08

Tsuna tried to concentrate on his homework in front of him. The words started mingling and swirling after a while but he got most of it done. That surprised him a little. However, if you've got a baby hitman threatening to blow up bombs if you don't finish your homework on time then you'd probably be surprised at what you can achieve.

Pressure makes diamonds.

Tsuna just wished Reborn would find some other coal to transform. Also, it didn't help that there were so many distractions going on around him. For instance, there was a cow outside his window.

There was a damn cow outside his window.

Tsuna sighed. He was way too tired for this. Somehow he felt that algebra drained his energy more than running a few dozen laps around the neighborhood. While Reborn checked his work, he opened the window, then was met with the face of a human child.

"Long time no see, Reborn!" it yelled.

Correction. There was a child dressed like a cow outside his window. His hair was puffy, large, and decorated with two short horns. The black and white onesie even had a tail. And apparently he knew Reborn.

Of course he knew Reborn.

Tsuna watched as the black haired and green-eyed boy jumped into his room with a gun in hand. He aimed it at Reborn and pulled the trigger but nothing came out. Confused, he looked down at the gun then chucked it at Reborn.

"Die!"

"You made a mistake here, Dame-Tsuna." Reborn pointed to a question as he casually returned the gun. By throwing it directly onto the other young child's head with enough force that it knocked the kid backwards.

Tsuna felt his heart skip a beat when the child crashed into the wall. Hard.

Only, the strange child didn't cry. He had tears in his eyes as he bent on the ground with his hands over his head. "Tolerate!"

He stood up. There was fire in his watery eyes as he faced Reborn again. "I am the great Lambo! Five years old and from the Bovino famiglia. My favorite foods are grapes and candies. By the boss's order, I am here to take you down!"

Then he ran towards the hitman with some kind of stun gun in hand. Blue electricity sparked everywhere. Tsuna thought he even saw the kid's horns charging up with electricity.

"Are you listening, Tsuna? You should use this equation here." Reborn smacked the child, causing him to roll to the side. The kid flew face first into the wall again, causing a small rumble to rock through the room. Tsuna held a hand to his face and cringed.

That must have hurt.

And he could see it in the child, Lambo's, eyes. His features were twisted as he bit on his bottom lip. His whole body was trembling, shaking as if he was trying to hold the pain in. Tsuna couldn't understand a single word Lambo was mumbling under his breath but it was probably something along the lines of "can't cry" and "Idiot Reborn".

"T-Tolerate!" But whatever pep talk he was giving himself didn't work. The child burst out in tears as he sat on the ground and he fished out a hand grenade from his hair.

A hand grenade.

With Reborn being the first example, there was no way Tsuna would think that hand grenade was fake.

Tsuna swore silently and raced over, wrestling the hazardous weapon out of the kid's hands and threw that horrendous thing out the window at full force. It exploded in the air, resulting in a cloud of ashes and smoke.

Meanwhile, Lambo still wept on the ground like a lost puppy.

"Hey, Lambo right?" Tsuna picked the crying child up and patted him on the back instinctively. "It's alright now. It doesn't look like it's a good time for you to be killing Reborn right now, so why don't we stop crying and go find some candy?"

"Candy?" he questioned through sobs and hiccups.

Tsuna wiped the snot and tears from his face with a tissue and headed towards the door. "Yeah, but no killing or lethal weapons during snack time, ok? Think you can do it?"

There was struggle on the kid's face as he glanced over Tsuna's shoulder at Reborn.

"We won't give Reborn any," Tsuna promised. He didn't think the hitman would care either. Reborn was always more of an espresso type of person.

"Ok!"

#

Even if he was small, Lambo was a very persistent killer.

Now, he didn't say he was a good one. He was just a very determined one.

Tsuna had tried to get the kid to go back to where he came from. Even offered to call his parents or guardians and take him to the airport but the responses were not great.

"Lambo is the greatest killer in the world! I don't want to leave until I killed Reborn." The kid would run away then, dodging Tsuna's attempts to capture him while littering a bunch of totally illegal stuff on the floor.

It took only five minutes to figure out that Lambo was much harder to deal with than Megumi and Tsumiki combined. And that was after he factored in Toji-san's occasional interference.

While the Fushiguro kids were quiet and well-behaved, Lambo was a ball of energy wreaking havoc everywhere he went. It didn't help that he seemed to be in a one-sided feud with Reborn. They "fought" constantly. Well, it might be better to describe it as Lambo throwing some kind of dangerous weapon at Reborn then getting hit by the hitman and going off crying. Repeat that cycle a few more times and you'd get the idea.

Usually Reborn ignored Lambo's advances. To put it in his words was that he "didn't associate with those of a lower rank than him".

But the more Tsuna watched the two interact, the more he started to question if all the mafia were terrible with children.

Even worse than Toji-san.

True, he will admit that Toji-san wasn't a stellar and model caretaker but at least the man never let him handle dangerous or sharp objects unsupervised. But Lambo...he could dig out a number of completely illegal and definitely not child-proof objects from his hair as if they weresupposed to be there like another hair clip. Knives, missiles, hand grenades, guns...all sorts of firearms that aren't safe for a child to carry around.

"Lambo! Put the gun down." Tsuna swapped the gun with a plate of breakfast. "Mama made the eggs extra sweet today just for you. If you don't eat it now it's going to get cold. You don't want to waste her hard work right?"

"Mama's cooking is the best!" The kid yelled happily as he dug in, completely forgot about his master plans to kill Reborn for the moment.

"You're awfully good with children," Reborn commented with a strange look. "Did you plan to make a career out of it?"

"No," Tsuna didn't think he was cut out to deal with a dozen children for eight hours a day and five days a week. "Maybe I just look good in comparison because you all are doing a lousy job."

He'd start losing faith in humanity if all the mafia were irresponsible adults like whoever raised Lambo to this point in life.

"What are you wearing anyways?" he asked the baby hitman, who was dressed more like a mad scientist. He had the white coat and the freakish hair that defied gravity.

"A good shock cures everything," Reborn said while taking out what looked like a more horrifying version of AEDs. The two pads in his hands were gigantic and they were wired to a metallic machine that beeps as if it was going to explode. "Even nosy children."

Somehow, he had tied Lambo down within seconds without Tsuna even noticing.

"Reborn!" Tsuna stepped in between him and Lambo.

He got it. He really did. He knew there were certain sacrifices to be made when you were trying to raise strong children. The jujutsu sorcerers let teenagers face off cursed spirits for god's sake and the death rate wasn't pretty no matter how hard you squint at it.

But this was going way too far.

He held his arms across his chest. "Let me be clear. You can't just smack a child around like he's a volleyball or basketball. I don't care how he was raised or if there's a general tradition within the mafia that you have to treat your kids like shit. There are no classes or ranks here. I don't care if you've got royal mafia blood in you or whatnot and I certainly don't give a damn what you think is normal education. None of that bullshit is happening in this house, you hear me?"

The hitman stared up at him with an unreadable look. "For someone that supposedly has no backbone, you stand up for some pretty unconventional things."

"It's not unconventional to care for the safety of children." he answered coldly.

"Spoiling the children too much will make them weak. They won't be proper members of the mafia."

To which, Tsuna only scoffed. "If you need children to fight your battles, then you mafia are the ones that have a problem."

Reborn packed his torture machines away. He tugged on the front of his lab coat then looked at Tsuna. "Tsuna feels like a mother right now."

"I will be anything if that means you'd back off. I am not part of the mafia so I don't have to play by your rules."

Speaking of which, he remembered that Nana had dressed him up as a girl before. It was probably a common trend for mothers with young sons and no daughters. It had been a white dress with lace hems, the sleeves were short, and an orange bow tied everything together at his back. He didn't mind wearing dresses or putting on makeup if it made his mom happy. Toji-san had a real good laugh when he first saw it though.

"Oh come on," the teen had said while trying to calm down from laughing so hard when he saw Tsuna pouting. "Think of it as a disguise. Let's go have some fun with it."

And he was right. It had been a disguise and disguises are only good when they made sure no one can ever connect two and two together. No one thought he was out of place on the streets or even questioned his gender. Nana did a real fantastic job.

Faceless men in suits would approach him. Tsuna didn't really understand what they wanted back then but they would praise and gush at him.

Until Toji-san broke their limbs that was.

The adults would scream, scrambling away on all fours as they begged for forgiveness. They'd roll on the ground without a shred of dignity, howling, sobbing, and blabbering about the pain. Toji-san took their wallets and handed them off to Tsuna, who stood in the dark alley as he watched the blood splattered onto the concrete and teeth flying through the air.

"Why did you hurt them?" he asked when Toji-san picked him up from the ground. There was some blood on the teen's face so Tsuna wiped it away with the handkerchief Nana packed into his bag.

"Because they were doing something bad."

"But all they did was tell me I looked pretty." And they offered him candies or money if he smiled.

Toji grinned. "Not all bad guys say mean things and not all pain has to come from a knife or fist. Sometimes, they are disguised as nice and sweet things."

"Like Snow White's poison apple?"

"Exactly."

They went to get takoyaki afterwards.

He sighed, shaking the memory out of his head then started untying Lambo. "Let's get you out of these."

When the kid was free, Lambo looked like he was about to cry again.

"Tolerate! Can't—Can't do it!"

He pulled out a—Tsuna wasn't sure what it was. A canon? A bazooka? Then Lambo aimed it at himself.

"Wait, Lambo! What are you—"

A puff of pink smoke filled the room as the trigger went off. Tsuna raised his hands to his eyes to protect them from the strong force of air radiating out.

When the smoke dispersed, there was a stylishly dressed teen standing in the middle of the living room. He had soft black hair and green eyes that looked like they were in a haze for a moment. This strange teen looked around the room then focused on Tsuna.

"Oh? Young Vongola," the teen greeted with one eye shut. "Ah, so that's how it is...It's been a while. Thanks for taking care of me 10 years ago."

"...Lambo?" He wasn't sure. But he has seen crazier shit go down in a cursed spirit's domain. "That bazooka...?"

Lambo nodded. "The person shot with the 10 years bazooka switches places with their ten years older future self for five minutes."

"That is wow." He didn't know what else to say. He didn't know technology was so advanced already.

Older Lambo surveyed the room. "This brings back memories..." Then his eyes found Reborn.

"Reborn!" His demeanor changed. More focused and filled with a sort of seriousness that Tsuna would never have expected from the crying child moments ago. "I'm not the crybaby I used to be anymore. Face me properly one-on-one. I will surely defeat you this time!"

"It's time for my appointment." Reborn noted as he glanced at the watch around his wrist. "I will come back tomorrow morning. Before that, don't forget to finish all your homework, Tsuna. I will check it when I come back."

Lambo was flustered in the face as he was being ignored. "Why you Reborn—"

Then Lambo stopped. His face twisted into something halfway between a frown and a goofy grin. "You know what? Forget it. It's not worth it. Good luck Reborn, you are so going to need it."

The way he said that made both of them turned to face him. It was a mix between excitement and total chaos...which probably couldn't mean anything good.

Only, the teen locked his lips as if he was pulling up a zipper.

"Oh and yong Vongola," he said while leaning in close. There was something heavier swimming in those emerald ponds of his, something Tsuna didn't quite know how to place yet. "It won't hurt to drop some of the burdens on your shoulder. Not everything that's been forced into your hands is your responsibility."

With that, he disappeared into a puff of pink smoke. The younger Lambo was back and the kid landed in Tsuna's arms.

"Tsuna! I want candies!" he demanded cheerfully. He looked completely unaware that he had just been sent to the future. Tsuna only nodded, his thoughts still lingering on what older Lambo had said.

What had he meant by that?

Whatever it was, he hoped it had absolutely nothing to do with the Fushiguros.