Chapter 14: CXXXI-CXL 1/2

Author's Note : Two things.

One, there's a TV Tropes page for this fic now. Aki no hikari has started it for me again, and since I am still a complete newbie to how the system works or how to add things (I edit myself, mostly punctuation choice and grammar with the odd detail correction here and there) I ask yet again for your help. Profile links still aren't working, so you'll have to do a bit of searching. Sorry.

For another… Alright, let's go through this really, really slowly one last time.

In Katekyō Hitman REBORN!, there is a race of humanoid beings that lived on the earth well before humans have who is only now down to the last surviving member. Said race of humanoid beings held this dimension supporting thing, called the Tri-ni-set or 7^3, and passed it to humans after a certain amount of time passed. That Tri-ni-set thing, since it requires a massive amount of power, takes the lives of seven people per generation. Those seven are called I Prescelti Sette, the seven strongest in the era they live in, and afterwards a new set of I Prescelti Sette are selected and that continued from whenever to present day.

That, alone, would change history into something rather unrecognizable. Discounting the undead mafia police officers that resulted, Omertà being a world-wide thing, the large amount of murder and criminal activates still on-going, or the fact the underworld was international by the early 1800s at the latest. There was maybe two hundred years where no one held the Tri-ni-set pacifiers, which maybe allowed history to continue down paths we recognize from our own history.

Stop telling me the real world history doesn't completely match up to what I have.

Obviously it doesn't. Try asking why.

Yes, Moscow in real-world 1960 is very different from how it is in-story. But in-story, I have a networked criminal underground that would've laughed in your face for telling them they couldn't trade/go/live as they liked/or do shit. Who likely affect politics just because they have interest in other areas that may or may not be aligned with the current political power in charge.

The Vor are a little old-fashioned, and I use out-dated terminology. Yeah, point? This is the 1960s, not the 2010s.

Next person who complains of some country not being as it should be will see their political heroes shot through the head in-story. This is getting to the point of stupidity, people. What part of fanfiction made anyone think 'completely true to real life!'?

That is literally impossible, highly unrealistic, and just stupid. I refuse to deal with it anymore.

Edit (4/25/2017) - Minor story and grammar corrections.

Edit (3/20/2018) - Final formatting and minor corrections.

Edit (9/7/2018) - Minor corrections.

Russian Roulette : Reloaded

CXXXI-CXL

CXXXI (Sunday the 30th of October, 1966. Renato's Apartment, Mafia Land.)

The door opening woke Sonya up, and she spent a very disorientating moment wondering where the hell she was and what she was doing in a man's bedroom.

Shamal reaching the bed and his struggle to climb up the side of it distracted her from that mental musing. She sleepily snatched the kid by the back of the oversized shirt he was wearing and sat him on the edge of the bed to get a good look at him once she woke up more.

Computing her location and the events of last night together was proving a bit tricky for her right now.

Baby Mist wasn't content to merely sit though, instead he buried his face in her stomach and started crying in earnest.

Absolutely befuddled, she blinked owlishly down at the kid.

On one hand… did Renato let the kid do this?

Aw…

On the other, she had no blessed clue what to do now.

The Russian awkwardly patted the kid on the back, trying to dredge up from memory what Dmitriy had done when Usov had his crying jags. That baby Mist wasn't nearly as touchy-feely as Shamal was being now, but hugs had seemed to work. She didn't particularly like being hugged or used as a handkerchief, but a three-year-old who recently lost his father was due some consideration.

Excuse her, three-and-a-half.

"Shamal, breath. You're going to make yourself sick at this rate."

Her contralto tones, sleep rough though it may be, wasn't anything like the hitman's baritone. It was different enough to permeate whatever had upset the boy, and Shamal tried to cut himself off.

Obviously, she wasn't who he expected to be in this bed.

The squeak, as if a mouse had been surprised, didn't quite manage to stop the sniffles. Watery brown eyes peered up at her, then the barely out of toddlerhood child rather hurriedly dashed a forearm across his eyes. "Wasn't crying."

"Alright. Not crying." She agreed slowly, wondering why he was denying it. "But you'll still make yourself sick if you keep doing… whatever you were doing."

"You needed a hug."

Sonya stared at him dubiously. She didn't even like hugs when Cherep wanted to give her some. Admittedly, her best friend/brother went totally overboard when he decided to be sappy and practically smothered her normally.

"And you were having a bad dream."

"I was, was I?" No, the thief didn't believe that for a moment.

Shamal nodded solemnly and blinked teary brown eyes up at her, looking as if butter wouldn't even melt in his mouth.

He'd be a damn fine liar in a few years, but he wasn't there yet.

She snorted softly and ruffled his already messy hair. "Fine then. I take it you don't feel sleepy enough to go back to sleep?"

She got a rapid head shake, which almost knocked himself off the bed and onto the floor with the violence of the motion. The kid also looked rather scared, and not of the near-tumble he almost took.

Steadying the Mist, the Russian thief pushed herself upright and stretched out her arms with a yawn. "Alright then, what… err… is there anything you do need?"

"No."

She blinked at the abrupt refusal, aware she was being lied to but unable to figure out what he was lying about. "…is Renato up yet?"

"No."

Eying his expression, which was steadily getting stormier by the second, she gave up.

Three-year-old children were a damn mystery to her, and no one was paying her to do it anyways. "Is there anything you want to do?"

"Can't. Mister Renato's sleeping, we can't wake him up for nothing. It's a rule." Shamal informed her tiredly, as if she was the one being difficult.

"I, little one, am a thief. Stealthy is what I am by trade alone, I will not wake Renato up no matter what it is." Sonya sniffed in offense at his obviously unconvinced expression, swinging her feet out from under the covers and off the bed to stand up. She also snatched him up, because like hell she would let some little brat doubt her skills to her face. "Be quiet and I'll show you."

The brat still looked highly skeptical on the superiority of a thief's silent steps to his own crashing elephant gait, even when she eased the door open quieter than he had managed.

The Storm-Cloud spotted Renato damn fast, the man had fallen asleep on the couch.

One of her own books, the one she had condensed several different books' worth of information on nature of Dying Will Flames into not her master research journal, was serving as a light blocker covering his face while his long legs were hanging off one side of the couch.

The ass had better not smudge the ink in her book, or she'd introduce him to her Bec de Corbins. Forcibly. Using the pointy end.

Huffing slightly as she irritably eyed the hitman, Sonya then cast her gaze around for her backpack and found it next to the couch.

…of course, it would be there.

Shamal's sharp intake of breath when she started moving forward was in violation of her order to be silent, but she didn't do more than throw the brat a sharp look.

When she reached the hitman's side, right before she bent slightly to lift her pack in a method that wouldn't let the stones she knew were inside from clacking against one another, baby Mist brat spoke loudly into her ear in what he probably fondly thought was a whisper.

It wasn't.

"Wow… you are stealthy, miss Sonya."

Sonya gifted him with an annoyed stare, even as Renato tugged down the edge of the book he had likely fallen asleep reading to see what they were doing. "Generally, Shamal, one does not speak when trying to be quiet."

The kid, who was practically only just out of toddlerhood on the cusp of being a young child, clapped his hands over his mouth as if that would help take back his words.

The Mafioso might have been trying to remain 'asleep' for all intents and purposes, in order not to give the game away… but the snickers he wasn't very successful in suppressing was shaking him slightly. Disgusted with being busted just that far from validating her sneaking skills to the child, the Russian thief picked up her backpack and dropped Shamal onto the hitman's stomach.

Ignoring the fact the man was now outright laughing at her, she dug out a box of gemstones and a pack of cigarettes out of her traveling pack. The box went on the coffee table, the pack of smokes went with her. "I am going to go have a smoke. You two figure out what we're doing for breakfast."

CXXXII (Sunday the 30th of October, 1966 continued. Renato's Apartment, Mafia Land.)

Renato could easily believe Sonya had done this before, at least once for another Mist.

She didn't get too irritated with Shamal's meandering questions, not even when it went back through the information she had just finished telling him in attempts to trip her up. The thief was irritated nonetheless, but it was more… dealing with a very young child annoyance than a Cloud being forced into close quarters with a Mist aggravation.

Everything the hitman had ever gotten on Dying Will Flame users and the type of people they tended to be insisted that Clouds, by nature, weren't sociable nor tolerant of irritations. Any and all passages that described Cloud Flame users also never failed to hold some kind of warning about their interactions with Mist users.

More to the point, they always warned to keep the two far apart unless a Sky could bridge the space between them.

He had even personally witnessed a fight that started between a Cloud and a Mist over a minor slight that had nearly destroyed an entire wing of a manor once. It had been stupidly inane, but apparently the little tiff meant more to the two of them than the good opinions of anyone around them at the time.

That was why he insisted on being present when his Storm-Cloud associate ran his Mist using… ward through the basics of Dying Will Flame types and what that would mean for him, as well as an overview of what kind of skills, tricks, and abilities she knew a Mist could have.

Yet… Sonya put up with getting patted, poked, prodded, and tugged on by Shamal. Who was sitting pretty in her lap while she went over how he was likely to fare against other types if he ever found himself in trouble.

This was the same woman who, at the tender age of thirteen, nearly broke Renato's wrist for grabbing her arm. She always sidestepped any possible brush with even pedestrians on the street, glared when someone tried getting into her personal space, and generally treated people talking to her as an annoyance she wasn't sure if she should beat the tar out of or ignore.

That woman, mainly a Cloud user of some impressively icy behavior, with a kid in her lap. A Mist kid being annoying because he somehow felt safe enough to do it.

Renato was staring. He knew it, and could probably help it, but… still… staring.

"No," Sonya repeated herself for the seventh time in as many minutes, "just because you're a Mist doesn't mean you automatically 'kick the butt' of any Lightning users."

Shamal gave her a disgruntled pout. "But you just said-"

"That Mist users, who are properly prepared, can really mess with a Lightning using their unique attention span. But that's Hard Lightnings, Soft Lightnings are harder to fool. It's all subjective, while a tendency means more likely it also doesn't mean that will always be true."

"What does subjective mean?"

The Russian thief sighed into his hair, releasing her book to rub the bridge of her nose. "It means that it depends on the situation."

"Oh… what does tendency mean?"

"That it is more likely to happen."

The brat considered that for a few moments. "What does differentiate mean?"

"I think," Renato spoke up before the twitch in the Cloud woman's right eye got worse, "we may need a small break."

The glare she tossed him contained every tiny bit of aggravation she wasn't letting the child in her lap know about. "We, huh?"

He merely smirked at her, pleased when the twitch got noticeably worse. He hadn't ever really managed to safely irritate the hell out of her before, so this was new to him. "Didn't you say you needed to visit the fences?"

"And the Thieves' Hall, and actually get myself a room nearby for…" Sonya looked at the kid still occupying her lap, "…longer than I'd like to. I don't think a week's going to cut it if we're going this slow."

She shut the book, nudging Shamal off her so she could stand and recollect her things.

Those books were something he rather dearly wished to question.

It was her handwriting, he knew that much at least. One book had great scores through some of the information, as if she had investigated then discarded whatever bit, the other had the bare minimum of information on all seven different types recorded within and a few rare selections on the benefits and drawbacks of certain specific types.

Bare basics, without the slants for or against certain types the Sun using Mafioso kept coming across in any of the books he found. Without expecting said types to conform or only show to specific personality traits.

Obviously her own work, but what he wanted to know first and foremost was how big of a pool of Flame active people she had worked with to cut whatever available information she started with to those bare bone descriptions. He could guess at least one of Soft Cloud, Soft Rain, Hard Sun, and Hard Mist from what she told Shamal. There were even hints of a young Lightning starting to submit some information, one not able to commit to hard answers yet but able to answer a few misconceptions.

It wasn't something he could ask, because Sonya likely wouldn't let that be included into just one of the favors she owed him. He'd have to find a different way.

Renato slanted a look at the child of one of his old contacts, of whom he was the only one available or able to take in when he ended up an orphan. The young Mist blinked teary brown eyes up at the thief, who did look slightly torn on leaving as she stared back at him.

Even if she was wildly uncomfortable with how clingy Shamal was when he found you didn't limit his contact time with your person.

He wondered if she would answer in her brutally frank way if he got Shamal to ask her questions instead.

CXXXIII (Monday the 31st of October, 1966. Mafia Land.)

Sonya didn't quite get around to the rocks she brought with her until the evening of the second day she was helping Renato out.

Discounting that first night, since little of anything really got done.

Baby Mist had, like all children at his age, no concept of patience or limits. It was all or nothing for him, and before they got to the actual attempts on learning de-Construction she'd greatly appreciate it if Shamal wouldn't keep exhausting her limited skills with Storm Flames when she kept his illusions contained for him.

Hopefully, the ease of utilizing a Flame through a gemstone would temper than a little… otherwise it would be incredibly useless for him like the other Mist she had helped through this part of his life.

The thief ran him through the gemstones in the safety of her hotel room, checking first to see that he could use sapphires and had a strange reaction to ruby before looking for a different fit.

Given the fact she imploded a sapphire, she wasn't going to let a young child run around with one.

"Why do I need a rock? You said it probably won't help."

"I said it likely won't help you when you're older. For now, though," she shoved another mineral, a clump of lapis lazuli Usov had favored, into his hands for him to try, "it may prove to be a decent emergency option."

Shamal pulled a little pouty face at the lump of rock, but not even a spark of Mist Flames appeared after a full minute. "Why?"

Breathing in through her nose to calm herself, Sonya vowed to get back at her hitman contact for this shit even if it took her years. "Because a focus stone like the one we're looking for can be used as a decent anchor for your little fishing net trap. Everyone will think you're inside of it, but instead you can sneak away and find Renato while they're distracted."

"I like that idea." Said hitman observing the trial and error testing of various gemstones put in lazily, tipping the chair he had commandeered from Sonya's hotel room even further back so his heels could rest on the top of a small side table.

"You would." She shot back repressively.

The Russian hadn't decided if the touch too complicated questions the kid kept posing to her was his fault or not, but she still suspected Renato was nudging the kid into asking them. It sounded a bit rehearsed to her, too much so to be questions a Mist as young as him thought up on his own.

That, and she was trained to catch that kind of falseness. She may not be always right guessing the why behind it, but she could still tell when something wasn't natural.

Shamal huffed at them, side-eyeing the sapphire she wasn't going to let him walk away with.

Blindly groping for the next stone while so distracted, he didn't notice right away that the oval chunk of turquoise started glittering when his baby-fat pudgy fingers closed around it.

When he did finally give it more of his attention, tiny flickers of darkly blue Flames started spiking up in response.

"I think we have a winner." Sonya informed him blandly, poking the kid in the side. "Even better than the sapphire, isn't it?"

Too distracted to respond, baby Mist kept staring in fascination at the rock glowing with his inner neon indigo fire.

Renato shifted, letting the legs of his chair thump back to the floor, and smoothly rose to his feet in a smooth movement. Taking the few steps to where she had set herself and the kid up on her hotel bed, he peered down at the results. "What is it?"

"Turquoise." She sighed again, rubbing at her temples. "Which correlates with no other results I've gotten just yet either."

"What do you mean?"

"Everyone I've tried this test with so far have preferred wildly different stones. Or minerals. Even those that share the same type if not polarization."

Picking up one of the discarded rocks, moonstone the thief identified on reflex, the hitman rolled the smooth round rock between his fingers curiously. "How many have you tried?"

Snorting softly, the thief looked up at him reprovingly. "I'm not answering that."

"Any particular reason you've never asked me?"

Sonya was about to tell him that she frankly didn't trust him that much with the people she did but didn't. Her eyes caught on a bit of tension lacing his frame, in how stiffly he held himself upright and the flex of his shoulders, but mostly she was distracted by the faint flicker of yellow in the rock he was rolling around his fingers.

"No… damn it, that's not even a yellow gemstone!"

"What…?" He followed her gaze down to his hands, and the moonstone now glimmering with a hint of Sun Flames. "…huh."

"Miss Sonya?" Shamal interjected, clutching his own not-indigo stone and sounding both baffled and concerned.

The Storm-Cloud ran a hand down her face, tiredly detailing what that was going to mean for her. "I… need more research… on… oh screw it. Screw color too, because apparently that has no bearing on anything."

Renato twisted the chunk of pale, almost-white but more bluish rock in his hands around, then dabbed a bit of yellow fire on the surface and watched it sink into the semi-transparent depths. "Well… I'm taking this."

"Fine, whatever." There were a few stones lost trying to match one person with a rock, so it wouldn't be too hard to hand wave the loss to Arseniy.

She could at least go poke Tatiana and see if moonstone would work for the Classical Sun as well, so this wasn't a complete back-step.

The color coded gemstone method of searching might not be the best way to match a Dying Will Flame user to a focus stone, but it was a working one nonetheless… and if she had done all that work for it in the first place it had damn well not prove to be a waste anyways.

CXXXIV (Tuesday the 2nd of November, 1966. Mafia Land.)

Since a baby Mist did have such an obvious episode of uncontrolled Construction smack dab in the middle of the free-floating island controlled by criminals, Sonya had been expecting it to have taken them less time to start asking questions of the uncomfortable kind.

'Them' being the representative of the coalition of mafia groups that ran Mafia Land's day-to-day business. They weren't stupid, no one that remained in control of an island of criminal-types like this could be without being brutally murdered and replaced in short order. Crafty and patient were the more likely culprits.

Four days after the fact, there was an elderly gentleman sitting at the café table she and Renato had typically used for the past five years when they had the time to spare. The thief herself was just thankful the hitman was keeping Shamal close to the more 'family-orientated' and residential sections, neither were present since she had volunteered to pick up lunch from a less 'peaceful' part of the city-like island.

She knew he was there for her, he was staring right at her meaningfully and as she watched one silvered eyebrow rose in expectation.

Considering the situation thoughtfully, she decided this was likely as close to neutral ground as anyone connected to those that ran Mafia Land could get. It was even partially her 'territory', someplace she was known at and well thought of if only for the tips she and a certain Sun user left after they were done with a tea or coffee break.

That being the case, it would've been very rude to turn the invitation down. The obvious suggested 'or-it-will-get-worse' threat the older man's stare was telling her just made that course of action the more prudent one.

The location choice was well thought out, after all.

After a moment to gather her thoughts, the Russian corrected her course to approach him while ensuring it was the more obvious path and he could see she was visibly unarmed. "I take it you wish to speak with me?"

"Sit… please." He gestured to her usual chair brusquely, turning his own around to face her directly across the tabletop rather than sit sideways with it between them as she normally did with Renato. "We have reports that you volunteered to… handle a little issue for our service personnel."

"That would be correct." There hadn't been any other way to get around that, there would've been witnesses no matter what she did. Sonya at least ensured her Flame use was at least revealed in a way that wouldn't come off as her being just destructive with it. "May I ask why you are approaching me about this?"

When the first three days had passed without word, she had assumed that Mafia Land had active Flame users so her showing up as one all the sudden wasn't that alarming. The thief had expected it to be added to the intelligence the island masters likely kept on everyone that visited, but that would've been par for the course.

Nothing was ever for free in their lives. Especially not a 'safe haven'.

This, a meeting taking place after more than twice the time they would've needed to hunt her down for answers or to arm twist her into being an active Flame user for the island on staff?

Was suspicious. Alarming too, if only because she didn't know what kind of allegiances or views the people that ran this place had on Dying Will Flame users.

"It was an accident, correct?"

"It will not happen again, if that is what you are asking." The thief admitted slowly. She'd blow off her circus life it that was what it would take to teach Shamal not to smother a building in Mist Flames again just because he was scared.

Cherep would understand when she explained this to him.

"The interests that I represent are not that concerned of a repeat." The gentleman claimed, straightening his lapels as if to hammer home the point that the people he worked for were too highly placed to be worried much. "We are more interested in… who it is you needed to correct the mistakes of."

In other words, 'whose aid did you go to?'

Sonya was intensely uncomfortable with the direction this 'discussion' looked to be heading to. The frown she was giving him seemed to answer some kind of question, and the man leaned forward slightly.

"There will be no blame laid out," he offered as if that was what was stalling her tongue, "but we do tend to… collect very special young people and offer a sanctuary for them."

Like that didn't sound disturbing at all.

Placed next to her brother's unfortunate experiences being 'collected' and Renato's past warnings of people hunting Flame users, this did not have undertones the Russian was willing to assist with.

"Just… something to think about." He rose to his feet, rather spry for a man of his advanced years, and strolled away as if he had nothing to worry about.

He probably didn't. If he was the only one here from whatever group was pulling the strings, she was a fish.

Slumping back in the spindly café chair, Sonya quickly ran that probing conversation through her head again.

If… if they were making an offer of protection for a supposedly younger Dying Will Flame user to an older one, didn't that mean they were really looking for users that didn't come with pre-existing allegiances?

She didn't know, nor did she really like any of it.

However, the Sun using Mafioso was Shamal's current and likely only guardian. She'd repeat the offer to him, speak up with her concerns, but it really was up to the hitman.

She rose to her own feet, continuing down the street to the restaurant they had picked for the day.

Likely if they knew exactly who she was and where she liked to frequent on the island, they knew what she had been up to lately. That whatever it was had to do with Renato… and possibly a little brown-haired boy that stuck close to both the hitman and the thief.

She'd look for any obvious tails, or anything that smacked of suspicious activity, but playing coy wouldn't do anything but delay the mid-day meal.

Cranky, hungry Shamal was not her favorite to deal with anyways.

CXXXV (Tuesday the 2nd of November, 1966 continued. Renato's Apartment, Mafia Land.)

Renato's features didn't change as she reported what had delayed her to him.

Which was scary enough given her suspicions of who he would become, she could've dealt without the tension that wracked both him and his little apartment the more ticked off he got.

Shamal was already preemptively cringing, not out of actual fear but what seemed to be expectations for something to blow up. He only flinched when the hitman shot his living room lamp to pieces, Sonya almost jumped out of her skin.

Obviously, household expenses for him likely included the odd fixture or three when he got pissed off.

"I know you said you weren't one, but could I possibly ask you to babysit a short while?" The too broad toothy grin he gave her, wreathed by the still smoking barrel of his pistol pointed at the ruins of pottery and wiring, made her more nervous.

"…sure. Take your time." Folding her arm under her chest, the thief gave him the most level look she could muster. "Renato, do please be careful. You live here, and this may not be-"

"Do you really believe that?"

Huffing slightly at getting cut off, the thief glared back at him. "Do you really believe all things are so straightforward?"

That knocked Renato back a mental step, and he considered her thoughtfully.

"It may not be as bad as it sounded to me." The Storm-Cloud finished her original words forcefully. "I only know of experiences that sound similar that were not so great for the people involved. It may be even on the up, and the fact it was a Mist and they tend to pop so young that led to the word choice the man used. So again, be careful."

Before you shoot someone you can't heal, went unsaid under her words. If he heard it or not was something she refused to speculate on.

"…I'll be back by morning."

She sighed as he turned on his heel and strode out of the apartment.

Shamal's tiny, but more importantly sauce covered, fingers fisted into her skirt and tugged lightly. "Is he mad at me?"

"No. Did you wash your hands before digging in?"

The child looked at his small take-away box of beef ravioli smothered in tomato sauce and cheese, at his hands, at the stain in her skirt, then back up to her. "Um… no?"

The thief gave him a highly unimpressed stare.

"Is Mister Renato mad at you?"

"Not this time, no." Sonya peered down at herself, and at the greasy mark Shamal had left behind. "Go wash your hands."

"Are you sure? He looked mad." Baby Mist was also not moving an inch, looking at her stubbornly.