Lal doesn't even know anymore. (Also, her boss is an idiot.)
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Lal Mirch was left blinking in the wake of the Decimo's group leaving, not entirely sure what had just happened. For one thing, Xanxus had seemed… different, to say the least. He had been visibly off-balance, looking to the Decimo as though for answers, and the fact that Reborn had introduced the boy as his Sky was…
Surreal, was one way to put it. The fact that he had Fon and Skull with him as well, alongside the Varia and quite a few younger Flame Actives she was willing to bet were his Guardians…
She didn't want to think on what he'd said of Iemitsu. She didn't want to think a man she respected had failed so badly. But there would be no choice—the Decimo had denied kinship with Iemitsu, called him a stranger, and a lying one at that.
That had not been the 'useless little Tuna-fishy' that Iemitsu wailed about. That had been a young man secure in his power, who had the strongest in the world folded into his care, who had gotten Reborn and Xanxus to follow him with unnerving ease.
(Lal had never Harmonized with Iemitsu. Had assumed that he'd had and lost the bonds she might have fit into, and simply been unwilling to 'replace' those lost. Now, she was wondering if that assumption was wrong, if he simply was of too incompatible a mindset for their Flames to mesh.)
Damage control. The Decimo was angry with the CEDEF head, and for solid reason. Damage control.
Worse, not only had Iemitsu wronged the boy on a personal level (eight years out of contact, to the point where he'd needed Xanxus to tell him who the man even was?), he had also started to verbally lash out at one of the Decimo's Guardians. Xanxus, at that, who was a Wrath Sky.
(She, like everyone else, had always assumed that Transcendent Skies were a myth. Apparently everyone was wrong, because there was no mistaking how steady and sure Xanxus' usually roiling Wrath had been, how he'd looked to Tsunayoshi with a level of protectiveness and fierce pride, how he'd folded to the young man's wishes without so much as a token protest. If that wasn't the mark of a full Harmony Bond, she didn't know what was.)
Somehow, Lal had the feeling that Iemitsu wasn't going to be the External Advisor much longer.
Still, she should probably break him out of that illusion and report to Timoteo. Ugh, what a mess.
Then, as it turned out, the snakes? Not illusions.
(It took ten minutes and excessive application of creative Cloud and Mist Flames to trap the things, which Lal was a little reluctant to kill. Three of the vipers ended up dead anyway, but live snakes that obedient had to be trained, and she didn't want to find out what the Decimo's people would say about having to train new ones. Also, how the hell did they smuggle that many snakes into Vongola Mansion without anyone noticing? Who carried around a dozen-odd vipers and constrictors and used them as restraints on people that annoyed them?)
Cloud-and-Mist Flame box of snakes in hand, Lal left Iemitsu under Oregano's watch and went to tell Timoteo that the Decimo and his group had returned to Varia Mansion to handle some situation involving a possible traitor before sighing and going to ask Turmeric to take her to return the reptiles.
Beating discipline and skill into recruits was her job. (There was the unofficial but overriding job of keeping the office in order, because Iemitsu was a strong, disciplined fighter but not a clerk. She understood that Timoteo had chosen him because he trusted him, but that trust really shouldn't have been put in a largely office-run position. Timoteo should have kept the man as a field commander, not a paper-pusher.)
Nowhere in that was 'returner of pets'. Although the snakes seemed more like working animals.
Ack. How did one teach snakes to attack (or bind) on command? Sure, Reborn seemed able to talk to reptiles, but he didn't train snakes.
Or, at least, she dearly hoped he didn't, because if the snakes she'd killed were Reborn's, she was going to have a very miserable year, if he was feeling forgiving. If he wasn't, she would have a very miserable rest of her life.
(Then, just to make things worse, she and Turmeric were turned away at the door, the Varia Mansion on lockdown and no one allowed in or out. Which left Lal with a tank of snakes and some worried questions. What was going on?)
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