mission report for hatenaimirai_e (part 2 of 2)
Back to part 1
---
"Should we try it out?" Aiba asks, hands on his hips. The skyship is repaired, the wings straight and safely attached. It's been scrubbed down and the dented front has been hammered out to round perfection. Most importantly, of course, the engine's been re-installed. Aiba's done everything he can--except a test drive.
"Yeah," Yoko says, ducking inside, "wait here. If she crashes I don't want to kill both of us."
"You're not going to die," Aiba answers, shutting the door to the cockpit and stepping back while Yoko flicks switches and tugs the lever to set the aether generator a-humming. The whole ship buzzes when he does, and it slowly rises from the ground. Yoko sends it forward, up, and around the mountain before he comes back to rest, a grin wide on his face.
"It's perfect, Aiba," he tells him, a rush of excited words spilling from his mouth, "we can leave as soon as you're ready."
"Let me get my bag of tools."
"THIS IS SO MUCH FUN~"
Yoko winces. The airship is a supply ship designed to hold boxes of medical supplies or food behind the cockpit. It's got a narrow cot between the storage drawers, so that he could take shifts with a second pilot during long flights, but the cot is high up. The few times he'd ever flown with a second pilot in the back he'd had boots pressed against the back of his chair, but Aiba had insisted on turning around, so his excited exclamations are pressed right up against Yoko's ear.
"Can you lower the volume?" he asks, "just a little?"
"But look at how amazing this is! We're flying! I've only ever been on a train before!"
"Yes, Aiba, we're flying, and we're going to be crashing if you keep yelling in my ear," Yoko answers.
"I have faith in you," Aiba chirps.
"Not comforting," Yoko answers, and sighs, "are you holding onto something? We're coming into the shipyard and we're in the little ship, it's our job to get out of the way of the cruisers, not theirs to get out of mine."
Aiba grabs the back of Yoko's seat. Yoko figures at least Aiba's not clutching his head.
The Tokio is a majestic ship--it is clearly the center of the entire shipyard, rising high and wide above even the classic battlecruisers--and the top deck features a housing for the emergency-use supply airship Yoko has flown for the past three years. The airship he's flying now.
"Lieutenant-Commander Yokoyama, sir!" Yoko will never tire of hearing that. He nods to the salutes, glad he decided to wear his uniform on the flight instead of Aiba's extra clothes, his wardrobe for the past three weeks.
"You didn't tell me you were an officer," Aiba says, sounding hurt.
"It's not really a big deal," Yoko answers, shrugging, "like I told you, I do a little bit of everything around here anyway."
"Well, yeah, but you have a fancy title! People salute you! You order them around!"
"And it is the best feeling in the world," Yoko agrees, smiling pleasantly to himself, "calm down, Aiba. Come on, we're going down two levels to the navigation deck--Aiba--you'll have plenty of time to look at that later!"
Aiba is examining a light--"oh, right, but this is so much brighter than mine, how is that--okay, okay, I'm coming!"
"What--is this an elevator?" Aiba's eyes are very round, "we talked about them in my physics class but we never actually used one..."
"The Tokio has seventeen decks," Yoko answers, running off facts drilled into his head when he took his post, "there are stairs and an emergency ladder shaft, but with a ship this big it made sense to try something a little different." As he speaks, he runs his palm over the orb in the wall of the elevator, lighting up the display, and presses his finger to the number 14. "We're on deck sixteen--the observation deck and landing strip above us is seventeen."
Aiba squats to get a better look at the display, the light of the orb lighting his face a dim pink. "This is amazing," he breathes.
Yoko can't help being impressed himself, for a moment. "She really is a great ship," he agrees, smiling.
Aiba watched the light that is the elevator's location on the display cycle around to fourteen, and stands to face the opening door, bouncing on his toes. His eyes flick all over the place, trying to take in everything at once, and he lets Yoko tug him along the hall by the sleeve without complaint.
"Aiba--Aiba! Welcome to the Tokio's navigation deck." Yoko pushes the door open, and pushes Aiba through.
Aiba looks up, and his jaw drops a little. "...oh my."
Yoko laughs. "That's what they all say," he says, and follows Aiba into the center of the room. The navigation seat--instead of piloting it with a wheel, like a boat or a small airship, the great cruisers had implemented a system much like the one the Tokio used in her elevators, with an orb that could be tilted one way or another for banking and spun forward or back to rise or fall--is empty at the moment, the pilot's orb dark. There are windows along either side of the deck, and that's where Aiba goes first, investigating the map and telegraph station as he walks around the deck. Finally, he turns and hops right up into the pilot's chair, running his fingers over the various buttons and mechanisms.
The door swings open again, and Yoko looks back over his shoulder. "Oh, first mate Becky!" he greets, grin wide and teasing.
"Yokoyama! You're finally back! And stop calling me that!"
"Of course, Becky-chan~"
"Commander Becky, you. Who's in the chair?" the tiny woman asks.
"Ah--Aiba!"
"What is it?" Aiba asks, looking up. He stops.
"This is Commander Becky," Yoko introduces awkwardly.
"Well hi," Aiba says, scrambling to stand up and stumbling off the platform. Becky doesn't look impressed under her long hair and artfully tipped hat.
"I can already tell this one's not a soldier," she says to Yoko, who nods in agreement.
"Aiba is an inventor," he tells her, "he's here to take a look at the aegen core."
"Oh, well hello," she answers, "Commander Rebecca of the Tokio. Happy to have you."
Aiba nods, clearly itching to get back to his investigation of the navigation system, and Becky shakes her head, hiding a laugh behind her hand. "Go back to that while I talk to the Lieutenant-Commander," she suggests.
Aiba's attention is off of them immediately, and Becky turns back toward Yoko, looking concerned. "Are you all right? What about the airship? Why didn't you contact us earlier? Where even were you? How'd you crash? Are you sure this guy's going to be able to help us out?"
Becky can be a little hard to follow, but she and Yoko have been sharing postings for almost five years (how had they both survived together this long?) and he picks up the rhythm of her questions soon enough. "Uh--I'm fine, I was bruised and I had the sniffles for a couple of days. The airship took a nasty hit but she's better than new now thanks to Aiba. When I left to distract our pursuers the Admiral told me I would have to get home on my own, and Aiba was too busy fixing the 'ship to send a telegram for me, so I never bothered until it was done. I was in Chiba, there was an electrical storm and it overloaded my aegen. Lost navigation and had to take an emergency landing. And yes. Probably. I think. He knows a lot about little aegens so it can't hurt."
"He can't be any worse than the other stiffs we've had in here," Becky muses, "and at least he'll be more entertaining to watch. You stay put here, Lieutenant-Commander, I'm off to check things up for the Admiral so I'll let him know where you a--Admiral Mabo! Hello, sir."
Yoko snaps to attention automatically, turning on his heel. The foremost Admiral of the Japanese Imperial Fleet was a man as impressive and imposing as the ships he had helmed. He was dressed now in his full dress uniform, characteristic sun-blocking spectacles perched high on his nose and hat tipped back on his head. He pushes his spectacles down his nose to get a better look at Yoko now.
"Yokoyama," he booms, "you're alive, then? All good news?"
"Yessir," Yoko answers. He's never quite sure how to act toward the Admiral--Matsuoka Masahiro was a man as personable as he was physically terrifying, but Yoko had been his subordinate since Yoko had lied his way into the army at seventeen. He'd watched Matsuoka rise through the ranks, and it was a combination of gratitude and remembered childhood terror of being caught and expelled from the army that kept him from calling the older man "Matsu-nii" like many of the other crew members.
"Mabooooo," Becky had no such issues, apparently, "aren't you supposed to be leading an intelligence meeting with the other brasss?"
"I run the meetings, I can do them as fast as I want," Mabo answers airily, poking her in the forehead, "don't you worry that pretty little head about it, kid."
"Stop calling me that!"
Mabo looks over Becky's head and narrows his eyes. "Who's in my chair?" he asks.
"You mean who's in my chair, Masa~hiro~ oh, are we not alone?"
"Ugh, so that's why you snuck out early?" Becky demands.
Mabo takes a moment to look unconvincingly wounded. "Becky-chan," he says, "what are you implying?!" He pointedly doesn't look at the woman next to him.
"You know exactly what I'm implying," Becky grumbles, but Yoko interrupts her.
"Hello, Ai-chan!" He would call Captain Haruna Ai, foremost pilot of the foremost ship in the entire fleet, by her title, but any time he did it she would simply pout and complain until he gave in, so Ai-chan it was.
"Oh, Yuu-chin," she says, winking obnoxiously, "it's so good to have you back~ Now. Who is in my chair?" Her eyes are narrow--she's in scary pilot mode now.
"Uh, that's the inventor who rescued me--Aiba! Come here and say hello the Admiral and the Captain!"
Aiba looks up over the top of the chair, and offers a friendly smile. "Hi!" he greets, "nice to meet you. Aiba Masaki."
"Pleasure to meet you too, as long as you can fix my ship," Mabo answers, his wide friendly grin a little out of place over his dress outfit.
"I can't be totally sure until I see it, but I think I can help," Aiba answers, confidence oozing from every pore as he adjusts the strap of his bag of tools over his shoulder.
"That's exactly what I like to hear," Mabo says, and claps Aiba on the shoulder so hard his knees buckle. "I'll take you on a tour of the ship. Ladies, Yokoyama, we'll meet you tonight."
Aiba looks back over his shoulder as the leave the navigation room--Becky and Ai have turned toward Yoko with matching grins. Aiba shudders--terrifying.
"This is our telegraph station--yo, Murakami, where are you going in such a hurry?"
"I was meeting Ohkura for lunch," Murakami answers, and that's all he gets out before Aiba is talking to him.
"HINA-CHAN~" he chirps, and Murakami blinks.
"Who the--Aiba?"
Aiba grins widely, and Murakami bursts into laughter. "What the hell are you doing here?" he demands.
"Trying to fix the aether generator," Aiba says, "after we finish touring the ship, anyway."
Murakami nods sagely. "Good luck with that," he answers, "I don't know about you but seeing a ship this pretty be grounded is depressing."
"It is, I flew in with Yokocho and it was the best feeling in the world," Aiba says, "it's a shame to have this ship stuck on the ground."
Murakami has frozen. "Yokocho as in--Yoko Yokocho?"
Aiba winces. "Yeah," he says, "he kind of crashed in my backyard."
"I know what I'm doing with my lunchbreak," Murakami says briskly, and nods goodbye to them both as he slides out of the communications office and back into the hallway.
"Murakami knew Yokoyama?" Mabo asks curiously.
"Yokocho kind of left without mentioning anything and no one's been able to find him," Aiba explains, keeping it vague.
Mabo nods sagely. "Well, let's get on down toward the heart of my pretty ship, shall we?"
He leads the way to the tenth deck--Matsuoka Masahiro doesn't do anything by half, he'd informed Aiba, and that included taking shortcuts when he doesn't really even need to. Aiba had agreed that it was easier to really see all of the innovation going on, like the chutes that let departments send things from one area of the ship to another. Mabo had laughed.
"And then I told him that if he gave me any more lip I was going to throw his damn raygun at him. Damn kids--oh, hey, Mabo."
"Taichi, Leader!" Mabo grins at them both, "meet our repairman. Aiba, Requisitions Officer Kokubun and our Mess Hall man, Joshima. But we all call him Leader."
Aiba ducks his head to them both. They're both fairly compact men, but strapped to Taichi's hip is a massive, sleek raygun the likes of which Aiba has never seen, so that automatically makes him look far more impressive than he might actually be. Joshima--or, er, Leader--is wearing a pleasant smile, but he seems to be thinking very hard about something.
"I think I left the soup on the burner," Joshima announces suddenly, "sorry, have to go, excuse me--"
Mabo and Taichi share a chuckle. "I swear Leader gets ten years older every week," Mabo says, "or just more forgetful. Did he get into the cooking wine again today?"
Taichi looks thoughtful. "Probably not," he answers, "he would share it with me if he had~"
"And you would have shared it with your captain, right?" Mabo asks, "so that he keeps looking the other way when you sneak girls into your quarters?"
"I have the best captain ever, of course I would," Taichi answers, smirking.
"You are full of more bald-faced lies than anyone else I have ever met," Mabo informs him as he hauls Aiba along.
"Thanks for the compliment~" Taichi calls after them.
"And here... we have the heart of the Tokio," Mabo announces. The doors are joined with a bright green orb--Mabo taps it and pulls a key from his pocket to unlock it, and the doors slide themselves open.
It's easily the most amazing thing Aiba has ever seen in his life. The massive aether generator is a sphere set into a metal structure of webs and surrounded by machinery the likes of which Aiba can only dream of tinkering with. Aiba walks forward on the catwalk until he's directly below the aegen, looking up with wonder at the blue and white swirling surface.
"It's... it's awesome," Aiba manages.
"Keep watching," Mabo advises him, "watch the way the surface keeps jumping."
Once Mabo mentions it, the instability in the aether is easy to see. Generally, produced and gathered aether was chaotic--a result of limiting something that was meant to simply exist--but once it was compressed into one place it existed stably. That was the entire reason it could be used in air travel. The generator for this orb appears to be working to keep it compressed, which was limiting output, which kept the ship from flying.
"It can't release aether to float you because it can't keep the aether in order," he says to Mabo.
"Gussan says it's like there's a whole bunch of aether leaking," Mabo adds, "it's producing a whole hell of a lot, but what we're actually getting into the engine is barely enough to hover off the ground."
Aiba pulls his lip into his teeth, and begins digging through his bag immediately for a notebook and pencil. Time to get to work. "I'll be here if you need me," he says, distracted. What could possibly be causing this? Sheer energy overload?
"If you can manage to fix this," Mabo says, interrupting him, "the Imperial Navy is prepared to commission you to finish work on the telephone you announced at the inventor's symposium last year."
"The one I got laughed out of?" Aiba asks archly.
"Your work has always been laughable--until you finish it," Mabo answers, "everyone knows that paper that came out of the Imperial University about wingspan and air lift is yours, you know."
Aiba shrugs. "I don't really care about recognition," he says, "but I don't like it when people laugh at my ideas--ideas that worked, in small experiments, even before I really started my work. If you guys will pay for me to do bigger tests I might be able to finish by the end of the year. Just in time for the next symposium. But first, the aegen."
Mabo leaves him to his work.
---
Aiba kind of sinks himself in his work over the next few days, asking for old papers on the properties of aether he hadn't thought to bring with him and testing things on a smaller scale. He's just not sure where the problem is arising, and it's kind of giving him a headache. Usually when he's hit a wall at home, he finds an empty space and shouts his problems to the empty air, and even if he doesn't have a solution by the end of his tirade he's in a place to start afresh. The problem is that there aren't any truly empty spaces aboard an airship. The quarters they gave him are single-person, but he's got neighbors nestled up close on either side who smack the wall if he sings too loudly while he's fixing his clothes and hair in the mornings. His second strategy--find your best friend and force him to show you a great view of the city--isn't going well either, seeing as he keeps missing Yoko by mere moments no matter where he goes.
It's only when he sneaks into Yoko's quarters and lies in wait that he manages to corner Yoko. Aiba shuts the door behind Yoko and grins widely, but doesn't expect Yoko's echoing shriek.
"Aiba what are you doing in here you should be working," Yoko scolds, trying to hustle Aiba out the room.
"Yokocho," Aiba complains, "I haven't seen you in three days. What's going on?"
Yoko settles down, pulling back and resting his hands on his hips for lack of anywhere else to put them. He's in a crisply pressed uniform today, and he's trimmed his hair, and he looks official and adult and ten different shades of ridiculously attractive. Aiba wants to ruin his uniform, wants to press fingers into his hair and leave it hanging over his eyes and--and he'd thought he'd left these feelings back with sixteen and heartbroken. He takes a deep breath.
"I'm just... settling back into work was harder than I thought," Yoko says, "you look tired, are you... are you all right?"
Aiba scratches the back of his head. "Just stressed," he answers, "I can't figure this aegen thing out."
Yoko fingers twitch on his hips--Aiba forces his eyes up. "If you're busy I'll go," he makes himself say.
Yoko's mouth settles into a line. "Aiba--Masaki," he says, and reaches out to grab Aiba's shoulders, "I'm not... I'm not too busy for you. What do you need from me? I'm not much help with this heavy physics stuff or anything, but I can--I don't know, track down another pudding cake, maybe...?"
Aiba steps in close and wraps his arms around Yoko's waist, pressing his face into the fabric of Yoko's uniform. "Just let me stay for a minute," he mumbles, feeling a wave of tired sweep over him as Yoko's arms wind around his shoulders.
"Got it," Yoko says, hiding a smile in Aiba's hair.
---
Aiba spends the night in Yoko's room, belly-down on Yoko's bunk while Yoko fills out paperwork, sketching plans and doing equations.
"Yokocho, I think I've got it," Aiba says, his eyes widening, "oh my god this is huge." He begins to scribble theory and equations across a fresh page, drawing a crude model. "I'm going to try to explain this, tell me if it makes sense. Aether compression works because the generator keeps the aether in the surrounding air and the aether in the generator sphere in perfect balance. When you want to fly, you actually send out aether toward the ground to make the aether on the ship less than the aether in the sky. You kind of... replace the airship with aether, I guess you could say. You come down by creating more aether, making you... heavier, for lack of a better word, than the atmosphere. The problem with the aegen here aboard the Tokio is that to keep a ship this big in the air, you need to be able to expel a lot of aether to rise and produce a lot of aether to sink. But to rise we need to be lighter to start, and somewhere along the line the generator is sending the aether into the atmosphere. Up, maybe, or out, either way it's not using it to sending it below the skyship. Gussan and I looked at the numbers--I think the compressed aether is keeping itself from dissipation by slowly letting aether escape. There's only so much aether the generator can make and push out at the same time."
Yoko nods. "I got like half of that," he answers honestly, "but the picture makes sense!"
Aiba looks down at the diagram. "Oh, good," he says, "well, I know what to do, now."
"You do?" Yoko asks, "what?"
"We need a second aegen," Aiba says.
"We need a what?!" Mabo demands, "we have the biggest aegen in the entire fleet!"
"That's the problem," Aiba answers, "either we use the aegen you have now to build two smaller ones, or you send for a small pre-built one for us to install and recycle the lost aether from the original. Installing a second, small aegen won't take too long--I promise. I've done it with smaller-scale aegens before."
Mabo rubs at his temples. "If that's really the only way to do it, I'll put in an order," he says, defeated.
---
Aiba's with the team that takes the delivery--aegens aren't just kept around, they're used, and the supply ship that was on its way was taking it from a now-retired cruiser especially for them. When the ship touches down, Aiba has to laugh. "Ryo-chan, I thought you were a cruiser pilot," he calls out, and the dark-haired young pilot grits his teeth at Yoko's echoing giggles. Aiba dips his head into the storage area to investigate the status of the aegen.
"Man, I can't escape Chiba anywhere," Ryo groans, "no matter how hard I try--and I try damn hard. I'm only doing this as a damn favor to Matsu-nii!"
"Matsu-nii appreciates it," Mabo calls, making Ryo flush.
"Well, it's not damaged," Aiba announces, leaning out of the ship and giving them a thumbs up, "I'm going to get down to installing this thing. Good to see you, Ryo-chan!"
"Yeah, yeah," Ryo answers, rolling his eyes, "and to answer your question, I do drive a cruiser. But aegens are valuable cargo and they only wanted to send the best~"
"And we got you instead? We really must be having a tough time on the northern front," Mabo teases, and Aiba can hear Ryo's groaning.
---
"Is this going to work?" Yoko asks, creeping into the engine room when Aiba's doing his final checks. It's hot, this deep in with the engine running, so Aiba's shirt is unbuttoned at the throat and his cuffs are pushed up to his elbows. He's watching the aether generators run for a few minutes before he finally sends the 'all-clear' up to the navigation deck, trying to be as sure as he can that they're not going to fail.
"I hope so," Aiba answers, "it has to." Aiba pushes his fists to his hips, eyes scanning the smaller aegen.
Yoko leans over to mess with Aiba's hair. "It's you," he says, "it'll work."
Aiba takes a moment, his head ducked low in thought, and then he looks over at Yoko with a smile so wide it cuts his face in two. "You're right," he answers, "I thought I was catching your pessimism for a minute there. Shall we?"
"Whenever you're ready, sir," Yoko answers, offering an obnoxious bow.
Aiba laughs, and bumps his hip against Yoko's. "Let's get to work," he answers, and turns around to tap the message chute. He's had a note--'ready to go!'--written for an hour now, unable to send it. He lays the folded up note in the chute and closes the little glass door. Sending it to the navigation deck is easy--press the button and spin the sphere--and then all they can do is wait.
They don't bother sending back a note--the hum of the engines intensifies to a low rumble. Aiba runs his fingers through his hair, front to back, and watches with nervous eyes as the gathered aether begins to spin and the generator begins its work. "It's now or never," Aiba whispers, "come on, come on..."
The ship groans and grumbles--and begins to rise. Aiba isn't sure what to do with his hands--he rubs his palms together nervously and finally grabs Yoko's sleeve in both hands.
"Come on, come on," Aiba mumbles, over and over again, and the ship continues its slow ascent.
A message comes back, interrupting Aiba's hoping. It's penned by Becky, and there's a happy dancing doodle of Mabo in the corner below the blocky 'IT WORKS!!' Aiba grins at Yoko, exultant. It works--his idea works. Aiba bounces on his toes, and a gleeful shriek finds itself rising through his chest.
"It works--Yokocho--it works! It works it works it works!" Aiba leaps on Yoko in the heat of the moment, feeling like he's going to explode or burst from his skin or any other number of probably messy things but he's too excited to particularly care. Yoko is grinning too, his hands light on Aiba's sides, and his laughter matches Aiba's.
"It works," Yoko repeats, "you did it. Come on, upstairs to the nav deck, you don't want to miss her flying, do you?"
Ai looks even happier than Aiba, perched in the nav chair and putting the Tokio through simple flight exercises--up and down and around in a wide circle. "Well, she's never going to be the fastest cruiser in the fleet," Ai says, "but we knew that going in. Her nav system reacts like a dream either way."
Mabo claps his hands together once, and turns on his heel toward the comm station. "Murakami, send a telegram back to home base," he orders, "Aiba, you've done it."
Aiba is looking out the window, eyes wide as he takes in the city below them. He glances back to offer them all a nod of his head. "Happy to help," he says, "really. This is the hardest problem I've had to work on in months!"
Mabo looks thoughtful for a moment. "You know," he says, "we have room for you, around here."
Aiba blinks. "As a science officer," he guesses.
"As a consultant," Mabo corrects, "you could work on your telephone system in your own lab on deck five and help Gussan with maintaining the engines..."
Aiba's gaze flicks toward Yoko, who's staring at him with something between 'yes' and 'no' reflected in his eyes. "You're going to war," Aiba says, slowly.
Yoko's mouth tightens when Mabo says, "next month."
Aiba sighs. "I appreciate the offer," he says, "but I think I have to decline. I don't work well under that kind of pressure!"
Yoko's sigh is probably one of relief. Aiba thinks it's probably the right choice--probably.
"Then I'll send a report to headquarters to get you your funding," Mabo says, briskly, "and we'll find you someone to fly you on back to Chiba before the end of the week. We have to get to Osaka and go through some more flight training."
"So I guess this is goodbye again," Yoko says, awkwardly fidgeting against the interior door of his quarters. Aiba's got his bag open on Yoko's cot, trying to stuff all of his things back inside, and he looks up when Yoko speaks.
He smiles. "You'll be back eventually," Aiba says, tone pleasantly firm, "so it's more like 'see you later'!"
Yoko smiles, thoughtfully. "I'll be back in Chiba as soon as I can," he says, "so... wait for me?"
Aiba hauls him close for a hug. "I'll wait," he says, "as long as you need me."
Yoko's fingers shake a little when he pulls Aiba in tighter, resting his chin on Aiba's shoulder. "I won't make you wait forever," he answers. He sounds strange, his voice tight somehow.
Aiba pulls back to look at Yoko. "Yokocho," he says, concerned, "what's wrong...?"
"Masaki," Yoko says, eyes shut tightly, "don't punch me, okay?"
"Uh... okay?" And then Yoko's kissing him.
Aiba squeaks, fingers seizing at the shoulders of Yoko's shirt as he kisses back. "Yoko--"he says, between kisses--"how long have you wanted to do that?"
"Since I woke up and you called me Kimitaka," Yoko confesses, brushing the back of his hand over Aiba's cheek.
Aiba giggles, brushing Yoko's hair from his eyes. "Idiot," he says, fondly.
"You didn't do anything either!" Yoko complains.
"I'm an idiot too," Aiba agrees pleasantly, "but I thought you knew that?"
"You're an airhead, not an idiot," Yoko answers, rolling his eyes, "most of the time." He curls his fingers at the small of Aiba's back, and they share breath for a long moment before the sound of the message chute in Yoko's quarters interrupts them.
Aiba smooths Yoko's uniform before he steps back and sets his shoulders. "Well," he says.
"Yeah," Yoko answers, adjusting the buttons at his cuff nervously.
"Guess that's my signal to go," Aiba says, curling his lips in.
Yoko reaches out and squeezes his fingers before he steps out of the way.
"See you," Yoko says, "see you as soon as I can."
"See you soon," Aiba answers, and fixes the strap of his bag over his shoulder as he steps out of the room.
---
The phone is ringing. Aiba scrambles off of the couch to the other end of the lab, brushing sleep from his eyes as he fumbles with the telephone receiver.
"Hello," he greets around a yawn.
"Aiba-san."
"Nino-chan," Aiba says.
"I, ah, saw Yokoyama's mom today," Nino begins, and Aiba's heart stops for a moment. The Tokio had left for training exercises in Osaka after Aiba had left, as promised, and Yoko had sent Aiba one more letter saying they were heading north to fight the Russians. Then, nothing for six months.
"Did she say something?" Aiba asks, carefully.
"You know how his checks had stopped? Six months' pay came in today."
Aiba nearly drops the phone. "Anything else?" he asks.
"And, uh, she got a telegram from him. He's coming home."
Aiba does drop the phone, then, and has to reach down and pick it back up. "Whoops," Aiba apologizes, "thank you for--calling me."
"Ow," Nino says, "well, you're welcome, I guess. He didn't write you?"
"Why would he write me?" Aiba asks, putting promises and kisses out of his head.
Silence from Nino; finally he speaks. "Aiba... never mind."
Aiba blinks at the dial tone.
"Nino, why are we here?" Yoko asks, as Nino drags him to Jun's pastery shop in the middle of the morning. Jun waves hello, but he's clearly too busy running the taffy machine and filling danishes to try to have a conversation at the same time.
"You'll see," Nino answers, "hey, Subaru."
"Subaru-kun," Aiba greets, letting Nino push him into a chair.
"Hi," Subaru answers, head bent over a piece of paper and humming a tune.
"Subaru is three days late on a commission for the Imperial Palace," Nino informs Aiba, and Subaru grumbles something about Nino being behind on his wordcount for three weeks without missing a beat.
Aiba laughs as they bicker; Subaru is clearly most of the way along, scribing notes he already has in his head. Nino has a pad open on his knee, and he's drawing a flow-chart.
"They're late," Nino comments suddenly, looking at his pocketwatch, "if I got out of my flat before nine for nothing..."
Aiba can't take it any more. He scrambles from his seat and squints out the window. "If you're talking about an airship, it's right there," he says, pointing up.
"Does it say 'YAMADA'?" asks Nino, distracted, "in big orange and blue letters?"
"As a matter of fact," Aiba answers, "yes? And yellow polka dots?"
"That's it," agrees Nino, "come on, let's go say hi to our guest--Jun-kun, we'll be back!"
"We're not even open," Jun complains, "come back at eleven!"
"We'll be back in fifteen for the cake I ordered--and even paid for," Nino shoots back.
"We have a guest?" Subaru seems as confused as Aiba is.
"A very stupid guest," Nino answers sagely.
The Yamada Courier Service is known in Chiba as the fastest--and the loudest, to be honest--airship crew in Japan. Yasuda Shota had spent most of his childhood in the salvage yard, learning to put old parts in new machines, and the ship they lived on shows it. Yasu hops out of the cockpit, shaking his limbs out and pulling his goggles off of his face. The Yamada looks like it used to be three or four ships, smashed together and covered with a heavy coat of paint. Yasu looks like his outfit used to be three or four outfits covered with... well, not a heavy coat of paint, but almost.
"Maru-chan is getting Yokocho's bags," he tells them, as he approaches. He leans easily against Subaru, forcing down a yawn--"sorry, it's a long trip from Okinawa."
Aiba's figured it out by now. His eyes are as round as saucers as he tries to remember how to speak Japanese. "He's here, then?" he asks, voice high and breathless.
"Took you that long?" Nino asks, and doesn't push Aiba off when Aiba wraps tight arms around his head and neck and squeezes.
Maruyama Ryuhei is a man made for smiling--the public relations half of the Yamada Courier Service is well known for his insistence on making his customers smile. He's got a trunk under each arm as he hops out of the back of the courier ship, and he apparently forgets he has them for a moment when he tries to wave--Yoko's complaining about 'damaging precious cargo!' can be heard as Maru attempts to re-balance them on his hips.
Yoko hops out behind Maru, rolling his eyes, but the smile playing over his face dies when he sees Aiba.
Aiba's eyes widen--Yoko's right sleeve is empty.
"Yoko," he says, quietly.
---
Yoko's mom throws a party to welcome Yoko home. Yoko looks like a tired mess for the first half, and he keeps avoiding Aiba, but Yoko's mom hauls him into the kitchen right after dinner and before dessert (courtesy Chez Jun) for some kind of talk, and he at least looks fairly pleasant for the rest of the evening.
"Yokocho," Aiba says, plastering a grin on his face when he finally corners Yoko.
"Ah-Aibacchi," Yoko answers, his hand shaking around his cup of water.
Aiba presses his hand to Yoko's back, gently, and leans his face next to Yoko's ear. "Are you okay?" he asks.
Yoko shrugs, his shoulder pressing to Aiba's chest. "As well as I can be," he answers.
"I knew you'd come back sooner or later," Aiba chirps, pleasantly.
"Not exactly how I wanted to make my grand return," Yoko admits, eyes sliding toward his sleeve. Aiba slides his fingers around Yoko's hip and squeezes in comfort.
"Yokoyama! Want a beer?"
"Naga-nii," Aiba says, when Yoko has to look around for a place to put his glass in order to take Nagase's offer of beer, "think."
Nagase blinks--"oh, right, I forgot, it's not every day you meet a guy with no arm. You know, couldn't you make him a new arm?"
Aiba and Yoko both look at each other, then at Nagase's fake leg. "...can you do that?" Yoko asks, not sounding hopeful.
"I... I don't know," Aiba answers, his mind racing.
Nagase puts a hand on each of their shoulders. "Well, if you can do it you'll be more of a legend then you already are--I dunno if one normal guy can take all that awesome."
Aiba presses his tongue into the inside of his cheek. "Is that a challenge?" he asks.
"Only if you want it to be," answers Nagase, and he jaunts away--before he turns around to speak again. "Yokoyama, is your mom single?"
"KEEP AWAY FROM MY MOTHER."
---
"Aiba, the phone is ringing."
"Your arm is cold, stop touching meeeee--"
"It's made of metal, of course it's cold. Now go get the phone, I'm trying to cook! The miso is going to burn..."
Aiba sighs, standing to trot up the stairs and pick up the phone. "You could have picked up the phone and come back downstairs in the time it took you to wake me back up," he complains.
"Hello," he says, as he cradles the phone to his ear.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AIBA-KUN!"
Aiba laughs. "Jun-kun, Nino-chan, Ohno-kun, thank you," he manages, before the three of them start talking over each other.
"Wait wait wait get him over here--oi! C'mere and wish him a happy birthday!"
"Aiba-chan? Happy birthday!"
"Sho-chan?! ARE YOU HOME?"
"For a week or two," Sho answers, pleasant, "how's your birthday going so far?"
The scent of not-ruined miso soup is filling the house, and Yoko is singing Subaru's Imperial March at the top of his lungs--badly, of course.
"It's perfect," Aiba answers.
---
"Should we try it out?" Aiba asks, hands on his hips. The skyship is repaired, the wings straight and safely attached. It's been scrubbed down and the dented front has been hammered out to round perfection. Most importantly, of course, the engine's been re-installed. Aiba's done everything he can--except a test drive.
"Yeah," Yoko says, ducking inside, "wait here. If she crashes I don't want to kill both of us."
"You're not going to die," Aiba answers, shutting the door to the cockpit and stepping back while Yoko flicks switches and tugs the lever to set the aether generator a-humming. The whole ship buzzes when he does, and it slowly rises from the ground. Yoko sends it forward, up, and around the mountain before he comes back to rest, a grin wide on his face.
"It's perfect, Aiba," he tells him, a rush of excited words spilling from his mouth, "we can leave as soon as you're ready."
"Let me get my bag of tools."
"THIS IS SO MUCH FUN~"
Yoko winces. The airship is a supply ship designed to hold boxes of medical supplies or food behind the cockpit. It's got a narrow cot between the storage drawers, so that he could take shifts with a second pilot during long flights, but the cot is high up. The few times he'd ever flown with a second pilot in the back he'd had boots pressed against the back of his chair, but Aiba had insisted on turning around, so his excited exclamations are pressed right up against Yoko's ear.
"Can you lower the volume?" he asks, "just a little?"
"But look at how amazing this is! We're flying! I've only ever been on a train before!"
"Yes, Aiba, we're flying, and we're going to be crashing if you keep yelling in my ear," Yoko answers.
"I have faith in you," Aiba chirps.
"Not comforting," Yoko answers, and sighs, "are you holding onto something? We're coming into the shipyard and we're in the little ship, it's our job to get out of the way of the cruisers, not theirs to get out of mine."
Aiba grabs the back of Yoko's seat. Yoko figures at least Aiba's not clutching his head.
The Tokio is a majestic ship--it is clearly the center of the entire shipyard, rising high and wide above even the classic battlecruisers--and the top deck features a housing for the emergency-use supply airship Yoko has flown for the past three years. The airship he's flying now.
"Lieutenant-Commander Yokoyama, sir!" Yoko will never tire of hearing that. He nods to the salutes, glad he decided to wear his uniform on the flight instead of Aiba's extra clothes, his wardrobe for the past three weeks.
"You didn't tell me you were an officer," Aiba says, sounding hurt.
"It's not really a big deal," Yoko answers, shrugging, "like I told you, I do a little bit of everything around here anyway."
"Well, yeah, but you have a fancy title! People salute you! You order them around!"
"And it is the best feeling in the world," Yoko agrees, smiling pleasantly to himself, "calm down, Aiba. Come on, we're going down two levels to the navigation deck--Aiba--you'll have plenty of time to look at that later!"
Aiba is examining a light--"oh, right, but this is so much brighter than mine, how is that--okay, okay, I'm coming!"
"What--is this an elevator?" Aiba's eyes are very round, "we talked about them in my physics class but we never actually used one..."
"The Tokio has seventeen decks," Yoko answers, running off facts drilled into his head when he took his post, "there are stairs and an emergency ladder shaft, but with a ship this big it made sense to try something a little different." As he speaks, he runs his palm over the orb in the wall of the elevator, lighting up the display, and presses his finger to the number 14. "We're on deck sixteen--the observation deck and landing strip above us is seventeen."
Aiba squats to get a better look at the display, the light of the orb lighting his face a dim pink. "This is amazing," he breathes.
Yoko can't help being impressed himself, for a moment. "She really is a great ship," he agrees, smiling.
Aiba watched the light that is the elevator's location on the display cycle around to fourteen, and stands to face the opening door, bouncing on his toes. His eyes flick all over the place, trying to take in everything at once, and he lets Yoko tug him along the hall by the sleeve without complaint.
"Aiba--Aiba! Welcome to the Tokio's navigation deck." Yoko pushes the door open, and pushes Aiba through.
Aiba looks up, and his jaw drops a little. "...oh my."
Yoko laughs. "That's what they all say," he says, and follows Aiba into the center of the room. The navigation seat--instead of piloting it with a wheel, like a boat or a small airship, the great cruisers had implemented a system much like the one the Tokio used in her elevators, with an orb that could be tilted one way or another for banking and spun forward or back to rise or fall--is empty at the moment, the pilot's orb dark. There are windows along either side of the deck, and that's where Aiba goes first, investigating the map and telegraph station as he walks around the deck. Finally, he turns and hops right up into the pilot's chair, running his fingers over the various buttons and mechanisms.
The door swings open again, and Yoko looks back over his shoulder. "Oh, first mate Becky!" he greets, grin wide and teasing.
"Yokoyama! You're finally back! And stop calling me that!"
"Of course, Becky-chan~"
"Commander Becky, you. Who's in the chair?" the tiny woman asks.
"Ah--Aiba!"
"What is it?" Aiba asks, looking up. He stops.
"This is Commander Becky," Yoko introduces awkwardly.
"Well hi," Aiba says, scrambling to stand up and stumbling off the platform. Becky doesn't look impressed under her long hair and artfully tipped hat.
"I can already tell this one's not a soldier," she says to Yoko, who nods in agreement.
"Aiba is an inventor," he tells her, "he's here to take a look at the aegen core."
"Oh, well hello," she answers, "Commander Rebecca of the Tokio. Happy to have you."
Aiba nods, clearly itching to get back to his investigation of the navigation system, and Becky shakes her head, hiding a laugh behind her hand. "Go back to that while I talk to the Lieutenant-Commander," she suggests.
Aiba's attention is off of them immediately, and Becky turns back toward Yoko, looking concerned. "Are you all right? What about the airship? Why didn't you contact us earlier? Where even were you? How'd you crash? Are you sure this guy's going to be able to help us out?"
Becky can be a little hard to follow, but she and Yoko have been sharing postings for almost five years (how had they both survived together this long?) and he picks up the rhythm of her questions soon enough. "Uh--I'm fine, I was bruised and I had the sniffles for a couple of days. The airship took a nasty hit but she's better than new now thanks to Aiba. When I left to distract our pursuers the Admiral told me I would have to get home on my own, and Aiba was too busy fixing the 'ship to send a telegram for me, so I never bothered until it was done. I was in Chiba, there was an electrical storm and it overloaded my aegen. Lost navigation and had to take an emergency landing. And yes. Probably. I think. He knows a lot about little aegens so it can't hurt."
"He can't be any worse than the other stiffs we've had in here," Becky muses, "and at least he'll be more entertaining to watch. You stay put here, Lieutenant-Commander, I'm off to check things up for the Admiral so I'll let him know where you a--Admiral Mabo! Hello, sir."
Yoko snaps to attention automatically, turning on his heel. The foremost Admiral of the Japanese Imperial Fleet was a man as impressive and imposing as the ships he had helmed. He was dressed now in his full dress uniform, characteristic sun-blocking spectacles perched high on his nose and hat tipped back on his head. He pushes his spectacles down his nose to get a better look at Yoko now.
"Yokoyama," he booms, "you're alive, then? All good news?"
"Yessir," Yoko answers. He's never quite sure how to act toward the Admiral--Matsuoka Masahiro was a man as personable as he was physically terrifying, but Yoko had been his subordinate since Yoko had lied his way into the army at seventeen. He'd watched Matsuoka rise through the ranks, and it was a combination of gratitude and remembered childhood terror of being caught and expelled from the army that kept him from calling the older man "Matsu-nii" like many of the other crew members.
"Mabooooo," Becky had no such issues, apparently, "aren't you supposed to be leading an intelligence meeting with the other brasss?"
"I run the meetings, I can do them as fast as I want," Mabo answers airily, poking her in the forehead, "don't you worry that pretty little head about it, kid."
"Stop calling me that!"
Mabo looks over Becky's head and narrows his eyes. "Who's in my chair?" he asks.
"You mean who's in my chair, Masa~hiro~ oh, are we not alone?"
"Ugh, so that's why you snuck out early?" Becky demands.
Mabo takes a moment to look unconvincingly wounded. "Becky-chan," he says, "what are you implying?!" He pointedly doesn't look at the woman next to him.
"You know exactly what I'm implying," Becky grumbles, but Yoko interrupts her.
"Hello, Ai-chan!" He would call Captain Haruna Ai, foremost pilot of the foremost ship in the entire fleet, by her title, but any time he did it she would simply pout and complain until he gave in, so Ai-chan it was.
"Oh, Yuu-chin," she says, winking obnoxiously, "it's so good to have you back~ Now. Who is in my chair?" Her eyes are narrow--she's in scary pilot mode now.
"Uh, that's the inventor who rescued me--Aiba! Come here and say hello the Admiral and the Captain!"
Aiba looks up over the top of the chair, and offers a friendly smile. "Hi!" he greets, "nice to meet you. Aiba Masaki."
"Pleasure to meet you too, as long as you can fix my ship," Mabo answers, his wide friendly grin a little out of place over his dress outfit.
"I can't be totally sure until I see it, but I think I can help," Aiba answers, confidence oozing from every pore as he adjusts the strap of his bag of tools over his shoulder.
"That's exactly what I like to hear," Mabo says, and claps Aiba on the shoulder so hard his knees buckle. "I'll take you on a tour of the ship. Ladies, Yokoyama, we'll meet you tonight."
Aiba looks back over his shoulder as the leave the navigation room--Becky and Ai have turned toward Yoko with matching grins. Aiba shudders--terrifying.
"This is our telegraph station--yo, Murakami, where are you going in such a hurry?"
"I was meeting Ohkura for lunch," Murakami answers, and that's all he gets out before Aiba is talking to him.
"HINA-CHAN~" he chirps, and Murakami blinks.
"Who the--Aiba?"
Aiba grins widely, and Murakami bursts into laughter. "What the hell are you doing here?" he demands.
"Trying to fix the aether generator," Aiba says, "after we finish touring the ship, anyway."
Murakami nods sagely. "Good luck with that," he answers, "I don't know about you but seeing a ship this pretty be grounded is depressing."
"It is, I flew in with Yokocho and it was the best feeling in the world," Aiba says, "it's a shame to have this ship stuck on the ground."
Murakami has frozen. "Yokocho as in--Yoko Yokocho?"
Aiba winces. "Yeah," he says, "he kind of crashed in my backyard."
"I know what I'm doing with my lunchbreak," Murakami says briskly, and nods goodbye to them both as he slides out of the communications office and back into the hallway.
"Murakami knew Yokoyama?" Mabo asks curiously.
"Yokocho kind of left without mentioning anything and no one's been able to find him," Aiba explains, keeping it vague.
Mabo nods sagely. "Well, let's get on down toward the heart of my pretty ship, shall we?"
He leads the way to the tenth deck--Matsuoka Masahiro doesn't do anything by half, he'd informed Aiba, and that included taking shortcuts when he doesn't really even need to. Aiba had agreed that it was easier to really see all of the innovation going on, like the chutes that let departments send things from one area of the ship to another. Mabo had laughed.
"And then I told him that if he gave me any more lip I was going to throw his damn raygun at him. Damn kids--oh, hey, Mabo."
"Taichi, Leader!" Mabo grins at them both, "meet our repairman. Aiba, Requisitions Officer Kokubun and our Mess Hall man, Joshima. But we all call him Leader."
Aiba ducks his head to them both. They're both fairly compact men, but strapped to Taichi's hip is a massive, sleek raygun the likes of which Aiba has never seen, so that automatically makes him look far more impressive than he might actually be. Joshima--or, er, Leader--is wearing a pleasant smile, but he seems to be thinking very hard about something.
"I think I left the soup on the burner," Joshima announces suddenly, "sorry, have to go, excuse me--"
Mabo and Taichi share a chuckle. "I swear Leader gets ten years older every week," Mabo says, "or just more forgetful. Did he get into the cooking wine again today?"
Taichi looks thoughtful. "Probably not," he answers, "he would share it with me if he had~"
"And you would have shared it with your captain, right?" Mabo asks, "so that he keeps looking the other way when you sneak girls into your quarters?"
"I have the best captain ever, of course I would," Taichi answers, smirking.
"You are full of more bald-faced lies than anyone else I have ever met," Mabo informs him as he hauls Aiba along.
"Thanks for the compliment~" Taichi calls after them.
"And here... we have the heart of the Tokio," Mabo announces. The doors are joined with a bright green orb--Mabo taps it and pulls a key from his pocket to unlock it, and the doors slide themselves open.
It's easily the most amazing thing Aiba has ever seen in his life. The massive aether generator is a sphere set into a metal structure of webs and surrounded by machinery the likes of which Aiba can only dream of tinkering with. Aiba walks forward on the catwalk until he's directly below the aegen, looking up with wonder at the blue and white swirling surface.
"It's... it's awesome," Aiba manages.
"Keep watching," Mabo advises him, "watch the way the surface keeps jumping."
Once Mabo mentions it, the instability in the aether is easy to see. Generally, produced and gathered aether was chaotic--a result of limiting something that was meant to simply exist--but once it was compressed into one place it existed stably. That was the entire reason it could be used in air travel. The generator for this orb appears to be working to keep it compressed, which was limiting output, which kept the ship from flying.
"It can't release aether to float you because it can't keep the aether in order," he says to Mabo.
"Gussan says it's like there's a whole bunch of aether leaking," Mabo adds, "it's producing a whole hell of a lot, but what we're actually getting into the engine is barely enough to hover off the ground."
Aiba pulls his lip into his teeth, and begins digging through his bag immediately for a notebook and pencil. Time to get to work. "I'll be here if you need me," he says, distracted. What could possibly be causing this? Sheer energy overload?
"If you can manage to fix this," Mabo says, interrupting him, "the Imperial Navy is prepared to commission you to finish work on the telephone you announced at the inventor's symposium last year."
"The one I got laughed out of?" Aiba asks archly.
"Your work has always been laughable--until you finish it," Mabo answers, "everyone knows that paper that came out of the Imperial University about wingspan and air lift is yours, you know."
Aiba shrugs. "I don't really care about recognition," he says, "but I don't like it when people laugh at my ideas--ideas that worked, in small experiments, even before I really started my work. If you guys will pay for me to do bigger tests I might be able to finish by the end of the year. Just in time for the next symposium. But first, the aegen."
Mabo leaves him to his work.
---
Aiba kind of sinks himself in his work over the next few days, asking for old papers on the properties of aether he hadn't thought to bring with him and testing things on a smaller scale. He's just not sure where the problem is arising, and it's kind of giving him a headache. Usually when he's hit a wall at home, he finds an empty space and shouts his problems to the empty air, and even if he doesn't have a solution by the end of his tirade he's in a place to start afresh. The problem is that there aren't any truly empty spaces aboard an airship. The quarters they gave him are single-person, but he's got neighbors nestled up close on either side who smack the wall if he sings too loudly while he's fixing his clothes and hair in the mornings. His second strategy--find your best friend and force him to show you a great view of the city--isn't going well either, seeing as he keeps missing Yoko by mere moments no matter where he goes.
It's only when he sneaks into Yoko's quarters and lies in wait that he manages to corner Yoko. Aiba shuts the door behind Yoko and grins widely, but doesn't expect Yoko's echoing shriek.
"Aiba what are you doing in here you should be working," Yoko scolds, trying to hustle Aiba out the room.
"Yokocho," Aiba complains, "I haven't seen you in three days. What's going on?"
Yoko settles down, pulling back and resting his hands on his hips for lack of anywhere else to put them. He's in a crisply pressed uniform today, and he's trimmed his hair, and he looks official and adult and ten different shades of ridiculously attractive. Aiba wants to ruin his uniform, wants to press fingers into his hair and leave it hanging over his eyes and--and he'd thought he'd left these feelings back with sixteen and heartbroken. He takes a deep breath.
"I'm just... settling back into work was harder than I thought," Yoko says, "you look tired, are you... are you all right?"
Aiba scratches the back of his head. "Just stressed," he answers, "I can't figure this aegen thing out."
Yoko fingers twitch on his hips--Aiba forces his eyes up. "If you're busy I'll go," he makes himself say.
Yoko's mouth settles into a line. "Aiba--Masaki," he says, and reaches out to grab Aiba's shoulders, "I'm not... I'm not too busy for you. What do you need from me? I'm not much help with this heavy physics stuff or anything, but I can--I don't know, track down another pudding cake, maybe...?"
Aiba steps in close and wraps his arms around Yoko's waist, pressing his face into the fabric of Yoko's uniform. "Just let me stay for a minute," he mumbles, feeling a wave of tired sweep over him as Yoko's arms wind around his shoulders.
"Got it," Yoko says, hiding a smile in Aiba's hair.
---
Aiba spends the night in Yoko's room, belly-down on Yoko's bunk while Yoko fills out paperwork, sketching plans and doing equations.
"Yokocho, I think I've got it," Aiba says, his eyes widening, "oh my god this is huge." He begins to scribble theory and equations across a fresh page, drawing a crude model. "I'm going to try to explain this, tell me if it makes sense. Aether compression works because the generator keeps the aether in the surrounding air and the aether in the generator sphere in perfect balance. When you want to fly, you actually send out aether toward the ground to make the aether on the ship less than the aether in the sky. You kind of... replace the airship with aether, I guess you could say. You come down by creating more aether, making you... heavier, for lack of a better word, than the atmosphere. The problem with the aegen here aboard the Tokio is that to keep a ship this big in the air, you need to be able to expel a lot of aether to rise and produce a lot of aether to sink. But to rise we need to be lighter to start, and somewhere along the line the generator is sending the aether into the atmosphere. Up, maybe, or out, either way it's not using it to sending it below the skyship. Gussan and I looked at the numbers--I think the compressed aether is keeping itself from dissipation by slowly letting aether escape. There's only so much aether the generator can make and push out at the same time."
Yoko nods. "I got like half of that," he answers honestly, "but the picture makes sense!"
Aiba looks down at the diagram. "Oh, good," he says, "well, I know what to do, now."
"You do?" Yoko asks, "what?"
"We need a second aegen," Aiba says.
"We need a what?!" Mabo demands, "we have the biggest aegen in the entire fleet!"
"That's the problem," Aiba answers, "either we use the aegen you have now to build two smaller ones, or you send for a small pre-built one for us to install and recycle the lost aether from the original. Installing a second, small aegen won't take too long--I promise. I've done it with smaller-scale aegens before."
Mabo rubs at his temples. "If that's really the only way to do it, I'll put in an order," he says, defeated.
---
Aiba's with the team that takes the delivery--aegens aren't just kept around, they're used, and the supply ship that was on its way was taking it from a now-retired cruiser especially for them. When the ship touches down, Aiba has to laugh. "Ryo-chan, I thought you were a cruiser pilot," he calls out, and the dark-haired young pilot grits his teeth at Yoko's echoing giggles. Aiba dips his head into the storage area to investigate the status of the aegen.
"Man, I can't escape Chiba anywhere," Ryo groans, "no matter how hard I try--and I try damn hard. I'm only doing this as a damn favor to Matsu-nii!"
"Matsu-nii appreciates it," Mabo calls, making Ryo flush.
"Well, it's not damaged," Aiba announces, leaning out of the ship and giving them a thumbs up, "I'm going to get down to installing this thing. Good to see you, Ryo-chan!"
"Yeah, yeah," Ryo answers, rolling his eyes, "and to answer your question, I do drive a cruiser. But aegens are valuable cargo and they only wanted to send the best~"
"And we got you instead? We really must be having a tough time on the northern front," Mabo teases, and Aiba can hear Ryo's groaning.
---
"Is this going to work?" Yoko asks, creeping into the engine room when Aiba's doing his final checks. It's hot, this deep in with the engine running, so Aiba's shirt is unbuttoned at the throat and his cuffs are pushed up to his elbows. He's watching the aether generators run for a few minutes before he finally sends the 'all-clear' up to the navigation deck, trying to be as sure as he can that they're not going to fail.
"I hope so," Aiba answers, "it has to." Aiba pushes his fists to his hips, eyes scanning the smaller aegen.
Yoko leans over to mess with Aiba's hair. "It's you," he says, "it'll work."
Aiba takes a moment, his head ducked low in thought, and then he looks over at Yoko with a smile so wide it cuts his face in two. "You're right," he answers, "I thought I was catching your pessimism for a minute there. Shall we?"
"Whenever you're ready, sir," Yoko answers, offering an obnoxious bow.
Aiba laughs, and bumps his hip against Yoko's. "Let's get to work," he answers, and turns around to tap the message chute. He's had a note--'ready to go!'--written for an hour now, unable to send it. He lays the folded up note in the chute and closes the little glass door. Sending it to the navigation deck is easy--press the button and spin the sphere--and then all they can do is wait.
They don't bother sending back a note--the hum of the engines intensifies to a low rumble. Aiba runs his fingers through his hair, front to back, and watches with nervous eyes as the gathered aether begins to spin and the generator begins its work. "It's now or never," Aiba whispers, "come on, come on..."
The ship groans and grumbles--and begins to rise. Aiba isn't sure what to do with his hands--he rubs his palms together nervously and finally grabs Yoko's sleeve in both hands.
"Come on, come on," Aiba mumbles, over and over again, and the ship continues its slow ascent.
A message comes back, interrupting Aiba's hoping. It's penned by Becky, and there's a happy dancing doodle of Mabo in the corner below the blocky 'IT WORKS!!' Aiba grins at Yoko, exultant. It works--his idea works. Aiba bounces on his toes, and a gleeful shriek finds itself rising through his chest.
"It works--Yokocho--it works! It works it works it works!" Aiba leaps on Yoko in the heat of the moment, feeling like he's going to explode or burst from his skin or any other number of probably messy things but he's too excited to particularly care. Yoko is grinning too, his hands light on Aiba's sides, and his laughter matches Aiba's.
"It works," Yoko repeats, "you did it. Come on, upstairs to the nav deck, you don't want to miss her flying, do you?"
Ai looks even happier than Aiba, perched in the nav chair and putting the Tokio through simple flight exercises--up and down and around in a wide circle. "Well, she's never going to be the fastest cruiser in the fleet," Ai says, "but we knew that going in. Her nav system reacts like a dream either way."
Mabo claps his hands together once, and turns on his heel toward the comm station. "Murakami, send a telegram back to home base," he orders, "Aiba, you've done it."
Aiba is looking out the window, eyes wide as he takes in the city below them. He glances back to offer them all a nod of his head. "Happy to help," he says, "really. This is the hardest problem I've had to work on in months!"
Mabo looks thoughtful for a moment. "You know," he says, "we have room for you, around here."
Aiba blinks. "As a science officer," he guesses.
"As a consultant," Mabo corrects, "you could work on your telephone system in your own lab on deck five and help Gussan with maintaining the engines..."
Aiba's gaze flicks toward Yoko, who's staring at him with something between 'yes' and 'no' reflected in his eyes. "You're going to war," Aiba says, slowly.
Yoko's mouth tightens when Mabo says, "next month."
Aiba sighs. "I appreciate the offer," he says, "but I think I have to decline. I don't work well under that kind of pressure!"
Yoko's sigh is probably one of relief. Aiba thinks it's probably the right choice--probably.
"Then I'll send a report to headquarters to get you your funding," Mabo says, briskly, "and we'll find you someone to fly you on back to Chiba before the end of the week. We have to get to Osaka and go through some more flight training."
"So I guess this is goodbye again," Yoko says, awkwardly fidgeting against the interior door of his quarters. Aiba's got his bag open on Yoko's cot, trying to stuff all of his things back inside, and he looks up when Yoko speaks.
He smiles. "You'll be back eventually," Aiba says, tone pleasantly firm, "so it's more like 'see you later'!"
Yoko smiles, thoughtfully. "I'll be back in Chiba as soon as I can," he says, "so... wait for me?"
Aiba hauls him close for a hug. "I'll wait," he says, "as long as you need me."
Yoko's fingers shake a little when he pulls Aiba in tighter, resting his chin on Aiba's shoulder. "I won't make you wait forever," he answers. He sounds strange, his voice tight somehow.
Aiba pulls back to look at Yoko. "Yokocho," he says, concerned, "what's wrong...?"
"Masaki," Yoko says, eyes shut tightly, "don't punch me, okay?"
"Uh... okay?" And then Yoko's kissing him.
Aiba squeaks, fingers seizing at the shoulders of Yoko's shirt as he kisses back. "Yoko--"he says, between kisses--"how long have you wanted to do that?"
"Since I woke up and you called me Kimitaka," Yoko confesses, brushing the back of his hand over Aiba's cheek.
Aiba giggles, brushing Yoko's hair from his eyes. "Idiot," he says, fondly.
"You didn't do anything either!" Yoko complains.
"I'm an idiot too," Aiba agrees pleasantly, "but I thought you knew that?"
"You're an airhead, not an idiot," Yoko answers, rolling his eyes, "most of the time." He curls his fingers at the small of Aiba's back, and they share breath for a long moment before the sound of the message chute in Yoko's quarters interrupts them.
Aiba smooths Yoko's uniform before he steps back and sets his shoulders. "Well," he says.
"Yeah," Yoko answers, adjusting the buttons at his cuff nervously.
"Guess that's my signal to go," Aiba says, curling his lips in.
Yoko reaches out and squeezes his fingers before he steps out of the way.
"See you," Yoko says, "see you as soon as I can."
"See you soon," Aiba answers, and fixes the strap of his bag over his shoulder as he steps out of the room.
---
The phone is ringing. Aiba scrambles off of the couch to the other end of the lab, brushing sleep from his eyes as he fumbles with the telephone receiver.
"Hello," he greets around a yawn.
"Aiba-san."
"Nino-chan," Aiba says.
"I, ah, saw Yokoyama's mom today," Nino begins, and Aiba's heart stops for a moment. The Tokio had left for training exercises in Osaka after Aiba had left, as promised, and Yoko had sent Aiba one more letter saying they were heading north to fight the Russians. Then, nothing for six months.
"Did she say something?" Aiba asks, carefully.
"You know how his checks had stopped? Six months' pay came in today."
Aiba nearly drops the phone. "Anything else?" he asks.
"And, uh, she got a telegram from him. He's coming home."
Aiba does drop the phone, then, and has to reach down and pick it back up. "Whoops," Aiba apologizes, "thank you for--calling me."
"Ow," Nino says, "well, you're welcome, I guess. He didn't write you?"
"Why would he write me?" Aiba asks, putting promises and kisses out of his head.
Silence from Nino; finally he speaks. "Aiba... never mind."
Aiba blinks at the dial tone.
"Nino, why are we here?" Yoko asks, as Nino drags him to Jun's pastery shop in the middle of the morning. Jun waves hello, but he's clearly too busy running the taffy machine and filling danishes to try to have a conversation at the same time.
"You'll see," Nino answers, "hey, Subaru."
"Subaru-kun," Aiba greets, letting Nino push him into a chair.
"Hi," Subaru answers, head bent over a piece of paper and humming a tune.
"Subaru is three days late on a commission for the Imperial Palace," Nino informs Aiba, and Subaru grumbles something about Nino being behind on his wordcount for three weeks without missing a beat.
Aiba laughs as they bicker; Subaru is clearly most of the way along, scribing notes he already has in his head. Nino has a pad open on his knee, and he's drawing a flow-chart.
"They're late," Nino comments suddenly, looking at his pocketwatch, "if I got out of my flat before nine for nothing..."
Aiba can't take it any more. He scrambles from his seat and squints out the window. "If you're talking about an airship, it's right there," he says, pointing up.
"Does it say 'YAMADA'?" asks Nino, distracted, "in big orange and blue letters?"
"As a matter of fact," Aiba answers, "yes? And yellow polka dots?"
"That's it," agrees Nino, "come on, let's go say hi to our guest--Jun-kun, we'll be back!"
"We're not even open," Jun complains, "come back at eleven!"
"We'll be back in fifteen for the cake I ordered--and even paid for," Nino shoots back.
"We have a guest?" Subaru seems as confused as Aiba is.
"A very stupid guest," Nino answers sagely.
The Yamada Courier Service is known in Chiba as the fastest--and the loudest, to be honest--airship crew in Japan. Yasuda Shota had spent most of his childhood in the salvage yard, learning to put old parts in new machines, and the ship they lived on shows it. Yasu hops out of the cockpit, shaking his limbs out and pulling his goggles off of his face. The Yamada looks like it used to be three or four ships, smashed together and covered with a heavy coat of paint. Yasu looks like his outfit used to be three or four outfits covered with... well, not a heavy coat of paint, but almost.
"Maru-chan is getting Yokocho's bags," he tells them, as he approaches. He leans easily against Subaru, forcing down a yawn--"sorry, it's a long trip from Okinawa."
Aiba's figured it out by now. His eyes are as round as saucers as he tries to remember how to speak Japanese. "He's here, then?" he asks, voice high and breathless.
"Took you that long?" Nino asks, and doesn't push Aiba off when Aiba wraps tight arms around his head and neck and squeezes.
Maruyama Ryuhei is a man made for smiling--the public relations half of the Yamada Courier Service is well known for his insistence on making his customers smile. He's got a trunk under each arm as he hops out of the back of the courier ship, and he apparently forgets he has them for a moment when he tries to wave--Yoko's complaining about 'damaging precious cargo!' can be heard as Maru attempts to re-balance them on his hips.
Yoko hops out behind Maru, rolling his eyes, but the smile playing over his face dies when he sees Aiba.
Aiba's eyes widen--Yoko's right sleeve is empty.
"Yoko," he says, quietly.
---
Yoko's mom throws a party to welcome Yoko home. Yoko looks like a tired mess for the first half, and he keeps avoiding Aiba, but Yoko's mom hauls him into the kitchen right after dinner and before dessert (courtesy Chez Jun) for some kind of talk, and he at least looks fairly pleasant for the rest of the evening.
"Yokocho," Aiba says, plastering a grin on his face when he finally corners Yoko.
"Ah-Aibacchi," Yoko answers, his hand shaking around his cup of water.
Aiba presses his hand to Yoko's back, gently, and leans his face next to Yoko's ear. "Are you okay?" he asks.
Yoko shrugs, his shoulder pressing to Aiba's chest. "As well as I can be," he answers.
"I knew you'd come back sooner or later," Aiba chirps, pleasantly.
"Not exactly how I wanted to make my grand return," Yoko admits, eyes sliding toward his sleeve. Aiba slides his fingers around Yoko's hip and squeezes in comfort.
"Yokoyama! Want a beer?"
"Naga-nii," Aiba says, when Yoko has to look around for a place to put his glass in order to take Nagase's offer of beer, "think."
Nagase blinks--"oh, right, I forgot, it's not every day you meet a guy with no arm. You know, couldn't you make him a new arm?"
Aiba and Yoko both look at each other, then at Nagase's fake leg. "...can you do that?" Yoko asks, not sounding hopeful.
"I... I don't know," Aiba answers, his mind racing.
Nagase puts a hand on each of their shoulders. "Well, if you can do it you'll be more of a legend then you already are--I dunno if one normal guy can take all that awesome."
Aiba presses his tongue into the inside of his cheek. "Is that a challenge?" he asks.
"Only if you want it to be," answers Nagase, and he jaunts away--before he turns around to speak again. "Yokoyama, is your mom single?"
"KEEP AWAY FROM MY MOTHER."
---
"Aiba, the phone is ringing."
"Your arm is cold, stop touching meeeee--"
"It's made of metal, of course it's cold. Now go get the phone, I'm trying to cook! The miso is going to burn..."
Aiba sighs, standing to trot up the stairs and pick up the phone. "You could have picked up the phone and come back downstairs in the time it took you to wake me back up," he complains.
"Hello," he says, as he cradles the phone to his ear.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AIBA-KUN!"
Aiba laughs. "Jun-kun, Nino-chan, Ohno-kun, thank you," he manages, before the three of them start talking over each other.
"Wait wait wait get him over here--oi! C'mere and wish him a happy birthday!"
"Aiba-chan? Happy birthday!"
"Sho-chan?! ARE YOU HOME?"
"For a week or two," Sho answers, pleasant, "how's your birthday going so far?"
The scent of not-ruined miso soup is filling the house, and Yoko is singing Subaru's Imperial March at the top of his lungs--badly, of course.
"It's perfect," Aiba answers.