Title: When Lightning Strikes Twice
Author: PowerHouseoftheCell
Summary: When Lambo Bovino, a 25 year-old at the end of his rope, threw that grenade, this was definitely not what he expected. Time Travel. No Pairings.
Disclaimer: I do not own KHR in any way, shape, or form.
Author's Note: Quite a few things occurred, and I needed to put this little project on the backburner. Anyways, I think I'll be able to finish this up within one or two chapters. Probably next chapter, who knows? My writing style has developed so much that looking back at the earlier chapters is kinda embarrassing.
And I'm very sad that none of you wished this story a happy birthday. :( I updated specifically on the 27th. Nobody noticed.
I digress. The poll for the very last chapter after the chapter is up. PLEASE VOTE. The last one was pretty fun, so let's see what'll turn up this time, hmm?
OoO
Daemon waited impatiently for the others to catch up, ignoring the guard stationed by the door. They filed out, one by one, looking a bit peculiar in different ways. Knuckle was shaky, Giotto and Asari were stern, and Lampo looked reluctant and frightened. He immediately pinpointed the perpetrator of their states.
"What did you do?" he asked the Lightning Guardian, promising murder with his eyes even if his tone was pleasant.
The aristocrat shrank back immediately at his tone, cowering under the additional eyes of the others. His tone was… unsettled, lacking its usual bluster and arrogance, when he spoke. "I was talking with Lambo about… some stuff and he just- he just passed out." Daemon realized, with a start that was overwhelmed by anger and curiosity, that Lampo had both of his eyes in full view.
"Lampo," Knuckle said, his voice as hard as stone yet as unsteady as a landslide. "You brought me there to heal him, and he did not just pass out. What. Happened?"
The greenet swallowed and kept his eyes studying the carpet for answers, or some organization for his thoughts. They kept twisting and turning over one another, focusing on one subject only to leap to another before they finished looking at the other.
"Lampo," Giotto said gently. "What happened?"
Lampo's face hardened and aged, eyes shadowed. "…I was talking to him about my f-father."
"Why, if I may ask? You are usually quite tight-lipped about him," Asari said inquisitively.
The young man mumbled inaudibly.
"Pardon?"
"I said." Lampo looked up, eyes flashing with anger and shining with unshed tears. "He's dead!" He panted heavily in the shocked silence that followed his scream. The servants in the surrounding area quietly snuck away. They knew that this was private business, and they respected Giotto enough to leave well enough alone.
Their blond leader began to put a consoling arm on Lampo, but his Hyper Intuition flashed.
This is not the end of it, it seemed to warn.
Meanwhile, Knuckle started putting the pieces together. The location, the topic, the unsettledness. He prayed to God that he had done it incorrectly, because the picture it painted was not a pretty one.
"I don't suppose," he said tiredly. "That you got this information in a letter and that was where you had been reading it."
Giotto's amber eyes widened in horrified realization. Let it not be said that Knuckle has no powers of observation, he thought.
"No," Lampo murmured. He closed his eyes in prepare for the verbal slaughter to come. "I... went into the interrogation room."
"You what," Daemon hissed.
The Lightning Guardian glared at him defensively. "She knew information about me! I needed to know where."
"Then you should've told the interrogator," Daemon said, glaring right back with ten times the force, all pretenses of calm thrown off. "Did you even get the information?"
Lampo's eyes widened. "I… I… Of course I did!" he lied despite himself, too apprehensive about his punishment to tell the truth.
"No, you didn't," the illusionist snapped. "You got so sidetracked by the information she fed you- despite the fact that there was no proof- that you lost sight of your goal. You let her get to you, and that is why no one else but trained interrogators are supposed to be in there! And let me guess, you were so ready to believe her story that you were going to punish her for it.
"But I won't be the one to punish you for this transgression." The greenet's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "I'll let Alaude do it so that you will never dare to set foot in that room again."
Lampo let out a few words that he had learned from G, then eyed the doors lining the hallway as if they would jump out and attack him. After all, no one ever knew where Alaude was if he wasn't in front of your very eyes.
Asari watched this all with a smile. Daemon's method of comforting (cruel words with kind ones cleverly inserted between them, then a threat to take the mind off of gnarled emotions) was odd at best, but it was certainly effective.
Seeing that it was time to intervene before Lampo tried to attack the Mist Guardian, Asari placidly placed a hand on Lampo's shoulder. "Now, now, we've certainly kept Lambo waiting long enough. Why don't we continue on our way, hmm?" He steered the protesting man away from the smirking one, and they restarted their trek to the infirmary.
Once they reached their destination, they discovered that Lambo was, in fact, waiting for them. His hands were fisted in the sheets, and his leg bounced up and down. It was the most expressive they had seen him in his entire stay.
As soon as they entered, his gaze settled on them, still with only one eye- here Lampo's own pair of eyes widened as he realized that both of his were open; he hurriedly closed one of them, too quick to be anything but intentional.
In contrast to Lampo's fumbling, Lambo's gaze was heavy and steady, weighing their worth on some unfathomable scale. Finally, after what felt like ten years, he shut his assessing eye. When he reopened it, it was just as heavy and just as steady (if not more so), but there was also an element of bone-deep exhaustion.
"I," he began. "Have not been entirely truthful with you, as you could probably guess. About my past, about my family, about why I'm here. Before you jump to any conclusions, I should say that I did not attempt to end up here, and I wouldn't dream of hurting any of you. Despite what may or may not happen." The last bit seemed to be muttered to himself, and the Guardians that were gathered shared confused looks.
"None of this will sound in the least bit believable," he warned. "All I ask is that you give me the courtesy of finishing everything before you begin interjecting. I'm probably going to sound crazy when I finish, but there really isn't much time…
"Anyways, I'll be starting at the beginning, because otherwise this will make no sense whatsoever." He cleared his throat.
"My name is Lambo Bovino, and I was born on May 28, 1998."
They stared at him, incredulous. 1998 was more than a century from now! The man in front of them waited slightly impatiently as they processed this in their minds. "That's impossible! You're insane!" Daemon finally cried, frustrated with the silence. But the illusionist knew as soon as the words exited his mouth that he was wrong, but what other than madness could cause this seemingly sane man in front of them to spew such nonsense?
The infirmed brunet sighed, despite knowing that this would most likely be the reaction. He turned to Vongola Primo and asked quite plainly, "Am I lying?"
"…no. No, you're not," the blond whispered, his voice louder than thunder in the heavy, tension-filled silence.
"It's impossible, Giotto! Are you absolutely sure?" The boss nodded incredulously. None of them could wrap their mind around such a preposterous idea.
"It could be that he simply believes that he is telling the truth," Asari suggested.
"No," Knuckle said reluctantly, unbelieving of the words even with the sight in Lambo's head. "Hyper Intuition senses absolute truth, remember? Otherwise it would've given Giotto a sign."
Lambo sighed. "If you're done discussing my state of my mind right in front of me, I'll finish my explanation." He paused, searching for the right words to convince them. "Humanity can go pretty far in a hundred years. We've developed cars, a plumbing system, internet, and, if you believe me, time travel."
The First Generation collectively blinked. "We have no idea what those other things are," Daemon muttered. He was too incredulous to think of a more intelligent quip.
"…right, we're getting off track.
"I was born into a very science oriented famiglia, and we created something called a Ten Year Bazooka. It allowed the user to be switched with a version of themselves from ten years in the future. We tinkered with it throughout the years, but that's as far as we went safely.
"However, the familythat I joined later was not deterred. They created a set of hand grenades to be used instead of the bazooka, but they didn't exactly… work out. The lab rats never came back no matter what we did, so the project was scrapped and most of the grenades were thrown out.
"I kept one for… reasons. About ten years later, I got desperate and used it. Instead of ten years into the future, I was transported here. You know the rest."
"You're still not telling us everything." Everyone turned to Knuckle in surprise. He was trembling slightly, his normally exuberant gaze directed to the floor.
"I'm can't tell you everything. Disrupting timelines can get… messy, for lack of better word."
"What about that voice in your head?" The priest raised his face to Lambo, his eyes burning.
"Voice?" Suddenly, the time traveler shot up. "What were you doing in my head?!" He sounded truly enraged, and the air crackled with electricity.
The group took a few steps back, but Knuckle stayed right where he was.
"How dare you?" the future Lightning Guardian continued in a low, dangerous voice. "How dare you violate something so sacrosanct without my permission?"
Never one to back down, Knuckle said, "I needed to find out what happened. I'd rather have someone living hate me than someone dead like me."
The scent of burning cloth filled the air from where his hands were fisted in the crisp sheets. "You had no right."
"I stand by my decision to the ultimate."
The brunets stared each other down. Then, finally, Lambo took deep, calming breath, forcefully detaching his fingers from the sheets one by one. "You are lucky," he muttered bitterly. "That you didn't find anything else.
"What was the voice like, since I wasn't awake enough to hear it?"
Knuckle spoke despite the lingering fear in his system. "It was ancient. Powerful. I felt… awestruck. I couldn't speak, couldn't move from my position. It wasn't speaking Italian, but I still knew what it was saying."
"What did it say?"
Knuckle reached into the dregs of his memory, thinking long and hard. His eyes widened. "Something about restoring balance… But Giotto, it mentioned the Tri-Ni-Sette."
Giotto let out a little gasp. "No…" he whispered. "It can't be."
Lambo grimaced. "This must be because I went too far back. I'm meddling in places where I shouldn't be, taken a road that was blocked for a reason. I've upset the balance; that's what it must be talking about."
"Wait. You know what the Tri-Ni-Sette is?"
The Bovino snorted absentmindedly, thoughts drifting away from the conversation and more towards trying to figure out what this would mean for himself. "Of course I do. I was a member of it, now-" He rapidly paled once he realized what he had said.
Then he let out a long, angry list of explicates in Japanese, making Asari wince minutely and color a bit.
"Explain," Giotto ordered.
"I suppose I have to, now." He scrubbed a hand across his face, somehow managing to look even more exhausted and world-weary.
"In the future, I am- was the Tenth Generation Lightning Guardian."
Silence reigned.
"Well, that explains a lot," Lampo sighed. At the others' strange looks, he defended himself, saying, "What? It does!"
"Like what?" Daemon drawled disbelievingly.
"Why he helped me, how unsurprised he was with the whole mafia thing, how he always seemed to know where he was going, the especially trained Lightning Flames?"
The First Generation began to argue amongst themselves as they were wont to do. Meanwhile, Lambo fought off another headache pounding at his temples.
Knuckle, as if suddenly remembering his initial question, cleared his throat loudly. "Lambo. The voice…"
"My, my. I'd hoped you'd forgotten that." He leaned back against the headboard. "That… I'm not entirely sure, but I have a theory.
"You remember the person who gave you the rings? The manager of the Tri-Ni-Sette? I believe she is restoring the balance, regardless of how-" His mouth twisted. "Unbalanced it was in the future." If he noticed their questioning looks, he ignored them.
OoO
After they left, Lambo's headache increased tenfold. He closed his eye against the suddenly too bright lights and shut his ears against the amplified volume of the bustling hallway outside.
Ignore the pain. Block it, he told himself. But regardless of how much he tried to separate himself from the sensations, they persisted until he finally, silently, submitted to lying in absolute stillness and trying to focus on anything else.
"-seriously going to give up your life for-"
His eyes shot open, feral and hate-filled, and he began shaking with rage. He knew that voice, knew it from his nightmares, knew it from the way it had laughed (true, honest to God fucking amused laughter) when he had shot Tsuna in the chest-
Byakuran.
What was it doing there? What did Knuckle do to his head?
It's not his fault, he reminded himself. This has happened before, with- with Tsuna.
"What's going on?" he whispered to himself. He had gone through hell. He had lost everyone he loved and he had foughtranlived despite it.
He was not scared of many things.
But right now?
He was terrified.
There was something bigger at play here, something much more powerful and much more dangerous than some little time travelling device malfunction. It was able to mess with his mind, able to push and prod and squeeze and drain his flames so they weren't regenerating.
He knew somehow that his previous theory was wrong.
What is it?
What is at stake here?
What is going on?
OoO
In another world, Yuni held the pacifiers close to her heart.