His gaze softened slightly as he leaned against the door frame, arms crossing over his chest. “You don’t… it’s not our fault that happened Rebecca. It was an accident. No one could have predicted what happened.”

That Kai existed… And Tomoe…

“… Have you talked to X?” It felt a bit… awkward to bring him up, almost as if he was shifting the responsibility onto the other, but there was no denying that Rebecca was closer to him than she was to Zero. If there was anyone she would go to about something as troubling as this, it would be him.

“It f-feels like I sh-should have-”

She cut herself off, not really able to continue talking as she choked on a sob before shaking her head. She hadn’t talked to X yet, she had been chugging along just fine until now, and she knew that X would say it wasn’t her fault.

“I h-haven’t.”

Her voice cracked a bit painfully there and she coughed to recalibrate before continuing.

“I h-haven’t really talked t-to anyone since I g-got out of the med b-bay all th-that time ago.”

iiregularhunters:

Zero held a hand up, giving the universal signal for Rebecca to slow down and stop. She was winding herself up and working herself into a frenzy and, in the same breath, she was digging herself into a hole that she didn’t belong him. An unnecessary one. And she needed to stop.

“You went after your sister after getting permission from X to do so. You followed the precautions that he told you to, precautions that saved your life. You fell into a trap, yes, one set by someone far stronger than even me and one that both myself and X probably would’ve fallen for. You kept your head and kept it together to be able to grab your brother’s body and run instead of actually doing something stupid like sticking around and trying to help.”

Zero paused, giving a long moment to allow his words to sink in before continuing. “So tell me, what am I missing. What did you do that makes you stupid?”

Rebecca pushed back her bangs, trying to keep tears out of her eyes.

“I… I guess I’m blaming myself. You got hurt, and Aerin d-died-”

She choked on her words, rubbing at her eyes to get rid of forming tears. She looked at the floor, her efforts to get rid of the tears in vain.

“I can s-still see what happened, I don’t know what to do-”

She choked off into a sob and covered her face, occasionally wiping at her eyes some more.

iiregularhunters:

So she was looking for Tomoe. Zero frowned a little at that – not at the reason, but at the memory of what they had all learned from the encounter. Kai, the name of the individual who wore X’s face, had Tomoe with him… and it was clear that it wasn’t again her will, either. There had been no way to perform any sort of viral scan, but Zero was more than willing to bet that she was infected now. Likely he had infected her… though that didn’t make it any better.

And with Doppler’s activity growing more erratic…

“Alright, so I’m guessing there’s something else you’re not telling then, because I’m not getting what you’re getting at. You got a signal from your missing sister, you told X about it, he gave you the okay to go after her. What part of that was stupid?” Zero arched a brow as he leaned against her door frame, brows arching as he waited for her reply.

“I was stupid enough to get captured, and you and Aerin got hurt. I-I know that’s a risk of being a Hunter but- I couldn’t do anything but run- I…”

It was clear that she blamed herself. Rebecca rubbed at her face a bit. No crying, not now. Not when she had been holding herself together just fine all this time.

“I’m sorry that I caused you and Aerin to get hurt. I should’ve… I should’ve been better. And I’ll be better.”

iiregularhunters:

His smile felt a bit forced now, though it wasn’t really any fault of Rebecca’s. It just felt like… a lot? A lot that he was now suddenly in charge of that he hadn’t even been aware of.

Xav had been sad and now he wasn’t and it was because of Zach. Which meant that he, one Zach Wily, son of an abusive father and parent to a brother that he had barely managed to raise without a police record, was supposed to keep someone else happy. Zach Wily, the military disgrace who had been discharged after suffering ‘violent emotional trauma’ from just a little thing like having his leg blown off and being pinned out in the field for days, bodies of his (dead) comrades lying next to him, and all he could do was-

“Can I braid your hair one day?”

The small and innocent question had Zach blinking as he snapped back to the here and now. “Uh… maybe.” Making promises that he knew he couldn’t keep was something he wasn’t a fan of, and he wasn’t sure he would ever be seeing Rebecca.

This was. This was just too much. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t something that he could handle. Xav needed someone… different. Better. Stable.

“I, uh… I think I need to go.” Zach nodded as he straightened. “Just tell your dad that it was… nice meeting you.” Xav was still getting something ready upstairs, but Zach had no intention of sticking around long enough to find out what.

There was a faint clunking on the stairs in the background, and someone coming down the stairs.

Rebecca squinted up at Zach before wobbling and squeaking when her Dad patted her head from behind her. She hadn’t heard him approach, but she had been concentrating on listening to Zach.

“…?”

Xav crouched down and ruffled his daughter’s hair before speaking.

“Go on upstairs and play for a bit, okay? Be careful on the stairs.”

He stood up properly and gave Zach a small smile as Rebecca nodded and walked away, wobbling occasionally.

“She’s a curious one. Sorry for the delay. Ready to head out?”

iiregularhunters:

He wasn’t one for pity and that wasn’t what he was about to offer her now. Instead Zero found himself just nodding as he watched the way Rebecca lowered her head as she looked away from him. The flinch hadn’t been missed either.

A slight hum was his response as one shoulder shrugged. “… what were you doing out there in the first place?” Rebecca wasn’t a hunter. Aside from being too young to qualify as one, she still was working on the skill necessary to even be able to be ranked as one.

“Where you looking for something?” Zero didn’t want to risk leading Rebecca into any specific response, so his question was left at that.

“I got a signal from T-Tomoe. I asked Dad about it and he-”

She rubbed at her arm to give herself a bit of time to gather her thoughts.

“He told me I could look for her only if I used my signal if I needed backup. I logged the signal I got from her before I left. I-It should still be in the database.”

She was ready for the lecture, quite honestly. She had been stupid.

iiregularhunters:

Shadow smiled sadly as he watched her go. It was an unfair trick he was playing on her, as he had no intention of going after her.

As Rebecca took her time to get settled, the robot master waited to ensure that no one was watching before stepping back into one of his own shadow portals. It swallowed him up, taking him into the distorted realm that would lead him along the shortened path to the fortress that Kai (and Tomoe) lived in.

He wouldn’t find Rebecca… but she wouldn’t find him again, either.

It took a good fifteen minutes for Rebecca to stop being excited about getting tested by an actual ninja.

It took another fifteen minutes before she realized that he wasn’t coming to find her at all.

She jumped down from the shelf and peeked out from the closet, wondering what was going on.

The hallway was empty. There didn’t seem to be a single trace of Shadow anywhere.

It took her a good moment of staring before embarrassment burned in her cheeks, and then it turned into and anger before she stomped off to the VR room to blow off steam. He could have just told her to go away! He hadn’t needed to trick her!

She was so embarrassed that she had fallen for it too. That felt humiliating.

iiregularhunters:

“That isn’t the easier skill to learn. Maintaining your silence while being able to focus on something else is a talent that even skilled soldiers often lack. Working on it is commendable.”

The mention of speed had him pausing to think, but he couldn’t really confirm or deny whether or not speed was useful. For himself, Shadow would never say he was fast, but he certainly had the ability to disappear when he needed to. Vanishing into the shadow realm was a far quicker way to ‘escape’ than anything else ever would be.

The conversation as a whole was beginning to wear on him, though. and Shadow could feel his smile becoming strained and forced. He had come here for– why had he even come to hunters, again? Because of Blues? Or… another reason…

He needed to get out.

“The real test now is if you think you can hide yourself well enough that I cannot find you.” The words slipped from his mouth easily as Shadow continued to smile blandly at the girl. “You have 30 seconds to get situated.” It was unsaid, but implied, that she should go elsewhere.

“Mhm. My goal right now is successfully multitasking at least once. Then I can start on trying it more than once.”

She didn’t want an easy path at all. She wanted to get better the hard way. Because she wanted to work hard to get better, not take some easy way out. And learning to multitask would be good for that.

Though what he had said next made her blink in surprise, she didn’t waste any time disappearing at a speed that would have left any human in the dust trying to keep up.

She even managed to disguise which direction she was going in, which was even better!

Rebecca had ended up hiding herself in a small-ish storage closet, tucked up on a top shelf with her signals dampened as far as they could go.

“You need to go talk to your brother about what happened. You’re being suspended from any hunter activity until you do.” [Zero]

“I-I was intending to at some point- Y-Yes Papa, I will.”

That is, if Aerin didn’t hate her for getting him killed, of course. Rebecca felt it was well within his rights to hate her for being stupid enough to get captured though.

She had long learned it was pointless to protest this though. She’d go get this over with quick and easy.

“H-He’s in engineering, I’m guessing? Or his room?”

iiregularhunters:

“Training, huh?”

Zero didn’t doubt her, but he also wasn’t dumb enough to outright believe her. Rebecca looked far too stressed out for that to be the case. There was more going on here and he was fairly confident that he could guess just what the other bits were.

“Sure, right.” Stepping inside, he reached out to idly snag a knickknack off her dresser. Nothing fragile or important, just something that he could hold instead of flailing his arms around uselessly. “Is training what they call ‘avoiding your dad’ these days? Cause I’ve definitely noticed that since, y’know.”

A beat before Zero looked up, gazing at Rebecca as he forced himself to say words that even he didn’t want to hear out loud. “Aerin’s core was shot through and I was left at the hands of Kai.”

“I wasn’t avoiding you, Papa.”

Which was the truth, that was her genuine reason for being so busy all the time. At what Zero said last though, that made a flinch go through her, and she lowered her head, her bangs shading her eyes.

“I wasn’t good enough. I was stupid enough to get captured. So I want to get better so it doesn’t happen again.”

She acknowledged that she had been stupid a while ago. Now all she wanted to do was make sure she wouldn’t be stupid in the future.

iiregularhunters:

@deafenedchampion

Too much time had passed since the incident and any… talk between the two. Zero had been busy dealing with the repairs and partial reconstruction to his body, and Rebecca had been-

…

That was the issue, really. He didn’t know.

The fact that she was avoiding him had been easy enough to pick up on, though, which was why he found himself wrapping his knuckles gently against her closed door. “Rebecca? Can we talk?”

There was a muffled clang behind the door as well as muffled, vehement swearing. Before more muffled swearing and steps towards the door. The door slid open to reveal a bedraggled Rebecca, blinking in a bit of surprise.

“Papa? I was just about to head back to training. Sure, we can talk.”

There were dark marks under her eyes, and her hair had grown just a little bit. It was tied up tight in a low tail, with her bangs and top of her hair in disarray.

She did back up though to give Zero room to come into her room though, going over to sit on her bed..