It is a lovely day in the Ark and Akane is a horrible Fusion.
Akane shut off her computer. Hal had been right, Final Fantasy XXIV was really addicting and a well designed MMO. There was something to be said for normal human interaction. On the internet, nobody knows you're a Legionic Fusion. The cybercrime sting was over, but she still had fun playing this game with all the new internet friends Hal had introduced to her. Akira was going to make fun of her new hobby.
Oh.
Akane, seeking a new distraction, chose to cram herself into the elevator. It was a good time to go home to feed the cats. Her phone rang. Caller ID showed Brenda and Akane rushed to answer.
The first words out of Brenda's mouth were, "I messed up."
Akane signed, [What are you talking about?]
"Akane, uh, it's going to be easier to explain in person and please don't kill me."
Akane pressed the elevator buttons to change her stop. Brenda had a lot of medical equipment and such she'd taken from the ARI. Upon approaching Brenda's location, Akane heard something that made her heart stop.
Akira was arguing with someone and nearing hysteria.
Akane opened the door.
No less than four of Akira were in the room. He'd been arguing with himself in only the way a set of identical people can. They looked at the door.
"Is that a new Legion? Brenda, is Akane getting here soon? Please?"
"I, um," Brenda looked helplessly at Akane. Akane's head whipped back and forth.
"Wait did she get another Legion while I was out?" Said another Akira.
Brenda gestured at some boxes. "You should all sit down for this one."
Akane folded her arms while trying to think of her explanation. All four Akira clones snapped to attention and said in unison, "Holy crap, are you... Akane?"
Akane nodded. Akane's distressed growl at Brenda made her say, "We found them in the ARI, left behind after the Noah incident? Look, the government was going to declare any clones of your brother property and I panicked because they were going to be used for who knows what and if the government doesn't know which is the first they can't actually take anyone."
Brenda's explanation was drowned out by the five twins starting to all yell.
Eventually the clones all asked Akane which was the real Akira. Akane lied through her teeth and said it was impossible to tell. (Wait if it is sign language, what is the equivalent expression for lying through your teeth?)
The brand new brothers, mercifully, did not call Akane out on it.
Three people crowded around the paper and the coin. Picnic tables made for a terrible occult atmosphere. "Reaper Creeper," said the first girl. She'd heard about this stuff on the occult forum and meant to wait for HighPriestess, but she was pretty late. Must have been called in to work. "Wait, what were we gonna ask?"
"Hope it works better than Kokkuri.," asked the one guy. "I get these things mixed up. You need a yes or no question."
"Let me start over. Reaper Creeper, should we wait for our friend before asking you more questions?"
The three friends all jumped as the join swiped left to the 'No.'
"Wait," said the second girl, "Isn't this supposed to move slowly? Maybe we were mistaken. Should we try the Ouija board instead?"
The coin circled around the word, then settled on 'Yes.' This was good enough for the three friends.
They started asking a lot of questions of the spirit board. No small amount of excitement was generated by the responsive planchette. Questions about age, lottery numbers, and missing cats continued.
This kept going until the final occult forum member arrived. Shizu stopped in the alley and stared above the table.
"Hi! Sorry we started without you. We thought you got called in to work."
"No, I had some unforeseen encounters. Wait, what were you doing?"
"We were trying out the Ouija Board. It's REAL. The spirits are answering everything! Wait, we never asked their name."
Shizu glared. "Howard."
"Huh? Howard? Wait, are we talking to the late Captain Maximillian Howard? "
Shizu's voice was low and furious. "No. It's a different Howard. They are about to join him, though." The board was shoved backwards by an invisible force fleeing. Shizu gave chase yelling, "Get back here! Are you trying to get us all cursed?! Tampering with our paranormal evidence?!"
Neuron's HQ was smaller than expected for the new recruit coming through on orientation. The new recruits could barely process the fact they were getting Legions. Being transferred into the famed Neuron task force was just crazy to them. Officer Howard led him to the next door.
"This here is the infirmary. Dr. Brenda here and her team will patch you up if you ever get hurt. No offense, but they don't want to see you in here too much."
The recruits had to ask about the one paramedic trainee. "Hey, are you two related?"
"Yeah. Hayato's one of my brothers." Howard said.
Hayato, despite the different uniform and haircut, looked amazingly like the policeman. "You'll probably meet my sister today too. Have fun with the new guy, Aki!"
As they walked away, one of the recruits could not help but start counting the number of scraped ceilings and dents on doorframes. It was rather unusual. They were all repaired, of course, but someone maintaining the place had either given up, was losing a war of attrition, or had run out of the paints needed to cover up the marks. Their senior officer ended the tour at the training room where Alicia handed them each the Legatus. The two recruits did not see Officer Howard getting his camera ready. Paramedic Howard had come downstairs to watch the show.
The two recruits fell back with a scream as Akane had positioned her corpselike face right in from of them. The Howard brothers started laughing, signing something back at Akane.
The recruits got their turn to laugh when Lappy somehow got right behind the Fusion without her noticing. Akane jerked back with a smallish screech. The brothers watching laughed even harder. Much to Akane's despair, they shared the video with pretty much everyone who was family, Neuron, and capable of hacking their accounts to steal the data anyway. (Kyle and Hal were very amused.)
The Ark Career Day was, to put it mildly, something of a big deal.
Every kid from Kindergarten up to college graduates and then some would attend the event. The various first responders and emergency service departments always had a booth area. Besides the larger section dedicated to law enforcement, someone had given Neuron their own booth in the section.
To Kazuma Howard's great delight, his booth was right near their booth. His booth for the Howard Animal Shelter had been given the go ahead to bring animals if they could handle the massive crowds and were cleared of redshift concerns by those with the ability to do so. He had chosen the best of the best dogs to handle this career fair. He'd been worried about the cats handling large crowds and it was with heavy heart he had to leave all of those behind. Only two dogs made the requirements for the fair.
Kazuma's dogs, Missile and Sissel, watched while Kazuma set up the table with pictures of adoptable dogs, dog training toys, and all sorts of merch to hand out to kids. The two dogs reveled in the attention from passerby that were all doing set up for their own booths.
Kazuma had chosen these two dogs for another reason.
Akane and Aki walked in with boxes of the police booth's stuff. Aki broke into a massive grin when they saw their brother there in the booth next to them. "You didn't tell us you were going to be here!"
"I wanted to surprise you! Didn't expect to be right next door." Kazuma's joy was mirrored by the two dogs going to greet the incoming family. Akane wasted no time setting boxes down at the booth and petting the fluffy ears. Most dogs were nervous around or barely tolerated Akane when they came in to the rescue. These two adored her and all the Legions.
Having her hands full, Akane wasn't talking much so it was Aki who said, "Neuron gets to do a demonstration today in the stadium. It's going to be really cool! Hope Marie, um, Lappy doesn't mind us hogging the spotlight."
"I'm surprised they have someone invisible to the general public working here? Sorry sis."
[I didn't think they would assign me here either, but look. We're assigned to the demonstration for elementary kids this afternoon!] Akane went back to petting the dog after signing that. Kazuma made a mental note to put up a sign asking people to not feed the dog.
"Too bad they won't be able to see you. It looks like we're just accompanying Lappy though. Knowing Marie, she will probably not need us to say much.
Hours later the two stood onstage for setup. The looked over the props Marie had brought. Traffic cones, some toy cars, some goodies for audience participation, and... targets? There was also a lunch judging from the fruit. As kids tricked in to their seats, an excited murmur started to fill the air. Akane typed away at her keyboard as she took notes about the day.
Aki looked nervous so she started telling jokes in sign.
From the front row, a kid said, "There's no way! You're wrong! You said the police monster that rescued you had claws."
Aki saw Akane's confusion as she realized someone saw her. Which should have been impossible here without the corruption levels unless...
"Nice to know the augmented reality is working! Lappy said cheerfully. "These kids will get to see you when you help me reenact the traffic accidents!"
"So anyone out there who knew sign language just saw your stupid knock knock jokes."
[Why wouldn't they have someone who was prepared for this, or more experienced like Jin?]
"Guess Olive didn't forgive you for convincing Alan the toilet fairy was real." Aki saw the kids arguing in the front row. "Hey, want to slice this apple for me?"
For the first half of the presentation, the two Howard siblings made a game of demonstrating things while Marie was doing her usual presentation. Marie was delighted, She'd done the exact same lecture last year and there had not been early as much cheering. The Akane and Aki acted out some of what she said in as over the top of a melodramatic fashion as possible. This was augmented by the creative use of Aki's full set of Legions.
"Hey, Olive?"
"Hi, Alicia, what's up?"
"I thought you wanted Li Fang helping Marie at the demonstration with the little kids today?"
"Yeah. I scheduled her with that age group. Middle school kids got Joey and Sarah. You wanted to put the fear of the law into the teenagers."
Alicia turned her phone screen towards Olive. "Why are the twins. sorry, quintuplets on the stage then?"
Olive snapped her attention to the livestream a kid was making. Akane, who they wanted to keep on a low profile until an official press release of some kind, was throwing 'Akira' up as high as she could. Aki chain jumped to the top of the stadium seating. Yelling and cheering drowned out any sort of other sound.
"Oh no. I mixed up the schedules!"
The Howard officers were pulled off the stage quietly by Olive after they had put a video of them tag teaming in the Astral plane. Lappy happily took over the rest of the presentation. After their show, the cat was very out of the bag.
The Neuron officers and the dogs in the same floor placement meant the place was packed like sardines with curious onlookers and excited kids. Kazuma found a cardboard box to put on Akane's head while the augmented reality projectors were moved to the area.
Okay killing off Akira was just good storytelling. It was heartbreaking. Replacing him with a clone was a bit cheap since they didn't address a lot of the issues with that. If they were going to give us surviving clone siblings, they should have given us a full set to conquer the world with. We only see the brothers that took up police work, are in medical training, and are running the animal rescue full time in this, but I hadn't decided what the other was up to. Probably in therapy or learning hacking skills with Hal and Kyle.
the protagonist adopted them all immediately.
I had another alternate epilogue idea for Akira surviving though.