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At first, they thought for sure that the incompetent civilian World’s Greatest Stuntman was a mask. To be fair, except for Luce, they all got to the so-called Il Prescelti Sette’s first meeting expecting a trap, so they all had on one kind of mask or another. Reborn made up for the fact that his face was widely known by scaling up the arrogant act and a seeming over-reliance on his guns. Verde picked an obvious fake name, put together a groundbreaking scrambling handheld device that scrambled both records and people’s memories of his features, and did his best to come across as a stereotypical mad scientist. Fon wasn’t well-known in the West back then, so he picked an overused, Westernized Chinese name, neglected to mention a clan name, and acted as disconcertingly polite as possible. Lal went instead of Colonnello who got the invitation, both using aliases. And Viper went the classical route of an alias and a cloak which covered their figure as well as half their face.
“I thought his was a good mask, if a bit obvious,” admired Lal grudgingly. She, Viper and Fon were watching from the rooftop as Skull employed numerous acrobatic tricks to dodge Reborn’s bullets, shrieking at the top of his lungs. Yuni was also nearby, laughing herself silly at their antics. “A fake name that could be explained away as a stage name, enough makeup to block any facial features, attention-grabbing appearance and persona to pass the real thing under the radar. The only problem I had with it was that his volume sometimes hurt my ears.”
“That hadn’t changed,” Fon said, his customary pleasant smile still present as they watched one of their teammates attempt to kill another.
“No, I just learnt to cope because he somehow convinced me that that was the real Skull .” Lal gritted her teeth, hand hovering near the gun by her waist. The only reason she didn’t join in the chase was Colonnello who had just joined the fray, his anti-tank weaponry drowning out Reborn’s gunshots and Skull’s yelled protest.
“If I may ask, when did you two fall for it? For me, it was after the Beccio mission,” Fon said. “I thought, no one would put their own life in jeopardy like that just to appeare incompetent.”
“Same for me,” answered Lal, “although I had doubts before that. All of us had lowered our masks by then, but Skull persisted with the act, so I thought ‘Was he playing the long con?’. But the act was too good. The act was perfect. ”
“Muu, I stayed suspicious for months after that,” Viper admitted, tellingly not charging them for their answer. Even the miser had to vent, it seemed. “I dug into his history; dug deeper, I mean. I already found the stuntman Skull de Mort. But after that, I found Aleks Sergeev too, along with his hometown in Russia, his family, school reports, hospital records, police reports, stopping at thirteen when he ran away to join the circus. I even found traces of his journey from Russia to China, then to India, across the Middle East, then back to Europe. I know the names of the man who got him into stunts, his three managers, the agency he briefly joined, and the job that took him to Italy. I’ve got videotapes of five of his shows while he was in the country, before Checker Face. I thought that was enough validity.”
Viper sounded almost defensive at the end of their rant. Fortunately, their audience were a bit too stunted by their words to care.
“That was… admirably thorough of him.” Fon commented after taking a minute to gather his thoughts.
“Yes. Thorough. Let’s go with that,” Lal said, still sounding stunted.
Over the sounds of ongoing gunfire, they heard Reborn snarl: “Thirty-seven years, lackey! You have a lot to answer for.”
“Not my fault!” Skull shouted back, not being out of breath in the slightest as he vaulted over a tree branch, then let it snap back to hit Colonnello in the face as the man sneaked up on him. “You guys were supposed to be The Greatest! I wasn’t going to break character before you guys figured it out! I have my pride!”
“Thirty-seven years, kora!” yelled Colonnello, getting right back into the chase. He seemed to have lost his guns somewhere in the last five minutes.
“Had Luce known, do you think?” Lal asked as her boyfriend tried to engage the supposed-civilian in hand-to-hand combat only to be played like a fiddle.
“I don’t think Nonna knew,” Yuni joined the discussion, her sentences interrupted by uncontrollable bouts of snickering. “Or Mamma. We can only See within our lifetime, and Uncle Skull didn’t slip up even once. ”
“Impressive.” Fon remarked. Then, at the disbelieving stares of the adults, he said: “I’m not too proud to admit when someone manages to play me, and I can definitely admire the dedication and work ethics involved. Especially when we also put the future into account.”
“The future?” asked Lal, confused.
“You mean the one with the Millefiore,” stated Viper. “We never found out in that future. That’d make this a successful forty-six-year long con. Skull somehow managed to take down half of Millefiore’s force while he was dying and none of us suspected he was anything more than a stuntman.”
Then, after a pause, they added more quietly: “I think Skull might be one of my informants. I’ll have to check, but, I think he’d been dropping me hints. ”
“Fon’s right,” said Lal. “That is impressive.”
The shooting had stopped sometime ago, which meant Reborn had ceased fire to eavesdrop on their conversation. Colonnello was still trying, unsuccessfully, to punch Skull in the face. Fon watched as the Cloud displayed fighting abilities well above what they were used to, and made mental notes to test them for himself sometime in the next few days. After Lal had her turn to vent her displeasure, of course. He had no doubt that Viper already had their revenge on the Cloud planned, and Verde had disappeared somewhere to make whatever he had in mind for his own payback.
“Sempai!” below them, Skull shrieked, his voice still as ear-splitting as ever. He somersaulted and planted both his feet on Collonello’s back, making the Rain faceplant into the grass. “You nearly ripped off my piercing! Show some respect to the Great Skull-sama!”
As Yuni dissolved into another bout of laughter, Reborn stalked toward them. His expression was a cross between irritated and amused: “The lackey’s still playing with us. He’s performing to amuse Yuni.”
“Still the World’s Greatest Stuntman, it seems,” Fon said.
Reborn answered: “As well as the World’s Greatest Conman.”