Characters / Black Lagoon - The Lovelace Household

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Roberta

Voiced by: Michie Tomizawa (JP), Tabitha St. Germain (EN)

Balalaika: Take a look at her eyes. Don't you notice anything?
Boris: The eyes of a soldier.
Balalaika: That's correct, sergeant. And that's not all. She's one hell of a rabid dog.

A maid who worked for four years at the Lovelace household in Venezuela. Although her domestic skills such as cleaning and cooking were somewhat lacking, she developed a close friendship with the young son of the Lovelace family, Garcia. Roberta was once known as Rosarita Cisneros, a former FARC guerrilla trained as an assassin in Cuba and an internationally wanted criminal. She was taken in by the Lovelaces to clear a debt of honor between Roberta's father and the head of the family, who then became her master.

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• Abnormal Ammo: Using a metal rod that is capable of penetrating armor isn't what is expected for a centuries-old musket to fire.
  • To be fair, muskets can fire flechettes with some minor tweaking, which is precisely what she requests a gunsmith in Roanapur to do.
• The Ace: Roberta is perhaps the series' best overall combatant, able to take on multiple seasoned combatants on her own. In the ''Dance of Death" arc, it took three elite combat groups to finally slow her down.
• Adaptational Karma: In the manga version of Roberta's Blood Trail, she gets to return home without a scratch on her after slaughtering Caxton's men. In the OVA adaptation, she gets to go home minus several limbs and an eye.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: One of the taller female characters, has dark hair, brooding (at best), and a bonefide Amazonian Beauty.
• Amazonian Beauty: Tall, a looker, and is really well built.
• An Arm and a Leg: The end of the Roberta's Blood Trail OVA for the anime leads to Roberta's 'reckoning' for her actions during the arc; she gets into a fight with an American special forces unit and loses her left arm from the shoulder down, her right leg from the knee down, her right eye and two fingers on her right arm and is left wheelchair-bound. This was a notable departure from the original manga, which was much kinder to her – Roberta killed almost all of the Americans and got away without so much as a scratch.
• The Atoner: She was a FARC guerrilla trained as an assassin in Cuba. After becoming disillusioned, she ran away and became a maid for a pacifist.
• Ax-Crazy: To say that she lost her shit following Diego's death is a very, very, very mellow way of putting it. Lots of guns? Check. Boiling blood? Check. Munching on stimulants like candy? Double check. Hallucinating? Oh yes. Delusions of still serving Garcia in the middle of a gunfight? That too. And that's not even factoring in the gratituious amounts of evil laughs and slasher smiles.
• Badass Adorable: With VERY heavy on the badass part but still, when you see that kind-hearted side of her, you really can't help but want to take her home with you. She blushed when Garcia kissed her. Take away Roanapur and FARC, and this woman is wholly capable of exuding cute.
• Badass Creed: "In the name of Santa Maria, a hammer blow of righteousness to all injustice."
• Bespectacled Cutie: Subverted. She adopted the persona of a demure housemaid after she left the FARC and Diego took her in. She doesn't even need to wear glasses; they serve to keep up appearances and hide her terrifying Death Glare. When one of her masters is threatened, she drops the charade and reverts back to the ruthless "Bloodhound of Florencia".
• Beware the Nice Ones: On a good day, she's just an adorable family maid. Threaten her charge, and she'll turn back into "The Bloodhound".
• Braids of Action: Wears her hair in two braids on the sides of her head and she's so tough she is constantly compared to the Terminator.
• Briefcase Blaster: Used one in her initial appearance for the surprise factor.
• Bringing Running Shoes to a Car Chase: She overtakes the Lagoon Crew's vehicle at a dead run and leaping right on the rear with a trench knife. There's a reason she's often compared to the Terminator.
• Byronic Heroine: Let's see: morally neutral, physically attractive, largely concerned with personal interests, suffering from a troubled past that still haunts her, guilty of crimes, cynical, jaded and self-destructive. Yeah, she fits the bill.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: She can outrun a car and fire machine guns one handed due to her assassin training.
• Clark Kent Outfit: Complete with glasses even! Her maid uniform hides her amazonian physique, though Garcia's flashback shows that it couldn't contain her biceps one time when she's smelling she has to fight.
• Composite Character: A combined Expy of El Mariachi, The T-1000 and Mary Poppins, or as the author calls her, "Death Poppins".
• Crazy-Prepared: Let's see, she shows up in Roanapur with an umbrella made of Kevlar that has a built in shotgun, a suitcase made of the same with a built in machine gun and rocket launcher, and she hides enough grenades to demolish an entire building in her maid's skirt. And then there's what's inside her suitcase besides all that.
• Creepy Good: Not good in a heroic sense, but she's the closest thing the show has to an Anti-Hero aside from Rock, since her only motivation is to save a young boy from certain death, and later, to avenge his father. She had to earn this however; before her redemption, she murdered countless innocents and children…
• Curb-Stomp Battle: She catches one of Shenhua's kukris in her teeth, uses it to block the other kukri (with it still in her teeth), then shatters it right in Shenhua's face◊ (again with her teeth). When Sawyer steps in, Roberta jams the chain and snaps the blade with the trigger guards of her IMBEL. And when it's Lotton's turn? She gives him the boot. Lotton survived, thanks to his Crazy-Prepared-ness, but it should be noted that the steel codpiece Lotton used to protect his goods was crumpled like a soda can from the impact.
• Dark Action Girl: Fits both the "dark" and the "action" parts with emphasis given her ruthlessness and past.
• Determinator:
  • The crew of the Lagoon repeatedly jokes that she could be the T-1000. All jokes stop when she starts climbing up the back of their car with a pair of trench knives. After catching up to them on foot at a dead run. What makes it awesome is that she's even imitating Robert Patrick's "knife hand" sprinter's run.
  • Take a look at Roberta's Blood Trail under Nigh-Invulnerable, just being able to MOVE under that condition guarantees this trope.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Roberta's Blood Trail ended with Roberta coming out of the thing losing several body parts (namely her left arm, her right eye, the index and middle fingers of her right hand, and her right leg). In the original "El Baile De La Muerte" arc, Roberta come out of the whole affair physically intact.
• Don't Look At Me: After she has brief sex with the FARC Commander and then beats his head into a paste, Garcia comes around the corner and begs for her to stop, causing her to have a complete mental breakdown and say these exact words.
• The Dreaded: Meet the only character that can put all of Roanapur on edge. News that the "Bloodhound of Florencia" was in the city put the entire power structure of its three warring criminal organizations into utter chaos for the week that she was there.
• Easily Forgiven: In the manga only version Roberta's Blood Trail, she's forgiven by Garcia and gets to go home without a scratch after killing Caxton's men, and many other people. The anime makes it quite a bit easier to swallow by leaving her in no shape to keep up her murder spree.
• Every Proper Lady Should Curtsy: She does this after she finishes mowing down a group of thugs in a bar with her umbrella gun, revealing to the surviving thugs that she had several grenades hidden under her dress and had pulled off all the pins in the process.
• Face–Heel Turn: During the "El Baile De La Muerte" arc. While she was never on the Lagoon Company's side, she was more of a "Face" until her Sanity Slippage as a result of her master's assassination from the bombing done by the NSA.
• Fingore: Anime only. When pinning down Sanchez, the Grey Fox sniper, he blasts a claymore mine near her. The explosion heavily damages the index and middle finger on her right hand to the point that they're hanging on by a thread of flesh; a thread she severs with a flick of her wrist.
• Foil: For Revy. Similar violent backgrounds, inhumanly efficient man-killers, dangerously unhinged, and both fly into a homicidal rage if their morality pets are harmed (Rock for Revy, Garcia for Roberta). But, Roberta is capable of suppressing her violent nature, is easily capable of loving, desperately seeks a purpose in life (in contrast to Revy's nihilism), is much more polite and intelligent, and feels guilt for all the things she did in the past. Essentially, she's how Revy would be if she tried to add purpose to her life and allowed herself to feel love or remorse.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: One of the papers Balalaika handles in episode 9 reveals her surname as Margareta.
• A Glass in the Hand: She does this with a beer mug – holding just the handle – at the Yellow Flag, one of the few hints we get that she's an utter badass before she breaks out the kevlar-lined Parasol of Pain and starts blasting people to hell.
• Guns Akimbo: Amongst her weapons are a pair of IMBEL 1911s, which she wields against Revy's Cutlasses. And later, she adds drum clips to them.
• Hero Antagonist: In her first appearance, she was trying to retrieve Garcia from his kidnappers, (which were the protagonists)… and is utterly unstoppable in her pursuit.
• Horrifying the Horror: When Sawyer, someone who chops up cadavers for a living, goes up against her, the chainsaw wielder is utterly scared.
• Hypocritical Humor: "I have no need for filthy language." During her fistfight with Revy, "STAY THE FUCK OUT OF THIS!"
• Implacable Woman: Rock makes a joke on how she's like the Terminator. Turns out it couldn't be closer to the truth.
• Knight of Cerebus: In the anime OVA, she's the central antagonist and we see exactly why she's easily the most dangerous and terrifying character in the entire series.
• Lightning Bruiser: She's got impressive foot speed and is WAY stronger than she looks.
• Mexican Standoff: Her epic battle with Revy crossed into a threeway with Hotel Moscow.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • After she shoots Garcia because he denounces her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • Also has this reaction upon realizing that while she was tongue kissing and getting screwed by the FARC Commander as a distraction in order to brutally kill him, Garcia was right around the corner, listening in on the entire thing in horror.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • Her nickname is the "Bloodhound of Florencia" and, to be fair, running won't do you much good. She can outrun a car.
  • After her initial rampage through Roanapur, the very name "Roberta" became one to run away from really fast.
• Nigh-Invulnerable:
  • Made of Iron is a standard power for characters in this series. Roberta is not so much made of 'Iron' as 'diamondoid, probably poured over a base of Wolfram or some other extremely dense, tear-resistant material'.
  • The final episode of Roberta's Blood Trail averts this trope. In the manga, Roberta came out of the entire ordeal without a scratch (all the blood on her clothes belonged to her victims). In the OVA, however, she is severely wounded by the Grey Fox unit to the point of losing her right eye, right leg, and left arm, and if that isn't bad enough, her right hand's index and middle fingers are shot off. The only reason she can still walk in the ending is thanks to a cobbled together prosthetic right leg. That being said though, she still won.
• Ninja Maid: She doesn't just know kung fu; she's bloody invincible, and carrying enough weaponry in her maid uniform to depopulate a small country. Considering that she used to be the infamous "Bloodhound of Florencia", the most dangerous hitwoman from the FARC…
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Who would believe that the clumsy housemaid who just burned dinner is actually the "Bloodhound of Florencia"?
• One-Woman Army: A fully armed drug cartel meets her in a bar. She kills all of them with ease.
• Opaque Nerd Glasses: She wears big round glasses to keep up a meek appearance and hide her glare with the fury of 10,000 Hells.
• Parasol of Pain: Hers is made of Kevlar and has a built in shotgun.
• Precision F-Strike: See Hypocritical Humor, above.
• Purely Aesthetic Glasses: There's nothing wrong with her eyes. She wears the glasses as part of her "Roberta the peaceful maid" persona. They help her stay in character.
• Red Baron: The Bloodhound of Florencia
• Redemption Failure: Tried to be a good person by being a loyal servant and a mother/sister of sorts to Garcia… sadly, all that went out the window with the murder of her master/Garcia's dad at the start of "El Baile De La Muerte". Worse yet, this was exactly what the antagonists of said arc were trying to accomplish.
• The Rival: One of the many Dark Action Girl rivals for Revy. Unlike Eda, it's less on a personal level and purely from a "I'm just better than you" point of view. Unlike the others though, she's the only one who's arguably "stronger" than Revy, besting her whenever they fight.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: What happens when Garcia gets kidnapped. It's absolutely terrifying to both Garcia and the Lagoon Company.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When Roberta's master (and Garcia's dad) is killed at the start of "El Baile De La Muerte", a trail of destruction is Roberta's response.
• Sanity Slippage: During "El Baile De La Muerte", she starts downing Ritalin like it's candy, which pushes her far beyond her limits.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: She uses them to hide her perpetual Death Glare.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Lampshaded when Roberta changes from her maid's outfit to an amazonian look.
• She Who Fights Monsters: In El Baile De La Muerte she hunts the killers of her dear master and becomes more dangerous than them. Only Garcia, Fabiola and Rock's plan were enough to snap her out of psycho-mode.
• Shower of Angst: We see her sulking in the shower right after her master's demise.
• Sociopathic Hero: She was once an amoral killing machine but has now dedicated herself to the Lovelace family and goes completely off the deep end when she thinks her young master has died.
• Specs of Awesome: Her permanently Scary Shiny Glasses only make her look even more badass.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Reality hits Roberta like a freight train in the anime-only version of Roberta's Blood Trail: It doesn't matter how much of a superhuman terminator you are, going up a highly trained, well-armed and heavily armored Special Forces unit with only an 18th-century smoothbore musket and absolutely no form of armor for yourself will not end well for you.
• Too Dumb to Live: Interestingly, this trope only applies in the OVA adaptation, when she confronts Grey Fox. Whereas in the manga she holds her own with barely a scratch against the elite soldiers, in the OVA, she gets a much more realistic treatment, and her choice to directly confront them armed with nothing more than a musket and some convenient metal rods carries an insanity bordering on downright suicidal. By the time Garcia and Rock unleash their gambit in order to force her to lay down her arms, she's put through the wringer, half-dead, and crippled for life, and it isn't clear whether the gambit saved Grey Fox from Roberta, or Roberta from Grey Fox.
• Tranquil Fury: After Abrego's cartel kidnap Garcia, she rips through his goons and tears a swath across Roanapur to get him back, all the while having the emotional expression of a brick wall.
• The Unfettered: In "El Baile De La Muerte", she will kill those who killed her master then return to the young master. And she's not particular about what it does to her, anyone else, or the long-term consequences. Move or die.
• Undying Loyalty: Fiercely loyal to Garcia and his father.
• Unscrupulous Hero: Her moral code can be seen as heroic (by this series' standards at least) since she gave up her life as a FARC guerrilla to become the maid of a pacifist and she only returns to her old ways to save the son of her master, but goddamn is she ruthless and terrifying. Then her moral code goes down the crapper with the "El Baile De La Muerte" arc.
• Unstoppable Rage: If you kidnap or kill her masters, she will hunt you down through single photographs and kill you. You have a slight chance of surviving if you are a member of the Green Berets, otherwise you are dead.
• Villain Protagonist: The "El Baile De La Muerte" arc follows her unrestrained rampage.
• Walking Armory: Roberta carries a gatling gun briefcase, shotgun disguised as an umbrella, at least one knife, and a crapload of grenades.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: During the "El Baile De La Muerte" arc, she is causing great damage and death due to grief for her deceased employer.
• Worthy Opponent: To Revy. Roberta's the only person in the series who's gone toe-to-toe with Revy in both a gunfight and a fistfight and won; In their first gunfight she briefly knocked Revy unconscious with a grenade, and then knocked her out again in a fistfight (this time for several hours).
• Would Hurt a Child: She's not proud of it, but during her FARC days she mentioned having killed women and children.

Garcia Fernando Lovelace

Voiced by: Kazue Ikura (JP), Cathy Weseluck (EN)

The young son of Roberta's master Diego, heir to the Lovelace family. When he's kidnapped and later the Lagoon company gets the work of "transporting" him, Roberta goes against our "heroes" to get her Morality Chain back.

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• All-Loving Hero: Stubbornly refuses to resort to violence as a means to an end, knowing the consequences of it. He also keeps Fabiola from making this mistake. The one time he appears to subvert this, it was a ruse.
• Break the Cutie: Vehemently defied. During the entirety of El Baile de la Muerte, the poor boy is tormented and given several chances to Jump Off The Slippery Slope, but he never breaks completely and is deadset on bringing Roberta back to her old self with a minimum of bloodshed.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Gun included, albeit unloaded; he only fires blanks with it, in a gambit to stop Roberta's Roaring Rampage of Revenge without killing any more people. It works.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: Becomes the Lovelace family head out of necessity after his father is killed.
• Cooldown Hug: Gives one to Roberta to revert her from psycho mood.
• Cuteness Proximity: Seems to cause this a few times in "El Baile de la Muerte", first when they go to the wrecked Yellow Flag several of the scantily clad ladies that Bao is hanging out with seem quite taken with him, and Shenhua hugs him and out right and asks if he wants to be her son.
• Distressed Dude: Introduced as a victim of kidnapping. It's not his fault; he ain't a child soldier like several other kids in this series. It's never stated if he had even a sliver of combat training his entire life.
• Harmful to Minors: Watching his maid slaughter a drug cartel while they swear up a storm.
• He Is All Grown Up: Roberta told him that she was impressed by how much he had grown in her absence (after he had straddled her, no less).
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Tries to reason with Roberta during her Roaring Rampageof Revenge.
• Mexican Standoff: Fakes one with Roberta as part of the plan to bring her down from her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Missing Mom: His mother died and Roberta serves as his Parental Substitute. Eventually, he loses his father as well.
• Morality Chain: To Roberta. Around him she acts like a nice Meido. When he's not around her, she tends to go crazy.
• "No More Holding Back" Speech: "See? We're not dead."
• Precocious Crush: He has a crush on his maid Roberta, who's in her mid-to-late 20's. In "El Baile de la Muerte", he kisses her.
• Protectorate: Roberta is determined to do anything to protect her young master. If you are in any way a threat to Garcia, you're dead before you can blink.

Diego Jose San Fernando Lovelace

Voiced by: Ryunosuke Obayashi (JP), Michael Kopsa (EN)

Garcia's father, Roberta's boss and leader of the Lovelace family. Whose tragic death kicks off the El Baile de la Muerte arc.

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• Class Traitor: He is of the old landowning class in Venezuela (well known for their right-wing politics), but when he was killed he was participating in a meeting of Hugo Chavez' fledgeling Fifth Republic Movement - which was even then socialism-inclined.
• Disappeared Dad: More like blown to smithereens, but still…
• Impoverished Patrician: According to Rock, the Lovelace family is on the lower rungs of Venezuelan high society. While he still has quite a bit of money due to plantations, it's still not much compared to what the Lovelaces used to have in the past. This is due to Diego's political beliefs (he's a quasi-socialist amongst a famously capitalist group) and the harrassment of the Colombian cartel.
• Morality Chain: Roberta owes him her new chance at life, and thus she goes batshit when he kicks it.
• Sacrificial Lion: His death kicks off the "El Baile de la Muerte" arc.

Fabiola Iglesias

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (JP), Shannon Chan-Kent (EN)

Another maid in the Lovelace household, and the only one who's trained in hand-to-hand combat and weaponry like Roberta. After she leaves in her Roaring Rampage of Revenge, Fabiola becomes Garcia's caretaker.

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• Abusive Parents: She looks up to her parents as honest hard working people. She states that when she stole a CD player for her younger brother that her mother beat her black and blue for it. Revy says that sounds like abuse to her but Fabiola insists that her mother did it out of love.
• Action Girl: One of the very few female warriors in the series that aren't considerably darker.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: She learned Capoeira from watching people practice. No formal training involved.
• Badass Adorable: Basically Roberta Lite.
• Celibate Hero:
  "There is no need for you to be concerned about my breasts. Even if they grew as big as melons I have no intention of anybody fondling them."
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Shoots Rock with a blank and cracks his rib at the end of "El Baile De La Muerte". Justified in that, while his actions end up saving their lives, it becomes clear that he helped them mainly to win a bet with Mr. Chang, and for the shits and giggles, and his methods were still enormously underhanded and got Roberta and Garcia hurt, so, naturally, she calls him out on this.
• Curtains Match the Window: Green hair and eyes.
• Dance Battler: Well versed in Capoeira, and uses this to dodge bullets while dual-wielding shotguns.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: When she pulls out a China Lake grenade launcher (that she hid on her back, underneath her outfit) to take out an SUV.
• Everyone Has Standards: She absolutely despises the Lagoon Company and especially hates Revy (for her psychopathy and nihilistic outlook that she uses to justify her many bad acts) and Rock (for his selfishness, underhandedness, and untrustworthiness). She was also particularly disgusted with Revy for mocking, insulting, and executing a gravely wounded FARC soldier who would have given them valuable information had Revy just let him live and helped take him to a hospital.
• Foil: To Revy, she represents the integrity of living a hardcore lifestyle without going psycho and giving up on the world. She's also probably Revy's alternate self, if she were a maid and very polite.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Woman!: Sadly doesn't have as much success as Garcia did with Roberta, but hey, she tried.
• Good Parents: Her parents were hard-working and passed on their strict moral values despite living in a Wretched Hive. When Fabiola says she was beaten for stealing, Revy assumes they are no different from her own Abusive Parents. Fabiola thinks otherwise.
• Groin Attack: With a knife concealed in her shoe. Ouch!
• Guns Akimbo: Dual-wields two Techno Arms MAG-7 shotguns that she hides in her sleeves.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Lets put it like this, if this series needed an action movie hero who was a straight up good guy with steadfast idealistic ethics, Fabiola would be that role and Garcia would be the sidekick or The Heart of the two. While Revy would probably be the main villain alongside Rock as the mastermind of the two.
• Kirk Summation: To Revy of all people, who has been insisting that they live in a horrible, vicious world and that Fabiola needs to stop being so idealistic. She finally gets fed up with it and insists the world is neither, and that she can accept that the world is a gray place and the one who really thinks the world is black and white is Revy herself. Neither Revy nor Rock were impressed.
• Letting Her Hair Down: She undoes her bun when she has an informal conversation with Garcia.
• Little Miss Badass: About 14 to 15 years old, one of the shortest characters in the series, and packing enough firepower to shoot out the entire frontage of the Yellow Flag and blow up an SUV in one shot.
• Modesty Shorts : Being a Dance Battler who fights in a Maid outfit, bike shorts are a must to prevent unwanted attention.
• The Napoleon: Is picked on because of her lack of height; a rather unwise thing to do.
• Ninja Maid: Not as lethal as Roberta, but then again it's very hard to be as lethal as Roberta.
• Not So Similar: She sports Roberta's fang-like Slasher Smile at one point, and Revy tries to push Fabiola more towards her nihilistic point-of-view, but she rejects Revy's arguments and never revels in violence like Revy or Roberta do.
• Plucky Girl: One of the few characters in the series who believes that problems can be solved without violence, and stalwartly holds onto this belief despite Revy's constant attempts to convince her otherwise.
• Prim and Proper Bun: Done up into her maid frill. It doubles as Compressed Hair.
• Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: She absolutely tore into Revy over her cynicism and nihilism being used as a catch-all justification for her many psychopathic and selfish acts, and while Revy and Rock shouted her down, they didn't actually address any of Fabiola's points.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Carries a pump-action China Lake grenade launcher during her fight at the Yellow Flag.
• Ship Tease: Her and Garcia share a tender moment in the latter half of the OVA, when they jump off the Lagoon Company's boat into the water.
• Street Urchin: Her backstory involved living on the street before coming to the Lovelace household.
• Undying Loyalty: Similar to Roberta, being taken in by the Lovelace family earned them her eternal loyalty.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She makes no effort whatsoever to hide that she detests the methods and mannerisms of Lagoon Company, especially Rock and Revy. Regardless, she puts up with it for Garcia and Roberta's sake.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: During the Yellow Flag shoot-out she inflicts serious injury, but tries to avoid killing anyone.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gives one to Rock at the end of the Roberta arc, because of him using most of the characters involved as pawns and the fact that he did it for fun as well to win the bet with Mr. Chang.
• Wrong Side of the Tracks: Grew up in the hood in Caracas and had to fend for herself on the streets at an early age.

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