Chapter Text
The Theory of Scarcity proposes that human wants and needs are infinite, while the resources that are readily available are finite. Humanity's litany of excess, waste, and avarice can never be satisfied. Human society cannot be satiated, and there will never be a way to accommodate the desires of every person at any one time. As far as theory goes, a world where everybody is happy can never, and will never, exist.
By way of ultra-deep excavation, humanity discovered an untapped, near-infinite source of energy. Magma energy, as it became known, fuelled a modern-day industrial revolution, but its limitations were pushed beyond simply boiling water to spin turbines. It was capable of so much more. Of doing the extraordinary: and the key to human immortality was soon discovered. Mankind could no longer die of natural causes, and humanity exploited their newfound power to its fullest. But, as there always tends to be, there was a drawback to using this Magma energy. Its extraction laid waste to the Earth's surface: drying out the ground, dirtying the water, killing the life that had existed there for many millions of years. These consequences were ignored. The efforts that previous generations had made towards conserving the health of their planet were cast aside in a fit of unprecedented corporate greed, and soon almost all life went extinct. The planet became uninhabitable, its surface a wasteland.
In the wake of their destruction, mankind constructed mobile fortress towns known as "Plantations", and celebrated the new culture that came with them. Despite living surrounded by evidence of their failures, human greed prevailed still, and Magma energy was siphoned more than ever in order to fuel these moving cities.
But one day, seemingly out of nowhere, mysterious, colossal creatures appeared with the power to crush entire cities beneath their hideous forms. Some thought they were a punishment sent by god, others worshipped them as gods, but they soon became known to all as humankind's greatest enemy. Klaxosaurs.
APE, a group of gifted scientists spearheaded by world renowned Doctor Werner Frank, invented a countermeasure. An equally monstrous combat tool in the form of a humanoid robot: The FRANXX. There were setbacks at first, functioning reproductive organs were needed to pilot a FRANXX, a trait which was becoming more and more rare as time went on, infertility being one of the only side effects of Magma immortality. The problems didn't end there, the neural backlash on a single pilot proved too much to handle, and so a double-pilot system was created. One Pistil and one Stamen, usually teenagers whose reproductive organs still functioned as normal, were put into pairs and taught to connect to the other's mind using FRANXX tech as a medium, in order to better control the Mechas.
Humanity started winning: Klaxosaurs fell all over the world before they could ever reach the Plantations. But the FRANXX were only as good as their pilots, and rebellious teenagers were hardly the most obedient soldiers. They needed a role model, an all-seeing eye, their lives needed to revolve solely around piloting, and so the Parasite program was born.
Hiro had always thought he would be alone in this world.
He would always be that one kid who asked too many questions — who wanted to know where they all came from, what their purpose in life was — and who would get annoyed when the adults didn't want to tell him. There were so many secrets that the children were never allowed an answer to, and yet he seemed to be the only one there who wasn't just complacent. They'd be sitting around their entire lives, under the thumb of some supposedly all-knowing overlords, and they didn't even care.
They were happy to live in cages, unable to spread their wings.
The fact that they weren't even allowed the luxury of being properly named was the final nail in the coffin. When asked, the other kids brushed it off as if it were nothing, and the adults were no help either. "The books you read are just fantasy, your serial number is all you'll ever need to refer to yourself as, 016.", they would tell him in that condescending tone. Like he was the weird one for wanting to be something more than a disposable pawn.
The children at the Garden were never equal, Hiro soon realised that their numbers were loosely based on their aptitude. They were told there was nothing wrong with being a higher Code, but every month more kids would disappear, and it was only ever the highest numbers who would go. Nobody came for you if you were smart enough, or strong enough, or willing enough to be just another cog in the machine. Grown-ups said that they were being taken "to a place that's better for them", but did such a place exist? If not the Garden, then where? If their caretakers were to be believed, there were monsters who roamed the world outside the walls of their cage, and only adults and trained pilots were allowed out there.
That was another thing, the adults living outside the walls were just like the children in the Garden, trapped. It was hardly idyllic. The only difference between them was that the grown-ups lived in bigger cages known as "Plantations", and relied on teenage pilots to defend them from the perils that came from the outside. Teenagers who were forced to face the horrors of an Earth that had been ruined as a result of actions that they weren't responsible for. It wasn't fair. Nobody ever listened, even after he gave all his friends proper names, even when he explained just how unjust and cruel the system was toward the parasites. They were all the same, adults and children alike, and before long, all their faces began to blur together.
Hiro was, according to the same adults who did nothing but lie, more special than the other kids. That really ticked him off. Hiro's way of thinking might've been atypical, but that didn't make him any better than any other child there. They just thought he was simple-minded enough to shut up if they praised him enough. He would be taken out of their usual area in the Garden for extracurricular activities — ones that could occupy his hands for a while, and keep him from trying to talk some sense into his friends.
The adults insisted it was his ideas that made him special, and yet it was this very way of thinking that isolated him. Despite how he felt, Hiro was by no means an outcast; matter of fact, a few of the kids thought of him as some sort of leader.
I'm no leader. We're all just bricks in the wall, I'm nothing special.
Sometimes it was distressing: the fact that he would never truly find companionship in any of those empty-eyed kids that littered the floor of the Nursery, not until they woke up from all this brainwashing.
So, for all intents and purposes, Hiro was alone, and that wouldn't change until they did. The boy could only dream of someone who could see eye to eye with him, someone who saw through the lies.
Someone like her.
Hiro stared at the ceiling of his and Goro’s shared room through weary eyes, having fallen onto the floor at some point during the night. It was too early to wake up as far as he could tell; given the lack of light that would, at this time of year, be seeping through the curtains by the time he was needed out of bed.
It was proving difficult to find the only person in the world who could fill the gaping hole in his heart, given he couldn't remember who she was, or is, and Hiro was starting to get fed up with himself.
He was having those dreams again. The ones that were fuzzy at the edges, ones that left him feeling despondent and aching for the touch of someone that he couldn't quite recall once he woke up. Ones that blurred the faces of people he knew he wasn't supposed to be able to remember. The dreams were all mostly the same: it was during the “special testing” that he was undergoing in the Garden that he had wandered away from the adults when their backs were turned. He didn’t go particularly far — the wing he was in was bleak and lacked much that could have been of interest. Matter of fact, it didn’t have much of anything in it at all. Just long hallways that reeked of disinfectant, and locked doors that gave no response when he knocked. He had set about finding his way back to the adults when he saw her.
Everything was so vague in his mind, despite the fact that it couldn't have been any more than 5 or 6 years ago. The memories were all so blurred together that even after many tens of these dreams he didn’t have a particularly good sense of time, but before he knew it, he’d busted through her window with a light fixture he’d worked free of its fittings. His heart had been in his mouth, and he had to put on a brave face as he held out his hand. He had never done anything half as outlandish as this during his time in the Garden, he wasn't much of a troublemaker, and saw no point in causing the adults unnecessary woe. The furthest he'd stepped out of line was when he named himself and his fellow children, but even that wasn't really causing trouble.
She had taken his hand, and followed him eagerly down the tree he’d had to climb to reach her window, but who was she? The static that covered her face had recently begun dissipating, little by little, with every one of these dreams he experienced; and he could finally try to make heads or tails of her features. She had crimson red skin, pink hair, and two large, iridescent horns protruding from her forehead. Were they pink too — like her hair — or were they red? Hiro shut his eyes again, willing himself impatiently to remember more clearly, but consciously trying to find the even smallest scraps of information was like pulling teeth. He was chasing images hidden in the deepest recesses of his mind, ones that always seemed so near, yet somehow out of reach…
They hurried through the white tundra, the air utterly frigid as snowflakes descended in their thousands onto the pair. He was thankful to have worn his thick winter boots that day, but she wasn’t so lucky. She must be freezing in those rags, he had thought, and yet her hands were warm to the touch. Hiro wasn't sure exactly what his plan was, other than getting as far away from the Garden as possible. He was half expecting to have been shot dead or at the very least stopped by now, but for some reason they were still running. Nobody had made any effort to catch them, but meeting a premature end out here was starting to not to seem so bad. Would I have cared if they really shot me? I would have been free for the first time in my life, and that freedom is all I need now. I would've died happy. It didn't matter. They didn't kill him, and now he had to focus on getting his new companion away from the Garden. That hellish place didn't deserve either of them as far as he was concerned, but he was finding it difficult to come up with a plan of action when the girl would make new problems for him to solve every few minutes.
“Stop! Don’t eat that!!” He cried as she tried to lower a wriggling mouse into her mouth by its tail, her razor sharp teeth snapping at his fingers as he swiped the rodent out of her clutches. The other thing he had to think about was what to call her, but that wasn't as urgent a problem, he had plenty of time to think of a name for her once he managed to calm her down.
They walked through the night, and at one point Hiro had to give the girl a lift so that she could get some sleep. He tried putting the danger of the Klaxosaurs out of his mind, but they had certainly put some distance between themselves and the Garden, and the odds of encountering one of humanity’s greatest enemies weren’t as low as he would have liked.
“Just another thing I should’ve thought about…” Grumbled the boy sorely. It was so unlike him to act so impulsively, every action he took was made with the appropriate level of care and caution, but that girl had done something to his brain. His feet had moved on their own, he had acted without thinking, and now looking back he was rather bitter that he hadn't put some forethought into breaking a girl out of her cell and running away with her. A horned girl, no less.
His friend wasn’t the heaviest cargo, but it had been damn tiring carrying her all this way. At least once she woke up the following morning she was much more docile, and when Hiro took her red-skinned hand and walked with his fingers laced between hers she was almost silent for a pretty long time — not counting the occasional coos and noises of awe as she took in their surroundings. It gave both past and present Hiro time to think. He couldn't see the number on that anklet she wore through the brain fog, but it had startled him for a reason he could only assume being that it was shockingly high, or shockingly low. Despite having all this time to create a name for her — something he’d gotten rather good at, or so he thought — the first few he came up with were far too on the nose for his liking.
“███? Hmm… nah.” He pondered to nobody in particular. “███… Well, that’s a new one…”
“Uuu?” She responded, eyeing him up with that curious glint in her green orbs. Green! Her eyes were green! This was amazing progress, and he could now remember almost perfectly how those eyes had looked when he first broke her window: wide and full of wonder as she tenderly took hold of his outstretched hand. It was such a vivid memory that Hiro almost couldn't believe he'd forgotten it.
“Um… I’m code 016, Hiro. You can’t speak, can you?” He asked, his voice soft. She warbled something unintelligible back at him, which was pretty much the best confirmation he could’ve asked for.
She couldn't form coherent words, and yet her voice was laced with curiosity in such an adorable way, one that made his heart melt even all these years later. It had mirrored his own, that insatiable desire to know more, to know why, and he was sure her face was just as cute too. If only I could see her without this stupid mental block. What would have blocked out my memories of her in the first place? The adults, of course, but was it the doctor? And why? Hiro could answer those last questions himself. Of course it was the doctor. This girl was no doubt related to him in some way. Hiro had seen something he shouldn’t have, done something so out of order that the man had no other choice but to wipe it clean from his mind. In which case, why am I recalling all of this now? Wouldn't he want me to forget her forever? Maybe Dr. Franxx isn’t as meticulous as his reputation would suggest. That, or this is all some grand plan of his… Did it even matter? He was remembering her, and that was all he could ask for right now.
“How about… ████ ███? Kinda clunky, isn’t it?” He had said with a chuckle, it wasn’t his best work to say the least. But it would do for now, and she seemed far more excited about all of this than the other kids that he’d named, most of whom were named a whole lot more elegantly.
“Ewo chu?” She parroted, copying his playful tone as she tried out her name in her own mouth.
“Oh? Guess you like it more than I do.”
“Ewo chu. Ewo chu!!” Hiro realised he should have come up with a better one before she got so attached, but it was too late now. She chanted the name like a mantra as they walked, and he had laughed at the conviction with which she was saying it. She was adorable, Hiro was ashamed he had let himself forget her, even if the adults had meddled.
She seemed to be able to understand him almost perfectly, and yet he couldn’t understand her. Words that he could make sense of seemed infuriatingly close, but nonetheless out of reach for the moment.
Come on, say your name, I know you can do it. I need you to be able to do it.
Hiro knew his thoughts were in vain, if she had at any point said it properly, it would have just been blocked out like all the other important information. But a name was all he needed to have a fighting chance at finding her again, or better yet, her code. Papa above, what he wouldn’t give to know her code again, but it was evidently too much to ask of the girl, and he could hardly blame her. He doubted they had given her a proper education like the rest of the kids back when they were in the Garden, given her lack of reading comprehension. He'd noticed the picture book tucked in her rags, one which was clearly targeted at an audience a hefty handful of years younger than them.
That just brought up yet another unknown surrounding the girl, how old was she? She appeared to be of a similar age to him, but looks were deceiving, and she might not age at the same rate that humans did. 5 years in the future she might have become unrecognisable, and Hiro couldn’t help but despair at the fact that that was a plausible scenario. How would he ever find a girl whose name, age, and appearance he either couldn’t remember or didn’t know?
Hiro needed a breakthrough, but those would only come with more of these dreams. More dreams demanded more time, and with the way his aptitude scores were looking, time might be in short supply. He could only assume that his scores had been screwed up by this, either when the Doctor had wiped his memories, or something else that had transpired over those couple of days that he wasn't at the Garden. The two events, his running away and subsequent drop in aptitude, were far too closely linked to have been a coincidence. Coincidental or not though, he and Naomi needed to connect properly, or they’d be on a one-way trip back to the Garden. He had no doubt in his mind that they could, their scores were good enough to get them onto Cerasus with their friends after all, but that didn’t stop him from worrying. Hiro's handicaps would only slow them down as the adults' expectations grew.
Regardless of his present-day self’s thoughts, the pair kept moving until the snowfall was too thick to walk safely through, at which point they huddled together at the base of an enormous tree, its roots sheltering them from the harsh winds. The girl withdrew that book he’d seen from her rags, and Hiro could just about make out the name through the static hazing its edges: “The Beast and The Prince”. It was almost ironic, and though he knew she was no beast; such a word was below someone like her, she wasn’t human. That didn’t change a thing, though. She needed someone to be there for her, and he wasn’t gonna turn his back on her now. Still not a human, but then again, I’m hardly a prince.
“Before we start, would you like a snack? It isn’t much, I only have the reward that the adults give me for the tests they run on me.” He asked, the word "snack" seemingly enough to pique her attention on its own.
He held out two green orbs of candy, the type he was given after every one of the “Special testing sessions” he was partaking in when he found her. She snatched them both greedily, and Hiro winced as she stuffed both candies, wrappers and all, into her mouth. She chewed noisily, the sweet orbs crunching as her teeth split them open with ease, and it only took a moment for her entire face to light up like a lamp. Her cheeks flushed a rosy pink, and her pupils dilated into saucers.
“Eeeeeee!!!!” She squealed, and Hiro had to dodge as she kicked her feet out in pure delight. It was a glorious sight, and instantly all of this was worth the effort he’d put in. She was happy, and suddenly that was all that mattered in his life anymore. If I can see that face again, even just once, I can die happy, present Hiro thought absently, having to wait a considerable amount of time for her to come down from the sugar high that ensued. The girl was quite literally bouncing off of the tree’s roots for a few minutes, and Hiro could only look on in wonder. She truly was one-of-a-kind. Once the horned girl calmed down enough to snuggle back up with him, he opened the book.
Hiro had flicked through the pages at a snail pace, with the girl… Ewo Chu, making an admirable effort to follow along as he spoke the words out loud to her. What could her number have been? Seventy-two? That isn’t high enough to be surprising. Was the first digit a zero? Do numbers that low even exist? Maybe she was a triple digiter, “Ewo Chu” was only a mispronunciation of what I named her, after all. It didn’t matter right now, the dream continuing regardless. His memories normally got too unclear and incoherent to understand somewhere around here, but this time they remained in their hazy yet decipherable state. This was new territory and Hiro needed to focus, there would be information here, he was sure. The final few pages in particular had caught the pinkette’s attention, for some reason.
“That was a tear jerker, huh? Unable to marry because they're too different.”
“Mawwy?” She tilted her head to the side quizzically, holding the last page open and taking it all in again.
“Yeah, marry, apparently it's a promise you make to stay with someone forever and ever. I had to work real hard to get that information out of one of my caretakers, and even then she didn’t really explain what it meant in much detail.” Hiro stood, stretching his arms above his head “Let’s walk some more, ‘kay? It looks like the snow isn’t falling as hard anymore, we can make some good headway before it gets dark again.”
“Hee hee~” The horned girl giggled, looking up at him through her bangs with a cheeky smile playing on her lips. She tucked her legs up against her chest, at which point Hiro noticed a bloody graze on one of her knees.
“Ah… you're hurt! Is it from when you scraped your knee earlier?” He asked, bending down to take a better look at it. Blue blood… “Give me a sec, okay? I don’t have any bandages, and it might get infected if I leave it as it is… I read once about how animals tend to each other’s wounds by licking them. Here, this might sting a little, so hold my hand while I clean it.”
The boy bent down a little more, letting her grip his wrist as he placed his tongue flat against her knee. His eyes snapped shut, and it took all Hiro’s might to keep himself from grimacing. He had to force his tongue back onto her knee to lick it again, and it was no more pleasant than the first time. It was foul tasting, like metal and dirt, but he pushed through it, lapping at the blood until the scrape was clean and the bleeding had stopped. It was an ugly gash, and he had ingested quite a lot of her blood in trying to clean it, but what really concerned him was that she hadn’t even realised it was there before Hiro had pointed it out to her. It was a real wonder that he had noticed it before she had. It spoke volumes about what they’d done to her to make her pain tolerance so hard to trigger. She can never go back. I won't allow it.
“Mawwy…?” She asked quietly, her voice a little more than a whisper as those beautiful emerald eyes gazed down at him. She was smarter than first appearances would suggest, and had known the weight that the word held even having just learnt it.
“Huh? Oh, right. When we get out of here, I’m gonna stay with you forever!" He responds, smiling wholly down at her. "Then, I’ll be your Darling!”
Tears pricked the edges of the pinkette’s eyes as she clutched at his coat, her fists bunching the thick jacket right above his chest. “Da… Da…”
“Exactly, Darling. I can be your Darling, and you can be mine!”
“Da-ing!”
Through the haze that was growing ever thicker, Hiro remembered that feeling, clear as day. His heart swelled, and he had felt like he would give the world to protect her. There was something primal in him, an element of himself that he hadn’t known existed that had awoken that day. One that wanted nothing but to make this girl happy, to be with her forever and ever like he'd promised. His body felt light, his heart had been pounding right out of his chest, his stomach full of butterflies, and he couldn’t help but grin toothily at the girl who clung to him. Words couldn't describe this feeling, not words that they'd been taught, anyway.
It was perfect. She was perfect. Hiro and the girl were all each other had ever wanted, and Hiro had felt like nothing would ever keep her from him, not even the adults. He wouldn't let them.
“There they are! You brats ran pretty damn far, you know that?!” Shouted a gruff voice.
No…
“A real pain in the ass! Damn monster!” Said another as he approached the huddled children. It was the worst thing Hiro had ever heard.
No… no, no, no.
The boy’s head whipped around, and he was met with a harrowing sight. There were armed guards rushing to surround the pair, in numbers that seemed completely absurd for just two missing kids.
He had moved between the closest of them and his Darling almost instinctively.
“I won’t let you take her! Why can’t you just leave us alone!? Let us be free!? You're the real monsters, you’ll never let us be happ-”
He whimpered weakly as the butt of a rifle cracked against the side of his head, and his vision swam as he fell to his knees. It hurts… why does my heart still hurt?
████ ███’s cries were the last thing he could remember before it all faded away, the poor girl screaming herself hoarse as she sobbed the last word he had taught her.
“Da! DA-ING!!”
Hiro's head hit the snow.
Werner Franxx had figured that Code 002 would be opposed to parting ways with the boy she had grown so fond of. Of course she was, he had been the centre of her world, if only for a couple of days, but that was enough. The man had seen love in his lifetime, he'd even experienced it himself before it became taboo, but this went beyond just love. In the limited time they'd had together, the two had gotten so close that, if Code 016 was given the choice, Werner was sure he would choose to be with Code 002 over every single childhood friend he'd grown up with. As heartwarming as it was, he couldn't let that happen. Code 002 was made for a purpose, and a distraction like him was unhealthy unless weaponized.
The doctor wasn't sure if the memory wipe machines could permanently erase such a strong emotion, but he would have to try. Even if the memories came back in a few years time, and given such a love between them it wasn't unlikely, it wouldn't be a problem at that point. He was sure 002 would have given up on the boy by then, she was far too volatile to stay hung up on him for that long. Franxx would also have to try and "normalise" the child, APE wouldn't let someone like him succeed, and so his rebellious nature would have to be dealt with.
Code 016 was certainly an interesting specimen, even beyond his unbelievable aptitude and critical thinking. He made the decision to break out of the only place he'd ever called home, with a girl he'd seen for a split second during a brief overlap in their schedules. He had set aside their differences like they had never existed at all. The entire buildup was on camera, of course, but Franxx had taken the footage for himself, his interest piqued by the boy. He was resourceful, climbing up to her window using a tree, and then breaking the glass with a loose light fixture. He was compassionate, a trait Franxx had thought was long since lost to time and the endless brainwashing from APE. And he was curious, constantly pestering adults with questions most children wouldn't bother with until they were full blown pilots, at which point they could easily be "killed in action" if they learnt too much.
The doctor wondered how a squad of these modern day children would react if left untouched in their teenage years. Would they grow to be more efficient pilots, or would they rebel, like 016 had?
That was a thought for another day. For now, he had to hope that a memory wipe would be enough to keep the two away from each other.
I won't let them silence me. They will not keep me from my Darling.
He promised. He said we would be together forever. Why won't they let me see him again?
All 002 ever did these days was train. Round and round the same track she'd run, day after day, pretending he was there with her. The adults never told her anything about him, only using his name like a carrot on a stick. They crammed all these mundane tasks into her schedule, hoping that if she spent enough time occupied with them she would forget him. But she never would.
I'll never let them take his face away from me. His eyes, his hair, his nose, his mouth.
The memory of him was like a slip of paper. No matter how well sheltered she kept it, one day the corners would become folded, and the slip would shrivel up, and she wouldn't be able to see that perfect smiling face in her mind again. But she was determined not to let that happen.
There wasn't a word to describe how she had felt that day, but she didn't need to label such a feeling, it would resurface when it was needed, when they would let her see him again. "In a while", she was told, sometimes it would even be "tomorrow", but tomorrow never came. The days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, and though the memory of him didn't fade, her hope did. Those people did nothing but lie.
The torture had stopped after she returned to the Garden, but the threat of its return loomed over her head, paralysing her in fear whenever she dared to think about trying to find her Darling again. The threat of the lasers that would lacerate her skin, and those big knives that took pieces of her away, only for the pieces to grow back.
Always taking, and never giving her anything in return. Darling had given her candy, and asked for nothing from her. These adults do nothing but steal what made me his Darling. Her rags, her red skin, the nice pocket file he'd given her when he had noticed that her nails were sharp enough to cut into her palms. All gone. Next they would come for her book, and the last thing she had shared with her Darling would be gone. She couldn't let them.
Zero Two would not be controlled.
I'll eat it, and then Darling will be with me forever, like he said. Inside of me.
Soon the book was gone too, but this time it was of her own accord, and it marked her first victory over the adults. The one thing she had left of her Darling other than the memory of him, hers forever.
When she found him again she would never let go. She wouldn't cower behind him like she had on that fateful day. She would be with him forever and ever, and then forever after that. Forever and ever. And she would rip through anybody who would dare try and take that dream from her again.