Half a Chance – At Innocence
Taichi: You two new guys who have no names to me? See those two? *Points to Sora and Yamato, who are having a lovely chat* they're both mine. No looking.
Hiiro: Hn.
Quatre: We're taken anyway.
Taichi: I haven't decided which one I want more. *Points at Minako* She's a Taito and Taiora fan.
Quatre: You aren't listening. We're called for. They're yours. We'll… um… I'll still talk to them. *Also points at Minako* She's weird and changes her mind. She might stick you with the Yama girl, Keika
Keika: Hi, I'm Keika, I'm blond, I got green eyes, and sometimes I'm in a very Relena mood
Hiiro: *Gets vexed expression on his face* Hn. I'm not emotionless you know, and I do have an opinion, Minako. *Joins in the pointing* She actually agrees with me. And she scares me.
Ken Ichijouji: Minako wants to put me with Daisuke for this fic! *Aw… such a cute couple*
Taichi: Just saying… those two are on reserve for when she… I make my mind up.
Quatre: Is it just me, or do those two look like they're going out with each other?
Minako: *Unfazed by pointing* NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I don't like Sorato! ACK! *Tackles Yamato* Okay Yamato, you stay away from Sora! You guys are not a couple when I'm in control!
*Hits Yamato multiple times. Jun sees this somehow and bashes Minako. Hiiro thinks it looks fun and joins in. So do Keika and Taichi. Ken, Quatre, and Sora, being the… um… sensible ones, try to stop the madness to no avail. Relena shows up and starts bashing Minako for bashing Hiiro back. Now Duo, Trowa, and Wufei have joined them. Duo joins the dog pile and hits Jun in the face a lot. Trowa stands on the edge and kicks people when they come close. Wufei rants about justice, and starts to hit Minako for writing this. The sensible ones have given up and gone for ice cream*
Ken: *at ice-cream place* I'm getting Vanilla. It was always my favorite flavor!
Quatre and Sora: Mine too!
*They realize they have so much in common… I guess… and talk*
*Back at Dog-Pile*
Minako: GET OFF ME! THIS WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN! *Gets kicked by Trowa* BARTON! Bring me a bat! *Gets bat, as requested, and bats off all the anime characters, who for some reason, are all chibifyed*
Taichi: As I was saying, they're both mine… hey? Are we missing people?
*Someplace else*
Ken: And then I had to go home…
Sora: Aw, that's so sad! I've never heard something like that before…
Quatre: *sob*
Disclaimer: I own that weird scene, I own the story I wrote to make up for that weirdness, but I don't actually own any of the characters. Well, I do own Keika. Off the subject.
Dedication: To Lewis Wick, though he'd probably never read this, to Kattie, who'd also probably never read this, to those who are kind enough to read, to those kind enough to review, and to Yama, for being somewhere round the corner with lovely data disks for me!
(AN: Can't start this one either – bear with me)
Izzy sighed. Some days are far too boring. He had done all the homework, all the schoolwork, well, just about everything, and all he had left was the problem with the digital world. And the only information he had gotten was some kind of algorithm that even he, the great Izumi Koushiro could crack it alone. Perhaps Ken could help. He was supposed to be a math genius as well. Breaking algorithms is a nice way of bonding… or something like that… once again Izzy scribbled on the sheet of paper with the algorithm at the top. Not even his trusty laptop could break the formula down. Oh how the mighty hath fallen.
Death-Glare Boy seemed to be death glaring some more, it appeared to Taichi. At least Taichi had gotten used to the glaring. Taichi was quick to adjust to threats at his life by now. But usually it wasn't silent death stares, it was harsh words. Hey, Death-Glare could probably do that too. Maybe he was really a weird evil dude from another dimension or something like that. And just how did Glare-Boy know the blond kid? He was a lot nicer than Death-Glare, and Death-Glare hadn't exactly made any attempt to talk to anyone else. Maybe he was shy? Maybe someone else needed to say the first words! Haha! Taichi is smart! He stood up (in the lesson?) and walked over to where Death-Glare was. He was smiling… nervously, but that the best even Taichi could do under such a scrutinizing stare.
"Hey, so you're new here?" Aw, stupid question. "That was kind of a stupid question, of course you're new here. So, did you transfer here from another school?"
"…"
No reply huh? That was kinda rude… ah well; this is Taichi we're talking about. He wouldn't let this go even if Death-Glare pulled out a gun and said 'Omae o korosu'. Which wasn't far off the mark to the norm for DG.
"Well, um, did you just move here or something?"
For Taichi, this was getting annoying. For Glare-Boy, this was getting more annoying. He didn't have his story straight yet! So all he said was, "My name is Hiiro Yui."
"Um… okay… My name is Taichi. It's uh… nice to meet you? Um… I have to finish my work now… uh… bye!" With that Taichi walked away VERY fast to where he sat. On the other side of the room, luckily. Sometimes Taichi wished he wasn't so… smart?
Hiiro was very annoyed. (AN: Leave Hiiro alone. This is all for my plot.) Some weird kid was trying to be friendly. That was weird. Oh yeah, and he was stuck in some other time or place or something with Quatre. Hiiro didn't like Quatre. Actually, Hiiro didn't like any of the other pilots that much. They were too different from him. It was annoying. Hiiro is easily annoyed… ah well; it's not Duo or Relena. Hiiro couldn't bear the thought of being stuck with them. Duo was annoying and wasn't exactly the most intelligent person ever. Especially since the people in this place only seemed to speak Japanese. Duo could not speak Japanese. Plus he was just plain annoying. Relena was more so. She would be constantly bugging him about stuff. She wasn't exactly smart either. And there was an algorithm to solve that might just get them back. Neither of those two would help this. Actually, neither would Wufei. He wasn't any good at math. Sure, he was smart, just no good at math. Trowa's apparent inability to talk might cause serious repercussions here. So maybe being stuck with Quatre wasn't so bad. He could speak Japanese (very well) help work out the algorithm and maybe make up some story or something… but he was still annoyingly weak in Hiiro's opinion at least. (AN: I decided this was set just after Quatre vs. Heero – they were in the Sanc Kingdom by now? I dunno. And I'll explain Hiiro at the end of the chapter, kay?)
Izzy groaned in frustration. None of the teachers in this school had been able to help him with the algorithm. In fact, when given the full thing, they couldn't even get as far as Izzy had, without his trusty laptop, and that wasn't far at all. No, dear Koushiro needed the help of someone else. Ken couldn't get much farther than he had, but it was an improvement. Izzy should have remembered that ever since Ken said bye-bye to the Dark Seed (?) he hadn't been as smart or athletic as before. No, Izzy needed the help of a genius… or a miracle… maybe if he asked Steven Hawking real nice he might help. No, that was another useless plan. Surely there was someone in the same school as him, same age or maybe older, that was smarter? Izzy quickly calculated the odds in his minds and sighed some more. It looked like praying for a miracle was the only option.
"Excuse me, Koushiro?"
Izzy turned to see the lady he knew as Taichi's math teacher. He looked at her in confusion.
"Koushiro, if you have the time, would you be able to help out a new student with some kind of formula? It's very confusing, and I thought you might be able to help."
Yes! Something to take his mind off of this! Probably some simple formula, but anything to help!
"O-Okay…"
"Thank you Koushiro. Stay here!"
He didn't really feel like doing much else, and not long later, the same teacher appeared with a confused looking blond in tow. (Yay! Two of my fave bishies in the same place!)
"Koushiro, Quatre. Quatre, Koushiro. BAI!" The teacher ran off. She had almost forgotten she had a class to teach.
Uncomfortable situation. Two quiet, polite people (not to mention they both get called short) standing uncomfortably. (Very bad. I hate these situations)
"Ano… Um… I'm Izumi Koushiro. It's very nice to meet you," Izzy was always very polite.
"It's nice to meet you too. My name is Quatre." Quatre is very polite too.
"So uh… you were supposed to need some help with a formula or something?" Yay Izzy. Go get a conversation, and UNCOMFORTABLE conversation, started now.
"Of course…" Well, Quatre found a bunch of papers in his (weird little) case (thingy). "It's some kind of algorithm. I figured some of it out, but I just can't seem to do the rest." Izzy got the bunch of very neat papers. The papers were neat, which is always good when you're handling numerous pages, but the hand-writing was barely readable (have you seen Quatre's handwriting? It's like calligraphy!! Plus, these are numbers, and he's not Japanese, so maybe he's a little rusty at writing in the old hiragana/katakana/kanji/roman numerals, and maybe he had to translate the whole thing from western numbers)
But even in calligraphic bad hiragana/katakana/kanji/roman numerals, Izzy could make out the top as the algorithm. He set the papers on a desk neatly (Izzy's neat too ya know!) and found his own papers. Yep, same algorithm. But how did some kid he'd never seen before get hold of a rather complicated algorithm for the digital world? Well, this new person had gotten a lot further than Izzy had. Izzy now found the time to look at the papers, and saw that it was a different part of the algorithm to what he had done. Silly Izzy! He'd done the hard stuff first! Well, the other stuff was pretty much done. Now there were other notes, in clearer writing, and better writing at that (Hiiro is Japanese, apparently. He sure kinda looks it…) Ah, more people have been working on the algorithm! Izzy got out his trusty laptop, which had since retrieved (well he has a free period. What else is a computer freak gonna do?) And added the new calculations into some kind of program.
"Uh… can you help me then?"
Oh. Silly Izzy! Izzy doesn't have much common sense, even if he is polite. "Oh, sorry. It's just I've been working on this one myself. Where did you find such a complicated problem?"
Quatre shrugged. In all honesty, he didn't really know where it had come from. It was just on Hiiro's trusty laptop when they… woke up?
"How long have you been working on it?"
"About a day,"
Izzy almost did something very out of character and mumble a stream of incoherent babble that sounded much like 'Wha?' But instead, he regained his composure and just stared in surprise.
"I haven't done as much as I would have liked to though,"
Izzy had to now take this into consideration. He'd also been working on the algorithm for a day only, and he'd gotten hardly anywhere. People considered him a genius. He even had a very nice high IQ. About 179 or something (My IQ is 100. what's yours?) So how had some strange kid get further than him? And have help?
"Um, have you ever taken an IQ test?" Izzy asked dumbly. NOT good. Geniuses don't ask stupid questions. Okay, so maybe that was just a stupid rhetorical question. But still, it was weird to say to someone you hardly knew.
"No… why?"
"Gomen ne. That was a silly question. I was just wondering, since you've done all this in one day, and I've hardly done anything in the same amount of time. I'm supposed to be a genius. So I'm just surprised someone could do better."
Quatre blushed. At least Duo was not here. He'd make weird comments. He'd ask if anyone could feel the nervousness in the room. But then… that meant Duo wasn't there! Ah! "Well… it wasn't me… I had a lot of help, you see, from my friend… of sorts…"
"It doesn't matter, I'm not really all that smart anyway,"
AH! Stuck in a room with two modest smart people! Two modest smart naïve people, at that!
The tension could not be broken better than Taichi running in and stating rather loudly
"Oh I'm so glad that's over! You're so lucky Izzy, double free period? What did you do, mark the tests for the teachers or something? Anyway, I've had one helluva day. There was this guy who kept giving me evils…" By now Taichi has noted that there are three people in the room, not two. "…Anyway I'll tell you later about that… uh… Hi! My name is Yagami Taichi!… Um… you're new, huh? So uh… what's that like?" Lame Taichi, real lame. It was Glare-Boys um… next death threat? "Um… I should be going now… BAI!" Taichi ran off again, mumbling something about the karma of not playing pranks on newbies. Only to accidentally run into Glare-Boy.
"Oh um… HI! Hiiro, right? I'm uh… no good at names! Uh… sorry for running into you… I was in a hurry… and I saw your friend! In there!" Taichi pointed ecstatically to the room he had just run out of. "I think they're talking about smart-people things bai!" And for the third time, Taichi broke off into a nervous sprint to… Kami-knows-where. Taking Taichi's advice (who would have thought! Hiiro taking advice! Taichi giving advice which is taken!) Hiiro went into the lovely but rather small computer room… I think… and he had his trusty laptop too. Sure enough, Quatre was there, now talking to Izzy again. But you probably knew that. It's not like they heard Hiiro coming and climbed out the window or something.
"Oh, hello
Hiiro-san," Quatre is very polite by the way. Uses nice suffixes and
everything! "You remember the algorithm? We've almost finished it now."
Hiiro said nothing. Instead he plugged in his computer. Typical Hiiro response.
Then he pulled some kind of wire out of his case (thingy) and put it in a port
on the computer. Hiiro then took Izzy's trusty laptop and hooked the other end
of the wire to another port. He then turned his own trusty laptop on, and typed
some code in. Then he took all the once neat notes on the algorithm and made
them messy again, so he could read them. Of course, three different styles of
writing, and only one his own very recognizable one, he took a little longer
than usual. But then this is Hiiro. He still did it damn fast. After he was
apparently done with the notes, he grabbed Izzy's laptop (poor Izzy! No one
every tried to take his pineapple before) and repeated the process. He then
typed in some new stuff on both at the same time (damn he's good!) and finally
pressed [Enter] key. There was a VERY loud shrieking sound, but that abruptly
subsided.
Now both computers displayed the message in DOS
[Enter program ZERO codes 1171, 1623, 8821]
"Uh… program ZERO?" Izzy asked in slight surprise.
Hiiro still didn't say anything. He seemed to be silently sighing. Then he spoke, almost sadly.
"I really thought that would work…"
Now he was stuck. Hiiro wasn't going to know ZERO protocols! He didn't have the time to check them over yet, and the fact that Wing Zero had gone AWOL in his homeland, meant he wouldn't have a chance to.
Quatre was still looking down, now very upset. Some things shouldn't be brought up again. All he said, very quietly, was "I know those codes…"
(AN: It's Midnight now, the day before an exam. Wait, it's midnight, which means it's the next day, which mean I'VE GOT AN EXAM TODAY! WAAAAAAAAAAA! Was gonna finish here, but had to redeem myself for my earlier AN. Plus I had a better idea)
Hiiro didn't look up. He knew all he'd do was glare anyway, and sometimes there isn't time for glaring. "You do?" Was his fairly flat answer.
"I wrote the program… I'd have to, wouldn't I?"
"Well?"
"I… *sigh* I don't know… I don't think we should try that. Those are three main protocols of the system. Who knows who might want them?"
Izzy, however, was almost perplexed by the situation. How did they get the algorithm for some odd dimensional portal from the digital world? How did they crack it so fast? What did the digital world have to do with this ZERO program they had written? Correction; the ZERO program Quatre had written, and obviously was nervous about. Wait… genius mode slowly kicking in, Koushiro managed to piece it together. The portal, the strange algorithm, the fact these two had just shown up that day, the fact they seemed to be in a world all their own… that was it!
"That's it!" Izzy said, without even realizing it.
"What?" was all he got from Hiiro. Now Izzy was being scrutinized under the dark-eyed boys gaze. He wasn't fazed – it took a lot more than a small stare to faze him - but still, he got his first good look at his eyes. They were dark, very dark, but not naturally. It was more like Hiiro had aged far before his time, seen so much, and thus diminished his spirit. But he was far from weak; there was also some great power that resonated from those orbs said to be the window to the soul, that Koushiro occasionally saw in Taichi. It wasn't, however, a very good thing. Izzy noticed the fact that he wasn't talking.
"Oh… well… yesterday there was some kind of dimensional disturbance, and that's when this algorithm showed up. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you two were sent though the dimensional rift to here. And now, I'm guessing that you need to enter those ZERO codes or whatever to go home!"
Quatre smiled wistfully, but still didn't look up. Actually, he hadn't really looked up much at all, except to note Hiiro's presence. "But that still doesn't explain why we came here… and I can't enter those codes… I guess we weren't meant to come here, ne?"
Izzy sighed. This might take a while "This is gonna sound pretty crazy eventually, but if you're here, you're here for a reason. People don't just dimension-hop for no reason."
"So what?" was Hiiro's placid response.
"So… it looks like someone needs you here…"
TO BE CONTINUED
Right. Explanation. Hiiro is under the impression that Quatre is weak, and that's why he doesn't like him. Well, Hiiro doesn't really like anyone. He finds faults in everyone, easily. Himself, his inability to express in true intensity his emotions. He's not emotionless, he just doesn't show the emotions people note readily – Compassion, loyalty, kindness, warmth… this is because he thinks it a very weak thing to show such emotions readily. Quatre does this. Thus, Quatre is weak. Plus, his physical and mental strength appear to be fairly minimal, and he's ready to trust anyone, which everyone will agree is a very naïve thing to do. I don't agree with what I think Hiiro thinks, and Hiiro changes his mind (well he tell Quatre to use the ZERO system, for Kami's sake!) Things change in this story though, quickly I'll tell you. It shouldn't give away the plot. Hiiro explains himself, and learns to express his emotions and not let them be used as a weakness. Quatre has strength! All will be revealed later!
