[JE] [JEF #5] Universal Appeal 3/10
Title: JE Fleet V: Universal Appeal 3/10
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 3
Compared to Kurogin orbital prison, the cells in the Red Spot Terminal detention centre were relatively modern - a significant improvement on the last time Jin had been thrown in jail. He hadn't deserved it then, either.
Stunner headaches were starting to become routine. Jin rolled carefully onto his side, hoping not to overshoot the bed, and found his partner staring back at him from the opposite wall.
"Try not to move too fast," Kame said. "If you're sick, I'm not clearing it up." He showed no inclination to make any moves of his own.
"I don't think moving fast is going to be a problem." Jin groaned, temples throbbing, vision blurring round the edges and a faint numbness in his left shoulder where he'd taken the hit. At least it hadn't been the head. "Is it just us in here?"
"Yeah. Local security showed up, started stunning everyone in sight, probably so they could sort us all out afterwards. We get a nice, two-person cell to ourselves until someone comes along and sets us free."
"You hope."
Kame gave him a resigned smile. "It's not like we did anything."
"If they thought we were harmless, they wouldn't have taken our guns."
"You may have a point. Can you get your comm badge to work?"
Jin reached into his shirt pocket, relieved to feel the flat bulldog still pinned inside. The relief lasted only as long as it took him to realise that no matter what he said or did, he couldn't get an answer from the KAT-TUN.
Kame's heart sank. "Either our communications array's gone down or we're being jammed. Whichever it is, we're on our own. I hope they're all okay out there."
"They will be." Jin was convinced of this. "They're probably complaining about us right now, and how we denied them all the chance to go barhopping round the station."
"For their own good."
"Of course." Jin rubbed a hand over his eyes, happy to see the stunner tremor fading to the occasional shake. "Can you stand yet?"
"Why, so I can give you a hand up?"
"The thought had crossed my mind."
"Don't be alarmed, it happens to the rest of us all the time."
If Jin was okay to indulge in a spot of bickering, Kame decided his head couldn't be bothering him too much. A sick Akanishi Jin was not the best company, as his crew knew only too well. Kame's own stunner headache wasn't much more than a dull pulse, a lazy rhythm at the back of his mind, sometimes skipping a beat. He could ignore it. He'd been shot in the thigh; the numb patch felt like dead wood to the touch but wouldn't stop him from standing. Not like the time he'd been shot in the ankle, and had spent the next ten hours overbalancing through the sensation that one leg was six inches shorter than the other.
Slow, that was the key. No sudden movements. Kame inched his way towards the edge of the bed till he could plant his feet on the floor. There was no carpet, of course, but the cell wasn't so badly equipped - a tattered but serviceable viewscreen showed a static image of Jupiter's famous Red Spot, there was a semi-private sanitary cubicle (translucent), and the beds were comfortable enough that had he been anywhere else in the universe, Kame might've been reluctant to move.
When sitting up didn't send him reeling, he had a go at standing. Wasn't that hard.
Walking wasn't so easy. One step, two step, three step...and oh dear, that was the floor coming up to meet him, wasn't it?
"You okay down there?"
Kame peered up. Jin was hanging over the edge of the bed, amused but concerned, too. Kame drew himself up to his knees, resting his elbows on Jin's mattress. "I don't see you offering to help."
"No point in both of us hitting the deck, is there?" Jin flopped over on his back again. "I'm going to give it a few minutes."
Five minutes came and went. Jin's eyes closed; Kame wondered if he was going to sleep. The timing couldn't have been worse. Someone was approaching their door, and quickly.
He poked Jin in the arm to rouse him. "We've got company coming. Try to look helpless and appealing."
"Would you settle for 'dazed and confused'?"
"Close enough."
Kame turned round to wait. There was a faint beep from outside and the door slid open to reveal the newly-promoted Lieutenant Nakamaru Yuichi, the KAT-TUN's resident hotshot pilot and beatboxer extraordinaire, in uniform for possibly the first time in his life. Kame could've kissed him.
"This is one time I don't mind you walking in on us," Jin said. "Where'd you get the uniform?"
Nakamaru stared, clearly puzzled. "Station supply, same as the rest of the unit. Where did you get the weird weapons?" He held out their blasters.
If that was Nakamaru's idea of a joke, Jin didn't think it was very funny. He giggled anyway, because their pilot was keeping such a straight face. "Arashi, of course."
"The talent agency? Oh!" Nakamaru caught on. "Of course! They're fashion accessories. That's why they don't fire - they're not real guns."
Kame wasn't sure what was going on here - maybe there were bugs in the cell and Nakamaru was worried about being overheard - but he wasn't going to argue about the gene-coded locks on the triggers, not when Nakamaru was holding them both out. The stunner was missing, though. Kame thought he might have dropped it in the confusion. He took his own, leaving Jin to pull himself up and do the same.
The effects of the stun had lessened enough that Jin was able to sit up with barely a flutter of giddiness; if his hand shook as he tucked the blaster under his jacket, he was the only one who knew. "Let's go, shall we? We're not in any trouble, right?"
Nakamaru gave them both a reassuring smile. "Not this time. We've checked the recording of the brawl and the guilty parties have all been identified. It's been left to me to go round and release everyone who was stunned incidentally." He rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed. "You guys are being a lot nicer about it than the LIPS guys in the opposite cell."
"The LIPS officers are locked up too?" Kame rose, propping himself up against the wall.
Nakamaru shrugged. "It was a designated neutral zone; they knew the penalty for opening fire. There were kids trying to eat their lunches in there."
Kame and Jin made vague noises of agreement that this was unacceptable. Nakamaru's datband drowned them out with a high-pitched squeal. Everyone winced.
"Got to get that thing fixed." Nakamaru ducked out the door. "Excuse me a second, will you?"
The door remained open. Jin glanced at Nakamaru talking earnestly into the datband round his wrist, and whispered his unease to Kame. "That wasn't the one he was wearing this morning, was it? Who's he talking to?"
"Somebody we don't know - and that worries me." Kame tiptoed across to the door for a listen.
"I'm almost finished here," Nakamaru said. "I'm just releasing the last two now." He had his back to the door, so the reply was muffled, but Kame could hear Nakamaru's response clearly enough. "No, I'm finishing early tonight. The chief says it's okay - I've got my intergalactic science exam tomorrow and you know I need all the extra study time I can get!"
Exam? Kame had a very bad feeling about this. Infiltrating the local security force to spring your captains from the detention centre was one thing, but it sounded like Nakamaru had actually joined up. Moreover, had gone so far as to sign himself up for an exam and have a comfortable working relationship with his colleagues. Which left Kame with the question: was it really Nakamaru at all?
He was so preoccupied he didn't notice Jin sneaking up to join him. "Well, Kame? Was Nakamaru secretly brainwashed while we were eating lunch?"
Kame didn't have an answer for him. "There's something very weird happening here." He drew them both back from the door as Nakamaru began to turn around, conversation over. "Follow my lead, okay?"
"But-"
"Jin, for once in your life don't argue. Please.."
Jin rolled his eyes. It wasn't as if he always argued, and Kame never complained about the fun they had making up afterwards, but truth be told, he shared Kame's wariness. Nakamaru was doing a wonderful job of pretending he didn't know them at all; Jin wasn't sure it was even pretense.
"Sorry about the interruption," Nakamaru said. "I just need the two of you to sign a statement and you're free to leave."
"A statement?" Kame said.
Nakamaru whipped out a datapad and stylus and presented them to Kame. "Standard release procedure. You know, to confirm that we stunned you but did not touch you beyond that. It stops people trying to sue us for injuries they supposedly received while detained. And if you could just confirm that you've recovered fully and had your property returned - yes, that's it, just sign here, please."
Kame skimmed the contents of the screen, which didn't appear to deviate from Nakamaru's description. He took the stylus and carefully signed his name, making sure Jin could see exactly what he'd written.
'Shinkame Kazuma', the name he'd used for the wedding in Eros City and the one on the marriage certificate he still carried with him.
If Jin was surprised, he kept it to himself, following Kame's lead and writing 'Akasei Jinpachi'. He handed the datapad back to Nakamaru, who seemed disappointed by their signatures.
"I thought you were Kamenashi Kazuya," he said to Kame. "You know, the baseball player? I was going to ask for an autograph. You look just like him!"
"People tell me that all the time." Kame smiled apologetically. "I think it's the hair."
Jin was dying to ask questions but he played along, allowing himself to be escorted from the detention centre and deposited at the entrance to the food court with a voucher for one free meal as a 'sorry we stunned you, better luck next time' gift from station security. When Nakamaru walked away without so much as a backwards glance, Jin decided he'd had enough of holding his tongue.
"What was that all about?"
"I didn't want the next news broadcast with my name to be about me getting thrown into detention during a brawl." Kame pocketed his own meal voucher, slipping it inside his wallet with the marriage certificate, IDs, and samples of various currencies. "I don't know what's going on here but I think we'd better be getting back to the ship, don't you?"
"Shouldn't we have gone with Nakamaru?"
Kame brushed his fingers against Jin's; Jin caught them for a moment and squeezed. At least Kame felt real, even if nothing else did.
"I'm not sure that's our Nakamaru," Kame said, quiet but firm. "He doesn't work here any more than I'm star player for the Lunar City Lunatics."
The walk back to the docking bays took longer than either man would've liked, involving a great deal of looking over shoulders while trying to appear inconspicuous. They didn't talk. Jin kept tapping his comm badge, trying to raise the ship now that they were out of the detention centre. Kame didn't even bother to try, not when Jin's muttered obscenities told him exactly how futile it would be.
They reached Docking Bay 94 at last. Kame went to press his thumb to the door panel, caught the name on the wall monitor, and almost had a heart attack.
"That's not the KAT-TUN." Jin appreciated he was stating the obvious.
"We've got the right bay, haven't we?" Kame doublechecked the name and number. Nope, still the 'Happy Wanderer', Docking Bay 94. "Maybe I'm dreaming. Jin, pinch me."
Jin obliged.
Kame swatted his hand away. "Not there! I enjoy being able to sit down, thanks."
"You don't suppose we registered under a false name, do you?"
"I know we didn't - I checked the door on the way out."
Unsure what to do next, Jin began checking the ship names on neighbouring bays, hoping they'd simply misremembered the number. Kame pulled out his datapad to see if he could connect to the station's information network. After three tries, it allowed him to log in as a guest. The list of ships docked at Red Spot Terminal was always public, as the governor felt being open and straightforward was the best way to prevent organised crime in his domain, and it didn't take Kame long to find it.
The KAT-TUN wasn't on the list.
He tapped his comm badge on a reflex, tried to raise the ship. Still silent. He caught up to his partner.
"Uh, Jin? I think we have a problem." He showed Jin the list.
"They've gone without us? But..."
Kame shook his head. "There's no way they could've left and been replaced by another ship so quickly. We weren't out that long. And look at the times next to each ship! I think..."
"What?" Jin usually enjoyed seeing Kame blush (especially when he was the cause) but this time it alarmed him rather than charmed him.
"Promise you won't think I'm crazy?"
"Sanity's vastly overrated. I promise, okay?"
Kame wouldn't meet his eyes. "I think they were never here in the first place."
Jin's first impulse was to ask Kame if he was still suffering the effects of the stun. But he'd promised to take him seriously, no matter how ludicrous the idea sounded. "Okay," he said slowly, "then how did we get here? You're not going to tell me we didn't arrive on the KAT-TUN, are you?"
"No, I..." Kame held his head in his hands. "The ship was here, and then we left, and then the ship wasn't here anymore and it was as if it had never arrived."
"That's-"
"Crazy? Yeah, I know. Crazier than me having a doppelganger who plays baseball for Lunar City Major? Crazier than Nakamaru having one who works in station security and studies for intergalactic science exams in his spare time?"
"When you put it that way..." Jin's stunner-induced headache was threatening to put in a reappearance; based on Kame's pained expression, his was doing the same. "You think there's another me running around here somewhere?"
"That LIPS officer thought you were still working for Kitagawa - maybe he knows one."
Jin hoped not. He'd run away from the old man's organisation at the tender age of twenty, not knowing what was going to happen to him but not wanting to watch himself become someone he could neither respect nor like. If, nearly a decade on, he'd still been living in Tokyo and working for the Kitagawas, what kind of man would he have become? A cheap thug, capable only of intimidation and violence? A devious sneak, worming his way into positions of power and influence in order to feed intelligence to his bosses?
"Come on." Kame interrupted his melancholy train of thought by tapping him on the shoulder. "I think I need a drink."
-----
Fifteen minutes later they were parked at a corner table, with a beer for Jin and a glass of red wine for Kame, watching the bar fill up. It was still early but the lights were turned down low, possibly to protect the reputations of those mid-afternoon drinkers. Jin had paid in cash. He wasn't sure his cards would even work anymore.
"Thanks for the wine." Kame took a sip and smiled. "The rest of the universe might be going to pieces but there's nothing wrong with the food and drink."
"Good, I'd hate to starve to death before we get home."
"If we could only figure out where "home" is..."
"You mean the ship, right?" Jin didn't think Kame was referring to Earth. That, he hoped, was still where they'd left it.
"Yeah. If they disappeared when we left, and we can't contact them now...do they still exist?"
"Maybe they're trying to contact us and wondering the same thing?" Jin slumped down on the cold leather seat. "This is too weird."
"But it's not the only strange thing that's happened lately." Suddenly enthused, Kame pulled out his datapad and began making a list. "Nobody contacted us once we'd left the Sol System; the Lunar City Lunatics broke a three-century losing streak-"
"Because they had you playing for them."
"-and this other me might be mixed up with smugglers; Nakamaru here works in station security and is studying intergalactic science; either Arashi are a genuine talent agency or nobody knows otherwise; Red Spot Terminal now has neutral zones and serves real meat in the food court-"
"Wait a minute." Jin held up his hand to interrupt Kame's muttered list. "Nakamaru here? Where do you think we are, exactly? Some parallel universe?"
Kame shrugged. "Why not? We've got doppelgangers here, and it would explain why some things are different. Need another beer?"
"Yes, but I'm afraid to drink one. Not that things can possibly get any stranger..."
"Don't be too sure of that." Kame pointed to the viewscreen hanging over the bar, where a commercial had just begun for the annual Saturnian billiards tournament, due to start in less than a fortnight. The big name players each got a portrait and profile shot; judging by the size of the fonts used, Taguchi Junnosuke was the heavy favourite to win.
"He's not blond anymore."
"Maybe he never was, in this universe." Kame added this latest development to his list. Junno likely to win annual Saturnian billiards tournament.
Jin plucked the datapad and stylus from Kame's hands and added a note of his own. Place bet if the opportunity arises. "What? I'm just being supportive of our crew."
"Our crew who don't even know we exist," Kame pointed out. "Nakamaru didn't have a clue who we were; I doubt the others would be any different. That's what makes me think things changed around us, rather than that they left the ship against orders and got caught up here too."
"Things were going weird before we left the ship, though." Jin longed to be able to seek sanctuary at the bottom of a beer bottle and emerge three days later when the universe would hopefully have restored itself to rights, but that wasn't an option. "Why would it suddenly have disappeared when we left the docking bay?"
Kame gave him a hopeless grin. "I have no idea. I'm pretty certain we're not going to figure it out by sitting in a bar, though."
"You were the one who said he needed a drink."
"I was hoping the alcohol would give me a revelation." Kame clambered out from behind the table. "All it gave me was a full bladder. I'll be back in a minute." He started to head for the men's room.
Jin watched him walk for all of three seconds before following. He couldn't explain why, when Kame asked, but he felt it would be a bad idea for the two of them to split up. At the food court, they'd at least been able to keep each other in sight, but Jin had the feeling that if Kame left the room, they weren't going to find each other again.
The elderly gentleman washing his hands in the corner gave them a peculiar look. Jin gave him a glare in return and sent him scurrying for the exit.
"He probably thought we were in here for a little fun," Kame said.
"I can't think of any situation less likely to put me in the mood. You realise we're now homeless?"
"Temporarily. We'll work something out."
"Something" turned out to be a cheap hotel room, with a pull-down double bed and a tiny bathroom, carpet threadbare and wallpaper peeling in the corners. Nothing like the last hotel they'd stayed in, but their supply of cash was limited and neither of them dared try their cards. The owner had given them a discount when Kame had produced the marriage certificate and explained that they were on their honeymoon. She'd been sceptical - who would choose to honeymoon there, after all, and so long after the wedding - but she hadn't asked for any form of ID, and that suited them just fine.
The room had a plug and cable, so Kame plugged in his datapad to recharge. He didn't know when he'd have another chance. Jin's was back on the KAT-TUN.
"What now?"
Having pulled the bed down from the wall and arranged the bedding to his satisfaction, Kame had kicked off his boots and was trying to find a comfortable position on the mattress. "Now we think about this calmly and don't panic."
Jin followed suit, hugging a pillow to his chest. "Can we at least have panic available as an option?"
"Later. We can either give up, become gibbering wrecks, and lose all hope of seeing our friends again, or we can work out how this happened and what we can do to fix it."
"Fix the universe. Sure, why not?"
"I knew you'd see it my way."
When Kame was determined to do something, he did it, regardless of the cost. Some days it just wasn't worth Jin's while to argue with him. What were two JE Fleet captains supposed to do in a situation like this? They hadn't had much training, once they'd joined up, but even if they'd followed proper procedure Jin was sure there was nothing in the manuals that covered this.
"Of course there wouldn't be anything in the manuals," Kame said. "Think about holovids instead. Fiction, not fact. We must've seen hundreds about parallel universes."
"Yeah, and all of them had some sort of explanation for how they got there. What did we do? Left Venus, took off from the Sol System altogether to go shopping in Alpha Centauri, swung by Barnard's Star to try out every restaurant in the system..."
"Hmm..." Kame began humming to himself, a tune Jin thought he recognised from a very old magical girl series. "Do you remember that shopping complex orbiting Alpha Cen A? I must've spent hours in there."
"Days. Would've been weeks if I hadn't lured you out with the offer of a pedicure."
Kame laughed and wiggled his toes. "That wasn't the only service you offered, as I recall."
"Well, I am quite hard to resist."
"Modest, aren't you? But I can't imagine anyone ever turning you down, Jin."
"You'd be surprised."
Jin thought back to his days sharing a room with Yamapi, both of them working for old man Kitagawa, never dreaming they'd both leave and one day wind up on the same side again. Often they'd used but one bed, first as terrified kids clinging together in the dark and whispering their secret fears, then as hormonal young men, helping each other grow up, exploring those feelings they didn't know how to explain.
But although the love remained, passion waned over time, once Yamapi had developed a planet-sized crush on JE Fleet Admiral Takizawa Hideaki - a captain, Takki had been back then - and Jin's advances had been met by gentle rebuffs. Jin didn't regret the transition. He'd probably never have run away by himself - never met Kame, never fallen in love.
Never been betrayed, never had his heart broken, never been knocked out by that stupid shockstick...okay, perhaps there were some negatives too. Jin didn't care about those things anymore.
"What's with the sappy smile?"
Jin shuffled closer to his partner, moved in so he could feel Kame's warmth through his clothes. "Just thinking about how lucky I am."
"We're in some strange, alternate universe with no clue how we got here or how to get home, and you feel lucky?"
"Because we're together in some strange, alternate universe."
"That's true." Kame's left hand sought Jin's right. "I guess if either of us were here alone, we'd be in pieces right now."
"And still in that bar, buried up to our necks in empties."
Kame didn't deny that the two of them had a fondness for alcohol, one they shared with most of the fleet. As vices went, they could do far worse. Like that security guard at the bank who'd...no, wait...
"I think I know where it started."
"Where what started?"
"The split, whatever you want to call it." Kame sat up, too agitated to keep still, pulling Jin up with him; he'd have stood if Jin's grip on his hand hadn't kept him anchored to the bed. "I think I know where it started.
"And if I'm right, it's my fault."
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 3
Compared to Kurogin orbital prison, the cells in the Red Spot Terminal detention centre were relatively modern - a significant improvement on the last time Jin had been thrown in jail. He hadn't deserved it then, either.
Stunner headaches were starting to become routine. Jin rolled carefully onto his side, hoping not to overshoot the bed, and found his partner staring back at him from the opposite wall.
"Try not to move too fast," Kame said. "If you're sick, I'm not clearing it up." He showed no inclination to make any moves of his own.
"I don't think moving fast is going to be a problem." Jin groaned, temples throbbing, vision blurring round the edges and a faint numbness in his left shoulder where he'd taken the hit. At least it hadn't been the head. "Is it just us in here?"
"Yeah. Local security showed up, started stunning everyone in sight, probably so they could sort us all out afterwards. We get a nice, two-person cell to ourselves until someone comes along and sets us free."
"You hope."
Kame gave him a resigned smile. "It's not like we did anything."
"If they thought we were harmless, they wouldn't have taken our guns."
"You may have a point. Can you get your comm badge to work?"
Jin reached into his shirt pocket, relieved to feel the flat bulldog still pinned inside. The relief lasted only as long as it took him to realise that no matter what he said or did, he couldn't get an answer from the KAT-TUN.
Kame's heart sank. "Either our communications array's gone down or we're being jammed. Whichever it is, we're on our own. I hope they're all okay out there."
"They will be." Jin was convinced of this. "They're probably complaining about us right now, and how we denied them all the chance to go barhopping round the station."
"For their own good."
"Of course." Jin rubbed a hand over his eyes, happy to see the stunner tremor fading to the occasional shake. "Can you stand yet?"
"Why, so I can give you a hand up?"
"The thought had crossed my mind."
"Don't be alarmed, it happens to the rest of us all the time."
If Jin was okay to indulge in a spot of bickering, Kame decided his head couldn't be bothering him too much. A sick Akanishi Jin was not the best company, as his crew knew only too well. Kame's own stunner headache wasn't much more than a dull pulse, a lazy rhythm at the back of his mind, sometimes skipping a beat. He could ignore it. He'd been shot in the thigh; the numb patch felt like dead wood to the touch but wouldn't stop him from standing. Not like the time he'd been shot in the ankle, and had spent the next ten hours overbalancing through the sensation that one leg was six inches shorter than the other.
Slow, that was the key. No sudden movements. Kame inched his way towards the edge of the bed till he could plant his feet on the floor. There was no carpet, of course, but the cell wasn't so badly equipped - a tattered but serviceable viewscreen showed a static image of Jupiter's famous Red Spot, there was a semi-private sanitary cubicle (translucent), and the beds were comfortable enough that had he been anywhere else in the universe, Kame might've been reluctant to move.
When sitting up didn't send him reeling, he had a go at standing. Wasn't that hard.
Walking wasn't so easy. One step, two step, three step...and oh dear, that was the floor coming up to meet him, wasn't it?
"You okay down there?"
Kame peered up. Jin was hanging over the edge of the bed, amused but concerned, too. Kame drew himself up to his knees, resting his elbows on Jin's mattress. "I don't see you offering to help."
"No point in both of us hitting the deck, is there?" Jin flopped over on his back again. "I'm going to give it a few minutes."
Five minutes came and went. Jin's eyes closed; Kame wondered if he was going to sleep. The timing couldn't have been worse. Someone was approaching their door, and quickly.
He poked Jin in the arm to rouse him. "We've got company coming. Try to look helpless and appealing."
"Would you settle for 'dazed and confused'?"
"Close enough."
Kame turned round to wait. There was a faint beep from outside and the door slid open to reveal the newly-promoted Lieutenant Nakamaru Yuichi, the KAT-TUN's resident hotshot pilot and beatboxer extraordinaire, in uniform for possibly the first time in his life. Kame could've kissed him.
"This is one time I don't mind you walking in on us," Jin said. "Where'd you get the uniform?"
Nakamaru stared, clearly puzzled. "Station supply, same as the rest of the unit. Where did you get the weird weapons?" He held out their blasters.
If that was Nakamaru's idea of a joke, Jin didn't think it was very funny. He giggled anyway, because their pilot was keeping such a straight face. "Arashi, of course."
"The talent agency? Oh!" Nakamaru caught on. "Of course! They're fashion accessories. That's why they don't fire - they're not real guns."
Kame wasn't sure what was going on here - maybe there were bugs in the cell and Nakamaru was worried about being overheard - but he wasn't going to argue about the gene-coded locks on the triggers, not when Nakamaru was holding them both out. The stunner was missing, though. Kame thought he might have dropped it in the confusion. He took his own, leaving Jin to pull himself up and do the same.
The effects of the stun had lessened enough that Jin was able to sit up with barely a flutter of giddiness; if his hand shook as he tucked the blaster under his jacket, he was the only one who knew. "Let's go, shall we? We're not in any trouble, right?"
Nakamaru gave them both a reassuring smile. "Not this time. We've checked the recording of the brawl and the guilty parties have all been identified. It's been left to me to go round and release everyone who was stunned incidentally." He rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed. "You guys are being a lot nicer about it than the LIPS guys in the opposite cell."
"The LIPS officers are locked up too?" Kame rose, propping himself up against the wall.
Nakamaru shrugged. "It was a designated neutral zone; they knew the penalty for opening fire. There were kids trying to eat their lunches in there."
Kame and Jin made vague noises of agreement that this was unacceptable. Nakamaru's datband drowned them out with a high-pitched squeal. Everyone winced.
"Got to get that thing fixed." Nakamaru ducked out the door. "Excuse me a second, will you?"
The door remained open. Jin glanced at Nakamaru talking earnestly into the datband round his wrist, and whispered his unease to Kame. "That wasn't the one he was wearing this morning, was it? Who's he talking to?"
"Somebody we don't know - and that worries me." Kame tiptoed across to the door for a listen.
"I'm almost finished here," Nakamaru said. "I'm just releasing the last two now." He had his back to the door, so the reply was muffled, but Kame could hear Nakamaru's response clearly enough. "No, I'm finishing early tonight. The chief says it's okay - I've got my intergalactic science exam tomorrow and you know I need all the extra study time I can get!"
Exam? Kame had a very bad feeling about this. Infiltrating the local security force to spring your captains from the detention centre was one thing, but it sounded like Nakamaru had actually joined up. Moreover, had gone so far as to sign himself up for an exam and have a comfortable working relationship with his colleagues. Which left Kame with the question: was it really Nakamaru at all?
He was so preoccupied he didn't notice Jin sneaking up to join him. "Well, Kame? Was Nakamaru secretly brainwashed while we were eating lunch?"
Kame didn't have an answer for him. "There's something very weird happening here." He drew them both back from the door as Nakamaru began to turn around, conversation over. "Follow my lead, okay?"
"But-"
"Jin, for once in your life don't argue. Please.."
Jin rolled his eyes. It wasn't as if he always argued, and Kame never complained about the fun they had making up afterwards, but truth be told, he shared Kame's wariness. Nakamaru was doing a wonderful job of pretending he didn't know them at all; Jin wasn't sure it was even pretense.
"Sorry about the interruption," Nakamaru said. "I just need the two of you to sign a statement and you're free to leave."
"A statement?" Kame said.
Nakamaru whipped out a datapad and stylus and presented them to Kame. "Standard release procedure. You know, to confirm that we stunned you but did not touch you beyond that. It stops people trying to sue us for injuries they supposedly received while detained. And if you could just confirm that you've recovered fully and had your property returned - yes, that's it, just sign here, please."
Kame skimmed the contents of the screen, which didn't appear to deviate from Nakamaru's description. He took the stylus and carefully signed his name, making sure Jin could see exactly what he'd written.
'Shinkame Kazuma', the name he'd used for the wedding in Eros City and the one on the marriage certificate he still carried with him.
If Jin was surprised, he kept it to himself, following Kame's lead and writing 'Akasei Jinpachi'. He handed the datapad back to Nakamaru, who seemed disappointed by their signatures.
"I thought you were Kamenashi Kazuya," he said to Kame. "You know, the baseball player? I was going to ask for an autograph. You look just like him!"
"People tell me that all the time." Kame smiled apologetically. "I think it's the hair."
Jin was dying to ask questions but he played along, allowing himself to be escorted from the detention centre and deposited at the entrance to the food court with a voucher for one free meal as a 'sorry we stunned you, better luck next time' gift from station security. When Nakamaru walked away without so much as a backwards glance, Jin decided he'd had enough of holding his tongue.
"What was that all about?"
"I didn't want the next news broadcast with my name to be about me getting thrown into detention during a brawl." Kame pocketed his own meal voucher, slipping it inside his wallet with the marriage certificate, IDs, and samples of various currencies. "I don't know what's going on here but I think we'd better be getting back to the ship, don't you?"
"Shouldn't we have gone with Nakamaru?"
Kame brushed his fingers against Jin's; Jin caught them for a moment and squeezed. At least Kame felt real, even if nothing else did.
"I'm not sure that's our Nakamaru," Kame said, quiet but firm. "He doesn't work here any more than I'm star player for the Lunar City Lunatics."
The walk back to the docking bays took longer than either man would've liked, involving a great deal of looking over shoulders while trying to appear inconspicuous. They didn't talk. Jin kept tapping his comm badge, trying to raise the ship now that they were out of the detention centre. Kame didn't even bother to try, not when Jin's muttered obscenities told him exactly how futile it would be.
They reached Docking Bay 94 at last. Kame went to press his thumb to the door panel, caught the name on the wall monitor, and almost had a heart attack.
"That's not the KAT-TUN." Jin appreciated he was stating the obvious.
"We've got the right bay, haven't we?" Kame doublechecked the name and number. Nope, still the 'Happy Wanderer', Docking Bay 94. "Maybe I'm dreaming. Jin, pinch me."
Jin obliged.
Kame swatted his hand away. "Not there! I enjoy being able to sit down, thanks."
"You don't suppose we registered under a false name, do you?"
"I know we didn't - I checked the door on the way out."
Unsure what to do next, Jin began checking the ship names on neighbouring bays, hoping they'd simply misremembered the number. Kame pulled out his datapad to see if he could connect to the station's information network. After three tries, it allowed him to log in as a guest. The list of ships docked at Red Spot Terminal was always public, as the governor felt being open and straightforward was the best way to prevent organised crime in his domain, and it didn't take Kame long to find it.
The KAT-TUN wasn't on the list.
He tapped his comm badge on a reflex, tried to raise the ship. Still silent. He caught up to his partner.
"Uh, Jin? I think we have a problem." He showed Jin the list.
"They've gone without us? But..."
Kame shook his head. "There's no way they could've left and been replaced by another ship so quickly. We weren't out that long. And look at the times next to each ship! I think..."
"What?" Jin usually enjoyed seeing Kame blush (especially when he was the cause) but this time it alarmed him rather than charmed him.
"Promise you won't think I'm crazy?"
"Sanity's vastly overrated. I promise, okay?"
Kame wouldn't meet his eyes. "I think they were never here in the first place."
Jin's first impulse was to ask Kame if he was still suffering the effects of the stun. But he'd promised to take him seriously, no matter how ludicrous the idea sounded. "Okay," he said slowly, "then how did we get here? You're not going to tell me we didn't arrive on the KAT-TUN, are you?"
"No, I..." Kame held his head in his hands. "The ship was here, and then we left, and then the ship wasn't here anymore and it was as if it had never arrived."
"That's-"
"Crazy? Yeah, I know. Crazier than me having a doppelganger who plays baseball for Lunar City Major? Crazier than Nakamaru having one who works in station security and studies for intergalactic science exams in his spare time?"
"When you put it that way..." Jin's stunner-induced headache was threatening to put in a reappearance; based on Kame's pained expression, his was doing the same. "You think there's another me running around here somewhere?"
"That LIPS officer thought you were still working for Kitagawa - maybe he knows one."
Jin hoped not. He'd run away from the old man's organisation at the tender age of twenty, not knowing what was going to happen to him but not wanting to watch himself become someone he could neither respect nor like. If, nearly a decade on, he'd still been living in Tokyo and working for the Kitagawas, what kind of man would he have become? A cheap thug, capable only of intimidation and violence? A devious sneak, worming his way into positions of power and influence in order to feed intelligence to his bosses?
"Come on." Kame interrupted his melancholy train of thought by tapping him on the shoulder. "I think I need a drink."
-----
Fifteen minutes later they were parked at a corner table, with a beer for Jin and a glass of red wine for Kame, watching the bar fill up. It was still early but the lights were turned down low, possibly to protect the reputations of those mid-afternoon drinkers. Jin had paid in cash. He wasn't sure his cards would even work anymore.
"Thanks for the wine." Kame took a sip and smiled. "The rest of the universe might be going to pieces but there's nothing wrong with the food and drink."
"Good, I'd hate to starve to death before we get home."
"If we could only figure out where "home" is..."
"You mean the ship, right?" Jin didn't think Kame was referring to Earth. That, he hoped, was still where they'd left it.
"Yeah. If they disappeared when we left, and we can't contact them now...do they still exist?"
"Maybe they're trying to contact us and wondering the same thing?" Jin slumped down on the cold leather seat. "This is too weird."
"But it's not the only strange thing that's happened lately." Suddenly enthused, Kame pulled out his datapad and began making a list. "Nobody contacted us once we'd left the Sol System; the Lunar City Lunatics broke a three-century losing streak-"
"Because they had you playing for them."
"-and this other me might be mixed up with smugglers; Nakamaru here works in station security and is studying intergalactic science; either Arashi are a genuine talent agency or nobody knows otherwise; Red Spot Terminal now has neutral zones and serves real meat in the food court-"
"Wait a minute." Jin held up his hand to interrupt Kame's muttered list. "Nakamaru here? Where do you think we are, exactly? Some parallel universe?"
Kame shrugged. "Why not? We've got doppelgangers here, and it would explain why some things are different. Need another beer?"
"Yes, but I'm afraid to drink one. Not that things can possibly get any stranger..."
"Don't be too sure of that." Kame pointed to the viewscreen hanging over the bar, where a commercial had just begun for the annual Saturnian billiards tournament, due to start in less than a fortnight. The big name players each got a portrait and profile shot; judging by the size of the fonts used, Taguchi Junnosuke was the heavy favourite to win.
"He's not blond anymore."
"Maybe he never was, in this universe." Kame added this latest development to his list. Junno likely to win annual Saturnian billiards tournament.
Jin plucked the datapad and stylus from Kame's hands and added a note of his own. Place bet if the opportunity arises. "What? I'm just being supportive of our crew."
"Our crew who don't even know we exist," Kame pointed out. "Nakamaru didn't have a clue who we were; I doubt the others would be any different. That's what makes me think things changed around us, rather than that they left the ship against orders and got caught up here too."
"Things were going weird before we left the ship, though." Jin longed to be able to seek sanctuary at the bottom of a beer bottle and emerge three days later when the universe would hopefully have restored itself to rights, but that wasn't an option. "Why would it suddenly have disappeared when we left the docking bay?"
Kame gave him a hopeless grin. "I have no idea. I'm pretty certain we're not going to figure it out by sitting in a bar, though."
"You were the one who said he needed a drink."
"I was hoping the alcohol would give me a revelation." Kame clambered out from behind the table. "All it gave me was a full bladder. I'll be back in a minute." He started to head for the men's room.
Jin watched him walk for all of three seconds before following. He couldn't explain why, when Kame asked, but he felt it would be a bad idea for the two of them to split up. At the food court, they'd at least been able to keep each other in sight, but Jin had the feeling that if Kame left the room, they weren't going to find each other again.
The elderly gentleman washing his hands in the corner gave them a peculiar look. Jin gave him a glare in return and sent him scurrying for the exit.
"He probably thought we were in here for a little fun," Kame said.
"I can't think of any situation less likely to put me in the mood. You realise we're now homeless?"
"Temporarily. We'll work something out."
"Something" turned out to be a cheap hotel room, with a pull-down double bed and a tiny bathroom, carpet threadbare and wallpaper peeling in the corners. Nothing like the last hotel they'd stayed in, but their supply of cash was limited and neither of them dared try their cards. The owner had given them a discount when Kame had produced the marriage certificate and explained that they were on their honeymoon. She'd been sceptical - who would choose to honeymoon there, after all, and so long after the wedding - but she hadn't asked for any form of ID, and that suited them just fine.
The room had a plug and cable, so Kame plugged in his datapad to recharge. He didn't know when he'd have another chance. Jin's was back on the KAT-TUN.
"What now?"
Having pulled the bed down from the wall and arranged the bedding to his satisfaction, Kame had kicked off his boots and was trying to find a comfortable position on the mattress. "Now we think about this calmly and don't panic."
Jin followed suit, hugging a pillow to his chest. "Can we at least have panic available as an option?"
"Later. We can either give up, become gibbering wrecks, and lose all hope of seeing our friends again, or we can work out how this happened and what we can do to fix it."
"Fix the universe. Sure, why not?"
"I knew you'd see it my way."
When Kame was determined to do something, he did it, regardless of the cost. Some days it just wasn't worth Jin's while to argue with him. What were two JE Fleet captains supposed to do in a situation like this? They hadn't had much training, once they'd joined up, but even if they'd followed proper procedure Jin was sure there was nothing in the manuals that covered this.
"Of course there wouldn't be anything in the manuals," Kame said. "Think about holovids instead. Fiction, not fact. We must've seen hundreds about parallel universes."
"Yeah, and all of them had some sort of explanation for how they got there. What did we do? Left Venus, took off from the Sol System altogether to go shopping in Alpha Centauri, swung by Barnard's Star to try out every restaurant in the system..."
"Hmm..." Kame began humming to himself, a tune Jin thought he recognised from a very old magical girl series. "Do you remember that shopping complex orbiting Alpha Cen A? I must've spent hours in there."
"Days. Would've been weeks if I hadn't lured you out with the offer of a pedicure."
Kame laughed and wiggled his toes. "That wasn't the only service you offered, as I recall."
"Well, I am quite hard to resist."
"Modest, aren't you? But I can't imagine anyone ever turning you down, Jin."
"You'd be surprised."
Jin thought back to his days sharing a room with Yamapi, both of them working for old man Kitagawa, never dreaming they'd both leave and one day wind up on the same side again. Often they'd used but one bed, first as terrified kids clinging together in the dark and whispering their secret fears, then as hormonal young men, helping each other grow up, exploring those feelings they didn't know how to explain.
But although the love remained, passion waned over time, once Yamapi had developed a planet-sized crush on JE Fleet Admiral Takizawa Hideaki - a captain, Takki had been back then - and Jin's advances had been met by gentle rebuffs. Jin didn't regret the transition. He'd probably never have run away by himself - never met Kame, never fallen in love.
Never been betrayed, never had his heart broken, never been knocked out by that stupid shockstick...okay, perhaps there were some negatives too. Jin didn't care about those things anymore.
"What's with the sappy smile?"
Jin shuffled closer to his partner, moved in so he could feel Kame's warmth through his clothes. "Just thinking about how lucky I am."
"We're in some strange, alternate universe with no clue how we got here or how to get home, and you feel lucky?"
"Because we're together in some strange, alternate universe."
"That's true." Kame's left hand sought Jin's right. "I guess if either of us were here alone, we'd be in pieces right now."
"And still in that bar, buried up to our necks in empties."
Kame didn't deny that the two of them had a fondness for alcohol, one they shared with most of the fleet. As vices went, they could do far worse. Like that security guard at the bank who'd...no, wait...
"I think I know where it started."
"Where what started?"
"The split, whatever you want to call it." Kame sat up, too agitated to keep still, pulling Jin up with him; he'd have stood if Jin's grip on his hand hadn't kept him anchored to the bed. "I think I know where it started.
"And if I'm right, it's my fault."