[oneshot] The stars remind me of you. (1/4)
Title: The stars remind me of you.
Group: EXO&SHINee
Pairing: Kai/Taemin.
Rating: R
Length: 28,530 words
Warnings: Blood, space, use of stage names as real names.
Summary: Bounty hunter Kai crashes onto clueless but lovely amnesiac Lee Taemin. Cue Adventures On Space™.
A/N: comission written for the magnanimous brandnewwind, who was absurdly patient with me thank you so much. this fic was officially inspired by Cowboy Bebop. i'm sorry if i got any of the characters in this wrong, and i'm sorry for the lack of caliente scenes. i'm basically just sorry
Let’s get this out of the way: Styx is an honest-to-god icy shithole. As habitable as anything past Neptune can be, yes, but even Triton is just an ice rink with colonies in it, and Styx is far from being any better. If anything, Kai bitterly thinks as he races through gelid streets, Styx in its best days resembles Triton in its worst days. Styx is just too cold.
“Too cold!”, Kai thinks out loud as frost once again takes over his helmet’s visor. “TOO COLD!!”, he reiterates as he has to lift the visor, and frost attacks his skin instead. “How do human beings actually live here!!”, he wonders in outrage as he pursues a two-thousand woolong bounty head through the empty, frozen streets of S-XIII.
“You complain too much,” comes the expected retort from the transmitter.
“Well, what can I say? IT’S TOO COLD DOWN HERE!!” Kai makes a show of shouting as close to his end of the transmitter as he can, and takes a little bit of pleasure in imagining his shipmate grimace at the noise. “Do you have any idea how cold it is? I’d like to see you come down and feel it for yourself!”
“I’ll pass. Also, you insisted in coming down personally,” Kai’s shipmate points out, and, to Kai’s chagrin, he’s right. “Leave him to me, Ravi, I’m the fastest between us both, I’m super fast, I can do this-”
“I don’t speak like that!! I-fuck,” Kai realizes a little too late that the man he’s chasing turns left rather than going straight, and for Kai, who was distracted, it’s too late to turn. He loses sight of the bounty head. “Fucking shit.”
“Good job, you idiot,” says the transmitter, not completely displeased. “There goes our chicken.”
“I can catch him,” Kai huffs, speeding through the streets in a tight zigzag as he searches for his criminal. “If you stop talking to me every time I’m close to cornering him, maybe?”
“Very well. I’m turning this off,” is the reply that comes. “Hope you crash and burn.” And the transmission clicks to an end.
This time, Kai is hunting to survive, a small, petty head called Young Speedster. As petty as the guy supposedly is, for stealing shitty old monos to do God-knows-what with them, he surely didn’t get his name for nothing. The sunofabitch is quick on his heels. Kai groans, reeling his mono upwards, intending to do an aerial recognition of the area. It’ll cost him time, but it’d be foolish to continue running blindly like that.
“Frost swallowed him, it seems,” Kai mutters to himself, aware that Ravi is not listening anymore. “The worst death. My chicken, though. I need my chicken. THERE HE IS!!”
There he is, racing like a madman through S-XIII’s abandoned industrial district. The fucker isn’t even being chased anymore, but he still drives in full speed. Kai needs a tactic of some sorts to get him. Maybe perceive a pattern in the way he drives, in his direction and such?
In a few seconds, Kai already knows what to do. Through his incessant zigzagging, Young Speedster seems to be heading east, and the route will eventually lead him into a large boulevard. All Kai has to do is to make a smooth, slow curve in the opposite direction - to mislead his chase, and to give himself enough impulse - and shoot down in a diagonal, as fast as he can, aiming for the boulevard. He could flatten like pancake if he didn’t pay enough attention: he has to concentrate one hundred percent in his driving.
“Food,” Kai mutters to himself as he performs the curve backwards. “Survival…” How sad is that. “Go, me. Go!”
With that one cheer for himself, he pulls the accelerator all the way back. And there he goes.
“AAAAAAAHH!!” he screams, both as a battle cry and a reaction to the blades of cold wind hitting his face. From where he is, descending like a comet from the sky, he sees the frosted concrete getting closer and closer, the Young Speedster glancing up flabbergasted as he drives on, a person in the middle of the street.
Fffffffffffffffffvium, makes the air as Kai swerves up, avoiding the crash with the floor. Ssssssssssswaaaaah, makes Young Speedster’s mono as he makes a tight U-turn to escape. Shhhaboom!!, makes the body colliding with Kai’s mono just as he was about to follow up, and fffvvrack!!, makes the concrete as Kai’s mono flips around itself again, and again, and again, and Kai thinks, this is what the helmets were made for. Quite the epiphany.
The bounty head escapes. Kai will grieve that later; for now, he’s, for all things, glad to be alive as he slides out from underneath his totaled mono. It always looks uglier than it really was, he tries to comfort himself by thinking, eying the debris with melancholy. At least it’s his ship and not his neck. Putting both of his hands on the least damaged lateral, he counts to three, and flips the vehicle in one swift movement so to reach for the transmitter.
A scream leaves his lungs as he notices a person inside.
AAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!, makes the scream, and it echoes in the empty streets in a ghastly way.
The body is tossed over the cockpit rather ungracefully, limp like a bag of water, eyes and mouth hanging open with little effort. To top it off, the body is dressed in a hospital gown. Kai wants out. Immediately. The transmitter cracks.
“That was quite the crash,” Ravi comments with a hint of mockery in his voice. “And I thought, for a minute, that you were a good pilot.”
“I hit someone,” Kai confesses, getting a little pale as he detects a fine line of blood trickling down from the corner of the body’s mouth. “Or someone hit me. Hard to tell. They’re bleeding.”
A pause. Kai knows he managed to shock the mockery out of Ravi’s body right now. He can’t bring himself to feel smug about it. “You hit someone?! How in the heavens?? There ain’t no one in S-XIII, Kai, specially at this hour.”
“Explain this, then,” Kai mumbles, snapping a picture of the body with the second uppermost button of his driving jacket. In a second, Ravi will be seeing what he sees. For now, he should probably… what…?
He kneels down on the concrete, almost at eye level with the possible corpse. Their eyes are red with blood now, thick dollops that cascade down his forehead. Kai swallows, his guts failing him for a second. “Huh… excuse me…?”
He doesn’t know why he’s talking with this obviously dead person. If they were alive, they’d have moved by now, right? And yet, he makes another attempt. He doesn’t want to touch but. He does. On the shoulder. “Excuse me… are you listening…?”
The person - dead or not - coughs. They cough, and, predictably, a lot of blood comes out. It splashes directly over Kai’s eyes. If Kai doesn’t scream, it’s out of sheer self-control. Blood everywhere. The person moves their eyes absentmindedly, as if taking their surroundings in, and, soon enough, their pupils lock down on Kai’s frozen, terrified face.
To drive Kai further into terror, they smile, a smile full of blood-covered teeth. “Hello.”
Kai’s self-control suffocates him.
Ravi is kind enough to give them - Kai, the mono, and the bleeding person - a lift back into the mothership, an old, but fairly functional thing named Kiev. The Kiev at times resembles a seagull, graceful but chunky, a bit crooked to the left side; that, of course, if seagulls were metallic and rust-colored, to conceal the bits where actual rust threatened to advance. Precarious, yes, but it works.
Not the same can be said about Kai’s mono at the time, Ravi notices as the transport elevator goes up, letting its occupiers in. Kai’s mono has a lot in common with the Kiev - its color, not quite rust but a faded burgundy, and its name, K-IV, despite this being pronounced ‘kay-four’ and not ‘kay-I-vee’ or anything similar - but, right now, it doesn’t look like it does. It doesn’t even look like a vehicle.
“Our baby…” Ravi laments.
“Ravi. Help. Person.” Kai reminds him, making the effort to carry said person on his back. Judging by Kai’s face, the load is quite heavy. Ravi helps, and, together, they lay the person down on the nearest couch. They have, fortunately, stopped bleeding.
“Not dead, by the looks of it,” Ravi comments, and Kai gives him the stank face, because it’s quite obvious, since the person is glancing around quite vividly. “Hello. Hey,” Ravi attracts the person’s attention by snapping his fingers in front of their eyes. “Hello. Name, age, home town, preferred pronouns. Please.”
The person blinks. They seem to be a little taken aback. Not their fault, really. “Uh, hello. I’m a he. I guess? My name is Lee Taemin.”
Ravi frowns, and Kai widens his eyes. They exchange a look. The hell is up with that name? “Where are you from, Lee Taemin?”
“Uh. I’m from. Down there?” Lee Taemin answers tentatively. This time, Kai frowns and Ravi widens his eyes as they exchange another look of disbelief.
“From Styx?” Ravi asks. Lee Taemin says nothing. “You don’t look like it.”
“Sorry,” Kai adds to Ravi’s sentence, elbowing his comrade on the ribs.
“Sorry,” Ravi ratifies. Lee Taemin seems not to mind. “So?”
He shrugs, toying with his necklace absentmindedly. “I guess I’m not from there, then,” he says, eyes unfocused. Kai is starting to think they should’ve checked for concussions first, asked questions later. “I woke up down there a few weeks ago. In a hospital. I don’t know my age, and I don’t remember where I’m from.”
Ravi glances at Kai. Kai, this time, does not glance back. He feels bad for Lee Taemin, covered in dry blood, dressed in hospital clothes, amnesiac. Clearly depressed. Quite depressing to look at, too.
“Did you run away from the hospital?” Ravi asks. Lee Taemin makes a face almost immediately.
“I did. It was terrible there. They wouldn’t even call me by my name,” at that, he holds up his necklace’s pendant, holding the inside out. “Even though it’s written right here!!”
Kai and Ravi lean forward to see. The pendant itself is simple, just a small medal with rounded corners, probably made of synthetic iron. Engraved on it, in a home-made or artisanal fashion, is the name ‘TAEMIN’ all in caps. So much for thinking he could at least remember his own name…
“I see,” Ravi mutters, and Kai can almost hear his shipmate think. He’s trying to solve the puzzle, or the puzzles, or just reveling in confusion. Either way, he’s unavailable from then on. Kai takes over the conversation.
“So, Taemin. Taemin?” he starts, hesitant. Taemin nods, and he goes on. “Taemin. How do you feel right now?”
Oddly enough, the question throws Taemin off. He blinks rapidly, and Kai wonders what’s so strange about what he asked. “What do you mean?”
“Well-well, I kind of ran over you back there,” He blushes a little as he admits that. The shame! He, a seasoned pilot… “And you were bleeding. A lot. By the way, I should get you a damp cloth… or would you like to take a shower?”
Taemin perks up. “A shower!”
“I’m guessing you haven’t taken one in a while,” Kai comments, and immediately realizes what nonsense he just said. “Not because you stink or anything!! But because public installations rarely have showers in Styx. Or even in Pluto, actually, and Pluto is relatively nice.
“Yeah,” Taemin chuckles, looking at Kai like he pities him a little. Kai’s face is now the same color as his ship, somewhere between bright red and the natural dark brown of his skin. “They instructed me to use rubbing alcohol, and that’s it. Pretty terrible.”
“Styx sucks,” Kai agrees, this time just hoping it isn’t the guy’s actual home town “So, here, come with me. Or, wait, actually,” Kai turns around to Ravi, who, predictably, is still burning braincells over Taemin’s very existence. “Ravi!” Kai calls, and it’s like he just popped a cracker next to Ravi’s ear. He looks almost insulted. “Could you show Taemin where the shower room is, please?”
“Oh… oh, sure,” Ravi gets to his feet, still a bit stunned. “Clothes…”
“Imma look through mine,” Kai reassures him. Ravi nods, getting to work almost immediately, leading Taemin down the starboard’s stairs; so Kai also takes his leave, jumping over the larboard rails, heading for his chambers.
“Mr. Taemin!”
Kai doesn’t really know why he knocked. In his mind, at the moment, he justifies that it’s Taemin’s first time on the ship, and he might not know they have a drawer-in-drawer-out system. Though, the voice of reason tells him a bit too late, if he had just slipped the clothes in and left, there was a good chance Taemin would’ve understood anyway… “Mr. Taemin, I’m sending your clothes-”
The door opens. Kai jumps in mortification. “-in-I-your clothes-”
“Oh, thank you!” Taemin smiles, accepting the clothes from Kai’s hands. Unfortunate, because, now, Kai has nothing in his hands to hide his face with. “Your clothes, actually, right? Haha.”
“Haha…” Kai echoes, increasingly mortified. He doesn’t really feel comfortable with seeing strangers stark naked. He really doesn’t. “Uh, actually, I should’ve just used the drawer, but I wasn’t sure whether you’d see it, so…”
“The drawer?” Taemin’s eyes twinkle with curiosity, and Kai scolds himself, you stupid thing, why did you mention the drawer? What if he asks you to explain? “Ah, well, I should go back to the shower, I shouldn’t waste water. Tell me about it afterwards, okay?”
“Sure.” He manages to bite his tongue before he lets it slip that they repurpose the shower water. He doesn’t need to know. “Bye.”
“Bye.” And Taemin closes the door.
It takes Kai a couple of seconds for him to let out the breath trapped in his lungs. God, that was awkward. Just as he’s turning around to go back to the upper hall, he notices Ravi leaning over the rail, watching him from the deck with a shit-eating grin as big as Jupiter.
“What,” Kai means to snarl, but merely mutters the word as he climbs up the starboard stairs.
“Your face,” Ravi giggles, and puts his fingers on his eyelids, forcefully widening his eyes. “Oh God. I can see forever.”
Kai attempts to hit him with a tornado kick but Ravi ducks in the last minute, cackling and shouting, “Know your folklore, Martian!”
“I’m not talking to you right now,” Kai attempts a low kick now, but Ravi jumps, serving him a roundhouse kick that Kai just barely avoids. The fucker. Kai breathes in, and, mustering all the strength he has, he twists Ravi’s leg, sending him to the ground. “There! Eat the gravity!”
“I’m immune to gravity!” Somehow, Ravi avoided face-planting the floor by falling on his palms, and he’s now pushing his body up, almost throwing Kai off-balance. “Callisto pride!!”
“Mars counter-attacks!!” Kai gives up class and tackles him.
Usually, when those two start wrestling and spurting out nonsense, they only stop when both of them are tired to the bone, which, considering their physical conditions, takes quite a long while. This time, however, just as Kai got Ravi in an arm lock the same time Ravi got his legs around Kai’s neck, an interruption appeared - Taemin had finished his shower, and the hiss of the shower room door opening always caused a startle.
The scene freezes. Kai and Ravi in a knot on the floor; Taemin, now clean and dressed in actual clothes, watching a little dumbfounded; the TV beeping timidly, warning everyone that Jack ‘n’ Jill’s Bounty News would start in two minutes; the refrigerator snoring a little. It’s a bit ridiculous. Kai and Ravi de-tangle properly, standing side to side as if nothing had happened.
“Would you like to eat with us, Mr. Taemin?” Kai offers as Ravi tends the TV. “We don’t have much, but…”
“Sure! Thank you! To tell you the truth, I’m starving,” Taemin confesses, putting a hand on his stomach. The bloodied hospital robe dangles from Taemin’s left hand. “Do you mind if I stay over? Is that imposing or something? I don’t really know.”
“Of course not,” no one deserves being stranded in Styx, Kai thinks. He turns to Ravi. “Ravi, dinner…”
“I know, I know. Just a second,” Ravi answers without looking at him, too focused on making the TV work. “And there we go,” he mutters victoriously as the screen lights up, showing the bright colored commercials that antecede Jack ‘n’ Jill. “I guess we’re having onion soup tonight. Are you allergic to anything, Taemin?”
“Uh…” Taemin thinks hard about the answer. Kai watches. “Not that I can recall…?”
Ravi makes a face. “Right. Sorry. Well, if you do, I guess I can patch you up. I’m a doctor, you see,” he can’t help but put on airs when he says that. Kai snorts. “Though, I guess that, if you survived being run over by this human blunder, you might not need me, like, ever.”
“Who’s the human blunder!!” Kai yells in outrage, and charges. Wrestling is inevitable. They’re performing serious attempts at throttling each other when they hear Taemin clear his throat, and it’s like a spell has been broken; they realize they have a guest, and reassume proper posture immediately.
“Well, I just realized,” Taemin starts as both of them are straightening their clothes. “You guys know my name, but… I don’t know yours…”
!!!!! He’s right. He’s completely right. What a faux pass, thinks Kai as the TV chirps a whistle-band version of Oh Susanna. He nudges Ravi for him to start the self-introductions, since he is, officially, the captain.
“Right. God, sorry,” Ravi apologizes properly, like a real captain of a real ship would. “My name is Ravi. I’m from Callisto, and I’m the captain of this ship, officially speaking. As for my age, I think I’m about… nine hundred days old? Something around that.” He turns to Kai, a bit startled. “You’re the same as me, right?”
“Around that, right.” Kai makes a face. “Almost fifteen years old back home.”
“We’re old.” Ravi pats him on the back and turns back to Taemin. “This is Kai, our ship’s genius pilot or something. He’s from Mars.”
“Born and raised,” Kai says rather bitterly. “By the way, we’re both bounty hunters. Do… do you, like, know what that means or…?”
“People who hunt criminals for money?” Taemin takes a guess. Both Ravi and Kai give him a thumbs-up, and he celebrates a little, as if they all were taking part in a quiz show. “Pretty cool.”
“At times,” Ravi admits, hands busy with dinner. “Sometimes it’s just a job. By the way, Kai, the volume.”
Kai conjures the remote control as if magically and turns the volume up. Jack ‘n’ Jill’s Bounty News is coming back after a commercial break.
“Bounty hunters from all over the universe, here we are to say…” says Jack, a buff Martian guy dressed as a cowboy. “Howdy! It’s time for another day of Jack ‘n’ Jill’s Bounty News! I’m Jack!”
“And I’m Jill!” Says, predictably, Jill, Jack’s tall, ginger, Europan cowgirl co-host. “This edition of our Bounty News brings all the info you rascals need to know about making money today!”
“Cut the crap,” Ravi complains to the TV.
“Sorry,” Kai turns to talk to Taemin, an apologetic half-smile on his lips. “This is probably really boring for you.”
“Oh, no! Not at all!” Taemin dismisses the possibility, seeming, indeed, quite absorbed into the show. “It looks like an interesting show. And it might be a good way for me to, you know,” he knocks on his own skull, making a sound with his mouth as to signalize it’s empty in there. Kai laughs a bit hesitantly.
“I guess it’s possible that you’re a bounty hunter who suffered from some kind of accident. Bad stuff happens to us sometimes,” Kai comments, and he feels like he just said something he shouldn’t when Taemin’s eyebrows twitch slightly in what seems to be horror. “Not to all of us, of course! I don’t know anyone who, like, died or anything. Do you, Ravi?”
“A couple times,” Ravi is clearly not paying attention. Kai mentally throws daggers at his shipmate’s back.
“Don’t mind him, he’s not even listening,” Kai is a bit relieved to see that Taemin is smiling at him. It makes him feel less like he’s blabbering, and more like he’s properly entertaining a guest. “But like, yeah. Anyway, what was the show talking about…?”
Jill is going over a fresh bounty announcement, the head being some mafia guy from Nereid who’s somehow involved with illegal meat transportation. Meat… how does meat taste, after all…?
“How much should we aim for?” Kai asks Ravi, browsing the new announcements for something that suits their needs.
Ravi cooks while thinks, thinks while cooks. The scent of onions and mushrooms starts to rise. “About two thousand? Five thousand would be ideal.”
Kai thinks Ravi expects too much from the world. “We might have to stick with the old news then, because…” he mutters, searching the fresh bounties for anything worth the trouble as Jack blabbers about legal bounties announced this week blah blah.
“Look,” Taemin speaks up unexpectedly, even startling Kai a bit. “That one looks good,” his finger is pointed at an exact section of the screen. Kai follows the sign.
“Oh!” he mutters, nodding. “Oh!!” he repeats as it dawns upon him. ”Ravi, how’s this? A gang of three named SIDD, one-thousand per member.”
“That SIDD? The dog people?” Ravi doesn’t even turn around, or steal a glance at the TV. Jill is now explaining the gang they’re talking about, ‘the vile genetic traffic agents SIDD, originally from the Kuiper belt…’. “Forget it. They were last seen in Ceres. Not worth the hassle.”
“In Ceres?!” Kai frowns as Jill repeats that exact same information: ‘These bad guys were last spotted in Ceres, between Mars and the Jovian system. Next, we have…’ Taemin looks fairly impressed. “How can you be sure your super-secret contacts are right this time? They could’ve come all the way up here, couldn’t they?”
“They could, but, well, would they? Would you?” Ravi casually shoots him down, and turns off the oven. “Now wash your hands, children. Dinner is ready.”
After a frugal dinner, the three of them discuss over what head to hunt - or rather, Kai and Ravi discuss while Taemin watches avidly - going back and forth between the possibilities until they decide extracting revenge from Young Speedster, who couldn’t possibly have gone too far. Ravi makes a brief consultation with his Super-Secret Contacts while Kai and Taemin handle the dishes, and, at last, when Kai is starting to sweat over what conversation to start once they’re done, he resurfaces.
“I bear good news,” he announces, and Kai seriously doubts that. “Young Speedster isn’t in Styx anymore.”
Kai could celebrate, but he hesitates a bit. “Hooray…?”
“He’s in Charon! HA!” Ravi grins, and, when Kai doesn’t react properly, he kicks him on the shins. “Laugh! You won’t have to go back to Styx!”
“Fuck you,” Kai tries to kick him back, but narrowly misses. “I guess you’re right, though. At least Charon has people.”
“And it doesn’t look like a military base all over,” Ravi adds. “Mr. Taemin, wanna watch our Kai in action? You could sit at the monitor with me. If he complains too much, you can shout insults at him. It’s awesome.”
Kai blushes a little in mortification, about to berate Ravi for treating a guest like that, when Taemin drops a shocker. “Uh, if possible,” he says. “I’d actually like to go with him.”
!
Ravi’s eyebrows go all the way up. “Oh?”
“I feel like it’s my fault that the guy slipped away the other time,” Taemin confesses, avoiding everyone’s eyes in a demure manner, and Kai is surprised that he even remembers Kai was hunting a head when they collided. “And I think I can help, possibly. I’ll just follow instructions. It’s been proved that I’m pretty sturdy.”
At that, neither Kai nor Ravi can help but laugh. “Indeed,” Ravi agrees, and Taemin chuckles silently at, possibly, himself. “Indeed, you’re right. Well, it’s up to the pilot over there.” When they turn around to face him, Kai feels like Ravi is silently mocking him over something. The thing is, what…? Or, what specifically…? “So?”
He doesn’t have any valid reasons to say no.
And so, to Charon they descend, Kai piloting Ravi’s mono, Taemin serving part-time as backrest since, like their name suggests, monos are built to carry one person and one person only. To travel like that feels a bit… uncomfortable. Kai can feel the exact firmness of Taemin’s chest, and that just doesn’t seem proper to him.
“So, considering that you and Mr. Ravi are from different planets,” is what Taemin breaks the ice with. “How did you meet?”
Kai smiles to himself. “Funny that you’re asking this right now. I was actually trying to steal this thing I’m driving.”
“What? Seriously!?” Taemin laughs, and so does Kai, nodding.
“Yeah. I was super poor. I don’t know if you have been to Mars, if you remember ever going there, but the whole planet is basically a giant slum.” Mars, fourth planet of the Solar System, currently the one habitable planet that’s the nearest to the Sun. Where the poor are the poorest and the rich have left the place to rot. “I stole stuff to survive, and Ravi was down there doing his business. So… yeah. I tried to steal this. I can’t believe I did it, nowadays. The hydraulic part of this thing is horrible.”
Taemin cackles, legitimately delighted at the story. His arms encircle Kai’s waist as Kai ducks the car down to lower their flight line, and there they stay, not tight enough to bother, but actually just solid enough to bother, maybe.
“How was it then? Did you hand it back to him?” Kai shakes his head. “Did he chase you?” Kai nods. “Oho. That must’ve been awesome.”
“He could drive way better than I could back in the day, I admit, and he had the better car,” the one that’s now sitting destroyed at the mothership. “I thought he was going to hand me to the police. Instead, he asked how much I was worth. Of course. Bounty hunters.”
“Were you worth much?”
“Nope. Not a dime. The actual reason why he kept me around is that I’d be more lucrative to him if I stayed. And because, don’t tell Ravi I told you this,” he adds in a secretive voice, “but he has a big gooey-soft heart.”
“Aw,” Taemin coos, and they cackle.
“I can hear you, you asshat!!” Yells Ravi’s voice from the transmitter, almost causing Kai to have a cardiac arrest. Shit, he forgot that thing was on. “Stop smothering Mr. Taemin with sentimental stories from your past and start looking for the head. Did you enter Kumarbi already?”
“I did! I’m in the innermost level already. Any lower and I’ll land,” Kai retorts, eyes on the streets down under. Kumarbi looks almost cozy compared to S-XIII; the protective dome looks less like a cage, the city structure looks less like a military camp, and there’s actual people in it. It’s still terribly cold, but hey. “Mr. Taemin, now we’re gonna look for the criminal from up here. Keep your eyes attentive. People in this town are rarely in a rush, so, if you see anyone racing, you tell me. We’ll observe for a few minutes-”
“I think I see something?” Taemin interrupts, and Kai has to admit he’s a bit taken aback. “There,” Taemin points with his finger a spot near the outskirts of the town, and Kai can barely see a thing. “Is that it?”
No, seriously, Kai can’t see shit from that distance. He subtly directs the car nearer to where Taemin is indicating, nearer, nearer… “Shit!!” He pulls the accelerator. “That’s him. Ravi, I’m going down immediately!”
“Don’t destroy my car,” Ravi begs. “But yeah, go.”
“Hold on, Taemin,” is the last warning Kai gives before he lurches the car forward, shooting down at maximum speed.
Taemin doesn’t scream, which Kai is thankful for; it seems like his driving tends to elicit screams from people, all kinds of people in all kinds of places. Taemin does tighten his hold around Kai’s waist, though, and by now Kai could’ve probably have calculated an entire topographic map of Taemin’s torso if he could do any math. He can’t, so he just feels, flushing improbably as the car takes a commanded sharp turn to the left, and the actual chase starts.
Young Speedster drives a black mono, tatted with obnoxious stickers here and there, and his helmet is bright lime-green colored. Not exactly unmistakably unique, not for Kai who has seen this type of driver just about everywhere, but he had done the world a favor and customized his mono with the words ‘YOUNG SPEEDZTAR’ written in neon across the back. It makes the chase considerably easy, even if he is absurdly fast, even if he does have some great moves and almost throws Kai off by zigzagging his way down Kumarbi’s southeast-northeast boulevard. It makes Kai considerably angrier at him.
“This fucking show-off,” he curses as the head does pretty much a vertical curve left, forcing Kai to do the same to follow. Since the mono Kai’s driving is considerably heavier - and more packed with weapons, true enough - it’s way harder to… drive…
“Hey, Ravi,” Kai calls into the transmitter as the idea pops into his head. “Can I fire one of these things? How’s the calibration?”
Ravi hums thoughtfully. “They’re good to go, as far as I know. Don’t shoot to kill though, we don’t know if he’s worth anything dead.” He pauses. “Do you even know how to shoot?”
“It can’t be that hard,” Kai thinks out loud, eyeing the weaponry commands with nonchalance. He then halts to a stop, hovering next to a plain rooftop. “So,” he turns to Taemin. “I got a plan. Would you be up to helping me? I promise you won’t get shot.”
“I’m trusting you,” Taemin says mockingly as he hops off onto firm land. “Sure, I’ll help. What should I do?”
“You seem to have really good eyes, so observe him for me. There should be… here it is,” Kai pulls the extra transmitter out of the necessities box, and hands it over to Taemin. “Tell me about his moves through this thing. It’s on, you just have to talk to it. If there’s any emergencies…” Taemin seems not to be listening; he’s admiring the device all around. “You got it. I’m off.”
“I’ll do my best!” Taemin smiles brilliantly. Kai is pretty much induced to smile back; then, he coolly puts the helmet on, and takes off.
“What happened to you? I saw you staying still for a while,” Ravi questions, probably checking the GPS map. “I thought you had shot yourself in the face.”
“He was dropping me off,” Taemin communicates, and Kai smiles to himself for no apparent reason. “Okay, I don’t see him anywhere. Off to chase him in the direction he went last time.”
“Roger. I’ll take a shortcut,” Kai carelessly performs a U-turn, the mono tipping to the side a little when inertia catches up. “Let’s see if we can corner him.”
Kai’s plan is simple and clear in his mind: while Taemin constantly reports Young Speedster position to him, he’ll follow it through the shortcuts, gearing up the weapons. Then, when they intersect, he’ll fire a harpoon aimed at the bounty head’s mono’s refrigerating system, trusting that the car will be minimally decent and stop functioning once it detects a leakage. If the Speedster try to run away by foot, Kai trusts his own legs to run faster than his, and, even if they don’t, Taemin would be there to back him up. Foolproof plan.
Foolproof, really, once he finds out how to activate the harpoon…
“He’s heading towards a tall round building,” Taemin communicates, but soon amends, “Okay, he’s past tall round building. I’m sorry, he’s fast.”
“No problem,” Kai assures him.
“He’s trying to get to a larger street, I think. Wait, I’ll get closer.” A strange sound. Did Taemin just jump from the rooftop? “Wow. That went better than expected.” He totally just did jump from the rooftop. “I’m onto him. He got to the larger street. I’m following. Heading north.”
“Your north or my north?” Kai is following Taemin’s directions at the same time he browses the weaponry commands for something helpful.
“General north, Mr. Kai,” Taemin chuckles. Kai grins. “He just turned right, I’ll follow him.”
“I’ll get there in a sec,” Kai decides to improvise with the weaponry, and just speeds up.
He twirls around the tall round building - Kumarbi’s main school, where small children in learning robes watch Kai pass by with excited smiles and squeals - and, instead of following the next boulevard, he crosses it immediately, hovering over the traffic as he dips into a rightwards street.
“Taemin, where are you?” Kai shouts as he suffers from an adrenaline peak from going up and down so fast and not even holding the brakes.
“Onto him! Not literally, but he’s going northwest and I’m following closely,” Taemin too sounds a bit roused, but less hysterical and more focused. “He’ll be out in the opposing corner from when we first saw him in one minute and a half, go through the west passage and you’ll corner him.”
“O…kay…” How can Taemin give such perfect data from eye value only…? Well, he’ll have to trust it for now, and he pulls the accelerator. “Anything else?”
“Found other rushers. There’s a person chasing a truck nearby,” he says. “Not sure what to make of it.”
“Ignore. Kumarbi people are rarely in a rush, but not never,” Kai sure has no business with trucks there. And, if he did, he forgot about it the minute he spotted the familiar helmet. “I got him! Taemin, I saw him! If you’re near, clear out, Imma shoot!”
He doesn’t wait for confirmation from Taemin; he simply shoots whatever his hand touches. Funnily enough, it’s a harpoon. It pierces through the target’s headlights. “HA!!” he fires something else. This time, it’s a machine gun, and it pretty much destroys the back part of the head’s mono, possibly damaging the engine, permanently damaging the horrid paintjob. “EAT THAT!!”
“Kai, the truck-”
“I GOT HIM!!”
“The truck, Kai, clear out-”
“Forget the truck!!”
“CLEAR OUT KAI I’M SERIOUS”
The truck hits Young Speedster, whose mono is connected to Kai’s via harpoon. The truck is sent flying, the Speedster is sent flying, Kai is sent flying. The last thing he says before falling is a prayer: please, God, if you’re there, forget about me, just save this car. If he survives and the mono not, Ravi will murder him for sure.
He falls head-first on the concrete. Praised be helmets.
Perhaps in his way towards death, Kai hears barking. He also sees puppies, a million puppies running towards him. Ah, yes, he’s in heaven. “No!!” someone screams in the distance, and then punches and kicks, and the puppies run. Puppies…
“Kai,” a voice calls him. “Kai, can you listen to me? Mr. Kai?” Kai blinks. He’s seeing a little more clear now. Taemin? It’s Taemin. “Kai, are you okay? Did you break any bones?”
He blinks again. His eyes focus slowly; Taemin kneeling next to him… the Speedster’s black mono fallen a bit ahead of them… puppies… puppies!!
“What’s going on?” he mutters as he sits up, feeling miraculously unharmed. He takes a look of the situation unfolding in front of his eyes, and, I assure, there’s a lot to take.
A bit to Kai’s left, there’s an overturned Sir Solomon’s Sweet Peas truck, spilling its contents everywhere, which are, curiously, not sweet peas, but hundreds and hundreds of dogs. Dogs everywhere. Dogs running, dogs walking, dogs pissing on walls, dogs licking Kai’s elbows. Actual dogs! Kai blinks again and sees Young Speedster fallen to the side, out cold and possibly dead, and an unrecognized blond person tying a guy up over the Speedster’s fallen mono.
“Hey!” Kai shouts, hastily getting to his feet as Taemin follows like a nurse. “Hey! You!” He’s a bit drowsy. He should check for concussions later. Possibly judging Kai well enough to stand by himself, Taemin goes check upon their bounty head. “Who are you? Did you run us over?”
The blond person looks up, and Kai’s blood freezes.
“Hey!!” Greets the yet unnamed element, a slender, pale man clad in black riding overalls. He’s clearly pleased to have company. “Long time no see, huh! Lil’ Kai from Kiev! Boy, look at you in your riding gear,” With a kick, he sends the man he just tied up to the floor, and turns his head in Taemin’s direction. “And you are…?”
It happens in a second. The gun in Kai’s pocket flies to his hand, and it clicks, barrel pointed directly to the blond man’s head. It attracts their attention, the man’s and Taemin’s, and the latter looks significantly alarmed. “Taemin, back off. Don’t let him get too close,” Kai warns, eyes locked with his new target.
Thankfully, Taemin does as told immediately, carrying, for no apparent reason, three dogs in his arms. The man is now stranded between the fallen Speedster, the tied people at his feet, and a whole bunch of flipped vehicles. Kai didn’t even have time to check Ravi’s mono for injuries…
“Who’s that?” Taemin whispers urgently.
“No one we should be mixing with,” Kai whispers back, still holding his gun up. Then, to the man: “What is your business here?”
“Ooh, that’s one cold way to say hello,” the man feigns offense, kicking a pebble like a sulking child. “Even though we’ve known each other for a while now…”
The transmitter clicks. “Kai, what happened? You’ve stopped moving. Did you crash?” Kai curses under his breath as Ravi’s voice cuts through the conversation like a blade, and the blond man drops the act instantly, eyes lighting up.
“Ravi?” he calls, a wide, slightly malicious grin forming on his lips. “Ravi, it’s me! Ra~vi~!”
“… Kai… is that…?”
“Yes,” Kai doesn’t need him to finish. “Yes, it is.”
“…”
“Oi, Ravi! Greet me, will you? Did you forget about me?” The man yells in outraged, crossing his arms. It’s hard to tell if it’s an act or not. “Won’t you come down to see me? It’s not very ‘you’, being this cold!”
“Get the fuck out of there,” Ravi commands. “Shoot him, if necessary, grab the bounty, and get the fuck out of there.”
Kai doesn’t hesitate, and shoots.
“Taemin, grab the mono!” he yells in the chaos as he narrowly avoids the counterstrike - of course that fucker had a gun on him, of course - and dives for the bounty head. Speedster is luckily light, but his position isn’t favorable, and, in an attempt to grab the body and run, Kai lowers his defense and gets kicked on the temple. Despite the helmet, his vision shakes.
“You made me do it,” the man taunts, throwing Young Speedster’s body over his shoulder like it’s nothing. “Now catch me if you can!”
“He got the head?” Ravi’s voice screams in the distance.
“The truck!!” the epiphany dawns upon him. “Taemin, the truck-”
“It’s overturned!” Taemin’s voice is unexpectedly near.
“Then how???”
A blue chromed mono appears as if conjured; onto it, blond man loads the speedster, tied man, and other two tied men Kai had failed to see. Kai makes a run for his own car.
“Taemin, trace him if he runs,” Kai commands as he hops into the cockpit. “Imma ram into this bastard.”
“Kai, my fucking mono!!”
“He’s running away with our chicken!!!” Kai shouts incoherently into the transmitter, and speeds away.
He barely sees what happens next. He’s still a bit out of it, because of the collision from earlier, and a well-aimed kick on the head does much damaged when from a worthy opponent. All he sees is: hideous blue mono with bounty in it. Blue mono might be faster, but Kai is wilder. Kai closes into them. Kai tries to shoot but accidentally changes gear instead, which he quickly corrects. Cold wind. The bounty. Survival. Dogs? Kai races and races, thinks and thinks of a way as the distance between them only widens.
Suddenly, the blue mono coughs.
Kai, who knows what that means, laughs.
“The bastard is out of fuel!” He cheers into the transmitter rather maniacally. “He’s ours! Taemin, you can retreat, I got him!”
“Roger!” Taemin says, and a dog barks, apparently. Kai is hearing dogs everywhere.
The blue mono’s speed is decreasing, the structure shaking and loosing height as the engine coughs and spurts like an asthmatic lung. Kai snickers maliciously to himself and pulls the accelerator one last time, gaining speed over the enemy, closing down on him as soon as he has an advantage. The man has no choice but to pull the brakes, and the body of the Young Speedster hops in the air, falling flat onto Kai’s lap. Convenient.
Visibly upset, blond man hits the steering wheel in frustration. “Not fair!” he cries. “I ran out of fuel!”
“You stole our head!” Kai retorts.
“You tried to shoot me!” he throws back.
“You-you’re trouble!!” is the only thing Kai has to say in his defense. “You’re like, trouble, the human incarnation! Every time we meet you something bad happens!!”
“Kai, stop talking to him,” Ravi instructs from the transmitter. “Get over here before he pulls funny shit on you.”
As a response to that, the man jumps out of his mono like a monkey, landing unceremoniously over Kai’s shoulders and pulling the transmitter to himself. “Ravi, how can you be so cold to me? After all our history together?!”
“Because of all our history together,” Ravi deadpans.
“I’m shocked! What are you going to do now? Leave me stranded here?” he could’ve passed for genuinely upset if he weren’t, at the moment, pulling Kai’s ears side to side just to annoy him. Kai tries frantically to get the man off his shoulders, but he got a tight thigh-lock around Kai’s neck. “Raviiii, you know I have no money!!”
“Forget it,” Ravi is relentless.
“I’ll behave this time, I swear!” he says dramatically. “I’ll just take the fuel and go! You’ll never hear of me again!”
“Number one: as if!!” Kai is glad to see his shipmate is no fool. “Number two: what makes you think that I’ll give you fuel?”
“The fact that I need it?” Grin. What an amazingly shameless person. Ravi bursts into laughter.
“No, Mr. Timoteo. The only way I’d let you into my ship would be under the following conditions: you give you mono’s keys to Kai,” Kai looks up and grins. Blond man Timoteo pouts. “And you hand your bounty over to us.”
No hint of jokes or insolence in Timoteo’s face now. He’s just pouting. “Not fair?”
“No deal.”
Timoteo sighs. “Okay, okay. You brute.”
Kai is still hearing dogs through the transmitter.
part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4
twitter askfm comission info
Group: EXO&SHINee
Pairing: Kai/Taemin.
Rating: R
Length: 28,530 words
Warnings: Blood, space, use of stage names as real names.
Summary: Bounty hunter Kai crashes onto clueless but lovely amnesiac Lee Taemin. Cue Adventures On Space™.
A/N: comission written for the magnanimous brandnewwind, who was absurdly patient with me thank you so much. this fic was officially inspired by Cowboy Bebop. i'm sorry if i got any of the characters in this wrong, and i'm sorry for the lack of caliente scenes. i'm basically just sorry
Let’s get this out of the way: Styx is an honest-to-god icy shithole. As habitable as anything past Neptune can be, yes, but even Triton is just an ice rink with colonies in it, and Styx is far from being any better. If anything, Kai bitterly thinks as he races through gelid streets, Styx in its best days resembles Triton in its worst days. Styx is just too cold.
“Too cold!”, Kai thinks out loud as frost once again takes over his helmet’s visor. “TOO COLD!!”, he reiterates as he has to lift the visor, and frost attacks his skin instead. “How do human beings actually live here!!”, he wonders in outrage as he pursues a two-thousand woolong bounty head through the empty, frozen streets of S-XIII.
“You complain too much,” comes the expected retort from the transmitter.
“Well, what can I say? IT’S TOO COLD DOWN HERE!!” Kai makes a show of shouting as close to his end of the transmitter as he can, and takes a little bit of pleasure in imagining his shipmate grimace at the noise. “Do you have any idea how cold it is? I’d like to see you come down and feel it for yourself!”
“I’ll pass. Also, you insisted in coming down personally,” Kai’s shipmate points out, and, to Kai’s chagrin, he’s right. “Leave him to me, Ravi, I’m the fastest between us both, I’m super fast, I can do this-”
“I don’t speak like that!! I-fuck,” Kai realizes a little too late that the man he’s chasing turns left rather than going straight, and for Kai, who was distracted, it’s too late to turn. He loses sight of the bounty head. “Fucking shit.”
“Good job, you idiot,” says the transmitter, not completely displeased. “There goes our chicken.”
“I can catch him,” Kai huffs, speeding through the streets in a tight zigzag as he searches for his criminal. “If you stop talking to me every time I’m close to cornering him, maybe?”
“Very well. I’m turning this off,” is the reply that comes. “Hope you crash and burn.” And the transmission clicks to an end.
This time, Kai is hunting to survive, a small, petty head called Young Speedster. As petty as the guy supposedly is, for stealing shitty old monos to do God-knows-what with them, he surely didn’t get his name for nothing. The sunofabitch is quick on his heels. Kai groans, reeling his mono upwards, intending to do an aerial recognition of the area. It’ll cost him time, but it’d be foolish to continue running blindly like that.
“Frost swallowed him, it seems,” Kai mutters to himself, aware that Ravi is not listening anymore. “The worst death. My chicken, though. I need my chicken. THERE HE IS!!”
There he is, racing like a madman through S-XIII’s abandoned industrial district. The fucker isn’t even being chased anymore, but he still drives in full speed. Kai needs a tactic of some sorts to get him. Maybe perceive a pattern in the way he drives, in his direction and such?
In a few seconds, Kai already knows what to do. Through his incessant zigzagging, Young Speedster seems to be heading east, and the route will eventually lead him into a large boulevard. All Kai has to do is to make a smooth, slow curve in the opposite direction - to mislead his chase, and to give himself enough impulse - and shoot down in a diagonal, as fast as he can, aiming for the boulevard. He could flatten like pancake if he didn’t pay enough attention: he has to concentrate one hundred percent in his driving.
“Food,” Kai mutters to himself as he performs the curve backwards. “Survival…” How sad is that. “Go, me. Go!”
With that one cheer for himself, he pulls the accelerator all the way back. And there he goes.
“AAAAAAAHH!!” he screams, both as a battle cry and a reaction to the blades of cold wind hitting his face. From where he is, descending like a comet from the sky, he sees the frosted concrete getting closer and closer, the Young Speedster glancing up flabbergasted as he drives on, a person in the middle of the street.
Fffffffffffffffffvium, makes the air as Kai swerves up, avoiding the crash with the floor. Ssssssssssswaaaaah, makes Young Speedster’s mono as he makes a tight U-turn to escape. Shhhaboom!!, makes the body colliding with Kai’s mono just as he was about to follow up, and fffvvrack!!, makes the concrete as Kai’s mono flips around itself again, and again, and again, and Kai thinks, this is what the helmets were made for. Quite the epiphany.
The bounty head escapes. Kai will grieve that later; for now, he’s, for all things, glad to be alive as he slides out from underneath his totaled mono. It always looks uglier than it really was, he tries to comfort himself by thinking, eying the debris with melancholy. At least it’s his ship and not his neck. Putting both of his hands on the least damaged lateral, he counts to three, and flips the vehicle in one swift movement so to reach for the transmitter.
A scream leaves his lungs as he notices a person inside.
AAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!, makes the scream, and it echoes in the empty streets in a ghastly way.
The body is tossed over the cockpit rather ungracefully, limp like a bag of water, eyes and mouth hanging open with little effort. To top it off, the body is dressed in a hospital gown. Kai wants out. Immediately. The transmitter cracks.
“That was quite the crash,” Ravi comments with a hint of mockery in his voice. “And I thought, for a minute, that you were a good pilot.”
“I hit someone,” Kai confesses, getting a little pale as he detects a fine line of blood trickling down from the corner of the body’s mouth. “Or someone hit me. Hard to tell. They’re bleeding.”
A pause. Kai knows he managed to shock the mockery out of Ravi’s body right now. He can’t bring himself to feel smug about it. “You hit someone?! How in the heavens?? There ain’t no one in S-XIII, Kai, specially at this hour.”
“Explain this, then,” Kai mumbles, snapping a picture of the body with the second uppermost button of his driving jacket. In a second, Ravi will be seeing what he sees. For now, he should probably… what…?
He kneels down on the concrete, almost at eye level with the possible corpse. Their eyes are red with blood now, thick dollops that cascade down his forehead. Kai swallows, his guts failing him for a second. “Huh… excuse me…?”
He doesn’t know why he’s talking with this obviously dead person. If they were alive, they’d have moved by now, right? And yet, he makes another attempt. He doesn’t want to touch but. He does. On the shoulder. “Excuse me… are you listening…?”
The person - dead or not - coughs. They cough, and, predictably, a lot of blood comes out. It splashes directly over Kai’s eyes. If Kai doesn’t scream, it’s out of sheer self-control. Blood everywhere. The person moves their eyes absentmindedly, as if taking their surroundings in, and, soon enough, their pupils lock down on Kai’s frozen, terrified face.
To drive Kai further into terror, they smile, a smile full of blood-covered teeth. “Hello.”
Kai’s self-control suffocates him.
Ravi is kind enough to give them - Kai, the mono, and the bleeding person - a lift back into the mothership, an old, but fairly functional thing named Kiev. The Kiev at times resembles a seagull, graceful but chunky, a bit crooked to the left side; that, of course, if seagulls were metallic and rust-colored, to conceal the bits where actual rust threatened to advance. Precarious, yes, but it works.
Not the same can be said about Kai’s mono at the time, Ravi notices as the transport elevator goes up, letting its occupiers in. Kai’s mono has a lot in common with the Kiev - its color, not quite rust but a faded burgundy, and its name, K-IV, despite this being pronounced ‘kay-four’ and not ‘kay-I-vee’ or anything similar - but, right now, it doesn’t look like it does. It doesn’t even look like a vehicle.
“Our baby…” Ravi laments.
“Ravi. Help. Person.” Kai reminds him, making the effort to carry said person on his back. Judging by Kai’s face, the load is quite heavy. Ravi helps, and, together, they lay the person down on the nearest couch. They have, fortunately, stopped bleeding.
“Not dead, by the looks of it,” Ravi comments, and Kai gives him the stank face, because it’s quite obvious, since the person is glancing around quite vividly. “Hello. Hey,” Ravi attracts the person’s attention by snapping his fingers in front of their eyes. “Hello. Name, age, home town, preferred pronouns. Please.”
The person blinks. They seem to be a little taken aback. Not their fault, really. “Uh, hello. I’m a he. I guess? My name is Lee Taemin.”
Ravi frowns, and Kai widens his eyes. They exchange a look. The hell is up with that name? “Where are you from, Lee Taemin?”
“Uh. I’m from. Down there?” Lee Taemin answers tentatively. This time, Kai frowns and Ravi widens his eyes as they exchange another look of disbelief.
“From Styx?” Ravi asks. Lee Taemin says nothing. “You don’t look like it.”
“Sorry,” Kai adds to Ravi’s sentence, elbowing his comrade on the ribs.
“Sorry,” Ravi ratifies. Lee Taemin seems not to mind. “So?”
He shrugs, toying with his necklace absentmindedly. “I guess I’m not from there, then,” he says, eyes unfocused. Kai is starting to think they should’ve checked for concussions first, asked questions later. “I woke up down there a few weeks ago. In a hospital. I don’t know my age, and I don’t remember where I’m from.”
Ravi glances at Kai. Kai, this time, does not glance back. He feels bad for Lee Taemin, covered in dry blood, dressed in hospital clothes, amnesiac. Clearly depressed. Quite depressing to look at, too.
“Did you run away from the hospital?” Ravi asks. Lee Taemin makes a face almost immediately.
“I did. It was terrible there. They wouldn’t even call me by my name,” at that, he holds up his necklace’s pendant, holding the inside out. “Even though it’s written right here!!”
Kai and Ravi lean forward to see. The pendant itself is simple, just a small medal with rounded corners, probably made of synthetic iron. Engraved on it, in a home-made or artisanal fashion, is the name ‘TAEMIN’ all in caps. So much for thinking he could at least remember his own name…
“I see,” Ravi mutters, and Kai can almost hear his shipmate think. He’s trying to solve the puzzle, or the puzzles, or just reveling in confusion. Either way, he’s unavailable from then on. Kai takes over the conversation.
“So, Taemin. Taemin?” he starts, hesitant. Taemin nods, and he goes on. “Taemin. How do you feel right now?”
Oddly enough, the question throws Taemin off. He blinks rapidly, and Kai wonders what’s so strange about what he asked. “What do you mean?”
“Well-well, I kind of ran over you back there,” He blushes a little as he admits that. The shame! He, a seasoned pilot… “And you were bleeding. A lot. By the way, I should get you a damp cloth… or would you like to take a shower?”
Taemin perks up. “A shower!”
“I’m guessing you haven’t taken one in a while,” Kai comments, and immediately realizes what nonsense he just said. “Not because you stink or anything!! But because public installations rarely have showers in Styx. Or even in Pluto, actually, and Pluto is relatively nice.
“Yeah,” Taemin chuckles, looking at Kai like he pities him a little. Kai’s face is now the same color as his ship, somewhere between bright red and the natural dark brown of his skin. “They instructed me to use rubbing alcohol, and that’s it. Pretty terrible.”
“Styx sucks,” Kai agrees, this time just hoping it isn’t the guy’s actual home town “So, here, come with me. Or, wait, actually,” Kai turns around to Ravi, who, predictably, is still burning braincells over Taemin’s very existence. “Ravi!” Kai calls, and it’s like he just popped a cracker next to Ravi’s ear. He looks almost insulted. “Could you show Taemin where the shower room is, please?”
“Oh… oh, sure,” Ravi gets to his feet, still a bit stunned. “Clothes…”
“Imma look through mine,” Kai reassures him. Ravi nods, getting to work almost immediately, leading Taemin down the starboard’s stairs; so Kai also takes his leave, jumping over the larboard rails, heading for his chambers.
“Mr. Taemin!”
Kai doesn’t really know why he knocked. In his mind, at the moment, he justifies that it’s Taemin’s first time on the ship, and he might not know they have a drawer-in-drawer-out system. Though, the voice of reason tells him a bit too late, if he had just slipped the clothes in and left, there was a good chance Taemin would’ve understood anyway… “Mr. Taemin, I’m sending your clothes-”
The door opens. Kai jumps in mortification. “-in-I-your clothes-”
“Oh, thank you!” Taemin smiles, accepting the clothes from Kai’s hands. Unfortunate, because, now, Kai has nothing in his hands to hide his face with. “Your clothes, actually, right? Haha.”
“Haha…” Kai echoes, increasingly mortified. He doesn’t really feel comfortable with seeing strangers stark naked. He really doesn’t. “Uh, actually, I should’ve just used the drawer, but I wasn’t sure whether you’d see it, so…”
“The drawer?” Taemin’s eyes twinkle with curiosity, and Kai scolds himself, you stupid thing, why did you mention the drawer? What if he asks you to explain? “Ah, well, I should go back to the shower, I shouldn’t waste water. Tell me about it afterwards, okay?”
“Sure.” He manages to bite his tongue before he lets it slip that they repurpose the shower water. He doesn’t need to know. “Bye.”
“Bye.” And Taemin closes the door.
It takes Kai a couple of seconds for him to let out the breath trapped in his lungs. God, that was awkward. Just as he’s turning around to go back to the upper hall, he notices Ravi leaning over the rail, watching him from the deck with a shit-eating grin as big as Jupiter.
“What,” Kai means to snarl, but merely mutters the word as he climbs up the starboard stairs.
“Your face,” Ravi giggles, and puts his fingers on his eyelids, forcefully widening his eyes. “Oh God. I can see forever.”
Kai attempts to hit him with a tornado kick but Ravi ducks in the last minute, cackling and shouting, “Know your folklore, Martian!”
“I’m not talking to you right now,” Kai attempts a low kick now, but Ravi jumps, serving him a roundhouse kick that Kai just barely avoids. The fucker. Kai breathes in, and, mustering all the strength he has, he twists Ravi’s leg, sending him to the ground. “There! Eat the gravity!”
“I’m immune to gravity!” Somehow, Ravi avoided face-planting the floor by falling on his palms, and he’s now pushing his body up, almost throwing Kai off-balance. “Callisto pride!!”
“Mars counter-attacks!!” Kai gives up class and tackles him.
Usually, when those two start wrestling and spurting out nonsense, they only stop when both of them are tired to the bone, which, considering their physical conditions, takes quite a long while. This time, however, just as Kai got Ravi in an arm lock the same time Ravi got his legs around Kai’s neck, an interruption appeared - Taemin had finished his shower, and the hiss of the shower room door opening always caused a startle.
The scene freezes. Kai and Ravi in a knot on the floor; Taemin, now clean and dressed in actual clothes, watching a little dumbfounded; the TV beeping timidly, warning everyone that Jack ‘n’ Jill’s Bounty News would start in two minutes; the refrigerator snoring a little. It’s a bit ridiculous. Kai and Ravi de-tangle properly, standing side to side as if nothing had happened.
“Would you like to eat with us, Mr. Taemin?” Kai offers as Ravi tends the TV. “We don’t have much, but…”
“Sure! Thank you! To tell you the truth, I’m starving,” Taemin confesses, putting a hand on his stomach. The bloodied hospital robe dangles from Taemin’s left hand. “Do you mind if I stay over? Is that imposing or something? I don’t really know.”
“Of course not,” no one deserves being stranded in Styx, Kai thinks. He turns to Ravi. “Ravi, dinner…”
“I know, I know. Just a second,” Ravi answers without looking at him, too focused on making the TV work. “And there we go,” he mutters victoriously as the screen lights up, showing the bright colored commercials that antecede Jack ‘n’ Jill. “I guess we’re having onion soup tonight. Are you allergic to anything, Taemin?”
“Uh…” Taemin thinks hard about the answer. Kai watches. “Not that I can recall…?”
Ravi makes a face. “Right. Sorry. Well, if you do, I guess I can patch you up. I’m a doctor, you see,” he can’t help but put on airs when he says that. Kai snorts. “Though, I guess that, if you survived being run over by this human blunder, you might not need me, like, ever.”
“Who’s the human blunder!!” Kai yells in outrage, and charges. Wrestling is inevitable. They’re performing serious attempts at throttling each other when they hear Taemin clear his throat, and it’s like a spell has been broken; they realize they have a guest, and reassume proper posture immediately.
“Well, I just realized,” Taemin starts as both of them are straightening their clothes. “You guys know my name, but… I don’t know yours…”
!!!!! He’s right. He’s completely right. What a faux pass, thinks Kai as the TV chirps a whistle-band version of Oh Susanna. He nudges Ravi for him to start the self-introductions, since he is, officially, the captain.
“Right. God, sorry,” Ravi apologizes properly, like a real captain of a real ship would. “My name is Ravi. I’m from Callisto, and I’m the captain of this ship, officially speaking. As for my age, I think I’m about… nine hundred days old? Something around that.” He turns to Kai, a bit startled. “You’re the same as me, right?”
“Around that, right.” Kai makes a face. “Almost fifteen years old back home.”
“We’re old.” Ravi pats him on the back and turns back to Taemin. “This is Kai, our ship’s genius pilot or something. He’s from Mars.”
“Born and raised,” Kai says rather bitterly. “By the way, we’re both bounty hunters. Do… do you, like, know what that means or…?”
“People who hunt criminals for money?” Taemin takes a guess. Both Ravi and Kai give him a thumbs-up, and he celebrates a little, as if they all were taking part in a quiz show. “Pretty cool.”
“At times,” Ravi admits, hands busy with dinner. “Sometimes it’s just a job. By the way, Kai, the volume.”
Kai conjures the remote control as if magically and turns the volume up. Jack ‘n’ Jill’s Bounty News is coming back after a commercial break.
“Bounty hunters from all over the universe, here we are to say…” says Jack, a buff Martian guy dressed as a cowboy. “Howdy! It’s time for another day of Jack ‘n’ Jill’s Bounty News! I’m Jack!”
“And I’m Jill!” Says, predictably, Jill, Jack’s tall, ginger, Europan cowgirl co-host. “This edition of our Bounty News brings all the info you rascals need to know about making money today!”
“Cut the crap,” Ravi complains to the TV.
“Sorry,” Kai turns to talk to Taemin, an apologetic half-smile on his lips. “This is probably really boring for you.”
“Oh, no! Not at all!” Taemin dismisses the possibility, seeming, indeed, quite absorbed into the show. “It looks like an interesting show. And it might be a good way for me to, you know,” he knocks on his own skull, making a sound with his mouth as to signalize it’s empty in there. Kai laughs a bit hesitantly.
“I guess it’s possible that you’re a bounty hunter who suffered from some kind of accident. Bad stuff happens to us sometimes,” Kai comments, and he feels like he just said something he shouldn’t when Taemin’s eyebrows twitch slightly in what seems to be horror. “Not to all of us, of course! I don’t know anyone who, like, died or anything. Do you, Ravi?”
“A couple times,” Ravi is clearly not paying attention. Kai mentally throws daggers at his shipmate’s back.
“Don’t mind him, he’s not even listening,” Kai is a bit relieved to see that Taemin is smiling at him. It makes him feel less like he’s blabbering, and more like he’s properly entertaining a guest. “But like, yeah. Anyway, what was the show talking about…?”
Jill is going over a fresh bounty announcement, the head being some mafia guy from Nereid who’s somehow involved with illegal meat transportation. Meat… how does meat taste, after all…?
“How much should we aim for?” Kai asks Ravi, browsing the new announcements for something that suits their needs.
Ravi cooks while thinks, thinks while cooks. The scent of onions and mushrooms starts to rise. “About two thousand? Five thousand would be ideal.”
Kai thinks Ravi expects too much from the world. “We might have to stick with the old news then, because…” he mutters, searching the fresh bounties for anything worth the trouble as Jack blabbers about legal bounties announced this week blah blah.
“Look,” Taemin speaks up unexpectedly, even startling Kai a bit. “That one looks good,” his finger is pointed at an exact section of the screen. Kai follows the sign.
“Oh!” he mutters, nodding. “Oh!!” he repeats as it dawns upon him. ”Ravi, how’s this? A gang of three named SIDD, one-thousand per member.”
“That SIDD? The dog people?” Ravi doesn’t even turn around, or steal a glance at the TV. Jill is now explaining the gang they’re talking about, ‘the vile genetic traffic agents SIDD, originally from the Kuiper belt…’. “Forget it. They were last seen in Ceres. Not worth the hassle.”
“In Ceres?!” Kai frowns as Jill repeats that exact same information: ‘These bad guys were last spotted in Ceres, between Mars and the Jovian system. Next, we have…’ Taemin looks fairly impressed. “How can you be sure your super-secret contacts are right this time? They could’ve come all the way up here, couldn’t they?”
“They could, but, well, would they? Would you?” Ravi casually shoots him down, and turns off the oven. “Now wash your hands, children. Dinner is ready.”
After a frugal dinner, the three of them discuss over what head to hunt - or rather, Kai and Ravi discuss while Taemin watches avidly - going back and forth between the possibilities until they decide extracting revenge from Young Speedster, who couldn’t possibly have gone too far. Ravi makes a brief consultation with his Super-Secret Contacts while Kai and Taemin handle the dishes, and, at last, when Kai is starting to sweat over what conversation to start once they’re done, he resurfaces.
“I bear good news,” he announces, and Kai seriously doubts that. “Young Speedster isn’t in Styx anymore.”
Kai could celebrate, but he hesitates a bit. “Hooray…?”
“He’s in Charon! HA!” Ravi grins, and, when Kai doesn’t react properly, he kicks him on the shins. “Laugh! You won’t have to go back to Styx!”
“Fuck you,” Kai tries to kick him back, but narrowly misses. “I guess you’re right, though. At least Charon has people.”
“And it doesn’t look like a military base all over,” Ravi adds. “Mr. Taemin, wanna watch our Kai in action? You could sit at the monitor with me. If he complains too much, you can shout insults at him. It’s awesome.”
Kai blushes a little in mortification, about to berate Ravi for treating a guest like that, when Taemin drops a shocker. “Uh, if possible,” he says. “I’d actually like to go with him.”
!
Ravi’s eyebrows go all the way up. “Oh?”
“I feel like it’s my fault that the guy slipped away the other time,” Taemin confesses, avoiding everyone’s eyes in a demure manner, and Kai is surprised that he even remembers Kai was hunting a head when they collided. “And I think I can help, possibly. I’ll just follow instructions. It’s been proved that I’m pretty sturdy.”
At that, neither Kai nor Ravi can help but laugh. “Indeed,” Ravi agrees, and Taemin chuckles silently at, possibly, himself. “Indeed, you’re right. Well, it’s up to the pilot over there.” When they turn around to face him, Kai feels like Ravi is silently mocking him over something. The thing is, what…? Or, what specifically…? “So?”
He doesn’t have any valid reasons to say no.
And so, to Charon they descend, Kai piloting Ravi’s mono, Taemin serving part-time as backrest since, like their name suggests, monos are built to carry one person and one person only. To travel like that feels a bit… uncomfortable. Kai can feel the exact firmness of Taemin’s chest, and that just doesn’t seem proper to him.
“So, considering that you and Mr. Ravi are from different planets,” is what Taemin breaks the ice with. “How did you meet?”
Kai smiles to himself. “Funny that you’re asking this right now. I was actually trying to steal this thing I’m driving.”
“What? Seriously!?” Taemin laughs, and so does Kai, nodding.
“Yeah. I was super poor. I don’t know if you have been to Mars, if you remember ever going there, but the whole planet is basically a giant slum.” Mars, fourth planet of the Solar System, currently the one habitable planet that’s the nearest to the Sun. Where the poor are the poorest and the rich have left the place to rot. “I stole stuff to survive, and Ravi was down there doing his business. So… yeah. I tried to steal this. I can’t believe I did it, nowadays. The hydraulic part of this thing is horrible.”
Taemin cackles, legitimately delighted at the story. His arms encircle Kai’s waist as Kai ducks the car down to lower their flight line, and there they stay, not tight enough to bother, but actually just solid enough to bother, maybe.
“How was it then? Did you hand it back to him?” Kai shakes his head. “Did he chase you?” Kai nods. “Oho. That must’ve been awesome.”
“He could drive way better than I could back in the day, I admit, and he had the better car,” the one that’s now sitting destroyed at the mothership. “I thought he was going to hand me to the police. Instead, he asked how much I was worth. Of course. Bounty hunters.”
“Were you worth much?”
“Nope. Not a dime. The actual reason why he kept me around is that I’d be more lucrative to him if I stayed. And because, don’t tell Ravi I told you this,” he adds in a secretive voice, “but he has a big gooey-soft heart.”
“Aw,” Taemin coos, and they cackle.
“I can hear you, you asshat!!” Yells Ravi’s voice from the transmitter, almost causing Kai to have a cardiac arrest. Shit, he forgot that thing was on. “Stop smothering Mr. Taemin with sentimental stories from your past and start looking for the head. Did you enter Kumarbi already?”
“I did! I’m in the innermost level already. Any lower and I’ll land,” Kai retorts, eyes on the streets down under. Kumarbi looks almost cozy compared to S-XIII; the protective dome looks less like a cage, the city structure looks less like a military camp, and there’s actual people in it. It’s still terribly cold, but hey. “Mr. Taemin, now we’re gonna look for the criminal from up here. Keep your eyes attentive. People in this town are rarely in a rush, so, if you see anyone racing, you tell me. We’ll observe for a few minutes-”
“I think I see something?” Taemin interrupts, and Kai has to admit he’s a bit taken aback. “There,” Taemin points with his finger a spot near the outskirts of the town, and Kai can barely see a thing. “Is that it?”
No, seriously, Kai can’t see shit from that distance. He subtly directs the car nearer to where Taemin is indicating, nearer, nearer… “Shit!!” He pulls the accelerator. “That’s him. Ravi, I’m going down immediately!”
“Don’t destroy my car,” Ravi begs. “But yeah, go.”
“Hold on, Taemin,” is the last warning Kai gives before he lurches the car forward, shooting down at maximum speed.
Taemin doesn’t scream, which Kai is thankful for; it seems like his driving tends to elicit screams from people, all kinds of people in all kinds of places. Taemin does tighten his hold around Kai’s waist, though, and by now Kai could’ve probably have calculated an entire topographic map of Taemin’s torso if he could do any math. He can’t, so he just feels, flushing improbably as the car takes a commanded sharp turn to the left, and the actual chase starts.
Young Speedster drives a black mono, tatted with obnoxious stickers here and there, and his helmet is bright lime-green colored. Not exactly unmistakably unique, not for Kai who has seen this type of driver just about everywhere, but he had done the world a favor and customized his mono with the words ‘YOUNG SPEEDZTAR’ written in neon across the back. It makes the chase considerably easy, even if he is absurdly fast, even if he does have some great moves and almost throws Kai off by zigzagging his way down Kumarbi’s southeast-northeast boulevard. It makes Kai considerably angrier at him.
“This fucking show-off,” he curses as the head does pretty much a vertical curve left, forcing Kai to do the same to follow. Since the mono Kai’s driving is considerably heavier - and more packed with weapons, true enough - it’s way harder to… drive…
“Hey, Ravi,” Kai calls into the transmitter as the idea pops into his head. “Can I fire one of these things? How’s the calibration?”
Ravi hums thoughtfully. “They’re good to go, as far as I know. Don’t shoot to kill though, we don’t know if he’s worth anything dead.” He pauses. “Do you even know how to shoot?”
“It can’t be that hard,” Kai thinks out loud, eyeing the weaponry commands with nonchalance. He then halts to a stop, hovering next to a plain rooftop. “So,” he turns to Taemin. “I got a plan. Would you be up to helping me? I promise you won’t get shot.”
“I’m trusting you,” Taemin says mockingly as he hops off onto firm land. “Sure, I’ll help. What should I do?”
“You seem to have really good eyes, so observe him for me. There should be… here it is,” Kai pulls the extra transmitter out of the necessities box, and hands it over to Taemin. “Tell me about his moves through this thing. It’s on, you just have to talk to it. If there’s any emergencies…” Taemin seems not to be listening; he’s admiring the device all around. “You got it. I’m off.”
“I’ll do my best!” Taemin smiles brilliantly. Kai is pretty much induced to smile back; then, he coolly puts the helmet on, and takes off.
“What happened to you? I saw you staying still for a while,” Ravi questions, probably checking the GPS map. “I thought you had shot yourself in the face.”
“He was dropping me off,” Taemin communicates, and Kai smiles to himself for no apparent reason. “Okay, I don’t see him anywhere. Off to chase him in the direction he went last time.”
“Roger. I’ll take a shortcut,” Kai carelessly performs a U-turn, the mono tipping to the side a little when inertia catches up. “Let’s see if we can corner him.”
Kai’s plan is simple and clear in his mind: while Taemin constantly reports Young Speedster position to him, he’ll follow it through the shortcuts, gearing up the weapons. Then, when they intersect, he’ll fire a harpoon aimed at the bounty head’s mono’s refrigerating system, trusting that the car will be minimally decent and stop functioning once it detects a leakage. If the Speedster try to run away by foot, Kai trusts his own legs to run faster than his, and, even if they don’t, Taemin would be there to back him up. Foolproof plan.
Foolproof, really, once he finds out how to activate the harpoon…
“He’s heading towards a tall round building,” Taemin communicates, but soon amends, “Okay, he’s past tall round building. I’m sorry, he’s fast.”
“No problem,” Kai assures him.
“He’s trying to get to a larger street, I think. Wait, I’ll get closer.” A strange sound. Did Taemin just jump from the rooftop? “Wow. That went better than expected.” He totally just did jump from the rooftop. “I’m onto him. He got to the larger street. I’m following. Heading north.”
“Your north or my north?” Kai is following Taemin’s directions at the same time he browses the weaponry commands for something helpful.
“General north, Mr. Kai,” Taemin chuckles. Kai grins. “He just turned right, I’ll follow him.”
“I’ll get there in a sec,” Kai decides to improvise with the weaponry, and just speeds up.
He twirls around the tall round building - Kumarbi’s main school, where small children in learning robes watch Kai pass by with excited smiles and squeals - and, instead of following the next boulevard, he crosses it immediately, hovering over the traffic as he dips into a rightwards street.
“Taemin, where are you?” Kai shouts as he suffers from an adrenaline peak from going up and down so fast and not even holding the brakes.
“Onto him! Not literally, but he’s going northwest and I’m following closely,” Taemin too sounds a bit roused, but less hysterical and more focused. “He’ll be out in the opposing corner from when we first saw him in one minute and a half, go through the west passage and you’ll corner him.”
“O…kay…” How can Taemin give such perfect data from eye value only…? Well, he’ll have to trust it for now, and he pulls the accelerator. “Anything else?”
“Found other rushers. There’s a person chasing a truck nearby,” he says. “Not sure what to make of it.”
“Ignore. Kumarbi people are rarely in a rush, but not never,” Kai sure has no business with trucks there. And, if he did, he forgot about it the minute he spotted the familiar helmet. “I got him! Taemin, I saw him! If you’re near, clear out, Imma shoot!”
He doesn’t wait for confirmation from Taemin; he simply shoots whatever his hand touches. Funnily enough, it’s a harpoon. It pierces through the target’s headlights. “HA!!” he fires something else. This time, it’s a machine gun, and it pretty much destroys the back part of the head’s mono, possibly damaging the engine, permanently damaging the horrid paintjob. “EAT THAT!!”
“Kai, the truck-”
“I GOT HIM!!”
“The truck, Kai, clear out-”
“Forget the truck!!”
“CLEAR OUT KAI I’M SERIOUS”
The truck hits Young Speedster, whose mono is connected to Kai’s via harpoon. The truck is sent flying, the Speedster is sent flying, Kai is sent flying. The last thing he says before falling is a prayer: please, God, if you’re there, forget about me, just save this car. If he survives and the mono not, Ravi will murder him for sure.
He falls head-first on the concrete. Praised be helmets.
Perhaps in his way towards death, Kai hears barking. He also sees puppies, a million puppies running towards him. Ah, yes, he’s in heaven. “No!!” someone screams in the distance, and then punches and kicks, and the puppies run. Puppies…
“Kai,” a voice calls him. “Kai, can you listen to me? Mr. Kai?” Kai blinks. He’s seeing a little more clear now. Taemin? It’s Taemin. “Kai, are you okay? Did you break any bones?”
He blinks again. His eyes focus slowly; Taemin kneeling next to him… the Speedster’s black mono fallen a bit ahead of them… puppies… puppies!!
“What’s going on?” he mutters as he sits up, feeling miraculously unharmed. He takes a look of the situation unfolding in front of his eyes, and, I assure, there’s a lot to take.
A bit to Kai’s left, there’s an overturned Sir Solomon’s Sweet Peas truck, spilling its contents everywhere, which are, curiously, not sweet peas, but hundreds and hundreds of dogs. Dogs everywhere. Dogs running, dogs walking, dogs pissing on walls, dogs licking Kai’s elbows. Actual dogs! Kai blinks again and sees Young Speedster fallen to the side, out cold and possibly dead, and an unrecognized blond person tying a guy up over the Speedster’s fallen mono.
“Hey!” Kai shouts, hastily getting to his feet as Taemin follows like a nurse. “Hey! You!” He’s a bit drowsy. He should check for concussions later. Possibly judging Kai well enough to stand by himself, Taemin goes check upon their bounty head. “Who are you? Did you run us over?”
The blond person looks up, and Kai’s blood freezes.
“Hey!!” Greets the yet unnamed element, a slender, pale man clad in black riding overalls. He’s clearly pleased to have company. “Long time no see, huh! Lil’ Kai from Kiev! Boy, look at you in your riding gear,” With a kick, he sends the man he just tied up to the floor, and turns his head in Taemin’s direction. “And you are…?”
It happens in a second. The gun in Kai’s pocket flies to his hand, and it clicks, barrel pointed directly to the blond man’s head. It attracts their attention, the man’s and Taemin’s, and the latter looks significantly alarmed. “Taemin, back off. Don’t let him get too close,” Kai warns, eyes locked with his new target.
Thankfully, Taemin does as told immediately, carrying, for no apparent reason, three dogs in his arms. The man is now stranded between the fallen Speedster, the tied people at his feet, and a whole bunch of flipped vehicles. Kai didn’t even have time to check Ravi’s mono for injuries…
“Who’s that?” Taemin whispers urgently.
“No one we should be mixing with,” Kai whispers back, still holding his gun up. Then, to the man: “What is your business here?”
“Ooh, that’s one cold way to say hello,” the man feigns offense, kicking a pebble like a sulking child. “Even though we’ve known each other for a while now…”
The transmitter clicks. “Kai, what happened? You’ve stopped moving. Did you crash?” Kai curses under his breath as Ravi’s voice cuts through the conversation like a blade, and the blond man drops the act instantly, eyes lighting up.
“Ravi?” he calls, a wide, slightly malicious grin forming on his lips. “Ravi, it’s me! Ra~vi~!”
“… Kai… is that…?”
“Yes,” Kai doesn’t need him to finish. “Yes, it is.”
“…”
“Oi, Ravi! Greet me, will you? Did you forget about me?” The man yells in outraged, crossing his arms. It’s hard to tell if it’s an act or not. “Won’t you come down to see me? It’s not very ‘you’, being this cold!”
“Get the fuck out of there,” Ravi commands. “Shoot him, if necessary, grab the bounty, and get the fuck out of there.”
Kai doesn’t hesitate, and shoots.
“Taemin, grab the mono!” he yells in the chaos as he narrowly avoids the counterstrike - of course that fucker had a gun on him, of course - and dives for the bounty head. Speedster is luckily light, but his position isn’t favorable, and, in an attempt to grab the body and run, Kai lowers his defense and gets kicked on the temple. Despite the helmet, his vision shakes.
“You made me do it,” the man taunts, throwing Young Speedster’s body over his shoulder like it’s nothing. “Now catch me if you can!”
“He got the head?” Ravi’s voice screams in the distance.
“The truck!!” the epiphany dawns upon him. “Taemin, the truck-”
“It’s overturned!” Taemin’s voice is unexpectedly near.
“Then how???”
A blue chromed mono appears as if conjured; onto it, blond man loads the speedster, tied man, and other two tied men Kai had failed to see. Kai makes a run for his own car.
“Taemin, trace him if he runs,” Kai commands as he hops into the cockpit. “Imma ram into this bastard.”
“Kai, my fucking mono!!”
“He’s running away with our chicken!!!” Kai shouts incoherently into the transmitter, and speeds away.
He barely sees what happens next. He’s still a bit out of it, because of the collision from earlier, and a well-aimed kick on the head does much damaged when from a worthy opponent. All he sees is: hideous blue mono with bounty in it. Blue mono might be faster, but Kai is wilder. Kai closes into them. Kai tries to shoot but accidentally changes gear instead, which he quickly corrects. Cold wind. The bounty. Survival. Dogs? Kai races and races, thinks and thinks of a way as the distance between them only widens.
Suddenly, the blue mono coughs.
Kai, who knows what that means, laughs.
“The bastard is out of fuel!” He cheers into the transmitter rather maniacally. “He’s ours! Taemin, you can retreat, I got him!”
“Roger!” Taemin says, and a dog barks, apparently. Kai is hearing dogs everywhere.
The blue mono’s speed is decreasing, the structure shaking and loosing height as the engine coughs and spurts like an asthmatic lung. Kai snickers maliciously to himself and pulls the accelerator one last time, gaining speed over the enemy, closing down on him as soon as he has an advantage. The man has no choice but to pull the brakes, and the body of the Young Speedster hops in the air, falling flat onto Kai’s lap. Convenient.
Visibly upset, blond man hits the steering wheel in frustration. “Not fair!” he cries. “I ran out of fuel!”
“You stole our head!” Kai retorts.
“You tried to shoot me!” he throws back.
“You-you’re trouble!!” is the only thing Kai has to say in his defense. “You’re like, trouble, the human incarnation! Every time we meet you something bad happens!!”
“Kai, stop talking to him,” Ravi instructs from the transmitter. “Get over here before he pulls funny shit on you.”
As a response to that, the man jumps out of his mono like a monkey, landing unceremoniously over Kai’s shoulders and pulling the transmitter to himself. “Ravi, how can you be so cold to me? After all our history together?!”
“Because of all our history together,” Ravi deadpans.
“I’m shocked! What are you going to do now? Leave me stranded here?” he could’ve passed for genuinely upset if he weren’t, at the moment, pulling Kai’s ears side to side just to annoy him. Kai tries frantically to get the man off his shoulders, but he got a tight thigh-lock around Kai’s neck. “Raviiii, you know I have no money!!”
“Forget it,” Ravi is relentless.
“I’ll behave this time, I swear!” he says dramatically. “I’ll just take the fuel and go! You’ll never hear of me again!”
“Number one: as if!!” Kai is glad to see his shipmate is no fool. “Number two: what makes you think that I’ll give you fuel?”
“The fact that I need it?” Grin. What an amazingly shameless person. Ravi bursts into laughter.
“No, Mr. Timoteo. The only way I’d let you into my ship would be under the following conditions: you give you mono’s keys to Kai,” Kai looks up and grins. Blond man Timoteo pouts. “And you hand your bounty over to us.”
No hint of jokes or insolence in Timoteo’s face now. He’s just pouting. “Not fair?”
“No deal.”
Timoteo sighs. “Okay, okay. You brute.”
Kai is still hearing dogs through the transmitter.
part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4
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