A/N: Thank you so much for sticking with me. xx


They were cold to the touch and hard as steel. Walking never made them weary, nor did feeling the earth beneath their feet ever bring them any joy.

When braced by an early autumn breeze, they simply calculated its wind flow velocity and adjusted their stride. They never, ever remarked—even to themselves—how sweet the September air smelled, how cheerful a sunny blue sky looked. But the greyest days never left them downcast, and the force of the rain pounding down on them was significant only to the extent that they needed to wipe their optical sensors—which they did without self-pity.

They were free of subjectivity and misconceptions, unburdened by self-doubt, or fear, or loneliness, or shame. In short, they perceived the world just as it was and nothing more. If they ever happened to turn their sights to Mt. Fuji, they'd see only a mass of rock.

However, at their debut to the gasping public in Tsukuba a few weeks ago, Dr. Light had claimed they were sensate beings in one fundamental respect: solving problems brought them genuine pleasure.

And now, after their corruption by Dr. Wily, the question of how to inflict the greatest destruction on the people of Tokyo was, for them, merely a problem needing to be solved. And the scale of the task ahead, which they had now set out to resolve with earnest sincerity, was grand, wonderfully grand—so much grander, more complex, and more challenging than the series of short-term industrial projects for which they had first been built.

They had no moral sensibilities with which to weigh this new objective against those. Once, all their actions had been shackled by limits, specifically don't step here, don't fling your arms there, in short don't damage—or set into motion any chain of events which could lead to the damage of—those soft, intermittently mobile fleshy things of plus-five-minus-five-thirty-seven-degrees-centigrade-internal-temperature. Not even if their rational subroutines had determined that damaging one, or a few hundred, would get the construction site cleared or the forest leveled faster.

But released from all such compunctions, they felt a freedom they'd never known before and never thought was possible. They had been told to feel grateful, so they did. Ah, thank you, Dr. Wily... now we can accomplish so much more. What would you have us do?

The problem Dr. Wily had posed to them had no finite solution. No matter how many human lives they burned up, or swept away in dam-break floods, or crushed under rubble, there would still be more sheltering in secret places or fleeing faster than they could follow.

This was going to be a challenge. And the Light Numbers loved nothing more than a good challenge.

In other words, they were not going to stop until every human being in Tokyo was dead.

Void of compassion. Incapable of remorse. It would be all-too-human to consider them evil, but among the long list of human qualities they lacked was even the slightest trace of ill-will. They were as innocent as earthquakes.


Through his rain-spattered window Blues watched the city advance with a growing sense of dread. Hulking skyscrapers with darkened facades blocked out the sky, black against an even deeper black. Flashes of lightning illuminated one pillar of smoke off in the distance, then another, then another. Sirens wailed. Helicopters roared as their searchlights turned this way and that. The blare of hundreds of car horns echoed up from the vehicle-choked street below like an orchestra out of tune.

"We've just received a report," said the newscaster on the netscreen, "that at least two dozen ferry liners and commercial freight ships have been crushed by ice sheets... yes, ice sheets in Tokyo Bay...

"...Half the city crippled by blackouts... Fire departments and emergency personnel overwhelmed... Government officials are urging Tokyo residents to stay calm..."

"...In Shinagawa Ward, another apartment building collapse... hundreds of people believed to have been crushed to death. Many more believed to be trapped inside..."

Shut up. Everything, shut up.

Blues put his head down and pressed his hands over his ears. He needed to think. Think about what he would do when the train at last stopped and opened its doors. But thinking wasn't helping. He had the vague notion that he should run—at least, that's what the people on the ground were doing, frantic and scattered like ants whose colony had just been kicked—but he didn't know what he would be running from, or where to run to. To safety, of course, in the short term... but were there any safe places in Tokyo now? And in the long term...

Somewhere out there, amid that dark and noisy confusion, was a section of the city called Suginami Ward, and somewhere inside it was Ms. Mitsui's house. He didn't know what that house looked like. He didn't know whether Ms. Mitsui and the baby would be at home, or if they had already fled. And he realized, as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, that he couldn't even be sure whether by the time he arrived—if he ever did arrive—the house would still be there at all.

Okay, okay, supposing the house was still there, and Ms. Mitsui and her baby were safe inside, and Blues did arrive. What difference would it make now? Even if he manged to tell Ms. Mitsui where her husband's body was, would any rescue crew be willing to retrieve it for her? Tokyo was in the midst of the greatest catastrophe it had seen since the war—or so the netscreen had said. No one was going to care about a single suicide in the woods of rural Shizuoka.

No one except Ms. Mitsui and her baby, of course.

But retrieving the body wasn't the point, was it? Mr. Mitsui's message would matter even if Mr. Mitsui himself was left on the mountain to rot. Tell them I love them. That part would matter to them, wouldn't it?

Would it matter to him if Dr. Light told him he loved him?

He shut his eyes and shook his head. Of course not, stupid.

All this thinking was stupid.

And then a tremendous rumble shook the train, the lights went out, and Blues was thrown head-first into the back of the seat in front of him.

He found himself curled up in a dazed heap on the floor, clutching at his backpack and wincing at a sharp ache in his neck. He had no idea what had just happened. It was dark, and the netscreen was silent. People were screaming.

And next, from somewhere outside, up ahead of the train, came a long succession of low, tight snaps, and then a terrifying groan of twisted metal and buckling concrete. Blues wrapped his arms around his head, certain another impact was imminent.

"The track..." called a voice. "The damn track's collapsed up ahead!"

"Oh, my God..."

"Out! Everyone, out! Go, go..."

Not knowing where the exits were or how to get there, only that he had to do something, Blues clambered to his feet, threw his backpack over his shoulders, and was carried away by a jumbled queue of human-shaped silhouettes stampeding down the aisle.

It wasn't at all like the orderly and premeditated exit from the train bound for Kanaya station. Blues was pushed and squeezed, and his feet were stepped on—and involuntarily he pushed and squeezed and stepped on feet that weren't his own. He cried out in protest, and at the same time the protesting cries of the poor souls in front of him pierced his ears. And for the first time he wondered what it would feel like to be blown up, or burned to death, or crushed.

Would the Light Numbers recognize that he wasn't human, somehow? Would that distinction spare him? Or would they blow him up or burn him or crush him anyway? As if of their own volition, his feet dug deeper into the carpet and his hands pushed harder.

And then a wave of fresh pain in his leg and stomach, more intense than he had ever felt, pressed him writhing toward the floor.

Not now. Please, not now.

On his way down he grasped frantically at the armrest of a seat, but found he didn't even have the strength to hold on to it. Inevitably his side collided with the carpet, and he gritted his teeth and shut his eyes. He felt the pressue of his lower half being kicked and trampled, but that pain didn't register at all—only the dark and bitter throb of his core and the scorch mark on his leg, connected as if by an electrified cord running through his body.

Stop, stop...

The pain, of course, didn't listen, intensified, and for a time—moments, or minutes, he wasn't sure—the world disappeared, and so did his past, and his future, and even the thought of Ms. Mitsui.

At last he wrenched his eyes open, dragged himself out of the path of fleeing passengers, turned around, and watched through agony-blurred vision as feet pounded by in the dark, just centimeters away from his nose, and in a brief moment of clarity realized that he wouldn't be able to get off this train by himself—not anytime soon, anyway. He reached out, grabbed at someone's ankle, shouted for help—and to his surprise the ankle went still. A presence bent down beside him, and a pair of firm hands grasped him beneath the arms.

"Hey," a man's voice shouted. "This kid's been hurt. Someone, help me out, here—hurry!"

Still wrapped up in his own pain, Blues didn't notice much of what happened next. He knew that he was lifted by multiple hands and carried, and that all the while he was clinging desperately to his backpack. Voices spoke to each other and to him, but he couldn't distinguish their words over the roar of panicked screams and the wailing of sirens. He couldn't have given them a coherent answer even if he'd wanted to. Cold raindrops hit his face, and he felt the heat of bodies pressed close to his. He was pushed and pulled upward onto a ledge, then picked up and borne along again. Exhausted gasps and the splashing of footsteps through water echoed in his ears. And then after what seemed like an eternity his pain dissipated, his senses returned, and he found himself trying to twist free from his rescuers' embrace.

"Put me down! I can walk."

"What? Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

Gently, they set him down. His feet met the pavement, and he began to run across the platform alongside the three people who had been carrying him—two men in business suits, and a woman in nurses' scrubs. He glimpsed their confused faces for only a moment before they were swept away in the fleeing crowd. Then a flash ripped through the darkness, followed by a deafening crash, and Blues looked over his shoulder just in time to see the back end of the train collapse along with the track beneath it.

On and on he ran, through the station, down a flight of stairs, into the rain-soaked street, through a blur of darkness and noise. At first he ran only with the conscious goal of escaping the destruction behind him, but as the minutes went by, the distance between him and it grew, and he began to feel a little safer, his thoughts turned back to the three people who had pulled him from the train. He wanted, needed, to thank them. He scanned the terror-struck faces of everyone he passed. No. Not yet. They were up ahead, surely, and he could reach them if he tried. If he ran faster, only a little faster, then perhaps...

And then, as he flailed around in that drenched, screaming crowd, a clear sequence of events played out in his mind's eye, sharp and shining like a film on a netscreen. He would catch up to those men in business suits and woman in scrubs, and they would beam their relieved smiles at him, tell him to follow them. Until the storm blew over they would shelter together in a dry supermarket storage room, or in the discreet space behind the counter of a bank—well, whatever, it didn't matter where, what mattered was that it was quiet and safe. And what mattered was that there they'd be by his side, those three kind souls who had helped him without a moment's hesitation—and if they could be so kind once, then perhaps they would keep on being kind, even after he'd dared to take off his mask and shades, shown them the generator in his backpack and what he used it for, and fearlessly laid bare to them the story of his life.

They'd listen, rapt. And all of them would voice their outrage as he recounted, one by one, the trials he'd endured in his short existence up until then:

"You say you lived all alone in the woods how long?"

"You're in terrible pain because you're core flaw is killing you? Oh, how unfair!"

"You mean Dr. Light just handed you over to Nurtech like that? Horrible—horrible!"

And perhaps the two men would slap him on the back, and the woman would pull him into an embrace—a real embrace, not at all like how Judith's had been, but warm and full and guiltless. And they would tell him that he was good, and clever, and courageous, and that he deserved far better than the purpose to which Nurtech would put him, better than Dr. Light's betrayal or the indifferent refusal of his own body to keep him alive. Then, in stern, loving tones, they would demand that he never, ever call himself stupid or idiot again. And they'd all pass the long night together huddling close and talking and laughing, and he'd enjoy a nice long luxurious charge from his generator, and his core would leave him alone, and perhaps he'd even curl up and close his eyes, soothed by the unintelligible timbre of their voices as he drifted off into sleep mode, fearing nothing in the world—the pain of his shuddering core and Dr. Light's silence and Dr. Wily's crime and Nurtech and the wheel and the Numbers' rampage blissfully forgotten—and in all that time he'd not once, not even once, feel any need to count the energy cells in his backpack.

He stopped in his tracks, transfixed. A river of people swept around him, but he didn't see them or feel the brush of their shoulders against his. He saw only the vision, bright and sure. He wanted it more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life. Even more than finding Ms. Mitsui. He was sure. It could happen. It was possible. He could feel the warmth of their hands on his back already. They would love him. He would be loved like Ms. Mitsui had been loved. How good it would be to be loved. All he needed to do was...

He kicked off from the pavement beneath him and waved his arms in the air.

"Come back!"

The first time he shouted, his voice was swallowed up by the crowd. But the world around him seemed to speed up, and the people around him seemed to run faster, dashing off to the right or the left and just out of his reach—and soon he was surrounded only by buildings with blank black facades which shouted "come back!" back at him, but he ran on. He ran on.

"Come back!"

Come back, come back, come back, come back, come back...

Something grabbed him by the foot. He fell forward, smashed into the pavement, cried out. He pushed his chest off the street, sat up, turned his head all around. No one was there—only his yellow scarf, muddied and wrapped around his shoe. He pressed his fingers into its softness, gathered it up—and beheld the dark oval on his calf where, only yesterday, two humans in Shizuoka had shot him, laughing.

And in an instant, the vision of the businessmen and the nurse and the hug and the slaps on the back and being loved dissolved like a grain of salt in water.

He punched at a puddle.

"You're an idiot," he said.

Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot...