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Chapter Text

It all started a couple of days ago. Jiro was taking a lap around the living room after having sat on the couch many an hours catching up on the latest chapters of the Hypnosis Microphone manga and needed to stretch his legs because HOLY HECK THEY HURT after doing nothing for so long.

Saburo had joined him on the couch about an hour after this lap, popular board game Monopoly in hand with a completely UNSPOKEN and definitely “/j” request to play with him.

But, ever impervious to Saburo’s “/j” dialogue, Jiro had taken him up on his offer, and had just been handed the dice after his brother had just bought his tenth hotel on Boardwalk.

He wasn’t sure that was legal, but Saburo insisted that it was, and while he would never admit it out loud, _{Saburo was more knowledgeable when it came to Monopoly than he was}.

“Get ready, cuz, I know my steelo!” Jiro grinned as he rolled a six. He smugly moved his custom Waluigi Monopoly figurine six spaces ahead, not paying attention to where it ended up.

“You do realize that put you in jail, right?” Saburo reached out a hand to take the dice.

“What?” Jiro’s eyes widened as he looked down upon Waluigi. In prison. Just like a certain older brother of his (Samatoki x Waluigi… Love wins!).

“Waluigi’s a criminal.” Saburo held back a smirk as he josteled his hand in indication for Jiro to hand the freaking dice over.

Jiro scowled at Waluigi. The traitor. In prison. How could this be? He tumbled the dice around in his hand, ignoring Saburo’s glare as he did so.

‘Honestly, what kind of sick system is it that beloved character Waluigi gets thrown in jail?’ He frowned to himself and shook his head, deep in thought. ‘Some system where only the most crooked of the crooked could be on top. GAWD! Like that frickin’ dirty cop!’ He slammed his non-dice holding hand on the table, making one of Saburo’s hotels fall over.

‘And Saburo had even mentioned once that he thought that guy’s fanny pack was cool!’ It had wounded Jiro’s ego so much that he decided to wear one the next day, only to be mocked by the very person he had hoped so badly to impress.

Saburo decided to use his trusty DnD dice that he always carried in his back pocket while he waited for Jiro to finish his train of thought. He rolled a 20. He looked at his brother stealthily as he moved his game piece, then realized that doing so wasn’t fair, and placed his custom Kaoru Sakurayashiki AKA Cherry Blossom from Sk8 the infinity Monopoly piece back. He rested his cheek on his hand and waited.

Jiro put a hand to his chin, nodding thoughtfully. ‘Since Saburo thinks that JERK is cool, does that make them friends?’ He felt a tear forming in his eye. Not that he was against his brother making friends or anything. But… He opened his watery eyes to glare at the Monopoly board. ’That guy legit went out of his way to hurt us before the first battle! And Saburo thinks he’s cool???’ He glanced at Saburo, who was staring off into space.

Jiro shook his head. He wouldn’t let that jerk turn his impressionable baby brother into the next chaotic evil officer of the lawforce! He wouldn’t! If Saburo thought that guy was cool, then he would just have to get Saburo to start thinking that Jiro was the coolest person ever, to know his steelo!

Jiro grinned to himself. And the first part of his mission would be to absolutely destroy his enemy with trash talk!

“GAWD! I can never forgive that dirty cop!” Jiro clenched his fist and glared at the ceiling. “No way!”

“Jiro I literally didn’t even ask.” As relieved as Saburo was that Jiro was finally talking, he had no idea what his brother was talking about.

Jiro abruptly stood from where he had been sitting on the couch. “That aside! I can’t believe you want to be friends with him!?”

Saburo rolled his eyes, starting to put up the board game. In hindsight he probably shouldn’t have tried playing Monopoly with his brother. The game was literally known for how it destroyed families (Heck, for all he knew, that could’ve been the reason that Ichiro had taken them away from Rei Amayado). “I never said that, Jiro, you dumb freaking Fake Fan!”

“Uh Huh, sure, I believe that.” Jiro did not believe that. He just straight up lied.

“Okay then.” While normally Saburo would continue this fight with his brother until his inevitable victory, he decided against it. He was a grown man after all. A 14-year old, grown man. Who was not petty! And definitely not stubborn! And definitely had friends his own age! And-

Jiro interrupted that line of thought with a laugh. “HA! You act smart, but you couldn’t even figure out that I lied! AHAHAHA!!!”

Saburo blinked. Nope. He was an Adult. He wouldn’t fight.

“ANYway! I can never forgive someone who, you know, went out of their way to be a jerk-hole and hecking beat my brothers up! Never!” Though that incident had happened a while ago, it was still fresh in both of their minds. Jiro knew that bringing it up would-

“Why aren’t you swearing?” Saburo legit didn’t care, but he was curious as to why something his brother was so seemingly passionate about wouldn’t warrant a few F-words¹.

“I AM! The writers just changed it so that we could get a G rating on this so that the fic's more accessible!” Jiro clenched his fist, anger rising up in him again. “Anyway!”

The teenager then began a whole spiel about how much he hated Jyuto Iruma. He had somewhat forgotten his initial point of ruining Saburo’s apparent appreciation for Jyuto Iruma and instead just started dissing him due to his pent-up anger at the bunny-rabbit-admittedly-a-little-cool-cop. Oops.

While this was going on, loud slapping noises could be heard on the other side of their apartment’s door. While the two boys would have normally opened the door, Jiro’s dissing was so loud that they couldn’t hear it, so the following happened:

Jiro continued to swear off the second member of MAD TRIGGER CREW, while the slapping against their door was eventually stopped. Almost as though… The person who was slapping the door realized that they had a key, and they put the key in the lock, then opened the door to let themselves into the Yamada residence.

Because that’s exactly what happened. Samatoki entered the Yamada household with a ‘Sup, kids.’

Saburo lifted his hand up to wave, while Jiro paused his tirade to greet the yakuza, just because he was trying to get his younger brother to think himself cool didn’t mean that he shouldn’t show his eldest brother some decency!

“Oh, hi Toki-nii! What’s up?”

Samatoki gave a thumbs up in response and joined Saburo on the couch.

Jiro nodded thoughtfully at that response before continuing.

“ANYway! Jerks who hurt my brothers are the worst! And I’ll never forgive anyone who would do that!”

Samatoki’s eyes widened as a memory overtook him.

He brought his hand to his forehead as the memory faded away. Oh. Oh shootttttt. He hurt Jiro’s brothers. And Jiro too. He let them die That One Time (see above for That One Time), and beat them up verbally on live television.

The yakuza clenched his fist. He had to earn their forgiveness! But he wasn’t going to apologize. No! That would be too easy for the scum-of-the-earth likes of him. But what could he do?

His gaze wandered over to the muted TV that had been ignored up until this point due to its lack of relevance to the plot. On the screen, an advertisement appeared for some kind of amusement park. Heh. It reminded Samatoki of the time that he had run into Ichiro while scoping out a place to take…

His gaze wandered over to the still-dissing-Jyuto-in-an-attempt-to-get-is-brother-to-think-he’s-cool-because-that’s-his-character-arc-for-this-story Jiro and the still-not-fighting-against-his-brother-because-he's-an-Adult Saburo.

“Hey, br*ts.” Jiro and Saburo brought their attention to Samatoki. The yakuza gestured to the TV. “How do you feel about a family trip there?”

Saburo blinked. Jiro blanched.

“Um… Toki-nii. I don’t really want to go to a poop farm²…”

“What?” Samatoki turned back to face the TV. The ad that had been playing for a fun, happy, family friendly amusement park had been replaced with an ad for a poop farm. Great timing on the TV’s behalf.

“Why is that even an ad…” Saburo grimaced.

The eldest brother put a hand to his face. “No. I meant the amusement park, Mic Darn…”

“Oh.”

Samatoki sighed. Well. At least they got the message.

[AT THE AMUSEMENT PARK...]

It was a wonderful day for a wonderful family trip to the amusement park. It was slightly overcast, and there was a greater than 0% chance of rain, so other families wouldn’t be crowding the lines to the family fun rides. The weather was just cool enough that nobody in their family would die from heatstroke. Samatoki couldn’t have asked for a better day to take his family out.

However...

Why the HECK was Nagoya’s division Bad BOOTY CHEEK Temple here, on their family trip to the amusement park?

“Why the HECK is Nagoya’s division Bad BURRO Temple here on our family trip to the amusement park?”

Hitoya let out a sigh, similar to a sigh a tired father would make, probably because he was a tired father. “Kuko dragged Jyushi and I here, kid. Now do you want me to pay for your tickets or not?”

Kuko flipped Hitoya some kind of aviary creature, that we can’t quite describe for the sake of keeping our General Audiences rating.

“You’re only ten years older than me, which is a smaller age gap than Ramuda and Jakurai have, so don’t call me ‘kid’.” Samatoki glared at the lawyer, who glared right back at him for a good minute before the yakuza considered and rolled his eyes.

“That aside, yes I do want you to pay for my tickets. Ichiro,” Samatoki turned to where Ichiro was standing. “Why did you invite Kuko to our family outing?”

The anime protagonist laughed and rubbed the back of his neck bashfully, like an anime protagonist. “Hahaha! Well you see. When you called me to let me know that you were taking our brothers to an amusement park, and that I better join you or you would sell them, I was with Kuko!”

Kuko nodded, Kukoly.

“Yeah! And I told him that he better not FREAKING go to an amusement park without me! So that’s why I’m here!”

“It was supposed to be a family outing...” Samatoki’s face turned dark enough that it caught the attention of Nemu, who had been the last to arrive at the park, probably because of their “government duties”.

“Yeah? And? Bad NINCOMPOOP Temple is a family?”

“I am going to throw you like a golf club.”

“Try.”

Samatoki started cracking his knuckles, and Kuko started uh… Kuko-ing. Nemu decided to step in between the two before all hell broke loose. After all, it was in their list of character traits that they couldn’t stand violence!

“After all this time, we get to hang out as a family! Nii-chan, no fighting!” She pointed a finger at Samatoki, giving him a sharp glance.

“Haha, lo*er!” Kuko sneered at the scolded Sammy boy. Nemu sent him a sharp look as well. “That goes for you too, Kuko-san!

Kuko rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything else. He respected Nemu enough to do as she asked. Somewhat. Sort of. Besides, he had something else to do anyway.

“Ichiro!” He slapped his boy best friend on the back.

“What’s up Kuko?” Ichiro slapped Kuko’s back right back, a little harder than Kuko had slapped him.

“You and I are going to m*rder each other today, got it?”

“Mu*der? I don’t know, I don’t think my character can get killed off, I am the protagonist after all, ahahaha!” Ichiro moved over to follow their group as they had started to enter the park. “Also I don’t want to die!”

“I don’t mean mur*er, murd*r!” Kuko ran after Ichiro. “I mean we’re going to beat each other up in games! Actual murde* is a crime!”

“Oh, that sounds like a lot of fun! Like when we went to that sports center in the Naughty Busters days!”

“Yeah, exactly! You really didn’t need to say that, it was a pretty obvious parallel that the writers were going for.”

Ichiro laughed and shrugged. “Ahahaha! You’re right! So what games do you want to fight in?”

As Kuko started to explain all of the amusement park fun carnival games they would fight each other to the death in, Samatoki looked around their group until he spotted Nemu. Without their help, he wouldn’t be able to earn his younger brother’s forgiveness in the first place. He quickened his pace so that he could catch up to her.

“Okay, Nemu. Here's the situation.” Samatoki stretched an arm over his second-eldest sibling and stage-whispered into her ear.

“There's a situation?” Nemu leaned close to Samatoki, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, there is.” Samatoki glanced over to where Saburo was stopped at, staring at a high rollercoaster, an unreadable expression on his face, Nemu following his gaze.

“You remember that one time when you got brainwashed to join Chuuoku by those meaners?”

Nemu shook their head lightly. “Not very vividly, no.” It was the truth. When you get brainwashed, it kind of gets hard to remember the events leading up to said brainwashing.

“Well, you remember how you had to go to that huge stadium?”

“I remember you slapping me in the face.” It had stung. Even if Nemu hadn’t exactly been herself at that moment, still.

Samatoki grimaced. “Yes, I did. And I am very sorry about that.”

Nemu waved a hand. “It was an emotional moment, I forgive you.” Samatoki smiled at that, but Nemu continued. “But what exactly are you leading up to?” She crossed her arms.

“Basically, that day, Chuuoku set it up so that I and Ichiro would fight each other, the last one standing wins kind of thing, and they used you and the kids as leverage to get us to do that.” Saburo was still staring at the high roller coaster, and at this point, Jiro was now standing next to him, doing the same with a similar expression on his face as his brother.

Nemu sighed. “Seriously? That’s messed up. The fact that Chuuoku does this kind of stuff and expects to get away with it… ugh.” They shook their head.

Samatoki clenched a fist. “I know. They’re horrible, and I’ll kick their BADONKA CLONKAS one day.”

“You said they used me and the kids as leverage. What kind of leverage?”

“The kind of leverage where it's like, ‘if you don’t beat your sort-of-brother-figure in a rap battle then we'll kill your siblings.”

“Oh my mic…”

“Yeah, and I won and let his brothers die because I believed that it would mean that you wouldn’t be killed.”

Nemu rubbed his back comfortingly. “That must have been hard, Nii-chan. I’m sorry that they put you through all of that.”

Samatoki glanced back at Saburo, joined by Jiro and more recently joined by Ichiro - having abandoned Kuko after the boy started ranting about how carnival games were rigged - all three staring up at that high roller coaster with unreadable expressions on their faces. Ichiro stared upwards for a bit, then shook his head. He looked at his brothers, and put his arms around their shoulders with a grin.

Samatoki lowered his gaze. The Yamadas had such a strong bond, and he had been willing to destroy it. He would never regret fighting for saving - what he believed at the time - Nemu’s life, but the cost could have been something irreplaceable. He clenched his fist, his nails scratching against his skin.

He could never forgive himself. And could never hope to have them forgive him either.

He could sure try though!

But the introduction of Bad NYAH Temple kind of ruined his plans. Hitoya at some point could be easily ignored - similar to a dad who payed the admission for his elementary school child and their friends, then stayed around to make sure nobody got abducted but didn’t really do much else - and Jyushi was friends with Jiro and Saburo, so their presence didn’t really ruin anything for him but…

Kuko Kuko’ed, Kukoly.

Yeah, he’d need to get rid of that clown.

Ugh, clowns. He grimaced as he thought of another certain… ex-friend... then shook that thought away, opting to point at Bad MUWAH Temple instead.

“Anyway, I need to make sure that I’m a good brother, and if I have to spend time with Kuko I think I’ll explode or something, so can you keep him away from the fam?”

“Kuko isn’t that bad…” Nemu glanced in his direction.

Samatoki also glanced in Kuko’s direction where the Buster Brothers joined them, Ichiro giving his bro a high-five as Kuko shouted a censored expletive. “Yeah, you need to get him away from me.”

Nemu sighed. “I guess I can make sure he’s away from you, Jiro and Saburo, but I don’t think I can keep him and Ichiro from their competition plans…”

“That’s fine, I’m pretty much focusing on those two anyway.”

“You and Ichiro already made up?”

“Yes, off-screen in between episodes 1 and 2 of ’Apartment Complex? I find it Quite Simple!’ and the authors don’t want to explain what happened other than we’re brothers again and that’s final.”

“Oh…” Nemu bit back a remark about how lazy of a writing decision that was and instead nodded. “Okay then.”

Samatoki also nodded. “So yeah.”

They both nodded together.

“Alright, I finished haggling with the underpaid amusement park employee, so come get your tickets, kids.” Hitoya’s call rudely interrupted the two sibling’s nodding, so they moved over to where he was handing them out.

“Thank you Hitoya-san!” Jyushi smiled as they were handed their ticket, then moved over to join Jiro, who had already finessed his ticket from Hitoya (not really, he just let Jiro think he had finessed his ticket, when in reality, Hitoya could never be stolen from³).

Hitoya smiled in response, then handed over two tickets to Ichiro and Saburo, but when Kuko reached to take his ticket, Hitoya pulled it back.

“What gives old man?” Kuko reached once more to grab the ticket, but Hitoya held it above his head, which only angered the short (tempered) red (hot) headed teen.

“Kuko, I’m going to ask you to please not make me regret buying you this ticket.”

“I’m gonna make you regret being born if you don’t hand me that ticket!”

Hitoya sighed, but handed the ticket over to Kuko, who hehehe’d.

“Thanks >:D!”

Hitoya bit back a smile before turning to Samatoki and Nemu. He held out their tickets to them before he joined his children at the front of the gate.

Samatoki nodded to Nemu, his plan about to be in action. He would be super cool, and earn his brother’s forgiveness through means of absolutely spoiling the heck out of them today.

Nemu sighed but followed their brother, because why not, they could sympathize with his motives to some extent.

Ichiro pulled his hood over his head, a very light drizzle was starting to fall, but that wasn’t going to stop him from absolutely destroying his best buddy, Kuko, in competition!

Kuko grinned as he took hold of Ichiro’s arm, a preemptive strike to begin an arm wrestling competition. He grinned. Man, he loved his friend so much.

Hitoya sighed as he watched Kuko be himself and prayed to whatever god there was that there wouldn’t be any trouble caused by his son.

Jiro took a deep breath, then coughed as he had taken too deep a breath, but then stopped coughing as Saburo was staring at him judgingly. He shook his head and held back the cough. No! He would be super cool! His brother would know his steelo!

Saburo really wanted to make fun of Jiro for coughing because he breathed too hard, but he would instead just stare judgingly at him instead. Because he was an Adult. And that’s how Adults show their disappointment. Through passive-aggression. And Saburo was nothing if not the most Adult character in Hypmic.

Jyushi smiled. They were so happy to spend time with their friends and family today. You go Jyushi!

Then, in sync due to magic that will never again be brought up in this multi-chapter fic, all of them took their first step into the Amusement Park.