151. (fic) soulxsoul, ch.10
title: soulxsoul, ch.10
rating/genre: pg; au (sci-fi), drama, romance
pairing(s): ohmiya, sakuraba
words: 2,864
summary: nino doesn't think he's crazy, but he doesn't tell anyone about satoshi anymore. because how could you tell anyone that you have another person living in your body?
disclaimer: FICTION.
notes: finished. for really real. read on for the dramatic conclusion...
Chapter 1| Chapter 2| Chapter 3| Chapter 4| Chapter 5| Chapter 6| Chapter 7| Chapter 8| Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Nino doesn’t remember closing his eyes, but when he opens them again, he finds himself in another place altogether. The stark white room with its shattering glass is gone, replaced by what looks like the waiting room of an upscale business office: lots of leather furniture with silvery chrome on the armrests, glass coffee tables and a tasteful abstract painting on the wall. Nino is standing in front of the couch with Jun next to him, facing Sho and Aiba across the coffee table.
“Huh?” is the first thing he thinks to say. He feels Satoshi moving through him, filling his chest, his throat, pushing into his limbs and all the way down to his fingers as if to make sure everything is still intact.
Safe, Satoshi says, sounding much calmer than Nino thinks he should. With you.
“Now where are we?” Jun asks. He sounds jumpy, irritated, and he reaches over to grab Nino’s arm, probably so as not to lose him again.
At the same time, Aiba looks over at Sho, then does a little double take.
“You’re alive!” Aiba says and grabs for the other man’s hand. Apparently the result is not what he was hoping for, and his expression falls.
“Oh,” he says. For a moment he looks heartbroken, but then a smile makes its way determinedly onto his face. “Well, you’re here, anyway.”
“I am,” Sho says, sounding surprised.
“Huh?” Nino says again.
“Well?” Jun interrupts, but receives only blank stares. “Do you know where we are?”
“Oh, right.” Sho glances around. “No, I don’t think-” but then his gaze lands on the door to his right. There is a little silver plaque across it that just says “President”, and Sho’s eyes go very wide. It is at about this moment that Nino registers voices coming from the other side of the door, which is not quite shut all the way.
“-don’t see what the problem is, we didn’t go against our contracts, and-”
At the sound of Kimura’s voice, Nino feels his panic come back to him full force, and Jun is already pulling him across the room.
“Wait!” Aiba hisses. He points towards the open door. “Don’t you want to listen?”
“Don’t you want to leave?” Jun counters.
“Well, there doesn’t seem to be a way out,” Aiba argues, and it is only now that Nino realizes there are no other doors or windows in the room.
Jun blinks at that, then turns towards the empty wall and stares at it, hard.
“Open,” he says authoritatively.
Nino would think Jun has completely lost it except that, for a brief second, a door flickers to life in the wall. It is only there long enough to be recognizable before it vanishes again.
“How are you doing that?” Nino demands, as Jun surges forward to check the wall, patting at it where the door knob had been, but to no avail.
“He’s Shifting,” says a new voice, and they all whip around to find Ikuta stepping from the office and shutting the door behind him. “Although he won’t be able to accomplish much in here, I’m afraid.”
“Toma!” Sho says, looking relieved to see a familiar face. “What are you doing here? What’s going on? Why are we in Johnny’s office?”
“Johnny?” Nino mouths at Jun, who just shrugs. It is some consolation that Aiba looks equally perplexed.
“He needs to speak with you,” Ikuta says. “Once he’s finished with the agents. He’ll explain everything,” he continues, when Sho opens his mouth for another question.
Suddenly, the volume of the conversation in the next room rises, Kimura again.
“They can replace us!” he is saying. “You don’t need to keep us here anymore!”
“That is enough,” says another voice, a deeper one that Nino doesn’t recognize. “At the very least it is clear that the five of you are no longer suitable for these positions. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with you, but for the time being, get out of my office.”
“But-”
“Now!”
Nino waits for the agents to emerge from the office, but instead there is silence. After a moment, the deep voice calls: “All right, send them in.”
Ikuta opens the door and motions them inside. Sho walks in immediately, followed by Aiba after only a brief hesitation, but Nino and Jun do not move.
“Why the hell should I go in there?” Nino says indignantly when Ikuta gives him a questioning look. “You people broke into my apartment and abducted me and my roommate, and that’s just things from the last twenty four hours that are counting against you.”
Ikuta sighs, but does not look especially surprised by Nino’s reluctance. But instead of trying to cajole him into coming, he just says: “Satoshi-kun, would you convince him please?”
Nino stares at Ikuta as he disappears through the office door, and then feels Satoshi-still there and filling every part of him-give him a little push.
It’s safe here, Kazu. They can’t take me now unless I chose it.
How do you know that? Nino demands. How can you know that?
I don’t know how I know, Satoshi returns, serene. Trust me.
Nino glances over to find Jun watching him expectantly.
“He says it’s okay,” Nino tells him, shaking his head in puzzlement. “Should we go?”
Jun looks back at the wall where there is still no door. “I guess we don’t really have a choice.”
Nino gives a reluctant nod, and they cross the room together.
Inside the office is not much different from the waiting room-sleek and impersonal-and Sho and Aiba are already seated in front of a desk that takes up most of the space in the room. The senior agents are nowhere in sight. Behind the desk, in a cushy leather chair, is the man who Nino supposes is Johnny.
He’s not as large and impressive as his voice sounded. His head barely clears the back of his chair, and he looks distinctly rumpled, his business suit appearing to have been slept in, and his thinning hair sticking up as if he has a habit of running his hands through it. The lines of his face are well-worn, but his eyes are sharp and calculating as he looks Nino over.
“Sit, sit,” he says impatiently, when Nino and Jun hesitate. Once they are seated, Johnny studies them all again briefly before settling on Sho. “You-are you in charge of this mess?”
“I-I’m not sure what you mean, sir,” Sho stammers.
“Well, it seems to me that all of you are Bound-”
“Coded, sir,” Ikuta interrupts from his position slightly behind and to the left of Johnny’s chair.
“Did they change the jargon again? Honestly…Bound, Coded-whatever it is, you,” and he points to Sho again, “are the one who Coded them, am I correct?”
“Well, I-” Sho begins, at the same time as Aiba says, “Ah, so that’s why!”
“That’s why what?” Jun interrupts everyone. “Look, I have no idea what is going on here, or what any of you are talking about, and if someone could just start from the beginning, I would really appreciate it.”
After the outburst, everyone stares at Jun in silence for a moment. Then Johnny gives one loud, sharp laugh.
“I like that, man knows what he wants,” Johnny chuckles, then leans back and runs a hand over his head. “The beginning, hmm. It would be helpful for me if I knew how much you know.”
“Oh, uh. I really only know what Aiba-san and Sakurai-san told me…” Briefly, Jun recounts the events of last night, including what Aiba told him about the ASD-a story which Nino listens to intently, as he was unconscious for most of it-and Sho’s retelling of their past lives. “But that’s all,” Jun finishes. “We never got around to talking about what happened to Sakurai-san after that.”
“I see,” Johnny says, hands laced over his stomach. He turns back to Sho. “As a matter of fact, I’d be quite interested in hearing about that as well.”
“Oh,” Sho says when all eyes are suddenly on him. “Um, well, I mean, it’s not really…There are a lot of things I still don’t know.” Sho trails off uncertainly, but Johnny nods encouragingly. Sho takes a deep breath and begins.
“After I transferred to the Host, I started being able to Encode-I could add sequences to people’s Codes, change things that were already set to happen in their current cycle, or future ones. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but the agents told me that the Encoding could help me find Aiba and Jun because their Codes were already programmed into the Reader. It took a while, since I was mostly on my own, and I lost track of Jun at one point because I couldn’t understand all of the Code I was seeing.
“Anyway, they told me the ASD was actually an organization that recruited people with abilities like mine, that all the agents were the same, with special abilities. Nakai-san is an Encoder like me, and when he met us the first time he saw that we, all of us, were going to have these abilities in our next lives. They said it was dangerous, too, especially Carrying and Shifting, and if we found all of you we’d be able to keep you safe-”
“Hang on,” Jun interrupts. “So if you’re an Encoder, and Aiba-san is a Decoder, and I’m a Shifter, and Nino is a Carrier, then what is Satoshi?”
Sho’s brow furrows. “Well, I assumed he wasn’t anything, since he was stuck in Nino’s body.”
“A Drifter,” Toma supplies. “Just like Carriers are the only ones who can safely house another soul, Drifters are the only ones who can safely occupy another’s body.”
“Go on,” Johnny prompts Sho, when he falls silent in thought.
“Oh, well. There’s not much more to it. They said they would help me, if I worked for them, so I spent all my time looking for the rest of you. After I found Jun and Aiba, I was using the ASD’s connections to find medical records that matched symptoms associated with Carriers to try and find Kazu. It was really just luck that he happened to be Carrying Satoshi.”
“So what were you going to do when you found all of us?” Jun wants to know. “Recruit us like you did Aiba-san?”
“Nakai-san was going to help me adjust your Codes so you wouldn’t be in danger from your abilities anymore, and they had created a body for Satoshi, and then-”
“And then he was going to Code us so we forgot everything,” Aiba says accusatorily. “Weren’t you?”
“It was the best way!” Sho says. “There’s no body for me, there would be no point in all of you worrying about me.”
“There’s no body for anyone,” Johnny interrupts before the argument can escalate. “The senior agents never knew how to make a living Vessel.”
“What?” Sho says, looking like he was just slapped in the face.
“Yes, there are quite a few things you still don’t understand,” Johnny says with a sigh. “But you couldn’t have understood, really, not with the way things happened. I suppose I can take over the explanation from here. From the beginning, yes, well.
“The All Souls Division has not, as you may have discerned by now, always been called by that name. It’s been disguised as a religious sect, a secret order, all manner of things over the years-and it has been around for many, many years. It is true that it is our job to help out souls as they move through their various incarnations, and we have always had a special interest in people of your abilities.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Nino says, holding up his hands for a pause. “You’ve been around for a long time and you help souls…Are you supposed to be God or something?”
Johnny laughs again, a belly-shaking guffaw this time. “Oh, no, no, nothing like that. Think of me as more like a middle-man. What goes on with the higher-ups is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.”
“Uh-huh,” Nino says, and raises an eyebrow.
“As I was saying,” Johnny continues. “Your particular skills are something of a glitch in the system, actually, things no human should be able to do but that make their way into the Code at odd intervals. Before the five of you, the last occurrence of all five abilities in the same cycle in such close proximity to each other was-”
“The seniors,” Sho murmurs.
“Right you are,” Johnny says. “They came to my attention because they had been using their abilities in highly, mm, shall we say unethical ways. Now, usually we would simply bring them in and have a Redliner-or, what was it? Encoder?-lock up their abilities, but these boys were very talented and very attached to their talents. So I offered them a deal: they could keep their powers if they used them to work for me, find and deal with other people like them. They could recruit them or Code them, take their memories or their abilities, it didn’t really matter to me.
“They took the deal, obviously, and even voluntarily entered Host bodies. I should have realized then that they would be a problem, if they wanted to keep their powers badly enough to give up practically everything else. But, I had other things to deal with, what with a world full of souls on my to-do list, and I let it slide, let them carry on.
“It worked out fine for a time, but I think after a while they got restless-not surprising, really, stuck in a Host body with nothing to do but hunt other souls. Got it into their heads that if they could replace themselves, maybe they could keep their powers and go out into the world, maybe I’d never even notice they were gone. Luckily, I’d sent Toma-kun here to keep an eye on them, or we’d be in a much bigger mess than we are now.”
“What were they going to do with us?” Sho asks.
“I think the plan was to put all of you in Hosts, then rearrange your memories a bit so you’d think you were supposed to be doing their job. Not a well thought out plan, really-implanted memories like that never last very long.” Johnny lets out a long sigh and stares at his desk for a while. After a time, he lifts his head and aims his gaze at Sho again. “Although you never really did explain how you all came to be Bound.”
Sho furrows his brow. “Sorry?”
“Coded, linked together, all of you. Destined to meet in each cycle of rebirth. How did you do that?”
“I, uh, I don’t think I did,” Sho stammers.
“Huh,” Johnny says, with a little smile. “Interesting.”
“What I want to know,” Aiba cuts in suddenly, still looking at Sho with a touch of anger, “is why the hell Kusanagi-sempai kissed you!”
“What?!” Nino and Jun exclaim, at the same time as Sho bursts out: “I don’t know! I was just as shocked as you, and I blacked out right after…”
Johnny exchanges a glance with Ikuta before speaking. “Kusanagi is a Carrier-that’s how souls are usually removed from bodies, before they came up with that transfer machine.”
“Oh,” Aiba says, brows furrowing.
“But if Kusanagi could do that all along,” Jun points out, ever logical, “why did they even make the machine?”
“Who knows?” Johnny shrugs. “Maybe so they wouldn’t have to train you before they jumped ship. I have a lot more questions for them now that I’ve talked to all of you. However,” and he steeples his fingers in front of himself, “the problem that remains is what to do with all of you.”
The room falls silent, and Nino glances down the line of seats-Jun returns his gaze uncertainly, Sho looks straight ahead, his mouth a grim line, and Aiba just fidgets nervously. Nino feels strangely blank, dazed, overwhelmed with all he has had to take in, and Satoshi is still inexplicably calm.
“What are our options?” Nino asks finally.
Johnny’s eyes settle on Nino, and his expression is carefully neutral, impossible to read.
“In different circumstances,” Johnny says, “I would simply lock your abilities and let you go back to your lives. Unfortunately, for that to happen, Sakurai-kun would have to leave the Host, and Satoshi-kun would have to leave your body.”
“Leave and go where?” Nino asks, already guessing the answer.
“On to their next cycle.”
Nino closes his eyes and lets out a rough breath, and Aiba makes a little noise that sounds like “no”. But somehow, still, Satoshi is unruffled, murmurs: Only if I choose it.
“In different circumstances,” Johnny repeats. “That would be my decision. However.”
Nino opens his eyes again. When he looks, Johnny is smiling.
“In this case,” he says, “I am willing to make a deal.”
chapter 11 and epilogue
Author's Note: ...read on! I'll save my ramblings for the last chapter :)
rating/genre: pg; au (sci-fi), drama, romance
pairing(s): ohmiya, sakuraba
words: 2,864
summary: nino doesn't think he's crazy, but he doesn't tell anyone about satoshi anymore. because how could you tell anyone that you have another person living in your body?
disclaimer: FICTION.
notes: finished. for really real. read on for the dramatic conclusion...
Chapter 1| Chapter 2| Chapter 3| Chapter 4| Chapter 5| Chapter 6| Chapter 7| Chapter 8| Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Nino doesn’t remember closing his eyes, but when he opens them again, he finds himself in another place altogether. The stark white room with its shattering glass is gone, replaced by what looks like the waiting room of an upscale business office: lots of leather furniture with silvery chrome on the armrests, glass coffee tables and a tasteful abstract painting on the wall. Nino is standing in front of the couch with Jun next to him, facing Sho and Aiba across the coffee table.
“Huh?” is the first thing he thinks to say. He feels Satoshi moving through him, filling his chest, his throat, pushing into his limbs and all the way down to his fingers as if to make sure everything is still intact.
Safe, Satoshi says, sounding much calmer than Nino thinks he should. With you.
“Now where are we?” Jun asks. He sounds jumpy, irritated, and he reaches over to grab Nino’s arm, probably so as not to lose him again.
At the same time, Aiba looks over at Sho, then does a little double take.
“You’re alive!” Aiba says and grabs for the other man’s hand. Apparently the result is not what he was hoping for, and his expression falls.
“Oh,” he says. For a moment he looks heartbroken, but then a smile makes its way determinedly onto his face. “Well, you’re here, anyway.”
“I am,” Sho says, sounding surprised.
“Huh?” Nino says again.
“Well?” Jun interrupts, but receives only blank stares. “Do you know where we are?”
“Oh, right.” Sho glances around. “No, I don’t think-” but then his gaze lands on the door to his right. There is a little silver plaque across it that just says “President”, and Sho’s eyes go very wide. It is at about this moment that Nino registers voices coming from the other side of the door, which is not quite shut all the way.
“-don’t see what the problem is, we didn’t go against our contracts, and-”
At the sound of Kimura’s voice, Nino feels his panic come back to him full force, and Jun is already pulling him across the room.
“Wait!” Aiba hisses. He points towards the open door. “Don’t you want to listen?”
“Don’t you want to leave?” Jun counters.
“Well, there doesn’t seem to be a way out,” Aiba argues, and it is only now that Nino realizes there are no other doors or windows in the room.
Jun blinks at that, then turns towards the empty wall and stares at it, hard.
“Open,” he says authoritatively.
Nino would think Jun has completely lost it except that, for a brief second, a door flickers to life in the wall. It is only there long enough to be recognizable before it vanishes again.
“How are you doing that?” Nino demands, as Jun surges forward to check the wall, patting at it where the door knob had been, but to no avail.
“He’s Shifting,” says a new voice, and they all whip around to find Ikuta stepping from the office and shutting the door behind him. “Although he won’t be able to accomplish much in here, I’m afraid.”
“Toma!” Sho says, looking relieved to see a familiar face. “What are you doing here? What’s going on? Why are we in Johnny’s office?”
“Johnny?” Nino mouths at Jun, who just shrugs. It is some consolation that Aiba looks equally perplexed.
“He needs to speak with you,” Ikuta says. “Once he’s finished with the agents. He’ll explain everything,” he continues, when Sho opens his mouth for another question.
Suddenly, the volume of the conversation in the next room rises, Kimura again.
“They can replace us!” he is saying. “You don’t need to keep us here anymore!”
“That is enough,” says another voice, a deeper one that Nino doesn’t recognize. “At the very least it is clear that the five of you are no longer suitable for these positions. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with you, but for the time being, get out of my office.”
“But-”
“Now!”
Nino waits for the agents to emerge from the office, but instead there is silence. After a moment, the deep voice calls: “All right, send them in.”
Ikuta opens the door and motions them inside. Sho walks in immediately, followed by Aiba after only a brief hesitation, but Nino and Jun do not move.
“Why the hell should I go in there?” Nino says indignantly when Ikuta gives him a questioning look. “You people broke into my apartment and abducted me and my roommate, and that’s just things from the last twenty four hours that are counting against you.”
Ikuta sighs, but does not look especially surprised by Nino’s reluctance. But instead of trying to cajole him into coming, he just says: “Satoshi-kun, would you convince him please?”
Nino stares at Ikuta as he disappears through the office door, and then feels Satoshi-still there and filling every part of him-give him a little push.
It’s safe here, Kazu. They can’t take me now unless I chose it.
How do you know that? Nino demands. How can you know that?
I don’t know how I know, Satoshi returns, serene. Trust me.
Nino glances over to find Jun watching him expectantly.
“He says it’s okay,” Nino tells him, shaking his head in puzzlement. “Should we go?”
Jun looks back at the wall where there is still no door. “I guess we don’t really have a choice.”
Nino gives a reluctant nod, and they cross the room together.
Inside the office is not much different from the waiting room-sleek and impersonal-and Sho and Aiba are already seated in front of a desk that takes up most of the space in the room. The senior agents are nowhere in sight. Behind the desk, in a cushy leather chair, is the man who Nino supposes is Johnny.
He’s not as large and impressive as his voice sounded. His head barely clears the back of his chair, and he looks distinctly rumpled, his business suit appearing to have been slept in, and his thinning hair sticking up as if he has a habit of running his hands through it. The lines of his face are well-worn, but his eyes are sharp and calculating as he looks Nino over.
“Sit, sit,” he says impatiently, when Nino and Jun hesitate. Once they are seated, Johnny studies them all again briefly before settling on Sho. “You-are you in charge of this mess?”
“I-I’m not sure what you mean, sir,” Sho stammers.
“Well, it seems to me that all of you are Bound-”
“Coded, sir,” Ikuta interrupts from his position slightly behind and to the left of Johnny’s chair.
“Did they change the jargon again? Honestly…Bound, Coded-whatever it is, you,” and he points to Sho again, “are the one who Coded them, am I correct?”
“Well, I-” Sho begins, at the same time as Aiba says, “Ah, so that’s why!”
“That’s why what?” Jun interrupts everyone. “Look, I have no idea what is going on here, or what any of you are talking about, and if someone could just start from the beginning, I would really appreciate it.”
After the outburst, everyone stares at Jun in silence for a moment. Then Johnny gives one loud, sharp laugh.
“I like that, man knows what he wants,” Johnny chuckles, then leans back and runs a hand over his head. “The beginning, hmm. It would be helpful for me if I knew how much you know.”
“Oh, uh. I really only know what Aiba-san and Sakurai-san told me…” Briefly, Jun recounts the events of last night, including what Aiba told him about the ASD-a story which Nino listens to intently, as he was unconscious for most of it-and Sho’s retelling of their past lives. “But that’s all,” Jun finishes. “We never got around to talking about what happened to Sakurai-san after that.”
“I see,” Johnny says, hands laced over his stomach. He turns back to Sho. “As a matter of fact, I’d be quite interested in hearing about that as well.”
“Oh,” Sho says when all eyes are suddenly on him. “Um, well, I mean, it’s not really…There are a lot of things I still don’t know.” Sho trails off uncertainly, but Johnny nods encouragingly. Sho takes a deep breath and begins.
“After I transferred to the Host, I started being able to Encode-I could add sequences to people’s Codes, change things that were already set to happen in their current cycle, or future ones. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but the agents told me that the Encoding could help me find Aiba and Jun because their Codes were already programmed into the Reader. It took a while, since I was mostly on my own, and I lost track of Jun at one point because I couldn’t understand all of the Code I was seeing.
“Anyway, they told me the ASD was actually an organization that recruited people with abilities like mine, that all the agents were the same, with special abilities. Nakai-san is an Encoder like me, and when he met us the first time he saw that we, all of us, were going to have these abilities in our next lives. They said it was dangerous, too, especially Carrying and Shifting, and if we found all of you we’d be able to keep you safe-”
“Hang on,” Jun interrupts. “So if you’re an Encoder, and Aiba-san is a Decoder, and I’m a Shifter, and Nino is a Carrier, then what is Satoshi?”
Sho’s brow furrows. “Well, I assumed he wasn’t anything, since he was stuck in Nino’s body.”
“A Drifter,” Toma supplies. “Just like Carriers are the only ones who can safely house another soul, Drifters are the only ones who can safely occupy another’s body.”
“Go on,” Johnny prompts Sho, when he falls silent in thought.
“Oh, well. There’s not much more to it. They said they would help me, if I worked for them, so I spent all my time looking for the rest of you. After I found Jun and Aiba, I was using the ASD’s connections to find medical records that matched symptoms associated with Carriers to try and find Kazu. It was really just luck that he happened to be Carrying Satoshi.”
“So what were you going to do when you found all of us?” Jun wants to know. “Recruit us like you did Aiba-san?”
“Nakai-san was going to help me adjust your Codes so you wouldn’t be in danger from your abilities anymore, and they had created a body for Satoshi, and then-”
“And then he was going to Code us so we forgot everything,” Aiba says accusatorily. “Weren’t you?”
“It was the best way!” Sho says. “There’s no body for me, there would be no point in all of you worrying about me.”
“There’s no body for anyone,” Johnny interrupts before the argument can escalate. “The senior agents never knew how to make a living Vessel.”
“What?” Sho says, looking like he was just slapped in the face.
“Yes, there are quite a few things you still don’t understand,” Johnny says with a sigh. “But you couldn’t have understood, really, not with the way things happened. I suppose I can take over the explanation from here. From the beginning, yes, well.
“The All Souls Division has not, as you may have discerned by now, always been called by that name. It’s been disguised as a religious sect, a secret order, all manner of things over the years-and it has been around for many, many years. It is true that it is our job to help out souls as they move through their various incarnations, and we have always had a special interest in people of your abilities.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Nino says, holding up his hands for a pause. “You’ve been around for a long time and you help souls…Are you supposed to be God or something?”
Johnny laughs again, a belly-shaking guffaw this time. “Oh, no, no, nothing like that. Think of me as more like a middle-man. What goes on with the higher-ups is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.”
“Uh-huh,” Nino says, and raises an eyebrow.
“As I was saying,” Johnny continues. “Your particular skills are something of a glitch in the system, actually, things no human should be able to do but that make their way into the Code at odd intervals. Before the five of you, the last occurrence of all five abilities in the same cycle in such close proximity to each other was-”
“The seniors,” Sho murmurs.
“Right you are,” Johnny says. “They came to my attention because they had been using their abilities in highly, mm, shall we say unethical ways. Now, usually we would simply bring them in and have a Redliner-or, what was it? Encoder?-lock up their abilities, but these boys were very talented and very attached to their talents. So I offered them a deal: they could keep their powers if they used them to work for me, find and deal with other people like them. They could recruit them or Code them, take their memories or their abilities, it didn’t really matter to me.
“They took the deal, obviously, and even voluntarily entered Host bodies. I should have realized then that they would be a problem, if they wanted to keep their powers badly enough to give up practically everything else. But, I had other things to deal with, what with a world full of souls on my to-do list, and I let it slide, let them carry on.
“It worked out fine for a time, but I think after a while they got restless-not surprising, really, stuck in a Host body with nothing to do but hunt other souls. Got it into their heads that if they could replace themselves, maybe they could keep their powers and go out into the world, maybe I’d never even notice they were gone. Luckily, I’d sent Toma-kun here to keep an eye on them, or we’d be in a much bigger mess than we are now.”
“What were they going to do with us?” Sho asks.
“I think the plan was to put all of you in Hosts, then rearrange your memories a bit so you’d think you were supposed to be doing their job. Not a well thought out plan, really-implanted memories like that never last very long.” Johnny lets out a long sigh and stares at his desk for a while. After a time, he lifts his head and aims his gaze at Sho again. “Although you never really did explain how you all came to be Bound.”
Sho furrows his brow. “Sorry?”
“Coded, linked together, all of you. Destined to meet in each cycle of rebirth. How did you do that?”
“I, uh, I don’t think I did,” Sho stammers.
“Huh,” Johnny says, with a little smile. “Interesting.”
“What I want to know,” Aiba cuts in suddenly, still looking at Sho with a touch of anger, “is why the hell Kusanagi-sempai kissed you!”
“What?!” Nino and Jun exclaim, at the same time as Sho bursts out: “I don’t know! I was just as shocked as you, and I blacked out right after…”
Johnny exchanges a glance with Ikuta before speaking. “Kusanagi is a Carrier-that’s how souls are usually removed from bodies, before they came up with that transfer machine.”
“Oh,” Aiba says, brows furrowing.
“But if Kusanagi could do that all along,” Jun points out, ever logical, “why did they even make the machine?”
“Who knows?” Johnny shrugs. “Maybe so they wouldn’t have to train you before they jumped ship. I have a lot more questions for them now that I’ve talked to all of you. However,” and he steeples his fingers in front of himself, “the problem that remains is what to do with all of you.”
The room falls silent, and Nino glances down the line of seats-Jun returns his gaze uncertainly, Sho looks straight ahead, his mouth a grim line, and Aiba just fidgets nervously. Nino feels strangely blank, dazed, overwhelmed with all he has had to take in, and Satoshi is still inexplicably calm.
“What are our options?” Nino asks finally.
Johnny’s eyes settle on Nino, and his expression is carefully neutral, impossible to read.
“In different circumstances,” Johnny says, “I would simply lock your abilities and let you go back to your lives. Unfortunately, for that to happen, Sakurai-kun would have to leave the Host, and Satoshi-kun would have to leave your body.”
“Leave and go where?” Nino asks, already guessing the answer.
“On to their next cycle.”
Nino closes his eyes and lets out a rough breath, and Aiba makes a little noise that sounds like “no”. But somehow, still, Satoshi is unruffled, murmurs: Only if I choose it.
“In different circumstances,” Johnny repeats. “That would be my decision. However.”
Nino opens his eyes again. When he looks, Johnny is smiling.
“In this case,” he says, “I am willing to make a deal.”
chapter 11 and epilogue
Author's Note: ...read on! I'll save my ramblings for the last chapter :)