On the Sixth day of Fic-mas
On the Sixth day of Fic-mas Dria wrote a Tremanthia/Tenimyu crossover and enjoyed it way too much. This is all my own fault for telling butterfly_eli that Tuti kept trying to worm his way into Tremanthia (one of my original stories), naturally Eli was too good to let such an opportunity slip and between that and talk of Gomoto in uniform... *coughs*
Why do I always end up throwing these boys into AUs?
Title: The Perils of First Days
Pairings/Characters: Background TxN and a hint of Gomoto/Souta if you squint.
Requested by: butterfly_eli
Summary: After months of training Gomoto Naoya is to join the Tremanthian Police Force, that legendry organisation run by the Countess. Only if he survives his first day that is...
Author's Notes: This fic is set the best part of a decade after my actual story about Tremanthia and its police force so it contains no spoilers and has next to nothing to do with what I'm doing over at tpf_commander ^__^
It really wasn’t fair. It wasn’t. He hadn’t lived at home for years and he’d only swung by because his Dad had dropped a hint that his Mum might want to see him in his new uniform before the swearing-in ceremony seeing as the thing was going to be so packed no one was allowed to bring any guests. So he’d taken a diversion and knocked on the door, grinning to himself because he’d been grinning all morning ever since he’d done the last button up on his new jacket, and now he was standing in his parents’ front room and his mother had the nerve to start sniffling.
Gomoto was quite sure that if it hadn’t been for that he really wouldn’t be feeling so suddenly nervous.
Nerves were… well, they were pointless. He’d completed his three months of intensive training, he’d passed all the exams and the medical and the panel interview where he’d been cross-examined to the point of making his head spin. He’d been selected and selected and selected again, he wasn’t just good enough, he was the best because only the best were admitted into the ranks of the world renowned Tremanthian Police Force. He’d been entrusted with the famous black uniform that he’d pressed and brushed until you could use the creases to cut cheese, he’d polished his standard issue sword until it gleamed and he’d scrubbed himself clean in the bath that morning so hard his skin had gone red.
‘…and after Helena’s son down at number fifty three didn’t make it, I was so worried,’ was what his mother was saying as she fiddled with his sleeves and the silvery buttons. The buttons matched the piped edging on the cuffs and the collar, they were small and seemed featureless but if you ran your finger over the upper surface you could feel the faint raised design, the Soames family crest…
It was her, the thought of her son being in the same room as a living legend, that was what was getting his mother so emotional. Gomoto wondered if that was why his stomach was churning faster than a carousel wheel, if it was because of her that he had the worst case of nerves he’d ever experienced. He must have been mad to think that he wasn’t scared earlier because he was terrified now, his knees were turning to water and his hands shook as he tried to disentangle his mother’s anxious fingers from his jacket. The TPF wasn’t just an organisation it was a… a legend in its own right, so many names connected to it had become burned into his memory long before he’d even started the training and selection process and now he was going to join them.
He looked up from the dark sleeves that had swallowed his arms to meet his father’s gaze. It didn’t happen often these days, he’d overtaken his father by an inch or two back during his teenage years and like all immigrant families they’d put it down to the change in diet and the difference between city living and the old land that had reared the previous generations. But his father was standing taller now, or tall enough to look his son in the eye and clap him firmly on the shoulder. The blow made Gomoto wobble, made his knees tremble for a moment before what felt like a bolt of iron replaced his spine. His father’s grin was crooked, the possible tears half hidden behind wire and circles of glass, but his voice was as firm as the hand on Gomoto’s shoulder as he told him, ‘You’ve done very well my boy, congratulations.’
***
Congratulations… a simple word, one easily passed from a mouth to an ear and in this context a word Gomoto could not get used to hearing. His parents’ neighbours had nudged each other and waved to him and called it from their windows as he’d left the family home a few short hours ago. Some complete strangers, or people he knew so vaguely that they might as well be strangers, had added it too as he’d passed them in the street. A patrol of four experienced officers, men and women who ordinarily wouldn’t have paid any attention to him as yet another faceless citizen, had nodded and smiled and said it as well. He’d asked them how they’d known he was a new recruit and they’d all laughed. ‘Once you’ve been in the TPF a while, you get pretty good at spotting the new jackets,’ one of them had told him with a warm smile. ‘Trust me, it doesn’t stay new for long and if it does, you’re not doing your job properly.’
Congratulations… his father wasn’t a great talker (his sister said that it was because with their mum around he couldn’t get a word in edgeways) but that somehow made what he did say more special. Gomoto knew that he hadn’t been wasting his time between leaving the Guild school at fifteen and joining the TPF now a decade later but still… his father had never said anything like that about any of his previous jobs.
Congratulations… the word lay distorted in his ears now, twisted by the aristocratic voice of a woman less than five years older than him, a woman he’d never seen in person but whose name and title had been the basis of whole conversations. Every new recruit had had their moment, their chance to walk across the raised stage at one end of the huge room where the swearing-in ceremony took place, one grasp of a hand and nod of a head and a whisper, soft and stern and delivered at random as one new jacket was replaced by another. She’d given it to him, she’d smiled a little as she’d shaken his hand and even as the next name was being read out she’d said, ‘Congratulations.’
A word and a hand shake from the famous Countess, the Commander-in-Chief of the TPF and daughter-in-law of the city’s Chief Governor… Gomoto wondered whether he’d ever have the nerve to wash his hand again.
***
‘Right, listen up! Well done all of you who’ve made it this far, you’ve passed the initial training stage and are now meant to be ready to step out of those doors behind you as a fully fledged officer of the law. But if you think for one moment that this means you know everything then you’ve got more lessons left to learn than you realise. The training you’ve done was stage one, that was the first step and this is the second and believe me, the path you ladies and gentlemen are now on is far longer than you can imagine. Welcome to the TPF.’
The short man standing on the seventh step of the main staircase finished glaring down at the assembled gaggle of new recruits and wiped his hands once on his trousers. Raised above them as he was, Gomoto could see the mud stuck deep into the tread of his thick black boots, he could see the patches on the jacket sleeves and the tarnished, dull glow of the buttons and suddenly the words of the faceless, nameless officer he’d met on his way to the swearing-in ceremony came back to him.
He swallowed sharply and hoped that his nerves had gone with the lump in his throat.
The man was replaced by a woman with glasses and barely restrained dark hair. She had a handful of paper and towered over her fellow officer to the point where Gomoto suspected she was as tall as he was. Adjusting her spectacles, the woman introduced herself, ‘My name is Captain Rogers, as the second-in-command of this house it is my duty to supervise the placement and well-being of new recruits such as yourselves. This house is one of six in East District and you are our third batch of new recruits this year, so any ideas you may have of the TPF being a tiny, besieged gang had better skip out of your brains pretty damn quick. This is Major Van Zendratt and he is our House Commander, he is your boss and you will do as he says if you want to hang onto your pretty uniform.
‘Now, what you need to know is this. Each one of you will be assigned to a squad of three or four officers; you will be the most junior member so you’ll keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. The other officers in your squad will be responsible for keeping you alive and you, in turn, will be responsible for their safety. The TPF believes in teamwork above all else; there are no heroes here. Your squad is like your family, it’s more important than your family. Your loyalty is to the Countess, to the TPF, to your District, your House and your squad. That’s how it works. Any questions you may have will be answered by the leader of your squad. Now, when I call your name, please step forward and I’ll match you up with the right people…’
***
The right people… well that was one thing to call them. Gomoto shook hands with his new colleagues and hoped he’d got the right balance between being firm and not breaking anyone’s fingers. It wasn’t easy to be sure, his sort-of boss was a lieutenant, shorter than him by half-head who accompanied every answer with a serene, enigmatic smile. The other two were a grinning corporal and another private, a veteran of all of eight months who snapped back at the Corporal when this was pointed out in a voice that gave away his gender. It was hard not to feel self-conscious and despite his best attempts, Gomoto knew he was failing. His uniform, the head to toe black and silver, made him feel like a bright shiny shell in a bucket full of broken pebbles. His companions’ wore uniforms that betrayed their experience, even the other private had two buttons clearly newer than the others and a knee that had been repaired with some careful darning. The Lieutenant was actually the tidiest of the lot, his jacket was buttoned up right to the collar leaving the white shirt beneath practically invisible. Yet even so, his hair grazed the top of the dark, stiff material that surrounded his neck in a manner that was definitely against regulations, curling slightly outwards in wisps and falling in his eyes every time he moved his head. The Corporal was the most untidy, hands in trouser pockets, jacket undone and hanging open and a shirt beneath that was so crumpled it clearly hadn’t seen a hanger in a while. His hair was almost as bad, messy and hanging forward over his forehead, sticking up in tufts at the back and scratching black lines around his ears.
Gomoto’s little self-analysis was abruptly ended, however, when the Corporal clapped him on the arm and said, ‘Stop eyeing us up like we’re half-deranged nut-jobs, we…’
‘Well he’d be right about you, wouldn’t he Tuti?’ the Private folded his arms across his chest and appeared to be trying not to smile.
‘Hey, that’s Corporal Tuti to you. Or Corporal Tsuchiya,’ the man added to Gomoto, grinning again before he slipped into a shrug. ‘Either works, I’m not fussy like Private Kime-hime over there.’
‘Key. Mer. Roo,’ the Private dragged the syllables out in an exaggerated fashion. ‘Eight months and you think you’d be able to get my name right.’
‘Well I keep expecting some fiendish master criminal to turn you into a pincushion and save me the bother,’ shrugged the self-styled Corporal Tuti. ‘That’s what your girlfriend keeps complaining about after all.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ the answer was growled out through gritted teeth and accompanied with a glare that told Gomoto this was a well-argued point. ‘She’s some infatuated idiot who thinks I’m more god than man. I keep trying to tell her I’m not interested but she hasn’t taken the hint.’
‘That’s because you’re going about it all wrong! With women you need to…’
Choking on a cough that might have been a laugh, the lieutenant in charge finally took charge, stepping between the two officers and apologising to Gomoto. ‘I did tell them to behave themselves to make things easier for you but…’ the Lieutenant paused for dramatic effect and because Corporal Tuti was trying not to laugh again. ‘This is their best behaviour. Come on, we should’ve moved out already, I don’t want Captain Rogers on my back cause we made the new guy change his mind on his first day.’
As the four of them headed back through the confusing labyrinth of corridors towards the front of the building and the main door, Gomoto heard Corporal Tuti say quietly to Lieutenant Nagayama, ‘To be fair, we only did that once.’
***
It didn’t take Gomoto long to decide that if anything was going to make him want to quit, it wouldn’t be his fellow officers. One of the teachers he’d had during his training had told him that you learn everything you need to know about people during the first five minutes of a patrol and Gomoto found this to be pretty accurate… if you stretched five minutes to an hour that is.
He’d already had a rough idea of what to expect. Squads had assignments that consisted of specific areas of the city and the basic idea was that at any time of the day or night there was a squad somewhere in that area, keeping an eye out for trouble, talking to people, and so on. It all sounded pretty straightforward until you threw in the mismatched personalities of the other three officers. Lieutenant Nagayama’s authority seemed to be based on the fact that Private Kimeru couldn’t argue with seven years practical experience and Corporal Tuti couldn’t be bothered to. It definitely didn’t have anything to do with age when the Lieutenant only had half a year at most over his companions, or size because his forehead came up only to Corporal Tuti’s chin.
In fact, Lieutenant Nagayama wasn’t much of an authority figure at all, not compared to some of Gomoto’s teachers who had all been of the tall, muscular variety (even the women). He seemed too laidback at first, friendly and polite to everyone they saw until it got to the point where Gomoto was beginning to wonder just what kind of squad he’d been assigned to. Corporal Tuti didn’t help the initial impression; even though he’d managed to get his jacket buttoned up by the time they left the building, he still insisted on matching their lieutenant pace for pace, bumping shoulders with him and dropping the title in favour of using the man’s first name. This had left Gomoto to walk with Private Kimeru, which hadn’t been a problem in itself, except that in amongst the perfectly normal conversation had fallen some comments about Corporal Tuti and Lieutenant Nagayama that Gomoto had felt he didn’t really understand.
And so it had continued for the first half an hour; walking and talking, teasing and joking until Gomoto had forgotten his nerves and almost forgotten that he was at work at all.
The shouting had been the first indication that something was up, but Gomoto’s reaction wasn’t as fast as the two senior officers who broke into a sprint so suddenly they were there one second and gone the next. Private Kimeru had grabbed Gomoto’s sleeve rather than waste breath yelling directions as they’d followed and they’d raced down the road together, people darting out of their way before they’d rounded the corner and almost fallen headfirst into the messy problem. The speed with which the Lieutenant and Corporal Tuti had reacted had probably prevented it from getting any worse and as Gomoto dumbly watched the scene unfold he caught himself wondering just why the squad needed another member when the senior two were more than a match for any wannabe thief. They seemed to be able to communicate without words, working together to corner the man and disarm him before he injured anyone else while Private Kimeru pulled the wounded shopkeeper out of the way and told the man’s wife to stop making such a fuss over a gash to the arm.
But it was at the point where Gomoto was feeling the most useless that the thief made a desperate run for it. Quite how he managed to react so fast, Gomoto didn’t know, but he leapt sideways into the man’s path and brought him down onto the ground so hard, the thief was knocked unconscious.
On reflection, it had all been pretty heroic and amazing up until the point where Corporal Tuti had sat on the stunned thief’s back, lighted a cigarette he’d picked out of the man’s pocket and announced he was going to give the new guy a lesson on how to tie prisoners up.
***
Four hours had passed since the impromptu and highly bizarre lesson that had then gone on to include basic first aid (something Gomoto had got top marks in during his training but which proved to be a little different when the blood was real and someone’s wife kept offering you a drink and fluttering her eyelashes so much your first thought was that she was having some kind of seizure) and prisoner transportation. The rest of their patrol had been, according to the others, completely uneventful and this was presumably why Corporal Tuti had nudged Gomoto with his elbow as they made their way up to see the duty officer and told him he was lucky to have got off so lightly.
Gomoto hadn’t agreed with him then and still didn’t agree with him now as the four of them sat in the noisy canteen, eating their respective lunches and killing time before their afternoon patrol. Eating was difficult because his stomach was still churning, and his appetite was no where near as hearty as Tuti’s and Kimeru’s. He poked his food a little and wished he could find a way to join in with the conversation buzzing around him.
‘Hey, I know canteen cooking isn’t great, but if you sit there trying to identify what it is you’ll never eat anything.’
Gomoto jumped a little, turning to look at Lieutenant Nagayama who had earlier taken the seat next to him despite a vocal protest from their messy-haired corporal.
‘It’s a shock to the system, I know,’ he smiled again and Gomoto wondered if his superior officer was still talking about the food or something else. ‘And it’s not the barrel of laughs Tuti pretends it to be, but if you don’t try and find the normality in it then you’ll always freeze and only normal citizens are allowed to do that. But I think you’re TPF material even if you’re not feeling very confident anymore, you caught that guy this morning after all.’
Swallowing, Gomoto gave a little shake of his head, ‘You and Corporal Tsuchiya did most of the work, I just…’
The Lieutenant didn’t let him finish, ‘Were in the right place at the right time. You covered an opening Tuti and I hadn’t even realised we’d left and you reacted immediately when he ran for it. You stopped us looking like idiots, Gomoto, and for what it’s worth I’m glad you’re in my squad.’
‘Takashi, you giving the new guy a pep-talk without me?’ Corporal Tuti planted both elbows squarely on the table in a way that would have made Gomoto’s mother wince and frowned over his dinner at Gomoto and Lieutenant Nagayama.
‘No one needs to hear what you call encouragement,’ muttered Private Kimeru to his fork.
Corporal Tuti turned his frown on the fourth member of their squad, ‘I happen to be great at encouraging others.’
‘Just like you’re great at giving advice about women?’ the Private’s eyebrows rose a little with the question, as though daring Corporal Tuti to disagree.
He got another shrug for his trouble. ‘Not my fault it backfired -’
‘She burst into tears!’ Private Kimeru’s fork hit the plate with a clattering snap that neatly distracted himself and Corporal Tuti from the snickering, muffled laughter coming from the Lieutenant’s direction.
‘Well how was I supposed to know she thought you were the woman of her dreams? That kind of thing only happens to you, Kime.’ The corners of Corporal Tuti’s mouth were twitching even as Gomoto tried to work out if he’d just heard what he thought he’d heard.
Private Kimeru looked round hurriedly before smacking Corporal Tuti on the back of the head, ‘Idiot, I told you that in confidence, don’t go blabbing it to the entire force.’
‘Hey, I only told Takashi!’ protested Corporal Tuti, rubbing the area the blow had landed and grinning all the while.
‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’
‘Come on Kime, relax, you know what Tuti’s like,’ Lieutenant Nagayama cut in. ‘And don’t throw a tantrum like you’re a kid, it’ll only make him worse.’
Corporal Tuti stopped smiling. ‘I thought you were sticking up for me?’ he demanded.
Lieutenant Nagayama grinned a little and the hint of wickedness that gleamed there meant that for the first time Gomoto felt he knew why Nagayama was in charge and not Tuti. ‘I don’t waste my time defending a grown man acting like a child. But you’re both making a racket and Captain Rogers just walked in so unless you want to get reported, you’d better shut up.’
Both of the men fell silent, returning to their dinners with an enthusiasm Gomoto suddenly found himself sharing so that when the lady captain did walk over five minutes later he was able to tell her that yes he was enjoying his first day and that he felt like he was settling in very well thank you.
It was as the woman walked off, clipboard still in hand, that Gomoto heard Tuti say to Kimeru, ‘I didn’t mean it you know.’
‘I know,’ came Kimeru’s equally quiet reply.
‘You don’t really look like a woman,’ continued Tuti in the same apologetic tone. ‘Well… except when you do that thing with your hair where it -’
‘Tuti?’
‘Err… yeah?’
‘I said you were forgiven so stop talking.’
‘Oh… okay.’
***
It was late when Gomoto got home that night. The street was largely in darkness, the clouds hid the stars and most of the shops down the far end of the lane were long since closed. His house was warm though and smelt faintly of some kind of foreign cooking, which meant that Souta had been experimenting in the kitchen again and made the weary police officer glad that he’d agreed to eat out with his new colleagues. Dinner had been even more interesting than lunch, just as the afternoon patrol had been more interesting than the morning one. Both had been steep learning curves, but Gomoto now held a warm sense of satisfaction that was settled somewhere in the region of his stomach on top of the filling spiced food Tuti had encouraged him to eat and that was enough to tell him he’d made the right decision.
He padded quietly through the house to the back where the stairs led up to the next storey without bothering to find a light. His boots had been left by the door and his jacket dangled from one hand while the other stretched up to cover a yawn. All in all, Gomoto decided as he climbed the stairs, it had definitely been a good day; exhausting, but good.
There was however, one last lesson for him to learn that night and it wasn’t how to hang his uniform up in the half-darkness of his bedroom when he couldn’t be bothered to find a match. Souta had left a half-full glass of some more or less transparent liquid on the bedside table with a note that said, “This isn’t to help you sleep, but to make sure you can get up tomorrow morning. First days are perilous and bad for the body.”
Gomoto regarded the glass and its contents thoughtfully before carefully pouring it down the small sink in the corner of the room. While his housemate was right about the danger, Gomoto knew that he wouldn’t have any problems getting up next morning, especially as his new colleagues had decided he owed them breakfast.
End
I think that may be the best one so far. Or the funniest... oh well, tomorrow is Squirtle's fic and on Saturday it's chapter nineteen of Nile Blue ^___^
Why do I always end up throwing these boys into AUs?
Title: The Perils of First Days
Pairings/Characters: Background TxN and a hint of Gomoto/Souta if you squint.
Requested by: butterfly_eli
Summary: After months of training Gomoto Naoya is to join the Tremanthian Police Force, that legendry organisation run by the Countess. Only if he survives his first day that is...
Author's Notes: This fic is set the best part of a decade after my actual story about Tremanthia and its police force so it contains no spoilers and has next to nothing to do with what I'm doing over at tpf_commander ^__^
It really wasn’t fair. It wasn’t. He hadn’t lived at home for years and he’d only swung by because his Dad had dropped a hint that his Mum might want to see him in his new uniform before the swearing-in ceremony seeing as the thing was going to be so packed no one was allowed to bring any guests. So he’d taken a diversion and knocked on the door, grinning to himself because he’d been grinning all morning ever since he’d done the last button up on his new jacket, and now he was standing in his parents’ front room and his mother had the nerve to start sniffling.
Gomoto was quite sure that if it hadn’t been for that he really wouldn’t be feeling so suddenly nervous.
Nerves were… well, they were pointless. He’d completed his three months of intensive training, he’d passed all the exams and the medical and the panel interview where he’d been cross-examined to the point of making his head spin. He’d been selected and selected and selected again, he wasn’t just good enough, he was the best because only the best were admitted into the ranks of the world renowned Tremanthian Police Force. He’d been entrusted with the famous black uniform that he’d pressed and brushed until you could use the creases to cut cheese, he’d polished his standard issue sword until it gleamed and he’d scrubbed himself clean in the bath that morning so hard his skin had gone red.
‘…and after Helena’s son down at number fifty three didn’t make it, I was so worried,’ was what his mother was saying as she fiddled with his sleeves and the silvery buttons. The buttons matched the piped edging on the cuffs and the collar, they were small and seemed featureless but if you ran your finger over the upper surface you could feel the faint raised design, the Soames family crest…
It was her, the thought of her son being in the same room as a living legend, that was what was getting his mother so emotional. Gomoto wondered if that was why his stomach was churning faster than a carousel wheel, if it was because of her that he had the worst case of nerves he’d ever experienced. He must have been mad to think that he wasn’t scared earlier because he was terrified now, his knees were turning to water and his hands shook as he tried to disentangle his mother’s anxious fingers from his jacket. The TPF wasn’t just an organisation it was a… a legend in its own right, so many names connected to it had become burned into his memory long before he’d even started the training and selection process and now he was going to join them.
He looked up from the dark sleeves that had swallowed his arms to meet his father’s gaze. It didn’t happen often these days, he’d overtaken his father by an inch or two back during his teenage years and like all immigrant families they’d put it down to the change in diet and the difference between city living and the old land that had reared the previous generations. But his father was standing taller now, or tall enough to look his son in the eye and clap him firmly on the shoulder. The blow made Gomoto wobble, made his knees tremble for a moment before what felt like a bolt of iron replaced his spine. His father’s grin was crooked, the possible tears half hidden behind wire and circles of glass, but his voice was as firm as the hand on Gomoto’s shoulder as he told him, ‘You’ve done very well my boy, congratulations.’
***
Congratulations… a simple word, one easily passed from a mouth to an ear and in this context a word Gomoto could not get used to hearing. His parents’ neighbours had nudged each other and waved to him and called it from their windows as he’d left the family home a few short hours ago. Some complete strangers, or people he knew so vaguely that they might as well be strangers, had added it too as he’d passed them in the street. A patrol of four experienced officers, men and women who ordinarily wouldn’t have paid any attention to him as yet another faceless citizen, had nodded and smiled and said it as well. He’d asked them how they’d known he was a new recruit and they’d all laughed. ‘Once you’ve been in the TPF a while, you get pretty good at spotting the new jackets,’ one of them had told him with a warm smile. ‘Trust me, it doesn’t stay new for long and if it does, you’re not doing your job properly.’
Congratulations… his father wasn’t a great talker (his sister said that it was because with their mum around he couldn’t get a word in edgeways) but that somehow made what he did say more special. Gomoto knew that he hadn’t been wasting his time between leaving the Guild school at fifteen and joining the TPF now a decade later but still… his father had never said anything like that about any of his previous jobs.
Congratulations… the word lay distorted in his ears now, twisted by the aristocratic voice of a woman less than five years older than him, a woman he’d never seen in person but whose name and title had been the basis of whole conversations. Every new recruit had had their moment, their chance to walk across the raised stage at one end of the huge room where the swearing-in ceremony took place, one grasp of a hand and nod of a head and a whisper, soft and stern and delivered at random as one new jacket was replaced by another. She’d given it to him, she’d smiled a little as she’d shaken his hand and even as the next name was being read out she’d said, ‘Congratulations.’
A word and a hand shake from the famous Countess, the Commander-in-Chief of the TPF and daughter-in-law of the city’s Chief Governor… Gomoto wondered whether he’d ever have the nerve to wash his hand again.
***
‘Right, listen up! Well done all of you who’ve made it this far, you’ve passed the initial training stage and are now meant to be ready to step out of those doors behind you as a fully fledged officer of the law. But if you think for one moment that this means you know everything then you’ve got more lessons left to learn than you realise. The training you’ve done was stage one, that was the first step and this is the second and believe me, the path you ladies and gentlemen are now on is far longer than you can imagine. Welcome to the TPF.’
The short man standing on the seventh step of the main staircase finished glaring down at the assembled gaggle of new recruits and wiped his hands once on his trousers. Raised above them as he was, Gomoto could see the mud stuck deep into the tread of his thick black boots, he could see the patches on the jacket sleeves and the tarnished, dull glow of the buttons and suddenly the words of the faceless, nameless officer he’d met on his way to the swearing-in ceremony came back to him.
He swallowed sharply and hoped that his nerves had gone with the lump in his throat.
The man was replaced by a woman with glasses and barely restrained dark hair. She had a handful of paper and towered over her fellow officer to the point where Gomoto suspected she was as tall as he was. Adjusting her spectacles, the woman introduced herself, ‘My name is Captain Rogers, as the second-in-command of this house it is my duty to supervise the placement and well-being of new recruits such as yourselves. This house is one of six in East District and you are our third batch of new recruits this year, so any ideas you may have of the TPF being a tiny, besieged gang had better skip out of your brains pretty damn quick. This is Major Van Zendratt and he is our House Commander, he is your boss and you will do as he says if you want to hang onto your pretty uniform.
‘Now, what you need to know is this. Each one of you will be assigned to a squad of three or four officers; you will be the most junior member so you’ll keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. The other officers in your squad will be responsible for keeping you alive and you, in turn, will be responsible for their safety. The TPF believes in teamwork above all else; there are no heroes here. Your squad is like your family, it’s more important than your family. Your loyalty is to the Countess, to the TPF, to your District, your House and your squad. That’s how it works. Any questions you may have will be answered by the leader of your squad. Now, when I call your name, please step forward and I’ll match you up with the right people…’
***
The right people… well that was one thing to call them. Gomoto shook hands with his new colleagues and hoped he’d got the right balance between being firm and not breaking anyone’s fingers. It wasn’t easy to be sure, his sort-of boss was a lieutenant, shorter than him by half-head who accompanied every answer with a serene, enigmatic smile. The other two were a grinning corporal and another private, a veteran of all of eight months who snapped back at the Corporal when this was pointed out in a voice that gave away his gender. It was hard not to feel self-conscious and despite his best attempts, Gomoto knew he was failing. His uniform, the head to toe black and silver, made him feel like a bright shiny shell in a bucket full of broken pebbles. His companions’ wore uniforms that betrayed their experience, even the other private had two buttons clearly newer than the others and a knee that had been repaired with some careful darning. The Lieutenant was actually the tidiest of the lot, his jacket was buttoned up right to the collar leaving the white shirt beneath practically invisible. Yet even so, his hair grazed the top of the dark, stiff material that surrounded his neck in a manner that was definitely against regulations, curling slightly outwards in wisps and falling in his eyes every time he moved his head. The Corporal was the most untidy, hands in trouser pockets, jacket undone and hanging open and a shirt beneath that was so crumpled it clearly hadn’t seen a hanger in a while. His hair was almost as bad, messy and hanging forward over his forehead, sticking up in tufts at the back and scratching black lines around his ears.
Gomoto’s little self-analysis was abruptly ended, however, when the Corporal clapped him on the arm and said, ‘Stop eyeing us up like we’re half-deranged nut-jobs, we…’
‘Well he’d be right about you, wouldn’t he Tuti?’ the Private folded his arms across his chest and appeared to be trying not to smile.
‘Hey, that’s Corporal Tuti to you. Or Corporal Tsuchiya,’ the man added to Gomoto, grinning again before he slipped into a shrug. ‘Either works, I’m not fussy like Private Kime-hime over there.’
‘Key. Mer. Roo,’ the Private dragged the syllables out in an exaggerated fashion. ‘Eight months and you think you’d be able to get my name right.’
‘Well I keep expecting some fiendish master criminal to turn you into a pincushion and save me the bother,’ shrugged the self-styled Corporal Tuti. ‘That’s what your girlfriend keeps complaining about after all.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ the answer was growled out through gritted teeth and accompanied with a glare that told Gomoto this was a well-argued point. ‘She’s some infatuated idiot who thinks I’m more god than man. I keep trying to tell her I’m not interested but she hasn’t taken the hint.’
‘That’s because you’re going about it all wrong! With women you need to…’
Choking on a cough that might have been a laugh, the lieutenant in charge finally took charge, stepping between the two officers and apologising to Gomoto. ‘I did tell them to behave themselves to make things easier for you but…’ the Lieutenant paused for dramatic effect and because Corporal Tuti was trying not to laugh again. ‘This is their best behaviour. Come on, we should’ve moved out already, I don’t want Captain Rogers on my back cause we made the new guy change his mind on his first day.’
As the four of them headed back through the confusing labyrinth of corridors towards the front of the building and the main door, Gomoto heard Corporal Tuti say quietly to Lieutenant Nagayama, ‘To be fair, we only did that once.’
***
It didn’t take Gomoto long to decide that if anything was going to make him want to quit, it wouldn’t be his fellow officers. One of the teachers he’d had during his training had told him that you learn everything you need to know about people during the first five minutes of a patrol and Gomoto found this to be pretty accurate… if you stretched five minutes to an hour that is.
He’d already had a rough idea of what to expect. Squads had assignments that consisted of specific areas of the city and the basic idea was that at any time of the day or night there was a squad somewhere in that area, keeping an eye out for trouble, talking to people, and so on. It all sounded pretty straightforward until you threw in the mismatched personalities of the other three officers. Lieutenant Nagayama’s authority seemed to be based on the fact that Private Kimeru couldn’t argue with seven years practical experience and Corporal Tuti couldn’t be bothered to. It definitely didn’t have anything to do with age when the Lieutenant only had half a year at most over his companions, or size because his forehead came up only to Corporal Tuti’s chin.
In fact, Lieutenant Nagayama wasn’t much of an authority figure at all, not compared to some of Gomoto’s teachers who had all been of the tall, muscular variety (even the women). He seemed too laidback at first, friendly and polite to everyone they saw until it got to the point where Gomoto was beginning to wonder just what kind of squad he’d been assigned to. Corporal Tuti didn’t help the initial impression; even though he’d managed to get his jacket buttoned up by the time they left the building, he still insisted on matching their lieutenant pace for pace, bumping shoulders with him and dropping the title in favour of using the man’s first name. This had left Gomoto to walk with Private Kimeru, which hadn’t been a problem in itself, except that in amongst the perfectly normal conversation had fallen some comments about Corporal Tuti and Lieutenant Nagayama that Gomoto had felt he didn’t really understand.
And so it had continued for the first half an hour; walking and talking, teasing and joking until Gomoto had forgotten his nerves and almost forgotten that he was at work at all.
The shouting had been the first indication that something was up, but Gomoto’s reaction wasn’t as fast as the two senior officers who broke into a sprint so suddenly they were there one second and gone the next. Private Kimeru had grabbed Gomoto’s sleeve rather than waste breath yelling directions as they’d followed and they’d raced down the road together, people darting out of their way before they’d rounded the corner and almost fallen headfirst into the messy problem. The speed with which the Lieutenant and Corporal Tuti had reacted had probably prevented it from getting any worse and as Gomoto dumbly watched the scene unfold he caught himself wondering just why the squad needed another member when the senior two were more than a match for any wannabe thief. They seemed to be able to communicate without words, working together to corner the man and disarm him before he injured anyone else while Private Kimeru pulled the wounded shopkeeper out of the way and told the man’s wife to stop making such a fuss over a gash to the arm.
But it was at the point where Gomoto was feeling the most useless that the thief made a desperate run for it. Quite how he managed to react so fast, Gomoto didn’t know, but he leapt sideways into the man’s path and brought him down onto the ground so hard, the thief was knocked unconscious.
On reflection, it had all been pretty heroic and amazing up until the point where Corporal Tuti had sat on the stunned thief’s back, lighted a cigarette he’d picked out of the man’s pocket and announced he was going to give the new guy a lesson on how to tie prisoners up.
***
Four hours had passed since the impromptu and highly bizarre lesson that had then gone on to include basic first aid (something Gomoto had got top marks in during his training but which proved to be a little different when the blood was real and someone’s wife kept offering you a drink and fluttering her eyelashes so much your first thought was that she was having some kind of seizure) and prisoner transportation. The rest of their patrol had been, according to the others, completely uneventful and this was presumably why Corporal Tuti had nudged Gomoto with his elbow as they made their way up to see the duty officer and told him he was lucky to have got off so lightly.
Gomoto hadn’t agreed with him then and still didn’t agree with him now as the four of them sat in the noisy canteen, eating their respective lunches and killing time before their afternoon patrol. Eating was difficult because his stomach was still churning, and his appetite was no where near as hearty as Tuti’s and Kimeru’s. He poked his food a little and wished he could find a way to join in with the conversation buzzing around him.
‘Hey, I know canteen cooking isn’t great, but if you sit there trying to identify what it is you’ll never eat anything.’
Gomoto jumped a little, turning to look at Lieutenant Nagayama who had earlier taken the seat next to him despite a vocal protest from their messy-haired corporal.
‘It’s a shock to the system, I know,’ he smiled again and Gomoto wondered if his superior officer was still talking about the food or something else. ‘And it’s not the barrel of laughs Tuti pretends it to be, but if you don’t try and find the normality in it then you’ll always freeze and only normal citizens are allowed to do that. But I think you’re TPF material even if you’re not feeling very confident anymore, you caught that guy this morning after all.’
Swallowing, Gomoto gave a little shake of his head, ‘You and Corporal Tsuchiya did most of the work, I just…’
The Lieutenant didn’t let him finish, ‘Were in the right place at the right time. You covered an opening Tuti and I hadn’t even realised we’d left and you reacted immediately when he ran for it. You stopped us looking like idiots, Gomoto, and for what it’s worth I’m glad you’re in my squad.’
‘Takashi, you giving the new guy a pep-talk without me?’ Corporal Tuti planted both elbows squarely on the table in a way that would have made Gomoto’s mother wince and frowned over his dinner at Gomoto and Lieutenant Nagayama.
‘No one needs to hear what you call encouragement,’ muttered Private Kimeru to his fork.
Corporal Tuti turned his frown on the fourth member of their squad, ‘I happen to be great at encouraging others.’
‘Just like you’re great at giving advice about women?’ the Private’s eyebrows rose a little with the question, as though daring Corporal Tuti to disagree.
He got another shrug for his trouble. ‘Not my fault it backfired -’
‘She burst into tears!’ Private Kimeru’s fork hit the plate with a clattering snap that neatly distracted himself and Corporal Tuti from the snickering, muffled laughter coming from the Lieutenant’s direction.
‘Well how was I supposed to know she thought you were the woman of her dreams? That kind of thing only happens to you, Kime.’ The corners of Corporal Tuti’s mouth were twitching even as Gomoto tried to work out if he’d just heard what he thought he’d heard.
Private Kimeru looked round hurriedly before smacking Corporal Tuti on the back of the head, ‘Idiot, I told you that in confidence, don’t go blabbing it to the entire force.’
‘Hey, I only told Takashi!’ protested Corporal Tuti, rubbing the area the blow had landed and grinning all the while.
‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’
‘Come on Kime, relax, you know what Tuti’s like,’ Lieutenant Nagayama cut in. ‘And don’t throw a tantrum like you’re a kid, it’ll only make him worse.’
Corporal Tuti stopped smiling. ‘I thought you were sticking up for me?’ he demanded.
Lieutenant Nagayama grinned a little and the hint of wickedness that gleamed there meant that for the first time Gomoto felt he knew why Nagayama was in charge and not Tuti. ‘I don’t waste my time defending a grown man acting like a child. But you’re both making a racket and Captain Rogers just walked in so unless you want to get reported, you’d better shut up.’
Both of the men fell silent, returning to their dinners with an enthusiasm Gomoto suddenly found himself sharing so that when the lady captain did walk over five minutes later he was able to tell her that yes he was enjoying his first day and that he felt like he was settling in very well thank you.
It was as the woman walked off, clipboard still in hand, that Gomoto heard Tuti say to Kimeru, ‘I didn’t mean it you know.’
‘I know,’ came Kimeru’s equally quiet reply.
‘You don’t really look like a woman,’ continued Tuti in the same apologetic tone. ‘Well… except when you do that thing with your hair where it -’
‘Tuti?’
‘Err… yeah?’
‘I said you were forgiven so stop talking.’
‘Oh… okay.’
***
It was late when Gomoto got home that night. The street was largely in darkness, the clouds hid the stars and most of the shops down the far end of the lane were long since closed. His house was warm though and smelt faintly of some kind of foreign cooking, which meant that Souta had been experimenting in the kitchen again and made the weary police officer glad that he’d agreed to eat out with his new colleagues. Dinner had been even more interesting than lunch, just as the afternoon patrol had been more interesting than the morning one. Both had been steep learning curves, but Gomoto now held a warm sense of satisfaction that was settled somewhere in the region of his stomach on top of the filling spiced food Tuti had encouraged him to eat and that was enough to tell him he’d made the right decision.
He padded quietly through the house to the back where the stairs led up to the next storey without bothering to find a light. His boots had been left by the door and his jacket dangled from one hand while the other stretched up to cover a yawn. All in all, Gomoto decided as he climbed the stairs, it had definitely been a good day; exhausting, but good.
There was however, one last lesson for him to learn that night and it wasn’t how to hang his uniform up in the half-darkness of his bedroom when he couldn’t be bothered to find a match. Souta had left a half-full glass of some more or less transparent liquid on the bedside table with a note that said, “This isn’t to help you sleep, but to make sure you can get up tomorrow morning. First days are perilous and bad for the body.”
Gomoto regarded the glass and its contents thoughtfully before carefully pouring it down the small sink in the corner of the room. While his housemate was right about the danger, Gomoto knew that he wouldn’t have any problems getting up next morning, especially as his new colleagues had decided he owed them breakfast.
End
I think that may be the best one so far. Or the funniest... oh well, tomorrow is Squirtle's fic and on Saturday it's chapter nineteen of Nile Blue ^___^