A/N: Hey all. I'm here to rewrite this and give it the proper time and dedication it deserves before moving on to the rest of the story. It'll be done in chunks, and what'll change shouldn't clash with plot details for later chapters in their individual arcs, but there might be a little bit of a disconnect until I match them up. Chapter four will be remade to fit more seamlessly to this chapter, but the gist of what happens there will be the same. Sorry for any confusion that may occur! I'll be posting the old chapters beside the updates so you can follow it a little more easily.
The Long Way Home: Chapter One
(rewrite of Neo World of Advent)
A man, twenty years of age, with blonde hair and crystal-blue eyes huddled over his bathroom sink. His left hand was clenched tightly, claw-like and sunk into the flesh of his right arm. His shirt sleeve was pulled back, crumpled at the elbow to make room as he waited for it to happen.
Music from a popular radio station blared outside of the bleached-white bathroom walls with its green square tiles and a curtain rack from which towels were hung. The sink was running, its bowl nearly full of the murky, sanguine broth of running water mixed with a trickling of blood spatter.
The sound of voices outside the door caught the man's attention. He clenched his right hand, which had now taken on a grey-back covering. "Where's Cipher?" he heard a member of his artificial family, Charles, call out over the dull roar of sink water running and the loud recording of a popular song being played outside.
Cipher gritted his teeth and stared at the pale pink skin that separated his metallic fist from the rest of his body, willing for the time when it, too, would stiffen, then harden, then morph into something hard and metallic. There was a near-euphoric sensation to it, a pounding of adrenaline that contradicted the shock of mutation called the "oversol".
Pouring from the creases of his wrist, small droplets of blood fell and Cipher held back a shout.
He had done this once every year, on his birthday for five years now, and learned to expect the hot, prickling sensation by now. It began as though his hand had fallen asleep, a sensation that turned into the uncomfortable bubbling of delicate flesh as it morphed into something entirely different, an overlay that covered his right fist in a grey-black metalloid.
Cipher was an advent, something not quite human, not quite reploid, but a strange, hazy middling between the two, a place where organic tissue met hardened steel and gave way to give birth to a thing born in naked flesh that belied dormant filaments that coiled around the nerves below.
This thin sheen of biological metalloid was an advent's biological defense. While most of the time an advent appeared a copy of their human parent, during times of extreme stress, their latent powers surfaced, and they took on the guise of their reploid sire.
Cipher did this every year on his birthday, when he poured blood and iron into the sink, anything to answer the question that had been burning in the back of his mind ever since he realized that the children he laughed and played beside were not actually related to him.
Every child - even advent children - had to have been created from the fertilized egg of two separate individuals... so who did he belong to? He had been told they were orphans - or worse, Umbrians, but the question lingered.
And if he were Umbrian, wouldn't that mean he had a family, somewhere, that just didn't know about him?
It was a question without an answer, and would continue to be one until Cipher could manifest his oversol in any recognizable capacity. Cipher glared at the grey-black-red space that had already begun to morph back into ordinary skin, frustrated and angry that it didn't work, guilty that he had, once again, committed the greatest sin a family head could commit.
He had put his own self above the others. He had put his biological family over the artificial one assigned to him, even if just for a second.
When there came a pounding on his door and Charles called out, "are you okay in there?" he let his arm fall lax and watched the hardened skin turn soft and raw from the exertion.
"I'm okay," he said. "Just tidying up, that's all." Cipher let out a breath, slow and deliberate. It was time he stopped doing this, he realized. He could not allow what happened last time to happen again. Give it up, he told himself. What would it matter, anyway? Your real family is out there. Act like it.
"Dude," Cipher heard Charles say, "it's your birthday party. We can't have a birthday party without the birthday guest." The air was heavy with the tentative quiet that comes just before bad news. "This isn't because you-know-who is here, is it?"
Cipher groaned and flicked his long sleeve over his right arm. He turned the sink water off, watching the murky water fade into the drain. "You-know-who... did someone invite Joan?"
"Sorry," Charles said. Cipher opened the door to face a tall, black advent with short, tidy hair. He wore a sheepish smile and a thick, cotton sweater decorated with the design of a popular band, The Iron Giants. Cipher let out a wan smile as he put a face to the person responsible for the music blaring in the halls. "I thought you knew."
"Well I do now," Cipher said. "When did she get here?"
"A little over half an hour ago," Charles said. "You've been in there for a long time, you know. Your guests were starting to wonder where you were."
"Well I'm here now," Cipher said. He followed Charles out of the small hallway that led into his apartment complex's common area. The apartment had been given to him by the city to raise his small family inside; years of renovations had given the place a much more homely feel, and Cipher a sense of pride from knowing that he was responsible for it.
It was circular in shape, with green wallpaper and curved windows that revealed the presence of a large swimming pool just beyond one of the two doors on either end of the room. Party decorations - streamers, balloons, stickers that Cipher suspected belonged to some of the younger children - covered everything in reach.
Even the many small photo frames that rest within black cabinets that faced the walls were not spared from the festivities. Visions of hours spent cleaning up stray party streamers swam before Cipher's eyes and he raised a thin eyebrow. "You work quickly, don't you?"
"Told you," Charles said, "you were in there for a long time. I thought you were hiding."
"I don't 'hide' from her, Charles." Cipher stared at the cluster of party supplies and a different concern came to mind. "How are we paying for all this?"
"Relax, chief." Charles wrapped the string of a blue balloon around a long finger. "These are from Katie's party, remember? We'll put 'em back up once we're done. All you ever do is worry about that kind of stuff. Put that big brain of yours to use for something else and just relax for once, okay?"
"It's kind of my job to worry about it," Cipher said, "but alright. What are the younger kids doing, by the way? The last time we let Matt out of sight, he was trying to set fire to the curtains."
"I told you to not worry about that kind of stuff. Shirley's got the kids,' Charles said. "She's got Brandon and Kent there to help her if she needs it." Charles jabbed a thumb in the direction of the common room area. "Time's a-wasting. Let's go!"
Cipher tried to keep the errant portion of his brain from looking for Joan. They had split up some two years ago, but their breakup still wasn't something he was completely comfortable with. The skin on his right arm crawled, and he focused on that instead. Physical discomfort was something he was used to. He learned by now how to compartmentalize it in a place where Cipher could acknowledge it, analyze it, fix it. Ignore it, if he had to.
Emotional discomfort was something he was still learning how to process. There were days when he wanted to pick up a communicator and call her. Then there were days when he was angry at the suddenness of the breakup, days where he was angry at the world at large, angry with being stuck with the titanic responsibility of taking care of children when he himself has still been a child at the time he was assigned his family.
It was a difficult position, making sure his family of twelve was taken care of, and it didn't often leave him with much time for introspection. The few times he was given a reprieve from managing finances, bedtimes, and the children's schooling, his mind wandered to a creeping hurt that reminded Cipher why he didn't like parties.
The common room was an explosion of color, red and blue balloons tied down to the columns of the staircase, posters wishing him a happy birthday plastered over a large sign that thanked them for keeping their environment clean. Cipher could still make out 'A clean apartment is a happy one!' under the peeling poster of an armored truck ploughing through a massive explosion that appeared to be the result of Fighting Fefnir's smoking cannon.
Cipher smiled. The poster was probably Brandon's idea. Cipher turned his gaze to where a group of advents he recognized from being from the Forge - a massive structure where Joan's family worked and lived - were laughing to something Brandon or Kent may have said. The two were the only ones Cipher thought had a good chance of actually being related, with thick black hair that always curled in the same, unkempt manner.
In a corner, Shirley wore a loose sweater and a multicolored beanie with two fuzzy balls on the end of string that trailed down either side of her face. The youngest children - Katie, Peter, and Sayah, were all huddled around her and listening as she gave the rules spiel. "Don't leave this room," he heard her say. "And don't do anything your brother - Matt!" She took off in a panic, flapping her hands at the back of an advent girl with fiery red hair and a cardigan that had been mostly cleaned of soot.
Cipher watched the girl avoid a bucket of something being dumped on her head - metal pail and all - with odd lurch. So Joan really is here. Cipher busied himself with taking over from where three seven-year-olds watched the scene unfold with wide eyes.
Peter found Matt's stunt funny and laughed as a group of people helped clean up the mess. Whatever had been in the pail was green and stuck to the carpeted floor. Cipher could make out Charla's aggravated shouts as she chastised Matt, who looked smug and unrepentant for his breach of proper pranking etiquette.
"Don't do anything that could actually hurt someone!" Charla told the twelve-year-old boy beside his accomplice, a sandy-haired boy named Greg.
"It's not funny," Cipher heard Katie say. "Miss Joan could have got hurt."
"Is too," Peter said.
"Is not," Sayah said. "Oh, hi Cipher!" She waved at him. "Matt was doing something stupid, wasn't he?"
"He was," Cipher admitted, "but don't call your brother stupid, alright? And Peter, please do your best not to follow in his footsteps. We don't need another troublemaker on the scene."
"Yes, Cy." Peter's eyes faced south. "Is Miss Joan okay?"
"She is," Cipher assured him. "It would take a lot more than that to get to her." Cipher let his eyes wander beside the staircase where she was bent down beside Charla with a spray bottle of cleaning supplies. Shirley was busy protesting Joan's involvement in cleaning up Matt's mess.
"How come she doesn't come by much anymore?" Katie asked.
"Shh," Sayah said. "Shirley said we're not supposed to talk about that, remember?"
"It's okay," Cipher said. "We just don't have time, that's all. It's not like she's forgotten about you, don't worry."
"But-" Katie began before Sayah whapped the back of her head. Katie's eyes welled up and Cipher stooped down quickly before she would start crying.
"Do you want to talk to her?" Cipher asked. "I know you miss your big sis sometimes." He knelt down for Katie to ride, piggyback, over his shoulders. "And Sayah, don't hit your sister."
"But Shirley said not to talk about that," Sayah said indignantly. "I was just doing what she told me to."
"If Shirley tells you not to do something, that doesn't mean you should hit other people to stop them from doing it," Cipher said. He had a feeling he'd had this conversation before. "Talia's in the other room with Matt and Greg. Why don't you go color something with her?"
"Okay," Sayah said, "but Shirley said not to leave the room, too..."
Cipher held back a sigh of frustration. "Shirley's in charge, but I'm the most in charge, okay? I'll go check with Shirley when I can," Cipher said. "Peter, go with Sayah."
"Okay," Peter said. "But come get us when there's cake!"
"I will," Cipher said. Katie's arms were firmly fastened around Cipher's neck. He grasped the small girl's ankles, careful to keep her well-balanced so as not to have her fall off. He steeled himself for the encounter that was to come, the awkward pleasantries, the stubborn evasion of the elephant in the room. But when Cipher scanned his eyes over the center of the room, he found a much emptier common area.
"Where is she?" Katie asked. "I bet she left, didn't she? She doesn't like to stop and say hello anymore."
"No, she doesn't," Cipher said softly. "It's complicated, Katie. I'll make sure she stays long enough to say hi next time." Katie's legs swayed and kicked his sides impatiently, so he bent down to let her off.
"Aww," Katie said. "No piggy-back ride? Can I go color with Talia, then?"
"Yes," Cipher said. "Have fun!" Cipher watched his youngest sister run off in some amusement. Life with his small family was never dull, that was for sure. Cipher strode across the clearing to where Shirley, Kent, Charles, and Brandon were talking.
"Hey Cy," Brandon said. "Where've you been?"
"This and that," Cipher said airily. Something hung up above caught his attention. "Is that a poster of the Resistance on the ceiling?"
"Oh yeah," Kent said. "I was wondering when you'd notice that."
"Is that my poster of the Resistance on the ceiling?" Shirley asked.
"Relax," Brandon said. "We just thought it would be funny, that's all. You know, Neo Arcadian building and all."
"It might be a good idea to get that down," Charles said nervously. "I know we're on good terms with them now, but old-War era posters aren't looked kindly upon. I don't to give the government any reason to take this place from us."
"Alright, alright," Kent said. "Way to set the mood, Charles."
"Guys," Cipher said. "Relax. I'm the one who's supposed to be the worrywart, remember? The kids are off doing something with Talia, and I think Joan just left. Let's try to have a little fun, okay? I heard something about cake, do we have any?"
"Oh yeah," Shirley said, all animosity forgotten. "Brad, Kent, it's in the fridge. Help me get the plates and forks."
Charles rolled his eyes. "You know," he said, "I wonder sometimes if the conflict with the Resistance rebels could have been settled with cake. It seems to do wonders here."
"I think it's a little more complicated than that," Cipher said with a laugh. "But yeah, it's nice to have something so simple and effective. Frosting may truly be the answer to world peace, after all."
"Hey," Charles said. "Listen. Can we talk in private?"
"Sure thing," Cipher said. "What for?"
Charles led him to a shaded section underneath the stairway. "What were you doing in there?" he asked. His face was a mask of worry and concern. "You know, earlier."
"Nothing," Cipher said. "Just thinking, that's all."
"Come on, Cy." Charles furrowed his eyebrows. "I found blood in the sink. You weren't trying to force your oversol again, were you?"
"One of the kids must have been brushing their teeth too hard," Cipher said. "Besides, it doesn't matter anyway. I'm not going to let what happen last time happen again."
"That's not -" Charles shook his head. "You know none of us hold that against you, right? I'm worried about you, okay? It's not healthy."
"It's fine," Cipher said. "I won't do anything that could hurt myself. Besides, I've given up trying. It's pointless."
"Cipher..." Charles shook his head. "You push yourself too hard. It's okay to-" He cut his voice off at the sound of footsteps. Charles sighed. "Whatever. It's your party, man. Do what you want."
Cipher watched Charles leave, some unidentifiable emotion bubbling inside his chest. It's okay to - what, exactly? Cipher shook his head. It didn't matter, he told himself. It didn't matter. Celebrations like this one were rare chances they had to have fun and not worry about work, so he had to make sure everything went smoothly.
"Hello everyone!" Cipher called out. It was just the twelve of them - Charles, Shirley, Brandon, Kent, Charla, Talia, Matt, Greg, Peter, Katie, Sayah. And him, of course. The members of the Forge had indeed already left.
"Thanks for everything. I know you're all waiting for the real reason you're here, so let's get to it. Who wants cake?" Cipher grinned. Soon, orders for which piece they would like cut were being taken up as Shirley cut into a large slab of vanilla cake with brown, puffy frosting that coated the sides.
"Whabbou' Prezzens?" Greg asked through a mouthful of cake.
"Swallow," Charles said. He looked slightly repulsed as bits of pastry went airborne.
"Sorry," Greg said. "What about presents? Are we still doing those?"
"We are," Charles said. "Cipher, do you want to do that now? It's getting to be pretty late." Sure enough, when Cipher looked out the windows, the sky had already taken on the brilliant gold of sunset as bright orange clouds wafted over a darkening atmosphere.
Shirley was quick to toss Cipher the first atop a precarious stack of packages. "This one's from... Matt, I think? That was nice of you, Matt."
"You told me to get something he'd like," Matt said. "I hope that counts."
One torn package later, Cipher stared at a grey TV remote. "Well, at least now we know where that went. Er, thanks, Matt. I think you missed the spirit of Shirley's advice, but yes, I have been looking for this."
Shirley groaned. "Alright, here's the next one..." Presents were handed around until Talia's present, an action figure of Zero, was gifted to him. It was missing the sword, but otherwise it was in excellent condition. Cipher looked to Shirley, hoping that it had not come pilfered from her vast collection of Resistance memorabilia.
"She did chores for it," Shirley said. Then, under her breath, "but the one I gave her was still in the box..."
Cipher thanked Talia for her gift. "Maybe I can bribe Shirley back with this," he said with a laugh. "Ha!"
When it came to be the older generation's turn, Brandon, Kent, Shirley,Charles, and even Charla presented a black-and-red leather jacket that he had been looking at for some time. Cipher held it up, a feeling of deep affection swelling up for his family. "Thanks, you guys." He tried it on, admiring the look and feel of it in front of a nearby mirror beside the fridge.
When the last present was handed out and they were all sufficiently stuffed with sweets, Shirley had the younger kids taken to bed. Matt, Greg, and Talia resisted at first - "We're technically teens, you know!" - but they marched Peter, Katie, and a now-sleeping Sayah upstairs all the same. This is what you're here for, Cipher reminded himself as he watched Talia picked her up so she could sleep off her sugar coma comfortably under the covers of her bed.
Charles shook him out of his reverie when he presented Cipher with a small envelope. "Er, hey. This is from Joan," he said. "She said to wish you a happy birthday."
"Thanks," Cipher said. The parcel felt unnaturally heavy in his hands, but he ignored it. "Mind if I just hang out here for a bit?"
"Sure thing," Charles said. "I've got a lot to do to prepare for work tomorrow, anyway. We might be able to sell a few hoverboards - the Slider series are pretty popular these days. And we always get one or two reploids asking to calibrate something or another. If you need me, I'll be upstairs."
"Same thing here," Kent said. "Me and Brandon are going to see how Shirley and the others are doing. And hey, uh, thanks for everything you do for us. It's a bit weird taking orders from someone my age, but I could never do the stuff you do. Thanks for being our family head." He appeared embarrassed by the sudden display of affection and shuffled up the stairs, out of eyesight.
"No problem," Cipher said softly. He ran his fingers over the slightly rugged paper of Joan's envelope, wondering what could be inside. A million suggestions all fought for his attention, but he forced himself to ignore them all. He slid a piece of paper out.
"Hey Cipher," he read aloud, "there's a tournament coming up soon. There's a pretty big prize pool for the winners, and I think you and I have a shot at it." Cipher stopped reading. Was this what she wanted to give him after two years of relative silence? He forced himself to keep going, skimming over the specifics. "The tryouts are soon," he read. "The city's pretty hyped up about it where I am. But we can do it. I know we can. All that time spent working out together can't have been for nothing.
I know we haven't spoken much, but I miss you. It would be nice to talk again. Meet me at the Dojo if you're interested.
Love, Joan."
Cipher stared at it for a second before he crumpled it up into a ball. A second later, he felt awful and uncrumpled it. He stared at the signature and let out a frustrated sigh. He folded it neatly back into a wrinkled square and stuffed it into his pocket. Is she serious about this?
Cipher knew she was powerful for a civilian. Joan was the daughter of the deceased gentle judge, Blazin' Flizard.
But what about him? What chance did he have of it, a nobody from a district nobody had ever heard of? Only powerful advents had any hope of making it very far. Everyone knew that. He couldn't even use his oversol well, the one thing that could hope to even the playing field with combat reploids they might face in a match.
So why did she...
Memories of an old hope came to surface and he picked Talia's present up, staring at the empty space in Zero's hand.
