Bite To Death

"A bit messy but I'll give you points for efficiency."

Dino jerks and whirls around to face the terminals, staring with wide eyes as Reborn emerges from the building and casually waltzes up like he didn't disappear for a whole day.

"Reborn? What the hell, where did you go?" Dino cries, moving to meet the man in concern.

"I found something," Reborn says calmly. "Got a bit distracted, I'll admit." He nods to the DC member, the only one with a red armband. "Nice to see you again."

"Fon sent you a message," the DC says.

"I got it," Reborn assures. "But Dino here wanted to go on a little adventre."

The teenager nods and then tilts his head in confusion. Dino follows the teen's line of sight and finds a green chameleon on Reborn's fedora.

"This is Leon," Reborn introduces, reaching up a hand to scoop up the lizard. "He was inside the airport." Then Reborn actually holds the animal out to the DC for the teenager to hold.

The DC takes the lizard gently and strokes a finger down its head. It seems to lean up into the motion happily. The black haired boy's coat shifts and a head peeks up from an inside pocket.

"This is Roll," the DC murmurs, shifting the lizard to one hand so he could pull out a hedgehog and hold it up to Reborn.

The hitman accepts it and Dino gets pushed into the background as they both start chatting about caring for pets and how cute they can be. Reborn brings up Skull in the conversation for some reason and the DC describes someone called Kusakabe Tetsuya as 'resilient' like he's praising a particularly nice houseplant.

Dino gives up on understanding the world.

Now that they have Reborn, they pile into the plane and take up seats along the benches either side. Bottles of water and a box of muesli bars is passed to the Chiavarone Family and Dino munches on one as he takes a seat beside Reborn and with the Namimori Patrollers.

"Mukuro," the purple one introduces himself as, rolling the trident between his palms in boredom. "Congratulations on surviving so long without a Skylark slaughtering everything within radius."

"I have this one instead," Dino retorts in between bites of his food, gesturing to Reborn who now has both the lizard and hedgehog in his l.a.p. "Hard to get him serious but an excellent mass murderer when he wants to be."

The albino leans forward. "Oh? Do tell more."

Takeshi laughs lightly. "Byakuran, I don't think he meant it literally."

Byakuran raises an eyebrow at Takeshi, pretty much all of the Mafioso within earshot mimicking the same reaction. Realisation slowly dawns on Takeshi and he looks at Reborn with sharp eyes.

"So how about the crazy weather lately?" Dino blurts out as a distraction. He noticed most of the teenagers greeting Reborn respectfully as they boarded the plane so he just assumed they were all Mafia and that little hitman joke slipped out.

"How many?" the DC asks, ignoring Dino.

"I don't bother counting the creatures," Reborn says dismissively. "There's no fun in beating a dead horse."

Lambo frowns. "I don't think that's the phrase."

"There's no fun in beating a dead Bovino."

Lambo leans back and tries to tuck himself behind the DC.

"Have any of you seen Kyouya Hibari before?" Dino attempts to distract everyone again, patting Reborn on the leg. Either way, he's been curious as to what the Chairman looks like, and his mind has conjured up strange faces. "Sorry, I mean Hibari Kyouya."

"Of course," Mukuro begins. "We are Patrollers, after all. He tends to join the regular expeditions so we do see him quite…often."

"What does he look like?" Dino asks as he balls up the wrapper of the muesli bar and tucks it into a pocket to throw later. He then backtracks quickly. "I don't mean that in a weird way, it's just because I hear so much about him on the radio and I'm curious."

They all glance to the DC.

"You'll find out soon enough," the red armband says.

"Yeah, he's kind of hard to miss," Takeshi chuckles. "There was this one time, he found an escaped Liger from the zoo and spent the whole day playing with it."

"Where did it go?" the Hayato wonders.

"He became…a gift," the DC says quietly.

"Birthday gift?" Byakuran asks with a strange intensity. "Or a like-like gift?"

"Is that why you have Roll?" Mukuro demands. "Who have you been seeing?"

Dino watches the confrontation in confusion, feeling like he's missing a lot of things.

"Does Fon know about…" Reborn trails off and gives a vague gesture to encompass all of the teenagers.

"Yes," the DC says with a frown. "And he encourages it so they'll watch me."

"Boss!" Romario calls from the other end of the plane, gesturing the Chiavarone head over. Dino stands and excuses himself, retreating to his right-hand man and away from the inside jokes.

They alight from the plane and take the cars waiting for them outside the airport to an administration building. The Chiavarone get registered there and write out any pertinent information while the Patrollers that arrived with them disappear further into the building.

Reborn doesn't bother filling in the forms, and when Dino is about to ask, the DC reappears and hands over a file. Reborn reads through it quickly and thanks the DC member, tucking the papers into an inside pocket of his suit.

The worker assigned to them tosses out suggestions and the Chiavarone all pick houses in an empty complex. They're handed keys and wallets filled with cash before being told to come back to the office within a week to pick out jobs.

The Chiavarone are half out the door when the teenagers return with a purple haired DC girl looking like Mukuro, who immediately greets her Chairman. The DC boy in the rescue team.

"Oh," Dino drags out slowly. "That's why I kept thinking about my OT7."