[oneshot] Secret Agents Don't Die
Title: Secret Agents Don’t Die
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx)
Pairing: Yamanoo
Genre: Action/Tragedy
Rating: PG13
Summary: AU. Their name is BEST, and their mission is to chase down the newest group of hackers on the block. Not every hero story has a happy ending.
Warning: Character death. Foul mouths.
Notes: Glossary of weapons mentioned in this story: Kodachi / Katana / Kunai / Semi-automatic pistol
Many thanks to dear hotfruitsfor bearing with me all through this, putting up with my fails, and betareading. ♥
Written for the contest at heysay_contest.
“Yuya, Kota would like me to tell you that we are going to hate you forever.”
Takaki Yuya rolls his eyes.
“Kei, stop being a wimp. There’s nothing wrong with crawling through airducts, especially if you need to be stealthy.”
His partner (or rather, one of his four partners) Inoo Kei sighs, and is tempted to shoot back an acerbic reply when a sharp whisper of We’re here! stops him short.
“Dai-chan, you sure?”
Arioka Daiki consults the tracking device installed on his wristwatch and nods.
“SEVEN are in the next room, we’ll drop here and burst in.”
“Affirmative.”
It takes them all of two minutes to silently land in the empty room. The security camera has already been bugged with a loop video, courtesy of Daiki, so SEVEN won’t know they’re coming.
“On the count of three,” their ‘leader’ of sorts, Yabu Kota, signals to them in sign language.
They all nod, withdrawing various weapons and holding them at the ready.
Kota holds up one finger, then two, then three. On his nod, Yaotome Hikaru kicks open the door, which is surprisingly not locked at all.
“Stop right there!” Kota yells, holding out a pistol in each hand, ready to fire.
There is silence - except for a strange beeping. SEVEN are nowhere to be seen.
“They escaped,” Kei growls, slowly relaxing his grip on his twin kodachi. “What’s that beeping?”
Yuya looks around the room, and his eyes land on a black disk with a blinking red light.
“Guys,” he says slowly. “This is not good…”
“SHIT!”
Hikaru flings a minibomb at the nearest window, and after it explodes in a shower of glass they leap through it and run as far as they can.
When they are several meters away from the base, a boom sounds, and they turn back to see the base going up in a column of fire and smoke.
“Close call,” Kota breathes. “For now, let’s head back to HQ.”
Their name is BEST, one of the youngest qualified groups of secret agents under the Kitagawa Organisation. Like most of Kitagawa’s agent groups they are made to complement each other and form a well-rounded group.
Arioka Daiki is their tracking expert, dealing with all the tracking gadgets they use to keep an eye on their targets. He’s also a genius at hacking into buildings to leech off their surveillance systems, and often uses this ability to ensure BEST isn’t detected when they infiltrate an enemy’s building.
Inoo Kei has a delicate face, but despite that and his gentle demeanour, he is in fact trained in assassination using knives. He’s trained under several seniors in the agency, including the infamous Koyama Keiichiro (or more well-known as Katana Koyama), and is reasonably proficient in wielding common blades from kunai to katana. It is said that he hides weapons everywhere on his person, and Hikaru swears he will never forget the day he stole Kei’s jacket and nearly sliced his finger open on a slim kodachi hidden in the sleeve.
Yaotome Hikaru is the group’s explosives expert. He has a range of self-made bombs kept everywhere on his person, including minibombs, flash bombs, and (for some reason nobody understands) stink bombs. He is generally in charge of breaking into enemy bases, and usually hangs around at the back during fights, unless he has to drop a flash bomb or a smoke bomb. For this reason, he is highly skilled in stealth, so nobody comes to attack him.
Takaki Yuya is known as the medic of the group, but in reality he is also a poisons and acupuncture expert. He always has a field medic kit somewhere on his person, several poisons ranging from simple nerve paralysers to ones that kill (and everything in between) stored in sealed vials, and a couple hundred acupuncture needles strapped in holders to his limbs. Yuya likes to claim he can hit peoples’ pressure points with his needles from a kilometer away, but up to now this has not been proven.
Yabu Kota is BEST’s leader, but only because everybody else forced him to take up the role. He is a shooting expert, preferring to use semi-automatic pistols above anything else. When BEST is sent on undercover long-term missions he is usually the one in charge of hunting down food (along with Kei), though he generally doesn’t like being assigned the role of the food provider.
They may be super powered agents, like everyone else in their organization, but Kitagawa Organisation exists to put down super powered bad guys, so it all works out.
Currently, the group that BEST has been assigned to hunt down (and bring back dead or alive) is SEVEN, a mysterious group of hackers.
Originally, nobody had paid much attention to them, until a couple of months ago when they somehow managed to hack into Sony’s database and steal the personal information of a staggering number of people.
They had left a message behind signing off as SEVEN, but that was all the information they had on this new hacker group. Was it even a group? How many people, what gender and what age? What was their motive?
Nobody knew.
Now, President of Kitagawa Organisation, Johnny Kitagawa, has mobilized BEST as well as their seniors NEWS, to help track down SEVEN.
So far, it was not going well, until BEST found a lead to one of their bases.
Unfortunately, it had just gone up in smoke minutes ago, and now BEST are left with no leads once again.
The next day, Kei heads for his day job. He’s only a secret agent when needed, and he still had to pay the bills, so he had chosen a job at a nearby coffee shop.
Today, however, it is practically empty save for one boy with chestnut brown hair sitting in a corner, typing away at his laptop.
Feeling bored, Kei decides to walk over and talk to the boy.
“Hey.”
The boy looks up, and wide eyes blink slowly at him.
“Oh, hi,” he says cheerfully.
“Are you free?”
“I guess.”
The boy grins, moving his bag so Kei can sit on the other chair at the table.
“My name’s Yamada, by the way.”
“I’m Inoo,” Kei says. “What are you doing?”
“Me?” Yamada asks brightly. “I’m doing an animation. Want to see?”
Kei nods, and Yamada turns his laptop so Kei can see it. On the screen is Adobe Flash, with an animation of a dancing leprechaun on it. For some reason, the leprechaun has a strawberry in his hat, and looks decidedly gleeful.
“My friend insisted it had to be a leprechaun,” he says, sounding upset. “But he let me put a strawberry in, so I’m reasonably happy.”
Kei just grins.
“Kota, you need to take a look at this.”
Kota blinks, and walks over to where Daiki is hunched over his computer.
“Yeah?”
Daiki points at the screen, and Kota sees several lines of code.
“I found this floppy disk at the base,” Daiki explains. “This is the analysis of the content.”
He opens up a Word file containing several lines of text.
Project: Code Ireland
Target: not confirmed
Mission: Sabotage and destroy
Status: Programming, due for test launch in two weeks
“Code Ireland?” Kota repeats, sounding bemused. “I haven’t heard of that virus before.”
“Exactly,” Daiki says. “So Code Ireland is either a scrapped project, or an upcoming one.”
Sighing, Kota straightens up and runs a hand through his hair.
“We’ll just have to be on our guard.”
Yamada turns up a couple of days later, once again during Kei’s shift.
“Chinen was upset I showed you my leprechaun,” he says. “He apparently doesn’t want anybody to see it until we present our project.”
“That’s okay,” Kei laughs. “What kind of project is it?”
Yamada fidgets a little.
“I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell anybody,” he says. “Chinen claims that it’s top secret until we finish.”
Smiling, Kei pats Yamada’s head.
“Okay then,” he says. “You want some tea?”
A couple of needles prick his side, and Kei is startled back into reality.
“Kei,” Yuya says, reproach in his voice. “You’re distracted. You can’t be distracted - what if this was an actual battle and not just a spar?”
Kei frowns, yanking out Yuya’s needles and stowing away his kodachi. Instead, he pulls out a slim katana from his hip sheath.
“I’m not distracted,” he bites out.
“Sure.”
Kei knows Yuya can probably tells he’s lying, but he’s not going to admit that Yamada’s been on his mind - secret agents are discouraged from having personal relationships of any kind.
The younger boy still intrigues him, though he has no idea why.
Yamashita, leader of fellow secret agent group NEWS, bursts through the door. NEWS has also been assigned to track down SEVEN along with BEST, and his appearance signals another possible lead on SEVEN.
“We found some information on people who may be part of SEVEN,” he says in between gasps of air, waving a sheaf of papers.
Hikaru and Daiki trip over their chairs in their hurry to get up and grab the papers.
Yamashita spreads out the papers, and introduces each one of them.
“They all look pretty young,” Yuya observes, and Yamashita nods.
“This one’s Akanishi. He used to be with KAT-TUN, that hacker group that Arashi’s keeping tabs on,” Yamashita says, pointing to the first sheet.
Kota nods in understanding. KAT-TUN is a crazy group of hackers, but Arashi is their organization’s best secret agent squad, after all.
“So Akanishi left?”
“Apparently so,” Yamashita says. “That’s what my informant told me. Maybe he formed or joined SEVEN. The kind of codes used by them to hack look like his level.”
Yamashita moves on to the next sheet of paper.
“This one is Nakagawa Shoko. She’s new in the hacker world, I think. Female hackers are rare, but I’ve heard she was the one behind that attack a couple of years ago on the Ministry of Health’s database. Definitely one to watch out for, something like the Sony break-in would probably be a piece of cake for her.”
The next piece of paper bears a photograph of someone who looks decidedly young, though the photo is too blurred to make out any specific details.
“This last one is Chinen Yuri,” Yamashita sighs. “He’s a genius hacker, from what I’ve heard from informants. Apparently he nearly succeeded in hacking into KAT-TUN’s computers by himself, and actually managed to corrupt quite a bit of their data.”
“Isn’t he on our side, then?” Hikaru asks, curiously.
Yamashita shakes his head.
“We don’t know where he stands - he’s a wildcard.”
The name Chinen sounds vaguely familiar to Kei, and with a jolt he realizes Yamada mentioning a friend named Chinen.
It’s a coincidence, he tells himself. Just a coincidence.
“I should probably stop eating cake,” Yamada says sadly, looking at the strawberry shortcake inside the glass display box.
Kei blinks.
“Why?”
“My friends have been telling me I’m fat,” he mumbles, pouting.
Laughing, Kei ruffles Yamada’s hair.
“You’re not fat,” says Kei cheerfully. “You’re perfectly fine, just the way you are.”
“Really?”
Kei nods, and Yamada beams at him.
“Thank you, Inoo~”
His smile is beautiful - almost like the sun, Kei thinks - and his own heart skips a beat.
“SEVEN hasn’t been doing anything lately,” Yuya sighs. “It makes me nervous.”
“Definitely,” Daiki agrees. “I think they’re planning something big.”
Kei says nothing, merely concentrating on sharpening his knives while Kota polishes his pistols next to him.
“It’s only the calm before the storm.”
Yamada comes into the shop furtively today.
“People are giving me weird looks,” he says timidly, and Kei immediately knows why - Yamada is wearing a bright pink parka that screams I AM A STRAWBERRY IDIOT on the back in lurid neon green.
“Your parka…” Kei starts. Yamada grins.
“Isn’t it nice? Chinen gave it to me as a birthday present.”
“Well- Er- Yes,” Kei flounders.
He figures Yamada doesn’t know about the text at the back of his new parka. Shrugging, he beckons to Yamada.
“You can eat in the break room. You’ll get cake, and nobody will stare at you.”
“Thank you! You’re the best!”
Five minutes later, Yamada is at home in the break room, happily munching on his second piece of strawberry cheesecake.
“It’s your birthday today?” Kei asks curiously, and Yamada nods, munching on a strawberry.
Kei slips away to the storeroom, and comes back a while later. Sticking a candle into the last uneaten slice of cake, he lights it and pushes it towards Yamada.
“Make a wish,” he says, and Yamada beams.
He squeezes his eyes shut for a while, before blowing out the candle flame with a single breath.
“Thank you,” he murmurs. “Usually Ryutaro makes me a cake, but he burnt down Keito’s kitchen recently when he fell asleep while smoking, so Chinen banned him from the kitchen and from cigarettes for two years.”
Kei laughs, trying to digest the new names.
“Well, I’m glad you managed to have one, then.”
“Yeah,” Yamada smiles. “Chinen’s been so irritable lately because of our project, so I’ve taken to sneaking away from him since I’ve finished my part of it. I’m glad I managed to meet you, talking with you keeps me sane for now.”
“This…Chinen doesn’t sound very nice,” Kei says, slightly reproachfully, and Yamada laughs, shaking his head.
“He is, just that he’s stressed now,” Yamada says. “He’s a genius, you know. Thankfully our project will be done in a few days and he’ll be back to normal.”
“That would be nice,” Kei says, holding Yamada’s hand. “You’ll still come here though?”
“Of course,” Yamada smiles. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
This time it is not Yamashita but Kato from NEWS who bangs open their door and slams a sheet of paper on their table.
“This guy,” he says, panting slightly. “He’s been smuggling contraband cigarettes and stuff. We managed to bug him, and we think it’s very likely he’s part of SEVEN.”
The profile picture is blurry, but Kei estimates that the person in question is possibly even younger than Daiki.
“What’s his name?” Daiki asks, swiveling around from his laptop.
“Morimoto Ryutaro,” Kato says. “We didn’t manage to get a hidden camera on him, but we managed to put on a tracker, at least, so if he’s with SEVEN we’ll know where they are.”
Kato pulls out a laptop and turns it on. On the screen is a topographical map with a single blinking yellow dot that appears to be moving.
“…Is that a forest?” Hikaru asks.
“It is the forest at the base of Mt Fuji,” Kato confirms. “We suspect their hideout is here.”
The dot blinks again, and suddenly it disappears. Minutes later, Kato’s laptop crashes, and the only thing left on the black screen is a grinning clown face, with the words SEVEN’S GOT YOU emblazoned below in shiny yellow lettering.
Kei thinks the face of the clown looks somewhat like a leprechaun he vaguely remembers seeing, but he puts that out of his mind.
“Shit,” Kato says, very eloquently.
“Chinen moved house yesterday,” Yamada complains. “We do our project at his place so I got lost trying to look for him.”
“Where does he stay?” Kei asks, bemused.
“Around Shinjuku station,” Yamada says. “He likes the statue of Hachiko.”
Kei blinks.
“That’s…nice.”
Yamada just laughs.
NEWS goes to the forest at the base of Mt Fuji to stakeout around the suspected area where SEVEN’s base is.
Kota sits in front of a walkie-talkie, recording down the contents of the regular reports Masuda sends through it.
“We’ll catch SEVEN this time,” Yuya says, restocking his supply of poisons in a corner.
Hikaru nods resolutely.
The next day, Yamada comes in right at closing time.
“Sorry, we’re closed,” Kei says, and Yamada’s face falls.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he says sadly. “Tomorrow is the day we’ll finally be done with our project, so I probably won’t come.”
Laughing, Kei leads Yamada out of the shop as his co-worker locks up.
“We can still talk, silly,” he says. “There’s a park there, we can sit down.”
When they reach the park, they end up walking around instead of sitting. Yamada sighs, his hand reaching down to take Kei’s.
“I’m glad to have met you,” he mumbles, and Kei smiles.
“I know,” he replies gently.
Yamada shakes his head and stops, turning around to face Kei.
“I mean, I’m very, very happy that I got to know you.”
Stepping closer to Kei, he throws himself at the taller boy, wrapping his arms around Kei.
“I like you,” he mumbles after a while into Kei’s shoulder.
Exhaling softly, Kei just holds him back, patting Yamada’s hair softly.
“Me too.”
It is 12pm the next night when Daiki leaps up from his computer, swearing up a storm. He lunges for the walkie talkie by Kota’s side.
“They’ve struck!” he yells frantically into the device. “SEVEN have struck!”
They hear muffled curses from the other end.
“We’re going into the base now,” Masuda says hurriedly, and the connection ends.
Kei is about to ask how Daiki can be so sure, but then he catches a glimpse of the computer screen and shuts up.
The screen is all black, save for some white words.
MY NAME IS IRELAND
YOU’VE BEEN HAD
ALL YOUR INFORMATION NOW BELONGS TO US
HAHAHAHA
LOVE, SEVEN
Below the incriminating notice is an animation of a gleeful dancing leprechaun.
In his hat is a single strawberry.
“They’re not there,” spits a sour voice over the walkie talkie. “Fuck it all.”
Kota frowns, ignoring Nishikido’s swearing.
“Where could they be?”
Kei considers the leprechaun and the name similarities, and slowly he comes to a conclusion that he’s always been reluctant to.
He takes a deep breath.
“I have a hunch about where they might be.”
Hikaru looks around the station and sighs, pulling at his cap.
“Shinjuku station?”
“It was a hunch,” Kei replies tersely, looking around.
He spots a poster of Hachiko on the wall of the station that definitely wasn’t there two weeks ago, when he last came to the station. Marching up to it, he slices through the tape sticking it to the wall, and yanks it down.
Concealed behind it is a hole in the wall, big enough for a man to fit in.
“Holy shit,” Daiki breathes. “It’s a tunnel.”
Kota sighs.
“Thank goodness the station’s already closed for the night.”
Daiki nods, turning on the flashlight installed on his watch.
“Let’s go.”
Kota stays behind to guard the entrance, and the other four crawl in.
After roughly five minutes, the tunnel widens and they reach a door. Hikaru attaches a small bomb to the door and they all step back.
BOOM.
They’ve already snapped on goggles to protect against the smoke, so they run in with weapons at the ready.
“Stop what you’re doing!”
The smoke gradually clears, and they see Hikaru pointing a gun that he borrowed from Kota directly at the face of a young boy.
“Chinen Yuri,” Hikaru breathes, recognizing the face of the hacker.
The boy’s mouth twists into a wicked smile.
“Kitagawa’s boys, aren’t you?” he asks in a sickeningly sweet voice. “Did you like what we did to your database? I could undo it, you know, but in about an hour your information will be rendered obsolete forever.”
Yuya frowns.
“What are you implying?”
“Leave, and let SEVEN walk free,” Chinen sing-songs. “If you do, I’ll restore the data that Ireland took from your computers.”
Yuya clucks his tongue in disapproval. Before anyone can react, his hand has moved and a silver blur has hit Chinen in the side of the neck. The young boy drops like a stone, one of Yuya’s long needles in his neck.
“Sedative,” Yuya says triumphantly. “He’ll be out for a week, with the concentration of that dose.”
Another boy stands up, smacking his hands on the desk.
“Morimoto Ryutaro,” Yuya names, and Hikaru moves the gun to point at him. “The smuggler.”
He gives a terse nod to Daiki, who runs to Chinen’s computer and begins tapping away at the keys.
“Don’t you dare-” Ryutaro starts, running towards Daiki.
Before he can get within even an arm’s length of Daiki, however, he collapses with another needle in his neck.
Two more boys - one tall and one who looks slightly foreign - back away slowly, before turning a doorknob behind them and running away. Another boy with chestnut hair can be seen in the hallway behind the open door, running away as well.
“After them!” Yuya barks, guarding Daiki.
Hikaru and Kei nod, taking after them.
They have lost sight of the fleeing SEVEN members by the time they reach a fork in the hallway.
“You take right,” Kei says quickly, remembering a flash of chestnut disappearing down the other path. “I’ll take left.”
Hikaru nods.
“Stay safe.”
He charges down the path on the right, and Kei begins his sprint down the one on the left.
The end of the hallway is a door, and Kei kicks it open, slipping the kodachi out from where it is hidden in his sleeve.
“Don’t hurt me,” a familiar voice gasps.
Yamada is inside the room, holding a gun shakily at the door.
“Yamada,” Kei whispers, voice cracking. The kodachi in his hands drops to the floor.
Yamada’s eyes widen at the sound of his voice, and the gun arm drops.
“I-Inoo,” he murmurs.
At that moment, Yamada looks so broken and fragile that Kei just drops to his knees in front of him.
“Why?”
Yamada simply smiles crookedly.
“I never imagined that you would have been a secret agent, Inoo,” he murmurs gently.
“I-” Kei begins to say, but chokes on his words instead. Softly, Yamada reaches out his free hand, brushing soft fingers against Kei’s white knuckles.
Before he can register what Yamada’s doing, the younger boy has raised the gun again, this time the barrel resting against his temple.
“I’m glad to have met you,” he says, smiling sadly.
Kei looks up, and bites back a gasp of horror.
“What are you doing?” he almost shrieks, hysterical.
“I’m sorry,” Yamada mumbles, “but it’s the best way. If you bring me out alive, they’ll torture me. I don’t want you to have to kill me, because then you’ll be even sadder, won’t you?”
“There can be another way,” Kei pleads, not even caring anymore that this is a criminal he is dealing with and that he’s completely going against the rules of his profession.
“I love you,” says Yamada, voice quavering. “I’m so glad I met someone like you, that someone like you can still accept me despite finding out my dark secrets.”
“Yamada-”
His smile is haunting now, and his eyes flutter.
“Will you remember me?”
“Always,” Kei whispers, frantic now. “Don’t do this, please-”
“I love you,” Yamada breathes, a tear beginning to form in the corner of his eye. “Goodbye.”
The finger tenses on the trigger, and-
fin.
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx)
Pairing: Yamanoo
Genre: Action/Tragedy
Rating: PG13
Summary: AU. Their name is BEST, and their mission is to chase down the newest group of hackers on the block. Not every hero story has a happy ending.
Warning: Character death. Foul mouths.
Notes: Glossary of weapons mentioned in this story: Kodachi / Katana / Kunai / Semi-automatic pistol
Many thanks to dear hotfruitsfor bearing with me all through this, putting up with my fails, and betareading. ♥
Written for the contest at heysay_contest.
“Yuya, Kota would like me to tell you that we are going to hate you forever.”
Takaki Yuya rolls his eyes.
“Kei, stop being a wimp. There’s nothing wrong with crawling through airducts, especially if you need to be stealthy.”
His partner (or rather, one of his four partners) Inoo Kei sighs, and is tempted to shoot back an acerbic reply when a sharp whisper of We’re here! stops him short.
“Dai-chan, you sure?”
Arioka Daiki consults the tracking device installed on his wristwatch and nods.
“SEVEN are in the next room, we’ll drop here and burst in.”
“Affirmative.”
It takes them all of two minutes to silently land in the empty room. The security camera has already been bugged with a loop video, courtesy of Daiki, so SEVEN won’t know they’re coming.
“On the count of three,” their ‘leader’ of sorts, Yabu Kota, signals to them in sign language.
They all nod, withdrawing various weapons and holding them at the ready.
Kota holds up one finger, then two, then three. On his nod, Yaotome Hikaru kicks open the door, which is surprisingly not locked at all.
“Stop right there!” Kota yells, holding out a pistol in each hand, ready to fire.
There is silence - except for a strange beeping. SEVEN are nowhere to be seen.
“They escaped,” Kei growls, slowly relaxing his grip on his twin kodachi. “What’s that beeping?”
Yuya looks around the room, and his eyes land on a black disk with a blinking red light.
“Guys,” he says slowly. “This is not good…”
“SHIT!”
Hikaru flings a minibomb at the nearest window, and after it explodes in a shower of glass they leap through it and run as far as they can.
When they are several meters away from the base, a boom sounds, and they turn back to see the base going up in a column of fire and smoke.
“Close call,” Kota breathes. “For now, let’s head back to HQ.”
Their name is BEST, one of the youngest qualified groups of secret agents under the Kitagawa Organisation. Like most of Kitagawa’s agent groups they are made to complement each other and form a well-rounded group.
Arioka Daiki is their tracking expert, dealing with all the tracking gadgets they use to keep an eye on their targets. He’s also a genius at hacking into buildings to leech off their surveillance systems, and often uses this ability to ensure BEST isn’t detected when they infiltrate an enemy’s building.
Inoo Kei has a delicate face, but despite that and his gentle demeanour, he is in fact trained in assassination using knives. He’s trained under several seniors in the agency, including the infamous Koyama Keiichiro (or more well-known as Katana Koyama), and is reasonably proficient in wielding common blades from kunai to katana. It is said that he hides weapons everywhere on his person, and Hikaru swears he will never forget the day he stole Kei’s jacket and nearly sliced his finger open on a slim kodachi hidden in the sleeve.
Yaotome Hikaru is the group’s explosives expert. He has a range of self-made bombs kept everywhere on his person, including minibombs, flash bombs, and (for some reason nobody understands) stink bombs. He is generally in charge of breaking into enemy bases, and usually hangs around at the back during fights, unless he has to drop a flash bomb or a smoke bomb. For this reason, he is highly skilled in stealth, so nobody comes to attack him.
Takaki Yuya is known as the medic of the group, but in reality he is also a poisons and acupuncture expert. He always has a field medic kit somewhere on his person, several poisons ranging from simple nerve paralysers to ones that kill (and everything in between) stored in sealed vials, and a couple hundred acupuncture needles strapped in holders to his limbs. Yuya likes to claim he can hit peoples’ pressure points with his needles from a kilometer away, but up to now this has not been proven.
Yabu Kota is BEST’s leader, but only because everybody else forced him to take up the role. He is a shooting expert, preferring to use semi-automatic pistols above anything else. When BEST is sent on undercover long-term missions he is usually the one in charge of hunting down food (along with Kei), though he generally doesn’t like being assigned the role of the food provider.
They may be super powered agents, like everyone else in their organization, but Kitagawa Organisation exists to put down super powered bad guys, so it all works out.
Currently, the group that BEST has been assigned to hunt down (and bring back dead or alive) is SEVEN, a mysterious group of hackers.
Originally, nobody had paid much attention to them, until a couple of months ago when they somehow managed to hack into Sony’s database and steal the personal information of a staggering number of people.
They had left a message behind signing off as SEVEN, but that was all the information they had on this new hacker group. Was it even a group? How many people, what gender and what age? What was their motive?
Nobody knew.
Now, President of Kitagawa Organisation, Johnny Kitagawa, has mobilized BEST as well as their seniors NEWS, to help track down SEVEN.
So far, it was not going well, until BEST found a lead to one of their bases.
Unfortunately, it had just gone up in smoke minutes ago, and now BEST are left with no leads once again.
The next day, Kei heads for his day job. He’s only a secret agent when needed, and he still had to pay the bills, so he had chosen a job at a nearby coffee shop.
Today, however, it is practically empty save for one boy with chestnut brown hair sitting in a corner, typing away at his laptop.
Feeling bored, Kei decides to walk over and talk to the boy.
“Hey.”
The boy looks up, and wide eyes blink slowly at him.
“Oh, hi,” he says cheerfully.
“Are you free?”
“I guess.”
The boy grins, moving his bag so Kei can sit on the other chair at the table.
“My name’s Yamada, by the way.”
“I’m Inoo,” Kei says. “What are you doing?”
“Me?” Yamada asks brightly. “I’m doing an animation. Want to see?”
Kei nods, and Yamada turns his laptop so Kei can see it. On the screen is Adobe Flash, with an animation of a dancing leprechaun on it. For some reason, the leprechaun has a strawberry in his hat, and looks decidedly gleeful.
“My friend insisted it had to be a leprechaun,” he says, sounding upset. “But he let me put a strawberry in, so I’m reasonably happy.”
Kei just grins.
“Kota, you need to take a look at this.”
Kota blinks, and walks over to where Daiki is hunched over his computer.
“Yeah?”
Daiki points at the screen, and Kota sees several lines of code.
“I found this floppy disk at the base,” Daiki explains. “This is the analysis of the content.”
He opens up a Word file containing several lines of text.
Project: Code Ireland
Target: not confirmed
Mission: Sabotage and destroy
Status: Programming, due for test launch in two weeks
“Code Ireland?” Kota repeats, sounding bemused. “I haven’t heard of that virus before.”
“Exactly,” Daiki says. “So Code Ireland is either a scrapped project, or an upcoming one.”
Sighing, Kota straightens up and runs a hand through his hair.
“We’ll just have to be on our guard.”
Yamada turns up a couple of days later, once again during Kei’s shift.
“Chinen was upset I showed you my leprechaun,” he says. “He apparently doesn’t want anybody to see it until we present our project.”
“That’s okay,” Kei laughs. “What kind of project is it?”
Yamada fidgets a little.
“I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell anybody,” he says. “Chinen claims that it’s top secret until we finish.”
Smiling, Kei pats Yamada’s head.
“Okay then,” he says. “You want some tea?”
A couple of needles prick his side, and Kei is startled back into reality.
“Kei,” Yuya says, reproach in his voice. “You’re distracted. You can’t be distracted - what if this was an actual battle and not just a spar?”
Kei frowns, yanking out Yuya’s needles and stowing away his kodachi. Instead, he pulls out a slim katana from his hip sheath.
“I’m not distracted,” he bites out.
“Sure.”
Kei knows Yuya can probably tells he’s lying, but he’s not going to admit that Yamada’s been on his mind - secret agents are discouraged from having personal relationships of any kind.
The younger boy still intrigues him, though he has no idea why.
Yamashita, leader of fellow secret agent group NEWS, bursts through the door. NEWS has also been assigned to track down SEVEN along with BEST, and his appearance signals another possible lead on SEVEN.
“We found some information on people who may be part of SEVEN,” he says in between gasps of air, waving a sheaf of papers.
Hikaru and Daiki trip over their chairs in their hurry to get up and grab the papers.
Yamashita spreads out the papers, and introduces each one of them.
“They all look pretty young,” Yuya observes, and Yamashita nods.
“This one’s Akanishi. He used to be with KAT-TUN, that hacker group that Arashi’s keeping tabs on,” Yamashita says, pointing to the first sheet.
Kota nods in understanding. KAT-TUN is a crazy group of hackers, but Arashi is their organization’s best secret agent squad, after all.
“So Akanishi left?”
“Apparently so,” Yamashita says. “That’s what my informant told me. Maybe he formed or joined SEVEN. The kind of codes used by them to hack look like his level.”
Yamashita moves on to the next sheet of paper.
“This one is Nakagawa Shoko. She’s new in the hacker world, I think. Female hackers are rare, but I’ve heard she was the one behind that attack a couple of years ago on the Ministry of Health’s database. Definitely one to watch out for, something like the Sony break-in would probably be a piece of cake for her.”
The next piece of paper bears a photograph of someone who looks decidedly young, though the photo is too blurred to make out any specific details.
“This last one is Chinen Yuri,” Yamashita sighs. “He’s a genius hacker, from what I’ve heard from informants. Apparently he nearly succeeded in hacking into KAT-TUN’s computers by himself, and actually managed to corrupt quite a bit of their data.”
“Isn’t he on our side, then?” Hikaru asks, curiously.
Yamashita shakes his head.
“We don’t know where he stands - he’s a wildcard.”
The name Chinen sounds vaguely familiar to Kei, and with a jolt he realizes Yamada mentioning a friend named Chinen.
It’s a coincidence, he tells himself. Just a coincidence.
“I should probably stop eating cake,” Yamada says sadly, looking at the strawberry shortcake inside the glass display box.
Kei blinks.
“Why?”
“My friends have been telling me I’m fat,” he mumbles, pouting.
Laughing, Kei ruffles Yamada’s hair.
“You’re not fat,” says Kei cheerfully. “You’re perfectly fine, just the way you are.”
“Really?”
Kei nods, and Yamada beams at him.
“Thank you, Inoo~”
His smile is beautiful - almost like the sun, Kei thinks - and his own heart skips a beat.
“SEVEN hasn’t been doing anything lately,” Yuya sighs. “It makes me nervous.”
“Definitely,” Daiki agrees. “I think they’re planning something big.”
Kei says nothing, merely concentrating on sharpening his knives while Kota polishes his pistols next to him.
“It’s only the calm before the storm.”
Yamada comes into the shop furtively today.
“People are giving me weird looks,” he says timidly, and Kei immediately knows why - Yamada is wearing a bright pink parka that screams I AM A STRAWBERRY IDIOT on the back in lurid neon green.
“Your parka…” Kei starts. Yamada grins.
“Isn’t it nice? Chinen gave it to me as a birthday present.”
“Well- Er- Yes,” Kei flounders.
He figures Yamada doesn’t know about the text at the back of his new parka. Shrugging, he beckons to Yamada.
“You can eat in the break room. You’ll get cake, and nobody will stare at you.”
“Thank you! You’re the best!”
Five minutes later, Yamada is at home in the break room, happily munching on his second piece of strawberry cheesecake.
“It’s your birthday today?” Kei asks curiously, and Yamada nods, munching on a strawberry.
Kei slips away to the storeroom, and comes back a while later. Sticking a candle into the last uneaten slice of cake, he lights it and pushes it towards Yamada.
“Make a wish,” he says, and Yamada beams.
He squeezes his eyes shut for a while, before blowing out the candle flame with a single breath.
“Thank you,” he murmurs. “Usually Ryutaro makes me a cake, but he burnt down Keito’s kitchen recently when he fell asleep while smoking, so Chinen banned him from the kitchen and from cigarettes for two years.”
Kei laughs, trying to digest the new names.
“Well, I’m glad you managed to have one, then.”
“Yeah,” Yamada smiles. “Chinen’s been so irritable lately because of our project, so I’ve taken to sneaking away from him since I’ve finished my part of it. I’m glad I managed to meet you, talking with you keeps me sane for now.”
“This…Chinen doesn’t sound very nice,” Kei says, slightly reproachfully, and Yamada laughs, shaking his head.
“He is, just that he’s stressed now,” Yamada says. “He’s a genius, you know. Thankfully our project will be done in a few days and he’ll be back to normal.”
“That would be nice,” Kei says, holding Yamada’s hand. “You’ll still come here though?”
“Of course,” Yamada smiles. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
This time it is not Yamashita but Kato from NEWS who bangs open their door and slams a sheet of paper on their table.
“This guy,” he says, panting slightly. “He’s been smuggling contraband cigarettes and stuff. We managed to bug him, and we think it’s very likely he’s part of SEVEN.”
The profile picture is blurry, but Kei estimates that the person in question is possibly even younger than Daiki.
“What’s his name?” Daiki asks, swiveling around from his laptop.
“Morimoto Ryutaro,” Kato says. “We didn’t manage to get a hidden camera on him, but we managed to put on a tracker, at least, so if he’s with SEVEN we’ll know where they are.”
Kato pulls out a laptop and turns it on. On the screen is a topographical map with a single blinking yellow dot that appears to be moving.
“…Is that a forest?” Hikaru asks.
“It is the forest at the base of Mt Fuji,” Kato confirms. “We suspect their hideout is here.”
The dot blinks again, and suddenly it disappears. Minutes later, Kato’s laptop crashes, and the only thing left on the black screen is a grinning clown face, with the words SEVEN’S GOT YOU emblazoned below in shiny yellow lettering.
Kei thinks the face of the clown looks somewhat like a leprechaun he vaguely remembers seeing, but he puts that out of his mind.
“Shit,” Kato says, very eloquently.
“Chinen moved house yesterday,” Yamada complains. “We do our project at his place so I got lost trying to look for him.”
“Where does he stay?” Kei asks, bemused.
“Around Shinjuku station,” Yamada says. “He likes the statue of Hachiko.”
Kei blinks.
“That’s…nice.”
Yamada just laughs.
NEWS goes to the forest at the base of Mt Fuji to stakeout around the suspected area where SEVEN’s base is.
Kota sits in front of a walkie-talkie, recording down the contents of the regular reports Masuda sends through it.
“We’ll catch SEVEN this time,” Yuya says, restocking his supply of poisons in a corner.
Hikaru nods resolutely.
The next day, Yamada comes in right at closing time.
“Sorry, we’re closed,” Kei says, and Yamada’s face falls.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he says sadly. “Tomorrow is the day we’ll finally be done with our project, so I probably won’t come.”
Laughing, Kei leads Yamada out of the shop as his co-worker locks up.
“We can still talk, silly,” he says. “There’s a park there, we can sit down.”
When they reach the park, they end up walking around instead of sitting. Yamada sighs, his hand reaching down to take Kei’s.
“I’m glad to have met you,” he mumbles, and Kei smiles.
“I know,” he replies gently.
Yamada shakes his head and stops, turning around to face Kei.
“I mean, I’m very, very happy that I got to know you.”
Stepping closer to Kei, he throws himself at the taller boy, wrapping his arms around Kei.
“I like you,” he mumbles after a while into Kei’s shoulder.
Exhaling softly, Kei just holds him back, patting Yamada’s hair softly.
“Me too.”
It is 12pm the next night when Daiki leaps up from his computer, swearing up a storm. He lunges for the walkie talkie by Kota’s side.
“They’ve struck!” he yells frantically into the device. “SEVEN have struck!”
They hear muffled curses from the other end.
“We’re going into the base now,” Masuda says hurriedly, and the connection ends.
Kei is about to ask how Daiki can be so sure, but then he catches a glimpse of the computer screen and shuts up.
The screen is all black, save for some white words.
MY NAME IS IRELAND
YOU’VE BEEN HAD
ALL YOUR INFORMATION NOW BELONGS TO US
HAHAHAHA
LOVE, SEVEN
Below the incriminating notice is an animation of a gleeful dancing leprechaun.
In his hat is a single strawberry.
“They’re not there,” spits a sour voice over the walkie talkie. “Fuck it all.”
Kota frowns, ignoring Nishikido’s swearing.
“Where could they be?”
Kei considers the leprechaun and the name similarities, and slowly he comes to a conclusion that he’s always been reluctant to.
He takes a deep breath.
“I have a hunch about where they might be.”
Hikaru looks around the station and sighs, pulling at his cap.
“Shinjuku station?”
“It was a hunch,” Kei replies tersely, looking around.
He spots a poster of Hachiko on the wall of the station that definitely wasn’t there two weeks ago, when he last came to the station. Marching up to it, he slices through the tape sticking it to the wall, and yanks it down.
Concealed behind it is a hole in the wall, big enough for a man to fit in.
“Holy shit,” Daiki breathes. “It’s a tunnel.”
Kota sighs.
“Thank goodness the station’s already closed for the night.”
Daiki nods, turning on the flashlight installed on his watch.
“Let’s go.”
Kota stays behind to guard the entrance, and the other four crawl in.
After roughly five minutes, the tunnel widens and they reach a door. Hikaru attaches a small bomb to the door and they all step back.
BOOM.
They’ve already snapped on goggles to protect against the smoke, so they run in with weapons at the ready.
“Stop what you’re doing!”
The smoke gradually clears, and they see Hikaru pointing a gun that he borrowed from Kota directly at the face of a young boy.
“Chinen Yuri,” Hikaru breathes, recognizing the face of the hacker.
The boy’s mouth twists into a wicked smile.
“Kitagawa’s boys, aren’t you?” he asks in a sickeningly sweet voice. “Did you like what we did to your database? I could undo it, you know, but in about an hour your information will be rendered obsolete forever.”
Yuya frowns.
“What are you implying?”
“Leave, and let SEVEN walk free,” Chinen sing-songs. “If you do, I’ll restore the data that Ireland took from your computers.”
Yuya clucks his tongue in disapproval. Before anyone can react, his hand has moved and a silver blur has hit Chinen in the side of the neck. The young boy drops like a stone, one of Yuya’s long needles in his neck.
“Sedative,” Yuya says triumphantly. “He’ll be out for a week, with the concentration of that dose.”
Another boy stands up, smacking his hands on the desk.
“Morimoto Ryutaro,” Yuya names, and Hikaru moves the gun to point at him. “The smuggler.”
He gives a terse nod to Daiki, who runs to Chinen’s computer and begins tapping away at the keys.
“Don’t you dare-” Ryutaro starts, running towards Daiki.
Before he can get within even an arm’s length of Daiki, however, he collapses with another needle in his neck.
Two more boys - one tall and one who looks slightly foreign - back away slowly, before turning a doorknob behind them and running away. Another boy with chestnut hair can be seen in the hallway behind the open door, running away as well.
“After them!” Yuya barks, guarding Daiki.
Hikaru and Kei nod, taking after them.
They have lost sight of the fleeing SEVEN members by the time they reach a fork in the hallway.
“You take right,” Kei says quickly, remembering a flash of chestnut disappearing down the other path. “I’ll take left.”
Hikaru nods.
“Stay safe.”
He charges down the path on the right, and Kei begins his sprint down the one on the left.
The end of the hallway is a door, and Kei kicks it open, slipping the kodachi out from where it is hidden in his sleeve.
“Don’t hurt me,” a familiar voice gasps.
Yamada is inside the room, holding a gun shakily at the door.
“Yamada,” Kei whispers, voice cracking. The kodachi in his hands drops to the floor.
Yamada’s eyes widen at the sound of his voice, and the gun arm drops.
“I-Inoo,” he murmurs.
At that moment, Yamada looks so broken and fragile that Kei just drops to his knees in front of him.
“Why?”
Yamada simply smiles crookedly.
“I never imagined that you would have been a secret agent, Inoo,” he murmurs gently.
“I-” Kei begins to say, but chokes on his words instead. Softly, Yamada reaches out his free hand, brushing soft fingers against Kei’s white knuckles.
Before he can register what Yamada’s doing, the younger boy has raised the gun again, this time the barrel resting against his temple.
“I’m glad to have met you,” he says, smiling sadly.
Kei looks up, and bites back a gasp of horror.
“What are you doing?” he almost shrieks, hysterical.
“I’m sorry,” Yamada mumbles, “but it’s the best way. If you bring me out alive, they’ll torture me. I don’t want you to have to kill me, because then you’ll be even sadder, won’t you?”
“There can be another way,” Kei pleads, not even caring anymore that this is a criminal he is dealing with and that he’s completely going against the rules of his profession.
“I love you,” says Yamada, voice quavering. “I’m so glad I met someone like you, that someone like you can still accept me despite finding out my dark secrets.”
“Yamada-”
His smile is haunting now, and his eyes flutter.
“Will you remember me?”
“Always,” Kei whispers, frantic now. “Don’t do this, please-”
“I love you,” Yamada breathes, a tear beginning to form in the corner of his eye. “Goodbye.”
The finger tenses on the trigger, and-
fin.