Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Watch TV?

Eh, there’s never anything good on this time of day… Or ever.

A movie?

No, those are always way too long.

Play a video game?

He could… but all of the ones that he hasn’t played to death lately are no fun by himself.

It’s official then: he has absolutely nothing to do. 

Hiroki lets out a long, exaggerated sigh as he flops back onto the couch. This is the worst thing that could possibly happen to him today—and on a Saturday of all days! He can’t even bug mom or dad like he normally would: she’s out running some errands, and he got called into work for some stupid ‘emergency meeting’ or the like (he didn’t seem too happy about it either at least, muttering some words under his breath as he got ready that would get Hiroki in big trouble if he ever tried to repeat them in front of his parents). Neither will be back for hours. Leaving him to fend off his boredom by himself.

Maybe he could’ve had a backup plan for that dilemma if he could at least call Johnny and see what he’s up to. But noooo, according to his parents he’s ‘not responsible enough’ to have a cell phone yet.

(Seriously, you lose track of a Gameboy a few times…)

Truly a tragic situation all around.

He blinks up at the ceiling, staring listlessly at it. There’s a strangely splotchy texture to it throughout the entire house, like someone took a paintbrush and carelessly flicked raised splashes and specks across the whole thing. When he was younger he found that if he unfocused his eyes in just the right way he could find weird patterns scattered throughout it—like the armless guy skateboarding up a mountain right above his bed, or the weird set of stubby vampire fangs between his and Yumi’s bedrooms. It was like the world’s loneliest game of Pictionary. Sometimes he’d even imagine that they were moving across the walls, mingling with other shapes and going on adventures that were equally as weird as they all looked. He hasn’t done it in ages, and he’s never looked that closely in here before (usually because he’s had something else to do). Maybe that’ll be interesting enough for now.

…

…

…

It’s not.

He groans and throws an arm across his face in exasperation. Why do things always have to be so boring around here? Every day it’s the same few things over and over and over again.

Why can’t something exciting happen to him for once in his life?

He sighs. Maybe he should just take a nap or something…

A door abruptly slams open. Hiroki startles upright with a squeak of surprise; the cushion bounces a little underneath him at the sudden shift in weight. On instinct he whips his head around toward the front door. 

It’s still shut up tight, no mom or dad in sight.

And if it didn’t come from there…

Familiar thudding boot steps start racing across the floor from above him. Hiroki jumps to his feet, only slightly tripping on his first couple steps, and rushes toward the hallway in his own sprint. He gets there just in time to find Yumi running down the stairs. She freezes at the sight of him. He can practically hear the wooden rail wheezing from the white knuckled iron grip she has it in.

She’s trying to sneak out again.

He smirks. It’s not exactly an out of the ordinary situation, but he’ll take it.

After all, there’s no better pass time than annoying your older sister, right?

“Well well well, what do we have here?” He asks, putting on his best ‘annoying little brother’ voice—a dash of fake innocence blended together with just the right amount of know-it-all condescension he knows works on her all too well—as he grins knowingly at her. “You weren’t about to run out of here and leave your poor, defenseless little brother here all by himself, were you?”

The effect on her is immediate. Her eyes, which had been flickering away from him, narrow, and her mouth presses into a thin, irritated line that only makes his own smile wider. It really never gets old. “You and I both know you're old enough to be fine at home by yourself for a few hours.”

Well. She’s not wrong. But…

“Take it up with mom and dad,” he tells her with a shrug. He’s been fighting that fight for ages now. Honestly, he’d appreciate the help. She doesn’t respond to that though, just lets out a huff and stomps past him so fast he almost doesn’t move in time to stay ahead of her. Why does she have to have such long legs?

He cuts her off again just a few feet from the front door, shoving an arm out against the nearby table to completely block her path. “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”

“Out. Now move.” She reaches for his shoulder. 

He sways back and digs his heels further into the floor just in case. “Why should I?”

“Hiroki…” Yumi pinches the bridge of her nose with an annoyed huff. “I don’t have time for your games right now. I need to go-”

“To do what?” He asks. His eyes light up at a thought. “Is it Ulrich?”

“I– what?” 

“You’re going to go make out with Ulrich, aren’t you?” He feels his impish grin returning at the realization.

Yumi stiffens straight as a rod. “That is so…! We aren’t even… That has nothing to do with any of what–” Her face turns a bright shade of red as she blusters and stumbles over her words. Finally, she shakes her head and looks at him with a spicy glare. “Ulrich and I are just good friends and that’s all, you got that!?”

That look on her face is probably supposed to be intimidating, but having lived with her his whole life, he’s mostly immune. The way her voice jumped in pitch isn’t helping her case either.

“Suuuure,” Hiroki rolls his eyes. “Keep telling yourself that.” Whatever helps her sleep at night.

She grumbles something under her breath—he only really manages to catch the word ‘brat’ in it all. It’s a struggle not to grin at her again. She tries to take a step past him. He doesn’t budge. “Are you gonna move?” she asks impatiently.

“Are you gonna tell me where you’re going?”

“That’s none of your business.”

He shrugs. “Then no.”

“Hiroki…!” She hisses out, then stops. She takes in a deep breath; he can practically see her mentally counting to ten before she tries again. “You have to let me leave. It’s an emergency.”

He perks up at that detail. That’s a new one. “What kind of emergency?” 

“It’s a er… computer emergency,” she answers, voice tight and awkward. Her gaze shifts off towards some of the decorations hanging on the wall when he raises an eyebrow at her.

“'A computer emergency?'” He echoes. That might be the worst lie he’s ever heard her tell—and he's heard a lot of them. “What, is Jeremy’s laptop gonna blow up or something? You’re terrible with computers. How are you gonna help?”

“That’s…” If the sentence is supposed to go anywhere from there, it doesn’t, instead just hanging in the air by itself until her mouth shuts with an audible click of her teeth. “Ugh… why do you care anyway?” she quickly pivots.

He taps a thoughtful finger against his chin as he lets out a hum. “Maybe I just wanna know what you’re doing for once.”

How can he not? Constantly tip-toeing around, skipping class, hanging out with a (cool) group of friends and whispering about weird stuff and disappearing for hours to places only they know about. Their parents are always complaining about him not understanding the rules of the house, but Yumi’s the one constantly breaking them. It’d be nice to know what she thinks is so important for once.

Although…

“If you really don’t wanna tell me though, maybe we can negotiate something,” he offers, smirk returning. It’d be nice not to have to work on the chemistry packet Ms. Hertz just handed out after all.

Yumi’s expression goes flat at the suggestion. “No,” she says firmly. “We’re not doing this today.” 

Before he can even think to respond, there’s a hand to his chest shoving him back from the table and out of her way. He hits the wall behind him with a loud thud and grunts. He winces when he puts a hand to his side; that’s definitely going to bruise a bit. Maybe she’s off constantly practicing martial arts, because he doesn’t remember her being this strong all the time.

The fact that she’s so much taller and stronger apparently is just so unfair.

“If you leave I’m telling mom and dad!” He calls to her just before she can reach the door. “I’ll tell them about all the times I’ve seen you sneak out after dark too!”

That gets her attention. Her hand freezes just a few inches from the knob and clenches into a tight fist. She whirls around on her heel, teeth flashing. “Hiroki, don’t you-”

The front door flies open. Both of them startle at the sound and, forgetting their quarrel for just a moment, share a confused look with one another. When they look over at the entrance, they find their dad standing there. Hiroki squints; the outside light shining on him is bright, and it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust. When he finally gets a chance to see his dad proper, he looks a little strange; his posture is hunched over in a way Hiroki never sees from him when he’s not lounging around, and the dark tie Hiroki watched him put on just hours earlier looks crooked the way it’s draped across his chest.

Huh. Must’ve been a rough day at the office.

“Dad! You’re back!” Yumi’s voice startles him out of his head. “I was just-”

“Yumi was trying to sneak out and leave me by myself!” Hiroki quickly cuts her off. She sucks in a sharp breath, and he hears her let out a huff he knows is pointed toward him. He sticks the tip of his tongue out in return.

Dad, for his part, gives Hiroki a blank stare. The glare from the sun on his glasses makes it hard to see his eyes. For a moment, Hiroki wonders if he even heard him, but then Dad starts walking toward Yumi in a stiff legged gait.

She places her hands out placatingly in front of her. “I-it’s not as bad as it sounds, I promise! My friends need me for something really important at school and I-” She cuts herself off with a surprised gasp when Dad wraps his own hand around her wrists. Tightly.

And then he starts dragging her towards the living room in spite of her vocal protests.

Hiroki’s grin drops. This is a lot less fun than he’d been imagining it’d be.

He quickly scrambles after them, watching as Yumi gets tugged toward the center of the room. She’s pulling desperately, but for as strong he now knows she is, she can’t get free. 

Hiroki bites his lip. “Hey, maybe lay off her a little. I mean, it’s not like she actually left me alone…” he trails off with an awkward laugh. "S-she said she'd only be gone for a little bit. I'd have been fine. Honest!" Dad doesn’t respond to him. Instead, he pulls Yumi’s arms up above her with just one hand until her feet aren’t even touching the floor anymore.

“Dad, stop! That hurts!” Yumi cries out. For all her thrashing she can’t get loose. She looks past Dad’s shoulder and directly at Hiroki. Her eyes are bright with a silent plea for help. He feels something drop in his chest at the look of terror etched on her face.

This isn’t like Dad at all.

Something is wrong.

Very, very wrong.

“Dad! Stop!” Hiroki runs forward and yanks on the arm holding Yumi with all his might. To his surprise, it actually works. Dad lets out a surprised grunt and drops her. The moment she lands she bolts away from him. Hiroki doesn’t get a chance to see where though, because now Dad’s attention is entirely on him instead.

Dad whirls around in an instant. Rough hands grab at the fabric of his yellow shirt and pull him up close to his face. Hiroki shrieks. Dad’s expression, normally so calm and composed and jovial, now looks anything but. His teeth are bared in an angry, white snarl that looks so incredibly wrong on his face. But the worst part is his eyes. They’re wild and unfocused, yet seem to pierce directly through him. 

Something flashes in them, and the next time Dad blinks, a strange bullseye symbol stares back at him instead of pupils.

Dad suddenly lets out a pained pant. In an instant, Hiroki finds himself falling back onto the floor. The TV remote, which had been laying on the couch last he saw, now lays by his dad’s feet. Dad’s form flickers into a transparent static in front of him, and when he looks past it, he sees Yumi standing there with her hand still outstretched. 

“We can’t stay here! Come on!” Hiroki’s barely to his feet when Yumi grabs hold of his hand and leads them both to the door. They dash through without bothering to shut it behind them and race down the street as fast as their legs will carry them.

The whole time, Yumi never lets go of his hand.

For once, he doesn’t complain.

Chapter Text

They don’t stop running until the house is far, far away and out of sight behind them. They’re moving so fast that other people walking down the street have to practically leap across the sidewalk to get out of their way in time. Complaints to watch where they’re going are quickly drowned out by the wind rushing past his ears and are ignored entirely by Yumi.

She leads him through town into alleyways and around corners he hasn’t been through before with a confidence like she’s been through them a million times. For all he knows, she has. She makes a sharp left through another one that otherwise seems like a dead end and takes them out onto another street corner with a set of concrete stairs sitting beside them nearby. It’s quiet here. Aside from a few cars passing by in the distance, it’s entirely devoid of other people. 

Honestly, he’s not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.

They come to an abrupt stop near the edge of the building adjacent to the stairs; only the strong hold she still has on his arm manages to stop him from completely crashing into her side. She presses her back against the wall and flattens herself out against it. A shadow drapes over them from an awning hanging above, and with her black clothes, she almost seems as though she’s trying to sink further into it. Like it will somehow camouflage her against the lighter colored, dusty brick behind her. She tilts her head toward the sky, quieting her heavy breathing from her still heaving chest into a faint whisper.

He feels his lungs burning inside his own chest. He’s never run this much in his entire life. Jim’s threats of laps around the track whenever the class is getting too rowdy have nothing on this. They just can’t. His heart is pounding faster than he ever thought possible; it practically vibrates against his ribcage. His body struggles not to follow suit.

Yumi must feel it too. She doesn’t say a word, but silently grips his hand tighter as she looks around. Her entire stance is tense; he feels how taut her muscles are from his spot beside her. When he looks up at what he can see of her face, her expression is just as pinched. Her eyes are narrowed and focused, but darting around wildly, inspecting every shadowy crevice and corner of the area around them like she’s expecting something to jump out at them at any second. 

After what just happened, maybe something will. The thought makes him hold onto her tighter too.

But nothing does. And it’s only then that Yumi finally lets her body loosen, if only a little bit. Her head twists back around the corner and thuds softly against the wall as she exhales a long, shuddering breath as her eyes close, shoulders gently drooping down. A moment later, she finally looks back down at him.   

“Are you ok?” 

He blinks wide eyes up at her. He’s still breathless, but not just from running. His mind is buzzing with a million different thoughts all at once. Echoes of confused ‘hows’ and angry ‘whys’ and so much more bounce around his head over and over again until it makes him so dizzy he’s amazed he can still stand. And all move so fast that he barely has time to process one thought before another takes its place and demands his full attention like a bright, neon lit sign flashing in a store window. He can barely think straight about any of them. Let alone get the words to leave his lips.

It all leaves him feeling paralyzed. Mouth hanging open, all he can muster is a small nod towards her in response.

“Ok… Ok, good…” Yumi mutters, more towards herself than him. Her shoulders sag further as she leans back again. She finally unlinks her hand from his.

He didn’t realize just how tight he’d been clinging to it until he’s left clutching at nothing. Uncurling his fingers again is slow and tingly in an almost painful way. 

Yumi reaches up and swipes some hair away from her face. An angry red ring flares around the edge of her wrist like a glowing bracelet under her sleeve. He finds she’s sporting a matching one on her other wrist. She’s not reacting to them—he’s not sure she’s even noticed them yet—but they look like they hurt, and are so, so out of place on her skin.  

All he can think about is how they got there. 

“Dad, stop! That hurts!”

He can’t get the images out of his head: the white knuckled grip holding her up effortlessly. The staticky, flickering grain of his skin. His mangled expression.

Dad’s eyes—pure, unnatural white and full of unfocused rage. Until that strange symbol pulsed through them like a heartbeat, and then disappeared just as soon as it showed up.

None of it feels real. It all seems more like something he’d see in one of his games that Mom usually tuts at him for playing because she thinks they’re ‘too violent’ for his age. He’s always scoffed at her worries. It’s just a game; it’s just fiction. He’ll be fine, he always told her. He has been fine.

This though. This is just wrong.

“Dad…” He finally gets his voice working again. His throat feels like sandpaper, and speech comes out sounding just as rough. “What…” Is all he manages to say before trailing off, mind still too jumbled to form the full question he wants to ask.

It’s enough for Yumi to understand him though. “That’s… a long story,” she says cryptically.

That… is not the kind of answer he was expecting. 

What on Earth does that mean? Does she know what’s going on? Now that he looks at her more closely, she’s almost disturbingly calm about the whole thing. She finally glances down at her wrists, frowning, but seemingly assessing her injuries with an otherwise mundane look on her face. Like she’s done this a thousand times before now. Why is she like that? This is as far from normal as you can get.

He almost huffs. Why is his sister always so confusing?

He wants to ask, but she moves before he can get his brain there and pulls out her phone. For a minute, he thinks maybe she’s calling for help. (Although who would even believe them, let alone be able to help? Mom? One of Dad’s coworkers? The police? Is anyone really qualified in this kind of situation?)

His expectations are once again shattered when she lifts the phone to her ear. “Jeremy?”

His confusion quickly gives way to a hot anger that burns through the unfocused fog in his head. 

“Jeremy?!” As in Belpois? The computer nerd who’s always skipping gym class? And always looks half ready to fall asleep at any given moment? That Jeremy? She can’t be serious“How the heck is he going to help anyo-”

Yumi raises a hand and fires a sharp look in his direction to silence him as she listens to the other end. “I’ve been a little busy. Jeremy… it’s my dad,” she says. Her face turns frustrated, and when she sees him still watching her like a hawk, she turns around before continuing in a milder tone. “No, that’s not… he’s the attack. ”

…Attack? What?

Hiroki tilts his head and tries to step closer to hear whatever Jeremy’s saying. Just for some degree of context if nothing else. Yumi, though, doesn’t let him get a good position, standing up straighter and leaning away from him before she speaks again. “He just came in out of nowhere and attacked. He was supposed to be at work. …Just a little bruised but, Jeremy…” Her eyes flicker towards Hiroki again, a flash of concern in them. “My brother was with me, and I couldn’t just leave him there so…”

Whatever Jeremy says next has her nodding a few times as she listens. “Right… Ok. On my way.” There’s no goodbye between them, she just presses a button before slipping her phone back into her pocket again. She doesn’t immediately say anything to Hiroki, merely sighs and rubs at one of her temples.

A silence stretches between them. He has so many thoughts in his head, so many questions to ask. He’s not sure where to start with them all. 

What ends up coming out of his mouth first though is…

“If you were gonna call one of your friends, you could’ve at least called your boyfriend.”

When in doubt, snark wins out. 

He stands by it though; at least that guy knows how to fight.

She stiffens immediately at the suggestion. “For the last time, Ulrich is not my-!” She cuts herself off with a groan and shakes her head. “Ugh, nevermind. Come on.” She turns toward the stairs.

“What? Where?”

“To the factory,” she responds irritably. Like it should be the most obvious answer in the world. 

Factory…? “The abandoned one by the river?”

He’s always wondered before why that place hasn’t been torn down yet. He’s heard rumors from others in his class before that the place is haunted, or has old uranium stored underneath. It’s been the subject of a couple issues of the Kadic News too (though they’ve never gone inside, despite all of Milly Solovieff’s begging to Jim that he may or may not have overheard before). 

But what does it have to do with anything going on now? Or Jeremy?

“Are there any other factories around here?” Yumi asks sarcastically. 

He ignores her tone. “Why?” he demands. “What’s so special about there?”

Yumi frowns. “Hiroki—” She turns from her spot on the top stair and reaches for his hand again when she sees he hasn’t moved.

“No!” He snaps it out of her grasp, pulls it behind him and takes a step back further than she can reach. “I’m not going anywhere until you give me some straight answers for once! Tell me why it’s so important to go to this stupid factory!”

Her mouth clamps shut, a frustrated grunt on her breath. He doesn’t budge. And they’re left just staring at each other.

“Because…! Because…” Whatever words she’s looking for don’t come to her. She practically deflates, tense shoulders dropping as her angry tone peters out and a conflicted look comes over her. She bites her lip, glancing to the side and then back at him like she’s weighing her options. “Because it’s the only way to help Dad,” she finally admits a moment later.

Hiroki freezes too. “...What?”

Something bangs out in the distance, startling them both. In an instant he finds himself being pulled towards Yumi, and she takes a defensive stance in front of him. A car alarm starts sounding a second later. There’s none parked near them. It’s from somewhere else down the block. It’s (probably) nothing to do with them)

It leaves them both tensed against each other again anyway.

“Look,” Yumi starts after it beeps for the third time. He’s still looking down the street. She puts a hand on one of his shoulders and lightly squeezes it, guiding his attention back to her. She’s looking him directly in the eye in a genuine way he hasn’t seen in some time. “I promise I’ll explain the best I can, but we can’t stay here. It’s too open, ok?” 

She doesn’t try to grab his hand this time. Instead, she offers her own toward him. Open with palm forward, just waiting for him to take it.

He stares. Yumi actually offering to explain something? None of this still feels real.

…But this situation at least doesn’t feel nearly as wrong.

“Fine,” he says. “Start talking.”

He takes her hand.

Chapter Text

“Wait, what did you just say?” 

The taller buildings around town start to thin out as they move closer in the direction of the river on the other side of town. High up windows slowly get replaced more and more by puffy clouds hanging overhead instead as they near the old road running parallel to it. Yumi moves ahead of him with purpose, taking long legged strides that he struggles to keep up with (one day, he swears, he’s going to be taller than her, and he’s going to revel in every second of it), Like before, the path seems to be a familiar one for her. He believes her when she says she knows the way to the abandoned factory she’s talking about very well, that it’s where she always sneaks off to with her friends.

As for her explanation of why they’re going there though…

Surely he can’t be hearing correctly.

“Dad’s been possessed,” Yumi repeats for him without looking back. Like that’s a completely normal thing to say to someone and actually mean.

Nope. Hearing perfectly fine then. It’s just what she’s saying is nonsense.

Ok then. Cool. Yumi’s lost it. Great. This might as well be happening at this point.

They finally come to a brief stop near the edge of the river. If he squints hard enough, he can see some of the details of the factory out in the distance. It doesn’t look like anything special from here—just a giant metal box with a buncha broken windows and some old, sun faded graffiti sprayed on the side of it (Although admittedly, the graffiti does look pretty cool even with as old as it seems to be. He wonders just how old it actually is. If only he could get a picture of it for Milly… Purely to appeal to her journalistic endeavors of course).

If Yumi’s to be believed though (and jury’s still out on that one), looks can be deceiving.

She doesn’t seem to realize the absolute absurdity of what she’s just said. While they’re stopped and catching their breath, he takes the opportunity to step in front of her and look at her with the utterly baffled expression such an unironic sentence properly deserves. “Possessed,” he repeats, voice flat. She nods. She really believes this? Ok, he’ll bite. “By what? ”

What, is she spending all her time summoning demons with her friends with all the old scrap in there?

“An artificial intelligence called XANA,” she says instead. “It possessed Dad to come after me.”

Well. That’s a new one out of her big bag of stories she pulls from for excuses. Points for creativity at the very least. But her response still feels less like an actual answer and more like a catalyst for a bunch of new questions buzzing in his brain. “And it did that because…?”

Yumi answers easily, “Because my friends and I are the only ones able to fight it off from destroying the world.” 

Oh, is that all it is then? Ok then. Cool.

…

…

…

…

…

Except actually…

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” is what he says instead. Because she cannot be serious about any of this right now. It sounds ridiculous. There’s no way any of this can be true. This has to be all made up; would all make a great plot for one of his games—he’d sink hours into something like that, no doubt. In terms of fiction it sounds right up his alley. But for anything similar to happen in real life?

And Mom says he takes in too much sci-fi… Sheesh…

He glances over at the factory for a moment. And here he thought he’d get some actual answers out of her for once. He’s more confused than ever now. He folds his arms across his chest with a huff. “If you’re still gonna lie about all this, you could at least make it more convincing.”

He strikes a nerve. “Hey, you wanted real answers, I’m giving them to you. It’s not my fault if you don’t believe it,” she snaps in response. The intensity of her voice gets him to look back at her again with narrow, suspicious eyes. A hand goes to her hip and she raises a brow at his disbelieving expression. “Ok then: do you have any other explanations for what’s going on?”

Hiroki opens his mouth to give a nasty retort back about how absurd her whole story sounds and how of course there has to be a better reason than the nonsense she just told him, but stops short of getting the words out. The image of that glitching bullseye symbol flashes in his mind before he can speak. 

Just like how it had in Dad’s eyes.

That in itself had been strange enough, but… Dad’s face had looked so contorted and wrong from the moment he walked in; his movements so stiff and cold and aggressive—and all focused on Yumi. It was all so different from how he normally was… 

Almost like it wasn’t him at all.

“It possessed him to go after me.” Her words strike him again.

It still sounds absolutely insane, but maybe…

The moment passes in silence. Eventually, he lets his mouth snap shut with a click of his teeth. At the borderline self-satisfied look Yumi gets on her face, he looks down towards the river and grumbles indistinctly under his breath as he stares into the water.

She always has to know more than he does, doesn’t she?

She huffs out something that almost resembles a laugh. “Didn’t think so.” Her shadow stretched along the ground starts to move again, catching his attention. When he looks back up, she’s already at least three steps ahead of him.

He scrambles to catch up again. “What, so I’m just supposed to believe that the reason you and your friends always run off and cut class is so you can go play secret superhero together? Is that it?” It sounds absolutely bizarre. Especially the thought of Yumi of all people being involved.

She hates getting involved in other people’s drama.

He barely manages to fall into a run beside Yumi, who rolls her eyes at the question. “It’s not playing , it’s about keeping people safe.”

“Ugh, you even have that part of the whole superhero schtick down,” he groans, barely resisting the urge to stick his tongue out at the idea. She sounds like she could be in a cheap PSA on a Saturday morning cartoon. Do her and her friends practice that, he wonders? Is she gonna tell him that great power comes with great responsibility next?

Actually, now that he thinks about it…

“How exactly do you ‘save the world’ then anyway? Do you have superpowers I should know about?” He can’t keep the excitement out of his voice as he asks. That would be pretty cool. Even for someone as annoying as his sister.

Yumi seems to think less so on the idea. “Don’t you think if I had any I’d have used them already?” She points out tiredly. 

Maybe. But…

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

She sighs loudly. “Are you physically capable of going five minutes without being an absolute brat?” 

The creeping grin splitting across his face should be answer enough for her.  

His moment of joy in annoying her is short lived, however, as they near the bridge connecting their path into the factory proper. Hiroki feels himself slowing down as they start to move across it until he finds himself at a standstill. The entrance to it looms large in front of them, like a dark gaping maw. A breeze blows by and he swears he can hear an echoey whistling coming from somewhere inside. He’s seen the factory before today of course—it’s kind of hard to miss it, eyesore that it is—but only ever at a distance. Seeing it this close up, all the rusted siding and broken glass and loose cables just beyond…

It looks pretty creepy.

Yumi, however, is undeterred by it and keeps walking closer. “There’s a computer lab in the basement of the factory with a supercomputer in it. We use that to stop its attacks in the real world. Including this one… I hope…” She adds that last part in a mutter under her breath and glances somewhere behind them in a brief pause, seemingly searching for something. 

Maybe Dad…?

He quickly shuts that thought down and keeps looking forward while his brain processes her latest revelation. A supercomputer… in there? The place looks like it’d barely know what a computer is, let alone a super one. It just doesn’t seem likely.

Now his demon summoning theory on the other hand…

“Are you coming?” Yumi’s voice cuts through the idea before it can get too far.

He jumps, pulling himself out of his imaginings of the shadows further inside and back to the reality that is conversation at hand. “How the heck did you even find something like that?”

“I didn’t,” she quickly emphasizes, shooing away the mental image he has of her just coming here to hang out and brood by herself all day (she can roll her eyes all she wants but he can absolutely see it). “Jeremy did. Something about looking for scrap metal I think is what he said.” Her expression goes all scrunched in thought, then she shakes her head. “It’s been a while. I don’t remember exactly.”

Jeremy? Huh... Hiroki didn’t take him as the trespassing type.

Cool.

They walk past a rusted cover leading into the storm drain below them that’s been left half open. When he glances down through it he finds a small collection of scooters and skateboards haphazardly left next to the metal ladder leading up. Vaguely, he remembers Yumi’s old board disappearing from her room ages ago; none of them are the right color to be hers though.“How long is ‘a while’?” he asks a moment later.

She pauses at that. “Two years?” It’s more of a question before she repeats again, this time with more conviction, “Two years. Or, almost two years at least.”

It’s an effort to keep his eyes from bugging out at her. Has she been acting so weirdly cagey for that long? That doesn’t sound right.

Weirdly, it feels like it’s been longer than that.

“How come no one else knows about it?” How does someone keep a secret this big so closed off for so long? Yumi’s a good liar, but she can’t be that good all the time.

…Can she?

She falters at that one, face pressing into a tight grimace. She opens her mouth, seeming to almost say one thing before she shuts it again, reconsidering. “That’s… a longer explanation than we have time to get into right now.” She finally says.

They’re about halfway across the bridge now, but his shoes suddenly feel like they’re weighed down by lead and he comes to a standstill. This all seems like… a lot. A lot of time, thought, efforts. 

Excuses to have to come up with. 

He frowns, thinking about all she’s said. Supercomputer… computer virus…

He’s no computer genius, but…

“Why don’t you just turn it off?”

“What?” Yumi startles and tilts her head at him in a way he hasn’t seen her do in a long while; like it was a question she wasn’t expecting.

He doesn’t see how she couldn’t.

“If this XONO thing is a computer virus, why don’t you just turn the computer off,” he repeats. Turning it off and back on again is like the one thing he knows about fixing computers. And surely she does too if she’s friends with a nerd like Jeremy. 

“It’s XANA,” she corrects, then makes something between a wince and an eyeroll seemingly aimed toward herself. “And that won’t work anymore.”

That’s an interesting way of phrasing it, he notes to himself. “Why not?”

“That’s a long story.”

“Why didn’t you turn it off when it still would’ve worked then?”

“That’s a long story too.”

Isn’t the point for you to tell me the ‘long stories’?

Of course; the one time she decides to let him in onto whatever it is she’s doing, and she still can’t tell him everything. She’s leaving him behind like usual. And she just has to know more than he does. Frustration rumbles through his chest, threatening to pour out of him with the strength of a thundercloud. He wants to yell at her again, scoff and leave, do something.

But then the air crackles with heavy static around them, and an actual lightning bolt lands in a bright blue flash between them.

So he doesn’t.

Chapter Text

The force of the blast knocks his feet out from under him in time with a deafening boom. His ears are ringing when he lands on his back with a thud that knocks the wind out of him. He gasps in his next breath, more surprised then hurt. It smells just like it does before a rainstorm. 

The sun is still shining above them.

Coarse static clings to his clothes and every move crackles with dull sparks against his skin as he struggles to pull himself upright. There’s a large, dark scorch mark still smoking in the space between where he and Yumi had just been standing. Yumi herself lays in a similar position across from him, sliding back further as she tries to sit up. Suddenly she freezes, her eyes going gaping wide with a look of harsh fear that he’s getting way too familiar with today.

Against his better judgment, he follows her gaze to where it’s pointed somewhere behind him.

Dad is standing there, shoulders high, posture hunched, dress shirt torn and singed at the seams in a way even Mom wouldn’t be able to fix. His hands are clenched into tight fists in front of him. And gripped between his stiff fingers is a big, bright, blue bolt of lightning. He looks like he’d fit right in with the cast of that fighting game Johnny showed him a couple weeks ago, the one with all the superheroes and villains from those comics he likes.

On any other day it would’ve been the coolest thing Hiroki’s ever seen. 

Today though?

He just tries not to think about what side of that cast Dad fits in more with right now. 

Hiroki feels his breath catch in his throat as Dad looks down at him. His eyes are a pure, blinding white, pupils nowhere in sight. Wisps of energy flicker out of the sides of them in a constant stream, almost like they’re leaking electricity—colored of course the same bright shade as the one grasped in his hands. Dad tilts his head and takes a step closer; a trail of TV static ghosts follows the movement before fading away again. There’s a brief moment where neither of them move.

The bullseye symbol from before pulses through his eyes heartbeat quick.

He smirks.

And suddenly the bolt clasped in his hands gets bigger. Brighter. Too bright, even, but Hiroki can’t tear his eyes away from it. Distantly, he hears shouting of something—of his name? He’s not sure. It all sounds underwater compared to the crackling hiss in front of him.

He should move, he knows that much. But he can’t. He can’t even breathe. The static from before buzzes heavier against him, pressing on his chest, choking the air out from it and burning his muscles taut. He’s paralyzed. The hair on the back of his neck somehow manages to jump up even higher as he looms closer.

Dad’s eyes flare electric blue. Something flashes. There’s a loud grunt.

…And the next thing he knows, Hiroki is yanked back onto his feet by strong arms just before another bolt can tear through him. Another scorch mark—this one bigger and somehow even darker than the last one—smolders in the spot he’d just been in.

He’d be shaking if there wasn’t a vice grip keeping him upright.

He looks up at Yumi behind him. She’s breathing heavy—panting, almost—and he swears he can almost feel the way her heart is beating out of her chest. Just like his.

At least he’s not alone in being completely freaked out of his mind.

Unlike him though, she’s not showing it. Her mouth is moving as she pulls him back further and then shoves him towards the factory’ entrance. It takes him a minute to register that she’s shouting at him. “There’s an elevator further inside, go!” And then before he can even think of something to say back she’s tearing forward and charging toward Dad.

Something in his heart jolts at the sight. She’s out of her mind; she can’t go against something like that! She’ll be fried! Made even crispier than the toast he’d tried to make Mom years ago for her birthday. This isn’t a job for her—he’s not sure who it is for, but it can’t be her. She’s just… she’s just Yumi! She can’t do this!

…But she does.

She throws herself forward at Dad without a hint of hesitation or fear. It’s almost the same way she does when she runs at him for a hug (rare as she does that anymore, it was a coming thing when they were younger). Here though, she sticks her shoulder out and rams into him in a powerful tackle that sends them both stumbling. His hands separate and fingers spread out in an attempt to catch himself on air; the lightning bolt fizzles out of existence immediately. And the sparks around his eyes do the same thing when his head smacks onto the factory bridge.

Hiroki winces. He can practically hear Dad complaining about his back killing him already—at least there’d be a good reason for it this time (well… ‘good’). The TV static ghosts from before completely overtake his body for a second, making it flicker in and out like a faulty video tape. When it stops, Dad’s lying completely still. Is he still breathing? Does he even need to breathe right now? This is bad.

Or… it’s not? If he’s down, he can’t hurt anyone. But it’s still Dad in there, right? Should he check on him or-

Dad’s eyes snap open. The bullseye symbol flares brightly, and he lunges for Yumi’s throat. 

Hiroki yelps. Nope! He’s fine! The foot he’d lifted falls back down like it’s made of lead.

Yumi slams her hands down against Dad’s arms before they can swipe at her. “Hiroki!” She twists her head back to glare at him. “Go! Now!” There’s venom in her voice, and it somehow overpowers the obvious strain in there too as she struggles to keep Dad’s thrashing limbs pinned underneath her. If only a little bit.

It’s enough to get him moving at least. His shoe squeaks underneath him when he turns on the ball of his foot and starts running. It’s not a far distance, not really, but it feels like forever. He’s going as fast as he possibly can—seriously, he has to have set some sort of a new personal best today with how much he’s been running—but the goal doesn’t feel like it’s gotten any closer. He didn’t think it was possible for his lungs to hurt this much, but he’s learning all sorts of things today, it seems.

He’s so tunnel vision focused on the entrance he almost doesn’t notice when he slips past the threshold. There’s a set of stairs in front of him, but they’re broken beyond the first couple steps, mangled remains spilling into nothing below. A fact that he realizes only after nearly stepping on air. Adrenaline and just a bit of luck (probably a lot of luck really) grinds his feet to a halt just in time; a few loose pebbles launch over the edge and down to the factory floor below. He watches them with wide eyes until they’re too small to see. He swallows and turns his head.

The elevator. He sees it—or at least the elevator shaft. It’s to his right, down on the factory floor. Mystery One: solved. But it’s older brother Mystery Two looms over him to take its place: just how is he supposed to get down there?

Static crawls up his back again. Yumi yells, and just in time to see her get thrown halfway across the bridge by a flash of brilliant light that blasts out from Dad’s chest. He jumps, and his hand brushes against a loose, frayed looking cable dangling from the ceiling in front of him in his panic. He gives it an experimental tug.

Is this thing safe…?

Yumi pulls herself back up and charges at Dad again. Dad’s grin glitters with more lightning.

At the feeling of buzzing scratching against his skin, Hiroki wraps his fingers around the rope, grits his teeth, and jumps just before he can see the two of them collide again.

He’s light. He’ll be fine… right?

The fall is faster than he’s ready for, yet it still seems like it takes forever to get to the bottom. Cool air rushes past his ear and onto his face. A sharp contrast to the sharp burning of his hands. Each second burns worse than the last; it’s a fight against every instinct he has to keep himself from letting go too soon just to make it stop. He lands on wobbly legs an eternity later, and when he opens his hands, he finds peels of skin coming off his red, rubbed raw palms.

The elevator shaft is within a sprint’s distance now at least though. He throws the side of his fist against the large button sitting against the metal frame when he gets there. A moment later, there’s a rumbling coming from below.

There’s another sound behind him: a scream. He turns around on his heel and finds two things:

Dad, standing in the middle of the factory floor against a spider web of cracks underneath him, blue sparks dancing out from his outstretched fingers.

…And their target, Yumi, who’s lying curled up in a ball in front of him, shaking as she’s struck. 

“Yumi!” He slaps his hand over his mouth with a wince.

Neither of them acknowledge his outburst. The sparks stop from Dad’s hand, but they don’t turn towards him. Instead Dad brings them together again until they get brighter and brighter, and take on a familiar shape. And a moment later he’s pointing a neon blue lightning bolt right at Yumi’s head.

She doesn’t move.

This is bad. He needs to do something to stop him—charge at him like Yumi did, throw something, shout, do literally anything! But he can’t get himself to move. There’s ice in his veins, numbing and cold and paralyzing him in place. No matter how much he tries, he can’t get his feet to move.

He’s scared. 

Yumi had made it look so simple, going after him like she had. He doesn’t understand how. She’s scared too, he knows that, but she pushed past it like it was nothing to her.

That’s when it really hits him: she wasn’t lying. She really has done this before. She told him that herself but it didn’t really sink in until now.

She’s fought off people coming at her with lighting in their hands before. Multiple times—many times! For the past two years! Without telling anyone else about what she’s done! How else could she react to everything that’s been going on so calmly?

He’d been joking before but… is Yumi actually a superhero?

The rumbling of the elevator abruptly stops. Something else behind him hisses. Moves out of the corner of his eye. And then…

“Hey!”

A shadow rushes out of the elevator before the shutter is even done opening towards and leaps at Dad. Not even Dad sees it coming, and once again he’s knocked down onto the ground onto, the lightning bolt this time getting thrown away to one of the crumbling factory walls way off to the side. It flashes big and bright—bright enough Hiroki has to cover his face with his arm—before fizzling out.

When he lowers his arm again, Ulrich is there helping Yumi to her feet.

With an arm around his shoulder, she looks at him gratefully before turning all business. “How bad is it going in there?”

Ulrich makes a face. “Odd’s at about 40 and they’re both dealing with a boatload of Krabs,” he replies, completely seriously.

…Hiroki understands the meaning of all of those words individually.

Yumi must understand that jumble put together though, because she hisses in a sharp breath at the news, bobbing her head a bit. “Well, we’ve dealt with worse,” she reasons. “What brought you back?”

“I crashed into two of them with my bike,” Ulrich says with a wide smirk that speaks volumes about whether or not it was intentional.

“Jeremy’s going to revoke your license if you keep doing that.”

“Hasn’t failed me yet,” he jokes back. His eyes meet Hiroki’s briefly. His smirk turns into an outright grin as he offers a small wave before looking back at Yumi. “Bring your sibling to work day?”

“I wish it were only him,” she says. Her eyes flicker over to where Dad is shuffling back to his feet. “Ulrich…” She reaches out and nearly places a hand on his shoulder, but seems to think better of it just a moment before.

He nearly groans. Even when they’re in danger, she wants to flirt with him, doesn’t she?

Ulrich waves her off. “I’ll handle things up here. You go help Odd before he does something else crazy.”

Ulrich gets into a fighting stance in front of them. Yumi hesitates for a moment, but ultimately turns around back toward Hiroki again. “Come on,” she says again, and leads him into the open elevator. It’s incredibly old looking, but he doesn’t wait to step in with her.

After everything else that’s happened today, this can’t even be close to the most dangerous thing he’s done.

Yumi hits the button. The metal shutter closes. The sound of Ulrich’s voice, delivering some sort of quippy one liner from what he can hear, becomes muffled by heavy humming.

The elevator jolts and begins its descent downward into who-knows-what below.

Chapter Text

Creaking. Squeaking. Humming. That’s all he can hear as the elevator keeps moving. The floor rumbles through his shoes, shaking his stomach and making it flip in that same uncomfortable way he got when he rode that rollercoaster with Yumi a few summers ago. For as old as this thing is, it moves way faster than he expected it to.

It comes to an abrupt stop a moment later. The metal shutter opens to a large lock looking thing that lights up with sparking electricity in the large crack running through it. Slowly it turns, then starts to pry itself open with a hiss. And when it does…

Hiroki is not ready for it.

Metal is everywhere: floor, ceiling, long sets of cables running along the floor from one end to the other. Everywhere. Which is strange enough, and then he sees what the cables connect to : a giant holographic spinning… sphere or something in the middle of the room. The lights of it gleam and bounce off of the metal walls, giving the whole place an eerie, greenish glow to it. A large control terminal sits just next to it, hanging off an arm from the ceiling. There’s a chair sitting just in front of it too.

…A chair that Jeremy Belpois is sitting in, which Hiroki only realizes after he peeks his head out from over the top of the monitor and offers a curt greeting to Yumi.

Jaw: officially on the floor. “Whoa…” 

Beside him, Yumi smirks as she guides him out the elevator. “I told you it was a computer emergency,’ she says, only a bit smug.

For once he can’t bring himself to be mad at her for it.

Yumi moves from his side to Jeremy’s in a few steps. “How’s it going?” she asks, eyes darting between him and the screen, and then they’re engrossed in a conversation with each other that Hiroki quickly loses interest in.

It’s hard to follow a conversation when you can’t understand every other word of what they’re saying in it. Since when does Yumi understand all this technical computery stuff anyway?

…Right, since about two years ago. He still doesn’t understand how she’s hidden that—especially if fighting off something like what happened upstairs is so normal for her. 

He shakes his head. This day is just too weird.

His foot lightly thuds against the edge of the hologram’s base. He hadn’t realized he’d been moving, he was so wrapped up in just staring at everything. It’s a lot to take in, almost too much. He steps back and leans closer to the strange sphere.

The outside of it is made up of thin, clear, white outlines, like the lines on a globe. There’s a smaller sphere floating within it, glowing a strange yellowish color and with that bullseye symbol from before over it. Around it there are a couple of other… things. They look like… maps? Maybe? One is blue and the other is purple. They look uneven with each other, like there should be other symbols too, but there’s just empty space instead.

A nagging temptation pulls at his brain, and he reaches his hand in past the clear wireframe before he can stop himself.

The wireframe feels strangely warm and staticky as he passes through it. The hair on his arm jumps up as one of the maps phases through him like it’s nothing. It reminds him of what it feels like when he presses his palm against the TV screen at home when it’s still on. It even makes a similar sound to it too as it starts to warp and fizzle in and out around his fingers.

There’s a beep near the monitor, and then a loud, “Hey!” When Hiroki looks up, Jeremy is sending him a sharp look, attention pulled from Yumi in an instant. “Don’t touch that!”

He yanks his hand back out immediately with a yelp. Jeremy keeps staring at him for a few more seconds, and wow it’s uncomfortable how intense it is. He’s got that stare Mom gives him when she knows he’s done something wrong down pat. It's weird seeing that from Jeremy. 

Who knew Belpois could be so authoritative?

“Ok,” Yumi cuts in quickly. She steps over to him, places her hands on his shoulders, and moves Hiroki to the spot she was just standing at beside Jeremy’s chair. “New rules: stay right here, don’t touch anything, and don’t bug Jeremy while he’s working. He’s in charge while I’m gone.”

The indignation at being herded around like a five year old quickly gives way to confusion for what feels like the millionth time today. “‘Gone’? Gone where ?”

She’s already inside the elevator when he turns to work, smirk back on her lips. “To go play superhero,” she tells him.

And then the elevator closes.

Great.

He turns back towards Jeremy again. His eyes go wide at the monitor he’s looking at: this thing has multiple screens. All of which have multiple windows open. He can’t even begin to guess what’s on most of them, but a few stand out on the main one: some kind of map, and a couple of… what look like trading cards, he thinks, that have profiles on them that look suspiciously similar to Odd Della Robbia and Aelita Stones.

…He doesn’t understand why Odd looks vaguely like a giant purple cat though.

“Just what the heck is all this…” He can’t keep himself from voicing the thought out loud.

“A supercomputer and a virtual world called Lyoko.” He doesn’t expect Jeremy’s matter-of-fact response and startles at the sound of his voice. He doesn’t even look back at Hiroki as he speaks, just keeps focused on his typing. Hiroki’s almost transfixed on just that alone; he’s never seen anyone type as fast as Jeremy does. 

But then something shifts on screen. Some of the cards cycle through, and a picture of Yumi with her hair up and a fan in her hand pops up on screen at the press of a few keys.

His brow furrows. “What is Yumi doing on there?”

Jeremy again answers plainly, “She’s going inside the supercomputer to help the others deactivate the tower and free your dad from XANA’s control.” Like that should be the obvious answer he should come to or something.

Hiroki feels his jaw go slack yet again as he stares at Jeremy. Vaguely, he remembers what Yumi said before back outside.

We use the supercomputer to stop the attacks in the real world .

He just thought that she meant like… hacking stuff or something like that! 

But a virtual world… That must mean…! “Wait, so you use a giant video game to fight off your bad guy?” 

Jeremy snorts. “That’s a big oversimplification, but sure. We’ll go with that.” His fingers dance along the keys. A moment later, he calls out, “Transfer, scanner, virtualization!”

And the card of Yumi on screen lights up. Another icon appears on the map—Yumi, it has to be Yumi—a moment later. Another window with her card opens up alongside some kind of audio waveform.

“Odd and Aelita are to the northeast of your current position,” Jeremy says, pulling the map towards another set of icons that must represent his other friends.

“ Send me a taxi? ” Yumi’s voice comes through sounding tinny and muffled through the computer's speakers. For as advanced as this thing must be, you’d think it’d have better audio quality. Maybe that’s what being virtual sounds like?

…She’s virtual right now, good lord. How did she even get in there? What did she have to do to appear like that? What did Jeremy do to get her there? Does he even want to know? 

Jeremy, oblivious to his mini crisis, just grins at Yumi’s request. “Coming right up!” A few taps at his keyboard later, another card appears on screen—some purple platform with a handle?—and then the green triangle that is Yumi zooms off.

And Hiroki just watches in awe.

They’re a well oiled machine, Yumi and her friends. Jeremy effortlessly switches from checking in on her progress, back to Aelita and Odd (who, despite what Ulrich said before, sounds like he’s doing fine, if the excited “Yeah! It’s ‘Yoo-hoo, it’s us’ time!” is anything to go by), and back to Yumi again all within a minute of each step. Minutes go by and she’s already halfway to where the others seem to be. Yumi seems to take each turn she’s supposed to with very little input from Jeremy, like she’s done this trek, gone down the path she’s on a million times before.

She probably has, if it’s been two years.

He has to wonder: what’s it like in there? Being virtual? It has to feel weird, right? It can’t possibly feel normal. He’s never been inside a computer just in the real world, but he can’t imagine being in an actual computer program would feel anything close to natural. He almost has to laugh: he’s always wondered what being in one of his games would actually feel like, how it’d feel to get his hands dirty fighting off the monsters he slays in the game (to the point Mom always jokes that he’s going to get sucked inside one of them any day now if he doesn’t stop spending so much time on them, which is not the threat she seems to think it is). 

And then he finds out Yumi’s doing just that on the regular. No wonder he can never get her to play a game with him anymore…

Yumi’s mark is about to converge with her friends when an alarm starts beeping. Three red dots appear, and Jeremy speaks into his mic urgently, “Three Tarantulas on your tail, Yumi!”

“ I see them. I’ll be careful. "

Bad guys? They must be; more cards pop up with strange spidery looking monsters and are pitted against Yumi’s. Odd lets out a grunt and pulls Jeremy’s attention back over to him, but Hiroki keeps watching the card of his sister with rapt focus.

The map isn’t a good representation for a fight—it’s just vague symbols—so he has to use his imagination. But watching one of the cards disappear almost immediately without Yumi taking a hit makes him wonder just how she fights. 

If it’s anything like how she fights in the real world, he’s surprised they haven’t knocked this XONO thing out yet already.

The number on her card goes down and her vehicle disappears against her next foe. Her symbol jumps around the map from one side to the other—he imagines her jumping and flipping around, dodging each attack before it can land on her. And then all too quickly, the next monster card disappears too. 

He cheers. “Yeah! Go Yumi! Show em’ who’s boss!”

He throws a celebratory fist in the air that gets a little too close to Jeremy’s seat. He sways out of the way of it and gives Hiroki an annoyed look, which he returns with a sheepish one of his own.

He swears Jeremy almost smiles at that.

But then something in the air shifts again. Static stretches across his skin in a frighteningly familiar pattern. His ears start buzzing; the lab starts to smell like ozone. There’s a bizarre warping sound, and Hiroki looks over just in time to see a TV static ghost phasing through the elevator door.

Dad.

And Ulrich is nowhere in sight.

Hiroki lets out a squeak without meaning to. Jeremy’s hands freeze just above the keyboard and his eyes go wide behind his glasses in obvious fear. 

The room isn’t very big, and Dad clears the gap in no time flat, completely ignoring Hiroki where he’s frozen in place in favor of going straight for Jeremy. And where Yumi, although was still overpowered, could put up a decent fight against Dad, Jeremy decidedly… doesn’t. Dad picks him up by the collar of his shirt high off the ground. Electric blue sparks through Dad’s eyes, then travels down his arm until it starts to coarse through Jeremy. He screams, body convulsing terribly.

Hiroki wants to look away, but finds he can’t. Even if he tries, the glow from the sparks bounces off the walls and makes the whole room look different.

An eternity later, the electricity stops, and Dad throws Jeremy across to the other side of the room. He lands with a heavy thud beside the cables snaking out of the ground and slumps over, head thunking onto the ground. 

After a few seconds, it’s clear he’s not getting back up.

The sparks from Dad’s eyes die down until the room is greenish again. There’s an almost maniacal grin plastered on his face as he turns around, one he turns toward Hiroki himself as he approaches the computer. He leers over Hiroki for a moment, seeming to savor the moment, but he doesn’t do anything to him. Just lets that bullseye symbol flash through his eyes again.

It’s still enough to keep Hiroki feeling intimidated, and his feet still rooted in place.

Dad turns toward the keyboard. On a normal day, he’d barely know what to do with the thing. Today though, his fingers start to fly across the keyboard even faster than Jeremy’s. An inhuman-like speed. Another window opens, he types in some commands—how does he know how to do all of this?

Odd lets out a startled squeak from the speaker before his card gets drained of its color. It vanishes from the screen a moment later, leaving only two left.

And the one Dad starts to focus on next is…

No…

No!

NO!

His legs start moving before he can think about it. This is a terrible idea, awful, horrible even. Yumi would yell at him over it if she could, call him an idiot for it too for good measure. But she can’t right now—she’s in there, doing her superhero stuff, trying to save everyone and just being awesome (don’t tell her he said that though). She can’t stop Dad from touching the computer or from messing with her and doing… whatever like he did to Odd from out here.

But Hiroki can. And he will . Because that’s his sister in there.

And only he’s allowed to mess with her. Those are little brother privileges and no one else's!

He throws himself at Dad and shoves him with all his might. He’s bracing himself to phase through, to hear TV static buzzing in his brain again, but to his surprise he actually makes contact. Dad yells out and stumbles forward and trips into the base of the holographic map, body fizzling against it. The map fizzles too, creating a bright flash that makes spots dance around Hiroki’s vision. 

More importantly, the window he’d opened on screen sits there with text unfinished. And Yumi’s card still stares back at him.

“ Jeremy? ” Yumi’s voice sounds from the speakers. “ Odd just devirtualized all of a sudden. Is everything ok out there? ”

“Yumi!” He exclaims, then notices the earpiece Jeremy’s had been wearing dangling off the arm of the empty chair and all but lunges to grab it. “Yumi,  Dad’s here and he knocked Jeremy out and-!” A spark shoots past his head. The mic clatters back onto the chair when he ducks with a yelp.

“ Hiroki? What’s going on? Hiroki? Hiroki?! ” Yumi’s voice frantically calls back, but he doesn’t have the time to respond. Dad climbs back up to his feet, blue lightning dancing from his fingers again. 

There’s nowhere to go—the room hasn’t gotten any bigger. He turns to run anyway as Dad lifts his arm.

Something strikes his back, just beside his left shoulder blade. His body jerks forward. Searing pain shoots down his side, hotter than anything he’s ever felt before. He hits the ground, but he doesn’t feel anything. All at once the heat stops and turns to ice instead as his body goes numb. There are spots in his vision.

The last thing he hears before the world goes dark is a heavy rumbling from above, and the faint sound of his sister's voice getting quieter and quieter.

The first thing he hears when he comes to is a faint humming somewhere nearby, and the sound of his sister's voice getting louder and louder.

“...roki! Hiroki! Wake up!” There’s a hand on his shoulder. Of course it’s the left one.

He hisses in pain as he slowly sits up, cradling his arm close to his chest. It’s not numb anymore, but he’d almost rather it still was. Instead, he’s left with a tingling pain that shoots down it at every move he makes. Yumi, sitting beside him, seems to sense this and pulls her hand away when he tenses and puts it on his knee instead.

It takes him a moment to register that she’s there, like actually there and he’s not just imagining it. His eyes go wide in panic, but then there’s another tap on his knee and Yumi jerks her head to the side, drawing his attention there.

The rest of her friends are in the computer lab—Jeremy’s awake again with Aelita and Odd back in the real world next to him at the chair, and Ulrich is near Yumi and Hiroki, looking a little more scuffed up than he did last he saw him, but otherwise no worse for wear. 

…And beside them is an unconscious Dad laying very still on the floor.

He jumps at that. “What…?”

“It’s over,” Yumi tells him quickly before he can get too far in his head again. “We won. For now.” She mutters that last part.

“Oh…” Hiroki lets out. Muscles he wasn’t aware were tense start to loosen at the revelation. His eyes dart nervously back down to Dad. “Is he… gonna be ok?”

“He’ll be fine,” Ulrich is the one to answer his question. He smirks down at Hiroki and then adds, “Took guts to distract him like you did though. Not bad.”

So that was what the rumbling he’d heard had been. Despite everything, Hiroki can’t help the grin that forms on his face at hearing that. Ulrich is so cool .

But all too quickly the feeling fades away, and another question tugs at his brain. “What happens now?” Do they wait for Dad to wake up? How are they ever gonna explain all of this to him? Wasn’t he at work when this happened?

Is Dad gonna have to look for a new job again?

“Now, we fix everything,” Yumi says. She’s not looking at him, she’s looking at Jeremy. He types something on the keyboard and opens another window with a countdown timer before turning and nodding at her. She returns it and looks back down at Hiroki. “Which means neither of you will remember this even happened.”

There’s a minute on the timer

“Oh…” He should have more questions about that, how it works and what that even means, but after the day he’s had, that feels like one of the least confusing things he’s heard about today. Instead, he asks “But you still will?”

She nods. “Yeah.”

Fifty seconds.

So that’s how she keeps it a secret. Not that knowing that will matter in a moment, but it scratches an itch in the back of his brain regardless.

But still…

Forty seconds.

“What if I don’t want to forget about all of this?” She raised a brow at his question, which he follows up with, “What if I want to remember like you?”

“You don’t want that,” Yumi tells him firmly.

“You don’t know that,” he bites back. He sits up and almost immediately crumples again at the stinging in his arm and shoulder. Yumi raises an unimpressed brow at him and pushes him back gently against the wall for support.

Thirty seconds.

“You don’t want that,” Yumi repeats. “People who remember get targeted by XANA. And XANA doesn’t like to play nice.” She motions to the arm he’s still has resting awkwardly against his chest. “It’s better if you don’t know about it. For so many reasons.” She almost smiles as she adds, “My sanity’s sake, if nothing else.”

She says all that like it’s supposed to make him feel better about it.

“I don’t want you to get hurt either, though.” Seeing her held up and struggling against an ironclad grip or curled up on the floor as she’s assaulted by endless electricity. Yumi’s strong, he knows that, but she seemed so… helpless, against it all even in spite of all that.

He doesn’t like the idea that that might happen to her again. That it will happen again.

Twenty seconds.

Her expression softens. “Hiroki, I deal with this all the time. I’ll be fine.” It’s supposed to be reassuring.

It’s not.

He stares down at his knees. “I just want to help…”

Ten seconds.

“Oh, Hiroki.” Yumi leans forward and wraps him in a one armed hug on his good side. “You being the brat you always are is help enough.”

She sounds like she genuinely means it too. Ugh. She has to get sappy now, of all times, when he won’t even remember it.

She always has to know more than him, doesn’t she?

He hugs her back.

The countdown hits zero. A bright flash shoots out from the hologram base.

Everything turns white.

…

…

…

…

...

Watch TV?

Eh, there’s never anything good on this time of day… Or ever.

A movie?

No, those are always way too long.

Play a video game?

He could… but all of the ones that he hasn’t played to death lately are no fun by himself.

It’s official then: he has absolutely nothing to do. 

Hiroki lets out a long, exaggerated sigh as he flops back onto the couch. And at the same time, something shifts on the cushion beside him, making him jump.

“Yumi?” He can’t keep the bewilderment out of his voice. “What’re you doing here?”

There she is, leaning back against the couch, with  a genuine and relaxed smile on her face. “What, I’m not allowed to sit out here? I live here too you know,” she says, though her tone makes it clear she’s not at all annoyed.

He blinks at her. This is weird for her. Has she been replaced by an imposter? He’s almost not sure what to say.

But when in doubt: snark wins out.

“Could’ve fooled me,” he replies, sitting up and giving her a suspicious glance. “Sure you’re not about to try and run out of here like you always do?” He’s sure he knows the answer already.

The closer he looks though, the weirder the whole situation is. Her phone isn’t anywhere in sight like it normally would be around this time. She doesn’t seem as frantic as she normally is when she tries to go see her friends. And she did actually stop to sit with him instead of trying to run straight for the door.

And the bizarre icing on this weird cake: she actually leans back in her seat and shakes her head. “Nope.”

He stares. “You’re kidding.”

“Is it really so weird for me to want to spend a little time with my brother for once?” she asks.

He gives her a flat expression. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

She hums. “Well, if you really don’t want someone to play a game with or something, I can just head back upstairs-”

He immediately jumps up to his feet and points at her before she can even pretend to get up. “I never said I wasn’t ok with that!”

This is strange for her, but he’ll take anything as a distraction right now.

Even if it comes in the form of something he never thought possible anymore.

She laughs and urges him forward. “Alright, alright, go on and pick something then.”

He grins and spins on his heel. She’s about to get absolutely destroyed in Mario Kart, she has no idea. But before he can reach for the controllers, he turns around and has to ask on last question, just to be sure:

“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather go spend time with your boyfriend?”

“Hiroki, pick a stupid game before I change my mind.” Yumi responds irritably.

He cackles and whirls back around. There’s the Yumi he’s used to alright!

He’s not sure what’s gotten into her today, but he won’t complain about the distraction to his boredom she’s bringing.

…And maybe, just maybe, given the grin she has on her face the whole afternoon as they play, he can convince her to make this a regular thing again.

Just as long as he can catch when she’s not busy  being secretive with her friends again.

Seriously, just what is it she’s always doing with them?

He’ll probably never know.