It was something he had done a thousand times before. Jump into an unsuspecting body, take it over, use it as he saw fit and then leave it.
Rinse and repeat, as it were.
He didn't know what made him chose that little girl who was so innocently playing in the park. Her mother was oblivious to the danger, not that she would have known what to do.
One moment he was possessing some random bystander...the next he was inside the girl's head, attempting to take control.
Except he ran into something he never would have anticipated, much less planned for.
The girl was a Sky. One that had yet to awaken her flames, but he could still tell what they were. More than that the Flames themselves felt so damn familiar he could never have mistaken them for anything else.
The girl was related to the same Sky he had betrayed all those centuries ago after Elena's death.
In a fit of panic, he tried to run. To get away from the memories and those pure untainted Sky Flames.
Except it was too late. The moment he entered her soul, her fledgling Flames reacted...and to his open horror and shock, he could feel himself harmonizing with the child. He had thought he was incapable of it after he abandoned his body.
Daemon Spade, after several centuries of running from his own past, was now caught by the reincarnated soul of the Vongola Primo.
Giotto and the others would be torn between pissed Daemon had even thought to possess a girl not even five...or laughing their ass off that a girl who hadn't even activated her Flames had managed to trap the vindictive Mist.
Daemon didn't know whether to curse or cry.
He settled for sulking in the corner of her mind like a petulant child while trying to figure out how the hell he was supposed to get out of this predicament now.
The girl remained completely oblivious of her new passenger and Mist Guardian.
Seven months later...
Daemon's irritation with being stuck with a child died the day Iemitsu brought Vongola Nono to the house.
He knew a set up when he saw one, and this reeked of incompetence. He had disliked Iemitsu long before he had to deal with being stuck in the man's daughter. How the hell someone that incompetent managed to produce a sweet little girl who reminded him so painfully of a more innocent Elena, he would never understand.
For the most part, their visit appeared benign... right up until little Eleanor as he had taken to calling her activated her Flames. (He refuses to call her "Tsunako", because it is a ridiculous and unattractive name for a little girl and makes him curse Iemitsu for his stupidity all the more.)
Iemitsu reacted badly, to say the least. The second Daemon hears the words "Flame" and "Seal" put in the same sentence as his little Sky, he acts.
Like hell is he going to let this idiot seal his own child because he doesn't want to be there for her and actually train her. He has SEEN the effects a Flame Seal can have on an Active child, and he knows that such a thing would not only dim her fire, but do far more harm than good.
She would become a bare ember of what she could have been, if she was sealed. A mere shell of what she could be, to say nothing of the fact that such seals would only suppress her ability to use her Flame and have absolutely no effect on Sky Attraction.
She would be bullied and tormented and have no idea why everyone focused on her more than other easily targeted children.
No. Just No.
Daemon latches on to her Active Flame and through dint of long experience of doing this with Giotto, twists it just a little to include his Mist.
It accepted his Flame with ease, as her body has grown used to his presence and her Flames know him as one of her Guardians instinctively.
With a little bit of Mist, he causes a minor distraction in the form of a loud scream and a gunshot outside. Eleanor hears nothing, too tired from activating her Flames for the first time. But the experienced mafioso react and run outside to find out the source of the sounds. The Storm doesn't even bother to keep an eye on the child, not really.
Which makes it pathetically easy for him to hide the girl from their senses and leave a perfect copy.
He is well aware of the role of a Mist Guardian. He helped to set an example of a Mist Guardian.
Creating something from nothing, nothing from something. Bewildering the enemy through deceit and trickery and shielding the Sky through illusions...that was the role of a Mist.
And if the Vongola had fallen so far as to seal a Sky this pure and potentially powerful...well, he had no issues keeping the little one far, far away from Iemitsu and the Ninth boss.
The mother was barely acceptable, if highly oblivious. It just made it easier to mold the child into a real Sky without anyone noticing.
Tsunako isn't afraid of the man inside her head. Even if the adults around her all shake their heads and humor her while the children keep their distance at the orders of their parents.
Daemon is nice. Creepy, and she's the only one who can see him, but nice.
He doesn't think she's slow and even helps her with her homework. Sometimes he gives her 'homework' too, but he explains things better than her teachers when she has trouble getting it.
It's thanks to him that she becomes proficient in not only Italian, but English, Chinese, French, Spanish, German and Latin. Which only includes how to read said languages.
When she is nine, her teachers try to 'gently' coax her towards making friends, if only so she would drop her "imaginary" one.
Daemon is not amused. At all.
Those teachers are discreetly 'sent away' after a month when they try to convince Nana that perhaps her daughter would do better in 'special social groups' that encourage children into making friends and talking to the adults.
Nana, to her credit, disliked the idea immediately. Her daughter was happy with her 'imaginary friend' and her grades were among the best in her class.
Sure, it was disappointing that Tsu-chan didn't have any normal friends, but she didn't see a problem with it. Sometimes it took a while for children to come out of their shell.
Daemon liked Nana just a bit more when she refuses to force her daughter into said 'special social groups' at the suggestion of the teachers.
Still, the fools did have a point. Talking to thin air wasn't considered normal. And she was a bit too young to have a cell phone.
So it was with a reluctant sigh that Daemon gently broke her of the habit of answering him out loud, and instead got her to start speaking to him with her thoughts.
He was in her head. He could hear her just fine without having to verbalize it.
Suddenly the teachers had a problem with the fact she wasn't talking to anyone, and instead started to adapt a glazed expression except when someone asked her a question directly.
It was like she couldn't win!
Daemon was becoming quite frustrated with modern teachers and their inability to leave things be.
His little Sky would never fit the mold they demanded of her. Doing that would only hinder her true nature and make her weaker as a result.
Besides, she was a Sky. It was inevitable that she would end up in the mafia at some point, or at least associated with it and having the civilian mindset they were trying to shove down her throat would only get her killed in a hurry.
He was just about at the end of his patience when he spots it. Or to be more specific, a him.
A boy who could have passed for Asari Ugetsu's son, complete with Latent Rain flames and a hint of possibly Mist.
Well, the teachers did want his Sky to make 'friends', and if the resemblance is anything more than a coincidence he may have found his Sky's first real Guardian...and he refuses to be counted as such because he's still stuck in her body and thus of limited help.
Even with the discreet Flame training he has her going through whenever they can get away for days at a time (thank god for Nana's oblivious nature), Tsuna could still barely maintain her Dying Will state for more than ten minutes.
She's still a child. Fortunately that limitation does not apply to her mental realm, where he puts her through the metaphorical ringer and forces her to think outside the box known as conventional wisdom.
For a Mist (and she had developed a Mist secondary as a result of his presence) the only thing that really limited their ability to mess with reality was belief and imagination.
And no, he did not subtly redirect the girl to the less annoying magical girl shows after she got hooked on the genre and wanted to reproduce the more ridiculous ones.
The outfits he could live with. The idiotic speeches about love and friendship which made absolutely no sense and only gave enemies an opening to kill you with he could not.
Let it be said that watching the first season of Sailor Moon had scarred Daemon for life. To say nothing of how appalled he was of "Crystal Tokyo"...he spent the next week explaining in excruciating detail about how the entire thing sounded more like the girl brainwashed an entire planet into playing nice because she didn't like violence instead of actually doing it the "right way". Tsuna quit watching the series after having to listen to Daemon bitch about that week's episode for hours explaining in far too much detail what she and the Sailor Senshi did wrong, to say nothing of how he despised Tuxedo Kamen for being so damn useless.
Now she just reserved the series as punishment for whenever she caught Daemon misbehaving.
Perhaps he should nudge the girl towards the little Rain.
Iemitsu is visiting.
Daemon takes one look at him and snarls in disgust...he still hasn't forgiven the attempted sealing. Tsuna stares at him and doesn't make the immediate mental connection between Iemitsu and the word "father"...in any variant of the word.
All she sees is an annoying mafioso who pretends to be married to her mother but is never actually there.
Daemon is more than happy to make a Mist illusion for Iemitsu to 'play' father with while they go camping for the week.
However it is the discussion that Tsuna has with the Mist in her head that sets a certain ball rolling.
She's meditating in this little cave inside the cliff face only accessible by rock climbing (the rocks that lead 'down' are so sharp that any rope would end up shredded if it was used) and was face to face with the Mist.
"I don't get why he bothers. He produced an heir with Flames and if he really loved Mama then why is he never around more?"
"Image, most likely," said Daemon.
"If that were true, then why does he always dress like a homeless drifter when he comes around? The neighbors already talk about Mama and the fact her 'husband' ditched her once he got her knocked up since he's never around," said Tsuna scowling. "If they saw him wearing that crap they'd only say worse things. To say nothing of that scraggly beard and the fact he's always drinking."
Daemon pulls her into his lap. She cuddles into him without a second thought.
"That man is not and will never be my father," said Tsuna with dead seriousness. She hugs Daemon tightly. "I'd rather tell people you're my dad than ever admit that man is anything more than my genetic donor."
Daemon's face went through a myriad of emotions.
"What."
His voice sounds off, almost choked.
Tsuna curls into his arms, and slowly drifts to sleep.
Daemon had always been there for her and acted as a sounding board. He taught her how to protect herself and kept her safe. He was a steady rock she knew she could count on. When he told her to do something, it was because he actually believed she was capable of it, or could push through self-imposed limits to do it.
In short he acted like a father should act, according to all the examples she had around her.
Sure, no one else could see him because he was stuck in her head (he never did explain how or why he was stuck) but she was glad he was. Otherwise she would be so very alone and those idiots would have put that seal on her, screwing her childhood over.
Daemon stared at the tiny creature in his arms. He couldn't believe the little Sky he had tried to possess had openly called him her father figure like that.
After losing Elena, any thoughts of having children died a painful death. He made a half-assed attempt to replace his beloved Elena, but it never lasted long and he always moved on once he grew bored. He could easily have descendants around the place, if he cared to look.
So hearing the word "Father" and having it associated with him alone from someone who could pass for a younger, female clone of Giotto...it made a strange warmth in his chest grow. Upon reflection, Daemon is rather startled to realize he has been acting like a 'father' for the girl he had tried to possess.
There was something about his little Sky that went beyond the usual charismatic attraction that came from their Flames. It was almost like she had a magnetic effect on those who were damaged, broken.
He looked at the little one in his arms.
And in a decision he would not regret in the least years later, when he was partially freed able able to interact properly with the physical world again, he hugged Tsuna tightly to him and let her sleep.
Maybe this fathering thing wouldn't be so bad.
He couldn't possibly do a worse job than that idiot who ran CEDEF.
Alaude must be turning in the Cloud ring or his grave, knowing his organization was in the hands of that buffoon.