From Mafioso to Pirate

Chapter 3: Mafioso Meets Pirate

XXX

Despite his assurance to Fuuta, it took Lambo no more than fifteen minutes to find himself in some trouble.

He was just walking around, seeing the sights and minding his own business, when he found himself in a secluded part of th town. Turning around, he began to walk back the way he came when he found the path blocked by three unpleasant-looking individuals.

"Yare, yare, do you need something?" Lambo asked, arching an eyebrow.

One of the men, a rather rugged-looking one with dirty brown hair and a long scar near his right eye, smirked at him. "Hey, kid, we saw that other guy give you a bag full of cash, is that right?"

Lambo's eyes narrowed, realizing that they were talking about Fuuta. 'A mugging, huh?'

One of the other men, a tanned, blonde man, pulled out a sword, pointing it towards him. "You'll hand that over to us if you know what's good for you," he snarled.

"Yeah, I don't think so," Lambo answered flatly, moving to walk past them. He may be the weakest of the guardians, but even he could take care of a few lowly thugs. This was nothing to be scared of.

"What was that?!" The third man, a big, bald guy, shouted as he and the others pulled out their own swords. "Do you have any idea what kind of situation you're in right now?!"

"Yare, yare," Lambo muttered, giving them his signature bored look with one eye closed. "I really don't want to deal with this. I'm supposed to be on vacation, you know?"

"Like we give a damn!" The scarred man, who seemed to be the ringleader of the group, exclaimed. "I-If you won't give us that money, then we'll take it from your corpse!"

Lambo arched an eyebrow. Did that guy just stutter? That was certainly strange. "You know, stuttering doesn't exactly make you look more threatening."

"That's it! Get him!" Ringleader, as Lambo had taken to temporarily calling him, shouted. And with that, he lunged at the young boy, the blonde and bald men, who Lambo decided to nickname Blondie and Baldie respectively, following suite.

Lambo's eyes narrowed as his Dying Will Flames started to crackle around his right hand, casting an emerald green light around it.

When it came to combat ability, he was severely behind the other guardians, as they never let him near any of their weapons and never offered to train him with them either. Dying Will Flames were something that they had no way of taking away from him, though. And although he was nowhere near their level when using said flames (since he lacked a proper teacher and all), he would still like to think that he could take care of a few muggers.

"Wh-What the?!" Blondie shouted as they all froze, staring at the electricity-like flames with a mix of shock, fear, and wonder. "What the hell is that?!"

"I-It's probably just some trick or something!" Ringleader shouted at them, though his tone was uncertain. "We need that money, remember?!"

"R-Right!" Baldy and Blondie shouted as the three raised their swords and ran for him.

'Right, I may be the weakest of the guardians,' Lambo thought as his flames became larger and brighter. 'But I'll prove that I can take care of myself!'

Meanwhile, a few blocks down from the secluded area where the Lightning Guardian's fight was taking place, two newcomers to Shells Town were walking down the same path he had.

"Hey, Luffy-san," the shorter of the two whined. He was rather short for his age and had short pink hair, large blue-rimmed glasses, and wore a white and blue shirt and plain black pants. "Please, just forget about getting Zoro to join your crew!"

The second person was a boy with dark black hair covered by a straw hat and a scar under one of his eyes. He was dressed in a sleeveless red vest, blue shorts, and a pair of sandals. He grinned in response to his friend's statement. "I haven't decided yet. I have to see if he's a good guy!"

"He was arrested because he's a bad guy!" The pink-haired boy shouted at him incredulously.

"I wonder if that Zoro guy is inside the base," the other boy, Luffy, continued on as if he hadn't heard him.

The effect was instantaneous. Everyone within hearing range paled as soon as that name left his lips. Both boys looked around in confusion as everyone backed away from them, looking terrified.

"I think it might be best if we don't mention Zoro's name around here," the pink-haired boy whispered to his companion, who just looked around in confusion.

"Eh?" Luffy mumbled as the smaller boy pushed him forward and they both walked far away from the scared and staring townspeople. "Well, whatever. Let's go to the Marine base. You wanna join them, right Coby?"

"Y-Yes, but I'm not sure I'm ready," the pink-haired boy, Coby, said, hurrying after Luffy as the other started walking off again. "I've heard that Captain Morgan is in command of this base."

And, just as had happened before, everyone in the area jumped away from them, positively terrified.

"Hahahaha! What a funny town!" Luffy laughed in response to their strange reactions as he and Coby continued on their way.

"This is weird, though!" Coby said worriedly, glancing back from time to time at the townspeople, who were still watching them warily. "I can understand being scared of Zoro, but why would they be scared of a Marine captain?"

"Maybe they just act like that for fun?" Luffy responded before something suddenly caught his attention, causing him to stop.

"Don't be ridiculous!" Coby shouted at him in irritation. He walked a couple more feet before stopping when he realized that Luffy wasn't following after him. He turned to see that the other was staring off towards a nearby gap between two buildings, which probably led to a dead end. "What's wrong, Luffy-san?"

"I hear something weird," the hat-wearing boy muttered, frowning.

"Really?" The smaller boy frowned and walked over to him before closing his eyes and trying to listen for whatever the other was hearing. "...Oh, I hear it too now! It sounds kind of like...electricity? That's strange... What do you think it is, Luffy-san? ...Luffy-san?"

There was no response. Coby opened his eyes back up only for them to widen when he realized that Luffy was no longer standing next to him. Panicking, he looked around wildly before quickly spotting him jogging over to the area where the strange noise was coming from.

"L-Luffy-san! Wait for me!"

Lambo easily sidestepped the three men as they lunged at him with their swords, his reflexes honed from all the years of dodging the bombs Gokudera threw at him whenever he made him angry.

Before the three could turn around, Lambo sent forth a current of his Lightning Flames towards them, hitting them each directly. The men howled in pain as the electricity shocked them for several moments before finally subsiding, leaving them falling towards the floor, smoking and unconscious.

"Well, that was...easy," Lambo muttered, looking down at them and sweatdropping. Considering this was his first real fight, he was expecting it to be a bit tougher than this. Either he was stronger than he thought, or these guys were complete weaklings. 'Second option. Definitely the second option,' he thought with a sigh, having no self-confidence to speak of. 'I bet the others wouldn't even need to use their flames to take these guys out... Still, that was weird, though. They hesitated at the last moment, almost like they didn't want to hurt me... Oh, I should probably check if they're okay.'

Quickly walking over to them, he checked each of their pulses before making sure that he didn't do any lasting damage to them. Even if they were just a couple of low-life muggers, he didn't want to seriously hurt them. They were technically civilians, after all, plus Tsuna had taught him from an early age that life was a precious thing.

"It looks like they're okay," he said in relief. "I should probably leave before they wake up, though..."

Turning around, he only managed to take two steps before freezing. Standing in front of him were two boys staring at him.

One of them was a short boy with pink hair who was staring at him with wide eyes, fear clear in them. The second one, a guy in a straw hat, was also staring at him with wide eyes. But instead of fear, they held wonder and child-like excitement. Lambo blinked at them and opened his mouth to say something when the straw-hat-wearing boy beat him to it.

"WHOA!" He shouted, all but jumping towards him. "That was so cool!"

Lambo could only blink and stare as the boy rushed over to him, the other one hesitantly following, looking at Lambo warily.

Now standing in front of him, the straw hat boy grinned widely and all but shouted, "I don't know who you are, but you've definitely gotta join my crew!"

"Crew?" Lambo asked, tilting his head in confusion. He knew that he should be wary, but this boy seemed harmless enough. And, considering his reaction at seeing Lambo's Dying Will Flames, he probably wasn't part of any Mafia family.

"Luffy-san, you can't just go around asking random people to join your crew!" The pink-haired boy shouted at the other boy, whose name Lambo now knew was Luffy. "Besides, this guy might be dangerous! Just look at what he did to those poor people!" He pointed at the three unconscious individuals with a trembling finger.

"Yare, yare, it's their own fault for trying to rob me," Lambo muttered. "Besides, I made sure not to seriously hurt them."

"O-Oh," the pink-haired boy said, surprise on his face. "S-Sorry, I just assumed..."

Luffy grinned at Lambo's statement. "So you're a good guy, then? Great! I really want you to join my crew now!"

Lambo sweatdropped at the boy's enthusiasm. He really just wanted to get out of here and get these three weeks over with. "What 'crew' are you talking about exactly?"

"My pirate crew!" Luffy replied as if it were obvious. "I'm Monkey D. Luffy, and I'm gonna be Pirate King!"

'What a bizarre name...' The cow-clad boy thought to himself before his eyes widened when he processed the rest of that statement. "Wait, Pirate King?!" He shouted, his nonchalant demeanor disappearing.

"So how did you do that anyway?" Luffy continued, ignoring his shock. "It was really, really cool!"

Lambo, in turn, ignored the boy's questions and turned to the other one. "Hey, is he serious? About becoming Pirate King?"

"Y-Yeah. I couldn't believe it either when he first said it... I-I'm Coby, by the way, and you are?"

"...Lambo," he answered, choosing not to give his last name. You can never be too careful, after all.

"Lambo? What a funny name!" Luffy remarked, laughing good naturedly.

"Look who's talking!" Lambo shouted back before sighing. "And, no, I'm not becoming a pirate."

Luffy's face immediately fell. "What? Why?"

"Why would anyone want to be a pirate? They're basically like these guys, except in the sea!" The cow-clad boy remarked, jabbing his thumb in the direction of the unconscious men.

"Hey, not all of them are like that! And I don't really care about money, I just wanna go on lots of adventures and find One Piece! So come with me, already!"

"I said no."

"I don't care. I've decided that I want you in my crew, and that's that!"

"No means no, dammit!" Lambo shouted, his calm demeanor completely gone at this point as he started to speed walk away from them. But, as Lambo would no doubt learn in the future, when Luffy wanted something, he usually got it.

"Hey, come on! I need a strong crew if I wanna go to the Grand Line, and you seem like you're pretty strong!"

Lambo froze in mid-step. Slowly, he turned back around to face Luffy. "...You think I'm strong?"

Luffy tilted his head to the side. "Well, yeah. I mean, not just anyone can do what you just did, right?"

The other boy scoffed at that. "The rest of my family can do the same thing," he said bitterly, glaring at the ground. "I'm a weakling compared to them... Go ask somebody else."

Luffy frowned at the expression the other made when talking about his family. He wasn't sure what made the other boy look so depressed when talking about them, but he decided that he didn't like it one bit.

Lambo seemed to take his silence as a sign to walk away, but the straw-hat boy quickly walked after him, Coby hurrying along.

"I'm going to make you part of my crew, no matter what you say!"

TO BE CONTINUED