A/N
Hello again! And a pleasant summer to you all!
If you have been reading a fic called To Labor Through the Winter Snow you might recognise one of the characters that gets introduced in this chapter. Many thanks to optimustaud for letting me borrow him and his colleagues! C=
I do not own or profit from any of what Kazue Kato has created.
Shopping for groceries took infinitely much longer than it would have if he hadn't had to go through the whole haggling dance with each and every produce vendor. On top of that they asked the same thing, every single one of them: where are you from, signore? Trying to show interest, one would assume, but telling the story over and over got old quick. The eighth time he was asked he just snarled "from someplace where you buy your damn vegetables instead of talking about them". So worth paying a few extra lire for his leek.
Shiro shouldered the apartment door open and kicked it shut softly once he was in, both hands occupied with loaded shopping bags. Nudging his shoes off, he carried his supplies into the small kitchen and the soon-to-be-filled fridge. But first off, the loaf of bread – to replace the one he had eaten yesterday. Every respectable Italian bought their bread fresh each morning.
However, there already was a loaf in the basket. There was a crisp salad sitting on the countertop, and in the oven a parmigiana was looking ready to be taken out and served. Just how early did the landlady rise to have all this–
"There you are!"
Shiro couldn't remember what her name was. It must have been something short and stocky: the woman who came waddling in from the corridor looked like she should be called something short and stocky. She looked like someone who at some point in life had made an enemy of gravity, and gravity had responded by pulling all her features down like a soufflé caving in on itself.
"Sleep all day, do you? Out indecencing at night of course – oh don't I know the minds of men", she huffed with the conviction of one who considers herself an expert in the field.
Whether or not "indecencing" was an actual word was up for discussion, but Shiro had more urgent discussions he needed to have with his landlady. He could see it already, the crowning fuck up to his bad reputation résumé: seminarian kicked out of Papal University before he even enrolled.
"You don't have to worry about indecencing; I'm a seminarian, I don't-"
"I don't, I wouldn't – boy, had I been given a lira every time I heard a man say that I wouldn't be renting rooms to students. Shoo, shoo!" She flapped the oven gloves at him until he hopped out of the way. She had a good amount of jewellery on her fingers, he noted: a good amount of jewellery overall, from the earrings peeping out of her grey curls to the heavy necklace weighing down the knitted cardigan that covered her blouse.
If he thought his sidestep would help, it didn't. When the parmigiana was out of the oven the landlady kept on herding him backwards, all but using the scalding hot oven form as a cattle prod.
"Just so, just so, move those skinny legs of yours: sit."
Sit? Why yes: upon closer inspection there was a minuscule table and two equally minuscule chairs at the far back of the kitchen, which was also the only place where you had a chance to actually see the pendulum clock behind the fridge. There were plates and cutlery laid out for two, and glasses accompanied by two bottles of soft drink Shiro identified as San Pellegrino Aranciata.
"Actually, I was just going to drop groceries off and–" Walk to his appointment at Rome Headquarters, as he wanted to get a look at his new home town.
"None of the sort: you're not leaving this apartment until you eat, Alexander."
It was like that one time Sen's goblin had lifted him up by the collar of his shirt: there was nothing to be done except wait until it let go. The parmigiana sat on its cork coaster, the salad sat next to it, and Queen Goblin skewered him with her piercing grey eyes.
"I'll be dead before I house a thief under my roof, you hear? Nothing disappears from pantries or drawers. You have the two upper shelves in the fridge for your things, and the cupboard closest by. You tidy the kitchen immediately after you use it and I will not permit any dirty dishes lying around. Laundry can be done between six in the morning and ten in the evening, not at other times…"
Shiro had perfected the art of zoning out monologues long ago and focused on his food instead. He had bought new ham, new eggs and new bread; as far as he was concerned the only thieving he'd done was back home in Japan. If Queen Goblin still had a problem with that she could sit on a cactus.
"…if you use the phone you wipe it with a wet cloth afterwards, and– What are you doing?" she gasped.
"Eating", Shiro informed through a mouthful of savoury parmigiana. "I have to be at HQ by–"
"Good lord!" And a whole rattle of other things that were too fast for him to catch. "What did your parents teach you? You say grace before eating! Here, like this."
With no concern whatsoever that he was holding cutlery, Queen Goblin took his hands and shoved them together, with the knife and fork awkwardly jutting up between his fingers. Clasping her own hands as well, she recited a swift but sincere grace. …after which she continued down the list of house rules and curfew hours. And not to bring any girls to his room; she repeated that about three times.
Four servings of parmigiana later Shiro was jogging to the bus stop with map in hand and the uniform robe slung over his arm. Queen Goblin – Roberta Modugno – had been serious about not letting him leave until he had eaten. Furthermore, with her exceptional knowledge of how men worked – how young men worked – she "could tell" he wasn't full just yet. Shiro himself could tell he wouldn't throw up just yet, but if he kept jogging it was only a matter of time. There was no way he would make it to his registration at HQ on foot anymore, not even if he could run. Hopefully fate would smile on him enough to at least let him make it in time for the bus.
It had been one damn good parmigiana, though.
Fate, or whatever higher power was in charge of Rome, had an odd sense of humour. Shiro didn't make it in time to the bus stop – neither, however, did the bus. Because timetables in Rome were just there as a practical joke to confuse tourists and buses arrived whenever they fucking pleased. So while Shiro did catch his bus, he still didn't arrive on time at Headquarters.
St Peter's Basilica looked the same as when he had been there two years ago; the towering dome, the huge plaza that opened up before it, the saints watching from atop the encircling colonnades. It seemed strangely familiar, even if he had only been there once before. It seemed… very familiar.
Last time Shiro had been in the Vatican it had been rainy December, and he had been to an exhilarating Court interrogation that left very little of his attention with the architecture. Now that he looked at it head on in daylight, the Roman Headquarters looked an awful lot like the Japanese. Marble columns and colonnades were a typical feature at True Cross Academy: people sometimes came to take pictures of them, or just admire the foreign architecture – Roman architecture.
Trust Samael to build his own Vatican if he couldn't buy the existing one.
"Get out of my head." His fingers went to work with automated practice, slipped a cigarette between his lips and wed it to the shy flame of his lighter. Set fire to unwelcome thoughts, burn the edges of the wound and seal it shut.
The marble colonnades rose like forests on each side of him, curving majestically to embrace the milling masses into the bosom of Saint Peter. The queue to enter the basilica formed a colonnade of its own: a shaky, poorly constructed one that meandered between the pillars in search of shelter from the sun. The plaza itself was almost deserted, with only a few sunscreened brave ones taking their picture in front of the obelisk and the fountains. Shiro slipped into his robes, past the queue and the dozens of different languages that hung like a sweaty cloud around it. A branch representative would be waiting for him at the most obvious landmark there was: the giant obelisk in the middle of the plaza. The Witness, it was called. The sole remaining witness to the martyr deaths that had taken place in Rome thousands of years ago. It quietly venerated those who had died for their faith, and reminded each and every one of their fine example.
Catholics sure loved their masochism.
You can always spot an exorcist in a crowd. The long black robes stand out like tomatoes in a basket of eggs, for one thing, but how an exorcist behaves is just as telling. The knowledge that demons are everywhere comes with a certain price to pay: when a threat can spring up around the corner at any given moment, nerves are wound tighter. Senses are whittled sharper. Muscles are always ready to spring into action, and the mind is never truly at rest.
The man who leaned against the stone in the shadow of the obelisk was, seemingly, relaxed. His beard and moustache connected at the tips and formed a square around his mouth, while thick sideburns crept out from below a wicker hat that added a friendly, casual touch to the austere cut of the uniform. He might have been a stone fundament himself, the way the mass of his large body settled his feet firmly on the ground. His arms were crossed over his chest in a comfortable manner – relaxed, to the untrained eye. An exorcist would recognise the tell-tale signs, however: the sweeping gaze and filtering ears that methodically surveilled the plaza.
It didn't take him long to spot Shiro. The bearded face lit up, the arms uncrossed, a balding head came into view as he removed his hat. In three gliding steps he had closed the distance, clasped Shiro's shoulders and…
One moment the man's face came disturbingly close, next the bushy sideburns prickled Shiro's cheek, and then the exaggerated noise of… of kisses landing on his cheeks.
"Welcome to Rome!" the man declared with a rumbling laugh as he eyed his handiwork. "Yes yes, that's how most transfers react – don't worry, you'll get your shoulders out of your ears soon enough."
Shiro righted his shoulders and the rest of his body and face as best he could and tried not to look like… Like whatever the fuck had just happened.
"Benedetto Battista", the exorcist smiled jovially, plopping his hat back on and thrusting his hand in Shiro's. "You'll hear most calling me Bébé, that's fine too. Lower First Class and Knight instructor."
"Shi– Alexander Fujimoto", he responded somewhat scatter-brained, and not just because his future teacher was called Baby; there was something wrong with the hand he was shaking. "Lower Second Class, Dragoon and Aria."
"Pleasure to have you with us, Alexander! I hope you don't mind the first name basis – I would use surname if I believed I could pronounce it. We have plenty of international exorcists here and I can't get the name right on a single one." He shook his head with a smile and some hand-waving. The hand in question was missing ring finger and little finger. "Though if you ask my daughter it's because I can't get the name right on anyone!" Benedetto laughed again – a hearty, rumbling laugh – and slapped his maimed right hand on Shiro's shoulder. "So, my dear student, your first lesson in Rome is cheek kissing: right cheek then left cheek. But only between friends, yes? When you meet someone for the first time you do not kiss: shake hands, nothing more."
"What? But–"
"Why I kissed you? Shock therapy for the culture shock." Benedetto winked. "Acclimatising can be a tricky thing for faraway transfers – the sooner you make yourself at home the better. Come, let's get you acquainted with Roma Aeterna!"
The Basilica was a temple; Headquarters were a fort. Nothing of the airy, otherworldly splendour above could be detected in the subterranean levels of the building. Corridors and staircases ribbed with austere stone arcs dug through the ground like the skeletons of giant snakes long dead and buried. Occasionally there would sprout even older passages to the sides, ones that breathed the damp, cold breath of raw earth. A world beneath the world. Benedetto was an enthusiastic tour guide, relating non-stop what they were seeing and what saint this-and-that statue depicted. The gesturing never stopped either, and Shiro idly wondered if it was his arms that were a windmill mechanism to operate his mouth or if it was the other way around.
"A funny way to build, right? Small corridor, square room, small corridor, square room." Indeed, the corridor ran like a string of prayer beads. The rooms were always sparsely furnished and didn't seem to fill any function other than… existing. "It's to make the base easier to defend. These corridors form bottlenecks, see? No matter how big an army that comes we can stand in the rooms and cut them down one by one, or two by two. If we can't hold one room we fall back and take up positions in the next. Clever, eh?"
Shiro hummed his agreement. Still, the greatest difference were the defences that weren't visible. Back in True Cross the wards only repelled demons of mid-level and higher: here nothing slipped through. No voiceless whispers, no ghostly buzz in his spine. The constant, invisible pressure he had grown used to… Down to nothing.
Once, he might have welcomed that feeling. When he had just recently become a demon lighthouse, his natural defences against possession burnt away, and wanted nothing more than to go back to how things used to be.
Things change. Things change and people change with them – that's how they survive. To suddenly not pick up any demonic presences at all felt unsafe. Like being blind. Like not being able to sense danger until it was too late. Because the price of knowing demons existed was nothing compared to the price of underestimating them.
"Ah, this is the best part of the tour!"
Like a creek reaching a lake, the corridor opened up into a grand hall. As they passed the double doors the ceiling formed vaults above them, leaping from pillar to pillar across the length and width of the room. The room itself was crowded: with desks, with lamps, with merry chatter and the crisp rustle of papers being handled.
"This is where all the paperwork gets done. As you can see it's everybody's favourite spot in summer, very nice and cool. This here is the reception desk – you will be seeing this a lot." The reception desks were the first line of booths and formed a natural barrier between the visitors' part of the hall and the part where the archivists worked. "This is where we hand in our reports after each mission."
"Oh don't listen to him!" The receptionist was a woman with a lot of make-up, and a chic scarf around her neck in the Order's red and blue colours. "We know why exorcists hang around here, Battista", she said with a sly look.
Well. The report desk might have been everybody's favourite spot for the cool air, or it might have been their favourite spot because all the workers were female: and they had some very form-fitting uniform skirts.
"Clara, you wound me! I am on very important Order business! That is, I've been entrusted with our fresh transfer here and we need to enter him in the system. You know the form, yes? The double seven something?"
"Seven five seven two – you're lucky you have us to take care of the book keeping." Clara the receptionist - whose name tag read Annabella - produced the required form with a delighted laugh.
"There are two sevens in it", he argued, but smiled all the same.
"You handle the demons and let us handle the numbers, dear. But tell me, did it work out for Arnaldo? Did he get to transfer?"
Clara/Annabella and Benedetto exchanged an uninterrupted flow of the Italian small talk over Shiro's head as he filled out his registration form. Lastly, he got to show his ID to her.
"Armoury next, then?" she said upon sliding his ID back to him. "If Gennaro is working today you can tell him next time I get a report with grime on it I'll give it right back. He can ruin his reports if he likes but it's on my head if his ruin the ones next to them as well."
Benedetto had no idea what he was talking about when he called the report desk the best part of the tour. In his defence Benedetto didn't understand guns, and he didn't understand people who were passionate about guns – he even said so as they entered the underground section that housed the armoury.
"Ciao, Marcello! Is Gennaro around?"
The armoury was… disappointing. As in it basically only displayed holsters, vests, ammunition belts, and other gear belonging to the Dragoon section.
"No – it's his youngest son's birthday." The actual firearms were kept behind a long counter that cut the room in two. The exorcist in charge of them was resting his lower arms on said counter while he leafed through a magazine with minimum interest. "He said something about going to Napoli to celebrate with the rest of the family. Bet they're having a great time of it. While I'm stuck here. Gathering dust." Another magazine page flopped over, unread and unenthusiastic. "What a way to waste one's life."
"Waste? What talk is this? It's a martyr death – you could do worse than that."
"Martyr", Marcello scoffed, but the scowl lines on his forehead smoothed somewhat. "Of what? Firearms?"
"Of dust."
"Go stuff your ass, Bébé."
"If you get out whatever's stuck up yours. You would be the most venerated martyr in the church – Saint Marcello, patron of dust, favourite of every housewife: hundreds of women praying for your services every day. Now try telling me that's a bad way to end!"
"Better than having one bald monkeyface interrupt me when I'm being moody."
It was like one of those doors that had multiple locks. Coax them open one by one and each time you got a step closer to getting through.
"Know which people are the only ones that can make a living off being moody?"
"This is going to be awful, isn't it?"
"Painters", Benedetto replied with a smile. And it grew wider. "Pain-tears."
Pain – yes. Like a knuckle duster gut punch.
"Good god, you want me to die from your jokes instead?!" Marcello was lost to the no man's land between laughing and crying, unleashing a flood of expletives that drowned out Shiro's agonised groan. The magazine flipped shut and skidded away on the counter. "Fine, fine: what do I have to do to get rid of you?"
Benedetto smiled and motioned to Shiro, who plucked the ID card out of his chest pocket once more.
"Lower Second Class – gotcha. Handgun. What model do you use?"
"What have you got?"
The exorcist paused for a moment, then turned towards the door in the back and called out: "Cog! We've got a guy here who wants to look at the–"
"Give him an M1911 and send him off!"
"Shove that M1911 someplace, I'm letting him in! This way." He waved Shiro over to a hinged section of the counter and led him to the door in the back. "He's a 60 year old man in a 30 year old man's body: grumpy and–"
"I hear you!"
"I know!" Marcello shouted back and unlocked the door.
Ah, yes. Yes. Let the people above marvel at Michelangelo's gilded dome and Pietá: Shiro was having his own religious experience in the Vatican's armoury. Row upon row of shelves greeted him, running in every direction and loaded with every firearm ever made.
"I need to upgrade my license to cover rifles." Shiro glanced over the rack of shiny black ArmaLite rifles – rows of ArmaLite rifles. He bit his lip, eyeing every item that passed as he reverently strode down the aisle with a boyish grin. If he rose a few degrees in Aria he would gain access to rocket launchers, too. Fucking rocket launchers.
No. No rocket launchers and no rifles. Handgun; he was there for a handgun. The SIG P220 model he had used in Japan winked at him with confident familiarity from the topmost shelf. But where was the fun in that?
He browsed the inventory at leisure, occasionally picking up a firearm and testing its grip and feel. Some spoke to him, others not so much as whispered; it's a special thing, the language between a gun and the hands that hold it. Eventually, he found one that settled in quite nicely. A simple design. Nothing extra, nothing wasted. The question now was how it performed.
"Cog?"
"Use your eyes. Unless you're blind. In which case my boot can help you find the door."
Shiro located the owner of the voice at the far end of a side aisle, where Cog's workbench pushed up against the wall like a frightened animal. The only thing sticking up over the chair's backrest was a battered, blue baseball cap with a white leaf. He didn't so much as turn around.
"I like the grip on this one." Shiro turned the weapon over, testing the weight that shifted comfortably in his hand. Walther P1. "How does it perform in the field?"
"Hell if I know." To properly underline how much he didn't care, Cog remained hunched over whatever he was working on.
"You're the guy who works in armoury, why don't you know?"
"'Cause I'm the guy who works in the armoury. You want to know what a gun's like you take it down to the range. They're all broken in and ready for service. Ammo's in the marked containers on the shelf." Cog stabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the shelf in question; Shiro ignored it in favour of trotting over to see what he was doing.
Cog's workbench was a topography of piles. Piles of fittings, piles of nails, piles of rubber rings, two screwdrivers for every screw known to man: it was the mountain kingdom of a chaotically organised mind. On the relatively free surface in the middle lay parts of a gun, each neatly aligned with the other.
Cog reached for the lamp to get better light. Shiro wouldn't have identified it as a lamp in the first place if he hadn't done that. It looked like a metal version of a vacuum cleaner hose fitted with a bulb and a primitive plastic… parabola TV flower. Cog pressed at the plastic petals to spread them wider for a broader light cone. Only then did Shiro notice how dark his skin was – too dark for an Italian.
"Don't recognise that model. What gun is it?" He stepped closer – to look at the project on the workbench, but also to sneak a glance at Cog's features.
"One designed by apes shitting on a notepad." Cog unceremoniously snatched a loupe from the desk for a closer look. "AutoMag. Some genius wanted to pack the power of a .44 Magnum into a semi-automatic and what they got was this piece of junk. Heavy, hard recoil, as reliable as explosive diarrhoea. And I'm supposed to 'fix' this train wreck 'cause some Dragoon can't be persuaded to use an actual gun."
"You know a lot about guns for someone who doesn't use them."
"Unlike the baboons that made this I can tell if a design's gonna work or not." He turned the barrel pipe slowly before the loupe, squinting his free eye shut. "I should give the guy a club instead. Same use, more reliable." A sudden grunt, something that sounded like a curse. "Or I'll just club him when he comes back. The moron polished the barrel pipe! No wonder it's got the hiccups! Probably thought he was gonna be a handyman and fix it himself. Idiot!"
Cog set the barrel down, and the loupe, and pulled off his baseball cap with a groan. A black stump of a pony tail jutted out from his neck, matching the stocky eyebrows and the meagre spread of hairs that attempted to be a moustache. Cog pressed his hands to his face and groaned again, as if the first time hadn't quite expressed his feelings about this, and kept groaning as his hands slid down the length of his features. Dark eyes, dark hair, wide nose; he was from somewhere in East Asia, no doubt about it.
"Where're you from?"
"Canada." Cog hitched the baseball cap back on with the bill pointing down his neck. "Toronto, if that tells you anything."
There was a moment in which Shiro's brain lost all footing: like a rugby player hit with a surprise slide tackle.
"You're hafu", he blurt out once his brain had found its feet again – almost found its feet again. "You're half…" How did you translate hafu to Italian? "Halfblood."
Cog uttered a snort that might have been a laugh but could just as easily have been a huff.
"Mother's from Vietnam. You?"
"Both my parents were Japanese. Alexander Fujimoto, by the way."
Another snort. Perhaps it was Vietnamese. Did Vietnamese sound like that?
As had happened quite often during the short time they'd known each other, Cog didn't care that Shiro was confused; his attention was on the Walther P1.
"Take the Beretta 92 as well while you're at it. They're pretty much the same gun. Some don't like the casings flying to the left on the P1 and some don't like the mag release on the Beretta – you'll figure it out." He was about to begin his salvage work on the AutoMag barrel when he halted. "On second thought…" He threw a glance at the gun again. "Just take the P1. Purebloods have too small hands for a good grip on a Beretta." He snorted again. "James Nguyen, by the way."
This time Shiro was 90% sure the snort was a laugh.
Shiro left the armoury comforted by the weight of the P1 on his hip. The Beretta had been nice too but he liked the slightly heavier trigger on the P1. That was the story he told Cog, at least.
Next were the barracks of the Swiss Guard. A very prestigious institution, the Swiss Guard, with a long and noble history within the Vatican but, Benedetto stressed, not as long as that of the Order of the True Cross: True Cross was the oldest Catholic military Order still in existence.
As the Pope's personal miniature army, the Swiss Guard had their barracks within the walled complex of the Vatican, next door to the Papal apartments and St Peter's Square where they could respond to threats on a minute's notice. The Guard and the Order shared some training facilities, where they were drilled in martial arts together – mostly it looked like every other gym Shiro had ever seen, with machines and weights and large mats that could be laid out on the floor for sparring practice. A few times per year the two forces had bigger joint exercises, to make sure they cooperated well if ever there arose a situation where they had to team up to defend the Vatican.
"They're tough, the Swiss, but fair. Really good people to work with. I would tell you who your supervisor will be but I can't for the life of me remember his name. It's like all Swiss Guards have the same name. Well, small wonder: they're all brothers. In arms." Benedetto broke into hearty chortle and nudged Shiro with an elbow. Or maybe that was the presence of his janitor co-worker in Japan briefly flitting past to salute a kindred spirit. "It is a little bit like that, though: very tightly knit group. It's usually you Dragoons who tend to bond well with the Guard, with your firearms and firearm things."
Romans and their romantic attachment to Italian fencing.
"I think they just don't wanna be martyred by their colleagues."
Benedetto approved, if physical contact was a sign of approval: he patted Shiro on the shoulder again. He lacked little finger on his left hand, too – god knew how many other injuries were hidden beneath his robes. Each exorcist Meister carried its advantages and its risks, but to be a Knight you had to be a special brand of fearless. There was no distance between exorcist and demon, no safety margin for a missed shot or mispronounced verse: just you and death with a metre of sharp steel between. Yeah, Knights were–
"Bucketheads", Benedetto chuckled in that particular way people chuckle when they recall good memories of youth. "Ah, but we were young. Young men full of competition and bravado. We called them Shitters in return – because they were stationary, you know? Sitting still to take aim. It depends on how much Dragoon you've got in you but you might need to unlearn a few habits. On the upside though, there are no bad Knights, so no need to worry: there's only good Knight or good night."
"Don't you ever stop?" Shiro groaned.
"Wait till you have kids", he smiled; "then you will understand."
With those words Benedetto pushed open another door, into a spacious hall. It looked like a church but definitely wasn't – the hall had the smell of cool, plastered stone mixed with that special smell that comes from sweat that has been shed and swabbed up for many, many years.
"This is where we will meet tomorrow, to introduce you to swords training. The sun will be on the right side then." Benedetto pointed at the far end: a round stained glass window gazed proudly down at them from behind the lacework of a safety net. "She's a true beauty, our Holy Mother." The wicker hat rested respectfully in his hands as his head nodded at the image. "This wasn't meant to be a training hall, I'm guessing you can tell. Those ceiling beams are a later addition, same with the wall bars and those shelves over there."
The echoes of their footsteps tiptoed over the plaster arcs as Benedetto mixed small talk with information about what Shiro could expect tomorrow. There would be no sparring, and no need to bring equipment: everything they needed was already there and they would mainly be going over the rules of fencing, weapon maintenance and common fencing sense.
"That's all you need to know for now. We'll save the details for when everyone is here."
"Roger." Shiro tore his eyes from the badminton shuttle wedged in between the rail of the climbing ropes and the ceiling beam they were anchored to. Benedetto held the door – which also looked like it had been intended for a chapel – for him. "What about the other nicknames? Or the rivalry was just between Dragoons and Knights?"
"No no no: there will always be rivalry among young men. Arias were Bookworms, obviously; Tamers were Witches – you will find many who carry amulets against the Evil Eye when they work with Tamers. We Italians are very superstitious, you'll notice. The Doctors were the only ones who didn't get any nicknames: young and feisty and with all the kinds of stupid that come with that, we still knew better than to mock the ones who held our lives in their hands."
Hold people's lives in his red stained hands – no, not going there, not going to let those sputtering memories flare up in flame. Shiro fished a cigarette out of his chest pocket before it was even a conscious thought.
"Smoke?"
"My doctor says I should cut down but he can stuff it – it keeps the steam up in an old man. Thank you." Benedetto helped himself to one and let Shiro light up for both of them.
"I'm no stranger to superstition – Japan's full of it", he said around the cigarette as he put the lighter away. "Some pretty logical, like saying you'll go blind if you don't eat up you rice as a way to make kids finish their food. Others are just random crap, like it's bad luck to turn twenty-five or forty-two but if a cat waves at you it means good fortune."
"Lucky numbers! Yes those are important here, too. Thirteen is very lucky: seventeen is bad luck. It looks like a man hanging from the gallows, you know? If you go to a bigger hotel they might actually have removed the numbers for the seventeenth floor!"
"Same thing in Japan." Shiro blew the smoke out with a smile: Italy might not be that different after all. "Many elevators don't stop at the fourth or ninth floor. The numbers are too similar to 'death' and 'suffering'."
"See, see? No matter what we look like, we humans are more or less the same", Benedetto rumbled heartily and used the cigarette – pinched between index and middle finger – to prick the air for emphasis. "We have our ways and we stick to them for no reason other than that we always have. Humans will always have vices, too. Of one kind or another." He dragged a long, pleasant breath on the cigarette. "So if it's nothing more harmful than a smoke and a friendly jibe, I say let humans have their vices."
"Just what your doctor wants to hear, I'm sure."
"It should be! I'm no good to him if I'm in perfect health, am I?"
It was nice to laugh; it was nice to laugh with someone who seemed to have a guffaw always just waiting to jump out and dance between the stone arcs, and Shiro could see why the Vatican chose someone like Benedetto Battista to welcome transfers. He was the colonnades of St Peter's: arms wide open, embracing the world.
"That's right, you were going to take Doctor classes, too, weren't you?" he recalled with a delighted gleam in the eye. "On top of working and studying for priest. Busy, busy – what's at the end of these ambitions, Amadeo? Arc Knight? Paladin?"
"No specific goal, really. Just feel like the more versatile I am, the better." It sounded empty and insipid as the over-chewed gum it was, his standard response to that question. "Name's Alexander, though."
"My bad! Alexander, Alexander – hah, Alexander the Great!" Benedetto looked like he had thought of something very clever and was very pleased with himself. "You know, when they said a transfer was coming from Japan I expected somebody shorter. The younger generations must be quite a bit taller, no? I used to work with a countryman of yours some twenty years ago and as I live and breathe, they had to commission a tailor to make him custom robes."
Whatever Benedetto was about to say after that vanished in a cough. Then the smell reached Shiro, and he started coughing as well. Rotten eggs – sulphur. That meant demons – that usually meant demons but there was absolutely nothing Shiro could sense that spoke of demons. His hand was on the gun in an instant, his eyes flitting right and left to locate the source of the disturbance. The stench came from the corridor they had just walked past; instants later, a woman's voice echoed out of the corridor in thickly accented Italian:
"Amit! For the love of Mary's cunt quit whatever it is you're doing!"
"What's going on?" Shiro breathed through his uniform sleeve, as far as that was possible.
"Nothing they can't take care of. I say we're done with the Barracks – come, let's meet up with your teammates at the Gianicolo terminal."
Why they were meeting the other exorcists at a bus stop was a mystery until Shiro saw the terminal. It lay right next to an open air sports complex housing both a basketball court, a volleyball court, and a small football field. It also didn't have a shred of shade to offer. Merely walking across it to the football field Shiro could feel red dust settle in the film of moisture forming at his neck. The four men waiting for them had done the only sensible thing and discarded their heavy robes: then one of them had decided that was enough sensibility for one day and had taken up juggling a football. His shirt had gone from white to a rusty pink that glued to his back.
"We usually group transfers together as a team", Benedetto told him as they approached. "It's less complicated than finding placement for them in existing teams. You will have Italians in your team as well, of course – we have people transferring from exorcist cells in other cities, too. One from the Veneto region, one from Florence, and one from Molise, if I remember. Oh yes, and one is from here in Rome."
"Welcome!" The young man that waved at them was rather short, and sported a meticulously tamed flurry of chestnut brown curls. "We were starting to worry you had gotten lost. Where do you have the rest?"
"Delayed!" Benedetto shouted back. "Some trouble with the weather at Heathrow. Our Brits will be arriving around noon tomorrow."
"Aaah but sir, how will we play a match with only five players?" He splayed his hands palm upwards: the winning grin, however, said he had already found a solution. "If only we had someone who could fill in on short notice."
"You don't think I can tell when someone is trying to string me along, Capponi?"
"Not stringing anyone along, sir." Yes he was. With his whole unabashed face. "Just saying it would be nice to have an extra player or two."
"You need to work on your politician face: people shouldn't be able to tell when you're lying." Benedetto returned the smile wholeheartedly. "But you could use another player. Well then! You introduce yourselves, I'll stretch these old bones for a bit and then I say we start!"
Benedetto broke into a light jog towards the goal posts, unbuttoning his robes as he did. The short guy smiled and offered his hand to Shiro. "Flavio Capponi, your go-to man for everything you need to know about Rome – just say the word and I'll hook you up wherever you want."
"Alexander Fujimoto, knows nothing about Rome", he said with a smile quirking the corner of his mouth.
"We'll fix that for you, my friend." He patted Shiro reassuringly on the shoulder. "Now, since he's too busy to introduce himself", he gestured at the man who was still juggling the ball, "this is my right hand blessing and burden: Gianpiero Sacchetti. Florence thoroughbred, you can see it in the weak chin he's trying to conceal with that beard; also look at the bounce in his step and his fine motor control. This is a hallmark trait of all distinguished Florentine families: allowed their ancestors to outrun hostile mobs."
Shiro wasn't sure if Flavio was introducing a friend or selling a horse.
"If all he's good for is running I might as well get a bike." The tall guy next to Flavio was in no doubt about the situation. Arms crossed, he eyed Gianpiero with the sceptical gaze of a buyer who wants his money's worth. "I'm looking for muscle, something that's fit for hard work and combat – this critter looks more like hair work and cocktails. Can he at least carry equipment?" Himself he looked like he could carry his whole team's equipment – possibly slung around his bull neck, and possibly hanging from his prominent ears.
"That depends, my good sir. Does he carry equipment well? Yes. Is he well equipped? No – and nobody grieves this more than I. It makes him terribly difficult to sell and nothing is worse for business than a dissatisfied customer – which is just about every girl in Florence."
The guy with the ears had a hard time keeping his face straight – not to mention Gianpiero had a hard time keeping his juggling together.
"But my dear Capponi, anything can be sold with the right marketing! He's not well equipped – so?" Ears guy swung his arms out. "He has other talents. Make the girls want him for what he has, not scorn him for what he doesn't have!"
"But what does he have?" Flavio was despairing: his eyebrows drew up worried creases over his eyes, his hands flew wildly in the air, his voice danced a staccato cadence over the syllables. "Look at him! The looks of a roasted eggplant and the brains of one too – the only thing he's good at is playing with balls!" Gianpiero suffered a snickering fit that almost made him drop his ball. "I tell him 'G, why do you keep doing this? What would your mother say if she knew you were wasting your life in such ways?' Sure, he handles balls very skilfully, but what will it amount to? All those hours of polishing his technique, do girls even have what it takes to appreciate it?"
If there was any talent Gianpiero had, besides playing with balls, it was self control. Flavio's oration cracked the rest of them up one after the other, and it was only after a jibe about Gianpiero's father teaching him to play that his control on the ball faltered, then failed, then he sent it flying at Flavio's head. It was a miss but he ducked reflexively anyway; Gianpiero used the split second to throw himself at him.
"I'm sorry you had to see this – very sad story", Gianpiero panted as he struggled to keep his grip on the laughing Flavio. "It's his mouth, he can't control it. When he lapses into fits like this you have to restrain him." Gianpiero was taller, and could quite easily wrap his arm around the neck of his friend. "He's been like this since he was born. It's a fatal condition: doctors didn't believe he would live this long." When informed of his fatal condition Flavio heaved up some rather grotesque gargling noises. "Ah, there it is – the final breath. Easy, easy, I'm right here…"
He eased the spasming Flavio down on the ground, cradled in his arms like a dying maiden. He hacked and gasped, clinging to Gianpiero's shirt in a death grip as he struggled to convey his final words.
"G… promise me… when I'm gone…" He rasped, choked; the quivering whisper cost him every ounce of strength he had left. "Take good care… of my balls…"
"I promise, Flavio." Gianpiero had a god-given stone face. "I will treat your balls as if they were my own. I will feed them and clothe them and raise them, until they are full-grown dicks just like their father."
It was, by far, the most entertaining death either of them had witnessed. The ice was expertly broken, and introductions carried on without delay.
"Larry Brooks, Intermediate Second Class Dragoon." The tall guy with the ears had big hands and a strong grip; Shiro felt his knuckles roll against each other when Larry squeezed. He didn't know what that meant. A test? A challenge? Larry's features were an odd mix of signals: an open smile, two guarded eyes.
"Alexander Fujimoto, Lower Second Class Dragoon and Aria." He squeezed the hand back, feeling the knuckles move under Larry's skin too.
"Welcome on the team, Al." He seemed content with the response, at least. The ears didn't actually stand out that much, it was his haircut that highlighted them: a tight shave that only left a trimmed patch of brown hair on top of his head.
The last guy to introduce himself was a tall, gangly creature with pitch black hair and glasses. When Shiro offered his hand the man clasped it in both of his and pressed it, as if Shiro were a long lost friend he had finally reunited with.
"Welcome, Alexander. I'm Remo Di Luca. It's a pleasure to have you with us", he said with a smile so warm and sincere Shiro just waited for the moment he would drop the act and burst out laughing. Or lean in and kiss him. He kinda hoped for the former.
Turned out it would be neither. The moment dragged out and the awkwardness increased exponentially until Shiro got out a limping 'pleasure to meet you, too'.
"Okay, boys!" Flavio clapped his hands together twice to get their attention. "How many of you can play football?"
A rhetorical question. Every Italian could play football: it was in their genes, just like hand waving and coffee drinking. Their souls were probably football shaped, too.
Odd ones out were Larry and Shiro, the poor misguided souls who believed "playing football" just meant being able to hit a ball with a foot because really how hard could that be? Thus the teams were split into Flavio-Remo-Larry and Gianpiero-Benedetto-Shiro to make them as equal as possible.
Shiro proved to be a fantastic football player – for the other team. If he didn't accidentally pass them the ball himself, Remo or Flavio could just stroll past and it would magnetically transfer itself to their feet. Larry was marginally better but seemed to prefer playing with invisible teammates over on the volleyball court. The times he got the ball it quickly got shot off the field, which meant it was Gianpiero who got it since he really did run like the wind. Furthermore, Florentines apparently didn't need breathing.
"You go guard the cage, Amadeo", Benedetto puffed, lifting his hat and wiping a napkin across his forehead. The sun was frying the ground, and they had failed yet another spurt across the field to intercept Remo's offense. With only three players in each team they hadn't spared anyone to stand in the goal. "Me and him can hold the field."
"You already hold the field." Shiro spat on the ground. No matter what he did, his mouth tasted like dust. "I could use a bloody Saint Marcello." He squinted at a Gianpiero who bounced impatiently on his toes, waiting for Benedetto to initiate the next charge. "Right. You and race horse go give 'em hell."
"That's the spirit!" Benedetto patted him in the back. "Oh, and don't spit."
"Huh?"
"Spitting: it's offensive." The Knight grinned and patted him again. "Welcome to Italy."
Not that they scored any more goals than before – they didn't let in as many in, at least. Shiro's reflexes made him a better goalkeeper than field player, although he still missed many of Flavio's feints. Benedetto and Gianpiero pushed themselves hard, but without Shiro shooting bad passes they worked out a chemistry in their two-man play. There was a good amount of shouting across the field – approving cheers, merry jibes, laughter – and when Benedetto scored a clean goal over the shoulder of an astonished Larry, Shiro found himself carried away cheering and applauding, too.
It was almost like that one day years ago, when another team of exorcists had pooled their forces in a warm gym hall to nick sandbags from a dökkálfr. When they had learnt each other's strengths, and their own: when they had learnt to use those strengths as a team.
A/N
Hafu is a word that came about in the 70's. It replaced older, taboo words for someone who is half-Japanese, though in this context Shiro uses it about biracials in general. I trust most of you know that Japan has a very xenophobic and "race aware" culture.
Pronunciation guide
Marcello – approximately [mar'tʃel:ɔ]
Gianpiero – approximately [ʤʌn'pɪerɔ]
Sacchetti – approximately [sʌ'ket:ɪ]
Yes I am totally forcing you to find an International Phonetic Alphabet chart. =9 While transcribing the names with English pronunciations might help some, many of you don't have English as your first language, so I think using the international standard is better.
Firearms
Firearms is the easiest thing I've ever had to research. 0_0 I knew absolutely nothing about guns before I did, but every gun geek and his dog (it's always a he) has a youtube channel where they walk you through every little part of the gun, its history, its design, its maintenance, its horoscope and favourite film. (It creeps me out, okay?)
The M1911 was the standard handgun in the US army at this time.
The P1 is, for all practical purposes, a Walther P38 like the ones manufactured for the German army during WWII: it just went through some minor changes, including the name, in 1957 when it was no longer produced in Germany. The P38 was, as many things made in Germany, a little piece of mechanical art. It was cheap, it was light, it was reliable, and the design was so ahead of its time that it became the "grandfather" of prominent modern gun designs.
The Beretta 92 is one of the guns that drew inspiration from the Walther P38. The big differences are pretty much what Cog described: casings are discharged to the left on a P38/P1 and to the right on a Beretta; magazine release is at the bottom of the grip on a P38/P1 and by the thumb next to the trigger on a Beretta. And the Beretta grip is wider – which can be a problem if you have smaller hands than what the manufacturer had in mind. (Beta reader chips in that this is a problem with every handtool, like electric screwdrivers and stuff. They're designed for (Western?) male hands.)
The AutoMag is something of a black sheep. Either people love it or they dislike it. It was one of the most powerful handguns in its time but… let's just say it had Issues caused by a rushed and not well thought through design. It's allegedly a fun thing to fire, if you like guns that are powerful and look powerful, but it's not reliable to actually fire: which should be a priority if you intend to use it in life or death situations.
What the AutoMag guy has done is to be over-enthusiastic about his gun maintenance. There's "by-products" from shooting, little particles of metal and gunpowder that stick on the involved surfaces. Those need to be removed, manually – not with some dremel or other mechanical polishing tool, they do the job too well and you will be polishing off metal that's part of the gun. Then the parts won't properly align with each other anymore.
I learnt a useful thing about ammunition, too (and that Katou pays attention to detail even there). If you read chapter 3, where Yukio is replenishing supplies in the exorcist shop, you'll notice he buys silver bullet jackets. Not silver bullets, as for example Hellsing will use. And when you think about it, it's obvious: silver is a light metal. A bullet of solid silver won't go very far or have much impact: thus it's only the bullet jacket that's made of silver, while the weighted core is probably lead.
Stuff I never knew about guns either include "breaking in" a gun. The term explains itself rather well: before you can consider a gun ready for use you have to shoot X number of bullets with it (usually in the hundreds). That way the barrel will get smoothed to perfection by the bullets and make firing easy. Same thing with all the moving parts of the gun: they slide against each other, shape each other to a perfect fit. Once that breaking in is done, you can put the gun away and be sure that whenever you pick it up again, the parts will slide smoothly and you will experience a minimum of mechanical screw ups.
Academy architecture
There's influences from both Mexico and Italy in the architecture of the academy – you get a better view of it in the Blue Exorcist movie or artwork from it. Definitely Greek/Roman/Etruscan columns.
Football, soccer, and American football
As you should have noticed by now, I'm European. And as you really should have noticed by now, this part of the fic is set in Europe. Ergo, when I write "football" it will be the European kind of football: the game where people run around in shorts and t-shirts and only touch the ball with their feet and heads. As is cleverly hinted at by the combination of "foot" and "ball".
If I ever talk about the American football game, which has very little to do with feet touching balls, I will call it American football. The exception is if it's Larry talking about it, which I'm sure he will.
Soccer? Don't be ridiculous, nobody here calls it soccer. It's football.