100% of gamblers lose before they win. (Arcana Virus)
-
It was a slow day, both at school and at the auto shop, and Kaita had half a mind to wander to the Ministry out of boredom before he remembered the chatroom. He opened it to find that, once again, not only had he totally missed when everyone had been online, but they’d also gotten into a subject way, way over his head.
“The future?” Kaita wondered aloud, lounging upside-down on his bedroom bean bag chair. “A giant meteor in the future? Wow…” He let his arm drop to the ground instead of holding it out in front of him; the chatroom window remained where it was, despite the tapping of the PET case against the floor.
Turboman, still projecting himself upside-up like a stick-in-the-mud, bent sideways at the waist to read for himself about the ‘vintage PETs’ and ‘EM Bodies’. “At least they don’t seem to be trying to get their hands on those vaults that have Hikari-hakase all stalled out,” he pointed out.
“If they shoved a giant meteor through the portals, would we need to go on standby for that, too?” Kaita wondered idly. There was no sign of the Netto-chan he’d met in the chatroom, either, though that lonely notepad person had come back.
“What would we be able to do about a giant meteor?” Turboman asked incredulously. “Wouldn’t you call ANSA about that, and not us?”
“It’s emitting some kind of noise,” Kaita pointed out. “So it’s obviously got something funny about it…” Reminded that there was a solution to his boredom sitting right there on his wrist, Kaita reached up to grab at the chatroom screen, navigating back to its main menu.
“What’re you lookin’ for?” Turboman wondered, noticing the new upswing in his Operator’s energy.
“I’ve got nowhere to be, so now’s my shot,” Kaita decided. “I’m gonna try the portals out for myself!”
While Kaita carefully tapped UI buttons, Turboman wondered, “Should we tell someone first, or…” The portal, tall enough for a fully-sized adult, snapped open in front of his hologram. “Whoa.” Turboman’s eyes, already pinpricks of light beneath his visor, seemed to shimmer a little.
“I wonder if I can make it smaller,” mused Kaita; the portal shut with a snap of displaced air and a shimmery, sci-fi whoosh as he navigated over to where the settings ought to be.
The next few minutes were spent on the issues of size, placement, and shape; square, round, the size of an eraser, next to the tree in the backyard and just as tall…
“Cool… I mean, maybe we should close it! Before someone sees us!” Turboman fretted.
“Okaaaay…” A bit reluctantly, Kaita disappeared the huge rift in spacetime in front of their window. It had been kind of funny, honestly. “Well, they could put a small meteor in it, that’s for sure,” he concluded. “…Okay, next up.”
“Next up?!” boggled Turboman, but there was no stopping Kaita in the throes of boredom. A new portal opened, this one resolving into a very familiar neighborhood. If Turboman hadn’t known better, he would’ve said that Kaita had simply opened a portal that would take them a couple of streets down from where they were. “I guess it’s not too bad if you’re just taking us for a lap around the neighborhood…”
“It’s Netto-chan’s Akihara Town!” Kaita explained, climbing to his feet and retrieving his backpack. “What better place to see what going through a portal’s like for ourselves, right?!”
“Your Mama’s gonna kill me…” complained Turboman as Kaita lined himself up for a jump.
“Here… we… go!” And with that, Kaita was through, Turboman’s hologram pulled along for the ride as his PET went along with his Operator.
-
If it weren't for the fact that Lan's mom was actually home somewhat early for once, Rock was sure that Lan would be spending this evening moping and childishly hunting for viruses to dispose of. There was nothing wrong with a little enrichment, Rock thought, but Lan had been really miserable the past few days, and she was starting to worry that she might pop like a balloon and do something impulsive at any moment. No catharsis from the Lotus Engine, suspicion from all her friends and enemies... It wasn't a situation that Rock really knew how to handle, since she was kind of part of the problem.
But Ms. Hikari was home, so Lan pretended that everything was fine. The glazed-over look that she wore when she didn't want anyone asking questions was only a marginal improvement over her looking like she wanted to beat someone to death. Rock, in speaking for her operator, made something up about school being a little hard at the moment so that Lan could evade the truth, but she felt horrible about it, regardless.
Lan kept her head laid down at her desk as she tossed and tumbled like she was having a bad dream. Stupid. So stupid. One second people were calling her a hero, and the next they all thought she was some kind of malicious demon. Well, it's not like that was to be completely unexpected, anyways. Something, something, the prestigious Hikari family, how could they have fallen from grace. All it took was one public fuck-up, and then everyone thought you were one step away from becoming some evil freak that was going to start experimenting on and killing people for no reason.
Stupid. Stupid. It was a stupid cycle. She was nothing like her dad, and yet everyone thought she was evil anyways!!
...It was then that a sudden, unfamiliar beep went off from one of Lan's desk drawers. She nearly jumped out of her seat before she quickly darted to open the desk drawer and find that...
"It's... the Fossa Tracker," Rock realized, already holding her breath. "Shit. What's going on?"
Lan narrowed her eyes. "I'm an idiot," she muttered to herself. "I forgot that I left it here after I kept traveling. O-of course." She squinted her eyes, then dragged her fist across the desk, before she attempted to compose herself. "God damn it! Mom's home! I can't just leave! But I bet someone's gonna come and try and interrogate me about all this crap again because-"
"It could be anything, kid," Rock interrupted, trying to stop her operator from winding herself up. "Could even be a false positive. No use worrying when I'm right here, right?" That seemed to reassure Lan, at least. It wasn't like she was going to get separated from Rock. She wasn't going to let that happen.
Slowly, she creaked open her bedroom door, and began to tiptoe down the hall. There was nothing she was going to spot from her bedroom window, so she probably needed to look outside the front. But she didn't want to go downstairs and explain what that beeping was...
-
Kaita marveled at the Akihara Town he’d traveled to. “It… seems a lot like our own,” was Turboman’s initial impression.
“No, it’s different,” Kaita noticed. “Everything looks older.” He pointed out the house where Meiru lived in their own world. “The roof’s gray.”
“Everything’s just kind of… drab, isn’t it?” mused Turboman. “I wonder if we’ve even got our red roof, if Meiru-san’s house looks like that…”
“I don’t think Meiru-san would change it to a color like that. I wonder if she even lives here,” Kaita continued to think aloud as he turned his attention back to the house in front of them. The Hikari home was still its proper whites and blues, albeit under a layer of grime. Nobody had been out to pressure wash it in some time, it seemed, and the upstairs balcony that Kaita remembered as attaching to Netto’s room appeared to be missing. Even the shrubbery in the planter seemed more unkempt, overgrown and patchy.
Something about it filled Turboman with foreboding. “I think we’d better head back for now,” he suggested.
“Hmm…” Kaita pulled out the chatroom app on a holoscreen, still displaying the inputs he’d made to take them to the spot they stood in. “If we went here, though, that means Netto-chan’s gotta be home.” He smiled down at Turboman’s hologram. “It’s been a while since we talked! We oughta at least stop in and say hi, don’t you think?”
“That’s the nice thing to do, yeah,” Turboman couldn’t help but agree as Kaita bounded up the steps.
“Even the doorbell’s somewhere else…?” wondered Kaita, searching for and locating a much less sophisticated setup than he was used to seeing on the homes in his neighborhood. As the analog bell rang out, he marveled, “That's old-school, too…”
-
Lan had made it halfway down the steps just as the doorbell rang, making her freeze up. It had officially crossed into too late territory before she could even say anything... especially since she quickly realized that her mom, in fact, was still in the kitchen. She could feel her own doom encroaching as those footsteps trailed across the floor, the door threatening to be answered at any moment now. "N-nooooo..." she couldn't help but whine to herself, as she scuttled down the rest of the steps like a strange bug, slowly peeking around the corner and occasionally ducking behind it.
It took a few seconds for the door to be answered, like the person on the other side was hesitating even answering it to begin with. Maybe they were peeking through windows on the other side - it wasn't like Kaita would be able to tell. Eventually, the door unlocked, and Kaita was presented with someone he would surely recognize. The Ms. Hikari of this world definitely looked a little younger than the one he would know, but in exchange, her clothing was a bit more formal, there were shades under her eyes, and her expression was confused and vaguely unwelcoming.
"Oh, er, hello," Ms. Hikari answered, her expression slowly shifting to better suit the fact that she was talking to a child. "Is it that time of year? Are you making the rounds for a fundraiser?"
-
Kaita waited, looking around at the stillness of the house with open-eyed wonder. He supposed he was an unfamiliar sight around this house, but it was still taking a long time. The entire neighborhood was so much quieter than his own version of Akihara Town. Was anyone really home…?
Finally, before Kaita could try the doorbell again, the door opened. He was a bit confused by the greeting he got—what sort of a fundraiser? A Net Savior Bake Sale, maybe?—but quickly recovered.
“Hello!” Kaita cheerfully greeted. “I’m Kaita, one of Netto-chan’s friends!” This Hikari-san was different enough from the one he knew for him to remember to say, “You’re Netto-chan’s Mama, Hikari-san, aren’t you? It’s nice to meet you!” and bow politely but enthusiastically.
-
Haruka blinked for a second, pausing just long enough for the thought that he had said something wrong to perhaps cross Kaita's mind. "Oh! Oh! Hello!" she greeted once she'd composed herself, brightening up considerably. Standing up straight, she opened the door more. "She didn't mention that anyone was coming over! Ah, she doesn't really have anyone over, now, does she...?"
It was then that Lan peeked around the corner and spotted their unexpected guest. Said guest was so out of the blue that she couldn't help but give away her position, stumbling out of the staircase hall and into the living room directly adjacent to the kitchen. As her mother peeked behind her shoulder, Lan curled into herself and pointed across the room. "Kaita...?! What are you doing here...?!" she couldn't help but babble, which immediately threw any hope she had of lying about him visiting right out the window. "U-uh... uhhh..."
Haruka smiled at Lan and beckoned her over. "You never mentioned a Kaita. Ah, you really ought to tell me about these things!" she said, to which Lan immediately shied away. "I knew this had to be a surprise, though. You never invite anyone over..."
Lan held her head low in shame as she scurried over to the door, hanging off to the side to let Kaita in. "I-I don't want to," she mumbled to herself, before eyeing Kaita with a bit more of her usual fervor. "K-Kaita, seriously, though, I hope nothing's wrong..." Both she and Rock were seriously hoping that Kaita had not been sent to check on her after the former's meltdown in Netto-san's office. Netto wouldn't have told anyone else about that... right? Lan really, really hoped so.
-
As Haruka blinked, Kaita blinked back. What an odd reaction. “Is everything o…”
But just like that, Hikari-san was back to her usual self. “I just felt like it!” Kaita explained brightly when she wondered. Once Lan properly revealed herself, he beamed and waved to her, Turboman waving from his shoulder.
It always felt a bit funny to be privy to someone else being talked to by their mother like that, no matter who it was. Maybe he really had caused Lan a bit too much trouble...?
He was startled from that train of thought by Lan’s worrying. “Nope, nothing at all!” he reassured her, bounding to her—
“Kaita, your shoes!” Turboman hurriedly cautioned before Kaita could make it more than two steps inside.
Kaita took an exaggeratedly large step back to the door, slipped his shoes off, then scurried on sock foot next to Lan. “Like I told Hikari-san, I just felt like it,” he said, completely honestly. “I wanted to see if I could make the trip over, that's all."
-
"Oh! Well, how kind of you," Haruka responded in turn, though she still looked a little confused. She eyed the source of the voice reminding Kaita of his manners, apparently surprised that another Navi was present. "Lan shuts herself in a lot, so I'm glad she has friends that will check on her. Come to think of it, you haven't told me much of anything about your friends as of late."
"Th-there isn't anything... to say," Lan answered awkwardly. She wriggled around a little bit, attempting to slip into her poker face as Kaita walked up to her. It was hard to really him away when he was looking at her like that... but her mom was right there, so it wasn't like could say everything.
Haruka walked back into the kitchen, but continued to engage with the so-called conversation from across the house. "The trip over... Hmmm, you must have met over the Internet, then?" she wondered out loud. "Where are you from, if it's not Den City?"
"...Yeah, it's another city," Lan immediately interrupted, before Kaita could say anything would get her in even bigger trouble. Leaning closer to Kaita, she lowered her voice. "W-well, you did it. I mean, there isn't anything that would've broken it, or whatever, but..."
Rock's hologram appeared on her operator's shoulder, interrupting her train of thought. "You guys should sit on the couch or somethin'," she suggested, perhaps as part of a ploy to give them a little privacy. She figured that Kaita couldn't lie even if he tried... but she still needed to keep Lan calm, lest she blow up over recent events yet again. "Can't tell you how glad I am that it was you at the door. The kid's been having a hard time lately."
"Rock!" Lan hissed, and her eyes wandered just in time to notice an eyebrow raise from her mother. Lan didn't want to say anything! She had the right to remain silent!!
