A/N: Hello again, community of DRRR! I'm sorry for my absence this past little while, but I was busy doing scholarly things such as creating a poster on William Faulkner, putting together an annotated bibliography, writing two very long papers and studying for exams! I have had a very busy past couple of weeks, and I appreciate the patience you have all given me in regards to updating on this story. I enjoy writing, but my education is important - and I'm in an English program, so it's helping me research and improve, SHOCK! Anyhow, we move onto the second installment of 'Satellite', which continues for the most part from where we left off! Like I said before, this is going to be a long, developing story. Meaning Mikado's childhood is not going to be there one minute and gone the next. I am going to include his years, growing up and finding new things and people that affect his life. So if any of you are here looking solely for the romance, that won't be happening for quite a bit and it will be a turbulent ride until Mikado ends up with the character of my choosing. You are all afraid now, I sense it, haha. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as you have enjoyed the last one! And if there are any little mistakes such as 'serial' and 'cereal' (which I fixed last chapter, thank you Epouvantable!), I would appreciate it if you could kindly point them out to me so that I may fix them and prevent others from going, 'This woman can't spell, what the crap'. Enjoy!

Durarara! belongs to its respective copyright owners.

The view from the Kishitani-Sturluson apartment balcony was very pretty.

Mikado noticed this the second day of his stay there. Celty had left early in the morning to go to work, and Shinra had left to go to school, leaving the boy to his own devices. One might have thought it odd to leave a six-year-old boy alone in a strange apartment in a strange city, yet Mikado did not find it so odd. After all, he could take care of himself. He knew how to fold futons and make himself a sandwich without cutting himself with the butter knife. He knew that plates and utensils went into the sink, butter went into the fridge and bread went into the cupboard. He knew not touch anything, to stay in the areas he was told was okay, and to stay away from Celty and Shinra's rooms.

He had just finished eating a sandwich when he idly looked out the balcony window and saw for the first time the strange, awe-inspiring city from above. The tops of the buildings, shining brightly due to the morning sun, glimmered before him like the sea he had seen once when he was very small, sand between his toes and his mother laughing as she hadn't for the longest time. There were a few birds on top of the roofs of the buildings, fluttering their wings and cooing stupidly to one another. He could not hear the sound of cars and people, but he knew it was happening. After all, he had walked amongst the streets only yesterday; it could not be too different from then.

It had been a few hours since he had first noticed the view outside of the balcony window. He was now sitting on the couch, blandly watching the television and wondering if he would be able to go back to school. Mikado had enjoyed school very much. It was always a little different every time he went. A teacher would talk about something new, or a classmate would bring in a new manga to show classmates. Sometimes fights broke out, sometimes they did not. Mikado and his very best friend, Kida Masaomi, would trade lunches on most days, with Kida-kun taking his chocolate chip cookies and Mikado taking Kida-kun's fruit snacks.

It was interesting. It was different. It was exciting.

Sitting in the living room, watching the television, doing nothing was boring.

Just as he contemplated going back into the room designated as his and falling asleep, the door to the apartment opened. Mikado listened to the sounds of someone taking off their shoes and slipping on a pair of slippers before he looked over to the door to see who was home. He blinked slowly as he saw Shinra walk in with his book bag on his shoulder and a grin on his face. He tilted his head to the side as the older boy dropped his bag onto the chair by the couch and walked over to where Mikado sat, sitting next to him.

"Hey Mikado-kun, how old are you?"

Surprised by the question, Mikado shrugged a shoulder quietly, looking away. "I'm six," he said softly, rubbing an itchy spot on his nose and wondering where Shinra was going to go with this.

"So you're six years younger than me…"

"You're twelve, Shinra-san?"

"Yeah, I am. You're pretty good at math, Mikado-kun." Mikado smiled a little bit at that, scratching his cheek humbly which caused Shinra to laugh and ruffle his hair playfully. "Anyhow, I was just wondering if you wanted to enrol into the elementary school I went to. I can e-mail my dad about it tonight, and he can set it up so that you can go to school. Only if you want to go there, though. I went to a private school, so that would mean a uniform now, instead of when you enter junior high school."

"…" Mikado looked away from Shinra as he started to talk about the pros and cons of the school, going into detail about the teachers, curriculum, principle and vice-principle and the workload. He only paid half-attention, though, as he wondered why Shinra was offering to get his father, who didn't know him, to enrol a complete stranger into school.

"Why?" Mikado finally asked, looking over at him. Shinra stumbled over something he was saying, eyes wide behind his oval-shaped spectacles before he smiled and shrugged.

"I dunno, 'cause I thought you would get bored sitting around here all day. There's nothing to do at the apartment, since we don't have any video game consoles or good channels on the television. Plus, you kind of seem like the type of person who would enjoy school."

Mikado nodded, closing his eyes as Shinra fell quiet, allowing the boy to think. After a moment, he opened his eyes and looked over at Shinra, nodding once slowly to show he wanted to go. Shinra grinned then, clapping his hands together with a self-proud smile.

"Great! I'll e-mail my dad right now!" he got up, pausing for a moment to look back at him. "Oh…Celty said she wanted to cook for you tonight," Shinra said with a wary smile. "I like her cooking, personally, since she tries so hard to make a good meal. But…uhm…she doesn't have the watermelon cell, sadly."

"Watermelon cell?"

"She can't tell if something tastes right or not. She's not from Japan, and she's only been here for a little while, so she's not used to Japanese food. But…uhm…could you please eat it? Even if you don't like it?" Shinra looked at him pleadingly, making Mikado wonder if Celty's food tasted of dirt and dog poop. He then shrugged and nodded, rubbing his cheek idly when he felt a tingle there, not quite an itch but bothering enough to take care of it.

"Okay."

"Great! I'll go e-mail my dad, then."

Mikado watched him leave, not sure what kind of life he had been adopted into, and not quite sure if he regretted it or not.

Celty's homemade dinner gave him cramps that night and made him feel utterly horrible, yet when the PDA showed her worried questioning he simply said he hadn't been feeling well lately anyway, so maybe his 'cold' took a turn for the worst. He had excused himself after that, laying in his futon and wondering how someone could mess up on food that badly.

He had slept for a few hours after that, the pain in his stomach slowly going away. He was woken up by the sounds of two voices quietly talking, both male, so he knew it wasn't Celty. After all, she couldn't talk for 'special reasons'. This caused him to wonder who the people were. One sounded somewhat like Shinra, but the other was a completely unknown voice. Yawning, Mikado sat up and rubbed an eye, pushing his comforter off of himself and making his way to his door. He slid it open silently, looking around blearily before spotting a light in the kitchen.

Quietly padding towards the source of the light, he jumped in surprise when Celty seemingly melded out of the shadows, adjusting her helmet as if she had just put it on. He blinked, looking at her with wide eyes when she looked over at him suddenly. Her shoulders jumped, showing her surprise at his appearance. He watched as the PDA appeared from her sleeve then, and she quickly typed something, showing him her message once she was done.

What are you doing up, Mikado-kun? I thought you weren't feeling well?

"I heard voices," Mikado said softly, getting the feeling that Celty did not want him to be noticed yet. He watched as she seemed to contemplate him before she turned to her PDA again, typing in something and showing it to him.

You hear Shinra and his father.

"His father?" Mikado blinked, not having known that Shinra's father lived in the apartment with them. He had gotten the feeling that Celty was some kind of caretaker of Shinra, and that Shinra's father worked somewhere far away. At least, that was what he had thought when Shinra had said he would e-mail his father, and not call him at work or something like that. Perhaps he was wrong?

He's a scientist. He doesn't really live here, though he pays the rent and everything for the building. Mikado nodded and Celty took her PDA back, writing again. His name is Kishitani Shingen and…he's a bit of a strange fellow.

"Strange?"

Uhm…well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt for you to go look for yourself.

Mikado nodded and walked away from Celty, unaware that she was watching him walk towards the kitchen light, her fingers tightening around the PDA. He paused at the slightly ajar door, peeking inside to see Shinra sitting with his back to the door, talking quietly to the man across from him. Mikado looked to him then, eyes widening slightly in surprise.

The man sat in a white lab coat, a pair of white gloves, and what seemed to be some sort of gasmask over his face, blocking out what he could possibly look like underneath. His voice was slightly obscured because of the mask, making him sound funny like Darth Vader from that English movie his father and he had watched once before a year ago. The man was talking animatedly though quietly, as though making sure not to wake their sleeping guest. Shinra was speaking quite similarly, but with his own quirky movements and hand gestures. After a moment, he slid open the door and walked in.

Father and son turned to Mikado then, Shinra showing his surprise and Shingen staring at him with what Mikado could only guess was a peculiar look. He shifted uncomfortably for a moment, before straightening his arms by his sides and giving a polite bow to Shinra's father. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I heard voices," he said politely, knowing he was doing his mother proud and not caring a bit as he did. He heard a soft chuckle then and looked up to see Shingen waving his hand to Mikado as if telling him to relax.

"It's all right, m'boy, it's all right," he said then, standing up and walking over to him. "We were just talking about you, actually. Shinra tells me you want to go to his old elementary school, is that right Ryuugamine-kun?"

"Yes, sir," Mikado answered honestly, looking up into the mask's eyes. He felt like he was staring into the face of an overgrown fly, and he had to wonder if this was how flies felt before they were swatted away by impatient humans. He flinched slightly when Shingen reached out and patted his head lightly.

"Well then, I'll get you registered and you can start next week. How does that sound?"

"Thank you, sir." Mikado bowed again, closing his eyes when he heard Shingen laugh once more before he listened to him walk away from him, out of the door and into the hallway. He straightened and looked over at Shinra, who was smiling at him faintly.

"He's a bit weird, right?" he asked then, waving the smaller boy over. Mikado walked over with a slight nod, sitting down as he was indicated. Shinra then stood up and walked over to the kitchen, pulling out a bowl and some cereal for Mikado to eat. "I'm sorry that we woke you up. Dad was being difficult, though. He didn't know why he couldn't ask you if you wanted to go to school or not. After all, it's your choice, right?" He grinned, obviously quoting his father. "I didn't want you to meet him, though."

"How come?"

"Because you're normal, Mikado-kun. And someone in this household has to be at least a bit normal, right?" He walked back over to the six-year-old then, placing down a bowl of cereal and smiling. "Celty said she wasn't going to be cooking again because she saw me crying while I was eating. I'll be cooking again for a while." He paused, looking thoughtful before grinning. "Did you want to learn how to cook? It's really easy!"

"Aren't I too small?" Mikado asked curiously, spooning some cereal and chewing on it quietly. Shinra shrugged, smiling and leaning against the counter behind him.

"Maybe. But that doesn't mean you can't learn, right?"

Mikado shrugged, not really caring one way or another. It'd be interesting, at least.

It did not take long for Mikado to be accepted into the private school Shinra had gone to in elementary school, nor had it taken long to get a uniform and a book bag for him to use.

He had just finished making up his futon when Celty came into his room, holding a neatly ironed uniform with the typed out question Do you want me to help you?

He nodded, taking off his pyjamas and accepting his pants and shirt when Celty handed them to him, buttoning his shirt up slowly so that he did not miss a single hole. Once he was done that, he tucked his shirt in like he had seen Shinra tuck his shirt in when getting ready for school. He then turned to Celty, who stood there waiting for him to be ready for her to come in. She stepped forward, kneeling in front of him and wrapping the tie around his neck, tying it loosely and correctly making the knot. He watched her with fascination, remembering when his mother would help his father tie his tie in the mornings or when they were going out to dinners.

'I'll teach you how to tie a tie one day, Mikado-kun,' his mother had promised once. She never did keep to that promise. He wondered if he should be more upset, but he found he couldn't be. After all, his parents decided to disappear in the black bags. He did not ask them to or tell them to. It was their decision to leave him behind. Why should he care what they promised or said anymore?

He felt a soft hand on his cheek then and he blinked, looking at Celty in confusion. She simply pulled her hand back to show it gleaming with a tear. Mikado stared at the tear with fascination before he silently wiped his face of them and shook his head. "I'm fine," he murmured softly, knowing that was what she was asking without her having to ask him on the PDA. "I don't know why I'm crying."

They stood there for a moment, awkward and silent and feeling like static was filling the air when suddenly Celty leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Mikado in a hug. Mikado froze, in shock, before his face crumpled and he sagged against Celty and cried for the first time in days since his parents' death.

He didn't care that they were dead. He didn't care that they were in black bags in the hospital, nor did he care that he had seen them covered in so much red and that the knife had been sticky to touch and that he had thrown up everything he had eaten that day after looking into his father's glassy, doll-like eyes. He didn't care about any of that.

But they left him behind, and he cared about that.

Pulling back, Celty produced a hand towel out of seemingly nowhere, wiping his face gently and brushing her fingers through his hair comfortingly as he had seen her do to Shinra multiple times. He closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling of being cared for even by a complete stranger before he opened them again and looked down at his shirt to see there was a tear spot or two. He frowned, sighing, before taking the coat Celty silently offered and slipping it on, buttoning it slowly.

She nodded, giving him a thumbs up and for the first time since he had come into the Kishitani-Sturluson apartment, he smiled wide.

Mikado found that he liked going to school in the city.

He had learned shortly after arriving to the apartment that the city was called 'Ikebukuro' and that it was a district in the capital of Japan, Tokyo. The education system there, naturally, was slightly different than it had been when he went to school in the country. It was especially different because he was now going to a private school and not a public school, and so the level of learning was slightly higher.

Mikado found he enjoyed the difficulty of the courses, and he excelled in the things he did.

His teachers were impressed by his intuitiveness and his intelligence, wondering where he had learned how to retain information so well. He was not sure himself, but he had always been able to figure something big out of something little. His mother had always been unnerved by it; his father had always been proud.

However, after the day he cried for his parents, he stopped thinking about them all together. Eventually, he forgot that they left him behind. And soon, after a year of going to school and living with Shinra and Celty (and being visited by Shingen), he forgot what they looked like, what his mother's favourite dress was, and the sound of his father's laugh. And he did not mind.

Living with Celty and Shinra was definitely interesting as well. When his birthday came around, Shinra baked him a cake and sang loudly and off-key the birthday song, with Celty clapping her hands, the visor of her helmet flashing in the candlelight. The now little seven-year-old boy was horribly curious as to what was beneath the helmet, as Celty never took it off with him in the room. He knew she could not have possibly slept with it on, but just like when he first came to the apartment, he knew better than to enter her room without her permission.

He allowed his curiousity to eat him up inside, since he did not want to ask Celty why she hid herself around him. She had her reasons, he knew she did. He might have been a child, but he understood that adults always had reasons behind the things they did, and Celty would most likely have a very good reason.

Shinra and he became closer as the months passed, which surprised Mikado vaguely. The older boy would help him with his homework, mostly math and science, and the two would go out to the market or the mall or the book store on the weekends when they did not have school. Though Mikado usually kept to himself, only commenting on things he was asked about, Shinra spoke enough for five people; he learned about the older boy's day from his teachers to his classes to his classmates. He learned who was interesting and who was boring and who was nice and who was mean. He learned who Shinra would love to dissect (he had been quick to accept that Shinra was a bit weird, but looking at his father, this was obvious).

Shinra treated him like a kid brother, carrying him around on his back, teaching him how to bike ride and how to roller blade and how to ice skate in the winter months. They cooked, Shinra talking on his nights and Mikado concentrating on his with Shinra and Celty supervising to make sure he did not hurt himself.

Another year passed, as well as more birthdays, and Mikado was eight when he first learned of Shinra's friend Heiwajima Shizuo.

He did not really learn about him, per say. It was more like Shinra came home in an excited rush, cheeks flushed and eyes wide with uncontained glee.

"I'm going out for a little while, do you think you can handle dinner Mikado-kun?"

"Sure, where are you going?"

"I'm going to visit a classmate of mine in the hospital." Shinra turned to Mikado with a wide grin then. "He threw a desk at someone today! I have to get to know him!"

He was gone before Mikado could ask anything else, making the younger boy wonder who this classmate of Shinra's was, and what would Shinra like for dinner?

He took a moment to think more on the strange student, wondering how it was possible for a fourteen-year-old to throw a desk and why would he throw a desk in the first place. He then decided it was probably best if he did not concern himself too much with the student, as he was not his business.

Sighing and shrugging to himself, he turned back to his homework, focusing on the equations in front of him while half his mind went through different recipes they could have for dinner that night.