Chapter 1: Let's fight.
It was another busy night on the streets of San Fransokyo. Especially in the alleyways of where bot fighting is taking place.
But for Hiro Hamada, it was night full of no regrets until he made the big mistake hustling the bot fighting champion, Yama, himself.
But the regret is short-lived when his overprotective brother comes to save him.
" Hiro! Get On!" Shouted Tadashi to his little brother who has once again got into trouble with illegal bot fighting.
" Tadashi!" Hiro exclaimed at his savior of a brother as he hops on with no questions asked. "Perfect timing!"
Nothing is said by Tadashi as he slams a helmet on his brother's head and takes off on the moped to shake off the angry mob that is chasing them. Given the fact that Hiro has scammed out of their money. Again.
" Are you alright?" his brother asks as he speeds up.
" Yea." Hiro answers.
" Are you hurt?"
" No."
" Then what were you thinking?" Tadashi says in anger, hitting his brother. "Knucklehead."
Hiro bends forward to capture his Megabot. That just had taken care of Yama for him.
"You and your other half graduated high school at thirteen! Thirteen! And this is what you're doing?"
He turns around and then uses an improvised ramp to jump over the mob after Hiro. Which impresses the daylights out of Hiro;
"Bot Fighting is illegal!" Tadashi lectures his brother.
" Bot fighting is not illegal. Betting on Bot fights. That's illegal, but it's so lucrative!" Hiro says showing off his wad of cash. "Besides. At least it's not as bad as what Tetris does."
"Don't remind me." He groans. "And speaking of her, where is she!?" Tadashi glares at Hiro.
" Last time I checked, she went with her friends to go shopping down on Hartzel Ave." Hiro tells Tadashi as he turns his moped down an alley towards the street.
" And by 'shopping' you mean robbing." He says.
" Yea pretty much."
" Ugh. She needs to stop associating with those criminals she calls 'friends'"
Cops are already trolling the street by the time the brothers start heading down on it. A group of teenagers is running from the cops with stolen goods and running ahead of them is a short girl wearing baggy clothes and a baseball cap covering her hair along with dragging a shoulder bag stuffed with items from the store. From a distance she would be mistaken for Hiro, but that girl is none other than Sayuri 'Tetris' Hamada.
Tadashi shouts to his little sister "Get on!"
She tries to make for Tadashi's moped, but immediately notices that she will get caught by the cops going in a similar direction and decides to ditch the items and run in the opposite direction.
Tadashi scoffs as he turns around to go after Tetris. But it's clear that he needs to save his and Hiro's hide first.
"She's going to be charged with evading the police if she keeps this up. When will you two learn to stop looking for trouble?" Tadashi said. " The last thing I want to be spending my Friday nights on, is saving both of your hides!"
"Will you relax Tadashi? It's not like we're going to get caught. Nothing will stop me now!" Hiro said just in time to have the cops cut them off and the mob to catch up to the two.
This evening just became longer as Hiro and Tadashi are thrown into handcuffs and shoved in the back of the police car.
"You were saying genius?" Tadashi scoffs at his brother.
At the police station, Hiro sits sheepishly in a cell by himself waving hi to his brother who is in the other cell with a glare on his face that is crowded with the other adults that were involved in tonight's bot games. All Hiro can be grateful for at this moment is that he's still technically a minor.
Although. He would prefer to be his twin right now and not get caught.
Eventually, Aunt Cass arrives to settle things with the charges. Somehow she manages to have the two boys released and the charges dropped with only a warning. Along with Tadashi practically forcing Hiro to reluctantly part with his money back to the mob in order to avoid further trouble with them.
"Oh I am so glad you two are alright" Cass says as she hugs them before grabbing the two by the ears as she pulls them out to the car. " WHAT WERE YOU DUNDERHEADS THINKING?!"
She drags the two over to the truck. Where Hiro's twin is waiting. Trying to keep her smirk from appearing to no avail. Despite that, Tadashi and Hiro are relieved to see her ok.
"AND DON'T THINK FOR A SECOND YOU'RE OFF THE HOOK YOUNG LADY!" She yells at Tetris as the three get in the truck. The smirk immediately is wiped off her face as she follows them solemnly to the truck.
Tetris looks and dresses a lot like Hiro. She has the Hamada black hair, not as neat as Tadashi's but nowhere as messy as Hiro's either. She's not really so much into girly things and dresses in baggy clothes mostly. Tonight she's wearing an outfit a lot like Hiro's with the exception of a blue tank top under a black hoodie and the cargo shorts are a dark grey.
What makes Hiro mad is that she's about a couple of inches taller than him and she's the younger twin by five minutes. Tadashi laughs at this, but promises Hiro he will get taller when he gets older. The only thing that really diverts her from her brothers is her eye color which is a beautiful blue-grey.
According to Tadashi he remembered their parents naming her 'Sayuri' after the main book character from some japanese love story because the character had the same color eyes. As she got older she was nicknamed Tetris after managing to take apart a whole video game system and put it back together at the tender age of four and it stuck.
The entire way home was Aunt Cass chewing the two of them out. Especially Tetris.
"You better count yourself lucky that you weren't arrested tonight with your brothers." She goes at her. "Because they are not as lenient towards thieves."
Tetris scoffs as she rolls her eyes. The only reason she didn't get arrested was that she knows how to not get caught unlike her cocky brother.
"For ten years, I have done all I can to raise you three. Do I know anything about children? No! Raising twins? Absolutely not! Should I pick up a book on parenting? Probably! Where was I going with this? I had a point." Aunt Cass lecturing the three.
" Sorry Aunt Cass." Tadashi said.
" We love you Aunt Cass." Hiro says, trying to defuse the situation.
"Very much." Tetris offers an overly docile tone.
" Well I love you too!" Aunt Cass as she opens her shop door. " I had to close the shop early on Beat Poetry Night!"
Once they get inside, Cass immediately goes to the kitchen for a bit of stress eating while the twins and Tadashi escape upstairs to the boy's shared bedroom.
Tadashi and Hiro share the loft space that is now their bedroom while Tetris shares with Aunt Cass. All three of them used to be up there until the twins turned thirteen. It was then that Aunt Cass announced that Tetris was too old to be sharing with the boys and had her move downstairs. Even though Tetris moved rooms, she still prefers to hang with her brothers more whenever possible.
" You two better make this up to Aunt Cass before she eats everything in the cafe." Tadashi says to the twins.
" Uh Huh. For sure." Said Hiro paying more attention to the computer and Tetris attending to her robot, Spider.
Spider is a nifty little robot that compresses into the size of a lighter. When activated it turns into a hand made of needles, walks like a spider and can change into any shape to fit through small cracks with a touch of a button on the small remote Tetris has in the palm of her hand. It works a lot like Hiro's bot fighting robot but it's much thinner and smaller, and is used for other purposes. Mainly to break in stores. Right now there's a glitch with it's response to the remote and long story short that's what caused her to get caught.
"And I hope you two learned your lesson boneheads." She hears her older brother tell them.
Hiros turns to look at Tadashi and says in a sincere tone, " Absolutely." But both Tetris and Tadashi know him too well.
But Tadashi knows otherwise " You're going bot-fighting aren't you?"
"There's another fight across town. If I book now, I could still make it." Hiro says as he grabs his robot and tries to leave, only to be grabbed by the hood of his jacket by Tadashi.
"When are you going to do something good with those big brains of yours?" Tadashi said.
"What? Go to College like you, so people could tell us stuff I already know?" Hiro pointed out.
"Unbelievable." Tadashi says before looking at Tetris still tinkering her robot and snatches it from her.
"Hey!" She shouts.
"I can't believe you two. What will mom and dad say?" Tadashi says to them as he tosses the robot to the side.
"Well they're not here right now are they?" Tetris snaps. "They died when we were three."
"Still. They would be disappointed to learn what you're doing with your lives now. Doing Bot fights and committing crimes should not be the long term plan for your two." He lectures the two.
"All I want is to be with people who appreciate me instead of pushing and nagging me to go bigger. Do better." She tells him. "And I'm sick of it. I'm sick of people expecting greatness out of me."
"Because you two are destined for that and don't know it yet because you keep falling into the wrong crowd. The people tonight that 'appreciate' you are ner duels who have used you to get what they want. And will drop you as soon as they get what they want. You're lucky enough not to be in juvenile hall with them right now for that robbery. If you keep going down like this, you'll just be wasting your life." Tadashi tells her.
She holds her ground, "Then at least I was good for something then aren't I?"
Tadashi sighs. He knows she doesn't mean it. It was never easy for her to be a prodigy at such a young age. Especially one that is part of a set of twins without parents. And kids around their age don't want anything to do with them since they are prodigies. What she is doing isn't a real passion for her. It's a desperate attempt to get attention that isn't involved being a prodigy twin.
And the same goes for Hiro. They're alike in so many ways that they rebel in similar ways.
He knows they have the passion, but they just need a push in the right direction. He then gets an idea.
" Hiro, If you're still going to that bot fight, I'll take you. Someone's got to keep you out of trouble." He tells him.
" Yes! Thank you!" Hiro says happily as he grabs his robot.
"Good luck in jail. I'm pretty sure Cass isn't going to bail your sorry butts out this time." Tetris says in a cocky tone.
"You're coming too, Tetris." Tadashi announces.
"Wait? What!?" Tetris says in outrage.
I'm not taking any chances with you after what's happened. So you're coming along. No complaints." He tells her.
She scoffs, "Fine. It's not like I have anything better to do with my time."
"Good." Tadashi smiles.
"Something tells me that there's a catch to this sudden generosity." Thought Tetris as she is following her brothers out to the moped.
Hey Everybody. This is the first chapter of the rewrite of one of my early stories. I wanted to go back to fix some things and flesh out Tetris' character a bit more. I know she is starting out as a bit more mean-spirited, but she will get nicer. I promise that. I know I had comments in the past that she was attention seeking and I'm going to embrace that a little bit. The main purpose though is that I do want to try to differentiate her more from Hiro instead of a complete female version of him.