Gift Fic for hikarinoniji
To: hikarinoniji
From: crazy_otaku911
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Title: Soldiers of the Wasteland
Pairing/Group: Hey!Say!JUMP - Yabu/Takaki (main), Nakajima/Yamada (but really this is almost completely gen.)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some violence and blood and… killing of things.
Notes: ~6700 words. Dear hikarinoniji, Happy Holidays! I hope you enjoy this offering of holiday fic! I had an immense fun writing this. ♥ Also, thank you to my betas for being awesome (and without whom this fic would not have come into being) and to the mods for being awesome too! \8D/
Summary: AU - The ruins are a maze of unexpected dangers, and only the highly-trained dare enter. Yabu isn’t ready for a new partner, but with two operatives dangerously outside contact range, he and Takaki must reconcile their differences to recover their missing comrades.
Yabu carefully lowered himself down into the metal pipe after Takaki, feeling Takaki’s arms wrap around his legs in support, which allowed him to let go of the access hatch’s ledge and drop the rest of the way into the pipe with a near soundless landing.
“Alright,” Yabu breathed, pulling his goggles back down and switching them to night-vision, waiting for the device to adjust fully to the dark of the sewers. The utility tunnels that ran above were still functioning, but once you got into the actual sewer system, it was a whole different world. “Hikaru, we’re in.”
“Got it.” Yaotome’s voice was startlingly loud in their ears after the constant, near silent drip-drip-drip of their journey so far into the sewers that lead into the ruined west side of the city. “This is where we last lost contact with the Yamada-Nakajima team yesterday from the probable Gaunt attack. Scout the area, assess the situation, and try to at least make contact with them. We’ll be tracking you, but maintain as much silence on the air as possible.”
“Roger,” Takaki murmured, barely audible, standing in the middle of the tunnel. It wasn’t necessary to hide just yet because the Gaunts couldn’t actually see. They navigated the dark and damp sewers based off their hearing, but it meant the more noise Takaki and Yabu made, the more they put themselves at risk. Yabu assured himself that they were more than prepared for a Gaunt, maybe even two, and that they’d hear the Gaunts long before they got near enough to worry about.
(He ignored the small voice in his head, telling him that he was full of bullshit.)
Yabu eyed Takaki with slight misgiving as the other pulled out a small, handheld scanner and headed further down the pipe. Takaki was capable, but not the most graceful or experienced of the bunch (in Yabu’s opinion) and it made Yabu apprehensive to have him along. But they were partners and their recon mission, to find the missing pair of operatives, wasn’t something he could run solo.
Takaki raised his hand, signaling over his shoulder. Standard signal, the coast was clear, but then his hand paused.
Then it dipped down twice.
Corpses. Two corpses.
Creeping forward, Yabu stepped down the access tunnel, expecting the worse - that they were too late to rescue Yamada or Nakajima - but as he reached Takaki’s side, he felt the some of the tension snap and release inside even as revulsion shuddered through him, his gaze falling upon two Gaunt corpses, black blood splattering the pipe around the scene.
“Idiot, you could have warned me,” Yabu hissed, testy in his relief that Yamada and Nakajima probably were still out there or at least this wasn’t where they’d died.
“What?” Takaki snapped back, crouching and swiping one of his gloved fingers over the pipe’s metal. “Looks like nothing came to clean this up… Hold on.” Standing up again, Takaki began to gingerly skirt around the grisly scene. While it was hard to tell how the Gaunts had actually died, the Gaunts themselves were horrific, as if they’d been forced out of a nightmare. With their patched fur, bulging, blind white eyes that never blinked, and large domed ears, they were repulsive. Their mouths were a gaping, sliming hole with saw-edged fangs and Yabu shuddered, looking at Takaki instead, his heart pounding.
It was hard to relax with a new partner, and Takaki was new to him. Until two months previous, Yabu had been running with Yaotome before a nasty accident in the west-side ruins had nearly robbed Yaotome of his left leg. The recovery process was going to be long - Takizawa had confided in Yabu that the doctors were not even sure if Yaotome would be able to move properly even after therapy - and thus Yabu had been assigned a new partner.
Takaki crouched again, still scanning before rapidly motioning for Yabu to join him. Yabu dropped that train of reminiscing to carefully make his way over. “What?”
“Red blood smears,” Takaki whispered, before reaching over and turning the data-screen on in Yabu’s goggles.
“Stop that!” Quickly slapping at the other’s hands, Yabu yanked his head away, readjusting his goggles and pulling his mask up lest he actually berate Takaki. They couldn’t afford that, he knew well enough, and if he wasn’t so on edge, it wouldn’t have mattered what Takaki did.
Takaki didn’t seem to even notice, merely sending over the readings of his scan. While human blood was common enough, with how many unfortunate homeless souls sought refuge in the sewer system from the cold of above-ground, Takaki’s scan showed that the blood was recent and it belonged to someone in their database.
“Yuuto,” Yabu said finally, eyeing the perfect DNA match.
“But none of it is Yamada’s,” Takaki confirmed as he slipped farther down the tunnel.
Yabu glanced at the two Gaunt corpses and raised an eyebrow, impressed. While the whereabouts of the two were unknown, for them to have brought down two adult Gaunts without Yamada suffering any apparent injury was no small feat. With no bodies in sight, it was possible they were still alive, despite having fallen off radar nearly twenty-six hours ago. They both undid the leather straps on the blades hooked to their belts, tense with anticipation and dread.
Takaki had already found a blood trail, and Yabu followed after him, twitching at even the softest sound beyond the monotonous dripping that haunted every part of the sewers.
He noticed that Takaki wasn’t even checking to see if he was following and suppressed a snort of annoyance. It wasn’t surprising, they had only run two minor missions before this, and Takaki had been a solo operative before that for quite some time.
Yabu would have tried to take Arioka or Inoo with him instead, but the two had been paired up for a good year now, and while their partnership seemed dysfunctional, they had a near perfect track record. He’d just have to work with what he had - Takaki.
“Hey, Kouta,” Hikaru murmured in his ear, and Yabu paused, realizing that Hikaru was on his private channel. “You need to calm the fuck down; your vitals are going haywire. What’s up?”
Yabu grimaced. He knew the jumpsuits each operative wore allowed the command center to monitor the operative’s vitals, alerting them if anything went wrong, and as their tech-op agent, Yaotome was keeping tabs on them both. Cupping his hands over his mouth to muffle the sound even more than the mask, he breathed out, “You’re spying.”
“It’s my job to,” Yaotome replied, almost cheerful in his matter-of-factness. “Now don’t tell me that you’re acting like a jackass because of Takaki.”
Yabu kept his hands cupped, but didn’t answer at all, so as not to lie, the silence speaking loud enough. He could practically feel Yaotome’s exasperation through the line.
“Kouta, it’s not like I want you to replace me, you know?” Yaotome said finally, and there was a touch of warmth amidst everything else. “But Takaki’s your partner right now and I don’t want anything happening to either of you while you’re down there. We already don’t know what happened to Yuuto or Ryousuke and I don’t want to be the one telling Chinen that neither of you are coming back either.” Yaotome paused and then added, quieter, “You know you’re not the only one. Takaki lost a partner too.”
Yabu felt a small stab of guilt at the reminder, but he just didn’t feel ready to soften to Yaotome’s reasoning. “That’s different and you know it,” he muttered before killing the connection, realizing with a surge of panic that he’d let his guard down, hadn’t paid attention to his surroundings. His gaze jerked upwards again as he relocated Takaki.
… Who was still walking off without him. Yabu glowered as he lengthened his stride, walking as silently as possible along the tunnel until he caught up with Takaki. “Hold up,” he hissed, but Takaki wasn’t paying attention, carefully stepping over residual sludge from a utility pipe running cross-wards. Deeper into the west-side they went, following dried drops of blood like a rather morbid twist on Hansel and Gretel.
“Look here!” Takaki whispered, suddenly reaching back to pull Yabu forward. “The blood trail ends here, but look at how it goes up the side of the tunnel…? Looks like they stopped here and got him patched up… but where-?”
“Why are you so noisy?!” Yabu exploded before he could stop himself, a small flash of red dancing in his vision that had nothing to do with his goggles. “Blah, blah, blah, just get to the point why don’t you!”
Takaki whipped around, obviously stung. “You know what, maybe if you were even trying to look for either of them, I wouldn’t have to say anything at all.”
“What?” Yabu snapped, rounding on Takaki. It was ridiculous, it was dangerous, but Takaki’s words left an ugly feeling in their wake. “You think I don’t want to find them too? I’ve known both a lot longer than you have, fucker so stop acting like an uppity little saint just because you’re raring ahead like a little know-it-all.”
“Oh, is that it?” Takaki spat, and Yabu couldn’t help but notice the way Takaki’s fingers tightened around the hilt of his blade, and even that added fuel to the fire. “You just want to play king of the rock? You got here first and so I gotta bend over backwards to sooth your ego while we’re in the middle of the fucking ruins?”
“Bullshit,” Yabu spluttered, color rising in his cheeks, infuriated. Takaki had been running solo missions since the Hashimoto episode, it wasn’t like he knew anything. “I’m the one? You’re the one running around like a little special snowflake, princess suck-up.”
“Well, maybe if you’d try keeping up then it wouldn’t be a problem,” Takaki snarled. “Unless you do have some sort of stupid-ass death wish down here.”
“You-!” and then they both fell dead silent, horror racing through them as they realized exactly what was echoing in the tunnel. Their voices, and, coming from back the way they’d come, a hair-raising chorus of shrieks, ravenous and insane.
“Gaunts,” Takaki gasped, blade whipping up, but Yabu’s sanity kicked back in again and he grabbed for one of Takaki’s arms. Now that the heat of anger had been doused with ice cold fear, he could hear the Gaunts, and he knew there was more than he and Takaki could ever handle together.
“Run.”
They took off down the pipe, boots splashing in water and refuse as the Gaunts’ shrieking rang through their ears. They were hungry, Yabu and Takaki both knew, and they were gaining ground fast.
Yabu sped ahead, hand still tight around Takaki’s wrist, yanking him along as they tore through the tunnel, his mind racing. There was no way they could outrun a Gaunt, but slowing down to find an escape meant that they’d probably die sooner than later.
Takaki’s steps faltered and Yabu’s heartbeat with them. “Can’t,” the other gasped, and Yabu just tried to run faster.
There had only been two Gaunts when Yaotome had nearly lost his leg, but Yabu’s ears told him there were at least four following them now. There’d be nothing left of him or Takaki if they got caught. “Keep running.”
But Takaki dug his heels in, swinging them around. “Can’t,” he repeated, shaking his head, and Yabu had no idea how long they’d been running, but he could see, even through the jumpsuit, that Takaki was struggling to supply his lungs with enough oxygen, panting even as he turned the way they’d come, blade raised.
“Yabu-Takaki team, can you hear me?” Yaotome’s voice crackled in their ear, but Yabu just shook his head, gripping his own blade as the Gaunts appeared seconds later, scrabbling to close the distance between them. There were five of them, and had there been a moment to spare, Yabu’s life might have flashed before his eyes.
Shrieking as they flung themselves at Yabu and Takaki, the Gaunts were wild eyed and terrible. With an answering cry of battle-fury, Yabu brought his blade up, striking, deflecting. It wasn’t about form or finesse, merely survival, and he drove the blade in deep, knowing it wasn’t enough even as the Gaunt screamed and tried to flay him with one set of razor-sharp claws. Yabu jerked his sword, embedded in the Gaunt’s shoulder, forcing it to twist away from him, but only for a brief moment.
There was a flash of silver-grey and Takaki launched past Yabu, sinking his blade though the eye socket of the Gaunt. There was not even a scream as the Gaunt went down, dead, but there also wasn’t even a moment for the feeling of victory as the other Gaunts simply clambered over the dead body, driving Yabu and Takaki back.
Yabu had never seen Takaki fight before, but now he had the real thing happening before him as Takaki drove his blade down on another Gaunt before sweeping his blade across, parrying between two of the extremely aggressive attackers. It was only when Yabu got past the ferocity and pure recklessness of Takaki’s fight that he realized there was a third Gaunt circling them.
“Watch out!” he shouted, taking a leap, his blade flashing out to block the attack on Takaki’s unprotected flank. Takaki whipped around to run his blade through the Gaunt as well, killing it with a quick thrust that pierced the Gaunt’s thick hide.
There was a sharp, stinging pain in Yabu’s arm and suddenly everything went impossibly hot. Looking down, he realized that the Gaunt must have gotten him before Takaki had killed it. There was a rip in his jumpsuit running down his upper arm, revealing torn flesh and blood.
“Yabu!”
Head swirling as the pain sunk into him, Yabu whirled, blade dancing in front of him as he blocked another Gaunt’s swing. It was then that he realized that he’d reached the end.
He was going to die.
Takaki shouted his name again and Yabu felt his sword falter as he swept it in a protective arc in front of him, but suddenly there was wailing and fog everywhere, the ground shaking beneath him. He nearly fell, but adrenaline had not quite failed him yet, and he kept his ground, one arm hanging useless at his side, the other still gripping his sword.
“Yabu, I need you to jump,” Takaki yelled, appearing at Yabu’s side. Yabu stared at him in confusion, before whipping his gaze around. No, he couldn’t jump, not when they were about to be taken down by monsters.
But the Gaunts were nowhere to be seen or heard, and Yabu started to wonder if he’d died already.
“Yabu,” Takaki said again, a hint of desperation in his voice as he snatched the blade out of Yabu’s hand. “Come on! They won’t be gone long.”
With that, Takaki crouched before launching himself into the air.
Equal parts of pain and adrenaline in his blood-stream made Yabu giddy, and in that moment, he would have called Takaki an angel, even if he couldn’t see the wings.
Unnoticed before was a vertical access tunnel, the bottom rung barely visible, but Takaki made the leap, catching it with a hand before gripping it and hauling himself up. Leaning over the lip, Takaki held a hand out, frantic. “Yabu, jump!”
It seemed an impossibly long way up.
He made the jump, but with his left arm useless, he missed the rung by a foot, his balance shot to hell. But right as he felt his stomach jolt, in preparation for the plummet down along with all his hopes, Takaki’s fingers closed in a vice-like grip around Yabu’s wrist and was able to haul Yabu up enough so Yabu could reach the bottom rung with his damaged arm.
Something shrieked below him, slamming into his leg right as he pushed upwards, but Takaki was yanking at his middle, pulling him up and away from harm.
The Gaunts were too large and heavy to even reach the tunnel’s entrance, let alone propel themselves up through it, but they stood below, scrabbling in an attempt to follow Yabu and Takaki, wailing and shrieking and whirring. There seemed to be even more than before, and Yabu felt himself sway, staring down at the repulsive limbs flailing in an attempt to reach them.
“Come on,” Takaki whispered, barely audible as he pulled Yabu away from the Gaunts. “We can get back up into the utility floor if we…” he stopped after a couple steps, eyeing the next ladder and then at Yabu, obviously concerned. “Can you climb it?”
The question annoyed Yabu, even if it was a fair one. He wouldn’t have lasted this long if he didn’t know how to deal with a little bit of pain. The problem was that the gaping gash in his arm was more than a little painful, but he swallowed and steeled himself for the challenge, nodding as he walked past Takaki, determined to keep his gait steady.
It was utter hell, climbing the twenty feet to get into the utility corridor, but he gritted his way through the pain, climbing and feeling the warmth spreading from his arm. It was his blood, he realized with a lurch.
They collapsed as soon as they got into the corridor, into what was as much safety as they could hope for. The Gaunts rarely traveled above ground, and while there were plenty of dangers to take their place, they were dangers Yabu was almost sure he could handle.
That was if he was able to move again. As their breathing evened out, the pain fully kicked in and he felt his breath catch as his damaged arm shifted when he reached to push his goggles off. It was dim in the hallway, most of the lights were broken but enough light remained that he could still see without his goggles.
“We lost contact with headquarters,” Takaki breathed out, sprawled out next to him, and Yabu realized the implication right before Takaki continued on, “That means we must be deep in the west-side.”
They were deep in the ruins.
The outer edge of the ruins wasn’t easy to navigate, but simple enough. But the deeper one went into the west-side ruins, the stranger things became. Not much was known about the ruins - they’d happened long before Yabu’s time - but the heart of the ruins radiated a strong, unusual magnetic field, rendering their scanners and communications useless. That coupled with the other dangers made the ruins a mysterious, perilous place. Few went in and even fewer came out.
“Shit.” Yabu almost felt like laughing. They’d just barely escaped with their lives and now they were trapped in the godforsaken ruins. He wondered how far they were from the place where he and Yaotome had fought the Gaunts, where Yaotome had nearly lost his leg.
“Shit,” Takaki echoed, but for entirely different reasons as he curled a fist into Yabu’s jumpsuit, hauling Yabu upright. “I didn’t realize… God, that’s bad.”
Sitting upright was dizzying. Hot nausea washed through Yabu, but Takaki helped him get propped up against a wall before moving to examine Yabu’s wounded arm.
“Shit, I am so sorry,” Takaki breathed, reaching into the small, compressed pocket where every operative carried the emergency med-kit, tugging it open and pulling out the numbing salve and synthetic bandages.
“Yeah, well…” Yabu let out a shuddering breath, trying to keep the hysteria at bay. “It happens.”
Takaki was careful as he opened the salve, shaking his head as he tried to properly survey the damage. “I can’t do much… we’re just going to have to numb the pain and wrap it up until we can get you back to headquarters…”
“What happened? How did you get them away?” Speaking through gritted teeth, Yabu spoke mostly to distract himself, but he did have an interest in figuring out the exact sequence of events. There had been several other Gaunts, there was no reason for them to still be alive.
“The Domoto labs’ new mini-grenade,” Takaki explained as he began to smear the anesthetic cream over the wound. “And you won’t tell anyone about that because I’m not even supposed to have them, let alone have them go off in the sewers. They could have brought the whole section down on our head, but I had to do something.” Takaki seemed to be trying to convince himself of this more than Yabu, frowning in concentration at the injured arm.
“I think you owe me an apology,” Yabu said, the words coming out before he could stop them, too distracted by the cold sting of the salve before the chemicals kicked in, numbing his pain receptors after a few tense moments. “Or at least a thank you.”
Tearing open the packet of synthetic bandages, Takaki raised an eyebrow. “For what?”
“For saving your stupid ass,” Yabu replied, willing himself to relax as the pain slowly began to ebb. It wouldn’t be perfect, the pain wouldn’t be completely gone, but at least he didn’t feel like puking anymore.
Takaki was quiet for a moment before he wrapped the bandages tight around Yabu’s upper arm. “You’re an ass, Yabu, you know?”
Yabu colored, indignant. He had meant it as a joke, there hadn’t been any need to be so defensive. “At least I’m not the one acting like an idiot without a partner,” he countered, stung.
While Yabu couldn’t see the other’s face, obscured in the dim light by hair as Takaki concentrated on the bandages, Yabu could just imagine the fire in the Takaki’s eyes, watching the way Takaki clenched his jaw in aggravation. But when Takaki spoke, his voice was soft and somber. “No, you’re acting like an idiot with your partner back at base,” he replied.
It stunned Yabu into silence and he just watched, completely dumb, as Takaki wrapped and sealed the wound against infections, his fingers unfairly steady as he checked all of Yabu’s vitals.
“You’re not in shock… and the wound isn’t that bad,” Takaki murmured, more to himself than to Yabu, smoothing his hands over the injury, tentative. “We could probably make it back out of the field… Maybe.”
When he fell silent, the quiet stretched out between them like an unbreachable chasm, even with Takaki right beside him.
“I’m sorry,” Takaki said finally, leaning back against the wall next to Yabu, pulling his gloves off so he could rub at his eyes. “I know that I… well, you know… ever since Hashimoto transferred to Takizawa’s special ops team, I’ve just… never had a partner again. It’s been a while. It’s not… it’s not bad, getting solo missions. It’s less complicated, you don’t have to consult with anyone else, or orchestrate your actions with someone else, or anything…” Takaki took a deep breath, his voice still soft in the silence.
“And it scares me.”
Yabu was still as a loss for words, head rested against the wall so he could watch Takaki, watch as the other refused to meet his gaze, staring at the opposite wall in confession.
“I’m just on my own, and there’s nobody there. You never know what will happen, but you do know that nobody’s watching your back, that everything could go wrong and there isn’t going to be anyone to help pull you out of trouble.”
Finally Takaki looked up, meeting Yabu’s gaze with a bleak smile. “So I’m sorry… I know that I don’t do things the way you want me to, and I am sorry I’m not as good a partner as Hikaru is.”
The words were like an offering, settling in the air between them as they both fell silent yet again. Yabu felt exhaustion wash over him. He couldn’t find any words to say, and eventually looked away, gaze wandering over the concrete floor. The corridor had caved in yards beyond where Takaki sat, but to Yabu’s right, it seemed to stretch on for forever.
Hang on.
“Takaki, what’s that?” he murmured, slowly pointing at an object just barely in sight, resting on the concrete floor.
Hauling himself to his feet, Takaki picked up a blade, cautiously making his way over to the small object, stooping down to scoop it up once he was there, turning it over in his hands.
It looked like a small, black die - with all of the sides blank except the snake eye - but it was really an identification crystal, one that all operatives carried, and Yabu knew exactly which one that was.
“That’s Yuuto’s,” Yabu identified, ignoring the dull ache in his arm as he pulled himself to his feet as well, reclaiming his own blade. “Yamada carries a six.” It occurred to him that he didn’t even know what Takaki’s identification crystal looked like.
“Right,” Takaki nodded, tucking the die away and turning back to the gloom of the corridor beyond. There were occasional lights still working after who knew how long, but there were also spots of pitch black, and Yabu could feel the other’s apprehension just looking at the dark areas.
“We’ll be fine,” he murmured, taking a step forward carefully so as not to jostle the sore arm.
Their boot-heels gently thudded on the concrete floor, syncing up to Yabu’s heartbeat in an eerie manner as they made their way through the gloomy maze of hallways. Yabu imagined that long ago, before the west-side had fallen in ruins, the utility sub-layer of the city would have been humming with life, with generators and maintenance crews providing the orchestral background.
It felt like hours that they walked in complete silence, too afraid to speak. The Gaunts would not be up here, but there was no point in being foolish or risky. Takaki took the lead and this time Yabu let him, noticing that Takaki kept himself to Yabu’s left side, protecting the side his injured arm was on.
“Blood,” Takaki whispered, coming to a halt, pointing at the ground some ten feet beyond. There was a small splatter pattern, which seemed to drop on for a couple feet before vanishing.
“I bet that’s Yuuto’s,” Yabu muttered, leaning forward to examine the dried blood. It certainly wasn’t old, but without their scanners working, there was no way to verify.
“Shh…” Takaki put a finger to his lips, glancing back at Yabu. His goggles hanging down around his neck, Takaki looked strangely vulnerable, his eyes wide, almost luminous in the pale light cast on them from the bulbs in the ceiling.
Following after Takaki, they crept forward again, tensing at every small sound, to the point where Yabu swore his ears were just playing tricks on him.
Nearly twenty yards ahead, they came to one of the generator chambers; the large double doors ominously ajar.
Takaki didn’t speak, didn’t even seem to breathe as he touched Yabu’s shoulder and then pointed at the door neared to them.
There was a small smear of what seemed to be blood.
They stared at each other for a moment, hearts pounding to the point where Yabu was afraid that it was going to give out on him.
“Yamada?” he called out finally, his blade at the ready as they slowly inched towards the door. Takaki was tensed at his side, covering him with his own blade, and a shorter knife that he’d produced from his boot.
Right as they reached the door, it seemed to crack open just a hairsbreadth wider, and a pale face with wide eyes stared up at them.
It was Yamada.
“Oh god,” the younger boy breathed out, and they didn’t even have to see his face, they could hear the painful relief in the other’s voice. “You found us.”
“Yuuto’s with you?” Yabu asked quickly, pushing the door open enough that he could slip inside. Takaki stuck close to his side and made sure the door was eased back into its original position.
“I’m here,” another voice confirmed. Resting against now archaic machinery was Nakajima, who was even paler than Yamada, though he managed a small, tired smile. “Knew someone’d get their ass over here soon enough, didn’t I, Ryousuke?”
“It was an ambush,” Yamada said quietly, turning to report to the most senior officer, which was Yabu. “We killed both of them, but Yuuto took a hit to the side. I panicked, figured there’d be more coming, so we patched him up as best as we could and then took off down the tunnel. I didn’t even think about heading up to the second level until we found an access pipe… but we couldn’t call out and we couldn’t go back into the sewer system with him like this, you know?”
Yamada and Nakajima were both younger operatives. Capable, mature, and highly skilled, but prone to a sense of panic that most operatives were weathered out of. Yabu kept his expression as smooth as possible, nodding as Yamada explained the whole situation. All in all, Yamada and Nakajima had both acted reasonably, and mostly appropriately, and it was no one’s fault that they were so close to the heart of the west side.
“Yabu’s taken a hit too,” Takaki said wryly, glancing at the arm in question. “With our luck, we’ll probably have to have someone looking for us too.”
Yamada hesitated at those words, and Yabu narrowed his eyes at the younger boy. “Something else, Yamada?”
Yamada’s expression was weary and it was as if his face had aged far beyond his actual years, as he glanced from Nakajima and then back to Yabu. In his eyes, there was a flash of fear, fear that Yamada knew he shouldn’t show.
“I think Yuuto’s wound is infected,” Yamada whispered, his voice dropping so low that Yabu had to strain to hear him. “He’s hiding it and I didn’t want to risk taking the bandages off to make sure, but he’s in a lot of pain.”
It made the situation even more dire.
The Gaunt’s putrid saliva was not deadly in and of itself, but it carried a viciously slow virus. One that was treatable, but not with anything an operative could carry with him. It would take days to truly affect the body, but slowly, surely, devastatingly, it would tear a person apart if the infection was left untreated for too long.
Takaki murmured wordlessly under his breath, moving away from their small circle to kneel next to Nakajima, smiling kindly. He said something, but was too far away for Yabu to distinguish the words. Yabu repressed a sigh, glancing from Takaki and Nakajima, to Yamada’s slowly calming expression. Giving Yamada another moment to fully compose himself, Yabu glanced around at the generator room.
There were several chambers like this, dotting the city’s underbelly. Yabu’s last mission with Yaotome had even reached a rather messy climax in one extremely similar. He could practically see the splatter of blood on the floor.
Then he blinked, shaking his head. His mind was surely playing tricks on him, before he realized that it wasn’t just his imagination.
There really was the blood splatter.
And suddenly he knew exactly where they were.
“Guys,” he hissed in suppressed excitement as he tugged Yamada to join the other two. “I know where we are. I know how we can get back to a safe zone, too.”
They all leaned closer, gathering around Yabu as he quickly sketched out a small, untidy map of sorts in the layer of dust that covered the floor, willing himself to remember every little detail from four weeks ago.
“Hikaru and I were here before, but we didn’t come through the main tunnel,” Yabu explained, tapping the circle he’d drawn closest to himself. “This is where we are… we came from here,” he murmured, tracing his finger to the left of the map before returning to the path he’d detailed. “You see, we can follow this corridor before going into a sub-level of the sewer. It’s a smaller pipe - a lot more cramped - but it’s too small for Gaunts… then once you get here,” he said, tapping a different part of the map, “we enter the main tunnel. But we’ll be far enough away from the main ruins that we should be able to contact headquarters and get out of there fast enough.”
He took a breath, mind flicking over his plan before he looked at them all, his gaze settling particularly on Takaki. “Yuuto and I won’t be defenseless, but you and Yamada are going to have to be prepared for whatever happens.” He paused and then added what was normally left unspoken. “That means you’ll leave us if there’s no chance of your own survival.”
Takaki’s mouth snapped open, as if he was about to protest, but the words never came. Yabu watched as Takaki’s shoulders slumped slightly, before the other finally nodded.
“That goes for you too, Ryousuke,” Nakajima said, slowly shifting so he could pull himself upright, wincing as he moved. His entire middle was covered in bandages, his right side seeming to have suffered the most damage, but there was a firm, strong determination in Nakajima’s eyes as he unsheathed his own blade.
“Ready?” Takaki asked, glancing around, his own blade in hand again. It was stained an ugly, disgusting black and Yabu tried to think of how long it had really been since they’d fought the Gaunts. Headquarters was probably scrambling to find an alternative method to rescue the (not just two, but four now) operatives. If they hurried, they’d probably be saving time and precious lives.
“Ready!” the other three chorused, and with that, they left the chamber, Takaki taking the lead, with Yamada bringing up the rear behind Yabu and Nakajima.
It was a tense, hurried progression down the hallway, the trip taking much taking longer than Yabu remembered it being. The panic (pain, dulled pain) threatened to overwhelm him with every step he took, the scenery shifting between new and alien to familiar, something he’d seen before.
The trip through the utility corridor was long, but easy enough, and they were soon lowering themselves into the sub-level sewer pipe, which was only tall enough for Yabu to walk through at a semi-crouch without hitting his head on the ceiling. They continued on, as swiftly and as quietly as possible, now back in the dark and the damp.
Takaki cut through the darkness unflinchingly, the grip on his blade steady as he lead them the way Yabu had directed earlier.
Somewhere in the pipe, crouched to the point where his back was beginning to cramp, the numbing salve’s effect wore off, and slowly the pain began to eat at the edges of Yabu’s conscious. One look at Nakajima showed him much the same thing, the other’s jaw clenched in discomfort as they continued onward. There was no time to stop to rest though. The longer they stayed off the radar, the worst it could get for themselves and for their comrades.
“Guys,” Takaki breathed out, coming to a halt, raising his hand out at the others in slight warning.
They were at the mouth of the main access tunnel. It wasn’t long from where they were to the nearest safe-zone entrance, just over a mile, but the large pipe was also the most dangerous stretch for them all, especially since Yabu was sure he and Nakajima smelled strongly of blood.
Waiting in tense silence, they watched as Takaki swung himself over the lip of the hole, allowing himself to drop. Yabu strained for the sound of him landing, knowing that if a Gaunt was too near, there wasn’t going to be much time for Takaki to do anything.
But Takaki’s landing barely made a sound at all, and after a good minute with no Gaunt screams, Yamada was quick to follow.
Between the four of them, they got Yabu and Nakajima down without a problem, but Nakajima had gone pale, clammy, his hands impossibly tight around the hilt of his blade as they began their journey again. Despite the danger, Yabu felt waves of exhaustion threatening to bowl him over. All he wanted to do was sink down, close his eyes, and sleep. It was possibly the worst location to do that, however, and he forced himself to keep his eyes open, gazed trained just beyond Takaki’s back as he and Yamada did their best to cover both the front and rear, waiting.
It was almost as if they knew they’d hear the shrieking wail before it actually sounded, but what Yabu hadn’t been expected was for Takaki to take off, leaping ahead, Yamada hot on his heels as the two operatives’ paths collided with that of a new, hungry Gaunt.
Yabu and Nakajima froze together, watching in morbid fascination as everything seemed to slow down, as Yamada tucked past Takaki to jerk his sword through the Gaunt’s stomach and as Takaki jammed his own blade down the Gaunt’s throat.
Blood, dark and disgusting, gurgled and spewed as the monster tried to scream and save itself, but it was shuddering and dead by the time Takaki retrieved his sword.
“Cool,” Nakajima muttered, admiring even in his exhaustion.
Just then, there was a small burst of static in Yabu’s ear, and then, loud and clear as ever, Yaotome’s voice was sounding out.
“Yabu? Takaki? Kouta, answer me, dammit, is that you guys again with Yamada and Nakajima? What the hell happened?!”
“Hikaru,” Yabu whispered, nearly crying as he realized that he was still truly alive and breathing. He’d made it alive so far, and so had Takaki. So had Nakajima and Yamada, and the relief nearly made his knees go weak.
“We’re near the south-west zone,” he murmured, hands cupped over his mouth as he and Nakajima joined the other two, carefully stepping around the corpse. “Yuuto and I both got swiped and Yamada thinks Yuuto might have an infection.”
“I know,” Yaotome said in exasperation. “We can see you. There’s a retrieval team scrambling, they should be there to clear the immediate area. Just… hurry up and get there, okay?”
“Right…”
The retrieval team was, in fact, waiting for them by the time they limped to the safe-zone’s entrance, lights and voices everywhere, causing Takaki to recoil in surprise, blade whipping up aggressively.
Soon they were all hauled up, the hatches sealed, and finally, after what felt like an eternity, Yabu realized that they were safe.
Safe.
The medics quickly descended upon him and Nakajima, removing the synthetic bandages to survey the true damage. It was quickly confirmed that Nakajima did have an infection, but it was still in the very early stages. He was whisked away for treatment, Yamada leaving with him as well, but not before both whispered hoarse, sincere words of thanks to both Takaki and Yabu for having found and saved them.
“I really didn’t know what to do,” Yamada said, not quiet meeting Yabu’s eyes, before dipping into a bow and vanishing with the small team of medics.
Luckily for Yabu, he was not infected at all, and the medics were quick to re-numb his wound, loosely bandaging the injury again so he could be shipped off to the hospital as well.
Takaki looked lost amidst the bustle, shell-shocked and just nodding at everything Captain Koyama said, hovering near Yabu but not actually saying anything.
“I’m glad you guys made it back safely,” Koyama said gently, squeezing Yabu’s good shoulder. “We were all worried that none of you were going to come back.”
“I see your lack of faith in my skills,” Yabu sniffed in mock disdain, trying to make light of the situation. It was much easier to do, now that everything was over. With a smile and a ruffle in Yabu’s hair, Koyama vanished off as well.
“…Takaki,” Yabu said finally, as the medic who was working on his arm left to retrieve a gurney.
“Mm?” Takaki inched closer, pushing hair out of his eyes, which seemed filled with impossible amounts of fatigue.
Yabu gave him the best smile he could manage, sincere albeit a bit lopsided. “Don’t you be tearing off on any missions until I’m all better, you got it?”
It seemed to take an eternity for the comprehension to dawn on Takaki’s face, but to his credit, he smothered it quickly, managing a smile of his own.
“Yeah… yeah, I guess I can deal with that, partner.”
From: crazy_otaku911
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Title: Soldiers of the Wasteland
Pairing/Group: Hey!Say!JUMP - Yabu/Takaki (main), Nakajima/Yamada (but really this is almost completely gen.)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some violence and blood and… killing of things.
Notes: ~6700 words. Dear hikarinoniji, Happy Holidays! I hope you enjoy this offering of holiday fic! I had an immense fun writing this. ♥ Also, thank you to my betas for being awesome (and without whom this fic would not have come into being) and to the mods for being awesome too! \8D/
Summary: AU - The ruins are a maze of unexpected dangers, and only the highly-trained dare enter. Yabu isn’t ready for a new partner, but with two operatives dangerously outside contact range, he and Takaki must reconcile their differences to recover their missing comrades.
Yabu carefully lowered himself down into the metal pipe after Takaki, feeling Takaki’s arms wrap around his legs in support, which allowed him to let go of the access hatch’s ledge and drop the rest of the way into the pipe with a near soundless landing.
“Alright,” Yabu breathed, pulling his goggles back down and switching them to night-vision, waiting for the device to adjust fully to the dark of the sewers. The utility tunnels that ran above were still functioning, but once you got into the actual sewer system, it was a whole different world. “Hikaru, we’re in.”
“Got it.” Yaotome’s voice was startlingly loud in their ears after the constant, near silent drip-drip-drip of their journey so far into the sewers that lead into the ruined west side of the city. “This is where we last lost contact with the Yamada-Nakajima team yesterday from the probable Gaunt attack. Scout the area, assess the situation, and try to at least make contact with them. We’ll be tracking you, but maintain as much silence on the air as possible.”
“Roger,” Takaki murmured, barely audible, standing in the middle of the tunnel. It wasn’t necessary to hide just yet because the Gaunts couldn’t actually see. They navigated the dark and damp sewers based off their hearing, but it meant the more noise Takaki and Yabu made, the more they put themselves at risk. Yabu assured himself that they were more than prepared for a Gaunt, maybe even two, and that they’d hear the Gaunts long before they got near enough to worry about.
(He ignored the small voice in his head, telling him that he was full of bullshit.)
Yabu eyed Takaki with slight misgiving as the other pulled out a small, handheld scanner and headed further down the pipe. Takaki was capable, but not the most graceful or experienced of the bunch (in Yabu’s opinion) and it made Yabu apprehensive to have him along. But they were partners and their recon mission, to find the missing pair of operatives, wasn’t something he could run solo.
Takaki raised his hand, signaling over his shoulder. Standard signal, the coast was clear, but then his hand paused.
Then it dipped down twice.
Corpses. Two corpses.
Creeping forward, Yabu stepped down the access tunnel, expecting the worse - that they were too late to rescue Yamada or Nakajima - but as he reached Takaki’s side, he felt the some of the tension snap and release inside even as revulsion shuddered through him, his gaze falling upon two Gaunt corpses, black blood splattering the pipe around the scene.
“Idiot, you could have warned me,” Yabu hissed, testy in his relief that Yamada and Nakajima probably were still out there or at least this wasn’t where they’d died.
“What?” Takaki snapped back, crouching and swiping one of his gloved fingers over the pipe’s metal. “Looks like nothing came to clean this up… Hold on.” Standing up again, Takaki began to gingerly skirt around the grisly scene. While it was hard to tell how the Gaunts had actually died, the Gaunts themselves were horrific, as if they’d been forced out of a nightmare. With their patched fur, bulging, blind white eyes that never blinked, and large domed ears, they were repulsive. Their mouths were a gaping, sliming hole with saw-edged fangs and Yabu shuddered, looking at Takaki instead, his heart pounding.
It was hard to relax with a new partner, and Takaki was new to him. Until two months previous, Yabu had been running with Yaotome before a nasty accident in the west-side ruins had nearly robbed Yaotome of his left leg. The recovery process was going to be long - Takizawa had confided in Yabu that the doctors were not even sure if Yaotome would be able to move properly even after therapy - and thus Yabu had been assigned a new partner.
Takaki crouched again, still scanning before rapidly motioning for Yabu to join him. Yabu dropped that train of reminiscing to carefully make his way over. “What?”
“Red blood smears,” Takaki whispered, before reaching over and turning the data-screen on in Yabu’s goggles.
“Stop that!” Quickly slapping at the other’s hands, Yabu yanked his head away, readjusting his goggles and pulling his mask up lest he actually berate Takaki. They couldn’t afford that, he knew well enough, and if he wasn’t so on edge, it wouldn’t have mattered what Takaki did.
Takaki didn’t seem to even notice, merely sending over the readings of his scan. While human blood was common enough, with how many unfortunate homeless souls sought refuge in the sewer system from the cold of above-ground, Takaki’s scan showed that the blood was recent and it belonged to someone in their database.
“Yuuto,” Yabu said finally, eyeing the perfect DNA match.
“But none of it is Yamada’s,” Takaki confirmed as he slipped farther down the tunnel.
Yabu glanced at the two Gaunt corpses and raised an eyebrow, impressed. While the whereabouts of the two were unknown, for them to have brought down two adult Gaunts without Yamada suffering any apparent injury was no small feat. With no bodies in sight, it was possible they were still alive, despite having fallen off radar nearly twenty-six hours ago. They both undid the leather straps on the blades hooked to their belts, tense with anticipation and dread.
Takaki had already found a blood trail, and Yabu followed after him, twitching at even the softest sound beyond the monotonous dripping that haunted every part of the sewers.
He noticed that Takaki wasn’t even checking to see if he was following and suppressed a snort of annoyance. It wasn’t surprising, they had only run two minor missions before this, and Takaki had been a solo operative before that for quite some time.
Yabu would have tried to take Arioka or Inoo with him instead, but the two had been paired up for a good year now, and while their partnership seemed dysfunctional, they had a near perfect track record. He’d just have to work with what he had - Takaki.
“Hey, Kouta,” Hikaru murmured in his ear, and Yabu paused, realizing that Hikaru was on his private channel. “You need to calm the fuck down; your vitals are going haywire. What’s up?”
Yabu grimaced. He knew the jumpsuits each operative wore allowed the command center to monitor the operative’s vitals, alerting them if anything went wrong, and as their tech-op agent, Yaotome was keeping tabs on them both. Cupping his hands over his mouth to muffle the sound even more than the mask, he breathed out, “You’re spying.”
“It’s my job to,” Yaotome replied, almost cheerful in his matter-of-factness. “Now don’t tell me that you’re acting like a jackass because of Takaki.”
Yabu kept his hands cupped, but didn’t answer at all, so as not to lie, the silence speaking loud enough. He could practically feel Yaotome’s exasperation through the line.
“Kouta, it’s not like I want you to replace me, you know?” Yaotome said finally, and there was a touch of warmth amidst everything else. “But Takaki’s your partner right now and I don’t want anything happening to either of you while you’re down there. We already don’t know what happened to Yuuto or Ryousuke and I don’t want to be the one telling Chinen that neither of you are coming back either.” Yaotome paused and then added, quieter, “You know you’re not the only one. Takaki lost a partner too.”
Yabu felt a small stab of guilt at the reminder, but he just didn’t feel ready to soften to Yaotome’s reasoning. “That’s different and you know it,” he muttered before killing the connection, realizing with a surge of panic that he’d let his guard down, hadn’t paid attention to his surroundings. His gaze jerked upwards again as he relocated Takaki.
… Who was still walking off without him. Yabu glowered as he lengthened his stride, walking as silently as possible along the tunnel until he caught up with Takaki. “Hold up,” he hissed, but Takaki wasn’t paying attention, carefully stepping over residual sludge from a utility pipe running cross-wards. Deeper into the west-side they went, following dried drops of blood like a rather morbid twist on Hansel and Gretel.
“Look here!” Takaki whispered, suddenly reaching back to pull Yabu forward. “The blood trail ends here, but look at how it goes up the side of the tunnel…? Looks like they stopped here and got him patched up… but where-?”
“Why are you so noisy?!” Yabu exploded before he could stop himself, a small flash of red dancing in his vision that had nothing to do with his goggles. “Blah, blah, blah, just get to the point why don’t you!”
Takaki whipped around, obviously stung. “You know what, maybe if you were even trying to look for either of them, I wouldn’t have to say anything at all.”
“What?” Yabu snapped, rounding on Takaki. It was ridiculous, it was dangerous, but Takaki’s words left an ugly feeling in their wake. “You think I don’t want to find them too? I’ve known both a lot longer than you have, fucker so stop acting like an uppity little saint just because you’re raring ahead like a little know-it-all.”
“Oh, is that it?” Takaki spat, and Yabu couldn’t help but notice the way Takaki’s fingers tightened around the hilt of his blade, and even that added fuel to the fire. “You just want to play king of the rock? You got here first and so I gotta bend over backwards to sooth your ego while we’re in the middle of the fucking ruins?”
“Bullshit,” Yabu spluttered, color rising in his cheeks, infuriated. Takaki had been running solo missions since the Hashimoto episode, it wasn’t like he knew anything. “I’m the one? You’re the one running around like a little special snowflake, princess suck-up.”
“Well, maybe if you’d try keeping up then it wouldn’t be a problem,” Takaki snarled. “Unless you do have some sort of stupid-ass death wish down here.”
“You-!” and then they both fell dead silent, horror racing through them as they realized exactly what was echoing in the tunnel. Their voices, and, coming from back the way they’d come, a hair-raising chorus of shrieks, ravenous and insane.
“Gaunts,” Takaki gasped, blade whipping up, but Yabu’s sanity kicked back in again and he grabbed for one of Takaki’s arms. Now that the heat of anger had been doused with ice cold fear, he could hear the Gaunts, and he knew there was more than he and Takaki could ever handle together.
“Run.”
They took off down the pipe, boots splashing in water and refuse as the Gaunts’ shrieking rang through their ears. They were hungry, Yabu and Takaki both knew, and they were gaining ground fast.
Yabu sped ahead, hand still tight around Takaki’s wrist, yanking him along as they tore through the tunnel, his mind racing. There was no way they could outrun a Gaunt, but slowing down to find an escape meant that they’d probably die sooner than later.
Takaki’s steps faltered and Yabu’s heartbeat with them. “Can’t,” the other gasped, and Yabu just tried to run faster.
There had only been two Gaunts when Yaotome had nearly lost his leg, but Yabu’s ears told him there were at least four following them now. There’d be nothing left of him or Takaki if they got caught. “Keep running.”
But Takaki dug his heels in, swinging them around. “Can’t,” he repeated, shaking his head, and Yabu had no idea how long they’d been running, but he could see, even through the jumpsuit, that Takaki was struggling to supply his lungs with enough oxygen, panting even as he turned the way they’d come, blade raised.
“Yabu-Takaki team, can you hear me?” Yaotome’s voice crackled in their ear, but Yabu just shook his head, gripping his own blade as the Gaunts appeared seconds later, scrabbling to close the distance between them. There were five of them, and had there been a moment to spare, Yabu’s life might have flashed before his eyes.
Shrieking as they flung themselves at Yabu and Takaki, the Gaunts were wild eyed and terrible. With an answering cry of battle-fury, Yabu brought his blade up, striking, deflecting. It wasn’t about form or finesse, merely survival, and he drove the blade in deep, knowing it wasn’t enough even as the Gaunt screamed and tried to flay him with one set of razor-sharp claws. Yabu jerked his sword, embedded in the Gaunt’s shoulder, forcing it to twist away from him, but only for a brief moment.
There was a flash of silver-grey and Takaki launched past Yabu, sinking his blade though the eye socket of the Gaunt. There was not even a scream as the Gaunt went down, dead, but there also wasn’t even a moment for the feeling of victory as the other Gaunts simply clambered over the dead body, driving Yabu and Takaki back.
Yabu had never seen Takaki fight before, but now he had the real thing happening before him as Takaki drove his blade down on another Gaunt before sweeping his blade across, parrying between two of the extremely aggressive attackers. It was only when Yabu got past the ferocity and pure recklessness of Takaki’s fight that he realized there was a third Gaunt circling them.
“Watch out!” he shouted, taking a leap, his blade flashing out to block the attack on Takaki’s unprotected flank. Takaki whipped around to run his blade through the Gaunt as well, killing it with a quick thrust that pierced the Gaunt’s thick hide.
There was a sharp, stinging pain in Yabu’s arm and suddenly everything went impossibly hot. Looking down, he realized that the Gaunt must have gotten him before Takaki had killed it. There was a rip in his jumpsuit running down his upper arm, revealing torn flesh and blood.
“Yabu!”
Head swirling as the pain sunk into him, Yabu whirled, blade dancing in front of him as he blocked another Gaunt’s swing. It was then that he realized that he’d reached the end.
He was going to die.
Takaki shouted his name again and Yabu felt his sword falter as he swept it in a protective arc in front of him, but suddenly there was wailing and fog everywhere, the ground shaking beneath him. He nearly fell, but adrenaline had not quite failed him yet, and he kept his ground, one arm hanging useless at his side, the other still gripping his sword.
“Yabu, I need you to jump,” Takaki yelled, appearing at Yabu’s side. Yabu stared at him in confusion, before whipping his gaze around. No, he couldn’t jump, not when they were about to be taken down by monsters.
But the Gaunts were nowhere to be seen or heard, and Yabu started to wonder if he’d died already.
“Yabu,” Takaki said again, a hint of desperation in his voice as he snatched the blade out of Yabu’s hand. “Come on! They won’t be gone long.”
With that, Takaki crouched before launching himself into the air.
Equal parts of pain and adrenaline in his blood-stream made Yabu giddy, and in that moment, he would have called Takaki an angel, even if he couldn’t see the wings.
Unnoticed before was a vertical access tunnel, the bottom rung barely visible, but Takaki made the leap, catching it with a hand before gripping it and hauling himself up. Leaning over the lip, Takaki held a hand out, frantic. “Yabu, jump!”
It seemed an impossibly long way up.
He made the jump, but with his left arm useless, he missed the rung by a foot, his balance shot to hell. But right as he felt his stomach jolt, in preparation for the plummet down along with all his hopes, Takaki’s fingers closed in a vice-like grip around Yabu’s wrist and was able to haul Yabu up enough so Yabu could reach the bottom rung with his damaged arm.
Something shrieked below him, slamming into his leg right as he pushed upwards, but Takaki was yanking at his middle, pulling him up and away from harm.
The Gaunts were too large and heavy to even reach the tunnel’s entrance, let alone propel themselves up through it, but they stood below, scrabbling in an attempt to follow Yabu and Takaki, wailing and shrieking and whirring. There seemed to be even more than before, and Yabu felt himself sway, staring down at the repulsive limbs flailing in an attempt to reach them.
“Come on,” Takaki whispered, barely audible as he pulled Yabu away from the Gaunts. “We can get back up into the utility floor if we…” he stopped after a couple steps, eyeing the next ladder and then at Yabu, obviously concerned. “Can you climb it?”
The question annoyed Yabu, even if it was a fair one. He wouldn’t have lasted this long if he didn’t know how to deal with a little bit of pain. The problem was that the gaping gash in his arm was more than a little painful, but he swallowed and steeled himself for the challenge, nodding as he walked past Takaki, determined to keep his gait steady.
It was utter hell, climbing the twenty feet to get into the utility corridor, but he gritted his way through the pain, climbing and feeling the warmth spreading from his arm. It was his blood, he realized with a lurch.
They collapsed as soon as they got into the corridor, into what was as much safety as they could hope for. The Gaunts rarely traveled above ground, and while there were plenty of dangers to take their place, they were dangers Yabu was almost sure he could handle.
That was if he was able to move again. As their breathing evened out, the pain fully kicked in and he felt his breath catch as his damaged arm shifted when he reached to push his goggles off. It was dim in the hallway, most of the lights were broken but enough light remained that he could still see without his goggles.
“We lost contact with headquarters,” Takaki breathed out, sprawled out next to him, and Yabu realized the implication right before Takaki continued on, “That means we must be deep in the west-side.”
They were deep in the ruins.
The outer edge of the ruins wasn’t easy to navigate, but simple enough. But the deeper one went into the west-side ruins, the stranger things became. Not much was known about the ruins - they’d happened long before Yabu’s time - but the heart of the ruins radiated a strong, unusual magnetic field, rendering their scanners and communications useless. That coupled with the other dangers made the ruins a mysterious, perilous place. Few went in and even fewer came out.
“Shit.” Yabu almost felt like laughing. They’d just barely escaped with their lives and now they were trapped in the godforsaken ruins. He wondered how far they were from the place where he and Yaotome had fought the Gaunts, where Yaotome had nearly lost his leg.
“Shit,” Takaki echoed, but for entirely different reasons as he curled a fist into Yabu’s jumpsuit, hauling Yabu upright. “I didn’t realize… God, that’s bad.”
Sitting upright was dizzying. Hot nausea washed through Yabu, but Takaki helped him get propped up against a wall before moving to examine Yabu’s wounded arm.
“Shit, I am so sorry,” Takaki breathed, reaching into the small, compressed pocket where every operative carried the emergency med-kit, tugging it open and pulling out the numbing salve and synthetic bandages.
“Yeah, well…” Yabu let out a shuddering breath, trying to keep the hysteria at bay. “It happens.”
Takaki was careful as he opened the salve, shaking his head as he tried to properly survey the damage. “I can’t do much… we’re just going to have to numb the pain and wrap it up until we can get you back to headquarters…”
“What happened? How did you get them away?” Speaking through gritted teeth, Yabu spoke mostly to distract himself, but he did have an interest in figuring out the exact sequence of events. There had been several other Gaunts, there was no reason for them to still be alive.
“The Domoto labs’ new mini-grenade,” Takaki explained as he began to smear the anesthetic cream over the wound. “And you won’t tell anyone about that because I’m not even supposed to have them, let alone have them go off in the sewers. They could have brought the whole section down on our head, but I had to do something.” Takaki seemed to be trying to convince himself of this more than Yabu, frowning in concentration at the injured arm.
“I think you owe me an apology,” Yabu said, the words coming out before he could stop them, too distracted by the cold sting of the salve before the chemicals kicked in, numbing his pain receptors after a few tense moments. “Or at least a thank you.”
Tearing open the packet of synthetic bandages, Takaki raised an eyebrow. “For what?”
“For saving your stupid ass,” Yabu replied, willing himself to relax as the pain slowly began to ebb. It wouldn’t be perfect, the pain wouldn’t be completely gone, but at least he didn’t feel like puking anymore.
Takaki was quiet for a moment before he wrapped the bandages tight around Yabu’s upper arm. “You’re an ass, Yabu, you know?”
Yabu colored, indignant. He had meant it as a joke, there hadn’t been any need to be so defensive. “At least I’m not the one acting like an idiot without a partner,” he countered, stung.
While Yabu couldn’t see the other’s face, obscured in the dim light by hair as Takaki concentrated on the bandages, Yabu could just imagine the fire in the Takaki’s eyes, watching the way Takaki clenched his jaw in aggravation. But when Takaki spoke, his voice was soft and somber. “No, you’re acting like an idiot with your partner back at base,” he replied.
It stunned Yabu into silence and he just watched, completely dumb, as Takaki wrapped and sealed the wound against infections, his fingers unfairly steady as he checked all of Yabu’s vitals.
“You’re not in shock… and the wound isn’t that bad,” Takaki murmured, more to himself than to Yabu, smoothing his hands over the injury, tentative. “We could probably make it back out of the field… Maybe.”
When he fell silent, the quiet stretched out between them like an unbreachable chasm, even with Takaki right beside him.
“I’m sorry,” Takaki said finally, leaning back against the wall next to Yabu, pulling his gloves off so he could rub at his eyes. “I know that I… well, you know… ever since Hashimoto transferred to Takizawa’s special ops team, I’ve just… never had a partner again. It’s been a while. It’s not… it’s not bad, getting solo missions. It’s less complicated, you don’t have to consult with anyone else, or orchestrate your actions with someone else, or anything…” Takaki took a deep breath, his voice still soft in the silence.
“And it scares me.”
Yabu was still as a loss for words, head rested against the wall so he could watch Takaki, watch as the other refused to meet his gaze, staring at the opposite wall in confession.
“I’m just on my own, and there’s nobody there. You never know what will happen, but you do know that nobody’s watching your back, that everything could go wrong and there isn’t going to be anyone to help pull you out of trouble.”
Finally Takaki looked up, meeting Yabu’s gaze with a bleak smile. “So I’m sorry… I know that I don’t do things the way you want me to, and I am sorry I’m not as good a partner as Hikaru is.”
The words were like an offering, settling in the air between them as they both fell silent yet again. Yabu felt exhaustion wash over him. He couldn’t find any words to say, and eventually looked away, gaze wandering over the concrete floor. The corridor had caved in yards beyond where Takaki sat, but to Yabu’s right, it seemed to stretch on for forever.
Hang on.
“Takaki, what’s that?” he murmured, slowly pointing at an object just barely in sight, resting on the concrete floor.
Hauling himself to his feet, Takaki picked up a blade, cautiously making his way over to the small object, stooping down to scoop it up once he was there, turning it over in his hands.
It looked like a small, black die - with all of the sides blank except the snake eye - but it was really an identification crystal, one that all operatives carried, and Yabu knew exactly which one that was.
“That’s Yuuto’s,” Yabu identified, ignoring the dull ache in his arm as he pulled himself to his feet as well, reclaiming his own blade. “Yamada carries a six.” It occurred to him that he didn’t even know what Takaki’s identification crystal looked like.
“Right,” Takaki nodded, tucking the die away and turning back to the gloom of the corridor beyond. There were occasional lights still working after who knew how long, but there were also spots of pitch black, and Yabu could feel the other’s apprehension just looking at the dark areas.
“We’ll be fine,” he murmured, taking a step forward carefully so as not to jostle the sore arm.
Their boot-heels gently thudded on the concrete floor, syncing up to Yabu’s heartbeat in an eerie manner as they made their way through the gloomy maze of hallways. Yabu imagined that long ago, before the west-side had fallen in ruins, the utility sub-layer of the city would have been humming with life, with generators and maintenance crews providing the orchestral background.
It felt like hours that they walked in complete silence, too afraid to speak. The Gaunts would not be up here, but there was no point in being foolish or risky. Takaki took the lead and this time Yabu let him, noticing that Takaki kept himself to Yabu’s left side, protecting the side his injured arm was on.
“Blood,” Takaki whispered, coming to a halt, pointing at the ground some ten feet beyond. There was a small splatter pattern, which seemed to drop on for a couple feet before vanishing.
“I bet that’s Yuuto’s,” Yabu muttered, leaning forward to examine the dried blood. It certainly wasn’t old, but without their scanners working, there was no way to verify.
“Shh…” Takaki put a finger to his lips, glancing back at Yabu. His goggles hanging down around his neck, Takaki looked strangely vulnerable, his eyes wide, almost luminous in the pale light cast on them from the bulbs in the ceiling.
Following after Takaki, they crept forward again, tensing at every small sound, to the point where Yabu swore his ears were just playing tricks on him.
Nearly twenty yards ahead, they came to one of the generator chambers; the large double doors ominously ajar.
Takaki didn’t speak, didn’t even seem to breathe as he touched Yabu’s shoulder and then pointed at the door neared to them.
There was a small smear of what seemed to be blood.
They stared at each other for a moment, hearts pounding to the point where Yabu was afraid that it was going to give out on him.
“Yamada?” he called out finally, his blade at the ready as they slowly inched towards the door. Takaki was tensed at his side, covering him with his own blade, and a shorter knife that he’d produced from his boot.
Right as they reached the door, it seemed to crack open just a hairsbreadth wider, and a pale face with wide eyes stared up at them.
It was Yamada.
“Oh god,” the younger boy breathed out, and they didn’t even have to see his face, they could hear the painful relief in the other’s voice. “You found us.”
“Yuuto’s with you?” Yabu asked quickly, pushing the door open enough that he could slip inside. Takaki stuck close to his side and made sure the door was eased back into its original position.
“I’m here,” another voice confirmed. Resting against now archaic machinery was Nakajima, who was even paler than Yamada, though he managed a small, tired smile. “Knew someone’d get their ass over here soon enough, didn’t I, Ryousuke?”
“It was an ambush,” Yamada said quietly, turning to report to the most senior officer, which was Yabu. “We killed both of them, but Yuuto took a hit to the side. I panicked, figured there’d be more coming, so we patched him up as best as we could and then took off down the tunnel. I didn’t even think about heading up to the second level until we found an access pipe… but we couldn’t call out and we couldn’t go back into the sewer system with him like this, you know?”
Yamada and Nakajima were both younger operatives. Capable, mature, and highly skilled, but prone to a sense of panic that most operatives were weathered out of. Yabu kept his expression as smooth as possible, nodding as Yamada explained the whole situation. All in all, Yamada and Nakajima had both acted reasonably, and mostly appropriately, and it was no one’s fault that they were so close to the heart of the west side.
“Yabu’s taken a hit too,” Takaki said wryly, glancing at the arm in question. “With our luck, we’ll probably have to have someone looking for us too.”
Yamada hesitated at those words, and Yabu narrowed his eyes at the younger boy. “Something else, Yamada?”
Yamada’s expression was weary and it was as if his face had aged far beyond his actual years, as he glanced from Nakajima and then back to Yabu. In his eyes, there was a flash of fear, fear that Yamada knew he shouldn’t show.
“I think Yuuto’s wound is infected,” Yamada whispered, his voice dropping so low that Yabu had to strain to hear him. “He’s hiding it and I didn’t want to risk taking the bandages off to make sure, but he’s in a lot of pain.”
It made the situation even more dire.
The Gaunt’s putrid saliva was not deadly in and of itself, but it carried a viciously slow virus. One that was treatable, but not with anything an operative could carry with him. It would take days to truly affect the body, but slowly, surely, devastatingly, it would tear a person apart if the infection was left untreated for too long.
Takaki murmured wordlessly under his breath, moving away from their small circle to kneel next to Nakajima, smiling kindly. He said something, but was too far away for Yabu to distinguish the words. Yabu repressed a sigh, glancing from Takaki and Nakajima, to Yamada’s slowly calming expression. Giving Yamada another moment to fully compose himself, Yabu glanced around at the generator room.
There were several chambers like this, dotting the city’s underbelly. Yabu’s last mission with Yaotome had even reached a rather messy climax in one extremely similar. He could practically see the splatter of blood on the floor.
Then he blinked, shaking his head. His mind was surely playing tricks on him, before he realized that it wasn’t just his imagination.
There really was the blood splatter.
And suddenly he knew exactly where they were.
“Guys,” he hissed in suppressed excitement as he tugged Yamada to join the other two. “I know where we are. I know how we can get back to a safe zone, too.”
They all leaned closer, gathering around Yabu as he quickly sketched out a small, untidy map of sorts in the layer of dust that covered the floor, willing himself to remember every little detail from four weeks ago.
“Hikaru and I were here before, but we didn’t come through the main tunnel,” Yabu explained, tapping the circle he’d drawn closest to himself. “This is where we are… we came from here,” he murmured, tracing his finger to the left of the map before returning to the path he’d detailed. “You see, we can follow this corridor before going into a sub-level of the sewer. It’s a smaller pipe - a lot more cramped - but it’s too small for Gaunts… then once you get here,” he said, tapping a different part of the map, “we enter the main tunnel. But we’ll be far enough away from the main ruins that we should be able to contact headquarters and get out of there fast enough.”
He took a breath, mind flicking over his plan before he looked at them all, his gaze settling particularly on Takaki. “Yuuto and I won’t be defenseless, but you and Yamada are going to have to be prepared for whatever happens.” He paused and then added what was normally left unspoken. “That means you’ll leave us if there’s no chance of your own survival.”
Takaki’s mouth snapped open, as if he was about to protest, but the words never came. Yabu watched as Takaki’s shoulders slumped slightly, before the other finally nodded.
“That goes for you too, Ryousuke,” Nakajima said, slowly shifting so he could pull himself upright, wincing as he moved. His entire middle was covered in bandages, his right side seeming to have suffered the most damage, but there was a firm, strong determination in Nakajima’s eyes as he unsheathed his own blade.
“Ready?” Takaki asked, glancing around, his own blade in hand again. It was stained an ugly, disgusting black and Yabu tried to think of how long it had really been since they’d fought the Gaunts. Headquarters was probably scrambling to find an alternative method to rescue the (not just two, but four now) operatives. If they hurried, they’d probably be saving time and precious lives.
“Ready!” the other three chorused, and with that, they left the chamber, Takaki taking the lead, with Yamada bringing up the rear behind Yabu and Nakajima.
It was a tense, hurried progression down the hallway, the trip taking much taking longer than Yabu remembered it being. The panic (pain, dulled pain) threatened to overwhelm him with every step he took, the scenery shifting between new and alien to familiar, something he’d seen before.
The trip through the utility corridor was long, but easy enough, and they were soon lowering themselves into the sub-level sewer pipe, which was only tall enough for Yabu to walk through at a semi-crouch without hitting his head on the ceiling. They continued on, as swiftly and as quietly as possible, now back in the dark and the damp.
Takaki cut through the darkness unflinchingly, the grip on his blade steady as he lead them the way Yabu had directed earlier.
Somewhere in the pipe, crouched to the point where his back was beginning to cramp, the numbing salve’s effect wore off, and slowly the pain began to eat at the edges of Yabu’s conscious. One look at Nakajima showed him much the same thing, the other’s jaw clenched in discomfort as they continued onward. There was no time to stop to rest though. The longer they stayed off the radar, the worst it could get for themselves and for their comrades.
“Guys,” Takaki breathed out, coming to a halt, raising his hand out at the others in slight warning.
They were at the mouth of the main access tunnel. It wasn’t long from where they were to the nearest safe-zone entrance, just over a mile, but the large pipe was also the most dangerous stretch for them all, especially since Yabu was sure he and Nakajima smelled strongly of blood.
Waiting in tense silence, they watched as Takaki swung himself over the lip of the hole, allowing himself to drop. Yabu strained for the sound of him landing, knowing that if a Gaunt was too near, there wasn’t going to be much time for Takaki to do anything.
But Takaki’s landing barely made a sound at all, and after a good minute with no Gaunt screams, Yamada was quick to follow.
Between the four of them, they got Yabu and Nakajima down without a problem, but Nakajima had gone pale, clammy, his hands impossibly tight around the hilt of his blade as they began their journey again. Despite the danger, Yabu felt waves of exhaustion threatening to bowl him over. All he wanted to do was sink down, close his eyes, and sleep. It was possibly the worst location to do that, however, and he forced himself to keep his eyes open, gazed trained just beyond Takaki’s back as he and Yamada did their best to cover both the front and rear, waiting.
It was almost as if they knew they’d hear the shrieking wail before it actually sounded, but what Yabu hadn’t been expected was for Takaki to take off, leaping ahead, Yamada hot on his heels as the two operatives’ paths collided with that of a new, hungry Gaunt.
Yabu and Nakajima froze together, watching in morbid fascination as everything seemed to slow down, as Yamada tucked past Takaki to jerk his sword through the Gaunt’s stomach and as Takaki jammed his own blade down the Gaunt’s throat.
Blood, dark and disgusting, gurgled and spewed as the monster tried to scream and save itself, but it was shuddering and dead by the time Takaki retrieved his sword.
“Cool,” Nakajima muttered, admiring even in his exhaustion.
Just then, there was a small burst of static in Yabu’s ear, and then, loud and clear as ever, Yaotome’s voice was sounding out.
“Yabu? Takaki? Kouta, answer me, dammit, is that you guys again with Yamada and Nakajima? What the hell happened?!”
“Hikaru,” Yabu whispered, nearly crying as he realized that he was still truly alive and breathing. He’d made it alive so far, and so had Takaki. So had Nakajima and Yamada, and the relief nearly made his knees go weak.
“We’re near the south-west zone,” he murmured, hands cupped over his mouth as he and Nakajima joined the other two, carefully stepping around the corpse. “Yuuto and I both got swiped and Yamada thinks Yuuto might have an infection.”
“I know,” Yaotome said in exasperation. “We can see you. There’s a retrieval team scrambling, they should be there to clear the immediate area. Just… hurry up and get there, okay?”
“Right…”
The retrieval team was, in fact, waiting for them by the time they limped to the safe-zone’s entrance, lights and voices everywhere, causing Takaki to recoil in surprise, blade whipping up aggressively.
Soon they were all hauled up, the hatches sealed, and finally, after what felt like an eternity, Yabu realized that they were safe.
Safe.
The medics quickly descended upon him and Nakajima, removing the synthetic bandages to survey the true damage. It was quickly confirmed that Nakajima did have an infection, but it was still in the very early stages. He was whisked away for treatment, Yamada leaving with him as well, but not before both whispered hoarse, sincere words of thanks to both Takaki and Yabu for having found and saved them.
“I really didn’t know what to do,” Yamada said, not quiet meeting Yabu’s eyes, before dipping into a bow and vanishing with the small team of medics.
Luckily for Yabu, he was not infected at all, and the medics were quick to re-numb his wound, loosely bandaging the injury again so he could be shipped off to the hospital as well.
Takaki looked lost amidst the bustle, shell-shocked and just nodding at everything Captain Koyama said, hovering near Yabu but not actually saying anything.
“I’m glad you guys made it back safely,” Koyama said gently, squeezing Yabu’s good shoulder. “We were all worried that none of you were going to come back.”
“I see your lack of faith in my skills,” Yabu sniffed in mock disdain, trying to make light of the situation. It was much easier to do, now that everything was over. With a smile and a ruffle in Yabu’s hair, Koyama vanished off as well.
“…Takaki,” Yabu said finally, as the medic who was working on his arm left to retrieve a gurney.
“Mm?” Takaki inched closer, pushing hair out of his eyes, which seemed filled with impossible amounts of fatigue.
Yabu gave him the best smile he could manage, sincere albeit a bit lopsided. “Don’t you be tearing off on any missions until I’m all better, you got it?”
It seemed to take an eternity for the comprehension to dawn on Takaki’s face, but to his credit, he smothered it quickly, managing a smile of his own.
“Yeah… yeah, I guess I can deal with that, partner.”