This is where exactly none of your questions get answered because I'm a terrible person. Next chapter will answer stuff, though, because it'll start out with a flashback.

Hiro walked behind Tadashi, matching the stride of the older. His finger was hooked onto the waist band, and he was looking down rather than at the faces of any of the other prisoners. He was practically shaking in his boots, the thought of being ganged up on again terrifying him. What terrified him even more was the thought that he was acting like a submissive puppy towards the other Hamada. He wasn't usually like this at all. He was usually a stubborn brat and got into nothing but trouble, but now he was reforming himself to fit the molds that he needed to go into. Maybe that was the point of prison. Or maybe he was going crazy.

Maybe he had a crush on Tadashi?

Hiro scoffed as soon as he thought that. He may have been Tadashi's prison bitch, but he was not thinking about a romantic relationship with that man. They were both in prison, and somehow that was the biggest turnoff he could think of. Also, he was like… almost like a brother to Hiro. And almost twice his age. Also, it was Tadashi, which was a perfectly reasonable explanation to Hiro.

Hiro didn't realize that Tadashi had stopped walking until he ran into the backside of his guardian. Tadashi looked down and chuckled at the look on Hiro's face. "I take it you didn't sleep well last night?" he inquired, ruffling that already-messy hair of his friend.

Hiro quickly fixed his hair with one hand, the other never leaving the grip that it had on Tadashi's waistband. "I slept fine!" He defended weakly. The bags under his eyes begged to differ, but Tadashi let it go as they left the dark building and stepped into the too bright sunlight.

"If someone starts picking at you, just tug on the band, okay?" Tadashi clarified. They walked in silence until they reached a section of the yard that was rather abandoned. They loitered there in the dry grass, continuing their conversation from breakfast. "Were you any good of a bot fighter?"

"I was great. I was probably the best that there was, seeing as I haven't lost a fight since I was thirteen. Well, not without meaning to. Sometimes I would lose on purpose so that I could trick people into betting more money, and then when everyone assumed that I would lose I would bring out my can of kickass and get them."

"Language, Hiro," Tadashi scolded. Hiro stared at him, slack-jawed.

"You're in prison for manslaughter, and you're probably like, thirty, and you're scolding me on my language?!" Tadashi nodded. Hiro sighed, shaking his head but just going with it.

"Anyways, how'd you get caught?"

"I was being really, really stupid and cocky. I got ganged up on and then it all went down from there, the cops showed up and I was taken in again. This time I got the full extent of the law because I'm legally over eighteen now. Pretty simple story, really."

"Okay, so tell me this. You seem to be a pretty smart kid – don't look at me like that, you are a kid – so why did you keep bot fighting? If you can build a robot that can win all of those battles, couldn't you have gone to college or something?"

Hiro shook his head, chuckling to himself. "I'm an orphan, but I ran away from the orphanage. I was living on the streets, really. Also, watch out, there's one of the suckers that I beat when I was sixteen at my two o'clock, it should be your four o'clock, if I'm not mistaken. Wait, no, it should be your eight o'clock," Hiro corrected himself, watching the tall, gruff, and dangerous looking man walk towards them. Tadashi turned around and glared at the on comer.

The man didn't flinch, which was his mistake.

"Tada, what are you doing with this shrimp? It's about time he was caught, and 'me and a lot of other people have got a bone to pick with him."

Hiro cowered behind Tadashi, unable to see the completely unamused look on Tadashi's face. The man didn't back down in the slightest.

"As I have already made clear, Hiro is mine. So buzz off," Tadashi said simply. Hiro wanted to claw his eyes out because the man still sounded so casual. Couldn't he at least sound angry or scared like a reasonable person?! The only thing that he had even gotten a little bit emotional about was the fact that Hiro swore. Even then, he didn't get angry, only a little bit passionate.

"Sorry, Tada," (what was with that nick name? Could people not pronounce the -shi or was it just something that Hamada went by?) "But this shit is personal."

The burly man made a move to grab at Hiro, but Tadashi beat him to it and easily knocked the larger man over, using some complicated martial arts trick that just looked like a blur of movement to Hiro. Tadashi leaned over a whispered into the man's ear, whispering something that Hiro couldn't understand.

'Tada,' he said, cockily. It was like he was rubbing salt into the wound. 'Tell all of your friends that Hiro is under my protection. If they so much as glance at him without asking me first, they'll have to deal with more than this. The usual rules apply. And, also, please watch the language. I rather dislike vulgarity.'

With that, Tadashi and Hiro made their exit.

When they were in their new secluded sector of the yard, Hiro stared at Tadashi blankly for a while. When he had plenty of time to digest what had happened, Hiro blinked and opened his mouth to talk. "That was…"

Silence.

"I mean…"

Longer silence.

"Is that how you killed someone?"

At this, Tadashi paled. It was the last thing he was expecting from the kid. "Nope, not even close. But we're going to be assigned jobs soon, so stay close to the guards."

His question was answered by essentially complete avoidance. Hiro didn't push it, though.

The rest of the week went by normally. Or, at least, as normal as it could have been in a prison.