A bright flash of red flame suddenly emanated from centerstage and lit the whole area in a blinding crimson light for a fraction of a second, and then a boy was suddenly standing where the fire had been, surrounded by a fading haze of reddish smoke. He smiled out at the crowd, the top half of his face covered by a silver mask and the red magician's tuxedo he wore clean and sharp despite his appearance from flames, blond hair just visible under his red and silver tophat. When he spoke his voice was obviously linked up to a microphone or amplifier of some sort

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Prospero Merlin and welcome to my show! Wow, there sure are a lot of people here today for such a small town, lemme see if I can get a better look..." With that he casually strolled off the front of the stage and over the heads of the audience, almost seeming to not notice that he was levitating in mid-air. He made an exaggerated show of looking around at everyone, though his eyes lingered just briefly longer on the Vongola group. Once he was finished he walked back onto the stage without commenting on this first trick at all.

"So, let's get things started with a simple trick to really make sure you're paying attention! I'm gonna pull a rabbit out of my hat!" He ignored any laughter or derision that resulted and simply twirled his hat off of his head with a bright smile still on his face. He reached inside and pulled out...a plush toy rabbit. He held it up for the audience inspection and asked "Still paying attention?" Then, with a flourish of his wrist, the toy was gone and there was suddenly a very small, very real rabbit sitting in his palm. "Good, because nothing during this show is as simple as it seems!"

From there it was a matter of a few tricks Prospero considered routine. Sawing a woman in half, 'reading' audience members minds and having multiple audience members each pick a card from a different shuffled deck and correctly guessing each one, even the 'teleportation' from one door placed by stagehands to another trick accomplished with trapdoors hidden in the stage.

One trick involved a particularly impressive escape starting with multiple sets of handcuffs slapped onto Prospero's wrists and ankles and a slotted heavy iron box wheeled out on stage suspended from some pulleys and dropped over his body. From there assistants stabbed multiple swords through the slots in the box iron box, and then raised it to show Prospero free from the various chains and unharmed.

“Ladies and Gentleman, you’ve been a great audience but it’s already time for my very last trick! This one’s really special because it requires full audience participation! “Thick mist started billowing out from under the stage, obscuring everything in sight and hiding the audience as Prospero’s voice from the microphone started to block out most sound in a hypnotic drone. “I want all of you to just focus on the sound of my voice and the swirling mist as it slowly drifts around you, blocking everything else out, even seeping slowly into your minds. Focus only on my voice and the mist. Focus as it blocks everything else out and you begin to fall into a deep, deep sleep. It is a sleep so deep that when you wake afterward you’ll only remember that this last trick was amazing. Let yourself fall deeper and deeper asleep and then…when I snap my fingers, you’ll wake up and everyone who’s not a member of the Mafia will disappear!”

The sudden *snap* of Prospero’s fingers coincided with the activation of a large fan from beneath the stage, blowing the mist away to reveal to Naoto and the would-be Guardians that most of the crowd from before really had disappeared. Prospero was smiling even wider than before.

“So Vongola Undecimo, did you like the show? Or maybe I should make you disappear too?”