AN: Blech. Spasmodatic updating = not good. I don't own it.

Chapter dedicated to Yui for kicking so much ass.

Chapter XXVIII: Real Life and Street Life

I pull myself and One out of my memories, and my brother's body collapses to the floor. I quickly kneel down next to him and prop him up, but he is unresponsive. The expression is on his face is one I've never seen on him before in my existence: Fear. His pupils are tiny in a sea of ice blue, his stark white albinism seems even paler then normal. His mouth is closed but stretched taut. His eyes are widely open, searching through everything I've seen already.

"Raikan!" I shout, and she rushes out of the office. Noticing One on the ground, she squats down next to me.

"What's wrong with him?"

"You're a human-based program, right?"

"Of course I am. And I bet you are too."

"Both of us. One is looking at the life of the human that he once was."

"That…has never happened to me."

"It happened to us before we met, and now to him as well."

She looks up at me, "You must have caused it, though!"

"Yes, we did. He didn't understand what we were trying to tell him. The boy, Adrian…"

"Troublemaking human," She grumbled. It's easier to tell she's a program now; I suppose she's lessened up in the presence of her…kin, are we? "Doesn't listen to a word I tell him. But he gets me on every point, and I can't waste time proving my points to him. I have stuff to teach to the kids."

"He is a….reincarnation of who we were once were."

She opens her mouth to speak and then shuts it again. After a few seconds, she speaks again, "You mean that was your human….form?"

"Correct."

The girl blinks in surprise. She laughs slightly and rolls her eyes, "That's insane…..you're kidding."

"We never were much akin to jokes." I reply, lifting my brother's limp body up, "We're perfectly serious."

"How do you know?"

"He is a splitting image of him, he has the same name, he has the same brother, he likes the same things…….they're exactly alike."

"Is Adrian's brother…….One?"

I nod silently.

She looks up at me and stands, glancing down at my brother's limp form, "Where are you going?"

"Hold this," I growl slightly and place One's body in her arms before phasing into my normal attire. I breathe a sigh of relief as the fabric comforts me, the typically darkened visage behind my polarized glasses surrounds me as I feel my vest and tie wrapped snugly around my neck, my shirt and clasped cuffs placing me back into the normalcy I'm used too. The pants are tighter on me, yet looser around the knees and legs. Taking his still weak person back into my arms, I phase out before she can squawk a complaint or protest. 

We arrive back at the penthouse room and I lay One on the couch and sit on the coffee table, growling into the twenty stories of air, stone, and concrete under me.

"What in the Mainframe did we do to deserve this?" I mutter quietly to myself.

Almost two hours later, he stirs. There is a THUMP as he rolls off the couch, falling onto the carpet. He phases back into his outfit (never mind the gi..Raikan'll give us new ones, I'm sure) and sits onto the couch, staring with glazed eyes into the coffee table.

"No."

I turn, "What?"

"You spoke of a third personage? One called Neil seems to believe he resides with us."

"We had Adrian. That same Adrian."

"This is the same Neil we saw in your memory."

"Of course it was," I chuckle softly, "We were brothers then as we are Twins now."

"Thompson isn't around to delete him." He grumbles slightly, "And we do not want to have him for the rest of our existence."

"Not a surprise," I respond with a slight smirk, "Do you want to go out again tonight?"

He shrugs, "If you want to, we suppose."

"Alright. Let's go out."

The two of us move in a synchronization that comforts me just as I feel it comfort One. We used to move like this all the time, whenever we were needed to stalk or kill, or to kidnap or murder. In the back of my mind, I want to say it's a shadow of the past, but I won't give up on maybe our lives could return to normal. Maybe.

Though I know, in my heart (or whatever is there…as far as the human expression goes) it won't.

We watch the night crowd move pass us, occasionally remembering some of them from our last venture here. I almost expect to see Choi and DuJour. The glowing lights that line the streets shine a strange shadow upon the streets and humans, casting an eerie glow on all.

"Watch it, jerk!"

I notice a man lying on the ground, snarling up at One. Apparently, they had collided.

"Pardon." He comments back, deftly stepping over the man. He starts to walk away when I feel a sudden fear in his mind as he turns back. Nodding silently to someone I don't know, he looks up at me.

//"Neil……says that is his brother."// He comments to me telepathically.

//"Did we not say it was?"//

I walk over to One and grab the man by his collar, lifting him up with ease and moving into the light. The man is a boy. That boy is Adrian.

"What are YOU two doing here?" He asks, the snarl not leaving his words nor his face, "Don't you have something OTHER to do?"

"We would ask you the same question, Adrian. This is not a place for little hum----boys. You could get abducted. Shouldn't you be at home, playing games with Neil?"

Adrian struggles against my grip, but it is in vain. He looks at me with hate flashing in his eyes, and suddenly I drop him to the floor.

//"Why did you let him go, Two?"//

I open my mouth to answer him vocally, but no sound comes out.

Why DID I let him go?

"Neil," His voice is layered with disgust, "Thinks that you may have had some sort of pity for this former form of yourself."

I've been groping for reasons so often now, I'm grateful for one to be handed for me, so I took it, "Yes," I replied, "That's correct."

Adrian stands up, backing into a fighting stance which I saw One correct for him earlier today. I raise an eyebrow at him and look at One, standing behind me, who seems to be talking to Neil. The footsteps of the boy are masked by the busy street, and as I go to turn back to Adrian to order him home, I do not see him taking a running jump and tackling me to the ground, slamming my head into the concrete and providing me with a searing, unthinkable pain. The little pathetic human is on top of me, raising a fist to sock me in the jaw. I slide out from under him, ignoring the pain in my head and my now-ripping clothes and pull my switchblade out of my pocket, opening it and hurling it at the boy's head in one fluid movement.

A scream fills the air, followed by the sound of bone hitting concrete for the second time in ten minutes.