After ditching the two in France, Reborn takes a train to Spain and gets distracted for half the ride designing a tiny train conductor uniform for Leon. You can get train sets that move and stuff, right?
"Drink, sir?" a waitress asks politely, pushing a small trolley up to Reborn's first class seat. She blinks a moment at the lizard resting on the brim of Reborn's fedora.
"An espresso, hold the poison," Reborn orders.
The waitress is too good to panic but her smile goes stiff.
Reborn raises an eyebrow. "No, that's fine, take your time."
She scrambles to pour the drink and sets it beside him on the small side table. She then ducks her head and quickly hurries away.
Reborn pops open the lid to his takeaway cup and blows on it before taking a short sip. Drugged, ugh. He already knew but it's still disappointing. The drugs must have been in the main coffee pot so they're either killing everyone or it'll knock him out and they'll pick him up at the next station.
Reborn frowns at the book but he can't be too mad, this was a mafia thing, not a cult thing. "Do you drink coffee?" Technically it drinks everything, right? No matter what Reborn pours on it, it comes out clean.
Reborn flips to a new page because he doesn't want to ruin his design of a tiny train to fit a lizard occupant. The ritual on that page was about the abyss or whatever, which is every other ritual anyway. Reborn doesn't consider it a loss to scribble over it.
Reborn slowly pours in the drugged drink and watches the book vore it like some discount roomba. It's genuinely an interesting Mist construct, he wonders how it was made but Reborn isn't that kind of genius, he'd have to ask a flame scientist.
Reborn pours out the rest of the drink and then sets the cup down. "See? I treat you nice and yet you still complain all the time. Others would have left you in a bathroom to be used as toilet paper but not me, I carry you around all day, I feed you. I'm not asking for a thank you but a little appreciation for all I've given up for you would be nice."
"Why are you gaslighting the Necronomicon?" a lanky man asks, an absolute giant who's tall enough that his explosion of green hair is brushing the ceiling. He rests an elbow on the seatback in front of Reborn and pushes up his glasses.
"Why are you in a lab coat?" Reborn retorts. "It's PPE for safety and taking it out of a lab with whatever material you work with potentially on it is not WHS approved."
"This entire dimension is my lab," the man scoffs and takes a seat across the aisle from Reborn. "That book isn't Mist flames, by the way, it's made from the skin of an Outer God and carries the power of one."
"That?" Reborn points at the book. "That is a god?"
"Yes, the one you've been sitting on and slapping into walls," the man says with an eyeroll. "Also no, I know full well it didn't trip down the stairs, you threw it out of a window. Through the glass."
"I-" Reborn pauses. "Feared for my life. Such immense power and – things a human mind is not supposed to comprehend-"
"Don't even bother."
Reborn purses his lips and looks the man up and down. Nerdy looking, too skinny but damn Reborn still wants to climb him. "You wouldn't happen to know Lal and Colonnello, would you?"
The man holds out a hand. "Verde."
"Reborn. You wanna fuck in the bathroom?"
"For reproduction?" Verde asks in confusion.
Reborn sighs. Why are all the attractive ones freaks?
Someone has a heart attack at the station they get off at (the waitress does because Reborn's Sun flames can do many things, none of which involve healing) and Verde gets caught up staring intently as an off-duty nurse attempts to help.
Reborn steals a car because renting always takes so long and drives to his safehouse an hour out. He stops for lunch at a cute roadside stall, and to make sure Verde isn't following somehow.
Reborn holds out a fifty euro to the worker because he doesn't carry anything less and then just shoves the change into the book he has tucked under one arm before grabbing the food and getting back into his stolen car, leaving the door open while he eats.
A person in a cloak and hood pulled low enough to cover their eyes floats up to Reborn and then into his body.
Reborn chokes on his food and quickly drops it off in the passenger seat. He looks down at his own body. "Excuse me?!"
There's some shuffling around and Reborn's chest feels heavy as the Mist user curls up in there. Reborn arm moves and he's not the one doing it.
Reborn activates his Sun flames and stops the muscles, then relaxes some and tenses others until his arm has returned back to his side. There's a pause and then the Mist user just wraps around his rib cage and flops a bit, settled in for a long ride.
"I don't know what kind of man you think I am but I have standards," Reborn says very seriously. "If you want this body, you better romance me properly."
"You met Verde for like five seconds and decided you wanted to fuck him," Reborn's mouth says on its own.
"Don't you put words in my mouth," Reborn complains.
"Oh but Colonnello's dick is just fine?"
Reborn ends up in a hotel instead because his safe house is probably going to get trashed if he heads there. He drops the book on the low table and sits back on the couch. "Okay, I'm not an idiot-"
"Well if you insist," Viper mutters, phasing through walls to check out the new room.
"Clearly," Reborn grits out. "This book is a new Mist construct, created by a cult who discovered flames but not the mafia, maybe it's even a weapon-"
Viper sighs heavily and disperses, reforming on an armchair opposite Reborn. Gives him a disdainful look like they're about to suck out Reborn's brain with a plastic straw and then kill a turtle from an endangered species with the bloodied plastic or something. "You have literally been translating it, how are you not getting this?"
"Do you know how much absolute bullshit I've forged in my career?" Reborn scoffs. "I've started cults. If you and the other weirdos keep going on about being -what- demons then I'm sorry, no, you're just mafia freaks like the rest of us."
"You're literally the one summoning us!" Viper cries in outrage. "Every time you give an offering and request, we show up. It's been shoddy drinks and water and drugs and money, which would normally call pathetic shadows or lesser creatures-"
Viper gestures vaguely at Reborn. "-but you have so many spare souls that you've ripped out of others, it turns the offering into something that even us Great Old Ones can't pass up on. You wanted a cute lizard, you wanted COMSUBIN, you wanted someone who knew about the science behind the book."
"Why did you show up then?"
"Well I wasn't a summon per se," Viper hedges. "You offered but didn't request, so it was an open ritual and – listen, the possession didn't work so let's not talk about it."
Reborn rolls his eyes. "Fine, how do I unsummon you then, according to your little cult?"
"You can't."
"That's pretty convenient, isn't it?" Reborn sneers.
Viper opens their mouth, closes it and then tries again. "Fuck it, fine. Whatever. We're all just fucked up mafia."
