A/N: Oya Oya! Sushi*Bomb here with the long-awaited (not really, but I like to tell myself that lol) Chaper 9 of Phases of Accidia. I have pretty much beaten Writer's Block's ass, thanks to C.I. which is a blast to write, and encourage anyone reading it to try it out. The idea behind the fic, that is.
No warnings or anything for this chapter…just read it and love it. *Thumbs up*
Disclaimer: Sushi*Bomb does not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn. I could never be as awesome as Akira Amano.
IX. For those of Superior Intelligence
"Hey trash, did you get the answer to number #17 yet?" Xanxus asked, relatively placid for once. The Varia boss scratched at his dark locks in irritation. Squalo looked up from his own paper with a comically blank expression. He simply shook his head slowly from side to side, as if the irksome assignment had fried his brain to the point where he could only utilize his most basic motor skills.
"Nah…I think I'm gonna skip it." The silverette yawned obnoxiously, leaning back in his chair to crack his back. Xanxus growled lowly, but went back to staring at his paper. He glared heatedly at the question whose answer seemed to elude both him and his friend.
The two commanders of the elite assassination squad were currently sitting in the library in the eastern wing of the Varia base, doing their homework. Yes, their homework. Even though the Varia were a group of feared and respected assassins, they were still in their teens, and as such, Nono still expected them to get a sound education. Thus, the members of the squad were all homeschooled at the base, and therefore, homework.
"Voi! Ya think Lussuria got the answer?" Squalo whispered, chewing on the end of his pencil. Xanxus snorted, shaking his head.
"Hell no. Lussuria hasn't even opened the book yet." The two laughed at the flamboyant teen, and his blatant disregard of the subject of mathematics.
After a while, the two teens sat staring at their almost complete homework. That one bloody question still unanswered. Squalo found the obvious blank space for the question most aggravating. Xanxus shared his sentiments, to an extent.
"Do you think Ms. Fabiola will care if we skip one?" The shark asked in resignation. Xanxus shrugged.
"I don't give a shit."
Squalo sighed in agreement; chuckling a bit as Belphegor casually strode into the room, looking terribly bored. The little boy came and sat at the table next to Squalo, who groaned in annoyance at the child's presence.
"What're you doing here runt? Did you finish your homework already?" The shark asked with a disapproving glance at the nintendo something or other in the ten year old's hands. Belphegor nodded his head, rapidly pressing the little buttons on the game. The device suddenly began to beep, apparently signaling that the prince had won the round. With a sigh, the boy turned off the game.
"Yeah, the prince finished it a long time ago. It was really easy." Belphegor said as he rested his blonde head in folded arms. He cast a glance at the open textbooks and scattered papers with mathematical equations scribbled on them. The prince sat up to lean over Squalo's paper.
"What are you guys doing?" He asked, staring intently at the problems. Squalo glared at the boy who was invading his personal space.
"Calculus. Wanna try it?" He asked sardonically. To his surprise, the blonde child nodded his head with genuine gusto, quickly slapping a palm over the textbook and dragged it over to his spot.
"Derivatives?" The boy said curiously. Xanxus and Squalo shared a disbelieving look as the young royal began to read the section in the book, looking abnormally fascinated for a ten-year old. The sky boss was amazed the kid could actually say the word, let alone try to comprehend what it meant. Squalo shook his head at the boy's antics. He leaned back in the chair with his arms lazily folded over his lean chest.
"So anyway, math's done. What else did we have for today?" Xanxus glanced over his to-do list intently, shoulders immediately sagging when he saw his least favorite subject circled. He frowned back up at the younger teen.
"Chemistry." Squalo actually hissed. He really hated chemistry. Xanxus laughed loudly at the second in command's fervent dislike of the subject as he pulled the heavy textbook out of his bag.
"Might as well get to it." He said. Squalo nodded in reluctant agreement, yanking his own book out from his backpack. Belphegor suddenly made a contented sound as he set the large math book down.
"Done!" The prince beamed, very proud of himself. The two older teens laughed.
"What're you so happy about runt? Did you actually get it or something?" More laughter. Belphegor pouted, nodding his head. Squalo snorted, before bursting into a fit of raucous guffaws at the kid. Xanxus, who was a bit calmer, looked at the young blonde, chuckling.
"Kid, this is big boy math. There's no way in hell you could understand it. Give it another six years, and then we'll see." The sky guardian said, before giving in and laughing with the silverette, who at this point was collapsed in a heap on top of the table, still shaking with hyena-like chortles.
Belphegor glared at the two. Why was it so funny that he understood this retard math? The prince shrugged. Maybe they were jealous because they're both dumb. Deciding that that had to be the reason, the prince looked at Squalo's paper again, specifically at the irritatingly blank problem in the middle of the paper.
Gingerly plucking the pencil out of Squalo's hand, the prince pulled the paper over to him. He pressed a finger to his mouth as he pondered the problem for a minute.
Find the derivative using the power rule.The prince read over the directions in the large textbook again to make sure he understood what the question required, and then set to work solving the problem.
Squalo's laughter was finally beginning to die down. He hadn't meant to laugh so hard, but the pure look of excitement on the kid's face at math of all things, the idea was just hysterical. The two older teens took calming breaths, before attempting to return to their dreaded chemistry homework.
Xanxus absently glanced in the royal child's direction, and did a double-take. The young prince had taken Squalo's paper and was pouring over the problem that they had left blank, a look of pure concentration on his face. The tip of a little pink tongue was poking out of the corner of Bel's mouth as he rapidly scribbled a mess of numbers and letters in the alotted space for the question.
And he actually looked like he knew what he was doing.
By this time, Squalo had stopped his eternal damning of chemistry and had also taken to watching the blonde boy. Every so often, the kid would groan in mild frustration or let out a little 'damn,' and erase something on the paper hurriedly, before returning to his dizzyingly fast calculating.
Xanxus and Squalo both sat with their mouths hanging open.
After a few minutes, Belphegor sat back in the seat, rubbing his tired hand with a satisfied smile. He slid the paper back to Squalo, who looked like he was trying to catch flies with his mouth. The swordsman looked over the boy's chickenscratch, contemplating the sloppy mess in growing astonishment.
This kid actually taught himself Calculus in less then ten minutes? …Holy shit.
Belphegor and Xanxus stared at him expectantly. Squalo hastily grabbed the textbook and flipped to the back of the book, searching for the answer to the question.
He made an odd strangled noise when he found it.
The two others leaned in closer. The silverette looked over at the child next to him, shock written all over his handsome face.
"It's right."
A chair abruptly scraped against the floor as Xanxus stood up and walked over to Squalo and Bel's side of the table.
"Lemme see that, trash." The Varia boss said, snatching the paper out of his second in command's hand and read it over himself. Dark eyebrows rose up in surprise. The older teen turned the textbook to face him and searched for the answer.
He looked dumbfounded.
The two teens stared at Belphegor, who had evidently grown bored with all of the amazement and shock, and opted instead to play the next round of his video game.
Xanxus couldn't believe it. All the kid did was read over the chapter, on a subject he had never seen in his life, and he not only understood it, but could apply it that quickly?
The kid was a fucking genius.
Over the years, the extent of Belphegor's mental acuity became much more apparent. Not only was the boy gifted with the ability of learning and processing information, both simple and complex, at supernatural speeds, but also possessed a photographic memory so detailed that Squalo had at one point believed Belphegor was some kind of robot-humanoid lifeform.
Once, the young blonde had been assisting Lussuria in the kitchen, because, as they had soon discovered, Belphegor was one of those kids who needed to be constantly stimulated and challenged. The prince had been helping the martial artist cook a very difficult dish that he had wanted to try for sometime, and would need help.
Lussuria noted that Belphegor had only briefly skimmed over the recipe in the book, without much interest or enthusiasm.
As the flamboyant man began adding the ingredients, he required the blonde to read each step to him. Which he did efficiently, as was usual of the prince. But the Muay Thai fighter actually took off his sunglasses to stare at the zestless prince in unabashed shock when he realized later that the book was sitting on the counter next to him, and the Belphegor had been walking around the kitchen, doing various other things. He had not come to the book once.
The boy had recited an almost seven page recipe, exactly, down to the precise measurements and cooking times, from memory, after just a glance?
The boy really was nothing short of amazing. The other Varia members knew they were intelligent; a general requirement of being a hitman was being intelligent to some degree. But Belphegor was in league all his own. If the blonde had even the slightest interest in a subject, he would hole himself up in the library for days, pouring over every nanobyte of information until he could tell you pretty much anything you wanted to know about it.
Squalo remembered once when they were gathered in the lounge, just relaxing, and Belphegor was working on a game in the newspaper. Sudoku, if he recalled correctly. Levi had walked in frustrated, as per usual, holding a book of crossword puzzles. The silverette remembered the lightning guardian had asked him the Latin term for the 'eye of hell' (What kind of weird question was that anyway?)
"Ocularis Infernum." The fifteen year old said absently, not even glancing up from his puzzle, which he was already halfway finished with. Levi looked from the prince to the sixteen blank boxes on the paper, to the prince again, before filling them in quickly with an incredulously muttered 'damn.'
So the kid knew Latin too? Not surprising.
Squalo snorted to himself in mild disbelief and amusement when he later noticed the newspaper Belphegor was reading was in Russian. He wasn't sure the prince had even noticed he was reading in a completely different language.
It became a past time for members of the Varia to ask the prince the most obscure questions when they were bored, just to see if Belphegor happened to know the answer.
"Voi brat, what's the name of this galaxy?"
"The Milky Way, duh."
"Hey Bel, what are the first seventeen numbers in pi?"
"3. 1415926535897932."
"Hey trash, how do you spell -?"
"P-S-E-U-D-O-A-N-T-I-D-I-S-E-S-T-A-B-L-I-S-H-M-E-N-T-A-R-I-A-N-I-S-M."
The older members of the group found some kind of weird enjoyment in deliberately asking the blonde boy the most random questions they could think of. It amazed them that ninety-nine percent of the time, the kid actually knew the answer. And when he didn't know, he would promptly run to the library and search for it until he did.
As they all got older, Belphegor began applying that superhuman brain of his to engineer brilliant tactical ploys. When they went out on assignment, it was usually the prince who would rapidly calculate their advantages and disadvantages, and quickly map out and devise a plan to get them in and out as quickly as possible, while efficiently carrying out their mission.
But for all his staggering mental capabilities, there were often times when Belphegor blurred the lines between intelligence, insanity, and plain retardation.
One year, during a particularly spartan training session gone wrong, the prince had somehow fallen off the roof of the Varia headquarters and broken his collarbone in four places. Understandably, the blonde was in an excrutiating amount of pain, and Xanxus knew that Morphine could only go so far…
But honestly.
In what universe was purposely injuring yourself to relieve pain considered a good idea?
Xanxus recalled the nurses in the infirmary having to literally strap the blonde hitman down to the bed after he slashed up his leg and poured alcohol on the wound. Xanxus had never up until then, and from that point on, ever heard Belphegor scream. That must've hurt like a bitch.
When Xanxus and the others questioned him later, Belphegor simply said that by slashing his leg he was redirecting his brain's attention to the most recent and significant area of pain, thereby temporarily relieving the severe throbbing of his mending collarbone. It was hard to argue with logic like that, what with the kid explaining the nerves and brain signals, using all those big medical words. That is, until Bel said that he said got the idea from an episode of House M.D.
At that point Xanxus facepalmed.
It was true that geniuses really have no common sense.
*Sigh* Sorry if the ending seems a little rushed. I have to start prepping my laptop (A.K.A. hiding all of my yaoi porn XD) for maintenance tomorrow! Yay and boo. Yay because my laptop will stop acting fucktarded, and boo because I'll be without my baby for the weekend, so I can't obsessively check my FFN account to see if anyone faved or reviewed my poorly written stories. LOL.
One other thing. The document manager is really really FAIL. It keeps deleting the word and it's really pissing me off.
Yeeeeah…anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Just in case anyone is curious, I actually do have a couple of friends who are in the genius I.Q. range, and a few tidbits in the story are based on things they've done or experienced firsthand. It's pretty cool. As always, read and review, or Belphegor will come slash your leg and pour alcohol on it. With a smile.
L8r dewds. Sushi*Bomb out! See ya when I see ya.