bunnyfic 25, 26
Okay, it seems my brain takes about a week to unburn. 8Db All good now; bunnyfic is continuing to roll. ♥ ...slowly getting back into the swing of things. xD; Urgh. I don't think I ever thought about anything so hard (for so long) as this thing, for NaNo. These parts are nothing too interesting, but um. Well... ;;
At Takizawa's House.
( 25: behind closed doors )
Tamamori was calm, leaning against the wall by the hatch that Fujigaya had brought him in by as Yokoo had instructed him to. He was very calm. He had nowhere else to be after all. Miyata was sleeping around this time of the night, and things felt strangely... calm. Unhurried. Very relaxed, and almost... borderline pointless? Now that Tamamori wasn't searching for Takizawa's crew anymore, anyway. He'd met the skaters, and they'd been very nice people. And they'd even given Tamamori more than he'd thought they would. An offer, as well as more information than he could digest in one night.
A lot of information.
From what Yokoo and Iida and Fujigaya had told him, he'd had more than a few things wrong about the way the Capital was run, and exactly who held the balance of power, so technically Tamamori had a lot to think about. But despite all that, there was one thing he was sure of, and it made him smile, wryly, and not feel so light-headed about everything after all...
He'd turned down the offer the skaters had made him.
And was quite calm about it.
Life was good.
Tamamori was leaned back against the wall and half asleep by the time Yokoo snapped his fingers in front of Tamamori's face. He jerked awake, startled.
"Past your bed time?" Yokoo chuckled. "I'm half surprised you waited."
Tamamori blinked at him, mind fuzzy. "...but, you said...?"
"And you do everything people tell you to? That's novel."
"No, not all the time," Tamamori backpedalled.
"Wow," Yokoo observed, "and you really do blush as quickly as your avatar. I thought that was just a glitch or something."
Tamamori pressed his hands to his cheeks in an attempt to cool them a bit, and inwardly cursed for having not yet taken the time to erase that particular trait from his virtual face. Pesky element. "Well..."
Yokoo's smile softened at Tamamori's discomfort. "Alright. Look, I'm not here to torture you so you never come back," he said. "You can always come back, okay? If you change your mind. Because--" he glanced over his shoulder, though Tamamori couldn't think what he'd be watching out for "--I still think you're making a mistake."
Slowly, Tamamori nodded, and lowered his hands. "Thank you. I mean, I might be, but..." He glanced aside. Despite everything, he was pretty set.
Yokoo could tell, and shrugged lightly enough. "Either way, Takizawa's door will always be open. We'll continue to keep an eye on you as well." He smiled pleasantly, crooked teeth showing. "Big Brother's watching, so don't misbehave."
Big Brother had been watching, Tamamori thought to himself, for a very long time now. Two Big Brothers: the government and Takizawa's lot, both. For some reason though, Tamamori was pretty sure that things would be alright. "Thank you," he said again. But then looked down in surprise as Yokoo deposited a pair of...
Skates...
On the floor.
"If I said they were yours now," Yokoo grinned, "would you thank me a third time?"
Tamamori stared at the footwear, wide-eyed. "But, I--"
"Don't know how to skate?" Yokoo asked. "Don't want them? Don't need them...?"
"I, um... think they're too big for me," Tamamori blinked.
"What." Yokoo regarded him for a moment, crossing his arms, then looked at Tamamori's shoes. And then looked at his own loafers, and back up at Tamamori. "Your feet are small for your height," he said clinically.
Tamamori flailed a bit inside. He and Yokoo were the same height. "Just because yours are a bit bigger...!" he exclaimed softly.
"Twenty-eights," Yokoo said, and raised an eyebrow in expectant query.
"...um. I'm... twenty-six or so?" Tamamori hazarded.
"Pfft," Yokoo said. But then broke out into a grin. "Fine then. Go find Nikaido before you leave, and see if he's got bigger feet than you and maybe wants to swap. The pair he has are Kitayama's old twenty-sixers, so -- wait. Did he ever tell you how he got them?"
Tamamori raised an eyebrow. Kitayama's old...? "He said he stole them off of a sleeping guy..."
Yokoo laughed at that. "Well, it's true that there's nobody who sleeps more... ah well, if the kid thinks he stole them fair and square, then don't burst his bubble. But Kitayama planned to let him have them all along."
"...oh," Tamamori blinked. Well, he supposed that made sense. Nikaido's skates were how he hid out underground, and got away from chasers and stuff... he'd have probably been long dead without them. But did that mean--? Tamamori tugged at his ugly, shiny anti-infrared hood. "Did you guys pull the strings behind me getting this too, then?"
Yokoo waved the mild curiosity away. "No, that was a trade of your own design. We let it go ahead, sure, but you were the one who set it up in the first place."
Somehow, that made Tamamori feel a bit better. A bit. "...okay," he said.
Yokoo was amused. "It's impressive you lasted so long without causing trouble, given you never even went underground." He gestured to the skates. "But you'll be able to explore down there a bit, now. It's always a handy place to hide out, and these'll make things a lot easier for you."
Tamamori thought about it. He supposed he could always wear two pairs of socks. "Thank you," he said.
"Don't put them on yet," Yokoo advised. "The business card Iida gave you in the white room also contains a model that I programmed, of these skates' specific dynamics. A little image training before a real world run wouldn't hurt." He grinned. "That way you won't end up nearly pancaked into the underside of a balcony like Nikaido, his first time."
Tamamori had to snicker at that mental image (moreso for its likelihood of being true). "Okay. I'll practice," he said. A bit, he left out. But then he had a strange thought: "Do you... um. Don't you need them anymore...?" he asked. Maybe Yokoo had another pair like Kitayama. But skates were really sort of expensive because of the miniature reactors, and...
Yokoo shook his head. "I don't need them." But he left it at that. "Should we go find Nikaido?"
Tamamori shook his head absently. "I won't bother..."
What he meant to say was that he'd rather not bother Yokoo and Takizawa any further, but Yokoo was laughing before Tamamori realised it.
"Lazy, aren't you?" Yokoo's face was all creased in amusement.
"Ah! No, that's not what I meant," Tamamori said. "I meant, I won't bother you--"
"No bother," Yokoo cut him off smoothly. "In fact, you might as well stay the rest of the night."
Tamamori blinked at him. "Eh?"
"What do you mean, 'eh'," Yokoo said severely. "It's late and way past your bedtime."
"I... don't have a bedtime," Tamamori said. Effectively having no parents had a few perks like that. (Though he didn't imagine they outweighed the downsides at all, but still...)
Yokoo crossed his arms. "You're on Takizawa's property," he said. "Which means you have a bedtime. Which means, in fact, that you should follow me." With that, he turned and started back down the corridor back the way he'd come.
Tamamori stared after Yokoo for several long seconds, nonplussed. He'd said he didn't want to stay and Yokoo had accepted that, and even given Tamamori his old skates...
Quickly, Tamamori scooped up the footwear and walked quickly in Yokoo's wake. Well. Just one half-night was fine, wasn't it...? He was too tired to go online again anyway.
Yokoo turned a corner. Tamamori followed. Then another corner. Then another one. And went through a door. And took another corner. And Tamamori gave up on trying to keep track of the directions; Takizawa's place was a labyrinth.
There were corridors crossing corridors and doors everywhere that all looked mostly the same. When they passed the doors, Tamamori began to wonder if there were people behind them all. Boys. Who'd been like him, once, maybe? How many...? And what other rooms were there...?
Absently, he reached out to trail his fingers along the wall as they walked, Yokoo leading in amicable silence. Tamamori was surprised to feel the 'wood' beneath his fingers to be actual moulded panels, sculpted and painted to look like real timber, instead of being just holographic projections onto the wall. Most houses he'd seen the insides of -- well, the ones who could afford to bother with ornaments anyway -- they preferred holo decorations. They were far cheaper after all, and you could easily change the settings if you got sick of them.
"...Takizawa is really dedicated to this 'real' thing, huh," he murmured.
Yokoo stopped walking, glancing back. "Say something?" Tamamori shook his head. Yokoo gave him a strange look, but gestured to the door he was standing in front of. "You can sleep in here tonight. The room's got two beds but Taisuke doesn't bet they'll both be used." He grinned. "Might want to knock first though." And with that, he turned around and walked away, patting Tamamori on the shoulder as he went past.
"Um. Thank... you?" Tamamori said, feeling slightly bewildered at the abruptness of it.
"You're welcome," Yokoo waved a hand dismissively, not turning back. And disappeared around a corner.
...
Tamamori stared at the door in front of him, as if it might yield under the x-ray vision he didn't have -- but then remembered Yokoo's words about knocking first, and thought maybe he should be glad about not having that superpower. Raising a hand, he... knocked twice.
There was a muffled 'yeep!' and a thud--
"That was the door! Your door!" one voice said.
"Are you sure?" a second voice asked. "I dunno..."
"It was definitely your door." The first one again.
A chuckle from the second one -- "So you want me to answer it?" -- joined by low, husky laughter that made Tamamori's skin kind of crawl in the wrong way.
...he knew those voices. He'd heard a lot of them today. Maybe entirely too much, because he felt suddenly beyond awkward for having made his presence known.
Doing a 180, Tamamori turned down the corridor Yokoo had disappeared into, thinking it would be better to find the other again and just say goodbye and thank you one last time and take his leave properly -- but the corridor stretched on, splitting left and right at its end, lined with doors, and Yokoo was nowhere to be seen. Out of view back the way he'd come, Tamamori heard Senga's door open, and Senga's voice: "Hey, but there's no one here...!"
Nikaido said something inaudible, and the door closed again.
Tamamori sagged against the wall and wished he'd just left when he'd been given the chance. But he was stuck here now and he was tired; he'd slept in worse places before. Stretching out on the floor along the corridor wall, Tamamori decided to let himself doze until dawn.
M15, 44-R. 74-M and everybody who ever tortured him.
( 26: kryptonite )
Miyata's eyelids felt gummed shut. He didn't like mornings, but then again probably not many people did, apart from the guys who worked night shift since that meant they'd be able to go home. For Miyata though, mornings meant returning to work. And today he'd probably get questioned about where he'd been and what he'd done the night before... something that happened occasionally, when his luck was bad--
Well, to be clear: it happened when his luck was worse than usual. Miyata's luck was always bad.
The long, tedious, and foot-dragging journey from wakefulness to conscious was nothing out of the ordinary though. By the time Miyata arrived at work and found himself an empty workstation, sat himself in its formafoam chair and logged into the system, he was mostly awake. Mostly.
Still, upon entering the ready-room scenario, he had to wonder if he hadn't accidentally read his clock wrong that morning and woken up too early or something, coming into work hours before he was supposed to be required (because that had happened before). The guy he was supposed to change over with wasn't there yet.
But a trainee was.
"...44-R?" Miyata asked, as he approached the other. "What are you doing here?"
44-R looked up tiredly. "I bailed. Captain got nuked. He said he wanted to write me up when he got out of the forest, so I'm waiting 'til he wakes up." A virtual flatscreen hovering in front of 44-R displayed the real time feed from the security camera above his captain's booth. The man in question looked dead asleep.
"He got FD'd?" Miyata asked just to be sure, glancing at the inert human. Forced disconnects happened every so often in their line of work, but an unconscious person and a person working online both looked very much the same out in the real world when they still had their netgear on.
"He got FD'd," 44-R nodded, brows knit. "Like I said, nuked. I went through the archives when he didn't follow after I got out of the scenario. Bloody errant dropped an A-bomb on his head." A derisive laugh trailed into silence.
Miyata said nothing, trying not to wonder just who might drop an entire atomic bomb on one man's head in a forest. Really, really trying not to wonder.
...he didn't want to know what Tamamori had been in the vicinity of chasers for. All that mattered was that Tamamori hadn't been caught. (Obviously not, if he'd brought in code like that just for kicks.) And Miyata didn't need to ask about Senga and Nikaido. Not yet. The less he knew before his supervisor interrogated him the better. He'd look into the records later, and keep his fingers crossed for their safety in the meantime.
He just hoped his presence there hadn't been what had tipped the chasers off about the others.
It couldn't have, could it? His message to Tamamori...? Not something so oblique, surely...
Miyata blinked. 44-R was talking. "Was I wrong to bail?" the trainee asked, gesturing to the heavyset man currently still on the virtual flatscreen. "I mean, just look at him. Still out cold. It's been hours."
Miyata smiled kindly at the fresh recruit, eyes crinkling up at the edges. "Maa, I don't think you need to worry about it being right and wrong. Maybe you disobeyed orders, but it seems you're being punished for it either way right? By staying back and such -- you're already doing the right thing again, so maybe you can forgive yourself."
44-R looked dubious. "I guess so..."
Miyata chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. "Um. If that's not enough, you'll probably be written up like your supervisor said. So..." He gave a helpless shrug. "If it were me, I'd just have stuck with him and been nuked too. Because dying like that doesn't hurt much, right? Just, boom-and-you're-dead? And your supervisor wouldn't be angry."
44-R gave a snort of derision. "Yeah, but time spent passed out isn't paid time you know. It's just wasted."
"Ahh," Miyata said. "I forgot about that; you're right." ...he'd forgotten because things like pay or kills or catches didn't really matter to him much at all, and sometimes he also forgot that not everybody shared the same frame of mind. "Oops."
"'Oops', M15...?" came a voice from behind him.
Miyata spun, the virtual hairs on the back of his neck rising. "Ummm... yeah," he grinned sheepishly. "Morning, Supervisor."
"Morning," his supervisor said, with a tone of tsk-tsk. "Tell me what else you've done, so we can get this all out of the way at once."
"Sir," 44-R said uninvited, "M15 was just saying he'd rather be nuked than disobey orders."
Miyata's supervisor raised a brow, and Miyata chuckled awkwardly. "Well... something like that...?" he offered.
"Then I guess you won't mind coming with me to explain what went on in your net access records last night," Miyata's supervisor said cordially.
"No, Sir, of course not, Sir," Miyata grinned.
"Don't get smart with me just because you're useless, M15."
"Sorry, Sir."
Miyata's supervisor cast an indulgent eye across at 44-R, who was watching the exchange with no small measure of puzzlement. "If you turn out like this lump of coal," Miyata's supervisor said, gesturing to Miyata, "...well. Let's just say you'd better not turn out like him."
44-R stared.
"Ahh," Miyata said, "that hurts." He turned to 44-R himself, lowering his voice marginally. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe insubordination is an encouraged trait."
"Rubbish," Miyata's supervisor said, having no problem overhearing that stage whisper. He crossed his arms. "Insubordination is never advised. Especially not when one tries to hide it." Suddenly, the glare of his avatar turned icy, and Miyata felt his stomach drop.
"Um. I don't know what you're talking about, Sir..." he said tentatively.
"Except for how I'm sure you do," Miyata's supervisor said, too coolly for comfort. "VR room 315 now, please, and you can tell me all about it." With that, his avatar disappeared first.
Miyata sighed. Well, trying to not make a big deal of the issue clearly hadn't worked...
44-R was still staring at him. "You, in trouble?" he asked, incredulous.
"Um," Miyata said, eyes shifting. "Not really. I mean, no. Not at all. Why would I have done anything wrong."
44-R rolled his eyes. "Right. Sure. Whatever. Good luck, man. You look like you'll need it."
Miyata resisted the urge to sigh again, and rubbed the back of his neck. "Right," he said. Well in either case, it was probably truer than he'd like to admit. "...I'll see you around." Leaving the ready-room himself, he indexed room 315 and braced himself for the worst.
:::
Tamamori didn't get to sleep very long. A handful of hours was a decent amount, though his body told him it would have preferred to lie inanimate for a little longer. That simply wasn't possible, though, when you were sleeping in a by-way and people were narrowly avoiding stepping on your face.
"Holy shit!" a loud voice exclaimed. "What the hell, now we're keeping errant rats indoors, too!"
That got Tamamori's attention. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, annoyed. "Who're you calling a rat?" he grumbled.
Though in hindsight, he knew that speaker's voice too. And when he finally looked up, he matched the voice to the face and the package was unmistakable as Fujigaya Taisuke. "I nearly stepped on your head, Tamamori!"
"Hey?" A second guy (that Tamamori hadn't seen at all yet) rounded the corner behind Fujigaya. He looked straight at Tamamori. "Did you change your mind about staying, then?"
"..." Mutely, Tamamori shook his head, wondering vaguely how much Yokoo had blabbed in such a short time, and if anybody knew the meaning of 'secrecy' around Takizawa's house. But before his tired mind could formulate a coherent question, another familiar voice was yelling.
"What the hell! You guys said nothing about going to school!" Nikaido's voice rang out as a door slammed open -- Tamamori could only assume it was Senga's around the corner. Fujigaya and his friend stepped back a couple of paces to look. Tamamori couldn't be bothered.
And then there was laughter that belonged to Senga, and Fujigaya joined Nikaido's shoutfest. "Of course you're going to school, idiot! If you're legal, you go through the education system. Crime fighters can't afford to be stupid."
"Are you calling me stupid?!" Nikaido shouted back, to more of Senga's laughter.
"I'm calling you potentially unsmart!" Fujigaya countered.
"What?"
"Guys-- GUYS!" Fujigaya's friend interrupted. "I don't think we should be--"
A few doors down from where Tamamori sat, another door opened, and Yokoo strode out, storming past the troupe with a towel around his shoulders. "You idiots are seriously too loud!" he snapped. "I'm not responsible if you wake the bear." And then disappeared before Tamamori could stop him.
"Ah," Fujigaya said, glancing casually over as another door slammed open behind them. "...too late."
Senga stopped laughing. Nikaido stopped shouting. Fujigaya's friend disappeared after Yokoo, and even Fujigaya shut his mouth. Tamamori sort of felt like he should hide.
Somebody's aura was large and black and very, very angry. Even if the person himself was not very tall, his voice was deep and growly as he emerged from the dark of his room. "The next one to shout dies."
"Ooh~ scary," someone whispered. Either Fujigaya or Senga. Nikaido snickered. Quietly.
Kitayama's shadowed eyes glowered out from under sleep-mussed bangs. "Stick to that volume and your heads get to keep their shoulders." And then his door shut again.
"...I'm still not going to school," Nikaido whispered at length.
"You're going to school, brat," Fujigaya hissed at him.
"Ne, come with, Nika~" Senga whispered. "You can be in my class. It'll be fun."
Fujigaya snorted softly. "I'd tell you not to say what class he can be in before he takes the placement test, except for how I'm pretty sure you dunces will be in the same class."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Nikaido hissed.
"You. Dunce," Fujigaya whispered pointedly, and stalked off.
"...don't listen to Taipi," Senga murmured. "He's mean in the mornings."
"Yesterday, you said he was mean at night!" Nikaido hissed.
"Yeah," Senga mumbled, "well..." And then a door clicked shut and the hall dropped back into relative silence.
Tamamori leaned against his wall, curled up with his knees to his chin, and thought for the first time that maybe he'd made the right choice by not joining Takizawa's lot for more reasons than one. Who'd have figured?
And while he was at the business of having depressing thoughts, he also considered his chances of finding his way out of the house without bumping into (or asking) any of the really grumpy people that he couldn't log out on because they were all right here...
1- ah, tamamori and miyata were the ones who said they preferred to stay home, after all... xD;
2- COULD NOT WRITE THE SENNIKA THIS TIME, SORRY. 8D;; *fills in the blank behind the door with magic marker* ♥
3- my original plan was to finish this within 60k, and um. that's why i got a bit stuck. :3 but now i'm unstuck, i really don't know where it's going anymore, so i guess we'll just see. :D
At Takizawa's House.
( 25: behind closed doors )
Tamamori was calm, leaning against the wall by the hatch that Fujigaya had brought him in by as Yokoo had instructed him to. He was very calm. He had nowhere else to be after all. Miyata was sleeping around this time of the night, and things felt strangely... calm. Unhurried. Very relaxed, and almost... borderline pointless? Now that Tamamori wasn't searching for Takizawa's crew anymore, anyway. He'd met the skaters, and they'd been very nice people. And they'd even given Tamamori more than he'd thought they would. An offer, as well as more information than he could digest in one night.
A lot of information.
From what Yokoo and Iida and Fujigaya had told him, he'd had more than a few things wrong about the way the Capital was run, and exactly who held the balance of power, so technically Tamamori had a lot to think about. But despite all that, there was one thing he was sure of, and it made him smile, wryly, and not feel so light-headed about everything after all...
He'd turned down the offer the skaters had made him.
And was quite calm about it.
Life was good.
Tamamori was leaned back against the wall and half asleep by the time Yokoo snapped his fingers in front of Tamamori's face. He jerked awake, startled.
"Past your bed time?" Yokoo chuckled. "I'm half surprised you waited."
Tamamori blinked at him, mind fuzzy. "...but, you said...?"
"And you do everything people tell you to? That's novel."
"No, not all the time," Tamamori backpedalled.
"Wow," Yokoo observed, "and you really do blush as quickly as your avatar. I thought that was just a glitch or something."
Tamamori pressed his hands to his cheeks in an attempt to cool them a bit, and inwardly cursed for having not yet taken the time to erase that particular trait from his virtual face. Pesky element. "Well..."
Yokoo's smile softened at Tamamori's discomfort. "Alright. Look, I'm not here to torture you so you never come back," he said. "You can always come back, okay? If you change your mind. Because--" he glanced over his shoulder, though Tamamori couldn't think what he'd be watching out for "--I still think you're making a mistake."
Slowly, Tamamori nodded, and lowered his hands. "Thank you. I mean, I might be, but..." He glanced aside. Despite everything, he was pretty set.
Yokoo could tell, and shrugged lightly enough. "Either way, Takizawa's door will always be open. We'll continue to keep an eye on you as well." He smiled pleasantly, crooked teeth showing. "Big Brother's watching, so don't misbehave."
Big Brother had been watching, Tamamori thought to himself, for a very long time now. Two Big Brothers: the government and Takizawa's lot, both. For some reason though, Tamamori was pretty sure that things would be alright. "Thank you," he said again. But then looked down in surprise as Yokoo deposited a pair of...
Skates...
On the floor.
"If I said they were yours now," Yokoo grinned, "would you thank me a third time?"
Tamamori stared at the footwear, wide-eyed. "But, I--"
"Don't know how to skate?" Yokoo asked. "Don't want them? Don't need them...?"
"I, um... think they're too big for me," Tamamori blinked.
"What." Yokoo regarded him for a moment, crossing his arms, then looked at Tamamori's shoes. And then looked at his own loafers, and back up at Tamamori. "Your feet are small for your height," he said clinically.
Tamamori flailed a bit inside. He and Yokoo were the same height. "Just because yours are a bit bigger...!" he exclaimed softly.
"Twenty-eights," Yokoo said, and raised an eyebrow in expectant query.
"...um. I'm... twenty-six or so?" Tamamori hazarded.
"Pfft," Yokoo said. But then broke out into a grin. "Fine then. Go find Nikaido before you leave, and see if he's got bigger feet than you and maybe wants to swap. The pair he has are Kitayama's old twenty-sixers, so -- wait. Did he ever tell you how he got them?"
Tamamori raised an eyebrow. Kitayama's old...? "He said he stole them off of a sleeping guy..."
Yokoo laughed at that. "Well, it's true that there's nobody who sleeps more... ah well, if the kid thinks he stole them fair and square, then don't burst his bubble. But Kitayama planned to let him have them all along."
"...oh," Tamamori blinked. Well, he supposed that made sense. Nikaido's skates were how he hid out underground, and got away from chasers and stuff... he'd have probably been long dead without them. But did that mean--? Tamamori tugged at his ugly, shiny anti-infrared hood. "Did you guys pull the strings behind me getting this too, then?"
Yokoo waved the mild curiosity away. "No, that was a trade of your own design. We let it go ahead, sure, but you were the one who set it up in the first place."
Somehow, that made Tamamori feel a bit better. A bit. "...okay," he said.
Yokoo was amused. "It's impressive you lasted so long without causing trouble, given you never even went underground." He gestured to the skates. "But you'll be able to explore down there a bit, now. It's always a handy place to hide out, and these'll make things a lot easier for you."
Tamamori thought about it. He supposed he could always wear two pairs of socks. "Thank you," he said.
"Don't put them on yet," Yokoo advised. "The business card Iida gave you in the white room also contains a model that I programmed, of these skates' specific dynamics. A little image training before a real world run wouldn't hurt." He grinned. "That way you won't end up nearly pancaked into the underside of a balcony like Nikaido, his first time."
Tamamori had to snicker at that mental image (moreso for its likelihood of being true). "Okay. I'll practice," he said. A bit, he left out. But then he had a strange thought: "Do you... um. Don't you need them anymore...?" he asked. Maybe Yokoo had another pair like Kitayama. But skates were really sort of expensive because of the miniature reactors, and...
Yokoo shook his head. "I don't need them." But he left it at that. "Should we go find Nikaido?"
Tamamori shook his head absently. "I won't bother..."
What he meant to say was that he'd rather not bother Yokoo and Takizawa any further, but Yokoo was laughing before Tamamori realised it.
"Lazy, aren't you?" Yokoo's face was all creased in amusement.
"Ah! No, that's not what I meant," Tamamori said. "I meant, I won't bother you--"
"No bother," Yokoo cut him off smoothly. "In fact, you might as well stay the rest of the night."
Tamamori blinked at him. "Eh?"
"What do you mean, 'eh'," Yokoo said severely. "It's late and way past your bedtime."
"I... don't have a bedtime," Tamamori said. Effectively having no parents had a few perks like that. (Though he didn't imagine they outweighed the downsides at all, but still...)
Yokoo crossed his arms. "You're on Takizawa's property," he said. "Which means you have a bedtime. Which means, in fact, that you should follow me." With that, he turned and started back down the corridor back the way he'd come.
Tamamori stared after Yokoo for several long seconds, nonplussed. He'd said he didn't want to stay and Yokoo had accepted that, and even given Tamamori his old skates...
Quickly, Tamamori scooped up the footwear and walked quickly in Yokoo's wake. Well. Just one half-night was fine, wasn't it...? He was too tired to go online again anyway.
Yokoo turned a corner. Tamamori followed. Then another corner. Then another one. And went through a door. And took another corner. And Tamamori gave up on trying to keep track of the directions; Takizawa's place was a labyrinth.
There were corridors crossing corridors and doors everywhere that all looked mostly the same. When they passed the doors, Tamamori began to wonder if there were people behind them all. Boys. Who'd been like him, once, maybe? How many...? And what other rooms were there...?
Absently, he reached out to trail his fingers along the wall as they walked, Yokoo leading in amicable silence. Tamamori was surprised to feel the 'wood' beneath his fingers to be actual moulded panels, sculpted and painted to look like real timber, instead of being just holographic projections onto the wall. Most houses he'd seen the insides of -- well, the ones who could afford to bother with ornaments anyway -- they preferred holo decorations. They were far cheaper after all, and you could easily change the settings if you got sick of them.
"...Takizawa is really dedicated to this 'real' thing, huh," he murmured.
Yokoo stopped walking, glancing back. "Say something?" Tamamori shook his head. Yokoo gave him a strange look, but gestured to the door he was standing in front of. "You can sleep in here tonight. The room's got two beds but Taisuke doesn't bet they'll both be used." He grinned. "Might want to knock first though." And with that, he turned around and walked away, patting Tamamori on the shoulder as he went past.
"Um. Thank... you?" Tamamori said, feeling slightly bewildered at the abruptness of it.
"You're welcome," Yokoo waved a hand dismissively, not turning back. And disappeared around a corner.
...
Tamamori stared at the door in front of him, as if it might yield under the x-ray vision he didn't have -- but then remembered Yokoo's words about knocking first, and thought maybe he should be glad about not having that superpower. Raising a hand, he... knocked twice.
There was a muffled 'yeep!' and a thud--
"That was the door! Your door!" one voice said.
"Are you sure?" a second voice asked. "I dunno..."
"It was definitely your door." The first one again.
A chuckle from the second one -- "So you want me to answer it?" -- joined by low, husky laughter that made Tamamori's skin kind of crawl in the wrong way.
...he knew those voices. He'd heard a lot of them today. Maybe entirely too much, because he felt suddenly beyond awkward for having made his presence known.
Doing a 180, Tamamori turned down the corridor Yokoo had disappeared into, thinking it would be better to find the other again and just say goodbye and thank you one last time and take his leave properly -- but the corridor stretched on, splitting left and right at its end, lined with doors, and Yokoo was nowhere to be seen. Out of view back the way he'd come, Tamamori heard Senga's door open, and Senga's voice: "Hey, but there's no one here...!"
Nikaido said something inaudible, and the door closed again.
Tamamori sagged against the wall and wished he'd just left when he'd been given the chance. But he was stuck here now and he was tired; he'd slept in worse places before. Stretching out on the floor along the corridor wall, Tamamori decided to let himself doze until dawn.
M15, 44-R. 74-M and everybody who ever tortured him.
( 26: kryptonite )
Miyata's eyelids felt gummed shut. He didn't like mornings, but then again probably not many people did, apart from the guys who worked night shift since that meant they'd be able to go home. For Miyata though, mornings meant returning to work. And today he'd probably get questioned about where he'd been and what he'd done the night before... something that happened occasionally, when his luck was bad--
Well, to be clear: it happened when his luck was worse than usual. Miyata's luck was always bad.
The long, tedious, and foot-dragging journey from wakefulness to conscious was nothing out of the ordinary though. By the time Miyata arrived at work and found himself an empty workstation, sat himself in its formafoam chair and logged into the system, he was mostly awake. Mostly.
Still, upon entering the ready-room scenario, he had to wonder if he hadn't accidentally read his clock wrong that morning and woken up too early or something, coming into work hours before he was supposed to be required (because that had happened before). The guy he was supposed to change over with wasn't there yet.
But a trainee was.
"...44-R?" Miyata asked, as he approached the other. "What are you doing here?"
44-R looked up tiredly. "I bailed. Captain got nuked. He said he wanted to write me up when he got out of the forest, so I'm waiting 'til he wakes up." A virtual flatscreen hovering in front of 44-R displayed the real time feed from the security camera above his captain's booth. The man in question looked dead asleep.
"He got FD'd?" Miyata asked just to be sure, glancing at the inert human. Forced disconnects happened every so often in their line of work, but an unconscious person and a person working online both looked very much the same out in the real world when they still had their netgear on.
"He got FD'd," 44-R nodded, brows knit. "Like I said, nuked. I went through the archives when he didn't follow after I got out of the scenario. Bloody errant dropped an A-bomb on his head." A derisive laugh trailed into silence.
Miyata said nothing, trying not to wonder just who might drop an entire atomic bomb on one man's head in a forest. Really, really trying not to wonder.
...he didn't want to know what Tamamori had been in the vicinity of chasers for. All that mattered was that Tamamori hadn't been caught. (Obviously not, if he'd brought in code like that just for kicks.) And Miyata didn't need to ask about Senga and Nikaido. Not yet. The less he knew before his supervisor interrogated him the better. He'd look into the records later, and keep his fingers crossed for their safety in the meantime.
He just hoped his presence there hadn't been what had tipped the chasers off about the others.
It couldn't have, could it? His message to Tamamori...? Not something so oblique, surely...
Miyata blinked. 44-R was talking. "Was I wrong to bail?" the trainee asked, gesturing to the heavyset man currently still on the virtual flatscreen. "I mean, just look at him. Still out cold. It's been hours."
Miyata smiled kindly at the fresh recruit, eyes crinkling up at the edges. "Maa, I don't think you need to worry about it being right and wrong. Maybe you disobeyed orders, but it seems you're being punished for it either way right? By staying back and such -- you're already doing the right thing again, so maybe you can forgive yourself."
44-R looked dubious. "I guess so..."
Miyata chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. "Um. If that's not enough, you'll probably be written up like your supervisor said. So..." He gave a helpless shrug. "If it were me, I'd just have stuck with him and been nuked too. Because dying like that doesn't hurt much, right? Just, boom-and-you're-dead? And your supervisor wouldn't be angry."
44-R gave a snort of derision. "Yeah, but time spent passed out isn't paid time you know. It's just wasted."
"Ahh," Miyata said. "I forgot about that; you're right." ...he'd forgotten because things like pay or kills or catches didn't really matter to him much at all, and sometimes he also forgot that not everybody shared the same frame of mind. "Oops."
"'Oops', M15...?" came a voice from behind him.
Miyata spun, the virtual hairs on the back of his neck rising. "Ummm... yeah," he grinned sheepishly. "Morning, Supervisor."
"Morning," his supervisor said, with a tone of tsk-tsk. "Tell me what else you've done, so we can get this all out of the way at once."
"Sir," 44-R said uninvited, "M15 was just saying he'd rather be nuked than disobey orders."
Miyata's supervisor raised a brow, and Miyata chuckled awkwardly. "Well... something like that...?" he offered.
"Then I guess you won't mind coming with me to explain what went on in your net access records last night," Miyata's supervisor said cordially.
"No, Sir, of course not, Sir," Miyata grinned.
"Don't get smart with me just because you're useless, M15."
"Sorry, Sir."
Miyata's supervisor cast an indulgent eye across at 44-R, who was watching the exchange with no small measure of puzzlement. "If you turn out like this lump of coal," Miyata's supervisor said, gesturing to Miyata, "...well. Let's just say you'd better not turn out like him."
44-R stared.
"Ahh," Miyata said, "that hurts." He turned to 44-R himself, lowering his voice marginally. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe insubordination is an encouraged trait."
"Rubbish," Miyata's supervisor said, having no problem overhearing that stage whisper. He crossed his arms. "Insubordination is never advised. Especially not when one tries to hide it." Suddenly, the glare of his avatar turned icy, and Miyata felt his stomach drop.
"Um. I don't know what you're talking about, Sir..." he said tentatively.
"Except for how I'm sure you do," Miyata's supervisor said, too coolly for comfort. "VR room 315 now, please, and you can tell me all about it." With that, his avatar disappeared first.
Miyata sighed. Well, trying to not make a big deal of the issue clearly hadn't worked...
44-R was still staring at him. "You, in trouble?" he asked, incredulous.
"Um," Miyata said, eyes shifting. "Not really. I mean, no. Not at all. Why would I have done anything wrong."
44-R rolled his eyes. "Right. Sure. Whatever. Good luck, man. You look like you'll need it."
Miyata resisted the urge to sigh again, and rubbed the back of his neck. "Right," he said. Well in either case, it was probably truer than he'd like to admit. "...I'll see you around." Leaving the ready-room himself, he indexed room 315 and braced himself for the worst.
:::
Tamamori didn't get to sleep very long. A handful of hours was a decent amount, though his body told him it would have preferred to lie inanimate for a little longer. That simply wasn't possible, though, when you were sleeping in a by-way and people were narrowly avoiding stepping on your face.
"Holy shit!" a loud voice exclaimed. "What the hell, now we're keeping errant rats indoors, too!"
That got Tamamori's attention. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, annoyed. "Who're you calling a rat?" he grumbled.
Though in hindsight, he knew that speaker's voice too. And when he finally looked up, he matched the voice to the face and the package was unmistakable as Fujigaya Taisuke. "I nearly stepped on your head, Tamamori!"
"Hey?" A second guy (that Tamamori hadn't seen at all yet) rounded the corner behind Fujigaya. He looked straight at Tamamori. "Did you change your mind about staying, then?"
"..." Mutely, Tamamori shook his head, wondering vaguely how much Yokoo had blabbed in such a short time, and if anybody knew the meaning of 'secrecy' around Takizawa's house. But before his tired mind could formulate a coherent question, another familiar voice was yelling.
"What the hell! You guys said nothing about going to school!" Nikaido's voice rang out as a door slammed open -- Tamamori could only assume it was Senga's around the corner. Fujigaya and his friend stepped back a couple of paces to look. Tamamori couldn't be bothered.
And then there was laughter that belonged to Senga, and Fujigaya joined Nikaido's shoutfest. "Of course you're going to school, idiot! If you're legal, you go through the education system. Crime fighters can't afford to be stupid."
"Are you calling me stupid?!" Nikaido shouted back, to more of Senga's laughter.
"I'm calling you potentially unsmart!" Fujigaya countered.
"What?"
"Guys-- GUYS!" Fujigaya's friend interrupted. "I don't think we should be--"
A few doors down from where Tamamori sat, another door opened, and Yokoo strode out, storming past the troupe with a towel around his shoulders. "You idiots are seriously too loud!" he snapped. "I'm not responsible if you wake the bear." And then disappeared before Tamamori could stop him.
"Ah," Fujigaya said, glancing casually over as another door slammed open behind them. "...too late."
Senga stopped laughing. Nikaido stopped shouting. Fujigaya's friend disappeared after Yokoo, and even Fujigaya shut his mouth. Tamamori sort of felt like he should hide.
Somebody's aura was large and black and very, very angry. Even if the person himself was not very tall, his voice was deep and growly as he emerged from the dark of his room. "The next one to shout dies."
"Ooh~ scary," someone whispered. Either Fujigaya or Senga. Nikaido snickered. Quietly.
Kitayama's shadowed eyes glowered out from under sleep-mussed bangs. "Stick to that volume and your heads get to keep their shoulders." And then his door shut again.
"...I'm still not going to school," Nikaido whispered at length.
"You're going to school, brat," Fujigaya hissed at him.
"Ne, come with, Nika~" Senga whispered. "You can be in my class. It'll be fun."
Fujigaya snorted softly. "I'd tell you not to say what class he can be in before he takes the placement test, except for how I'm pretty sure you dunces will be in the same class."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Nikaido hissed.
"You. Dunce," Fujigaya whispered pointedly, and stalked off.
"...don't listen to Taipi," Senga murmured. "He's mean in the mornings."
"Yesterday, you said he was mean at night!" Nikaido hissed.
"Yeah," Senga mumbled, "well..." And then a door clicked shut and the hall dropped back into relative silence.
Tamamori leaned against his wall, curled up with his knees to his chin, and thought for the first time that maybe he'd made the right choice by not joining Takizawa's lot for more reasons than one. Who'd have figured?
And while he was at the business of having depressing thoughts, he also considered his chances of finding his way out of the house without bumping into (or asking) any of the really grumpy people that he couldn't log out on because they were all right here...
1- ah, tamamori and miyata were the ones who said they preferred to stay home, after all... xD;
2- COULD NOT WRITE THE SENNIKA THIS TIME, SORRY. 8D;; *fills in the blank behind the door with magic marker* ♥
3- my original plan was to finish this within 60k, and um. that's why i got a bit stuck. :3 but now i'm unstuck, i really don't know where it's going anymore, so i guess we'll just see. :D