JE- "World’s Finest: How Ten Important Agency Beginnings Came to Be"

[peroxide_fic]

Title: World’s Finest: How Ten Important Agency Beginnings Came to Be
Universe: JE ( Gov AU B-side)
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS, ARASHI, V6, TOKIO, HSJ, Kinki Kids, T&T, KAT-TUN, Matchy, Higashiyama, K8, Toma, Shoon (EVERYBODY)
Warnings/Spoilers: OOC, randomness, nothing in depth.
Word Count: 10,055
Summary: Random snippets of agency canon that you were probably better off not knowing.
Dedication: for all the JE friends who DIDN’T request anything on the holiday request meme; this is me trying to include a little something for all of you. You’ll totally be able to tell which ones are for who too, I think. Um, apologies for the cluelessness about most groups up front. You all know I’m a one trick pony by now, I’m sure.
A/N: I think after a while I just gave up on being IC. More so than usual. I PLAY THE AU CARD AGAIN. HAHA.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!



1. Budgeting

Before they become the Agency Regulations Administrators for Special Hearing Investigations they are known as Agency Reconnaissance: Advance Squadron for Hostile Infiltration, an information gathering and espionage unit often sent into enemy territory for the sake of securing any incriminating evidence required for cases and/or sabotaging a target’s security operations before ground units are scheduled to physically attack them.

“We are good,” as Agent Matsumoto likes to say in summary, “at fucking up other people’s shit.”

“That’s a bit crude,” Agent Sakurai feels the need to respond a few moments later, as he finishes downloading the files they were sent to retrieve tonight while professionally ignoring the obnoxious green laser scope on Ninomiya’s rifle when it gets (purposefully) pointed right in his face. “I like to think our jobs have a little more finesse than that,” he adds, ejecting the disk and sliding it into his vest pocket once it’s done. “We’re like engineers. We have to figure out how things work, and then take them apart delicately. With precision and…”

He is interrupted when, from down the hall, there is a sudden and resounding explosion; it promptly sends a dense cloud of debris into the air and makes the enforced door they are standing behind crunch in on itself.

The wailing scream of the facility’s alarm soon follows.

From inside the smoke and chaos, a slightly fried Agent Aiba coughs and stumbles back into the room to join his teammates. “Done!” he exclaims, cheeks ash-smeared and smile bright. “How was that? Was it good?”

“Perfect,” Director Ohno approves from the background, pausing in the middle of doodling on the whiteboard so that he can nod sagely at Agent Aiba and the smoking, sizzling destruction all around them.

Agent Sakurai slaps one hand to his forehead before grabbing Agent Aiba with the other as the team starts to run down the hallways and out into the yard. “It was perfect except that you weren’t supposed to detonate until after we escaped!” he shouts at his teammate incredulously, all while the bullets start to fly (at their heads) and the spotlights from the guard towers in the four corners of the facility desperately begin to seek them out (so that the bullets flying at their heads can find them better).

“Oh,” the rest of ARASHI says, looking thoughtful as they run (and duck). “Oooh.”

Agent Sakurai suspects-correctly- that only two of them are doing it mockingly.

~~~~~

Just a few years after ARASHI begins its career as an infiltration unit, Senior Director Kondo comes to them with an offer for something else altogether.

“How would you like,” he begins graciously, in a way that makes Agent Sakurai think that they won’t have much choice in the matter either way, “to become the new head unit of our Internal Affairs commission?”

“What? Why?” Agent Ninomiya asks absently, from where he is playing 3-D Pong on his laptop. “It’s fun doing what we do.”

“We’ve had a meeting,” Director Kondo tells him calmly, “and we can’t think of anyone more suited than ARASHI for the job. Who else can better protect us from the very same things the five of you do to your targets on a regular basis?”

“In other words, it takes a thief to catch a thief,” Sho murmurs, while Matchy just nods. “Or in this case, a rat.”

“Exactly. Not that we think of you like that, of course. It’s just that you all have hands-on experience in the espionage field, and you’ll know what kinds of signs to look for in terms of potential sabotage or inter-agency leaks. You’re the most qualified group we have to fill the position.”

“Qualified, huh?” Sho says, and still feels like Matchy isn’t telling them everything. Rat’s instincts.

Matchy ignores Sho’s studying look professionally. “So, will you take the job?”

Everyone turns to Director Ohno.

Who flips a coin. Looks at it.

And pauses a moment.

Then, “Ah,” he sighs thoughtfully, and puts the coin back on the table with a very serious expression on his face. “So tonight I’m eating chicken.” He crosses his arms and furrows his brow in deep contemplation. “With egg or with onion? Both? Neither?”

Matchy blinks.

“If we take it,” Agent Ninomiya pipes up, calmly ignoring his team leader, “will we get to hack the other teams’ e-mails?”

Matchy gives him an odd look. “Yes, I suppose that would be part of the equation.”

“Will we get to tell them what to do?” Matsumoto adds, when he starts to catch on to what Ninomiya is getting at as well.

Matchy sighs and nods in affirmation to that too. “Under certain circumstances, yes. You’d have the authority to temporarily seize control of the other units’ command if you deem it necessary for the sake of an investigation.”

Ninomiya and Matsumoto immediately raise their hands. “In!” they declare in tandem, while Matsumoto grabs one of Aiba’s arms and holds it up over his teammate’s head for him, thus giving the three of them the majority vote (whether all voters realize it or not).

“Yay?” Aiba says automatically, blinking when he suddenly finds his arm in the air without knowing why. He puts his other one up to even it out and wonders what they’re celebrating all of a sudden.

“Four votes for yes,” Ninomiya points out to Director Ohno after a beat, as he counts all of the hands currently in the air. “That’s the majority, leader.”

Agent Aiba waves his two votes happily.

“I see,” Ohno replies, brow still furrowed severely as he stares at the space in front of him.

Ninomiya pats him. “Egg.”

Ohno blinks. “Egg?”

Ninomiya nods. “Egg.”

Ohno smiles. “Sure.”

Silence.

Matchy coughs. “So…is that a yes?”

Agent Sakurai pinches the bridge of his nose. “I think that’s a yes,” he confirms, upon correctly reading the gleeful (slightly power-hungry) expressions on Ninomiya and Matsumoto’s faces and the peaceful (oblivious) ones on Director Ohno’s and Agent Aiba’s.

Matchy just looks relieved. “Great,” he tells them, and stands to go. “I’ll push the paperwork through first thing tomorrow.”

The Senior Administrator leaves the room quickly after that, because while Sho looks resigned to the change he still looks vaguely suspicious about something as well, and the last thing Matchy wants is for him to find out that the real reason for the sudden change in group mission statements is due solely to the fact that the agency just doesn’t have the money or the resources to keep sending in rescue teams every time one of Agent Aiba’s escape plans fails.

As far as all of the Senior Administrators are concerned, giving ARASHI a little bit of extra power to keep them out of trouble is the bargain of the year.

~~~~~

2. Indestructible

Agent Nagase is a last minute addition to TOKIO, right before its official inception as a permanent unit.

It’s a little bit odd, to suddenly go from being a team of four to a team of five, and more than that, to receive someone much younger than the other members and with less field experience is-naturally-a bit worrisome.

“We’ll just have to look out for him,” Yamaguchi theorizes reasonably when they’re in Leader’s office, waiting for the new kid to check in for his first day on the team. “Show him the ropes, guide him. It’ll be like having a little brother.”

“What if he’s a dick?” Taichi poses, reasonably.

Matsuoka snorts. “Then it’ll be more like house training a bad dog.” He cracks his knuckles and grins a bit manically for emphasis.

“I bought a bottle of vodka,” Leader poses after a beat, voice hopeful, “to welcome him.”

“What if he doesn’t like booze?”

TOKIO is horrified at the thought. Leader clutches his bottle of Grey Goose protectively to his chest.

“I wonder why they chose to put someone new into TOKIO just like that,” Taichi questions hastily, before the others can get too depressed about the possibility that there are people in this world who don’t like vodka. “We’ve been working together for a long time already; it might be hard for newcomers to adjust to our pace.”

Silence, as the others think about this.

Well, almost silence, because Taichi blinks when he thinks he can hear something a lot like thudthudthudthudthud coming towards them from out in the hallway.

“Do you guys hear someth…” he starts, but gets cut off when the door suddenly flies open and a giant body hurtles in.

“Sorry! I’m late! I’m late, sorry!!” the owner of the body announces breathlessly, and realizes a moment too late that the office isn’t as big as he’d first anticipated (especially considering the fact that Tat-chan and Mabo are standing around in it, taking up space). The newbie hits the breaks on his dead run just a second later than he should have.

And hurtles right into Yamaguchi, who is standing a few feet in front of the door. Their momentum carries them forward and directly into Matsuoka, who is perched casually on the corner of Director Joshima’s desk.

In the moments that follow there is a crash, a heavy sounding final thud, and the horrible sound of flesh hitting drywall and snapping wood.

Minutes later, when there is a Yamaguchi-sized crack in the far wall of Leader’s office, a collapsed book shelf, a shattered lamp, and the smoking remains of a computer on the ground, Yamaguchi stands up, shakes his head, and holds up his hands. “I’m alright!” he announces.

Matsuoka puts a hand up too, from under the avalanche of binders, books, and splintered wood that had fallen on him in the aftermath of the crash. “All fine here!” he adds.

And that leaves, Taichi realizes, the new guy. Agent Nagase.

Whose head is currently stuck in the dry wall up to his neck. But despite all that, he gamely puts up both hands automatically too, and says, “I’m okay! I’m okay!”

Miraculously, despite the chaos around them suggesting otherwise, the three of them really, really are okay. There’s not a single scratch on any of them, actually.

It’s at that moment when Taichi suddenly gets it, the whole reason why this new guy is here on this old team full of old boozers as opposed to somewhere else, with agents his own age, making a new name for himself.

Taichi realizes that TOKIO is probably the only group in the agency that is strong enough to take Nagase in and not die from it.

Ten minutes, some frazzled looking EMTs, and one crowbar later, Agent Nagase and the rest of TOKIO sit in the hallway outside of Director Joshima’s ruined office, so that they can enjoy their first toast together, as a team.

The five of them drink Vodka and cranberry juice straight from the bottles (mixing in their mouths) as they crouch on the ground in a five point circle, and when Nagase farts loudly enough that the sound echoes down the long corridor rather dramatically, not a single member of the newly restructured TOKIO feels like anything is out of place at all.

~~~~~

3. Pair

“There is an opening in the ranks for a Junior Administrator for the formation and management of new units,” Agent Takizawa gets told one day out of the blue, some weeks after returning from a successful undercover stint as a professional boxer.

Tackey blinks. “Oh?”

Higashiyama stretches, spins, and then shouts, “Ha!” as he proceeds to split a stack of bricks piled high between two concrete blocks in his office. With his fist.

Five of the bricks shatter through on impact, right down the center.

Tackey tries not to look too impressed.

Then, the Senior Administrator grabs a towel off of his coat rack and wipes his forehead, breathing deeply and looking as spry as ever. “We’ve decided that we need some young blood in the upper management,” he admits to Tackey eventually, perching on the edge of his desk. “We think a new approach will breathe life into the agency; give it space to take in some innovative ideas. So we want you-as one of our younger but more responsible stars-to help start this new movement. We have to evolve with the crimes, after all.” He laughs at his own bad joke.

Tackey’s brow furrows. “So you want me… at a desk?”

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s a plan in its infancy, so you’ll still be in the field for a few years yet,” Higashiyama assures him. “Because you’re much too young to be put out to pasture, so to speak.” Pause. Smile. “But it’s well known that you’ve been going on for a while now, about how the agency’s way of looking at things is outdated. It’s your chance to change things, Takizawa. I think you should take it.”

Tackey refrains from revealing that his criticism of the so-called “old ways” has thus far been solely focused on the fact that people like his best friend get relegated to nothing more than cannon fodder simply because some crazy agency evaluation system has deemed him less worthy than someone else, due solely to a bunch of meaningless statistics put down on a series of complicated charts under his agency profile.

Just because Tackey tests better than Tsubasa doesn’t automatically mean Tackey is the better agent, after all. Clearly none of the people reading his and Tsubasa’s profiles has ever seen Tsubasa work with his fists in a no-holds-barred brawl, after the both of them have been drugged and are trying to break out of a yakuza-filled host club before they pass out from the pain and/or the medication.

As far as Tackey is concerned, people who are placed on teams in the hopes of working together would benefit most from having a completely different series of skill sets to draw from. As it was, Tackey had passed out first; Tsubasa ended up carrying him out over his shoulder, fighting the whole damned way before falling unconscious at a 7-11 on the corner.

“So?” Higashiyama asks after a moment of silence has passed between them, voice stirring Tackey from his thoughts “Will you take the job or not? I imagine the offer’s only on the table for a limited amount of time before those old fogies upstairs start rethinking it.”

Tackey leans back and takes a deep breath. “That depends,” he admits, feeling oddly ambitious the more he thinks about it (and the more indignant he gets every time he remembers someone holding his life in higher esteem than Tsubasa’s). Maybe this is his chance to change things, so that the agents who come after him won’t have to deal with that same kind of bullshit logic too.

In the meantime, Higashiyama blinks, not having expected Tackey to actually try and bargain his way into this job any. He thinks it shows that the young agent is growing up a little. “Depends on what?” he asks, and hopes Tackey isn’t going to disappoint him by asking for a raise or two extra weeks of paid vacation.

Tackey smiles winningly. “On how much of the system you’re willing to let me change all at once.”

Higashiyama looks vaguely surprised when he hears that-not what he’d expected- but pleased too. He laughs. “New blood indeed,” he mutters to himself in a charmed sort of way, and sits down in his chair properly now, so that the two of them can discuss the new terms under which Tackey will spend the next few years overhauling the system that he’s hated for so long.

~~~~~

The next morning, Tackey calls Tsubasa and says, “We just got promoted.” He sounds pleased with himself.

Tsubasa blinks. “We? At the same time?”

Tackey laughs and thinks that should be obvious by now. “Well yeah. We’re a team, aren’t we?”

Tsubasa snorts. “How the hell did you swing that?”

“I told them I needed you. That I am incompetent and lost without you.” Pause. “So I told them the truth.”

A helpless groan. “The truth? I can’t believe you outscored me on our last stand-off negotiations exam.”

“That was a million years ago. Also, it probably helped that I didn’t fall asleep in the middle of the gunman’s demands. Just a theory.”

Tsubasa supposes that’s true. “So? Now what?”

When Tackey responds, Tsubasa can hear his partner’s grin through the phone. “So how do you feel about a corner office?”

Tsubasa laughs and wordlessly hangs up on him.

~~~~~

4. Peas

Ryo meets Uchi in his second year at the Osaka branch of the academy, when Uchi suddenly gets moved up a year unexpectedly, into Ryo’s advanced placement class.

Ryo assumes that it’s not because the kid is good so much as because the higher ups want to graduate as many cadets as quickly as they can, simply due to the fact that the Osaka branch is steadily running out of the Tokyo branch’s old hand-me-down targets to shoot at.

It never occurs to him that the pretty boy freshman who got moved up could actually be his rival.

Or even a decent shot. Most of the people here aren’t, after all.

“Ranking test!” one of their bored supervisors tells the cadets in the academy’s second year sniping concentration that afternoon, right after Uchi has introduced himself smartly and without any of the humility an underclassman ought to have.

Ryo decides that’s two strikes against the kid so far, first the arrogance, and second, the fact that his introduction into their class means more wasting time.

The cadets groan when they hear the announcement, because they know it’s a waste of time too. “Sir,” one of the older boys whines outright (because the rules in Kansai are very different from dictatorial Kantou), “we already know Nishikido’s gonna be first. Can’t we just pretend we took the test and go fishing for the rest of the afternoon? It’ll save targets. We always gotta cut back costs, right?”

The other ten snipers in the group murmur in agreement.

“Ranking test, assholes,” their supervisor pushes, sitting back on the grass and staring at the sky. “I gotta get in scores by the end of the week. Real ones. Last time I made ‘em up for you lazy dumbasses some smarty pants in the Internal Affairs department back in Tokyo caught on because of some sorta mathematical anomaly. Plus it’ll give me a feel for the newbie.”

Uchi grins at being mentioned. “And I would really like to see how good my senpai are,” he says brightly, “because I bet I have a lot to learn from them.”

Most of the class buys it except for Ryo, because Ryo knows the difference between a smirk and a smile a million miles away.

He thinks that part of the reason the rest of these idiots suck so much at shooting targets is because they’re obviously all half-blind.

Though at least they’re right about one thing; this whole idea is a waste of time and energy.

Ryo’s going to rank first on this test. Again.

But they end up lining up in front of the targets anyway, so that he can prove it.

Six shots later and Ryo and Uchi are the only two left.

After watching the kid a little bit, Ryo realizes that he’s pretty good. Almost as good as him, maybe.

But not quite.

Maybe.

“I can’t believe I lost to a freshman!” the older kid from earlier complains some minutes later, after he’s gotten thoroughly trounced by Uchi in no time at all. Officiously, he turns to Ryo like Ryo owes him money or something. “You better not lose!” he says to his classmate, and crosses his arms. Ryo notes dully, that he looks to be on the verge of some sort of “You’re representing us as a class,” type speech.

Except that before he can begin, there’s the sound of a gun misfiring, the ricochet of a bullet off of one of the other cadet’s rifle body, and the ominous thud of something embedding itself into the tree trunk behind the older kid, right next to his arm.

“Oops!” Uchi breathes, hands over his mouth in what should be a mortified manner. Except that Ryo is standing next to him, and can see the very slight edges of a clearly not mortified smile underneath the younger cadet’s fingers. “I accidentally misfired,” Uchi murmurs, knuckling himself in the head cutely. “My bad, senpai!” he apologizes, bowing profusely. Then, he looks up again, sweetly. “Were you going to say something?”

He was, but the older cadet is too frazzled by his near-death experience to remember what any of it was.

From where he’s lying half-awake in the grass, their instructor takes a shot of booze from his hipflask and makes an impatient sound. “Hurry the hell up and finish, shitfaces!” he orders, as Uchi and Ryo obligingly line up to take their turn.

And as Uchi levels his rifle and adjusts the scope, he smiles. “Don’t let the misfiring fool you, senpai,” he says to Ryo when it’s just the two of them, “I’m actually really good.”

Ryo snorts, but can’t hide his grin when he does. “You may be good,” he murmurs back, “but not that good. Three-degrees down on the ricochet and it would have hit the part of the tree by his head.”

Uchi looks surprised; whether it’s from being caught or from Ryo’s quick assessment of the results remains a mystery. “Damn,” he mutters eventually, and takes the first shot, landing it dead-center on the bullseye when he does. “Next time, then.”

Ryo laughs and takes aim for his turn. “Next time,” he agrees, as he squeezes the trigger.

He decides that maybe the two of them can be friends after all.

~~~~~

5. Family

When Agent Okada comes to Tokyo to join V6, he is still very, very young. On top of that, he has no experience of either academy, beyond the examinations he took there, to pass out of all of his classes.

It is the cost, people suppose, of being a prodigy.

His family sends him off to the big city in the east with various snippets of Kansai wisdom for him to remember at all times; his father tells him to always be honest and his sister tells him not to date Tokyo girls. His mother tells him that as a boy, it is his job to grow up to be a great man and one day, build a family.

Okada goes to Tokyo with all of these things close to his heart.

Though his interpretation may be a little bit off. He is still a little bit young, after all.

When he walks into Director Sakamoto’s office and sees a much older, very serious-looking man sitting at his desk working (later he’ll realize that Director Sakamoto had actually been sniping on Ebay), the young explosives expert blinks and immediately blurts, “Otousan.”

Sakamoto pauses. And subsequently loses his bid. “Excuse me?” he asks, and isn’t sure he heard quite right.

From his chair, 2IC Agent Nagano snorts in gentle laughter. “That’s cute,” he says, and gives Sakamoto a look that tells him to please play nice, whether he likes being called otousan or not.

Which is hard for the older agent, because Go and Ken have their arms around each other and are pointing and laughing at Sakamoto. “Otousan!” they chant in tandem, in-between high pitched giggles, “Otousan looks angry!”

It doesn’t help when Inohara joins them.

“Okay, that’s enough, kids,” Nagano chides gently, when Sakamoto looks like something in his head is going to burst. The others happily obey.

Okada looks thoughtful. “Okaasan,” he murmurs automatically, and looks at Nagano when he does.

Nagano blinks.

This time, Sakamoto laughs. “See?” he says, “It’s weird, right?”

Okada realizes belatedly that maybe his dad had meant for him to always be honest, but to selectively choose when to be honest out loud.

But his fauxpas doesn’t end up being too bad, because before he knows it, Go and Ken’s arms are slung around his shoulders and they are laughing at him. “We like you,” they say, around big smiles, “you’re funny.”

And then they pull him out the door to show him around.

Sakamoto sputters, because he had had this whole great speech about being a team planned out for them (and for when after his Ebay bids were done), except now he won’t get to use it, because the younger three are already ignoring him for the day.

“You’re all grounded!” he shouts after them without thinking, and sends Inohara into a series of big-mouthed, guffawing laughs when he does.

Nagano just quietly placates him with tea and says, “Otousan, please mind your blood pressure.”

It is the beginning, Sakamoto thinks, of the world’s most dysfunctional family.

And despite all of Nagano’s fussing, his blood pressure ends up suffering anyway.

~~~~~

6. Rules

KAT-TUN comes to an understanding, early on in their career as a junior team.

It is after a week of working backup for Koichi for a grueling fourteen hours straight every day, when the six of them are trudging back into the locker room scraped up and sore but otherwise alive.

Mission accomplished.

Despite all that however, Kame looks dissatisfied with something, like something is bothering him that he can’t let go of, even after everything has been said and done.

While they are changing, he can’t hold it in anymore, and turns to Ueda. “Why weren’t you there to cover for Nakamaru when he messed up?” he asks abruptly, and when he does, makes everyone else pause for a moment and stare, like they can’t quite believe he said that.

Ueda blinks. “Excuse me?”

Kame takes a deep breath. “You were there to support Nakamaru. But when things went wrong on his side, you didn’t do what you were supposed to do. You didn’t cover for his mistakes.”

“Um, Kamenashi-kun,” Nakamaru starts, and wants to explain that maybe Ueda hadn’t dived in after Nakamaru because that would have gotten them both in hot water. He’s touched by Kame’s concern for his welfare, but really, there are priorities to think about here. The oldest agent raises his hand. “It really wasn’t…”

“The mission could have been jeopardized if the targets had been able to break through your end,” Kame says to the explosives expert, brow furrowed. “He should have covered.”

“Oh,” Nakamaru replies, when he realizes what Kame had actually been getting at.

Ueda’s eye twitches. “Are you seriously asking me why I did what I did or are you just voicing your disapproval for how I do my job in the form of a question?” he asks.

Kame takes a step back. “There’s no need to get defensive,” he begins, in what Jin calls Kame’s dick voice, “I think it’s a genuine concern that we have to ask these kinds of thi…”

Ueda punches Kame.

A beat.

And then Koki throws his shirt on the ground. “Finally!” he shouts, like he’s been waiting for that particular bell forever. He promptly jumps into the fray with fists flying.

The others figure they might as well follow his lead.

Needless to say, chaos erupts.

~~~~~

Twenty minutes and six makeshift ice-packs later, Koichi looks around at the mangled faces of his backup unit incredulously. “What could you idiots possibly have been thinking?” he demands, and can’t believe that they are more injured from dealing with each other than they’d been after the six of them had been dismissed from the crime scene after their successful arrest earlier today.

Kame looks like he wants to respond, but jostles his swollen jaw a little bit too much in the process and just ends up making a sort of whimpering noise instead.

Ueda sees it and seems pleased, even as he quietly suffers Kleenex shoved up both nostrils to stem his nosebleed.

“It wasn’t our fault! Kame and Ueda started it!” Koki feels the need to clarify as he presses a bag of frozen corn to his left eye.

Koichi stares. “So the other four of you decided that the best way to respond to a conflict between teammates was to have everyone start to wail on everyone else in the meantime?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Jin replies boredly, and would like to please go home so he can change out of his ripped shirt now, please.

“Shut up,” the remaining members tell him in tandem (except for Kame, who just gives him a look that seems like that’s what he would have said to Jin if he could).

Koichi looks like he has a headache. “I can’t believe this,” he mutters again, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I actually have to send you guys to Internal Affairs now, so they can have an agency psychologist evaluate you and make sure you won’t shoot each other the next time you have guns in your hands.”

“What, really?” Jin demands, and looks distressed for the first time all day. “But I have a date tonight!”

Nakamaru smacks him by rote.

Jin smacks him back on instinct. Twice. On his bruised shoulder. On purpose.

Koichi responds by slamming his fists into the tops of both of their heads. “Tomorrow. Internal Affairs,” he tells them flatly. “Now clean up and go home before I suspend you all on top of it.”

The members of KAT-TUN all grudgingly stand and trudge out of the room.

“I think,” Jin mutters a few minutes later, when they’re back in the locker room and picking up the overturned benches and strewn clothing and shattered bottles of toiletries, “that the six of us need to establish some rules as a group, so Koichi doesn’t bitch us out like that again.”

A moment.

And then Koki clears his throat. “How about no hitting in the face, one-on-one only, and best two out of three in thirty second rounds, no ratting?” he poses.

Silence.

“Regardless of ratting one another out, What if we get caught in the act?”

Ueda slings his duffle over his shoulder. “Last one to put both hands up gets the blame.”

“That’s fair,” the others agree.

And from that day on, KAT-TUN never gets in trouble for inter-group violence ever again.

But only because they learned how to not get caught.

~~~~~

7. Westside

After teaching several successful courses to the cadets at the Tokyo Academy in their very limited free time, Koyama and Nakamaru receive a request from the Osaka branch.

Koyama-always eager to help guide young minds-easily agrees to the offer, and drags a helpless Nakamaru along with him in all his enthusiasm.

“It’ll be fun!” the younger explosives expert insists to his friend cheerfully. “I bet it’ll be like teaching a bunch of tiny, adorable Ryo-chans!”

“Um,” Nakamaru replies, and wonders if Koyama is still trying to convince him that this is a good idea only he fails really hard at it.

“It’s our duty as good senpai,” Koyama argues next, and buys Nakamaru dessert at the academy cafeteria. A cheerful bowl of chocolate pudding.

Nakamaru sighs. “I guess,” he acquiesces eventually, and eats his pudding.

~~~~~

When Koyama excitedly tells Ryo about the class he is going to teach on the weekends in Osaka, Ryo blinks at him for a moment, and then throws his head back and laughs.

Koyama blinks. “Eh? What’s so funny, Ryo-chan?”

“You’ll see, you’ll see,” Ryo replies around his wheezing giggles, “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“Surprise?” Koyama asks, and in a moment of blind optimism, convinces himself that Ryo must mean that something nice is waiting for him in Osaka.

~~~~~

The following weekend, Koyama gets to his classroom bright and early Saturday morning, an hour before his and Nakamaru’s class is supposed to begin.

Nakamaru wanders in blearily five minutes before the first bell, and Koyama cheerfully hands him an almond croissant and a cup of coffee to help wake him up, just like he does when they’re teaching together in Tokyo.

“Mmmmgh,” Nakamaru responds in thanks, and drinks the coffee.

Five minutes later, no one is in the room.

Nakamaru groans. “Maybe the Osaka headmaster forgot about us.”

“It’s early on the first day, ne,” Koyama assures him as he peeks out the window. “It takes a lot of dedication to be in class on a Saturday, after all.”

Nakamaru looks skeptical. “No, pretty sure they forgot about us.”

Koyama isn’t convinced; it’s only two minutes past now, after all. “Let’s give them some more time, ne.”

Forty-five minutes later, no one is there.

Nakamaru gives up and puts his head down on the table to nap.

Koyama wonders-worriedly- if maybe all the students got lost.

~~~~~

“Jackasses,” the Osaka academy headmaster grumbles when Koyama and Nakamaru are sitting in his office later that morning, the two explosives experts inquiring about whether or not the school forgot to make the announcement about their class.

“We did have a roll sheet, but maybe…erm, maybe you forgot to tell them what time and what room?”

“No, I’m pretty sure they’re just being jackasses,” the headmaster replies grumpily. “They enrolled in yours as a filler class; they’re probably trying to get into the advanced marksmanship class that’s been on wait list forever instead. Everyone here fuckin’ wants to be a sniper. Whether they’ve got the talent for it or not.”

Koyama blinks. “Eh, really?”

“Great,” Nakamaru yawns. “Does that mean we don’t have to do this anymore? The commute is hell.”

But then Koyama smiles. “Eito’s reputation here is really amazing, ne.”

Nakamaru slaps a hand to his forehead.

~~~~~

The two of them go out to the target range in a last ditch attempt a little while afterwards, to the overflowing advanced marksmanship class.

As it turns out, the headmaster is right; no one in Osaka wants to take a volatile mechanics class at eight am on a Saturday morning when they can take a much more glamorous shooting class at noon the same day.

Thirty students sit on the sidelines, pestering the slightly inebriated instructor to please give them permission to take the class.

“I said no!” the instructor replies doggedly, and tells them to get the hell out, because there’s only enough targets this semester for fifteen students.

When he sees Koyama and Nakamaru standing nearby and looking lost, he sighs. “Can I help you Tokyo boys?” he asks.

Koyama blinks. “Eh, how’d you know?”

The instructor smirks, and gestures to Nakamaru’s chest. “Sweater vest.”

Koyama laughs.

Nakamaru, not so much. “So,” he says after a minute, and holds up his roll sheet. “I think you have a few people who belong to us.”

~~~~~

“We don’t want to be bomb squad,” one of the Kansai cadets tells the two guest instructors straight up later that afternoon, when they are back in the classroom and holding a special late version of the introduction to volatile mechanics class (because the marksmanship instructor made them).

“Well, you don’t have to be on the bomb squad,” Koyama placates them, “this class is just a beginning course, ne. It’ll come in handy even if you’re a sniper in the future. Just the basics.”

“What’s so great about being snipers anyway?” Nakamaru asks. “Your headmaster told us that 80% of the Osaka branch applies to be in that concentration. You all do know that flooding the market like that will just make it more selective, right?”

A few blank looks.

Nakamaru sighs when logic fails. “Never mind.”

Koyama, however, understands where the students are coming from. “Eito is really amazing,” he sympathizes, “so it makes sense that you want to be like them, ne. But there are really a lot more other interesting things to do too. Maybe you’ll find something you like even more than being a sniper!”

“I don’t want some pampered Tokyo agent telling us what’s what,” one of the students begins stubbornly, “You don’t understand what it’s like being here. Getting your hand-me-downs all the time, never being taken seriously. The only ones who know where we come from are Eito. And we’re gonna live up to their legacy and become great snipers. Dig our way out of this shit hole too, and show you all that no one in the world can beat a Kansai shooter.”

Koyama looks a little scandalized at the language, while Nakamaru looks unimpressed. “Look,” the older explosives expert begins reasonably, “it’s fine to want to be a sniper if you’re a good shot, but how many of you are actually at least above average?”

Every hand in the room goes up.

Nakamaru snorts. “No really.”

A few hands go down.

Nakamaru arches an eyebrow.

All hands go down.

“Right, and that’s why none of you got into the advanced marksmanship class, right?”

A slightly sulky, highly defensive, “What do you know? The Tokyo branch probably has enough ammo and targets to let any jackass they want into the program, whether he’s any good or not.”

Nakamaru grabs a very old, very familiar ticking device out of his pocket and flips a few switches on it, twists a few wires.

The LED display lights up and begins counting down from 5:00. “You’re right. I don’t know a lot about shooting or snipers, except that I’ve got one on my team, who is a good shot from Tokyo. But I do know a lot about bombs,” he begins, and flips a few more switches, which makes the display instantly lose a second depending on how quickly he talks, or lose a minute when he jostles it too hard. “And you can be the best damned shot in the world, but if one of these is sitting in front of you with…” he shakes the device, and it instantly goes from 1:30 to 0:30, “thirty seconds left and no way out, you and all of your ace-shooter teammates are still going to die unless you at least know a little bit about how to deal with these.”

The cadets look vaguely impressed with his dexterity, but stubbornly persist in their immobility. “We want to be snipers,” they say.

Nakamaru sighs and pulls a wire from the device; it immediately goes off with a single, ominous pop. “Suit yourselves.”

He gets up and leaves the room.

Koyama doesn’t know what to do.

~~~~~

“Ryo-chan,” Koyama begins later that week, when he’s in the break room with the sniper on regular work hours, “everyone in Osaka wants to be a sniper too. Like you, ne.”

Ryo snorts. “Yeah, I know. And only one out of fifty of those idiots is going to be good enough.”

“Ryo-chan,” Koyama murmurs, sounding kind of lost, “what to I do?”

“Win their respect,” Ryo replies simply, around the rim of a cup of coffee. Pause. Grin. “And if they still give you shit after that, I’ll head down to Osaka with you and kick the shit out of them.”

Koyama laughs nervously and supposes it’s just another one of those Kansai things because he definitely does not want to see Ryo-chan beating up a bunch of cadets.

But more importantly, he wonders how he could possibly win the Osakans’ respect.

~~~~~

When he goes to Director Sakamoto for help on the matter, the older agent just kind of grins and says he has an idea.

When Koyama listens to that idea he thinks that it is either very, very smart or very, very stupid.

When he tells it to Nakamaru, Nakamaru thinks it is the latter.

“But,” Nakamaru also adds, “it’s all we’ve got.”

Koyama blinks. “So…we should do it?”

“Why not?”

Koyama grins a little. “I thought you didn’t want to teach this class that much.”

Nakamaru looks thoughtful. “Yeah,” he admits eventually, “but as troublesome as it is, looking at those cadets and hearing how stupid they are really pissed me off for some reason.”

Koyama bursts out laughing. “You’re definitely a KAT-TUN member, ne.”

Nakamaru takes it as a compliment this time, and the following Friday night, the two of them are on the early evening shinkansen to Osaka.

~~~~~

At seven am Saturday morning, the alarms in the Osaka academy abruptly go off.

Cadets in their underwear stumble out of the dormitories and into the yard blearily, wondering if someone pulled the alarm again, just so they wouldn’t be caught sneaking back into the building after curfew.

But the minute they get out into the quad, they see the bombs.

One on every pillar, door, and fencepost, all arranged in an intricate, synchronized series of wires and counters and pale gray blocks of C-4.

The cadets all start to look worried, as the counters hit an ominous two minutes.

“Oh god the terrorists are after us,” someone whimpers on instinct. “All the brightest stars of tomorrow, gone in a national tragedy!”

He gets smacked in the face.

“This is a joke right?” one of the more anxious looking cadets demands. “Haha, very funny! I bet it was the seniors.”

“Fuck you!” the seniors all say.

“Someone go poke one of those damned things and confirm that they’re fake. I bet they’re fake! I mean, we do have security here, right?”

“We don’t even have our own track, dumbass. Why do you think we have to run around the block for conditioning?”

“The point is, it has to be fake! Why would someone attack Osaka before Tokyo?”

A general murmur of agreement.

Then, one of the sharper cadets clears his throat. “So. Can anyone actually confirm that Tokyo hasn’t been attacked already?”

The smarter cadet gets a retaliatory wedgie. “Nerd!”

“Just…someone go and check if they’re real or not, okay?! We don’t fuckin’ have time to waste with theories.”

“We wouldn’t be able to tell, asshole! Do it yourself!” someone else shouts back.

One brave freshman ambles up to one of the devices and studies it determinedly. “They have to be fake! Look!” He reaches out to grab it.

And is immediately tackled by four of his much more cowardly classmates. “What if touching it will blow us all up, dumbass?!” they scream, and proceed to beat him over the head severely and repeatedly for nearly killing them all. “Sometimes these things have motion sensors, right?”

“And sound sensors!” another cadet remembers.

The entire quad goes dead silent.

Subsequently, the world’s most quiet pandemonium breaks out a little while later, in those final thirty seconds, as every single student’s eyes watches the counters on the bombs click down what could potentially be the remaining half minute of their much too short, inglorious lives.

When the counters all reach zero simultaneously, there is an explosion.

The cadets all scream and cover their heads.

From the shower of confetti.

A few seconds after that, Koyama and Nakamaru come out of hiding, the Osaka academy headmaster behind them and looking pretty damned amused.

“Alright, assholes,” the headmaster says gruffly, getting everyone’s attention, “Introductory Volatile Mechanics starts in less than an hour in B Building, room 405. Who’s going?”

Koyama and Nakamaru are both satisfied when twenty out of the eighty people present grudgingly raise their hands.

~~~~~

For the next eighteen weeks after that, Koyama and Nakamaru spend their Saturday mornings in Osaka, trying to teach a bunch of would-be snipers how to identify, contain, and disarm explosive materials.

At the end of the course, when ten of the twenty students in the class decide that maybe there’s future for them in this type of thing after all, the two explosives experts consider it four and a half months well spent.

More importantly, for the first time in a long time, the Osaka branch welcomes some pampered Tokyo boys into its halls with open arms, when the cadets there finally begin to realize that they can represent Kansai pride without having to be snipers to do it.

The following year, the same request to teach gets sent to Nakamaru and Koyama again.

This time, the two of them don’t even have to think twice before they agree.

~~~~~

8. Zero

It feels like one day Shoon is a member of a team-a successful one at that-and the next day, he is suddenly all alone.

“Our team is breaking up. The two of us are being put into a different unit,” Yabu and Hikaru tell Shoon and Taiyou that morning when his world first shifts off of its axis, as he walks into work expecting it to be just the same as yesterday, with the four of them finishing up that routine surveillance for Tegoshi-kun on a long-term project of NEWS’s. “Takizawa-kun has picked the two of us to be a part of his new team.”

Shoon stares when he hears the news, and waits for some sort of tell from his two longtime teammates, some sort of sign that they’re just joking with him and something this sudden and painful wouldn’t happen to them just like this, on a random Wednesday morning without warning. It just wouldn’t be fair if they were serious, not after all the years and adventures and trials they’ve been through together.

But there’s no punch line like he hopes, no Hikaru dissolving into a grin and saying “Gotcha!” or Yabu pointedly reiterating that the whole stupid idea had been Hikaru’s in the first place. All there is are a pair of painfully tight smiles and distant, slightly frightened looks.

Sometime later-maybe a day or two or a week or a month, he can’t really remember-Taiyou has that same, painfully tight smile on his face one Thursday afternoon, when he tells Shoon he’s quitting. “Maybe a security job is the best someone like me can do after all,” the taller agent admits, and says he already has a new job all lined up, protecting a small bank in Saitama. He starts in two weeks. “You should visit me sometime,” he adds, looking embarrassed.

And just like that, Shoon is suddenly alone. No team, no work, and no hope.

He wonders if it’s the universe’s way of telling him that everything he spent the last few years of his life working so hard towards was ultimately meaningless.

~~~~~

Meaning visits him months later in the form of a ghost from units past, dressed down in a simple grey hooded sweatshirt and fashionably ripped jeans. “Hey, Yamashita-kun,” the man says in friendly, open greeting as he leans against Shoon’s door lazily. “Remember me?”

Shoon stares and thinks that he’s one of the few junior agents left who had been around at the time, but yes, he remembers the name of the person standing in front of his office very well.

He continues to stare, in what might be a very disrespectful way.

But luckily, this particular senpai has always been a really easy-going guy.

Half an hour later, Agent Ikuta takes Shoon out to lunch at a cozy, nondescript café. “My treat,” he insists, before they order panini with iced tea in the shade of a trendy outdoor patio.

“Toma-kun,” Shoon starts nervously after a moment, because he doesn’t know what’s going on, “not that I don’t want to see you, but…”

Toma laughs. “But what am I doing here?”

Shoon nods.

Toma sips his tea and stretches his legs out under the table. “Well,” he begins, “I kind of have something important to tell you.”

When their paninis come, Shoon completely forgets to eat his, because he is too busy listening (in a dazed sort of way) to Toma’s cheerful explanation as to what-exactly-happens to guys like them in a job like this.

That afternoon, amongst the scattered shards of his old life, Yamashita Shoon gets a glimpse into the future.

And even though it’s a future that doesn’t look particularly bright or easy or smooth for him, he thinks that it’s okay, because despite all that, it’s his. Toma smiles reassuringly at him and tells him that the only thing that really matters is what he does with it.

When he leaves the café some hours later, after Agent Ikuta has professionally faded back into the anonymous crowds of the Tokyo populace, Shoon returns to the agency all by himself.

For a second, he stands outside of the building’s looming doors, the very ones that he has walked unthinkingly into without fail for every day of his life for more than half a decade now.

And then he takes a deep breath, walks through them one more time, and tells himself that this must be the beginning of his second life.

In those moments, he learns what it is to be reborn. He even smiles.

Nobody is there to see but him, but he thinks that’s okay too.

~~~~~

9. Contract

ARASHI members know that Agent Tegoshi can make them see whatever he wants to make them see on his computer at any time during the day. Agent Tegoshi knows this too, and the six of them are fine by it.

As it is, they have an understanding.

Because-for example- on days when Ninomiya doesn’t want to work very seriously, it is a great relief for him to not see any e-mails going between the members of NEWS’s computers even though in reality there are probably something like fifty a day. Agent Ninomiya appreciates it because when he doesn’t have to write a report on any suspicious activity, that means he and Jun can send viruses to KAT-TUN’s intranet all day instead.

Or-for example-Agent Sakurai sometimes can’t hack into V6’s database for routine check up because Agent Okada is still considered a prodigy in all aspects despite his increasing age; when that happens Sho knows he can call in the “favor” between he and Tegoshi, the unspoken part of the agreement that says “we’ll leave your team alone for the most part if you help us out once in a while.”

Tegoshi can usually get him into all of the other teams’ systems before lunch, which leaves Sho the rest of the day to fix whatever it is Ninomiya and Matsumoto are doing to Akanishi’s computer today.

It is, in short, a much more symbiotic relationship than one might think.

It wasn’t always this way.

~~~~~

“Someone’s in our system,” Tegoshi murmurs in vague distress sometime in the beginning of 2004. Pause. “Very obviously in our system.”

“Eh,” Koyama murmurs, worried simply because it sounds like he ought to be given the circumstances. “What are they doing?”

“Downloading all of our report roughs from Leader’s in-box, ne,” Tegoshi replies, and doesn’t stop to explain much more before he types in a few keys and the download very abruptly stalls for a second, before continuing-seemingly-right where it left off.

“Whatever you did didn’t work…” Koyama frets, peeking over the younger agent’s shoulder. “It’s still going.”

Tegoshi smiles nervously. “No…it’s okay, Koyama-kun,” he answers. “They didn’t get our files.”

Koyama doesn’t get it really, but he figures Tegoshi knows what he’s doing.

~~~~~

Down on ARASHI’s floor, Agent Ninomiya finishes the routine download from Yamapi’s computer because today NEWS was randomly picked for screening.

He yawns in boredom, clicks open the document and sees:

The hamster dance.

“The heck?” he mutters, as hundreds of tiny, tiny cartoon hamsters wiggle across his screen.

Sho passes by on his way to the photocopier and blinks when he sees what Ninomiya is concentrating on. Sighs. “We don’t actually have time to waste today, you know. Those reports are due in to Matchy before we leave at five.”

“But I’m actually working!” Ninomiya replies, and sounds just the slightest bit indignant that he should be suspected of doing anything but.

Sho looks skeptical.

Ninomiya ignores him and clicks the hamsters closed.

“This,” he decides reluctantly, “might actually take some effort.”

~~~~~

At lunch time, Ninomiya thinks that he’s successfully bypassed whatever ridiculous security system is on Yamashita’s computer. He starts a fresh download of the requested files-this time off of the hard drive and not the internet-and considers it as working way harder than he’d planned to today.

When he opens the first file, he gets a virus.

One that actually causes their entire network to crash.

Sho storms into the room five seconds after everyone’s monitors go black and says, “What did you do?”

Ninomiya sputters.

~~~~~

It takes Leader sleepily tapping a random combination of letters on his keyboard to successfully isolate one of the files with the virus in it (tricky because it keeps copying itself and uploading itself into other programs); by mid-afternoon, they’re finally back on line.

“Something is definitely up with NEWS’s network,” is all Ninomiya has to say about it afterwards, as he sulks in his chair and Jun makes fun of him for sucking at his job.

Sho has a headache. “I’ll look into it,” he declares, after Aiba suggests trying the download again, because watching the virus eat its way through their hard drives had been strangely hypnotic to him. Like playing old-school snake on his old cell phone.

“I wonder if I can recreate it,” he murmurs thoughtfully.

Sho quickly reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a squeaky toy. And squeaks it.

“Mister Peabody!” Aiba cheers, and latches on.

Sho gets to work.

By himself.

~~~~~

“Someone really wants our files, ne,” Tegoshi says again towards the end of the day, when he looks into NEWS’s network activity and sees someone worming their way rather skillfully into Ryo’s cache.

He furrows his brow, moves to intercept by creating a dummy version of Ryo’s computer on the network, and thinks to himself that maybe it’s time to play hardball.

~~~~~

When he is approximately fifteen minutes into Ryo’s list of files (for some reason they all seem to be named, “Sexy Osaka Man 1, 2, 3, etc., etc., etc.,) Sho’s computer screen starts to blink.

Approximately ten seconds after that, his hard drive short circuits.

Two seconds after that, Ninomiya’s computer starts to spark, followed by Matsumoto’s, Aiba’s, and Ohno’s, all in a burning, sizzling row.

Sho stares. “WHAT THE HELL,” he shouts a moment later, as the smoke hits the smoke detectors in the ceiling and the sprinkler system goes off right above them.

~~~~~

A few days later, everyone sits around Matchy’s office looking slightly cowed.

“I’m sorry!” Tegoshi apologizes profusely, “I really didn’t know! It was just…I was worried, since I didn’t know what was going on,” he admits, looking impossibly young and terrified when face-to-face with so many senior agents who he doesn’t know and who he has (apparently) greatly wronged.

It’s pathetic enough that Yamapi reaches out and puts a comforting hand on the small of the young hacker’s back, before turning to Matchy resolutely. “I’ll take responsibility, ne,” he says. “He was just doing his job.”

Matchy sighs, both bemused at Tegoshi-kun’s heartfelt apology and kind of impressed by Yamashita’s protectiveness. “It’s not his fault, or yours,” he assures the young agents in a surprisingly fatherly sort of way. “It just means that we need to work out a system.”

Everyone blinks. “A system?” Sho asks, and wonders if that is supposed to be some sort of snipe against ARASHI’s effectiveness.

Matchy almost laughs out loud this time. The very young are so very twitchy sometimes. “A system,” he confirms. “It’s partially my fault too, you know. For only skimming the NEWS member profiles.”

Yamapi is confused, and is wise enough-despite being very young-to come out and ask the question. “What about our profiles?”

Matchy reaches forward and puts a hand on Tegoshi’s head then, because Tegoshi still looks like a kicked puppy, staring down at the tops of his shoes and wringing his hands. “When I told Tackey the whole story,” he admits to the young hacker, “he spent about ten minutes straight laughing at me. And then he told me all about how you got this job in the first place.”

Tegoshi swallows. “Oh.” He wonders if he’s going to get in trouble for hacking the agency’s database all those years ago too.

“You,” Matchy clarifies when he sees the trepidation still on the kid’s face, ruffling Tegoshi’s messy, computer-geeky hair as he does, “will make a good resource for both teams.”

“Eh?” everyone says, all at once.

Matchy leans back in his chair. “I have an idea,” he admits.

In the hours that follow on that early morning in 2004, Matchy explains his idea. NEWS and ARASHI come to an agreement shortly thereafter.

And from that day on, Sho’s computer never explodes-because of a virus, at least- ever again.

~~~~~

10. Double

The way that the two members of the Kantou Illegal Narcotics Key Investigators get paired together is so simple that it is almost insulting.

“Send a memo to Agent Domoto,” one of the administrators of the time orders his aide absently one day, “we need him to clear his schedule tomorrow, so that he can go over his report on the polygamy case with the defense attorney.”

“Right!” the hapless secretary quickly agrees, and rushes the memo down to Tsuyoshi as instructed.

Tsuyoshi blinks at the hastily scrawled, “Clear your schedule tomorrow morning for meeting with defense attorney,” that makes it down to his desk early that evening, right when he’s about to leave for the day.

A mere junior agent who has had some good luck breaking cases bigger than they’d initially been perceived to be, Tsyuoshi simply shrugs mentally to himself and does exactly as he’s told, thinking that this is probably happening because maybe some of his casework has proved to be surprisingly valuable again, like it had that one time with the marijuana field.

The next morning, a very pretty, very serious-looking lawyer shows up at his door bright and early at eight am, asking him if he minds being recorded and to please verify and elaborate on some of the facts he’d glossed over on in his report.

Then, she hands him the report.

He blinks. Flips through it a little bit. “Um,” he admits to her after a beat, “this isn’t mine. I didn’t write this.”

Needless to say, the defense attorney ends up storming out of the building very angrily, but only after vocally threatening to complain to the judge that the local authorities are trying to make their case against her client stick by playing petty mind games with the justice system.

Tsuyoshi watches her go in a vaguely mournful manner; anyone with such great legs shouldn’t be such a bitch, he thinks. It’s horribly disappointing.

The administrator (and the secretary) who had sent the memo to the wrong agent are also not very happy when they find out what happened, but for different reasons entirely.

~~~~~

One month later, a Senior Administrator has to request a full physical and psychological evaluation from Agent Domoto after his breakthrough in a particularly nasty case involving a laboratory’s illegal development of infectious pathogens. It is imperative, the administrator says, that the agents involved with the bust be evaluated in the hours immediately following the arrest and seizure of those responsible for the laboratory. Their clothes should all probably be burned.

When junior agent Domoto Koichi gets the note to please be prepared for a visit from one of the agency doctors, he finds it slightly odd but not particularly surprising considering the fact that random drug testing has come into effect at the agency recently; he assumes that his meeting with his director this afternoon is thus cancelled and strips off all of his clothes, as instructed by the memo.

Fifteen minutes later, the aforementioned director walks into Koichi’s office-right on time-and promptly gets an eyeful.

In the meantime, everyone on Tsuyoshi’s floor (and all of TOKIO for some reason) ends up coming down with a particularly nasty strain of the flu (not surprisingly, the only ones who don’t actually realize the fact that they are displaying symptoms are TOKIO as well).

After that particular incident, the Senior Administrators decide to put Tsuyoshi and Koichi in a unit together, tentatively called KINKI.

They do it simply because they figure that if the two of them are always together, the memos will find their way to the correct Agent Domoto eventually.

For all its complicated dealings, the agency can be stupidly simple like that sometimes too.

But-as they’ve all discovered- it usually ends up working out okay.

END

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