FIC FOR SPACE_SICK
For: space_sick
From: pipsqueaks
Title: Heroes On Wheels
Pairings/Characters: KAT-TUN gen; possible JinDa and KoKame if you squint
Rating: G
Warnings: KAT-TsUNdere-style affection; mild to moderate crack
Notes: Just under 3000 words. It is worth mentioning, albeit barely, that 蛙 is 'frog' and 帰る is 'to return (home)', and both of these words are said 'kaeru'. space-sick, I really hope you like this! Many thanks to my beta :D
Summary: KAT-TUN have a TV show. On wheels. Nobody is entirely sure how, or even if this is going to work.
Nakamaru voiced the concern all six members were feeling (or possibly only five; it was hard to tell).
Maru tried again. "A television show with us, on roller-skates?"
"That's Kisumai territory, surely," Koki said, suddenly having visions of Fujigaya laughing at him, or worse, the entirety of Kis-My-Ft.2 vowing never to speak to him again.
"Or hikaru GENJI," Kame nodded. "And unless one of us suddenly gets arrested for drug possession, I don't think we're them." He paused and looked at Jin for a moment before Ueda hit him.
Jin looked up from his cell phone screen, face blank. "Huh?"
"Nothing," Ueda said, and then turned to the ignored member of staff who was waiting anxiously for their official response. "Thank you very much, we'll work hard together."
"Thank you, KAT-TUN," the young man said, and fled the room.
"What?" Kame and Koki simultaneously jerked their heads up to look at Ueda with matching furious expressions.
"You agreed to this? Who said we were okay with this? I didn't say I was okay with it!" Koki's voice reflected the distress on Kame's face.
"It's Johnny's," Ueda shrugged, sitting back down between Jin and Junno, with minimal concern. "You should know this by now. If you don't say 'yes' when you get an opportunity, who knows when you'll get the chance again. Right, Shuuji-kun?"
Kame sagged. "But I suck at skating," he said, in a small voice.
"I don't!" Junno grinned.
Ueda hit him.
Quietly, Jin nudged Ueda in the ribs. "Tat-chan?"
Ueda glanced sideways, then down at Jin's cellphone screen where he had paused his engrossing game of virtual golf. "What?"
"…What are we doing?"
~:~
The first day of skating practice saw the majority of KAT-TUN assembled on time, most of them kitted out with appropriate protective gear. Kame seemed ready to go into battle with his helmet, wrist, elbow and knee protection, and Koki was not far behind.
"Am I wearing enough protection?" Koki asked, looking around at the others. "Nakamaru, you haven't got knee… armour. Don't you need it? You might fall, and crush a kneecap!"
"Koki," Ueda asked, tugging at his headband to keep his hair away from his face, "is your helmet lined with tin-foil as well?"
Nakamaru snorted behind his hand.
"…No?" Koki glanced at Ueda. "Why?"
"…To keep the alien mind-rays out, of course. You can never be too careful."
"Asshole," Koki narrowed his eyes. "I will laugh hardest when you're the first to fall over."
"You're not wearing any padding, Tat-chan," Nakamaru said, eyeing his helmet and silently wondering just how badly it would mess up his hair if he put it on. "Are you trying to be cool?"
"Um," Ueda began, but then the door opened and Akanishi staggered in, skates already on and wobbling precariously with his kneepads strapped on over his baggy jeans.
"Jin," Nakamaru said, grinning at the other three. "You look like an idiot with your jeans like that."
"Yeah, well," Jin panted, flopping down onto the bench. "You look like an idiot with your face like that. Tat-chan, why aren't you wearing your armour?"
"He doesn't need it," Kame said, flinging his arm around Ueda's shoulders. "He's too cool. He's also a semi-professional roller-skater when he's not being a semi-professional kick-boxer and idol."
"Wow," chorused Nakamaru and Koki. "Cool~"
"Get off," Ueda said, shoving at Kame's arm. "I couldn't find mine. I figured one of you must've hidden them somewh-"
"Taguchi isn't here," Jin suddenly spoke up, cutting Ueda off mid-sentence. "Where is he?"
"Do you really think a juggling, tap-dancing gymnast needs lessons on how to stumble about wearing wheels?" Kame asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes," Koki said, with a mulish expression.
"Knee," Ueda simply said quietly, looking underneath the bench in case his own knee-pads were hidden there.
"Oh. 'Kay." Jin slipped his cell phone into the pocket of his baggy jeans, unable to be separated from it for too long. "He'll still join us later though, right?"
"Yeah," Ueda said, giving up and sitting down next to Jin and folding his arms. "So I take it nobody knows where my protective gear is, then."
"Good afternoon, everyone," the middle-aged instructor entered the hall and bowed. "I'm Ueki-san, pleased to meet you."
"Haven't a clue," Koki responded cheerfully to Ueda, before they bowed their way into the beginning of the lesson.
~:~
To the casual observer, the 5/6ths of KAT-TUN assembled in the training hall had only been scooting around for an hour, but to them it felt like an entire day's work. A not-very-complex move that involved spinning around in a circle whilst holding hands sent Nakamaru careering into the climbing bars fixed to the wall, to which he clung desperately as his feet wheeled out from underneath him. The resulting chaos included Koki collapsing on the floor in hysterical laughter, Kame falling over him, Jin tripping on Kame's outstretched foot and dragging Ueda down too, and the instructor tugging at his thinning hair in something akin to desperation.
"A break, now, I think," he said, heading to the double-doors in a bid for nicotine and freedom. "Regroup in twenty."
For a moment there was silence, broken only by Koki's muffled laughter and an irritated tsk as Ueda extricated himself from Jin's vice-like grip. Then, from over by the wall, a muffled voice called out:
"Can someone help me stand up?"
"No," said Ueda, getting to his feet. "You can stay there." He held a hand out to Kame who was struggling to stand, and the two idols skated across to help Nakamaru detach himself from the wall.
A short while later, the five idols sat together on the bench along the wall, drinking from their bottles of water. They didn't say much, having no reason to speak and every reason to reacquaint themselves with stability and reassure themselves that their hearts and lungs still worked. After a little while, Jin began to get bored and pulled his cell phone from his pocket, leaning against Ueda as he tapped away at the keypad.
"My knee hurts," Nakamaru whined, pulling a face as he rubbed the offending joint.
"Maybe it's phantom pain on behalf of Taguchi," Koki said, giving a jaw-cracking yawn.
Ueda grinned. "He should feel his own damn pain," he said, then, "Akanishi, you're leaning on me."
"I know," Jin said, shifting a little so that he was more comfortable. "You should get fatter, you'd make a better pillow then."
"Jin," Kame said, eyeing the taller man, "why are your knee-pads outside your jeans like that?"
"To stop my jeans getting ripped," Jin responded.
"But they're torn already," Kame correctly pointed out.
"They're not a fashion accessory," Ueki-san said, coming to an easy halt in front of them. "Akanishi-kun is right, in a way. It doesn't matter if they get battered; it matters if you do."
Jin looked smug. Kame tried not to sulk.
"Training resumes," the instructor said, skating away from them again as the five men collectively suppressed sighs (some with more success than others) and got back onto their feet.
"Why did we agree to this?" Koki whined and rested his forehead on the back of Kame's neck and draped his arms over the other man's shoulders, clinging to him as Kame pulled him across the floor.
"Because we're secretly all masochists," Jin said.
Ueda huffed, and skated across the floor after Kame and Koki. "Speak for yourself, Akanishi."
~:~
Despite the fact that they had spent the previous day practicing their skating skills, there was still a vague sense of confusion as to what their new television show would actually entail. As such, with the cameras rolling only minutes after make-up had finished tending to the worst of their blemishes, KAT-TUN hovered about, trying their best to appear cool and not-at-all-anxious.
"Douzo," an offscreen member of staff said as she handed Kamenashi an envelope containing the plan for the day's shooting. "And good luck!"
"That sounds ominous," Ueda murmured, peering over Kame's shoulder as the younger man opened the envelope and pulling out the largish card containing their instructions. His eyes widened. "Huh?!"
"What is it?" Koki half-climbed over Ueda in his bid to read, and wobbled precariously on his skates in the process. "Read it out, Kamenashi!"
"KAT-TUN's Good Guy Mission!" Kame read directly from the card. "Let's Bring Smile! KAT-TUN in disguise will perform as many good deeds as possible around the city, in one hour. To help, they will wear roller-skates for extra speed! Do your best, KAT-TUN!"
"Are we working all six together?" Jin asked the producer, who shook his head from behind the cameras and pointed to Kame, who turned the card over.
"Ah, there's more," he said. "We'll be working in three pairs, competing to do more good deeds and get the best 'Good Guy' ranking. The teams this week are…" He glanced up at the camera, then at his fellow group-mates. "KAT-TUN's A and U, Akanishi and Ueda! T-T, Taguchi and Tanaka! K-N, Kamenashi and Nakamaru! Everybody do your best!" He raised his hands and started clapping, and was joined by the other idols and members of staff.
"This sounds like it's gonna be wheely fun!" Junno's face crinkled into a grin as he skated over to Koki's side with graceful ease.
A dead silence met this; the applause ceased, Jin looked off to the side as his lips twitched, and Ueda looked in the opposite direction so as not to meet his gaze. Junno smiled even wider, and Koki hit him. "Taguchi, good guys don't make bad puns," he said. "Don't make us lose through your lameness."
"I won't," Junno said, undeterred, "because I'm awesome."
~:~
Nakamaru had felt mild relief when Kame had picked help out at a diner! as their first task. He wasn't overly confident on the skates, and wheeling around delivering food to customers like the old-style fast-food joints did not seem like too much of a challenge. But then:
"How are we supposed to get these bowls of tomato soup down two steps and out to the diners without spilling anything?" he asked, feeling the sweat forming underneath his protective helmet already.
"Do your best, ne," the head waitress said, bowing her head and smiling encouragingly. The camera zoomed in on Kame's face, which was set in a firm line of utter concentration under the mask that covered half of his head.
"Yosh," Kame said, lips pressed together. "Let's do this."
Nakamaru felt that vague, tense feeling in his gut solidify into something he was all too familiar with. Oh no. This isn't going to go well.
It was lucky, Kame supposed as he watched Nakamaru spill soup over himself and career into a table, that their team had picked the red superhero outfits to wear. Tomato wouldn't stain that much.
~:~
"No!" the wrinkled obaasan shook her walking stick menacingly at the two idols dressed as frogs. "Get off! Go away! I'll call the police!"
"Ne, grandma," Junno said, skating closer and crouching down to pick up the fallen groceries. "All we want to do is help you. We're frogs, ne? We'll help you return home, ne."
Koki groaned quietly to himself and turned around to head-butt a lamp post in despair.
"He's not a frog," the elderly woman said, black, beetle-like eyes narrowing in her wrinkled face as she directed her glare towards Koki. "His face looks like a foot. I don't trust him."
"Koki-kun's the friendliest frog of all!" Junno exclaimed, grabbing Koki and dragging him forward. Koki bowed, and grinned awkwardly.
"My husband's moustache was better than that," she said, unconvinced.
"Please forgive me," Koki said, sinking to his knees and bowing deeply, aware that the cameras were still rolling. "I'll grow a better moustache in the future!"
~:~
Picking up litter from the pathways around the park was not exactly a glamorous job, but once Jin and Ueda had got over the initial urge to hold a mock sword-fight battle with the PikStiks they'd been given, they quickly got to work. For a while it was relatively slow-going and quiet, but just as the cameraman began to despair for the ratings, Jin looked up.
"Ne, Uebo," he said, his voice quiet but carrying clearly across the wide path.
"Hm?" Ueda looked up, hair falling over his headband and into his eyes. Dressing like hippies had seemed like a good idea at the time. "What?"
"Hold your bag open," Jin said, gesturing to the black refuse sack Ueda was holding. As Ueda did so, Jin took aim with the grabber tongs in his hand, and flung the empty Coke can. It landed directly in the opened sack, and Jin whooped, punching the air as the staff applauded. "Let's do it this way," Jin said. "It'll be more fun."
Working in tandem, the two idols made their way around the circumference of the park with almost no difficulty whatsoever, until a faint noise made Ueda stop dead.
"What?" Jin lowered his arm and peered through his thick-rimmed spectacles as Ueda held a gloved finger close to his lips.
Ueda paused, frowned, then shook his head. "Must be nothing. I thought I heard…"
"Wait." Jin reached out to his group-mate. "That miaowing?"
"You can hear it too?"
"Like… a kitten?"
"Yeah."
"Where is it?"
One of the staff behind the cameras pointed to a tall tree a short distance away. "Up there, see? It… is it stuck?"
"Jin, no, wait!" Ueda dropped the half-full sack as Jin half-ran, half-skated across the park towards the tree. "You're still wearing your skates!"
"It's fine!" Jin called back, almost throwing himself at the tree and trying to climb. "I'll be--"
Fortunately for Jin, he had not climbed very far when his grip faltered, and he tumbled back down to the grass. "Dammit," he said, scrubbing the heel of his palms on his flares. "I'm still wearing my skates."
Ueda resisted the urge to say 'I told you so', and instead started climbing the tree himself, using techniques learned over a year and a half previously in training for his solocon. "Make sure it doesn't get away," he grunted to Jin, who wobbled to his feet and brushed aside the fussing of the filming crew.
"This'll get us 'good guy' points, right?" Jin asked, as Ueda reached the second set of branches and pulled himself up further.
"If it doesn't kill us first," Ueda agreed, spitting leaves out of his mouth as he wrapped his legs around the thick branch, edging along its length and decidedly not looking downwards. "Whatever you do, kitten, don't jump."
The kitten blinked its wide, bright yellow eyes at Ueda, and hissed.
"Seriously," he said, fixing it with a stern look. "Don't."
There was a blur of flying black fur, and suddenly Jin found himself with an armful of kitten, which then turned into an armful of clawing black fury, which finally ended up as a pile of kitten clinging ferociously to his head, tail flicking furiously.
Jin whimpered. "He's okay," he called out, a little too scared to move in case the kitten decided to gouge out his eyes. "You can come down, now."
"Um," Ueda said, and the camera panned back up to where the toned idol sat, fifteen feet in the air, roller-skate-clad feet dangling. "I'm not entirely certain I can…"
~:~
"What happened to you?" Kame asked, as Jin and Ueda were escorted back to the meeting-point in a fire truck wrapped in foil trauma blankets.
"What happened to you?" Jin retorted, eyeing Kamenashi's apparently blood-spattered appearance.
"Soup happened to us," Nakamaru said, eyeing the fire truck with faint nostalgia.
"Koki got beaten up by an old lady," Junno beamed, and received a half-hearted whack on the leg from Koki, who was sitting on the floor clutching the furry frog head of his costume and looking morose. Ueda went and sat next to him, holding out his blanket for the younger man to share.
"I don't like cats," Ueda mumbled to Koki, who nodded quietly and held out the frog head for the boxer to cling to.
"Do we have to keep doing this?" Kame asked, turning to the producer with a pleading expression.
"I'm okay with not being a nice guy," Jin said, mimicking Kame's expression. The camera zoomed in on the scratch-marks on his face. "I'd rather be mean and not-dead."
"At least you didn't get stuck up a tree for half an hour," Ueda muttered under his breath, and then shoved Koki in the ribs with his elbow when the short-haired man giggled. "I hate you."
~:~
"So what do we do instead?" Kame asked a week later, slumping forward and resting his head on his arms on the table in the conference room. "We need some kind of concept, at least."
"You don't have to move around if you're fishing," Nakamaru suggested. "Fishing is nice and safe."
"Extreme fishing?" a much-recovered Ueda suggested, looking at Koki, who nodded in agreement. "Fishing from the top of a waterfall?"
"Or maybe from a speedboat?" Jin suggested, with visions of high-tech fast-motion cameras and James Bond-style boat chases.
"No," Nakamaru said. "Just fishing. By a lake."
"You do realise this will be the most boring television show ever invented, don't you," Ueda said, pursing his lips and leaning back in his chair.
"I can see it now," Jin said. "Girls in anoraks buying us tubs of maggots and spools of reel."
There was a collective shudder as those gathered at the table imagined this.
"We could always host a variety show and invite different guests every week," Junno shrugged. "That normally works." He paused for a moment, and then grinned. "We could call it The Taguchat Show."
Silence fell for a moment. Then,
"I like fish."
"Yeah, fishing is good."
~:end:~
From: pipsqueaks
Title: Heroes On Wheels
Pairings/Characters: KAT-TUN gen; possible JinDa and KoKame if you squint
Rating: G
Warnings: KAT-TsUNdere-style affection; mild to moderate crack
Notes: Just under 3000 words. It is worth mentioning, albeit barely, that 蛙 is 'frog' and 帰る is 'to return (home)', and both of these words are said 'kaeru'. space-sick, I really hope you like this! Many thanks to my beta :D
Summary: KAT-TUN have a TV show. On wheels. Nobody is entirely sure how, or even if this is going to work.
Nakamaru voiced the concern all six members were feeling (or possibly only five; it was hard to tell).
Maru tried again. "A television show with us, on roller-skates?"
"That's Kisumai territory, surely," Koki said, suddenly having visions of Fujigaya laughing at him, or worse, the entirety of Kis-My-Ft.2 vowing never to speak to him again.
"Or hikaru GENJI," Kame nodded. "And unless one of us suddenly gets arrested for drug possession, I don't think we're them." He paused and looked at Jin for a moment before Ueda hit him.
Jin looked up from his cell phone screen, face blank. "Huh?"
"Nothing," Ueda said, and then turned to the ignored member of staff who was waiting anxiously for their official response. "Thank you very much, we'll work hard together."
"Thank you, KAT-TUN," the young man said, and fled the room.
"What?" Kame and Koki simultaneously jerked their heads up to look at Ueda with matching furious expressions.
"You agreed to this? Who said we were okay with this? I didn't say I was okay with it!" Koki's voice reflected the distress on Kame's face.
"It's Johnny's," Ueda shrugged, sitting back down between Jin and Junno, with minimal concern. "You should know this by now. If you don't say 'yes' when you get an opportunity, who knows when you'll get the chance again. Right, Shuuji-kun?"
Kame sagged. "But I suck at skating," he said, in a small voice.
"I don't!" Junno grinned.
Ueda hit him.
Quietly, Jin nudged Ueda in the ribs. "Tat-chan?"
Ueda glanced sideways, then down at Jin's cellphone screen where he had paused his engrossing game of virtual golf. "What?"
"…What are we doing?"
~:~
The first day of skating practice saw the majority of KAT-TUN assembled on time, most of them kitted out with appropriate protective gear. Kame seemed ready to go into battle with his helmet, wrist, elbow and knee protection, and Koki was not far behind.
"Am I wearing enough protection?" Koki asked, looking around at the others. "Nakamaru, you haven't got knee… armour. Don't you need it? You might fall, and crush a kneecap!"
"Koki," Ueda asked, tugging at his headband to keep his hair away from his face, "is your helmet lined with tin-foil as well?"
Nakamaru snorted behind his hand.
"…No?" Koki glanced at Ueda. "Why?"
"…To keep the alien mind-rays out, of course. You can never be too careful."
"Asshole," Koki narrowed his eyes. "I will laugh hardest when you're the first to fall over."
"You're not wearing any padding, Tat-chan," Nakamaru said, eyeing his helmet and silently wondering just how badly it would mess up his hair if he put it on. "Are you trying to be cool?"
"Um," Ueda began, but then the door opened and Akanishi staggered in, skates already on and wobbling precariously with his kneepads strapped on over his baggy jeans.
"Jin," Nakamaru said, grinning at the other three. "You look like an idiot with your jeans like that."
"Yeah, well," Jin panted, flopping down onto the bench. "You look like an idiot with your face like that. Tat-chan, why aren't you wearing your armour?"
"He doesn't need it," Kame said, flinging his arm around Ueda's shoulders. "He's too cool. He's also a semi-professional roller-skater when he's not being a semi-professional kick-boxer and idol."
"Wow," chorused Nakamaru and Koki. "Cool~"
"Get off," Ueda said, shoving at Kame's arm. "I couldn't find mine. I figured one of you must've hidden them somewh-"
"Taguchi isn't here," Jin suddenly spoke up, cutting Ueda off mid-sentence. "Where is he?"
"Do you really think a juggling, tap-dancing gymnast needs lessons on how to stumble about wearing wheels?" Kame asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes," Koki said, with a mulish expression.
"Knee," Ueda simply said quietly, looking underneath the bench in case his own knee-pads were hidden there.
"Oh. 'Kay." Jin slipped his cell phone into the pocket of his baggy jeans, unable to be separated from it for too long. "He'll still join us later though, right?"
"Yeah," Ueda said, giving up and sitting down next to Jin and folding his arms. "So I take it nobody knows where my protective gear is, then."
"Good afternoon, everyone," the middle-aged instructor entered the hall and bowed. "I'm Ueki-san, pleased to meet you."
"Haven't a clue," Koki responded cheerfully to Ueda, before they bowed their way into the beginning of the lesson.
~:~
To the casual observer, the 5/6ths of KAT-TUN assembled in the training hall had only been scooting around for an hour, but to them it felt like an entire day's work. A not-very-complex move that involved spinning around in a circle whilst holding hands sent Nakamaru careering into the climbing bars fixed to the wall, to which he clung desperately as his feet wheeled out from underneath him. The resulting chaos included Koki collapsing on the floor in hysterical laughter, Kame falling over him, Jin tripping on Kame's outstretched foot and dragging Ueda down too, and the instructor tugging at his thinning hair in something akin to desperation.
"A break, now, I think," he said, heading to the double-doors in a bid for nicotine and freedom. "Regroup in twenty."
For a moment there was silence, broken only by Koki's muffled laughter and an irritated tsk as Ueda extricated himself from Jin's vice-like grip. Then, from over by the wall, a muffled voice called out:
"Can someone help me stand up?"
"No," said Ueda, getting to his feet. "You can stay there." He held a hand out to Kame who was struggling to stand, and the two idols skated across to help Nakamaru detach himself from the wall.
A short while later, the five idols sat together on the bench along the wall, drinking from their bottles of water. They didn't say much, having no reason to speak and every reason to reacquaint themselves with stability and reassure themselves that their hearts and lungs still worked. After a little while, Jin began to get bored and pulled his cell phone from his pocket, leaning against Ueda as he tapped away at the keypad.
"My knee hurts," Nakamaru whined, pulling a face as he rubbed the offending joint.
"Maybe it's phantom pain on behalf of Taguchi," Koki said, giving a jaw-cracking yawn.
Ueda grinned. "He should feel his own damn pain," he said, then, "Akanishi, you're leaning on me."
"I know," Jin said, shifting a little so that he was more comfortable. "You should get fatter, you'd make a better pillow then."
"Jin," Kame said, eyeing the taller man, "why are your knee-pads outside your jeans like that?"
"To stop my jeans getting ripped," Jin responded.
"But they're torn already," Kame correctly pointed out.
"They're not a fashion accessory," Ueki-san said, coming to an easy halt in front of them. "Akanishi-kun is right, in a way. It doesn't matter if they get battered; it matters if you do."
Jin looked smug. Kame tried not to sulk.
"Training resumes," the instructor said, skating away from them again as the five men collectively suppressed sighs (some with more success than others) and got back onto their feet.
"Why did we agree to this?" Koki whined and rested his forehead on the back of Kame's neck and draped his arms over the other man's shoulders, clinging to him as Kame pulled him across the floor.
"Because we're secretly all masochists," Jin said.
Ueda huffed, and skated across the floor after Kame and Koki. "Speak for yourself, Akanishi."
~:~
Despite the fact that they had spent the previous day practicing their skating skills, there was still a vague sense of confusion as to what their new television show would actually entail. As such, with the cameras rolling only minutes after make-up had finished tending to the worst of their blemishes, KAT-TUN hovered about, trying their best to appear cool and not-at-all-anxious.
"Douzo," an offscreen member of staff said as she handed Kamenashi an envelope containing the plan for the day's shooting. "And good luck!"
"That sounds ominous," Ueda murmured, peering over Kame's shoulder as the younger man opened the envelope and pulling out the largish card containing their instructions. His eyes widened. "Huh?!"
"What is it?" Koki half-climbed over Ueda in his bid to read, and wobbled precariously on his skates in the process. "Read it out, Kamenashi!"
"KAT-TUN's Good Guy Mission!" Kame read directly from the card. "Let's Bring Smile! KAT-TUN in disguise will perform as many good deeds as possible around the city, in one hour. To help, they will wear roller-skates for extra speed! Do your best, KAT-TUN!"
"Are we working all six together?" Jin asked the producer, who shook his head from behind the cameras and pointed to Kame, who turned the card over.
"Ah, there's more," he said. "We'll be working in three pairs, competing to do more good deeds and get the best 'Good Guy' ranking. The teams this week are…" He glanced up at the camera, then at his fellow group-mates. "KAT-TUN's A and U, Akanishi and Ueda! T-T, Taguchi and Tanaka! K-N, Kamenashi and Nakamaru! Everybody do your best!" He raised his hands and started clapping, and was joined by the other idols and members of staff.
"This sounds like it's gonna be wheely fun!" Junno's face crinkled into a grin as he skated over to Koki's side with graceful ease.
A dead silence met this; the applause ceased, Jin looked off to the side as his lips twitched, and Ueda looked in the opposite direction so as not to meet his gaze. Junno smiled even wider, and Koki hit him. "Taguchi, good guys don't make bad puns," he said. "Don't make us lose through your lameness."
"I won't," Junno said, undeterred, "because I'm awesome."
~:~
Nakamaru had felt mild relief when Kame had picked help out at a diner! as their first task. He wasn't overly confident on the skates, and wheeling around delivering food to customers like the old-style fast-food joints did not seem like too much of a challenge. But then:
"How are we supposed to get these bowls of tomato soup down two steps and out to the diners without spilling anything?" he asked, feeling the sweat forming underneath his protective helmet already.
"Do your best, ne," the head waitress said, bowing her head and smiling encouragingly. The camera zoomed in on Kame's face, which was set in a firm line of utter concentration under the mask that covered half of his head.
"Yosh," Kame said, lips pressed together. "Let's do this."
Nakamaru felt that vague, tense feeling in his gut solidify into something he was all too familiar with. Oh no. This isn't going to go well.
It was lucky, Kame supposed as he watched Nakamaru spill soup over himself and career into a table, that their team had picked the red superhero outfits to wear. Tomato wouldn't stain that much.
~:~
"No!" the wrinkled obaasan shook her walking stick menacingly at the two idols dressed as frogs. "Get off! Go away! I'll call the police!"
"Ne, grandma," Junno said, skating closer and crouching down to pick up the fallen groceries. "All we want to do is help you. We're frogs, ne? We'll help you return home, ne."
Koki groaned quietly to himself and turned around to head-butt a lamp post in despair.
"He's not a frog," the elderly woman said, black, beetle-like eyes narrowing in her wrinkled face as she directed her glare towards Koki. "His face looks like a foot. I don't trust him."
"Koki-kun's the friendliest frog of all!" Junno exclaimed, grabbing Koki and dragging him forward. Koki bowed, and grinned awkwardly.
"My husband's moustache was better than that," she said, unconvinced.
"Please forgive me," Koki said, sinking to his knees and bowing deeply, aware that the cameras were still rolling. "I'll grow a better moustache in the future!"
~:~
Picking up litter from the pathways around the park was not exactly a glamorous job, but once Jin and Ueda had got over the initial urge to hold a mock sword-fight battle with the PikStiks they'd been given, they quickly got to work. For a while it was relatively slow-going and quiet, but just as the cameraman began to despair for the ratings, Jin looked up.
"Ne, Uebo," he said, his voice quiet but carrying clearly across the wide path.
"Hm?" Ueda looked up, hair falling over his headband and into his eyes. Dressing like hippies had seemed like a good idea at the time. "What?"
"Hold your bag open," Jin said, gesturing to the black refuse sack Ueda was holding. As Ueda did so, Jin took aim with the grabber tongs in his hand, and flung the empty Coke can. It landed directly in the opened sack, and Jin whooped, punching the air as the staff applauded. "Let's do it this way," Jin said. "It'll be more fun."
Working in tandem, the two idols made their way around the circumference of the park with almost no difficulty whatsoever, until a faint noise made Ueda stop dead.
"What?" Jin lowered his arm and peered through his thick-rimmed spectacles as Ueda held a gloved finger close to his lips.
Ueda paused, frowned, then shook his head. "Must be nothing. I thought I heard…"
"Wait." Jin reached out to his group-mate. "That miaowing?"
"You can hear it too?"
"Like… a kitten?"
"Yeah."
"Where is it?"
One of the staff behind the cameras pointed to a tall tree a short distance away. "Up there, see? It… is it stuck?"
"Jin, no, wait!" Ueda dropped the half-full sack as Jin half-ran, half-skated across the park towards the tree. "You're still wearing your skates!"
"It's fine!" Jin called back, almost throwing himself at the tree and trying to climb. "I'll be--"
Fortunately for Jin, he had not climbed very far when his grip faltered, and he tumbled back down to the grass. "Dammit," he said, scrubbing the heel of his palms on his flares. "I'm still wearing my skates."
Ueda resisted the urge to say 'I told you so', and instead started climbing the tree himself, using techniques learned over a year and a half previously in training for his solocon. "Make sure it doesn't get away," he grunted to Jin, who wobbled to his feet and brushed aside the fussing of the filming crew.
"This'll get us 'good guy' points, right?" Jin asked, as Ueda reached the second set of branches and pulled himself up further.
"If it doesn't kill us first," Ueda agreed, spitting leaves out of his mouth as he wrapped his legs around the thick branch, edging along its length and decidedly not looking downwards. "Whatever you do, kitten, don't jump."
The kitten blinked its wide, bright yellow eyes at Ueda, and hissed.
"Seriously," he said, fixing it with a stern look. "Don't."
There was a blur of flying black fur, and suddenly Jin found himself with an armful of kitten, which then turned into an armful of clawing black fury, which finally ended up as a pile of kitten clinging ferociously to his head, tail flicking furiously.
Jin whimpered. "He's okay," he called out, a little too scared to move in case the kitten decided to gouge out his eyes. "You can come down, now."
"Um," Ueda said, and the camera panned back up to where the toned idol sat, fifteen feet in the air, roller-skate-clad feet dangling. "I'm not entirely certain I can…"
~:~
"What happened to you?" Kame asked, as Jin and Ueda were escorted back to the meeting-point in a fire truck wrapped in foil trauma blankets.
"What happened to you?" Jin retorted, eyeing Kamenashi's apparently blood-spattered appearance.
"Soup happened to us," Nakamaru said, eyeing the fire truck with faint nostalgia.
"Koki got beaten up by an old lady," Junno beamed, and received a half-hearted whack on the leg from Koki, who was sitting on the floor clutching the furry frog head of his costume and looking morose. Ueda went and sat next to him, holding out his blanket for the younger man to share.
"I don't like cats," Ueda mumbled to Koki, who nodded quietly and held out the frog head for the boxer to cling to.
"Do we have to keep doing this?" Kame asked, turning to the producer with a pleading expression.
"I'm okay with not being a nice guy," Jin said, mimicking Kame's expression. The camera zoomed in on the scratch-marks on his face. "I'd rather be mean and not-dead."
"At least you didn't get stuck up a tree for half an hour," Ueda muttered under his breath, and then shoved Koki in the ribs with his elbow when the short-haired man giggled. "I hate you."
~:~
"So what do we do instead?" Kame asked a week later, slumping forward and resting his head on his arms on the table in the conference room. "We need some kind of concept, at least."
"You don't have to move around if you're fishing," Nakamaru suggested. "Fishing is nice and safe."
"Extreme fishing?" a much-recovered Ueda suggested, looking at Koki, who nodded in agreement. "Fishing from the top of a waterfall?"
"Or maybe from a speedboat?" Jin suggested, with visions of high-tech fast-motion cameras and James Bond-style boat chases.
"No," Nakamaru said. "Just fishing. By a lake."
"You do realise this will be the most boring television show ever invented, don't you," Ueda said, pursing his lips and leaning back in his chair.
"I can see it now," Jin said. "Girls in anoraks buying us tubs of maggots and spools of reel."
There was a collective shudder as those gathered at the table imagined this.
"We could always host a variety show and invite different guests every week," Junno shrugged. "That normally works." He paused for a moment, and then grinned. "We could call it The Taguchat Show."
Silence fell for a moment. Then,
"I like fish."
"Yeah, fishing is good."
~:end:~