Settling In, Not Settling Down

They arrived at the Ministry of Science under the cover of night.

"Meijin-kun, make sure the room's ready," Yuuichirou said as soon as the two scientists had maneuvered the stretcher out from the back of the van and into the Ministry lobby. As Meijin ran to comply, Yuuichirou's hand came to rest on Netto's shoulder, where the General had branded him. Atsuki felt his eyebrow twitch; if Netto had been awake, he would've definitely had on one of those thousand-yard stares of his right now, dissociating from the feeling of being touched there without warning.

The thought occurred to Atsuki that maybe these people would like watching Netto lose his grip on reality about as little as he did, and he should tell them it worked better to hold Netto's hand first.

Before he could say anything, the entire gaggle of would-be heroes turned up, plus the princess of Creamland. Their attention was mostly focused on Netto, at first, but Atsuki was a very hard figure to miss. The first one of them to look up and realize he was there was, of course, the infuriating rich-boy-in-chief. "What are you—?" Enzan began, but Atsuki quickly cut him off.

"What am I doing here?! This is all your fault!" This time, Atsuki was in no mood to stop at merely taking a warning swing at the Net Savior who had caused him and Netto so much grief. But all Atsuki got was one satisfying but too-short look of startled realization from Enzan before Laika had positioned himself between them. "Stand aside!"

"Unfortunately for you, that is not how we settle things around here," Laika said dryly.

"Why is Atsuki here?" wondered Kaita. For a moment, Atsuki mourned for the way things would've gone if they'd followed the plan and taken the little brat away to become Tenth of the Silver Division; it would've been quite rewarding to watch his stupid, naive face harden under the relentless training Atsuki would've given him. As if reading his thoughts, Kaita shrank backward, adding, "Not that he needs a reason? I guess?"

"Atsuki saved Netto-kun," Rockman explained.

"Hard as it is to believe, he is, at present, our ally," Laika seconded.

"I'm 'Netto''s ally, at least," Atsuki said. "Don't know about all of you."

"We need to get him to the medical ward," Yuuichirou said decisively, cutting through the confusion.

"Papa, I need to tell you a few things," Rockman said, moving to stand on Yuuichirou's shoulder. "Before Netto wakes up, so neither of you can get too surprised."

For a Navi, the little thing was so perceptive.

"Sir," Netto's other Navi said, materializing in front of Atsuki. "May I be returned to Netto's care, so that I may watch over him?"

"Why not," muttered Atsuki, slipping Netto's PET off his wrist. "I'm glad I'm rid of you two, anyway." He put the PET in Netto's left hand, since it wasn't bandaged.

And then the whole gaggle was all walking away, surrounding Netto's stretcher. By himself in front of the doorway, Atsuki remarked, "Well, might as well wait here, it's a roof."

Enzan's redheaded sidekick, last to leave, was apparently not quite out of earshot. "'Wait' for what?" Meiru asked, reappearing in the doorway.

"For Seven to wake up, of course." Cheerfully noting her confusion, Atsuki explained, "I can't go back to the Citadel labs after I had to drag him away from Two—it's my story against hers, and she's far closer to the General's ear. 'Netto' is the only one left who knows how to keep me alive and would, so I'll spend what's left of my life doing whatever he needs done."

He nearly had to do a double take; Meiru was looking at him with an expression on her face Atsuki couldn't quite identify, not quite fear but more complicated than sadness. "They… they treated you like that, too, didn't they? With… what we saw in the archive, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but…"

Disgruntled, Atsuki said, "Don't look at me like that! That's weird."

"Okay, okay!" Though Meiru schooled her face into a more neutral expression, she didn't walk away. "Is Atsuki your real name?"

Atsuki shrugged in response. "It's another false name, but I made it up myself," he explained.

"Hmm, I guess that makes sense. It is very fiery," Meiru observed. "Well, since you're the one who decided on it, it's kind of like a proper name. So I guess I'll keep on calling you Atsuki!"

"Whatever," Atsuki said in response, looking around. The last time he'd been in this room, he had been running a distraction so that Netto could make a mess of the valuable data stored within the Ministry of Science… and send a message to both Net Saviors not to try any more clever tricks.

Netto had been adamant that it was better to plant the idea of attacking the Ministry early with Shun than to go with the idea of killing the Net Saviors outright, even though it was so much more complicated that way. He was full of strange little quirks like that, but that was what made him a more interesting partner than one of the other Silvers and their boringly easy to read patterns of thought.

Atsuki realized that Meiru was still there, her gaze following his to various parts of the room. "Scram," he said flatly.

"No," she said in an equally flat tone of voice.

"Rockman said you were all friends of his. Don't you want to be there when he wakes up?"

She glanced to the side, finally seeming uncomfortable. "It's… complicated," she sighed. "Netto kept me at such a distance from whatever was going on. Now I feel like maybe we really were better off apart."

"What are you talking about? Of course you were at a distance. You're a glamorized civilian, and we're… we were in the greatest cyberwarfare unit on Earth. Why would you ever need to know what we were really doing?" At a loss as to where this expectation of hers had even come from and why he was hearing about it, he took a step toward her, scrutinizing her.

Meiru shrank back, though her eyes continued to meet his. "Y-you wouldn't hit a girl, would you?!"

"Huh?"

Meiru hurriedly explained, "I saw what happened with Enzan, and I'm kind of a lot smaller than you, y'know?!"

"So? You've proven yourself to be as capable as anyone else here."

"That's—" Meiru seemed rather surprised. "Thanks…?"

Atsuki shrugged.

"I just…" Quietly, Meiru asked, "What's he like?"

"He's the strangest person I've ever met," Atsuki said honestly. "He's smart and dependable, but he's always taking stupid risks nobody else would ever think of taking. Like giving up our position for me, and choosing not to have you and Mister Perfect die even after you became a problem. And he's still doing shit like that, even after all the General did to break him of it." He smiled crookedly. "He's fascinating."

"…Oh. That sounds like him, yeah…" Tears shimmered in Meiru's eyes. "We should be there. You're right," she decided.

"I'm not one of your little group, in case you forgot," Atsuki pointed out dourly. "You should be there. I will just wait here."

"Are you sure?" she asked, seeming concerned.

"Do I need to make myself any clearer?" he asked more threateningly than he really felt like acting, taking another step toward her.

"Eep!" Meiru darted away and through the doorway, but she turned around rather than leave right away. Smiling, she explained, "I'm not a natural talent like Netto or a genius like Enzan, and Roll doesn't have a lot of base power like Rockman and Blues. We got here by practicing and studying enough strategy to compensate for all of it. But even now, people underestimate us, even if they should know better. So… it means a lot that you'd punch me?" After a moment, Meiru cried, "Argh, that came out wrong!" and fled.

What a strange girl. No wonder Netto had wanted to make sure she made it out alive.

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After a while, Atsuki ended up sitting against the wall, resting his eyes. Standing just made him itch to run, and the chairs in the lobby were too uncomfortable for someone as tall as he was.

The door slid open again. Atsuki didn't open his eyes at first, expecting the visitor to be Meiru. But judging from the spacing and heaviness of the footsteps, the person approaching was too small. It had to be one of the children.

He opened his eyes to see Kaita sitting down next to him.

After a short while of Kaita glancing around silently, Atsuki finally said, "Go away."

"What's your name?" Kaita asked instead of doing what he was told. "I mean, your real name, not your number or your pretend name."

"I don't know. I was recruited when I was too young to remember my family," Atsuki said flatly.

"Oh." Kaita seemed unsure of how to proceed for a moment. "What should I call you?"

"It literally does not matter," Atsuki said, irked by what a thing it seemed to be around the Ministry. "Why are you being so nice to me?"

"Well, I guess you're gonna be here now, so I figured I might as well try…?"

"Not just you, all of you! You've all faced me before. I shot down people in this very room!" Frustrated, Atsuki asked, "Why would you even assume I am 'gonna be here', when everyone here knows exactly what I am?"

"You cared so much about Netto, you went in there and saved him before Laika could reach him. And Laika's super serious," Kaita explained. "Rockman told us all about it, and… we know some stuff because of what happened at the harbor, too, so… yeah."

"For a Navi, that thing has such an accursedly big mouth," Atsuki muttered. "And now you think I'm what? Some kind of 'friend', like all of you?"

"I think it depends on who you ask," Kaita said. "I haven't forgotten how scary you are. You never really… seemed to care about who you were hurting, and that really upset Mary-chan. I don't think you deserve to have nowhere to go, though."

"That's contradictory," Atsuki said flatly. "If I don't care about anyone, I don't belong here in your normal little city."

"No, it's not! You do care. You were just trying to keep Netto on the General's good side, so you put him over everyone else."

This was undoubtedly something else Rockman had explained secondhand to them. "I wanted for Netto to be able to keep going on missions, as he is a competent partner. If the General had continued to doubt his effectiveness, he would have been unable to. Sentiment doesn't factor into my reasoning." Yet he couldn't banish the image of Netto smiling softly at him while they hid from the cameras and ate real food, while they carried out their orders with enough efficiency to make a slight detour from the mission, while they drunkenly planned out dreams that wouldn't come true.

Netto small and fragile in his arms, bleeding out.

He was surrounded by all his little friends from the outside world now, and Atsuki was out here. Not belonging to that world, unable to hide his own nature for long enough to pretend.

Netto had a personhood to return to, but all Atsuki had ever had was being the General's thrall.

"I wanted to remain at his side, but that was just another fantasy…"

"No, it's not?" Kaita asked, confusion on his idiotically soft face. "We can go check on Netto-san right now and—"

"Why are you still here?!" A flash of impotent fury propelled Atsuki to his hands and knees; Kaita scrambled backward. "I'm not even human! Haven't been for years! You can't reason with me, or understand me, or even stand up to me." On his feet now, he raged, "I'll beat you into paste!"

Kaita darted away. It didn't lessen the uncertainty any, and neither did hurling one of the uncomfortable chairs across the room.

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The lobby was clearly not a safe place to wait, so Atsuki started looking for somewhere else to go.

There was a small gym on the first floor, thankfully, so Atsuki was able to busy himself in the usual way. He had a feeling nobody else knew it existed, since there was so much dust covering most of the equipment and the weights were not nearly as heavy as he was capable of lifting, so he also suspected that his chances of having any more bizarre encounters would be reduced.

It was a shame there wasn't anything heavy enough to really make him work hard; he needed to be putting back some of the bulk he'd lost if he wanted to regain enough strength to reduce that Enzan's head to a fine mist, and pushing himself to exhaustion would have been a great way to avoid thinking too hard about what he was still doing here. But he had to settle for what was there, and there was an adequately hefty punching bag, so he concentrated on technique.

He'd only been fighting his own body, still shaky and sore from its treatment over the last week, to run through drills for maybe fifteen minutes when he sensed someone else's eyes on him. It was definitely not the Sharan, who he was fairly certain he wouldn't have picked up on at all in his current state. He'd meant to use himself catching his breath as cover to prepare to attack the onlooker, but once he'd stopped moving, he found himself needing to stay still, limbs aching and leaden.

He did use his hunched-over position to get a surreptitious look at who was behind him. It was that piece of shit, Enzan. Atsuki thought that was quite fortuitous. All he needed was for Enzan to come just a little closer, and he could flatten him under the weight of one of his tackles.

Atsuki really did catch his breath, his implants numbing his nerves and causing the pain to recede. Enzan did not come closer. This was certainly the most annoying time he could have chosen to have learned his lesson for once, but Atsuki was not one to give up on his goals so easily.

Slowly, almost lazily, he turned and began to close the distance. Enzan watched him approach, his feet shifting but otherwise not moving just yet. That made sense. Someone so slender would need to use evasion and momentum to fight. Someone like that probably also only ever ran into even more inexperienced fighters. Seeing that Enzan knew he was coming for an attack, Atsuki picked up speed with his final few steps forward, prompting the side-step, and in turn dropped and kicked out at his opponent's feet.

To his credit, Enzan realized what was happening and jumped back from that initial attempt at a sweep. But Atsuki, experienced as he was, only needed that half-second where his opponent was out of position. He was on Enzan before he had a chance to recover, pinning him before planting a knee on his chest to keep him down.

"You really shouldn't try sneaking up on me," he said, grinning furiously. "This is, what, the second time, if we count the alleyway?"

"I wasn't trying—" Atsuki shifted more of his weight onto the leg holding Enzan down, enjoying the coughing and gasping it produced too much to be too bothered by his own lack of breath.

"We were supposed to be out of here months ago," Atsuki told him, so fixated on Enzan's struggles that he was barely aware he was doing so. "But you kept prodding, and Netto just had to treat you with kid gloves instead of cutting that crap off like he was supposed to, and the mission got out of hand, and now he's almost dead. All because of you." He didn't realize how enraged he was until he found himself saying, "I have nowhere I can return to because of you."

Atsuki frowned. Enzan had stopped struggling. He removed his leg from Enzan's chest, figuring he'd just passed out. It wouldn't do to get thrown out before he could tell Netto that this was unfeasible; that Netto had gone to all that trouble for nothing.

Unfortunately, Enzan was still awake. "…That makes two of us. I've really been making a nuisance of myself, haven't I?"

Never one to question an enemy's expression of utter hopelessness, Atsuki smiled and said, "Good. You're admitting it."

"At least it'll look less strange if we're both around here at odd hours," Enzan remarked. He seemed weirdly okay with the prospect.

Still, Atsuki couldn't let himself play along. Netto had always understood when it was fake, but some outsider moron wouldn't. "…I can't stay."

"Then why are you waiting around?"

"If I run before he wakes up, Netto will just chase me down again. I have to stay long enough to tell him to leave me to my fate, and then I'll… go." Perhaps back to the harbor, where the water could extinguish him.

"He won't accept that," Enzan pointed out.

"Don't you think I realize that?!" Atsuki got to his feet, needing to let out the frustration on the punching bag. "Someone like you can't even understand it. I've only ever been what the General needed of me. And for a moment, I thought I could be what Netto needed of me. But he doesn't need me! He has all of you!"

Enzan sighed. "You'll fit right in around here, believe me." He started to twist to one side, but abruptly stopped with a wince. Dourly, he added, "Maybe ease back on the force, if you want to go around picking fights."

"That was easing back," Atsuki informed him. "I could've caved your chest in if I'd wanted to."

"…Your limbs have those artificial bones in them, too. Like Marino," Enzan realized, then looked directly at Atsuki, propping himself up on his elbows. "How are you still conscious?"

"Because Netto ran all over town to save me, you twit," Atsuki said. "That's the only reason we got found in the first place."

"What did he do?" Enzan asked. Something had clicked together in his mind, that much was apparent, and it was propelling him past what had to be a few solid bruises to his feet.

Atsuki followed him to the door. "No, you answer my question, who the hell is Marino?"

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The patient now resting in one of the Ministry of Science's lab rooms was instantly familiar to Atsuki. After all, he'd helped train her. "Why isn't she dead?" he wondered.

"We've managed to stabilize her. But—"

"Not that, you idiot," Atsuki snapped impatiently at Enzan. "We aren't supposed to let ourselves get captured like this. What happened to her cyanide capsule?"

"We took it away," Enzan said. "…So she let herself get into this state on purpose."

"Wow, gold star," Atsuki said sarcastically. "I can't believe you've kept her around this long." He explained, "We're both inherently unstable. Our bodies only fall apart faster when we're cut off from our stabilizers." It seemed like another fever dream, how much Netto had wanted to stay by his side. He reached into his jacket pocket and found the proof it was real: the two vials Netto had slipped to him. "…This must've been to last us until we were finally out of here," he thought aloud.

Netto would've saved Eight, bleeding heart that he was. She'd probably had no idea that these were the side effects of her enhancements until this week. And Atsuki knew he was doomed either way. So he administered the injections to her, just as he would have to himself.

"Well, if you're going to be all sensitive toward some lunatic like her, you'd better give her some privacy," Atsuki told Enzan as he sauntered past him and out the door. "She's going to wake up in a lot of pain."

To his surprise, Hikari Yuuichirou was waiting for them outside. "Blues sent me a message. You were able to help Marino-san?" he asked Atsuki, sounding weirdly relieved about it.

"With any luck, you'll never see her again once she wakes up," Atsuki told him flatly.

"Thank you, Atsuki-san," Yuuichirou said unreservedly. "I didn't want to have to see her wither away like that."

"Why are you thanking me?" Atsuki asked, baffled. "I haven't done anything. That was Netto who made those vials up."

Yuuichirou merely smiled in return, eyes gentle like his son's would have been. "Let's go see if Netto's woken up, you two," he said, clapping one hand over Enzan's shoulder in a half-hug and extending the other to Atsuki.

Atsuki looked away. "I should wait here."

"You're his friend, too, Atsuki-san," Yuuichirou pointed out.

"We're not friends, we're just in the same unit. We don't make friends," Atsuki protested, but Yuuichirou just kept talking.

"I'm sure he'd be much happier to see you there beside him, rather than wondering what had happened to you."

Atsuki crossed his arms. The way Yuuichirou seemed so willing to accept him was just too strange; he turned his head away from the older man's face. "Maybe he would, but what about all of you? You'd have to be delusional to want me around."

"Rockman was willing to vouch for you," Yuuichirou explained. "So we're willing to give you a chance."

"Well, of course he was, he's probably still under that charm ailment Netto put on him. It's not like I was ever nice around him," Atsuki said sourly. "Take that off him, and see what he says."

"'Charm'?" Enzan asked.

"It's an ailment that works like a suggestion effect," Atsuki explained. ";It makes Rockman think Netto's an ally, even though he attacked the Ministry of Science. It also seems to make him think…" Enzan and Yuuichirou seemed to be somewhere between skeptical and amused. "…they have a history…?"

"Is that what he told you?" Enzan said, his laughter quiet and amused. "And Rockman went along with it? How clever."

"There's no way I know of to make a suggestion work quite that subtly," Yuuichirou explained, also exceedingly mirthful. "Rockman has always been Netto's Navi. He returned to Netto's side as soon as he could of his own volition. He knew he needed to play along to earn your trust, but I had no idea they'd made up an entire story to explain what he was doing there!"

"He managed to lie to my face…?" Atsuki realized. "Unbelievable…"

"As a matter of fact, if I didn't know better," Yuuichirou said gently, eyes twinkling with mirth, "I'd think Netto's charmed you, too."