Chapter Text
It was always the odd tolerance that great skies had with the Lackey that drew his irk like no other. It didn’t seem to matter whether it was Luce, Aria, or Yuni. They had a penchant for coddling the twenty-five-year-old like an actual child, treating every misstep with a pat on the head.
That kind of behavior would only kill an already out-of-depth civilian.
“Oh, Skull already went ahead—he’ll be meeting all of you there.”
Dawn was barely breaking through the windows, and a pleasant chill permeated the meeting room. The soldier, scientist, informant, martial artist, hitman, and the Giglio Nero famiglia head sat together at the circular table, but an empty chair to the right of Lal where a certain purple-haired man should have been sitting draws the eye.
They eyed Luce, curious, and then fleetingly sent each other glances.
Their eyes flew to Viper’s face the most. The Informant had a frown, and tilted their head slightly to the left. No information.
They should be doing last minute checks right now: running through the plan one more time, updating their information bank for any changes on target location, security routes, visitor list, double checking their weaponry—everything but this.
“Interesting,” Fon sipped his tea calmly with an ever present smile, “I couldn’t really sleep last evening, and was stretching by myself on the roof; it’s too bad I didn’t get to bid him… good luck…”
The Chinese man softly laid his teacup on the plate, and looked up at Luce with gentle challenging eyes. “...On his sudden passion for location scouting.”
The phrasing made Reborn’s lip almost twitch at the thought. His black eyes were trained on Luce’s face, looking for any microexpressions that would slip out into the surface even as he kept himself aware of what the others were doing.
Verde was sketching blueprints, Viper was scribbling away and mumbling over their accounting log, and Lal was busy cleaning her rifle; picture-perfect examples of unbothered, wandering minds. It was like any other mission-less Tuesday, nothing amiss.
But everyone knew they were far from distracted from the conversation at the table.
Why would the sky allow the civilian to drive to a target on his own? Did Skull boast about doing the mission himself, and Luce, who should know better, allowed it?
A parent spoiling a child, or a teacher letting a stubborn brat learn things the hard way?
Luce merely returned the look sheepishly. “I was surprised myself, but I saw him at the base. I am sure he will be alright.”
So she had not foreseen Skull’s leaving during their planning session. Which was not reassuring, in any sense.
Something wasn’t lining up, and experience had taught all of them that even the most innocuous of peculiarities could lead to disaster. Besides, the hitman put his hand on his fedora and allowed Leon to crawl into it, Skull had never expressed any interest in their missions other than getaway driver, bait, and unlikely back up.
Reborn sent the smallest, most undetected slip of sun flames to his pet, and hid his pride at the way his chameleon immediately lashed its tongue out at the air as if it was attempting to catch a fly to eat just like Reborn trained him. The first time, he made no note of it, but the second time—
Reborn coughed and politely excused himself from the table to feed his hungry chameleon flies in his room. Fon and Viper could handle needling Luce for any other scraps, but the hitman had a hunch that they had gotten all that they could out of the sky.
Out of the room, he ran a satisfied finger down Leon’s spine, and took out a fly from one of his many, many hidden pockets as a reward. He never needed to go anywhere to feed his pet.
He took the long way to his bedroom, taking the detour that passed by the garage. Behind the classy brown door, the uneasy feeling in his gut was confirmed.
Skull’s motorbike laid untouched, and he quickly scanned the rest of the huge room in the dark, none of the other nine cars were missing.
“Mou. That someone who loved vehicles and who was in such a hurry to get to the base ahead of us,” Mammon’s voice started from beside him, and he felt the mist’s presence becoming heavier until it formed a solid construct of the informant Reborn knew was still in the meeting room. “Would decide to hike out of a five-mile forest on foot,”
Viper’s illusion floated onward and Reborn followed them, shutting the garage door gently behind him with a gloved hand. There was no need for secrecy—it was unlikely that anyone in the mansion didn’t know that he was looking around for clues. But good habits were like knives, better sharp than blunted. “Is preposterous.”
He agreed. Skull was stupid most of the time, but the stuntman had always made sure not to cause any of them unnecessary harm—a danger to the stuntman’s own self but nobody else.
A worrying trend, but still. There was a brain somewhere under that helmet.
“You’re next to his bedroom. Did you hear him leave?” Reborn petted Leon, and the reptile slowly changed to match his skin tone. His lips quirked, eyes shaded from Viper.
“That’ll cost you,” They got to Skull’s bedroom on the second floor and, the construct unhesitatingly opened the door, paying no mind to the stuntman’s privacy.
Reborn tilted his eyebrow at them.
They both already knew the answer to that. Viper would not be digging around the garage if they had known that Skull left early, the opportunistic mist would have tailed their civilian cloud already in search of profitable information.
Viper huffed exasperatedly, and Reborn knew he had won.
“No.” And the mist didn’t offer more information than that.
The bedroom, more akin to a suite, was surprisingly tidy for such a rowdy man. Reborn would even go as far as to say that it looked untouched. The only sign of life immediate to the eye were the miniatures of motorbikes and racing cars neatly lined up on the curled maplewood shelf next to the window next to the bed.
Neither of them commented on the thin layer of undisturbed dust on the bedding. They had been going on missions for a month now.
Did Skull even sleep on it?
They’ve never seen the man exhausted, even when the rest of them had been satisfyingly drained by their weekly tasks.
The two quickly went on the search—peering under the bed frames, under the small sitting table, inside the closet and cabinets that showed them Skull only brought the most minimal of his clothing needs (undies, socks, towels, boots, and three biking suits), the decently-sized separate living room that also had dust settled on the rug and burgundy loveseat, the neat drawer full of makeup, and the undisturbed bathroom (there weren’t even a speck of trash. Clean toilet water had a thin line of dry, crusty mineral on the porcelain bowl—a mark far higher than the current water level, as if the toilet water had been dehydrating for months).
Even the window, Skull’s most likely choice for his quiet escape, yielded no signs of being moved from its position the last couple of weeks (attested to by the lack of drag-marks on the dust sloped sill). Reborn checked the bolts, considering if the window had simply been removed and placed back again from within the room—introducing the possibility of an inside job. Reborn would not discount the chance of one of them aiding Skull in slipping away (in which case, he would commend his team. No one had given away that they knew more than the other).
If it weren’t for the clothes and the tiny toy vehicles, the two would have thought they were searching an unlived room.
After less than five minutes, they were back at the door. Both said nothing, their blank faces an admittance that Skull’s room had only added more questions than answers.
Were they searching the wrong room? Was Skull sleeping elsewhere? Reborn considered asking the mist, but thought better of it. The mist wasn’t the kind to waste their own time.
Viper twitched beside him, and disappeared. Their voice echoed in the quiet hallway.
“Luce just went to the kitchen to bring us snacks.”
Reborn’s mouth thinned. He nodded his thanks knowing the mist most likely was still surveying the area. He sped walked to his room, light on his feet, opening the door knob, and making sure the sound of the door closing was audible because even if Luce knew he’d gone snooping, Reborn had standards.
When he got back to their meeting room, Viper and Fon were engaging in a conversation about the use of poisons in ending altercations early, Verde was asking Lal if she’d let him modify her Colt carbine, and Luce was still in the kitchen.
Nobody acknowledged his entry, looking for all the world like their conversations were the only thing in their minds. But Reborn knew better—in a second, he saw the way Fon’s hooded eyes flicked his way as the martial artist sipped his tea, Viper’s inaudible sigh knowing that the storm would not pay a cent to learn what Viper and Reborn had found out when the hitman would share it for free, Lal’s piercing gaze on Reborn’s reflection on her shiny, newly oiled rifle surface, and the microscopic lens on Verde’s tie turned towards Reborn’s figure on the doorway.
No questions voiced, but all questions asked—did you find him? Do you know why he left? Did Luce sanction it? Do you know how he left (that one was Viper specifically).
He could feel the whole room holding their breath. Skull’s empty chair was jarring, if only because the cloud was always a comment or two loud on the table and a visual catastrophe of black and neon purple with one foot benched on the table unless Reborn shot it down.
Reborn’s left hand raised to his head, tilting his fedora down with two fingers.
Lal’s grip on her COMSUBIN-issued rifle tightened, Verde pushed his glasses up with a finger, Fon’s smile slipped into something the slightest bit colder, and Viper hummed.
Well, Reborn smirked, if that wasn’t a call to hunt down their wayward civilian cloud, he wouldn't know what was.