[FIC] Nom Nom; Bang Bang - Chapter 1 - Don't worry! Zombies are looking for brains; you're safe...
Title: Nom Nom; Bang Bang
Author: seiyoku
Chapter: 1/?
Rating: Hard R
Genre: AU post apocalyptic zombie battle. Black comedy/almost crack
Warnings: ZOMBIES! So the usual, blood, gore and violence, character death, swearing and dark humour (I take no prisoners. No character is safe from hilarious knee-slapping ridicule)
Fandom: J-pop
Bands: Kat-tun, NEWS, Kanjani8
Pairings: Akame
Disclaimers: Hell used to belong to Satan; and then Kat-tun took over and turned it into a disco rave party... in the back of a Rescue Rangers bus!
Authors notes: Ok, it is like... a serious parody even though I'm not too sure how that works. Plus, superhero Jin cause isn't that idea just hilarious?! And it is sooo politically incorrect; nothing is safe from ridicule (can't stress this enough, so consider yourselves well warned)
Oh, and the summary has nothing to really do with anything. Ha. Just an info-mercial.
Summary: Is your house surrounded? Are the hoards of the undead scraping at your door causing you night after night of terror? Is something currently gnawing on your arm?
Well then, call Akanishi Jin, Zombie Hunter Extraordinaire and his crack team of professionals and see what they can do for you!
Call NOW, before it's too late!
*****
Chapter One
*****
The subways, Ryo had said. The tunnels. Check them out. Make sure things were on the DL. Get the 411 and report back, and Jin was pretty sure that Ryo had been a gangster back when life was different. Not that he really cared. They had all been a lot of things before the virus swept through Japan, turning the world upside down and changing everything that they had known.
Wasn't like his pre-war story was actually that much better anyway.
Akanishi Jin, Zombie Hunter Extraordinaire and ex-TV celebrity paused, his hand pressed up against the wall of what used to be the Marunouchi Subway line. His fingers twitched in response to the cold cement, the worn fingerless leather gloves doing little to block the chill. It sent a shiver down his spine that reminded him he was still mostly human and that was the most welcome cold comfort he'd ever known.
Everything was so cold these days. Winter was approaching faster than anyone would have liked. and with the city still in the midst of a warzone, electricity was a luxury that none of the survivors even bothered to dream about. Sure, there had been talk at the start, when there was enough people alive to have hopes and ideals floating around like leaves in the autumn wind, but now those dreams had turned brown and rotted like corpses. Their ranks had faulted, their numbers decreased and the idea of taking back the city had followed right along on the tail of those sinking revelations. They had once thought big, planning an attack to move themselves through the city and into the gates of the power station. Once there, they were sure they could get things back up and running. But as time dwindled on and Resistance fighters started to nibble at each other in a less than endearing way, Jin, as well as the others, threw that idea out the widow.
Dreams were a luxury that none of them could afford nowadays. All they had was endurance, determination and ammunition. Then again, even that was running short. It wasn't like Japan was infamous for having arms runners and thugs with pistols all over the bloody place. This wasn't America and there were no stupid laws saying that people were allowed to carry guns or buy them at Wal-Mart.
But Jin had his little arsenal and that was all that mattered. A few good contacts, a few dead cops and then a crazy raid on an American army base had seen Jin set up with more fire-power than an F1-11.
Yet even that was starting to run dry. Bullets could only be used once and guns got dropped, lost in scuffles and were rendered useless once the ammunition ran out completely. As that became even more and more obvious to the Resistance fighters, as they liked to call themselves, the last dredges of hope continued to crash like the American dollar.
That left them with Jin. But that was a completely different story and more times than not, Jin felt sorry for the idiots who looked to him as a saviour.
Ignoring the chill of the tunnel wall, Jin pressed himself closer, allowing his shoulder and hip to scrape against the curved cement. Again he was reminded that he would have to go scrounging for clothes. Singlets and cotton pull overs was not winter attire and the sleeveless leather vest and ugg boots he had pulled over his jeans didn't really help much either. He should have kept the bulletproof vest he'd taken to wearing through the start of all this, but after the little 'accident' - as Jin liked to call it - he'd handed it over to someone a little more in need of the protection.
Pressed up against the tunnel wall, Jin felt his eye twitch. Almost instantly, his lips pulled back, revealing white teeth that were pressed together in an odd sort of contemplative expression.
There was a rumbling in the earth and Jin sure as all hell knew that it wasn't an oncoming train.
He couldn't be so lucky.
But it was something else, like the dragging of feet across crumbling cement.
They always sent Jin because he was special and he was always alone as his partners had a tendency to end up dead. Jin learned the hard way that if you go through enough of them, then no one wants to hit the streets with you covering their backs. Sad as it was, it turned into a win-win situation as the only thing that Jin hated more than zombies was blundering partners. They had a way of pissing him off and causing too much noise. Nine times out of ten they deserved to be eaten for stupidity alone.
Besides, it took away from his mystique if he had some idiot cluttering after him. People were far more impressed by the lone ranger, action figure, anti-hero type than those that took retards out for babysitting while attempting to shoot some zombies. And of course, these days at least, no partner would be able to keep up with him. Jin considered that as part of his undeniable charm.
See, he'd been bitten about a month ago. A good old puncture wound with rotten teeth, tearing a chunk he could still feel clean out of the back of his shoulder. The fucker had come up behind him in a fight, all short and shiny in their tattered host gear and stupidly pointy shoes. Jin hadn't seen it coming. Neither had his partner Yamapi who had been getting turned into first class sushi at the time, which was rather quite ironic as the guy had always reminded Jin of a fish. It was all in the eyes - so fucking dark and dead looking - and that odd little mouth that sort of made a gasping motion right before the man tried to talk or breathe. Fucking creepy and maybe Jin was a diva, but not having to see dead fish eyes every day for the rest of his life seemed like a pretty good thing. Not that he wanted people to be eaten alive, but on a scale of one to ten, some people just had it coming.
But that really wasn't the point and in the scheme of dead partners, Yamapi hardly racked in within the top ten. All Jin had known was that one minute he was shooting, the next he was in pain and after that, he'd dropped his gun and all but crumbled in on himself.
It fucking hurt. Burnt like fire in his blood and made his back feel like it had been completely flayed. Jin's eyes had watered, the tears of agony rolling down his cheeks and his right hand had slapped behind him in desperation, clutching at the open wound as he'd screamed out into the night. He felt the blood there, thick and fucking oddly gluggy and Jin had pulled away. His fingers were covered, his palm dripping with his own blood.
It had been black.
Jin had known then and there that he was a goner. A bite like that. Well, he had seen it too many times to try and blind side himself from the truth. With blood running down his back, he'd be like meals on fucking wheels for these creatures, and even if he did manage to cut his way through the last of this particular nest, then it would only be a matter of hours before he turned himself.
Hours. Just like that, his life had ticked down to a matter of hours and there on his knees with a hoard of flesh eating, rabid hosts pressing around him, Jin had thought that life was actually pretty shitty. What a fucking way to go. Death by host. Eaten alive by host. Sure, it worked for dead fish man over there, but Jin liked to think that he was destined for much larger things and would go out with more of a bang. Dying like this was like some horrible G-grade yaoi porn horror fest and while Jin had envisioned himself as some porn actor god in his younger days, all his plots had involved girls with big tits and round butts and less, well, zombies.
The truth of the matter was it was that thought alone that had Jin fighting on. No fucking way he could die here, like this, in such an anticlimactic, corny way!
He shot and slashed, kicked and snapped thin necks and hell, he even pulled at some once styled hair when the occasion called for it. He staggered and grunted, took another bite to his forearm and one of the damn make-up covered boys actually scratched him across the throat with nails that were like claws. They ripped through skin from just behind Jin's left ear all the way down at an angle, across his sensitive collarbones and raked to a stop at Jin's breastbone.
Jin hissed and snarled all the way through the pain, staggered to his knees gasping and then used a broken bit of brickwork to smash the zombies head into pink mist. After that, he had somehow managed to battle his way out of the sticky situation, taking down as many of the creatures as he could on the way. How he made it out, staggering and gasping for breathe, was still beyond him to this day. But it had worked and that was all that mattered. Well, no, because he was fucked and was soon going to be craving the fleshy part of some morons arm and that wasn't really something he wanted to live through.
Despite that, he had to get word back to command. That was all that mattered and fuck, it might have been the one unselfish thing that had ever gone through his head.
Jin went underground. Well, not actually underground as that would take him to where the Resistance was and while yes, he was generally a selfish prick, he didn't particularly want to eat his friends. Besides, he knew where they had been and even if he was a flesh eating zombie, he wasn't too sure if chewing down on any of them would be good for his longevity in the scheme of all things undead.
For Jin, going underground was as good as going above ground. He sent his best wishes to those below, told them that he was done for and that he hoped to god zombies had no memory when they finally started with the skin craving cause fuck, if they did, then the least his friends could do was shower before he came to get them. He told them good luck and to keep their heads high, don't forget to brush their teeth and spot check for bedbugs. That was all he could think of at the time and he didn't like the way the ink smudged on the page; made him realise that the odd leaking sensation coming from his eyes actually was the result of crying.
He'd left the note at a safe-house, knowing that one of the other scouts would check there while Jin and his well and truly eaten partner failed to check in, and then headed for the hills. Well, not the hills, but Roppongi was close enough. Place was crawling with the stinking creatures and it was pure spit and nothing at all to do with bravery that had seen Jin wanting to send as many of those fuckers to hell before he joined them.
The first day had been hell. Jin would never admit that he was scared, but his heart had never beat so fast in his chest as it had when he just walked down the main street of Roppongi. Arms out, he had called to the creates, making a ruckus while tripping over a fallen trash can. Cursing and holding his shin, Jin had known it was the end when the sound of scuffling feet got louder and closer and the off key groans of the creates echoed off the walls. He had a whole fucking army coming towards him and hardly any bullets.
But at least it would be over.
That had been the plan and fuck it all, but it was meant to have been foolproof. Walk into zombie hot spot, make noise and yeah sure, kick a can - not fail to see it and fall over it - but cause a pretty distraction to get noticed and then take as many of the sons of bitches with him as he could. Nice and simple and, as Ryo would have said, not even Jin could manage to fuck that one up.
Yet somehow he did. The zombies came alright, all snapping jaws and drooled strings of saliva and Jin had done his best to shoot and fight his way through as many as possible. And then they had stopped. Not as in physically stopped, as in, stopped coming and Jin was standing on a pile of rotting corpses that smelt about as good as the back alleys of Kabukicho when the morning sunlight hit the pavement.
Jin had sighed and climbed down, wondering what exactly he was doing wrong on this suicide mission. That should have been easy. Walk into a fight he couldn't win and then die. And then come back and roam the night and wreak some bloody fucking vengeance.
But no. Through some twist of fate, he had even managed to fuck that simple task up and that had left him standing in the middle of a bunch of rotting corpses at the base of Tokyo Tower wondering what the fuck to do now.
Two weeks later, he was still alive and kicking and Jin was finally starting to think that something was wrong. As in, seriously wrong. Getting bitten by a zombie was a pretty shit way to go; turning into one meant that the rest of the world thought it sucked to be you and your friends had a tendency to want to shoot you in the head. But to be diving off six story buildings and landing on his feet without even a grunt just didn't quite fit into the grand scale of live, be chewed on, return the favour and then die.
Later on, when he had finally returned back to base and broken the news of his non-death to the no doubt happy masses, things had been a bit chaotic as everyone struggled to make sense of his non-zombie state. Ryo said it was because Jin didn't have a brain to affect and if he did, it sure as hell wasn't in his head, while Yu was certain that it had something to do with Jin's DNA. Both options seemed rather plausible to Jin and all he took from it was the knowledge that he could probably smoke a carton a day and not have to worry about the ideas of lung cancer and emphysema any more.
He was lighter on his feet and faster. Fucking fast. When he moved, Ryo and Yu agreed; they couldn't see him at all. Nothing but a blur of dark clothes and then the bright explosions of gunfire. Agile and slippery as all fuck, he could disarm half their guards in under ten seconds and could leap across roofs like the Japanese mockery of Batman. His eyesight was better, his hearing heightened and the mediocre fighting skills he'd learnt through tv boxing programs before the shit started to fly had somehow turned into those of a ninja.
It was really quite cool in a way and Jin took a great deal of pleasure in reminding the haggard remains of Tokyo's Rescue Rangers team that he was a shitload better than all of them combined. Hell, Jin was half tempted to start wearing his undies on the outside just to prove his point but he figured that wouldn't be an overly good way to get the ladies. Not that there were too many of them left that didn't want to chew on his arm and suck the blood out of his neck instead of something else out of somewhere else. But Jin was an optimistic sort of guy when it came to the ideas of sex. If he busted through enough windows, kicked enough ass and flicked enough of his hair out of his eyes after doing so, then he was bound to get some damsel in distress action at least every now and then.
That was what all this superhero, saving the world sort of shit was about anyway. Clark Kent had never been a good guy; he was just a nerd who was desperate to get some sweet tail.
The other cool thing about the sizable crater of scar tissue on his shoulder was that it had made him psychic or something. Nothing cool like predicting lotto numbers or intense mind control that could eventually lead to a wonderful array of one night stands and seven-somes, but it was still pretty handy nonetheless. He could sense them. Feel their dead hearts and the stillness they sent into the thriving world around them. The living all had a pulse and beat, a tune that couldn't be ignored. Even space and emptiness had a feel that was still alive; concrete and pavement and wide open sky. Jin could feel it all. And yet one of those creatures stood out like a burning candle in the dark. There was a sense of nothingness that couldn't be ignored.
It was like a hollow void in the back of Jin's mind, gnawing and pulling and twisting at his consciousness.
That was how Jin knew that he wasn't alone as he stood in the darkness of the subway tunnel. That and the intense pain that was currently ripping through his neck and collarbone. That was the only really shitty thing about the host attack and his new found lot in life. The whole ordeal had left him with a massive line of twisted white flesh down the front of his neck that seemed to tingle and burn every time the fucking creatures got close enough to be able to pick up their stench through the reek of the decaying city. It was almost as good as his psychic abilities and Jin had taken to calling it his Fleshy Alarm. Really, the sense needed a cooler name but he only ever really thought about it when he was close to writhing on the floor in teeth-grinding agony while his whole throat seemed to burst into flames as the creatures came closer. That wasn't really the time to be thinking about witty nicknames for his amazing abilities and somehow it always managed to slip his mind during his quiet, time outs.
So right now, his Fleshy Alarm was itching like crazy and his wonderful psychic abilities were telling him that he was right near a fucking nest of the hungry creatures.
He could go it alone, but Jin wasn't - for the most part - suicidal. Not any more at least. Stupid, yeah. And the more Ryo yelled it at him, the more Jin was starting to believe the words himself, but not utterly without a sense of self preservation. He rather liked himself being alive and ten times better than anyone else and he wasn't about to go and fuck that up by taking on a whole damn nest of no doubt starving undead just so that he could brag. Besides, it wasn't like anyone was actually ever going to knock him off the top of the leader board, so the kill count didn't really factor into the decision.
Letting his hand fall from the wall, Jin turned on his heels and picked his way back through the mess of broken stone. It wasn't until something shiny caught his attention that he paused only a few feet from the subway entrance. And when his eyes narrowed in on the object, a grin of pure glee spread across his dirty face.
Oh, a hundred yen piece!
Maybe luck was on his side after all. Jin couldn't help but smile more while reaching down to scoop up the small coin. He deposited it in his pocket, patting the other coins held there fondly. At least this entire mission hadn't been a complete waste after all.
*****
“There's a nest,” Jin said by way of hello while striding into the poorly lit room. Something about it seemed tense, the two men within stared at each other with eyes that cut like daggers.
Jin yawned, scratched the back of his neck with dirty hands and went about ignoring the way they glared. Just like always. In a way, it was good that at least one thing never changed.
To say that the two top shots of their little operation didn't get along was an understatement. Jin viewed Nishikido Ryo and Yokoyama Yu as rival Disney villains; at each other’s throats constantly and trying to belittle the other even though it was apparent that they were both fighting for the same thing. The safety of the human race. Just that little notion; that was all they were working towards. But if Ryo said left, then Yu would say right and then they would argue for a few hours until Jin lost interest and started carving his name into the walls with a switch blade. If the human race made it out of all this alive, then Jin damn well wanted them to remember who the fuck their hero and saviour was.
Jin fit in there somewhere as something more than a mercenary for hire and yet less than a general. After all, anyone who worked with him ended up dead so it wasn't like he could actually lead armies. Not if they actually wanted any humans alive by the end of it. It was pretty much the three of them that ran the joint, though even Jin would admit he did very little in the actual planning of things. He was the brawn, as Yu liked to say. Ryo disagreed with that and said that Jin was the muscle of the operation and maybe Jin was the stupid one, but he was pretty sure that both words meant the same thing. Not that he would voice such opinions out loud though. It would only result in an even more epic battle of the two leaders and Jin was seriously running out of wall space.
As the official base of operations for the Resistance, it was pretty much lacking on the impressive part. When one thought of guerilla warfare in a city torn apart they could be excused for thinking of white computers and glass display screens, neon glow and people typing and triangulating signals by hacking satellites. Sci-fi clean and shiny was the way these things always happened in movies. Well, not at the start of course, but then the heroes would overthrow the evil fucker’s lair and all would be well and dandy. That wasn't about to happen here any time soon.
What they had was a bunch of half mouldy crates, a chair with a broken wheel and a couple of planks of wood propped up on piles of junk to make desks. ‘Fancy’ and ‘functional’ were two words that would never describe the room in question. It always made Jin shake his head; he'd suggested that they hold themselves up in the JalCity hotel in Yotsuya sanchome but both leaders had been against it. Not that they agreed with each other of course and Jin was starting to see that that never happened. But they agreed to agree on no and agreed to disagree on why the answer was no, and that was pretty much the only sane conversation Jin had ever seen them have. Anything else ended in arguments and thrown trash. On second thought, Jin was somewhat glad that they didn't have a shiny room to abuse. Ryo said the hotel was too fancy, drew too much attention and that Jin simply wanted to feel like he was still living the high life while Yu was of the belief that it wasn't easily defensible with its marble foyer and glass window fronts. Jin's quite rational argument was that at least they would have a fucking desk but no one seemed to give two hoots about that idea.
So sure, planks of wood and rotting milk crates it was. Nothing screamed underdogs like a makeshift army who couldn't even afford somewhere to plonk their asses while they plotted their next move.
“A nest?” Ryo asked as Jin moved to perch on the edge of the wood turned desk. The pile of trash below him groaned in protest and Jin tried not to look like he was worried about the whole damn thing collapsing beneath him.
“How many?” Yu quickly followed, not to be outdone in the question department.
Jin scratched at the back of his neck again and wondered if he had fleas. Then, he wondered if there was such a thing as zombie fleas and if that was the case, they were all fucked three ways from Sunday. If the undead could get that small, then they could come in through the air conditioning vents and eat them all alive in their sleep. That would kind of suck in a big way and instead of scratching, Jin slapped at the back of his head three times fast, trying to squash whatever the hell was making his skin itch.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Ryo questioned and Jin wondered why anyone actually thought that Ryo was the people person in this fabulous leadership duo. He sure as hell had a way with words though Jin was almost positive that said way could never be described as 'smooth'. Snappy and harsh, the way he talked matched his height. Angry little man syndrome and Jin had to laugh. Hell, half the time he wanted to pat the other man on the head in an overly snide way just to fuck with him. But the way Jin figured it was that Ryo was short, so he was closer to Jin's balls and he didn't want to go and mess with someone who could get a grip on them quicker than he could. That was dangerous territory. Besides, Ryo looked like the type of person to turn around and bite arms.
“Do you think zombies have fleas?” Jin wondered aloud. Behind him he heard the unmistakable sound of Yu's head slapping into his own palms and Ryo, for all his snappy ways, just looked at Jin with huge eyes.
Wow, maybe he actually had a point after all and Jin couldn't help but felt slightly excited about bringing something intelligent into their conversations and battle plans. He decided to elaborate.
“Just sayin', ya know. If birds can go zombie-like from picking at dead flesh, what about fleas? And oh god, that would mean flies and mosquitoes and bedbugs!”
“How many are in the nest?” Yu asked from behind him and Jin was tempted to tell him that he didn't fucking know. How the hell was he meant to know how many of the zombies had fleas and how many fleas were carrying the virus.
Then he understood the question and was glad that he didn't say anything after all.
“Somewhere around the fifty mark,” Jin supplied. He said the number casually, as if it really wasn't a big thing. Fifty zombies! Actually, on the grand scale of things, fifty was pretty slim pickings, especially when one took Japan's population into consideration, subtracted the two thousand or so that were still human and then somehow worked out the math of bullet to head ratio. That still left them with only a few million undead to wipe out which was really just a lot of little clusters of fifty.
Fuck, when Jin thought about it that way, it made the solution to the whole war seem rather simple really.
“That's a lot to be in one place,” Yu mused. He didn't seem overly worried either, but then it wasn't really in him to show much of any sort of emotion. He nodded, and squinted on occasion and he did an excellent impression of a stuck up, pompous fucking prick but that was about the extent of his emotional repertoire. Jin gathered that it was that reason alone that had everyone else believing that Ryo was the nicer one of the two leaders. At least he could smile, creepy as it was.
Ryo wasn't smiling now though. In fact, he was glaring at Yu with the wrath of a thousand suns and Jin found it wholly unsettling that Yu merely blinked and looked away.
“It's not that many for a nest,” Ryo muttered simply for the sake of being argumentative and Jin could clearly see where this was going to go.
Scratching at his head again, he idly wondered why none of them were freaking out about the idea of zombie fleas and shifted his weight so the pile of trash made another horrible groaning sound.
“Can we not do this right now?” Jin interjected. They both looked at him like he was a dipshit for opening his mouth, but Jin didn't really care. “How about you let me give my report and then you can argue as much as you want; I have coins to count.” His hand went back to his pocket, jangling the collection of hundred yen pieces with a look on his face that could almost be seen as loving. He really did want to count them, and add them to his jar and then maybe go and knock over another vending machine and pilfer the change from that.
No one said anything so Jin decided to take that as an affirmative response.
Moving from his nice little seat, Jin moved across to the far wall where they had hung up a map of Tokyo. It was scribbled all over with roads highlighted in different colours and black pen having been rubbed so harshly across the paper surface that holes had started to form. It looked like some dumb American tourists Lonely Planet map at the end of a holiday, when they finally realised that the book and map had been a waste of money and that the reason they were getting lost all the time was because the maps made no sense at all.
Not that its condition really mattered. Unlike Lonely Planet, this map actually made sense and Jin's eyes flicked over it quickly before he ripped it overly dramatically off the wall. With a spin and a flurry of paper that would have put some lame boy bands dancing to shame, Jin slapped the map down on the biggest make-shift table and braced his hands on either side so he could lean over it like some actor in an epic fantasy movie.
For all their intolerable ways, both Ryo and Yu moved over, their arms folded as they watched both Jin and the map, waiting to hear the news. Jin licked at his lips for a moment, left them hanging for a few more while he tried to work out if he had the map upside down or not and then pulled a knife out of the top of his boot since he didn't make a habit of carrying a pen. Using a pointing apparatus in situations like this just made him seem cooler anyway.
Drawing the knife over the Subway line in question, Jin nodded, looked at the compass on the side of the page and then started.
“The eastern tunnel is completely clear until about a quarter mile in. Looks like there was a collapse or something.”
“So the nest is there?” Ryo demanded with a ferocity that scared the shit out of Jin. Yu shuffled and snorted loudly and thankfully kept his fucking mouth shut so Jin could keep going. Yeah, Ryo wasn't known for his patience either.
“As I was saying,” Jin glared up at the other man through his lashes and poked at the table with the knife. “There was a collapse. However, it had to have happened a good few months ago. The main tunnel was blocked, sure enough, but I did find a well dug little passageway that struck out at a left through the mess. Followed it as far as I could and then got whacked in the face with a fucking train.” There was a pause and no one seemed ready to ask questions. “No, seriously!” Jin protested, “it was a fucking train like, right there, all smashed out lights and shit and it almost took me out!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ryo muttered, “you walked into an inanimate object. We get it.”
Jin rolled his eyes and shook his head. Honestly, he was the best line of defence that these measly humans had against these creatures; you'd think that they would treat him with just a little more respect. So what if the train wasn't moving? At least pretend to be worried about the idea of Jin smashing his precious face into a shattered spotlight while digging around in the fucking dirt all in the name of helping these stupid humans.
Jin scoffed and looked to Yu, hoping he would understand the situation better. The other man looked somewhere between lost and bored and Jin ruled him out with a sigh. Fine. No one cared what emotional issues he had to go through in the line of duty. That was just fucking great.
“What I am trying to say here is that the tunnel, the one that had been done by hand through the rubble of the collapse, lead to right in under the front of the smashed train...” He paused again and hoped that someone would... well fuck it. Jin just rolled his eyes, wondered why he was apparently labelled as the stupid one and just spat it all out. “And we all know the creatures don't dig, so...”
“So, someone dug their way in there before you?” Ryo said like he was only just starting to catch up.
“Or out of there,” Yu added, his fingers cradling his chin in a way that made him look diabolical. Jin couldn't help but wonder what would happen when the day came that something he said didn't have two possible options. Would the world implode when the two leaders finally agreed on one thing? Most likely and a few more meetings like this and Jin would consider himself ready to see that day come.
“My guess is survivors,” Jin threw into the mix, mainly to fuck with their way of thinking. “The fact that the tunnel made it all the way through the cave in means that at least someone got out. But why the fuck the nest is down there beats the hell out of me.”
As soon as he said the words, the answer occurred to him but for the sake of peace and not showing the other two up, he kept his mouth shut and waited for one of them to point it out. Honestly, if he had known it would take a whole minute and a half for Yu to come up with the answer, then he would have spat it out himself.
“Someone on the train was infected.” Jin nodded at Yu and kept his inner exclamations about giving the bright kid a gold start to himself.
“Train crashed in the panic and caused the cave in,” Ryo added which was pretty much as close to agreeing with Yu as he would ever allow.
Jin filled in the rest. “And some of the survivors started to dig in a place that was easily defensible; right between the front of the train and the rubble. The rest of the passengers turned and got stuck down there, making the nest.”
Silence fell as the pieces of the puzzle finally started to settle into place. It was a logical explanation and one that even Jin was happy with. Of course, logic never seemed to last long with them and Jin was beginning to wonder why they hadn't had an all out coup de tat on their hands when the intelligence of their leaders came to be questioned by the rest of the Resistance.
“We could blow them up,” Ryo suggested with a bounce and Jin made a mental tally in his mind. With Ryo, it always led to blowing something up. They blew up the Alta building in Shinjuku just last week and Jin was still hard pressed to understand why it was important for that building to go. Maybe Ryo had a thing against girls’ fashion. Before that, it had been the main street of Harajuku - again with the female shopping districts - although, Jin reminded himself, he had been there and witnessed that shit. A whole fucking swarm of zombie Gazette and Dir en Grey cosplaying, brain-dead fangirls was a scary thing and on second thought, yeah, they had to go! So a point to Ryo for that one.
“Won't that ruin the tunnel?” Jin pointed out, all logical facts and intelligent input.
“It is already useless,” Ryo snapped back, his tone making it obvious that he didn't like to be questioned when it came to blowing shit up. Again, Jin found himself wondering just what the fuck this head case used to do before the zombies took over.
With no other option, Jin looked up to Yu, hoping that he would be the voice of reason in all this. The other man had the closest thing to a thoughtful expression he could muster plastered all over his face and Jin took that as a loud, resonate 'no'.
“Ok...” Jin said slowly. “So we blow it up and try to find another subway line we can use for an emergency evac spot.” Rolling his neck from side to side, Jin worked out the kinks with an audible crack and licked his dry lips. “When do you want me to hit it?” Cause there was no questioning that it would be Jin going down that hole to lay the charges and set the whole thing ablaze. That was the other part of his job description. Akanishi Jin, Zombie Hunter Extraordinaire and bomb detonator. No one could move as fast as him and no one could deal with the situation if it all went bad.
And, as a rather snide part of his mind said, Ryo was pretty much gunning to get him killed anyway, so why not try and blow Jin up on a daily basis? Again, as the chosen saviour of the human race, Jin didn't seem to get many of the perks that should come with it. Fucking jealous, insignificant humans.
“Check with the Priest,” Ryo finally said, his head nodding slowly as his eyes kept travelling over the map. Jin felt his heart sink and the feeling was even worse that Yu scoffed in response but didn't argue. “See what he's got in stock or what he needs to make this happen.”
No! Jin didn't want to fucking check with the Priest and it took all his willpower to turn around and fucking hell Ryo to do it. He'd tried that once and it had backfired when Ryo had all but told Jin that the Priest was his responsibility ‘cause he was the dim-witted idiot who had brought the crazy man there in the first place. Jin hated being wrong, especially when the other person was so logically right.
But the Priest fucker creeped him out to all hell and there was something fucking crazy about his eyes. And the dancing; Jin couldn't deal with the dancing. Give him ten rounds with a giant flesh eater and no bullets rather than two minutes with the fucking Priest.
See, the Priest was an Outsider. When the zombies hit, it was everyone for themselves. People scattered or grouped up and either way, ninety percent of them all died. After that, they became part of the problem and before long, there was hardly anyone left with a pulse. With the numbers so dwindled, things changed. Groups became hives and hives turned into pockets of life and they somehow merged under the leadership of Ryo and Yu. Thus, the Resistance was born.
But the Outsiders were different. They were the ones who stuck to themselves, skulked in the darkness and raided Lawsons' for cigarettes. Either they didn't know of the Resistance or they didn't care for it, feeling that they were safer on their own. Small target and all that shit. Issue with that was that after a few months of skittering through the dark and keeping away from all forms of life, the Outsiders went a bit weird themselves.
Weird was a nice way of putting it. Batshit fucking crazy was the more politically correct term and so, as much as the Resistance wanted to keep the human race alive, those with too many screws loose were not overly welcomed. They had a tendency to go a little bit weird once they were in the company of people.
The Priest was the perfect example of that weird. He'd seemed normal when Jin had found him, locked up in a closet and blinking at the world like he'd never seen it before. And in a fit of idiotic kindness, Jin had decided to lend the little man a hand and get him somewhere safer. In other words, Ryo had given the order to blow up another row of apartment blocks which happened to be home to the very closet that said man had been living it up in.
So feeling nice, Jin had evacuated him from the area and all but relocated him into a tiny shoebox of a boarded off section of the Resistance's stronghold. Two days later, the guy was on a soap box, shaking and dancing and flailing around like there was some trippy disco music that only he could hear. A day after that, he was yelling about the 'mighty smiting hand of god' and Jin was hard pressed to know if 'smiting' was even the right word for what was currently going on.
However, the sad truth of the matter was that there was no one better when it came to arms, guns and making shit explode. Typical religious nuts.
With a laborious sigh, Jin nodded and flicked his dagger over in his hands like a true cowboy before shoving it back into the top of his boot.
“Fine!” he all but spat, “I'll go talk to the freak and see if he has anything useful. But if he needs shit to make the bombs, I ain't taking him out to get it.”
Ryo and Yu merely nodded as Jin made his mini act of defiance and that, more than anything, freaked him out. Trust them to actually agree on something as downright freaky as the fucking Priest.
*****
Chapter Two preview
“God has picked you,” The Priest said simply. “He has taken you up from the depths of hell and your own mortal death and placed you upon this world to act as his hand. He has filled you with the holy light of his son, so that you may act in their place and deliver us from evil. He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal body by his Spirit that dwelleth in you!” The deep and meaningful ended with the Priest's hand pressed in against Jin's chest, maybe where the little guy thought the heart was even though it was more smack bang in the middle of his rib cages.
It made Jin feel awkward all over again.
Jin sniffed loudly. Then he blinked. Then he rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand and wiped it away on the side of his jeans.
“Cool,” he finally said, trying to sound as upbeat as possible and resisting the temptation to ask if that role came with discount coupons or get out of hell free cards.
*****
Authors Notes:
To keep myself amused and happy, I shall sort of alternate between the serious Half Past Four; Shifting Gear and then this crazy little idea. Otherwise I will get bored.
Having said that, I have no clue how long this will be. Not at all. If anything, I think I may be able to knock it over in about four parts. But I have tonnes of ideas. So I am thinking that Nom Nom; Bang Bang will be the starting arc where I introduce the world and the characters and not really have that much plot. After that I can have a series of one-shots and short fics and drables based in the same crazy world with Jin just... well, being a superhero, zombie killing douche.
Bahahahahahahahaha. I randomly picked Ryo and Yu because they are the only other JE boys that I know by name and don't want to kill. I picked it, wrote their intro and decided to have them fighting and then what did I find on youtube? But a video of Yu bitching about Ryo. It was amazing!
As always, thoughts and comments are greatly appreciated.
Oh, and for something new.
Seiyoku's fanfic wisdom corner
Author: seiyoku
Chapter: 1/?
Rating: Hard R
Genre: AU post apocalyptic zombie battle. Black comedy/almost crack
Warnings: ZOMBIES! So the usual, blood, gore and violence, character death, swearing and dark humour (I take no prisoners. No character is safe from hilarious knee-slapping ridicule)
Fandom: J-pop
Bands: Kat-tun, NEWS, Kanjani8
Pairings: Akame
Disclaimers: Hell used to belong to Satan; and then Kat-tun took over and turned it into a disco rave party... in the back of a Rescue Rangers bus!
Authors notes: Ok, it is like... a serious parody even though I'm not too sure how that works. Plus, superhero Jin cause isn't that idea just hilarious?! And it is sooo politically incorrect; nothing is safe from ridicule (can't stress this enough, so consider yourselves well warned)
Oh, and the summary has nothing to really do with anything. Ha. Just an info-mercial.
Summary: Is your house surrounded? Are the hoards of the undead scraping at your door causing you night after night of terror? Is something currently gnawing on your arm?
Well then, call Akanishi Jin, Zombie Hunter Extraordinaire and his crack team of professionals and see what they can do for you!
Call NOW, before it's too late!
*****
Chapter One
*****
The subways, Ryo had said. The tunnels. Check them out. Make sure things were on the DL. Get the 411 and report back, and Jin was pretty sure that Ryo had been a gangster back when life was different. Not that he really cared. They had all been a lot of things before the virus swept through Japan, turning the world upside down and changing everything that they had known.
Wasn't like his pre-war story was actually that much better anyway.
Akanishi Jin, Zombie Hunter Extraordinaire and ex-TV celebrity paused, his hand pressed up against the wall of what used to be the Marunouchi Subway line. His fingers twitched in response to the cold cement, the worn fingerless leather gloves doing little to block the chill. It sent a shiver down his spine that reminded him he was still mostly human and that was the most welcome cold comfort he'd ever known.
Everything was so cold these days. Winter was approaching faster than anyone would have liked. and with the city still in the midst of a warzone, electricity was a luxury that none of the survivors even bothered to dream about. Sure, there had been talk at the start, when there was enough people alive to have hopes and ideals floating around like leaves in the autumn wind, but now those dreams had turned brown and rotted like corpses. Their ranks had faulted, their numbers decreased and the idea of taking back the city had followed right along on the tail of those sinking revelations. They had once thought big, planning an attack to move themselves through the city and into the gates of the power station. Once there, they were sure they could get things back up and running. But as time dwindled on and Resistance fighters started to nibble at each other in a less than endearing way, Jin, as well as the others, threw that idea out the widow.
Dreams were a luxury that none of them could afford nowadays. All they had was endurance, determination and ammunition. Then again, even that was running short. It wasn't like Japan was infamous for having arms runners and thugs with pistols all over the bloody place. This wasn't America and there were no stupid laws saying that people were allowed to carry guns or buy them at Wal-Mart.
But Jin had his little arsenal and that was all that mattered. A few good contacts, a few dead cops and then a crazy raid on an American army base had seen Jin set up with more fire-power than an F1-11.
Yet even that was starting to run dry. Bullets could only be used once and guns got dropped, lost in scuffles and were rendered useless once the ammunition ran out completely. As that became even more and more obvious to the Resistance fighters, as they liked to call themselves, the last dredges of hope continued to crash like the American dollar.
That left them with Jin. But that was a completely different story and more times than not, Jin felt sorry for the idiots who looked to him as a saviour.
Ignoring the chill of the tunnel wall, Jin pressed himself closer, allowing his shoulder and hip to scrape against the curved cement. Again he was reminded that he would have to go scrounging for clothes. Singlets and cotton pull overs was not winter attire and the sleeveless leather vest and ugg boots he had pulled over his jeans didn't really help much either. He should have kept the bulletproof vest he'd taken to wearing through the start of all this, but after the little 'accident' - as Jin liked to call it - he'd handed it over to someone a little more in need of the protection.
Pressed up against the tunnel wall, Jin felt his eye twitch. Almost instantly, his lips pulled back, revealing white teeth that were pressed together in an odd sort of contemplative expression.
There was a rumbling in the earth and Jin sure as all hell knew that it wasn't an oncoming train.
He couldn't be so lucky.
But it was something else, like the dragging of feet across crumbling cement.
They always sent Jin because he was special and he was always alone as his partners had a tendency to end up dead. Jin learned the hard way that if you go through enough of them, then no one wants to hit the streets with you covering their backs. Sad as it was, it turned into a win-win situation as the only thing that Jin hated more than zombies was blundering partners. They had a way of pissing him off and causing too much noise. Nine times out of ten they deserved to be eaten for stupidity alone.
Besides, it took away from his mystique if he had some idiot cluttering after him. People were far more impressed by the lone ranger, action figure, anti-hero type than those that took retards out for babysitting while attempting to shoot some zombies. And of course, these days at least, no partner would be able to keep up with him. Jin considered that as part of his undeniable charm.
See, he'd been bitten about a month ago. A good old puncture wound with rotten teeth, tearing a chunk he could still feel clean out of the back of his shoulder. The fucker had come up behind him in a fight, all short and shiny in their tattered host gear and stupidly pointy shoes. Jin hadn't seen it coming. Neither had his partner Yamapi who had been getting turned into first class sushi at the time, which was rather quite ironic as the guy had always reminded Jin of a fish. It was all in the eyes - so fucking dark and dead looking - and that odd little mouth that sort of made a gasping motion right before the man tried to talk or breathe. Fucking creepy and maybe Jin was a diva, but not having to see dead fish eyes every day for the rest of his life seemed like a pretty good thing. Not that he wanted people to be eaten alive, but on a scale of one to ten, some people just had it coming.
But that really wasn't the point and in the scheme of dead partners, Yamapi hardly racked in within the top ten. All Jin had known was that one minute he was shooting, the next he was in pain and after that, he'd dropped his gun and all but crumbled in on himself.
It fucking hurt. Burnt like fire in his blood and made his back feel like it had been completely flayed. Jin's eyes had watered, the tears of agony rolling down his cheeks and his right hand had slapped behind him in desperation, clutching at the open wound as he'd screamed out into the night. He felt the blood there, thick and fucking oddly gluggy and Jin had pulled away. His fingers were covered, his palm dripping with his own blood.
It had been black.
Jin had known then and there that he was a goner. A bite like that. Well, he had seen it too many times to try and blind side himself from the truth. With blood running down his back, he'd be like meals on fucking wheels for these creatures, and even if he did manage to cut his way through the last of this particular nest, then it would only be a matter of hours before he turned himself.
Hours. Just like that, his life had ticked down to a matter of hours and there on his knees with a hoard of flesh eating, rabid hosts pressing around him, Jin had thought that life was actually pretty shitty. What a fucking way to go. Death by host. Eaten alive by host. Sure, it worked for dead fish man over there, but Jin liked to think that he was destined for much larger things and would go out with more of a bang. Dying like this was like some horrible G-grade yaoi porn horror fest and while Jin had envisioned himself as some porn actor god in his younger days, all his plots had involved girls with big tits and round butts and less, well, zombies.
The truth of the matter was it was that thought alone that had Jin fighting on. No fucking way he could die here, like this, in such an anticlimactic, corny way!
He shot and slashed, kicked and snapped thin necks and hell, he even pulled at some once styled hair when the occasion called for it. He staggered and grunted, took another bite to his forearm and one of the damn make-up covered boys actually scratched him across the throat with nails that were like claws. They ripped through skin from just behind Jin's left ear all the way down at an angle, across his sensitive collarbones and raked to a stop at Jin's breastbone.
Jin hissed and snarled all the way through the pain, staggered to his knees gasping and then used a broken bit of brickwork to smash the zombies head into pink mist. After that, he had somehow managed to battle his way out of the sticky situation, taking down as many of the creatures as he could on the way. How he made it out, staggering and gasping for breathe, was still beyond him to this day. But it had worked and that was all that mattered. Well, no, because he was fucked and was soon going to be craving the fleshy part of some morons arm and that wasn't really something he wanted to live through.
Despite that, he had to get word back to command. That was all that mattered and fuck, it might have been the one unselfish thing that had ever gone through his head.
Jin went underground. Well, not actually underground as that would take him to where the Resistance was and while yes, he was generally a selfish prick, he didn't particularly want to eat his friends. Besides, he knew where they had been and even if he was a flesh eating zombie, he wasn't too sure if chewing down on any of them would be good for his longevity in the scheme of all things undead.
For Jin, going underground was as good as going above ground. He sent his best wishes to those below, told them that he was done for and that he hoped to god zombies had no memory when they finally started with the skin craving cause fuck, if they did, then the least his friends could do was shower before he came to get them. He told them good luck and to keep their heads high, don't forget to brush their teeth and spot check for bedbugs. That was all he could think of at the time and he didn't like the way the ink smudged on the page; made him realise that the odd leaking sensation coming from his eyes actually was the result of crying.
He'd left the note at a safe-house, knowing that one of the other scouts would check there while Jin and his well and truly eaten partner failed to check in, and then headed for the hills. Well, not the hills, but Roppongi was close enough. Place was crawling with the stinking creatures and it was pure spit and nothing at all to do with bravery that had seen Jin wanting to send as many of those fuckers to hell before he joined them.
The first day had been hell. Jin would never admit that he was scared, but his heart had never beat so fast in his chest as it had when he just walked down the main street of Roppongi. Arms out, he had called to the creates, making a ruckus while tripping over a fallen trash can. Cursing and holding his shin, Jin had known it was the end when the sound of scuffling feet got louder and closer and the off key groans of the creates echoed off the walls. He had a whole fucking army coming towards him and hardly any bullets.
But at least it would be over.
That had been the plan and fuck it all, but it was meant to have been foolproof. Walk into zombie hot spot, make noise and yeah sure, kick a can - not fail to see it and fall over it - but cause a pretty distraction to get noticed and then take as many of the sons of bitches with him as he could. Nice and simple and, as Ryo would have said, not even Jin could manage to fuck that one up.
Yet somehow he did. The zombies came alright, all snapping jaws and drooled strings of saliva and Jin had done his best to shoot and fight his way through as many as possible. And then they had stopped. Not as in physically stopped, as in, stopped coming and Jin was standing on a pile of rotting corpses that smelt about as good as the back alleys of Kabukicho when the morning sunlight hit the pavement.
Jin had sighed and climbed down, wondering what exactly he was doing wrong on this suicide mission. That should have been easy. Walk into a fight he couldn't win and then die. And then come back and roam the night and wreak some bloody fucking vengeance.
But no. Through some twist of fate, he had even managed to fuck that simple task up and that had left him standing in the middle of a bunch of rotting corpses at the base of Tokyo Tower wondering what the fuck to do now.
Two weeks later, he was still alive and kicking and Jin was finally starting to think that something was wrong. As in, seriously wrong. Getting bitten by a zombie was a pretty shit way to go; turning into one meant that the rest of the world thought it sucked to be you and your friends had a tendency to want to shoot you in the head. But to be diving off six story buildings and landing on his feet without even a grunt just didn't quite fit into the grand scale of live, be chewed on, return the favour and then die.
Later on, when he had finally returned back to base and broken the news of his non-death to the no doubt happy masses, things had been a bit chaotic as everyone struggled to make sense of his non-zombie state. Ryo said it was because Jin didn't have a brain to affect and if he did, it sure as hell wasn't in his head, while Yu was certain that it had something to do with Jin's DNA. Both options seemed rather plausible to Jin and all he took from it was the knowledge that he could probably smoke a carton a day and not have to worry about the ideas of lung cancer and emphysema any more.
He was lighter on his feet and faster. Fucking fast. When he moved, Ryo and Yu agreed; they couldn't see him at all. Nothing but a blur of dark clothes and then the bright explosions of gunfire. Agile and slippery as all fuck, he could disarm half their guards in under ten seconds and could leap across roofs like the Japanese mockery of Batman. His eyesight was better, his hearing heightened and the mediocre fighting skills he'd learnt through tv boxing programs before the shit started to fly had somehow turned into those of a ninja.
It was really quite cool in a way and Jin took a great deal of pleasure in reminding the haggard remains of Tokyo's Rescue Rangers team that he was a shitload better than all of them combined. Hell, Jin was half tempted to start wearing his undies on the outside just to prove his point but he figured that wouldn't be an overly good way to get the ladies. Not that there were too many of them left that didn't want to chew on his arm and suck the blood out of his neck instead of something else out of somewhere else. But Jin was an optimistic sort of guy when it came to the ideas of sex. If he busted through enough windows, kicked enough ass and flicked enough of his hair out of his eyes after doing so, then he was bound to get some damsel in distress action at least every now and then.
That was what all this superhero, saving the world sort of shit was about anyway. Clark Kent had never been a good guy; he was just a nerd who was desperate to get some sweet tail.
The other cool thing about the sizable crater of scar tissue on his shoulder was that it had made him psychic or something. Nothing cool like predicting lotto numbers or intense mind control that could eventually lead to a wonderful array of one night stands and seven-somes, but it was still pretty handy nonetheless. He could sense them. Feel their dead hearts and the stillness they sent into the thriving world around them. The living all had a pulse and beat, a tune that couldn't be ignored. Even space and emptiness had a feel that was still alive; concrete and pavement and wide open sky. Jin could feel it all. And yet one of those creatures stood out like a burning candle in the dark. There was a sense of nothingness that couldn't be ignored.
It was like a hollow void in the back of Jin's mind, gnawing and pulling and twisting at his consciousness.
That was how Jin knew that he wasn't alone as he stood in the darkness of the subway tunnel. That and the intense pain that was currently ripping through his neck and collarbone. That was the only really shitty thing about the host attack and his new found lot in life. The whole ordeal had left him with a massive line of twisted white flesh down the front of his neck that seemed to tingle and burn every time the fucking creatures got close enough to be able to pick up their stench through the reek of the decaying city. It was almost as good as his psychic abilities and Jin had taken to calling it his Fleshy Alarm. Really, the sense needed a cooler name but he only ever really thought about it when he was close to writhing on the floor in teeth-grinding agony while his whole throat seemed to burst into flames as the creatures came closer. That wasn't really the time to be thinking about witty nicknames for his amazing abilities and somehow it always managed to slip his mind during his quiet, time outs.
So right now, his Fleshy Alarm was itching like crazy and his wonderful psychic abilities were telling him that he was right near a fucking nest of the hungry creatures.
He could go it alone, but Jin wasn't - for the most part - suicidal. Not any more at least. Stupid, yeah. And the more Ryo yelled it at him, the more Jin was starting to believe the words himself, but not utterly without a sense of self preservation. He rather liked himself being alive and ten times better than anyone else and he wasn't about to go and fuck that up by taking on a whole damn nest of no doubt starving undead just so that he could brag. Besides, it wasn't like anyone was actually ever going to knock him off the top of the leader board, so the kill count didn't really factor into the decision.
Letting his hand fall from the wall, Jin turned on his heels and picked his way back through the mess of broken stone. It wasn't until something shiny caught his attention that he paused only a few feet from the subway entrance. And when his eyes narrowed in on the object, a grin of pure glee spread across his dirty face.
Oh, a hundred yen piece!
Maybe luck was on his side after all. Jin couldn't help but smile more while reaching down to scoop up the small coin. He deposited it in his pocket, patting the other coins held there fondly. At least this entire mission hadn't been a complete waste after all.
*****
“There's a nest,” Jin said by way of hello while striding into the poorly lit room. Something about it seemed tense, the two men within stared at each other with eyes that cut like daggers.
Jin yawned, scratched the back of his neck with dirty hands and went about ignoring the way they glared. Just like always. In a way, it was good that at least one thing never changed.
To say that the two top shots of their little operation didn't get along was an understatement. Jin viewed Nishikido Ryo and Yokoyama Yu as rival Disney villains; at each other’s throats constantly and trying to belittle the other even though it was apparent that they were both fighting for the same thing. The safety of the human race. Just that little notion; that was all they were working towards. But if Ryo said left, then Yu would say right and then they would argue for a few hours until Jin lost interest and started carving his name into the walls with a switch blade. If the human race made it out of all this alive, then Jin damn well wanted them to remember who the fuck their hero and saviour was.
Jin fit in there somewhere as something more than a mercenary for hire and yet less than a general. After all, anyone who worked with him ended up dead so it wasn't like he could actually lead armies. Not if they actually wanted any humans alive by the end of it. It was pretty much the three of them that ran the joint, though even Jin would admit he did very little in the actual planning of things. He was the brawn, as Yu liked to say. Ryo disagreed with that and said that Jin was the muscle of the operation and maybe Jin was the stupid one, but he was pretty sure that both words meant the same thing. Not that he would voice such opinions out loud though. It would only result in an even more epic battle of the two leaders and Jin was seriously running out of wall space.
As the official base of operations for the Resistance, it was pretty much lacking on the impressive part. When one thought of guerilla warfare in a city torn apart they could be excused for thinking of white computers and glass display screens, neon glow and people typing and triangulating signals by hacking satellites. Sci-fi clean and shiny was the way these things always happened in movies. Well, not at the start of course, but then the heroes would overthrow the evil fucker’s lair and all would be well and dandy. That wasn't about to happen here any time soon.
What they had was a bunch of half mouldy crates, a chair with a broken wheel and a couple of planks of wood propped up on piles of junk to make desks. ‘Fancy’ and ‘functional’ were two words that would never describe the room in question. It always made Jin shake his head; he'd suggested that they hold themselves up in the JalCity hotel in Yotsuya sanchome but both leaders had been against it. Not that they agreed with each other of course and Jin was starting to see that that never happened. But they agreed to agree on no and agreed to disagree on why the answer was no, and that was pretty much the only sane conversation Jin had ever seen them have. Anything else ended in arguments and thrown trash. On second thought, Jin was somewhat glad that they didn't have a shiny room to abuse. Ryo said the hotel was too fancy, drew too much attention and that Jin simply wanted to feel like he was still living the high life while Yu was of the belief that it wasn't easily defensible with its marble foyer and glass window fronts. Jin's quite rational argument was that at least they would have a fucking desk but no one seemed to give two hoots about that idea.
So sure, planks of wood and rotting milk crates it was. Nothing screamed underdogs like a makeshift army who couldn't even afford somewhere to plonk their asses while they plotted their next move.
“A nest?” Ryo asked as Jin moved to perch on the edge of the wood turned desk. The pile of trash below him groaned in protest and Jin tried not to look like he was worried about the whole damn thing collapsing beneath him.
“How many?” Yu quickly followed, not to be outdone in the question department.
Jin scratched at the back of his neck again and wondered if he had fleas. Then, he wondered if there was such a thing as zombie fleas and if that was the case, they were all fucked three ways from Sunday. If the undead could get that small, then they could come in through the air conditioning vents and eat them all alive in their sleep. That would kind of suck in a big way and instead of scratching, Jin slapped at the back of his head three times fast, trying to squash whatever the hell was making his skin itch.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Ryo questioned and Jin wondered why anyone actually thought that Ryo was the people person in this fabulous leadership duo. He sure as hell had a way with words though Jin was almost positive that said way could never be described as 'smooth'. Snappy and harsh, the way he talked matched his height. Angry little man syndrome and Jin had to laugh. Hell, half the time he wanted to pat the other man on the head in an overly snide way just to fuck with him. But the way Jin figured it was that Ryo was short, so he was closer to Jin's balls and he didn't want to go and mess with someone who could get a grip on them quicker than he could. That was dangerous territory. Besides, Ryo looked like the type of person to turn around and bite arms.
“Do you think zombies have fleas?” Jin wondered aloud. Behind him he heard the unmistakable sound of Yu's head slapping into his own palms and Ryo, for all his snappy ways, just looked at Jin with huge eyes.
Wow, maybe he actually had a point after all and Jin couldn't help but felt slightly excited about bringing something intelligent into their conversations and battle plans. He decided to elaborate.
“Just sayin', ya know. If birds can go zombie-like from picking at dead flesh, what about fleas? And oh god, that would mean flies and mosquitoes and bedbugs!”
“How many are in the nest?” Yu asked from behind him and Jin was tempted to tell him that he didn't fucking know. How the hell was he meant to know how many of the zombies had fleas and how many fleas were carrying the virus.
Then he understood the question and was glad that he didn't say anything after all.
“Somewhere around the fifty mark,” Jin supplied. He said the number casually, as if it really wasn't a big thing. Fifty zombies! Actually, on the grand scale of things, fifty was pretty slim pickings, especially when one took Japan's population into consideration, subtracted the two thousand or so that were still human and then somehow worked out the math of bullet to head ratio. That still left them with only a few million undead to wipe out which was really just a lot of little clusters of fifty.
Fuck, when Jin thought about it that way, it made the solution to the whole war seem rather simple really.
“That's a lot to be in one place,” Yu mused. He didn't seem overly worried either, but then it wasn't really in him to show much of any sort of emotion. He nodded, and squinted on occasion and he did an excellent impression of a stuck up, pompous fucking prick but that was about the extent of his emotional repertoire. Jin gathered that it was that reason alone that had everyone else believing that Ryo was the nicer one of the two leaders. At least he could smile, creepy as it was.
Ryo wasn't smiling now though. In fact, he was glaring at Yu with the wrath of a thousand suns and Jin found it wholly unsettling that Yu merely blinked and looked away.
“It's not that many for a nest,” Ryo muttered simply for the sake of being argumentative and Jin could clearly see where this was going to go.
Scratching at his head again, he idly wondered why none of them were freaking out about the idea of zombie fleas and shifted his weight so the pile of trash made another horrible groaning sound.
“Can we not do this right now?” Jin interjected. They both looked at him like he was a dipshit for opening his mouth, but Jin didn't really care. “How about you let me give my report and then you can argue as much as you want; I have coins to count.” His hand went back to his pocket, jangling the collection of hundred yen pieces with a look on his face that could almost be seen as loving. He really did want to count them, and add them to his jar and then maybe go and knock over another vending machine and pilfer the change from that.
No one said anything so Jin decided to take that as an affirmative response.
Moving from his nice little seat, Jin moved across to the far wall where they had hung up a map of Tokyo. It was scribbled all over with roads highlighted in different colours and black pen having been rubbed so harshly across the paper surface that holes had started to form. It looked like some dumb American tourists Lonely Planet map at the end of a holiday, when they finally realised that the book and map had been a waste of money and that the reason they were getting lost all the time was because the maps made no sense at all.
Not that its condition really mattered. Unlike Lonely Planet, this map actually made sense and Jin's eyes flicked over it quickly before he ripped it overly dramatically off the wall. With a spin and a flurry of paper that would have put some lame boy bands dancing to shame, Jin slapped the map down on the biggest make-shift table and braced his hands on either side so he could lean over it like some actor in an epic fantasy movie.
For all their intolerable ways, both Ryo and Yu moved over, their arms folded as they watched both Jin and the map, waiting to hear the news. Jin licked at his lips for a moment, left them hanging for a few more while he tried to work out if he had the map upside down or not and then pulled a knife out of the top of his boot since he didn't make a habit of carrying a pen. Using a pointing apparatus in situations like this just made him seem cooler anyway.
Drawing the knife over the Subway line in question, Jin nodded, looked at the compass on the side of the page and then started.
“The eastern tunnel is completely clear until about a quarter mile in. Looks like there was a collapse or something.”
“So the nest is there?” Ryo demanded with a ferocity that scared the shit out of Jin. Yu shuffled and snorted loudly and thankfully kept his fucking mouth shut so Jin could keep going. Yeah, Ryo wasn't known for his patience either.
“As I was saying,” Jin glared up at the other man through his lashes and poked at the table with the knife. “There was a collapse. However, it had to have happened a good few months ago. The main tunnel was blocked, sure enough, but I did find a well dug little passageway that struck out at a left through the mess. Followed it as far as I could and then got whacked in the face with a fucking train.” There was a pause and no one seemed ready to ask questions. “No, seriously!” Jin protested, “it was a fucking train like, right there, all smashed out lights and shit and it almost took me out!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ryo muttered, “you walked into an inanimate object. We get it.”
Jin rolled his eyes and shook his head. Honestly, he was the best line of defence that these measly humans had against these creatures; you'd think that they would treat him with just a little more respect. So what if the train wasn't moving? At least pretend to be worried about the idea of Jin smashing his precious face into a shattered spotlight while digging around in the fucking dirt all in the name of helping these stupid humans.
Jin scoffed and looked to Yu, hoping he would understand the situation better. The other man looked somewhere between lost and bored and Jin ruled him out with a sigh. Fine. No one cared what emotional issues he had to go through in the line of duty. That was just fucking great.
“What I am trying to say here is that the tunnel, the one that had been done by hand through the rubble of the collapse, lead to right in under the front of the smashed train...” He paused again and hoped that someone would... well fuck it. Jin just rolled his eyes, wondered why he was apparently labelled as the stupid one and just spat it all out. “And we all know the creatures don't dig, so...”
“So, someone dug their way in there before you?” Ryo said like he was only just starting to catch up.
“Or out of there,” Yu added, his fingers cradling his chin in a way that made him look diabolical. Jin couldn't help but wonder what would happen when the day came that something he said didn't have two possible options. Would the world implode when the two leaders finally agreed on one thing? Most likely and a few more meetings like this and Jin would consider himself ready to see that day come.
“My guess is survivors,” Jin threw into the mix, mainly to fuck with their way of thinking. “The fact that the tunnel made it all the way through the cave in means that at least someone got out. But why the fuck the nest is down there beats the hell out of me.”
As soon as he said the words, the answer occurred to him but for the sake of peace and not showing the other two up, he kept his mouth shut and waited for one of them to point it out. Honestly, if he had known it would take a whole minute and a half for Yu to come up with the answer, then he would have spat it out himself.
“Someone on the train was infected.” Jin nodded at Yu and kept his inner exclamations about giving the bright kid a gold start to himself.
“Train crashed in the panic and caused the cave in,” Ryo added which was pretty much as close to agreeing with Yu as he would ever allow.
Jin filled in the rest. “And some of the survivors started to dig in a place that was easily defensible; right between the front of the train and the rubble. The rest of the passengers turned and got stuck down there, making the nest.”
Silence fell as the pieces of the puzzle finally started to settle into place. It was a logical explanation and one that even Jin was happy with. Of course, logic never seemed to last long with them and Jin was beginning to wonder why they hadn't had an all out coup de tat on their hands when the intelligence of their leaders came to be questioned by the rest of the Resistance.
“We could blow them up,” Ryo suggested with a bounce and Jin made a mental tally in his mind. With Ryo, it always led to blowing something up. They blew up the Alta building in Shinjuku just last week and Jin was still hard pressed to understand why it was important for that building to go. Maybe Ryo had a thing against girls’ fashion. Before that, it had been the main street of Harajuku - again with the female shopping districts - although, Jin reminded himself, he had been there and witnessed that shit. A whole fucking swarm of zombie Gazette and Dir en Grey cosplaying, brain-dead fangirls was a scary thing and on second thought, yeah, they had to go! So a point to Ryo for that one.
“Won't that ruin the tunnel?” Jin pointed out, all logical facts and intelligent input.
“It is already useless,” Ryo snapped back, his tone making it obvious that he didn't like to be questioned when it came to blowing shit up. Again, Jin found himself wondering just what the fuck this head case used to do before the zombies took over.
With no other option, Jin looked up to Yu, hoping that he would be the voice of reason in all this. The other man had the closest thing to a thoughtful expression he could muster plastered all over his face and Jin took that as a loud, resonate 'no'.
“Ok...” Jin said slowly. “So we blow it up and try to find another subway line we can use for an emergency evac spot.” Rolling his neck from side to side, Jin worked out the kinks with an audible crack and licked his dry lips. “When do you want me to hit it?” Cause there was no questioning that it would be Jin going down that hole to lay the charges and set the whole thing ablaze. That was the other part of his job description. Akanishi Jin, Zombie Hunter Extraordinaire and bomb detonator. No one could move as fast as him and no one could deal with the situation if it all went bad.
And, as a rather snide part of his mind said, Ryo was pretty much gunning to get him killed anyway, so why not try and blow Jin up on a daily basis? Again, as the chosen saviour of the human race, Jin didn't seem to get many of the perks that should come with it. Fucking jealous, insignificant humans.
“Check with the Priest,” Ryo finally said, his head nodding slowly as his eyes kept travelling over the map. Jin felt his heart sink and the feeling was even worse that Yu scoffed in response but didn't argue. “See what he's got in stock or what he needs to make this happen.”
No! Jin didn't want to fucking check with the Priest and it took all his willpower to turn around and fucking hell Ryo to do it. He'd tried that once and it had backfired when Ryo had all but told Jin that the Priest was his responsibility ‘cause he was the dim-witted idiot who had brought the crazy man there in the first place. Jin hated being wrong, especially when the other person was so logically right.
But the Priest fucker creeped him out to all hell and there was something fucking crazy about his eyes. And the dancing; Jin couldn't deal with the dancing. Give him ten rounds with a giant flesh eater and no bullets rather than two minutes with the fucking Priest.
See, the Priest was an Outsider. When the zombies hit, it was everyone for themselves. People scattered or grouped up and either way, ninety percent of them all died. After that, they became part of the problem and before long, there was hardly anyone left with a pulse. With the numbers so dwindled, things changed. Groups became hives and hives turned into pockets of life and they somehow merged under the leadership of Ryo and Yu. Thus, the Resistance was born.
But the Outsiders were different. They were the ones who stuck to themselves, skulked in the darkness and raided Lawsons' for cigarettes. Either they didn't know of the Resistance or they didn't care for it, feeling that they were safer on their own. Small target and all that shit. Issue with that was that after a few months of skittering through the dark and keeping away from all forms of life, the Outsiders went a bit weird themselves.
Weird was a nice way of putting it. Batshit fucking crazy was the more politically correct term and so, as much as the Resistance wanted to keep the human race alive, those with too many screws loose were not overly welcomed. They had a tendency to go a little bit weird once they were in the company of people.
The Priest was the perfect example of that weird. He'd seemed normal when Jin had found him, locked up in a closet and blinking at the world like he'd never seen it before. And in a fit of idiotic kindness, Jin had decided to lend the little man a hand and get him somewhere safer. In other words, Ryo had given the order to blow up another row of apartment blocks which happened to be home to the very closet that said man had been living it up in.
So feeling nice, Jin had evacuated him from the area and all but relocated him into a tiny shoebox of a boarded off section of the Resistance's stronghold. Two days later, the guy was on a soap box, shaking and dancing and flailing around like there was some trippy disco music that only he could hear. A day after that, he was yelling about the 'mighty smiting hand of god' and Jin was hard pressed to know if 'smiting' was even the right word for what was currently going on.
However, the sad truth of the matter was that there was no one better when it came to arms, guns and making shit explode. Typical religious nuts.
With a laborious sigh, Jin nodded and flicked his dagger over in his hands like a true cowboy before shoving it back into the top of his boot.
“Fine!” he all but spat, “I'll go talk to the freak and see if he has anything useful. But if he needs shit to make the bombs, I ain't taking him out to get it.”
Ryo and Yu merely nodded as Jin made his mini act of defiance and that, more than anything, freaked him out. Trust them to actually agree on something as downright freaky as the fucking Priest.
*****
Chapter Two preview
“God has picked you,” The Priest said simply. “He has taken you up from the depths of hell and your own mortal death and placed you upon this world to act as his hand. He has filled you with the holy light of his son, so that you may act in their place and deliver us from evil. He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal body by his Spirit that dwelleth in you!” The deep and meaningful ended with the Priest's hand pressed in against Jin's chest, maybe where the little guy thought the heart was even though it was more smack bang in the middle of his rib cages.
It made Jin feel awkward all over again.
Jin sniffed loudly. Then he blinked. Then he rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand and wiped it away on the side of his jeans.
“Cool,” he finally said, trying to sound as upbeat as possible and resisting the temptation to ask if that role came with discount coupons or get out of hell free cards.
*****
Authors Notes:
To keep myself amused and happy, I shall sort of alternate between the serious Half Past Four; Shifting Gear and then this crazy little idea. Otherwise I will get bored.
Having said that, I have no clue how long this will be. Not at all. If anything, I think I may be able to knock it over in about four parts. But I have tonnes of ideas. So I am thinking that Nom Nom; Bang Bang will be the starting arc where I introduce the world and the characters and not really have that much plot. After that I can have a series of one-shots and short fics and drables based in the same crazy world with Jin just... well, being a superhero, zombie killing douche.
Bahahahahahahahaha. I randomly picked Ryo and Yu because they are the only other JE boys that I know by name and don't want to kill. I picked it, wrote their intro and decided to have them fighting and then what did I find on youtube? But a video of Yu bitching about Ryo. It was amazing!
As always, thoughts and comments are greatly appreciated.
Oh, and for something new.
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