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Chapter Text

Yuugiri was hungry.

It had been two days since she had left the orphanage with all the other kids and the nice lady. She hadn’t wanted to stay, too afraid she would hurt someone, like at the place she had been before. But she didn’t know where else to go, and she was hungry.

Delicious scents of sugar and fried treats startled her to a stop in the middle of the street. There was a portico to the side, and beyond it, she could glimpse booths with games and food, colors, puppets and balloons. Children ran in the alleys, laughed, begged their smiling parents for ice cream.

She stepped forward, as if hypnotized by the sight.

“Ah,” a woman in a booth nearby tried to call to her, “wait sweetie, you need a ticket…”

She cut herself off as the portico lit up a deep red and produced a loud, angry buzz.

Yuugiri jumped and cringed. The door to the attraction park stayed closed before her. People were staring at her and backing away with anxious whispers.

She stayed frozen, unsure what to do, until a scary-looking man in uniform approached her, the woman from the booth wringing her hands in the background.

“Where are your parents, kid?” he said brusquely. “A girl like you shouldn’t be alone in public.”

Oh no. Last time someone had asked her about her parents, she had ended up in the orphanage. She didn’t want to go back! She kept silent, panic rising in her.

“You won’t answer? Don’t tell me you ran off…!”

He caught her arm, and the too-tight grip and rising voice were enough to send her over the edge. With a cry, she pushed.

Andy angled his phone to take another picture of the beautiful stucco façade of the city hall. With a pair of sunglasses masking his eyes, a baseball cap perched on his head and his favourite jacket back at the hotel, the better to feel the warm summer sun on his skin, there was nothing to make him stand out from the dozen or so of tourists doing the same in the vicinity.

Certainly, no one would notice him inching the camera to the side until he captured the unassuming next building over and one of the discreet ECMs installed on and around it. This country wasn’t the most tolerant for espers. There were ECMs in plain sight all around the city hall plaza, but that building’s only official use was mundane administration and paper-pushing; hardly crucial enough to warrant such an expensive security system. He could see why his clients were worried there could be more to it.

Not that he cared much. Andy hated espers just as much as normals. Neither cause was his. But the mistrust on both sides, he could use. It made for well-paying jobs, the kind of jobs he was the best-equipped to deal with. Normals hired him to infiltrate esper-only meeting places, espers paid him to go where they couldn’t go without ECM-induced headaches. The plaza security had no effect on him.

He had enough pictures. He put his phone back in his pocket and turned to go. Tonight, he would attempt to get in and see what he could dig out. In the meantime, he would go back to his hotel room and send what he had to Yoh.

Making contact with P.A.N.D.R.A. had been a fluke and he was still not sure the money was worth the risk of associating himself with such a high-profile terrorist organisation. What was strange was that he didn’t get the vibes he would have expected from hardened international criminals from them at all. Well, sure, Magi was kind of grim and he could easily imagine him being paranoid and dangerous, but he had only seen the guy twice. Mostly, he dealt with Yoh, who behaved more like a teenager than anything. He was generally cheerful and irreverent, with the odd bout of bad-tempered grumbling. He called his boss “the old man”, for Christ’s sake.

He was wrenched out of his thoughts by a commotion a few blocks over. Dark purple shadows were bleeding into the sky. Only a high-level esper could possibly do this.

He hesitated for a moment, then ran towards the chaos.

He had to go against the flow, as most people were fleeing in the other direction. A policeman stopped him at the edge of the street.

“Don’t go further, sir, it’s dangerous out there!”

“What’s happening?”

“We’ve got an out of control esper. I’ve already called the army, they should be here any minute.”

Andy squinted at the heart of the shadows, trying to see past the various horrifying visions writhing inside. He gasped.

“That’s a little girl in there!”

“She’s a dangerous esper,” the officer repeated.

“Are you kidding me? You’re calling the army on a terrified little kid?”

He ducked past without waiting for an answer, too fast for the man to catch him. The illusions parted before him like a river around a moving boulder, swallowing but never touching him. The girl lifted her head as she heard him running up to her. He stopped at the raw fear in her eyes and showed her his empty hands, trying to look as non-threatening as possible.

“Hey, don’t worry. I’m not here to hurt you.”

She didn’t answer.

“I’m Andy. What’s your name?”

Still nothing, but now she looked less scared of him specifically and more like a kid who knew she had done something wrong and didn’t know how to make it better.

He knelt in front of her, slowly, telegraphing his every movement.

“Hey. It’s okay. No one is going to hurt you. But you should turn it off now, alright?”

Uh oh, had he said something wrong? She suddenly looked about to cry. Maybe she didn’t know how to stop?

He raised his hands.

“I’m going to touch you now, okay?”

She closed her eyes tightly and ducked her head between her shoulders, but didn’t do anything to dissuade him. Was she still afraid he would hurt her? Or maybe…

He smiled and settled his palm on the stop of her head, ruffling her thick black hair. Almost instantly, the illusions around them vanished. She gasped and stared at him in wonder.

“See? Everything is going to be fine. You can’t hurt me.”

Her eyes filled with tears. Before he could panic he had spectacularly messed that up, she threw herself against his chest and began wailing. He released a relieved sigh and patted her back, murmuring senseless words of comfort.

The sounds of cars approaching, then doors slamming, booted feet and terse yells had him tensing. He looked over his shoulder and saw soldiers spilling out from the direction he had come.

Shit. He knew better than most that the army, any army really, and espers made a really bad combination. Worse, the girl was obviously very high-level. Too many people would see her as nothing but a weapon.

Sensing his unease, she had stopped crying to lift wet ruby eyes to his face. Despite himself, Andy melted at the innocent curiosity in them. He hated espers… but damn, a kid was a kid. He smiled at her.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get you somewhere safe, okay?”

She ducked shyly, but produced a minuscule nod.

“Sir, stand up slowly and back away from the girl! This is for your own safety!”

Andy took a deep breath. Determination filled his lungs. He yanked the kid in his arms and dove for the nearest street.

“Major, I think you should see this.”

Kyousuke turned to the man standing behind him in the passageway.

“What is it, Magi? I was on my way out.”

“To find that girl from the laboratory, right? Come and see.”

Kyousuke frowned, but followed him to the Catastrophe’s bridge. They had docked just a few minutes ago, but only Momiji was here.

“Yoh?” he asked.

“Dealing with that investigation out in the city,” she said. “Apparently, his informant dropped off the radar a few hours ago. He went to see if he could track him.”

“Hum. Alright, what is it? I want to get to the girl before she can disappear again. It took us long enough to find that orphanage, only to discover she had run off.”

Magi’s only answer was to turn on the main screen overhead. A low-quality video appeared. It obviously came from a cellphone, the person shooting shaking in fright and constantly making the footage jump. There was nothing even remotely frightening on screen, just people running and screaming, but catching a glimpse of the little girl prostrated on the ground in the middle of it all, Kyousuke could guess at what they had tried to film. Normals, he scoffed internally. Not even able to figure out that illusions wouldn’t appear on a video.

“When was this?” he snapped, stepping closer to the screen.

“A few hours ago. But wait.”

The girl was completely alone now, but she stayed huddled in a little ball. Kyousuke’s heart went out to her. She must have been terrified out of her mind. The urge to go out there and find her right this moment increased ten-fold.

Just as he was losing patience, a figure darted out in the screen and ran up to her. Kyousuke straightened. After a few moments conversation, the girl clutched at the newcomer and the footage steadied, the phone owner babbling in meaningless relief. The illusions must have stopped. Someone she knew? Why else would she have accepted his comfort so readily?

“Do we know who that is?”

“No. It’s impossible to see clearly,” Momiji said. She pressed some keys on a console, enlarging the picture. The video was too grainy, shot from too far away and at the wrong angle. The stranger’s cap hid their hair and they could just see the edges of sunglasses on their face. Kyousuke thought it must have been a man based on their figure, but even then he wasn’t sure.

He frowned. He didn’t like this at all. Still, his mood lightened a little when the man — probably — ran from the approaching soldiers, the little girl clutched in his arms. He ducked in a nearby street, followed by entire platoons.

Of course, he could be leading her to plenty of other places worse than the army.

“They haven’t been caught yet,” Magi said, “but the city is on high-alert, looking for them.”

“She was unlucky enough to lose control a few streets away from the city hall,” Momiji sighed. “The army is trying to present her as a dangerous terrorist. Poor kid…”

“See if you can find any other footage of that guy, maybe from nearby security cameras. I’m going out.”

The girl was sleeping in his bed, exhausted. Andy stood watching over her a few feet away, at a loss. She had been hungry, so he had fed her what little food he kept in his bag, but no matter how much he asked, she wouldn’t tell him her name or how to contact any sort of parent or guardian. What was he supposed to do with her, now?

He glanced at the TV. It was turned on, the volume set as low as it would go. His mismatched eyes tightened at the alarmist reports it kept spouting since he had gotten back. He didn’t think anyone would recognize him anytime soon from what little footage of the incident there was. He took a few seconds to be grateful for his tourist getup. But what about the girl? Her looks were pretty distinctive. And how come no one had come forward yet to the media to defend their little girl? Could it be she was all alone?

His phone buzzed on the table. He snatched it and refused the call before it could ring and wake up his guest. It was Yoh’s third attempt to contact him since he had missed his check-in time.

He moved to the window and parted the curtains. Night had fallen outside. First things first: he had to get the girl out of the city.

That meant he wouldn’t be able to complete his job. He was risking getting P.A.N.D.R.A. out for his blood and that was so not good. He turned his phone off completely, opened the back and yanked the sim card out. It crunched under his boot.

Luckily, he had a lot of experience with disappearing.

He packed his bag efficiently, then stepped up to the bed and gently shook her shoulder. She blinked at him and used a little fist to rub her eyes.

“I know you’re still sleepy, but we’ve got to go. You can sleep on the way, okay?”

She didn’t get up, only hitching the covers up.

“Go where?” she whispered, her very first words to him.

“You’ll find out. Come on,” he said so he didn’t have to admit he had no clue. Where could they go? Out of the country would be best, but while he was good at travelling undetected, could he do it with a vulnerable tagalong?

It might be moot, anyway, since she just pouted and glared at him. It was reassuring to finally see her show some spirit, but now was really not the time.

Sighing, he knelt next to the bed.

“Look, this is not a safe place for you. I promise to let you pick where we go after, who you want to contact, but right now we have to go before bad guys find us.”

After a moment of careful consideration, she pushed the covers off and sat up. Relieved, he tried to help her put her shoes on, but she would have none of it.

“Alright, alright,” he chuckled, then dropped his baseball cap on her head. “Here, keep this to hide your face. And this.”

The red jacket he draped over her shoulders dwarfed her. Surprised, she looked for a moment like she might refuse to wear it. But finally, blushing, she bundled herself up in it. Andy helped her roll the sleeves up so her hands could peek out at the ends.

Now she looked even more adorable than before, if that was possible.

Andy didn’t bother with checkout. He had already paid for the room anyway. He just used the fire escape staircase at the back of the building. The girl went in the backseat of his rental car, his duffel bag next to her. There were sure to be blockades on the roads out of the city. He drove to the port, figuring he would have better luck there.

He parked in the shadows of a hangar and turned to his young passenger — too young even for the seatbelt, which made him feel like a terrible excuse for a responsible adult.

“I’ll go see if I can find us a boat. Wait here, okay?”

He stretched a hand back to pat her head. He could feel her eyes on him as she watched him go through the car window.

Kyousuke stopped dead mid-air.

He had been searching the city for hours now, taking to the sky as soon as it had been dark enough to do so without being seen, trying to feel any trace at all of the girl’s power. As powerful as he knew her to be, she should have been shining like a beacon to him. His complete inability to detect her had left him more and more frustrated, even angry. Could it be she had already been whisked away?

But now, now, out of the blue, he could feel her. He wasn’t even closer to her than he had been a second before. He had actually been moving in the opposite direction. ECMs?

He raced to the spot before he could lose her again, surprised to land in a rather shady backstreet near the port. His eyes scanned the place. They landed on a car. He smiled. Large eyes stared at him in fascination from the backseat, nearly hidden by the door behind which she had ducked.

“I finally found you! I have been looking for you. You’re the girl from that laboratory, aren’t you?”

She hid completely out of sight, startled.

“It’s okay. The people in that place were enemies of P.A.N.D.R.A. We found your file when we investigated there.”

A few seconds of hesitation, then she peeked up. He allowed himself to hover a few feet over the ground. She gasped. His smile widened.

“Won’t you come out so I can see you?”

A second of silence, then the door clicked open. Some tension vanished from his shoulders. Whoever had taken her, they hadn’t locked her in.

She slipped down from her seat, clinging to the handle with both hands.

“Oh, you are even prettier than I thought,” he said, charmed by the way her small frame nearly disappeared under a too big jacket. She blushed and looked at the ground. He touched down and knelt in front of her. “Are you okay? No one has hurt you, have they?”

She shook her head no, staring at him through her bangs.

“Can I ask whose jacket that is? Who brought you here?”

She fidgeted for a while, looking anywhere but at his face. Finally, in a nearly inaudible voice:

“Andy.”

She was clutching at one of her sleeves, but didn’t seem distressed. Whatever that Andy wanted out of her, he had at least treated her right so far.

“Is Andy like you and me? Is he an esper?”

No answer this time. Because she didn’t want to say, or because she didn’t know? He spotted some of her power starting to leak into the air. Time to stop with the questions; he was already making her nervous. With a smile, he waved a hand and banished the purple lights. She started, looking at him with wide eyes.

“You don’t have to worry anymore. Would you like to come with me? Everyone back home would very much like to meet you…”

“Get away from her!”

A man was running at them from the mouth of the alley, whipping a gun from the back of his waistband. Kyousuke instinctively raised his hand, but young Yuugiri threw herself at his arm.

“No!” she pleaded in a breathless voice that was more whisper than scream. “Andy is nice!”

The two men stopped and assessed each other with clear suspicion. Kyousuke’s gesture must have tipped “Andy” to his powers, because he kept the gun carefully directed at the ground. Kyousuke took the opportunity to size him up. Young, obviously athletic under his form-fitting shirt. His ease with the weapon hinted at military training. His distrust grew.

“You know this guy?” Andy asked Yuugiri.

When she fidgeted but shook her head, his opinion of the situation appeared to follow the same path as Kyousuke’s.

He was searching for the best way to break the standoff without upsetting the girl when a motorcycle rushed in the alley behind Andy, who whirled around to aim his gun at the newcomer. Kyousuke was on his feet and had pushed Yuugiri behind him before the vehicle had even screeched to a halt.

“Finally heard you!” exclaimed a familiar voice. “Man, you’re hard to find Hinomiya!”

“Yoh?!” Andy yelled.

“Yoh?” Kyousuke echoed.

“Boss?” his young executive gaped at seeing him here.

There was a moment where they just glanced at each other in complete confusion. Then Kyousuke connected the dots. He pointed at Andy.

“This is the informant you were looking for?”

“This guy is your boss?” Andy said, gobsmacked. “Are you kidding me? You said he was old as dirt!”

“Did you, now?” Kyousuke asked with a ticked-off smile.

Yoh chuckled awkwardly.

“Ah… But what are you doing here, boss? I thought you were looking for… ah, you found her.”

Andy’s — Hinomiya’s — expression slammed closed.

“What does P.A.N.D.R.A. want with her? She’s just a kid. You can’t seriously be looking to draft her.”

“Draft her?” Kyousuke repeated. “My, that’s a grim opinion of us you have.”

“Come on, man, I told you about the kids. All espers kids who have nowhere to go are welcome with us. We give them a new home, that’s all,” Yoh said.

Hinomiya seemed to reluctantly relax.

“You did tell me about it. I was just never sure you were serious. Aren’t you guys terrorists? How can you care for kids at the same time?”

“Eh, we manage. The Catastrophe is big enough for everyone!”

“The Catastrophe?”

“Yoh,” Kyousuke warned.

“Oups,” he winced. “Ah, but come on grandpa. The guy has taken jobs for us for a few years now. He’s alright! You know, for an incomplete.”

He smirked at Hinomiya, who glared at the strange insult.

The girl moved out from behind Kyousuke. He thought about holding her back, but despite how laidback Yoh could seem, he wouldn’t be so casual with someone he doubted.

“Andy?” she said, hesitantly walking to him.

Kyousuke approved of the way the man immediately turned and knelt to her level.

“What’s up? You alright?”

“Are we going now?”

Hinomiya slipped his gun at the small of his back and laid an affectionate hand over the top of her head. Then the smile disappeared from his face and he looked up, drilling merciless eyes over Kyousuke and Yoh in turn.

Finally, he sighed and sat back on his heels.

“Hey, listen. You have a choice now. You can go with these guys, or you can come with me. That’s your decision.”

She stared at him, dazed.

“I choose?”

“That’s right. If you don’t like them, we go. Just say the word.”

She looked at Kyousuke herself. He smiled warmly at her. Should he plead P.A.N.D.R.A.’s case? It would be too dangerous for her to stay with the likes of Hinomiya. If a stable esper family had been willing to take her on, he would have given them a chance. But someone who earned his life with information and infiltration? How long until his job caught up with him and left him dead in a dark alley, or worse, until someone went after the girl in retaliation?

“But, listen,” Hinomiya continued, his eyes and voice steady. “I think you should go with them. They can take much better care of you than I could.”

Kyousuke couldn’t help staring at him in surprise.

“I can’t go with Andy?” Yuugiri said, looking upset.

“You can if you really want to!” he backed up in a panic. “Really. I’d like to have you with me. But I’m going to be moving a lot and… it’s not safe, being with me. If you go with them, you’ll be with other kids. You can learn to read and… and a lot of other stuff. Me… I don’t know if I can give you that. You understand?”

She understood, but she didn’t like it. She snagged the fabric of his shirt with small fingers.

“Then Andy and I go together.”

Yoh laughed and Kyousuke had to smile. It was endearing how attached she had become to the man in so short a time. He must have done something right. Hinomiya faltered, taken aback.

“Ah… Me in a place full of espers… not the best idea, you know…”

Just like that, Kyousuke’s smile winked out. He pressed his lips together so he would not lash out in anger. Hinomiya glanced up at that moment but didn’t appear moved by his expression, instead matching him glare for glare.

“But I want you to contact me from time to time, okay? You call me, and if they won’t let you or if they’re not treating you right, I’ll hunt them down and make them regret it.”

Kyousuke felt his lips reluctantly stretch up at the sheer nerve of the man. Despite himself, he was intrigued. He didn’t like espers, but would go this far for an esper girl he had known less than a day?

“You sure are passionate… I don’t dislike that,” he said.

He turned to Yuugiri.

“In that case, I’ll even bring you myself to see this guy. What do you say?”

She opened wide hopeful eyes.

“Really?”

“Sure, if that’s what you want.”

It would give him more time to figure out what made him tick. If Yoh was going to keep hiring him, he wanted to make sure his trust wasn’t misplaced.

Plus, it would give him a genuine excuse to escape Magi’s attempts to make him work. He always needed more of those.

The girl seemed to measure his sincerity. She slowly nodded and moved to detach herself from Hinomiya.

“Ah,” he said, catching her at the last minute. “I still don’t know your name.”

“Yuugiri,” she whispered.

“Yuugiri. Eh,” he smiled, “a pretty name for a pretty girl.”

He took the cap off her head to muss her hair, then put it back on when she was thoroughly blushing.

“Here, you keep that. Ah, thanks.”

He accepted the jacket she clumsily took off and held out to him. Then Yuugiri ran to Kyousuke to hide behind his legs. Hinomiya stood up.

“I suppose Yoh has your contact information,” Kyousuke said. “We’ll see about setting up a meeting in a month or two.”

“Yeah, about that, man, did you have a problem with your phone?”

“Ah, uh, yeah. I’m going to need to buy another one,” he said, wincing in a way that told Kyousuke there was more to the story than a simple accident. “But I have your number, I’ll call you.”

“You better. What about the job, uh?” Yoh sighed. “Well, we’re already in town, so I guess we’ll do the work ourselves.”

Hinomiya looked unhappy about the loss of business, but shrugged.

“Fair enough. Then I’m gonna go, I guess.”

“Okay!”

Yoh lifted a hand as if to pat his shoulder in passing, but Hinomiya skittered away with an irritated glare. Yoh just grinned. Hinomiya called a last goodbye at Yuugiri, then climbed in his car and drove away.

“What was that about?” Kyousuke asked once he was gone.

“Uh? You mean that last stuff? Eh, not much. The guy just has a personal bubble the size of a building when it comes to espers. I’m surprised he let the little lady so close!”

He ducked to address Yuugiri with these words, but she just shyly inched further behind Kyousuke. He set a reassuring hand on her back, but he was frowning.

“And you don’t think that’s alarming?”

“Well, he keeps saying he hates espers, but he says the same thing about normals. I figure it’s probably something to do with him being an incomplete.”

“You called him that earlier. What does that mean?”

“According to his military file—”

“Military?”

“Yeah. He’s a dropout from the US army. Dual citizenship, American and Japanese. Anyway, file says he tested as an esper, but never manifested.”

“Never?” he blinked.

“Nope. It’s left him a little bitter, me thinks.”

“Hum.”

Figuring he would have more opportunities to puzzle this out later, Kyousuke turned back to his new ward.

“Let’s get you introduced to the Catastrophe, shall we?” he smiled.

Chapter Text

Yuugiri had quickly made an impression on the Catastrophe. She seemed content trailing behind the adults instead of joining the other kids in their games, and most members of P.A.N.D.R.A. had fallen at first sight for her small frame and her shyness. She would have been spoiled rotten if she hadn’t insisted on sticking mostly to Kyousuke’s side. For anyone else, earning her trust demanded treasures of patience.

Kyousuke couldn’t say he wasn’t flattered by the preference. He himself had a soft spot for the girl and took pride in his place as her favourite.

Which only made it more vexing when he was reminded he was just number two in her heart.

“Andy!” Yuugiri called, beaming.

She let go of Kyousuke’s hand and ran ahead of him to greet the man sitting on a mooring bollard along the pier. As was now their habit, Hinomiya plucked the brown baseball cap from her head to muss her hair. She wore that thing everywhere.

“Hey kid. You doing okay?”

By the time Kyousuke joined them, she was engaged in a breathless recounting of something that had happened in the pool the day before. Hinomiya glanced up to address him with a cordial, if rather stilted, nod. Kyousuke gave an answering smirk.

It was their third pre-planned meeting and it was obvious Hinomiya still had no idea what to make of him. Which was just the way Kyousuke preferred it, especially since he himself had made little progress in figuring the man out. Their time together was spent around Yuugiri. They had yet to exchange a word that wasn’t about the girl.

But this time ended up being different.

Hinomiya led Yuugiri to a city fair, Kyousuke trailing behind as per usual during these little outings. For a while they wandered through the festival, sampling food and visiting booths, much to Yugiri’s delight. Kyousuke had to grudgingly give it to Hinomiya: he was good to her.

They stopped to watch a puppet show. It didn’t take long for Yuugiri to join the ring of children sitting on the ground, entranced by the moving dolls. Kyousuke was so focused on the open happiness on her face he nearly failed to notice Hinomiya moving back to join him a little further away than most parents stood.

“So… the Catastrophe is a boat?”

Kyousuke wrenched his eyes away from Yuugiri with a disbelieving smirk.

“You’re only figuring that out now?”

“Well, I had an inkling when you always proposed meeting at coast cities,” Hinomiya grumbled with a light blush. “But it’s not like you ever said!”

Kyousuke snorted. Then the corners of his lips stretched down. Despite him starting a conversation of his own volition, Hinomiya stood much further away than could be considered polite when talking to someone.

“Would you like to visit?” he baited.

Hinomiya goggled at him.

“You’d let me aboard?”

“Yoh vouches for you. And Yuugiri would be happy to have you there. You’re the closest thing she’s got to a parent, after all.”

“Isn’t that you?” he mumbled. “Every time I talk to her, it’s ‘the Major did this’, ‘the Major said that’.”

“Oh?” he smirked, the smart to his pride fading some. “Well, we can share custody, I suppose.”

“Does that make you the mother if she lives with you?”

Kyousuke’s smirk could have given a shark a run for his money.

“Why, Hinomiya, so forward,” he drawled, taking the opportunity to step well into the man’s personal bubble. “Something you’re trying to tell me?”

Hinomiya sputtered and flailed his hands in denial, already reddening. Kyousuke delighted at how easily he got flustered. He could have fun with this one.

He was also throwing wide-eyed glances around, only stopping himself from taking more than one step back when it would have brought them in hearing range of a group of parents. The extra space was enough to take the edge of scandal off their conversation to any onlooker, yet he stood rigidly still, looking at Kyousuke like he would at a snake ready to strike.

The contradicting urges to tease the man and snarl at him were giving him the beginning of a headache. He kept the smirk in place through some effort.

“How about that visit, then?”

Hinomiya’s face showed a brief flicker of disappointment that his attempt to deflect had failed. He hid it well, but not well enough, especially to someone who had been looking for it.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea…” he said vaguely.

“Can’t be bothered to see where Yuugiri lives? A little girl who counts on you to have her best interests at heart?”

The growing edge in his voice had sweat bead on Hinomiya’s forehead, but despite his increasingly panicked glances, the puppet show was not drawing to an end.

Yet he still got the out he was looking for when several armed men in uniform burst out of the crowd, waving ECMs in their direction.

“Hyoubu Kyousuke, leader of P.A.N.D.R.A.! You’re under arrest! Surrender or we will not hesitate to shoot!”

“Oh, really,” Kyousuke sighed, annoyed, as people all around him began to scream and run.

He took a single hand out of his pockets and waved. But instead of the men going flying like he had intended, nothing happened. Kyousuke tensed. A new, more powerful model of portable ECM?

The soldiers opened fire. In the same instant, Kyousuke was tackled out of the way.

He found himself flat on his flat behind a deserted booth. He stared at the sky, bullets raining around the makeshift shelter and Hinomiya’s arms crushing his ribcage. The man let go like he was on fire.

“Sorry sorry!” he said, springing in a crouch and holding his hands out as if to fend off a blow. “Are you okay?”

Those ECMs couldn’t possibly have the reach to neutralize all of his powers at that distance. Yet now that Kyousuke was paying attention, he could feel his abilities muffled… as well as the vague discomfort of a budding headache.

And Hinomiya, who had just saved his life, was eyeing the side of the booth like he was seriously considering throwing himself under the bullets to get away from him.

Kyousuke propped himself up on his elbows, stare drilling in him.

“Andy Hinomiya,” he said, slowly, like he was tasting the name on his lips.

Hinomiya flinched.

“I’m taking Yuugiri back to the Catastrophe. Can you make your way out from here?”

Hinomiya glanced over his shoulder. Yuugiri had taken shelter behind the puppet show booth. As he looked, she tried to inch over toward them, but a new salvo sent her cringing back. Hinomiya clenched his eyes closed, pain obvious on his face. He gave a harsh nod.

Then he launched himself at the next booth with more speed than Kyousuke had expected from an army dropout, tucking in a tight roll that brought him up on the balls of his feet, back to the cheap plastic and gun already out.

The headache washed away.

A smirk blossomed unbidden on Kyousuke’s lips, triumph and something resembling awe that he would have refused to admit to.

He teleported to Yuugiri, set a hand on her shoulder even as he smiled reassuringly at her. They disappeared just as the enemy changed their aim, Kyousuke catching sight from the corner of his eyes of Hinomiya taking advantage of the distraction to run.

Andy was gone from that country before the day was out, the risk that someone had captured an image of his face too great to stay. Thankfully, he was done with his business there, but it was still a sour departure, even if he had known that associating with P.A.N.D.R.A. could put him in a dangerous spotlight…

Not that he would likely ever have the problem again, he reminded himself with a pang of loss. Hyoubu knew, now. There was no way he could have missed it.

What broke his heart was that he had not even had the time to say goodbye to Yuugiri.

What would they say to her? She had known about his power and had never seemed bothered by it. It was what had brought them together in the first place. Would they lie and say Andy didn’t want to see her anymore?

P.A.N.D.R.A.’s business was gone now, under all probability, but it was really the girl he was upset about. She didn’t need to think one more person had abandoned her, not this young in her life. He could try and pressure them into letting him see her, like he had promised her, but… no. P.A.N.D.R.A. was powerful. They were humouring him and her with these meetings. If they didn’t want to deal with him anymore, they had the means to ensure that.

Better lie low. Then he might get a chance later.

Despite his resolution, it was a low-spirited Andy that went about the following week. Inconveniently, he didn’t even have a new job lined up to distract himself. It was one of those occasional bouts of time when business was at a stand-still. None of his regular contacts had anything in store for someone of his talents, and he was loathe to get out and find new ones when, if he was very unlucky, people could be after his blood.

He was in the middle of a particularly punishing round of push-ups in his hotel room when his phone rang. He just about threw himself at the coffee table to answer.

“Hello?” he said, winded.

Please be a client, please be a client.

“Oh, am I interrupting something?” said a mocking voice.

Andy took the phone away from his face to stare at the receiver in disbelief.

“Hyoubu??”

“Yes?”

“I… that is… are you…”

“I can see you are distracted. It’s alright, I can call again at a more… convenient time.”

Andy took a deep breath and gathered his wits around him. This was not a conversation he wanted to have while flat-footed. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a bare wrist.

“What do you want?” he asked coldly.

Would P.A.N.D.R.A. come after him, after all?

“To reschedule?” Hyoubu said in a tone that implied he was speaking to a very dimwitted child.

Andy gaped. “… Reschedule?”

“I know, my magnanimity surprises even me sometimes. But we were interrupted last time, and I suppose it only counts as half a visit. We might as well do this custody thing right.”

Had Hyoubu not figured him out after all? But that look he had given him at the end…

“Are you still there?” Hyoubu snapped, impatient.

“I… Yeah yeah, I’m here.”

“Can you come to Brazil or not?”

“Brazil?” Andy sagged in annoyance. He was half-way across the world from it. Man, was he beginning to hate long flights.

“If you can’t…”

“No no, I’ll be there.”

It might be a trap. He was aware of it, uncomfortably so, but if he still had a chance to see Yuugiri… He had to know for sure.

Hyoubu and Yuugiri were waiting for him at a little secluded beach. The sky was overcast, but it wasn’t cold and Yuugiri had taken shoes and socks off to walk at the edge of the waves. She seemed to be looking for shells. Hyoubu stood looking at the horizon, as always hands in the pockets of his incongruous high school uniform. Why would someone as allegedly old as him wear something like that, Andy wondered not for the first time.

They both turned as soon as the sole of his boots crunched in the sand. Yuugiri beamed and run up to him, her wet feet encrusted in white in seconds.

Relieved when she reached him without being stopped, Andy knelt to give her a rare hug. She gave a little start, then shyly grabbed at his jacket. A moment later she ducked out of his arms, embarrassed.

A shadow falling on him had him look up at Hyoubu. He immediately jumped to his feet, but the man didn’t appear hostile. He was, however, smiling the smuggest smile Andy had seen on his face to date.

“What?” he snapped.

Hyoubu huffed and pretended to be offended. It didn’t work, mostly because of the smirk still clinging to the corner of his lips.

“I was simply going to congratulate you on your promptness in coming to heel.”

“Wha… I’m not a dog!”

“You certainly do bark like one. What must it be like to be so tense, I wonder?”

What was happening? Hyoubu stood well in the range of his power. Didn’t he realize that? And why was he bantering at him like this? Where was the edge of suspicion he usually treated him with?

“What do you want?” he ground out.

Hyoubu sighed, falsely put upon.

“You should be nicer to someone who brought you a present. After I went to the trouble of preparing it myself, too.”

He started taking his hands out of his pockets and Andy tensed, ready for anything. But the only thing he held up was a pendant balancing at the end of a long silver chain. Andy blinked and looked at it closer. The symbol was familiar. He glanced at the brooch on Hyoubu’s uniform, unimpressed. What was that, marking your territory or something?

“Still not a dog. I’m not putting on a collar.”

“Refusing a present is rude. You wouldn’t want to show a bad example to Yuugiri, would you?”

“Hey, wa—”

Before he could do much more to protest, Hyoubu crowded up against him and threw both arms around his neck. He had to be doing this stuff on purpose, Andy thought furiously, focusing on not giving him the pleasure of blushing.

The chain clicked shut at his nape. At once, Andy could tell something had changed. It was small, like an imperceptible vibration in his bones, or the sudden absence of it.

Hyoubu drew back and considered the pendant resting against his chest with an approving hum.

“How is it, Yuugiri? Better?”

The girl stared in awe.

“My head doesn’t hurt anymore…”

“That’s right, you can spend time with that guy without feeling bad now.”

Yuugiri started to smile widely, then remembered herself and ducked her face to the ground, round cheeks pink with delight.

“Thank you…”

Andy was devastated.

“I was giving you a headache? Yuugiri, you should have said! Man, this is why I don’t hang out with espers…”

He stopped when sand began wafting up around him in long and lazy drifts. Hyoubu had on that frozen, pissed-off smile he had first seen aimed at Yoh.

“You can stop whining now before you upset her. Or I can just dump this in your pants.”

Andy didn’t answer, too busy gaping at the sand. The sand that shouldn’t have been able to float in the air less than a foot from him. Finally, he realized what was happening. He grabbed the pendant and stared at it.

“This is…”

“A limiter. You’d better take good care of it. You’ll need it to visit the Catastrophe; I wouldn’t want you to make the other kids feel sick. Yuugiri and I are fine because we are high-level, but not everyone is as lucky.”

For a long moment, Andy was lost for words. When he at long last tried to speak, it was to discover his throat had clogged up. Yuugiri tugged at his pants, worried.

“Andy?”

He knelt and set a hand on her head, but made sure his bangs hid his wet eyes. His other hand had tangled with the chain in a white-knuckled grip.

“I’m fine,” he managed to say in a good approximation of his usual voice.

He hoped he wasn’t shaking. He couldn’t really tell.

He heard Hyoubu hum again, neutral. Instead of calling him on his bluff, though, he said, downright jaunty:

“Well, now that this is out of the way, how would you like to become an official member of P.A.N.D.R.A.? Membership is free, plus you get a cute cell phone strap as a welcome present.”

Something was shoved in front of his face. Andy stared at the miniature figurine of Hyoubu himself. He had to stomp down hard on the urge to laugh. If he started, he wasn’t sure he would manage to stop.

He had expected to be hunted down like a, well, like a dog, or at the very least ostracized like he had been by every esper who had ever known about his power until he had met Yuugiri. And she had only taken to him because his ability had been a blessing to her at the time. But here was the leader of one of the most extreme espers-only organization on the planet, offering him to join him while being perfectly aware of what he could do.

Paranoia tried to lift its ugly head, but for once in the last years of his life, it had a hard time taking hold. Somehow, he could tell Hyoubu had no ulterior motive. Maybe it was because of how open and silly the man now was with him.

Still, he gently pushed the figurine away.

“Eh. Thanks… but no thanks.”

He blinked the wetness away and stood up. Hyoubu’s lips had tugged down at the corners, although he looked more considering than upset.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I… don’t play well with others. Lack of habit, I guess. But… thanks. Really. Maybe in a while. I’ll think about it.”

Hyoubu smiled, and Andy had the disconcerting feeling that he understood everything he wasn’t saying.

“You really are an earnest guy. Fine, if that’s how you want to play it.”

Andy yelped as the sand under his boots suddenly moved like he had been standing on a carpet someone had yanked forward. He landed on his ass, Yuugiri giggling at him. Hyoubu had turned to walk away and only answered his shrill protestations with a hand wave.

Man, he sighed, what had he gotten himself into?

The limiter was warm in his hand.

Chapter Text

Barely a week after Andy’s truce with Hyoubu, P.A.N.D.R.A. contacted him for a new job. It wouldn’t have been much to think about, just the relieving confirmation that he hadn’t lost their clientele, if Magi Shirou hadn’t come in person to talk to him.

Magi was an intimidating person and, from what Andy understood, P.A.N.D.R.A.’s number two (and de facto spokesperson as Hyoubu spent a lot of time fooling around, if you listened to Yoh). Andy spent their whole meeting on edge and grew more and more confused as it went.

Sure, he had met Magi before, but only for very delicate missions, or when complications arose. This one looked like a pretty straightforward infiltration.

“Is Yoh alright?” he finally asked, curiosity and a measure of worry eating at him.

“Pardon me?”

“Isn’t he my usual contact? Why isn’t he handling this meeting? He’s not in trouble, is he?”

Magi looked surprised, but in a good way.

“He’s fine,” he said with a small smile. “Now, about the intel we need…”

Andy ended up pulling all the stops for the job, half-sure there was more to it than Magi was willing to tell him and it would all go very wrong at some point. He wore the limiter just in case, under his shirt so it wouldn’t snag anywhere, but turned off. (That’s the point where he realized the thing could even be turned off; before then he just took it off. Trust Hyoubu not to give him the user manual.)

But the extra caution was moot. It all went without a hitch and Magi nodded in satisfaction when he checked the data on the memory stick he delivered.

“You’ll receive your payment on the usual account. Thanks for your good work.”

“No problem, I guess,” he said, having pretty much given up on figuring out what was going on.

However, before he left, Magi stepped up to him and looked at the limiter hanging against his chest. He stayed there long enough to rekindle Andy’s nervousness. Then he smiled and laid a hand on his shoulder before turning to go.

Andy was left touching his shoulder, incredulous, with the distinct feeling he had just passed some kind of test.

The day after, Yoh called him “just to touch base”. He had never done that before. The conversation was bewildering and didn’t touch on any subject of import. However, he noticed Yoh being more open than usual about life on the Catastrophe and what P.A.N.D.R.A. was up to. At this point, he had no doubt anymore that Hyoubu had informed his executives of the standing invitation he had extended to him.

“I hope you’re not trying to convince me to join,” he told Yoh, wary.

“Man, get over yourself! Who needs a loser like you in P.A.N.D.R.A., anyway?” he sniffed, but he sounded put out. “I’m just pissed Magi stole my job.”

Despite himself, Andy was touched.

On Yuugiri’s next visit, he was walking back to her and Hyoubu, balancing two ice creams and a coffee, when a beautiful young woman accosted him.

“Hey there!”

“Er… hi?”

He tried not to stare at her low-cut shirt, but her flirtatious behaviour made it rather difficult.

“Those look good,” she said, nodding at the ice creams.

“I hope they are… If you want one, I got them at—”

“Oh, why don’t you show me!”

She looped her arm in his and dragged him off.

“Whoa! Look, I’m flattered, really, but I’m kind of expected somewhere…”

“That’s okay, it won’t take long!”

 She shoved him in a deserted sidestreet. Andy was a healthy young man; it didn’t take much more than this for his thoughts to head straight south.

But one of the ice creams slid down its cone at the abrupt treatment. The shock of cold on his hand brought along a flash of clarity. In the next second he had dropped the treats and the coffee and drawn his gun on the woman.

“You talked to me in Japanese,” he said coldly. “That’s not this country’s language and I know I look at least half-occidental. Who are you?”

“Eh, not bad.”

She drew her hand back. He was well out of her reach and so didn’t react until she shoved it forward and he found himself knocked back against the wall behind him.

He dropped like a sack of potatoes, gasping for the air expelled from his lungs. Damn it, an esper! Would he have time to turn the limiter off before she attacked again?

His hands twitched up, but she was kneeling in front of him before he could move. Smirking, she coyly slid a finger from his collarbones down to the centre of his chest. There she cupped the limiter.

“Hum, he really went all out,” she said in something like admiration.

“What?” he wheezed.

“Show me, show me!” a boyish voice said directly in his head.

A sort of flying rodent with a strange contraption on its back plopped on her shoulder from above. Andy goggled.

“Uwah, the old man is not subtle!”

“Right? No wonder he wouldn’t show it to us!”

Japanese, telekinetic, knew about the limiter, telepathic flying squirrel… Andy sagged forward in relief.

“You’re Momiji, aren’t you?” he groaned.

“Got it in one!” she enthused.

“And I’m Momotarou!” the squirrel said.

Yoh had mentioned Momiji a few times and Yuugiri talked about her animal companion often enough. After Magi and Yoh, why hadn’t he expected that the last of the Catastrophe’s main team would drop by at some point?

 “What do you want? Damn it, you made me drop the ice creams. I’m going to have to get new ones and Yuugiri will pout because I’m late and Hyoubu will make passive-aggressive comments about getting me a leash.”

They burst into laughter.

“That sounds like the major alright! Ah, but I’m relieved,” Momiji said.

She let go and drew back, letting him stand up, which he did warily.

“Relieved?”

“Looks like you are as harmless as the major said you were.”

He twitched, annoyed.

“He said that, uh…”

The smile dropped from Momiji’s face. He straightened at her sudden seriousness.

“You’d better be, you know. Yuugiri adores you, and she’s very dear to all of us at P.A.N.D.R.A. If you hurt her, we won’t forgive you.”

“Yeah!” Momotarou said, puffing up. “I’m her protector, you know! You don’t want to mess with me!”

“The major, too,” Momiji added.

“What, the major?” Andy asked, confused.

“He must really like you. It’s not in his habits to take care of this kind of things himself.”

She set a delicate finger on the limiter.

“He won’t even let me tag along on the visits.” Momotarou crossed his arms, fuming. “What’s his problem?”

“Hyoubu, like me? Are you kidding?” Andy said in disbelief. “All he does is sneak barbs at me and play childish pranks.”

“Well, the major is rather childish.”

“I’m so glad this is how my crew thinks of me.”

Andy jumped to see Hyoubu and Yuugiri at the mouth of the alley. The girl was pouting at the two party-crashers and Hyoubu looked ticked off. He proceeded to prove Momiji right by engaging her in one of the most immature arguments Andy had ever witnessed.

“Magi said that!”

“Stop lying! It’s obvious you are the one who said it!”

Andy edged away from them when the hair pulling started. He couldn’t believe his eyes. These were the high-ranking members of one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world? Magi was the only normal one of the lot!

He reached Yuugiri, who had by now noticed the ice creams on the ground. Her eyes started to mist over and he gulped.

“Hey hey! It’s okay, I’ll buy you another one, I promise. I’m sorry, please don’t cry…”

The commotion behind him stopped. He turned from his attempts to comfort her and saw Hyoubu glare at Momiji and Momotarou with a pout.

“See? You’re upsetting Yuugiri. Don’t just interrupt her visits with her other parent, how heartless are you?”

Momiji looked at the girl with genuine remorse.

“I’m sorry, Yuugiri. We didn’t mean to butt in on your afternoon with Mom and Dad. We’ll see you back aboard, okay?”

“Hey wait, I’m staying!”

Momotarou tried to fly toward Yuugiri, but Momiji caught him and teleported. Hyoubu huffed.

“Mom and Dad?” Andy repeated, not sure he wanted to believe his ears.

Hyoubu’s annoyance disappeared like so much snow in the sun.

“Yes, dear?” he smirked.

“Please tell me that’s not already a running joke on the Catastrophe.”

“Why should I? You’re the one who first brought it up, you know.”

And he now deeply, deeply regretted it. Sighing, he held a hand out for Yuugiri to take.

“Let’s go. You still want strawberry?”

Months passed by in a relative routine.

There were no more jobs from P.A.N.D.R.A., but he had enough clients otherwise to keep himself busy. Yuugiri and Hyoubu’s visits continued and Yoh called from time to time. He didn’t hear from Magi or Momiji again, but figured he would see them at some point.

After all, he kept meeting more and more P.A.N.D.R.A. members, by “chance”. It was hard to tell if that was Hyoubu or Yoh’s attempt to convince him to join already or if he was just becoming so infamous in the organization that the others spontaneously wanted to get a look at him. Some of the stuff they said definitely made it sound like he was getting a reputation. He wished he knew what kind of stories were circulating about him on the grapevine, but that was not enough of a reason to become a member. (Sometimes he had a hard time remembering that.)

One day, Hyoubu called to ask his location. The sun had yet to set when he and Yuugiri appeared before Andy’s hotel room. It was too soon for their next meeting and Andy was in the middle of a job, but there was a tightness around Hyoubu’s eyes and mouth that spoke of carefully controlled violence. Andy let them in.

Yuugiri was the same as always, cheerful and curious of everything. That’s why it took Andy so long to notice the new mark on her arm. He brushed a careful thumb over it as she looked at him askance.

“Major did that too,” she said, repeating the action for herself.

Hyoubu was watching them from the other side of the room. Andy bit his tongue until he tasted blood so he wouldn’t ask.

He wanted to ask, so very much. But Yuugiri was relatively unarmed and certainly not traumatized. Hyoubu was the only one to show anything was different.

Andy had chosen months ago to trust him with that child’s life and safety. He would trust in those eyes, hard as diamonds today, that whatever problem there had been, it had been permanently resolved.

Maybe it was the wrong choice. It certainly felt like the right one when they stood ready to leave hours later and Hyoubu aimed a now familiar taunting smirk at him. The relief nearly had him ignore the gibe that followed.

“I suppose I will once more be the one to tuck Yuugiri in. You make such a bad mother, stuffing her full of sweets and leaving it to me to make sure she brushes her teeth before bed.”

Nearly.

“Mother?” he spluttered, wide-eyed. “I’m not— I thought that was you!”

Hyoubu’s smirk grew. He made a show of looking Andy up and down, causing him to stiffen in embarrassment.

“Oh no, you are obviously the mother,” he chuckled. “Say goodbye to Mom, Yuugiri.”

“Goodbye Andy,” she waved, not showing any confusion at the nickname. Almost like she had heard it many times before.

“Obviously? What’s that supposed to mean, ‘obviously’? Hey!”

Of course, by then both Yuugiri and Hyoubu had disappeared.

He groaned and hung his head. At least now he knew why most P.A.N.D.R.A. members looked so amused when meeting him.

“What do you mean, Yuugiri was the one to ask for it??”

Kyousuke took the phone away from his ear and winced. The sheer volume of Hinomiya’s voice was enough to carry his outraged demand through the hotel room. Momotarou perked up from where he was nibbling on some seeds on the table by the flower vase.

“Ah! Mom is angry at Dad!” he had the nerve to say, delighted.

Kyousuke glared at him.

“Hyoubu! Did Yuugiri really ask to kidnap a princess?”

“That’s what I said, didn’t I?” he huffed, reluctantly bringing the device back to his face.

“What the hell are you guys teaching that girl? In what universe is that a normal favour for a kid to ask?? Why did I think it would be a good idea for her to grow up on a boat full of terrorists?”

Kyousuke rolled his eyes and let the phone dangle from his hand as Hinomiya continued to rant. That he could fuss like this and not see where his nickname came from was a mark of how dense the man could occasionally be. Momotarou was sniggering. Kyousuke teleported the vase over his head, revelling in the pained squeak that followed.

“Would you calm down already?” he sighed down the line. “Yuugiri predicted that the princess would be murdered and asked to save her. There is no need to be so dramatic about it.”

This finally had Hinomiya fall silent.

“She wanted to save her?” he asked after a while in perfect confusion. “Why?”

The question would have sounded callous coming from Kyousuke, had he voiced it when it had first occurred to him. But for all that Hinomiya pretended to hate normals, he was as sincere about it as when he proclaimed his hate of espers, which was to say not at all. Despite the mistreatments he must have received from both populations, the man was unable to hold a real grudge. The tough guy front and the mistrust he presented to the world only existed to hide a marshmallow heart, and they made a poor disguise. It shouldn’t have made Kyousuke feel so fond of the transparent idiot.

But the point remained: Yuugiri was usually too shy to concern herself with people outside of her makeshift family.

“Who knows?” he hummed.

“You do,” Hinomiya immediately suspected.

“Oh?” he said, amused.

“I can hear it in your voice. Come on, Hyoubu!”

“You are much too tense,” he faux-sighed. “Relax! Yuugiri had never asked for anything but her visits with you. Why refuse? It would make me a poor father. P.A.N.D.R.A. can protect a princess if that’s what it takes to make her happy.”

At that moment, there was a knock on the door. It opened, revealing Princess Sophie, Yuugiri half-hidden behind the skirt of her ballroom dress.

“Excuse me...”

The princess had a considering look in her eyes. How much had she heard?

Momotarou flew over to Yuugiri, plopping himself down on her baseball cap.

“Yuugiri, Mom is on the phone!” he said with glee.

The girl beamed, which didn’t escape Princess Sophie’s notice. She watched as the girl trotted to Kyousuke’s chair, staring at the phone with poorly-concealed envy.

“Andy?”

The princess blinked in surprise at the name. Kyousuke smirked.

“Here, our daughter wants to talk to you.”

He heard a cut-off sound of surprise from the receiver as he passed the phone to her. She carefully wrapped both hands around it.

“Andy? Are you coming to visit?”

The princess approached Kyousuke, looking hesitant.

“You... seem young to be her father...”

“I’m older than I look,” he smirked.

He doubted she believed him, but to her credit, she dropped the subject.

“Then I suppose I should ask for your permission. I have a request,” she said, smiling. “This girl says she rarely gets to play outside, so I would like to show her a bit of my country. If that’s alright with you?”

He turned to Yuugiri.

“The princess is going to show me outside, so you’ve got to come,” she was saying into the phone.

“Even if you say it like that...” he heard Hinomiya’s tiny voice say. “Ah, no, don’t pout!” he added, correctly guessing at the face she was making. “I’m really far away right now and I don’t think you are going to stay in Monarch for long. Are you?”

She looked up at Kyousuke with hope in his eyes. However, Hinomiya was right. The kidnapping had stirred a lot of attention. They would have to leave as soon as the situation was resolved.

Still, he smiled at her.

“How about this? I’ll come with you and the princess. This way the next time we come in Monarch, you and I can show Andy around.”

After a moment of careful consideration, she nodded and handed him the phone back.

“Hyoubu?” Hinomiya said as soon as he had it pressed to his ear. “Are you seriously going to let the princess outside? How can you protect her like that?”

“It’s alright,” he said, turning to the princess who looked back with innocent curiosity. He smirked. “I have an interesting idea.”

“Interesting? Hey, your ‘interesting idea’ had better not put Yuugiri in any danger.”

“Yes yes, Mom. Give me a little credit, please.”

He ended the call. The princess offered him a quizzical smile.

“Your husband?”

Momotarou just about died laughing. He flopped over from Yuugiri’s head and barely caught himself mid-air, convulsing with tears streaming from his eyes.

This time Kyousuke teleported the vase upside down, first drenching him then dropping it on his head.

Chapter Text

Andy liked Japan well enough, he supposed. He had never visited before his rather unorthodox career had become a necessity, but with his heritage this was a country he could easily blend in. Espers and normals were the same as everywhere else, so he could always find work to do.

He avoided Tokyo, though. Their esper-surveillance organisation, B.A.B.E.L., was based there and he had a strong policy of avoiding this type of agencies.

“Tokyo?” he said, stopping dead in the street. His stomach dropped. His hand clenched around the phone. “I thought we had agreed to meet in Nagoya?”

“Something has come up,” Hyoubu said.

Talk about an understatement.

“You mean that huge assault B.A.B.E.L. just led to try and keep the Catastrophe from entering the country?” he drawled. “That kind of something?”

“Oh, so you do watch TV,” Hyoubu teased back, but his voice lacked something. He sounded distracted.

“I don’t see how I could have missed it, it’s been all over the news. Hyoubu... Is everything alright? Why meet in Tokyo? That’s just under B.A.B.E.L.’s nose.”

“You will meet with Yuugiri in Nagoya as planned. Momiji will bring her, so be on your best behaviour.”

“Momiji?” he repeated dumbly. “What about you?”

“I have business in Tokyo. Someone has to oversee the reparations of the Catastrophe.”

Andy opened his mouth without finding anything to say. It all sounded reasonable. The assault had been really over the top, no wonder the Catastrophe would need reparations. But some unknown instinct was screaming at him that something was wrong. Hyoubu was the type to delegate, right? He had never missed a single visit before.

Why was he overthinking this? He would still get to see Yuugiri, and without having to go to Tokyo. It’s not like he could do much if Hyoubu or P.A.N.D.R.A. were in trouble.

It was still hard to choke out an agreement.

When they came to join him, neither Yuugiri nor Momiji showed signs that anything was amiss. He tried to test the waters with Momiji, but she was pretty flippant about the attack.

“I guess it’s a little weird,” she only conceded. “B.A.B.E.L. isn’t usually so insistent. It was touch and go for a while there. We could have used your talents.”

She was smirking, which turned the complaint into a playful little jab, so he let it go.

“And you don’t think that’s something to be worried about?”

“We’ve dealt with B.A.B.E.L. for a while, you know. We can handle them. As long as we have the major with us, we can handle anything.”

“Hyoubu is that strong?” he blinked.

She just smiled. She truly believed in what she was saying.

Andy didn’t doubt Hyoubu’s powers, precisely. He had never really seen them in action, aside from the odd bout of telekinesis or teleportation, but he had to be good to lead an organisation like P.A.N.D.R.A. Still...

“Isn’t it a little too much to rely on one guy like this? He’s only human, you know.”

Momiji’s smile turned into a small and private thing. Yuugiri had stopped to look at a shop display, so, in a hushed voice, she took the opportunity to tell him her story. How war had wrenched her from home and safety when she was just a child and Hyoubu had taken her in, given back to her and others what they had lost: a family.

It touched something in him, and not only because she trusted him enough to confide in him. Part of him vibrated with the story, understood her loss intimately and wished for the comfort she had found since then. It brought back to mind Hyoubu, standing on a beach and offering him a place in that very same family.

His hand clenched around his limiter. Remembering this, it was too easy to understand the way Momiji must see him, the awe and the gratitude. Hyoubu brought people together. He gave them a place, people to care for. He protected them and fought for them.

But did he let them do the same for him?

“Anyway, don’t get your skirts in a ruffle about it, Mom. Daddy is good to us.” Momiji patted his shoulder with a mocking smile.

“I’m not— That’s not— Ugh! I’m too young to be your mother,” he grumbled, red-cheeked.

She laughed, happy that he was playing along for once.

Yuugiri was looking for something, that much was obvious. She tried and discarded so many stores, though, that eventually Andy had to ask. She blushed and looked at her shoes. He hadn’t seen her so shy in months.

“It’s the major’s birthday,” she said in a whisper. “I want to find a present for him.”

“Oh,” he blinked, taken aback. “Well... okay. Can I help?”

 What did you even get the head of an international crime syndicate for his birthday?

“I’ll leave you to it,” Momiji said cheerfully. “I’ve got my own shopping to do. See you here in an hour!”

She waved and disappeared in the crowd before he could beg her for an idea. His shoulders sagged in despair. She knew Hyoubu better than him. Why was she abandoning him to his fate?

He turned back to find two big eyes full of hope staring up at him. He had to fight hard not to let his sudden nerves show.

“Uuuh… Let’s go try that store.”

In retrospect, Andy should have expected it. He had no excuse, really. He knew P.A.N.D.R.A.’s particular brand of insanity by now. And that was what he got for hanging out with teleporters. Still…

“Are you guys making a habit of kidnapping people, now?” he groaned, eyes closed in incredulity, standing stock still in the middle of the Catastrophe’s main hall.

Momiji giggled.

“Don’t be such a downer! It was about time you came aboard anyway.”

He dared to peek around the room. It was a huge space that crossed several decks of the boat, topped off with a glass roof dozens of feet above their heads. From just that little glance, he could tell the Catastrophe was way bigger than he had expected. At the moment, the hall was also brightly lit and lavishly decorated with balloons and banners. A lot of people milled about.

Andy wanted to cringe, but he realized he recognized several of them. Muscle beamed at him from the other side of a long white table groaning under impressive amounts of food, and Patty stopped the little cart she was wheeling around to offer him the blushing, slightly creepy stare she usually had for him. He reluctantly relaxed enough to return everyone’s waves with the hand that wasn’t holding a shopping bag.

As soon as he was done, though, he found himself clutching the limiter.

“You sure Hyoubu won’t mind having me here?”

Sure, he’d been offered a tour of the place by Hyoubu himself, but he hadn’t reiterated the invitation in a while now. What if he had changed his mind?

“You kidding?” Yoh said, popping out of nowhere to prop an elbow on his shoulder. “Finally getting Mom here can totally be our birthday gift.”

“You mean my birthday gift,” Momiji rebuked. “It was my idea, and I’m the one who brought him in.”

“Come on, don’t be stingy!”

While they squabbled, Andy noticed something he had missed in his first look around. At the head of the room, on a raised dais, stood a sumptuous red and gold chair. It couldn’t be called anything but a throne, really.

“Wow, tacky. Don’t tell me Hyoubu sit on that thing?” he asked Yuugiri.

She shook her head, though she offered no more explanation.

“This is the Queen’s throne,” Magi said, approaching him. “Welcome aboard, Hinomiya.”

Well… if even Magi had no problem with his presence, maybe it was really alright.

“Ah… thanks. The Queen?”

“Ho ho… Don’t tell me no one has told you about the Queen of Catastrophe yet?” Yoh gloated, pushing on him with his arm with the smuggest look. “How sad!”

Andy shrugged him off.

“Your face is really annoying me right now…”

“The major is here!” someone yelled.

Immediately, it was a mad scramble as everyone put the finishing touches on whatever they were doing and gathered around the table where Hyoubu was being ushered. Andy only caught glimpses of him as he focused on taking Yuugiri’s hand so they wouldn’t be separated in the chaos. He would have stayed somewhere at the back of the crowd if he hadn’t felt himself being pushed forward.

“Come on, you two! This way!” Momiji said in his ear.

“Uh…”

Despite a new bout of anxiety, he let himself be herded to the head of the table where Hyoubu, sitting right before his birthday cake, was receiving the simultaneous well-wishes of everyone gathered.

“Thank you, everyone,” he said when the clapping had subsided. “It makes me really happy that you put this party together for me.”

He was smiling as wide and sincere as Andy had ever seen on him. He felt himself uncoil a little. Maybe he had truly been reading too much into things.

Then Hyoubu’s eyes fell on him. They betrayed no surprise, though they took a familiar smug glint. Andy sighed in relief and wondered why he had expected anything else.

“So they did manage to get you aboard, uh. I see how it is. You won’t even indulge me on this little favor, but if it’s our sweet little daughter who asks, you can’t say yes fast enough.”

There was a smattering of laughter around the table, even from Momiji. Yuugiri blushed and hid her face behind Andy’s hand, but didn’t bother correcting Hyoubu. Evidently, she had wanted Andy to visit the Catastrophe. She just hadn’t had the courage to ask him yet. Feeling like an idiot, he patted her head in reassurance.

“Major, here.”

Hyoubu was distracted by Magi offering him a paper bag. This marked the start of the gift-giving.

Knowing P.A.N.D.R.A., it should not have come as a surprise that most of them were gag gifts. Even Momiji’s, perfectly nice and serviceable shirts, were treated as if they were. By her reaction, she had expected it, though.

It made Andy feel a little better as he crouched next to Yuugiri.

“Come on, Yuugiri,” he said gently.

Pink-cheeked, she stepped forward. She wouldn’t look Hyoubu in the eyes as she shyly held up a little envelope.

In the end, Yuugiri had been the one to choose her gift. She was a strong-willed little girl, for all that she didn’t appear so, and never appreciated someone making a decision for her. Even Andy’s advice had been met with frank skepticism (not that he blamed her). Objectively, the end result wasn’t much, but Andy wasn’t surprised when Hyoubu knelt in front of her with his first sincere thanks, matching traditional lucky charms in their hands.

“I’ll take good care of it,” he promised her, earning himself a smile.

“It’s your turn, Mom!” Yoh mocked, once more using Andy as a prop.

Startled, Andy pushed him off with a huff. Hyoubu stood up with an expectant smirk.

Thankfully, Andy may be a little oblivious sometimes, but he wasn’t stupid. As soon as Yuugiri had pronounced the words “the major’s birthday”, he had known it would as some point come back to bite him in the ass. Hyoubu was the type to not warn you about the date and then milk your guilt for not having gotten him any present for all it was worth.

So he pushed his shopping bag forward with a wry quirk of the eyebrows. He knew now that he had agonized over what to get for way too long. It would fit right in with the rest.

“Happy birthday, Hyoubu.”

The entire hall seemed to be holding its collective breath. Andy noticed a few people near the back pushing on their feet to better see what was happening. He fought back a blush. His reputation in P.A.N.D.R.A. was getting out of hand.

Hyoubu pushed his hand in the bag and retrieved a “#1 Dad” mug.

Over the sound of everyone’s simultaneous laughter, Hyoubu looked him in the eye with an approving smile.

“Thank you. I will be sure to use it.”

He did. The mug was full of milk the entire evening.

Andy would know: despite being constantly approached by members of P.A.N.D.R.A. eager to talk to him (which, okay, made him feel kind of warm inside), he found his eyes wouldn’t stop straying to Hyoubu. The star of the party wandered from group to group like a shepherd checking on all his charges, always welcomed with open arms.

This curious obsession meant he was the first to notice when Hyoubu quietly left the hall.

Andy turned around to search for Yuugiri. He found her talking to Momiji near the table where she had gone in search of more cake. He took the opportunity to slip away himself.

The Catastrophe really was big.

Thankfully, footsteps echoed in the resounding silence outside the great hall. He followed them up a few flight of stairs and to an open deck. There he found the pool, so often featured in Yuugiri’s stories, and Hyoubu reclining against the balustrade.

When he came nearer, the man tilted his head without taking his eyes off the sky.

“Sneaking around, are you?”

“I remember someone offering me a tour.”

Hyoubu smiled, but didn’t move. Andy hesitated, then came to lean next to him. A few moments passed in silence as they both stared at the stars. Faint noises from the party reached them from below.

“Thank you for coming tonight.”

“I…” Andy said, taken aback. He thought about admitting Momiji hadn’t really given him a choice; the words tangled in his throat.

Hyoubu sounded… wrong, somehow. It sounded stupid even in his head—just because the man was being earnest, for once, didn’t mean something was amiss.

“Yeah, sure.”

He gulped, then decided he might as well take the plunge.

“P… P.A.N.D.R.A. is going to be alright, yeah?”

That got Hyoubu to look down at him, blinking. Andy forced himself not to blush in embarrassment. Hyoubu smirked.

“Are you worried about B.A.B.E.L.? That’s adorable. Don’t fret so much, mom, the kids are perfectly safe.”

He refused to be baited.

“You’re leaving Japan as soon as the reparations are finished, right?”

“I’m afraid so. It’s a shame, too. It had been so long since we had come last. Who knows when we’ll able to come back.”

Hyoubu turned away. It was a perfectly innocuous move, even though it hid his eyes behind his hair. It didn’t mask his lips, though.

Andy didn’t know what it was, but something about that smile froze him to the bones.

He wheeled Hyoubu around. The esper staggered in surprise, wide-eyed. Andy clutched his shoulders.

“Is something wrong, Hyoubu?”

For a long moment they remained frozen, eyes locked together. The whisper of waves washing against the hull twined with the sound of their breathing. Moonlight danced over the pool water.

“P.A.N.D.R.A. will be fine. I will make sure of it.”

The smile had dropped from Hyoubu’s face. His eyes were piercing and his mouth grim. Andy was reminded of the day Yuugiri had come see him with that mark on her arm.

This was the Hyoubu Kyousuke that most of the world feared, he thought. This was the terrorist, the soldier, the man who would level cities to protect his own.

It should have been scary, but the fear didn’t come. He was Yuugiri’s guardian and… and, yes, a friend. Whether or not Hyoubu felt the same way about him.

“If there is anything I can do to help…”

Andy’s limiter clinked when Hyoubu cupped his hand around it. He stared at it for a second, then let it drop.

“There is nothing you can help with.”

The words settled in his chest like cold lead. Andy recoiled, heart in his throat and surprised by his own reaction. His hands slid from Hyoubu’s arms. Hyoubu graced him with a subdued smirk.

“Don’t look so down. You’ll make Yuugiri sad.”

He planted a finger on his forehead and tugged up, as if to erase his frown. With some difficulty, Andy feigned enough humor to huff and step back.

“Come on. This is a party! Do at least try to have some fun,” Hyoubu said.

He turned away and disappeared in the shadows leading to the stairs. Andy’s eyes followed after him with a helplessness he didn’t understand, but hated all the same.

When Andy made it back to the main hall, it was late enough that the kids were being herded to bed despite their half-hearted complaints. Yuugiri in particular had insisted on waiting for him, so he accompanied her to her room and helped her to settle for the night.

“I can show Andy the Catastrophe tomorrow?” she asked, hopeful, while he smoothed the bed sheets over her.

He felt a pang of guilt.

“Sorry,” he said, hating to disappoint her. “I have to leave early tomorrow for a job. But I’ll definitely come back aboard soon, okay? You can show me then.”

She pouted, upset.

“How soon?”

“In a few days if everything goes well. And the Catastrophe will be in better shape by then, right?”

She was slightly mollified by the short delay.

“Promise?”

“Promise. I’ll see you super soon, and you can show me everything.”

He gently petted her hair. She blushed and smiled. He rose.

“Sleep well.”

The party lasted well into the night, but Andy begged off before midnight with the same excuse of an early start.

True to his word, the sun had barely risen the next day when he stepped out of the room he had been lent. He wandered around for a little while, but the Catastrophe’s public areas were deserted. Everyone was apparently sleeping off the evening’s excesses.

Everyone, except a little boy he spotted all of a sudden. He was creeping around a corridor on one of the main floors, looking nervous. Was he not supposed to be out of bed? Andy smiled.

“Hey,” he called, figuring he could get the kid a glass of warm milk or something if he could just show him where the kitchen was.

But his presence badly spooked the boy. He jumped and bolted around a corner.

“Hey, wait!” Andy said. “It’s okay!”

He ran after him, but by the time he reached the intersection, the boy had disappeared. He scratched his head, embarrassed. Good job, Hinomiya.

“Sneaking around?”

It was his turn to jump. He wheeled around, clutching at his chest.

“Hyoubu!”

The man looked as composed as ever. Of course, as far as Andy knew, the only thing he had drunk all evening was a hundred percent non-alcoholic.

“This is a restricted area, you know. It’s rude to go poking around when you’re a guest.”

Hyoubu’s smirk had a curious kind of rigidity to it. Andy heard the warning under the light-hearted jab. He blinked.

“Ah… Sorry. I was looking for Momiji. I don’t know where you guys’ quarters are.”

The esper’s eyebrows rose. He managed to look pitying and amused at the same time.

“You want to wake up a hung over Momiji? You’re braver than I gave you credit for, Hinomiya.”

Damn, he had not thought of that. He groaned.

“She said she’d give me a ride back to Nagoya. If I wait too long, I’ll be lucky if the hotel doesn’t throw my stuff away.”

Hyoubu shrugged.

“I suppose that’s easily done.”

He set a hand on his shoulder. The next second, they were in a small sidestreet in Minato. Nagoya’s harbor was just waking up around them.

“I trust you’ll find your way from here?” Hyoubu asked, putting his hand back in his pocket.

“Uh… yeah,” Andy said, taken aback. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. See you soon, Hinomiya.”

He was gone before Andy remembered to mention the little boy. Figuring it didn’t really matter, he went in search of a taxi.

The very same day, he bought a train ticket back to Tokyo.

All in all, B.A.B.E.L. was harder to infiltrate than Andy had expected, but easier than he had feared.

He knew his past experiences colored his perception of the place. It had taken him four days of observing the place before he had forced himself to admit he had as much info as he was ever going to have. Still, he had expected something… worse.

Like what, he scoffed at himself. Bars at the windows, the screams of espers being experimented on? Even if B.A.B.E.L. was that kind of organization, this was their main headquarters, right at the government’s front door. Not the place you’d choose for shady activities.

The place was strangely deserted. It was late, sure, the sun long since gone under the horizon, but Andy had mostly chosen tonight because of the sudden activity he had seen not an hour ago. Many agents had left in black cars. He hoped the operation didn’t have anything to do with P.A.N.D.R.A., but if it did, he had to trust they would be fine. It was his best occasion to get in, and he wasn’t going to waste it. He just had to be quick and get out before everyone came back.

He finally got the door of the director’s office open. He slid inside and closed it behind him without a sound. A quick glance around showed no security camera. He allowed himself to breathe easier. He hurried to the computer on the desk.

Andy had some hacking knowledge, though he wasn’t an expert. It was necessary with a job like his. He successfully entered the system and searched for anything pertaining to P.A.N.D.R.A.

He hadn’t lied to Yuugiri, he kept telling himself. It was a job, though not his usual kind of job. Certainly, he had never infiltrated such a high profile target for personal reasons before today. He didn’t even have any guarantee that B.A.B.E.L. had the kind of info he needed. Hyoubu had after all been adamant that they posed no problem.

But then, Hyoubu wanted him out of the way.

A password prompt box opened. He told himself that was the reason he was gritting his teeth.

He had found P.A.N.D.R.A.’s files and could open any of them without difficulty, except Hyoubu’s. Of course.

He sighed and investigated the rest. Magi, Momiji and Yoh’s files didn’t reveal anything surprising. He squinted at finding one on Yuugiri. Fear gripped him, but it didn’t contain much; a power chart, and the fact that she had once been an experiment subject in a questionable lab, which he had already gathered from conversations with her. He relaxed and took his finger off the deleting key. Better not to leave any trace that he had been here.

As he closed the file, he noticed a link in the folder. He didn’t know how it had escaped him before. It was red-flagged and marked urgent.

Prediction PD-486 – Probability: IN PROGRESS

He clicked on it.

It took him a few embarrassingly long seconds to understand what he was seeing, like his brain refused to interpret the picture.

When he did, ice froze his heart.

This was the Catastrophe sinking.

Chapter Text

Terror gripped Kyousuke’s heart.

This was his home, his family, his life getting annihilated before his eyes.

Not again, he kept thinking, half-hysterical. Not again.

But the Catastrophe was burning, and as he landed unsteadily on the deck by the pool, his eyes wouldn’t detach from the blood on Magi’s arm.

His children. They were shooting at his children.

In his arrogance, he had thought he could stop this. He was strong, he was canny. He could protect them all, all his kids. He could guard his Queen’s throne for her. It would never have to sink to the bottom of the sea. Her kingdom, their home.

But he was weak after all. He wasn’t in control at all. He had failed, just as his body was failing him.

He didn’t hear Magi calling him until the man – not a child, not anymore – surged to his feet and seized him by the collar.

“Major! Get a hold of yourself! We believe in you!” he screamed, voice breaking halfway through, and this time Kyousuke heard. Magi’s eyes were fury and despair in equal measures.

“Magi…” he breathed.

“If you don’t protect this boat, who will??”

And that was the question, wasn’t it?

It didn’t matter that he was weak. It didn’t matter that he was dying. There was no one else but him.

He had taken them all under his wings, to be shepherded until their Queen found her way to them. Until she came, he was their guardian. They were his responsibility, his to shield from the evils of a world that would hunt them down to extinction.

It didn’t matter that he was tired to the bones of struggling, tired of fighting an uphill battle every day. He was their only hope. He would never betray them, never have them know his fate.

His lips curved in a familiar smirk. He brushed Magi’s hands from his jacket.

“Are you forgetting who you are talking to?”

They looked at him with relief, his precious children.

He would protect them with everything he had left, and if it cost him his life today… he would consider it well-spent.

It took all of Andy’s considerable aptitudes to make it past B.A.B.E.L.’s protective perimeter around the harbor. Were they hoping to hide their attack against the Catastrophe from the general public?

It seemed incredibly useless. Whatever they were doing, although the battle was happening a few miles out of the coast, by the time Andy hotwired a speedboat, it had progressed to the point where blasts of light kept setting the horizon ablaze. He gritted his teeth and tore the boat from the dock, pushing the engine as much as he dared. The roar of it alerted nearby agents. He heard them scream at him to stop, but didn’t turn back.

It didn’t take him long to make out the Catastrophe on the dark waters. It would have been hard to miss given the fire engulfing every deck. His heart skipped a beat.

Then he saw it.

A star was hovering above the Catastrophe.

It pulsed orange and blue and purple, then suddenly grew seven brilliant wings. As Andy squinted, trying to understand what he was seeing, a blast of incredible, eye-searing power burst from it. It rushed ahead, straight at a veritable armada. The ensuing explosions created a new sun right there on the sea.

This amount of destruction was terrifying. He was a speck of dust intruding in a battle between two giants.

And yet Andy blinked the after-image from his eyes and kept a stubborn course for the Catastrophe. Too many emotions for him to name strangling his heart in his chest, he stared at the star. It had gone back to purple now, more flame than celestial presence anymore.

The fire must have reached the Catastrophe’s fuel tanks. Consecutive blasts set off along the ship’s hull, raising huge waves just as Andy neared it. He rode them out the best he could, spluttering against the seawater that drenched him head to toe. He had to believe the others had evacuated. They would have taken care of Yuugiri. There couldn’t be anyone left on the ship… because if there was, he was too late to help, and he couldn’t afford to think something so horrible.

He could see a body in the flame now. The uniform was a confirmation he hadn’t really needed, although it did make his stomach bottom out.

Hyoubu stood suspended in mid-air, one hand reaching for the sky as if to grab the moon from it. He was silhouetted against the glow of dozens of missiles heading straight for him.

Andy heard himself scream his name.

Yet the missiles exploded harmlessly against an invisible shield, one after the other. Andy gaped in awe at Hyoubu’s tense shoulders, these arms so frail in appearance yet strong enough, he could see it now, to bear the weight of the world.

He had been worrying for nothing after all. Hyoubu had it all taken care of. How long had he been holding P.A.N.D.R.A. together before Andy came along? How arrogant he had been to think his help was needed.

Then the purple flame faded. One missile whizzed past Hyoubu, and suddenly, he was falling.

“Hyoubu!!”

Andy gunned the engine, panic clawing at his lungs. He ignored the missiles slamming into the Catastrophe, shredding the hull until the ship cracked in two and began sinking. All it meant was waves, turbulence to ride out as he desperately reached for Hyoubu’s drop point.

The teenage body splashed into the sea and disappeared from view.

Andy didn’t wait for the speedboat to stop. As soon as he got close enough, he dived.

Fire lit the dark waters red. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. To his relief, Hyoubu was still conscious. Though his eyes were hazy, when Andy’s hand clamped on his wrist, they focused on his face. Was it simply exhaustion making him so listless? He couldn’t have begun to guess; by the time he swam they both to the surface, Hyoubu had fainted.

Andy gasped for air. He drew Hyoubu’s arm tighter around his shoulders and looked around.

Flaming debris had invaded the sea around them. In his luck, he had missed most of the fallout from the Catastrophe’s destruction. Spotting his boat a dozen feet away, he swam up to it. Hauling Hyoubu aboard was awkward and would have probably been impossible if the man had weighted more than a drenched kitten. Andy climbed inside himself, boots splashing in the foot or so of water that had found its way aboard. He was doubly lucky it hadn’t outright capsized.

As he persuaded the reluctant engine to start again, he never noticed long white hair and a scuba mask watching him from the water.

It still shouldn’t have surprised him when he docked a few hours later, far away from the city, and had barely stepped a foot on dry ground before a blow dart encountered his neck.

He staggered, clutching the still unconscious Hyoubu tighter against his chest even as dizziness struck. His shoulder met a tree. He turned and let himself slid down it, cradling Hyoubu on his lap.

Silhouettes emerged from the lengthened shadows of a timid sunrise. He glared at them, but is vision was already darkening.

Yes, was his last coherent thought. He really should have expected it. His luck was never that good.

Rain slicked against the manor’s windows. It drowned everything in grey daylight, including the white sheets of Kyousuke’s bed.

It was appropriate that this day, dark and miserable as it had started, would continue this way. At least he had that comfort.

“Tell me, Kyousuke. Why did the Americans use so much violence?”

Kyousuke remained silent, even as the words sparked anew an anger that wouldn’t soon be extinguished.

He remembered the voice he had heard broadcast aboard the Catastrophe, as he was trying to stop their little spy from setting off the device that would end up incapacitating Ihachigo. So familiar, that voice… Yet it should have been impossible. If that man still lived, the man that had betrayed him and left him for dead… if it was him that had robbed him of everything once again, put his family in danger; if it was that man…

He clamped down on the fury that surged, knowing he was in no position to act on it at the moment.

“Are you listening to me, Hyoubu Kyousuke?” Fujiko insisted.

“When are you going to stop playing the big sister?” he snapped back. “We went on our ways a long time ago.”

He hadn’t asked for her help. He didn’t need anything from her, not when she had betrayed their kind and sold their services to scornful normals who would only ever see them as tools.

“I have nothing to tell you.”

A tense silence filled the space between them, underlined by the whispers of the falling rain. Fujiko pushed away from the window. It seemed she was going to leave, but the door slammed open before she could cross the room to it. Sakaki barged in.

“Director!”

Whatever emergency this was, it set off more annoyance than wariness in Fujiko.

“Again?” she exclaimed, exasperated.

Sakaki grimaced in apology.

“He’s very persistent?”

Fujiko whirled on Kyousuke.

“You need to call off your guard dog. We can hardly get anything done with him escaping every five seconds! He should know by now that he won’t get far anyway.”

Kyousuke’s heart tripped, but he only smiled.

“A dog? I hardly see what you mean, Fujiko.”

“You know exactly what I mean. I don’t know where he came from, given he’s not in our files, but you certainly got him loyal enough already.”

He would have answered, but at that moment he became aware of three well-known presences approaching.

“Hello, Queen,” he said as Kaoru, Shiho and Aoi piled inside, bumping a gaping Sakaki out of the way. “You came to see me? It makes me so happy.”

 “What are you three doing here?” Fujiko exclaimed.

Kaoru glanced at her, but just as she was turning to Kyousuke, she did a double-take.

“Director!”

The window behind Fujiko burst open. Before she could turn, a dark red form slammed into her, pushing her to the ground. Hinomiya crouched over her and held a gun to her head, silently daring Sakaki and the horrified girls to do anything about it.

“Where did he get that gun?” Sakaki asked in shock.

“It’s mine,” Minamoto’s voice answered. He appeared in the doorway, breathless and clutching at his arm with a pained grimace.

“Minamoto!” Kaoru yelled in worry, rushing to his side.

He blinked at her and the two other girls in surprise.

“Where did you guys come from? You should be in Tokyo!”

If Kaoru heard the question, she didn’t deem it worthy of an answer. Instead she puffed up, predictably upset by Minamoto’s injury.

“Alright, buster!” she said, turning back to Hinomiya and his hostage. “You are done.”

She unleashed a wave of kinetic energy. The shock and dismay on everyone’s face when it vanished uselessly around Hinomiya was more than enough to sooth Kyousuke’s bitterness at this display of his Queen’s usual priorities.

Rainwater was quickly drenching the carpet under the window. It had flattened Hinomiya’s hair, added a new shine to his red leather jacket and plastered his pants to his butt and thighs. No one had thought to take his limiter from him and it hung beneath his chest, catching the light with a wet shine. He wore the same look on his face than that evening they had first met, as a possible foe stood between him and Yuugiri. He was the loveliest view Kyousuke had seen in a long time.

Fujiko regained her wits the fastest. Her face creased as she tried to use her powers, to absolutely no avail. Dismayed, she struggled, but Hinomiya had her solidly immobilized with an arm behind her back.

“You…! What are you doing to me?”

Kyousuke chuckled, getting everyone’s attention back to himself before Kaoru could realize Hinomiya’s abilities wouldn’t stop an object launched at him.

“Oh, that dog! You should have said.”

“Kyousuke,” Kaoru said, angry and frightened. “Stop him! He’s going to hurt her!”

“And what makes you think this has anything to do with me, Queen?”

“Queen?” he heard Hinomiya whisper, blinking at him and Kaoru in confusion.

As Kaoru faltered, Minamoto took a step forward. He froze when Hinomiya nudged the gun in warning.

“Cut the crap, Hyoubu. We had to pry you from his grip. We know he’s P.A.N.D.R.A.”

Hinomiya blinked but otherwise did not react. Kyousuke, however, wouldn’t let the misunderstanding stand. Hinomiya didn’t need to get any more involved in P.A.N.D.R.A.’s mess than he already was.

“He is not.”

“But!” Kaoru spluttered as they all stared in surprise. “He’s got the same symbol as your brooch around his neck!”

“So what? I can’t give a gift to a friend?”

Fujiko had twisted to look over her shoulder at Hinomiya’s face and pendant. After Kyousuke had used his limiter in front of his Queen, no doubt they were finally figuring out why they hadn’t noticed Hinomiya’s abilities earlier.

“Friend?” Kaoru repeated.

Or maybe they were stuck on something else. Kyousuke would have been insulted that him having a friend outside of P.A.N.D.R.A. appeared so improbable to them, but he couldn’t be bothered. He was tired and his entire body ached like a giant bruise.

“Hyoubu?”

Hinomiya was looking at him, questions in his eyes. He supposed the conversation must have sounded strange to someone expecting to find him sequestered somewhere. Kyousuke smiled blandly and pointed at the foot of his bed.

“Heel.”

Hinomiya looked exasperated, but took the hint. He rose to his feet, sliding the gun to the back of his waistband in the same motion, and stepped to the bed.

“Not actually a dog,” he grumbled as Sakaki rushed to Fujiko to help her climb to her feet. “How are you? What did they do to you?”

He glared suspiciously at everyone else in the room.

“Hey, we are trying to help, buddy,” Fujiko retorted. “Back off.”

“Help?” Andy scoffed.

He set a hand on Kyousuke’s shoulder. The gesture was protective, and Kyousuke would have brushed it off and snarked something about his motherly urges, but he stiffened instead. The invasive pain he felt everywhere had dulled, as if smothered by a blanket.

Hinomiya glanced at him in surprise.

“Ah, sorry.”

He reached for his limiter, but Kyousuke caught his wrist.

“No, don’t.”

He sank back against his pillows, boneless with relief. Now that it hurt less, he thought he might be able to rest, and his body liked the idea so much not even the perspective of his Queen seeing him so weak could persuade him to stay upright. Hinomiya’s eyes darkened in worry.

“Are you injured? Ill? Seriously, Hyoubu, if it hurts you don’t need a headache on top of it.”

He liked the faint headache much more than he liked the feeling of his organs failing. But he would never be so cruel as to say so in front of his clueless Queen… or Hinomiya and his marshmallow heart, for that matter.

“Sit,” he said instead, waving a careless hand to the side of the bed.

The dog joke was this time answered with Hinomiya’s fist colliding with the wall above his head.

“Dammit, Hyoubu!” he yelled, leaning above the bed so he had no choice but to look him in the eye. “Tell me what’s going on! I’m not one of your flock. You don’t need to protect me! I can damn well protect myself!”

In the heavy silence that followed, Kyousuke felt the weight of everyone else’s rapt attention on them. He wouldn’t look at them, however. His eyes were locked with Andy’s, with the anger and the fear so earnestly displayed there.

“You’re the one they call Mom!” Fujiko exclaimed in surprise.

Hinomiya’s focus was sufficiently hijacked. He straightened, flustered, the beginning of a blush darkening his cheeks.

“Uh?” he said in perfect unison with Kaoru, Aoi and Shiho.

“That’s right!” Sakaki crowed in glee. “We have a file on that person everyone in P.A.N.D.R.A. calls Mom, but we never could figure out who she was. Well, no wonder! We were looking for the wrong gender all along!”

He burst in laughter. The girls’ lips were twitching in incredulous hilarity and Fujiko looked smug. Andy glared at all of them, then at Kyousuke, face as flaming red as his jacket.

“Seriously?!”

He shrugged with a smirk.

“Don’t look at me. You outed yourself.”

“Ou…? Are you…? I…”

Hinomiya’s hands balled into fists and he closed his eyes, taking deep breaths in an obvious attempt to regain his composure.

“What happened to the Catastrophe? Is everyone else safe?”

Kyousuke’s smile faded.

“I don’t know.”

When Andy’s eyes returned to his face, searching for the truth of his words, he added:

“I put Magi and Yoh in charge of evacuating. They should be fine, but I haven’t heard from them.”

Obviously, he didn’t add. Fujiko was hardly naïve enough to allow him access to a phone so he could call reinforcements and escape her surveillance.

“We can contact them for you, if you like,” she offered, right on track.

And give B.A.B.E.L. any mean of tracking what was left of P.A.N.D.R.A.? Even Hinomiya scoffed.

“I’ll do it myself, thanks.”

“I can’t let you do that,” she returned.

There was a tense stand-off. They would have taken Hinomiya’s phone too, of course. Hinomiya’s eyes narrowed, and this time the anger coiling around his shoulders had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with something far more lethal.

“Are you ‘trying to help’ or not? Make up your mind, because you’re going to have to do way better at keeping me a prisoner if you want to stop me from making that phone call.”

“Why are you more worried than Kyousuke? You’re not even a member of P.A.N.D.R.A.,” Kaoru pointed out with her customary bluntness.

“Mom,” Shiho said in a stage whisper, and Aoi sniggered.

“My girl was on that boat,” Andy growled, and if Kyousuke’s heart melted a little at hearing him finally give words to his relationship with Yuugiri, well, that was his business.

Kaoru, Aoi and Shiho exchanged awkward glances. Everyone turned to Fujiko. Under the weight of their combined stares, she finally yelled in exasperation:

“Oh, all right! Make that damn phone call. But we’ll be watching you, and if any member of P.A.N.D.R.A. turns up here, we won’t be as lenient. Got it?”

“That’s fine,” Andy said without even glancing at Kyousuke. And damn him if that wasn’t some superb trust that the both of them would be more than sufficient to make their way out when it became necessary, even though he still had no clue why Kyousuke was bedridden.

Oh, Kyousuke thought as his heart gave another twinge. Maybe he was in a little too deep.

Then Andy moved to get to the door Minamoto was holding open for him, and the twinge became less of a turn of phrase and much more painful. Taken by surprise, he let a grunt escape and Andy froze.

“Kyousuke?” his Queen asked, running to his bedside in worry. Aoi and Shiho clustered around the foot of the mattress.

He carefully breathed through the returned pain.

“Hyoubu?” Andy said.

“I’m fine,” he answered with a measure of his usual poise. “Get going already.”

Instead, Andy took a step back in his direction. Kyousuke couldn’t stop himself from taking a deeper breath, and Hinomiya, who apparently chose the most inconvenient of times to become observant, noticed. He blinked in surprise, then glanced at the girls gathered around him, considering. He came back at his side, opposite to Kaoru who was watching him warily.

“Hinomiya…” Kyousuke started in annoyance.

“You’re safe here?” he was cut off. It was asked in a near whisper, even though there was no way anyone in the room could miss it.

Kyousuke pursed his lips. He knew the answer to that, though he had no desire to admit it out loud. Why was it that Hinomiya always had to complicate matters?

“Safe enough,” he groused, earning himself a smile from the girls and Fujiko. “Stop hovering.”

Hinomiya did nothing of the sort, instead leaning over the bed to steal the hand his Queen was holding.

“Hey!” Kaoru complained.

He caught Kyousuke’s eyes, frowning.

“You seriously have to explain.”

Then his left eye, the golden one, lit up. Kaoru gasped and leaned away. Kyousuke watched with interest, happily surprised, but nothing seemed to happen. Only, when Andy let him go a second later and stepped away, the pain didn’t return.

Kyousuke examined his hand with curiosity.

“Uh.”

Hinomiya wasn’t gone for long. Kyousuke barely had a few minutes of dodging the girls’ questions about his health — and Fujiko’s increasingly pointed inquiries on Hinomiya himself — when he barged back in, pale.

“They’ve got Yuugiri,” he said.

The chatter in the room ceased. Kyousuke straightened, his face closing, his heart going cold. He forced himself to keep breathing.

“Everyone else?”

“Fine,” Andy said, voice clipped.

He made his way back to the bed, and his eyes were heavy with anger.

“Yoh wouldn’t say anything about the attack. Who is it, Hyoubu? Who has my girl?”

Kyousuke pressed his lips together. Did he have any right to keep that information from him? He hated that Hinomiya was already so deeply involved, and now…

He scoffed to himself. Who was he kidding? Now there would be no keeping him in the dark. If it came to this, Hinomiya would put himself in danger just to get the information he would refuse him. He should have insisted to make the call himself.

“They are called the USEI,” he started reluctantly, and then cut himself off when Andy reeled back, wide-eyed.

“The USEI?!”

Kyousuke squinted in sudden realization.

“You grew up in the USA. What do you know of them?”

He threw back the covers and stood up, all thoughts of keeping Hinomiya out of this forgotten. That reaction couldn’t have been brought about by simple hearsay of the organization. He cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner.

Hinomiya gasped when he clutched the lapels of his jacket and yanked him closer.

“Your military file says your esper power never manifested,” Kyousuke growled. “But you’re completely unable to keep it turned off without a limiter. There is no way the Americans are that dense. Your file was tampered with.”

“Kyousuke,” Fujiko tried to butt in.

“Stay out of this,” he hissed, glaring at her with livid green eyes. “Get out.”

“Kyousuke!” Kaoru protested.

Minamoto was bracing to intervene, no doubt physically knowing the unsubtle lout, when Hinomiya, head down, muttered:

“Some privacy would be good.”

B.A.B.E.L.’s elite exchanged glances. They filed out of the room one by one and closed the door behind them.

Only when they were gone did Kyousuke realize he might have made a mistake. Weak-hearted fool that he was, he had allowed Hinomiya to muzzle what little power his body was still able to put out. Hinomiya hadn’t needed Minamoto to step in. If he wanted to remove Kyousuke, he was more than fit enough to do it.

But he only rested his hands on his wrists, not yet pushing them away.

“It’s true. I know the USEI. They are the reason I fled my country like a coward.”

Kyousuke’s fists clenched even tighter.

“Tell me everything.”

He nodded without looking at him.

“You’re right. Of course the military knew about my power. Back at camp I couldn’t go a single day without one of the espers giving me shit about it. Eventually the constant tensions between me and every other recruit became too much and… I was cast out.”

His mouth became a bitter line.

“Never mind that I was better than most of them put together,” he whispered with more rage than he had accustomed Kyousuke to hearing. Evidently, the wound had never healed.

Hinomiya sighed explosively.

“The USEI found me then. They wanted to offer me a job. They kept saying things like wanting to use esper abilities to better the world, that my ability was a gift… that I had my place in this world.”

It was like a red veil fell over Kyousuke’s mind. He was distantly aware of shoving Hinomiya against a wall.

“His name!”

“Hyoubu?” Hinomiya gasped.

“The man who told you all this. Give me his name!”

“I don’t… I don’t know it! He never introduced himself.”

Kyousuke’s heart pounded in his head. He had to know… he had to know!

“He was an old man,” Hinomiya added hesitantly. “Wearing glasses. Japanese… yet probably a boss of some kind in the USEI, because the other guy was deferring to him. He said he got his scars during the last war…”

White noise obscured anything else he may have said. Kyousuke’s power strained, struggling to bubble over despite his exhaustion and Hinomiya’s bounds. He couldn’t feel the weakness of his body anymore, nor the cold floor beneath his feet or Hinomiya’s wet jacket clenched in his fingers. There was only the rage.

“Sao… tome!” he spat.

His vision darkened. He never felt himself hit the ground.

Chapter Text

From the monitor in the surveillance booth, Andy watched the two sleeping forms in the dark infirmary room. Kaoru, the red-haired esper girl, was conked out on the second bed. Earlier, she had volunteered to give Hyoubu some of her blood.

That girl was still a mystery to Andy. Actually, everyone in the building was. Here were B.A.B.E.L.’s best and brightest, including their prized espers The Children, and the most powerful of them had just a few hours ago willingly bled for a known terrorist. There was also the fact that Hyoubu kept calling her “Queen”. Like the Queen Magi and Yoh had been talking about… the one the Catastrophe had been named after?

He could have broken his brain trying to figure that one out, but in all actuality he was giving it little thought. First and foremost in his mind was the fact that no one would tell him why the hell Hyoubu had needed that blood transfusion in the first place.

He clenched his fists. He could still feel the weight of Hyoubu’s body as he had collapsed against him.

That Hyoubu had lost consciousness after his incredible display out at sea was nothing unexpected, he supposed. It could have been simple exhaustion. But the relief with which he had reacted to Andy’s nullifying ability, the way everyone here treated him like glass, and that new fainting spell…

When had he started caring so much? Hyoubu had begun as a simple mean to an end. He was Yuugiri’s guardian where Andy couldn’t be. They had an understanding, a deal. The girl was the only thing that brought them together.

But now… here he was, and his heart was ripping in two. Yuugiri needed him. He had to go after her, to get her out of the USEI’s clutches. But his feet wouldn’t move. As long as he didn’t know that Hyoubu would be okay, he was rooted to the spot. Unable to sleep, he had slipped out of his “guest room” and sneaked in here just to check that Hyoubu was still breathing. The guy he had found watching the monitors lay on the ground, out cold.

Shaking his head to himself, he sighed and straightened. He might as well go back and try to catch a few hours of shut-eye. He wasn’t doing himself any favor fretting like this. If anyone at P.A.N.D.R.A. heard about it, they would have a field day.

He was about to turn away when he did a double-take at the screen. The form in Hyoubu’s bed was moving.

Hyoubu sat up and spent a long time looking at Kaoru. Hinomiya could only imagine what he was thinking, watching that girl barely older than Yuugiri sleep. To someone like Hyoubu, they must all have seemed like children.

Hyoubu got up. Andy nodded to himself and silently let himself out.

By the time Hyoubu teleported, fully dressed, to the tree-line in front of his window, Andy was waiting. He turned the key in the ignition. The headlights of his stolen car came on, pointed straight at that black uniform that would have otherwise blended in the night.

Hyoubu threw an arm in front of his face, grimacing. When he recovered enough to recognize who was at the wheel, he stared. His eyes were intense, even in the less than ideal lighting. Andy’s stomach twisted, just a little.

“Get in,” he said, aiming for bored nonchalance.

Instead of complying, Hyoubu stood his ground and sank his hands in his pockets. Looking at him, one would have thought they had all the time in the world.

The silence stretched, became uncomfortable. Despite himself, Andy fidgeted.

“You owe me the end of that story, I think.”

He scowled to hide his relief.

“Not my fault you fainted before I could finish.”

If he was expecting an explanation, he was disappointed.

Hyoubu came closer, removing himself from direct light, and leaned against the opposite car door. Andy turned the headlights off. The moon was clear enough to still see Hyoubu’s eyes as twin will o’ the wisps, trained uncompromisingly on Andy’s face.

He sighed.

“Those two guys… I can’t deny their offer was tempting. It was… everything I had wanted, what they were offering. A place I could belong. A job only I could do. A way to be useful, to prove myself. But… I don’t know. That guy, the one whose name you wanted to know… he was kind of giving me the creeps. Maybe it was the scars… I started to say that I wanted time to think about it. Then the other guy became… insistent. And the more he pushed, the more I wanted to get out of there. The old man got him to shut up and agreed to leave me a few days to make my decision.

“But that night, I realized that they had set people to watch me around my hotel room. I called the number they had given me, yelled at them for breaching my privacy. They said the surveillance was just there for my protection.”

He scoffed.

“I… I guess that’s the point where I freaked out. They were being so patronizing, so… And I sat down and I realized for the first time the kind of damage I could do if someone tried to use me against innocent espers. So… I ran. And they chased me. And that’s when I knew I had to get the hell out of the country.”

He spread his hands over the wheel in a voilà kind of gesture.

“So I did. And I’ve been running ever still. I’ve had a couple close calls over the years, that’s how I know they still haven’t given up.”

He fell silent. Hyoubu hummed, threw his head back to look at the stars.

“They will have fiddled with your records to make sure no other country would take an interest in you,” he mused.

Andy nodded, even knowing that he wouldn’t see him. A few minutes passed. The wind whistled in the tree branches nearby.

Hyoubu suddenly chuckled. Andy glanced at his back, startled.

“Normals will never cease to amaze me.”

He looked small, suddenly. Was it Andy’s imagination that made his breath sound labored?

“Hyoubu…”

He reached out as if in a dream, leaned over the passenger seat. His hand came to rest on Hyoubu’s back, flat against the soft black fabric. He felt the muscles stiffen under his palm. Hyoubu turned just enough for one single brilliant eye to focus on him. Andy’s tongue tangled in his mouth, wanting so badly to use another name, yet stopped by the utter impropriety of it.

Kyousuke.

The moment was broken by the wail of an alarm system.

“Ah,” Andy said dumbly. “I guess the guard woke up.”

The window facing them on the second floor slammed open.

“Kyousuke!” Kaoru shouted.

Without hesitation, she stepped on the windowsill and jumped down.

“Oi,” Andy said, alarmed, but she landed without so much as a sprained ankle.

“My queen,” Hyoubu returned, unruffled, as she ran up to him.

“Don’t do this! Stay!”

Hyoubu closed his eyes.

“What you are asking from me is impossible, Queen.”

“It doesn’t have to be! Kyousuke… We can do this together. Wouldn’t you be happier like this? Please!”

“I am glad that you care so much, truly. But if I don’t fight for my comrades, if I do nothing while that man still lives, I will no longer be myself.”

Tears sprang in Kaoru’s eyes. Despite their strange circumstances, it was obvious she cared about Hyoubu, and he returned it with an odd kind of devotion.

Andy turned away, feeling like he was intruding just by being there. But the movement had the opposite effect from the one intended as it brought Kaoru’s attention to him.

“You! You’re his friend. Tell him he has to stop!”

“Uh?” he said, confused.

“Queen.”

“If Kyousuke keeps using his powers… what will happen to all of us that he leaves behind?” she pleaded.

“Kaoru,” Hyoubu said, and his tone brooked no argument.

She was crying in earnest now. Hyoubu sighed.

Andy heard nothing of the short conversation that followed. He felt like some icy incorporeal hand had reached into his chest, found his heart and squeezed. No one would tell him what was happening to Hyoubu… but he wasn’t stupid.

Hyoubu hoisted himself up onto the passenger seat. Andy started the car and drove away in autopilot. In the rearview mirror he saw Kaoru collapse in the grass, sobbing, just as Minamoto came running around the manor’s corner. The man gathered her in his arms. He looked up for a second and his eyes met Andy’s.

He turned back to the road.

They left the manor grounds in heavy silence. When the trees began to thin out around the car, Andy found the strength to say:

“I could help.”

Could he help? Sure, his ability had seemed to bring Hyoubu relief earlier. But the only reason it had worked was Hyoubu was still weak from the incredible feats he had displayed to protect the Catastrophe. The power Andy had seen him wield on that day… how could he ever hope to cancel something so godlike?

But he could try. Even a little support was better than nothing, right?

Hyoubu leaned forward to fiddle with the radio.

“Help with what?” he said, flippant.

And then he turned the radio on and the volume up, neatly ending the conversation.

Andy swallowed with difficulty. His throat hurt with too many emotions he didn’t want to name.

Hyoubu was heading to battle, and he would never permit himself being weak when his people were at stake. Andy knew that about him if he knew nothing else. Whether or not his powers were putting his life in danger, as long as he had them, if the need presented itself, he would use them. And Andy couldn’t stop him. Hyoubu had made his choice, and who was he to try and deny him this? Nobody, that’s who. He hadn’t even listened to the girl he called “Queen”.

Andy jabbed the radio’s power button, returning them to abrupt silence. Hyoubu turned, flint in his eyes.

“With that Saotome guy,” Andy snapped, effectively cutting short whatever harsh rebuke was coming.

Hyoubu stared at him for long enough that he nearly regretted opening his mouth.

“I see Fujiko was feeling chatty.”

He gave a stiff shrug. She had told him plenty about Hyoubu’s past alright, about the war and the special USP unit and how it had all ended in blood and flames, and he was grateful to her for it. Certainly Hyoubu wouldn’t have talked himself, and he felt like he understood him better now. But he would have rather she mentioned Hyoubu’s present, too.

“I’d rather have heard it from you,” he said, a pointed barb in his voice.

Hyoubu smiled with amusement, the bastard.

“Those are old stories, Hinomiya. They shouldn’t have been of any concern to you.” His smile faded abruptly. “Until the dead had the bad taste to come back and haunt the living, I suppose.”

Andy scoffed.

“Cut the crap, Hyoubu. I don’t need a psychology degree to tell that what happened back then made you into the person you are today. I just wish…” He groaned in frustration, but still muttered: “Friends are supposed to tell each other this kind of stuff, aren’t they?”

Hyoubu had better not give him any crap for this. He was the one who had first used the F word. But the man only shrugged, unconcerned.

“Would you have told me about fleeing your country?” he returned.

Andy didn’t have to think long.

“… Yeah. At some point, it would probably have come up.”

Hyoubu stared at him.

“What? What’s with that look?” Andy blustered, hating that he was feeling himself blush. “I have no reason to hide it from you. Get me tipsy enough and I tend to whine about how much I miss decent hamburgers anyway.”

Hyoubu laughed.

“You sure are earnest, uh?”

He made to pat his hair. Andy batted his hand away, pink-cheeked.

“Damn it Hyoubu, not a dog!”

Alan Walsh’s house was surprisingly suburban.

Andy didn’t know what he had been expecting for the home of one of the major officers of a secretive government agency, exactly, but it was not a dull, square two-storied building identical to all the other ones in the street. Or maybe blending in was precisely the name of the game.

“We should be coming too,” Yoh whined for the umpteenth time.

Andy glanced imploringly at Hyoubu, but the man was still ignoring him. Given Hyoubu’s failing health, Andy had made the executive decision to call the rest of P.A.N.D.R.A. for backup. He had done it without Hyoubu’s knowledge or consent and was now paying for it in the form of ostensible pouts and moody silences. How a man old enough to have fought in the Second World War could pull off the teenager act so well was beyond Andy.

“I already told you,” he sighed, exasperated. “It’s better if the USEI thinks you guys are still weakened and scattered.”

“Then why do you get to show up with the old man?” Momotarou argued.

“Because Walsh knows me and my presence will distract him. Are you two making me repeat everything on purpose or are you really this scatterbrained?”

Yoh opened his mouth, ready to fire a hot retort (which was unfortunately not too much of a turn of phrase when he was concerned).

“Settle down Yoh, Momotarou” Magi cut in from the driver seat. “We stick to the plan.”

The young man grumbled to himself, but sank down in the passenger seat and crossed his arms, Momotarou sniffing on his shoulder.

Too many big babies in this car, Andy decided. Rolling his eyes, he popped his door open.

“Well, we are off,” he said, nodding to Magi in thanks.

He grabbed Hyoubu’s arm and dragged him out with him, not listening to his yell of protest. Momiji followed, giggling.

Hyoubu managed to wrench himself from his grip halfway across the street — or rather, Andy consented to let him go. Not much muscle in that biceps, he observed absently.

“You have all the manners of an ape,” Hyoubu huffed, brushing himself off.

“This from a guy who keeps offering me sugar for treats.”

“Now now, boys,” Momiji chided.

Night was falling. They stopped in the shadow of the house and Momiji teleported them inside a dark living room. Hyoubu perched himself on the round coffee table while Andy and Momiji checked that the house was as empty as it had seemed from the outside.

“All clear,” Andy said when they reconvened with Hyoubu.

“Me too,” Momiji said. “Well, this is me leaving… Oh, wait! I nearly forgot.”

She dug in her pocket. In the darkness, it took Andy some time to recognize the object she held out to him with sad, solemn eyes. He might have let out a sound, but it was drowned out by Hyoubu’s angry hiss. With a trembling hand, he reached for the familiar baseball cap. Momiji deposited it on his palm. He turned it over, examining it, then put it on.

It had been his originally, but it felt wrong now. It should have adorned Yuugiri’s head. He would hold on to it for her, he decided.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

Momiji nodded with a cheerless smile and teleported out.

Andy turned to Hyoubu. As usual in the twilight, his green eyes seemed to catch what little light there was and shone all the more brilliantly for it. They were trained on Andy.

“You done pouting?”

The man scoffed and looked away.

Andy sighed and let himself sink into the nearby couch.

“Look, I know you wanted this whole thing to be you as the lone avenger going after Saotome, and you only let me tag along because of Yuugiri. But he has all the power of the USEI and the US military behind him. And how do you think everyone in P.A.N.D.R.A. feels when you won’t involve them in this kind of heavy stuff? The Catastrophe was their home too.”

He had heard the relief in Yoh’s voice when he had called him, the impatience to do something, anything to even the scales.

“They shouldn’t have to get dragged in the issues of my past.”

“You didn’t hear me babbling about it, did you? But you should let them take care of you sometimes, Hyoubu. Being a family goes both ways.”

Hyoubu stared at him without answering. When it became apparent he wouldn’t say anything else, Andy meandered away. He looked around the living room, but there wasn’t much in terms of entertainment. Even the personal items were kept to a minimum. There was a TV, but turning it on would have been a dead give-away to their presence.

He was getting very bored when he heard the sound of a car approaching. He stilled and listened. When the headlights came close enough to be seen from the windows, he ducked in the corridor and hid in the corner under the staircase. Hyoubu would do as Hyoubu wished, as usual.

The front door opened and closed. There was a rustle, then footsteps. The lights came on in the living room.

“Yo,” he heard Hyoubu say, casual as you please.

Rolling his eyes, Andy moved silently.

“So you are still alive,” Walsh said after a beat, remarkably composed.

The click of Andy’s gun against the back of his head alerted him to his presence behind him. This time Walsh’s eyes widened when he managed to catch a glimpse of his face.

“You!”

“Me.”

You had to give it to the guy, he was good at what he did. It only took him a second to erase all traces of his surprise.

“We had some reports placing you in contact with P.A.N.D.R.A., but to think you would outright ally yourself with a terrorist organization… I suppose we were wrong about the kind of man you are. It’s just as well we never recruited you.”

“You have some nerve,” Andy scoffed. “Recruited? Don’t you mean kidnapped? I can’t believe that you could even dare to claim the morale high ground after all the shit you pull…”

“You do know that P.A.N.D.R.A. obliterated an entire city block in Venezia a few months ago?” Walsh cut him off. “Yes… That man just in front of you, to be exact. There were victims by the dozens.”

Andy froze. He had heard about the event, of course, and strongly suspected P.A.N.D.R.A.’s involvement even then, aware that they were in the country. He hadn’t liked it but had said nothing. It wasn’t his place to question P.A.N.D.R.A.’s business, especially Hyoubu’s, he knew.

But that was months ago, before he grew closer to all of them, before that evening on the Catastrophe. Before he began, just a little, to understand Hyoubu.

He was surprised at the difference it made. He searched Hyoubu’s eyes, wanting confirmation that the reminder had the very least affected him, but his face had become unreadable.

An elbow slammed in Andy’s mid-section. He cursed his distraction as Walsh wrenched the gun out of his grip.

There was a gunshot.

The bullet stopped just before Hyoubu’s chest. It spun there for a moment before dropping to the ground. Hyoubu looked unmoved, but Andy knew the effort had to have cost him. He jerked the gun out of Walsh’s hand with great prejudice.

The man didn’t bother resisting. He had gone pale and sweaty, staring at Hyoubu with something like horror.

“So the reports of your power weren’t exaggerated.”

He sneaked a pained look at Andy, who blinked without understanding.

“Thinking you could use us against each other? That’s just like normals,” Hyoubu scoffed.

Of course. Walsh didn’t know about his limiter, didn’t know that Andy wasn’t countering Hyoubu at all right now. What he had done back at the manor had long since faded. He resisted the urge to fiddle with the pendant, instead pointedly aiming the gun at Walsh’s back.

“Where is Yuugiri?”

“Who?” he arched an eyebrow. “Oh… the girl?”

“Yes, the girl,” Andy ground out. “I swear if you hurt her…”

“Is that why you allied with espers? I supposed she looks just like an innocent child, if you can’t see through to her real nature…”

He nudged the gun against his back in warning. Walsh paused, then sighed.

“Very well. I will take you there.”

“A wise decision,” Hyoubu said.

Of course, it all went to hell.

By the time they were deep in the federal base and Walsh turned on them, Andy had been so tense he was nearly relieved. He had expected it from the start, but he had at least hoped that they could find Yuugiri. No such luck: she was long gone before they made it there.

He listened as Hyoubu, rage well concealed in his heart, talked with the disembodied voice of Saotome Eiji that came to them from speakers around the room. He watched as a projector came to life and images appeared on the wall.

“This is… the future?” he said, numb from surprise.

These were flashes of destruction, of fire and death, of war. Espers running rampant through the streets, turning the world to ashes.

It… it couldn’t be their future. It wasn’t. Andy was just beginning to reconcile his two dueling natures. He couldn’t believe it would ever come to this point, where espers would set out to destroy normals.

“We won’t remain passive, waiting for this future to happen,” Saotome was saying. “In order to protect humanity, we need to rewrite it.”

The image changed once more. For the first time, Hyoubu reacted.

It was a red-haired woman standing atop a burning building. It took some time for Andy to recognize her. He had only seen the girl a handful of times before, and she was still a good few long years from turning into this slender, confident woman.

But there was no denying it: it was Kaoru.

“What is it that you call her? Oh, right, the Queen of Catastrophe,” Saotome drawled. “She will also disappear from that future.”

The pieces of the puzzle finally assembled before Andy’s eyes. It wasn’t the girl Hyoubu had sworn loyalty to, but the woman in that prediction. Whatever her role was in the future depicted here, it had marked Hyoubu for life. It was her the empty throne of the Catastrophe had been waiting for.

But now the throne had sunk to the bottom of the sea, and the USEI would have the Queen herself disappear too.

“I won’t allow it!” Hyoubu snarled, eyes glowing, and the projector collapsed in a shower of sparks.

Andy winced. Although he was wearing his limiter, ECM lined the room’s ceiling. What was the idiot doing, wasting his power for something so trivial?

But then a swarm of hovering robots invaded the room and Andy was fervently grateful he had already noted the ECM’s positions. One bullet, two, and Hyoubu’s shield flickered to life even as he threw himself at Andy, pushing them both to the ground. The robots fired. Walsh collapsed.

Andy used his last bullet to bust the door’s lock and hurried out of the room, Hyoubu’s arm thrown over his shoulders as the man stumbled in exhaustion. The robots followed.

“See why backup was a good idea?” he panted, throwing himself in an adjoining corridor.

Hyoubu humphed, even as he slipped his phone from his pocket and pressed a few buttons. Seconds later, they heard distant explosions. The hoverbots hesitated, their lights flickering in confusion as they received contradictory orders. Andy took the opportunity to slip in a nearby room. He propped Hyoubu behind a console and dropped beside him to catch his breath.

“We need to get to the upper level for Momiji to teleport us out,” Hyoubu said.

“Are they waiting for us there?”

“They’ll have trouble getting in as long as the ECM are active.”

“So get up there, take care of the ECM. Alright.”

He peeked around the console, trying to hear what was going on in the corridor. The room had another door. Should they try that one instead?

“Hinomiya.”

“Uh?”

Hyoubu wasn’t looking at him.

“After we get Yuugiri back… it’d be better if you distanced yourself from P.A.N.D.R.A.”

Andy opened his mouth for a vehement protest, then closed it with an audible snap.

“This is about Venezia, isn’t it?”

Hyoubu didn’t answer, which was as good as an agreement. Andy sat back, sighing.

“What happened back there?”

“What does it matter?” he snapped. “This is what we do, Hinomiya. If you have a problem with it, you shouldn’t be in contact with us.”

“I doubt this is something you do regularly,” Andy forged on, ignoring this blatant attempt to get him to drop the matter. “And certainly not without good reason.”

“Oh?” Hyoubu laughed, contempt clear in his voice. “Good reason? And what do you call ‘good reason’? What makes you think you know me so well?”

He cringed at the reminder. What did he really know about him? Hyoubu’s coldness hurt, and for a moment, his faith wavered.

Was he really mistaken in believing in this man? He was a murderer. By his own admission, he had killed before then and would kill again in the future.

He took a deep breath.

“I don’t. I know that. There is plenty about you I don’t know. But it would disappoint Kaoru.”

He knew as he said it that it was a cheap shot, but he also knew he was right. And after the whole thing with the prediction, more than ever, he was struggling to make sense of Hyoubu’s relationship with the girl. It was a part of Hyoubu he had barely glimpsed before, yet one that, he could see it now, exerted a major influence over his life.

But Hyoubu had no outward reaction.

“My Queen is still young and naïve,” was all he said. “She will understand one day.”

“Really?” Andy asked with a doubtful twist of the lips.

He had only met her a few days ago, yet even he could tell it would take some major personality changes for her to caution killing hapless normals. The woman in that prediction could as well have been another person altogether.

Hyoubu cut his eyes to the side and said nothing. Encouraged, Andy dared to let the words out.

“It would disappoint me too.”

He braced for a cruel rebuttal, but only earned a mirthless smirk.

“You have made that plenty clear…”

He cut him off before he could go further.

“And I know I probably look just as young as Kaoru to you, but I hope I know a little bit more about how the world works. Do you want to know what I thought when I first saw Yuugiri, Hyoubu?”

Taken aback by the apparent non-sequitur, Hyoubu finally glanced back at him. Andy made sure their eyes met before continuing.

“I thought: ‘esper or normal, a kid is a kid’.”

Hyoubu’s lips thinned. There was a message here, a warning not to continue.

Andy did it anyway.

“And I don’t think someone who built a cruise ship to raise dozens of children can really be keen to create more orphans, even normal ones.”

Hyoubu snorted, turning away.

“You know nothing about me,” he bit off.

“Maybe,” Andy said, conciliatory.

There was a moment of silence. When he didn’t hear any whirring or bipping, Andy tugged at Hyoubu’s arm.

“Come on, the robots are gone.”

The man brushed his hand off, refusing his help, but followed without comment. Andy figured if he was really angry with him, he would know. All in all, it could have gone worse.

Chapter Text

“What do you mean, she attacked Magi?”

Andy stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. He barely noticed when pedestrians bumped into him with dark looks, only clutching his phone tighter.

“We don’t know how, but she seems to have managed to incapacitate him,” Hyoubu was saying in his ear. “Presumably a psychic attack of some sort, although of a kind she had never displayed before.”

“Come on, Hyoubu!” he cut in, aghast. “Yuugiri would never do that!”

There was a short silence.

“Hinomiya,” Hyoubu said, and his stomach dropped just from the tone of his voice. “She’s clearly not in control right now. Saotome… She’s being used.”

“You think… you think he is…” Using her to do his dirty deeds. Using her to destroy that future, like he had promised Hyoubu. Using her to hurt people. “But she’s just a child,” he could only say, helpless.

Hyoubu didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Yuugiri was just a child, but she was a very powerful child. Hadn’t Andy himself feared that this would happen if she fell in the wrong hands, the very day he had met her?

He closed his eyes against the nausea stirring in his gut.

“Where?” he asked, voice stronger now, as he started moving again.

“You need to sit this one out, Hinomi—”

“Are you kidding?!”

“I’m not. Look, this is clearly affecting you. We need to keep our heads clear when dealing with her. And she would hate to know she had hurt you.”

“Cut the crap. You care just as much as me. Besides, if she’s got an attack you guys have never seen, I’m our best shot at dodging it.”

“Your ability is not strong enough to counter her full power, Hinomiya.”

He gritted his teeth. In his head, he knew that. But in his heart… he had to believe that if she saw him, something in Yuugiri would stir; that she wouldn’t be able to hurt him.

“It’s worth a try, at least.”

When silence answered him, he took the phone away from his face to glare at it.

“Kyousuke!”

“Did you just use your mom voice on me?” Hyoubu said, the raised eyebrow clear in his words. “Andy.”

Andy reddened. He may have crossed a line, here.

“Head to the city hall,” a disembodied voice echoed around him. “Hurry.”

“Yoh?” he asked in surprise, even as he started running.

“Yoh?” Hyoubu repeated, displeasure tinting the name.

“Sorry to interrupt the Mom and Dad special number,” Yoh said, sounding more somber than Andy ever remembered hearing him. “It’s always a riot, but Momoji just got taken down too. I say we give Hinomiya a try before we bring out your big guns, old man.”

“Oh, you say, uh? Strange how I remember being the one giving the orders until that point.”

“Come on boss, you need to stop coddling the guy. He’s one of us now.”

“Actually—”

“Oh shut it Hyoubu,” Andy interrupted before he could once again bring up the fact that he was not an official member of P.A.N.D.R.A. to try and keep him away from the danger. Why did he keep doing that? He wasn’t responsible for Andy’s wellbeing, damn it. “I’m on my way anyway. Don’t do anything stupid before I get there.”

He cut the line to Hyoubu’s spluttering and ran faster.

The city hall park entrance was teeming with people when he finally made it there, out of breath and never so grateful to be in excellent shape. He stopped and squinted around the crowd.

“To your right,” Yoh said.

He elbowed his way in that direction. His heart did a painful somersault in his chest when he caught sight of a familiar white dress.

“Yuugiri!”

She didn’t seem to hear him. He ran after her.

This wasn’t an ideal location. If Yuugiri did try to fight him, they risked hurting nearby passersby and they would quickly catch the attention of the security personnel. But it was too late to head her off in a quieter place. It was clear she was headed straight for the city hall, and allowing her to keep walking would only make the situation worse. He would just have to hope his power would be enough to allow civilians to remain unscathed.

He didn’t even reach her.

A foot extended, causing him to trip and sprawl on the ground. Immediately two security guards were on him, pinning him to the pavement.

“Andy Hinomiya, you’re under arrest!”

“Seriously?! What do you even have on me? Hey, let go!”

Despite his frantic struggles, he was well and firmly stuck. He watched Yuugiri disappear through the gathered bystanders without a single look back. His heart sunk.

Suddenly the two men sagged over him. The crowd surrounding them gasped. So did he, though it was more because he could no longer breathe under their combined weights. Thankfully, they were soon pushed aside.

He sat up, panting, and looked up at his saviors. Instead of Yoh or Hyoubu, he had the immense surprise to recognize two of B.A.B.E.L.’s finest.

“What are you guys doing here?” he goggled at Minamoto and Sakaki.

“Helping. Hurry up! If you’re going to stop that girl, go now! We’ll cover you!”

“Got it!”

He jumped to his feet and rushed to the park, frightened civilians parting for him.

From his vantage point on top of a nearby building, Kyousuke watched Hinomiya burst onto the scene just in time to shield New York’s new mayor from Yuugiri’s attack.

“Yuugiri! Stop!”

The girl had searched for a high point too. She stood on the city hall roof, not easily reached by someone with Hinomiya’s abilities. Kyousuke would have given up Hinomiya’s intervention for moot, despite Yoh’s hopes, but even from so far away, he could see Yuugiri react to his voice. She took a step back, hesitated.

Kyousuke leaned forward as if it would allow him to see better, Momotarou doing the same on his shoulder. Hinomiya lifted his arms up, as if to embrace the girl despite the distance.

Before he could say one more word and potentially sway her, though, the policemen surrounding the stage showed their true colors. They drew their weapons on Andy, for lack of the mayor that his security detail had already whisked away to safety.

Kyousuke’s heart pounded painfully in his chest. For once, he wasn’t sure it was a purely medical problem.

But Minamoto and Sakaki barged in – what where these two clowns doing here? – and he returned his attention to Yuugiri. Just in time to see the girl recover and unleash a devastating psychic attack. In a radius of hundreds of feet around the city hall, all normals became rioting savages.

“Hyoubu…” Momotarou said.

He was wondering why he hadn’t intervened yet, Kyousuke knew. Kyousuke’s lips thinned. He was out of time, anyway.

“Yoh,” he said, before teleporting.

He reappeared on the stage in front of the city hall. Minamoto, Sakaki and Hinomiya had huddled behind the podium for cover.

“Hyoubu!” Minamoto exclaimed, the first to notice him.

“Oya, Minamoto,” he returned, blinking in surprise. “Not frothing at the mouth yet? Oh, I see, hiding behind Hinomiya’s skirts, uh? Find yourself your own Mommy, I need this one.”

“Wha…”

Yoh swooped in with a sonic assault that had the welcome effect of forcing the hypnotized policemen to let go of their guns to cover their ears. He dropped on the stage next to them.

“You called, boss?”

Kyousuke plucked Momotarou from his shoulder and handed Yoh the squirming rodent.

“You two get these two morons inside the building.” The city hall was a government building, it would have protection against ESP.

Without any further ado, he teleported himself and Hinomiya to the rooftop. The man stumbled, unprepared for the jump. Any protest he might have uttered, however, died when he spotted the girl standing in front of them.

“Yuugiri!”

Yuugiri watched them with cold ruby eyes. It didn’t stop Andy from taking a step forward.

“Yuugiri, it’s okay. Everything is okay, now.”

Kyousuke extended a hand, intending to dissuade him from moving any further, but he froze. The look on Andy’s face was breathtakingly tender. He gulped, tried to curb the warmth in his chest.

“Remember when we met? It was just like this. You were so afraid. You didn’t want to hurt people, but you didn’t know how to stop. Remember, Yuugiri?”

For the first time since they had reached her, Yuugiri’s expression cracked. It was a sliver of doubt, barely a trace of a frown. Andy dared to take another step.

“Remember what I told you then? Everything is going to be okay. It’s all going to be fine, because you can’t hurt me. You can’t hurt me, Yuugiri. I’ll always be there for you.”

He took the baseball cap from his head and held it out to her, smiling.

“Okay?”

Yuugiri’s eyes were riveted on the hat. When she made no move to take it, Andy took a third step and lifted it. But just he was going to deposit it on her hair, Yuugiri flinched and squeezed her eyes shut.

Kyousuke felt an ESP wave shake the air and raised a shield just in time to deflect the psychokinetic blast that would have sent him sailing from the building.

“Hyoubu!” Andy called in worry, whirling around.

“I see,” Kyousuke said, searching for the source of the attack that hadn’t come from Yuugiri’s direction. “So this is what you have been using. A hypnotic attack. Espers lose control of their powers without even realizing it and turn it against themselves, self-destructing.”

Andy gasped as he spotted it too. Kyousuke’s doppelganger stood even higher than them, looking down with cold, flat eyes.

“Will it work against me, though?”

As he glanced at Yuugiri to assess her state of mind, he spotted Andy’s eyes widening. He turned, but too late. From nowhere came another figure.

Fast was all he had time to think before it was on him, clutching his arm in a grip strong enough to make him wince. It was fast enough that he only recognized it by the mismatched eyes. He gasped, feeling curiously betrayed.

Why hadn’t he accounted for this possibility? He had known this fight was his to take on and his alone. Why hadn’t he known, when he had changed his mind on a whim and taken Andy with him, that it would come back to haunt him?

Maybe because of all people to try and use Andy against him, Yuugiri was the one that hurt the most.

The double’s left eye lit up a brilliant gold.

“NO!”

It disappeared suddenly, leaving Kyousuke stumbling against the wind. He had a moment to marvel that his power wasn’t gone. Then the weight of the situation settled in his gut.

He whirled around, saw Andy with his hand still on the limiter he had just turned on. The brown baseball cap sat at his feet. His eyes were wide with relief.

“You idiot!” Kyousuke shouted, voice gone hoarse. “Don’t—!”

The kinetic blast slammed into Andy. He was sent flying, body contorting through the air like a rag doll. Kyousuke only just managed to snag him and yank him back to the rooftop before he fell to the ground fifteen feet below. He lay there, motionless. Unconscious, or…

Kyousuke turned to his double, pale eyes seething with fury.

“Alright, ghost. You and me.”

Andy came to with a groan.

He immediately wished he hadn’t woken up.

Everything hurt, a persistent ache that spread right down to his bones. What had he done, grappled with a truck? He rolled on his stomach, woozy, and blinked against the daylight.

The scene that greeted him had every recent memory return to him in a rush. Yuugiri stood silhouetted against the setting sun, her white dress tinted with soft yellows and oranges. In front of her knelt Hyoubu, one of her small hands held in his. He was a burning flame to her soft hearth colors, his body encased in the purple fire Andy had seen for the first time above the sinking Catastrophe. His pale hair writhed toward the sky with the force of his energy.

They were a humbling sight, and Andy felt warm all over from being allowed to witness it. His chest lit with love for both of these extraordinary beings, and oh.

Rather than linger on it, he pushed himself up.

“Yuugiri?”

At the hope in his voice, the girl snapped from the strange trance-like state she and Hyoubu were sharing. A huge smile split her face in two, and Andy could have collapsed from the relief.

“Andy!”

Her hand slipped from Hyoubu’s and she ran toward him. She stopped suddenly and blinked, surprised at finding her baseball cap lying there in the middle of the rooftop. She picked it up and plopped it on her head, easy as you please, before throwing herself into his arms. He squeezed her against him, overjoyed.

He lifted his head to congratulate and thank Hyoubu, but he stopped in his tracks. The man’s face was twisted in a grimace.

Suddenly, Andy remembered why the purple flame should have been a bad omen. His stomach dropped.

“Hyoubu?” he said, heard his voice drip with anxiety.

The rooftop’s door slammed open behind him, unleashing Yoh and Momotarou.

“Hey, you guys did it!” Yoh enthused, before slowing to a stop as he seemed to notice the tension in the air. “Uh… Boss?”

Hyoubu’s shoulders bowed. His face creased in pain. Without any more warning, his power exploded outwards.

Andy would have been bowled over if he hadn’t already been kneeling. He clutched Yuugiri to him, but her cap went flying away. Momotarou, who had dropped on the girl’s head at the first opportunity, yipped in surprise as the gales of air propelled him with it out and over the trees.

Andy squinted against the wind. Hyoubu’s flame had turned into a raging blaze, and it showed no sign of dying back down.

“Hyoubu!” he shouted in panic, struggling to get up.

The man rose to his feet himself. There was no longer agony in his eyes, or at least none of the physical kind.

“The last shreds of my control… gone.” He huffed. Andy could barely hear him above the storm. “This is what I get for cheating time for so long.”

Something moved at his collar. Andy watched in dismay as Hyoubu’s brooch, the twin to the symbol he himself wore around his neck, fell to pieces. Although he had never used it in front of Andy, he could tell, from the expression on Hyoubu’s face if nothing else, what it had been and what it shattering meant.

Hyoubu appeared to brace himself.

“Hinomiya!” he called out, before he caught himself. “No… Andy. Get Yuugiri out of here.”

“What?” he returned, unwilling to believe what he was hearing.

“Keep her safe. P.A.N.D.R.A. will be fine; my Queen, too. Today was the last day I could protect her, and so I have to trust that she will find her way. But you keep Yuugiri safe. And you… you take care of yourself. Don’t…” He gasped against pain. “Don’t you dare make her an orphan. You hear me?”

Yuugiri clung to Andy’s pants. She stared at Hyoubu, uncomprehending yet.

“Major?” she whispered.

He wanted to cover her ears, to prevent her from hearing those terrible words. He wanted to yell at Hyoubu for daring to utter this garbage in front of his daughter. He was unable to do either, frozen by both fear and grief.

“What’s going on?” Yoh asked, shouting over the wind and simultaneously using his power, presumably to better channel his frustration. The sheer volume made Andy’s ears ring.

It had the benefit of knocking the cobwebs from his mind. He pushed at Yuugiri’s shoulders until she detached from him and backed away into Yoh. Yoh closed his hands around her small frame in an automatic gesture, protecting her from the elements.

“Andy?” Yuugiri asked, looking at him with budding fear in her eyes. “The Major?”

“You stay here, Yuugiri,” he said, holding her stare firmly. “You stay safe with Yoh. I’m going to get the Major and knock some sense into his head.”

Her alarm disappeared at once. She nodded with unconditional trust.

“Andy brings the Major back.”

“That’s right.”

He ruffled her hair. He caught Yoh’s eyes; they exchanged a nod.

Then he turned, braced himself, and turned his limiter off. The pressure of Hyoubu’s sheer power lessened, though far more than he had hoped. He gritted his teeth. Doubt assaulted him.

But he couldn’t fail Yuugiri. She believed in him. He didn’t think he was worthy of how deeply she thought of him; he didn’t think he would ever be worthy, but he was going to keep trying. In the end, he figured that’s how parenting worked. You tried. That’s all kids ever asked of you. That’s all Yuugiri had ever asked of him, anyway.

If he tried and failed today, she might forgive him. He might not forgive himself, though.

So he dug his boots into the ground, and he pushed forward.

Hyoubu’s eyes widened.

“Andy…”

“Shut up,” he grunted, crossing his arms in front of his face to protect his stinging eyes.

“Andy, stop. It’s useless…”

“Shut up!” he yelled. “You want to leave me a widow? A single parent with a little kid, too? You don’t think I’ve got a right to say something to that?”

Hyoubu’s mouth flopped open. He seemed to want to protest more, but astonishment had plucked the words from his lips. Andy groaned, struggling against the wind to take another step.

“That’s right, Kyousuke. You shut up.”

“You tell him, Mom!” Yoh’s disembodied voice floated around.

Andy ignored him. The closer he got, the greater the pressure; the more he had to hunch down just to resist being blown over.

“You stop being selfish.”

His boots slid on dirt and he nearly sprawled down. He kept upright by sheer force of will.

“And for once in your life…”

His thighs, stomach and every muscle in his body burned from exhaustion. He took another step forward.

“… you let people help!”

With one last lunge, his hands closed like vices around Hyoubu’s shoulders.

Kyousuke could only stare helplessly into the mismatched eyes burning a hole into his skull.

“Andy…”

He couldn’t possibly help. Nothing could help Kyousuke now. Andy’s ability was a candle to his true, unleashed power. Couldn’t he see this? He had to know.

But despite the impossibility of the task, he had come. Kyousuke found that he was moved; if not by the result, at least by the intent. To have someone care so deeply for him as to stand by his side, even now, against all odds… it was more than he would have asked for.

So he didn’t resist when Andy yanked him against his chest. Arms engulfed him in a tight embrace. He could feel Andy’s whole frame shaking with the exertion of trying to push his ESP beyond its breaking point. Lips lifting in a bittersweet smile, he settled his hands on the broad back, returning the hug.

This was kind of nice. He should have done it sooner.

Andy tensed in his arms. His entire body seemed to seize, hands crushing Kyousuke where they gripped him. Kyousuke yanked his head up as he started screaming, not in pain, but in fury.

Andy’s left eye was a golden sun in his face, burning brightly. But even as Kyousuke watched, the star expanded and turned red giant. Power clamped around Kyousuke’s core, mercilessly wrangling the wild flood of his life force into submission, pushing and pulling and compressing until it was once more sitting in his chest, diminished but subdued.

The light in Andy’s eye vanished, leaving it black as a moonless sky. His eyelids closed.

Without any more warning, he went slack in Kyousuke’s arms. Kyousuke stumbled and fell to his knees. Still he held on, staring in disbelief at the head now lying on his shoulder.

The wind had died down. Behind him, the sun was still setting, its glow no longer obscured by Kyousuke’s energy. He was alive.

His time had come and passed, and he was alive.

Strangely enough, Yuugiri had been the easiest of Andy’s goodbyes this time around. She had pouted as usual, but she was used to him coming and going from his life by now. She knew she would see him soon, because he always came back to her.

It was everyone else who seemed under the impression that things should change now. Yoh and Momiji had been particularly put out that he still wasn’t considering joining P.A.N.D.R.A.

“At least wait for the Major to come back!” they had tried to argue.

Subjecting himself to their wheedling and needling for however long it took Hyoubu to come back from whatever errand had kept him away from the hotel since Andy had woken up? No thanks. Sometimes it really felt like they were children and he the patient adult… Although patient was kind of a stretch.

He sighed, stepping through the hotel’s sliding doors into the sunlit street.

He did feel regret at not seeing Hyoubu before leaving. At the same time, though, he was a little relieved. He needed time to come to terms with the hornet nest of feelings that the man now elicited in him. And he couldn’t help but feel like Hyoubu’s absence this morning had been deliberate. It was probably his old feelings of inadequacy rearing up their ugly heads, he tried to persuade himself. All the same, a little distance would be good for both of them.

He turned, having successfully convinced himself, and the point promptly became moot.

“Oh,” he said, rather dumbly, at finding Hyoubu walking down the sidewalk towards him.

“And where do you think you’re going?” the man said, stopping in front of him.

Despite everything, Andy couldn’t help but smile. Hyoubu sounded annoyed.

“On my way?”

“You’re still not joining?” Hyoubu crossed his arms, indignation written all over his face.

Andy laughed. Happiness bubbled in his stomach.

“You guys are really hung up on that, uh? Sorry Hyoubu… I don’t think I’ll join after all,” he said, sobering up.

“And why not?” Hyoubu’s eyes widened in outrage.

“Because if I do, you’ll have the perfect excuse to try and dismiss my help next time.”

Hyoubu blinked, taken aback.

“You’re still really bad at accepting help,” Andy continued, “so I’m not going to make things even easier for you. I’m staying right where I am, where you can’t boss me around, and I can call you on your bullshit. As equals.”

Hyoubu’s mouth tilted in a lopsided smirk.

“Mom got used to having special treatment, hmm?” he said, and the suggestiveness in his voice left Andy blushing and spluttering in embarrassment. “I suppose that’s my fault.”

Before Andy could recover, he stepped up to him, cupped both hands around his face and pressed their lips together.

Andy’s brain stuttered to a stop. He kissed back on automatic, one hand curling around Hyoubu’s slim hip.

He knew he was beet red when they parted. Hyoubu’s smug smirk just about confirmed it. He cleared his throat.

“I’m still not joining,” he muttered.

Hyoubu’s face fell in irritation.

“It was worth a try,” he sighed.

Andy laughed and knocked their foreheads together gently. Shameless.

He stepped away.

“I’ll see you soon, Kyousuke.”

“I should think so, yes.”

He sidled around him and started on his way down the street, half-expecting (hoping) to be called back. When nothing came, he hazarded a glance over his shoulder.

Hyoubu had not moved from his spot except to turn and watch him go. His mouth was curved in a smile. Andy smiled back, heart warm and heavy in his chest.

Then he turned and disappeared in the crowd.

A few months later, Andy found himself approached by a certain Princess Sophie for a job. A legal, perfectly tailored to his abilities job.

Bouncing on her toes behind the princess, Yuugiri beamed at him.

(When he would appear on his couch the very day he got his new apartment in Monarch, Hyoubu would comment on how much more convenient finding him would be now that he had a proper doghouse. He would also remind him that Yuugiri needed to brush her teeth before bed.)