[JE] [JEF #2] Attack of Nerves 1/5
Title: Attack of Nerves (1/5)
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: JE (specifically, KAT-TUN)
Pairing: Akame, though others are mentioned
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 20,000
Genre: AU, sci-fi, crack, comedy, fluff, angst, you name it...
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the bands, individuals or songs mentioned within.
Summary: Sequel to Personal Space, and you really need to have read that one first. The crew of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN are given a new mission, to boldly go where several men from Osaka have gone before, and find out what attacked the K8. The answer lies somewhere in Jin's murky past, and only Kame, with the help of an advanced video game console, can save the day.
Chapter 1
"Port!"
"Starboard!"
"Port!"
"Starboard!"
"Port!"
Akanishi Jin, captain of the JE Jaguar-class ship KAT-TUN, admitted defeat. "Fine. Just steer us whichever way's quickest out of the Sol System."
Kamenashi Kazuya, the other captain of the JE Jaguar-class ship KAT-TUN, grinned triumphantly and sat back in the right captain's seat to watch his partner fume. In the fifteen months since his "rescue" from the Fahngarlians, Kame had won more than his fair share of arguments with Jin - trying to wipe out the entire human race, he'd discovered, did wonders for his competetive nature - and the other man was starting to show signs of resentment.
In the left captain's seat, Jin did his best to accept his loss in a mature and sensible fashion, as befitted the man in charge of one of the most heavily-armed ships in the fleet. But Kame's seductive smirk drove all thoughts of maturity out of his head, and he resorted to sticking out his tongue.
Kame looked away and laughed. "Don't point that at me unless you intend to use it."
Jin always enjoyed making up after their arguments. As he leaned across the small armrest that was all that separated them, the rest of the crew uttered a collective groan of "Not again!"
Commander Ueda Tatsuya, the KAT-TUN's second (or third, depending on your perspective) in-command and resident boxing champion, contemplated knocking both lovestruck captains out and throwing them in the brig for the duration of the voyage, but decided he hadn't yet reached the point of leading a mutiny. Despite the KAT-TUN's general disdain for JE fleet regulations and utter refusal to obey any order unless they really felt like it, there were some things that even a bunch of former space-pirates just couldn't do.
Besides, Ueda liked his job. It was just unfortunate that his commanding officers were lunatics all the way up the chain.
"I've already laid in a course," pointed out Ensign Nakamaru Yuichi, hotshot pilot and beatboxer extraordinaire. "If you guys ever bothered to look at the navicomp, you'd know where NGC 1569 is!"
"NG what?" Jin tore his eyes away from Kame long enough to look blankly at the pilot. "I don't even know *what* that is, never mind *where*!"
Ensign Taguchi Junnosuke, the cheerful Head of Communications, gave him a brief rundown. "Our destination today is NGC 1569, a dwarf galaxy in Camelopardalis! Only 2.4 megaparsecs away, its stars are visible even from Earth! What kind of adventures will this mysterious galaxy have for us? Check it out!"
The shaven-headed Security expert, Lieutenant Tanaka Koki, administered a swift kick to Junno's chair, thereby knocking his controller from his hands and causing him to meet a messy fate at the hands of a mutant space-spider in the latest Legend of Zelda game, 'A Link to the Universe'.
"What?" Koki said with a shrug as Junno looked at him in bewilderment. "You're not a talk-show host."
"That still doesn't tell me anything," Jin grumbled. "I thought we were supposed to be going to Alpha Centauri."
"We've been reassigned," Ueda informed him. "Weren't you paying attention to Commodore Yamashita's briefing?"
The two captains looked at each other guiltily, and Kame spoke up first. "I remember Yamapi arriving, but..."
"But we were...uh...distracted. By...the...uh...new additions to Pi's uniform," Jin stammered out. "Didn't you guys think the jacket was really...uh..."
"Colourful," Kame finished for him. "Really colourful. And shiny too."
Unlike the crew of the KAT-TUN, Commodore Yamashita Tomohisa, former smuggler and Jin's best friend, wore the red and black JE uniform. He couldn't, however, resist adding a few touches of his own, particularly when they involved things that were pink and/or furry.
Koki was suspicious - but then, he got paid to be. "After Taguchi loaded the data disc the commodore made us switch the lights off for the briefing. We were in the dark, and I know you couldn't have been mesmerized by the outfit for that long."
"Yeah, aside from the screen, we were in the dark, so-" Nakamaru stopped short as his brain helpfully provided a mental image of what his captains might have been up to while the lights were off.
Kame read his face like an open holonovel. "We were asleep, all right?" he said testily. "It was a long night, we were a little tired, and I couldn't stay awake long enough for Koki to translate the information sent by Arashi."
The Agency of Really Awesome, Smart and Handsome Individuals, military intelligence cleverly camouflaged as a talent agency, provided background on all missions assigned to JE crews. Their skills were numerous and varied, ranging from highly fashionable weapons design to unorthodox espionage aboard alien warships. Despite their differences they were a close-knit group, each and every one of them willing to sacrifice themselves for the rest, and most of their messages were annoyingly happy.
"Koki was translating?" Jin asked, puzzled. "But he's not in Communications."
Koki allowed himself a smug look. "They sent it in rap this time. Nobody knew what the mission was till I deciphered it." He slouched down at his station in a more-gangsta-than-thou pose, crossing his arms over his non-regulation green shirt and allowing an awestruck trainee to place a pair of sunglasses delicately on his nose.
Jin took time out from his confusion to comfort Junno, who didn't look happy to have been bested at his job. "There, there," he said soothingly, petting the other man on the head, "I'm sure you'll pick it up in no time. Koki can teach you. Right?"
Koki assured them that yes, he would be only too happy to teach rap to anyone who wanted to learn. Jin, who had a fair understanding of rap gleaned largely from listening to Koki in the shower, looked around at his crew and smiled. They might not be Arashi, but they were still tight, and there was a bond between them that even the ups and downs of military life couldn't break.
Kame's rudimentary knowledge of rap, acquired during an unfortunate weekend in Yokohama back when he'd been living on Earth, was not up to the task of understanding Sakurai Sho's low, rapid-fire bursts of information. "Did anybody take notes?" he asked.
Junno looked at Nakamaru. Nakamaru looked at Koki. Koki looked at Ueda. Ueda just looked annoyed.
"If I read these out to you, do you promise to pay attention?" he said wearily.
Jin and Kame nodded solemnly, crooking their pinkies. Ueda pulled out his datapad, making sure his hand covered up the Gackt sticker on the back so the others wouldn't laugh at him again, and donned his glasses.
Jin's jaw dropped open. Ueda was beautiful under normal circumstances, even when he was lazing round his cabin in shorts and a stripy shirt, but when he wore glasses...
It took Kame less than a second to realise where his partner's mind was, and it wasn't where it ought to be - namely, on him. He smacked Jin lightly on the back of the head, intending to jar him a little, but jealousy lent unintended strength to the blow and Jin sat down on the floor in a daze.
Kame looked down at him and winced. "Oops."
Jin didn't seem hurt, or even upset. His expression was somewhere between bliss and childlike glee, and he was using his fingers to follow the imaginary winged creatures circling his head. "What an amazing butterfly," he sighed happily.
Kame frowned. "That is not a butterfly," he said. "That is Ueda and if you don't stop looking at him like he's a piece of chocolate cake, I think he's going to kill you." As an afterthought, he added, "And if he doesn't, I will."
That brought Jin back to his senses in a hurry. Kame's threat, even filtered through a pretty haze of butterflies, was serious enough, and painful experience had taught Jin that it was safer for all concerned if he didn't push Kame too far.
The other captain had never quite recovered from his misguided attempts at genocide, and the number of lives lost through his strategies weighed heavily on him still. Even now, he had trouble looking out at the Sol System, preferring to keep the external view off the main screen when at all possible, and was prone to slipping into black moods whenever he allowed guilt to chip away at his carefully-constructed shields. It was easy enough to pretend when his world extended no further than the KAT-TUN's outer hull, but Kame's shipboard confinement would be over in less than a year and he would be free to come and go as he pleased, his debt to society paid.
In theory. In practice, Jin suspected that Kame would go on paying that debt for the rest of his life. He'd committed his own fair share of guilt-worthy offenses - one didn't become captain of a pirate ship by being an angel, after all - but robbing rich merchants was a far cry from wiping out warships. Kame had a lot to deal with.
But as long as they were together, Jin would be there to help him handle it.
Ueda couldn't help but smile at the antics of his captains. "Can I talk now?"
Jin struggled back to his seat and waved a regal hand. "Commander Ueda, please continue with the briefing," he said loftily.
The cluster of trainees loitering at the back of the bridge settled themselves in for a story and began passing around popcorn.
Ueda tactfully ignored the trainees, figuring he couldn't discipline them for it when their own captains had fallen asleep during the previous mission briefing, and proceeded to read aloud from his notes. "We've been pulled from routine patrol in Alpha Centauri to investigate NGC 1569, following the succession of mishaps befalling previous scout ships. The first never returned, the second was found abandoned, drifting at the edge of the Milky Way, and the third..."
"The third?" Kame prompted.
Ueda looked uncomfortable. "The third was one of ours. After two failed attempts it was decided to send out a scout from the military - they sent the K8."
The K8 was a Cougar-class ship, the pride of the JE fleet until the new Jaguar-class came along, and it was both larger and more formidable-looking than the KAT-TUN. The eight coloured stripes running along the hull gave it a fierce appearance, which its crew cheerfully encouraged.
"The K8?" Jin gasped. "What happened to them?"
"The TOKIO picked up a distress signal about two weeks ago from a ship headed for Sol on autopilot. They investigated, found the K8." Ueda's voice was very soft. "There were deep scores on the hull, and the pink stripe had been completely scratched away."
"What about the crew?" asked Kame.
"They're all alive, but..." Ueda struggled to maintain his composure. "They're in a bad way. They took Ambassador Nishikido with them in case they ran into a situation requiring diplomacy, but it doesn't look like he was much help."
Kame wasn't surprised. "He knows less about tact than Jin," he pointed out. "I'm not sure I'd want him trying to talk an alien out of shooting me."
Despite the insult, Jin agreed. "He only wanted the job as a JE ambassador so he'd have an excuse to spend half his time out with the fleet. I hear he's been practically living in Ensign Uchi's quarters on the Pin."
Kame bristled at the reference to Yamapi's bright pink flagship but Jin opted not to notice.
"Qualified diplomat or not," Ueda continued, "he was unconscious when they found him and so were the crew. Most of them still are. They've been hospitalised back on Earth."
"Some of them regained consciousness?" Jin said.
"Sort of." Ueda consulted his notes. "Chief Engineer Ohkura Tadayoshi appears to be in some sort of trance - he believes himself to be at work, and keeps banging on the furniture. Apparently he's quite good - they're selling tickets for his evening performances to raise money for charity."
"Can they really do that while he's in a trance?" Nakamaru wondered.
"They're putting aside a cut for him," Ueda explained. "It's a military hospital, so the patients need as many distractions as they can get. They'd do the same with the K8 Communications officer, Yokoyama Yuu, but his trance hasn't been nearly so useful. All he's doing is babbling nonsensically - something about a bicycle and a bunch of superheroes? Arashi have been trying to analyse it but so far they've come up with nothing."
There was a collective shiver from the crew, even those who'd already heard the story.
"And finally, Captain Shibutani Subaru has had brief periods of consciousness, during which he doesn't speak but emits a strange wailing sound. Again, Arashi are on the case but they're as baffled as his doctors."
"Are you sure there's something wrong with him?" Jin cracked, remembering how weirdly-pitched his one and only disastrous date with the K8's captain had been.
"Of course there's something wrong with him," Kame huffed, "and there's something wrong with Yamapi if he thinks he's going to send us out to meet the same fate!"
"While the commodore is eccentric, to say the least, I don't think he was wrong to choose us," Ueda said unexpectedly. "The K8 may be bigger but they're no match for us when it comes to firepower."
"We've got more shield generators too," Koki chimed in.
"And a better pilot!" This came, unsurprisingly, from Ensign Nakamaru.
"Plus we've got two captains, and that has to be better than one," Junno said brightly.
Jin was shocked. "When did you guys get so gung-ho about the military?"
KAT-TUN's T, T, U and N answered as one. "While you were sleeping!"
"I walked right into that one, didn't I?"
"We both did," Kame said, answering Jin's broad grin with one of his own. "And if we're already on our way, it looks like we accepted the mission in our sleep."
"Impressive, aren't we?"
Ueda regarded Jin warily. "Are you sure you were asleep the whole time? Because you shouted out 'YES!' in English when the commodore asked if you were prepared to accept the mission."
Jin blushed. "I was asleep!"
"Did I say anything to Yamapi?" Kame wanted to know. His cheeks were also faintly coloured.
Ueda shook his head. "Not that I remember. He teleported back to his flagship before we switched the lights back on, and by that point you were both awake. Yawning, but awake. You told me to make the arrangements, which I've done, and said we'd talk in the morning. That was two days ago. I assumed that meant you'd both agreed to the mission and were happy to leave the preparations to me."
"I'm sure we were," Kame said. It was more than a little embarrassing for him to be on what was probably a suicide mission because his partner chose that particular moment to talk in his sleep. He turned to Jin and asked, "What were you dreaming about, anyway?"
Jin's blush deepened. "I don't know but I'm pretty sure you featured in there somewhere."
"Good answer, good answer!" the trainees applauded, throwing their popcorn up in the air. The ongoing soap opera involving the command crew of the KAT-TUN provided more than adequate entertainment for the young trainees, who each picked their favourite officer to support.
"I'd better have done," Kame muttered, "or somebody's going to be sleeping alone for the rest of the trip." It wasn't until he felt every set of eyes in the room fixate on his flustered face that he realised he'd spoken louder than he'd meant to. It wasn't as if his relationship with his co-captain was any secret - the rest of the fleet knew about it, never mind the rest of the crew - but it had only been a few months since they'd rekindled a romance Kame had once thought dead, and he was still getting used to the idea of being half of a whole again.
"Don't worry," Nakamaru reassured Jin. "With this new drive, it's going to be a short journey. Three days at most till we hit NGC 1569. Of course, how long we'll take once we get there, I have no idea."
"Arashi went through the K8's logs," Ueda said. "We know the rough coordinates where they were attacked...or whatever happened to them. They didn't knock themselves out."
Jin snickered. "You haven't been to any of their parties, have you?"
"That has absolutely no relation to this. I think the commodore and Admiral Takki are hoping that we'll find whatever it is before it finds us, and shoot it full of more holes than one of Taguchi's jokes."
Luckily, the tail end of Ueda's sentence was drowned out by Junno's cry of victory as he successfully slew the boss of the third intergalactic dungeon.
Kame groaned. "I think we can come up with a better plan than that in the couple of days it'll take us to get there."
"I don't know," Jin argued, "I think the 'shoot first, ask questions later' plan has its merits. We're more heavily shielded and better armed than anything else that's gone into that galaxy, and I for one would like us to come out of it in better shape too."
"Remind me how we survived in the old days when I used to let you win the arguments all the time?"
"Simple," Jin said with a smile and a wink. "You guys ganged up on me with alcohol and feathers till I changed my mind."
Tickle torture was an excellent incentive for most people to recant their arguments - alas, Kame wasn't ticklish, so Jin never got to avenge himself in kind. He had to settle for getting him drunk instead, which had proven to be an interesting experience the night the artificial gravity failed.
"Then spare me the trouble of finding some feathers and just admit that perhaps we should think about what we're flying into, Jin. This is new, unexplored territory we're talking about. Anyone...anything could be out there."
"And we'll handle it." Jin was doing a good job of projecting a cocksure, confident attitude towards the mission, which he considered to be necessary for the morale of the crew.
It might have done wonders for the trainees, but it only succeeded in irritating Kame further. "Jin, let me remind you what happened last time I met an alien race!"
Oh. So that was it. A metaphorical light bulb clicked on over Jin's head. "And let me remind *you* that you're still under arrest and therefore will not be leaving the ship. No running off with strange alien women this time, okay?" He rested his hand lightly on his co-captain's neck and started playing with the (dyed) coppery strands that fell over his fingers. "Just relax. It's somebody else's turn to wipe out humanity."
When Kame seized Jin's hand and wrenched it away, the older of the two captains realised his joke had fallen flat. "Sorry, sorry, I know that wasn't funny...uh, Kame, you can let go now...that's starting to hurt..."
Kame relinquished his death-grip on Jin's hand and glared furiously at him. "You're right, that wasn't funny. Maybe you're not worried that it could all happen again but I am!"
"Doesn't worry me," Jin said. "I know you're not the same person you were two years ago - neither am I - but that doesn't mean you're going to go crazy again. You're stronger than that, Kame. You wouldn't turn on us again - that's all over now."
"Yeah?" Kame stood up, his face a mix of fear and fury, and headed for the sliding bridge doors. "I betrayed both sides in the same war, Jin - how am I supposed to get over that?"
The doors clanged shut after him, leaving the bridge in painful silence. Trainees cowered in corners while the command crew looked anxiously at their remaining captain.
"What did I say?" Jin wailed.
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: JE (specifically, KAT-TUN)
Pairing: Akame, though others are mentioned
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 20,000
Genre: AU, sci-fi, crack, comedy, fluff, angst, you name it...
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the bands, individuals or songs mentioned within.
Summary: Sequel to Personal Space, and you really need to have read that one first. The crew of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN are given a new mission, to boldly go where several men from Osaka have gone before, and find out what attacked the K8. The answer lies somewhere in Jin's murky past, and only Kame, with the help of an advanced video game console, can save the day.
Chapter 1
"Port!"
"Starboard!"
"Port!"
"Starboard!"
"Port!"
Akanishi Jin, captain of the JE Jaguar-class ship KAT-TUN, admitted defeat. "Fine. Just steer us whichever way's quickest out of the Sol System."
Kamenashi Kazuya, the other captain of the JE Jaguar-class ship KAT-TUN, grinned triumphantly and sat back in the right captain's seat to watch his partner fume. In the fifteen months since his "rescue" from the Fahngarlians, Kame had won more than his fair share of arguments with Jin - trying to wipe out the entire human race, he'd discovered, did wonders for his competetive nature - and the other man was starting to show signs of resentment.
In the left captain's seat, Jin did his best to accept his loss in a mature and sensible fashion, as befitted the man in charge of one of the most heavily-armed ships in the fleet. But Kame's seductive smirk drove all thoughts of maturity out of his head, and he resorted to sticking out his tongue.
Kame looked away and laughed. "Don't point that at me unless you intend to use it."
Jin always enjoyed making up after their arguments. As he leaned across the small armrest that was all that separated them, the rest of the crew uttered a collective groan of "Not again!"
Commander Ueda Tatsuya, the KAT-TUN's second (or third, depending on your perspective) in-command and resident boxing champion, contemplated knocking both lovestruck captains out and throwing them in the brig for the duration of the voyage, but decided he hadn't yet reached the point of leading a mutiny. Despite the KAT-TUN's general disdain for JE fleet regulations and utter refusal to obey any order unless they really felt like it, there were some things that even a bunch of former space-pirates just couldn't do.
Besides, Ueda liked his job. It was just unfortunate that his commanding officers were lunatics all the way up the chain.
"I've already laid in a course," pointed out Ensign Nakamaru Yuichi, hotshot pilot and beatboxer extraordinaire. "If you guys ever bothered to look at the navicomp, you'd know where NGC 1569 is!"
"NG what?" Jin tore his eyes away from Kame long enough to look blankly at the pilot. "I don't even know *what* that is, never mind *where*!"
Ensign Taguchi Junnosuke, the cheerful Head of Communications, gave him a brief rundown. "Our destination today is NGC 1569, a dwarf galaxy in Camelopardalis! Only 2.4 megaparsecs away, its stars are visible even from Earth! What kind of adventures will this mysterious galaxy have for us? Check it out!"
The shaven-headed Security expert, Lieutenant Tanaka Koki, administered a swift kick to Junno's chair, thereby knocking his controller from his hands and causing him to meet a messy fate at the hands of a mutant space-spider in the latest Legend of Zelda game, 'A Link to the Universe'.
"What?" Koki said with a shrug as Junno looked at him in bewilderment. "You're not a talk-show host."
"That still doesn't tell me anything," Jin grumbled. "I thought we were supposed to be going to Alpha Centauri."
"We've been reassigned," Ueda informed him. "Weren't you paying attention to Commodore Yamashita's briefing?"
The two captains looked at each other guiltily, and Kame spoke up first. "I remember Yamapi arriving, but..."
"But we were...uh...distracted. By...the...uh...new additions to Pi's uniform," Jin stammered out. "Didn't you guys think the jacket was really...uh..."
"Colourful," Kame finished for him. "Really colourful. And shiny too."
Unlike the crew of the KAT-TUN, Commodore Yamashita Tomohisa, former smuggler and Jin's best friend, wore the red and black JE uniform. He couldn't, however, resist adding a few touches of his own, particularly when they involved things that were pink and/or furry.
Koki was suspicious - but then, he got paid to be. "After Taguchi loaded the data disc the commodore made us switch the lights off for the briefing. We were in the dark, and I know you couldn't have been mesmerized by the outfit for that long."
"Yeah, aside from the screen, we were in the dark, so-" Nakamaru stopped short as his brain helpfully provided a mental image of what his captains might have been up to while the lights were off.
Kame read his face like an open holonovel. "We were asleep, all right?" he said testily. "It was a long night, we were a little tired, and I couldn't stay awake long enough for Koki to translate the information sent by Arashi."
The Agency of Really Awesome, Smart and Handsome Individuals, military intelligence cleverly camouflaged as a talent agency, provided background on all missions assigned to JE crews. Their skills were numerous and varied, ranging from highly fashionable weapons design to unorthodox espionage aboard alien warships. Despite their differences they were a close-knit group, each and every one of them willing to sacrifice themselves for the rest, and most of their messages were annoyingly happy.
"Koki was translating?" Jin asked, puzzled. "But he's not in Communications."
Koki allowed himself a smug look. "They sent it in rap this time. Nobody knew what the mission was till I deciphered it." He slouched down at his station in a more-gangsta-than-thou pose, crossing his arms over his non-regulation green shirt and allowing an awestruck trainee to place a pair of sunglasses delicately on his nose.
Jin took time out from his confusion to comfort Junno, who didn't look happy to have been bested at his job. "There, there," he said soothingly, petting the other man on the head, "I'm sure you'll pick it up in no time. Koki can teach you. Right?"
Koki assured them that yes, he would be only too happy to teach rap to anyone who wanted to learn. Jin, who had a fair understanding of rap gleaned largely from listening to Koki in the shower, looked around at his crew and smiled. They might not be Arashi, but they were still tight, and there was a bond between them that even the ups and downs of military life couldn't break.
Kame's rudimentary knowledge of rap, acquired during an unfortunate weekend in Yokohama back when he'd been living on Earth, was not up to the task of understanding Sakurai Sho's low, rapid-fire bursts of information. "Did anybody take notes?" he asked.
Junno looked at Nakamaru. Nakamaru looked at Koki. Koki looked at Ueda. Ueda just looked annoyed.
"If I read these out to you, do you promise to pay attention?" he said wearily.
Jin and Kame nodded solemnly, crooking their pinkies. Ueda pulled out his datapad, making sure his hand covered up the Gackt sticker on the back so the others wouldn't laugh at him again, and donned his glasses.
Jin's jaw dropped open. Ueda was beautiful under normal circumstances, even when he was lazing round his cabin in shorts and a stripy shirt, but when he wore glasses...
It took Kame less than a second to realise where his partner's mind was, and it wasn't where it ought to be - namely, on him. He smacked Jin lightly on the back of the head, intending to jar him a little, but jealousy lent unintended strength to the blow and Jin sat down on the floor in a daze.
Kame looked down at him and winced. "Oops."
Jin didn't seem hurt, or even upset. His expression was somewhere between bliss and childlike glee, and he was using his fingers to follow the imaginary winged creatures circling his head. "What an amazing butterfly," he sighed happily.
Kame frowned. "That is not a butterfly," he said. "That is Ueda and if you don't stop looking at him like he's a piece of chocolate cake, I think he's going to kill you." As an afterthought, he added, "And if he doesn't, I will."
That brought Jin back to his senses in a hurry. Kame's threat, even filtered through a pretty haze of butterflies, was serious enough, and painful experience had taught Jin that it was safer for all concerned if he didn't push Kame too far.
The other captain had never quite recovered from his misguided attempts at genocide, and the number of lives lost through his strategies weighed heavily on him still. Even now, he had trouble looking out at the Sol System, preferring to keep the external view off the main screen when at all possible, and was prone to slipping into black moods whenever he allowed guilt to chip away at his carefully-constructed shields. It was easy enough to pretend when his world extended no further than the KAT-TUN's outer hull, but Kame's shipboard confinement would be over in less than a year and he would be free to come and go as he pleased, his debt to society paid.
In theory. In practice, Jin suspected that Kame would go on paying that debt for the rest of his life. He'd committed his own fair share of guilt-worthy offenses - one didn't become captain of a pirate ship by being an angel, after all - but robbing rich merchants was a far cry from wiping out warships. Kame had a lot to deal with.
But as long as they were together, Jin would be there to help him handle it.
Ueda couldn't help but smile at the antics of his captains. "Can I talk now?"
Jin struggled back to his seat and waved a regal hand. "Commander Ueda, please continue with the briefing," he said loftily.
The cluster of trainees loitering at the back of the bridge settled themselves in for a story and began passing around popcorn.
Ueda tactfully ignored the trainees, figuring he couldn't discipline them for it when their own captains had fallen asleep during the previous mission briefing, and proceeded to read aloud from his notes. "We've been pulled from routine patrol in Alpha Centauri to investigate NGC 1569, following the succession of mishaps befalling previous scout ships. The first never returned, the second was found abandoned, drifting at the edge of the Milky Way, and the third..."
"The third?" Kame prompted.
Ueda looked uncomfortable. "The third was one of ours. After two failed attempts it was decided to send out a scout from the military - they sent the K8."
The K8 was a Cougar-class ship, the pride of the JE fleet until the new Jaguar-class came along, and it was both larger and more formidable-looking than the KAT-TUN. The eight coloured stripes running along the hull gave it a fierce appearance, which its crew cheerfully encouraged.
"The K8?" Jin gasped. "What happened to them?"
"The TOKIO picked up a distress signal about two weeks ago from a ship headed for Sol on autopilot. They investigated, found the K8." Ueda's voice was very soft. "There were deep scores on the hull, and the pink stripe had been completely scratched away."
"What about the crew?" asked Kame.
"They're all alive, but..." Ueda struggled to maintain his composure. "They're in a bad way. They took Ambassador Nishikido with them in case they ran into a situation requiring diplomacy, but it doesn't look like he was much help."
Kame wasn't surprised. "He knows less about tact than Jin," he pointed out. "I'm not sure I'd want him trying to talk an alien out of shooting me."
Despite the insult, Jin agreed. "He only wanted the job as a JE ambassador so he'd have an excuse to spend half his time out with the fleet. I hear he's been practically living in Ensign Uchi's quarters on the Pin."
Kame bristled at the reference to Yamapi's bright pink flagship but Jin opted not to notice.
"Qualified diplomat or not," Ueda continued, "he was unconscious when they found him and so were the crew. Most of them still are. They've been hospitalised back on Earth."
"Some of them regained consciousness?" Jin said.
"Sort of." Ueda consulted his notes. "Chief Engineer Ohkura Tadayoshi appears to be in some sort of trance - he believes himself to be at work, and keeps banging on the furniture. Apparently he's quite good - they're selling tickets for his evening performances to raise money for charity."
"Can they really do that while he's in a trance?" Nakamaru wondered.
"They're putting aside a cut for him," Ueda explained. "It's a military hospital, so the patients need as many distractions as they can get. They'd do the same with the K8 Communications officer, Yokoyama Yuu, but his trance hasn't been nearly so useful. All he's doing is babbling nonsensically - something about a bicycle and a bunch of superheroes? Arashi have been trying to analyse it but so far they've come up with nothing."
There was a collective shiver from the crew, even those who'd already heard the story.
"And finally, Captain Shibutani Subaru has had brief periods of consciousness, during which he doesn't speak but emits a strange wailing sound. Again, Arashi are on the case but they're as baffled as his doctors."
"Are you sure there's something wrong with him?" Jin cracked, remembering how weirdly-pitched his one and only disastrous date with the K8's captain had been.
"Of course there's something wrong with him," Kame huffed, "and there's something wrong with Yamapi if he thinks he's going to send us out to meet the same fate!"
"While the commodore is eccentric, to say the least, I don't think he was wrong to choose us," Ueda said unexpectedly. "The K8 may be bigger but they're no match for us when it comes to firepower."
"We've got more shield generators too," Koki chimed in.
"And a better pilot!" This came, unsurprisingly, from Ensign Nakamaru.
"Plus we've got two captains, and that has to be better than one," Junno said brightly.
Jin was shocked. "When did you guys get so gung-ho about the military?"
KAT-TUN's T, T, U and N answered as one. "While you were sleeping!"
"I walked right into that one, didn't I?"
"We both did," Kame said, answering Jin's broad grin with one of his own. "And if we're already on our way, it looks like we accepted the mission in our sleep."
"Impressive, aren't we?"
Ueda regarded Jin warily. "Are you sure you were asleep the whole time? Because you shouted out 'YES!' in English when the commodore asked if you were prepared to accept the mission."
Jin blushed. "I was asleep!"
"Did I say anything to Yamapi?" Kame wanted to know. His cheeks were also faintly coloured.
Ueda shook his head. "Not that I remember. He teleported back to his flagship before we switched the lights back on, and by that point you were both awake. Yawning, but awake. You told me to make the arrangements, which I've done, and said we'd talk in the morning. That was two days ago. I assumed that meant you'd both agreed to the mission and were happy to leave the preparations to me."
"I'm sure we were," Kame said. It was more than a little embarrassing for him to be on what was probably a suicide mission because his partner chose that particular moment to talk in his sleep. He turned to Jin and asked, "What were you dreaming about, anyway?"
Jin's blush deepened. "I don't know but I'm pretty sure you featured in there somewhere."
"Good answer, good answer!" the trainees applauded, throwing their popcorn up in the air. The ongoing soap opera involving the command crew of the KAT-TUN provided more than adequate entertainment for the young trainees, who each picked their favourite officer to support.
"I'd better have done," Kame muttered, "or somebody's going to be sleeping alone for the rest of the trip." It wasn't until he felt every set of eyes in the room fixate on his flustered face that he realised he'd spoken louder than he'd meant to. It wasn't as if his relationship with his co-captain was any secret - the rest of the fleet knew about it, never mind the rest of the crew - but it had only been a few months since they'd rekindled a romance Kame had once thought dead, and he was still getting used to the idea of being half of a whole again.
"Don't worry," Nakamaru reassured Jin. "With this new drive, it's going to be a short journey. Three days at most till we hit NGC 1569. Of course, how long we'll take once we get there, I have no idea."
"Arashi went through the K8's logs," Ueda said. "We know the rough coordinates where they were attacked...or whatever happened to them. They didn't knock themselves out."
Jin snickered. "You haven't been to any of their parties, have you?"
"That has absolutely no relation to this. I think the commodore and Admiral Takki are hoping that we'll find whatever it is before it finds us, and shoot it full of more holes than one of Taguchi's jokes."
Luckily, the tail end of Ueda's sentence was drowned out by Junno's cry of victory as he successfully slew the boss of the third intergalactic dungeon.
Kame groaned. "I think we can come up with a better plan than that in the couple of days it'll take us to get there."
"I don't know," Jin argued, "I think the 'shoot first, ask questions later' plan has its merits. We're more heavily shielded and better armed than anything else that's gone into that galaxy, and I for one would like us to come out of it in better shape too."
"Remind me how we survived in the old days when I used to let you win the arguments all the time?"
"Simple," Jin said with a smile and a wink. "You guys ganged up on me with alcohol and feathers till I changed my mind."
Tickle torture was an excellent incentive for most people to recant their arguments - alas, Kame wasn't ticklish, so Jin never got to avenge himself in kind. He had to settle for getting him drunk instead, which had proven to be an interesting experience the night the artificial gravity failed.
"Then spare me the trouble of finding some feathers and just admit that perhaps we should think about what we're flying into, Jin. This is new, unexplored territory we're talking about. Anyone...anything could be out there."
"And we'll handle it." Jin was doing a good job of projecting a cocksure, confident attitude towards the mission, which he considered to be necessary for the morale of the crew.
It might have done wonders for the trainees, but it only succeeded in irritating Kame further. "Jin, let me remind you what happened last time I met an alien race!"
Oh. So that was it. A metaphorical light bulb clicked on over Jin's head. "And let me remind *you* that you're still under arrest and therefore will not be leaving the ship. No running off with strange alien women this time, okay?" He rested his hand lightly on his co-captain's neck and started playing with the (dyed) coppery strands that fell over his fingers. "Just relax. It's somebody else's turn to wipe out humanity."
When Kame seized Jin's hand and wrenched it away, the older of the two captains realised his joke had fallen flat. "Sorry, sorry, I know that wasn't funny...uh, Kame, you can let go now...that's starting to hurt..."
Kame relinquished his death-grip on Jin's hand and glared furiously at him. "You're right, that wasn't funny. Maybe you're not worried that it could all happen again but I am!"
"Doesn't worry me," Jin said. "I know you're not the same person you were two years ago - neither am I - but that doesn't mean you're going to go crazy again. You're stronger than that, Kame. You wouldn't turn on us again - that's all over now."
"Yeah?" Kame stood up, his face a mix of fear and fury, and headed for the sliding bridge doors. "I betrayed both sides in the same war, Jin - how am I supposed to get over that?"
The doors clanged shut after him, leaving the bridge in painful silence. Trainees cowered in corners while the command crew looked anxiously at their remaining captain.
"What did I say?" Jin wailed.