Warnings: None

Chapter Note: Takes place during Yusuke and 2020!NQK's shared childhood.

This one-shot was informed by couple of Tumblr asks.

The first, from devotedlyeclecticlady: "I feel like 2020!NQK might have gotten arrested? Or like, they call this girl's parents to come get her level of arrested, at least while she's young? How would her parents feel about this I wonder?"

ANSWER: I think she'd be pretty careful not to get arrested so as not to upset her folks, but I think she'd have some close calls thanks to Yusuke and would DEFINITELY get kicked out of class a few times for being belligerent in ways 2016!NQK is not. Any "be an ally of your government without questioning things" propaganda would NOT sit well with her and DEFINITELY trigger an outburst. I also think she'd be more down with Yusuke's petty crimes, especially theft *O LONG AS HE STEALS FROM A HUGE CORPORATION and doesn't get caught, so as not to incur the company's wrath on an innocent worker. Throwing a wrench into capitalism is definitely up her/my alley, and she'd be sure to nurture Yusuke's rule-breaking in such a way that it falls in line with her moral outlook.

The second inspiration ask (from an anonymous asker): "Yusuke by age 10 has been given so many variations on the 'it's not what you steal, it's who you steal it FROM' talk he can quote it in his sleep. And like, does Robin Hood exist in this universe? I feel like it should given how culturally shaping it is, but many things are absent from NQK's new world. If it does, 2020!NQK totally stuffed that in Yusuke's brain, right?"

MY ANSWER: "If Robin Hood doesn't exist, she no doubt creates a Japanese version of him to feed to Yusuke when they're kids! And if Robin Hood DOES exist, she feeds him to Yusuke just the same. It would for sure be a huge part of her narrative, I feel, along with other classic tales of rebellion and uprising. Fun Fact: She'd describe Robin Hood to resemble Cary Elwes in Men in Tights for a tie-in to the star of the tale she told Yusuke and Kuwabara about in Classic!LC, The Princess Bride."

RIOT CHILD

Chapter 02:

"The Tale of Robin Hood"

Keiko looked at Yusuke for all of two seconds before her eyebrows hitched up. Yusuke grinned and dribbled his basketball between his knees, hoping she'd be distracted, but she wasn't fooled for even a second.

"So where'd you get the basketball, huh?" was all she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

Yusuke shrugged. "Found it."

"You found it."

"Yup."

She eyed him over for a minute more as he dribbled the ball on the sidewalk, refusing to meet her eyes. It was for this reason (not to mention her mask and oversized glasses) that kept him from seeing the look on her face as she dryly observed, "Looks new to me."

"Maybe it is." He tried to spin the ball on his fingertip. Failed. Cursed and added, "Maybe it isn't."

When he finally looked at her again, her glasses had slipped to the tip of her nose. Brown eyes studied him over the tops of the lenses, a cold and emotionless stare that reminded him of the dead mackerel Keiko's father brought home from the fish market on Sundays. Seeing it made Yusuke sulk on reflex. Keiko often relied on this look when she wanted Yusuke to tell her something. She'd just sit there in silence, staring her fish-eyed stare, until Yusuke cracked under the pressure of that quiet and spill his guts.

And her tactic worked this time around, too. Soon he found himself fidgeting, then shifting from foot to foot, and then he confessed in one huge burst that he'd lifted the basketball from the sporting goods store off the corner of B and C Block.

But Keiko didn't get mad at this confession, as he half expected her to. Instead she nodded a few times, hands falling out of their cross and to her sides without a sound.

"I see," was all she said.

For a minute Yusuke felt relieved, but somehow her lack of anger just made it worse, though he wasn't quite sure why. Feeling awkward, he tucked the basketball under his arm and kicked his sneaker at the sidewalk, a pebble sneaking in through the gaping hole on the shoe's threadbare toe. He cursed when it lodged itself under his toenail, but Keiko knelt and helped him get his shoe off, and everything was OK again… except for the feeling of uncertainty in Yusuke's stomach, because he still didn't understand why Keiko hadn't gotten mad.

She solved that mystery a few days later for him, though.

It happened after school, when she dragged him downtown to one of the biggest department stores in the city. Yusuke had never been inside; too nice, too fancy for him or Atsuko, whose money mostly went to booze and thrift store clothing. Plus, it seemed like the kind of place where there'd be a ton of security guards or something, and according to both Yusuke's father and Keiko, these were rent-a-cops, which were almost as bad as a regular cop. They'd probably chase raggedy Yusuke out the second he walked through the big glass front doors—but when Keiko guided Yusuke inside, the rent-a-cop standing behind a little podium beside the doors didn't yell or anything. He scanned everyone as they walked into the department store, and to Keiko and Yusuke he simply gave a quick, uncertain smile. Probably wasn't sure what to make of Keiko's medical mask and thick glasses. Nobody was ever sure what to make of those.

Not that Keiko was at all deterred by the man's (or anyone else's) curious glances. She appeared nothing short of determined as she dragged Yusuke through the home goods-area and to the back corner full of sporting equipment, feet slapping firmly and with purpose against the shiny marble floor.

"What are we even doing here, Keiko?" Yusuke whined as they made their way past a display of camping tents. "This is stupid."

"No, it isn't," she replied. "We're getting you some new shoes." Just as she said this, they turned a corner around some gigantic outdoor grills and into the athletic shoe section, row upon row of colorful footwear greeting them like a new friend.

"Here," she said, tugging him down an aisle. "Here's the kid section. Pick out your favorites."

Yusuke eyed the shoes in confusion, but the emotion quickly resolved itself when he remembered all the times Keiko had bought him food and school supplies in the past. Keiko was no doubt going to buy him the shoes; he certainly didn't have enough money to do it on his own. As Keiko wandered away, heading to the end of the aisle to peer around the corner with sharp eyes, Yusuke grabbed a few pairs off the shelves and headed over to Keiko. Before he got anywhere near her, however, she pointed back the way he'd come at a seat positioned midway down the aisle.

"Sit there, facing away from me," she ordered.

"Uh. OK?"

Made no sense why she wanted him to sit there, specifically, but then again, Keiko didn't make a lot of sense most days. Yusuke shrugged and did as she asked, eventually deciding that the pair of sneakers with flames painted on the sides were the coolest of his chosen pairs. Keiko nodded approvingly when Yusuke called her over to look at the shoes, finally breaking away from her spot at the end of the aisle to stand at Yusuke's elbow.

"Yeah, these are awesome," Yusuke said, admiring his feet. "I'm getting these." A glance at the price tag had him gulping, though. "Uh… are you sure you can afford them with your allowance?"

Keiko rocked onto her toes, then onto her heels. "Nope."

"… what?"

Keiko shrugged. "I didn't bring any money."

Yusuke's jaw dropped. "Keiko, you know I don't have any money, either!"

She shrugged again. "So?"

"So how am I supposed to buy the shoes?" Yusuke warbled.

"Easy. You're not buying them." Her glasses slipped down her nose… and over the top of them, Keiko winked. "You're stealing them."

"I'm what!?"

"Welcome to Keiko's Learning Corner," Keiko declared with gusto. "Today's lesson: How to shoplift responsibly at the expense of our capitalist overloads!"

Yusuke had no idea what a "capitalist overload" actually was, but he'd heard Keiko curse them out enough times to know they were pretty bad—and that made him feel a thrill of excitement, because this meant they were about to Stick It To The Man, as Keiko so often put it. (He also didn't know who The Man was, but once again, he knew he shouldn't be his friend.) Hunching alongside Keiko over his new sneakers, Yusuke listened intently as she walked him through step-by-step instructions on how to remove the little plastic tag threaded through one of the shoes' eyelets, which she called an EAS device (whatever that meant). Removal involved the use of a really strong magnet Keiko said she bought at a hardware store, though she also said he could remove a sensor with a screwdriver, but he wasn't really listening at that point. He was too busy staring at her in awe as she used the magnet to pop off the security tag, instructing him to place his old, worn-out shoes in his new sneakers' box and return it to the shelf.

"Now we're in the home stretch," she said as she tied Yusuke's new shoes for him. "We did all of this in the blind spot of the security cameras—I came by to do recon last week and made sure to note all of their positions—so—"

"Is that why you made me sit here?" Yusuke asked.

"Yup." She rose to her feet, and even through the mask and glasses, Yusuke could tell she'd started grinning; he heard the sound of it in her voice. Putting a hand on her hip, Keiko said: "Now it's time to make our exit. If we get separated somehow, rendezvous at my parents' place. Do not wait around if I get caught or something; you just take care of yourself, first." She threaded her fingers together, popping her knuckles with a crack that matched the gleam in her eyes. "But first, we walk out the same way we came in."

Yusuke's eyes widened. "Through the front door?"

"Yup!" Keiko tossed her hair. "Look like you belong, Yusuke, like you own the freakin' place, and no one will question you. Confidence is key. If you look like you believe you belong here, that's what everyone else will believe, too."

"But Keiko, there's a security guard!" he said, nerves rising up at long last. "Shouldn't we sneak out the back?"

"That only makes us look guilty!" said Keiko. "Where's your sense of adventure, Yusuke? Even if we're caught" (here her voice took on a sing-song cadence) "we're under 18, we won't be doing any time. Hey-ey! Come out and play!"

Yusuke ignored her musical prattling; he had no idea what she was on about, but this was normal behavior for Keiko, so whatever. She certainly seemed happy and confident enough, and she'd never steered Yusuke wrong before, so without protest he followed her out of the shoe department and back onto the tile pathway that snaked between the store's various departments. Keiko walked with a spring in her step, but although Yusuke trusted her, his stomach still managed to tie itself into at least one knot by the time they got near the door they'd originally entered. He'd never shoplifted from a place like this, after all, and he couldn't help but wonder if they had a jail in the basement. It seemed like they might. This place was fancy enough to afford one. It was probably full of kids like him, chained up and put to work sewing clothes or something in a sweatshop (another word he'd learned from Keiko), and—

Just as his imagination really started to run away with him, Keiko stopped walking. He almost ran into her from behind, but as he staggered back to avoid a collision, Keiko darted off to his left and between some racks of dresses. She disappeared like a whisper of smoke in the wind, and as Yusuke stared after her with his mouth open, a sharp bark of sound cut through the department store's hushed interior.

"Hey, kid!" the voice boomed—and to Yusuke's horror, the security guard from the front entrance appeared ahead of him, standing between Yusuke and freedom. The man strode toward Yusuke in his blue uniform, frown stretched across his face, hands swinging in heavy fists at his sides. "Hey kid, what the heck do you think you're—"

Yusuke froze. Should he run? Should he fight? But where had Keiko gone? Should he leave without her? What should he—?

Before he could plan an attack, a new voice—a familiar voice—cried out, "Mama?!" Sniffling, this voice asked, "Mommy? Mommy!? Where did you go!?"

Behind the security guard, Keiko emerged from between some more racks of clothing (when had she managed to go over there? Yusuke wondered)—and for some reason, she wasn't wearing her mask. She'd ditched her glasses, too, and had pulled her hair back in a ponytail for some reason, her usual pigtails absent. But more alarmingly than all of that was the fact that tears had traced twin paths down her chubby cheeks, eyes red and puffy as she wept heartily into her hands. Big, fat, hiccupping sobs tore from her throat with every breath, and for a second, Yusuke hadn't even recognized her. Without her usual hair and mask, she looked different, somehow, a fact that rendered Yusuke momentarily dumbstruck.

The security guard felt the same way, apparently. He had stopped cold when Keiko cried out for her mother, and then he started looking between Yusuke and Keiko in turns, face drawn into a mask of torn confusion. Soon he sighed, barked at Yusuke to stay put, and turned on his heel to approach Keiko.

"Hello, miss," he said in a much kindlier voice than he'd used on Yusuke. Kneeling at her side, he asked, "Did you get lost?"

Keiko looked at him with huge, watery eyes. "Uh-huh." A massive sniffle, dramatic yet convincing. "My mommy, she…"

She didn't finish her sentence. She gave another sniffle, let her lip wobble like a cork on the sea, and threw her arms around the guard's neck with a terrified wail. Yusuke almost walked over to ask her what was wrong, her performance was so convincing, but as soon as her face peered over the guard's shoulder, her lost-child act dropped like a stone. She glared at Yusuke and mouthed "Go! Go!" at him before closing her eyes and forcing some more tears, sobbing into the cop's neck as though she really meant it.

Yusuke knew better than to waste this chance. Slipping out of sight between the racks of clothing, he traced a slightly meandering path to the front entrance, walking coolly and calmly through the big glass doors without a pause—just as Keiko had told him to.

And to his satisfaction, no one called after him or yelled "Stop, thief!" at Yusuke's retreating back.

In fact, no one said a damn word to him.

When he turned to look back at Keiko, he wondered if it was because of his act, or because her own performance had drawn a crowd of at least twelve shoppers, all of whom were too distracted by Keiko's theatrics to pay Yusuke any mind.

"Sorry about that," Keiko said as they crawled out her bedroom window and onto the roof beyond. "I saw the guard coming and thought a distraction was in order. Without my mask, he totally didn't realize I was the same kid you'd come in with."

"Good thinking," said Yusuke as he followed her out the window. "How'd you get away, though?"

"Eventually I just pretended to see my mom and ran off." Shooting him a grin over her shoulder, Keiko laughed. "Like I said: confidence. Plus, people like to take pity on crying kids. Basically used my crying-little-kid privilege to pull the wool over their eyes, those suckers."

It had taken Keiko a while to escape the clutches of the security guard, but eventually she'd appeared at her parents' restaurant to rendezvous with Yusuke just as she'd promised. Dodging her parents was easy, as was climbing onto the roof to admire the fruits of their labor (namely Yusuke's flame-bedazzled footwear). Yusuke had been a bit pissed when Keiko seemingly left him alone in the store, but damn if he wasn't impressed by her quick thinking and acting abilities. Why didn't she cry on command more often to skip class? Beats the heck out of him…

"Hey, Yusuke?" Keiko said after they'd given Yusuke's new footwear its due consideration. "Can I get serious for a second?"

He looked up from his shoes with a frown, shielding his eyes with a hand as the setting sun cast streaks of red and gold across their perch on the restaurant's roof. Keiko's mask (which she'd apparently seen fit to re-don once she left the department store) hung in a blue puddle under her chin, and with steady hands she removed her thick glasses and stowed them in her pocket. She'd started wearing the glasses a few months prior; said they were just eye protection, not a prescription lens. Still, even though the glasses were fairly new, Yusuke knew she didn't take them off without reason. The thick glasses warped the image of her eyes behind them, and that meant that when she wanted to give him a lecture, they usually got taken off so she could look him in the eye.

… great. So he was about to get a lecture, then. But it had been her idea to steal the shoes, not his!

Not that that made any difference to Keiko. "If you're gonna steal—and as a general rule, I wish you wouldn't, because drawing attention to yourself so early puts you on the radar of the cops, which would suck, and—" She cut herself off with a sigh. "Anyway. If you have to steal, then stay away from the mom-and-pop shops, all right? Stick to big-box stores, massive chains, stuff owned by corporations. That sort of thing. OK?"

"Why?" Yusuke asked.

"Because stealing from mom-and-pop shops like that sports store between B and C Block is like stealing from my parents." A ferocious gleam possessed her gaze, as if daring Yusuke to argue. "The money my parents make goes directly toward putting clothes on our backs. You're making it harder for a family to live when you steal from an independent retailer."

"Oh. I guess that makes sense." Yusuke would rather swallow a nail than do something bad to Keiko's family; they fed him too much, too often to take more advantage of. Still… "But why is it OK to steal from the big stores, instead?"

"Retail loss prevention practices," Keiko replied. "They factor shrinkage into their operating costs and have the capital to make up for it."

"… I have no idea what you just said."

Keiko took a second to gather her thoughts, leaning on her elbows on the roof's warm shingles. "Basically, large corporations have so much money, taking a pair of shoes doesn't really impact them, y'know?" She waved one hand in a vague arc. "They know shoplifting will happen, or that merchandise might get damaged, or that products could get lost in the mail. They count on it happening, and they have so much money, it doesn't even matter if you take a pair of shoes here and there." She tossed her hair out of her eyes with a grin. "Plus, it doesn't come out of an employee's paycheck when you steal from a big-box store. Not usually, anyway. No one at a big store can be directly blamed for the theft, so no one gets in trouble. If you pull off a theft smoothly enough so that no one notices it happen, then by the time they realize the shoes are missing, it'll be too late to ping an employee for it."

Yusuke's nose wrinkled. "Hmm…"

"It's not like dine-and-dashing, is what I'm saying," Keiko continued. "When you dine and dash, your server usually gets the cost of the meal taken out of their paycheck. Or at least they did back in…"

She trailed off, staring at the sunset horizon through eyes that saw even further into the distance. Yusuke kept quiet, letting her have her moment in silence. She drifted off like that a lot, and while he used to push and pry for her to admit whatever she was thinking about, he knew better by now. They'd known each other for years; Yusuke knew Keiko was as stubborn as a rock. It was better to let her stare into space like a space cadet than to piss her off with too many questions.

"Never dine and dash, is what I'm saying," she eventually finished, eyes returning to the present once again—complete with their earlier, ferocious gleam. "As a daughter of two restaurant owners, I can never condone a dine-and-dash."

Yusuke didn't say anything—not even when Keiko looked at him for agreement. Keiko always seemed so confident in the things she said, and most of the time, Yusuke couldn't help but believe her words… but then he thought about what Keiko had said before they left the department store. Did her advice to look confident apply to her in this instance, too? She always looked confident when she talked, after all. How much of what she said was all bluster, no bite?

Yusuke wasn't sure. All he knew is that something wasn't quite adding up.

And Keiko sensed his unease, because soon she frowned and poked his shoulder with a fingertip. "What's wrong?" she asked, poking him again. "You got all quiet."

"Isn't stealing just… stealing?" Yusuke said, words not coming quick and fast (not like Keiko's always seemed to). "Isn't stealing just stealing no matter who it's from?"

She faced the sunset again, lips pursing. "Technically speaking, you're right. Theft is theft. But since there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, buying something is basically just as bad as stealing it since you're helping perpetuate an inherently unethical system." When Yusuke just stared at her, nonplussed, she heaved a sigh. "I'm not going to tell you that stealing from a corporation is right and good, necessarily. But in my mind, one little boy stealing himself some new shoes just doesn't tip the scales."

"Scales?" Yusuke repeated. "What scales?"

"The scales of morality. Of justice," Keiko said with all of her usual conviction. "Because it's a drop in the bucket compared to the human rights violations committed by the top one-percenters. Did you know that the top one percent of wealthiest people own 50% of the world's total wealth? And that 56% of people at the lowest end of the wealth scale own just 2% of the world's wealth?"

"That seems…" Math wasn't Yusuke's best subject, but even he could see that those numbers were really bad. "That doesn't seem right to me, I guess."

"That's because you're not stupid, and because it's not right," said Keiko. Lip curling in disdain, she said, "They could end world hunger in a minute, but because they're greedy, they refuse to. They make more money in a year than they could ever spend in a hundred lifetimes, but still they refuse to give up a single yen. Some guy in an ivory tower is putting millions of yen he didn't earn into his pocket every minute. He didn't earn it himself. Other people earned for him after he happened to have one good idea at a good time and got a million dollars of investment money from his rich daddy, and…"

Keiko dived headfirst into a lengthy rant, fury burned in her eyes more brightly than the crimson sun dipping past the horizon. Whether or not she was right didn't really matter, in Yusuke's mind. Clearly Keiko believed everything she was saying—and she wouldn't steer him wrong on purpose, which meant it was probably OK for him to believe, it, too. Of that, Yusuke had no doubt.

"When you steal a pair of shoes from a big corporation who use slave labor in another country to produce their products, the damage comes out of that ivory tower asshole's pocket," she was saying, teeth gnashing with every word. "If he misses out on a few hundred yen, I honestly can't be compelled to give a shit. Poor baby. Wah-wah!" She pretended to cry, fists rubbing at her eyes as if wiping away tears. Keiko's hands eventually dropped again, though, and she rolled her eyes. "In the end, Yusuke, you stealing a pair of shoes doesn't tangibly hurt anyone, but it sure does help a little boy with cold feet. And to me, that's worth the momentary moral lapse… if it's even a moral lapse at all when you consider that you're just helping right the scales of inequality."

Yusuke wasn't sure what half of the big words meant, specifically, but he got the idea. Guys with too much money didn't deserve that money, and taking it from them helped make the bad things they did better. Maybe? He thought he was at least on the right track. But apparently Keiko could still see that he was confused, because she sat up and turned toward him on the roof, eyes intent upon his face.

"You ever hear the tale of Robin Hood?" she asked.

Yusuke frowned. "Robin what?"

"He was a thief who stole from the rich so he could give to the poor," Keiko explained. "Or at least, that's what people say he did. It's certainly a catchy claim. But when you look at his story more closely, you learn that what he really did was fight an illegitimate and corrupt government who indiscriminately stole from the land's poorest citizens. All Robin Hood did was reclaim and redistribute wealth amongst the poor that was already theirs to begin with." She rolled her eyes again. "If he were alive today, I think he'd look at the state of corporate greed, at those CEOs who lean on oppressive labor practices to line their pockets, and notch an arrow on his bow." Keiko bared her teeth. "'Eat the rich,' the starving masses cry."

Yusuke said, "You lost me."

To which Keiko replied, "Once upon a time, in the land of Nottingham, there lived a man by the name of Robin Hood…"

The tale of Robin Hood enthralled Yusuke like no other story of Keiko's ever had. Full of adventure and derring-do, swordfights and clever strategy, he listened in rapt fascination to the tale of Robin Hood's exploits against the dastardly Sherriff of Nottingham. (A sheriff was basically a cop, Keiko explained, and she liked them just as little.) By the time she finished regaling him about Robin Hood's band of Merry Men, Yusuke thought he understood everything she'd tried to tell him that evening, and he said as much with pride. But Keiko had one last thought to share before she put the subject to bed.

"If there's anything thing you can learn from this story, Yusuke, it's that if you need to steal, do it for the right reasons," she said, staring with faraway eyes at the golds and pinks streaking the darkening sky. "Don't just do it for fun. Do it because you have no other choice." She reached over and took his hand in hers, giving it the gentlest squeeze. "And if you need to steal a pair of shoes, wear those shoes so that you may stand on steady feet when it comes time to render aid to others."

It was a lot for any nine-year-old to think about, even when you didn't think about all the big words Keiko had used to make her point. And although some portions of what she'd said to Yusuke would never make total sense to him, her words would stay with him afterward—for many years, in fact.

Yusuke, incorrigible shoplifter that he was, never stole from a mom-and-pop shop again.

NOTES:

I don't think I've ever shoplifted in my life, but 2020!NQK is a bit more cutthroat (and daring) than I am. Still, I think her points stand to a degree. Don't steal from small businesses or dine-and-dash from restaurants, people! Eat the rich! Down with our corporate overlords!

Sorry you're getting this instead of a Lucky Child chapter this weekend, but I unexpectedly had to foster a rescue puppy and I needed to emergency puppy-proof my house and prepare for his arrival. We're all doing great, but he hasn't had his vaccinations yet, so we're cooped up inside and it's gotten in the way of writing.

REALLY SHOCKED at the reception the first chapter got. Oh my GOD. Thank you! You got the first chapter of this project off to a GREAT start: noble phantasm, C S Stars, 431101134, Convoluted Compassion, Freaky Shannon-igans, Rubber and Gum, jonrich31, Kaiya Azure, IronDBZ, xenocanaan, and a TON of anonymous guests!