2Originally, Françoise Arnoul had stepped into the crisp, Autumn evening to help her fever break. She'd been running a forty-degree Celsius fever from the tress of being so sidelined since her team's fight with the Assassin of Flash. After Jet managed to bring the two halves, 0010+ and 0010-, together, they short circuited one another. They died, as brothers who couldn't embrace. Yes, originally, she had only planned to take a walk to aid her in breaking her fever. But when she came across the fluffy haired boy and his scraped face, lying unconscious in a ditch… She couldn't just leave him. She couldn't trust he'd be ok. With all the strength she had in her condition, she slung one of his arms over her shoulders, dragging him back the way she came. It was twenty minutes before she reached Dr. Koizumi's place, panting from the effort.
"Oh, You're back, 003." He said pleasantly, eyes closed. Sensing her hesitation, he opened them. "003! W-Who is that? What? Why?" He pointed to the boy on her arms.
"He's hurt!" she yelled, frustrated by the elderly man's trivial concerns. "Call 002 and 004, he's unconscious and he's been like this for at least a day."
"You'll be in the same state if you keep straining yourself!" the doctor scolded, obliging the female cyborg in her request and letting the men take the stranger off her hands. She followed the two of them into the medical room Koizumi had built into the house. The doctor set up the IV, sending 002 and 004 out of the room, and put up other medical equipment accordingly, ridding him of the shredded clothing and laying the boy back into the bed. The man then proceeded to him up to all the necessary machines. Françoise pulled up a chair beside him, pulling his blankets up to his neck as he shivered in his thin muscle shirt and black boxers. She looked at the tattered clothing Koizumi had set aside, taking the jacket and looking through the pockets curiously. There was a wallet, with cash, a few pictures, but no ID. The female cyborg suddenly realized how tired she was, putting the boy's belongings back into his pocket and leaving the room. She allowed herself to sleep on the couch, dreaming strange things about the stranger.
Apparently, her subconscious believed he was a cyborg, just as she was. She dreamt of watching him from a first person view, running from the never ending shadow of the Black Ghost. He seemed so afraid and confused. His hand reached out to hers, and she tried to take hold. But his fingers slipped away from her grasp, and he was thrown into a spiral of darkness. She watched as his form became distant, then out of sight, and she was left in the quiet white, shaded by the Black Ghost's silhouette. He was always watching. Waking up, Françoise walked quickly back into the medical room to check on the boy.
He was stirring from his sleep, just as she had from her own. She'd slept about 12 hours, she realized, as it was eight in the morning and was about 7:30 when she'd left last evening. Sitting down next to him as he opened his eyes, she smiled gently, ready to answer the storm of questions he probably had for her. He looked over at her and she began to speak.
"Hey. I'm glad you're awake now. How do you feel?" she asked.
"Yeah… I feel better. How long was I out? Are you the one that brought me here? Am I in a hospital?" his voice was anxious.
"I brought you here yesterday, when I found you face down in the dirt. We're not in a hospital. You're in Dr. Koizumi's house, with me, him, and my friends. You were out probably 2 days or so judging from how I'd found you, along with the time you were sleeping here." She explained, observing his face as he took in the information.
"I guess I understand why you would do that. I was in a pretty bad condition when I managed to escape there and hide."
"Did someone do that to you?"
"Yeah. Some guys beat me up on my way home, and they probably considered me dead if they saw me in the ditch."
"Why did they do that to you? I'm Françoise, by the way."
"I'm Joe. Joe Shimamura." He replied. "I don't know why exactly. It's probably just that I'm different." He shook his head, breathing to formulate his explanation. "I've never had a mother or father, so I was living in an orphanage for a while, up til two years ago when the Father was killed. I've been on my own since then, working a lot of different jobs and errands to support myself in a small apartment. I have to get back out there and…" Françoise put her hands in front of him as he started sitting up, shaking her head no and gently pushing him back into the hospital bed.
"No. You're still hurt and if people treat you so badly, you don't need to return. That's hard, I know." Joe… he seemed so heartbreakingly vulnerable.
"It's not so bad if you've always had to make it out on your own and take the punches. It just stops hurting after a while. Once my body's fully recovered, you'll have to let me go. I need to catch up on college work, my next payments, that sort of thing." His mouth curled upwards in a bittersweet half smile. He was so strong to be making jokes at a time like this.
"Stay here with me and my friends, we have plenty of room and we could help you. You can't…"
"Look out!" he suddenly ripped the IV from his body, diving from the hospital bed. The sound of air rushed past Françoise's ear, and she was toppled to the ground, a poison bullet of some sort on the floorboards a few feet from the two of them. Joe glared out the window, suddenly disappearing from the spot, finding the guilty one in an instant. Acceleration power?! The girl thought, stunned. Just a moment later, the boy had returned, dropping a black clad man in front of her. His clothing was adorned with knives and guns of every sort. Joe slammed him up against the wall, holding his throat.
"Talk! Why did you try to kill her and who do you work for?" the hired gun let out a bitter laugh.
"That girl is a cyborg, kid. You don't know nothing about what you're getting yourself into." The boy let the hired gun slide down from the wall and hit the floor. Removing his shirt, and turning his back to the man, he revealed three numbers that were tattooed between his shoulderblades so long ago. The man's eyes suddenly opened wide, his voice sounding afraid.
"009?! The rogue cyborg?" the aforementioned cyborg gave the man a hard chop on the back of his neck, incapacitating him.
"That's right. I'm cyborg 009, Joe Shimamura." He said, the half-smile of before back on his face as he turned to Françoise. "Sorry I left out the more exciting details about my life." He helped her up from the floor.
"I'm 003, Françoise Arnoul. Now that we've been properly introduced, name and number, I'm sure my friends would like to meet you. They're cyborgs, Joe. Just like us."
3 days later…
Joe stood at the edge of the cliff, watching the waves slap against the rocks. He'd been warming up to his cyborg companions over the last few days, but he still didn't feel like he could trust them with his deepest thoughts. So he isolated himself when he felt the most like he couldn't speak, when he most needed to think by himself. The steady rhythm of it, the undisturbed motion of this always intrigued him. He could watch it for hours at a time, every now and then, wondering how comfortably stable the life of the ocean was. It was always guaranteed to slap against the shore, no end to this cycle. It was boring, possibly, but at least it was familiar. It was safe. Françoise suddenly approached from behind, gesturing for him to sit down next to her and allow his legs to hang over the cliff's edge. She brushed back her hair, looking quite like she had something deep to say.
"When you caught the man who tried to kill me, and he told you what I am, he called you "the rogue cyborg." She said, her tone heavy with something like disappointment and reflection.
"Yes… what of it?" he replied, feeling uneasy.
"You still feel like a rogue cyborg to me, Joe. You're worlds away from the rest of us." The ninth cyborg looked at his feet, trying to understand why she felt she needed to say something like that. How had he wounded her?
"Gomen, 003. I've just always wandered off on my own whenever I've needed to figure things out. It's familiar, being alone with my thoughts. It's familiar. It's…"
"Comfortable?" she finished, a rueful smile crossing her lips.
"Ah. That too, I guess." He agreed, not able to look at her. "Before you came up here, I was thinking how nice it must be to have familiarity and repetition in your life, like the ocean waves. They're guaranteed to always slap against the shore, always find a place to call home. All my life, I've never had a place to call home. I've always had to keep moving around every few years, always hurrying to the next job or errand to keep myself up. I've always had to keep changing everything… now I've finally got somewhere to settle down, but it's changed again. I've got to accept I'm a cyborg and that I'll never be safe."
"I'm sure that feels scary. You're always wondering what will come next. Before I became a cyborg, I had a life as a ballet student, and I had my older brother, Jean Paul, who I could always lean on. And then it was all ripped from my hands. I think the more stable you are, the more painful it is when something comes and changes everything. You envy people with stability, Joe, but they probably envy you. You knew you'd always have to keep moving, didn't you?"
"Yes, you're right… I knew I wouldn't settle down. I just realized something though. If change is always happening, always guaranteed at least, isn't it the only constant, too?"
"You're so profound." She noted. "It's an oxymoron, I know. Tell me though… why can't you open up to the team and I?"
"Gomen, 003! I know I just said change is a constant, but I'm still trying to be prepared in the back of my mind, in case I'm suddenly pulled away from you too. I'd still be hurt if it happened so abruptly."
"Just trust us." She sounded almost like she was pleading, standing up and walking away, but stopping midway. "I liked it better when you still called me by name, 009." As her presence disappeared from his, Joe buried his fist into the cliff beneath him, knocking loose a good portion of the unoccupied space of rock. He watched it splash into the waves below, not even interrupting their flowing rhythm for a second. Damn them… damn them and their ability to stay the same while everything around them changes. Humans... why do they love stability? Could it be, that humans love stability because change comes so quickly from the world outside, but comes so slowly from the world inside?
