First up, just a bit of background on the Namimori attack from Xanxus' POV.

Will take prompts, though will not promise to fill them.

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Xanxus wasn't quite sure how things had managed to turn out like this, but considering they were on a jet not owned by the Varia, he wasn't able to express his bafflement with violence. He was a Wrath, not fucking suicidal, and non-Varia meant 'not made to stand up to Varia-defined 'mild force''. There were things one just didn't do at ten thousand feet, and punching a hole in one's own transportation was one of them.

That left him with too damn few options, and he found himself mentally going through the past several days to try and figure out if there had been any warning signs for the sheer insanity that was anything associated with the twig of a Decimo.

'Plan A' had been for Squalo to snag the half-rings being sent to the Decimo candidate from the CEDEF's trash-in-training Rain, assemble them with the half-rings he'd already appropriated, and claim the heirship.

'Plan B' had been, in the case of decoys (which they had been, but that was a moot point) or the Varia SIC somehow not being able to acquire them (he hadn't, which at this point was less humiliating than it could have been and also moot), had been to claim dissention in line-of-succession and force a set of actual Ring Battles. He'd had half a plan for kidnapping the old man to further his cause, but when Squalo hadn't returned or reported in and his sense of his Rain had gone from faint to muffled (his bonds still existed, but years stifled in Zero-Point Ice had his senses muddled), the rage had blasted all rational—or irrational—thought from his mind.

Calling an outright attack on Namimori wasn't the most well-thought-out decision he'd ever made, but aside from a few (incredibly ridiculous) rumors out of Mafia Land, all Xanxus had been able to find on the Decimo candidate was that he was a fourteen-year-old civilian with sealed Flames and an idiot father. If the 'civilian kid' and 'sealed' parts didn't doom Vongola, Iemitsu's genes probably would. The man was a menace in the office and a ditz about family. He was a strong fighter and a good field leader, but that was the thing: heading a Famiglia was not at all like field leading, and Iemitsu behind a desk was worse than just weak; he was controllable.

(If it weren't for Lal Mirch, the CEDEF would have lost functionality years before, not that the Nono paid enough attention to see it.)

That added up to Xanxus' rather reasonable assumption of 'better to kill the brat now'. He didn't like killing kids, not even Mafia brats that were more killer than child, but if it was the kid or Vongola, the kid was the one who'd have to go. Besides, the Mafia would eat a civilian alive—break him if it didn't kill him. Taking him out quick and early would be a mercy.

Of course, that had been the reasoning before he'd lost it when Squalo had been taken from him. And he had lost it, but—and this was a pretty major and telling 'but'—not a single Namimori citizen had been killed.

The Varia had mobilized everyone who could be brought in on short notice—a good thirty Flame-trained assassins—to attack the town, and the response from said town had been quick, efficient, organized, and damn effective.

The kid's Guardians had held back his—the Varia Elite—while the kid himself had punted Xanxus into the concrete a good dozen times before showing that he could use Zero-Point. (Xanxus' heart had stuttered in sheer, furious terror, and the kid had seen it. Had seen it—and had let his Flames flare orange again.)

Then had come the dragon.

Which was very distinctively not an illusion. With his Flames as high as they had been, no illusion would have been able to physically restrain him, and later he'd learned that the unicorn he'd assumed to be illusion was just as real as the dragon. And the flaming, multi-colored, turtle-shelled bird. And that meant the rumors out of Mafia Land were probably fucking true.

And now that tiny and terrifying twig of a Decimo had clearly decided that Xanxus was his, and that he needed some kind of help. Had wrapped him up in bright, warm Flame and started piecing him back together when he hadn't even known he'd been broken.

Which should have been insulting. Should have been infuriating. Demeaning, something. But…

(Damned if Xanxus wasn't starting to think that the kid might be his Sky, because that deceptively soft warmth was circling him in a way he was unfamiliar with. Harmony was different for an Element than a Sky, and as a Sky, he only knew the Sky's end. But he couldn't bring himself to think of the kid—of Tsuna—as 'trash' when he even thought of himself as such on his worse days. Pretty solid indicator, there, and any Sky capable of pulling in not only another Sky but a Wrath, Xanxus, was incapable of being trash.)

… damned if the kid wasn't real.

So, no, Xanxus decided. The only warning had been the rumors out of Mafia Land, and no amount of warning would have been enough to prepare anyone to face the transcendent presence of Sawada Tsunayoshi's Flames, much less the supernatural support system he seemed to be amassing. Also, he had three Arcobaleno and at least seven (possibly nine) other Elements. And now Xanxus, who found his own Flames banked and eased and his ever-present temper soothed to the point that he hardly even wanted to curse, much less put holes in people.

(The fucking mythological Transcendent Sky. Only explanation.)

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