Skull argued with me the entire chapter. I rewrote this three times (and am still not quite happy with it) and was stuck. I do, however, give credit where credit is due, and so I thank SecretEngima who let me bounce ideas off of her, helped me get through the chapter, and managed to get me writing properly again. Thank you darling!
Merry (belated) Christmas! (Or Holiday of your choice should you celebrate another)
ALSO: She has adopted the Femme Fatale chapter in Flicker and you would all go check it out (though it is crossed over with Transformers).
O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~
It is…odd…for Skull to have the Arcobaleno planning beside him in this. It is not odd to work with them- he has been doing so for decades now after all- no, it is odd that he is working beside them as he is not as he pretends to be, in the middle of the Magical World.
It is odd that he is being treated with respect, that his words are being given weight in their discussions on tactics and plots where before he would have been ignored, scoffed at and most likely kicked to the side. It is odd that when Skull voices an opinion in direct opposition to Reborn, or Colonnello he is not kicked or hit, but asked why.
A part of him is vindictively thrilled at the obvious evidence their world view of him has shattered so entirely- another feels…disoriented. Almost like he had stood on the edge of a building and a strong wind threatened to knock him off. He hasn't quite fallen, but he teetered on that edge, unsure of his footing for an instant.
Skull had always been the best at learning under pressure though, and even as he teetered on that edge of falling, Skull corrected his balance. He had been a General long before the Arcobaleno had met him, and so Skull has no trouble taking control of the situation where he is so much more informed then the others.
O~O~O~
Viper is both amazed and horrified.
She'd missed so much. This was Harry Potter: Man-Who-Conquered. Her Cloud, Skull De Mort. Cloud Arcobaleno.
The man she owed her own freedom to- who all of Wizarding Britain owed their freedom to. She had not treated Skull as badly as the others, she had interfered if she truly thought it needed, but that had not been often.
Sure she had thought she was doing Skull a favor in that if he was going to run around in the Mafia, he would have to learn to 'toughen up' and deal with everything…but everything was wrong.
Instead she had allowed the man she owed a debt to…to be hurt. She had not hurt him, had not lifted a hand in his direction, but she had most often stood by, had not lifted a hand for him either.
Viper felt a little (a lot) sick.
And watching him now?
Watching the layers of masks she associated with Skull fall away to show the General he had always been, it has never been so clear to her that she had been blind. Watching him mobilize on behalf of his own, watching him gear up for war…she had been a fool.
Her world has tilted, the clouds had cleared and the truth is shining as bright as the sun, blinding her in its intensity.
The masks are gone now, and she can see how tense Skull- Harry- is, how intensely focused he is.
Viper owes this man so much. This man who has shattered and pulled himself back together through sheer stubborn bullheadedness, who has been stretched thin to the point of almost breaking. A broken, pained hero who has soldiered on through fire and hell.
She will not allow it to go on.
She is the World's Best Information Broker.
His family is missing-taken with the express purpose of trapping Skull, tugging on his strings. For a purpose that would shatter Skull completely, like a grenade, he would go off, shatter apart into shrapnel and would take everyone around him along with him.
But no. Not this time. This time Skull is marching to war with her, and she is the Mist. She will shield him and his, she will hide their forms from their enemies, she will twist reality around them. This time it will be different.
Viper will find his family, she will bring them back to him, and these wizards would never touch him or his again.
This time he is not Harry Potter, the Chosen One, the Only One That Can. He is Skull De Mort, he is hers and he is not alone.
He never will be again.
O~O~O~
Lal has never been so glad for her army training before.
She's used to following superior's orders. She's used to doing so even if she doesn't like the superior in question. She may be high on the pecking order, but she is not the top. She knows how to fall in line behind a General. She knows when to push, how to offer her opinions, when to back down, when to shut up and stay that way.
It's not that she doesn't like Skull, he is one of hers, and as annoying as she had found him to be, she liked him well enough. Watching his memories, finding out how off her opinions had been, that she had missed the fact Skull was a Soldier, someone like her…
Discovering as she watched him lead, fall into the role of General that he is someone she could follow and respect if he had been her General…that's a little hard to swallow. She feels like someone shot her in the knee, took out one of her supports, knocked her off balance.
But her training, her instinct allows her to fall behind Skull as he sheds the labels of Lackey, Weakling, Civilian, and Coward to don the face of Leader, Survivor, General, Veteran.
She falls back on the training that has lead her so well as she struggles to see in a word that suddenly feels inverted and off. She listens to the Cloud as he lays the situation out for them, as he points out enemies and strongholds, as he explains the protections standing in their way.
Her world is rearranging, but she can do this.
This is familiar, this is like breathing. She can do this, she can follow a General worthy of her respect, she can follow a man moving to save his family, she can defend that, defend the freedom of one of her own.
She just has to keep her head above the rearranging pieces of her world as she absorbs the fact this General she so respects is one and the same as Skull.
O~O~O~
It's like the first time he had been caught in the blast range of a grenade.
He had been thrown clear across the field, shrapnel had torn into his body, he had been one giant bruise, his arm had been sprained, and he had gotten a concussion when he came to a sudden stop face first against a wall.
Colonnello has no idea how else to describe it.
He had been part of the army for years, even before his Flames, before the Mafia. He had lived and been raised on and in Military. He had always been able to see fellow soldiers. Fellow survivors.
But Skull…Skull is that grenade.
Colonnello hadn't seen him coming, hadn't been ready, and the blast of knowledge that had been the Memories, has thrown him.
Watching Skull now, seeing the General he is and has been the entire time Colonnello has known him up close instead of through memories…it is the shrapnel from the blast. It tears at him. Sinks into his skin, leaves him bleeding and agonized because he had never been so…
How had he missed the survivor, the fighter Skull was? The Leader? Colonnello had spent his entire life surrounded by leaders both good and back, vicious and kind. He should have seen it.
As he stares at the Skull in front of him now, leaning over a map he had pulled from the wall, and pointing our key points and places of suspicion as well as the sure targets, the shrapnel of his ignorance digs a little deeper.
Skull is clever he is keen, he is a blade, old and worn, a little chipped in places but sturdy, reliable, and still sharp enough to eviscerate a man.
Colonnello is seeing the Veteran in Skull shining brightly, as he turns to Lal and himself, to each of the Arcobaleno asking opinions and correcting them where they fail to take Magic into account. He is seeing Experience in the Cloud as he rejects ideas and reworks them on the go to work best with what he has.
He is seeing the General in action as he coordinates their ideas and specialties into a working plan.
O~O~O~
It is the blindness of looking straight into the sun, or perhaps in the flash of lightning.
Verde had been so very certain of his facts. Tested and tried, worked and reworked, Verde had been certain of his information. This new information had shaken everything, shattered his views, and reformed them.
He feels blind, deaf, and dumb.
Verde does not like it.
And sitting with Skull, working on ways to get past magic of all things, Verde feels very much like he was struck by lightning. The jarring impact of the information, searing into his mind, shattering everything, the light that flashed so brightly and suddenly he is blind, the crashing noise that makes him deaf…
And in learning this information he has been introduced to Magic. Everything he had known before this, every project he had worked on, every theory he had come up with, every half-formed thought…it had been done with a missing variable.
It was wrong. Missing work. This changed everything.
His world has shifted upside down and suffered a natural disaster of epic proportions.
And on top of that, he had been so very wrong about Skull. He had dismissed the Cloud. Thought him useless, unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
And yet here he sits, smartest scientist in the world, a man labeled with the 'greatest mind in generations' and he is being taught by one he had considered uneducated and dismissed.
It's…humbling. His very thought process works against him in these scenarios where logic has no place, and common sense seems to be nonexistent. Where there seems to be no rules.
It annoys him, is a bit irksome, but at the same time, that flash of lightning…that natural disaster Verde's world has suffered?
It had pierced the darkness that had hidden Skull away. It unearthed and brought to light that cunning, vicious mind, that has no limit to what can be done or thought of. It had shredded Verde's blinders.
And for all that Verde feels very much like a man lost at sea in a storm, he is glad for it.
A Scientist needs all the variables to fix mistakes after all.
O~O~O~
Fon is a Storm. He has found his 'Eye, is generally calm and controlled, but this makes him no less of a Storm.
He feels strongly, his temper is destructive and powerful when stirred.
And it has been stirred on behalf of his Cloud.
It doesn't help that Fon feels very blindsided by Memories he now carries of what his Cloud has suffered alone for so long.
Fon had always been absolutely enthralled with Flames and the way they manifested and interacted in people and with other Flames.
Clouds were Protectors at their cores. The very first line of defense for their people even before Storms. They were the ones that looked at a situation from afar, the ones that absorbed what was happening and what needed to happen and then made it happen.
Clouds were the ones to stir the other Elements. In an ironic twist- they were the Generals. The ones to tell the Sky what was coming, to maneuver the Elements into the proper positions to defend their home.
Where did the Storm spring from?
Clouds.
And where there was a Storm, it brought the Rain, the Lightning.
What was Mist at its core?
A ground-bound Cloud. (Which- Fon was sure- was part of the reason Clouds and Mists either got along or didn't. They were either too alike and butted heads, or were complimentary)
What was it that shielded the entirety of the Sky? That could provide the Sun a place to rest and hide its light?
Clouds.
Skull had been an exception in some ways to these things, and in others he had been exactly a Cloud. Fon had known Skull was protective, even before the Future-that-Wasn't. It had been there in the little things, the way Skull had gotten loud and extra annoying to pull attention away from the others where needed, the way he would sometimes 'trip' directly between one of the others and threats, the way that, when the chips were down, Skull's Flames were a bonfire at their back strong and shielding. Seeing the Not-Future where Skull had stood between an army and the others while poisoned and not allowed a single soul to get past him had only solidified that knowledge.
But Fon had not realized that Skull had always been a protector. That he was a Cloud that had lost a large amount of those that were claimed as his own. He had not realized he was a Cloud that had fought in War. A Cloud that had lost, so, so much and had now had those he considered his own taken hostage to cage him.
Watching Skull now, arguing his points with the others, leaning over maps, intense, with that sharp lethal focus of a Leader…Fon can see that Skull is absolutely furious, but is sitting at his own personal 'Eye' in his rage.
That was fine. Skull might have found his eye, but Fon was teetering on the edge of his own. Skull was his. Everything he had learned in the Memories he had been shown, had only deepened that for Fon. From what he could see Skull had not mourned his losses from Before, not truly, and now everything he had left from Before was being threatened. If he lost the rest of His Own…Fon was certain Skull would self-destruct.
As the Storm to his Cloud, Fon refused to allow Skull to suffer any more loss or face any more war on his own. He could meditate on all the new information he had later, after they had his Cloud's family back.
For now, at this moment, Fon would Rage on his Cloud's behalf, would fight to save what his Cloud had left.
O~O~O~
Yuni knows she is not quite the Arcobaleno Sky.
She is partially Harmonized to them. She is theirs and they are hers, but she is not quite what each of them need to be their True Sky. The fact that she is a Juvenile Sky only makes them more protective of her.
All Flame users that are sane and not Corrupted Flames, are instinctively protective of young Elements- young Skies especially. The stronger the Element, the stronger the instinct to shield and nurture the Juvenile Element. As a powerful young Sky surrounded by the World's Strongest Flame Users, it was inevitable that they would be protective of her, that they would try to teach her, nurture her.
But they are hers, and she is theirs despite not being completely Harmonized.
And she is not happy about this attack on her Cloud through his own.
She is not happy that this is how the Arcobaleno find out about their Cloud's past either.
But she is thrilled to see Skull letting his masks fall away, to watch his true self shine through, to watch him stretch his wings and show the Arcobaleno what he had hidden away.
She can See What Will Be, now that the Arcobaleno know what Skull is, who he was and who he is now.
She is thrilled to see the potential future, and she will work for her own to have the best future she could give them.
They will Rage together, and it will take work, the Arcobaleno will have to work hard, work to help Skull through the aftermath of this, but What Will Be will be beautiful…if everything works out.
And Yuni is determined to see everything to work out.
For Skull and the other Arcobaleno.
O~O~O~
Reborn had not botched something so horribly as this since his very first Hit.
He has spent three decades dismissing and looking down on Skull for being the 'weak civilian with no idea what he is doing'.
He had claimed more than once that Skull's ignorance would see him dead if he wasn't careful. Not as a threat, but as a genuine worry, because he had believed that to be truth.
Watching the Memories of Skull's past, Reborn has come to the understanding that he has completely misjudged everything he thought he knew about the Cloud. Skull is smart, he is cunning, he is careful. He knows how to misdirect and hide in plain sight. He knows how to sabotage, plot and plan and enact his plans. He knows war.
In short, Skull is very likely to survive the Mafia. Has all the skills he needs, was in fact so skilled at it that he had fooled the Best the Mafia had to offer.
Watching Skull lean over maps and lay out his plans and needs, even as he listens to their suggestions and either accepts them or rejects them and then tells them why their ideas were rejected…
Reborn is realizing that Skull was skilled, that he had so much potential, that he had experience with things going so south they ended up north.
And he is being forced to look back at his actions over these last three decades, to look at all the different situations the Arcobaleno had found themselves in with the new information he has on Skull…and he is being forced to see the damage his prejudice about Skull being an 'incapable civilian with no Flame knowledge' had done.
He was the leader of the Arcobaleno, the one that had the most presence, the one that took the lead, and in displaying his utter bias he had infected the others even before they had a chance to truly form opinions. Reborn knew they had their own bias towards civilians, but he was also sure that his own had not helped the situation.
And looking back on everything with newly opened eyes, he can see the many, many times he had flat out rejected or mocked Skull's ideas on principle, ideas he could now see would have saved them all so trouble in FUBAR missions if he had only shut up, set his preconceived notions aside, and listened. He can see the way Skull slowly stopped trying to offer ideas to any of them in any serious capacity, and he can now see the times that it really, honestly mattered, how Skull had used that cunning of his to manipulate them all in just the right way to make them think his plans were their own ideas. And he can see how their notions of how Skull was had only helped him manipulate them when it was truly needed, because of course the Civilian could never manipulate them.
Reborn was the Healer. He didn't act like if often of course, but despite everything he was still a Sun, the Healer of his own. He had spent decades standing and working with Skull and he has been so blinded by what he 'knew' that he had missed the agony in his Cloud. He had failed to heal him. Failed to help him.
He refused to fail so utterly ever again.
And he would start here- helping Skull get his family back.
O~O~O~
The Arcobaleno are unbalanced. Their worlds have shifted, something they had considered a fact of life, has changed.
For decades they have looked at their 'Civilian Cloud' and seen someone who was not meant for battle, for high-stress situations, for plotting and fighting.
And for decades, that has been exactly what their Cloud has done, what he has lived through and adapted to. What he had done before he had even known to call his purple fire Flames. He has known exactly what he is capable of, what he could do and stand, and adapt to. Skull knew his limits.
For the Arcobaleno, who have spent the last thirty-three years subconsciously enforcing the ideas that Skull- their Cloud- was not and could not do these things…learning that he has done them, can do them, is doing them now and may even be better at it then they are in some ways…they are very unbalanced.
His skills are different than theirs. They are hitmen, assassins, soldiers, information gathers, scientists…they are the ones that work with surprise from the shadows. He is the one that stands in the spotlights, coordinates and leads everyone, and even while the focus of everyone manages to go out and fight and win.
It was one thing to see in his Memories how Skull had been a General, leader and soldier both on the front lines of a war while being Target Number One on his enemies' lists.
It is another thing entirely, to see Skull shed his masks, to watch his violet eyes harden and sharpen, to watch as the General in him stirs, a War Veteran Survivor, now educated up close and personal with the ways of the Mafia and made all the more Dangerous for it.
Their worlds had been shifted and shattered, changed and rearranged, but the Arcobaleno stand firm. They will not fail their Cloud in this. They will adjust. They will learn, they will bow to his superior knowledge and they will get his family back.
Everything else can come after.