JE/NewS+HSJ- "Making Number Six" (2/2)
Title: Making Number Six
Universe: JE ( Government AU)
Theme/Topic: NewS as senpai their kouhai look up to.
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: HSJ, NEWS, Tackey, Tsubasa
Warnings/Spoilers: OOC, stupidity.
Word Count: 10,756
Summary: Six separate stories come together in the pursuit of one happy ending. Ten rookies each learn something very important.
Dedication: Written for seca’s (very, very late) b-day request! Sorry I don’t know HSJ that well, but mousapelli helped give me some cliff’s notes and some betaing, so hopefully what I wrote is an okay facsimile of the group you know. Also thanks to crystallekil for taking a look at this for me as well.
A/N: The title of this pretty much references “We are Legends,” but not so much that reading it is absolutely necessary (though recommended?). And I think I’ve learned my lesson. NO MORE HSJ. NEVER AGAIN.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
5.
There are fifteen screens in front of them, all with various situations (full of nothing) playing out on each of them. There are also seven radio channels to monitor and a security system to hack, recording devices collecting evidence, and a slew of technical and audio interference due to the presence of multiple helicopters, television vans, police radios, and in addition to that, interference from the efforts of the robbers themselves.
Tegoshi sits at the center of it all, playing pop music in the background and bobbing his head to the beat.
Chinen huffs. “We’re like glorified secretaries. What are we waiting for?”
Tegoshi smiles and patches another line through to headquarters at Yamapi’s request. “We’re waiting for Shige, ne,” Tegoshi tells him simply, and offers Chinen and Morimoto candy from his pocket. Clearly he is very excited about getting to be their senpai today.
The two younger agents eye the candy disinterestedly.
“I can cause a blackout and our guys can storm in there right now,” Chinen pouts. “Every minute we wait someone could die.”
Tegoshi cocks his head to the side thoughtfully. “Eh, that’s true sometimes,” he says. “But it’s not true all the time.”
He smiles.
Chinen groans.
“Ryutarou-kun,” Tegoshi asks after a second, “how are those scrambled signals coming?”
The young HSJ agent coughs and quickly averts his eyes from the brilliance of Tegoshi’s smile. “I’m…it’s slow?”
Tegoshi nods. “Sorry to make you do it, it’s my least favorite job,” he says airily. Chinen thinks that just figures; it’s one of the more tedious jobs, and honestly, not something he thinks is necessary right now. The robbers put a scrambling device into the bank’s central security system when they broke in and for a while no one could see anything but snow when they were trying to tap the cameras; unbeknownst to the culprits Tegoshi managed to disable the scrambler remotely, but there are still twenty minutes of fuzzy footage that have to be descrambled and put back together, which is currently Morimoto’s task despite the whole effort being of very low priority right at the moment.
The hostages are still inside and the robbers are making demands and Tegoshi-senpai is telling them to clean up shaky video footage that, at best, will be used as video evidence for the case in court. Months from now.
Chinen is unimpressed; he wants some sort proof that sitting before him is the agency’s most highly ranked computer specialist. The guy he always gets compared to.
In the meantime, Tegoshi types absently at his laptop and eats candy. He looks like a college student surfing the internet when he’s supposed to be writing that ten page paper that’s due in two hours. That he hasn’t started on yet.
In the background, Yamapi blabs into the phone while Yabu stands beside him taking detailed notes and asking kiss-ass questions.
Chinen continues to be bored, and imagines himself usurping Tegoshi’s number one standing in a matter of months and looking good while doing it.
“Um,” Ryutarou pipes up eventually, “I think I got it!”
“Yay, that’s great!” Tegoshi enthuses, and offers the candy again. Ryutarou sighs and takes a piece.
Tegoshi patches the repaired footage into a sixteenth monitor on his display and starts to go through it. Right then and there.
“What are you doing?” Chinen asks.
But Tegoshi is too engrossed in the new footage. “Ah!” he exclaims, when he finds what he was looking for. He points to the monitor. “In the twenty minutes while the signal was being scrambled before I could deactivate the scrambler, half of the hostages disappeared from the floor, ne. We can only assume they got holed up somewhere else as insurance for the robbers to use to get away. While Ryutarou-kun was descrambling I managed to get a complete blueprint of the building from the bank officials.”
“We already had that,” Chinen snorts.
“We had the public one,” Tegoshi replies, unfazed. “This is a private bank, ne, and after the hostages disappeared suddenly and I couldn’t find them anywhere I suspected that the owners might have had secret vaults installed throughout the structure, since rich people do weird things like that. I was right, there are eight of them. Then I figured the robbers must have had some inside information to know that so in the meantime, I hacked the bank’s main records system and ran a scan of the robbers’ snapshots from the security cameras with all bank employees from the last twenty years. I got the match a little while ago; bank robber number three right there,” he pauses to tap screen ten, “used to be a security guard here, so I figured he would know the locations of the secret vaults just from being around. After I got that confirmation I went ahead and hacked the managers’ and owners’ private computers remotely and found the electronic combinations for each of those vaults, then hacked the special security system that opens and closes them. I needed the unscrambled footage from earlier to confirm which of the vaults any of the hostages might have been hidden in so that I can report to Ryo-tan on the roof when the targets are clear enough of that area that we can move in without getting anyone killed. In the meantime, I’m waiting for visual confirmation from Shige and Yuto-kun about the hostages still on the floor. They’ll warn them about our actions ahead of time so it doesn’t turn into a fiasco when we cut the power and storm the building like Chinen-kun wanted to earlier.”
Silence.
Tegoshi beams at Ryutarou. “You’re really a great help!”
Morimoto blushes while Tegoshi hits the "next" button on his iTunes. “And that’s pretty much what I do, ne,” he says to them, leaning back in his chair and absently balancing a pencil on the tip of one finger. He looks just as idle as he’d seemed for the last two hours, though when Chinen finally moves to look more closely, he notices how Tegoshi’s eyes constantly dart from monitor to monitor as the pencil balances on his fingertips, a thousand bytes of information flashing past him and being processed with every glance. “Even though I’m not as strong or fast as the others, and even though I have to sit and wait a lot for things to happen while they do the inside work without me, sometimes watching is the most important thing of all,” Tegoshi poses thoughtfully, when he catches Chinen’s eyes on him. He smiles. “Don’t you think?”
A moment.
Chinen sighs, while Morimoto turns redder, to the very tips of his ears.
“Okay, I get it,” Chinen acquiesces eventually, and reaches out to snatch a piece of Tegoshi’s candy.
He pops it into his mouth grudgingly, but tells himself that no matter how proficient at his job Tegoshi is, he still likes Director Ohno more.
~~~~~
6.
“This isn’t going to be very fun,” Shige warns his charge for the day carefully, as they crawl through the bank’s air duct system. “We’ll probably get punched or something.”
Yuto flounders a little when his shirt gets caught in one of the vent grates. “I-is it ever fun?” he asks, and looks apologetic when Shige stops and helps him disentangle himself.
“Okay, not really,” Shige acquiesces. “Not until afterwards, when things go well.”
Yuto nods. “Oh.”
“Anyway, keep moving; the others are probably waiting for us by now.”
Yuto blinks. “Already?” He glances at his watch. “It’s barely been two hours.”
Shige sighs, long-suffering. “Tegoshi doesn’t have any patience when he’s stuck in the operation center; he’s probably already identified the perpetrators, their telling habits, and how to arrest and/or shoot them. Yamapi’s probably already agreed with him.”
“Wow.”
Shige snorts, but seems kind of proud anyway. “Yeah. So now it’s our turn.”
“Oh.” Yuto nods, wide-eyed.
A moment.
And then Shige clears his throat politely, urging Yuto forward. “Around this next corner, we’ll be able to fall through into the target office there. The trick after that is getting caught without getting…well, shot.”
Yuto cringes, while Shige leads the way to their destination and pushes the grating over the office they’re dropping down into. “H-how is it?” Yuto asks.
“Clear,” Shige tells him.
“No, I mean…getting shot.”
Shige blinks. “Of course it’s horribly painful. What else would it be?” he asks, flatly.
Yuto wipes sweat from his brow and offers an embarrassed smile. “I guess so, huh.”
Shige sighs when he sees the terrified look on the younger agent’s face as he’s stepping down onto the desk in the office. He raises his arms to help Yuto down. “Don’t worry,” he manages after a beat, “if anyone is going to get shot here it’s probably me.”
Yuto’s eye’s widen. “What? Why?”
“Because,” Shige drawls, “you don’t look like much of a threat at all.”
The younger agent isn’t sure if Agent Kato is trying to comfort him or scare him even worse; Shige’s face gives nothing away as he opens the office door and peeks out into the hallway. “Okay, clear,” he says. “Let’s go.”
Yuto swallows and follows him out the door.
~~~~~
Five minutes later, the two of them find themselves held at gunpoint, just as planned. Apparently Agent Kato has that kind of luck when it comes to these types of things.
“Who the hell are you?” the angry, clearly agitated robber demands, when he stumbles across the duo on one of his patrols.
“We were in the bathroom,” Shige replies, hands up over his head and affecting an appropriately terrified expression.
Yuto doesn’t have to act terrified when the nozzle of an automatic rifle is pointed right at his face like it is. Shige inches forward slightly, between the gun and his kouhai. “What is this?” he demands, and draws the attention to himself with just the right touch of frantic in his voice.
Seconds later they get pressed up against the wall and patted down gruffly. “I suppose this is a robbery,” Shige muses aloud, and yelps a little when a hand jostles him below the belt.
“You’re a smart one,” the robber snorts, becoming more confident as he finds nothing on either of them that identifies them as anything other than civilians. “Should have stayed in the bathroom.”
“I’m thinking so,” Shige replies, as the two of them get shoved into the main floor to join the other hostages.
Yuto tries to keep from shaking too hard, until he realizes that it’s helping him blend in really well.
~~~~~
Thirty minutes later, as the two of them sit crouched on the floor with their arms over their heads with ten other terrified and sobbing hostages, Shige chances a look up and makes eye contact with the camera in the corner.
None of the robbers notice; they still think their scrambler is working.
Ten minutes later, Shige gets a little bolder and starts to make a few gestures with his hands at the camera.
Yuto blinks and turns his head sideways to watch because he can’t help it.
“Look away,” Shige murmurs under his breath quickly. “Straight ahead, Nakajima. Straight ahead.”
Yuto hastily turns his head forward. “Sorry,” he whispers.
“The key,” Shige begins after a moment of silence, when he confirms that none of the robbers have noticed them, “is not drawing attention to yourself.”
Yuto nods. “O-okay.”
“We’re background guys,” Shige says. “Our job isn’t to get noticed, it’s to blend in."
A few minutes later, Shige doesn’t look up at the camera at all when he starts to move his hands in a series of gestures that must mean something, though Yuto isn’t sure what. They’re never anything he’d ever learned in the academy.
When he stops he glances up and the camera suddenly pivots on its horizontal axis ever so slightly, a small, left to right motion. Once. Twice.
“Okay,” Shige whispers, and then shifts, hissing a little more loudly now to get the attention of the other hostages. “Don’t move, don’t say anything, don’t look at me,” he tells them first. “We’re here to help.”
He gets a few odd looks anyway, and one hysterical woman moves on instinct, earning a look from one of the robbers, who is behind them, leaning on the counter. “Oi,” he starts, glaring, “what’s going on over there?”
“We’re praying,” Shige replies instantly, before the woman can say anything. “Is that okay?”
A scoff. “Pray all you like.”
Shige nods. “Thank you.”
“Two minutes,” he continues, under his breath, to the circle of civilians. “The lights are going to get cut off and there’s going to be gunfire in two minutes. When it happens, don’t move. Don’t move. Don’t nod or move your heads, but everyone look at me with your eyes to tell me you understand.”
Everyone looks at him, including Yuto; he can’t help it.
Shige’s right, he thinks; this isn’t very glamorous, it’s terrifying and dangerous and chances are when it’s all over, it won’t seem like a very big deal at all. Getting captured on purpose in order to act as crowd control isn’t something that will ever look amazing on a paper report, even though the rate of Yuto’s heart right now would suggest otherwise of the situation.
“Stay with me,” he hears Shige say soothingly to the hostages, “one more minute.”
“One minute,” Yuto agrees.
They stay silent.
“What, done praying already?” the robber by the counter cackles, hefting his gun as he eyes them. “You ain’t gonna sing us any hymns or pass around a collection plate?”
“Ten seconds,” Shige stresses, when some of the hostages start a fresh wave of sobbing when they see the gun. “Breathe slowly. Seven seconds.”
“Aw, you big babies,” the gunman snorts, when the sobbing begins anew. “You make me feel like a bully.”
“Two,” Shige mouths.
“One.”
The lights go off.
There are three small crashes, three thuds, the sound of bodies dropping.
A pause.
“Fuck!” the robber by the counter curses, clearly injured. “You fucking feds! I’m going to blow this entire city block sky high!”
There’s the sound of rustling; Shige can see in his mind’s eye as the worst of what they expected comes to light. There’s a detonator somewhere on the robber and that means there are bombs somewhere too; they could all die at any second.
The sound of a button being pressed.
Shige holds his breath.
And…
…nothing.
Shige smiles a little, thinks to himself he’ll buy Koyama dinner later. “C’mon, Nishikido,” he murmurs, jaw tight. “Your turn now.”
And then, right on cue, there’s one more crash, one more thud.
And then the lights go on again.
Shige sighs in relief and stands, as the injured screams of the three robbers start to fill the room, Ryo’s bullets not fatal, but painful enough to feel like it.
The senior undercover agent turns to Yuto next, “Stay with them until I clear you,” he instructs, and goes to collect the robbers’ weapons.
Once the weapons are disabled and kicked across the room Shige picks up the phone, the direct line to Yamapi that had been established when this robbery became a hostage situation. “Pi,” he reports, sounding a bit out of breath, “we’re clear.”
He hangs up and turns to Yuto and the hostages as police and SWAT personnel burst in from the doors on every side. “You’re okay now,” he tells them, and grabs Yuto by the shoulder, pulling him out of the way as the hostages are finally, finally rescued.
“What are we…” Yuto starts, looking confused.
“Vent shafts,” Shige says with a bit of a frown. “There’s press all over the place and we can’t let our faces get caught on camera.”
“Oh. Right.”
Shige smiles crookedly. “It’s not always a glamorous job,” he says, “and there’s no such thing as recognition for guys like us.”
Yuto watches the scene unfold as he gets pulled back towards the same office, the same ventilation duct they’d come out of. He sees one of the hysterically sobbing hostages as she clings tightly to a paramedic, crying out her relief and gratitude on his shoulders while he checks her over for injuries.
“But,” Shige finishes, patting his kouhai’s shoulder as they close the door behind them and slip back into the shadows. “It’s still an important job.”
Yuto eyes him and thinks that Shige looks cool standing there as he says that, despite what the other agents sometimes say about him.
The effect is ruined a few minutes later, when Shige rips his pants trying to climb back into the air duct.
~~~~~
7.
Yabu wants to become legendary.
Like his senpai before him, he’s set out to claim his place amongst them in legend as a team leader; he wants to be as strong as TOKIO and as reliable as V6, as persistent as Tackey and Tsubasa, as enduring as KAT-TUN and as dedicated as NEWS.
Even more than that, he wants to be better. He wants to be the ones who create legend number six, who makes legend number six the number one legend people think of when they think of the agency.
It’s the one thing he wants most out of his time here.
But sometimes, he doesn’t know if his team feels the same.
Sometimes he thinks that Chinen and Yamada are concentrating more on being divas while Hikaru perfects his clown act, that Okamoto is never serious enough and Yuto never confident enough. Morimoto and Arioka get lost in the sea of faces while Inoo purposefully doesn’t try to stand out in it and Takaki is the consummate doormat to the whims of his teammates.
It all leaves Yabu no choice but to take complete control, to step in where they fall short and be confident and demanding and strict when they’re not.
But that’s the job of every leader he thinks, to find a way around your team’s weaknesses by constantly being on top of everything. You have to be prepared and observant and efficient to nip any problems in the bud. There’s no room for error.
Like Director Kamenashi, he wants to keep a sharp eye out for whatever might stand in his way.
Right now, as he observes Director Yamashita, he isn’t sure what it is exactly, Administrator Takizawa is trying to teach him.
In the meantime, Yamapi walks the length of the hastily erected operations center, talking quietly on his phone with Takizawa; “Everything’s fine,” Yabu hears the more senior director say into the phone calmly. “Three hours. For the members of my team, something like this won’t take more than three hours.”
Yabu thinks it’s a ridiculous estimate; these kinds of situations are unpredictable and tend to become long and drawn out. There are eighteen hostages inside, soon to be twenty if Yuto and Shige pull through with their crazy part of this plan. There are also-more importantly-a trio of well-armed robbers who have nestled in for what looks to be a long time given that their very first list of demands to Yamashita were for food and water.
A few minutes later, Yamapi nods again and says, “We’ll take care of everything,” without expanding on it much; it’s too vague for Yabu, too non-specific and it makes him itch to do something more concrete, to lay down a precise procedural for the team to follow and take into completion. “We’ll take care of everything” isn’t enough for him, and he can’t begin to imagine why it would be for someone as seasoned and professional as Takizawa.
“Sir,” Yabu starts after Yamapi is off the line, “shouldn’t we check in on the status of your team? It’s been twenty minutes since we split up.”
Yamapi blinks. “Has it?” he says, and looks at his watch too, like he doesn’t believe Yabu. “Eh, it felt like an hour already, ne.”
He smiles at Yabu. “Don’t worry,” he tells the younger agent, “there’s nothing we can do for now but wait.”
But Yabu thinks Director Yamashita is wrong. There are a million things they could be doing now; they could be radioing Koyama or Masuda in the subterranean teams to check on their progress. They could be issuing orders to Tegoshi and the technical team; they could be calling in backup for Nishikido on the roof because only having three snipers ready to go for something of this magnitude is ridiculous. They could be actually preparing the food and water that the robbers demanded be delivered within the next eight hours.
They could be doing something-anything- besides sitting here saying everything is going to work out just because.
“Leader!” Tegoshi chirps from the other side of the van where Yabu thinks he can hear pop music playing.
“Mm?” Yamapi asks, a very official response.
Tegoshi beams, “The police chief on line four, ne. He wants to know how you want crowd control handled.”
Yamapi blinks. “Courteously,” he replies after a moment.
Tegoshi nods. “I’ll tell him!”
He goes back onto the line, and Yamapi, unbelievably, sits back again, looking thoughtful.
Yabu stares. “Courteously?” he echoes, because he can’t really help it.
Yamapi looks at him. “Well, it’s not nice if police officers are rude to the people we have to protect, ne.”
Yabu supposes that makes sense. In (yet another) really vague way. He sighs and starts to wish they’d been given co-authority on this; he’s not sure he’s comfortable with his team providing backup for such a badly run operation.
In the meantime, the hotline directly connected to the bank’s phones rings. Yabu jumps at the noise while Yamapi gets up, stretches, and ambles over to it. He picks up. “Hello?”
“How is our first set of demands coming along, Mister Secret-Agent?” the lead robber asks. “You do realize that for every ten minutes it’s overdue you’ll have one less hostage to save.”
Yamapi doesn’t react. “We have until,” he checks his watch, “nine o’clock, right?”
“Right.”
“It’s going to take some time,” Yamapi says coolly, “there’s a lot of traffic block ups and irritated citizens to work around, ne. I mean, did you see the crowd outside?”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way within the given timeframe,” is the only reply, followed by a click.
Yabu is eagerly at Yamapi’s side. “Should I call in the order for the food and water?”
Yamapi’s brow furrows. “It will inconvenience a lot of people if you do, won’t it?”
Yabu blinks and wonders if Director Yamashita understands that if they don’t do it, and this whole thing drags on, people won ‘t just be inconvenienced, they’ll die. “What do you mean inconvenience?” he asks instead, politely.
“Because we’ll be done in less than three hours,” Yamapi says again, vaguely, “to do that would put people on a task that isn’t necessary for the mission objective, won’t it?”
Yabu sighs. “Yes, sir.”
Yamapi smiles reassuringly. “Don’t worry, ne,” he says. “Both of our teams are very good, right?”
Yabu thinks that isn’t the point.
And Yamapi looks at him like he can read every thought in his head. “Believe,” is what he says after a moment, simply.
“Believe!” Tegoshi’s voice echoes from the other side of the van, and the two older agents point at each other and laugh a little, despite the tense situation, despite the fact that anything and everything could go wrong for them at any second.
Then Tegoshi goes back to his pop music, Yamapi goes back to his chair, and they wait.
Yabu sits beside Director Yamashita and thinks of the millions of things that could ruin everything.
~~~~~
“Being the Leader is the easiest and hardest job in this line of work,” Takizawa had told him when he’d been picked as HSJUMP’s director.
Yabu hadn’t understood what Takizawa had meant when he’d said that but didn’t want to look bad in his superior’s eyes so he hadn’t asked for any elaboration.
He thinks he gets the easy part now though, because Director Yamashita is currently sitting in his chair staring at the ceiling and humming commercial jingles to himself.
It’s been exactly two hours and fifty minutes.
Yabu isn’t sure he can stand it anymore.
He stands. “Sir,” he says, sounding more clipped than he’d intended to when he does, “is there anything I can do while we wait?”
Yamapi looks at him, stopping mid-jingle. “Is something wrong, Yabu-kun?” he asks.
Yabu sighs. “I just…I don’t like sitting around feeling like I’m not contributing. I need to do something.”
Yamapi’s brow furrows.
“Not that I’m insinuating that you’re not…” Yabu starts hastily. “I mean…”
Yamapi chuckles a little. “That,” he says, “is the hardest part about this job, don’t you think?”
Yabu blinks. “Excuse me?”
“The waiting. Not being able to do anything. I used to worry about it lots, ne.”
Yabu isn’t sure where this is going, but everything he knows about Director Yamashita currently tells him random swings in topic aren’t out of the ordinary. “Sir?”
“Our job,” he starts, “is weird. Because we start out with all the responsibility. Everything is on us when we get a mission or an assignment or called out on an emergency response. From the start we plan and we instruct and we order, but after that, after everyone’s doing what you told them to do, from there on out it’s up to them and not us anymore. All that responsibility we had suddenly belongs to everyone else.”
Yabu wants to disagree, because to him a leader never stops leading, not for a moment.
But something holds him back; maybe it’s the fact that the person in front of him is still, despite everything he’s seen today, his dai senpai.
“It’s hard, right?” Yamapi asks. “Worrying about them.”
Yabu nods. “But what else are we supposed to do?”
Yamapi smiles gently. “The best thing a leader can do is not worry,” he replies, simply.
“I don’t think…”
“Believe,” Yamapi echoes, just like earlier, just as vague and unsatisfactory to the younger director.
“But that doesn’t mean anything,” he retorts automatically.
Yamapi shrugs. “Maybe not yet, because you’re still new and your team is still new and maybe you don’t understand each other yet. We were like that too, ne. A lot of teams are like that at first.”
Yabu isn’t sure he can follow what Director Yamashita is getting at; there’s no set path in his argument, no logic.
“I don’t understand what you mean when you just say believe, sir,” Yabu tells him, frustrated edges on all of his words. “I don’t understand how that helps.”
Yamapi looks at his watch. “It’s almost been three hours, ne.”
“Sir,” Yabu says, and it sounds almost like a whine. “Please explain to me what you’re thinking.”
Yamapi winks and stands, heading over to the other side of the trailer, where Tegoshi looks up and smiles when he arrives. Yabu follows.
“Update?” Yamapi asks, and gets offered candy from Tegoshi as he does. He takes a few and pops them into his mouth.
“Shige and Yuto-kun are there now, I’m just waiting for Shige’s signal.”
Yamapi nods. “Okay.”
A few minutes later, Shige starts signaling the camera.
“He says they’re clear and they’ve been clear. The hostages that must be locked in the vault are isolated; they’ll be fine if we get to them quickly. He’s worried that the security is lax though, which means he thinks there are bombs too, just like Leader did, ne.”
Yamapi’s brow furrows. “Koyama and Massu?”
“I just got Massu’s report; they’ve made it to the basement and Kei-chan says that each explosive they found had less power the closer they got to the bank; he suspects that they ran out of it as they went or they didn’t want to risk killing themselves with the bombs so much as the police officers and agents around them, ne. He believes we’ve got an all clear.”
Yamapi nods. “Ryo-chan?”
“Leveled up twice,” Tegoshi replies mysteriously.
Yamapi laughs. “Okay.” He checks his watch. “Tell Shige two minutes.”
“Hai!”
Tegoshi moves the camera twice; on the screen, Shige gets it. After that, Tegoshi moves three more of the cameras, so that one of each of the robbers is in front of him. Preparing.
“What is going on?” Yabu demands eventually, after everyone goes silent again. “There’s not enough communication!”
“One minute,” Yamapi says, before looking over his shoulder and mouthing “Believe” to his young kouhai again.
Sixty seconds later, the lights inside the bank go off.
The night vision on the cameras turns on.
A second later, Nishikido’s voice comes in on the channel. “Well?” he asks.
Tegoshi doesn’t miss a beat. “Ryo-tan, we finally found where they locked up the hostages and everyone inside is prepared! You’re clear to go, ne.”
They can practically hear Ryo’s smile through the radio. “Great.”
A moment.
Then, “Gimme a light, Tego-nyan.”
“Hai!” Tegoshi sing-songs. “We’ve got one 180cm bruiser twelve yards from the file cabinet. Three yards in front of the desk.”
A slight pause.
“Next,” Ryo confirms, sounding exasperated. Tegoshi laughs a little.
“Second robber five yards from the front door, about 165cm but crouched.”
“Got it.”
“And the last is smack dab in the middle of the third window and the fourth window from the left; leaning against the bank counter; roughly 177cm tall, leaning backwards slightly. You’ll have to go through the wall.”
“Got it.”
The confirmation is swiftly followed by three shots. Two shots hit the robbers in the stomachs. One doesn’t.
Tegoshi goes back to his monitors.
“Hit, hit and a wound to the right arm. The last one dove to cover after the first shot, Ryo-tan,” he reports quickly, and sees it when the robber reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out what is very clearly a detonator. He stays calm, believes what Koyama told them.
“Damn,” Ryo says. “Okay next.”
“He’s crawling around a foot below the countertop yelling something, two feet back.”
The robber hits the detonator on screen and Tegoshi holds his breath for a moment, but only one.
Nothing happens except that a bullet crashes through the wall and hits the last robber in the stomach.
“Incapacitating hit, Ryo-tan!” Tegoshi chirps sweetly. “Sasuga, ne.”
“Yeah, well I’m amazing,” Ryo replies automatically. “Over and out.”
Tegoshi flips off the channel and everyone inside the trailer watches on screen as Massu and team burst out from the north hallway and Koyama’s team bursts through the south hallway, as Shige and Yuto slip back into the shadows and the local police and paramedics flood the building.
“Tegoshi,” Yamapi gently reminds his computer specialist. “The vault people, ne.”
“Oh yeah,” Tegoshi laughs, and punches a few numbers into his laptop as he radios Koyama. “Kei-chan, if you and the others could head through the door to your left and down the hallway, the fifth door on your right will have some people in need of help, ne.”
“Roger!” Koyama agrees quickly, and is off.
Meanwhile, on the top middle screen, a secret door slides open and a vault electronically unlocks itself. Eight disheveled people stumble out into the waiting arms of agents Koyama, Yaotome, and Takaki.
“Tegoshi,” Yamapi says next, after the final problem is dealt with, “put me on the team channel.”
“Hai!” Tegoshi flips a switch.
“Good work, everyone,” Yamapi says simply, though judging by the NEWS members' faces on the monitors, it might be all he needs to say. “We’ll see you back at headquarters.” Pause. “After Massu’s team showers, ne.”
And then black.
~~~~~
“Three hours,” Yabu breathes in disbelief sometime later, as they’re riding back to the agency. “How did you know?”
Yamapi loosens his tie and relaxes his shoulders for the first time all day. “I believed,” he says simply.
Yabu is too exhausted to be patient anymore. “Sir,” he replies, and gives Yamapi a look.
Yamapi chuckles. “I believed in the abilities of my team,” he clarifies. “I trusted them to do their jobs.”
Yabu gapes. “That’s it?”
Yamapi smiles. “That’s everything,” he corrects.
They ride back together in silence after that, and as Yabu looks down at the hands in his lap, and the file folder he has there with all of his team members’ profiles, he realizes that maybe he has a little rethinking to do about what it means to take to lead.
~~~~~
8.
“Today,” Administrator Takizawa starts, some weeks later, “the Homicide Squad Japan: United Metro Police will officially be recognized as a permanent, senior unit within the agency.” Pause, smile. “I would launch into a long speech about what that means for all of you as individuals and as a team, or a speech about your duties and our expectations for you all, but I think,” he says, with a look sideways to where NEWS is seated during the ceremony, “that the ten of you already know exactly what you’re getting into. And what we expect from you from here on out.”
“Yes sir!” the young agents say.
Tackey laughs a little. “Well then. Good luck, work hard, and I look forward to seeing what you all will bring to the table.” Then, he holds up a folder. “Today, you officially graduate from junior agent status. You’re playing with the big kids now.”
He tosses the folder to Yabu. “This is your first solo mission. Have some of the cake Koyama-kun brought for you and then get to work.”
He waits for it then, the looks of horror or the looks of uncertainty, for something that will give him any room to doubt, that will have to make him turn to Yamapi and ask NEWS for another assist.
“We’ll do our best!” Yabu says, and stands holding the file in both hands.
The rest of his team stands too, right on his heels.
“We’ll do our best!” they echo, and stand together-really together- for perhaps, the first time since their formation.
Tackey nods when they do, satisfied with that, with the determined looks on their faces and the eagerness with which they look back at him.
He glances sideways again, at an approving NEWS, and thinks that there is nothing more motivating in this world than knowing someone else is counting on you.
He thinks for the first time in a long time, that this unit is one that will do great things one day, that they’ll be able to stand up beside their senpai successfully because they’ve been given all the tools they’ll need for a good start.
Tackey leaves the ceremony and believes that one day HSJUMP will bring the agency their long-awaited number six.
He thinks that it’s about damned time.
END
(Part One)
Probably still typos. Lemme know.
Universe: JE ( Government AU)
Theme/Topic: NewS as senpai their kouhai look up to.
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: HSJ, NEWS, Tackey, Tsubasa
Warnings/Spoilers: OOC, stupidity.
Word Count: 10,756
Summary: Six separate stories come together in the pursuit of one happy ending. Ten rookies each learn something very important.
Dedication: Written for seca’s (very, very late) b-day request! Sorry I don’t know HSJ that well, but mousapelli helped give me some cliff’s notes and some betaing, so hopefully what I wrote is an okay facsimile of the group you know. Also thanks to crystallekil for taking a look at this for me as well.
A/N: The title of this pretty much references “We are Legends,” but not so much that reading it is absolutely necessary (though recommended?). And I think I’ve learned my lesson. NO MORE HSJ. NEVER AGAIN.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
5.
There are fifteen screens in front of them, all with various situations (full of nothing) playing out on each of them. There are also seven radio channels to monitor and a security system to hack, recording devices collecting evidence, and a slew of technical and audio interference due to the presence of multiple helicopters, television vans, police radios, and in addition to that, interference from the efforts of the robbers themselves.
Tegoshi sits at the center of it all, playing pop music in the background and bobbing his head to the beat.
Chinen huffs. “We’re like glorified secretaries. What are we waiting for?”
Tegoshi smiles and patches another line through to headquarters at Yamapi’s request. “We’re waiting for Shige, ne,” Tegoshi tells him simply, and offers Chinen and Morimoto candy from his pocket. Clearly he is very excited about getting to be their senpai today.
The two younger agents eye the candy disinterestedly.
“I can cause a blackout and our guys can storm in there right now,” Chinen pouts. “Every minute we wait someone could die.”
Tegoshi cocks his head to the side thoughtfully. “Eh, that’s true sometimes,” he says. “But it’s not true all the time.”
He smiles.
Chinen groans.
“Ryutarou-kun,” Tegoshi asks after a second, “how are those scrambled signals coming?”
The young HSJ agent coughs and quickly averts his eyes from the brilliance of Tegoshi’s smile. “I’m…it’s slow?”
Tegoshi nods. “Sorry to make you do it, it’s my least favorite job,” he says airily. Chinen thinks that just figures; it’s one of the more tedious jobs, and honestly, not something he thinks is necessary right now. The robbers put a scrambling device into the bank’s central security system when they broke in and for a while no one could see anything but snow when they were trying to tap the cameras; unbeknownst to the culprits Tegoshi managed to disable the scrambler remotely, but there are still twenty minutes of fuzzy footage that have to be descrambled and put back together, which is currently Morimoto’s task despite the whole effort being of very low priority right at the moment.
The hostages are still inside and the robbers are making demands and Tegoshi-senpai is telling them to clean up shaky video footage that, at best, will be used as video evidence for the case in court. Months from now.
Chinen is unimpressed; he wants some sort proof that sitting before him is the agency’s most highly ranked computer specialist. The guy he always gets compared to.
In the meantime, Tegoshi types absently at his laptop and eats candy. He looks like a college student surfing the internet when he’s supposed to be writing that ten page paper that’s due in two hours. That he hasn’t started on yet.
In the background, Yamapi blabs into the phone while Yabu stands beside him taking detailed notes and asking kiss-ass questions.
Chinen continues to be bored, and imagines himself usurping Tegoshi’s number one standing in a matter of months and looking good while doing it.
“Um,” Ryutarou pipes up eventually, “I think I got it!”
“Yay, that’s great!” Tegoshi enthuses, and offers the candy again. Ryutarou sighs and takes a piece.
Tegoshi patches the repaired footage into a sixteenth monitor on his display and starts to go through it. Right then and there.
“What are you doing?” Chinen asks.
But Tegoshi is too engrossed in the new footage. “Ah!” he exclaims, when he finds what he was looking for. He points to the monitor. “In the twenty minutes while the signal was being scrambled before I could deactivate the scrambler, half of the hostages disappeared from the floor, ne. We can only assume they got holed up somewhere else as insurance for the robbers to use to get away. While Ryutarou-kun was descrambling I managed to get a complete blueprint of the building from the bank officials.”
“We already had that,” Chinen snorts.
“We had the public one,” Tegoshi replies, unfazed. “This is a private bank, ne, and after the hostages disappeared suddenly and I couldn’t find them anywhere I suspected that the owners might have had secret vaults installed throughout the structure, since rich people do weird things like that. I was right, there are eight of them. Then I figured the robbers must have had some inside information to know that so in the meantime, I hacked the bank’s main records system and ran a scan of the robbers’ snapshots from the security cameras with all bank employees from the last twenty years. I got the match a little while ago; bank robber number three right there,” he pauses to tap screen ten, “used to be a security guard here, so I figured he would know the locations of the secret vaults just from being around. After I got that confirmation I went ahead and hacked the managers’ and owners’ private computers remotely and found the electronic combinations for each of those vaults, then hacked the special security system that opens and closes them. I needed the unscrambled footage from earlier to confirm which of the vaults any of the hostages might have been hidden in so that I can report to Ryo-tan on the roof when the targets are clear enough of that area that we can move in without getting anyone killed. In the meantime, I’m waiting for visual confirmation from Shige and Yuto-kun about the hostages still on the floor. They’ll warn them about our actions ahead of time so it doesn’t turn into a fiasco when we cut the power and storm the building like Chinen-kun wanted to earlier.”
Silence.
Tegoshi beams at Ryutarou. “You’re really a great help!”
Morimoto blushes while Tegoshi hits the "next" button on his iTunes. “And that’s pretty much what I do, ne,” he says to them, leaning back in his chair and absently balancing a pencil on the tip of one finger. He looks just as idle as he’d seemed for the last two hours, though when Chinen finally moves to look more closely, he notices how Tegoshi’s eyes constantly dart from monitor to monitor as the pencil balances on his fingertips, a thousand bytes of information flashing past him and being processed with every glance. “Even though I’m not as strong or fast as the others, and even though I have to sit and wait a lot for things to happen while they do the inside work without me, sometimes watching is the most important thing of all,” Tegoshi poses thoughtfully, when he catches Chinen’s eyes on him. He smiles. “Don’t you think?”
A moment.
Chinen sighs, while Morimoto turns redder, to the very tips of his ears.
“Okay, I get it,” Chinen acquiesces eventually, and reaches out to snatch a piece of Tegoshi’s candy.
He pops it into his mouth grudgingly, but tells himself that no matter how proficient at his job Tegoshi is, he still likes Director Ohno more.
~~~~~
6.
“This isn’t going to be very fun,” Shige warns his charge for the day carefully, as they crawl through the bank’s air duct system. “We’ll probably get punched or something.”
Yuto flounders a little when his shirt gets caught in one of the vent grates. “I-is it ever fun?” he asks, and looks apologetic when Shige stops and helps him disentangle himself.
“Okay, not really,” Shige acquiesces. “Not until afterwards, when things go well.”
Yuto nods. “Oh.”
“Anyway, keep moving; the others are probably waiting for us by now.”
Yuto blinks. “Already?” He glances at his watch. “It’s barely been two hours.”
Shige sighs, long-suffering. “Tegoshi doesn’t have any patience when he’s stuck in the operation center; he’s probably already identified the perpetrators, their telling habits, and how to arrest and/or shoot them. Yamapi’s probably already agreed with him.”
“Wow.”
Shige snorts, but seems kind of proud anyway. “Yeah. So now it’s our turn.”
“Oh.” Yuto nods, wide-eyed.
A moment.
And then Shige clears his throat politely, urging Yuto forward. “Around this next corner, we’ll be able to fall through into the target office there. The trick after that is getting caught without getting…well, shot.”
Yuto cringes, while Shige leads the way to their destination and pushes the grating over the office they’re dropping down into. “H-how is it?” Yuto asks.
“Clear,” Shige tells him.
“No, I mean…getting shot.”
Shige blinks. “Of course it’s horribly painful. What else would it be?” he asks, flatly.
Yuto wipes sweat from his brow and offers an embarrassed smile. “I guess so, huh.”
Shige sighs when he sees the terrified look on the younger agent’s face as he’s stepping down onto the desk in the office. He raises his arms to help Yuto down. “Don’t worry,” he manages after a beat, “if anyone is going to get shot here it’s probably me.”
Yuto’s eye’s widen. “What? Why?”
“Because,” Shige drawls, “you don’t look like much of a threat at all.”
The younger agent isn’t sure if Agent Kato is trying to comfort him or scare him even worse; Shige’s face gives nothing away as he opens the office door and peeks out into the hallway. “Okay, clear,” he says. “Let’s go.”
Yuto swallows and follows him out the door.
~~~~~
Five minutes later, the two of them find themselves held at gunpoint, just as planned. Apparently Agent Kato has that kind of luck when it comes to these types of things.
“Who the hell are you?” the angry, clearly agitated robber demands, when he stumbles across the duo on one of his patrols.
“We were in the bathroom,” Shige replies, hands up over his head and affecting an appropriately terrified expression.
Yuto doesn’t have to act terrified when the nozzle of an automatic rifle is pointed right at his face like it is. Shige inches forward slightly, between the gun and his kouhai. “What is this?” he demands, and draws the attention to himself with just the right touch of frantic in his voice.
Seconds later they get pressed up against the wall and patted down gruffly. “I suppose this is a robbery,” Shige muses aloud, and yelps a little when a hand jostles him below the belt.
“You’re a smart one,” the robber snorts, becoming more confident as he finds nothing on either of them that identifies them as anything other than civilians. “Should have stayed in the bathroom.”
“I’m thinking so,” Shige replies, as the two of them get shoved into the main floor to join the other hostages.
Yuto tries to keep from shaking too hard, until he realizes that it’s helping him blend in really well.
~~~~~
Thirty minutes later, as the two of them sit crouched on the floor with their arms over their heads with ten other terrified and sobbing hostages, Shige chances a look up and makes eye contact with the camera in the corner.
None of the robbers notice; they still think their scrambler is working.
Ten minutes later, Shige gets a little bolder and starts to make a few gestures with his hands at the camera.
Yuto blinks and turns his head sideways to watch because he can’t help it.
“Look away,” Shige murmurs under his breath quickly. “Straight ahead, Nakajima. Straight ahead.”
Yuto hastily turns his head forward. “Sorry,” he whispers.
“The key,” Shige begins after a moment of silence, when he confirms that none of the robbers have noticed them, “is not drawing attention to yourself.”
Yuto nods. “O-okay.”
“We’re background guys,” Shige says. “Our job isn’t to get noticed, it’s to blend in."
A few minutes later, Shige doesn’t look up at the camera at all when he starts to move his hands in a series of gestures that must mean something, though Yuto isn’t sure what. They’re never anything he’d ever learned in the academy.
When he stops he glances up and the camera suddenly pivots on its horizontal axis ever so slightly, a small, left to right motion. Once. Twice.
“Okay,” Shige whispers, and then shifts, hissing a little more loudly now to get the attention of the other hostages. “Don’t move, don’t say anything, don’t look at me,” he tells them first. “We’re here to help.”
He gets a few odd looks anyway, and one hysterical woman moves on instinct, earning a look from one of the robbers, who is behind them, leaning on the counter. “Oi,” he starts, glaring, “what’s going on over there?”
“We’re praying,” Shige replies instantly, before the woman can say anything. “Is that okay?”
A scoff. “Pray all you like.”
Shige nods. “Thank you.”
“Two minutes,” he continues, under his breath, to the circle of civilians. “The lights are going to get cut off and there’s going to be gunfire in two minutes. When it happens, don’t move. Don’t move. Don’t nod or move your heads, but everyone look at me with your eyes to tell me you understand.”
Everyone looks at him, including Yuto; he can’t help it.
Shige’s right, he thinks; this isn’t very glamorous, it’s terrifying and dangerous and chances are when it’s all over, it won’t seem like a very big deal at all. Getting captured on purpose in order to act as crowd control isn’t something that will ever look amazing on a paper report, even though the rate of Yuto’s heart right now would suggest otherwise of the situation.
“Stay with me,” he hears Shige say soothingly to the hostages, “one more minute.”
“One minute,” Yuto agrees.
They stay silent.
“What, done praying already?” the robber by the counter cackles, hefting his gun as he eyes them. “You ain’t gonna sing us any hymns or pass around a collection plate?”
“Ten seconds,” Shige stresses, when some of the hostages start a fresh wave of sobbing when they see the gun. “Breathe slowly. Seven seconds.”
“Aw, you big babies,” the gunman snorts, when the sobbing begins anew. “You make me feel like a bully.”
“Two,” Shige mouths.
“One.”
The lights go off.
There are three small crashes, three thuds, the sound of bodies dropping.
A pause.
“Fuck!” the robber by the counter curses, clearly injured. “You fucking feds! I’m going to blow this entire city block sky high!”
There’s the sound of rustling; Shige can see in his mind’s eye as the worst of what they expected comes to light. There’s a detonator somewhere on the robber and that means there are bombs somewhere too; they could all die at any second.
The sound of a button being pressed.
Shige holds his breath.
And…
…nothing.
Shige smiles a little, thinks to himself he’ll buy Koyama dinner later. “C’mon, Nishikido,” he murmurs, jaw tight. “Your turn now.”
And then, right on cue, there’s one more crash, one more thud.
And then the lights go on again.
Shige sighs in relief and stands, as the injured screams of the three robbers start to fill the room, Ryo’s bullets not fatal, but painful enough to feel like it.
The senior undercover agent turns to Yuto next, “Stay with them until I clear you,” he instructs, and goes to collect the robbers’ weapons.
Once the weapons are disabled and kicked across the room Shige picks up the phone, the direct line to Yamapi that had been established when this robbery became a hostage situation. “Pi,” he reports, sounding a bit out of breath, “we’re clear.”
He hangs up and turns to Yuto and the hostages as police and SWAT personnel burst in from the doors on every side. “You’re okay now,” he tells them, and grabs Yuto by the shoulder, pulling him out of the way as the hostages are finally, finally rescued.
“What are we…” Yuto starts, looking confused.
“Vent shafts,” Shige says with a bit of a frown. “There’s press all over the place and we can’t let our faces get caught on camera.”
“Oh. Right.”
Shige smiles crookedly. “It’s not always a glamorous job,” he says, “and there’s no such thing as recognition for guys like us.”
Yuto watches the scene unfold as he gets pulled back towards the same office, the same ventilation duct they’d come out of. He sees one of the hysterically sobbing hostages as she clings tightly to a paramedic, crying out her relief and gratitude on his shoulders while he checks her over for injuries.
“But,” Shige finishes, patting his kouhai’s shoulder as they close the door behind them and slip back into the shadows. “It’s still an important job.”
Yuto eyes him and thinks that Shige looks cool standing there as he says that, despite what the other agents sometimes say about him.
The effect is ruined a few minutes later, when Shige rips his pants trying to climb back into the air duct.
~~~~~
7.
Yabu wants to become legendary.
Like his senpai before him, he’s set out to claim his place amongst them in legend as a team leader; he wants to be as strong as TOKIO and as reliable as V6, as persistent as Tackey and Tsubasa, as enduring as KAT-TUN and as dedicated as NEWS.
Even more than that, he wants to be better. He wants to be the ones who create legend number six, who makes legend number six the number one legend people think of when they think of the agency.
It’s the one thing he wants most out of his time here.
But sometimes, he doesn’t know if his team feels the same.
Sometimes he thinks that Chinen and Yamada are concentrating more on being divas while Hikaru perfects his clown act, that Okamoto is never serious enough and Yuto never confident enough. Morimoto and Arioka get lost in the sea of faces while Inoo purposefully doesn’t try to stand out in it and Takaki is the consummate doormat to the whims of his teammates.
It all leaves Yabu no choice but to take complete control, to step in where they fall short and be confident and demanding and strict when they’re not.
But that’s the job of every leader he thinks, to find a way around your team’s weaknesses by constantly being on top of everything. You have to be prepared and observant and efficient to nip any problems in the bud. There’s no room for error.
Like Director Kamenashi, he wants to keep a sharp eye out for whatever might stand in his way.
Right now, as he observes Director Yamashita, he isn’t sure what it is exactly, Administrator Takizawa is trying to teach him.
In the meantime, Yamapi walks the length of the hastily erected operations center, talking quietly on his phone with Takizawa; “Everything’s fine,” Yabu hears the more senior director say into the phone calmly. “Three hours. For the members of my team, something like this won’t take more than three hours.”
Yabu thinks it’s a ridiculous estimate; these kinds of situations are unpredictable and tend to become long and drawn out. There are eighteen hostages inside, soon to be twenty if Yuto and Shige pull through with their crazy part of this plan. There are also-more importantly-a trio of well-armed robbers who have nestled in for what looks to be a long time given that their very first list of demands to Yamashita were for food and water.
A few minutes later, Yamapi nods again and says, “We’ll take care of everything,” without expanding on it much; it’s too vague for Yabu, too non-specific and it makes him itch to do something more concrete, to lay down a precise procedural for the team to follow and take into completion. “We’ll take care of everything” isn’t enough for him, and he can’t begin to imagine why it would be for someone as seasoned and professional as Takizawa.
“Sir,” Yabu starts after Yamapi is off the line, “shouldn’t we check in on the status of your team? It’s been twenty minutes since we split up.”
Yamapi blinks. “Has it?” he says, and looks at his watch too, like he doesn’t believe Yabu. “Eh, it felt like an hour already, ne.”
He smiles at Yabu. “Don’t worry,” he tells the younger agent, “there’s nothing we can do for now but wait.”
But Yabu thinks Director Yamashita is wrong. There are a million things they could be doing now; they could be radioing Koyama or Masuda in the subterranean teams to check on their progress. They could be issuing orders to Tegoshi and the technical team; they could be calling in backup for Nishikido on the roof because only having three snipers ready to go for something of this magnitude is ridiculous. They could be actually preparing the food and water that the robbers demanded be delivered within the next eight hours.
They could be doing something-anything- besides sitting here saying everything is going to work out just because.
“Leader!” Tegoshi chirps from the other side of the van where Yabu thinks he can hear pop music playing.
“Mm?” Yamapi asks, a very official response.
Tegoshi beams, “The police chief on line four, ne. He wants to know how you want crowd control handled.”
Yamapi blinks. “Courteously,” he replies after a moment.
Tegoshi nods. “I’ll tell him!”
He goes back onto the line, and Yamapi, unbelievably, sits back again, looking thoughtful.
Yabu stares. “Courteously?” he echoes, because he can’t really help it.
Yamapi looks at him. “Well, it’s not nice if police officers are rude to the people we have to protect, ne.”
Yabu supposes that makes sense. In (yet another) really vague way. He sighs and starts to wish they’d been given co-authority on this; he’s not sure he’s comfortable with his team providing backup for such a badly run operation.
In the meantime, the hotline directly connected to the bank’s phones rings. Yabu jumps at the noise while Yamapi gets up, stretches, and ambles over to it. He picks up. “Hello?”
“How is our first set of demands coming along, Mister Secret-Agent?” the lead robber asks. “You do realize that for every ten minutes it’s overdue you’ll have one less hostage to save.”
Yamapi doesn’t react. “We have until,” he checks his watch, “nine o’clock, right?”
“Right.”
“It’s going to take some time,” Yamapi says coolly, “there’s a lot of traffic block ups and irritated citizens to work around, ne. I mean, did you see the crowd outside?”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way within the given timeframe,” is the only reply, followed by a click.
Yabu is eagerly at Yamapi’s side. “Should I call in the order for the food and water?”
Yamapi’s brow furrows. “It will inconvenience a lot of people if you do, won’t it?”
Yabu blinks and wonders if Director Yamashita understands that if they don’t do it, and this whole thing drags on, people won ‘t just be inconvenienced, they’ll die. “What do you mean inconvenience?” he asks instead, politely.
“Because we’ll be done in less than three hours,” Yamapi says again, vaguely, “to do that would put people on a task that isn’t necessary for the mission objective, won’t it?”
Yabu sighs. “Yes, sir.”
Yamapi smiles reassuringly. “Don’t worry, ne,” he says. “Both of our teams are very good, right?”
Yabu thinks that isn’t the point.
And Yamapi looks at him like he can read every thought in his head. “Believe,” is what he says after a moment, simply.
“Believe!” Tegoshi’s voice echoes from the other side of the van, and the two older agents point at each other and laugh a little, despite the tense situation, despite the fact that anything and everything could go wrong for them at any second.
Then Tegoshi goes back to his pop music, Yamapi goes back to his chair, and they wait.
Yabu sits beside Director Yamashita and thinks of the millions of things that could ruin everything.
~~~~~
“Being the Leader is the easiest and hardest job in this line of work,” Takizawa had told him when he’d been picked as HSJUMP’s director.
Yabu hadn’t understood what Takizawa had meant when he’d said that but didn’t want to look bad in his superior’s eyes so he hadn’t asked for any elaboration.
He thinks he gets the easy part now though, because Director Yamashita is currently sitting in his chair staring at the ceiling and humming commercial jingles to himself.
It’s been exactly two hours and fifty minutes.
Yabu isn’t sure he can stand it anymore.
He stands. “Sir,” he says, sounding more clipped than he’d intended to when he does, “is there anything I can do while we wait?”
Yamapi looks at him, stopping mid-jingle. “Is something wrong, Yabu-kun?” he asks.
Yabu sighs. “I just…I don’t like sitting around feeling like I’m not contributing. I need to do something.”
Yamapi’s brow furrows.
“Not that I’m insinuating that you’re not…” Yabu starts hastily. “I mean…”
Yamapi chuckles a little. “That,” he says, “is the hardest part about this job, don’t you think?”
Yabu blinks. “Excuse me?”
“The waiting. Not being able to do anything. I used to worry about it lots, ne.”
Yabu isn’t sure where this is going, but everything he knows about Director Yamashita currently tells him random swings in topic aren’t out of the ordinary. “Sir?”
“Our job,” he starts, “is weird. Because we start out with all the responsibility. Everything is on us when we get a mission or an assignment or called out on an emergency response. From the start we plan and we instruct and we order, but after that, after everyone’s doing what you told them to do, from there on out it’s up to them and not us anymore. All that responsibility we had suddenly belongs to everyone else.”
Yabu wants to disagree, because to him a leader never stops leading, not for a moment.
But something holds him back; maybe it’s the fact that the person in front of him is still, despite everything he’s seen today, his dai senpai.
“It’s hard, right?” Yamapi asks. “Worrying about them.”
Yabu nods. “But what else are we supposed to do?”
Yamapi smiles gently. “The best thing a leader can do is not worry,” he replies, simply.
“I don’t think…”
“Believe,” Yamapi echoes, just like earlier, just as vague and unsatisfactory to the younger director.
“But that doesn’t mean anything,” he retorts automatically.
Yamapi shrugs. “Maybe not yet, because you’re still new and your team is still new and maybe you don’t understand each other yet. We were like that too, ne. A lot of teams are like that at first.”
Yabu isn’t sure he can follow what Director Yamashita is getting at; there’s no set path in his argument, no logic.
“I don’t understand what you mean when you just say believe, sir,” Yabu tells him, frustrated edges on all of his words. “I don’t understand how that helps.”
Yamapi looks at his watch. “It’s almost been three hours, ne.”
“Sir,” Yabu says, and it sounds almost like a whine. “Please explain to me what you’re thinking.”
Yamapi winks and stands, heading over to the other side of the trailer, where Tegoshi looks up and smiles when he arrives. Yabu follows.
“Update?” Yamapi asks, and gets offered candy from Tegoshi as he does. He takes a few and pops them into his mouth.
“Shige and Yuto-kun are there now, I’m just waiting for Shige’s signal.”
Yamapi nods. “Okay.”
A few minutes later, Shige starts signaling the camera.
“He says they’re clear and they’ve been clear. The hostages that must be locked in the vault are isolated; they’ll be fine if we get to them quickly. He’s worried that the security is lax though, which means he thinks there are bombs too, just like Leader did, ne.”
Yamapi’s brow furrows. “Koyama and Massu?”
“I just got Massu’s report; they’ve made it to the basement and Kei-chan says that each explosive they found had less power the closer they got to the bank; he suspects that they ran out of it as they went or they didn’t want to risk killing themselves with the bombs so much as the police officers and agents around them, ne. He believes we’ve got an all clear.”
Yamapi nods. “Ryo-chan?”
“Leveled up twice,” Tegoshi replies mysteriously.
Yamapi laughs. “Okay.” He checks his watch. “Tell Shige two minutes.”
“Hai!”
Tegoshi moves the camera twice; on the screen, Shige gets it. After that, Tegoshi moves three more of the cameras, so that one of each of the robbers is in front of him. Preparing.
“What is going on?” Yabu demands eventually, after everyone goes silent again. “There’s not enough communication!”
“One minute,” Yamapi says, before looking over his shoulder and mouthing “Believe” to his young kouhai again.
Sixty seconds later, the lights inside the bank go off.
The night vision on the cameras turns on.
A second later, Nishikido’s voice comes in on the channel. “Well?” he asks.
Tegoshi doesn’t miss a beat. “Ryo-tan, we finally found where they locked up the hostages and everyone inside is prepared! You’re clear to go, ne.”
They can practically hear Ryo’s smile through the radio. “Great.”
A moment.
Then, “Gimme a light, Tego-nyan.”
“Hai!” Tegoshi sing-songs. “We’ve got one 180cm bruiser twelve yards from the file cabinet. Three yards in front of the desk.”
A slight pause.
“Next,” Ryo confirms, sounding exasperated. Tegoshi laughs a little.
“Second robber five yards from the front door, about 165cm but crouched.”
“Got it.”
“And the last is smack dab in the middle of the third window and the fourth window from the left; leaning against the bank counter; roughly 177cm tall, leaning backwards slightly. You’ll have to go through the wall.”
“Got it.”
The confirmation is swiftly followed by three shots. Two shots hit the robbers in the stomachs. One doesn’t.
Tegoshi goes back to his monitors.
“Hit, hit and a wound to the right arm. The last one dove to cover after the first shot, Ryo-tan,” he reports quickly, and sees it when the robber reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out what is very clearly a detonator. He stays calm, believes what Koyama told them.
“Damn,” Ryo says. “Okay next.”
“He’s crawling around a foot below the countertop yelling something, two feet back.”
The robber hits the detonator on screen and Tegoshi holds his breath for a moment, but only one.
Nothing happens except that a bullet crashes through the wall and hits the last robber in the stomach.
“Incapacitating hit, Ryo-tan!” Tegoshi chirps sweetly. “Sasuga, ne.”
“Yeah, well I’m amazing,” Ryo replies automatically. “Over and out.”
Tegoshi flips off the channel and everyone inside the trailer watches on screen as Massu and team burst out from the north hallway and Koyama’s team bursts through the south hallway, as Shige and Yuto slip back into the shadows and the local police and paramedics flood the building.
“Tegoshi,” Yamapi gently reminds his computer specialist. “The vault people, ne.”
“Oh yeah,” Tegoshi laughs, and punches a few numbers into his laptop as he radios Koyama. “Kei-chan, if you and the others could head through the door to your left and down the hallway, the fifth door on your right will have some people in need of help, ne.”
“Roger!” Koyama agrees quickly, and is off.
Meanwhile, on the top middle screen, a secret door slides open and a vault electronically unlocks itself. Eight disheveled people stumble out into the waiting arms of agents Koyama, Yaotome, and Takaki.
“Tegoshi,” Yamapi says next, after the final problem is dealt with, “put me on the team channel.”
“Hai!” Tegoshi flips a switch.
“Good work, everyone,” Yamapi says simply, though judging by the NEWS members' faces on the monitors, it might be all he needs to say. “We’ll see you back at headquarters.” Pause. “After Massu’s team showers, ne.”
And then black.
~~~~~
“Three hours,” Yabu breathes in disbelief sometime later, as they’re riding back to the agency. “How did you know?”
Yamapi loosens his tie and relaxes his shoulders for the first time all day. “I believed,” he says simply.
Yabu is too exhausted to be patient anymore. “Sir,” he replies, and gives Yamapi a look.
Yamapi chuckles. “I believed in the abilities of my team,” he clarifies. “I trusted them to do their jobs.”
Yabu gapes. “That’s it?”
Yamapi smiles. “That’s everything,” he corrects.
They ride back together in silence after that, and as Yabu looks down at the hands in his lap, and the file folder he has there with all of his team members’ profiles, he realizes that maybe he has a little rethinking to do about what it means to take to lead.
~~~~~
8.
“Today,” Administrator Takizawa starts, some weeks later, “the Homicide Squad Japan: United Metro Police will officially be recognized as a permanent, senior unit within the agency.” Pause, smile. “I would launch into a long speech about what that means for all of you as individuals and as a team, or a speech about your duties and our expectations for you all, but I think,” he says, with a look sideways to where NEWS is seated during the ceremony, “that the ten of you already know exactly what you’re getting into. And what we expect from you from here on out.”
“Yes sir!” the young agents say.
Tackey laughs a little. “Well then. Good luck, work hard, and I look forward to seeing what you all will bring to the table.” Then, he holds up a folder. “Today, you officially graduate from junior agent status. You’re playing with the big kids now.”
He tosses the folder to Yabu. “This is your first solo mission. Have some of the cake Koyama-kun brought for you and then get to work.”
He waits for it then, the looks of horror or the looks of uncertainty, for something that will give him any room to doubt, that will have to make him turn to Yamapi and ask NEWS for another assist.
“We’ll do our best!” Yabu says, and stands holding the file in both hands.
The rest of his team stands too, right on his heels.
“We’ll do our best!” they echo, and stand together-really together- for perhaps, the first time since their formation.
Tackey nods when they do, satisfied with that, with the determined looks on their faces and the eagerness with which they look back at him.
He glances sideways again, at an approving NEWS, and thinks that there is nothing more motivating in this world than knowing someone else is counting on you.
He thinks for the first time in a long time, that this unit is one that will do great things one day, that they’ll be able to stand up beside their senpai successfully because they’ve been given all the tools they’ll need for a good start.
Tackey leaves the ceremony and believes that one day HSJUMP will bring the agency their long-awaited number six.
He thinks that it’s about damned time.
END
(Part One)
Probably still typos. Lemme know.