Gokudera and Yamamoto walked in silence for a long time. Gokudera looked numbly at the walls around him, seeing a strange mix of old worn bricks and reinforced steel and concrete. He looked out the window and saw sun and leaves, and for half a second felt relief, a little hope. Grief and guilt quickly slammed back down on his thoughts.

Eventually the two of them reached a small room set up like a boardroom. The people inside stopped their loud argument to observe at the new arrivals.

Squalo stared at Yamamoto's face, passively cheerful and almost normal. The other occupants of the room, Bel, Lussuria, and Mammon, however, seemed either too nervous or uncaring to make eye contact.

Yamamoto was the first to break the silence.

"Where are we? Is this it? Just the four of you? Where's the rest of your team? And our team?"

Squalo quietly responded "We're in a modified church, a secret secondary base near our main one I had built in case of attack. Yes, this is it. . I don't know how many you brought, but Mammon confirmed that three members of your team, including the Arcobaleno, were trapped in an artificial landslide at the back of the facility. The rest of Varia didn't get out."

Belphegor laughed openly at the silence that followed Squalo's explanation.

Yamamoto continued, still calm. "What happened? How did they manage to take over your main headquarters?"

"You talk first, kid. The three of us have been in our own dungeons for weeks. I need to know how this all went down from the outside."

Yamamoto sighed, then calmly began explaining. "Fine. About a month ago, when Varia fell out of contact, all the rest of Vongola got was a short message about a long mission you were about to start. The ninth thought nothing of it, but then… Vongola branches and allies started being attacked, and falling completely. Some new family was taking them down one by one.'

'Then the main branch was attacked. The External Advisor team went to defend the Ninth, and we were sent to find Varia and see if you could be brought to help or if you needed rescuing yourselves.'

'We had six people, including Reborn. Mukuro, Chrome and his gang went missing without a trace just before the attacks started. And Lambo couldn't come because Tsu…" Yamamoto trailed off for a moment, his smile stiff and forced, unable to say the name.

"It was decided he was too young to be brought into such an unknown situation.'

'We arrived and saw your base overrun with enemy soldiers. Reborn figured you would be trapped in lower level dungeons and made a plan to rescue you. Me, Gokudera and Ts… We would attack from the front, both as a diversion and to beat some of their stronger fighters while Hibari, Ryohei and Reborn snuck in from the back entrance and broke you out.'

'It all went wrong. We were distracting pretty well, almost inside the facility, when who I think were lieutenants came out. One of them used guns, a lot of guns, and the other was just insanely strong, fast, a berserker with two knives. It was almost an even fight, and we barely managed to beat them. Then their boss came out.'

'Black flames everywhere. He was using Xanxus's guns to shoot black flame bullets. He was… he was so strong, we couldn't even keep up. Only Tsu… Ts… only…"

Gokudera interrupted his struggling friend's explanation. "Only the Tenth stood a chance against him. They were fighting pretty evenly when… I was too slow, I… oh… I couldn't dodge when he shot at me, my shields were scattered. I thought I was going to die, I heard the shots but then there was a blur in front of my eyes and the Tenth, oh the Tenth, he just went and…"

"He took the bullets," Yamamoto explained. "He caught seven of them in his gloves and took six straight to the chest.'

'We ran, then. We got into the woods and then I stayed behind to try and buy Gokudera enough time to get Ts-Tsu… him to a doctor, or at least away from the fighting.'

Yamamoto smile finally failed as he finished his explanation, his expression harsh, angry, and full of self-loathing. 'I lasted maybe thirty seconds before I felt a needle in my neck and I was sleeping. I woke up here, and he was… Tsuna was dead."

Yamamoto stared at Gokudera, a question in his eyes, until Gokudera responded shakily. "I got the Tenth further away and we hid in the cave where we made base. I tried to do first aid, and then that bastard was there. He knocked me out and...'

'Why the hell didn't he kill me too?"

"He needed you to report the death." Squalo responded. "He needed the Vongola to lose hope."

Squalo started his own explanation then. "We were taken completely by surprise. One moment we were hearing reports of attacks on the outer patrols, the next we were unconscious. I woke up in one of our cells with these three separate from everyone else. We were left there for over a month, seeing no one but silent guards from the enemy. When we got rowdy, they'd run an electric current through the floor. Same for trying to escape, use flames, or any other random reason.'

'When you attacked the power was cut and we were able to escape. We got out and went straight to this secret secondary base. Mammon found you all after the fighting had stopped, just lying there, and we went to retrieve you. There was no body in the cave, just some blood, but Mammon saw the bullet go into his brain before they took the body with them."

"So," Squalo asked, "What do we do now?"

ARG sorry for the very long break. Hibari will be in the next chapter, I just feel that wall of expository dialogue was enough for you to deal with.