Authors Note:

KHR is NOT mine. There. I reminded myself.

This story just popped out of a random idea of Tsuna having been detained by the mob for having a suspicious looking entourage and making him rationalize all their accusations. I don't really know what I was thinking when I was writing it—it's just the dialogue seemed really amusing to me. I'm sorry if it seems cracky and all that. Indulge me, please. I'm letting off steam from stress and it really was quite amusing imagining it being played in front of me.

Ok. SO time for disclaimers or warnings or whatever purpose this clarification serves. this is AU. Obviously. And the situation is simple. Tsunayoshi is not the heir to the Vongola—well—at least not that he is aware of. He is a simple student attending university when an opportunity to come to Italy landed quite literally on his lap. Some of the characters will act the same, some might not and others I have no idea how they'd react at all.

THE FISH AND THE MOB

Day One:

Just a Friendly Phone call with a Side of Death

Good judgment comes from experience; and experience,

Well, that comes from bad judgment.

- Anonymous

Good ole Murphy. Never ceases to amaze. And to render people speechless. And leave each and everyone he ever touched in a towering helpless-and for some-near chaotic, homicidal mess.

Clarification is necessary to be sure-but as Tsuna recalled his current situation it might be seen as not necessarily that bad. But we digress. An explanation, as previously stated, is necessary so let us set the stage, pull back the curtain and bring our intrepid protagonist and his merry band of miscast, as well as you, dear unfortunate reader back to the beginning or as close to it as Tsunayoshi's memory is able.

The last nine and a half months of his existence has been utterly blissful. He should've known on hindsight that nothing ever comes for free. Well, not as long as Murphy's Law plays poker with Karma's bitch.

And all it took for his life to turn upside down was three day and three simple, harmless things.

Three days. Three things. A phone call. A plane ride. And a poker game.

Are you paying attention? Good. Hold on. Take a deep breath. Here we go.

Eleven months ago he moved out of his childhood home, changed his address, learned how to live on his own, and even secured a semi-reliable means of income and spent most of the week attending classes in a school where for the first time in his life he finally achieved his goal of being invisible.

Yeah, you heard it right—INVISIBLE.

That, right there, has been his goal since elementary school and his one burning desire for most of his middle school and most of his high school years. Not one to aim for fame or god even infamy. Because seriously what would he do with either of those things? No, his goal was and is mediocrity. Normalcy in all its beautiful, gracious subtleness and originality. He yearned and burned with the idea of being just like everyone else, of disappearing within the welcoming arms of normality and blessed ordinariness.

You would think that with such a frankly simple-minded wish, he didn't have to do anything spectacularly complicated to achieve it. No, as far as wishes go, his wouldn't even register in the scale of impossibility. But the facts were these—fate or whatever or whoever it is that controlled the flow and ebb of mankind's life felt like pulling a fast one and made him Target Number One. They attached a big-ass bulls-eye on his ass and never even sent him a text or an email to inform him of the fact. They just sounded the hunting trumpet and let the hounds of hell loose. Or in this particular case—fate put him on the Murphy's Law Express with a side-trip to the Seven Levels of Hell. NO, not just the seventh—not even just one level of hell. All of them. Really. And it all began on the last day his first year in university officially ended and summer break finally began.

DAY 1

The building Sawada Tsunayoshi chose as his personal abode for his final years of his schooling looked like any well-kept mansion found anywhere else in the town of Namimori. Seven-storey's high, red bricks and black mullioned windows that looked out unto an immaculately kept garden that's been moved, swept and trimmed to within an inch of its verdant leafy life—a constant, if harmless reminder to Tsuna of the neurotic tendencies of his kind, if utterly eccentric land lord.

"Oi! Watch out! Delivery coming through! Good evening Nii-san!"

The sweet, lilting voice called out cheerily behind him and he immediately plastered himself against the nearest wall, watching in bemusement as a small, delicate looking girl, fourteen years old, pig-tailed and undeniably graceful as she navigated the narrow steps and careened into the hallway to make her daily delivery of ramen to their shared landlord.

"Evening I-pin. Making a delivery-" he took a peek at his watch, and saw that it was ten minutes to seven "-at this hour?"

"Yes, Nii-san. Kawahira-ojisan called the shop and made Taichou promise to send a delivery even if it was bit late."

"I'd say it is—it's nearly seven! Way past delivery time, I think for you. And a tad late for ramen."

"Kawahira-ojisan wants it for dinner every night this week. Ohhh! I have to hurry or the noodles will get soggy again! See you later!"

With an amused shake of his head, Tsuna hoofed up to his fourth floor apartment. The sound of the lock engaging behind him seemed to trigger an unspoken hint to his mind and he could feel his entire body sagging in relief. He noted absently the feel of his backpack's strap sliding from his shoulders down his upper arms, catching brief against the inner curves of his elbow before slithering down to fall on his entryway floor with a quiet thump. He toed off his trainers, and shed the light jacket he has taken to wearing to ward off the expected chill inside his many classrooms.

It was the last day of his first year in University and things have been going surprisingly well. No one has thumped him against the lockers and he has yet to earn a degrading and infinitely traumatic, psychologically demeaning and dispossessing moniker. All in all, it was, thus far, the best week of his academic career. It should, by all rights, make him ridiculously happy and in many ways, he is. He just considers it amusing that a week without insult or injury could simultaneously make him happy and really wary at the same time. If he didn't know any better, he would think he was catching the paranoia that infected one of his closest friends.

Right. Just what I need...my university life to be safe and normal and I'm cracking at the seams.

With a rueful smile and a shake of his head, he walked towards his tiny kitchen, filled the kettle and set it on the stove to boil. He rummaged into the cupboards for the box of pasta he shoved there during his first shopping trip of the month and tried to remember if he had enough tomatoes to make a halfway decent marinara sauce. Though raised in a fairly traditional Japanese household, his parents particularly enjoyed Italian cuisine and it has to his friends lasting amusement, been an oddly amusing factoid about his otherwise nondescript personality.

The kettle just boiled when his attention was caught by the faint chimes of his phone. Turning the stove off and hoping whoever called wouldn't delay him long enough to make him reheat his water; he swiped his mobile from his desk and chirped a brief hello. The voice on the other end put paid to his plans for dinner. With a resigned sigh, he tucked the pasta back into the cupboards, reached out instead for the box of tea bags and a clean cup. He tucked the phone between his shoulders, murmuring appropriately at certain points as his hands busied themselves preparing his tea. He was about to take a careful sip of the scalding brew when his consciousness caught the tail-end of his caller's rant.

"I—what? No mom, I'm fine. I told you its okay. The move wasn't so bad and I had some help. You gave me money for the movers remember? And it wasn't like I moved to another town—I barely moved ten miles away from our old house!"

"I know, but I shouldn't have let your—"

"Mom, for the last time, I'm telling you that it's okay for you to stay with him. You missed him something fierce when you were apart and I'm fine on my own."

"But I feel like I abandoned you, my only child! What kind of mother does that make me now, tell me?"

Tsuna resisted the urge to bang his head at his mother's unnatural need to turn everything into a tragic drama. He adored the woman—like no one else on God's green earth but there are days he wonders why he was the way he is considering his parents.

"The kind that believes in her child's independence," he murmured soothingly, hoping his tone would calm his usually unflappable mother. "Mom, I'm nearly eighteen, I'm not a little kid anymore. It's not like I'm completely helpless—I can certainly take care of myself for a couple of years—and I'll be doing that anyways when I graduate from University and go out into the big bad world. Trust me, you did not abandon me. I am not feeling abandoned, at all. I feel empowered."

"Now, dear, that's very kind of you to say, but still…"

Something about the tone of his mother's voice pinged a warning in him and he found himself gripping the phone a bit more tightly than he was a minute ago. Eyes narrowing, he found his gaze zeroing on the flyer that was currently pinned on his refrigerator door informing him of his schedule for the upcoming school trip.

"Mom, where is he?"

"Who dear?"

"Mother, don't act coy with me. It doesn't become you. Where is that man and why isn't he around to—he's gone again isn't he?"

"Tsuna, dear, it isn't like that—!"

"That utter bas—!"

"Now, now dear," his mother admonished good-naturedly, "don't you go accusing your father of haring off into the sunset again—it's never like what it seems. He's just very busy with the family business and I told you I don't like you calling him those terms. Your grandparents were properly married after all."

Tsunayoshi snorted indelicately and decided the tea wouldn't suffice in curving his growing temper. With a frown, he turned towards the pantry and retrieved a box of soy-rice crackers. Savagely crunching one between his teeth, he muttered on the phone once more, "The circumstance of his birth is the least of his failings Mom. Busy haring off is just right. Family business—that's his usual excuse isn't it? I thought that's the reason you went with him—so that he could put this family first for once. You missed him so badly, and the least that man could do is be around so that you won't have to."

He could hear his mother's sigh clearly over the phone lines.

"He still has his work. Just because we're closer in location now, doesn't mean he stops doing whatever it was that kept him from us. At least now when it gets dark, I know he'll be coming home to me, and he has done that since I came here."

"Great. Bully for him then" he muttered huffily.

"Oh baby, I wish you came with me. You could study here and we can be a family—a proper one—after all these years I really thought that we could be together. You could've come with us and studied here—!"

"Mom, look, I already caved in and agreed to go there for after University alright? In the meantime, I would like to enjoy the few years I have left just here in Namimori. I like it here—familiar turf and all that. And besides, I only have a few short years to get through my bachelor's degree. It'll be fine."

"But I won't be there to take care of you—and what of your allowance? I don't think it's gonna be enough—!"

"Mom, I already have a part time job remember?" He moved away from the kitchen, balancing his cup, the packet of crackers and his mobile as he walked towards his tiny living room to flop gracelessly into his sofa, placing his cup on top of his tiny coffee table.

"Oh that thing! You mean helping out at that diner?"

He could easily imagine his mother's dazed look at that information. Much as he loved her, his mother belonged to another era where a young man was not expected to earn a decent living serving like a common maid. "It's a proper job and Uncle allowed me to work so long as I make sure my grades are stable and the household chores are taken care of."

"But what about company? I don't want you to be lonely—if you work all those hours however will you have time for your friends?"

He gave in to the urge to snort, "I'm not lonely at all, Mom! I'm not really the most extroverted person you know. Besides, I like my own company."

"But darling, the thought of you going on about at all hours, and then coming home to a lonely house. It saddens me that's all."

"Mom, if I decided to go to a bigger university or move to another city that's the same kind of situation that I'll be facing. I don't really know why you're haranguing me about this right now when we already discussed this to death even before you left with that man."

"Oh Tsunayoshi! Why do you do that? Why can't you call him by his proper name?"

Rolling his eyes once more at his mother's inability to reconcile with his 'amicable hatred' for the man that sired him, he rummaged through his bag and found his PDA, hoping to update his memos immediately after his mother finishes her weekly nagging. "His name is too pretentious for words. Just like the name he saddled me with."

"Then call him by his proper title, dear."

"I already do Mom."

"Tsunayoshi! A good son does not refer to the man who gave him life as 'That Man'!"

"Think of it as a term of endearment, Mother."

"Tsunayoshi, so help me—!"

"Better ask That Man for help, Mother. I'm sure he could at least make himself useful in that sense. Good talking to you again—!"

"Tsunayoshi—!"

"Love you too, Mom! Talk to you again soon, goodnight, bye!"

With a sigh, he pushed the end-call button and slumped against his sofa in utter relief. Lately, talking to his mother has become a constant battle—one that distresses them both and leaves the main culprit for them relatively unscathed. Scowling at the stray reminder of That Most Hateful of Entities, he rose from his seat intending to find something more sustaining than mere soy-rice crackers when he heard a curious noise from just outside his door.

Glancing at his clock, he noted that it had been nearly an hour since he walked through his door, his mother's phone call lasting far longer than he had anticipated. Debating whether it was prudent to open his door to all possible disasters, he reprimanded his morbid imagination and walked decisively towards the door, peering at the peephole for good measure.

Seeing no one standing on the other side of his door, he wondered once more at the noise, worried that it might be someone needing assistance. Arguing that there was a doorman after all in the building and that no one strange really could just waltz through their apartment complex, he gingerly slid the chain free and opened his door.

And that's when he saw IT.

On hindsight, Tsunayoshi reminded himself, he never should've listened to himself whenever logic entered the picture. He was no good with logic.

"Holy mother of—! What the—is that a—?!" He crouched down to touch the prone figure and was about to determine the presence of a pulse when a soft monotonous voice stopped him cold.

"Stop. I know you can be dense but even you couldn't possibly be that dense to mistake that for anything else than a dead body."

The bored monotone that spoke somewhere beside him barely registered and Tsuna found himself rising from his crouch, replying with a trembling voice even as his eyes never moved from the sight of a man of indeterminate age and race lying dead not two feet away from his front door

"I know what it is! I-i, just-how did it get there-oh god, this poor man!"

"What do you plan to do now?" A near-silent slurping sound followed the monotonous words.

"Plan?" He blinked nervously for a moment before raising his head to stare at the figure beside him. "Well, call the police, isn't that obvious? Surely someone is looking for this poor man?"

"I see." Another slurp. "And when they get here and consider you as a suspect?"

"Me?!"he quailed, eyes widening in faint alarm as his mind tried to process the meaning of the words that he just heard. "Why would the police think that? I'm the one who's going to call them!"

"Like no one has thought of that before. The body was found in your house. NO one is here to prove you didn't do it."

A quick flick of a thin, delicate looking wrist made a paper cup sail flawlessly towards an open trash bin and Tsunayoshi finally regained enough cognitive function to look at the figure that until that moment he barely paid any mind to.

"Well they have no proof that I did it either."

"Good. Keep that in mind if they ever push for a questioning. Remember what I told you."

"Of course I remember—what a minute—Lal! What are you doing here?"

"They sent me."

"They—my parents sent you?!"he screeched in disbelief. "How could they have sent you?! I spoke to my mother less than an hour ago! She couldn't have told you anything!" He turned towards the slight figure next to him and glared. "It wasn't my mother at all was it? It was That Man!"

Lal snorted indelicately. "Apparently. Who else would send me to this burg?"

He sneered in annoyance and gave out a dismissive wave, the body lying between them forgotten in the heat of his annoyance. "Well, congratulations then. You've seen me now. As soon as I-I deal w-with this, I will offer you dinner before you leave and then you can go back to wherever it is that you really intended to go when you're not pandering to That Man's meddlesome machinations."

"Who died and made you think you can talk to me like that you impertinent punk?"

"If I'm really lucky no one except this unfortunate man. If any of the gods out there really loved me, they would've done that to the idiot that fathered me but I doubt the gods would listen since my father probably hides better than the gods on a good day. It would take all the known gods far too many days to find the annoying twit."

As he stood there glaring at the woman who worked with his father and the corpse that lay forgotten like an unwanted witness to his latest parental-induced humiliation for what seemed like an interminable time, his inner self found the opportunity to run amok with a minor meltdown without any constraint.

"Oh great. This is just freaking great! Like I wasn't unfortunate enough to be born in an obscure town that seemed to suffer from an excess of incidents and oddities, oh no! I had to have a father that liked working everywhere else that's on the opposite hemisphere where his family could be found. And now, here I am—am I that ordinary? Of course not! Oh no—nothing so mundane for Sawada Tsunayoshi! Most people find dead animals on their stoop. I mustn't have anything as plebeian as that. NO! Sawada Tsunayoshi is special! He's so freaking special that he finds dead bodies! Just friggin' awesome!"

"Do you know you're saying all of that aloud?"

Gasping Tsuna turned towards his unwanted guest—the live one, not the dead one—and blinked. He stared at Lal once more and blinked again. "NO, I didn't. Thank you for telling me."

At that Tsunayoshi allowed himself to give in to temptation and banged his head repeatedly against his door, hoping for a concussion at least, or even temporary amnesia. If he was really, really lucky, maybe he could induce enough brain trauma to forget everything.

He stared at the dead body dumped on his front door like some macabre delivery from hell and wondered for the hundredth time if he wasn't cursed. Surely no one suffers from the kind of bad luck that seemed to follow him like a bad smell that simply won't quit.

Because seriously—why him?

He wasn't a bad person. His mother wouldn't have been able to live with herself if she raised an evil spawn. And That Man wasn't imaginative enough to be evil—neglectful and absent-minded yes, flaky as hell, definitely—but evil, no.

And it wasn't like he was all that special in the extend family or friends department. It's like fate had an abacus in hand 24-7 that constantly monitors the check and balance in the life of one Sawada Tsunayoshi. For every 'normal' friend he could gain, fate would throw him a wrench and send him someone equally 'maddening'.

At least that's how he reasons out the logic of having a godparent of a sort that pops in every once in a while to bring him presents and then proceed to make him suffer from some weird experiments and an old family friend that you want to run away from except this one has a criminally good homing beacon that's worse than the latest GPS imaginable.

"Come on, I'll treat you to dinner."

She pulled him away from his door and walked him towards the apartment's sole elevator. It didn't even surprise him to see that it was being manned by a dark-suited figure. He was about to step into the elevator carriage when he remembered the cold body lying across his welcome mat.

"What about the—the poor man on my stoop?"

"We'll take care of it. Don't worry."

"That just made me worry more. Lal-san, exactly what is it that you do for That Man?"

"You really don't want to know."

"I was afraid you were going to say that, Lal-san."

"Tsunayoshi, this hasn't been a pleasant evening is it?"

He stared at the woman who was punching out the button for the ground floor and cocked an eyebrow, muttering snarkily, "What do you think?"

"I try not to assume things; quickest way to prove one's an ass."

Tsuna found himself nodding as he leaned against the cool steel walls of the elevator carriage. "I've had better."