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Chrome had known that she should not have expected Tsuna to have it all figured out on day one of officially being Vongola Decimo, the acting head of the Vongola family. That said, she had perhaps expected a little more than a frantically put-together meeting at 8 am in the morning on day two of them officially being at the head of the organization.
"I," Tsuna said with bloodshot eyes as he leaned over the meeting table, "have been taught how to be a crime boss. I do not want to be a crime boss. In fact, I have famously refused to be a crime boss." The early morning light filtered through the windows and dappled across his hair. It almost looked like a halo from the right angle, though there was nothing peaceful or divine about their obviously sleep-deprived boss.
Gokudera gave him nervous looks out of the corner from his eyes, even as he stood the closest to Tsuna. Chrome had picked a safer spot, in the corner with a snoring Lambo at her side. All of this was far too much hubbub for this early in the morning, but she’d feel bad about leaving Tsuna to his troubles alone, so here she was. Mukuro-sama and Hibari had not even shown up, which was probably good for the order of the meeting – after all, Tsuna was managing to come across erratic enough all on his own today.
Yamamoto looked like he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or keep a straight face, and only Ryohei sat bright and bushytailed, paying attention. Chrome had seen Gokudera bribe him with extra hours in the ring if he sat down and shut up just minutes before.
Tsuna had something to say and for once he deeply and unequivocally needed them to simply listen. And obey him, of course, but that was implied. Reborn had made sure of that over the years, no matter how much Tsuna disliked it.
"Today, we no longer have to take it," Tsuna said. "Today, we have the power to change the Vongola. No longer will that change be in us only. We’ll have to tackle the whole thing now." He looked vaguely terrified, blank paper on the desk crumpling in his hand. "I – we need ideas on how to do this. Think more vigilantism instead of crime."
He swayed in place. Gokudera quickly stepped forward to catch him by the elbow. Almost too quietly to catch, she could hear him inquire after when Tsuna’s last meal had been. Chrome didn’t doubt it had been long ago – the kitchen staff was only just now arriving, and yesterday Tsuna had not been able to bring himself to eat more than a few bites during the long day of ceremonies.
Gokudera turned back to them as he guided Tsuna out of the room. "Meeting adjourned. For next time… Come up with a way to fulfill the boss’s wish. Start out with ideas about vigilantism. Perhaps a topic close to your heart."
"Extreme!" Ryohei said as Tsuna and Gokudera left. "Boxing lessons for all!"
That was a nice community-building idea, Chrome thought to herself, but not necessarily what she’d think of as vigilantism. What topic could she focus on? Preferably something she could do herself, something she could do a test run for. Something that was practical and would serve the people of Palermo, but that touched on something that was personal to her.
As Lambo let out an extra loud snore beside her – was his apnea playing up again? – she suddenly thought of the letter she’d opened just this morning. Of the letters, black on white, stating she was number four hundred on the waiting list for a new kidney. Of how, back home in Japan, she’d been barely under number three hundred despite the fact that she’d been on the list for over ten years. How she knew, in fact, that the only reason she’d gotten that high so far was because so many others had died ahead of her because no help ever came.
That sounded like a promising project, now she thought of it. Surely Tsuna would approve.
At its core, Chrome knew, this was an issue of logistics. Plenty of people had organs. Plenty of people were even part of donor programs! But the time between their deaths and access by any individuals who could harvest their organs was usually the crux of the issue. Organs died quickly. Not as quickly as a person did, as long as they had not died of organ failure, but it was a negligible amount of time between it in most cases.
Now if only someone could do something about that…
But first, preparation, which only took some minor forgery. Chrome smiled at her laptop screen as she filled out another application for a local crook for the Organ Donor Register. Four more and she’d be done with the entire Cretino famiglia. She snuggled back into the couch of the common room and took a sip of her drink as she sent it off.
The door opened as Tsuna stumbled in, going straight for the coffee machine.
"Boss," Chrome greeted him.
He blinked, once, then twice, obviously still tired and overworked. "Chrome! What are you doing at…" He attempted to look at his watch, only to realize he didn’t have one on anymore. He sighed.
Chrome stifled a smile. "Working on my vigilantism project."
A genuine beam of a smile spread across Tsuna’s face. Even washed out and tired as he looked, it brightened his whole mien. "That’s fantastic! I’m so glad to hear you’ve been working on it."
The corners of Chrome’s mouth rose in answer. "Thank you," she said, and started logging new names with vigor. Just the encouragement she’d needed.
It was easy enough. The next time an enemy famigilia tried to corner her in the dark, she made sure to lead them closely to the district hospital. She kept a headstart of about a minute. She had just hung up her call for an ambulance when her would-be hunters found her at a dead-ended alley.
"Hey girlie," said the muscle. "Hear there’s a new wind blowing in the Vongola. That doesn’t mean anything good for my boss’s business. Now come quietly, or we get down to business." He cracked his knuckles for the effect. Chrome laughed.
His expression hardened. "Alright. The hard way, then." And he advanced on her. Or well, an illusion of her.
Chrome, for her turn, carefully choked him. Enough to be fatal, but without damaging organs or causing organ failure too quickly. Her breath fogged as her victim quietly choked on a nonexistent object in his throat. A cold night. Quite good for preservation.
She laid him out on the cold cobblestones – so quaint, Europe! – as she heard sirens approach. Her final touch was an organ donor card, neatly tucked into his pocket alongside his wallet.
She did not give the money a second glance. She wasn’t a common thief, after all.
And Tsuna had asked them to involve as little crime as possible.
She had repeated this little game three times by the time the next large-scale attack was launched on the Vongola. By now, the procedure was baked into her, so she gets to work with zeal. One enemy after another falls. There was no time today to call ahead to the hospital, not when she was not sure how long the battle wouldlast, but she could call the minute they were done.
Blood still dripping off her trident, she gestured for everyone to get moving as she rattled off the particular street to the emergency number. She hung up with a smile, tucking a few donor cards into the pockets of the men who went down most recently.
Tsuna looked at her gratefully as they all filed into a small van – their days of booking it by foot were, mostly, behind them. "Thank you for calling the emergency number. It feels… more humane, that way."
Chrome nodded as she fastened her seatbelt as Gokudera hit the gas like a madman. "Of course, Boss."
"I did wonder, what did you tuck into their pockets there at the end? Is that some kind of local prayer?"
Chrome blinked. How would she know the local prayers? She’s just as much from Japan as he is! "It’s a donor card. For my vigilantism side project."
"…Organ donation?"
Chrome had not expected him to turn puce. People get squeamish about the strangest thing, really. He just had his fist inside someone’s guts, but saving those organs and making sure someone else can use them through harvesting is weird? "Yes, something close to my heart." Of which she had none, of course, but an illusion beating there, but that was beside the point. They’re talking metaphorically here.
Tsuna’s eyes softened, even as he frowned. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. "Chrome, did Mukuro put you up to this?"
Chrome looked at him, utterly puzzled, as silence descended on the van. In the row behind them, Mukuro chuckled. The kufufufu rang through the iron confines of the space.
Chrome laughed too. Tsuna’s frown only got deeper, but… it really was funny, you see. "Mukuro-sama has made about three plans in his life and after that I took over for his own good," Chrome said, her hand limp in Tsuna’s. "I think his introduction to you was about the last time he ever planned anything bigger than a birthday party." He did do parties well.
Tsuna was gaping by now. "But.. the plans are always so ruthless-" He cut himself off there, shaking his head. "Nevermind, not the point right now. Chrome, are you telling me you’re harvesting organs for your vigilantism side project?"
Chrome nodded, holding on to her seat as Gokudera swerved around a corner.
Tsuna’s mouth dropped even lower, if that was possible, even as he narrowly grabbed onto the seat in front of him before he smashed face-first into it.
"Sorry, Juudaime!"
Tsuna straight-up ignored Gokudera. "That was NOT what I meant when I said that I wanted more vigilante than mafia!"
Bianchi, seated next to Mukuro behind them, snorted. "Should’ve given more specific instructions then. I think she’s doing great."
"It’s a crime!"
That was just straight up not true. Chrome couldn’t let it stand. "The only criminal part of it was the minor forgery I committed when signing all our enemies up for the organ donor register."
Tsuna looked at her wild-eyed. "And the murder?!”’
"Self-defense that I would have committed anyway. Really, Tsuna, this is just good resource management." If they had dead men and women lying around anyway, why not just make use of them? Chrome frankly didn’t get what the hubbub was about. She wasn’t even selling the organs on the black market! Way too high a contamination rate there and also it would just have gone to the rich instead of the many, many people on the waiting lists for organs.
She was helping the common man and this was the response.
Tsuna looked about ready to have an aneurysm, seemed to realize he was getting nowhere, and buried his head in his hands.
Chrome watched him helplessly. "I was just trying to help."
"Excuse me for one moment," Tsuna said, and screamed into his hands like a madman. Gokudera nearly swerved off the road when he whipped his head back to watch Tsuna instead of the road. Only Yamamoto grabbing the steering wheel averted them from that fate.
Tsuna exhaled deeply, and looked back up, as if that was a normal thing to do. Gokudera hesitantly looked back at the road, and Tsuna smiled. It did not reach his eyes, which were quite done-looking, but Tsuna just got like that sometimes so Chrome wasn’t too concerned.
"Chrome," he said, "let’s do medical vigilantism in another way, okay? What do you think of sticking it to the pharmaceuticals?"
Well, that sounded like an excellent idea, of course, even if she managed to never quite promise that she’d quit calling in ambulances for collection if there were enough corpses around. No crime involved even, just for Tsuna, because she’d already signed off all of Italy’s famiglia’s on the donor register.
All in a day's work.
The good part of finding out her boss had an entirely different morality system than she did was, of course, that once he promised to help her fight medical inequality the whole Vongola got involved.
The bad news was that they were close to going bankrupt within two weeks because Tsuna had called all crime within the famiglia to a halt in a panic and they were now instead giving out medicine to those in need for free instead.
Which was good, mind you, but more in the moral sense than the financial one. Reborn had threatened to come back from his vacation in the Bahamas and everything to check violently if Tsuna had suddenly forgotten how to add and subtract.
"Sticking it to the big pharma is all well and good," groaned Gokudera over the latest cooler of medicine they’d hauled into their repurposed van, "but it doesn’t help us if we’re stealing insulin they sell for a hundred dollars but made for three. Not if we’re giving it away for free when these heists cost a lot. They upped the fucking security, you know!"
Chrome knew this intimately, of course. She was part of the operation, after all. But generally it was better to let Gokudera vent when he got steamed up, lest he truly explode at the most unfortunate times. Did people become like their weapons if they used them long enough, much like dog owners ended up looking like their dogs? Inquiring minds would like to know, and Chrome meant herself by that. Mukurowl sure did look like Mukuro-sama, but she wasn’t sure if it counted if it had been possessed.
"We’re going into debt with Mammon and Tsuna still doesn’t want to see any crime. At this point, we’ll end up running a crime scene cleaning service because that’s about the amount of transferable skills I can come up with! Nobody would hire us for security."
Other famiglia’s would, perhaps, but that would go right back to being a crime either by the nature of what they would be doing, or because, technically, it would mostly just be protection money because it would mean they were not attacking them themselves. Getting out of the criminal circuit was hard enough when you were on your own, doing it as the biggest mafia famiglia in Italy was near impossible.
"What if," Chrome said, "we just did a little crime."
Yamamoto, starting the car as they got in – Gokudera was no longer allowed to drive – blinked. "Sounds fun."
"The whole point is getting out of crime, baseball-head!" Gokudera glared at him.
"No, but really," Chrome said, getting settled in the car. "We can’t do this all at once. That won’t work. What Tsuna really objects to is the violence, right?"
Gokudera hesitated, but nodded.
"Then what if we do something minor? Something that, if we spread it widely enough, is profitable enough to fund our vigilantism, but not harmful enough for anyone to actually bleed or end up in poverty? Think stealing from the rich."
Gokudera looked considering. "I’ll call Juudaime."
Chrome inclined her head with a smile. "Please do that with your seatbelt on."
Red-faced, Gokudera complied.
Thirty minutes and a medicine drop off later, Gokudera hung up.
"And?" Yamamoto asked, keeping his eyes on the road. A skill Chrome appreciated very much. She leaned forward through the gap between the driver and passenger seat to be able to see their expressions better.
"He said yes to nonviolent crime that doesn’t make anyone starve," Gokudera said.
Chrome thought that was about right. Tsuna might want to better the Vongola, but you couldn’t better anyone who didn’t have enough food to eat. Financial violence was violence all the same, and he was directly responsible for the state of the Vongola.
"Got it," Yamamoto said. "What’s the plan now, then?"
"Stealing nuts," said Gokudera, incredibly seriously.
Yamamoto laughed. "Sounds dirty and fun!"
Gokudera groaned and turned to Chrome. "There is a nutfarm near us that has pick-ups today, I think. Can you make the car look like a nut pick up truck?"
Chrome blinked. "Got any pictures?"
"Just Google it."
Chrome did. Their car looked like a perfect replica of a walnut pickup truck by the time they pulled up to an almond farm. She could see Gokudera panic when they stepped out of the car to start to load, but this mistake was really his fault since he had not told her what kind of nut company they were supposed to be, and also, the first rule of stealing shit was not sticking out in any way. Men in nut pickup trucks did not panic. Neither did women, for that fact.
With a smile, she approached the pick-up site with a whistling Yamamoto beside her. Before long, they’d loaded everything in.
With everyone heedless of what they’d done, they drove off with about 200 kg of almonds in the back.
"What now?" Yamamoto asked as Gokudera slumped in his seat, exhaling loudly as he wiped sweat from his brow.
"I have about fourteen more farms we could hit."
Yamamoto shook his head. "I mean, what do we do with the nuts."
It was silent for a moment.
"Sell them?" It seemed obvious to Chrome.
"Yeah, but where is the nut black market?"
Gokudera straight up stared at Yamamoto. "Do you hear yourself? It’s fucking getting send overseas, you idiot! To a perfectly legitimate market that doesn’t know we’re not a nut farm ourselves!"
Yamamoto shrugged. "Have mercy on us first-time criminals, Hayato."
Gokudera was easily wound up as always and began cursing him out while Chrome laughed. First-time criminals, that was a good one!
Nut-ing but crimes over here!