You are twelve when you master the art of dynamite, packing nitroglycerin into cylinders like you were wrapping gifts. You're thirteen when you start doing hired work for older men (they pick you up by the scruff of your neck, muse, what's this pup doing so far from his mother's tit? Go back and suckle her breast before you come back to us!), you're thirteen-and-a-half when you kill your first man. (It was an accident -- he was a thief and you were a child, just a child frightened and hungry and cold --)
You are what Rome regurgitated and spat upon the ground, black bile, grime and dirt, pimpled with scars and nips. You are Sicilian mobster at your very roots, cosmopolitan at your fingertips, savage every drop in between. Men learn not to cross your explosive temper, lest they have a death wish. You make a name for yourself. You grow infamous, you grow fangs between your teeth.
A baby named Reborn approaches you. "There's no doubt you have talent, but it's unfocused. Too raw to be of actual use. More often than not, you pose a danger to yourself. I have a proposition for you, little one. There is a boy in Japan who needs you as much as you need him. Are you ready? Are you ready to be collared and pledge allegiance?"
You spit, "I need no one. I owe loyalty to no one. I'm a lone wolf. Not even you, Reborn, can tell me what to do."
The baby has an inscrutable expression on his face before he sighs sadly. "Pity. Even if I shot you with my my Dying Will Bullet right now, nothing would come of it. You'd simply die. Because you don't have anything to live for right now, as it is, do you?"
You grind your teeth, you seethe, "Are you calling me useless? Are you?"
(For a baby, he has an ageless face. "Just think about it," he says with a shrug, before disappearing.
You ponder and mill over his words, you pace back and forth like an animal enclosed by metal bars, before you return to him.
"If I deem this boy unworthy of my loyalty, I kill him."
The baby smiles. "Deal.")
You are fifteen, and you are just a scared little kid.
(You have an Italian name, but you renounced it -- mutt, they'd sneer behind your back, as you exchanged dignity for money, as you lived threadbare and never had excess. Japanese mutt.
Your mother named you Gokudera Hayato, and you don't know what it means, but you take it.
It suits you much better, after all.)