Chapter 12.

His hand shot out like a snake strike, and Danny gave a shout as he felt his leg being yanked back. Crap! Atomu could do that echolocation thing… he had forgotten to turn intangible again! Guiltily, he flickered back into view and looked over his shoulder.

"Dude, you nearly gave me a heart attack," he complained.

"Your heart wasn't beating in the first place. Who sent you, Uran or Ochanomizu?" Atomu had regained the look of irritation he had worn back at the security bot attack.

"Uran. Also, I may not have a pulse, but I do have a shin bone. Please stop crushing it." Atomu's death-grip slowly unlocked and Danny quickly pulled his leg away, rubbing it. "Jeez, it's not like I'm going to run away—"

He looked up and noticed the man, who was staring at him in silent fascination. Suddenly feeling every not-inconspicuous inch between him and the ground, he swiveled and put his feet firmly on the floor.

"Uh, hello sir."

The man eyed him strangely, frowning slightly at the recognition.

"He doesn't speak English," Atomu sighed, turning to Tenma. They exchanged a few words.

"This is the Danny I was speaking of."

"Fascinating…" he said, staring at Danny's faintly glowing form, "Are you sure you don't know how he manages to do that?"

"You'll have to ask him yourself," Atomu remarked.

He gave a short laugh. "Shame he doesn't speak Japanese," he said with an odd thoughtfulness.

"And Danny, this is Dr. Tenma. Since I acknowledge that you were forced into this, and can't understand what we're saying anyways, I don't care if you stay. Just keep quiet for a while, I'm seeing if he can do anything to help your situation."

Danny started to complain that he had been leaving when Atomu had caught him, but was distracted by the second comment.

"How much have you told him?" he asked sharply.

"Everything."

"What? Even about me!"

"Danny, I know you've said you're paranoid, but honestly, you're from another dimension. Nobody here really cares you're a half-ghost, because it's amazing you even look human."

Danny glowered at him.

Atomu sighed. "Look, I trust Tenma—"

"Ochanomizu and Uran sure don't."

Atomu raised a hand. "Let me reword that. Although I don't necessarily trust him, Tenma is a brilliant man and we can't afford not asking him if he can help. Do you want to be stuck here forever?"

Danny stalled long enough for Tenma to slip in a comment, and they started to talk again before he could rebuke.

"I'm afraid that I personally cannot help you and your companion, but I do know someone who most likely can. He was one of that research team I was on for the dimensional studies, and if my memory does not fail me, he was working on it long after we stopped."

"Great! Do you know who it was?"

"That, unfortunately, does escape me. I probably have records of the project, but I'll have to go down and search for them."

Danny watched sullenly as Tenma got up and walked past them, disappearing down the stairs. "Where's he going?"

"He said he knew someone who would know more than him."

Danny gave a snort, when his eyes were drawn back to the desk and he remembered why he had been leaving in the first place. He drifted over quietly as Atomu stared out the window, drumming his fingers on the edge of the workbench. Danny picked up the picture frame with a small scrape, and behind him Atomu commented, "You know, I wouldn't touch anything. He's kind of OCD about how he arranges his stuff—" Danny turned around and flipped the picture so Atomu could see it.

Atomu's fingers froze.

"You caught me when I was leaving… I was going off to ask Uran what this was. Who is that boy and why does he look like you?"

Atomu was silent.

Danny was about to repeat the question when he finally spoke.

"…He still has that…" His voice was small and quiet; he seemed to be saying it more to himself than to Danny. There was an implacable emotion on his face, somewhere between shock and poignancy.

"Who is it? Is it you?" Atomu glanced up at Danny, vague discomfort adding itself to his expression. He drew his knees up to his chest and looked away.

"No."

He paused again.

"That's Toby."

"Why do you look like him?" Danny repeated.

"My design was based on him."

Danny realized that for all the one and a half days he had known Atomu, this was the first time he had seen him actually acting like a child.

"Then… where is he now? Is there a person running around who looks exactly like you?"

"He's dead."

It was Danny's turn to be silent. "…Oh." he said, his arms slowly falling to his sides. How is it possible to answer questions in a way that raises even more? He thought in frustration. He still had a bazillion things he didn't understand, but the conversation had become so awkward he wasn't sure he wanted to continue.

They were interrupted by Tenma's clipped footsteps returning up the stairs. He carried something large, bulky, and metal under his arm.

"Sorry, I didn't find it. I know those record papers are in there somewhere, but it would take a far more intensive search to find them."

"I see. What's under your arm?" Atomu asked suspiciously.

"Ah, well," Tenma said, walking up to Danny with what Danny had just realized was some sort of helmet, "You said I should ask him myself."

"What are you!— " Before Danny could react or step away, Tenma had placed it on his head and pressed a button on the back, making it clamp in from all sides. Confused, he started to reach up, but his hands were only half way there when he felt a mind-shattering jolt and collapsed.

A few seconds later, the fuzz began to fade and Danny's brain slowly began to work again. He felt kind of dizzy, like he had just taken a heavy blow to the head, but with none of the pain. The buzz in his ears was fading, and he realized Atomu was shouting at him. His eyes fluttered open, but most of his vision was out-of-focus and obscured by the blurry orange fireworks around the edges of his vision. Feeling was returning to his body, and he realized through the angry onslaught of pins and needles that he was sitting down in the desk chair. In the haze, he heard a sentence with odd clarity.

"私は言っていること分かっていますか?"

He blinked, and the fog cleared a little. Danny could see Atomu now— he had stopped yelling, and was staring back at Tenma with one hand on Danny's shoulder. "何?" he asked, an appalled look creeping across his face. Tenma merely repeated the question.

He felt the words sinking in now. Watashi wa… iteiru… he… knew that. Something freshly seared into his mind clicked with those words. The way they were strung together was completely alien, but he knew enough of them to rationalize a sentence.

"Can you understand me?"

Danny was too dazed to do anything more than answer yes.

Atomu's eyes widened at his response, and he seemed to swivel around and explode at Tenma. "You actually— that's neural alteration! Is that machine even tested?"

"Of course. It was a Ministry funded project."

"This thing is practically a prototype! The versions of this today are still experimental and have only been used on people in a specific state of sleep! Do you want to put him in a coma?" He quickly reached around the back of the helmet, clicking the release button and angrily handing it to Tenma.

Meanwhile, Danny was starting to get a low-key headache, which was not improved by the Japanese flying past his ears at lightning pace. Only the individual words seemed to make sense, and slowly it dawned on him that he was listening to Japanese sentence structure.

"I assure you, it's quite safe. I've used it many times myself when I don't have time to read a large quantity of information."

"That would be far more reassuring if you weren't already mad as a hatter. Excuse me, but I think I'll be taking him back to the Ministry to check for brain damage." He turned back to Danny. "Can you stand?"

Glad that someone was finally speaking English, he replied "I feel fine," and got to his feet.

"Ah well, and I was hoping to ask him a few questions," Tenma remarked, his voice betraying his amusement as he watched Atomu drag Danny over to the window. "What do you want me to do when I find the files?"

Atomu stomped up on the work bench and glowered at him. "Come down to the Ministry. Bring any research papers you find with you."

Tenma raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure that's wise? The last time you told me to do that, the guards had me in handcuffs before you had even reached the ground floor."

"I'll forewarn them. Just be there at 10 AM sharp, or they'll start to get fidgety. Anything involving you seems to get them fidgety."

"Of course," he said suavely, "Don't worry, I'm always punctual."

Danny drifted off the floor, rubbing his forehead. He had preferred it when Japanese had meaningless syllables— now every time they spoke (and they spoke fast), his brain went into overdrive trying to decode what they were saying.

Finally they finished trading verbal blows and Atomu yanked Danny out the window. It was almost night now— the sun had vanished beyond the skyscrapers, leaving only a shrinking pale yellow glow. Behind them, a dark starry sky was encroaching, and Danny could hear the dozens of crickets it had brought out chirping below them. He would've liked to fly lower, but Atomu pulled him higher, furiously asking him if he was feeling OK, were his senses impaired, did he hurt anywhere, did he have a headache, how strong was the pain, where was it coming from, could he please respond in complete sentences, was he dizzy, did he feel faint.

Somewhere between mindlessly answering questions, the full implications of what had just happened hit him, and he stopped in midair. Atomu backfired, worriedly grabbing his shoulder when Danny finally spat out "Is he always like that? He didn't even give me a damn warning, he just walked up and fried my fricking brain! It's no wonder Ochanomizu and Uran hate him!"

Atomu gave a grim smile. "Tenma," he said with a little melancholy, "isn't really notable for his… empathy."

Danny gritted his teeth and snarled "Why doesn't he know English, anyway? He's wearing a Ministry badge in that picture, and everyone else at the damn place seems to speak it."

Atomu sighed. "Tenma no longer works at the Ministry for— reasons, but when he did it was a very different place. Robotics had just become a popular field, and countries had begun to hide their breakthroughs from one another as an attempt to best each other. Japan was no exception— the Ministry is very open nowadays, but back then it was strictly local."

"Reasons?" Danny asked, looking at him curiously.

Atomu made a bitter face. "…Yes. After he finished building me he had a sort of falling out with—"

"He built you!"

"I thought that was obvious," Atomu said, frowning slightly.

"Well— I guess it was, but—" but I'm just surprised you admitted it.

Filtering into their silence was the distant static of traffic and the steady rush of Atomu's rockets, which cast a flickering orange glow that contrasted with his own pale white luminescence. To the right, the city had begun to flicker to life with an ocean of cool blue streetlights; the jutting dark skyline framed by the sun's last few dying rays.

"Com'n," Atomu muttered, tugging his arm and swooping off towards the twinkling steel skyscrapers.

Danny followed, taking with him a million unanswered questions.