A/N: I am a chapter-spewing MACHINE! WOO~! I guess getting to the actual manga events has bolstered my work ethic! It's so much fun to write! Thank you all for voting on the poll - but I hope you realize that the winner of the poll won't automatically be paired with Lambo. I have absolutely no idea how to write romance...
Keeping Your Character - Chapter Ten
Lambo leaned halfway out the window of Tsuna's second floor bedroom, trying to catch the slightest breeze in reprieve from the sweltering heat. She was already wearing a tank top and a pair of knee-length shorts, and she was still sweating more than was comfortable. Unfortunately, the air conditioning wasn't working, and the only electric fan had been given to Nana.
'Why….?' she whined inwardly, pushing a few sweaty locks of hair away from where they were sticking to her forehead. 'I want to be at hooooooooooooome… It has air conditioning. And an indoor pool. And I think I even have some popsicles still in the freezer. So why do I have to be here?'
"Tsu-kun!" a voice called from downstairs. "Will you please walk to the store and get some green tea for you mother?"
Lambo's head whipped around to stare at the middle school student also in the room with her. 'Oh, that's why.' she mused. '...Iemitsu is going to get an uncomfortable amount of static electricity when I next see him.'
Tsuna paused in the middle of his groaning at the thought of walking in the heat, stiffening at the force of her displeased stare on his back. He shuddered slightly, and pulled on his sandals, hoping that if he got out of the house, she'd stop trying to bore a hole in his head with her eyes.
Unfortunately, he had forgotten that she was technically his bodyguard, so she had to follow him in case someone would take the opportunity to try and kill him. (Which, knowing his luck, is exactly how things would happen.)
Lambo smirked slightly as she fluttered her new paper fan - the cool wind currents generated by the motion were sweet relief from the scorching heat. She had badgered Tsuna into buying it for her at the store - though he had been forced to use his own pocket money instead of what Nana had given him, because that only paid for the green tea that she wanted. Still, he had been happy to do it after she had threatened to start putting live worms in his pillow case if he refused.
'Ah, life is good when you know someone you can coerce into buying you free stuff!' she thought happily to herself, following a few feet behind her Tsuna. She took a long sip from her water bottle - also bought for her by her charge. While it was a little bit mean - or a lot bit mean - well… she didn't exactly care at the moment because of the darn heat. She was a cold-weather person, dammit! Still, she'd just put ice cubes in his bed later on instead of worms - that would probably even be a pleasure for him because of the heat.
Tsuna mentally cried waterfalls as he trudged along the sidewalk, wiping sweat from his forehead. 'Damn that Lambo.' he thought miserably. 'Not only did I have to waste my own money on her, but I didn't have enough with me to buy myself a drink, too. And I'm really thirsty now.' He turned to look at her, already imagining the gloating look on her face at his frustration.
You can imagine his surprise when he saw her nowhere in sight, especially when she had never passed up such an easy opportunity to taunt him. She had vanished without a trace.
He faced forward again, slightly bemused. 'Where'd she go…?' he thought, brow puckering slightly. '…she better not have gone to put worms in my pillow case.' his pace quickened at the notion, but his progress was halted by a ringing sound - the noise a bell on the handlebars of a bicycle made. He turned to look at the street, only to see a figure on a mommy bike slowing to a halt next to him.
The figure was obviously a woman - a well-developed woman, at that, judging from the curves he could see beneath her tank top and leather pants. She had lots of arm accessories, as well as a tattoo of a scorpion on her shoulder. The woman turned to face him, pulling off her helmet as she did so. Cascades of bubblegum pink hair flowed down, and Tsuna could see that she had a very pretty face.
She pulled out a can of soda. "You can have this, if you like." she stated, before tossing the can at his head, and pedaling her vehicle away down the street.
Tsuna, being the clumsy kid he is, missed his catch. The can smacked roughly into his head and bounced onto the ground, spurting open on contact.
"Ow…" he muttered, bending over to pick up the can. "I must have looked like such a loser - and it spilled, too."
Before he could even touch the can, it began to belch out noxious-looking purple fumes. Tsuna froze in shock, and then freaked out slightly as a bird dropped dead to the pavement due to the haze. He picked himself up from his crouch, and began to sprint back home, thirst forgotten in his alarm. He needed to see Reborn about this - what if it was something to do with the mafia?
At the scene of the incident, Lambo slowly shimmered back into the visible spectrum, still staring at the place the biker had disappeared. 'Darn it…' she thought to herself in irritation. 'I'd forgotten that person would be coming here soon… At least I managed to hide myself before she saw me…' With a small shudder at the narrowly missed catastrophe, she began to head back to the Sawada house as well. Only instead of wanting to see Reborn, she kind of wanted to hide in Tsuna's closet.
"Reborn!" Tsuna exclaimed as he sprinted up the stairs - miraculously not tripping over his feet in his haste. "We have a problem!" he threw open the door to his room. He managed to get out a few words about the dead bird, before actually comprehending what his eyes were telling him.
Reborn stood in front of him, large beetles covering every inch of his babyish face - though some settled on his hat next to Leon. "Hm?"
"Do you emit tree sap!" the boy yelled incredulously.
"These guys are my summer minions." Reborn declared. "They collect information for me."
"Does that mean you speak bug language?" Tsuna asked, still flabbergasted by his tutor's latest eccentricity.
Reborn ignored him with the ease of one who cares not for the words of inconsequential people. "With their help, I was able to grab hold of some important data." he told his student as the beetles dispersed. "Bianchi is in town."
"Bianchi…?" Tsuna asked, half-curious, and half-dreading the answer. "Who's that?"
"A former fellow hitman." Reborn told him bluntly.
"What?" Tsuna asked in dread. Any reply he might've gotten was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell.
"Italian pizza delivery!" a muffled voice declared from the porch.
As Tsuna went downstairs to get the door - seeing as his mother had gone out sometime during his trip to the store - his closet creaked open, and Lambo's head peaked out.
"This is all your fault, you know." she told the smaller hitman bluntly, a slight pout on here face.
Reborn only smirked at her, knowing exactly why she had said that, before heading downstairs to yet again save his hapless student from dying.
Tsuna, meanwhile, was choking on the fumes emitting from the open pizza box being held in his face. As soon as he had answered the door, the biker girl from earlier had pulled on a gas mask and opened it up. Before he could actually pass out from the toxic gas, there was a loud bang, and the pizza box was blasted out the door by a couple of bullets.
Behind him stood Reborn, holding a still smoking gun. "Ciaossu, Bianchi." he greeted calmly.
"Reborn…" Bianchi said reverently - like a devoted fan girl, coincidentally - as she pulled off her gas mask to reveal a blushing face beneath.
"This girl is Bianchi?' Tsuna thought to himself disbelievingly. 'More importantly, though, why is it that I was on the verge of being murdered by her?'
"I'm here to bring you back." Bianchi told him, her blush darkening and her posture becoming almost shy. "Let's do another big job together, Reborn." she pleaded. "A peaceful place doesn't suit you. You should be in the darker world, where every moment is dangerous and thrilling!"
"I told you Bianchi, I have a job to raise Tsuna, so I can't." Reborn told her bluntly, refusing her offer without a second thought.
Bianchi paused for a moment, before astonishingly, she began to tear up. "…Poor Reborn. Unless the Tenth dies in an accident, he'll never be free." she stated mournfully.
"Wha?" Tsuna turned to stone at the ridiculous train of thought, mouth open in sheer incredulity.
"I'll go home for now." Bianchi said, turning to leave. "But when the Tenth is murde- I mean dead, I'll come to bring you back again." she told Reborn, nonchalantly passing over her slip of the tongue.
"Huh? What the heck are you saying?" Tsuna was not so willing to ignore the fact that she almost said 'murdered'. Bianchi ignored him, and left the house without another word.
As soon as the pink-haired woman was gone, Lambo poked her head around the top of the stairs. "She's gone now?" she asked in a satisfied tone.
"And where were you when she was trying to kill me, oh Miss Bodyguard?" Tsuna finally blew up from the stress, as the three remaining people in the house moved back to his room.
"Avoiding Bianchi." Lambo stated bluntly as she sat down on his bed.
"I thought you were supposed to be protecting me from assassins, not hiding from them!" Tsuna yelled, his eye twitching in frustration.
"Bianchi's a special case. She hates my guts." Lambo told him plainly. "And the rest of me as well." she added thoughtfully. 'It'd be kind weird if anyone just hated the guts of a person… It'd be like, 'Your internal organs have offended me! Take them out so we may engage in a duel of honor!' …but then the person would die anyway. So maybe when they say 'hate his guts' it just means they hate the organs that are keeping him alive?'
"Who is Bianchi, anyway?" Tsuna asked, calming slightly at the thought of actually being informed.
"She's a freelance hitman call 'Poison Scorpion'." Reborn told him. "Her special skills is feeding people her poison cooking."
"Another weirdo has appeared!" Tsuna groaned in dismay as he clutched his forehead. "What is wrong with your world?" he then paused, thinking of something else. "But besides that," he pointed at Reborn, "she seems to favor you a lot."
Reborn smirked slightly. "Bianchi loves me. We went out at some point too."
"Wha?" Tsuna asked in astonishment. "So she was your girlfriend, then?" he said disbelievingly, looking at his tutor's extremely young body. 'Why would someone go out with a baby…? Isn't that illegal?'
"I'm popular with women." Reborn stated almost smugly. "Bianchi was my lover - my fourth one, to be exact." he held up four tiny fingers.
"Do you even know the meaning of the words you just said?" Tsuna shrieked in disbelief. He abruptly calmed, turning toward the other person in the room, who was now hugging his pillow. "But why does she hate you then? I mean, you're friends with Reborn, aren't you?"
Lambo's entire body seemed to twitch at a horrible memory. "…because she walked in on Reborn and me talking in a bar." she stated with forced calm, vigorously kneading at the pillow in her hands.
Tsuna blinked, not understanding at all. "So…?" How could something like that generate a hate of homicidal magnitude? 'And why were you two - a baby, and an under-aged girl - talking in a bar of all places…? Isn't that illegal, too?' he thought with a blank face.
"She thought I was trying to steal Reborn from her - the crazy broad!" Lambo abruptly shouted in annoyance, nearly ripping the poor pillow in half. "She didn't even stop to try and notice we were just talking - instead, she just started flinging poisonous garbage everywhere! I think she killed, like, fifteen bystanders!" 'Not to mention, that was the incident that made Iemitsu start with his stupid notion that I like Reborn!' she thought in irritation. 'Who takes the actions of a complete psycho like Bianchi as hard evidence toward a delusional theory like that?'
Tsuna stared blankly at his bodyguard. 'What.' Not only was he shocked at the incredibly stupid situation, he was surprised to see his normally unflappable bodyguard lose her composure and raise her voice. Even when she had been threatening to put live worms in his pillow case in order to force free things out of him, she had kept a calm, steady tone of voice. She must be really pissed with Bianchi.
"And now whenever that idiot sees me anywhere, she flies off the handle and goes on a rampage - flinging her crappy cooking in every direction! It's gotten so annoying that I just avoid her when I see her." Lambo lamented in a snarl. 'I mean, I thought what with me being female, the whole 'Ten-Years Later Lambo = Romeo' thing wouldn't happen…. But nooooo! Stupid Fate hates me! In fact, I think her reaction to me is even worse than it was to canon!Lambo!'
Tsuna seemed to regain his poise slightly. "But if my bodyguard is set on avoiding her, how am I going to survive her trying to kill me?" he asked desperately.
"Tsuna…" Reborn told him seriously. "All humans are creatures that will die one day."
"Don't act enlightened all of the sudden!" the middle-schooler yelled at him.
And to make matters worse, that night Tsuna found worms in his pillow, along with a note. It read - 'Since Bianchi is only in town because of you, I decided to do this anyway - It makes me feel better. - L.'
'Damn it.' Tsuna thought gloomily as he reluctantly hopped out of bed to change his pillow.
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The Next Day
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Lambo contentedly ate the breakfast that Nana had provided as she sat at the Sawada's kitchen table. She had been coming over for meals ever since she had started 'body-guarding' for Tsuna - it was nice to have home cooked meals after years of constantly moving for her bounty hunting. She always made sure to sneak a few bills into Nana's wallet when she could - because even though Nana was generous enough to not ask for anything in return for constantly feeding her, Lambo liked her enough to try not to cheat her out of any money. She knew for a fact, that once Reborn had arrived, Iemitsu had received a 'raise', allowing Nana to get the extra cash needed for feeding another mouth.
She looked up from her omelet and toast as Tsuna clumsily descended the stairs. She examined his form, and noticed he was practically radiating anxiety. Of course, in her opinion, the thought of Bianchi was enough to turn anyone's stomach.
"You know," she started to address him, "It's days like this that I'm glad I'm not in charge of your protection detail at Nami-Middle." she stated nonchalantly.
Tsuna looked up from his own plate and stared questioningly at her, cheeks full of rice. "Huh?" he mumbled through his mouthful.
"Bianchi is most definitely going to try to kill you today." Lambo told him casually with a smile, resting her head on her propped up hand. "and I won't have to be there for it."
Tsuna abruptly looked even more anxious - even slightly nauseous, despite the delicious food in his mouth, and swallowed with a reluctant gulp. He stared uneasily at his plate, before standing quickly from the table, shouting a farewell to his mother, and starting on his usual route to school.
Lambo smirked and continued eating. 'Of course, that doesn't mean I won't come to watch the show anyway.' she thought contentedly to herself.
'The thing is, despite the fact that she said that to scare me, she's probably right.' Tsuna thought apprehensively to himself. He cheered up slightly when his crush, Sawagawa Kyoko joined him on his walk to school - and actually talked to him!
"Good morning, Kyoko-chan!" he greeted nervously - though for once, it was a good kind of nervous. Lately, all he had been getting was the bad, so it was a nice change.
"Good morning, Tsuna-kun." she returned the greeting with a smile. "Today we're going to make rice balls in Home Economics, so I'm excited!"
"Ohh." Tsuna fumbled slightly, mentally searching for something else to say. His thoughts were interrupted by the scarily recognizable sound of a bike bell coming from behind him. He turned in terror only to confirm that Bianchi was pedaling up to the two middle-schoolers on her mommy bike.
"Those who interfere with someone else's love life should die covered in poison." was her bloodcurdling salutation. The Poison Scorpion pulled out a couple of eerily familiar cans, "Here you go." was all she said before biking away.
As Tsuna hurriedly batted away the two cans of poisonous juice tossed at him and his crush, he couldn't help but think the day would only go downhill from there.
Lambo - who was monitoring the situation with a pair of binoculars from a nearby rooftop - unknowingly agreed with his sentiment. After this day, Bianchi was going to become a regular fixture in the Sawada household, if things went according to the storyline, that is. That was bad. She hadn't just been saying stuff to freak Tsuna out earlier - Bianchi genuinely hated her; and living with someone out to murder you was not conducive to staying alive. Not to mention the fact that after having to constantly dodge the Poison Scorpion whenever in the same area - or just leave, or incapacitate her - Lambo pretty much hated her right back.
'This was another reason why I didn't really want to take this job.' she sighed, before hopping over the rooftops toward Namimori Middle.
"We'll give the rice balls that we made in Home Economics class to you boys!" all the girls in Tsuna's class declared, holding platters of three rice balls each. Many of them kept shooting glances at Gokudera, Lambo noticed from her perch on a school building opposite from the classroom window.
The boys went wild as they cheered.
Lambo watched with vigilant eyes as the events played out:
-Bianchi switched Kyoko's rice balls for a set of her own, poisonous onigiri.
-Kyoko offered Tsuna her rice balls - which would have been sweet, had they not been lethal to ingest.
-Tsuna dithered over whether to take the rice ball and suffer physically, or to disappoint Kyoko, and suffer emotionally.
-Tsuna's choice was taken out of his hands by his two 'subordinates', who each unknowingly reached to take a poisoned rice ball.
-Tsuna knocked the rice balls from their hands, giving the impression to his classmates that he was threatening them not to eat Kyoko's rice balls, instead of warning them off for their health. (Though since Kyoko was so dense, she still didn't take it as a sign that Tsuna liked her)
-Reborn shot Tsuna with a Dying Will Bullet - in reward for protecting his Family members - as well as an additional one, aimed at his stomach, which allowed him to eat Bianchi's cooking without having something horrible happen to him.
-Tsuna proceeded to eat the poisoned rice balls - along with every other rice ball in the classroom, causing Bianchi to slink off in defeat upon seeing her technique didn't succeed in killing the Tenth.
Lambo sat back and sighed, lowering the binoculars from her eyes. 'Well, at least everything went according to the story - despite the story kind of ticking me off.' she thought to herself. 'I just wish I knew what to do when Bianchi starts hanging around permanently. I don't want Nana's house to be destroyed any more than it usually is.'
After brooding over the matter for a few minutes, Lambo gave it up as impossible for the moment. 'I'm going to go ask Nana to make me some Earl Grey.' she thought decisively. 'And maybe a dessert or five. I need comfort food.'
However, before she could even begin to imagine the kind of drool-inducing goodies her friend could create, she was interrupted by someone speaking to her from the entrance of the roof.
"You are trespassing on Nami-Middle territory." a low, oddly familiar voice pronounced from behind her.
She twisted her head to look behind her, and to her utter disbelief, saw a certain Head Prefect, jacket draped around his shoulders like a cape, whipping out a pair of tonfa, and settling into an offensive stance.
"For that, I will bite you to death." Hibari Kyoya stated, a bloodthirsty glint shining in his narrow eyes.
'Oh come on!' she grumbled mentally, hands swiftly depositing her binoculars into a pocket. 'When I don't really want the story to go on as in canon - like with Bianchi - it does. But then when something different does end up happening, it has to be something like this?'
She sighed mentally, eyeing the strongest fighter in Namimori Middle School. 'Oh well, nothing I can do about it.' she resigned herself to a fight, reaching for the ever-present Meteor Hammer wrapped around her waist under her shirt. A grudgingly excited glint appeared in her own eyes. 'I suppose I could use a workout anyway. And Hibari will be a good measure of my strength level.'
Hibari observed the new prey in front of him. She moved like a well-oiled machine, and handled her weapon with the ease of constant, extensive use. He felt a hint of intrigue accompanying the usual anticipation of beating someone. This might actually be interesting.