[log][Elevator Gone Wild][Anko, Sai, Kakashi][closed]
To be continued.
A heavy sigh rumbled through his ribcage as Kakashi’s least favorite words in the entirety of the printed world haunted him once again. He’d been waiting months for this theoretical continuation, and yet every time he reread the cheap pages of his favorite orange book, the story never progressed any further. Would he ever find out if Maria, the poor girl kidnapped from her family and sold to a wealthy lord in exchange for seed, managed to escape the iron and leather harness the lord had left her in and meet Gabriel, the wandering knight with whom she’d fallen madly in love with after a night of wild passion, in time? His life remained hollow and incomplete without answers. What was the point of getting up in the morning when he didn’t know if true love could triumph over the oppression of unsolicited lust?
With a soft snap, the paperback was shut and slid into the back pocket of jeans that had become slightly too large after his months of self-imposed exile and unintentional malnutrition, as Kakashi returned his gaze to his apartment building’s still shut elevator door. Perplexed, he reached out and pressed the button again before shoving his hands deep in his pockets.
With nothing to read, the wait seemed interminable. In fact, now that he thought about it, hadn’t he only been roughly sixty pages into his four hundred and eighty-two page book when he had first arrived? Eyes narrowing suspiciously, Kakashi stepped closer to the elevator and pressed his ear against in, searching for the electric hum it was bound to make even if it had stopped on another floor.
There was no electric hum. No sound of movement at all. In fact, there was only a vague echo drifting down the elevator shaft that sounded vaguely reminiscent of voices.
Suspicion growing, Kakashi set his fingers to the gated latch of the elevator door and pried it open. As it was definitely of the archaic persuasion, he managed to force the door without too much trouble. The trapped air of the elevator shaft crashed over him in a wave of sticky heat as it was freed, gagging him slightly as he peeked in and looked up.
The echo was definitely voices and the elevator was definitely not moving.
"Hello?" he called up, mostly curious but maybe vaguely concerned.
Instead of answering, Sai caught an indistinct echo from down below them. "Did you hear that?" He lifted himself off of the wall he was leaning against and stood there, waiting for another sound to reach them. "Perhaps someone has fixed it?" Hope was returning to them after leaving sometime after hour two out of the total of four stuck in the elevator.
Torn between feeling overjoyed that someone had found about their predicament and pissed that someone was interfering with her tormenting, Anko didn't move immediately when the voice echoed through the stifling elevator shaft. When the gears finally finished clicking in her head she flew up from her seat on the floor and begin banging on the wall and hollering down to the voice below them.
"GET US OUT OF HERE!"
"Maybe we should try some of the buttons?" Sai suggested, thinking that the sound could be the mechanical workers. Unfortunately, there wasn't an intercom of any sort that would allow them to speak to Anko and Sai directly.
"I recall you giving me hell for trying buttons when it obviously didn't work before, and now you want me to try them?", Anko growled, still feeling slightly bitter over getting scolded like a bad child.
"I only "gave you hell" because they did not work. Perhaps now they will because someone is down there. It could be a work man." Sai replied softly, still hoping to catch another sound.
"If it was someone working down there we would hear more noise," she hissed back, ceasing her banging for a moment to see if there would be any more sounds from below them.
Kakashi blinked at the yelling and the banging he could hear coming from inside the metal cage. At least two people were definitely trapped in there.
He frowned and pulled back into the hallway. What to do? He didn’t own a phone which made calling for help a little tricky, and then he would need to factor in the wait time between when he managed to get a hold of management and when maintenance actually arrived, which could be days. And while he supposed he could call emergency services (again assuming he could eventually find a phone), he would probably still know everyone on the squad and the entire purpose behind being in this exact building was to avoid those people. Plus, they wouldn’t have any idea how to solve the problem anyway. Emergency response was primarily trained to deal with violence, after all, so they would be useless to him.
A heavy sigh rumbled in his ribcage as the conclusion that he would need to figure this mess out settled on his shoulders. “Uhhh, just…hold on a minute,” he called up the elevator shaft to reassure the unknown prisoners before he pulled a quarter out of his pocket and started undoing the screws covering the elevator control panel in the lobby. Maybe he could MacGuyver enough of a jump for the elevator to slide up or down a bit, and then he could pry open the doors on either the second or third floor and they could get out…
The voice floating up the elevator shaft was heaven to her ears. Finally there was a light at the end of the tunnel, or elevator shaft, as it were. There was a sharp metal clang as what Anko assumed was an access panel fell to the cheap concrete floor that ran throughout the building. She nudged Sai out of the way with her hip so she had full access to the button panel before she started jabbing buttons earnestly. After a few terse moments, a hum was heard echoing through the tiny compartment before the elevator jerked down a few inches. She didn't know or care exactly why it was moving again, be it her button smashing or the results of their savior below, she just knew the damned thing was moving. It lurched again before creeping downwards slowly.
"The buttons are working again." The elevator was slowly making its descent and Sai was pleased to find some new air was making its way into the elevator. He was feeling much cooler. "We are going to get out." He was anxious to finally step out of the elevator after four long hours.
Anko couldn't help the shiver of excitement that coursed through her veins. Freedom! Feeling positively giddy, she turned and jumped onto Sai like a child, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, laughing out loud at the thought of getting the hell out of there. She fought to keep a good grip on his sweat slicked body, the momentum throwing them against the wall.
At the force of Anko's hug, Sai automatically caught her by wrapping his right arm around her waist as his left moved up to grasp her arms encircling his neck. Just as Sai's back hit the wall, the elevator came to a terrifying halt. They were silent, completely dumbfounded that their close escape has been taken away from them.
Milton the Elevator, was apparently a very funny elevator and favored unexpected surprises because as Anko was starting to become angry again and Sai was becoming slightly dismayed, the elevator made a sickeningly horrible creak and dropped. It felt like they were in a tumbler because in addition to descending at a faster rate than usual, the carriage of the elevator was shaking back and forth in the small space available in the elevator shaft.
Anko's arms tightened around him, as they were thrown to the other side of the wall. Anko let out a grunt of pain from Sai's heavier frame crushing her against the wall. Before Anko could let out a complaint, they were once again thrown across the small elevator. Sai's head cracked against the wall this time and his eyebrows furrowed slightly from the pain. He reached up and rubbed the sore spot on his skull.
The impact caused the grip Anko had on Sai's waist to slide down a bit lower around his hips. Her tank top clung to Sai's chest, causing it to ride up and his hands slid down to grip her thighs to keep her from falling off completely. Another lurch threw them so that Anko's back was slammed against the far wall again, her left hand sliding off Sai's shoulder to brace against the wall, her lower back arching away from the slimy wall so that only her shoulder blades and the back of her head was touching the wall. Hissing at the sharp pain ringing through her head and snug fit between their two bodies, Anko prayed that the elevator didn't have anymore hidden surprises for them.
Once they stopped on the other side of the wall, he braced himself to be thrown the other way again. After a moment of just expecting something and nothing happening, it seemed that Milton had finished playing games with them and had puttered back to inactivity. Sai let out a soft breath. With one arm he pushed against the wall to put some distance between their bodies when a movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention.
Sai stopped moving(away from Anko) to absorb the sight of a grey-haired man staring at them through the gated elevator door.
"Oh. Hello." Sai greeted, completely oblivious to his quite scandalizing state of undress and position.
Once the panel was removed, Kakashi found himself exposed to a network of unreasonable complication given the simplicity of the one button and otherwise blank face of the lobby elevator control. For a second he just stared at the mess, at a bit of a loss regarding where to even start. Finally, with nothing more than a blink, he attacked the problem. If pushing the button triggered the elevator to descend then using it as his guide seemed like the most logical course of action.
As Kakashi mapped out the wires looking for inconsistencies or problems, his mind started listing off his possible next steps should the malfunctioning part of the elevator not be by-passable. He had already concluded that the real problem was mechanical: obviously power was somehow not making its way into the engine. That was probably far more complicated than Kakashi would be able to manage to fix. However, it was entirely possible that there was a backup power source and that it’s connection to the main engine was compromised, which is why it hadn’t kicked in when the first had faltered.
Aha! Following his theory, Kakashi came across a heavy cable that looked like it had been chewed on by a rodent at some point in the recent past. As the teeth marks seemed to have only made it past the rubber casing, Kakashi assumed this to mean that there was a significant active current running through the copper. As he jimmied the cable, he heard a lurch through the wall, signaling the movement of the elevator box.
Arching his eyebrow curiously, Kakashi jimmied it more, pressing it towards the side that seemed to have triggered an electrical reaction. Success! The lurching ignited to a full on roar as the elevator suddenly dropped towards the ground level. Hoping he was guesstimating the break system and gravity correctly, Kakashi pulled the cable back a few feet before the elevator sunk down into the basement level.
Immensely pleased with himself when the elevator stopped almost perfectly level with the ground floor, Kakashi pulled away from the mangled panel to check on the occupants. He blinked as he recognized his favorite neighbor (the delectable Anko, who conveniently lived two floors below his) in a rather familiar looking position with some boy he hadn’t met yet.
"Yo," Kakashi replied automatically to the boy’s greeting, hand rising away from the mess of wires that had once been a control panel in a half wave.
“Sorry I’m late?”
"Always fashionably late eh 'Kashi?", she couldn't help but smile, squeaking as Sai suddenly released her thigh causing her to drop to the ground. Mindfully ignoring the compromising position she was just in, Anko tugged down the edge of tank top and attempted to make herself seem as presentable as possible under the circumstances.
Before the elevator could revolt against her again, Anko grabbed the grate and yanked it open, hurrying out of the cramped box, Sai following closely behind her after grabbing his shirt off of the ground. Ever the polite and proper one, "Kakashi, this is Sai, Sai, this is Kakashi, he lives on the top floor."
"Sai, it was pleasure meeting you, we really must do this again sometime WITHOUT the elevator, ok? And now if you two gentleman will excuse me, I feel fuckin' nasty and am in dire need of a shower and something to eat." Anko headed off towards the stairs, stopping in her tracks and turned around after a second thought. "Kakashi, if you don't already have something planned, you're welcome to come on up and we can discuss your reward hmm?", she offered a wink as a blatant invitation to her ever sexy neighbor, before turning back towards the stairs.
He supposed she was very excited to be free as she blew past him like a whirlwind to head off to where ever. He was also anxious to take a shower and eat something. He also needed to call for another interview. He quickly said nice to meet you to Kakashi, waved goodbye to Anko, and headed for the stairs (he will be taking the stairs for a long time to come after that experience) to go back to his apartment.
Kakashi blinked as Sai and Anko literally flew past him, barely giving him the chance to acknowledge Sai’s introduction and greeting with a nod and to register Anko’s characteristically direct proposition. Before he had the chance to reply to either of them, they were off like shots to the stairwell.
Kakashi shrugged mentally and took his time disentangling his hands. For a second he considered putting the control panel back together but finally decided not to. With the wires exposed and in disarray, other occupants wouldn’t be tempted to climb into the trap of the elevator, and one of them would eventually call the building manager and have it fixed. Kakashi could completely wash his hands of this business and avoid all possible avenues of detection. Pleased, he dusted his hands off (favorably considering the very real option of physically washing his hands of this business as well as helping his favorite neighbor do the same) before reaching for the box of take-out he’d been returning home with in the first place and heading towards the stairs. Some days, things just worked out in his favor.
A heavy sigh rumbled through his ribcage as Kakashi’s least favorite words in the entirety of the printed world haunted him once again. He’d been waiting months for this theoretical continuation, and yet every time he reread the cheap pages of his favorite orange book, the story never progressed any further. Would he ever find out if Maria, the poor girl kidnapped from her family and sold to a wealthy lord in exchange for seed, managed to escape the iron and leather harness the lord had left her in and meet Gabriel, the wandering knight with whom she’d fallen madly in love with after a night of wild passion, in time? His life remained hollow and incomplete without answers. What was the point of getting up in the morning when he didn’t know if true love could triumph over the oppression of unsolicited lust?
With a soft snap, the paperback was shut and slid into the back pocket of jeans that had become slightly too large after his months of self-imposed exile and unintentional malnutrition, as Kakashi returned his gaze to his apartment building’s still shut elevator door. Perplexed, he reached out and pressed the button again before shoving his hands deep in his pockets.
With nothing to read, the wait seemed interminable. In fact, now that he thought about it, hadn’t he only been roughly sixty pages into his four hundred and eighty-two page book when he had first arrived? Eyes narrowing suspiciously, Kakashi stepped closer to the elevator and pressed his ear against in, searching for the electric hum it was bound to make even if it had stopped on another floor.
There was no electric hum. No sound of movement at all. In fact, there was only a vague echo drifting down the elevator shaft that sounded vaguely reminiscent of voices.
Suspicion growing, Kakashi set his fingers to the gated latch of the elevator door and pried it open. As it was definitely of the archaic persuasion, he managed to force the door without too much trouble. The trapped air of the elevator shaft crashed over him in a wave of sticky heat as it was freed, gagging him slightly as he peeked in and looked up.
The echo was definitely voices and the elevator was definitely not moving.
"Hello?" he called up, mostly curious but maybe vaguely concerned.
Instead of answering, Sai caught an indistinct echo from down below them. "Did you hear that?" He lifted himself off of the wall he was leaning against and stood there, waiting for another sound to reach them. "Perhaps someone has fixed it?" Hope was returning to them after leaving sometime after hour two out of the total of four stuck in the elevator.
Torn between feeling overjoyed that someone had found about their predicament and pissed that someone was interfering with her tormenting, Anko didn't move immediately when the voice echoed through the stifling elevator shaft. When the gears finally finished clicking in her head she flew up from her seat on the floor and begin banging on the wall and hollering down to the voice below them.
"GET US OUT OF HERE!"
"Maybe we should try some of the buttons?" Sai suggested, thinking that the sound could be the mechanical workers. Unfortunately, there wasn't an intercom of any sort that would allow them to speak to Anko and Sai directly.
"I recall you giving me hell for trying buttons when it obviously didn't work before, and now you want me to try them?", Anko growled, still feeling slightly bitter over getting scolded like a bad child.
"I only "gave you hell" because they did not work. Perhaps now they will because someone is down there. It could be a work man." Sai replied softly, still hoping to catch another sound.
"If it was someone working down there we would hear more noise," she hissed back, ceasing her banging for a moment to see if there would be any more sounds from below them.
Kakashi blinked at the yelling and the banging he could hear coming from inside the metal cage. At least two people were definitely trapped in there.
He frowned and pulled back into the hallway. What to do? He didn’t own a phone which made calling for help a little tricky, and then he would need to factor in the wait time between when he managed to get a hold of management and when maintenance actually arrived, which could be days. And while he supposed he could call emergency services (again assuming he could eventually find a phone), he would probably still know everyone on the squad and the entire purpose behind being in this exact building was to avoid those people. Plus, they wouldn’t have any idea how to solve the problem anyway. Emergency response was primarily trained to deal with violence, after all, so they would be useless to him.
A heavy sigh rumbled in his ribcage as the conclusion that he would need to figure this mess out settled on his shoulders. “Uhhh, just…hold on a minute,” he called up the elevator shaft to reassure the unknown prisoners before he pulled a quarter out of his pocket and started undoing the screws covering the elevator control panel in the lobby. Maybe he could MacGuyver enough of a jump for the elevator to slide up or down a bit, and then he could pry open the doors on either the second or third floor and they could get out…
The voice floating up the elevator shaft was heaven to her ears. Finally there was a light at the end of the tunnel, or elevator shaft, as it were. There was a sharp metal clang as what Anko assumed was an access panel fell to the cheap concrete floor that ran throughout the building. She nudged Sai out of the way with her hip so she had full access to the button panel before she started jabbing buttons earnestly. After a few terse moments, a hum was heard echoing through the tiny compartment before the elevator jerked down a few inches. She didn't know or care exactly why it was moving again, be it her button smashing or the results of their savior below, she just knew the damned thing was moving. It lurched again before creeping downwards slowly.
"The buttons are working again." The elevator was slowly making its descent and Sai was pleased to find some new air was making its way into the elevator. He was feeling much cooler. "We are going to get out." He was anxious to finally step out of the elevator after four long hours.
Anko couldn't help the shiver of excitement that coursed through her veins. Freedom! Feeling positively giddy, she turned and jumped onto Sai like a child, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, laughing out loud at the thought of getting the hell out of there. She fought to keep a good grip on his sweat slicked body, the momentum throwing them against the wall.
At the force of Anko's hug, Sai automatically caught her by wrapping his right arm around her waist as his left moved up to grasp her arms encircling his neck. Just as Sai's back hit the wall, the elevator came to a terrifying halt. They were silent, completely dumbfounded that their close escape has been taken away from them.
Milton the Elevator, was apparently a very funny elevator and favored unexpected surprises because as Anko was starting to become angry again and Sai was becoming slightly dismayed, the elevator made a sickeningly horrible creak and dropped. It felt like they were in a tumbler because in addition to descending at a faster rate than usual, the carriage of the elevator was shaking back and forth in the small space available in the elevator shaft.
Anko's arms tightened around him, as they were thrown to the other side of the wall. Anko let out a grunt of pain from Sai's heavier frame crushing her against the wall. Before Anko could let out a complaint, they were once again thrown across the small elevator. Sai's head cracked against the wall this time and his eyebrows furrowed slightly from the pain. He reached up and rubbed the sore spot on his skull.
The impact caused the grip Anko had on Sai's waist to slide down a bit lower around his hips. Her tank top clung to Sai's chest, causing it to ride up and his hands slid down to grip her thighs to keep her from falling off completely. Another lurch threw them so that Anko's back was slammed against the far wall again, her left hand sliding off Sai's shoulder to brace against the wall, her lower back arching away from the slimy wall so that only her shoulder blades and the back of her head was touching the wall. Hissing at the sharp pain ringing through her head and snug fit between their two bodies, Anko prayed that the elevator didn't have anymore hidden surprises for them.
Once they stopped on the other side of the wall, he braced himself to be thrown the other way again. After a moment of just expecting something and nothing happening, it seemed that Milton had finished playing games with them and had puttered back to inactivity. Sai let out a soft breath. With one arm he pushed against the wall to put some distance between their bodies when a movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention.
Sai stopped moving(away from Anko) to absorb the sight of a grey-haired man staring at them through the gated elevator door.
"Oh. Hello." Sai greeted, completely oblivious to his quite scandalizing state of undress and position.
Once the panel was removed, Kakashi found himself exposed to a network of unreasonable complication given the simplicity of the one button and otherwise blank face of the lobby elevator control. For a second he just stared at the mess, at a bit of a loss regarding where to even start. Finally, with nothing more than a blink, he attacked the problem. If pushing the button triggered the elevator to descend then using it as his guide seemed like the most logical course of action.
As Kakashi mapped out the wires looking for inconsistencies or problems, his mind started listing off his possible next steps should the malfunctioning part of the elevator not be by-passable. He had already concluded that the real problem was mechanical: obviously power was somehow not making its way into the engine. That was probably far more complicated than Kakashi would be able to manage to fix. However, it was entirely possible that there was a backup power source and that it’s connection to the main engine was compromised, which is why it hadn’t kicked in when the first had faltered.
Aha! Following his theory, Kakashi came across a heavy cable that looked like it had been chewed on by a rodent at some point in the recent past. As the teeth marks seemed to have only made it past the rubber casing, Kakashi assumed this to mean that there was a significant active current running through the copper. As he jimmied the cable, he heard a lurch through the wall, signaling the movement of the elevator box.
Arching his eyebrow curiously, Kakashi jimmied it more, pressing it towards the side that seemed to have triggered an electrical reaction. Success! The lurching ignited to a full on roar as the elevator suddenly dropped towards the ground level. Hoping he was guesstimating the break system and gravity correctly, Kakashi pulled the cable back a few feet before the elevator sunk down into the basement level.
Immensely pleased with himself when the elevator stopped almost perfectly level with the ground floor, Kakashi pulled away from the mangled panel to check on the occupants. He blinked as he recognized his favorite neighbor (the delectable Anko, who conveniently lived two floors below his) in a rather familiar looking position with some boy he hadn’t met yet.
"Yo," Kakashi replied automatically to the boy’s greeting, hand rising away from the mess of wires that had once been a control panel in a half wave.
“Sorry I’m late?”
"Always fashionably late eh 'Kashi?", she couldn't help but smile, squeaking as Sai suddenly released her thigh causing her to drop to the ground. Mindfully ignoring the compromising position she was just in, Anko tugged down the edge of tank top and attempted to make herself seem as presentable as possible under the circumstances.
Before the elevator could revolt against her again, Anko grabbed the grate and yanked it open, hurrying out of the cramped box, Sai following closely behind her after grabbing his shirt off of the ground. Ever the polite and proper one, "Kakashi, this is Sai, Sai, this is Kakashi, he lives on the top floor."
"Sai, it was pleasure meeting you, we really must do this again sometime WITHOUT the elevator, ok? And now if you two gentleman will excuse me, I feel fuckin' nasty and am in dire need of a shower and something to eat." Anko headed off towards the stairs, stopping in her tracks and turned around after a second thought. "Kakashi, if you don't already have something planned, you're welcome to come on up and we can discuss your reward hmm?", she offered a wink as a blatant invitation to her ever sexy neighbor, before turning back towards the stairs.
He supposed she was very excited to be free as she blew past him like a whirlwind to head off to where ever. He was also anxious to take a shower and eat something. He also needed to call for another interview. He quickly said nice to meet you to Kakashi, waved goodbye to Anko, and headed for the stairs (he will be taking the stairs for a long time to come after that experience) to go back to his apartment.
Kakashi blinked as Sai and Anko literally flew past him, barely giving him the chance to acknowledge Sai’s introduction and greeting with a nod and to register Anko’s characteristically direct proposition. Before he had the chance to reply to either of them, they were off like shots to the stairwell.
Kakashi shrugged mentally and took his time disentangling his hands. For a second he considered putting the control panel back together but finally decided not to. With the wires exposed and in disarray, other occupants wouldn’t be tempted to climb into the trap of the elevator, and one of them would eventually call the building manager and have it fixed. Kakashi could completely wash his hands of this business and avoid all possible avenues of detection. Pleased, he dusted his hands off (favorably considering the very real option of physically washing his hands of this business as well as helping his favorite neighbor do the same) before reaching for the box of take-out he’d been returning home with in the first place and heading towards the stairs. Some days, things just worked out in his favor.