Still Waters: Triple Threat
Title: Triple Threat
Rating: PG
Summary: Professor Ishikawa's elite team has plans of its own and he is no longer included in any one of them.
A/N: Time frame varies, Nakamura and Sayama's conversation takes place around the time when Jun Tanaka is attacked by Quicksilver, the rest includes the entire length of the story.
Nakamura was a dedicated worker… hard working but rather unlucky. Things had gotten tough in the police department in the past few months and with the head of his team distracted by the awful thing that had happened to his son, he was left with all the paperwork.
He was left in charge of the missing person reports and he was irked because Sayama had gotten the serial bank heists and street murders of petty criminals. He had singled out files which had the least bit of information in them. First was the file of a junior high student that had gone missing a while back. She was associated with a very mysterious family that had been massacred in one night. Her body was never found.
Then there was this junior boxer. He had gone missing without a trace as well.
The third file he picked up was as thin as the first two, and he assumed there was hardly any info here as well but then there was something about the name that caught his interest.
“Hoshitsuki?”
The name was familiar, very familiar and after some more searching he found the file of a scientist with the same name. He yelped unconsciously as he realized why the name was so familiar.
“Nakamura what’s the matter?” asked Sayama, rushing over to his desk.
“I know these two… Hoshitsuki… this man used to live right next door to me back in Saitama!”
“Really?”
“I knew he had left for work somewhere but to have his family make a missing persons report and then her… Suzuka,”
“Daughter?”
“Yeah, I knew her well before I moved to Tokyo for work… she was my younger brother’s childhood friend, they went to the same university together…,”
“She’s missing?”
“My brother… Daiki… he died in a brawl with a senior, I knew that she had disappeared since but I never would have thought that she was still missing!”
“I’m so sorry about your brother,”
“Hmm,”
“Do you think she disappeared because she was involved? Maybe she was afraid of being charged?”
“Suzuka? This Suzuka? She was the sweetest thing ever… brilliant and a lovely person. My brother had been secretly crushing on her for years, was too proud to admit it since the two were also rivals but I knew for a fact that she cared for him very much. Even if she was involved in any way, she would not have left, not ran… I know her that much,”
“So… do you think her disappearance is connected to her father’s?”
“Maybe… but whatever it is, for Daiki’s sake… I need to bring her home.”
~*~
Alice’s first few days in Quicksilver weren’t exactly pleasant. She was under the guidance of a man named Hiroshi and the company of a younger boy, Hayato. Hiroshi got on her nerve the minute they met with his overbearing and demanding attitude.
Hayato was no better, despite being relatively humble with his brilliance he stuck to her like glue. She was mildly surprised to discover that the relative that had taken her in was a distant cousin of her mother and he had chosen to shelter her not because of pity or empathy… but because she was to be his most important asset.
A few years with the group and she saw it grow. She was allowed to do anything to alter her appearance, in order to shed her old identity and so she did, and when she was confident enough… her uncle had her lead teams into the city, pulling off crimes at a massive scale. She was there at all the bank heists, and they did a lot. Her uncle said that all the money was for the development of the nation and that’s what they were doing at Quicksilver’s facility. She was also a good negotiator and so she accompanied her uncle on ‘member hunts’. Some were eager, some needed force and blackmail. She never thought about what she was doing, whether it was right or wrong. She had come from a family of assasins but her mother had been the purest soul, the source of her guilty conscience. The only reason she never acted upon it was because she saw no reason to. She had a life, a purpose and fighting it would mean losing everything all over again. Why would she want that? And she never used her blade on an innocent, her uncle never made her. They were intelligent masterminds, not mindless killers he used to say.
Despite being involved in nearly every major project and recruitment, Alice realized just how alone she was when Hayato ran away with that Idol they had kidnapped. It had hurt more to know that her uncle was leaving him to die. She hid behind an uncaring façade like she always did… it was like her self-defence mechanism. When she discovered that the boy, Ryosuke… her uncle’s latest obsession had saved Hayato… she was secretly very welcome to the idea of him being a part of them. She owed him, for saving her dear friend.
These boys… their latest targets were a wonder to her. Yuto had the actual ability to manipulate ice… she had witnessed it herself. She didn’t think things like this were possible, but there he was… defeated due to his soft nature, his friend protected in a barrier of ice.
Then she came… Hoshitsuki Suzuka. The girl was a mess when she arrived, despite being accompanied by her own father. She was kept under sedation most of the time. She apparently had a dangerous ability. They had named it the “Banshee’s Call”. She also seemed to have a type of telekinesis. Suzuka didn’t talk much though, even when the effects of the sedation had worn off. She had a liking for dolls and had gotten her father to fill her room with them. The girl was in her late teens but she acted younger… and it didn’t feel like it was intentional either. Alice didn’t really know how to approach her but if she was going to be part of her team… she had to, without a choice.
Alice went shopping and bought her an entire wardrobe full of dresses and boots and ribbons to rid the girl of the plain grey shirt and trousers the facility made her wear, just because she herself had hated that suit. That had seemed to do the trick.
Suzuka had let her brush her hair and dress her up and started calling her ‘onechan’.
Lastly… Silver. He was almost a dead body when they brought him in but the Professor… her uncle had injected him with ‘the drug’. When the man woke up, he didn’t much remember who he was. The medical staff had termed it transient amnesia… a temporary kind of memory loss… but it was enough time for her uncle to plant seeds of hatred and a feeling of being indebted to Quicksilver because they had saved him from near death.
Silver wasn’t a killer, but her uncle was smart enough to not be so blunt with him. With his newfound strength due to the drug, Silver was made to train. Both Suzuka and Silver were being kept for special targets… targets she later discovered were members of that Idol group.
Their first mission together was to go to town and convince Ryosuke to join their side. The boy was a stubborn fool. Their subordinates had already captured and injured the bait… a young boy that apparently held some importance for the Idol. Suzuka had stayed in the car while she and Silver had directly approached Ryosuke. The next mission was his retrieval from sector 0. She was surprised to find out that it was Hayato’s mission all along. The condition for his release was that he would go with Ryutaro and that he would lure this group to sector 0. Him falling sick and Ryosuke curing him was all part of the plan. Hiroshi got arrested along the way. Hayato had sent her a message that had left her all confused. The boy had confessed that he had strong feelings for her and if she would ever choose to leave Quicksilver… he would be there waiting.
She had scoffed at the idea… the only way to leave Quicksilver was either prosecution by the police… or death.
That was before they moved to that Island facility, where more teams were busy with various researches, some awe inspiring… some horrifying. It was like a center of forbidden researches.
Her uncle was on the edge of losing his sanity, she could tell.
Silver had taken a strange liking to Ryosuke… while she had not cared much. Her major concern was her uncle’s increasingly odd behaviour.
He had lost the calculative, manipulative personality and was now intent on just… destruction. This was apparent after they had shifted to their Island facility. When Ryosuke had rebelled, they were made to torture him and despite her being very loyal and dutiful to her Uncle, the man that had saved her life… she knew… she was working for a maniac. Someone who only used people to his own advantage, someone who would inflict pain and suffering just to prove a point… someone who would sooner than later self-destruct and would take everyone along with him.
He was someone who had to be stopped.
The last night before the boys had come to the Island, Alice had stood in the grand veranda outside her uncle’s office, gazing up at the night sky. She had a strange feeling and for the first time in years felt like crying.
“What are you doing one-chan?”
She had jumped slightly as she felt Silver draping a blanket around her shivering frame and Suzuka hooking an arm in hers.
“What are you guys doing out here?” she asked, a little wary. Silver leaned against the railings, hands in his jacket pockets.
“Our leader is star gazing, I thought you were too cool for mushy stuff like that?” he joked as Alice glared at him.
“Ignore him, what’s wrong?” Suzuka asked, anxiously. Alice sighed.
“I don’t want to die like this,”
“Who says we’re dying… you really think those Idols can best us?” Silver scoffed.
“If they don’t… the Professor will… do you really think he won’t just do more experiments on us or gives us some mission that might get us killed? We’re just tools for him… and even if we don’t die and the navy finds us… who’s to say we will escape lifetime imprisonment or execution?”
There was a poignant silence and for the first time, she could see that the two were looking extremely disturbed.
“But…,” Suzuka began.
“None of this was our choice… we have nowhere else to go!”
“I know I have a family somewhere…,” Silver added.
“I just can’t remember who they are…,”
Alice pulled Suzuka close. The younger girl was in tears.
“We’re so powerful… but at the same time so weak… powerless to escape our fate,”
“What do you suppose we do?” Silver asked.
“You’re asking me?”
“Yeah… you’re the leader,”
“You trust me? I’m probably just as rotten as the professor,”
“Yeah but the prof doesn’t acknowledge it… you do, that’s the difference,”
Alice stared at the young man, trying to decipher the meaning behind the strange smile.
“I say… we give it all we got… fight those Idols, if we live… we will leave the facility to self-destruct and then run… together…,”
“Together?” Suzuka piped up, eyes shining.
“Yeah, why not? We’ll start fresh… a new life somewhere, you can go look for your family Silver,”
“That sounds like a good idea, but what if we don’t survive… at least not all of us do,”
“We do what we can, and whoever lives runs…,”
“Sounds… like a plan,” Suzuka spoke after a minute of silence. Alice shrugged.
“Let’s do it then.”
~*~
A/N: I need to mention that the character of Suzuka Hoshitsuki is a cameo appearance of my reader and friend princessxnicola. The lovely lady is responsible for the character's general appearance (I based Suzuka's physical features on nicola) and the character name. To Nicola I want to thank you for taking part and giving me a great character blueprint to work with, I really hope you enjoyed the story and how your character came out! Everybody else, thank you so much for reading!! It means a lot to me.
Rating: PG
Summary: Professor Ishikawa's elite team has plans of its own and he is no longer included in any one of them.
A/N: Time frame varies, Nakamura and Sayama's conversation takes place around the time when Jun Tanaka is attacked by Quicksilver, the rest includes the entire length of the story.
Nakamura was a dedicated worker… hard working but rather unlucky. Things had gotten tough in the police department in the past few months and with the head of his team distracted by the awful thing that had happened to his son, he was left with all the paperwork.
He was left in charge of the missing person reports and he was irked because Sayama had gotten the serial bank heists and street murders of petty criminals. He had singled out files which had the least bit of information in them. First was the file of a junior high student that had gone missing a while back. She was associated with a very mysterious family that had been massacred in one night. Her body was never found.
Then there was this junior boxer. He had gone missing without a trace as well.
The third file he picked up was as thin as the first two, and he assumed there was hardly any info here as well but then there was something about the name that caught his interest.
“Hoshitsuki?”
The name was familiar, very familiar and after some more searching he found the file of a scientist with the same name. He yelped unconsciously as he realized why the name was so familiar.
“Nakamura what’s the matter?” asked Sayama, rushing over to his desk.
“I know these two… Hoshitsuki… this man used to live right next door to me back in Saitama!”
“Really?”
“I knew he had left for work somewhere but to have his family make a missing persons report and then her… Suzuka,”
“Daughter?”
“Yeah, I knew her well before I moved to Tokyo for work… she was my younger brother’s childhood friend, they went to the same university together…,”
“She’s missing?”
“My brother… Daiki… he died in a brawl with a senior, I knew that she had disappeared since but I never would have thought that she was still missing!”
“I’m so sorry about your brother,”
“Hmm,”
“Do you think she disappeared because she was involved? Maybe she was afraid of being charged?”
“Suzuka? This Suzuka? She was the sweetest thing ever… brilliant and a lovely person. My brother had been secretly crushing on her for years, was too proud to admit it since the two were also rivals but I knew for a fact that she cared for him very much. Even if she was involved in any way, she would not have left, not ran… I know her that much,”
“So… do you think her disappearance is connected to her father’s?”
“Maybe… but whatever it is, for Daiki’s sake… I need to bring her home.”
~*~
Alice’s first few days in Quicksilver weren’t exactly pleasant. She was under the guidance of a man named Hiroshi and the company of a younger boy, Hayato. Hiroshi got on her nerve the minute they met with his overbearing and demanding attitude.
Hayato was no better, despite being relatively humble with his brilliance he stuck to her like glue. She was mildly surprised to discover that the relative that had taken her in was a distant cousin of her mother and he had chosen to shelter her not because of pity or empathy… but because she was to be his most important asset.
A few years with the group and she saw it grow. She was allowed to do anything to alter her appearance, in order to shed her old identity and so she did, and when she was confident enough… her uncle had her lead teams into the city, pulling off crimes at a massive scale. She was there at all the bank heists, and they did a lot. Her uncle said that all the money was for the development of the nation and that’s what they were doing at Quicksilver’s facility. She was also a good negotiator and so she accompanied her uncle on ‘member hunts’. Some were eager, some needed force and blackmail. She never thought about what she was doing, whether it was right or wrong. She had come from a family of assasins but her mother had been the purest soul, the source of her guilty conscience. The only reason she never acted upon it was because she saw no reason to. She had a life, a purpose and fighting it would mean losing everything all over again. Why would she want that? And she never used her blade on an innocent, her uncle never made her. They were intelligent masterminds, not mindless killers he used to say.
Despite being involved in nearly every major project and recruitment, Alice realized just how alone she was when Hayato ran away with that Idol they had kidnapped. It had hurt more to know that her uncle was leaving him to die. She hid behind an uncaring façade like she always did… it was like her self-defence mechanism. When she discovered that the boy, Ryosuke… her uncle’s latest obsession had saved Hayato… she was secretly very welcome to the idea of him being a part of them. She owed him, for saving her dear friend.
These boys… their latest targets were a wonder to her. Yuto had the actual ability to manipulate ice… she had witnessed it herself. She didn’t think things like this were possible, but there he was… defeated due to his soft nature, his friend protected in a barrier of ice.
Then she came… Hoshitsuki Suzuka. The girl was a mess when she arrived, despite being accompanied by her own father. She was kept under sedation most of the time. She apparently had a dangerous ability. They had named it the “Banshee’s Call”. She also seemed to have a type of telekinesis. Suzuka didn’t talk much though, even when the effects of the sedation had worn off. She had a liking for dolls and had gotten her father to fill her room with them. The girl was in her late teens but she acted younger… and it didn’t feel like it was intentional either. Alice didn’t really know how to approach her but if she was going to be part of her team… she had to, without a choice.
Alice went shopping and bought her an entire wardrobe full of dresses and boots and ribbons to rid the girl of the plain grey shirt and trousers the facility made her wear, just because she herself had hated that suit. That had seemed to do the trick.
Suzuka had let her brush her hair and dress her up and started calling her ‘onechan’.
Lastly… Silver. He was almost a dead body when they brought him in but the Professor… her uncle had injected him with ‘the drug’. When the man woke up, he didn’t much remember who he was. The medical staff had termed it transient amnesia… a temporary kind of memory loss… but it was enough time for her uncle to plant seeds of hatred and a feeling of being indebted to Quicksilver because they had saved him from near death.
Silver wasn’t a killer, but her uncle was smart enough to not be so blunt with him. With his newfound strength due to the drug, Silver was made to train. Both Suzuka and Silver were being kept for special targets… targets she later discovered were members of that Idol group.
Their first mission together was to go to town and convince Ryosuke to join their side. The boy was a stubborn fool. Their subordinates had already captured and injured the bait… a young boy that apparently held some importance for the Idol. Suzuka had stayed in the car while she and Silver had directly approached Ryosuke. The next mission was his retrieval from sector 0. She was surprised to find out that it was Hayato’s mission all along. The condition for his release was that he would go with Ryutaro and that he would lure this group to sector 0. Him falling sick and Ryosuke curing him was all part of the plan. Hiroshi got arrested along the way. Hayato had sent her a message that had left her all confused. The boy had confessed that he had strong feelings for her and if she would ever choose to leave Quicksilver… he would be there waiting.
She had scoffed at the idea… the only way to leave Quicksilver was either prosecution by the police… or death.
That was before they moved to that Island facility, where more teams were busy with various researches, some awe inspiring… some horrifying. It was like a center of forbidden researches.
Her uncle was on the edge of losing his sanity, she could tell.
Silver had taken a strange liking to Ryosuke… while she had not cared much. Her major concern was her uncle’s increasingly odd behaviour.
He had lost the calculative, manipulative personality and was now intent on just… destruction. This was apparent after they had shifted to their Island facility. When Ryosuke had rebelled, they were made to torture him and despite her being very loyal and dutiful to her Uncle, the man that had saved her life… she knew… she was working for a maniac. Someone who only used people to his own advantage, someone who would inflict pain and suffering just to prove a point… someone who would sooner than later self-destruct and would take everyone along with him.
He was someone who had to be stopped.
The last night before the boys had come to the Island, Alice had stood in the grand veranda outside her uncle’s office, gazing up at the night sky. She had a strange feeling and for the first time in years felt like crying.
“What are you doing one-chan?”
She had jumped slightly as she felt Silver draping a blanket around her shivering frame and Suzuka hooking an arm in hers.
“What are you guys doing out here?” she asked, a little wary. Silver leaned against the railings, hands in his jacket pockets.
“Our leader is star gazing, I thought you were too cool for mushy stuff like that?” he joked as Alice glared at him.
“Ignore him, what’s wrong?” Suzuka asked, anxiously. Alice sighed.
“I don’t want to die like this,”
“Who says we’re dying… you really think those Idols can best us?” Silver scoffed.
“If they don’t… the Professor will… do you really think he won’t just do more experiments on us or gives us some mission that might get us killed? We’re just tools for him… and even if we don’t die and the navy finds us… who’s to say we will escape lifetime imprisonment or execution?”
There was a poignant silence and for the first time, she could see that the two were looking extremely disturbed.
“But…,” Suzuka began.
“None of this was our choice… we have nowhere else to go!”
“I know I have a family somewhere…,” Silver added.
“I just can’t remember who they are…,”
Alice pulled Suzuka close. The younger girl was in tears.
“We’re so powerful… but at the same time so weak… powerless to escape our fate,”
“What do you suppose we do?” Silver asked.
“You’re asking me?”
“Yeah… you’re the leader,”
“You trust me? I’m probably just as rotten as the professor,”
“Yeah but the prof doesn’t acknowledge it… you do, that’s the difference,”
Alice stared at the young man, trying to decipher the meaning behind the strange smile.
“I say… we give it all we got… fight those Idols, if we live… we will leave the facility to self-destruct and then run… together…,”
“Together?” Suzuka piped up, eyes shining.
“Yeah, why not? We’ll start fresh… a new life somewhere, you can go look for your family Silver,”
“That sounds like a good idea, but what if we don’t survive… at least not all of us do,”
“We do what we can, and whoever lives runs…,”
“Sounds… like a plan,” Suzuka spoke after a minute of silence. Alice shrugged.
“Let’s do it then.”
~*~
A/N: I need to mention that the character of Suzuka Hoshitsuki is a cameo appearance of my reader and friend princessxnicola. The lovely lady is responsible for the character's general appearance (I based Suzuka's physical features on nicola) and the character name. To Nicola I want to thank you for taking part and giving me a great character blueprint to work with, I really hope you enjoyed the story and how your character came out! Everybody else, thank you so much for reading!! It means a lot to me.