Well, I plainly overestimated how much of this I'd gotten done, and scrapping 1k of Kitamitsu's part didn't help either. 8D Oh well. It won't be a month again 'til the next update, but figured I might as well post what I have. *lame* |D
K17; the Crew.
( 38: slingshot )
Kitayama's heart thudded loud in his ears as he skated, a smile on his face under his scarf. He was good, he knew, but that didn't make his game any less lethal or the thrill of confrontation any less sharp-being complacent meant being dead, and Kitayama had no desire to become one with the climate control anytime soon.
He ducked and dropped, weaving through the security with deft feet and a situational awareness borne of too many years on the streets and scuffles just like this. He could feel the flow of the fight around him, each glance, shout and air pistol shot updating his mental map of the scene and where he stood in relation to it.
It was that ability that took his skates from recreational to weapons-grade. Unlike a lot of the others, Kitayama's skates were for more than just a good time flying: custom modifications over the years, plus a lot of extra shortcuts programmed into their motion sensors, meant it took less for him to kick their repulsors in or cut them out, or switch to tractor mode or slide or skip or double-jump.
It also made them hard to control well, but familiarising himself with his footwear until using each shortcut was as natural as raising a hand or tilting his head not only made winning a whole lot more efficient for Kitayama, it made it an art.
He spun at the distinctive pshht~ of a hook firing behind him, arm going up defensively. The weapon's small claws sank through his sleeve and into his arm wraps, and without thought Kitayama twisted his wrist and looped the wire around his forearm twice more before grabbing it and yanking hard. Experience told him one of three alternatives would follow: a novice agent would have his pistol pulled from his hands; an intermediate would dig his feet in and hold firm; an expert would pull back and duck behind one armored forearm.
These guys were so-so, and probably not too used to fighting skaters yet.
The agent reflexively spread his feet and gripped his pistol tighter, activating the hook's retract function. As the wire went taunt, Kitayama went with it. Momentum on his side, he jumped and twisted, blinking down his skates' power to connect a solid crescent kick to the agent's neck, the least armored part of his body. The agent crashed to the ground under the force of Kitayama's repulsors as they whirred back to life, and Kitayama leaped away with a pistol in his hand and one less target on the board.
Flying higher gave him a little respite, though the guards also took the opportunity to reform beneath him. Three fired from a tri-point formation on the ground metres below, intending to net him. As the hooks shot upward, Kitayama threw himself back, away from the first one, and blocked the second with the body of his stolen air pistol, relinquishing the weapon as the security agent retracted his wire.
The third hook caught his leg, and Kitayama hissed at the bite of its claws in his calf. He twisted, feigning the desperation of a caught animal, and the wire wrapped twice more around his ankle as it began to retract, first going taunt then pulling Kitayama down bit by bit as the security agent on the ground braced and pulled, braced and pulled, like an expert fisherman of old. Kitayama offered token resistance. Timing was everything.
And they didn't keep him waiting. A shout, and two more hooks fired. Kitayama cut his skates' power and dropped like a stone. The two hooks sailed harmlessly overhead. The agent below him, surprised, stumbled back as his wire retracted at speed-he held on to his gun though, and that was all that mattered to Kitayama as he kicked in his skates' tractor mode. His footwear automatically latched onto the nearest possible surface-the agent's chest armor-aborting the man's backward scramble as Kitayama landed hard, the armor giving out beneath his feet with an audible crack. The agent lay still.
Disengaging, Kitayama jumped back into repulsor mode and spun back up into the sky. He put his hands on his hips, tilting his head at each of the remaining agents in turn.
Still want to play? he asked, body language a silent taunt. You still technically have numerical supremacy... ♥
*
"There they go. The last two are running," Iida reported in sync with the screen updates.
"Chase them, Mitsu!" Yokoo called, then made a noise of disgust when Kitayama slowed instead, enough that his smudge on the satellite feed reformed into a clearer picture. "Damn it, you lazy bastard."
Iida laughed. "He'd have your hide if he heard that."
"No, he'd totally agree with me." Yokoo frowned and crossed his arms. "Just one more down and I would've won our bet."
Iida hummed an oscillation. "Well it seems he's dropped the game just past ninety percent complete. I wasn't right either."
"...Gocchi would've bet on that five percent window we missed."
"Lucky he wasn't in on it, then, wasn't it?" Iida chuckled, calling running-scorecard.gxt up from his archives. "Since currently, if he ever called in all the favours he's won from you, you'd... literally be running errands for him 'til you were thirty. Thirty-two, in Kawai-kun's case."
"And twenty-nine in Taipi's," Yokoo rolled his eyes. "I know."
*
Cheerily, Tsukada popped his head in the door of Tackey's private quarters. "Nikaido's in past the second perimeter~" he reported, and vanished again.
"...um," Senga said, looking up at Takizawa kind of hopefully.
Takizawa laughed, shooing him off the couch. "Go on, you silly boy."
"Thanks, Boss~" Senga grinned, and took off as fast as he could for the egress hatch, excited that his best friend had made it back from his first sort-of mission.
*
Nikaido had had it up to his eyeballs with carrying people around and had resolved never to do it again no matter which 'lite hacker was going to be owing him favours for it later. Miyata was heavy, damn it, and Nikaido swore he could feel the patch of drool on his shoulder through his clothes. And it was gross. So so very, very gross.
Up ahead, the hatch to Takizawa's place opened and Nikaido looked up to see Senga poke his head out, beaming brilliantly. "Nika! You made it back!"
Nikaido wrinkled his nose, in no mood for smiling but unable to remain entirely grumpy while Senga was so jubilant. "Yeah," he said. "I am. T'daima or whatever." (Kawai and Senga had given him a crash course in Old Local a while back, but he hadn't remembered much of it apart from 'uru-sigh' or 'uru-say' or whatever the hell Kawai liked to yell. Yokoo's extra lessons since hadn't met with much more success.)
" 上手!上手!" Senga laughed, stepping aside so Nikaido could duck through the hatch (and if Miyata's head accidentally smacked against it, well. Senga didn't seem to notice). "お帰りよ!" He poked his head back outside. "Eh? Hiromii's still out?"
"Yeah," Nikaido said, shrugging Miyata off his shoulders into something approximating a rag-doll's stance. "Said something about raiding this guy's place or something, I dunno. Carry him for me? I'm sick of lugging around the Stupid."
Senga regarded Miyata's limp form with a measure of dubiousness. "He has Stupid germs?"
"Yeah," Nikaido huffed. "And I'm sick of being near them."
"But won't I catch them then?" Senga frowned, reaching over to swing the hatch shut in procrastination.
Nikaido snorted. "Maybe, but it won't matter if nobody can tell by looking at you, right?"
"Mean!" Senga scolded. "Stop hanging around Taipi and Yokoo-kun. They're a bad influence, and anyway I wouldn'ta known you'd touched the Stupid either until you said so!"
"I totally have not touched the Stupid," Nikaido said, in what may or may not have been a self-defeating argument. "There has been at least a cloth barrier between it and me at all times!"
"Except for where you've got a huge wet patch of Stupid totally gone through your shoulder!" Senga said, pointing to Miyata's drool.
Nikaido scowled and shoved the ex-Government agent over. When Senga automatically reached out to steady him, Nikaido grinned in triumph. "Stupid!"
"Not fair!" Senga complained. "He's heavy and drooling."
Nikaido waved the complaints away. "Whatever, just dump him on the couch since it's not like Kitamitsu's sleeping on it right now. And if he doesn't wake up by the time the other guys get back, then like whatever. Totally not our problem."
*
The other guys weren't long in coming, Fujigaya and Kawai racing again. This time, Kawai won.
"Drugs!" Fujigaya called, clambering through the hatch a close second. "Dope cheat!"
"You gave 'em to me, so what does that make you?" Kawai crowed. "Saboteur! Self-saboteur!"
"That is totally not-" Fujigaya paused, catching sight of Yokoo standing in the hall, logged off and arms crossed.
It looked like he'd been ready to deliver a pre-prepared lecture, but narrowed his sharp gaze on Kawai instead. "Did I hear drugs? And what happened to your arm." Though skinny as ever, Yokoo seemed suddenly impassable to Fujigaya, as if in Watchtower mode for real.
Kawai clearly had no such psychological barriers though, waving off Yokoo's enquiry as he tried to duck past with his hoverboard. "No biggie, no biggie."
But Yokoo would have none of it, grabbing Kawai by the scruff of his shirt. "Consider yourself grounded, Fumito."
"What? Says who!"
"Says your friendly neighbourhood medical practitioner, that's who," Yokoo told him, eyeing Kawai's coldpacted wrist with distaste.
"It was worse over there, and before we got him the painkillers," Fujigaya volunteered. "All swollen and bruised~"
Kawai gave a dirty glare from under Yokoo's arm as Yokoo's narrow gaze lynched Fujigaya's own. "You'd do well to take a leaf out of Tottsu's book and start carrying a medkit to deal with the juveniles," he said.
"Oy, oy, stop talking about me like I'm not here!" Kawai protested, with pointedly no rebuttal of the juvenile tag.
"But he's not my brother," Fujigaya said, "nor am I his keeper."
"No," Yokoo allowed, "but he's our village idiot and we are all responsible for each other just the same." With that, he dragged Kawai away down the hall, only calling back over his shoulder: "And along those lines, you'd better hope that Tamamori gets here in one piece!"
Exasperated, Fujigaya threw his hands up and stalked back to the common room. A guy couldn't win around these parts no matter what he did or didn't do.
*
The common room was empty, save for Miyata's body heaped gracelessly atop the couch like some discarded marionette tossed out with the trash. Since nobody else was around, Fujigaya took it upon himself to rearrange Miyata in a way that would hurt decidedly less by the time he woke up.
"You're a lot of trouble, you know?" he told Miyata's prone form, stretching him out flat on his back, arms by sides. Realising presently that he now had nowhere to sit, Fujigaya bent Miyata's knees up and shoved his feet in enough to vacate the end of the couch. Then sat himself down. "Who ever heard of a government employee falling for an errant hacker? Seriously, making life hard for yourself much?"
Crossing his arms, Fujigaya cast an imperious glance over Miyata's way, though the agent didn't respond, still out cold (though his lips moved a little as if sleep-miming or something). Fujigaya shrugged. "Well, whatever. You don't have to worry anymore, because when you wake up, you'll find that we've benevolently taken care of your problems for you like the nice guys we-"
A crash at the hatch interrupted his soliloquy, and Fujigaya looked up. Speaking of problems...
"I am SO sorry!" Hashimoto wailed, apparently entirely unaware of what an Indoor Voice was. He was flailing about while Goseki helped Totsuka haul Tamamori's body in through the square little door.
Amused, Fujigaya pushed himself up from the couch and trotted over. "Let me help you with that."
"Much obliged," Goseki said.
Together they got Tamamori in and upright, mostly leaned against Fujigaya, and Totsuka closed the hatch behind himself, resting against it for a moment before straightening up. "...I'm not doing that again," he said.
"Sorry," Fujigaya grinned. "I owe you one. And welcome back."
"Thanks."
Hashimoto's head was tilted and he stood oddly bent, seemingly in an attempt to peer under Fujigaya's unibang at his face. "Who are you?" Hashimoto asked. "Who are you? You gave us Mister Smellypants."
Fujigaya eyed Hashimoto, but Totsuka answered before he could decide what to say. "This is Fujigaya, but you can call him Taipi like the rest of us."
"He's a good friend of ours," Goseki added, and Hashimoto's eyes narrowed.
"A friend, huh?"
"A good friend," Goseki corrected, and Hashimoto's eyes narrowed some more.
"Ryosuke, stop that," Totsuka said, cuffing Hashimoto over the back of the head. "That's not what he means. And please don't encourage him, Goseki-kun. Please."
Goseki just smiled.
"...right," Fujigaya said, his face a rare expression of faint disturbance. "Nice to meet you."
"It probably is, I think?"
"You're supposed to say 'It's nice to meet you, too'," Totsuka scolded as Goseki laughed.
Shaking his head, Fujigaya turned around and hauled Tamamori back to the common room couch where Miyata was waiting.
"上手!上手!" Senga laughed-- ("you can has mad skillz!!", becase the Japanese will praise you for trying even if your true ability sucks hairy monkey balls). "お帰りよ!" (welcome back, yo!)
1- btw, there's also now an
FAQ of sorts. ♥ idk, i felt like it. *procrastinate*
2- darn, wanted to write something for fujigaya's birthday, too. oops.
3- ...transformers movie tomorrow! \8D/ *no study ethic*
4- DAMNIT, GDOCS, STOP EATING MY SPACES. >8E