"OH!"

Fukuro and Kumadori had gathered around Lucci, who observed the chick with a frowning expression.

"Where did you find it, chapapa?"

"At the foot of a pine tree. Its nest had fallen." briefly explained the younger boy.

"Yoyoi! What bird is it?" Kumadori asked curiously.

"I don't know."

"What's going on here?"

Jabra and Blueno had returned from the patrol tour.

The older boy saw his companions huddled around Lucci's big hat and came up with his usual bully way:

"What do you guys have to confabulate?"

He stretched his neck and finally saw the unfledged chick struggling weakly inside the tuba.

He couldn't hold back a burst of laughter:

"GYAHAHAHA! Would you look at him, our Pollyanna! She found a little friend."

"Lucci, do you intend to keep that animal?" the master asked him sternly. Young pupils were not forbidden to have animal companions, as long as they knew how to treat them properly.

"Yes, master."

"Very well. We'll go back to the base and get it some accommodation."

Once back in the tower, Fukuro and Kumadori rushed to crumble and wet some biscuits in order to compose a thin baby food with which feed the chick. Blueno filled a little container with some water to quench it.

"Well, well! Should this one become a killer? Within a year this island will become a refuge for animals!"

Jabra was scratching his head as he watched Lucci feed the baby, unable to consider him a potential Cipher Pol assassin.

His thoughts were interrupted by Fukuro's arrival in the curly-haired boy's room, curiously tidy to be the room of such a young person.

"What would you like to call it?"

"Hat."

"Hat?"

"Yes, I put it in my hat."

"It's an ugly name, chapapa! I prefer Tori."

"The animal is mine, Fukuro."

"Call it Rapunzel, so it'll keep you company! Princesses understand each other..."

Both Fukuro and Lucci ignored the provocation of their older companion, who was leaning against the window sill with his arms and legs crossed.

Suddenly, Kumadori burst into the room, banging his flip-flops on the floor and shouting like a madman:

"YOYOIII! I have found it, I have found it! An union of names for you I invented!"

"WHY DO YOU SCREAM, DICKHEAD?" Jabra remarked, screaming in return.

"HATTORI! The bird in the hat! So simple, so effective! Oh, I can't wait to tell mom how creative I am!"

"You are creatively idiotic, that's for sure!" Jabra murmured, who at times doubted that he was in the midst of aspiring secret agents.

"Yes, I like Hattori." concluded Lucci. He never changed his expression, it was difficult to understand what was going on in his head.

As the weeks went by, Hattori revealed his species; he was a pigeon.

He considered Lucci as a parent and followed him everywhere.

As his master trained, Hattori watched him perched on his hat or on the branches of nearby trees.

It was already autumn when Zhuren had his students begin a massive learning and review course of the Rokushiki, according to the age of each.

"Today we will start with the easier one: the Kami-e."

"Easy" was a big word when it came to Rokushiki: even the most basic one was to bend the body like a sheet of paper or a blade of grass swaying in the wind, and thus being able to avoid attacks and even to float.

Here, floating was not something that could be learned easily, especially if your name was Blueno and you weighed forty-two kilos at the age of eight.

Lucci learned quickly.

He was focused, had an uncommon learning and attention span.

They could have waved a chocolate cake in front of him and he would have eaten it only with the technique learned, without distractions.

Jabra had come to believe that the boy was actually a programmed robot rather than a flesh and blood person.

When he was Lucci's age, the cake would have been chomped by abandoning any training.

To hell fatigue.

He had run away from home and joined those killer farmers because his father loved to drink and gamble, and his mother would have jumped into the fire instead of contradicting her husband with whom she was madly in love.

As for Fukuro and Blueno, they came from St. Poplar orphanage.

Kumadori had been brought there by his mother Yamanbako, an established assassin.

He could be said to be the only one having a bright family situation, even if he didn't know who his father was, perhaps one of the victims that his mother had first seduced, then tortured and killed.

And now, thirteen-year-old Jabra stared with envy at the boy with half his years working as if it were a matter of life or death.

"You won't surpass me, Pollyanna." he thought to himself, foaming with rivalry.