Super Special Training (Asher)

Elliot blinked. "Wait, what? You lost Meicoomon?" he asked, trying to figure out how that even happened. Losing a normal animal was weird enough. A sapient one? How much of a disaster area was Asher's room? "How did you even do that?" he managed to ask as he started laughing. Of course, he couldn't be too merry. One of the pans was starting to slide away! He quickly leaned back, eyes wide with shock and pupils laser-focused on the sliding pan. It slid into place at an agonizingly slow pace, at which point Elliot let out a relieved huff.

Much less relieved was the indignant huff when Asher just started taking the mess from his hands. "No, you're the guest!" he protested, puffing slightly. "I should be the one doing everything I could to help you, right?" However, as he realized how much he had to look up to face Asher when they were standing, he started to wonder if that was a problem. "Although you are taller than me. And stronger than me." That hug was really nice. "Okay, okay. I'll let you help this time. But just this once, okay?" he made sure to state, not wanting Asher to be under the illusion that he'd need to work in this household.

Recovering his walking stick, he started heading to the kitchen at a much more natural pace. "Y'know, its probably best you're helping. Mom left those pans really high up. I almost fell trying to get 'em down last time, and this time would've been way harder." That explained the small chair scuffs leading from the floor to the nearby cabinet, at the very least. "So the pans were in the top shelf over there. The tea set was on the bottom shelf, though, and so was the tea kettle. Isaac can't get to the top shelf easily, after all. Although he has a better time than me at it." Well of course he did! He could at least balance on both legs!

That said, Elliot really wished he could be helping Asher out more. After all, there was always room for self improvement, right? "Do you dream?" he found himself asking as he looked around the kitchen, the question almost coming out unconsciously.

"Oh, don't worry, I do that all the time," Elliot said at Asher's expression of concern. "Besides, remember the whole Digital World thing? Trust me, I deal with way scarier stuff than a chair." Of course, that was starting to edge on the point of talking a little too much. Especially in the context of his earlier dream question. That just reminded him of Porcupamon, of Myotismon, of Omnimon Zwart, and all the other close calls that Elliot had experienced during his time in the Digital World so far. The number had actually been stable for quite a long time, recently. He'd been quite the little leader, and remained surprisingly strong in the face of tense incidents like the Trailmon derailment. Maybe he was really moving past those initial growing pains.

And yet his hand still floated up gingerly to where his scars from Myotismon were, as if making sure they were still there. He hoped Asher didn't see.

"Oh, me?" he asked, as if surprised his own question was being turned on him. Why did the worst of those nightmares have to be the ones to rise to the surface? "Sometimes," he admitted. "A lot more than usual, lately, but that's just because so much has been going on since moving to Japan." In both worlds, really! "Some good, some bad. I dunno. It complicated.

Anyway, when you're done, my room's upstairs. C'mon, lets go check it out!" With that Elliot started scooting off, gently tapping his way up the stairs and opening the first door on the right. Dear lord, it was a mess indeed! The sheets were somewhat tossed aside, and a pillow had fallen off of the bed. The rug was bunched up a little, a small lighter patch showing where shoes must've normally been put. A few scattered textbooks were left on the desk, one even still open. One of the clothes drawers slightly ajar.

"Oh, no, that's Isaac's half. My half's over to the right," Elliot corrected. He pointed to a much more pristine looking segment, dusted to perfection. The bed was so tucked in it didn't look like Elliot would even be able to fit in it. His clothes for tomorrow were folded in an orderly fashion and left on his nightstand, and his relatively small TV didn't even have a speck of dust on it. And yet Elliot still peered disapprovingly at it. "I would've put my-" Perfectly arranged and lined up, for that matter- "-shoes away if I knew we were having company, and I think the curtains are a bit wrinkly . . ." The fact that Elliot even had cute little curtains said a lot!

"But, yeah, that's my room! Anything you want to play?"

Worse than Piper? How was that even possible? "Oh, please, don't tell her you said that," Elliot warned. "I'm pretty sure she'd, like, bleach the whole house white or something trying to out-clean me." Something told Elliot that Piper wasn't really someone for second bests. She retook a test just to overturn a 99, for crying out loud! It was equal parts admirable and somewhat terrifying. It also made her a great study buddy, if not one impossible to keep pace with.

Still, Elliot wasn't one to talk about perfectionism, with the way he was currently fiddling with the curtains to try and smooth them out. Stupid curtains. "I'm glad you like it, though!" he chirped. "I always feel kinda grody when my room's too dirty for long. So I just started cleaning it regularly. Feels so much better that way." Then again, it also felt better when he did both morning and night showers, so who even wanted to listen to what Elliot had to say? This boy was way too clean for his own good. It was a wonder he'd adjusted to giant, world-spanning adventures so easily with how much of a mess they raised!

"I've got a lot of games. Kinda hard to pick from them all sometimes," he said. He had honestly been hoping Asher would've done the picking! "How about you try Roller Coaster Tycoon for a bit? I wanna see what you can come up with," Elliot quickly booted up his Steam account, taking a pillow off of his bed and putting it on the back of his computer chair for extra comfort. With that settled he flopped onto his bed, looking strangely tired for this early in the day. Then again, they had been spending a decent amount of time training, hadn't they?

"So, is this gonna be your first holiday season in Japan?" Elliot asked. "There's a lot of really cool traditions about that kind of thing here, from what I read. Like the first dream of the New Year hinting at what your luck's gonna be like next year." So that's why Elliot was asking earlier! Explained his somewhat distracted mumble. Maybe the boy was a little worried that he'd have a bad one then, too.

"Miss being home for it all?"

Elliot was more than content to sit back and watch Asher kill some pixel people. Or not kill some pixel people. Or maybe extort a bunch of pixel people by making free water and expensive bathrooms. That was always Elliot's preferred strategy, really. Not because of the exploitation part! It was more just giggling at seeing games behaving just as intended even when that painted a really weird picture of reality. Just like flipping buckets on people's heads in Skyrim and them placidly standing there instead of ever taking them off. Or horses reporting their own thefts, also in Skyrim. Or arrowing a guy in the head and having him assume it was the wind just because he didn't see you, still in Skyrim.

Man, Skyrim was weird.

"Oh, I just did the research on my own once I found out we were moving here," Elliot responded. "I didn't want to stick out like a sore thumb when moving here. I mean, kinda hard not to, but it still wouldn't be right of me to go without learning the culture first. And there was so much interesting stuff to learn, too." The myth could be absolutely fascinating, and the history was really neat too. Even stuff like bowing when greeting someone and reading Japanese was starting to become less strained and more reflexive as he became more integrated with the country.

And Asher was so integrated he could answer without even a thought. Now, how was Elliot even supposed to answer that? "Well, I, um . . . yeah," he finally admitted, sighing and embedding himself a bit deeper into his bed. "Not that I'm not happy to be here! I really love it! But it just feels weird not being home for the holidays, you know? And there's my old friends from school, and my relatives, and my dad, and just-"

Elliot had fallen quiet again. "You should build a really tall coaster," he finally said, trying to keep his eyes focused on the screen.

"I'll be sure to bring it up to her next time I see her," Elliot said, grinning. "It'd be nice to see her talk about a topic that didn't involve my grades being on the line. And it means I get to learn cool stuff, too, so win-win!" Piper could be so serious business sometimes. This would at least be the more fun side of serious business. Business casual?

And then Asher raised the million dollar question. "He's-" Elliot started, thankful that Asher would be looking at the screen and not at him. The look on Elliot's face was equal parts happy, and longing, and worried, and confused. "He's my dad," was all Elliot could even think of for a start. "And he always cared a lot about me. He let me play whatever games he was playing, even the really hard ones I could never beat on my own. He always made sure I had my favorite food, and plenty of stuff to do, and took great care of me. And he worked really hard. Sometimes too hard. But . . ."

What was Elliot supposed to say? He fought with mom too much? He never liked Isaac? He could get tense and even violent when pushed too far? How could he admit all of those things about a man he dearly loved, who made up like 75% of his good childhood memories? Was he supposed to say the family had an impromptu move to Japan just because his mom never wanted to see his face again? Was he supposed to say that he still sometimes heard Isaac muttering angrily in his sleep about him? Deep in his heart, he knew all of it was true. Even the stuff everyone tried to hide from him for the sake of his happiness. Yet he just couldn't reconcile it, and if he couldn't reconcile it then he couldn't face it. And if he couldn't face it, then he had to run from it.

"He could be kinda angry sometimes."

He had tried to avoid even talking about it, but Asher coaxed it out of him. Why'd he have to feel so comfortably-uncomfortable around him? It sucked. But at least the roller coaster was really, really tall now. "I don't think its tall enough, but its as well as we can get it, I think," Elliot said. "Now what are you gonna do with it?"

Elliot really didn't want to keep talking about this. At the same time, he knew if he told Asher that the older teen would just start worrying about him again. And as much as he really liked being hugged and softly reassured by Asher, he really didn't like having to talk about topics this complicated. Maybe Asher would notice it a page taken out of his book when Elliot proceeded to ignore all of that conversation, almost as if in a daze, before finally turning lazily towards him. "Yeah. He does," Elliot finally said, trying to drag out a smile again.

Much better to focus on the roller coasters. "Building under stuff is really fun," he said, remembering that one time he built Happy Valley. Really chaotic mess of loop-de-loops, then raised the ground to cover it all up, and finally built a small, peaceful-looking circle loop connecting to the terrifying underground mess. People never knew what they were getting into when they approached Happy Valley! Although that might have been because people in Roller Coaster Tycoon never knew what they were getting into, and not any genius on Elliot's part. But deep in his heart, he knew Happy Valley was a smart plan.

"Y'know, I think Isaac took overtime today," Elliot said, surely marking a guest to be named Isaac and dipped slowly yet agonizingly into a lake. "He's been doing that a lot lately. Probably wants to make sure he has enough for the holiday rush. Good thing, huh? He probably would've been back by now otherwise." Wouldn't it have been great if he just ended up barging in through the front door in the middle of that hug? "He's really been working hard lately, though. I hope it doesn't tire him out too much. I think part of him's trying to take responsibility, too, since he's one of the only other people in the family working right now." Sure, Maia's gifts were important, but so was contributing to the household income. Maybe Isaac was gonna be spending a lot more time at this job than Elliot thought.

"People being nice to my big bro there?"

Elliot shrugged a little. "Its not really handling one or the other so much as handling both," he pointed out. "And I know, I know. He doesn't have to go to the Digital World too. But I get the feeling if we didn't schedule stuff he'd start sneaking out to do it, so by setting aside some time it makes everything smoother. And then there's also grades, and language-learning, and helping out around home.

It all just gets kinda busy sometimes,"

Of course, for now Elliot was just watching Asher fiddle with the price of admission, making it constantly swing between way too cheap and way too expensive. "Why don't you make it free, but then make all the food and water really expensive?" he suggested sleepily. By now, if Asher looked at him he'd see Elliot was hugging a pillow to his chest. "Or, like, have a giant roller coaster by the entrance, but the exit dumps them off clear on the other side of the park. And then they gotta find their way back." Such deviousness! It was clear Elliot had a lot of ideas when it came to gaming. Then again, this was also the guy who rigged his Minecraft homes with TNT in case anyone moved his bookshelves out of place.

Of course, he hadn't even been thinking customers. "Well, both," Elliot added, "But I was mostly thinking co-workers. He told me because of the high turnover rate people could be a little chilly at first, so I wanted to make sure things were going better for him now. But customers are important too. Wouldn't it be great if my big bro was already starting to get some regulars?"

The topic of customers was starting to get the gears in Elliot's head turning, too. "Any good customer stories lately? They don't have to be Isaac's. Although it'd be way funnier if they were," Elliot requested, rolling over onto his belly so he could get a better look of Asher. Looking at him while lying flat on his back was really starting to get straining!