AN:/ About 2/3rds of the way done this fic. Might be the first KHR one I ever finish

—

All around the world, the Mafia sits up. Some point behind raised hands, smug in the face of Vongola's embarrassment, and yet others look deeper and start raising worries.

Reports of missing documents, mysterious accidents. Of secrets carefully plucked out of secure servers.

The rumours grow, and alliances form. More than one family starts planning to either retaliate or else join with 'The Crows of Namimori'. A few even send invites for alliances, although the only response anyone ever gets is silence.

Very few of the families seem to understand what truly is going on. Most of them treat it as a rising new family, overstepping their bounds. They complain about those eschewing tradition, how it sets a bad example for the younger generation.

Some of them put in motion a strategy to deal with the upstarts. Some of the more foolhardy try and use mafia law to get rid of them.

When contacted, the Vindice simply report that they have no interest in policing a group not part of the mafia, and that if families are so keen to fight civilians that they should remember not to break oath.

When prompted to consider the Vongolan heir as having broken oath, they point to the laws of Omerta and reply that unless Sawada junior swears allegiance to a family, no matter his blood, he is still a civilian.

The more resourceful families go straight to action. Or they try, despite what is currently going on; Namimori is still considered Vongola territory. To try and send in men now would be tantamount to declaring war on the world's most powerful family.

Very few families see the situation for what it is, and draw back into their own territories. A trap, designed like a Venus flytrap, where the whole of Namimori is one giant gaping maw. At the first tremor of mafia presence the jaws slam shut.

It is one thing to walk into a trap you are anticipating, and it is another thing to walk into a trap unknowingly out of pride. Much better to remain neutral.

Dino, unfortunately, doesn't have a choice. As he is allied with Vongola he is already right in the middle of the chaos, and it is his mentor that was kidnapped. He might not like Reborn all that much most of the time, but he also doesn't want to see the man-turned-child frozen in some sort of stasis in enemy territory either.

"I'm not sure how much help I will be," he says anyway, face buried in his espresso. He's been up for nineteen hours straight, and the fatigue shows.

Beside him, working the monitors, Basil smiles. Both of them are stuck in a dark room lit only by computer screens and littered with empty mugs and energy bar wrappers. Of the two of them Basil is the only one actually qualified to be using the computers to investigate Namimori and The Crows, but since Dino is almost useless until an actual battle comes around, he's been shoved in here with him.

He does at least have the advantage of being a Mafia boss and one that was close to Reborn, so he does have some idea of what he is doing and the contacts to look into it.

Of course, the one that really should be here is Iemitsu, but he left a while ago to talk with the Ninth. The steady ticking of the clock says it won't be much longer before he comes back.

"Oh." Basil says, pulling away from his keyboard. Dino looks up from his espresso contemplation and quirks an eyebrow. He's too tired for anything else.

"What now? More trouble?" He asks, knuckling his eyes. After the tenth hour, where they got almost hourly alerts towards disappearing Mafioso, he's gotten quite blasé about the idea of more complications. Most of the men were found later anyways.

"Not as such, no. But I think I might have found out where the information leak came from," Basil says, turning the monitor so Dino can peer over his shoulder.

Two lines of code stream across the screen, and it takes a while before Dino can make out what it says. Computers have never been his forte.

"Does that say what I think it says?" he asks, incredulously.

"If you mean, does it say 'lol, get dunked on' and then the timestamp for four years ago, then you would be right," Basil answers, highlighting a few texts in the otherwise gibberish of whatever programing language is being used.

"Wait, how do we know this has anything to do with Namimori?" Dino asks, leaning in even more.

"Well, it was hidden in Iemitsu-sama's finances, so I would say so," Basil says. Dino pauses.

"You're…looking at the CEDEF's boss' accounts? You can do that? Isn't that type of stuff supposed to be top secret?" he says slowly, watching the blood rise in the younger boy's face.

"I—I mean, we were told to, to look into everything we could, and it's not like it's difficult or anything," the boy mumbles, rubbing his hair, "and I mean, I'm also CEDEF so it's not like it's nothing I don't already know…"

"Wow, I guess we know who's the true shadow leader behind CEDEF now," Dino jokes, making Basil almost burst into actual flame.

"You kids having fun?" a voice says from the doorway, and they both turn.

Sawada Iemitsu looks ragged to the bone, with deep circled bruises under his eyes and the sallow complexion of a man who hasn't slept in a few days. Basil jumps to his feet, conveniently hiding the screen from his boss in the process, and bows deeply.

"Sawada-sama!" he gushes, true fanatic adoration in his voice. Dino hides a wince.

"How's the search going?" the CEDEF boss asks, taking a seat at the only other chair. Dino obligingly scoots over, his elbow hitting the back key on the keyboard by 'accident', consequently hiding the finance reports.

"Could be better. So far what we know isn't that much more complete than it was a day ago. Whoever they have hiding their tracks, he's good," Dino reports dutifully.

"We do know now that they must have been planning this for at least a year, boss," Basil adds, bringing up a list of dates, conveniently void of sources.

"Shit." Iemitsu mutters, rubbing his stubble, "No wonder they're as prepared as they are. Do we have an identity on the hacker that got the information?"

Basil types in a few search commands and motions to the screen. On it a young boy, photographed in a school science fair exhibit for the local newspaper, smiles nervously up at them. He looks to be about ten years old.

"That was taken around the same time as the first known data extraction, although it appears to not have caught anything about the inheritance. That came later, after the deaths of most of the Ninth's sons. Shoichi Irie, genius computer programmer, engineer and scientist. He was already on his way towards doing correspondence classes with the university," Basil recites, before clicking the next page.

On this one, a group of boys are clustered around a computer, with the smiling face of Shoichi looking out of it. Tsunayoshi and the boy that had been standing next to him in the video are instantly recognisable, as well as the Hibari scion in the back.

Iemitsu notes that his son isn't wearing the black pompadour that seems to have become iconic of the Discipline Committee. The medical mask is present though, as well as the red Committee badge pinned to his sleeve.

"This was uploaded by one of the boy's in the background to a private blog. Supposedly this was after routing out the local Yakuza group. The boy wrote that Shoichi was responsible for providing stun weapons, as well as intel."

Another click, another slide. This one showing two girls smiling up at the camera, arms linked. Behind them two boys are playfully shoving each other, one with a baseball bat slung over his shoulder. In the very back, Tsuna is half hidden by a swinging arm.

"Sasagawa Kyoko, Kurokawa Hana, Yamamoto Takeshi, and Sasagawa Ryohei. Friends of Tsunayoshi-san, and noted as active participants in the Discipline Committee. You'll be interested to note that Kurokawa is enrolled in long-distance university classes for math and data analysis. Yamamoto is the son of a retired hitman and seems to have inherited his sword, both Sasagawa siblings are influential members amongst their peers, and the brother is captain of the boxing club. He also happens to be a frequent member of the underground fight clubs."

One final click.

Sawada Nana stands tall, besides a woman in white. Both are holding baseball bats and cheerful grins. Behind them, nailed to the wall, is a broken and bloody body.

Iemitsu takes a step back, and Dino winces at the look on his face. The photograph had startled them as well the first time they saw it. In the end it was because of it that he stayed for the rest of the night instead of going back to his hotel.

"What," Iemitsu says, flatly. If Basil notices the conflict going on in his boss, he doesn't mention it.

"Sawada Nana and an unknown woman, sixteen years ago. Male body belongs to a local Yakuza member, and the photo appears to be the confirmation photo towards an assassination by a rival group. It was probably never meant to survive, the original message was destroyed when that group was exterminated in an 'accidental fire'. The boss was petty and stupid enough to keep a copy in his personal account."

Basil finishes, giving his boss a moment to register that, before closing the file and opening a new one. All the photographs are linked by thick arrows, with notes attached to each. Almost like one of those data boards you see in cops shows.

This is where Dino takes over. Most of his time had been spent on it after all, and he knows the details the best.

"Ok, so here's what we got as a timeline. Around fourteen years ago, Sawada Nana quits her job as a freelance contractor, most likely because she becomes pregnant at the time. Seven years later she enrols her shy child in an after-school care program, where the youngest Hibari is wreaking havoc. The two meet and somehow bond. Hibari then goes on to build up a nice little gang of delinquents, aimed at keeping the schoolyard in order. Of them, the most notable is Kusakabe Tetsuya who becomes something of a right-hand man when the group becomes official. Fast forward a few years and a pile of assault charges, and you have a very effective enforcement group. It is speculation as to whether without the mitigating and enthralling nature of a young Sky the group would have been quite as successful. As it is, quite a few of the members of the group display classic signs of Sky attraction." Here he pauses, taking a sip of his espresso and letting Iemitsu absorb it all. He appears to still be in shock over his wife.

"The truly deciding factor, though, is when Shoichi Irie comes into the picture. You've already seen some of what he is capable of: hacking, weapons design. And with it, of course, the ability to poke into Mafia secrets. This is, if you will forgive my dramatics, the start of the end."

"That explains some of it, but a small-time delinquent group shouldn't be able to have the resources that Namimori does. Not to mention being able to convince the amount of people currently living there to go along with it," Iemitsu interrupts, seemingly willing to ignore the thought of his wife as an assassin.

Basil nods. Dino on the other hand makes a so-so motion with his hand.

"Maybe, but you're forgetting something. Namimori is outrageously stuffed with flame sensitives due to being the dumping ground of a lot of civilian Mafia family members. Not to mention the Yakuza. Put that together, on top of a strong Sky descended from one of the strongest possible Sky bloodlines…?"

Iemitsu winces.

"His flames were supposed to be sealed though."

Dino shrugs.

"Doesn't seem to have stopped him."

—

Tsuna watches Reborn float in what the rest of the group has taken to calling 'The Dream Machine' and what Shoichi is adamant is 'that highly advanced piece-of-crap you've somehow convinced me to design, AKA The Morpheus v2.24'.

Somehow, he still can't believe that their plan worked. It's true that the Mafia is outrageously prideful, and wouldn't expect civilians to be able to use guerilla warfare tactics, but this was supposed to be the strongest man in the world.

This was supposed to be someone unbeatable. This was supposed to be the man who would end up turning him into a Mafia boss.

His teeth grind at the reminder before he forcibly relaxes his jaw.

Maybe at one time he would have been weak-willed enough to follow along with a scheme like that, but not now that he's been able to talk to people who've actually dealt with the Mafia. Maybe some would say that the idea of being a Mafia boss is exciting, but after meeting the widows, the orphans, the broken men and woman of the Mafia, the thought just curdles in his gut.

It doesn't matter how 'lenient' Vongola is supposed to be, he doesn't believe in their goodwill at all.

So far, twelve families have sent their answers. Out of those, only four have indicated that they will respect the ultimatums mentioned in the video. All four of them are notorious for being stoutly neutral, interested mostly in science or technology.

Honestly, that's better then Tsuna expected.

It does mean though that he should probably step away from the glass seal and head towards the war room to help plan their next step. They need to organise the individual traps for each family they expect to send a negative, as well as comb very carefully over the positive responses for deception.

On top of that he has to manage his team, as well as the various offshoots like Mukuro's gang.

He turns away.

Maybe one day after all of this he will be able to sit down and actually imagine what life would look like if the man in the glass was actually his tutor. Right now, he is much too busy.

Just before he seals the basement off again, he takes one last look at Reborn. In the glow of the machines he can almost imagine that he is watching him go.

—

"They're making a disgrace of Vongola," Squalo mutters, rewinding the video again so that he can watch the camera pan back to Reborn, "should have at least killed the shitty baby."

Across the table Mammon snorts, before tapping the tablet and projecting the image in the air above the table, letting the rest of the group see it.

"That means we get to kill them, right?" Bel asks, sounding bored. He hasn't even bothered looking up from sharpening his blades.

Xanxus, still and silent up to this point, narrows his eyes and crosses his arms.

"They were able to get the drop on an Arcobaleno, means they can't be completely useless," He taps the video forward, so it pauses on Sawada's face, "still trash though."

Squalo makes a tsking sound in the back of his throat. Besides him Lussario hums consideringly.

"Just means the fight will be worth it." He says while inspecting his nails.

Xanxus bangs a fist onto the table and snarls at the men.

"And the shitty boss still wants the brat as a heir. Fucking can't cut his losses like a fucking leader should." His flames hover just over his skin, turning the air around him into steam. His team all casually lean away, used to it.

"This just gives us a reason to kill em, though," Bel says, sneer firmly plastered on his face. Mammon shakes their head.

"If Sawada was officially a part of the Family, we would have grounds to initiate an inheritance battle. If he was completely outside the family we would be able to exercise our authority to organize a hit on him. As it is, he exist both inside and outside the family. For all points and purposes, untouchable," the Arcobaleno says in a monotone. They appear completely uncaring.

The rest of the group make disgusted expressions, and start muttering about the uselessness of rules.

"Quiet, trash!" Xanxus snaps, drawing his gun. For the most part the noise subsides.

"Quality means being certain of our outcome, which means having a family still standing to take over. Which it won't be, if we take on the whole of it," Lussario says thoughtfully. The more bloodthirsty of the group make disgruntled noises.

"But all we need to do is give definite proof that Sawada is unsuitable for inheritance, right? We don't actually have to kill him," he continues, getting a hum of consideration from Mammon and disgusted looks from the rest. Xanxus is tellingly quiet.

"Get on with it, shitty peacock," Squalo complains, leaning heavily on the table. The video plays another loop, static showing for a second before the face of Sawada reemerges.

"So, what sort of things disqualify you from inheriting? Death of course, which is looking to be tricky. Complete ineptitude, which we have just been shown is also not an option. That leaves us with mental instability and-" he trails off.

"And prior engagement," Xanxus finishes. Lussario grins smugly.

"We just have to prove that these so called 'Crows' are a Mafia family, and that Sawada is the boss, and he will be ineligible from inheriting anything from Vongola."

—

Cecilia and Nanaki watch as their boss paces the hallway in silence. Technically both of them fall under the greater Vongolan hierarchy, and Iemitsu is only their supervisor on this mission, but he is, currently, their boss.

Unfortunately.

"It has to be fake," Iemitsu mutters, footsteps echoing down the hall. He had grabbed the two of them on his way out of the research closet, looking even more worn down then when he had walked in.

"I would have noticed something, there's no way she could have kept that a secret. It's Nana," he continues.

The two Mafioso share a look, but keep obediently quiet. They don't bother reminding the older man that they don't have time for his rambling. Although Cecilia's eye does start twitching when, after a stopping to stare at the wall for a few seconds, he continues pacing.

Nanaki chews on his toothpick and watches both of them with lazy eyes, looking completely unconcerned.

"She's a housewife," Iemitsu says in something between horror and confusion.

Cecilia sighs.

"Might I remind you that one of the most popular tactics for women assassins is that of the black widow?" she says, crossing her arms.

Iemitsu snaps around and stares at her with an open mouth.

"Are you trying to say she married me for a hit?" He yelps.

Cecilia's lips purse and she very carefully shrugs. It's probably not a good career move on her part to suggest that her superior's wife only married him so she could kill him later.

"Maybe she got tired of the life and married the first guy she came across. Which just happened to be you," Nanaki pipes up, words mumbled through the wood in his mouth.

Cecilia elbows him in the gut.

"I'm sure it's nothing. In the meantime, was there something you needed us for, sir?" she says, smiling through her ire.

Iemitsu pushes one hand into his loose fringe and sighs.

"We have some intelligence that suggests a rival family will try and break into Namimori tonight. No doubt they are looking to take over the territory now that it is contested. It is, as I am sure you are both aware, a trap. While both groups are occupied I need you to sneak in and relay back more information. We need to know what's going on in there."

Cecilia nods, glad to finally have some semblance of competence from her otherwise lackadaisical boss. Nanaki, on the other hand, just sighs and shoves another toothpick into his mouth.

"Understood, sir!"

—

Shoichi leans back and cracks his neck. In front of him, the newest readout from the latest Spyders sweep across his screens. Beside him are a few of the other more computer savvy volunteers, a mismatch of street kids and office workers.

"Sir!" one of them yells, bringing his attention back with a snap. He's still not used to the respect being one of the team leads gives him.

"Yes?" he asks, standing and wandering over. The tech who called him is one of Ghost's, a tired-looking teen of indeterminate gender.

"Thought you would like to see this, I have transcripts from a conversation between Sawada Iemitsu and two grunts. Looks like orders for infiltration. Tonight," the youth says, beaded bracelet jangling as they bring up the records.

Shoichi snags the dangling headphones attached to the tech's desk and lets himself be ushered into their seat. Pressing play, he watches as both the transcribed audio and the hidden video roll by. The angle is pretty mediocre, as the Spyder had been clinging to one of the grunts' heads, but it gives enough for a basic body language program to start spitting out some details.

"Looks like they found out about Mama's past," he says with a frown, before bringing up a dialogue box with a list of saved console commands. It takes a single click to bring up the backdoor he installed into the Vongolan network, letting him bypass several more annoying security measures.

A neat and tidy list of servers pop up, and he clicks the right port for the satellite HQ that Iemitsu has been using for his investigations.

"Hmm, looks like they have someone who's not completely useless at computers. I should have thought to erase more things. Oh well, it's too late for any of this to be useful to them anyways." He mumbles, scrolling through the time-stamped documents and searches.

"Do we not have any bugs in there?" the youth of indeterminate gender asks, and he hums in thought before checking the blueprints.

"Looks like they've been doing all their digging in a storage closet for some reason. Possibly it's the only room that gets good Internet speed, which they would need to be able to keep up with the security on our firewalls. Here, I'll add it to the Spyder's search radius."

He then brings back up the audio file, along with the video recording and the finished analysis, and watches the words roll on by for a few seconds.

"Well, looks like we have two jobs tonight. Call Mama, would you? She'll want to be in on this one. I'll contact Tsuna and Tetsuya and set up some sort of plan," he finally says, tugging at a stray lock of hair.

The youth of indeterminate gender nods vigorously. Shoichi gives back their chair and heads back to his desk, side stepping bits and pieces of unfinished projects as he does.

A few heads nod toward him, either in the process of building more equipment or watching the monitors, and not for the first time he wonders at the amount of human beings in his life. He really thought for a while he would only ever have robots and online friends.

And now look at him, heading his own department. Having something he can comfortably call friendship with Tsuna and his group. He's even mostly gotten over his stomach aches whenever he has to meet someone new.

On the other hand, people.

He sidesteps an older man in rumpled clothing swearing at the soldering kit in his hands, streaks of silver melted into the front of his sweater. This brings him closer to a girl with a rainbow flag stitched across her leather jacket, hair dyed a bright neon green, the contents of her screen stopping him in his tracks.

"Is that…ethical?" he asks slowly, watching the grinding bodies in what appears to be one of Vongola's media entertainment rooms.

The girl unhooks one headphone and grins at him, teeth flashing at him.

"Is anything that we're doing ethical? Can you rank the scale of morality involved in spying and voyeurism?" she retorts, shrugging.

Shoichi fidgets, but something about that has him pausing.

"But we are spying on the Mafia, not on people, doing, you know. Not on sex," he says, face as red as his hair.

The girl nods slowly.

"That is true, crimes committed against a person are much more looked down upon than crimes committed against an organisation. Especially when it comes to privacy and sexuality. Think of it like this then," she says, sweeping her arm out, "we don't watch the raunchy stuff, we turn off the cameras every time someone goes to the washroom or makes out in the break room. You are now reducing your watching time by about a fifth. Now imagine what can happen in that time, how slow your reaction time will be when someone decides to be efficient and pass on mission plans at the same time that they fuck James from acquisitions."

Shoichi feels his eyebrows rise, the blood in his cheeks spread out until he's absolutely sure he's red all over.

"Right. Carry on," he finally gets out, conceding the point and running away at the same time. The type of people that usually end up in tech tend to be odd, nerds and enthusiasts, but he thinks that some of them might be weirder than others. Or maybe just a lot more knowledgeable than he is. He feels like he's just been lecture by his computer ethics teacher.

—

"I'm not sure this is a good idea." Tsuna worries, watching his mother pack. A few unmarked bottles filled with unidentifiable liquids, rope, duct tape, a variety of knives, a lighter, more rope…

"That's what I said about you conceding leadership over to Hibari," his mother says evenly. Tsuna winces.

His mother has always had strong opinions about not being beholden to anyone, including being a subordinate under someone like Hibari. He figures it's something she carries from her time as a contractor, but it has only strengthened over the years when it became obvious that the Mafia had their sights on him.

If he had taken the position of boss, he knows she would have a lot less of an issue with it all. As it is, she's supportive only because she considers him some sort of shadow leader, craftily planning things from behind his much more bloodthirsty boss.

She's not altogether wrong.

"Hibari is much more suited towards being the leader. Besides, it looks bad if I were to become boss when the Mafia is gunning for me. Like this it looks like I'm being protected, not dragging in everyone else for my own goals," he says with a sigh. He gets a kiss on the head in reply.

To think, a few years ago she was still pretending to be the perfect housewife. He wouldn't say he's ok with her past job, but he's made his peace with it. It helps that she has no desire to go back to it, finds the very thought distasteful.

Although that doesn't mean she's not prepared to kill, or indeed, that she feels any sort of regret in the act at all. He's quite aware that there's something wrong with her, but she's still his mother, and he loves her.

"Be safe, I'll see you tonight at the meeting." She says, ruffling his hair a little before drifting out of the bedroom and heading for the stairs. He runs after her.

"Wait!" he calls out, stopping her before she gets to the door, "you're forgetting these."

He holds out the box of plastic gloves to her and basks in her surprised delight. Nana's small hands delicately pick up the box and she tucks it into her overlarge purse.

"Oh course, silly me. You be good now, Tsu-kun," she says, before turning away.

Tsuna watches her walk down the road and bites at his nails, before a phone call has him scrambling to find his cellphone.

"Hello?" he asks, bringing the device up to his ear.

"Tsuna! Glad I could catch you. You're still at Hibari's right?" Takeshi says through the phone. Tsuna blinks. He had been sure that the other boy was still on that 'top secret training mission' with his father.

"Yeah, why?" Hh asks, tucking the phone into one shoulder so he can pick up one of Shoichi's tablets and start poking at the schedule saved on it. Just opening it requires both sets of fingerprints, a blood sample, and a biometric reading.

He supposes it really isn't paranoia if they are out to get you.

"I have something awesome to show you. Me and dad were experimenting, and...just hang on a sec. We're almost there," Takeshi hangs up, and Tsuna is left blinking once more.

His friends are so energetic.

—

"Should I get the others?" is the first thing Tsuna says upon seeing Takeshi and his father walk through the door, swords in hand.

Takeshi laughs.

"Probably, but I'm not sure I can wait. C'mon, we need to go outside for this," he says, dragging Tsuna away from his tablet and out the door. Tsuyoshi watches them go with an indulgent eye and waves at Tsuna's stuttered protests.

"I'll get the fire extinguisher!" he yells, as both boys go around the corner.

"Fire extinguisher?" Tsuna yelps, tugging his arm out of Takeshi's hold. He's a lot stronger than he remembers, so the training trip must have done something.

"Haha, ha," Takeshi says with a grin, but doesn't slow down.

Finally, the enter one of the lesser-used gardens, slightly overrun by creeping weeds and dry leaves.

"Ok, this should do it," Takeshi says, before taking a few steps away from Tsuna and turning so he's facing him.

"What exactly are you going to do?" Tsuna asks cautiously, edging away a little. He's gotten used to Takeshi's insanity, which means he is legitimately worried about what the boy is about to pull out.

"Watch," he says, swinging his sword down from where it was resting on his shoulder, like a baseball bat.

He tips the blade until it is resting almost vertically to the ground, loose-handed and with the sort of concentration most people don't consider him capable of.

A few seconds pass.

"What? I don't see—" Tsuna is interrupted when the blade, suddenly and without warning, bursts into flame.

Dirt and leaves go kicking up, and he brings his arms up to protect against the blast, realising as he does that the fire feels almost cool to the touch.

There's a sickening crunch above them, and then water pours from the suddenly black clouds. Tsuna opens his eyes to see Takeshi, water pouring down his face, collapsed on his knees with his sword digging into he suddenly wet soil.

He quickly moves to his side, hands fluttering a little before sanity reasserts.

"That's nothing a fire extinguisher would help with!" he can't help but complain, crouching down and checking up on the downed boy.

"Haha. Well, the first few times there was maybe some fire, and then water. The fire ate the water by the way. I guess this means I'm getting better at it?" he says through heaving breaths.

Tsuna shakes his head, before hauling the other boy up and settling him back on his feet. He doesn't appear to be any the worse for wear, besides being out of breath.

Tsuna takes one more look at the heaving clouds, the suddenly very muddy garden, and then down to their equality wet and muddy clothing.

"Oh man, Hibari is going to kill us."

—

Nana catches a cab a few blocks from the Hibari residence and gives the driver the address to a popular café in the area where the two grunts are supposed to be. She sits down and orders tea with mochi, and sets about to wait.

She had the foresight to bring a book, which conveniently hides the small tablet that her target information is currently being streamed to. Popping in some earphones gives her the appearance of relaxation, while also giving her access to the tech department on the other line.

"Scan complete," a female voice says through the headphones, "calculating most advantageous ambush spots, escape routes, local 'Crow participation and chance of interference. Thirty seconds until calculation complete."

Nana hums and takes a sip of her tea. How nice it is to have competent handlers; it's too bad she never had the resources that the Crows seem content to throw at her now.

"There're three alleys in your general area, two of which have access to Crow-approved safe houses. Downloading coordinates to your tablet now. Closest route back to base highlighted here. There's a total of twenty-four local Crows in your area, and zero unapproved Mafia members. There's a thirty percent chance of rain, and the current schedule for the Corridori family elimination is proceeding according to plan. You have an hour."

She murmurs her thanks, conveniently timed with the arrival of her order of mochi, and settles in to read.

The grunts are nothing particularly interesting, although she is amused to see that they are ones that she has come across before. The woman in particular, having been one of the ones she disposed of gently, in accordance with her son's wishes for minimal bloodshed.

Today however, she doesn't intend to be so nice.

She's not too worried about either of their fighting skills, having no real intentions of facing them in a fair fight, but she does frown a little at the thought of having to take down both of them at the same time.

There's no way they will let themselves be separated now that they are officially in enemy territory. On top of that, she will have to make sure they don't notice her once during the whole affair, since they will have been warned by now as to her true nature.

A pity, she does it enjoy it when her prey comes up to her unsuspecting.

"You have incoming, your 3 o'clock. Both targets identified, body language appears to be cautious but relaxed, they should come into sight in forty seconds," the voice in her ear says, and she turns in her chair so her face is out of sight but she has a clear view on the café's mirrored backboard.

A quick tap of her tablet has a bunch of cameras popping on screen, giving her even more area to cover. There's even one in the alley she has selected as her first choice.

Good, now just for the bait.

She shrugs her jacket off and tugs the hood up on the sweater underneath it. On her back, a soaring Crow takes flight in red thread. The number 11 is written right under it, and she makes sure she's positioned in such a way that when the two goons round the corner it's the first thing they see. A nod to the waitress and she walks out, angling her face away.

One of the nearby Crows takes her seat and continues acts as if they were at her table all along. Her things will be safe with them until she can reclaim them.

She doesn't even have to look to know that the trap worked, the sudden prickling along her scalp tells her the grunts have noticed her. How predictable.

Still, she has to tuck a grin back down as she walks towards her chosen alley. One of the woman in the neighbourhood-knitting circle winks at her as she walks past, and she returns it with one of her own.

It's good to be back.