A/N Thanks to all who favorite/alerted and special thanks to Ice Queen (Guest), YukiTora17, and AvianaSawada1827 for reviewing, I really appreciate it. So, without further ado, I give you the sort-of-chapter-one.

Ornithophobic

Not Exactly A Chapter: A Shadow of Shadows

====Story Start====

Ando, Nari was not the sort of boy who had a thousand different admirers- in fact, he'd probably be shocked to find out he had even one. He had a slight frame and was not especially tall, his hair was a middling brown, his eyes matching, and his overall demeanor was quiet. If one were to go up to his classmates and ask for his whereabouts the majority of them wouldn't even know who you were talking about.

Nari was calm- not like his popular, cheerfully laidback underclassman Yamamoto, Takashi was, but calm in a cold, detached sort of way. He was unshakable, unflappable, and –If you were to ask any one of the very few people who actually knew who he was.- utterly uninteresting. He had been attending Nami-chu for a year and a half, and in that time he had managed to avoid attracting the attention of anyone at all.

Even the ever formidable Reborn had dismissed him as insignificant.

This was one of the few instances which proved Reborn to be human, and thus, capable of making mistakes. Because Ando, Nari had a pendant, and this pendant had the symbol for Yin and Yang. One side was purple, the other indigo, and whenever Nari was away from home the parts which were indigo glowed.

This was, as I'm sure some of you might have guessed, because the indigo side represented Mist flames- or illusion.

When at home, alone, Nari looked much different. The first, and most notable, change being that he was actually a she. Her short hair was a strawberry blonde, her eyes gold except for the thinnest spike of glacial blue which appeared almost to pierce the pupil of her left eye. She was still slight of frame, but with a more defined waist- hips a bit wider, shoulders a little more narrow, chest –though tightly bound; she was not the sort to rely solely on illusion when it was her own life on the line- just a bit more rounded. Shorter than her noisy classmate Ryohei, but taller than the prospective Vongola Tenth, her height was not particularly noteworthy and she had no strong opinions about her appearance one way or another. Her face was relatively attractive, though a bit sharp, her pale eyebrows on the thin side, her eyelashes thick, and her upper lip slightly thinner than her lower.

She was also, clearly, not Japanese.

Her name was not Ando, Nari, although that was the name she'd chosen for herself. She had been born Canary Black, of the Black Family. Notorious information brokers, the Black family was known only by the most powerful individuals in the Underworld, and were sometimes called The Shadows of Shadows.

They had over a hundred different aliases and they were rumored to have blackmail on every crime syndicate there was, be it gang, mafia, yakuza, or some other term which basically meant group of people who do illegal/immoral things. It, too, was said that they had at least one spy placed strategically in every headquarters of every organization in the world. There were also quiet whispers which stated that the line of direct heirs had a preternatural ability to 'see the best path' although no one was entirely clear what exactly that meant.

The only ones who knew how many, if any, of these rumors were true were the members of the Black family, and they weren't telling.

That said, there were some things which were known facts about the Black family:

1: The only people outside of their family to see them fight were buried deep in the ground.

2: There was nothing in the world quite so frightening and devious as the retribution of a vengeful Black family.

3: There were very few limits to what a member of the Black family was willing to do in order to get information, and those limits seemed to vary with each member.

4: There were only a few known members of the Black family, and these individuals acted as the family go-betweens, they were who you went to if you wanted information.

5: They had established go-betweens stationed in at least the top thirty most powerful countries, if not more.

6: Members of the Black family were known to show no genuine emotion ever since an unknown event approximately ten years ago.

And 7: If a member of the Black family stated that they had a Life Debt, they would do everything in their power to repay that debt, even cutting off all connections with their family in order to devote all their time and energy to the task. An indebted Black cannot lie to the person they owe, but they are prohibited from sharing secrets about the family, and asking is an exercise in futility and will cause backlash from the rest of the family.

As an actual member of the Black family, Canary knew quite a bit more than that, but the only things which concerned her were this:

1: Her family was doing everything within their power to find her.

And 2: She would sooner die than go back.

That may have seemed a bit dramatic by other people's standards, but that was her decision, and Canary would stick to it. Unlike her Nari alias, Canary was a strong-willed, slightly hotheaded and opinionated person; she had keen observation skills and was well trained in the ability to think logically and dispassionately. Believing it would be easier to hide from her family if no one noticed her, she utilized her family's most understated talent- the ability to be dismissed by everyone as someone below their notice. You'd be surprised by just how much information you could learn when no one paid you any mind.

Like the fact that her school was becoming something of an epicenter for significant mafia events. Her adorably pathetic underclassman Sawada Tsunayoshi was the soon to be Vongola Tenth, his stalk-I mean right hand man was Gokudera Hayato, also known as Smoking Bomb Hayato. His home tutor was the famous/infamous Reborn, the sun Arcobaleno. –Someone she intended to avoid at all costs.- And his housemates included Bianchi, the Poison Scorpion, and Lambo, a member of the Bovino Famiglia who were good for weapons but not much else.

A true shadow, like all members of her family –No matter how much she wished to reject it.- Canary was hiding in plain sight. Not even her own family would think to look for her at the center of such important mafia related events- it attracted too much attention in its own right. But she was clever, and knew the best place for her...

Was in the Shadow of Shadows.

Nari: a variation on the name Nariko which is Japanese meaning thunder; thunder child; humble child; child who climbs high. I'm using the particular meaning 'child who climbs high' for Nari's name.

Ando: variously written, originally with characters meaning 'peaceful east' or 'pacify the east'; the majority now use characters meaning 'peaceful wisteria'. In this case, I'm using the meaning 'pacify the east'.