The long anticipated reunion between the two brothers!
Idia was twitching, there was no other word for it.
Azul had a bemused and morbidly curious expression on his face.
"Are you sure that you..."
"No, I don't have a son!" said Idia irate.
For the past two weeks, there had been a strange, persistent rumor about him having a son. He didn't know when it started or why, but multiple witnesses had come forward agreeing that they had seen a younger Idia, about ten to twelve years old, wandering the halls.
Some had managed to take a picture of a small child that looked almost identical to Idia in Sam's shop the night before, with a tablet. He was buying several snacks and was using a tablet to communicate and pay. He was even wearing a Night Raven uniform that was far too big on him with an Ignihyde ribbon, skull headphones and even had Idia's trademark blue hair and golden eyes. There was even a rather fuzzy image of the kid's face, with pointed teeth.
Idia was at his wit's end over the whole thing, because the resemblance was so strong that even the headmage was starting to ask some uncomfortable questions about his possible son.
Azul found the entire thing hilarious, mostly because this was happening to Idia of all people.
Idia did his best to put that headache out of mind. Instead he decided to focus on whoever had been trying to download a ridiculous amount of porn since the semester started.
And it was a lot of porn. The files were bigger than any he had seen, and he didn't want to know what weird fetishes this guy had for them to be that large. He had to up the firewall around the school just to keep it to a reasonable level, and whoever was doing it had to be an addict of some sort.
He still regretted opening that last file, which had been decidedly raunchy and depraved.
He was just glad ORTHO was in charge mode and hadn't seen any of it.
When he returned to his dorm, he was annoyed to find that the firewall had been breached again. Whoever was doing this had some serious skills, which made Idia wonder why they were so addicted to porn of all things. With that sort of ability, they could hack any number of sites and make big bucks in short order.
Idia scowled in annoyance. It was time to teach whoever was doing this a lesson. He went to work making a patch to the firewall to leave some nasty...surprises...for the culprit. His job done, he went to sleep and hoped that the issue had resolved itself.
In Ortho's room
"What the fuck?" said Ortho, irate. Someone had just corrupted the file he was trying to download.
After the second and third one came in a digitized mess, Ortho scowled.
Someone was trying to mess with his livelihood.
A brief examination revealed that the files he had now were too degraded to bother fixing. He'd have to get Kuroka to deliver the uncorrupted versions for editing.
A cold smile filled his face. It had been far too long since he had a real challenge like this.
The next morning, he heard an outraged shout, and had to grin when he heard an alarm warning of an intrusion.
"Ready to have fun, my adorable little Tonberry?"
IDIA gave a very enthusiastic thumbs up, with a dark grin on his face.
For the next week and a half, Ortho and IDIA gleefully began an all out prank war against their enemy. Azazel's extensive library of pornos was put to good use, and it took very little time for them to figure out that their opponent was a gamer by the name of Gloomurai...and that he was behind the 'no massive porn downloads' in the dorm.
Ortho straight up cackled every time Gloomurai got hit with a porn trap.
ORTHO had tracked the times that the 'chibi Idia' had appeared in Sam's shop, and had hidden his presence. Somehow, the mini version of his brother seemed to know when he was around. With how advanced the hacker was, he suspected that they were able to track him somehow.
So ORTHO decided to be devious. He went completely offline to hide himself.
For the first three days, he got nothing...then on the fourth, he saw him.
A kid about ten or twelve who looked almost identical to Idia wearing an oversized hoodie and an Ignihyde ribbon. He had vibrant gold eyes that seemed to peer into the darkness like a cat, and wore a pair of headphones that covered his ears completely. His hair was tied up in a neat ponytail, and went down to his waist. His skin was as pale as moonlight, and his hair was the same shade of blue as ORTHO and Idia. The lower lip of his hoodie covered up his face, but ORTHO caught a glimpse of pointed teeth when it briefly lowered as he walked. He had a tablet in his hands, which looked fairly well used.
ORTHO observed the boy from the hidden room in the shop, and watched how Sam easily tracked down the items on the list and the kid paid using some sort of watch.
"Pleasure doing business with you, my little imp!" said Sam with a wink.
ORTHO did his best to follow silently, hovering for the most part so that the child didn't notice him. He watched dumbfounded as the mini Idia walked right through the Ignihyde mirrors and made a beeline straight for one of the rooms belonging to the freshmen.
The child knocked on the door briefly, and walked in once it opened up enough for him to enter.
ORTHO immediately went to his brother's room.
"Nii-san, I know where that other Idia is!" said ORTHO excitedly.
Idia stood up quickly. It was past time to end this, and maybe he'd get lucky and find the damn porn addict too.
Idia was fully prepared to lock out the damn freshmen who caused him so much grief the past month and a half.
Before he had a chance to knock, or otherwise introduce himself, the door opened.
"Took you long enough. IDIA said he saw the other cyborg following him," said the teen smugly.
Idia barely registered the smaller figure cheerfully waving his hand at ORTHO. ORTHO waved back, just a little.
The smaller figure was a near dead-ringer for him, which explained the weird rumors that had been cropping up. However there were a few tell-tale signs that indicated it wasn't an actual child...but a technomagic humanoid like ORTHO.
As if that wasn't shocking enough, the teen who had opened the door could have passed for ORTHO's own twin, just aged up to how old the real one would have been if the accident hadn't happened.
He had longer hair than ORTHO, and his eyes had some bags from long exposure to the computer, but his face looked almost identical. His golden eyes showed intelligence and power, and his hair was the exact same shade as Idia's. He had slightly tanned skin, likely from getting out in the sun more than Idia cared to, and looking past him revealed plenty of anime and game paraphanalia. Then he noticed something on the screen past him and scowled.
"You're the damn porn addict," he said irritably.
Ortho rolled his eyes.
"I'm not a porn addict, I just edit the damn things," said Ortho. "My adopted father is the one who likes that crap, and he has a production company for it."
"You can't keep downloading in on the school servers," said Idia, annoyed. The shock was wearing off.
"Well if you didn't keep blocking my extra router with that stupid firewall, I wouldn't have to," said Ortho.
Idia narrowed his eyes at him.
"Are you the one who disabled the one I set up?!"
"That hack-job?" said Ortho dismissively.
ORTHO and IDIA watched the byplay with amusement and slight interest.
"I'm ORTHO."
"IDIA. Nii-san was beyond thrilled when Gasper mentioned another cyborg like me. The only friends I have are his creations."
"How old are you?" asked ORTHO curious.
"I'm about six or seven," chirped IDIA.
"I'm about 7 or 8," admitted ORTHO.
He was honestly thrilled, because now he was the older sibling.
"When do you think they'll figure out the obvious?" asked IDIA calmly.
Ortho tilted his head.
"Ortho-nii had amnesia when Azazel found him. He said I was based off his brother, but he couldn't remember how old he was so he just made me the younger one," clarified IDIA.
The two were really getting in to it now, arguing using fluent nerd lingo. It was clear both of them were enjoying the spat, especially Idia.
ORTHO snickered. And honestly, if this was the original Ortho that would explain a lot.
"How did he survive the incident?" asked ORTHO.
"Nii-san's signature spell allows him to teleport. He must have awakened it during whatever it was that left him so badly injured," said IDIA. "Azazel said that he was comatose for a week before he woke up."
Idia admitted defeat, but at least now he had a face to put to the person who had been driving him up the wall for weeks now.
The second ORTHO brought up the fact that the other teen might be the original Ortho, Idia's brain almost stalled.
The denial was strong, and he refused to acknowledge the idea, regardless of how much he wished it was true.
Two days later
Idia visibly choked on his soda when IDIA walked in, calm as you could be and went straight Gasper.
Gasper grinned at him.
"Ortho-nii wanted me to tell you that there's going to be a special delivery for you tomorrow morning."
"Idia...why is there a preteen version of you in the club room?" said Azul slowly, his glasses askew.
"Because apparently one of the freshmen had a robot version of me that's similar to ORTHO and got approval from the headmage to let him wander around."
IDIA slowly turned and a cheerful grin formed on his face. If he hadn't know the 'child' was a robot like ORTHO, he would have mistaken him for human. His face was that expressive.
He held up a tablet, and across the screen a sentence scrolled.
"Hi! My name is IDIA, but to avoid confusion you can call me Tonberry!"
Idia sputtered again.
"Wait, you're Tonberry? The ego-destroying troll who can one-shot veteran players?"
Gasper held up a hand.
"I'm Chronos. Ortho-nii is Lethe, and Lilia-senpai is Muscle Red," said Gasper. He found the club to be incredibly relaxing, as no one pressured him to socialize and he could have a quick pick-up game with ORTHO any time he liked where they didn't have to talk at all.
Idia's brain seemed to short circuit...he never expected Muscle Red to be in the same school, much less be Lilia of all people.
Azul eyed his friend.
"Uh-huh. So did you ever figure out who the porn addict is?"
"Ortho-nii isn't a porn addict," said Gasper. "He gets paid to edit the videos and send them back. His dad runs a production company for it and he's the head of the editing department."
Azul paused.
"Wait. The mini Idia's brother is the head of an editing department for porn?"
IDIA grinned at him, a mischievous expression in his eyes.
"He knows what everyone's fetishes are by this point. EVERYONE, including the headmage," said IDIA on his tablet.
Azul's eyes gleamed at the sheer amount of information he had access to.
"Really now..."
"Where is Ortho now?" asked Idia, trying to reboot.
Gasper looked at IDIA. IDIA's grin didn't abate a bit.
"Nii-san was kidnapped by the Film Research club because their club president found out he knew how to use a camera properly. Apparently he corrected a second year's use of it and fixed the filter so it looked professional despite how old the camera was," said IDIA.
"Wait...what?" said Idia baffled.
"Ortho doesn't just edit videos. He's been known to sub for the cameramen during filming, and it's gotten to the point where he doesn't even register nudity anymore. Apparently it caused a minor issue with his girlfriend until they figured out how to work around it."
Kuroka had apparently been very frustrated because Ortho was so unmoved by naked flesh that the usual methods of getting someone in the mood were ineffective. Azazel had been kicking himself for not realizing there might be consequences of roping a preteen into editing porn so young.
Eventually they figured out that they would need a lot of roleplaying and foreplay before Ortho could be ready for that sort of thing. Either way, exhibitionism was firmly off his list of kinks.