"Where the fuck did you come from?" Says a startled-looking person pointing a knife at him, in a language that bears any similarities to it but is nonetheless incomprehensible. 

A knife. What, was this guy in the middle of dinner?

Lexius draws his sword, a fluid motion too fast to follow, and points it at the moron in turn, the metal glowing cherry-red with heat. "Drop the blade before you hurt yourself."

Red glowing sword, what? The moron is very worried about this development! 

His friend down the alley, not so much. He draws a small black thing out of his jacket and points it at Lexius, clearly expecting this to worry the stranger as much as or more than the sword worries the knife wielder. 

The level of confidence that man is displaying in his small black object is worrisome. Even Lexius' poor watercraft can pick that up, through the man's apparently nonexistent shields.

He breathes in the smoky air and, in the blink of an eye, he's at the other end of the alley and his sword has bisected whatever that thing is.

Based on the shouting, this man is surprised! Or maybe he's shouting because of all that heat so close to his body. Or maybe it's both! Both seems likely. 

Behind them, the shouting man's 'friend' makes a break for the end of the alley the three of them are standing in. 

Lexius has an idea, and that idea is to cause the man's feet to sink up to the ankles in the weird stone under their feet. No running. (Maybe the guy has enough earthcraft to free himself and get away, but based on the clownery that has been going down in this alley, he kind of doubts it.)

This produces yet more incomprehensible shouting!

Panicked, the man in front of him points his newly shortened black object at Lexius again and pulls the trigger. 

One might assume that something is supposed to happen when he does that, and the fact that nothing does is a result of Lexius' work on it. He pulls the trigger again, swears as it does nothing again, and then attempts to hit the unnaturally fast red-hot sword wielding person with it instead.

"Fucking really?"

Lexius swirls around him. Slam goes the man into the stone. Crack go several of his bones.

And he's out like a light, which is probably for the best. It's certainly easier on Lexius' ears, anyway.

The guy buried up to his shins in cement is still shouting, though.

The shouts attract the attention of a passerby, who leans around the corner to investigate, taking in the scene with interest. 

"Hello!" he calls down the alley, the word accented slightly oddly but still, actually, understandable. Then he asks a question in whatever language Lexius' ineffective attackers were speaking.

"Salve!" Lexius calls back. "I don't speak whatever language that is!"

There's a pause, and then he mutters something indistinguishable but incredulous-sounding. Then he waves a hand purposely, and repeats himself, "Are you speaking Latin?" 

"Yes. You're not, and I can still understand you. Are you - telepathic, or something?"

"I'm not good enough with mist to be telepathic," he says, shaking his head, "This is a sky trick. I am good enough to make them forget what they just saw, though," he motions to the two guys, "Though I dunno if that one will need it," he muses, hand coming up to cup his chin as he looks the unconscious one over.

(He also takes that moment to mentally poke at the part of his mind which houses his Intuition, trying to get it to spit out something clearer than 'Something Is Wrong Here', to no avail.)

"Why bother making them forget the fight? They're just bandits. Maybe it'll teach them not to fuck with swordsmen they don't know."

Well, now he's confused! And concerned, "If you leave them aware of what actually happened here - the cement trick and the burning, mostly - there's a chance the Vindice," a word which carries along with it the concept of 'widely feared enforcers of law', "Will come after you for it. I can try to leave them with vague memories of attacking a strange swordsman and regretting it, though, if it's important to you? I might not succeed, I'm still new to this, but I can try." 

The man stuck in the ground objects to this idea loudly. And then he objects to it silently, as another hand wave renders him muted.

"...not that important. Are you saying... I don't even know what you're saying. I figured out already that you're not human, but - you not only can't furycraft, you don't want people to know furycrafting exists?"

"Never said I wasn't human," he says, and, "What's furycrafting?"

"The thing humans do. Manipulating the natural elements."

He holds out his hand and crafts a curl of flame. "You do... whatever 'sky' and 'mist' are, humans do furycrafting."

"...Yeah, now that you mention it... translation error I guess," Harmony translation usually doesn't do that, but at least it's corrected itself now. "Supposedly Flames come from the soul, though, so you could probably do it if you went active. Anyway, better safe than sorry when it comes to the Vindice. Can you get him out of the ground once I've wiped him?" 

"Yeah, sure. Why didn't they use their Flames when I was fighting them, by the way?"

"They're not Active. I think our best estimate is less than 0.001% of the population world-wide is? And almost everyone else is like these two, wiped if they see any evidence." He steps closer to the man, into his reach, and grabs the fist he tries to swing at him before it can hit. His other hand goes to his forehead and then he's dropping on his ass with his feet still trapped in the concrete, as unconscious as his fellow. 

"So they just... can't do anything? That little knife he was threatening me with was his best bet? I almost feel sorry for the poor bastards."

He considers. "Well, he could at least have gotten a proper sword."

"If you carried a sword around here without a way to conceal it you'd probably get arrested," he says as he makes his way over to the other guy to wipe him too, just to be sure. "If he couldn't get a gun like his friend here, the knife was probably the best he could do." He leans over and pokes the guy in the forehead, and then straightens and tilts his head at the swordsman, "I'm Jamie," he introduces himself, "You're really not from around here, are you?" 

"Oh, let me-" He crouches to release the earth's grip on the bandit, then straightens up. "Alexianus Rufinius. Lexius, for short. If they don't let you have swords and most of you don't have crafting or Flames how are you supposed to defend yourselves, your fists?"

"For most people, yeah. Most civilians don't expect to have to defend themselves, though. Most of them don't even learn how. Among the Flame-aware almost all of the men can, and some of the women, and guns are the weapon of choice - this thing," he adds, picking up the thug's wrecked weapon. "But civilian society puts on a good enough façade of peacefulness that lots of people go through their lives without ever having to fight. All the violence around here is out of sight, out of mind." 

"Sounds dull. Maybe nice for the weaklings. How's the gun work, I only knew it was dangerous but I'd like to know how."

"It fires metal bullets too fast to see without enhancement." He offers it to Lexius for a closer look. "From very long ranges, some of them."

"How d'you stop people from - right, no crafting. I guess it's not actually that dangerous to me long as I'm paying attention, then."

"That's about how it is for us, too, in the hands of a civvie." He drops it on the thug's chest carelessly, "So, Latin-speaking person who's never heard of guns and has magic I've never heard of, how'd you end up in Palermo?" 

"No crowborn idea. I was walking to my next class at the Aleran Imperial Academy and suddenly I had - a fit of vertigo, or something, and then I was here. Palermo's the - empire, nation, state, city?"

"City. Palermo, Sicilia, Italia. Biggest city on the island, and the heart of the underground. Known for our hospitality, as you've seen," he adds, motioning at the nearest thug with a grin. 

"Did notice that, yeah. ...don't suppose you've got some use for a mercenary? I don't love mercenary work, but I like being alone in a city full of criminals without speaking the language a damn sight less."

"God, security would love it if I brought an unknown extra-dimensional mercenary home," he laughs, "I can just imagine the face my brother will make. Let's do it. How are you at taking the roof route? It's easier to get around up there until we reach the outskirts." 

He shrugs. "The buildings are taller than I'm used to, but it shouldn't be a problem. You said I should hide my sword?" He wraps the blade around his waist, in a way that metal really shouldn't be able to do. It ends up looking like a moderately unusual belt wrapped around his extremely unusual tunic.

He watches the sword with interest, wondering if he could do something like that, "Cool," he grins, briefly lapsing into English. "We're actually going away from the really tall buildings," he adds, heading for the alley's entrance now that Lexius is ready, "This way."

They're on the edge of one of the closer-to-modern parts of the city, where it meets a formerly separate town full of more historic-style buildings like they have on the waterfront, though significantly less well-kept. The streets and alleys in this area are a maze, and he hasn't had enough time to get familiar with the ground level. So, rooves it is. Just a short walk down a paved side road littered with a few cars, and then up they go!

It's simple enough to climb the buildings; a bit of earth for strength, a bit of air for speed. He clambers up to the lip of the roof and hops up onto it.

"So - what's Italia like? Apparently you build giant houses with metal?"

It's unclear whether Jamie is using any of his own powers to climb or not; if he is, it's subtle. He seems to manage just as well as Lexius, either way. Once up on the rooftops, he sets off at a comfortable walk so they can chat as they go. 

"Metal? Oh, yeah," he looks back at the apartments rising behind them, "For supports. I think it lets us build higher than we could, otherwise. So we can pack more people into less space. Most of those aren't really that tall as high-rises go, actually, this is a pretty small city."

"Huh. They're - less grand than the buildings in the capital back home, but they're taller than anything except the palace and the High Lords' estates. I guess it's easier to build tall with metal than with earthcrafting."

"There are some pretty grand buildings around the city, but those aren't them, yeah." He turns to walk backwards for a bit while they talk, navigating just as well like that as he had facing forwards, "High Lords and palaces? Do you have a king, where you come from?" 

"We have an emperor. Gaius Sextus. He's... a tricky old bastard, but he seems to genuinely care about the empire and its people. Far as anyone can tell, at least. What about this place?"

"Complicated!" He says, and his smile and bright tone are rather at odds with his words.

"There's no king in Italy, anymore, though some countries still have them. Most of the ones left are only figureheads now, though, the countries are actually run by... somewhat elected civilian governments. I'm not really the one to ask about all that, though, Alex - my brother Alex - is the one who actually cares about this stuff. I'm only learning it at all because I've been surprise-promoted to a position which kinda needs to know how the civilian governments work, and really needs to know how the underworld is run. Which is, by the Heads of Families which control their own territories, protect their own people, have alliances with and the allegiance of other Families, and sometimes go to war with each other. All the while keeping the civilians from ever noticing we're anything more than particularly organized criminals." 

"So you've got Senates running the mortal countries, but the fire-people couldn't help falling into a more familiar arrangement. And pretending to be criminals. Although I suppose you can't really pretend to be a criminal without being a criminal, after a certain point..."

"To be fair, we don't follow the civilian laws but we live on their lands, so as far as they're concerned we are criminals," he shrugs, and then pauses to jump a small gap before continuing, "The families were here before them though, and they usually can't catch us alone, and definitely can't catch whole families, so the façade goes on. Maybe someday it'll break, but anyone who tried would be up against the Vindice, so... let's just say it probably won't be me." 

"What is this Vindice, anyway? Some kind of... supernatural lawkeeper?"

"In a nutshell. They're tall, wear all black, their skin is wrapped in bandages, and they all use these flame-suppressing chains as weapons, and we have no idea how many of them there actually are. They have a prison, where they put anyone who breaks their laws. They always find out about the obvious ones, and they'll investigate any law-breaking that's reported to them, and since they have some kind of secret ward-breaking, economical teleportation method there's no keeping them out." And he really doesn't like them, his fear is pretty obvious just from the tension in his voice when he talks about them, though the actual emotions don't leak through his shields. 

"Huh. Wonder if their chains would suppress crafting or if I could just incinerate the spooky bastards."

Lexius is not unconscious of the undertone of fear, but it's polite not to point it out.

"I hope if you're forced to find out it turns out they don't!"

He scurries up a wall to a higher level, "What were you asking before- Italia, right. There was an empire here, some thousand years ago, called Rome, which spoke Latin, at one point, or something very like what you're speaking which goes by the same name." 

"...huh. It does sound pretty bloody implausible that the same language would show up in two different worlds with no connection... though not much more so than there being humans in both places with different magics, admittedly. - speaking of which, your magic, your Flames - how do they work? You can - fuck with memories, and talk without a common language?"

He wavers a hand, "There are categories," he explains, "The flames are named for weather phenomena. Most people have one or two types of flames, each of which has different- abilities and aesthetics? The messing with memories is mist, which is very flexible but also very impermanent, on its own, outside of mental affects. The understanding trick is sky, which has a power aesthetic summed up by the word harmonia, and is the rarest kind. There are five others like them, but I only have one more; I'm a sky with clouds - it would be more accurate to call me a cloud with sky, actually, but there are politics - and a touch of mist." 

"...huh. Sounds a bit complicated. Furycrafting's just - elements and associations. You've got the physical, the actual air, earth, fire, water, metal, wood - and you've got the associations. Air makes you faster and sharpens your senses. Earth makes you stronger. Fire crafts emotions - except lust which is earth, don't ask me, I'm not a scholar. Water reads emotions, and heals flesh. Metal dulls pain. Wood lets you read and manipulate animals. You could fit the whole system on a scrap of parchment. And there's certainly no politics."

"Parchment! Fun. You could fit an explantion on a scrap of paper - each flame and its word - but it wouldn't be very in-depth. Storm, sky, sun, lightning, rain, mist, cloud," he counts them off on his fingers, "Always in that order because we see them in the seven colours of the rainbow. Storm is disintegration, sky is harmony, sun is activation, lightning is hardening, rain is tranquility, mist is construction, cloud is multiplication." He thinks, "And there are politics because the sky flame is seen as the leader's flame." 

"...huh. I think if I were going to call any of the flames the fancy important one it'd be the one that's literally at the top of the rainbow, but what do I know?"

"Ha, you might think so," he shrugs, "There's these personality profiles associated with them, which are only part-way bullshit," he explains. "They're based on the first generation of the oldest and most powerful of the Families, and the leader was a sky. Also, flame actives bond with each other, and bonds with a sky are different from all the others. Skies aren't always leaders, but it's kinda hard to tell if the number of the ones that are, are influenced by Tradition, or if they'd be that way anyway, you know?" He considers this for a moment, and then adds, "Skies being the rarest flame type influences things, too." 

"I'll bet. Every leader wants a legacy, huh? Even if it means saddling everyone with a system that privileges men whose only virtue is coincidence."

"Never a truer phrase spoken," he huffs, "The oldest sky descendant must inherit, of course! Never mind that there are plenty of more suited candidates. If they aren't skies, and aren't of the blood, the Vongola won't have them." He mimes spitting. 

"Don't have to be males or alphas? How positively egalitarian."

"Male preference, I think, and it used to be only men until the Ottava. The entire main bloodline died during the second world war, besides her, and then she won enough respect to pave the way for more leading Donnas in the wider underworld." He pauses, spins to look at Lexius, "Not familiar with 'alphas' though?" 

"...alphas? You've got male and female, then alpha, beta, omega? In our culture it's kind of an override, a female alpha can do whatever her brothers can. Because, I mean, what are you going to do, stop her? She'd bite you, and it'd be your own fault for being an idiot."

(The concepts come through as a sort of... parallel gender system, as he implies. Alpha for the ?masculine?, omega for the ?feminine?, beta for the ?default?)

"...yeah, we don't have that. Does that come with the furycrafting? Flames have some personality effects, but I wouldn't really list them with genders. Well," he considers, "I guess some of them affect what you get shoved into doing," he admits, "Suns are almost all healers, lightning men are almost all bodyguards. That kind of thing." 

"...no, it's got nothing to do with furycrafting - well, I guess you might be able to watercraft somebody into it, if you were a hell of a watercrafter. But I would've said yesterday that it was just how humans worked. None of the other species of people do it... though I guess they don't craft either?" He shakes his head.

"So what does it mean? I think gender's associated with physical sex, for most people - can you be a, what, transalpha-" he tangents, and then gets back to his original question, "Are there physical things involved or...?" He stops, "Or is this a question I shouldn't be asking you right off the bat or something?" He laughs sheepishly, "I'm learning diplomacy, supposedly." 

"...I've got no idea what 'trans' means or how 'physical sex' is different to 'gender' but - yeah, physical things - alphas are bigger and stronger and they've got absolutely massive dicks, just stupidly massive, even the girls, and in turn omegas have, you know." Fingering gesture. "And they're... usually... pretty small and slight."

(Lexius is, it may be noted, about 5'4; his build has the look of someone who has forced his body to develop muscles in spite of its strongly held personal beliefs.)

"There aren't that many of either, most everybody's a beta, usually it doesn't come up. But it's - you can smell it. Or we can. Alphas smell like - victory - and omegas smell like - well. Life."

He waves a hand at the trans comment, as if he can blow it away for another time, "And I guess I don't smell like either?" Jamie himself is slight but not small, out of context - at 5'9 he's about average. "I wonder if a mist could mimic it," he considers, "Maybe a storm could burn a scent off?" 

Lexius sniffs him, wrinkles his nose for a moment while pulling his lips back from his teeth, then turns and sneezes in the other direction. "Yeah, you smell like a beta. Well, you smell like perfume, but you smell like a beta."

(They're different words, but one is clearly derived from the other sufficiently to make the pun[?] work.)

"I don't know if you could mimic it, but clearly you can't smell the difference anyway, so it wouldn't be very useful."

What an expression! Jamie has enough control over his face not to smile too much about it or the sneeze which follows.

"Perfume...? Oh," he rubs at his neck, "Right. I get lectures nowadays when I forget," or 'forget', "To put it on. Anyway, it might be pointless to do it, but thinking about what flame'd be best for whatever is good practice." 

He reaches the edge of the most recent roof, this one looking out over a wide hillside, and starts clambering down. 

"It's a bit of a hike from here," he tells Lexius once they're on the ground, "I left my bike up in the hills a ways." 

"Fine by me. It's not skittish, is it? I never learned much woodcraft."

"Nnnno," he trails off, "Say, did you recognize the metal things on the streets?" 

"...no. I thought people were steelcrafting them into motion somehow, it was kind of-"

He slaps his forehead. "You don't have steelcrafting."

"We do not!" He agrees, "We have combustion engines and really advanced metalworking, though, compared to what they must have where you're from. I can give you some basic overview on how that works if you want, but I'd be at it all day if I tried to get detailed." 

"Combustion... they move with fire. Huh. That sounds, uh, dangerous. But I guess you've either figured out a way around it or you care a lot about moving fast."

"We do care a lot about moving fast, but it's not quite as dangerous as it sounds. That metalworking makes for some really well-sealed containers for the fire, so if a person didn't know it was there they might not even realize that's what was happening, if not for the smoke. Cars are like, uh, do you guys have carriages? Litters?" He shrugs, "They're faster than horses or people, and don't get tired, and yeah, people die in crashes all the time but statistically any given person isn't likely to."

"We have carriages. Hitch a beast to a box and sit in the box is not one of the hard inventions. Let's go to your extra special box drawn by fire which might kill us but not because of the fire."

"Mine's not a box, actually, it's more like a horse than a carriage but-" he hops up a rise, from which they can see a gravel road a hundred meters or so away, "It's up that road a ways." 

"A horse run by fire! Exciting."

When they reach the motorbike, he beholds it. "That is a very strange horse," he rules.

He squints at the front tire, pokes it, and sticks his tongue out. "What is that stuff?"

Jamie swings a key on a ring around his index finger, "The tires? Rubber. Made of..." he stalls, "It's a pretty complicated process, actually. But they don't break easy, and they grip the road better than wood or metal wheels would."

He swings a leg over the bike and motions to the small seat further back, "Can't really keep personal space on this thing," he shrugs. 

Lexius hops on, looking off-balance. "Nothing to grip," he mutters darkly. "You've invented a horse without an ass."

He laughs, "Fondled a lot of horses asses, have you? If I'd known I was going to be picking up a passenger, I would have brought a better bike for that," he reaches around behind both of them, searching for the bar on the back there, "Here, you can hang onto that, if you want, or you can hold around my waist, I'm not shy." 

Lexius rolls his eyes and puts his arms around James's waist. "On, noble steed."

He gives a credible attempt at a whinny! And turns the key in the ignition, sending the bike rumbling and turning them up the road. 

Alex is in an overgrown hedge maze in the gardens, reading in the grass in a dead end, as you do when you're trying to avoid everyone. Jamie has up and vanished, and hadn't even had the decency to come get him before he did, so his options were essentially their rooms and this, and he's been spending far too much time inside lately. He's missed the sun. And the privacy of being alone in the semi-wilderness. 

Someone falls through the arbor and lands heavily in an overgrown rosebush. "Faex!"

Alex drops his book and scrambles to his feet. 

He looks at the boy in the grass. He looks up where he'd fallen from. He starts to scowl, "Were you watching me-?"

He tries to get up, yelps in pain as the thorns tear at his skin, and concentrates.

The rosebush shivers as the thorns fall from its branches. There's a sound like rain as they hit the ground.

Then the strange boy stands up. "Paenitet me obtrudere, sum - ignoscas, ubi per corvos est hoc?

This is out of context enough to drop the scowl from his face, though the use of- if that was flames it was exquisitely controlled, he couldn't see a lick of fire- the use of whatever that was makes him wary instead. 

And then Latin?

He tries to translate that based on years old rememberings of that time he'd spent three months trying to learn Latin on his own, mostly comes up with 'sorry', 'where', and 'crows' for some reason. That last one can't be right, can it? 

"Do you know where you are?" He tries asking, in Italian, and then again in English, and again in French. 

"...barbarus es? Faex. Barbarus es."

He points at himself. "Aquitainus Septimus Leonatus ex Mare. Leo." He points at Alex. "Et tu?"

Well, he knows that one.

"Ale-" he makes a face, "Alessio Lucius Vongola. Alex," he repeats the format back to him. 

Also, he knows 'barbarus', though he has the vague impression the Romans just called everyone else that. Are there Romans now? There might be Romans. At this point 'and now there are Romans?' isn't stretching his incredulity much, not after the secret magic rainbow fire mafia. 

-which, now that he's thinking of it, he could solve the language issue with flames. Except that his sky is tangled enough with his secondary storm that doing anything that only takes the one of them takes him ten times as long as it'd take Jamie. He starts working on it anyway, shunting storm flame out of the way as he refines it. 

(As a side effect of this, dark red swirls into his eyes and pools there.)

"Alex," Leo repeats.

Then the red eye shit starts happening. He raises his eyebrows and leans back on his heels. Some kind of barbarian magic? Maybe it'll help bridge the communication gap.

Well, it takes him about fifteen seconds to scare up enough pure sky for it, and if he slips on refining more he'll have to start all over again, but.

"Leo," he says in return once he has it down, and, "Gonna go ahead and assume you didn't mean to drop in on me." 

He's not speaking Latin, but Leo can understand what he means anyway. 

"Fancy barbarian magic," Leo comments. "Uh, nice to meet you, and no, I certainly didn't. I tripped and fell into the fountain in Academy Square and landed in your lovely rosebush. Sorry about the thorns, if you want them back I can grow them back on."

The rosebush is looking a little squashed, too, he notes, but he shrugs, "If the gardeners came out this far in the grounds they'd probably thank you. What Academy?" 

Leo strokes a finger along the rosebush's smooth branches, which shiver again as they heal over and straighten. Its blooms, which had been withering as autumn approached, return to full vibrancy. He pokes one, and the petals fall away as the core ripens into a thumbnail-sized red berry. He pinches it off the stem, concentrates over it for a moment, and pops it into his mouth.

"So, I'd say the Academy," he says contemplatively as he chews on the rosehip, "and look at you like you're insane, but while I'm sure it'd be funny, I'm actually capable of making basic inferential leaps. Hi! I'm Leo. I'm from another world, apparently. This is your estate?"

He watches more closely for flames this time, and- still doesn't see any. The hell. 

"A-" he stops, needing a moment to come to terms with that. "Another world," he continues on a deadpan.

He's leaning enough into sky that he can't deny the guy sure thinks he's telling the truth. 

Proceeding as though he is, for now, "My grandfather's," he says, and, "Take it everyone where you come from knows about the Academy, then? And you're sure you're not a far-flung last bastion of the Romans that got cut off in a pocket dimension or something," he'd been reading The Sixth Flame the other day, a collection of stories that go a ways to explain how deep the mist paranoia is around here. Getting trapped in a pocket dimension was only about midway down the iceburg.

"Please consider for a moment how little it would alter my hypothesis space to be from a pocket dimension rather than another world."

"Point," he admits. "Uh. Welcome to Earth, I guess. Terra, Gaia, etcetera. The Vongola Estate, more... specifically... you shouldn't have been able to get through the wards without calling down security on your head, actually," he realizes, "What were you doing to the rosebush? That's not flames." 

"It's called crafting. There's air, earth, fire, water, wood, and metal. I was using woodcraft, lets you manipulate plants and plant products in various ways. Flames would be entirely inappropriate for rosebush manipulation unless I wanted the rosebush to be charcoal instead."

"Flames as in soulfire. 'Flames' stands out less, so that's what we call them. They don't actually burn things you don't want them to. Usually," he amends, giving the faded discolouration on his hands and wrists a dark look. "Sun flame could have done that, if thorns fall off naturally, I don't know, I'm not a gardener. Or mist flame, maybe. But it wasn't flames." 

"No, it wasn't. Soulfire's the magic that's letting us talk? That's more abstract than crafting usually gets. You get some abstraction but usually - emotions, not concepts."

"'Concepts' is... more or less what soulfire is all about." He looks off towards the house, though he can't see it past all the hedges, "Security'd want me to flag them down about this," he says, "But you're not hostile," he seems very sure of this. "You have a way back to your world slash dimension, or should I take you up to the Fort to see what Grandfather thinks of this." 

"Yeah, let me craft a portal real quick. Whoops, not an element as it turns out."

He lets out a sharp breath, "Fine, then. Hope you're up for a walk. It's a bit of a hike, with the maze in the way." Even without it, they're half-way down the mountain here. 

Leo raises an eyebrow as the hedge most directly in their way parts.

He stops, "-right. Can you keep doing that? We're deep in, and I don't have the maze memorized." 

"Living plants are easy. Solid wood is slightly harder but not much."

He'll move through the hedge with a nod, then, "That cuts the trip down by almost half."

They can just go out in one straight line. He only knows approximately where the Fort is thanks to the position of the sun - he'll reorient more accurately once they're outside. 

The entire hedge maze is an overgrown mess, and the gardens directly outside it are only just better. The bushes are untrimmed and spilling out over the remains of the stone borders to their plots, and wildflowers dot the uncut grass, splashes of reds and golds sweeping through variegated white, yellow and green, filling the air nearby with their heady scent. A consistent cool breeze rustles the foliage outside the hedge, raising goosebumps on bare skin, but with the late summer sun almost directly above it's more pleasant than not. 

Rising above the tops of the trees ahead they can just see the rusty-red tiles of the Fort's roof and the tops of bleached-white stone walls. The architectural style is probably pretty familiar to Leo's eyes - what he can see of it from this distance, at any rate. 

Huh.

"Nice place. Your grandfather's, you said?"

Shrug, "Yeah. It's an old estate. Grandfather's the ninth head of the family, but it was an abandoned Roman villa before Primo had it restored. It's something like fifteen hundred years old, now." 

The translation renders 'Primo' as both a word - first - and a name or title. While it's doing that, Alex adjusts his bearing to just to the right of the visible roof. 

"Huh. Could be any minor noble estate back home."

As they stroll through the grounds, Leo raises a hand and lets the breeze play over it, then twists the air around it experimentally, sending a counter-breeze rustling through Alex's hair.

He shakes his head, running his fingers through the strands and brushing some lingering grass out as he does. Steady again, he raises an eyebrow at Leo, "Wind, huh? My brother'd like that. He's been working on flight since he heard it was possible." 

"Hmm. Flight's hard, with crafting - takes finesse and power, and I've got the finesse but the power escapes me. But I've got all of the elements at least a touch - noble blood runs strong."

"Mm," his mouth twists, "Anyone around here would tell you that Vongola blood is the same. Sky flames give me access to all the others, in theory. In practice, my problem's the opposite of yours - too much power, not enough finesse." And an equal affinity for Storm that muddies the waters.

"Flying with any kind of efficiency is right out for me. Jamie has finesse to spare, though. He'll figure it out." 

"Nobles back where I'm from... we're bred for the craft. A citizen born with strong enough crafting can become noble by performing services for the empire. The real nobles hate it, of course... until it's been enough generations that they can pretend they've forgotten, and marry off their least favorite daughters to take in the new blood."

"Ah-huh. Sounds a little like the Families, but here if you show signs of Sky Flames out of nowhere, and you don't have a Family already, someone will snatch you up. Sky Flame needs to be inherited, usually, and everyone wants a Sky, nevermind whatever they want. Most of the other kinds will just get a person dragged into the underworld and left to sink or swim. Who gets the better deal depends - what's worse, a gilded cage, or having to make your own way in a world you barely know?"

What's better, the security of a family that badly wants you to fight for them and have Sky kids, or the freedom of a freelancer who rarely knows where their next meal is going to come from. 

"Oh, you get that too. Someone whose crafting isn't quite good enough to get him a title, but still gets snapped up by some noble patron... I'd prefer the gilded cage, myself, but I've heard the counterarguments."

"The gilded cage could be worse," Alex nods. It probably goes without saying that he'd rather make his own way, though. 

Leo will continue trotting along until and unless they are accosted, then.

They make it all the way up to the flagstone terrace, just a few flights of stairs down from the actual house, before any accosting occurs. Alex is already turning to look at the accoster in question before he appears - out of thin air, to Leo's point of view, and out of a burst of indigo to Alex's. 

"Hey kid," says the suddenly appeared man, "You see any- whoa, what's the deal with Spartacus?" 

Alex gives Leo a look over, "Spartacus, really? He's not dressed like a gladiator." 

Shrug, "What's his name, Batiatus, then. It's the general Roman aesthetic!" 

"...well, whatever, Ganauche this is- uh." He squints, "Leonatus? Sorry, I was a bit distracted when you introduced yourself."

Leo bows. "Aquitainus Septimus Leonatus ex Mare. Leo, or Leonatus, or Lord Aquitaine, depending on how formal we're being." He plucks a daisy from the ground and causes it to wrap itself around his finger like a ring.

Ganauche watches all this with steadily rising eyebrows.

"Ganauche the Third, Lightning Guardian to the Ninth Vongola," he returns, and, "Alex, what the hell." 

Alex is distracted from scrutinizing Leo's introduction, turning to give Ganauche a scowl, "He dropped out of the sky into a rose bush in the hedge maze at the edge of the property. Unless the book I was reading was unknown to me a book on how to accidentally summon magic Romans, I didn't do it." He lifts the book in question and waves it in the man's face. The cover is blank, but the spine reads RV II MDCCLXII. 

Yes let's definitely distract Alex from scrutinizing Leo's introduction, Leo did not realize his steelcraft wasn't sufficient to block Alex from picking up on his lack of confidence in his own legal status and this implies either that Sky trumps steel or that Alex is kind of a scary person.

"I have a variety of moderately terrifying powers and a vested interest in not being stabbed," he says mildly. "Help me help you?"

"...Sure, we'll see what the Boss thinks. First, though," He looks to Alex, "Have you seen your brother? Coyote stopped by his room for something but he wasn't there, and then Housekeeping couldn't find him so I got drafted." 

He gives a sharp headshake, "Haven't seen him all day," he says truthfully, "Have you checked the rooves?" 

Eyeroll, "Obviously. I've met the guy. Well, he'll turn up, or we'll send out a search party. He's probably just gone into town again." Don Vongola will surely agree this is important enough for him to stop looking for now. 

"Come on." He turns to lead them up the stairs to the next terrace, and then the one above, which leads into the building proper.

Leo looks around with continued mild interest.

The familiar architecture takes a step to the right as they get closer, revealing it to be more of a modern fortress-home built on the bones of a roman villa, from the building materials to small touches to the architecture which make it just a hair anachronistic, even here where the attempt at mimicry is strongest.

There are glass doors inside the archways leading onto the terrace they're now on, the rooms inside hidden by curtains pulled across them. Ganauche doesn't lead them towards any of those, instead taking them to the right along the terrace to a more discrete door set into the outer wall, where it meets the east tower there.

Inside is a short hall. They hang a quick right into the tower rather than going further into the building, and climb the stairs there, exiting the tower one floor up.

A description of the labyrinthine route the group takes from this point to Alex's grandfather's study would be long and convoluted. Suffice to say they pass through several open courtyards, walk down many more halls, and take at least three more staircases, two down and one up. The decor is expensive-looking if unfamiliar, much of it pretty clearly antique or made to look that way, and the art, which fills the halls tastefully throughout - paintings, tapestries, statuary, vases, and more - ranges from exquisite to bland. They pass many servants doing basic maintenance and going this way and that through the halls, along with well-dressed men and women on other business, all of whom nod respectfully to Alex, some of whom nod respectfully to Ganauche, and many of whom eye Leo curiously as they pass.

Entering the study itself requires going through the Don's sitting room. Ganauche lets them through the glass doors without any comment from the guard there, and then knocks on the door to the study.

Leo whispers to Alex: "Do I bow, or kneel, or what? As a representative of a foreign lord."

-he cuts off the 'uh' before it can form, but visibly stalls for a moment.

"You can bow if you want to, but he won't expect it," he responds, lowly, "He might come in for a handshake, but. If you're not comfortable with that he'll know and he won't do it. Other than that..." he thinks, "Just wait to sit until he invites you to."

"...good." A power play, then - the old lord wants to show that he's strong enough he doesn't need to make people kowtow, just get basic respect. I can appreciate that. Would've been nice to tell me before, but maybe the boy's just dull.

...for some reason he is annoyed now. He makes a tch noise, but before he can do anything else in response to the flood of irritation, the door opens.

The man who opens it is in his sixties, his chin-length hair and bristly mustache both full-grey, his face lined with considerably more severity than happiness.

"Ganauche," he begins with, before his eyes land on Leo, having completely passed over Alex with only a hint of a tightening in his expression. "Ah," he stops himself, "We have a guest."

In the interest of avoiding a lesson on the matter later, Alex tries to juggle the translation technique and pull on his storm flame at the same time, sharpening his memory of the guest's full name.

"Sig. Nougat," he calls the man's attention to himself, "May I introduce- Lord Aquitainus Septimus Leonatus ex Mare," he pauses, letting the storm go, and realizing he's lost the translation technique at the same time. He makes a face, and then feels a burst of frustration at himself for making the face, in front of Coyote no less, but before he can drag the technique back up again Ganauche replaces it with a version of his own.

Well. Fine then.

"Leo, this is Signor Coyote Nougat, right hand to Don Timoteo Vongola and SIC of the Vongola Famiglia."

Leo bows deeply. "It is my honor to meet you, Signore. If it is the same to you, I would have you call me Leo, as Alessio does - I find myself thrown upon the mercy of your house, and I would not have you call me Lord in the absence of my demesne."

Signor Nougat scrutinises him for a moment before nodding, "Very well, Signor Leo." His gaze sweeps over all of them, "Don Vongola is quite busy with another matter, but this seems to be a situation of some urgency. Come," he steps back and to the side, allowing them to pass him into the room.

Alex steps inside first, subtly straightening his shoulders (and his jacket, which looks a little bit crumpled) as he passes the old man. 

Leo joins him, standing exactly as straight as he already was.