JE/NEWS- "This is Our Beginning" (1/2)
Title: This is Our Beginning (1/2)
Universe: Government Agent AU
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (cameos by members of KAT-TUN, K8, Kinki, and T&T)
Warnings/Spoilers: OOC, AU STOOPID
Word Count: 12,834
Summary: In the AU related to “To Serve and Protect,” “Waiting to Come Home,” “Guardian Spirits,” and “Strength, Weakness”- NEWS’s beginnings. Both of them.
Dedication: Ann, Nico, Jo- HAPPY NEW YEAR.
A/N: Okay, this is WAY LONGER than it should have been and ridiculously boring, but I thought I should go ahead and set up backstories and inter-group relations and everything I could about this universe as quick as possible so I could make Ann (and others) write for me in it; I think I would be more inspired in general if I could read other people’s takes on the AU. When it’s just me I bore myself silly, you see. So yeah! Here, have a really long and unnecessary set of backstories. Do with them what you will, but I’m warning you, this really is NOT an entertaining read at all. It kind of reads more like a timeline than anything else. SORRY I’M UNEXCITING. ALSO, SORRY FOR THE RETARDED ACRONYMS.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
1.
When Yamapi enters the training academy he is fresh out of high school and naïve; he thinks he’s going to be a hero.
Which makes sense to him; the entire reason he’d decided to join the agency in the first place was because he’d seen a press conference on TV with Agent Takizawa talking about some big rescue operation that he’d headed over the past six months. As it turned out, the operation had ended up saving twenty hostages from a creepy foreign cult with no casualties reported on either side. Yamapi had been fourteen at the time and hadn’t really cared about big world issues like that, but he remembers to this day, how his little sister had grabbed onto his arm suddenly, eyes bright and cheeks pink with excitement when Takizawa’s face had come on the screen.
“What?” he’d asked, looking at her like she’d grown another head. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s cool!” she’d squealed, right in his ear. “Isn’t he cool, niisan?”
He’d frowned, looking thoughtful in a big brotherly sort of way as he’d assessed his sister’s latest crush in search of any obvious flaws. “What’s so cool about him?” he’d asked.
She’d positively glowed back at him, clutching his elbow tightly. “He’s a hero!”
Something about that moment had stuck with him all the way through high school, and so after graduation, he decided that if that is how the people who he loves looks at heroes, then maybe he should go ahead and become one too.
He’s always wanted to become the kind of adult his sister can be proud of.
His first year in the academy is tough; he learns from an instructor during his very first week there that this job isn’t for people who want to be heroes, because in the world of civil service heroes don’t exist. There are only flesh and blood men and women working hard for the sake of others.
Yamapi eventually learns to accept that part of the academy as the weeks drag on; he doesn’t quit right after hearing it because even though he only joined because he’d wanted to be a hero, he’s never quit anything before in his life. It’s the one thing he expects of himself if nothing else.
With time he discovers that he is good at the physical parts of the job; he can run a mile in five minutes and he can shoot fairly well even though he doesn’t really like the sound of bullets hitting their target. He’s not good at surveillance though (the attention to detail makes his eyes cross), and whenever he studies anything having to do with undercover work he always gets smacked over the head by his teacher and called hopeless.
“Your face is too honest,” the instructor sighs, and gives up on Yamapi ever becoming an international super spy.
His roommate in the dorms, a tall guy by the name of Akanishi Jin, is kind of the opposite of him. Jin is an absolutely horrible shot but seems to be pretty capable when it comes to managing wires and microphones; whenever they go to their lecture on undercover procedures the instructor will smirk at Jin and tell him, “You can’t lie to a liar, but if I were anyone else, you’d be able to convince me that you actually want to be here when you smile like that, Akanishi. Good work.”
As it turns out, Jin is really good at being who he’s not when he has to be.
Yamapi sometimes asks him at night before they fall asleep if it comes easily; Jin says it does, but that he’s not sure if he likes it. He’ll do it though, if it means he can catch bad guys.
Yamapi isn’t sure he likes it either, but eventually, he learns to accept that part of the job too.
~~~~~
The first time he meets Agent Takizawa in person it’s on the same day as the level three obstacle course for their monthly physical exam; Yamapi is winded halfway through the trial but stops his own progress on the climbing wall momentarily to turn around and give Jin a hand up. “C’mon, take my hand,” he says, “You can do it.”
“This sucks!” Jin whines, and looks like he wants to give up and go have a cigarette.
“If your dream is to catch bad guys,” Yamapi puffs back at him resolutely, “then you have to climb this wall.”
“True,” Jin allows, and redoubles his efforts.
They eventually make it over, hand in hand and breathing hard.
Neither of them notices Agent Takizawa watching them as they do this because they’re too absorbed in trying to survive the course; Takizawa however, makes special note of what he sees by turning to their instructor and asking for the name of the cadet with the helping hand.
“Yamashita,” the drill coach replies, and nods in understanding at Takizawa. “He’s definitely one of those types. The type you’re looking for.”
Takizawa smiles; “I think so too. I’d like to talk to him, once he and his friend are finished.”
“Of course.”
And so, once Yamapi is done with the toughest obstacle course of his entire life (and subsequently sweaty and disgusting from it), he suddenly gets approached by the glamorous face from TV his sister had swooned over more than three years ago. When he sees Takizawa up close and in person for the first time Yamapi thinks that maybe he understands what she’d seen in him before; there is something naturally cool about him. He vaguely wonders if maybe there are still heroes around, if only you look hard enough.
“Yamashita-kun?” Takizawa begins, snapping Yamapi out of his daze, “There is a special program I am starting up this year and I would like you to come and be a part of it.”
Yamapi blinks. “Special program?”
“I promise it won’t interfere with the rest of your training; this is an extra-curricular track that I plan on personally instructing for the next three years.”
Yamapi’s mind goes blank under the force of the older man’s smile and he finds himself agreeing without really knowing any of the details.
Later, when he is exhausted and crawling into his bunk, Jin hangs off the edge of his so that he is looking down into Yamapi’s sleeping space upside-down. “So! I heard that you,” Jin chortles, “have been chosen for the special advanced leadership track.”
Yamapi sighs. “Go to sleep,” he says, and throws his pillow at his bunkmate. It hits the floor without hitting Jin, and Yamapi decides he is too sore to get out of bed and pick it up again.
Jin just giggles and rolls back onto his bed. “You’re going to learn how to be the boss.”
“Go to sleep.”
“Yes sir! Good night!”
“Good night.”
Yamapi stares up at the bottom of Jin’s mattress as he tries to get to sleep and supposes that if he can’t be a hero like he’d wanted to, the very least he can do is be the best at his job that he can be. He wants the people he loves to be proud of him.
And so he spends the last three years of his academy career training under Agent Takizawa’s-Tackey’s- direct supervision, along with three other cadets Tackey had hand picked from various concentrations around the academy. They are known as the four top students in the whole school and looked up to by everyone; their professors constantly have high expectations of them and their underclassmen all aspire to be like them. In time however, it turns out that the other three find the track too grueling and voluntarily drop out from under Takizawa’s tutelage. In the end, Yamapi is the only one of them to finish the special course to Tackey’s satisfaction. In fact, he passes the whole thing with flying colors, which results in Jin calling him a teacher’s pet and trying to give him wedgies sometimes. Yamapi just sighs and hits him over the head a lot.
~~~~~
At Yamapi’s graduation ceremony, his sister squeals right in his ear and clutches his arm just like she used to when she was little; she congratulates him on becoming a real life hero.
He smiles in embarrassment and is about to tell her that the first thing they teach you in the academy is that this is not a job for heroes. That heroes don’t exist in this world.
However, when she looks up at him like she is-bright-eyed and so, so proud- he finds himself starting to think twice, to feel that maybe heroes do exist, just not in the same way he thought they did back when he was fourteen and watching an amazing stranger on TV talk about saving twenty people from dire circumstances in a single moment of selfless brilliance.
He looks at his little sister and tells himself that if heroes do really exist-and he thinks that they do- they are flesh and blood men and women who work hard because they have the smile of someone precious to them to protect.
He promises her in his heart that he will do his best and never give up; it’s all he’s ever asked of himself.
He’ll become an adult she can be proud of.
~~~~~
2.
Nishikido Ryo and Uchi Hiroki are the two best shots in a group simply known throughout the Osaka branch of the agency as the Kansai Eito; called as such because it is a unit composed of eight elite snipers known for both their shooting skills and their distinct lack of respect for proper authority.
They are, summarily, the agency’s eight problem children.
But that’s all well and good; Ryo doesn’t care if the entire Japanese government looks down on them as hooligans as long as they keep signing his paychecks. Besides that, he is happy in Eito because in Eito, his team leader doesn’t care if he wears jeans to work or if all his reports say nothing more than “I shot him until he was dead,” on them. Eito are the most accurate sharpshooters the agency has to offer and the fact of the matter is they know exactly how good they are. As such, they can act however they want to whomever they want because in the end, the government needs them to do the dirty work. It would be far more costly to fire them and take the time to train someone new rather than simply tolerate their eccentric natures and let them do their jobs.
And they wouldn’t have it any other way.
“This is the life,” Ryo sum ups happily, and puts his feet up on his desk to prepare for his post-lunch nap. His current report serves as a grease absorber for his left over French fries. Subaru likes it when the paperwork smells delicious anyway; it makes it less boring.
Uchi smirks at him from the desk opposite Ryo’s, tossing a wadded up post-it note at his best friend’s forehead. “And they treated us like we’d never amount to anything,” he drawls.
Ryo wiggles his toes. “We are invincible,” he says simply, and falls asleep believing every word of it.
But then, a few weeks later, the happy freedom of Eito is momentarily disrupted when the two of them suddenly get an urgent summons to Tokyo.
One where attendance isn’t optional.
~~~~~
“We already have a unit. A damned good one too,” Ryo spits, and gets right into Takizawa’s face about the whole thing when he finds out exactly why he just wasted the last three hours of his life on the shinkansen to get out here. “We don’t need another one.”
“Well, we need you,” Tackey says simply, and doesn’t get unpleasant about Nishikido’s anger at all.
Ryo snorts. “Then that’s just too bad for you, isn’t it?”
“And you need us,” Tackey adds, semi-cryptic.
Ryo doesn’t notice. “Like hell we…”
Uchi frowns and does notice; he reaches out to shut Ryo up. “What do you mean we need you?” he asks, and despite being as indignant about the whole thing as Ryo is, opts for erring on the side of caution in this case. Takizawa is a powerful senior agent, after all.
“It means exactly what it sounds like,” Tackey says. “The higher ups are starting to get fed up with Eito’s attitude. And I don’t really blame them; from what I can see all of you seem to have some pretty intense entitlement issues.”
Ryo’s eyes narrow. “I don’t want to hear that from someone who’s always had everything handed to him on a silver platter.”
Tackey ignores him. “There is talk,” he explains to Uchi, “about whether your bad attitudes come from the direct influences you have on one another. The Commissioners think that by splitting you up permanently, you might stop feeding off of each other’s negative energy and learn how to work well with others for a change.”
Something flickers across both agents’ eyes when they hear that; Ryo thinks it is the first time he has truly felt apprehensive about something someone of authority in this agency is telling him.
Tackey continues. “The last time I had an ear to the door there was talk of transferring Agent Ohkura to the Hokkaido branch as early as August.”
When Ryo speaks again his voice is low, deadly. “What do you want from us?”
“Woah,” Tackey replies, holding his hands up defensively, “Despite what you might think this isn’t blackmail, Nishikido-kun. This is simply me giving you a warning from what I’ve heard on the grapevine. And, admittedly, an opportunity to nip it in the bud.”
Ryo is about to tell Takizawa exactly where he can shove his warning and his opportunity, but before he can, Uchi stops him. Again.
“What kind of opportunity?” the younger sniper asks, voice measured.
Tackey smiles, glad to see that someone in Eito can be reasonable if he puts his mind to it. “It’s an opportunity to prove that you can play nice with others and continue your work with Eito at the same time.”
In short, it is an offer neither of them can refuse.
~~~~~
As it turns out, Tackey’s opportunity is a special temporary unit he has been working to put together for the past five years; it is some sort of weird experiment he has personally undertaken in the hopes of rewriting the books on what he considers the agency’s antiquated approach to assigning agents to teams. It’s all the talk amongst the higher ups in terms of it being crazy and never working; as far as they’re concerned, agents from backgrounds as dissimilar as the ones outlined in Takizawa’s proposal will never be able to learn how to work together efficiently (let alone successfully). Ryo has no idea what any of that might possibly mean for him and Uchi, but the two of them show up to the first meeting anyway.
They tell themselves that it’s all for the sake of Eito.
When they get to the fancy conference room where they are scheduled to meet there are seven other agents already there as well; all of them look impossibly young and completely unreliable in terms of appearance and demeanor. Ryo only recognizes a few of them immediately off hand; they are other trainees who he’d sometimes taken tests with up at the Tokyo branch of the academy when the Osaka training facilities had been deemed too decrepit to actually run nationally certified exams on.
Takizawa’s star pupil Yamashita is there, looking just as wary as everyone else; Ryo casually glances around the room and mentally starts to add things up in his head, trying to figure out the punch line of this elaborate joke before anyone else. From what he can see so far, in addition to Yamashita, there’s that awkward looking bomb specialist who’d ranked in the top three at the national aptitude exam, the two current record holders for the agency’s 50m and 100m dash, and he and Uchi, the two best shooters the agency currently have on payroll.
The other three young faces are new to him (or just so unmemorable that he’s completely forgotten anything having to do with them if he ever did meet them before), but throwing them aside, Ryo figures that the people gathered in this room look like the best and brightest to have popped up in agency during the past five to ten years.
When Tackey begins to talk several minutes later, Ryo discovers that he’s right, and that this is probably the first time he’s ever wished to be dead wrong.
“You,” Tackey tells them, “Are the best of the best.”
No one responds; they aren’t sure how to.
“As such, I’ve been given permission to put you together in this special unit in the hopes of using your considerable and varied talents towards protecting the safety and welfare of the Japanese public.” A pause, a breath, a smile. “So from today onwards, all of you-all nine of you-will be what we call NEWS. The Nippon Emergency Welfare Squad.”
Ryo bites the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming when he hears this.
And it’s not even about the stupid acronym at all.
He just really, really doesn’t want this.
Any of it.
~~~~~
3.
Koyama does his best to try and bring the team together as a cohesive unit, but the title “Nippon Emergency Welfare Squad” is exactly as broad as it sounds; everyone comes from different fields of expertise and different schools of training. He understands in theory Takizawa’s plans for the unit, understands how thinking that the best of the best working together from many different perspectives with different skill sets will provide a well-rounded, cohesive team.
But theory is far different from practice, and regardless of the many bombs he’s successfully defused throughout his academy career, Koyama can’t help but think that despite his best efforts, this new unit is going to explode in his face at any second.
As if to prove his worst fears right, he looks up when he hears an annoyed snarl from the other side of the room.
“Didn’t they teach you anything in basic training?” Ryo barks at a nervous Tegoshi, and snatches the younger agent’s firearm from his hands, disassembling it in about fifteen seconds and then dumping all the separate parts back into the young hacker’s upturned palms. “Keep it clean, keep it dry. That way if you die on a mission, at the very least, it won’t be because your gun malfunctioned on you.”
“H-hai!” Tegoshi stammers, and bows in thanks to the senior agent. “I’ll definitely do that.” Pause. “Not die in a mission. Um, clean my gun.”
“Great.” Ryo sighs, turns around, and storms off muttering (loudly) to himself about amateurs and helpless, pampered little Tokyo boys.
Koyama is left with a shell-shocked Tegoshi and a lot of random gun parts.
“Well,” the explosives expert begins, forcing a smile and a little laugh; “Nishikido-kun sure is a helpful senpai, ne, Tegoshi?”
Tegoshi nods, still vaguely skittish around Koyama as well. “Un. I uh… I should go put this back together. Somehow.”
He dodges out of the room in the opposite direction of Nishikido, leaving Koyama on his own and counting the remaining seconds until total detonation.
~~~~~
After a mere two months with the group Moriuchi decides to leave the agency all together; he tells them he’s realized that after being selected to be in NEWS, he’s gained enough self-confidence to pursue his true dream of becoming a Private Investigator. This leaves an already uncertain Tegoshi on his own as the only surveillance and technology specialist in the unit. In the meantime, Ryo and Uchi just want to go home all the time and Yamapi seems like he’s always wondering why he hadn’t been put on a regular team with his contemporaries and his senpai from the academy; he hates being the most senior agent in the unit and he misses Jin, who is off working in the west end of Tokyo under Domoto Koichi. Koyama remembers that Akanishi’s new unit is kind of like Administrator Domoto’s direct response to Takizawa’s NEWS; they are called KAT-TUN (for the Kantou Anti Terrorism Targeting Unified Network).
Koyama hopes they are doing better than NEWS is.
As it is, Koyama ends up playing peacemaker most of the time when ideologies clash within NEWS, trying to help the others understand each other even though he doesn’t really understand them all that well himself yet. He thinks that sometimes he has nightmares because of this; there’s a particularly bad one he’s had twice in a row now, where Nishikido suddenly grabs Masuda and strangles him to death with his bare hands while everyone stands by watching, not sure what to do because they don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.
“Just give it time,” Shige tells him sensibly on one of those nights after the bomb expert has had another bad dream and has to call someone to talk about it. “The group will either work after we all get used to one other or it won’t work and Takizawa-san will disband us. This is what experiments are for; they either prove or disprove a theory. There’s nothing you can do about it by yourself at this point, so go back to sleep and don’t call me again until a decent hour.”
Koyama hangs up feeling a little better but not a lot; the next dream he has involves Uchi and Kusano getting into a deadly shootout over Kusano linking all of Uchi’s paperclips together in a giant, annoying chain.
~~~~~
The next morning when he walks into the office-still shaken from his most recent nightmares- the first thing he sees is Ryo arguing with Shige; Shige snorts unappreciatively and excuses himself to get coffee just as Ryo’s voice starts to get uncomfortably loud. Koyama watches them both mutter uncharitably under their breaths about each other as they head in opposite directions.
And Koyama feels something knot itself tightly inside his chest when he hears this; it’s a familiar sort of dread that’s not unlike when he doesn’t know which wire to cut and the clock is ticking down into its final seconds.
Based on feeling, he counts them at about a five.
~~~~~
A week later Uchi yells something uncharitable about Tegoshi’s lineage when the younger agent accidentally fails to deliver a memo to him from Director Yamashita in time; Tegoshi bows in apology and scampers off looking terrified. Later, Koyama overhears Tegoshi talking to Masuda about whether he should hand in his resignation or not; he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to fit in here.
“I have the letter all written up and everything,” he explains to Masuda worriedly.
Koyama’s heart breaks a little as he counts them down to four.
~~~~~
That night Koyama wakes up screaming again; the last image he has was of Shige and Yamapi throttling each other in a burning warehouse. Shige had fought dirty and Yamapi had responded in like and it had somehow felt like the end of the world to Koyama when he’d seen that.
He wipes sweat and tears from his face and shakily reaches for the phone at his nightstand, automatically dialing Shige’s number even though it is four am and they have work at seven.
“Shige,” he sobs, when Shige picks up with an annoyed grunt, “Shige, I had another nightmare.”
He hysterically explains the details of his dream to his best friend, and somewhere in the middle of it all, murmurs that he thinks they’re at three now and he doesn’t know what to do before the explosion since he can’t fix it.
Shige doesn’t really get it, but lets Koyama talk until his voice is a little hoarse and he can’t think anymore. Then he says, “Go back to sleep,” very calmly and hangs up.
~~~~~
Exactly four months after their formation Takizawa decides that it is finally time for NEWS to take on their first big solo mission. Everyone is understandably more nervous and edgy than normal as they load up and head out; Ryo snaps at all the other members in intervals of five seconds or less while Yamapi is dead silent the whole time, clutching his gun and staring off into space.
Tegoshi’s wires get tangled in his anxiety and Kusano offers to help with them; they’re both so jittery that the entire system is a big pile of knots by the time they arrive on the scene. Similarly, Koyama’s hands are shaking and his stomach is in knots; meanwhile Uchi sulks quietly to himself in the corner while Shige pretends to nap so no one can see how scared he really is.
Masuda is eating hypnotically on the bench, shoving potato chips into his mouth one after another until Ryo shouts at him to chew with his mouth closed or end up with a fist planted firmly inside too.
“I have a bad feeling about today,” Koyama murmurs to himself when the van comes to a rolling halt well outside the perimeter of the building they are raiding. His stomach gurgles in agreement with that assessment and he has to take a moment out in the bushes to stop and be sick while Kusano wrinkles his nose and Shige absently pats his back.
By the time the group takes their positions, Koyama is as pale as a sheet and can barely see straight. He utters a quick prayer when Yamapi gives the attack order and realizes that right here, right now, they’re at two and still counting down fast.
~~~~~
The good thing about being the best of the best, Koyama realizes later, is that everyone can pull his own weight, even in a crisis situation. Even in a team where the members don’t work well with one another yet.
At the very least, they all know how to do their jobs.
And so the eight of them make it out of the mission a bit shaken but otherwise unharmed; when the bad guys are caught, lives saved, and drugs confiscated, a few near misses on their parts are acceptable in the grand scheme of things.
On the way back to headquarters no one says a single word for a very long time.
Koyama is almost grateful for the silence for once; he closes his eyes as they sit in the van together and tries to will his heart down from his throat and back into his chest again. He hopes that the one count he’d been dreading for the past few months can be staved off for a little while yet, that they’re not going to detonate today after all.
Just a moment-even a second-longer is all he asks.
But then, without warning, Ryo explodes.
“What the hell is that?” the sniper snaps suddenly, and causes Koyama’s heart to leap up into his throat all over again. The explosive expert’s eyes shoot open and he is just in time to see Ryo unbuckle himself from his seat and begin bearing down on a terrified Tegoshi. Ryo grabs the younger boy’s hand, yanking it open before Koyama can protest or try to calm him down.
“You shouldn’t stand when the van is in mo…” Shige starts, but trails off when he finally sees what Ryo sees.
Blood.
There is a long, narrow gash across Tegoshi’s white palm that no one had noticed; he’d been holding it tightly against his chest this whole time, as it dripped a steady trickle of crimson-almost unseen- onto his black Kevlar.
Koyama dumbly thinks to himself that it figures the sniper is the only one who saw it; they’re supposed to notice everything.
Tegoshi looks mortified under everyone’s collective gazes; he tries to close up his hand again, tries to make himself as small as possible against the wall of the van.
Koyama isn’t sure what to do now.
But Ryo knows what to do; he ignores everyone else and keeps moving, turning over his shoulder to Uchi. “Kit,” he barks.
Uchi nods, unbuckling himself and digging around under the bench until he finds the First Aid kit. He tosses it to his best friend.
“You again,” Ryo mutters at Tegoshi, grasping the young hacker’s hand in one of his and popping open the lid to the First Aid kit with the other. He pulls out a tube of antibacterial cream and uncaps it with his teeth, not taking his eyes off the blood for a moment. “You clearly have no idea what you’re doing.”
Tegoshi is too shocked to say anything. Actually, everyone is.
“Listen up, because I’m only saying this to you once. Every wound gets looked at before we get back to headquarters. Always. Preferably by the EMTs; don’t ever hide anything from your teammates. It’s dangerous and it’s stupid and I need to know at every second of every day what condition you are in so I know you can watch my back.”
“It’s just a scr…”
“I don’t care,” Ryo says, sounding harsh. But Koyama notices that his movements are gentle as he disinfects the wound, as he rips open a bandage and presses it to the cut on the younger agent’s hand. “When seven other lives depend on you, you don’t fuck around.”
Tegoshi looks completely mystified, clutching his patched up hand to his chest as Ryo glares down at him.
Everyone thinks that he might burst into tears at any second now.
But he doesn’t.
Like Ryo, he’s the next one to surprise them all.
“T-thank you!” he manages, sincerely, and beams up at Ryo. “From today on, I’ll do my best!”
Ryo blinks, momentarily stunned by the intensity of the smile that none of them knew existed in the small, awkward newbie who mostly kept to himself.
“Um,” he mutters, and looks away quickly, inexplicably embarrassed. “Whatever.”
He turns around and goes back to his seat, buckling himself in and perfectly fine to pretend that had never happened.
But Koyama saw it happen; they all did.
And he thinks that it had felt like the moment right before an explosive is going to go off; that split second when he has to pick a wire and cut it and hope that they all make it out alive. Together.
To Koyama, it was like the moment when the counter stops, right at one.
And everyone is still okay.
~~~~~
Koyama sleeps well that night, for the first time in a long time.
Consequently, so does Shige.
~~~~~
4.
“So how was your week in snobsville?” Yokoyama asks, and perches himself onto the edge of Uchi’s desk. He starts fiddling with Uchi’s paperclips, hooking them into a long, annoying chain one by one. “Did you eat very tiny desserts at stylish Tokyo cafes and chat about the stock market and the economy? Did you ride a taxi?”
Uchi scowls and slaps the older sniper’s hands away from his paperclip bowl. “We just worked. And stop it, it took me three hours to undo them the last time you linked them all together like that.”
Yoko feigns plaintiveness. “It’s because I miss you when you’re not here! I sit at your desk when you’re gone and pretend to have a conversation with you. I play with your paperclips and sniff your pens because they still smell like your cologne.”
“Liar.”
“It’s true!” the older agent cackles, and likes the way Uchi looks when he’s kind of annoyed but not really.
“Good to see you’re spending your time productively,” Uchi sniffs sulkily, grabbing his paperclip bowl and tossing it into one of his desk drawers.
Yoko chuckles and reaches out to ruffle the kid’s hair. “We do miss you! Some of us have even been talking; we think we would all rather walk than see you and Ryo have to keep up this double duty crap for Takizawa and his snooty little pet project.”
“You mean quit?”
His teammate nods, looking sly (and vaguely manic). “We could resign and become professional hitmen! Live on society’s edge and stuff. Kind of like we already do, except with better pay. And you and Ryo wouldn’t have to work with the brat brigade.”
Uchi sighs. “You know, NEWS isn’t as bad as you think.”
A beat.
Then Yoko’s eyes narrow thoughtfully and he ducks down closer so that he can whisper right into Uchi’s ear. “Did they bug your office?” he asks. “Are they listening to us right now? Do we have to pretend to act nice?”
“What? No! I’m just saying… it’s a good team and the members are nice,” Uchi tells him. “And stop talking so close to me, your breath smells like okonomiyaki sauce.”
Yoko pulls back when he hears this, blinking several times. Then he grabs Uchi’s shoulders. “Are you brainwashed?” he demands.
Uchi shoves him off the desk.
~~~~~
A week later, when Uchi complains to Koyama about how he keeps getting brainwashing jokes from the rest of Eito, Koyama suggests that maybe both teams should try to meet up and get to know each other a little better, since it’s like they work together all the time between having Ryo and Uchi on alternate weeks. “We’re like one big collaboration, ne?”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Uchi tells him, realistically. Not everything can be full of hearts and stars and big shiny rainbows like Koyama thinks they can. “It might be…weird.” He leaves out the part where NEWS will probably get horribly insulted for the majority of the night and Tegoshi might cry. No one wants to see that; Koyama gets blubbery at the mere thought of Tegoshi crying. Uchi crosses his arms and sighs. “You guys probably aren’t ready anyway. Meeting them is…an experience.”
“Eh? Are we meeting new people?” Tegoshi asks, when he bounces past the break room and overhears just the last bit. “Is there going to be a party?”
Uchi senses danger.
“Party?” Kusano chirps, poking his head in from the opposite door as his selective hearing decides to pick up on its favorite keyword right then and there as well. “Will there be food?"
“Food?” Massu chimes in, and now his magic word is in play too.
Uchi groans as it just gets worse from there; soon everyone is in and ready for a group-bonding road trip to Osaka this weekend. They make Ryo promise to treat them to takoyaki.
Koyama laughs helplessly at an exasperated Uchi once everything is decided; he pats the young sniper’s back soothingly. “Maa, maa,” he says, “I’m sure everything will be fine.”
“If anything, it’s going to be interesting,” Ryo agrees evilly, and doesn’t try to comfort Uchi at all. Uchi isn’t sure if Ryo’s amusement is a good sign or not.
Usually it’s not.
~~~~~
“I think,” Yokoyama begins, wide-eyed to a smug Ryo at dinner later that weekend, “that I am officially brainwashed too.”
And that’s just from Yamapi smiling and offering to pay for everything tonight.
By the time Tegoshi ends up bouncing around in Subaru’s lap (about two beers later), becoming hitmen and living on the edge of society with good pay are the farthest things from anyone in Eito’s minds.
In fact, Murakami and Yokoyama summarily decide that they both want to join NEWS now.
They look mostly serious about it, too.
And that, Uchi thinks, might actually be worse than the brainwashing jokes.
By a lot.
~~~~~
Afterwards, when NEWS members are helping drunken Eito members into taxis, Yokoyama grins and pats Yamapi’s shoulder, telling the young Director, “I approve of you as a man.”
Uchi decides that maybe tonight wasn’t such a disaster after all.
(Part 2)
Universe: Government Agent AU
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (cameos by members of KAT-TUN, K8, Kinki, and T&T)
Warnings/Spoilers: OOC, AU STOOPID
Word Count: 12,834
Summary: In the AU related to “To Serve and Protect,” “Waiting to Come Home,” “Guardian Spirits,” and “Strength, Weakness”- NEWS’s beginnings. Both of them.
Dedication: Ann, Nico, Jo- HAPPY NEW YEAR.
A/N: Okay, this is WAY LONGER than it should have been and ridiculously boring, but I thought I should go ahead and set up backstories and inter-group relations and everything I could about this universe as quick as possible so I could make Ann (and others) write for me in it; I think I would be more inspired in general if I could read other people’s takes on the AU. When it’s just me I bore myself silly, you see. So yeah! Here, have a really long and unnecessary set of backstories. Do with them what you will, but I’m warning you, this really is NOT an entertaining read at all. It kind of reads more like a timeline than anything else. SORRY I’M UNEXCITING. ALSO, SORRY FOR THE RETARDED ACRONYMS.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
1.
When Yamapi enters the training academy he is fresh out of high school and naïve; he thinks he’s going to be a hero.
Which makes sense to him; the entire reason he’d decided to join the agency in the first place was because he’d seen a press conference on TV with Agent Takizawa talking about some big rescue operation that he’d headed over the past six months. As it turned out, the operation had ended up saving twenty hostages from a creepy foreign cult with no casualties reported on either side. Yamapi had been fourteen at the time and hadn’t really cared about big world issues like that, but he remembers to this day, how his little sister had grabbed onto his arm suddenly, eyes bright and cheeks pink with excitement when Takizawa’s face had come on the screen.
“What?” he’d asked, looking at her like she’d grown another head. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s cool!” she’d squealed, right in his ear. “Isn’t he cool, niisan?”
He’d frowned, looking thoughtful in a big brotherly sort of way as he’d assessed his sister’s latest crush in search of any obvious flaws. “What’s so cool about him?” he’d asked.
She’d positively glowed back at him, clutching his elbow tightly. “He’s a hero!”
Something about that moment had stuck with him all the way through high school, and so after graduation, he decided that if that is how the people who he loves looks at heroes, then maybe he should go ahead and become one too.
He’s always wanted to become the kind of adult his sister can be proud of.
His first year in the academy is tough; he learns from an instructor during his very first week there that this job isn’t for people who want to be heroes, because in the world of civil service heroes don’t exist. There are only flesh and blood men and women working hard for the sake of others.
Yamapi eventually learns to accept that part of the academy as the weeks drag on; he doesn’t quit right after hearing it because even though he only joined because he’d wanted to be a hero, he’s never quit anything before in his life. It’s the one thing he expects of himself if nothing else.
With time he discovers that he is good at the physical parts of the job; he can run a mile in five minutes and he can shoot fairly well even though he doesn’t really like the sound of bullets hitting their target. He’s not good at surveillance though (the attention to detail makes his eyes cross), and whenever he studies anything having to do with undercover work he always gets smacked over the head by his teacher and called hopeless.
“Your face is too honest,” the instructor sighs, and gives up on Yamapi ever becoming an international super spy.
His roommate in the dorms, a tall guy by the name of Akanishi Jin, is kind of the opposite of him. Jin is an absolutely horrible shot but seems to be pretty capable when it comes to managing wires and microphones; whenever they go to their lecture on undercover procedures the instructor will smirk at Jin and tell him, “You can’t lie to a liar, but if I were anyone else, you’d be able to convince me that you actually want to be here when you smile like that, Akanishi. Good work.”
As it turns out, Jin is really good at being who he’s not when he has to be.
Yamapi sometimes asks him at night before they fall asleep if it comes easily; Jin says it does, but that he’s not sure if he likes it. He’ll do it though, if it means he can catch bad guys.
Yamapi isn’t sure he likes it either, but eventually, he learns to accept that part of the job too.
~~~~~
The first time he meets Agent Takizawa in person it’s on the same day as the level three obstacle course for their monthly physical exam; Yamapi is winded halfway through the trial but stops his own progress on the climbing wall momentarily to turn around and give Jin a hand up. “C’mon, take my hand,” he says, “You can do it.”
“This sucks!” Jin whines, and looks like he wants to give up and go have a cigarette.
“If your dream is to catch bad guys,” Yamapi puffs back at him resolutely, “then you have to climb this wall.”
“True,” Jin allows, and redoubles his efforts.
They eventually make it over, hand in hand and breathing hard.
Neither of them notices Agent Takizawa watching them as they do this because they’re too absorbed in trying to survive the course; Takizawa however, makes special note of what he sees by turning to their instructor and asking for the name of the cadet with the helping hand.
“Yamashita,” the drill coach replies, and nods in understanding at Takizawa. “He’s definitely one of those types. The type you’re looking for.”
Takizawa smiles; “I think so too. I’d like to talk to him, once he and his friend are finished.”
“Of course.”
And so, once Yamapi is done with the toughest obstacle course of his entire life (and subsequently sweaty and disgusting from it), he suddenly gets approached by the glamorous face from TV his sister had swooned over more than three years ago. When he sees Takizawa up close and in person for the first time Yamapi thinks that maybe he understands what she’d seen in him before; there is something naturally cool about him. He vaguely wonders if maybe there are still heroes around, if only you look hard enough.
“Yamashita-kun?” Takizawa begins, snapping Yamapi out of his daze, “There is a special program I am starting up this year and I would like you to come and be a part of it.”
Yamapi blinks. “Special program?”
“I promise it won’t interfere with the rest of your training; this is an extra-curricular track that I plan on personally instructing for the next three years.”
Yamapi’s mind goes blank under the force of the older man’s smile and he finds himself agreeing without really knowing any of the details.
Later, when he is exhausted and crawling into his bunk, Jin hangs off the edge of his so that he is looking down into Yamapi’s sleeping space upside-down. “So! I heard that you,” Jin chortles, “have been chosen for the special advanced leadership track.”
Yamapi sighs. “Go to sleep,” he says, and throws his pillow at his bunkmate. It hits the floor without hitting Jin, and Yamapi decides he is too sore to get out of bed and pick it up again.
Jin just giggles and rolls back onto his bed. “You’re going to learn how to be the boss.”
“Go to sleep.”
“Yes sir! Good night!”
“Good night.”
Yamapi stares up at the bottom of Jin’s mattress as he tries to get to sleep and supposes that if he can’t be a hero like he’d wanted to, the very least he can do is be the best at his job that he can be. He wants the people he loves to be proud of him.
And so he spends the last three years of his academy career training under Agent Takizawa’s-Tackey’s- direct supervision, along with three other cadets Tackey had hand picked from various concentrations around the academy. They are known as the four top students in the whole school and looked up to by everyone; their professors constantly have high expectations of them and their underclassmen all aspire to be like them. In time however, it turns out that the other three find the track too grueling and voluntarily drop out from under Takizawa’s tutelage. In the end, Yamapi is the only one of them to finish the special course to Tackey’s satisfaction. In fact, he passes the whole thing with flying colors, which results in Jin calling him a teacher’s pet and trying to give him wedgies sometimes. Yamapi just sighs and hits him over the head a lot.
~~~~~
At Yamapi’s graduation ceremony, his sister squeals right in his ear and clutches his arm just like she used to when she was little; she congratulates him on becoming a real life hero.
He smiles in embarrassment and is about to tell her that the first thing they teach you in the academy is that this is not a job for heroes. That heroes don’t exist in this world.
However, when she looks up at him like she is-bright-eyed and so, so proud- he finds himself starting to think twice, to feel that maybe heroes do exist, just not in the same way he thought they did back when he was fourteen and watching an amazing stranger on TV talk about saving twenty people from dire circumstances in a single moment of selfless brilliance.
He looks at his little sister and tells himself that if heroes do really exist-and he thinks that they do- they are flesh and blood men and women who work hard because they have the smile of someone precious to them to protect.
He promises her in his heart that he will do his best and never give up; it’s all he’s ever asked of himself.
He’ll become an adult she can be proud of.
~~~~~
2.
Nishikido Ryo and Uchi Hiroki are the two best shots in a group simply known throughout the Osaka branch of the agency as the Kansai Eito; called as such because it is a unit composed of eight elite snipers known for both their shooting skills and their distinct lack of respect for proper authority.
They are, summarily, the agency’s eight problem children.
But that’s all well and good; Ryo doesn’t care if the entire Japanese government looks down on them as hooligans as long as they keep signing his paychecks. Besides that, he is happy in Eito because in Eito, his team leader doesn’t care if he wears jeans to work or if all his reports say nothing more than “I shot him until he was dead,” on them. Eito are the most accurate sharpshooters the agency has to offer and the fact of the matter is they know exactly how good they are. As such, they can act however they want to whomever they want because in the end, the government needs them to do the dirty work. It would be far more costly to fire them and take the time to train someone new rather than simply tolerate their eccentric natures and let them do their jobs.
And they wouldn’t have it any other way.
“This is the life,” Ryo sum ups happily, and puts his feet up on his desk to prepare for his post-lunch nap. His current report serves as a grease absorber for his left over French fries. Subaru likes it when the paperwork smells delicious anyway; it makes it less boring.
Uchi smirks at him from the desk opposite Ryo’s, tossing a wadded up post-it note at his best friend’s forehead. “And they treated us like we’d never amount to anything,” he drawls.
Ryo wiggles his toes. “We are invincible,” he says simply, and falls asleep believing every word of it.
But then, a few weeks later, the happy freedom of Eito is momentarily disrupted when the two of them suddenly get an urgent summons to Tokyo.
One where attendance isn’t optional.
~~~~~
“We already have a unit. A damned good one too,” Ryo spits, and gets right into Takizawa’s face about the whole thing when he finds out exactly why he just wasted the last three hours of his life on the shinkansen to get out here. “We don’t need another one.”
“Well, we need you,” Tackey says simply, and doesn’t get unpleasant about Nishikido’s anger at all.
Ryo snorts. “Then that’s just too bad for you, isn’t it?”
“And you need us,” Tackey adds, semi-cryptic.
Ryo doesn’t notice. “Like hell we…”
Uchi frowns and does notice; he reaches out to shut Ryo up. “What do you mean we need you?” he asks, and despite being as indignant about the whole thing as Ryo is, opts for erring on the side of caution in this case. Takizawa is a powerful senior agent, after all.
“It means exactly what it sounds like,” Tackey says. “The higher ups are starting to get fed up with Eito’s attitude. And I don’t really blame them; from what I can see all of you seem to have some pretty intense entitlement issues.”
Ryo’s eyes narrow. “I don’t want to hear that from someone who’s always had everything handed to him on a silver platter.”
Tackey ignores him. “There is talk,” he explains to Uchi, “about whether your bad attitudes come from the direct influences you have on one another. The Commissioners think that by splitting you up permanently, you might stop feeding off of each other’s negative energy and learn how to work well with others for a change.”
Something flickers across both agents’ eyes when they hear that; Ryo thinks it is the first time he has truly felt apprehensive about something someone of authority in this agency is telling him.
Tackey continues. “The last time I had an ear to the door there was talk of transferring Agent Ohkura to the Hokkaido branch as early as August.”
When Ryo speaks again his voice is low, deadly. “What do you want from us?”
“Woah,” Tackey replies, holding his hands up defensively, “Despite what you might think this isn’t blackmail, Nishikido-kun. This is simply me giving you a warning from what I’ve heard on the grapevine. And, admittedly, an opportunity to nip it in the bud.”
Ryo is about to tell Takizawa exactly where he can shove his warning and his opportunity, but before he can, Uchi stops him. Again.
“What kind of opportunity?” the younger sniper asks, voice measured.
Tackey smiles, glad to see that someone in Eito can be reasonable if he puts his mind to it. “It’s an opportunity to prove that you can play nice with others and continue your work with Eito at the same time.”
In short, it is an offer neither of them can refuse.
~~~~~
As it turns out, Tackey’s opportunity is a special temporary unit he has been working to put together for the past five years; it is some sort of weird experiment he has personally undertaken in the hopes of rewriting the books on what he considers the agency’s antiquated approach to assigning agents to teams. It’s all the talk amongst the higher ups in terms of it being crazy and never working; as far as they’re concerned, agents from backgrounds as dissimilar as the ones outlined in Takizawa’s proposal will never be able to learn how to work together efficiently (let alone successfully). Ryo has no idea what any of that might possibly mean for him and Uchi, but the two of them show up to the first meeting anyway.
They tell themselves that it’s all for the sake of Eito.
When they get to the fancy conference room where they are scheduled to meet there are seven other agents already there as well; all of them look impossibly young and completely unreliable in terms of appearance and demeanor. Ryo only recognizes a few of them immediately off hand; they are other trainees who he’d sometimes taken tests with up at the Tokyo branch of the academy when the Osaka training facilities had been deemed too decrepit to actually run nationally certified exams on.
Takizawa’s star pupil Yamashita is there, looking just as wary as everyone else; Ryo casually glances around the room and mentally starts to add things up in his head, trying to figure out the punch line of this elaborate joke before anyone else. From what he can see so far, in addition to Yamashita, there’s that awkward looking bomb specialist who’d ranked in the top three at the national aptitude exam, the two current record holders for the agency’s 50m and 100m dash, and he and Uchi, the two best shooters the agency currently have on payroll.
The other three young faces are new to him (or just so unmemorable that he’s completely forgotten anything having to do with them if he ever did meet them before), but throwing them aside, Ryo figures that the people gathered in this room look like the best and brightest to have popped up in agency during the past five to ten years.
When Tackey begins to talk several minutes later, Ryo discovers that he’s right, and that this is probably the first time he’s ever wished to be dead wrong.
“You,” Tackey tells them, “Are the best of the best.”
No one responds; they aren’t sure how to.
“As such, I’ve been given permission to put you together in this special unit in the hopes of using your considerable and varied talents towards protecting the safety and welfare of the Japanese public.” A pause, a breath, a smile. “So from today onwards, all of you-all nine of you-will be what we call NEWS. The Nippon Emergency Welfare Squad.”
Ryo bites the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming when he hears this.
And it’s not even about the stupid acronym at all.
He just really, really doesn’t want this.
Any of it.
~~~~~
3.
Koyama does his best to try and bring the team together as a cohesive unit, but the title “Nippon Emergency Welfare Squad” is exactly as broad as it sounds; everyone comes from different fields of expertise and different schools of training. He understands in theory Takizawa’s plans for the unit, understands how thinking that the best of the best working together from many different perspectives with different skill sets will provide a well-rounded, cohesive team.
But theory is far different from practice, and regardless of the many bombs he’s successfully defused throughout his academy career, Koyama can’t help but think that despite his best efforts, this new unit is going to explode in his face at any second.
As if to prove his worst fears right, he looks up when he hears an annoyed snarl from the other side of the room.
“Didn’t they teach you anything in basic training?” Ryo barks at a nervous Tegoshi, and snatches the younger agent’s firearm from his hands, disassembling it in about fifteen seconds and then dumping all the separate parts back into the young hacker’s upturned palms. “Keep it clean, keep it dry. That way if you die on a mission, at the very least, it won’t be because your gun malfunctioned on you.”
“H-hai!” Tegoshi stammers, and bows in thanks to the senior agent. “I’ll definitely do that.” Pause. “Not die in a mission. Um, clean my gun.”
“Great.” Ryo sighs, turns around, and storms off muttering (loudly) to himself about amateurs and helpless, pampered little Tokyo boys.
Koyama is left with a shell-shocked Tegoshi and a lot of random gun parts.
“Well,” the explosives expert begins, forcing a smile and a little laugh; “Nishikido-kun sure is a helpful senpai, ne, Tegoshi?”
Tegoshi nods, still vaguely skittish around Koyama as well. “Un. I uh… I should go put this back together. Somehow.”
He dodges out of the room in the opposite direction of Nishikido, leaving Koyama on his own and counting the remaining seconds until total detonation.
~~~~~
After a mere two months with the group Moriuchi decides to leave the agency all together; he tells them he’s realized that after being selected to be in NEWS, he’s gained enough self-confidence to pursue his true dream of becoming a Private Investigator. This leaves an already uncertain Tegoshi on his own as the only surveillance and technology specialist in the unit. In the meantime, Ryo and Uchi just want to go home all the time and Yamapi seems like he’s always wondering why he hadn’t been put on a regular team with his contemporaries and his senpai from the academy; he hates being the most senior agent in the unit and he misses Jin, who is off working in the west end of Tokyo under Domoto Koichi. Koyama remembers that Akanishi’s new unit is kind of like Administrator Domoto’s direct response to Takizawa’s NEWS; they are called KAT-TUN (for the Kantou Anti Terrorism Targeting Unified Network).
Koyama hopes they are doing better than NEWS is.
As it is, Koyama ends up playing peacemaker most of the time when ideologies clash within NEWS, trying to help the others understand each other even though he doesn’t really understand them all that well himself yet. He thinks that sometimes he has nightmares because of this; there’s a particularly bad one he’s had twice in a row now, where Nishikido suddenly grabs Masuda and strangles him to death with his bare hands while everyone stands by watching, not sure what to do because they don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.
“Just give it time,” Shige tells him sensibly on one of those nights after the bomb expert has had another bad dream and has to call someone to talk about it. “The group will either work after we all get used to one other or it won’t work and Takizawa-san will disband us. This is what experiments are for; they either prove or disprove a theory. There’s nothing you can do about it by yourself at this point, so go back to sleep and don’t call me again until a decent hour.”
Koyama hangs up feeling a little better but not a lot; the next dream he has involves Uchi and Kusano getting into a deadly shootout over Kusano linking all of Uchi’s paperclips together in a giant, annoying chain.
~~~~~
The next morning when he walks into the office-still shaken from his most recent nightmares- the first thing he sees is Ryo arguing with Shige; Shige snorts unappreciatively and excuses himself to get coffee just as Ryo’s voice starts to get uncomfortably loud. Koyama watches them both mutter uncharitably under their breaths about each other as they head in opposite directions.
And Koyama feels something knot itself tightly inside his chest when he hears this; it’s a familiar sort of dread that’s not unlike when he doesn’t know which wire to cut and the clock is ticking down into its final seconds.
Based on feeling, he counts them at about a five.
~~~~~
A week later Uchi yells something uncharitable about Tegoshi’s lineage when the younger agent accidentally fails to deliver a memo to him from Director Yamashita in time; Tegoshi bows in apology and scampers off looking terrified. Later, Koyama overhears Tegoshi talking to Masuda about whether he should hand in his resignation or not; he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to fit in here.
“I have the letter all written up and everything,” he explains to Masuda worriedly.
Koyama’s heart breaks a little as he counts them down to four.
~~~~~
That night Koyama wakes up screaming again; the last image he has was of Shige and Yamapi throttling each other in a burning warehouse. Shige had fought dirty and Yamapi had responded in like and it had somehow felt like the end of the world to Koyama when he’d seen that.
He wipes sweat and tears from his face and shakily reaches for the phone at his nightstand, automatically dialing Shige’s number even though it is four am and they have work at seven.
“Shige,” he sobs, when Shige picks up with an annoyed grunt, “Shige, I had another nightmare.”
He hysterically explains the details of his dream to his best friend, and somewhere in the middle of it all, murmurs that he thinks they’re at three now and he doesn’t know what to do before the explosion since he can’t fix it.
Shige doesn’t really get it, but lets Koyama talk until his voice is a little hoarse and he can’t think anymore. Then he says, “Go back to sleep,” very calmly and hangs up.
~~~~~
Exactly four months after their formation Takizawa decides that it is finally time for NEWS to take on their first big solo mission. Everyone is understandably more nervous and edgy than normal as they load up and head out; Ryo snaps at all the other members in intervals of five seconds or less while Yamapi is dead silent the whole time, clutching his gun and staring off into space.
Tegoshi’s wires get tangled in his anxiety and Kusano offers to help with them; they’re both so jittery that the entire system is a big pile of knots by the time they arrive on the scene. Similarly, Koyama’s hands are shaking and his stomach is in knots; meanwhile Uchi sulks quietly to himself in the corner while Shige pretends to nap so no one can see how scared he really is.
Masuda is eating hypnotically on the bench, shoving potato chips into his mouth one after another until Ryo shouts at him to chew with his mouth closed or end up with a fist planted firmly inside too.
“I have a bad feeling about today,” Koyama murmurs to himself when the van comes to a rolling halt well outside the perimeter of the building they are raiding. His stomach gurgles in agreement with that assessment and he has to take a moment out in the bushes to stop and be sick while Kusano wrinkles his nose and Shige absently pats his back.
By the time the group takes their positions, Koyama is as pale as a sheet and can barely see straight. He utters a quick prayer when Yamapi gives the attack order and realizes that right here, right now, they’re at two and still counting down fast.
~~~~~
The good thing about being the best of the best, Koyama realizes later, is that everyone can pull his own weight, even in a crisis situation. Even in a team where the members don’t work well with one another yet.
At the very least, they all know how to do their jobs.
And so the eight of them make it out of the mission a bit shaken but otherwise unharmed; when the bad guys are caught, lives saved, and drugs confiscated, a few near misses on their parts are acceptable in the grand scheme of things.
On the way back to headquarters no one says a single word for a very long time.
Koyama is almost grateful for the silence for once; he closes his eyes as they sit in the van together and tries to will his heart down from his throat and back into his chest again. He hopes that the one count he’d been dreading for the past few months can be staved off for a little while yet, that they’re not going to detonate today after all.
Just a moment-even a second-longer is all he asks.
But then, without warning, Ryo explodes.
“What the hell is that?” the sniper snaps suddenly, and causes Koyama’s heart to leap up into his throat all over again. The explosive expert’s eyes shoot open and he is just in time to see Ryo unbuckle himself from his seat and begin bearing down on a terrified Tegoshi. Ryo grabs the younger boy’s hand, yanking it open before Koyama can protest or try to calm him down.
“You shouldn’t stand when the van is in mo…” Shige starts, but trails off when he finally sees what Ryo sees.
Blood.
There is a long, narrow gash across Tegoshi’s white palm that no one had noticed; he’d been holding it tightly against his chest this whole time, as it dripped a steady trickle of crimson-almost unseen- onto his black Kevlar.
Koyama dumbly thinks to himself that it figures the sniper is the only one who saw it; they’re supposed to notice everything.
Tegoshi looks mortified under everyone’s collective gazes; he tries to close up his hand again, tries to make himself as small as possible against the wall of the van.
Koyama isn’t sure what to do now.
But Ryo knows what to do; he ignores everyone else and keeps moving, turning over his shoulder to Uchi. “Kit,” he barks.
Uchi nods, unbuckling himself and digging around under the bench until he finds the First Aid kit. He tosses it to his best friend.
“You again,” Ryo mutters at Tegoshi, grasping the young hacker’s hand in one of his and popping open the lid to the First Aid kit with the other. He pulls out a tube of antibacterial cream and uncaps it with his teeth, not taking his eyes off the blood for a moment. “You clearly have no idea what you’re doing.”
Tegoshi is too shocked to say anything. Actually, everyone is.
“Listen up, because I’m only saying this to you once. Every wound gets looked at before we get back to headquarters. Always. Preferably by the EMTs; don’t ever hide anything from your teammates. It’s dangerous and it’s stupid and I need to know at every second of every day what condition you are in so I know you can watch my back.”
“It’s just a scr…”
“I don’t care,” Ryo says, sounding harsh. But Koyama notices that his movements are gentle as he disinfects the wound, as he rips open a bandage and presses it to the cut on the younger agent’s hand. “When seven other lives depend on you, you don’t fuck around.”
Tegoshi looks completely mystified, clutching his patched up hand to his chest as Ryo glares down at him.
Everyone thinks that he might burst into tears at any second now.
But he doesn’t.
Like Ryo, he’s the next one to surprise them all.
“T-thank you!” he manages, sincerely, and beams up at Ryo. “From today on, I’ll do my best!”
Ryo blinks, momentarily stunned by the intensity of the smile that none of them knew existed in the small, awkward newbie who mostly kept to himself.
“Um,” he mutters, and looks away quickly, inexplicably embarrassed. “Whatever.”
He turns around and goes back to his seat, buckling himself in and perfectly fine to pretend that had never happened.
But Koyama saw it happen; they all did.
And he thinks that it had felt like the moment right before an explosive is going to go off; that split second when he has to pick a wire and cut it and hope that they all make it out alive. Together.
To Koyama, it was like the moment when the counter stops, right at one.
And everyone is still okay.
~~~~~
Koyama sleeps well that night, for the first time in a long time.
Consequently, so does Shige.
~~~~~
4.
“So how was your week in snobsville?” Yokoyama asks, and perches himself onto the edge of Uchi’s desk. He starts fiddling with Uchi’s paperclips, hooking them into a long, annoying chain one by one. “Did you eat very tiny desserts at stylish Tokyo cafes and chat about the stock market and the economy? Did you ride a taxi?”
Uchi scowls and slaps the older sniper’s hands away from his paperclip bowl. “We just worked. And stop it, it took me three hours to undo them the last time you linked them all together like that.”
Yoko feigns plaintiveness. “It’s because I miss you when you’re not here! I sit at your desk when you’re gone and pretend to have a conversation with you. I play with your paperclips and sniff your pens because they still smell like your cologne.”
“Liar.”
“It’s true!” the older agent cackles, and likes the way Uchi looks when he’s kind of annoyed but not really.
“Good to see you’re spending your time productively,” Uchi sniffs sulkily, grabbing his paperclip bowl and tossing it into one of his desk drawers.
Yoko chuckles and reaches out to ruffle the kid’s hair. “We do miss you! Some of us have even been talking; we think we would all rather walk than see you and Ryo have to keep up this double duty crap for Takizawa and his snooty little pet project.”
“You mean quit?”
His teammate nods, looking sly (and vaguely manic). “We could resign and become professional hitmen! Live on society’s edge and stuff. Kind of like we already do, except with better pay. And you and Ryo wouldn’t have to work with the brat brigade.”
Uchi sighs. “You know, NEWS isn’t as bad as you think.”
A beat.
Then Yoko’s eyes narrow thoughtfully and he ducks down closer so that he can whisper right into Uchi’s ear. “Did they bug your office?” he asks. “Are they listening to us right now? Do we have to pretend to act nice?”
“What? No! I’m just saying… it’s a good team and the members are nice,” Uchi tells him. “And stop talking so close to me, your breath smells like okonomiyaki sauce.”
Yoko pulls back when he hears this, blinking several times. Then he grabs Uchi’s shoulders. “Are you brainwashed?” he demands.
Uchi shoves him off the desk.
~~~~~
A week later, when Uchi complains to Koyama about how he keeps getting brainwashing jokes from the rest of Eito, Koyama suggests that maybe both teams should try to meet up and get to know each other a little better, since it’s like they work together all the time between having Ryo and Uchi on alternate weeks. “We’re like one big collaboration, ne?”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Uchi tells him, realistically. Not everything can be full of hearts and stars and big shiny rainbows like Koyama thinks they can. “It might be…weird.” He leaves out the part where NEWS will probably get horribly insulted for the majority of the night and Tegoshi might cry. No one wants to see that; Koyama gets blubbery at the mere thought of Tegoshi crying. Uchi crosses his arms and sighs. “You guys probably aren’t ready anyway. Meeting them is…an experience.”
“Eh? Are we meeting new people?” Tegoshi asks, when he bounces past the break room and overhears just the last bit. “Is there going to be a party?”
Uchi senses danger.
“Party?” Kusano chirps, poking his head in from the opposite door as his selective hearing decides to pick up on its favorite keyword right then and there as well. “Will there be food?"
“Food?” Massu chimes in, and now his magic word is in play too.
Uchi groans as it just gets worse from there; soon everyone is in and ready for a group-bonding road trip to Osaka this weekend. They make Ryo promise to treat them to takoyaki.
Koyama laughs helplessly at an exasperated Uchi once everything is decided; he pats the young sniper’s back soothingly. “Maa, maa,” he says, “I’m sure everything will be fine.”
“If anything, it’s going to be interesting,” Ryo agrees evilly, and doesn’t try to comfort Uchi at all. Uchi isn’t sure if Ryo’s amusement is a good sign or not.
Usually it’s not.
~~~~~
“I think,” Yokoyama begins, wide-eyed to a smug Ryo at dinner later that weekend, “that I am officially brainwashed too.”
And that’s just from Yamapi smiling and offering to pay for everything tonight.
By the time Tegoshi ends up bouncing around in Subaru’s lap (about two beers later), becoming hitmen and living on the edge of society with good pay are the farthest things from anyone in Eito’s minds.
In fact, Murakami and Yokoyama summarily decide that they both want to join NEWS now.
They look mostly serious about it, too.
And that, Uchi thinks, might actually be worse than the brainwashing jokes.
By a lot.
~~~~~
Afterwards, when NEWS members are helping drunken Eito members into taxis, Yokoyama grins and pats Yamapi’s shoulder, telling the young Director, “I approve of you as a man.”
Uchi decides that maybe tonight wasn’t such a disaster after all.
(Part 2)