Tuesday 1.10 - First Mission

[pichi.livejournal.com]

With the sun down and the moon steadily rising into the slate-colored sky, Omi hugged the wall of the building as he moved for the unguarded side entrance. For good measure, he scanned the area once more on reaching it before withdrawing a miniature spray can and a handheld device from one of his jacket pockets. The can discharged a fine powder across the keys, revealing five faint partial fingertips over the 0, the 8, the 3, the 2, and the7.

Yoshi.

Omi entered the same numbers into the device and pushed a green button. The device rapid-fired through a series of electromagnetic transmissions, radioing to the keypad's control box all possible combinations of the numbers in search of the right one.

It only took a few moments to find it. The door unlocked and Omi slipped inside.

He looked around, listened for trouble and heard nothing. Quickly returning the items from his pocket to their home in his jacket, Omi ran for the nearest vent, mindful of the security cameras along the way. From there he crawled through the building's air ducts, having memorized the layout from the blueprints he'd dug up. At predetermined locations throughout the ventilation system, he placed explosives from his backpack.

Just in case they needed a back-up plan.

Finally he made his way to the utility room; a careful scan of the room showed no sign of guards. If only he had 100 yen for every time that was a security system's fatal flaw. Dropping down into the room, Omi moved to the fuse box and opened the panel. Simple as that, he pulled the fuse.

He pressed the talk button on his headset. "Systems down. Meet me at the side entrance."

Comments

[plotbunnytiff.livejournal.com]

Ken made it down the hallway just in time to hear “Drop your weapon. Now!” from the stranger blocking the doorway. He seemed to be pointing a gun.

After that, the world seemed to be moving like a tape caught in fast forward. Omi was coming around the man’s side, dart in hand. It stabbed him in the side, and he curled inward, the barrel glinting dangerously.

The man fell backwards. The box fell out of Ken’s hands.

A boom and flash as the gun went off, a gurguling noise as Ken caught the target by the neck and slammed him into the ground.

And then Ken started punching him in the face, repeatedly, with his claws fully extended, over and over, without a sound.

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

Yohji’s eyes went wide in horror as he watched Ran calmly put down his katana.

What was he doing?! Ran never put down his weapon. Ever. It was unfathomably unprecedented.

Ran, you Idiot.

I am about to die, was all he could think, he’s going to shoot me whether they put their weapons down or not. Only now he might shoot them first.

I am doing to die, and the last thing I will ever see is Ran being shot.

God I fucking hate guns.

There was no way he could react without the target blowing a hole through his chest. He tried frantically to signal with his eyes to Ran to stop putting your katana down.

Ran didn’t notice, or at least, didn’t react.

Although it should have been his initial response, Yohji only now started to grasp for an idea of how to escape.

He kept a razor blade stashed in the cuff of his glove. Sometimes his wire got tangled and needed to be cut free….

Oh, brilliant. You’re going to take down a trigger happy target with a razor blade. How the hell am I going to get to it without him shooting me?

The question was irrelevant, because suddenly the pressure on his back disappeared and he heard the tell-tale thump of dead weight hitting the floor.

Omi.

Yohji dropped to his knees and snatched the gun out of his assailant’s now limp hand. He shakily pointed the gun at the remaining…well, what he could only assume was one of their targets. He couldn’t get a good look at the face.

He only just remembered that they were supposed to do some interrogating. He didn’t know if this was the right one or not. But he didn’t want to take chances. He lowered the gun and expertly shot the man in the knee.

It was only after this that Yohji fully processed just what the hell Ken was doing. He turned around to the sound of a wet squelch in time to catch the remainder of the dead man’s face disintegrate into a bloody pulp. Ken was punching a dead man in the face with his bugnucks still on.

They had all gone fucking crazy.

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

The second Omi had taken down the target behind Yohji, Ran lunged for his katana. He straightened to the sound of two gunshots, one that narrowly missed his side. The other sounded like it made impact with human flesh, and a knot clenched in his gut.

Whipping toward the scene, he registered movement on the floor behind Yohji, red blood being flung upwards by a fast-moving fist. He didn't pause on it, there was no time.

Yohji turned to face what was happening on the floor, gun still in hand, and Ran followed it's trajectory path to the third target, clutching at his knee, propped on a chair. Ran lept onto the desk, planning to take the shortest route to the man.

He didn't allow himself to feel relief at Omi's save.

Suddenly, he was ducking as the third target whipped around at his movement, flinging one of the computers at him with the same motion. He almost blocked it with his katana, but it was too precious to him. He let the momentum of his fall ease the blow, taking it in his shoulder as he stumbled off the desks into the nearby chairs. The computer crashed into the wall behind him, shattering.

He landed in a crouch, prepared to kill, orders or no orders to question.

He gave his arm a quick check. Not broken, but...

He launched himself back to his feet, katana in his right hand.

The man looked surprised to see him.

He pressed his blade to the targets throat, stopping himself at the very last minute from drawing it across. "How many disks are there?!"

The man was shaking beneath him, eyes wild. "All the disks are in that cabinet."

"Code."

"45-9-83"

Ran nodded to Omi, not taking his eyes off the target.

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

Yohji flinched as a sticky arc of blood flew up and splattered him in the face.

What the fuck are you doing, Ken.

His instinct was to lean forward and start pulling Ken off the mangled corpse. But as his hand closed around Ken's shoulder a much more pressing matter occurred to him.

What the fuck am I doing?

The target he'd disabled probably had a gun. Being shot in the knee doesn't stop you from shooting back. And then he'd turned around and given the man a clean target of his back....

How many times am I going to fuck up today?

He whipped back around, accidentlly shoving Ken a little instead of the intended interception. He was just in time to see a computer crash into Ran. A computer.

Ran recovered as if it were nothing...a paper airplane flying into his shoulder instead of a lead-like piece of plastic and metal. Yohji was too late to help. Ran had everything under control. This time Yohji managed to repress his reflex to dash to Ran's unrequired assistance.

Ran apparently expected Omi to retrieve the disks. Yohji was torn whether to go back to stopping Ken from mincing target one, or to watch Ran and make sure that target three didn't pull anything funny.

Well, it's not like the guy was going to get any deader.

[plotbunnytiff.livejournal.com]

It was an instinctual move, born of muscle memory and endless hours of training.

As soon as he felt the shove on his back, he braced his back leg and twisted, swinging his arm around to connect his weapon with the flesh of the unseen opponent.

He’d slashed twice, the sensation of tearing skin registering only a millisecond before he realized the person who shoved him was Yohji.

He had cut Yohji.

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

He had been too busy watching Ran interrogate the remaining target to see it coming.

Ken, apparently, was quite vigilant in the sharpening of his blades. Yohji didn’t even feel it coming.

When he’d been shot so long ago (not so long ago. It’d only been 3 years…4? It was far too important for him not to remember. He couldn’t remember,) it had been like hitting a wall at 60 mph. The force had thrown him backward and he’d thought that his entire body was shattered. The bullet had shattered. There was probably shrapnel still in there somewhere.

Ken was so much kinder to his victims. It was practically painless surgery.

He didn’t register the injury. Yohji only noticed that all the warmth seemed to be draining out of the room.

His chest kind of itched. When he looked down he was confused at why his coat suddenly seemed the wrong color. It was the wrong color, and it was wet. Funny, he hadn’t thought that Ken had splashed him with quite that much blood.

Why was it getting so fucking cold?

The itch started to throb, and Yohji finally noticed the look of pure horror on Ken’s face.

He’s looking at me.

He looked down again, and this time was rather surprised at how he might have missed the hole which had suddenly appeared next to his shoulder. Well, the hole-ness of it was rather obstructed by all the blood. Easy mistake. There was gash running up the length of his arm as well, but why get bogged down in the details.

He found himself detachedly thinking, well, at least I wasn’t shot.

“I…” it was more difficult to breathe than he’d expected, “probably deserved that.”

He got a chance to look and make sure Ran was still in control of the target, before his legs gave out.

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

The man under his blade gave a raspy chuckle.

Holding him with a viselike grip, fingers digging deep into the muscles of his arm and blade drawing a thin line of blood on the target's throat, Ran turned only at Yohji's muttered statement.

The older man crumpled to the floor, two dark crimson stains spreading to meet on his clothing.

Ken stood behind him, a dazed, bloodthirsty expression fixed in place.

"Yoh-!" It was involuntary. Ran cut himself off before he used his teammate's real name. "Stop him, Bombay!"

A flashback to a girl, and a car.

...but she had Yohji's face.

He yanked the target to his feet, a sick smile lingering on the corners of the man's mouth. "It's probably karma, you know," the scientist said to him.

"You have no idea what karma I deserve," Ran said darkly. He dragged him hastily to the cabinet. "Open. Now!"

The man choked at the added pressure to his skin. He entered the numbers he had given Ran, then four more. The target was grinning.

"What did you do?!" Ran shouted.

A beep started from inside the cabinet. It was still unopened.

"You can't open it!" The man said gleefully. "It wilkkrgl."

His eyes glazed over, manic expression in place, blood spurting from his throat.

Ran threw the body away from him and sprinted across the room.

[pichi.livejournal.com]

It all happened so fast.

After the target fell, two gunshots ringing through the air in the process, Omi felt paralyzed, his body just slightly trembling in the aftermath of the adrenaline rush. He managed to shift his eyes down to the body, to Ken's fist ruthlessly mutilating the target's face. The violence itself meant nothing. What bothered Omi was how completely out of control Ken was.

Ken had said that being together would help. Omi thought again, just briefly, to their encounter the night before. To the sort of intimacy he'd stepped out of his comfort zone and forced himself to accept for the sake of helping Ken.

The violence itself meant nothing, but seeing Ken on the ground, completely out of control anyway, that made him feel just a little sick inside.

Omi managed to notice enough of the target's face before it became unrecognizable that he wasn't the one they'd needed alive, though Omi was nearly to the point that he no longer cared; Yohji's life came before a target doomed to die anyway. Blood from the target's face splattered against his cheek. He glanced at the one Aya had cornered, overheard the combo, saw the nod, and with a weak one of his own was just about to start for the cabinets--

When everything went to hell All. Over. Again.

Ken turned and slashed Yohji. Yohji began bleeding. Badly. The disks had just-- if he understood correctly-- been locked into the cabinet more securely. Stress and horror mounted from the complete lack of coordination and teamwork amongst them, and as Omi tried in futility to calm the swelling sense of hysteria inside him, he felt one keen instinct for their next move:

Get them out.

He automatically reached and helped catch Yohji before he hit the floor. "Yohji-kun!" He cried. "Hold yourself together! We'll get you back!"

Words he would do well to consider himself. Looking down at his teammate slumped in his arms and bleeding all over them, Omi knew that in truth, the success or failure of the mission had had nothing to do with the way his body had moved without permission to take out the target while he had a gun at Yohji's back. If he'd been in Aya's place... he might well have set his weapon down, too.

And now it was all for nothing anyway, wasn't it?

As Aya approached, Omi passed Yohji to his stronger teammate. "All three of you head for the exit! I'll meet back up with you! I just need a minute!"

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

Ran bent under Yohji's weight, his body a familiar mold of muscle on his shoulders. He was strong enough to support him, despite his smaller frame.

"There's no time!" Ran snapped at Omi, alarmed. "We have some disks, we can't do anything more! Leave!"

The beep was a constant, quiet noise in the otherwise silent room.

Yohji's blood was all over him. He cursed and stumbled through the door. If the others wouldn't come, that would have to be their choice. Whether or not he liked it, or felt responsible for not having the means to make them leave. "Yohji!" He snapped. The hallway was thankfully empty. "Balinese! We have to make it outside! Now!" It came out far harsher than he intended.

How had this happened? A simple mission, three scientists.

A metal tang lingered in the back of his constricted throat. His katana dragged on the floor, he could do nothing about it.

He would kill Yohji, once they got home. Ran meant it.

[pichi.livejournal.com]

Omi ignored Aya.

Just a check. Sato had said it would probably be on the target's person. Aya hadn't searched him. Sure, they had disks, even ones that looked like the right one. And Omi knew, deep down, most likely none of them were the one they were supposed to get.

Just a check.

He skidded to his knees at the target's corpse and patted him over, checking pockets as he went. Not in the jacket. Not around the shirt. Nowhere around the legs or hips. Not the shoes. Omi clenched his fists and nearly hit the floor in frustration-- then froze.

His eyes went wide, and he looked at the broken hunk of computer by the wall.

He sprinted to the computer and fumbled at the eject button of the disk drive. Out popped another disk, perfectly identical to the one they were looking for. Omi's spirits rose.

"Got it!"

He turned and dashed back for the door to join his teammates in their retreat.

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

It was getting increasingly difficult for Yohji to focus. As his blood pressure dropped, less and less of the external stimuli was filtering through the dizzy throbbing. He thought he heard his name a few times, and wondered at the fact that they weren’t using his codename. Then he wondered how that particular thought had managed to slip in before so many other, and more pressing ones.

"Hold yourself together!" Omi’s voice had a different edge to it than Yohji’d ever heard before.

I can’t feel my arm, Omi. Kinda impossible to hold myself together….

He wanted to make a joke of it, but talking just seemed like too much effort. All he managed was a pained smile.

He couldn’t remember ever feeling quite this weak.

He tried pulling himself together enough to support his own weight. Not because Ran was yelling at him that they had to get out, but because all he could think was Ran is hurt too. He can’t carry me with his arm like that.

But it was like trying to stand on pieces of string.

He settled for trying to staunch his bleeding with the uninjured arm, but he couldn’t even close his fist, let alone apply any pressure.

He gave up and collapsed against Ran’s back, resigned to whatever was now in store.

“I really,” he was barely wheezing, let alone talking now, “don’t mind if you drop me.”

He closed his eyes, looking forward to unconsciousness.

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

Ran gritted his teeth, and pressed his forefinger into the edge of Yohji's wound. Hopefully not enough to make him pass out, but perhaps enough pain to keep him awake.

No time for kindness.

"You bastard," Ran ground out. "What do you think you were doing?"

Argue with me, dammit!

His shoulder was throbbing, but he managed to keep a firm grip on his sword, despite Yohji's arm pressing down on it. Dislocated, he assessed. Nothing serious.

Omi and Ken - where were they?!

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

A sharp pain cut through the blackness. Yohji winced, but didn't protest. The effort to protest was almost as painful as the actual pain. He couldn't be bothered.

"What do you think you were doing?"

He wasn't sure why Ran's question struck him as funny. A lot of the past few minutes suddenly seemed funny, actually. He supposed it was because it all felt so surreal. He would have laughed if he'd had the energy.

"...watching...you...." Complete sentences were beyond him. Should have been watching Ken. It vaguely occured to him that that probably didn't come out sounding right, he really ought to explain, but it was getting harder and harder to care. He wanted to go to sleep more than anything. Maybe in a few minutes Ran would let him...

[plotbunnytiff.livejournal.com]

There was no room in his head for thoughts really. Once it sunk in what he’d done, the automatic trains of thought-

~oh no accident my fault his fault so sorry how bad why did I what do we~

didn’t switch on. He just got out of the way and watched.

Watched Aya haul Yohji to safety, watched Omi hunt for and find the last disk, watched his hands pick up the container of disks, watched the tile ahead of him blur past his shoes as he ran to catch up with his teammates.

To have any level of thought beyond what was needed to dodge obstacles in front of him, to remember anything more complex than when to turn left or right seemed incomprehensible. If he looked up to see Aya and Yohji’s backs…they were simply running side by side.

Running was good. Running faster was better. The giant blast behind him was not good, but there was an exit, and soon there was grass beneath his shoes instead of white tile. He stumbled forward a few more feet before stopping to catch his breath, never lifting his gaze from the impossible miracle of lawn darkened by the night sky.

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

"Shit!" Ran snapped.

Yohji became a deadweight in his arms. Ran had to use all his strength to heft him up, feet dragging on the ground.

The expected explosion came just as they reached the back doors, throwing them both headfirst onto grass. Yohji sprawled in front of him as Ran managed to duck into a roll, landing on his back.

Ran rolled over, conscious that Yohji had passed out and he didn't know where the others were. He assessed where they had landed - there was a fence off in the distance, and there was Ken ahead of them. Only Omi unaccounted for, then. There was no time to think on that. He pushed to his knees and scrambled over to Yohji, tearing open his jacket. He snapped at Ken, "Give me the shirt on your waist."