Squalo's perspective on a certain pre-Tsuna chase.
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Squalo had been chasing the damn CEDEF brat for days, and when he finally managed to get him to ditch his transport in favor of heading to the rooftops on foot, the Inverted Rain had been more than happy to do the same.
He was Varia. He liked a good chase.
Turned out the little rat was decent with a boomerang and his Flames, though, and Squalo found himself getting frustrated at how close he was getting to the target Squalo was supposed to be keeping him away from.
He didn't want to kill the brat. Wasn't the brat's fault that he'd been given orders opposing Squalo's own, and CEDEF might not technically be Vongola, but they were Vongola support, which meant the brat was supposed to be an ally.
You didn't kill allies. Not on purpose, anyway, not unless it would protect the whole.
At this rate, though, he wasn't going to have much choice. The brat wasn't good enough to beat him head-on, but slow him down enough to keep half a step ahead in a chase while Squalo was holding back? Yeah, he was good enough for that.
It was getting frustrating. He wanted to catch the kid, not kill him. He was allied, and good enough that once that bastard Iemitsu was out of the picture, he'd probably be trainable. Wasn't the brat's fault his boss was an incompetent moron, and considering how good he was even with that for a boss, he had promise.
Then the brat dropped down off a skyscraper in the city Sawada's spawn lived in—civilians below, Squalo noted distantly before his attention snagged on (holy shit what were the odds?) the very person that he had been flat-out ordered to keep those Half-rings away from.
No more choice. The CEDEF brat had to die, he didn't have time to screw around anymore.
Then Sawada's spawn stood up with a freaking exasperated groan, like people dropping in from above while bleeding and/or waving swords was normal, and suddenly the lion statues outside the café he'd been eating at with what looked like some kid-friends came to life.
Getting pinned by the big one was painful but not unbearably so, but the slightly smaller one (no mane—female?) biting through his sword was enraging.
Worse, Sawada's spawn was talking to them. Telling—holy shit, these weren't Mist. Or Cloud. His own Rain was strong enough to have dissipated either, and there was a fucking cub at the spawn's feet chewing on what was left of his prized blade, and clearly making progress towards eating it entirely.
Squalo wasn't quite able to wrap his mind around that.
And then he registered the word 'Vindice'. Backed through what he'd heard but not paid attention to, and realized what he'd just done. Shit, it would have been safer to fail the mission than to break Omertá. And he'd done both.
… And Sawada's spawn had allies that were very much not Vongola.
(They were missing something. Missing a lot, by the look of it, but Xanxus was going to be pissed that Squalo had gotten himself caught.)
There were implications to that—poor intel, strong allies, freaking living statues—maybe robotic? A base—a base that Squalo was promptly escorted to by three metal lions and four… Yakuza? Flame Active, at that, though not too strong. Shit, poor intel didn't even begin to cover this—Xanxus was going to be walking into something that was a hell of a lot closer to 'trap' than 'win'.
(And Squalo couldn't even warn him. Shit. He should have just gutted the CEDEF brat when he'd had the chance.)
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