[Lulara]
by mmmdraco
The Gentlemen's Operation
~*###*~
He awoke to a bucket of cold, putrid water being thrown in his face. It was followed shortly thereafter by the bucket itself. He raised his head slightly and glared at the man in front of him. "Is there a reason you woke me from such a good nap?"
"Who are you? Who do you work for?"
"I'm James Bond, clearly. Would you take me out of the cuffs now?" He raised his shoulders to show the strain.
He got the back of the man's hand across his face for that.
"Who are you? Who do you work for?"
"Are you a broken record? James Bond. MI6. Can't you tell from the staggeringly good looks?"
The next hit was hard enough to knock the chair down with him in it. As he lay on the ground, he realized his lip was bleeding. Damn, but those cuts took forever to heal. He must bite his lips in the night or something. He'd put some balm on when he had a chance.
The door to the room squeaked open as his chair was forcibly righted. His shoulders took the brunt of the movement. He heard someone enter and whisper to his assailant. He turned his head to see two men glaring at him. "Stay still while we're gone, you little bitch. Not that you're going much of anywhere chained up like that," the new man said. They turned and left the room.
Hikaru Shindou took a deep breath and reached his hands together. Using his right hand, he dislocated the thumb of his left hand. He let out a deep breath and carefully pulled his hand free. From there, it was the work of a moment to pull the cuff free from his hand and through the loop in the floor that his captors had been sure would hold him. He pushed his thumb back into place with a wince, thankful that powerful people often stopped worrying about the details. He was also thankful that he'd done this before and that it got less painful each time.
Most of his posessions had been taken away from him while he was unconscious, including anything he might use to take off the other cuff. He didn't dare injure his dominant hand if he didn't have to. He tucked the loose cuff on the long trailing chain into his pocket. Who knew? It might end up being useful.
~*###*~
Akira Touya stood poised at the ready for a fight. He'd just hit the trip wire surrounding the building his partner had been taken into hours before. It was really a whole grid of wires set into the grass: just enough that most people had no hope of spotting them. But it was Akira's job to do just that.
He'd seen the wires before Hikaru was even through the door, and it had been easy enough to bypass them just by crawling through. Some expense had obviously been spared as the wires were nearly 20 cm apart with some give to allow for the area rodent population. The rest of the perimeter traps were just as easily negotiated and taken out (since he knew pretty well what he was looking for), and some he'd even reconfigured for this moment.
The guards knew he was coming now. Somehow, they thought they were too smart, as stupid people often do, and figured they had him.
But things are rarely so easy.
Firearms were still illegal for personal possession in Japan, so Akira had set up camera here and there sending a live feed to headquarters. If the men rushing outside to capture him evaded all other charges, this one would stick. They were on film.
As they got within range, Akira began to take them out methodically. With only one exit from the building on this side, all of the armed men were coming out one door. With a tranquilizer dart gun and a lot of practice, it was easy to take a large majority of the men down before any of them knew they'd been hit. He'd done his part.
The rest was up to Hikaru.
~*###*~
Most of the men in the building had raced off in response to Akira's trap. A few had been left behind in a moment of brief intelligence, but they wouldn't believe that he'd escape. They never thought it might be a trap, and it always worked in their favor. Hikaru wasn't going to let it fail now.
He slid easily along the wall. He was going fast to make sure anyone who might glimpse the security footage would come running. He could take on twenty of these men in a fight, he was sure. He just hoped there wouldn't be more than tht.
A sentry was posted in the hallway, but he was glancing at his watch as Hikaru approached him from behind. It was easy to hit the man in such a way as to make him crumple to the ground. Most of the men he was taking down were standing alone. He wondered at the lack of groups. They were guarding something here worth more than just one man left behindm and he'd come here specifically to find it.
He found it when he rounded the next corner. At first glance, it seemed like another single man stationed along a hallway, but this one saw him just as he turned the corner. As he did, he realized that the man was practically a giant and there were two other men to the other side of him. For all that Hikaru was trained in stealth and silence, it didn't help him much when he had nowhere to hide. The two smaller men stayed in place as the large man raced toward him. He hadn't pulled out a gun, but Hikaru could see the strength in the legs that pushed him forward and in the arms that reached out for his throat. This was a man who didn't rely on weapons because he didn't need to.
The man had to be close to 200 cm tall and towered over Hikaru, but Hikaru wasn't forgetting his training.
Dashing forward like he was, the man's center of gravity had shifted. When he was close enough, Hikaru dove at the other man's knees. The fall he took was enough to put most people in hospital, but not this one. The man yelled as he hit the ground, but was quick to tumble back upward and throw a punch at Hikaru's face. He narrowly avoided it by throwing himself toward the man and knocking him off balance again. He held the man's shirt and put his knee into the other's groin, then his stomach, in quick succession. As the man sagged toward the floor, Hikaru clenched his hands around the man's throat, He cut off the air until he felt the man go limp beneath him.
He heard a somewhat familiar noise from behind him and knew it was stupid to have forgotten the other men. He dropped the large man to the ground and started to turn as he felt a bullet graze the side of his neck where grimy sweat had already built. Another burst through his thigh, but he could tell from the feel (and the fact that the blood wasn't spraying out everywhere) that it hadn't hit the femoral artery. He raced toward his two assailants.
Thankfully, they were shocked to see him able to move, so their reactions were slowed. It was just enough that he could get close enough to do something. Whipping the loose handcuff still attached to his wrist out of his pocket and through the air, he sliced across one man's eyes. A well-aimed throat punch did the rest to take him down. The other was a bit harder. Every time Hikaru thought he had the man down, he'd pop up like daisies in the spring. It was with a lot of regret that he grabbed the man's neck and twisted until he felt it snap. He only had a certain amount of time to get this done and it felt like the end of that was coming soon.
He looked at the door the men had been guarding. He tried the handle cautiously, but it was locked. Trying to ignore the dizziness stemming from the blood loss, Hikaru stood poised at the door and ran it through with his shoulder. He felt it dislocate. It was getting harder to draw in a good breath, but he persevered.
There she was: the woman they'd been sent to extract. "Akari," he said to her. "My name is Hikaru and I've been sent to bring you back to your husband."
"Mitani?" she whispered. Then, "Could you untie me?"
He looked at the ropes and the impossible knots there. "Can it wait until we get outside? We're pretty short on time here."
Her eyes got large. "Why such a rush?"
"Let's just say that we're not the only guys here for you today."
She slid out of her shoes and stood up. "Any chance you can carry my shoes? I'd hate to leave a pair of Manolos behind."
Trying not to roll his eyes, Hikaru grabbed the shoes and led the way.
~*###*~
Akira loaded another man into one of the vans they were using to carry the tranquilized men to the local law enforcement center. He checked his watch and glanced back toward the front door of the building. Where was Hikaru?
The other branch of their unit was trapping a syndicate they'd leaked information to. The other men were already on their way. They only had another 15 minutes or so before hell broke loose.
Akira grabbed another man from the piles and hefted him onto his shoulder and was about to load this man into a fresh van when he saw the front door finally open. Their target raced out, her hands still strung behind her back. Akira dumped the man he was carrying and ran toward her, still looking at the door. Any second now...
Only, any second changed to any minute and Hikaru hadn't come through the door. He reached Akari and handed her off to a member of the team he'd called in once he could be reasonably certain most of the people had been taken down. He questioned her quickly about Hikaru as her bonds were being cut, but she didn't know anything. Akira checked that his tranq gun still had a few shots left - Shit! Only one. But his partner was still inside. It wasn't a sucessful extraction unless everyone got pulled out and time was running out. Tranq gun at the ready, Akira took a step inside the door.
There he was. Hikaru lay on the floor with blood beginning to pool around him. A guard lay to his side with a stiletto heel protruding from his chest. It's match lay on the floor beyond the two of them. Akira checked for Hikaru's pulse. It was there, but weak. Pulling Hikaru up, Akira raced outside with him. The other team was here to deal with the rest of the men inside, as well as the syndicate members who might make it past the other team en route to catch them. He raced across the field with Hikaru in his arms and climbed into the medic van they'd had at the ready.
They pulled out of the driveway and headed toward the hospital. The mission briefing could wait. After all, by Akira's estimations, they'd just taken out one of the largest yakuza branches in the area.
~*###*~
Hikaru woke up wincing that evening. Akira was seated at his side. "Hey."
Yawning, Hikaru tried to stretch his arms in front of him, then abandoned his efforts. "Did we?" he managed to croak out through his dry throat.
"She's out. He got her. We got 57 yakuza members, and 14 syndicate members in holding with charges on them all. And then there were the two casualties. Stilettos?"
"Rule one: you do what you can with what you have." Hikaru noticed a cup of water on his bedside table and pulled it toward him to take a large gulp. "She's the one who told me to hold them."
"Mitani certainly got an interesting girl. I wonder if he'll tell her what he actually does for a living now."
"Did you believe at first that he was our boss?"
Pouring a glass of water for himself, Akira shook his head. "No. But, IU also can't believe he married the prime minister's daughter."
Laughing, Hikaru said, "Especially since she's kind of hot!"
Akira glared at him. "Do you want me to remind you of where all of your injuries are?"
Rolling his eyes, Hikaru took another gulp of water. "Trust me. I don't need any help with that right now."
Akira looked at his partner and wondered once again how they'd gotten to this point. He'd always known he was going to be involved in espionage and government. His father was well-known for it among the right people. But how Hikaru had turned from being a salaryman who taught martial arts to kids on the side for extra cash into the man who only nearly died in situations where many men had... But they'd become partners, and then friends, and then a bit more.
Their first time had been during a mission in the north of Japan. Camped out overnight waiting for a man to show, they'd had to get close to stay warm. Akira had tried to deny how good even just the feel of Hikaru's warm breath against the back of his neck had felt, but his hands had started to roam over Hikaru's body just as Hikaru started to touch him. They were compatible, and that was more than Akira could claim with most people.
"You in there?" Hikaru asked. Akira turned to look at him. In the four years they'd been partnered together, they'd seen a lot of missions. Their unit didn't even have a name. As it was, they were considered a branch of the police for payroll purposes, and were nowhere to find in any of the files. Akira only knew this because he'd tried to find more information on his partner, and it had been impossible to glean more than the barest details of his life prior to joining the unit. In a fit of frustration, he'd looked himself up to try to find a new starting place, only to find that it proved equally futile.
"I'm here," Akira whispered.
Hikaru thought back to his recruitment. He hadn't been out of school for very long. A man named Sai had come to him. The man said his job was to investigate good fighters and blackmailers and really just anyone who was good at anything the government could turn in their favor, and he brought them in. At least, that'd what he'd been told. As soon as he was standing in the middle of the office that served as unit headquarters, he couldn't find Sai anywhere. There was a big to-do about him even knowing what the place was and he'd nearly been arrested until someone actually looked him up and passed him off to Mitani. He hadn't been able to find anyone who knew Sai. Maybe he'd used a code name. But that was the past.
He'd had to learn to live in the moment. You could only plan so far ahead before you set yourself up to fail. He's gotten his first gun shot wound learning that lesson. Maybe that'd why he was with Akira. He made a pleasant and convenient now. Additionally, with Akira there, he didn't have to watch his back. Well, much.
~*###*~
They showed up at mission headquarters the next day after Hikaru was released from his doctor's care with orders of bed rest for the next week before walking anywhere further than the bathroom. It made Hikaru want to run to his post-mission briefing just to prove he could. Akira was there, though, and had been the whole while. He would make Hikaru listen to reason (as much as he ever did anyway).
Mitani was behind the desk today. Since his wife had been the one kidnapped in this case, it wasn't terribly surprising that he had taken charge. What was surprising was the lack of other people in the room. They had always held the briefings with the chief agents present.
If everyone else had been briefed the day before, there was a serious breach of protocol.
Akira seemed to have picked up on it as well. "Where is everyone, Mitani?"
Mitani gestured for the men to sit down. Once they'd been seated for several minutes, Mitani finally spoke. "Gentlemen, good job on the mission the other day, but I'm afraid it was the last. The government has decided to shut us down."
Hikaru leaned forward. "Why? We were doing well!"
"Too well, in fact. In one fell swoop, we took down more long-term criminals than usually get taken in during a year. Additionally, we got enough on all of them to get a sentence to stick for a while, at least a few years, and that'll be long enough for them all to start to rat on each other and condess their own sins in exchange for smaller sentences, but they'll still add up.
"So, we're out of a job."
Mitani hesitated. "Yes, in a way. You'll be given a pension, as it were, in order to keep you from having to transition back into society."
Hikaru frowned. "What am I supposed to do? Take up macrame? Learn to cook gourmet meals?"
"Well, gentlemen, I did have a little something in mind. What do you know about go?"
"Go?"
Akira piped up. "The board game. It's very strategic. What about it?"
"I've always had a casual interest. I wonder if the two of you would like to join me tomorrow to find out a bit more about it."
Raising an eyebrow, Hikaru looked over to Hikaru and then back to Mitani. "Give him the address. We'll try anything once." He struggled up from his chair. "I'm going to go take some more painkillers." He headed out of the office.
Akira fought the blush coloring his face and took the business card that Mitani offered him. "Is there a time you'd prefer us to show up?"
"Any time that is convenient for you will be likewise convenient for me."
Bowing, Akira pocketed the card. "Tomorrow, then."
~*###*~
They showed up after lunch the next day in front of a large building with the words "Go Institute" emblazoned across the front. Hikaru grumbled at having to be pushed up the ramp in a wheelchair, but didn't move to actually resist it.
Once inside, Mitani greeted them. "Can I give you the tour?"
They agreed and allowed themselves to be led around the large building: through game rooms and practice rooms and storage rooms and viewing rooms and snack bars and lounges. Finally, Hikaru snapped. "Mitani! This is boring!"
Mitani led them over to the elevator with a smile on his face. Once the door had closed, he pulled a key from his pocket and inserted it into a lock on the panel. He pressed a button that had no floor number next to it and they felt the elevator descend. "Mitani? Where are we going?" Akira asked.
When the door opened, Mitani led the way into a well-insulated area with far more modern design than the rest of the building. "Welcome to my building, gentlemen."
"Your building?" Hikaru wheeled himself around slowly.
Gesturing toward a cluster of comfortable chairs, Mitani took a seat of his own. "The government has had my office bugged for the last year or so that I know of. Some information that only I had reached someone it wasn't supposed to reach. The only way it could have happened is if they were spying on me. That's when I bought this building, though it was junk then, and renovated it. Our unit has been closed down, but if you want to keep at your jobs, I can handle that."
"That's against the law, Mitani," Akira said as he leaned toward the other man.
"Not really," Mitani said. "A few pertinent laws got changed and I have the right people under my thumb, so it's really just a matter of whose law it's against. Akari's been in on this since I found out about the bugging and she's helped me set things up. But you'll be on the payroll of the go institute, but not really doing much for it. Although, I do truly recommend the game. Still, the setup is no different from what our previous unit was. Japan made laws to allow that and has other statutes in place to make sure all laws have to stay in place for a certain number of years. You want in, you're in. It's legal. I've checked it back and forth and back again."
Hikaru raised a hand. "I'm in."
Akira nodded. "It's what I'm good at, so I might as well keep it up."
"Do we get to have a name this time?" Hikaru rolled his wheelchair closer to Mitani. "Because not having a name is really lame."
"Go."
"What?"
Mitani gestured upstairs. "The Go Institute. Short for 'Gentlemen's Operation'."
Akira quirked an eyebrow at the idea. "I assume that won't go on the business cards."
Smiling, Mitani shook his head.
Hikaru rolled back over to Akira. "Hey, now that we're gainfully employed again, how about we go back to my place and see what we can think up as most interesting way to rip my stitches?"
Akira stood up and turned Hikaru's wheelchair around. "I think the painkillers are getting to him. I'll just go put him to bed. Do we need the key for the elevator?"
Mitani shook his head again and laughed softly as he watched the pair flirt and bicker their way onto the elevator.
The Gentlemen's Operation
~*###*~
He awoke to a bucket of cold, putrid water being thrown in his face. It was followed shortly thereafter by the bucket itself. He raised his head slightly and glared at the man in front of him. "Is there a reason you woke me from such a good nap?"
"Who are you? Who do you work for?"
"I'm James Bond, clearly. Would you take me out of the cuffs now?" He raised his shoulders to show the strain.
He got the back of the man's hand across his face for that.
"Who are you? Who do you work for?"
"Are you a broken record? James Bond. MI6. Can't you tell from the staggeringly good looks?"
The next hit was hard enough to knock the chair down with him in it. As he lay on the ground, he realized his lip was bleeding. Damn, but those cuts took forever to heal. He must bite his lips in the night or something. He'd put some balm on when he had a chance.
The door to the room squeaked open as his chair was forcibly righted. His shoulders took the brunt of the movement. He heard someone enter and whisper to his assailant. He turned his head to see two men glaring at him. "Stay still while we're gone, you little bitch. Not that you're going much of anywhere chained up like that," the new man said. They turned and left the room.
Hikaru Shindou took a deep breath and reached his hands together. Using his right hand, he dislocated the thumb of his left hand. He let out a deep breath and carefully pulled his hand free. From there, it was the work of a moment to pull the cuff free from his hand and through the loop in the floor that his captors had been sure would hold him. He pushed his thumb back into place with a wince, thankful that powerful people often stopped worrying about the details. He was also thankful that he'd done this before and that it got less painful each time.
Most of his posessions had been taken away from him while he was unconscious, including anything he might use to take off the other cuff. He didn't dare injure his dominant hand if he didn't have to. He tucked the loose cuff on the long trailing chain into his pocket. Who knew? It might end up being useful.
~*###*~
Akira Touya stood poised at the ready for a fight. He'd just hit the trip wire surrounding the building his partner had been taken into hours before. It was really a whole grid of wires set into the grass: just enough that most people had no hope of spotting them. But it was Akira's job to do just that.
He'd seen the wires before Hikaru was even through the door, and it had been easy enough to bypass them just by crawling through. Some expense had obviously been spared as the wires were nearly 20 cm apart with some give to allow for the area rodent population. The rest of the perimeter traps were just as easily negotiated and taken out (since he knew pretty well what he was looking for), and some he'd even reconfigured for this moment.
The guards knew he was coming now. Somehow, they thought they were too smart, as stupid people often do, and figured they had him.
But things are rarely so easy.
Firearms were still illegal for personal possession in Japan, so Akira had set up camera here and there sending a live feed to headquarters. If the men rushing outside to capture him evaded all other charges, this one would stick. They were on film.
As they got within range, Akira began to take them out methodically. With only one exit from the building on this side, all of the armed men were coming out one door. With a tranquilizer dart gun and a lot of practice, it was easy to take a large majority of the men down before any of them knew they'd been hit. He'd done his part.
The rest was up to Hikaru.
~*###*~
Most of the men in the building had raced off in response to Akira's trap. A few had been left behind in a moment of brief intelligence, but they wouldn't believe that he'd escape. They never thought it might be a trap, and it always worked in their favor. Hikaru wasn't going to let it fail now.
He slid easily along the wall. He was going fast to make sure anyone who might glimpse the security footage would come running. He could take on twenty of these men in a fight, he was sure. He just hoped there wouldn't be more than tht.
A sentry was posted in the hallway, but he was glancing at his watch as Hikaru approached him from behind. It was easy to hit the man in such a way as to make him crumple to the ground. Most of the men he was taking down were standing alone. He wondered at the lack of groups. They were guarding something here worth more than just one man left behindm and he'd come here specifically to find it.
He found it when he rounded the next corner. At first glance, it seemed like another single man stationed along a hallway, but this one saw him just as he turned the corner. As he did, he realized that the man was practically a giant and there were two other men to the other side of him. For all that Hikaru was trained in stealth and silence, it didn't help him much when he had nowhere to hide. The two smaller men stayed in place as the large man raced toward him. He hadn't pulled out a gun, but Hikaru could see the strength in the legs that pushed him forward and in the arms that reached out for his throat. This was a man who didn't rely on weapons because he didn't need to.
The man had to be close to 200 cm tall and towered over Hikaru, but Hikaru wasn't forgetting his training.
Dashing forward like he was, the man's center of gravity had shifted. When he was close enough, Hikaru dove at the other man's knees. The fall he took was enough to put most people in hospital, but not this one. The man yelled as he hit the ground, but was quick to tumble back upward and throw a punch at Hikaru's face. He narrowly avoided it by throwing himself toward the man and knocking him off balance again. He held the man's shirt and put his knee into the other's groin, then his stomach, in quick succession. As the man sagged toward the floor, Hikaru clenched his hands around the man's throat, He cut off the air until he felt the man go limp beneath him.
He heard a somewhat familiar noise from behind him and knew it was stupid to have forgotten the other men. He dropped the large man to the ground and started to turn as he felt a bullet graze the side of his neck where grimy sweat had already built. Another burst through his thigh, but he could tell from the feel (and the fact that the blood wasn't spraying out everywhere) that it hadn't hit the femoral artery. He raced toward his two assailants.
Thankfully, they were shocked to see him able to move, so their reactions were slowed. It was just enough that he could get close enough to do something. Whipping the loose handcuff still attached to his wrist out of his pocket and through the air, he sliced across one man's eyes. A well-aimed throat punch did the rest to take him down. The other was a bit harder. Every time Hikaru thought he had the man down, he'd pop up like daisies in the spring. It was with a lot of regret that he grabbed the man's neck and twisted until he felt it snap. He only had a certain amount of time to get this done and it felt like the end of that was coming soon.
He looked at the door the men had been guarding. He tried the handle cautiously, but it was locked. Trying to ignore the dizziness stemming from the blood loss, Hikaru stood poised at the door and ran it through with his shoulder. He felt it dislocate. It was getting harder to draw in a good breath, but he persevered.
There she was: the woman they'd been sent to extract. "Akari," he said to her. "My name is Hikaru and I've been sent to bring you back to your husband."
"Mitani?" she whispered. Then, "Could you untie me?"
He looked at the ropes and the impossible knots there. "Can it wait until we get outside? We're pretty short on time here."
Her eyes got large. "Why such a rush?"
"Let's just say that we're not the only guys here for you today."
She slid out of her shoes and stood up. "Any chance you can carry my shoes? I'd hate to leave a pair of Manolos behind."
Trying not to roll his eyes, Hikaru grabbed the shoes and led the way.
~*###*~
Akira loaded another man into one of the vans they were using to carry the tranquilized men to the local law enforcement center. He checked his watch and glanced back toward the front door of the building. Where was Hikaru?
The other branch of their unit was trapping a syndicate they'd leaked information to. The other men were already on their way. They only had another 15 minutes or so before hell broke loose.
Akira grabbed another man from the piles and hefted him onto his shoulder and was about to load this man into a fresh van when he saw the front door finally open. Their target raced out, her hands still strung behind her back. Akira dumped the man he was carrying and ran toward her, still looking at the door. Any second now...
Only, any second changed to any minute and Hikaru hadn't come through the door. He reached Akari and handed her off to a member of the team he'd called in once he could be reasonably certain most of the people had been taken down. He questioned her quickly about Hikaru as her bonds were being cut, but she didn't know anything. Akira checked that his tranq gun still had a few shots left - Shit! Only one. But his partner was still inside. It wasn't a sucessful extraction unless everyone got pulled out and time was running out. Tranq gun at the ready, Akira took a step inside the door.
There he was. Hikaru lay on the floor with blood beginning to pool around him. A guard lay to his side with a stiletto heel protruding from his chest. It's match lay on the floor beyond the two of them. Akira checked for Hikaru's pulse. It was there, but weak. Pulling Hikaru up, Akira raced outside with him. The other team was here to deal with the rest of the men inside, as well as the syndicate members who might make it past the other team en route to catch them. He raced across the field with Hikaru in his arms and climbed into the medic van they'd had at the ready.
They pulled out of the driveway and headed toward the hospital. The mission briefing could wait. After all, by Akira's estimations, they'd just taken out one of the largest yakuza branches in the area.
~*###*~
Hikaru woke up wincing that evening. Akira was seated at his side. "Hey."
Yawning, Hikaru tried to stretch his arms in front of him, then abandoned his efforts. "Did we?" he managed to croak out through his dry throat.
"She's out. He got her. We got 57 yakuza members, and 14 syndicate members in holding with charges on them all. And then there were the two casualties. Stilettos?"
"Rule one: you do what you can with what you have." Hikaru noticed a cup of water on his bedside table and pulled it toward him to take a large gulp. "She's the one who told me to hold them."
"Mitani certainly got an interesting girl. I wonder if he'll tell her what he actually does for a living now."
"Did you believe at first that he was our boss?"
Pouring a glass of water for himself, Akira shook his head. "No. But, IU also can't believe he married the prime minister's daughter."
Laughing, Hikaru said, "Especially since she's kind of hot!"
Akira glared at him. "Do you want me to remind you of where all of your injuries are?"
Rolling his eyes, Hikaru took another gulp of water. "Trust me. I don't need any help with that right now."
Akira looked at his partner and wondered once again how they'd gotten to this point. He'd always known he was going to be involved in espionage and government. His father was well-known for it among the right people. But how Hikaru had turned from being a salaryman who taught martial arts to kids on the side for extra cash into the man who only nearly died in situations where many men had... But they'd become partners, and then friends, and then a bit more.
Their first time had been during a mission in the north of Japan. Camped out overnight waiting for a man to show, they'd had to get close to stay warm. Akira had tried to deny how good even just the feel of Hikaru's warm breath against the back of his neck had felt, but his hands had started to roam over Hikaru's body just as Hikaru started to touch him. They were compatible, and that was more than Akira could claim with most people.
"You in there?" Hikaru asked. Akira turned to look at him. In the four years they'd been partnered together, they'd seen a lot of missions. Their unit didn't even have a name. As it was, they were considered a branch of the police for payroll purposes, and were nowhere to find in any of the files. Akira only knew this because he'd tried to find more information on his partner, and it had been impossible to glean more than the barest details of his life prior to joining the unit. In a fit of frustration, he'd looked himself up to try to find a new starting place, only to find that it proved equally futile.
"I'm here," Akira whispered.
Hikaru thought back to his recruitment. He hadn't been out of school for very long. A man named Sai had come to him. The man said his job was to investigate good fighters and blackmailers and really just anyone who was good at anything the government could turn in their favor, and he brought them in. At least, that'd what he'd been told. As soon as he was standing in the middle of the office that served as unit headquarters, he couldn't find Sai anywhere. There was a big to-do about him even knowing what the place was and he'd nearly been arrested until someone actually looked him up and passed him off to Mitani. He hadn't been able to find anyone who knew Sai. Maybe he'd used a code name. But that was the past.
He'd had to learn to live in the moment. You could only plan so far ahead before you set yourself up to fail. He's gotten his first gun shot wound learning that lesson. Maybe that'd why he was with Akira. He made a pleasant and convenient now. Additionally, with Akira there, he didn't have to watch his back. Well, much.
~*###*~
They showed up at mission headquarters the next day after Hikaru was released from his doctor's care with orders of bed rest for the next week before walking anywhere further than the bathroom. It made Hikaru want to run to his post-mission briefing just to prove he could. Akira was there, though, and had been the whole while. He would make Hikaru listen to reason (as much as he ever did anyway).
Mitani was behind the desk today. Since his wife had been the one kidnapped in this case, it wasn't terribly surprising that he had taken charge. What was surprising was the lack of other people in the room. They had always held the briefings with the chief agents present.
If everyone else had been briefed the day before, there was a serious breach of protocol.
Akira seemed to have picked up on it as well. "Where is everyone, Mitani?"
Mitani gestured for the men to sit down. Once they'd been seated for several minutes, Mitani finally spoke. "Gentlemen, good job on the mission the other day, but I'm afraid it was the last. The government has decided to shut us down."
Hikaru leaned forward. "Why? We were doing well!"
"Too well, in fact. In one fell swoop, we took down more long-term criminals than usually get taken in during a year. Additionally, we got enough on all of them to get a sentence to stick for a while, at least a few years, and that'll be long enough for them all to start to rat on each other and condess their own sins in exchange for smaller sentences, but they'll still add up.
"So, we're out of a job."
Mitani hesitated. "Yes, in a way. You'll be given a pension, as it were, in order to keep you from having to transition back into society."
Hikaru frowned. "What am I supposed to do? Take up macrame? Learn to cook gourmet meals?"
"Well, gentlemen, I did have a little something in mind. What do you know about go?"
"Go?"
Akira piped up. "The board game. It's very strategic. What about it?"
"I've always had a casual interest. I wonder if the two of you would like to join me tomorrow to find out a bit more about it."
Raising an eyebrow, Hikaru looked over to Hikaru and then back to Mitani. "Give him the address. We'll try anything once." He struggled up from his chair. "I'm going to go take some more painkillers." He headed out of the office.
Akira fought the blush coloring his face and took the business card that Mitani offered him. "Is there a time you'd prefer us to show up?"
"Any time that is convenient for you will be likewise convenient for me."
Bowing, Akira pocketed the card. "Tomorrow, then."
~*###*~
They showed up after lunch the next day in front of a large building with the words "Go Institute" emblazoned across the front. Hikaru grumbled at having to be pushed up the ramp in a wheelchair, but didn't move to actually resist it.
Once inside, Mitani greeted them. "Can I give you the tour?"
They agreed and allowed themselves to be led around the large building: through game rooms and practice rooms and storage rooms and viewing rooms and snack bars and lounges. Finally, Hikaru snapped. "Mitani! This is boring!"
Mitani led them over to the elevator with a smile on his face. Once the door had closed, he pulled a key from his pocket and inserted it into a lock on the panel. He pressed a button that had no floor number next to it and they felt the elevator descend. "Mitani? Where are we going?" Akira asked.
When the door opened, Mitani led the way into a well-insulated area with far more modern design than the rest of the building. "Welcome to my building, gentlemen."
"Your building?" Hikaru wheeled himself around slowly.
Gesturing toward a cluster of comfortable chairs, Mitani took a seat of his own. "The government has had my office bugged for the last year or so that I know of. Some information that only I had reached someone it wasn't supposed to reach. The only way it could have happened is if they were spying on me. That's when I bought this building, though it was junk then, and renovated it. Our unit has been closed down, but if you want to keep at your jobs, I can handle that."
"That's against the law, Mitani," Akira said as he leaned toward the other man.
"Not really," Mitani said. "A few pertinent laws got changed and I have the right people under my thumb, so it's really just a matter of whose law it's against. Akari's been in on this since I found out about the bugging and she's helped me set things up. But you'll be on the payroll of the go institute, but not really doing much for it. Although, I do truly recommend the game. Still, the setup is no different from what our previous unit was. Japan made laws to allow that and has other statutes in place to make sure all laws have to stay in place for a certain number of years. You want in, you're in. It's legal. I've checked it back and forth and back again."
Hikaru raised a hand. "I'm in."
Akira nodded. "It's what I'm good at, so I might as well keep it up."
"Do we get to have a name this time?" Hikaru rolled his wheelchair closer to Mitani. "Because not having a name is really lame."
"Go."
"What?"
Mitani gestured upstairs. "The Go Institute. Short for 'Gentlemen's Operation'."
Akira quirked an eyebrow at the idea. "I assume that won't go on the business cards."
Smiling, Mitani shook his head.
Hikaru rolled back over to Akira. "Hey, now that we're gainfully employed again, how about we go back to my place and see what we can think up as most interesting way to rip my stitches?"
Akira stood up and turned Hikaru's wheelchair around. "I think the painkillers are getting to him. I'll just go put him to bed. Do we need the key for the elevator?"
Mitani shook his head again and laughed softly as he watched the pair flirt and bicker their way onto the elevator.