[kame/pi feat jin, nagase, yoko] Slow Circle (2 of 2)
He woke up in the morning without a headache, and mentally thanked whoever had created the spell Kamenashi had used the night before. He felt better this morning; there was a certain heaviness to his skin that was new, but it wasn’t hard to adjust to after a moment of stretching. Kamenashi had explained the night before that the ward would actually sink into his skin over the rest of the day, making the paint from his pen disappear, and that was proving true. Kamenashi’s stark black runes from the night before had faded to a light gray shadow of their former selves.
He trapised out of his bedroom to find Kamenashi once again making breakfast, and he hopped in the shower on automatic after an easy ‘g’morning’. By the time he’d finished buttoning up a green button-down shirt and picking out a sports jacket to wear for his interview with the local hockey captains, the smell of salmon had filled the apartment.
"I had salmon in the fridge?" he asked, as he laid his jacket over the back of his chair and stuffed his new daily bento in his briefcase.
Kamenashi looked up. "No," he said, "I went out this morning. I charged it to the card the MLE gave me, so it wasn’t a big deal. Sit down, it’s ready~"
"Do you like cleaning as much as you like cooking?" Yamashita asked, when he finally put his chopsticks down.
Kamenashi considered it, visibly. "No," he said, "but I hate messes. And cleaning is like scratching an annoying itch. Cooking is fun."
"Food is much better than cleaning toilets," Yamashita agreed, and stood. "You don’t--need to clean, or anything. It’s fine. Okay?"
"Aw, I was going to scrub the bathtub today," Kamenashi dead-panned, "I’ll actually be at the library all day--for real, stop looking at me like that!--so I’ll see you back here tonight at some point. And take an umbrella, there might be rain."
Yamashita saluted in both goodbye and agreement, plucking his umbrella from the rack near the door as he passed through his front door.
He spent all day thinking about Kamenashi. Even the parts where he was interviewing grizzled-looking hockey coaches and captains about why their team was going to win the Hokkaido Cup. He managed to nod and scribble enough notes down to flesh out the rest of his planned article, though, and he counted that as a victory as he stomped back to the office. Nagase and Yokoyama hadn’t managed to wreck the place in the three hours he’d been gone, surprisingly, and were both hard at work when Yamashita let himself in to get cracking.
The article poured out of him easily, but it was long, so by the time Yamashita left the office it was dark outside. The rain that had been threatening all day finally began to come down not a minute after he left the train station to start his five-block walk home, and Yamashita was thankful for Kamenashi’s obsessive behaviors as he hauled his umbrella out.
The light was on in his apartment when he finally stepped inside, but there was no television on as background noise and Kamenashi’s shoes weren’t in his genkan. "Dammit Kamenashi, don’t run up my electricity bill," he grumbled to himself as he stepped out of his loafers, kicking them into the pile in front of his shoe rack lazily.
"Yamashita-kun?"
Yamashita froze in the middle of putting his briefcase down on his kitchen table.
"In the living room. I’m not here to hurt you."
"Who are you?" Yamashita demanded, creeping down the hallway.
He stepped into the living room, and froze.
"Yo," said the man standing awkwardly in front of his small television. He was simply dressed--red t-shirt, loose gray cardigan and jeans--and looked tired but alert under a mop of brown hair. "I’m, uh, Yamashita Tomohisa. From the future."
Yamashita became dimly aware his mouth was hanging open--he shut it, only to reopen it with a disbelieving "but why are you here?!".
"To fix things," his future self said, "um, sit. Please." He gestured at the couch, and Yamashita walked to it, mind still numb. His future self settled gingerly next to him, fiddling with the material of his cardigan and looking nervous.
"In the next week or two," the man said, "you’re going to be asked to save the world. Or, like, the responsibility of saving the world is going to fall on you. I’m here to tell you not to do it."
"...not to do it?" Yamashita asked, boggled, "why would... is anyone else going to?!"
"Yes," his future self said, quickly, "no, yes, absolutely, someone else can do what they ask you to do, I’m not here trying to destroy the world, I swear, but... tell them no. Turn them down."
"...why?" Yamashita asked, thinking.
"It ruins your life," the man answered, eyes dark and serious, "they don’t stop with saving the world. Everything they want from you is... is too heavy. It crushes you."
"This sounds ridiculous," Yamashita said, slowly, "how do I know you’re not Nishikido, here to stop me from stopping him?"
"Ryo-chan? What about Ryo-chan? He’s not... that’s what he told you, isn’t it. That Ryo-chan is trying to destroy everything?"
"He wants to rule the world, Kamenashi said."
The man snorted. "Kazu is... Kazu’s heart is in the right place," he said, "but Kazu has been trying to prevent me from meeting you since we arrived."
"He was warding me from you?" Yamashita demanded, flabbergasted, "what the hell is even going on here?!"
"Kazu’s afraid I’m going to change everything, I think," the man said, "he’s paranoid like that. We’re, um, we’re--together, I guess I should mention that. He chased me back into the time stream. Just... when the time comes, remember that it makes doing anything you’re dreaming about doing impossible. There are other people who can do the job instead of you. That’s all. Tell Kazu his ward-work is impressive, but as soon as I remembered what the address of the apartment was he lost."
Then the man lifted his hand, and with a whipping wind of sheer cold magic, he disappeared like he’d never been there. Yamashita sat in the silent half-light of his living room, his stomach rolling with ‘Kazu’ ‘Kazu’ ‘Kazu’. He hadn’t moved in the half-hour that passed before the front door swung open, and a cheerfully humming Kamenashi came in.
"Yamashita-kun, are you here? Oh my god why can’t you put your shoes in the slots, you ass..." Maybe it was just Yamashita’s perspective that had changed, but Kamenashi’s complaints about Yamashita’s cleanliness habits seemed longer-suffering. Fonder. Yamashita shook his head. Kamenashi had lied. Again. Remembering made his stomach stir up again, and he stood from the couch to confront Kamenashi.
"I don’t know why I’m so surprised you lied to me," he found himself saying, without preamble. Kamenashi looked up from reorganizing Yamashita’s shoe rack, his eyes wide with surprise.
"I’m sorry?" he prompted.
"My future self was here when I came home," Yamashita said, and watched Kamenashi’s face crumple with a sickeningly fierce sense of triumph. "He told me you lied. About Nishikido."
Kamenashi had shut his eyes, scrubbing at his hair in frustration, and he cursed loudly before he drew himself to his feet. "He’s trying to change the flow of time in order to benefit himself. He’s not allowed to do that."
"Not allowed to warn himself, or not allowed to ruin things with you?"
Kamenashi paled. "He--of course he did. Look, I’m not just in this to protect him and me--to protect us. I’m trying to save the whole world. No one can do what he did--what you do--like him. Like... like you. Look, I’ll go. I’m... I’m sorry, if it helps."
Yamashita shrugged, and turned around. "Be gone by morning," he said, and shut himself in his bedroom until morning.
The house was empty when Yamashita turned his alarm off. He blew the air from his lungs in a long huff, and then went digging for the cereal. He was in no mood to cook. When he checked on the contents of his briefcase, he found a freshly packed bento inside, and after staring at it for a long moment, he resisted the urge to toss it in the trash. Yamashita Tomohisa didn’t waste food.
Or, at least, that was what he told himself. When lunch time came around, he was barely hungry, and after forcing down one of the onigiri he gave the rest to Yokoyama and hopped back into his work. Nagase and Yokoyama both stared at him in confusion, and Nagase hauled them both out for a drinking party with the guys from the reviews section, and Yamashita found himself getting his ear talked off by guys he hadn’t seen in months, like Koyama the budding reporter who had been in half of Yamashita’s Communications classes. It was one of the best nights he’d had in a long time, besides the part where he kept thinking ‘Kame and Nino would get along great’ and 'Nagase would eat Kame alive'. Kamenashi dogged all of his thoughts whether he wanted him there or not.
He was so wrapped up in forgetting Kamenashi that when his chest started to burn three nights later, he half-thought it was just his body torturing him like his sleepless brain kept doing. But when the burning continued unabated and the ground started to shake beneath him, Yamashita realized things were probably a little more dangerous than he’d been thinking, and the separate warnings from both Kamenashi and his future self rang between his ears. ’You can save the world’, they said over and over again. "Yeah, okay, fine, world-saving, but how?" Yamashita demanded, "I can’t even see straight!"
Jin’s distinctive laughter made him force his eyes open, and the current Jin from his time grinned down at him under obnoxious Aviator sunglasses and a Costa Rica tan. "Come on," Jin said, and hauled Yamashita up by the forearm.
Traveling by the dimensional tears Jin called ‘slips’ always gave Yamashita a headache, but this time he was so focused on resisting the urge to claw his own chest off that it didn’t even matter. Jin’s palm was steady against his arm, and when the world settled around them again his grip tightened to keep Yamashita standing upright.
"What the hell is going on," Yamashita demanded. They were back on Todai’s campus, near the pond. The grounds were deserted and the entire place was vibrating with what Yamashita knew was magic. The ward on his chest pulsed and burned in a rhythm that Yamashita eventually realized matched the beating of his heart, and he rubbed his palm over the ward with a hiss.
"Having future you and current you in the same world for too long unbalanced the magical energies of the entire Tokyo area," Jin summarized, "basically, his activated magic and your latent magic are reacting to one another, and it’s fucking things up for everybody else."
"So why doesn’t he go home?" Yamashita demanded.
"It’s... confusing," Jin admitted, "but they way he explained it to me was this: he had to be here to create himself... in order to go back in time and tell you to change your future."
"He’s going to disappear when I change his history, isn’t he," Yamashita asked, quietly.
Jin made a face. "As is, yeah," he agreed.
"And Kamenashi too?"
"Probably. Kame only came back to stop you. Him. Whatever you know what I mean."
Disgustingly, he knew exactly what Jin meant. "So...?"
"So now you have a choice. Either you do what future you told you to do--let somebody else handle this--or you handle it. I’m not allowed to tell you what to do, Pi, but I’ll support you whatever you decide." Jin made a face. "That was super-sappy, don’t tell anyone I said that."
"Yeah, gross," Yamashita teased, and then focused on the rippling water of the lake. "What do I have to do?"
"There’s a statue thing in the library called the Totem of Anralos," Jin said, "some relic that was placed under the damn thing for protection. It magnifies powers, or at least that’s what I was told. But it has to be someone whose magic is latent. If you have an Affinity it doesn't work right. We tried."
"So you could pluck anybody whose powers haven’t emerged yet and make them do this, but you came to me first?"
"The more latent power, the better," Jin said, "and you have the most latent power... ever."
"...I do?"
"What, no one told you this? Nagase didn’t mention it, or anything?"
"He said I’d ‘know when the time came’."
"Asshole," Jin said, fondly, "he’s my boss, technically, did you know that? That massive moron runs MLE's dimensional travel division. Anyway, if you want to do this, then tell me now. If you don’t, I’ll send you home. Okay?"
"Where are they?" he asked. Jin blinked, and then understanding dawned.
"They’re here, somewhere, I think," he said, "I thought I heard them arguing about Ryo-chan. Oi, Yamapi! Kame!"
There was a quiet rush of wind, and then they were both there, looking mutually tired but otherwise unchanged from the night Yamashita last saw them.
"Question," Yamashita said, directly to his future self. "This... stuff they want you to do. Is it... evil?"
"No," his future self answered, slowly, "just... hard. Ethical choices." He glanced sidelong at Kamenashi, whose fingers curled about his wrist silently.
"Are we happy together?" Yamashita asked Kamenashi. Kamenashi’s eyes held his the entire time he considered it.
"Besides when you leave shoes on the floor instead of in the shoe rack," Kamenashi said, a smile tugging at his mouth.
Yamashita snorted, and lowered his head to stare at the ground. Slowly, he looked up. "Let’s do this," he informed Jin. Out of the corner of his eye he caught his future self’s understanding nod.
"Remember, make the lights equal," the man said.
Jin grinned, and then they were slipping again, catching the beginning of a rant from Kamenashi on the subject of ‘oversimplifying the art of energy manipulation and warding’. They came out somewhere with familiar architecture--the basement of the Todai library looked remarkably like the second floor in size and shape--but unfamiliar contents. There were relics everywhere, but the most impressive relic was by far the middling-size statue of a woman wearing a robe displayed in a glass case in the center of the room. Not because of particular majesty or anything, but because power rolled off of it in waves. "The Totem of Anralos," Jin said in a hushed voice, but he needn’t have bothered. Every hair on Yamashita’s entire body stood up as he approached the case, an electrifying rush of something like kin. His belly was full of fire that pushed and pulsed against the ward on his chest, and he reached out to throw the case’s unlocked door open before he could think twice. He grabbed the Totem of Anralos, and everything went black.
When his eyes opened again, he was once again in the library, but the overhead lamps were all out. Instead the entire room was filled with what seemed like millions of small floating balls of light. They were a lot more chaotic then Yamashita had anticipated. They darted back and forth across the black landscape like particularly active children, and each time he reached out to grab one it slipped away. Resisting the urge to kick at the ground in a temper tantrum, he took a deep breath--and watched the lights pulse in time with it. He tested it--with each breath he took in, the lights pulsed and moved about. The faster he took them, the faster the lights. He spread his arms wide and took a long, deep breath, trying to calm himself as much as possible, and when he opened his eyes on exhale he realized that the lights had begun to converge into two larger spheres.
It took a few more deep breaths to gather up all the errant little lights, but once he had the problem seemed really, really obvious. One side was nearly a third bigger than the other. Yamashita approached the larger ball, and reached out to take a fist full of light. The lights went every which way, floating about the room until Yamashita sucked in a big breath and they found their way back to the bigger ball.
Make them equal, his future self has said, but he didn’t know how. All he knew was that they liked his lungs, or something. As soon as that thought occurred to him, the solution became clear. Without thinking any more, Yamashita pushed his face into the bigger sphere and sucked in a breath between his lips. Without a pause, he turned and blew out into the other. When he compared sizes, there was still an obvious difference but it was smaller.
Fifteen or sixteen careful puffs later, Yamashita was satisfied. He glanced between the two floating orbs, and nodded to himself. "Now what?" he asked, raising his hands to put them on his hips, which was when he realized the Totem was sticking out of his pocket. "How did I miss you?" he asked the statue, and plucked it from the loose pocket of his pajama pants. He held it up, hoping that would do the trick, and to his surprise, it did. The Totem began to vibrate in his hands, and the light sphere began to vibrate back and forth.
The lights overhwlemed him, and he closed his eyes against it.
He woke up again with Jin staring into his face. "Pi, oi! Pi! Pi? Oh thank god." Jin looked hugely relieved.
"Woah," Yamashita managed, "where am I?"
"On the floor of the Todai library lobby," Jin said, and sure enough he was. The place was still empty, at least.
"Did I do it?" Yamashita asked. He was afraid for the answer.
"I... I think so," Jin said. He looked tense. "You went limp, for a while, and your breath stopped. That was scary. You started to breathe again, thank god, I was not and am not interested in doing CPR on your ass. Then the Totem started to glow, and then it disappeared."
"What do you mean it disappeared," Yamashita answered, struggling to sit up.
"He means you and the Totem combined." Nagase looked like he was dressed to go skateboarding instead of helping save the world, and he crossed the library lobby in shabby sneakers to squat at Yamashita's side. "You okay?" he asked, reaching out to grab Yamashita's shoulder.
"I think so," Yamashita said, "combined?"
"When you used it to rebalance the energies, it had to amplify your powers so much it became a part of you" Nagase answered. Then he made a face. "It's more complicated than that," he said, "but that's the core of it. It shouldn't harm you, but if your chest starts to hurt let me know. All right?"
Yamashita nodded, head swimming. "Tokyo's safe?" he asked.
"Pi," Nagase said, "Tokyo is safe. Because of you. You did good work, kid!"
"Doesn't feel like I did much," Yamashita said.
"World-saving never does," Nagase answered. "Now come on, Kamenashi's about to get sent back to his time."
Yamashita scrambled to his feet, and stumbled toward the door. The fountain his older self had blown up had been repaired since the week before, and Kamenashi was sitting on the edge of it, legs thrown wide and elbows on his knees. He looked up when Yamashita approached, his jaw slack, and rose, slowly, to meet him.
"You're safe," Kamenashi said, quietly.
"That's what they tell me," Yamashita agreed, "I'll, uh. I'll see you around, I guess."
Kamenashi nodded, eyes sober. He stepped closer, crowding Yamashita's space, and his palm pressed against Yamashita's elbow. "Thank you," he said, "I'll do my best to help him out."
"Make him take a vacation," Yamashita grumbled.
Kamenashi laughed. Then he reached into his coat pocket and plucked out a note. He pressed it into Yamashita's hand, and stepped away when Nagase and Jin came out of the library's front doors, arguing loudly about whether it was better to be drunk or hungover on the job.
"See you at home," Yamashita said, and Kamenashi smiled, wide and honest and dazzling, before he straightened up for Nagase.
"Come back around the office sometime with that boytoy of yours," Nagase admonished, "I'm sure there's room for a Mayor Yamapi column in my section."
"I'll talk to him about it," Kamenashi promised.
Nagase nodded, and then he glanced at Jin. "A slip to HQ, please," he said, and wrapped an arm about Kamenashi's shoulders before they ducked into it.
Yamashita unfolded his older self's note. 'Pi, good work today. You did exactly what I did, five years ago! Man, time travel is confusing, huh? Thanks for taking care of Kazu, and I'm sorry for ruining your office--time traveling by yourself has its hazards! Things are tough, I won't lie, and when the time comes for you to do this to yourself, you'll feel like you want out, too. But it'll work out! I think.' Yamashita shook his head, laughing, and folded the paper up.
"I wasn't done reading," Jin complained from over his shoulder. Yamashita rolled his eyes, and shoved the note in the pocket of his sweatpants.
"...so now what do we do?" Yamashita asked.
"We go back to your place and play video games, then you put up a roommate wanted sign so I can stop getting annoying screechy voicemails from Uchi at two in the damn morning in Costa Rica asking if you died," Jin said, making the entire suggestion sound infuriatingly obvious.
To Jin, it probably was. Yamashita laughed.
"So, just to be sure. Nishikido Ryo isn’t trying to take over the Earth, right?" he asked, and Jin broke into laughter.
"Ryo-chan is an engineering major. A mundane," Jin said, flapping his hands, "he’s great for parties, though~"
"Do you know anything about these scoreboards exploding around town, for curiosity's sake?"
"...Tegoshi and I do really fucking stupid shit on tequila in Costa Rica surrounded by women in bikinis, and that’s all I have to say on the matter. Fucking Tegoshi--worst partner ever."
"No, I think you win that award. Ow!"