All things considered, Tsuna believed that it had been much easier to persuade Vindice to properly investigate than convincing Shoichi that they would be fine and that it would be ill-advised to pack their things and try to disappear.
When the red-head had returned from his job with I-pin and Lambo, he had immediately sensed the tenseness in the air and had demanded to know what he had missed. A hasty report later and they had a hysterical inventor to calm down.
Eventually, they managed to make Shoichi understand that attempting an escape would not only be doomed to failure, but would land Tsuna in prison and would cast serious doubts on the innocence of Mukuro, Ken and Chikusa. Their best bet was on Vindice's integrity and investigating abilities or they could hope that they worked better than Vongola. The Sky still wasn't sure if such oversight was on purpose or if the largest Famiglia had wanted to get rid of a possible future threat. He had shared his doubts with his friends; Shoichi didn't believe that they could have done that to three abused children, but all the others (minus Lambo and I-pin who had left to play in their room) had a more jaded outlook. There were few things Mafia wouldn't lower itself to in order to destroy a potential enemy. And Mukuro had admitted that some of the security records probably showed him promising to destroy the whole Italian Underworld...
But calming Shoichi down had only been the second highest problem -for Tsuna at least. After Vindice's departure, Hayato had pretty much started worshiping the ground the brunet stepped on. He had stars in his eyes every time he even thought about his Boss who, frankly, found it quite disturbing. Tsuna had tried to work on the silveret's adulation, like he had done when he had recruited him. Unfortunately, this didn't work as well as the first time and Hayato still seemed to think the sun rose and set on his command. The most he had accomplished was to have the Storm stop singing his praise out loud. Most of the time...
So apart from this little issue, Caeruleus continued its activities as it had before as best as they could . And as expected, Shoichi and Hayato spent quite a lot of their free time studying the mark of contract on Tsuna's arm.
()()()()()()
Four days after Vindice's little visit, things had more or less already returned to normal. With the beginning of April and the warmer weather, they started receiving several jobs from people wanting to get their gardens into shape. As such, Chikusa -who had discovered a talent for gardening in the small backyard of the house- had a lot to do, as did Ken, Shoichi and Hayato who used their Sun Flames to discreetly boost the growth of the plants and practice their control.
Presently all four of them were away to help people with their gardens, Kyoya was in the neighboring dojo to teach -read 'painfully beat into them'- the basics of self-defense and Tsuna had just returned from delivering a translated document. Lambo and I-pin were with Kyoya, playing around the dojo (and helping the raven demonstrate their weakness to those attending his lessons. After all, how strong could you be if you were defeated by two innocent-looking five-year-olds?).
That left Tsuna with Hayato and Mukuro to hold down the fort. While waiting for clients, they had decided to practice their Japanese. The illusionist had been faster than his two comrades in learning the language, so he now had more lessons with Hayato than with I-pin and Lambo. The bluenet had admitted that witnessing Tsuna's memories had helped him greatly; indeed, in one's mind, it was the understanding of the words that was transmitted to the viewer, not their sounds. So language was not an obstacle in mind-reading, and instead gave the observer some basic understanding of the tongue.
