JE/NEWS- "This is Our Beginning" (2/2)
Title: This is Our Beginning (2/2)
Universe: Government Agent AU
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (cameos by members of KAT-TUN, K8, Kinki, and T&T)
Warnings/Spoilers: OOC, AU STOOPID
Word Count: 12,834
Summary: In the AU related to “To Serve and Protect,” “Waiting to Come Home,” “Guardian Spirits,” and “Strength, Weakness”- NEWS’s beginnings. Both of them.
Dedication: Ann, Nico, Jo- HAPPY NEW YEAR.
A/N: Okay, this is WAY LONGER than it should have been and ridiculously boring, but I thought I should go ahead and set up backstories and inter-group relations and everything I could about this universe as quick as possible so I could make Ann (and others) write for me in it; I think I would be more inspired in general if I could read other people’s takes on the AU. When it’s just me I bore myself silly, you see. So yeah! Here, have a really long and unnecessary set of backstories. Do with them what you will, but I’m warning you, this really is NOT an entertaining read at all. It kind of reads more like a timeline than anything else. SORRY I’M UNEXCITING. ALSO, SORRY FOR THE RETARDED ACRONYMS.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
5.
On Shige’s first day at the academy, everyone looks at him with mixed feelings of skepticism or resentment; some even go for outright disdain.
“He’s the one who got a perfect score on the entrance exam?”
“He’s the one who passed out of the first two years of courses?”
“He’s going to graduate before us?”
“He’s not so great.”
“What’s so special about him?”
“He just looks like an ordinary person if you ask me.”
Needless to say, it is a less than welcoming reception.
But he tells himself that he doesn’t care, not really. He’d joined the academy to do a job he felt was important, not to make friends or be popular or impress other people. Besides, he knows that just because he’s smart it doesn’t mean that everything will come easily to him; the rest of the cadets can praise him or loathe him for his test scores all they want but in time, they’ll all learn that he also can’t run a five minute mile to save his life and forget about everything else.
That’s just how things go; people like to focus more on someone else’s failures than their successes.
So sensibly, Shige decides on his first day that he is not going to have any expectations of himself at this place other than to learn what he can, graduate, and get a job. It can’t be helped if other people expect ridiculous things of him. That’s their own fault.
He tells himself he’s not going to let any of their resentment bother him at all. Not even a little.
And so he bears with it as best he can, ignoring the majority of the looks and not-so-subtle whispers on his way to the dormitory; his one and only wish about this place is that his roommate is someone tolerable (or at the very least, subtle).
But those hopes are quickly dashed; the second he walks into the door of his room he hears: “Yo! So you’re the prodigy, ne!”
Kusano had been hanging upside down from the pole inside of the closet doing sit ups; Shige gets the crap scared out of him because you can’t see the closet door from the doorway until you turn around.
“Don’t just do that!” he yelps, and promptly loses all semblance of the heavy dignity he’d been carrying around with him during the long, lonely walk through the dormitory halls.
Kusano laughs at his befuddled expression and leaps down from the bar, sweaty and disgusting and grinning like a crazy person. He thrusts his hand out. “I’m Kusano.”
Shige doesn’t take the hand, but nods in acknowledgement. “Kato.”
“Eh, that’s too common, isn’t it?”
Shige chokes. “It's my name!”
“Isn’t it like, the eighth most common name in Japan? I think there are ten other Kato-kun’s on roll call right now, ne.”
Shige bristles. “That’s irrelevant to me!”
“Well…what’s your other name?”
“My other name? I don’t have another name!”
Kusano’s eyebrows furrow when he hears that, the younger cadet biting his tongue in thought. “So… you’re telling me your name is… Kato Kato?”
Shige stares; to this day he is convinced that there wasn’t really any other reaction he could have had to something like that. “Kato Shigeaki,” he manages after a beat, slowly.
A grin. “Great! Shige then.”
“What?!”
But Kusano isn’t in the mood to quibble about names anymore; he reaches out, ruffles Shige’s hair, and then asks if Shige wants to go on a jog with him before dinner. He chants “Shige, Shige, Shige,” to himself all the way out the door.
Shige remembers thinking to himself that it is going to be a really long year.
~~~~~
A really long year actually turns into three very short ones; Kusano introduces Shige to Koyama from the Volatile Substances and Devices Department after Shige’s first week and he somehow finds himself constantly being dragged along behind the two of them from there on out, acting as the voice of reason to Kusano’s recklessness and Koyama’s hopelessness.
The rest of the academy considers it plain old snobbery.
“Why does he get to monopolize Koyama-kun’s time?” they mutter to themselves, because everyone likes Koyama.
“Kusano-kun is too good for him, isn’t he?”
Kusano is one of the academy’s star athletes.
“Clearly he thinks he can only hang out with the best.”
By then Shige is used to hearing that kind of stuff; he even manages to convince himself that it doesn’t bother him at all. He’s not here to make friends or impress people or be popular, after all.
But then Kusano hears it too.
And Shige can immediately tell that it kind of bothers Kusano a lot.
Kusano’s initial reaction is to march right up to the people who are whispering about his friend; somehow, he is still smiling.
“No, don’t…” Shige starts, but is summarily ignored.
The younger cadet promptly slings his arms over the gossipers’ shoulders. “Shige ne,” he tells them, using a loud voice so that everyone within a hundred feet can hear him, “Shige is going to be the best undercover agent in the world!”
Silence.
Then Kusano laughs. “And! He’s really funny!”
More silence.
But Kusano is done anyway; he heads back to Koyama and Shige and says, “Let’s go buy potato chips!” like he hadn’t just done something incredibly strange at all.
Shige groans and gets dragged along after the two of them without being able to say a word in his own defense.
But he notices that afterwards, no one really talks about him any more.
Everyone is too busy trying to figure out if Kusano is insane or not.
~~~~~
“Shige,” Koyama says one night, as they are leaving the sick bay together after sneaking Kusano some manga and magazines to help him get over his current flu internment, “Shige, we’re just like a family aren’t we? We take care of each other.”
Shige remembers rolling his eyes and telling Koyama that if they keep sneaking into the infirmary every night to give Kusano something else he definitely needs to help him feel better, the two of them are definitely going to be the next ones to get sick.
“But we’ll still take care of each other even then, right?”
“That’s not the point!”
Two days later, Koyama comes down with the exact same flu and it is Shige’s cruel fate to be dragged behind the recently recovered Kusano on multiple trips to the sick bay so that they can deliver vital potato chips that the younger cadet insists will help Kei-chan feel better faster.
Shige quietly resigns himself to getting sick next.
He’s right.
And as he lays in the infirmary feeling feverish and miserable, he clutches a useless bag of potato chips and some girly manga about boys who can turn into zodiac animals and wonders to himself when his time at the academy had become all about the useless friends he’d made and the stupid things they constantly did.
~~~~~
Now, in the present, Koyama and Kusano have not changed at all. Age has not matured them, experience has not hardened them. They’re just as useless and stupid as ever.
And they have multiplied.
“Shige,” Koyama starts suddenly, smiling broadly, “Shige, we’re still just like a family aren’t we?” he asks, eyes twinkling just like Shige remembers from all those years ago, back when the two of them had been sneaking in and out of the sick bay together. “We’re just like a family, except an even bigger one now!”
Shige sighs and looks around his apartment; Tegoshi is currently fast asleep on Ryo’s lap as the two of them stretch out on his couch like they own it while Massu and Pi are raiding his fridge (again). Uchi is going through his CD collection with a very judgmental expression on his face and Kusano is trying to feed Nana Kansai flavored Calbee. She is not impressed.
Neither is Shige. “Why are you all here again?” he demands. “I’m supposed to be resting! I’m injured!”
“You got a measly twenty eight stitches, you panty-waist. Suck it up,” Ryo calls back, and shifts apologetically when his volume stirs Tegoshi.
Koyama just laughs and helps Shige into the recliner. “Maa, maa,” he soothes, “Don’t get too worked up or your stitches will tear.” He lowers his voice before he speaks again, so Ryo can’t hear him. “And Ryo-chan was really worried about you earlier, ne.”
“That’s all well and good, but it still doesn’t answer my question,” Shige grumbles, though he realizes that Koyama is right and this is just another one of those hopeless situations that he can’t afford to get too riled about for the sake of his own wellbeing.
“Eh, we’re here because you were injured!” Kusano pipes up, when no one else bothers answering. “It’s only natural, isn’t it?” He grins and offers his chips to the undercover agent next. “To help you feel better!”
Shige sighs. “At this rate you’re just making more work for me! Look at the mess I’ll have to clean up once you all leave!”
Kusano just laughs. “You’re funny, Shige!” he says, and ends up eating the chips himself when no one takes him up on his offer to share.
Shige has a headache.
And as he is eventually forced into a bitter kind of resignation with regards to his current circumstances (i.e. after everyone falls asleep all over his living room), he can’t help but ask himself how his circle of useless friends who do stupid things has grown so inconceivably large over the past few years.
Even more, he wonders when he started being completely okay with it.
~~~~~
6.
Massu’s older sister is the one who signs him up for the academy entrance exams; it’s after his high school counselor deems his grades unacceptable for any self-respecting college to accept and Massu subsequently fails all of their entrance exams to prove that counselor right.
It doesn’t get him down though; he’s always known that school isn’t his strong suit. He’s much better at running or swimming and climbing or exploring, at doing things that he can feel rather than think.
It’s just how he is.
And he’s pretty sure it’s because he’s like this that he breaks the time record for the 50m dash during his first week in the academy, all while failing every one of his basic undercover exercises and written tests in the same five days.
As such his instructors end up developing a special training course for him; it is full of various hand-to-hand combat styles, weapons training, shooting, and obstacle courses. He meets two guys named Taguchi and Kusano who are also put in these classes with him and they all become great friends and rivals. Out of the three of them Kusano is the fastest and Taguchi is the most agile; Massu is sort of a combination of the two and called the most solid by his CO, the person most like a wall.
“When you are put on a unit,” their instructors say to the three of them, “You will be the ones who stand between your teammates and imminent danger.”
“Like a shield!” Massu realizes, and feels inexplicably proud about that.
Junno looks less enthusiastic about that realization, but smiles through his apprehensions and promises to do his best anyway.
Kusano is too busy staving off boredom by tearing up bits of paper and sprinkling them in Massu’s hair.
~~~~~
The first time Massu is shot it is during a training exercise and with a red paintball.
In the last seconds of the drill he sees Moriuchi-kun from the opposite team sneaking up behind Massu’s teammate Kitayama-kun. Massu jumps between the two without thinking, absorbing the bullet into his shoulder for his teammate and hitting Moriuchi square in the chest with his own shot before crashing to the ground.
Kitayama looks sheepish as he helps Massu up once the final bell signals the end of the exercise. “You should have just told me to duck,” he mutters, and pats Massu’s shoulder in silent thanks as they head to the viewing room.
“Eh? Really?” Massu says, and looks down at the explosion of red paint on his chest thoughtfully. For some reason calling out hadn’t even occurred to him; he’d already seen all the possible permutations of the situation play out in his mind seconds before it actually happened. He’d noted the speed at which Moriuchi’s gun was rising and the play of Kitayama’s muscles that told him his teammate was already committed to moving forward rather than out of the way; it would have been impossible for Kitayama to change directions in that last second even if Massu had warned the other agent beforehand. That is why he’d jumped in without hesitation; he’d known instinctively that his actions had been right, that his reaction time and position in that particular moment in time were all factors that made his choice the only viable one for both his and Kitayama’s survival.
He doesn’t know how he knows all these things exactly; he just supposes that even though he’s never been a good thinker, he’s always been a genius of action.
When they review the video afterwards Kusano and Taguchi both agree with his decision; so does the CO in charge of the exercise.
“You did well,” the instructor tells Massu with a vague look of approval. “If someone is going to get hit, turning a fatal gunshot to a non-fatal injury is always preferable. Kitayama, be more careful next time. Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir!” they all say.
~~~~~
“Was it really as easy as you made it look?” Junno asks Massu once they’re back in the locker room and getting changed. “Just jumping in the way of a bullet like that.”
Massu nods. “Un, it was easy.”
Junno looks less convinced than Massu is, vaguely uncertain. “Was it easy because it was just paint?”
Massu beams. “It was easy because my teammate would be okay.”
The taller agent frowns at that, hanging up his flawless vest on the rack with the other training gear, right next to Massu’s red stained one. “Oh.”
For a moment, he looks like he is thinking very hard about something.
And then he smiles.
“Okay!”
Neither of them really thinks anything more about it after that.
~~~~~
The second time Massu is shot it is the real deal and he’s bleeding a lot and slightly dizzy as he and Kusano carry an unconscious Shige between them. Fire licks at their heels and they both instinctively know that the building is going down in the next thirty seconds or less.
The bullet is lodged in the fleshy part of his thigh and the moment he knows Shige and Kusano are both safe the adrenaline is suddenly gone and he collapses on his face in the dirt. But Massu only lets himself drift into unconsciousness after he hears Kusano checking the three of them in, after he hears everyone else’s voice check in too.
He blacks out thinking that if he had to; he’d defeat this unconsciousness without a second thought and run right back in there if a teammate needed him.
~~~~~
When he wakes up he’s in the hospital and it is because there are good food smells wafting from somewhere down the hallway; he looks at the clock on the wall and realizes that it is about lunchtime. Judging from how hungry he is right now, it is lunchtime at least a day after their mission and he hasn’t eaten for nearly twenty four hours.
When he shifts into a sitting position in the hopes of getting some food he notices Shige with his head lying on the corner of the mattress for the first time; the younger agent is fast asleep and wearing the same clothes from yesterday.
Massu smiles when he looks Shige over and realizes that Shige isn’t as injured as he’d appeared to be during the mission; there is just some light bruising on the undercover agent’s cheek and he has a split lip. His ankle is probably sprained too, and some of his hair is singed at the very tips.
Massu’s leg aches dully as he assesses Shige’s injuries, but it’s not really that big a bother; the worst thing about right now is probably the fact that he is hungry and can smell food but can’t see it anywhere.
For now, he’s just really glad that Shige is okay.
~~~~~
The third time he is shot it’s just a scrape from where a bullet brushed his arm.
But even still, he thinks that it’s the most painful injury of his whole life.
Because as the EMTs apply bandages and disinfectant to his wound he can see the faint shapes of two other ambulances in the distance, can hear the deafening roar of their sirens as they rush through the streets to the nearest hospital.
Uchi and Kusano are inside those ambulances right now, fighting for their lives.
And somehow, the fact that Massu is sitting here with just a tiny scratch on his arm makes it hurt more than anything else ever has.
Massu feels like he failed.
~~~~~
The fourth time Massu is shot it is because he is pushing Tegoshi out of harm’s way.
The bullet grazes his temple and he feels himself being launched backwards onto the ground from the surprising force of it all.
He hears Tegoshi’s panicked cries right before he passes out and thinks to himself that everything will be okay if Tegoshi can still talk like that right now.
Because it means that Tegoshi is okay.
Massu tells himself that there is nothing on this earth that can hurt him as long as he never fails anyone important to him ever again.
~~~~~
7.
Kusano does not regret the actions that took him off of active duty.
As far as he is concerned he did nothing wrong; breaking cover, disobeying orders, and drawing enemy fire were all things that had to be done for the sake of something greater.
He’d been the one to see the enemy sniper first, revealed to him by the faint glint of a scope that he knew wasn’t theirs from an entire building away. Maybe no one else had noticed it but he had, and that’s why he’d known what he was meant to do at that very moment.
His only regret is that he’d been too late for Uchi, that he hadn’t been able to shout in warning before his teammate had taken that first shot to kill the target at Kusano’s right, revealing his trajectory and subsequently, his position to the enemy shooter.
Jumping out from where he was hidden immediately after that had been-to Kusano-the only logical next step. Because if Uchi was first then that meant Ryo would be next; Kusano knows that all snipers, good guys or bad guys, are trained to take out the biggest threat to their interests first.
Other snipers are always the biggest threat.
That is, until some idiot breaks cover and charges right at your boss with his gun held high.
Then that idiot is the biggest threat.
Kusano still remembers the searing, tearing pain of the bullet entering his back, but even more, he remembers the feeling of satisfaction when that shot had made the enemy’s trajectory clear and Ryo took the bastard out with a particularly vicious double headshot.
Massu had been the one to drag him to safety; he’d been conscious but couldn’t really feel anything at the time, watching silently as Shige radioed in their second man down on the unit’s worst mission to date.
Kusano remembers the look of absolute panic on Shige’s face in those moments; had laughed about it to himself even, because it was good to know that Shige cared, even though all Shige did was call him a moron and complain about him all the time.
Massu had thrown off his vest and ripped off his shirt, pushing the fabric against the wound to stem the bleeding. He had looked worried, anxious.
Kusano hadn’t been able to talk, but if he could have, he would have told Massu to cheer up, to smile because this was what they did. They were the team protectors.
He’d known Massu would blame himself for it later, would say, “I should have been the one to take the hit,” because he’d had his vest on and Kusano had been working as undercover backup to Shige, so they’d been bare. A sign of trust to their targets to ensure a successful exchange of goods.
But there hadn’t been time to warn Massu about the enemy shooter, no time to tell him to take the hit instead. There’d only been a second-less than a second- and Massu should know more than anyone else that in those seconds, guys like them know exactly how these things are going to go down even before they actually do.
It had to be this way.
Kusano remembers closing his eyes as the gunshots had died down that day, thinking to himself that he would never open them again. He remembers being glad to have met all of his teammates.
~~~~~
When he wakes up there are a handful of relieved faces waiting all around his bed, tear-stained and frighteningly haunted.
“Three days,” Shige snarls, and looks torn between embracing his friend and throwing things at his head. “You were out for three days and why did you do something so stupid?!”
Kusano grins. “Good to see you too, baby.”
Koyama promptly dissolves into hiccupping sobs when he hears Kusano’s voice, which makes everyone else start to cry too. Kusano notes absently that Tegoshi is the only one in the room who can do it pretty (which just figures), and hopes they all cut it out soon.
Seeing them like that, he plasters a smile on his face and opts not to tell them that right now, he can’t feel his legs.
~~~~~
Months later-when he can do it on his own- Kusano wheels himself into the room of his one and only regret.
It’s the first and only time he cries about what went down that day, and when he’s all out of tears, he takes a deep breath and smiles, reaching over to pat Uchi’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and knows-knows-that his teammate can hear him.
He tells himself that one day, he’ll make it up to him.
~~~~~
8.
Tegoshi is used to everything coming to him easily.
Growing up he is one of the cutest kids in the neighborhood and thus often indulged by the adults there; they give him candy and little toys and tell him what a good boy he is. At school he’s talented at sports and gets good grades not from studying hard, but from natural ability. People like him because he’s amiable and well-behaved; they look at him and can tell right away that he will make something of himself in the future.
He discovers that he’s good with computers around the time he’s finishing up middle school; high school is spent broadening his horizons in the field, writing programs, designing games, hacking top secret government databases for the pure challenge of breaking their security codes.
It’s all very, very easy.
And so is finding something to do after high school; during his third year several major technology companies write to him, offering him six figure salaries out of the gate if he comes to work for them while universities like Keio, Todai, Waseda, Meiji, and Hosei all offer him full scholarships into some of the most prestigious engineering and computer science programs in the country.
It’s all too easy. And as such, meaningless to him.
Tegoshi thinks he wants to do something bigger than work at a corporation from nine to five every night or just go to school to learn things he already knows; he feels like there is something more important out there for him to be doing, something challenging.
He doesn’t want to become the kind of adult who never really lives.
He wants to take his life into his own hands.
One afternoon during his webmastering course, he hacks the database of a certain government agency.
It takes him less than seven minutes.
He isn’t impressed.
He does however, run across the top secret profiles of several interesting looking agents; he pores over them and gets excited just by reading the descriptions of some of the things they’ve done in their careers.
Espionage. Drug busts. Sting operations. International collaborations. Saving lives, helping people in need.
Being heroes.
Right before he is about to log off of the database he notices one profile in particular that catches his eye; the agent is a trainee just a few years older than him. This person has high marks all around from his academy courses and has several glowing reports written on him by his instructors. They all call him the future of the agency.
Their great hope.
Tegoshi notes the name-Yamashita Tomohisa-and feels something he’s never felt before in his life.
Awe.
That someone so young could have such great things put on his shoulders is amazing to Tegoshi; he realizes it’s something he wants too.
He wants to be needed.
When he logs off of the site, he makes sure to leave tracks.
~~~~~
Three days later, two government agents knock on his door.
He smiles in relief when he sees them; three days is a long time to track someone who had left such an obvious trail and he had started to worry.
“Tegoshi Yuya-kun,” one of the agents says, and smiles at him amiably. “Hi.”
Tegoshi smiles back. “Hi.”
~~~~~
Tegoshi notes that Agent Takizawa is much nicer than some of the missions he has been on would make him out to be; the two of them are sitting in his living room like old friends while his mother nervously serves them tea.
“I am assuming that a person with your skills,” Takizawa begins, “would not leave a trail like that unless he wanted to be found.”
Tegoshi laughs. “Eh, really?”
Takizawa nods. “Really.” Pause. “So the question is…what do you want from us?”
Tegoshi looks thoughtful. After a moment, he settles for being frank.
“How about a job?”
Takizawa is surprised for the first time all afternoon.
~~~~~
A few months later, Tegoshi begins to think that signing up for government work was a bad idea on his a part.
The academy’s world is completely different from the safe, familiar world he had come from; it is a place where sticking out and being special just seems to get you ostracized (or worse, bullied).
The senior cadets in his advanced courses all sneer at him and pick on him; they don’t understand why someone so young and weak-looking is getting special treatment from Director Takizawa.
“Takizawa requested that he get pushed through the basics as quickly as possible,” the instructors explain, and do exactly as they’re told. Tegoshi is forced to learn in ten months what the other cadets have four or five years to learn; he takes double the course work and has private tutoring sessions at night with each of his instructors before bed.
He’s tired and lonely by the time the first week is through and not sure if he can take it anymore.
For someone who is used to everything coming so easily, life has suddenly become very, very hard.
He’s almost on the verge of giving up.
But then, one day, when he is exhausted and stretched out on the ground after failing his first attempt at the senior cadets’ advanced obstacle training course, he catches sight of a familiar face.
It’s Agent Yamashita, walking through the training grounds with Director Takizawa.
The two seem to be deep in conversation; Tegoshi notices the slight furrow in Yamashita’s brow as they speak.
“I’ll do my best,” Yamashita says after a while, with conviction if not certainty. “I’ll do my best.”
Tegoshi takes a deep breath and closes his eyes when he hears that; he struggles to his feet again. “Do your best,” he tells himself resolutely, and gets back in line to try the course one more time.
Because he knows that if he wants to catch up to Yamashita-san one day, he has to become someone who can be relied on.
This time, he makes it through the course.
But just barely.
~~~~~
Tegoshi graduates his academy training in just under a year; he has full marks for surveillance and technology, passing marks in undercover and volatile substances, and his lowest grades in hand-to-hand combat and physical strength. His mile run still takes him six minutes but the instructors suppose it is good enough given his ridiculous training schedule and pass him anyway. They realize that Takizawa must have his eye on the kid for a reason.
NEWS is formed two months later, and when Tegoshi walks into the room and sees Yamashita sitting there, waiting, he’s so nervous that he almost falls over.
This, he thinks to himself, is what I’ve been working for all this time.
And for a brief, bright moment, all the hardship he experienced to get here suddenly feels well worth it.
~~~~~
He learns on his first day as a member of NEWS that the hardships are far from over.
Most of his teammates seem surprised that they’re here, like they can’t quite wrap their minds around being in a special unit so soon after graduating. Tegoshi realizes it’s weird too. Based on the research he did on the agency before joining, all of their different concentrations would traditionally lead them to be placed in units consisting solely of similar agents; a sniper unit (like Eito), an undercover unit, a surveillance unit, a field support unit, the bomb squad, etc., etc. Yet here they are all the same, a ragtag collection of representatives from various fields of expertise. They have no idea how to work together and seem to have no desire to do so in the first place.
In the first month Tegoshi is yelled at by Nishikido-kun a lot (the sniper’s hair at the time is dyed blonde and slicked back; very against regulations and very symbolic of Eito). That terrifies Tegoshi almost as much as it makes him regret every choice he made that led him to this place; he immediately starts thinking about whether he should go ahead resign after all, whether he should enter a university or join a conglomerate like his parents had wanted.
As the weeks drag on he gets yelled at by Uchi-kun almost as often as he does by Nishikido-kun. In the meantime he is pretty much ignored completely by Yamashita. Koyama tries to talk to him now and again but it is in a nervous and kind of horrible way that makes them both uncomfortable, while Kato seems disinterested in him all together. The only ones he really knows from his academy courses are Massu, who had been assigned by their hand-to-hand instructor to work with Tegoshi on weekends, and Moriuchi, who he had the majority of his technology courses with.
Kusano is friendly enough but his enthusiasm can a little bit intimidating sometimes; Tegoshi remembers having a few physical education courses with him, but they had never talked because they had never finished their drills anywhere near each other (Kusano was always first and Tegoshi always last).
Despite having so many people on the same team, Tegoshi somehow feels even lonelier here than he had at the academy.
For the first time in his life, Tegoshi seriously begins to doubt himself.
~~~~~
It is four months after their formation when Tegoshi starts to feel something like hope again.
During their first solo mission as a unit he is so nervous when the bullets start flying that he ducks to cover without looking first and tears his palm open on a nail protruding from one of the floor boards. It stings but wakes him up a little; he calms himself down as best he can and crawls to the closest surveillance camera to do his job. He manages to hook his computer up to the circuit after a few fumbling misses and drips blood all over the keyboard as he hacks the system to cut the feeds. It’s not going to help a whole lot but it should be enough to keep the enemy from finding his teammates prematurely.
In the meantime he pulls out his gun-cleaned and dried to perfection-and hopes that he doesn’t get himself killed.
Afterwards he’s alive and fine; everyone is. He hides the injury he sustained from the nail because it’s embarrassing, an amateur mistake he made by jumping the gun. He doesn’t want them to know about it, feels like it might taint today’s victory somehow.
But Nishikido notices.
Snipers notice everything.
Nishikido promptly blows up at the younger agent about it; it is under the intensity of that angry gaze when Tegoshi realizes that he is more afraid of his teammate than he was of the bullets flying by his head back in the enemy stronghold.
Somehow, that seems wrong to him.
But then Nishikido grabs Tegoshi’s injured hand in his own and holds it open, strong but gentle. There is something in his voice when he talks as well, when he says, “You clearly have no idea what you’re doing,” with feigned annoyance. It reminds Tegoshi of his mother’s voice back when he was young, how she would try to be angry with him and only end up sounding concerned after he’d found yet another way to scrape himself up playing soccer or climbing trees.
For some reason, when Nishikido talks to him like that-scolds him like that- he feels instantly comforted.
He begins to realize that maybe everyone in NEWS-even when they don’t mean to be-is a nice person.
It’s enough to make him smile again, for the first time in a long time.
“Hai!” he tells Nishikido brightly, “From today on, I’ll do my best!”
When he says it, it’s more to himself than anyone else.
~~~~~
Tegoshi’s smile lasts for almost two whole years, right up until the moment when he has to watch-helpless-as Uchi and Kusano are shot on the surveillance cameras right in front of him.
He thinks it is the hardest thing he has been through in his entire life.
~~~~~
Afterwards, when the mission is a disaster and Uchi won’t wake up, Tegoshi sits in the hallway of the hospital with his knees up against his chest, crying softly. Yamapi keeps getting called away to give statements and get blamed while Ryo throws things a lot and Shige screams in the bathrooms when he thinks no one is watching. Massu’s lost his appetite and Koyama’s lip is always trembling, like he’s trying to bite back the torrent of tears threatening to burst out because he feels like he needs to stay strong for everyone.
“It will be okay,” he murmurs to the younger members, “It will be okay.”
It isn’t okay.
After a month of waiting for Uchi to wake up, after finding out that Kusano can’t move his legs, after endless hearings and meetings and pointing fingers and media disasters, Takizawa finally caves.
He tells them, “For now, you can’t be NEWS anymore.”
In that single moment of devastating loss, they all discover that even though they never wanted to be NEWS in the first place, they can’t imagine being anything else.
~~~~~
After the announcement everyone cries and gathers close; they put their arms around each other and promise that they will return one day, that they’ll be NEWS again.
“Until then,” Koyama blubbers, “We have to keep moving forward.”
Everyone nods and tries to look resolute for the sake of everyone else, but in truth, none of them are sure what will happen next.
No one knows if they will ever get to be NEWS again.
~~~~~
In the months that follow NEWS’s disbandment KAT-TUN is transferred from the smaller west Tokyo branch of the agency to the main branch; Tegoshi suspects it is because of those rumors he’s heard regarding how Domoto Koichi-san is sick and tired of KAT-TUN’s attitudes (apparently he is overheard saying that the best thing about KAT-TUN is how clever their name is and nothing else). Administrator Imai gladly takes the fledgling unit under his command to fill the void NEWS’s suspension has caused in the main office and Jin’s team spends the next few months carving out its own niche under Tsubasa’s relaxed (and somewhat mischievous) guidance. Within a year they go from a B-grade junior unit to the top ranking team in the agency’s largest precinct.
“Sometimes,” Tsubasa says wryly, when asked about how he whipped KAT-TUN into shape, “the best thing you can do for someone else is leave them alone.”
In the meantime, Tegoshi is assigned to various branches throughout the country as a consultant; he usually works with junior agent groups on small time cases by cleaning up video and audio or by monitoring and analyzing yakuza activity.
“Maybe if we reposition Camera A more towards the right we can get the door without obstructing sound from the office too badly,” he suggests to one of his kouhai one day, as they pore over the video footage sent back by some of their bugs.
“Sure, that sounds great, senpai!” the kid chirps, and agrees without a moment’s hesitation. He scurries off to report the adjustments right away.
Tegoshi watches him go and sighs to himself; Shige would have at least argued about the sunlight filtering in through a nearby window at four pm and how that might give them unclear evidence during the two hours it takes for the sun to move out of view again. He would say it’s better to have partially obstructed footage for twenty four hours of the day rather than have a clear visual for twenty two hours and then have two hours where they are left completely helpless.
Shige always likes to cover all his bases as evenly as he can; Tegoshi is more of a risk taker because he has good luck with these things.
And in those differences, their group had found an odd sort of balance, if only because Tegoshi had learned early on that if he wanted to suggest something, he’d better have done all the preparation work and structured his argument into something solid and viable beforehand lest it be shot down by the quick thinking (and quick tongues) of the other members.
Right now, with everyone readily agreeing to his suggestions without a second thought, Tegoshi feels like he is losing his edge.
Right now, he feels like something very important in his life is missing.
He tries not to think about it too much though, because for now, all he can do is work as hard as he can and continue to become stronger as an agent for his own sake and for the sake of his teammates as they wait for one another.
When they are reunited, he doesn’t want to be the only one who hasn’t moved forward.
And so he tells himself that he’ll work hard-he’ll endure- so that when they meet again, they can be proud of him.
In the meantime, this loneliness, this suffering, this hardship, won’t be in vain.
For someone who is used to things coming easily to him, Tegoshi never works harder for anything than he does for the sake of NEWS.
~~~~~
As it turns out, NEWS is reinstated as a unit eight long months later. When Tegoshi walks into the old office after receiving the summons it feels like that missing part of himself is starting to come back together again, just like that. When he looks at the others’ faces as they arrive one by one through the doors after him, he thinks they feel the same way he does. Knows it.
Everyone is stronger than they were eight months ago.
The six of them gather in the conference room and Yamapi hands them their briefings one at a time, like it is some sort of important ceremony. Everyone notes that there are two extra copies of the case with him as well; when he’s done handing out their files he pushes the extras under his own, like he wants to hold on to them just in case the two people who they belong to decide to walk through that door and join them suddenly.
And then-for the first time in eight long months- they sit down and get to business.
It’s terrifying and exciting all at once; no one says anything because they can barely breathe.
But then Yamapi smiles.
“This,” he tells them, and has the strongest look of conviction in his eye that any of them have ever seen to date, “is our new beginning. Our fresh start.”
And it is at that very moment, with these people-this team-that Tegoshi Yuya finally learns that nothing worth having in this world ever comes easy.
He knows that NEWS was worth fighting for.
END
( Part 1)
EDITS PLZ.
Universe: Government Agent AU
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (cameos by members of KAT-TUN, K8, Kinki, and T&T)
Warnings/Spoilers: OOC, AU STOOPID
Word Count: 12,834
Summary: In the AU related to “To Serve and Protect,” “Waiting to Come Home,” “Guardian Spirits,” and “Strength, Weakness”- NEWS’s beginnings. Both of them.
Dedication: Ann, Nico, Jo- HAPPY NEW YEAR.
A/N: Okay, this is WAY LONGER than it should have been and ridiculously boring, but I thought I should go ahead and set up backstories and inter-group relations and everything I could about this universe as quick as possible so I could make Ann (and others) write for me in it; I think I would be more inspired in general if I could read other people’s takes on the AU. When it’s just me I bore myself silly, you see. So yeah! Here, have a really long and unnecessary set of backstories. Do with them what you will, but I’m warning you, this really is NOT an entertaining read at all. It kind of reads more like a timeline than anything else. SORRY I’M UNEXCITING. ALSO, SORRY FOR THE RETARDED ACRONYMS.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
5.
On Shige’s first day at the academy, everyone looks at him with mixed feelings of skepticism or resentment; some even go for outright disdain.
“He’s the one who got a perfect score on the entrance exam?”
“He’s the one who passed out of the first two years of courses?”
“He’s going to graduate before us?”
“He’s not so great.”
“What’s so special about him?”
“He just looks like an ordinary person if you ask me.”
Needless to say, it is a less than welcoming reception.
But he tells himself that he doesn’t care, not really. He’d joined the academy to do a job he felt was important, not to make friends or be popular or impress other people. Besides, he knows that just because he’s smart it doesn’t mean that everything will come easily to him; the rest of the cadets can praise him or loathe him for his test scores all they want but in time, they’ll all learn that he also can’t run a five minute mile to save his life and forget about everything else.
That’s just how things go; people like to focus more on someone else’s failures than their successes.
So sensibly, Shige decides on his first day that he is not going to have any expectations of himself at this place other than to learn what he can, graduate, and get a job. It can’t be helped if other people expect ridiculous things of him. That’s their own fault.
He tells himself he’s not going to let any of their resentment bother him at all. Not even a little.
And so he bears with it as best he can, ignoring the majority of the looks and not-so-subtle whispers on his way to the dormitory; his one and only wish about this place is that his roommate is someone tolerable (or at the very least, subtle).
But those hopes are quickly dashed; the second he walks into the door of his room he hears: “Yo! So you’re the prodigy, ne!”
Kusano had been hanging upside down from the pole inside of the closet doing sit ups; Shige gets the crap scared out of him because you can’t see the closet door from the doorway until you turn around.
“Don’t just do that!” he yelps, and promptly loses all semblance of the heavy dignity he’d been carrying around with him during the long, lonely walk through the dormitory halls.
Kusano laughs at his befuddled expression and leaps down from the bar, sweaty and disgusting and grinning like a crazy person. He thrusts his hand out. “I’m Kusano.”
Shige doesn’t take the hand, but nods in acknowledgement. “Kato.”
“Eh, that’s too common, isn’t it?”
Shige chokes. “It's my name!”
“Isn’t it like, the eighth most common name in Japan? I think there are ten other Kato-kun’s on roll call right now, ne.”
Shige bristles. “That’s irrelevant to me!”
“Well…what’s your other name?”
“My other name? I don’t have another name!”
Kusano’s eyebrows furrow when he hears that, the younger cadet biting his tongue in thought. “So… you’re telling me your name is… Kato Kato?”
Shige stares; to this day he is convinced that there wasn’t really any other reaction he could have had to something like that. “Kato Shigeaki,” he manages after a beat, slowly.
A grin. “Great! Shige then.”
“What?!”
But Kusano isn’t in the mood to quibble about names anymore; he reaches out, ruffles Shige’s hair, and then asks if Shige wants to go on a jog with him before dinner. He chants “Shige, Shige, Shige,” to himself all the way out the door.
Shige remembers thinking to himself that it is going to be a really long year.
~~~~~
A really long year actually turns into three very short ones; Kusano introduces Shige to Koyama from the Volatile Substances and Devices Department after Shige’s first week and he somehow finds himself constantly being dragged along behind the two of them from there on out, acting as the voice of reason to Kusano’s recklessness and Koyama’s hopelessness.
The rest of the academy considers it plain old snobbery.
“Why does he get to monopolize Koyama-kun’s time?” they mutter to themselves, because everyone likes Koyama.
“Kusano-kun is too good for him, isn’t he?”
Kusano is one of the academy’s star athletes.
“Clearly he thinks he can only hang out with the best.”
By then Shige is used to hearing that kind of stuff; he even manages to convince himself that it doesn’t bother him at all. He’s not here to make friends or impress people or be popular, after all.
But then Kusano hears it too.
And Shige can immediately tell that it kind of bothers Kusano a lot.
Kusano’s initial reaction is to march right up to the people who are whispering about his friend; somehow, he is still smiling.
“No, don’t…” Shige starts, but is summarily ignored.
The younger cadet promptly slings his arms over the gossipers’ shoulders. “Shige ne,” he tells them, using a loud voice so that everyone within a hundred feet can hear him, “Shige is going to be the best undercover agent in the world!”
Silence.
Then Kusano laughs. “And! He’s really funny!”
More silence.
But Kusano is done anyway; he heads back to Koyama and Shige and says, “Let’s go buy potato chips!” like he hadn’t just done something incredibly strange at all.
Shige groans and gets dragged along after the two of them without being able to say a word in his own defense.
But he notices that afterwards, no one really talks about him any more.
Everyone is too busy trying to figure out if Kusano is insane or not.
~~~~~
“Shige,” Koyama says one night, as they are leaving the sick bay together after sneaking Kusano some manga and magazines to help him get over his current flu internment, “Shige, we’re just like a family aren’t we? We take care of each other.”
Shige remembers rolling his eyes and telling Koyama that if they keep sneaking into the infirmary every night to give Kusano something else he definitely needs to help him feel better, the two of them are definitely going to be the next ones to get sick.
“But we’ll still take care of each other even then, right?”
“That’s not the point!”
Two days later, Koyama comes down with the exact same flu and it is Shige’s cruel fate to be dragged behind the recently recovered Kusano on multiple trips to the sick bay so that they can deliver vital potato chips that the younger cadet insists will help Kei-chan feel better faster.
Shige quietly resigns himself to getting sick next.
He’s right.
And as he lays in the infirmary feeling feverish and miserable, he clutches a useless bag of potato chips and some girly manga about boys who can turn into zodiac animals and wonders to himself when his time at the academy had become all about the useless friends he’d made and the stupid things they constantly did.
~~~~~
Now, in the present, Koyama and Kusano have not changed at all. Age has not matured them, experience has not hardened them. They’re just as useless and stupid as ever.
And they have multiplied.
“Shige,” Koyama starts suddenly, smiling broadly, “Shige, we’re still just like a family aren’t we?” he asks, eyes twinkling just like Shige remembers from all those years ago, back when the two of them had been sneaking in and out of the sick bay together. “We’re just like a family, except an even bigger one now!”
Shige sighs and looks around his apartment; Tegoshi is currently fast asleep on Ryo’s lap as the two of them stretch out on his couch like they own it while Massu and Pi are raiding his fridge (again). Uchi is going through his CD collection with a very judgmental expression on his face and Kusano is trying to feed Nana Kansai flavored Calbee. She is not impressed.
Neither is Shige. “Why are you all here again?” he demands. “I’m supposed to be resting! I’m injured!”
“You got a measly twenty eight stitches, you panty-waist. Suck it up,” Ryo calls back, and shifts apologetically when his volume stirs Tegoshi.
Koyama just laughs and helps Shige into the recliner. “Maa, maa,” he soothes, “Don’t get too worked up or your stitches will tear.” He lowers his voice before he speaks again, so Ryo can’t hear him. “And Ryo-chan was really worried about you earlier, ne.”
“That’s all well and good, but it still doesn’t answer my question,” Shige grumbles, though he realizes that Koyama is right and this is just another one of those hopeless situations that he can’t afford to get too riled about for the sake of his own wellbeing.
“Eh, we’re here because you were injured!” Kusano pipes up, when no one else bothers answering. “It’s only natural, isn’t it?” He grins and offers his chips to the undercover agent next. “To help you feel better!”
Shige sighs. “At this rate you’re just making more work for me! Look at the mess I’ll have to clean up once you all leave!”
Kusano just laughs. “You’re funny, Shige!” he says, and ends up eating the chips himself when no one takes him up on his offer to share.
Shige has a headache.
And as he is eventually forced into a bitter kind of resignation with regards to his current circumstances (i.e. after everyone falls asleep all over his living room), he can’t help but ask himself how his circle of useless friends who do stupid things has grown so inconceivably large over the past few years.
Even more, he wonders when he started being completely okay with it.
~~~~~
6.
Massu’s older sister is the one who signs him up for the academy entrance exams; it’s after his high school counselor deems his grades unacceptable for any self-respecting college to accept and Massu subsequently fails all of their entrance exams to prove that counselor right.
It doesn’t get him down though; he’s always known that school isn’t his strong suit. He’s much better at running or swimming and climbing or exploring, at doing things that he can feel rather than think.
It’s just how he is.
And he’s pretty sure it’s because he’s like this that he breaks the time record for the 50m dash during his first week in the academy, all while failing every one of his basic undercover exercises and written tests in the same five days.
As such his instructors end up developing a special training course for him; it is full of various hand-to-hand combat styles, weapons training, shooting, and obstacle courses. He meets two guys named Taguchi and Kusano who are also put in these classes with him and they all become great friends and rivals. Out of the three of them Kusano is the fastest and Taguchi is the most agile; Massu is sort of a combination of the two and called the most solid by his CO, the person most like a wall.
“When you are put on a unit,” their instructors say to the three of them, “You will be the ones who stand between your teammates and imminent danger.”
“Like a shield!” Massu realizes, and feels inexplicably proud about that.
Junno looks less enthusiastic about that realization, but smiles through his apprehensions and promises to do his best anyway.
Kusano is too busy staving off boredom by tearing up bits of paper and sprinkling them in Massu’s hair.
~~~~~
The first time Massu is shot it is during a training exercise and with a red paintball.
In the last seconds of the drill he sees Moriuchi-kun from the opposite team sneaking up behind Massu’s teammate Kitayama-kun. Massu jumps between the two without thinking, absorbing the bullet into his shoulder for his teammate and hitting Moriuchi square in the chest with his own shot before crashing to the ground.
Kitayama looks sheepish as he helps Massu up once the final bell signals the end of the exercise. “You should have just told me to duck,” he mutters, and pats Massu’s shoulder in silent thanks as they head to the viewing room.
“Eh? Really?” Massu says, and looks down at the explosion of red paint on his chest thoughtfully. For some reason calling out hadn’t even occurred to him; he’d already seen all the possible permutations of the situation play out in his mind seconds before it actually happened. He’d noted the speed at which Moriuchi’s gun was rising and the play of Kitayama’s muscles that told him his teammate was already committed to moving forward rather than out of the way; it would have been impossible for Kitayama to change directions in that last second even if Massu had warned the other agent beforehand. That is why he’d jumped in without hesitation; he’d known instinctively that his actions had been right, that his reaction time and position in that particular moment in time were all factors that made his choice the only viable one for both his and Kitayama’s survival.
He doesn’t know how he knows all these things exactly; he just supposes that even though he’s never been a good thinker, he’s always been a genius of action.
When they review the video afterwards Kusano and Taguchi both agree with his decision; so does the CO in charge of the exercise.
“You did well,” the instructor tells Massu with a vague look of approval. “If someone is going to get hit, turning a fatal gunshot to a non-fatal injury is always preferable. Kitayama, be more careful next time. Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir!” they all say.
~~~~~
“Was it really as easy as you made it look?” Junno asks Massu once they’re back in the locker room and getting changed. “Just jumping in the way of a bullet like that.”
Massu nods. “Un, it was easy.”
Junno looks less convinced than Massu is, vaguely uncertain. “Was it easy because it was just paint?”
Massu beams. “It was easy because my teammate would be okay.”
The taller agent frowns at that, hanging up his flawless vest on the rack with the other training gear, right next to Massu’s red stained one. “Oh.”
For a moment, he looks like he is thinking very hard about something.
And then he smiles.
“Okay!”
Neither of them really thinks anything more about it after that.
~~~~~
The second time Massu is shot it is the real deal and he’s bleeding a lot and slightly dizzy as he and Kusano carry an unconscious Shige between them. Fire licks at their heels and they both instinctively know that the building is going down in the next thirty seconds or less.
The bullet is lodged in the fleshy part of his thigh and the moment he knows Shige and Kusano are both safe the adrenaline is suddenly gone and he collapses on his face in the dirt. But Massu only lets himself drift into unconsciousness after he hears Kusano checking the three of them in, after he hears everyone else’s voice check in too.
He blacks out thinking that if he had to; he’d defeat this unconsciousness without a second thought and run right back in there if a teammate needed him.
~~~~~
When he wakes up he’s in the hospital and it is because there are good food smells wafting from somewhere down the hallway; he looks at the clock on the wall and realizes that it is about lunchtime. Judging from how hungry he is right now, it is lunchtime at least a day after their mission and he hasn’t eaten for nearly twenty four hours.
When he shifts into a sitting position in the hopes of getting some food he notices Shige with his head lying on the corner of the mattress for the first time; the younger agent is fast asleep and wearing the same clothes from yesterday.
Massu smiles when he looks Shige over and realizes that Shige isn’t as injured as he’d appeared to be during the mission; there is just some light bruising on the undercover agent’s cheek and he has a split lip. His ankle is probably sprained too, and some of his hair is singed at the very tips.
Massu’s leg aches dully as he assesses Shige’s injuries, but it’s not really that big a bother; the worst thing about right now is probably the fact that he is hungry and can smell food but can’t see it anywhere.
For now, he’s just really glad that Shige is okay.
~~~~~
The third time he is shot it’s just a scrape from where a bullet brushed his arm.
But even still, he thinks that it’s the most painful injury of his whole life.
Because as the EMTs apply bandages and disinfectant to his wound he can see the faint shapes of two other ambulances in the distance, can hear the deafening roar of their sirens as they rush through the streets to the nearest hospital.
Uchi and Kusano are inside those ambulances right now, fighting for their lives.
And somehow, the fact that Massu is sitting here with just a tiny scratch on his arm makes it hurt more than anything else ever has.
Massu feels like he failed.
~~~~~
The fourth time Massu is shot it is because he is pushing Tegoshi out of harm’s way.
The bullet grazes his temple and he feels himself being launched backwards onto the ground from the surprising force of it all.
He hears Tegoshi’s panicked cries right before he passes out and thinks to himself that everything will be okay if Tegoshi can still talk like that right now.
Because it means that Tegoshi is okay.
Massu tells himself that there is nothing on this earth that can hurt him as long as he never fails anyone important to him ever again.
~~~~~
7.
Kusano does not regret the actions that took him off of active duty.
As far as he is concerned he did nothing wrong; breaking cover, disobeying orders, and drawing enemy fire were all things that had to be done for the sake of something greater.
He’d been the one to see the enemy sniper first, revealed to him by the faint glint of a scope that he knew wasn’t theirs from an entire building away. Maybe no one else had noticed it but he had, and that’s why he’d known what he was meant to do at that very moment.
His only regret is that he’d been too late for Uchi, that he hadn’t been able to shout in warning before his teammate had taken that first shot to kill the target at Kusano’s right, revealing his trajectory and subsequently, his position to the enemy shooter.
Jumping out from where he was hidden immediately after that had been-to Kusano-the only logical next step. Because if Uchi was first then that meant Ryo would be next; Kusano knows that all snipers, good guys or bad guys, are trained to take out the biggest threat to their interests first.
Other snipers are always the biggest threat.
That is, until some idiot breaks cover and charges right at your boss with his gun held high.
Then that idiot is the biggest threat.
Kusano still remembers the searing, tearing pain of the bullet entering his back, but even more, he remembers the feeling of satisfaction when that shot had made the enemy’s trajectory clear and Ryo took the bastard out with a particularly vicious double headshot.
Massu had been the one to drag him to safety; he’d been conscious but couldn’t really feel anything at the time, watching silently as Shige radioed in their second man down on the unit’s worst mission to date.
Kusano remembers the look of absolute panic on Shige’s face in those moments; had laughed about it to himself even, because it was good to know that Shige cared, even though all Shige did was call him a moron and complain about him all the time.
Massu had thrown off his vest and ripped off his shirt, pushing the fabric against the wound to stem the bleeding. He had looked worried, anxious.
Kusano hadn’t been able to talk, but if he could have, he would have told Massu to cheer up, to smile because this was what they did. They were the team protectors.
He’d known Massu would blame himself for it later, would say, “I should have been the one to take the hit,” because he’d had his vest on and Kusano had been working as undercover backup to Shige, so they’d been bare. A sign of trust to their targets to ensure a successful exchange of goods.
But there hadn’t been time to warn Massu about the enemy shooter, no time to tell him to take the hit instead. There’d only been a second-less than a second- and Massu should know more than anyone else that in those seconds, guys like them know exactly how these things are going to go down even before they actually do.
It had to be this way.
Kusano remembers closing his eyes as the gunshots had died down that day, thinking to himself that he would never open them again. He remembers being glad to have met all of his teammates.
~~~~~
When he wakes up there are a handful of relieved faces waiting all around his bed, tear-stained and frighteningly haunted.
“Three days,” Shige snarls, and looks torn between embracing his friend and throwing things at his head. “You were out for three days and why did you do something so stupid?!”
Kusano grins. “Good to see you too, baby.”
Koyama promptly dissolves into hiccupping sobs when he hears Kusano’s voice, which makes everyone else start to cry too. Kusano notes absently that Tegoshi is the only one in the room who can do it pretty (which just figures), and hopes they all cut it out soon.
Seeing them like that, he plasters a smile on his face and opts not to tell them that right now, he can’t feel his legs.
~~~~~
Months later-when he can do it on his own- Kusano wheels himself into the room of his one and only regret.
It’s the first and only time he cries about what went down that day, and when he’s all out of tears, he takes a deep breath and smiles, reaching over to pat Uchi’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and knows-knows-that his teammate can hear him.
He tells himself that one day, he’ll make it up to him.
~~~~~
8.
Tegoshi is used to everything coming to him easily.
Growing up he is one of the cutest kids in the neighborhood and thus often indulged by the adults there; they give him candy and little toys and tell him what a good boy he is. At school he’s talented at sports and gets good grades not from studying hard, but from natural ability. People like him because he’s amiable and well-behaved; they look at him and can tell right away that he will make something of himself in the future.
He discovers that he’s good with computers around the time he’s finishing up middle school; high school is spent broadening his horizons in the field, writing programs, designing games, hacking top secret government databases for the pure challenge of breaking their security codes.
It’s all very, very easy.
And so is finding something to do after high school; during his third year several major technology companies write to him, offering him six figure salaries out of the gate if he comes to work for them while universities like Keio, Todai, Waseda, Meiji, and Hosei all offer him full scholarships into some of the most prestigious engineering and computer science programs in the country.
It’s all too easy. And as such, meaningless to him.
Tegoshi thinks he wants to do something bigger than work at a corporation from nine to five every night or just go to school to learn things he already knows; he feels like there is something more important out there for him to be doing, something challenging.
He doesn’t want to become the kind of adult who never really lives.
He wants to take his life into his own hands.
One afternoon during his webmastering course, he hacks the database of a certain government agency.
It takes him less than seven minutes.
He isn’t impressed.
He does however, run across the top secret profiles of several interesting looking agents; he pores over them and gets excited just by reading the descriptions of some of the things they’ve done in their careers.
Espionage. Drug busts. Sting operations. International collaborations. Saving lives, helping people in need.
Being heroes.
Right before he is about to log off of the database he notices one profile in particular that catches his eye; the agent is a trainee just a few years older than him. This person has high marks all around from his academy courses and has several glowing reports written on him by his instructors. They all call him the future of the agency.
Their great hope.
Tegoshi notes the name-Yamashita Tomohisa-and feels something he’s never felt before in his life.
Awe.
That someone so young could have such great things put on his shoulders is amazing to Tegoshi; he realizes it’s something he wants too.
He wants to be needed.
When he logs off of the site, he makes sure to leave tracks.
~~~~~
Three days later, two government agents knock on his door.
He smiles in relief when he sees them; three days is a long time to track someone who had left such an obvious trail and he had started to worry.
“Tegoshi Yuya-kun,” one of the agents says, and smiles at him amiably. “Hi.”
Tegoshi smiles back. “Hi.”
~~~~~
Tegoshi notes that Agent Takizawa is much nicer than some of the missions he has been on would make him out to be; the two of them are sitting in his living room like old friends while his mother nervously serves them tea.
“I am assuming that a person with your skills,” Takizawa begins, “would not leave a trail like that unless he wanted to be found.”
Tegoshi laughs. “Eh, really?”
Takizawa nods. “Really.” Pause. “So the question is…what do you want from us?”
Tegoshi looks thoughtful. After a moment, he settles for being frank.
“How about a job?”
Takizawa is surprised for the first time all afternoon.
~~~~~
A few months later, Tegoshi begins to think that signing up for government work was a bad idea on his a part.
The academy’s world is completely different from the safe, familiar world he had come from; it is a place where sticking out and being special just seems to get you ostracized (or worse, bullied).
The senior cadets in his advanced courses all sneer at him and pick on him; they don’t understand why someone so young and weak-looking is getting special treatment from Director Takizawa.
“Takizawa requested that he get pushed through the basics as quickly as possible,” the instructors explain, and do exactly as they’re told. Tegoshi is forced to learn in ten months what the other cadets have four or five years to learn; he takes double the course work and has private tutoring sessions at night with each of his instructors before bed.
He’s tired and lonely by the time the first week is through and not sure if he can take it anymore.
For someone who is used to everything coming so easily, life has suddenly become very, very hard.
He’s almost on the verge of giving up.
But then, one day, when he is exhausted and stretched out on the ground after failing his first attempt at the senior cadets’ advanced obstacle training course, he catches sight of a familiar face.
It’s Agent Yamashita, walking through the training grounds with Director Takizawa.
The two seem to be deep in conversation; Tegoshi notices the slight furrow in Yamashita’s brow as they speak.
“I’ll do my best,” Yamashita says after a while, with conviction if not certainty. “I’ll do my best.”
Tegoshi takes a deep breath and closes his eyes when he hears that; he struggles to his feet again. “Do your best,” he tells himself resolutely, and gets back in line to try the course one more time.
Because he knows that if he wants to catch up to Yamashita-san one day, he has to become someone who can be relied on.
This time, he makes it through the course.
But just barely.
~~~~~
Tegoshi graduates his academy training in just under a year; he has full marks for surveillance and technology, passing marks in undercover and volatile substances, and his lowest grades in hand-to-hand combat and physical strength. His mile run still takes him six minutes but the instructors suppose it is good enough given his ridiculous training schedule and pass him anyway. They realize that Takizawa must have his eye on the kid for a reason.
NEWS is formed two months later, and when Tegoshi walks into the room and sees Yamashita sitting there, waiting, he’s so nervous that he almost falls over.
This, he thinks to himself, is what I’ve been working for all this time.
And for a brief, bright moment, all the hardship he experienced to get here suddenly feels well worth it.
~~~~~
He learns on his first day as a member of NEWS that the hardships are far from over.
Most of his teammates seem surprised that they’re here, like they can’t quite wrap their minds around being in a special unit so soon after graduating. Tegoshi realizes it’s weird too. Based on the research he did on the agency before joining, all of their different concentrations would traditionally lead them to be placed in units consisting solely of similar agents; a sniper unit (like Eito), an undercover unit, a surveillance unit, a field support unit, the bomb squad, etc., etc. Yet here they are all the same, a ragtag collection of representatives from various fields of expertise. They have no idea how to work together and seem to have no desire to do so in the first place.
In the first month Tegoshi is yelled at by Nishikido-kun a lot (the sniper’s hair at the time is dyed blonde and slicked back; very against regulations and very symbolic of Eito). That terrifies Tegoshi almost as much as it makes him regret every choice he made that led him to this place; he immediately starts thinking about whether he should go ahead resign after all, whether he should enter a university or join a conglomerate like his parents had wanted.
As the weeks drag on he gets yelled at by Uchi-kun almost as often as he does by Nishikido-kun. In the meantime he is pretty much ignored completely by Yamashita. Koyama tries to talk to him now and again but it is in a nervous and kind of horrible way that makes them both uncomfortable, while Kato seems disinterested in him all together. The only ones he really knows from his academy courses are Massu, who had been assigned by their hand-to-hand instructor to work with Tegoshi on weekends, and Moriuchi, who he had the majority of his technology courses with.
Kusano is friendly enough but his enthusiasm can a little bit intimidating sometimes; Tegoshi remembers having a few physical education courses with him, but they had never talked because they had never finished their drills anywhere near each other (Kusano was always first and Tegoshi always last).
Despite having so many people on the same team, Tegoshi somehow feels even lonelier here than he had at the academy.
For the first time in his life, Tegoshi seriously begins to doubt himself.
~~~~~
It is four months after their formation when Tegoshi starts to feel something like hope again.
During their first solo mission as a unit he is so nervous when the bullets start flying that he ducks to cover without looking first and tears his palm open on a nail protruding from one of the floor boards. It stings but wakes him up a little; he calms himself down as best he can and crawls to the closest surveillance camera to do his job. He manages to hook his computer up to the circuit after a few fumbling misses and drips blood all over the keyboard as he hacks the system to cut the feeds. It’s not going to help a whole lot but it should be enough to keep the enemy from finding his teammates prematurely.
In the meantime he pulls out his gun-cleaned and dried to perfection-and hopes that he doesn’t get himself killed.
Afterwards he’s alive and fine; everyone is. He hides the injury he sustained from the nail because it’s embarrassing, an amateur mistake he made by jumping the gun. He doesn’t want them to know about it, feels like it might taint today’s victory somehow.
But Nishikido notices.
Snipers notice everything.
Nishikido promptly blows up at the younger agent about it; it is under the intensity of that angry gaze when Tegoshi realizes that he is more afraid of his teammate than he was of the bullets flying by his head back in the enemy stronghold.
Somehow, that seems wrong to him.
But then Nishikido grabs Tegoshi’s injured hand in his own and holds it open, strong but gentle. There is something in his voice when he talks as well, when he says, “You clearly have no idea what you’re doing,” with feigned annoyance. It reminds Tegoshi of his mother’s voice back when he was young, how she would try to be angry with him and only end up sounding concerned after he’d found yet another way to scrape himself up playing soccer or climbing trees.
For some reason, when Nishikido talks to him like that-scolds him like that- he feels instantly comforted.
He begins to realize that maybe everyone in NEWS-even when they don’t mean to be-is a nice person.
It’s enough to make him smile again, for the first time in a long time.
“Hai!” he tells Nishikido brightly, “From today on, I’ll do my best!”
When he says it, it’s more to himself than anyone else.
~~~~~
Tegoshi’s smile lasts for almost two whole years, right up until the moment when he has to watch-helpless-as Uchi and Kusano are shot on the surveillance cameras right in front of him.
He thinks it is the hardest thing he has been through in his entire life.
~~~~~
Afterwards, when the mission is a disaster and Uchi won’t wake up, Tegoshi sits in the hallway of the hospital with his knees up against his chest, crying softly. Yamapi keeps getting called away to give statements and get blamed while Ryo throws things a lot and Shige screams in the bathrooms when he thinks no one is watching. Massu’s lost his appetite and Koyama’s lip is always trembling, like he’s trying to bite back the torrent of tears threatening to burst out because he feels like he needs to stay strong for everyone.
“It will be okay,” he murmurs to the younger members, “It will be okay.”
It isn’t okay.
After a month of waiting for Uchi to wake up, after finding out that Kusano can’t move his legs, after endless hearings and meetings and pointing fingers and media disasters, Takizawa finally caves.
He tells them, “For now, you can’t be NEWS anymore.”
In that single moment of devastating loss, they all discover that even though they never wanted to be NEWS in the first place, they can’t imagine being anything else.
~~~~~
After the announcement everyone cries and gathers close; they put their arms around each other and promise that they will return one day, that they’ll be NEWS again.
“Until then,” Koyama blubbers, “We have to keep moving forward.”
Everyone nods and tries to look resolute for the sake of everyone else, but in truth, none of them are sure what will happen next.
No one knows if they will ever get to be NEWS again.
~~~~~
In the months that follow NEWS’s disbandment KAT-TUN is transferred from the smaller west Tokyo branch of the agency to the main branch; Tegoshi suspects it is because of those rumors he’s heard regarding how Domoto Koichi-san is sick and tired of KAT-TUN’s attitudes (apparently he is overheard saying that the best thing about KAT-TUN is how clever their name is and nothing else). Administrator Imai gladly takes the fledgling unit under his command to fill the void NEWS’s suspension has caused in the main office and Jin’s team spends the next few months carving out its own niche under Tsubasa’s relaxed (and somewhat mischievous) guidance. Within a year they go from a B-grade junior unit to the top ranking team in the agency’s largest precinct.
“Sometimes,” Tsubasa says wryly, when asked about how he whipped KAT-TUN into shape, “the best thing you can do for someone else is leave them alone.”
In the meantime, Tegoshi is assigned to various branches throughout the country as a consultant; he usually works with junior agent groups on small time cases by cleaning up video and audio or by monitoring and analyzing yakuza activity.
“Maybe if we reposition Camera A more towards the right we can get the door without obstructing sound from the office too badly,” he suggests to one of his kouhai one day, as they pore over the video footage sent back by some of their bugs.
“Sure, that sounds great, senpai!” the kid chirps, and agrees without a moment’s hesitation. He scurries off to report the adjustments right away.
Tegoshi watches him go and sighs to himself; Shige would have at least argued about the sunlight filtering in through a nearby window at four pm and how that might give them unclear evidence during the two hours it takes for the sun to move out of view again. He would say it’s better to have partially obstructed footage for twenty four hours of the day rather than have a clear visual for twenty two hours and then have two hours where they are left completely helpless.
Shige always likes to cover all his bases as evenly as he can; Tegoshi is more of a risk taker because he has good luck with these things.
And in those differences, their group had found an odd sort of balance, if only because Tegoshi had learned early on that if he wanted to suggest something, he’d better have done all the preparation work and structured his argument into something solid and viable beforehand lest it be shot down by the quick thinking (and quick tongues) of the other members.
Right now, with everyone readily agreeing to his suggestions without a second thought, Tegoshi feels like he is losing his edge.
Right now, he feels like something very important in his life is missing.
He tries not to think about it too much though, because for now, all he can do is work as hard as he can and continue to become stronger as an agent for his own sake and for the sake of his teammates as they wait for one another.
When they are reunited, he doesn’t want to be the only one who hasn’t moved forward.
And so he tells himself that he’ll work hard-he’ll endure- so that when they meet again, they can be proud of him.
In the meantime, this loneliness, this suffering, this hardship, won’t be in vain.
For someone who is used to things coming easily to him, Tegoshi never works harder for anything than he does for the sake of NEWS.
~~~~~
As it turns out, NEWS is reinstated as a unit eight long months later. When Tegoshi walks into the old office after receiving the summons it feels like that missing part of himself is starting to come back together again, just like that. When he looks at the others’ faces as they arrive one by one through the doors after him, he thinks they feel the same way he does. Knows it.
Everyone is stronger than they were eight months ago.
The six of them gather in the conference room and Yamapi hands them their briefings one at a time, like it is some sort of important ceremony. Everyone notes that there are two extra copies of the case with him as well; when he’s done handing out their files he pushes the extras under his own, like he wants to hold on to them just in case the two people who they belong to decide to walk through that door and join them suddenly.
And then-for the first time in eight long months- they sit down and get to business.
It’s terrifying and exciting all at once; no one says anything because they can barely breathe.
But then Yamapi smiles.
“This,” he tells them, and has the strongest look of conviction in his eye that any of them have ever seen to date, “is our new beginning. Our fresh start.”
And it is at that very moment, with these people-this team-that Tegoshi Yuya finally learns that nothing worth having in this world ever comes easy.
He knows that NEWS was worth fighting for.
END
( Part 1)
EDITS PLZ.