Final chapter

The robot didn't look quite as menacing as it should. In fact, it was tiny. Tiny, but kind of cute. Except it shot destructive beams out of its fingers and launched missiles from its arms.

Not that it was unexpected, after they'd accidentally set of some sort of warning signal in a random hallway. They'd felt drowsy then. Ugetsu and Knuckles claimed it was from the effect of rain flames.

Now, still kind of sleepy, they dodged the incoming attacks sluggishly. Lampo had put up his shield, but it looked like he was about to fall asleep.

G brought out his gun and shot at the beams to halt their movements while Ugetsu sliced at the missiles. Giotto went into Dying Will mode quickly and flew at the robot to engage in battle. Knuckles busied himself with healing the wounds from the first attack where they were all caught off guard and trying to dispel the effects of the rain flames.

An explosion blew up the wall to the left and Alaude jumped out from the smoke. He looked pissed, dragging a man that looked half-dead by the scruff of his neck and dumping him in front of Giotto. His clothes were clean, and his handcuffs were out.

The Vongola boss raised an eyebrow. "What's this?" he asked. Wordlessly, the other guardians fought off the robot as he sorted out the matter.

The man on the floor gave a bark of laughter. "I see you're already struggling," he said smugly. "How are you going to survive fighting King Mosca at this rate?" With his bruised face and panda eyes, he honestly didn't look at all threatening. Alaude kicked the man mercilessly until he passed out.

"The robot is called a Mosca unit. He claims there is a boss unit called King Mosca that cannot be defeated by anyone." They both jump away as the tiny Mosca fires bullets at them from its fingertips. G shoots at it, but the bullet almost only bounces of the body. It does leave a scratch though.

Giotto frowns. "If what the King Mosca that this man is saying is real, then we're definitely going to have a lot of trouble."

The Mosca turns to them, as though hearing them speak, and a small rocket emerges from its back, angled precisely so that it would surely blast them to pieces when they come into contact. Giotto lights up his gloves and uses the flames to push himself forward and ram into the body of the robot. The robot swung out its arms and hit Lampo who was conveniently standing there hard in the face.

"Ow," he complained, then promptly crumpled to the floor. G rolled his eyes. "What a brat."

By now, Estraneo agents were trickling out to fight them and some were even bringing out unfinished projects to test them out on some free guinea pigs. Two other Mosca have joined them by now. They looked no different from the first one which is a relief.

"Where is Daemon?" Ugetsu asked as he knocked the robot away from Giotto with his sword.

Giotto grunted as one of the other two landed a heavy metal arm on his front and sent him back a few feet. "Not getting in more trouble, hopefully." He grabbed the outstretched metal arm with both hands and flung it upwards. It did not have much effect other than creating a crater in the ceiling. The robot responded by shooting out beams from its fingertips which Giotto blocked with a wave of sky flames.

"I'm so happy to be hearing you speak so highly of me, Giotto." Daemon's voice says. "I am still looking for Nagi's brother."

"Whatever!" G yells loudly, because Daemon isn't around physically. "You've been looking for him for a long while. Hurry the hell up."

"Don't rush me," he grumbled before releasing some illusions to help his fellow guardians. Long vines crept up from the ground and wrapped themselves around the metal limbs of the mini robots.

Nagi tugged on Daemon's sleeve. "Here," she said, pointing to a tiny door in the corner. It didn't look like anything significant, but he supposed anyone smart would definitely hide things in those kinds of places.

He kicked down the door and found tied up and unconscious Takeshi, Mukuro and Byakuran slumped on the floor. Nagi rushed over to her brother's side at once as Daemon untied them.

"Well well, what have we here?"

Daemon tensed up. He hadn't sensed anyone approaching at all. Even if he let his guard down, he should have felt something. He turned his head to face the voice and was met with a crazed-looking man with light indigo flames leaking out of the ring on his finger.

Of course, Daemon thought. The man hid his presence with his mist flames. "Not that it wasn't nice meeting you," he said, shifting his body to block Nagi from the man's view, "but we are expected elsewhere." With that, he disappeared in a cloud of smoke, bringing the four children with him to where Giotto and the rest of the guardians were.

Giotto jumped away as the wall was blown apart and a bigger, sturdier Mosca stepped out dramatically, immediately zeroing in on the Vongola boss. He froze on of the tiny Mosca as it flew at him as his guardians worked together to disable the other two all the while dodging attacks from what looks to be the King Mosca.

"Giotto," Daemon whispered urgently as he materialized. "There's a mist flame user among the scientists. I found Takeshi and the others but they're unconscious."

"Bring them back to the mansion," Giotto said, ducking as the King Mosca swiped at him. "They need to be taken care of."

Daemon frowned. "I don't think you can take on that mist user, I didn't even feel him coming awhile ago."

"We'll hold," Giotto said determinedly. "Bring them back and have the doctors check on them, come back if you can. If not, I'm sure we can handle it." So Daemon did as told, disappearing once more as he left the others to bring the children back to the safety of the mansion. G shot at the resilient metal body of the King Mosca from behind Lampo and his shield. The bullet bounced off harmlessly.

"That gun of yours isn't going to do anything against the King Mosca, you know." Emilio appeared from behind the robot. "They're made to eliminate you."

"Who the hell are you?" G demanded, jumping away from the mini-robot's attack. Lampo sent a shock through the three remaining robots but they only had any effect on the two smaller ones as they fell, disabled.

"No one you need to know," Emilio said nonchalantly and tried to throw a punch, but was blocked by Knuckles.

"Giotto, what do we do?" Asari asked. The guardians were beginning to tire. Most of their enemies were already defeated but there was still that mist flame user that Daemon was talking about to take care of.

Alaude looked irritated. "What do you mean what should we do? We obviously need to beat this man into giving us answers."

"Hello, remember the robot?" Lampo asked fearfully as he dodged an attack.

"Don't be ridiculous. Ugetsu, remember one of our training sessions for our flames where we tried to channel our flames into our weapons? Do it now."

"I remember," Asari frowned. "But I couldn't do it very well."

"Well focus and do it now," Alaude said in annoyance. "What's the point of saving Takeshi if you're not going to get back to him?"

That seemed to work, as Asari narrowed his eyes and focused on the King Mosca as Knuckles took care of Emilio. Seconds later, his sword was coated in blue flames. Giotto and G were still engaged in battle with the robot. "Get down!" Asari shouted, leaping forward to bring down the flame-coated sword on the metal suit of the robot. It easily fell apart.

The robot split open, revealing a mostly hollow inside as a tied-up Tsunayoshi fell from inside. Emilio laughed. "I wasn't expecting you to defeat it so easily, if I'm honest." He said in annoyance. "These things were supposed to get rid of you." Knuckles rushed over to the unconscious boy's side to heal him. Alaude took over dealing with the man and kicked Emilio mercilessly as the boy started waking up.

"Who the hell are you?" Alaude demanded again. Emilio shrugged.

Tsuna looked over at him once. "You..." he pointed at the Estraneo scientist. The guardians immediately pinned the man with their stares. "You're... You were in my room. One night."

"So," Alaude said casually, "you were the on who set that fire."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"That was a terrible denial, Emilio. Even I could see through it." A new voice said. The air rippled and all of a sudden, they were no longer in the hallway. Instead, they were floating in the middle of pitch black darkness.

"Who's there?" Giotto demanded. "Show yourself!"

"Boss?" Emilio muttered.

"Very good," said the voice. A face appeared in the middle of the space. It's the man Daemon had seen. "Welcome, Vongola. Did you think the battle was already over? I'm not standing down until I've avenged our last boss."

Lampo groaned, but G shut him up with a smack on the head. "What the hell do you want?"

The man's eyes flashed angrily. "What do I want?" He laughed. "What do I want, he says." The man fully materializes before them and he points a finger at their group. "Your lives, for what happened to the previous boss. He was killed by one of your allies. As such, you have a responsibility, don't you think?"

"I don't think so, nufufufu." The black space disappeared, and they were back in the hallway again. Daemon had the man in his grip, a knife pressed to his throat. "Don't you even try anything funny. The Vindice know about your illegal human experimentation. Move and we'll happily hand you over to them."

The man glared at him uselessly as Emilio struggled to break free of Alaude's grasp.

"Now," Daemon purred. "Why don't we talk about what you've been doing wrong?"

"Never!" spat the man. Daemon ignored him and pressed the knife hard enough to make a little cut and draw some blood and began questioning him. "You kidnapped the Gesso Famiglia's heir. They had no relation to this little mess. Mind telling me why?"

The man laughed hysterically. "Do you think only you can use others?" He slipped a finger into a pocket and produced the Mare ring. "We only needed him for this. Emilio used them to look into different parallel worlds and 'come up' with weapon designs."

Giotto frowned. "That's illegal."

Alaude shrugged. "Just another thing to add to the list for when the Vindice come and get them."

"You used a child to power a battle robot." Knuckles frowned disapprovingly. "If he'd died it's another to the list."

"But he didn't."

"You know," Daemon shifted and pressed the man to the wall. "A while ago, I don't know how you managed to hide your presence so well, but now it's clear to me that your illusions are weak."

The man laughed. "Wouldn't you like to know? I used the flames of that kid you found in that room. He has exceptional power, you know. He's the only kid that we've succeeded with on our project for the six paths of hell-"

"That's enough." Smoke filled the room and three cloaked men appeared. "We are aware of many of the Estraneo Famiglia's actions violating the mafia law in the past few months." Chains wrapped around the two Estraneo members' throats and dragged them towards the Vindice guards.

"I'll get you soon, Vongola!" the man glared at them hatefully. His hysterical laughter was all they could hear as they disappeared back into the smoke.

No one moved for a minute. Then, Lampo dusted off his pants and looked around at the wreckage. "Let's go home?" he offered.

"Yeah," Giotto said faintly, still staring after the spot they had disappeared into. "Let's."

~end of story

note-the warning signal mentioned in the beginning is similar to the dummy flames that appeared on the radar in the choice battle. Inside the glass case is rain flames so when they explode they 'doused' the guardians in rain flames thus they got drowsy because of the tranquility property of the flames.

No excuses, other than utter lack of motivation. This update took six months and it's not even good or long. I'd hoped that I might have a sudden burst of inspiration while I was still busy with school, but obviously that didn't happen. I'm so sorry. If there are strange plotholes or something, leave them in a review and I'll try my best to answer them! I know I don't really reply to reviews but please do know that I read them all anyway!

If you were disappointed, I'm sorry. Originally, I wanted to do a huge dramatic scene where the 1st gen are close to getting defeated and a sudden hero (maybe the Vindice or Giotto's resolve to protect his family idk) would save them but I'm just really...out of it? so I did this instead. I'm disappointed too, honestly this story wasn't planned out well and I guess I realized too late that maybe it doesn't really fit my writing style. I only reread this story to look for important plot points that I may have forgotten. It's really cringey how badly written this is.

That said, this was a good experience for me. I learned and developed a lot of my writing through this even if the story itself I think is quite poorly researched and written. I'm really grateful to everyone who's been reading/following/supporting this story and if you'd been disappointed somehow/still love the story anyway I hope you give any of my future work a chance too!

sorry for the long note

(also I wanted the guardians to be amazed at the entrance of the Vindice but I was like, 'they are grown men' this isn't supposed to happen)