Hiya everyone! This took me quite a little time, mostly because of school and also because I had few and far-between reviews on the next chapter, thus making me think that everyone had lost interest in this and making me lose interest too. So if you want this to continue, be sure to review this time!

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They shaved him. They said that the electrodes wouldn't stick to his skull if they didn't. He watched his brown locks fall to the ground in something akin to horror and nostalgia. He didn't even get to enjoy his haircut for a week and already they were cutting it off. He felt like the strands of hair were the first of a series of things in his life to fall apart.

They didn't even offer him a mirror to look into.

Four nurses in white led Toris to a room full of medical equipment. There was some sort of huge white cylinder, connected by several wires to the wall. He had seen such equipment before in hospitals. It resembled the one used for CAT-scans, only with a few modifications.

An entire side of the room seemed composed of one great mirror. He was no fool. He knew that a handful of doctors and officers were probably on the other side, watching and monitoring him.

He was requested to remove his shirt and lie down on the stretcher that would later be rolled into the machine. As soon as he was on his back the nurses started applying electrodes do his head. He shivered under the cold touch.

Toris closed his eyes briefly and thought about Captain Jones. Was he back on his ship? When would he be departing? Would they ever meet again? He had said that he would be waiting to hear about what had happened to him in the end, but who knew when an order would arrive for them to depart immediately? Duty came first, it always did.

He was pulled rather abruptly from his musing when he felt what the nurses did next. He snapped his eyes opened and tried to get up but found he couldn't.

"A… Are you tying me up?!"

The nurses looked up to him, four identical blank stares focusing on his face.

"We need to restrain you, sir. Some people are tempted to move during the retrieval of memories. It messes up the process."

With a final tug on his bonds, she added "don't worry; this will not be painful to your body."

Somehow this was not comforting at all.

They tugged on his bonds one last time and, finally, they pushed the stretcher into the insides of the scanner. Toris heard the door close, leaving him all alone, tied up in this dark, enclosed space. He tried not to panic. He closed his eyes hard and tried to imagine that he was somewhere else.

Suddenly there was a BUZZ and he needn't imagine anymore.

- - - - - -

He was running in a golden field that seemed to stretch on forever. The sky was blue and cloud-less. Hands grabbed him from behind and covered his eyes.

"Guess who?"

He laughed and tried to pry the hands off him.

"Feliks! Stop it!"

He heard a tense gasp and the hands withdrew. The air suddenly seemed a few degrees colder. He turned around to see what got to his friend when he saw it. A giant spaceship was slowly drifting east, eclipsing the sun. A smaller vessel came out of it and headed towards his home further away.

"Another customer for Edouart," he said.

"I'm not sure. Like, it has a pirate flag drawn on it."

He took a closer look. Indeed, the unmistakable skull was there, with the crossed femurs and… a sunflower? His eyes widened. I couldn't be the Himawari he had heard of, could it?

Far away, the vessel landed in front of his house. He couldn't see from that distance, but an overwhelming feeling of dread took over his senses and he made a mad dash for his home.

"Toris, wait!"

- - - - - -

"Brothers!"

He threw the door open to find his brother Edouart sitting face to him at the table, in front of a strange man. He was back to the door. All Toris could see of him was that he was very tall, almost as much as Raivis even thought he was sitting. He was wearing a long beige trench coat, along with a pale scarf. That struck him as odd: who would wear such winter clothes under the hot sun of Lantis?

His brother looked more serious than he ever saw him. Neither man has reacted to his arrival, both of them engaged in what seemed like a staring contest. Toris made his way to Raivis, who was standing in the doorway to the back store and looking at them with as much worry as his circuits would allow him to express.

Before he could ask the tiny robot what was going on, Edouart suddenly slammed his hands onto the table.

"Close this shop if you want to, but no matter how much you threaten us I will never assist you, mister Braginsky!" he snapped with a harsh tone.

The man looked up at him and smiled. Nothing was wrong with that smile, but what would have been a comforting gesture looked far too creepy and intimidating on that man.

"Is that your final word?" he inquired with a strong accent Toris couldn't place.

Smile intact, he swept his gaze over the room's occupants. When he met those baby-like violet eyes, a violent shiver cursed through Toris' body. That gaze held so much cruelty and despair it was unbearable.

Edouart kept firm ground. "Yes, that is my final word."

The smile, if possible, got wider and creepier. "Very well then"

He got up and looked at the door.

"Nathalia!"

Moments later they met the scarier woman they had ever met. They were then taken, bloody and beaten, on board of the Himawari.

- - - - - -

A knife under his throat. Cold hands restraining him.

"You will work on that machine, da?"

His brother lowered his head and got to work.

- - - - - -

He and Edouart were huddled in a corner, Yvan walking menacingly towards them. He had a water faucet in hand, his favourite weapon, and a crazy gleam in his eyes. They had learned the hard way never to anger him, especially not in those days when he seemed to be looking for blood more than usual. It was just their luck that the program Edouart was working on, with less equipment than what he really needed, chose that day to crash.

"You told me this would work!" He raged, raising his pipe.

Toris hid his head in his arms, preparing for the oncoming blow.

What he heard instead what a sound of metal hitting metal. He looked up to see that Raivis had jumped in front of the pipe.

"Raiviiiis!" screamed Edouart. He threw himself next to his creation to assess the damage. The little one was now sprawled on the ground, his arm twisted at an odd angle and eyes closed. His system had probably shut down from the shock.

He blanched. If Yvan could twist the metal arm of a robot like this, than he could only imagine the force of his blows. Toris was frozen on the spot. He couldn't take his eyes off their captor. The man should have been angered beyond belief at missing his target, like he got when anyone tried to stop or dodge his blows. Yet, this time, he seemed genuinely curious. His baby-face was back, and he had his pipe lowered next to his body, forgotten.

"Why did he take the hit?"

Edouart looked up from his inspection. "You don't know? That's because of the three laws!" When all he received was a blank stare, he readjusted his glasses and started explaining. How he could be so calm in such situations, Toris would never know. He kind of envied him this ability.

Yvan looked entranced, then excited by the explanations.

"This is so fun! Make me one like that!"

The robot designer put on a face that clearly said "oh no, not another thing to do!" but fortunately the terrible pirate captain didn't notice. He grabbed the little robot that was still out and shoved it in a closet. He turned around with a bright smile.

"Little robots have no flesh, so they're no fun to hit, da?"

- - - - - -

The time when things really changed for Toris was on the occasion of another one of those beatings. He was alone, that time. Yvan had once again locked Raivis in a closet so that he wouldn't interfere, but this time the android was conscious. He could be heard banging on the other side of the door.

"Please sir, let him out!" he begged.

He watched the pipe spin in the air, gleaming in the neon light. The other didn't answer, just smiled at him that frosted smile of his. The banging intensified.

"I beg of you, sir! If you don't let him out, he'll damage his positronic brain! It would near impossible to repair him!"

The pipe halted its movement. "ha?"

"If he knows someone is out there getting hurt and he can't help that person, to him it'll be like he's disobeying to the first law! He'll go crazy, fry his own brain!"

Yvan leaned closer, so close that their noses were almost touching. "You also want me to let him out so he can protect you, da?"

For the first time ever since that day back on Lantis, he mustered the courage to look at him in the eyes. "I don't care. I can heal." He said. Yvan cocked his head to the side, seemingly puzzled by his answer. "But…" he took a deep breath. "But if Raivis fries his brain, it's over! Edouart will never get over it!"

Whatever reaction he expected from his captor, it was certainly not laughter.

"You are really funny, comrade! You'd suffer for the sake of a robot?"

He frowned. "He's family."

The tall man just turned around and walked to the closet door. He turned around slightly, hand on the control board. His face was partly hidden in the shadow of his bangs and scarf.

"Then I'll need to show you. Everyone isn't nice like that."

He scanned his hand and the door opened, revealing a frantic and shaking Raivis that ran straight to him. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he could see a sad smile on Yvan's face before he left the room.

- - - - - -

After that day, the Captain allowed him to leave the lab he had originally locked them in. He made Toris do all sort of jobs in his ship, like every other member of his – terrifying – crew. Sometimes he'd just call for him to talk or beat him up, depending on his mood. Toris sort of wished his status aboard had never changed at all.

- - - - - -

A colourful explosion. A merchant ship wrecked and left for the authorities to find. Were they any survivors? He hoped there was.

"It's beautiful, da?" The voice of his Captain coming from his right startled him. (When had he gone from captor to Captain? Toris would often lie in bed, wondering how the hell that had happened. But at least, sometimes, he was allowed to see his brothers, working in the lab still.)

He removed his hand from the window and looked away.

"Why did you have to trash their vessel?" The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. 'shit' he thought, and tensed his muscles for what he knew was coming. Yvan smiled creepily at him.

"What do you mean, comrade?"

"Ah, no, nothing! I'm sorry sir!"

Yvan put a heavy hand on his shoulder. "No, keep talking."

He shivered and shut his eyes tightly. "You could have just ordered your soldiers to take the money and leave. There was no need for all this destruction."

The hand left his shoulder, but no hit came. After a few minutes he risked an eye in his Captain's direction. He was looking through the window, a far away look on his face. Then he shook his head.

"Tsk tsk. You do not understand how the world works. Do you know who they were?"

He hesitated. The menacing aura was gone, replaced by one of… weariness? But he still didn't trust the pirate not to hit him.

"They were merchants?"

"They were filthy dogs of the capitalism, that's what they were!" he snapped, making Toris jump at least a mile in the air. He started angrily pacing around the room.

"Just by doing their business they serve the rich and take from the poor, making them poorer and poorer! Small children works in terrible conditions, in the frosted land of some remote planet, to produce goods for mindless consumption! Then those rich bastards are going to ruin their own planet and move somewhere else, where they will kick the native out of their homes and force them to work for them, underpaid and underage!"

"Yes, I agree that this needs to stop, but was it reason enough to kill them?" he shouldn't have questioned his captor's doing, but he the curiosity was too much to resist. He needed to understand.

Yvan stopped pacing and looked at him with wide, innocent eyes. "They're not dead."

"They're not?" he looked around and looked at the ship again. It looked pretty wrecked. The other man walked to his side.

"I am afraid Nathalia obeyed my orders with a little too much enthusiasm. The plan was not to kill them, and that is why we did not make their ship explode. We merely destroyed the commands and life-support system. They have limited air and food now. We wanted to make them suffer."

"Why?"

"Because we want them to understand, and humans cannot understand the suffering of others unless they experience it themselves."

"That's not true!" he shouldn't have expressed his opinion like that, he knew, but what the other was saying sounded so wrong that he just had to say something, anything. "It is possible to understand others! No everyone is selfish and unfeeling! Causing pain will only make matters worse!"

Violet eyes flashed his way, in all their intimidating glory.

"And how do you know?"

He had an answer for that. There was surely an answer. There had to be. But under the weight of that stare, he could only splutter incoherently. Yvan smiled sadly and looked outside again.

"When two people have success together, do they share it? Seldom. Most people try to take all glory for themselves and the both of them end up hating each other. They try to be best. To go the farthest, to be strongest, to climb the highest! They compete, they envy, they hate each other, and devour one another!" He nearly yelled the last part, his voice taking on a high pitch and his eyes wild.

And then he changed his attitude drastically, becoming calm in an instant. "But when two people suffer or experience failure together, they become close. Friends. They help each other out, and then they say that they made it out, together. In a plane about to crash, when there is fear and tears, there are also messages of love. That is because experiencing suffering makes people good, while success usually causes hatred and makes people bad."

"B…But causing pain to other will cause hatred as well! It will make them hate you!"

"Yes, hatred comes first. But then, you get wise. You accept it, you understand it. And it brings you peace. Isn't it normal to want to share that peace?"

Those eyes were still looking at him, drilling into the deepest corners of his soul. It felt like he was being taken over by that gaze, full of suffering and pain but not an ounce of hatred. In then he saw a burning desire to be understood. And Toris stood there and let himself be taken away. He was his captor, in more ways than one.

"This is crazy" he argued still, weakly.

"Human kind is crazy, but we can save them. They just need to understand the pain they cause each other. But like I said, they need to experience it, first. They won't understand any other way. Everyone is equal, but people cannot see that. Only in pain they realise that they are all human beings, and that there are no such things as race or nobility and such. When they all see this, we will all become one! But we need to make this happen, da? "

"And how do you know?"

"Because I am the product of all this! That's how I know! They made me what I am, and I saw that it could not go on!"

- - - - - -

The highest level of consciousness brought by pain: insanity. Or peace, like Yvan had called it. He most certainly had it.

And now he was trying to have Toris have it too. But little did he know that his pipe did less to accomplish this goal than his eyes did.

He had understood, from Yvan's speech, that all that violence was just a misplaced effort to be understood. That he was suffering, himself, and wanted to share it. To not be alone in his insanity.

But when he had met with Edouart and Raivis and told then those conclusions, the former had just scolded at him and the later had almost fried his circuits over it. It was so deeply against the laws that he could not even consider it.

Edouart quickly took Raivis away to do damage-control.

"Let me tell you about Stockholm syndrome one of these days" he said before leaving.

The worst was that Toris knew his brother was right. But he still couldn't stop from wanting to help their Captain.

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To be continued. Now hit the review button plz!