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She's not entirely sure how she got into this mess. One second she's trying to track down her older brother and the next she's being cornered by what might well be the most dangerous men she's ever met.

And her father's in the mafia.

It had all started innocently enough; she just wanted to find out where her brother ran off to every day.

They weren't particularly close, their first interaction had been six months ago when her father dropped her off on his doorstep with a note telling him who she is.

At four, she wasn't the best at understanding the subtleties in interactions but it didn't take an expert to put together the fact that her father and brother didn't get along and she had just been abandoned.

Though, for what's it worth, she wasn't really concerned about it.

She doesn't know if her mother was ever in the picture, she had never been around as far as she knew, and her father wasn't exactly attentive so being alone in a house too big for her was something she had grown accustomed to and she had no delusions of her brother suddenly opening himself up to her.

Still, she was worried for him. Sure, he had 12 years on her but they were firmly entrenched in mafia territory and with active flames (and wasn't that just sad) along with a father that wasn't well liked, he made a prime target.

She never considered that she would make a better one.

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Feet pounding on the cobblestone, she prays desperately to any god that might be listening to get out of this alive.

She's four for god's sake! She knows nothing! She doesn't even have active flames yet but still these men won't leave her alone.

She's not sure if they're actually mafia, chasing someone through the streets whether justified or not is sure to attract a lot of attention and the Antonelli may not be the most powerful family but they ruled this town with an iron fist.

A crate explodes to her right, brutally jerking her back to the present. Maintaining the zig zag she's been running in, she breaks out into the open street, immediately immersing herself with the crowd.

Had the street been any less busy her plan might not work. As it is, she's able to blend in, skirting around people's legs and slowly but surely losing her tail.

Rounding a corner at the end of the street she breaks out into another run, trying to put as much distance between them as possible.

'If I make it out of this,' she thinks to herself 'I'm going to have to work on my stamina.'

Feeling like her legs were about to burst open, she ducks into an alley, diving behind a bag of trash. Gasping for breath, she slumps against the wall and waits for a minute before relaxing.

Glancing around at the rotting decay that surrounds her she curses both herself and her brother. It's easily one of the most disgusting things she's ever seen but she makes no move to get up. Better to sleep here and get sick, she muses, than to leave and….well...die.

Her eyes snap open at the sound of something slamming into the wall.

There is no way that an animal made that noise. Absolutely no chance in hell. Like a rat in a trap she tries to meld herself to the wall, willing herself to become invisible.

Casting a cautious glance up, she finds herself staring into hard, obsidian eyes and all she can think is that she's going to die next to a bag of trash.

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He hadn't been expecting much when he arrived in Squillace.

Sure, it was a beautiful town but Italy wasn't bereft of those. The only really interesting thing was the pottery the town was known for.

Or, well, the only interesting thing save for the young, active Mist that had somehow managed to evade working with the Antonelli.

Though it wasn't unheard of, flame users weren't known for being spared from the mafia and with how much the Anotelli were trying to force the young Mist's hand, it was the prime opportunity for him to swoop in as a "saving grace" on behalf of the Vongola.

Though he could've done without his partner.

God knows how he had been roped into this but here he is, standing in a market place trying to pick which terra cotta pot he likes more while his partner sought out the Mist.

At least he was looking at the ceramics until he heard the unmistakable sound of gunshots.

He looks up just in time to watch the reflection of a young girl burst into the busy street and lose herself in the crowd.

Quirking a brow, he watches as she uses her height (or lack thereof) to skirt around people's legs, effectively disappearing from sight.

Her technique is sloppy at best and he's seen much better from kids her age but he's sorely lacking in entertainment so he turns away from the stall and makes to follow her.

Just as he reaches the crowd a group of men come barreling down into the street, screeching about "the brat" that got away. Most of the civilians shift away once they spot the crest identifying them as Antonelli grunts. Not satisfied with the reaction, the men start waving their guns in the civilians' faces like absolute amateurs, all the while demanding information.

'Well this just got more interesting.' He smirks to himself.

Tucking his hands into his pockets, he strolls leisurely towards where she's no doubt hiding. The ambient flames she's giving off makes pinpointing her location a matter of seconds though it would've been child's play regardless.

'Sloppy,' he scoffs to himself. Honestly it was just bad parenting to leave a flame capable child with no method of self defense.

Turning into the alley she's hid herself in, he nearly rolls his eyes at the heavy panting. Entertainment and irritation are at war and he's hard pressed to decide whether this was worth it after all.

'Well,' he eyes a trash can standing near him, 'it wouldn't do to give her a heart attack by just showing up.'

A smirk curls across his lip.

'No, no. I should definitely announce myself.'

And if he lets out a bit of irritation on the can and relishes a bit in the harsh intake of breath, well who's there to say anything?

Let it never be said that he can't make the best out of a bad situation.

It's two steps until he's standing in front of the girl. The bag of trash she's hidden behind is doing an absolutely horrible job at providing cover and though she's absolutely shaking with fear she still manages to meet his eyes.

They say nothing, just eye each other; her in fear and him in faint amusement.

She tears her eyes away from his then and eyes his arms, clearly looking for that hideous patch that the grunts were wearing. Her eyes grow increasingly frantic when they find nothing and now she's searching everywhere on his person, hoping against hope that she'll see anything that will let her know who she's dealing with.

There's nothing.

The realization that this man is not related to the ones chasing after her, that he can do whatever he wants quickly dawns and she snaps her eyes back to his.

Her pupils are blown in fear, shoulders hunched over, shaking like a leaf in a tornado, shallow breaths tearing through her chest; she's not just scared now, she's downright terrified.

But she hasn't looked away.

Has kept her eyes trained on him, not giving him the opportunity to strike when she's unaware.

He smirks.

He tries not to, really, but it's impossible to stop. This little girl is showing more courage than he's seen in hundreds of mafioso and there's something to be said for that.

Distantly, he registers the flames moving steadily towards him as his partner and sharpens his grin. The girl jerks back, acting like if she pushed hard enough that the wall would swallow her whole.

"Would you stop scaring her?"

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At the second voice she jerks even farther back into the wall. She can't tell where the voice came from and she's certainly too scared to take her eyes off the man in front of her.

Child she may be, stupid she is not.

"Who says I'm scaring her?" A part of her is severely irritated that they're speaking in a different language but an equally large part is whispering that they're talking about all the ways they could cut her up into bite sized pieces and she would never know.

"Don't play coy." The tonal variations keep throwing her off but it also sounds so familiar, she just can't place where she knows it from.

Admittedly being terrified out of your mind isn't the best time to play at being a linguistics expert.

A flash of red in the corner of her eye grabs her attention and (very reluctantly) she turns to face it.

Standing before her is a man dressed in red and white with a long, thin braid down his back. He's smiling genially at her but she isn't at all convinced that he's as nice as he's pretending to be. His eyes are similar enough to the other man that she finds it impossible to calm down.

He's speaking again but she can't really focus on anything other than her heart pounding in her ears and with a jerk she realizes that she's kept her eyes off the other man for far longer than she feels comfortable. The men are too far away from one another to watch them both at the same time so she compromises by sliding her eyes from one to the other frantically.

She ignores the smirk being shot her way.

"Hēi," the man in red calls to her, "we're not going to hurt you." He extends an arm out, palm facing her in an attempt at mollification. The other man scoffs but seems to decide that it's best not to get involved and takes to leaning against the wall, crossing his arms with that insufferable smirk still on his face.

The girl is 100 percent ill at ease now. At this point, she doubts that the man is a part of the group that was chasing her originally but that doesn't mean he's not associated with them. Why else would he have followed her here and then intimidated her until this other guy showed up? And now he's just relaxing by a bag of trash as if his suit wasn't worth more than the combined income of half the town.

Nothing good can come when a man like that relaxed. Nothing good at all.

Keeping him in her periphery, she turns her attention to the man in red. His other hand is out as well now, palm out towards her and the smile has come back on. Maybe in a different scenario she'd accept his attempts, smile back at him and then run back out into the street but here she is, staring at him like a mouse does the cat.

Her mind reels, thinking of all the things she's not going to be able to do anymore. No more naps in the sun, no more cloud watching, no more late night star gazing (and god are the stars beautiful - they were never quite so bright in Naples), no more watching the fishermen come in with their catches or the ceramicists digging clay by the gulf, no fireflies distracting her from the stars, god she never even got the chance to hug her brother!

Her eyes are filling with tears before she can stop it but she doesn't want to die and there's so very little she can do right now. She can't fight (she doesn't know how), she can't scream (it'll only get her killed faster), she can't do anything.

She's utterly hopeless but she doesn't want to die.

So when the man in red starts stepping closer and she instinctively jerks back into the wall, she feels her resolve harden.

She glares balefully at the man, not managing to dissuade him at all, though his smile drops from his face. The arms he has outstretched towards her droop a bit putting them that much closer to where she assumes his weapons are.

The desperation she's been trying to stamp down claws at her throat, threatening to rip through her mouth with its ferocity. She knows it'll just get her killed faster but with the next step the man takes she decides she doesn't care. The force is steadily building up within her and just as it feels like her chest is going to burst he takes another step.

She explodes.

A power unknown to her tingles underneath her skin before surging out of every pore. The initial onslaught is almost unbearably painful and she finds herself clenching her eyes closed in a ridiculous attempt at shutting it out

'How unfair,' she thinks to herself. 'To be so convinced that you were going to die at someone else's hands only to accidentally kill yourself.'

Her eyebrows furrow at the faint bustling noises of the town past the silence in the alley. Is she a ghost? It would explain why she doesn't feel pain anymore.

She opens her eyes, finding herself fully corporeal and not nearly as dead as she thought she would be. The entire alley is swathed in purple that is originating from the flickering form of what appears to be flames on her hands.

Confused, she looks back up but the men are nowhere to be seen and the panic starts to well up again because where are they?

There are no bodies lying around so they clearly weren't affected by whatever just happened. For all she knows they could be planning a counter attack.

A chill runs down her spine as she realizes that's probably exactly what they're doing. They probably saw this as some sort of attack and are looking to get some form of revenge.

'But I'm not hopeless anymore.' She eyes her hands critically. Though she doesn't know how to control them, she knows these are her flames and she's not about to go down without a fight.

The flames flare brighter as if in conjunction with her thoughts and even in this dire situation she can't help but note how pretty they are.

A noise to her left has her snapping to her feet, her hands in front of her in a mockery of a fighting stance.

"I didn't think I scared her that badly." Looking as if he never left, the man regards her with blatant amusement. A part of her is still bristling at not being able to understand him.

A scoff from the right and she finds herself sandwiched in between the two men. Her resolve shakes, fear clawing at her.

Shaking it off she tries to will herself to hold on for just a little longer, surely someone has seen something and, honestly, so long as it wasn't the group of men from earlier she didn't care who it could be.

But help doesn't come and she stiffens as the red man sighs.

"Sorry about this."

Suddenly he's right in front of her, taking in her wide eyes and stuttering breaths. (My god, she hadn't even seen him move!) Her flames move instinctually, curling around her in a makeshift shield. Forgetting her hands all together, she pushes with all her might, sending the shield out and away from her in an attempt to knock him over or at least get him away. He quirks a brow but otherwise doesn't react and coats his hand in red flames, reaching out to just tap the shield.

It shatters.

Before she can try to conjure another one he's in front of her again only this time he's taken her hands in his, steadily pumping them with his flames.

She can only watch wide eyed and terrified as her flames slowly putter into nothing.

"How interesting," the man is still leaning against the wall acting as if what had just happened was anything but.

She just stares, suddenly so numb and mind-numbingly exhausted.

"My apologies for frightening you on behalf of both my friend and myself." He's smiling at her with her hands still firmly encased in his. She's instantly irritated by both his composure and the fact that they could've spoken Italian the entire time, they just chose not to.

Gamely ignoring her glare, he continues, "I also apologize for having to cut your flames off but a massive, uncontrolled output such as yours could have dire consequences."

There's no chance she's about to admit she didn't understand the majority of what he said so she just stays quiet, eyeing him with renewed wariness.

"You do realize you're speaking to a child, no?"

The smile drops from his face for a second before coming back with blinding intensity.

Unsurprisingly this just makes her more nervous.

"I'm being rude aren't I? Let me introduce myself, my name is Fon and I am a Storm." He gives her hands a quick squeeze. "What I said earlier was that your flames were too strong and could have seriously hurt you so I had to put them out."

She has a feeling she should be saying thank you but she's still not sure that they won't kill her so she just bites her tongue.

"Do you know what flames are?" Fon asks.

Nodding her head, she chances a quick glance at the other man and jerks back as soon as she meets his eyes.

"Ah, I can see you're still worried. Fear not, we aren't interested in hurting you." Yet, her mind supplies unhelpfully.

A wave of exhaustion slams into her, soaking her through to the bone, the awkward angle of her arms isn't helping anything. She fidgets slightly, trying to gently tug her hands away from Fon.

The other man heaves a dramatic sigh before pushing off the wall and quite literally sauntering over. He flicks one finger out, allowing a dazzling yellow flame to light the tip. She tries not to flinch as he presses it against her forehead. Warmth spreads out to the rest of her body, slowly uncoiling her muscles and returning her body back to its pre-release state.

"Your name?"

'Who doesn't introduce themselves first?' She grumbles to herself. But he did just help her.

She looks back at Fon and catches the eagerness in his eyes. Technically they both helped her and really there's not much to lose by giving them her name.

"Ancile." She winces at how hoarse her throat is. "Ancile Shamal."

She can't help but think of the elderly matron she used to live by that spent every waking moment preaching warnings of the devil appearing as a handsome young man when a smirk crawls across his face.

"Chaos, Ancile. It's a pleasure to meet you."

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Idk where all this confidence to post my stories is coming from but here we go! Please don't hold back criticisms! I'm pretty sure I abused the crap out of commas in this and I can never manage to catch all of my splices no matter how hard I try.

Also, I'm not swinging for the fences when it comes to canon divergence but there'll naturally be a bit that's different. From what I have planned though the major events should stay the same.

Thank you so much for reading!