thrown

Ken and Chikusa fall into full shift mode, stepping in front of Mukuro protectively. Chrome takes up a stance, her hand slipping into the pocket of her uniform to pull out a plastic box. It's portioned into smaller containers with different seed types inside. She can't do much as a tree nymph, isolated to growing plants, but she can cause a distraction if need be.

The Varia calmly step through the portal and blur with their speed. Ken and Chikusa see it coming but their bodies just can't move fast enough to defend and they're suddenly pinned to the ground, a wolf Ken snapping and snarling at Fran, Squalo and Belphegor.

Chikusa hisses and coils tight, struggling to injure himself so he can use a vampire's strongest power. Lussuria and Levi keep a careful hold on the creature, Lussuria taking extra precaution to push healing energy into the man so he doesn't get a single cut and that dangerous blood doesn't spill.

Mukuro staggers to his feet, shoving Chrome behind him, and glares at the Varia leader as a trident forms in his hands.

Xanxus walks right up to Mukuro and sneers down at him. "You must be the Vongola."

"I was never Vongola," Mukuro corrects fearlessly, though his hands grip his trident tightly and the very air grows heavier. "My brother was always too wary to trust me."

"He was right to be," Squalo mutters.

"And you?" Mukuro hums lightly, eyes locking onto the fallen. "Are you smart enough to fear?"

"No," Fran admits willingly.

Xanxus' arm disappears from his side and reappears pointing a gun straight at Fran's head. There's a starburst of violent orange and the fallen Guardian is thrown back, his face unrecognisable from the hole going straight through his head and the trauma to the still connected flesh. The body hits the ground and doesn't move.

Mukuro tightens his death grip on the trident and feels the energy inside him swirling madly, coiled and ready to obliterate. He may be exhausted but he has more than enough to take care of a few Varia, the pathetic fallen who don't even care to better themselves, just lazing around in Hell.

"I'm here to give you the whole 'welcome' speech," Xanxus says, holstering his gun. "As a fallen, you automatically belong to me. Therefore, if you come to Hell you'll be taught the basics and I won't get shit for one of mine being a weak little brat. It's a win-win situation."

"You just shot your Guardian, and you think I'll take that offer?" Mukuro sounds out slowly as if talking to a child.

"It's fine, he heals," Xanxus waves off the very real concern of the fallen Alpha just killing his subordinates.

"He's dead," Mukuro deadpans. "You blew his head off."

"He has Hydra blood," Xanxus argues. "The trash doesn't die unless his heart is destroyed."

Fran sits up then, his head healed and sitting right next to a new one.

"Oh my," Chrome murmurs.

"Yeah, you have no idea," Lussuria mumbles in the back and then gets elbowed by Squalo.

"My question still stands," Mukuro says. "Why do you think I'll take your offer?"

"I can protect you," Xanxus shrugs. "At least until you're able to stand on your own."

Mukuro can't help but laugh. "Protect me? You have no idea what I'm capable of."

"That goes for you too," Xanxus sates. "You're a clever one, I'll give you that," he willingly admits. "You probably have things I've never seen before, but the fact is that I have experience where you have barely any knowledge on what makes a fallen a fallen."

"I've had nothing to do but experiment for half a century-" Mukuro begins.

Xanxus barks out a laugh. "Fifty years?" he parrots in amusement. "You say that like it means anything."

The fallen Alpha advances, and while Ken and Chikusa struggle harder and Mukuro backs up completely until he was crowding Chrome against the wall, Xanxus doesn't stop until he's centimetres from Mukuro.

"I'm rather lazy," Xanxus says. "And maybe I haven't taught these fallen trash as much as I should have, but I honestly have no idea why people keep forgetting who I am."

"I know who you are," Mukuro snaps. "The Alpha fallen, we all know."

Xanxus smirks. "The first fallen," he corrects. "The Alpha part comes later."

As Mukuro watches, the man in front of him gains dark red cracks and lines in his tan skin, the scars growing wider and pulsing with heat and power as they take over Xanxus' body and unlock his real power levels.

Mukuro can barely breathe and he can see that the others are having trouble as well.

Xanxus reaches up and runs long, calloused fingers against his own cheek, tracing the raised edge of one scar. "It was my father," he says conversationally. "You have a neat eye but I was a bit messy. I just kept tearing into the fucker because it tasted so good."

Mukuro swallows thickly because he knows how delicious the flesh tastes, how ripe with power it is. The extra energy from the angelic flesh you consume is what gives a fallen their boost in power. Not all of it, but it contributes a lot depending on how strong the family member is.

"Do you know who my father was?" Xanxus asks idly. "I'm curious if the whispers have reached the younger generations or if the information was erased by the Alpha angel in my time."

Mukuro can only shake his head, the pressure too heavy to speak.

Xanxus huffs in laughter and leans closer, whispering into Mukuro's ear before he pulls back, his scars closing until unblemished skin remains, sealing away the dangerous and tempting power.

Mukuro stares in shock and a whole lot of denial.

God, little fallen, was the righteous fucker that I ate.

"I'll give you time to think over the offer again," Xanxus allows. "Oh, and if you see the Hibari boy, tell him that he's mine, would you?" Xanxus states calmly.

"Yours, is he?" Mukuro chuckles, a bit hysterical from the information just shoved onto him. "And how is that going for you?"

Xanxus huffs out a laugh. "The hunt is the best part. Now, shouldn't you be running?"

"From you?" Mukuro wonders idly. "I don't think you're very scary, no offence."

That is a blatant fucking lie and Mukuro knows Xanxus can tell.

Xanxus simply turns and strides away, opening a portal. Before he steps through he turns back to Mukuro and smirks. "If you have second thoughts, I'll be happy to rescue you from the Vongola. In the meantime, think of this as a welcoming present."

Mukuro freezes, only just picking up on the fast moving angelic energy. The flood of Mukuro's power beforehand has also called Daemon.

That's the only thing he registers before a streak of red leaps from Xanxus' fingers and slams into Mukuro's chest. He doubles over with a cry of pain, dropping his trident as his eye burns like lava was being poured into his skull.

The Varia leave, Ken and Chikusa scrambling over to Mukuro as soon as they're released, but that's a vague thing to take note of. The pain fills him agonisingly slowly, lazily drip-drip-dripping to the pit of his stomach where it sloshes and burns him from the inside. He can feel the other three trying to ask him what's wrong and if they can do anything.

Chrome drops a seed and the plant shoots up rapidly under her command, single flower bud opening to show dark blue pollen. "Mukuro, please, can you bite into this?" she tries, snatching the general poison cure and holding it out to him.

Mukuro sucks in a desperate gasp when it feels like something inside him snaps and all of that viscous, burning pain explodes inside him, turning to Mukuro's usual cold, gently swirling power. He's bloated with the energy, delirious with it.

He jerks up right and the three leap backwards in shock.

"Okay," he chirps with a wide smile, trident reforming in one hand. "Note to self, never share raw power with the Alpha fallen ever again."

"Are you okay-" Chikusa tries.

Mukuro tears open a portal as answer, shoving them all inside before letting it snap closed against three horrified faces. He then takes a gate to somewhere else, somewhere with wide hills of sand. He not quite sure where, but the life forms he senses are insects and the odd lizard.

He sends out a burst of his unique power, the energy radiating like mist as it covers the desert he stands in, calling Daemon's attention away from the others and directly towards Mukuro.

It's a short wait as a painfully bright portal opens and Daemon steps through.

"Brother!" Mukuro calls out, spreading his arms wide as if asking for a hug. "My, I haven't seen you since that time I gouged out your eye and swallowed it whole!"

Laugher bubbles out of Mukuro, and he acknowledges that maybe he isn't in the right mind to be having this conversation, but the absolutely ridiculous amount of power inside him says that Mukuro can do whatever the fuck he wants because no one can stop him.

"What's happened to you?" Daemon asks, stepping forward. "This isn't like you."

"Isn't it?" Mukuro hums. "And how exactly would you know what I'm like, dearest, loveliest brother? In fact the longest consecutive time we've spent together is when you cast me into Eden and lectured me as my wings were slowly ripped to shreds."

"If you didn't struggle so much, it wouldn't have hurt," Daemon says. "Take it from someone who knows."

"You don't know anything," Mukuro snaps, the glee at being so powerful disappearing under the hatred. "You pretend you fucking care but you never have."

"I care," Daemon says quietly. "I always have, it's just so hard to talk to you when you're on Earth with that leech and mutt-"

"Don't talk about them like that, you racist asshole!" Mukuro snarls.

Sand whips up in a large radius around Mukuro, spiralling upwards into a tornado before diving back down and charging straight for Daemon.

The angel scowls and a small portal opens at his shoulders, the golden light forming massive wings of deep indigo. The portal blinks out of existence and seconds before the drill of sand reaches, Daemon shoots directly upwards, his wings beating against the air.

Mukuro simply jumps straight up, wings of leather and scales tearing out of his back as he goes. Scales streak across his skin and his next snarl brings flame to life. For all intents and purposes, Mukuro is a dragon, which should be impossible.

There should be no way that Mukuro can access the abilities of another race. Water can't be fire.

But realistically, fallen shouldn't exist either. Their bodies are unnatural and their powers freakish. They're in a permanent transition state from angel to demon, two races that are as different as they can be.

Based on that little fact, Mukuro has experimented and has been able to 'transition' into different races as well, slipping around the line of what should be impossible, taking it as more of a suggestion than a universal law.

Water can't be fire, but it can be hot enough to burn.

He's always been the creative sort, one step ahead of everyone else despite the library being locked to him and even when he was denied a mentor. Mukuro doesn't need anyone, never has, so that time locked away was just an uninterrupted research break.

Is fifty years nothing to you, Alpha fallen? Well what do you think I can do in your life span?

"Just tell me what's wrong!" Daemon shouts over the loud, churning sands below.

"Tell you?" Mukuro screams. "The last time I told you, I was shoved into Eden! But no, that was just good brotherly behaviour, wasn't it? Nothing is ever your fault, huh?"

Fire dances over his skin and explodes in a shockwave, catching the edge of Daemon's wings. The man hisses in pain and the very sunlight is pulled to replace the burnt feathers. The fire that drips to Earth is so hot and so potent the sand turns to glass, spiked and warped from the winds that mould it.

"Mukuro, just listen!" Daemon barks in irritation.

"Do you ever listen?" Mukuro laughs, wings furling around him as the sands rise once more. "Have you ever listened to me? Or to the angels that thought me better off dead? Have you heard of how many tried to kill me even before I became a fallen?"

Daemon snarls at the sand that cuts into him and throws out his arms, the grains dropping to the ground like lead weights and impacting so hard a circular crater forms.

"No, I didn't know because you don't tell me shit, Mukuro!" Daemon roars back. "Am I supposed to read it from your mind?"

"Don't fuck around!" Mukuro hisses. "I told you that they tried to cut off my wings!"

"They were playing, they were only a few centuries old," Daemon dismisses.

Mukuro lets out a wordless scream of rage. Daemon whirls out of the way as Mukuro charges and instead conjures fire. Not dragon flame like Mukuro but proper holy fire, able to not only kill a demon but make sure it stays dead instead of escaping to another dimension and healing there. He throws it like a spear and it strikes Mukuro's chest dead on, washing over the man.

Mukuro cries out in pain but it's fake and mocking and Mukuro can't hold it for more than a few seconds. It turns to derisive laughter. The attack would have done serious damage to a fallen, but right now Mukuro isn't one.

"Oh, is that all you have, brother?" Mukuro hums, barely seen past the roaring flames he's engulfed in. "I'm truly quite disappointed."

The fire presses into him and ripples outwards, growing exponentially as Mukuro uses dragon travel to teleport behind Daemon. The man expects it though and drops like a stone before arcing upwards in a curve, heading straight for the sun.

Mukuro flinches away from the light but follows nonetheless.

"Fine! Fine, let's get to the main issue here. You expected me to let you die," Daemon snaps back. "For a nymph you've known for barely half a century at that point," he scoffs. "You were going to face off against the Fey, Mukuro, and I should have just stood there and watched you die?"

"Yes!" Mukuro roars. "Yes, you fucking should have!"

He puts on a burst of speed and they clash in the air, shockwaves raining down on the Earth and hurricane winds blow from their wing beats. Mukuro rips into his own arm with sharp claws and the blood splatters over Daemon's wings that were being used as a shield.

The blood sinks in abruptly with Mukuro's vampire control and Daemon screams as his body is invaded, the blood infecting everything it touches, growing boiling hot and distorting his wings, making them shed feathers and flesh.

Daemon twists in pain and falls from the air, his wings shedding into flecks of light as they part from him, the angel getting rid of the limbs before the infected blood can reach his body. Mukuro dives down, latching onto the angel from behind and digging in with hooked claws. Seeds from Chrome's box burst to life, pressed in between Mukuro's hands and Daemon's chest.

Daemon groans and tries to curl away from Mukuro as the plants rapidly grow, burrowing into Daemon's body like it was soil and twisting around the man to pin his arms by his sides. The angel shudders and gasps for breath as the plants start draining him to feed Mukuro, the roots clinging to his lungs and liver and weaving into his bones and puncturing his intestines.

Daemon planned to fight a fallen, not an army of supernatural. He wasn't expecting a vampire and certainly not a fey so why would he bother to dodge some blood or to get away from some seeds?

He can't defend himself from an enemy, not when he was expecting a brother.

"Isn't this great?" Mukuro roars over the sound of air twisting past from how quickly they were spiralling towards the earth. "I love this feeling," Mukuro laughs. "I dream of this moment every night and I wake up wanting to fall all over again!"

"You're a disappointment, you piece of shit fallen," Daemon spits out, wheezing for air because his body wasn't listening to him anymore. "You think you're strong for doing it? You think you're noble self-sacrifice was anything but a selfish demand for attention? You could have just fucked the nymph and gotten it out of your system, then we wouldn't have to do this."

Mukuro's wicked smile falls away and it's silent for a moment, the two brothers plunging towards the ground, the Earth far too close.

"Don't you dare insult Chrome," Mukuro says calmly and pushes away.

Daemon slams into the ground with enough force to shatter every bone in a human body and Mukuro snaps out his leathery wings at the last moment, taking to the skies again and landing lightly on a faraway dune.

Daemon isn't dead. He doesn't deserve death.

Mukuro's body reverts back to fallen as his power finally dips into dangerous levels. The shifting isn't kind nor easy and it's all Mukuro can do to open a portal. He gets three steps and collapses into Chrome's arms.