Even though Hiro had intended to go along with Yamato's World of Merit last reset, Yamato remembering meant that he got Yamato, Fumi and Alcor to work on whatever he wanted them to work on. When the day to make a choice came, it was Yamato that suggested that Hiro go along with Ronaldo, since that neatly avoided all the fighting that so distressed Hiro and irritated Yamato.
Also, Yamato said, to Ronaldo's face, "Perhaps if you see that your ideal world is doomed to failure enough times, you'll stop wasting our precious days with your delusion that a world can survive without allowing the strong to follow their own ambitions."
It turned out that being part Septentrione insulated Yamato somewhat from having humanity's instincts rewritten. Fortunately, most of them were too shocked by the very idea of it to actually attack Yamato for coming in, grabbing some supplies, grabbing some people like Dr. Otome, Fumi, Hiro himself, even Ronaldo, the ones who were vital if this world was going to have any chance to survive and chaining them up to something and forcing them to eat by informing them that they would not be allowed to go help any other people until they ate something.
At the end, when supplies ran too low, and not even that worked?
"You are never doing this again," Hiro remembered Yamato saying fiercely.
When he woke up in his bed the morning after, he did only the minimum amount of stuff he could get away with before running downstairs to actually cook breakfast.
There were perishables in the fridge, and the thought of allowing them to go to waste…
He counted up on his fingers exactly how many boxed lunches he could get away with making, since he would be carrying them around varying lengths of time until he ran into the people that would eat them. Well, Daichi was always too stressed to have breakfast the morning before the exams, so he could make two for him…
Hiro made a mental note to see if he could buy some takoyaki on the way to save Daichi. Hopefully it wouldn't get frozen over during the fight. No, it probably still wouldn't be fresh. He'd get some for Yamato later, to thank him for trying.
"Hi, Yamato," Hiro said, stepping closer to the leader of JPs. It made him smile to see the look in Yamato's eyes. Who was this person and why were they in his personal space? Referring to him with such familiarity? Especially because Hiro was sure that if it had been anyone else, Yamato would have just turned up the glare at their impertinence. The hints of surprise and confusion in those grey eyes: were they really at someone daring to get to close to him, or were they there because Yamato was surprised at how irritated he wasn't? "Remember me?"
His smile grew wider when Yamato's mouth opened, the younger teen frowning slightly, brows furrowing, because yes, there was something about this civilian. Did it feel like the answer was on the tip of his tongue?
Well, that or the ends of some of those tentacles.
"Let me refresh your memory," Hiro said, grinning wickedly as he grabbed Yamato's uniform.
Yamato had thought this was an absolutely stupid and suicidal plan. However, since he did want to get his memories back on the first day possible so he spent as little time as possible in fruitless pursuit of the world of merit (also without Hiro), he had then insisted on helping Hiro train in order to successfully pull off this maneuver.
The thought of that 'Wait, you want me to practice stripping you?' conversation made Hiro's grin widen as he heard Daichi and Makoto squawk behind him, while Io gasped.
His target was just staring at him, caught in a paralysis of 'what in the name of the ten million gods does this civilian think he is doing?'
Hiro wished he could spare an arm to get out his cell phone camera, because the expressions Yamato's face was going through as he tried to process what was happening were hilarious.
Maybe on another repeat, when he had this down. No: right now he needed to remove enough of Yamato's clothing that he could get at the seal and tear it off before any of them managed to convince their brains that yes, as crazy as it was this was actually happening and either Yamato did something magical or Makoto tackled him off her boss. It was still the first day, so right now Yamato was a lot stronger than Hiro was. Fortunately, Hiro was faster and had the advantage of surprise, or rather utter existential shock that the universe was a place where something like this could actually happen. Someone just coming up to him and starting to tear his clothes off in public with absolutely no shame.
Obviously this Yamato hadn't met Joe yet.
"Got it!" Hiro crowed in triumph, tearing the seal off and flinging it across the room. The by-now-familiar chains only swarmed him once the seal was safely gone.
This many? Was Yamato worried that someone might try to shoot Hiro, or was he just happy to see him?
"You… You…" The version of Yamato that didn't remember yet was sputtering, practically, almost half as furious at Hiro as he was at Hiro's companions when Hiro sided with someone else. "I won't allow you to ruin everything!"
The chains around Hiro tightened, but it was only a brief pressure that didn't hurt at all. So the Yamato in the chains still remembered and would protect Hiro until the current Yamato remembered and stopped trying to kill the witnesses. That was a relief, even though he'd trusted that would be the case.
He might have patted one of the chains reassuringly, to let Yamato know that Hiro trusted Yamato to take it from here and wasn't worried, but he was a little tied up at the moment.
"This power… Are you another pawn of the heretic? Did he put you up to this!?" In order to turn JPs against Yamato?
That was unfair. "It was your idea," Hiro said, the cheerfulness of his voice letting them (and his friends) know that he wasn't worried about the chains. "You wanted the valuable tactical information."
"What valu-" Yamato started to demand, before realizing, "Ah, their capabilities…" Or at least a mimic of them.
The chains around him shifted a little, Yamato's regard shifting from him to them. Actually thinking about them, and not just how to stuff them back into the box, kill all the witnesses, keep this from having happened so he wasn't marked as an enemy of humanity and ousted from power during what was supposed to be his great chance to save and change this world.
There was a sort of startled jerk in the chains that let Hiro know that Yamato had remembered. The 'Oh, that is who this strange person is, this is what happened and what could possibly inspire someone of above-average intelligence to come in here and start tearing my clothes off.'
Hiro was dropped the few centimeters to the ground as Yamato's chains uncoiled and vanished, not before one of them lifted up Yamato's coat so he could hand it to himself, put it in his actual hands so he could put it on. "It worked."
"Yeah, I kind of figured."
Yes, of course Hiro could figure that much out. "I have so much work to do… Sato, this is Hiro Kageyama. Do whatever he tells you to do," he told her, waving at one of the teenagers she'd brought in.
"He's an allied devil summoner?" Makoto asked, brain finally managing to come up with an explanation for this. There were three great summoner clans other than the Hotsuin: if Hiro was some childhood friend of the Chief's, one he hadn't seen in years, that might explain why he acted so… even though it took the Chief a moment to recognize him. And all that might have been some mystic thing that was none of her business. Right.
"Yes," Yamato said, because it was true. "Hiro has extensive experience with the enemies we are facing now. Defer to him in all tactical and strategic matters." He had other business to attend to.
And he might give slightly different orders to Nagoya JPs, while he was at it. Ronaldo Kuriki had been somewhat helpful giving advice on how to deal with his earlier self, while he wasn't blubbering or cursing himself for being a failure in foreign languages or trying to convince Yamato to hand him his gun so his share of the food could go to others. If JPs opened up recruitment in Nagoya, saying that given the demon threat they had to reserve their supplies to make sure that the civilians were protected, and then offered to give any volunteers enough to feed themselves and their families? As a police officer, it would be quite reasonable to expect Ronaldo to volunteer to defend Nagoya's civilians, and he would see this as a chance to infiltrate JPs and uncover the evil plots of the evil organization that killed his mentor for violating national secrets acts.
Or tried to, at least. Someone who would vanish, leaving a daughter behind to mourn and a junior officer to make an ass of themselves… Yamato would detail some of his officers to tracking down the man in order to use him to defuse Kuriki, but he doubted most of his incompetent employees were up to finding someone who had survived this long in the first place because they were skilled at evading JPs. He would have to leave that to Hiro, as much as he disliked Hiro wasting his time on something like that.
"What about Al Saiduq?" Hiro asked.
"What about him?" Yamato frowned a little. Well, yes, he knew why Hiro was asking. Gathering his assets and using them in the most efficient manner was only intelligent, and Hiro was certainly that.
"If we find him, we find Fumi, and then she can get the terminals working early." Hiro drew folded sheets of paper out of a pocket. "I drew up a couple different schedules on the way to the exams." If he could go to Nagoya during the time he would have been taking the subway to and from Osaka, he could start working on Airi and Jungo, and tracking down Dera-Deka, early.
"I will secure him by the end of the day." Fumi wouldn't mind working overnight, especially if he gave her a few people to test the terminals on. There would be no more incidents with Makoto.
Now that he had a little more experience using the other part of him, Yamato thought he might feel Alcor, but he didn't want to grab and subdue him here, when he was already being forced to meet people's eyes and give them glares that told them that no, they hadn't seen anything, and what they really should be worrying about was what the Director was going to do to them if they didn't get back to work. At least there hadn't been too many people in here, and no one should connect his chains to Dubhe's freakish appearance. They looked nothing alike.
"I'm counting on you, Yamato," Hiro said, and he was. He even pressed copies of his graph-paper schedules – made by hand, clearly just so Yamato would have them - into Yamato's hands.
Yamato was unaware of the slight blush on his face as his fingers curled around the token of Hiro's respect for him and desire to keep him in the loop.
The times that Hiro had marked off to spend time with Yamato would be put into Yamato's own calendar as soon as he got back to the office. He knew that of course the others would take up much more of Hiro's time than Yamato did – after all there were twelve of them and one of him – but Yamato was already on Hiro's side, so Hiro didn't really need to spend time with him.
For a moment he feared that Hiro would have taken that into consideration when making this schedule, taken Yamato's times with Hiro and given those precious hours to other people in order to develop his bonds with them, but no. Surely Hiro wouldn't do that.
Especially if Yamato secured Alcor and with him Fumi as soon as possible, giving Hiro precious extra hours to spend on strengthening his power as the Shining One. Oh, and eventually bringing an end to this, but Yamato didn't really care about that.
He had what he wanted, and the longer this went on, the more time Yamato would have to design a better world of merit and learn enough about people to convince Hiro to support him in it.
Of course, bringing back the old world, and making sure Hiro remembered so he could remove Yamato's seal (Yamato didn't really care about the others remembering, especially if they remembered how much they liked Hiro), and imposing a perfect world of merit… That might be a little much for Alcor's tiny brain, since they were going to have to erase Polaris and that left his sword to become their plowshare and build the new world.
Well, the sooner Yamato got his own business taken care of, the sooner he would have time to spend with Hiro.
And Yamato's business included going down to the Dragon Stream summoning circle, where there were no witnesses, and dragging Alcor into their reality.
Strangely, it wasn't as simple as peeling him off Hiro's radiance. Had he felt like he wasn't allowed to touch that light until Hiro managed to grow close enough to him in each timeline?
Once again, the heretic did not seem frightened or intimidated by the tentacles around him.
Yamato wasn't expecting Alcor to narrow his eyes as soon as he saw the Hotsuin and transform into his cube form.
Oh. Yes. He should have anticipated that, Yamato realized as he felt the heretic's curse take effect on him. This was right after Alcor realized Yamato Hotsuin intended to use the power, the trust Alcor had given his clan to pact with Polaris and betray humanity. So, from what Alcor knew, Yamato Hotsuin deserved to die.
For being stupid enough to trust Polaris, if nothing else. In hindsight, Yamato had to agree.
If he did this again, he thought as he dodged and pulled out his cell phone, glad Alcor wasn't attacking the chains or else he would be dead a thousand times over, of a thousand cuts, he would definitely make sure to have Hiro here when he did this. The Shining One's light seemed to have a pacifying effect on Alcor. That made sense, since it mimicked the power of Polaris and the septentriones were meant to submit to their creator, not argue with him.
Yamato did not draw any connection between that and the effect Hiro had on him. Hiro was strong, intelligent, and had introduced him to sex and takoyaki. He was also warm and Yamato liked coiling around him. It awoke a sense of primal contentment in him that had nothing to do with Alcor and all the ways in which he was pathetic.
Hiro was absolutely nothing like that lying bastard Polaris, so how Yamato, even his septentrione side reacted to Hiro had absolutely nothing to do with Polaris. Just thinking about it made his lip curl into a sneer of distaste.
The point was to subdue Alcor intact enough to be of use, not to have the pleasure of defeating him. Yamato knew that, and yet he told himself that if Alcor was being difficult, was fighting back? Yamato hadn't fought Hiro when Hiro tried to return his memories. (Yamato, being Yamato, didn't acknowledge that was only because he'd been too startled to.)
"You are strong, Yamato Hotsuin," Alcor said after they'd gone a couple of rounds and the cube looked a little worse for wear.
Yamato smirked, not with pride but almost fondly. If Hiro had been there, he would have made a note that this was almost the first time Yamato had looked that way at anyone but Hiro. "My demons are strong." The power Alcor had given humanity, the power Yamato had gained while fighting at Hiro's side. This was the first day: if he was using only his own strength and only the demons he'd had back then, he would never have survived Alcor's assault.
Yamato would have to find time to get stronger, and check to make sure Hiro had put opportunities for training into his schedule.
"That may be so, but I will not let you hand humanity's fate over to Polaris!" Alcor declared, transforming into the star.
"I have no intention of doing so." Because that would be stupid. "Not anymore." Yamato hated the thought that only an hour ago, before Hiro unsealed his memories, Yamato had been just that stupid.
"I know that humans can say things that are not true, Yamato Hotsuin. That is known as a lie. I will not be deceived by you again!" The way he had been deceived into giving Yamato so much knowledge, until the Hotsuin laughed and revealed to him that he had other plans, better things to do than defending this country and humanity.
"Humans can lie," Yamato agreed, "but I'm not only human, am I? See for yourself." He coiled a little more of himself around Alcor, entwining with the metal coiled around that star form.
"That would break your mind, Yamato Hotsuin. I may have contaminated the files of your clan, you may be correct to hate me for this, but I would not do that to you."
"…So you didn't do this to us deliberately, so that you could connect to our minds and satisfy your cravings for companionship?" His need to have other minds connected to his?
Silence, until Alcor admitted, "I do not understand what you mean, Yamato Hotsuin. Is this somehow connected to the human ability to form bonds with others without being able to connect?" That miraculous power. "Regardless, the way humans think and the way we septentriones perceive the universe are incompatible. For our minds to connect would break you, and possibly me as well." Not that Alcor was as bothered by that thought as he was by the thought of doing that to Yamato, enemy or not.
Not when Alcor had wanted to die, until Yamato connected to him. The Shining One's soothing light helped, but it wasn't enough to kill the pain, to fill up the empty ache inside of him where he had been torn away from his brothers.
Yamato was delighted. "So Hiro isn't the only one growing stronger from all of this?" Io's matchless ability to harness the power of gods. Ronaldo's ability to rally an army. Even Daichi, who Yamato almost hated for having Hiro to himself for all those years, had somehow managed to find some means of breaking a septentrione's defense. If it weren't for him, Dubhe would have been just as much trouble as Betesnach to defeat.
If these repetitions continued, if Hiro had more time to work on all of them, then what? Would they all become worthwhile companions? Io was almost there, although her shy hesitation had turned Yamato off until his World of Merit cured it.
"Hiro… The Shining One? Yamato Hotsuin, do you have designs on the Shining One?" Yamato could feel Alcor's aura crackle with protective anger.
"You think I…" when Yamato had been convinced that Alcor was the one planning to seduce and ruin Hiro?
Although, unlike Yamato, Alcor was perfectly correct. Yamato certainly did have designs on the Shining One and that power, that light.
If Yamato was Alcor, if Alcor had any brains, he would snatch Hiro up every time this began, the instant he sensed that power, wrap around it and never let go. If it weren't for the septentrione's inability to choose his own purpose, then instead of being the Sword of Polaris, he could be the Sword of Hiro.
Even thinking about that made Yamato's chains twitch jealously, so perhaps it was to his benefit that Alcor was so stupid.
Last time, he had simply reached for the septentrione equivalent of USB ports and cables, the parts of Alcor that were meant to hook up to the others but had been scarred over if not outright torn out by the violence with which Polaris tore him loose from the others. Alcor had barely managed to put up a fight that time. This time, though, he'd attacked Yamato right away, because they were enemies. If Yamato tried to break into Alcor's mind, possibly killing them both?
Yes: Yamato underscored that mental note to do this with Hiro there next time. If Hiro's light reminded Alcor's of his master's (only obviously far superior to Polaris' radiance), of the days when he was able to connect to the others, then no wonder the part of Alcor that didn't want to fight being given something he missed so much it tortured him every eternal instant had won out over self-preservation and any lingering desire he had not to hurt the mostly-human Yamato Hotsuin. If Yamato Hotsuin was so determined to invade Alcor's mind, then let him suffer the consequences.
That was what Yamato would have done: he loved to see fools suffer the consequences of their own actions. The universe was so rarely fair.
"Your mind won't hurt me." Not when Alcor barely had a mind. "Think of it as one of those strange powers of humanity." Yamato resisted the immature impulse to fold his arms. "Hiro… The Shining One showed me that you were right: humanity can't trust Polaris, so I can't have my world of merit." Not yet, anyway. "And he needs you to give back Fumi so he can use the terminals. "So hurry up and connect to me so you can see for yourself that I'm not lying, or I'll wrap around Hiro so tightly that you can't have any of it."
That would have ensured immediate compliance on any later day, he was sure of it, after Alcor had more of a chance to taste that light, to feel it soothe that deep pain.
Truth be told, if it weren't for his family's ability to use the dragon stream, Yamato was certain he wouldn't come close to being able to absorb all of that power. Still, it was a power of life and humanity, and that was what his clan specialized in. What he couldn't absorb, he could at least tie up so Alcor couldn't have it.
Hmm, that was a thought. If Hiro could provide enough power for even a single one of the shields to stay up after defeating Mizar…
Hiro wanted this over with.
Yamato had never felt so alive. It was because of these repetitions that he had Hiro, after all: why kill the temporal phenomenon that laid the golden eggs? Not until they had their perfect happy ending. So what if it wasn't as simple as Yamato thought? He hadn't thought it was possible to have a Hiro, either, so this was clearly much better than his original plan.
"If you are lying, Yamato Hotsuin, you will die," Alcor reminded him, because even wild and angry Alcor was still pathetically nice enough to give warnings like that. Like Otome's death clip.
"Just hurry it up," Yamato told him, smirking as the coils descended on him.
It was rather like having a knot in his back for hours or even days, after some ill-advised combination of training and paperwork, and then feeling the release of tension and accompanying endorphins as it was worked out and his body returned to a functional state, the way it should be. Alcor's enmity was worrying, in the same way it would be worrying to have a furious Clicky giving him that back massage, with those hands so close to his neck and possibly a gun leveled at the back of his head, but there was still an inevitable sense of blessed relief, of finally.
Alcor's suffering was so much worse, and Yamato could feel him melt, feel him become the squishy wounded thing he'd been before instead of a drawn blade even before Yamato tugged Alcor over to Yamato's memories.
When Alcor followed the links from Yamato's memory files to Alcor's own memory files of that timeline, Yamato found himself with bony arms wrapped around him, Alcor's human form pressed up against Yamato's back, face pressing into the curve of Yamato's neck, muffled by his hair, as more of those metal coils entwined with his own chains, forming point after point of connection. Yamato's mostly-human brain couldn't follow most of the fourth-dimensional shuffling of their various bits Alcor did to let them get comfortable even though Yamato still had far fewer connection points than Alcor did, but when it was over?
Alcor didn't feel quite comfortable, and it hurt just like the stretching of unused muscles. On them both, really. Alcor was right about the danger: if there wasn't some core of strength in Yamato, he would have lost himself in this, when Alcor had experienced so much more, so many alien things. Oh.
His connection to Hiro. The bonds built up over time. How had he not realized that was what made him so sure of his own identity? Apparently it wasn't just septentriones: humans also defined themselves through their connections to others. Their minds could be bound together.
It was Yamato that shifted his other body to wrap Alcor up in chains again, even as dampness made its way through his hair to trickle down his neck and soak into his collar.
Like their respective stars, the Alcor system had almost been a part of the Mizar system. None of the septentriones were meant to operate alone, but Yamato could feel how it calmed Alcor to be wrapped up in another entity again.
Like a sword belonged in its sheath, instead of exposed to the elements. That was a good way to ruin fine steel.
Of course, that must have been Polaris' intention. Let Alcor be ruined, let him become weak, both so that he was no threat and in order to terrify the others. Let them see how rebellion and separation were nothing less than a living hell.
Yamato somehow managed to move parts of Alcor, to wrap him a little around Hiro's radiance. Alcor had felt much healthier when Yamato connected to him before, but that was after soaking up that warmth for days. At least some part of Alcor hadn't given up, if he had still sought out the comfort the Shining One's power provided. Or was it that part of him just wanted the pain to stop?
No matter what it took. Almost no matter what it took. All this, and he'd still tried to help humanity, when weren't they the reason he was suffering like this in the first place? Humanity and Polaris.
Alcor snapped his fingers. "Bifrons."
"Yes, Master?"
"Have Botis return Fumi Kanno to JPs."
So, it seemed that Alcor had kept going through Yamato's knowledge of what must be done even as he sniveled on Yamato's shoulder. His voice showed no trace of the inner turmoil Yamato could feel: wise, when dealing with demons. Especially Bifrons, who Alcor had subdued in order to keep him from attacking humans and was only restrained by his fear of Alcor's considerable power.
It was after Bifrons was gone that Alcor nuzzled at his neck and said "Yamato Hotsuin…" in a breathy, thankful, submissive way that went straight to a certain part of him. The septentrione was clearly grateful enough to do anything Yamato desired as long as it didn't involve letting go of the human. Normally, Yamato found begging and pleading and all those displays of weakness a turn-off, but right now Alcor was tied into his own mind, his own memories, and Yamato's memories of speaking to Hiro…
In the world of merit, there was absolutely no shame in being put in his place by one stronger. The problem was that of the two of them, Alcor was the stronger… Slightly. Hiro hadn't managed to reach level five with Alcor until the last round, so while Alcor was inherently stronger than Yamato, he had far less of that power to draw on.
Yamato realized that he and the heretic, the incredibly powerful being that blessed his clan with scraps of that power, were just about equals. He'd never had an equal until he first met Hiro, and now he knew better than that. Hiro had clearly been superior to him from the beginning. Yamato still liked the thought of having equals, after having such a good experience with his first one. Hiro was everything he had hoped to gain from from his world of merit, and more.
Alcor was still sad, pathetic, and soggy when he wasn't trying to kill Yamato, but having someone like him? Someone that couldn't look down on him for not being human when they weren't human at all?
Yamato supposed it wasn't too much of a burden, even if having the clingy alien plastered to his back would make it harder to maintain proper posture while reading reports or sending out orders.
If Yamato tolerated Alcor, then hopefully Hiro would continue to demonstrate this positive reinforcement technique for him, which was like discipline in that it was only used on underlings who were worth it.
Yes: The only reason Yamato could see for not wanting this week to go on forever was that if Hiro wasn't scrambling to spend time with everyone else, he would have more time for Yamato.