted and he's still snoring.

Reborn pinches Verde's lips together. It stops the loud noise but Reborn has bad impulse control, so he also pinches the man's nose shut. Interestingly, Verde takes quite a while before he registers that he's being suffocated.

Reborn snatches his hands back and plays dead when he sees Verde's eyelids flutter.

Verde squints out of the window for a while and pushes up his glasses. "Reborn, you have five seconds to explain yourself before I harden the muscles in your chest and give you a heart attack."

Reborn uses those five second to unbuckle himself and dive into the passenger seat's footwell, hiding under Colonnello's legs as Verde tries to grab him.

"Stop!" Lal snaps immediately as she wakes up, reaching across Viper to pull Verde back. "If I wanted to mind children then I would have stayed in COMSUBIN!"

"Ouch," Colonnello mutters.

Verde shrugs Lal off but stays in his seat. "He tried to kill me."

"Again?" Fon mutters, eyes still closed and leaning against the window with Skull's leather jacket as a pillow.

"You were snoring," Reborn complains. "I couldn't sleep."

"So your first thought was 'murder'?"

"I wasn't trying to kill you, it just happened!"

Viper laughs. "That's messed up."

Fon startles awake in the third row next to Viper when the car trembles. There are white lines space close together across the road, raised slightly so the car gets bumped around.

"It wakes up drivers a bit," Skull says easily, noticing Fon's confusion in the rear-view mirror. He glances to the others, all of them also blinking sleepily. "It's only warning us about a set of lights, go back to sleep, cuties."

Skull gets a bit of grumbling but they do slump down again. Verde, now in the passenger seat again, gives Reborn a suspicious look but the hitman is lying down across Lal's lap and she has a pretty firm grip on his hair.

Fon purses his lips. "Skull, at the next petrol station, can I drive?"

Viper jerks upright. "You don't have a licence."

"Sure," Skull says instead. "I'll teach you, it's easy."

Viper opens their mouth and then closes it again. "Fon. Doesn't have. A licence."

"Neither do I, technically."

Lal reaches past the seat in front and grabs Skull's shoulders, yanking him back as she lurches forward, Reborn sitting up as he's dislodged. "What?" she hisses into Skull's ear. "You don't have a what?"

Skull only laughs. "I have forged every single one."

Reborn drags a hand across his face. "God, that explains so much."

"Fon!" Colonnello shrieks, clinging to Verde so tightly the scientist is having trouble breathing.

Skull hums and reaches over to grab the wheel from the passenger's seat. "Just a little correction there, try to stay in the lines."

They all narrowly miss getting crushed by the two-trailer truck a lane over when Skull quickly swerves them out of the way, everyone in the vicinity honking at them.

Fon drives like there are four lanes on a three lane road.

"Ah," Skull says mildly. "No, you can't cross solid lines, remember? Especially not double."

Viper is screaming. They're just screaming, a death grip on the door as Fon almost drives them into oncoming traffic.

Everyone is peripherally aware that Skull drives likes this too, he's done some pretty risky manoeuvres before. But Skull can control the car, and even when it fishtails out it's Skull doing that on purpose to scare them. They've gotten used to it.

Fon doesn't know what the fuck he's doing and the excited but confused smile on his face says more than enough. They're all going to die because Fon thinks going one-twenty down a highway at night is the perfect place to have his first practice behind the wheel.

The car slams to a stop, Reborn catching himself on the seat in front before his nose is broken from the sudden impact but still chokes on the seatbelt.

"Keep going," Skull says. "You're doing great, but you can't stop like this in case someone is right behind you."

The barrel of a Malvagio comes to rest against the side of Fon's head. "Pull over," Reborn orders. "I'm driving."

Lal thinks to herself as she drives through the sunrise. Lal thinks that she shouldn't have lied about Luce's plane having no more seats. She thinks delaying their exit out of Russia just to give the Bratva enough time to close the borders was maybe not well thought out.

Lal thinks she could have planned a better way to avoid the shitshow in Italy, while that Vongola Don of Reborn's calmly sweeps the garbage to the side before setting everything alight. Lal definitely thinks that she never wants to be in a car with these assholes for longer than an hour ever again.

But the way they sleep on each other is super cute so it's not a total loss.