and thus, it was technicolor

by avonapricot

Summary:

Rui Kamishiro is a vigilante of sorts. This society has simply taken a downturn and he sees the opportunity to set it right.

Tsukasa Tenma is an idol of sorts. Until he sees something he can't unsee and chooses to make sure something like that never happens again.

Chapter 1: print('first sighting')

A boy sits atop the center-city tower, legs dangling off the edge of the roof. The heels of his boots click against the LED display that is currently strobing a blinding white, making the components squish together and form a blue wave of distortion. 

 

The entire building was covered with these panels of lights because when the sun can no longer illuminate the magnificence of the office buildings and luxury hotels, the city must do it themselves. The consequence is that there is never truly ‘night,’ what with the lights polluting the once dark sky into a sickening gray and the bustle never truly dying down, only lessening slightly before another wave of people takes hold.

 

Rui is sickened by it. And yet, this is the most beautiful view in the entire city.

 

The landscape is decidedly purple, a signature of the town, it seems. The city encapsulates itself in a purple haze if Rui lets his vision go unfocused, which he often does at this vantage point for the same reason he comes up here in the first place: to blur out the people. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath after removing his face mask, leaving it hanging from one ear.

 

He refocuses his eyes and sweeps them along the crowd of citizens, tourists, children. All of their heads are adorned with these headsets that remove any sense of individuality for a chance at an idealized view of life.

 

“See the world how you’ve always wanted to!” This is what Ootori Corp. preached when they came out with the first line of devices. It was dystopian how fast the country full of miserable office workers took to the idea of an idealized reality, quickly implementing it into society.

 

The headsets make everything you see better. How you want to see it. Then, it discards the rest. Crime rates skyrocketed due to users not being able to defend themselves in muggings and robberies, due to their augmented reality not supporting the negative experience and discarding it.

 

The city is called Segno, and the musical emblem is plastered on every single building in the vicinity. The original idea was that the city would stay rooted in tradition and always return to its foundations first and foremost. That idea has been forgotten with the coming of a new age of technology.

 

Rui has given the city’s name a second meaning since the first one has been discarded. Segno: no matter how much progress we make, we always regress to what we always have been– the slums. 

 

A small pink robot whizzes around Rui’s head with its helicopter-inspired rotor blades. He knows what inspired the formation of this machine because he created it. It catches his attention enough to make him realize his in-ear headset has fallen out to rest across his shoulders. When he puts them back in his ears, he is subjected to a shrill berating.

 

“Rui! Jesus Christ, Rui, I’ve been trying to get your attention for the past two minutes! I had to hack an Echo-Bot to get you to zone back in!” He grasps the Echo-Bot, running his slim fingers along the bat-like ears of the tiny robot. 

 

“Sorry, sorry, Nene~” he begins, “it’s been a long night already and it’s not even halfway through the shift yet. Just started to get on my nerves.” He can hear Nene sigh through his earpiece before continuing on.

 

“I know, Rui. But, you’ve got a live one in an alley about two blocks out. I’ve sent the coords to Ferry-Bot and just need your confirmation so it can get you from… wherever you are and bring you there.”

 

“Shit! Why didn’t you say something earlier? Confirm transport for Ferry-Bot. What’s the status?” He rambles this string of words while panickedly shoving his mask back on his face and getting to his feet, making sure all his gear is still safely stored within his jacket. 

 

“Don’t even start with me, Rui, it’s not my fault you disconnected comms and went to dick around on the…” Rui hears rapid-fire clicking, “... the center-city tower? What the hell, Rui.”

 

“It’s pretty~” he pauses a moment, “... sorry for yelling, my head hasn’t been in it today, for some reason.”

 

“You’re fine, I’m not sorry for yelling, though.” Rui can hear the smirk in her voice and makes a scandalized expression at the empty air in front of him. Just as he was about to start that chain of fake banter, the Ferry-Bot whirs into existence beside him. It is of similar composition to the Echo-Bot, but large enough to support his weight as he connects the purple strap of leather hanging from his belt to the side and secures his position on the foot and hand holds.

 

The robot swiftly starts the journey to the coordinates Nene programmed in. Rui rather likes the journeys on Ferry-Bot, with the air pressing into his face almost feeling fresh, even though he knows it’s not. At least it doesn’t smell like fast food, car exhaust, and body odor like the stagnant air does. 

 

***

 

Ferry-Bot deposits Rui on the roof overlooking the alley of interest, where there is a distinct sound of furious yelling. He peers down and sees a large man– who notably lacked a headset but did not lack a nasty-looking hunting knife– yelling at a man who had an older-looking camera where his head should be. An older style, but still relatively common. 

 

Rui uses an Echo-Bot to silently descend to where the two men are standing, just behind the aggressor. In a regular scenario, he might’ve just swept this guy’s legs out from under him and restrained him for the police to find once they’re called. Maybe even a sharp kick to the gut if Rui was feeling particularly happy-go-lucky. But the knife complicates things.

 

Just as he decides to make use of some nanobots that bite like fire ants, a figure jumps down from the roof in a blur, flipping in a way so the heel of their boot connects with the aggressor’s head. 

 

Rui catches a glimpse of the person and it's almost as if the world stops. 

 

It’s a boy, probably around his age, with a black mask covering the bottom half of his face, not a strange sight, seeing as Rui is wearing something similar. But there is something strange about this boy. His hair nearly glows, a stark warm color gradient, blown up and away from his forehead due to the nature of the maneuver he is currently doing.

 

He stands out against all the haze of the city, a stark yellow in a sea of cool purple.

 

He’s like a star.

 

The scene catches up with itself and the boy lands gracefully beside the man who he just forced to crumple to the ground. His hair falls back into his face as he carefully picks up the knife the man was holding and tosses it into an arrant trashcan nearby. Only then does he look up and see Rui.

 

His eyes are like pools of honey. I wouldn’t mind drowning in a pool of honey.

 

They don’t stare at each other long since the other boy suddenly gains a look of terror in his eyes and bolts past Rui and out of the alley. 

 

Rui stands there a moment, stunned. Maybe it was the hair, maybe it was the eyes, maybe it was the fact that he just felled an entire grown man with one kick, but Rui didn’t know what to do with himself.

 

He shakes himself out of his reverie and jogs to the end of the alley, looking in both directions to find that the boy is long gone. He sighs as he walks back to the man who was just rescued, who was still standing against the far wall, with a seemingly vacant stare peering through the camera lens. 

 

The man doesn’t see his approach, Rui knows this. His collection of features has a city-wide blur due to the police constantly being on his ass about ‘vigilantism’ and ‘trespassing,’ or whatever. All the Ootori brand products discard his presence, barring him from being some sort of hero to these people. That’s fine.

 

He takes a small disc from his pocket and tosses it toward the man, watching as it embeds itself into the side of the headset. The disc lights up with an image of a young girl with shorter, blindingly yellow hair. She seems to be spinning in a chair, gleefully. 

 

“Rui-kun! Hellooooooo!!” She’s still spinning as she’s talking to him.

 

“Hello, Rin-chan! You know what to do, right?”

 

“Of course!” Her image glitches so she’s closer, winking over her pair of sunglasses.

 

Sunglasses?

 

“Rin-chan, where did you get those sunglasses you’re wearing?”

 

“Nene-chan programmed them in for me! Aren’t they cute?” She does a spin before pushing them up her nose.

 

He huffs, “Yes, I quite like them,” he’ll have to talk with Nene about spoiling Rin.

 

“Okaayyy, off I go!” 

 

The tiny screen dims and there is just silence for a moment before the headset sparks and crumbles away, revealing the man beneath it, who looks positively shell-shocked. Rui gives him a half-assed smile before snatching the disc containing his virus and pocketing it.

 

As he’s walking off, he tells Nene to phone the police, but his mind is somewhere else.

Who was that boy?

Chapter 2: print('origins')

Summary:

The creation of a vigilante. Alternatively, the creation of a frightened child.

Rui always had an affinity for technology.

 

Even from a young age, he would take things apart– T.V. remotes, electronic toys, the refrigerator (that wasn’t a hit with his parents)– and promptly put them back together again. It made sense. Motherboards, hard drives, and CPUs were just puzzle pieces and weren’t mushy and complicated like the niceties used to try and get his classmates to like him.

 

Sure, he had his next-door neighbor, Nene, to keep him company. Though, even she never truly understood his fascination with the inner workings of technology. She was more inclined to enjoy her gaming consoles how they were meant to be– to play games. Nene was not thrilled when Rui had taken apart her console, but relented once she found out her save files were safe as can be. 

 

He made his first Echo-Bot when he was nine, using the scrap parts of his unused toys and the parts his parents left lying around the house. They were both Ootori Corp. employees, signed on straight out of their college years to aid in the next big thing. 

 

When Rui brought the Echo-Bot to school, it seemed that this was the factor in his formula for friendship he had been missing. It was something unseen before to every single person, and thus, every single person wanted to befriend the guy who could get them one of their own. 

 

The Echo-Bots were very quickly banned after a situation involving the propeller blades and the hair of a passing gym teacher.

 

But, the robots continued to thrive during break times, with Rui making iterations upon iterations of the same robot for whoever wanted one. When they were brought out, there was a sense of connection between Rui and his classmates that he had never been able to achieve before. He was cool. 

 

Seeing their eyes light up with glee as they flew their robots of his creation through the sky, slicing through the smog of the city and bouncing off of each other midair, gave Rui a sense of belonging. 

 

Until Ootori Corp. unveiled their famed ‘next big thing.’ His parents had been working on headsets that changed the filter on reality. It allowed you to see the world through the lens of what you wanted it to look like. This is what Rui’s parents had been working on and leaving scraps of around the house.

 

Being an inner-city school, every child was soon equipped with tiny headsets to match their tiny bodies. First, the children from affluent families. Then, the children whose parents didn’t want them to be left out or bullied at school. 

 

Rui’s parents didn’t get him one at first, wanting to try out the technology themselves, beyond their test runs at work, before giving one to their child. Unfortunately, he seemed to fade from view once his childish whining and needs began to get on their nerves, slowly phasing him out of view. The only problem was that he was a child. They knew that they had a child that needed to be fed and put to sleep every night, but the loving, empathetic parents Rui once had were gone and replaced with robots. Robots he couldn’t take apart and fix.

 

But that wasn’t all. His classmates lost interest in his creations since they could have much cooler ones simply brought into existence with a single thought. He was phased out at school; classmates didn’t care enough to see him in the first place and teachers were already irritated with his antics enough to phase him out too. 

 

He eventually stopped going.

 

His last straw was when he saw Nene walk out her front door with a tiny, green headset in the shape of a box radio. 

 

He kept to his room, only being fed by the obligatory meals his parents made and locking the door before they could emotionlessly tuck him in for bed at a reasonable 9:30 p.m. It took him years to create and fine-tune a new creation– one that would destroy a headset from the inside.

 

It was a virus, living on a circular disc made from parts of the very technology it was created to destroy. Being around the age of eleven now, Rui decided to name it a phrase, similar to a superhero call-out. He imagined himself throwing out this disc and exclaiming the words as some sort of catchphrase.

 

“Ruin it, now!”

 

***

 

Rui was afraid.

 

He was afraid he hadn’t tested his ‘Ruin it, now!’ enough and that it would hurt whoever he used it on, even though there were many tests done to prove it wouldn’t.

 

Rui remained afraid, nonetheless.

 

He was afraid as he crept across the median between his and Nene’s houses, jumping over the fence and peeking in through the window.

 

He saw Nene’s parents, sitting vacantly on their couch, staring at a television that was not on, and that probably hadn’t been on in months. He moves to a different window– the one to Nene’s room.

 

There she is, sitting on the desk chair near her bed, staring just as vacantly into nothing as her parents were. He wonders what her ideal reality is showing her right now. He wonders if he’s a part of it. He couldn’t bear testing that once she adorned her headset, locking himself away before she ever could have witnessed him from under the screen.

 

Rui creeps in through the open window and positions himself between her and the door. 

 

“... Nene?”

 

There is no reaction.

 

Something in him snaps.

 

“Ruin it, now!” he screams out, chucking the disc at where Nene’s head should have been, watching as it did exactly as he programmed it to do. He is afraid.

 

Four small arms embed themselves onto the exterior of the device and, for a moment, there is only silence. Rui is afraid.

 

Suddenly, the machine sparks and makes Rui yelp before he roughly covered his mouth. The headset falls away in pieces, revealing a confused and terrified-looking Nene beneath. Her eyes slowly track around the room before landing on Rui, whose legs are trembling violently where he stands and whose hands are still covering his mouth. Whose eyes are filled with tears.

 

“Rui…?”

 

The scene unfreezes and Rui sobs, stumbling over his legs as he runs toward the girl, wrapping his arms around her torso and crying into her shoulder. 

 

After a moment, she reciprocates. 

 

***

 

Rui has a partner in crime.

 

After telling Nene just what the past two years of his life have been like, her eyes fill with tears to match his, her lips spilling over with apologies. 

 

Instead of just Rui against a society of spineless robots, it was Rui and Nene. 

 

He taught her to code, to reconfigure, and to create pieces of technology that would be useful to them. He knew that the objective was to rid the world of these headsets, but the big question was how.

 

For now, they were kids. They made useless creations and played menial games. Rui needed this and Nene missed it anyway. 

 

Nene codes a friend, an avatar to associate with Rui's headset-ending virus. It’s a girl, a bit older than them, with yellow hair like straw and eyes blue like the sky is supposed to be, instead of the gray it is; they made her peppy and they gave her the ability to learn, to respond. They didn't think of the implications associated with her existence, only that they had someone else to talk to. ‘Ruin it, now!’ isn’t a fitting name for a young girl, so they just called her ‘Rin.’

 

And thus, it was Rui, Nene, and Rin against the world. Well, the ‘world’ at that point was video game opponents and their robotic parents, but they’d get to the important stuff soon enough.

 

They were just children, after all.

Chapter 3: print('lost and found')

Summary:

The search for a shooting star.

“Nene, you don’t understand. I have got to see him again.”

 

“I think you’re delusional and strange. Get well soon.” After Nene says this, she spins in her chair and props her feet up on the desk she was just facing away from, her eyes not moving from the gaming console grasped in her hands.

 

The room the two currently occupy is dark, only being lit by odd lamps here and there and the glow of the screens that sit atop the desks that line the walls. There are pieces of robots and odd-shaped tools scattered across surfaces and along the sides of the room, kicked around to carve walkways from doorway to doorway. It’s Rui’s childhood bedroom but with the childhood stripped away. If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of dishes being moved about in the kitchen– preparing for dinner. 

 

“He was different, I swear it. Nene you didn’t see him. He glows .” Now it’s Rui’s turn to spin in his chair, covering his face with his hands as he goes round and round, eventually stopping to face the screen that always displays the same occupant.

 

“Awww, I wish I saw him! Then I could back you up!” Rin says this excitedly, as she does most things. 

 

“You could pretend, you know~”

 

“Oh, okay! His face was so, so hot! And he was… orange!” She pauses before lowering her voice for her next statement, “... the color was orange, right?” Rin had obviously attempted to whisper this but she doesn’t quite have the voice capacity for that.

 

“Thank you, Rin,” Rui says, miserably. “And it wasn’t just orange. It was…” He runs a hand down his face, “This city is so cold, always purples and greys and blues so dull you’d think they’d gone stale. This boy was just… warm. He was orange and yellow and pink… like a sunset. Like a star.”

 

Nene whirls back around at this with a contemplative expression on her face, the game long discarded in favor of listening to the conversation she already exited. Her eyes narrow as she scans Rui’s face, trying to place the emotion that resides there; an emotion that Rui himself doesn’t think he could name. Her nose scrunches as she opens her mouth to what is probably going to be another rebuttal, but is interrupted.

 

“I’ve never seen a sunset.”

 

Both of their eyes widen as they turn to the source: Rin. The AI has an expression on her face that reads so human it's hard to look at. Nene and Rui didn’t code in her expression of longing or the innocent look in her eyes, she must have developed that over time. 

 

“I’ve never seen the stars, either.”

 

It’s harrowing how a creature born in the pollution of a hungry city has never seen the stars; has never seen the sun set because the buildings cover the skyline and the fumes discolor the warm tones. It’s horrible how one can long for something they’ve never experienced.

 

It reminds Rui of himself.

 

He slowly pivots his head over to Nene to see a similar train of thought running behind her eyes, which were still staring at the robot before her. After a time, she meets his gaze and analyzes his expression once more. She sighs.

 

“Fiiiine. I’ll help you find your star, Rui Kamishiro.” A strangled noise of elation escapes Rui’s throat as Nene rolls her chair back toward her computer screen. “But, you also need to promise to take a break from this whole,” She waves her hand in the air, emphatically, “vigilante business for a few days so we can get out of the city. Soon.” Out of the corner of his eye, Rin tilts her head. 

 

Rui frowns at this. They haven’t taken a genuine break in what’s probably been six months now, and he didn’t plan on stopping. Things were speeding up and he doesn’t think they can afford a vacation right now. Not when he’s so close to something big that he can taste it. Before he can even open his mouth, Nene interjects.

 

“It’s been a while since we’ve seen the stars too, you know.” She not looking at him, instead staring intently at her gaming console, which Rui hadn’t noticed she’d picked back up. This halts any and all logical brain function and replaces it with the canvas that was the sky, on the occasions when he was driven away from smoggy Segno. A canvas painted with reds, yellows, oranges, and pinks. 

 

“... Okay.”

 

He turns to face Rin fully, only to see a small smile on her face–a grateful smile. He smiles back. 

 

“I’ll even let you bring your new lover boy too if we find him.” Nene chirps, wholly dissipating any tenderness that had formed in the moment. Rui makes a noise of protest while Rin’s small smile splits into a wide grin as she cackles, filling the dark room with the bright noise. 

 

Nene and Rin giggle at him as he pretends to sulk until they hear three sharp raps on the bedroom door.

 

Knock, knock, knock. Evenly spaced and perfectly timed. Once more.

 

Knock, knock, knock. 

 

Upon receiving no response, there is a tink as ceramic meets the wooden floors, and the footsteps they didn’t hear approach pat, pat, pat away. 

 

The collective breath held by the room is released with a sigh and Rui opens the door to find a plate of meat he can’t recognize and something mashed that he also can't recognize. Edible, though. He raises his gaze to see his mother, box television atop her head, round the corner of his hallway, walking away. 

 

As he closes the door, he sees Nene get up out of her chair and walk towards the window they slip out of as opposed to braving the front door. She looks back and nods at him before hoisting herself up and out, jogging across the median between their houses. She’s got a similar plate of food waiting outside her bedroom door that she’ll grab and bring back like she always does. 

 

They couldn’t free their parents. Rui’s parents would misunderstand and take offense and Nene’s would be right there to back them up. They would all go back to the devices eventually. Who wouldn’t want their idealized reality?

 

Rui shovels some of the mush into his mouth while waiting for Nene to return. 

 

Peas.

 

***

 

The code they’ve made is running just as they hoped. When implemented into the Echo-Bots, the program detects the colors in its field of vision and refers back to a dictionary of all the colors Nene and Rui could think of. When it hits yellow, orange, or pink, an alert is sent to Nene, who relays it to Rui, who investigates. 

 

It definitely works, but it’s a little disheartening when the list of things you’ve excitedly sprinted to includes: a dumpster fire, another dumpster fire, a horrifically angry orange tabby, and also another, smaller dumpster fire.

 

Rui crouches down next to the smaller dumpster fire and shoves his face in his hands, letting out a guttural groan in the process.

 

“Listen bud, you’re the one who wanted to start this little passion project. Don’t chicken now.” Nene scathingly tells him through his earpieces. God, he wishes she could see his face so he could give her the look she deserves. 

 

Rui stands up from his pitiful crouch and stretches his arms to the sky, allowing the fire to warm his back as he contemplates the route he’ll take once he exits this alley. 

 

Ping. He hears it on Nene’s computer before she even says anything. His heart soars.

 

“Got a hit a couple blocks southbound, on the top of a building. Take Ferry-Bot.” She says this succinctly. As much as she likes to tease him, she knows when Rui is getting genuinely frustrated.

 

As she says this, the robot rounds the corner and swiftly brings him into the sky.

 

On their approach, he sees exactly what the program flagged, and it's not the elusive boy with hair like a sunset. It's a billboard, shining bright yellow in the dim purple of the night, ultimately contributing to the light pollution but doing so in a way that dazzles. 

 

He says nothing as he lets go of Ferry-Bot and lands on the roof adjacent to the advertisement. The robot evidently wasn’t expecting this, so it makes a shrill beeping noise as it twirls in the air, having lost its passenger.

 

The robot’s panic abruptly stops and the night is silent as the city of Segno could possibly be– meaning the hum of cars and the faint sound of bustle– but quieter nonetheless.

 

“Rui?” He hears an Echo-Bot whirring off somewhere behind him– probably Nene keeping an eye on him. He doesn’t respond, just stares at the billboard ahead of him. 

 

It’s a bright yellow to catch the attention of anyone who passes by– a vibrant yellow to offset the drab city. The face of an idol is the focal point of the advertisement, his winking face covered slightly by his hair, which shares a color with the background of the billboard: golden. Everything about him is golden: his hair, his eyes, and hence, his brand. His stage name is scrawled in cursive next to his face.

 

Pegasus.

 

His performance dates are listed below his name, seeming to occur once every few weeks at the biggest arena in the entirety of Segno– the Wonder Stage. Rui is intimately aware of Pegasus’ shows since the crime rates in the surrounding area skyrocket as the mindless citizens file out of the doors and into a crowd, ready to be picked off.

 

He checks the dates once more. One is scheduled for tonight in approximately fifteen minutes, give or take. He’s never bothered to show up to the Wonder Stage until after the show lets out before, but he figures there’s a first for everything. Something enamors him about the idol, but it’s not like that makes him special. Pegasus wouldn’t have a crowd of people experiencing their ideal reality and wanting to see him live if he didn’t possess some sort of allure.

 

Being drawn in by an idol is not a reason to put off a couple of hours of searching and vigilantism, but he figures the show will cause an influx of yellow in the area (since that seems to be his brand), and being present at the Wonder Stage will allow Rui to nip any petty crimes in the bud. 

 

That’s reason enough, he supposes. So much thought to go into an excuse to see a pretty boy, and it was just an excuse to convince himself, at that.

 

“Nene, halt the search for the night. This idol’s show will create a lot of interference with our specific search, so I say we call it for now.” He says this distantly, still staring at the billboard.

 

“... Okay, Rui.” She must sense something is off about him but doesn’t care enough to question since he’s been stationary for ten minutes and it's starting to piss her off. Nonetheless, she says, “Stay safe out there, I’m always on call if you need me.”

 

A small smile spreads across his face. “Thank you.”

 

As the Echo-Bot containing Nene’s surveyance whirs away, he continues to stare. He wonders if Pegasus puts on one of those shitty headsets once he goes backstage after a show. 

 

***

 

Rui sits with his legs dangling over the edge of the arena, the metal structure making a resonating dong every time his heel makes contact. He has a bird’s eye view of the main stage in every sense of the word, and he arrives just in time for the show to start, sending Ferry-Bot away for the time being. 

 

The arena is completely silent. There is no need to talk to one another when you have your own entertainment over your head, so no one does. Rui fiddles with the components of an Echo-Bot while he waits, deconstructing and reconstructing it like he has thousands of times before. 

 

The start of the show is nearly panic-inducing. A sudden loud blaring of music interrupts the silence with columns of light strobing and beaming across the crowd. Smoke begins to fill the stage as if to set the scene just right. Before Rui can regret it later, he fishes a familiar disc out of his pocket and taps the screen. 

 

“Ehhh?! What is it Rui-kun?” Rin leans in closer to try and get a better look at him.

 

“I think this is the closest I can get you to the stars for now, Rin-chan. You’re gonna have to wait for the real things, but I didn’t think you’d want to miss this.” He had to yell this over the loud introductory music that was still blaring. He then embeds the device into the side of the area, so that the AI could clearly see the stage. 

 

“A concert?! Rui-kun, you shouldn’t have!” she says, teasingly, “Woooooww!! So bright!”

 

Just as Rui is about to respond, Pegasus enters the stage. His presence is instantly felt by everyone in the room, to the point where Rui can see yellow glowsticks start to light up in the crowd. An idol so influential that he can get these idiots out of their houses and buying his merchandise? Rui would be more impressed by that if all the air didn’t suddenly leave his lungs the second Pegasus stepped on stage. He thinks he heard Rin gasp.

 

The idol’s image is displayed on a larger screen behind him as he dances, sings, and works a crowd that will never respond. He is constantly winking at the camera and looking directly into it to simulate him looking right at each individual and god is it working on Rui. His heart has been thumping double time since Pegasus got on stage. It’s an idol’s job to dazzle, and so Rui lets himself be dazzled. 

 

***

 

As the show ends, Rui comes to his senses. Pegasus rushedly thanks the crowd and jogs off the stage just as Rui pulls Rin from her spot on the metal frame of the arena. 

 

“Oh my god, Rui-kun, that was the most amazing thing I have ever seen.” She is dead serious, staring at Rui with a borderline constipated look on her face. “If that is what seeing a sparkly idol feels like, I can’t wait to see the real stars!”

 

Though Rui’s not sure if these experiences are comparable, Rin has seen so little of the world that they just might be. After numerous more thanks and numerous responsive promises to see the real stars, Rin is powered down and placed back in his pocket. 

 

It feels weird that the entirety of what is ‘Rin’ can fit into his pocket, but dwelling on that will result in a rabbit hole Rui doesn’t have time for.

 

He calls for Ferry-Bot to meet him at his current location while surveying the crowd below. He can see a few unmasked people, but none look to be taking advantage of the situation to pickpocket. There is another realization that Rui comes to, all before Ferry-Bot arrives. 

 

A crowd like this is something most vigilantes of Segno wouldn’t want to miss out on.

 

He might be here. 

 

Rui feels a sort of guilt for reacting so intensely to the idol on stage when he is still looking for a certain someone that he may or may not have taken a quick liking to. He feels like a common fangirl, the way he fawned over the idol.

 

Ferry-Bot breaks him out of his reverie and, just as he’s about to board, he hears a yell from the crowd below. As he surveys the ocean of people, he sees a woman, seemingly intoxicated, yelling and pushing against the crowd, as if trying to get into the stadium. She’s shoving people with headsets on and, since they aren’t aware of reality enough to react, they topple like dominoes. 

 

Rui hurries his preparation to mount Ferry-Bot to take him down into the action. Everything is in place and he opens his mouth to give the command.

 

Wait.

 

The thought enters his mind and he pauses. 

 

Maybe if I wait, he’ll show up.

 

Is it moral? Not really. Would it be effective at luring a vigilante? Of course. It almost lured him. This would certainly expedite the process, and so Rui hesitates. 

 

He waits thirty seconds, the woman is still barrelling her way through the crowd and people are still falling.

 

Just a bit more.

 

Thirty more seconds and dread washes over Rui. What am I doing? The crowd is beginning to step over the fallen, increasing the risk of trampling and killing these people underfoot tenfold. I’ve been selfish. Anything that happens now is my fault. What was I thinki–

 

A flash of gold. A comet. A shooting star. 

 

There he is.

 

He glides above the heads of the crowd on some sort of cliche-looking hoverboard. Rui recalls seeing similar devices lean against his parents' workshop at home, evidently being developed for their place of work, but nothing ever came of it. He files that information away for later. 

 

The boy glides above the woman causing all this commotion and carefully sits down on the board, fiddling with what seems to be a remote for the piece of technology. After some fumbling, the board violently jerks downward, causing the boy to scream loud enough that Rui could hear it at the top of the arena.

 

With that, and after seeing the blonde vigilante successfully hoist the woman onto the board to be taken away, Rui commands Ferry-Bot to place him above the section of the crowd where the epicenter of the damage seems to be. 

 

Once there, Rui drops some small, squared-shaped robots on the crowd and giggles just a little to himself when he can hear the devices make hollow metal sounds as they make momentary contact with some of the headsets below. These devices are equipped with canisters of chemicals that, when activated, will release a screen of smoke to temporarily lower visibility. He hopes this will give those on the ground enough time to collect themselves. 

 

As he presses the button to activate them, he spots the boy dart into a close alley in his peripheral vision. Before the smoke spreads through the crowd, he instructs Ferry-Bot to follow. 

 

Once he gets to the alley, he sees him. The boy is placing the, now very confused, woman on the ground and against a wall, hoverboard bumping lightly into the wall next to him. Rui can barely hear the the boy talking softly to the woman over the loud beating of his own heart in his ears. As to not scare him, Rui will wait until the boy turns around to greet him. 

 

Something that doesn’t happen for the next three minutes.

 

In his impatience, Rui has successfully jumped from Ferry-Bot to the abandoned hoverboard, now floating just out of view of the blonde. He saw how inefficiently it ran when it was used just moments ago, so he ponders what adjustments could be made to allow it to run smoother. Allowing a safe topic– technology– to fill his mind gives his heart a break, finally slowing to a normal pace.

 

To test the stability, Rui hooks his knees onto the board and flips upside down. Reckless, but he wouldn’t be himself if he chose conventionality. It wobbles a bit, but not enough to worry about it flipping over entirely. Impressive.

 

All of a sudden, a disarming pair of eyes come into view. It seems the boy stood up and turned around, only to find himself face to face with another boy, who has also commandeered his hoverboard and is now upside down, for some reason.

 

Rui is just as shocked, seeing as the air was filled with stunned silence instead of his prepared set of dialogue– which he forgot immediately. 

 

“Uhhhh–” is all Rui could get out before the blonde vigilante yells so loud that Rui is unceremoniously toppled off of the hoverboard and onto the ground, thankfully landing in a way that entails bruises and not broken bones. 

 

The boy is still yelling as Rui gets up in a pitiful, slow manner. The only difference is now he is jumping up and down, trying to snatch his hoverboard from where it lazily floats in the air. 

 

Rui, now vertical, moves to grab it for him when a call comes from the end of the alley they’re in.

 

“What do you two think you’re doing?” It’s the police. The police in Segno are not fond of vigilantism, especially Rui’s form of vigilantism. It seems the boy is also aware of this because he snaps his head to Rui with terror in his eyes. Rui moves without thinking.

 

As he whistles for Ferry-Bot, which still flies overhead, he runs up to the boy and wraps an arm around his waist, securing him at his side. He makes a noise that sounds kind of like ‘bwuhabuhuh?’ before yelping as he’s lifted off the ground, Rui having grabbed onto one of Ferry-Bot’s foot holds and commanding the robot upwards. 

 

In the ascent, the boy has enough mind to grab his hoverboard before it was too late. He looks down to see the police just below them, having gotten to where they were a few milliseconds too late. The few of them glare angrily up at the pair, so he feels obligated to point to where the woman is next to them, causing them to finally notice her. 

 

***

 

They maintain their precarious position until they reach a rooftop far enough from their last location to avoid any cop sightings. The boy drops down first, falling to his knees and breathing in deeply since Rui’s hold on him limited his capacity to inhale. Rui drops down after him, also falling as the jolt of the fall causes his knees to give out.

 

They just breathe for a couple of minutes, processing all the events that just happened. 

 

“What were their expressions like?” Rui asks. 

 

“What?” The boy turns to him, wearing a puzzled expression.

 

“The police. What did their faces look like as we escaped?”

 

The blonde continues to look puzzled at Rui before sighing and relenting, turning away as he answered, “Angry. Angry enough to be red in the face, or maybe that was from the bit of running they did to get us.”

 

“Did you flip them off?”

 

“Hah?!” He quickly turns back, incredulously. “No! I pointed to the woman I had nabbed from the crowd, obviously! Who do you take me for?”

 

“Ah~ you’re better than me.”

 

There is a moment of silence before the boy bursts out in quiet laughter, shaking his head at the ground. The events of the day caused his mask to slip down, revealing the rest of his face. The speed of Rui’s heart might as well threaten a fainting spell at this point, staring at the laughing boy with red dusting his cheeks. 

 

The laughing stops suddenly, replaced by a careful silence instead. The boy slowly turns to him. “Do you… know who I am?”

 

“No, but I’d quite like to. You intrigue me.” Rui stands up as he says this, walking to the boy and sticking his hand out to help him stand as well.

 

He stares at Rui, shocked, before relief floods his features, taking his hand and allowing himself to be leveraged upward. Once he is on his feet, the pair just stare at each other. In Rui’s case, it’s because he doesn’t think he could make any noise other than an extremely embarrassing and strangled one. 

 

“If you didn’t recognize me, then why were you there?” A pause. “Did you want to help me with that woman? I had everything handled just fine.”

 

“I know, it was more of a selfish reason than you’d assume,” Rui says, guiltily. 

 

“And that is?”

 

“You’re different than the rest of this godforsaken city. You…” He struggles to find the words, waving his hands to show that he’s thinking, “... glow.”

 

Rui quickly looks away after this, embarrassed of what he has just said. This barred him from seeing the light blush appear on the other boy’s face. 

 

“What’s your name?” The boy breaks the awkward silence, causing Rui to look back at him with wide eyes.

 

“My name is–” Rui is interrupted.

 

“Wait, this is wrong.” The boy then reaches up to Rui’s face, unhooking his face mask from one ear, revealing Rui’s whole face. His hand lingers a moment before quickly pulling it back.

 

“There you are!” He smiles, his face slightly red from embarrassment. “ Now , what’s your name?” He repeats.

 

Rui barely hears it, since he is currently trying everything in his power to stop the violent blush that desperately wants to take over his entire face.

 

When the boy tilts his head to the side after what must have been a good amount of seconds, he manages to choke out, “Rui. My name is Rui.” A pause. “And you?”

 

“Oh! My name is…” He seems to have a gut reaction to that question that he has to manually override to get out the next part. “Tsukasa.” 

 

After regaining some amount of sanity (not all– some), Rui manages, “Well, it is nice to finally meet you, Tsukasa-kun.” At this, Tsukasa gives him a brilliant smile and suddenly the sanity is gone once more. 

 

Returning to the main topic of conversation, Tsukasa says, “So, what does being a person that’s, apparently, different than the rest mean for me? You’ve got me, what now?”

 

“‘Got you’?”

 

“Well, not really. I could run away, but you’ve ‘got’ my attention, I guess.”

 

Rui takes the next few seconds to completely make something up, seeing as he didn’t think he’d get this far. “I want to… collaborate?” His mind races. “Your… hoverboard! Yes, your hoverboard has some, uh, amendments I could make to it. I’ve developed a lot of technology, so I think your addition to my effort and my technological upgrades for you could mean big things for the future.” Rui blinks, surprised at what he just pulled out of his ass entirely. 

 

“Your ‘effort’?” Tsukasa says, searchingly.

 

“Rid the world of Ootori brand headsets and return society to reality.” This idea is the center of everything he has done for the past five years. It's important to him and he utters it carefully– reverentially.

 

Tsukasa’s eyes immediately light up. “Yes. Absolutely.” They stare at each other with twin smiles before Tsukasa seems to remember something. “Wait, maybe.” Rui pouts. “We should probably see each other’s… operations . Y’know, before we make any rash decisions.”

 

“Ah yes, that would be smart. Well, we could–” Sirens cut them off. The flashing blues and reds creep closer to the building they are standing on. They must’ve had air support to be able to see them, but it's not like anything matters other than running right now. Of course they focus their efforts on the people who help mitigate the crimes instead of the crimes themselves. Fitting.

 

Rui collects himself faster than Tsukasa. “Meet on the center-city tower tomorrow night and we’ll go from there. Right now, we need to split. Too much attention with two vigilantes staying stationary. Can I count on you, Tsukasa-kun?”

 

The blonde gives him a small smile before covering his face with his mask once more. “Of course, Rui!” He chants this before running to the edge of the roof, hoverboard in hand. He turns and waves with much fanfare, to the point where his whole body moves with the motion. Rui returns this with his own, admitted much less violently, and Tsukasa steps on the board and silently drifts away. Rui turns his face to the sky, gray and dull as it is, and smiles widely, allowing himself to feel the frenzied joy his body has been itching to get out since he first saw the other boy. 

 

Tsukasa-kun…

 

He puts his face in his hands.

 

I’m so pathetic~

Notes:

came up with half the scenes for this chap while vodka tipsy