.Hack: Penance
A .Hack fanfiction by Renfro Calhoun

Disclaimer: Project .Hack and attached concepts/characters are property of Bandai and Cyber Connect. They are used without permission, but with the utmost respect.

Notes: Happens after the end of Quarantine. (Thoughts look like this.) I'll keep the intro short for this one. Suffice it to say, this has been a long time coming. Names are based on what little info I could scrounge up; I'm reasonably sure about BlackRose's real name, and a little less sure about others. Comments, critiques and et cetera are always appreciated. Enjoy :)

This chapter done to the tune of: Kenny Wayne Shepherd – Blue on Black

Chapter 36 – The Date

He spotted her standing near the main entrance, where she said she'd be waiting. He glanced at his watch to be sure. (5:30,) he thought, (right on time.)

She bore startling resemblance to her picture, and even her avatar in the less obvious respects: chocolate brown hair down to her shoulder, comparable to that of her character if it were colored normally and obeyed the laws of gravity; slender and slight in figure, perhaps five and a half feet tall – an inch or two above his own height – and, he noted with some embarrassment, a not inconsiderable amount of 'resistance', though he made a concerted effort not to gauge this quality. Her deep brown eyes scanned the crowd by the entrance studiously, clearly looking for someone.

As he parted from the foot traffic entering and leaving the convention center, he took stock of her outfit: she wore an olive green jacket, zipper open in the front to reveal a dark red t-shirt; blue jeans and a pair of white tennis shoes that had clearly seen a lot of use. A brown-and-black backpack sat over her shoulders, though he could only guess at its contents.

Hiroshi smiled. Looking right, he nodded to Yasuhiko. "That's her," he said, anxiety and anticipation dueling inside, though he suppressed any visible notice of either. He had a million and one worries – how they would react upon seeing each other for the first time, how they would deal with the fact that she was two years his senior, just to name two – but none were about to keep him from approaching.

Together, the two boys approached the girl, and upon noticing Hiro she broke into a slow, but growing smile. "Hiro!" she called, waving them over. "There you are!"

"Akira, hi!" Hiro replied cheerfully as they neared, suppressing his worries, giving them time to return en masse. "It's nice to finally meet you."

"It's nice to meet you, too," she replied, without any audible timidity, though there was a slight stiffness to her posture that suggested she wasn't yet entirely comfortable.

Hiro motioned to his friend, a convenient device to deflect the awkwardness even further. "This is Yasuhiko – Orca in the game."

Yasu bowed his head slightly to her as the two exchanged courteous 'hi's.

"Were you waiting here long?" Hiro asked.

"I just got here a few minutes ago myself," she replied. "This place is huge!"

Hiro and Yasu looked around, getting the layout of the convention center. Past the entrance they had just come through, a small lobby housed the information booths and a map of the building; beyond twin archways to the north was the floor of the center, where nearly a hundred displays by dozens of technology and entertainment firms crisscrossed this way and that. High above the floor, colorful banners hung down from the companionways beneath the domed ceiling, which also housed the powerful lights that were as bright as day itself.

Somewhere in this, Yasuhiko noticed they had fallen to awkward silence, and after studying the looks on both Hiro's and Akira's faces, he devised a plan of his own. "Well," he said, "I said I'd meet Balmung here too, so I'm gonna go find him."

Hiroshi looked at him, somewhat surprised. "Wha?" he grunted, feeling his chief source of confidence start to slip away. "But…"

"Ah, don't worry," said Yasu with a dismissive wave. "I'll catch you two later." Noting that Akira's gaze wasn't on him, he snuck a quick wink to his shorter friend. "Have fun!"

Hiroshi let out a short sigh, half surprised and half frustrated. He flushed slightly as he turned to face Akira without backup, and suddenly found himself tongue-tied.

She looked down at the young boy before her, a stark contrast to the one who had approached her; though not uncomfortable, per se, he was clearly unprepared for his friend to leave the two of them alone. Clad in a longsleeve brown shirt and black slacks, the former he picked at occasionally, he was not physically unlike his online self, although far less garish in dress.

For her part, she wasn't holding up much better. Similarly stripped of courage by Yasuhiko's sudden exit, she found herself face-to-face with her friend and comrade, the boy she had partnered with time and again online to face all sorts of monstrosities, digital and otherwise. Without so much as seeing each other's face or knowing each other's name, the two had shared much; for her, more than she had shared with all but her closest friends, and she had a hunch the same could be said of him.

"So… you're Kite, huh?" she said finally, smiling somewhat sheepishly. Though not intimidated – he was 14 to her 16, after all – she was still quite self-conscious, careful of how she presented herself.

He met her eyes, if bashfully so. "Y-yup," he tried to sound casual. "And you're… BlackRose."

"Hmm," she murmured, nodding her head. (I guess it's easy to forget who we really are through all this… but still…) "Well… shall we?" she finally asked, gesturing towards one of the arches.

"Yeah, sure," said Hiro. "Let's go take a look around."

Side-by-side, they walked towards the arch, passing through it and into the convention proper, nearly being bulldozed as a group of six raced towards a nearby stall – which appeared to be demonstrating a beta version of some video game that had been converted from a cartoon.

Something about that caused Hiro to chuckle, but he wasn't sure what.

As they started across the floor, Akira abruptly asked, "So, how was your day today?"

Even she was puzzled by her choice of question, an obvious evasion of the even more obvious. Still, Hiro replied, "All right. Not a whole lot happened, mostly I just got ready for this. Uh, the expo," he quickly clarified.

"Yeah, me too," said Akira, suspecting he didn't really mean the event itself, so much as his reason for being there.

"We had to pick up Yasu; his parents are out tonight, so Mom volunteered."

She heard his words, though her mind was elsewhere. "How did you two meet, anyway? Were you always friends?"

Relaxing a little, Hiro fell into single-file behind her as a pair of men – helpfully wearing blue-and-yellow shirts that identified them as "event staff" – edged past them. "Well, I've known him since 2nd grade, when he and his family moved into the neighborhood."

The dialogue slowly grew more casual, although not more personal; perhaps their age difference, perhaps simply the unease of meeting someone for the first time, whatever the reason, both were unwilling to steer the topic towards the things they really wanted to talk about. She caught bits and pieces, some of which went unsaid; Hiro looking up to Yasu as kind of an older brother, his parents' sudden separation (which, she noted, Hiro couldn't clearly or comfortably discuss), their prior experiences with online gaming, and so on.

Everything except that which she wanted to ask him about: their online selves. She wanted to thank him. To be up front, to be honest, to remove the barrier between the world and The World.

Akira was only half-paying attention when Hiroshi launched into a retelling of how he met Yasuhiko, her mind still churning over the information she had been presented with. This was her partner, her friend, in many ways even her hero, and she couldn't breach the subject in any meaningful way.

"…so anyway, then there was crash, and we all ran outside…"

There was something in his voice. She knew there was more he wanted to say, and it wasn't about the baseball that came flying through his kitchen window. The girl sighed quietly. (Just a couple days ago we were laughing and having fun… I kissed him on the cheek, even, and now… now we can't even talk about it.)

Hiro caught her sigh. "Um… is… is everything all right?"

"Huh?" She looked over at him, blushing slightly. "Oh… oh, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I just…" she trailed off, and they stopped walking, causing some close-following couple to have to circle around them.

Hiroshi looked up at her expectantly. "Just…" he began, his lips quickly freezing in place as they refused to form words. She had an idea what he was trying to say, stymied by shyness that seemed to be mutual.

Akira took a long pull of air through her nose, and released it slowly. "Ah, I…" she began, looking away somewhat sheepishly. "I never really got a chance to…" (Oh, come on, Akira, just spit it out!) "…to thank you."

"What for?" he asked.

"For…" she lightly kicked at the floor with one of her feet, tennis shoe scraping across the heavily worn red carpet. "For everything, really." She noticed as he started to flush again, and felt a similar heat rise in her own cheeks. "I mean… even from the start, you were always there to help me, and I… tonight I just wanted to thank you for all that, you know?"

"Akira," Hiro muttered. "I owe you just as much. You were there for me, too…" he seemed to be struggling, forcing the words out, an almost Herculean feat to defeat his own shyness. "Y-you… I mean, we're… partners, right?" His grin was shaky at first, but grew stable as she grinned back.

"Y-yeah," she stammered, taking some measure of control. "Yeah, we are." Her grin faded, but with it went some of her own hesitation. "I didn't know what to expect when I first logged on… all I knew is that it was responsible in some way. And I had to do what I could to fix it… to help Kazu get better."

She sighed again, looked away, those words opening a floodgate within, paving the way for the rest to follow. "I didn't know if anyone would believe me. Not my parents, my friends… nobody. But you were willing to help. You stood by me through it all, and I… I can't thank you enough, Hiro. I'm… I'm really glad I met you." She inhaled deeply. "I never would have gotten anywhere without you."

A part of her couldn't believe the words coming out of her own mouth. This was a boy she had just met; younger, shorter, and shyer than she, he hardly seemed the type that would fall readily into heroism, even reluctantly so. Yet if there was one thing 'The World' had taught her, it was something that now seemed painfully obvious; that much more lay beneath appearances.

She smiled. Such was certainly true of her 'new' friend. "I'm glad I met you, too," he replied. "I'm really glad… that I got to help you." He was quick to add, "and that you were able to help me, too."

A hint of a certain Heavy Blade's personality drifted into her smile. "Well, someone had to. You couldn't very well have fought the phases by yourself, could you?"

He seemed to loosen up, and at that so did she. "Heh heh… no, I couldn't."

The two shared a quiet laugh, slowly becoming aware of the convention around them again.

"Well," said Akira after a few seconds. "Shall we continue?"

"Let's," answered Hiro.

His worries and anxieties abated, if temporarily so, Hiro couldn't stop himself from smiling as he walked alongside Akira.

Her confession, of sorts, had been a big boost to his confidence, reminding him that they were still who they had always been – not Kite and BlackRose, but two players, two people, just trying to get to the bottom of a mystery. Though she had told him, in words that left little to interpretation, how she had depended on him, he knew that just as often he had needed her.

Need. The word seemed strange to him, a curious way to define a relationship between two kids, much less two kids of different ages. Somehow it was something they had put aside in the game, where that difference was less obvious and that need more so. A reliable partner, a confidante, a friend… someone he liked, someone he cared for… maybe even someone, in the parlance of a detective he could mention, for whom a different l-word might apply.

The very thought made him blush, though not so much that he didn't notice Akira had stopped. He turned to her, and found that she'd wandered over to a nearby display, where a small crowd had gathered around a man testing some kind of virtual reality gear.

"Akira?" asked Hiroshi as he neared. "What's up?"

"Hmm? Oh! Sorry, I saw someone over here." She gestured to a woman, perhaps in her 30's, who stood next to a little girl that Hiro guessed was her daughter. Smiling, she introduced them. "These are the Kunisakis, they used to live next door to us." She then motioned to Hiro. "This is Hiroshi, a friend of mine."

"How do you do?" said the mother, smiling at Hiroshi, which he returned.

"I'm fine, thanks," he said, a small part of him dismayed that Akira had referred to him only as a friend – and another part of him blushing at the implication of that first part. "Nice to meet you."

"And you too," she replied. She glanced at the display, watching briefly as the man in the VR gear mimed holding a gun. To her child, she said, "Oh, we should probably go find your father and brother, I think they said they wanted to have dinner in the lounge here."

"All right," said the girl. "Bye, Akira! I'll email you later!"

Akira waved good-bye. "See you, Rena! Say hi to your brother for me!"

The Kunisakis waved as they departed, leaving Akira and Hiroshi to their own devices.

Within an hour, the two found themselves following suit, heading for the lounge on the north end of the center to grab a bite to eat. Along the way, they briefly ran into Yasuhiko, who claimed Balmung's player was in the bathroom before conveniently disappearing.

As they approached the lounge, Akira saw a pair of uniformed police officers walk by, one of them speaking into a two-way radio. "Copy that, lieutenant," he said. "All clear here."

Something about that seemed to unsettle Hiroshi, and it didn't take much for Akira to guess that it had to do with real-world problems. Calling attention to his nervous expression, she asked, "Is everything okay?"

Hiro gulped. "Well, sort of… I guess I just don't know what to expect. I talked to Dean earlier, and… well, I don't know."

The lack of clarity in his response piqued her curiosity, if morbidly so. "What do you mean?" she asked as they arrived at the lounge, heading towards a nearby booth.

He groaned slightly as they sat down; Akira slung her backpack off her shoulders and gingerly set it down before taking a seat. "It's just what I've always worried about, kind of. Having something follow me from 'The World'."

"Something to deal with in the real world?" she asked.

Hiro nodded. "Yeah… it's like that time when we were fighting Delphi."

She unconsciously shivered. "I remember. When it found us, I… I was… I was scared. I didn't believe it at first, that this thing was really…"

"Yeah… me neither," he seemed to whisper. "I, uh… I ran away from my computer… I didn't know what to do, what to think…" he swallowed. "It was all too much."

She shook her head. "This whole thing… this whole thing is too much."

A yelp and a shatter of glass called everyone's attention to a waitress, who hastily apologized with a blushing face as she scurried to clean up the broken bits of glass and ice that now littered a small section of the floor.

The distraction ended, Hiro turned back to Akira. "Yeah… it makes you wonder, doesn't it…"

"If it'll ever be over," she finished for him.

She hung her head slightly, eyes drooping shut as a few bangs of hair spilled over her forehead. (Will it ever be over?) she wondered. (Will we ever be able to just play the game?) She knew it wasn't the first time the two had pondered such, but they weren't Kite and BlackRose in the real world.

They were just Hiro and Akira. Two kids. Two kids who wouldn't have gotten involved were it not for their own tragedies and problems. Two kids who had faced self-doubt time and again.

"But still…"

She looked up. "Hmm?"

Hiro was smiling, or starting to. "Still… if I had to do it all over again… I would."

Akira was initially caught off-guard, accustomed to being the one delivering the pick-me-ups. She'd heard that line dozens of times in movies and TV shows from multiple corners of the globe, and overused as it was, she had to admit it suited him. "Hmm hmm," she murmured, a nearly unheard chuckle. A cliché she saw coming, yet couldn't deny was good to hear. "You too?"

He nodded. "Me too."

She looked into his eyes, and saw a trace of the strength that she knew, that she found so endearing. Gentle, yet persistent. Kind, yet bold – where he needed to be, at least. "We just have to keep doing what we think is right, huh?" she asked, somewhat rhetorically. His words from her mouth prompted a memory, that time at the chapel.

Apparently, it had for him as well. "That's the only way to move forward," he said.

Akira smiled softly. "Then that's what we'll do."

The boy smiled back at her. "That's what we'll do."

(He's cute when he smiles,) she thought, a hint of girlish glee in her mental tone – seemingly against her will. A flush came to her cheeks as she remembered something important, something she'd wanted to give to him, something an email from a "concerned third party" – or so Dean had called himself in the email – had suggested to her in the form of a link to a reputable chocolatier.

"Say, Hiro," she began, fidgeting briefly. "There's… there's something I…" she frowned, mentally chastising herself for her inability to just come out and say it. "Oh, I'll just give it to you," she said in mock annoyance as she reached for her backpack.

"Y-yeah?" she heard Hiro mutter as she rifled through her belongings.

Her hand fell upon something solid, rectangular, and smooth; a small box which rattled and crinkled as it was moved. She drew it out, and was almost too preoccupied with speaking properly to see his eyes widen and a rush of color hit his cheeks, in what must have been the tenth time that night.

"I-I know what today is… you do too, right?" she said in a quiet voice, alien even to her. When he nodded slowly, she continued. "I, uh… I had some help finding a good deal online, and… I-I-I really wanted to thank you for everything, and…"

"Akira…"

Her own face felt like it was on fire. "I… I like you, Ki… uh, Hiro." She forced herself to look across the table at the boy opposite her, and slowly pushed the box out towards him.

The brief name flub didn't faze him in the least, or maybe it just didn't matter. He could only smile back as he gently took the box from her. "Thank you," he said in that same quiet tone of voice. "I… I like you too, Akira."

She tried to control her response, tried to keep cool and collected, and she suspected he was trying much the same. "Happy Valentine's Day, Hiro."

"Happy Valentine's Day, Akira."

He watched as the two made their way out of the lounge, and a broad grin crossed his lips as he saw the two link hands, if nervously so. He couldn't help but feel just a little bit jealous when he saw the box of chocolates wedged under the boy's free arm.

"See something interesting?"

Chuckling, Dean turned back to his own companion. "Just the happy ending."

"Happy ending?" asked Miku, raising an eyebrow in amusement.

"Some guys get all the luck," he explained, smiling slyly.

"And what about you?"

"Well… some of us just get some of it."

End of Chapter 36