#43: Fic: Setting Sail - part II

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Part I


Part II



The truth is that after Ayase, all of them split up.

The government drops them as quickly as it can, and there is a brief period of time where all five of them are wanted suspects. Sho’s the first one to clear his name; his father has friends in high places. He manages to get Aiba off the hook, too, by producing evidence that the chemicals had been from another source, but that is the extent to which his family’s influence holds. Jun, on Nino’s advice, vanishes off someplace else.

Nino and Ohno lie low in Sri Lanka for a while. It’s Nakamura who gets them the tickets and who introduces them to a friend there who can put them up for very little money. They spend slightly more than two months in Colombo with no news at all; Nino does as many small jobs as he can secure and tries to blend in as much as he can.

Ohno sleeps. He sleeps in the day, when it’s hot outside and there’s nothing for him to do except watch television programmes he doesn’t understand. He goes fishing once or twice in the evenings at Nakamura’s friend’s behest, but it doesn’t become a routine. Most days, Nino returns to their room after a long afternoon of looking for work to find Ohno curled up in a corner of the mattress with his back to the door, gazing wordlessly at the wall.

“Do you dream?” Nino asks, one night, when he awakens to see Ohno facing him, eyes open in the darkness.

Ohno turns away and doesn’t answer.

In the past two months Ohno has become painfully narrow; narrow and ragged and worryingly silent. Nino doesn’t know what to make of it - doesn’t know what to do when Ohno sleeps for days on end; when Ohno stops sleeping and takes to wandering the city’s alleyways instead. He disappears for hours and returns in a haze, and nothing in Nino’s life has ever prepared him for this - for this frightening shadow of his childhood friend.

And then Jun calls, one afternoon.

“I just got the news,” he says, “they’ve ruled it an accident.”

They will probably never find a legitimate job again - to the extent that their commission from the government was a legitimate job - but they can go home. Nino is swept by a wave of relief that makes him shut his eyes from the glare of the surrounding city and reach out to press his hand against a pillar for balance.

Nino returns (joyfully, bearing a shopping bag of fruit and a celebratory six pack of beer) to find Ohno asleep on the mattress, and, for the first time in weeks, doesn’t resist the urge to lie down next to Ohno, to put one arm over his narrow shoulders and to press his face against Ohno’s back.

“We’re going home,” Nino breathes. “Oh-chan, we’re going home.”



“For a week’s work this is rather spectacular,” says Nino approvingly, flipping through the dossier Jun has assembled.

“For a week’s work this is rather terrifying,” says Mao, “you even have the brand of her water filter. What did you do, break into this woman’s house?”

“Well,” says Jun, “all it takes is some very careful observation.”

“And a powerful pair of binoculars,” Aiba adds.

Kuroki Meisa (formerly known as Shimabukuro Satsuki) is the head of electronic design at Saori Industries. She has a fondness for firearms, fine dresses and all-you-can-eat yakiniku. In her youth she was awarded a police medal for chasing down a snatch thief. She is also startlingly beautiful.

“The guns,” says Ohno. “What are the chances that her subconscious will be armed?”

“Rather high,” Jun replies. “Though there’s the possibility that they might not aim very well. The man at the rifle range showed me her score count and it was abysmal.”

“Any score is abysmal in comparison to yours,” says Nino. “You’re practically a robot.”

“I appreciate that,” Jun tells him. “It really helps when you take pains to move the discussion along like this.”

“The question is whether we want her to know if the third level is a dream,” Ohno cuts in.

“Well she’s had training, so it should only be an issue of how long she takes to realise,” says Jun.

“What if she doesn’t realise?” asks Ohno. “What if we make certain she knows from the start?”

“Why would we do that?” Jun asks.

“If she’s sure it’s a dream from the start-” Ohno begins.

“-she’ll be sure she’s awake when she’s woken up,” Nino finishes. “She won’t think to look.”



When Ohno opens his eyes he finds himself standing in the middle of a street in downtown Nago.

Mao has done a spectacular job with this, he thinks. It is a low-rise labyrinth of nostalgia and halfway-familiar landmarks; distinctly, sunnily Okinawa, Ohno recognises, except that down here, no roads lead to the sea.

The engineer Case Corporation has sent is an uncertain-looking young man named Ikuta who claims to have had some experience with dream sharing but behaves like he’s had none at all. This suits Ohno just fine, as long as the other man doesn’t do anything stupid.

It’s preferable that they make no contact with the mark at this level; somewhere in town Nino is waiting to see which projections Kuroki brings in first and how she interacts with them, but Ohno’s job at this point comprises of simple breaking and entering.

“Ohno-san, where are we going?” Ikuta asks, trailing behind Ohno as he turns a corner and heads past a series of quaint-looking shops. No projections have noticed them so far but it doesn’t stop Ohno from feeling uncomfortable anyway, knowing that he’s once again three levels deep and helpless to wake himself.

“We’re trying to get the information you need as quickly as possible,” Ohno tells Ikuta, stopping at the entrance of a small toy shop.

“And that information is... here?” asks Ikuta, looking doubtful.

“Yes,” says Ohno, stepping into the shop, “this is where she spent her childhood.”

“Can I help you?” calls the middle aged man standing at the counter.

“I’m looking for a nineteen-inch Ultraman model,” Ohno tells him, “sixty-six or sixty-seven.”

“Are you talking about the Christmas release?” asks the man.

“That, or the twelve and a half inch one,” says Ohno. “I’m not picky.”

The man nods, and vanishes into a back room.

“Vintage Ultraman toys?” Ikuta asks, slightly incredulous.

“There was this job, a while back,” Ohno replies, slipping quickly into the furthest aisle from the counter and beginning to cast around for something.

“What are you looking for?”

“Toy treasure chest, with a real lock,” says Ohno. “Kuroki-san liked playing pirates.”

“Who would put a real lock onto a toy treasure chest?” asks Ikuta, poking gingerly at a rack of Doraemon keychains.

“The same people who thought to make Ultraman shampoo bottles,” Ohno replies, turning round to inspect the next shelf. “There.”

It’s almost too easy; the chest is sitting between a model pirate ship and five battered hats, just waiting to be opened. Ohno picks the two locks with no effort at all and flips the lid open within the next half a minute.

Lying inside the box are two thick-looking envelopes. “Open them,” Ohno tells Ikuta.

Before Ikuta can reach for the first envelope, however, his hands still at the sound of a gun being cocked behind them.

“Don’t move,” someone tells them. “Hands in the air. Turn around.”

Slowly, they do as the person says.

“Oh, fuck,” says Ikuta, when he catches sight of the speaker’s face.

“Oh, fuck indeed,” says the man.

Ohno looks at him. He seems halfway familiar, but it’s not because Ohno recognises him from Kuroki’s dossier photographs. It’s the way he’s holding the gun, standing over them with a bit of a smirk, the look in his eyes strangely catlike.

“I’ve seen you before,” says Ohno slowly.

“He’s just a projection,” Ikuta bites out almost immediately.

“That’s right,” says the man, “but it doesn’t mean I can’t shoot the both of you in the head right this moment.”

From the corner of his eye, Ohno can see the shop assistant emerging from the back room and walking towards them with an intent look on his face. He is holding neither the nineteen-inch nor twelve and a half-inch Ultraman model.

“Ikuta-kun,” says Ohno quietly, hoping against all hopes that Ikuta will be able to understand from his tone of voice exactly what he is about to do, “we are going to have to-”

“Run,” Ikuta breathes, and within the next ten seconds he’s launching himself at the shop assistant with a pistol in hand that Ohno hadn’t noticed he’d been carrying, the same time that Ohno lunges forward to wrestle the gun from the man’s hands.

A shot from behind Ohno tells him that Ikuta’s taken care of the shop assistant; Ohno scrambles up off the ground just long enough to bring his knee up against the man’s stomach in a hard, sharp jerk that has him grunting in pain. Ohno takes this chance to yank the gun from the man’s hand, but the action sends him falling sideways into a nearby shelf, and the man’s already reaching forward and to grab Ohno’s arm and pull him back towards him when -

A second shot; the man collapses onto the ground with a bullet wound in his forehead.

Ikuta is standing behind Ohno, his face impassive.

“What was that-” Ohno begins, but Ikuta’s already kicking aside the body and hoisting Ohno up by the shoulders.

“We should probably leave,” says Ikuta.

“Who are you?” asks Ohno, again. He glances down at the man on the ground. “Who was he?”

“I did say I had some experience,” Ikuta replies, grabbing the two envelopes and opening the first one. “But I didn’t think I’d actually have to use it.”

“Right,” says Ohno. “Who is this man?”

“Oguri Shun,” Ikuta replies, after a pause.

Ohno crouches down and examines the man’s face. “Oguri Shun...” Ohno remembers Oguri Shun; he’s the only other extractor for whom Jun has been on point more than once. He turns to Ikuta. “You’ve worked with him before?”

“Well, yes,” says Ikuta.

“He wasn’t on the dossier,” says Ohno, “any idea how he’d end up here?”

“Aren’t you supposed to know this?” Ikuta demands.

“Is that what you were looking for?” Ohno counters, pointing at the documents in Ikuta’s hands.

“Yes...” says Ikuta, going through them briskly. “...and no.”

“What?”

Ikuta rips open the second envelope. “There’s information missing. There’s a whole section about cybernetic autonomy that was supposed to be here and-”

He looks up. “The last few pages are blank.”

“She is shutting us down,” says Ohno. “She knows, and she’s bringing up her defences. We have to run.”

The projections will be all over them any minute now, and if Kuroki has had training or some sort of exposure to an extractor like Oguri, it is practically a given that those projections won’t be easily taken care of.

“I take it we’re not waiting for Ninomiya-san, then?” asks Ikuta, as they hurry out of the shop and onto the street, guns at the ready.

“Nino can take care of himself,” says Ohno. “It’s us I’m more worried about.”

“Why?” asks Ikuta.

“He’s the dreamer,” Ohno replies. “If Nino goes out early, the dream collapses on us.”

And then the police sirens start up.

“Okay,” says Ohno, “let’s just try not to get killed.”

They run.

Ikuta dashes ahead and Ohno follows closely behind, heading down the nearest alleyways and cutting fences in a mad attempt to keep those police sirens as far from them as possible. It’s a losing battle; with every corner they turn Ohno can hear their pursuers getting closer - as they clatter through a decrepit-looking convenience store and burst out the back door there are definite shots being fired behind them, and Ohno’s not sure why he’s trailing after Ikuta in the first place when neither of them know a way out of this -

They are standing on top of a low hill that cuts off abruptly into a concrete ledge.

“Whoa,” says Ikuta, gripping onto the railing.

“You know the drill,” Ohno says, climbing up such that he’s sitting on top of the railing and making a mental note to thank Mao or Nino or whoever it was who built this into the dream.

They fall.



Jun does two jobs in Taipei; one for each month he’s lying low. Both are illegal, of course; it wouldn’t be like Shun to strike deals with the powers that be, after all. Jun isn’t on point for either one of them - Abe speaks Mandarin fluently, and he’s got connections all over the city - but it turns out that Shun needs the extra pair of hands, anyway.

“Why did you choose to work here?” Jun asks Shun, one night. “Why not back in Tokyo?”

They are standing at the outdoor observatory of the Taipei 101. Below them, the city unfolds in a glittering rush of lights.

Shun spreads his arms wide. “I like it here,” he tells Jun. “And Shota-kun likes the architecture.”

Jun is about to reply when Mao bursts out onto the deck in a frenzy, guards hot on her heels. She tosses an envelope to Shun, who catches it and opens it.

“Now can we please go?” Mao demands, running over to the high fence and rolling her eyes in exasperation when Jun offers to give her a leg up.

“I don’t understand what this business with leaping off high places is about,” says Mao, pulling out her gun and pressing the barrel against her temple. “We’re only one level deep, Jun-kun.”

“Good work, Mao-chan,” Shun tells her approvingly, tossing the papers aside. “We’ve got what we’ve come for.”

When Mao pulls the trigger and crumples to the ground, Jun cannot suppress a shudder.



“What was Oguri Shun doing in Kuroki’s subconscious?” asks Ohno, the moment he wakes up.

“Oguri Shun?” Jun repeats, incredulously.

“Yes, your contact in Taipei,” says Ohno. “Shun-kun. What relation does he have with Kuroki and why didn’t you surface this?”

“Look, we need to clear out of here, fast,” Nino tells Ohno, pulling the IV tubing from his forearm and standing up.

“Where’s Ikuta?” Ohno asks.

“I sent him to the van; he’ll be picking Nino up on the microphones the whole time,” says Jun. “We don’t have long.”

“I don’t trust him,” says Ohno.

“When have we?” asks Nino, checking his reflection in the mirror. When Ohno glances back at Nino he’s already transformed into a young lady recognisable from the dossier as Horikita Maki.

“Nice detail on the suit jacket,” Jun says approvingly.

“I am, after all, a woman of impeccable taste,” Nino-as-Horikita replies, giving them a cheeky wink that looks entirely inappropriate on Horikita’s face.

“I still want to know what Oguri has to do with her,” murmurs Ohno, glancing at Kuroki’s sleeping figure.

“So do I,” says Jun. “But we’ve got to finish the job first. Remember Sho-kun,” he tells Ohno.

Ohno swallows. “Of course.”



“He’s asleep at my place,” says Aiba over the phone, except that Nino knows from his tone of voice that Ohno isn’t just asleep.

“I’m on my way,” Nino replies. It disturbs him a little how easily this response comes to him, now. He had said exactly the same thing to Jun four nights ago, and to Sho the previous week.

Sho had called from the hospital. “He tried to go in after her,” he told Nino, when Nino arrived.

Nino had rubbed his palm over his face, a gesture he had spent years trying to get rid of. “Did he manage to?”

“You know they won’t let anything remotely resembling a PASIV come anywhere near her,” said Sho. “He’s been issued a warning.”

“A warning?” Nino repeated agitatedly. “Does he even know-”

Sho had touched his hand to Nino’s shoulder in a calming gesture, then, and Nino had not had the strength or the will to resist any further.

“Just take him home.”

“Lately, it seems that’s all I’ve been doing.”

Nino arrives at Aiba’s apartment and finds Ohno asleep in Aiba’s bed, the IV tube in his arm coiling neatly into the PASIV next to him.

“How long?” Nino asks Aiba, unable to keep the sharpness out of his voice.

“A few hours,” Aiba replies.

“No,” says Nino, “how long has he been coming to you?”

“He said he couldn’t dream, Nino-kun, he said he-”

“How long?” Nino snaps, but when he turns to see the plaintive expression on Aiba’s face he regrets being so harsh.

Aiba is as worried as the rest of them - more so, perhaps, because he is the one who concocts these dreams, the one who had, at the most crucial of moments, stepped aside to let someone else do a job Ohno had trusted him to carry out perfectly.

“Since the two of you got back,” says Aiba. “Daily, after Jun-kun refused to see him.”

“I’m waking him up,” Nino says, stalking over to Ohno and beginning to manhandle him from the bed.

“Nino-kun, there’s still twenty-”

When Nino turns around Aiba literally flinches at his expression; it’s a look that is equal parts sorrow as it is fury, born of a consuming sense of impotence at the situation unravelling before them.

“I’m waking him up.”



The plan is to give Nino forty-five minutes to get any information he can from Kuroki, after which Ohno and Jun will enter the picture with a rather different method of persuasion. They had originally estimated a twenty-minute time period before security would begin amassing, but if Kuroki has got Oguri Shun running about in her subconscious Ohno suspects that they probably have only a fraction of that time.

“Nino will get what we need,” Jun murmurs, as they sit in the storage room on the same floor observing Kuroki via a set of five hidden cameras in her apartment. Nino-as-Horikita is making her a drink in the kitchen, chattering the entire time, nothing in his movements or speech betraying the slightest hint that he is an impostor.

“He’s gotten really good in the past two years,” says Ohno.

Jun glances over at him. “Nino’s always been good,” he says slowly, “and it hasn’t been that long.”

Ohno’s not sure if Jun means something particularly significant in saying that, but is distracted by Kuroki taking out her work briefcase and spreading papers across the dining table.

“Look at that,” says Jun. “He’s gotten her to talk business within ten minutes.”

It’s almost too easy. The blueprints are right there and Kuroki is explaining them to Nino, highlighting recent glitches and detailing some of the improvements the team is in the middle of developing. While all this is happening, Ikuta is sitting in the van, no doubt drinking in every word.

“Ikuta-kun,” Ohno murmurs into his mouthpiece, “are you getting all of this?”

There is no response.

“I should probably go check on him,” says Ohno.

“Why wouldn’t he be listening?” asks Jun. He points at the monitor screen. “Wait, Nino’s giving us the signal.”

In Kuroki’s apartment, Nino-as-Horikita is walking over to the cabinet over the kitchen counter and placing a glass directly in front of the camera hidden there. It warps the visual strangely, turning the screen into an arrangement of unfocused colour.

“We need to move,” says Jun, reaching for the ski-mask he’s stuffed into his coat pocket and putting it on.

They’ve gotten the information they need; all they need to do now is arrange for the kick back up.

The plan, as they have run through at least half a dozen times, is for Nino to bring Kuroki out to the corridor, whereupon Ohno and Jun appear as kidnappers and overpower the both of them.

One thing Ohno has learnt in the many extractions he has carried out is that very few things tend to go according to plan.

They don’t expect that Kuroki will be ready for them when they emerge into the corridor, or that she will have a gun. They also don’t expect her to be aware that she is still in a dream.

“Very clever of you,” she tells them, the barrel of her gun pressed firmly against her temple, “using a dream within a dream. It’s just too bad I’ve been trained to be able to tell.”

“Don’t shoot,” says Ohno quickly.

“Who sent you?” Kuroki asks. “I know you’re not just the regular sort - that’s a first class forger I have tied up in my living room.”

“We’ll answer your questions,” says Ohno. “Just put the gun down.” With great care, he drops his own weapon onto the floor and nods to Jun to do the same.

“I never thought I’d one day end up holding myself hostage,” says Kuroki, smiling thinly. “It’s game over for you if I wake up, isn’t it?” she asks. “Now tell me, who sent you?”

“There’s no reason why we should tell you,” says Jun. “If you wake up, we’ll try again.”

“Your friend here doesn’t seem to think so,” Kuroki replies.

“We’re employed through a middle man,” lies Ohno. “We don’t know who sent us - so put down that gun and we’ll talk.”

“Right,” says Kuroki grimly. “Since you’re not willing to tell the truth, I have no choice but to wake up.”

Two things happen before Kuroki can pull the trigger: Ikuta emerges from the elevator, startling Kuroki, and Ohno leaps forward with a speed borne of desperation to wrestle the gun from her hand.

They are almost the same height but she’s phenomenally strong, and manages a vicious kick to Ohno’s stomach as he attempts to twist the gun out of her grip. She kicks him again and would succeed in hitting him in the solar plexus if not for Jun pulling her off him and pinning her face-first to the ground.

“Security’s coming,” Ikuta tells them, while Jun handcuffs Kuroki and drops a hood over her head.

“Let’s get out,” says Ohno, trying not to sound as shaken as he feels. Kuroki’s still alive; she’s still struggling to get free, still making sure that Jun has to use all his strength just to keep her from getting away.

“Apartment window,” says Jun, jerking his head towards the door of Kuroki’s unit.

One of the first things they’ve agreed on for this extraction is that they’ll get out when they can - Ohno enters Kuroki’s living room to find an open window and Nino nowhere to be seen.

“I’ll go first,” says Ikuta, heading for the window.

“You’re next,” Jun tells Ohno. He will need to go last, with Kuroki, to give the team as much time as possible to clear out before she awakens on the first level.

Ohno walks to the window, turning round to give Kuroki one last look before climbing out onto the ledge.

“You won’t get away with this,” Kuroki bites out from underneath the hood.

She’s still alive.

Ohno falls.



This is the last time they are all together:

Sho opens his eyes to the dim glow of the television in the darkness. They are in Aiba’s living room, and all the others are asleep. He checks his watch; it is slightly past three in the morning.

There was beer, earlier that night. There was beer and Aiba getting slightly teary-eyed in the middle of it all, and Nino sitting behind Jun on the couch and kicking him every time he lost to Sho at Super Mario. And before that there was yakiniku at the place downstairs; Jun attacking the meat with great fervour while Sho tended the hot plate; Aiba becoming oddly quiet beside Ohno, who leaned in slightly as Nino continued conversing in a sort of rapid-fire Nino-to-Ohno monologue that they’ve all begun to grow accustomed to.

Nino has never talked to Ohno like that; he has never had a need to. He talks at Ohno now, Sho realises, as if he thinks that by throwing enough words at Ohno he will get something in return.

It is three in the morning and everyone is asleep except for Sho.

Then someone moves, in the darkness, and when Sho leans forward to try and make out who it is, he realises that it is Ohno.

For a long moment they just look at each other. Sho takes in the odd lucidity in Ohno’s expression and is startled by how alert he appears to be.

“It’s late,” Sho tells him, “you should go back to sleep.”

Part III