Chapter 55:

And Deal With

Wow guys, I'm going to have to ask you questions more often. Over 70 reviews for that last chapter. That's over double the next highest. *hugs!*

Warnings of a chapter filled with fight scenes. Do not fear, Tsunayoshi is not tortured. I should have specified that last chapter. Also I mean no offence to anyone who is religious, and I am sorry if I offend anyone with anything that happens in the church.

I've left a present in this chapter for you all. Her name is Mich. It means myself in German. There's no particular reason for me choosing German, except it was the only word meaning myself in any of the relevant languages I checked that sounded remotely like a name. You'll see why she is a present when we get to her paragraph. I say she but Mich could be short for Michel too, for all of you sadistic fanboys out there. However, Mich shall be referred to as a girl due to the majority of my readers being female. Please enjoy.

Tick Tock. You're on the Clock.

As the Bell tolls midnight, a piercing scream can be heard.

The Mafiosi and Arcobaleno gathered all tense, the atmosphere becoming electric. They knew who had made that scream and they were not very happy. That sound should never fall from those lips, ever. The Mafiosi around turn to the Arcobaleno as the scream dies out, cringing as they do, not really wanting to see the expressions that would be on the Arcobaleno's faces. But there is no need for the Arcobaleno aren't even there. How they had disappeared so quickly no one knew. Sure, Reborn and Fon they could understand since it was part of their job description, but for even Skull and Verde to move like that… it was truly unprecedented.

A whine fills the air around them, along with the zinging sound of a sword being released from its sheath. "Annoying Trashes, grabbing all the action for themselves." Scoffs Xanxus, the air around him glowing a deathly orange. The whining grows in pitch as the X-Guns Xanxus is famous for are charged to their maximum capacity. Lussuria can be seen stretching, whilst Belphegor grins madly, admiring the sharp edge of his knives. With a loud bang, Xanxus takes to the sky, the Varia jumping into action at the same time, all taking different directions to enter the church from.

Tsunayoshi was important to the Varia, the boy had somehow managed to work his way in. Between their defencelessness at utter adorableness to the way that Tsunayoshi had told them off for drinking and swearing, everything the brat did forced him to become someone the Varia noticed. Of course they had first noticed him for the untapped potential they could all see brimming in the boy. The way he had fearlessly pointed a gun at Xanxus or stared directly at Belphegor with his lunatic grin, all of it had proved that the brat was not a normal person, but someone more. They were impressed with the little boy they saw, marking him as Varia Quality. If the Arcobaleno didn't want him then they'd certainly keep him.

And the Varia were quite a possessive bunch when it came down to it. In the Mafia you had to grab something precious and keep it close before it was either ripped from you or destroyed. And those who got in the Varia's way were removed. As simple as that.

"Che, well I ain't letting them have all the fun." Says G., stringing the bow he had brought with him. He might be an expert in guns, but archery was what he did best.

"Exactly. A holy place should not be defiled like this." Agrees Knuckle. How dare they hold some one hostage in a place of sanctuary and freedom? Three minutes should be more than enough to teach them the proper respect for God's House.

"Nufufu~ My dearest Elena would never forgive me if I let anything happen to the boy." Daemon adds in, removing a speck of dust from his scythe.

"Haha, we don't even need to ask if Giotto's going, we all know he can't say no to someone in need. I'm surprised that he's still even 'ere." Laughs Cozart, patting Giotto harshly on the back.

Giotto nods and looks between his men. Seeing that they are all ready to go and save his great great-great-great-grandson, Primo claps once and abruptly they have all disappeared too. The regular Mafioso around drop their jaws in awe of the three spectacular exits. How could they ever hope to contend with that? That was why Vongola were the Number One Family.

"Kekeke, You think we're gonna let you in that easily?" comes a squeaky voice from behind the horde of Mafia Row Residents. They look backwards towards the forest and find themselves surrounded by men in Bull Fighting uniforms. "Although I'd be running if I were you. I certainly wouldn't want to enter the Devil's lair. The Arco Iris are the scariest people in the entirety of Spain. If they say jump, we don't bother with asking how high, we'd be dead before we even said one word."

The Bosses of the Nuevo, Tomaso, Chiavarone and Giglio Nero all turn with toothy feral grins on their faces, some of them cracking their knuckles. What, they were Mafioso. And all of them were itching for a fight.

"Gamma," says Aria, pulling out one of the custom guns that her Famiglia had gotten her. "I do believe we should hold down the fort here. I'm sure Mother would appreciate less interference."

Gamma nods, and the rest of the Giglio Nero bring out their own weapons too. "I do believe my Lady would like that, Princess." He agrees.

There are noises from the back of the crowd along with a few screams. One of the Giegue pops out of the crowd of Enemies with his nailed club held high. "You'd better hurry up, we're already on 15," he comments in Italian before whacking the next man who came at him. "Make that 16."

From then on, madness ensued as Mafia Row went against the Spanish Mafioso. It basically all devolved into one huge contest, with shouts of battle scores and taunts flying across the forest clearing like bullets. Even if they weren't friends usually, only united under the tentative banner of Mafia Row residents, the common goal shared between them all allowed them to put their differences aside.

All because of one small boy.

"Oy, Boss. They've started to move in. There is a 100% chance that the fake Arco Iris have entered the building. There is a 96% chance that reinforcements have also entered the building. The fake Arco Iris's time entering the building was 2.46 seconds with a Standard Deviation of 0.5 seconds from the start of the boy's scream." The woman pulls up her glasses and readjusts her pigtails before going back to typing.

The Boss chuckles. "Good job Morganna. Go have fun." The woman at the computers nods before reaching under her desk and bringing out a new type of keyboard. This one had lots of coloured buttons and switches on it.

"Hell's Path, activating."

Hearing a slight click in the otherwise silent hallway, Lal and Colonnello jump backwards, holding their weapons up infront of them. The floor where they had just been standing crumbles, leaving a dark black hole in it's place. Colonnello kicks a stone in, waiting for it to hit the bottom. But as far as he can tell it doesn't.

Lal suddenly pushes Colonnello to the wall as a flurry of poisoned tipped darts fly past.

"Aw, I didn't know you cared, Lal." Cheekily smiles Colonnello before squeezing Lal in a quick hug and slipping past her to run down the corridor. Lal turns a bright red before angrily running after her flirtatious student. Colonnello rolls under a pair of axes that appear out of the walls, Lal following a split second behind. When Lal sees a small hole open in the wall and the glint of a silencer, she tackles Colonnello to the ground. The bullets go over their heads, instead of into Colonnello's back like they would have if she wasn't here. However, the floor that they landed on is slippery and the pair roll down a gradient and into a large stone room.

"How many times have I told you to watch your back?" she grumbles, getting up from the floor. "You are in for hell when we get back." Colonnello rolls his eyes but still smiles at her anyway.

"On the contrary missy, Hell starts right here."

Before they can even look properly, the COMSUBIN members shoot off their riffles, only using the sound for targeting.

"Olé!" the man shouts, gracefully spinning under the bullets.

"The Italian Mafia's Strongest Marksmen and Trap Masters, Lal and Colonnello, have entered Romain's room. Their chance of survival: 37%. If they stop bickering long enough, 40%."

"Now now, is that anyway to great your host?" the man pouts. "But why the rush?" he asks, as the pair continue to aim and fire at him. "You're only decreasing the time you have left to live. For I'm not letting you out of here alive." The man, Romain, turns serious and stops dodging the bullets in favour of running straight for Lal. Lal keeps on firing until the man gets too close to comfort. Under Colonnello's covering fire, she swings the riffle to lie across her back and instead draws out her knives.

Lal and Romain clash, her swinging at his outstretched arm as he attempts to punch her in the jaw. She ducks under the punch before using her leg to sweep the man off his feet. Romain jumps over her foot before skipping backwards a few paces to avoid Colonnello's sniper shots. Now that there was distance between the enemy and Lal, Colonnello switches guns and brings out his anti-tank riffle. Laying it on the ground, he lays down and peers through the sight, taking aim and firing off the first shot.

Strangely, the man jumps to the left, closer to the bullet, rather than to the right where there was more room. Running in whilst Romain was distracted, Lal takes another swipe with her knives, this time scoring down the man's entire right arm. The enemy grabs her wrist and flips her to the floor, ducking under another anti-tank bullet in the process. Lal glares up at the man before attempting to push up from the floor to kick him. However there is no floor to push up from and her face flashes in shock for a moment before she falls.

Just in time she manages to grab the edge of the floor before she fell into green water below.

"LAL!" Colonnello shouts, watching her fall down the newly appeared hole in the floor. He grits his teeth and sends a few more bullets in the man's direction. He was sure that Lal was going to be okay. Something as small as that wasn't going to take her out. He would know since he's tried before during training.

Lal was not confortable at the moment. Since she had been laying down on the ground before falling, she currently had her back to the wall and her arm reaching up backwards to cling to the floor. Her shoulder screamed at her as she pushed against the wall to turn herself around. There was little purchase on the smooth walls of the trap, but pushing against the wall harshly once again gave her the momentum she needed to lift herself up.

With her head and arms now above floor level, she grabs the enemy's foot and tugs harshly. Colonnello uses that moment to shoot another bullet, this one embedding in the man's left hip.

Lal climbs out of the hole in the floor, sending a knife into Romain's unprotected back. She runs off a little way to allow her to regain her breath back. As she runs over another square of the monochrome-checked floor, it once again falls out from underneath her. But this time she jumps over it. Suspicious, Colonnello rolls a few of the bullet shells around him. Three of the squares around his position disappear.

"Lal, the floor's rigged!" he warns. He leans up slightly to take a look at what traps he could have fallen into and grimaces. They were COMSUBIN level traps. They were not dealing with an amateur.

"I know that already dumbass!" Lal retorts taking stock of the area around her. She hadn't noticed it before, but when she had been running around the room earlier, some of the black square tiles had disappeared. It was hard to tell which ones had fallen and which had not. "We're going to need a plan." She mumbles.

"See, I told you to the extreme that all churches have this secret entrance!"

"Would you shut the hell up or we'll get noticed, you religious fanatic idiot!"

"Maa, maa, there's no need to get excited and raise your voices."

"We're not getting excited flute freak!"

"Giotto, should we ditch them?" asks Cozart, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the arguing buffoons behind them. Giotto sighs before rubbing his temples.

"That might be a good idea. Alaude and Daemon have already gone ahead as soon as Knuckle showed us this entrance. I bet they're already in the thick of things." Giotto agrees. The childhood friends nod at each other before sneaking off.

Hearing screams and the sounds of a fight coming from up ahead, the pair run quicker towards the small band of light in front of them. Pushing the stone door open further, they find that Alaude and Daemon have indeed already gotten into fights, with many uniformed men already lying unconscious on the ground.

"I think they've got this covered." Cozart comments, before he and Giotto go and sit at the foot of an angel statue, watching the pair fight. They were doing a marvellous job, the two Bosses had to admit.

"Ua-ah-ah." Cozart says in a telling off voice before flicking his fingers. A few of the Uniformed men running for the door go flying away from it and towards the ball of gravity Cozart had conjured up. "There's no time to run now. Remember you guys started this."

Giotto spots a few men running for the opposite door. But before he can light his Flames and go after them, they fall to the ground with arrows in their backs. "Finally joined the party?" Giotto asks as he looks up to see G. standing there with his bow raised, letting another arrow fly into a fleeing enemy's back.

"Che, you couldn't keep me away if you tried. Someone's got to look after you two." G. grins before letting another arrow fly.

"OI, you cannot do that to the holy scriptures!" shouts Knuckle, running over and punching an enemy who was about to knock Alaude over the head from behind with the Bible.

"Ore-sama shall stay here." Lampo announces, sitting down at Giotto and Cozart's feet. "To, you know, protect our escape route… or something." He whimpers as a bullet wizzes past his face and lands in the statue before quickly hiding behind his lucky shield.

"Guys," Giotto starts in a voice that can be heard over the clangs of battle. "You are not to let anyone leave this room, understood?"

"Ushi~ shi~ shi~ The Varia's Number one, skilled in battle sense, Prince the Ripper, it's not gallantry~ Ushi~ shi~ shi~" Belphegor sings as he skips down the corridor. "Oh look, you've all prepared yourselves for the Prince's arrival!"

Somehow, despite entering through different entrances, the Varia had all managed to end up in the same room, with a set of steps leading underground infront of them. A huge hole in the wall shows how Xanxus and Squalo had entered, no doubt with Levi trailing behind. Lussuria had entered through a side door and Belphegor had, of course, arrived through the main door of the room.

"The Prince shall go first, as is his princely right!" declares Belphegor, jumping down the stairs before the others could protest.

"Voooiii! Come back here Belphegor! Little kids should go last!" Squalo shouts, following Belphegor with his sword flying around in the air in a menacing manner.

"Oh look, the Prince's welcoming party have arrived! Bow down before me peasants!"

There was a collection of Uniformed Spaniards waiting for them as they arrived at the bottom of the stairs. Hearing the tell-tale sign, the Varia duck down as one, letting the shots from Xanxus' X-Guns fly over their heads. Boss was so impatient sometimes. The Mafiosi at the front fall down under Xanxus's attack.

Needless to say, the Varia work their way through all who appear infront of them, not really being impartial. There were the odd shouts of "Vooii! That one was mine!" and "Mou~ Too slow hunny~" and a constant background noise of "Ushishishi", Prince remarks, demands of bowing and calls of knife and wire judgement. The sounds of walls exploding, of men grunting in pain and for one certain person, the sound of blood splattering on the floor, was like music to their ears. It was safe to say that the Varia were having fun. Wasn't that nice?

"The Italian Mafia's Best Scientist and Martial Artist, Verde and Fon, have entered Ferdinand's Domain. Their survival rate is 45%."

"Why so high?" the Boss asks.

"Respect for a fellow Intellectual."

"But he's a Scientist and you're a Mathematician."

"So?"

Verde and Fon stood back to back, panting to catch their breath. Verde wipes some blood away from his eye before placing some butterfly stitches over it to help stop the bleeding. He turns around and uses his scalpel to cut away a strip of cloth from his lab coat. Carefully removing the knife from Fon's arm, he quickly starts to wrap the make shift bandage around it.

"2 meters behind you, about 30 degrees clockwise I'd say." Fon mumbles, looking over Verde's shoulder. The Scientist grabs a vial from his lab coat before throwing it in the direction Fon had specified. The vial crashes and a satisfying hiss along with quieting robotic beeps sounds, making Verde smile.

Noticing Verde's eyes flick from his arm to somewhere over his left shoulder, Fon immediately kicks out in that direction, feeling his foot connect with a metal chassis. The robot goes flying into some more robots and then into the wall. "I'll get those." Verde offers, walking over towards the pile of fallen robots. Fon nods in agreement, letting the Scientist do what he did best.

After a few minutes of fighting, the pair had settled into a routine. Fon knocked the robots to the floor and Verde (with some surprisingly quick Scientist-ninja moves) cut the wires leading to their power sources and dismantled the robots. Their plan wasn't fool-proof, as shown by the wounds the pair had already sustained. Fon couldn't be everywhere to knock robots down and protect Verde, nor was Verde quick enough to dismantle all of the hundreds of robots surrounding them currently.

Another vial of acid goes flying, melting through the metal of the robot's bodies and through the rubber casing of the internal wires. Fon reaches into his robes and brings out a pair of nunchucks, which would do a better job of denting the robot's bodies. Plus it saved him from harming his feet and knuckles any further. Striking metal constantly had done quite a bit of damage already, without the wounds conflicted through the robot's attacks.

Fon spins the nunchucks around his body, behind his back, over his head, and under his arm, the whole time crunching through robots with the other end. However he notices something on the ceiling that really shouldn't be there. Ripping a part of his robes off- it was hanging off anyway- he goes over to where some wires are sparking and sets the piece of material alight. Jumping from robot to robot that were in a pile in the corner (Verde left them there after dismantling them, something to do with having a clear workspace at all times and methodical processes) and holds the flame under a box on the ceiling. Within seconds alarms are blaring and water falls from the ceiling.

Verde looks disgruntled, wiping drops of water off his glasses as he glares at Fon. The martial artist just shrugs and gives Verde a smile. "Well, it's working isn't it?" Verde couldn't protest since the water from the fire sprinklers was indeed short circuiting out the robots. Verde turns around and stalks through the door opposite to where they had entered from. "Follow or else I'll blow you up too."

Fon shakes his head at Verde's comment before following the Scientist. Verde chucks a few metal cubes into the room. They fizz on contact with the water before exploding. The whole room is filled and the blast is felt by the pair who were quite a distance away already. Fon looks over Verde's shoulder to see him typing away on some sort of small hand held device that was glowing in different shades of green. He recognised the screen as some sort of radar.

"What's that for?" He asks, following when the scientist takes a left turn.

"I'm tracking down the radio wave signals that was controlling the robots. I want to meet the man who created them. His design was a good one, one of the best I have seen so far." Verde explains, pushing his glasses back up his nose.

Fon grimaces slightly. "Verde, I do not believe you should be complimenting the enemy in such situations." Verde just shrugs, it's not like he cared for that kind of thing. His ideas of normalcy and what not to do didn't exactly align with everyone else's.

"Here we go." Verde announces, twisting the handle of a door.

There was one member of the Varia that had not gone with the others, and that was their temporary Cloud. Their Cloud changed on a daily basis depending on who Xanxus liked at the time and who he had not killed already. Xanxus was picky with his officers. Her name was Mich, and she was a weapon's master. You name it and as long as it wasn't a gun, she was good with it. From swords (although she left those to Squalo in general) to scythes, to brass knuckles, staffs, maces, shuriken, anything she could get her hands on.

She crept along the corridors by herself, sticking close to the shadows of the wall to blend in. She had found an entrance in the forest that no one else had gone down. It had taken her a while to get back into the wide halls of the church, but she seemed to be two or three levels underground. Using a mirror to look around a corner, she spots two men in Bull Fighter Uniforms guarding a door. She slides her blowgun out from its place strapped to her leg and inserts two poisoned darts from her belt. Slowly leaning around the corner, she shoots the darts and the two guards fall to the floor unconscious without making a sound.

Mich creeps along the hallway towards the pair, keeping an eye out for movement from either of them. Coming to the door, she places an ear against it and listens to what's inside.

"Sugar, it seems like we underestimated the fake Arco Iris. It might be better to retreat and regroup."

Carefully opening the door, Mich steps inside. However the door creaks and the man inside turns around.

"How did you get in here?" he demands, pointing a gun at her.

"Pfft. In here? It was far too easy. Now tell me where Tsunayoshi is before I send you to an early grave."

Go all you sadistic fans out there! The Right Hand Man is yours to torture and maim as you wish. Feel free to take out all your rage at Tsunayoshi being captured on him. That's my present to you all. I hope you like it. Also feel free to tell me what you do with him, I'm interested. And now you know why I called her Mich/myself. It's a weird way to do a reader-insert without breaking the rules, smart eh?

I'm stopping the chapter here. The fight shall be continued next chapter. I didn't mean to end this chapter on a cliff-hanger like this, but I didn't leave myself enough time to finish the chapter. Fight scenes took longer than I remember them taking. Oh well, it just means more for you all to read.

See you all next time!

Phantom Hitman 1412

First Published 22 November 2012

So as we now all know, the 'Man in the Cell' is TYL! Canon! Gokudera. But I'm so proud of the many of you who wrote either Alternate Dimension, Canon, or Storm. That means you're really taking in what I'm writing and that's such a compliment. And I also love those guys who actually spent the time to copy and paste quote to prove their points. Some people practically wrote essays. God I love you all so much! I'm over the moon!

So I thought I'd share with you all of the clues that I put in there for those of you who were wondering. I'll be deciding on the winner/s of the Omake later. It's going to be hard since so many of you actually decided to write all 12 reasons. I didn't expect so many responses.

There were three clues to who the man was not. These were:

1-That someone else made the sushi, meaning it wasn't Yamamoto in the cell

2-A healer friend. This could have been either Dr Shamal or Ryohei.

3-He names Sky, and Tsuna wouldn't call himself Sky. Plus the last time the pair got close to each other, Tsunayoshi fainted. And Gokudera gave him an assignment to do a few chapters ago anyway.

4-Now that I think about it, there is four. Gokudera makes reference to being the only person to talk to Verde, meaning it wasn't going to be Verde either.

Now for the clues that he was Gokudera:

1-"Che," Quite an obvious one. It was something that I made extra sure not to put in last chapter since I thought it would give it away too easily.

2-"Flick of a Lighter" In the Manga, Gokudera smokes to light his dynamites up.

3-"Tsunayoshi didn't understand a word of what came next" Gokudera is a genius and when explaining things tends to go about it in a scientific manner that Tsuna can never understand- think of how he tried to teach Tsuna to swim.

4-"The person that the not-stranger looked like" Not really a clue to Gokudera specifically, but shows that it must be someone that Tsunayoshi knows as a child that looks similar all grown up.

5-"I'm one of the few people he bothers talking to" This could be linked to the 3rd point, and indeed many of you put them together, but Verde would only stand intelligent people, which Gokudera is.

6-"Hear his voice coming from you makes me forget" Again not really a clue to Gokudera specifically, but it does show that it must be someone that knew Tsuna from a young age, this limits it to the Guardians and the Arcobaleno.

7-'Naughty words' Obviously I don't swear in this fic, but Gokudera does and is the only Guardian to swear so often.

8-"The light gets closer to the ground and the noise of something hitting the floor" Gokudera's self-punishment bowing apologises. Gokudera is the only one to bow like this.

9-"Someone I admire greatly" and who admires Sky more than Gokudera?

10-"Idiot Friend" Whilst already being a reference to who he is not, only Gokudera calls Yamamoto an Idiot

11-"Feeding it to Ur-um, my pet cat" He nearly mentions feeding sushi to Uri, who is Gokudera's pet Leopard/cat.

12-"Trust this man explicitly" As a right hand man, there would be no one that a Boss!Tsuna would trust more.

13-"The Last person to use poisoned food" After being poisoned by Bianchi so often through food, I doubt that Gokudera would use this technique himself.

14-"No one knows that I'm here" To get here without anyone knowing would mean activating the Space/Time transporter. If you remember back in the Bovino chapter, Shoichi, Spanner and Verde had all been there to transport Tsuna back home. As such someone would have to be smart to activate it by themselves, so it had to be Gokudera.

15-"I've been in a similar situation before" This could either be a reference to it being an Adult that Tsunayoshi was talking to, or a reference to Gokudera's time in the Mafia as a child after he ran away from home. Gokudera has been in the Mafia the longest, and therefore possibly been in some sort of kidnapping/hostage situation before.

16-"The man is embarrassed. Sounds like Lal" As many of you put it, Gokudera being a Tsundere, just like Lal can be sometimes. He goes all red when he's doing something that goes against his delinquent façade.

17-"Babble Incoherently" Only Gokudera would do this when caught doing something nice or complimented.

18-"Oh St. Mary" I didn't expect anyone to get this one although I think someone guessed at it. Gokudera was brought up in Italy which is quite a Catholic place, hence why this Saint in particular. Also Gokudera is most likely the only one to pray to a Christian figure rather than using the Japanese equivalent.

19-"The stuttering" practically the same as point 17. Gokudera wouldn't like to admit to caring for someone so directly.

20-"Damn my orders" The phrasing in particular, but I'd imagine Gokudera as someone to defy orders to save Tsuna in any form.

21-A clue from a previous chapter, but Storm left Sky's office with a smile on his face. He was going to make Sky proud of him by going and looking after Tsunayoshi.

See, wasn't I nice only asking for 12.