Chapter 66:
And Enjoy the Change
"You know, this cake is almost as good as Luce's." Tsunayoshi compliments, staring at the piece in his fingers. However he was sure that no one would be able to make cake that tasted as good as Luce's, it just wasn't possible.
"It's only the best cake for Lambo-san." The teen drawls, before taking another bite.
They both continue to sit inside the rather large pantry (there were alot of people to feed after all), eating cake and talking about food in general. Tsunayoshi hadn't noticed that the door had closed behind him. The pantry had a light bulb, so he had never noticed the loss of light. The door muffled the noises of the people outside, and Tsunayoshi was too busy paying attention to what Big-Lambo was saying. It was rude to not listen when someone was talking to you, according to Luce… and a certain someone's bullets.
"Well, have you found him yet?" asks Storm, ready to blow the ceiling off the mansion just to find the child.
"He's good at hiding to the Extreme!" reports Sun, which basically meant no.
"Maa maa, don't worry, I'm sure that what the girls have planned out will work. You know how good their cooking smells." Rain explains, patting Storm's shoulder.
Storm has to nod his head to that. The girls' cooking was wonderful, nearly as good as Sky's mother, especially since she had taught them. The three men were getting hungry just thinking about it. But then he remembers who else was possibly in the kitchen and he shivers.
"As long as someone doesn't let Aneki in then everything will be fine. Sky would not be happy if we poisoned Chibi. That's a direct insult and an indirect assassination attempt and I won't allow it. We have to keep Chibi in the exact condition he came in until we are forced to take him home." Storm explains to the other two with a serious expression on his face. The other two nod. Over the years they had all fallen to Scorpion's poison cooking and it was not an experience they would wish on anyone.
"It'll be fine, Scorpion is on a mission anyway," smiles Rain.
Storm looks away, down towards the kitchen. "Actually she's not. She completed it early since she wanted to throw Hitman a party to celebrate some sort of anniversary of theirs, some stupid girly sentimental thing, I don't know. She called earlier and explained that she'd be back at 5."
Ding. Dong. Ding. Dong.
Oh please not another one.
DING.
The trio look at each other. It was 5 already. She'd be back any moment.
"Ah, Hayato, here to give me a welcome home hug? What a nice brother you are."
Storm's eyes widen as he stands stock still. They just had to be having this conversation infront of the front door didn't they? Storm turns his face away as his sister gives him a hug.
"Welcome back Scorpion." Says Rain, waving.
"Planning an EXTREME party?" roars Sun.
"Oh yes, a party for my darling Hitman. It'll have been fifteen years since we went on our first mission together." She explains, rosy eyed. She hugs her brother tighter at the thought, getting excited already. It was going to be the best party ever.
"Well, I've got to go and prepare a wondrous feast for my love. See you all later." She smiles and waves to the males as she walks down the corridor.
Storm stands there, staring into space and getting over the contact he had just had. Luckily no poison cooking had been involved.
"Hmm, I wonder what she'll make for Hitman? Coffee cake? Amaretto biscuits? Espresso cup-cakes?" wonders Rain, watching her leave.
Leave down the corridor leading to the kitchen.
The kitchen where the girls were making cookies to lure Chibi out with.
"NOOO!" Storm shouts, running down the hallway after his sister. Sun and Rain soon realise what that meant and ran after Storm.
Storm quickly grabs Scorpion's hand and pulls her to a stop. "But Aneki, you can leave that until later. I don't even think Hitmanis at the mansion right now. And anyway, you can't go to the party looking like that. I mean... just look at your hair."
Scorpion takes a lock of hair into her fingers and peers at it. "It could do with a trim."
"And why stop there? You want to look your best for such a momentous occasion. Why not get a facial, and a manicure and a pedicure, and maybe even a massage to get rid of the stress from that latest mission." Storm frantically looks over his sister's shoulder, giving the other two a look ordering them to help him.
"He's right you know." Says Rain, mock gravely. "Do you even have a dress to wear? You want to impress him don't you?" For someone who didn't like anything remotely feminine, Storm sure knew a lot of womanly things Scorpion could be doing.
"And some extreme new shoes that will knock his lights out." Adds in Sun enthusiastically. Hana always wanted shoes.
Scorpion takes a look between the boys and her destination. Storm fears that she's thinking of walking that way anyway. He had to stop her.
"I'll even take you." He shouts, squeezing his eyes shut as he did so. He couldn't believe he'd just said that.
Scorpion's eyes light up and she hugs her little step-brother again. "Oh you will Hayato? How wonderful. I know the perfect place. Let me just grab my purse."
She then grabs Storm's wrist before dragging him off, Storm protesting all the way. She ignores his shouts and rants, not listening to a word of it since she was so happy that her little brother wanted to do something with her.
Storm looks back down the hallway as he's being dragged and gives the pair a look that screamed help me. The other two shake their heads before saluting Storm for his bravery in the face of adversity. He scowls, gives them a rather rude hand gesture and is then dragged around a corner.
"Let's check on the girls then." Says Rain brightly, as if he hadn't just watched his fellow Guardian dragged away to his doom. Sun agrees, he was still hungry and hopefully Hana had finished that snack for him.
They walk down the corridor, passing the turning Storm and Scorpion had taken and eventually arrive at the kitchen.
"Should we do chocolate-chip cookies? Little boy's love them." Wonders an orange-blond woman with a mixing bowl under her arm.
"No, it has to be Gingerbread men desu! They smell really good too." Argues another of the women, a brunette, going to a shelf to find the ginger she would need.
"How's it going girls?" asks Rain as he walks in. The three women in the room turn and, seeing who it is, smile.
The brunette, wearing a homemade apron that looked like she was wearing a cookie, stomps over to them, a pout on her face. "We can't decide what to make. Haru thinks it should be Gingerbread Men, but Kyoko thinks it should be Chocolate-chip. Who do you agree with?"
That was a rather dangerous question, one that they were not going to fall into. Luckily there was two of them, so Rain could say one whilst Sun said the other.
"I think you should extremely do both!" Or they could do that.
"Here you go," says the other brunette of the room, waving a plate under Sun's nose before placing it on the table. Sun gives a cheer before sitting down to devour his extremely extreme snack.
By the time Sun has finished his snack, the girls have finished making their biscuits and have placed them in the oven.
"So now what?" asks Sun, fidgeting in his seat since he currently had nothing else to do.
"Now we just sit and wait." Explains his little sister. Sun sighs, he hated waiting.
Tsunayoshi and Lightning are nearly finished with the huge cake, only one piece remains.
"Do you want the last piece?" asks Tsunayoshi. It was Lightning's cake after all, it would be mean to eat the last piece.
Lightning looks at the cake forlornly, as if he really did want to eat it. However he stops himself. "No, I am going to give it to I-pin. She's not very well at the moment so hopefully this gift from Lambo-san should make her happy. I don't give my cake to just anyone after all."
"I-pin's not well?" asks Tsunayoshi, tilting his head. That wasn't good. Although it was interesting to know that I-pin lived with these people in the future. He wondered who else from Mafia Row he'd meet here?
Lightning and Chibi exit the pantry and start walking towards I-pin's room. However, just as Tsunayoshi walks past an open door, he smells something rather delicious. He stops outside of the door and takes in a breath. He keeps on sniffing, following the trail of his nose until he enters the room.
"AHH! They're finally finished. I was getting bored to the EXTREME!" Sun shouts, watching as the treats were pulled out of the oven and placed onto cooling racks.
"Yeah, and they smell great as usual." Agrees Rain, smiling as a plate filled with the sweets was placed onto the table.
"They taste even better than they look." Adds in one more voice.
"Why thank you." Smile the two chefs, turning to where the voice had come from. Sun and Rain do too, only to find a small hand reach up over the table, take a biscuit and disappear. Everyone crouches down to look under the table and finds a little boy with crumbs all around his face.
"Well, Designer, Negotiator, you've certainly lured Chibi out." Congratulates Rain.
The Secretary shivers and looks away disgusted. "Why wold you have trouble finding a monkey like him?" she asks Sun.
"He's extremely good at hide-and-seek. We couldn't find him anywhere and we looked everywhere." He defends, looking back up at her.
Tsunayoshi looks up when he realises that the adults are looking at him. He looks towards the two women who had flour on their clothes, the people who must have made these really good biscuits, and vaguely recognised them in the same way he did everyone else here.
"You're Big Haru and Big-Kyoko!" He cheers before running over to hug them. He'd recognise Haru's 'desu' anywhere.
"Haha, seems that the Smiling Saint has struck again. Is there any child that doesn't like you?" Laughs Rain. Negotiator was not only, as her codename suggested, a negotiator (Mafioso had a weakness to beautiful women who knew how to word themselves very carefully) but she was also the Face of the Neo Vongola. She could be seen hosting many charity events and doing a lot of hands on work with children who had been made orphans or sold as slaves in the Mafia.
Tsunayoshi then moves over to hug Big-Haru before standing back and admiring her apron. "Did you make that?" He asks.
Designer stands up proudly before showing off the apron. "Hahi? Of course Haru did, desu. Haru makes lots and lots of cute clothing."
"She's not called the Lady of 1,000 Faces for nothing you know Chibi. She can make herself look like someone totally new. She could walk in and you'd never know it was her." Explains Rain, a broad grin on his face. Designer did have a cool yet dangerous job. She did a lot of recon work for Neo Vongola, infiltrating Mafia Families under different aliases, finding blackmail or creating rumours. She also insisted on making clothes for everyone else too, including their suits.
Chibi looked awed by this, it sounded rather cool. However he was slightly sceptical about Rain's claims. He could tell when even Reborn was in disguise, so he suspected he could always tell when it was Haru too.
"Urgh, who's brat is it anyway? It looks a lot like Sky. You should just sent it back to it's parents to look after." Secretary scoffs, taking a few steps away from the child. It was going to get her suit dirty she was sure.
He recognised all of the others, but not this person… "Who is she? I don't know her."
"Che, that's a good thing. I don't want to know you either." She explains, eyeing him carefully incase he came closer.
"Hana be nice. It's extremely Sky but not Sky." Sun shouted as if that sentence made sense. It did make sense, but only to him and Rain.
"Her codename is Secertary since she is in charge of all the paperwork that Sky doesn't do. She's good with finance and such. However her real name is Hana."
"Hana?" repeats Tsunayoshi, tilting his head as he looks her over. Hmm… Hmmmmm… "No she doesn't live on Mafia Row. I don't know who she is."
Rain nods his head. He should have thought about that. But then again, he didn't know much about this place called Mafia Row. He hadn't been there before. In fact he didn't know much about any of it. Just that Sky had said that someone from an alternate dimension would be able to help them with their problems.
"Another Mafia Brat?" Secretary asks. "Well I'm out of here then." She didn't want to be around children any more than she had to. Plus she had work to be doing. So she stands, grabs a few biscuits and exits the room.
"Oh. Bye bye." Tsunayoshi waves to her back. She doesn't answer back.
"Don't worry about her desu. She just doesn't like children for some reason." Consoles Designer, patting the child's fluffy hair. "How she can hate such a cutie I don't know." She squeals before picking him up in a crushing hug.
"Too tight, too tight." He gasps. He should be used to crushing hugs like these since Luce gave them sometimes, but they still hurt.
"Hahi! Haru is so sorry desu. Haru got excited." She put the child down and straightened out his clothing. "Hahi? You have a tail?" She questions, holding the appendage.
"It's part of the hoodie. Mamma Luce made it for me. It doesn't move though. I wish it did." Tsunayoshi explains before frowning. It would be so cool to have a moving tail. Maybe Verde would make it for him?
Designer had to wonder who 'Mamma Luce' was. She didn't know anyone young enough to be this boy's mother by that name. The only Luce she knew was Princess's Grandmother who was dead.
"Did you want to help me decorate the biscuits?" Asks Negotiator, smiling down sweetly at the boy. Tsunayoshi turns and smiles brightly. That was the best bit, after eating them.
"Sure!" He beams. The girls are taken aback by his smile and have to resist the urge to hug him to death for being so cute.
He runs over to one of the chairs at the table and climbs up on it. Standing up he pulls a cooling rack with the gingerbread men on it closer to him before looking back towards the two girls. "What are we going to decorate them with?" He asks.
The girls run about finding decorations for the gingerbread men and making icing. Tsunayoshi stands there, looking at the gingerbread men and deciding what he should do. Then he had an idea. He grabs one of the bowls the girls had placed infront of him and tips the contents into one of the other bowls. He then takes some icing and pours it into the bowl before grabbing some black food colouring.
The four adults in the room watch as the boy concentrates on doing whatever decorating he was doing. Black was a strange colour for a child to choose, they had been expecting red or something. Tsunayoshi continues on regardless of their watching eyes, tongue stuck out in determination. By the time he pulls away a few moments later, four of the gingerbread men are quite largely covered in black, and all of the others have black shoes. He reaches for another bowl, emptying the contents before mixing a new colour, this time a green. Two of the gingerbread are fully covered in the green whilst another one gets a green shirt and… green hair?
The process continues until finally Tsunayoshi sits back and takes in a deep breath, now finished. Everyone leans over to look at what Chibi had created. There were nine in total, all with faces, clothing and hair.
"Oh these are the Arcobaleno, right?" asks Rain, turning to the boy. The black and orange one was Hitman, the black and purple one was Stuntman with another being Psychic, the bright red one was Martial Artist, the black and green one was Scientist, complete with liquorice glasses. The one dressed in white must be Princess… no, he'd mentioned Luce so it must be her instead. The green pair were the two Rain ex-Arcobaleno. That made up the 8 Arcobaleno. So why was there nine?
"Who is that?" Asks Big-Kyoko, pointing to the last one.
Tsunayoshi looks at them all as if they are silly. Which they must be. How had they not met this man before? He was sure he'd introduce him to all his friends eventually. "Well, that's Bermuda of course." He smiles. Bermuda's gingerbread man was black and white with liquorice hanging from his hands to represent the chains.
The two Neo Vongola Guardians are surprised about this. But now that they thought about it, they remembered Sky saying something about it. He'd had to take a day off to go visit Chibi and make sure that the boy met the Vindice. In their own dimension the Vindice were strong allies, but hard to convince to do anything. In fact if it wasn't for the fact that the traveling of dimension put stress on the Tri-ni-sette they were protecting they most likely wouldn't be involved at all.
"He looks very mysterious desu. Like a dark knight on horseback sneaking away to see the love of his life. Ahh how romantic desu." Designer imagines, hands clasped together under her chin. The boys look at her like she's mad since they know who Bermuda really was. Neither Designer nor Negotiator knew who the Vindice were, and they'd like to keep it that way.
"Yup, Bermuda is everyone's knight, keeping bad people away from all the good people!" Sings Tsunayoshi. That's how he saw it at least. Most people just didn't realise that.
"That's good." Says Big-Kyoko. "Would you like to give them to the Arcobaleno?" she asks. They could spare a few and the boy had tried so hard on them, it was only right that he give them to the people they were meant for. It would be a shame to eat them.
"Can I?" Tsunayoshi asks, eyes widening and shining. Big-Kyoko nods before placing them near the window so that the icing could set properly.
He was sure that the Arcobaleno were going to love them.
It wasn't long after that the girls looked at the clock and realised that they needed to start working on dinner preparations. They didn't cook for the whole of Neo Vongola of course, just their close friends and family. The rest of Neo Vongola ate in a shared cafeteria in a different part of the mansion. There had been a fight between the old Vongola chefs and the pair of girls over who would cook for the prestigious Neo Vongola Primo. The girls had won the fight, mainly because everyone preferred their cooking. However a compromise had been made and some chefs could come in and help with preparations under the girls' watchful eyes.
So the three males were kicked out of the kitchen since they weren't going to help.
Dinner had been a grand affair; Tsunayoshi had never seen so much food in his life. He thought there was a lot of food at home with the ten of them, but this table was even larger. There were just so many people to feed. At their insistence, he had sat between Big-Haru and Big-Kyoko and he let the girls feed him until he felt like he was going to explode.
The atmosphere around the table was quite similar to the one back at home; everyone was laughing, fighting, shouting, talking and making a huge racket. But the fights weren't serious to Tsunayoshi's eyes. Just the fights of a loving mismatched family. It felt right. Somehow it felt like he belonged here, like it was home.
It was late at night and everything was dark. But Tsunayoshi couldn't get to sleep. The house creaked and groaned in different ways to usual. Animals were making noises outside the window. And most importantly, there was no one else in the bed next to him. He had had the odd sleepover before and he could sleep fine then because someone else was in the same room. But now… there was no one. He didn't even have Natsu with him.
He was alone, in the dark, and he was scared.
Slowly he climbed out of bed, hugging the pillow closer to him before making his way into the hallway. Before he had gone to bed, Big-Hayato had made sure that Tsunayoshi knew the way from his room to Hayato's room and that he should shout if he wanted something. But he didn't want to disturb anyone else.
Storm grumbles when there is a knock at his door. Which idiot was it this time? He harshly swings the door open, ready to shout at the person who had interrupted his sleep. However it looks like no one is there, until he feels a pull at his pyjama leg. He looks down to find a tearful Chibi hugging a pillow.
"Oh, Chibi, is everything alright?" He asks, kneeling down. Chibi nods before looking away and swinging his foot against the carpet. Storm waits a few moments to see if Chibi would say anything, but he doesn't. "Well?"
Chibi looks up at him, very close to tears. "I can't get to sleep. Usually I sleep with one of the Arcobaleno, and I usually have Natsu with me too. But I don't have either of them." He sniffs. "And…" He looks away once again. "I'm scared of the dark. I wanted you to help me like last time I was in the dark all alone."
The Mysterious Man in the Cell who had brought light and comfort into his pitch black prison.
Chibi looks up, "Please?" He asks as tears start to fall. What if Big-Hayato said no?
Storm had sighed at first. He didn't know that Chibi slept like that or else he would have given the boy to one of the girls to look after. And he was about to –despite the late hour- until Chibi had said the last few sentences. He remembered what Chibi was talking about, it had only been a few days since then, plus it wasn't the kind of meeting one forgot. Now that Chibi was crying, his 'Juudaime senses' kicked in and he was suddenly in a panic.
"Please don't cry Chibi! Of course you can come in here. You can stay with me and I'll leave a light on or something. Just please stop crying." He'd do anything to get that expression off of a face that looked so much like Juudaime's.
Chibi sniffs up his tears and hugs the pillow tighter once more. "Really?" Storm nods his head rapidly before taking a step backwards to let Chibi in. If this was anyone else, they'd be kicked out immediately, but he couldn't say no to Chibi. Looking after children wasn't his thing either, but this boy rarely acted his age- He seemed so much older that Storm really didn't mind his presence.
Slowly Chibi walks in, and over to the bed. He looks back towards Big-Hayato for permission before being encouraged onto the bed and under the covers. True to his word, Big-Hayato left a lamp on over the other side of the room so that Chibi wouldn't be scared any more.
"Thank you Hayato." Chibi whispers before falling to sleep.
Chibi slept well after that, right the way through until morning.
Right until the loudest exclamation he had ever heard sounded.
"VVVVVVVVRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOO IIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"
Translations: Negotiator/ Smiling Saint- Kyoko. Designer/ Lady of 1,000 Faces- Haru. Scorpion- Bianchi. Secretary- Hana. Their names took me forever I swear.
Since it will be New Year by the time I next see you all, I want to wish you all a Happy New Year. I hope everyone faced the past year with their dying will? And let's face the New Year with Deathperation too!
Happy New Year from everyone at Mafia Row!
Phantom Hitman 1412
First Published 30 December 2012