Archive of Our Own ^beta

No one had really noticed occasional coughing. After all, it was March, and the season was swinging from colds to allergies; everyone had one thing or another. When he complained of fever and shortness of breath as well, his mother had taken him to a general practitioner, who'd put him on antibiotics for a case of bronchitis. For a few days, they seemed to help.

Then he had collapsed into a shaking heap in the middle of a business dinner.

He didn't understand what was going on. The doctors in the hospital threw around terms like "Aspergillosis" and "allergy-related immunodeficiency" that made his mother cry and his father look tense and drawn, but he couldn't focus enough to try and keep up.

The needles hurt. The bed hurt. Breathing hurt. Everything hurt.

His father brought him specially-made nutrient solutions that were supposed to work with what the IVs were putting into his system, but he couldn't keep them down. His mother brought him the softest blankets she could find to keep from irritating his skin, but they still felt heavy and suffocating. The doctors had even encouraged him to try using his NEXT in the beginning, but five minutes in an hour just wasn't enough progress, and he'd had to stop to keep from wearing himself out too much. He couldn't sleep and didn't want food.

He was going to get better, people promised. It wasn't impossible for someone his age and condition to fight off what was lurking in his lungs. There were a lot of medications that could help him. But his weight kept going down and the vicious cough and pains persisted.

The nurse he saw the most came to him one night and told him he was going home in the morning. For some reason, the man looked like he was going to cry when he said it. And his parents looked no better when they came to pick him up. His father's mouth was set in a grim line as he was carefully wrapped in warm -too warm- blankets, and his mother's smile as she settled him into the back seat of the car was weak.

"Mama?" He could barely recognize his own voice anymore, thin and raspy as it was.

"It'll be okay, baby," she murmured, too shaky to be properly soothing as she kissed him on the forehead. He felt the familiar uncomfortable spike of a needle.

By the time they left downtown, he was asleep.

His parents' voices swirled around him as if in a fog, desperate, urgent murmurs that slowly drew him up out of the cloud of unconsciousness.

"Emily, if this doesn't work-"

"The outcome will be no different than if we do nothing. We have to try, Barnaby."

He blinked fuzzily, slowly becoming aware of cold metal under him and around him and something covering his face. And he was wet. No, he was underwater. What was going on?

"We're out of time," his mother said, and he wondered what they were out of time for.

He didn't get the chance to ask before suddenly the pain multiplied a hundred-fold, a new feeling like knives stabbing through his brain overtaking him. Throat too raw to scream, he could only manage faint whimpers as he tried to squirm free of whatever was holding him down. 'Make it stop... Please, please, please make it stop!'

It got harder to move, his body feeling even weaker and more sluggish than before. His chest felt like it was going to collapse. He was getting lightheaded and sick. What little survival drive he still had left kicked in, his body trying desperately to escape, to just keep functioning-

-But the darkness overtook him anyway.

His vision returned in white, and for a moment, he thought he was dead. Then he slowly realized that the light was actually surgical lights. A shadow leaned over him, focusing into the face of his father. "Dad?"

His voice sounded strangely stronger. But why was it so... tinny? Like he was in some kind of case?

His father's face broke into a relieved smile as the man wiped away welling tears. "Hey, kiddo. Welcome back. Can you sit up for us?"

He tried, but found that whatever he was covered with was heavy. Awkward. His body wouldn't respond the way it wanted to. His mother leaned over him and murmured soothing nonsense in response to his noise of frustration, and hands he couldn't feel carefully repositioned him. Now he could see some kind of weird-looking metal legs in front of him. Some kind of... protective suit?

He wasn't sure what made him look to his left, a strange creaking noise following the turn of his head. There was a tank lying in some sort of support machine, a huge thing made of metal and plastic. In it rested a small, gaunt, motionless figure that-

Wait.

Wait.

The world spun with the sudden flood of horrible realization, and he started to scream.

When the panic finally faded enough that he could actually see around him again, he had ended up huddled in a tiny ball in the corner opposite the lab from the tank that held his body. Shrapnel, torn and scattered papers, and sparking wires littered the floor and dangled in front of him. From the center of the room, his parents watched him, and the stunned, nervous caution on their faces just made him curl up even smaller.

His father was holding a wounded arm, and blood seeped through his lab coat.

He couldn't look anymore, hiding his face against his knees.

"Barnaby."

"Go away," he pleaded, hating the electronic buzz in his voice from where he'd probably blown some important piece or another. Hands gently lifted his head, but he couldn't make himself look up, keeping his line of sight on the floor.

"Honey, look at us," his mother coaxed gently after a minute or two, and he made himself obey.

"I'm dead."

"No. No, you're not. That's the point, son," his father said, still making no effort to bind up his wound.

"With the condition you were in, there were only a few weeks left at best before the medical staff would have given you up as a lost cause." His mother began to gently pet his head, like she'd always done whenever he was really small and had had a nightmare, and even though he knew he had no stomach, he was still somewhat sick at the realization that he couldn't feel it at all. "We couldn't just let our baby keep wasting away to nothing."

He skittishly glanced around at the destruction, still too rattled to accept what they were trying to explain. "What happens now?" he finally asked, voice very small.

"Right now, we clean up," His father said, and he was grateful when the elder moved to block any potential view of the frightening tank. "And once we've dealt with this mess and you've had a little time, we'll figure out where to go from there."

"I know this is a terrible shock," his mother said, holding him a little more tightly. "But we can make this work out."

"Okay," he mumbled, resting his head on her shoulder.

But he really, really missed the ability to cry right then.

He missed the funeral. It made sense to do so, since it would have just been awkward to go to his own, but that meant having to stay home alone, with only the news broadcasts to keep him company.

After the fourth anchor on as many channels babbling about what a tragedy it was to lose such a promising scientific mind at only thirteen, he turned off the television and holed up in his old bedroom.

It took four weeks for him to finally recharge. Terrified of the fact that every shutdown essentially meant dying and coming back again, he'd adamantly refused to do so, even fleeing and hiding when his parents tried to make him. They'd finally found a compromise in a form of warm shutdown, allowing his neural processors to still function via a stronger recharging connection.

If he pretended hard enough, sometimes it almost felt like actual sleeping. He convinced himself he could even dream.

Harder was re-learning physical things with no sense of touch to guide him. His father had installed some special calibrators to help him keep track of his own strength, but they could only do so much.

Thankfully nothing he'd broken was irreplaceable.

The sensory loss had proven to only have one solution. He simply made himself forget about it as much as possible. He learned to pay attention to the clock for when it was time for meals, rather than using his nose. He made a special effort to have something else to do whenever everyone was eating, since he couldn't process food or taste.

Catching up on studies had proven to be an effective way, but only for a short time. He'd discovered quickly that while his thought processes functioned much in the same way as they always had, they worked much faster. Though he couldn't officially compete for grades, since he technically no longer existed, by his fourteenth birthday, he was back at the top of his class through the online courses.

Unfortunately, when he had too much time to himself to think, that pushed the most obvious and worst problem back in his face.

The isolation.

He looked around at the cages and sighed. Ever since he'd finally re-learned dexterity and not to hold things too tightly, his father had started quietly sneaking him into work and had handed over care of the laboratory mice to him. He didn't mind the work...

He just wished that the mice weren't the closest thing he could consider as friends. They were nice enough, and cute, and didn't get scared and try to bite him anymore, but they couldn't exactly hold conversations.

His parents' original plan had been do simply disguise him as a super-intelligent AI based on their son, rather than being their son himself. It had made him uncomfortable and nervous at first to partially lose his identity, but gradually, he'd gotten used to the idea.

But then something had changed, and the plan had never happened.

He'd asked his father a few times what was going on, but had never been given a straight answer. Slowly, he'd managed to piece that the continuing rise of NEXT acceptance had something to do with it, but he still didn't know what. And by his sixteenth birthday, he'd stopped asking his mother when it would be all right for him to go out.

The only people he ever saw besides his parents were two of their colleagues, and he didn't like either of them. Mr. Maverick was nice enough when he visited, but something he couldn't put a name to about the man made him uneasy. Dr. Rotwang he outright hated, and the feeling was mutual.

"You may still be a waste of resources, but at least you're not entirely useless anymore," the man had said once when he was found tending to the mice, and it had been the only thing even approaching a compliment that had ever gone between them. He couldn't understand why his parents continued working with such a jerk, especially since all Rotwang ever seemed to do around him was badmouth their work and general intelligence. The only reasonable explanation he could come up with was that maybe that was the problem. Maybe Rotwang only said these things so blatantly to him.

So he quietly tweaked his hearing mechanisms to pick up the conversations better, including the disgruntled muttering he didn't always pay attention to. And it was through that that he learned part of the reason Rotwang was such an ass to him was because he was considered inferior to a project the man had going.

A project his parents apparently didn't know about.

Curiosity got the better of him, and one afternoon after he'd finished caring for the mice and boredly carrying his way through their usual verbal sparring, he quietly snuck out of his lab after the man, shadowing him down deeper into the building. The lab the scientist entered had a coded lock, but there wasn't a code in the building yet that he couldn't crack. When the doors swished open, he stole inside-

-and stopped, stunned, by what he found.

Another robotic figure lay restrained on a work station. The under-molding was much like his own, though clearly shaped to resemble a female. That wasn't what made him stare, though.

Half the body was covered in synthetic musculature. And skin. That completed side looked almost perfectly human, even without any hair added yet. For a brief moment, he felt an aching pang of jealousy.

Then she opened her eyes to look at him.

There was nothing behind them.

Alarmed squeaking trailed after him when his terrified flight past the mouse cages rattled the wiring. Heedless of the noise, he huddled in a ball behind them in the corner, wishing fervently that he had the ability to throw up.

That was Rotwang's idea of perfection?

That mindless, soulless, empty husk?

Suddenly all those conversations they'd had before were that much more terrifying and enraging. And when the man made the mistake of coming into his lab a few hours later, Barnaby quite literally saw red.

The next thing he was aware of was his father desperately trying to hold him back after having pulled him off the man. As he finally came back to himself and went slack in his father's grip, all he could do was keep screaming obscenities at the bastard who basically wanted him lobotomized. The guilt at having attacked someone only sank in once Rotwang had been taken away to the infirmary, and his father had sat him down on a lab table.

Giving up any of his memory chips hit him with a feeling not unlike acute vertigo. The floor seemed to move under him, and he'd ended up having to lie down before he could fall over, just from loosening them from their casings. He hadn't thought of this part when he'd had the idea to record conversations, and now that idea felt like a really bad one. But he'd still obediently spat them into his father's hand, one, two, three.

"I'll give them back," his father promised, stern but still sympathetic. "As soon as I know if anything brought this on."

Even though he knew what information his father would find, he still felt nervous as his mother drove him home. Or maybe that was just the sickness from losing large chunks of his memory so quickly. Either way, he didn't see any need to make himself get out of bed, remaining in his warm shutdown mode for the next three days.

On the third day, his father came and 'woke' him, and he obediently held still for the chips to be reinstalled. It was kind of a rush to have all that information flooding back, both in a good and bad way. When he'd stopped trembling from the upload, his father silently hugged him and left.

He never knew what exactly came of the data search. But Rotwang never came to bother him again.

At... he'd lost track of his age, he was already halfway through a Master's in engineering. Sort of. Still with no legal identity to call his own, he could participate in the classes, but that was all. Just like the rest of his schooling. But what was new was being able to actually talk to professors and other students via the forums. For the first few weeks, he'd been almost giddy with the source of new conversations and the fact that people, actual people on the other ends of the connections seemed to like him, or at least what he had to say.

But eventually, it wasn't enough. After all, unlike him, people couldn't be on at all hours of the day, with other things taking up their time. He still spent long lonely stretches, especially during big exam weeks.

He'd never gone beyond the university servers, afraid of diving into the deep end. Full immersion was a lot to attempt. But his body was only in warm shutdown, right? It wasn't like he wouldn't be able to get back in once he did a little exploring. And he knew enough now that he wouldn't have to worry about shorting out anything. And to see things that weren't in a news broadcast for once...

Just... a little peek at what was out there. It couldn't hurt anything.

He 'woke' just long enough to plug in another connection cable to let his ghost shift a bit.

Then carefully slipped through the firewall.

He made a noise of glee as the streams of data washed over and around him. It was dizzying, the swell and flow of information that came in and out of the school servers. Screwing up his courage, he let himself be washed into one that fed into the security surveillance system that connected the campus to the area around it.

It was so different, being able to look through the cameras himself than watching their feed from a television screen. Even without his body physically there, it felt like he was closer to everything. Including the people pattering around below him. Always hidden away for fear of being caught, he'd never been able to just people watch. Even the mundane patterns of the shoppers in a mall were fascinating.

He'd been having so much fun that he entirely lost track of time, so when he zipped through one of the clocks in the city square and discovered it was nearly six, he got a tiny feeling of potential trouble. His father would be coming to retrieve him from the lab in thirty minutes.

Well, he could still get back in much less than that with little effort. Reversing course back the way he'd come, he crossed the city in moments, rising back up through the school servers-

-then smacked into an electronic wall.

What th- He tried again, and again found something hard blocking his path. He tried pushing, and reeled back from the nasty shock he got in response.

This shouldn't have been happening. He ghosted into the laboratory's security system to see if he could find another route in. It didn't make sense. He should have easily been able to get back into his own body as long as it was-

-gone.

Shock swelled into fear when he looked through the camera over his computer station and saw only empty space where he was supposed to be sitting. His father couldn't have come and picked him up already, the man would have definitely noticed something was off. And his body couldn't have just gotten up and walked off on its own...

Trying to fight back rising panic, he dove into the records, skimming back over the course of the day, and terror turned to anger when he saw a hatedly familiar figure leaning over his still body. 'Don't you dare. Don't you dare-'

He couldn't hear what Rotwang was saying. But there was no missing the hands that disconnected him from the terminal before tossing him into a crate of -stolen, had to be- mechanical materials and wheeling the lot out of the room. The cameras closest to his current position exploded as his rage surged out into the data streams and, with a noise of blind fury, he tore through the connections after the thief.

Even with two new heroes on the roster, which usually drew out a bunch of loonies eager to "test" them, it had been extremely quiet in the last week, Kotetsu mused as he waited for the crossing light to change. He still wasn't sure how he felt about Dragon Kid on the team. She was bright and fast and eager to work, but... Damn, she still wasn't much older than Kaede.

'Or maybe there've always been Heroes starting out that young and I'm just getting old enough for it to bother me.'

Shaking off the sudden morose thought, he bit into his sandwich, only to nearly choke when the traffic light above him suddenly exploded, followed in quick succession by two more across the street and an ad screen shorting out. Looking back in the other direction, he could see a similar trail of burst lights and screens flashing in random succession. 'What the hell? Did a switchboard operator get drunk again?' he wondered.

Then his call bracelet lit up.

The trail lead halfway across the city. Pinpointing an exact starting point had proven to be ineffective, but a clear direction of movement allowed them to at least follow it to find out what the ultimate target was. As best as anyone could figure, it was some kind of time-pattern hacking attack, but as they chased after the signal, he had a strange feeling about it. He was no computer genius by a long shot, but from what he could see, the only things heavily damaged seemed to be the simpler, less expensive things like traffic lights, while the more complex systems were merely randomized.

If this had been an intentional attack, shouldn't it have been the other way around? Criminals usually went for the big flashy things, after all.

Dragon Kid managed to get ahead of the signal, and hit the next traffic light in front of it.

For a moment, it looked as though she'd succeeded in halting whatever sequence was controlling the pattern.

Then another traffic light went up in a totally new direction. That was unexpected.

They took off after it, and this time, it seemed to actually be working to throw them off the trail. No more explosions, and it would double back and veer off. Almost like it was something actually alive, rather than being controlled by remote. Not really getting the chance to think about it, as fast as it was moving, he vaulted the railing of a bridge to keep up as it started back in the direction they'd originally been going, and nearly crashed into a civilian passing under before he managed to alter course enough to land safely.

He blinked at the woman he'd nearly landed on. "Doctor Brooks?'

The harried, nervous woman in front of him was a far cry from what he remembered during the only year they'd both still been with the show. Though clearly anxious, she forced a polite smile. "Tiger. How's the suit faring?" she asked as easily as if she were asking what time it was.

"Ah- still good," he said, caught off guard by the sudden small talk. "Saito does really well with it. Um- what are you doing out here?" he asked, noticing the small device in her hand. Surely she hadn't been the cause of-

"Oh! Well, uh, my husband and I are trying to find our- some equipment stolen from our laboratories," she said, then both ducked as Sky High shot over them, trailing the signal in yet another direction.

"Geez, this is turning into a headache. I'm starting to think there's no way to catch this thing." Kotetsu said, then froze at the sudden sharp glare the scientist pinned him with.

"Don't. Call my boy a thing," she said, tone flat and cold, before her eyes went wide as she realized what she'd just said.

Kotetsu stared. "I... I think I'm going to need a little more explanation about what the hell is going on here."

As he hopped from building to building to catch up with the others, Kotetsu's mind was still reeling from his conversation with Doctor Brooks.

An android.

Their own son.

On one hand, the entire concept fell uncomfortably out of a scary sci-fi movie. On the other, he well remembered the desperation that had set in during the last months of Tomoe's illness. Or how they both would have been if it had been Kaede to fall ill. He couldn't really blame the parents for pulling out the heavy scientific arsenal. Even as much as the results creeped him out personally.

He caught a spire and landed at its base, checking the scanner Brooks had given him. She and her husband had actually only been tracking the physical body via a small chip implanted in the casing of an arm, and that had been what she'd thought he was talking about. Comparing the resonance of that to the rogue signal he and the other heroes were chasing had given them both a very nasty surprise.

They were apparently chasing separate halves of the same person.

If he'd thought he'd seen Emily Brooks' mama bear side minutes before, it was nothing compared to the look that had crossed her face when they realized that the situation was much, much more dire than either side had guessed. She'd practically thrown the second device at him out of nowhere with a hissed order to bring her son's ghost back, before running off to collect her husband and resume the search for the rest of him.

Kotetsu wasn't about to disobey that order.

He just had to figure out a way to-

Inspiration struck as Dragon Kid landed below him, chasing the signal back the way he'd come. "Hey, Kid!"

She blinked up at him. "Tiger? Where did you-?"

"Not important." He hopped down beside her. "Do you think there might be a way you can actually control where he's going? Maybe herd him somewhere a little more isolated?"

" 'Him'?" she asked, but he was very lucky that his helmet hid the wince and she didn't dwell on the question. "I'm not sure, but maybe... if I use small enough bursts, I can block its path without damaging anything. The problem is how fast it moves."

"I can deal with that."

"Okay. Then there's a manufacturing plant about half a mile from here that's fenced off. That might work."

"Great!" Activating his Hundred Power, he crouched to let her climb onto his back, and they leaped off after the ghost.

They landed in the plant's yard just after the sparking of the electric fence. "Now what?" Dragon Kid asked.

"Now we find the main generator and shut it down," he said, and she looked at him like he'd grown a second head.

"We what?" she asked flatly.

"He's using communication feeds to travel. If this place is anything like other plants I've been to, each building has its own backup generator, but they aren't connected."

"So if we cut off the main power, then it'll be trapped in whatever building it's in," she said, catching on. "And since the work day's over, we won't have to worry about the employees."

"Exactly."

The central power controls proved easy to find. Now they just had to deal with the building-to-building search. They split up, but their quarry had gone so quiet that potentially any of the empty buildings could be his hiding place, and his scanner wasn't helping. "Barnaby?" he called softly, attempting to coax some kind of response. "C'mon, little bunny, you can't hide in a hole forever."

Though he hadn't intended it insultingly, that got a response as a computer screen near him flashed on, a clearly offended 'Not A Bunny' printed across the desktop before it went dead again. Well, at least he was in the right building.

He didn't fail to notice security cameras swiveling to focus on him. Since his power had already faded, he put his hands up in an attempt to make himself look even less threatening. "Hey, look. I'm not here to fight you. I just want to talk. Your parents are really worried about you, you know?"

Silence answered him for a long minute, and he held his breath. Then the room's central terminal lit up.

"You... you met my parents?"

The synthesized voice came out in two layers, that of a small child and that of a young man, similar in tone yet slightly out of sync, and the duel nature and electronic reverb in it sent a slight chill down his spine. He steeled his nerve, reminding himself that the ghost was probably a whole lot more scared than he was.

"Yeah. I ran into your mother earlier." Almost literally.

"I- I wasn't trying to worry them. I was going to go home," the voice replied, the child of the two becoming slightly stronger for a brief moment. "I really was."

"I know you were," Kotetsu soothed, lowering his hands to his sides slowly enough that the ghost could see he wasn't going for a weapon. "They're not angry with you. They're just scared because they can't find the rest of you. That's what you were doing too, wasn't it? Before we interfered, I mean."

"Yes."

"Do you know who took your body?" Kotetsu asked, and reeled back when several computers near him exploded and the terminal's screen went red.

"He's a lying, abusive, disgusting ass," the voice snarled, the reverb becoming a sharp feedback noise as the adult voice took over between the two.

"Whoa! I believe you, I really do! But stop breaking things, okay? That's why everyone else is freaking out over you," Kotetsu said quickly, and made a noise of relief when the static feeling in the room slowly faded and the screen went blue again. Weird. It was kind of like what he'd seen with some NEXT powers, he noted absently.

"I'm sorry," the voice murmured, quiet and contrite, and actually balanced now. "I only learned how to do this a few hours ago."

That gave him another idea. "Do you think you've learned enough that you could fix whatever hasn't exploded?"

"I... think so?"

"Okay. I'll make a deal with you. You fix what you can out of what you broke and go back to your parents' lab, and I'll let the other heroes know about your missing body-" though he'd just stick to the doctors' 'missing equipment' story if he could, "-and keep you company until it's found."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why would you stay with me?" the voice asked, and he noticed the child had become dominant again. "I'm- I'm not-"

It would have been easy to fall back on the old 'heroes take care of people' speech, and it almost came to his tongue, but Kotetsu thought better of it. This wasn't the time for rehearsed responses. "Because even though you've been through a lot of hell, especially today, you still seem like a good kid to me, and it wouldn't be fair to abandon you now. You shouldn't have to deal with shit this scary by yourself," he said honestly.

The terminal went quiet for a long minute, and Kotetsu wondered nervously if he'd still managed to say the wrong thing. Then the speakers crackled to life again.

"Okay. I'll go."

Convincing the others that the signal had been contained had proven harder than he'd thought. Whether it was actually his quarry or not, a fortuitous spark and jerk in the left arm of his suit had been the only thing that got them to believe him.

Getting them to go help search for the 'missing prototype' had been much easier. All he'd had to do was invoke the Brookses' name. Even if the pair hadn't worked closely with HeroTV in years, everybody who went out in the field knew just how much they owed the two for their protective tech. Sky High had taken the scanner he'd held out without hesitation, and off they went.

He didn't need the scanner to track the younger Brooks back towards the laboratory compound. He'd been there a dozen times himself, and even if he hadn't, he just had to follow the wave of screens and machines coming back to life.

Damn. He'd actually been afraid that maybe he'd been asking too much of Barnaby, but the kid was good, especially for someone who hadn't even been an internet entity for an entire day. "Sure explains why the news anchors had been wailing about the loss of a prodigy all those years ago.."

Shaking off the mental wandering, he leaped the fence of the compound, and noticed there didn't seem to be too much in the way of guards. Maybe everyone was busy dealing with the destruction the ghost had left in his wake. Whatever was going on, he wasn't complaining at the rare lack of hassle, and followed the trail of sparking cameras to what he assumed had been the starting point.

It wasn't really much to look at. A tall shelf full of cages of white mice, a small computer terminal, a table, and a couple of bookshelves. Really, the only remotely homey things about it were a pot of some kind of lilies and orchids and the drawings scattered about. Since it didn't look like Barnaby had arrived yet, he picked up a couple, and found carefully, precisely-rendered machine schematic ideas and some looser sketches of the parents at their work.

"Geez," he muttered quietly. He was never gonna fault someone for being studious, even though he'd never really bothered with it, and there was still the matter of parental protectiveness... but was this seriously all the kid had to look forward to every day for so long? "Can't believe the wandering itch took this long to hit."

"Hello?" asked that quiet, dual-layered voice from the speakers in the small computer, and Kotetsu jumped slightly. "Are you here?"

Looking around, Kotetsu found there weren't any working cameras in this room, and the computer had no microphone. That left the kid basically blind and deaf. Well, he could find a way around that, he thought, and pulled a connection wire from his left gauntlet before flipping his helmet's faceplate down so he could use the suit's mike.

"Hey, Bunny."

"Still not a bunny," the voice protested, and the reverb was slightly less obvious in his helmet. He also noticed that the protest wasn't nearly so vehement this time.

"How are you holding up?"

"I... don't know. It's- It's hard to keep track. I might... have left some bits behind in the other machines. I'm not sure."

"Talk to me, then," Kotetsu said gently. "Maybe having something to concentrate on will help you stay together."

"I don't know what to talk about. It's different when it's a voice instead of text."

Kotetsu bit his lip against the ache that suddenly bloomed in his chest at the awkward, nervous discomfort in the voice. Like the drawings and the flowers and everything, it was another reminder of just how isolated the ghost had been. God, this really wasn't fair. "Well, we can talk about anything. Are you in school at all?"

"Sort of."

"Why don't you tell me about your classes, then? I bet you're doing really well."

It was going on midnight when his comm-link finally went off. In a way, he'd grown to enjoy his strange conversation partner, so it took him a second to notice the beeping and switch frequencies. "Tiger."

"Hey, hon," Fire Emblem's voice said from the end. "The good doctors are on their way back to the lab."

"Did you find the prototype, or are we going out searching tomorrow?"

"No, we found it. What was left of it, anyway."

Kotetsu's stomach dropped. "Left of it?" he asked unsteadily, trying to ignore the gentle 'pushing' of Bunny trying to find out why he'd gone quiet on their frequency.

"Yeah. The memory boards and some of the external body were intact, but whoever took it cannibalized a lot of the internal parts before dumping it. They're understandably rather upset about the matter."

So was he. The memory boards was a lucky thing indeed, at least as far as he could tell, but the rest... Now he could understand in part why Bunny hated the one responsible so much. "I'll check in with them when they get here."

"All right. See you tomorrow."

The comm-link went dead, and Kotetsu bit his tongue, wondering how the hell he was going to explain this to Bunny.

In the end, he hadn't had to. Before he could find the words to do so, an extremely exhausted-looking Barnaby the elder had come in, followed by his equally morose wife, carrying the body between them.

It was spattered heavily in mud, very likely having been dumped in a hurry, and the level to which it had been gutted was appalling. Clearly the chest cavity at least had been taken apart with no less than metalworking shears, and while the head was still intact compared to the rest of it, it was badly dented, possibly in a failed attempt to destroy the memory boards without having to open it up. There were holes where pieces and parts had been ripped out, the wires that had held them in dangling useless.

Comparing the ruined shell to the voice he'd been talking to for the last couple of hours made him very queasy.

They carefully shifted aside flowers and drawings and laid it on the table. Then Emily Brooks noticed the wires connecting his suit to the terminal. "Is he there?"

"Y- yes, Ma'am."

"I'm sorry, Tiger, but could you leave your helmet for a little bit? We need to talk to our son."

He nodded and removed it, handing it over, and her husband handed him a small card in return. "There are enough people here at all hours that the cafeteria stays open. Use this to get anything you like."

He wasn't sure he could really make himself eat anything after all this, but the concern was touching enough that he managed to stammer out a thanks and quickly make himself scarce.

It had taken fifteen minutes just to make himself get a cup of coffee and a bagel. And while he'd finished half the coffee, he'd been staring at the bagel with no desire to eat it for almost twenty when a hand pulled pulled out the chair across from him and Barnaby Sr. Sat down.

"What's the verdict, sir?"

"In its current condition, Barnaby's body is beyond all hope of repair. We'll have to build an entirely new one from the base-skeleton up."

"And... how is he taking it?"

"As badly as can be expected." The older man sighed and raked a hand tiredly through his hair. "Barnaby claims the thief was a former colleague of ours whom he regularly got into arguments with."

"Former as in fired, I'm guessing."

"Got it in one. His treatment of our son couldn't be counted against him on record, but the fact that he'd been using facility equipment for an unsanctioned experiment definitely didn't win him any favors."

He remembered Bunny mentioning an experimental gynoid that had scared the hell out of him. If that had been the thing that had gotten said thief fired, it'd go a long way to explaining the grudge. "Do you think the theft was actually for the parts, or just revenge?"

"Probably both," Brooks muttered bitterly. "If he's still trying to continue the project, having backup parts to keep from having to constantly rebuild and repair issues himself would be helpful." And there was no missing the obvious viciousness with which the body had been handled, but neither wanted to mention it. After a moment of awkward silence, Brooks continued. "Barnaby will have to remain in his current state until his new body can be completed. We have a few other prototypes, but they're painfully crude. He'd hardly be able to use them."

"Um. He mentioned something about 'losing pieces' when he connection-traveled."

"He brought that up with us. Unfortunately, that means we'll have to keep him confined within a laboratory subsystem. With the way he described it, the risk that he could end up being scattered completely is too high if we just let him keep moving through the networks until he can be downloaded."

Jesus, and he'd been thinking things couldn't get much worse than being stuck as an electronic ghost for however long. Finally making himself take another swallow of coffee, he thought for a few moments, before getting an idea. "Would... it be possible to put just one wireless connection in the system?"

"That depends on what kind of connection it is and where it goes."

"It would go to my PDA." At the man's raised eyebrow, he quickly continued. "It's just that... I promised your son I wouldn't abandon him while all the scary shi- stuff was going on. I shouldn't break that promise just because it's going to take longer than I thought." He failed at enough promises as it was, but Brooks didn't need to know that.

The man's mouth quirked into a faint, wry smile, and Kotetsu couldn't help feeling like he'd just been handed an A grade for something. "I'm sure we can come up with something."

The changes to his device were easy enough to adjust to, and since the built-in mike could let Bunny listen in on things going on around him, the ghost was very good about not interrupting during missions or other work things.

And... maybe... it was a little nice to have someone who was always willing to listen and never brushed him off. Kotetsu could never make himself admit as much, however. It felt too much like taking advantage of the kid.

They'd been chatting over speakerphone while he'd been cutting up vegetables when a familiar ringtone poked into the conversation. "Hang on a minute, Bunny, I gotta take this," Kotetsu warned, then hit the button to change lines. "Hi, sweetie!"

"I'm not 'sweetie'," Kaede said from the other end, though she didn't sound too annoyed by it this time, which he counted as a win. "How come your voice sounds so weird?"

"Oh, well, I have another line open. It tends to do that."

"Who are you talking to? It better not be a lady."

"Kaede!" The scandalized squeak was only half kidding, and she started laughing.

"I was just joking, Dad. So who is it? Someone from work?"

"Well, sort of. I'm helping some old bosses of mine test a new communication program that's supposed to be more person-like. I guess they figure if your old man can't make it short out in annoyance, no one can."

"Oh, that sounds cool," Kaede said, for once not even sighing at his imposed goofiness. "Can I try talking to it?"

"Sure, let me switch over to conference." Wiping his hands on a towel, Kotetsu pressed a couple of buttons. "Hey, Bunny, say hello to my daughter, Kaede."

"Your creators named you Bunny?" Kaede asked incredulously.

"No, your father did that."

"Oh. I should have expected that," she said, and Kotetsu let them chat as he started the rest of dinner, only cutting in when the barbs got a little too close to home. "I think she likes you," he said when his mother had called Kaede to the table, ending the phone call.

"She's very nice. A little bossy, though."

"Yeah, well, unfortunately she gets that honest from both sides. Hey, maybe when you're up and walking around, I could introduce you."

"I... I think I'd like that," Bunny said, and Kotetsu frowned a little. He'd started noticing it coming up more and more often as of late. That hesitating 'I think'. It was almost like Bunny was beginning to become more unsure about his own emotions. A possible side effect of being a ghost so long, maybe?

He decided he'd bring it up in his next report to the parents. And hoped for Bunny's sake that the construction didn't take too much longer.

Bunny had warned him that he was going offline, which Kotetsu hoped meant the kid would be whole soon. As the days ticked by, though, he'd started getting a little nervous.

And that feeling of unease proved to be correct in a whole different way when a harmless-looking white-haired girl had suddenly body-slammed him into the pavement right as he'd tried to save her from some falling rubble. 'What the hell-' He barely had time to dodge before a fist could crush the faceplat of his helmet, and when he landed several feet away, she came after him. "Hey! I don't know what your problem is, but this isn't-!"

He was forced to evade again, and this time, looked her full in the face by accident as he did.

Dead eyes.

'Can't be...'

A small hand caught his arm, and he hissed in pain as the metal crunched, sharp bits digging into the skin before she flung him into a wall. Alarm sensors lit up in his helmet as something in the back of his armor snapped from the impact. "Shit," he muttered under his breath, just before the sky lit up.

"Tiger!"

Dragon Kid landed beside him to help him up, then both froze when a thin figure emerged from the smoke, completely unharmed. The electric pulse should have been enough to temporarily stun even a NEXT-powered human. He'd been there and done that during the endurance training sessions. His sneaking suspicion was getting stronger by the minute. "Kid, stay the hell away from that."

"Wha-" Dragon Kid didn't get to finish her question as he grabbed her and leaped out of the way, the gynoid's fist embedding into the rock where the girl's head had been.

Bad.

This was bad.

"Hit it with something stronger!" Dragon Kid stared at him, but when the thing lunged for them, she obeyed. Getting away from the fresh smoke, they landed on a nearby building ledge.

The cloud hadn't even cleared yet before something out of a nightmare shot up after them.

He had to think of something. Long-range attacks clearly weren't working, and Dragon Kid's armor was the lightest of all of theirs to allow for conductivity. He had to lure the gynoid away from her somehow. "Stay here!"

"No way!"

"Just do it!" he snapped with more force than he'd ever shown the younger hero before, then vaulted off the ledge to land a kick to the robot's face that propelled him high enough to grab the edge of the building's roof. Despite the fact that it had been what he was aiming for, he was actually surprised when the gambit worked, the robot thudding onto the roof after him as he jumped for the next one, trying to ignore the grinding in his back. If he activated his power, it wouldn't hurt so much...

...But if he activated his power and hadn't gotten away or broken it before his time ran out, he was fairly sure he was a dead man.

He leaped for the next building, only for the breath to get knocked out of him when the robot grabbed him by the ankle and yanked him back down onto hard tar and stone. Rolling to the side kept him from getting his ribs stomped in, but throwing up his arms to block didn't do him any favors when he felt his left wrist snap from the next blow.

Okay, situation decided for him. The familiar blue glow and energy surge flooded his body and he caught the next punch.

But not the one after it. The masonry at the edge of the roof shattered when he hit it. He tried to fire off a wire to catch himself, but the warping both arms of his armor had taken wouldn't allow it.

And he didn't remember anything after that.

When he opened his eyes, it was to the familiar view of hospital lights. "Ugh. I feel like I got hit by a truck."

"Good guess." Nathan came into view, leaning over him. "But not quite. Dropped twelve stories, more like. Lucky for you, your armor was still partially functioning and your power hadn't run out yet. Otherwise, they probably would have picked you up in pieces."

Kotetsu groaned faintly. Then quickly sat up, ignoring the agony that shot through him when he did so. "The robot! Did-"

"Lie down, you idiot," the other man said, and a poke in the chest hurt enough that he meekly did as told. "Sky High was able to take it apart."

"Oh. Well. That's something, at least," Kotetsu mumbled. God, even without the fear of getting torn apart, his mind was having trouble dealing. What if some of Bunny's stolen parts had been inside those casings? The very idea was nauseating.

Hold up. Bunny.

"Hey... how long have I been out?"

"A little less than three days, why?"

"I didn't get any... weird messages to my PDA while I was unconscious, did I?"

Nathan pursed his lips, thinking, then snapped his fingers. "There was one that Antonio thought was rather strange. None of us recognized the voice-"

"Male? Sounded kind of computerized?" he asked, trying not to sound too obviously hopeful.

"Yes. All he said before he hung up was that there had been delays, and he'd resume contact in two days. That was... about an hour after lunch yesterday." Nathan raised an elegant eyebrow. "Honey, you aren't associating with any odd types, are you?"

"Define 'odd'," Kotetsu said dryly, earning a faint chuckle. Two days and yesterday. That meant Bunny would be 'coming back' tomorrow. Besides the fact that he just wanted to hear the kid, maybe he could find out about these 'project delays'.

And whether he'd been right about the suspected source of the thing that had tried to kill him.

Nathan had been kind enough to bring his PDA to him before going home, though it had come with a cheery veiled warning to stay in bed until healed or else.

Damn, the man was scary sometimes.

Kotetsu laid the device on the table that lay across his bed so that he wouldn't potentially miss anything. Sure enough, he'd just finished lunch the next day when a familiar beeping pattern sounded. Brightening a little, he tapped the receive button. "Hey, Bunny."

"Hi." It was kind of amazing how exhausted one word could sound, especially when physical tiredness was an impossibility. "You okay? You don't sound so good."

"Neither do you. I take it the integration didn't go well?"

"Not really, no. In short, I've... atrophied, for lack of a better word," Bunny said quietly, and Kotetsu instantly thought of the emotional distance he'd been picking up on. "I'll have to work my way back up to thinking physically. And learn how to operate the new body, of course."

"Jeez, I'm sorry." He had some further questions about the process, but Bunny clearly didn't want to talk anymore about it and he could always ask the scientists later, so he switched topics. "Ah, I think I might have run into your psycho robot counterpart."

"The girl?" Bunny asked, and Kotetsu could practically hear the scowl. Suspicion confirmed. "Is that why-"

"Um... well... yeah," Kotetsu said hesitantly. 'Please don't ask how bad it was...'

"Please tell me you won."

"Sky High did, at least," he admitted, managing to hide the relief in his voice that Bunny didn't press for injury detail.

"Good."

His hero training protested the sheer venom in the ghost's voice, especially since it was the first time he'd heard such raw emotion in the past few weeks. But considering the kid's history with the creator of the thing that had beaten the shit out of him and probably would have done the same to any other hero or civilian unlucky enough to get in its way, Kotetsu instead found himself silently agreeing.

"Are you going to be okay?" Bunny asked, all the hate in his tone having suddenly evaporated.

"Pff. I've had worse." Which was technically true, even though he couldn't really remember any instance where he'd hurt this much. "I'll be back on my feet in no time."

"That's good, too. Hey, I've got to go now. We're getting ready to run a couple of therapy exams. Get better soon."

He found himself somewhat warmed by the quiet well-wishing. "Will do."

As Kotetsu healed up and got back to work, things became more... not really normal, but more routine. Bunny again checked in with him like clockwork, though the ghost was ruthlessly secretive about what kind of new shape he had. No amount of wheedling or leading questions could get the kid to spill the 'surprise', and asking his parents only netted him the information that they were clearly in on keeping the mystery a mystery.

The feeling like he was somehow having a Christmas present withheld only added to the oddity of the whole situation. Not that he minded. It was kind of fun.

More fun than the questions swirling around the robot that had attacked him. The head casing had self-destructed when Sky High had disabled the body, negating any chance of investigating its program. Keith had said that the robot had followed him down once it had knocked him off the building. That only attacking it repeatedly had finally gotten it to change targets instead of finishing him off.

It didn't exactly mesh with his previous assessment that it had been attacking indiscriminately, and the thought that he might have actually been its target made him shiver. But why him? Had Rotwang been spying and knew of his association with the Brookses? Or was it just because he'd been picked out of the Heroes? Which wasn't exactly a less scary option when he thought about it. If that were the case, it could have just as easily been one of the others that it had been sent after.

And though he didn't bring it up with his coworkers or Bunny and his family, he couldn't shake the nagging, discomforting idea that this wasn't over yet.

It was two weeks into October when the other shoe finally dropped. His sense of foreboding had gotten almost unbearable when Maverick himself called them all to the training center, and the man's announcement proved it to be entirely grounded. "Robot heroes?"

"They're not intended as replacements, I assure you," the older man said kindly, but it did nothing to ease the knot in his stomach. "We simply feel that with the advances in technology and the rise of more serious crimes, it might be worthwhile to augment our hero population with a few members who can act when one or more of you are unavailable." Maverick had looked right at him at the last part, and he couldn't help dropping his eyes to the floor. He had to admit, his injury record lately hadn't exactly been stellar.

He still didn't like this idea, though. Especially not when a huge black simulacrum of his armor clanked into the room. And especially not when, instead of either of the two scientists he'd hoped to see, a smarmy-looking man followed it in. He'd only ever seen Rotwang via the security feeds Bunny had shown him, and that hadn't prepared him for the smug superiority that just radiated off the man. He bristled quietly when the newcomer gave the lot of them a sweeping, dismissive glance.

"This is H-01," Maverick was saying, and Kotetsu forced himself to listen. "Right now, he's merely an experimental prototype. But he's the first of the designed line."

"I'm not so sure about this," Nathan said. "The last encounter any of us had with a humanoid robot didn't exactly end in sunshine and rainbows."

"I must agree," Keith said. "How do we know that it will be safe to work with, and not attack civilians, or us, or again, the civilians?"

"All proper failsafes have been installed," Rotwang said, and Kotetsu bit the inside of his cheek to keep from growling at the 'how dare you question' tone in the man's voice. "Perhaps a demonstration is in order?"

"A little sparring match would be an excellent idea," Maverick cut in before the tension between the heroes and the scientist could ratchet any higher. "Mister Kaburagi, if you would be so kind as to get your armor?"

Kotetsu swallowed thickly. "Sure," he said, getting up to go down to the lab.

"Don't do it," a small voice cut in as he walked down the hall, and he started before remembering he'd had his PDA on him all day and unclipped it from his hip.

"I don't like it any more than you do, Bunny, but boss' orders are boss' orders."

"Rotwang's failsafes only work when he wants them to," Bunny insisted, and for the first time in a long time, the child voice was prevalent. "That robot is going to hurt you."

Kotetsu plastered a little cheer into his voice. "Hey, I can take a few scratches. I'll be fine."

He hoped.

Kotetsu took a deep breath as he stood in front of the robot in his armor. Only a few feet separated them now, and Christ, the thing was even bigger up close. Instead of leaving it in the lab, he'd handed his PDA over to Nathan when he'd gotten back, and though that had gotten him a questioning look, the man had accepted.

The robot moved and they slowly began to circle each other. The slightly jerky movements reminded him uncomfortably of the robot girl, and he tried to shake off the memory of that empty-eyed stare.

A slight drop of the left hip was all he got before he had to throw up his arms to block the incoming kick.

-There were times when he absolutely hated that sound was his only connection to Kotetsu. Now was one of those times. From his 'spectator' spot in the hands of one of the man's comrades, he could hear every blow, every collective gasp, every protest of an underhanded trick by the chunk of metal his friend was fighting.

This wasn't good. This really wasn't good.

Even without being able to see, he knew Kotetsu was wearing down and H-01 wasn't. And yet the fight wasn't stopping. Why wasn't Maverick stepping in?

At another sharp crunch, he 'looked' around at the walls of coding encasing him. Until now, he'd faithfully obeyed his parents' instructions not to leave the subsystem.

But this was important.

The firewall bit painfully as he altered himself and pushed through it, but he ignored the burn, already searching for the signal resonance of the fighting robot. Part of his mind seethed when he recognized the pulse of some of his own parts within the thing's body, but he pushed himself past that and spread out to hear and see what was going on in the training room's cameras.

Kotetsu was down.

"Maverick! Call it before that thing kills him!" he heard the biggest of the heroes bellow as the robot strode over to the supine body on the floor, and he made up his mind.

The electrifying burn of leaving his subsystem was a needle sting compared to the pain of forcing his way into the robot's central control. He didn't care. Kotetsu wasn't moving, and he couldn't let that monster get any closer.

'Control Program Override, Subsystem 112-H2D35.'-

Even not moving hurt, Kotetsu thought as he lay in a heap on the floor, his helmet destroyed and the rest of his suit not doing much better.

"Maverick! Call it before that thing kills him!" he heard Antonio snap, but there was no response as H-01 stood over him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the others preparing to intervene.

They didn't get the chance before something else did.

There was an earsplitting feedback screech as the robot suddenly electrified, reeling back unsteadily. Its motions were even jerkier than before as it slowly raised an arm. Almost as if-

-as if it weren't acting under its own control.

"Bunny," he rasped, too quietly for anyone to hear over the grind of metal and the screech of electricity. But what they all did hear was when the feedback became overlaid with words.

"Leave... Him... Alone!"

He hadn't even known what kind of weaponry the robot had, since it had only needed speed and strength to take him apart. But the sight of seeing the huge blade extend from H-01's arm and lance through its own head made his heart drop into his stomach. Oh, God.

Oh, God.

As it fell to the ground in a sparking, ruined heap, Kotetsu thought he was going to throw up. Bunny couldn't have killed himself with that thing. He just couldn't. Trying to force himself to his feet to get to it, Kotetsu instead found himself caught by multiple pairs of hands as his coworkers tried to force him to stay down until medics could arrive. The last shreds of power and adrenaline had already faded and his vision was going black and blurry at the edges, but he had to get to that robot.

He was still struggling when an oxygen mask was fitted over his nose, and everything went grey.

Waking up drugged out of his gourd on morphine was beginning to become an annoyingly regular occurrence, Kotetsu mused fuzzily as he stared up at the lights of his hospital room. Though he only remembered about a third of the list, Antonio had been by to give him the injury breakdown and inform him that no one was quite sure yet what was going on company-wise. Keith had dragged in Ivan and a basket of flowers and fruit. Pao-lin had bodily shoved Karina through the door a few hours later, both armed with get-well cards that he couldn't see well enough to read yet. Nathan hadn't been by, but that was to be expected when corporate intrigue was in the air...

And he hadn't heard anything from Bunny.

For the first couple of days, he tried -in vain, but he tried- not to worry about it too much. For one, trying to think too hard through the haze of the morphine made his head swim in a particularly nauseating way. And for another, he'd learned from a rather displeased Saito that somehow his PDA had been completely fried in the surge that had taken out the robot.

It was just a lack of communication lines. That was all.

Really.

But when day four came, and his head was much clearer, and there was still no word, that was when fear started to creep in. When Nathan finally dropped in to see him, he'd immediately asked to borrow a cell phone.

Calling the lab only got him the automated voice system, even with the secondary number, and calls to either off the Brookses' cell phones went straight to voice mail. Trying to swallow back a wave of panic that threatened to overwhelm him, he handed Nathan's phone back.

"You're shaking."

"I- Don't ask. Please. I'm not sure I could explain it right now," Kotetsu said, then took a deep breath. "So, what's the official sound byte?"

Nathan made a faint noise of distaste. "Standard experimental equipment issue, as we all pretty much guessed. Though why they're bothering to protect someone whose invention rather blatantly attempted to rip your head off is a mystery." The look on his face indicated he had a few possible ideas, and Kotetsu tried not to squirm. Whether he liked it or not, he'd had a few of his own pop up, and they all kept circling back to his involvement with the Brooks family and Rotwang's blatant hatred of them.

But none explained why Maverick would ever potentially be involved. The parents were supposed to be old friends of his, weren't they? Kotetsu was fairly sure he at least remembered that much from the one year he'd worked with all three.

"Maybe it's a bottom line thing," he said, hoping the 'I really don't want to deal with it' came through. "They probably see scrapping such a huge project over one incident as a waste."

That earned him another uncomfortably searching look, then Nathan leaned back in his chair. "Possible. All the same, I think we'd all best be watching our backs where this is concerned."

After two more weeks and several more failed attempts at reaching Bunny or his parents, Kotetsu was finally released from the hospital. Though he still ached and the shower he'd managed hadn't exactly been the best, the second he was out the sliding doors, he hailed a cab.

The passcode he'd been given months ago still worked, thankfully, though his ragged appearance made the guard at the gate regard him with suspicion. The receptionist he found, once he'd identified himself, wasn't nearly so suspicious and merely waved him through.

Bunny's residential lab didn't look much different. In fact, the only change that he could see was that the empty space under one of the bookshelves now contained a couch. After a search of the surrounding rooms and hallways yielded no familiar faces or clues as to what might be going on, he decided that was as good a place as any to wait. Just for a little while. Then he'd go home.

As he drifted up out of the darkness of sleep, the first thing Kotetsu physically perceived was the feeling of a hand on his face. Warm, gentle, and curious, fingertips roamed up the bridge of his nose and over the ridge of his brow, then down across the curve of his cheek. A light, questioning tug on his beard made him groggily start awake, only to find bright green eyes very close to his. He jerked back with a surprised gasp, only to regret it when his bruised back hit the arm rest of the couch and his head lightly hit the adjoining wall.

"Sorry about that," said an almost familiar voice, and when Kotetsu stopped seeing spots...

He stared.

For a brief moment, he had the sudden insane thought that somehow Emily Brooks had cloned herself as a younger male. Then the figure in front of him tilted his head slightly. "Is something wrong?" he asked, and this time, Kotetsu did recognize the voice as the young man of the pair he'd always heard before. He'd gotten so used to the dual layers and electronic back noise that just hearing him sound like a regular person had struck him as strange at first.

"Bunny?" he asked, his own voice a little small with shock, and a soft mouth curved into an amused smile that he knew from all his conversations with the father.

"That's still not my name, you know."

He swallowed, pushing himself to his feet. "Yeah. I know," he managed to say, then grabbed the closest wrist and pulled his friend into a hug. "God," he mumbled, burying his face into Bunny's shoulder. "I should be pissed at you for risking yourself like that. But considering you saved my ass, I'm just glad you're okay."

"I'm sorry," Bunny murmured, hugging him back a little awkwardly. Like he wasn't used to it. And hell, he probably wasn't. "Everything happened so fast, I didn't have time for a better plan. And after that, it was pretty much download, or risk being permanently fragmented. But it was worth it, since you were able to get here in one piece."

"Jesus, Bunny." Finally reining in his emotions a little, Kotetsu pulled back for a better look. Curiosity spurred him to slide his fingers over a cheek, just as Bunny did to him before, and he noticed when the blond subtly leaned into it. "You... can feel that?"

"I have a full sensory system wired underneath the skin polymer, with marked pressure points." That wry smile came back. "Underneath this, I look a bit like an aluminum Christmas tree."

Kotetsu couldn't help a faint snort as he continued his examination. It was amazing. Whatever wiring and construction Bunny's eyes had gone through, they conveyed every flicker of emotion and thought, instead of being empty like those of the girl who'd attacked him. The 'skin' was different as well. Softer, with a living warmth to it. Even whatever passed for musculature moved in a realistic way. "Goddamn," he said, thoroughly impressed. "No wonder it took so long to construct you."

"I... admit, I was a little selfish about it," Bunny said quietly. "I didn't want any of the same materials or construction type that I'd seen Rotwang using, so we had to design something entirely new. And, on the plus side, a lot of what went into me is now being tested for medical benefits, so there are a few potential patents in the future."

"I can't really blame you on the first one," Kotetsu said, unable to keep just a little bit of a growl out of his voice. Now that he'd had his own encounters with the bastard and his work, he'd want to stay as far away from similar ideas as possible if he were in the same position. "And what was the second one?"

"Well, apparently this grafts easily, for starters," Bunny said, indicating his skin. "The only downside is that it doesn't take small stamps very well."

"Small stamps?"

Bunny fluttered his fingers at him. "No prints." Curious, he took hold of the hand -again, not missing the faint jolt that caused in his friend- to examine. Sure enough, the creases of hand movement were there, but none of the tiny identification lines. "So, technically, I still don't have a legal identity."

"But you could still go out, right? I mean, you don't drink, or drive or anything, so that wouldn't hinder you much."

Bunny fidgeted a little. "I... um. I haven't really-"

Oh. Right. The socialization issues. He felt like a bit of a jerk for not remembering that. Squeezing the hand he held, Kotetsu recovered and gave his friend a smile.

"Well, that's what you've got me for."

The pain was worse than anything he could remember in his life. Even worse than his original upload. He screamed and twisted in agony as the coding around him fractured and shattered when the robot fell to the floor, and it took every last ounce of will to keep himself from being ripped to pieces with it.

And then something else was pulling at him, and pulling hard, and for a moment he thought he heard some kind of alarms.

He woke up staring at surgical lights, just as he had all those years before, only this time it was his mother leaning over him, tears streaming down her face. He couldn't understand what she was saying through the sobs, but it didn't especially matter when she suddenly jerked him up into a fierce, desperate hug.

His nerves lit up with the sensation, and all he could manage was a weak hiss of shock at the feeling of being held. A large, warm hand rested on his head, and he involuntarily leaned into it, tilting to look up at his father, all tense and drawn.

"I'm sorry, I had to," he wanted to say, now realizing why they both looked so upset, and why he'd heard that strange noise moments -minutes? Maybe even hours?- before. But just like the original first time, he couldn't quite get his voice and mouth to function the way he wanted to.

A strange sort of unfamiliar exhaustion hit him all at once and he began to droop. Recognizing that they weren't going to be able to get answers yet, his parents quietly extracted a nodded promise that he would explain himself when he could, then allowed him to lapse into warm shutdown and rest.

As he 'dozed', he wondered if Kotetsu would be okay.

It was three days before he had learned his new facial structure well enough to speak without having to be connected to the speakers of a computer terminal. When he had finally told his parents what had been the cause of the sudden fragmentation that had set off their laboratory alarms, his father had said nothing, but gently ruffled his hair in approval.

Of course, it had brought up a whole new list of concerns, and once he was able to walk, he had listened in on more than one hushed conversation about whether his parents should start worrying about trouble from 'Albert'. He remembered seeing Maverick stand by as the robot pummeled his friend, and pulled away to go back to his room.

It wouldn't be happening again if he could do anything about it. He just had to finish getting himself back together.

"What's this?" Kotetsu asked, calloused fingers lightly brushing the band around his wrist, and Barnaby had to fight back a reactive shiver.

"I was going to pull my hair back, but I haven't quite re-learned enough dexterity for it yet. Still having trouble with small things."

"Here, I'll do it, then," Kotetsu said, and Barnaby obediently sat down in front him. Fingers combed through his hair to pull it out of his face, and that time, he couldn't stop the pleasant feeling that sent down his spine.

No matter how small or subtle, touch and scent still seemed to blind side him. So far, everyone had gone easy on him -no sudden claps on the back, or frying onions, or anything like that- but it was still so hard after going so long without. He'd spent so much effort suppressing his sensory memory that it seemed like everything was completely alien and new . The catch and pull of fingers in his hair again drew a small noise out of him.

"Sorry, did I pull too hard?"

"No, it's okay."

And to make matters worse, he'd noticed in the past couple of days that his involuntary reactions seemed to be more acute when it was Kotetsu. Oh, sure, the mechanism that functioned as his 'heart' was incapable of speeding up, and he couldn't blush -which he was grateful for- or get a fluttery feeling in his nonexistent stomach, but... The subtle brush of a hand against his neck as his friend finished tying off his hair definitely made his internal temperature register just a tiny bit higher.

Maybe it was just a reaction to something he'd never felt before, since he hadn't known Kotetsu before he'd been uploaded. Or maybe... this was what it was like to have a crush. He wasn't sure.

He didn't ask.

As he regained his physical abilities, he began to grow a little restless in the laboratory and at home again, especially when Kotetsu was busy. Bored experimenting lead him to discover that he could still make dives into the connection system, though now he was always careful to leave part of himself inside his physical body in case of another attempt at thievery. Doing so left him a little disoriented when he fully came back to himself, but it was a small price to pay, especially since he discovered the more beneficial side-effect that he no longer had to worry about bits of his mind breaking off into the machines he visited.

He 'woke' in his computer chair, rubbing his head, then picked up the glasses he'd laid next to the terminal. He didn't need them, as his eyesight in this body was better than most normal humans had at their best, but he hadn't been able to refuse his mother's request for a familiar aesthetic. Leaning back a little, he toyed with them for a moment before he slipped them on, the receptors in his eyes immediately adjusting for the very slight perception change the lenses caused.

To be honest, he kind of enjoyed having them again.

One of his time sensors in his head beeped. Kotetsu was due for a visit in about fifteen minutes. Deciding to go meet him for a change instead of waiting in the lab as usual, Barnaby pushed himself up out of the chair. A strange sense of foreboding rose up out of nowhere as the door swished open for him, but he didn't pay it much mind.

Until he bumped into a familiar figure as he turned a corner three hallways later. "Er- Mister Maverick? What are you doing here?" God, he hoped that didn't sound as obviously accusing as it did to him.

Apparently not, since the older man merely gave him a placid smile, strangely unruffled by his new appearance. "Mere business formalities, my boy. Now that the armor contracts are up on the table again, I was stopping by to see if perhaps your parents would be interested in taking them up again."

Though he would have liked to possibly help in giving Kotetsu some improved armor, a small, nervous part of Barnaby hoped they'd declined. The fewer people who got close to this mess, the better. "Oh, well, then, I won't keep you-"

A broad hand suddenly pressed against his cheek, fingers threaded into his hair, and it was all Barnaby could do not to reflexively flinch or shy away. Where being touched by his parents or Kotetsu had always been comforting, or at least pleasant, the grip and stare that pinned him down now just made him feel... rather like a rabbit trapped by a snake. "This explains why they've been so busy as of late. A very remarkable job."

"Um... th- thank you?" Barnaby managed to say, and was infinitely thankful when the man pulled away. "E- excuse me, I'm supposed to be meeting someone."

"Of course."

Barnaby quickly moved aside and continued on his path, not even caring that it felt like he was fleeing. When Kotetsu came into the compound's secondary lobby and found him huddled on a couch, he couldn't even come up with an explanation for why the brief meeting had rattled him so much. "Pede poena claudo," had been all he was able to mumble in response to concerned inquiries.

Retribution came limping.

They'd get theirs eventually.

He'd been telling himself that ever since he'd nearly been shredded by H-01's demise. It didn't really help him right now, though.

But it did make him inwardly resolve to keep a closer eye on Kotetsu when he was at work.

Over the next few weeks, his observations began to lead to worry. Not so much about the overall problem, as neither of his two targets had made another move against Kotetsu yet. No, he was starting to worry about other things. Like how Kotetsu would slump with exhaustion whenever he thought no one was around to notice. The uncomfortable changes in his expressions whenever his other bosses got on his case. How he and Kaede were arguing more often.

Sure, Kotetsu was still warm and cheerful whenever he visited, but now Barnaby could better see the faint circles under his eyes and the occasional tremors in his hands. He didn't talk about work much, and when he did, it was with a heavy dose of self-depreciation that Barnaby knew was a lie compared to some of the rescues that only the cameras he'd been in had seen.

"You're not stupid," he said, cutting off one of Kotetsu's usual offhand comments as they were watching a rerun of HeroTV one afternoon. Judging by the way the man stared at him, it had come out a little more vehemently than he'd intended, and his nerve suddenly deflated. "I mean-"

He unconsciously bit his lip as he tried to think of what he wanted to say. "You didn't just write me off as a threat. A stupid person wouldn't have tried to talk me down instead of attacking me. If you were stupid, I'd be dead, either because I would have disintegrated in the net, or because one of your coworkers would have gotten lucky. You're the biggest reason I'm still here at all. So... So please don't say that again. Okay?"

Kotetsu was still staring at him, and Barnaby fidgeted uncomfortably, feeling a bit stupid himself now for having just shot off his mouth like that. Then he was startled into a surprised squeak when arms suddenly folded him in close in a tight hug. "Kotetsu?" he asked hesitantly, then went quiet when he felt something wet against his neck as his friend shook a little.

He wasn't really very good at this comforting thing, but Kotetsu apparently didn't mind, seeming to just need someone to lean on for awhile.

And he could at least do that.

But he could also do more, and two weeks into December, he was suddenly struck with inspiration. He'd been given access to the family accounts, and he could get into just about any records network with little effort, even Apollon's. Making everything look proper enough that no one would question it proved to be a bit more difficult, but considering the backlog of time he was working with, not impossible.

When he'd finally gotten everything finished, with enough time for Kotetsu to get the message before their usual visit, he drew back out of the networks and sank back into his chair with a noise of satisfaction.

'Just hope this works', he thought as he watched the clock for a few minutes, before getting up to go wait in the secondary lobby. When Kotetsu came in a little while later, clearly puzzling over something, he tried not to perk up too much. "Something on your mind?"

"Huh? Oh, hey, Bunny. Just... some weird stuff at work. Lloyds suddenly called me in to grouch about all the vacation time I've accumulated. Said I was using some of it before the year was out, or else, then booted me out."

"Well, isn't some time off a good thing?"

"Not when you end up climbing the walls from boredom. I haven't really made any-" Almost on cue, Kotetsu's phone beeped an incoming text message, and Barnaby tried very hard not to squirm. His friend clicked on the screen to read it, then frowned slightly. "A train ticket? But I didn't order-"

The slow dawning of realization would have been comical if he weren't so nervous.

"Bunny, what did you do?"

Well, at least he didn't sound angry about it... yet. "Um, I might have made some arrangements," Barnaby admitted. "You just... always seem so tired lately. Even when you talk about Kaede, and that always used to liven you up. So... I thought... maybe going home to see her for a week or so might make you feel better."

Whatever reaction he'd been expecting or dreading, the sad smile and a hand gently ruffling his hair wasn't it. "It's really nice of you, Bunny, but I can't just accept-"

"You don't have to 'just accept'," he said quickly. "Think of it as another social lesson if you have to."

Kotetsu blinked at him, then raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"This is the first time I've gotten to give a Christmas present since I was thirteen. So it's another step forward, right?"

He was fairly sure he felt some of his casings strain at the hug that earned him, but he couldn't bring himself to mind in the slightest.

He'd opted to spend the afternoon and evening of New Year's doing a recharge. Since he had little in the way of work to do, and his parents had decided to go to the staff party, it was looking to be a dull night anyway.

By his internal clocks, he'd been in warm shutdown for a little over five hours when the feeling of fingers gently sweeping through his hair made him rouse. Blinking a little, he looked up to find Kotetsu leaning over him.

" 'Morning, Sunshine," his friend teased, and Barnaby tilted his head slightly as he put his glasses on.

"I thought you were supposed to still be on vacation."

"I am. I go back to work tomorrow."

"Then why-" Kotetsu cut him off by tugging at his arm, and he obediently got up, still lost as to what was going on as he was lead out of the lab. And no less confused when they walked right past the empty reception desk. "What's going on?"

"I called your parents for a status update last night. They think with all the progress you've made since getting your new body, you're up for the next step. So I figured maybe we could make a slightly late Christmas of it for an hour or two."

He didn't figure it out until they stopped in front of the main doors, then he remembered. Leaving the compound was the next step. He involuntarily stiffened, mind reeling, until a hand reached up and brushed his hair out of his eyes.

"Bunny, listen. This is only if you're okay with it. At whatever point you want to stop and come back, then we stop right there, no questions asked. I'm not going to force you into anything from this second on, okay?"

As laughable as it seemed to the rational part of his mind, especially compared to the other threats looming over the both of them even now, Barnaby was honestly scared. It was one thing to go out into the city in a form that no one could see or bother. But this...

Kotetsu was a warm presence beside him, and that and the promise gave him a little courage back. No. No, he could do this. Trying to ignore the way his hand shook a little, he reached out and pressed the button to open the doors-

-then immediately clung to his partner at the gust of icy wind that blew in. Both yelped, Barnaby from the chill and Kotetsu from the iron grip on his shoulder. "Sorry!" Barnaby said, quickly letting go. "But I'm pretty certain I really don't like cold."

Kotetsu covered his mouth with a gloved hand, and Barnaby scowled petulantly at him, knowing full well the man was trying to hide a smile. "Fair enough," Kotetsu said, muffled, before taking off his scarf and wrapping it around Barnaby's neck. "Guess our first big mission will be to get you a good coat. Can you manage until then?"

Barnaby nodded, dampening his sensory network, then accepted an offered arm, unconsciously lacing their fingers together. They crossed the grounds, and Kotetsu waved to the sensor handling the gates in place of the usual guard. "Ready?" he asked, giving Barnaby's hand a squeeze.

"Ready," Barnaby murmured, and the gate opened for them.