They could not leave the room right now. They were all located in the middle of their row with at least eight adults on either side. It would take too long to make their way out, and Verde was already lowering his tiny finger towards the button that would start his device.
There was only one real solution left. "Crouch down on the floor!" Whispered urgently Tsuna to his friends. Luckily, they all heard him, and obeyed his instruction at once. Even Spanner followed his order, although it was clear from the look in his eyes and his raised eyebrow that he didn't understand why. Shoichi and Hayato sported the same bewildered expression, but their silent inquiry was answered when Verde's machine finally started.
A brilliant Flame flickered immediately on all four of their chests and over their hands. Tsuna's and Byakuran's were orange, Shoichi's was yellow and Hayato's was mainly red, with wisps of blue, yellow, purple and green.
Spanner -whose body had not lit up since he was not Flame-active- was looking at them with awe and curiosity. Thankfully, he was smart enough to understand that now was not the time to ask questions.
Since they were all crouched and curled up on the floor between seats, the light of their fire didn't really reach the other spectators, so nobody noticed the Flames. The people seated in the same row as the group looked at them weirdly, but barely saw a glow and assumed the children were doing something on their cellphones, which explained them crouching on the floor to hide the shining screens. It earned them some disgruntled and judgmental glares, but their secret was safe.
Soon after, the Flames died down by themselves and the children tentatively returned to their seats, with sheepish smiles to their offended neighbors. Spanner's eyes were brimming with silent questions, but that would have to wait, and his rather innocent curiosity was not what alarmed Tsuna the most.
From the stage, Verde was looking straight at them, although his mouth kept automatically voicing his lecture as though nothing had happened.
Tsuna was getting a bad feeling from that unwavering, piecing gaze, but he reasoned that even if the scientist had understood or seen what had taken place, it was not an issue. Verde was an Arcobaleno, so according to what Fon had told them, he had to already know about Flames.
The other issue would be that he somehow recognized them -him- as the target of Vongola's and Iemitsu's search. But from what he had gathered, Verde was a reclusive man -baby- that was only interested in his experiments and had little to no contact with the outside world. With some luck, that included the Mafia, and the Lightning Arcobaleno either would not identify him as Iemitsu's lost son, or wouldn't care and would not inform anybody.
The rest of the conference went by without anymore incidents, but Tsuna was still tense, and even his friends' enthusiasm was severely dampened. Verde kept looking in their direction all through the lecture, and the brunet couldn't wait to leave.
Finally, the two hours were over and the members of Caeruleus with Spanner were among the first to leave the room. Still, the brunet couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching them, and after looking around the area, he realized that the impression came from the many surveillance cameras. Surely, there was nothing unusual about being watched through cameras in such a place, and the unease he felt only came from his shaken nerves. The same went for his buzzing Intuition: it only hummed in his head without any focus and was probably a side-effect from the earlier scare.
Tsuna offered to keep looking at the stalls, but nobody's heart was in it anymore, and Spanner was obviously waiting for them to be alone to bury them with questions about the strange fire he had seen escaping their bodies. They called it a day and followed the blond to collect his 'Mosca' from a nearby back alley.
Chapter 24: That doesn't have public transportation
Start from the beginning
