Tsuna arrived at the mansion after breakfast, escorted by Ken and Chikusa. Tetsuya already had tea out in the workroom, so he knelt on his cushion and poured himself a cup. Hibari was in his usual spot at the window. For a moment there he wondered just how well his senpai would do as a male model, because that was the vibe he was getting. Hibari somehow always looked perfect.
His attention was drawn away when Mukuro entered the room, looking pleased. "Mission accomplished. Our target not only received the calling card, she read it and shrieked angrily more than once, partly due to the contents, and partly because she saw the cards scattered in front of the house that she only noticed when she turned around to go back in.
"So we're set to go, then," he said with a nod. "Vote? Do we go now, or wait until we've had lunch?"
"I'd like to finish waking up first," Shoichi said, "and Mukuro-san might want a nap after getting up so early."
"Also, giving her a bit a time will help that message sink in. She might want to disbelieve it, but that someone knows…"
"And with her husband home today, she won't be beating on the kid. Or anything else."
No one spoke up to suggest they go immediately, so he nodded. "After lunch, then."
"In that case, I'm going to go take that nap. I'll set an alarm for eleven, just in case I don't wake up earlier than that," Mukuro said, then wandered out.
Tsuna passed the time by practicing escapology, just to keep his mind occupied on something other than worrying. Hands cuffed behind his back, flame lockpick, and a whole lot of frustration.
Mukuro wandered in a few hours later and watched his efforts with amusement, then focused on Ken and Chikusa's efforts at learning on regular locks.
Tsuna was, unfortunately, unable to free himself before it was time to make lunch, so Tetsuya had to handle that on his own. Hibari had to rescue him when Tetsuya rolled the cart in. Picking locks behind your back was hard!
Okonomiyaki was eaten and enjoyed, the serving cart rolled back off to the kitchen and dealt with, and then … Hibari sent them to Watanabe's Palace, and teleported the group to the final safe room.
Hibari opened the door once everyone was geared up, then prowled off toward the staircase. The catwalks led to a metal staircase leading down to the ground floor. They would have to come at the stage from the front, but Tsuna never expected any differently. The doors in that "room" were fake as seen from the back.
As they rounded the side wall and came into view of the "woman", she looked up, carefully laid her magazine on the low table, and stood, then transformed from casual trousers and blouse into an elaborate kimono outfit and hairstyle and moved to stand at the center of the "room".
He stepped up onto the stage alongside Hibari, and quickly noticed an addition in the back corner. A representation of the abused boy was there, chains wrapped around him for binding and suspension, and his head bowed. Tsuna grimaced. There were also rather too many photographs of the woman scattered around the "room", and statuettes that somewhat resembled her.
«"How dare you. I will kill you for such accusations!"»
He exhaled and adjusted his fist weapons.
«"I have every right! So let's begin."»
She went first and buffed herself to up her damage.
Tsuna sighed and shot her, then startled in confusion when the son representation screamed in pain and started leaking blood.
«"Stop sniveling. It didn't hurt that much."»
"Uh…"
"What the hell?" Ken said.
They quickly found out three things. She was neutral to everything, every attack on her damaged her "son" instead (he screamed like the damned every time, which made Tsuna's stomach lurch around like it was trying to flee his body), and she hit like a truck. Shoichi was on full-time healing.
Thankfully? She could only use buffs and Physical attacks.
«"If you could just do things right I wouldn't have to punish you!"»
Chikusa frowned and said, "Is she repeating herself from before?"
With no reason to use anything against her other than Physical, that's what Tsuna and everyone else did, with exceptions for healing, buffing, or debuffing.
«"You boys could use a mother like me. I'd teach you right."»
"Oh, I think I might be sick," Shoichi moaned as he used [Mediarama] again.
The son representation was moaning weakly any time he wasn't screaming in pain, blood was flowing freely to the floor, and the chains rattled like a clatter of bones every time they landed a hit on the woman. Yeah, Tsuna's stomach was still trying to flee his body. It was like a metaphysical representation of a person letting every attack bounce off them and onto a convenient patsy, just with more blood and horrifying sound effects.
«"Stop playing the victim! This is what you deserve."»
Tsuna had long since swapped to a Persona that nulled Physical, so at least he wasn't feeling exceptionally tenderized every round. His family didn't have that luxury.
Then the representation of her son died with a sickeningly loud, wet gurgle and a fountain of blood gushing from his mouth. He went slack and only the chains around him kept his body from hitting the floor.
Shoichi tagged out and let Ken come in as healer. Tsuna could hear the sound of retching in the background as the silhouette audience cheered and clapped like they had shown up purely for the blood sport aspects of reality TV.
The only reason Tsuna himself didn't throw up was because that boy was a manifestation, not real, and they had not just killed the very teenager they were trying to help. That and he was trying not to look over there.
Hibari attacked and immediately scowled when his tonfa bounced right off. That started another round of checking reactions, because the upper left display had blanked. Watanabe was still neutral to everything, and yet somehow invulnerable.
"What about all those photographs and statues?" Chikusa asked. "They weren't here before."
Tetsuya darted over and smashed one on his turn. Watanabe shrieked.
«"Why do you make me have to hurt you?"»
"Huh… I wonder…" When his turn rolled around he tried hitting her with [Zero Point Breakthrough] and failed. "Worth a shot."
"Maybe it failed 'cause she's not active?" Ken asked. "Except, then it shouldn't have worked outside on that wall."
"Or because this is a boss and it might be considered cheating?" Shoichi said, sounding rough.
He shrugged, still avoiding looking at the corpse. "We'll see what happens after all these photos and statues are destroyed." There were dozens of the things, which just meant that much more in the way of opportunity for her to attack them.
«"Why are you upset?"»
Once the last shrine to vanity (or public image?) was destroyed, Watanabe shrieked again, her eyes bulging near out of her head, only that time it was an actual attack. Tetsuya was hit with Despair, which was healed a moment later by Ken.
Every few rounds Watanabe would shriek, landing an ailment nearly always, either Despair or Fear, or she would use [Brain Shake] instead of a pure physical attack and sometimes inflict Brainwash (which would cause the afflicted to attack his allies, heal Watanabe, or buff her), requiring two people to not attack that round in order to heal both damage and the affliction.
«"You know that isn't how this works! Why do you always cause trouble?"»
Ken growled as he wailed on her with his axe, but at least he got to attack for once.
Eventually she went down as the last of her health was whittled away, and splashed back into her original form, though she had collapsed onto the floor. To his relief the corpse faded out, along with the chains and blood.
Tetsuya stepped up to give her a talking to, which meant Tsuna didn't have to. And once she verbally stumbled her way through an agreement to confess, she turned into sparkling white motes and shot upward through the ceiling.
"Look!" Ken said, pointing toward the back of the set.
Tsuna gazed tiredly toward where the gaseous sphere had been only to see—was that a solid gold diploma?
Ken bounded over to grab it, and that was when everything began to shake and parts of the ceiling far overhead started to detach and fall around them. "Time to go!"
His little family bolted for the studio doors, Hibari practically herding Tsuna along, busted through them, then ran down the hallway to the main doors, which were also busted through. Before they could even turn around to see what was happening to the building they were automatically ejected from the Palace.
Tsuna heaved a huge sigh and dropped down onto his cushion, not caring for the moment that he might be late for dinner, as Ken plunked the diploma onto the table. A closer look revealed that it was a B.A. in Psychology.
It made him feel sick all over again. "Hopefully we can sell that in Mementos. Or… Shoichi-san, can you use the gold for any of your science stuff?"
"Uh, maybe. Some things just work better if gold is involved. It's highly efficient in conducting electricity."
"Vote?" he prompted.
The general consensus was for Shoichi to toss it in his inventory.
"Now we just gotta wait for that lady to confess to the police," Ken said.
"Omnivore. Call home and let your mother know you're spending the night."
He blinked, then nodded. "I'll do that. Thank you," he said before getting up so he could exit the room and make that call. He rather liked the idea of being near his little family after an experience like that. It was just a shame that Shoichi might not be able to do the same. As it was, Tsuna wouldn't have clean clothes for the next day, and he decided he should probably start carrying a few sets of spares in his inventory. As an afterthought he removed his gloves and tossed them in.
His mother was thrilled he was staying with a friend. She didn't ask who, but he did not expect her to. For her it seemed that life was painted in broad strokes of watercolour.
As Tsuna poked his head back in to see Tetsuya get up to start in on dinner, Shoichi also rose and came out into the hall. He and Tetsuya headed toward the kitchen as Shoichi called his mother to let her know he'd been invited to sleep over. That made Tsuna feel a bit better about things. And really, Shoichi needed some food in him and people who wouldn't question him potentially feeling queasy.
He and Tetsuya tossed together a simple stir fry, rice, and miso soup for everyone to enjoy, and they mostly ate in silence. It was only after washing up that they started talking again.
"That was weird," Ken opened with.
"And highly distressing." He didn't even want to think about what the defects's unconscious self might be saying inside his Palace. "I feel like I sound so naïve, as I had no idea there were people like that in Namimori. But I think we did well."
"We succeeded."
"It gives us at least a vague idea of what to expect should we ever manage to get into the defect's Palace."
"And anyone else who'd have to be dealt with that way."
"Their unconscious image of themself seems to dictate the form their Palace takes? But the interface did require insight into how they perceive something. Their place of power."
"We can only hope not all of them will be so sick-minded."
Tsuna yawned like his face was going to break. It wasn't just the prolonged battle, it was the emotional or psychological toll added to that which had him feeling so absurdly tired.
Ω
The outcome of their effort was revealed in an arrest after the woman turned herself in to the police, and rumor that the husband and son would be selling the house and moving to another city. News reports were appropriately vague as to details of the woman's crimes considering a minor was involved as a victim, but plenty of people (judging by the gossip going around as overheard while walking between his home, Hibari's mansion, the shrine, or back home) knew what those tidbits meant.
As the remainder of summer break wound down he did have the odd nightmare. His mother never asked, so either he was quiet enough about it while still asleep, or she simply did not register things of that nature, never mind the scandal being talked about in town in hushed tones and murmurs.
Tsuna loved his mother, but even he would be the first to admit she simply wasn't all there. He wondered at times if what he loved was what she represented, rather than her as a person. That made him feel guilty, because it made him sound too much like the defect he called a father.
It was small comfort that he was home every night (barring the odd exception) and regularly talked with her, or learned cooking from her, which was so much more than he could say for her husband.
Ω
Moving from elementary school to middle school was not that big of a deal. What was, however, was a certain teacher taking an instant dislike to Tsuna, one Nezu Dohachiro, who taught science and seemed to think that frequent tests was an excellent thing. Anyone who handled them with ease made the man suspicious—
'He must hate Hibari, then.'
—and anyone who performed poorly was likewise hated. The same was true when he called on people in class to answer questions. Answer them too readily or easily and he eyed the person as if he suspected cheating, and a stumbled or nervous answer resulted in scornful looks.
Tsuna came under his scornful gaze for a different reason entirely. Tsuna was doing well in his classes and stopped hating the very idea of attending or thinking that none of it mattered. Nezu kept eyeing up Tsuna's fluffy brown hair and doe eyes and scowling, like his appearance personally offended the man. After another test was returned to him had been dripping in red, scathing, nitpicky comments, plus a reduction in grade for such grievous sins, he finally brought it up during their usual afternoon Mementos visit.
"So, just a head's up," he said in the middle of trouncing another group of shadows. "Nezu-sensei appears to loathe me."
Hibari frowned slightly.
"He's started making comments alluding to my appearance, like that has anything to do with academic performance. My tests come back covered in red markdowns. So, I'd like a second opinion here. Because I can't think of anything I've done to get treated this way, aside from existing and looking like an easy target."
"Your appearance is highly deceptive," Shoichi said.
"Which comes in handy at times," he admitted.
Mukuro chimed in with, "I agree that Nezu-sensei seems to have it out for Tsuna-kun."
"He's very unhappy with my hair," Ken said, "and it's not like I bleached it or anything."
Tetsuya shrugged. "He's never liked my hair, but I think he's been too intimidated to make an issue out of it."
"I've been keeping all the returned tests, just in case," he said. "Maybe we should observe for the next few weeks, now that the issue's been brought up, and discuss it again then?"
Everyone agreed, and it was back to training.
Things had changed up a bit since they defeated Watanabe in her Palace. Tsuna could now itemize a Persona, resulting in anything from accessories, armor, weapons, or skill cards. Most of the time it wasn't worth it, though it did allow him to add specific skills to specific Personas.
The average level of shadows in Mementos had risen, which made their training progress smooth back out again rather than continuing on the slow slide to an endless grind. He was in his sixties now level-wise, and leaned toward assuming that ninety-nine was the level cap.
Tsuna was lucky to have Mukuro, Ken, and Chikusa in his class at Namimori Middle. It meant allies and witnesses to any hinky behavior.
Three weeks later and Nezu was still giving him the evil eye, knocking points off for idiotic reasons like imperfections in his handwriting or not using a word the man arbitrarily preferred, so he brought it up again.
"This isn't getting any better," he said. "I'm beginning to worry that he'll accuse me of cheating next because some of the kids still call me Dame-Tsuna behind my back, and I know he's heard them."
Shoichi scoffed. "I'm going to do some checking into his background. It's bad enough bullying is so prevalent, worse when it's coming from one of our teachers. Well, one of yours."
"With an eye toward exposing him for something?" Ken asked.
Shoichi shrugged. "If he's dirty, should he really be teaching? Whether he's a candidate for Palace diving is somewhat different. He's not physically abusive, right? Not like that gym teacher and coach the Phantom Thieves went after."
Chikusa shook his head. "Not that we've witnessed."
Hibari shot a look at Tsuna who, once again, seemed to know what he wanted. "Is it illegal in Japan to bug a classroom with recording devices, and if so, do we care? Because video evidence of his behavior might be useful."
"I think if you did it wouldn't be admissible," Shoichi said. "If it happened in your home that'd be a different story, but in the classroom? I don't think so."
Tsuna frowned, but nodded. "But the same could be true of anything you dug up."
Shoichi nodded. "Which means if I did find anything bad, we'd have to either arrange a leak or anonymous tip, or see if he's bad enough to have a Palace."
He didn't doubt Shoichi could find evidence if there was any. Despite hacking being considered a criminal skill, it was incredibly useful for getting access to information certain people did not want you to have, such as defects who may or may not be planning another visit. Or what exactly it was the Vongola did. Organized crime covered a lot of territory, after all.
Nezu turned out to have a very big secret. During his own stint in middle school he was a failure, scoring poorly on most everything. His education claims were fabricated. His rirekisho claimed a top high school and university, but digging revealed he attended a fourth-rate high school and a fifth-rate university. His shokumukeirekisho was practically a wholesale pack of lies.
Clearly, whoever handled hiring at Namimori Middle had not been doing their job. But, considering so many adults (in education, at least) thought that bullying was the natural order of things, he almost couldn't be surprised they were lackadaisical when it came to their work responsibilities.
"I feel like this is projection," Chikusa said. "He did so poorly in his own schooling, so now he's acting like others probably did toward him when it comes to poor or struggling students, or showing his jealousy of those who are good students. Except, he's focusing mostly on the people who physically stand out or he thinks are easy targets. The fluffy, the foreign…"
"We don't know what he does in other classrooms," Mukuro said, "if there are more students he's harassing."
Tsuna punched a Decarabia right in the eye and said, "We can always try to see if he has a Palace. The obvious route is to leak the information, but if they were stupid enough not to check in the first place, they might sweep all that under the rug so as not to bring shame to the school. Or am I rationalizing this? I don't even know."
"There is a certain thrill in going into a Palace," Tetsuya said understandingly. "And it's experience for if the defect comes back."
"And that right there is probably it," he said, shaking his head. "What do you propose we change once we hit the level cap? I'm assuming it's ninety-nine. Mementos for requests and general fitness is a given."
"But not needed as an every day thing, perhaps," Chikusa said. "Perhaps three days a week in here, three days on other things, like outside sparring and other skills, and one day for … I don't even know."
"One project I could think of would be new weaponry once we tap out on what's available for purchase or as treasure here," Mukuro said. "Though I don't know if you'd feel comfortable working on weaponry," he said to Shoichi. "Specifically, weaponry that in some way incorporated our flames."
"Like, attuned to them?"
Mukuro shrugged. "I have excellent reach with my trident, but I have yet to quite get the hang of trying to channel flames through it. It might be the material."
Shoichi looked thoughtful. "It is something I could try. At the very least, I could start roughing out some ideas, and run tests on various materials—metals?—to see what reacts best to flames, what channels them, what blunts or blocks them…"
Tsuna became aware of a creeping sense of dread, and started looking around warily.
"What is it?" Shoichi asked.
"Not sure. But I doubt it's good," he said, then heard the faint sound of chains in the distance. "Yeah, th-that's not good. Let's hit the staircase, like, now."
Hibari shot him a curious look, almost like he wanted to disagree, but then something came into view in the distance, shrouded by the lighting and the warping of the air at a distance. Whatever it was glowed a sullen red, was huge, wrapped in chains, and headed right for them.
Tsuna fled for his life.
He panted once he hit the top of the stairs, and was thrilled that his little family had fled with him.
"What the fuck was that thing, yo?" Ken said, staring down the stairs like he was afraid it was climbing up behind them.
"As importantly, does that mean we can never go on that floor again if Tsuna-kun's intuition has him fleeing like that?" Chikusa asked.
He got his breathing under control and gazed back down the stairs himself. "It won't follow. Or rather… I don't feel it anymore."
"We've been on these floors for months and this never happened," Tetsuya said. "Is it because we cleared a Palace?"
"I got new options in the interface when it comes to Personas," he said.
"And the shadows have become tougher," Shoichi said. "So this…"
"A new obstacle. But why that floor?"
"So, everyone needs to keep an eye on Tsuna-kun," Mukuro said. "If he starts getting uneasy, we need to be on the alert."
They were only a few minutes into fighting various shadows when that feeling of dread came back, and the distant rattle of chains.
"Oh, fuck," Ken said, then hauled ass.
Everyone fled after him and barreled down the stairs, coming to an untidy halt at the bottom.
"Five minutes," Hibari said.
That got him a number of confused looks before Shoichi said, "There's a timer on this thing?" He immediately checked his watch. "This thing doesn't keep time normally in here, but it still advances. It just corrects itself once outside. So let's see."
"If that's true, then it's because we spent so much time talking between fights?" he said. "We're now in danger of that … thing … coming to flatten us if we dally in clearing a floor? Because I'm not ashamed to say I'm terrified of it."
He stared out into the red-tinted distance and sighed.
"Uh, is this gonna show up on any floor now?" Ken asked.
"And does it vanish from the level the second we switch floors?" Tetsuya said. "Because the thought of having to dodge those things every day, every floor, is enough to make me lose hair."
"And that would be a tragedy," Mukuro joked.
After a couple more minutes of waiting, the creeping dread starting crawling up his spine as Shoichi said, "Time. Up!"
Another mad dash up the stairs ensued.
"Limited data, but so far, yeah," Shoichi said. "We have five minutes to clear a floor or face that thing, not counting the actual battles possibly. Let's go right back down. I want to know if it clears once we leave." He made it known he was serious when he trotted back down the steps.
There was nothing down there but a refresh of normal shadows.
Hibari nodded and prowled off. The hunt was back on.
Ω
They waited until Sunday to get back to discussing anything important. No one wanted to get caught up in things and forget the timer that started when entering any given floor.
"So before we were interrupted by the Harbinger of Doom, we were talking about Nezu-sensei, and flame-channeling weapons? I think."
"I would say he's teaching decently, but for all we know he's memorized lectures someone else wrote, or the stuff he puts on the board. And students never seem to be willing to ask him questions. They might be attending juku and getting help there."
"We can try to see if he has a Palace, but… We have his name, the school, but what would he see that as?" Chikusa asked.
"He faked getting into a top-ranked university. Maybe that? Though what the inside of his Palace would be like even if it was…"
Tsuna wrote down "university" on a piece of paper. He wasn't about to actually try entering keywords for Nezu before they'd even had lunch.
"Castle" was suggested, so he wrote that down, too. Sure, they could just ask Mukuro to go ghost in the guy's head, but putting in some honest effort to figure it out wouldn't go amiss.
"Fortress" was another suggestion he dutifully noted down.
After lunch he tried putting them in one at a time and none matched, so instead they went to Mementos to take care of some requests that had come in, one for a second year high school boy who was sexually harassing girls (even as young as twelve years of age) who walked by, the other for a young man who kept playing music far too loudly at home, but refused to listen to requests to turn it down because his father was one of the city councilmen and no one wanted to push too hard.
The week that followed was more of the same, at least as far as Nezu was concerned. On Sunday after lunch they tried the potential keywords they had brainstormed up during that time. They finally nailed it when Shoichi took a somewhat once-removed approach and suggested "campus".
What they landed in was bizarre in the extreme. It looked like the representation of a little town, but it was raised path after raised path, between which was a forest of trees, and dotted with small buildings like houses. There was a multitude of stairs, leading to paths which bridged over others.
Their starting point was a dead end, and he could see in the distance a statue of Nezu. "Our goal?" he said. There were also metal grilles blocking some of the paths, which suggested (to him, anyway) a necessity to find a button or lever to open them.
"I can hope some of those buildings are safe areas," Shoichi said. "Um, should we use the tried and true when it comes to mazes? Follow one wall until we hit the goal?"
Tsuna looked out over the area again, seeing immediately that any hope of back-tracing from the statue was impossible. There were too many elevated paths or buildings hiding what was behind them to see an unbroken solution. "Maybe we should."
"Left?" Tetsuya said.
"And we can get that right there out of the way," Chikusa said, pointing at a section three and four levels below them. "There's an actual dead end. Might have a chest."
Hibari stalked off down the short flight of stairs and to the left. The dead end indeed contained a chest, blocked from view from their starting point by trees, which was looted. The rest of that non-viable area was a loop bare of anything but shadows in the form of townsfolk. Or maybe students? Professors? Support staff?
His senpai back-tracked to the bottom of the stairs where they had started, going up a tall, L-shaped set of stairs, around a corner, and into the building there. The walls had equations on them, which baffled Tsuna at first.
"Check out the safe," Mukuro said. "Maybe these equations provide the combination?"
The first one he looked at was: 10 + 15‧X = 100
He blinked at how simple it was. "Six," he said, and he wasn't even all that good at maths.
Shoichi whipped out a notebook and pencil so he could make notes.
The next wall showed: 18 - 4‧X = 5‧X
"Two," Ken said.
The next wall showed: 41 = 12‧X - 7
"Four."
The next was: 24 = 3(N - 5)
"Thirteen," he said. "How many numbers does that safe combination have?" A look around the room showed no more equations, nor did a look at the floor and ceiling show any.
Mukuro went over to investigate and said, "Four."
Tetsuya frowned. "So add the digits of that last one to get a digital root of four?"
"And figure out what order they should be in."
Mukuro started messing with the lock, and a minute later they all heard a click as it sprung open. "It was clockwise with the door as zero. As for what's inside…?" He reached in and pulled out a small plastic card, then held it up. All it had on it was a blue square.
"Uh…"
"It feels a little thick at the center of that square," Mukuro said, running his fingers over the card.
"There might be a wafer chip inside," Shoichi said. "Like on a credit card. And the blue is to show what it matches with?"
Most of them shrugged before exiting and heading down the stairs. The landing had four staircases off it. Two went up (such as the one they had just descended) and two went down. Hibari bore left and up, then into the building just to the left at the top of the stairs.
That, too, had equations to be solved, for a combination to open a safe on the wall. The contents of that had a card with a green circle, also slightly thick at the center. The third building, after a very long walk and plenty of shadows to fight, was a safe area.
Every building along their left-weighted route was either a puzzle room (with insultingly simple equations), a treasure room, or an ambush of shadows, until they hit the thirteenth room, which was another safe area. It was also a dead end (which meant they would have to backtrack), and at the end of a very long walk.
"Shadows here are a bit tougher," Ken said. "Which is good."
Them being harder, and having seen a bump in difficulty in Mementos after the previous Palace meant…? They would see another? He did wonder what, if any, change(s) would happen when it came to fusions.
Once they were rested they exited and back-tracked, turning left at the landing. The statue was right there, but they had to go up an L-shaped set of stairs, around a corner, and down an L-shaped set of stairs. The statue resembled a younger, more idealized version of Nezu, and the base had his name and a series of coloured symbols. Beneath each symbol was a combination lock.
Mukuro tapped the blue-square card over the matching symbol, with no appreciable result. "Didn't think it'd be that simple," he said. "So maybe these cards open the way to a building that has the solution to the lock below. And each lock takes numbers matching their sides."
Shoichi was busy sketching out the symbol spread of coloured shapes.
Tsuna got in closer to see what Mukuro meant. The circle only required one number, so in theory they could just cheese it. The triangle needed three, the square needed four, and so on. What would happen once they were all unlocked…? "Maybe the statue changes to give access to a new area, or a boss arena with the treasure." He stepped back with a sigh.
"At least the equations are simple so far," Shoichi said as he put the notebook away. "But that might be a reflection of how poorly he did in school."
"We've done a ton of walking, and fighting," Tetsuya said. "I am a bit winded."
Hibari shot a long look at Tsuna, then turned and prowled his way back to the safe room, where he said, "Omnivore. We can now set a safe room as a starting point."
He blinked. "Oh, like saving your progress. Sort of. We could teleport to it anyway from the entrance, but it saves time. Cool."
Ω
When Tsuna arrived on Sunday it was to a surprise. There was cake on the sideboard, covered with a glass dome. And a portable grill.
"Huh…"
Hibari, one of his escorts that morning, laid a warm hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. "It is your birthday, Omnivore."
He reached up to briefly cover Hibari's hand, then huffed in pleasure. "Wao… Thank you. We need to start celebrating everyone's birthdays." Then he immediately winced, because of the trio. "Er…" He shot them an apologetic look.
Mukuro, Chikusa, and Ken each shrugged. "We have no idea. So, whatever is on our paperwork," Chikusa said.
Tsuna resolved to slap a calendar on the wall or something, so everyone could have a reminder of when to have a friendly get together that had nothing to do with Mementos, requests, or Palaces. They spent the morning just talking, about things like books, games, and movies, though the conversation did devolve into a discussion about weapons and what Shoichi thought might be good conductive material, as well as potential drones that were small enough for most to mistake as literal bugs.
Lunch featured yakitori made on the grill. Toriniku, atsuage, piman, enoki maki, and asuparabekon, with tare. It was fantastic, and cake afterward finished things nicely. Tsuna almost felt too full to head into Nezu's Palace, but Hibari was having none of that nonsense of slacking off, so in they went.
They arrived in the safe room. Which, cool. They just had to backtrack to the most recent split and head left. Again. Along the way they found one of those metal grilles blocking their way. The blue card opened it when Mukuro waved the card next to the reader. Beyond was a continuation of the path, more buildings, and puzzles which turned out to be in Morse code.
'Thank kami for Shoichi,' he thought, 'because I don't have the first clue about this stuff.' He wondered just how much random knowledge Shoichi had stored in his head. If he had not known, they would have had to exit to print something out which would let them decipher all this, and subsequently lose a day's progress.
The safe did not contain yet another card. Which, good? Instead it contained a weapon for Mukuro which was an upgrade to the one he held. After a last sweep of the room they exited and carried on.
A few hours later (hours? days? he had no idea) they were in another safe room, having dealt with too many shadows to count, all having gained upgraded weapons, and another plastic card, except that one, while it still had the blue square on it, lacked the wafer chip and instead had a four digit number at the center.
"One down, six more to go," he said, blinking owlishly. "This Palace may take a while."
The next path was for the yellow pentagon, and the puzzles for that were a variant on sudoku. Chikusa pounced on those and, at the end, they got a new plastic card with a number centered on the yellow pentagon. After that was the indigo triangle path and puzzle boxes.
There was a safe area right next to the red hexagon path, so they ducked in, set it as the current "save point", and exited the Palace for the day. Tsuna was escorted home by Hibari and Tetsuya, helped his mother make dinner, ate, then headed upstairs to flop on his bed.
His brain hurt from all those puzzles, though at least the algebra was easy enough for him.
Ω
Two days later they had all seven codes and teleported to the safe room near the statue, then finished up for the day. All any of it did was make Tsuna side-eye his maths homework with a vague sense of loathing. Hopefully he would get over it soon, roundabout the time Nezu confessed his sins and was turfed out of the school.
Whatever the case, it would be preferable to have Nezu out before Chikusa's birthday on the twenty-sixth, so they could just enjoy the day.
Wednesday rolled around (technically hours ago, but it was the sun coming in through his bedroom window that counted), so he got up for his usual morning activities (fluffy pancakes were the best!), and trundled off to school in the company of Tetsuya and Mukuro while various young people edged away or fled on ahead of them, probably worried about being bitten to death if they dared to be late.
He really needed to make hamburger steak again for Hibari. (It was only a minor consideration that it was Tsuna's favorite, too.)
Nezu was his usual bastard self, but as it was a lecture day, it was more on the order of the man trying to make a fool out of him by asking "difficult" questions, and Tsuna casually tossing out correct answers with a bored expression.
Cue scornful looks.
When they entered the Palace it was time to deal with that statue. Mukuro was an angel (which normally he would never use as a descriptive given that they were in Japan, but oddly enough, some shadows were angels, which made no sense to him whatsoever) to whip those code cards out of his inventory and enter all those numbers.
The statue jerked and raised up some distance (which, looming Nezu, not fun), rotated, and a door on the back slid aside to give them access to a stairway leading downward.
He was halfway down the impossible staircase (impossibly long, too) when he saw what awaited them, and said, "Will anyone think any less of me if I cry? Because I want to cry."
Hibari petted his hair, which made everything better. (Almost, because he could still see that maze.) He wondered if Hibari would bite him to death if he hugged him.
There was a maze with high, painfully-white walls, and something he couldn't quite make out at the center. There may or may not have been colourful splashes of … paint? … on some of those white walls, which meant there might be more insultingly simple puzzles to solve.
'Okay, the Morse code stuff was beyond me, but really, the rest of it…?'
"Cheer up, Tsuna-kun," Shoichi said. "It looks like a labyrinth, and proper ones only have one path."
He exhaled in relief.
Once they hit the bottom it really was just a matter of walking the only available path. The colourful splashes were more puzzles, this time of four boxes in a two by two grid, with operators between them, and numbers at the bottom and right side.
Tsuna checked out at that point as the others solved it, with Shoichi writing down the answers (and the paint colour, just in case). Instead, he had an intense staring contest with Hibari, fighting the urge to hug his senpai and leech comfort out of him. Why he felt that way he just didn't know, but he wanted it. At some point, much like he had with demanding a spar, he would work up the nerve to actually do it.
In the meantime, he was holding back a huff over the amusement brimming in Hibari's eyes.
Getting bitten to death for doing it wasn't really a factor, because he was bitten to death on a regular basis during sparring and continued to get better at the not being bitten part.
Someone coughed, which caused him to look away (he counted that as a loss in the staring contest), and then get moving again along the path.
"This would be so much nicer with murals," Chikusa muttered.
"But then we'd have to pay attention to everything," Ken countered, "lookin' for the codes."
Chikusa heaved a sigh and nodded.
Tsuna, for his part, was suddenly imagining a Palace with narrow enough hallways that Tetsuya would be unable to turn his head for fear of knocking himself for a loop what with that hairstyle. Beside him Hibari snorted softly, and Mukuro, up ahead, cackled.
Each time they hit a puzzle Tsuna checked out so he could continue his staring contest with Hibari, all while thinking about what it would feel like to hug him. Nothing like hugging his mother, he presumed, but he hadn't even done that in forever, not since he reached the stage of, "Ew, Kaa-san, you're embarrassing me!"
Funny how he wasn't thinking the same when it came to Hibari.
Eventually they reached the center, and it was another damn statue of a younger, idealized version of Nezu. The guy clearly had issues.
The doorway revealed for that one led down, but that time to a long hallway. A door was to their immediate left, so in they went to find a safe area. Their "save point" was updated, and they sat down to rest for a bit. Not long, because the walk had not been arduous.
After that it was off down the hallway, which opened up into a boss arena. (He had played enough video games to recognize a boss arena when he saw one!) It was only then that he realized they had not been subjected to Nezu's thoughts while traversing the Palace.
The arena was a lecture hall with stepped seating for students. At the bottom was a lectern, while the back wall held a massive screen. Nezu probably fancied himself a tenured professor, teaching hundreds of breathlessly attentive students.
"…Where is the treasure?" Mukuro said.
"That screen is a roll up," Tetsuya said. "Maybe in the wall behind it?"
Ken bounced over and slipped underneath the bottom edge of the thing, then back out. "Yep. Same as before, a gaseous white sphere with a rainbow aura."
"Let's go," Hibari said.
Ω
Middle school was different when it came to the end of the day, because students often attended clubs. Hibari could no longer supervise all students leaving the property because of that. Or, he could, but did not have time to linger until clubs also finished up. Far too many of those ended not long before the usual dinner hour. The routine from elementary would see them never getting anything done.
That being so they headed immediately to the mansion, to have tea in the workroom and discuss a calling card for Nezu. Everyone got to work cutting up magazines to get what they needed to glue into place on the cards Tetsuya printed out.
"So, we take a page from the Phantom Thieves and plaster these all over the bulletin board? Teachers move between classrooms, we don't go to them, so…?"
"Maybe the staff room?" Mukuro said. "Though we didn't need a lot of people in the know when it came to Watanabe."
"His bag?" Chikusa said. "If one of us can stealthily slip a bunch into it. It's a question of knowing that he's seen one, been affected by it."
"What about his car?" Shoichi said. "Does he have one he uses to get to and from the school? That might be easier to spy on, to see that he's noticed."
Mukuro perked up at that. "Excuse me for a little while," he said, then vanished out the door.
Tsuna just wished his hands didn't sweat inside the latex gloves. Washing his hands afterward was just a little strange. Almost gluey.
Mukuro did not get back until it was almost time for Tsuna to head home. "He has one, yes. Worst case is he doesn't use it for that, but if I'm the one to place them, I can mess with his head a little to ensure he does notice the cards. He spots a splash of colour and goes to investigate before heading in, that sort of thing."
No one had a problem with that plan, so it was decided.
Hibari and Ken escorted him home, but halfway there Tsuna got the creepy crawlies up his spine and shot a nervous look at his senpai. "Hibari-san," he whispered. "We got incoming?" Ken had enhanced hearing from his time as an experimental subject, so Tsuna knew he heard what he said, even though his head was turned away.
Hibari diverted their group through a less populated area as Tsuna stealthily grabbed his weapons from inventory and put them on. Sure enough, a man skulked up behind them and tried to snatch Tsuna. He was deeply surprised (and perhaps regretful) when the three of them wailed the tar out of the man after he said, "I only need the tuna-fish, but maybe I can get money for all three of you."
Any thought he ever had of doing away with the escorts died a swift death.
Hibari got on his phone and called in members of the Disciplinary Committee as Tsuna and Ken hogtied the kidnapper. Why Ken kept zip ties in his inventory he just didn't know, but they were handy. As a secondary measure, Ken broke the man's fingers.
Tsuna winced at the sound of snapping bones.
Not five minutes later six Disciplinary Committee members ghosted up and stared at the man before looking to Hibari for instructions.
"The mountain," was all he said.
The six nodded. One hauled the man up to carry, with the other five surrounding the one, then ghosted back off again.
Hibari placed a hand on Tsuna's shoulder to get him moving again, and they continued their journey to the house. He lingered for a moment, looking back at his two friends, then fully stepped inside and closed the door.
He promptly heaved a sigh, then went to wash up so he could help with dinner. His mother was clueless to his mood—no surprise—and upstairs he used his homework as a way to distract himself from another kidnapping attempt, though it only went so far. This one had called him a fish, too, which meant…
Tsuna was starting to wish he could just live at Hibari's mansion.
Ω
When morning came he was feeling a bit out of sorts. Nightmares could do that. Tetsuya and Chikusa were his escorts, and Hibari was at the gate, giving them a nod as they passed through. Inside their classroom, Mukuro was looking smug, which meant things had gone well.
And, when it was time for Nezu to teach in their classroom, the man himself was looking rather shaken. If anything, it made Nezu even more snide than usual, and Tsuna and others came in for plenty in the way of scornful or scathing looks.
It was about then that Tsuna wished he was telepathic. Which, naturally, saw Mukuro shoot him an amused and fondly indulgent look.
Not a word about Nezu was spoken during lunch. Hibari had of course carved out his own space up there, taking over one of the ends blocked off by a stairwell "building". It was unfortunately on the same level as the remainder of the roof, but somewhat sheltered from the rest. It was still too much of a risk to talk about anything important up there.
He was a little surprised when Hibari handed him a bento box, and even more so when he opened it to see hamburger steak inside. A delighted smile flashed over his face at the treat. He wanted to hug Hibari more than ever.
"Thank you," he murmured, then took his usual seat. His meal was delicious, and it gave him a warm and fuzzy feeling inside that Hibari had noticed what his favorite was.
Tsuna noticed Nezu in the staff room on his way back down to his classroom; the man looked stressed.
After school it was back to the mansion, and then into Nezu's Palace. Everyone geared up and exited the safe room, and headed down the corridor to the lecture hall.
Shadow Nezu was there, standing behind the lectern, giving a lecture (complete with visual aids) to an audience of black, grey, and white people silhouettes. He did not appear to notice them at first, despite them boldly stalking down the central staircase.
Once he did, Nezu tilted his head back slightly so he could look down his nose at them. He opened his mouth to say something, but Hibari jumped forward and smacked him with his tonfa, so the fight was on.
He, like Watanabe, was neutral to everything. 'Which sucks,' he thought.
His attacks were sad, limp little things, and they looked like Nezu was flinging algebraic equations at them, ones designed for precocious ten year olds.
«"I'll see you all expelled!"»
They scoffed.
It was Shoichi who noticed many of the equations on the screen were incomplete, and ducked over to start filling in the answers. Every time he completed one, Nezu jerked and let out a hoarse scream, like he had been deeply wounded.
'And every time he does,' he thought, 'I see Shadow Nezu's HP drop a big chunk. Cool.'
«"You'll never amount to anything, any of you!"»
"The delusion is strong in this one," Chikusa said.
«"I'm better than you! You're nothing!"»
Tsuna let it just wash over him, because Nezu seemed to be a one-trick pony, albeit one with lots of health, and one prone to projecting his insecurities all over other people. Once he was defeated he splashed back to his more usual appearance and crumpled to the floor. Shoichi was the one to give a stern lecture to Nezu's shadow self before he poofed off in a sparkle of white. And, when the screen was held up out of the way, the man's treasure was an award plaque for National Teacher of the Year.
Which, lame!
But there was no time to ponder that further, as the lecture hall was falling apart around them. Hibari hustled him off up the central staircase so they could hit that nearby safe room to teleport to one on the surface and exit, and hopefully not get crushed. Not two seconds after they emerged into the original surface maze, they were warped out and back to the workroom.
Tsuna flopped down on his usual cushion and removed his gloves to chuck into inventory. "That one wasn't nearly as mentally scarring," he said with a smile. "The treasure, though… I sincerely hope that's made of something interesting, because otherwise it's vendor trash."
Ken plunked it down. "Looks like silver."
"Sell, or materials for Shoichi's weapons testing? Or detailing."
"…It also has excellent conductivity."
Tsuna pushed the plaque toward Shoichi, and that was that.
Ω
He did not see Nezu on Saturday, mostly because they did not have science that day, and of course, no one saw the man on Sunday. On Monday, however, during homeroom, they got an announcement after the usual roll call, and after the other normal announcements.
"And on a final note, a new Science teacher is being brought in after Nezu … sensei opted to leave Namimori Middle due to some distressing allegations that were brought to light. This is very sudden, we realize, and Science this week will be a little disjointed due to the change, but the school is doing everything it can to get things back on track. For the moment, a substitute has been called in…"
Tsuna stopped listening at that point and shared looks with his family, as well as took in the reactions of the other members of his class. Most of them looked stupidly shocked, which he found weird.
The day itself featured a lot of gossip between classes, a quietly satisfied lunch at their part of the rooftop, and a prayer on Tsuna's part that whoever was brought in to replace Nezu wasn't such a bastard.
It was at the shrine, in Mementos, that Tsuna found one thing that had changed. He could do what the interface was calling Sacrifice Fusion, where he could sacrifice one Persona to increase the stats of another Persona. It would be hellaciously expensive to do, as it required "purchasing" stored Personas repeatedly in order to sacrifice, and he deemed it something to be held off on until he had top tier Personas worth the expense of further strengthening.
Everyone noticed that the general difficulty of all shadows inside had increased again.
It was the next afternoon, however, that Mukuro said while in Mementos, "I had a very strange dream last night. If I didn't know any better I'd say I have a sister."
Most of them blinked and shot Mukuro questioning looks.
"Here, in Japan. She looks a lot like me."
"…You do have the thought-reading thing," he said. "Is it possible for a Mist to do that while sleeping?"
"If this is more than just a random dream," Tetsuya said, "could you possibly locate her while awake? At least investigate. It's very odd, but so is all of this."
Mukuro looked relieved that no one immediately dismissed it as just a dream. "I can try. I can also try to deliberately seek out her sleeping mind," he said as they skipped down to the next level to avoid attracting the Harbinger of Doom.
"I think you should," he said. "It sounds random, but why should that mean it's not something important and real? If you were originally kidnapped, well…"
What he didn't say out loud was that if there were human traffickers out there, what was to say they weren't taking children from all over the world? Mukuro could have been taken while he was vulnerable and ended up with that awful famiglia.
Hibari shot a look at Tsuna, with the result of him just knowing what he wanted.
"Try to find out her name in dreams," he said. "If we had even a name, that could help so much."
Shoichi nodded. "Yeah. With a name I could do some digging around. If you're dreaming, though, maybe she's nearby? I mean, how far could something like that even work?"
"It didn't happen before," Chikusa said, "but here? Maybe you've passed by her and didn't even realize it. Maybe her class was at the Imperial Palace when we were. Or maybe she's in the next town over. Too far to reach from Italy, but close enough here? We don't have a lot of prior experience with this…"
Mukuro gave a firm nod, and nothing more was said about it for the moment. The next day at lunch, however, he said, "Shiratori Nagi."
"As in Shiratori Aoi?" Tetsuya said. He shot off a text message, presumably to Shoichi.
Mukuro looked blank, so Tsuna said, "She's a famous star. Lives in Namimori, but almost never here. I think she has a place in Tokyo she spends most of her time at. According to online stuff, her husband works for some overseas company." Then he shivered, because it made him think of the defect. "Are dreams not too coherent?"
Mukuro said, "They're … dreamy. At least right now. It was hard to get that much information. Maybe with practice I can refine it."
After school, when they reached the shrine, Shoichi was already there, sitting back to the wall as he tapped away on his laptop. As soon as he realized the others had arrived he said, "Mukuro-kun, come look at this."
They all went to look, but gave Mukuro precedence. His breathing hitched slightly. "Yes, that's her."
"Well, she's on the other side of t-town, in that high-rise of luxury apartments. It's possible she was in Tokyo until just recently, which could be why you d-didn't connect to her earlier. If what I've been able to find is accurate, she lives alone, and she's enrolled at Midori Middle."
"Can you try to see if she'd be willing to meet?" Ken asked. "I mean, ask in dreams."
Mukuro nodded. "Maybe at the park. I'd say a restaurant, but…"
"And how many?" Shoichi asked as he packed his laptop into inventory and got up.
They all moved to the tōrō so Hibari could send them to Mementos, then checked their gear before teleporting to Ikari no Michi.
"You mean how many is too many, because she might feel overwhelmed?" Mukuro asked.
"Yeah."
That got pondered while they wailed the tar out of a set of shadows, then Mukuro said, "Perhaps Tsuna-kun, perhaps Shoichi-kun."
"Because we're the most harmless looking?" he asked.
"You're delightfully fluffy," Mukuro said with a smirk, then reached out to pet his hair.
He hummed, poked Mukuro on the arm, then turned to face the latest shadow come to menace them.
Ω
Tsuna felt unaccountably nervous when it came time to meet Nagi, if only because he almost never spent any time talking to girls. Fellow students, that was. He wouldn't be the one doing most of the talking, anyway, in theory.
Mukuro led them to a nice grassy seating area not far from the big fountain and flicked a blanket into place, then dropped down to sit. Tsuna sat next to him, and Shoichi next to him. It was a good fifteen minutes before Nagi showed up, and at that, it was immediately clear she was a very shy person.
How she managed to gain the courage for this meeting/outing was therefore a mystery. 'But, well, people are courageous in different ways, right?' he thought.
She took a seat rather hesitantly and nodded, saying, "Hello," so quietly he had to strain to hear it.
Mukuro nodded back and greeted her (with Tsuna and Shoichi chiming in a second later), then said, "In person it's even more obvious. I hope that doesn't sound weird."
She looked up from under her side-swept fringe and shook her head slightly. "…No."
Tsuna was briefly distracted as Hibari and Tetsuya made a patrol through the park, as if it wasn't blindingly obvious what they were up to. It still made him feel warm inside to know they were keeping an eye on things in a reasonably discreet manner.
"I wasn't sure how much was getting through in dreams," Mukuro said. "And I should make introductions. These are two of my friends, Sawada Tsunayoshi and Irie Shoichi," he said, gesturing briefly to each. "And this is Shiratori Nagi."
This had to be the most painfully awkward thing he had ever experienced, and he was known for being a complete mess when it came to social encounters, at least in the past.
Nagi suddenly giggled quietly, raising one hand to cover her mouth.
Mukuro reached over to pet his fluffy hair, then said, "Right. I just had this weird idea, since we look so much alike… I was in Italy for a long time, and only recently came to Japan. You could be my sister in looks alone."
Nagi ducked her head for a moment, then shrugged slightly. "…I have no idea. I know … something happened."
So was it possible that Mukuro had been snatched when he young enough to just not remember? Or was this just a case of finding someone who simply greatly resembled him? If Mukuro had blood family, he was all for the idea of them becoming family. He wasn't too sure about the parents, though. It seemed different from…
"Would you be okay with us doing some digging?" Mukuro asked. "If we are siblings, I'd like to be able to … embrace that."
Nagi looked up again from beneath her sheltering fringe, her one visible eye briefly resting on Tsuna, before switching to Mukuro. "It's okay."
Tsuna's intuition chose to speak up (so to speak) and make him think she only said that because she expected nothing to come of it. Or rather, that even if something did, nothing would change.