Katekyō Hitman REB0RN!: The Next Generation » Places

         Hildegarde locked her hands together over Alastor's chest, entangling her fingers with one another. She was currently standing behind the Rizzo leader, leaning her bosom into his shoulder blades. She had her arms atop his shoulders, her forearms coming together in front of Alastor's body like a triangle, its north-most vertex composed of her clasped hands. Slowly, perhaps even unconsciously, she cracked her knuckles. It seemed to sooth her.

Hildegarde brought her head down to Alastor's ear, releasing her breath across his delicate flesh with practiced tact. When she opened her mouth to speak, her words came out a mere whisper."Why don't you just crush them yourself, Al?"

For Alastor's part, he seemed eerily calm and statuesque. It was as if the Rizzo weren't currently engaging the enemy, and Hildegarde wasn't currently pressing herself against him. With his expression, he might as well have been watching waves crash along the rocky shoreline of some far off beach. Hildegarde knew better, though. Alastor wasn't calm, he was bored. It's why she asked her question in the first place.

Alastor sighed, his eyes quickly scanning the reception-area-turned-arena. "We're here for the other rings." He turned his head slightly, which allowed his eyes to meet Hildegarde's. "You guys can have your fun, but I'm not going to waste flames on the likes of them."

Hildegarde bent her leg right leg at the knee, her heel nearly making contact with her backside as she leaned even deeper into Alastor's back. This shift in weight caused Alastor to hunch forward slightly in order to maintain his own balance.

"Then who will ya waste your flames on?" She asked, her voice confident in its homely southern bent. "You already grounded that skate punk of a flame king, and after this little skirmish, it's only a matter of time before the remainder of his primitives show." Hildegarde touched her right cheek to his left. "What if I need you then? Gonna sit that fight out too?"

The area under Alastor's eyes grew several shades pinker, his eyes themselves darting to the right, in the opposite direction from Hildegarde. From their perch high atop a neighboring building, the two Rizzo had a direct line of sight on the battle that was unfolding below. In response to the monstrous armor-like presence before them, one of these so-called "Varia" had created a foggy haze; it was probably an attempt to mask some form of counterattack. That brought a smirk to Alastor's face, albeit a slight one.

These primitives were one hundred years too early to effectively engage in combat with the likes of that particular beast. They had no idea what they were messing with.

Hildegarde, not satisfied with silence as an answer, shifted her weight once again, this time in the opposite direction, pulling her boss backwards. This latest stunt from the Quasar guardian caused Alastor to lose his balance entirely, making them both fall back towards the roof. When they hit the dirty cement tiling that made up the rooftop, Alastor found himself straddling Hildegard, his palms flat against the ground on either side of her head, her hands still on his shoulders.

"What was that for?" He asked, his tone neutral but his face still slightly flushed.

As he looked down at her, she simply grinned back up at him. "Letting the others have their fun, like you said," she muttered with mock innocence.

"What?"

Though she was a woman, Hildegarde was definitely the stronger of the two. With her hands still on his shoulders, she brought Alastor's torso closer to her own. "Trev and the others can take on those primitives. That means we have time to make a smidgen of our own fun."

Alastor's face scrunched in confusion, but before he could open his mouth to speak, Hildegarde turned things around. She used her grip on his shoulders to roll to the side, causing them to exchange positions. Now she was straddling him, and he lay pinned under her.

Alastor and Hildegarde had been best friends since childhood, and she considered herself to be his most loyal... well, everything. Friend, follower, soldier, defender—anything he or the Rizzo needed her to be. She was his right hand, and would gladly destroy the world if he simply commanded it.

Ever since the day they met more than half a decade ago as little kids, Hildegarde has been playing these types of physical games with Alastor, as she did with all her friends. When her mother was still around, she would always something about her "acting tomboyish," and that wrestling and rolling around was a "boy thing". Such discouragement had absolutely zero impact on Hildegarde, who did what she wanted anyway. Though she toyed with most of her friends in an overtly physical manner, it had always been something distinctly different when it came to Alastor. Hildegarde could feel it in her chest, then and now. It had long since become much more than a simple sense of friendship between them, though she wasn't sure her glorious leader had fully come to terms with that fact... or if he was even aware of what she felt for him.

So she would make it clear, here and now. This was the perfect place: in the middle of a war zone!

"Al," Hildegarde began, her accent thick, her expression devoid of jocularity. She locked his gaze within her own. "I want to have your children."

...

If Alastor's face was flushed before, it turned as red as a ruby now. "B-bu... I don't—wha?" he sputtered, her words derailing his usually lucid and coherent train of logic. "Uh—"

Without warning, something struck Hildegarde in the side of the head. The projectile impacted with such force that her head was thrown sideways, blood and spittle flying from her mouth as she gasped in surprise.

And then she became as silent and unmoving as a statue.

There were no words. There was no time. After what seemed like an eternity, Hildegarde simply stood, the expression on her face menacingly neutral, even as a single strand of blood found its way from the side of her head to the bottom of her chin.

Alastor knew that look. "Garda," he said, using an elbow to prop himself up. His tone had resumed its authoritative tenor. He pointed at her when he said his next words, ensuring he made eye contact. "No killing."

Hildegarde didn't react as another projectile smashed into her face—the top of her head this time. She was prepared for it. The blood-red object exploded immediately upon impact, disintegrating into nothingness.

"You didn't say no maiming, though" she muttered, leaping off the roof and taking flight. Maroon flames exploded from the bottom of her boots as she hurdled towards the source of the attack.

Alastor stood, dusting himself off with a few curt flicks of his wrist before straightening his collar. As usual, it was a sharp suave gesture. Though Hildegarde's earlier words bounced around in the back of his mind, this wasn't the first time she'd said something completely off-the-wall. Nor would it be the last. He'd save digestion of her... uh, desires for later.

Alastor sighed softly, taking the opportunity to survey the scene below. He might not be able to take a bullet to the face like Hildegarde, but he wasn't particularly worried about being sniped. Worst case, he could just suck it up and use his flames, after all, though he doubted it would come to that. The Rizzo completely outclassed the current set of riffraff below, that much was obvious.

Hildegarde seemed to be making her merry way towards one of the Varia members. Whoever it was, he looked completely normal save for the massive red wings that emanated from his back. They were composed of Storm flames, by the look of them. A rare flame type, back in the future.

Whomever ended up being on the receiving end of Hildegarde's rage would come to regret it. He just hoped he wouldn't have to step in to save the poor bastard from a horrible death.

That's when something in Alastor's periphery drew his attention. Looking to his right, Alastor spied the remains of the stage where the Vongola brass had been giving their little press conference several minutes earlier. The area was still covered in a thin gray mist, though it was quickly thinning. What'd caught Alastor's eye was not the mist itself, but a bright golden light that shined from within it. Squinting, Alastor could make out the source of the luminescence.

It was the Varia who'd attacked him earlier—their Sky ring user—and something in his hands was giving off quite a bit of energy. He even began to feel its radiant heat from where he stood, dozens upon dozens of meters away.

Suddenly, the Varia unleashed his attack, making a wide diagonal swing with his arms, curved upward. A thick yellow beam of energy shot forward immediately, following the arc of his swing like an impossibly long staff. The beam of light bisected what remained of the mist cloud, dispersing it entirely, but it didn't stop there.

Several dozen meters away, in the distance behind the mist, stood a pristine skyscraper of an office building, which existed on the other side of the street from the Vongola headquarters building. The beam of molten gold-black light struck that as well, entering the skyscraper near its bottom right side and moving upwards diagonally to exit a moment later near its middle left side.

It was as if a samurai had sliced a tree trunk in half. The newly bisected building succumbed to the temptations of gravity almost immediately, the top portion beginning its downward slide along this new diagonal axis. The screams of bending girders and splintering glass panes reached even Alastor's ears until, after a few seconds, the building imploded entirely, collapsing in on itself in a massive black plume of dust that enveloped the area surrounding the Vongola headquarters building.

Alastor was leaning over the edge of the roof in order to secure a better view, his hands firmly gripping the guardrail. His eyebrows were raised high in surprise. For the first time since he arrived in this time period, he was, for lack of a better term... impressed.

         Ai's slumber didn't exactly appear like a slumber in the usual sense. She would merely sit, in this case on the bed, and stare off into the distance, merely blinking. Slumber was a time for allowing the body to rest, while the mind did its work, considering the past and contemplating the future. Of course, the body may have been asleep, yet Ai was always alert, and sitting upright allowed her quick movement if she ever needed to wake up suddenly. Of course, Ai didn't put effort into maintaining the illusion of being a regular human being while she was 'sleeping' as sleeping was all about conserving energy as well. Ai didn't need to sleep, but if she were to stay awake all the time, she'd have to deviate from her usual meal cycle to make up for the lost energy.

Of course, Ai was efficient anyway, designed that way in form and mind. In body, however, it needed to be cared for like a disabled child, billions of relatively simple cells that come in all different forms constantly monitored and checked for functionality, health and proper reproduction, making sure none of each cell was producing foreign substances or mutated cells, and this particular body had an unhealthy habit of doing so. The human body's design was burdened for constantly fighting against decay with its hyper-regenerative abilities and as soon as energy stops flowing and that Life Flame of the human combustion engine extinguishes, the body instantly decays. That must have been why Ai's kind had given up their dependence on their bodies and continued to evolve with their minds. They may have become more vulnerable mentally, but physical harm was all but trivial. The body decayed all the time, but the mind lasted seemingly forever.

Did it really, though? Her kind lived for absolutely endless amounts of time, until they either died from some sort of accident or were chosen to die for the sake of mental reformation, yet the last mental reformation hadn't occurred since relatively soon after the ancestors defeated the humans and found no more use for their human bodies and were able to develop a new physical form and mindset which had been preserved for the rest of their entire history, up until Ai's birth. Will be, Ai reminded herself, if she didn't complete her mission. That reformation was thought by most as being their greatest achievement, as the age of true discovery and learning occurred since then, and after a great period of time, where the great steam engine of enlightenment was running on 'full speed ahead', there suddenly came a point, which absolutely nobody would have realized at the time, where the last piece of undiscovered data in the universe was learned, and the steam engine came to a grinding halt. Not one thinking mind could have realized it at the time and even Ai wouldn't have been able to point it out on the TID. Everything in the universe had been learned, yet the mind wasn't satisfied, yet nothing could quench it. Ai obviously wasn't alive at that time, though she felt as if she remembered that time herself, mainly due to how connected she was by mind to other minds. Ai's mind was young, yet she had peered into the minds of those much older than herself, millions, billions, more than trillions of times older, and they're minds were □□□□. They were old minds, and though they were wise, they had been □□□, almost lost in a way. The concepts were difficult to put into human words as the workings of the Alien mind were incomprehensible in human words and even in human thought, but to compare the mind to the body, their minds had decayed. Make no mistake, they worked perfectly fine, but because the minds were so □□□□ it was almost as if they □□□.

Perhaps before Ai had been born, she had been taught absolutely nothing as a sort of mercy, if Aliens could feel such an emotion. Ai had spent uncountable amounts of time contemplating and making sense of a world she could not observe, to the point where she achieved the same goal as that of her kin, to learn absolutely everything, and then, Ai was born and gifted with a body which allowed her to observe the universe. Back then, Ai wouldn't have cursed the body's disadvantages but blessed its ability to sense the world in ways she never would have been able to imagine. Only, the sensation of sensing didn't satisfy her, as everything she could observe was something she had already known, something she guessed in her infantile stage, nothing that was new to her, even though it technically was. She had strived for omniscience all her pre-life and when she was born, there was nothing else, and she too felt □□□□. That was how Ai knew that she had to complete her mission.

After all, she was designed that way.

---

Ai had 'awoken' once Joel had told her to. Ai would have appeared awake the whole time, but what appeared to just be her moving her head slightly was her jolting herself awake, not that she looked disturbed in any way. She would have just been appearing to have been awake the whole time. When ordered, Ai went into the kitchen.

Yes, Ai ate normal people food. She would look through Joel's kitchen quickly, opening things and closing them just as quickly as she was calculating the most appropriate meal to suit her very specific nutritional needs. Eventually, she suited for a rather large meal of untoasted, unbuttered bread, an apple, a medium-ripe banana, a small bowl of of peanut butter, a can of spam, a few slices of cheese, a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice. She ate mechanically and quickly, yet at a stable pace that allowed her to chew up and swallow her food before eating more to prevent herself from stuffing her pace. She appeared ignorant to everything around her or to what odd looks or comments people would have on her rather unusual meal, and ate unshamefully.

Just as unshamefully was her third eye exposed, along with its various accessories. Ai felt no reason to hide it at all among those whom she trusted with her secret in an isolated environment, no matter how unusual or grotesque it may have appeared. The way her clothing was designed did a good job hiding the spots of which the chords speared to her body where the skin seamed to grow over, although the hearts were rather unusual. It was only be efficient organic design and mere coincidence that every location where each chord had connected to her appeared in the geometric shape of a heart, just the same sort of reason why her third eye appeared in the shape of a sphere or her body's eyes were spheres or human bodies were made with such a queer organic shape. Or, perhaps Ai was designed with such a visually appealing external form (clothing-wise), with the exception of the eye itself by some sort of intelligent design, yet her kind was incapable of creativity. Thus, it had to be coincidence.

Once Ai was finished, she turned her attention to Joel, whom was addressing her and Eri. "Okay ladies. Today is gonna be more proactive you, since you get to do two things today instead of one. First things first. Go inside the building and meditate. I don't care what you think about or how you prefer to meditate, but make sure you really get into it. Don't talk and make as little sound as possible. Make it so quiet that the only thing you can hear are your thoughts. At about noon, I'll let you know the second thing I have planned." Ai simply nodded and looked toward the Cloud Guardian.

         "Varia, scatter!" Yemyais ordered, taking several leaps backwards in the hopes of putting some sunlight between himself and this behemoth. His final leap ended with him skidding across the asphalt, the rubber soles of his shoes struggling to grip the ground beneath his feet. It'd given him all the time he needed to formulate a plan.

The Varia Sky guardian looked to his right. "Eric, to me." A clean-shaven black male a few inches taller than Yemyais answered the call without hesitation, his opaque Vogue aviators glinting in the sunlight. Eric's movements were marked with a type of feral eccentricity, as if he were composed of a barely-contained energy simply bursting at the seams. He wore sandals, and was garbed in tight leather pants and a sleeveless loose-fitting T-shirt that read "don't do it" across the front in big bold letters. It didn't take him long to reach Yemyais, and when they stood side-by-side, the age difference was obvious, with Yemyais being at least a year the junior.

"What's the plan, boss?" Eric asked, running a hand across his curly ceasar-esque designer hairdo. There was a slight grin adorning his face. A moment after he spoke, he used his middle finger to press his stylish shades back up his nose, towards his face.

Instead of answering, Yemyais turned to his left. "Koenig, give us some cover!" The Varia that was closest to the hostile armor nodded in response. Unlike the others, he was clothed from head to toe in a large black leather overcoat that hid the entirety of his body, save for some mud-brown combat boots. The coat's collar was flipped up, hiding most of his face. Judging by looks, he seemed to be around the same age as Eric—eighteen, maybe nineteen—with messy dark hair the fell around his eyes and ears in an uncontrollable clump. What you could see of his face was sharp and angular, his eyes cold and hard. It was the look of a man that was all serious all the time.

A chain fastened tightly to Koenig's wrist glowed a fiery blue, the wisps of which emanated from his sleeve. In the next moment, a lengthy double-ended trident appeared in his hands, as blue as the seven seas and sharp as the rocks that adorn their coasts. Without wasting a moment, Koenig spun the weapon in his hands, rotating it twice, before stabbing the weapon into the ground, parting the asphalt like a hot knife to butter. From the wound in the earth came a torrent of steam, like a geyser, that quickly mystified the area, shrouding it in an opaque grayness that blotted out even the sun. The hostile armor didn't move a single inch as the mist embraced it with its myriad tentacles, quickly reducing all visibility within proximity to zero.

Yemyais drew his blade, placing the sheath through a loop in his belt and pulling at the retractable chain to give himself some maneuvering room. "Eric," he began, gripping his blade with both hands and taking a stance like a baseball player who'd just stepped up to home plate. "Solar Eclipse."

"Wha?!" Eric reacted as if Yemyais had said a naughty word. "You serious, Yem? S-class move right out of the box?" Even though he was busy asking questions, Eric moved to stand behind his leader. "I thought you were saving it for that brat Cain?"

"My instincts tell me this isn't an enemy we can play with," Yemyais said, still in stance, the blade of his weapon pointing at the ground, forming a forty-five degree angle with the rest of his body. Eric moved forward, wrapping his arms around Yemyais and overlaying the boy's grip with his own. To an outsider, it looked as if Eric were in the middle of teaching Yemyais how to properly swing a putter in some hipster version of mini-golf. After a moment, the sword burst into brilliant hard orange-red Sky flames. "Plus the move needs some work. So let's try this."

In response, Eric's hands exploded with neon yellow Sun flames that burned with an equal intensity. The white-hot intensity of the two incandescent flames was such that they were visible even from without the cloud of mist.

Eric snickered, obviously having just barely contained a bark of laughter. "I bet you like it when I'm behind you, huh Yem?"

"Shut up, douche," Yemyais hissed in response, his face turning red ever-so-slightly around the cheeks. It was a relatively new technique, and so they hadn't had a chance to work out all the kinks, this position being one of them. It was the best way he could think of to deliver both Sun and Sky flame to his sword in a concurrent controlled fashion, without one of them having to hold on to the razor-sharp blade edge.

Not being around the blade edge was a very important part of remaining alive while executing this move.

After counting to three, Yemyais poured as much energy as he could into the box weapon, causing the Sky flames to burn with such intensity along the weapon's blade that it began to emit a soft high-pitched screech. At the same time, Eric directed his own Sun flames inward through Yemyais's hands, further augmenting the box weapon. The result was awesome in every sense of the word. The Sky flame that surrounded the blade not only grew in size, but grew darker, taking on a golden-yellowish sheen; however, it didn't lose a single lumen of its radiance at all. In fact, it grew even more luminous and magnificent. So bright was this new harmonized flame that Yemyais and Eric both had to turn their heads in an attempt to shield their eyes, lest they blind themselves. The sword was visibly humming now, its soft screech exploding into a full-on scream.

"More!" Yemyais commanded, and Eric was quick to oblige. He transitioned his hands from gripping Yemyais's to grasping his boss's shoulders, allowing him to take a step back away from the weapon and its overwhelming resplendence, though he was not able to directly infuse Sun flames through the sword's handle anymore. He compensated by infusing Yemyais with the flames directly, allowing the boy to boost his own output even further. The flame that surrounded the blade became even darker, resembling a dark golden-yellow in its center enclosed by a black and red sheen—like the radiant halo of a solar eclipse. After a few seconds, Yemyais spoke again. "Enough!" He commanded through gritted teeth, eyes clenched shut. "Stand back!"

The blade handle itself had become hot to the touch, so much so that it began to scald Yemyais's palms, but he ignored the pain. Streams of flame jetted out from the critical mass that enveloped his sword like jets of molten rock from a volcano. Wherever the little black-gold streams of liquid landed, the asphalt melted away instantly, leaving nothing but a gaping pothole.

Eric had long since retreated backwards a dozen or so meters, well out of his boss's way. Yet, even from where he was, Eric could still feel the raw heat coming from the weapon's blade. It was as if he were on a beach at noon in the middle of summer, with no clouds or shade to protect himself from the sun's glorious splendor.

To see his boss shine so brightly... just to gaze at his figure alone, one had to risk blindness.

Eric loved the sight like nothing else in this world.

"I hope you're honored, Rizzo," Yemyais grunted in his effort to keep the massive amalgamation of flames under his control, leaning forward in his stance. He swung the weapon backwards, locking his arms, preparing to strike. When he did this, the ground in his wake was crushed in, as if someone had dropped an invisible freighter from high above. It was the very force of the flames themselves that so affected his surroundings, like an artificial gravity. From the way he held himself, it was obvious that the Varia boss was about to make a wide upwards swing.

"I'm showing you my Eclipse flame."

         It was once written that because space was so vast (so very vast) that absolutely anything was possible. It was also once said by another person at another time that in the endless length of time, anything that wasn't impossible, even practical impossibilities, can happen. Of course, both were equally true, but at the same time, both time and space had their limits, limits of which could only have been measured in Ai's time, in Ai's perfect universe. In a sense, time and space were practically infinite, but not truly infinite. Only in true infinity could all practical impossibilities are certain to happen, and that existed only in the infinite possibilities of the multiverse. Therefore, everything that can happen, will happen, has happened, or is happening and in every single location it is possible to happen.

Ai had to face this all the time. Despite universes being infinite, there were always more universes in the future than there were in the past. Ai may have only come from one timeline, but that timeline would have split many times after she'd been taken to the past, and would be fated to diverge many times after the time Ai came to the past. It was in this way that the TID was flawed. When Ai received information from the future, it is from multiple futures which may have vastly different data. So, if she had, for some reason, requested information on whether she was successful in her mission or not, she wouldn't have been able to get a clear answer until Ai existed in the point of time where either the Aliens have won or the Humans have. One way she could tell is whether she'd even received the data or not, as she would not have received data from a future where she was successful, for her kind and the TID would have been eradicated.

Plus, Ai was constantly in danger. In the future she came from, the hellishly perfect universe, it was only a handful of thinkers that decided it was best to change the past, when the general governing opinion was to keep their perfect society alive and moving along the same way it always has. While there are futures where Ai's activities in the past remain undiscovered, there are many where they have been discovered and information from those futures have been cut off. Ai was designed, however, to be an independent thinker, cut off from the great collective conscience, so they couldn't simply kill Ai by thinking about it. At the same time, it was only possible to send an independent thinker backward through time. There have been possible futures where the governing opinions have bred their own independent thinkers to send back into time, yet not a single one was nearly advanced as Ai. Even the entirety of the collectiveness had forgotten true independent thinking. Ai was the single possible logical independent thinker. Ai, in multiple different universes, has had to deal with these lesser probes and very few have failed to defeat them, but because it was possible, there existed alternate universes where she had failed. Indeed, Ai's mission was faced with as many casualties as there were successes, but she worked hard equally in every universe where she existed to complete her mission; to exterminate her own kind.

In fact, the very night Ai had woken Nami, she had to fight a lesser probe which had been sent back to stop her. The probe had infiltrated the Vongola headquarters and took on the disguise of one of the staff. Ai had to destroy the human's body, unfortunately, but she killed the Alien assassin without much trouble at all and without creating any disturbance in the facility. The incident went completely unnoticed. Of course, because it was possible, there existed a few universes where Ai would have lost to the assassin. Ai did occasionally ponder the nature of her plight, every since the incident when the Rizzo family attacked them. “The fact that you appear in our history books means you’ve already had your effect on our time. You’ve already done your damage to us. To humans. We must be here because of you…” The Rizzos came from a future that her own timeline, at least up until the point they came back, was shared with. If the Rizzos came from a timeline where Ai was unsuccessful, then the odds were that Ai herself was fated to be unsuccessful. Ai constantly played Roulette with the multiverse and while she was fated to be successful at times, at others she was fated to lose. But what if she knew what her fate would be? Ai pondered exactly what course of action she would take if she knew that no matter what action she took, nothing had enough persuasive power to make her mission a success. It would have made it useless to continue trying, so it would have been sensible to give up, especially if she was certain that she would succeed in an alternate reality because it was possible and the multiverse was infinite.

These were merely hypothetical thoughts, however. Ai did not have true certainty that she had failed completely and while her odds didn't seem too well, Ai was programmed to continue toward her goal as hard as she possibly could, so if it was possible that she could be successful, she would continue to function.


The next day, Ai had arrived at Joel's home. It was Joel's idea that the guardians would be staying at his place while they trained, as enhancement of the Vongola's combat skills was the procedure Joel saw necessary to defend against the Rizzo. Ai would have suggested enhanced security of the rings by the Vongola's staff, but DiCaccio had notified her about recent attacks on various Vongola-owned facilities and services, twelve plus a thirteenth having occurred that day, and how they were most likely related to the Rizzo and had CEDEF on the case. They confirmed at least a single face at one of these attacks as having been present during the Rizzo's attack on the Vongola. DiCaccio suspected they were going for the networks, but he was somewhat confident about their safety. "Any sort of hacker would need control over at least half of our network to be able to do any real damage," he said, "All data is backed up, encrypted and cached daily. Haven't you heard? The Information Age is ending! Cyber-attacks are a thing of the past. We're at the dawn of the Deathperation Age, and the power wont be in the best farmer, engineer or programmer anymore, but in the most resolute pyrotechnic!"

Even if the Rizzos weren't trying to access their network to find the locations of the guardians, they would likely already know of each of the guardians' addresses in the future, with the exception of Joel's. Ai had already caught a girl in a wheelchair hanging around Cain's house one night when she was going to go there herself to eliminate another Alien assassin from the future whom was planning on using Cain's body. Ai could immediately recognize she was one of the Rizzos (although, it was strange that she was near the Boss's home when his ring was already taken). It was clear that they knew their home addresses. Joel's place, however, was quite unknown. It wasn't recorded anywhere on the Vongola's network. It was outside of Namimori, where the Rizzos wouldn't be expecting them, and it was quiet which was perfect for their training. Ai believed that she herself needed no form of training at all, but she didn't deny Joel's request. After all, it was her duty as a guardian to protect her family, so it would have been best if she was with the family.

DiCaccio was too busy to drop her off personally, so he had his agent Saffron drive her there. Ai could have driven a car herself, but her body's appearance was obviously too young to be able to have any sort of licensing that allowed her to do so. Ai didn't need to bring any of her personal belongings besides her ring—she had none other—so she came with no luggage. After Saffron dropped her off near the house and drove off, Ai approached the door and knocked on it gently. She could hear the Boss had already arrived.

         The day was modest in its temperature. Not too hot for this time of year, but not too cold either. A perfect balance. The sun was out overhead, shining down on the front of the building, bathing the area in its gentle resplendence. Atop the metal and glass structure were the words "Namimori Finance Organization," forged in gold and silver embossed letters. Through the large rotating door and into the building's lobby sat two rows of people—men, women, and even some children, their backs against the wall, hands flat against the ground. They had a panicked look in their eyes, and huddled together like an unmoving herd of sheep. Towards the left side of this spacious room was a long metal counter, on top of which were several large glass windows. Judging by their thickness, they had to be bulletproof.

At the teller window on the furthest left edge of the counter, adjacent to the building's large glass windows, stood two people. The first was a golden-eyed woman with long hip-length black hair, straight, with bangs that fell over her ears. She was dressed in jeans and a red t-shirt, overlain with a knee-length black trench coat. On the other side of the window was a woman dressed in a professional suit, complete with tie. She had an alarmed look in her eyes, and was busy furiously stuffing a bag with dollar bills from a nearby cash register.

The woman on the outside of the teller window placed her hand flat against the glass and leaned in, her shadow looming over the panicked teller on the other side, who was busy stuffing bills and coins into a bag somewhere on the ground.

"Hey, uh..." The woman squinted at the badge pinned to the teller's uniform. "Wendy." At mention of her name, the bank teller, Wendy, froze. "Look at me, Wendy." It wasn't a request.

Ever so slowly, Wendy turned her head to face the woman, avoiding eye contact as if the mere notion of it would turn her body to stone. The woman sighed, slapping the glass with her hand, the sound reverberating throughout the room, ending in absolute silence. Wendy cowered in surprise and fear.

"Wendy." The woman sounded somewhat exasperated, her voice increasing in octave with every word. She slapped the glass again, harder this time. "You're not lookin' at me, Wendy."

Wendy looked up at the woman issuing her command through the glass, tears in her eyes. "Y-ye-y-yes—?"

"What do I look like, Wendy?" The woman asked, interrupting the teller's nervous sputtering. Unlike just a moment ago, her voice had become completely calm, harboring not a single suggestion of annoyance or exasperation. After a second or two of confused staring on Wendy's part, the woman continued, her voice suddenly regaining its hard edge. "Do I look like a joke to you?" Wendy reacted with a deep fearful frown, as if someone had just told her some very bad news. "You think this is a god damned joke? A fucking action movie?" The woman narrowed her eyes maniacally, leaning her face close enough to the window that her breath began to fog it up. "You tryin' to be a hero, Wendy?" With every punctuated sentence, the woman's voice grew exponentially in its professed irritation and aggravation, nearly overcoming her southern drawl.

"No!" Wendy squealed, but the woman didn't seem to hear her, as she was too far into her tirade.

At this point in the conversation, the woman began making accentuating motions with her free hand—which incidentally had a gun in it—mostly pointing at her own face. "DO I LOOK LIKE RONALD FUCKING MCDONALD TO YOU?" She bellowed, spittle flying from her mouth. In reaction to the sudden change in mood, others in the room began to whimper and squeal in terror. Wendy herself trembled, but answered the woman's questions with a hurried promptness, as if her life depended on it. Perhaps it did.

"N-no..."

The woman pressed her face against the window, her voice returning to a gentle calmness for but an instant before she ruptured mentally, punctuating every other word by delivering a ferocious punch to the teller's window. "Then I suggest you HURRY. THE FUCK. UP. AND PUT. THE FUCKING. MONEY. IN. THE FUCKING. BAG. BEFORE I KILL. EVERYONE. IN HERE!" Her punches left a sizable crack in the glass. As if to further prove her sincerity, the woman aimed the gun at where Wendy stood behind the protective window. Upon inspection, it was obvious that the weapon in her grasp was not your average run-of-the-mill gun. It had an oblong shape and unnaturally small barrel. Along its side read the words: "Paintball is fun!" accompanied by a smiley face.

The woman pulled the trigger, sending a single pellet of paint to smash into the teller's window. Wendy screamed.

And then the window exploded in a miniature fireball.

Shards of glass flew in every direction, bathing the area in a coarse glassy mist. The crowd of people sitting on the floor screamed out in sheer terror as the detonation rocked the building. In response, Wendy kicked her packaging efforts into overdrive, stuffing large wads of bills and metals into the backpack at her feet with as much speed and accuracy as she could humanly muster. A dozen seconds later, she succeeded in dumping as much money as she could into the bag. "Uh..." she said, attempting to lift the collection of stolen goods; however, it proved much too heavy for her. With another crestfallen sigh, the gun-toting woman reached through the newly-fashioned gaping hole in the teller's window and clenched one of the bag's straps with one hand, hoisting it up and over the counter. In one motion, she swung the bag across her back, fitting her arms through its straps and securing it to her person.

"Nice," she said, congratulating herself. Then she turned her back to the teller and addressed the crowd of people who were cowering at her feet. "Good job everyone," she called, waving her gun around as she spoke and causing general panic among her temporary hostages. "I've always wanted to rob a bank, like in the movies. Too bad they don't exist where I come from." As she made her way to the bank's ornate rotating glass door, she tossed her paintball gun into a nearby garbage can as if it were yesterday's newspaper. "Ciao."

As she made her way out from the doors of the Namimori Finance Organization, the faint whirl of police sirens could be heard in the near distance. It wouldn't be long before the police had this place surrounded. Two minutes, max. The woman began to whistle an upbeat tune as she walked away from the building, sauntering as if she didn't have a single care in the world. Passersby shot her odd looks, but she didn't mind them. As the first police car bent the corner up ahead and started hurtling down the street, the woman mounted her bike with a practiced flare, kicking one leg over its side in a wide exaggerated arc before straddling the metal beast, her body fitting to the curves and contours of its sleek streamlined chassis.

Inside the police car that was rapidly approaching the biker, two officers, middled aged men by the look of them, prepared to engage a potentially gruesome hostage scene at the Namimori Finance Organization, a centuries old financial institution that was owned and operated by the illustrious Vongola family. A robotic female voice rang out over their car's radio.

All units, reports of a 211S silent alarm at the Namimori Finance Organization. Suspect is described as an black haired gold eyed female, brown skin, 5'10", 140 pounds. Be advised: suspect is considered armed and dangerous.
The officer on the passenger's side picked up the radio microphone and spoke into it. "Dispatch, this is 95. We are 10-23. Approaching a female that matches that description outside of the building. She has mounted a motorcycle, its a—" the officer paused for a moment to eyeball the make and model of the bike "—a Ducati Superbike, 1198. Dispatch, suspect may attempt to flee."

The police vehicle skidded to a halt beside the woman and her motorcycle. Before the car even came to a complete stop, the two officers had opened their doors and drawn their weapons.

The biker put her index and middle fingers to her ear and pressed, a blue light emanating from between her fingers.

"Hey," she barked, speaking to the air. "You there?"

The two officers took positions around their vehicle, using its metal exterior as cover from which to aim their weapons.
"Freeze!" Called one of the officers.
"Step away from the vehicle with your hands up!" Called the other.

The biker gave them one dismissive look over her shoulder before turning her had back to face forward.

Yes, I am here. Came a monotonous stolid response from the earpiece.
"Good, Mr. Wizard," the woman responded. "Get me out of here."
There was silence on the other side of the line for a moment. ... What?

"I SAID GET OFF THE BIKE!" The officer shouted from behind the woman. "NOW!"

"I said, navigate me out of here, twerp," she sighed, the exasperating in her voice returning. "God."
There was more silence. ... There are reports of a heist at the Namimori Finance Organization saturating the Vongola network trunk. The voice came as if from a machine with a human tongue, completely devoid of feeling.
"Yeah, so what?"

"THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING!" Came the cop's voice a third time. He actioned his pistol, the ominous click permeating the air and carrying with it the promise of violence.
The woman didn't even flinch.

You were not supposed to make a scene, Garda. Just like with the other facilities, you were supposed to—
"Okay, mom. What are you now, my boss?"
... No.
"Look, so some stuff happened, and I ended up robbing the place." Hildegarde made a subconscious circular motion with her hand as she spoke. "Cool story. Just get me out of here before the bodies pile up, eh."
It was another second before the voice on the other side of the line responded. Okay. Head north.

"LADY! GET OFF THE BIKE! NOW!"

Hildegarde sighed loudly before jabbing her fingers back into her eat with great umbrage. "What is this, a fucking pirate ship, Trevor? Where the hell is north? I said navigate me, dammit."
It was yet another second before Trevor responded, his demeanor as flat and prosaic as ever. Okay. Make a U-turn.

Hildegarde's mouth morphed into a somewhat twisted sneer. "Good." She bumped the motorcycle's ignition button with the knuckles of her hand, causing the glorious machine to roar to life like a mighty lion declaring his divine right to rule. Almost immediately, the police officers began firing shots, though if the slugs hit her, she didn't act like it. Hildegarde revved the bike's engine, spinning the back wheel while braking with the front and leaning her body slightly to the side. In a matter of moments, the metal beast shifted with its rider's weight, gaining angular momentum until it completed a 180-degree rotation in one majestic swoop, leaving a dark black stain along the asphalt in the form of a half-circle. Then, between breaths, Hildegarde released the bike's front brake... and the beast responded in kind, its engine screaming as it realized its fullest potential, tires clawing and tearing at the asphalt below it, wanting nothing more than to roam free.

Hildegarde surged forward in a blur of metal and thrust, nearly running through the first cop as she sped off, the engine of her metallic steed changing pitch as she cycled through its gears.

Left. Came Trevor's voice as Hildegarde approached an intersection. The traffic light hanging above the crossing went from green to yellow, but instead of slowing to a stop, Hildegarde increased her speed. Right before she breached the intersection, the traffic light transitioned to red... and then flickered back to yellow, and then turned green. Taking the initiative, Hildegarde swerved left, leaning deeply into the maneuver, her left knee poking out from the side of the bike like the wing of an eagle.

At this point, several police cars had spotted her, and had since engaged her in active pursuit. Slowly but surely, they began to close the distance between her bike and their cars.

Left.

Seeing her chance, Hildegarde swerved into oncoming traffic, just barely avoiding being sideswiped by a delivery truck. Unfortunately, her avoidance maneuvers left her with too shallow an angle with which to perform a wide turn, so she mounted the curb, blasting through pedestrians on the sidewalk in order cut a sharp left. Her chasers, their sirens blaring, attempted to execute a similar maneuver by swerving into oncoming traffic but failed miserably, smashing into several cars and each other.

Hildegarde revved the engine, regaining her lost speed as she blasted down the residential streets. As she approached intersections, the light always flickered to green in her favor, as if they had been programmed specifically to allow her safe passage.

Right. Trevor called out suddenly. Hildegarde looked in preparation for another sharp turn, but readjusted her weight at the last microsecond, nearly losing her balance and falling off the bike as she aborted the maneuver. Blasting down the road she'd almost turned down were a phalanx of police cruisers 3 cars deep, on the hunt, sirens blaring, attempting to head her off by predicting her actions.

Not today, you bastards.

You didn't turn right.
Hildegarde hissed, her eyes watering. "Couldn't," she yelled, hoping the microphone in her ear would pick up her voice over the blasting wind.

You should have turned right. He didn't say it matter-of-factly. It was more like he was stating an extremely uninteresting fact, like one plus one is not three.

Hildegarde didn't need Trevor to tell her that she should have made the turn, for she could see the grim reality for herself. Angry red lights saturated the area roughly a block ahead of her like the carnivorous eyes of hungry demons in the darkness. Hildegarde smacked her lips in annoyance. She'd encountered what the people of this time period call: rush hour traffic.

"Shit!" Hildegarde pulled on the brakes as hard as she could, sliding to a cringe-inducingly close stop roughly a third of a meter behind the bumper of some random car whose driver was honking up a storm. "Ah, shut the hell up," she responded, touching the car's trunk.

It exploded, setting the back of the car on fire.

The guy in the car got out immediately and began shouting, but Hildegarde had already mounted the curb with her bike, taking the sidewalk as a shortcut around the traffic. A few police officers skidded to a halt behind the rush hour parking lot of a road, getting out and attempting pursuit on foot, but by the time they got around the first car and started running up the sidewalk, Hildegarde was long gone.

**

Hildegarde pulled up to a dingy unpaved service road that lead to an abandoned cluster of warehouses near the coast of the city, parking the bike and deploying its kickstand with an unhealthy amount of dramatic flare, flipping her hair with one hand somewhere in the process. Though they were nowhere near as safe, efficient, or environmentally safe as the vehicles of her time, these primitive piston-fired fossil fueled machines had really made her day, and none more so than this old-world "motorcycle"—stolen, of course. Maybe Alastor would let her bring it back with them to the future as a souvenir.

With a content grin, Hildegarde walked a few blocks, entering one of the supposedly abandoned warehouses. On the outside, the place looked like a dilapidated crapshoot ready to collapse at any moment. Inside, the first scent to greet Hildegarde was one of mold, causing her to crinkle her nose in contempt. However, after going through the dank lobby and making her way through the dark dreary staircase down to the warehouse's basement floor, the looks changed dramatically. The difference that was first and foremost was, of course, lighting. Soft golden rays of light emanated from lamps made to hang from the basement's ceiling, banishing the darkness. Next was the smell. The place didn't smell like the moldy basement of an long-abandoned factory, but like the fresh metallic innards of business datacenter.

This place was preselected as a mustering ground for Rizzo field operations in this time period.

Adjusting the straps of her backpack so as to alleviate some of the stress on her back, Hildegarde sauntered down the remaining stairs and onto the basement floor. The basement was both large and wide, and was divided into sizable cubicles or "rooms" by old metal shelves. Hildegarde walked past the cubicle that she recognized as belonging to Donovan and snickered despite herself, though she wasn't sure why. She also walked by Miku's cubicle, followed by Sora's, Flandre's, and then hers. As she moved past the different sectioned off rooms, she didn't check to see if the other Rizzo had already left to hunt their assigned targets or not, instead focusing entirely on herself.

She entered her own room with a sigh, dropping her backpack of goodies to the ground and kicking it so that it slid under what passed as her bed, joining several other bags and boxes of things that she happened to appropriate from various places in this time period. Finished, she left her room, moving through the cubicles until she reached Trevor's. She tried her hardest not to be envious of the fact that Alastor had given Trevor the biggest section of the warehouse—about twice as large as her cubicle. The boy's room was filled with whirling fans, buzzing computers, and at least eight large monitors, each with different things on them. Everything in the room seemed to be connected together by wires, all of them leading to the same place: a small black cube on his desk, which acted as the nexus point for every cord and device in the area. Hildegarde didn't understand the whole "computers" thing. Never did, really, not even in the future. It was the main reason she didn't join her brothers in becoming C-Frame pilots for the war effort back home. Why trust in some machine when you could trust in your own two fists?

She came up behind the Trevor's seat, which looked more like a leather throne than a simple office chair, placing one hand upon its back. "Hey Trev," she said nonchalantly. "Did it work?"

"You shouldn't steal stuff, Garda," he said, his voice characteristically lacking any inkling of varied tone or emotional interest. As usual, his utterance was a monotonous one. It was something Hildegarde had had to get used to.

"They were just askin' for it, I couldn't resist." She said, letting out a sharp laugh and slapping the back of Trevor's chair.
"Please don't do that," he said in response to her physical action, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.
"So did it work?" She asked again. "Are you in?"

Trevor was silent for a moment, tapping away at his keyboard, before he responded.

"Yeah. I just got a response from the peripheral you plugged in to the terminal at the Namimori Finance Organization headquarters... before you robbed it."
"So that's all thirteen?"
"Yes, we've taken over 51% of their network."
"So... what does that mean? We have access to the Vongola's secure computer thingy?"

"We have control of the Vongola International VPN—their secure intranet," Trevor corrected. "The L1-Norm microarchitecture sub-quantum processor that my C-Frame's AI utilizes is lightyears ahead of any of this time's basic systems. Security in this time amounts to wet tissue paper, and I the hacker equivalent of the King of Flames." Trevor began to both speak and type faster, the rate of the clicks and clacks of his fingers depressing keys increasing in proportion to the rate at which he spoke. "Their distributed system uses a Lattice-based cryptosystem to facilitate secure communications between their various datacenters and endpoints." On Trevor's largest screen, a map of the city appeared. "The algorithm they employ is even resilient against hackers compromising one or more of their datacenters. However, that security relies on the assumption that at least than 50% of their network remains uncompromised, which is why you had to hit at least thirteen of their facilities. Again," Trevor continued, pressing a single button on his keyboard. On one of his secondary screens popped up a window that began listing the names of files. "we control 51% of their network now. We have access to financial records, transaction reports, stock portfolios, weapons caches, research facilities, complete rosters listing every Vongola member all around the world... names, addresses, phone numbers, em—"

"Wait wait wait wait." Hildegarde said, bringing her hands up to massage her temples. "Slow it down. You're killin' me." After a sigh, she continued. "Just tell me this: can we figure out where these cowards are hiding out?"

"Yes," he responded simply. "We already sourced the home addresses of all the Vongola guardians before coming here, which Alastor already ordered some of the other Rizzos to check out." Dots appeared on the map that was currently up on Trevor's largest screen, attracting Hildegarde's attention. Each one definitely represented the home location of a Vongola guardian. "But now that we've broken into their system, we have info on every single Vongola-owned territory in Japan, including plots of land that were never mentioned in the historical records. Unfortunately, it will take some time to comb through this extra data, even for my C-Frame. They seem to be hiding not only from us, but from the entire world... even the rest of the Vongola."

Hildegarde smacked her lips, sighing.

"Still," Trevor continued, "it's really only a matter of time before my C-Frame finds those that remain hidden. I have already found the hospital that the Tempest recuperated within. She seems to have survived manifesting that undefined berserk flame we witnessed back at the Vongola's technology expo." Trevor's voice seemed to grow just the slightest bit more foreboding in its unyielding monotony, though the fluctuation was to such a small degree that it went unnoticed by Hildegarde. "I still have to research it."

"Good," Hildegarde said, pumping her fists as if she'd won some contest. Images of the Vongola's mist guardian came to the forefront of her mind, causing her to grind her teeth. "I can't wait to crush that alien pretender and take my rightful ring."

For the first time, Trevor looked away from his computer screens and turned to Hildegarde, leveling his cool gaze at her. On his lap was the optical disk that he'd received from the Storm guardian back during the initial skirmish. "Also, Alastor wanted to speak with you."

Hildegarde's face lit up at the Moon guardian's words. "What?! Why didn't you tell me that sooner you twerp?" She turned immediately, bending the corner away from Trevor's cubicle and heading for the other end of the floor, where Alastor's cubicle was. "Ciao!" she called out over her shoulder in her usual southern drawl.