Reborn's dancing, much like the rest of his personality, is set at two extremes. Either he's a consummate professional in traditional ballroom dancing, or else he's a stripper.

Judging by the fact that this event is a Mafia charity gala, it's unfortunately not the proper opportunity to demonstrate the latter dancing skill.

"You could," Colonnello says, still chuckling a bit from Reborn abrupt assessment. "I mean grab a table, Viper can add a pole, you're good to go."

Reborn smiles behind his glass of champagne. "I can donate all the cash I get to the charity."

Colonnello barks out a laugh and leans sideways to bump shoulders with Reborn. "Fuck charity, you should just keep it all."

The charity is actually to sponsor Mafia Land, which Reborn has been avoiding since the last incident. Reborn does believe in the cause though so he's donated guns and some clothing accessories like a belt with lockpicks set into the leather, for the charity to auction off later this evening.

Viper is the one who dragged them all here after the invitation reached the manor. Reborn doesn't mind, it's a good place to make connections, which is of course Viper's goal tonight, but the others dragged their feet as Reborn dressed them up.

Skull trots over, cleaning his hands with a napkin, chocolate cake smudged around the corners of his lips. At least his cute bowtie and vest are still proper but the hair is a lost cause. "Do you wanna dance?"

"Not with you," Reborn retorts.

Which means Skull immediately narrows in on the hitman. "Let's go!" He tosses the crumpled napkin vaguely the in the direction of a table and grabs Reborn's hand, dragging him out of the nook he'd found and towards the dancefloor.

Reborn drops off his champagne on the tray of a passing waitress and gathers Skull towards him in the proper hold before spinning them out into the crowd.

Skull like the spins a lot so they stay off to the side, making up their own steps that involve a lot of twirling, both together and apart. Skull holds up his arm, gripping Reborn's hand, and only then realises that Reborn is going to have some trouble getting underneath considering how much shorter Skull is.

Reborn simply coils up, spinning underneath before unfolding smoothly back to his proper height.

Skull's eyes go wide at the graceful move and after a few steps, Skull holds up his arm again. He wants to watch Reborn do that spin, it's so pretty.

Reborn obliges him with a smirk but halfway back, he gets snatched away by a blur of red and Skull is left standing alone as Fon bullies Reborn deeper into the crowd of dancers.

Skull shrugs and ducks through the crowd until he finds Lal chatting at the edges with some guy in military medals.

"Lal!" Skull cheers and yanks her away.

Lal sighs but follows anyway. She takes the lead because Skull is a disaster and only knows how to dance like he's in a rave.

Reborn and Fon have turned into a tornado of red and black spinning through the crowd, switching back and forth between who leads while simultaneously trying to trip each other up, all while somehow matching the tempo of the live band.

"Can they not at least pretend to be professional?" Lal complains to the stuntman, twirling Skull. "Reborn keeps pissing off all his clients, he should be making contacts here."

Skull shrugs. "I think it's less Reborn and more Fon."

Lal glances over and Skull stumbles as she guides them into a box step alongside the crowd. Across the room, Fon hooks a foot around the back of Reborn's and the hitman is forced into a sudden dip that almost displaces his fedora.

Unsurprising, since Fon wins eight out of ten fights when Reborn doesn't pull a gun out. However, Lal privately thinks that if it was honestly to the death, regardless of a gun or not, Fon would find himself struggling. Reborn can be slippery when he wants to be.

"Oh," Lal finally realises. "There are Triad in the crowd. Fon has been with us too long, they must be pressuring him to show some kind of result."

"Should we help?" Skull asks, peering around. "Reborn is getting twitchy."

Reborn grabs Fon's braid to haul himself back up and the two are off again.

Lal says nothing but takes Skull closer. She spins Skull into Fon and steals away Reborn.

"Reborn did not like that," Fon sighs.

"Watch out for sudden bullets," Skull laughs.

"I know," Fon admits, luring Skull into the middle of the crowd to hide them as much as possible. "I will make it up to him later. I'll be his coffee slave for a week."

Skull splutters in protest. "Excuse you, I'm his coffee slave."

Fon has had to slow his pace considerably for Skull but that looks bad, because other people should not dictate his actions. So Fon picks up the stuntman and places Skull on top of his feet before picking up the pace.

Skull clings to Fon's shoulders and gets taken for a ride, laughing as the room blurs around them.

"And how are you enjoying the party?" Fon asks with a fond smile. "Making friends?"

Skull perks up. "Do you know the Carcassa famiglia? They're super cool."

Fon makes a vague noise. "We…will have to talk about that later."

Fon stops so Skull can step off his feet, do a spin, and then hop back on before they move off again.

"Are they bad?" Skull asks. "And what kind of bad? As in too beneath you in political connections, or not strong enough, or into the bad stuff like snuff films, or did Reborn kill a lot of them once, or-"

Fon slingshots Skull at Viper.

Viper is basically spear tackled away from their negotiations and Fon steps up to the woman with a polite smile.

Viper stops themself from hitting the ground through liberal use of ESP and some Mist tentacles. "Skull, you fuckwit-"

"Fon did that," Skull argues, scrambling off Viper and getting his feet back under him. "Wanna dance?"

"Eat a dick."

Viper gets dragged off anyway and it's a disaster because Viper refuses to do anything but float in place while Skull moves them around, and Skull doesn't know how to dance.

Lal and Colonnello swing by, the blond asshole already laughing at them.

Viper scowls and just shoves Skull into Lal, stepping up to Colonnello instead.

Colonnello watches sadly as Lal leaves him. He just started dancing! Come on, how unfair.

"That's what you get," Viper mutters.

"What have I done?" Colonnello complains, swinging them both after Lal, in the hope that Skull leaves and Lal comes back to Colonnello.

"Nothing," Viper says. "You do nothing, and that's the problem. Take lead and control them."

"Uh, no? That's your problem."

Viper clicks their tongue. "That's Luce's problem. And speaking of Luce, I do believe I have blackmail on her dancing partner."

"You're ditching me already?" Colonnello says but swings them closer to where Luce has that bland boss smile that says she's only talking to the guy because she has to.

Colonnello comes to a stop beside them, separates from Viper, and holds out a hand. "May I have this dance?"

Luce pulls away. "Do excuse me, Walter."

Walter is too distracted by Viper, looking rather worried as the Mist floats closer ominously.

Luce takes Colonnello's hand and her smile relaxes to something more genuine. She laughs when Colonnello goes the extra step and presses a kiss to the back of her hand before they fall into step with the other dancers.

"Did you get that from Reborn?" Luce asks.

"I just saw him use the hand kiss thing to seduce someone away," Colonnello admits. "Let's hope he doesn't get caught or we'll have to make a speedy exit."

Luce looks around and just manages to spot Reborn disappearing off into a darkened hallway with a woman dressed in dark green and a seductive smirk on her lips.

"That's an assassin," Luce points out.

"Great, hopefully they'll kill each other."

Luce frowns. "Get Fon for me, I'll follow them first and see if I can't pull Reborn away before he makes a scene."

Colonnello rolls his eyes but takes off. Luce steps off the dancefloor as well and makes her way towards the exit Reborn took.

A man breaks away from the nearest group casually chatting around a table of food, and makes his way into the darkened hallway after Reborn, hand slipping into his suit jacket.

Luce picks up her pace. Reborn will be fine but she still worries.

Fon swiftly joins her, taking the lead. He takes a left and so Luce follows. The second door down is closed and there's a loud thump that comes from inside.

Fon opens the door and Luce peeks inside.

The woman and man are dead on the ground, the woman frothing at the mouth and looking like she might have been dragged into the room, while the man has a hole through his head.

Verde looks up where he's kneeling beside the woman, taking notes on a notebook, hands covered in latex gloves. Reborn is lounging on a couch near Verde, unscrewing the silencer from his gun.

"Luce," Reborn says in delight. "Would you like some chocolate?"

Reborn nods towards a table where a napkin holding small praline chocolates sits, surrounded by small glass vials and needles, plus an extra set of gloves and a case to hold it all.

"Throw that before someone does eat it," Luce warns.

Verde frowns, going back to his test subject. "I'm keeping the chocolates for further testing."

Fon walks up to Reborn and takes a seat beside the hitman. "Was this planned?"

"My hit was the man," Reborn says. "The extra assassin was a happy coincidence, so I offered to let Verde have her."

"Tell me again," Verde says.

Reborn crosses his legs, weapons now tucked away. "I gave her the champagne right outside the room and it reacted with the chocolates rather fast, only six seconds before she started coughing-"

Colonnello pokes his head into the room. "Lal says this many people is suspicious unless we're having an orgy, so break it up."

While they file out of the room, Verde takes a sample of the pink foam from the woman's mouth.

Reborn, the only other living person left in the room, stretches himself out on the couch. "I did also give her a knock against the wall so she'd stop struggling but I don't know how much that affected it."

"Wouldn't have done much," Verde assures the hitman. "The combined reaction causes a foam, much like the 'elephant toothpaste' chemical reaction that amuses children so much. That filled her stomach before spreading up her oesophagus, which then hardened quickly upon contact to air and the expansion blocked her trachea."

"Are you taking the body home?" Reborn muses.

"I already made arrangements with Viper."

With perfect timing, Viper shows up alongside the woman they had been dancing with before getting tackled by Skull. "You done in here?"

Verde stands up and starts packing everything into the case. "You have the address?"

"Of course," the woman says happily, a well-known cleaner for the elites. "Pleasure doing work with you, Verde."