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1. mundane (calm before the storm)

Even with a metal spine, Takara lives. 

Being the experimental subject of an eccentric professor, he tries to become one of the many civilians in the island. It's working.

It's working, until it isn't.

-

Takara's life began with a broken spine and a kid with colour-changing eyes.

And rehabilitation. Lots of rehabilitation.

He looked like he got smashed into a thousand rocks then dropped from a Sky Island and lived, and he had all the shattered bones in his body to prove it. Some old coot from the corner of the island thought him interesting, picked him up, and fixed him up.

Living life with a metal skeleton wasn't too hard once you got used to it. People stared, he overheated a lot, the limbs creaked with every step, and he needed a good oiling around every few days, but this beats dying by a long shot.

How such technology existed in West Blue, Takara really wasn't about to question it. He was an experiment, and an experiment of the Professor he will be.

-

Now, about the kid with colour-changing eyes.

The moment Takara's surgery scars healed and he got used to the lumpy metal parts, he had dragged the boy into a bath house and scrubbed fossils of dirt off their skins (seriously, is this kid a human or a gorilla? How could the Professor just let the kid live in the jungle?) before clothing him in something more decent to wear.

"So, what's your name?"

"Cross!"

"Hi there Cross, my name is Takara. Nice to meet you."

"Nais tu meat-chu?"

"It's something you say to people when you first meet them."

"Nice to meet yu! Nice to meet'chu!"

"Yes, yes."

A loose, hooded sweater and a pair of shorts. It was going to be winter soon and jungle boy or not, this kid needed to stay warm!

Takara had a decent amount of allowance on him (Professor was rich despite living in some rusty shed) and he was going to use it if it meant getting this kid something other than torn boxers to cover himself.

Cross was a little ball of sunshine, really.

His hair was black, and his eyes were mirroring shades of gray. Sometimes, his left eye would shine blue, and his smile would brim a little more sinister, but aside from that, he was a normal child like any other.

Except for the fact that he lived in the jungle, of course.

-

Takara got himself a coat, and successfully set himself back into civilisation by making small talk with the people of the town, introducing himself and telling them where he stayed.

"With the Professor?" someone repeated back at him, alarmed, "from the looks of it, you're his next victim, eh? No offense of course, kid."

Takara laughed it off.

(The Professor was an eccentric man. No one knew where he came from or what he was intending on doing, settling down in the corner of the island, but everyone seemed to be friendly.)

"Hey, mister," a young girl, probably five or six, came closer to his steel ankle, "is this thing inside your leg? Doesn't it hurt?"

"Now, Nene, that's rude to ask. Don't bother the young man," her mother chastised, picking up her daughter and sending a pitiful glance at Takara.

Takara faltered.

In a normal situation, this would classify him as a disabled man, wouldn't it? Having four metal prosthetics...

"It's okay," he said, hoping his smile looked kind enough, "it doesn't hurt anymore. It looks cool, doesn't it?"

And the girl, despite her mother's reprimanding, brightened considerably. "Uhn!" she cheered, "it's so shiny, like a robot!"

Takara gave the girl a high-five, and waved at her as she left with her mother.

Civilisation was going to be hard, with all these metal parts, and Takara felt a little more sullen each time he thought of it. Maybe he could live it out like this, just running errands for the professor and living on this island without much meaning to himself.

But then, what was the point?

(No... he didn't need a point.)

His name is Takara. Whoever he was before he was Takara-- that person was dead. His meaning now was with the Professor, to whom he owed his life and his everything to.

He didn't need a new goal.

Well, at least he didn't think so.

-

"Takara! Takara! This is Umma!"

Cross had cozied up to the man enough to drag him into the jungle, where he presumably lived. Turns out that the Professor wasn't allowing the child to roam the jungle, the child never lived with the Professor to begin with.

And here Cross had brought him to a den.

A bear's den.

Pointing grandly at the old grizzly and beaming brightly, Takara was tugged forward presumably to bond with... Umma.

"Uhm... nice to meet you," he said, body stiff and limbs straight with fear-- "my name is Takara, I have been in Cross' care."

To Takara's horror, Cross leapt into the bear, nuzzling up to the fur and cuddling with the great and dangerous beast. And the beast was nuzzling back? Holy crap.

"Umma! Umma, so humans said 'nice to meet you' when they see new humans!" Cross began to ramble the bear like a child excited to tell his mother about his day, "that's what Takara told me!"

The bear let out a gruff noise at that, and nodded its head at Takara.

Takara was going to assume that meant she wasn't going to eat him yet.

"Umma is the mommy of the forest!" Cross spread his arms and declared pridefully.

Oh.

So the bear is his mother.

Makes sense.

(No it doesn't.)

-

"Oh my god, what did you do, Cross?"

Takara was officially Cross' babysitter and he hated the job with a burning, boiling passion.

The island had a lot of trees. I mean, it's famous for being a key source of fruit production in West Blue-- even nobles buy from this island and the World Government has a monopoly on the market of fruit from Moribakari Island-- but okay, that's not the point.

The point is, "this durian tasted bad," Cross said, holding up a red spiky shell with blue, swirly flesh that he probably took a bite out of and threw away.

Takara wanted to cry.

"That's not a durian," he tried to say, "Cross, you've lived in this forest for how many years, you should know that they're supposed to be green and yellow."

Cross blinked up at him. He looked between the red durian and Takara, then at another durian on the ground a few paces away.

"Oh," he said.

Takara bonked him over the head, "you moron!"

-

Umma was the Lord of the Forest, and this island being what it was, that was a very grand feat. She was a bear, but she was wise. And much more than anything, she was a mother.

Takara curled into her fur, tears dried at his cheeks, and let the bear's steady breathing soothe him out of his nightmares.

Sometimes, when the pain of his metal joints gets a little too hard to bear, he would come here. He would bury himself in the unconditional love Umma would give him, and he basked in the gentle pull of the forest.

At some point, Takara realized that he got adopted.

-

"Takara, could you help us out here?"

The people in the city were nice.

Takara's limbs would act up every once in a while, but when they could work, they were superb. It gave him strength beyond an average man, and stability more assuring than any man-made lever.

Wanting to assimilate back into human society (and wanting to rely less on Professor's apparently inexhaustible allowance every month) Takara worked in the construction site every once in a while.

"This thing collapsed last night, and we just aren't sure which to pick up first."

The whole chaotic mass of lumber, steel, and miraculously intact glass was held in a strange, half-suspended shape caused by levity and gravity.

Takara tapped twice at the scar by his left eye, and his iris gleamed with a wave of green binary codes, scanning the sight before him and calculating the best course of action with a series of mathematical and physical information.

"We'll have to sacrifice at least one of those glass pieces-- maybe the one down there," Takara muttered to the man, "that pipe's busted, so we have to give up on that one. The wood under it will need to be last."

The man hummed in consideration at that. "That sounds good enough. What do you have in mind?"

"Well-- first we need to hold those two up, and slide the first glass pane out from there--"

His left eye, another part of him lost to his initial injury, was replaced with a robotic glass eye that could fulfill many things-- x-ray vision, identification, metal detecting-- again, Takara wasn't going to ask how the Professor even made this. He was just going to live with it and hope it wouldn't blow up on him one day.

-

"Come back here, Cross! You are putting on your shoes right this instant!"

"No! Don't wanna! They're heavy!"

"You have a feetful of blisters! If they get infected, your feet will rot and fall off!"

"No they won't!"

"Yes they will!"

Takara's day begins with chasing a kid across the forest and making him put on shoes. After a while, Cross' red jacket was stained with mud and water, but the kid didn't mind it. At least he was keeping them on. But shoes, the kid hated shoes with a burning passion.

"They're heavy!"

"You'd wear down anything less durable in two seconds, with how you usually run!"

"Then I'm fine without shoes!"

"You are not!!"

Takara's known the kid for about three months at this point. He just knows that the kid is a ball of endless energy and Takara's strained limbs can never catch up to whatever parkour skills this kid has ingrained in his soul.

Especially after he ate that pain-in-the-ass fruit.

"Tag Tag," Cross touched the tree, and a red handprint planted itself on the bark of the tree. He touched another one, "Catch me if you can!"

And he vanished.

He teleported behind Takara, a ways away, laughing. Takara skidded to a stop, turned around, and chased-- only for the kid to reappear at the front again, making mocking faces.

"Goddamn it Cross!" Takara yelled at him, "this is bully culture!"

"Takara is the bully!" Cross yelled back, "you make me wear shoes!"

"It's self-care!!"

The Tag-Tag fruit, which allows the user to essentially teleport between two to three 'tagged' spots. The mark doesn't disappear until he wills it to.

Takara groaned.

His limbs were already starting to hurt from the strain. He still wasn't capable of more than an hour of strenuous activity a day. Sitting down on the grass, he put Cross' boots on the side and picked something out from his bag.

A crossbow he had been building.

"Are you not gonna catch me anymore?" Cross hollered from a distance.

"I'll get you eventually, Cross," Takara hollered back. He loaded the arrow on the bolt and set it on his arm, attaching it to a metal bolt on his forearm.

Bending his elbow around a few times, he tucked it in, raised it-- and tested how it felt.

"It's a little tight. Maybe I'll ask Professor for some ideas," he muttered to himself, keeping his arm high and testing the aim.

"Hey, Takara, what are you-- UGWAAH!!"

Cross had suddenly emerged right where Takara had his crossbow pointed. So Takara did the logical thing and pulled the trigger.

The arrow caught the boy on the shirt, near his shoulder, and embedded itself into the tree bark.

There's a second as the situation sunk in.

"Wait, Takara, don't--"

Without another second to hesitate, Takara loaded three more arrows and shot them so they pinned the boy to the tree firmly by all the loose parts of his clothing.

"Finally caught you, you cheeky brat," Takara grinned devilishly.

Cross whimpered in defeat.

-

"Takara! Takara! C'mon, c'mon!"

It was a bright and very happy day for both of them, the day Umma finally gave birth to a litter of cubs. They were all so little, so tender, and so precious as the mother bear nursed them, and they began to learn how to live and breathe.

"This is Sori, this one is Hanu, this one is Yuen," Cross listed them off quickly and without a miss in his beat.

"Wait-- are you naming them?" Takara asked.

"No!" Cross denied quickly, "Umma named them! I'm just telling you cos you can't hear her!"

Pause. And Play.

"You can understand her?!" Takara gawked, disbelief clear across his face, "how?"

Cross grinned almost mischievously, "because Umma can speak inside my head!"

Takara absolutely did not understand, but he let it be in lieu of Umma's knowing glance in his direction. It was amazing enough that he was able to get this close to a mother bear and her cub.

He thought he had gone through all of the surprises about Umma by now, but well, guess there was a new surprise every day.

"What's this one's name?" Takara crouched down, pointing at the littlest one at the end of the row, one that Cross hadn't named for Takara yet.

And Cross ran a gentle hand over the cub's form-- it was so tiny, it fit snugly at the size of Cross' hand. Was it premature?

"Umma says that she'll give this one to us."

"Oh... wait, huh?"

When Takara looked over again, Cross' left eye shone blue, in contrast to its usual dull gray.

Of course, the boy himself didn't notice-- but once Takara saw it, he gasped in surprise and tried not to make a sound, as if the special colour was a butterfly that would fly off and disappear if he startled it.

"It's too weak, so it won't survive in the wild. Umma says she'll let us raise it, under the protection of humans," Cross explained, "so, we can name it if we want."

Takara blinked. Such was the cruelty of life in the wild-- so this little cub was deemed unfit for life, even though it was just born. Its mother didn't want it.

But that was okay.

Takara wasn't fit for life either, and yet here he was.

(He felt so emphatic for the pitiful little creature.)

"Guess it's time to learn how to be a Dad, Cross," Takara joked.

"Sure is," Cross agreed, a smile lifting onto his expressions.

When Cross blinked again, the blue was gone, and his eyes were gray again.

It was a strange sight, really. Did that eye change according to his mood? Or were there perhaps some other criteria in the background the Takara wasn't catching?

It was a very beautiful shade of blue.

Takara hoped he could see it again.

-

"Cross, give me one reason I shouldn't be angry right now."

Cross spun around, looking positively scandalised. He held a hand to his chest, as if he was physically hurt by the reprimanding tone.

Behind him, the baby bear slept soundly in a little mountain of gold, jewellery, and money.

"But he likes it," Cross insisted, tears prickling at the edge of his eyes, "you're going to take away his dream??"

Takara slammed a fist on the boy's head.

"Tell me again, Cross," he was positively pissed, with how low his tone was going, "where did all that gold come from?"

Cross sniffled, nursing a huge bump on top of his head, "from that ship on the port," he whined, "but they left their treasure alone! That means I can take it!"

"No it does not!!"

Takara set a palm on his face. Goodness, he left the kid with the bear for one week and suddenly the bear has a bed more expensive than the Professor's shed.

"But he was just staring at em like he really wanted those shiny, shiny things!" Cross sounded something short of straight out crying at this point, "I think he likes treasure! So I gave him some."

Takara let out a strangled, dying noise.

"We're going to raise a money-addicted bear, this is absolutely fucking perfect," he swore, looking up to the sky and covering his face with his hands, "okay then. This is fine."

Cross braced himself for another punch, but it didn't come.

Instead, Takara sat down beside him, and began to fiddle with a strange metal contraption he was working on.

"Listen here, Cross," Takara adjusted the holster, "I'm gonna open your eyes to the amazing world of thievery."

-

They were a strange combination.

Pseudo-cyborg and jungle-boy, both who looked human but could barely be ethically classified as such. Cross seemed to stick to Takara very often, and like a child (he looked like a teenager, but acted so much younger) he was curious about everything.

Cross began to learn mannerisms, names, and foods-- and in turn, Takara learned how to cross jungles, how to climb and step while making as little noise as possible, as well as which animals or plants were edible to hunt.

Takara wondered if Cross was the Professor's experiment too, but he didn't quite find the time or opportunity to ask. Maybe their relationship itself was an experiment, and the Professor was simply taking jottings of how they interacted every day.

That was their life, for nearly three years.

Thinking back, Takara knew this would happen one day. Experiments, though long, were made to end. Perhaps, that was what happened to him. To them.

Three years later, the Professor set the island on fire.

Without a word to Takara or Cross, without a note or a reason or even a trace of where he'd gone, the Professor burned down the forests and the towns, and ran away by boat before anyone even traced the source back to him.