Gah. GAH.
I'd like to say that the delay was due to a lack of free time (which initially, it was), but actually I think it may have been due to a surplus. I love vacation time as much as anyone else, but at least the school year has structure…discipline is not my strong suit.
And ff net took away my precious dashes! WHERE HAVE THEY GONE? Geez, I had to go back and edit all seven of the previous chapters so there were actual dividers again, so if anyone got a ridiculous number of notices about chapters eight or nine…that would be why. For things like that bother me deeply.
Due to this long delay, I have finally posted a double-whammy! Reborn was ridiculously in the lead, anyway.
Reviewers! You are awesome. And patient. And much deserving of thanks. So…THANK YOU! (Someday, I will respond to things. When I am less frazzled. Maybe. But in the meantime, you all remain awesome.)
And now, at long last, Lambo!
Lambo
1.
Lambo's devotion to Tsuna, unlike the others, comes not from the fact that he respects the man Tsuna has become, but because he knows his boss started out as just as big a loser as he did.
2.
Lambo would be just as efficient a fighter as I-Pin, if not more so, if it weren't for the unfortunate fact that he possesses the attention span and discipline of an average five-year-old, and the self-esteem of a salted slug. The vast difference in skill between his fifteen-year-old self and hers continues to be due to self-esteem issues—in no small part the fault of a certain gun-toting Arcobaleno.
As depressing as it is for him to realize it, it's only after Reborn's death that he begins to gain the confidence that allows him to become his twenty-five-year-old self.
3.
Lambo is the only Guardian who has always considered the current Vongola his family, as he alone was raised to adulthood alongside them. As a result, all his childhood hopes and dreams more or less revolve around those family members.
Very near the top of the list is his long-standing childish curiosity to see Hibari Kyouya literally bite someone to death.
4.
Getting raised by Ranking Fuuta after Sawada Iemitsu deems the attacks on his household far too dangerous for his poor wife to handle is a surreal experience, to say the least, between the fact that Fuuta is actually targeted by enemies far more than Lambo has ever been for his unique ability, Fuuta's compulsive ranking (Lambo spends more of his childhood hovering various distances off the ground than he does walking), and the closeness of their respective ages (although Fuuta most likely possessed more common sense by the time he hit age five than Lambo does before he reaches eighteen).
Still, Lambo reasons when he looks back on the dysfunctional years of his youth, it's infinitely preferable to getting raised by one of his fellow Guardians.
5.
By Lambo's sixteenth birthday, he is immune not only to electricity, but to practically every kind of poison known to man.
He supposes he should probably thank Bianchi for this, but he's too afraid she'll try to bake him something if he does.
6.
The Bovino family, while nowhere near on par with the extremely deceased Estraneo family, has the unfortunate habit of viewing its younger members as nothing more than test subjects. As Lambo gets older, he realizes that the only reason they allowed him to pursue his ludicrous vendetta against Reborn was as a means to test out the prototype Ten-Year Bazooka.
Lambo may have found his way to Japan as a grudge-holding infantile Mafioso, but he stays because even with their flaws, the Vongola are the first real family he's ever had.
7.
By the time Lambo reaches the tender age of seven, he has already visited and explored more alternate futures than Irie Shouichi does in a lifetime.
By the time he's ten and has calmed down enough to actually observe his surroundings, he's already put together a (very crude) timeline of when and how Byakuran first begins to target the Vongola family. Unfortunately, between his naïve inability to comprehend the true significance of the situation, his impulsive attitude, and his family's overall continued dismissal of its youngest member, he's unable to warn any of them.
All the Guardians may feel the same devastation over Tsuna's death, but only Lambo has to live through it more than once.
8.
Lambo's horns are a gift from his dearly departed mother, an influential scientist within the Bovino family prior to her tragic but inevitable death-by-explosion when one of the many Ten-Year Bazooka experiments goes awry.
(The Bovino's decision to pass on said gift to her son would seem more sentimental if it weren't for the fact that the very presence of those horns is entirely responsible for Lambo's gradual 'immunization' to electricity.)
Interestingly enough, due to the nature of the aforementioned experiments, he ends up running into her at age twenty anyway, and it is she who shows him how to unlock his full potential as Lightning Guardian, five years late (or perhaps early) though she may have been.
Lambo wouldn't trade that meeting for the world, but even so considers Sawada Nana to be the only woman in his life who qualifies for the title 'mother.'
9.
Fifteen-year-old Lambo's chivalrous tendencies are actually the product of too much time spent in the presence of Trident Shamal during his youth, much to the dismay of the majority of the Vongola family. Lambo initially apprentices (that is, begs and cries for hours on end before the good doctor finally gives in) himself to Shamal at age six in an effort to get the better of his other (slightly less dismissive) rival, one Gokudera Hayato, and Shamal agrees because 'chicks dig guys with cute kids.'
Seven years and one onset of puberty later, Shamal abruptly cuts off Lambo's so-called apprenticeship when (despite the Bovino's still questionable competence in the field of battle) the student becomes the master.
Every Valentine's Day, though, Lambo must question whether or not it was worth it.
10.
Lambo identifies himself as a member of the Bovino family all the way into his adulthood, both verbally and by continuing to wear the Bovino colors (well, cow-print) throughout the years.
As far as he's concerned, the work he does for the Vongola family is just one big payback for the debt he owes to big brother Tsuna.
(Because if there's one thing Lambo's always been good at, it's recognizing the difference between family and family. The Bovino family has had his allegiance since birth, but the Vongola family and its boss will always have his devotion.)
Um, in case anyone was wondering, and I probably should've mentioned this sooner, these 'facts' are indeed for the Vongola family of the TYL-verse, right up until the point when Tsuna poofs into existence in his coffin and turns everything all topsy-turvy. So yeah, no Uni-retcon, no Shimon family, Byakuran's pretty much on the verge of winning...wow. This has more depressing-potential than I thought…
Lambo may or may not be the exception to some of this. Man, time travel is confusing.