2A/N: Hey there. It's been two whole weeks since I last wrote anything, ans any writing skills I may have had at that point have completely dimished, so this sure was a joy ride to write. Not. Anyway, I somehow managed to make a funny meme into something not very funny, if that is even possible. That aside, I hope you all like the story, and hopefully I can write more after exams, which are in two weeks. Wish me luck
"Tachikawa-san, don't you have homework?" Jin asked, glancing into the future of his rival as they walked side by side through Border HQ. Tachikawa diverted his eyes and put on an innocent face before quietly mumbling an answer to Jin's question.
"I can do it later," he dismissed, waving a hand in the air as if it would help him. Jin sighed and shook his head with a small smile. Tachikawa really hadn't changed since high school.
"My Side Effect tells me that you'll fall asleep on your couch when you get home, leaving you to rush through your homework in the morning tomorrow and get everything wrong," Jin predicted, earning a heatless glare from his rival.
"Then I guess this will just be another chance for me to disprove your Side Effect," Tachikawa declared, causing Jin to raise his hands in a defensive gesture with a chuckle.
"Alright then," he challenged, a smug grin on his face that only strengthened Tachikawa's glare.
"Anyway, were you serious about joining the ranking battles? We need to fight soon. It's been too long," the elder of the two said, changing the topic. Jin nodded.
"I'm looking forward to it," he replied, stopping to search his pockets for his phone.
"Kazama-san sa- aaaagghh!" Tachikawa began speaking, but suddenly cut off and yelped when a book whizzed past his face before slamming into the back on Jin's head, invisible to the brunette's precognition. Jin immediately lost consiousness, his vision fading to darkness as pain blossomed in the back of his head and he lost his grip on his phone. The device clattered to the floor as Jin tipped forward, his heels rising off the ground as his weight distribution was became uneven. A heavy 'thud' echoed through the now-silent room as Jin's body hit the floor on his side, his head smacking painfully into the hard floor. His eyes were unseeing and slightly open, making him look dead. The only thing that contradicted that was the slight rise and fall of his chest as Tachikawa yelled, his voice overpowering the chorus of 'SHIT!'s from the owners of the book.
"JIN!"
-000-
The darkness around Jin disappeared with a flash of light, painting his vision with spots. He blinked them away before glancing around at his surroundings.
It took a minute, but Jin was able to recognize where he was. Downtown Mikado City. However, it was different than Jin remembered it being the last time he had gone there, but still oddly familiar. The crowds of people were oddly dressed as well. The fashion was hard to pinpoint, and buildings and cars were a bit older looking, but Jin wasn't sure why.
Confused and a bit uncomfortable, Jin spun in a circle, searching the skyline for the sore thumb that was Border HQ. The building was visible from anywhere in Mikado, but for some reason, Jin couldn't find it. He spun around again and again until he began to feel dizzy, and even tried jogging down a few streets, but there was no sign of the base.
Even more confused than before, Jin began to walk away from the middle of town. He wasn't sure where he was going, but the bright lights that had begun to turn on as the sun began to set only made him nauseous, and the crowds made him dizzy. A quick test also revealed that his Side Effect wasn't working.
As Jin walked aimlessly away from the louder parts of town, he received many odd glances. He heard the people who passed him by whisper to each other about him.
"Border?"
"His jacket is weird."
"What's with those sunglasses? Where do they connect?"
"Is he foreign? He looks Japanese, but his hairstyle is so weird."
Why we're people wondering about Border? Everyone in Mikado knew about the group since they had gone public after the First Invasion, and they always recognized the jackets of Border agents due to the similar designs. However, as Jin kept walking, he noticed that there seemed to be no damage to Mikado. There was no sight of HQ or the Forbidden Zone. Even places where Jin swore there were still wrecked houses left abandoned from the First Invasion were good as new.
Before he knew it, Jin found himself on an oddly familiar street. He couldn't quite place it, but he felt that he knew it well. The area didn't look like anything close to Tamakoma or HQ, which only made Jin's confusion mount as he began to walk down the street, eyes scanning over the houses.
Almost all the way down the street, Jin suddenly froze, his eyes locked on a familiar blue house near the end of the street. In just seconds, his brain recognized the rose bushes in the front yard, the white mail box with cherries painted on it and the oak tree in the side yard.
Jin shook his head before looking back, sure that his brain was playing tricks on him because that house was supposed to be destroyed. Jin looked back at the house, but nothing had changed. It was still there, completely intact with the lights on inside, not the pile of rubble it had been when he'd last seen it four and a half years ago.
'Was it rebuilt?' Jin wondered as he wandered toward the house, looking up at it with wide eyes, his breaths growing shaky and uneven. He had to be imagining everything. There was no way that the house in front of him was still standing.
Just then, the front door flew open, and Jin saw a small boy dart outside, a young woman following after him. Jin immediately began walking down the street, pretending he was headed somewhere to avoid being suspected as a stalker, though he kept his eyes trained on the boy and the woman. The woman had chestnut brown hair drawn up in a bun and blue eyes the color of ice but not nearly as cold, as well as a bright smile that Jin knew he wouldn't have ever been able to forget, even if he got amnesia and couldn't remember his own name.
As Jin disappeared down the road, eyes facing forward, no longer watching the woman and child in the familiar blue house, he was silent. No one would think anything was wrong unless they saw the small quiver in his shoulders, or the single silent tear that strayed down his face as memories long-suppressed resurfaced to torment him in the hollowing, impossibly heavy way that they had years ago.
-000-
After what seemed like an hour of aimless wondering filled with things Jin hadn't thought about in years, the now-composed teen finally came to his senses standing in front of the same blue house he had passed earlier. His eyes instantly went to the ground and he began walking again, wanting to get away. Maybe he was dreaming, or maybe it was some sick joke, but he didn't care. He just wanted to get away. Anywhere but where he was, was a good place to be.
Unfortunately, the universe seemed to be against Jin, because a green ball the size of a basketball rolled onto the sidewalk, stopping right in front of him. The brunette stopped, eyes locked on the ball in front of him as if staring would make the object disappear.
Slowly, Jin knelt down and reached out, picking up the ball with one hand and looking at it. The ball brought back memories of his childhood. Not necessarily bad memories, but not ones that Jin wanted to think about, given they all ended with the same event, one he hadn't quite gotten over in the past four and a half years.
Jin suddenly blinked out of his thoughts when he felt the gaze of innocent eyes on him, and he looked up from the ball to see the young boy from the familiar house standing in front of him in blue jeans and a white t-shirt. The boy had the same chesnut brown hair as his mother, but his was shorter and thicker. He also had the same eyes as the woman, though his held a certain darkness and shrewdness that the woman's did not. That shrewdness was easy to spot as the boy studied Jin with curiosity, blinking in surprise when Jin held the ball up for him with a kind smile. The boy hesitantly reached out and accepted the ball, muttering a small 'thanks' before returning to staring at Jin.
"Who are you?" the young boy asked. He recognized the young man in front of him somehow, but he wasn't sure exactly what was familiar. All he knew was that the man had the same eyes as him. He wasn't thinking about color, though. It was the steely darkness and pain, the sorrow and guilt that the young boy recognized. He had the same look in his own eyes whenever he looked in the mirror, the look that made the other kids at school call him scary and refuse to play with him. The only real difference was how much stronger that darkness was in the man's eyes than the boy's.
Jin stared back at the boy with a smile, practically seeing the gears turning in the child's head. The white bandage wrapped around the boy's forearm, covering a healing wound from a kitchen accident that would leave a faint scar, let Jin know that the boy was six years old. Maybe that was a good thing, because that meant he had at least six more years before things would turn bad, then from bad to worse.
Careful so he wouldn't spook the child, Jin brought his hand up and dropped it gently on the boy's head, ruffling the child's thick brown locks with care.
"I'm you, but stronger," he replied simply, before abruptly standing. Jin gave the boy another smile, this one much smaller but far more sincere that his last, as he turned and walked away, leaving the child with his cryptic words. However, he knew that one day, the boy would understand his words. Jin was a man who lived in the future, fought through the present, and buried the past. Going back thirteen years threw him into a world he had long stashed away, but also allowed him to work with his strengths. There was no changing the past, but there was influencing the future, and he knew that the boy would never forget his words. After all, thirteen years later, they rang through his mind loud and clear in a muddled memory of the past.
When the world around him faded to black, Jin was foo far immersed in his mind to notice.
-000-
"-don't know. The book just came flying out of nowhere and smacked into him."
"If you saw the book coming, why didn't you stop it?"
"It was fast, alright! Anyway, his eyes have been open since he dropped, and its creeping me out because he isn't even awake!"
"That happens sometimes when people get hit in the head. Just keep an eye on him for a minute while I call Rindo-san."
Jin's eyes focused as he blinked a few times, and he saw the blurry dark figures nearby take the shape of Shinoda and Tachikawa. Shinoda was digging through his pocket and headed for the door, while Tachikawa turned to Jin, though his eyebrows shot up when he saw the brunette blink.
"Wait, Shinoda-san. I think he's waking up," Tachikawa called before turning back to his rival. "Jin? Hey, you awake?" he asked.
"Jin?" Shinoda walked back from the door, stopping beside Jin along with Tachikawa, a concerned look on his face. Jin shifted his eyes between the two, completely unaware of the events that had occurred prior to him losing consciousness.
"What...?" he questioned, glancing around. He couldn't see a ton, since there were two full-grown men standing in his line of vision, so Jin went to push himself upright, only to stop when a wave of pain washed over his head. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw, waiting for the pain to pass. However, the back of his head and the side of his head that he wasn't laying on both continued to throb as the rest of the pain died down.
"You've got a concussion, Jin. You're in the infirmary. Just stay still for now while I call Rindo-san," Shinoda ordered before walking away. Jin watched him go, then looked to Tachikawa, who had a slightly concerned expression on his face that matched his mentor's.
"You know, seeing you get nailed in the head with a book was pretty funny, actually, but... Are you alright?" Tachikawa asked with an uncharacteristic lack of his usual teasing behavior. Jin nodded slowly, careful to not agitate his head. He tried to get up again as well, but found that his body was too heavy to move.
"Yeah," he said, verblizing his response quietly and cursing how pathetic he sounded and probably looked. However, Tachikawa didn't seem convinced.
"I was just asking because you, uh, were crying in your sleep. Just a little bit," the elder attacker commented, his voice lacking the smug tone that was usually expected. It was due to the fact that he had never seen Jin cry before, consious or asleep, and the new sight was a bit alarming to Tachikawa. Jin sighed and closed his eyes as the memories came back to him bit by bit.
"I'm fine, Tachikawa-san," he muttered sleepily. The nurses must have given him the okay for sleeping, because Jin noticed that Tachikawa didn't say another word to him as he drifted off. The last thing he remembered was the confused look on the face of the young boy he had seen, his six year old self, as the current him walked away.
Someday, young Yuichi Jin would understand what the oddly familiar stranger meant that day. Unfortunately though, that would be the day when he learned the true pain of loss.