Timoteo doesn't find out about the Varia's new Cloud Officer until the first damages report hits his desk.

Or, more accurately, Tsunayoshi's desk, since he's summering in Italy at Reborn's assistance to learn the ins and outs of the Family. Timoteo is amenable to this, even if Tsuna is a little young. Then again, Reborn is his teacher, and that makes him the exception to every rule.

His first hint that something of note has happened is Tsuna's loud and horrified yelp as he drops a thick stapled sheaf of papers like it's about to bite him. Lifting his head, he blinks at Tsuna, who stares at the report with something akin to terror.

"Something wrong, my boy?" he asks affably.

Tsuna very visibly marshals himself—likely because Reborn (threatened) promised to drop by some time after lunch—and carefully flips past the first page. "Um. Xanxus wants…money? It's a funds request for—for the south wing of the Varia mansion."

Well, Timoteo thinks more or less amiably. At least the Varia didn't level a small town. Again. After he warned them that they'd be rebuilding the next one by hand they miraculously managed to understand the phrase "minimum of collateral damage preferred". It might be fairly optimistic of him, but Timoteo is counting it as his birthday present from Xanxus. "Oh? Are they remodeling?"

Tsuna turns to the next page and blanches chalk-white. "R-r-rebuilding it," he stutters.

Timoteo freezes.

"Come again?" he asks politely.

The boy doesn't quite squeak, which is an improvement over the first week he was here. He does read with a little more alacrity, though. "They—they need a new south wing," he says weakly. "And half of a new entrance hall. It was—um. Belphegor and…" He blinks at the other name, clearly startled, and there's a very faint narrowing of his eyes. It's the look of a boss assessing a threat, Timoteo thinks almost fondly. Good. Tsuna's learning, even if he did get a late start of it. "It says Cloud Officer, but…I thought Gola Mosca was destroyed? By Hibari?"

And if the Hibari boy didn't finish it, the CEDEF certainly did, Timoteo thinks, losing a good portion of his humor to suspicion. When he sent Squalo away with the idea of hiring a Cloud Officer who was a little more human than a machine that fed off life forces, he'd expected it to go the way most of his suggestions-cum-orders tend to with the Varia: Xanxus ignores him for several months or even years, Timoteo keeps hinting at a beneficial course of action, nothing gets done, and eventually things blow up in the Varia's faces and Xanxus pretends the suggestion-cum-order was actually his own idea all along and finally does it.

It is less, Timoteo thinks a touch wearily, like having a son, and more like having a very large cat.

"It was," he tells Tsuna absently, trying to decide on the best course of action. "No name is given?" When Tsuna shakes his head, he sighs a little, because of course it wouldn't be that simple. If he goes in person, Xanxus will take offense, and he's only just begun the most tentative of bridge-building between them. Better not to risk it.

"What a fortuitous coincidence," he says, making it cheerful, and can pinpoint the exact moment Tsuna's Hyper Intuition warns him what's coming. "You've been cooped up in here for so long, my boy, it's about time you took a bit of a trip. You'll need Xanxus's signatures on these—" he drags out the all-too-familiar stack of paperwork and drops it in the middle of Tsuna's desk "—or, barring that, have Squalo forge it. Belphegor and the Cloud Officer will need to sign as well on forms one through twelve."

Tsuna stares at the mountain of paperwork with clear horror, opens his mouth to try for a refusal, and breaks off with a screech as Reborn drops from the ceiling fan and lands on his head.

"A field trip, Dame-Tsuna," he says with familiar malicious cheer. "Aren't you excited to see the beauties of Italy and learn more about the Famiglia?"

"I'm going to die," Tsuna wails, but when Reborn kicks him in the head he groans, collects the stack, and offers Timoteo a tremulous smile.

Timoteo smiles back, and silently wishes him luck. It's not easy to be one of the few people on the planet with any measure of Xanxus's respect. Hopefully Tsuna will come to appreciate the position the way Timoteo himself failed to do.

Tsuna would rather go through Reborn's hell-torture all over again than do this. He would rather do literally anything than this, but Reborn is still far too terrifying and Tsuna is still horrible at saying no, so he pulls himself out of the big, intimidating black car in front of the Varia headquarters and hopes they throw a nice funeral for him. Gokudera will probably cry. Ryohei will probably cry too, honestly, but that's somehow less worrying, since Gokudera crying is usually accompanied by Yamamoto attempting to comfort him, which is usually accompanied by dynamite. Tsuna doesn't want his funeral interrupted by dynamite.

"Hey, this place isn't so bad," Yamamoto says cheerfully, dragging Tsuna out of terrifyingly vivid daydream—daymares?—of his casket being launched into the stratosphere by Gokudera's misaimed explosives, with Reborn dressed in a priest outfit waving a solemnly sadistic goodbye.

Tsuna looks for himself, because he's learned by now not to trust anything that comes out of Yamamoto's mouth. Ever. And…if one ignores the conspicuous absence where a good quarter of the house used to be, Yamamoto is mostly correct. It's a stately old mansion in the middle of the countryside, surrounded by forests and fields.

The visibly aggravated Squalo waiting for them in front of what used to be the front steps rather takes away from the image.

"What are you doing here, runt?" he demands, scowling suspiciously at Tsuna in a way that makes Tsuna want to hide behind the nearest solid object.

"Hey, Squalo!" Yamamoto says, waving enthusiastically, like he's greeting an old friend. "How are you?"

Squalo gives him a sour look. "I wasn't talking to you, brat. What does the usurper want with us?"

Tsuna thinks about protesting the title, because it's not like he's a willing part of this at all, but gives it up as a lost cause. "N-Nono sent me," he says, and kind of wants to die at the way he stutters. "Er—paperwork?"

If anything, Squalo's expression gets worse, but he sighs and waves a hand in surrender, turning to stride back into the mansion. "Fuck, whatever. Anything that'll make you take that pathetic expression of yours away faster. My office is upstairs."

Tsuna doesn't bother asking for Xanxus; if Squalo is willing to sign—and the way Timoteo said it makes Tsuna wonder if Xanxus has ever done his own paperwork—he's not about to argue.

"Who's your new Cloud Officer?" Yamamoto asks cheerfully, because of course he does. Tsuna quietly has a minor panic attack, but Squalo just rolls his eyes.

"Is that why the old man sent you?" he scoffs. "Figures. The one time Xanxus doesn't completely blow him off he acts like the fucking world is ending."

Tsuna isn't entirely sure he'd phrase it like that, but he's not going to argue that point either. He ignores the way Yamamoto is laughing—better for his sanity that way—and darts up the stairs at Squalo's heels before Levi, just emerging from a room at the end of the hall, has a chance to see him.

"Everyone involved has to sign, too," he says, more apologetically than he'd like.

"Fuck," Squalo says, but since it sounds more like fuck me than it does fuck you, Tsuna manages not to flinch. He pauses, expression twisting like he's eaten something bad, and repeats, "Fuck."

"Something wrong?" Yamamoto asks brightly, but his eyes have sharpened in that particularly unnerving way they sometimes do.

(The one time Tsuna tried to mention it, Yamamoto just laughed a little, scratched the back of his head, and asked, "Oh, like your eyes do, Tsuna?"

Tsuna had dropped the subject quickly after that.)

Squalo obligingly turns his scowl on the other swordsman. "Fuck you, I'm just—strategizing." He groans, fisting his hands in his long hair and pulling. "Goddamn shitty boss and his goddamn shitty fucking taste—"

Tsuna's Hyper Intuition is lowkey screaming in the back of his head. That's never a good sign.

Yamamoto must feel it too, because he takes three steps forward and one to the side, putting himself halfway in front of Tsuna without even seeming to think about it. "Something wrong with your boss, then?"

Squalo flips him off, then turns on his heel and stomps towards the third door on the left. He throws it open with a loud, "VOOOOI, WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT IDIOT PRINCE? AND WHERE'S THE BLOODTHIRTY BRAT?"

"Shishishi, there aren't any idiot princes here," Bel says, sprawled out across a couch with a book covering his face. "Only idiot swordsmen."

"VOI, YOU SHITTY BASTARD—"

"Where do you think my little moon-child is?" Lussuria asks, giggling far too happily for Tsuna's comfort. He notices Tsuna and Yamamoto peering around Squalo and brightens. "Oh my! Did you bring that heartthrob of a boxer with you? I'm aching for another rematch with him!" A fluttery wink. "And then maybe some one-on-one time afterwards, if you know what I mean~."

Tsuna makes a mental note to keep Ryohei as far away from the Varia ass humanly possible, even as he smiles weakly. "S-sorry, only Yamamoto this time. Er. Belphegor, can you—?"

Before he can finish, Squalo yanks the briefcase out of his hands, stalks over, rips it open, and shoves the appropriate forms in Bel's face. "Fucking sign it, asshole, you know where."

Bel scowls, but he takes the papers and the pen Squalo practically shoves up his nose. "Paperwork is for peasants."

"Paperwork is for anyone who fucking DESTOROYS HALF OF HEADQUARTERS!" Squalo bellows at him. "FUCKING SIGN IT, BEFORE I MAKE YOU DO IT IN BLOOD."

Looking incredibly put-upon, Bel starts signing. Tsuna sort of half-wonders if they could clone Squalo, because if he can control the Varia, the rest of the mafia world would probably be a piece of cake. Except then they'd have to clone Xanxus too, because there's no way to picture Squalo without Xanxus, and—

One Xanxus is already one too many, in Tsuna's opinion.

As if in answer to that thought, there's a roar from down the hall, full of familiar rage, and Tsuna twitches hard, turning and expecting to see Xanxus bearing down on him, guns drawn. Instead, however, there's a snarl fit to match Xanxus's, and the sound of a door slamming open with enough force to crack the plaster. Xanxus's Flames of Wrath flare, heavy enough to send a tremor of primal terror down Tsuna's spine, and there's a sound like a body being slammed full-force into a wall.

"Again?" Squalo demands, sounding like he's on the verge of tearing his hair right out of his head. "Goddamn really?"

"I think it's adorable!" Lussuria coos, clasping his hands next to his cheek. "Ah, young—"

"If you say love I'm going to gag," Squalo threatens. "Where the fuck is Mammon? We're going to need another illusion before those shitheads traumatize the entire Varia."

Before Lussuria can answer, there's the sound of steps, quick-light and almost soundless in the way of Hibari's. half a second later, a young man Xanxus's age stalks into the room, dark hair looking like he just rolled out of bed, wearing a white shirt meant for someone two sizes larger than him and a pair of pants. The scars on his face make Tsuna pale, and the look in his remaining eye is deadly enough that Yamamoto actually grabs Tsuna and pulls him back and behind the swordsman's body.

The Cloud Officer, Tsuna assumes, feeling a little faint with terror.

"Are those hickies?" Lussuria squeals delightedly. "Oh, you naughty boy!"

The Cloud Officer gives him a dark look, but when the marital artist grabs him he doesn't resist, just lets Lussuria tip his head up and to the side to get a better look. "I'm going to kill him," he says to Squalo, and that's an accent Tsuna hasn't heard outside of his Guardians since he left Japan.

"Want to fucking repeat that?" Xanxus growls, stalking in behind him. He spares a disdainful look for Tsuna—which is still more than he would have given him before the Ring Battles, not that Tsuna is happy about that—before throwing himself into the throne-like chair that's clearly his. He is, at least, more thoroughly dressed than the stranger, though his clothes are as disheveled as ever.

"Bastard," the Cloud Officer spits. His black eye shifts with an almost dizzying twist, becoming a black-and-red pinwheel that spins lazily, and the pale violet of his Flames colors the air around him, but at least he doesn't attempt to go through Lussuria to get at Xanxus.

Xanxus gives him a grin that's all teeth and no humor. "Yeah, probably."

If Tsuna didn't know better, he'd swear Xanxus just made a joke about his parentage. And judging by the dumbfounded look on Bel's face as he drops the pen, he wasn't the only one who heard it.

To his utter surprise, the stranger snorts, amusement curling one corner of his mouth. He bats Lussuria away, though not rudely, and takes a step back to turn and study Tsuna. Yamamoto is dismissed with one long glance, but his eye narrows the moment it lands on Tsuna's face, fills with a strange sort of recognition and nostalgia.

"Vongola Decimo," he says, more or less politely, and ignores the scoff Xanxus gives.

"Sawada Tsunayoshi, pleased to meet you!" Tsuna blurts, accidentally in Japanese, and bows automatically.

To his shock, the Cloud Officer bows back, and says in the same language, "Uchiha Obito, it's a pleasure."

"So you give him a family name, but not me?" Xanxus grunts, and he's frowning faintly in a way that makes Tsuna's sense of self-preservation gibber quietly in the back of his mind.

"He's not an asshole bastard like you," Obito retorts, turning a poisonous glare on the Varia boss.

In a rush, Squalo snatches the papers from Bel, snarls, "VOOOOI, DON'T YOU IDIOTS DARE—" and dives like he knows they're not going to listen to him. And, in a whirl of air, Obito vanishes completely just as a shot from one of Xanxus's pistols slams into the floor.

"They look like they're having fun, don't they?" Yamamoto asks cheerfully, even as he herds Tsuna back towards the door. At the same moment, Obito reappears out of nothing right above Xanxus, stabbing down at him with what looks like a kunai. Xanxus twists aside, letting it clang off the metal of his chair, and in the same movement he grabs Obito by the arm and drags him up—

Tsuna nearly trips over his own feet with a yelp.

Xanxus and Obito are kissing, vicious like they're about to draw blood and entirely unconcerned by sudden retreat of all the present Varia members. Squalo is the last out, dragging Lussuria by his green-dyed hair, and he slams the door pointedly behind him. "Good riddance!" he shouts back through the wood, but if it makes any impact at all, Tsuna certainly can't tell.

"They—I—what?" Tsuna asks weakly, still trying to figure out what he saw.

This time Squalo's grimace is entirely agreement. "Believe me, shrimp, I feel the same fucking way. Come on. I can make up a signature for that idiot ninja, too."

That, Tsuna thinks, is probably the best idea he's heard all day. He hurries to follow the second-in-command, very carefully ignoring the noises coming from the room behind them.

There's lots of things he doesn't need to know about, and that's at the very top.