au meme #8: battle royale.
1- Eggs dying saved, yay!. *_* Fail, human. *finds excuse to post* 
2- Josh Groban's Oceano [ lyrics+trans | mp3 download ] was on repeat the entire time editing this. Not something I usually do, but this song is gorgeous and fit perfectly. :(
For Anon here at the AU meme.
battle royale JE, anyone?
who: NewS.
rating: whatever BR without the sex would be rated; 1660w.
warning: it's battle royale (movie version, if there's a difference). guns, death, and nishikido ryo.
They were the last six alive in the waxing hours of the third and final morning. By midnight, there could only be one of them left or they would all die, but for now... Ryo rested.
In the pre-dawn hush, the gunshots, explosions and echoing screams of the last two days seemed surrealistically distant, a dull nightmare lingering in his mind's recess. Ryo remembered having bowed his head at each of the six-hourly death counts as if the last one hadn't been just three hours ago. As if Uchi and Kusano hadn't been among the casualties then.
Their unbreakable circle had been chipped and cracked and thrown, tested over the last fifty hours. Now they were all they had left.
*
School seemed like a lifetime ago, when they'd all shared the back row and pissed on the concept of adulthood, hurling abuse at their teacher both physical and verbal. None of them had wanted to be there, except maybe Kato who'd occasionally worked his blood pressure into the stratosphere at their collective insolence (though Koyama always calmed him before any shit really hit the fan).
Masuda and Koyama hadn't needed an academic education, heirs to their parents' restaurants; and Tegoshi, following his mother's footsteps, was already making more on the streets than many a salaryman. Uchi, too. (Amid ten million Japanese unemployed, dirt-streaked and disillusioned, a weaver of dreams and fantasies would never be out of work.)
Ryo had wanted to hate the two of them for being the kind of person who'd broken the Nishikido home, but he couldn't. He hated his own father for giving half his meagre salary to a whore every week, and hated his mother for putting up with it, but the way Uchi and Tegoshi were only ever made Ryo jealous-sometimes violently so.
He hated that part of himself, too, but hadn't been able to stop it. Like father like son, and it had been their laughter to undo him every time, melodically sweet and sickeningly superior. They were boys in control, where Ryo had never been.
Kusano had been their teacher's last straw, with his contests against Akanishi from the class across the hall.
The pair of them had thrown switchblades at the blackboards a few times, seeing who could hit closest to his teacher's head while his back was turned writing up equations in chalk. It had been Kusano's knife that took off their teacher's ear; Kusano had denied the blade was his, and it mightn't have been since nobody really saw it, but he'd stayed home from school from then on anyway.
He'd been so happy that Tegoshi had called him, asking if he wasn't going to join them on their school trip. So happy, glad to know he'd been missed.
Any less and Ryo would have wished Kusano'd never come back.
Waking up, their 'school trip' had turned into this warzone, this one-mile radius of fear and betrayal. And now Kusano was dead. Just like Uchi... Ryo's stomach twisted and he closed his eyes for a moment, holding his breath to keep down the soggy porridge Koyama had scraped up for them at sundown.
They'd all promised to stick together from the first day and it had worked: Moriuchi had taken off running from the classroom, not turning back despite how they'd called his name, and Ryo'd had a moment of I told you so upon hearing Boy #36: Moriuchi Takahiro rounding out the death count that first midnight.
Despite that…
Despite that.
Mind made up, Ryo looked down and fitted the silencer to his gun as quietly as possible.
*
The rest of them were mostly sleeping, having promised each other they'd deal with tomorrow when it came, too exhausted to watch their backs among friends anymore. Ryo had promised too, except Tegoshi was still awake.
Masuda's mild fever had flared to blazing after being caught in the flank during the earlier gunfight-the one that had reduced them to six. Pale and passed out, barely breathing, Masuda's wound bled through his dressings with as much determination as Tegoshi had to apply pressure and change the bandages. Koyama's first aid kit was going to run out soon. There was one roll left.
Ryo watched from opposite the room, thinking distantly that he might never have known the self-centred little slut had a capacity for care if not for this...
"Ryo-tan," Tegoshi said then, not looking up.
Ryo slid his gun under the thin blanket in his lap. "…Tego-nyan?"
Tegoshi was silent for a long moment, but "…no, nothing," he said eventually, not turning around. He folded his arms on Masuda's chest and leaned forward to rest his head.
"If you say so." Ryo crossed the room to drape his blanket over Tegoshi's shoulders.
Tegoshi smiled a tired smile under closed eyes, the shadows beneath them seeming darker since Kusano's passing. "Goodnight, Ryo-tan," he murmured.
"Goodnight," Ryo said, and stroked Tegoshi's hair, lingering for only a moment- "Sleep well." -before raising his gun. Shooting twice.
Masuda was going to be next, but when Ryo gently shifted Tegoshi away, he found a needle by Masuda's arm and three glass vials all as echoingly empty as Masuda's pulse.
"Thank you, Tego-nyan," Ryo whispered, setting Tegoshi right again before moving on to the adjacent room.
*
Kato stirred when the floorboards creaked under Ryo's feet, sitting up all lethargic. "...Nishikido?"
Koyama made a vaguely discontent noise as his arms around Kato's waist were jostled. The thin pillow between them the night before was now on the floor.
"Can't sleep," Ryo said.
Kato nodded, husky voice soft: "How's Massu?"
"Tegoshi took care of him," Ryo said, bluntly oblique. "They're both out now."
"…I'm glad," Kato sighed, and shifted back down under his blanket. "You should rest, too, you know. Tomorrow's going to be hell."
"I can't stop thinking about it," Ryo admitted. "Mind if I sit here for a bit?"
"Suit yourself," Kato told him, "but you're mistaken if you think I'm going to keep you company." By the moonlight through the window, Ryo saw plain as day the way Kato's hand gently brushed Koyama's cheek. "See you in the morning. We'll figure a way out then." And then he closed his eyes and silence reigned once more.
Neither Koyama or Kato would live if they won, Ryo knew, watching them. It would only be one of them and they weren't made of the right stuff.
And so when Kato began to snore softly, Koyama mumbling indistinctly of pancakes for breakfast, Ryo stood and shot them, too, unhesitant before they could dream of anything else.
*
He found Yamashita passed out on the kitchen floor amid scraps of paper towel, notebook sheets, tin can labels, toilet paper, and a few dozen paper cranes.
"My wish," he'd told Ryo earlier, busily folding, "is for us all to leave here together."
"We can't do that," Ryo had said.
Yamashita'd looked offended. "It's my wish, I can do whatever I want with it."
And Ryo had left him at that, not strong enough to take the heartbreak.
Yamashita had always been the one keeping everything together, the calm gravity centring their classroom maelstrom. At home he'd been his family's anchor too, the man of the house since his father had walked out and taken that prestigious Aoki name with him. Ryo had seen first-hand how Pi had coped, how he'd still mustered up smiles and hung out with them all even after working long hours overnight to make ends meet.
Hell, he'd even found time to do his homework.
Yamashita was strong and good, and had turned out alright despite the cards life had dealt him. He didn't deserve an end like this, out on a pathetic island in the middle of nowhere.
And though maybe it wasn't Ryo's place to play god this way, neither would it be his moral problem anymore in just a little while.
"Pi," he said softly, a hand on Yamashita's shoulder. "Pi, I'm gonna go now…"
"Mnngh…" Yamashita mumbled, rolling over in his sleep, a sheet of notepaper stuck to his cheek. "No, five… more minutes, Mom…"
"Idiot," Ryo murmured, "you'll get to see her soon enough."
*
"Ryo-chaaan," Yamashita groaned, dawn light on his face as the morning death count was read out. "I told you to wake me up!" He rolled over-then sat abruptly, his blood run cold at the realisation their teacher was still droning on over the speakers.
There shouldn't have been a death count. There'd only been the six of them left.
Yamashita ran.
…Takahisa, dead.
Boy #13: Tegoshi Yuuya, dead.
Boy #7: Kato Shigeaki, dead.
Boy #9: Koyama Keiichiro, dead.
Boy #18: Nishikido Ryo, dead.
Boy #37: Yamashita Tomohisa, congratulations! You're the last one standing, and the official winner of the BR Act's seventh round...!
In the first room Tegoshi was slumped over Masuda's chest, his pretty face unrecognisable; Kato and Koyama were curled up together in the next, as pale as their sheets were red.
"Ryo!" Yamashita shouted. "Ryo!"
He found Nishikido outside the old house, stretched out on his back and cold to the touch, staring up from where Yamashita remembered the moonlight being brightest the night before.
Around his silencer, the scrap of a notebook:
Don't sleep with shit stuck to your face, idiot. What're you gonna do without me?
I was there from the start. Remember that.
…I'll be there 'til the end.
Ryo-chan,
Your very own hell's angel.
say hi to your mom for me. She's totally hot.
And keep your sister outta trouble. She's hot, too.
ps. Jin hurts you and i'll fuckin haunt him to the grave.
pss. whatever, you can take care of yourself I know.
But I'll be watching anyway
Yamashita barely felt the helicopter pick him up past his own tears.
His friends were the worst in the world.
2- Josh Groban's Oceano [ lyrics+trans | mp3 download ] was on repeat the entire time editing this. Not something I usually do, but this song is gorgeous and fit perfectly. :(
For Anon here at the AU meme.
battle royale JE, anyone?
who: NewS.
rating: whatever BR without the sex would be rated; 1660w.
warning: it's battle royale (movie version, if there's a difference). guns, death, and nishikido ryo.
They were the last six alive in the waxing hours of the third and final morning. By midnight, there could only be one of them left or they would all die, but for now... Ryo rested.
In the pre-dawn hush, the gunshots, explosions and echoing screams of the last two days seemed surrealistically distant, a dull nightmare lingering in his mind's recess. Ryo remembered having bowed his head at each of the six-hourly death counts as if the last one hadn't been just three hours ago. As if Uchi and Kusano hadn't been among the casualties then.
Their unbreakable circle had been chipped and cracked and thrown, tested over the last fifty hours. Now they were all they had left.
*
School seemed like a lifetime ago, when they'd all shared the back row and pissed on the concept of adulthood, hurling abuse at their teacher both physical and verbal. None of them had wanted to be there, except maybe Kato who'd occasionally worked his blood pressure into the stratosphere at their collective insolence (though Koyama always calmed him before any shit really hit the fan).
Masuda and Koyama hadn't needed an academic education, heirs to their parents' restaurants; and Tegoshi, following his mother's footsteps, was already making more on the streets than many a salaryman. Uchi, too. (Amid ten million Japanese unemployed, dirt-streaked and disillusioned, a weaver of dreams and fantasies would never be out of work.)
Ryo had wanted to hate the two of them for being the kind of person who'd broken the Nishikido home, but he couldn't. He hated his own father for giving half his meagre salary to a whore every week, and hated his mother for putting up with it, but the way Uchi and Tegoshi were only ever made Ryo jealous-sometimes violently so.
He hated that part of himself, too, but hadn't been able to stop it. Like father like son, and it had been their laughter to undo him every time, melodically sweet and sickeningly superior. They were boys in control, where Ryo had never been.
Kusano had been their teacher's last straw, with his contests against Akanishi from the class across the hall.
The pair of them had thrown switchblades at the blackboards a few times, seeing who could hit closest to his teacher's head while his back was turned writing up equations in chalk. It had been Kusano's knife that took off their teacher's ear; Kusano had denied the blade was his, and it mightn't have been since nobody really saw it, but he'd stayed home from school from then on anyway.
He'd been so happy that Tegoshi had called him, asking if he wasn't going to join them on their school trip. So happy, glad to know he'd been missed.
Any less and Ryo would have wished Kusano'd never come back.
Waking up, their 'school trip' had turned into this warzone, this one-mile radius of fear and betrayal. And now Kusano was dead. Just like Uchi... Ryo's stomach twisted and he closed his eyes for a moment, holding his breath to keep down the soggy porridge Koyama had scraped up for them at sundown.
They'd all promised to stick together from the first day and it had worked: Moriuchi had taken off running from the classroom, not turning back despite how they'd called his name, and Ryo'd had a moment of I told you so upon hearing Boy #36: Moriuchi Takahiro rounding out the death count that first midnight.
Despite that…
Despite that.
Mind made up, Ryo looked down and fitted the silencer to his gun as quietly as possible.
*
The rest of them were mostly sleeping, having promised each other they'd deal with tomorrow when it came, too exhausted to watch their backs among friends anymore. Ryo had promised too, except Tegoshi was still awake.
Masuda's mild fever had flared to blazing after being caught in the flank during the earlier gunfight-the one that had reduced them to six. Pale and passed out, barely breathing, Masuda's wound bled through his dressings with as much determination as Tegoshi had to apply pressure and change the bandages. Koyama's first aid kit was going to run out soon. There was one roll left.
Ryo watched from opposite the room, thinking distantly that he might never have known the self-centred little slut had a capacity for care if not for this...
"Ryo-tan," Tegoshi said then, not looking up.
Ryo slid his gun under the thin blanket in his lap. "…Tego-nyan?"
Tegoshi was silent for a long moment, but "…no, nothing," he said eventually, not turning around. He folded his arms on Masuda's chest and leaned forward to rest his head.
"If you say so." Ryo crossed the room to drape his blanket over Tegoshi's shoulders.
Tegoshi smiled a tired smile under closed eyes, the shadows beneath them seeming darker since Kusano's passing. "Goodnight, Ryo-tan," he murmured.
"Goodnight," Ryo said, and stroked Tegoshi's hair, lingering for only a moment- "Sleep well." -before raising his gun. Shooting twice.
Masuda was going to be next, but when Ryo gently shifted Tegoshi away, he found a needle by Masuda's arm and three glass vials all as echoingly empty as Masuda's pulse.
"Thank you, Tego-nyan," Ryo whispered, setting Tegoshi right again before moving on to the adjacent room.
*
Kato stirred when the floorboards creaked under Ryo's feet, sitting up all lethargic. "...Nishikido?"
Koyama made a vaguely discontent noise as his arms around Kato's waist were jostled. The thin pillow between them the night before was now on the floor.
"Can't sleep," Ryo said.
Kato nodded, husky voice soft: "How's Massu?"
"Tegoshi took care of him," Ryo said, bluntly oblique. "They're both out now."
"…I'm glad," Kato sighed, and shifted back down under his blanket. "You should rest, too, you know. Tomorrow's going to be hell."
"I can't stop thinking about it," Ryo admitted. "Mind if I sit here for a bit?"
"Suit yourself," Kato told him, "but you're mistaken if you think I'm going to keep you company." By the moonlight through the window, Ryo saw plain as day the way Kato's hand gently brushed Koyama's cheek. "See you in the morning. We'll figure a way out then." And then he closed his eyes and silence reigned once more.
Neither Koyama or Kato would live if they won, Ryo knew, watching them. It would only be one of them and they weren't made of the right stuff.
And so when Kato began to snore softly, Koyama mumbling indistinctly of pancakes for breakfast, Ryo stood and shot them, too, unhesitant before they could dream of anything else.
*
He found Yamashita passed out on the kitchen floor amid scraps of paper towel, notebook sheets, tin can labels, toilet paper, and a few dozen paper cranes.
"My wish," he'd told Ryo earlier, busily folding, "is for us all to leave here together."
"We can't do that," Ryo had said.
Yamashita'd looked offended. "It's my wish, I can do whatever I want with it."
And Ryo had left him at that, not strong enough to take the heartbreak.
Yamashita had always been the one keeping everything together, the calm gravity centring their classroom maelstrom. At home he'd been his family's anchor too, the man of the house since his father had walked out and taken that prestigious Aoki name with him. Ryo had seen first-hand how Pi had coped, how he'd still mustered up smiles and hung out with them all even after working long hours overnight to make ends meet.
Hell, he'd even found time to do his homework.
Yamashita was strong and good, and had turned out alright despite the cards life had dealt him. He didn't deserve an end like this, out on a pathetic island in the middle of nowhere.
And though maybe it wasn't Ryo's place to play god this way, neither would it be his moral problem anymore in just a little while.
"Pi," he said softly, a hand on Yamashita's shoulder. "Pi, I'm gonna go now…"
"Mnngh…" Yamashita mumbled, rolling over in his sleep, a sheet of notepaper stuck to his cheek. "No, five… more minutes, Mom…"
"Idiot," Ryo murmured, "you'll get to see her soon enough."
*
"Ryo-chaaan," Yamashita groaned, dawn light on his face as the morning death count was read out. "I told you to wake me up!" He rolled over-then sat abruptly, his blood run cold at the realisation their teacher was still droning on over the speakers.
There shouldn't have been a death count. There'd only been the six of them left.
Yamashita ran.
…Takahisa, dead.
Boy #13: Tegoshi Yuuya, dead.
Boy #7: Kato Shigeaki, dead.
Boy #9: Koyama Keiichiro, dead.
Boy #18: Nishikido Ryo, dead.
Boy #37: Yamashita Tomohisa, congratulations! You're the last one standing, and the official winner of the BR Act's seventh round...!
In the first room Tegoshi was slumped over Masuda's chest, his pretty face unrecognisable; Kato and Koyama were curled up together in the next, as pale as their sheets were red.
"Ryo!" Yamashita shouted. "Ryo!"
He found Nishikido outside the old house, stretched out on his back and cold to the touch, staring up from where Yamashita remembered the moonlight being brightest the night before.
Around his silencer, the scrap of a notebook:
Don't sleep with shit stuck to your face, idiot. What're you gonna do without me?
I was there from the start. Remember that.
…I'll be there 'til the end.
Ryo-chan,
Your very own hell's angel.
say hi to your mom for me. She's totally hot.
And keep your sister outta trouble. She's hot, too.
ps. Jin hurts you and i'll fuckin haunt him to the grave.
pss. whatever, you can take care of yourself I know.
But I'll be watching anyway
Yamashita barely felt the helicopter pick him up past his own tears.
His friends were the worst in the world.