bunnyfic 27
Finally finished editing the nano. xD Surprisingly it was... not as bad as I feared? Ahaa, the first nine parts were boring as all hell but the rest was okay (if often nonsensical). :0 I totally forgot about some loose threads though, like IY's backstory, and also TOP3, wjkwwewke. *fixes that*
M15. 2000. The Second and Fourth Guards, 04-A, 54-N.
( 27: avoidance tactics )
"So," Miyata's supervisor said. Having modelled the scenario after a cityscape, he leaned against their balcony's guardrail, looking outward across the buildings below.
Miyata stood a few paces back, closer to the door. He wasn't really the kind of guy to tempt fate. Even virtually. "So..." Miyata said. Then added: "Sir."
His supervisor turned and hopped up to sit atop the waist-high railing, making Miyata nervous for him. "Last night," his supervisor said. "You were with three questionable characters."
"Questionable?" Miyata asked, playing stupid if not entirely innocent.
"21-K, 53-N, and a third with a mid-level scrambler on his sequence," his supervisor said, leaning back to look at the sky. "Sound familiar?"
"Ummm..." Miyata said, distracted by thoughts of you're going to fall, you're going to fall, you're going to fall-- "Nikaido, I think. Senga. And a friend of mine."
"Right. And there was a mention of a certain... name?"
Miyata knew for sure then that he wasn't going to be getting out of this easily and gave an inward sigh, putting his best game face on. "Oh! I know, you're talking about when Senga mentioned 滝沢秀明 -- I mean, Hideaki Takizawa, aren't you?"
"Thank you," Miyata's supervisor sniffed. "We can make this much easier now."
Miyata nodded heartily. "I logged off because I didn't want to get in trouble. You know, how it's bad to hang with the wrong crowd and all that. I just met Senga and Nikaido by accident -- I didn't know they were bad."
Miyata's supervisor regarded him for a very long moment, eyes focused as if trying to determine if Miyata was being thickly sarcastic to the point of no inflection, or was actually just that stupid. Miyata gave him nothing, eye-crinkling smile unwavering under the scrutiny, more than used to it by now.
"...alright then," his supervisor said eventually. "I'll get right down to it. No sense in wasting your time or mine."
Miyata nodded.
"Management wants you use you to find out more information about Takizawa's activities," his supervisor said.
Miyata froze.
"You haven't told your contacts that you work for the government yet, and you aren't to tell them in the future either. You're to acquire their confidences, and report back any information you glean." His supervisor looked away. "I'm telling you this now because I like you, M15: you will be under intense surveillance. Failure to follow through with these orders will be regarded as a violation of your terms of employment, and will result in your termination at Management's discretion."
He glanced back over at Miyata. "I've been aware of you trying to suppress your own productivity in this department for years, and have overlooked the fact this long because your knowledge of Old Local has been useful to external units like Narcotics, once or twice--"
"Um. That's not--"
Miyata's supervisor held up a hand. "No, I know what you've been up to. You're a good guy, M15, if a bit confused. But Management believes you've already pushed their leniency far enough." He looked off into the horizon, unable to meet Miyata's eye. "Please, don't pull any more stunts."
*
Miyata felt gutted.
Drawn and quartered too, preemptively. He hurt in all the stupid places.
Sitting in his workstation, offline, he dug the heels of his palms into his closed eyes, rubbing vigorously. Life didn't like to play fair, did it? Why was he the only one to get asked all the hard questions in class...?
The line he'd tried to tread so carefully, between being useful enough to keep his head and useless enough to give the errants a chance, had been thinning all this time and he hadn't seen it coming. Or rather, he'd chosen to ignore its imminence. And now that that tightrope had whipped out from under him a little more harshly than he'd expected, he didn't have a Plan B to fall back on. Thoughts chased rings around the roses through his head in a merrily morbid tune.
Wilfully being an instrument of errants' demise simply wasn't an option. He owed it to his father's legacy to try to keep other illegals alive, even at the risk of his own life. But he liked being alive too, and owed living to his father as well. He wasn't sure he'd be able to make that ultimate sacrifice, except in one case -- he'd trade his life for Tamamori's freedom, without a doubt.
But the homework they'd given him wasn't that black and white, was it? No, that would've been too easy. If all he'd been asked to do was turn in Tamamori, then he wouldn't have done it. Simple as that.
Management wasn't asking for Tamamori, though. Nothing so overtly significant. All they wanted was a little data. A little turn-coating. How much should it matter? Miyata didn't even know Senga that well yet, and hadn't ever seen him before the forest last night. Would it really hurt if Miyata ferreted out a little information here and there about Senga's boss, and passed it on? Senga didn't really seem that high up in the food chain anyway, and if Takizawa really was that powerful, shouldn't Takizawa's people be able to take care of any leaks and their consequences...?
Shouldn't they though.
That gave Miyata pause. If Takizawa could deal with such leaks that easily, Miyata might very well find himself dead that way instead. After all, he had just reasoned that he didn't know Senga that well; lack of familiarity was a double-edged sword. Would Senga also be punished if Miyata betrayed him (even a little bit)...?
Miyata didn't know.
It all came down to information. With no idea what Takizawa did, how he operated, or what he might do if circumstances forced his hand, Miyata couldn't make a do-or-die decision.
In order to get that information, he'd have to see Senga again. But given Management's surveillance, by the time Miyata learned enough to make an appropriate choice -- he would already have made one, and the security of Takizawa's house would already be compromised.
The moment to choose was now... but there wasn't really a steering wheel at all.
In a rare show of frustration, Miyata threw his netgear against the cubicle wall and made a noise of dissatisfaction at the impact's soft, hollow clatter. He was probably under surveillance already -- heck, knowing management, he'd probably been under surveillance since last week and they'd only bothered to tell his supervisor today.
Oh, and it was intense surveillance, too. Miyata knew what that meant pretty well: someone out there would be monitoring his case at all times. He'd already been under regular surveillance since forever, as a former illegal working for the government. That had just been automated recording and random spot-checks on the archives, with flags on keywords like Takizawa Hideaki's name...
But, hey. He'd learned to live with that, and would learn to live with this too, wouldn't he?
When push came to shove, this new directive was just another wretched test of loyalty. One day, Miyata was going to be pushed too far and snap -- they were all expecting it, and so was he, more and more acutely. Maybe it'd be tomorrow, and little did he know this was his last day alive. Or maybe it'd be the day after... maybe in another decade, who knew.
In the meantime, he didn't want to think about how much this slow whittling away at his high moral ground meant he might also be dying inside.
At least, he thought, leaning down to pick up his bent headset, it seemed like they were willing to overlook his daily contacts with a certain sequence that kept changing. Even if Management couldn't really prove that Tamamori was Tamamori all the time any more than Miyata could, they'd still have more than enough circumstantial evidence to charge him over willing association with a known hacker, so at least... at least they were giving him something, for now...
At least. For now.
Miyata swallowed the sour taste that attempt at optimism had left in his mouth, frowning.
He was sick of scraping the bottom of the barrel. But there was nothing else he knew how to do to survive.
*
"This is bullshit," Nikaido announced.
He and Senga sat side by side on a mass public transport as it hurtled through the Capital from stop to stop, braking abruptly and taking off fast. Its compensators handily prevented its passengers from being jostled around by inertia and sudden changes in altitude -- but the fact just made Nikaido queasy. He could see the lurches and drops and climbs clear as day through the transport's windows, but felt none of it. He was nothing but totally comfortable in his formafoam seat. The incongruity bothered him a lot.
"What's bullshit?" Senga inquired.
They were on the way back from school, and the only ones talking. In fact, they were probably the only ones mentally present. All other passengers on the at-capacity transport were either sleeping or had their netgear on. Which made sense. Wasted transit time otherwise, right?
Or something.
"Why don't we just skate?" Nikaido said, pointedly looking away from the windows.
"I'm not very good at it though," Senga said. "And I don't have skates. Boss Tackey won't give me any yet."
"Well, you need to learn," Nikaido said, decisive as if it was his call to make.
"Teach me then?" Senga said.
Nikaido looked at him sidelong. "You just said you don't have skates." Teaching would be a lot harder with one of them perpetually on foot.
Senga shrugged, a grin growing on his face. "I don't, but I could borrow some pretty easy, I think." Kitayama or Fujigaya would probably lend theirs to him for an afternoon without too much convincing, if they didn't have any jobs to run. Senga didn't have a winning smile for nothing.
"Well," Nikaido said. If they both had skates, then... He grinned. "Sure, I can show you around underground and stuff."
"What's down there anyway?" Senga said. "Hiromii and Taipi go that way all the time, because of the satellites, but I've never been."
Nikaido's smile turned obnoxious at that. "I'm not telling," he said. "You're just gonna have to find out for yourself."
*
"Hasshi!" Kawai hollered, head back and voice echoing. "Ryosuke Hashimoto, where are you!"
Some seconds later, far out of sight but not earshot, he heard it again: "Hasshi! Ryosuke Hashimoto, where are you!" inflection and all.
"Gocchi," Kawai said, speaking into his handset. "It sounds really weird when you don't wait so long before playback you know."
"No, it's just that you sound really weird anyway," Goseki assured him, voice crackling a little over the veritably prehistoric walkie-talkie. None of the newer technologies worked properly underground, since the insulating layer was specifically designed to stop anything -- accidentally or otherwise -- messing with the repulsors and other life-support systems the Capital relied upon.
And thus it came to be that Kawai and Goseki walked a search grid beneath the second quadrant, without skates, a little bit apart from each other, flashlights and radio sets in hand. Looking for Hasshi with a fine-toothed comb.
Skating would have been quicker of course, but that wasn't really the Honor Guard's thing, and since Hashimoto didn't have skates either, it wasn't like they were chasing a target they had no hope to catch. If anything, being on foot allowed them to check every nook and cranny that a body (dead or otherwise) might go unnoticed in.
Kawai hoped Hashimoto wasn't dead. Not least because being dead underground probably meant that the kid would've fallen a substantial height and pancaked against some hard platform or or other, which would make for some grisly cleanup. (Hasshi hadn't been lost long enough to die of starvation yet.)
It was more because Kawai -- well, the Guard collectively, really -- took a perverse delight in Hashimoto's continued existence. The boy was an anomaly. A system outlier. Alive and kicking, making you constantly think gee, where's that argument for natural selection now? because Hasshi could really be just that dumb and more.
The Capital's system largely encouraged selective breeding. Because of the high price of everything, only the richest could attain high education, and get good jobs and keep being rich. And given how much it cost to get wed and reproduce, it was usually only the prettiest and smartest that got that chance. Hasshi was pretty enough, but...
"Hashimoto!" Kawai shouted again. "If you're dead, I'll kill you!" It would be sad if all that amusement went down the drain.
His handset clicked on -- "You're an idiot," Goseki chuckled -- and clicked off again. Seconds later, Kawai's vocal doppelgänger echoed through the underground from Goseki's vicinity.
"If it bothers you that much, do your own shouting," Kawai told his handset.
"No, no this works," Goseki said, defending the simple megaphone record-and-replay system he was using. "Your voice is louder than mine."
"Next time I'm searching with Tsuka-chan," Kawai said. "And we'll take bets on what Tottsu and you are gonna do without us."
"I think I've got enough voice clips in this to last a good long while," Goseki said with an audible shrug. "Totsuka's probably collecting the same, wherever those two are right now."
"You're assuming we're going to be hunting for Hasshi next time as well, Goseki-sama~"
"You're going to bet we aren't?" Goseki laughed.
And okay, Kawai didn't want to say so, but Goseki totally had a point there. "...hold that thought," he said instead as a figure emerged from behind a panel of lights on the platform before him. It wasn't Goseki -- it was much, much taller than Goseki, but slim. Kawai squinted against the lights, trying to shield his eyes and get a better look at who it was. Who else would be down here?
"You want Hasshi," the silhouette said, soft-spoken. The voice was male. Not too old.
"Yeah," Kawai said. "We lost him. Know where he went?"
"What do you want with him?"
"Nothing sinister," Kawai shrugged. "We just want to make sure he's not in too much trouble."
"You know where he is," Goseki said, appearing from the silhouette's other side. "Don't you, Nozawa."
The figure gave a start, eyes darting to Goseki warily. "How do you know me...?"
A fourth pair of boots hit the metal platform behind Kawai, and he spun. "Hey, don't scare me like..." that, was what he'd wanted to say. But was brought up short by a switchblade pointed at his throat.
"Don't get any closer to Yuki, either of you!" Knifeboy said, in what seemed to be the most authoritative voice he could muster. He wasn't as tall as Nozawa, but still taller than Kawai.
Goseki giggled, and suddenly Kawai felt very alone. "Heyyy," he said, sliding one foot back as he raised his hands. "Let's work things out, alright? I don't want to hurt you, kid."
"..." Knifeboy blinked at that. The switchblade wavered as he took in Kawai's casual defensive stance.
"...Yuma..." Nozawa said, apparently thinking the same.
"Yeah, okay -- sorry, sorry!" 'Yuma' laughed nervously, bowing as he retracted his blade and bravado and scuttled to Nozawa's side (but a little a bit in front in a cute little display of protectiveness). "I had to try. Please don't hurt us!"
With the pair finally next to each other, Kawai smacked himself in the head. "Ohh, you guys! 04-A and 54-N. My brain's a dinosaur." Grinning, he held out a hand for the shaking. "I'm Kawai. That's Goseki..."
With a shared glance, neither boy took up the shake, keeping their hands by their sides.
"...how do you know us?" Nozawa asked.
"Ah, that's--"
Goseki gave a delicate fistpump, eyes disappearing as he smiled. "We're your guardian angels."
Sanada and Nozawa glanced at each other again.
"...creepy," Sanada said at length.
"Oh, it's--"
Goseki nodded, cordial. "Isn't it just? Now, where's Hashimoto."
"Can you stop cutting me off!" Kawai exclaimed.
Goseki laughed. "Maybe when you've got something to say worth hearing."
"We work for Takizawa Hideaki," Kawai told Sanada and Nozawa. "Maybe you've heard of him...?"
All he got were two blank looks. "Tack what?"
"Who," Kawai stressed. "It's who. Tackey is our boss."
"...okay." Nozawa turned aside. "Um, Goseki? Our camp's over there. Hasshi's sleeping at the moment, but..."
"Please, lead the way," Goseki said graciously. "I'm amazed he didn't wake up from all Kawai's shouting before..."
"You guyyys!" Kawai said, exasperated.
"Um, hey..." Sanada ducked his head politely upon getting Kawai's attention. "You're welcome to come too, if you like," he said, and beamed before trotting along in Nozawa's wake.
1- there's going to be another bit before the segue into pink+orange kisses. *_*
2- going to... add this to the master post, then date that out of order after a while, so that it remains the first thing listed when you click on the tag. *anal* 8)
3- as usual, notice of mistakes/inconsistencies is appreciated! :D
4- GANBARIMAAASu. *flump*
M15. 2000. The Second and Fourth Guards, 04-A, 54-N.
( 27: avoidance tactics )
"So," Miyata's supervisor said. Having modelled the scenario after a cityscape, he leaned against their balcony's guardrail, looking outward across the buildings below.
Miyata stood a few paces back, closer to the door. He wasn't really the kind of guy to tempt fate. Even virtually. "So..." Miyata said. Then added: "Sir."
His supervisor turned and hopped up to sit atop the waist-high railing, making Miyata nervous for him. "Last night," his supervisor said. "You were with three questionable characters."
"Questionable?" Miyata asked, playing stupid if not entirely innocent.
"21-K, 53-N, and a third with a mid-level scrambler on his sequence," his supervisor said, leaning back to look at the sky. "Sound familiar?"
"Ummm..." Miyata said, distracted by thoughts of you're going to fall, you're going to fall, you're going to fall-- "Nikaido, I think. Senga. And a friend of mine."
"Right. And there was a mention of a certain... name?"
Miyata knew for sure then that he wasn't going to be getting out of this easily and gave an inward sigh, putting his best game face on. "Oh! I know, you're talking about when Senga mentioned 滝沢秀明 -- I mean, Hideaki Takizawa, aren't you?"
"Thank you," Miyata's supervisor sniffed. "We can make this much easier now."
Miyata nodded heartily. "I logged off because I didn't want to get in trouble. You know, how it's bad to hang with the wrong crowd and all that. I just met Senga and Nikaido by accident -- I didn't know they were bad."
Miyata's supervisor regarded him for a very long moment, eyes focused as if trying to determine if Miyata was being thickly sarcastic to the point of no inflection, or was actually just that stupid. Miyata gave him nothing, eye-crinkling smile unwavering under the scrutiny, more than used to it by now.
"...alright then," his supervisor said eventually. "I'll get right down to it. No sense in wasting your time or mine."
Miyata nodded.
"Management wants you use you to find out more information about Takizawa's activities," his supervisor said.
Miyata froze.
"You haven't told your contacts that you work for the government yet, and you aren't to tell them in the future either. You're to acquire their confidences, and report back any information you glean." His supervisor looked away. "I'm telling you this now because I like you, M15: you will be under intense surveillance. Failure to follow through with these orders will be regarded as a violation of your terms of employment, and will result in your termination at Management's discretion."
He glanced back over at Miyata. "I've been aware of you trying to suppress your own productivity in this department for years, and have overlooked the fact this long because your knowledge of Old Local has been useful to external units like Narcotics, once or twice--"
"Um. That's not--"
Miyata's supervisor held up a hand. "No, I know what you've been up to. You're a good guy, M15, if a bit confused. But Management believes you've already pushed their leniency far enough." He looked off into the horizon, unable to meet Miyata's eye. "Please, don't pull any more stunts."
*
Miyata felt gutted.
Drawn and quartered too, preemptively. He hurt in all the stupid places.
Sitting in his workstation, offline, he dug the heels of his palms into his closed eyes, rubbing vigorously. Life didn't like to play fair, did it? Why was he the only one to get asked all the hard questions in class...?
The line he'd tried to tread so carefully, between being useful enough to keep his head and useless enough to give the errants a chance, had been thinning all this time and he hadn't seen it coming. Or rather, he'd chosen to ignore its imminence. And now that that tightrope had whipped out from under him a little more harshly than he'd expected, he didn't have a Plan B to fall back on. Thoughts chased rings around the roses through his head in a merrily morbid tune.
Wilfully being an instrument of errants' demise simply wasn't an option. He owed it to his father's legacy to try to keep other illegals alive, even at the risk of his own life. But he liked being alive too, and owed living to his father as well. He wasn't sure he'd be able to make that ultimate sacrifice, except in one case -- he'd trade his life for Tamamori's freedom, without a doubt.
But the homework they'd given him wasn't that black and white, was it? No, that would've been too easy. If all he'd been asked to do was turn in Tamamori, then he wouldn't have done it. Simple as that.
Management wasn't asking for Tamamori, though. Nothing so overtly significant. All they wanted was a little data. A little turn-coating. How much should it matter? Miyata didn't even know Senga that well yet, and hadn't ever seen him before the forest last night. Would it really hurt if Miyata ferreted out a little information here and there about Senga's boss, and passed it on? Senga didn't really seem that high up in the food chain anyway, and if Takizawa really was that powerful, shouldn't Takizawa's people be able to take care of any leaks and their consequences...?
Shouldn't they though.
That gave Miyata pause. If Takizawa could deal with such leaks that easily, Miyata might very well find himself dead that way instead. After all, he had just reasoned that he didn't know Senga that well; lack of familiarity was a double-edged sword. Would Senga also be punished if Miyata betrayed him (even a little bit)...?
Miyata didn't know.
It all came down to information. With no idea what Takizawa did, how he operated, or what he might do if circumstances forced his hand, Miyata couldn't make a do-or-die decision.
In order to get that information, he'd have to see Senga again. But given Management's surveillance, by the time Miyata learned enough to make an appropriate choice -- he would already have made one, and the security of Takizawa's house would already be compromised.
The moment to choose was now... but there wasn't really a steering wheel at all.
In a rare show of frustration, Miyata threw his netgear against the cubicle wall and made a noise of dissatisfaction at the impact's soft, hollow clatter. He was probably under surveillance already -- heck, knowing management, he'd probably been under surveillance since last week and they'd only bothered to tell his supervisor today.
Oh, and it was intense surveillance, too. Miyata knew what that meant pretty well: someone out there would be monitoring his case at all times. He'd already been under regular surveillance since forever, as a former illegal working for the government. That had just been automated recording and random spot-checks on the archives, with flags on keywords like Takizawa Hideaki's name...
But, hey. He'd learned to live with that, and would learn to live with this too, wouldn't he?
When push came to shove, this new directive was just another wretched test of loyalty. One day, Miyata was going to be pushed too far and snap -- they were all expecting it, and so was he, more and more acutely. Maybe it'd be tomorrow, and little did he know this was his last day alive. Or maybe it'd be the day after... maybe in another decade, who knew.
In the meantime, he didn't want to think about how much this slow whittling away at his high moral ground meant he might also be dying inside.
At least, he thought, leaning down to pick up his bent headset, it seemed like they were willing to overlook his daily contacts with a certain sequence that kept changing. Even if Management couldn't really prove that Tamamori was Tamamori all the time any more than Miyata could, they'd still have more than enough circumstantial evidence to charge him over willing association with a known hacker, so at least... at least they were giving him something, for now...
At least. For now.
Miyata swallowed the sour taste that attempt at optimism had left in his mouth, frowning.
He was sick of scraping the bottom of the barrel. But there was nothing else he knew how to do to survive.
*
"This is bullshit," Nikaido announced.
He and Senga sat side by side on a mass public transport as it hurtled through the Capital from stop to stop, braking abruptly and taking off fast. Its compensators handily prevented its passengers from being jostled around by inertia and sudden changes in altitude -- but the fact just made Nikaido queasy. He could see the lurches and drops and climbs clear as day through the transport's windows, but felt none of it. He was nothing but totally comfortable in his formafoam seat. The incongruity bothered him a lot.
"What's bullshit?" Senga inquired.
They were on the way back from school, and the only ones talking. In fact, they were probably the only ones mentally present. All other passengers on the at-capacity transport were either sleeping or had their netgear on. Which made sense. Wasted transit time otherwise, right?
Or something.
"Why don't we just skate?" Nikaido said, pointedly looking away from the windows.
"I'm not very good at it though," Senga said. "And I don't have skates. Boss Tackey won't give me any yet."
"Well, you need to learn," Nikaido said, decisive as if it was his call to make.
"Teach me then?" Senga said.
Nikaido looked at him sidelong. "You just said you don't have skates." Teaching would be a lot harder with one of them perpetually on foot.
Senga shrugged, a grin growing on his face. "I don't, but I could borrow some pretty easy, I think." Kitayama or Fujigaya would probably lend theirs to him for an afternoon without too much convincing, if they didn't have any jobs to run. Senga didn't have a winning smile for nothing.
"Well," Nikaido said. If they both had skates, then... He grinned. "Sure, I can show you around underground and stuff."
"What's down there anyway?" Senga said. "Hiromii and Taipi go that way all the time, because of the satellites, but I've never been."
Nikaido's smile turned obnoxious at that. "I'm not telling," he said. "You're just gonna have to find out for yourself."
*
"Hasshi!" Kawai hollered, head back and voice echoing. "Ryosuke Hashimoto, where are you!"
Some seconds later, far out of sight but not earshot, he heard it again: "Hasshi! Ryosuke Hashimoto, where are you!" inflection and all.
"Gocchi," Kawai said, speaking into his handset. "It sounds really weird when you don't wait so long before playback you know."
"No, it's just that you sound really weird anyway," Goseki assured him, voice crackling a little over the veritably prehistoric walkie-talkie. None of the newer technologies worked properly underground, since the insulating layer was specifically designed to stop anything -- accidentally or otherwise -- messing with the repulsors and other life-support systems the Capital relied upon.
And thus it came to be that Kawai and Goseki walked a search grid beneath the second quadrant, without skates, a little bit apart from each other, flashlights and radio sets in hand. Looking for Hasshi with a fine-toothed comb.
Skating would have been quicker of course, but that wasn't really the Honor Guard's thing, and since Hashimoto didn't have skates either, it wasn't like they were chasing a target they had no hope to catch. If anything, being on foot allowed them to check every nook and cranny that a body (dead or otherwise) might go unnoticed in.
Kawai hoped Hashimoto wasn't dead. Not least because being dead underground probably meant that the kid would've fallen a substantial height and pancaked against some hard platform or or other, which would make for some grisly cleanup. (Hasshi hadn't been lost long enough to die of starvation yet.)
It was more because Kawai -- well, the Guard collectively, really -- took a perverse delight in Hashimoto's continued existence. The boy was an anomaly. A system outlier. Alive and kicking, making you constantly think gee, where's that argument for natural selection now? because Hasshi could really be just that dumb and more.
The Capital's system largely encouraged selective breeding. Because of the high price of everything, only the richest could attain high education, and get good jobs and keep being rich. And given how much it cost to get wed and reproduce, it was usually only the prettiest and smartest that got that chance. Hasshi was pretty enough, but...
"Hashimoto!" Kawai shouted again. "If you're dead, I'll kill you!" It would be sad if all that amusement went down the drain.
His handset clicked on -- "You're an idiot," Goseki chuckled -- and clicked off again. Seconds later, Kawai's vocal doppelgänger echoed through the underground from Goseki's vicinity.
"If it bothers you that much, do your own shouting," Kawai told his handset.
"No, no this works," Goseki said, defending the simple megaphone record-and-replay system he was using. "Your voice is louder than mine."
"Next time I'm searching with Tsuka-chan," Kawai said. "And we'll take bets on what Tottsu and you are gonna do without us."
"I think I've got enough voice clips in this to last a good long while," Goseki said with an audible shrug. "Totsuka's probably collecting the same, wherever those two are right now."
"You're assuming we're going to be hunting for Hasshi next time as well, Goseki-sama~"
"You're going to bet we aren't?" Goseki laughed.
And okay, Kawai didn't want to say so, but Goseki totally had a point there. "...hold that thought," he said instead as a figure emerged from behind a panel of lights on the platform before him. It wasn't Goseki -- it was much, much taller than Goseki, but slim. Kawai squinted against the lights, trying to shield his eyes and get a better look at who it was. Who else would be down here?
"You want Hasshi," the silhouette said, soft-spoken. The voice was male. Not too old.
"Yeah," Kawai said. "We lost him. Know where he went?"
"What do you want with him?"
"Nothing sinister," Kawai shrugged. "We just want to make sure he's not in too much trouble."
"You know where he is," Goseki said, appearing from the silhouette's other side. "Don't you, Nozawa."
The figure gave a start, eyes darting to Goseki warily. "How do you know me...?"
A fourth pair of boots hit the metal platform behind Kawai, and he spun. "Hey, don't scare me like..." that, was what he'd wanted to say. But was brought up short by a switchblade pointed at his throat.
"Don't get any closer to Yuki, either of you!" Knifeboy said, in what seemed to be the most authoritative voice he could muster. He wasn't as tall as Nozawa, but still taller than Kawai.
Goseki giggled, and suddenly Kawai felt very alone. "Heyyy," he said, sliding one foot back as he raised his hands. "Let's work things out, alright? I don't want to hurt you, kid."
"..." Knifeboy blinked at that. The switchblade wavered as he took in Kawai's casual defensive stance.
"...Yuma..." Nozawa said, apparently thinking the same.
"Yeah, okay -- sorry, sorry!" 'Yuma' laughed nervously, bowing as he retracted his blade and bravado and scuttled to Nozawa's side (but a little a bit in front in a cute little display of protectiveness). "I had to try. Please don't hurt us!"
With the pair finally next to each other, Kawai smacked himself in the head. "Ohh, you guys! 04-A and 54-N. My brain's a dinosaur." Grinning, he held out a hand for the shaking. "I'm Kawai. That's Goseki..."
With a shared glance, neither boy took up the shake, keeping their hands by their sides.
"...how do you know us?" Nozawa asked.
"Ah, that's--"
Goseki gave a delicate fistpump, eyes disappearing as he smiled. "We're your guardian angels."
Sanada and Nozawa glanced at each other again.
"...creepy," Sanada said at length.
"Oh, it's--"
Goseki nodded, cordial. "Isn't it just? Now, where's Hashimoto."
"Can you stop cutting me off!" Kawai exclaimed.
Goseki laughed. "Maybe when you've got something to say worth hearing."
"We work for Takizawa Hideaki," Kawai told Sanada and Nozawa. "Maybe you've heard of him...?"
All he got were two blank looks. "Tack what?"
"Who," Kawai stressed. "It's who. Tackey is our boss."
"...okay." Nozawa turned aside. "Um, Goseki? Our camp's over there. Hasshi's sleeping at the moment, but..."
"Please, lead the way," Goseki said graciously. "I'm amazed he didn't wake up from all Kawai's shouting before..."
"You guyyys!" Kawai said, exasperated.
"Um, hey..." Sanada ducked his head politely upon getting Kawai's attention. "You're welcome to come too, if you like," he said, and beamed before trotting along in Nozawa's wake.
1- there's going to be another bit before the segue into pink+orange kisses. *_*
2- going to... add this to the master post, then date that out of order after a while, so that it remains the first thing listed when you click on the tag. *anal* 8)
3- as usual, notice of mistakes/inconsistencies is appreciated! :D
4- GANBARIMAAASu. *flump*