Author's Note: Revised 5/16/15

Hope you like the new version xp I know I do~

This interlude reads more like a summary because there is a lot of triggering material involved in the mission. I will write a detailed version when I am in the mood for the real horrors that the mafia has to offer. At the moment, I do not want nightmares so this will have to do.

Kieth Lemaro.

The man was a sleaze-ball of the worst kind. That was why Tsunayoshi took up the hit. It had been issued by the Vongola but a paycheck was a paycheck and his bank account was getting a bit low.

Unfortunately, the man was already dead when he got there. He recognized the kill as the supposed Sword Emperor, Tyr of the Vongola. He was a Sky with a unique fighting style because he lost a hand in battle. Tsunayoshi had never had the pleasure of crossing paths with him until now.

'Damn it. I need a paycheck!' He sighed, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. "Now what?" He said out loud.

The door opened. The maid screamed. Tsunayoshi tensed before his flight reflexes kicked in and he dove through the window. The maid would not remember his face. He wove through the crowds until he arrived back at the villa he'd learned to call home where Nocturna was waiting for him.

Nocturna was a beautiful woman with hair a shade of black so deep that it glowed blue under florescent light. Her skin was pale and on the side of her face, starting at her temple, curving around her eye and stopping on her cheek was a silver crescent moon.

It was part of her Thirty Night Torture ability. When the moon was full, that marked the climax of the torture. For twelve straight hours, while the moon was full and shining over your fallen body, you would endure hell. Tsunayoshi had never been on the receiving end of it but he had seen it in action—had watched the man's body melt under the amount of stress his mind put it under—and new that he never wanted to be on the receiving end of it.

At the time, he had not known that the man who stole his kill and the woman that was pleasuring him were connected—had not known that the scent he was smelling on her Flame was that of her Sky.

"You seem tense." Nocturna said, running her hands over Tsunayoshi's shoulders.

The two of them had crossed paths in the back-alleys before. It wasn't until Nocturna tried to roofie him that they got together.

In her defense, not many of the young ones came to her willingly. Tsunayoshi was a rare exception.

"Someone stole my kill."

"Hmm~?" She hummed.

"The signature was a double-edged sword through the chest." Tsunayoshi took a sip of wine. Nocturna froze. Tsunayoshi looked back at her. She was nervous… why? "Are you alright?"

"Fine~." She cooed, pressing her breasts against his back. He sighed. What did she find attractive in him? He was fourteen…

Well… not that he was complaining but something told him that society wouldn't see it the same way he did.

"Are you familiar with the MO?"

Nocturna laughed nervously.

Tsunayoshi gave her a dry stare. "Who is he? Ex boyfriend?"

"More like… my boss."

"I didn't know you were employed." Tsunayoshi mused, stirring in the hot water when he turned on the faucet. "Is he a Don?"

"He's the leader of a shadow organization within the Vongola. His name is Tyr—a Sky like you."

He connected the dots. "That explains the strange scent on your Flame." He mused. "He's marked you, hasn't he?"

"Yes." Nocturna nodded. "I am his Mist."

"And the gentleman that was with you the other night… Maverick. He is a Cloud, right?"

Nocturna gave him an odd look. "How did you know?"

"Lucky guess." Tsunayoshi lied easily. He had read his Flame, of course. That man had the same scent on his Flame that Nocturna did. They were both claimed. Such a pity, he thought mournfully. "Would you mind asking your boss why he stole my prey?"

"It was a message to the people he was working for—the Zeno. Tyr is trying to put an end to the war between them and the Vongola."

"Well," Tsunayoshi laughed. "If he wants to do that, who am I to stop him? They will seek a replacement. Keith Lemaro was a computer programmer."

"Then we have a problem." Nocturna sighed.

"Oh?"

"We needed to off a biological engineer, not a computer programmer. Whoever collected intel probably did a shitty job. The fresh releases were crap this year." Nocturna sighed. "I'm going to be called out."

"Hmm… what if I gave your boss an in?"

"How would you do that?" Nocturna turned to him, watching him light himself from the tub and wrap a towel around his waist.

"I have a partner that's a wiz with computers." He lied. Leon would help him decipher the coding that would otherwise be foreign to him. He relied a lot on that little lizard and no one knew it. He was Mayhem's dirty little secret… "He can talk me through what needs to get done and you can come with me as my assistant or something."

Nocturna pursed her lips. "Tyr will want to do the job himself."

That was disappointing. 'Suck it up, sweetheart. A paycheck is a paycheck.'

"In that case, I'll want the money he stole when he took my kill." Tsunayoshi deadpanned, completely serious. Nocturna nodded.

"That sounds reasonable. Wow, you just did half of my job for me." She beamed. "Thank you, Tsunayoshi." She kissed his cheek.

He would never see that money.

His first impression of Tyr had been sleaze-ball. He did not like the man. The man had complimented him, treated him well, but underneath it all, Tsunayoshi had a feeling that the man did not really give a damn what happened to him and that was only proven when they finished the job.

The job had been done but there had been one miscalculation.

The Don had never left the premises. Tyr had lied, had set it up so Tsunayoshi would take the fall.

Tsunayoshi had just finished writing the script when he turned and realized Tyr had fled. Seconds after that registered, the doors flew open and he was strapped to the desk he had been working at. Keith Lemaro's boss, Don Zeno, was a tall man with equal length in his torso and legs. His hair was black and slicked back into a long ponytail.

He was on top of Tsunayoshi, burning his clothes away. He forced himself on Tsunayoshi—inside of him—before he pulled out a syringe and injected him with a liquid that burned his blood.

He felt that needle slide into his arm and cool liquid imbued with his blood. His already sluggish senses became foggy. He felt a phial being emptied into his mouth. He tried to spit the burning liquid out but a hand clamped firmly over his mouth while another rubbed his throat in a means of coaxing the burning liquid down. Without consent, it drained into his system leaving nothing but cold, sharp and searing pain in its wake.

It hurt a lot but and he tried to open his mouth to scream but nothing came out. He couldn't make a sound. His body thrashed against his restraints, twitching and convulsing against his will as the pain became too much to bare. The thrashing aggravated old wounds, ripped the stitches out of fresher ones and hurt him more than the liquid coursing through his veins did.

When the pain was gone, Tsunayoshi was left naked and curled in the corner with strange black markings running up his arms and down his back. Don Zeno had just sat and watched him burn.

"Beautiful." He had murmured before grabbing Tsunayoshi and throwing him over the desk. He had intended to rape him again, to remind him that he was no longer in control when suddenly, he was burning and then he was gone.

Tsunayoshi broke from the burnt corpse's grasp easily, sparing it only a glance before he set the entire place ablaze.

He did not feel a thing.

He had not felt a thing since.

The abuse was still fresh in his mind but there was no emotion to go with the actions. One day, he'd admit that maybe he went overboard but today, he did not care. He rigged the building, knowing that it would not be enough to kill the man and waited for him to show up.

When Tyr showed up, he attacked, beating the man within an inch of his life and leaving him. When he stood over him after he was done, he spat by the man's face. "You are despicable. You left a child to be raped and tortured because you failed to lure the boss away and for what? Because you did not want to pay me the money that I would be living on?" He shot Tyr's kneecaps out. "Let this be a lesson. I will not kill you. Use this mercy to change your ways or the next time we meet, I will."

Twenty minutes later, the building exploded.

Tsunayoshi was already gone.

Tsuzukeru.

Thanks for reading~!