Thank you for the lovely reviews! They made my day C: Yeah, when I said I'd have the second chapter up in "a week", I guess I meant two. Sorry about that.

Warning: This chapter includes heavy character focus, a little bit of headcanon, and lots of talking. I am not Jewish and have little to no knowledge of how a real Jewish funeral works, and though I did do research on the subject there may be errors. (Not that I went very into detail with the funeral, but it never hurts to have a disclaimer…)

I tried to stick as close to canon as possible, and with as little as we know about Hi's life except that he comes from a strict Jewish family and was the newest addition to the island before Tory, it was kind of hard. Thusly, this chapter has some headcanon of mine that may or may not be disproved by future installments in the series (but it probably won't, seeing as what little backstory we get in this series argh). I was biased towards writing this chapter next, partly because Hi is my favourite character and partly because I wanted to get Chance out of the way for a while, truthfully. For a while being the key words. XD

Enjoy!

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"Just have a seat over there sirs, and a doctor will be with you shortly."

"Thank you, ma'am." Hi keeps up his best poker face, saluting to the receptionist behind the desk. She raises an eyebrow, and Chance rolls his eyes.

"Pay no attention to him," he says dryly, although it doesn't have the same effect as he'd hoped; he sounds more than a little silly, with a tissue held to his nose, head thrown back and blood drying above his lip.

The receptionist gives him what is possibly the most loathing stare of all time. "Just take a seat, sir."

"Will do." Hi flashes her a toothy grin and strides over to the magazine rack. "Oh wow, Raw Denim Weekly. Exactly the kind of thing I want to read on a weekly basis." He thumbs through the rack some more. "Ooh, Pocket Watch Monthly. Definitely the most useful thing I'll read this month." He pauses. "Cosmopolitan! Lucky me!"

"You know, you don't have to be as loud as your shirt," Chance comments, irritated. The other people in the waiting room are beginning to stare at them in a mixture of anger and incredulity.

"Rude!" Hi flops down into one of the cheap plastic chairs. "And I was just finding the right magazine - wait, what's wrong with my shirt?"

"Nothing," Chance smirks. "It suits your personality."

Hi frowns. "I'll take that as a compliment," he says smoothly.

One by one, people begin to filter out of the waiting room, taken away to be examined by various doctors and nurses. Chance only has a broken nose, and is thusly at the bottom of the waiting list. Not that he minds - it's a chance to ask some questions he's been wanting clear answers to for a while now.

"So," he begins, thumbing idly through a magazine as the last person leaves the waiting room. "You seem to be taking the news rather well."

"What news?"

Chance blinks. "That I was foolish enough to pry too deeply into your business. That I was insane enough to inject myself with a virus that could have potentially killed me. That now I'm just like you."

Hi snickers. "You're not just like me. You're much more mature and civilized. You're practically British."

"You know what I mean. Doesn't it bother you?"

Hi pauses. "Yes," he says slowly. "Yeah, I think it kind of bothers me that you've been kind of a jerk recently. Yeah, it's kind of weird that my only friends used to be the only special ones, and now there's…you." Hi shrugs. "But to be fair, you weren't exactly the definition of mental wellbeing."

"I'm still not," Chance says quietly, looking down at his feet.

Hi only smiles. "You're better," he assures him.

Chance manages a tired smile. "So what happens now?"

Hi leans back in his chair, whistling. "I don't…I don't really know, to be perfectly honest. I know Ben and Tory kinda freaked out over it, but-" he takes a deep breath, "-I think we'd all appreciate that help you mentioned. Figuring out how this thing has changed our DNA, if it's for worse or better…it's important."

Chance nods. "Believe me, I'll do whatever I can. Maybe I can use some of the Claybourne fortune for good. I'd be the first," he adds. It's meant as a joke, but instead comes out as a bitter and self-loathing.

Hi is silent for a moment. "You know," he says finally, "I don't think this is a bad thing."

Chance frowns. "I'm sure you're the only one who shares that sentiment."

"I don't mind change," Hi says, and it's the truth. "Well, I do, like if suddenly I woke up in an alien spaceship and they told me that I was a test subject all along and that my entire life was a lie, I'd mind it then."

"But you adapt well," Chance guesses.

Hi nods. "I guess. Better than others, maybe. When I first moved here I thought I was gonna be the only teenager at Loggerhead and that it was gonna be boring and I would hate it. Turns out, there's two other guys that I can hang around and be a doofus with. Plus, the scenery is beautiful." Hi shrugs. "Point is, I ended up loving it. It's a hassle to get to the synagogue on time, and we have to catch a freaking boat just to get to school, and there are wolves everywhere, but I still love it."

"I'm the opposite," Chance replies with a grimace. "If I tell myself I'm going to hate something, I'll end up hating it regardless of whether it's really all that bad. Not the greatest habit to have."

"Habits are hard to break," Hi smiles thinly. "But seriously, change is healthy. If things didn't change, we'd never grow and learn."

"Sometimes things change for the worse."

"Nothing ever changes absolutely for the worse. Some time, somewhere, there's someone or something who's a little happier from a change someone else made." Hi sighs. "Well, that's my, uh, opinion."

"I wasn't expecting to have such a…philosophical discussion with you when we arrived here," Chance admits.

Hi laughs. "Yeah, I'm probably the person you'd least expect to have a conversation like this with. I kinda think about this a lot, I just haven't really had the chance to talk about it."

Chance raises an eyebrow. "Really?"

"People think I'm a doofus, and I am really, but I also do a lot of thinking. Usually I'm just being a dumbass, so people overlook it."

"Is that how you cope with change too?" Chance asks, genuinely interested.

Hi shrugs. "I put on a brave face so I don't have to see the people I love around me suffer. Smiling all the time gives the impression of not particularly caring, I find."

Chance takes a moment to reflect. "I haven't smiled genuinely for a long time," he realises.

Hi nods. "Sometimes it's hard," he says, staring out into the window at the car headlights flashing past. He doesn't add anything more, and the silence in the waiting room grows. Hi wonders if the receptionist can hear them from all the way on the other side of the room, but she's put headphones in her ears and began reading a magazine - Cosmopolitan, Hi gleefully notes.

The silence is broken when Chance clears his throat. "So. The virus. What does it do?"

"Huh?" Hi looks up.

"It makes our eyes glow yellow - red, for me - and gives us certain…."

"Superpowers?"

"Uncanny abilities," Chance decides upon. Superpowers seems like much too childish a word. "Or heightened abilities."

"Yeah, and we all have different specialties," Hi replies. "Like Ben turns into the Hulk, Tory can smell a fart from another continent, Shelton can hear the fart from another continent, and I can see in…" Hi pretends to flick his hair and grins at Chance. "…Hi-definition."

Chance grimaces. "Wow. That was a wonderful pun. Really."

Hi smiles. "I've been wanting to use that forever. So what's your specialty?"

Chance blinks. "I haven't really had the chance to find out."

"…Did you just make a pun?"

"What? No, I…How else could I have phrased that sentence?!"

"There were plenty of others ways and you know it," Hi smirks. "So you don't really know if you have any kind of specialty?"

"Like I said, I haven't had the time or the bravery to try and find out."

"Hmm." Hi folds his arms and leans back in his chair, a thoughtful expression upon his face. "You know, us four all have powers directly tying into one of the five senses, and the only one missing is touch."

"What about Cooper?"

"Coop has…Coop has his own little doggy powers." Hi shrugs. "We, uh, don't really know about Coop's powers. He can't tell us, after all. Maybe one day he'll be able to speak English. That could be his thing. He'd be like that dog in those books about the talking dog."

"Right," Chance says flatly. "Perhaps I have a different set of powers to yours. It is a different strain of the virus, after all."

"Yeah," Hi says thoughtfully. "And your eyes glow red instead of yellow. You should do a few test runs someday, figure it out."

"Perhaps." Chance hesitates. "I'm not entirely sure how much damage this virus would do to my body, however. It could be harming us, rather than helping."

"Also true." Hi sits forward slightly, reaching over for another magazine. "I don't think that's something we should dwell on too much."

"That these powers may be killing us? Doesn't that seem like a very pressing matter to you?"

Hi shrugs, letting his eyes skim the magazine idly. "Well, yeah. But I'm not going to focus on that. I have these powers now - we have them - and I think that if we use them responsibly and actually help people with them, it won't matter that they're shortening our lifespans or whatever. It's kind of like we're giving some of our lives to other people."

"That seems rather idealistic for a high school student." And slightly morbid, Chance thinks, if he enjoys the feeling of metaphorically giving his life away to others.

"What? We've already saved lives." Hi looks Chance in the eyes, uncharacteristically serious. "I didn't think much of it at first, but then I realised…what I've got - what you've got - is huge. We've got the power to change lives, for the better or for the worse. Why not take the chance to make the world a better place to live in?"

"The entire world?" Chance almost laughs. What can a high school student do to change the entire world?

Hi smiles thinly. "I don't think it's impossible," he says simply, and the two lapse into a strangely comfortable silence.

oOoOoOoOo

When Hiram Stolowitsky was small - five, maybe six years old - his grandmother passed away.

It was a solemn time in the Stolowitsky household. His parents - even his mother, who had only lost her mother-in-law, was teary-eyed. All of the family gathered for her funeral, people who Hi couldn't even remember seeing again before or after the occasion. It wasn't a happy time for anyone - everyone wore black, Hi included. Hi had protested violently at the thought of wearing all black; his wardrobe mainly included bright Hawaiian shirts and colorful flip-flops.

"Do I have to wear this?" he remembers complaining to his mother. "This - what did you say it was - tuck-see-dough?"

"Tuxedo," Ruth had stressed, smoothing him down. "Yes, you do. Your grandmother would have liked it best this way."

Hi disagreed, and decided to do something about it.

Sneaking off had been surprisingly easy. Hi wonders now if it should have been so easy for a five year old to sneak off unattended in a crowd full of people he barely knew, but he reached his destination unharmed. When he returned, his mother had been shocked to find him dressed not in his tuxedo, but back in his bright yellow Hawaiian shirt, flip-flops, and a straw hat.

"Hiram Stolowitsky!" she had thundered, storming over to her son. "Where did you even get those from? Change back right now young man, or I'll-"

"I don't wanna!" Hi protested. 'I don't like that stupid thing. It looks silly."

"It's respectful," Ruth snapped. "Why on earth would you want to wear…that?"

"Nana liked it when I wore bright colours," Hi had answered earnestly. "She said it reminded her to be happy."

After that, Ruth hadn't objected to Hi's choice of clothing ever again.

Hi is used to being the one that others turn to during times of crisis - not necessarily consciously, or realizing it was Hi that they want. If there's one thing Hi does extraordinary well, it's lightening the mood. He was making others laugh from the day he was born, and has only honed his talent ever since. The pack has managed to form an unspoken rule: if Hi is still joking, the situation isn't at its worst yet.

Hi wishes they'd realises that his jokes aren't necessarily something he can control anymore.

Now he does it out of sheer habit - the desire to be liked, combined with a friend circle that he has inexplicably become the designated clown of, and the desire - need - to see his friends happy and laughing. If Hi can distract them from the horrors of a situation with his bad humour and wacky style, then he's succeeded, and he can rest in the knowledge that he's helped out in his own little way. But sometimes he doesn't necessarily want to be the clown, and yet he jokes again anyway. Sometimes he doesn't think his weird, off-the-wall brand of humour is entirely appropriate, but his mouth runs ahead of his brain and conjures up some snarky comment that goes largely ignored.

And so it was settled. Tory may be the leader, but Hi is the glue who keeps his pack together, who guides them through the rough patches so that they may come out the other side unscathed. Though he's not unaffected by the horrors that somehow manage to befall them every few months, he likes to think that his jokes do them good, even if he struggles as a result.

A pack looks out for their own, after all.

oOoOoOooOoOo

The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.

- Nathaniel Branden

oOoOoOooOoOo

So that was a little…heavy. And a little bit of bonding between Hi and Chance. In another world, I think those two would actually get on kind of well. Hi seems to be able to get along with just about anybody if he doesn't have a grudge against them…

A friend of mine said that Chance wouldn't be taken to the ER for a broken nose, and…embarrassing story of mine, I totally did go to the ER - aka, the emergency room- because my teacher thought my nose was broken and the darn thing was projectile bleeding all over the place. It was broken, and a bad break too, but the teacher said she just kind of panicked at all the blood and thought I would bleed to death, and subsequently thought it was an emergency, and in hindsight, I probably could have just gone to the doctor's. The ER had a waiting room, but others I've been too haven't had them and you just sort of find a place to sit amongst the hubbub. Maybe it's a New Zealand thing.

Next chapter is Ben, because I don't really know how to write Shelton and I'm kind of freaking out a little for his chapter. /dies

Reviews are, as always, adored. Thank you for reading! :D