It was only after the fact, when they were prowling around Mementos again, that it occurred to him that Nagi might have the same facility with reading thoughts, which was a point in her favor for being Mukuro's sister. She had seemingly reacted to some of the things he had been thinking.
Mukuro stabbed a Chernobog with his trident and said, "I think she might. I also think that some of her shyness is due to her parents never being around. Some people can handle that, even thrive, but most can't."
The girl might be as much of a mess as he had been, which meant it was likely she had no friends at her school. She might welcome the company? But they did spent the majority of their time training, in Mementos, or outside on Sundays. Still, there were evenings, though that carried its own dangers.
He did wonder, if she had Mist Flames… Would she be willing to learn how to stand up for herself? For others?
"Me communicating with her in dreams might have made her aware of what is possible," Mukuro added. "And if so, she may have been doing so during that meeting."
Huh… Another person ghosting his brain. He shrugged and said, "Chikusa, your birthday is on Friday. Should we take that day off from training, or…?"
Chikusa pursed his lips in thought. "How about we celebrate on Sunday morning."
"We could always do the same for mine," Tetsuya said. "Mine will also be on a Friday, and I'm fine waiting on Sunday morning for our gathering."
Tsuna got the creepy-crawlies again, everyone noticed, and everyone booked it to the nearest staircase. "I really have to wonder about that … thing. There must be a way to defeat it. It just seems weird that there's one at all."
Shoichi laughed nervously. "Yeah, well, I'm waiting for the moment when your intuition doesn't see you fleeing for your life. Only then would I be willing. There is an escape option, we've just never needed to use it before."
"Huh… We'll see."
Ω
The week chugged along as its usual clip and aside from a quiet word to Chikusa on Friday about his birthday, nothing much happened aside from the school still using a substitute for science. Morning announcements had revealed that the new teacher should be in place for Monday, so there was that.
Mukuro spent a fair amount of every lunch texting back and forth with Nagi. Which, good?
Shoichi spent a fair amount of time (at night) digging into everything he could track down, trying to find out what "something happened" meant. Sure, Tsuna thought, they could cough up the funds to have a DNA test done to check for a sibling relationship, but that would require specific permission.
Chikusa was all for discussing it during his birthday celebration on Sunday, because it was more immediately relevant than what politician did what stupid thing that week, or gushing over their latest favorite game or manga.
"The 'something happened' incident," Shoichi reported, pushing his glasses up absentmindedly, "was a kidnapping. Mukuro-kun's age does fit the circumstances. Nagi-san's brother was born a year earlier than her. Well, a year and six months. Anyway, he was kidnapped right around the time Nagi-san was born. Possibly the confusion of a star having a second child made it possible." He shrugged.
"No one ever found out what happened to the boy," Shoichi continued. "So it is possible, given Mukuro-kun's age, the startling resemblance between him and Nagi-san, and the strong likelihood that she, too, has Mist Flames, that he is Shiratori Masaru."
Mukuro let out a slow breath.
"The birthday on your identity paperwork even matches his, the ninth of June. And, going by physical development, you're around the same age as Hibari-san and Tetsuya-kun."
"…She seems open to the idea of a brother," Mukuro finally said. "I will let her know what's been found. She might agree to DNA testing, but the downside of that is if her parents found out, because I have no intention of…"
He didn't have to say it for Tsuna to understand. That was some serious bullshit in his estimation. Okay, sure, parents had their kid snatched, and were in no position to find him compared to the disgusting, bottom-feeding famiglia that kidnapped him (and presumably had Mists to run interference), but to basically let their daughter live alone most of the time? 'Can you say neglect?' he thought.
He had to wonder if they'd even notice if their daughter went missing, what with one parent overseas and the other one caught up in glitz and glamour and whatever else went part and parcel with stardom. Or maybe those things were a reaction to having their kid snatched? They physically and emotionally detached themselves from each other and the remaining child?
Whichever it was, Tsuna could understand why Mukuro was in no hurry to deal with those two. It was different for Hibari. Still no evidence of parents, but he was well-adjusted, fiercely independent, and well able to care for himself. Still not a typical picture of family life, but Hibari did have his own little family.
Granted, most all of that stemmed from Tsuna screwing up his courage and demanding a spar, which snowballed in weird and wondrous ways, but he had a family. As did Mukuro. It made more sense to add Nagi to that family rather than the other way around. Tsuna's own father might as well not exist and his mother was off in cloud-cuckoo-land, so he considered his friends his family.
He didn't know much in depth when it came to Tetsuya's family, or Shoichi's, but from the way they sometimes spoke, he could tell they were fond of them, that they had a home aside from the one in Tsuna's heart.
Talk switched to other things, such as games, manga, and books, and when ten o'clock rolled around, he and Tetsuya excused themselves so they could get lunch started. Chikusa had expressed a desire for nikujaga, and that took a fair amount of time, if only because of the thirty to sixty minutes cooling time to allow the flavors to absorb before reheating and adding blanched snow peas.
They were on their way to the shrine, feeling happy and full, when Tsuna's intuition sparked and he stopped dead, swung his head around toward what he was sensing, then bolted off like his life depended on it.
Or, someone else's, as it turned out.
He rushed out onto the sidewalk of a busy street just as a car went out of control—there may have been a kitten involved—and a certain girl was suddenly in danger. Tsuna kept right on moving, darting through traffic like a master player of Frogger, and swept both kitten and Nagi up as he made it to the safety of the other side of the street.
Hibari and Mukuro were the first ones to reach him, totally ignoring the car that crashed into the wall of a nearby shop, and probably because they had ghosted his brain the second his intuition had prodded him. They would have known why he bolted.
The rest showed up less than a minute later.
Nagi was panting like she had just run a marathon and looking just a bit light-headed. The kitten (which had no collar and might be abandoned) had dug it's needle claws into his arm with no signs of letting go anytime soon. It was a cute little thing, and he could totally understand why Nagi had tried to save the little floof.
"Omnivore."
He nodded. "Let's take this to a quieter location?" he suggested as the kitten crawled up onto his shoulder, and then made itself comfortable in the hood of his lightweight hoodie.
Quieter turned out to be the tea shop a bit down the street, where they sat outside and sipped oolong while Nagi finally got her breathing under control, along with a platter of bite-sized cakes.
The police wandered by to take statements, which Nagi stuttered through, Tsuna bullshitted through, and Hibari stared menacingly through. The police, who apparently wanted no part in pissing Hibari off, left it at that and trundled off to talk to other people who had witnessed the car go out of control.
"We'll need to figure out if the floof in my hood is a stray." Said kitten was purring. He knew that because he could feel the vibrations against his back.
"Thank you," Nagi whispered.
He blinked at her. "You're welcome. I wasn't about to let something awful happen to you when I could prevent it."
She had a look on her face of near complete incomprehension, which baffled him. He had no idea how to react to that except with disbelief that someone failed to comprehend—well, no. There was a time when he felt his life was worthless, so perhaps he could understand? But he had been artificially hampered. Was it really so different in the end, though? His own mother was a gullible airhead. He loved her, but he wouldn't rely on her to do mu—actually, he didn't even know if she was the one paying the bills. All of it might just get automatically charged to the defect's credit cards, and all she did was the shopping. When it came to money, that was.
He went so deep down that rabbit hole of thought he had to be snapped out of it by Hibari, who rested a warm hand on his shoulder. Tsuna's own hand came up automatically to briefly rest on his senpai's, then blinked back to total awareness. "Where were we?" he asked, then took a tiny cake to eat.
Hibari was transmitting … not words, not even images … something like feelings or impressions to him, strengthened by the hand still on his shoulder. So Tsuna leaned on his intuition, boggled slightly over what he got back, then nodded. "Yeah, so, shrine, anyone?"
Ω
He would feel bad for Nagi (and why was it his brain refused to think of her by her family name?), but that was just how things went when you had hyper intuition. She gaped on seeing Mementos. Tsuna, for his part, was somewhat awed and deeply honored that everyone trusted his intuition to the point of bringing her in so quickly.
And, because they had all the time in the world inside, they sat down right in the entrance and he explained to her why they were there, what had driven him to seek out help, how he stumbled into Mementos, and further, what they were doing with it beyond just training to be stronger, strong enough to defend themselves. Strong enough to help others.
She agreed, after a little encouragement from Mukuro, to try it herself, so they all trooped down the stairs so she could face a shadow. As she stared nervously at the shadow advancing on her, Tsuna remembered that he had a kitten in his hood.
Except, his costume was on, and he now had no idea where that kitten was. Eeeeeee. And he couldn't exactly leave to go check, not yet.
Nagi went through the usual, though she struggled for longer against the voice before she gained the resolve to rip off her mask and be … reborn … in a way. She was like Mukuro, suddenly gaining a trident and busting out [Psi] for an attack.
He still didn't get the trident thing, but worrying over it was a waste of time. She could have ended up with a whip, like that blonde girl, and wouldn't that just be odd?
Once Nagi finished off her opponent, Mukuro was right there guiding her back up the stairs to get her outfitted properly. The rest of them followed, mostly to avoid lingering too long on any one floor. After that, of course, they teleported to Ikari no Michi and started hunting, with Nagi inactive to begin with so she could rapidly gain levels with how quickly they plowed through everything on that floor, and every other floor they visited.
Before they left, however, and aside from Tsuna selling off all the vendor trash, he said, "So, how was it?" He then winced at how lame the question sounded.
Nagi smiled just barely and said, "Illuminating."
Outside Hibari gestured at Mukuro and Ken, then Nagi. They nodded and escorted her home. There would come a point when Nagi would be able to more than hold her own, but even an excellent fighter could be overwhelmed or ambushed. And women were more at risk, sadly enough.
Everyone else went with Tsuna, though they swung by Shoichi's place first, then his own. The kitten had mysteriously appeared again in his hood once they were outside, and Hibari carefully secured the little floof before urging Tsuna into his house.
It would be … so much nicer … if they could all just live together. But even if Nagi was welcomed into a room of her own at the Hibari mansion, Tsuna could not live there. Neither could Shoichi and Tetsuya. If it came to it, what Tsuna feared, then they would eventually all live in the same location. In Italy.
He wondered if anyone else was teaching themselves Italian, as he was. The trio already knew the language, but he questioned whether Hibari, Tetsuya, and Shoichi had started to learn. He sort of expected that Hibari already knew at least Mandarin. They all had to learn English.
On a whim he woke up his laptop and checked a world map. Italy was fair sized, but not any bigger than Japan. Assuming they ended up there, well… In theory they could keep doing the same thing. Perhaps not entering a local Mementos (because it would send people into a tizzy if their boss and top tier went missing regularly), but possibly still capable of stealing the twisted desires of the worst mafiosi.
After all, if he got sucked into a job he never wanted, why do it their way when his little family already had their own methods? It couldn't be impossible to have one of his own go place calling cards, though the first few times it might be necessary to give their targets a little mental jolt to make them feel hunted.
Then again, if he managed to collect a full set of Secondary Guardians, it might be possible to do Mementos requests. He refused to believe he himself had to be present. The downside would be that people would start making the connection between what had happened in Japan, in two places (if they did their research), and what would be happening in Italy, specifically in Milan.
That much Shoichi had pinned down. The Iron Fort (what kind of a stupid name was that, anyway?) was on the outskirts. And if the Phantom Thieves could cover all of Tokyo's twenty-three wards, there was no reason his little family couldn't cover Milan, which was ridiculously low in population compared to Tokyo.
But that, he realized, depended entirely on where the local entrance to Mementos was.
As he laid down to sleep, he once again sent up a prayer that it would not come to that.
Ω
Nagi gained ranks rapidly over the course of the week, as she had showed up for every single Mementos training session, even though she spent a fair amount of time inactive, getting only 75% of the experience. Even better, she was gaining confidence, not only in herself, but that the others would have her back.
She no longer looked as confused that anyone would want to.
It was on Sunday that she had her first outside spar. Tsuna went first with Hibari, as generally always happened. His senpai pulled a few of his fake kidnapper tricks again, but Tsuna had started to learn the feeling of those, the flame aspect to them, and was no longer taken off guard by those tactics.
He was lasting quite a bit longer, which only made the fire in Hibari's eyes notch up with pleasure. And something else, though he could not quite put his finger on what. He still ended up losing the fight, but that was mostly because he simply did not have the stamina Hibari did. His senpai was probably using his Cloud Flames to augment himself.
That got him an amused look before Hibari cocked a brow at Chikusa.
Tsuna walked over to the benches and took a seat next to Nagi, got out some water, and slowly sipped it.
"This is all … odd," she said.
He hummed. "Yeah. But… I only lasted a couple of minutes the first time, and now?" Between breaking his artificial limiters, learning to stand up for himself, and gaining his own little family of people he would gladly protect and who would protect him, his life had become immeasurably better. Helping other people was a bonus, though he could wish that others would similarly stand up and say, "No more. This isn't right. You need to stop."
"I want … to be stronger. To not always be afraid."
He nodded and took another sip. "To not be a victim," he said softly.
"To not be at someone else's mercy."
"I remember, the first time I saw an incubus, I shrieked. I was so embarrassed. Some of the shadows are just so… But no one laughed at me. Hibari-san might have rolled his eyes, though." He chuckled. "My face felt so hot, I must been blushing like crazy."
Nagi laughed nervously and nodded.
"My biggest concern, and why I'm all for these spars, is that fighting another person isn't like fighting shadows. People are far more variable, you know? That's why we started sparring more than just Hibari, because we need to be adaptable."
"Kidnappers."
"Yeah. Twice now. I wouldn't doubt there'll be more. I'm a little worried about you, too. I mean, your mother is famous, right? Or is it just that no one knows where you are, who you are."
Nagi startled.
"That's why I don't get upset over having an escort, because I know I won't be alone if someone comes after me again. Someone clearly can't keep his mouth shut." He sighed, then noticed Hibari. "Oh, it's your turn."
Nagi nodded and slowly got up. She, like Shoichi initially, looked like she was walking to her doom.
Tsuna got up and walked circles around the benches, so he did not stiffen up, but kept an eye on her spar. She was a bit timid, but he could tell Hibari was going easy on her from the outset. Nagi wouldn't learn anything if Hibari beat her down in seconds flat, after all.
And, based on the look on her face when he could see it, she realized that, too. He was absolutely thrilled when her expression showed determination.
Nagi would be fine, he decided. She would become who she could be, who she wanted to be.
Given how long the spars tended to last at that point, it meant less and less time for him to work on things like escapology. He shrugged as he took a seat again and got out another bottle of water. Once they had capped out on levels in Mementos, they would switch up their routine, leaving more time for other skills.
It was later in Mementos, as they were fleeing from the Harbinger of Doom, that he and Nagi collided and [Tsunayoshi and Nagi have achieved Harmonization] and [Nagi is now the Secondary Mist Guardian of Tsunayoshi] and [Tsunayoshi has achieved Level 72] flashed by.
Hibari grabbed him and hauled him up the stairs; Mukuro did the same for Nagi.
"Huh…" He was a little out of breath from the fleeing, the colliding, and the harmonizing. "Welcome to the family, Nagi-san. Er, the bigger family."
She produced a faint smile.
Ω
Mementos was just a bit weird that day. A bout of flu had been going around the city, but they thankfully had not caught it, having started wearing masks the second it was reported on the news, that and washing their hands frequently, or using hand sanitizers.
But the shadows, they were affected, sometimes showing up afflicted with Despair.
It was giving Tsuna ideas.
"I want to try something," he said, smacking his right fist into his open left hand. "We need to linger. But still be prepared to flee if this goes wrong."
Everyone looked at him like he was mental, but then Tetsuya gained a look of realization. "You want to see if that … thing … will fall to Despair."
"Yep."
"And if it does, it probably gives a lot of experience," Shoichi said, looking sort of gleeful.
"We will wait by the stairs," Hibari pronounced.
Everyone nodded and moved that way, so they had a handy exit should things go wrong.
When Tsuna did get the creepy-crawlies letting him know one was coming, he resisted the urge to flee, and instead stood firm. The huge, chain-wearing shadow glided in from the left and immediately honed in on them. Okay, so he was trembling, either from fear or excitement, maybe both, but so was everyone else.
The thing glided up to them and initiated battle.
Tsuna heaved a massive sigh of relief the second he saw that it was inflicted with Despair. "Yes," he hissed and did a little fist pump.
After three rounds of the thing drooping in Despair—the interface called it a Reaper—it died, gaining them 72,050 XP (which was hilariously awesome), ¥3,570, and a Divine Pillar (a look at which showed it would halve all damage taken, but the user would be unable to dodge anything).
"Huh… Not so sure if I'd want to use one of these," he said, "but I think we should milk these Reapers for everything we can get."
"Just, you know, flee if they aren't in Despair?" Ken said.
Hibari nodded sharply.
"We've never tested if another one will show up after another five minutes," Shoichi said, glancing at his watch, "since we've always fled."
"Beating one normally would only matter should anyone else join us," Chikusa said. "And I expect at least one will."
"I am kinda missing a Lightning," he muttered. "You know the funny thing? By the time I do have one, that there's someone out there who meshes the right way, not just with me, but all of us…"
"The last Path would be … useless?" Ken said with a bark of laughter.
"Yeah." He grinned.
Five minutes on another Reaper threatened him, but that one made Tsuna's gut clench in a fundamentally wrong way. "Flee!"
The party dashed up the stairs and looked at Tsuna questioningly.
"That felt wrong in … a different way. The first one was just the fear of the unknown, the fear of something so huge and scary looking. This one, though, was…" He shook his head in frustration. "I don't have words for it. Let's wait for the next one. We just need to stay by the stairs."
Of course, standing around for five minutes at a time, waiting, meant chatter started up. Tsuna kept [Intuition] going while he asked, "Has there been any noise at all about the defect?"
Shoichi shook his head, not bothering to point out that he would have warned everyone the second he knew anything. "One of the things I did was set up a … listening … program. Sort of. It's filtering all communications to and from the defect, basically looking for keywords. But I've been going over things every night, because I kinda have to learn what to look for? And I set up the filter to alert me if something does show while I'm at school."
"I take it the odds of piggybacking any security cameras in there is low," Tetsuya said.
Shoichi wrinkled his nose. "…Maybe? It depends on how sophisticated their systems are. That is a danger, not knowing what's being said rather than sent. I should look into what airport they use when they send operatives out. I'm pretty sure I could track credit card use."
"Worst case, he usually sends a postcard or calls when a visit is impending," he said, then tensed. "Uh… I think this one is okay."
It was, and it died in three rounds, giving them another massive experience boost, money, and a second Divine Pillar (that was immediately chucked into inventory).
By the time they left Mementos they were all level ninety-nine. An interesting side effect of hitting the cap was that everyone's Persona (bar Tsuna's) underwent a transformation to a higher form, resulting in much improved stats, plus a new skill for triple the evasion against their weaknesses. Not as good as null or drain or repel, but better than being knocked ass over teakettle every time.
Ω
Hibari sent out a text at lunch to Shoichi and Nagi, informing them that after school they were to come to Namimori Middle. Tsuna knew that because of one of those looks his senpai had sent him. So it was that they waited for the two (Shoichi arrived faster, because Yumei was within easy walking distance), then proceeded to the Hibari mansion.
Once in the workroom and set with tea he said, "So this week will be a little odd, because we maxed out on a Sunday. New schedule is Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in Mementos, for exercise and any requests, with other days here for sparring, strength training, and other outside skills. Sundays are outside things, possibly just plain normal time, like going to see a movie in a theatre, whatever. Speaking of outside things, where is the—"
The subject of his inquiry pounced a little unsteadily into the workshop on dainty paws, with a tail raised high and curved at the tip.
"—kitten," he finished lamely, then reached out his hand to the little floof.
The kitten trotted on over and sniffed at his fingers, then got onto his legs so it could start making biscuits, which only meant he might have to purchase a spare set of uniform trousers after those needle claws made holes in the fabric. The fact that he was kneeling and it was at a very odd angle did not seem to bother the small animal.
"And if I was lying down it'd be my stomach, so you could check for weakness, right?" he muttered as he looked down at it. 'Well, so long as the little thing has a place of safety.'
A quick look at Hibari had him saying, "Sparring only today, as soon as we've finished our tea."
Ω
He and Nagi bonded over that kitten. He didn't even care that he ended up with far too many scratches from playing with it, plus cat hairs all over his clothing, and neither did she. They were both just suckers for a cute ball of fluff. As the weeks went by, the kitten slowly grew, and before he knew it the school year had ended.
It was on a Wednesday, as they headed toward the shrine, that Tsuna stopped dead again, his family noticing a heartbeat later and turning back warily.
He cocked his head to the side, listening to that nebulous sense, then looked north, toward the shopping district. "There's … something. Not bad. This way," he said, then took the lead. His intuition led them to the shopping district itself, and as he approached La Namimorine he saw what he was after, sitting at an outside table.
And the subject of his search saw him.
Tsuna raised his hand in a "wait" gesture, then turned back to his family. "I need to talk to him. Alone."
Hibari scowled and shot the man in question a dark look.
"I know, I know. I'll explain after we get to our usual place. Just give me a couple of minutes," he said and, when everyone unhappily nodded, he turned back and walked forward.
The man, no longer wearing glasses as he had been before, tracked his movements and tilted his head in invitation, so Tsuna sat down.
"No names," he said. "I could have easily found out, but I didn't, out of respect. Is this a coincidence, that you're here?"
His companion—or Joker—said, "No names. I moved after those events. Where I am now… Let's just say rumors fly." He briefly flashed his phone, showing the website Tetsuya and Shoichi had worked on. "I just wanted to know if you were all right."
He nodded. "That group… They couldn't help, but … I felt … compelled?" He shrugged. "I followed you, and I got sucked in."
Joker grimaced, looking away for a second.
"It was scary. I had to fight twice, because that group was already—had already gone deeper. I … awoke. When I got home from that trip I went looking. That group couldn't help me, but I can help myself, once the opportunity presents itself. I am all right. I hope you are, too."
Joker nodded. "I am. That group is. I won't be staying, I just… I'm sorry."
Tsuna shook his head. "I'm glad I met you. I'm gonna go now, before my friends start to get too antsy."
Joker nodded again, his brow crinkled. "Stay safe."
He got up and flashed a small smile. "Safe as I can be," he said, then walked back to his friends. "Let's go," he said, not at all surprised when felt Hibari walking right behind him like a shield.
It wasn't until they were inside Mementos that he answered the burning question on everyone's minds. "That was the guy my intuition originally led me to, in Tokyo. I told him no names. I pointed out I could have figured out who all of them were, but I chose not to. Anyway, he heard rumors or something. He found our website, tracked rumors or news to here."
"Why?" Hibari said.
"He wanted to know if I was all right. He also seemed upset that I can do this, that I got sucked in. He apologized, though I'm not sure if that's for this," he said, waving a hand around, "or that he couldn't help me in the beginning. He said he wasn't sticking around. I figure he's about to start university, but I'm not going to try to figure out where or how close he might be that he learned."
"No, no," Shoichi said. "We don't have any reason to. He's not an enemy. If all he really wanted was to see that you were okay…"
"And my intuition didn't, uh, dislike him." He grimaced, because sometimes there just didn't seem to be words for what he feeling or sensing. "I mean, he might not have made the connection between me talking to him and what's going on here, but I figure, the second he laid eyes on me here…"
Tetsuya nodded. "We have requests to do, so let's get moving."
Ω
Aside from another kidnapping attempt (and another bitten-to-death person being hauled off to "the mountain"), the school year had been going fairly smoothly. They trained daily, with the odd Sunday given over to less practical activities. The kitten steadily grew up toward being a cat, and prowled around the Hibari mansion like it owned the place (Tsuna still didn't know if it was a boy or a girl, nor had it been given a name), and seemed to quite like Tsuna (he wondered if his flames had anything to do with that.)
Sadly, it meant that Hibari, Tetsuya, and Shoichi would be moving up to high school when the new school year began. Tsuna thought, had the trio not been placed in his year, he might have gone mental at being alone. It also meant he would be unable, for that year, to surprise Hibari with his favorite meal at lunch, or be surprised by Hibari.
It would—well. Shoichi and Nagi were alone in their schools, which was awful.
They were only a few days into the first week of their three week break between first and second terms when Shoichi showed up for their outside afternoon with a worried look on his face.
Tsuna's heart sank when he saw it.
"Yeah, uh… I'm getting noise about a visit. The defect."
Tsuna got up from his cushion and went to sit next to Hibari at the window, unable to keep himself from wringing his hands together. He felt comforted when his senpai placed a hand on his shoulder. "S-So, an opportunity."
"Yes," Mukuro said. "A ripe one. But… When or how would we deliver a calling card? And we need to start brainstorming keywords now, before he even arrives."
"And you need to tell your mother you've been invited on a trip or something," Chikusa said, "before she even gets word he's coming."
He laughed, though it sounded flat. "Yeah. I'm a little too afraid I'll punch him in the face. How long of a visit? Do you even know?"
"A week, if what I'm seeing is accurate. Basically, the week prior to term starting."
"So we need to invent this trip quickly. For me, I mean. Maybe even go so far as to get tickets and ride a train somewhere, then quietly return." Information flowed into him via Hibari's hand. He nodded and said, "Okay, so, I'll be going on a trip with Hibari-san and his parents, to Sendai. We can buy tickets for the San-yo line, get off at the next town or city over, and come back. We just need to not be seen returning."
"So either me or Nagi needs to go along," Mukuro said with a nod.
"And I need to be able to tell her I'm going without actually giving any information," he said. "If they don't know where I supposedly am… Or we're meeting Hibari-san's parents in Sendai, whichever. Low-key reveal, so there's no real reason for my mother to ask questions or get details. Hopefully no reason for her to tell the defect I won't even be around—that he'll be aware of. No Mementos trips during that, because we'll be in the Palace anyway."
"Okay, so, potential keywords," Tetsuya said, then grimaced.
"I really think he's sees his … life … with my mother as some kind of delusional faery tale."
"Cottage."
"Castle."
"Palace."
"Mansion."
Shoichi was busy writing down the suggestions, while Tsuna was trying to wrack his brain for what sort of fantasy the defect had in his head, because that would be reflected in what the Palace actually looked like, in some way. Was he a king with a queen and a prince? Was he an adventurer and they'd end up in some ancient tomb? Or would it be a construction site, because that was the "reality" the man presented when he was with his wife?
In hindsight Nezu's Palace had made a vague kind of sense, but only if he looked on it with the term "rat race" in mind.
It might be something to do with CEDEF, because the defect was the boss there, with many minions at his command. The building itself might look innocuous on the outside, or even inside above ground, but there might be levels underneath.
The defect's reality was one thing. It was a question of which reality would be in play when he was in Namimori, whether he compartmentalized his separate lives.
Shoichi was nodding and writing things down, which made Tsuna realize he had spoken some of that out loud. Or had Mukuro or Nagi ghosted his brain and said it for him?
Those two gave him innocent smiles.
He huffed. "Right. When? Uh… I really kinda want him to see the calling card after he's left, but… That'd mean, what, sneaking stuff into his suitcase? Or…"
"So he sees the cards while he's on the plane back? In either of those cases, we'd never be certain he saw them."
"And it's not like we can paper his office in Italy with them, even if we could hijack any security cameras there."
"Maybe if I leaned real hard on my intuition I'd be able to tell that he's read one?"
"Hopefully. Because I don't think I can hijack a phone camera mid-flight."
"In theory, though, we could fake a—does your mother even know how to send a text message?"
Tsuna shrugged helplessly.
"Why don't we also work out the wording for the cards?" Nagi said. "There's no reason not to. If we have it done ahead of time, it's one less thing to worry about."
Tsuna laughed mirthlessly. "Gluttony. One of the things that always stuck out was his gluttony."
Tetsuya fiddled with his phone for a moment, then said, " 'Excess in eating or drinking; greedy or excessive indulgence'. I'd say it fits well enough."
Ω
That evening, during his time with his mother cooking dinner, he offhandedly mentioned that he had been invited to go on a trip during break, with his friend. He was counting on her being distracted by two things. One, that they were in the middle of cooking dinner. Two, that the magic word "friend" was mentioned. That "parents" were also mentioned probably counted for a third.
His mother seemed thrilled that he would be having a little adventure, but not so excited that he was worried she would talk to her husband about it. It really was kind of pathetic that he was using her gullibility and airheadedness against her, but he couldn't just vanish for two weeks with no word and expect her to just blank on the whole episode.
That might work with her never seeming to quite register how long the defect had been away, but he had no idea if it would work for him, and he didn't want to slide too that far down that slope. He was already toeing the line in a way that made him unsettled. He also did not think he could say anything against her husband.
That man had tormented him under the guise of playing so many times, gotten him blackout drunk so many times, and not once had she ever done anything other than fail to see, probably because facing reality would shatter her romantic dream.
Best case scenario was her not saying anything until the defect questioned where his "little tuna-fish" was, and then barely remembering the details.
Dinner sat heavily in his stomach, but he gave a fake smile before heading upstairs to take a shower and soak for a while. It helped, but only so much, so when he got to his room he grabbed his laptop and put in more work on Italian.
When Saturday rolled around, he was packed for two weeks. Breakfast with his mother was quiet. She noted the suitcase, but just nodded to herself. He escaped the house not long after, Hibari and Mukuro having come as escorts, and they all made for the train station, to take a deceptive trip. The suitcase was chucked into inventory at the first opportunity, and Mukuro had morphed his appearance into someone else entirely and followed at a distance so as to separate them in the minds of anyone paying attention.
The ride itself was pleasant but boring, and when they got off at the next stop, it was time for disguises for Tsuna and Hibari, and a new one for Mukuro. Then they got on a train headed straight back to Namimori, that time sitting together, and went to the Hibari mansion.
His suitcase was dropped off in his room, then he joined the others in the workroom. "You know, Mists can bend reality. Can you two figure out a way to bend it so far we can teleport or portal using Mist?"
Mukuro and Nagi exchanged a look that just brimmed with silent communication. "We'll see what we can figure out," Mukuro said.
"We have a week before the defect arrives."
"We've already stocked up on food," Nagi said. "But it's just you and Hibari-san who can't be seen in town, so getting more once the fresh goods run out isn't an issue."
A part of Tsuna was jumping up and down in excitement. Two weeks living in the same house with Hibari, and most of his family. He didn't even care that three people in the room were ghosting his brain and knew it. But that was countered by the impending visit by the defect, which both deeply sucked, and was the opportunity he had been waiting for since he was just shy of eleven. Three years of waiting, of preparing.
If the plan worked, he would break his mother's heart, for exposing the lie of their perfect fantasy marriage. He would have to bear that guilt for the rest of his life, just like he already bore the anger at her for never seeing, for living in a delusion.
He ran both hands over his face and just breathed.
Tsuna was more than a little surprised when Hibari laid a hand on his shoulder and steered him out of the room, off to the family wing of the house, into a communal room on the sleeping level, and onto a sofa.
Hibari sat down next to him. "Omnivore. You are allowed to be angry. You have every reason to be."
"…A part of me wants to hate her." She never saw. Because Tsuna was just clumsy. Tsuna roughhoused with other boys a little too hard. Tsuna was just lazy and not trying hard enough. Because Tsuna must secretly love "playing" with his papa, and the "magic water" was just water and Tsuna was just so tuckered out after play time that he fell asleep. That he was—
His mind went blank when Hibari wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him closer.
"A part of me wants her to hurt like I've been hurting. But then I wonder, if he did something to her. Or if he chose her precisely because she's like this. Doesn't change how I feel, though." He shifted a little and leaned, letting his head rest against Hibari's shoulder. It wasn't a hug, but it was sort of there. "I kind of like that you can ghost my brain. It means you see me."
"I will always see you."
Ω
The week itself was spent on various forms of exercise, partly to keep in shape, and partly to keep their minds off the impending visit. Tsuna got in plenty of cooking time, because Tetsuya wasn't there 24/7. And if Tsuna made hamburger steak at least twice, well, no one called him on it.
Shoichi was practically glued to his laptop anytime he wasn't actively participating in some kind of exercise, waiting for the moment when the defect got on a plane. Whether that would be a private jet or commercial was in doubt. One would expect a man trying to be subtle would do things in a roundabout way, but even flying commercial might raise questions in the minds of those not allied or affiliated with Vongola.
Coming from as far as Italy they were expecting at least one stopover, if not two. The only important one was when he was actually in the country. The defect landed in Japan on the evening of the third of January, and spent the night in a hideously expensive hotel. The next morning he started his journey to Namimori, in a suspiciously plain car.
Breakfast in the Hibari mansion was quiet. Tsuna was on edge, simultaneously wanting to hide under the covers and get the hell on with things, because he was scared to see what was in the defect's mind and impatient to get that man out of their lives.
(Or, as much as he could be considering there was the distinct possibility of Tsuna being tapped as the tenth don of a potentially incompetent famiglia.)
They sparred in the morning, to work off excess energy, then had lunch, gathering in the workroom afterward.
Tsuna opened the interface and entered the first two keywords, then started plugging in the options they had brainstormed. He heard a lot of—
"No candidates found."
—during that, and finally got a hit on the rather ambiguous "retreat".
"Beginning navigation."
Tsuna blinked in sheer disbelief once the world had righted itself. He was standing inside his own home. Then he looked around suspiciously because it seemed too perfect and yet too wrong at the same time. "What the…? Something is just not right here."
And, as he was the only one intimately familiar with the interior of the house (that he knew of), it was up to him to figure out that pervading sense of wrongness. Everywhere he looked the house was like a fantasy ideal of a home. Things sparkled (but not in the "punch it for vendor trash" way) or gleamed, and everything was like a sanitized nightmare.
The inner corners of the walls were too perfect, the walls themselves were flawless, the outer corners so sharp and straight he was afraid he could cut himself open if he touched one.
His mother's bedroom (he couldn't rightfully call it his parents') was vaguely interesting in the same "something is just off" way, but nothing stood out beyond that.
It was the bathroom that did.
No one else could really see it, not what he did. Aside from the idealized everything, the tub was just wrong. He only noticed it after he removed the wooden cover. "The drain is wrong, in the tub," he said.
Ken carefully bent over the edge and reached down, half-in, half-out, and hooked his fingers around the stopper. As he pulled, it lifted, far more than should be possible, to the point where he was standing again and a spiral staircase had appeared, made from the same chromed metal.
"So we're gonna go down a staircase that leads to who knows what, in a way that's impossible. Right," Ken said.
Hibari went first, lightly hopping over the edge of the tub, and heading downward. Mukuro went next, then Ken. Tsuna followed, then the rest of their family. When he hit the bottom he was greeted with the sight of a long hallway.
The walls were painted a dull blue above waist-high white tiles. The floor was composed of more white tiles. Overhead were shallow metal cones with non-frosted bulbs, shining down pools of dim light.
"What the fuck is this?" Ken breathed out.
"It looks like an institution," Chikusa said.
The hallway was long and foreboding. There were no places to hide, and their footsteps as they started down its length oddly echoing for all that they made no sound. The intersection up ahead was a four-way and the map was no help, only showing what they could see.
"Left," he said, because that's how they rolled.
There was a door to the left once they turned and walked a short distance. Hibari opened it and glanced inside, then entered. A safe room. It had a sofa along one wall, a desk, office chair, filing cabinets, the odd pot plant, and a visitor chair.
Not enough for all of them to sit, on seats, anyway.
The bookcases were filled with fake books, the titles blurred and smudged beyond reading. Nagi rifled through the desk drawers as Tetsuya took the filing cabinets. There was nothing in them. It was Ken sitting in the office chair that meant something, as they could hear a crinkling noise when he did. Ken hopped back up and pulled the cushion up, revealing a map.
Shoichi scowled. "Great. This place is massive. So many rooms."
"At least the hallway to room ratio is a little more sane," he joked.
The map showed that there were at least two levels, downward rather than upward. But, for what appeared to be a secret facility under a too-perfect representation of "home", that only made sense.
"All right." He glanced at Hibari, who nodded, then said, "Same as before."
The piled back out and turned left, and continued down the hallway. The next room on the left led to what looked like an infirmary, with shadows on the beds that jumped up when they got to close and had to be beaten.
It was only once the room was cleared that Nagi said, "Why is there an infirmary?"
"This is like … his other life hidden under the façade of normalcy," Chikusa said.
The hallway cornered again. On the right were several rooms that could only be entered from there, so they headed into the first. It looked like an operating theatre. High up on the back wall was a large window, like a viewing room.
The room next door, accessed from the hallway and the operating theatre, was a monitoring room by the looks of it. It also had a staircase leading up to the viewing room.
"Why are we seeing barely any shadows?" Mukuro muttered.
The hall cornered again. The map showed a series of smaller rooms, on both sides of the hallway. In the first—
Tsuna's stomach heaved. There was a shadow there, but it looked closer to a real person than not. It laid atop a bier, the wounds causing its "death" quite clear. An engraved plaque on the side of the bier held a name none of them were familiar with.
All the rooms off that hallway held biers, corpses, and name plaques, all with similar but not exact fatal wounds.
"Are these … enemies he's killed?" he wondered out loud. "Like trophies?"
It was not until they got beyond those rooms—or rather, backtracked due to a dead end—that they started to see shadows regularly. They were dressed mostly like normal people, and they bustled about with a sense of purpose. None of that stopped Tsuna's little family from ambushing every last one of them and defeating the resulting creatures.
Down the central spine were a number of rooms with those bustling shadows, offices with one, two, or even three desks in them. Some had banks of monitors on the walls, though the images on them were always too fuzzy to make out.
Shoichi, Nagi, and Ken rifled through all the desks, chucking various things into inventory.
The hallway split in a T formation, with a door at the center. It, however, refused to open. Shoichi fiddled with the control panel to the right and said, "It's been sabotaged. Thankfully, I've been finding stuff that'll let me fix this."
While Shoichi did that they split their attention, keeping an eye on all three sides. The door swished open and they all piled in after Shoichi, then immediately zipped to concealment spots. The facing wall had its own door, but the wall itself was glass.
Tsuna carefully peered through the leaves of the pot plant he was behind to see a representation of the defect, seemingly in a meeting with two operatives. One, to his surprise, looked the same size as Fon. She was just as tiny, perched on the back of a chair. The man was average, as viewed from an angle.
"I don't care!" the defect said. "We need another check on the bastard, and on the Varia. Those fuckers would do anything to free him if they could figure out where he was."
Tsuna exchanged looks with his family, who all looked just as clueless.
"Xanxus is on ice, boss. He's not getting out of that," the man said. "I agree that the Varia won't stop, though."
"You have your orders," the defect said. "Dismissed."
Everyone stopped breathing as the door opened and the two subordinates walked out, then exited into the hallway. The defect disappeared through a side door moments later.
"Xanxus is the fourth son," Shoichi said quietly. "What the hell happened to him, then? I'll have to do more digging."
"I'm about to say the most random thing ever," he said, "but how the hell are we even able to bring things out of the unconscious mind? Physical things?"
Everyone blinked in confusion.
Everything else on that floor was bizarrely not interesting, with the sole exception of a large armory brimming with weaponry. They all helped themselves to upgrades, even though it was puzzling and suspicious that all of them were covered.
Down the right-most hallway, around a corner, and past a series of rooms that were so office-like and bureaucratic it was almost nap-inducing (something that made Tsuna shiver in dismay, because he might end up sitting behind a desk dealing with stacks of paperwork) was a stairwell leading down.
Just to the left at the bottom was a door that led into another safe room, which they all happily piled into. That, at least, had plenty of seating, along with a water cooler, stacks of paper cups, and a fish tank.
"This is plenty fucked up," Ken said as he started filling cups and handing them out.
Tsuna accepted two and took a seat next to Hibari, giving him the other. "I'm kind of hung up on those bodies," he said, then sipped. "How many more must there be, that weren't his kills? I thought intelligence gathering was supposed to be subtle, but…"
"They might have been enemies of Vongola and he happened to be in place to fight against them," Nagi said. "To have them displayed like trophies, though, is just wrong."
"And says nasty things about the guy's mind," Tetsuya said.
A quick glance at the map showed there was another staircase leading downward, clear on the other side of the level. He sighed quietly and said, "Vote? Keep going, or break for the day. We have no idea how many levels, and we need to be at the treasure the day before he leaves."
"The first Palace was three levels," Tetsuya said. "The second one, well… Two mazes and the boss arena."
"Yeah, but Nezu was totally lame," Ken said with a sneer.
"This is at least three levels going by the map."
"We need to be ready to place the cards for his departure on the ninth, so four days if we don't count that one."
"And we got through an entire level this time already."
Hibari's contribution was, "Hn."
"…What I'm hearing is we should get through this level and down, to see if there's yet another level," he said.
No one disagreed, so after Hibari reset their "save point", they shuffled out of the safe room. Half a dozen steps down the hall toward the T-intersection and they were greeted by a laser grid out of nowhere. Which, incidentally, suddenly showed up on the map.
Tsuna took another look at it and frowned, looked at the lasers, then pull some vendor trash out of inventory and chucked it through. Instead of being sliced and diced, an alarm went off, and the sound of tramping was heard. Another look at the map showed a bunch of red dots closing in from the east.
"Right," he said, then pushed forward.
A group of guard-type shadows tramped down the hallway and engaged, each politely waiting their turn to have the stuffing kicked out of them. Sadly, there was a bulkhead with orange-glowing lines to their left, so they went right, though what was probably an open bulkhead. To their immediate left was another bulkhead, that one with blue-glowing lines, and just ahead was yet another bulkhead, that one with purple-glowing lines.
That left a door to the right, which they went through and, after wailing the tar out of the scientist-type shadows in there, investigated.
"This terminal here will let me fiddle with the bulkheads," Shoichi reported, then started tapping away. "Unfortunately, it's an either-or situation. I can affect only one colour at a time."
"Kami-sama," he muttered. "If we stick to our usual, I vote orange. Except… the open bulkhead we passed through may drop and negate that choice."
"The stairs are way over on the left, so maybe we do right this time? So purple."
The entire floor was like that. Laser grids that popped in or out with no warning which, if tripped, summoned a squad of oddly-polite-in-the-sense-of-waiting-their-turn guard shadows (the alarm stopped automatically each time after thirty seconds), bulkheads galore, rooms with switching terminals, and the odd room with loot in it.
When they made it to the staircase they were all irritated and a bit tired, so it was good that there was a safe room just off the bottom. Once it was set as their current "save point" Hibari then warped them so they could exit from the Palace.
"Any preferences for dinner?" Tetsuya asked, which sparked a number of suggestions.
Tsuna left the workroom when Tetsuya did, to help make fried gyōza along with rice, pickles, and miso soup.
"So that was all kinds of messed up," Ken said.
Shoichi was already tapping away at his laptop.
"Trying to figure out the Xanxus and Varia thing?" Mukuro asked.
Shoichi nodded, eyes never leaving the screen.
"If the brothers do meet a bad end," Nagi said, "you would be next in line. But this Xanxus person… If he were to get free…"
"Yeah," he said uneasily. "They said 'on ice'. Like…?"
"Like your [Zero Point Breakthrough], you mean."
"Yeah," he repeated. "If he's literally been frozen, and is freed. Well, I for one imagine he'd be seriously hacked off about it. Not that we have any idea why it would have happened."
"For something like that? Maybe he tried to demand to take over as the tenth don?"
"I'd suggest we have Tsuna-kun freeze a living something with [Zero Point Breakthrough] and then try to reverse it, but…"
"Yeah, that's going a bit far. Because animals don't deserve to be experimented on. So unless it was a person of irredeemable nature, I can't see trying it. And even then, we've been dealing with them in the Palaces."
"I don't even know how to describe what I'm doing aside from hitting the flash point between positive and negative. That doesn't really leave a clue as to how to reverse it, because the only thing I can think of is the opposite of that point, and now we're talking 4D space or something?"
Shoichi winced and shook his head. "Right, let's drop that idea."
"And I can't see us mounting a rescue mission for someone we don't know what he looks like, where he's kept, or even what he did to get iced," Chikusa said. "In Italy, presumably."
It was a consideration, though. If he ever used that attack on a person, what would he do with the results? Use it as some kind of messed up decoration? Which, really, made him think of Shadow Iemitsu's sickening corpse trophies.
"Tomorrow we can clear level three, and see if level four is it."
"So far I've found that Xanxus is the youngest son of four, and that he was…" Shoichi trailed off, his expression troubled. "He's illegitimate, apparently."
Tsuna winced. That sort of thing did not go down well, certainly not in Japan. Apparently not in Italy, either. Which, stupid, because that would be like the child in question had any choice in being born to an unmarried coupling, and worse because it was almost always the woman who was blamed, because sexism was a thing and the patriarchy was still too powerful.
Nagi, Shoichi, and Tetsuya elected to stay the night at the mansion, so when bedtime rolled around the majority of his family headed up to the guest wing, while he and Hibari headed to the other wing. Outside his door he paused, turning back to face his senpai, then moved forward and wrapped his arms around the older boy.
He didn't care if he was going to be bitten to death for this, he wanted his hug, damn it. He was utterly delighted when Hibari's arms came up to wrap around him in a return hug, and he leeched all the reassurance he could out of it.
Hibari was warm and solid and steadying, a rock of slightly-skewed sanity in a world where weird piled atop weird and there were crocodile-filled pits in the defect's psyche for all he knew, or howler moneys and bulls because what better way to baffle or distract someone than to throw actual bull shit at them.
(He really hoped that wasn't the case, because ew.)
He had his hug at last, brave enough to take it, and the steady heartbeat under his ear was comforting and made the connection between them feel stronger than ever.
When he finally laid down to sleep he thought perhaps his next goal was to dare to drop a kiss on Hibari's cheek, because he was slowly coming around to the realization that he was seriously in like with his senpai, possibly even love.