Reborn is at a party, surrounded by stunningly beautiful men and women who all titter and shuffle ever closer with too wide close-lipped smiles and narrowed eyes.

"I'm glad you could make it," giggles a woman too old to be giggling. She has a death grip around Reborn's upper arm, shiny red nails threatening to rip a hole through his suit jacket. "A man as desirable as you must be so busy."

Reborn smiles charmingly, sending several of the weaker ones swooning, and wonders how many he'll bring to his hotel room tonight. "I get enough offers coming in that I can pick and choose which ones interest me."

"Are you interested in-" another woman says from too far back in the crowd and gets jostled out of the pack structure for speaking out of turn.

"Oh, Reborn," sighs a man, hand sliding further down Reborn's back. "Tell me, what things interest you these days?"

Reborn hums. "I have to say my current hobby is pushing little children into the gap between the train and the platform."

A laugh is shocked out of a nearby woman, middle of the pack because of her low ranking famiglia, and Reborn locks onto her. She stutters. "S-sir, I-"

There's a brief scuffle on the other side of the crushing crowd as an assassin is stabbed several times and shot before being squeezed out of the encirclement and dropped onto the floor for the cleaning staffed to clean up the body.

"Oh my," Reborn says. "Are they serving the cake already?"

Several people snap their fingers for staff who spontaneously appear with perfectly set plates that Reborn is then handfed. Quite unfortunately, Lal gets to him before he can eat more than a few bites.

So anyway, Reborn isn't allowed at parties anymore for reasons that are definitely not his fault by any definition.

And as punishment, instead of going on the mission to the G20 summit (where Reborn definitely would have been tempted to start a war), he has been told to stay home and take care of the various animals.

Which is fine with him, Reborn adores the cute pets he's collected.

"Keiman!" Reborn calls out, standing in the backyard in board shorts and with puffed up arm floaties in bright yellow high up on his biceps.

Keiman, Verde's lovable (man eating) alligator waddles cutely out of the backdoor with Leon riding his head, and nips at Reborn's ankle.

Reborn picks the alligator up in a hug and steps into the small inflatable pool, then lies down in the shallow water with his head on one edge and feet propped up on the other, getting comfortable with Keiman resting on him, and Leon stacked on the top.

"Good?" Reborn asks.

Keiman wags his tail, hitting Reborn's knees, and starts gnawing on Reborn's left arm floatie.

"Keiman, don't do that, I don't want to drown!" Reborn cries, with a remarkable amount of distress for a man who is about to drown in what is essentially a hand-span of shallow water, in a kiddie pool not big enough for him to even lie down properly in.

Keiman also seems to know this and stares at Reborn.

"I don't know how to swim," Reborn lies earnestly and splashes a little bit in the water.

Reborn smacks the squirrel out of the air with a pillow and dives for it while it's still stunned, yanking it up and hurling it back into the little cloth carrier Luce uses before frantically zipping it up.

The squirrel shrieks and starts running around the pet carrier, as in up the walls, across the ceiling and back down again – and sure, squirrels have claws that can climbs but holy shit.

"Okay, no coffee," Reborn says. "I get that now."

Reborn then pulls the list Luce gave him out of a pocket and looks for the next thing he's not supposed to do. Leon has retreated into Reborn's clothes and is refusing to come out anymore, which makes the consequences of this more difficult but also more interesting.

"Okay, Cosmo, what do you say about fighting the neighbourhood dogs?"

Cosmo is delighted.

"But you're definitely a seagull, right?" Reborn asks, tossing hot chips with chicken salt at Falco from where he sits on a shitty plastic chair outside a fish and chip shop near the beach.

The 'white falcon' squawks at Reborn and gobbles up the chips, then looks back at him as if begging for more.

"So why did COMSUBIN army-train a seagull as Colonnello's partner for warfare?" Reborn throws some more chips at the bird.

Falco dives but gets body-checked by a bright green seagull!Leon who manages to get all three chips before they hit the ground.

"Or maybe Colonnello just spoiled you. Both options are equally as likely right now."

"So you've really never killed anyone before?" Reborn asks, cracking nuts over the dining table and eating them with Fon's tiny monkey that the man smuggled from China.

(Or at least Lichi and Leon are cracking open various nuts and seeds, which Reborn then steals to eat.)

Lichi shakes her head.

"Didn't have the opportunity or just not interested?"

Lichi puts a cracked open nut into Reborn's hand and gestures for him to eat.

"Do you want to kill someone today?" Reborn asks. "That might be a fun bonding exercise."

Lichi mimes more aggressively for him to just eat.

"I bet it'd be funny to see someone try to run from a tiny money with a knife," Reborn says pointedly, with much intent staring.

Lichi sighs heavily. Leon pats Lichi's arm with a tiny two-toed foot in comfort.

Timoteo says, "I think I have Stockholm syndrome."

"Oh?" Reborn glances over with a smirk. "And I wasn't even trying. Damn, I'm impressive."

"Do you do anything nice? At all? In your entire life?"

"I do mercy kills pro bono."