[JE] [JEF #3] Photographic Memories 7/8
Title: JE Fleet III: Photographic Memories ch. 7/8
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame (though others are mentioned)
Rating: PG-13? Maybe occasionally bordering on R?
Total word count: Approx. 37,550
Genre: AU, sci-fi, crack
Disclaimer: Not mine, dammit.
Summary: Mere hours away from Earth, the crew of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN have their leave cut short as Commodore Yamashita sends Captains Akanishi and Kamenashi on a top secret mission to Venus. But when Kame's past as the tactical advisor for the Fahngarlians catches up with him, the planet of love becomes the planet of war...
Chapter 7
It wasn't the first time Jin had woken up early on Valentine's Day. There had been the year he'd been woken by Ueda at four in the morning to say that their target was on his way out of the Sol System two days ahead of schedule and if they were ever going to steal his nice shiny cache of navicomps, it had to be now. Then there had been the year he'd woken up of his own accord, just before three, and spent the next few hours throwing up from a bad case of the Deimos strain of flu. Kame hadn't been around for that one.
By far the most pleasant Valentine's Days had been spent with Kame, and more often than not, those had involved sleeping in and getting up very late. It was one of the handful of days in the year when the others could be induced to bring them breakfast in bed - the height of laziness, really, since the cabins all had replicators and obtaining breakfast was usually as simple as pressing a few buttons.
On this particular Valentine's Day, with the first rays of sunshine beginning to peek through the gap in the curtains, 'early' was as late as six-thirty and Jin's five hours of sleep didn't feel like nearly enough. It was, however, more than sufficient for him to react in an instant to the first footfalls of their uninvited guest. Even as he blinked the sleep from his eyes, he drew his gun and sat up. Kame was in danger, and there was no way that Jin could sleep through that.
Horikita Maki didn't look like a terrorist - at least, not how Jin had always thought of them. She was slight, harmless-looking and faintly owlish of feature.
She was also wearing a Cupid's Gate maid uniform, and for a moment, Jin wondered if he'd just pulled a gun on some hapless staff member who was simply there to bring them an early breakfast. But even if he hadn't recognised her face, the stunner in her hand would've given her away.
Maki looked surprised to find Jin awake and armed, but she recovered quickly, firing a pair of shots as she threw herself back out the door. There was a slight crack and a cry of pain as she accidentally caught her nose on the frame: it didn't slow her down. The noise woke Kame - his "light doze" had turned into "heavy slumber" a good three hours ago - and he sat up with a start, the beam missing him by inches. The other skimmed Jin's curls but made no contact with his skin, ensuring he didn't get stunned twice in twenty-four hours but was doomed to have a bad hair day.
Kame leapt out of bed, diving for the door with his weapon in one hand and the room's keycard in the other. (He had no intention of accidentally locking himself out, and he didn't trust Jin to remember to bring it with.) He jammed his feet into his boots, commended himself for his foresight in going to bed attired in enough that he wouldn't be arrested for going out in public, and chased after the intruder.
Jin patted his hair gingerly, checking for damage, and scrambled to his feet. No way was Kame going anywhere without *him*. He seized his cellphone and made a frantic call to Koki while he slipped into a pair of running shoes.
"You're late!" he panted down the line. "Get over here before Kame gets himself killed!"
Koki's response was unrepeatable: Jin thought it sounded suitably urgent.
It wasn't hard to follow Kame. For one thing, neither he nor Maki had bothered to conceal their weapons, which meant Jin could just listen out for the sounds of screaming staff. He raced down the corridor, yelling at the occasional curious guest to get back in their room and stay there. Shrieks from the staircase told him to go down both flights - if he took the lift, he knew it would take forever.
It didn't matter if word got back to Eros City Security that there were lunatics running around with illegal weapons. All that mattered, as Jin saw it, was making sure that Horikita Maki didn't shoot Kame with her...stunner.
Stunner?
Why a stunner, of all things? Maki couldn't have carried Kame away by herself. Was she planning to knock him out and torture him? Kill him slowly? Call her friends to the hotel and have them do it?
Or had she never intended to hit him at all?
With a sudden flash of insight, Jin increased his pace. Once Kame got out those front doors he'd be exposed, in the open...exactly where they wanted him.
They continued this strange chase, the three of them, through the foyer, past the fountain and all the cherubs, right down to the front door. Maki was temporarily slowed by a luggage trolley in her path, but Jin lost any ground he might have gained when he tripped over someone's abandoned bag and crashed heavily to the floor. He bit back a curse and sprinted after his partner.
He made it out the door just in time to be hauled into one of the small, pink cabs by Kame, who pointed out Maki's cab just disappearing into the distance, and yelled "Follow that car!" to the driver.
Their cabbie, who was built like a bouncer from a high-grav planet, was extraordinarily pleased. "I've been waiting all my life for someone to say that! Hold on, sirs, she won't get away!"
As Jin discovered when the driver gunned the engine, "hold on" was a useful piece of advice. He braced himself between the door, the seat and Kame, gripping the handle for dear life. "It's a trap," he gasped out.
Kame was breathing equally hard, and his knuckles were white where they clutched his blaster. "I figured that part out for myself."
"When?"
"About halfway down the second flight of stairs."
"Oh. Good." Jin held out his cellphone in one shaking hand. "I called Koki."
"Great, but he's not going to know where we are."
"Corner of Third and Shield, about to head down to Chapel Common," the cabbie helpfully supplied. "Is that lady you're chasing getting married today?"
Jin sent Koki a text with this information and said, "Not that I know of!"
"What makes you say that?" Kame asked.
Their driver gave a shrug of his beefy shoulders. "Chapel Common's where most of the weddings in the city take place, 'specially this time of year. Valentine's Day, they hold ceremonies from midnight to midnight, one entire day of non-stop weddings. If you squeeze in a quickie divorce, you can even get married there twice in one day."
The two captains shared a look of utter bewilderment.
"She can't be planning on roping me into a shotgun wedding, can she?" Kame said hesitantly. "What kind of revenge is that?"
"That would be revenge on *me*, and it's not going to happen." Jin gripped the door handle a little tighter as the cab careened wildly on two wheels to avoid a pony carriage. "I didn't steal you back from the Fahngarlians to watch you marry someone else."
Kame grinned at him. "I don't fancy gaining a terrorist group as my in-laws, thanks."
Both captains tucked their weapons away after one too many strange looks from the other cars on the road. Not that this made them any less conspicuous, but at least no one watching them would think they were holding up the driver.
Maki's cab stopped just outside Chapel Common, at a drop-off point ringed by trees. As she left the vehicle, a familiar face darted out of the shadows to join her.
"Toma," Jin muttered, and Kame peered out the window as their own cab ground to a halt.
"He doesn't look that dangerous."
"Neither does Aiba, until you let him loose in the lab."
Arashi's Aiba Masaki, known more for contributing to the 'Really Awesome' and 'Handsome' part of his organisation's name than the 'Smart' bit, was just as cute and fluffy as his habit of naming new spaceships after cats suggested. But let him anywhere near a laboratory, and his inner mad scientist took over. Every goldfish living in Arashi's space station, Horizon, quivered in its bowl when he approached.
Kame had to pay the fare with the credit card he kept stashed in the pocket of his jeans - under the name of 'Shinkame Kazuma', of course - and that slowed them down even more, waiting for the transaction to process. The cabbie didn't mind too much that they'd paid by card, not when he'd had the time of his life as part of a high-speed car chase, and he even offered to wait for them to return. Kame turned him down: if he'd eaten breakfast, he'd have lost it on the ride, and he could do without another trip like that.
Jin shaded his eyes and scanned the area. "I don't see them!"
Kame did the same but had better luck. The common was dominated by a cluster of large tents, each opening on a dais, and with a large, covered tube leading to the back. The tubes all emerged from the same giant building, the only permanent structure in the place, and all the wedding parties were headed in there. Even in that crowd, Maki's maid outfit stood out.
He pointed them out to Jin and the chase began anew, elbowing their way through the throng of couples, relatives, friends, well-wishers, gawkers and the occasional nay-sayer to reach the doors, where they were just in time to watch Toma and Maki disappear down a corridor marked 'm/m', accompanied by a pair of staff members and a nun wearing boxing gloves.
"Just one moment, sir and miss!" a cheerful voice rang out as its owner seized both Kame and Jin by the arm. "You'll need to register and pay a deposit. No refunds unless the ceremony ends before it starts!"
They looked at each other blankly. "Which one of us is a miss?" Jin wanted to know.
"You're the one with spangles on his shirt, he probably means you," Kame said, tugging his arm free to continue the pursuit.
"Register first!" The man, whose nametag read 'Ben', held out his hand. "Credit card will do."
Kame sighed and handed over his card to be swiped. Hopefully, the military would reimburse him.
"Mr. Kazuma Shinkame," the irritating little staff member called out. "And?" He looked at Jin.
Jin didn't want to take any chances. He didn't know how Maki had ended up going down the m/m corridor, but he and Kame had to follow. "Mr. Jinpachi Akasei."
"There's no need to shout," Ben said testily. "I can hear you perfectly well."
Given the noise level in the building, the veracity of this statement was questionable, but they didn't have time to argue. They let Ben lead them to the corridor, where they were left alone to make their own way towards the tent.
But not for long. A pair of enthusiastic dressers seized them before they'd taken ten steps, denounced their outfits with horror, and kitted them out in a pair of matching white tuxedos without so much as a by-your-leave.
"You do this to everyone who comes down here?" Kame asked, narrowly avoiding getting a hairbrush in the mouth.
"Everyone," came the response. "Your clothes will be waiting for you after the ceremony, when you have to give these back. You want your wedding photos to look good, don't you? We like to alternate the tuxedo colours, so the couple before you were both in black."
Jin took a guess. "Blond guy and a little guy in a maid's outfit?"
"That's the pair," the other dresser confirmed. "What a cute, boyish fellow! He was very shy, though - insisted on turning his back on us and dressing himself."
"Wish I'd known that was an option," Jin grumbled, but they didn't hear him. The only pair of hands other than his own that he wanted undressing and dressing him belonged to Kame: guarding the hyper-sensitive patch of skin at his collarbone was a near-impossible feat when the dressers were determined to get him to wear a bowtie. It was nothing short of a miracle that they'd both been able to keep their weapons concealed.
When they were finally allowed to go, they hurtled down the corridor as though they were being chased by JE Fleet Ambassador Nishikido Ryo, he of the psychotic stare and caustic tongue. They'd lost a lot of time.
"This is the worst Valentine's Day I've ever had," Kame complained as they ran. "Even counting the one where we all nearly got arrested."
Jin's laugh emerged as a wheeze, but the sentiment was intact. "You can't moan about that one, Kame - that was the day we stole our first ship together!"
Kame knocked his wrist against Jin's so their bangles sang out, and kept running.
The corridor gave way to an external door with a covered tube, and a woman ambushed them before they could leave.
"Vows," she barked at them. "Need a print copy, or saying your own?"
"Whichever's quickest," Kame answered.
The woman nodded. "Your own, then. Remember, keep it short. All ceremonies are a maximum of five minutes; the clerk will give you a nod to hurry it up if you're rambling too long. Civil ceremony only - if you want a religion of your choice, come back after midnight. Collect your certificate on the way out. Go!"
She hustled them through the door and went to tend to the next couple.
"People really think getting married like this is romantic?"
Kame was just as puzzled as his partner. "I think it's a novelty thing. Come on, I see daylight."
They emerged in a waiting area just behind the dais to watch a crowd of strangers applaud the marriage of 'Mizuki Ashiya' and 'Shuichi Nakatsu', a.k.a. Horikita Maki and Ikuta Toma. The ceremony ended with a whimper rather than a bang - Toma leaned in to kiss Maki but promptly started nosebleeding, and there was a general scramble as everyone searched for a tissue.
Both halves of the couple were handed a glass of wine: these were lined up in neat rows on a long table, two for each ceremony (weddings for three or more participants took place on a different dais). There was cake, but it was being consumed by the grumpy-looking clerk who was filling in all the paperwork.
The instant Maki and Toma accepted their certificate of marriage, they were ushered out the way and the next couple was announced.
"Kazuma Shinkame and Jinpachi Akasei!" the herald screamed out, reading from his datapad, and a pair of hands pushed Kame and Jin forwards.
There was no way for them to reach their quarry. Maki and Toma were waiting in the crowd, watching them. Maki looked tense: Toma looked...confused? Jin figured it must have been the announcement of their aliases that had thrown him off.
But he was only staring at Jin.
The governor of Eros City, who was conducting the ceremony at this particular dais himself - the others, he'd delegated to his underlings - had been handling the Valentine's Day rush at Chapel Common for the last six years, and he was as fed up with it as everyone else. Consequently, the ceremonies had reduced in length from thirty minutes to a mere five.
A lot of this was down to the governor's penchant for cramming as many words into one breath as he could possibly manage. "We, this crowd of complete and utter strangers, are gathered here today to watch another couple of tourists get hitched so they can tell their folks they got married in Eros City on Valentine's Day. How romantic."
He took his second breath, and added, "Vows. Start!"
Not unexpectedly, Jin's mind went blank. "Um...I..."
"I, Jinpachi Akasei," Kame whispered to him.
"I, Jinpachi Akasei...uh...being of sound mind and body-"
"You're not dictating a will!" Kame muttered, and there was gentle laughter from the crowd.
Jin opened his mouth to try again, but Kame shook his head. "Don't worry about it," he advised. "Let's just get this over with so we can get moving." He raised his voice so the crowd could hear him. "I, Kazuma Shinkame, take Jinpachi Akasei to be my lawfully wedded...uh..." He stopped, shrugged, and smiled at the crowd in lieu of a suitable noun. A woman in the front row screamed with joy, but was quickly hushed by her friends.
The governor looked at his watch. "Minute and a half - good enough for me. I now pronounce you married! Kiss each other, drink your wine, collect your certificate and get out of the way - I've got another hundred of these to do before lunch."
The clerk threw a half-hearted handful of confetti in their general direction and stuffed another piece of cake in his mouth.
Somehow, the sight just wasn't conducive to romance. The whole situation left Jin feeling confused and empty. He'd never thought about marrying Kame - about marrying *anyone*, come to that - and even if he had, this certainly wouldn't have been in his plans. Not this heartless, loveless sham before an audience of unknowns.
Well, unknowns and two terrorists.
"How did this happen?" he wondered aloud.
Kame placed a steadying hand on his shoulder and leaned in as if for a kiss. "I told you not to worry," he whispered. "It's not legally binding - we didn't marry each other under our real names. Now kiss me, drink your wine, and let's go after them."
That was more like it. Jin kept his eyes firmly fixed on the two fugitives as he brushed Kame's lips with his own, but it was unnerving to have Toma watching him still, puzzled, as though searching for the answer to some question he couldn't quite comprehend. Did Toma recognise him now? The skinny, gangly boy with the short blond hair had given way to a (slightly more) mature man who filled out his tuxedo where it counted, and wore his dark brown waves to his shoulders.
And if he recognised Jin, would it make any difference?
Kame broke away first, a smile on his lips. "To be continued," he promised, and drew Jin across to the table to accept their cups of wine from the clerk. He handed them one apiece; they raised them in perfect synchronicity to their mouths, and...
"Stop!"
Jin jerked his wrist so suddenly in response to Toma's cry that half his glass spilled down the front of his fresh, white jacket.
"Stop?" the governor repeated. "We don't have time to stop. Next!"
"Don't drink from those glasses!" Toma yelled, and fought his way through the crowd to reach the wine table, a confused-looking Maki trailing along at his side.
The clerk threw down his pen in disgust. "Wimp!" he fumed. "You said it would be funny. But I put the stuff in like you said and I'm not giving the money back!"
Kame looked at his glass warily, and reached under his jacket to place his free hand on his blaster. "What stuff?"
"The pellets," the clerk sulked. "The red ones. He said they'd make you both real dizzy, start seeing things. You know, liven the wedding up a little."
An angry rumble started to work its way round the crowd. In some cases, this could be attributed to hunger as almost nobody bar the clerk had eaten breakfast yet, but mostly it was fury. Only the officials got to mess with the ceremony - never the couples.
"Toma," Jin said slowly, "what's really in our glasses? What are you trying to do?"
Up close now, Toma could hear Jin much clearer than he had during the latter's pathetic attempt at wedding vows, and his eyes widened at Jin's voice. "Akanishi Jin?" he asked. "Akanishi Jin who used to work for Kitagawa?"
Jin swallowed his next question, which was going to be something along the lines of "why can't you just leave Kame alone?", and said, "You really didn't recognise me?"
Toma shook his head. "I didn't...I didn't know..."
"What difference does it make?" Maki said. "Why did you stop them from drinking?"
"Why?" Kame echoed, his voice cold and brittle. "Change your mind about killing me?"
There was a collective gasp from everyone present, even those who knew what was going on.
There was a faint tremor in Toma's voice when he answered. "No. But I can't do it like this." He knocked the glasses from their hands.
Kame regarded the dark, reddish-brown stain on Jin's jacket, remembering the event that had bought him Toma's enmity in the first place. "Hair dye?"
"Yeah."
Kame seized Toma by the lapels, wishing he had enough height to be properly intimidating. As it was, he was going to have to rely on his anger. "Why bring Jin into it?"
"I didn't know," Toma reiterated. "I'd seen surveillance photos of the two of you together but I didn't know it was him, I swear!"
Maki gazed at Jin uncertainly. "He's a friend?"
"We haven't seen each other in, what, over ten years?" Toma said, and Jin nodded. "Not since Earth."
"I'm not here to reminisce, Toma." Jin glared at him. "If you guys did all this research on Kame, looking in his file, going to all the trouble of bothering to lure him here *almost* by himself, how the hell did you manage to avoid my name cropping up? The KAT-TUN has two captains, you know!"
"We know that," Maki said earnestly. "The AT-TUN was under the sole command of Akanishi Jin for six months, and was renamed to KAT-TUN following Kamenashi Kazuya's recapture from the Fahngarlians and subsequent deprogramming."
"Exactly, and *I'm* Akanishi Jin!"
"Not according to your file, you're not." Toma's voice was slightly strangled; Kame still had his lapels in a knot. "Maki made copies of all the KAT-TUN personnel files for me, and not only did yours not have a picture but the kanji were different. I didn't think it was you - no details about your past. Never thought you'd join the military."
"Oh, and you'd happily have killed some other Akanishi just because he was here with Kame?" Jin spat.
Thunderclouds would've been brighter than Toma's expression. "Yeah, because all the gossip round JE Fleet HQ is about the two of you - how you went and "rescued" him from the Fahngarlians, and stopped him from being executed the way he deserves. The KAT-TUN captains, joined at the hip. He was supposed to bring you here for camouflage and lose you to that," he pointed at the shattered wine glasses on the ground, "before dying himself. No time for a honeymoon.
"But he was supposed to bring some nobody - not you!"
"I brought my partner," Kame said coldly.
"And his friends brought themselves!"
Everyone looked round to see Ueda and Taguchi, weapons drawn, standing on the edge of the dais. The shout had come from Ueda, and everybody made way when he approached the party by the wine table.
"Now what!" the governor roared. Everyone ignored him.
"The others are taking Kazama and Hasegawa to the station," Taguchi murmured in Jin's ear by way of explanation. "The Pin should have landed by now."
Recognition flickered in Maki's eyes. "I've seen your files," she said. "You're part of the KAT-TUN's command crew."
"How come they have pictures and I don't?" Jin mumbled.
He could understand having the wrong characters for his name on file, or even a missing picture - mistakes did happen, after all, and especially in the military. But for both of them to occur, well, that seemed deliberate. Could it have been Yamapi at work, trying to preserve a small measure of anonymity for him?
Yamapi had been the one to recruit him in the first place. While he hadn't always been good about understanding his best friend's need for space, he'd always respected it, giving him the breathing room he needed not to feel trapped. It made sense, after a fashion, that Pi had done this to help Jin keep his options open.
It was obvious Jin's mind was starting to wander, and Kame muttered his name to make him focus again. Jin looked up in time to see Kame's grip on Toma slacken, and Toma make a grab for Maki's tuxedo jacket. At first, Jin thought Toma had given up, had decided that if he was going to get shot down by the menacing Eros City Security personnel who'd surrounded the area by now, that he was going to get in a quick grope before he died.
Then he saw the photograph in Toma's hand.
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame (though others are mentioned)
Rating: PG-13? Maybe occasionally bordering on R?
Total word count: Approx. 37,550
Genre: AU, sci-fi, crack
Disclaimer: Not mine, dammit.
Summary: Mere hours away from Earth, the crew of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN have their leave cut short as Commodore Yamashita sends Captains Akanishi and Kamenashi on a top secret mission to Venus. But when Kame's past as the tactical advisor for the Fahngarlians catches up with him, the planet of love becomes the planet of war...
Chapter 7
It wasn't the first time Jin had woken up early on Valentine's Day. There had been the year he'd been woken by Ueda at four in the morning to say that their target was on his way out of the Sol System two days ahead of schedule and if they were ever going to steal his nice shiny cache of navicomps, it had to be now. Then there had been the year he'd woken up of his own accord, just before three, and spent the next few hours throwing up from a bad case of the Deimos strain of flu. Kame hadn't been around for that one.
By far the most pleasant Valentine's Days had been spent with Kame, and more often than not, those had involved sleeping in and getting up very late. It was one of the handful of days in the year when the others could be induced to bring them breakfast in bed - the height of laziness, really, since the cabins all had replicators and obtaining breakfast was usually as simple as pressing a few buttons.
On this particular Valentine's Day, with the first rays of sunshine beginning to peek through the gap in the curtains, 'early' was as late as six-thirty and Jin's five hours of sleep didn't feel like nearly enough. It was, however, more than sufficient for him to react in an instant to the first footfalls of their uninvited guest. Even as he blinked the sleep from his eyes, he drew his gun and sat up. Kame was in danger, and there was no way that Jin could sleep through that.
Horikita Maki didn't look like a terrorist - at least, not how Jin had always thought of them. She was slight, harmless-looking and faintly owlish of feature.
She was also wearing a Cupid's Gate maid uniform, and for a moment, Jin wondered if he'd just pulled a gun on some hapless staff member who was simply there to bring them an early breakfast. But even if he hadn't recognised her face, the stunner in her hand would've given her away.
Maki looked surprised to find Jin awake and armed, but she recovered quickly, firing a pair of shots as she threw herself back out the door. There was a slight crack and a cry of pain as she accidentally caught her nose on the frame: it didn't slow her down. The noise woke Kame - his "light doze" had turned into "heavy slumber" a good three hours ago - and he sat up with a start, the beam missing him by inches. The other skimmed Jin's curls but made no contact with his skin, ensuring he didn't get stunned twice in twenty-four hours but was doomed to have a bad hair day.
Kame leapt out of bed, diving for the door with his weapon in one hand and the room's keycard in the other. (He had no intention of accidentally locking himself out, and he didn't trust Jin to remember to bring it with.) He jammed his feet into his boots, commended himself for his foresight in going to bed attired in enough that he wouldn't be arrested for going out in public, and chased after the intruder.
Jin patted his hair gingerly, checking for damage, and scrambled to his feet. No way was Kame going anywhere without *him*. He seized his cellphone and made a frantic call to Koki while he slipped into a pair of running shoes.
"You're late!" he panted down the line. "Get over here before Kame gets himself killed!"
Koki's response was unrepeatable: Jin thought it sounded suitably urgent.
It wasn't hard to follow Kame. For one thing, neither he nor Maki had bothered to conceal their weapons, which meant Jin could just listen out for the sounds of screaming staff. He raced down the corridor, yelling at the occasional curious guest to get back in their room and stay there. Shrieks from the staircase told him to go down both flights - if he took the lift, he knew it would take forever.
It didn't matter if word got back to Eros City Security that there were lunatics running around with illegal weapons. All that mattered, as Jin saw it, was making sure that Horikita Maki didn't shoot Kame with her...stunner.
Stunner?
Why a stunner, of all things? Maki couldn't have carried Kame away by herself. Was she planning to knock him out and torture him? Kill him slowly? Call her friends to the hotel and have them do it?
Or had she never intended to hit him at all?
With a sudden flash of insight, Jin increased his pace. Once Kame got out those front doors he'd be exposed, in the open...exactly where they wanted him.
They continued this strange chase, the three of them, through the foyer, past the fountain and all the cherubs, right down to the front door. Maki was temporarily slowed by a luggage trolley in her path, but Jin lost any ground he might have gained when he tripped over someone's abandoned bag and crashed heavily to the floor. He bit back a curse and sprinted after his partner.
He made it out the door just in time to be hauled into one of the small, pink cabs by Kame, who pointed out Maki's cab just disappearing into the distance, and yelled "Follow that car!" to the driver.
Their cabbie, who was built like a bouncer from a high-grav planet, was extraordinarily pleased. "I've been waiting all my life for someone to say that! Hold on, sirs, she won't get away!"
As Jin discovered when the driver gunned the engine, "hold on" was a useful piece of advice. He braced himself between the door, the seat and Kame, gripping the handle for dear life. "It's a trap," he gasped out.
Kame was breathing equally hard, and his knuckles were white where they clutched his blaster. "I figured that part out for myself."
"When?"
"About halfway down the second flight of stairs."
"Oh. Good." Jin held out his cellphone in one shaking hand. "I called Koki."
"Great, but he's not going to know where we are."
"Corner of Third and Shield, about to head down to Chapel Common," the cabbie helpfully supplied. "Is that lady you're chasing getting married today?"
Jin sent Koki a text with this information and said, "Not that I know of!"
"What makes you say that?" Kame asked.
Their driver gave a shrug of his beefy shoulders. "Chapel Common's where most of the weddings in the city take place, 'specially this time of year. Valentine's Day, they hold ceremonies from midnight to midnight, one entire day of non-stop weddings. If you squeeze in a quickie divorce, you can even get married there twice in one day."
The two captains shared a look of utter bewilderment.
"She can't be planning on roping me into a shotgun wedding, can she?" Kame said hesitantly. "What kind of revenge is that?"
"That would be revenge on *me*, and it's not going to happen." Jin gripped the door handle a little tighter as the cab careened wildly on two wheels to avoid a pony carriage. "I didn't steal you back from the Fahngarlians to watch you marry someone else."
Kame grinned at him. "I don't fancy gaining a terrorist group as my in-laws, thanks."
Both captains tucked their weapons away after one too many strange looks from the other cars on the road. Not that this made them any less conspicuous, but at least no one watching them would think they were holding up the driver.
Maki's cab stopped just outside Chapel Common, at a drop-off point ringed by trees. As she left the vehicle, a familiar face darted out of the shadows to join her.
"Toma," Jin muttered, and Kame peered out the window as their own cab ground to a halt.
"He doesn't look that dangerous."
"Neither does Aiba, until you let him loose in the lab."
Arashi's Aiba Masaki, known more for contributing to the 'Really Awesome' and 'Handsome' part of his organisation's name than the 'Smart' bit, was just as cute and fluffy as his habit of naming new spaceships after cats suggested. But let him anywhere near a laboratory, and his inner mad scientist took over. Every goldfish living in Arashi's space station, Horizon, quivered in its bowl when he approached.
Kame had to pay the fare with the credit card he kept stashed in the pocket of his jeans - under the name of 'Shinkame Kazuma', of course - and that slowed them down even more, waiting for the transaction to process. The cabbie didn't mind too much that they'd paid by card, not when he'd had the time of his life as part of a high-speed car chase, and he even offered to wait for them to return. Kame turned him down: if he'd eaten breakfast, he'd have lost it on the ride, and he could do without another trip like that.
Jin shaded his eyes and scanned the area. "I don't see them!"
Kame did the same but had better luck. The common was dominated by a cluster of large tents, each opening on a dais, and with a large, covered tube leading to the back. The tubes all emerged from the same giant building, the only permanent structure in the place, and all the wedding parties were headed in there. Even in that crowd, Maki's maid outfit stood out.
He pointed them out to Jin and the chase began anew, elbowing their way through the throng of couples, relatives, friends, well-wishers, gawkers and the occasional nay-sayer to reach the doors, where they were just in time to watch Toma and Maki disappear down a corridor marked 'm/m', accompanied by a pair of staff members and a nun wearing boxing gloves.
"Just one moment, sir and miss!" a cheerful voice rang out as its owner seized both Kame and Jin by the arm. "You'll need to register and pay a deposit. No refunds unless the ceremony ends before it starts!"
They looked at each other blankly. "Which one of us is a miss?" Jin wanted to know.
"You're the one with spangles on his shirt, he probably means you," Kame said, tugging his arm free to continue the pursuit.
"Register first!" The man, whose nametag read 'Ben', held out his hand. "Credit card will do."
Kame sighed and handed over his card to be swiped. Hopefully, the military would reimburse him.
"Mr. Kazuma Shinkame," the irritating little staff member called out. "And?" He looked at Jin.
Jin didn't want to take any chances. He didn't know how Maki had ended up going down the m/m corridor, but he and Kame had to follow. "Mr. Jinpachi Akasei."
"There's no need to shout," Ben said testily. "I can hear you perfectly well."
Given the noise level in the building, the veracity of this statement was questionable, but they didn't have time to argue. They let Ben lead them to the corridor, where they were left alone to make their own way towards the tent.
But not for long. A pair of enthusiastic dressers seized them before they'd taken ten steps, denounced their outfits with horror, and kitted them out in a pair of matching white tuxedos without so much as a by-your-leave.
"You do this to everyone who comes down here?" Kame asked, narrowly avoiding getting a hairbrush in the mouth.
"Everyone," came the response. "Your clothes will be waiting for you after the ceremony, when you have to give these back. You want your wedding photos to look good, don't you? We like to alternate the tuxedo colours, so the couple before you were both in black."
Jin took a guess. "Blond guy and a little guy in a maid's outfit?"
"That's the pair," the other dresser confirmed. "What a cute, boyish fellow! He was very shy, though - insisted on turning his back on us and dressing himself."
"Wish I'd known that was an option," Jin grumbled, but they didn't hear him. The only pair of hands other than his own that he wanted undressing and dressing him belonged to Kame: guarding the hyper-sensitive patch of skin at his collarbone was a near-impossible feat when the dressers were determined to get him to wear a bowtie. It was nothing short of a miracle that they'd both been able to keep their weapons concealed.
When they were finally allowed to go, they hurtled down the corridor as though they were being chased by JE Fleet Ambassador Nishikido Ryo, he of the psychotic stare and caustic tongue. They'd lost a lot of time.
"This is the worst Valentine's Day I've ever had," Kame complained as they ran. "Even counting the one where we all nearly got arrested."
Jin's laugh emerged as a wheeze, but the sentiment was intact. "You can't moan about that one, Kame - that was the day we stole our first ship together!"
Kame knocked his wrist against Jin's so their bangles sang out, and kept running.
The corridor gave way to an external door with a covered tube, and a woman ambushed them before they could leave.
"Vows," she barked at them. "Need a print copy, or saying your own?"
"Whichever's quickest," Kame answered.
The woman nodded. "Your own, then. Remember, keep it short. All ceremonies are a maximum of five minutes; the clerk will give you a nod to hurry it up if you're rambling too long. Civil ceremony only - if you want a religion of your choice, come back after midnight. Collect your certificate on the way out. Go!"
She hustled them through the door and went to tend to the next couple.
"People really think getting married like this is romantic?"
Kame was just as puzzled as his partner. "I think it's a novelty thing. Come on, I see daylight."
They emerged in a waiting area just behind the dais to watch a crowd of strangers applaud the marriage of 'Mizuki Ashiya' and 'Shuichi Nakatsu', a.k.a. Horikita Maki and Ikuta Toma. The ceremony ended with a whimper rather than a bang - Toma leaned in to kiss Maki but promptly started nosebleeding, and there was a general scramble as everyone searched for a tissue.
Both halves of the couple were handed a glass of wine: these were lined up in neat rows on a long table, two for each ceremony (weddings for three or more participants took place on a different dais). There was cake, but it was being consumed by the grumpy-looking clerk who was filling in all the paperwork.
The instant Maki and Toma accepted their certificate of marriage, they were ushered out the way and the next couple was announced.
"Kazuma Shinkame and Jinpachi Akasei!" the herald screamed out, reading from his datapad, and a pair of hands pushed Kame and Jin forwards.
There was no way for them to reach their quarry. Maki and Toma were waiting in the crowd, watching them. Maki looked tense: Toma looked...confused? Jin figured it must have been the announcement of their aliases that had thrown him off.
But he was only staring at Jin.
The governor of Eros City, who was conducting the ceremony at this particular dais himself - the others, he'd delegated to his underlings - had been handling the Valentine's Day rush at Chapel Common for the last six years, and he was as fed up with it as everyone else. Consequently, the ceremonies had reduced in length from thirty minutes to a mere five.
A lot of this was down to the governor's penchant for cramming as many words into one breath as he could possibly manage. "We, this crowd of complete and utter strangers, are gathered here today to watch another couple of tourists get hitched so they can tell their folks they got married in Eros City on Valentine's Day. How romantic."
He took his second breath, and added, "Vows. Start!"
Not unexpectedly, Jin's mind went blank. "Um...I..."
"I, Jinpachi Akasei," Kame whispered to him.
"I, Jinpachi Akasei...uh...being of sound mind and body-"
"You're not dictating a will!" Kame muttered, and there was gentle laughter from the crowd.
Jin opened his mouth to try again, but Kame shook his head. "Don't worry about it," he advised. "Let's just get this over with so we can get moving." He raised his voice so the crowd could hear him. "I, Kazuma Shinkame, take Jinpachi Akasei to be my lawfully wedded...uh..." He stopped, shrugged, and smiled at the crowd in lieu of a suitable noun. A woman in the front row screamed with joy, but was quickly hushed by her friends.
The governor looked at his watch. "Minute and a half - good enough for me. I now pronounce you married! Kiss each other, drink your wine, collect your certificate and get out of the way - I've got another hundred of these to do before lunch."
The clerk threw a half-hearted handful of confetti in their general direction and stuffed another piece of cake in his mouth.
Somehow, the sight just wasn't conducive to romance. The whole situation left Jin feeling confused and empty. He'd never thought about marrying Kame - about marrying *anyone*, come to that - and even if he had, this certainly wouldn't have been in his plans. Not this heartless, loveless sham before an audience of unknowns.
Well, unknowns and two terrorists.
"How did this happen?" he wondered aloud.
Kame placed a steadying hand on his shoulder and leaned in as if for a kiss. "I told you not to worry," he whispered. "It's not legally binding - we didn't marry each other under our real names. Now kiss me, drink your wine, and let's go after them."
That was more like it. Jin kept his eyes firmly fixed on the two fugitives as he brushed Kame's lips with his own, but it was unnerving to have Toma watching him still, puzzled, as though searching for the answer to some question he couldn't quite comprehend. Did Toma recognise him now? The skinny, gangly boy with the short blond hair had given way to a (slightly more) mature man who filled out his tuxedo where it counted, and wore his dark brown waves to his shoulders.
And if he recognised Jin, would it make any difference?
Kame broke away first, a smile on his lips. "To be continued," he promised, and drew Jin across to the table to accept their cups of wine from the clerk. He handed them one apiece; they raised them in perfect synchronicity to their mouths, and...
"Stop!"
Jin jerked his wrist so suddenly in response to Toma's cry that half his glass spilled down the front of his fresh, white jacket.
"Stop?" the governor repeated. "We don't have time to stop. Next!"
"Don't drink from those glasses!" Toma yelled, and fought his way through the crowd to reach the wine table, a confused-looking Maki trailing along at his side.
The clerk threw down his pen in disgust. "Wimp!" he fumed. "You said it would be funny. But I put the stuff in like you said and I'm not giving the money back!"
Kame looked at his glass warily, and reached under his jacket to place his free hand on his blaster. "What stuff?"
"The pellets," the clerk sulked. "The red ones. He said they'd make you both real dizzy, start seeing things. You know, liven the wedding up a little."
An angry rumble started to work its way round the crowd. In some cases, this could be attributed to hunger as almost nobody bar the clerk had eaten breakfast yet, but mostly it was fury. Only the officials got to mess with the ceremony - never the couples.
"Toma," Jin said slowly, "what's really in our glasses? What are you trying to do?"
Up close now, Toma could hear Jin much clearer than he had during the latter's pathetic attempt at wedding vows, and his eyes widened at Jin's voice. "Akanishi Jin?" he asked. "Akanishi Jin who used to work for Kitagawa?"
Jin swallowed his next question, which was going to be something along the lines of "why can't you just leave Kame alone?", and said, "You really didn't recognise me?"
Toma shook his head. "I didn't...I didn't know..."
"What difference does it make?" Maki said. "Why did you stop them from drinking?"
"Why?" Kame echoed, his voice cold and brittle. "Change your mind about killing me?"
There was a collective gasp from everyone present, even those who knew what was going on.
There was a faint tremor in Toma's voice when he answered. "No. But I can't do it like this." He knocked the glasses from their hands.
Kame regarded the dark, reddish-brown stain on Jin's jacket, remembering the event that had bought him Toma's enmity in the first place. "Hair dye?"
"Yeah."
Kame seized Toma by the lapels, wishing he had enough height to be properly intimidating. As it was, he was going to have to rely on his anger. "Why bring Jin into it?"
"I didn't know," Toma reiterated. "I'd seen surveillance photos of the two of you together but I didn't know it was him, I swear!"
Maki gazed at Jin uncertainly. "He's a friend?"
"We haven't seen each other in, what, over ten years?" Toma said, and Jin nodded. "Not since Earth."
"I'm not here to reminisce, Toma." Jin glared at him. "If you guys did all this research on Kame, looking in his file, going to all the trouble of bothering to lure him here *almost* by himself, how the hell did you manage to avoid my name cropping up? The KAT-TUN has two captains, you know!"
"We know that," Maki said earnestly. "The AT-TUN was under the sole command of Akanishi Jin for six months, and was renamed to KAT-TUN following Kamenashi Kazuya's recapture from the Fahngarlians and subsequent deprogramming."
"Exactly, and *I'm* Akanishi Jin!"
"Not according to your file, you're not." Toma's voice was slightly strangled; Kame still had his lapels in a knot. "Maki made copies of all the KAT-TUN personnel files for me, and not only did yours not have a picture but the kanji were different. I didn't think it was you - no details about your past. Never thought you'd join the military."
"Oh, and you'd happily have killed some other Akanishi just because he was here with Kame?" Jin spat.
Thunderclouds would've been brighter than Toma's expression. "Yeah, because all the gossip round JE Fleet HQ is about the two of you - how you went and "rescued" him from the Fahngarlians, and stopped him from being executed the way he deserves. The KAT-TUN captains, joined at the hip. He was supposed to bring you here for camouflage and lose you to that," he pointed at the shattered wine glasses on the ground, "before dying himself. No time for a honeymoon.
"But he was supposed to bring some nobody - not you!"
"I brought my partner," Kame said coldly.
"And his friends brought themselves!"
Everyone looked round to see Ueda and Taguchi, weapons drawn, standing on the edge of the dais. The shout had come from Ueda, and everybody made way when he approached the party by the wine table.
"Now what!" the governor roared. Everyone ignored him.
"The others are taking Kazama and Hasegawa to the station," Taguchi murmured in Jin's ear by way of explanation. "The Pin should have landed by now."
Recognition flickered in Maki's eyes. "I've seen your files," she said. "You're part of the KAT-TUN's command crew."
"How come they have pictures and I don't?" Jin mumbled.
He could understand having the wrong characters for his name on file, or even a missing picture - mistakes did happen, after all, and especially in the military. But for both of them to occur, well, that seemed deliberate. Could it have been Yamapi at work, trying to preserve a small measure of anonymity for him?
Yamapi had been the one to recruit him in the first place. While he hadn't always been good about understanding his best friend's need for space, he'd always respected it, giving him the breathing room he needed not to feel trapped. It made sense, after a fashion, that Pi had done this to help Jin keep his options open.
It was obvious Jin's mind was starting to wander, and Kame muttered his name to make him focus again. Jin looked up in time to see Kame's grip on Toma slacken, and Toma make a grab for Maki's tuxedo jacket. At first, Jin thought Toma had given up, had decided that if he was going to get shot down by the menacing Eros City Security personnel who'd surrounded the area by now, that he was going to get in a quick grope before he died.
Then he saw the photograph in Toma's hand.