[JE] [JEF #3] Photographic Memories 2/8
Title: JE Fleet III: Photographic Memories ch. 2/8
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame (though others are mentioned)
Rating: PG-13? Maybe occasionally bordering on R?
Total word count: Approx. 37,550
Genre: AU, sci-fi, crack
Disclaimer: Not mine, dammit.
Summary: Mere hours away from Earth, the crew of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN have their leave cut short as Commodore Yamashita sends Captains Akanishi and Kamenashi on a top secret mission to Venus. But when Kame's past as the tactical advisor for the Fahngarlians catches up with him, the planet of love becomes the planet of war...
Chapter 2
The KAT-TUN was less than an hour from Venus. While Jin had spent the journey puzzling over the president's message, Kame had been contemplating the question of what to tell Ueda and the others. It didn't matter that the trainees didn't know why they were heading to Venus - they obeyed without question - but there was no way they could keep their command crew in the dark. Already, Nakamaru had been by, asking why they'd changed course, and Ueda had been giving them significant looks, asking them silently what the hell was going on.
There was an unspoken rule onboard that if there was something you didn't talk about, you probably had good reason for doing so and nobody would press you unless you indicated that you wanted pressing. Even with things that affected the entire crew, like unplanned course changes.
But that didn't mean that rumours didn't fly, that nobody got curious.
"We have to tell them," Kame said eventually. "They'll go stir-crazy waiting at the spaceport if we don't give them a reason."
Jin didn't bother pointing out that they were probably already crazy. "We should take them with us; I'd feel safer with backup. There's four of them, they can go in pairs. Yamapi won't arrive until tomorrow, and he can't get to us after we board the train. We've all got more than enough fake IDs."
"We can't," Kame protested. "Weren't you listening to the briefing?"
"I don't care. You know as well as I do they can all keep a secret!"
"Jin!"
"Besides," Jin continued recklessly, figuring that now he'd started, he might as well finish, "President Tsubasa told us to, didn't he? He said to do it our own way."
Comprehension hit Kame so hard he had to sit down. "You mean..."
"Exactly." Jin smirked and sat down next to his partner. "We're not usually in the business of obeying orders, are we? And the president knows that. He and Admiral Takki let us operate as we want because that's how we get results."
Kame frowned. "I agree. But, Jin, do you realise if that's true, you've just confirmed my theory about there being something else going on here? They could've told us openly to take Ueda and the others for back-up - or at least to let our crew know what was going on - and we'd have agreed because that's the smart thing to do. The fact that we're supposed to keep everyone in the dark and isolate ourselves, proves that there's something strange about all this."
"Of course there's something strange," Commander Ueda Tatsuya said from the doorway. "We're obviously going to Venus, not Earth, and I would've thought the two of you would be thrilled at spending some time on the planet of love."
"Instead you're moping over your luggage," Ensign Nakamaru Yuichi added as he followed Ueda inside. "What's the matter? Can't decide which hotel has the most comfortable honeymoon suites?"
Kame grimaced as Ensign Taguchi Junnosuke and Lieutenant Tanaka Koki followed their crewmates inside and made themselves at home in Jin's cabin. There was no going back now. They had to tell them everything.
"I don't like it," Koki opined when Kame was done with the tale. As their man in charge of Security, it was his job to be paranoid. "You'd be leaving yourselves open to who knows what down there."
"The ship will be safe enough with the trainees, docked at Eros City spaceport," Ueda said. "Especially if we leave them Taguchi's game collection to keep them occupied. We're coming with you."
If Taguchi wasn't entirely thrilled by the prospect, he never let it stop him from smiling. "We can't let our captains have all the fun, can we?"
"I'm not sure how much "fun" we're going to have." Jin began to remove the seals on the package from Arashi. "Tracking down some cleaning lady with a stolen photograph in the middle of a bunch of courting couples. Not how I planned to spend my vacation."
"She's obviously not just a "cleaning lady"," Kame pointed out, brandishing his datapad. "According to the disc Commodore Yamashita left us, she was working at the JE Fleet HQ under the name 'Ashiya Mizuki', and her cover held up under their standard personnel background checks. But when she disappeared and they started digging deeper, they came up empty. No technical background whatsoever, no strong political opinions, nothing controversial and definitely no criminal record.
"Yet she disabled a sophisticated security system, stole a photograph that should have had no significance to her, and made it off-world using a perfectly falsified identity."
"Making her about as natural as Taguchi's new hair colour," Nakamaru joked.
In preparation for his up-coming (now postponed) leave on Earth, Taguchi had dyed his hair a bright, screaming blond in an effort to make himself seem more exotic and appealing to the locals. After all, he hadn't set foot on his home planet in over two years, and there was no telling what the current fashions were.
"I thought you guys said you liked the colour!"
Ueda cracked a smile. "That's not *quite* how I remember it..."
"Never mind that," Jin interrupted. "Look what Arashi sent us."
He'd finally managed to get the seals off - no easy task, since they'd let Aiba take care of the packaging and he'd gone overboard. Jin was now covered in animal stickers.
"These must be the gadgets Yamapi was talking about," Kame mused, picking up one of the silvery bands and turning it over in his hand. "Looks like you slip them over the barrel."
Jin pulled out his blaster and tried it out. The band fit perfectly, sliding on with ease...but once it was in place, it locked, refusing to come off again. A thin strip of gold shone down the centre, and if Jin listened closely, he could hear a faint humming, the sound of one of Arashi's unusual electronic pieces at work.
Kame nodded approval and did the same with his own weapon. "Let's hope they work, otherwise we won't be able to get in with so much as a vibraknife."
"And look, Kame." Jin pointed to the remains of the parcel. "They sent six."
-----
Five hours later, Kame and Jin disembarked from the Eros Express, the only service running between the spaceport and Eros City itself. They each carried a small suitcase containing enough to see them through the week - though nothing that they couldn't abandon if they had to - since it was essential that 'Shinkame Kazuma' and 'Akasei Jinpachi' appeared to be just like all the other tourist lovebirds.
What set them apart from the throng of couples were the guns that each man had concealed in the small of his back. (The advantage of a gene-locked trigger being that there was no chance of firing accidentally and shooting yourself as you walked.) The security guards hadn't frisked them; there was no point, not when the checkpoint scanners could build up a full-body image and even a toothpick would be detected and seized as a weapon. This meant that Jin was minus the knife he usually carried in his right boot and both men were missing their teleport bracelets. Even though the KAT-TUN was in range, the shiny silver bangles would be useless, as all outgoing and incoming transmissions were blocked everywhere in Eros City except those made from the public comm terminals at the station.
Similarly, their comm badges wouldn't work, even to talk between themselves, because the communications were routed through the ship and they, too, would be blocked.
So it was with much regret that the two captains left their ship in the capable hands of top trainee Yabu Kota and his junior crewmates. After making plans with Ueda and the rest, they'd disembarked at the spaceport, submitted themselves to the checks, and bought tickets for the first train to Eros City.
Koki and Nakamaru had left later, spending some quality time in the spaceport shops and trying out the not-nearly-as-stylish-as-anything-MatsuJun-could-design baseball caps. They'd ended up on a different carriage.
Ueda and Taguchi had left last, stopping off for a snack before the security checks, and only just made it onto the same train.
Once the teams had reached the station, they kept a cautious distance from each other. While they still had visual contact, it was necessary to establish a means of communication, and a small rental shop tucked inside the station provided the perfect solution.
"Kind of old-fashioned, aren't they?" Jin said. He was holding a compact, shiny, black cellphone of the type favoured in the early twenty-first century. "Whatever happened to using datbands for personal comms?"
Kame shrugged. "If the sign on the wall is to be believed, telecommunications bangles just aren't romantic enough for this city - if lovers are unfortunate enough to be separated, they want to be able to see each other's faces when they call. These have video capability."
"Oh." Jin flipped his open and switched it on. "Look, Kame! We can have different ringtones! And wallpapers! And-"
"And we can do pretty much anything with them except communicate with anyone outside the city walls," Kame interrupted.
"Right." Jin stopped playing around and located the phonebook function. "Can I have your number?"
Kame looked at him strangely. "Why are you asking me in English?"
"Because," Jin sounded extremely proud of himself, "it's the only common language used in Eros City. We can't rely on anyone outside the tourist industry speaking much Japanese here."
Kame smothered a groan and exchanged numbers with his partner, then urged him away from the rental place so the other two teams could pick up their own cellphones. They waited on a nearby bench and watched as first Koki then Ueda visited the shop, each emerging with a pair.
To exchange numbers, they'd worked out a plan ahead of time. The others would scribble down their details on a scrap of paper and ensure they passed them to Kame, who would send a text message to each of them with the rest. Nakamaru walked past the bench on his way to get an ice cream, casually flicking a tiny ball of paper onto Kame's jacket with all the skill of a Jovian dealer. Taguchi balled up some old wrappers he found in his pockets and began juggling with them, ensuring that when he "accidentally" lost one, it fell into Jin's lap.
Both teams disappeared with their luggage, heading in separate directions to check into pre-arranged hotels. Tourists could only make bookings from the spaceport; reservations were made and paid for during the security process - it was part of checking their credit rating - and upon arrival, visitors handed over their vouchers to the hotel.
The KAT-TUN command crew were all travelling under assumed names, of course, and had excellent credit. The reservations and cellphone rentals had been made using these false identities; Kame distributed the numbers to the others before he and Jin picked up their luggage and departed for their own hotel, a towering, ritzy building by the name of Cupid's Gate.
Public transport round Eros City was mostly a matter of small, bright pink groundcabs; small, bright pink trains; small, bright pink pony carriages and large, cool blue buses. (These last were owned by a different company.)
"You'd think Pi would've signed up for this job himself," Jin murmured to Kame as they hailed one of the open carriages. (The commodore's love of pink was surpassed only by his love of food.)
Kame hushed him and gave instructions to the driver, then climbed up onto the luxurious leather seat. Jin petted the pony for a moment and did the same; it wasn't often he got to see live animals, not now that he was no longer living on Earth, and it gave him great pleasure every time he encountered one. This particular pony, he thought, looked a little like Nakamaru. Perhaps it was the nose.
The ride didn't last long. The hotel was close enough that they could probably have walked to it, even with luggage, but they were supposed to be on holiday, after all, and Kame wanted to savour the feeling of being outdoors again, just for a little.
Freedom felt better than he'd expected, with a gentle breeze cooling his face and Jin's body pressed warmly against his side. Everywhere he looked there were couples (and the occasional group) strolling hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm, joined at the hip or just plain liplocked, and there wasn't so much as a hint of unhappiness about them. He could almost allow himself to forget their mission and snuggle contentedly under Jin's arm.
Almost.
Because between the skin of his back and the smooth leather of the seat, the solid, dependable presence of his blaster was an excellent reminder that he couldn't get too comfortable. This wasn't their area of expertise - hadn't been even before they gave up their life of piracy - and Kame wasn't at all sure they were up to the task. The commodore had provided a place to start...but the rest was up to them.
"Kame?"
"Hmm?"
"We're here, and I think the pony wants you to pet him."
Still half-lost in his comfortable reverie, Kame patted Jin a couple of times on the head.
"Not me - the pony!"
Both animal and driver were used to the idiosyncrasies of tourists, and the former accepted Kame's apologetic pat with as much grace as the latter accepted Jin's handful of Venusian dollars. For larger expenses a swipe of their false credit cards would do, but when it came to the smaller things in life it was handy to have a ready supply of cash.
Transaction complete, the carriage went on its way, leaving the two captains standing on the grounds of the luxurious Cupid's Gate. The hotel stood twenty storeys high, dominating the local skyline with its colored glass windows and ornamental cherubs, most of whom were pointing their bows and arrows at the tourists.
The cherubs weren't carrying real weapons, so why did Jin keep getting the urge to draw his gun and start using them for target practice? One of them in particular, one shifty-eyed, suspicious-looking little archer, irritated the hell out of him for no reason he could figure.
He plucked at Kame's sleeve as they walked towards the opulent front doors. "Kame?"
"I'm not petting you again, Jin. At least wait till we get to our room."
"Not that," Jin hissed. "Look at the cherub behind us!"
Kame turned. There were over a dozen of the tiny winged creatures behind them. "Any one in particular?"
"That one! The one with the wings."
Jin couldn't have been less helpful if he'd tried. "A little more specific?" Kame said.
"The one on top of that pedestal. No, don't look, it might see you!"
Kame gave his partner a tight smile. "You just told me to look, now you don't want me to? Make up your mind, Jin."
"Look, but don't let it see you looking," Jin said. "I don't want it to know that we're onto it."
"Of course, that would never do..." Kame surreptitiously peeked back at the cherub in question, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and hustled Jin towards reception. "It's only a statue," he told him firmly. "A small, kind of goofy-looking statue. I really don't think it's up to anything."
Jin disagreed. "It was facing the other way when we walked in, and turned round the moment we passed it. It's watching us, don't you feel it?"
As if to prove him wrong, the cherub promptly spun round on its pedestal to face an entirely new direction.
"See? It rotates at intervals, just like the one in the centre of the foyer fountain." Kame tried to sound reassuring, rather than mocking, but it was difficult to keep the derision out of his voice when Jin was so clearly jumping at shadows. This whole stupid mission was going to make them both paranoid if they let it, and Kame wanted to enjoy his - working - vacation.
"But the eyes-"
"Maybe it's part of the hotel security system," Kame conceded. "I could believe that. But it's not watching for *us*, Jin."
Reluctantly, Jin let himself be convinced. It was embarrassing, the way Kame was handling being planet-side again so much better than he was, and they couldn't afford to slip up. Getting freaked out by a dumb statue, no matter how creepy it was, was not allowed.
Checking in was a speedy process and since they didn't have enough luggage to warrant assistance, Jin and Kame were left to make their own way up to the third floor, Room 369.
Forgetting for a moment about their mission, Jin immediately threw himself down on the king-sized bed, bouncing a couple of times to check for springiness. He did not find it wanting.
Kame, ever the practical one, brought Jin's abandoned suitcase into the room and closed the door. He tested the lock, which satisfied him as much as the bed had pleased Jin.
It was a nice room, as Venusian hotel rooms went, with a plush red carpet and gold-trimmed furniture. There was no comm terminal, of course - guests could contact each other or the front desk using a small, voice-only console mounted near the bed - and the tinted windows let the sunshine pour in while hiding the room's occupants from outside eyes. Naturally, if not for the heavy-duty terraforming and the atmosphere generation project undertaken by the first colonists from Earth, there would have been no windows at all, much less a balcony.
"This isn't bad," Jin commented. "Not as bouncy as those Jovian low-grav mattresses, but not bad."
"Just try not to break this one," Kame advised as he began to transfer the contents of his small case into the wardrobe. "At least, not until Saturday night. Are you going to unpack?"
"Is it worth it?"
"We're on holiday, remember?"
Jin was about to contradict his partner when he realised that even in their hotel room, it probably wasn't a good idea to break cover. No talking about anything important. Fine, Jin was good at that.
He unpacked his own case while Kame investigated the luxurious en-suite bathroom; judging by the younger captain's shout of delight, it was equipped with a hot tub. They'd had one installed on the KAT-TUN but the jets were prone to breaking and they'd worn it out after escaping the living space station. (If they couldn't scrub themselves on the inside, at least they could feel clean on the outside again, though Jin wasn't sure he was ever going to be able to wash away those memories, no matter how many hot baths he took.)
"There's plenty of time for that later," Kame said as Jin joined him in the bathroom, looking longingly at the taps. "It's the middle of the afternoon, Jin!"
"So?"
"So I'd like to get some fresh air after being stuck on that train for three hours." They both knew Kame wasn't just talking about the Eros Express. "Besides, if you bath now you'll be horribly lazy for the rest of the day, get restless in the evening, and drag me out for a walk at midnight or something."
Jin tried to look hurt but since Kame laughed at his expression, he figured he hadn't done a very good job of it. "All right. Where did you want to go?"
Kame pulled out his cellphone and sent a text to Taguchi and Nakamaru. "I thought we could try that place your friend recommended."
Meanwhile...
In a small inn across the street from Cupid's Gate, Taguchi, having accidentally changed his cellphone message setting to 'vibrate', jumped a mile when Kame's text came through.
"Careful," Ueda advised. "You nearly fell out the window."
As the owners of the tiny, quaint little building had planted rosebushes along the front of the property, Taguchi thought he'd better change his settings. Even though it would have been a short fall - the inn being a bungalow - he'd still have ended up with a faceful of thorns.
He pulled out his phone and read Kame's message. "They're on the move."
"Then we should probably get going."
Ueda ran a comb through his freshly-dyed red hair, trying in vain to do something about the girly flips at the end, and made sure his air gun was hidden securely beneath his denim jacket. He'd picked it up from a weapons dealer in Okinawa on their last trip to Earth. The gun looked like a toy - all shiny plastics - but there was nothing childish about its ability to convert gases into solids. By its very nature, the weapon was never loaded, but Ueda could fire it almost anywhere. After all, if he found himself without oxygen, not being able to use his gun would be the least of his problems.
"Think we'll get to do any sightseeing while we're here?" Taguchi asked as he checked the powerpack in his own equipment.
Years of playing VR video games had made him a crack shot with almost any weapon you cared to name, but the one he favoured (which bore a remarkable resemblance to the gun used in Interplanetary Space-Duck Hunt) was a variation on the standard illegal nerve-disrupter, one with no function other than to induce uncontrollable fits of laughter in the target. It wouldn't kill anyone - not without continuous exposure - but it would certainly incapacitate them.
"You're thinking about that arcade the guidebook mentioned, aren't you?"
Taguchi gave Ueda his most winning smile. "It wouldn't hurt to take a look, would it?"
Ueda smiled back. "Later. Let's see what our friends are up to, shall we?"
Twenty minutes later...
"Why do we get stuck in the one down the street?" Nakamaru complained. "If anything happens we'll be miles away."
"Because you lost at Janken," Koki pointed out. "I told you I should've done it."
Given that the last time they'd played the game for stakes of anywhere near this magnitude, Nakamaru had wound up as an ensign despite being the oldest of the crew, he had to admit that perhaps he'd been having a run of bad luck. Jin had always been their captain (and Kame would've too, if he'd been in the military at the time), but after that they'd ended up playing for ranks, much to the despair of Commodore Yamashita who'd tried to insist that such a thing just wasn't done.
Because if it *was* done, he wanted to be an admiral.
"It's not like our hotel's that bad," Koki continued. "I checked it out; all the rooms are soundproof. Know what that means?"
Nakamaru definitely did. "We can practise as much as we want without a certain lovable idiot sneaking in and recording us! You've been working on a new rap, right?"
Koki proceeded to give his partner a quick sample of his latest effort as they strolled casually past the hotels, clubs, shops and eating establishments that made up Main Street, Eros City. Nakamaru readily joined in, beatboxing a rough accompaniment. Most of the people walking past were too wrapped up in their own lives to notice, many of them holding hands.
The KAT-TUN's top Security man and resident hotshot pilot were not, however. Neither of them wanted their gun arms to be occupied.
Nakamaru's weapon of choice, like Taguchi's, was designed to incapacitate rather than kill, which had been of considerable use to them in their pirate days. Each target required two shots: the first, to prepare their ears; the second, which was actually a series of rapid pulses, gave them a high-frequency headache for a couple of hours, rendering them sightless and soundless for a while.
Koki's gun had started out life as a regulation military blaster, plain and simple, but there was no way he could resist making modifications. The converter had been souped up so each powerpack lasted three times as long as before, there was an option to use all the remaining power in a single shot, and the original barrel had been replaced with a much shorter one with the legend 'JOKER' emblazoned on the side.
Of course, they hadn't been able to bring extra powerpacks. The scanners would've picked them up immediately. Only Jin and Kame didn't have to concern themselves with running out - their weapons could convert almost any form of matter into power, regardless of state. Not that anybody was expecting a long, drawn-out gunfight in Eros City. At least, not yet.
"You think they'll be okay?" Koki asked, nodding ever-so-slightly at the distant figures of Jin and Kame, who were walking thirty feet ahead of them. "Don't they look kind of tired to you?"
Nakamaru scratched his head. "They had a rough time recently, didn't they? I don't remember much of the dream I was having then - just that sound, you know? - but what they saw..."
Even thinking about what they'd found in NCG-whatever made Koki shudder, and he'd been lucky enough not to see it. Jin and Kame had told the others everything once they'd woken them up, but they'd kept to a strictly neutral briefing, hadn't discussed it since, and clammed up if anyone tried to approach them about it.
"I guess they'll be okay so long as they've got each other," he said.
"And the rest of us!" Nakamaru added.
"Yeah, but they won't have us for much longer if you don't get a move on!"
Meanwhile...
If he ignored the weight of his gun, the fake ID in his pocket and the fact that he was being followed at a distance by four of his friends, Kame could imagine himself to be on a genuine vacation, one taken for nothing but pleasure, which, really, was the only reason anyone came to Eros City. It catered for the romantics, the lovestruck, the wordless and the weird: no matter what you wanted out of your love life, you could find it here.
"It's nice to see the sun from a planet again, isn't it?" Jin commented. "You can't feel it on a ship."
Kame agreed, the warmth was very pleasant. He was looking forward to doing some serious basking in the sunlight as soon as the chance arose. Being outdoors again was...simply wonderful. He'd forgotten what it was like to breathe air filtered by nothing more than nature, to watch (imported) birds alight on trees, only to take flight again in the open skies. No virtual experience with the CNS Plus could ever have felt quite so real.
He consulted his personal datapad for directions. Everything private was locked, hidden and heavily encrypted, of course, so any prying Venusian officials would find nothing more incriminating than a handful of photographs of himself and Jin, a couple of novels for when he got bored, and a copy of the Eros City guidebook.
One thing they definitely wouldn't find: the collection of data Yamapi had brought, copied across from the disc.
"If we take a left here, the restaurant should be a couple of blocks down," Kame said, shutting down the datapad and returning it to his jacket pocket. "It comes highly recommended by our friend."
"Pi eats anything," Jin reminded him. "I don't know how much we should trust his choice in restaurants."
Kame caught Jin's hand where it was swinging free by his side and gave it a squeeze, murmuring, "We're not going there for the food. I mean, we are, because it'll look strange if we don't eat anything and I know you've got to be starved by now-"
"You have *no* idea."
"-but we're going to this particular restaurant because this 'Ashiya Mizuki', under the name 'Kotani Nobuko', listed it as her destination, according to Pi's man at the spaceport. It checked out, which means she definitely arrived there - assuming they weren't lying, of course."
Not all visitors to Eros City stayed in tourist establishments - some had friends or relatives living there. So when they had to state their destination at the spaceport, instead of making a hotel reservation, they provided the contact details of their host, who had to confirm with the staff that this was the case. When the visitors arrived at their destination, the host, even if it was a hotel, had to check in with the spaceport staff to inform them of this.
Jin groaned. "I hope they weren't lying. I want her to be there so we can get what we came for, get a late lunch and get out of here. I still feel like we're being watched."
Kame gave a little jerk of his head to the street behind them, indicating that yes, idiot, of course they were being watched...by their own crew. Jin felt rather sheepish after that.
"This is as much a city of voyeurs as anything else, though," Kame said. "Maybe we *are* being watched. I know I wouldn't mind watching you all day."
Jin blanched. "Then I really would get paranoid - even if it was you. Besides, it's not like I do anything much worth watching."
"It's not what you do, it's who you are."
Kame's surprise moment of unabashed romanticism made Jin smile: a sweet, lopsided curve with a hint of playful sparkle. "I could watch Kame all day too," he admitted. "I've got a lot of time to make up for."
"Just don't get confused and start watching Tat-chan by mistake, or I'll have to shoot you."
Temptation very nearly drove Jin to turn round and look at Ueda, but he beat it into submission and kept his eyes firmly fixed on the street instead. "I guess he does look a bit like you now, with that red hair. But only a teeny, tiny little bit; I'd never mix the two of you up."
"You'd better not."
Kame's jealousy, as Jin well knew, was not to be taken lightly. After all, he'd tried to wipe out humanity in the belief that Jin had been having an affair with Yamapi.
Fortunately, Kame didn't sound insanely jealous, merely teasing. Maybe the planet of love was rubbing off on him.
And now he just sounded confused. "You know, I think we've taken a wrong turn somewhere..."
Jin scanned their surroundings. They'd come out by a very familiar-looking plaza, bordered by shops on two sides, with a ring of benches round a central marble statue. While the place was reasonably crowded, full of happy couples enjoying the sunny afternoon, there was enough space for him to spot Ueda and Taguchi emerging from another side street, both looking as confused as Kame sounded.
"I'd say so. Weren't we here five minutes ago?"
Kame nodded. "And the restaurant's less than ten minutes from our hotel. I'd better look at the directions again."
(Across the plaza, Ueda was consulting his own Eros City guidebook - a print copy, since he thought it made a good souvenir - and wondering why the two captains had been walking round in circles.)
Jin paused by a bench, thinking to wait while Kame checked the map, but Kame kept going, walking in a daze as he skimmed his datapad. Before Jin realised he was standing by himself, his partner was halfway across the plaza; Ueda and Taguchi, heads bent over the former's guidebook, didn't notice Kame's approach.
Ah, that was it. They should've taken a *right* at the Oceanic Memorial, not a left. Kame was elated to find he hadn't messed up too badly with the directions. He turned to Jin to give him the good news, but Jin was no longer by his side. He swept the square in a glance, locating Jin waiting impatiently on a bench, and opened his mouth to call him over.
Before he could form a single word, the crack of a gunshot split the air, causing tourists and natives alike to fall silent.
Across the plaza, a bloodstained Eros City guidebook fluttered to the ground.
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame (though others are mentioned)
Rating: PG-13? Maybe occasionally bordering on R?
Total word count: Approx. 37,550
Genre: AU, sci-fi, crack
Disclaimer: Not mine, dammit.
Summary: Mere hours away from Earth, the crew of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN have their leave cut short as Commodore Yamashita sends Captains Akanishi and Kamenashi on a top secret mission to Venus. But when Kame's past as the tactical advisor for the Fahngarlians catches up with him, the planet of love becomes the planet of war...
Chapter 2
The KAT-TUN was less than an hour from Venus. While Jin had spent the journey puzzling over the president's message, Kame had been contemplating the question of what to tell Ueda and the others. It didn't matter that the trainees didn't know why they were heading to Venus - they obeyed without question - but there was no way they could keep their command crew in the dark. Already, Nakamaru had been by, asking why they'd changed course, and Ueda had been giving them significant looks, asking them silently what the hell was going on.
There was an unspoken rule onboard that if there was something you didn't talk about, you probably had good reason for doing so and nobody would press you unless you indicated that you wanted pressing. Even with things that affected the entire crew, like unplanned course changes.
But that didn't mean that rumours didn't fly, that nobody got curious.
"We have to tell them," Kame said eventually. "They'll go stir-crazy waiting at the spaceport if we don't give them a reason."
Jin didn't bother pointing out that they were probably already crazy. "We should take them with us; I'd feel safer with backup. There's four of them, they can go in pairs. Yamapi won't arrive until tomorrow, and he can't get to us after we board the train. We've all got more than enough fake IDs."
"We can't," Kame protested. "Weren't you listening to the briefing?"
"I don't care. You know as well as I do they can all keep a secret!"
"Jin!"
"Besides," Jin continued recklessly, figuring that now he'd started, he might as well finish, "President Tsubasa told us to, didn't he? He said to do it our own way."
Comprehension hit Kame so hard he had to sit down. "You mean..."
"Exactly." Jin smirked and sat down next to his partner. "We're not usually in the business of obeying orders, are we? And the president knows that. He and Admiral Takki let us operate as we want because that's how we get results."
Kame frowned. "I agree. But, Jin, do you realise if that's true, you've just confirmed my theory about there being something else going on here? They could've told us openly to take Ueda and the others for back-up - or at least to let our crew know what was going on - and we'd have agreed because that's the smart thing to do. The fact that we're supposed to keep everyone in the dark and isolate ourselves, proves that there's something strange about all this."
"Of course there's something strange," Commander Ueda Tatsuya said from the doorway. "We're obviously going to Venus, not Earth, and I would've thought the two of you would be thrilled at spending some time on the planet of love."
"Instead you're moping over your luggage," Ensign Nakamaru Yuichi added as he followed Ueda inside. "What's the matter? Can't decide which hotel has the most comfortable honeymoon suites?"
Kame grimaced as Ensign Taguchi Junnosuke and Lieutenant Tanaka Koki followed their crewmates inside and made themselves at home in Jin's cabin. There was no going back now. They had to tell them everything.
"I don't like it," Koki opined when Kame was done with the tale. As their man in charge of Security, it was his job to be paranoid. "You'd be leaving yourselves open to who knows what down there."
"The ship will be safe enough with the trainees, docked at Eros City spaceport," Ueda said. "Especially if we leave them Taguchi's game collection to keep them occupied. We're coming with you."
If Taguchi wasn't entirely thrilled by the prospect, he never let it stop him from smiling. "We can't let our captains have all the fun, can we?"
"I'm not sure how much "fun" we're going to have." Jin began to remove the seals on the package from Arashi. "Tracking down some cleaning lady with a stolen photograph in the middle of a bunch of courting couples. Not how I planned to spend my vacation."
"She's obviously not just a "cleaning lady"," Kame pointed out, brandishing his datapad. "According to the disc Commodore Yamashita left us, she was working at the JE Fleet HQ under the name 'Ashiya Mizuki', and her cover held up under their standard personnel background checks. But when she disappeared and they started digging deeper, they came up empty. No technical background whatsoever, no strong political opinions, nothing controversial and definitely no criminal record.
"Yet she disabled a sophisticated security system, stole a photograph that should have had no significance to her, and made it off-world using a perfectly falsified identity."
"Making her about as natural as Taguchi's new hair colour," Nakamaru joked.
In preparation for his up-coming (now postponed) leave on Earth, Taguchi had dyed his hair a bright, screaming blond in an effort to make himself seem more exotic and appealing to the locals. After all, he hadn't set foot on his home planet in over two years, and there was no telling what the current fashions were.
"I thought you guys said you liked the colour!"
Ueda cracked a smile. "That's not *quite* how I remember it..."
"Never mind that," Jin interrupted. "Look what Arashi sent us."
He'd finally managed to get the seals off - no easy task, since they'd let Aiba take care of the packaging and he'd gone overboard. Jin was now covered in animal stickers.
"These must be the gadgets Yamapi was talking about," Kame mused, picking up one of the silvery bands and turning it over in his hand. "Looks like you slip them over the barrel."
Jin pulled out his blaster and tried it out. The band fit perfectly, sliding on with ease...but once it was in place, it locked, refusing to come off again. A thin strip of gold shone down the centre, and if Jin listened closely, he could hear a faint humming, the sound of one of Arashi's unusual electronic pieces at work.
Kame nodded approval and did the same with his own weapon. "Let's hope they work, otherwise we won't be able to get in with so much as a vibraknife."
"And look, Kame." Jin pointed to the remains of the parcel. "They sent six."
-----
Five hours later, Kame and Jin disembarked from the Eros Express, the only service running between the spaceport and Eros City itself. They each carried a small suitcase containing enough to see them through the week - though nothing that they couldn't abandon if they had to - since it was essential that 'Shinkame Kazuma' and 'Akasei Jinpachi' appeared to be just like all the other tourist lovebirds.
What set them apart from the throng of couples were the guns that each man had concealed in the small of his back. (The advantage of a gene-locked trigger being that there was no chance of firing accidentally and shooting yourself as you walked.) The security guards hadn't frisked them; there was no point, not when the checkpoint scanners could build up a full-body image and even a toothpick would be detected and seized as a weapon. This meant that Jin was minus the knife he usually carried in his right boot and both men were missing their teleport bracelets. Even though the KAT-TUN was in range, the shiny silver bangles would be useless, as all outgoing and incoming transmissions were blocked everywhere in Eros City except those made from the public comm terminals at the station.
Similarly, their comm badges wouldn't work, even to talk between themselves, because the communications were routed through the ship and they, too, would be blocked.
So it was with much regret that the two captains left their ship in the capable hands of top trainee Yabu Kota and his junior crewmates. After making plans with Ueda and the rest, they'd disembarked at the spaceport, submitted themselves to the checks, and bought tickets for the first train to Eros City.
Koki and Nakamaru had left later, spending some quality time in the spaceport shops and trying out the not-nearly-as-stylish-as-anything-MatsuJun-could-design baseball caps. They'd ended up on a different carriage.
Ueda and Taguchi had left last, stopping off for a snack before the security checks, and only just made it onto the same train.
Once the teams had reached the station, they kept a cautious distance from each other. While they still had visual contact, it was necessary to establish a means of communication, and a small rental shop tucked inside the station provided the perfect solution.
"Kind of old-fashioned, aren't they?" Jin said. He was holding a compact, shiny, black cellphone of the type favoured in the early twenty-first century. "Whatever happened to using datbands for personal comms?"
Kame shrugged. "If the sign on the wall is to be believed, telecommunications bangles just aren't romantic enough for this city - if lovers are unfortunate enough to be separated, they want to be able to see each other's faces when they call. These have video capability."
"Oh." Jin flipped his open and switched it on. "Look, Kame! We can have different ringtones! And wallpapers! And-"
"And we can do pretty much anything with them except communicate with anyone outside the city walls," Kame interrupted.
"Right." Jin stopped playing around and located the phonebook function. "Can I have your number?"
Kame looked at him strangely. "Why are you asking me in English?"
"Because," Jin sounded extremely proud of himself, "it's the only common language used in Eros City. We can't rely on anyone outside the tourist industry speaking much Japanese here."
Kame smothered a groan and exchanged numbers with his partner, then urged him away from the rental place so the other two teams could pick up their own cellphones. They waited on a nearby bench and watched as first Koki then Ueda visited the shop, each emerging with a pair.
To exchange numbers, they'd worked out a plan ahead of time. The others would scribble down their details on a scrap of paper and ensure they passed them to Kame, who would send a text message to each of them with the rest. Nakamaru walked past the bench on his way to get an ice cream, casually flicking a tiny ball of paper onto Kame's jacket with all the skill of a Jovian dealer. Taguchi balled up some old wrappers he found in his pockets and began juggling with them, ensuring that when he "accidentally" lost one, it fell into Jin's lap.
Both teams disappeared with their luggage, heading in separate directions to check into pre-arranged hotels. Tourists could only make bookings from the spaceport; reservations were made and paid for during the security process - it was part of checking their credit rating - and upon arrival, visitors handed over their vouchers to the hotel.
The KAT-TUN command crew were all travelling under assumed names, of course, and had excellent credit. The reservations and cellphone rentals had been made using these false identities; Kame distributed the numbers to the others before he and Jin picked up their luggage and departed for their own hotel, a towering, ritzy building by the name of Cupid's Gate.
Public transport round Eros City was mostly a matter of small, bright pink groundcabs; small, bright pink trains; small, bright pink pony carriages and large, cool blue buses. (These last were owned by a different company.)
"You'd think Pi would've signed up for this job himself," Jin murmured to Kame as they hailed one of the open carriages. (The commodore's love of pink was surpassed only by his love of food.)
Kame hushed him and gave instructions to the driver, then climbed up onto the luxurious leather seat. Jin petted the pony for a moment and did the same; it wasn't often he got to see live animals, not now that he was no longer living on Earth, and it gave him great pleasure every time he encountered one. This particular pony, he thought, looked a little like Nakamaru. Perhaps it was the nose.
The ride didn't last long. The hotel was close enough that they could probably have walked to it, even with luggage, but they were supposed to be on holiday, after all, and Kame wanted to savour the feeling of being outdoors again, just for a little.
Freedom felt better than he'd expected, with a gentle breeze cooling his face and Jin's body pressed warmly against his side. Everywhere he looked there were couples (and the occasional group) strolling hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm, joined at the hip or just plain liplocked, and there wasn't so much as a hint of unhappiness about them. He could almost allow himself to forget their mission and snuggle contentedly under Jin's arm.
Almost.
Because between the skin of his back and the smooth leather of the seat, the solid, dependable presence of his blaster was an excellent reminder that he couldn't get too comfortable. This wasn't their area of expertise - hadn't been even before they gave up their life of piracy - and Kame wasn't at all sure they were up to the task. The commodore had provided a place to start...but the rest was up to them.
"Kame?"
"Hmm?"
"We're here, and I think the pony wants you to pet him."
Still half-lost in his comfortable reverie, Kame patted Jin a couple of times on the head.
"Not me - the pony!"
Both animal and driver were used to the idiosyncrasies of tourists, and the former accepted Kame's apologetic pat with as much grace as the latter accepted Jin's handful of Venusian dollars. For larger expenses a swipe of their false credit cards would do, but when it came to the smaller things in life it was handy to have a ready supply of cash.
Transaction complete, the carriage went on its way, leaving the two captains standing on the grounds of the luxurious Cupid's Gate. The hotel stood twenty storeys high, dominating the local skyline with its colored glass windows and ornamental cherubs, most of whom were pointing their bows and arrows at the tourists.
The cherubs weren't carrying real weapons, so why did Jin keep getting the urge to draw his gun and start using them for target practice? One of them in particular, one shifty-eyed, suspicious-looking little archer, irritated the hell out of him for no reason he could figure.
He plucked at Kame's sleeve as they walked towards the opulent front doors. "Kame?"
"I'm not petting you again, Jin. At least wait till we get to our room."
"Not that," Jin hissed. "Look at the cherub behind us!"
Kame turned. There were over a dozen of the tiny winged creatures behind them. "Any one in particular?"
"That one! The one with the wings."
Jin couldn't have been less helpful if he'd tried. "A little more specific?" Kame said.
"The one on top of that pedestal. No, don't look, it might see you!"
Kame gave his partner a tight smile. "You just told me to look, now you don't want me to? Make up your mind, Jin."
"Look, but don't let it see you looking," Jin said. "I don't want it to know that we're onto it."
"Of course, that would never do..." Kame surreptitiously peeked back at the cherub in question, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and hustled Jin towards reception. "It's only a statue," he told him firmly. "A small, kind of goofy-looking statue. I really don't think it's up to anything."
Jin disagreed. "It was facing the other way when we walked in, and turned round the moment we passed it. It's watching us, don't you feel it?"
As if to prove him wrong, the cherub promptly spun round on its pedestal to face an entirely new direction.
"See? It rotates at intervals, just like the one in the centre of the foyer fountain." Kame tried to sound reassuring, rather than mocking, but it was difficult to keep the derision out of his voice when Jin was so clearly jumping at shadows. This whole stupid mission was going to make them both paranoid if they let it, and Kame wanted to enjoy his - working - vacation.
"But the eyes-"
"Maybe it's part of the hotel security system," Kame conceded. "I could believe that. But it's not watching for *us*, Jin."
Reluctantly, Jin let himself be convinced. It was embarrassing, the way Kame was handling being planet-side again so much better than he was, and they couldn't afford to slip up. Getting freaked out by a dumb statue, no matter how creepy it was, was not allowed.
Checking in was a speedy process and since they didn't have enough luggage to warrant assistance, Jin and Kame were left to make their own way up to the third floor, Room 369.
Forgetting for a moment about their mission, Jin immediately threw himself down on the king-sized bed, bouncing a couple of times to check for springiness. He did not find it wanting.
Kame, ever the practical one, brought Jin's abandoned suitcase into the room and closed the door. He tested the lock, which satisfied him as much as the bed had pleased Jin.
It was a nice room, as Venusian hotel rooms went, with a plush red carpet and gold-trimmed furniture. There was no comm terminal, of course - guests could contact each other or the front desk using a small, voice-only console mounted near the bed - and the tinted windows let the sunshine pour in while hiding the room's occupants from outside eyes. Naturally, if not for the heavy-duty terraforming and the atmosphere generation project undertaken by the first colonists from Earth, there would have been no windows at all, much less a balcony.
"This isn't bad," Jin commented. "Not as bouncy as those Jovian low-grav mattresses, but not bad."
"Just try not to break this one," Kame advised as he began to transfer the contents of his small case into the wardrobe. "At least, not until Saturday night. Are you going to unpack?"
"Is it worth it?"
"We're on holiday, remember?"
Jin was about to contradict his partner when he realised that even in their hotel room, it probably wasn't a good idea to break cover. No talking about anything important. Fine, Jin was good at that.
He unpacked his own case while Kame investigated the luxurious en-suite bathroom; judging by the younger captain's shout of delight, it was equipped with a hot tub. They'd had one installed on the KAT-TUN but the jets were prone to breaking and they'd worn it out after escaping the living space station. (If they couldn't scrub themselves on the inside, at least they could feel clean on the outside again, though Jin wasn't sure he was ever going to be able to wash away those memories, no matter how many hot baths he took.)
"There's plenty of time for that later," Kame said as Jin joined him in the bathroom, looking longingly at the taps. "It's the middle of the afternoon, Jin!"
"So?"
"So I'd like to get some fresh air after being stuck on that train for three hours." They both knew Kame wasn't just talking about the Eros Express. "Besides, if you bath now you'll be horribly lazy for the rest of the day, get restless in the evening, and drag me out for a walk at midnight or something."
Jin tried to look hurt but since Kame laughed at his expression, he figured he hadn't done a very good job of it. "All right. Where did you want to go?"
Kame pulled out his cellphone and sent a text to Taguchi and Nakamaru. "I thought we could try that place your friend recommended."
Meanwhile...
In a small inn across the street from Cupid's Gate, Taguchi, having accidentally changed his cellphone message setting to 'vibrate', jumped a mile when Kame's text came through.
"Careful," Ueda advised. "You nearly fell out the window."
As the owners of the tiny, quaint little building had planted rosebushes along the front of the property, Taguchi thought he'd better change his settings. Even though it would have been a short fall - the inn being a bungalow - he'd still have ended up with a faceful of thorns.
He pulled out his phone and read Kame's message. "They're on the move."
"Then we should probably get going."
Ueda ran a comb through his freshly-dyed red hair, trying in vain to do something about the girly flips at the end, and made sure his air gun was hidden securely beneath his denim jacket. He'd picked it up from a weapons dealer in Okinawa on their last trip to Earth. The gun looked like a toy - all shiny plastics - but there was nothing childish about its ability to convert gases into solids. By its very nature, the weapon was never loaded, but Ueda could fire it almost anywhere. After all, if he found himself without oxygen, not being able to use his gun would be the least of his problems.
"Think we'll get to do any sightseeing while we're here?" Taguchi asked as he checked the powerpack in his own equipment.
Years of playing VR video games had made him a crack shot with almost any weapon you cared to name, but the one he favoured (which bore a remarkable resemblance to the gun used in Interplanetary Space-Duck Hunt) was a variation on the standard illegal nerve-disrupter, one with no function other than to induce uncontrollable fits of laughter in the target. It wouldn't kill anyone - not without continuous exposure - but it would certainly incapacitate them.
"You're thinking about that arcade the guidebook mentioned, aren't you?"
Taguchi gave Ueda his most winning smile. "It wouldn't hurt to take a look, would it?"
Ueda smiled back. "Later. Let's see what our friends are up to, shall we?"
Twenty minutes later...
"Why do we get stuck in the one down the street?" Nakamaru complained. "If anything happens we'll be miles away."
"Because you lost at Janken," Koki pointed out. "I told you I should've done it."
Given that the last time they'd played the game for stakes of anywhere near this magnitude, Nakamaru had wound up as an ensign despite being the oldest of the crew, he had to admit that perhaps he'd been having a run of bad luck. Jin had always been their captain (and Kame would've too, if he'd been in the military at the time), but after that they'd ended up playing for ranks, much to the despair of Commodore Yamashita who'd tried to insist that such a thing just wasn't done.
Because if it *was* done, he wanted to be an admiral.
"It's not like our hotel's that bad," Koki continued. "I checked it out; all the rooms are soundproof. Know what that means?"
Nakamaru definitely did. "We can practise as much as we want without a certain lovable idiot sneaking in and recording us! You've been working on a new rap, right?"
Koki proceeded to give his partner a quick sample of his latest effort as they strolled casually past the hotels, clubs, shops and eating establishments that made up Main Street, Eros City. Nakamaru readily joined in, beatboxing a rough accompaniment. Most of the people walking past were too wrapped up in their own lives to notice, many of them holding hands.
The KAT-TUN's top Security man and resident hotshot pilot were not, however. Neither of them wanted their gun arms to be occupied.
Nakamaru's weapon of choice, like Taguchi's, was designed to incapacitate rather than kill, which had been of considerable use to them in their pirate days. Each target required two shots: the first, to prepare their ears; the second, which was actually a series of rapid pulses, gave them a high-frequency headache for a couple of hours, rendering them sightless and soundless for a while.
Koki's gun had started out life as a regulation military blaster, plain and simple, but there was no way he could resist making modifications. The converter had been souped up so each powerpack lasted three times as long as before, there was an option to use all the remaining power in a single shot, and the original barrel had been replaced with a much shorter one with the legend 'JOKER' emblazoned on the side.
Of course, they hadn't been able to bring extra powerpacks. The scanners would've picked them up immediately. Only Jin and Kame didn't have to concern themselves with running out - their weapons could convert almost any form of matter into power, regardless of state. Not that anybody was expecting a long, drawn-out gunfight in Eros City. At least, not yet.
"You think they'll be okay?" Koki asked, nodding ever-so-slightly at the distant figures of Jin and Kame, who were walking thirty feet ahead of them. "Don't they look kind of tired to you?"
Nakamaru scratched his head. "They had a rough time recently, didn't they? I don't remember much of the dream I was having then - just that sound, you know? - but what they saw..."
Even thinking about what they'd found in NCG-whatever made Koki shudder, and he'd been lucky enough not to see it. Jin and Kame had told the others everything once they'd woken them up, but they'd kept to a strictly neutral briefing, hadn't discussed it since, and clammed up if anyone tried to approach them about it.
"I guess they'll be okay so long as they've got each other," he said.
"And the rest of us!" Nakamaru added.
"Yeah, but they won't have us for much longer if you don't get a move on!"
Meanwhile...
If he ignored the weight of his gun, the fake ID in his pocket and the fact that he was being followed at a distance by four of his friends, Kame could imagine himself to be on a genuine vacation, one taken for nothing but pleasure, which, really, was the only reason anyone came to Eros City. It catered for the romantics, the lovestruck, the wordless and the weird: no matter what you wanted out of your love life, you could find it here.
"It's nice to see the sun from a planet again, isn't it?" Jin commented. "You can't feel it on a ship."
Kame agreed, the warmth was very pleasant. He was looking forward to doing some serious basking in the sunlight as soon as the chance arose. Being outdoors again was...simply wonderful. He'd forgotten what it was like to breathe air filtered by nothing more than nature, to watch (imported) birds alight on trees, only to take flight again in the open skies. No virtual experience with the CNS Plus could ever have felt quite so real.
He consulted his personal datapad for directions. Everything private was locked, hidden and heavily encrypted, of course, so any prying Venusian officials would find nothing more incriminating than a handful of photographs of himself and Jin, a couple of novels for when he got bored, and a copy of the Eros City guidebook.
One thing they definitely wouldn't find: the collection of data Yamapi had brought, copied across from the disc.
"If we take a left here, the restaurant should be a couple of blocks down," Kame said, shutting down the datapad and returning it to his jacket pocket. "It comes highly recommended by our friend."
"Pi eats anything," Jin reminded him. "I don't know how much we should trust his choice in restaurants."
Kame caught Jin's hand where it was swinging free by his side and gave it a squeeze, murmuring, "We're not going there for the food. I mean, we are, because it'll look strange if we don't eat anything and I know you've got to be starved by now-"
"You have *no* idea."
"-but we're going to this particular restaurant because this 'Ashiya Mizuki', under the name 'Kotani Nobuko', listed it as her destination, according to Pi's man at the spaceport. It checked out, which means she definitely arrived there - assuming they weren't lying, of course."
Not all visitors to Eros City stayed in tourist establishments - some had friends or relatives living there. So when they had to state their destination at the spaceport, instead of making a hotel reservation, they provided the contact details of their host, who had to confirm with the staff that this was the case. When the visitors arrived at their destination, the host, even if it was a hotel, had to check in with the spaceport staff to inform them of this.
Jin groaned. "I hope they weren't lying. I want her to be there so we can get what we came for, get a late lunch and get out of here. I still feel like we're being watched."
Kame gave a little jerk of his head to the street behind them, indicating that yes, idiot, of course they were being watched...by their own crew. Jin felt rather sheepish after that.
"This is as much a city of voyeurs as anything else, though," Kame said. "Maybe we *are* being watched. I know I wouldn't mind watching you all day."
Jin blanched. "Then I really would get paranoid - even if it was you. Besides, it's not like I do anything much worth watching."
"It's not what you do, it's who you are."
Kame's surprise moment of unabashed romanticism made Jin smile: a sweet, lopsided curve with a hint of playful sparkle. "I could watch Kame all day too," he admitted. "I've got a lot of time to make up for."
"Just don't get confused and start watching Tat-chan by mistake, or I'll have to shoot you."
Temptation very nearly drove Jin to turn round and look at Ueda, but he beat it into submission and kept his eyes firmly fixed on the street instead. "I guess he does look a bit like you now, with that red hair. But only a teeny, tiny little bit; I'd never mix the two of you up."
"You'd better not."
Kame's jealousy, as Jin well knew, was not to be taken lightly. After all, he'd tried to wipe out humanity in the belief that Jin had been having an affair with Yamapi.
Fortunately, Kame didn't sound insanely jealous, merely teasing. Maybe the planet of love was rubbing off on him.
And now he just sounded confused. "You know, I think we've taken a wrong turn somewhere..."
Jin scanned their surroundings. They'd come out by a very familiar-looking plaza, bordered by shops on two sides, with a ring of benches round a central marble statue. While the place was reasonably crowded, full of happy couples enjoying the sunny afternoon, there was enough space for him to spot Ueda and Taguchi emerging from another side street, both looking as confused as Kame sounded.
"I'd say so. Weren't we here five minutes ago?"
Kame nodded. "And the restaurant's less than ten minutes from our hotel. I'd better look at the directions again."
(Across the plaza, Ueda was consulting his own Eros City guidebook - a print copy, since he thought it made a good souvenir - and wondering why the two captains had been walking round in circles.)
Jin paused by a bench, thinking to wait while Kame checked the map, but Kame kept going, walking in a daze as he skimmed his datapad. Before Jin realised he was standing by himself, his partner was halfway across the plaza; Ueda and Taguchi, heads bent over the former's guidebook, didn't notice Kame's approach.
Ah, that was it. They should've taken a *right* at the Oceanic Memorial, not a left. Kame was elated to find he hadn't messed up too badly with the directions. He turned to Jin to give him the good news, but Jin was no longer by his side. He swept the square in a glance, locating Jin waiting impatiently on a bench, and opened his mouth to call him over.
Before he could form a single word, the crack of a gunshot split the air, causing tourists and natives alike to fall silent.
Across the plaza, a bloodstained Eros City guidebook fluttered to the ground.