Diclaimer: I don't own the characters or the series. Amano Akira does. I'm just playing with them for a bit.

A/N: Set in my 1896 'verse.

Questionable Practices

It wasn't often that one saw a pretty woman in these parts. When one of such creatures made a mistake of that magnitude, they certainly didn't go around alone, nor did they dress as half-decently as this one did. Therefore, it was only natural that she would catch attention as she walked into one of the seediest bars one could manage to find if you were actually putting some effort into it.

Every pair of eyes in the room was on her the moment she walked in. With the pretty purple hair, tantalizingly short little dress, and her high-heeled boots she was quite a sight, certainly more beauty all in one package than the regulars of the place could remember seeing in the past decade or so. The only imperfection one could find about her was the eye patch, nicely covering her right eye, but then the men around here had seen worse. She had all her four limbs and ten fingers left and didn't appear to have copious amounts of bodily hair. She was certainly a step up from the women they were used to.

"Good afternoon." The greeting shocked the barkeeper so badly, he was actually caught staring at her face instead of any other part of her anatomy. This was something of an impressive achievement, considering his usual activities the few times anything even remotely female made the mistake of stepping into his bar.

"…Right." He shook his head, returning to the comforting normalcy of staring at her breasts. It wouldn't have been right otherwise. Besides, if she didn't want her breasts to be ogled at, she should have had them properly covered up. …Okay, so her dress had little to no cleavage, considering the high collar, but she did have breasts. That voided any complaints she could have made. "And what do you want?"

"I want to know where this man is." She pulled a photograph from what he could only conclude was thin air, given that her dress most definitely did not have any visible pockets or other methods of having hidden it previously. From the first glance at the ugly face pictured, the barkeeper knew whom he wanted. So knew one of the more daring regulars who had sidled up to her.

"You don't want anything to do with that guy, sugar," he slurred, obviously well past his first drink of the night. The stench of his breath made this even more obvious. "That's a nasty guy, that one. Far too nasty for little angels like you." He got about as close to her as he could without actually sliding inside her clothes. Judging by the lustful gazes he kept giving her, it was only a matter of time and some drunken fumbling.

"Why do you think I'm asking about him in a place like this?" Though her words were sharp, her voice was awfully sweet, her eye big and shiny as she turned to look at the regular customer. "Do you know where he can be found?"

"Not at the moment, and good riddance, says I," the man grunted. "Ain't a man in this shithole who hasn't broken a law or two, but that guy, he's worse than any of us. …Well, worse than any of us except old Fred over in the corner, but none ever asked for ol' Fred. Definitely not any little angels."

"If you have no information for me," she said, still with that sweet, almost uncertain tone of hers, "I'm going to have to ask you to take more distance."

"Aw, but angel, I'm just doing the right thing by not telling ya," the old drunk argued. "He's seriously bad news. Ya don't find him, he finds you. And when he does, you won't like it." His fingers brushed over her bare thigh, slowly creeping upwards. "It'd be a real shame to see an angel like you ruined by a man like that… real shame, I'm telling ya."

"…Kindly remove your hand from me." Yet the only thing she did to resist was push him away, rather ineffectively, given that he only stumbled right back, leaning even closer to her this time. His breath washing over her face made her wince even as his hand now reached out to tighten around her wrist, instead.

"Now, don't be that nasty, angel! It's not like I want to hurt ya," he breathed. "…Well, at least you're gonna like it if I do. I mean, I can be real good. Show you real good why you shouldn't go with men like him. Them's bad news, I'm telling ya, you'd better go with old Nico here, I'll show you a real good time for your troubles so you didn't come into this shithole for nothing…"

She cast a somewhat distressed glance around. However, all the men in the bar found something far more interesting to look at, not really caring about the scene. If she was stupid enough to walk in here alone with a dress that just barely covered her panties, she deserved any kind of uncomfortable advances she got. Their only complaint might have been that they hadn't been the one to make those advances, but then, they knew Nico. He had always been good about sharing.

"…I do believe I gave you your fair warning." Now, there was something new about her tone, a new kind of steel that almost startled them. Almost. They'd seen far too many little girls playing tough in their lives to actually care. She was a frail little thing; it wasn't like she could put up much of a fight.

"Feisty, eh?" Nico grinned. "That's just the way to get old Nico's blood –"

They never quite found out just what the end to that sentence would have been. 'Flow' would probably have been an accurate answer, considering he was suddenly staggering backwards, holding onto a bleeding wound on his arm with a rather impressive howl. The woman stood up straight, now, her little hand holding onto what might have been called a trident had any of the men present been able to handle such a difficult word. Where it had appeared from, none of them could quite explain. "I told you not to touch me," she said, all wariness now gone from her voice. "You do not have the right."

"Oh, yeah?" One of the other regulars stood up from his table, apparently spurred on by Nico's misfortune. Unlike Nico, he wasn't an aging man who had seen better days; instead, he was quite the impressive young brute, with an ugly face but plenty of muscle. And he was apparently fully planning to make use of that muscle now, walking towards her with a threatening look on his face. "Let's see you be brave with that little stick of yours against a real man."

Eyeing him from head to toe, her face took on an expression best described as contempt. "A real man? Oh, please. I doubt you've even seen a real man. I mean," she added with a perfectly angelic little smile, "it's not like the bad boys ever let you see their face while they were having fun with you when you were in jail for being naughty with your grandmother's cat."

"That's a dirty little mouth you've got on you," the younger man growled. "Let's see you put it to its intended use." The way he grabbed his crotch made it most clear indeed what he meant by that.

"What, and deprive your dear dog of the honour? I would never be so heartless."

Now, the man attacked forward with a howl of rage. However, it was cut rather short as a rapidly moving figure suddenly stood between him and the woman, then in one swift movement struck him to the ground. "I'm afraid," growled the man who had appeared almost out of nowhere, standing even taller than the young idiot and impeccably dangerous in his neat black suit, "it's against my principles to let idiotic brutes paw at my girlfriend."

"I could have handled this all by myself." She shook her head. "There's no need for you to defend my honour, Kyouya-san."

"You would deprive me of my greatest delight? You are as cruel as your mouth is filthy, my dearest Nagi." The man smirked, apparently entirely ignoring the rest of the people in the bar. "Where have you learnt to say such things, anyway? I know for a fact it is not from me."

"Xanxus is rather an effective teacher," she replied, tilting her head almost coyly to the side. "He always says one should be able to give people exactly what they deserve, and not an ounce more politeness."

"He talks about unspeakable acts of bestiality in your presence? I wonder if I should be worried." Stepping closer, he leant in to press a light kiss on her lips, then glanced at her weapon. "And you have only stabbed one man. This night isn't getting to a very good start, is it?"

"I'm sure I can make it more." Glancing around at the currently very horrified clientele of the fine establishment, she raised her voice. "We want information on the man in this picture, including his current location. His name is supposedly Benedetto Pacitti and he has been here before. And remember," she added, still with that cursed smile, "we only actually need one of you alive… for just long enough to answer our questions."

"And before you think we cannot get away with murdering you all and setting this place on fire as we leave," the man added wryly, "I would like to assure you that the local law enforcement are not only quite busy looking aside while we are running our little errands, we actually have a couple of them on call in case any need would arise." As he spoke, a rather ornamental ring on his finger glinted, light glancing off the purple stone on it. The woman had a similar one on her finger, only the stone was indigo.

The only man in the bar deeply involved enough to know what this meant, the good old Fred, made for the door while he still could. Unfortunately for him, he found it locked.

Granted, they should have known better. No woman of that magnitude would walk into a place like this without there being some sort of a trap built into it.

However, it didn't usually involve getting erased by the mafia simply for a couple of them making lewd comments.