JE- "We Are Legends"
Title: We Are Legends
Universe: JE ( Government AU)
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS, KAT-TUN, TOKIO, V6, Tackey and Tsubasa, Matchy, Higashiyama (and some cameos by the BSB. That’s right, the BSB)
Warnings/Spoilers: LOTS AND LOTS OF OOC, randomness.
Word Count: 8,785
Summary: From one generation to the next: some of the agency’s most legendary exploits.
Dedication: For Koyama’s birthday fic, since he loves everyone in Johnny’s Jimusho. I thought I’d try to work on some of that love too and expand my horizons a little. SORRY IF IT’S WRONG KOYAMA.
A/N: Yeah clearly I don’t really know much about the non NewS or KAT-TUN groups. But hey, it’s an AU right? People are used to horrible characterization in AUs already so I should be golden. Also, I was totally running out of ideas before… well, before I even started this really, so yeah. LAME. Sorry, SMAP, don’t even know all of your faces yet so you get left out of the legends. Also, I tried to work in Arashi and Kinki but I was just too lazy to do the research and no one wants to read about them in this universe anyway. Blah, blah, blah, as always, some of these are based on real JE events as gathered from newshfan’s subs, PVs, Ann, and Nicole, and various other translations and videos I’ve read or seen over all this time that I can still remember the details to for some reason. Though at the same time, some of these scenarios are purely made up because I couldn’t think of any real parallels to use. Such is life.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Prologue
There are currently five legendary stories that get passed through the agency from year to year without fail, into the eager ears of new agents and academy graduates on their very first few days of service. The stories function as both an introduction and a warning of sorts, telling them what will be expected of the newcomers over the years as they serve under the badge, as well as mentally preparing them for the sacrifice, innovation, and endurance that will be necessary to survive in this line of work. The stories themselves are, unsurprisingly, some of the most amazing tales of their senpai’s exploits over the agency’s long history, a moving, awe-inspiring, and sometimes amusing collection of feats by the people who came before them and who laid the groundwork that made the agency what it is today.
“Maybe one day your team will be able to add a story to the list as well,” Administrators and Training Officers tell the rookies as they prepare them for what lies ahead, “Maybe one day you’ll do something that gives us legend number six.”
Hearing these stories always leaves stars in the young newcomers’ eyes for a long time afterwards, inspiring them to try hard and do their best so that maybe one day, they too will get to join the ranks of the agency’s most admired and successful units.
“Someday,” these junior agents often say to themselves, “I want to be just as amazing as our senpai.”
Here’s what it takes.
~~~~~
1. TOKIO
TOKIO’s legend is about endurance.
The group is sent to stake out three possible locations in which (according to agency sources) an arms deal is scheduled to take place; the meeting might (or might not) happen at any time over the next few days. “Two teams of two and one team of one,” Administrator Higashiyama explains to them as he passes out reconnaissance pictures of the sites, “Break into them as you see fit.”
It’s decided that Yamaguchi will go with Taichi and that Matsuoka will try to keep Nagase in line, leaving Director Joshima (as the most senior agent) by himself at the third location.
“No contact, no movement,” Higashiyama stresses, “this is a delicate operation and we need to make an arrest. We’re putting a three day’s grace on it and will break com silence to call you back only once it’s over. Is that clear?”
The members nod. “Yes, sir!”
TOKIO (for Terror Opposition: the Kantou Investigatory Offensive) is known throughout the ranks as the agency’s equivalent of the Marine Corps; they are the most physically dominant unit currently on active duty.
This means of course, that TOKIO is responsible for the most physically grueling missions, the most demanding basic training, and in this case, the most exhausting and extreme stakeouts.
“Three days,” Nagase whines as they spend the night before protein loading and mentally preparing themselves, “What if my butt itches like last time? I nearly died not being able to move to get it!”
“I don’t care as long as you don’t have gas like last time,” Matsuoka tells him, and watches longingly as a waitress walks by their table with several large bottles of cold beer for the booth behind them. His teammates follow suit unconsciously.
“If we drink tonight,” Taichi starts after a moment, trying to sound sensible, “the next three days without food or water will be very painful.”
A beat, as they stop to consider this.
And then five hands promptly shoot up to signal the waitress anyway.
As it is, TOKIO has no problem getting her attention when every single one of them starts shouting “Beer!” at the top of their lungs.
~~~~~
Director Joshima and his team live to regret the alcohol the next morning, when they’re made to deploy before sunrise to their respective sites. Each takes nothing more than a loaded rifle, night vision goggles, and camouflage outerwear with him.
“See you in three,” they say before leaving, all of them vaguely hungover and kind of tired but game to go anyway. They hit their knuckles against one another before breaking off, weapons slung over their shoulders and fighting back yawns.
Yamaguchi and Taichi’s site (location one) turns out to be an overgrown empty lot in the backwater countryside; they dig into the dirt and cover themselves with foliage before the sun breaks the horizon.
Nagase and Matsuoka’s site is location two, an abandoned pier that’s rotting wood is nearly completely covered by barnacles. Both bag their guns and secure themselves to the poles with rope before jumping into the chest-high water.
As for Leader, he finds himself alone at location three, on a heavily wooded hill just outside the kind of cabin that always seems to be used in various American horror films; the foliage is thick and overgrown, nearly blacking out the sky, and there’s a bed of fallen leaves blanketing the ground that crunches underfoot every time he so much as twitches.
He groans and starts digging in alongside the hill overlooking the northern face of the cabin, covering himself with leaves and doing his very best not to move even though the angle he is lying at sort of makes the blood rush to his head.
~~~~~
On day one nothing happens and the groups of two take shifts watching the site and sleeping to recover from their hangovers. Leader stays awake.
Nagase gets gas again but luckily they spend most of the time submerged up to at least their stomachs, sitting in the water together and slapping their own arms every now and again to keep from feeling too cold.
At location two, Taichi has a near miss with a curious squirrel.
And unbeknownst to him, leader’s communication link breaks.
~~~~~
On day two, something happens.
A small motorboat pulls up to the pier Nagase and Matsuoka are bobbing under. It’s not the targets but a couple of horny teenagers and Nagase nearly blows their cover snickering at them when the guy can’t figure out how to get the girl’s bra off.
Yamaguchi gets bitten by ants when the toe of his boot accidentally digs into some of their underground tunnels. He grits his teeth and doesn’t move while Taichi laughs silently at him.
Leader accidentally falls asleep.
~~~~~
On the morning of day three something important happens.
At location two, a pair of motorboats pull up to the pier in the predawn hours; it’s the targets instead of horny teenagers this time, and a briefcase containing international security codes is on the verge of being traded for cash when the two TOKIO members explode out of the water.
Matsuoka kills the buyer while Nagase wings the seller, and when two big, scary members of the agency’s most elite ground operations team are bearing down on someone after three days of no food and no water and constant cold, the best thing to do is to surrender as peacefully as possible. Which the seller does.
Nagase calls it in to the others first, “We got them,” he says, before ringing in to check in with Administrator Higashiyama.
At location one, Taichi and Yamaguchi explode out from their foliage-covered pit looking relieved; they hike back eighteen miles to where they left their foliage-covered car and head back so Yamaguchi can be treated for his ant bites.
At location three, Leader finally wakes up; he doesn’t know how long he was out.
~~~~~
During the late afternoon of day three no one sees Leader around. “He’s probably already getting pissed to recover the two nights we didn’t get any booze,” his teammates theorize to themselves, and all go home to sleep and eat and then go and get drunk too.
“Two days off to recuperate, then I want full mission reports,” Higashiyama writes to them in an e-mail memo. “Lunch and drinks on me Monday afternoon.”
At location three, Leader’s communication link is still broken.
~~~~~
On day four, everyone rests up except for Leader, who is starting to get hungry.
~~~~~
On day five, everyone is pretty much fully recovered except for Leader, who might be very slightly delusional. He manages to stay put anyway, waiting for the communication from Administrator Higashiyama that will tell him it’s okay to go home.
~~~~~
On day six, everyone is surprised when Leader is the only one who doesn’t show up for Administrator Higashiyama’s lunch meeting.
When they call his cell phone there’s no response, and when they call his apartment the answering machine picks up.
“Maybe he got really drunk,” Nagase poses.
Taichi looks thoughtful and points to the food Higashiyama ordered for them today, as congratulations. “The food is free. And there’s beer.”
A moment of silence, as they all consider this.
“Oh shit,” Yamaguchi breathes, when he realizes.
Meanwhile, back at location three, Leader falls asleep again.
To be fair, he can’t really help it.
~~~~~
When the rest of them get to the location later that morning everyone fans out in search of Director Joshima as quickly as possible, but no one can find him in any of the hiding spots that would seem optimal for their last mission. He doesn’t answer their calls so they start fearing for the worst, “Is Leader dead?” Nagase asks, looking to Taichi for reassurance and for once, appearing as young as he is.
Taichi sighs and tries to think. “Hey, there’s a hill,” he starts eventually, “maybe Leader wanted the high ground and dug in at the top.”
Nagase blinks. “Leader’s hiding spots are really good,” he agrees, and that said, the four of them start climbing up the hill.
It’s a long way to the top.
“Leader is amazing,” they breathe to themselves some time later, when they stop to rest approximately halfway up.
~~~~~
They find Director Joshima when Yamaguchi accidentally sits on him during their break.
He grunts and wakes up muttering about sake; they hasten to dig him up.
~~~~~
The first thing Leader says to his relieved teammates once he’s fully conscious and blinking up into the daylight again is, “Ah, I thought I was going to die.”
Then he stands like everything is perfectly normal, brushes the leaves off of his clothes, and calmly heads down the hill as if nothing strange had happened to him at all.
In the van on the way back, the second thing he says is, “I need some beer.”
The rest of his team takes it as a sign that he’s all right.
~~~~~
TOKIO’s legend teaches the junior agents that their physical training may be torture, but that it is torture with a reason behind it.
Because in this line of work, sometimes the most amazing thing you can do is not die.
~~~~~
2. V6
V6’s legend is about faith.
It’s a windy, rainy day when the bomb is found on a large cruise ship currently in the middle of its course touring the Pacific; the emergency gets radioed in to the agency by a frantic ship’s crew and moments later, V6 is deployed by helicopter to the scene with a meager thirty one minutes remaining on the clock. In the meantime, rescue workers frantically battle the bad weather, working to get the cruise patrons off the ship and out of the estimated blast area, battling valiantly through the needle-like rain and low visibility.
The team arrives with sixteen minutes left on the display. When the helicopter prepares to whisk away all the civilians remaining onboard (the ship’s captain and two members of his core crew), Matchy grimly radios in to tell Sakamoto’s team “Good luck.” Everyone knows that in this kind of weather, it will take the chopper a total of eight minutes to get out of the estimated blast zone and fifteen minutes to get back to solid ground again.
There’s not enough time to return for a second pickup if something goes wrong.
Inohara sees the pilot’s apologetic expression as he brings the chopper’s nose up and turns them around to leave; “You’re on your own from here on out,” his eyes read, and Inohara smiles back at him to show that there are no hard feelings. He turns and follows the rest of his unit down into the bowels of the ship.
The helicopter flies off into the distance, back towards land, and leaves the agency’s Volatile Mechanics Unit alone in the cargo hold of a luxury cruise liner, standing next to a bomb the size of a large dog that is sitting -almost innocuously-in a crate labeled “Frozen food.”
Fifteen minutes, forty eight seconds left.
“They said the crew already did a full sweep,” Sakamoto tells everyone, once he’s through whistling in amazement at the sheer size of the explosive, “Apparently this is the only one they found. But…”
“…we should make sure it isn’t,” Nagano finishes for him with a tiny, sideways smile. Before Sakamoto can respond he turns and beckons for the three youngest members of their unit to follow him to the other end of the hold so they can make themselves useful scanning for more volatiles. In the meantime, Inohara helps Sakamoto carefully lift the explosive out of the crate and carry it towards the door, where the lighting is better.
Once they set it down again they unscrew and lift the front panel so they can get a better sense of what they’re dealing with.
“Ah, we’re too old for this,” Inohara sighs, when he sees the veritable maze of complicated chips and wires flashing underneath the hood.
Sakamoto scoffs. “We’re still plenty young,” he says stubbornly, and takes out his wire cutters and grease pens.
Inohara wisely refrains from commenting on the sweat already dotting both of their brows and gets his equipment out too.
~~~~~
“I don’t think there are any other bombs; at least in the hold,” Okada reports calmly after nine more minutes have passed. “There’s no way we could check the individual cabins with only seven minutes left. We’ll have to rely on the crew’s initial sweep.”
They all pause to consider this.
“I found a cute hat,” Ken starts after a moment, and puts it on his head. He smiles. Pirouettes.
Inohara sighs before wiping his forehead with the back of his hand and turning to Go. “Could you please leash him again?” he asks, gesturing vaguely to Ken. “We’re working here.”
Go grins back wanly. “He’ll just chew through it again.”
“Alright,” Sakamoto announces after a beat, holding a coiled green wire out with his pliers triumphantly. “I think this is our culprit.”
Inohara blinks. “You think?”
Sakamoto scowls and throws one of his pens at his groupmate sourly. “Okay, I am 98% sure. What do you want from me?”
“So cut it already,” Nagano urges, as Ken starts trying to put his cute hat on Okada in the background.
Sakamoto sighs. “My hard work,” he says, “is completely unappreciated by you monkeys.”
He cuts the wire as the clock counts down to 5:12.
A second later, as he holds the successfully split wire in his hands, the clock counts down to 5:11.
A pause.
“Um…” Nagano starts carefully, “that probably wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Sakamoto, very slightly bewildered, looks back at all the other wires again, as the counter goes to 5:08.
“That had to be it. There’s no other…” he pauses. “Okay. Two options. Either it’s an independent counter and we’re freaking out about nothing or I’m really wrong and I have no idea what the shit I’m doing. Which means it has to be an independent counter by the way, because I am really good at this job.”
Inohara looks vaguely panicky. “We still have to be careful though. There should be one life raft left; the one that was for the captain and his two crew members, right?”
“There should be.”
“We can’t all fit on that,” Nagano points out sensibly. “Especially considering the fact that you two,” he gestures to Inohara and Sakamoto with one hand, “are huge.”
Inohara looks grim, but manages a smile, “You’re right about that,” he says, and turns to look at Sakamoto too.
The team leader understands. “If it’s the three of them and they leave now,” he says, eyeing the younger members in the background, “they might still be able to get far enough out of the blast area to make it. Not that it’s going to explode though, because I’m right, you assholes.”
Inohara reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “Just to be safe,” he says, before turning around and clapping his hands officiously. “Alright you three,” he announces, getting the others’ attention, “you’re all going topside and getting out of here on the life raft.”
Ken stops trying to get Okada to put his cute hat on. “Eh?” they all say.
“You heard him,” Sakamoto agrees. “We’re trying to work here, and you’re all distracting. And annoying. So go on.”
The uncharacteristic edge of seriousness in the older members’ voices as they speak stills the younger half of the team. “But…”
“No time for complaints, children,” Nagano tsks, “Leader said to go, didn’t he?”
A pause.
“Leader also said he found the wire, right?” Ken says, pouting slightly as he clutches the straw bonnet he found in both hands. “Besides, those rafts kind of looked flimsy, if you ask me.”
Inohara sighs and looks at Go pointedly.
Go just shrugs. “Like I said, he chewed through it again,” he says. Pause. “And… I kind of agree with him, to be honest.”
Okada steps up, crouching next to Sakamoto and smiling lopsidedly as he pokes at the sliced ends of green wire the team leader is holding with his index finger. “Leader is so old he’s been doing this forever,” he states, “So if it’s cut, then it’s cut. It’s probably an independent counter.”
The three older members look at each other for a moment, then turn back to their young teammates warily. Okada, Ken, and Go all respond with their best, cutest smiles. Like they have all the confidence in the world.
The countdown ticks to 4:01.
“Oh god we’re too old for this,” Inohara groans in defeat eventually, and stands. Ken puts the bonnet on Inohara’s head placatingly and the six members all gather around the bomb, watching it as it counts down to 3:42.
“So what, we just wait?” Sakamoto says, disbelievingly. Pause. “Not that I’m worried.”
“Let’s hold hands,” Ken suggests at random.
Everyone stares. “What? Why?”
He shrugs. “Why not?” he asks, grabbing Go and Inohara’s hands in either of his and squeezing tightly. “It’s cute, isn’t it?” He beams at everyone.
A moment.
And then Nagano sighs in defeat, reaching out and taking his teammate’s hands too. The helplessly others follow suit.
They spend the next three minutes standing in a circle like that, fingers tightly intertwined and hoping for the best as the rain pounds the deck outside.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Inohara murmurs, chuckling breathlessly as the final ten seconds ominously begin to tick down in front of them.
“Your hand,” Okada responds nonchalantly around a smirk, “is really clammy.”
Right before the counter clicks to zero, they all close their eyes and take a deep breath.
When they open them again a moment later, they realize that the rain seems to have stopped.
Ken lights up and disengages his hands from the others, asking if that means they can go play volleyball on the deck together now, at least until the helicopter comes back to get them again.
“If you’re careful,” Nagano acquiesces, following the younger half of the team up the stairs.
In the meantime, Sakamoto wipes the sweat from his brow and grins. “Told you,” he murmurs to Inohara triumphantly, and is pleased when his voice only shakes a little when he does.
~~~~~
V6’s legend teaches the junior agents that they have been allowed to become members of this agency because they have been successfully trained to be the best of the best at what they do.
And even if they don’t believe it themselves, sometimes all they need is someone else who believes it for them.
~~~~~
3. Tackey and Tsubasa
Tackey and Tsubasa’s legend is about defiance.
The jungle prison is sweltering and the walls are slimy from the heat and humidity; Tsubasa works around his rusty shackles and eventually manages to angle himself sideways so that he can rest his forehead directly against the grime on the wall behind him because it’s cooler even if it smells. He looks up at the beams of sunlight filtering through the rusty grate above his head and thinks ruefully that he is going to die down here all alone like this, another nameless, faceless junior agent sacrificed for a greater good on his first real mission.
If that’s the case he hopes that Takizawa is far, far away from here by now, disc safely in his possession as he gets praised emphatically by the administration for his hard work and dedication. He hopes Tackey- wherever he is- is safe and happy and cool, because Tsubasa doesn’t want to die down here for nothing.
If his best friend is okay then at least he’ll have done his job, Tsubasa supposes, smiling weakly to himself as he pulls his knees up and tries to shrink away from the sun as much as possible.
“Protect him at all costs,” they’d said to him before the two of them had left, “he’s the future of the agency.”
Tsubasa had immediately known what those orders had really meant; “Die for him if you have to. He’s worth more than you are.”
Tsubasa thinks they didn’t have to say that because he would have done it anyway.
Which is why he’s here right now actually, a little bit tortured and a lot hot and hungry and vaguely delirious; when the enemy had been closing in on them during their botched escape a few nights ago he’d shoved a protesting Tackey unceremoniously into a thick growth of brush and dashed off in the opposite direction as loudly and obnoxiously as possible.
They’d chased after him, naturally, and they’d caught him too, because it was dark and he hadn’t known where he was going; after that it’s all been a blur of questions and torture and questions and torture and sometimes both at the same time.
“Where’s your partner?” they would ask in broken Japanese, and punch him or kick him right after.
Which he thinks is kind of counter-productive to the whole information gathering concept, given that it’s pretty much impossible to enunciate properly when your face is so swollen you can’t really move it.
“I have no partner,” he’d managed after a while, and wryly thought to himself that it was mostly true; partners suggested people of equal standing. He’s really just cannon fodder.
Or rather, fodder currently being pummeled by the cannon.
But they’d thought he was being cute when he’d answered, which is why he hasn’t had any food or water for the past two days, sitting in an underground hole the size of a refrigerator box as he waits to die from dehydration or the mosquitoes, whichever gets him first.
He did his job though, and he thinks that as long as Tackey is safe, that’s all that matters.
Tackey is probably back in Japan now, he tells himself over and over again, safe and sound and with all of the information they’d been sent to get neatly in hand. They’ll promote him for it maybe, give him some awards and put him one rung higher on that ladder to success they always say he’s heading straight to the top of at record speed.
Tsubasa knows Tackey will remember him after he’s gone, even if no one else does. He’s never minded being nothing to the rest of the world as long as that also meant getting to be Tackey’s best friend too.
He smiles around his bloody lip and closes his eyes.
He wonders if maybe dying won’t be so bad.
He doesn’t get to find out, because he hears a voice from up above him suddenly; Tsubasa squints towards it, just in time to see a blurry shadow block out the sunbeams filtering through the grating for a single, blessed moment.
When he tilts his head just right, he can see the flash of a familiar smile through the slats, and that’s really all the answer he needs. “Yo!”
Tsubasa hopes he’s hallucinating.
Tackey waves like an idiot, and Tsubasa supposes that no, he’s not hallucinating.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, and struggles to his feet.
“Getting you out,” Tackey says. “Or trying. Sorry it took me so long… I had to wait until they got bored with you and left.”
Tsubasa is about to say something about how Tackey is a moron, but before he can he hears the sound of something being uncapped. “Here,” Tackey urges, and something wet and cool gets poured through the grate.
Tsubasa drinks a few sips before Tackey stops, “You’ll throw up if you get too much,” the younger agent explains, and even though Tsubasa knows already, he can’t help but feel a little gypped all the same.
He licks his lips and tries to concentrate on more important things. “You need to get out of here. Our orders are to get you and that disc back to headquarters at all costs,” he says plainly, wiping his mouth with the back of one slimy sleeve.
Tackey looks unimpressed. “Wow, I didn’t know you thought I was such a dick,” he whistles.
“I think you’re a tremendous dick,” Tsubasa replies, “But that isn’t the point. Your orders are to…”
“We’re a team, aren’t we?” Tackey says, suddenly.
Tsubasa blinks. “No,” he says, “I’m not…”
Tackey’s eyes turn a little hard around the edges. “When it’s between the two of us,” he starts again, more slowly, “when no one else is involved, when it’s you and me just like this, we’re a team, aren’t we?”
Tsubasa pauses and feels helpless in the face of those eyes. He sighs. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “A team.”
Tackey grins; it’s all he needs. “Then I’ll have you out of there by nightfall.”
He winks and disappears again.
Tsubasa curls up and waits for the sun to set.
In the interim, he thinks that if they really are going to be a team one day- a team that doesn’t just exist between the two of them only but that exists in the eyes of the rest of world too- he’s going to have to get out of here and prove to the agency that guys like him can stand next to guys like Tackey after all.
Even if guys like Tackey are kind of ridiculous sometimes.
That night, they manage to break Tsubasa out of prison without either of them getting captured or killed.
The following morning, they return to Japan together.
As a team.
~~~~~
(Administrator) Tackey’s and (Administrator) Tsubasa’s legend teaches the junior agents that no matter their beginnings, any one of them can strive to become great one day.
All it takes is stopping every once in a while to help each other along the way.
~~~~~
4. KAT-TUN
KAT-TUN’s legend is about silence.
No one but Jin and the administration know the exact details of the time he spends in America during the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007; as far as the greater part of the agency is concerned, he is gone for six months after being given a prestigious opportunity to train with the Americans. They speculate that he spends his time overseas lazing around the FBI headquarters during the work week and then partying in hot LA clubs on the weekends. They imagine that he learns all of his English from cute blond girls at sleazy bars even though he will never use it ever again once he returns to Japan.
“He must be living it up,” they say, because everyone knows that the sole purpose of exchange programs like this is to provide news bites and photo ops for the international press and not for anything truly important like saving lives or incarcerating criminals. “They won’t put him on any real cases while he’s there.”
In the agency, only Jin and the higher administration really know what happens in those six months; even Yamapi can only make educated guesses about the exact details.
In truth, the first month is spent mostly lonely and bewildered; the federal agents in LA who think Jin is here solely for the exchange program all seem to believe that saying the same thing to him more slowly a second time will magically make him capable of understanding English. When they realize he still doesn’t get it no matter how long they stretch their vowels out for, they sigh in defeat and decide to pair him and his target up with a Japanese-American agent in records. They tell the three of them to make coffee everyday at 6am and dust the file cabinets.
In the meantime, the FBI agents who know what Jin is really here for-his acting overseas supervisors- meet with him in secret after hours; Agent Littrell is the hardest for Jin to understand because they say he’s from a place called Kentucky and apparently Americans talk even more strangely than normal there, while Agent Carter keeps playing pranks on Jin to try and make him more comfortable in America. One day Jin finds a rubber finger in his hamburger and screams like a girl.
Despite their oddness they’re both pretty nice as far as supervisors go he thinks, but they also have ridiculous expectations of him as well. Beyond the normal paper-pushing work week he has to pretend he’s here for, they tell him that his cover also means pulling extra hours at night and on the weekends. Jin finds out that this kind of thing is normal in the US because in America, agents have to be more than just amazing simply to keep up with the criminals.
Jin sees what they mean by that his first day in the office; the number of murderers and drug dealers and muggers and serial rapists he sees on file in the records department is enough to make him feel vaguely sick. The more he sees of it the more he starts to miss peaceful Japan and fighting with the rest of his unit over petty things like putting away the handcuffs properly.
“See what we gotta deal with?” Agent McLean says-slowly-and tells Jin to organize some crime scene photos for their ongoing prosecution of a two year old murder. The victims were an entire family of eight and the defendant is the family’s father.
After he does what Agent McLean tells him to Jin follows his real target out for a late dinner at a 24-hour diner called Denny’s; the food is disgusting and none of the waitresses are cute, but Jin fakes a smile anyway and chats up the alleged traitor like they’re best friends for life from here on out.
He gets back to his one room apartment at 2am that night, after transferring the recording of his conversation to Agent Dorough at the drop point. He sets his alarm for 5am before closing his eyes and trying to get some sleep.
He finally drifts off a little after 4am, when he’s too exhausted to think or worry about anything anymore, and manages to get forty minutes in before his alarm goes off. He wakes up to an obnoxious American DJ spinning a strange thirty second series of sound bites that all just sound like farts from various TV shows.
He slaps the radio off and gets out of bed.
Eventually, he gets used to it.
~~~~~
In America, Jin learns that he doesn’t know nearly as much as he thought he did. His supervisors are as patient as they can be with him, and soon he manages to learn the difference between “car shrimp” and “small car” after all. They correct some of his hand-to-hand combat techniques and show him all the latest technology in weapons they have, as well as evaluate his work as an undercover agent.
He discovers everything about him needs work, and tries to get better so he will stop embarrassing himself.
He realizes it’s going to take a while.
~~~~~
In late December, he finally manages to record the drunken confession that they need to officially reinstate NEWS as a unit.
He gets congratulated by Administrators Imai and Takizawa over a top secret secure line when it happens, and then promptly gets told that he needs to take the investigation deeper just like they knew he was going to have to do to all along.
It’s at the request of the Americans.
“At this rate, you probably won’t be back until April at the earliest,” Tsubasa tells him realistically.
Silence.
And then, “Merry Christmas,” Jin says quietly to them in English, before he hangs up. It’s just in time to hear the beep that means his leftover hamburger is done reheating in the microwave.
~~~~~
In January, he is given permission to call Yamapi. When they finally get to talk to one another again Jin feels a painful lurch of homesickness greater than all the ones before it combined starting to well up in his chest suddenly, simply from hearing the sound of his best friend’s voice after all this time. For a moment, all he wants to do is give up chasing the bad guys and go home again.
Instead he says, “I’m going to catch these guys, Pi. I’m going to do it.” He tries to sound as convincing as he can so Yamapi won’t worry.
There’s a pause on the other end after that, like Yamapi is thinking about what to say in response. Jin squirms, because even if he can’t see Pi’s face right now it still feels like Pi is reading right past all of Jin’s posturing anyway, despite the fact that Jin is supposed to be a pretty accomplished liar. After a moment, Yamapi just sighs and laughs a little into the mouthpiece. “Bakanishi,” he says, voice warm, “if you didn’t catch them after all this time chasing them around the world it would be horrible, wouldn’t it? Of course you’ll catch them.”
When Jin hears this, he manages to steel his jaw again, for the first time in a long time. “Yeah,” he vows, and actually believes it now, now that Yamapi is telling him he believes in Jin too, “I’ll do it.”
A week later, Jin gets the break in the case he’d been waiting for.
The night after, they make the arrest.
~~~~~
The case doesn’t end with an arrest though; they have to organize evidence and prepare testimony and sign statements and talk ceaselessly about the legal proceedings necessary to push the case through. Jin is caught smack dab in the middle of it all, and even though his English has improved over the last few months it’s still not that good.
He manages though, because that’s what he does, and the only part where he shows his uncool side is the part when, after months of running around trying to make their case stick, Agent Dorough looks at him apologetically and says, “I’m sorry, but now that we’re pushing through, you can’t tell anyone about this.”
“Oh,” Jin says after a moment, and frowns.
He finds out that it’s because the source they uncovered ties back to high positions within the FBI. This kind of thing has ramifications of how the Americans are seen all over the world, and as such, Jin’s superiors agree to keep everything he did in Los Angeles a secret of the highest priority, out of a desire to keep working relations amiable between the two bureaus.
Not a word of anything that happened on this mission is to be spoken of ever. To anyone.
In mid-April, when most of the semantics are finally ironed out, Jin boards the plane that will take him back to Japan feeling both immense dread and immense relief for what lies ahead.
The entire flight back, he practices his fake smiles and how to say, “What’s up dude?” in English, so that when he sees his teammates again, they’ll know that all their assumptions about his actions of the past few months were exactly right.
Because as far as anyone is concerned, Akanishi Jin had nothing but a great time in America.
~~~~~
For a long time after he returns, the exact circumstances regarding Jin’s six months in America are kept top secret; his struggles and his suffering and his loneliness and his successes are unknown to his friends and to his teammates for many, many years.
For the sake of something greater, he endures the silence and lack of recognition with quiet determination.
~~~~~
KAT-TUN’s legend teaches the junior agents that sometimes, the greatest sacrifices they will make for their jobs won’t always be acknowledged, no matter how much they want them to be.
It means that sometimes, for the sake of more important things, this job can be a thankless one.
~~~~~
5. NEWS
NEWS’s legend is about unity.
During their suspension Ryo is allowed to return to work with Eito after Tackey and Yamapi both argue heatedly with the administration on his behalf; it is under the condition that he is not to work with other NEWS members in any official capacity in the interim, since that would clearly be an attempt to skirt the group’s suspension (and as such, the agency’s higher authorities).
It is under these circumstances when the story happens, one cold winter’s night in a dirty little corner of Chinatown.
Ryo is in for a hit on one of the Triad’s drug kings when he gets snuck up on and knocked unconscious before he can take the shot; the guy who gets him is small but moves like a Kung Fu master out of one of those cheesy Hong Kong action flicks, the only difference being that he can’t fly so much as punch really hard.
When Ryo wakes up again it’s hours later and he’s in a cell sporting a killer headache; one of his eyes is swollen completely shut and he can taste blood whenever he swallows or moves his tongue.
Through his good eye he can make out his cage’s bars and just beyond that, the four gray cement walls that belong to the small room he’s in. There is one large, metal door directly in front of him and up against the back wall he can see a dingy old folding table with his personal effects strewn haphazardly on top of it; all of them look thoroughly rifled through.
A security camera peers down at him from the corner of the room to his left, and there’s a single, narrow window high up on the right wall that suggests he’s in some sort of basement holding room.
The door to his cage has a weird mechanism on it too; it’s some sort of a timer that seems to be stuck on 0:00 for whatever reason. He can see it flashing those three numbers over and over and over again every second, like how a digital alarm clock gets stuck blinking on 12:00 right after a power outage.
Ryo licks his lips and wonders bitterly if whoever beat the crap out of him is going to come back down here and torture him for information or something. It seems like a vaguely Chinatown-ish thing to do.
He hates himself a little, for getting caught off guard like that, because this is a really shitty place to die.
And Yokoyama still owes him money.
He doesn’t have time to dwell on it too much though, because a second or two later, he hears a strange crackling noise coming from his com-link as it sits over on the dingy folding table. He turns his head just in time to see its red light start to flicker on.
The sounds that come out of it are mostly staticky at first, but after a minute or two he can make out something very, very distinct.
“Ryo-chan? Hello? Ryo-chan, are you there?”
When he hears his name coming out of his earpiece he wonders if he got hit harder on the head than he’d first thought, because suddenly, his com-link is talking to him from across the room and it sounds a lot like Yamapi.
“Ryo-chan, Ryo-chan, it’s Yamapi!” the voice says, after Ryo doesn’t respond right away. “Are you okay? I can see you!”
Ryo blinks. “What?”
“Wave at the camera, ne,” Tegoshi’s voice suddenly chimes in, and Ryo is very, very creeped out when the security camera on the top left corner suddenly shifts a little, so that it’s looking right at him.
“I don’t believe this,” he mutters to himself, when he figures it out.
“Eh, sorry it took so long,” Tegoshi apologizes brightly, “I had to get enough footage of Ryo-tan being unconscious so I could put it on a feedback loop in the building’s security system, ne.”
Ryo sighs. “Aren’t you in Sweden right now?”
Tegoshi chuckles. “Yup! But Kei-chan called me and said we had an emergency, ne. Massu’s here too. Say hi, Massu.”
“Hi,” Massu’s voice replies. “You’re eye is really swollen, Nishikido-kun.”
Ryo rolls his good one.
“Can we please concentrate on getting him out first?” Shige complains, and that’s funny, because Ryo hadn’t recalled Shige and Yamapi being in Sweden too.
His face must show it on the camera, because Koyama’s voice is the next to chuckle nervously and say, “Tegoshi put us on a conference call into your com-link after using it to track your position ne. Don’t ask me how.”
“Ryo-chan,” Yamapi begins, sounding worried, “are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?”
“Uwah, Ryo-tan’s lip is all bloody,” Tegoshi exclaims.
“Okay let’s get me out of here now and then talk about how my very cool face got messed up later,” he drawls, and limps over towards the cell door, towards the mysterious flashing 0:00 timer. “You idiots do have a plan to get me out of here, right? And what the hell is this, by the way?” He gestures to the fancy mechanism.
“Eh,” Koyama breathes, as the camera follows Ryo. “Tegorin, zoom in on the door, ne.”
The camera lens rotates, and Ryo assumes that means it’s zooming in.
“Yabai,” Koyama exclaims next, “Ryo-chan, that’s a volatile lock ne. If you try to get out forcibly then it’s triggered to start a countdown and explode. You’re going to have to deactivate it to get the door to open, and that requires a four digit number code, ne.”
Ryo has a headache. “Not an explosives expert!” he snaps, “Deactivating isn’t exactly my forte.”
A beat of silence, and Ryo wonders if Koyama is just realizing that now.
But apparently he knows this already, he’s just thinking. “Ne, Ryo-chan, can you break off the end of your zipper?”
Ryo blinks. “The one on my pants?”
“Un.”
Ryo looks down at his zipper pull. “I can try.”
He tries.
And gets nothing but the shape of the zipper pull indented into his fingers.
“Um,” Shige’s voice starts after a moment, carefully. “Maybe you should take off your pants and just tear the cloth around the zipper? Then you can pull the whole thing out.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Or you could sit there quietly and die,” Shige adds, objectively.
Ryo flips the camera off before removing his pants and ripping the zipper out. Still not so nice on his hands, but better than trying to yank out metal, he supposes.
Ten minutes later, he’s standing in his boxers with a successfully extracted zipper. “Okay, now what?”
“Reach around the bars and see if you can use the nose of the pull to work into the crack on that little panel you see on the far right side,” Koyama instructs. “It should flip up if you get it right, ne. But um, don’t hit against the bars too much at the same time, or you might explode.”
Ryo does it. It’s not easy, but he manages.
“Do you see the…”
“I can’t see it,” Ryo tells him, arms stretched out through the bars and barely able to reach the front mechanism at all.
“Oh,” Koyama breathes. Then, “Move your left hand to the right and grab the white wire.”
Ryo grabs a wire.
“No, the white…” pause, “…er, the one after that. More right, ne.”
Ryo does it.
“Okay now pull it as hard as you can ne. You have to disconnect it in one go or… you might explode.”
Ryo pulls it out.
The 0:00 stops flashing. In fact, it changes to a 1:00. And then a second later, to 0:59.
“KOYAMA!” Ryo shouts. “What did you do?!”
“Eh? Calm down, calm down,” Koyama hastens to explain, “You had to disengage the movement trigger first, otherwise shaking the door would make you explode, ne. But doing that engaged the timer automatically as a failsafe. Even still, this next part should be easy since this lock looks like an old model so…”
The counter goes down to 0:34.
Ryo twitches.
“KOYAMA.”
“Right! Um, reach back to that wire you’d touched earlier, the wrong one? Now it’s the right one ne.”
Ryo moves his hand right.
“Left!” Koyama barks.
Ryo moves left, and fingers another wire.
“Right, that one. Just pull it and you should be okay.”
He pulls it, right as the counter stops at 0:12.
He sighs in relief. Then moves to open the door.
It’s still locked.
“I thought you said it was supposed to open!!”
Nervous laughter. “I just disabled the explosive part ne. You’re on your own to find out the number code to open the door though. Sorry, Ryo-chan.”
Ryo sighs. “Great.”
“Try 8888,” Shige suggests.
A beat.
“Where the hell did that come from?”
Shige sounds sheepish. “Eight is a lucky number, isn’t it? They are Chinese.” Pause. Mutter. “I mean, it’s worth a shot.”
Ryo tries 8888.
Nothing happens.
“Great, thanks Shige.”
“What, it was worth a shot!”
“Try 4444,” Yamapi suggests next. “Because they’re bad guys ne, so they’d definitely like that.”
Ryo sighs and tries it too.
They all watch as the door pops open.
“Sasuga leader!” Tegoshi chirps, and Ryo is too happy to be out to be properly amazed at Yamapi’s luck. He heads right to the table with his belongings on it and starts suiting up again. His rifle, he notes bitterly, is very, very not loaded.
“Now what?” he says.
“We’ve counted fifteen men inside with you on the cameras,” Shige starts.
Ryo positions himself by the door. “Hey, if you can track me, where the fuck is my backup?”
“Eito is on strict orders not to infiltrate for a rescue for fear of exposing the agency,” Yamapi explains grimly, “Right now ne, the targets think a rival organization sent you. And that way…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ryo interrupts, and gets it. To a lot of their superiors, getting not one, but two potential targets dead (or at least in a shooting war with each other) at the end of the day is well worth losing a couple of field agents here and there if you have to. “So what about you guys?” he asks next, “You’re going to get us worse than suspended if they find out you’re doing this.” He puts in his earpiece and Tegoshi obligingly turns down the volume.
“Get in trouble for what? We’re all off the clock,” the young hacker chirps. “I mean, I was just innocently surfing on the internet on my own laptop when I happened to hack this place’s security system, ne. And I thought it would be cool to show all my friends.”
Ryo smiles grimly, “Right.”
“Besides, you’re the only one there. If you somehow manage to escape on your own,” Shige agrees, “none of the Administrators can complain, right?”
“Stop sounding so smug at your own smartness,” Ryo tells him, out of habit.
Shige just snorts.
“Okay,” Tegoshi instructs, “I’m going to cause a blackout, Ryo-tan. It’s going to get dark, but the cameras all have a night-vision option and backup power, so don’t worry, okay?”
“That doesn’t help me any, Tego-nyan.”
“But it helps us help you.”
“You can’t be…”
The lights suddenly go out.
“Two steps forward to the door,” Yamapi instructs.
Ryo limps forward two steps and starts groping the air in front of him.
“Er, two more steps,” Yamapi corrects. “Bigger ones.”
Ryo walks forward two more steps and promptly slams into the door. “Yamapi!!”
“Sorry!”
Ryo throws the door open with a snarl. “Now what?”
“Fifteen Nishikido-kun sized steps down the hall and then turn left,” Massu’s voice tells him next.
Ryo is a little bit skeptical, but does as he’s told.
He stops perfectly in front of the next door and turns left.
“Ten and a half steps down this hall,” Massu says next, and Ryo can practically hear his pleased smile as he says it.
He would call the younger agent on it like he does with Shige, except that he can’t help but be kind of impressed with how Massu’s mind works in situations that have to do with physical activity; converting distance into the individual strides of a particular person in a particular situation without having to think about it is just one of those things Massu can do that is both ingenious and moronic all at the same time.
It just can’t be helped.
“There’s the first guard at the end of the next hallway,” Massu says a little while later. “Um, he’s coming kind of fast, so count backwards from three when you reach the corner and then jump out, ne. He’s taller than you are, but carrying low. Then you can…”
“Take his gun,” Ryo finishes, and when he gets to one-one thousand, lunges out.
The guy gets his rifle yanked out of his hand at the exact same time Ryo’s palm slams up into his nose fast and hard. He drops like a rock and Ryo drags him back around the corner, patting him down for extra ammunition.
“Um,” Shige starts after a beat, “maybe you should take his clothes too.”
“Ryo-chan does need new pants,” Yamapi agrees pragmatically.
Ryo rolls his eye again and takes the guy’s clothes.
Then, he sets his jaw and proceeds to take out the other fourteen guys, all with a little help from his friends.
~~~~~
Nishikido Ryo’s solo escape from (and subsequent destruction of) a Chinatown drug lord in the course of a single night is the hottest news in the agency the following morning; how he managed such an amazing feat all on his own with such ridiculous odds stacked against him is both mysterious and ridiculously cool to all of the people who hear the story afterwards. For a while, Ryo is the Tokyo branch’s biggest celebrity.
When Tackey casually inquires to Yamapi about how Nishikido-kun must have picked up a lot of interesting skills from working with NEWS over the years-like, for instance, bomb deactivation and security system hacking-all Yamapi has to say about it is, “Ryo-chan is really amazing, ne.”
Tackey laughs and says everyone in NEWS is a little bit amazing.
Yamapi politely pretends to have no idea what Administrator Takizawa means by that.
~~~~~
NewS’s legend-once its truth is revealed to the rest of the agency many years later- teaches the junior agents that being part of a team isn’t something that ends the moment you leave work at the end of the day. It isn’t something that ever ends really, given what you and your teammates have to go through together over the years.
In this line of work no one- not anyone- is ever really alone.
Because quite frankly, it would be impossible to survive that way.
~~~~~
Epilogue
The purpose of telling the young agents of today the legends of the teams that came before them is first and foremost, to teach them important lessons about all of the things that may-or more likely, will- happen to them over the course of their careers serving under the badge. They need to know about all of the challenges and hardships they too will face one day, out there on the front lines.
But besides just being a lesson (or a warning), the stories also pose a challenge.
“Surpass us,” the legends all seem to say, somewhere in the midst of their retelling, “Make legend number six.”
All it will take is your everything.
END
EDITS PLZ. Maybe a better Koyama b-day fic will come to me tomorrow.
Universe: JE ( Government AU)
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS, KAT-TUN, TOKIO, V6, Tackey and Tsubasa, Matchy, Higashiyama (and some cameos by the BSB. That’s right, the BSB)
Warnings/Spoilers: LOTS AND LOTS OF OOC, randomness.
Word Count: 8,785
Summary: From one generation to the next: some of the agency’s most legendary exploits.
Dedication: For Koyama’s birthday fic, since he loves everyone in Johnny’s Jimusho. I thought I’d try to work on some of that love too and expand my horizons a little. SORRY IF IT’S WRONG KOYAMA.
A/N: Yeah clearly I don’t really know much about the non NewS or KAT-TUN groups. But hey, it’s an AU right? People are used to horrible characterization in AUs already so I should be golden. Also, I was totally running out of ideas before… well, before I even started this really, so yeah. LAME. Sorry, SMAP, don’t even know all of your faces yet so you get left out of the legends. Also, I tried to work in Arashi and Kinki but I was just too lazy to do the research and no one wants to read about them in this universe anyway. Blah, blah, blah, as always, some of these are based on real JE events as gathered from newshfan’s subs, PVs, Ann, and Nicole, and various other translations and videos I’ve read or seen over all this time that I can still remember the details to for some reason. Though at the same time, some of these scenarios are purely made up because I couldn’t think of any real parallels to use. Such is life.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Prologue
There are currently five legendary stories that get passed through the agency from year to year without fail, into the eager ears of new agents and academy graduates on their very first few days of service. The stories function as both an introduction and a warning of sorts, telling them what will be expected of the newcomers over the years as they serve under the badge, as well as mentally preparing them for the sacrifice, innovation, and endurance that will be necessary to survive in this line of work. The stories themselves are, unsurprisingly, some of the most amazing tales of their senpai’s exploits over the agency’s long history, a moving, awe-inspiring, and sometimes amusing collection of feats by the people who came before them and who laid the groundwork that made the agency what it is today.
“Maybe one day your team will be able to add a story to the list as well,” Administrators and Training Officers tell the rookies as they prepare them for what lies ahead, “Maybe one day you’ll do something that gives us legend number six.”
Hearing these stories always leaves stars in the young newcomers’ eyes for a long time afterwards, inspiring them to try hard and do their best so that maybe one day, they too will get to join the ranks of the agency’s most admired and successful units.
“Someday,” these junior agents often say to themselves, “I want to be just as amazing as our senpai.”
Here’s what it takes.
~~~~~
1. TOKIO
TOKIO’s legend is about endurance.
The group is sent to stake out three possible locations in which (according to agency sources) an arms deal is scheduled to take place; the meeting might (or might not) happen at any time over the next few days. “Two teams of two and one team of one,” Administrator Higashiyama explains to them as he passes out reconnaissance pictures of the sites, “Break into them as you see fit.”
It’s decided that Yamaguchi will go with Taichi and that Matsuoka will try to keep Nagase in line, leaving Director Joshima (as the most senior agent) by himself at the third location.
“No contact, no movement,” Higashiyama stresses, “this is a delicate operation and we need to make an arrest. We’re putting a three day’s grace on it and will break com silence to call you back only once it’s over. Is that clear?”
The members nod. “Yes, sir!”
TOKIO (for Terror Opposition: the Kantou Investigatory Offensive) is known throughout the ranks as the agency’s equivalent of the Marine Corps; they are the most physically dominant unit currently on active duty.
This means of course, that TOKIO is responsible for the most physically grueling missions, the most demanding basic training, and in this case, the most exhausting and extreme stakeouts.
“Three days,” Nagase whines as they spend the night before protein loading and mentally preparing themselves, “What if my butt itches like last time? I nearly died not being able to move to get it!”
“I don’t care as long as you don’t have gas like last time,” Matsuoka tells him, and watches longingly as a waitress walks by their table with several large bottles of cold beer for the booth behind them. His teammates follow suit unconsciously.
“If we drink tonight,” Taichi starts after a moment, trying to sound sensible, “the next three days without food or water will be very painful.”
A beat, as they stop to consider this.
And then five hands promptly shoot up to signal the waitress anyway.
As it is, TOKIO has no problem getting her attention when every single one of them starts shouting “Beer!” at the top of their lungs.
~~~~~
Director Joshima and his team live to regret the alcohol the next morning, when they’re made to deploy before sunrise to their respective sites. Each takes nothing more than a loaded rifle, night vision goggles, and camouflage outerwear with him.
“See you in three,” they say before leaving, all of them vaguely hungover and kind of tired but game to go anyway. They hit their knuckles against one another before breaking off, weapons slung over their shoulders and fighting back yawns.
Yamaguchi and Taichi’s site (location one) turns out to be an overgrown empty lot in the backwater countryside; they dig into the dirt and cover themselves with foliage before the sun breaks the horizon.
Nagase and Matsuoka’s site is location two, an abandoned pier that’s rotting wood is nearly completely covered by barnacles. Both bag their guns and secure themselves to the poles with rope before jumping into the chest-high water.
As for Leader, he finds himself alone at location three, on a heavily wooded hill just outside the kind of cabin that always seems to be used in various American horror films; the foliage is thick and overgrown, nearly blacking out the sky, and there’s a bed of fallen leaves blanketing the ground that crunches underfoot every time he so much as twitches.
He groans and starts digging in alongside the hill overlooking the northern face of the cabin, covering himself with leaves and doing his very best not to move even though the angle he is lying at sort of makes the blood rush to his head.
~~~~~
On day one nothing happens and the groups of two take shifts watching the site and sleeping to recover from their hangovers. Leader stays awake.
Nagase gets gas again but luckily they spend most of the time submerged up to at least their stomachs, sitting in the water together and slapping their own arms every now and again to keep from feeling too cold.
At location two, Taichi has a near miss with a curious squirrel.
And unbeknownst to him, leader’s communication link breaks.
~~~~~
On day two, something happens.
A small motorboat pulls up to the pier Nagase and Matsuoka are bobbing under. It’s not the targets but a couple of horny teenagers and Nagase nearly blows their cover snickering at them when the guy can’t figure out how to get the girl’s bra off.
Yamaguchi gets bitten by ants when the toe of his boot accidentally digs into some of their underground tunnels. He grits his teeth and doesn’t move while Taichi laughs silently at him.
Leader accidentally falls asleep.
~~~~~
On the morning of day three something important happens.
At location two, a pair of motorboats pull up to the pier in the predawn hours; it’s the targets instead of horny teenagers this time, and a briefcase containing international security codes is on the verge of being traded for cash when the two TOKIO members explode out of the water.
Matsuoka kills the buyer while Nagase wings the seller, and when two big, scary members of the agency’s most elite ground operations team are bearing down on someone after three days of no food and no water and constant cold, the best thing to do is to surrender as peacefully as possible. Which the seller does.
Nagase calls it in to the others first, “We got them,” he says, before ringing in to check in with Administrator Higashiyama.
At location one, Taichi and Yamaguchi explode out from their foliage-covered pit looking relieved; they hike back eighteen miles to where they left their foliage-covered car and head back so Yamaguchi can be treated for his ant bites.
At location three, Leader finally wakes up; he doesn’t know how long he was out.
~~~~~
During the late afternoon of day three no one sees Leader around. “He’s probably already getting pissed to recover the two nights we didn’t get any booze,” his teammates theorize to themselves, and all go home to sleep and eat and then go and get drunk too.
“Two days off to recuperate, then I want full mission reports,” Higashiyama writes to them in an e-mail memo. “Lunch and drinks on me Monday afternoon.”
At location three, Leader’s communication link is still broken.
~~~~~
On day four, everyone rests up except for Leader, who is starting to get hungry.
~~~~~
On day five, everyone is pretty much fully recovered except for Leader, who might be very slightly delusional. He manages to stay put anyway, waiting for the communication from Administrator Higashiyama that will tell him it’s okay to go home.
~~~~~
On day six, everyone is surprised when Leader is the only one who doesn’t show up for Administrator Higashiyama’s lunch meeting.
When they call his cell phone there’s no response, and when they call his apartment the answering machine picks up.
“Maybe he got really drunk,” Nagase poses.
Taichi looks thoughtful and points to the food Higashiyama ordered for them today, as congratulations. “The food is free. And there’s beer.”
A moment of silence, as they all consider this.
“Oh shit,” Yamaguchi breathes, when he realizes.
Meanwhile, back at location three, Leader falls asleep again.
To be fair, he can’t really help it.
~~~~~
When the rest of them get to the location later that morning everyone fans out in search of Director Joshima as quickly as possible, but no one can find him in any of the hiding spots that would seem optimal for their last mission. He doesn’t answer their calls so they start fearing for the worst, “Is Leader dead?” Nagase asks, looking to Taichi for reassurance and for once, appearing as young as he is.
Taichi sighs and tries to think. “Hey, there’s a hill,” he starts eventually, “maybe Leader wanted the high ground and dug in at the top.”
Nagase blinks. “Leader’s hiding spots are really good,” he agrees, and that said, the four of them start climbing up the hill.
It’s a long way to the top.
“Leader is amazing,” they breathe to themselves some time later, when they stop to rest approximately halfway up.
~~~~~
They find Director Joshima when Yamaguchi accidentally sits on him during their break.
He grunts and wakes up muttering about sake; they hasten to dig him up.
~~~~~
The first thing Leader says to his relieved teammates once he’s fully conscious and blinking up into the daylight again is, “Ah, I thought I was going to die.”
Then he stands like everything is perfectly normal, brushes the leaves off of his clothes, and calmly heads down the hill as if nothing strange had happened to him at all.
In the van on the way back, the second thing he says is, “I need some beer.”
The rest of his team takes it as a sign that he’s all right.
~~~~~
TOKIO’s legend teaches the junior agents that their physical training may be torture, but that it is torture with a reason behind it.
Because in this line of work, sometimes the most amazing thing you can do is not die.
~~~~~
2. V6
V6’s legend is about faith.
It’s a windy, rainy day when the bomb is found on a large cruise ship currently in the middle of its course touring the Pacific; the emergency gets radioed in to the agency by a frantic ship’s crew and moments later, V6 is deployed by helicopter to the scene with a meager thirty one minutes remaining on the clock. In the meantime, rescue workers frantically battle the bad weather, working to get the cruise patrons off the ship and out of the estimated blast area, battling valiantly through the needle-like rain and low visibility.
The team arrives with sixteen minutes left on the display. When the helicopter prepares to whisk away all the civilians remaining onboard (the ship’s captain and two members of his core crew), Matchy grimly radios in to tell Sakamoto’s team “Good luck.” Everyone knows that in this kind of weather, it will take the chopper a total of eight minutes to get out of the estimated blast zone and fifteen minutes to get back to solid ground again.
There’s not enough time to return for a second pickup if something goes wrong.
Inohara sees the pilot’s apologetic expression as he brings the chopper’s nose up and turns them around to leave; “You’re on your own from here on out,” his eyes read, and Inohara smiles back at him to show that there are no hard feelings. He turns and follows the rest of his unit down into the bowels of the ship.
The helicopter flies off into the distance, back towards land, and leaves the agency’s Volatile Mechanics Unit alone in the cargo hold of a luxury cruise liner, standing next to a bomb the size of a large dog that is sitting -almost innocuously-in a crate labeled “Frozen food.”
Fifteen minutes, forty eight seconds left.
“They said the crew already did a full sweep,” Sakamoto tells everyone, once he’s through whistling in amazement at the sheer size of the explosive, “Apparently this is the only one they found. But…”
“…we should make sure it isn’t,” Nagano finishes for him with a tiny, sideways smile. Before Sakamoto can respond he turns and beckons for the three youngest members of their unit to follow him to the other end of the hold so they can make themselves useful scanning for more volatiles. In the meantime, Inohara helps Sakamoto carefully lift the explosive out of the crate and carry it towards the door, where the lighting is better.
Once they set it down again they unscrew and lift the front panel so they can get a better sense of what they’re dealing with.
“Ah, we’re too old for this,” Inohara sighs, when he sees the veritable maze of complicated chips and wires flashing underneath the hood.
Sakamoto scoffs. “We’re still plenty young,” he says stubbornly, and takes out his wire cutters and grease pens.
Inohara wisely refrains from commenting on the sweat already dotting both of their brows and gets his equipment out too.
~~~~~
“I don’t think there are any other bombs; at least in the hold,” Okada reports calmly after nine more minutes have passed. “There’s no way we could check the individual cabins with only seven minutes left. We’ll have to rely on the crew’s initial sweep.”
They all pause to consider this.
“I found a cute hat,” Ken starts after a moment, and puts it on his head. He smiles. Pirouettes.
Inohara sighs before wiping his forehead with the back of his hand and turning to Go. “Could you please leash him again?” he asks, gesturing vaguely to Ken. “We’re working here.”
Go grins back wanly. “He’ll just chew through it again.”
“Alright,” Sakamoto announces after a beat, holding a coiled green wire out with his pliers triumphantly. “I think this is our culprit.”
Inohara blinks. “You think?”
Sakamoto scowls and throws one of his pens at his groupmate sourly. “Okay, I am 98% sure. What do you want from me?”
“So cut it already,” Nagano urges, as Ken starts trying to put his cute hat on Okada in the background.
Sakamoto sighs. “My hard work,” he says, “is completely unappreciated by you monkeys.”
He cuts the wire as the clock counts down to 5:12.
A second later, as he holds the successfully split wire in his hands, the clock counts down to 5:11.
A pause.
“Um…” Nagano starts carefully, “that probably wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Sakamoto, very slightly bewildered, looks back at all the other wires again, as the counter goes to 5:08.
“That had to be it. There’s no other…” he pauses. “Okay. Two options. Either it’s an independent counter and we’re freaking out about nothing or I’m really wrong and I have no idea what the shit I’m doing. Which means it has to be an independent counter by the way, because I am really good at this job.”
Inohara looks vaguely panicky. “We still have to be careful though. There should be one life raft left; the one that was for the captain and his two crew members, right?”
“There should be.”
“We can’t all fit on that,” Nagano points out sensibly. “Especially considering the fact that you two,” he gestures to Inohara and Sakamoto with one hand, “are huge.”
Inohara looks grim, but manages a smile, “You’re right about that,” he says, and turns to look at Sakamoto too.
The team leader understands. “If it’s the three of them and they leave now,” he says, eyeing the younger members in the background, “they might still be able to get far enough out of the blast area to make it. Not that it’s going to explode though, because I’m right, you assholes.”
Inohara reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “Just to be safe,” he says, before turning around and clapping his hands officiously. “Alright you three,” he announces, getting the others’ attention, “you’re all going topside and getting out of here on the life raft.”
Ken stops trying to get Okada to put his cute hat on. “Eh?” they all say.
“You heard him,” Sakamoto agrees. “We’re trying to work here, and you’re all distracting. And annoying. So go on.”
The uncharacteristic edge of seriousness in the older members’ voices as they speak stills the younger half of the team. “But…”
“No time for complaints, children,” Nagano tsks, “Leader said to go, didn’t he?”
A pause.
“Leader also said he found the wire, right?” Ken says, pouting slightly as he clutches the straw bonnet he found in both hands. “Besides, those rafts kind of looked flimsy, if you ask me.”
Inohara sighs and looks at Go pointedly.
Go just shrugs. “Like I said, he chewed through it again,” he says. Pause. “And… I kind of agree with him, to be honest.”
Okada steps up, crouching next to Sakamoto and smiling lopsidedly as he pokes at the sliced ends of green wire the team leader is holding with his index finger. “Leader is so old he’s been doing this forever,” he states, “So if it’s cut, then it’s cut. It’s probably an independent counter.”
The three older members look at each other for a moment, then turn back to their young teammates warily. Okada, Ken, and Go all respond with their best, cutest smiles. Like they have all the confidence in the world.
The countdown ticks to 4:01.
“Oh god we’re too old for this,” Inohara groans in defeat eventually, and stands. Ken puts the bonnet on Inohara’s head placatingly and the six members all gather around the bomb, watching it as it counts down to 3:42.
“So what, we just wait?” Sakamoto says, disbelievingly. Pause. “Not that I’m worried.”
“Let’s hold hands,” Ken suggests at random.
Everyone stares. “What? Why?”
He shrugs. “Why not?” he asks, grabbing Go and Inohara’s hands in either of his and squeezing tightly. “It’s cute, isn’t it?” He beams at everyone.
A moment.
And then Nagano sighs in defeat, reaching out and taking his teammate’s hands too. The helplessly others follow suit.
They spend the next three minutes standing in a circle like that, fingers tightly intertwined and hoping for the best as the rain pounds the deck outside.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Inohara murmurs, chuckling breathlessly as the final ten seconds ominously begin to tick down in front of them.
“Your hand,” Okada responds nonchalantly around a smirk, “is really clammy.”
Right before the counter clicks to zero, they all close their eyes and take a deep breath.
When they open them again a moment later, they realize that the rain seems to have stopped.
Ken lights up and disengages his hands from the others, asking if that means they can go play volleyball on the deck together now, at least until the helicopter comes back to get them again.
“If you’re careful,” Nagano acquiesces, following the younger half of the team up the stairs.
In the meantime, Sakamoto wipes the sweat from his brow and grins. “Told you,” he murmurs to Inohara triumphantly, and is pleased when his voice only shakes a little when he does.
~~~~~
V6’s legend teaches the junior agents that they have been allowed to become members of this agency because they have been successfully trained to be the best of the best at what they do.
And even if they don’t believe it themselves, sometimes all they need is someone else who believes it for them.
~~~~~
3. Tackey and Tsubasa
Tackey and Tsubasa’s legend is about defiance.
The jungle prison is sweltering and the walls are slimy from the heat and humidity; Tsubasa works around his rusty shackles and eventually manages to angle himself sideways so that he can rest his forehead directly against the grime on the wall behind him because it’s cooler even if it smells. He looks up at the beams of sunlight filtering through the rusty grate above his head and thinks ruefully that he is going to die down here all alone like this, another nameless, faceless junior agent sacrificed for a greater good on his first real mission.
If that’s the case he hopes that Takizawa is far, far away from here by now, disc safely in his possession as he gets praised emphatically by the administration for his hard work and dedication. He hopes Tackey- wherever he is- is safe and happy and cool, because Tsubasa doesn’t want to die down here for nothing.
If his best friend is okay then at least he’ll have done his job, Tsubasa supposes, smiling weakly to himself as he pulls his knees up and tries to shrink away from the sun as much as possible.
“Protect him at all costs,” they’d said to him before the two of them had left, “he’s the future of the agency.”
Tsubasa had immediately known what those orders had really meant; “Die for him if you have to. He’s worth more than you are.”
Tsubasa thinks they didn’t have to say that because he would have done it anyway.
Which is why he’s here right now actually, a little bit tortured and a lot hot and hungry and vaguely delirious; when the enemy had been closing in on them during their botched escape a few nights ago he’d shoved a protesting Tackey unceremoniously into a thick growth of brush and dashed off in the opposite direction as loudly and obnoxiously as possible.
They’d chased after him, naturally, and they’d caught him too, because it was dark and he hadn’t known where he was going; after that it’s all been a blur of questions and torture and questions and torture and sometimes both at the same time.
“Where’s your partner?” they would ask in broken Japanese, and punch him or kick him right after.
Which he thinks is kind of counter-productive to the whole information gathering concept, given that it’s pretty much impossible to enunciate properly when your face is so swollen you can’t really move it.
“I have no partner,” he’d managed after a while, and wryly thought to himself that it was mostly true; partners suggested people of equal standing. He’s really just cannon fodder.
Or rather, fodder currently being pummeled by the cannon.
But they’d thought he was being cute when he’d answered, which is why he hasn’t had any food or water for the past two days, sitting in an underground hole the size of a refrigerator box as he waits to die from dehydration or the mosquitoes, whichever gets him first.
He did his job though, and he thinks that as long as Tackey is safe, that’s all that matters.
Tackey is probably back in Japan now, he tells himself over and over again, safe and sound and with all of the information they’d been sent to get neatly in hand. They’ll promote him for it maybe, give him some awards and put him one rung higher on that ladder to success they always say he’s heading straight to the top of at record speed.
Tsubasa knows Tackey will remember him after he’s gone, even if no one else does. He’s never minded being nothing to the rest of the world as long as that also meant getting to be Tackey’s best friend too.
He smiles around his bloody lip and closes his eyes.
He wonders if maybe dying won’t be so bad.
He doesn’t get to find out, because he hears a voice from up above him suddenly; Tsubasa squints towards it, just in time to see a blurry shadow block out the sunbeams filtering through the grating for a single, blessed moment.
When he tilts his head just right, he can see the flash of a familiar smile through the slats, and that’s really all the answer he needs. “Yo!”
Tsubasa hopes he’s hallucinating.
Tackey waves like an idiot, and Tsubasa supposes that no, he’s not hallucinating.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, and struggles to his feet.
“Getting you out,” Tackey says. “Or trying. Sorry it took me so long… I had to wait until they got bored with you and left.”
Tsubasa is about to say something about how Tackey is a moron, but before he can he hears the sound of something being uncapped. “Here,” Tackey urges, and something wet and cool gets poured through the grate.
Tsubasa drinks a few sips before Tackey stops, “You’ll throw up if you get too much,” the younger agent explains, and even though Tsubasa knows already, he can’t help but feel a little gypped all the same.
He licks his lips and tries to concentrate on more important things. “You need to get out of here. Our orders are to get you and that disc back to headquarters at all costs,” he says plainly, wiping his mouth with the back of one slimy sleeve.
Tackey looks unimpressed. “Wow, I didn’t know you thought I was such a dick,” he whistles.
“I think you’re a tremendous dick,” Tsubasa replies, “But that isn’t the point. Your orders are to…”
“We’re a team, aren’t we?” Tackey says, suddenly.
Tsubasa blinks. “No,” he says, “I’m not…”
Tackey’s eyes turn a little hard around the edges. “When it’s between the two of us,” he starts again, more slowly, “when no one else is involved, when it’s you and me just like this, we’re a team, aren’t we?”
Tsubasa pauses and feels helpless in the face of those eyes. He sighs. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “A team.”
Tackey grins; it’s all he needs. “Then I’ll have you out of there by nightfall.”
He winks and disappears again.
Tsubasa curls up and waits for the sun to set.
In the interim, he thinks that if they really are going to be a team one day- a team that doesn’t just exist between the two of them only but that exists in the eyes of the rest of world too- he’s going to have to get out of here and prove to the agency that guys like him can stand next to guys like Tackey after all.
Even if guys like Tackey are kind of ridiculous sometimes.
That night, they manage to break Tsubasa out of prison without either of them getting captured or killed.
The following morning, they return to Japan together.
As a team.
~~~~~
(Administrator) Tackey’s and (Administrator) Tsubasa’s legend teaches the junior agents that no matter their beginnings, any one of them can strive to become great one day.
All it takes is stopping every once in a while to help each other along the way.
~~~~~
4. KAT-TUN
KAT-TUN’s legend is about silence.
No one but Jin and the administration know the exact details of the time he spends in America during the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007; as far as the greater part of the agency is concerned, he is gone for six months after being given a prestigious opportunity to train with the Americans. They speculate that he spends his time overseas lazing around the FBI headquarters during the work week and then partying in hot LA clubs on the weekends. They imagine that he learns all of his English from cute blond girls at sleazy bars even though he will never use it ever again once he returns to Japan.
“He must be living it up,” they say, because everyone knows that the sole purpose of exchange programs like this is to provide news bites and photo ops for the international press and not for anything truly important like saving lives or incarcerating criminals. “They won’t put him on any real cases while he’s there.”
In the agency, only Jin and the higher administration really know what happens in those six months; even Yamapi can only make educated guesses about the exact details.
In truth, the first month is spent mostly lonely and bewildered; the federal agents in LA who think Jin is here solely for the exchange program all seem to believe that saying the same thing to him more slowly a second time will magically make him capable of understanding English. When they realize he still doesn’t get it no matter how long they stretch their vowels out for, they sigh in defeat and decide to pair him and his target up with a Japanese-American agent in records. They tell the three of them to make coffee everyday at 6am and dust the file cabinets.
In the meantime, the FBI agents who know what Jin is really here for-his acting overseas supervisors- meet with him in secret after hours; Agent Littrell is the hardest for Jin to understand because they say he’s from a place called Kentucky and apparently Americans talk even more strangely than normal there, while Agent Carter keeps playing pranks on Jin to try and make him more comfortable in America. One day Jin finds a rubber finger in his hamburger and screams like a girl.
Despite their oddness they’re both pretty nice as far as supervisors go he thinks, but they also have ridiculous expectations of him as well. Beyond the normal paper-pushing work week he has to pretend he’s here for, they tell him that his cover also means pulling extra hours at night and on the weekends. Jin finds out that this kind of thing is normal in the US because in America, agents have to be more than just amazing simply to keep up with the criminals.
Jin sees what they mean by that his first day in the office; the number of murderers and drug dealers and muggers and serial rapists he sees on file in the records department is enough to make him feel vaguely sick. The more he sees of it the more he starts to miss peaceful Japan and fighting with the rest of his unit over petty things like putting away the handcuffs properly.
“See what we gotta deal with?” Agent McLean says-slowly-and tells Jin to organize some crime scene photos for their ongoing prosecution of a two year old murder. The victims were an entire family of eight and the defendant is the family’s father.
After he does what Agent McLean tells him to Jin follows his real target out for a late dinner at a 24-hour diner called Denny’s; the food is disgusting and none of the waitresses are cute, but Jin fakes a smile anyway and chats up the alleged traitor like they’re best friends for life from here on out.
He gets back to his one room apartment at 2am that night, after transferring the recording of his conversation to Agent Dorough at the drop point. He sets his alarm for 5am before closing his eyes and trying to get some sleep.
He finally drifts off a little after 4am, when he’s too exhausted to think or worry about anything anymore, and manages to get forty minutes in before his alarm goes off. He wakes up to an obnoxious American DJ spinning a strange thirty second series of sound bites that all just sound like farts from various TV shows.
He slaps the radio off and gets out of bed.
Eventually, he gets used to it.
~~~~~
In America, Jin learns that he doesn’t know nearly as much as he thought he did. His supervisors are as patient as they can be with him, and soon he manages to learn the difference between “car shrimp” and “small car” after all. They correct some of his hand-to-hand combat techniques and show him all the latest technology in weapons they have, as well as evaluate his work as an undercover agent.
He discovers everything about him needs work, and tries to get better so he will stop embarrassing himself.
He realizes it’s going to take a while.
~~~~~
In late December, he finally manages to record the drunken confession that they need to officially reinstate NEWS as a unit.
He gets congratulated by Administrators Imai and Takizawa over a top secret secure line when it happens, and then promptly gets told that he needs to take the investigation deeper just like they knew he was going to have to do to all along.
It’s at the request of the Americans.
“At this rate, you probably won’t be back until April at the earliest,” Tsubasa tells him realistically.
Silence.
And then, “Merry Christmas,” Jin says quietly to them in English, before he hangs up. It’s just in time to hear the beep that means his leftover hamburger is done reheating in the microwave.
~~~~~
In January, he is given permission to call Yamapi. When they finally get to talk to one another again Jin feels a painful lurch of homesickness greater than all the ones before it combined starting to well up in his chest suddenly, simply from hearing the sound of his best friend’s voice after all this time. For a moment, all he wants to do is give up chasing the bad guys and go home again.
Instead he says, “I’m going to catch these guys, Pi. I’m going to do it.” He tries to sound as convincing as he can so Yamapi won’t worry.
There’s a pause on the other end after that, like Yamapi is thinking about what to say in response. Jin squirms, because even if he can’t see Pi’s face right now it still feels like Pi is reading right past all of Jin’s posturing anyway, despite the fact that Jin is supposed to be a pretty accomplished liar. After a moment, Yamapi just sighs and laughs a little into the mouthpiece. “Bakanishi,” he says, voice warm, “if you didn’t catch them after all this time chasing them around the world it would be horrible, wouldn’t it? Of course you’ll catch them.”
When Jin hears this, he manages to steel his jaw again, for the first time in a long time. “Yeah,” he vows, and actually believes it now, now that Yamapi is telling him he believes in Jin too, “I’ll do it.”
A week later, Jin gets the break in the case he’d been waiting for.
The night after, they make the arrest.
~~~~~
The case doesn’t end with an arrest though; they have to organize evidence and prepare testimony and sign statements and talk ceaselessly about the legal proceedings necessary to push the case through. Jin is caught smack dab in the middle of it all, and even though his English has improved over the last few months it’s still not that good.
He manages though, because that’s what he does, and the only part where he shows his uncool side is the part when, after months of running around trying to make their case stick, Agent Dorough looks at him apologetically and says, “I’m sorry, but now that we’re pushing through, you can’t tell anyone about this.”
“Oh,” Jin says after a moment, and frowns.
He finds out that it’s because the source they uncovered ties back to high positions within the FBI. This kind of thing has ramifications of how the Americans are seen all over the world, and as such, Jin’s superiors agree to keep everything he did in Los Angeles a secret of the highest priority, out of a desire to keep working relations amiable between the two bureaus.
Not a word of anything that happened on this mission is to be spoken of ever. To anyone.
In mid-April, when most of the semantics are finally ironed out, Jin boards the plane that will take him back to Japan feeling both immense dread and immense relief for what lies ahead.
The entire flight back, he practices his fake smiles and how to say, “What’s up dude?” in English, so that when he sees his teammates again, they’ll know that all their assumptions about his actions of the past few months were exactly right.
Because as far as anyone is concerned, Akanishi Jin had nothing but a great time in America.
~~~~~
For a long time after he returns, the exact circumstances regarding Jin’s six months in America are kept top secret; his struggles and his suffering and his loneliness and his successes are unknown to his friends and to his teammates for many, many years.
For the sake of something greater, he endures the silence and lack of recognition with quiet determination.
~~~~~
KAT-TUN’s legend teaches the junior agents that sometimes, the greatest sacrifices they will make for their jobs won’t always be acknowledged, no matter how much they want them to be.
It means that sometimes, for the sake of more important things, this job can be a thankless one.
~~~~~
5. NEWS
NEWS’s legend is about unity.
During their suspension Ryo is allowed to return to work with Eito after Tackey and Yamapi both argue heatedly with the administration on his behalf; it is under the condition that he is not to work with other NEWS members in any official capacity in the interim, since that would clearly be an attempt to skirt the group’s suspension (and as such, the agency’s higher authorities).
It is under these circumstances when the story happens, one cold winter’s night in a dirty little corner of Chinatown.
Ryo is in for a hit on one of the Triad’s drug kings when he gets snuck up on and knocked unconscious before he can take the shot; the guy who gets him is small but moves like a Kung Fu master out of one of those cheesy Hong Kong action flicks, the only difference being that he can’t fly so much as punch really hard.
When Ryo wakes up again it’s hours later and he’s in a cell sporting a killer headache; one of his eyes is swollen completely shut and he can taste blood whenever he swallows or moves his tongue.
Through his good eye he can make out his cage’s bars and just beyond that, the four gray cement walls that belong to the small room he’s in. There is one large, metal door directly in front of him and up against the back wall he can see a dingy old folding table with his personal effects strewn haphazardly on top of it; all of them look thoroughly rifled through.
A security camera peers down at him from the corner of the room to his left, and there’s a single, narrow window high up on the right wall that suggests he’s in some sort of basement holding room.
The door to his cage has a weird mechanism on it too; it’s some sort of a timer that seems to be stuck on 0:00 for whatever reason. He can see it flashing those three numbers over and over and over again every second, like how a digital alarm clock gets stuck blinking on 12:00 right after a power outage.
Ryo licks his lips and wonders bitterly if whoever beat the crap out of him is going to come back down here and torture him for information or something. It seems like a vaguely Chinatown-ish thing to do.
He hates himself a little, for getting caught off guard like that, because this is a really shitty place to die.
And Yokoyama still owes him money.
He doesn’t have time to dwell on it too much though, because a second or two later, he hears a strange crackling noise coming from his com-link as it sits over on the dingy folding table. He turns his head just in time to see its red light start to flicker on.
The sounds that come out of it are mostly staticky at first, but after a minute or two he can make out something very, very distinct.
“Ryo-chan? Hello? Ryo-chan, are you there?”
When he hears his name coming out of his earpiece he wonders if he got hit harder on the head than he’d first thought, because suddenly, his com-link is talking to him from across the room and it sounds a lot like Yamapi.
“Ryo-chan, Ryo-chan, it’s Yamapi!” the voice says, after Ryo doesn’t respond right away. “Are you okay? I can see you!”
Ryo blinks. “What?”
“Wave at the camera, ne,” Tegoshi’s voice suddenly chimes in, and Ryo is very, very creeped out when the security camera on the top left corner suddenly shifts a little, so that it’s looking right at him.
“I don’t believe this,” he mutters to himself, when he figures it out.
“Eh, sorry it took so long,” Tegoshi apologizes brightly, “I had to get enough footage of Ryo-tan being unconscious so I could put it on a feedback loop in the building’s security system, ne.”
Ryo sighs. “Aren’t you in Sweden right now?”
Tegoshi chuckles. “Yup! But Kei-chan called me and said we had an emergency, ne. Massu’s here too. Say hi, Massu.”
“Hi,” Massu’s voice replies. “You’re eye is really swollen, Nishikido-kun.”
Ryo rolls his good one.
“Can we please concentrate on getting him out first?” Shige complains, and that’s funny, because Ryo hadn’t recalled Shige and Yamapi being in Sweden too.
His face must show it on the camera, because Koyama’s voice is the next to chuckle nervously and say, “Tegoshi put us on a conference call into your com-link after using it to track your position ne. Don’t ask me how.”
“Ryo-chan,” Yamapi begins, sounding worried, “are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?”
“Uwah, Ryo-tan’s lip is all bloody,” Tegoshi exclaims.
“Okay let’s get me out of here now and then talk about how my very cool face got messed up later,” he drawls, and limps over towards the cell door, towards the mysterious flashing 0:00 timer. “You idiots do have a plan to get me out of here, right? And what the hell is this, by the way?” He gestures to the fancy mechanism.
“Eh,” Koyama breathes, as the camera follows Ryo. “Tegorin, zoom in on the door, ne.”
The camera lens rotates, and Ryo assumes that means it’s zooming in.
“Yabai,” Koyama exclaims next, “Ryo-chan, that’s a volatile lock ne. If you try to get out forcibly then it’s triggered to start a countdown and explode. You’re going to have to deactivate it to get the door to open, and that requires a four digit number code, ne.”
Ryo has a headache. “Not an explosives expert!” he snaps, “Deactivating isn’t exactly my forte.”
A beat of silence, and Ryo wonders if Koyama is just realizing that now.
But apparently he knows this already, he’s just thinking. “Ne, Ryo-chan, can you break off the end of your zipper?”
Ryo blinks. “The one on my pants?”
“Un.”
Ryo looks down at his zipper pull. “I can try.”
He tries.
And gets nothing but the shape of the zipper pull indented into his fingers.
“Um,” Shige’s voice starts after a moment, carefully. “Maybe you should take off your pants and just tear the cloth around the zipper? Then you can pull the whole thing out.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Or you could sit there quietly and die,” Shige adds, objectively.
Ryo flips the camera off before removing his pants and ripping the zipper out. Still not so nice on his hands, but better than trying to yank out metal, he supposes.
Ten minutes later, he’s standing in his boxers with a successfully extracted zipper. “Okay, now what?”
“Reach around the bars and see if you can use the nose of the pull to work into the crack on that little panel you see on the far right side,” Koyama instructs. “It should flip up if you get it right, ne. But um, don’t hit against the bars too much at the same time, or you might explode.”
Ryo does it. It’s not easy, but he manages.
“Do you see the…”
“I can’t see it,” Ryo tells him, arms stretched out through the bars and barely able to reach the front mechanism at all.
“Oh,” Koyama breathes. Then, “Move your left hand to the right and grab the white wire.”
Ryo grabs a wire.
“No, the white…” pause, “…er, the one after that. More right, ne.”
Ryo does it.
“Okay now pull it as hard as you can ne. You have to disconnect it in one go or… you might explode.”
Ryo pulls it out.
The 0:00 stops flashing. In fact, it changes to a 1:00. And then a second later, to 0:59.
“KOYAMA!” Ryo shouts. “What did you do?!”
“Eh? Calm down, calm down,” Koyama hastens to explain, “You had to disengage the movement trigger first, otherwise shaking the door would make you explode, ne. But doing that engaged the timer automatically as a failsafe. Even still, this next part should be easy since this lock looks like an old model so…”
The counter goes down to 0:34.
Ryo twitches.
“KOYAMA.”
“Right! Um, reach back to that wire you’d touched earlier, the wrong one? Now it’s the right one ne.”
Ryo moves his hand right.
“Left!” Koyama barks.
Ryo moves left, and fingers another wire.
“Right, that one. Just pull it and you should be okay.”
He pulls it, right as the counter stops at 0:12.
He sighs in relief. Then moves to open the door.
It’s still locked.
“I thought you said it was supposed to open!!”
Nervous laughter. “I just disabled the explosive part ne. You’re on your own to find out the number code to open the door though. Sorry, Ryo-chan.”
Ryo sighs. “Great.”
“Try 8888,” Shige suggests.
A beat.
“Where the hell did that come from?”
Shige sounds sheepish. “Eight is a lucky number, isn’t it? They are Chinese.” Pause. Mutter. “I mean, it’s worth a shot.”
Ryo tries 8888.
Nothing happens.
“Great, thanks Shige.”
“What, it was worth a shot!”
“Try 4444,” Yamapi suggests next. “Because they’re bad guys ne, so they’d definitely like that.”
Ryo sighs and tries it too.
They all watch as the door pops open.
“Sasuga leader!” Tegoshi chirps, and Ryo is too happy to be out to be properly amazed at Yamapi’s luck. He heads right to the table with his belongings on it and starts suiting up again. His rifle, he notes bitterly, is very, very not loaded.
“Now what?” he says.
“We’ve counted fifteen men inside with you on the cameras,” Shige starts.
Ryo positions himself by the door. “Hey, if you can track me, where the fuck is my backup?”
“Eito is on strict orders not to infiltrate for a rescue for fear of exposing the agency,” Yamapi explains grimly, “Right now ne, the targets think a rival organization sent you. And that way…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ryo interrupts, and gets it. To a lot of their superiors, getting not one, but two potential targets dead (or at least in a shooting war with each other) at the end of the day is well worth losing a couple of field agents here and there if you have to. “So what about you guys?” he asks next, “You’re going to get us worse than suspended if they find out you’re doing this.” He puts in his earpiece and Tegoshi obligingly turns down the volume.
“Get in trouble for what? We’re all off the clock,” the young hacker chirps. “I mean, I was just innocently surfing on the internet on my own laptop when I happened to hack this place’s security system, ne. And I thought it would be cool to show all my friends.”
Ryo smiles grimly, “Right.”
“Besides, you’re the only one there. If you somehow manage to escape on your own,” Shige agrees, “none of the Administrators can complain, right?”
“Stop sounding so smug at your own smartness,” Ryo tells him, out of habit.
Shige just snorts.
“Okay,” Tegoshi instructs, “I’m going to cause a blackout, Ryo-tan. It’s going to get dark, but the cameras all have a night-vision option and backup power, so don’t worry, okay?”
“That doesn’t help me any, Tego-nyan.”
“But it helps us help you.”
“You can’t be…”
The lights suddenly go out.
“Two steps forward to the door,” Yamapi instructs.
Ryo limps forward two steps and starts groping the air in front of him.
“Er, two more steps,” Yamapi corrects. “Bigger ones.”
Ryo walks forward two more steps and promptly slams into the door. “Yamapi!!”
“Sorry!”
Ryo throws the door open with a snarl. “Now what?”
“Fifteen Nishikido-kun sized steps down the hall and then turn left,” Massu’s voice tells him next.
Ryo is a little bit skeptical, but does as he’s told.
He stops perfectly in front of the next door and turns left.
“Ten and a half steps down this hall,” Massu says next, and Ryo can practically hear his pleased smile as he says it.
He would call the younger agent on it like he does with Shige, except that he can’t help but be kind of impressed with how Massu’s mind works in situations that have to do with physical activity; converting distance into the individual strides of a particular person in a particular situation without having to think about it is just one of those things Massu can do that is both ingenious and moronic all at the same time.
It just can’t be helped.
“There’s the first guard at the end of the next hallway,” Massu says a little while later. “Um, he’s coming kind of fast, so count backwards from three when you reach the corner and then jump out, ne. He’s taller than you are, but carrying low. Then you can…”
“Take his gun,” Ryo finishes, and when he gets to one-one thousand, lunges out.
The guy gets his rifle yanked out of his hand at the exact same time Ryo’s palm slams up into his nose fast and hard. He drops like a rock and Ryo drags him back around the corner, patting him down for extra ammunition.
“Um,” Shige starts after a beat, “maybe you should take his clothes too.”
“Ryo-chan does need new pants,” Yamapi agrees pragmatically.
Ryo rolls his eye again and takes the guy’s clothes.
Then, he sets his jaw and proceeds to take out the other fourteen guys, all with a little help from his friends.
~~~~~
Nishikido Ryo’s solo escape from (and subsequent destruction of) a Chinatown drug lord in the course of a single night is the hottest news in the agency the following morning; how he managed such an amazing feat all on his own with such ridiculous odds stacked against him is both mysterious and ridiculously cool to all of the people who hear the story afterwards. For a while, Ryo is the Tokyo branch’s biggest celebrity.
When Tackey casually inquires to Yamapi about how Nishikido-kun must have picked up a lot of interesting skills from working with NEWS over the years-like, for instance, bomb deactivation and security system hacking-all Yamapi has to say about it is, “Ryo-chan is really amazing, ne.”
Tackey laughs and says everyone in NEWS is a little bit amazing.
Yamapi politely pretends to have no idea what Administrator Takizawa means by that.
~~~~~
NewS’s legend-once its truth is revealed to the rest of the agency many years later- teaches the junior agents that being part of a team isn’t something that ends the moment you leave work at the end of the day. It isn’t something that ever ends really, given what you and your teammates have to go through together over the years.
In this line of work no one- not anyone- is ever really alone.
Because quite frankly, it would be impossible to survive that way.
~~~~~
Epilogue
The purpose of telling the young agents of today the legends of the teams that came before them is first and foremost, to teach them important lessons about all of the things that may-or more likely, will- happen to them over the course of their careers serving under the badge. They need to know about all of the challenges and hardships they too will face one day, out there on the front lines.
But besides just being a lesson (or a warning), the stories also pose a challenge.
“Surpass us,” the legends all seem to say, somewhere in the midst of their retelling, “Make legend number six.”
All it will take is your everything.
END
EDITS PLZ. Maybe a better Koyama b-day fic will come to me tomorrow.