Chapter Text
You're fifteen when you find out your little brother's a NEXT. It didn't quite come out of nowhere -- he'd been breaking things, and one time he managed to burn himself when he went to get Dad a cup of coffee, which he broke -- but he'd always covered for it before. Then one day he accidentally breaks a kid's leg while playing soccer, which happens, but he's really upset about the whole thing, like it's his fault and not just an accident, and then about a week later he comes home with a black eye and your parents get a call from his teacher. Then the shit hits the fan. They order you out of the room while they're having a talk with him, so you sit resentfully in your room, straining to overhear; Dad's talking louder than Mom, and it sounds more like a lecture than anything. You push the door open a crack so you can hear better.
The gist of it, after about an hour with a lot of repetition and a lot of "we're not saying it's your fault, son, but you need to be careful," is that your parents say he should never touch anybody, or anything if he can help it, when he's glowing. Which would make sense if anyone else had a black eye, but that's not what it sounds like to you. Maybe his powers were involved in the broken-leg accident, but a black eye? They're not punishing him for fighting; they're telling him not to touch people at all. They're telling him not play soccer with his friends or fight back if someone hits him.
"So if you've got these special powers, how bad does the other kid look?" you ask, hoping you're wrong about part of this.
"I didn't even hit him!" Kotetsu yells, looking like he's going to cry, and you kind of noogie him without the headlock rather than ruffling his hair.
"Maybe you should next time."
"But Mom and Dad said--"
"Yeah, I guess, but jeez, Kotetsu."
"I mean, what if I killed somebody? NEXTs do that."
He's ten years old and that's what he's thinking? How bad is this power? "Is it the same kids every time?"
He kind of nods, then shakes his head. "Some of the same ones, but not every time."
"Maybe I should start picking you up from school." Yeah, you don't actually have your license yet, but some of the farm kids have been driving on their own since they were fourteen. The town's not small enough that any cop will know on sight you're not one of them. "Run 'em over if they give you problems."
"Maybe," he says, dubiously, and you know it probably won't help, because there's still lunch, and gym class, and a lot of ways to make somebody's life miserable without punching him, but dammit, no one smacks your little brother but you.
You've just turned sixteen when your father gets a call at the store from the Stern Bild police and your mother, at about the same time, gets word from one of the other teachers at the high school that she needs to come to the teachers' lounge like right now to see what's on the news. And you're at home, watching TV and ignoring your homework, when your father calls to tell you your brother's somehow gotten himself to Stern Bild where he got into the middle of a bank robbery, somehow, and can you get on the train and go get him? You want to drive, but your father says no way in hell you're driving that far on your own three days after getting your license, so while you're getting ready to go to the bus station, your mother calls, with the exact same news. And finally you leave, an hour later, thinking it would have been easier for Dad to just close the store.
It's before cell phones, so you're clutching handwritten directions - what bus lines to take, where you can find your baby brother - and scared to death you'll lose them. And you have a two-and-a-half hour train ride to spend freaking out. He's probably not hurt, or your parents would have said, but still. In your head he's still the five-year-old who wanted to play your video games even though he was terrible at them, and if you peel back a layer, he's really still the baby who started walking at nine months old, and then at about a year started bonking his head on furniture he used to be able to run right under. How the hell is he big enough to get himself on TV without anyone even knowing?
You get off the train in Stern Bild, you go looking for the bus, you check your wallet every five minutes for your brand-new shiny license so you can prove your brother belongs to you (well, kind of - it's not like he has any ID) and when you get off the bus and walk a block to where all the helicopters and cars are clustered, you find your idiot brother sitting in amongst a knot of cops with a blanket around his shoulders and a huge, shit-eating grin on his face. He doesn't look the least bit scared or traumatized or anything. You really want to yell at him - you were supposed to spend this evening hanging out with a bunch of your friends, and Sakura was going to be there, and you were going to get to use your license and show it off and everything - but there are cops all around so you just tell him, gruffly, "Mom's going to wring your neck."
He tells you about Mr. Legend like fifty times on the train trip home, complete with sound effects.
It was all over the news back home, but that didn't help, apparently, or maybe made it worse, because you stumble on some little shits from the junior high looming over him, and without even thinking about it you're over there, spinning one around by the shoulder, grabbing both of them by the fronts of their shirts and slamming them against the chain-link fence. Maybe it would have been more effective if it was a wall, but from the way they're squrming and babbling it seems like it worked okay as is. "So how's it feel having someone bigger than you picking on you?" you ask, and one of them starts on about how the kid's a NEXT, so you toss his buddy aside and cock your fist to hit him, and he flinches.
"So you're scared of me and not of the NEXT," you say, scornfully. "Yeah, it was a totally even fight here, you and your friend against him."
"Muramasa, let's just go home," Kotetsu says, and you let him tug your arm, you let go of the bullying little asswipe, and as you pass his buddy, who hasn't gotten up, you kick him in the side. You've never been in a fight before, and you're still keyed up and angry by the time you reach the house.
"Tell me if any of them do that again," you tell Kotetsu, and he says he will. He doesn't, of course. It'd be nice to think you're just such a badass no one ever bullied him again, but you're pretty sure that's not how it went.
You go off to college, and news from home comes in little bursts - the store's doing fine, it's time for parent-teacher conferences, Kotetsu's grades are doing better - and visits home at the holidays. You come back that first Thanksgiving and there's a new fridge and Kotetsu's three inches taller. At Christmas he's gotten his hair cut and his voice is cracking. When you come back for the summer it suddenly hits you that your dad's got a fair amount of gray in his hair and your mom's starting to go gray too.
Every time you see him it seems like he looks different. For a while when he's thirteen he tries to nurse the dozen wispy hairs on his chin into a ridiculous-looking goatee, and the second Thanksgiving you catch him checking out your girlfriend. You're mostly just shocked he's old enough to want to. Then you're in your senior year and he's got a girlfriend, or at least a girl who's a friend and who comes by to look for him after Thanksgiving dinner is over. And who's pretty obviously into him, and he's obviously nuts about her, but when you call her his girlfriend the next day he flushes brick-red and insists it's not like that. It just makes you feel kind of old, or like you should knock their heads together and explain it all to them while they're dazed, but whatever. They'll work it out.
They do; she's his date to your wedding to Ayame. You're twenty-four, he's eighteen, and he's telling you about how they're both going to SBU. He's following his high school girlfriend to college - that's not going to end in tears at all, you think, but it's not like he'd want to hear it, and you're married to Ayame, who looks gorgeous right now, and you don't really feel like being cynical today.
Dad dies when you're twenty-seven, a sudden heart attack. He was sixty-one. You take some time off work to go home and help with the funeral arrangements, and then you feel stupid because your mother never, ever needs help with anything. But it does give you a chance to talk to her about the liquor store, about the family, and make some decisions.
You pull Kotetsu aside after the funeral and tell him what you're planning. "Huh," he says. "You really want to do that?"
"Yeah," you say. You really do, because the store isn't just the Family Business, it's the place you played when you were little (maybe not all that legally, but you did,) it's been your summer job since you were sixteen (again, maybe not that legally,) and it reminds you of Dad. You don't want it closed down or sold, and you'd rather work there than at your job in accounting. You can be your own boss, keep a family tradition going. And someone should be here with Mom, since it's right in the middle of Kotetsu's semester at school; he won't be home for months. Mom's pretty much unstoppable, but even forces of nature can get lonely. "Obviously you don't."
He shakes his head. "I'm going to be a Hero." That's how he says it, all capitalized, kind of reverent, and several bits of info click into place - the Legend obsession, that rescue a decade ago, the way he watched Hero TV all the time - and you wonder how come this is the first you've heard of this plan, which has obviously existed for a long time.
"Well, good luck," you say, because you have other things on your mind, like how Ayame's going to take the news. She didn't want to even go out with you, for a while, because she just wanted to get the hell away from Oriental Town, not go off to college and date some guy she knew from high school. You hope she's mellowed out about it, but you're not really sure.
Kotetsu's twenty-two, freaking out right before the wedding. You're picking lint off his flashy white tux while he mutters "oh god oh god oh god" under his breath, and Antonio keeps telling him to breathe. You don't think that's actually going to help much, but you're not really sure what would, and at least Antonio's trying to do his duty as best man.
Your own marriage went down in flames. Ayame had not relaxed her stance on your hometown one bit and she didn't appreciate you making decisions like this without asking her, and at least the second part of that, you have to admit, was fair. While you were still trying to train your mother so she could run the store in full - she'd done the books for years, ever since she took early retirement from the school, but couldn't operate the cash register - and you could move back to Stern Bild, Ayame's patience ran out. You don't figure Kotesu wants any advice from you right now. But then he says, "Bro. Help. I have no idea what I'm doing."
"No one ever does," you say. "You'll lay eyes on her and it'll be fine. Just don't panic."
"Okay," he says, exhaling like that actually helped somehow.
"And it helps if you discuss dealbreakers before the wedding, but it's a bit late for that," you add. Antonio looks like he can't tell whether or not he should laugh, and then Kotetsu does laugh, and the three of you are still grinning at each other as they take their places.
Kotetsu's twenty-five, and you and Mom are watching him on TV. He's calling you both, all excited, on the new holo-screen phone, to tell you Tomoe's pregnant. He's twenty-six, picking you and the Amamiyas up at the train station in his new, dad-like SUV and driving to the hospital. He's twenty-seven, twenty-eight, sending Mom pictures and moony texts about Kaede's perfection and adorableness, videos of her toddling and eating and playing. He's King of Heroes. He's got everything he ever wanted.
He's twenty-nine, and Tomoe's sick. You drop your mother off at the train station so she can help them out; she and Mrs. Amamiya alternate months. Kaede doesn't understand, Mom tells you over the phone. She's acting out because she misses her mother whenever Tomoe's gone overnight. Mom looks tired on the phone's little screen, and Kotetsu looks like hell. You never see Tomoe, really, so the worry about them is a lot more present in your mind; it's easy to think Tomoe will pull through, until you go to visit her in the hospital and you see how little of her there is left. She's gotten so thin, and she just looks tired, in a way that makes Mom's weariness look like nothing. You hug her carefully, afraid she'll break. It's the last time you ever see her.
Kotetsu's thirty, and the funeral's over, and he can barely talk. There's nothing you can do to make any of it better.
Not directly, anyway. Kotetsu's still trying to do the Hero thing, running off to take calls while Kaede's at preschool; his ranking's suffering for it, because sometimes he can't leave, and he's obviously not doing so great even when he's there on the scene. Mom's the one who brings it up, pointing out, gently, over the course of several conversations, that Kaede needs to have someone stable around. He's been leaving her with babysitters nights he thinks there might be crime, he's been late to pick her up at preschool - three hours late, one time - and it's not doing her any favors. First Mom goes to stay with them for a couple of months, and then when she comes back you meet her at the station and she's got Kaede with her.
She'd been hoping to bring Kotetsu back too, you know that, but you both know him too well to expect the first try would have worked.
Kotetsu's turning thirty-five soon and you've seen him in person all of three times since the funeral; once for Kaede's fifth birthday, once for Christmas when she was six, and a random summer weekend when she was seven. There've been visits - Mom taking Kaede into Stern Bild for a few days, a week - but she's never felt very safe in the city, for good reason, and Kaede's gotten old enough to get annoyed that her father keeps ditching them mid-visit instead of just taking it for granted that grownups do that. You still think not telling her was a mistake. Sure, when she was little, that was one thing, but she's nine now, which is old enough to keep a secret, and you'd think Kotetsu of all people would know that. If she understood she might not get so upset, because as it is, she thinks he's just ditching her because he doesn't want to see her.
Or he could retire - his ranking tanked when Tomoe got sick and it hasn't recovered since - but he won't even hear of it and Mom's asked you to stop bringing it up. You usually leave the phone to Mom and Kaede, anyway. You were never very good with phones, and it just pisses you off to see him, looking tired or faking happy or legitimately happy because he just talked to Kaede, but plugging away at something that most people retire from after half the time, when his daughter needs him. Kaede's a good kid. She's adorable, and smart, and funny, all the things Kotetsu likes to coo about her in the same tone he's used since she was a toddler, because he doesn't seem to realize five years have passed and she's not four anymore. You know these things about her because you're here, and he says them because he's her father and he'd think them even if they weren't true. She's smart enough to tell the difference.
You stop watching Hero TV. You're sick of watching him making a fool of himself in public. "Crusher for Justice" - like he doesn't ruin thousands of people's days, maybe costing some of them jobs, every time he disrupts traffic, forces them to close off a freeway or a train line. And it doesn't even do anyone any good. He comes in last, two seasons in a row, and his sponsor company's failing. He should retire.
Instead he gets a new employer, a fancy suit - whatever happened to that suit he and Tomoe designed, the one that determined his sponsor because no one else would let him come up with his own costume? - and a partner, this young prettyboy Kaede's got a crush on. That's not going to be awkward in the least if Kotetsu ever shows up at the house again, or lets her come for a visit. At least if he figures the crush out, which he very well might not. But that's Kotetsu's problem; you've washed your hands of all this hero business. He and Mom have worked out something between them, and if you think it's a bad idea, well, part of being family is knowing when to mind your own damn business. Kaede's your niece, not your daughter or granddaughter, and while you know it hurts her feelings when Kotetsu breaks a promise, he's at least been making fewer of them. Maybe he's capable of learning.
And sometimes she has to acknowledge it's not his fault. Like when the bridge out of town blows up in front of him.
Not that she could tell him right away. Phone calls won't go through to Stern Bild - a lot of the cell towers are damaged or destroyed, and on top of that, a lot of the twenty million people in the city have family somewhere else who are trying to call them to find out if they're okay. Even calls on the land lines won't go through all the time, and people are being asked not to make non-emergency calls so as not to overtax the system. You think about keeping the shop open, so the regulars can come in like they always do, talk it over, but the local news channel is running steady ribbon of closings and cancellations under the footage, and it seems like people just want to be home with their families. There's a little conversation, folks coming in to buy a few bottles, but instead of pleasantries the obvious question is, "you have anybody in the city?" And you do, and you can't just say he's safe. Obviously no one wants to stay after that.
And then around noon they have a big press conference about this Barnaby kid, his dead parents and his connection to all of this, fighting crime to avenge them. Kaede's probably eating it up with a spoon. If it's real, that might explain some of it - Mom's been sighing, "oh, he doesn't like his partner," at night after Kaede's gone to bed. That's how you get all your Kotetsu news anymore, second-hand from Mom or Kaede. To Kaede, he's her stupid dad, and Barnaby's boring old partner, two separate people. If Barnaby's really that single-minded, that focused, no wonder he and Kotetsu couldn't get along. Kotetsu can be pretty damn single-minded himself, when he wants to focus on something, but he'll always seem scattershot, he'll always learn by screwing up first and getting it right later, and he'll never ever explain. He'll always think it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. He'd drive a perfectionist - no way is this kid not a perfectionist, look at that hair - batshit insane.
The press conference seems like a distraction, to you, something new to put on the news while they wait for something to happen. It's as clear a signal as any that you might as well close up shop, head home, be with as much of your family as you can get in one place. You wonder about Ayame, if she and her new husband are still living in Stern Bild, but if you can't call Kotetsu you sure as hell can't call your ex-wife.
Of course at home they have on Hero TV, because Kaede's a fan now and Mom's worried about Kotetsu. They sit on the kitchen chairs - you don't even know why you bought the TV in the living room, no one uses it - and you stand in the doorway, arms folded, trying to look solid, like Dad always used to, because this is pretty damn scary, and Kaede needs to feel like someone's there keeping the world from falling apart. You kind of hope that's Kotetsu, but she can't know that. Besides, the whole city's held hostage, and forget fighting the terrorists, the heroes can die just like anyone else if the city's supports are knocked out like this Ouroboros has threatened.
It's getting on towards three when "Jake" - he's on a first-name basis with the entire country now - announces he's going to fight the heroes, and if they win he'll spare the city. Like this is some kind of goddamn arcade game. Like he missed playing Street Fighter while he was in prison. He calls Sky High out for a fight, and the newscasters sound hopeful and they show shots of hopeful-looking crowds, but you've got a bad feeling; this guy may be nuts, but he couldn't have hooked up with a group that could coordinate something like this if he wasn't some kind of threat.
He wipes the floor with Sky High. That'd be bad enough on its own, especially since Jake's girlfriend hijacked the broadcast and reruns the part where Sky High gets thrown halfway across a football field for half an hour, but then the broadcast switches abruptly, to Jake's face. "We're giving back your king," he says, and the camera shows him shoving a limp body out of a helicopter. You hear Mom gasp, and Kaede shrieks; it's almost a full minute before they're far enough away that you can see that he didn't fall. It's almost worse; he's hanging by his outstretched arms from something, up high.
"Is he dead?" Kaede quavers.
You can't actually answer. She's got enough adults lying to her.
Eventually the terrorists relinquish their grip on the TV broadcast for a while, and the news reports that Sky High is hanging from the Poseidon Pegasus, like that's supposed to mean anything to people who aren't from Stern Bild, and you spend half an hour watching a rescue crew trying to get him down. They report excitedly that he's alive, and all three of you exhale in unison, and then Jake breaks in to draw a card, this time; you wonder when it'll come to pulling a hero out of a hat.
It's Antonio. You don't say anything, and Mom doesn't say anything. You couldn't, really; if Kaede knew an old friend of her dad's was a hero, that might be the final straw that makes her look past that stupid little mask he wears and recognize how much the man next to Barnaby in all the pictures looks like her father. So you have to keep your mouth shut even when Jake throws Antonio across the field the other way from where he threw Sky High, and then about ten minutes later he's hanging by his shoulders from what the announcers tell you is the Kronos minotaur. You think, blankly, that explains some of the weirder things about his costume, as you look at the distance shot.
"How is that possible?" Mom asks you, in Japanese. "I thought his power was being invulnerable."
"His skin gets really tough. I guess not tough enough," you say. Or maybe it was something internal - if your skin and bone are too strong to break, maybe your innards can be damaged against them; brain impacting skull, lungs crushed against ribs. You don't like this train of thought. Antonio's a good guy; he was there for Kotetsu after Tomoe died, when no one else really was. Including you.
"Why are you guys speaking Japanese?" Kaede asks suspiciously. "What are you talking about?" She only knows bits and pieces; Kotetsu and Tomoe must not have used it much at home. Convenient for you and Mom, when there are secrets to keep.
"Just habit," Mom says. "It's my first language, you know. When I was a little girl--"
"I know, Grandma," Kaede says, focus shifted to fending off another story about the old days, and Jake doesn't even bother with letting anyone watch the rescue, this time, just pulls the next two, some stupid game with walking teddy bears; it doesn't matter. It's time for your kid brother, the one who learned he was too tall to run under the kitchen table by repeatedly running full-tilt into the kitchen table, to fight the psychotic terrorist who just put the indestructible man in the hospital.