Colonnello pulls up to the curb with a screech, the window of his (borrowed without permission) COMSUBIN jeep already down. "Get in, I've got candy."
Reborn raises an eyebrow.
"I mean coffee," the soldier offers up.
Reborn hums, suspicious, but gets into the vehicle anyway.
Skull meanders along the street acting like a normal person to not trigger any killing instinct and only at the last moment does he step out of the crowd's flow and jump at Fon.
Fon violently flips whoever it is going for his back but realises halfway through and gentles the vicious slam into the ground to something more like a rattling push downward.
Skull ends up on his ass, leaning back against Fon's knees and frowns.
"What did you expect to happen?" Fon muses, rightening Skull's clothes, a little wrinkled by the sudden grab.
"I expect this!" Skull turns and gets a good grip around Fon's knees, trying to topple him over.
"No," Fon says and with a twist he's sitting on Skull's back. "Please, I just want dinner."
"Defeat me first!"
"You're already defeated," Fon points out.
"This is all according to plan!"
Reborn pulls off his jacket the next time Luce shivers and drapes it around her shoulders, over the too thin coat she's already wearing.
"Aren't you cold?" Luce asks worriedly, reaching up to clutch at the lapels.
"I'm not weak like you," Reborn jokes. "Besides, I have my trusty Verde here to block the wind."
Reborn pats Verde on the chest, the scientist -for once- not wearing a lab coat but a thick trench (that's basically a lab coat anyway).
Lal ducks around the corner, from the bakery they stopped at on the walk back to the manor. "Luce, did you say rye bread?"
"With the seeds," Luce agrees and follows Lal into the store.
As soon as they're out of the vicinity Reborn slinks behind Verde to hide himself and starts shivering so hard he vibrates. "Fu-fu-fuck me, s-s-so cold."
Reborn wraps his arms around his thin shirt and hunches over. Leon stayed with Viper because he refused to come outside so Reborn doesn't even have a little green cape to hide himself in.
Verde rolls his eyes. "You were already cold with your jacket on, why did you give it to Luce?"
"I'll die like a fucking gentleman," Reborn hisses because it's not about logic, it's about the principal of the matter.
Verde unbuttons his trench coat and turns to Reborn, holding it open. Reborn dives in so quick he basically splatters against Verde's chest. The scientist closes the coat around Reborn as much as he can and hugs tightly.
"You're my favourite," Reborn admits.
"You just want me for my body heat."
"It can be both."
Viper does a double take at all the equipment Lal is laying out in the back of the takeaway restaurant they've now commandeered for the shootout. "Is that Reborn's experimental set?"
Lal stands behind the front counter, contemplating the belt of ammo magazines in different colours. "Yeah. He said I should test it, which means it might explode."
A shadow appears at the blasted open doorway and Lal slams the red clip into her empty handgun and fires. The bullet impacts hidden body armour and the capsule with dormant Storm flames inside the bullet cracks open, disintegrating the entire body and a bit of the pavement.
"I like that one," Lal muses and shoots a car she can see through the now clear doorway. The car disintegrates.
Viper hands Lal an indigo cartridge. "I loaded these but I'm not sure how they'll react, try them out." Viper then takes cover in the back kitchen, just barely peeking out through a small window.
Lal empties out the red and loads Viper's. She fires out into the empty street and it blooms into huge, thrashing tentacles.
"I was thinking tentacles," Lal admits. "But I don't know if that was me or just the basic form any of your Mist flames takes."
"Could be a bit of both," Viper acknowledges. They do enjoy tentacles. Perhaps a bit too much.
The tentacles in the street are growing; picking up cars, smashing through buildings, perhaps an illusion, also maybe real.
"We should relocate," Lal says.
"Lead the way."
Five minutes later, they're on a rooftop, and Lal selects another colour.
The blue bullets don't penetrate the body armour but it does wash over the person regardless and they stagger briefly towards cover before crumpling to the ground, body slowed into stasis for later interrogation purposes.
The orange bullet has such impact force that Lal is jolted backwards from the kick and the bullet goes straight through two people, a car tire and probably several meters of road judging by the sudden water geyser that springs up from a burst underground pipe.
The green one is a regular bullet until Lal changes target and hits metal scaffolding of a building front under repair and a Lightning barrier crackles over it.
The yellow bullets are made of rubber and unfortunately -but not unexpectedly- heal the woman Lal shoots.
Lucky last is the violet bullets because this is probably going to do a whole lot of damage.
"If I shoot someone," Lal begins cautiously. "Do they turn into Skull when he loses control and goes full steroid-by-the-fistful bodybuilder?"
"Aim at the road first," Viper says.
"If I hit the road," Lal begins. "Does it-"
"Just shoot and we run," Viper scoffs.
The violet set are basic jigsaw bullets that Reborn already uses. The metal is fitted together like a jigsaw, and the air pressure after being fired breaks it apart mid-air so a rain of shrapnel tears through whatever is in the way.
Adding Cloud flames means when a tiny bit of shrapnel hits, the road bulges and shudders into a spiky mound the size of a small van. Another bit of metal hits and the painted line of the road crackles and pops. Another piece explodes when it propagates the air before it even lands.
And then the half a dozen other pieces of the jigsaw bullet-
"Go," Lal says, already turning. "Go, go, Viper move."
Reborn shuffles the worn wooden chair around the cafe table and swings an arm around Shamal, pulling the doctor in.
Shamal looks at Reborn and then tries to follow the hitman's bright, charming smile to whatever poor soul that caught his attention.
A man across the street startles, hands clenching around the bulky photographer's camera and then slowly tries to turn it so it's like he was taking photos of the cafe's mural above them.
Reborn throws up an ironic peace sign and squishes his cheek against Shamal's.
The fake photographer, clearly here to watch either Reborn or Shamal, hesitates for a moment but snaps a quick picture and slips away into a back alley.
"That seems like a problem," Shamal says, voice a bit distorted because Reborn is nuzzling against his face.
"I like problems," Reborn says happily, narrowing his eyes. "Haven't hunted anyone down in a while."
.
A/N: These streets have seen some shit.