From Mafioso to Pirate

Chapter 1: Family?

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Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, Katekyo Hitman Reborn, any of the characters, or the cover image.

Fifteen-year-old Lambo sighed as he gazed sadly at his Vongola Ring. He has officially been the Vongola Lightning Guardian for ten years.

The boy sighed again. He may have been a guardian for ten years, but it didn't feel like he was one at all.

He just wasn't treated like a guardian. Not by his fellow guardians, not by his boss, not even by Reborn, who once said that there was no one worthier than him to be the Lightning Guardian.

Tsuna cared for him, but he didn't understand him, nor did he trust him. He had never once given him a mission, and wouldn't even let him do mundane tasks around the mansion. He seemed to think that giving Lambo any work whatsoever would result in him messing up and then crying to him about it.

It Tsuna thought that he was too weak, then why didn't he do anything to help him? If Tsuna, who was once so dame, could become such a great and influential mafia boss, then why did everyone give up on Lambo so easily? Without even giving him the option of becoming stronger? They just gave up on him without even giving him a chance.

Gokudera Hayato, the Storm Guardian, saw him as nothing but an annoying cowardly burden. Even as Lambo grew older, stopped being so loud and annoying, and became less cowardly, the man just continued to treat him like he did when he was five, insulting him and calling him "stupid cow" and other demeaning names.

Once Lambo had hit the age of nine, he was in that phase where he wanted acceptance from those around him. He tried to be nice to Gokudera, hoping that the man would be nice in return, or at least less insulting. But it seemed that the silver-haired man was just too used to seeing him as the "stupid cow" to realize that Lambo was growing up and maturing. Tsuna once reassured him that Gokudera did in fact care about him and even told him a story about how once, during a fight between Xanxus and his guardians and Tsuna and his, the other man had saved his life. The boy found this hard to believe, though, especially since he didn't remember any of it.

Yamamato Takeshi was one of the few who were nice to him. But Lambo noticed a big difference in how Yamamato treated him and how he treated the others. The swordsman seemed to always hold a different expression when looking at him than when he looked at everyone else. As a kid, he never understood it. As he grew older, he finally did.

Pity. The strange expression on the man's face was pity. Whenever Lambo made a mistake, the swordsman's expression said that he was not surprised, that he was even expecting it. Lambo, after learning that Yamamato had no expectations for him, had felt his heart break slightly. Ever since his revelation, his relationship with Yamamato had become strained, him no longer viewing him as an older brother. Yamamato, who to this day was still a bit oblivious to the things around him, never noticed.

Ryohei was someone that Lambo used to hold in high esteem. When he was younger, the man treated him as if he were his own little brother. Ryohei would often play with him when he was younger, and he never got annoyed with him like the others often did. Ryohei was good with kids, but when those kids grew up, Lambo realized, the man didn't know how to deal with them anymore.

When Lambo was ten, Ryohei realized how weak Lambo was when compared to the other guardians, he immediately made it his mission to train the younger male. At first, Lambo had been overjoyed. With Ryohei's help, he was sure to get stronger and his family would start to act differently towards him! Unfortunately, that's not what happened.

Ryohei's training was, for lack of a better word, extreme. And it really brought home the fact that Ryouhei was not good with older children. The training he had Lambo do was not fit for a ten year old. But Ryohei, who had been training hard from the time he was a child, didn't realize this. After about five months of attempted training, it seemed that the man's patience had finally run out. For the first time since Lambo had known him, Ryohei lost his temper, shouting about how he was weak and useless and how he was giving up on him. Later, once he had calmed down, he had apologized profusedly to Lambo. He did not ask for them to resume their training, however, and Lambo decided against bringing it up ever again. That incident caused the Lightning Guardian's self-esteem to plunge downwards.

Hibari Kyouya...well...there was not really much to say about him. The cloud guardian had basically ignored him for his entire life, seeing him as nothing but another herbivore that deserved no attention. Although Lambo wasn't very close to the man, his outright indifference actually hurt worse than Gokudera's hostility, especially since they were supposed to be "family."

Mukuro treated him basically the same as Hibari. Lambo barely ever saw the man, and when he did, a brief look of disgust would cross the illusionist's face before it went back to being neutral. That expression gave Lambo all the information he needed to know how the man felt about him.

Chrome was nice to him, and she seemed to understand where he was coming from due to her past with her own family. But, unlike him, she had people who helped her become strong. She was strong now, unlike him. So, even in her eyes, he was a weakling.

Kyoko and Haru were two people that Lambo used to see as older sisters. As he grew older, though, he started seeing them less and less often. Tsuna had decided that, since the two girls were now involved with the Mafia, they had to learn how to defend themselves, which resulted in them seeing him less. At first, Lambo was very bitter about it, but not because he didn't see them as much, but because everyone had better expectations for them than they did for him. When he grew older, though, he understood why. Kyoko and Haru weren't guardians like him, people had different expectations for them. But that still didn't explain why Tsuna had offered to train them but had never offered the same for him. Did they just expect him to be strong from the get-go just because he was a guardian?

As a result of rarely seeing each other, Kyoko and Haru did not know how to act around him anymore. He obviously wasn't that little rambunctious five-year-old anymore. Their meetings now were very...awkward. They would often start to talk about subjects that a little kids would like before stopping when they realized he was losing interest. Afterwards, whether they did it on purpose or unconsciously, they had begun to avoid him, leaving him mourning over their broken bond.

He really didn't know how Bianchi felt about him. She was nice to him when he was a child, but as he grew up, due to his apparent resemblance to an old boyfriend of hers, she now threw her poison cooking in his face whenever she saw him. A part of Lambo missed the nice Bianchi his child-self knew, and a bigger part of him made sure to never go near her if he valued his life.

His relationship with I-Pin had already started to strain by the time they began school together. The girl quickly found her own group of friends. She tried to include Lambo in it as well, but the boy was avoided by many of the children in school because of his horrible grades and because of what a spoiled brat he was back then. Eventually, I-Pin, not wanting to lose the friends she had made, left him behind.

When it happened, Lambo was heartbroken. Now, years later, he and her were almost no better than strangers to each other.

As for Mama... Well... At first, she seemed to have good expectations for him. But as he brought home bad grade after bad grade, he was shocked by how quickly and easily her expectations for him faded. He had once even heard her sighing about having another "dame and useless son." Now he understood how Tsuna felt when he was young... He had begun to avoid her after that, and Nana, true to her obliviousness, never even noticed how awkward his conversations with her had become or how little she had begun to see of him.

Reborn was always mean to him, but that only seemed to escalate as he grew older. The ex-Arcobaleno was always insulting him, glaring at him in disgust, and questioning about how it was possible that they hadn't found a replacement for him yet. Lambo often wanted to yell at him about how he had trained Dame-Tsuna to become a great mafia boss, so why couldn't he train Lambo to become a great Lightning Guardian? But, since he was terrified of the hitman, the poor boy would just take the borderline verbal abuse before quickly getting as far away from him as he could.

Fortunately, the hitman didn't bother much with him anymore. After the Arcobaleno Curse was broken, all of the ex-Arcobaleno, excluding Verde (God knows where he went off to) joined the Vongola, or were forced to join, in the Cloud Arcobaleno's case. Skull stayed with them for a few years (Lambo's heart often hurt at the sight of the borderline abuse he received from his "fellow" Arcobaleno) before, one day, he just disappeared.

The phrase "you don't know what you have until it's gone" came to mind as Lambo watched the other ex-Arcobaleno practically go into a panic searching for him. Lambo inwardly scoffed. What did they expect after how they treated him? It seemed that, because they all saw him as their lackey, they had forgotten that Skull was his own person and that he was under no obligation to stay with them. It was only after he left that they realized their mistakes. After all, what kind of sky has no clouds? A part of him felt sorry for Reborn and the others, but he honestly thought that they deserved it. Reborn ignored him as a result, which Lambo took great relief in.

After he left, Lambo often wondered if there was a possibility that he could have become friends with Skull, what with their similar backgrounds of being looked down upon by the people who were supposed to be their comrades. Now, he'd never know.

Fuuta was the only member of his "family" that seemed to care about him anymore. The older boy was always asking if he was alright and if there was anything he could do to help him out. Lambo was very touched by this, but unfortunately couldn't spend much time with Fuuta as the older male had his own missions to do.

But, even if Fuuta treated him better than the rest of his "family" did, it was painfully obvious that he had as much expectations for Lambo as the rest of them did. When he was eleven, he asked Fuuta if he would train him so that he could become stronger. Fuuta had given him an indulgant smile and told him "when you're older." This in itself wasn't a bad response...if it weren't for the fact that he said the same thing every year that Lambo had asked him for the past four years. Once, Lambo had had enough of it and attempted to steal some weapons in order to train himself, but was caught by Tsuna. From then on, everyone made sure to always keep an eye on him to make sure he never did anything like that again, never even thinking of asking him why he did it in the first place.

Lambo felt like he was surrounded by strangers, not by a family.

He really wanted to just go up to them and throw a massive tantrum demanding explanations as to why they always insulted his weakness and intelligence yet never did anything to help him. But throwing a tantrum would just prove to them all that he really was the stupid, weak, spoiled, useless brat that they seemed to think he was.

Lambo's gaze moved away from the Vongola Ring on his finger and towards the window. He just sat there, staring at the beautiful blue sky, as if asking it for answers.

Would this be his entire life?

He broke out of his thoughts when there was a sudden hard knock on his bedroom door. "Oi! Stupid Cow!" Came Gokudera's voice. "Juudaime wants to see you!"

TO BE CONTINUED

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Wow, it's been years since I made this account and I'm just now getting around to uploading something... o.O

As you can probably tell, this will be a "Lambo joins the Strawhats" fic. Also, I decided to make this story on a whim, so don't expect rapid updates, but I'll do my best. XD
I've already got some descent plans for this.

Also, I'm going to get some important information out of the way right now:

Since this is the world of One Piece, Italy and Japan don't exist. Instead, Italy and Nammimori will be considered their own islands.

The Mafia will be mainly land-based. This means that they rarely travel by ship, so there is no Mafia in the Grand Line, but there are in the East Blue, the South Blue, etc. And the Vongola, even though it is in the East Blue, is still considered the strongest Mafia Family of them all.

Also, to all of you wondering about why I put so much emphasis on Skull near the end. Let's just say that I have plans for him. It'll probably take a long time to get to that point, and even now those plans are kind of iffy, but there are plans, oh yes, there are plans...

Also, one thing I hate is character bashing (it just doesn't make sense most of the time and it's so extreme! .) so if I did that accidentally, let me know.

Also, as I've previously said, this is my very first story. Don't be too harsh. :(