Act II: Burning Down The Underground
Word Count: 3,838
The men were engaged, their weapons at the ready. His Family thrummed with impending vermillion violence, humour and thrill lacing their atmosphere as they hovered in the orbital pull of their Harmoniser.
Xanxus stared into the amber liquid of the crystal glass, watching as burning quencher morphed into a flash of golden asphyxiation. His lips twitched, before he tilted his head back and swallowed the fiery gold like it was Etir and was sweet on his tongue.
The fireplace was lit and roaring despite how the country already sweltered with Summer. Long, lashing tongues of brilliance snapping in and out of existence and staining the air with flickering unsteadiness.
"Boss," Squalo uttered, lowering his hand from his earpiece. "We're ready for the order."
In a few, short rotations of the clock, the Sky had lost near everything. His heritage, his inheritance, his haunter. Gone from his blood was the golden gilded crown of the underworld, and gone from his sheets was the jewel-eyed Lotus.
He had lost it all, so the future was obvious.
Xanxus would claw and bite until he had it all back.
The wronged Wrath lowered his drink and grinned feral, throwing the glass, clear fractals shattering in tongues of flame within the hot hearth.
"Burn it all down."
Daiki grumbled as he stood from the car, his back cracking in several places from such a long time contained within vehicles of metal. A light nausea of air travel still lingered in his stomach as his designated driver, Goto, closed the door behind him and another man began unloading the boot.
"The Oyabun and the clan are waiting for you just inside, Watanabe-dono." Goto uttered smoothly, his voice a deep, silken timbre. "There will be someone to collect you at the door."
"I understand," The Sun hummed, straightening himself out with a sigh, mouth still sharp with peppermint gum. "Thank you, Goto-san."
"Of course."
The Watanabe Clan estate was just how he remembered it, imposing, huge and looming. Ready to devour you whole.
Daiki took a breath before striding forwards, golden eyes scanning the familiar setting of traditional scapes, dragonic motifs slipping in and out of focus as the doors groaned open, like the Watanabe realms sensed the arrival of its Heir. The air shifted as he stepped across the threshold, and despite how he was alone, he could feel the eyes of hundreds boring into every crevice of his being, tearing his apart meticulously as he walked, chin held high and shoulders set, brass clicking on his hip.
"Excuse me." A quiet voice spoke, making the cobalt haired boy turn.
It was a young girl, barely over ten, who had address him, head bowed low as she gathered her hands before her thighs. At Daiki's recognition, the girl raised her stance, revealing bruise in the corner of her little pink lips.
The Sun frowned, and the escort lowered her eyes.
"Please, follow me, my Lord. The Oyabun is just this way." She uttered quickly, before slipping past, trying to make herself as transparent and inconsequential as possible.
The young Yakuza followed her with his eyes for a moment, watching how her walk wavered and felt his stomach roll from within him, before stepping after her. She visibly tensed at the sound of his steps, perhaps not having remembered him being so close, but recovered and hid away the paranoia of her stride.
This place really was just how he remembered it.
His pallet tasted sour, but it always did here. At least, until he downed seven shots of sake or scotch.
Gold eyes dragged along the walls critically, vaguely impressed, but also not at all. The damage of his certification as heir has been completely erased, not a scratch on the walls, not a drop of blood on the floor. If it weren't for the scribe that had been scribbling away in a safe room, documenting the carnage with studious and enthralled enthusiasm, many may have been fooled into believing that no such catastrophe had raised the Watanabe estate like hellfire.
"Well, if it isn't my dearest Daiki-nii?"
Daiki turned, before laughing and opening his arms for his cousin to come gliding over from an alternate entrance, a handmaid scampering off with her sandals.
Honda smiled widely at her elder cousin, momentarily forgetting the braces of metal which lined her teeth as she was scooped up and pressed into a familiar chest. The Sun smiled and lifted her chin examining the braces with a fond laugh, making the girl flush and press her lips tight in embarrassment.
"How long have you had them?" He asked, letting her loop her arms through his as they continued to walk, the little chaperone girl before them stealing glances at the Watanabe Lady with badly concealed idolisation.
"About a year now. They're coming off next year, June."
"Around the same time you're turning fourteen then?" The elder hummed, smiling as she nodded, a hair ornament tinkling gleefully.
The two underground royals spoke for moments more, quietly catching up the short years that had been lost, before they stilled and fell silent, the door to the main room blocking their path.
Honda smiled, before slipping her arm free and lowering her eyes, porcelain face melting into one of pleasant apathy, with hooded eyes and slight upward tilts of her soft pink lips. Her delicate hands came to be clasped before her, and a long exhale brought about her demeanour.
Daiki sighed as he watched her coat herself in layers of fur-lined femininity, before he reached out and tucked a stray lock of her hair behind her ear, making the young girl startle, and then smile. The Sun inclined his head with affection, before returning straight and broadening his shoulders, lips pressed into a firm line as his eyes narrowed slightly.
"Ready, my Lord?" The little girl uttered, glancing between the Yakuza blood.
"Yes, thank you."
Slabs of paper and wood were cast to the side in a smooth motion, and the heavy scent of incense and alcohol. Fans of brightly coloured aesthetics graced perfumed breezes around painted faces. Women cooed as they exposed their shoulders elegantly, squealing and giggling as men pressed their noses to the hollows of their throats.
Honda bowed her head to her cousin and glided to a small flock of girls, each bearing a similarity. Relations of blood upon blood smiled at each other from the distance, before Daiki turned his eyes forwards, and strode towards them.
"Daiki-kun!" The old Oyabun, Watanabe Haruko, greeted, smiling thinly at the boy. "Welcome home."
"It's good to be back, Oyabun-sama." The Sun laughed, silicone joy lacing his tone. "How have you been?"
"Good, good." He hummed, obviously having lost interest already.
Daiki grunted politely, also having tuned out. The baker's son found himself a position at the forefront of his cousins, tucking his knees beneath himself. A hand touched his shoulder, and he turned with a soft smile, seeing the young Sora grinning up at him, tell-tale signs of crayons smearing her hands and blooming clouds of rainbotic colours.
"Hi!" She whispered, waving.
"Hello again, Sora-chan." He answered, hushed, before pausing. "Your front tooth finally grew back in. Finally."
"Oh, hush you."
The two curled their lips in mutual glee, before falling silent.
The Oyabun spoke out to the room and men gave reports, Daiki urged to listen in order to catch up the years he had lost. He thinned his lips as details became impressed into his memory, new names and old allies flying through the words.
Golden amber flashed across the room. Dying grey caught his, and his grandfather held their gaze. Daiki felt his hair stand on end, but expressed no such unease. Himura was looking at him with such skin crawling intensity, such a gag-inducing gaze, but the Sun refused to lower his eyes, staring back with obvious miff.
The room's attention turned at once, the door sliding open once again, and revealed a woman who glared at the Yakuza like they were something lesser. She was dressed in strictly traditional garb, formal kimono of neutral colours hugging her thin body as she slipped her hands into the opposing sleeve. Her eyes were slate and sharp, lips pulled into a firm line which showed nothing but disinterest in her expression. She sent her gaze about the room, sever annoyance showing upon every face as they forced their heads to incline in spiteful respect.
There was a shift behind her kimono, and Daiki let his eyes fall from her sharp face to see it, pausing when narrowed eyes peered out from around the woman. A rather annoyed looking boy, no older than eight or nine, glared back at the Watanabe Heir.
"Hibari-sama! How delightful of you to join us." Haruka cooed, like the sycophant he was.
"Charming." The woman, Hibari, grunted, before gliding into the room. She paused, and fixed her grey eyes upon the new face, the Sun lifting his gold to her. "Who are you?"
"Watanabe-Yamaguchi Daiki," He answered evenly, dipping his head in greeting. "Pleasure to meet you."
"Likewise." She hummed, before following his stilted attention to the child who kept close to her. "This is my son, Kyoya. Say hello."
The young boy glanced to his mother out of the corner of his sharp eye, before turning back to the kneeling Yakuza, a frown on his face.
"Hello, Herbivore."
Daiki blinked, before coughing a laugh of surprise. People around the room shot him looks.
"Hello, Kyoya-san."
The Cloud narrowed his eyes at the informal greeting and shifted his arms, a flash of metal peering out of his sleeves. Daiki thought that his tonfa looked too large a claw for such small paws, but he would grow into them.
"Children, you may go." Haruka announced, and the generation bowed before filing out like a uniform flock of birds.
The two Hibari's watched the Heir slip out with his cousins, and the mother placed a hand on her son's shoulder to cease his impulse to follow, knowing how easily the young predator could be distracted. He sent her a look of indignation, to which she only huffed and turned her chin away, making Kyoya pout and sit beside her.
The young Skylark would seek out his new prey later. For now, he'd suffer politics in a perfume heavy room while his mother held her cub by the scruff of his neck.
…
The Watanabe youths' composure was stiff and swift, expressions void of anything beyond expectation as they walked in a gentle tandem. They turned the corner, and Daiki spun to receive the embraces of his little cousins. He grinned and gathered the girls up in his arms, laughing gently as they cooed at his return.
"Look at you all, you've gotten so big! It's been just three years!" He chuckled, brushing aside the unkempt length of the small Kaguya's fringe, the seven-year-old giggling as her coal eyes were shown from beneath the curtain of pitch.
"Up!" Aoi yawned, reaching for her elder.
"And who are you?" Daiki asked, bending to scoop the infant into the air, little legs dangling as the child blinked slowly.
"This is Aoi-chan," Honda smiled. "She's two now."
The Sun smiled, a paternal part of him always too sweet for children, before he looked down and laughed, Aoi fast asleep against his shoulder.
"She's got chronic fatigue," Naomi murmured, stepping up to grasp the elder's shirt end in her little fist. "She's always sleeping."
"Oh, I hope she's eating well then."
"She does now, but not before," Bunko sighed, tugging a clip out of her hair with a pout. "Rin-oba never fed her. Honda-onee-sama fed her with a bottle. That's bad, right?"
Daiki thinned his lips and cradled the little girl closer, skin near transparent in its fragile white hue.
"It's...not the best. But, I suppose our aunty has a reason."
"She's pregnant again." Honda uttered, glancing off.
"Again?" He hissed, allowing the girls to urge him on towards the dorms. "Didn't she just miscarry from stress? Four times?"
"Our mothers are determined to have a boy." The eldest girl gritted, helping the youngers down the step.
Handmaids rushed out from the border or sakura trees and began checking them over, one tsking at Bunko for removing her hair clip. The little six years old huffed and yanked the rest out, before latching onto Daiki's leg, grumbling as he gently carded his fingers through her short soot hair.
Feminine perfumes swirl around the Sun as he breathed in deep, the threshold of trees revealing a place of familiar fantasticals. Reflections of living light danced upon still ponds, water lilies blooming under the light of a nocturnal sun that waxed a full spread. Gas lamps flushed the old building a golden hue as moon bathed silhouettes approached, bare feet padding gently against blued grass in languid steps, loosening without the burning eyes of the Main House.
Daiki hummed a tune as the creature in his arms stirred, as if the metamorph of the world had thrummed through her sleeping form.
A smile flitted over the Sun's lips as warm honey scanned the main room, the place barely changed from three years ago, still exuding the atmosphere of lazy riches and cosy superiority. It was hazy with incense, pillows piling high in corners and scattered along the floor for lazing through the day in sweet scenting spaces.
"Daiki-nii?" Honda asked, touching his elbow as Naomi let out a yawn, leaning against his side heavily.
"Mm?"
"Has there been something bothering you?" She breathed, handmaids urging the girls to their beds with gentle croons. "You've been..off since you came back."
Daiki blinked down at her, trying to ignore how he felt phantom hands grasp his hips and a hot, non-existent breath wash over his nape. He tilted his head in a show of confusion, before uttering an easy denial.
"You know how I am with air travel."
Honda stared, before smiling and lowering her eyes, understanding that this would go no further.
"Did you throw up again?"
"Of course I did, who do you think I am?"
A week in this place, and no change. Nothing had changed. Not the warm familiarity of his cousins who might as well have been his sisters, nor the hollow in his side as he laid in a bed that had become too cold.
The Sun grunted as his arms hung empty, outstretched across the bedding in a movement that had sprung upon the nocturnal phase. His shoulder was stiff from how many nights he had spent in this position, arms open in hopes of a body, warmed by the fire of its own rage, would fill them and fill the rivets in his mind and chest with bloody red resin.
A part of him, a stupid part of him, wondered where the Wrath was, gazing around with childish wide eyes, trying to find the man. It pawed at the back of Daiki's mind, whimpering pathetically for comfort and vermillion, only for the Heir to narrow his eyes and push it away like a neglectful parent.
Daiki grunted as he got up from the futon, the new sun peeking through the curtains. He had things to do, and no time to be bothering with memories. They'd fade in time, and take with it the bone-weary longing that weighed down his very skeleton.
His grandfather, Himura, had summoned him, and despite how it near physically pained the Sun to even breath the same atmosphere as the hysteric man, he knew that ignoring it would only bring unnecessary grief.
So, with a sigh, Daiki pushed himself from his room and left behind the phantom of the devotee of Lotuses in a cooling and empty bed.
…
"You've grown so much since we last met, my boy." Himura chortled, already half-drunk despite the early hour.
Daiki tilted his lips politely as he sat himself on a cushion across from the man, accepting a saucer of the strong tasting alcohol with a murmured thanks, letting the murky liquid ripple when balanced in his fingers.
"You'll be receiving an attendant soon. My brother is the one choosing, so be careful of him, he may not be trustworthy."
"Of course, ojii-san."
The aged Yakuza laughed lowly and poured himself another cup of inebriant, downing it without trouble. He sighed as he lowered the ceramic, before latching his eyes onto the youth, the cracks and lines in his skin deepening.
"Tell me, have you been thinking about our last discussion?"
Golden eyes flashed up, holding the man's expression in their gaze of molten honey.
The old grandfather smiled with desert lips, dry and cracked like a forsaken lake. His breath was sandy in its parch, and he swallowed another slip of the misty drink, but no amount of inebriant would quench the man's hollowed riverbed of a thirst.
"I have," The Heir, cast in dark brass, chose his words critically. "Deliberated over the topic."
"And? What verdict have you come to?"
Daiki lowered his cup and uttered his answer evenly, "I think the sooner we execute the Oyabun the better."
Himura grinned, lip stretching wide - before he coughed and took a smothering sip of alcohol, regaining his decorum.
"That's wonderful news, Daiki-kun." He hummed, like he hadn't just slipped over the edge by just a fraction.
"I have thought about how to go about the usurpation, and have an idea. Though, it may require some outside help. But I'm sure I can manage to find that, just leave everything to me, ojii-san."
The old man shuddered as he smiled, worn, wrinkled face pulling at the sagged edges as he gazed at the bronze Sun with a shuttering glee. He got to his feet, knees popping like boots on a forest floor, before scuttling over to Daiki, who watched from under his dark lashes, orbs of scotch and sun searing in their nature.
The desert man, Himura, lowered to sit at the side of the young underground royal. He turned his gaze on the Heir, dying grey dizzy with sadistic glamour, before he placed a bony, arthritic hand across the Sun's back. He grinned and continued to hold the boy in the strong-lose 'hug' that felt more like being in the embrace of a dying tree.
Daiki yawned as he dumped his towel on the foot on his futon, dropping into it with a groan. His grandfather had insisted on herding him around all day like some kind of half-blind sheepdog, able to see, but with no depth perception. It drove him up the wall, but he managed to keep his feet on the ground and eventually freed himself from the arthritic clutches of that old man.
He muttered an Italian cuss and rolled over, arm shoved beneath his head, before pausing. That letter wasn't on his desk before.
Instantly, he was on high alert, ears prickling and golden eyes carving out the room for any abnormalities. The Sun got to his feet and made his way towards the alien presence. His eyes narrowed, honey laced gold darkening in surprise.
"Varia," Daiki grunted, touching the familiar red wax seal that depicted the private assassination squad's elaborate seal. "My, faster than I expected."
He pinched it by its corner and flipped to read the back of the envelope, a sigh falling from his lips as he read the curly script and address.
To: Watanabe-Yamaguchi Daiki❤
"Lussuria. Of course." He drawled, turning it back and cracking the seal with brass fingers, sliding out a parchment. "He was the only one I told about the Watanabe."
The elusive baker tossed the empty envelope back onto his desk and unfolded the paper. He placed his hand on the desk and lent on it lazily, humming as the bright pink pen that seemed to be the Varia Sun's only writing utensils showed for him.
The coup failed. Boss got got by the Ninth. Squalo know's what happened to him, but he's gone quiet. You should have been here Daiki you should have stayed. I don't blame you, none of us do. But he might have just made it if you had stuck by us.
We could really use you now, too, Daiki. We could really use someone to lean on. We're a mess without our Sky. Elements out of whack. Elements out of Harmony.
Write back to us soon, yeah?
Your big sis,
Lussuria.
Daiki's lips had parted, and his eyes had stilled. He just wasn't sure when it had happened.
He breathed deep, scenting incense that mingled with the electricity of something rising within him. An emotion stained the air with its permeation, it writhed and wriggled between particles, tangible, a heavy miasma which partnered with the wisps of perfumed smoke.
Daiki refused to name or acknowledge the feeling, refused to register the airy arms that wrapped around his shoulders as he sat down at the desk. The being of fantasy leant up against his back and murmured things from underwater to him, muffled by time and reality as the Sun reached for a new parchment and a pen.
I'm sorry to hear that your coup didn't work out. You all must be under intense watch now by the Vongola and that CEDEF operation. Must be stressful.
Squalo may feel responsible for the Ninth's win. Be sure to watch over him, yes? And the others, they're likely to be shaken at the loss of their Sky.
A part of me wishes I could be of more help, you know that, Sister. But you also know that I cannot leave where I am. I am more trapped here, in the Watanabe, than when I was the Varia's prisoner.
Lips drawn from magma trailed along the Heir's exposed nape, and he forced himself to pay no mind to the formation.
I think you are wrong, however, in one aspect. Whether I had stayed or I had left, Xanxus would not have set aside his goals for anything. He is too driven for that. He would not have been swayed by any of my words, the fool.
I hope to keep in contact with you, Sister, and the Varia. The Watanabe is stifling, my dear cousins aside, and your 'vitality' would be refreshing.
Be well and safe, I hope to hear from you again soon.
Your young brother,
Daiki.
The Sun stood and slipped the folded paper into a blank envelope, before leaving it on his desk, knowing someone would take it to its destination, addressed or not.
The hands that had laid upon him slipped from his hips as he walked and came to kneel in the centre of his futon.
The light of the gas lamp glowed soft and honeyed as Daiki's hand rose from his knee and touched his chest, wondering at the hollow, before he shook, and bowed himself, head lowered against the ground as that emotion saturated the air and hushed the room into darkness.
