[https://i.imgur.com/1ktIYP2.png]

Chapter OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiqG9J5ohXQ

The gleeful screams of children echoed in the not-so-far distance. The grass billowed against the soft summer wind; the green shimmered, reflecting the gold-red hue of the setting sun. In front of the shabby, two-story shack otherwise known as the NoTech Orphanage, Lucy called for the young boys and girls, who were playing outside, to come in for dinner.

[https://i.imgur.com/cHYJa3S.png]

Lucy, who was a NoTech girl of 14, had grown up at this orphanage. She had been raised primarily by the Orphanage Mother. However, now that Lucy was almost of age, she volunteered for more and more of the responsibilities, until Lucy had practically become a mother of the orphanage herself, and the actual Mother was away most of the time nowadays.

[https://i.imgur.com/j5IvbRD.png]

NoTechs - they were citizens of the technologically advanced, futuristic nation known as Futura. However, unlike normal Futurans, NoTechs were citizens at the bottom of the social pyramid. They were forbidden to use any Techs, which were the almost-magical pieces of technology that fueled everyday life in Futura, whether it be the Sky Train that chugged along above the skyscrapers, or the genetic enhancements that the rich blessed their children with, or the haptic-kinetic technology that allowed you to rearrange your interior décor with just a few wiggles of your fingers. The only piece of "Tech" that they were allowed to touch were the Facial Chips that they were born with. In fact, every single Futuran was born with a Facial Chip, which served as a communication and identification device.

[https://i.imgur.com/TpzTTVT.png]

Finally, all of the children had gone indoors, and the creaking of the long-rotted wooden floors was reverberating all around the orphanage. A meagre dinner, but one that was packed with love, was ready. Thirty or so plates were spread on the tables and counters, and the children began to dig in. However, three of the orphanage children weren't present.

After checking in on all of the kids, Lucy walked out of the orphanage again.

"Teeeeek!! Craaash!!! Hoooope!!!!" she yelled.

A brief silence. And then, she heard Crash's voice. It was a bit scratchy and a bit rough, but it had the tone of a boy who had wisdom beyond his years. However, he didn't say anything particularly wise.

"We'll be there soon! Just start without us!" he shouted.

"What he said!" said Tek. Tek's voice was higher in pitch, and at this young age, he sounded exactly like a girl would. His tone was rather earnest, and straightforward.

"Pardon us for a short while!" said Hope. As expected of someone who was once a Noble, he spoke with a formality that was missing in Crash and Tek. His voice was sonorous to an extent, and carried well.

Lucy sighed. Those three were the troublemakers of this Orphanage. They weren't bad boys, really -- but Crash liked the idea of being a bad boy. Meanwhile, Hope sometimes acted as if he had a total of one brain cell. Finally, Tek was oblivious to any of the faults of his big brothers, so he would follow them to the ends of the world. So, not bad by any means, but troublemakers nonetheless.

She walked back into the orphanage, not closing the door behind her. It was her way of communicating, "you're always welcome".

[https://i.imgur.com/ko4tEcq.png]

A short distance from the orphanage, three boys were kicking branches in the forest. In other words, they were doing nothing important.

Tek, with an excited, yet reserved stare in his eyes, and his soft black hair seemingly bristling with energy. Crash, with his fiery-red spikes that were supposedly hair, and his equally-crimson eyes. His facial chip was located right above his nose, almost like a perpetual band-aid that he had to put on after a fight. Finally, Hope stood coldly. Despite being the oldest (he edged out Crash by just a bit), he was the most recent to join the orphanage. He still hadn't fully melted into the environment. His icy-blue eyes weren't haughty, but rather, held a disdain for himself and his own powerlessness.

For some reason, these three boys, who were so different in temperament, and had such different origins, would hang out every single day. There must have been something connecting them behind the scenes, whether it was fate or a divine will, but on the surface, and to any third party, it was a small miracle that these three would become friends, that they would become brothers more faithful to one another than any brothers connected by blood.

Crash was the first to speak up.

"So! Back to our discussion, the one we were having before the old bag butt her butt-head in!" he shouted, with a triumphant grin on his face.

Hope twitched, clearly offended.

"Lucy is but 5 years older than you and me. I hate it when you insult others without a second thought. I know you don't mean it, but it's hurtful nonebutless," said Hope.

"You mean nonetheless, you idiot? BuuuuuWAAAhahahaha!!!" laughed Crash, pointing at Hope.

Hope's one revealed eye (the other being covered by his bangs) narrowed, and he clenched his teeth.

"What did you say, scum?" said Hope. "Do you want to be buried under cubes again?"

"Bring it, loser!! I have way more wins than you, and it'll be that way until the day you die!" yelled Crash.

"Hey, stop it, guys!" cried Tek. He looked like he was about to cry. Indeed, 2 seconds later, he began crying. Tek had always been somewhat of a crybaby, and it was likely that this trend would continue until the end of time. "Guys, guyyzzz..." he sniffled. "We were talking avout, avoooudd.... our dreabbbs!!!"

Crash and Hope stared at each other. Hope sighed, closed his eyes, and turned his head slightly, exasperated, but also having lost the urge to fight. Crash looked into the sky with just his eyes (his head was still pointed downwards). He still felt like punching something, but he used reason and logic to calm down his emotions. "Is it worth it?" "Look at Tek." "It's almost dinner." "We were in the middle of something." Crash thought these thoughts in his head, and he cooled down.

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"That's right, Tek. So wipe your tears, you crybaby, and let's start!" shouted Crash.

"Okay!!" said Tek, expectantly.

Hope nodded.

Crash cleared his throat.

"Let's talk about our dreams! Our goals! Our burning passions! Why were we born into this world?" shouted Crash.

"To find the One Piece!" cried Tek.

Hope groaned, and Crash looked deflated.

"Yes, Tek... we can do that too. But let's not talk about your manga for a second, and focus on reality, okay?" said Crash, with as kind of a voice as he could muster.

"Okay..." said Tek, looking down with cheeks filled with indignant air.

[https://i.imgur.com/QCd24Ho.png]

"I'll start then," said Crash. And in that moment, his youthful rebelliousness, his burning-coals stare, and his spiky hair that threatened to stab anything nearby; they all simmered down. Instead of a towering flame or a booming explosion, Crash became a bubbling pool of lava, or a tank of water almost about to boil -- his heat was contained, it was set on something far away, and indeed his gaze veered off into the unknown, beyond the orphanage grounds, beyond the forest, the nearby NoTech town, beyond the settlements and cities. Perhaps he was not looking far into space, but far into time.

Even Hope, whose usual reaction to anything that Crash did was to scoff at him, stared at him with a serious, inquisitive glare.

"I think there are many people that could achieve great things, but they're not able to. People who are in the lower classes, for example. They don't have access to Techs like everyone else. I want those people to be given opportunities. People like you, Tek. And you too, Hope." said Crash. Then, looking even farther into the distance -- or perhaps at this point, his open eyes were seeing a faraway dream, a distant memory -- he continued. "I know -- I knew a lot of people, and they were suffering, struggling, and I wish I could have done more for them. But instead, I was the only one who made it out. Everyone at the orphanage is important to me, and of course, so are you, Tek and Hope. But if I could only accomplish one thing with my life, I want to pay back the people that counted me as one of their own. I was never able to pay back my debt, up until the very end..."

Tears welled up in Crash's eyes, and he didn't bother hiding the tears, or wiping them away.

"I want to turn Futura upside down. I don't care if it throws everything into chaos. Even if I have to burn this nation down to ash, at least then we could all climb equally from the flattened remains, from an even bedrock. Those who truly have talent, those who are strong, they should naturally rise to the top. It shouldn't be people who simply have a name tag like 'Royal' or 'Noble'."

"That's my dream. That's my goal. And I will die fighting for it," said Crash.

It was a speech unbefitting of a nine year-old. Possibly few adults could even speak like that on the spot. It was not a rehearsed monologue, but it was clearly familiar to Crash. It was the result of months of endless ruminating on his short but eventful life experience thus far.

"Whoops! I didn't mean to mess up the mood so badly, haha!" said Crash. "How about you, Hope? What's your future looking like?"

It seemed that the somber atmosphere was contagious, and Hope had caught the same illness of the soul as Crash in that moment. It may have just been the continuing descent of the sun, but the shadows that dawned on Hope's elegant features betrayed a murky darkness in his heart.

[https://i.imgur.com/44PAojI.png]

"My family... my mother and father were murdered. The other nobles said they committed treason, but I just can't see them doing anything like that! They didn't like a lot of the stuff the big guys were doing up top, but they never did a single crime. And my younger brother, and younger sister too, they took them... And my Facial Chip was moved onto my eye," said Hope.

And here he brushed aside his bangs that only covered half of his forehead, revealing the grotesquely, forcefully implanted Facial Chip, buried forever into his left eyeball and eye socket.

"I barely managed to make it out alive, thanks to my dad's aide. He smuggled me out." said Hope.

And here, he looked directly into Crash's eyes. Crash flinched, since they rarely met each other's line of sight in earnest.

"Crash," said Hope. "In that sense, you and I are the same. I'm the only one that made it out, and everyone else is gone. And now, I'm the only one who can do anything about it. Ever since that day, there's been a shadow in my heart and it makes me want to hurt others. But I hold it back. Because what I really want to do isn't destroying things. I want to fix what's wrong with Futura. My dad always told me about the corruption and evil at the top of the ladder. The Royals, the Nobles, they're rotten, he said. I want to see it with my own eyes, and clean it all up. Bit by bit, I want to make everyone's lives better. Make things more equal. I want the weak to have more rights and the ones at the top to have less privileges to abuse. That's a feeling that sleeps deep inside my heart, and it's a light that the shadow will never fully eat up."

Hope and Crash maintained their locked gaze for a while longer, and then looked away -- both looked to Tek, who was bawling his eyes out silently.

"I... I didn't know you two were so... so sad and lonely... but now we're here together!! All three of us are here, and we can work together, and be nakama, and follow our ninja way, and I promise beeelel... *hic* I promise that if the three of us are together, nothing can stop us!!!" cried Tek, dropping enough tears to water the tree next to him for the next few days.

Crash aimed to calm down the situation.

"Okay, Tek! I don't want Lucy to see ya crying when we head inside, she'll spank me again!! That bi- I mean, that dopey old sis of ours always babies you too much! So stop crying, and share your dream, it's your turn now, squirt!" shouted Crash.

Hope nodded in assent.

Tek sniffed and hiccupped until he felt better, as Hope patted his back. Finally, Tek parted his trembling lips.

[https://i.imgur.com/oPYFpem.png]

"Unlike you two, big bro Hope and big bro Crash, not much happened to me before. I was left near here when I was a baby, like Asta and Yuno. I only know this orphanage. I only know Tim, and Sally, and Crash, and Hope, and Marshine and big sis Lucy and Beenie and the other kids. I don't know the world outside. So I think my first goal is to grow up. And then my second goal is to go outside. And then my third goal is to look around, to really have a good look," said Tek.

Despite his immature way of speaking, Tek seemed to be trying with all his might to express something from deep within, and perhaps that was the reason that Hope and Crash stared intently at him. As if Tek were a prophet about to speak of the future, Hope and Crash listened so as to not miss a single detail.

"And I don't know how to really say it," said Tek, "But, um. Like, if there's an old guy I see walking down the street. I want to help him. And then if there's a little kid being bullied. I want to tell the bullies to stop. If there's a bad guy, I want to make him become a good guy or at least get him to stop doing bad stuff. I think that's what I want to do. I don't know about the Royals or lower classes or anything like that. But what I know is that I want to do things that are good. I want to do a lot of them and as long as I keep doing good things, I think the world will also become a good place!"

With each sentence, Tek began to gain more and more confidence, and grew to have more faith in his own words. By the end, he had a confident stare and a childish smile of innocence and faith, as he looked to Crash one moment and Hope the next.

At the same moment, Crash and Hope hugged Tek, and with some squirming, it became a proper hug between the three of them.

"Huh...?" said Tek.

"Let's do it," said Hope. "Let's make all three of our dreams a reality."

Crash was silent. And then his stomach gurgled.

After another silence, Hope burst into laughter, and so did Tek.

Crash said, "But first, let's fill our stomachs, ya poopheads!"

And the three boys returned to the orphanage -- they returned to childhood, and happiness, and the hopeful eternity known as youth that was threatened by the ever-sinking sun. But even if the sun sank below the horizon, it seemed like as long as those three boys were together, the morning light would definitely come again the next day.

[https://i.imgur.com/crjPndu.png]