"Fuck my life," he muttered as he stared up at the ceiling. Thankfully, getting blown to bits was one part sheer terror and the rest velvet dark bliss. And then waking up, again, as a five year old.
He held up a hand and summoned his will, and immediately gawked. His flames were purple with streaks of indigo. "I'm a Misty Cloud?" It took until he was off in his now-usual training area for new lives that the obvious smacked him in the kisser like a frozen mackerel.
"I'm not a Sky," he breathed. "I can't be the Vongola Decimo."
He returned to the house for lunch and immediately stopped short on entering the kitchen. There was another boy there, seated at the table. The kid looked remarkably like Iemitsu, rather like how his appearance followed Nana's features.
"Tsu-kun~!" warbled his mother. "Wash up and come straight back. I'm just about done."
He wandered off to the bathroom long enough to wash his face and hands, then returned and took a seat. He spent the meal just observing and listening. The boy's name was Ieyoshi, Tsuna's fraternal twin.
He wondered what flame the boy—his brother—held.
This was going to change events, his own flames notwithstanding. When Iemitsu and the old man showed up… Well, he might see then what flames were at hand. For himself, however, he would need to spend as much time as possible away from his family, to figure out how best to use these two new flames.
And, of course, as much time as he could manage at the library. There were always new languages to learn, and history to brush up on, just in case details were different.
. . .
He sat quietly in his room pretending to read his book (sadly, an age-appropriate picture book) while his brother played in the yard. Their father and the old man were visiting, but he felt like an old hand at avoiding trouble, so he was fairly relaxed.
His brother was the "adventurous" type, and he was babbling to himself about pirates or ninja or something, dashing around in the grass and partway up the one tree. Tsuna kept his brother in his peripheral vision as much as possible without appearing to do so; no point in cluing in the adults.
Would his brother show off his flames?
Yes, he would, having tripped over an exposed tree root and face-planted into a short horizontal skid. After a moment of silence, the crying started. Tsuna had to wonder if it was intense emotion that triggered the first flames and not just facing death, because his brother's hands had an orange aura about them, showing he was a Sky.
Iemitsu noticed, much like the man had in Tsuna's first two lives, and took a moment to confer with the old man. Nothing happened right then, probably because their father glanced up at the window to see Tsuna reading there (seemingly engrossed and facing somewhat away), but he lay awake that night, waiting, and eventually heard the two men enter his brother's room.
He could only assume they had sealed his brother's flames.
That assumption was proven right when Ieyoshi went from an athletic, adventuring type to a clumsy, slightly fearful, and rather dim-witted little boy.
'Right. I need to spend as much time as humanly possible figuring out my new flames. Odds are I'm going to die horribly again, but knowing it now will help in the future, this one or the next.'
. . .
He was seven when he realized something, and promptly smacked himself in the face for being so blind and so stupid. His brother was a Sky. Tsuna was a Cloud. Sure, Kyoya was in town and could serve that role, still being a Cloud, but what were the odds that their father and/or Reborn didn't look straight to him as a possible Cloud Guardian to Ieyoshi?
'Aw, fuck, I am so not doing that. Huh,' he thought. 'Xanxus didn't have a proper Cloud Guardian at the Scramble Battles. Maybe I should drift that way and see if I can join as a mook, maybe work my way up? It'd mean getting my hands filthy, but shouldn't a potential mafia boss know those deeds?
'Seriously, was the ninth trying to keep me "innocent" or something up to the point where I'd be dunked into the deep end for real and possibly react even worse? I kinda think the ninth generation is a bit dippy. How can they expect a person to just take up the reins and know next to nothing of the kinds of decisions they'd be forced to make?'
He sighed. Never having gotten that far he had no way of knowing exactly how the Ninth had planned to handle the transfer of power, what training he would have received in Italy. If he left he would have to fake his own death, so that no one would come looking for him. He would also have to figure out a reliable way to disguise himself.
Next on the list was sneaking into Italy, and then somehow making enough of a name for himself that the Varia would come snooping, to see if it was worth recruiting him. He could also try, with a disguise, pretending to be older, so that it would not look so odd that he was seeking to join the Varia.
'Uh, wait a second.' He grabbed some paper and did the math. 'The Cradle Affair should happen this year? That means—well, it's extremely doubtful I'd be able to get an in with the Varia in time to actually see Xanxus, but it would still mean eight years of missions and training prior to the Scramble Battles—assuming all that goes the same.'
With that in mind he spent his training time figuring out how to fake being an adult, or at least a teen. If he was good enough at it he could conceivably "borrow" a passport and identification at the airport, from some lone traveler who was due to hop on a plane.
Wreathe the guy in Mist Flames to get him to leave the airport and essentially be out of his mind for a day or so, and take his place long enough to get out of Japan. He could wipe the identification of fingerprints at the other end—or burn all of it—and switch to a different disguise, and then do it all over again to get where he was aiming for: Italy.
'So, right, twin goals. The disguise, and likewise being good enough with illusions to fool people into thinking I died. Going missing wouldn't be so bad, but that would always leave it open for our father to keep looking for me.'
. . .
Namimori was conveniently near the sea. Not right on it, but close enough for the beach to be a valid destination for a family trip. A small "accident", some illusionary sharks…
Sawada Tsunayoshi was declared dead.
He did not overly concern himself with the reactions of his mother and brother. His mother had long since been relegated in his mind to an android and his brother barely registered as an actual human being, if only because he did his best not to get attached.
After that he finagled his way onto a plane to Italy, though it took him several days of tracking people at the counters to find someone he could imitate. That man was ensnared and led away long enough for Tsuna to "borrow" his passport, identification, and phone, plus any cash he had on hand.
That supplemented the money he had been able to "borrow" from the yakuza in Namimori. As it was, he was going to have to use his flames to both acquire food (either by stealing money and using that, or by stealing the food directly and propagating more of it) to survive on while he figured out how to survive in general in a strange land, with no friends, no one to trust or lean on, and no real clue how to find jobs that wouldn't see him dead inside of a week.
How sad was that, he thought. All that time dealing with Reborn, and he had no clue where any family held territory, not even the one he belonged to. He rather wished he had asked Hayato more about his life after he'd run away from home.
. . .
He had spent quite a bit of time using little Mist spies (anime and manga had contributed greatly to his ideas for flame use) to eavesdrop hither and yon, and finally got an idea of where the big players were located.
After that it was a case of tracking down the exact location of the Varia mansion-headquarters-party palace (it could happen, right?) and setting himself little missions. One, risk getting shot-beheaded-gutted-defenestrated in order to sneak in and map the place.
Two, having established the layout, sneaking in to leave notes about holes in the security, that last night's dinner was sub-par, and that Lussuria really needed to pick one colour and stick with it for his hair. He thought of them as little "love notes" to his future family.
If nothing else, all these messy deaths and rebirths were doing wonders for his mental stability. He would probably fit right in with the Varia. Well, assuming he didn't kill half the non-core, non-elite members for being too stupid to live.
Too bad arranging an accident for Levi probably wouldn't go over well. Or it might, who knew? His replacement might be worse, though. How Levi counted as Quality…?
Counterfeiting and money laundering became new skills of his. He propagated copies of existing notes, then passed them off as real with merchants local to wherever he was, using a little Mist as required. Stealing the money in the first place was (at first) challenging and exciting.
Tsuna was starting to understand why Hayato could be so gung-ho to jump into trouble, except that he thought Hayato was more about putting on a tough front and thinking such behavior was a requirement rather than his sort-of-but-not-really friend actively being an adrenaline junkie.
Obviously, it took a certain kind of person (read: psychotic whackjob) to do well in the Varia.
There was a twisted sense of pride in successfully screwing over merchants who were cruel to street kids or bigoted when it came to obviously foreign people, even those who spoke the language fluently. (Gods help him if he ever went to France. He had heard things about France.)
Sadly, if he was still aiming to join the Varia, having already killed and gotten the resulting horror out of his system was probably a good idea. Or a bad one. He was having trouble of late keeping things straight along those lines.
'I wonder if all people with Mist Flames are at least slightly mental,' he wondered. 'I have learned to better understand Kyoya, though. I keep wanting to stake a claim and defend it against all comers, but I can't afford to do that yet. It does make me wonder what the other flames would be like.'
"You look lost."
He startled a little. The voice had been too close, which meant he had failed at keeping alert enough while meandering through memories. Tsuna turned slowly to see a man somewhere between twenty and thirty, perhaps. "Eh?"
"I could help," the man said, smiling slightly. "It really gets me to see kids on the street."
Tsuna was currently his real age, and looking rather scruffy to boot, so it was unsurprising that someone took him for the street urchin he was. He adopted a suspicious look and let his gaze dart around for a bit before coming back to rest on the man. "Help?"
The man nodded. "I baked too much earlier. I may as well help someone who needs it with some of the extras. I'm Carlo."
"…Jun."
"Up to you, kid. I have some extra pandoro and panettone. I was thinking of taking the excess to an orphanage."
'How convenient those are sweet breads and can be seen as a treat. Looks like a child predator. Maybe this would be a good first kill. I get to take out a menace to society and not feel too bad about it.' He eased up on the suspicion and added some hopeful hunger to his expression. "Um, I suppose I could… I mean…"
The man just waited patiently, which meant he was an old hand at this sort of blasphemy. Perhaps in the beginning he had rushed in and suffered the delights of a child screaming in fear and had to run before the police or alarmed nearby persons had arrived to investigate.
"I am a little hungry," he said. "Where…?"
The man's smile widened slightly. "It's not far. Maybe you can help me package up the rest so I can take it to the orphanage? That'd be a fair exchange, yes?"
Off they went, and Tsuna was unsurprised in the least to find he'd been led to what could charitably be described as a pedophile's wet dream. On the surface it was innocent enough, but Tsuna could spot a number of things which set off alarms in his head, like odd, nearly-invisible outlines of things on the walls.
The man led him into a kitchenette and retrieved some of the aforementioned bread. Tsuna noted that the man was very particular in which pieces were set aside for him, and which were for "Carlo" (he refused on principle to believe it was the man's real name).
'I expect the bread is drugged, then,' he thought, 'so let's turn that around. Dosage for a child wouldn't affect him the same way, but it'd be a starting point for my use of Mist.' He shot a grateful smile at Carlo and reached out for the food, employing Mist Flames to ensure the man (who, insofar as he could tell, did not have active flames) took the wrong bread, and to ensure the man failed to notice that Tsuna only pretended to eat the presumably untainted bread.
Success was realized when the man's eyes started drooping, so Tsuna played along and pretended to be awfully sleepy himself, all while sending waves of Mist at Carlo to help the drugs along. Once the man was unconscious he tied him up in Mist Flame ropes and started poking around.
One of those outlines was a rotatable panel. The other side of it had manacles for wrists and ankles, positioned about right for the average-sized child. His stomach lurched twice as badly when he noticed dried blood on the metal, and he honestly worried that he might throw up.
He tossed a hard look at the unconscious predator and set to work. The man wouldn't fit well into those manacles, but Tsuna didn't particularly care. The whole point was to ensure the man wouldn't escape and somehow survive what Tsuna considered appropriate punishment.
It took some doing, but he eventually had Carlo locked into place and a ball-gag fitted (another one of the man's "toys", found behind another panel). He loosened the man's belt and wrestled his trousers down off his hips, then cut away the man's undergarments.
He made a sound of disgust. Not for Carlo's equipment, for that in itself was nothing unusual. His disgust was reserved for what the man must have done with it, to still too trusting, naïve, street kids just hoping for a few moments of kindness.
He found a knife in the kitchen, taking the time to slip on a pair of gloves first so as to not leave fingerprints on it, and approached his would-be torturer and soon-to-be victim.
A few calculated slaps got Carlo to wake up. Tsuna smiled when the man realized his predicament and alarm stole over his features.
"I don't know exactly what you had planned," Tsuna said quietly, "but I know it was bad. Were you planning to have your way with me? Sell me on the black market as an organ donor? As a whore, a slave? I don't really care in the end. You will pay for your presumption."
The man looked torn between fear and the certainty that a mere child could not truly harm him.
Tsuna smirked and held up his knife. "This is what should happen to child abusers," he said, then reached down and grabbed the man's equipment, pulled, and then sliced down. There was a surprising amount of blood. He dropped both knife and genitalia, then stepped back a ways.
"I imagine that hurts," he said. "Hopefully it won't take too long for you to bleed out. I have things to do, places to be… Maybe in the next life you won't be such a disgusting waste of humanity."
It took longer than he expected, actually.
Once the man was undeniably dead, Tsuna swapped out his gloves for a new set and rifled through the man's pockets for cash. 'Should have done that before he woke up, but whatever.' He would take the food in the place, but without knowing how much of it was drugged, it just wasn't worth the risk, and the clothes stored there were all too big.
He poked around a little more, tapped a few spots that looked as if they housed more secrets, and then covered himself in illusion to hide the blood. Tsuna was safely away a few minutes later, hoping that someone would eventually smell something and call the police.
. . .
Since his first kill—the throwing up everything he had eaten in the prior week part had not been amusing, nor the disturbed state of his stomach for quite some time afterward—he had continued to interfere in nasty situations, in and around stealing enough money or food to survive.
There were always out of the way places he could bed down in relative safety (such as oddly-shaped roofs). A tarp and some illusion generally took care of the rest. He also listened, because information was valuable.
Unfortunately, he had learned very little from Reborn regarding the various families in Italy. True, he knew that "Vongola" was supposedly a "good" family, as were the Cavallone. Dino himself was a good man and his people clearly adored him (even if not one of them would ever use the word "adore"). Even Fūta ranked Dino highly.
When not gathering information, money, or food, or keeping an eye out for people who ought to be kicked out of the gene pool, Tsuna spent time in the library, learning whatever he could that might conceivably be useful.
The sounds of a struggle came to his ears so he cloaked himself in Mist Flames and wandered that way. 'Oh, look, another rapist.' He watched for a few moments, just to be certain he was interpreting the situation correctly, then acted.
Mist was used to distract the rapist with the sound of siren nearby. The man startled, looking with alarm toward the sound. Tsuna took advantage of the man no longer feeling in control of the situation and smothered him in Mist. The girl was likewise smothered, if only to get her to fall asleep despite the circumstances.
He was nice enough to use illusion to cover up her bared skin, partly for modesty's sake and partly so he didn't have to look at it. The man, however… Tsuna prompted him to move a bit farther down the alleyway as he set up Mist barriers which should keep the general public away. The woman might be found and given help, but the man was hidden away.
He had been poking around medical texts of late, mainly to see how he could use his Cloud Flames in the event he was injured (such as propagation as a response to blood loss) and had a little something he wanted to try out. The rapist had volunteered to be his lab rat.
Tsuna concentrated hard and began to propagate the man's platelets, hoping it would cause clumping and clog up the veins and arteries, and result in death due to either a lack of oxygen being distributed to his system, or that his heart would fail trying to push blood through increasingly smaller conveyances.
What he did not expect, in the least, was for two people to move through his Mist barrier like it was nothing more than smoke, and eye him up.
One was Mammon—which explained why the simple barrier was useless—and the other was clearly Belphegor.
Tsuna cocked a brow up as he observed them as they observed him, though he did not lesson the effects of his flames on the rapist, who proved at least part of his theory by dying.
"Mu… So you're the one who's been stealing our kills on occasion," Mammon said.
Belphegor grinned psychotically. Tsuna was torn between wondering if that meant he was shortly to die yet another messy death, or if the older boy was thrilled to find someone even vaguely like him.
"I didn't realize that garden variety rapists were the Varia's sort of thing," he said as calmly as he could. "Was this one more naughty than I realized, then?"
Mammon ignored that and said, "You're clearly active. You will be coming with us, boy."
"Or die," Belphegor added, still grinning. "Your choice. You'd be beautiful clothed in bright blood and razor cuts."
"Yeah, no," he said. "I'm not ready to die, so I guess I'm coming along."
. . .
He looked around the "mook" quarters with some distaste, but considering he had been living on the streets for several years, he had to admit it was bliss in comparison.
The lives of mooks were rather regimented. Training sessions were mandatory for newcomers and people below a certain level of skill. And no one got to go on missions until a baseline competence was proven.
True, he had proven he was a capable killer, especially after having unknowingly managed to off at least two Varia targets, but he was still a mook. His assigned "name" (if he could call it that) was 893CM. Tsuna wasn't sure he appreciated every yahoo out there knowing his flame types, but whatever. No one had picked up on his Earth Flames.
(And considering it was probably assumed impossible for a person to have active flames from both "sets"—he assumed there was second set, anyway —he could understand why they went unnoticed.)
Assuming he lived so long, he already had a new name picked out.
He sighed. The Varia was headquartered in what once had been a monastery, so the mook rooms were monastic cells, just large enough for a single bed and a set of drawers. Or, as he had been informed, "There's no sense giving mooks anything approaching luxury when far too many of you wash out in no time flat." (And by "wash out" he clearly meant die.)
If nothing else he was getting training by competent people who expected mooks to shut up and do the work. Minor grumbling was ignored as a way to blow off steam, but anything more was met with a response of either a bullet to the brain or a far more intense workout, depending on how much of a pain the mook in question was.
He learned that it was fairly uncommon for there to be women in the Varia, and those who were tended to pretend otherwise, at least until they had proven they were more than a match for any sexist twats lurking in the ranks.
Tsuna had long since learned to create what he called Bounding Boxes, an idea he'd picked up from a combination of geometry and video games. In his case, the box delineated a cube of space that no one could get into (more complicated than the simplistic barriers he used against civilian interference), and that would collapse as soon as the person he made it for (only himself, so far) exited through one of the "walls".
He protected his sleep that way, in case another mook decided to go after him at his most vulnerable. The faces of the cube held properties of confusion, to gently drive most people away, and his Cloud Flames were used to propagate the density or intensity of that confusion. Mist Flames drove that part based on intent. They were his flames, even seemingly separate from himself in the cubic form, so they would still act on his will.
During his free time he worked on trying to duplicate another game trick, colloquially referred to as Hammer Space.
Take a single thing, such as a pouch or messenger bag, and use his flames to propagate the interior's dimensions. Nothing was technically solid, he knew that from his research. Just because the space between molecules was too tiny for the human eye to discern did not meant it didn't exist. He could use that space. To store things and, if he was clever, to move through.
. . .
Squalo eyed him with some skepticism before slinging a folder across the desk. "Fuck this up and don't bother coming back. It's way more fun to hunt you down before killing you."
'Yeah, yeah, it was in the handbook.' Tsuna grabbed the file and started reading. It was the lowest rank mission that could be assigned. Do enough of them and do well and you could bump up to the next level. The mission in question was a hit, with very little in the way of complexity.
Find the target—the data in the file gave a rough outline of the man's general schedule—kill him, and get away clean. The target was the same sort he'd been killing already, though this one liked to drug his child victims, take compromising photographs to sell, and then sell the child to a black market organ dealer. The guy got double the money, essentially, as people into child pornography would pay well.
There could be more to this test, he realized. The information might not be solid. So he committed to memory the man's face—full front and profile—along with the other data listed, then nodded and placed the folder on the desk. "On it."
Andrea Torti was not hard to find, which meant the folder had not been purposely misleading—or at least, not all of it was. To be careful and cautious Tsuna shadowed the man for several days before he even considered acting. The time limit on the hit was one week, mostly because it was bottom rank and in Italy.
Once he felt confident to move, he tried the same trick as his last kill. The man was eating lunch in a well-populated park, so Tsuna amused himself feeding the ducks while he concentrated on propagating the platelets in Torti's blood.
Assuming it worked again and had not just been a fluke last time, there was no way medical personnel could clear the man's blood vessels quickly enough to save his life. Tsuna ran out of bread just about the time his target keeled over. He took bonus points for the man having face-planted into his lunch.
Once he was certain Torti was beyond help he scrunched up his empty paper bag, tossed it into a nearby waste bin, and returned to base in a roundabout way to report to Squalo.
"Decent job," Squalo said.
Tsuna wondered if contracts for mooks went through Squalo because he was in charge while the boss was indisposed, or for some other reason. He would have expected the core Cloud, Ottavio, to be the one testing him.
"See Mammon for your pay," Squalo added, then waved him away in dismissal.
. . .
A random mook hunted Tsuna down—and, incidentally, interrupted his practice time with guns—to say that Mammon wanted to see him. He nodded and the mook raced off. Tsuna unloaded the gun, cleaned it, and put everything away before he tracked Mammon down in their office.
"That'll be a standard deduction for each minute of my time you wasted," Mammon said without preamble. "A mission for you." A folder was indicated.
He nodded and began to read. He was being sent—he paused in shock. He was being sent not on a hit, but to infiltrate a family opposed to Vongola. The Todd Famiglia was known for being especially bloodthirsty. The job was to infiltrate in whatever way made sense to him in order to determine if they were naturally inclined toward it, or if there was some family-only drug being used.
'Somehow I don't think I can propagate a person's tendency toward spilling secrets,' he thought unhappily, 'but I could use Mist to fool them into talking to the wrong person, or no person at all. Also, see if they have a lab at their base where they're cooking up bizarre drugs. This will really put my facility with Mist Flames to the test.'
He spent a good hour going over the information in the folder, to be certain he had it all memorized, before he even thought about relinquishing it and going off to gather supplies. Everything was stored into his version of Hammer Space, exhaustively tested with things that he wouldn't cry over if they were lost, like random bits of crumpled paper, bad cooking, and various other types of objects.
So far, nothing had disappeared into the void, spoiled faster than normal, been altered into an extra-dimensional being better left as a gift (or sacrifice) for Cthulu, or really, anything particularly weird. He had yet to try putting a live being into his subspace pocket and wasn't keen to try. What if a mouse shat all over the interior?
'If only I could figure out the trick to moving between molecules I'd be effectively invisible to these people,' he thought. 'Without worrying that someone in the vicinity is resistant or immune to illusions. Though to be fair, it seems rare in people without Mist Flames.'
It took several days for him to scope out their headquarters and get a sense of how their people moved around, where, and when. Only then did he start poking around inside the compound. He wasn't too nervous doing so considering he had done the same at the Varia's headquarters and had never been caught.
But it wasn't "Quality" to assume otherwise. He had been hearing that term a lot of late.
How it could possibly be considered Quality to cut off your own hand and install a prosthetic one with a sword attached… And all because the guy Squalo defeated also had one? How was it Quality to be a jealous, simpering, boss-fixated person who nearly defined all brawn-no brains?
One thing that was true of much of humanity—and the Todds were no exception—was that rarely did anyone ever look up. Human beings were not wired that way, though they could be trained to pay attention to things above eye height.
Thus, Tsuna used his Earth Flames to assist him in creeping along at ceiling level, while his Mist Flames kept him invisible to the naked eye. Thankfully, the Todds were not a large family, so surveying the interior of the compound only took a week, and he had brought a fortnight's worth of food.
A hammock inside a bounding box in the attic sufficed for naps. He did not want to sleep for more than a few hours at a time, though it left him feeling dragged out and a bit translucent, so to speak.
He was running out of places to look when he finally spotted a secret door, mainly because something about the wall had reminded him of the guy he castrated and his little playhouse. He settled into position in the upper corner nearest the door to wait.
All the practice keeping above eye level was grinding use of Earth Flames into reflex rather than conscious thought, which was both good and bad. Good because he would not have to actively think about it, and bad because he might use them at the wrong time and tip people off.
Then again, people might assume he was like Mammon, in that he had a little something extra going for him.
He was eventually able to determine, through use of spies, that there was no particular automation on either side when it came to security, so he slipped through the hidden door when no one was around, and navigated back to creeping along at ceiling level.
It was a long, boring wait until the people on shift cleared out, but even then he was cautious. He had stuck his hammock to the ceiling so he had a place to rest comfortably and fashioned a bounding box, large enough to cover his position, without impacting the floor space beneath his position near a wall.
Taking care of his base needs was a bit barbaric, but needs must. He took catnaps for a day until he had a better idea of the lab's schedule, then set to work poking into everything and taking copious pictures with one of the cameras he had appropriated from the child pornographers he had dealt with.
The Todd "scientists" were cooking up a mixture of benzodiazepines and anabolic steroids. So, a mixture of anxiety-reducing drugs to calm the nerves of mooks, plus performance enhancers. A little research (both from reading the lab reports and at the library on the way back) revealed that a common enough side effect was increased aggressiveness and violence.
Tsuna spent a fair bit of time in his hammock during an overnight stop on his way back to HQ, protected by a Bounding Box, writing up a report on his acquired laptop, also including the photographic evidence.
The entire thing was tossed onto a USB drive and handed over to Mammon when he got back.
"I'll drop a note in your room about your pay," Mammon was generous enough to say before taking the information and turning away.
'And I will be paying a delivery fee, no doubt,' he thought on his way out.
. . .
Tsuna had had surprisingly little contact with Ottavio by the time the Big Fuss happened. By then he was firmly planted in the Elite ranks, but his missions always came from Squalo or Mammon, or very rarely, Lussuria.
He was both liked for being an oddity as a Cloud (meaning he did not bite the heads off everyone who so much as looked at him funny) and eyed strangely (mostly for the same reason). The room upgrade gave him something akin to a studio apartment, though it was underground.
More security than an aboveground room, more space, but no windows—well, he made some fake ones—and no having to worry about blackout curtains not quite getting the job done.
He still used a Bounding Box when he was sleeping. No sense in letting down his guard simply because he was better skilled and more trusted within the Varia. Jealousy was not alleviated by logic and reason, after all.
The Big Fuss, as it turned out, was Boss being somehow defrosted. He never did get the details on that, but considering he was Elite and not Core, that mostly made sense.
Even more interesting was the fallout of some big job, which Tsuna—now called Heul—knew nothing about until an emergency call came in for high-ranking members to serve as backup on some island.
"So let me get this straight," he mumbled. "Ottavio made a deal with low-ranking soldiers to smuggle arms, but the army found out, people started panicking, and Ottavio dropped them like a hot potato. The soldiers got rightfully pissed and decided to attack Vongola personnel here on the island."
"To be more precise," Mammon said (which meant an extra fee for said precision—he was fairly certain the Mist kept a roaming invisible-to-everyone-else whiteboard for on-the-go note taking), "the personnel are counted as hostages. Their real target is Ottavio."
"And once Boss realized the situation and that Ottavio is the one who screwed him over—" Squalo broke off when Xanxus strolled over with a dangerous look on his face.
"Orders, Boss?" Squalo asked
Xanxus had scars on his face. They were odd. In places they looked faded, while in others raw. Was it a result of battles, or from being frozen? Tsuna had not gotten a good look at the man before, in his most recent previous life. Xanxus had always been sitting some distance away, or on the opposite side of whatever arena, during the Scramble Battles.
Speaking of which, those were quite possibly due to come up soon, which made Tsuna spare a moment of thought for his brother. Was Reborn there with him, torturing him in the name of making him into "good" boss material?
"The Cloud trash is upset we didn't all end up dead because of his soured deal. He's brought in a Gola Mosca, and he's not aiming it at them."
Squalo growled and swished his blade around.
"Shark trash, you and the baby trash are my backup to take out that Gola Mosca. The rest of you trash, fuck up those damn soldiers!"
Tsuna nodded and took off with the other non-core members. His squad headed for the northwest part of the island. He was a bit shocked for two reasons. One, that there were so many low-ranking soldiers around to beat the crap out of or kill. Two, that over one hundred Vongola personnel were at the meeting and apparently all of them were so damn useless that they couldn't even properly defend themselves.
What was this place, really? A Vongola retreat and all the people were cooks and maids? And completely incompetent when it came to wielding a kitchen knife for anything besides food prep? Or household chemicals? Spices? Had these people no sense of creativity?
He amused himself by propagating the aura of fear he induced with his illusions, to demoralize the other side and make it easier for himself and his squad mates. He had long since lost most of his morals when it came to killing—those who deserved, anyway. Innocents remained off the table.
It was a stupid tactic if the other side thought of it first.
If he thought of it first, though, it was potentially brilliant.
His squad cleaned up in their area and went to see if anyone else needed help. He noticed off in the distance that there was a big dust up in progress, presumably Boss having fun.
This was an opportunity to see Xanxus in a different light. He had no way of knowing how things might have gone last time around if he had lived. Xanxus of that time had been furious, violent, and seemingly bitter—about what he wasn't sure.
'Not being primary pick for Decimo, sure,' he thought as he absently slammed a fist into a soldier's solar plexus to take him out of the game. 'But I get the feeling there was more to it than that. And I'm not necessarily in a position to be in any way involved if those Scramble Battles happen again. I also don't think I can coincidentally take a holiday in Japan and find Namimori to be fascinating for some reason.'
. . .
Tsuna managed to slip the odd spy into Boss's office by virtue of using the space between molecules to hide them, thus adding heavily to the odds they would not be found, even by Mammon.
Granted, he himself could now slip between the cracks in the fabric of the world, but it was much harder to slip in and stay there, unmoving, than it was to slip in and go somewhere. Standing still even in normal situations was difficult, unless he was lost in thought. Standing in line somewhere meant twitching, shifting his balance, looking around…
His spies reported something of great interest. The Scramble Battles were on, even if no one but Boss and his top men were aware of it. Yet. Boss was planning the whole thing out with his men. How to kidnap Timoteo, for one.
His brow went up in surprise. They were planning to use the old man as the power source for a Gola Mosca. He knew from the island incident that those things, while powerful, were a bit tetchy when it came to function. Why the old man as a power source…
He thought back to his most recent previous life. What if he had lived through the Cloud Battle? Would they have found Timoteo inside that machine? To what end? There was something so obviously staring him in the face, yet he could not see it.
He scowled in frustration.
Xanxus was planning to fake letters from Timoteo. Mammon was a dab hand at forgery, so that part would not be at issue. Xanxus knew how to make the same seals as Timoteo—probably taught alongside his brothers by their father.
Boss was going to set things in motion, utterly against the Ninth's wishes, which meant that Ieyoshi was being prepped, and Xanxus had obviously caught wind of that.
Still, Tsuna was confused. He could understand being upset, not only at having been frozen, but also at someone else, someone younger, being first pick to take over the tenth generation. Xanxus had been raised alongside his brothers, despite his unfortunate origins, with the belief that he was a viable heir, so he had every right to expect he could be picked as Decimo after his brothers had met unfortunate ends.
True, having blown up (so to speak) and gone on to plan and execute a coup had to lose Boss serious points on the scale…
At least he knew that it was nothing personal, when Xanxus had come after him previously.
He shrugged. He would simply have to send spies along with Boss and the core Varia and hope they lasted long enough for him to get a report at the end.
. . .
His eyes went more than a little wide as he absorbed his spies' reports. Placing Timoteo into that Gola Mosca was a trap. Xanxus planned it all out, to essentially maneuver Ieyoshi into being the Ninth's murderer, to give Boss leverage and reason to kill Ieyoshi, his guardians, and have the support he needed to take on the role of Decimo.
What no one expected (aside from two people, apparently) was that Xanxus was adopted. The rings were blood-locked or something, however that worked. Boss had been rejected when he wore the ring.
Timoteo had taken in a lost lamb (more accurately a starving lion well accustomed to mauling anyone who got in his way) and pretended to be his father, all for the fact that the boy had Sky Flames? And then led him on to believe he was of the blood? That he could inherit?
What a bastard.
He could sort of understand Xanxus's reaction now. His methods were dodgy and involved a crew of underage innocents, but still, he could see the logic behind it all. The sense of personal betrayal Boss must have felt. There was probably so much more he wasn't privy to, but he had enough.
In the end, Ieyoshi and his people had survived, though the Varia had proven that Ieyoshi learning how to do Zero Point Breakthrough (just as Tsuna had learned) meant little when Mammon could so easily and quickly reverse the effects with the complete set of Vongola rings.
'Something to remember if I get to that point again,' he thought a bit morosely.
Xanxus was easily proved to be startlingly intelligent, and more than capable of planning a half dozen steps ahead. Once you filtered out delightful terms such as "trash" when applied to oneself, and the alarming frequency of curses, he wasn't such a bad sort, and definitely excelled in his position as leader of the Varia.
He could respect a man like that, preferably if he acted a little less on his emotions.
. . .
Not long after Ieyoshi had ascended to Decimo in fact, displacing an increasingly aged and fading Timoteo (being used as a battery had done the man no good), troubles started up. At first it was thought that families from the wrong side of the tracks were stirring the pot, hoping to find and exploit weaknesses in the newest leader of the Vongola.
Tsuna—still going by the name Heul—was not the Varia Cloud Officer. But then, neither was anyone else. He was, however, most often tapped for high-levels jobs, or tasked with some sort of oversight when it came to the Cloud Division as a whole. Not useless, he concluded, and possibly being considered.
Either Xanxus was in no rush to fill that role, or he was being very particular when it came to Clouds in general, especially since the last one betrayed him and essentially got him frozen for nearly a decade. It was a bit strange still that Tsuna's age was nearly a match for Boss's, if one went by functional time.
Not knowing if Xanxus had been in any way aware while he was iced…
Squalo stormed into the break room for the Elite and slammed his hand against the wall. "The CEDEF installation in Belarus has been compromised. Every last person assigned there simply vanished. Fucking incompetent trash, all of them," Squalo bitched, "but they're still Vongola. Put together a team and go investigate."
The others on break slowly turned to look at Tsuna, who sighed in resignation. All the work, but not the title or the pay increase. "Right," he said. "On it."
"Take a card with you, just in case," Squalo replied, then stormed off again.
Mammon preferred it when operatives used Varia credit cards for big things, simply because it made the accounting easier, but in general their use was highly frowned upon due to the trails they left behind. Anyone caught using a credit card against authorization was summarily shot, and not in the head first. More like a few extra places to start with, to get the message across, before being nailed right between the eyes.
He finished up his meal quickly and hastened off to see Mammon, first to get one of the credit cards, and second to see who was available to take with him. He ended up with Jace (Sun), Leto (Lightning), and Mela (Storm).
Mammon gave them permission to use the Varia jet to get to Belarus that much more quickly, as well.
Tsuna nodded and exited with his crew. "Get packed and meet at the entrance in an hour."
"How long, you think?" Mela asked.
"Assume two weeks, with four weeks of rations just in case. And get something to eat if you haven't already."
They took off, and he hastened to his apartment to pack, more for looks than out of need. Anything of true value would be Between, plus extra supplies for everyone going, some extra weapons just in case, prosthetics for disguise purposes…
. . .
"We went over every cubic inch of that place," he reported, his three crew nodding behind him. "There was nothing physical to find in terms of, say, a struggle. It was as if every last one of them just got up and walked out, never to be seen again. Food was still out in places and starting to spoil. Some of the toilets hadn't been flushed, showers were still running, things like that."
"And non-physical, trash?" Xanxus near demanded.
"Evidence of Mist Flames, but that's almost to be expec—hang on," he said, his brow crinkling. He looked back at his crew. "Am I imagining things, or was there a suspicious amount of—"
"Marshmallows?" Leto said.
"Yeah. So it's not just me?"
The other two nodded.
"Yeah, now that you mention it, I saw a lot of snack packs of them," Mela said, scratching her cheek. "I figured they had a thing for hot chocolate or something, but now…"
"Certainly couldn't have been for coffee," Jace muttered.
Tsuna nodded and turned back. "So, Mist Flames, and whoever crafted this attack has a sweet tooth and left a semi-subtle hint. There was still plenty of money in the usual places, clothing, food, and other supplies. Only the people were missing. They could all be dead by now and buried in a mass grave, or had their minds twisted to serve someone else."
"After being tortured for information, presumably," Mammon said sotto voce.
Tsuna offered no opinion on that. For all he knew it could be a group who simply hated the Vongola and wanted them all dead. And if they'd already done their homework, torturing information out of the Belarus CEDEF group would be pointless. It couldn't be just any random psycho, not unless they were exceptionally good and had fixated on that office for some reason…
Yeah, he had nothing.
Xanxus scowled and waved his hand—which was better than him flinging an empty (the man did not waste booze) glass or bottle at them—in dismissal. "Baby trash will inform you about your pay later."
Tsuna nodded and quit the room.
. . .
"What the everloving fuck?" he said disbelievingly, staring at Squalo.
"You heard me," Squalo growled.
"The Sawada trash hatched some plan to swap with their ten-years-younger counterparts," Xanxus said, fury on his face. "Fucking trash could barely hold it together during the Scramble Battles, and now they're back, in the middle of this? The Sawada trash has clearly lost his damn mind."
Mammon had, after extensive research (best never to ask for the details as to how that research was done), determined that Vongola's enemy was the Gesso Famiglia, now the Millefiore Famiglia, a melding of Gesso and Giglio Nero.
The goal? Byakuran Gesso wanted to collect all pieces of the Tri-ni-set (the Arcobaleno pacifiers, the Mare Rings, and the Vongola Rings) and use them to recreate reality. For some reason.
"And we get to pick up all the slack, as usual," he said slowly. His promotion to Cloud Officer was only notable in that his pay for missions suddenly increased drastically and he was shoved into the Cloud Officer's room one morning and told he would have to pay for his own décor.
Didn't stop him from using his Bounding Box technique every time he slept, despite the added security.
'It's amazing that with the passage of time, I grow more and more disillusioned with Vongola,' he thought. 'The ninth generation should have been put to pasture way before they finally went willingly, and my brother and his people are… Ugh. Though, to be fair, there might be a me in some other dimension that went through this as Decimo, and made the same decisions. Which is pathetic, really. Maybe next time I should arrange things to my liking early. Something to think about in my copious spare time.'
. . .
His death was glorious, if you were the type to ascribe glory to what was the eventual fate of all mankind. Or as someone once said, the debt that all men pay. His sixth death involved a large group of Black Spell members, a vat of melted marshmallow, and a toasting fork. Once again, it was best not to think about it too much or remember just how embarrassing it all was—or would be if anyone but himself would ever be aware of it in his next life.
