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Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn
Summary: Continuation of Mukuro's activities during the ring battles; an early bit of puzzle-pieces - he wasn't bluffing about knowing what Xanxus was up to.
Warnings: Some violence, one reference to needles for the phobic, and Mukuro losing a couple of pawn-hosts - nameless red-shirt deaths, I guess?
There'd been survivors of a few of the massacres.
Most of them were actually intentional. Get a few marked targets; the stronger Famiglia would take them in, in the misguided hope they'd be a source of information on the enemy they were trying to catch, nurse them back to health from other injuries, and in the end, it meant having a spread of unwitting pawns, Manchurian sleepers he could step into. He had enough built that way that he could've continued on from Vendicare, if he thought the Vendice would let him get away with it and not just cut off humoring his little game; skip the fronts and visible faces, turn into a faceless specter that could be anyone.
With the new "mission", it meant having more avenues for what had been asked than they'd realized; the Vongola and their allies, after all, did still tend to be more "humane" than usual for Mafia, and had taken in quite a few of his sleeper pawns.
The only thing he'd been asked was to serve as the Mist Guardian for the Ring Battle, for the sake of ensuring that Xanxus's power-grab failed. The two mistakes they'd made if they wanted to know what he was up to, was that they'd let him know the end goal and slipped the larger purpose, and that they hadn't specified any boundaries on his duties.
And if "victory" involved "Xanxus loses", then of course he was going to take an interest in Xanxus's entire plan, and he highly doubted there wouldn't be some movement in Italy to match what was being done in Japan; securing the succession would be useless if he couldn't ensure the loyalty of the organization.
One of his sleepers had managed to end up staff to the Ninth himself, and he'd taken full advantage of that, shifting between coaching Chrome and watching through that particular agent; there'd already been signs of movement - subtle things, people coming back from trips, bits of activity that pointed to gathering power in the headquarters.
Getting a better idea of how far it went had taken a little more hands-on approach, putting a little more pressure to take over completely, the unwitting host blacked out unconscious while he was going about normal business and just… running errands that happened to mean passing through where he could get a feel for what was going on, to get enough notes in the host's hand to maybe put a small monkey wrench in the works.
He walked into the Ninth's office wearing the face of a just-out-of-teens survivor of one of Mukuro's massacres. "Sir? I don't mean to intrude, just, there's something that's been bothering me…"
The Ninth glanced up; he'd noticed occasional odd glances when he was watching, but this was different - almost like there was a half-moment of tensing for something else before the old man covered it with his usual friendly demeanor. "Of course not, come in, come in."
"Well, it's a politics thing… ah, it might just be me being paranoid, but - well…"
There was a listening nod and a hand gesture, with an odd feeling he was being humored.
"There's an awful lot of Xanxus's old supporters and allies of theirs that've been gathering around the headquarters lately, and I'm not sure it's a coincidence."
"I see my friend had good instincts when he picked you for this." The Ninth seemed tired, almost saddened with that, and a red flag went up in Mukuro's mind; his host was among the people on staff the Ninth had chosen himself. "You're likely correct; I've suspected he was going to move again, and that it would be more tangled of a web this time than the last."
"Then - shouldn't you be calling in extra security, or gathering force here? If it's an internal power grab, then there's already something in place, isn't there?"
"Call in CEDEF, you mean?" The Ninth chucked bitterly, shaking his head. "They were gutted years ago; we've barely got enough to try to mind that the succession challenge is following the rules, and when it comes to internal armed force, most of it already answers to Xanxus. Pushing it to the challenge and giving up the ring was the only thing I could do - put it out of either of our hands, and into the hands of the next generation and the rings themselves." There was a small, pointed glance, and somehow, it was even more certain that yes, the Ninth did know who he was talking to, and that it wasn't his aide.
He opened his mouth to ask something - if he was being humored, he may as well see about arranging something to distract, maybe find out more about what he'd walked into, particularly with that odd wording - but was interrupted by the room going dark, the power cutting out.
He stepped away from the desk, gun out and trained on the doorway; the aide didn't have an active flame, he couldn't do more than minor tricks if anything and he was cursing that when the door opened and greeted him with a wall of lightning flame projected forward; his host body was knocked back, off his feet, the gun skittering away.
He was growing to loathe that trick from the Varia subordinates.
"So this is what it's come to." The Ninth stood; he was working on getting the host body to obey, trying to feel out how much he could believably do without alerting the Varia that there was a possession-technique user at work - something he was less inclined to tip his hand to when chains grew out of the floor to hold him to the floor; another illusionist, albeit not a horribly powerful one. "That'll be quite enough; if Xanxus has something to say to me, he can say it to me directly, but I'm not going to throw lives away for this feud." The old man gave Mukuro a brief glance, a tilt of the raised hand; something not quite visible of a 'stand down' order. "I'll go with you."
There was a confused pause, then they ushered the Ninth out between them, leaving the room.
He knew that wasn't the end of it from the fact that the chains didn't dissipate after they left; sure enough, one of them came back after a few minutes, pausing to retrieve the gun he'd dropped.
Judging by how quiet it was, they were aiming to avoid any witnesses, which meant he was being seen as a loose end.
Host bodies dying while he was there was always so much more uncomfortable when it wasn't something he'd planned.
-----
He'd hopped to another sleeper the next day, after he'd managed to shake off the residual ick from "dying"; there was a very obvious "something wrong" - nobody had noticed anything but a power outage, and the Ninth was present, as if nothing happened. From the one time he managed to get close to get any feel for the illusions, he was pretty sure the "Ninth" was the same illusionist that'd been there the night before.
Kidnapping the Ninth and replacing him with a double … it was an odd plan, and hinted at something with more subtlety than he would've expected from the records.
It took a little more jumping between the few hosts he had that might work to find one that could get around one of the areas there was more movement - and a bit of catching details to find a hidden door into some old underground chamber, a large weapons lab of some kind.
It was quiet, no sign of anyone else there at the time, but he was still on edge, nosing around in dim lighting cast by equipment; a few notes, parts of something larger that were being packed to move -
And one set of schematics among the things that were laid out that he scanned over. The engineering and detailed wiring notes were beyond him, but some of the notation and terms were familiar enough, as well as other bits that twinged things he remembered better than he'd thought from his childhood - systems for feeding off and using a strong enough source of Flames, suppression mechanisms to ensure control of the power source -
He was considering if he could get away with sabotage when a gloved hand caught the back collar of his shirt; he caught a glimpse of reflection in a shut-down monitor in front of him, light glinting off glasses, and the jab of a needle in his neck before everything went numb, fuzzy, and black.
That last part, when he got his mental footing back in the Vendicare from his second host death in two days, bothered him; he had a good pause in the blank void of the tank to think. It had to be a Mist user; his attention had been on the schematics, yes, but he'd also been looking up to tally sabotage chances, and there hadn't even been a sign of the door opening or any sign of anyone else in the chamber before he was grabbed. The other illusionists he'd seen were ones he could've run rings around, felt coming a mile away; whoever had caught him there, they were a worrying presence.
Summary: Continuation of Mukuro's activities during the ring battles; an early bit of puzzle-pieces - he wasn't bluffing about knowing what Xanxus was up to.
Warnings: Some violence, one reference to needles for the phobic, and Mukuro losing a couple of pawn-hosts - nameless red-shirt deaths, I guess?
There'd been survivors of a few of the massacres.
Most of them were actually intentional. Get a few marked targets; the stronger Famiglia would take them in, in the misguided hope they'd be a source of information on the enemy they were trying to catch, nurse them back to health from other injuries, and in the end, it meant having a spread of unwitting pawns, Manchurian sleepers he could step into. He had enough built that way that he could've continued on from Vendicare, if he thought the Vendice would let him get away with it and not just cut off humoring his little game; skip the fronts and visible faces, turn into a faceless specter that could be anyone.
With the new "mission", it meant having more avenues for what had been asked than they'd realized; the Vongola and their allies, after all, did still tend to be more "humane" than usual for Mafia, and had taken in quite a few of his sleeper pawns.
The only thing he'd been asked was to serve as the Mist Guardian for the Ring Battle, for the sake of ensuring that Xanxus's power-grab failed. The two mistakes they'd made if they wanted to know what he was up to, was that they'd let him know the end goal and slipped the larger purpose, and that they hadn't specified any boundaries on his duties.
And if "victory" involved "Xanxus loses", then of course he was going to take an interest in Xanxus's entire plan, and he highly doubted there wouldn't be some movement in Italy to match what was being done in Japan; securing the succession would be useless if he couldn't ensure the loyalty of the organization.
One of his sleepers had managed to end up staff to the Ninth himself, and he'd taken full advantage of that, shifting between coaching Chrome and watching through that particular agent; there'd already been signs of movement - subtle things, people coming back from trips, bits of activity that pointed to gathering power in the headquarters.
Getting a better idea of how far it went had taken a little more hands-on approach, putting a little more pressure to take over completely, the unwitting host blacked out unconscious while he was going about normal business and just… running errands that happened to mean passing through where he could get a feel for what was going on, to get enough notes in the host's hand to maybe put a small monkey wrench in the works.
He walked into the Ninth's office wearing the face of a just-out-of-teens survivor of one of Mukuro's massacres. "Sir? I don't mean to intrude, just, there's something that's been bothering me…"
The Ninth glanced up; he'd noticed occasional odd glances when he was watching, but this was different - almost like there was a half-moment of tensing for something else before the old man covered it with his usual friendly demeanor. "Of course not, come in, come in."
"Well, it's a politics thing… ah, it might just be me being paranoid, but - well…"
There was a listening nod and a hand gesture, with an odd feeling he was being humored.
"There's an awful lot of Xanxus's old supporters and allies of theirs that've been gathering around the headquarters lately, and I'm not sure it's a coincidence."
"I see my friend had good instincts when he picked you for this." The Ninth seemed tired, almost saddened with that, and a red flag went up in Mukuro's mind; his host was among the people on staff the Ninth had chosen himself. "You're likely correct; I've suspected he was going to move again, and that it would be more tangled of a web this time than the last."
"Then - shouldn't you be calling in extra security, or gathering force here? If it's an internal power grab, then there's already something in place, isn't there?"
"Call in CEDEF, you mean?" The Ninth chucked bitterly, shaking his head. "They were gutted years ago; we've barely got enough to try to mind that the succession challenge is following the rules, and when it comes to internal armed force, most of it already answers to Xanxus. Pushing it to the challenge and giving up the ring was the only thing I could do - put it out of either of our hands, and into the hands of the next generation and the rings themselves." There was a small, pointed glance, and somehow, it was even more certain that yes, the Ninth did know who he was talking to, and that it wasn't his aide.
He opened his mouth to ask something - if he was being humored, he may as well see about arranging something to distract, maybe find out more about what he'd walked into, particularly with that odd wording - but was interrupted by the room going dark, the power cutting out.
He stepped away from the desk, gun out and trained on the doorway; the aide didn't have an active flame, he couldn't do more than minor tricks if anything and he was cursing that when the door opened and greeted him with a wall of lightning flame projected forward; his host body was knocked back, off his feet, the gun skittering away.
He was growing to loathe that trick from the Varia subordinates.
"So this is what it's come to." The Ninth stood; he was working on getting the host body to obey, trying to feel out how much he could believably do without alerting the Varia that there was a possession-technique user at work - something he was less inclined to tip his hand to when chains grew out of the floor to hold him to the floor; another illusionist, albeit not a horribly powerful one. "That'll be quite enough; if Xanxus has something to say to me, he can say it to me directly, but I'm not going to throw lives away for this feud." The old man gave Mukuro a brief glance, a tilt of the raised hand; something not quite visible of a 'stand down' order. "I'll go with you."
There was a confused pause, then they ushered the Ninth out between them, leaving the room.
He knew that wasn't the end of it from the fact that the chains didn't dissipate after they left; sure enough, one of them came back after a few minutes, pausing to retrieve the gun he'd dropped.
Judging by how quiet it was, they were aiming to avoid any witnesses, which meant he was being seen as a loose end.
Host bodies dying while he was there was always so much more uncomfortable when it wasn't something he'd planned.
-----
He'd hopped to another sleeper the next day, after he'd managed to shake off the residual ick from "dying"; there was a very obvious "something wrong" - nobody had noticed anything but a power outage, and the Ninth was present, as if nothing happened. From the one time he managed to get close to get any feel for the illusions, he was pretty sure the "Ninth" was the same illusionist that'd been there the night before.
Kidnapping the Ninth and replacing him with a double … it was an odd plan, and hinted at something with more subtlety than he would've expected from the records.
It took a little more jumping between the few hosts he had that might work to find one that could get around one of the areas there was more movement - and a bit of catching details to find a hidden door into some old underground chamber, a large weapons lab of some kind.
It was quiet, no sign of anyone else there at the time, but he was still on edge, nosing around in dim lighting cast by equipment; a few notes, parts of something larger that were being packed to move -
And one set of schematics among the things that were laid out that he scanned over. The engineering and detailed wiring notes were beyond him, but some of the notation and terms were familiar enough, as well as other bits that twinged things he remembered better than he'd thought from his childhood - systems for feeding off and using a strong enough source of Flames, suppression mechanisms to ensure control of the power source -
He was considering if he could get away with sabotage when a gloved hand caught the back collar of his shirt; he caught a glimpse of reflection in a shut-down monitor in front of him, light glinting off glasses, and the jab of a needle in his neck before everything went numb, fuzzy, and black.
That last part, when he got his mental footing back in the Vendicare from his second host death in two days, bothered him; he had a good pause in the blank void of the tank to think. It had to be a Mist user; his attention had been on the schematics, yes, but he'd also been looking up to tally sabotage chances, and there hadn't even been a sign of the door opening or any sign of anyone else in the chamber before he was grabbed. The other illusionists he'd seen were ones he could've run rings around, felt coming a mile away; whoever had caught him there, they were a worrying presence.
