JE/NewS- "Inglorious"
Title: Inglorious
Universe: JE/NewS; Government AU ( B-side)
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (and Tackey)
Warnings/Spoilers: Crack, OOC, stupid
Word Count: 3,433
Summary: In this line of work it’s not always James Bond and Jackie Chan. Sometimes it’s poo.
Dedication: Happy birthday mousapelli! Sorry this is so um, bizarre.
A/N: Because koneho wrote an AMAZING Gov Au fic for me where NewS is full of win, my first instinct was to respond by writing one where NewS is full of fail. I DON’T KNOW, it’s so I can relate to them better in our mutual fail? LOL But yeah, filing this under the AU B-sides, so you know, it really has nothing to do with the main body of AU fic and you won’t miss anything important by skipping over it. Or so I tell myself.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
1.
As a highly renowned Junior Administrator managing various top-grade units in the East Tokyo branch of the agency, Tackey has seen and heard everything there is to see and hear in this line of work over the years; he has served under and learned from various legendary agents of the past and he also believes that he has had a part in hand-choosing and training the legends of the agency’s future. He has experienced those rare moments in his career that look like they’re straight out of a Hollywood action movie (though more often than not, he gets stuck behind a desk just like any normal office worker, doing mindless, inglorious paperwork). He’s gone undercover too, and has killed a man with his bare hands. He’s led investigations and shot bad guys as well, and has written so many damned reports that if they were to be stacked one on top of the other they would be thicker than an English dictionary.
On the flipside, he’s also been shot for being stupid, might’ve nearly died if not for Tsubasa, has been beat up and knocked unconscious and suspended from work for insubordination and worst of all, has had the various typos on his reports over the years all circled in red pen by Senior Administrator Higashiyama and sent back down to him to be corrected.
He feels that it is this amalgamation of experiences that allows him to do one particularly important aspect of his work today: serving as a sort of public spokesperson for the agency.
As of late his ultimate goal in this respect has been to try to foster a more realistic view of his agents to the Japanese public by assuring them that the men who serve as agents are regular people too. They aren’t superhuman in any way, aren’t any different from a normal salary man walking down the street.
Sure, the situations these agents find themselves in are fantastical sometimes, but Tackey tries to stress to the civilians that just because the situations are fantastical doesn’t mean the solutions have to be as well.
So far, no one believes him.
All they think about is James Bond or Jackie Chan when they hear the term “Government Agent,” looking on in awe as they imagine bullets flying and exploding buildings and near impossible car chases.
“Those guys’ lives must seriously be amazing!” people will say to Tackey, even though he’s already assured them that the agent’s lives aren’t any more or any less amazing than their own.
They don’t buy a word of it of course, but it doesn’t stop Tackey from trying.
He thinks it would be much easier to convince them if he could show them the reports he gets from his agents at the end of every week; he thinks that if the public knew some of the idiotic situations his men got themselves into, they would finally realize that he’s very, very right.
This job isn’t as glamorous as it looks.
~~~~~
2.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Ryo says, when he hears the announcement. “Pi, tell me you’re kidding.”
Yamapi looks apologetic as he hands out gloves and masks to the other members. “The DA says we definitely need to find this piece of evidence before the case goes to trial on Monday, ne.”
The rest of NewS slumps when they realize that Yamapi is being serious about this; they turn as one and look over their shoulders then, at the mountains and mountains of fertilizer bags that they are going to have to dig through over the next few days.
Ryo is bitter while pulling on his pair of latex gloves and his facemask; he glares sideways at Yamapi as the rest of the team shuffles into the warehouse. “If you had just let me shoot the guy during the bust,” Ryo mutters to their leader darkly, “then there would be no trial. And more importantly, there would be no giant bags of poo.”
Yamapi sighs and knows that Ryo is right, even as he reluctantly tears open the first bag of manure.
Everyone makes a face.
“It’s in the name of justice ne,” Yamapi tells them, and gets to work.
That week, NEWS smells like poo.
~~~~~
3.
Shige is sent on a mission to Okinawa with Koyama during the middle of summer in 2007; “We were originally planning to send Tegoshi,” Takizawa tells them, as he’s explaining the details of the assignment, “but he got pulled away on that special Peru mission last minute.”
“We can do it,” Koyama chirps dutifully, while Shige looks vaguely indignant about getting one of Tegoshi’s throwaway jobs.
“We need you two to head out and photograph shipping company A’s operations over the next few days on routine check up,” Takizawa explains, “Please make sure your records have as much detail as possible, but be subtle when you’re getting them. It shouldn’t be too hard, a day’s work maybe, but you’re booked at the hotel for both Saturday and Sunday just incase something comes up.”
Koyama looks excited. “The whole weekend? Does that mean…”
Takizawa smiles a little at his enthusiasm and reaches under his desk. “For the weekend, you’re both tourists,” he says, handing them an unwieldy high-tech camera that probably cost more than a month’s rent for either of their apartments. “Don’t get caught. Have some fun when you’re finished.”
“Yes sir!” both agents say, sharing an anticipatory look before going home to pack and prepare.
~~~~~
In Okinawa a few days later, Koyama gleefully spreads his arms over his head and breathes in deep as they look out over the water. “Shige,” he crows excitedly, “the ocean is so beautiful! The air is so fresh!”
He looks extremely satisfied with life right now.
In the meantime, Shige sighs and resigns himself to doing the work; he hefts the camera in both hands, taking pictures of the targets on the wharf and of the ocean intermittently so as to escape any immediate suspicion.
“Take some really good ones of the sea,” Koyama urges next, and sounds like they really are on vacation right now. “For memory’s sake. I’ll use it as my desktop background, ne.”
“Right, okay,” Shige murmurs perfunctorily, and has one eye on the targets the entire time Koyama is blabbering on about the scenery. “Stop fussing at me. We’re still working you know.”
Koyama just sighs happily, a dreamy look in his eye. “The sky is so blue! Ah, make sure you capture it well, Shige! We don’t ever see this kind of thing in Tokyo ne. I’ll definitely remember it for my whole life!”
Shige twitches a little. “Look, this isn’t exactly rocket science,” he tells his best friend slowly, and as he does, can’t help but wonder to himself why Director Takizawa had specifically been planning to send Tegoshi out here when it’s clearly a mission that any trained monkey could do half asleep. “All I have to do is press a button and the pictures will come out. Stop worrying about it and try to keep your voice down a little. People will stare.”
“Take one of me next!” Koyama says after that, and laughingly jumps in front of Shige while waving dual peace-signs and puffing out his cheeks.
Shige almost rolls his eyes but manages not to; at least Koyama is making their cover ridiculously believable with his antics. Though at the same time, people might walk by the two of them and think they’re, you know, that way, especially given how giggly Koyama is right now.
“Shige, Shige, take the picture!”
“Alright already.” He looks through the viewfinder and frames the taller agent hastily, snapping an obligatory shot of his best friend in front of the water before getting back to the mission.
As it turns out, the workers on the pier don’t notice them there at all for the rest of the afternoon and it ends up being one of the simplest assignments Shige has ever had.
That night, after eating live raw uni with seaweed for dinner and purple potato ice cream for dessert, Shige falls asleep in their hotel room to the sound of Koyama’s contented snoring.
He thinks to himself that it wouldn’t be so bad to be like Tegoshi and get easy missions like this all the time; maybe he should have studied surveillance and technology back at the academy after all.
~~~~~
“So when I told you to capture as much detail as possible, you decided on black and white?” Takizawa inquires a few days later, and pushes the file folder with Shige’s failed pictures inside of it towards him with raised eyebrows.
Koyama looks supremely disappointed when he sees the photographs as well, but for all the wrong reasons. “Eh? The sky is all gray! The ocean is black! Shige, what happened?” he whines.
Shige doesn’t respond because he’s too busy looking completely mortified. “Black and white? Why is it black and white?”
Takizawa watches them both for moment as they shuffle through the shots disbelievingly; he doesn’t know whether to be bemused at Shige’s utter humiliation or boggled over the fact that someone so smart could do something so stupid in the first place.
After a moment he settles for neither choice and dismisses the two agents with a tired wave instead, supposing that these kinds of things just can’t be helped sometimes. “I’ll just send KAT-TUN tomorrow,” he tells them.
Koyama pats Shige’s shoulder consolingly on the way back to their floor. “I have some pictures from my last trip there, ne. In color. You can have as many as you want, Shige.”
That week, KAT-TUN gets an easy mission and some free vacation time; all it costs is Shige’s pride.
~~~~~
4.
Shige is deep undercover and days away from making the final deal that will get them an arrest when the wiretaps in the hotel room he is staying in suddenly start to get staticky and very near impossible to deal with. Tegoshi tries to instruct him on how to fix the equipment from his end but they soon discover that the problem goes too far beyond Shige’s limited technical expertise for him to fix on his own.
“You’ll have to swoop in tonight after the target’s liaison drops Shige off ne,” Yamapi instructs a reluctant Tegoshi that afternoon, when the feedback on the microphones starts to get so bad that they can only make out every other word Shige is saying to his contacts. “Just get in, fix them, and get out, ne. Don’t worry about anything.”
Tegoshi nods as he slips on his street clothes, preparing to infiltrate Shige’s hotel room once the undercover agent’s keeper has left for the night. “It’s probably not a complicated problem,” he tells himself. “It definitely won’t take long, ne.”
~~~~~
It turns out to be a complicated problem.
“It’s not the microphones,” Tegoshi huffs after an hour, pouting irately as he holds one of the bugs up to his face and examines it critically. Again. “I mean, I don’t think it is.”
It takes him another hour after that to figure out that what they are hearing is interference from the new cell phone tower that went up across the street a few days ago rather than a problem with their own equipment. Tegoshi sighs and reports to the others that he will have to take the time to recalibrate the bugs in Shige’s room with Ryo’s help on the other end.
“This might take a while,” he breathes, and looks at Shige uncertainly.
Shige checks his watch. “They’re coming to get me again at eight, so you should have plenty of time.”
Tegoshi nods and starts to work, sprawling out on his stomach on the bed so that he can reach the microphone that’s been planted behind the headboard.
Just as he does, Shige’s liaison returns to the room unexpectedly.
“Sorry, Sugata-san,” he says as he walks in, “Something came up and we need to get back to the office a little bit earlier than pla…”
He trails off as he sees Tegoshi on the bed. “Who the hell is that?!” he demands hotly, hand automatically reaching for the gun tucked into the back of his pants; “Kitagawa-sama isn’t going to like this!”
Tegoshi looks helpless on the bed.
Shige thinks fast.
“That’s just a whore,” he says.
Tegoshi looks affronted on the bed.
Shige gives him a pointed look.
Tegoshi does his best to look like a whore. On a bed.
He runs his hand through his hair.
The liaison blinks. “Whore?”
He studies Tegoshi for a moment, while both agents hold their breaths.
Then, “Oh, sorry about that,” he laughs eventually, sounding sheepish. “I probably shoulda known she was a whore just looking at her.”
Tegoshi is promptly affronted again, but another warning look from Shige keeps him from pouting about it too badly.
Before too long the target’s liaison finally remembers himself and moves to leave the room with a polite bow and a vaguely lecherous look at Tegoshi; “We don’t gotta leave until you’re uh, finished with your business here, I guess. I’ll just be outside the door, okay, Sugata-san?”
“Thanks,” Shige manages, voice just a little bit tight as he closes the door behind the leering liaison.
A moment.
And then Tegoshi pouts. “I am not a girl!” his whispers, pink-cheeked. “Or a whore!”
Shige sighs and goes to sit on the bed next to him, looking at his watch tiredly. “We have to make sex noises now,” he says after a beat, calmly.
Tegoshi sulks.
That night, he has to scream Shige’s (fake) name like he means it.
~~~~~
5.
On a particularly long, particularly difficult stakeout of a yakuza headquarters in the November cold, Koyama is woken up five whole hours before his next shift is scheduled to begin.
“Kei-chan,” Tegoshi whispers, sounding distressed as he shakes Koyama’s shoulder, “wake up, ne.”
Koyama twitches blearily and rubs at his eyes at the sound, immediately thinking that something must be up. “Is something happening? What’s happening” he murmurs, fighting to clear his mind of sleep haze so that he can get back to work. “Did they give the location of the goods already?”
Tegoshi frowns and can’t quite look Koyama in the eye when he answers. “No… I mean, not yet.”
Koyama blinks and shivers, pulling his blanket up over his nose again. “Tego-nyan,” he starts, sounding vaguely exasperated, “if nothing’s happening, then why are you waking me up so early?” He tries not to let himself sound too grumpy at the younger agent because he knows that sometimes, this whole surveillance thing can get lonely.
But then again Tegoshi doesn’t look lonely so much as sheepish. “I don’t think this is the kind of thing I should be listening to,” he admits in a whisper after a moment, and takes off his headset. He hands it to Koyama and lowers his voice even more. “I mean it’s… you know. That kind of thing.”
Koyama, confused, doesn’t know what that is at all. He puts on the headset and listens for a moment.
And then turns bright red. “Tegorin,” he murmurs, suddenly wide awake, “maybe you should go take a nap. I’ll wake you when this is all over, ne.”
Tegoshi looks relieved. “Kei-chan is the best,” he chirps, and curls up in his seat to get some sleep.
Koyama spends the next three hours listening to a side of yakuza brotherhood that he never would have imagined exists (or rather, never wanted to imagine exists, especially in a big house full of burly, tattooed men).
During that mission, Koyama gets an uncensored lesson in the mechanics of what it takes to have a successful gay orgy without waking up the boss.
~~~~~
6.
When Massu’s sidearm gets kicked out of his hand by one of the main target’s underlings in the middle of a bust one night it leaves him and his opponent going at it hand-to-hand in a small back room of the complex from there on out, while Massu’s teammates fight their own battles in various other sectors of the building.
Mass sizes up his opponent in a matter of seconds; he realizes at a glance that this won’t be easy. The target is bigger than him, broader and taller and longer-legged.
He tries striking first, going in low, but the move is read and dodged before he can land it; a second later Massu barely manages to block the knee aimed at his stomach with both arms before a fist is sent flying at his face again. He instantly knows there’s no time to back away or dodge properly so he leans forward and down instead, catching the punch off of his shoulder before his opponent’s arm can fully extend and wrapping his right hand around the larger man’s wrist on the extension, twisting it sideways. He keeps hold of the wrist and pivots quickly into his opponent’s body after that, slamming his left elbow into the underling’s stomach. His actions are rewarded with a startled grunt before his elbow gets grabbed and his back is pulled tight against his opponent’s torso, making it almost impossible to move. He tries striking back with his head but only ends up hitting it against his opponent’s chest ineffectually, sending the two of them staggering back into one of the walls, both arms trapped.
The only other thing he can think of to do at this point is release the target’s wrist from his right hand and hope that he’s the faster of the two in striking once those arms are free.
He takes a deep breath, prepares to let go and then…
…his opponent’s head promptly explodes all over him.
Massu stares.
“What’s with that face? I interrupt you two lovebirds in the middle of something private just now?” Ryo asks coolly from the doorway after a beat, casually holding Massu’s forgotten sidearm in one hand and his Very Large Rifle in the other as the underling’s now nearly headless body slumps onto Massu’s shoulders like a grotesque blanket.
Massu frowns and wiggles out from under it hastily, heart pounding. “If you’re going to do that,” he complains, swiping at his bloody cheek and frowning, “you should warn me first, ne.”
Ryo snorts. “What, and give the guy time to dodge? Deal with it, you baby.”
Massu pouts at the sniper as he drips all over the floor on his way back outside. He hates it when Ryo does that.
That night, Massu spends five long hours washing blood (and other things) out of his hair.
~~~~~
7.
On what would otherwise be a peaceful Saturday afternoon, the sound of a bullet hitting metal is the only precursor to the explosion that suddenly engulfs a dusty backwater farmhouse somewhere in Shiga prefecture.
Just before the explosion occurs, all six members of NEWS can be seen rushing out through the doors and windows of the building in a state of high panic; all of them head towards and then dive straight into the ditch running along the pasture a few hundred feet away from the barn.
They make it just in time to hit the mud and cover their heads as the building goes up, raining charred wood and flaming bits of debris into the air.
A moment.
“I said shoot the crank!!” Shige shrieks at Ryo after a beat, “Shoot the crank!”
“I heard tank!!!” Ryo replies indignantly. “Enunciate better, stupid!”
“Um,” Tegoshi starts, wiping at his face tentatively and interrupting them before the two older agents can get into a real argument about who’s to blame for blowing up the farmhouse, “I don’t think this is mud we’re sitting in, ne.”
When a cow suddenly peers over the edge of the ditch and lows at them curiously, everyone realizes that he’s right.
It isn’t mud.
That week, NEWS comes out of their mission smelling like burning poo.
~~~~~
8.
Tackey laughs quietly to himself as he closes the last of this year’s collated NEWS reports; he’s circled any typos and misspellings he’s managed to find in them with red pen and prepares to have them sent back down to their respective owners for corrections before he submits the entire packet to a Senior Administrator for review.
In the meantime, he smiles and surreptitiously makes copies of the more amusing reports to share with Tsubasa over lunch later today; he can’t help but think that if NEWS managed to get into this much trouble over the last six months, then Tsubasa’s collection of KAT-TUN reports will be utterly priceless in comparison.
END
EDITS PLZ.
Universe: JE/NewS; Government AU ( B-side)
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (and Tackey)
Warnings/Spoilers: Crack, OOC, stupid
Word Count: 3,433
Summary: In this line of work it’s not always James Bond and Jackie Chan. Sometimes it’s poo.
Dedication: Happy birthday mousapelli! Sorry this is so um, bizarre.
A/N: Because koneho wrote an AMAZING Gov Au fic for me where NewS is full of win, my first instinct was to respond by writing one where NewS is full of fail. I DON’T KNOW, it’s so I can relate to them better in our mutual fail? LOL But yeah, filing this under the AU B-sides, so you know, it really has nothing to do with the main body of AU fic and you won’t miss anything important by skipping over it. Or so I tell myself.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
1.
As a highly renowned Junior Administrator managing various top-grade units in the East Tokyo branch of the agency, Tackey has seen and heard everything there is to see and hear in this line of work over the years; he has served under and learned from various legendary agents of the past and he also believes that he has had a part in hand-choosing and training the legends of the agency’s future. He has experienced those rare moments in his career that look like they’re straight out of a Hollywood action movie (though more often than not, he gets stuck behind a desk just like any normal office worker, doing mindless, inglorious paperwork). He’s gone undercover too, and has killed a man with his bare hands. He’s led investigations and shot bad guys as well, and has written so many damned reports that if they were to be stacked one on top of the other they would be thicker than an English dictionary.
On the flipside, he’s also been shot for being stupid, might’ve nearly died if not for Tsubasa, has been beat up and knocked unconscious and suspended from work for insubordination and worst of all, has had the various typos on his reports over the years all circled in red pen by Senior Administrator Higashiyama and sent back down to him to be corrected.
He feels that it is this amalgamation of experiences that allows him to do one particularly important aspect of his work today: serving as a sort of public spokesperson for the agency.
As of late his ultimate goal in this respect has been to try to foster a more realistic view of his agents to the Japanese public by assuring them that the men who serve as agents are regular people too. They aren’t superhuman in any way, aren’t any different from a normal salary man walking down the street.
Sure, the situations these agents find themselves in are fantastical sometimes, but Tackey tries to stress to the civilians that just because the situations are fantastical doesn’t mean the solutions have to be as well.
So far, no one believes him.
All they think about is James Bond or Jackie Chan when they hear the term “Government Agent,” looking on in awe as they imagine bullets flying and exploding buildings and near impossible car chases.
“Those guys’ lives must seriously be amazing!” people will say to Tackey, even though he’s already assured them that the agent’s lives aren’t any more or any less amazing than their own.
They don’t buy a word of it of course, but it doesn’t stop Tackey from trying.
He thinks it would be much easier to convince them if he could show them the reports he gets from his agents at the end of every week; he thinks that if the public knew some of the idiotic situations his men got themselves into, they would finally realize that he’s very, very right.
This job isn’t as glamorous as it looks.
~~~~~
2.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Ryo says, when he hears the announcement. “Pi, tell me you’re kidding.”
Yamapi looks apologetic as he hands out gloves and masks to the other members. “The DA says we definitely need to find this piece of evidence before the case goes to trial on Monday, ne.”
The rest of NewS slumps when they realize that Yamapi is being serious about this; they turn as one and look over their shoulders then, at the mountains and mountains of fertilizer bags that they are going to have to dig through over the next few days.
Ryo is bitter while pulling on his pair of latex gloves and his facemask; he glares sideways at Yamapi as the rest of the team shuffles into the warehouse. “If you had just let me shoot the guy during the bust,” Ryo mutters to their leader darkly, “then there would be no trial. And more importantly, there would be no giant bags of poo.”
Yamapi sighs and knows that Ryo is right, even as he reluctantly tears open the first bag of manure.
Everyone makes a face.
“It’s in the name of justice ne,” Yamapi tells them, and gets to work.
That week, NEWS smells like poo.
~~~~~
3.
Shige is sent on a mission to Okinawa with Koyama during the middle of summer in 2007; “We were originally planning to send Tegoshi,” Takizawa tells them, as he’s explaining the details of the assignment, “but he got pulled away on that special Peru mission last minute.”
“We can do it,” Koyama chirps dutifully, while Shige looks vaguely indignant about getting one of Tegoshi’s throwaway jobs.
“We need you two to head out and photograph shipping company A’s operations over the next few days on routine check up,” Takizawa explains, “Please make sure your records have as much detail as possible, but be subtle when you’re getting them. It shouldn’t be too hard, a day’s work maybe, but you’re booked at the hotel for both Saturday and Sunday just incase something comes up.”
Koyama looks excited. “The whole weekend? Does that mean…”
Takizawa smiles a little at his enthusiasm and reaches under his desk. “For the weekend, you’re both tourists,” he says, handing them an unwieldy high-tech camera that probably cost more than a month’s rent for either of their apartments. “Don’t get caught. Have some fun when you’re finished.”
“Yes sir!” both agents say, sharing an anticipatory look before going home to pack and prepare.
~~~~~
In Okinawa a few days later, Koyama gleefully spreads his arms over his head and breathes in deep as they look out over the water. “Shige,” he crows excitedly, “the ocean is so beautiful! The air is so fresh!”
He looks extremely satisfied with life right now.
In the meantime, Shige sighs and resigns himself to doing the work; he hefts the camera in both hands, taking pictures of the targets on the wharf and of the ocean intermittently so as to escape any immediate suspicion.
“Take some really good ones of the sea,” Koyama urges next, and sounds like they really are on vacation right now. “For memory’s sake. I’ll use it as my desktop background, ne.”
“Right, okay,” Shige murmurs perfunctorily, and has one eye on the targets the entire time Koyama is blabbering on about the scenery. “Stop fussing at me. We’re still working you know.”
Koyama just sighs happily, a dreamy look in his eye. “The sky is so blue! Ah, make sure you capture it well, Shige! We don’t ever see this kind of thing in Tokyo ne. I’ll definitely remember it for my whole life!”
Shige twitches a little. “Look, this isn’t exactly rocket science,” he tells his best friend slowly, and as he does, can’t help but wonder to himself why Director Takizawa had specifically been planning to send Tegoshi out here when it’s clearly a mission that any trained monkey could do half asleep. “All I have to do is press a button and the pictures will come out. Stop worrying about it and try to keep your voice down a little. People will stare.”
“Take one of me next!” Koyama says after that, and laughingly jumps in front of Shige while waving dual peace-signs and puffing out his cheeks.
Shige almost rolls his eyes but manages not to; at least Koyama is making their cover ridiculously believable with his antics. Though at the same time, people might walk by the two of them and think they’re, you know, that way, especially given how giggly Koyama is right now.
“Shige, Shige, take the picture!”
“Alright already.” He looks through the viewfinder and frames the taller agent hastily, snapping an obligatory shot of his best friend in front of the water before getting back to the mission.
As it turns out, the workers on the pier don’t notice them there at all for the rest of the afternoon and it ends up being one of the simplest assignments Shige has ever had.
That night, after eating live raw uni with seaweed for dinner and purple potato ice cream for dessert, Shige falls asleep in their hotel room to the sound of Koyama’s contented snoring.
He thinks to himself that it wouldn’t be so bad to be like Tegoshi and get easy missions like this all the time; maybe he should have studied surveillance and technology back at the academy after all.
~~~~~
“So when I told you to capture as much detail as possible, you decided on black and white?” Takizawa inquires a few days later, and pushes the file folder with Shige’s failed pictures inside of it towards him with raised eyebrows.
Koyama looks supremely disappointed when he sees the photographs as well, but for all the wrong reasons. “Eh? The sky is all gray! The ocean is black! Shige, what happened?” he whines.
Shige doesn’t respond because he’s too busy looking completely mortified. “Black and white? Why is it black and white?”
Takizawa watches them both for moment as they shuffle through the shots disbelievingly; he doesn’t know whether to be bemused at Shige’s utter humiliation or boggled over the fact that someone so smart could do something so stupid in the first place.
After a moment he settles for neither choice and dismisses the two agents with a tired wave instead, supposing that these kinds of things just can’t be helped sometimes. “I’ll just send KAT-TUN tomorrow,” he tells them.
Koyama pats Shige’s shoulder consolingly on the way back to their floor. “I have some pictures from my last trip there, ne. In color. You can have as many as you want, Shige.”
That week, KAT-TUN gets an easy mission and some free vacation time; all it costs is Shige’s pride.
~~~~~
4.
Shige is deep undercover and days away from making the final deal that will get them an arrest when the wiretaps in the hotel room he is staying in suddenly start to get staticky and very near impossible to deal with. Tegoshi tries to instruct him on how to fix the equipment from his end but they soon discover that the problem goes too far beyond Shige’s limited technical expertise for him to fix on his own.
“You’ll have to swoop in tonight after the target’s liaison drops Shige off ne,” Yamapi instructs a reluctant Tegoshi that afternoon, when the feedback on the microphones starts to get so bad that they can only make out every other word Shige is saying to his contacts. “Just get in, fix them, and get out, ne. Don’t worry about anything.”
Tegoshi nods as he slips on his street clothes, preparing to infiltrate Shige’s hotel room once the undercover agent’s keeper has left for the night. “It’s probably not a complicated problem,” he tells himself. “It definitely won’t take long, ne.”
~~~~~
It turns out to be a complicated problem.
“It’s not the microphones,” Tegoshi huffs after an hour, pouting irately as he holds one of the bugs up to his face and examines it critically. Again. “I mean, I don’t think it is.”
It takes him another hour after that to figure out that what they are hearing is interference from the new cell phone tower that went up across the street a few days ago rather than a problem with their own equipment. Tegoshi sighs and reports to the others that he will have to take the time to recalibrate the bugs in Shige’s room with Ryo’s help on the other end.
“This might take a while,” he breathes, and looks at Shige uncertainly.
Shige checks his watch. “They’re coming to get me again at eight, so you should have plenty of time.”
Tegoshi nods and starts to work, sprawling out on his stomach on the bed so that he can reach the microphone that’s been planted behind the headboard.
Just as he does, Shige’s liaison returns to the room unexpectedly.
“Sorry, Sugata-san,” he says as he walks in, “Something came up and we need to get back to the office a little bit earlier than pla…”
He trails off as he sees Tegoshi on the bed. “Who the hell is that?!” he demands hotly, hand automatically reaching for the gun tucked into the back of his pants; “Kitagawa-sama isn’t going to like this!”
Tegoshi looks helpless on the bed.
Shige thinks fast.
“That’s just a whore,” he says.
Tegoshi looks affronted on the bed.
Shige gives him a pointed look.
Tegoshi does his best to look like a whore. On a bed.
He runs his hand through his hair.
The liaison blinks. “Whore?”
He studies Tegoshi for a moment, while both agents hold their breaths.
Then, “Oh, sorry about that,” he laughs eventually, sounding sheepish. “I probably shoulda known she was a whore just looking at her.”
Tegoshi is promptly affronted again, but another warning look from Shige keeps him from pouting about it too badly.
Before too long the target’s liaison finally remembers himself and moves to leave the room with a polite bow and a vaguely lecherous look at Tegoshi; “We don’t gotta leave until you’re uh, finished with your business here, I guess. I’ll just be outside the door, okay, Sugata-san?”
“Thanks,” Shige manages, voice just a little bit tight as he closes the door behind the leering liaison.
A moment.
And then Tegoshi pouts. “I am not a girl!” his whispers, pink-cheeked. “Or a whore!”
Shige sighs and goes to sit on the bed next to him, looking at his watch tiredly. “We have to make sex noises now,” he says after a beat, calmly.
Tegoshi sulks.
That night, he has to scream Shige’s (fake) name like he means it.
~~~~~
5.
On a particularly long, particularly difficult stakeout of a yakuza headquarters in the November cold, Koyama is woken up five whole hours before his next shift is scheduled to begin.
“Kei-chan,” Tegoshi whispers, sounding distressed as he shakes Koyama’s shoulder, “wake up, ne.”
Koyama twitches blearily and rubs at his eyes at the sound, immediately thinking that something must be up. “Is something happening? What’s happening” he murmurs, fighting to clear his mind of sleep haze so that he can get back to work. “Did they give the location of the goods already?”
Tegoshi frowns and can’t quite look Koyama in the eye when he answers. “No… I mean, not yet.”
Koyama blinks and shivers, pulling his blanket up over his nose again. “Tego-nyan,” he starts, sounding vaguely exasperated, “if nothing’s happening, then why are you waking me up so early?” He tries not to let himself sound too grumpy at the younger agent because he knows that sometimes, this whole surveillance thing can get lonely.
But then again Tegoshi doesn’t look lonely so much as sheepish. “I don’t think this is the kind of thing I should be listening to,” he admits in a whisper after a moment, and takes off his headset. He hands it to Koyama and lowers his voice even more. “I mean it’s… you know. That kind of thing.”
Koyama, confused, doesn’t know what that is at all. He puts on the headset and listens for a moment.
And then turns bright red. “Tegorin,” he murmurs, suddenly wide awake, “maybe you should go take a nap. I’ll wake you when this is all over, ne.”
Tegoshi looks relieved. “Kei-chan is the best,” he chirps, and curls up in his seat to get some sleep.
Koyama spends the next three hours listening to a side of yakuza brotherhood that he never would have imagined exists (or rather, never wanted to imagine exists, especially in a big house full of burly, tattooed men).
During that mission, Koyama gets an uncensored lesson in the mechanics of what it takes to have a successful gay orgy without waking up the boss.
~~~~~
6.
When Massu’s sidearm gets kicked out of his hand by one of the main target’s underlings in the middle of a bust one night it leaves him and his opponent going at it hand-to-hand in a small back room of the complex from there on out, while Massu’s teammates fight their own battles in various other sectors of the building.
Mass sizes up his opponent in a matter of seconds; he realizes at a glance that this won’t be easy. The target is bigger than him, broader and taller and longer-legged.
He tries striking first, going in low, but the move is read and dodged before he can land it; a second later Massu barely manages to block the knee aimed at his stomach with both arms before a fist is sent flying at his face again. He instantly knows there’s no time to back away or dodge properly so he leans forward and down instead, catching the punch off of his shoulder before his opponent’s arm can fully extend and wrapping his right hand around the larger man’s wrist on the extension, twisting it sideways. He keeps hold of the wrist and pivots quickly into his opponent’s body after that, slamming his left elbow into the underling’s stomach. His actions are rewarded with a startled grunt before his elbow gets grabbed and his back is pulled tight against his opponent’s torso, making it almost impossible to move. He tries striking back with his head but only ends up hitting it against his opponent’s chest ineffectually, sending the two of them staggering back into one of the walls, both arms trapped.
The only other thing he can think of to do at this point is release the target’s wrist from his right hand and hope that he’s the faster of the two in striking once those arms are free.
He takes a deep breath, prepares to let go and then…
…his opponent’s head promptly explodes all over him.
Massu stares.
“What’s with that face? I interrupt you two lovebirds in the middle of something private just now?” Ryo asks coolly from the doorway after a beat, casually holding Massu’s forgotten sidearm in one hand and his Very Large Rifle in the other as the underling’s now nearly headless body slumps onto Massu’s shoulders like a grotesque blanket.
Massu frowns and wiggles out from under it hastily, heart pounding. “If you’re going to do that,” he complains, swiping at his bloody cheek and frowning, “you should warn me first, ne.”
Ryo snorts. “What, and give the guy time to dodge? Deal with it, you baby.”
Massu pouts at the sniper as he drips all over the floor on his way back outside. He hates it when Ryo does that.
That night, Massu spends five long hours washing blood (and other things) out of his hair.
~~~~~
7.
On what would otherwise be a peaceful Saturday afternoon, the sound of a bullet hitting metal is the only precursor to the explosion that suddenly engulfs a dusty backwater farmhouse somewhere in Shiga prefecture.
Just before the explosion occurs, all six members of NEWS can be seen rushing out through the doors and windows of the building in a state of high panic; all of them head towards and then dive straight into the ditch running along the pasture a few hundred feet away from the barn.
They make it just in time to hit the mud and cover their heads as the building goes up, raining charred wood and flaming bits of debris into the air.
A moment.
“I said shoot the crank!!” Shige shrieks at Ryo after a beat, “Shoot the crank!”
“I heard tank!!!” Ryo replies indignantly. “Enunciate better, stupid!”
“Um,” Tegoshi starts, wiping at his face tentatively and interrupting them before the two older agents can get into a real argument about who’s to blame for blowing up the farmhouse, “I don’t think this is mud we’re sitting in, ne.”
When a cow suddenly peers over the edge of the ditch and lows at them curiously, everyone realizes that he’s right.
It isn’t mud.
That week, NEWS comes out of their mission smelling like burning poo.
~~~~~
8.
Tackey laughs quietly to himself as he closes the last of this year’s collated NEWS reports; he’s circled any typos and misspellings he’s managed to find in them with red pen and prepares to have them sent back down to their respective owners for corrections before he submits the entire packet to a Senior Administrator for review.
In the meantime, he smiles and surreptitiously makes copies of the more amusing reports to share with Tsubasa over lunch later today; he can’t help but think that if NEWS managed to get into this much trouble over the last six months, then Tsubasa’s collection of KAT-TUN reports will be utterly priceless in comparison.
END
EDITS PLZ.