Title: Murder Death Kill Games

Summary: Skull gets a neat tattoo that abruptly appears on his hand one day (barely seen between all the other inked skin) and Viper immediately recognises it as a symbol of the Holy Grail War. (Reborn is offended by the insinuation that the Arcobaleno would ever need to summon a servant when they have the world's greatest hitman to kill everything instead.)

Background: Fate Zero AU. Because team hitman was the coolest (with team serial killer second) and everyone else was fucking useless.

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"Oh shit," Skull says in mildly surprise, staring the back of his hand. "Did I get another tattoo?"

"You don't remember?" Viper scoffs and lifts their head up from their cereal bowl to look. "Oh. Oh fuck."

Skull pauses. "Do we...want to pretend it's not there?"

"Maybe," Viper admits. "But also, this gives one free wish. And I can never have too much money, if you know what I mean?"

"Alright," Skull begins. "So...murder-death-kill games?"

"Pretty much," Viper admits. "So I'll just text Reborn to come over and in the meantime we can get started on summoning our meat shield."

After much struggling with the living room furniture, there's finally enough room for Viper to draw up a complicated looking magic circle.

Skull squints as the circle thing starts to glow, Viper standing behind him in case something goes wrong and they need a meat shield. Verde is also watching from the side of the room, having come up from his small lab in the basement to find the living room an absolute mess while Skull and Viper perform some sort of cult ritual.

A sudden burst of air and the glow cuts out, a dark, shadowed figure now standing in the circle, entirely cloaked in a writhing sort of darkness. It drips off them, sinks into the carpet and rots the fabric. There are no features to be seen, just a being of poison and venom.

"An Assassin servant," Viper muses.

The front door slowly creaks open, a widening beam of soft golden sunlight flooding the room and spilling across the floor until it touches the cloak of darkness covering the servant.

And then the sunlight starts ravenously devouring the shadows.

"It's not what you think," Viper blurts out before they even turn to look at the front door.

Reborn stands in the doorway, eyes locked onto the servant. "And what, exactly, do I think this is, Viper?"

"Funny story," Skull begins. "Because I got a tattoo and - no! No, no, Reborn wait!"


"Um," Skull begins, leaning an elbow on the backrest of a Cervello church pew. "My Assassin got killed by my hitman...and I was wondering if maybe I could do like another summoning? Maybe get a Rider this time?"

The black-masked and pink-clothed Cervello, the neutral supervisor of the Holy Grail War, stares at Skull.

Skull awkwardly straightens up, brushes off the pew he touched, and laughs nervously.

"Your servant. Was killed by a normal human," the Cervello summarises.

"I wouldn't call him normal," Skull tries.

"I can feel your servant, they are standing outside," the Cervello points out.

"No, but, it's because Reborn killed the guy and then Leon ate it." Skull shrugs. "Not really 'ate it' but more of a storage thing. Leon just stores weird things in his stomach."

"You have a servant, you cannot summon another," the Cervello grits out. "When your servant dies, you also cannot summon another."

"Okay, I get that," Skull insists. "But also can I still play-"

Lal storms through the church doors with a scowl on her face, fully ready to throw down because she needs that wish if the COMSUBIN higher ups still insist on cutting costs to the ground troops. "Listen, Cervello. Skull was deliberately sabotaged by your fancy beer mug giving him a weakling, who died in one shot from my medic."

Now this sentence really has a lot to unpack.

The fancy beer mug is a several millennia old sacred relic that holds the blood of Christ and can grant any wish, ever. The weakling summoned was the personification of poison, so everything it touches would have gradually started to die, which is rather overpowered in all honesty.

It could be considered a 'one shot' if you count the six hundred and twenty-eight bullets of a full-fledged Chaos Shot as 'one'. And maybe, if you're out of Reborn's hearing range, you could quietly whisper that Sun flames have certain connotations that mean a user of said flames could perhaps be considered to have a healing ability.

Reborn slams open the double doors of the church. "What did you call me?"

"Sorry," Colonnello calls out, wraps his arms around Reborn's middle, and starts dragging the hitman away.

Fon steps up and quietly closes the double doors again with a serene smile.

Skull purses his lips. "So, no take-backsies?"


The three main mage families are the Vongola who use magic stored in rings, Millefiore who sacrifice their sanity for glimpses into possible branching universes, and the Giglio Nero who are lead by a long line of matriarchs descended from an alien goddess and are all virgin mothers.

Tsuna (unwillingly) has Xanxus, a Berserker. Byakuran has a Shoichi who is a Caster. Uni has Gamma, an Archer.

Chrome has the Lancer Mukuro, and was a sickly child who was born with immense power into a normal family, 'donated' to a Giglio Nero branch family by her mother. An illegitimate child from a smaller mage family called Hayato has Takeshi, a Saber.

A middle-schooler -who is completely unrelated to magic- is Kyouya, who has a small purple hedgehog Rider that he has (re)named Roll and it turns into a miniature Death Star but is mostly just his pet.

Tsuna is very aware that all of these people are terrifying and violent and have zero chill. Tsuna wants to go home. Fuck the Holy Grail, he doesn't want it.

But mostly fuck Xanxus.

This standoff in the quiet shipyard is not meant to happen, because people usually at least try to go for tactics instead of straight up just battle royal, but Xanxus ran around shooting people and things, loudly and violently enough until everyone came out of hiding.

Xanxus then declared them all wimp-ass bitches and set a meeting time and place so they could just free-for-all.

The tense pause lasts for a long moment after everyone finally steps out to reveal themselves.

"Where's the last one?" Mukuro chuckles with a kufufu, his one red eye glowing brightly in the darkness of night, the shipyard only lit by the full moon above. "Already dead or too scared?"

Skull peeks out from around the corner of a tall stack of shipping crates and slumps in relief. "Oh! Oh, thank God, I've just been like running around for the last half hour trying to find you guys. This place is a maze, all of my friends have ditched me, and there's no one around to ask for directions!"

Skull jogs out into the large open area beside the water of the harbour, the other side cut off by shipping containers.

Byakuran tsks but there's a smile on his face, eyes squinted. "Another civilian. A surprising amount this generation."

"Civilian?" Colonnello chuckles, his voice being transmitted through all of the earpieces the hidden Arcobaleno are wearing. He's smirking through a sniper rifle at Byakuran's fluffy white hair, lying stomach-down on the top of a three-storey yacht bobbing with the waves of the harbour.

"To me, you're a civilian too," Reborn reminds the blond, his sights on the shaky brunet, from out on a crane halfway across the shipping yard. "Every time you try and do Mafia things, I laugh."

Colonnello tsks. "Talk shit again, bitch, let's see if you can take an anti-tank."

"Cut the chatter, idiots," Lal hisses at them, crouched low on the crate, just above Uni and Gamma.

Kyouya has already turned, tonfas drawn, to find Fon standing behind him in the shadows, the martial artist with a bland smile and hands folded away in large red sleeves.

Verde is on the same yacht at Colonnello, sitting back in his chair and watching as his AI drones drift through the air silently, all locked onto Mukuro.

Viper is invisible, hovering between Hayato and Takeshi, a mass of oddly jointed and distorted limbs emerging from the folds of their cloak, tipped in claws and barbs and teeth.

"Can I just go home now?" Tsuna complains quietly.

Xanxus raises his guns with a roar. "Come at me, trash!"


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Other story lines within this one:

1. In an alternate universe, Kyouya summons himself a servant by the name of Kusakabe.

2. Kyouya then keeps summoning servants until he has a Disciplinary Committee.

3. In an alternate universe, Reborn summons Skull as a rider. Skull is useless and so Reborn basically kills everyone by himself while Skull sits off to the side and obediently applauds.

4. In an alternate universe, Tsuna makes a wish of the Holy Grail and the world resets. Again.

5. In an alternate universe, the Arcobaleno are the seven servants and kill each other's masters so they can run away together with the Holy Grail.

6. In an alternate universe, Nana is summoned as a servant and she's hella OP.

7. In an alternate universe, everyone is in the Mafia and they have magical fire powers.

8. In this universe, Tsuna makes friends with a whole hoard of psychos and maybe doesn't hate every minute of it like he pretends to.