"Gareki, that was so amazing!" Tsubame cheered clapping her hands together. "You hit the bullseye every single time!"

"It's not really a big deal." Gareki grumbled, handing the flash-gun back to man inside the booth. The man was glaring at him as the screen behind his head announced thousands of points in brilliant colors and flashing lights. He handed over the prizes in a clump, not even bothering to make it easy as he dumped them all into Gareki's skinny teenage arms, some of them falling on the ground.

Tsubame smiled, bending down to pick up the ones that fell. "Don't be silly! What other thirteen-year-old boy could do that?"

Gareki shrugged.

"I don't even see you practicing, It's like it just comes naturally to you," Tsubame continued as the two of them started walking down the boardwalk again. Most of the prizes were Holo-pets, so Tsubame picked one of them in the form of a silver wristband with a glittering rainbow gem in the center. She put it on, and touched the crystal in the middle and suddenly the hologram of a furry, white ball with a long tail was hovering in the air and bouncing up to land on her shoulder. Tsubame laughed.

Gareki rolled his eyes, "What is that creature?"

Tsubame checked the bracket, "Umm… A Rainbow Forest Niji. Aww it's so cute!"

Gareki snorted, only to have the white thing fly over and ghost through his chest like it was taunting him, making the air around him shimmer as the hologram burst apart and then reformed like a cloud.

Tsubame had to hold her stomach she was giggling so hard.

"So where do you think Yotaka got off to?" Gareki asked pointedly over her laughter. "Think he's still trying to win that hover-board thing?"

Tsubame smiled, "Defiantly, I still feel my stomach drop every few minutes."

"That twin telepathy shit is just weird," Gareki replied as he stuffed the rest of the holo-pets into his pockets. Tsubame smacked him on the back of the head.

"OW!"

"Tsubaki says not to use language like that." Tsubame chided, her eyes taking on that serious dip between her eyebrows and her mouth pressing together in a line, making her look more like her older sister.

"Tch," Gareki looked away, "You're such a narc."

Another smack.

"STOP IT!"

"Now announcing the results of the Hover-board obstacle course."

Tsubame perked up, knocking the white bunny-thing off it's spot on her shoulder and making it burst into a cloud of color and disappear back into the bracelet. "The results? Crap, come on." Tsubame grabbed Gareki's hand and started dragging him after her at a sprint.

Gareki nearly tripped a few times, trying to get his bearings, but then was running too.

The hover-board course was enclosed in a huge, watery-looking sphere in the center of the board walk. Stadium-like seating circling the circumference of it. Tsubame and Gareki had to run up six flights of stairs to get to the top.

Gareki was breathing hard when they finally broke through the crowd at the top, and had to lean against the safety railing to catch his breath. The adults behind them grumbled angrily, but Tsubame didn't seem to notice as she gripped the rail and squinted through the barrier in search of her brother.

"There he is!" Tsubame pointed out the kid with the long purple hair who was standing at the center of the course, in line with all the other contestants.

Gareki folded his arms over the top of rail and rested his chin on them, watching as Tsubame waved frantically, trying to get her brother's attention.

He couldn't help but smile as Yotaka's eyes meet his sister's and his face turned bright red at the spectacle she was making, he looked at the ground as he gave a single wave back.

Tsubame laughed, but finally stopped making a scene as she leaned her forearms against the rail and watched in fascination as the announcer stepped forward to give the results.

"Yotaka got second place!" Tsubame squealed, "That's incredible! Good job Yotaka!" She yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth.

Gareki scrambled to drag her back from the rail and put a hand over her mouth before the adults behind them could give her worse than a few dirty looks.

Then, as the results finished and the trophies were handed out, the barrier around the stadium burst into what looked like rain drops of all different colors, exploding outward into the crowd.

Everyone cheered as the colorful droplets made the air shimmer and shine like they where were standing in the center of a rainbow. Tsubame gasped, squirming out of Gareki's grasp so that she could dance in it.

Gareki rolled his eyes and shook the shiny stuff out of his hair, but when he looked up and watched the colors rain down from the sky his lips parted in surprise.

The drops looked like gemstones in the sunlight.

"Gareki!" Tsubame called reaching out and grabbing his hand again, "We have to go get Yotaka."

Gareki let her pull him through the crowd towards the stairs. The two of them wound between people to get down as fast as they could, and Gareki scanned the crowd for the purple haired boy. Tsubame squealed as she spotted him first.

"Yotaka!"

The boy turned, trophy in hand as Tsubame ran up and hugged him. Gareki stayed back and watched from a foot or two away.

"Congrats," Gareki offered around Tsubame's squeals and Yotaka smiled.

"Thanks."

That's when the three of them heard the clock tower voice ring out above the crowd.

"It is now eight o'clock."

Gareki glanced at the glowing digital face of the clock tower. Also displaying the weather in the form of a bright orange sunset and a clear sky glowing behind the numbers.

"We should go find Tsubaki," Yotaka said, easing out of his sister's hug and trading it for a protective hand around her forearm.

Gareki nodded.

"You're right," Tsubame agreed, but a sadness fell over her expression.

Gareki had been expecting that. It's actually why he had waited and let Yotaka be the one to break the news.

He knew the cheerful girl would be the most disappointed their day of false luxury had come to an end.

As the three of them wandered through the crowd back toward the entrance, Gareki glanced at all the advertisements that were flashing on the Holo-flags.

"Welcome to the Karneval boardwalk! Don't forget to stop by our Circus!" They all said, as bright colors outlined a map to the circus tent. Gareki's eyes narrowed.

"And look how cute this Holo-pet is!" Tsubame squealed. Holding up the device on her wrist and freeing the hologram Niji to bounce through the air again. Yotaka beamed at it, and Gareki felt something like relief unfold in his chest.

He'd done something good for them. Maybe that was another step in the right direction.

It took almost fifteen minutes to make it back to the archway at the entrance of the board walk. When they finally made it there, the three of them looked around the crowd, trying to spot a stream of silver hair in the chaos. Finally, Gareki hunted down a bench and started climbing on it.

"Be careful!" Tsubame warned.

"What if someone sees you!" Yotaka agreed.

"It's fine," Gareki waved them off as he climbed onto the arm of the bench.

He was thirteen, so he could still barely clear the tops of the adult's head, and that irritated him. He considered climbing onto the back of the bench but he didn't have quite that much confidence in his balance.

Then he saw a shine of silver hair catch the sunset.

He turned, "Hey over–," he broke off.

As his eyes settled on Tsubaki's slim figure, he realized she was waving. Not in their direction though, towards someone else.

Gareki turned quickly, trying to follow the direction she was looking to see who was on the other side. But there were so many people, and his movement was too jerky. Before he knew it, his feet slipped from the arm of the bench and he fell hard onto the ground.

"OW!"

"Geez," Tsubame frowned as she came over and helped Gareki to his feet. "I told you to be careful!"

Gareki frowned at her. "I saw Tsubaki."

Tsubame's eyes widened, "Oh? Where is she?"

"What happened here?"

The three kids turned around to see Tsubaki standing behind them, eyes wide in that innocent way she had, that reminded Gareki of a child even though she was old enough to be a young mother.

"Tsubaki!" Tsubame cheered, standing up and leaving Gareki on the ground to go give her older sister a hug. "We were looking for you."

"I heard something loud over here and spotted you." Tsubaki smiled down at Gareki, "Are you all right? Did you get hurt?"

"I'm fine," Gareki said, looking down and rubbing his throbbing hip.

Tsubaki smiled. "Be more careful, okay?"

Gareki nodded vaguely.

"How was your day?" Tsubame asked as she traded places with Yotaka for a hug.

Tsubaki blushed. "It was fun. The man who gave you guys the tickets to come here took me on a date. It was wonderful."

Garret frowned.

He'd known from the start that this trip had been a gift from the man that Tsubaki had started dating over the past month or so, and he'd never liked it.

He couldn't say why. He hadn't met the guy. Had no reason not to trust him, but he didn't.

Maybe it was because he hadn't met him. Maybe it was because of all the gifts, or the fact that he'd gotten Tsubaki to quit her job so that he could support them…

Something about it made Gareki sick.

And just now, he'd come so close to seeing him… but he hadn't.

He wished he would have trusted his first instinct and followed Tsubaki when they arrived at the park. But he hadn't wanted to worry the twins, and he didn't know how to explain…

They were like Tsubaki. They trusted people.

Gareki didn't know if he knew better or just knew differently, but he never completely trusted anyone.

Not since he was eight years old.

"Wow!" Tsubame's eyes lit up as she laughed. She'd been like that over all Tsubaki's stories since she'd met this man. Like she was listening to a fairy tail.

"We should go home," Gareki grumbled, pushing himself back onto his feet and brushing himself off. Tsubaki sort of frowned.

"I guess you're right," she said, but the light seemed to dim in her eyes. Gareki couldn't blame her.

'Home' was in the slums.

Tsubaki cooked dinner that night, like always. And Gareki tried to ignore the fact that it was with the food that man bought for them.

She had kept it simple, just potato and chicken soup.

"Need help?" Gareki asked as he came into the kitchen. Tsubaki smiled.

"Sure, would you take your plate to the table?"

Gareki nodded and took the dish, walking carefully back toward the door as the soup burned hot against his fingers through the bowl.

He was almost out the door when he heard something tinkling as it fell against the ground.

Gareki turned, just in time to see Tsubaki pick something up and close her hand tightly around it before he could see what it was.

"What happened?" Gareki asked, and Tsubaki turned to smile tightly at him.

"Oh nothing, I just dropped a spoon."

Gareki frowned, his eyes falling to the wooden spoon sitting on the side of the stove. The only one he'd seen on the counter.

"Sure,"

Gareki turned back around and continued out the door.

He had thought about pressing her further, but somehow couldn't bring himself to do it.

He'd tried before, and it always ended the same.

"We need his help Gareki," Tsubaki would say, sounding frantic and pleading. "You don't even know him! Just trust that I know what I'm doing, ok?"

I can't.

He knew he could leave. If it became too much for him… He'd only been living with them for three years as it was. It wasn't like they were family.

But… where would he go?

Gareki set his bowl down on the table and settled into his chair. He was lost in thought when the twins came down from upstairs, laughing as they joined him a few moments before Tsubaki called them to come get their food.

Gareki watched them, watching their smiling faces as Tsubame gushed about her Karneval prizes and Yotaka recapped his hover-board tournament. He felt guilty for wanting to end that for them.

He also felt bitter. That they didn't see what he saw.

"Tsubaki," Tsubame said when her sister sat down at the table. "Do you want to see the prizes Gareki won for me at Karneval?"

"He won them?" Tsubaki asked, "How?"

Tsubame beamed, "You should have seen it! There was this game where you had to shoot these bubbles with targets on them, and if you hit the bullseye the bubble popped and you got the prize inside. Gareki hit it every time!"

"What?" Tsubaki turned to smile at him. "I didn't know that you could shoot like that, How did you learn?"

Gareki stared at her.

Learn? He hadn't learned. He'd always…

Gareki was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling there was something wrong with that. Something wrong about him.

That he shouldn't tell them the truth.

"I just practice." Gareki lied, and quickly changed the subject. "Tsubame liked the weird white thing the best."

"It's a Niji!" Tsubame instantly gushed. "It's a holo-pet! It's so cute! But he won some other holo-pets too. Like a grass rabbit, and a moss lizard!"

"Eww!" Yotaka wrinkled his nose, "Why would you want that?"

"It's not the real lizard."

"Still!"

Tsubaki laughed, and it rang like a bell. "Sounds like you guys had fun."

Gareki looked away, down towards the floor.

She knew that look in her eyes. It was relief.

To her this must justify everything…

Gareki balled his hands into fists.

"This soups tastes different," Tsubame noted as she took a bite. "Did you add something new?"

Tsubaki's eyes briefly flashed before she smiled. "New? I don't think so. Maybe you just had too much sugar at the boardwalk."

Gareki narrowed his eyes.

The soup didn't taste any different to him, but the look in Tsubaki's eyes…

"We didn't eat any sugar." Gareki said lowly. And Tsubaki's hand tightened on her spoon.

"Oh," her voice sounded too high, "How strange,"

Gareki's throat burned.

What did that mean?

Gareki was quiet after that, letting dinner conversation pass over him like the buzzing of flies around his head. He waited until he'd eaten enough that hecould politely excuse himself to the small attic that was serving as his room.

He was glad he stayed there. Glad that he hadn't been bunked with the twins. Sometimes he just needed his space to think, and that night more than ever he found himself thinking.

He flopped onto his thin, narrow bed. Hearing it creak beneath his weight as he stared up at the ceiling and felt the familiar panic rise up in his chest. The kind he'd been feeling for the past few weeks.

It was all going to slip away.

He didn't know when, or how, or why he thought that. Somehow, though, he was positive.

If things stayed as they were, it would all slip away.

Maybe I should let it, he thought, maybe I would be fine on my own.

But no matter how many times he told himself that, an unfamiliar ache echoed from somewhere deep inside his chest.

If I don't want to leave… he considered, realizing it was time to admit that was what he'd decided, what am I going to do?

"I'm going to start making money."

Tsubaki was sitting in the living room, hemming what looked like a pair of Yotaka's pants.

Very few people these days still repaired old clothes now that all fabric was recycled, but they still had to. They couldn't afford the recycling fee.

"What?" Tsubaki straightened to look at him where he was standing in the doorway to the room, his head down, staring at the floor.

"I'm going to make up for what he's giving you." Gareki said, "Whatever amount it is. I'm going to make it so we don't have to rely on him anymore."

Tsubaki's eyes darkened. "Gareki…"

"I can do it," Gareki said, his eyes flashing. "Just you wait. I'll do it, and when I have, you can stop doing what ever it is he's asking from you."

Tsubaki's eyes widened in horror. "What would make you say something like that?"

Gareki looked up at her with a sharp gaze, finally meeting her eyes.

"The fact that you didn't just tell me I was wrong."

With that Gareki turned around and left the room. Leaving a silent, gapping Tsubaki behind him.

3 months later~

10:00 PM– West End, Karasuna

"Hey kid,"

Gareki stopped.

He didn't know why he responded to that. It was demeaning. But it was too late now.

"What're you doin' here?" came a gruff voice from behind him. "You know this ain't no place for kids."

Gareki slowly turned around.

There were two of them. One of them was wide and roped with muscle and the other one was tall and had dark scruff coating his chin.

"Mind your own business, ugly." Gareki warned. "I'm not just some kid."

"Oh, you ain't?" the two of them laughed and it was grotesque. Like cows choking.

Gareki rolled his eyes. Officially losing his patience.

He reached for his belt and pulled out an ESP (Electric Stunning Pistol) flicking the spark charge with his thumb.

Gareki raised it, and shot both men in the forehead with two quick shots. The bright electric currents flashing like lightning as the two men went down, unconscious.

He supposed he didn't have to shoot them in the head, but this way they'd be out for a good three hours at least. Plenty long enough to learn their lesson.

Gareki holstered his gun.

He trudge further down the street. He wore a short gray jacket, but he wished it was longer, warmer. It was already getting short in the sleeves. Maybe he should start taking a few more jobs… make just a bit more money…

He sighed. Weapons were expensive. Food was expensive. Supporting the twins… and they'd been getting sick more lately. Chronic headaches and fevers, and pain killers were expensive. Even if he did take more jobs he'd probably just be scraping by.

Tsubaki still hadn't left that man… Gareki wasn't making enough to out-balence him, not when he had to spend money on his own gear. But more jobs meant more weapons too… it was a vicious cycle.

He needed to find simple jobs where he could make a lot of money, but that was risky. High profile jobs mean security and police, and simple jobs meant there was nothing to guard. There was rarely a lucky middle.

Tonight it was a crooked casino- cliché and straight forward as it sounded. It wasn't high profile enough for good security, and Gareki had already scoped out a hole. It helped that no one would look twice at a kid.

It was in a bad side of town though, Gareki noted, pulling his hood up to hide his face. People were rough here. That's what he'd have to watch out for.

He could handle a rough crowd, though. People like that were all the same.

And Gareki didn't miss.

Later That Same Night~

Karasuna, Outer Edge

"You're both burning up again," Tsubaki fretted as she pressed the back of her hand gentling against Tsubaki's forehead. "That's the fifth time this week."

Tsubame moaned, rolling over and trying to pull the blankets up over her shoulders.

"Cold," She whimpered, curling up into a ball and shuddering. Tsubaki's eyebrows pulled together.

"I know, sweetie, but we have to get your temperature down." Tsubaki rose from beside the bed. "I'll go get some cold rags, and some water."

Tsubame's eyelids fluttered but she didn't say anything.

Tsubaki worried her lip as she walked out of the room.

She was in the kitchen, filling up glasses of water and ringing out the cold water rags when she heard the front door swing open from the living room.

"Hello? she called, her voice trembling. "Gareki?"

The door shut and footsteps thumped towards the room, until a head of dark black hair appeared in the doorway.

"Were you expecting someone else?"

Tsubaki let out a breath, "Where in the world have you been?"

"Are the twins sick again?" He asked, eyeing Tsubaki's actions by the sink.

The silver haired woman dropped her eyes.

"Yes."

"I guess it's good I stopped on my way back then." Gareki said, tossing a bag onto the kitchen table. A bottle of pain killers and two freeze-packs spilled out across the wood.

"Where did you get that?" Tsubaki asked, eyeing Gareki with worry. "Where have you been getting any of the stuff you come home with lately?"

Gareki didn't answer. He just adjusted the black bag on his shoulder and turned around to walk out of the room.

"I'm tired," He called over his shoulder. "I'm going to bed."

"Someone's been paying the water bill lately," Tsubaki called after him. "And the electric, and the gas." she raised the blue of her eyes to look at where Gareki had frozen in the doorway. "It's been you hasn't it?"

Gareki said nothing. Didn't even turn around.

"Gareki you can stop this," Tsubaki said desperately. "I didn't want any of this for you when I brought you here. I'm supposed to be taking care of you."

Gareki's hand around the strap of his bag tightened.

He started walking again.

"I'm tired."

Tsubaki's eyes widened as he walked away. She could hear his feet on the stairs, quick thumps like he was running. Her lips trembled and she had to clasp a hand over them to keep from sobbing.

Despite what she had said, she didn't know what she'd have done if Gareki hadn't brought home more pain killers. Didn't know how she would have paid those bills if she'd tried to do it on her own. And with the twins always sick…

Tsubaki held her face in her hands as she cried.

What was she supposed to do now?

It was a few months after that day that it happened.

The twins weren't getting better, and in her desperation Tsubaki had started spending more time with that man, accepting his money, trying to keep Gareki from paying the bills.

She didn't realize that it only motivated him more.

Gareki needed to start making more money on his jobs. He needed to do something more to stop this, to save all of them, maybe to get them out of the slums and away from whatever man had convinced Tsubaki to trust him.

That's why Gareki took the job.

It was big, a corrupt business man who was just rolling in money. Stealing from him would be enough to float them for weeks, maybe months depending on how much he got.

The only thing was…it was in another town.

He had decided he would go, he needed to. If he did this right, it just might change everything, and that's why he had to do it.

He packed a bag and bought a ticket on the train.

At the time, he was fourteen.

And it was on the train that he met them for the first time.