Fic: "Stage 5 - Maturation 3/?? ¤Blues/Rockman, ¤ PG-13 ¤ Romance. Humor.
Title: “Infecten - stage 5 - Maturation 3/?”
Author: Nemesi.
Fandom: Rockman.EXE (MMBN)
Genre: Romance. Humour.
Word Count: 1670.
Characters/Pairings: Blues/Rockman; Netto, Enzan, Axl mainly. Others mentioned.
Rating: PG-13.
Disclaimer: Rockman.EXE, its characters, places and themes belong to Capcom, Shogakukan, ShoPro, TV Tokio, etc.. No copyright infringement is intended.
Warnings: Shounen-ai. Un-betaed. Navi-preg (and I claim ownership on this idea). OC.
A/N: In this stage, the disease fully develops into a chronic condition. ♥
Summary: And then, unfortunate event n° 1 took place.
* * * * *
Shuuseki Ijuin wasn’t happy. Not that it was any news (the man had permanent frown lodged on his face since about birth), but today his not-happy levels had skyrocketed through the roof and then some.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” he asked.
His interlocutor was a tall, slim man donning a long cloak and matching black hat. There was a shadow of stubble on his chin, and his hair was long and haggardly cut, reaching barely past his shoulders. His eyes glittered coldly in the shadow cast by his hat, their colour an indefinable hue that stood between grey and blue, as though they were made of either ice or glass.
“Are you?” Mr Ijuin asked again.
The man-in-black offered him an infuriating smirk.
“Whaddaya say, Chief?” He lounged back in his chair (he was supposed to remain standing before his employer but, oh! he was never one for formalities) tipped his hat, and jerked his chin towards the papers currently spread between them. “It’s all in there… data logs, dates, scans, pictures.”
Mr Ijuin clenched his fists, feeling the dull half-moons of his nails dig inside his palms. The vertical line between his eyebrows deepened suddenly.
“Impossible.”
“Yeah, sure. Ya seen th’ pictures. They’re withholding th’ information, but Sci-Lab has developed a way ta impregnate Navis. And…”
He trailed off, and his voice dripped a sort of dark delight. Taking his feet from the desk he stretched across it, grasped one of the pictures and casually flung it towards Mr Ijuin.
The picture landed with calculated choreography right where it was supposed to, face up and angled just so.
“-yer own son’s been actively helpin’ them all along,” the man-in-black finished, relaxing back in his chair.
“I cannot possibly believe…”
“That th’ midget’d slip top-secret information to yer rival company right under yer nose?” the man-in-black sneered. The way he dealt with Mr Ijuin was peculiar. Looking at him, you’d get the feeling that, while he loved the snuffing work, loved mixing with the shadows, swimming through them to overhear jealously-kept secret and sneak peeks of unheard-of wonders, he despised the man who paid him to do it.
If you think about it, this combination of pride and loathing wasn’t just odd, but instable, too. Like a easily inflammable liquid, it was liable to blast at the merest spark. And blasts, you realize, have the nasty tendency to make damage.
Moving the camera back to Mr Ijuin, reveals a tightening in his jaw; jury’s still out whether on not an iron bar would’ve snapped, were it to be placed between his teeth at the moment. The line between his eyebrows had all but turned into a gulf. His mouth had taken an unforgiving downward curve. The Man-in-black smirked at his obvious irritation.
“Well, but that’s exactly what he’s been doin’! Hell, kid’s even volunteered his own precious Navi--” he produced another picture from his sleeve, like a magician or a barstool trickster, and threw it on top of the first one. “-as one of th’ main subjects of th’ experiment.”
Looking down at the picture, Mr Ijuin was met with the sight of a Navi who was unmistakably Blues: sword at the ready, hair flying wild, one arm wrapped securely around Rockman, shielding him from a blast of sorts.
The man-in-black kept flinging pictures at Mr Ijuin, each showing some kind of interaction between the Red Navi and the Blue Navi - be it in tournaments, on the field as they fought Net-menaces, or in private.
As the stack of pictures grew, so did Mr Ijuin’s fury. His blood began to boil, in almost the literal sense, as his face went first pale, then flushed over.
Finally, the crowing picture was flung, and landed with a flourish on top of the stake. It was a picture of the purple-clad, green-eyed, kitty-eared result of Blues and Rockman’s union. A crude circle had been drawn with a red marker around the young Navi’s face. Underneath, the name “Axl.EXE” had been written in a spidery calligraphy and underlined twice.
Mr Ijuin looked up, his lips in a line, eyes storming with anger. If someone had thrown a bucket of water on his head at the moment, it’d have evaporated in a matter of seconds. His fist shook, so much so that he had to forcibly restrain it. When he next spoke his voice was steady and cold; but it was a coolness borne of pure anger, honed like a blade:
“I want those Navis. All three of them. Now.”
The man-in-black’s eyes lost a little of their gleam, then. But his smile was wide, flashing white in the cool shadow of his face.
“Gotcha.”
* * * * *
“…which is an aspect I fear has been neglected in your project. We should reflect on our potential market pool and establish a target before any coding is done for the site, so that…”
“IJIUIN ENZAN, EITHER YOU GET OUT OF THERE IN THE NEXT TEN SECONDS OR I SWEAR--!”
The scream, you realize, had a force that made the windows rattle, hurricane-like, for a whole bunch of seconds. It was also imbued with such a bristling, red-hot indignation, that more than one investor found himself flinching or ducking for cover. Those few who hadn’t dived under the Meeting Room table were amazed to see the scream - indignation, volume and all - slid off IPC’s young President like water off a duck’s back.
Enzan merely paused in his speech - not even faltered, but took a deliberate pause. He rearranged his papers in front of him and rose with an elegance that would’ve made a model envious.
Smiling, he bowed at the waist and excused himself from his baffled clients. He walked slowly and deliberately to the door (but still within the ten-seconds limit, mind you), bowed politely one last time, went out into the corridor, and all was silence.
Silence was broken two seconds later by a loud ramming noise, followed closely by a pained yelp.
“OUCH! Enzan! What was that for?!”
There was some urgent whispering from Enzan-san, then a high, carefree laugh from whoever his visitor was.
“I know. And I knew you’d hole yourself in there and forget all about lunch. So I brought you something. See? Mom made it especially for you. And Meiru sends you some homemade cookies. I mean, she sent them, past tense. … … … …What? I was hungry!”
Enzan laughed then, a sound he tried to muffle, but still audible. Some eyebrows rose inside the room, and not a few mouths quirked up in amusement. Hearing Ijuin Enzan laugh so light-heartedly was as rare as seeing a birds flying backwards. He whispered something too low to be heard, to which his visitor replied:
“Yeah, yeah, you wish. Are you coming, now? …no. …no. I said, ‘no’. NOPE! … … … … all right. Ten minutes. Not a second more. Then I’m barging in there and dragging you out by the hair, fair warning.”
And then the door re-opened (it’s amusing how quickly the investors scrambled back to their seats, like schoolboys who didn’t want to be caught on their feet by the teacher), and Enzan made his way inside, looking as unruffled as when he’d left. Outside, if they craned their neck, the investors could glimpse a boy with a blue bandanna and a orange vest tapping his foot impatiently.
The sight in itself wasn’t threatening… but the pout. Oh! That pout. It was endearing and annoying and highly menacing at once, a mixture that somehow prompted every one of them to close off the meeting within the ten-minutes time limit.
Exactly ten minutes later, Enzan emerged from his office, one eyebrow firmly lodged at his hairline.
“You,” he told Netto in a business tone, “will accompany me to my every meeting from now on. I have never signed a contract so quickly and with so little complaints, before.”
Netto offered a hearty laugh, and thrust the lunch box in Enzan’s hands.
“Deal. Especially if I get to skip school to come with you.”
“Well, if that happened, I could hire some private teachers to…”
“Forget it. Let’s go. Someone,” he said, with an air of secrecy about him, “is waiting for you.”
Enzan correctly deciphered what all of the wink-winking, nudge-nudging Netto was subjecting him to was about, and smiled.
“Good. I’m rather anxious to see him too. I want to know how his first training lesson went.”
“Fabulous! He’s so quick, you wouldn’t believe! Not even Rockman and Blues combined could be that agile!”
“Being so small and slender, he makes an hard target to hit, doesn’t he?”
“The hardest.”
“Chips?”
Netto shook his head, and said: “We didn’t use any,” which Enzan actually approved of.
“How did he attack then…?” he asked, trying to sound casual. But an eager glint had appeared in his eyes, so unlike the cold façade he usually hid behind.
Unfortunately for him, Netto just shook his head with a grimace.
“He didn’t. Whatever he did that day with Roll… it can’t be replicated.”
Both boys faltered in their steps, before stopping altogether, each lost in his own private thoughts.
“Maybe…”
“Perhaps…”
“I mean…”
“A lucky shot, mh?”
“Seems like it.”
Lost in reverie, Netto didn’t notice that Enzan had left him behind until he heard the ding of the elevator reaching their floor. Springing forth with a shout, Netto caught up with his friend, weaselling inside the elevator a moment before the doors slung shut.
“I…”
“…hate me, I know.” Enzan offered airily, before taking a peek inside the lunch box. His eyes widened and warmed up, and Netto leaned with his back against the door to better admire the play of emotion wafting across Enzan’s surprised but pleased face.
“Your favourite,” he offered simply, after a while.
Enzan nodded, and said nothing for the rest of the ride.
Or, better yet, until unfortunate event n° 1 took place.
The elevator stopped.
Between two floors.
And they were stuck.
- Scene 3 cleared.
NOW LOADING…