Final chapter, here we go!

Scale 6: Good Mood Graviton

At least the lack of sync wasn't too awkward around Neku. Not because they weren't buddies, but because the sync honestly hadn't added much to their friendship. Kinda like Minamimoto, now that Fret thought about it.

That definitely didn't keep Neku from wrecking Fret at Tin Pin however. Fret hadn't won a match against him yet, though occasionally he got him down to the last two pins.

"Hey Neku," said Fret, as he and Neku got ready for another match. Stride was bustling this evening, but they'd managed to snag a table in a quiet corner in the back. "Do you just…not miss the sync or something?" Even Nagi acted like she missed the connection sometimes. But only sometimes. She'd also said that she wouldn't want her empathy back all the time. "Or…empathy?"

"Hmm…" Neku paused. "It's…complicated."

"So you do miss it?"

"It's…" said Neku, folding his arms. "Here's the thing. This wasn't my first Game."

"Well yeah, you're the Legendary Player and all." Fret snapped his fingers when his brain finally caught on. "Oh! So you've gone through something like this before! Yeah, Beat-buddy mentioned feeling kinda weird after his last Game! So that must have happened to you too, huh?"

Neku was quiet at first. "What Beat experienced and what I experienced during our final attack was…pretty different."

"Kweh? What do you mean?"

"Hmm…How to explain it…" Closing his eyes, Neku folded his arms. "Well basically, when we—Shiki, Beat, Joshua, and I—did our own final attack, it wasn't nearly as strong as the attack that you, me, and the Wicked Twisters all did together. But the power wasn't evenly distributed either, because all my partners had been trapped by the Noise form we were fighting."

"Yikes, how'd that happen?"

"It's a long story. Point is, all that power got directly channeled through me and only me. It was…certainly something to experience, not gonna lie, and I was so glad to finally take down Kitaniji."

"Just like we were really glad to finally take down that Phoenix!" said Fret. "But wait, does that mean…"

"…Yeah, my empathy's been fried for a good long while," Neku said. "Haven't mentioned it to Beat or Shiki. I don't want them blaming themselves for something that's not their fault." He frowned at Fret. "So don't you tell them about that either. Not that it matters now, since we all got fried during that last sync attack."

"Gotcha," said Fret. He did think that Neku should tell them at some point, but that was something Neku had to decide on. Fret wasn't going to spill his beans for him.

Neku sighed. "I mean it's not like I don't care about people. Trust me, I know what that's like. It's just that I have trouble understanding why other people feel the way they do. So I have to work extra hard to understand other people, while trying not to look like I have to try extra hard, if that makes sense?"

"Yeah," said Fret. "That's what I've been trying to do since I got back. What everybody's been trying to do, really. So how do you do it?"

"Well, I don't know how effectively I do it, but mostly I try to notice all the details of a person, not just their expressions or what they say," Neku explained. "Like, if someone like Beat is being unusually quiet, it could mean a lot of things. Maybe he's thinking about something, maybe he's sad, maybe he's just tired. He's probably not angry or happy, we all know how loud he gets then. So I look at what else he's doing. Of course that kind of observation works best if you actually know the person."

"Oh, like body language stuff, right?" said Fret. "Yeah, I've been working on that thanks to Boss and EleStra!"

Neku looked at Fret for a bit, probably trying to figure out how that worked, and Fret was disappointed when Neku didn't ask him to elaborate. "Yeah, body language is a big part of it. But it's also stuff like asking yourself, what's going on around them? Is there anything that they might be reacting to? What stuff do they have with them? Are they listening to music? If so, what kind? Even their song choices can tell me a lot about a person, especially someone I already know. Everyone's got their own ways of expressing themselves after all."

"Yeah, I guess that's true," said Fret. If Beat pulled a coat around himself, he was probably just cold. If Rindo did it, he probably did it because he felt anxious rather than cold. If he was actually cold, his coat would be zipped up and his arms would be tucked into the opposite sleeves.

But Fret didn't know Neku's body language well. He wasn't sure what Neku just gazing down into the palm of his hand meant.

Neku noticed Fret's squint. "Something wrong?"

"Oh, no! Just uh…trying to figure out your body language too." He paused, thinking of the many, many questions he had asked Nagi about…just about everything she did. "So what's it mean when you look down at your hand?"

"Oh. Just thinking about stuff," said Neku, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Not bad stuff. Just stuff in the past. On how I've…changed. A lot. Before the Game I didn't like people. I mean really didn't like 99% of humanity. And I definitely didn't care about people. If I hadn't had any empathy whatsoever, I would have been delighted, because all I wanted to worry about was myself."

"Oh geez," said Fret. That was a feeling he couldn't understand at all, nor did he want to. "Talk about an emo phase."

"No kidding." Neku chuckled dryly. "And man did I despise the partner sync at first. Being forced to feel the feelings of a total stranger, and have to depend on them for survival? No thank you. But over time, that changed. I came to care about my partners, and then other people I knew, and then everyone. And just when I started to really get it, enjoy it almost, then the final attack happened, and then…" His eyes narrowed as he gazed at the ground.

Fret looked away. "Then your empathy got roasted, huh?"

"…Yeah," said Neku. "But I still cared about everyone, and wanted to keep caring, so I kept trying to know them better, kept trying to understand them. And in the end, it took a lot of effort, still takes a lot of effort, but I still care about them. The 'roasted' empathy, as you put it, doesn't get in the way of me being a decent person."

"Gotcha," said Fret. "That's…pretty awesome actually! Go you!"

"Thanks." Neku smiled. "And that's why I know the rest of you guys have got this too."

"Really?" asked Fret. "Even—"

"Especially you," said Neku. "The sync made that loud and clear."

Fret chuckled nervously. "T-That means a lot actually. Thanks Neku."

"Anytime."

But Fret could only bring himself to smile a little. He appreciated the vote of confidence, he really did. And yet…"Still, there's gotta be a way to bring our empathy back, right? I mean, all this really helps, but…"

Neku frowned, closing his eyes. "If there is, no one's found it."

"But there's gotta be something." Fret hated how desperate he sounded.

"I've talked to both Joshua and Mr. H about it," said Neku. "Both say it's a no-go. It's not the kind of thing you can build into someone's Soul by tinkering with it."

"Why?" Fret didn't even know who this Mr. H was, but if he was being grouped together with the Composer, and was also the guy who had saved Rhyme by stuffing her into a pin or something… "Weren't they already tinkering with our Souls by putting in that sync stuff in the first place? If they can put that in, why can't they just put in some kind of artificial empathy system? That's basically what the sync was anyway, right?"

"Stuff like the sync doesn't work in the RG," explained Neku. "Even if it did, the sync works by having you connect with someone else who has the same system—someone else on the same team. It doesn't work for just anyone. You didn't understand the emotions of the other teams any better when you had the sync, did you?"

"No…" Fret said, shoulders slumping. "So I guess that wouldn't work…" And that still wouldn't be the same as natural empathy anyway, would it? He didn't think of it much during the sync giddiness, but sync clearly didn't work like natural empathy. Natural empathy did not cause things like being easily overtaken by others' emotions to the point of losing himself, sensing every minute change in mood and health, and sharing power in an infinite loop until there was no power left to share. It was more like its own sense entirely, overlapping with, but not replacing, his natural empathy. Though apparently sync overlapped enough of that empathy to eventually cook it like a chicken...

So then…

"It's really not so bad, once you get used to it," said Neku.

Neku probably thought that his calm exterior was reassuring, but…

"But hey, look at me, I've been doing alright, so you've got this."

Fret chuckled anxiously. Yeah, he so 'got' this alright. He 'got' the same empathy problem that Neku had been dealing with for years. The same Neku who had been distant for their entire sync, who nodded and smiled serenely when everyone else was trying to comfort Fret, because he cared but he just didn't get it.

"Something wrong?"

"...Neku, dude. You're awesome and all, but…" How did he say this without sounding awful? "I don't think you 'got this' as much as you think you do."

"Hmm?"

"Because something about you always felt weird during the sync, but I could never figure out what," said Fret. "But if your empathy was already fried, well, that would explain a lot. Like why you could be so chill when the rest of us were freaking out about the Inversion stuff, and people dying, and…everything, really. And maybe it was good that we had somebody keeping their cool during all that, but also it kinda felt like you…didn't care?"

Neku frowned. "Trust me, I did very much care what was going on."

"Like, I know you did," Fret went on. "I was synced with you, after all. Even if your feelings were quiet, I could still sense them. But if I hadn't been synced with you? I would've assumed you didn't give a crap about anything. And that's…not okay. Maybe it's okay for you if people think you don't care, but it's not okay for me. Not if everyone starts thinking that I don't care because I don't pick up on the same feelings they do. I don't want to accidentally hurt people because I can't read the room."

Neku sighed, eyes glancing downward.

"Like, all these extra skills for reading people help, they really do. Sometimes they might even be more helpful than just relying on empathy. But I still need to really think about what I'm doing, really watching people, asking questions, stuff like that. All that takes a little while. And people notice that, and it…weirds them out, sometimes. Maybe a lot of the time. I'm still working on reading people better, after all." Fret's voice twisted a little. "Do I really have to be like this for the rest of my life? I d-don't know how to handle that, even after all this time, even after everything…"

"I…know that feeling too," Neku answered solemnly. "I'm not going to pretend that there's a perfect substitute for empathy. And you're not 'bad' or 'weak' for missing it. Whether someone has empathy or not, whether someone wants to have empathy or not, it's what they do that matters." He smiled, a little...wistfully, maybe? "As someone once told me, the world ends with you."

"Kweh? What does that even mean?"

"Basically, expand your horizons and understanding, and your world will get bigger," said Neku. "And you've already been doing that, so you're well on your way. You might not be able to see everything, but with the people around you watching your blind spots, you can see farther. So the more people you get to know, the more you'll be able to see and understand."

"Uh, okay?"

"For example. I didn't really get to know you well during the Game," Neku said. "We didn't have much time together because there was so much going on, and my lack of empathy didn't help. But now that I've gotten to know you, I can say with confidence that you're a loyal and caring person, whether you have empathy or not. And now I know way more about fashion because of you and Shiki. You'd think after two Games I would've developed some fashion sense, but nope. Good thing I've got you two."

"You bet." Fret grinned. "Shiki's told me the horror stories."

"I'm sure she has." Neku smiled, a more amused smile this time. "So, considering all that, would you say that we get along better now?"

"Uh, yeah actually," said Fret. "Haven't known you for that long, but I get you better now, and it sounds like you get me better too. So…yeah, we've made progress. Even if we both have our empathy fried."

"Exactly," said Neku. "That didn't stop us from becoming friends."

"Yeah!" said Fret. Even with all the new speed bumps, his new friendships had only gotten stronger. Even Minamimoto, who apparently hadn't ever had any empathy, had still stopped by that one time at the Digital Hachiko to give advice. And remind Fret to charge his phone.

…And at the time Fret had just regarded Minamimoto as a psycho. Oof. Big oof. Maybe Fret should have another talk with him. Assuming he ever showed up again.

"So, are you feeling better now?" asked Neku.

"Good enough to play some more Tin Pin!" said Fret. In truth there was still a lot he needed to sort through, about a lot of things, but for now he was good. Like he'd been good for a while during the Game, after Nagi had spoken to him seriously during that third week. Whenever these feelings flared up again he'd end up talking, sorting, thinking. But, just for right now, he would be fine.

Nagi'd been right, hadn't she? He would need...time. It sucked, but it was true.

Fret and Neku played more Tin Pin. Which Fret kept losing. By a lot. Man, why was he so bad at this? Well to be fair, Neku had played this for years while Fret had only played it for days. Looked like Fret needed more time to be better at this too.

Then, at the end of a particularly bad match, a bright yellow plastic glove thing dropped onto the table out of nowhere with a clack.

"Try that in your next match, zeptogram."

Man, Minamimoto sure liked appearing out of nowhere, didn't he? "Oh, Mr. Minami! Hi!"

Neku blinked. Slightly surprised maybe? "Hey Minamimoto. What brings you here?"

"Heh, I want to see if that variable will give you a non-zero chance of winning against that hedgehog-headed hectopascal," said Minamimoto with a knowing smirk.

"Uh, thanks?" Fret didn't know what this knockoff knight gauntlet thing even was.

"Is that really all you wanted to do?" asked Neku, raising an eyebrow. "Surely the great Minamimoto isn't afraid of facing me one on one in Tin Pin?"

"Ha! Irrelevant!" said Minamimoto. "This isn't about my own calculations! I want to see Zeptogram No. 1's calculations when given a new factor."

"Why though?" asked Fret. "I mean, thanks for the sweet gear, but, uh…it's not like I'm going through a major tournament arc to win some prize money to cure somebody's cancer or something."

"So zetta dull! There you go again, trying to plug yourself into others' equations," said Minamimoto. "Don't you wanna win to expand your own range? Scram with the dependent variable act. Become your own magnum opus! Compact others' opinions and sum them to the pile!"

"Uh, but I like having other people's opinions?" said Fret. "I mean, even if I don't agree with them, I like knowing what other people think."

"But are you gathering that data from others to test your theories, or are you defining yourself by that data?" asked Minamimoto. "It's up to you to evaluate the peanut gallery, not the other way around. Sort out the novel opinions from the trash and put 'em in the appropriate matrices."

"But what if it's not as simple as right or wrong opinions?" asked Fret. "Like you…" How did he say this without sounding like a jerk? "I know you don't worry about other people's emotions and stuff, but I do."

"Ha! So you are still obsessed with other people's evaluations," said Minamimoto. "Still seeking that empathy equation? Empathy is trash! Crunch! Add it to the heap!"

Neku frowned. "Just because empathy is trash to you doesn't mean it's trash to other people. Fret's just thinking about how to be a good person—"

"Ha ha ha ha ha! What, you think that just because your empathy is a positive integer, that alone makes you equal to 'a good person'?" asked Minamimoto. "Check your work! Many radians become rogue integers and push others away because of that expendable empathy operator. They want to subtract the pain of others' feelings badly enough that they divide those factors from their lives or add annihilator methods to cope."

"That's true," said Neku. "But you're missing out on a lot of positive information too. Even if you have some other methods of figuring out what other people are thinking, wouldn't you at least want the option? To be more efficient at calculating others' emotions, so to speak?"

"Hmph. Sure, you can use any data, and the empathy operator spits out that data pretty efficiently. But skewed data can lead to worse outcomes than no data. And empathy outputs are skewed by your internal filters. Sure, it's just a way of getting data, and all operators end up with data skewed in some direction. But some operators output more skewed data, others less skewed, and empathy's one of the most internally skewed of all. Besides, even if I 'wanted the option', not every operator can be used in every topological space. Maybe your topology let you use that operator. The restrictions on mine never made that a possibility." Minamimoto's scowl gave way to a grin. "Heh, not that I've ever needed it."

Neku still had a...a serious expression. Maybe confused by what Minamimoto had meant.

Fret stepped in. "Yeah, Mr. Minami just never had empathy ever. B-But it doesn't mean he's a psycho or something!" No need to mention how Fret once had thought that. "He still cares about us in his own weird way."

"Hmm, I see," said Neku. "Wait, Minamimoto, if you never had it, how do you know what empathy is like?"

Minamimoto scoffed. "Plenty of random radians tried to define it for me back in the RG. Asked me why I acted like it was a null value for me, but the operators they described sounded more like unproven conjectures. Didn't have any proof it was a possible operator until I translated to the UG for the first time. Then I ended up in a Game. That garbage sync with that trash partner of mine who couldn't even put a single-digit defense, that was when I finally observed the operator: others' emotions being plugged into your equation like they were your own. How the factor was I supposed to be in my vector if some helpless hectopascal's 'feelings' kept pulling me out of it?"

Neku grimaced. "I at least kinda get that feeling, since I didn't like the sync much at first either. Neither the physical or emotional pain."

"Maybe for inverse idiots who have yoctolitre brain volumes and can't keep track of their partners' status without the sync, it helps 'em stay uncrunched. But for me? It just distracted me from my calculations—what I needed to keep both myself and my partner from getting erased." Minamimoto glowered. "That partner ended up crunched after we'd won the Game anyway. Imagination too low to pass the horizontal line test."

Fret didn't even want to know what kind of test that was. Maybe it was an evil game of limbo? "But you seemed to enjoy syncing with us though? At least, kinda?"

Minamimoto grinned. "Heh. Nice hypothesis, but you've miscalculated. I enjoy being adjacent to you zeptograms in a combat zone. Imagination's an artistic medium like any other. Heaping your garbage outputs—" It didn't sound like an insult, just a matter-of-fact statement. Hey, Fret was beginning to tell the difference! "—into a magnum opus of compacted Noise makes for zetta fun times. That's in spite of the sync, not because of it. And willingly choosing to take on the empathy operator and running calculations on its interesting data for a limited ?-interval is orders of magnitude less zetta annoying than having that operator on all the time whether I like it or not."

"Oh. Uh, I guess that makes sense?" said Fret. Nothing was fun if someone was forced to do it. "But you still like us, right? Me, and the other Wicked Twisters?"

"Naturally. Not valuing the sync and not valuing my zeptograms aren't even in the same quadrants."

"Yeah!" Fret nudged Neku. "He's only here because he really wants to be here. He's got a bajillion things he could be doing, but he wants to hang out. Or, uh, test...this variable." He poked the yellow plastic. Aw, cute, it had a little dog on it now that Fret looked more closely. Kinda looked like Hachiko. "Even if it means cutting into his...uh, arts and crafts time?"

Minamimoto's grin broadened. "Q.E.D." Wow, guess Fret had sort of gotten to know Minamimoto, too.

"It's just like how losing my empathy hasn't stopped me from liking all my friends." Fret rubbed the back of his neck. "And I think they still like me the same too. Probably."

"Definitely," said Neku.

"They'd be inverse idiots not to," Minamimoto added. "You're Zeptogram No. 1 for higher-order reasons."

"Wait, really?" Actually wait, considering how much value Minamimoto put into numbers, and he called Fret literally No. 1…Man, why didn't he put 2 and 2 together sooner? Or 1 and literally zero in this case? That technically shouldn't require math at all!

"You're not this much of a stupid scalene, zeptogram." Despite the words he said, Minamimoto was grinning widely and tilting his cap up. So that was...a compliment? Yeah, definitely a compliment. "I won't reiterate what I told you at that stylish hologram display. You're zetta fascinating, and the hectonewtons you apply to the other nodes in the network propel the radians you're adjacent to forward on more interesting accelerate the chaos around you. Makes for more garbage to heap—a more artistic Shibuya."

Accelerate chaos? Well, Minamimoto probably meant that in a good way. "Well call me a trash compactor then, because I'll make as much garbage as you want despite my deep-fried empathy."

"Ninety deg—" He scowled as Fret completed his sentence. "Zeptogram." Minamimoto studied Fret for a second, then crossed his arms over his chest. "Listen, zeptogram. Your gravitational force doesn't influence others because you can or can't use the empathy operator. The empathy operator might've been one equation you used to reverse-engineer your desired solutions, but it isn't the only possibility. Just have to figure out a different vector with a similar endpoint."

"Yeah, and well, that's what I'm starting to do," said Fret. "Learning from everyone how to, uh, use different equations to get the same result?"

"Not bad. So, what've you FOILed out?" Minamimoto seemed to gaze right through him. "Checking others' work and learning to use their axioms and identities is a good first step. But you have to arrange the propositions into a proof all your own. The function's unsolved until you get to your quod erat demonstrandum."

"Uh…Well, paying attention to other people's expressions and how they move and stuff helps a lot," Fret began, rubbing the back of his neck as his brain scrambled to remember everything. "Paying attention to stuff in the environment helps too, like Neku said. Paying attention to expressions too, like really paying attention. Actually asking people how they feel, straight up. Showing them you're really listening by, uh, summarizing what they're saying and making sure you're both on the same page. Uh, just talking to people, really talking to people, more in general too. Just, being really observant? And not, like, too caught up in what you think they should feel?"

"Sounds like you're a good fraction of the way towards finishing that proof. Keep iterating on it. Even if the series never converges, you'll spiral out to infinity as long as you keep adding terms." Minamimoto shrugged. "You might even find the terminal equation more accurate than before the Game, when you only relied on the empathy operator. Now you're adding terms deliberately, instead of cruising on a curve just because it approximated well enough. It's all skewed data, but this data might end up less skewed. After all, what is empathy—true empathy, not the artificial sync—but equal to getting caught up in what you think the other radian should feel?"

"Yeah, I guess that's true," said Fret. "Now that I'm doing a bunch of things to understand the other person, I kinda…see things from more angles? And that helps a lot. Still doesn't cover all the blind spots, but everyone has at least some of those anyway, right?" And that's what friends were for, at least according to Neku, or whoever he was referencing.

"Sure. No single polynomial can cover every possible coordinate. You'll always have missing data. So will he—" Minamimoto jabbed a finger in Neku's direction. "—and so will I. I've got operator options that your topologies will never have. I don't see you calculating probabilities with enough precision to notice when a zeptogram's been translating himself through time. And the set's bijective: you don't see me accelerating that chaos in the same way you do, convincing integers to integrate themselves together or sum new threads to their physical matrices. We all analyze the chaos, and contribute to it, from different angles."

"Yeah, like a bunch of different pieces of confetti, or something," said Fret, smiling. C'mon, his galaxy brain could do better than that. "Or a bunch of pins slamming around in the biggest Tin Pin tournament ever!" There we go!

"Ha ha ha ha ha! I zetta dig your style. That's another medium you can accelerate chaos in, Zeptogram No. 1." Minamimoto patted the yellow slammer. "Quod demonstrabitur!"

"Oh, you want chaos, Mr. Minami?" Fret grinned slyly. "How about I take you and Neku on?"

"Heh, a challenge? Fine. I'll test your theorem as long as you test mine. Add that Omega Slammer Kaiser Canis to yourself, and I'll integrate." He pulled another piece of plastic from the inner lining of his coat: a matching omega slammer, this one in red and decorated with black graffiti. "I'll crunch the both of you at 299,792,458 m/s!"

"Bring it on, Mr. Minami!" said Fret, yanking on Kaiser Canis.

Minamimoto cracked his knuckles and slid the red plastic over his wrist. "Well, you asked for it."

Neku sighed, but there was a smile on his face. "The fighting never ends…Any last words?"

"No empathy operator doesn't have to equal no mercy." Minamimoto whipped out a croaky panic pin, flipping it through the air and slamming it onto the board. "But in this equation it does. Prepare to be iterated!"

A croaky panic pin, huh? The blepping cartoon frog looked surprisingly cutesy for a punk guy like him. Even someone…especially someone like Minamimoto was full of surprises. If they hung out enough together, Fret would figure out all his 'angles' with enough time.

Yeah...with enough time.

IIIIII

Today, everyone was gathered at the Digital Hachiko, just vibing after a few hours of window shopping. Nagi and Shoka were going on about EleStra, and Fret babbled right along with them. Meanwhile Neku stumbled through EleStra's first level: he had asked to play the game blind, since he wanted to study the character expressions himself. It had been the Fretster himself who had brought up the idea.

But man, Fret so wanted to tell him that he was using that support Dena unit completely wrong. A lot of players used him because he could nullify damage for a turn, but Fret found the real power was using Dena's rally skills to boost his allies. The individual boosts looked so weak on paper that few players had bothered, but those boosts stacked. Even Nagi'd been impressed by it once he'd shown her the strat.

But Neku wasn't doing either of those. He was just using the unit to attack. When his attack stats were garbage. Clearly Neku hadn't played enough RPGs.

And speaking of Lord Dena, or at least someone who looked like him, Rindo was showing Beat how to play FanGO. Beat half-walked, half-ran around the statue, eyes glued to his phone as he chased after whatever was on the screen. Every time he passed by the hologram, Rindo, who was making the digital Hachiko do tricks with Rhyme, kept telling Beat to ease up on his swipes so he didn't overshoot the Fenrir every time or whatever.

When it was Rindo's turn to play with the holographic Hachiko, Rhyme tapped at something on her phone and calmly explained some of the things that made the digital dog work. Fret still didn't follow it, though it wasn't nearly as complicated as Minamimoto's explanation had been. He wondered if the math-man himself was lurking somewhere nearby, assessing her definitions. Not enough math/10 probably. But at least Rhyme was having a good time, judging by how relaxed her shoulders and timbre were.

As if summoned by Fret's thoughts, Minamimoto materialized beside Rhyme, because why on earth would he enter a room normally? Guess he didn't want to miss out on the fun. Or maybe this was just the exact time he liked to visit the Digital Hachiko, because numbers or something.

Beat stopped and glared at Minamimoto, FanGO forgotten. "Tabooty! Whatchu doin' here? You better not be here to mess wit' us! I don't like yo' ass standin' so close to Rhyme either!"

Oh right, Beat had some sort of beef with Minamimoto that Fret still didn't know much about. Fret would have to ask more about that someday.

Minamimoto only grinned in his usual toothy way. Ignoring Beat entirely, he focused his intense gaze on Rhyme. "Heh, any lowest common denominator could use that proposed Fresnel diffraction. What makes your solution any more elegant?"

"The hell you talkin' bout now?" growled Beat.

But even though Beat was as tense as that one really angry Tomonami sprite, Rhyme's body remained loose. "Oh, hey, Mr. Minamimoto." She showed the Mina-man her phone. "Here's the model I've been fiddling with. You can see the complexity trade-off, but at this holographic fringe trace accuracy, the fidelity is still good enough. And the sparsity makes it viable in real-time. I'm still improving it, though. Practice makes perfect."

"Rhyme, whatchu doin'? He's dangerous yo!" Beat snapped.

Minamimoto remained leaning back, his cap tipped up as if to see better. "Nonzero probability a faster impulse function exists," he mused.

"Hey, you better listen up, Tabooty!" Beat snarled. To Fret it looked like he was about to stomp on over.

Fret, however, reached over and touched Beat's shoulder. "Chill out, Beat-buddy. Mr. Minami ain't gonna bother anybody. He just likes to hang out here."

Beat still scowled, his shoulder remaining tight under Fret's hand.

"And he's not bothering Rhyme either," Fret added, pointing to Rhyme. "See, look at how relaxed she is?" He then pointed to Minamimoto. "And Mr. Minami too. Besides, if Mr. Minami wanted to do something…Well, he would have done it already."

Beat took a deep breath, briefly mimicking Rhyme's stance. "Yeah, you right. But why's Tabooty here then?"

Both Fret and Beat glanced over.

"The prime factor algorithm for FFTs," Minamimoto was saying with a smirk. "Even a difference of sixteen balances the equation with implementation difficulty. I zetta dig your style."

Fret smiled. "Looks like he just wanted someone to geek out with."

Seemed that Rhyme did, too, judging by the hand on her cheek. She'd done the same when she'd pondered about Fret's burnt-out empathy. She wasn't annoyed: she was interested, curious and thinking. "Well, it's hardware-dependent. If I were implementing it in the real Hachiko, it'd depend on what's under the hood. But I think we're thinking along the same lines."

"Hmph." Minamimoto scowled, and Beat tensed up, but Fret squeezed Beat's shoulder. He'd seen that scowl before, just like when Minamimoto had glared at the omega slammer while adjusting it mid-match. His version of a thinking face. Seriously considering Rhyme's words, maybe. "Reducing pure mathematical beauty into hardware dependencies is garbage."

"You think so? I think it's fun, like your art." Rhyme didn't look worried by the scowl either. "Necessity is the mother of invention. Just like you use the physical properties of trash to make it beautiful, I use the physical hardware to lower the computational complexity." When Minamimoto broke out into a wide smirk, Rhyme smiled. Fret knew that smile: a knowing smile, like how she'd smiled when she'd beaten Fret at pulling off a skateboarding trick the other day. "So, if you have any thoughts on the underlying equation, I'll translate it to the hardware. Teamwork makes the dream work."

Minamimoto crossed his arms, but only for a contemplative second. Then he grinned, angling his hat back up. That was his calculating grin, like when he'd studied the Tin Pin board right before unleashing the winning move. A calculating Minamimoto, Fret'd learned, was a happy Minamimoto. "I can align my vector with that angle. Accelerating the IRF should be easy as π. Let me see." His grin only widened as he looked over her shoulder.

Rhyme hadn't flinched at the closeness at all, instead moving closer to give him a better point of view. A thinking Rhyme was a happy Rhyme, too.

Fret nudged Beat. "See, Beat-buddy? All good. I think she looks pretty happy to get to geek out with someone, too."

Beat frowned. "You right, man. I still don't like it...but you right. Got my eye on the punk, but I ain't finna make a scene." He watched the two for a moment longer, jabbering about variables and simplifying terms, then went back to his FanGO game. Fret sighed in relief.

Rhyme caught Fret's gaze and nodded at him. That smile...Fret was pretty sure that one meant thank you.

As the math nerds nerded out, the tension faded and everyone got back to what they were doing, as if nothing ever happened. Neku threw Fret a thumbs-up, Shoka dragged Beat away to play FanGO with him, and Nagi cautiously approached the Hachiko geeks, though the only thing coming out of her mouth was a series of unintelligible noises. Good luck with that one, Boss.

And today…today Fret felt alright. His empathy had gone on another vacation to the arcades or something, but he could tell by everyone's expressions that his friends were having a good time. And seeing everyone else happy…Even if he couldn't feel it directly, knowing that his friends were happy made Fret feel happy too. Really happy even, like his Soul was wrapped in a toasty, fluffy blanket.

Rindo walked over to Fret, arms at ease by his sides. "Hey, nice going there."

"Aw, it was nothing." Fret rubbed the back of his neck. "Just had to pay a little attention."

"You paying attention? That must have taken serious work."

"Yeah yeah," said Fret.

"But seriously, good job." Rindo smiled, but then his expression tapered off into something more serious. "I don't know enough about Mr, Minami's body language to tell what he's feeling."

"Well he's here now, so we could awkwardly stare at him for a while until you learn it!" said Fret, winking. "He wouldn't even care, because he's Mr. Minami doing Mr. Minami things."

"Why do you gotta make it sound so weird?"

"Because I guess it is kinda weird?" said Fret. "But it's okay, we're all weirdos here! So let's be weirdos together!"

Rindo smiled. "Sure. Together. Yeah, that sounds good." But he didn't turn toward Minamimoto.

…Had Fret missed something? He studied Rindo's face. A warm smile. So warm it was kinda hard for Fret to directly look at it without his cheeks flushing up.

Rindo took Fret's hand, his fingers interlacing with Fret's this time. He looked uncertain. "Is this okay here? Around the others, I mean?"

It reminded Fret of that very first time, back during the first week of the Game, when, in the bittersweet throes of a fading sync, they ended up holding hands. This time, Fret didn't jump away, just squeezed Rindo's fingers gently back. "Yeah. I mean, it's just handholding, right?"

Both of them were quiet for a little bit.

"Thanks for all the suggestions, by the way," said Rindo. "They've helped a lot. Like just asking people how they feel without dancing around it too much, or the mirroring thing. Even the ones I'm not that good at using. Like, uh, touch." He glanced down at their shared hands, before closing his eyes. His thinking face.

"That's great!" said Fret. "You've got this Rindude!"

"T-Thanks…"

More silence. A mostly peaceful silence, but…

Man, times like these really made Fret wish his empathy worked right. But even without the empathy, Fret still cared. A lot. About Rindo in particular. Did Rindo? Well of course he cared, because he was Rindo, but did he care in the same way Fret did? This was just handholding, but…

But there was only one way to know for sure, wasn't there? To be honest.

Fret took Rindo's other hand, carefully intertwining his fingers. He felt Rindo's hand twitch in surprise, his eyes wide. "Hey, uh…" Oh man, what could Fret even say? His galaxy brain nearly went supernova with panic. "Um...Create life with what's in reach?" Of course some butchered version of TOKYU's slogan had popped into his head first, go figure."So will you…stay within reach?"

"Uh, what are you talking about?"

"DoYouWannaGoOutWithMe?" Fret blurted out, and hoped that it wasn't too mashed together for Rindo to understand. He wasn't sure if he had the nerve to say it again.

One second, then two, as Rindo stared at him. Oh no, what if Fret had completely misread things and—

Then Rindo smiled. "Yeah, I'd love to."

And then Fret felt so happy and warm and connected, he could have sworn they had synced.

But they hadn't. They didn't need that anymore. No special powers required.

Thank you to everyone who read this fic all the way through! This was a fun and interesting fic to write, and (relatively) smooth to draft and edit as well. Even if it was supposed to stay a oneshot at first haha.

Also thank you to oddvector for being here for most of it as well! You're a big reason why this went so well. It's so nice whenever you're able to join in and edit/discuss things, and I really appreciate all the ideas! As well as all tangents about stuff we go on lol

I hope you enjoyed!