The Mastermind is a Middle School Student (KHR FF)

(2)Island With A Suspicious Amount Of Mafiosos

(24: That’s crazy bro)

[-1-]

When the ship docked on the island, many questions previously lingering at the back of his head were answered.

Do you know how Disneyland build it’s parks?

Scratch that, do you play any video games? Specifically, open world video games.

Have you ever had moments, where, the narrative world being portrayed to you, is inherently, unmistakably, completely different from the actual world you explore?

An empire with billions and billions of loyal brainwashed citizen? Nope, you can only count to 60 residents at most, and most of them aren’t even natives.

A huge sprawling land of ruins, that narrative wise, takes 10 days to traverse at top speed? Nope, hit sprint—nay, just walk normally and you’ll be out in 2 days in-game time. On foot, by the way.

A mansion belonging to an insanely rich noble family whose daughter of has, ironically, devoid of malice, has the suffix ‘-princess’ in her name given by nearby residents? Nope, just a thin 5x5 hallways in a ‘U’ shape with a small gazebo in the middle. The amount of room you can see doesn’t even exceed one hand.

In a nutshell, forgoing all sarcasm, human capabilities have limits. And the people behind games, comics, and novels, also certainly do. While words hold the advantage of complete imagination, they also require more effort to be exerted to achieve a similar immersion to it’s more visual counterpart.

That’s why a novel that can take 5 hours to finish; it’s life version would take little more than an hour to finish. Even then, it’s mainly because it’s padded by a slow opening, with unnecessarily long battle scenes, and a long sad song played somewhere in the middle that directly consumes 10 minutes of playing time.

Game designers have to consider the capabilities of it’s players’ devices, Comic artists have to consider their own deadline and energy, Producers have to consider budgets.

So, certainly, it’s enough to put as minimal NPCs as possible as to somewhat give birth to the idea of ‘a lot of people’ in the players’  minds. It’s just enough to draw as minimal landmarks as possible as to convey the idea that ‘there’s a lot of things on this island’s.

All for the illusion, that a complete world exist.

Eitou is not sure why he’s so surprised in the first place. He had already experienced this Disneyland Immersion Breaking before. Once. When he first arrived in Namimori.

Let’s make one thing clear, Namimori, is in fact, not a ‘small’ town.

If Namimori is considered a small town, then Tokyo next door should directly kneel down and call him dad.

Namimori is huge, like, larger than the manga or anime makes it out to be. There’s certainly more than one supermarket. There’s certainly more than 4 digits amount of residents. And there’s certainly more than one mysterious mountains completely isolated form the outside world. He’s starting to understand how the cast got lost in there once and had to survive on poisonous mushrooms.

There’s still only 3 middle schools, but much more high schools. And to say there’s only 3? That’s undermining the sheer size of each schools.

Ignoring the All Girls and Private school that Haru and Shoichi Irie go to, the government owned school; Namichuu, is abnormally large. Which, make sense, because with the amount of unexplainable earthquakes that happened with it in the centre, it could only survive by relying on large expanse of school ground.

The hot ray of sun, entirely out of place from Japan’s current climate (which, he doubts they’re still even in Japan anymore. There’s probably some misg illusion shenanigan messing up his sense of directions.) hits his skin. Eitou himself is a gardener, and often spent his days under the sun working obsessively on his farm. This little heat isn’t much for him, but his natural self-cooling process of sweating is still there.

Perhaps because he looked pitiful sweating under the sun, a black umbrella slightly tilted forward, covering Eitou’s entire body in shade.

“I can’t believe Hibari-san actually gave us the ticket for free.” Jun emerged from behind, holding both of their luggage in one hand, and an umbrella in the other. “It took us faster than I thought to arrive.”

Eitou yawned, holding his slipping sunglasses, “Of course it’s faster, it’s powered by the newest illegal technology crowdfunded by every non drug-dealing mafia.”

Jun paused. “Ah?”

In the distance, the sound of a fast roller coaster muffles the junior’s blank reaction. The supposed island is actually quite massive. At least, judging by the map, there’s a lot more things than expected being stuffed on this island. A resort, a theme park, a hotel, beach, gym, swimming pool (on an island?), a training range, and a bunch of grey areas marked only as ‘staff only’. Considering the fact that Colonnello apparently have a huge ass land to ‘train’ intruders, this gives birth a sort of ominous feeling towards these grey areas.

Ah, just because Eitou will avoid these areas, doesn’t mean his junior also should.

Eitou stretched his back, “Go to the reception and tell them we’ve arrived, say that you’re from the Hibari household.”

The younger frowned, hanging all their luggage on his forearm, and slowly took out two ticket admissions from his pocket, “Do I need these?”

“Nope.” Eitou smoothly took it, “Just go and report your name, -- also sell Hibari-shi’s face by the way.”

Jun nodded, “Where’s the reception?”

Eitou pointed towards the tall building nearest to the entrance, “There. And I’ll pick you up when they’re done.”

The younger shrugged off all of the luggages, putting it next to his relaxed senior and obeyed, “You don’t need to pick me up when I’m done, I’ll meet you at the beach.”

The gardener struggled to get his lips straight, “Really? I’ll entrust everything to you then.”

After Jun dissapeared into the maws of the building, Eitou took a moment to hold silence for his poor junior. He wiped away his tears, and also of his consciences, as he waved for a staff over to take care of the luggage.

The cruise actually provides staff help to carry luggages, but no one uses it. Makes sense, if your true identity is a criminal, you won’t trust anyone with your stuff. Of course, his identity is as clean as a bald head. It won’t be a problem to get help carrying these away. Ah, he didn’t tell Jun of course, since the guy was so eager to hold the luggage for him.

Hm?

Eitou caught on a fleeting thought. If the ship was specifically for Mafiosos and free agents…

Why did the staff react so violently to the Hibari name? Isn’t the Hibari couple both upright individuals? The madam is a military official for goodness sake. Wait— How did Hibari even get two tickets to a criminal land?

“…” the innocent gardener accidentally glimpsed the dark side of Japan’s government, and silently changed his thoughts. He could only hope they won’t get targeted by the enemies made by the Hibari family. He’s already regretting this whole trip, he hasn’t even taken more than one step on this island.

Anyways, it doesn’t matter, since Jun will have a nice and safe time with two out of the seven strongest flame users in the world.

It’s true that Eitou told him to stay out and avoid the outside world, but it is also true that Jun would probably be safer under Colonnello, Reborn, and Tsuna’s care. Colonnello and Reborn are literally the two out of the seven strongest; and while their friendliness to Jun isn’t guaranteed, there’s a Tsuna there that famously said he fights for his friends and comrades. As long as Tsuna is there, the two arcobalenos will protect Tsuna’s world view, and as long as the two arcobalenos is protecting Tsuna’s world view, Jun will stay alive.

Thinking back to his plan, Eitou smiled with a haughty huff. As expected of a little genius like him, he could even take advantage of these annoying babies!

“Ah, Yukimura-kun! Where’s Wada-kun?” a gentle voice asked him. Nana came out of the beach area, holding an empty water bottle. In the distance, Eitou could see I-pin, Lambo, and Bianchi. He confirms that Tsuna and Reborn is gone, and smiled back towards the older woman.

Eitou waved leisurely, as if he’s still unaware of the dense amount of criminals around him, “All fine. The staff helped with everything. Jun-kyun went to register us in.”

“Ah? Oh, that’s where Tsu-kun has gone…” Nana mutters to herself, as if she had just realized where her one and only child had dissappeared too. She frowns, “Geez, couldn’t he have told me before he went?”

In truth, Eitou is also one of those fans that thought, there’s no way someone as ditzy and clueless like her is real.

But she is.

He thought up complicated plots like brainwashing, brain damage, mental disorders—but nope. At best, she might be autistic, but saying that is an insult to autistic people. At this point, he can only surrender and guess that this is just manga logic.

And that manga turned into reality.

“Ah, but don’t you need to show your tickets to register? I still have the tickets one me.” she asked, already forgetting about her underaged son moving around without supervision. But considering Japan’s culture, it might not be so surprising. Even toddlers can walk out alone to their school a kilometer away from home, what about a teenage boy?

Eitou rubbed the back of his neck, thinking up a perfunctory excuse, “It’s okay. The staff accepts both ways, the one without ticket is just a bit more exciting.”

“Exciting?”

“Un, you get to see a performance from… from…”

Oh.

Nana tilted her head, “From who?”

Oh.

“… The greatest stuntman to ever be.”

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh---

“It just reminded me, I haven’t registered yet, I’ll go to the receptionists. Here, can Nana-san keep these tickets for me?”  Eitou smoothly placed two slightly crumpled tickets onto Nana’s palms.

Before Nana could even ask, he turned around and waved, “Well, see you later.”

Nana barely let out an ‘ah’ before the young man completely dissappear into the building.She doesn’t even question why the teen still have to register when Jun had already gone for the both of them and simply sighed, looking at the tickets in her hand. “Greatest stuntman? It’s been so long but I still instinctively thought about Skull-san.”

Thinking of this, she sighs again. “He had completely disappeared from the public eyes for a long time now… Could it be finally time for someone else to take his spot? I wonder if he’s still alive…”

Finally, the woman could only put the tickets into her pockets. She turned around towards the rest of her family in the distance and smiled, “Let’s go back to the beach!”

[-2-]

“Sawada-chan!!!!” an energetic voice reverberates across the empty land.

Tsuna looked at the incoming train and shouted in surprise, “Longchamp!?”

“Jun-kyunnnnn!!!!” another voice came from behind Naito.

Wada sits on the ground with empty eyes, his glasses is already broken and put aside from the previous shenanigans.

This time, even Tsuna’s face appeared a little twisted, “….Senpai????”

Moments pass by in a dizzying blur, and two recognizable faces appeared within the group. Colonnello ignored Naito and focused his round eyes on Yukimura, but his voice is asking Reborn, “Kora, isn’t this the child from the Gold Empire?”

The other baby answered in an equally squeaky voice, “The Gold family, not Empire. Their business is called the Yukimura now.”

“Ahn?” Colonnello blanked out, “What do you mean?”

Reborn pulled out an old tobacco pipe out of nowhere and sighs, “Love blinds even the rational.”

The rain flame user can’t understand these nonsense and snorted to himself. He ignored Reborn and pointed at Yukimura, “Kora, Gold, you go—”

BOOM!

In the distance, explosions rained from on high, various screams immediately resounded on the island. Wada was stunned out of his depression, before realizing exactly what’s going on, “What’s happening?”

Eitou felt heatwaves brushing against his cheek, and naturally stepped in front of Jun. He smiled, “What else? We’re under attack.”

“Under attack???” Tsuna almost screamed out his vocal cords, fighting against the loud background noise. “What do you mean???”

At this point, Naito seems to have remembered something and knocked his head, “You remember my new girlfriend, Renko?”

Tsuna nods tentatively.

Naito grinned with a peace, “It turned out she’s a spy from the Carcassa Family! I got tricked by her!”

“HUH!?” Tsuna’s eyes bulged, “That girl was a spy!???”

BOOM!

Another explosion rang in the distance.

In the distance an announcement is made. Announcing that the island will now enter combat mode, and that guests are to proceed to the nearest shelter. It has to be said, the process is so smooth to the point one would suspect this thing happened too often.

While Tsuna and Reborn have a heartfelt conversation about mafias, Jun seemed to remember something and grasped the end of Eitou’s gaudy Hawaiian shirt.

“Senior.”

“Mn?” Eitou took a hold of his sliding sunglasses.

“Is this the drug thing you mentioned?”

Eitou tilted his head, “Eh… Not really.”

“..?” Jun looked up in confusion, but his myopia only allowed him to see a blurry image of the others face.

“Let’s say…” Eitou looked towards the horizon, smiling at the incoming ships. “It’s related to someone I’m a fan of.”

[-3-]

“I can’t believe Reborn!” Tsuna leaned against the opening of the tunnel, countless drop of sweat dropping from his chin. Behind him, multiple figures also ran—although at varying intensity.

While Tsuna wholeheartedly complain about his tutor, Jun has already sped up; leaving only white dust in his wake. Naito exclaimed, “Yahoo! It’s the end of the tunnel! Peace! Peace!”

“Really?--!!?” Tsuna was taken aback, blinded by the light. As soon as he regained his vision back, his eyes bulged at the behemoth in front of him

Naito had the decency to introduce the building, “Mafia Land’s Icon! The Mafia Fort!”