[JE] [JEF #5] Universal Appeal 7/10
Title: JE Fleet V: Universal Appeal 7/10
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 7
Lunacy, as Lunar City Major was colloquially known, was familiar territory to the occupants of the Sakura. In another lifetime, they'd all lived there for months, waiting for the trial of Kame's former LIPS colleagues to end so he no longer had to stick around to give evidence. Then they'd won a ship in a rigged poker tournament and left as soon as they possibly could.
Once the autopilot had brought them gently down to the surface of Earth's moon, they all disembarked so Koki could lock up. He and Nakamaru were going to resupply with fuel and do some sightseeing, he'd said.
"What do I owe you?" Kame had paid their way to Alpha Centauri only - with Jin's card.
"Kick in for the hyperdrive fuel and we'll call it even." Koki lounged against the docking bay wall, trying for casual nonchalance. "Figured we might tag along for a bit."
"I thought you were going sightseeing?"
"We are," Koki said. "We've never seen a clone before, or a cursed diamond."
"I could probably write a paper on the clone for extra credit." Nakamaru patted his hair, which refused to stay flat. Lunacy's artificial atmosphere was heavy on the wind today.
Jin was on the verge of telling him not to waste his holiday on such academic enterprises, but he was certain - almost - that Nakamaru was joking.
Datapad in hand, Kame flipped through the local comconsole directory, connecting wirelessly through the spaceport's own systems. There were no contact details listed for 'Kamenashi Kazuya'. Oh well. It had been worth a shot. "He's ex-directory."
"Wouldn't you be if you were a star athlete?" Jin said. "People must be wanting to see him all the time. We'll just have to find him the old-fashioned way."
"Look for the nearest sports bar?" Koki suggested.
"Nope." Kame found the other hope he'd been clinging to, the latest sports news. "The Lunar City Lunatics are playing the Olympian Gods at the Crescent Moon Stadium tonight.
"We're going to the game."
Nakamaru grinned. "I take it back. This is exactly the kind of holiday I was hoping for!"
As Kame saw it, he and Jin were faced with three potential problems. They didn't have tickets for the game, which meant they were going to have to get creative to access the stadium. It wasn't likely the other Kame would have the diamond on him, so they were going to have to extract the information from him somehow and go in search of it.
And of course, they couldn't risk separation.
He checked his watch against the local time on his datapad. "It's only two here. We've got four hours before the game starts."
"Tickets will have sold out ages ago," Nakamaru said. "When the Lunatics started winning games, everyone wanted to go just for the novelty."
"And now they go for you." Koki pointed to Kame. "Or your clone, anyway. You're a total sports idol."
Jin waved a dismissive hand. "There's always guys selling tickets outside the stadium."
"And I'm not sure they're the kind of guys who take cards," Kame said. "Besides, I don't want to corner him on the field in front of 50,000 witnesses. We'll have to sneak in."
"Great!" Jin mustered all the enthusiasm he could. "Got any ideas?"
Kame pressed his thumb to the panel. The docking bay door creaked open, badly in need of oil, to reveal dozens of travellers milling about the corridor - including a group of four wearing familiar black and white uniforms. "Oh, one or two..."
-----
Never in his worst nightmares had Jin envisioned himself wearing a LIPS uniform. As a kid he'd steered clear of them, knowing they'd arrest him if they ever found out he'd committed crimes for the old man that crossed interplanetary borders. As an adult, the only good thing he'd been able to say about them was that Kame looked hot in the uniform.
He still did, with his jacket sleeves rolled up to the elbows and shirt collar wide open. He'd touched up the black nail polish from Koki's stash. Despite the skull-print fedora he still wore, no one was going to mistake Kame for anything other than a LIPS officer.
"Nobody wears the uniform hat." Kame jerked his chin at the four unconscious male officers, stripped to their underwear, blindfolded and tied up in the cargo hold of the Sakura. One wore a trilby, one wore a purple beanie, one was completely bareheaded and the other was currently squashing his sombrero. "We can wear what we want."
Koki finished laminating their ID badges - stolen from the officers, with hastily-printed photographs stuck over the real ones. "Here you go, Officer Masuda."
Masuda? Kame tilted the beanie-wearer's chin towards the light. No doubt about it, they'd knocked out Lt. Masuda Takahisa, one of the JE Fleet officers assigned to Yamapi's pink flagship. This universe was getting stranger by the minute.
They'd had to resort to desperate measures to lure in the LIPS officers. Kame figured a combination of crime, scandal and celebrity should do it. He had Nakamaru quietly approach them, telling tales of how he'd seen Kamenashi Kazuya buying Trans-Saturnian Rum from a pair of infamous Jovian rappers - over a game of drunken strip poker, which nobody appeared to be any good at. Thrilled by the potential entertainment and blackmail value, the LIPS officers had followed Nakamaru without question. The moment they were through the door of the docking bay, Nakamaru hit the panel to close them in. Koki dropped all four with rapid bursts from his customised stunner - a guy had to be able to protect the person he loved, so he said - and minutes later, the occupants of the Sakura were dressing in their borrowed uniforms.
"Are you sure we don't have time to launder them first?" Nakamaru asked, grimacing as he pulled on the jacket.
Kame's own inner neat freak was having a fit too, but they just didn't have the time. "Definitely. It'll take us near an hour to get to the stadium from here, and these guys won't stay stunned forever."
"Five hours," Koki said. "I can't guarantee they'll be out any longer than that. I'd like 'em out of my ship before they wake up, too."
Jin transferred his currently-useless comm badge into the right inner pocket of his LIPS jacket and tucked his blaster in the left. With any luck, the unconscious officers in Koki's cargo hold would soon be a thing of the past. Jin wasn't sure how the universe would change again, assuming it worked, but he hoped that they wouldn't need to come back. Consequently, he also wore his new hat, loathe to leave it behind when he returned home. Or home returned to him, whatever.
They tried to appear nonchalant as they left the docking bay, aiming for that casual LIPS swagger. It didn't come easily to Nakamaru. The station was on the other side of the spaceport but the trains were the fastest way to get around Lunacy. People took one look at the uniform and rushed to get out of the way.
Koki loved it. "It's like they're cowering in fear of us. I could get used to this uniform."
"Don't," Kame advised. "Sombrero-boy will be wanting it back."
It didn't escape his notice that Koki, with his slightly shady background, and Nakamaru, with his decent, upstanding life as a Red Spot Terminal security guard, had slipped only too easily into their normal roles - criminal acts were matter of course. Either that said more about their characters than Kame had time to think about, or by bringing the four of them together, he'd somehow taken steps to rebuild his own universe.
They hit the ticket machines at a dash, pausing only long enough for Jin to swipe his card and distribute the tickets. One-way, only. The platform was dead ahead, more crowded than one of Captain Kimura's holovid premieres, completely packed with enthusiastic baseball fans who'd flown all the way over for the game. Fans of the Olympian Gods, being from Mars, naturally wore red. Those who supported the Lunar City Lunatics wore a soothing light green, belying the team's name. Some, obviously Kamenashi Kazuya fans, had decorated their clothes with turtles. Kame pulled his fedora low over his eyes and kept moving.
It was a struggle to get through the sea of baseball fans but they managed, mostly thanks to Jin yelling in English (and occasionally Spanish) for people to get out of the way. The train was heaving, of course. Kame led the way down to the very last carriage, where he hoped fewer people would pass them by. It looked like they were going to be standing all the way to the Crescent Moon Stadium.
Or possibly not. When they reached the end carriage, a gang of obvious delinquents (hairbands, eyeliner, far too much lipstick, making only token attempts at wearing their school uniform) took one look at them and gave up their seats to the "LIPS officers". Jin clapped one on the shoulder as he skulked past and told him that this was indeed a mature and manly thing to do, but that his lipstick was a shade too dark. The youth glowered silently and made an obscene gesture on his way out, which Jin happily returned.
"You're not a kid anymore," Kame said. "You're supposed to be above being baited."
"You didn't know me when I was a kid." Jin stretched his legs as far as the cramped confines of the carriage would allow. "If I did that around the house they'd have broken my fingers for me. We all had to at least be able to act like good kids, otherwise we weren't much use for getting in places."
He hadn't meant to add the last bit; fortunately, the noise level was such that only Kame, right next to him, was able to hear it. He didn't want to give Koki and Nakamaru the wrong idea.
There was only one stop between the spaceport and the station closest to the stadium. The remaining occupants of the carriage took the opportunity to shuffle further down the train, or disembark altogether, rather than suffer the rest of the journey with four LIPS officers.
Only one man boarded. Everyone was stunned, for very different reasons.
"Taguchi Junnosuke!" Nakamaru exclaimed, forgetting he was supposed to be playing it cool.
Koki gave him an appraising look. "Must be our month for meeting sports heroes."
Junno favoured them all with a sunny smile and settled down at the other end of the carriage.
Kame couldn't believe his eyes either. What was Junno doing here? "Uh, excuse me?" he called. "Are you going to the game?"
"They invited me to pitch the opening ball," Junno said. "Isn't that great?"
Having been on the receiving end of Junno's pitches in many a virtual baseball game, Kame hoped the poor batter was adequately protected. Junno might be the approximate size and shape of a hatstand but beneath the long black coat he was hiding some serious muscles. Of course, that didn't necessarily mean his aim was any good...
"Brilliant," Kame said without enthusiasm.
Junno failed to notice that no one was exactly thrilled by his admission. "Isn't it? I couldn't believe it when my agent told me. She said it would be good publicity for the tournament I'm in next week."
"We should've placed a bet," Jin muttered.
"And they've got me pitching against...um..." Junno edged closer to their end of the carriage; Kame held his breath. "Against you."
Clearly, Junno was bewildered. It would've been only too easy for Kame to deny having anything to do with himself. Jin might be puzzled but the other two would think it a perfectly sensible course of action.
"Think it's a sign?" Jin whispered.
Kame nodded and beckoned Junno over. "Publicity stunt," he said. "I'll explain later. We should go in together."
"Do I need a LIPS uniform too, 'Officer Masuda'?"
Unless they were lucky - or unlucky - enough to run into more officers on the way, Junno wasn't getting his own uniform. "No," Kame said firmly, thinking fast. "You have to pretend we've arrested you. It all comes to a head on the field, when we drag you out to the pitcher's mound and make like we're going to execute you. The crowd will love it."
It was a ridiculous explanation but Junno bought it, though only after Kame promised to let him juggle a few baseballs before pitching one.
Koki rolled his eyes. "Why don't we just get up there and do a comedy routine while we're at it?"
Nakamaru liked the idea but he was the only one. Kame had no intention of letting any of them get anywhere near the field, because if they did, it was already too late. He had to find his other self before the game began...and now he had to do it with four people in tow. Stealth was no longer a viable option.
When they left the train, the charade began, with Kame and Jin walking in front, Nakamaru and Koki behind, and Junno in the middle. They didn't have handcuffs to make it more realistic, but there were so many people rushing through the station that no one noticed. Everyone was on their way to the game. Those who weren't headed straight for the stadium were lining up for the bathrooms.
Jin wasn't sure how Kame planned on getting into the stadium with Junno - why would they arrest someone and take him to a baseball game? - but he agreed that they couldn't simply have left him to his own devices. Of course that did mean they were going to have a lot of explaining to do if this didn't work...
Getting near the stadium was a task and a half in itself. Although staff members appeared to be everywhere, the actual rate at which the crowd moved through the gates was painfully slow. Kame stood on tiptoe to peer over the mass of people; eventually, Junno took pity on him and put his height to good use, though from that distance he couldn't see much.
"I think they're frisking everyone when they collect the tickets," Junno said at last. "Or the staff are feeling up the fans, I'm not sure."
Kame thought it was probably the former. "Are you armed?"
"Me?" Junno looked absolutely bewildered that anyone would accuse him of such a thing. "No. Do you think I should be?"
The rest of them had an excuse for being armed. They'd taken the stunners from the LIPS officers, meaning they now carried two weapons apiece - Nakamaru had brought his stunner from work, just in case, and Koki never went anywhere without his customised one. Fortunately, the uniforms gave them the authority to be carrying. Without one, Junno was better left unarmed.
"No, I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't be stopped by security, that's all. They might not know you were invited to throw the opening ball." Kame hoped it wasn't going to be necessary to pull a gun on his other self, but if anyone did, it certainly wasn't going to be Junno, who knew less about the situation than anyone else present.
When they finally got close enough to a gate to talk to a member of staff - young, pretty and very familiar - they found out the reason for the delays.
"Got to search everyone coming in," he explained as he glanced at their ID badges. "Even celebrities. Never know what they might be carrying. You know that enka singer, Shibutani Subaru? We stopped him earlier; had a skull-shaped mace in his bag. Claimed it was a fashion accessory, but we soon sorted him out."
Jin would have found this less disconcerting if he hadn't known that Subaru was actually the captain of the JE Fleet ship K8 - and the staff member offering the explanation was the K8's Chief Engineer, Ohkura Tadayoshi. He thought the skull-shaped mace sounded pretty cool, though.
Ohkura checked that their faces and badges matched - Kame's puzzled him, but he shrugged and moved on - and patted Junno down, finding nothing. He had to ask for confirmation that Junno had indeed been invited, as the name didn't ring any bells.
"What's with the security?" Koki asked. "Has there been some kind of scare?"
"You could say that." Ohkura gestured to them to wait a moment. He muttered to his colleagues that he was taking a teabreak, grabbed an Eito Ranger lunchbox from inside the booth, and beckoned Koki and co. to follow him. They landed up in the break room, where Jin immediately launched himself at the vending machine.
Apparently, Ohkura was taking a genuine teabreak. The lunchbox wasn't just for show. In between mouthfuls, he filled them in. "We're not supposed to know anything about it, just make sure no one comes in with weapons, but I've heard that someone's looking to take out the Lunatics' star player."
Everyone looked at Kame. He held out his name badge. "Officer Masuda, remember?" That was all he needed, to have someone take out his other self before he managed to get to him.
"Right." Ohkura took another bite of his mini-pizza. "Nobody told me about this publicity stunt of yours...nobody tells me anything, really..."
That wasn't Kame's problem, so long as Ohkura bought the story. "Do you know who it is?"
"Some crime family from Earth, I think. Maybe...Kitayama?"
"Kitagawa?" Kame suggested.
"That's the one!"
Jin sprayed lemon water all over the floor. Nakamaru, disgusted, passed him a tissue.
"The old man owns the Olympian Gods." Jin was far too agitated to think about cleaning. "I forgot he was so into baseball. He couldn't buy his way into any of the teams on Earth so he went for Mars instead."
"That's very helpful," Koki said, "but how do you know that?"
"Um..." Jin smiled weakly. Innocence, he could do. False innocence was more of a challenge. "I'm a big fan of true crime stories?" Nobody was swallowing that one, with the possible exception of Ohkura, who was more interested in swallowing the contents of his lunchbox. Telling the truth wasn't ideal, but Jin wasn't sure he could keep up with any more lies. Keeping track of Kame's identity was tough enough already. "I used to work for the Kitagawas, okay? When I was a kid. I left years ago."
Nakamaru sighed. "Anything else we should know about you and Kame? Murder convictions, unpaid fines, anything like that?"
"Unpaid fines?" Koki gave him a "what the hell?" look.
"That's it," Kame said. "I think." He was intrigued by the way aspects of Jin's past had remained unchanged. Perhaps it was because Jin himself was unchanged. His leaving the Kitagawas had had nothing to do with Kame - if the bank account was any indication, he was with them still. That guy back at Red Spot Terminal had certainly thought so.
Which meant that if the alter!Jin was still working for old man Kitagawa, and doing what Kame's Jin suspected him of doing for a living...oh.
From the way the blood had drained from Jin's face, it was clear he'd considered the same possibility. "You wouldn't," Kame said fiercely. "Ever."
"I might." Jin ignored the confusion they were causing. "If I hadn't left, I might be like that."
Kame wrapped his arms around Jin from behind, refusing to let go until Jin relaxed, releasing the tension from his body with a couple of slow, deep breaths. "You wouldn't."
"I don't really get what's going on," Koki said, trying not to look at them but unable to help himself, "but if some hired gun from the Kitagawas takes out your clone, does that mean it's the curse working or he's just really unlucky?"
"Clone? Curse?" Poor Junno was completely in the dark. "Nobody said anything about a curse. Can I call my agent?"
This was getting out of hand. Kame released his partner and made everyone else take a seat so he could have a height advantage. "Short version. I'm the real Kamenashi Kazuya. The guy who's playing in the game tonight is my clone. He's stolen a diamond that belongs to me and I have to get it back. There's a curse on the jewel that will strike down any owner but the true one. If he gets assassinated, I lose my chance to find out where it is.
"Basically, if you see someone who looks like me but isn't wearing a LIPS uniform, stop him."
Junno beamed. "This is some publicity stunt! Who's your agent? Can I hire you guys to run my PR?"
"Depends," Koki said. "What are your finances like?"
"Never mind what his finances are like!" Jin wanted them to stop sitting around and talking so they could get on with finding the alter!Kame. The sooner they found this diamond, the sooner things would return to normal. He wanted to be back on his own ship, with the friends who'd known him for years, having stupid arguments about who spilled coffee all over whose favourite scarf and why 'Prison Planet Break' was a far better series than 'CSI: Pluto'. "Can we start looking?"
"I'm not sure you should be-" Ohkura paused and frowned as his datband crackled to life. He shook it a couple of times and held it up to his ear, listening hard for about thirty seconds. "They've caught someone armed! I'm supposed to get back outside. I'll be back in a few minutes and we can straighten this whole thing out. Just don't move."
Not moving was the last thing any of them wanted to do - especially if, as Jin feared, it was his other self. He raced after Ohkura, Kame hot on his heels, the other three bringing up the rear. The chase led them back out to the gate, where a violent struggle was taking place between a pair of stadium staff members and the missing member of the KAT-TUN's command crew.
"Ueda Tatsuya!" Koki gasped.
Nakamaru cursed himself for not having his autograph book handy. "I keep running into famous sportsmen and no one's going to believe me when I get home. Baseball players, billiards players, boxers..."
It didn't surprise Kame that Ueda was known for his boxing here. He was the number one in his weight class in the entire JE Fleet, and nobody was more dedicated to training his body. It looked like he was about to be forcibly ejected from the stadium, if the staff had their way.
"Hold it!" Jin decided to take advantage of the uniform. The stadium staff were just there to take the tickets; if they ran into trouble, they called for security. But if four LIPS officers took trouble off their hands, there'd be no need. "What's he being accused of?"
One of the staff got a trifle carried away and barked out, "Carrying two lethal weapons, sir!"
Jin smirked. 'Sir' sounded nice. He didn't get to hear it very often. Some of his crew had tried it for a while but it hadn't lasted. "What kind of weapons? Guns? Knives? Maces?"
"His fists, sir!"
"Huh?"
Ueda freed himself easily, leaving the hapless staff members sitting stunned on the ground. "They asked if I was carrying any weapons, and I said that my hands were registered lethal weapons. It was a joke."
"We'll take responsibility," Jin said, holding out his badge for emphasis. "If Taguchi fails we might need a relief celebrity pitcher for the opening ball."
"Nobody's expecting that much," Junno said. "How can I fail?"
Koki smacked him lightly across the back of the head and herded him back indoors. Kame and Jin double-teamed Ueda, marching him off to the break room before he could ask any awkward questions.
The awkward questions, as it turned out, came from Koki, as Ueda seemed quite content to watch and see how the whole thing played out. "What's your obsession with collecting sportsmen? I can understand roping in Taguchi to give us credence, but why do we need Ueda as well?"
Jin was relieved that they'd run out of command crew members to find, but short of saying that Kame's clone was a bit of a fanboy and the more celebrities they could draw him in with, the better, he had no idea how to respond. He looked to Kame for help, receiving only a shrug in return. In the end, he had to settle for stonewalling them. "I can't explain it, okay? You just have to trust us."
"Please," Kame added, and that seemed to clinch it for Koki.
"Fine, but if anything goes wrong..."
"Goes wrong with what?" Ueda asked. "I came here to watch the game. Do we have time to get a couple of hot dogs?"
Kame checked. One hour left before the game was due to start. His other self would definitely be at the stadium by now, if only they could find him. "No time for hot dogs; we've got to look for someone first."
"Well, you did manage to get me inside," Ueda said amiably. "As long as I get to my seat before the game starts, I can help you find them. Who are we looking for?"
Kame removed his hat so there could be no doubt whatsoever about his identity.
"Me."
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 7
Lunacy, as Lunar City Major was colloquially known, was familiar territory to the occupants of the Sakura. In another lifetime, they'd all lived there for months, waiting for the trial of Kame's former LIPS colleagues to end so he no longer had to stick around to give evidence. Then they'd won a ship in a rigged poker tournament and left as soon as they possibly could.
Once the autopilot had brought them gently down to the surface of Earth's moon, they all disembarked so Koki could lock up. He and Nakamaru were going to resupply with fuel and do some sightseeing, he'd said.
"What do I owe you?" Kame had paid their way to Alpha Centauri only - with Jin's card.
"Kick in for the hyperdrive fuel and we'll call it even." Koki lounged against the docking bay wall, trying for casual nonchalance. "Figured we might tag along for a bit."
"I thought you were going sightseeing?"
"We are," Koki said. "We've never seen a clone before, or a cursed diamond."
"I could probably write a paper on the clone for extra credit." Nakamaru patted his hair, which refused to stay flat. Lunacy's artificial atmosphere was heavy on the wind today.
Jin was on the verge of telling him not to waste his holiday on such academic enterprises, but he was certain - almost - that Nakamaru was joking.
Datapad in hand, Kame flipped through the local comconsole directory, connecting wirelessly through the spaceport's own systems. There were no contact details listed for 'Kamenashi Kazuya'. Oh well. It had been worth a shot. "He's ex-directory."
"Wouldn't you be if you were a star athlete?" Jin said. "People must be wanting to see him all the time. We'll just have to find him the old-fashioned way."
"Look for the nearest sports bar?" Koki suggested.
"Nope." Kame found the other hope he'd been clinging to, the latest sports news. "The Lunar City Lunatics are playing the Olympian Gods at the Crescent Moon Stadium tonight.
"We're going to the game."
Nakamaru grinned. "I take it back. This is exactly the kind of holiday I was hoping for!"
As Kame saw it, he and Jin were faced with three potential problems. They didn't have tickets for the game, which meant they were going to have to get creative to access the stadium. It wasn't likely the other Kame would have the diamond on him, so they were going to have to extract the information from him somehow and go in search of it.
And of course, they couldn't risk separation.
He checked his watch against the local time on his datapad. "It's only two here. We've got four hours before the game starts."
"Tickets will have sold out ages ago," Nakamaru said. "When the Lunatics started winning games, everyone wanted to go just for the novelty."
"And now they go for you." Koki pointed to Kame. "Or your clone, anyway. You're a total sports idol."
Jin waved a dismissive hand. "There's always guys selling tickets outside the stadium."
"And I'm not sure they're the kind of guys who take cards," Kame said. "Besides, I don't want to corner him on the field in front of 50,000 witnesses. We'll have to sneak in."
"Great!" Jin mustered all the enthusiasm he could. "Got any ideas?"
Kame pressed his thumb to the panel. The docking bay door creaked open, badly in need of oil, to reveal dozens of travellers milling about the corridor - including a group of four wearing familiar black and white uniforms. "Oh, one or two..."
-----
Never in his worst nightmares had Jin envisioned himself wearing a LIPS uniform. As a kid he'd steered clear of them, knowing they'd arrest him if they ever found out he'd committed crimes for the old man that crossed interplanetary borders. As an adult, the only good thing he'd been able to say about them was that Kame looked hot in the uniform.
He still did, with his jacket sleeves rolled up to the elbows and shirt collar wide open. He'd touched up the black nail polish from Koki's stash. Despite the skull-print fedora he still wore, no one was going to mistake Kame for anything other than a LIPS officer.
"Nobody wears the uniform hat." Kame jerked his chin at the four unconscious male officers, stripped to their underwear, blindfolded and tied up in the cargo hold of the Sakura. One wore a trilby, one wore a purple beanie, one was completely bareheaded and the other was currently squashing his sombrero. "We can wear what we want."
Koki finished laminating their ID badges - stolen from the officers, with hastily-printed photographs stuck over the real ones. "Here you go, Officer Masuda."
Masuda? Kame tilted the beanie-wearer's chin towards the light. No doubt about it, they'd knocked out Lt. Masuda Takahisa, one of the JE Fleet officers assigned to Yamapi's pink flagship. This universe was getting stranger by the minute.
They'd had to resort to desperate measures to lure in the LIPS officers. Kame figured a combination of crime, scandal and celebrity should do it. He had Nakamaru quietly approach them, telling tales of how he'd seen Kamenashi Kazuya buying Trans-Saturnian Rum from a pair of infamous Jovian rappers - over a game of drunken strip poker, which nobody appeared to be any good at. Thrilled by the potential entertainment and blackmail value, the LIPS officers had followed Nakamaru without question. The moment they were through the door of the docking bay, Nakamaru hit the panel to close them in. Koki dropped all four with rapid bursts from his customised stunner - a guy had to be able to protect the person he loved, so he said - and minutes later, the occupants of the Sakura were dressing in their borrowed uniforms.
"Are you sure we don't have time to launder them first?" Nakamaru asked, grimacing as he pulled on the jacket.
Kame's own inner neat freak was having a fit too, but they just didn't have the time. "Definitely. It'll take us near an hour to get to the stadium from here, and these guys won't stay stunned forever."
"Five hours," Koki said. "I can't guarantee they'll be out any longer than that. I'd like 'em out of my ship before they wake up, too."
Jin transferred his currently-useless comm badge into the right inner pocket of his LIPS jacket and tucked his blaster in the left. With any luck, the unconscious officers in Koki's cargo hold would soon be a thing of the past. Jin wasn't sure how the universe would change again, assuming it worked, but he hoped that they wouldn't need to come back. Consequently, he also wore his new hat, loathe to leave it behind when he returned home. Or home returned to him, whatever.
They tried to appear nonchalant as they left the docking bay, aiming for that casual LIPS swagger. It didn't come easily to Nakamaru. The station was on the other side of the spaceport but the trains were the fastest way to get around Lunacy. People took one look at the uniform and rushed to get out of the way.
Koki loved it. "It's like they're cowering in fear of us. I could get used to this uniform."
"Don't," Kame advised. "Sombrero-boy will be wanting it back."
It didn't escape his notice that Koki, with his slightly shady background, and Nakamaru, with his decent, upstanding life as a Red Spot Terminal security guard, had slipped only too easily into their normal roles - criminal acts were matter of course. Either that said more about their characters than Kame had time to think about, or by bringing the four of them together, he'd somehow taken steps to rebuild his own universe.
They hit the ticket machines at a dash, pausing only long enough for Jin to swipe his card and distribute the tickets. One-way, only. The platform was dead ahead, more crowded than one of Captain Kimura's holovid premieres, completely packed with enthusiastic baseball fans who'd flown all the way over for the game. Fans of the Olympian Gods, being from Mars, naturally wore red. Those who supported the Lunar City Lunatics wore a soothing light green, belying the team's name. Some, obviously Kamenashi Kazuya fans, had decorated their clothes with turtles. Kame pulled his fedora low over his eyes and kept moving.
It was a struggle to get through the sea of baseball fans but they managed, mostly thanks to Jin yelling in English (and occasionally Spanish) for people to get out of the way. The train was heaving, of course. Kame led the way down to the very last carriage, where he hoped fewer people would pass them by. It looked like they were going to be standing all the way to the Crescent Moon Stadium.
Or possibly not. When they reached the end carriage, a gang of obvious delinquents (hairbands, eyeliner, far too much lipstick, making only token attempts at wearing their school uniform) took one look at them and gave up their seats to the "LIPS officers". Jin clapped one on the shoulder as he skulked past and told him that this was indeed a mature and manly thing to do, but that his lipstick was a shade too dark. The youth glowered silently and made an obscene gesture on his way out, which Jin happily returned.
"You're not a kid anymore," Kame said. "You're supposed to be above being baited."
"You didn't know me when I was a kid." Jin stretched his legs as far as the cramped confines of the carriage would allow. "If I did that around the house they'd have broken my fingers for me. We all had to at least be able to act like good kids, otherwise we weren't much use for getting in places."
He hadn't meant to add the last bit; fortunately, the noise level was such that only Kame, right next to him, was able to hear it. He didn't want to give Koki and Nakamaru the wrong idea.
There was only one stop between the spaceport and the station closest to the stadium. The remaining occupants of the carriage took the opportunity to shuffle further down the train, or disembark altogether, rather than suffer the rest of the journey with four LIPS officers.
Only one man boarded. Everyone was stunned, for very different reasons.
"Taguchi Junnosuke!" Nakamaru exclaimed, forgetting he was supposed to be playing it cool.
Koki gave him an appraising look. "Must be our month for meeting sports heroes."
Junno favoured them all with a sunny smile and settled down at the other end of the carriage.
Kame couldn't believe his eyes either. What was Junno doing here? "Uh, excuse me?" he called. "Are you going to the game?"
"They invited me to pitch the opening ball," Junno said. "Isn't that great?"
Having been on the receiving end of Junno's pitches in many a virtual baseball game, Kame hoped the poor batter was adequately protected. Junno might be the approximate size and shape of a hatstand but beneath the long black coat he was hiding some serious muscles. Of course, that didn't necessarily mean his aim was any good...
"Brilliant," Kame said without enthusiasm.
Junno failed to notice that no one was exactly thrilled by his admission. "Isn't it? I couldn't believe it when my agent told me. She said it would be good publicity for the tournament I'm in next week."
"We should've placed a bet," Jin muttered.
"And they've got me pitching against...um..." Junno edged closer to their end of the carriage; Kame held his breath. "Against you."
Clearly, Junno was bewildered. It would've been only too easy for Kame to deny having anything to do with himself. Jin might be puzzled but the other two would think it a perfectly sensible course of action.
"Think it's a sign?" Jin whispered.
Kame nodded and beckoned Junno over. "Publicity stunt," he said. "I'll explain later. We should go in together."
"Do I need a LIPS uniform too, 'Officer Masuda'?"
Unless they were lucky - or unlucky - enough to run into more officers on the way, Junno wasn't getting his own uniform. "No," Kame said firmly, thinking fast. "You have to pretend we've arrested you. It all comes to a head on the field, when we drag you out to the pitcher's mound and make like we're going to execute you. The crowd will love it."
It was a ridiculous explanation but Junno bought it, though only after Kame promised to let him juggle a few baseballs before pitching one.
Koki rolled his eyes. "Why don't we just get up there and do a comedy routine while we're at it?"
Nakamaru liked the idea but he was the only one. Kame had no intention of letting any of them get anywhere near the field, because if they did, it was already too late. He had to find his other self before the game began...and now he had to do it with four people in tow. Stealth was no longer a viable option.
When they left the train, the charade began, with Kame and Jin walking in front, Nakamaru and Koki behind, and Junno in the middle. They didn't have handcuffs to make it more realistic, but there were so many people rushing through the station that no one noticed. Everyone was on their way to the game. Those who weren't headed straight for the stadium were lining up for the bathrooms.
Jin wasn't sure how Kame planned on getting into the stadium with Junno - why would they arrest someone and take him to a baseball game? - but he agreed that they couldn't simply have left him to his own devices. Of course that did mean they were going to have a lot of explaining to do if this didn't work...
Getting near the stadium was a task and a half in itself. Although staff members appeared to be everywhere, the actual rate at which the crowd moved through the gates was painfully slow. Kame stood on tiptoe to peer over the mass of people; eventually, Junno took pity on him and put his height to good use, though from that distance he couldn't see much.
"I think they're frisking everyone when they collect the tickets," Junno said at last. "Or the staff are feeling up the fans, I'm not sure."
Kame thought it was probably the former. "Are you armed?"
"Me?" Junno looked absolutely bewildered that anyone would accuse him of such a thing. "No. Do you think I should be?"
The rest of them had an excuse for being armed. They'd taken the stunners from the LIPS officers, meaning they now carried two weapons apiece - Nakamaru had brought his stunner from work, just in case, and Koki never went anywhere without his customised one. Fortunately, the uniforms gave them the authority to be carrying. Without one, Junno was better left unarmed.
"No, I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't be stopped by security, that's all. They might not know you were invited to throw the opening ball." Kame hoped it wasn't going to be necessary to pull a gun on his other self, but if anyone did, it certainly wasn't going to be Junno, who knew less about the situation than anyone else present.
When they finally got close enough to a gate to talk to a member of staff - young, pretty and very familiar - they found out the reason for the delays.
"Got to search everyone coming in," he explained as he glanced at their ID badges. "Even celebrities. Never know what they might be carrying. You know that enka singer, Shibutani Subaru? We stopped him earlier; had a skull-shaped mace in his bag. Claimed it was a fashion accessory, but we soon sorted him out."
Jin would have found this less disconcerting if he hadn't known that Subaru was actually the captain of the JE Fleet ship K8 - and the staff member offering the explanation was the K8's Chief Engineer, Ohkura Tadayoshi. He thought the skull-shaped mace sounded pretty cool, though.
Ohkura checked that their faces and badges matched - Kame's puzzled him, but he shrugged and moved on - and patted Junno down, finding nothing. He had to ask for confirmation that Junno had indeed been invited, as the name didn't ring any bells.
"What's with the security?" Koki asked. "Has there been some kind of scare?"
"You could say that." Ohkura gestured to them to wait a moment. He muttered to his colleagues that he was taking a teabreak, grabbed an Eito Ranger lunchbox from inside the booth, and beckoned Koki and co. to follow him. They landed up in the break room, where Jin immediately launched himself at the vending machine.
Apparently, Ohkura was taking a genuine teabreak. The lunchbox wasn't just for show. In between mouthfuls, he filled them in. "We're not supposed to know anything about it, just make sure no one comes in with weapons, but I've heard that someone's looking to take out the Lunatics' star player."
Everyone looked at Kame. He held out his name badge. "Officer Masuda, remember?" That was all he needed, to have someone take out his other self before he managed to get to him.
"Right." Ohkura took another bite of his mini-pizza. "Nobody told me about this publicity stunt of yours...nobody tells me anything, really..."
That wasn't Kame's problem, so long as Ohkura bought the story. "Do you know who it is?"
"Some crime family from Earth, I think. Maybe...Kitayama?"
"Kitagawa?" Kame suggested.
"That's the one!"
Jin sprayed lemon water all over the floor. Nakamaru, disgusted, passed him a tissue.
"The old man owns the Olympian Gods." Jin was far too agitated to think about cleaning. "I forgot he was so into baseball. He couldn't buy his way into any of the teams on Earth so he went for Mars instead."
"That's very helpful," Koki said, "but how do you know that?"
"Um..." Jin smiled weakly. Innocence, he could do. False innocence was more of a challenge. "I'm a big fan of true crime stories?" Nobody was swallowing that one, with the possible exception of Ohkura, who was more interested in swallowing the contents of his lunchbox. Telling the truth wasn't ideal, but Jin wasn't sure he could keep up with any more lies. Keeping track of Kame's identity was tough enough already. "I used to work for the Kitagawas, okay? When I was a kid. I left years ago."
Nakamaru sighed. "Anything else we should know about you and Kame? Murder convictions, unpaid fines, anything like that?"
"Unpaid fines?" Koki gave him a "what the hell?" look.
"That's it," Kame said. "I think." He was intrigued by the way aspects of Jin's past had remained unchanged. Perhaps it was because Jin himself was unchanged. His leaving the Kitagawas had had nothing to do with Kame - if the bank account was any indication, he was with them still. That guy back at Red Spot Terminal had certainly thought so.
Which meant that if the alter!Jin was still working for old man Kitagawa, and doing what Kame's Jin suspected him of doing for a living...oh.
From the way the blood had drained from Jin's face, it was clear he'd considered the same possibility. "You wouldn't," Kame said fiercely. "Ever."
"I might." Jin ignored the confusion they were causing. "If I hadn't left, I might be like that."
Kame wrapped his arms around Jin from behind, refusing to let go until Jin relaxed, releasing the tension from his body with a couple of slow, deep breaths. "You wouldn't."
"I don't really get what's going on," Koki said, trying not to look at them but unable to help himself, "but if some hired gun from the Kitagawas takes out your clone, does that mean it's the curse working or he's just really unlucky?"
"Clone? Curse?" Poor Junno was completely in the dark. "Nobody said anything about a curse. Can I call my agent?"
This was getting out of hand. Kame released his partner and made everyone else take a seat so he could have a height advantage. "Short version. I'm the real Kamenashi Kazuya. The guy who's playing in the game tonight is my clone. He's stolen a diamond that belongs to me and I have to get it back. There's a curse on the jewel that will strike down any owner but the true one. If he gets assassinated, I lose my chance to find out where it is.
"Basically, if you see someone who looks like me but isn't wearing a LIPS uniform, stop him."
Junno beamed. "This is some publicity stunt! Who's your agent? Can I hire you guys to run my PR?"
"Depends," Koki said. "What are your finances like?"
"Never mind what his finances are like!" Jin wanted them to stop sitting around and talking so they could get on with finding the alter!Kame. The sooner they found this diamond, the sooner things would return to normal. He wanted to be back on his own ship, with the friends who'd known him for years, having stupid arguments about who spilled coffee all over whose favourite scarf and why 'Prison Planet Break' was a far better series than 'CSI: Pluto'. "Can we start looking?"
"I'm not sure you should be-" Ohkura paused and frowned as his datband crackled to life. He shook it a couple of times and held it up to his ear, listening hard for about thirty seconds. "They've caught someone armed! I'm supposed to get back outside. I'll be back in a few minutes and we can straighten this whole thing out. Just don't move."
Not moving was the last thing any of them wanted to do - especially if, as Jin feared, it was his other self. He raced after Ohkura, Kame hot on his heels, the other three bringing up the rear. The chase led them back out to the gate, where a violent struggle was taking place between a pair of stadium staff members and the missing member of the KAT-TUN's command crew.
"Ueda Tatsuya!" Koki gasped.
Nakamaru cursed himself for not having his autograph book handy. "I keep running into famous sportsmen and no one's going to believe me when I get home. Baseball players, billiards players, boxers..."
It didn't surprise Kame that Ueda was known for his boxing here. He was the number one in his weight class in the entire JE Fleet, and nobody was more dedicated to training his body. It looked like he was about to be forcibly ejected from the stadium, if the staff had their way.
"Hold it!" Jin decided to take advantage of the uniform. The stadium staff were just there to take the tickets; if they ran into trouble, they called for security. But if four LIPS officers took trouble off their hands, there'd be no need. "What's he being accused of?"
One of the staff got a trifle carried away and barked out, "Carrying two lethal weapons, sir!"
Jin smirked. 'Sir' sounded nice. He didn't get to hear it very often. Some of his crew had tried it for a while but it hadn't lasted. "What kind of weapons? Guns? Knives? Maces?"
"His fists, sir!"
"Huh?"
Ueda freed himself easily, leaving the hapless staff members sitting stunned on the ground. "They asked if I was carrying any weapons, and I said that my hands were registered lethal weapons. It was a joke."
"We'll take responsibility," Jin said, holding out his badge for emphasis. "If Taguchi fails we might need a relief celebrity pitcher for the opening ball."
"Nobody's expecting that much," Junno said. "How can I fail?"
Koki smacked him lightly across the back of the head and herded him back indoors. Kame and Jin double-teamed Ueda, marching him off to the break room before he could ask any awkward questions.
The awkward questions, as it turned out, came from Koki, as Ueda seemed quite content to watch and see how the whole thing played out. "What's your obsession with collecting sportsmen? I can understand roping in Taguchi to give us credence, but why do we need Ueda as well?"
Jin was relieved that they'd run out of command crew members to find, but short of saying that Kame's clone was a bit of a fanboy and the more celebrities they could draw him in with, the better, he had no idea how to respond. He looked to Kame for help, receiving only a shrug in return. In the end, he had to settle for stonewalling them. "I can't explain it, okay? You just have to trust us."
"Please," Kame added, and that seemed to clinch it for Koki.
"Fine, but if anything goes wrong..."
"Goes wrong with what?" Ueda asked. "I came here to watch the game. Do we have time to get a couple of hot dogs?"
Kame checked. One hour left before the game was due to start. His other self would definitely be at the stadium by now, if only they could find him. "No time for hot dogs; we've got to look for someone first."
"Well, you did manage to get me inside," Ueda said amiably. "As long as I get to my seat before the game starts, I can help you find them. Who are we looking for?"
Kame removed his hat so there could be no doubt whatsoever about his identity.
"Me."