[JE] [JEF #5] Universal Appeal 1/10
Title: JE Fleet V: Universal Appeal 1/10
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: R (m/m activity)
Genre: AU, crack, sci-fi
Word count: 35,850
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Summary: The JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN goes AWOL in more ways than one.
A/N: Takes place straight after III, but won't make any sense unless you've read IV, so if you're new to the series, you might want to read them in order.
Chapter 1
Sharp-suited lawyers argued back and forth in the darkened courtroom, spreading their poison through the crowd. Giant shadows rose from the bench to the galleries, faceless accusers blending into the background, all of them focused on the dock and the pitiful wretch awaiting judgment.
It was the first time Akanishi Jin had been on trial, though with his career, he'd expected it to happen eventually. No one got away with it forever. Even old man Kitagawa had been up before the judge a time or two, though the judge was always in his pocket and the prosecutor had laser sights showing on his jacket.
Jin didn't have those advantages. He barely had a defense attorney. The wraith slipped between the shadows to whisper the occasional question in his ear, but beyond that, he was on his own. Stripped of his rank and comm badge, without a single crew member to support him, Captain Akanishi Jin of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN was captain in his heart only. If they drummed him out of the United Solar Navy on some trumped-up charge, would it be the end?
It wasn't even a military court. When they'd hauled Jin out of his cell, he'd been expecting to see a panel of JE Fleet officers. Perhaps the charges were from his pirate days, and his naval career would simply be brushed aside as if he'd never signed up at all.
It seemed otherwise when a blinding beam of light cut through the darkness and a voice boomed out, "Akanishi Jin, you stand accused of theft of the Jaguar-class ship KAT-TUN, conspiracy to overthrow Earth President Tsubasa, and having a bad hair day. How do you plead?"
"Bad hair day?" Jin spluttered, causing his ghostly lawyer to spin frenzied circles at his elbow. "I've been locked up below for a week - of course I'm having a bad hair day! You try spending time in those cells and see how glamorous you look when you come out!"
"Silence!" roared the light.
Calloused fingers seized Jin's wrists, yanking them behind him; Jin pulled back at the first touch of cold metal. If they cuffed him again, they'd take him back downstairs and lose him in the dark. He lashed out with a closed left fist, allowing himself a grim smile when the fingers retreated, their owner groaning in pain. Jin wasn't going down so easily this time.
The fingers kept coming, though. They grasped Jin's shoulder and shook him roughly, and then he was falling from the black night of the courtroom...
...through the grey mists of a dream...
...back into his own bed, where his co-captain, Kamenashi Kazuya, was waiting for him with an unforgiving glare.
"If you keep playing Grand Theft Autopilot late at night with Junno, you're sleeping alone. Forever," Kame threatened. "I've had enough of getting in fights when we're both asleep."
Jin checked the display on his alarm clock - he'd only been asleep for three hours. No wonder he felt like hell. "We didn't play tonight," he mumbled. "And they accused me of having a bad hair day."
"It's the middle of the night and you're worried about your hair?"
"It's not the hair that worries me!"
Kame rubbed his eyes and propped himself up on one elbow so he could see Jin properly by the dim cabin nightlight. Not that 'night' and 'day' had much relevance when one was out in some backwater galaxy without so much as a single habitable planet, but it helped to keep a regular sleep schedule. "This can't wait till morning?"
"I dreamt I was being charged with theft, Kame. Theft of this ship, and conspiracy to overthrow Earth President Tsubasa." Jin slumped back against the pillows; tired, but knowing he wasn't likely to sleep further that night.
"I wouldn't mind overthrowing him but I certainly wouldn't want to try replacing him," Kame said. After the whole mess in Eros City, where Tsubasa and his partner, JE Fleet Admiral Takizawa Hideaki, had used Kame as a stalking horse to flush out a terrorist organisation, Kame had good reason to resent the man. "And you didn't steal the ship. For once."
"But I did! We did," Jin corrected himself. "Our month's leave was up three weeks ago! We're AWOL, Kame. Don't you find it a little strange that no one's tried to warn us to get ourselves back to the Sol System?"
"What I find strange is that you're worried about it. Since when were you such a stickler for military regulations?"
Coming, as it did, from a man who'd once tried to destroy the entire human race over as petty an emotion as jealousy, this didn't do much to help Jin put things in perspective. "Since I realised how much trouble I'd cause for everyone else on the ship."
Kame sighed. "Jin, your best friend happens to be your commanding officer, and he's well-used to your ways. If you can't take advantage of that, then you're not the man I married."
"It was a fake wedding," Jin said glumly.
"Didn't stop us from taking a real honeymoon, though."
Since departing Eros City, the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN had spent its month of leave (and then some) as far from the Sol System as possible, as the crew had made a unanimous decision that rather than return to Earth for a break, they'd follow their captains on what proved to be a shopping and sightseeing tour of outer space. Kame worked off some of his anger at the military by spending a fortune at some of the most exclusive boutiques in the universe, while Jin improved his rap skills by hitting every club they passed.
"Some honeymoon. The trainees kept pestering me to take them out to eat," Jin said, but he wasn't mad about it. Not really. They'd all had a nice holiday, with no psychotic computers trying to eat them, or terrorists trying to poison them with red hair dye, and he was glad that Kame had been able to relax properly for the first time since the war with the Fahngarlians.
But there was a limit to how long they could stay out and play, and they'd passed it three weeks ago.
"You owed them for fixing the hot tub," Kame pointed out, which Jin thought was unfair as they'd both made good use of it, frequently at the same time. "Tell you what: if it means that much to you we can head for home and try to contact someone to yell at us. In the morning. Go back to sleep so I can do the same?"
Jin gave it his best shot, sprawling out on the mattress like a dishevelled starfish and listening to Kame breathe in the hopes that his mind would slow to a similar, regular pattern, eventually switching off altogether. No such luck. Twenty minutes later he'd shifted position thrice, knocking his partner in the process and almost losing a pillow down the side of the bed.
"I'm going back to my own cabin," Kame said, suddenly sitting up. "It would be nice if one of us managed to get some sleep, and I don't think it's going to be you."
"Sorry," Jin mumbled. "I keep seeing lawyers when I close my eyes. It wouldn't be so bad if they all looked like you, but they're not even human."
Unsure whether to be flattered or horrified, Kame laughed anyway because the whole situation was ridiculous. Jin normally slept like the dead - at least, he had until Kame had walked out on him, believing him to be having an affair with Commodore Yamashita Tomohisa. Some of the more peculiar events over the last couple of years were obviously starting to catch up with him.
"Let's see if I can tire you out a little," he suggested. "Then perhaps you won't be so restless."
Jin approved of this idea. Not that he was likely to argue when Kame's hand was trailing its way down his chest, brushing lightly over bare skin as it sought more sensitive parts. The dim nightlight scarcely allowed them to catch each other's eyes but the warmth was always there, a tenderness born of shared history and a spark that no fight, no matter how serious, could ever completely extinguish.
Nudging the covers away, Jin shifted to let Kame press against his side without hitting his head on the nightstand - always a passion killer - and gave himself up to sensation. Kame's hand, stroking gently between his legs. Kame's lips, brushing over his collarbone, careful to dance around the old shockstick burn. Just...Kame.
"Maybe we can market you as an insomnia cure," Jin said, struggling to keep his voice even.
For that, Kame nipped his throat. "The rest of the universe will have to find their own; I'm a limited edition."
"You're definitely one of a kind." The tail end of Jin's agreement disappeared, swallowed by a kiss and washed down with caresses.
As a plan to wear Jin out it wasn't working particularly well, but he was more than willing to keep trying. If he couldn't sleep, he could at least enjoy the rest of his night, and if he ended up dozing on the bridge in the morning it wouldn't be the first time. One hand found Kame's hip and clung, clenching on each stroke; Kame laughed and muttered a warning about bruises. Jin didn't care, he was so close. Just a little more...
A fine sight they made, two JE Fleet captains entwined on the sheets with barely a scrap of fabric between them and no eyes for anyone but each other. Warm, comfortable, secure in the knowledge that no one could possibly get to them.
Except their own crew.
Jin was all of ten seconds away from satisfaction when the cabin door slid open to reveal Ensign Nakamaru Yuichi, the KAT-TUN's resident hotshot pilot and beatboxer extraordinaire. "I think I deserve a promotion," he said.
Red of face and short of both breath and temper, Jin scrabbled for cover and hoped Nakamaru couldn't see where Kame's hands were. "You can have one if you walk out right now!"
"Seriously?" Nakamaru looked like he couldn't believe his good fortune, eyes and smile wide as he retreated to the corridor, completely oblivious to the tryst he'd just interrupted.
As the door closed, Lieutenant Tanaka Koki's voice floated through. "See, I told you it's all about the timing!"
Kame glared at the door. "Nice going," he said. "They'll all be trying that now."
Jin collapsed against the pillows and wished he'd remembered to ask Engineering about getting the lock fixed.
-----
With Nakamaru's unwanted intrusion having destroyed the mood, neither captain had felt much inclined to continue. Kame had retreated to his own cabin, which had a working lock, leaving Jin to fume silently for a good half an hour before sleep overtook him again. There were no more courtroom dreams.
The next morning found Jin on the bridge, engaged in an argument with his newly-promoted pilot. "That's not how it works," he kept insisting.
"Field promotion," Nakamaru retorted. "And about time too. I'm the oldest person in the crew!"
"Rank isn't based on age," Ensign Taguchi Junnosuke said. "Else Kame couldn't be a captain."
Commander Ueda Tatsuya couldn't resist joining the discussion, if only because no one on the KAT-TUN had ever succeeded in keeping quiet about anything. "I don't think voting on your captain and playing jan ken for the rest is accepted military practice."
"Neither is wearing a tracksuit on the bridge, but that doesn't stop you," Koki said.
Ueda beamed at him. "Now our captains have finally dragged themselves out of bed, I'm going for a run around Deck 12. Three hundred laps - who's with me?"
One starstruck trainee immediately dashed back to his quarters to change into more suitable attire for a workout, thrilled by the mere thought of going for a run with the ship's second-in-command.
Koki frowned after him. "We'll have to send someone to pick him up off the floor later. It's not safe to leave trainees lying around in the corridors - Jin might trip over them."
"It only happened once!" Jin's protest was so vehement he almost fell off the arm of his chair. "And don't distract me when I'm trying to tell Nakamaru it's not fair to walk in on people in the middle of the night and demand a promotion. We might've been asleep!"
"Would've been asleep, if you hadn't been having weird nightmares again," Kame mumbled.
"If you'd been asleep, I'd have left without saying anything." Nakamaru coloured slightly. "But you obviously weren't, and Koki said it seemed like a good time because you'd agree to anything, and-"
"Spare us." Kame held up a hand. "Congratulations, Lieutenant Nakamaru Yuichi. Unfortunately you won't get a pay increase because we've been avoiding all contact with the United Solar Navy for the past seven weeks, so they won't know unless we return to the Sol System. You don't get to wear more pips on your uniform, because none of us wear uniform. You will still be responsible for exactly the same number of pilots in training, and will still have exactly one sixth of the command crew vote."
The chain of command on the KAT-TUN worked in a slightly unusual fashion for a military vessel. With the six members of the command crew having previously worked together as a band of space pirates, each man weighed in equally when it came to making decisions. Fortunately, this didn't happen too often, because getting them all to agree on something was a task that drove the trainees to despair.
Nakamaru appeared to be on the edge of despair himself. "So I don't really get anything out of it?"
"You get to outrank Junno?" Koki suggested, amusing everyone except Junno himself, who was too busy planning a virtual billiards game with Yonehana to notice.
"I still don't think it should count," Jin sulked.
"You're just embarrassed because I walked in on you and Kame-"
"It counts!" Jin said hastily, before Nakamaru could scandalise the trainees. It wasn't the first time he and Kame had been caught in a delicate situation, but most people had the decency not to interrupt with promotion requests.
"Settled?" Kame said. No one dared argue. "Good. Ueda, before you go for a run, we need a vote."
"If this is about whether or not Koki should dye his hair pink again-"
Kame gave him a withering look. "Far more important than that - besides, we've all agreed it's never happening again and that's final. It's just too disturbing.
"No, the question is: should we return to the Sol System?"
Junno stopped his planning long enough to check the ship's accounts. In addition to heading up Communications, he was also responsible for the KAT-TUN's finances - a role Ueda had been forced to hand over after admitting he never knew what anything cost. "I don't know about our individual accounts but collectively we're running out of money. We've been through so many systems lately that only accept hard currency that our stash is running low."
"It's the hyperdrive fuel," Nakamaru said, shaking his head sadly. "The price just keeps rising."
Koki took his revenge for the pink hair crack. "So does Kame's bar tab."
Kame ignored him. "That's one in favour of going home. I'm also in favour, if only so Jin will stop trying to kill me in his sleep."
"It's not my fault," Jin insisted, but he couldn't help looking guilty. He explained to the others. "I keep having these dreams that I'm being charged with stealing the ship and plotting conspiracy to overthrow Earth President Tsubasa."
"And having a bad hair day," Kame added.
Jin sighed. "And having a bad hair day. We've been AWOL for over three weeks now and no one has even tried to contact us. The longer we stay out here, the worse it'll be when we get back."
"You didn't steal the ship," Ueda said. "We all did. You can't take sole responsibility for this."
"You're not planning to overthrow Tsubasa, are you?" As the man in charge of Security, it was part of Koki's job to be suspicious. "Just checking."
"Certainly not!" Jin said. "I don't want to go into politics!"
"Pity, 'cause I kind of like the idea. Of going into politics, not overthrowing the government," Koki hastened to clarify. "I figure that's a respectable career goal."
"You've gone from being a jewel thief to being a space pirate to being a Lieutenant in the United Solar Navy." Kame's amusement was well-founded, since all of them save himself had a criminal background prior to taking up piracy. "How does being a politician fit into that?"
A handful of Koki's flock of trainees, all of whom had 'JOKER' emblazoned on their sleeves, immediately turned their backs on Kame in protest.
Nakamaru spread his hands in a peace-making gesture. "Leaving that aside for now, how does everyone else feel about returning?"
"After the way they used us in Eros City - especially Kame - I don't really feel like going back and giving them another try, you know?" Koki said. "Ueda got shot, Jin got stunned, we all could've been killed and what did we get out of it?"
"Jin always gets stunned," Kame said, waving a dismissive hand. "I'm not happy about it either, Koki, but anyone who wants to leave is free to do so. No hard feelings."
"It's not fair to the trainees," Nakamaru said when Koki remained stubbornly silent, refusing to respond. "Or the guys on loan from the Academy."
Yonehana Tsuyoshi, Machida Shingo, and Yara Tomoyuki waved from their corner of the bridge, where they were supposed to be observing the progress of the trainees.
"What I mean is, none of them signed up for this. If we desert, we'd just be going back to where we started. But we can't take them down with us."
General consensus was that Nakamaru made a great deal of sense, as Kame suddenly started whittering about being a good captain and looking out for his juniors, Ueda agreed (though only so he could escape for his run), and even Koki started to weaken.
Not enough, however. "Perhaps I should take Koki aside and persuade him?" Kame suggested, a whisper meant for Jin's ears only.
"No." Jin had more than a passing familiarity with Kame's methods of persuasion, and had no intention of sharing with Koki. "Just promise him he can get a puppy or something."
Kame's laughter was warm against Jin's ear. "I meant that I'd talk to him, idiot. With words."
Fortunately for Jin, this proved to be unnecessary: Koki addressed him directly. "You're really worrying about this? That you're going to be held responsible for running off with this ship and everyone on it?"
"Yeah, but..." Jin gulped down a mouthful of air, which didn't help steady him any. "More than that, I'm worried because we haven't heard anything from anyone since we left the Sol System. Not just the JE Fleet, I mean. None of our friends have tried to contact us either. Not even Yamapi, and he should definitely have sent a message."
"All the equipment's in full working order," Junno confirmed. "We've been picking up forwarded messages whenever we're in range, but all we're receiving is junk mail and Kame's baseball stats."
Kame shrugged. "Maybe Yamapi's taking a vacation too," he suggested. "He probably had a hard time dealing with Ikuta Toma and the others."
"He'd still have contacted me." Jin was adamant about this. His best friend would definitely have sent him a message; if not before, then once the KAT-TUN had taken more than its month of leave. "There's something weird going on."
"And you want to go back and find out what it is." Koki mulled this over for a moment. Following Jin's whims had landed them all in trouble more than once. Was it better to stay off the radar altogether, and never return to the Sol System?
But then, that meant they could never return home, either. Home was Earth, brilliant in blue and green...but home was the KAT-TUN, too, and all who served aboard her.
"Let's go," Koki said at last. "If it looks like we're going to get hauled over the coals, we take what we can get and fly."
"After all the engine upgrades we've been given, there's not a ship in the fleet that'll catch us." Nakamaru positively shone with pride.
"We head for home, then," Kame said. "All agreed?"
"Agreed," Ueda said. "Can I go for my run now?"
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: R (m/m activity)
Genre: AU, crack, sci-fi
Word count: 35,850
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Summary: The JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN goes AWOL in more ways than one.
A/N: Takes place straight after III, but won't make any sense unless you've read IV, so if you're new to the series, you might want to read them in order.
Chapter 1
Sharp-suited lawyers argued back and forth in the darkened courtroom, spreading their poison through the crowd. Giant shadows rose from the bench to the galleries, faceless accusers blending into the background, all of them focused on the dock and the pitiful wretch awaiting judgment.
It was the first time Akanishi Jin had been on trial, though with his career, he'd expected it to happen eventually. No one got away with it forever. Even old man Kitagawa had been up before the judge a time or two, though the judge was always in his pocket and the prosecutor had laser sights showing on his jacket.
Jin didn't have those advantages. He barely had a defense attorney. The wraith slipped between the shadows to whisper the occasional question in his ear, but beyond that, he was on his own. Stripped of his rank and comm badge, without a single crew member to support him, Captain Akanishi Jin of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN was captain in his heart only. If they drummed him out of the United Solar Navy on some trumped-up charge, would it be the end?
It wasn't even a military court. When they'd hauled Jin out of his cell, he'd been expecting to see a panel of JE Fleet officers. Perhaps the charges were from his pirate days, and his naval career would simply be brushed aside as if he'd never signed up at all.
It seemed otherwise when a blinding beam of light cut through the darkness and a voice boomed out, "Akanishi Jin, you stand accused of theft of the Jaguar-class ship KAT-TUN, conspiracy to overthrow Earth President Tsubasa, and having a bad hair day. How do you plead?"
"Bad hair day?" Jin spluttered, causing his ghostly lawyer to spin frenzied circles at his elbow. "I've been locked up below for a week - of course I'm having a bad hair day! You try spending time in those cells and see how glamorous you look when you come out!"
"Silence!" roared the light.
Calloused fingers seized Jin's wrists, yanking them behind him; Jin pulled back at the first touch of cold metal. If they cuffed him again, they'd take him back downstairs and lose him in the dark. He lashed out with a closed left fist, allowing himself a grim smile when the fingers retreated, their owner groaning in pain. Jin wasn't going down so easily this time.
The fingers kept coming, though. They grasped Jin's shoulder and shook him roughly, and then he was falling from the black night of the courtroom...
...through the grey mists of a dream...
...back into his own bed, where his co-captain, Kamenashi Kazuya, was waiting for him with an unforgiving glare.
"If you keep playing Grand Theft Autopilot late at night with Junno, you're sleeping alone. Forever," Kame threatened. "I've had enough of getting in fights when we're both asleep."
Jin checked the display on his alarm clock - he'd only been asleep for three hours. No wonder he felt like hell. "We didn't play tonight," he mumbled. "And they accused me of having a bad hair day."
"It's the middle of the night and you're worried about your hair?"
"It's not the hair that worries me!"
Kame rubbed his eyes and propped himself up on one elbow so he could see Jin properly by the dim cabin nightlight. Not that 'night' and 'day' had much relevance when one was out in some backwater galaxy without so much as a single habitable planet, but it helped to keep a regular sleep schedule. "This can't wait till morning?"
"I dreamt I was being charged with theft, Kame. Theft of this ship, and conspiracy to overthrow Earth President Tsubasa." Jin slumped back against the pillows; tired, but knowing he wasn't likely to sleep further that night.
"I wouldn't mind overthrowing him but I certainly wouldn't want to try replacing him," Kame said. After the whole mess in Eros City, where Tsubasa and his partner, JE Fleet Admiral Takizawa Hideaki, had used Kame as a stalking horse to flush out a terrorist organisation, Kame had good reason to resent the man. "And you didn't steal the ship. For once."
"But I did! We did," Jin corrected himself. "Our month's leave was up three weeks ago! We're AWOL, Kame. Don't you find it a little strange that no one's tried to warn us to get ourselves back to the Sol System?"
"What I find strange is that you're worried about it. Since when were you such a stickler for military regulations?"
Coming, as it did, from a man who'd once tried to destroy the entire human race over as petty an emotion as jealousy, this didn't do much to help Jin put things in perspective. "Since I realised how much trouble I'd cause for everyone else on the ship."
Kame sighed. "Jin, your best friend happens to be your commanding officer, and he's well-used to your ways. If you can't take advantage of that, then you're not the man I married."
"It was a fake wedding," Jin said glumly.
"Didn't stop us from taking a real honeymoon, though."
Since departing Eros City, the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN had spent its month of leave (and then some) as far from the Sol System as possible, as the crew had made a unanimous decision that rather than return to Earth for a break, they'd follow their captains on what proved to be a shopping and sightseeing tour of outer space. Kame worked off some of his anger at the military by spending a fortune at some of the most exclusive boutiques in the universe, while Jin improved his rap skills by hitting every club they passed.
"Some honeymoon. The trainees kept pestering me to take them out to eat," Jin said, but he wasn't mad about it. Not really. They'd all had a nice holiday, with no psychotic computers trying to eat them, or terrorists trying to poison them with red hair dye, and he was glad that Kame had been able to relax properly for the first time since the war with the Fahngarlians.
But there was a limit to how long they could stay out and play, and they'd passed it three weeks ago.
"You owed them for fixing the hot tub," Kame pointed out, which Jin thought was unfair as they'd both made good use of it, frequently at the same time. "Tell you what: if it means that much to you we can head for home and try to contact someone to yell at us. In the morning. Go back to sleep so I can do the same?"
Jin gave it his best shot, sprawling out on the mattress like a dishevelled starfish and listening to Kame breathe in the hopes that his mind would slow to a similar, regular pattern, eventually switching off altogether. No such luck. Twenty minutes later he'd shifted position thrice, knocking his partner in the process and almost losing a pillow down the side of the bed.
"I'm going back to my own cabin," Kame said, suddenly sitting up. "It would be nice if one of us managed to get some sleep, and I don't think it's going to be you."
"Sorry," Jin mumbled. "I keep seeing lawyers when I close my eyes. It wouldn't be so bad if they all looked like you, but they're not even human."
Unsure whether to be flattered or horrified, Kame laughed anyway because the whole situation was ridiculous. Jin normally slept like the dead - at least, he had until Kame had walked out on him, believing him to be having an affair with Commodore Yamashita Tomohisa. Some of the more peculiar events over the last couple of years were obviously starting to catch up with him.
"Let's see if I can tire you out a little," he suggested. "Then perhaps you won't be so restless."
Jin approved of this idea. Not that he was likely to argue when Kame's hand was trailing its way down his chest, brushing lightly over bare skin as it sought more sensitive parts. The dim nightlight scarcely allowed them to catch each other's eyes but the warmth was always there, a tenderness born of shared history and a spark that no fight, no matter how serious, could ever completely extinguish.
Nudging the covers away, Jin shifted to let Kame press against his side without hitting his head on the nightstand - always a passion killer - and gave himself up to sensation. Kame's hand, stroking gently between his legs. Kame's lips, brushing over his collarbone, careful to dance around the old shockstick burn. Just...Kame.
"Maybe we can market you as an insomnia cure," Jin said, struggling to keep his voice even.
For that, Kame nipped his throat. "The rest of the universe will have to find their own; I'm a limited edition."
"You're definitely one of a kind." The tail end of Jin's agreement disappeared, swallowed by a kiss and washed down with caresses.
As a plan to wear Jin out it wasn't working particularly well, but he was more than willing to keep trying. If he couldn't sleep, he could at least enjoy the rest of his night, and if he ended up dozing on the bridge in the morning it wouldn't be the first time. One hand found Kame's hip and clung, clenching on each stroke; Kame laughed and muttered a warning about bruises. Jin didn't care, he was so close. Just a little more...
A fine sight they made, two JE Fleet captains entwined on the sheets with barely a scrap of fabric between them and no eyes for anyone but each other. Warm, comfortable, secure in the knowledge that no one could possibly get to them.
Except their own crew.
Jin was all of ten seconds away from satisfaction when the cabin door slid open to reveal Ensign Nakamaru Yuichi, the KAT-TUN's resident hotshot pilot and beatboxer extraordinaire. "I think I deserve a promotion," he said.
Red of face and short of both breath and temper, Jin scrabbled for cover and hoped Nakamaru couldn't see where Kame's hands were. "You can have one if you walk out right now!"
"Seriously?" Nakamaru looked like he couldn't believe his good fortune, eyes and smile wide as he retreated to the corridor, completely oblivious to the tryst he'd just interrupted.
As the door closed, Lieutenant Tanaka Koki's voice floated through. "See, I told you it's all about the timing!"
Kame glared at the door. "Nice going," he said. "They'll all be trying that now."
Jin collapsed against the pillows and wished he'd remembered to ask Engineering about getting the lock fixed.
-----
With Nakamaru's unwanted intrusion having destroyed the mood, neither captain had felt much inclined to continue. Kame had retreated to his own cabin, which had a working lock, leaving Jin to fume silently for a good half an hour before sleep overtook him again. There were no more courtroom dreams.
The next morning found Jin on the bridge, engaged in an argument with his newly-promoted pilot. "That's not how it works," he kept insisting.
"Field promotion," Nakamaru retorted. "And about time too. I'm the oldest person in the crew!"
"Rank isn't based on age," Ensign Taguchi Junnosuke said. "Else Kame couldn't be a captain."
Commander Ueda Tatsuya couldn't resist joining the discussion, if only because no one on the KAT-TUN had ever succeeded in keeping quiet about anything. "I don't think voting on your captain and playing jan ken for the rest is accepted military practice."
"Neither is wearing a tracksuit on the bridge, but that doesn't stop you," Koki said.
Ueda beamed at him. "Now our captains have finally dragged themselves out of bed, I'm going for a run around Deck 12. Three hundred laps - who's with me?"
One starstruck trainee immediately dashed back to his quarters to change into more suitable attire for a workout, thrilled by the mere thought of going for a run with the ship's second-in-command.
Koki frowned after him. "We'll have to send someone to pick him up off the floor later. It's not safe to leave trainees lying around in the corridors - Jin might trip over them."
"It only happened once!" Jin's protest was so vehement he almost fell off the arm of his chair. "And don't distract me when I'm trying to tell Nakamaru it's not fair to walk in on people in the middle of the night and demand a promotion. We might've been asleep!"
"Would've been asleep, if you hadn't been having weird nightmares again," Kame mumbled.
"If you'd been asleep, I'd have left without saying anything." Nakamaru coloured slightly. "But you obviously weren't, and Koki said it seemed like a good time because you'd agree to anything, and-"
"Spare us." Kame held up a hand. "Congratulations, Lieutenant Nakamaru Yuichi. Unfortunately you won't get a pay increase because we've been avoiding all contact with the United Solar Navy for the past seven weeks, so they won't know unless we return to the Sol System. You don't get to wear more pips on your uniform, because none of us wear uniform. You will still be responsible for exactly the same number of pilots in training, and will still have exactly one sixth of the command crew vote."
The chain of command on the KAT-TUN worked in a slightly unusual fashion for a military vessel. With the six members of the command crew having previously worked together as a band of space pirates, each man weighed in equally when it came to making decisions. Fortunately, this didn't happen too often, because getting them all to agree on something was a task that drove the trainees to despair.
Nakamaru appeared to be on the edge of despair himself. "So I don't really get anything out of it?"
"You get to outrank Junno?" Koki suggested, amusing everyone except Junno himself, who was too busy planning a virtual billiards game with Yonehana to notice.
"I still don't think it should count," Jin sulked.
"You're just embarrassed because I walked in on you and Kame-"
"It counts!" Jin said hastily, before Nakamaru could scandalise the trainees. It wasn't the first time he and Kame had been caught in a delicate situation, but most people had the decency not to interrupt with promotion requests.
"Settled?" Kame said. No one dared argue. "Good. Ueda, before you go for a run, we need a vote."
"If this is about whether or not Koki should dye his hair pink again-"
Kame gave him a withering look. "Far more important than that - besides, we've all agreed it's never happening again and that's final. It's just too disturbing.
"No, the question is: should we return to the Sol System?"
Junno stopped his planning long enough to check the ship's accounts. In addition to heading up Communications, he was also responsible for the KAT-TUN's finances - a role Ueda had been forced to hand over after admitting he never knew what anything cost. "I don't know about our individual accounts but collectively we're running out of money. We've been through so many systems lately that only accept hard currency that our stash is running low."
"It's the hyperdrive fuel," Nakamaru said, shaking his head sadly. "The price just keeps rising."
Koki took his revenge for the pink hair crack. "So does Kame's bar tab."
Kame ignored him. "That's one in favour of going home. I'm also in favour, if only so Jin will stop trying to kill me in his sleep."
"It's not my fault," Jin insisted, but he couldn't help looking guilty. He explained to the others. "I keep having these dreams that I'm being charged with stealing the ship and plotting conspiracy to overthrow Earth President Tsubasa."
"And having a bad hair day," Kame added.
Jin sighed. "And having a bad hair day. We've been AWOL for over three weeks now and no one has even tried to contact us. The longer we stay out here, the worse it'll be when we get back."
"You didn't steal the ship," Ueda said. "We all did. You can't take sole responsibility for this."
"You're not planning to overthrow Tsubasa, are you?" As the man in charge of Security, it was part of Koki's job to be suspicious. "Just checking."
"Certainly not!" Jin said. "I don't want to go into politics!"
"Pity, 'cause I kind of like the idea. Of going into politics, not overthrowing the government," Koki hastened to clarify. "I figure that's a respectable career goal."
"You've gone from being a jewel thief to being a space pirate to being a Lieutenant in the United Solar Navy." Kame's amusement was well-founded, since all of them save himself had a criminal background prior to taking up piracy. "How does being a politician fit into that?"
A handful of Koki's flock of trainees, all of whom had 'JOKER' emblazoned on their sleeves, immediately turned their backs on Kame in protest.
Nakamaru spread his hands in a peace-making gesture. "Leaving that aside for now, how does everyone else feel about returning?"
"After the way they used us in Eros City - especially Kame - I don't really feel like going back and giving them another try, you know?" Koki said. "Ueda got shot, Jin got stunned, we all could've been killed and what did we get out of it?"
"Jin always gets stunned," Kame said, waving a dismissive hand. "I'm not happy about it either, Koki, but anyone who wants to leave is free to do so. No hard feelings."
"It's not fair to the trainees," Nakamaru said when Koki remained stubbornly silent, refusing to respond. "Or the guys on loan from the Academy."
Yonehana Tsuyoshi, Machida Shingo, and Yara Tomoyuki waved from their corner of the bridge, where they were supposed to be observing the progress of the trainees.
"What I mean is, none of them signed up for this. If we desert, we'd just be going back to where we started. But we can't take them down with us."
General consensus was that Nakamaru made a great deal of sense, as Kame suddenly started whittering about being a good captain and looking out for his juniors, Ueda agreed (though only so he could escape for his run), and even Koki started to weaken.
Not enough, however. "Perhaps I should take Koki aside and persuade him?" Kame suggested, a whisper meant for Jin's ears only.
"No." Jin had more than a passing familiarity with Kame's methods of persuasion, and had no intention of sharing with Koki. "Just promise him he can get a puppy or something."
Kame's laughter was warm against Jin's ear. "I meant that I'd talk to him, idiot. With words."
Fortunately for Jin, this proved to be unnecessary: Koki addressed him directly. "You're really worrying about this? That you're going to be held responsible for running off with this ship and everyone on it?"
"Yeah, but..." Jin gulped down a mouthful of air, which didn't help steady him any. "More than that, I'm worried because we haven't heard anything from anyone since we left the Sol System. Not just the JE Fleet, I mean. None of our friends have tried to contact us either. Not even Yamapi, and he should definitely have sent a message."
"All the equipment's in full working order," Junno confirmed. "We've been picking up forwarded messages whenever we're in range, but all we're receiving is junk mail and Kame's baseball stats."
Kame shrugged. "Maybe Yamapi's taking a vacation too," he suggested. "He probably had a hard time dealing with Ikuta Toma and the others."
"He'd still have contacted me." Jin was adamant about this. His best friend would definitely have sent him a message; if not before, then once the KAT-TUN had taken more than its month of leave. "There's something weird going on."
"And you want to go back and find out what it is." Koki mulled this over for a moment. Following Jin's whims had landed them all in trouble more than once. Was it better to stay off the radar altogether, and never return to the Sol System?
But then, that meant they could never return home, either. Home was Earth, brilliant in blue and green...but home was the KAT-TUN, too, and all who served aboard her.
"Let's go," Koki said at last. "If it looks like we're going to get hauled over the coals, we take what we can get and fly."
"After all the engine upgrades we've been given, there's not a ship in the fleet that'll catch us." Nakamaru positively shone with pride.
"We head for home, then," Kame said. "All agreed?"
"Agreed," Ueda said. "Can I go for my run now?"