"Alright," Mukuro says, stepping forwards. "Now it's my turn. Rokudo Mukuro of the Tiraboschi Family, at your service. I'm apparently the Fuuta-rated Mafia Top Expert in Minds, Spirits, and Possessions."
There's an odd expression on Sawada's face again as he glance over at Mukuro, the same expression he'd had when he'd first looked at Mukuro again, and the girl tenses again.
Then . . . Mukuro doesn't want to say that Sawada softens, because that doesn't describe how his expression changes, but. He makes himself softer, perhaps. He pushes down whatever emotion was behind that expression, and blunts his edges like a new parent child-proofing their house.
And Mukuro feels . . . amused. A little offended at the idea that he's someone to be protected, and amused by the idea as well.
"Sawada Tsunayoshi," Sawada says. "Here to check me for possession?" he asks, glancing at Reborn. "Again?"
"You must understand, ever since the Estraneo debacle, they've been downright paranoid about it," Mukuro says cheerfully.
"Oh? The Estraneo debacle?"
Mukuro notes the way Reborn's eyes go sharp at Sawada's question as he says, "Yes, they were quite upset about the possession bullets, not to mention the blatant, mass theft of family magics."
"And how do you intend to test me for possession?" Sawada asks, that unfamiliar emotion rising again.
"I'm going to have a look around in your pretty little head, and make sure there's no one hiding in there," Mukuro says. He'd talked over his methods when he'd been contacted of course. Some of the families turned him away at that, not willing to risk it. Others had been desperate enough to go for it anyways.
"You promised," the girl mumbles from her corner of the room."
"I did," Sawada says calmly, glancing over at her. Then he looks back at Mukuro. "So I'm afraid you'll have company. Is there anything you need from me, Rokudo Mukuro-san?"
Mukuro's eyes narrow as the girl moves to stand on Sawada's left. It hurt to admit it, but he says, "Your shields. I wouldn't want to batter such a beauty down with brute force."
"Of course," Sawada says calmly. He glances around the room, then goes to sit on the exam table again, the girl following him. "Give me a second. They're automatic, so it takes effort to keep them down. You'll be able to tell when."
Sawada closes his eyes.
And Mukuro watches as the glittering defenses around his mind power down and fold themselves away.
"You," the girl says rudely. She's still glaring at him, but she's also holding out a hand. "Come on."
Mukuro takes her hand in the real world, and the offered connection in the world just off of that, and together they approach Sawada. Even without the massed shields, his mind looks . . . different. His natural shields - the ones that act more like a cell membrane, defining inside and outside - are more reactive than they should be, especially given that he doesn't seem to have any psychic talent. And the hold that Mukuro had spotted earlier goes right through his natural shields as well, with only a thing layer of buzzing something keeping him from literally loosing his mind as it slips out of his head like a egg out of an egg shell.
Mukuro tugs at the girl, and they head for the hole in the natural shields first.
"Don't touch," she cautions him. "I think even you'd probably be knocked out."
"Maybe if someone died," he says absently, watching the way Sawda's mind churns of the other side of the barrier. It's fascinating. He's not entirely sure what he's actually perceiving here. He's not actually getting any sense of emotions or strings of thought through the barrier, so it's working somewhat better even than a natural shield. But at the same time there's a very vivid sense that he can see through it. It feels a little like he's looking at Sawada's brain, skull cut away carefully for some reason.
"Could you tell? If they haven't?" the girl asks.
Mukuro lets her tug him away to the edge of the hole, where she knocks gently on Sawada's natural shields like they're a door. On the second knock, her hand just goes through. She glances back at him, then they go in together.
They pause there, just inside his mind. Mukuro's surprized by how . . . busy it is, even now. Not just busier than he'd expected, but busier than he's seen in a long time. There's surface thoughts whirling past - Sawada does have an internal monologue by the way Mukuro hears words when he trails a curious hand along one (wish they would/could just stay again but they've both got bodies). There's multiple layers of internal monologue even, though the second one seems to be focused on keeping the mental shields down.
And then there's something Mukuro recognizes, though he's only seen it very rarely. The mind magic of Vongola's famed Hyper Intuition glitters, drawing in sensory information like a tree draws water from its roots, and fitting it together with memories like puzzle pieces. And interacting with that is a part of Sawada's mind specially built for the purpose, throwing the information up to become a part of his internal monologue, or discarding it as irrelevant. Mukuro watches as again and again, images of himself and the girl appear, pieces picked out of the greater whole. He trails one hand against one of these thoughts as they pass and hears in good health, his skin is surprisingly clear for a teenager, and he even looks like he's getting enough to eat for once.
And deeper into his mind, there's the shimmering subconscious processes, and the dark web of memories, just waiting for the right association to be called forth and reassembled.
Mukuro dives deeper, and finds, hiding among the memories, the ghost of an orange flame, positively teeming with connections. It sparks when Mukuro reaches out to touch it, reaching back to him and the girl, and from that he catches an echo of desperation. But this deep, the memories are so fragmented that Sawada would have to think about them, to remember and reconstruct them, up on the surface, for them to be comprehensible.
Mukuro and the girl move through Sawada's mid, searching, and there's nothing. No other presence.
"It's so . . . empty," the girl says as they start to climb back up.
"It's very busy," Mukuro disagrees absently.
"It's busy sure. But there's so much room between everything."
Mukuro pauses at that, watching as Sawada's hyper intuition pulls a memory from the depths of his mind, drawn up the roots.
He hadn't thought about it that way, but-
"How would you possess someone?" the girl challenges. "If you were going to do it long term, if you wanted to keep them safe? You can't just push them down then."
Mukuro looks around, and she's right. There's enough room for a whole second person, maybe more, in the gaps. He doesn't really know how it would work, but the idea of it fascinates him.
But that's not what he's here for. Sawada's mind is set up oddly, but he's not possessed.