A/N

It is the season of people returning from the grave so here I am, back from the dead to bring you fanfiction!

To everyone who kept their fingers crossed for me on my exams: it worked. It worked. And I want to thank you all for believing in me, because I was not able to believe in myself. I thought I had screwed up everything, that I was going to lose my place at the university, lose my classmates, my study money, my apartment, etc. But I passed. I'm so happy and I just want to hug you all. Thank you!

/Dimwit

P.S. I have been away for a long time, so if I haven't responded to a review you left, odds are… I've forgotten about it. T_T I'm so sorry, and if you asked me something please remind me to respond to it! (As for writing requests, I have those archived and in many cases outlined. I just haven't had much time to write.) D.S.

Shiro quite liked Alfredo alla Scrofa. It looked like his apartment but bigger, and without an old lady telling him when to eat and sit and wipe his shoes. It was a classy place yet it had a touch of home-ness that made him feel surprisingly welcome – much owed to the picture frames. The walls of the restaurant looked almost like chess boards, and though the photographs weren't familiar to him he understood between Flavio and Larry that they were Western movie stars and politicians.

If Shiro had taken the time to look properly he might have noticed that many of those photos were taken at the restaurant; he might also have been prepared for the prices on the menu. …Which he was now able to afford. Not every day, no, but if he felt like indulging in a little luxury now and then there was nothing stopping him but habit.

Habits – there were many of those at work around the table the waiter had them shown to. Gianpiero had put on a fresh shirt but the purpose of buttons still eluded him, at least from the sternum up – or maybe it was a calculated move to distract the eye from his pants. Shiro gave the latter a last look before they disappeared under the table. They were a bellbottom cut with black and red stripes that should not have been possible to wear outside a circus – but as they say, confidence matches everything.

"At ease, soldiers." Larry and Andrew always held their shoulders a bit squarer than the rest, stood a bit straighter than the rest – and Flavio couldn't resist poking fun of it. "And you, sit down: the waiter will come to us."

"I know, but we're missing a napkin." Remo continued peering towards the kitchen in the hopes of making eye contact. "They might be able to bring one over when they–"

Flavio grabbed a tastefully folded napkin from the neighbouring table and slapped it down on the plate like one laying out a winning hand of cards.

"Problem solved."

Remo glanced at the napkin, and at the now napkin-deficient seat, in a manner indicating that he did not share Flavio's opinion. However, he seated himself without a word. Exactly like a doormat. Step on it as much as you want, it won't protest.

A sharp clonk made Larry very nearly jump out of his chair. Gianpiero, who had slung his suit jacket over the backrest of the chair, vanished out of sight as he reached for whatever had fallen out of its pockets.

"Hey Flavio!" He shot back up again with a happy grin. "Look what I found!"

"You found your Order badge: congrats", Shiro noted without fanfare.

"He found an Order badge – he's got at least ten by now and never knows where they are. Well done: how about you let me take care of that so you don't forget it at the disco tonight?"

"But what if run into a demon and I need to stab it?" Gianpiero flipped the badge over and made a stabbing motion with the tip of it.

"If you run into a demon when you're drunk you'll be asking it out on a date."

The bickering didn't die down until the waiter came to take their orders.

"Beer, beer, wine – what do you guys drink?" Flavio asked once he had counted off Larry, Gianpiero, and himself respectively.

Andrew wanted wine, Remo wanted an aranciata, Shiro wanted to place his order himself thank you very much, but asked for a beer when that wasn't an option.

"Three beers, a bottle of wine for the gentlemen, and one aranciata for our Venetian featherweight, please."

Miraculously, they did get to order the meals by themselves. The waiter had barely left the table before Flavio was back to harassing Gianpiero about his badge.

"A man of wisdom is able both to love his enemies and hate his friends", Larry pitched in sagely. "So whatever you are you're good at it. Almost like brothers."

"Basically. We've known each other since we were in diapers", replied Gianpiero. "So since he was about twelve."

"The thing was, our families knew each other. My father works in Florence and as they happened to have a son the same age–"

"I'm 82 days older."

"–they hoped I would be a good influence on the development of this idiot. So they put us together and–"

"He absorbed all the stupidity."

"–now he's basically my brother, yeah", Flavio finished and slapped his hand on Gianpiero's shoulder. "Even though he's still an idiot from Florence."

"He likes to deny it, but he has as much Florentine blood as I do." Gianpiero lowered his voice to a completely audible whisper. "We deported his family to Rome. Had to get rid of the stupidity."

"If you were my brother you'd be smart."

"If I were your brother you'd be taller."

"And you'd be more handsome."

"Says the guy who's never had a girlfriend."

"It's hard to find one that's not already your girlfriend."

"Younger brothers get hand-me-downs, that's just how it is."

The waiter returned with a tray full of beverages and left as soon as he had placed them on the table.

"Alright: guys." Flavio interlaced his fingers and leaned forward as if he were about to start an important meeting. Not a formal meeting but an important meeting: perhaps one where the attendants were about to plan a burglary. "This is a time for everyone to get to know everyone, and luckily I know a few good ways to do that. So, we're gonna take turns, and we're all gonna tell each other our most memorable mission."

"In what way memorable?" Larry asked.

"Any way. Something funny, something that went well, something that went south – anything that made an impression on you."

"First off: does anyone know how many dams the U.S. has? 80 000, and that's just approximate figures. And do you know how many of those we have to dispatch teams to every year? Hundreds. If you were to compile mission reports from the whole country, I promise you there would be one dam-related report every third day at least. It's specifically dams – not hospitals or schools or other buildings – because the U.S. is populated by nature spirits that won't let you build even a walkbridge before they go apeshit." For lack of drum sticks, Larry used his index fingers to tap a soft rhythm against the table edge. "This particular dam was out in a nice little nowhere in West Virginia, called Buffalo Creek. For the record, Buffalo Creek is like 'John' for rivers. There's at least five Buffalo Creeks that I know of. Anyway, the whole area is mountains, and rich in coal, so the dam was owned and maintained by a mining company named Pittston." Larry snorted and added: "I can imagine Battista's joy. Pits-ton, mining company."

"He'd think it was a hole-some business." Gianpiero spun his recovered exorcist badge in circles on the table.

"There had been heavy rainfall in the region when we were called over, abnormal quantities over several weeks. There had also been the Boom noises. The Appalachian mountains have a great deal of weird shit going on: unexplained booming claps of thunder without lightning, for one. That plus the rain and some superstitious worker fellow at the mine resulted in my team being sent there. Hours before dawn. Everyone geared up in rain ponchos. I'm telling you, you could see the dam quake at every boom. Thousands of tonnes of slate and rock, trembling like a leaf in the wind."

"How could you see that if it was before dawn?"

"They've got lights at the mine, obviously." Larry shot Gianpiero a dry look. "You don't wanna drive blind where you could drop thirty feet down a hillside."

"Thirty bikes."

"Anyway… Intermittently, if you looked real hard, you could see a thin, zipping flash of light come out of the sky above the dam before each clap. Straight as an arrow. No one's ever seen a thunderbird but when you see that unnatural kind of lightning you know what you're dealing with. Not that that matters." Larry took a sip of his beer. "Nature spirits have to be appeased in very particular ways. It takes voodoo rituals from the tribe they favoured or they won't go away. But you know, which Indian tribe that lived in that particular area four-five hundred years ago – no one's kept track of that. Very few Indians join the Order, too. So we were standing there, in the rain, watching this dam that held back millions of gallons of coal sludge quiver with each bolt of lightning, and we knew we didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell taking that thunderbird out in under twelve hours. I had… a hundred thoughts and none going through my head at that time. I knew what was going to happen to that dam, and to the villages downstream of it, and that was all I saw. That was all I could think, that this will be a disaster and we're powerless to stop it. I stood like that till Eugene – the team leader – grabbed my shoulder and shook me out of it. I'll try not to be long-winded, I'll just say that Eugene is a man I'd follow through the gates of hell and back. He gave us orders and no one hesitated, not for an instant: we went from paralyzed to a single smoothly operating unit of hands and feet. Tamers went onto the dam to fortify it. Knights and Dragoons detonated explosives in the hillside to create buffer dams downstream. Me and a few more took the cars to go alert the people in the valley. Mountain folk rise early, luckily. Many were already moving about in the streets, so we could split up and yell as we were driving. For a while it almost seemed like a… a fairy tale. Like I was the boy crying wolf to the entire town. Away from the dam, the idea of the collapse and the flood it would cause seemed surreal in a way that actually made doubt that it was going to happen. But it did, of course. We were driving for the next town at breakneck speed when we heard the rumble behind us. When I looked in the rear-view mirror there was this black, churning wall of water filling the valley, doing a slalom from side to side and obliterating everything in its path. I almost drove off the road. 'This is it', I thought. 'This is how I die.' I stepped on the pedal all the way to Man, closest bigger city in the area. We got most of the people into the hills by the time the water reached town, and from then on all we could do was… watch. Cars, houses, everything was swept away like toys." Larry could see it as he spoke, you could tell. His gaze was far away, blank with memories that would never stay just memories. "I've never felt so powerless in my life. Never felt so small and human in the hands of forces beyond our control. But when the water level began to sink and everyone went out searching for survivors, I felt strong. I saw these people giving their all to help each other: people that wouldn't have been alive if not for us. Our team, small and human and powerless as we were, saved hundreds of lives that day. That will always be special to me." Larry raised his beer quietly, and everyone followed suit with their own glass: to the dead, to the living, to the ones that make the difference.

"I feel honoured", Andrew grasped Larry's shoulder in a heartfelt grip, "sitting next to a hero."

"We're all heroes", he responded, glancing around the table with a small smile playing the corner of his lip. "We who are God's sword and humanity's shield. We're part of something much bigger than ourselves, something that's been around for a thousand years and will still be around a thousand years after we're dead – and if that ain't worth a toast, I don't know what is. To brothers in arms!" He raised his glass again, and so did all the rest of them.

"I was once on a mission in Sydling St Nicholas, Dorset. This is an outstandingly charming village, I ought to tell you – hardly the setting one would picture for the gruesome events that transpired there." Shiro was already preoccupied with imagining what might constitute 'an outstandingly charming village' in Andrew's world. "It started with the dogs. Sydling is a peaceful place, home mostly to elderly and families with children, and many of them have dogs. One after the other they disappeared from their garden pens, always at night. The townspeople thought they were being stolen and stopped letting their dogs out of the house unsupervised, and for a while it seemed that would be the end of the tragedies: then the same thing happened to the geese at one of the local farms. Then cats began disappearing, and sheep and goats…"

Larry suffered a sudden bout of coughing, which may or may not have had to do with Gianpiero humming something that sounded very much like 'old MacDonald had a farm…'

"And one elderly couple had their hen house demolished", said Andrew gravely. "It was their grandchild, a wee boy of nine, who woke up at night and went to the kitchen for a glass of water when he saw the perpetrator. He was interviewed by the police first, then by the Order when they passed the case on to us. The animals weren't stolen, as had first been assumed: they were eaten, by what the boy described as 'a very thin person who could rip wire netting with their bare hands'. We all understood what that meant." A muted 'damn' left Larry's mouth. "But it didn't prepare us for what we found. We traced the demon to a house in the neighbourhood; an elderly woman opened when we rang the bell. She was so gentle, so mild…" Andrew stifled a sniff.

They could guess where the story was going from there – or Shiro could. In his mind the mild old lady took on the shape of the nukekubi woman he had exorcised, nightdress billowing and face split with a maw full of sharp fangs.

"When she understood our mission she tried to shove us out, block the entrance with her frail little body. She shouted at someone inside the house to run…" Andrew's eyes squeezed tight and… "Excuse me." He dabbed the napkin at his eyes. "A voice answered her back. A cracked and rusty voice straight out of the grave, oh I wish I could forget that voice… There weren't words, not at first, but when we pushed past her into the house it became more agitated. 'Mother', it said."

"Oh shit…" Gianpiero murmured.

"Don't say such vulgar things." Andrew kept dabbing at his eyes, voice thicker and thicker. "She had cared for her son – even when he began to turn, even when he was more corpse than human; even when she had to catch live animals to feed him…! And he fought the decay, refused to lay a hand on his mother despite the cravings the infection plagued him with! Never in my life have I seen such proof of love between mother and child! Every time I think of it, I…!"

"Become a sobbing mess", Shiro noted: around the table, everyone was waiting for everyone else to do something about it. Like pouring Andrew a drink. That was Gianpiero's solution.

"To mothers!" Everybody followed suit as he raised his glass – and maybe added a muted something about mama's boys – for a toast.

"To mothers – and humanity", Remo joined in. "Whether it be something we must continually hold on to or something we must continually create."

"Nice! Should I be asking you to write my speeches?"

Remo declined Flavio's request with a lopsided smile. "I'd rather not be involved in politics. It tends to make holding on to humanity more difficult."

Shiro almost choked on his beer. Flavio cracked up; Gianpiero hooted – virtually howled – and slammed his palm rhythmically on the table.

"Today's truth, though." Larry ceased his muffled drum solo with something that might have been a sharp strike on a cymbal. "The Communist parties are little more than angry mobs with catchy names. The police are bringing out APCs and submachine guns to keep the peace in the streets – hell, just to defend themselves – and meanwhile the whole city's cowering in anticipation of the next riot. I saw the barricades today, passed them on the way here, as did he." Larry nodded at Andrew. "Hard to hold on to your humanity when you're willing to spill the blood of the law."

"I think what we're seeing in Italy right now is humanity. The self-interest, the violence, the greed of people who don't understand how economy works."

"Hey, Cesarino, did you just call Communists self-interested?"

"They are", Flavio continued with heat. "They don't care about the people – if they did, they wouldn't attempt to impose a political system that turns countries into corrupt, impoverished dictatorships every time it's instated. If they cared, they wouldn't be bombing public events and instigating arson against political opponents. That's not the country I was born in. That's not the country I want my children to be born in. When I think of what Italy has been and what it has become I… I don't even have words for it."

"This is why he needs someone to write his speeches." Gianpiero attempted to lick the beer foam out of his scant moustache. He didn't succeed too well. "I tried but he didn't want to use it."

"Half of it was rock'n'roll lyrics."

"Empirically proven to capture the hearts of the masses."

"Speaking of losing humanity", Shiro tapped a finger against his beer glass; "Those disappearances all over the city – do we know what that's about yet?"

"I'll hear it from my sources the moment they know but right now – nothing." Flavio swished the wine around in his glass. "Only that new names turn up on the list every day. Over a hundred people are gone now and the police are desperate to keep a lid on it."

"They are already under a lot of pressure", Andrew added, though it didn't really need to be added.

The food came in, at last, with hypnotic aromas of garlic and tomato: if things were this tasty, Shiro could see a point with the cut-throat prices.

"Mmm…" Remo had a weird way of doing that. The humming thing. Like someone testing his voice pitch before singing. "My team had an encounter with shapeshifters. We didn't realise that at first, of course – I didn't realise it until the battle was over. The thing I fear the most is becoming blind. I'm partially deaf from ear infections in childhood, and rely on my eyes to read lips. When the shapeshifter struck me blind, I was terrified. All I could think about was how I was going to live now, how I was going to communicate and move and work. I felt hands grasping me, shaking me: I heard the voice of my teammate but without my eyesight I could only make out a muffled blur of words. Eventually he wrote in my palm with his finger: 'It was a shapeshifter. You are not blind.' In that very moment, the darkness began to fade away and soon I could see again." Only then did Shiro realise that they were all quiet. Not even Gianpiero had made a single move to speak during Remo's recollection. "They had removed the shapeshifter from my face long ago, but it wasn't until they removed the fear from my mind that my eyesight returned. It was a humbling experience – one might even say sublime", Remo said with his heart in every syllable. "When we look upon the world, do we truly see it? Or is what we see only the reflections of our own minds, our hopes and fears? How much do demons deceive us, and how much do we deceive ourselves?" Remo let his gaze wander to all his teammates in turn, permanently tucking the questions into the mind of each and every one. "Thank you for listening."

Oh come on… Come on! Who even says something like that? In a way like that? Like some ancient philosopher teaching his students at a staircase in Athens, what the fuck…

"And now over to the weather…" Larry fell in perfectly with Remo's speech tone. "Sorry, couldn't help myself. Never would've guessed you were deaf – honestly, good job, pal – but now that I think about it you do put a lot of effort into measuring your voice when you speak."

"Do you know sign language then?" Gianpiero leaned in over the table as if taking a closer look at Remo would reveal whether he did or not.

"I know sign language, yes. But not many others do."

"Italian is a sign language." Shiro added a few arbitrary hand waves to make his point.

"And you just said you offer your services to fishermen for money", Gianpiero translated.

"Are you serious?"

Of course not. From Remo snickering behind his hand to Larry slapping the table with his palm, there wasn't a single soul around that table who was the least bit serious.

"It is a very interesting observation", said the one person who was serious. "I don't think human deception could ever be comparable to that carried out by demons, however. We may deceive at times, but we have something demons don't: morality. We know when we do another human being wrong; we–"

"Those were rhetorical questions", Shiro cut off, skewering an olive on his fork. "Also, he was talking about deceiving yourself, not others."

There are people you can read like open books, and there are people you don't have to read because their faces are neon signs broadcasting whatever currently goes through their minds.

"Why would a man want to deceive himself?" Andrew was the living incarnation of puzzlement.

If Shiro had been better at Italian, he would have roasted the guy mercilessly.

"Well – he might want to think he's smarter than he actually is." Larry, on the other hand, was very good at Italian. "'Cause it feels better to think you're smart than to know you're an idiot. Deceiving yourself is all about not wanting to face up to the harsh reality."

The puzzled look settled in more comfortably on Andrew's features.

"How is that constructive? Ignoring the challenges and difficulties of reality, wouldn't that only allow things to grow worse?"

"Here." Gianpiero helped Andrew to another glass of wine. "The prime vehicle on any journey of self-discovery – leaves logic behind and gets you in touch with your urges and wishes, 'cause in the end they call the shots and the brain is just a squishy grey walnut."

"What he means is too much journeying to self-discovery makes your brain a squishy grey walnut." Flavio quirked an eyebrow at Gianpiero, who was toasting with Andrew and downing a fair bit more than a sip.

"I was staying at an old-fashioned inn when an emergency situation occurred, so I was the only exorcist there. No equipment except a handgun. The entire valley was swarmed with tengus, so many you couldn't see the sky. It's a type of big, humanoid crow demon that sometimes eats people."

Translating the events to Italian was a cumbersome exercise. Many details fell between words that didn't carry quite the same connotations; many details fell away because he let them. That he had been there because of his close ties with Samael, or that he had broken a demon's neck in hand-to-hand combat, were things people in Rome didn't need to know. But also… in the back of his mind, as he retold the events of Kiridani ryokan, he knew this was his chance to reinvent himself. As he had done when he went from orphanage boy to smalltime criminal, as he had done when he went from the streets of True Cross to its most renowned school, Shiro took the opportunity to edit and shed the bits of his past that didn't fit with the new life he was going to shape.

"Sanctifying bath water…" Remo's eyes were full of wonder and incredulty. "I would never have thought of that. Thank you, Alexander: I will take this lesson to heart and hope that I never come in a situation where I need to use it."

Swallowing the last of his scallopine, Flavio swung his head towards Gianpiero. "Haunted hair salon?"

Gianpiero made a sweeping gesture with his hand. "Ladies first."

"So!" Flavio clapped his hands together. "Our tale begins at Calogero's, which you have probably never heard of but that's not important. The salon had seen an escalation in ghost activity over a few months and was on the brink of bankruptcy: our team was sent there to fix it, and to keep the gawkers out." Flavio leaned in and shot a meaningful look at his audience. "'Cause Italians flock to gossip like ants to syrup."

They all smiled in agreement: behind Flavio's back, Gianpiero was paedagogically pointing out an Italian who loved gossip.

"We draw lots on who does what and unfortunately this time around I got the short end of the stick – crowd control. We're not exactly inconspicuous in these robes, if you know what I mean. Plus half the town knew the rumours of ghost activity at Calogero's. So there we are: G and Carmine go in, I stand outside answering stupid questions."

"What's happening? Is anyone hurt? Has there been an accident?" Larry pitched his voice higher and counted them off on his fingers.

"That", Flavio said and pointed. "And you get to respond at least ten times 'cause people don't know how to use their bloody ears – and you can never say 'we're exorcising a demon' without them starting a debate on how demons don't exist. So I reply: 'It's a beaver infestation, ma'am.' And the lady looks at me, like she wants to call bullshit but at the same time she doesn't want to accuse a member of the clergy. 'Beavers? In a hair salon? In Rome…?'" Flavio pitched his voice in an imitation of a female one almost as bad as Larry's. "I'm putting on G's best poker face now and just stick to my story: 'Yes, ma'am. They were drawn to the carrots at the vendor's next door but the nest is in the hair salon – you can tell by the smell of urine. Once they have marked their territories they are quite vicious when protecting them, so it's not safe to go in there.' There is a vegetable vendor next door, and the woman looks like she's about to buy what I say when some four-eyes next to her calls me out saying there's no beavers in Italy and I'm probably thinking of rabbits. 'It's sad that so few people beavers love carrots. They're given carrots as special treats at the zoo, and when they escaped they went for what they knew.' And the guy doesn't argue", Flavio snorted through a wide grin, "'cause with these uniforms people believe anything you say."

"What's sad is he didn't realise what a brilliant innuendo he was making there", Gianpiero laughed. "Meanwhile Carmine and I are inside with the owner who looks a little like Tullio Altamura. What we learn of the ghost is apparently it gathers up hair, slaps it around and pours products over it, then bangs up the interior of the salon. When it escalated it was even cutting or tearing the hair directly from the customers' heads. Oh, yeah – he showed us. He was wearing a beret to hide that the ghost had given him a close shave, as Bébé would'a put it. He should count himself lucky his razors were so sharp. I had to stitch up a guy with a wound from a dull blade once and man, it wasn't pretty. Gianpiero gulped a mouthful of beer. "So we think it's the ghost of a hairdresser – a vengeful one. Does the owner know of any colleagues who died and may have become vengeful ghosts? Apparently yes: there was a guy who died in a car accident a decade ago. Sounds promising. However, the only thing the owner can come up with to explain his post-life trashing of the salon is that he always got beaten at scopa. Personally I would've guessed he was bald."

"Beaten at what?"

"A card game – I'll teach you sometime", Gianpiero responded when Shiro once again knew nothing about Italian customs. "Right: we're trying to figure out why this guy is haunting the salon when we strike gold and the ghost appears in person. Not bald, so there went my theory. Instead it's a scrawny fellow who looks like he could be in his forties, big moustache, tiny glasses – looks nothing like the guy who died in the car accident, when we describe him to the owner. That's as much as we get before a swarm of scissors come out of the drawers and fly at Carmine." Gianpiero's eyebrows shot up. "I probably forgot to say it but Carmine had long hair. Emphasis on had."

"Since G would forget his own hands if they weren't attached to his arms, he had left the medical equipment outside with me", Flavio took over. "So Carmine comes out for alcohol and gauze looking like he's run through barbed wire, cursing so badly I had to cross my delicate heart – and the gawker woman does the same! 'Maybe you could lure them into a cage or a bag?' she says. 'With carrots?' I'm imploding inside, but I keep a straight face and tell her – very professionally – that we might consider it if we can't smoke them out any other way."

"While Cesarino is making subconscious dirty talk with Lady Beaver I'm trying to talk to the ghost, but it's about as clueless as Flavio is. Sometimes it seems to hear me and sometimes not: it reacts, but it doesn't answer my questions. It's completely absorbed in gathering up all the hair it can find and muttering nonsense to itself – equal parts about French princes and Castor, one of the twin stars in Gemini. That's how it usually goes, apparently. They'd tried reading it the daily horoscope but that didn't have any effect. Next the owner asks me if I have any suspenders", Gianpiero made a gesture as if he were throwing something in the air, "because what young man doesn't wear suspenders in this day and age? But evidently suspenders are the next step after the hair, so he takes off his own before the ghost lends a hand. The ghost nicks the suspenders, gathers the hair up in a pile, and starts spanking it with the suspenders." He allowed them all ample time to stare blankly ahead as he treated himself to another mouthful of beer. "At that point I was pretty ready to grab a drink and go home. I've never heard of a ghost behaving that erratically, never. Hairs flying everywhere, ghost patting them back together – and the owner just watches it all with weary eyes and tells me to wait for the best part." He sighed. Looked at the glass in his hand. Yes, he needed another sip. "I said I'd never heard of a ghost behaving that erratically before, but I've also never heard of a ghost peeing before. Didn't know they could do that. Still don't know how to feel about it. So after peeing all over the hair pile, the ghost got agitated – that, too, is apparently how this routine goes. It darts around, upturning drawers and pulling down whatever mirrors are left, as if it's looking for something. I try asking again what it wants", he put the glass down, folded his arms on the table, looked around; "and though it's still talking nonsense, there's one word it repeats very firmly."

Flavio clasped his hands and turned his gaze upwards, thanking higher powers for this blessing.

"I have never been happier than the day I watched G come out of Calogero's, address the vegetable vendor next door, and walk back in with a bunch of carrots."

"Oh my god…" Larry buried his face in his hands, wheezing with laughter. "Are you making this up? 'Cause this sounds very made up. You'd better have a damn good explanation for this or I won't believe this is actually how things went down."

"We have, we have – and it's all true", Flavio grinned. "Oh, the woman also wanted a damn good explanation, of why priests were hired to catch escaped beavers. That is a good question, so I had to think fast and look even more professional: 'Have you seen Disney's Snow White, ma'am?' She had, fortunately. 'My colleague that you just saw has a talent not unlike hers: he has a special bond with animals.'"

"With beavers." Gianpiero grinned with his whole face.

"My theory is that animals recognise they're the same: eat, sleep and fuck, that's all they do. Anyways, animals love G."

"And the ghost loves the carrots. He's humming to himself as he mashes them in a wash basin, then grabs every bottle of hair product he can find, mixing it all to a soggy orange diarrhoea that he bathes the hair in. I don't even know how to describe it when he pulls it out of there. If you imagine a booger the size of a football, from a creature that's probably a close relative of venomous sea slugs, then you have an approximate idea. It smells like lavender and piss – until the ghost viciously attacks it with curling irons. Then it smells worse."

"You could smell burnt hair and piss all the way out in the street", Flavio added. "So before the mutton brains could get worried I clarified that when I said 'smoke them out', I meant it literally."

"I can barely breathe in there, I feel my beard hairs curling back up into my skin, and I am way beyond done with this mission. The ghost is looking at the singed heap of organic matter like it's lost treasure. He lifts it, cradling it tenderly in his hands… and tries to squeeze it down on the hairdresser's head. Everything fell in place for me then. I know what the ghost wants, and I know what to do to put it at peace."

"And because G can't hold a thought in his head longer than a sneeze, he went straight to HQ with his key without telling me or Carmine. There I'm left standing with the gawkers for an indefinite amount of time until G finally comes out the door."

"Wearing my grandfather's tophat", Gianpiero raised his glass and toasted himself, "and carrying a portable cage with a beaver borrowed from the zoo."

"No fucking way…!"

"The ghost wasn't talking about French royalty or horoscopes: it was talking about hats", Gianpiero explained with a grin three miles wide. "A dauphin was a tophat made from rabbit or camel hair – cheaper materials – while a real, high-quality tophat was made of–"

"Beaver felt – and called a castor, because that's the Latin genus name for beavers. The hatter hadn't had the right materials to make the order and had tried to make a substitute hat, cheaper materials but covered with a thin coat of beaver hairs. To do that you need to put the non-beaver hairs through a process called–"

"Carroting."

"And I fucking died!" Yes, Flavio did look like he might die from laughter any moment, or at least start crying. "I almost fucking died when you came out with the beaver! It was the peak of my existence!"

It was almost midnight when Shiro made a rather inelegant return to his apartment. Beer wasn't something he was used to. It had quite a nice taste though. And he tolerated it well, so he had ordered a few more as the evening wore on. It had worked out splendidly until he stood up.

Shiro plodded into his room and was about to toss his socks on the laundry pile when he noticed there was no laundry pile. In its place sat an empty wicker basket he had never seen before. Odd. There were no clothes littering the bed either: the bed itself, on the other hand, was immaculately made.

He pondered this anomaly for a moment. Then he stalked briskly to the drawers, opened them – why yes, there lay his missing clothes. Washed, ironed and folded. In his drawers – in the drawer that contained the baoding ball...

Shiro stood there, frozen, until a tiny coal tar floated by and bumped into his glasses.

"Modugno!" He pounded his fist on the door, hard, to be heard over the radio pouring some talkshow programme into the old woman's room.

Queen Goblin came out, garbed in a nightgown and a large, grey shawl that made her resemble a huge jackdaw. She looked about as amused by this as he was.

"What did you do?! You went into my room while I was out?!"

Roberta's eyes narrowed. She puffed herself up, looking even more like one of the birds in the hallway.

"You smell of alcohol."

"You went into my room, messed with my stuff, and took down my wards!"

"That room needed airing if any room ever has! Dirty clothes on the floor?! Mud all over the bathroom?! You be glad I 'mess with your stuff', boy! Here you are, gallivanting around town all–"

"Do I look glad?! No?! Then stay the fuck out of my room!"

"Don't you use that sort of language with me!"

"Don't come here demanding respect from me when you were rummaging through my things without permission!"

"Well some gratitude for cleaning wouldn't be out of place!"

"Some privacy would make me grateful!"

"Really? Then good night!"

The door slammed shut. Seconds later the sound of the radio came through even louder. Fine. Fine.

Shiro kept repeating himself that it was fine while he spat out verses to exorcise the coal tars; while he drove out the stronger, heavier presences that had been drawn in by his outburst; while he drew new wards to replace the ones on the windows. It was all fine. It should be fine. There was no way Roberta could have found it; even if she had there was no way she could know what it was.

Shiro pulled the cord over his head with shaky fingers. Prayed as he inserted the key in the drawer lock. Turned. Opened.

Still there. As he knew it would be. The lacquered box with the baoding ball lay undisturbed in its pocket dimension free of socks and underwear. He locked the drawer again, heart still pounding in his ears – pounding like horse hooves tasting the freedom outside the stable.

His chest felt lighter without the key. Night or day, sleep or wake, he wore the key, and habit makes people blind. He never felt the weight of it, yet now… Now it lay there in his palm, cord hanging limp between his fingers – and the weight, like never before…

"Key to all locks except the shackle around my neck."

The pale light from the street traced the metal like fingers of a blind man, melting its ghostly sheen into the surface. Not a smudge, not a dent, as if time had never touched it. As if this one key was more real than the walls around him or the air in his lungs.

"Only for now."

Shiro grasped the cord in his hands.

dog leash

"This won't last forever."

Hung the key around his neck.

slave collar

"I swear."

It always seemed to hold body temperature.

promise ring

"I'll teach you regret."

A/N

The creation of this chapter was a wild ride, let me tell you. It took a lot of idea-tossing and a lot of laughing.

Dimwit: "imagine the chaos after the ghost has gone through all the steps [of hat making] (and gotten even angrier because where there should be a hat there is now a pile of hair and carrots bathed in piss and gently steamed with a curling iron."

Fox: "Hair-covered carrot bathed in piss and gently steamed with a curling iron.
I think we reached peak shitpost"

The steps of the hat-making process aren't done in the right order here, but if you're interested in the (quite intriguing) process there's a good break-down if you google "Alfred Jacob Miller from pelt to felt".

I read a peculiar article about psychologically induced blindness, and it was just the right thing for the reflections I wanted Remo to share.

APC – armoured personnel carrier, vehicle used by military and, on occasion, police.

Tullio Altamura was an actor who did a lot of Spaghetti Westerns.

I have a friend I named Snow White in my phone book. Porcelain skin and rosy cheeks, dark curly hair, sings like an angel, and wild animals enter her apartment all the time. That's... basically where Gianpiero's trait came from.

Promise rings aren't the same as engangement rings, as I thought when I first heard the term. =0w0'= Promise rings are exchanged as symbols of a promise – any kind of promise, between any kinds of people. Partners, family, friends – enemies…