Chapter the second in which Reborn gets a bit of a runaround.
Reborn is stumped.
It has been a very long time indeed since the world's greatest hitman was so thoroughly stymied. Despite the shame of it, he has no idea what has happened to Sawada Nana and Sawada Tsunayoshi. Are they dead? In that case, when were they killed? Or have they been kidnapped and are being held somewhere? Reborn thinks they are most probably dead, and dead for a long time by now.
The whole situation is a disaster.
Arriving in Namimori to toughen up the next Vongola Boss, he found everything exactly as Iemitsu had described it. The town was quiet, partly due to its protected status, partly due to, as he discovered, fear of Hibari. Iemitsu's secret family was so utterly civilian. Sawada Nana acted like the light in her eyes came from the hole in the back of her head. Her son was hopeless, useless, powerless and, most of all, spineless.
Well, at least Reborn had his work cut out for him. How to turn this into a mafia Don?
It was no until after first contact had been made that everything went pear-shaped. He approached Nana as a special tutor, and she let him in, offering refreshments and vapid chatter about Iemitsu in equal measure. It was quiet hell. Nana was unfailingly polite, an attentive hostess, pretty and vivacious, and would not shut up about Iemitsu and her lovely home and her sweet, precious son. Reborn could not extricate himself for politeness' sake, and sipped coffee and suffered until salvation in the form of Sawada Tsunayoshi came stumbling in, ten times clumsier and more timid than Dino had ever managed.
If Nana had not been so utterly normal and tooth-gratingly clueless, and her son so useless, he would have expected enemy action.
Reborn quickly changed his mind upon properly meeting Tsuna. This was hell. Tsuna, soon not-so-affectionately nicknamed Dame-Tsuna, stuttered, stumbled and flinched his way through everything. And that was excluding that piercing "Hiee!" that grated on every last nerve Reborn possessed.
Shooting Tsuna with a dying-will bullet was the sweetest thing Reborn had done in a long time, up until it wasn't, up until the Vongola Heir he had been entrusted with disappeared in a puff of misty flame residue.
The Nana-clone's chilling, triumphant laughter and final comment unsettled him deeply.
Just- what? How?
Namimori was one of the most secure and well-surveilled places on Earth. The abduction of a mafia civilian wife and an heir should not have been possible.
This is a unmitigated catastrophe for the Vongola. The Ninth is old, too old really, to effectively lead the Alliance. They have lost three heirs already, having the fourth slip through their fingers looks like grave incompetence. Worse, it makes the Vongola look weak. If this situation isn't remedied soon the sharks will start circling. Then there is the Xanxus situation, something that has the potential to turn very explosive, very quickly. Having a legitimate heir in place before unthawing Xanxus was paramount.
Reborn had managed to capture the smallest flame-trace from the mist clone in a jar and seal it from outside flame-influence. Hopefully that misty Sky signature would lead somewhere. Skill like that, brought to bear with such a grudge behind it, is bound to have left traces somewhere. Someone will have trained that talent, and Skies a rare, ones with such a clear mist secondary even more so. And politically, the kind of animosity that would prompt an action such as this will have left traces in the underworld. Now it's just a matter of following those traces back to the source.
Iemitsu, predictably, has a complete meltdown upon being told of the disappearance of his family. Reborn leaves him slumped over his desk and blubbering like a three-year-old as one of his subordinates tries to calm him down. Strangely skewed though the man's flame signature is, it does signal complete shock and surprise. Reborn had expected nothing less, but he had to confirm Iemitsu's innocence in the matter for himself.
Timoteo is equally surprised.
If the matter hadn't reflected badly on Reborn himself as well, it would have been funny to watch the most powerful Mafia famiglia promptly descend into chaos and then do their best impression of headless chickens. Since he is embroiled in this mess, however, it is simply painful. He wants no part of this incompetence touching him, or his ever-suave reputation.
In the end, the Ninth shows the last little bit of steel he has left in him and fixes Reborn with a piercing gaze:
"Fix this."
Verde, mad scientist that he is, is able to analyse the flame-trace that Reborn had captured from the Nana-clone. He purifies away Reborn's flame trace, as well as the minute traces that remained of Tsuna's sealed sky flame that had soaked into the mist-clone after it spending time in a space saturated with said Sky's flames. In the end he is left with a sample that seems to belong to a female Sky with a strong secondary mist flame, somewhere in her late teens. From the flame-degradation, that also make the test as a whole somewhat unreliable, he is able to pinpoint the clones' ages to about three years. So, the unknown Sky girl will be in her late teens or early twenties by now. It is not much to go on, but it gives him a start.
With the purified flame sample Reborn will be able to match the Sky responsible, once found. The bad news is that the trace is old and years cold, and with a professional job like this, nothing will have been left to chance, left for him to discover.
Reborn might have the purified flame sample, and a basic profile to go after, but his investigation turns up a whole lot of nothing. No one knows anything, however hard he shakes them. The Superbi, the Chiavarone, the Bovino, thr Simon, the Tomasi and various other mafia famiglias don't know anything. The Varia are gleeful on behalf of their Boss, but seems innocent in this particular matter. The Triads are a bust, as are the Mafiya and the Cosa Nostra. The Vindice know nothing, even when Reborn hints Omerta might be threatened. In the end, even the pitiful Yakuza - and how the mighty are fallen that Reborn has to go to them for answers - haven't heard anything.
This is looking less and less like a Sky with a grudge, and more like a highly professional hit with the force a top-secret agency behind it, for it to remain this obscure. In the end, the criminal world is pretty small. If it had been one of the families or organisations that fall under Omerta, someone would have known, or Reborn would at least have felt a hint of that highly distinctive misty sky flame.
So he casts his net further - intelligence agencies, paramilitary organisations, terrorist networks. Anyone who could have something to gain from the true giant of the underworld toppling - because without heir, that is looking to be a likelier and likelier fate for the Vongola.
Still nothing.
Upon waking and being informed of the situation in the wider Vongola Alliance, Xanxus just laughs.