All characters © Amano Akira
Summary: There is a reason the Ten Year Bazooka only goes one way. And why it only lasts five minutes.
"The Grandfather Paradox?" a sixteen-year old Lambo asks Irie, scratching the scalp beneath his hair. It's the first time he's heard of such a thing, but he's glad that the technicians have finally decided to sit him down and explain everything. It's about time.
"It's what stops the Ten Year Bazooka from working properly," Spanner answers for him. "There's a reason time travel only goes one way. See, if you went back in time and killed your grandfather before he met your grandmother, you would never have been born, therefore unable to kill your grandfather. Since your grandfather was then unable to be killed, he would have met your grandmother, you would have been born, and therefore capable of going back in time and killing him."
"Did you know your bazooka came from the future?" Irie wonders aloud as he fiddles with some controls on the console by his main computer. Lambo is still trying to wrap his head around theoretical paradoxes and dead grandfathers and whatnot, so he does not hear Irie's question at first. Irie repeats it again.
Lambo shrugs, shaking his head. "It was just something my family gave to me to protect myself. I never knew where it came from."
"Well, now you do!" Irie exclaims brightly. "Your future self," he adds, referring to an older version of Lambo, "gave us very specific instructions."
"He-I mean, I did?"
Spanner nods. "It's actually us that gives the Bovino family their bazooka. Since Shouichi's White Round time machine was built under Byakuran's supervision, and since Byakuran was the only one with access to parallel worlds (and therefore parallel knowledge), we're the only ones who know how to eliminate the Grandfather Paradox," he explains. "We then give the recreated bazooka to you, which you give to your family of sixteen years ago."
Lambo shakes his head again. "Yare, yare. It's so confusing," he sighs. Spanner shoots him a sympathetic glance around his lollipop.
"Basically, eliminating the Grandfather Paradox allows us to travel back in time as well as forwards, making the bazooka a two-way weapon," Irie adds. "Time travel wasn't fully developed until last year under Byakuran, so we didn't know this before."
"It's not called the 'Ten Year Later' or the 'Ten Year Past' Bazooka; just the Ten Year Bazooka," Spanner mutters, speculating more to himself than to the others. "But, it requires your future self to be transported back into the past so that you maintain a stream of consciousness in both dimensions."
"For five minutes," Lambo adds.
Irie nods. "It's five minutes so that the smallest possible paradoxes are created," he says. "Although, with the proper preparation, you technically could kill someone in five minutes...Heck, I destroyed my own future in less than that..."
"But then it just gets confusing," Spanner finishes. As if it wasn't already.
"Yes, that's right. It gets really confusing." Irie sighs and rubs his stomach. "Now, Lambo. Are you sure you want the bazooka modified so it goes two ways? Heck, who knows if it will work; technology is technology, and never ideal. The thing could still have glitches."
"Interference from the space-time continuum," Spanner exclaims. Lambo almost thinks he is making it up at this point.
"There's only one bazooka-we could simply trash it so you wouldn't give it to your family in the first place, making its existence...well, nonexistent," Irie pushes forward. "Your family can always come up with new weapons."
This is a question Lambo has prepared for. "I would like the bazooka completed," he tells them. He has an answer ready, and he tries not to make it sound too much like it has been rehearsed. "Without it, I would have died a long time ago, I think. And strangely, it's helped me."
"Helped you?" Irie echoes. "I remember my first time with your bazooka, and it was simply traumatizing. I was thrown ten years into my own future and back again in less time than it takes to brush your teeth."
"Time is a force of nature that is not meant to be manipulated or used as a toy," Lambo agrees. "We've played with it enough, and thanks to that, I know everything about my past, present and future. I am who I am today because of that bazooka, and it's too late to change that. When I'm six, I'll know everything that happens to my friends when they get old, and when I'm sixty I'll visit them when they are twenty."
"I feel sorry for you. You'll live your life in the wrong order," Spanner muses, to which Lambo gives a lopsided half-smile. It's quite endearing.
"Yes," he says, closing one eye, "but I'll be able to help everybody with what I know, at one point or another. I could save them when they might die. In the future, I've already gone back to save them." Spanner shrugs at this, seeing the point and vaguely understanding it.
"But, your actions will always have consequences," Irie points out, remembering is escapades in changing his future. "Some things aren't meant to be changed."
Lambo chuckles quietly. "Yet some things have to be, Shouichi," he replies. "And when I use the bazooka, I'll be sure not to kill any grandfathers on the way."
/
Ten years ago
As a general rule, Gokudera tried not to smoke in front of the kids. He knew they din't really mind, but his guilty conscience produced an endless tirade in his head about second hand smoke and whatnot. Nicotine was an addictive substance, no matter how you looked at it, and sometimes Gokudera couldn't help but catch a smoke here or there.
It was the middle of April, he was in the park, and he just happened to be babysitting the kids (again) when he decided he needed a butt. The park was an open enough space so the kids wouldn't cough, he decided, and lit up.
At first, he was a little startled when Lambo suddently bursted into tears. Lambo crying was nothing new in and of itself, but Gokudera realized at once that this wasn't the "I want takoyaki" tantrum, or the "I have to pee" tantrum, or even the "Ipin hit me" tantrum. Lambo was screaming, beating the ground with his tiny fists and pulling at his hair. Ipin automatically cowered behind Gokudera, who tried to reassure the curious passerby that everything was all right, the kid was just cranky, he hadn't had his afternoon nap. Gokudera was pretty good at it, since this was hardly the first time the kids had publicly embarrassed him.
He made a valiant attempt to give Lambo a quick scan for injuries, thinking that maybe the kid got stung by a bee or something. As he leaned over, Lambo surprised him by ripping the cigarette from Gokudera's lips and stomping on it until it was in tatters on the pavement, smoldering weakly. "STUPID STUPID DERA!" Lambo screamed, as tears and snot mixed on his face and ran down his chin.
"Um, Lambo..." Gokudera was still trying to get over the initial shock of Lambo's tantrum. One minute he had been fine, the next this. "What's wrong?"
Lambo pointed to the remains of the cigarette. "I hate this thing!" he screamed shrilly. Gokudera threw a glance around the park to make sure nobody was looking before he scooped Lambo up into his lap.
"Now," he said quietly, "can you tell me what's wrong? Please?"
Lambo was still crying, but at least the screaming had stopped. "It makes you sick," he hitched.
Gokudera frowned. "What, the cigarette?" He knew the kids had some knowledge about smoking, but they were in kindergarten, for Giotto's sake. They shouldn't be learning about that stuff until later. He vowed to seriously hurt whoever had scared Lambo with these facts. He started, "I know it makes people sick sometimes-"
"No, it makes you sick! I hate it hate it hate it!"
"Ssshhh," Gokudera hushed, bouncing Lambo up and down on his lap like a worried mother. "I'm still not getting you, Lambo. This makes me sick? How?"
Lambo tugged at his sleeve desperately, since Gokudera was still not understanding. "Stupid Dera! You get lung cancer when you're fifty!"
This took Gokudera by surprise. He may have been an angry boy, an impulsive boy, but he was not a stupid boy. His first thought was that Lambo had had a bad dream about him recently, or that he had accidentally seen a program on TV about smoking. Or Reborn had terrorized the kid some more. Somewhere in the back of his mind, where he himself was reluctant to venture, Gokudera thought of the Ten Year Bazooka. But that was silly, since you'd have to use the bazooka four consecutive times in a row to get knowledge that far into the future. Even Lambo wouldn't do something that ridiculous.
"You can't know that, Lambo," he said slowly, blinking. The kid shouldn't even know what lung cancer is. "That's silly. I'm always very careful."
Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. Lambo pulled himself away from Gokudera and hopped down from the park bench. "No, no you're not!" he yelled. "I've seen it! And then you'll be dead and you won't be able to buy me dango anymore! You're so STUPID!" With that he took off, wailing. Gokudera rose to chase him, but was stopped by Ipin.
"He need time," she told him in fragmented English, and Gokudera could only watch as an unsupervised six year old went running into the park, into the clutches of god knows what lay between the trees.
"Damn. The Tenth is going to kill me," he groaned, putting his face in his hands. A part of him wondered what that had been all about. Oh well, he decided. Kids. With them, you never knew.
/
Ipin is the only one who fully understands what Lambo has done. She thinks that it is only natural that he and Fuuta develop such a close relationship in their later years; they are often targeted for their powers, and both have knowledge that they shouldn't possess.
She also knows that Lambo has seen much farther than he should have. If you use the Ten Year Bazooka enough, it can show you just about anything. And it's often faulty. Still. Sometimes Lambo gets stuck.
Poor little boy who's seen his life backwards, who has grown up in the wrong order. Ipin knows that if anyone in the mafia deserves a hug more than anyone, it is Lambo. And when they grow old, she knows that he sometimes visits their family...when they are no longer with them.
"When they die, I can just go back to a time when they aren't dead," Lambo sometimes tells her. His green eyes are distant and droopy, like an old tortoise's. "They are all smiling and laughing, like they will last forever. It's quite wonderful...but then your five minutes are up and you have to come back. That's the saddest part of it all."
end.