"So," Fon begins, looking over his newest students who are still fiddling with their new martial arts clothes. "The most important part of training is stretching. How flexible are all of you?"

"Is there a way to quantitatively measure that?" Verde asks, pushing up his glasses.

"Yeah, I'm not sure how to answer," Skull admits.

"Are you talking Karma Sutra flexibility?" Colonnello snarks and then turns to Lal. "We can go through the whole book and find out."

Viper looks down at their hands for a moment. "I think I can touch my nose if I try really hard."

Fon thinks about ocean breeze and bamboo swaying in the wind and definitely not about punching these people in the throat.

"Can I go home?" Reborn complains, sitting on the floor off to the side, his back pressed against Luce's knees. "This is pointless; I'm a long-distance fighter."

Fon opens his mouth but gets cut off.

"And honestly, martial arts is ridiculous if it isn't supplemented by a weapon," Reborn continues. "It's like bringing a knife to a gun fight, except you don't even have a knife."

Fon thinks about his favourite food and kittens and not about holding Reborn under water until the hitman stops struggling.


"Yes sir!" Skull cries in response to Lal, sloppily saluting. Then he backtracks. "Um, is it ma'am? … si-ma'am?"

The others snicker.

"Drop and give me twenty!" Lal snaps out of habit. "All of you!"

"Twenty what?" Luce blurts out. "Oh, no, never mind I get it."

Lal shakes her head as everyone but Luce starts doing push-ups just to mock her. Skull and Colonnello are very enthusiastically calling out numbers, but Lal can't criticise their technique, so she leaves them alone. Lal then looks at Verde, the next one down the line, and just stares.

"You're lucky I'm humouring you at all," Verde replies to her silent incredulity. He's currently doing half push ups, using his knees instead of toes.

Lal accepts that reasoning and moves on, looking up at Fon, who's standing with his hands tucked into large sleeves, a serene expression on his face.

"I finished already," Fon says, despite it not being ten seconds since Lal first gave the order.

Lal can believe that anyway, so she moves on … to Reborn and Viper. The hitman is currently kneeling next to the Mist, his hands gripping the back of the cloak to lift and lower the other adult in a mimicry of a push up. Viper has proper posture for it, on hands and toes with a straight back, but also they're not doing any work at all, simply letting Reborn move them around.

They both pause and look up at Lal.

The COMSUBIN leader sighs. "I'm so glad none of you are my soldiers."


"Are those monster trucks?" Colonnello asks in amusement.

They're all lined up in black overalls, standing just off to the side of a dirt track. Skull is standing in front of them, hands on his hips and a wide grin on his face.

"This is not going to end well," Lal states.

Not ten minutes later, a monster truck covered in red Storm flames slams into a Lightning hardened one that gets shoved to the side, spinning out of control and tackling a blue truck into a pool of mud. An indigo truck speeds over all of them, entirely floating in the air.

Yet another truck, burning yellow, takes a hill at an incredible speed and lands on the red truck. The tires and metal are disintegrated as Storm flames take their toll, but the yellow truck keeps going, rolling over the green truck and then the blue, skipping over the mud completely, and then ramming into a violet truck which rolls onto its side.

"These are not Bumper Cars at a damn carnival!" Skull screams out of the window.

Luce waves a large black and white checkered flag as Viper passes the finish line about ten meters up in the air, still technically winning the race.


"And you have to make sure that no one is going to cross between you and the target," Colonnello rattles off.

He's lying on his stomach in the grass field, his entire focus on the firing range's target, two hundred meters away, an easy distance for the others. The sun is warm and the breeze is soft, a perfect day to be outside.

A snore cuts through his concentration and Colonnello pulls back from the scope before looking to the side. Only to find absolutely everyone asleep, cuddled up together.

Colonnello frowns and pops off a shot without looking. The bang jolts most of them awake, but then they blink at him sleepily and roll over, going straight back to their puppy pile and dreams.


"Information gathering is about reading people," Viper dictates. "It's pointless if you ask someone and they lie. It's also a waste of time and money if they don't know anything."

They all nod, riveted.

"Now, we're in the shopping mall to test your baseline skills," Viper continues. "Find out about these people and report back to me in an hour."

The Mist hands out pictures of different people, most of the targets turned partly away, unknowing of the photo being taken.

Skull comes back empty handed because he got distracted at the pet shop. Lal and Colonnello got name, approximate height, and any military training. Luce waved goodbye to her target and rattles off about how cute the woman's children are.

Verde claims that his target is indeed allergic to peanuts, and that's all he says, ambulance sirens in the distance. Fon tells them about how his target is a pretty good boxer and goes into detail about speed and tactics.

Reborn arrives with a bit of blood on his collar and information that the Pietra famiglia is intent on spreading their influence down to Sicily.

Viper blatantly takes out a notebook and writes down everything Reborn says. As if the Mist would waste time and money on teaching these people how to be an informant without any gain.


"No, add a bit more flour," Luce says quickly, taking away the sugar from Skull.

She then has to dart around the kitchen and remove yet another vial of something from Verde before he puts it in the mash potatoes. She also knocks the spice packet from Fon's hands because that never ends well.

Lal is at least competent, but then again she's only chopping some lettuce. Viper is mixing a bowl, but has to keep stopping when their arms get tired. Colonnello is whipping up desert except half is already gone from his 'taste tests'.

Luce sighs and looks around to find Reborn perched on the kitchen bench with a mug of espresso in his hand. He holds out another mug, this one tea with honey.

Luce smiles and makes her way over, taking the drink and just watching the mess grow. They'll order pizza or something later.


"What does this do?" asks Lal, pointing at a weird glass thing with twists and turns and round pockets.

"It's a reflux apparatus," Verde says. "It-"

"What's this?" Viper demands, staring at a large box thing set into the wall with a plastic pane that can be pulled down.

"Fume hood," Verde replies in irritation, already knowing how this is going to go despite only stepping into the room a minute ago.

The rest chime in with questions, wandering around the chemistry laboratory and poking things. Skull knocks over an entire stand of test tubes, Colonnello apparently wants to smell everything, Fon keeps getting his long sleeves in every liquid available, and Luce is standing outside because some of these chemicals effect pregnancy or can be carcinogenic and all of them are hazardous.

"What happens if I do this?" Reborn calls out, the amusement in his voice saying that he already knows.

Verde's head snaps around and he finds the hitman standing beside a bench, a large array of chemicals around him, many of which Verde did not put out. Reborn is holding two conical flasks up, both startlingly clear. They're almost like plain water, which means they're the most dangerous.

Verde scans the materials Reborn had access to and his eyes widen. "Get down!" he screams, diving under a bench.

The rest follow his lead as Reborn pours the contents of one flask into another.


Reborn slams in the magazine for the semi-automatic he's carrying. "I call this Hitman Style Paintball."

The others look between each other, wary.

"Um," Fon begins. "These are real guns and real bullets."

Reborn smirks. "That's why it's called 'Hitman Style'. The rules are: you're out of the game if you die. That's all."

Skull looks to the sidelines where Luce is sitting behind bulletproof glass. His eyes beg her for help, but the woman is playing with Leon and doesn't notice.

"Three, two, one, go!" Reborn cries and they scatter in fear as he peppers the ground around their feet with bullets.

Luce eventually takes notice that the bullets aren't rubber like Reborn promised, and she ends up saving them all from almost certain death.