[Arashi] [Cyberpunk!AU] Open Your Eyes (15)
[Title] Open Your Eyes (15)
[Author] honooko
[Rating] R
[Notes] I know, this is the longest wait for an update ever. But I am not and never will abandon this story! It's all plotted out to the end now, so there's no reason for me not to finish. XD For tangiblewhimsy, who will be in my house in less than a month. ♥
Their plan was extremely complex, and it worried Jun. He knew better than anyone how good Aiba and Nino were at their respective talents, but Sho and Ohno remained relatively untested in the fight against the Ment. Sho had the mind to be formidable, but Jun wasn't sure how Ohno would fare.
"He was Force," Aiba reminded him over breakfast. "He's got knowledge we don't. That'll be useful." Jun finished his omelet in silence, running through every back-up plan at least twice before feeling somewhat prepared for what lay ahead.
The first task was outwardly simple: they needed to get their hands on a genuine Force uniform in order to duplicate it. It had to be a real one, too. Force uniforms contained identity strips that served like digital dog tags. Each uniform was coded to identity a specific wearer, and while Aiba was quite certain he could make a version that worked the same way, he needed an original to work off of.
"I have one," Ohno said, "but I left it behind. It's got a tracking system in it that they could have used to find me."
"Where did you leave it?" Nino asked him, a map spread out on the living room floor in front of him. One of his laptops was propped up on a couch cushion, tracking Ohno's mother throughout her day in prison.
"My apartment," Ohno said. "But the Force has to be all over it by now, right?"
"Probably," Nino said. "Won't stop me, though."
"How do you expect to get through a Ment housing facility to steal a Force uniform belonging to a defector?" Sho asked. He was curious, not incredulous, and Nino puffed a bit under the positive attention.
"Distractions!" he chirped. "Aiba's going to make me a big one." He and Aiba exchanged a look of self-satisfied glee, and Jun felt suddenly nervous again. Aiba and Nino could generally be trusted to be sensible about assignments, but sometimes they looked at each other and smiled, and Jun could tell they were about to do something very stupid 'because we can'.
"Is he going to be okay?" Sho asked as Nino suited up and put on his skates. "Things are kind of crazy out there right now." Jun forced himself to smile reassuringly, putting a hand on Sho's shoulder and pitching his voice to sound comforting.
"He'll be fine," he said. "He does this all the time." He didn't like lying to Sho, but the truth was far more than Sho was prepared to deal with at the moment. They needed his head clear for what was coming up. He held back the question that rose to his lips when Aiba handed Nino a variety of small boxes, none bigger than a coin. Nino deposited them in his pockets, patting himself down and checking everything was in place.
Ohno rounded the corner, watching Nino check everything in silence. His face was twisted up in worry and Jun kept wondering if Ohno was going to actually do anything, or just stand there quietly. Abruptly, Ohno seemed to make a decision; he stepped forward and in one smooth movement, put his hand on Nino's cheek and pressed a kiss to his lips.
For a long moment, no one said anything at all. Then Ohno stepped back, his face set in a firm expression. Nino just looked incredibly surprised.
Aiba let out a hoot of encouragement. Nino scowled at him.
"Be careful," Ohno said softly. Nino didn't answer, but Jun knew it was because Nino didn't want to lie to Ohno and promise his safe return when there was absolutely no guarantee.
"I'm off," he said instead, stepping out the door and rolling away with a backwards wave.
Everyone watched him leave in an empty, gaping silence.
~
Nino made good time to Ohno's building, considering he was dodging patrols the entire way. His memory was his map; he never forgot a place once he'd been there, and even though he'd been drugged pretty heavily when he'd arrived at this place, going home had been somewhat easier to recall. He came up to the building and hid behind a power generator on the side.
"Hello," Nino greeted the machine brightly, pulling out a thin cable from a packet on his vest. "I'll be getting inside you, if you don't mind."
The generator had no outright protests, and Nino whipped out a small screen from yet another pocket. He was tracing the power distribution; in buildings like these, you could tell what was what just by looking at how much electricity they required to run. For a Force residence building, the most power would be directed towards security.
The path glowed a bright yellow on his screen. The color made him pause, admiring its strength, before taking one of the tiny boxes out of his pocket. He placed the box on top of the generator and backed away.
The trigger was a sound; he snapped his fingers. Instantly, all the lights just ahead of him went out. Windows clicked open. Doors let go of their latches. All of Nino's devices shut down; the only thing that still worked were the wheels on his skates. The box had blown out a powerful electromagnetic pulse that killed everything using power in the immediately vicinity.
Now was his chance to get in. Nino darted along a shadowy edge, hiding behind a vehicle.
There were two sentries at the front door, but the loss of power had put them in a bit of an odd situation. It not only knocked out security features, it knocked out their uniforms. One man was twitching strangely, the various weapons mounted on his suit having begun to splutter in a dangerous way; the other was shouting into his communications device, not having realized it wasn't working.
"What the hell," he snapped, annoyed. "Did the power grid blow?"
His partner twitched again.
"I'll check it. You stay here," the first man said, as if his friend could have possibly done anything else. As soon as he had rounded the corner, Nino strode forward. He walked right past the twitching sentry; the man had no way to stop him. The door slid open when he pushed it and he didn't pause before entering.
Now he just had to get all the way up.
~
"How is he going to make it up 89 floors without being seen?" Sho asked, drumming his fingers on his knees. Aiba grinned, a small screwdriver held between his teeth. He removed it to answer.
"He'll manage," Aiba said. "He's going to hate every second though."
~
Pulling open a door just behind the elevators, Nino stepped inside and closed the door behind him before sitting down and pulling off his skates. He looked up… and up… and up.
"89 flights," Nino growled, facing the staircase. It was going to be a long hike, but at least he could be relatively sure he wouldn't be seen; no one took the stairs anymore, especially in buildings more than 30 stories high. Most people forgot there were staircases at all.
It took him a little over fifteen minutes. He had to pause every ten flights or so to take some deep breaths and make sure he hadn't lost track of which floor he was on; it was also pitch-dark with the power out, and he had to pay close attention to make sure the only sounds he could hear were his own footsteps.
By his calculations, the power would come back in about ten more minutes. He hit the 89th floor and peeked out the door, checking for sentries.
Using a small mirror, he looked around the corner. There were four guards at the elevators, but they were distracted with their malfunctioning uniforms and communication devices. Only one guard was looking steadfastly at the elevators with his weapon leveled; Nino knew this was going to be the guy he'd have to fool. Still barefoot, he crept along the wall, away from the sentries, until he reached Ohno's apartment. The locks were still blown and all he had to do was push it open. The uniform was exactly where Ohno had said it was: in a box just inside the front door.
Nino stepped inside the apartment and shut the door silently behind him. He picked up the suit and looked for the ID tag Ohno had described. It was a small LED panel, and like everything else electronic, it was dark. The uniform was safe to wear. Nino slipped it on, stuffing his skates in a bag he'd brought expressly for this purpose. Luckily, he and Ohno were essentially the same size. He pulled the helmet on and checked his reflection in the glass of a photo framed on the wall.
He realized suddenly it was a photo of a much younger Ohno, probably in grade school, and a woman who could only have been his mother. Carefully, Nino removed the photo from the wall. He opened the frame and took the picture out, putting it in his pocket. Once he put the frame back, he was satisfied he was ready to go.
Ohno's suit was a slightly older model; it didn't have a barracuda attachment and all his weapons were kept at his station, so while certain features of the suit were not functioning, it still moved. Nino had to leave the lower part of the mask open to breathe, as the air filter ran on power. He'd noticed a few other guards with their mouths exposed though, so he didn't think it would be a problem.
Now he just had to trick them into believing he was one of them.
Nino crept out the door again before sliding further down the hall along the wall. All the doors were unlocked, and he slipped inside one silently, counted to ten, before bursting out loudly, tripping over the floor and stumbling towards the elevators. He did his best to make it look like his limbs weren't cooperating with him.
"What's going on?!" he yelped, approaching the sentries at the elevator. They looked at him, startled, unsure of where he'd come from.
"Where-" the guard Nino had noticed paying close attention to his post earlier began, but Nino cut him off.
"Sir!" he said, "I was on leave, Sir, but then the lights went out. Am I needed, Sir?" He saluted stiffly. The force officer looked at him with a scowl.
"We've lost power," he said. Nino let his jaw gape in mock-surprise.
"But-how?!" he squeaked. The officer winced at the pitch of his voice. He looked about to respond when suddenly the communications unit crackled and the lights returned. The EMP blast had worn off. Nino had to hurry before anyone asked him for ID.
"Sir!" a voice said over the comms. "The generator has been tampered with!"
The officer pointed at Nino imperiously before answering back, "I'm sending someone down to look. Do not leave your posts!" He pressed the call button for the elevator, and Nino saluted him when the doors opened before getting inside. He followed it all the way down and walked out the front door as easily as he'd walked in; the officers posted at the bottom merely pointed him towards the generator before returning to their original positions on either side of the entrance.
Nino made for the generator, removing the tiny box that the EMP blast had come from. It had been knocked aside like debris by the first Force officer to take a look; it was easy enough to pocket once more. Glancing around the make sure he hadn't been followed, Nino slipped away and hit the streets.
He jogged, talking continuously to himself. This gave the outward illusion that he was on his way to meet someone, or lagging behind his unit. The uniform was enough to make people either overlook him (other Force) or hide from the sound of the boots clacking on the pavement (everyone else.) It took him half the time to make it back to The Place than it had taken him to leave.
"Can't be spotted now," he muttered to himself, ducking behind a dumpster to take the uniform off. If he was seen wearing it too near the opening to the bar, it might invite unwanted Force attention to a location that had thus far stayed under their radar. The uniform was bulky and heavy to carry; he wished he could have just worn it all the way back. It didn't really help that he felt extremely safe wearing it, serene in his total anonymity.
Reaching the front door of their home, he knocked. Jun pulled it open so quickly Nino half-expected it to fly off the hinges.
"Well?" Jun asked.
Nino held the suit aloft, triumphant. Jun's expression broke into a relieved smile as they both went to the living room where everyone else was waiting.
"Mission accomplished," Nino announced proudly. Sho looked truly impressed from his sit on the couch; Ohno looked at Nino and was clearly relieved just to see him alive.
"Nice!" Aiba said, taking the suit from Nino's hold. "I'm going to get started on this. Ohno, I might need your help."
"In a second," Nino said, "I have to talk to him first." Aiba nodded and grabbed Sho by the elbow.
"Come on, Brainy," he said to Sho, "let's see how useful you can be!" Sho spluttered the entire walk back to Aiba's lab. Jun looked Nino up and down once more in silence, reassuring himself that Nino wasn't lying and was, in fact, in one piece.
"I'll be in the kitchen," he said quietly, making his exit. Once he was sure Jun was gone, Nino knelt down on the carpet next to Ohno. Ohno brought a hand to Nino's face, warm and gentle. Nino closed his eyes to enjoy the feeling for just a heartbeat more, before pulling the photograph from his pocket.
"I thought you might... want this," he explained softly. He would have given anything for a photo of his family; a real one, with everyone smiling and happy. All he had were memories, images that lost clarity with each passing year. He saw them most vividly in dreams, but during his waking hours, their features were increasingly hard to recall.
Ohno took the photo in silence. He studied it, tracing his mother's face with a finger.
"Thank you," Ohno said at last, sincere. He looked up, meeting Nino's gaze. "Nino, we're-we're going to get her back, right?"
Nino felt a wave of cold fear run down his spine. But this was not the time for fear.
"We'll get her back," he promised.
"Thank you," Ohno said again, pressing the photo to his chest.
"Now go help Aiba," Nino said, standing up. "We're going to need every advantage you can give us." Ohno nodded, getting to his feet and shuffling to Aiba's lab, his eyes still glued to the photograph.
Nino only hoped it would be enough.
Chapter 16.
[Author] honooko
[Rating] R
[Notes] I know, this is the longest wait for an update ever. But I am not and never will abandon this story! It's all plotted out to the end now, so there's no reason for me not to finish. XD For tangiblewhimsy, who will be in my house in less than a month. ♥
Their plan was extremely complex, and it worried Jun. He knew better than anyone how good Aiba and Nino were at their respective talents, but Sho and Ohno remained relatively untested in the fight against the Ment. Sho had the mind to be formidable, but Jun wasn't sure how Ohno would fare.
"He was Force," Aiba reminded him over breakfast. "He's got knowledge we don't. That'll be useful." Jun finished his omelet in silence, running through every back-up plan at least twice before feeling somewhat prepared for what lay ahead.
The first task was outwardly simple: they needed to get their hands on a genuine Force uniform in order to duplicate it. It had to be a real one, too. Force uniforms contained identity strips that served like digital dog tags. Each uniform was coded to identity a specific wearer, and while Aiba was quite certain he could make a version that worked the same way, he needed an original to work off of.
"I have one," Ohno said, "but I left it behind. It's got a tracking system in it that they could have used to find me."
"Where did you leave it?" Nino asked him, a map spread out on the living room floor in front of him. One of his laptops was propped up on a couch cushion, tracking Ohno's mother throughout her day in prison.
"My apartment," Ohno said. "But the Force has to be all over it by now, right?"
"Probably," Nino said. "Won't stop me, though."
"How do you expect to get through a Ment housing facility to steal a Force uniform belonging to a defector?" Sho asked. He was curious, not incredulous, and Nino puffed a bit under the positive attention.
"Distractions!" he chirped. "Aiba's going to make me a big one." He and Aiba exchanged a look of self-satisfied glee, and Jun felt suddenly nervous again. Aiba and Nino could generally be trusted to be sensible about assignments, but sometimes they looked at each other and smiled, and Jun could tell they were about to do something very stupid 'because we can'.
"Is he going to be okay?" Sho asked as Nino suited up and put on his skates. "Things are kind of crazy out there right now." Jun forced himself to smile reassuringly, putting a hand on Sho's shoulder and pitching his voice to sound comforting.
"He'll be fine," he said. "He does this all the time." He didn't like lying to Sho, but the truth was far more than Sho was prepared to deal with at the moment. They needed his head clear for what was coming up. He held back the question that rose to his lips when Aiba handed Nino a variety of small boxes, none bigger than a coin. Nino deposited them in his pockets, patting himself down and checking everything was in place.
Ohno rounded the corner, watching Nino check everything in silence. His face was twisted up in worry and Jun kept wondering if Ohno was going to actually do anything, or just stand there quietly. Abruptly, Ohno seemed to make a decision; he stepped forward and in one smooth movement, put his hand on Nino's cheek and pressed a kiss to his lips.
For a long moment, no one said anything at all. Then Ohno stepped back, his face set in a firm expression. Nino just looked incredibly surprised.
Aiba let out a hoot of encouragement. Nino scowled at him.
"Be careful," Ohno said softly. Nino didn't answer, but Jun knew it was because Nino didn't want to lie to Ohno and promise his safe return when there was absolutely no guarantee.
"I'm off," he said instead, stepping out the door and rolling away with a backwards wave.
Everyone watched him leave in an empty, gaping silence.
~
Nino made good time to Ohno's building, considering he was dodging patrols the entire way. His memory was his map; he never forgot a place once he'd been there, and even though he'd been drugged pretty heavily when he'd arrived at this place, going home had been somewhat easier to recall. He came up to the building and hid behind a power generator on the side.
"Hello," Nino greeted the machine brightly, pulling out a thin cable from a packet on his vest. "I'll be getting inside you, if you don't mind."
The generator had no outright protests, and Nino whipped out a small screen from yet another pocket. He was tracing the power distribution; in buildings like these, you could tell what was what just by looking at how much electricity they required to run. For a Force residence building, the most power would be directed towards security.
The path glowed a bright yellow on his screen. The color made him pause, admiring its strength, before taking one of the tiny boxes out of his pocket. He placed the box on top of the generator and backed away.
The trigger was a sound; he snapped his fingers. Instantly, all the lights just ahead of him went out. Windows clicked open. Doors let go of their latches. All of Nino's devices shut down; the only thing that still worked were the wheels on his skates. The box had blown out a powerful electromagnetic pulse that killed everything using power in the immediately vicinity.
Now was his chance to get in. Nino darted along a shadowy edge, hiding behind a vehicle.
There were two sentries at the front door, but the loss of power had put them in a bit of an odd situation. It not only knocked out security features, it knocked out their uniforms. One man was twitching strangely, the various weapons mounted on his suit having begun to splutter in a dangerous way; the other was shouting into his communications device, not having realized it wasn't working.
"What the hell," he snapped, annoyed. "Did the power grid blow?"
His partner twitched again.
"I'll check it. You stay here," the first man said, as if his friend could have possibly done anything else. As soon as he had rounded the corner, Nino strode forward. He walked right past the twitching sentry; the man had no way to stop him. The door slid open when he pushed it and he didn't pause before entering.
Now he just had to get all the way up.
~
"How is he going to make it up 89 floors without being seen?" Sho asked, drumming his fingers on his knees. Aiba grinned, a small screwdriver held between his teeth. He removed it to answer.
"He'll manage," Aiba said. "He's going to hate every second though."
~
Pulling open a door just behind the elevators, Nino stepped inside and closed the door behind him before sitting down and pulling off his skates. He looked up… and up… and up.
"89 flights," Nino growled, facing the staircase. It was going to be a long hike, but at least he could be relatively sure he wouldn't be seen; no one took the stairs anymore, especially in buildings more than 30 stories high. Most people forgot there were staircases at all.
It took him a little over fifteen minutes. He had to pause every ten flights or so to take some deep breaths and make sure he hadn't lost track of which floor he was on; it was also pitch-dark with the power out, and he had to pay close attention to make sure the only sounds he could hear were his own footsteps.
By his calculations, the power would come back in about ten more minutes. He hit the 89th floor and peeked out the door, checking for sentries.
Using a small mirror, he looked around the corner. There were four guards at the elevators, but they were distracted with their malfunctioning uniforms and communication devices. Only one guard was looking steadfastly at the elevators with his weapon leveled; Nino knew this was going to be the guy he'd have to fool. Still barefoot, he crept along the wall, away from the sentries, until he reached Ohno's apartment. The locks were still blown and all he had to do was push it open. The uniform was exactly where Ohno had said it was: in a box just inside the front door.
Nino stepped inside the apartment and shut the door silently behind him. He picked up the suit and looked for the ID tag Ohno had described. It was a small LED panel, and like everything else electronic, it was dark. The uniform was safe to wear. Nino slipped it on, stuffing his skates in a bag he'd brought expressly for this purpose. Luckily, he and Ohno were essentially the same size. He pulled the helmet on and checked his reflection in the glass of a photo framed on the wall.
He realized suddenly it was a photo of a much younger Ohno, probably in grade school, and a woman who could only have been his mother. Carefully, Nino removed the photo from the wall. He opened the frame and took the picture out, putting it in his pocket. Once he put the frame back, he was satisfied he was ready to go.
Ohno's suit was a slightly older model; it didn't have a barracuda attachment and all his weapons were kept at his station, so while certain features of the suit were not functioning, it still moved. Nino had to leave the lower part of the mask open to breathe, as the air filter ran on power. He'd noticed a few other guards with their mouths exposed though, so he didn't think it would be a problem.
Now he just had to trick them into believing he was one of them.
Nino crept out the door again before sliding further down the hall along the wall. All the doors were unlocked, and he slipped inside one silently, counted to ten, before bursting out loudly, tripping over the floor and stumbling towards the elevators. He did his best to make it look like his limbs weren't cooperating with him.
"What's going on?!" he yelped, approaching the sentries at the elevator. They looked at him, startled, unsure of where he'd come from.
"Where-" the guard Nino had noticed paying close attention to his post earlier began, but Nino cut him off.
"Sir!" he said, "I was on leave, Sir, but then the lights went out. Am I needed, Sir?" He saluted stiffly. The force officer looked at him with a scowl.
"We've lost power," he said. Nino let his jaw gape in mock-surprise.
"But-how?!" he squeaked. The officer winced at the pitch of his voice. He looked about to respond when suddenly the communications unit crackled and the lights returned. The EMP blast had worn off. Nino had to hurry before anyone asked him for ID.
"Sir!" a voice said over the comms. "The generator has been tampered with!"
The officer pointed at Nino imperiously before answering back, "I'm sending someone down to look. Do not leave your posts!" He pressed the call button for the elevator, and Nino saluted him when the doors opened before getting inside. He followed it all the way down and walked out the front door as easily as he'd walked in; the officers posted at the bottom merely pointed him towards the generator before returning to their original positions on either side of the entrance.
Nino made for the generator, removing the tiny box that the EMP blast had come from. It had been knocked aside like debris by the first Force officer to take a look; it was easy enough to pocket once more. Glancing around the make sure he hadn't been followed, Nino slipped away and hit the streets.
He jogged, talking continuously to himself. This gave the outward illusion that he was on his way to meet someone, or lagging behind his unit. The uniform was enough to make people either overlook him (other Force) or hide from the sound of the boots clacking on the pavement (everyone else.) It took him half the time to make it back to The Place than it had taken him to leave.
"Can't be spotted now," he muttered to himself, ducking behind a dumpster to take the uniform off. If he was seen wearing it too near the opening to the bar, it might invite unwanted Force attention to a location that had thus far stayed under their radar. The uniform was bulky and heavy to carry; he wished he could have just worn it all the way back. It didn't really help that he felt extremely safe wearing it, serene in his total anonymity.
Reaching the front door of their home, he knocked. Jun pulled it open so quickly Nino half-expected it to fly off the hinges.
"Well?" Jun asked.
Nino held the suit aloft, triumphant. Jun's expression broke into a relieved smile as they both went to the living room where everyone else was waiting.
"Mission accomplished," Nino announced proudly. Sho looked truly impressed from his sit on the couch; Ohno looked at Nino and was clearly relieved just to see him alive.
"Nice!" Aiba said, taking the suit from Nino's hold. "I'm going to get started on this. Ohno, I might need your help."
"In a second," Nino said, "I have to talk to him first." Aiba nodded and grabbed Sho by the elbow.
"Come on, Brainy," he said to Sho, "let's see how useful you can be!" Sho spluttered the entire walk back to Aiba's lab. Jun looked Nino up and down once more in silence, reassuring himself that Nino wasn't lying and was, in fact, in one piece.
"I'll be in the kitchen," he said quietly, making his exit. Once he was sure Jun was gone, Nino knelt down on the carpet next to Ohno. Ohno brought a hand to Nino's face, warm and gentle. Nino closed his eyes to enjoy the feeling for just a heartbeat more, before pulling the photograph from his pocket.
"I thought you might... want this," he explained softly. He would have given anything for a photo of his family; a real one, with everyone smiling and happy. All he had were memories, images that lost clarity with each passing year. He saw them most vividly in dreams, but during his waking hours, their features were increasingly hard to recall.
Ohno took the photo in silence. He studied it, tracing his mother's face with a finger.
"Thank you," Ohno said at last, sincere. He looked up, meeting Nino's gaze. "Nino, we're-we're going to get her back, right?"
Nino felt a wave of cold fear run down his spine. But this was not the time for fear.
"We'll get her back," he promised.
"Thank you," Ohno said again, pressing the photo to his chest.
"Now go help Aiba," Nino said, standing up. "We're going to need every advantage you can give us." Ohno nodded, getting to his feet and shuffling to Aiba's lab, his eyes still glued to the photograph.
Nino only hoped it would be enough.
Chapter 16.