"Inevitable Fate", chapter four
Title: Inevitable Fate
Chapter: 4/??
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Character, Pairing(s): none yet
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language
Summary: We are the ones who will break the wall of fate. Kamenashi's life is the same as it always has been, until the day his transmitter shorts out and his entire existence is irrevocably altered, launching him into a rebellion he didn't even know existed.
Notes: I swear I thought I had posted this. LMAO I just had a massive confusion attack at realizing that I hadn't.
“It stinks down here,” Tanaka complained as the six of them shuffled along the metal grating. It was narrow quarters, and they were traveling single file as the path wound around underneath the Tokyo streets.
Nakamaru’s connections in the ward office meant access to ward blueprints. And ward blueprints meant sewer lines. Kame had to admit that it was a pretty clever way to get around after curfew without having to anticipate bishop patrols. But he learned rather quickly why their missions were so dangerous.
They were on the clock.
Ueda had skill with rigging transmitters, that was for damn sure, but six blips moving along after curfew would be detectable on any bishop monitor, no matter how crappy their tech was. So the six of them were currently registered at The Joker Club and would be for the next hour thanks to Ueda’s tweaking. But if they were even a few seconds late in returning, they’d be transmitting from a mile away all of a sudden. And that would be a problem. Potentially a rook problem.
Kame had to admire their guts, and he understood why their little resistance movement was so small scale. They didn’t have the technology to evade and sneak around very much yet. No wonder Ueda wanted to study the transmitters so strongly.
“If you can think of a better way to get around,” Ueda grumbled, watching the seconds tick down with a nervous eye, “I’d love to hear it.”
Kame wasn’t sure what Ueda’s actual trade was. Taguchi had hinted that it was something completely mundane. Kame knew mundane. He scooped rice for a living. But where he used his free time to play baseball, Ueda was a key figure in revolution. It was a far cry from sliders and curveballs, and he kept close to Taguchi’s back as they continued to the ward office.
Nakamaru led the way up the ladder. “This should drop us in the alley behind the building.”
And he was true to his word. The air was far fresher when they slid the sewer grate open and emerged. Tanaka stretched, making a few satisfied murmurs as Taguchi held out a hand to help Kame up. He was still a little sore from the procedure. Maybe it was a little early to be getting out in the field with the criminals, he thought bitterly.
Tanaka linked arms with him. “Buddy system. I call Kamenashi.”
Akanishi frowned. “Quit fucking around. Maru, you and Junno go inside. Ueda, you take the pervert and watch the front.”
There were no comments once Jin gave the order. Nakamaru produced the key for the rear building door and shakily turned it in the lock. Taguchi followed him inside after checking the time with Ueda. They disappeared within, and Tanaka and Ueda went to play look-out at the front.
It grew quiet then, and Akanishi sat down on the stoop where Nakamaru and Taguchi had gone inside. Kame watched him pull a lighter and rolled up cigarette from inside his pocket. Cigarettes were hard to come by. Tobacco wasn’t exactly a necessity. He could only think of one factory in the city that his trade dealt with. But as a messenger, Akanishi probably got some interesting tips.
Akanishi flicked the lighter, a brief burst of pale orange in the fairly dark alley. Only a buzzing light from the street beyond provided illumination. He leaned against the brick and sighed. Each second that ticked by was a second closer to them all getting caught, but Akanishi didn’t seem bothered at all.
It was clear that Akanishi wasn’t much for conversation, and they stood in silence for a few minutes. He wondered about the efficiency of the operation. Two lookouts in front and back? Wouldn’t four people inside the ward office help them locate the papers faster? Then again, the more people inside, the more chance for knocking something over or misplacing something that would get Nakamaru in trouble come morning.
The more people outside, the more that could escape quickly into the night in case the rooks caught on, he thought, feeling a chill run down his spine. Suddenly, he understood the system they used.
He shuffled, shifting his weight from one foot to another. “You and Junno work together? You’re both messengers, right?”
“Yeah,” Akanishi said, taking a lazy drag of his cigarette. The smoke curled upwards, tingling the inside of Kame’s nose. It seemed that Akanishi was forthcoming about their operation but not really about himself.
“I work at...well, you know where I work. You get around I bet.”
Akanishi looked up at him, blowing smoke towards his face. “Get around?”
“The city. I’ve never had much reason to travel around. Too much work to do. I guess you get to talk to a lot of different people, see people at work in different trades. Is that how you gather information? You and Junno, I mean. You listen in for gossip and things like that?”
Akanishi’s stare grew uncomfortable, and he shut his mouth. “You talk a lot.”
Kame had never thought so before. But then again, he’d usually had few questions. About anything. Things were just the way they were, the way they always had been. Now that his world was upside down, and all he could cling to was whatever Akanishi and the others told him was the truth, he supposed that he had a lot more to think about. A lot more to be curious about.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. Kame supposed he wasn’t being a very good look-out, but with the way Akanishi was just sitting there smoking, neither was he.
Akanishi released an almost exhausted sigh. “I’ve known Junno since we were apprenticed together. He’s kind of like one of those people who won’t go away.” Kame noticed that the man was smiling as he said it though. Since they were apprenticed - Kame had never kept in touch with anyone that long.
In school, they’d always been too busy studying, too busy preparing for the trade test. Then once everyone was apprenticed, nobody kept in touch. Sure, he had his baseball friends, but that was neighborhood guys. He was starting to realize, now that he was feeling what he was “supposed” to be feeling, that people had real bonds. Not obligation out of working together or a common interest like baseball. Real friends. True friends.
He almost envied Akanishi for having someone like Taguchi, someone to talk to. If they’d really known each other for over ten years, they probably knew one another inside out. Sure, Kame’s baseball friends knew things about him. His supervisor at work knew his likes and dislikes. But nobody really knew him, and Kame had never really tried to learn about anyone else. And maybe it was the chemicals in his body being all mixed up, but he wanted to know Akanishi. He wanted to know all his new companions from The Joker Club.
To voice that, however, would make him as much the butt of jokes as Taguchi was, and Kame was already saddled with the newbie stigma. He’d just have to keep those more sentimental thoughts to himself. Maybe his body was still readjusting. Maybe he was just being overly emotional.
The door opened, and Nakamaru nearly tripped over Akanishi. “Blocking the doorway? Good plan,” the other man grumbled.
Akanishi got to his feet slowly, stomping out his cigarette. “Get what we need?”
Taguchi pulled a paper from the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. “Copied to the letter.”
“And we’ve got fourteen minutes to get back,” Nakamaru said, ducking around Akanishi’s form blocking the doorway and heading straight for the sewer cover.
Taguchi shoved the paper back in his pocket and gave Akanishi a nod. It felt like a weight had lifted, knowing that they’d gotten in, gotten out. All they had to do was get back. It was almost exhilarating. After standing outside for so many minutes, their secret operation was coming to a close. Kame wasn’t much for defying authority, but that was his life now, wasn’t it?
Akanishi shoved him forward. “I’ll get the other two. Just get moving.”
He headed for the ladder, veins pulsing with life. No bishops, no rooks, and they had fourteen minutes. He climbed down, following Taguchi and Nakamaru who were already moving briskly. Better safe than sorry.
There was no complaining about sewer smell on the way back, and they raced along under the streets to The Joker Club. There were no sighs of relief until the last man was in Ueda’s lab, and Ueda himself was getting everybody back into their normal transmission state. Well, if faking out the system was what passed for normal now.
Tanaka ruffled his hair like Kame was some kid freshly apprenticed. “Aww, look how excited you are. It warms the heart.”
He shrugged Tanaka off. Ueda was already typing away at whatever he did. “It was his first time, give him a break.”
Maybe this hadn’t been as dangerous as Kame had thought. They’d gotten back with three minutes to spare, and nobody else was sweating or breathing heavily. Just him with his pulse racing.
“Popped his lawbreaking cherry,” Tanaka continued, smiling widely.
There wouldn’t be a visit to the factory for at least a week or two, Kame quickly understood as he listened to them talk about the information they’d stolen. The transmitter facility wasn’t in the ward. It was on the other side of Tokyo. Kame hadn’t been that far away in his entire life. Ueda needed time to figure out how to get them there safely. They’d definitely need more than an hour next time around.
The chatter continued, and Kame realized he’d be spending the night at The Joker Club once again. He headed for the same spare room as last time, only noticing that Akanishi had followed him once he got to the door.
“You need to relax,” Akanishi said, waiting in the doorway as Kame walked inside. “That was nothing compared to what’ll go down next time.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” Kame gritted out, pulling a spare blanket out of the shoddy cabinet in the corner. “It’s not like I’m used to this stuff.”
He wasn’t sure what their damn expectations for him were. His whole body was on the fritz, and they were expecting him to just fall in line and deal with it.
“For what it’s worth,” Akanishi said, “I’m glad you didn’t flake on us.”
“Why?” he shot back, tossing the blanket on the bed. “Because if I didn’t fall in line, you’d kill me in case I decided to rat you all out?”
Akanishi smirked. “Yeah, we’d probably have to do that.”
Kame wasn’t sure if the guy was joking or not. His smile was probably as crooked as his brain, unhooked just like Kame’s and just as unpredictable, even with however many years of practice.
Akanishi tapped the doorframe. “Well.”
“Good night,” he replied dismissively.
“Just trust us, okay? I know it’s a lot to ask, but we’re a family here,” the other man said, sounding more sincere than he had the whole night. “You come with us on a night like tonight, we’ve got your back. It’s an expectation that you’ll have ours too.”
He pulled the door closed, leaving Kame alone.
Trusting people had been a lot easier before. Trust was common sense. Trust that things were done for a reason. Trust that the bishops were keeping you safe, that the rooks did something necessary that need not be spoken of.
Trust in the transmitter on your back.
It seemed his only course of action was to trust that Akanishi and the others knew what the hell they were doing.
--
Kame woke early- restlessness had kept him from really sleeping through the night. His head was too filled with what-if's and could-be's, of the repercussions that would happen should they get caught outside on one of the raids. He pushed hair out of his face with a sigh, propping his elbows up on his knees and leaning over the bed to steady himself once more.
Ever since he'd discovered the truth of the situation, going to work and letting himself get swept up in the monotony of his job was becoming more and more difficult.
He didn't expect to find anyone else awake in the bowels of The Joker Club, but Taguchi was there going over the blueprints they'd gotten away with the night before. Kame couldn't make heads or tails of anything that was on the paper, and the lines and numbers meant nothing to him, but Taguchi seemed absorbed in it, looking over every piece with the utmost scrutiny.
"Morning," he said, with a cheery smile, when he caught sight of Kame entering. Kame stifled a yawn.
"Morning," he parroted back.
"You an early-riser, too?" the other man asked.
It wasn't that Kame liked getting up in the morning- he didn't, not particularly, but he didn't really feel like explaining that there were coils in the pit of his stomach that kept him too anxious to get any good rest, especially not in the wake of Taguchi's sunny expression. There was something about the other man that was uplifting- even when his jokes fell a bit off the mark. "I guess," Kame finally settled on by way of an answer, and it seemed to be received well enough.
"You can't wake Jin up with a stampede next to his bed," Taguchi laughed. There was a cup of water next to his elbow, and he reached for it, longer fingers curling around the sloped sides. "It's nice to have someone else to talk to before the alarms start going off."
"What are you looking at?" Kame asked, gesturing to the maps spread out over the table's surface.
"Here," Taguchi said, pointing at a spot marked with a blue bounding box, "is the main facility for the transmitter productions. It's not very big, but the problem is that it's connected to some other buildings. It's not just out there in the middle of nowhere. And it's going to be heavily guarded."
Of course it would be, Kame thought. The rooks and bishops operated at the beck and call of someone higher on the chain- and while Kame didn't want to, couldn't possibly think of anything that could control the rooks, he knew that there had to be something. Someone pulled the strings, probably something centralized.
The thought wasn't a cheerful one.
"But they don't figure people are going to just go looking for it," Kame reasoned, "right? Because... because no one questions things when they are connected to the system."
When Taguchi's gaze met Kame's own, there was something shimmering there, behind his eyes. Pride. "Yeah. Exactly. It's our advantage."
It was stupid to be pleased that someone was impressed with Kame's ability to catch on, but the warm sensation swept through his form anyway, and he let it linger for a little while as Taguchi got up to refill his water. There was some breakfast on the small countertop that was no doubt just as paste-like in taste as the last batch had been, and Kame wasn't feeling particularly hungry for it. After another few minutes with both of them looking over the next page of the prints, Nakamaru walked in with his hair half-sticking up, away from his head.
"Ugh," he commented, looking into the cooker. "It's too early to be looking at crap like that, you guys."
"Never!" Taguchi laughed. He turned the page. "It's never too early to be plotting a rebellion. Tyranny never sleeps."
Nakamaru leaned back against the counter with narrowed eyes. "You've been spending too much time with Ueda again."
"In reality, aren't we all spending too much time with Ueda?" Kame felt bold enough to supply, and was rewarded with a choked laugh from Taguchi and a smack to his back in agreement. Nakamaru just sort of smirked and started going through drawers to find a clean glass. It felt like the time Kame'd pitched a shut-out a few years ago with the neighborhood team, only more so; the buzzing in his veins was more pronounced, more noticeable. Kame didn't much like dealing with the constant anxiety and anger, but the other parts- well, they weren't really all that bad, sometimes.
He liked feeling like he belonged. He'd never felt like he belonged to anything before.
There were some shuffled, clunking footsteps behind them, and Kame looked over his shoulder in time to see Akanishi emerge from one of the rooms.
"Early route," he said, anticipating the question that was half ready to fall from Taguchi's mouth. He looked a little grumpy, still groggy around the edges. "Oh, and make sure you remember- two weeks. Sunday. Mission scheduled for nightfall."
"Aye, aye, captain," Taguchi sing-songed.
"Koki'll complain that he has to keep an eye out on the floor," Maru said. "Sundays are bigger days for the casino, with the late curfew."
Akanishi scooped out a spoonful of the breakfast concoction and made a face. "Let him bitch if he wants. He does that anyway, just at varying degrees of volume. Think we're all used to it by now, anyway."
"I heard that!" came Tanaka's annoyed voice from behind a closed door.
"I meant you to!" Akanishi shouted back, before putting the spoon down and brushing his hands off on his pants. The messenger charms on his necklace glinted under the lights hanging from the ceiling, jingling when he moved his arm to wipe at his mouth.
Kame swallowed down the lump in his throat. He wondered why he was suddenly getting light-headed.
He tried not to think about the impending expedition as he rose from the table. He had his shift at work to go to, and things to focus on- namely keeping himself as subtle as possible, blending in with the muted colors of the world around him. It was hard to make sure he kept his raging emotions to himself, and he was starting to get paranoid that other people could practically smell them just by looking at him.
Akanishi left the same time Kame did, tugging at one of his necklaces bound by a leather cord. "Listen," he said, as they stepped out into the light of the rising sun, "I meant what I said last night. I'm glad you're here with us."
"Because there are more people now to help with raids?" Kame asked.
There was a moment of silence. Akanishi leveled him with a long gaze. "Yeah," he said, finally. "Exactly."
There were people milling outside, but not many; the early morning shifts were only for a handful of messengers and those who opened up factories and markets. Kame had his fair share of them, but he'd never really liked them. When he'd first been apprenticed, he'd been on first shift for a year until he worked his way high enough up on the ladder to be moved to a later starting time. The grunt-work was expected for those just starting out in a trade- and for those who were slowly on their way back down.
In a way, the morning felt like both the start and demise of life- the fresh-faced apprentices trying to impress with their willingness to cooperate, and the elderly who were being weeded out of the workforce altogether, to await the rooks' arrival.
"I'll be there," Kame said, dropping his voice lower. "You don't have to worry about me, Akanishi, I'll help you out."
"Jin," the other man replied. He wasn't looking at Kame when Kame looked at him, his gaze out on the sunlight flickering over the pebble-strewn pathway, but his hand was sort of clenching and unclenching at his side, near the hem of his uneven jacket. "I mean, you can call me Jin. If you want."
"Okay," Kame said.
Jin gave him one last look and a small salute, and headed off in the opposite direction with his hands shoved into his pockets, ponytail bobbing with each step, and Kame had to take a deep breath. He obviously hadn't gotten enough sleep last night, because his heartbeat was already hammering against his ears. His palms were covered with a thin layer of sweat, and he wiped them off on his shirt. He had to steel himself to be normal enough to get through the day at work.
He had to be normal enough to get through every day at work.
The never-ending slew of shifts hadn't felt so long and difficult before, but for some reason, Kame felt like they were bearing down on him. Like he wanted something more. The hot sting of fear that had stayed in the back of his throat for hours the night before hadn't exactly been a pleasant sensation to deal with, but at the same time, it had been something. Something he felt so keenly it overtook everything else.
Kame shook his head, and started off towards the market.
--
A few days later, he was heading home by way of the baseball diamond when he was intercepted by a breathless messenger with short, cropped hair.
"Sorry," the boy wheezed, handing him a small envelope with a red seal on the front. "I just missed you at work, so I thought I'd chase you down before you got all the way home."
"Thanks," Kame said. He took the letter gingerly. He didn't get a lot of messages- sometimes he'd get one from Aiba when the other man was organizing a more planned out baseball scrimmage, and when people got sick at work, he'd get them asking him to come in early for a shift to cover up the hole in production. He had a feeling the paper in his hand wasn't about either thing, however, and he deliberately moved as slowly as possible in opening it so that by the time he tugged the letter itself from the envelope, the messenger had already moved on.
Kamenashi, it read. Are you feeling lucky? I was, and I scored some points today. Must be a good day to do some gambling. Thought you might like to know, in case you feel up to it later. Hope you don't have burnt rice for dinner. -Nakamaru
Kame didn't think they used messengers for planning- it was too obvious, and the bishops went through letters sent through the channels. He wondered why Taguchi or Jin hadn't delivered it, but maybe that was too obvious. Too many close connections and the bishops might start to wonder about it.
But the message itself was easy enough to understand: meeting at the casino, after dinner and before curfew. Kame shoved the letter into his jacket pocket and walked a little slower, drawing close to the wire fence.
"Yo, Kamenashi!" Ninomiya called from behind the pitcher's mound. "Feeling up for a round?"
It had been awhile since Kame had felt the leather of the ball beneath his fingertips, since he felt the slow burn of sixty plus pitches working into the muscles of his shoulder. He felt stiff and out of practice.
"Sorry," he said. "Not tonight."
Nino gave him a smirk, tossing the baseball up and down and letting it hit his glove with a heavy smack each time. "Yeah, you just can't stand to see me threaten your reputation, can you?"
"You caught me," Kame said, and even managed a shaky smile. "Except that you've got years to go until you can even think about threatening me- why don't you work on that curveball some more, and come get me when you've mastered it?"
"Ass," Ninomiya laughed, and then his attention turned elsewhere, to the outfield.
Kame would have enjoyed a game with the neighborhood guys, but as he walked away back towards his apartment, he realized he didn't really miss it as much as he thought he should. It really wasn't a tough decision to go to the meeting rather than play the game- and he wasn't sure why the realization chilled his blood as much as it did.
--
There wasn't much activity at The Joker Club when Kame arrived- just a few stragglers still hoping to cash in with their meal rations on the table. On the weekends, when curfew was extended a few hours, people stayed out later to gamble, but the weekdays didn’t seem to be big days for the place. He glided between the tables and pachinko machines to the small door in the back, hidden in the shadows of one of the overhangs and the bar countertop the dealers sometimes cashed out rewards at.
The others were there when he walked in, and Taguchi gave him a small wave. "Sorry," he said, though he wasn't really late- not really.
"Do you guys have impromptu meetings like this often?" he asked, sliding down onto the seat beside Taguchi.
"Only when something comes up," was the answer, and it didn't really help to ease Kame's nerves much. Nakamaru was standing near the doorway down to Ueda's lab with his arms crossed over his chest, and beside him, Ueda was sipping at a glass of something. Koki was seated across the table, bouncing a ball up and down on the wooden surface with enough force to rattle the legs against the floor. Kame could only see Jin's profile with the way the other man was leaning his head against the wall.
He was the last piece, it seemed, and Nakamaru stepped forward to start. "I know you all had things to be doing tonight," he started, and Tanaka cut in with a mumbled, "Or money to be made on the floor" that Kame was pretty sure he'd wanted Nakamaru to hear.
"Shut up, Koki," Nakamaru hissed, and it sounded like he was on edge. More than usual, anyway, and even though Kame didn't know the man that well, it made his muscles clench a bit. "Listen, there are two things that couldn't wait."
"Is this about our plan to get in and get a transmitter?" Jin asked.
"Yeah."
There was a collective sigh in the room, breath mingling together. Ueda put his cup down and took his glasses off the bridge of his nose, rubbing his fingers wearily against his eyes. "We knew this was going to happen."
"Do they know something?" Jin asked. "About us? Or is this about the blueprints we got?"
Kame's breath caught painfully in his throat when his mind threw pictures of the six of them carried off by rooks to the underbelly of the city, and eased a bit when Nakamaru shook his head before answering. "No. Not directly. They don't know anything about us planning to get in there, but I got into some higher files to see if there was more security than we had anticipated, because the prints we swiped hinted at something."
"There is," Tanaka sighed. It wasn't a question.
"The factory where the transmitters are manufactured is connected to another factory, a larger one that sits adjacent in the same building," Nakamaru explained. He pulled the blueprints out and unrolled them, edges of the papers curling up into tight rings until he smoothed them over with his palms. His finger made contact with the far edge, a double-lined wall in the plans. "Here. Security level 5."
"What does that mean?" Kame asked, leaning over so he could see better.
Nakamaru tapped his finger a few times against the blue ink. "It means it's beyond my authorization code."
Kame could decipher nothing from the double-lined edge to the print. Jin let out a long, slow breath and bit his bottom lip, pink tip to his tongue sticking out past his mouth. "What do you know?"
"That it's powered by at least three generators on restricted access. That there are power lines running between the two factories. Security level 5 means it's going to be more than we anticipated and I can't tell you what it is they're doing there."
"Who has access to level 5?" Ueda asked.
"I don't know," Nakamaru said.
And Jin leaned down heavily on the table, palms pressed flat against it, pushing his shoulders back up and bowing his elbows out. The cords around his neck swung lazily back and forth, charms glinting in the light. "Take a guess," he ordered.
"Bishops," Nakamaru said. "Rooks. Maybe a couple higher-ups in the government, but nothing at my code. Nothing at the ward or precinct level; it's all got to be above that."
Kame sat back against the chair. The weight that had settled over the room was almost stifling. He could see Taguchi crack his knuckles one at a time, he could see Tanaka rolling the ball around and around in his hand.
The glasses were back on Ueda's nose, and the other man pushed them up to keep them from sliding forward when he leaned over on his elbows, paper crinkling and shifting beneath his movement. "What I want to know is why the transmitters aren't manufactured in the building under level 5 security," he said.
"What do you mean?" Jin asked. It came out sharp; maybe he was rattled, though his face betrayed nothing.
"I mean," Ueda replied, "what are they doing in there that's more important and confidential than the transmitters that keep us all subdued are?"
A chill ran up Kame's spine, and it was distinctly uncomfortable. "Don't," Jin barked suddenly. "Don't assume anything- yet. We don't know what it is. Thinking about it is just going to get everybody worked up."
"But it is going to affect our getting in and out of there," Ueda pointed out. And despite Jin's orders, Kame couldn't help but think about what could be in there- the mainframe, maybe. The controls that monitored all of their transmitters, the bits that Ueda was playing with and altering. If they could hit the central nerve of the web, could they take out everything that was keeping them under its thumb?
Whatever Ueda was rigging, there had to be a central location for it somewhere- and trying to get into a building right next to it sounded as dangerous as Kame letting his transmitter flicker and die completely and then standing out in the middle of the baseball diamond and screaming about it for the world to hear.
"Then we push it back," Taguchi suggested, and when all eyes in the room turned to him, shrugged a little before adding, "at least until we know what we are potentially going up against?"
"Yeah," Jin said, just as Nakamaru and Ueda both moved up off the blueprints, and the ends coiled back together with a small snap. "We do that. Push it back a week, get ourselves more settled. The more information we have, the better prepared we'll be going in. We can still do this, we just have to make it work."
Kame wasn't so sure, but hearing Jin sound confident seemed to help the others relax a bit.
"What was the other thing you called us for?" Tanaka asked, and Kame had forgotten that there was even another piece of information they'd been waiting on.
"Oh," Nakamaru said, and he met Kame's gaze. "Kame, you should know. Your number's going to be called."
Kame's mouth went very dry, and he struggled to swallow because his throat felt like it was three times its normal size. "What?"
"Oh, man!" Tanaka said, and smacked his palm against his knee as he made a face up at Nakamaru from his seated position. "Why can't you give me good news like that? Come on, can't you nudge my number in there instead? It's been months since I got any action!"
"No, it hasn't," Ueda replied smoothly, "I heard you going solo two nights ago. Can't you ever keep it down?"
Tanaka made kissing faces into the air. "Want to join me then, Tat-chan?"
"Well, it's nice to know that some things never change, and you're still disgusting," Ueda said.
Kame stared at Tanaka and Ueda, at the rolled up papers in the middle of the table, at the charms hanging off of Jin's necklace cord, feeling everything and nothing all at once. It boiled up from his stomach and bubbled in his chest. He knew what would happen when his number was called- in theory. He would have to report in to the large buildings at the far edge of the ward, made of dark red brick. He knew he would be coupled and given a room number.
Thinking about it had never made him feel so deliriously light-headed before, though, and he had trouble focusing on what was going on around him.
"You've never been called before?" Taguchi asked. His tone was kind of gentle.
"No," Kame admitted; it had never seemed like a big deal before, but suddenly, it very much did. He wasn't sure why.
Tanaka's knees knocked up against the side of the table. "Poppin' your cherry! Listen, you need any help or anything, you just come to me beforehand, yeah? I'll show you how to really get in there and-"
There was a smack when Jin's hand made contact with the back of Tanaka's head, hard enough that the sound almost echoed around them. Tanaka rubbed at the offending skin a bit and looked up, but Jin just stared at the corner of the room.
"Meeting adjourned," he said.
"When?" Kame asked, as he stood so fast he nearly tripped over one of the chair legs. Nakamaru was rolling the prints the rest of the way up and slipping them beneath his arm. "When are they calling me?"
"Within the next week," Nakamaru replied. He looked a little apologetic. "I'm sorry, I don't have the specifics. I just know that your number came through the list. I keep a watch for all of ours so at least we've got some advance warning before we get the official notice."
Before he'd been disconnected, before he'd been "freed"- he'd thought about getting called. He was pretty sure everyone did. But it was more of a theoretical thing, just something that he knew would happen eventually like it did to everyone else. It was just another thing he would slip into his schedule, and that would be it. He didn't even know the specifics of what happened inside the brick buildings; people didn't talk about it much.
But now- now it was making him kind of queasy. And having the others talk about it with more intimate knowledge than he had wasn't helping matters. He needed to get all the information on his own, before his number came up through the system.
He just swallowed hard to force down the ache in his stomach, and left The Joker Club to hurry back home.
Chapter: 4/??
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Character, Pairing(s): none yet
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language
Summary: We are the ones who will break the wall of fate. Kamenashi's life is the same as it always has been, until the day his transmitter shorts out and his entire existence is irrevocably altered, launching him into a rebellion he didn't even know existed.
Notes: I swear I thought I had posted this. LMAO I just had a massive confusion attack at realizing that I hadn't.
“It stinks down here,” Tanaka complained as the six of them shuffled along the metal grating. It was narrow quarters, and they were traveling single file as the path wound around underneath the Tokyo streets.
Nakamaru’s connections in the ward office meant access to ward blueprints. And ward blueprints meant sewer lines. Kame had to admit that it was a pretty clever way to get around after curfew without having to anticipate bishop patrols. But he learned rather quickly why their missions were so dangerous.
They were on the clock.
Ueda had skill with rigging transmitters, that was for damn sure, but six blips moving along after curfew would be detectable on any bishop monitor, no matter how crappy their tech was. So the six of them were currently registered at The Joker Club and would be for the next hour thanks to Ueda’s tweaking. But if they were even a few seconds late in returning, they’d be transmitting from a mile away all of a sudden. And that would be a problem. Potentially a rook problem.
Kame had to admire their guts, and he understood why their little resistance movement was so small scale. They didn’t have the technology to evade and sneak around very much yet. No wonder Ueda wanted to study the transmitters so strongly.
“If you can think of a better way to get around,” Ueda grumbled, watching the seconds tick down with a nervous eye, “I’d love to hear it.”
Kame wasn’t sure what Ueda’s actual trade was. Taguchi had hinted that it was something completely mundane. Kame knew mundane. He scooped rice for a living. But where he used his free time to play baseball, Ueda was a key figure in revolution. It was a far cry from sliders and curveballs, and he kept close to Taguchi’s back as they continued to the ward office.
Nakamaru led the way up the ladder. “This should drop us in the alley behind the building.”
And he was true to his word. The air was far fresher when they slid the sewer grate open and emerged. Tanaka stretched, making a few satisfied murmurs as Taguchi held out a hand to help Kame up. He was still a little sore from the procedure. Maybe it was a little early to be getting out in the field with the criminals, he thought bitterly.
Tanaka linked arms with him. “Buddy system. I call Kamenashi.”
Akanishi frowned. “Quit fucking around. Maru, you and Junno go inside. Ueda, you take the pervert and watch the front.”
There were no comments once Jin gave the order. Nakamaru produced the key for the rear building door and shakily turned it in the lock. Taguchi followed him inside after checking the time with Ueda. They disappeared within, and Tanaka and Ueda went to play look-out at the front.
It grew quiet then, and Akanishi sat down on the stoop where Nakamaru and Taguchi had gone inside. Kame watched him pull a lighter and rolled up cigarette from inside his pocket. Cigarettes were hard to come by. Tobacco wasn’t exactly a necessity. He could only think of one factory in the city that his trade dealt with. But as a messenger, Akanishi probably got some interesting tips.
Akanishi flicked the lighter, a brief burst of pale orange in the fairly dark alley. Only a buzzing light from the street beyond provided illumination. He leaned against the brick and sighed. Each second that ticked by was a second closer to them all getting caught, but Akanishi didn’t seem bothered at all.
It was clear that Akanishi wasn’t much for conversation, and they stood in silence for a few minutes. He wondered about the efficiency of the operation. Two lookouts in front and back? Wouldn’t four people inside the ward office help them locate the papers faster? Then again, the more people inside, the more chance for knocking something over or misplacing something that would get Nakamaru in trouble come morning.
The more people outside, the more that could escape quickly into the night in case the rooks caught on, he thought, feeling a chill run down his spine. Suddenly, he understood the system they used.
He shuffled, shifting his weight from one foot to another. “You and Junno work together? You’re both messengers, right?”
“Yeah,” Akanishi said, taking a lazy drag of his cigarette. The smoke curled upwards, tingling the inside of Kame’s nose. It seemed that Akanishi was forthcoming about their operation but not really about himself.
“I work at...well, you know where I work. You get around I bet.”
Akanishi looked up at him, blowing smoke towards his face. “Get around?”
“The city. I’ve never had much reason to travel around. Too much work to do. I guess you get to talk to a lot of different people, see people at work in different trades. Is that how you gather information? You and Junno, I mean. You listen in for gossip and things like that?”
Akanishi’s stare grew uncomfortable, and he shut his mouth. “You talk a lot.”
Kame had never thought so before. But then again, he’d usually had few questions. About anything. Things were just the way they were, the way they always had been. Now that his world was upside down, and all he could cling to was whatever Akanishi and the others told him was the truth, he supposed that he had a lot more to think about. A lot more to be curious about.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. Kame supposed he wasn’t being a very good look-out, but with the way Akanishi was just sitting there smoking, neither was he.
Akanishi released an almost exhausted sigh. “I’ve known Junno since we were apprenticed together. He’s kind of like one of those people who won’t go away.” Kame noticed that the man was smiling as he said it though. Since they were apprenticed - Kame had never kept in touch with anyone that long.
In school, they’d always been too busy studying, too busy preparing for the trade test. Then once everyone was apprenticed, nobody kept in touch. Sure, he had his baseball friends, but that was neighborhood guys. He was starting to realize, now that he was feeling what he was “supposed” to be feeling, that people had real bonds. Not obligation out of working together or a common interest like baseball. Real friends. True friends.
He almost envied Akanishi for having someone like Taguchi, someone to talk to. If they’d really known each other for over ten years, they probably knew one another inside out. Sure, Kame’s baseball friends knew things about him. His supervisor at work knew his likes and dislikes. But nobody really knew him, and Kame had never really tried to learn about anyone else. And maybe it was the chemicals in his body being all mixed up, but he wanted to know Akanishi. He wanted to know all his new companions from The Joker Club.
To voice that, however, would make him as much the butt of jokes as Taguchi was, and Kame was already saddled with the newbie stigma. He’d just have to keep those more sentimental thoughts to himself. Maybe his body was still readjusting. Maybe he was just being overly emotional.
The door opened, and Nakamaru nearly tripped over Akanishi. “Blocking the doorway? Good plan,” the other man grumbled.
Akanishi got to his feet slowly, stomping out his cigarette. “Get what we need?”
Taguchi pulled a paper from the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. “Copied to the letter.”
“And we’ve got fourteen minutes to get back,” Nakamaru said, ducking around Akanishi’s form blocking the doorway and heading straight for the sewer cover.
Taguchi shoved the paper back in his pocket and gave Akanishi a nod. It felt like a weight had lifted, knowing that they’d gotten in, gotten out. All they had to do was get back. It was almost exhilarating. After standing outside for so many minutes, their secret operation was coming to a close. Kame wasn’t much for defying authority, but that was his life now, wasn’t it?
Akanishi shoved him forward. “I’ll get the other two. Just get moving.”
He headed for the ladder, veins pulsing with life. No bishops, no rooks, and they had fourteen minutes. He climbed down, following Taguchi and Nakamaru who were already moving briskly. Better safe than sorry.
There was no complaining about sewer smell on the way back, and they raced along under the streets to The Joker Club. There were no sighs of relief until the last man was in Ueda’s lab, and Ueda himself was getting everybody back into their normal transmission state. Well, if faking out the system was what passed for normal now.
Tanaka ruffled his hair like Kame was some kid freshly apprenticed. “Aww, look how excited you are. It warms the heart.”
He shrugged Tanaka off. Ueda was already typing away at whatever he did. “It was his first time, give him a break.”
Maybe this hadn’t been as dangerous as Kame had thought. They’d gotten back with three minutes to spare, and nobody else was sweating or breathing heavily. Just him with his pulse racing.
“Popped his lawbreaking cherry,” Tanaka continued, smiling widely.
There wouldn’t be a visit to the factory for at least a week or two, Kame quickly understood as he listened to them talk about the information they’d stolen. The transmitter facility wasn’t in the ward. It was on the other side of Tokyo. Kame hadn’t been that far away in his entire life. Ueda needed time to figure out how to get them there safely. They’d definitely need more than an hour next time around.
The chatter continued, and Kame realized he’d be spending the night at The Joker Club once again. He headed for the same spare room as last time, only noticing that Akanishi had followed him once he got to the door.
“You need to relax,” Akanishi said, waiting in the doorway as Kame walked inside. “That was nothing compared to what’ll go down next time.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” Kame gritted out, pulling a spare blanket out of the shoddy cabinet in the corner. “It’s not like I’m used to this stuff.”
He wasn’t sure what their damn expectations for him were. His whole body was on the fritz, and they were expecting him to just fall in line and deal with it.
“For what it’s worth,” Akanishi said, “I’m glad you didn’t flake on us.”
“Why?” he shot back, tossing the blanket on the bed. “Because if I didn’t fall in line, you’d kill me in case I decided to rat you all out?”
Akanishi smirked. “Yeah, we’d probably have to do that.”
Kame wasn’t sure if the guy was joking or not. His smile was probably as crooked as his brain, unhooked just like Kame’s and just as unpredictable, even with however many years of practice.
Akanishi tapped the doorframe. “Well.”
“Good night,” he replied dismissively.
“Just trust us, okay? I know it’s a lot to ask, but we’re a family here,” the other man said, sounding more sincere than he had the whole night. “You come with us on a night like tonight, we’ve got your back. It’s an expectation that you’ll have ours too.”
He pulled the door closed, leaving Kame alone.
Trusting people had been a lot easier before. Trust was common sense. Trust that things were done for a reason. Trust that the bishops were keeping you safe, that the rooks did something necessary that need not be spoken of.
Trust in the transmitter on your back.
It seemed his only course of action was to trust that Akanishi and the others knew what the hell they were doing.
--
Kame woke early- restlessness had kept him from really sleeping through the night. His head was too filled with what-if's and could-be's, of the repercussions that would happen should they get caught outside on one of the raids. He pushed hair out of his face with a sigh, propping his elbows up on his knees and leaning over the bed to steady himself once more.
Ever since he'd discovered the truth of the situation, going to work and letting himself get swept up in the monotony of his job was becoming more and more difficult.
He didn't expect to find anyone else awake in the bowels of The Joker Club, but Taguchi was there going over the blueprints they'd gotten away with the night before. Kame couldn't make heads or tails of anything that was on the paper, and the lines and numbers meant nothing to him, but Taguchi seemed absorbed in it, looking over every piece with the utmost scrutiny.
"Morning," he said, with a cheery smile, when he caught sight of Kame entering. Kame stifled a yawn.
"Morning," he parroted back.
"You an early-riser, too?" the other man asked.
It wasn't that Kame liked getting up in the morning- he didn't, not particularly, but he didn't really feel like explaining that there were coils in the pit of his stomach that kept him too anxious to get any good rest, especially not in the wake of Taguchi's sunny expression. There was something about the other man that was uplifting- even when his jokes fell a bit off the mark. "I guess," Kame finally settled on by way of an answer, and it seemed to be received well enough.
"You can't wake Jin up with a stampede next to his bed," Taguchi laughed. There was a cup of water next to his elbow, and he reached for it, longer fingers curling around the sloped sides. "It's nice to have someone else to talk to before the alarms start going off."
"What are you looking at?" Kame asked, gesturing to the maps spread out over the table's surface.
"Here," Taguchi said, pointing at a spot marked with a blue bounding box, "is the main facility for the transmitter productions. It's not very big, but the problem is that it's connected to some other buildings. It's not just out there in the middle of nowhere. And it's going to be heavily guarded."
Of course it would be, Kame thought. The rooks and bishops operated at the beck and call of someone higher on the chain- and while Kame didn't want to, couldn't possibly think of anything that could control the rooks, he knew that there had to be something. Someone pulled the strings, probably something centralized.
The thought wasn't a cheerful one.
"But they don't figure people are going to just go looking for it," Kame reasoned, "right? Because... because no one questions things when they are connected to the system."
When Taguchi's gaze met Kame's own, there was something shimmering there, behind his eyes. Pride. "Yeah. Exactly. It's our advantage."
It was stupid to be pleased that someone was impressed with Kame's ability to catch on, but the warm sensation swept through his form anyway, and he let it linger for a little while as Taguchi got up to refill his water. There was some breakfast on the small countertop that was no doubt just as paste-like in taste as the last batch had been, and Kame wasn't feeling particularly hungry for it. After another few minutes with both of them looking over the next page of the prints, Nakamaru walked in with his hair half-sticking up, away from his head.
"Ugh," he commented, looking into the cooker. "It's too early to be looking at crap like that, you guys."
"Never!" Taguchi laughed. He turned the page. "It's never too early to be plotting a rebellion. Tyranny never sleeps."
Nakamaru leaned back against the counter with narrowed eyes. "You've been spending too much time with Ueda again."
"In reality, aren't we all spending too much time with Ueda?" Kame felt bold enough to supply, and was rewarded with a choked laugh from Taguchi and a smack to his back in agreement. Nakamaru just sort of smirked and started going through drawers to find a clean glass. It felt like the time Kame'd pitched a shut-out a few years ago with the neighborhood team, only more so; the buzzing in his veins was more pronounced, more noticeable. Kame didn't much like dealing with the constant anxiety and anger, but the other parts- well, they weren't really all that bad, sometimes.
He liked feeling like he belonged. He'd never felt like he belonged to anything before.
There were some shuffled, clunking footsteps behind them, and Kame looked over his shoulder in time to see Akanishi emerge from one of the rooms.
"Early route," he said, anticipating the question that was half ready to fall from Taguchi's mouth. He looked a little grumpy, still groggy around the edges. "Oh, and make sure you remember- two weeks. Sunday. Mission scheduled for nightfall."
"Aye, aye, captain," Taguchi sing-songed.
"Koki'll complain that he has to keep an eye out on the floor," Maru said. "Sundays are bigger days for the casino, with the late curfew."
Akanishi scooped out a spoonful of the breakfast concoction and made a face. "Let him bitch if he wants. He does that anyway, just at varying degrees of volume. Think we're all used to it by now, anyway."
"I heard that!" came Tanaka's annoyed voice from behind a closed door.
"I meant you to!" Akanishi shouted back, before putting the spoon down and brushing his hands off on his pants. The messenger charms on his necklace glinted under the lights hanging from the ceiling, jingling when he moved his arm to wipe at his mouth.
Kame swallowed down the lump in his throat. He wondered why he was suddenly getting light-headed.
He tried not to think about the impending expedition as he rose from the table. He had his shift at work to go to, and things to focus on- namely keeping himself as subtle as possible, blending in with the muted colors of the world around him. It was hard to make sure he kept his raging emotions to himself, and he was starting to get paranoid that other people could practically smell them just by looking at him.
Akanishi left the same time Kame did, tugging at one of his necklaces bound by a leather cord. "Listen," he said, as they stepped out into the light of the rising sun, "I meant what I said last night. I'm glad you're here with us."
"Because there are more people now to help with raids?" Kame asked.
There was a moment of silence. Akanishi leveled him with a long gaze. "Yeah," he said, finally. "Exactly."
There were people milling outside, but not many; the early morning shifts were only for a handful of messengers and those who opened up factories and markets. Kame had his fair share of them, but he'd never really liked them. When he'd first been apprenticed, he'd been on first shift for a year until he worked his way high enough up on the ladder to be moved to a later starting time. The grunt-work was expected for those just starting out in a trade- and for those who were slowly on their way back down.
In a way, the morning felt like both the start and demise of life- the fresh-faced apprentices trying to impress with their willingness to cooperate, and the elderly who were being weeded out of the workforce altogether, to await the rooks' arrival.
"I'll be there," Kame said, dropping his voice lower. "You don't have to worry about me, Akanishi, I'll help you out."
"Jin," the other man replied. He wasn't looking at Kame when Kame looked at him, his gaze out on the sunlight flickering over the pebble-strewn pathway, but his hand was sort of clenching and unclenching at his side, near the hem of his uneven jacket. "I mean, you can call me Jin. If you want."
"Okay," Kame said.
Jin gave him one last look and a small salute, and headed off in the opposite direction with his hands shoved into his pockets, ponytail bobbing with each step, and Kame had to take a deep breath. He obviously hadn't gotten enough sleep last night, because his heartbeat was already hammering against his ears. His palms were covered with a thin layer of sweat, and he wiped them off on his shirt. He had to steel himself to be normal enough to get through the day at work.
He had to be normal enough to get through every day at work.
The never-ending slew of shifts hadn't felt so long and difficult before, but for some reason, Kame felt like they were bearing down on him. Like he wanted something more. The hot sting of fear that had stayed in the back of his throat for hours the night before hadn't exactly been a pleasant sensation to deal with, but at the same time, it had been something. Something he felt so keenly it overtook everything else.
Kame shook his head, and started off towards the market.
--
A few days later, he was heading home by way of the baseball diamond when he was intercepted by a breathless messenger with short, cropped hair.
"Sorry," the boy wheezed, handing him a small envelope with a red seal on the front. "I just missed you at work, so I thought I'd chase you down before you got all the way home."
"Thanks," Kame said. He took the letter gingerly. He didn't get a lot of messages- sometimes he'd get one from Aiba when the other man was organizing a more planned out baseball scrimmage, and when people got sick at work, he'd get them asking him to come in early for a shift to cover up the hole in production. He had a feeling the paper in his hand wasn't about either thing, however, and he deliberately moved as slowly as possible in opening it so that by the time he tugged the letter itself from the envelope, the messenger had already moved on.
Kamenashi, it read. Are you feeling lucky? I was, and I scored some points today. Must be a good day to do some gambling. Thought you might like to know, in case you feel up to it later. Hope you don't have burnt rice for dinner. -Nakamaru
Kame didn't think they used messengers for planning- it was too obvious, and the bishops went through letters sent through the channels. He wondered why Taguchi or Jin hadn't delivered it, but maybe that was too obvious. Too many close connections and the bishops might start to wonder about it.
But the message itself was easy enough to understand: meeting at the casino, after dinner and before curfew. Kame shoved the letter into his jacket pocket and walked a little slower, drawing close to the wire fence.
"Yo, Kamenashi!" Ninomiya called from behind the pitcher's mound. "Feeling up for a round?"
It had been awhile since Kame had felt the leather of the ball beneath his fingertips, since he felt the slow burn of sixty plus pitches working into the muscles of his shoulder. He felt stiff and out of practice.
"Sorry," he said. "Not tonight."
Nino gave him a smirk, tossing the baseball up and down and letting it hit his glove with a heavy smack each time. "Yeah, you just can't stand to see me threaten your reputation, can you?"
"You caught me," Kame said, and even managed a shaky smile. "Except that you've got years to go until you can even think about threatening me- why don't you work on that curveball some more, and come get me when you've mastered it?"
"Ass," Ninomiya laughed, and then his attention turned elsewhere, to the outfield.
Kame would have enjoyed a game with the neighborhood guys, but as he walked away back towards his apartment, he realized he didn't really miss it as much as he thought he should. It really wasn't a tough decision to go to the meeting rather than play the game- and he wasn't sure why the realization chilled his blood as much as it did.
--
There wasn't much activity at The Joker Club when Kame arrived- just a few stragglers still hoping to cash in with their meal rations on the table. On the weekends, when curfew was extended a few hours, people stayed out later to gamble, but the weekdays didn’t seem to be big days for the place. He glided between the tables and pachinko machines to the small door in the back, hidden in the shadows of one of the overhangs and the bar countertop the dealers sometimes cashed out rewards at.
The others were there when he walked in, and Taguchi gave him a small wave. "Sorry," he said, though he wasn't really late- not really.
"Do you guys have impromptu meetings like this often?" he asked, sliding down onto the seat beside Taguchi.
"Only when something comes up," was the answer, and it didn't really help to ease Kame's nerves much. Nakamaru was standing near the doorway down to Ueda's lab with his arms crossed over his chest, and beside him, Ueda was sipping at a glass of something. Koki was seated across the table, bouncing a ball up and down on the wooden surface with enough force to rattle the legs against the floor. Kame could only see Jin's profile with the way the other man was leaning his head against the wall.
He was the last piece, it seemed, and Nakamaru stepped forward to start. "I know you all had things to be doing tonight," he started, and Tanaka cut in with a mumbled, "Or money to be made on the floor" that Kame was pretty sure he'd wanted Nakamaru to hear.
"Shut up, Koki," Nakamaru hissed, and it sounded like he was on edge. More than usual, anyway, and even though Kame didn't know the man that well, it made his muscles clench a bit. "Listen, there are two things that couldn't wait."
"Is this about our plan to get in and get a transmitter?" Jin asked.
"Yeah."
There was a collective sigh in the room, breath mingling together. Ueda put his cup down and took his glasses off the bridge of his nose, rubbing his fingers wearily against his eyes. "We knew this was going to happen."
"Do they know something?" Jin asked. "About us? Or is this about the blueprints we got?"
Kame's breath caught painfully in his throat when his mind threw pictures of the six of them carried off by rooks to the underbelly of the city, and eased a bit when Nakamaru shook his head before answering. "No. Not directly. They don't know anything about us planning to get in there, but I got into some higher files to see if there was more security than we had anticipated, because the prints we swiped hinted at something."
"There is," Tanaka sighed. It wasn't a question.
"The factory where the transmitters are manufactured is connected to another factory, a larger one that sits adjacent in the same building," Nakamaru explained. He pulled the blueprints out and unrolled them, edges of the papers curling up into tight rings until he smoothed them over with his palms. His finger made contact with the far edge, a double-lined wall in the plans. "Here. Security level 5."
"What does that mean?" Kame asked, leaning over so he could see better.
Nakamaru tapped his finger a few times against the blue ink. "It means it's beyond my authorization code."
Kame could decipher nothing from the double-lined edge to the print. Jin let out a long, slow breath and bit his bottom lip, pink tip to his tongue sticking out past his mouth. "What do you know?"
"That it's powered by at least three generators on restricted access. That there are power lines running between the two factories. Security level 5 means it's going to be more than we anticipated and I can't tell you what it is they're doing there."
"Who has access to level 5?" Ueda asked.
"I don't know," Nakamaru said.
And Jin leaned down heavily on the table, palms pressed flat against it, pushing his shoulders back up and bowing his elbows out. The cords around his neck swung lazily back and forth, charms glinting in the light. "Take a guess," he ordered.
"Bishops," Nakamaru said. "Rooks. Maybe a couple higher-ups in the government, but nothing at my code. Nothing at the ward or precinct level; it's all got to be above that."
Kame sat back against the chair. The weight that had settled over the room was almost stifling. He could see Taguchi crack his knuckles one at a time, he could see Tanaka rolling the ball around and around in his hand.
The glasses were back on Ueda's nose, and the other man pushed them up to keep them from sliding forward when he leaned over on his elbows, paper crinkling and shifting beneath his movement. "What I want to know is why the transmitters aren't manufactured in the building under level 5 security," he said.
"What do you mean?" Jin asked. It came out sharp; maybe he was rattled, though his face betrayed nothing.
"I mean," Ueda replied, "what are they doing in there that's more important and confidential than the transmitters that keep us all subdued are?"
A chill ran up Kame's spine, and it was distinctly uncomfortable. "Don't," Jin barked suddenly. "Don't assume anything- yet. We don't know what it is. Thinking about it is just going to get everybody worked up."
"But it is going to affect our getting in and out of there," Ueda pointed out. And despite Jin's orders, Kame couldn't help but think about what could be in there- the mainframe, maybe. The controls that monitored all of their transmitters, the bits that Ueda was playing with and altering. If they could hit the central nerve of the web, could they take out everything that was keeping them under its thumb?
Whatever Ueda was rigging, there had to be a central location for it somewhere- and trying to get into a building right next to it sounded as dangerous as Kame letting his transmitter flicker and die completely and then standing out in the middle of the baseball diamond and screaming about it for the world to hear.
"Then we push it back," Taguchi suggested, and when all eyes in the room turned to him, shrugged a little before adding, "at least until we know what we are potentially going up against?"
"Yeah," Jin said, just as Nakamaru and Ueda both moved up off the blueprints, and the ends coiled back together with a small snap. "We do that. Push it back a week, get ourselves more settled. The more information we have, the better prepared we'll be going in. We can still do this, we just have to make it work."
Kame wasn't so sure, but hearing Jin sound confident seemed to help the others relax a bit.
"What was the other thing you called us for?" Tanaka asked, and Kame had forgotten that there was even another piece of information they'd been waiting on.
"Oh," Nakamaru said, and he met Kame's gaze. "Kame, you should know. Your number's going to be called."
Kame's mouth went very dry, and he struggled to swallow because his throat felt like it was three times its normal size. "What?"
"Oh, man!" Tanaka said, and smacked his palm against his knee as he made a face up at Nakamaru from his seated position. "Why can't you give me good news like that? Come on, can't you nudge my number in there instead? It's been months since I got any action!"
"No, it hasn't," Ueda replied smoothly, "I heard you going solo two nights ago. Can't you ever keep it down?"
Tanaka made kissing faces into the air. "Want to join me then, Tat-chan?"
"Well, it's nice to know that some things never change, and you're still disgusting," Ueda said.
Kame stared at Tanaka and Ueda, at the rolled up papers in the middle of the table, at the charms hanging off of Jin's necklace cord, feeling everything and nothing all at once. It boiled up from his stomach and bubbled in his chest. He knew what would happen when his number was called- in theory. He would have to report in to the large buildings at the far edge of the ward, made of dark red brick. He knew he would be coupled and given a room number.
Thinking about it had never made him feel so deliriously light-headed before, though, and he had trouble focusing on what was going on around him.
"You've never been called before?" Taguchi asked. His tone was kind of gentle.
"No," Kame admitted; it had never seemed like a big deal before, but suddenly, it very much did. He wasn't sure why.
Tanaka's knees knocked up against the side of the table. "Poppin' your cherry! Listen, you need any help or anything, you just come to me beforehand, yeah? I'll show you how to really get in there and-"
There was a smack when Jin's hand made contact with the back of Tanaka's head, hard enough that the sound almost echoed around them. Tanaka rubbed at the offending skin a bit and looked up, but Jin just stared at the corner of the room.
"Meeting adjourned," he said.
"When?" Kame asked, as he stood so fast he nearly tripped over one of the chair legs. Nakamaru was rolling the prints the rest of the way up and slipping them beneath his arm. "When are they calling me?"
"Within the next week," Nakamaru replied. He looked a little apologetic. "I'm sorry, I don't have the specifics. I just know that your number came through the list. I keep a watch for all of ours so at least we've got some advance warning before we get the official notice."
Before he'd been disconnected, before he'd been "freed"- he'd thought about getting called. He was pretty sure everyone did. But it was more of a theoretical thing, just something that he knew would happen eventually like it did to everyone else. It was just another thing he would slip into his schedule, and that would be it. He didn't even know the specifics of what happened inside the brick buildings; people didn't talk about it much.
But now- now it was making him kind of queasy. And having the others talk about it with more intimate knowledge than he had wasn't helping matters. He needed to get all the information on his own, before his number came up through the system.
He just swallowed hard to force down the ache in his stomach, and left The Joker Club to hurry back home.