bunnyfic 13, 14, 15, 16
The creator of NaNo was male, wasn't he? 8D HA.
Biggest mistake yet. xD; Which I tried to iron out in my head for two days, putting off a decision by doing filler crap. But no. In the end Tamamori had to come back. Lol, fail. Anyway.
Government entity M15, 一人で.
( 13: electric sheep )
For a long time, Miyata sat right where he was, unmoving, and stared at the 'successful logout' screen that hovered in front of his virtual eyes as all thought slowly trickled out of his mind in a mass exodus.
It was the fashionable thing to do, didn't they know? To travel. Miyata's head was not the swank place to be seen. Not at all...
Presently the logout screen flickered, causing him to jump in surprise. It had only happened to him once or twice before -- getting so close to a meditative state that his netgear threatened to deactivate. The headsets were powered by the kinetic energy of their user's body, turning themselves on and off automatically according to the brainwaves their sensor pads could read.
Without a decent hack, it had to be the right person's brainwaves -- and the right type of waves, too. Which meant that the comatose couldn't operate them, nor could people surf the net in their sleep.
Miyata, though... Sometimes, he felt like he was special in the most mundane ways.
He didn't know anyone else who could trick their netgear into thinking they weren't conscious while still being wide awake at any rate... even inadvertently.
Wasn't that special~?
...the feeling of not wanting to go to bed because he didn't want to have to wake up and face work the next day though, made him feel nothing but exceptionally ordinary indeed.
It wasn't that he disliked his job -- merely that he couldn't agree with what it required of him. He was an easy-going human, most of the time. He didn't like to cause a fuss. But tomorrow at work, a fuss would be made of him -- his supervisor would have to call in for a chat again, and Miyata would have to make a demonstration of his loyalty again, and who knew if the errant he pulled in next time would be Tamamori, or one of Tamamori's friends? That Nikaido kid... Miyata didn't know if he could live with his own existence, if something like that happened.
If something like that happened...
His past would pretty much just go up in smoke -- the sum of all Miyata's efforts and incompetence across the years. His interactions with Tamamori -- and also, worse yet, any incentive for him to not just lie in bed and wallow in misery until he died. Miyata was hard-working, but there were just some things that weren't worth it.
Miyata didn't mind the work he did. It was good work: the more totally inept people like him on the government's payroll, the fewer competent people they'd be able to hire, theoretically. And the less there were of those competent people -- like his supervisor, nice though the man was -- who believed what they were doing was right, and worked hard for the government's cause... the less there were of them, the better the chance the errants had. Right?
Miyata had seen his supervisor in action. He was such a fearsome hunter...
If Miyata took in a catch the same way... He knew he could. He was theoretically capable of it, but if he did... and became one of the regular crew...
Melodramatic as it were, he didn't think he could live with it.
Despite all that, stress and statistics and all, Toshiya Miyata was too set with the status quo to change; too scared to run, and too fearful to hide. He lacked a confidence in his ability to survive, let alone live, if he had to fend for himself. The best he could offer was just...
Try his best to be his worst.
And hope against hope that that was enough.
He knew it wasn't -- that it wouldn't be in the long run, but... that didn't stop him hoping anyway. Miyata was an optimistic guy. He'd lasted this long without doing too badly... maybe his good luck would continue~
Is what he thought.
Because he didn't want to think about what would happen when (...if) his lucky run came to an end.
There was nothing particularly fantastic about his life at the present time, but that sure didn't mean it couldn't get one hell of a lot worse.
Tiredly, Miyata rubbed his eyes. He could also very easily help that process along. It'd only take one little nudge of one snowball or other, and everything would cascade.
Which snowball, though?
...to message or not to message? That Senga knew Takizawa Hideaki... Tamamori would want to know. But it meant that Miyata would have one more thing to answer to come morning...
...
...well. He figured that would be a trade-off he could make.
Logging back on, Miyata closed his eyes against the WELCOME TO GOVNET splash screen and immediately brought up a typewriter with just one sheet of paper threaded through its roll. The antique machine sat upon a desk in a non-descript room, its sole window opening onto a classically midnight 1920's cityscape. The place was lit by a single, flickering bulb dangling from the ceiling.
Ahh, the advent of electricity...
Smartly, Miyata snapped the suspenders over his shoulders -- they were slightly uncomfortable but nonetheless amusing statements of fashion. And also, they stopped his pants from embarrassing him, which was always handy -- and dragged up a chair, sitting down. He proceded to stare mournfully at the blank slate of a typewriter, wondering what to say.
What could he say, that wouldn't make everything totally obvious? If he was unobvious enough, maybe his supervisor wouldn't notice...
Tentatively, he hit the h key, and then, considerately, e a d... after that, he picked up speed, the clever little message formed in his mind. (He thought it was clever anyway.)
head back to 2000 for interesting times!, he typed in one neat line, and turned the knob to roll the paper free, signing on the bottom by hand with an ink pen, courtesy of Toshiya Miyata.
A pause, and he added in a smaller note, beneath that: PLEASE THINK OF HIM AS 宮田俊哉 INSTEAD! はじめました!!
Satisfied, Miyata set the pen down and regarded his note, reading it over.
...his satisfaction evaporated upon the realisation that it sounded like absolute gibberish.
Sighing, he lifted the pen again, and thought about what to do about that. ↓ he wrote over the 2000, then above that: 二+千! and then 面白い! over a second arrow that pointed to interesting.
There. The message was a little more obvious now, while remaining equally indecipherable (or so he hoped) to those who weren't in the know.
Folding the sheet of paper up into a careful paper plane, Miyata walked to the open window -- and threw the plane out, letting it glide off into the night on a directional wish. He closed the window immediately, not waiting to see if his letter got shat on by a crow or bounced back to him because Tamamori was offline and his scrambler's re-router wasn't taking messages or something...
It wouldn't make a difference to Miyata; the deed was done.
Turning away from the window, he left the scenario and logged off again, finally lifting his netgear from his head. Feed disrupted for real, the logout screen shimmered and disappeared. Miyata blinked, squinting into the darkness of his tiny apartment. The sole candle he'd left burning had killed itself. The room was full of black pitch.
Not that he needed light to know where everything was, or where he was in relation to everything. That was the good thing about having a tiny place, after all~ It was impossible for you to get lost, or lose much either.
Stretching, Miyata reached for the ceiling that was probably still there, bouncing on the balls of his feet a few times to ease the kinks in his back. Satisfied that he was no longer creaking, he replaced his netgear on the stand he always kept it on and shuffled over to the wall.
The long, pull-down table was already down -- it was where he'd eaten dinner, after all; Miyata had already cleared away the disposable plate. Patting the wall beside the small recess the table folded up into, his fingers brushed the switch he was looking for and flicked it. He felt the familiar, brief rush of air accompanying the soft whump that sounded when his self-inflating mattress was released from its niche in the wall.
Table transformed, Miyata didn't think twice and climbed atop it, into a bed that was kind of cold but soft enough. With a sigh, he pulled the blanketing insulayer over himself and tugged it up to his nose. His mind was tired and worried, but as much as he wanted to stay awake so dawn wouldn't come around so disgustingly fast, it wasn't usually like his thoughts to cooperate...
Yeah, these things never cooperated.
Miyata ended up asleep within minutes.
Errant 21-K; entity 53-N. I14, Y00.
( 14: boxed in, freaked out )
"Wait. You just said he collects what?" Nikaido demanded, at once incredulous and disturbed. He stopped walking and pinned Senga with a stare under reflected torchlight. They were currently following a narrow sort of beaten path through the brush that Nikaido's floating map had directed them onto.
"He collects people," Senga explained patiently, with the air of one who was slightly superior in the situation. Because he knew things. "Like illegals. And registers them." He beamed. "Not me, but people I live with used to be errants, you know? But they're not anymore, because Boss Tackey found them and registered them and now they're okay and live with us."
"'Us'..." Nikaido said slowly. "Right." Despite Senga's chipper demeanor, the whole thing still sounded nothing but totally creepy and suspicious to Nikaido. A powerful dude whose hobby was gathering up kids who were running for their lives -- so they'd be indebted to him? What other reason would there be? What did Takizawa get out of it, or ask for in return? There was no such thing as a free lunch.
"...and this collection," Nikaido continued, "is all... male?"
He'd managed to wrangle the scroll out of Senga's hands, despite their deal.
It had been nothing interesting though. Just a short list of names and a bunch of weird chicken scratches that meant nothing to him (or Senga either. Nikaido had asked, and been met with nothing but a blank stare and useless speculation):
Protected pre-registrants:
森本新太郎 Shintaro Morimoto
森本龍太郎 Ryutaro Morimoto
京本大河 Taiga Kyomoto
Their paperwork has been routed, and gear requisitioned.
Please advise of contact sequences at your utmost leisure.
Warm regards,
滝沢秀明
Hideaki Takizawa.
Nikaido didn't know a lot about the Old Local tongue, but those were definitely boy-sounding names. And there were small illustrations by each, rendered in black ink. Which... totally had to have been done by hand from scratch for their abysmal lack of skill. Nikaido was no fine artist himself, but even he'd had to squint funny in order to determine that the blobs and lines constituted approximations of male faces. Apparently Takizawa couldn't draw.
"Yeah," Senga nodded. "We're all guys. I don't think Boss Tackey really does girls much."
"What?" Nikaido felt a vague mortification. "What, he does you guys? That was something I really didn't need to know."
"Don't be stupid," Senga scrunched up his face. "It's not like that -- it's nothing bad you know, but just that Boss Tackey's very affectionate."
"Riiight, sure. That's all it is."
"You don't believe me!"
"I seriously don't believe you at all."
"But why not?" Senga persisted, ambling over sideways two steps as they walked, to lean his head on Nikaido's shoulder. It was kind of awkward to walk like that though, so he looped his arm casually through Nikaido's elbow and held on as well.
Nikaido gave Senga a weird look sideways, and tried not to get stabbed in the eye by Senga's messed up hair (though that was partly his own fault, he supposed, from sitting on Senga's head).
"See, affection's nice, isn't it~?" Senga asked softly, a playful lilt through his tones.
And Nikaido had to consider that...
Though Senga's hair kind of smelled like sweat and gross at the moment, the weight of him by Nikaido's side was kind of comforting. A different kind of comforting than the usual one Nikaido went for when somebody snuggled or carried him in bunny form -- different, but kind of... just as nice?
"Um," he said, and stuck his arm around Senga's waist, kind of unsmoothly. But it was worth it for feeling the grin of Senga's cheek against his shoulder.
"I'm totally right, aren't I~?" Senga chuckled, and lifted his head to smile at Nikaido close range. "And you know what? Doing it for real's even better."
"...right." Abruptly, Nikaido was reminded that this wasn't anything real at all -- of course it wasn't, they were in the middle of a forest in a pseudo-medieval scenario; Senga was wearing a dumb tunic. The two of them had only met a little while ago, and they were going to go their separate ways once they got to the castle because Senga's boss collected little boys, which was hellishly weird and also creepy.
Annoyed now, Nikaido gave Senga a little shove, pulling his arm from the other's loose hold. "Sure. I bet it is." It was probably jealousy that clipped his tone. He hadn't been close to anyone out in the real world since... practically forever, a few years with his supposed 'family' aside.
People weren't worth it, he reminded himself, when Legals would sooner hand you over than be caught doing anything wrong, and when even half of those on your own side of the law would trade you for amnesty in the blink of an eye.
"You know what--" Nikaido started, but then glanced back upon realising Senga hadn't kept up the pace. He turned around.
Senga stood a half dozen steps away, eyes wide and an unreadable expression on his face. Slowly, silently, he lifted a finger to his lips.
Nikaido tilted his head, brows knitting in puzzlement. Glancing left and right, he wondered for a second what Senga was up to...
It took about that long to dawn on him that the forest was silent.
And it wasn't that kind of nighttime hush where you could still hear creatures breathing if you strained. There was no wind. The trees weren't rustling. The fallen leaves weren't making even the slightest sound underfoot.
Nikaido looked down. In fact, the leaves weren't interacting underfoot at all. The forest floor might as well have been made out of moulded plastic -- abruptly, his eyes darted to Senga's bare feet. Ouch...
As if walking through a suspended animation -- the scenario was noiseless as a grave and just as still -- Nikaido tentatively made his way back to Senga, cringing a bit at the way the points of leaves just stuck into the soles instead of crunching when he stepped on them. "Senga," he said, "you can't walk around with nothing on your feet anymore--"
Senga didn't reply, staring straight ahead.
Nikaido prodded Senga's form on the shoulder. "Hey--"
The torchlight Senga was holding clattered to the ground from limp fingers before Senga snapped back to awareness at the touch. "Oh man," he said, "oh man, they've--"
"Locked the scenario--"
"They've locked the scenario. I just tried, I can't log out."
Nikaido hadn't even bothered to attempt escaping. "Yeah, well," he said, with a wry smile. "You'll be fine. You're legal and your boss is totally some sort of high-up, right? You'll be fine."
"What about you?" Senga demanded in a hushed whisper.
Nikaido shrugged, glancing around. Apart from the stillness, nothing was amiss just yet. "Whatever, I've dealt with stuff like this before," he said with distinctly more bravado than he felt. A locked scenario was a very hard virtual prison to leave. He forced a cocky grin. "Who said they were after me anyway? I'm popular and all, but maybe it'll just go away soon-- anyway," he swallowed dryly. "Anyway, what you need are shoes. I've got some more, so you can take these--"
As Nikaido crouched to undo his laces, a feather-tailed arrow whistled over his head in the space his torso had occupied milliseconds ago.
Its sharp point smacked harshly into the trunk of a tree a mere two metres up ahead and bounced off, clattering to the forest floor with the lack of scenario interactivity.
Nikaido froze in his crouch, eyes wide in shock. Okay, so they were definitely after him; he'd felt the wake of that arrow through his hair--
A heartbeat later, Senga was the one who grabbed his arm and dragged him off of the path, through the trees in the opposite direction. Nikaido staggered in Senga's wake. "Bunny--" Senga hissed, eyes darting around in the direction the arrow had come from. "Bunny rabbit something small now, please. It'll be easier for me to--"
"The hell is wrong with you?" Nikaido hissed back, stumbling. "Get out of here! If you're caught in my company, there's gonna be hell to pay for--"
"Shut up!" Senga hissed. "Just shut up and bunny and hold on tight! Please!"
"Your feet are leaving fucking blood prints on the floor--!" Nikaido snapped back, trying valiantly not to trip. But then he tripped, flailing--
"Bunny," Senga ordered. Nikaido bunnied. Senga swung him up onto his shoulder. "And now hold on tight," he instructed, breaking into a sprint now that he wasn't being held back. Nikaido held on. And Senga changed course ever so slightly, running straight for a massive tree about a dozen metres ahead.
Nikaido freaked out.
He could see a lot better with his bunny eyes than his human ones since they'd left Tamamori's torch behind. But this wasn't necessarily a good thing at all. Especially since he had no control over where they were going, had no idea what the plan was, and had no viable means with which to stop Senga from running them both right into a pancake at twelve o'clock.
:::
"Wataru..." Iida said.
Yokoo looked up at that tone of voice. Under the calm amusement, a rare tension, barely discernible. He dropped the whack-an-errant game, standing. "Fill me in, Kyon."
"They've locked the scenario, but--" Yokoo made a sound of disgust. Iida chuckled. "--I suspect Senga's going to do his thing."
"Really," Yokoo grinned. "You think so."
"Eighty percent probability and climbing," Iida chuckled, lightly teasing. "Ah, make that ninety-five. The errant just hitched a ride."
"21-K?"
"21-K."
Yokoo shook his head. "Look who's playing prediction now. You do realise it might've been more pertinent to let Taisuke know instead? Senga isn't exactly my charge."
"Taipi's not online right now," Iida said, with the impression of a shrug. "I'm making a recording of it for him to watch later if he likes. Though not impossible, it'd be harder to get him into the live scenario than you or me." He was definitely smiling now. "Should I open the back door so you can watch the phenomenon live action...?"
Yokoo hummed for a moment as if in consideration. But then grinned. "Route the real time visuals over to the common room flatscreen, but don't turn it on yet. I'll go tell Taisuke myself; he'd like to know that in a little while he may have a bit more ammo to shoot Kitamitsu with."
"Suit yourself," Iida shook his head. "But you'll be missing out." Flatscreens were rather antiquated pieces of technology -- and the Takizawa residence did have far newer counterparts, like screens that displayed in 3D, or full realism holographic projectors. Fujigaya could even watch the feed online in a duplicate scenario. But Yokoo was a bit of a traditionalist sometimes.
Iida could accept that, even when -- in his opinion -- watching a feed on flatscreen was as much of a non-event as reading about the news, as opposed to being there as it happened.
"I may be missing out on seeing the action first-hand," Yokoo conceded, drawing up a door for himself that had a glowing green Exit sign over it. He grinned. "But believe me, Kyon. It will be funnier this way."
Iida smiled. He could understand that, too: company was also vital to an experience. Actual company. "Alright. I'll page you if I need help."
"You won't need it," Yokoo chuckled, opening his exit. "Page me when he goes." Stepping out, he closed it behind himself, logging off.
"You'll know as soon as it happens," Iida said into the ensuing silence. He turned his attention back to what their operational youngest would do next.
Errant 21-K; entity 53-N.
( 15: the natural power user )
"Alright," Senga murmured to himself, "...alright..." and changed the track of his mind, counting off the imaginary beats in his head as it phased into a new rhythm -- a strong, solid baseline supporting frenetic threads of pseudo-melody. He knew these sounds; they told a story. And the overarching strength of their tone said he had nothing to fear. He could win this.
Senga felt confident.
Sweating though he was already, he brought his breathing under control and flew lightly, feet leaving the forest floor in time to the beat. He could run and nobody could catch him, because that was just the way things were. He was good at this. It was just like how he could dance really well...
He glanced around -- that tree looked good -- and made a slight course correction, veering a little left. Absently, he reached up to pet Nikaido on the head just once, to make sure the bunny was still with him, before picking up speed into a full sprint.
Senga ran at the tree and made it up its trunk two strides, three strides, nearly four before he felt gravity start to take hold against his traction and momentum. He tensed then, in a split second scanning for a good branch; finding one a couple of metres away, about an arm's width thick, he launched himself upwards, stretching for it--
"What the fuck!?" Nikaido shrieked in a very highly miniaturized version of his regular voice, his hacked bunny voice box not the same size as his human one at all. "Are you fucking crazy?"
Senga nearly missed the branch he was aiming for, barely catching it with his fingertips.
"Huh?" he said, voice a stage whisper, getting a better grip. Nikaido squeaked, squashed in the very small gap between Senga's shoulder and neck. It took some work for Senga to get his momentum back; he had to swing a bit in order to scramble his legs up onto his perch. "...you can talk like that?" Senga asked, voice still lowered, when they weren't in danger of falling off anymore. He tried to look at Nikaido, but it wasn't working very well.
"Of course I can fucking talk! I'm not just some dumb animal you know," Nikaido huffed, irritated now that he wasn't being squashed anymore -- his hair was all fuzzed up too, and it felt annoying and funny... But then he remembered the gripe that had led him to open his mouth in the first place: "Are you a goddamn monkey or what? Trying to get us killed the quick way?"
Senga only chuckled at that. "Nah," he whispered, without the thought even crossing his mind that he might miss a branch or not make a jump. "Trust me, Nika-chan~ I'm good at this."
"Nika-what did you call me?" Nikaido asked, prodding at Senga's shoulder with a paw.
But then Senga's head whipped around at a blur of movement to their far right, close to the ground -- a sign of their pursuit -- and the next second they were off again.
And Nikaido shut up and sank his teeth into Senga's tunic (and maybe a bit of skin under that too) in order to hold on as best he was able. He didn't want to close his eyes though; not even the fourth-dimension rollercoasters in the themepark scenarios he'd been to had anything on the shit Senga was pulling -- especially from the point of view of a tiny creature.
And nothing pre-programmed was capable of giving the same kind of lurching stomach drop Nikaido felt every time Senga went for a branch just out of reach, and seemed to make the distance by nothing but sheer force of will. Nikaido was all for challenging new things and raising the bar, but this--? The way Senga was picking a path through the tree branches at breakneck speed like a needle through thick forest fabric, pushing scenario physics like he was born to -- or they didn't even exist -- it was decidedly not normal.
Nikaido was loving it.
Or, he was loving it up until the moment where they reached the edge of a clearing and Senga -- for all seeming intents and purposes -- leaped clear out into the air across the centre of it, three storeys up from the hard dirt floor.
There was no way they were going to make it all the way across -- it was metres further than any of the other leaps had been (all crazy of their own right).
Nikaido stared in abject terror as the middle of the clearing rushed up to meet them, and squeezed his eyes shut at the last second. Moments later, he felt all the air leave his chest in a solid whump against Senga's shoulder as they landed hard, and--
And...
Nikaido's long rabbity ears twitched curiously. Weird. He'd been expecting to hear a lot more wet crunches after the fashion of bones being snapped in half and shattered to bits, but--
Nothing.
He cracked one eye open.
The world lurched as Senga stood up and looked around. From the middle of the clearing. The moonlight shone down on him like he was some sort of an indestructible angel, and Nikaido's excess adrenaline abruptly channeled itself down a different path: "Idiot!" he hissed, leaping down from Senga's shoulder to land -- human again -- in a crouch.
"Huh?"
Nikaido didn't answer though, grabbing Senga's arm. He dragged them both over to the side of the clearing, behind a tree trunk and under the cover of some foliage; just because it seemed like Senga could survive anything didn't mean either of them had to tempt fate by being easy targets like that.
"This is the clearing where I started off, I think!" Senga said, voice cheery even in a whisper. Strangely, he didn't even seem out of breath.
"That's nice." Nikaido kicked his shoes off. "Put them on," he ordered.
Senga blinked and looked down at his own feet as if in surprise. "Oh... ow," he said.
Nikaido rolled his eyes. "Right. Ow. Put them on."
"What about you...?" Senga asked, looking back up at Nikaido who was keeping watch.
"Do I look like I just did a whole lot of running and crap in through a frozen scenario?" Nikaido said testily.
Senga made a face. "Fine."
"Fine?" Nikaido echoed. As if donning shoes were a chore. But Senga ignored him. At least he was putting the shoes on, even if he was taking his own sweet time doing up their laces. For the moment, it seemed like they'd lost their pursuit pretty far behind...
Nikaido sighed. "Okay, that was awesome. I mean, you're really good at in-scenario stuff," he admitted reluctantly. Senga beamed. Nikaido looked away from his happy-to-be-complimented face. "But," he stressed, "are you just gonna keep us running indefinitely, or have you got a plan?"
There was probably only one chaser on them. Two if they were unlucky. Nikaido wondered if Senga knew things like that. Wondered vaguely how long it had been since Senga's friends -- whoever they were -- had crossed the line over to the legal side of the law under Takizawa or Tackey or whatever that creepy guy's name was supposed to be. Maybe it hadn't been so long since they'd crossed, if Senga was willing to go as far as he already had for an illegal like Nikaido that he didn't even really know...?
Senga had totally stuck his neck out to help -- was continuing to help, leaving his head on the chopping block -- and Nikaido didn't really know how he was supposed to feel about that. On the one hand, his first instict was to call Senga stupid and just leave the idiot behind like he should've done in the first place, after getting to read that stupid, pointless scroll.
And yet, this sticking together stuff -- it was what Senga wanted, and somehow Nikaido didn't at all feel that leaving him behind would be the better (or nicer) thing to do, even if it would definitely be better for Senga to not be caught assisting an illegal, and even if Nikaido would have more of a chance of escaping the frozen scenario by himself anyway...
Mentally, Nikaido ran through the small clipboard of shortcuts and codes he had on him. He wouldn't be able to bring in anything new, but well... he would probably be able to worm his way out of the frozen scenario by himself. Maybe. Theoretically anyway. He'd done it a couple of times before -- but just by himself. And it had taken a long while each time. He'd been lucky, really. But luck was as good as skill sometimes~
If he were just by himself, he'd try take out the chaser first; try buy himself a little bit of extra time before trying the wormhole. Then...
Well. None of that mattered at the present, did it? Nikaido simply wasn't going anywhere without Senga and vice versa, and that was that.
Sighing, Nikaido dropped down to sit on the forest floor -- muffling a yelp when the frozen leaves pricked through the seat of his pants.
Senga snickered at him.
Nikaido glowered.
And Senga very pointedly turned his focus back to doing up his laces. Finally done some seconds later, Senga drew a deep breath and looked around. "Well..." he said, "I sort of have a half plan."
"Really," Nikaido deadpanned, not bothering to muster up any enthusiasm or confidence for Senga's pointed lack of certainty.
Senga nodded, grinning in the reflected moonlight the clearing allowed down through the forest canopy. "I say we call for help!"
"Uh huh." Nikaido raised a dubious eyebrow. "Call who exactly?" Who, and for what kind of help was also something he'd like to know. They had no way to contact anybody. Tamamori had definitely left the scenario, and codesmen at his level weren't exactly common. Nikaido didn't know any others himself, personally -- hadn't known any period, until earlier that day.
Senga, though, seemed unfazed by this little statistic and stood up, filling his lungs.
And cupped his hands to his mouth, tipping his head back to loose a mighty shout toward the distant moon before Nikaido could even process what he was up to (for its sheer absurdity more than anything else): "II-CHAAAN~! IF YOU'RE LISTENING, A LITTLE BIT OF HELP HERE ANYTIME SOON WOULD BE SUPER SWEET PLEAAAAASE!"
"What the fuck do you think you're doing!?" Nikaido yelled, forgetting to keep his own voice down as he jumped to his feet and snatched Senga's arm away. Senga staggered -- he was still grinning, though. Nikaido stared at him.
"I have friends in high places!" Senga giggled -- giggled, Nikaido thought with a distant air of strange. "Kind of. More powerful friends than yours~ they're pretty powerful. And so, they'll definitely be able to help us! I think."
Nikaido looked around.
Nothing was happening.
His stomach curled its toes. "Then what the hell was that 'if you're listening' bit?" he glared.
Senga chewed on his top lip for a second, clearly thinking about how to say what he wanted as un-badly as possible. He glanced to the side. "...well. Uhm. He and Yokoo-kun sort of run the entire firewall for Boss Tackey's place, so. They've definitely got a monitor here. But they might be kind of busy..."
Before Nikaido could tear into all the reasons why relying on something like that was utterly stupid, a shout suddenly sounded from... not as far off as they'd hoped to have left their pursuit. Senga's eyes widened. And then widened again when a hunting horn sounded long and loud.
Nikaido swore. "Great. Now they've brought in reinforcements--" Senga's uncanny in-scenario skill had obviously raised an extra red flag or two (or two dozen). Nikaido had a few hold-out codes that could probably do enough damage to at least...
His thoughts trickled off when he realised that Senga was only grinning.
"...come on," Senga said, teeth white under the moonlight, and held out a hand. Nikaido stared at him. "Hey, hey don't make a face like that~" He winked. Winked. "Ii-chan or Yokoo-kun'll notice eventually. And I can definitely run forever until then, okay? It'll be fun!"
...Senga, Nikaido thought (and definitely not for the first time that night), was not only completely retarded, but also kind of batshit... abnormal.
Nikaido... couldn't say he didn't like that~? ♥
And hey. If Senga wasn't worried for himself, then hell if Nikaido would bother stressing either.
"Well, since you offered so nicely," Nikaido said with tactless aplomb, grin cocky as he stepped up to take Senga's hand. "Go right ahead~ Show me a good time."
Errant 74-M.
( 16: the headhunted )
It took Tamamori ten minutes to notice the letter in the bottle that had washed up on his beach, going by the production time stamped on its clear glass bottom. He wouldn't have blamed himself for the tardy notice, though. He'd only been watching the waves come into the small cove, fully relaxed with no particular ills in mind, and the bottle had washed up a little ways further down the curve of sand.
It had taken him a further twenty minutes of intense and brainless staring to decipher its message, though. He only bothered because it was from Miyata. Anyone else, and it would've just been tossed for junk mail.
It wasn't that Miyata was so special, really. That was a silly thought. It was just that sometimes, Miyata's thought processes were themselves junk mail, and so one had to be careful when sorting trash from treasure...
head back to 2000 for interesting times!, this one said.
courtesy of Toshiya Miyata.
PLEASE THINK OF HIM AS 宮田俊哉 INSTEAD! はじめました!!
Tamamori read it three times before acknowledging to himself that relying on a flash of intuition just wasn't going to cut it. And so he thought. And thought hard.
Starting with numbers.
...the year 2000? Nothing had happened then though, so far as Tamamori had been aware. Historically, the end of the year before that -- 1999 -- had been the time when the programmers of that era had kicked up a gigantic hoo-ha, concerned that their primitive technologies wouldn't be able to cope with the excess of zeros the new year would bring. Or something. The tech world as they knew it was supposed to have folded in upon itself or come to a standstill or something, taking everything with it...
Tamamori had always thought it was a hyperbolic load of crock and only ever skimmed the various library records on the issue, since nothing had ever come of it. The so-called Y2K bug had done nothing and, as far as Tamamori was concerned, the year 2000 only rang a distant bell in his mind as one of many technological hype letdowns in history...
Distracted, he brought his focus back to the task at hand.
Miyata wasn't hard to read, face to face, but sometimes the track of his brain went a bit sideways...
PLEASE THINK OF HIM AS 宮田俊哉 INSTEAD! はじめました!! the post script said.
Tamamori pursed his lips. What was that supposed to mean? Toshiya Miyata and 宮田俊哉 were the same thing -- one version was just backwards and in Old Local...
Over the years, Miyata had taught Tamamori a bit of what he knew of the language. Basic things, like Miyata's name. The easy letter sets. Numbers. Common greetings. And so Tamamori knew his すみません from his ありがとう, but still had trouble with telling his ツ from his シ or ソ from ン...
Did Miyata want him to think in Old Local? Because that was asking a bit much... Dictionaries that weren't for International were incredibly hard to come by, so long after the First Collapse.
And what was はじめました? Tamamori knew はじめまして was 'ha-ji-me-ma-shi-te' and something you said when you met someone for the first time. It meant something like, "Nice to meet you." But はじめました's last character was different -- a 'ta' instead of a 'te' -- and Tamamori wondered about the significance of it. Did that make it a different word, or...?
He frowned, eyes moving across the 二+千! and 面白い! with equally irritable incomprehension. He'd never seen 面白い!'s characters before in his life, apart from the 'い' and so duly ignored its existence. 二+千! pointed to the 2000. 二 was 'ni' and meant two. 千, though...? Was it thousand, then? ...'chi'? Or...
Tamamori's brows knitted in concentration.
No, wait. He tilted his head slightly, recalling Miyata telling him once how 'ni-sen-en' meant two thousand of the Old Local currency, while 'san-zen-en' meant three thousand because the thousand bit could be both 'sen' and 'zen' depending on what number it was with... (Miyata was dryly fascinating like that all the time, liking to fill in comfortable silences with just-as-comforable off-hand trivia memos. He was a wealth of non-essential knowledge.)
Nisen, then.
Head back to... ni... sen?
...
...
...!
When it suddenly clicked, Tamamori felt vaguely stupid, indignant at being made to feel stupid, and also annoyed that Miyata was directing him back to the stupid scenario with the idiot who was sending something to the Princes.
And yet... Tamamori skimmed the message again. It didn't really sound like Miyata was there anymore, himself? Odd.
Had he found something out... and then thought it better to bail? It wouldn't have been the first time something like that had happened. Tamamori could appreciate that Miyata walked a very fine tightrope for his job. The scrutiny that the government so liberally blanketed those under its umbrella with, legal and illegal alike, was nothing compared to the invasions of privacy it subjected its employees to day in and day out...
Tamamori felt his gut twist a little. He tugged on his ear, looking at the note in his hand again. And then glanced around. There was nobody else at the cove, but then again he hadn't expected there to be. It wasn't a standard beach.
The next second there was nobody there at all, as Tamamori retreated his avatar back into the virtual safety of his blueroom.
With barely a hesitation, he called up Miyata's contact sequence, scanning for the other's online presence -- to no avail. Miyata was offline, and had been last time-stamped at... not so long after Tamamori had exited the forest scenario, actually. Miyata had logged off, before briefly logging back on again and then leaving for real.
Tamamori clicked his tongue, thinking as if he had options in the matter. But he didn't, really. There was nothing much for it, but to do as Miyata suggested and head back. For curiousity's sake.
He called up the commissioned hawk -- the handiest avatar he had on hand that would fit in that forest and wouldn't necessitate walking either -- and took a moment to straighten out its feathers, which were in slight disarray after being eaten by the teeth virus.
"Sorry Mr. Hawk," Tamamori murmured. "You'll reach your rightful owner eventually. But I just need to borrow you for a bit longer..."
The next second, he soared out into the night.
'A bit longer' actually turned out to be... a bit longer than Tamamori'd expected.
The night air was cold against his wings as he circled in the sky above the area where he'd last seen traces of Nikaido and Senga's contact sequences.
The entire block was locked.
You couldn't tell by looking from the outside, unless it was through a scan -- but Tamamori had tried flying into it, low through the trees. And as soon as he'd hit the locked area, he'd suddenly emerged on the other side of it as if instantly teleported. He almost hadn't noticed, forest being forest and the momentary jarring of vision seeming more like a minor glitch than anything.
But straight code didn't play tricks like that.
And so Tamamori circled, wondering what to do next.
The lockdown had obviously happened after Miyata had gone (obviously, because otherwise he wouldn't have been able to leave the scenario, or get a message out to Tamamori either). But there was something in there -- that either Senga or Nikaido had -- that Tamamori would be interested in, enough that Miyata had put himself up to further investigation just to let him know of it.
Swooping low into the branches of a tall tree just outside the locked area, Tamamori hit the brakes, spreading his wings and tail feathers, and settled onto his new perch with a patent lack of hurry (especially since Senga and Nikaido were probably in some sort of trouble); he'd get there when he got there. Tamamori knew Nikaido was good out in the real world, but online he seemed a bit slow. Senga the messenger was an unknown, idiocy aside. If the pair were going to get caught, then they'd probably do so with or without Tamamori's shadow presence...
Quietly, the hawk folded its wings and closed its eyes, appearing to sleep as Tamamori set to work on slicing himself backdoor access into the frozen region. Vaguely, he hoped that the 'interesting' of which Miyata had spoken would be able to help Senga and Nikaido with whatever they were currently up against...
It probably wasn't more than one or two chasers anyway...
Unless said 'interesting' meant they'd brought in assistance...
He supposed he'd find out soon enough...
Minutes later, the sleeping hawk shimmered into thin air and disappeared.
And so Tamamori knew his すみません (sumimasen/sorry) from his ありがとう (arigatou/thanks), but still had trouble with telling his ツ (tsu) from his シ (shi) or ソ (so) from ン (n- all katakana)...
二+千! (2+1000!) and 面白い! (omoshiroi/interesting!)
1- this plotting thing... it is yabai. xD; LOL. this week was so, so off. i don't think i've even spellchecked 15/16. ahwell, akjwhfr.
2- WHY IS IT SATURDAY TOMORROW ALREADY? 0_0
3- a commitment might be just a handful of hours, but then the time around it as well and suddenly most of your day is gone? why happen. ;; so weird. D|
4- have MIROTIC stuck in my head so bad. xD; of all things. eugh. for the past three days. nooo~ *shoos out the DBSK*
Biggest mistake yet. xD; Which I tried to iron out in my head for two days, putting off a decision by doing filler crap. But no. In the end Tamamori had to come back. Lol, fail. Anyway.
Government entity M15, 一人で.
( 13: electric sheep )
For a long time, Miyata sat right where he was, unmoving, and stared at the 'successful logout' screen that hovered in front of his virtual eyes as all thought slowly trickled out of his mind in a mass exodus.
It was the fashionable thing to do, didn't they know? To travel. Miyata's head was not the swank place to be seen. Not at all...
Presently the logout screen flickered, causing him to jump in surprise. It had only happened to him once or twice before -- getting so close to a meditative state that his netgear threatened to deactivate. The headsets were powered by the kinetic energy of their user's body, turning themselves on and off automatically according to the brainwaves their sensor pads could read.
Without a decent hack, it had to be the right person's brainwaves -- and the right type of waves, too. Which meant that the comatose couldn't operate them, nor could people surf the net in their sleep.
Miyata, though... Sometimes, he felt like he was special in the most mundane ways.
He didn't know anyone else who could trick their netgear into thinking they weren't conscious while still being wide awake at any rate... even inadvertently.
Wasn't that special~?
...the feeling of not wanting to go to bed because he didn't want to have to wake up and face work the next day though, made him feel nothing but exceptionally ordinary indeed.
It wasn't that he disliked his job -- merely that he couldn't agree with what it required of him. He was an easy-going human, most of the time. He didn't like to cause a fuss. But tomorrow at work, a fuss would be made of him -- his supervisor would have to call in for a chat again, and Miyata would have to make a demonstration of his loyalty again, and who knew if the errant he pulled in next time would be Tamamori, or one of Tamamori's friends? That Nikaido kid... Miyata didn't know if he could live with his own existence, if something like that happened.
If something like that happened...
His past would pretty much just go up in smoke -- the sum of all Miyata's efforts and incompetence across the years. His interactions with Tamamori -- and also, worse yet, any incentive for him to not just lie in bed and wallow in misery until he died. Miyata was hard-working, but there were just some things that weren't worth it.
Miyata didn't mind the work he did. It was good work: the more totally inept people like him on the government's payroll, the fewer competent people they'd be able to hire, theoretically. And the less there were of those competent people -- like his supervisor, nice though the man was -- who believed what they were doing was right, and worked hard for the government's cause... the less there were of them, the better the chance the errants had. Right?
Miyata had seen his supervisor in action. He was such a fearsome hunter...
If Miyata took in a catch the same way... He knew he could. He was theoretically capable of it, but if he did... and became one of the regular crew...
Melodramatic as it were, he didn't think he could live with it.
Despite all that, stress and statistics and all, Toshiya Miyata was too set with the status quo to change; too scared to run, and too fearful to hide. He lacked a confidence in his ability to survive, let alone live, if he had to fend for himself. The best he could offer was just...
Try his best to be his worst.
And hope against hope that that was enough.
He knew it wasn't -- that it wouldn't be in the long run, but... that didn't stop him hoping anyway. Miyata was an optimistic guy. He'd lasted this long without doing too badly... maybe his good luck would continue~
Is what he thought.
Because he didn't want to think about what would happen when (...if) his lucky run came to an end.
There was nothing particularly fantastic about his life at the present time, but that sure didn't mean it couldn't get one hell of a lot worse.
Tiredly, Miyata rubbed his eyes. He could also very easily help that process along. It'd only take one little nudge of one snowball or other, and everything would cascade.
Which snowball, though?
...to message or not to message? That Senga knew Takizawa Hideaki... Tamamori would want to know. But it meant that Miyata would have one more thing to answer to come morning...
...
...well. He figured that would be a trade-off he could make.
Logging back on, Miyata closed his eyes against the WELCOME TO GOVNET splash screen and immediately brought up a typewriter with just one sheet of paper threaded through its roll. The antique machine sat upon a desk in a non-descript room, its sole window opening onto a classically midnight 1920's cityscape. The place was lit by a single, flickering bulb dangling from the ceiling.
Ahh, the advent of electricity...
Smartly, Miyata snapped the suspenders over his shoulders -- they were slightly uncomfortable but nonetheless amusing statements of fashion. And also, they stopped his pants from embarrassing him, which was always handy -- and dragged up a chair, sitting down. He proceded to stare mournfully at the blank slate of a typewriter, wondering what to say.
What could he say, that wouldn't make everything totally obvious? If he was unobvious enough, maybe his supervisor wouldn't notice...
Tentatively, he hit the h key, and then, considerately, e a d... after that, he picked up speed, the clever little message formed in his mind. (He thought it was clever anyway.)
head back to 2000 for interesting times!, he typed in one neat line, and turned the knob to roll the paper free, signing on the bottom by hand with an ink pen, courtesy of Toshiya Miyata.
A pause, and he added in a smaller note, beneath that: PLEASE THINK OF HIM AS 宮田俊哉 INSTEAD! はじめました!!
Satisfied, Miyata set the pen down and regarded his note, reading it over.
...his satisfaction evaporated upon the realisation that it sounded like absolute gibberish.
Sighing, he lifted the pen again, and thought about what to do about that. ↓ he wrote over the 2000, then above that: 二+千! and then 面白い! over a second arrow that pointed to interesting.
There. The message was a little more obvious now, while remaining equally indecipherable (or so he hoped) to those who weren't in the know.
Folding the sheet of paper up into a careful paper plane, Miyata walked to the open window -- and threw the plane out, letting it glide off into the night on a directional wish. He closed the window immediately, not waiting to see if his letter got shat on by a crow or bounced back to him because Tamamori was offline and his scrambler's re-router wasn't taking messages or something...
It wouldn't make a difference to Miyata; the deed was done.
Turning away from the window, he left the scenario and logged off again, finally lifting his netgear from his head. Feed disrupted for real, the logout screen shimmered and disappeared. Miyata blinked, squinting into the darkness of his tiny apartment. The sole candle he'd left burning had killed itself. The room was full of black pitch.
Not that he needed light to know where everything was, or where he was in relation to everything. That was the good thing about having a tiny place, after all~ It was impossible for you to get lost, or lose much either.
Stretching, Miyata reached for the ceiling that was probably still there, bouncing on the balls of his feet a few times to ease the kinks in his back. Satisfied that he was no longer creaking, he replaced his netgear on the stand he always kept it on and shuffled over to the wall.
The long, pull-down table was already down -- it was where he'd eaten dinner, after all; Miyata had already cleared away the disposable plate. Patting the wall beside the small recess the table folded up into, his fingers brushed the switch he was looking for and flicked it. He felt the familiar, brief rush of air accompanying the soft whump that sounded when his self-inflating mattress was released from its niche in the wall.
Table transformed, Miyata didn't think twice and climbed atop it, into a bed that was kind of cold but soft enough. With a sigh, he pulled the blanketing insulayer over himself and tugged it up to his nose. His mind was tired and worried, but as much as he wanted to stay awake so dawn wouldn't come around so disgustingly fast, it wasn't usually like his thoughts to cooperate...
Yeah, these things never cooperated.
Miyata ended up asleep within minutes.
Errant 21-K; entity 53-N. I14, Y00.
( 14: boxed in, freaked out )
"Wait. You just said he collects what?" Nikaido demanded, at once incredulous and disturbed. He stopped walking and pinned Senga with a stare under reflected torchlight. They were currently following a narrow sort of beaten path through the brush that Nikaido's floating map had directed them onto.
"He collects people," Senga explained patiently, with the air of one who was slightly superior in the situation. Because he knew things. "Like illegals. And registers them." He beamed. "Not me, but people I live with used to be errants, you know? But they're not anymore, because Boss Tackey found them and registered them and now they're okay and live with us."
"'Us'..." Nikaido said slowly. "Right." Despite Senga's chipper demeanor, the whole thing still sounded nothing but totally creepy and suspicious to Nikaido. A powerful dude whose hobby was gathering up kids who were running for their lives -- so they'd be indebted to him? What other reason would there be? What did Takizawa get out of it, or ask for in return? There was no such thing as a free lunch.
"...and this collection," Nikaido continued, "is all... male?"
He'd managed to wrangle the scroll out of Senga's hands, despite their deal.
It had been nothing interesting though. Just a short list of names and a bunch of weird chicken scratches that meant nothing to him (or Senga either. Nikaido had asked, and been met with nothing but a blank stare and useless speculation):
Protected pre-registrants:
森本新太郎 Shintaro Morimoto
森本龍太郎 Ryutaro Morimoto
京本大河 Taiga Kyomoto
Their paperwork has been routed, and gear requisitioned.
Please advise of contact sequences at your utmost leisure.
Warm regards,
滝沢秀明
Hideaki Takizawa.
Nikaido didn't know a lot about the Old Local tongue, but those were definitely boy-sounding names. And there were small illustrations by each, rendered in black ink. Which... totally had to have been done by hand from scratch for their abysmal lack of skill. Nikaido was no fine artist himself, but even he'd had to squint funny in order to determine that the blobs and lines constituted approximations of male faces. Apparently Takizawa couldn't draw.
"Yeah," Senga nodded. "We're all guys. I don't think Boss Tackey really does girls much."
"What?" Nikaido felt a vague mortification. "What, he does you guys? That was something I really didn't need to know."
"Don't be stupid," Senga scrunched up his face. "It's not like that -- it's nothing bad you know, but just that Boss Tackey's very affectionate."
"Riiight, sure. That's all it is."
"You don't believe me!"
"I seriously don't believe you at all."
"But why not?" Senga persisted, ambling over sideways two steps as they walked, to lean his head on Nikaido's shoulder. It was kind of awkward to walk like that though, so he looped his arm casually through Nikaido's elbow and held on as well.
Nikaido gave Senga a weird look sideways, and tried not to get stabbed in the eye by Senga's messed up hair (though that was partly his own fault, he supposed, from sitting on Senga's head).
"See, affection's nice, isn't it~?" Senga asked softly, a playful lilt through his tones.
And Nikaido had to consider that...
Though Senga's hair kind of smelled like sweat and gross at the moment, the weight of him by Nikaido's side was kind of comforting. A different kind of comforting than the usual one Nikaido went for when somebody snuggled or carried him in bunny form -- different, but kind of... just as nice?
"Um," he said, and stuck his arm around Senga's waist, kind of unsmoothly. But it was worth it for feeling the grin of Senga's cheek against his shoulder.
"I'm totally right, aren't I~?" Senga chuckled, and lifted his head to smile at Nikaido close range. "And you know what? Doing it for real's even better."
"...right." Abruptly, Nikaido was reminded that this wasn't anything real at all -- of course it wasn't, they were in the middle of a forest in a pseudo-medieval scenario; Senga was wearing a dumb tunic. The two of them had only met a little while ago, and they were going to go their separate ways once they got to the castle because Senga's boss collected little boys, which was hellishly weird and also creepy.
Annoyed now, Nikaido gave Senga a little shove, pulling his arm from the other's loose hold. "Sure. I bet it is." It was probably jealousy that clipped his tone. He hadn't been close to anyone out in the real world since... practically forever, a few years with his supposed 'family' aside.
People weren't worth it, he reminded himself, when Legals would sooner hand you over than be caught doing anything wrong, and when even half of those on your own side of the law would trade you for amnesty in the blink of an eye.
"You know what--" Nikaido started, but then glanced back upon realising Senga hadn't kept up the pace. He turned around.
Senga stood a half dozen steps away, eyes wide and an unreadable expression on his face. Slowly, silently, he lifted a finger to his lips.
Nikaido tilted his head, brows knitting in puzzlement. Glancing left and right, he wondered for a second what Senga was up to...
It took about that long to dawn on him that the forest was silent.
And it wasn't that kind of nighttime hush where you could still hear creatures breathing if you strained. There was no wind. The trees weren't rustling. The fallen leaves weren't making even the slightest sound underfoot.
Nikaido looked down. In fact, the leaves weren't interacting underfoot at all. The forest floor might as well have been made out of moulded plastic -- abruptly, his eyes darted to Senga's bare feet. Ouch...
As if walking through a suspended animation -- the scenario was noiseless as a grave and just as still -- Nikaido tentatively made his way back to Senga, cringing a bit at the way the points of leaves just stuck into the soles instead of crunching when he stepped on them. "Senga," he said, "you can't walk around with nothing on your feet anymore--"
Senga didn't reply, staring straight ahead.
Nikaido prodded Senga's form on the shoulder. "Hey--"
The torchlight Senga was holding clattered to the ground from limp fingers before Senga snapped back to awareness at the touch. "Oh man," he said, "oh man, they've--"
"Locked the scenario--"
"They've locked the scenario. I just tried, I can't log out."
Nikaido hadn't even bothered to attempt escaping. "Yeah, well," he said, with a wry smile. "You'll be fine. You're legal and your boss is totally some sort of high-up, right? You'll be fine."
"What about you?" Senga demanded in a hushed whisper.
Nikaido shrugged, glancing around. Apart from the stillness, nothing was amiss just yet. "Whatever, I've dealt with stuff like this before," he said with distinctly more bravado than he felt. A locked scenario was a very hard virtual prison to leave. He forced a cocky grin. "Who said they were after me anyway? I'm popular and all, but maybe it'll just go away soon-- anyway," he swallowed dryly. "Anyway, what you need are shoes. I've got some more, so you can take these--"
As Nikaido crouched to undo his laces, a feather-tailed arrow whistled over his head in the space his torso had occupied milliseconds ago.
Its sharp point smacked harshly into the trunk of a tree a mere two metres up ahead and bounced off, clattering to the forest floor with the lack of scenario interactivity.
Nikaido froze in his crouch, eyes wide in shock. Okay, so they were definitely after him; he'd felt the wake of that arrow through his hair--
A heartbeat later, Senga was the one who grabbed his arm and dragged him off of the path, through the trees in the opposite direction. Nikaido staggered in Senga's wake. "Bunny--" Senga hissed, eyes darting around in the direction the arrow had come from. "Bunny rabbit something small now, please. It'll be easier for me to--"
"The hell is wrong with you?" Nikaido hissed back, stumbling. "Get out of here! If you're caught in my company, there's gonna be hell to pay for--"
"Shut up!" Senga hissed. "Just shut up and bunny and hold on tight! Please!"
"Your feet are leaving fucking blood prints on the floor--!" Nikaido snapped back, trying valiantly not to trip. But then he tripped, flailing--
"Bunny," Senga ordered. Nikaido bunnied. Senga swung him up onto his shoulder. "And now hold on tight," he instructed, breaking into a sprint now that he wasn't being held back. Nikaido held on. And Senga changed course ever so slightly, running straight for a massive tree about a dozen metres ahead.
Nikaido freaked out.
He could see a lot better with his bunny eyes than his human ones since they'd left Tamamori's torch behind. But this wasn't necessarily a good thing at all. Especially since he had no control over where they were going, had no idea what the plan was, and had no viable means with which to stop Senga from running them both right into a pancake at twelve o'clock.
:::
"Wataru..." Iida said.
Yokoo looked up at that tone of voice. Under the calm amusement, a rare tension, barely discernible. He dropped the whack-an-errant game, standing. "Fill me in, Kyon."
"They've locked the scenario, but--" Yokoo made a sound of disgust. Iida chuckled. "--I suspect Senga's going to do his thing."
"Really," Yokoo grinned. "You think so."
"Eighty percent probability and climbing," Iida chuckled, lightly teasing. "Ah, make that ninety-five. The errant just hitched a ride."
"21-K?"
"21-K."
Yokoo shook his head. "Look who's playing prediction now. You do realise it might've been more pertinent to let Taisuke know instead? Senga isn't exactly my charge."
"Taipi's not online right now," Iida said, with the impression of a shrug. "I'm making a recording of it for him to watch later if he likes. Though not impossible, it'd be harder to get him into the live scenario than you or me." He was definitely smiling now. "Should I open the back door so you can watch the phenomenon live action...?"
Yokoo hummed for a moment as if in consideration. But then grinned. "Route the real time visuals over to the common room flatscreen, but don't turn it on yet. I'll go tell Taisuke myself; he'd like to know that in a little while he may have a bit more ammo to shoot Kitamitsu with."
"Suit yourself," Iida shook his head. "But you'll be missing out." Flatscreens were rather antiquated pieces of technology -- and the Takizawa residence did have far newer counterparts, like screens that displayed in 3D, or full realism holographic projectors. Fujigaya could even watch the feed online in a duplicate scenario. But Yokoo was a bit of a traditionalist sometimes.
Iida could accept that, even when -- in his opinion -- watching a feed on flatscreen was as much of a non-event as reading about the news, as opposed to being there as it happened.
"I may be missing out on seeing the action first-hand," Yokoo conceded, drawing up a door for himself that had a glowing green Exit sign over it. He grinned. "But believe me, Kyon. It will be funnier this way."
Iida smiled. He could understand that, too: company was also vital to an experience. Actual company. "Alright. I'll page you if I need help."
"You won't need it," Yokoo chuckled, opening his exit. "Page me when he goes." Stepping out, he closed it behind himself, logging off.
"You'll know as soon as it happens," Iida said into the ensuing silence. He turned his attention back to what their operational youngest would do next.
Errant 21-K; entity 53-N.
( 15: the natural power user )
"Alright," Senga murmured to himself, "...alright..." and changed the track of his mind, counting off the imaginary beats in his head as it phased into a new rhythm -- a strong, solid baseline supporting frenetic threads of pseudo-melody. He knew these sounds; they told a story. And the overarching strength of their tone said he had nothing to fear. He could win this.
Senga felt confident.
Sweating though he was already, he brought his breathing under control and flew lightly, feet leaving the forest floor in time to the beat. He could run and nobody could catch him, because that was just the way things were. He was good at this. It was just like how he could dance really well...
He glanced around -- that tree looked good -- and made a slight course correction, veering a little left. Absently, he reached up to pet Nikaido on the head just once, to make sure the bunny was still with him, before picking up speed into a full sprint.
Senga ran at the tree and made it up its trunk two strides, three strides, nearly four before he felt gravity start to take hold against his traction and momentum. He tensed then, in a split second scanning for a good branch; finding one a couple of metres away, about an arm's width thick, he launched himself upwards, stretching for it--
"What the fuck!?" Nikaido shrieked in a very highly miniaturized version of his regular voice, his hacked bunny voice box not the same size as his human one at all. "Are you fucking crazy?"
Senga nearly missed the branch he was aiming for, barely catching it with his fingertips.
"Huh?" he said, voice a stage whisper, getting a better grip. Nikaido squeaked, squashed in the very small gap between Senga's shoulder and neck. It took some work for Senga to get his momentum back; he had to swing a bit in order to scramble his legs up onto his perch. "...you can talk like that?" Senga asked, voice still lowered, when they weren't in danger of falling off anymore. He tried to look at Nikaido, but it wasn't working very well.
"Of course I can fucking talk! I'm not just some dumb animal you know," Nikaido huffed, irritated now that he wasn't being squashed anymore -- his hair was all fuzzed up too, and it felt annoying and funny... But then he remembered the gripe that had led him to open his mouth in the first place: "Are you a goddamn monkey or what? Trying to get us killed the quick way?"
Senga only chuckled at that. "Nah," he whispered, without the thought even crossing his mind that he might miss a branch or not make a jump. "Trust me, Nika-chan~ I'm good at this."
"Nika-what did you call me?" Nikaido asked, prodding at Senga's shoulder with a paw.
But then Senga's head whipped around at a blur of movement to their far right, close to the ground -- a sign of their pursuit -- and the next second they were off again.
And Nikaido shut up and sank his teeth into Senga's tunic (and maybe a bit of skin under that too) in order to hold on as best he was able. He didn't want to close his eyes though; not even the fourth-dimension rollercoasters in the themepark scenarios he'd been to had anything on the shit Senga was pulling -- especially from the point of view of a tiny creature.
And nothing pre-programmed was capable of giving the same kind of lurching stomach drop Nikaido felt every time Senga went for a branch just out of reach, and seemed to make the distance by nothing but sheer force of will. Nikaido was all for challenging new things and raising the bar, but this--? The way Senga was picking a path through the tree branches at breakneck speed like a needle through thick forest fabric, pushing scenario physics like he was born to -- or they didn't even exist -- it was decidedly not normal.
Nikaido was loving it.
Or, he was loving it up until the moment where they reached the edge of a clearing and Senga -- for all seeming intents and purposes -- leaped clear out into the air across the centre of it, three storeys up from the hard dirt floor.
There was no way they were going to make it all the way across -- it was metres further than any of the other leaps had been (all crazy of their own right).
Nikaido stared in abject terror as the middle of the clearing rushed up to meet them, and squeezed his eyes shut at the last second. Moments later, he felt all the air leave his chest in a solid whump against Senga's shoulder as they landed hard, and--
And...
Nikaido's long rabbity ears twitched curiously. Weird. He'd been expecting to hear a lot more wet crunches after the fashion of bones being snapped in half and shattered to bits, but--
Nothing.
He cracked one eye open.
The world lurched as Senga stood up and looked around. From the middle of the clearing. The moonlight shone down on him like he was some sort of an indestructible angel, and Nikaido's excess adrenaline abruptly channeled itself down a different path: "Idiot!" he hissed, leaping down from Senga's shoulder to land -- human again -- in a crouch.
"Huh?"
Nikaido didn't answer though, grabbing Senga's arm. He dragged them both over to the side of the clearing, behind a tree trunk and under the cover of some foliage; just because it seemed like Senga could survive anything didn't mean either of them had to tempt fate by being easy targets like that.
"This is the clearing where I started off, I think!" Senga said, voice cheery even in a whisper. Strangely, he didn't even seem out of breath.
"That's nice." Nikaido kicked his shoes off. "Put them on," he ordered.
Senga blinked and looked down at his own feet as if in surprise. "Oh... ow," he said.
Nikaido rolled his eyes. "Right. Ow. Put them on."
"What about you...?" Senga asked, looking back up at Nikaido who was keeping watch.
"Do I look like I just did a whole lot of running and crap in through a frozen scenario?" Nikaido said testily.
Senga made a face. "Fine."
"Fine?" Nikaido echoed. As if donning shoes were a chore. But Senga ignored him. At least he was putting the shoes on, even if he was taking his own sweet time doing up their laces. For the moment, it seemed like they'd lost their pursuit pretty far behind...
Nikaido sighed. "Okay, that was awesome. I mean, you're really good at in-scenario stuff," he admitted reluctantly. Senga beamed. Nikaido looked away from his happy-to-be-complimented face. "But," he stressed, "are you just gonna keep us running indefinitely, or have you got a plan?"
There was probably only one chaser on them. Two if they were unlucky. Nikaido wondered if Senga knew things like that. Wondered vaguely how long it had been since Senga's friends -- whoever they were -- had crossed the line over to the legal side of the law under Takizawa or Tackey or whatever that creepy guy's name was supposed to be. Maybe it hadn't been so long since they'd crossed, if Senga was willing to go as far as he already had for an illegal like Nikaido that he didn't even really know...?
Senga had totally stuck his neck out to help -- was continuing to help, leaving his head on the chopping block -- and Nikaido didn't really know how he was supposed to feel about that. On the one hand, his first instict was to call Senga stupid and just leave the idiot behind like he should've done in the first place, after getting to read that stupid, pointless scroll.
And yet, this sticking together stuff -- it was what Senga wanted, and somehow Nikaido didn't at all feel that leaving him behind would be the better (or nicer) thing to do, even if it would definitely be better for Senga to not be caught assisting an illegal, and even if Nikaido would have more of a chance of escaping the frozen scenario by himself anyway...
Mentally, Nikaido ran through the small clipboard of shortcuts and codes he had on him. He wouldn't be able to bring in anything new, but well... he would probably be able to worm his way out of the frozen scenario by himself. Maybe. Theoretically anyway. He'd done it a couple of times before -- but just by himself. And it had taken a long while each time. He'd been lucky, really. But luck was as good as skill sometimes~
If he were just by himself, he'd try take out the chaser first; try buy himself a little bit of extra time before trying the wormhole. Then...
Well. None of that mattered at the present, did it? Nikaido simply wasn't going anywhere without Senga and vice versa, and that was that.
Sighing, Nikaido dropped down to sit on the forest floor -- muffling a yelp when the frozen leaves pricked through the seat of his pants.
Senga snickered at him.
Nikaido glowered.
And Senga very pointedly turned his focus back to doing up his laces. Finally done some seconds later, Senga drew a deep breath and looked around. "Well..." he said, "I sort of have a half plan."
"Really," Nikaido deadpanned, not bothering to muster up any enthusiasm or confidence for Senga's pointed lack of certainty.
Senga nodded, grinning in the reflected moonlight the clearing allowed down through the forest canopy. "I say we call for help!"
"Uh huh." Nikaido raised a dubious eyebrow. "Call who exactly?" Who, and for what kind of help was also something he'd like to know. They had no way to contact anybody. Tamamori had definitely left the scenario, and codesmen at his level weren't exactly common. Nikaido didn't know any others himself, personally -- hadn't known any period, until earlier that day.
Senga, though, seemed unfazed by this little statistic and stood up, filling his lungs.
And cupped his hands to his mouth, tipping his head back to loose a mighty shout toward the distant moon before Nikaido could even process what he was up to (for its sheer absurdity more than anything else): "II-CHAAAN~! IF YOU'RE LISTENING, A LITTLE BIT OF HELP HERE ANYTIME SOON WOULD BE SUPER SWEET PLEAAAAASE!"
"What the fuck do you think you're doing!?" Nikaido yelled, forgetting to keep his own voice down as he jumped to his feet and snatched Senga's arm away. Senga staggered -- he was still grinning, though. Nikaido stared at him.
"I have friends in high places!" Senga giggled -- giggled, Nikaido thought with a distant air of strange. "Kind of. More powerful friends than yours~ they're pretty powerful. And so, they'll definitely be able to help us! I think."
Nikaido looked around.
Nothing was happening.
His stomach curled its toes. "Then what the hell was that 'if you're listening' bit?" he glared.
Senga chewed on his top lip for a second, clearly thinking about how to say what he wanted as un-badly as possible. He glanced to the side. "...well. Uhm. He and Yokoo-kun sort of run the entire firewall for Boss Tackey's place, so. They've definitely got a monitor here. But they might be kind of busy..."
Before Nikaido could tear into all the reasons why relying on something like that was utterly stupid, a shout suddenly sounded from... not as far off as they'd hoped to have left their pursuit. Senga's eyes widened. And then widened again when a hunting horn sounded long and loud.
Nikaido swore. "Great. Now they've brought in reinforcements--" Senga's uncanny in-scenario skill had obviously raised an extra red flag or two (or two dozen). Nikaido had a few hold-out codes that could probably do enough damage to at least...
His thoughts trickled off when he realised that Senga was only grinning.
"...come on," Senga said, teeth white under the moonlight, and held out a hand. Nikaido stared at him. "Hey, hey don't make a face like that~" He winked. Winked. "Ii-chan or Yokoo-kun'll notice eventually. And I can definitely run forever until then, okay? It'll be fun!"
...Senga, Nikaido thought (and definitely not for the first time that night), was not only completely retarded, but also kind of batshit... abnormal.
Nikaido... couldn't say he didn't like that~? ♥
And hey. If Senga wasn't worried for himself, then hell if Nikaido would bother stressing either.
"Well, since you offered so nicely," Nikaido said with tactless aplomb, grin cocky as he stepped up to take Senga's hand. "Go right ahead~ Show me a good time."
Errant 74-M.
( 16: the headhunted )
It took Tamamori ten minutes to notice the letter in the bottle that had washed up on his beach, going by the production time stamped on its clear glass bottom. He wouldn't have blamed himself for the tardy notice, though. He'd only been watching the waves come into the small cove, fully relaxed with no particular ills in mind, and the bottle had washed up a little ways further down the curve of sand.
It had taken him a further twenty minutes of intense and brainless staring to decipher its message, though. He only bothered because it was from Miyata. Anyone else, and it would've just been tossed for junk mail.
It wasn't that Miyata was so special, really. That was a silly thought. It was just that sometimes, Miyata's thought processes were themselves junk mail, and so one had to be careful when sorting trash from treasure...
head back to 2000 for interesting times!, this one said.
courtesy of Toshiya Miyata.
PLEASE THINK OF HIM AS 宮田俊哉 INSTEAD! はじめました!!
Tamamori read it three times before acknowledging to himself that relying on a flash of intuition just wasn't going to cut it. And so he thought. And thought hard.
Starting with numbers.
...the year 2000? Nothing had happened then though, so far as Tamamori had been aware. Historically, the end of the year before that -- 1999 -- had been the time when the programmers of that era had kicked up a gigantic hoo-ha, concerned that their primitive technologies wouldn't be able to cope with the excess of zeros the new year would bring. Or something. The tech world as they knew it was supposed to have folded in upon itself or come to a standstill or something, taking everything with it...
Tamamori had always thought it was a hyperbolic load of crock and only ever skimmed the various library records on the issue, since nothing had ever come of it. The so-called Y2K bug had done nothing and, as far as Tamamori was concerned, the year 2000 only rang a distant bell in his mind as one of many technological hype letdowns in history...
Distracted, he brought his focus back to the task at hand.
Miyata wasn't hard to read, face to face, but sometimes the track of his brain went a bit sideways...
PLEASE THINK OF HIM AS 宮田俊哉 INSTEAD! はじめました!! the post script said.
Tamamori pursed his lips. What was that supposed to mean? Toshiya Miyata and 宮田俊哉 were the same thing -- one version was just backwards and in Old Local...
Over the years, Miyata had taught Tamamori a bit of what he knew of the language. Basic things, like Miyata's name. The easy letter sets. Numbers. Common greetings. And so Tamamori knew his すみません from his ありがとう, but still had trouble with telling his ツ from his シ or ソ from ン...
Did Miyata want him to think in Old Local? Because that was asking a bit much... Dictionaries that weren't for International were incredibly hard to come by, so long after the First Collapse.
And what was はじめました? Tamamori knew はじめまして was 'ha-ji-me-ma-shi-te' and something you said when you met someone for the first time. It meant something like, "Nice to meet you." But はじめました's last character was different -- a 'ta' instead of a 'te' -- and Tamamori wondered about the significance of it. Did that make it a different word, or...?
He frowned, eyes moving across the 二+千! and 面白い! with equally irritable incomprehension. He'd never seen 面白い!'s characters before in his life, apart from the 'い' and so duly ignored its existence. 二+千! pointed to the 2000. 二 was 'ni' and meant two. 千, though...? Was it thousand, then? ...'chi'? Or...
Tamamori's brows knitted in concentration.
No, wait. He tilted his head slightly, recalling Miyata telling him once how 'ni-sen-en' meant two thousand of the Old Local currency, while 'san-zen-en' meant three thousand because the thousand bit could be both 'sen' and 'zen' depending on what number it was with... (Miyata was dryly fascinating like that all the time, liking to fill in comfortable silences with just-as-comforable off-hand trivia memos. He was a wealth of non-essential knowledge.)
Nisen, then.
Head back to... ni... sen?
...
...
...!
When it suddenly clicked, Tamamori felt vaguely stupid, indignant at being made to feel stupid, and also annoyed that Miyata was directing him back to the stupid scenario with the idiot who was sending something to the Princes.
And yet... Tamamori skimmed the message again. It didn't really sound like Miyata was there anymore, himself? Odd.
Had he found something out... and then thought it better to bail? It wouldn't have been the first time something like that had happened. Tamamori could appreciate that Miyata walked a very fine tightrope for his job. The scrutiny that the government so liberally blanketed those under its umbrella with, legal and illegal alike, was nothing compared to the invasions of privacy it subjected its employees to day in and day out...
Tamamori felt his gut twist a little. He tugged on his ear, looking at the note in his hand again. And then glanced around. There was nobody else at the cove, but then again he hadn't expected there to be. It wasn't a standard beach.
The next second there was nobody there at all, as Tamamori retreated his avatar back into the virtual safety of his blueroom.
With barely a hesitation, he called up Miyata's contact sequence, scanning for the other's online presence -- to no avail. Miyata was offline, and had been last time-stamped at... not so long after Tamamori had exited the forest scenario, actually. Miyata had logged off, before briefly logging back on again and then leaving for real.
Tamamori clicked his tongue, thinking as if he had options in the matter. But he didn't, really. There was nothing much for it, but to do as Miyata suggested and head back. For curiousity's sake.
He called up the commissioned hawk -- the handiest avatar he had on hand that would fit in that forest and wouldn't necessitate walking either -- and took a moment to straighten out its feathers, which were in slight disarray after being eaten by the teeth virus.
"Sorry Mr. Hawk," Tamamori murmured. "You'll reach your rightful owner eventually. But I just need to borrow you for a bit longer..."
The next second, he soared out into the night.
'A bit longer' actually turned out to be... a bit longer than Tamamori'd expected.
The night air was cold against his wings as he circled in the sky above the area where he'd last seen traces of Nikaido and Senga's contact sequences.
The entire block was locked.
You couldn't tell by looking from the outside, unless it was through a scan -- but Tamamori had tried flying into it, low through the trees. And as soon as he'd hit the locked area, he'd suddenly emerged on the other side of it as if instantly teleported. He almost hadn't noticed, forest being forest and the momentary jarring of vision seeming more like a minor glitch than anything.
But straight code didn't play tricks like that.
And so Tamamori circled, wondering what to do next.
The lockdown had obviously happened after Miyata had gone (obviously, because otherwise he wouldn't have been able to leave the scenario, or get a message out to Tamamori either). But there was something in there -- that either Senga or Nikaido had -- that Tamamori would be interested in, enough that Miyata had put himself up to further investigation just to let him know of it.
Swooping low into the branches of a tall tree just outside the locked area, Tamamori hit the brakes, spreading his wings and tail feathers, and settled onto his new perch with a patent lack of hurry (especially since Senga and Nikaido were probably in some sort of trouble); he'd get there when he got there. Tamamori knew Nikaido was good out in the real world, but online he seemed a bit slow. Senga the messenger was an unknown, idiocy aside. If the pair were going to get caught, then they'd probably do so with or without Tamamori's shadow presence...
Quietly, the hawk folded its wings and closed its eyes, appearing to sleep as Tamamori set to work on slicing himself backdoor access into the frozen region. Vaguely, he hoped that the 'interesting' of which Miyata had spoken would be able to help Senga and Nikaido with whatever they were currently up against...
It probably wasn't more than one or two chasers anyway...
Unless said 'interesting' meant they'd brought in assistance...
He supposed he'd find out soon enough...
Minutes later, the sleeping hawk shimmered into thin air and disappeared.
And so Tamamori knew his すみません (sumimasen/sorry) from his ありがとう (arigatou/thanks), but still had trouble with telling his ツ (tsu) from his シ (shi) or ソ (so) from ン (n- all katakana)...
二+千! (2+1000!) and 面白い! (omoshiroi/interesting!)
1- this plotting thing... it is yabai. xD; LOL. this week was so, so off. i don't think i've even spellchecked 15/16. ahwell, akjwhfr.
2- WHY IS IT SATURDAY TOMORROW ALREADY? 0_0
3- a commitment might be just a handful of hours, but then the time around it as well and suddenly most of your day is gone? why happen. ;; so weird. D|
4- have MIROTIC stuck in my head so bad. xD; of all things. eugh. for the past three days. nooo~ *shoos out the DBSK*