"Dr. Sorensen!" Blues gasped, and then he couldn't help but laugh at how he'd nearly been knocked over. Leaves crunched in rapid fire rhythms under his feet as he scrambled for a solid footing. Judith's lanky arms around him were hot and damp with sweat.

"Tom was right!" she cried. "What a day. It gets better and better. What a wonderful day! He kept telling us you were alive, Blues… Those energy cell thefts… My God, was that you all along? It was you, wasn't it?"

Blues let himself go limp in her embrace. As long as her words corroborated Morita's, he could forgive her for anything. "It was!"

"To think you had to live like that!" She drew in a sharp gasp. "Blues, you're incredible. We tried everything to get you out of Nurtech's reach – we even had a plan to whisk you away overseas, but it fell through on your first birthday, there in the parking lot… we failed, we let you down… Yet you managed to evade them all this time by yourself!

"Oh, and don't worry about Nurtech anymore. They're still after you, but you'll be safe with us. We're in a much better position to fight them. They wouldn't dare take you away from Dr. Light since… well, so much has happened in the past few days… in the past day, especially! It's a different world now…"

Blues listened to her in silence, eyes closed, breathing in the heady scent of her floral perfume. He didn't know what "plan" she was talking about, or what had changed about the world, and at the moment he didn't care. He didn't want to think about the past, and something about the way Judith sighed just then told him she understood. He surrendered to the warmth of her hands on his back, the heat of her neck pressed against his forehead, and a shiver of joy that made him tremble all over.

"Riko told us the two of you escaped from Tokyo tonight. Yuichi and I have so many questions… You've been hurt badly… but nevermind, Blues, you don't need to explain it now… There will be time for us to catch up later…"

He nodded. Her words had reminded him that they weren't alone, and he peered into the darkness behind Judith to check that Morita was still there. She was. Her face, lit up by the glow of Yuichi's netphone, was floating above the shadows of the nearby trees, smiling and sniffling. Yuichi handed her a bottle of tea, and they talked in hushed tones and cast hopeful glances in his direction. Blues looked away, self-conscious of the fuss everyone was making over him. After all, Morita herself had spent the last few days enduring starvation and terror. But after nearly two years of isolation, he had to admit being made a fuss of was quite nice.

"You've kept this…" Judith tugged gently at the scarf around his shoulder, then wiped her shadowy hand across her cheeks. Although the night obscured most of the details of her face, Blues saw in her eyes that she had been crying.

He squeezed at a section of the yellow cloth. "Yeah," he sighed. The scarf, just like the fateful day she'd given it to him, was full of ambivalent meanings. "It was important to me, I guess."

Silence and the chirping of crickets crept in between them.

"Listen," Judith said. Her voice went dark. "Tom and I were stupid. We lied to you and withheld things from you. We were cruel, we were awful, and I don't expect you to ever forgive us…"

"I forgive you," Blues said. He pulled back, straightened himself, and looked up at her, for a moment feeling powerful in a way he never had before. But only for a moment. "I was angry once, but I've learned a lot since then. You see, Dr. Morita told me that Dr. Light…" His voice faltered a little. "...Loves me."

"Oh, Blues." Judith cupped a hand over her mouth. For a long time she appeared at a loss for words, knotting her eyebrows as if hurt. "He does. He does.

"He isn't the greatest at… expressing his feelings with words. I know that. But he tries. He's gotten better recently."

"That's what Dr. Morita told me." Blues let out a long sigh. "…So I had to come back and give him another chance, if he'll agree to repair my core…"

"Agree?" Judith suddenly laughed. "Blues, he's been waiting ages for you to ask." She put a hand on his uninjured shoulder and squeezed it. "He's moved heaven and earth to find a way to do it safely."

Blues smiled. In an instant the spell of pathos between them had been broken.

The trees around them seemed to brighten, and Judith's face came into sharper relief – from human-like shadows into crow's feet and streaks of tear-melted mascara. She had aged during the time he'd been gone, and it seemed that some of the new lines on her face had been etched there by worry. But before Blues was able to catch a full glimpse of her, a masculine hand planted a couple of friendly pats on his arm. He turned – Yuichi was smirking at him, phone in hand. His fitted grey suit and business shoes were wildly out of place among the strewn leaves and overgrowth.

"Hey, Blues," he said. "The next time I jump into a burning basement to save you, you'd better be in it."

On Yuichi's right thumb, and on the tips of his fingers, patches of thick discolored skin were just visible in the light of the netphone they held. Blues had never seen a burn scar on a human before, but he recognized them for what they were at once. And he knew Yuichi had meant to tell a joke, but he didn't find it at all funny.

"Mr. Nishikawa," he said, eyes wide. "I'm sorry… You had a family, and a baby, and if you'd died…"

"Don't start with that," said Yuichi, and laughed. "It's just a few singed fingers. I can use them just fine. And I got to keep my handsome face, so I'm not that mad. Besides, what other choice did you have but to stay hidden that night?"

Blues stared up at Yuichi. "Thank you," he said, then rummaged around in his mind for any other words which might be adequate. None came. The act of running towards that basement, rather than away from it, had required a level of courage Blues was certain he himself didn't yet have, and he was keenly aware that he was surrounded by extraordinary people – his people – and that he'd been incredibly lucky to find them again.

Just then Yuichi dropped his smile and said, with a glance toward Judith, "we'd better hurry."

"Right," Judith said, and sniffed. "Blues, you're in a bad way, even if it doesn't feel like it right now. We need to get you home before your core degrades any further or that little charge we gave you runs out."

"The only problem is that the main road's not safe and the front door's being watched," said Yuichi, sucking in a bit of air through his teeth. "We're going to go through the woods. You used to take walks with Dr. Light out here, didn't you? Can you find your way home?"

Except for the night of his first birthday, Blues had never seen Yuichi so serious. He stared ahead at the trunks of the trees made white by the light of the man's phone. Slowly, a familiar pattern took shape. He had been here before. As long as his double vision didn't return, he'd be able to find the house. He took a few halting steps forward, but then he remembered something Judith had said and stopped in his tracks. It indeed didn't feel to him like his core was about to fail. All at once, he realized why.

"My pain's gone," he said, reflexively putting his hands on his stomach. A confused smile crept up on his face, and he turned around and stared at the two scientists behind him. "What did you do?"

"Disconnected your pain receptors, of course, back there in the car," Judith said. "You were hardly conscious, so I suppose you don't remember…"

"You can do that? You really can?"

Judith gave him a curious look. "Of course, Blues. I thought I told you about it once... But we can't keep them that way too long, or it'll start interfering with your gross motor systems…"

"So if you decide to run away again, be sure to reconnect them first," added Yuichi with a wink.

Blues tried to muster another smile, but he was ill at ease. "Dr. Wily showed me how to disconnect them once," he said, "and it didn't work…"

Judith and Yuichi looked at each other.

"You're going to have to re-evaluate your old memories of Dr. Wily," Yuichi said slowly, looking upwards as if deep in thought. "We've all been doing a lot of that lately. Some of the things he did back then have only become clear to us in retrospect. But come on, Blues. Let's focus on getting you home. Dr. Light will explain it all to you once you're stable again.."

There was much more that Blues wanted to say – about the kerosene and the matches, about his core flaw not being an accident, about Dr. Wily talking to him directly through the netscreens in the underpass – but he didn't want to bring the mood down any further. He needed to walk. Weakness was creeping up through his legs, and he'd lose precious time if the scientists ended up having to carry him home. He forged ahead, but with each step he took the seed of unease in his mind sprouted and grew.

"Dr. Morita," he said. "Are you there?" He whipped his head around. "She hasn't left yet, has she?"

"I'm right here, Blues," Morita's gentle voice said. With a rustle of leaves her darkened silhouette appeared in front of him. He reached out for her, and Morita took one of his hands firmly in hers and pulled at it. "Let's walk, okay?"

He took a deep breath and nodded. As the scientists' phones lit the path ahead, he picked his way through the trees on unsteady feet, putting his faith in the sounds of whispering leaves and singing crickets to soothe him. After Tokyo the woods smelled wonderful. There was a familiar hint of coolness in the late summer air which he hadn't felt in the city. Somewhere in the near shadows a breeze was nudging a row of bamboo stalks, making them creak and groan. The night was gentle, and Dr. Light's house was directly ahead, five hundred meters at most. But Blues was ill at ease, and not only because his terrible suspicions about Dr. Wily had been right. He was trying to remember something important – some recent memory, relevant in some way to this reunion, which his dying core suddenly wouldn't allow him to access. A loose end somewhere. Something he'd seen in Tokyo had troubled him. The color blue and the word "Dad" had had something to do with it, but the details wouldn't come. The woods continued to spread out into a pitch-black beyond, and as the minutes passed his feet grew heavier. But with Morita ready to catch him when he stumbled, Judith and Yuichi following close behind, and his pain relegated to a memory, he reassured himself he was safe. Slowly, laboriously, like a ship's captain turning a large vessel around, he steered his thoughts toward the immediate future, where hope and home were.

"How long will it take?" he said with a quick glance at the shadows behind him. "To repair my core, I mean?"

"The better part of a day, perhaps," said Judith, with more than a hint of satisfaction in her voice.

"Only a day?" Blues found himself smiling. "Not months?"

"Not long at all. Sixteen hours or so," offered Yuichi. "Dr. Light's done a lot of preparation."

"After it's done, I want to sleep on a futon – a soft, clean one," Blues said – then felt a little embarrassed at how demanding his pronouncement had sounded.

"You will," Judith reassured him, "by this time tomorrow."

"What else do you want?" Yuichi called out brightly.

"A new generator," said Blues, raising his voice a little. Their conversation seemed to have become a kind of game. "I lost my old one in Tokyo."

"Well, of course," Judith said matter-of-factly. "You'll get one. A new generator is a must."

"And new clothes. Everything I'm wearing has holes in it."

"I'll say," said Yuichi. "You look terrible."

Blues laughed. "And a piano. And some sketchbooks. And the answers to all my questions."

"Par for the course," said Judith.

He felt better. The darkness ahead began to pale. With every notable feature he made out through the dim, visions from his first year of life appeared: on his left was the giant camphor tree under which he'd seen the dead crow, not knowing at the time what death was except that the sight of the motionless bird made him rush back to Dr. Light's side for comfort; to his right was the small clearing where he'd been scolded for running ahead and leaving his creators behind, back before he'd understood that being seen by the outside world was dangerous. They weren't happy memories, but he greeted them fondly because of what they meant to him: that the house was close. The further he walked, brushing branches out of his face, the more primordial the memories he revisited became, until he reached the woods of his life before speech, before context, before comprehension of what he observed. Trees he'd seen before familiarity with real trees had tamed his reactions. Trees whose Latin names he hadn't learned, whose Japanese names he hadn't formed in full with his mouth. A large stone he'd studied in reverent silence for an hour. The heavy sensation of pulling Dr. Light by the hand because he couldn't yet say, "come here, look at this with me." At the time he'd made those memories, he had never been particularly troubled by anything. It was before he'd seen the man with the camera, before he'd begun to question the meaning behind his creators' many "sorry"s, before he'd felt the unnameable loss, before he'd first noticed Dr. Light weeping late at night.

"Blues?" said Morita by his side. "Are you okay? You're gripping my hand really hard."

"I… um…" Blues blinked into the faint light in the distance. "Dr. Light's been very lonely, hasn't he?"

Morita hesitated for a moment. "He's missed you," she said at last. "A lot."

"I know how it feels to be lonely," said Blues, looking away. "It's the worst thing in the world."

Behind him, Judith and Yuichi were talking in low tones. "Blues," Judith called out. "Now that you mention it, there's something we've been meaning to tell you… It got lost in all the excitement… I think you'll like it…"

"What time is it?" Blues said suddenly.

"...Er, it's about half past one," said Judith. "Why?"

"The living room lights are on." He let go of Morita's hand, and although his feet were heavy he picked up his pace. "Dr. Light used to always stay up until two." A fire had been lit in his heart that could not be put out, and he'd forgotten all about what Judith had wanted to say.

"Blues," Judith said, "where are you going all of a sudden?"

"To climb over the wall," he called over his shoulder.

The three scientists broke out in laughter. "Wow," said Yuichi. "Have you got the strength for that?"

In reply, Blues launched himself into an awkward half-run.

"All right, then," said Judith indulgently. "Go give Tom the surprise of his life. Just be quiet about it, please. The press is nearby."

Blues waved at them to show he understood. He didn't stop turning to look back at the three figures until their shadows were indistinguishable from the night, the glow of their netphones had disappeared behind the trees, and the air around him was still and silent.

Just before he reached the garden wall he blinked, opened his eyes, and saw each of the concrete bricks in double. He blinked again, and again, and shook his head, but the anomaly in his vision remained. It didn't bother him much. He was already home. To his slight surprise, though, the wall was different altogether from what he had remembered, with features he hadn't noticed in the news broadcast he'd seen during his train ride into Tokyo. When he'd lived here it had been solid and plain, offering no view to the inside. But this new iteration of the wall, rebuilt after the house had burned down, had half-moon and arch-shaped windows carved into some of the bricks – into which he now slipped one foot, then another, before hoisting himself off the ground. Through the little window closest to his face, he peered into the well-lit garden beyond. The camellia bushes, the hydrangeas, the cherry, and the maple were smaller, younger versions of the plants that had perished in the fire. They were each in the same places their predecessors had been, giving the garden a continuity which ought to have been comforting. And yet, in a way Blues couldn't quite understand, the sight unsettled him.

He took a deep breath and climbed a little higher. When his hands reached the top of the wall they brushed against something hard and smooth. He blinked up at the object – actually, two objects, which his double vision perceived as four: two round stones of a nearly identical size and shape, one balanced neatly on top of the other. He froze in silent curiosity at the sight. It was exactly the kind of impromptu sculpture he might have created on a lazy Sunday afternoon while rambling around in the garden with his sketchbooks in tow. He had never known Dr. Light to do anything like it.

Up he climbed, brute-forcing his heavy feet into new half-moon holes, heaving his weight higher, straining his arms with what felt like the last of his strength, until at last his head was above the top of the wall. Trembling all over, he turned toward the living room window. He was sure Dr. Light would be alone, reading, or sipping whisky, or pacing slowly in front of Catherine' butsudan, looking pensive and sad – the way he'd seen him in the dream he'd had in Morita's car – the mere thought of which filled Blues's eyes with tears. And he was sure that when he revealed himself and strode up to the sliding door, it would be the first happiness Dr. Light had felt since the night he'd run away.

With the back of one free arm he wiped his eyes. Then he looked. The curtains were wide open. All the lamps were on. Dr. Light was standing by the sofa, and there was movement and action, but something strange was happening. Blues at first didn't comprehend what he was seeing. For a moment he thought his faulty vision was playing tricks on him, but he blinked several times and realized he'd been wrong. There were other people in the living room with Dr. Light – two other people. Small people, child-sized people, one yellow-haired girl and one black-haired boy. Dr. Light and the girl were standing side by side, looking similarly rapt, eyes wide, leaning forward. The boy, his back to the window, appeared to be telling them a story with big expressive gestures. He moved his body and his hands with a self-assurance that seemed both alien and strangely familiar. And then the boy turned, and Blues caught a glimpse of his face and the unmistakable glint of blue in his eyes.

All at once the disturbing memory he'd repressed came rushing back. The boy in the house with Dr. Light was the same robot with blue eyes he'd seen yesterday in Tokyo fighting one of the Numbers – who was definitely not human, but had called Dr. Light "Dad." He wasn't wearing his blue armor anymore, and instead was dressed in an ordinary t-shirt and shorts, his disheveled black hair gleaming with tiny beads of realistic sweat – but it was him. It was unmistakably him. Blues recognized his own face when he saw it, and this boy's face was almost exactly like his own. In fact they were so close in appearance that, if they had been human, they could even have been mistaken for brothers.

Blues shook his head. The scene in front of him didn't make any sense. But I destroyed the code, he thought. He groped around for some kind of logical explanation and found none. Then, as he watched, Dr. Light stepped forward and took the boy in his arms and held him tightly. The boy returned the hug at once. It was odd how automatic and effortless it was for him, how he didn't look at all surprised by the gesture. He merely closed his eyes and leaned in, and his hands knew exactly where to go. Then Dr. Light opened his arms to let the girl into the embrace, and he hugged her too, his chin nuzzling her hair. For a minute at least the three of them stood entangled, their eyes shining with happy tears. When they at last began to pull apart from each other, Dr. Light uttered something which Blues read clearly on his lips: I love you. And right away the boy and the girl mouthed this back to Dr. Light as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

Blues's hands gripping the wall tightened. It was all he could do to keep from falling, since his legs had turned shaky and weak. He couldn't stop staring. Dr. Light, the boy, and the girl seemed to double themselves, then triple themselves, until they took up his entire field of vision. Then, when the tears forming in his eyes blurred out the distorted scene in front of him, he grudgingly looked away. So it was true that Dr. Light had changed. He was happy now with those two, almost stupidly happy, and he could show warmth and love. He hadn't been able to do it for Blues three years ago, but by some miracle he'd been able to change for them.

If his life up to that point had not been marred by so much fear and broken trust, Blues might have managed to pull the rest of his body over the wall, into the garden, and up to the sliding door, to face Dr. Light and the meaning of the boy who looked so much like him. But because his life had been marred, the assurances of the scientists that Dr. Light loved him were suddenly in doubt. They'd told him well-meaning lies before, and he now assumed they'd also done it tonight. Perhaps they cared, to an extent – cared enough to lure him back here so they could save his life. But if they'd had any respect for his feelings, they would have known that he took the idea of being loved very seriously. Did they think he was an idiot? Anyone could see Dr. Light hadn't missed him much. Why would he?

In that impulsive moment he had no way of knowing that through the process of programming the boy and girl, Dr. Light had been able to retrace his steps, correct the intentional errors in Dr. Wily's calculations and snippets of code, and reverse-engineer a safe and surefire fix for Blues's core flaw – twice, in order to be absolutely sure. Or that, unbeknownst to them, it was in fact for this very reason they had been created. It would also have changed the entire course of Blues's life to know that when he'd left the scientists behind minutes earlier, Judith had phoned Dr. Light to tell him he was coming – and that Rock's return home alive earlier that evening wasn't the only reason for the joy on the man's face.

But Blues didn't know any of this. There in front of him was the little stone tower. He picked up the uppermost stone and, with all his strength, hurled it straight at the sliding glass door. In an instant the stillness of the night was shattered. There was a tremendous crash, followed by gasps and shrieks from inside the house, then Dr. Light's muffled, gruff voice commanding the boy and girl to go to their room. The door flew open so forcefully that it slammed against its frame, and out stormed Dr. Light, crunching broken glass beneath his slippers.

"Hey! Who's there?" he shouted. "I'm warning you. Leave my family alone."

But Blues was already on the ground, wiping his tears and dragging his heavy feet away from the house and back into the darkness. Instead of returning to Judith, Yuichi, and Morita, he took a different route: one which would lead him deeper into the woods, alone. From the gravel driveway at the far side of the house, beyond sight, a small clamor rose up and echoed through the trees. Car doors slammed and unfamiliar voices called to each other. The sound of the crash had roused the news reporters, and that was all the more reason for Blues to hurry his escape. With the word family still ringing in his ears, he picked up his pace – away from the boy and girl, away from Dr. Light, away from the scientists, away from everyone.

"Blues?" Morita's voice rose from the shadows far behind him. "What are you doing?"

"Hey, what's going on?" cried Yuichi. "I heard a crash."

"Blues was over there just a minute ago," said Morita, incredulous, "climbing the wall… and then he threw something at the house, and I saw him run that way."

"Why would he do that?"

"Oh my God, what's happened?" Judith's pitch rose along with the panic in her voice. "Where is he? I don't understand. Blues!"

"Blues, come back!" shouted Yuichi. "You're dying!"

"I think I see him," Morita said, "over there!"

"Please, don't lose sight of him!" Judith cried. "He can't get far like that."

To Blues, trudging away as fast as his body would allow, Judith's words sounded like a fitting challenge. He wasn't completely certain what "like that" meant, but he pinned his hopes on the chance she'd been talking about his pain receptors. As he stumbled onward into the dark, he reached up beneath his shirt and manually opened his chest panel. By feel he found the wires the scientists had disconnected while he was unconscious in Morita's car, and by feel he forced them back into their inputs. At once his whole body was seized with pain. Hands over his mouth, he stifled a cry – but for what he'd lost in comfort, he'd gained in speed and mobility. He let out a strained sigh of relief. He was running at full tilt now. Before long he put some distance between himself and the scientists, and their voices shrank to faint echoes. But he wasn't at peace yet, not as long as there was any possibility of being found. He kept running.

The glow of the house faded and disappeared. With no one's netphone to light his way, he ran with his hands outstretched in a pitiful attempt to shield himself from branches and tree trunks. Once in a while he was pricked and whipped by twigs, or collided with something in the dark. Each time it happened he bit back tears, cursed under his breath, and forced himself onward.

The sounds of the scientists' calls and cries behind him spurred him on, but he had no destination in mind. He didn't know how long he ran. It felt like hours. The passage of time was marked only by the slow but sure losses of strength which, step by step, slowed his pace from a run to a stride, from a stride to a walk, from a walk to a stagger, and finally from a stagger to a downward pitch face-first into the ground. He tasted dirt, coughed, and heaved himself onto his side, then onto his back. He tried lifting his hands up to wipe his mouth, but found they wouldn't budge. His head, heels, and elbows were rooted to the earth. He grit his teeth and that was that. This was where he would stay.

Nothing at all was visible through the darkness above him, not even the faintest outline of branch or leaf – and he didn't know whether that was because this patch of forest was especially thick, or because the moon had set, or because his core failure had rendered him blind. Whatever it was, he didn't care much. He didn't care much about anything anymore. Even his pain was fading. The only sensation that was clear and true to him now was the mantra playing on full blast through his thoughts: I hate them… I hate them…

For a brief moment he thought of Mr. Mitsui, but he didn't know why.

It was a relief when the last traces of human voices in the distance were drowned out by the song of the crickets, and he was alone with the night.

A/N

When I was seven years old, one of my best friends told me the story of Blues returning home, seeing Dr. Light hugging Rock and Roll, and running away in tears. The year was (IIRC) 1990, and he'd just read the story in a magazine interview with Keiji Inafune. He was deeply moved by it, and later on so was I. Believe it or not, I have carried this story in my heart all my life since then, and now I've shared it with you.

One more chapter, guys.