AN: Part 2, where Haru is every bit as bad as Byakuran, in some senses.

It's nearly two months later, on Valentine's Day, when Haru first starts making good on the faith Shouichi's could-be self first put in her with respect to derailing Byakuran's destructive nature.

She does it by giving him a yakuza lawyer, which is just… Shouichi has no words. None at all.

"How did you even meet him?" He hisses to her in the kitchen, peering over to where Byakuran is blinking with sleepy delight from their couch—his, really, more than anything these days—at the flashy man sitting at their little kotatsu in rigid seiza, staring right back at him with a glittering, enraptured gaze. Maeda Kikyo is a very pretty man, so there's any number of ways that he could have caught Haru's eye; first and foremost, she might have simply taken issue with his white suit and flagrantly paisley shirt.

He notices that the man's suit is missing its jacket, and a terrible suspicion forms.

Haru fidgets in front of the fridge, where her chocolate is still setting. "There was a big sale at my favorite bakery today," she mumbles. "I wanted to buy some extra to send to Kyoko-chan and Chrome-chan."

"Haru, oh my god," he says, passing a hand over his eyes. "Don't throw cakes at yakuza."

"Haru didn't throw it, hahi!" She scowls at him, cheeks puffing out. "…I. I didn't throw it." She coughs, calming down out of bashfulness at the slip. "I got jostled by the crowd and we both went down. Kikyo-san was very understanding, but I wanted to try and compensate him anyways."

"Haru, this is Tokyo. There is no Hibari Kyouya lurking around to put the fear of god into the local gangs; that could have been really dangerous."

Haru bites her lip, and his stomach burns like hellfire. Which makes sense, because he's always been reasonably sure that Hibari Kyouya is in fact a creature summoned up from the very gates of the Inferno itself.

"No," he says, very quietly. "Oh god, nooo."

"It's going to be a busy night," she says evasively. "And—and Kikyo-san seems very nice."

"We're harboring a criminal while Hibari Kyouya is loose in the most noisy, crowded city in the country," Shouichi says, just to get the damning words out in the open. "He's not going to have a group to belong to in the morning, is he?"

"…Byakuran-san seems taken with him?" Haru offers, sheepish.

"You're unbelievable," he sighs, beginning to rhythmically bump his head against the wall beneath the apple blossom. He glances at the sink again, and catches sight of the faint remainders of a large, probably masculine footprint on the back of the soaking jacket, sees what appear to be the ingredients for high-quality hamburger steak not yet put away, and pauses mid-bump to give his best friend a shrewd look.

She bites her lip, then sets her jaw and raises her chin minutely, stubbornly, completely unrepentant.

"You always wait until the day after Valentine's Day to raid cake shops once the prices fall," he remembers finally, keeping his voice low. He finds himself horrifically, perilously close to an ambiguous, warm emotion he refuses to acknowledge as pride. Sure, she might be growing up enough to sacrifice cake and money. Sure, she's branching out and trying to make new friends. But she still probably stalked a member of the local yakuza, assaulted him with unreasonably priced baked goods, and then proceeded to essentially put out a hit on the man's boss and group, because he was nice to her and was apparently being mistreated. That's not okay.

They're supposed to be avoiding this world, aren't they?

…shit. He's still impressed. Haru is devious when she wants something. He had almost allowed himself to forget that, amidst the perfect storm of drinking, sweet-binging, and hardcore late-night Jenga tournaments that their frien—that their completely benign and shallow association with Byakuran has turned into.

He'll have to put a stop to this, somehow. This, he realizes grimly, is the first shifting pebble in a highly slippery slope. If he lets her keep this one, it will only encourage her. Byakuran is a necessary evil—in the sense that he needs to first be present in their lives to be vanquished from it—and so Shouichi can't complain about him stealing their couch, or badgering Shouchi to play some game or one of his embarrassingly amateur songs, or strutting around in Haru's newest designs, or kissing them on the cheeks whenever he greets or leaves them and claiming it's an Italian thing even though he aims for the apex of their ears and jaws every time, that absolute liar, or dropping in on their classes with the pure, sugary nonsense he dares to call 'brain food', or shuffling around their apartment in a wife-beater and his boxers at the crack of noon while he squints, disheveled and disgruntled, at some new e-mail from his sick cousin imparting criminal wisdom, one hand fluffing his already magnificent bedhead while he drapes himself over whichever of them is closest to leech off their warmth, or—

"Oh my god," Shouichi breathes, staring past Haru into the ungodly abyss of unwanted realizations.

Maeda Kikyo is not the first pebble. Shouichi is already so far down the slope, he doesn't even know which way is up anymore.

"Our lease is up in a few months, anyways," Haru says, patting his shoulder and picking up his train of thought with unsettling, amused ease. "We should look into getting a bigger apartment."

"Ngh," he whines, dropping his head against the crook of her neck in numb defeat. She cards her fingers through the fluffy hair at his nape—he's been using Byakuran's shampoo for months, how did he never realize that they were already in so deep?—and croons out vaguely reassuring noises, cradling him with one hand and assembling a simple evening meal with the other.

Goals and accomplishments, he thinks, and then for some reason he remembers this morning, when the three of them woke up underneath the kotatsu, tangled and warm and—

"We'll probably need at least four rooms," he forces himself to say, cutting that thought down before it has a chance to meander towards any sort of conclusion.

They don't actually get a new apartment once their lease is up, even if Kikyo has basically moved in and has, for some reason known only to himself, decided to become their pseudo-butler.

Instead, Byakuran drags them off on what he promises will be a grand tour of Europe in its entirety.

Somehow, Shouichi can't even muster up a shred of surprise that their first stop is a dilapidated village somewhere in rural Greece. For a funeral, naturally, even though Shouichi is nearly one hundred percent certain Byakuran has never met the deceased, middle-aged farmer in his life.

"D'we know each other?" The dead man's foster son—a scruffy, understandably glum-faced guy who calls himself Ródi—squints at them suspiciously after the writes are carried out. He does not, Shouichi notices from a cursory glance at the other villagers heading back to their homes and fields, look especially Greek, so it's not as outlandish a question as it might seem on the surface. He also has that whole 'deathly aura of intimidation' that Shouichi not-so-fondly recalls from his incidental meetings with Sawada's group. And he apparently knows Japanese for some reason.

He's also as tightly wound as an E-string one pluck away from snapping, which is highly alarming.

"Not at all," Byakuran says blithely, as Kikyo fusses over arranging the white chrysanthemums they brought for the meager little grave. Shouichi knows instinctively he is lying, and has no idea why. "But you see, you've been swirling those massive Flames of yours around yourself so desperately that I felt it prudent to arrange the trip over myself, before dear Haru-chan tore a door off our car and bolted here on foot."

Haru has been on edge since they entered the country, Shouichi can admit. She's been restless, always rolling her shoulders and staring hard outside the windows of their hotels and taxis and rentals, as though looking for somebody who called out to her across a crowded room.

Out of pure self-defense, once he realized that they were well and truly stuck in a downward spiral, Shouichi brushed up on his knowledge of Flames. Haru had told him what she knew, in bits and pieces over the years, but Byakuran's mysterious cousin has far more information at his disposal, and Byakuran likes to read out loud. Even when they're trying to study. Especially then, if he feels particularly neglected and Kikyo's doting attention just isn't cutting it, on that given day.

The biggest thing—the thing that made him realize there was no escape, just like that day years before, biking on the hills—is how the different Flames can Resonate. It deserves the capitalization; from what he knows, it's a strong, sudden chemistry, the kind that doesn't make a relationship all on its own, but the kind that certainly speeds up the process and leaves the end result rock solid. Sometimes it's romantic, and sometimes it's antagonistic, and most commonly the process is mentioned in reference to a full Harmonization—that is to say, when one of each Flame type Resonates with a Sky Flame user.

A Sky Flame user like Byakuran, for example, but he's not the center of this issue, despite all implications to the contrary.

Despite what popular literature on the subject might suggest—research only done at the behest and coin of powerful famiglia, over the years—full Harmonization isn't all that common, due to the relative rarity of pure Sky Flame users. Instead, more often than not 'incomplete' Harmonizations pop up, between the other types of Flames.

So, this is about Haru. Everything is, for Shouichi, but this especially. Haru is a Lightning Flame user, which he knows because for some god-awful reason she was once hit by a Dying Will Bullet and that's as much like cracking an airtight seal on a bottle as it can be a legitimately life-threatening situation. There's no going back. But really, the point is this:

Haru is a Lightning Flame user. Lightning Flame users, at their core, are protective. They are well suited for defense, either bodily or through some sort of barrier creation, and to be honest, that suits Haru perfectly. She's the crazy girl who would throw herself bodily in front of a child if she thought they might be in danger, somebody who would do anything for a friend, the type of person who literally bribed and threw a monster of a man at a local, legitimately dangerous gang because she decided that she wanted to keep Kikyo. She's very much the quintessential Lightning, is what he's getting at with this.

Lightnings historically have particularly tempestuous Resonations with Storms, to skirt a truly terrible pun. They can be vicious enemies or the closest of friends, and in many cases flip the spectrum around at a moment's notice.

In hindsight it gives some rationale as to how she and Gokudera Hayato had managed to be eternally at one another's throats while simultaneously remaining, in the loosest definition, friends. Byakuran just said 'you've been swirling those massive Flames of yours around yourself so desperately' and all Shouichi can feel is gut-churning dread because what does that mean? He's stronger than Gokudera Hayato, even Shouichi can sense that much, but what does that mean for Haru?

His friend makes a small, wounded noise and shifts while he's still thinking furiously, and it takes him a few seconds to notice that she's moving. His fingers brush the back of her blouse, just a beat too slow to stop her as she darts towards Ródi, the man himself taking a wary step back.

Shouichi feels like he's having a stroke, everything slowing down and going blurry for a moment of pure, unrestrained fear, a panicked moment of he's so strong, Byakuran thinks he's strong, is this one of those future cities that were-will-be destroyed, oh god, Haru, oh god Haru no—and then there's a cool hand weaving into his hair, and Byakuran's breath is hot against his cheek, jarring things back into some semblance of normality.

"Watch," the man who Shouichi is supposed to stop orders, and he can't do anything but obey.

Haru zips towards Ródi, and Shouichi's breath catches into a wheezy, silent 'no', but then she collides with the man and climbs him like a goddamn tree, wrapping herself around him like a koala with abandonment issues, pressing her face against his stubbly cheek as she keens in a way that is raw and beyond language, a type of frustrated sadness that makes Shouichi's heart hurt because he never wants to see her sad, never wants to hear her make that sort of heartbreaking, heartbroken sound, and—

They're crying, he realizes suddenly.

Ródi's body language shifts the moment she makes contact, his arms snapping around her and caging her tight even as he stumbles to his knees. Haru is openly sobbing, fingers clenching desperately in the back of his worn and threadbare shirt. He isn't so much weeping as he is howling, like a beast, like a maelstrom, like a—like a child who just lost everything, Shouichi realizes, and things rapidly click into place. He can barely breath, the air around them is so hot, stinging at the back of his throat and his eyes as the Flames that had impressed Byakuran so much crushed down on them all with the weight of Ródi's grief.

"Haru-chan has such a giving heart," Kikyo murmurs, one hand cradling his cheek as he watches the scene before them, and Shouichi feels Byakuran's lips curve against the shell of his ear.

They leave Greece within two days, a freshly falsified passport and some new clothes allowing 'Miura Zakuro' to follow along with them.

They take a pit stop in France next, in Nice, and then they head to the orchard in Jura, which is actually Shouichi's idea because Haru is still looking a little raw around the edges, like she wants to rip herself open and wrap them all up in everything she is, to keep them safe. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the newly-named Zakuro follows her around like a grumpy shadow and frequently uses her lap as his pillow and sucks up her attention as though she's the older one in that particular, peculiar dynamic. Nothing at all.

Shouichi insists he is not jealous.

"Well I am," Byakuran tells him bluntly, when the other three—well, Haru, with a bemused Kikyo and Zakuro in tow—head off to look at the local flea market. "I like Zakuro plenty—" and here Shouichi very carefully does not remind him that they were supposed to have only just met the man, "—but you see, I am feeling neglected. Haru-chan belongs to everyone, but we were here first. Fix it, Shou-chan."

There's something wrong with that statement, but a niggle of some self-preserving, primal instinct tells him to drop it, because Byakuran's gaze is sharp and tense. He occasionally has what Shouichi and Haru privately refer to as Bad Days, where he claws his way back to consciousness wild-eyed and sallow-cheeked, often before falling ill. He twines himself around them most often around those times, desperately, like he's a ship and they're the only things keeping him from being ripped out to sea and capsized.

"…well, there's one thing we could do," he says hesitantly, and then shoves his cowardice aside for once in his life and twines his fingers through Byakuran's fist until it loosens into a mere vice-grip around his poor, poor metacarpals. "I mean, she's still going to ditch us because he's a kid and she goes nuts over kids, but it should jar her back into her normal groove."

"Good," Byakuran hisses out a breath and rolls his shoulder, but doesn't relinquish Shouichi's hand.

Shouichi says nothing, cowardice returning with its good friend denial hitching a ride on the way back. This is nothing, he tells himself. This means nothing.

Haru is delighted with the idea of going to Madame Faustine's orchard. She is delighted when she finally gets to embrace her penpal, even if Zakuro hangs back and sulks before the old woman bustles over and starts mothering him herself, plying him with food and milk and praising the obvious signs of field-labor she can see so readily on him. Haru is ecstatic to meet Safran, and Shouichi wants to run straight back to Nice as soon as he claps eyes on the boy. Thing. The Thing wearing a boy's skin.

"What is that," he hisses to Byakuran, the hair on the nape of his neck standing on end. "What is that?" The child's eyes had been dead in the photographs, but in the flesh they are dark and dull with something abyssal and twitching, as though somebody had reached into the void and squelched around until it was a ruined mess of incomprehensible viscera. And then crammed it into the shape of a child, which is apparently enough for Haru to not care about how intrinsically wrong the Thing actually is.

Shouichi should have known. This is Reborn all over again, except somehow worse.

"I have no earthly idea," Byakuran tells him, looking insanely pleased at the words. But I want it, his gaze makes hauntingly, horrifyingly clear, boring hungrily across the field where Haru is running her hands over that ridiculous apple hat, making indiscernible but obviously impressed comments the entire time.

"Ah, Fran?" Madame Faustine sighs in her fluttery, accented Japanese and shakes her head. "It's a bit of an embarrassing story, I'm afraid. You see, my daughter lost her first pregnancy—terrible tragedy. The poor dear didn't even make it halfway, and she… did not take it well. She took some rather… unconventional measures, shall we say, to ensure a healthy birth the next time."

"What," says Shouichi, his stomach knotting itself tighter with every moment. "You make it sound like she made a deal with the devil, or something."

"One of them, yes," the old woman agrees, sipping a mug of chilled cider and smiling pleasantly. "Only, she's never really taken to the family craft all that well; the ritual left her dead and poor Lord Belphegor doesn't remember a thing about what he truly is."

Byakuran, for some unknown, absolutely insane reason, looks positively euphoric at this revelation, as though he has just heard the punch line of the greatest joke in the entire world instead of confirmation that a literal denizen of Hell is getting a piggyback ride from Haru as they speak. "Are you telling me," he says slowly, every syllable dripping with the delight visibly dancing in his purple eyes. "That your… your Fran, his true name is Belphegor?" He sniggers to himself. "Forgive me. I mean, of course, Prince Belphegor. The chief demon of Sloth itself."

"Just the one," Madame Faustine agrees amicably, and Byakuran absolutely loses it, laughs so hard he bends in half, literally crying with mirth and clinging to Shouichi for support.

"This normal for him?" Shouichi hears Zakuro grunt, before the scruffy man sets to work on what looks like a truly delicious apple tart.

"Not at all," Kikyo says, and then adds brightly, "I'm so glad to see both Byakuran-sama and Haru-chan in such high spirits."

"Better'n all the weepy shit 'n glaring," Zakuro concurs through a thick mouthful of apple filling, before continuing to stuff his face. Shouichi wants to remind the man that he caused said 'weepy shit' in the first place, but thinks better of it because Haru and the literal demon child are heading back towards them.

"I wanna keep him forever, hahi!" Haru gushes, rubbing her cheek against Fran's with obvious adoration. The creature's eyes look marginally less horrifying in that moment, which sends an icicle of dread stabbing through Shouichi's gut.

"Let's," wheezes Byakuran, using Shouichi's shoulder to heave himself upright again. "Oh, Haru-chan, what a marvelous idea." He wipes at his eyes, still chuckling to himself, and Shouichi wants to scream.

It's a terrible idea.

But predictably enough, when they leave France, there is indeed a not-child numbered among them. Shouichi despairs, and resolves to never be alone with Fran, ever, if he can possibly help it. Horrific hellspawn are the last thing he needs in his life.

Until the day he dies—possibly even past that—Shouichi will swear up and down that Daisy's terrifying entrance into their lives is entirely Fran's fault.

He has no idea how, exactly, but it is. It has to be. Somehow.

No matter what Haru says in the aftermath, he just can't accept that pure happenstance is what leads their rental car to break down half a mile from a secluded mental asylum in the sprawling English moors. In the middle of a vicious storm that pretty much flooded the road and forced them to slog over for shelter. In the creepy ivy-strewn mental asylum.

The creepy ivy-strewn mental asylum that had been, not even forty-eight hours before their muddy and sodden arrival, coincidentally taken over by some insane remnant of the now-defunct Estraneo famiglia.

Shouichi plays video games and watches horror movies, usually because Haru and Byakuran force him to. He knows it's always some satanic force that drags the poor protagonists into nightmarish situations like this. He patently refuses to believe Fran is totally innocent in their involvement in this fiasco.

It doesn't really matter what he believes, really, because no matter what leads them there they still choose to go inside. They go inside, and everything changes. Forever.

"We're going to kill whoever did this," Haru whispers when they do, like a promise, like a scream.

Shouichi is too busy hunching over and throwing up in the corner from the sight of the torn-apart and stitched-together, modified corpses they find waiting for them in the lobby—children, he thinks, hysterically calm, it of course it has to be a fucking asylum for children—to see her face. But he can see Kikyo's calm gaze shutter and go dark, can feel Zakuro's unseen, omnipresent Flames go dense and hatefully hot. He can't see Byakuran's face, as the man pulls Haru close and rocks her like a baby while she teeters on the knife's edge between heartbroken tears and homicidal rage, and he has no idea where Fran is, only the vague, hunted sense of having something ghoulish lurking behind him.

He's thankful for that, at least.

"Of course," Byakuran says, his voice soft but unyielding. "But, Haru-chan, I'm not sure—"

There's a soft crackling noise, and despite the bile still prickling at the back of his throat, Shouichi tastes mint. He unsteadily straightens up to find that Byakuran has released Haru, wisely, and that she is pale, trembling, and sparking like a broken socket, which is new.

"I'm not going back to the car," Haru says, and Byakuran hands his arms in surrender.

"Alright, alright. I just want to make sure everybody is safe." He says that, and then he pulls a gun out of his jacket, and hands it to Shouichi which is just—

"What?" He says, nearly dropping it. "No, thank you, I mean—what?!"

"No, Shouichi-sama, you hold it like this," Kikyo steps forward to rearrange his terrified grip on the illegally concealed weapon, pulling a second one out of his own. "Also, this is the safety. It's very important. I just flicked it off, so don't touch it yet," Kikyo tells him, like Shouichi is going to so much as twitch a finger near the trigger. "Byakuran-sama, I really do think we should have spent a day at a shooting range with them."

"Hindsight," Byakuran shrugs, with a flash of something rueful and self-recriminating flitting through his eyes.

Haru is clutching a knitting needle in her hand, and it looks sharper than it should, and it's sparking too, and Shouichi feels like his stomach is devouring itself with great, juicy enthusiasm. He doesn't know what to do. It feels like something tiny and smushed into the very back of his brain is trying to scream, tickling the very edges of his comprehension, warning him that he has missed so many chances to turn back but he is now on the most precarious precipice of all—

Some feathered monstrosity bursts through the receptionist window, near Haru.

There's a loud, thunderous crack, and a heavy thud.

Shouichi lowers the smoking barrel and pushes his glasses up with trembling fingers, eyes wide and chest heaving.

"My elbows hurt," he says, numbly. His voice sounds soft in his ears, and he isn't sure if that's because the gunshot temporarily deafened him or because he's in shock. He had whipped up the gun and aimed out of pure reflex after years of arcade games, pulling the trigger before he could think much more than near Haru, and really, all the joints in his arms hurt. But that's all he feels.

"That would be the recoil," Kikyo informs him, looking about two steps away from a polite golf clap. Byakuran is looking at Shouichi as though he has never truly seen the younger man before.

"Shou-chan isn't supposed to be that cool," Fran comments, tangibly suspicious. "Are you an imposter?" The boy crouches down and pokes what, from the tattered scrubs, had probably once been a nurse or orderly of some point, and now looked like somebody had given making their own Quetzalcoatl the old college try. The skull is neatly blown out, and the creature's momentum had carried it even as it hit the floor, leaving a gruesome streak of blood and some other viscous liquid he doesn't want to think about in its wake.

Shouichi takes one look at his handiwork, and then bends over and vomits again.

"Nevermind," Fran says, apparently satisfied that he is still the same old uncool Shouichi.

A large hand claps him hard on the back, nearly making him spew for a third time. "Good reflexes," Zakuro says, and then the older man heaves him upright and takes the gun out of Shouichi's shaking hands just in time for Haru to slam into him, displaying some vastly superior reflexes.

She's still sparking, but he doesn't flinch away, and is not at all surprised to find that when the little jolts hit his skin, they don't actually sting. He thinks vaguely of Byakuran's crushing grip back in Nice, but then Haru starts talking and he shakes off the incoherent musings for the vastly more important here and now.

"Sorry, hahi," Haru mumbles against his shoulder. "Sorry, Shou-chan, I know you didn't—you've never—because of me, you—"

"Haru," he says, pressing a hand against her back and feeling something warm and thick oozing over his numb acceptance. "It's fine." He paused, and swallowed. "Well, not really. But," he huffs out a laugh, high and soft. "I'm a wimp, and a coward, you know? If I wasn't going to follow you this far, I would have run away years ago." He thinks of a hill, of hands squeezing his shoulder and an unfaltering smile, and squeezes her tight. "Maybe if we hurry we can save at least one or two kids," he says, to sidestep the issue because this is not the time or place to finally address the criminal elephant in the room that is their future career path. Byakuran has never asked anything of them, and neither he nor Haru has ever made any promise of any sort.

But he can still feel the gun in his palm, and when Haru pulls back from his shoulder there's a glint of green in her eyes and his shirt feels freshly starched and dryer-warm despite the rumpled state the past day of travel had left it in.

"I love you," Haru tells him, fierce and honest, and bright-eyed even beneath the green. She presses her lips to his, brief and hard, then steps away and begins moving towards the heavy doors leading to the rest of the asylum.

Shouichi's brain sputters to a halt, but somehow his mouth carries on without him. "I've never thought of you like a sister," he babbles.

"I know," Haru tosses over her shoulder as she moves past Kikyo and Zakuro, who are glancing spastically between the two of them and Byakuran, who is apparently entirely absorbed doing something with his phone. "I don't make the same mistakes twice, hahi."

"I'm staying," Fran tells her bluntly, his apple-hat suddenly turning dark and mottled like some living creature's camouflage when she pauses in front of him.

"Fine," Haru sighs, not phased in the least, but levels a finger at him. "But you stay behind one of us at all times, okay?"

Fran nods, and they finally move forward—even Shouichi, whose brain reboots enough for stiff ambulatory movements. The fluffy, giddy panic swelling in his chest dies down as soon as they do, because there are more beast-creature-people in the halls, either dead or in various states of dying. Shouichi hasn't taken a biology class since graduating high school, but even he can tell that their bodies are trying and failing to adapt to new bones and organs that were never meant to be fused together. Each of them has a small, notched metal plate in their chests.

They follow the groans and whimpers, the low snarls and fading whines, occasionally pausing to put down a particularly unfortunate genetic mash-up until they reach a large atrium.

Boss stage, a tenaciously nerdy fragment of his brain whispers, and he fights the urge to hit himself. This is very much not the time.

There's a large Ping-Pong table at the center of the room, with a boy strapped down and a man standing over him in bloody scrubs.

"Do you see, Doctor Koenig?" The man is exultant, gesturing at the boy whose open chest cavity he's inspecting. "I told you! Didn't I tell you? I told you!" He's a young man, with blond hair and bright eyes, possibly even handsome, except the manic grin stretched across his face is highly unsettling. "I knew it was the right place, this time!"

His audience is a middle-aged man, unwashed, unshaven, wrapped in a straightjacket and chained to a nearby pillar. The aforementioned Koenig has an airplane's worth of bags beneath his eyes, and an expression of complete defeat.

"For God's sake, Gelb," he croaks out. "It's enough. It's enough already, please. This is madness—these children, their caretakers—all for one boy—"

"The perfect specimen," Gelb corrects him, prodding something inside the boy with a fond expression. The boy stares up at the ceiling with a blank gaze that makes Shouichi's gut churn sickly. "A boy who's been a boy for nearly thirty years, Koenig! And to think, you wanted to run off and tell Verde, letting him snatch away this golden opportunity!"

"He's a boy!" Koenig shouts, his voice cracking like old, weathered wood. "This isn't… Gelb, your father has been dead for years, please just stop. Stop. I sheltered you, when your Family fell, didn't I?" His voice turns desperate. "You were a good assistant. I didn't teach you… I didn't teach you my theories and techniques for this—this—this slaughter. This perversion. These are not Koenig Boxes."

"No," Gelb agrees. "These are my Carnage Boxes and they are magnificent. Doctor Koenig, I truly am grateful for all you've done for me but this—" He makes an expansive gesture at the room, the boy, the corpses littering the room. "Letting Skull de Mort slip through the Estraneo's fingers has always been my father's greatest shame, yes. But Koenig, my good man, my father is dead, along with the rest of that short-sighted Family. This isn't some frivolous account of sons taking over the debts and obligations of their fathers. This is for me. This is my moment!"

"As fascinating as this all is," Byakuran says, strolling into the flickering fluorescent lights, only half of which remained unscathed from the short-lived monstrosities with flight capability. "I'm afraid your moment is rather inconvenient for us."

"Who—" Gelb spins around, and focuses a snarling, red-eyed glare about sixteen feet to their right, at another doorway. Shouichi suspects Fran again, and the boy squares his shoulders in something a little prouder than his usual slouch when they all turn to look at him. "Who the hell are you?"

"Don't worry about it," Byakuran assures the madman, switching his expectant gaze to Zakuro, who heaves a sigh but shuffles forward, flexing his fingers idly along the way.

"Well, whatever. Even if I finally have my ideal specimen, a few more test subjects is nothing to—AUGH!" Gelb's sneering is cut off as soon as Zakuro claps his large palm over the other man's face, wreathing it in bright red flames. Which is… new? Maybe not, Shouichi reflects, since Zakuro looks relatively bored while disintegrating a man's face. Maybe he did that all the time in his poor little Greek village. Maybe it's a cultural thing—they lived near a volcanic mountain, didn't they? He feels like modern-day human sacrifice had a decent chance of actually being a thing, given that he is literally living a horror video game at the moment.

Maybe accepting the mafia thing on more than a subconscious level has finally driven him insane, Shouichi thinks, reviewing those last few thoughts with a small frown. His grip on Haru's arm slackens for a moment as he contemplates this chilling possibility, and before he can realize his mistake she's off like a shot, skidding to a stop beside the makeshift operating table. She looks down at the boy, cut and spread open, and makes a wounded noise low in her throat.

"Zakuro, rip his hands off," she says, in a voice that sends shivers down Shouichi's spine. But not in a bad way, which lends some strength to his insanity theory. Zakuro just grunts in assent and grabs one of the bloody hands scrabbling against him, using his free hand to grip a bony wrist as he lights up a second clump of visible Storm Flames.

"Are you an angel?" A breathless, creepy voice drifts over, and Shouichi realizes that the boy has been conscious the entire time and is now staring at Haru from behind his messy green hair with dark, shining eyes.

"No, sweetie," Haru says in English, bending down to gently smooth that hair out of his face. "I'm Haru."

"'M Daisy," the boy slurs. "Have you seen my rabbit? A monster ripped it up."

As the rest of them drift over, Shouichi can literally see Daisy's heart and lungs pulsate around a small metal box, bare to all the elements. Luckily, there's nothing left in his stomach to throw up, so he just silently gags and removes his glasses so that the world goes blurry and he can't notice any more fine details.

"Tell you what, Daisy," Haru says, in a terribly gentle voice. "I'm good at sewing, so I'll fix your bunny right up for you."

"If you would be kind enough to unbind me," comes the creaky, uncertain voice of Koenig. "I'd like to fix that boy up, myself."

"Zakuro?" Byakuran calls, draping an arm over Shouichi's slack shoulders as he takes back his gun.

"Ugh, fine," complains Zakuro, and then there's a wet, meaty thud as he lets Gelb's twitchy corpse fall to the linoleum.

"Can the next one not be a creepy child," Shouichi begs Byakuran, too tired to pretend he isn't at least somewhat wise to the other man's dangerous, insane game for once. "Please?"

Byakuran laughs quietly, and presses a kiss to his temple. "Okay, Shou-chan. Since you asked so nicely."

After the asylum is taken care of—Byakuran had been texting the Gesso wet-works branch, while Souichi and Haru had their little moment—they all end up heading to Italy. Daisy is ten times clingier than Zakuro ever was, but Haru keeps a hand free to tangle with Shouichi's and Byakuran naps on her shoulder for the entire plane and car ride, so there's no tantrum this time.

Even if Byakuran claims that the Gesso are a small famiglia, there's still a sprawling, countryside manor for them to stay at.

"Signorina Bluebell is in the North Study, sir," an immaculate, silver-haired butler informs Byakuran as they enter, and his purple eyes light up.

"Excellent, thank you," he says, steering the group down several halls to a spacious library.

Inside, there's a girl in a wheelchair, playing Grand Theft Auto and crowing victoriously into her headset as she runs down a person on a jetski with her boat.

"HA!" She cheers, throwing her arms up and tossing her long, blue hair. "Suck on that, Starry-Eyes," she sneers, in fluent Japanese. "Who's Ranked Thirty-Second now, you condescending little—"

"I'm home, Bluebell!" Byakuran cuts her off cheerfully.

"Oh!" She tilts her head back and smiles brightly, before pressing a button. "Hold on a sec, loser, I've got some stuff to do with people I actually care about." She pulls off the headset and tosses it onto a table, maneuvering her wheelchair with impressive fluidity until she's facing them. "Welcome back, Byakuran! These are the ones?"

Shouichi at first thinks she means the group as a whole, which includes a worried, contemplative Koenig who didn't want to leave Daisy. Then she rolls forward and grabs his and Haru's hands.

"It's so great to meet Byakuran's boyfriend and girlfriend," she gushes, beaming at them. "He's always texting me and sending me cute pictures of you two. It's obnoxious. He's the worst."

This casual revelation—not Fran being a literal demon, not killing a monster that was once a person, not finally acknowledging his feelings for Haru and maybe considering acknowledging his feelings for, uh, somebody else, too—this is the tipping point.

"It's nice to meet you," he says, politely, and then everything goes dark.