Work Text:
Shiro makes it to the training room with Hunk just in time to hear the kid with the tonfas say, “Your hair is against the regulations of Namimori Middle. I'll bite you to death.” Then he charges at Keith without further ado.
Keith might not speak a lick of Japanese but luckily – or unfortunately – he's perfectly fluent in 'homicidal maniacs with weapons.' He has his sword – the Galra one – out in a flash, which results in one of the other kids exclaiming, “Haha, that looks like fun!” before he produces a sword from god only knows where, only to be told to, “Do not interfere, Yamamoto Takeshi. He's my prey.”
At this point, the small child in the suit and fedora ambles up to Shiro and says, “Ciaossu.” Which wasn't a word the last time Shiro checked, but then again, maybe his Japanese has gotten rustier than he realized, because none of what these kids are saying makes any sense whatsoever.
“So, like,” says Hunk. “You see the problem. There was a flash and a bang, and now we have this. Like, they're probably not Galra? Do Galra speak Japanese? I don't think so?”
“Come to think of it, why does literally everyone in the known universe speak English?” wonders Pidge after scurrying over to Shiro's side. “What kind of sense does that make? The known universe. Do you guys understand how enormous that is? France and Germany are right next to each other and people speak totally different languages!”
“Are you freaking out because of the kid in the cow getup attached to your leg?” asks Hunk gently.
Pidge looks at him with eyes the size of dinner plates and whimpers.
“Would you like me to, um... remove him?”
“Sorry about the annoying brat,” says the other small child, switching to English smoothly. “He's partial to the company of ladies. But more importantly, which one of you is in charge here?”
“That would be me,” thunders Allura, looming up behind Shiro and doing that whole thing where she's suddenly a head taller than the usual. “Who are you and what are you doing in my castle? What manner of Galra wickedness is this?”
“Princess, I don't think—” says Shiro, only to be smoothly talked over by the toddler.
The one with the fedora.
Because of course.
“Great. Get over here, No-good Tsuna. Try to act like the boss for once.”
“Reborn,” whines one of the kids. He looks and sounds maybe all of twelve years old. “Where the hell are we? What's going on? Don't tell me it's Byakuran again?”
“Don't worry, Tenth, I'm here to protect you!” yells another kid, before catching sight of Allura – how he's managed to miss her before, Shiro has no idea – and shrieking, “Holy shit, it's a U.M.A.!”
“I... really don't think that's it, Gokudera-kun,” says his companion, who, Shiro can't help but note, continues to look very worried. “I mean, remember the last time you said that?”
“This is all extremely confusing but I'm extremely sure she's not an alien!” proclaims yet another kid.
There are so many of them.
“Oh shut up, what would you know, you shit-for-brains jock?”
“Well, actually,” says Shiro.
“Oi, Octopus-head, you wanna go?”
“See, Nagi,” says a boy who's apparently been standing right next to Shiro this whole time, what the hell, “this is why we avoid association with these fools whenever possible.”
The petite girl with the matching hairstyle tucked under his arm gazes up at him adoringly.
“Yes, Master Mukuro.”
Tonfa kid, who's meanwhile graduated his gear to a complicated setup of handcuffs and chains which seem to be giving Keith a hard time, whirls in their direction so fast it's a wonder he doesn't give himself whiplash.
“Rokudo Mukuro.”
“Oh my.”
“I'll bite you to death.”
The Mukuro kid chuckles.
“I don't think so,” he says, and then he's suddenly... not there.
“So, um, what,” says Lance, walking up behind Shiro with impeccable timing.
Shiro shrugs.
“That pretty much sums it up.”
* * *
Allura and the inexplicably well-dressed toddler are conducting intergalactic relations over cups of coffee produced by the portable espresso machine the toddler produced from... somewhere.
“I stopped questioning it a long time ago,” explains Sawada Tsunayoshi in a dead voice which suggests he's stopped questioning more than eerily articulate toddlers and mystery espresso machines.
Shiro can keenly relate.
The kids claim to be in the Mafia. Well, the toddler and the one who's been interrogating Coran and diligently taking notes ever since Coran made his belated entrance claim to be in the Mafia.
As for the rest, the homicidal kid is now taking a nap on the floor, having lost interest in Keith after the Mukuro kid's come and gone, the Mukuro kid's girlfriend is spacing out and not caring much about Lance's pitiful attempts at flirting, the kid with the sword is amicably sparing with Keith, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Keith is doing his level best to murder him, and the cow child is ignoring both Hunk and the boxer kid in favor of whining about wanting food and his mama and also more food while crawling – and drooling, and getting snot – all over Pidge, who continues to look hilariously horrified by this development.
Tsuna just finished relating a story about this one time he and company ended up ten years in the future, where they battled a mentally unstable dimension-hopping megalomaniac and saved an infinite number of worlds from sure destruction.
“Or something like that,” Tsuna concludes with a weary shrug.
“I... can't imagine what that has to do with the Mafia,” Shiro confesses. “Evil megalomaniacs and color-coded world saving with magical weapons of magical origins, I can sort of get, sadly, but what does it all have to do with organized crime?”
Tsuna raises hopeful, shining eyes at him.
“Right? Right? Thank you! I'm not the only one who thinks it's completely nuts! By the way, your friend who's trying to hit on Chrome should probably know her convicted mass murderer boyfriend is still in the room. I mean he's not a bad guy, exactly, mass murder and all, hahaha, but. Um. Just a heads up.”
It says a lot about Shiro's life these days that he's not terribly concerned about this latest revelation.
“At least the Mafia thing makes more sense now.”
“Oh my god, no,” Tsuna sputters, looking around nervously. “He's not. In the Mafia. More like emphatically against all things Mafia-related.”
“And don't you forget that, Sawada Tsunayoshi,” intones a disembodied voice. Judging by the girl's – Chrome? Nagi? – delighted reaction, it's safe to assume it's Mukuro's.
“We're not big fans of ominous disembodied voices around here,” Shiro remarks mildly. “And concealed weapons. They tend to make us jumpy.”
Tsuna hangs his head, looking crestfallen.
“We have a lot of those. Sorry.”
Apparently done with his impromptu nap, the tonfa kid rolls over and considers Shiro with a casually bloodthirsty look. Because that's totally a thing.
“Are you strong?”
“Oh my god, Hibari-san. We're not even on the same planet as Namimori Middle, please don't bite him to death.”
“You don't give me orders, herbivore.”
“I didn't,” Tsuna wails plaintively. “I asked you. Nicely.”
“Oh my god, Tenth! You gotta hear this! They have giant box weapons for space battles!”
“I'm... very happy for you, Gokudera-kun.”
“Tenth, do you think we could—”
“No way in hell.”
Gokudera looks heartbroken.
“He's really into aliens and stuff,” Tsuna tells Shiro in an undertone.
“I never would have guessed.”
* * *
By the time the underage mafiosi depart with another inexplicable flash-and-bang, Pidge's laptop has fallen victim to itty-bitty space gooey hands, Lance is looking traumatized and mumbling about lava for some reason, Keith is stalking around in a rage demanding that someone fight him 'without weird magical animals, dammit,' and Hunk is in a state of melancholia because he's apparently managed to befriend the boxer kid despite the language barrier and the fact that they seemed to have absolutely nothing in common.
“I had no idea earthling children had so much fighting spirit,” says Allura in a vaguely accusatory tone as she gazes upon the disaster that is her chosen team of paladins.
Shiro briefly considers enlightening her, or pointing out that she didn't have to choose literally the first people she came across to pilot Voltron, but decides it would be more trouble than it's worth.
“Yep. That's earthling children for you. Always ready to fight interdimensional crime and injustice in the colors of the rainbow.”
Allura squints at him suspiciously, obviously trying to decide if he's screwing with her.
Shiro gives her his most winning Trust Me I'm An Astronaut smile.
“Well, good,” she sniffs. “I expect the same degree of enthusiasm from you, paladins.”
It's nice to finally put all that PR training to good use.