firstlight | [PoT] AU: Gentleman and Trickster (part 8)

Right.

I'm alive! And so is the fic! See?

I lied about the number of chapters. It was going to be all one thing but it got too long. Predictably. Oops.

I'm slightly nervous about posting this part. Might edit more heavily later. For now, posting it before I change my mind.

Title: Gentleman and Trickster (8 of 9)
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Pairing: Niou/Yagyuu, implied Yanagi/Kirihara
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Disclaimer: violence, language, UST, not mine.
Summary: Welcome to the streets of Tokyo, in the not-so-distant future. Meet Niou and Yagyuu, a slightly unlikely pair, running errands for whoever will pay. Cyberpunk AU.
(Now the shiny somewhat-cleaned-up version! Thanks to

elenya54 for giving my grammar a good kicking. Actual plot and characterisation remain as shoddy as ever, though. *grin* )

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

--Wide-Area Connection Open--
--Location [00365.7866.674.22] Masked--
--ID [YH] Alias [Gentleman]--
--Check Messages--
--2 New Messages--

1

From: YR [Master]
Time/Date: 16:45
Location: Masked
Subject: A Problem
Message: Received the following communication from someone/thing using the alias ‘Lastlight’ at 16:33 today. I have not yet responded to agree to or dismiss the demands made but I suspect I cannot delay long. (Further comments follow the forwarded message.)

>to the individual known as master
>i am the construct known as lastlight
>i make this attempt on behalf of the construct [characters not recognised]
>of which i am an avatar
>the individual known as master is in possession of data relating to the
>construct [characters not recognised]
>the construct requires that this data be immediately erased
>in the event that it is not measures will be taken to ensure that it cannot
>be used
>lastlight

I have considered destroying the storage device already, but this entire business confuses me, and I wish to have something to bargain with -- even if we comply with the demands, we may still find ourselves in trouble from other sources. Niou may have some ideas; he is good at reading odd situations without a great deal of data to work from.
- YR

2

From: SG [Samurai]
Time/Date: 17:06
Location: 00365.7866.675.97
Subject: YR's Whereabouts
Message: I know you have been spending time with Renji lately. Why is he not responding to messages? His ID is unreachable. If you are with him, you may inform him that I will work out why he has been keeping information from me. I know he has been.
Regards,
SG

--Wide-area Connection Closed--

--Direct link with NM closed--
--Attempting to open direct link with YR--
--Attempt failed: YR not available (check ID)--
--Attempting to open direct link with KA--
--Attempt failed: KA refused--
--Attempting to open direct link with NM--
--Link open--

Niou, we have a new problem.

* * * *

They'd been on the metro for almost forty-five minutes, and there was a definite sense that they were simply delaying an inevitable confrontation. Yanagi had apparently received the info-dump Yagyuu had sent, and had forwarded Yagyuu a message, but since then had been unreachable. Kirihara could be located but refused to open a link or respond to messages, which meant something pretty serious must have happened. An avatar of something which sounded like an AI and had a name no-one's unit could recognise was making non-specific threats against them as a group. He and Yagyuu were on a metro train with a group of men who were presumably waiting until they got off to do them some damage (or try, at least). Sanada had picked up on the fact that something was wrong and might throw himself into the whole mess at any moment.

All in all, things were just fantastic.

All they needed now was... Niou halted that line of thought there. He wasn't generally superstitious but he had a nagging feeling that thinking up new problems right now would just be tempting fate.

The first thing they had to do was get off the metro, and either lose or eliminate the men following them. Ideally they should get hold of one to find out who exactly they were. He communicated this idea to Yagyuu over the link, and received a brief but approving response. Right. The trick to this would be finding the right place to get off the train. They should be able to exit the metro into a busy street, but be close to alleys. Hopefully ones which Niou knew well. They needed to outmanoeuvre these men, and they needed to fight on their own terms.

He knew the perfect place.

The main road through Fifteenth district was home to a kind of unofficial market which had grown up over the years because - in a place like Fifteenth - no one could be bothered to remove all the street vendors who set up their stalls from time to time. It was noisy, and smelled of a confusing mix of hot food and raw meat; and you couldn't walk more than a few steps without someone trying to relieve you of your money in any one of a variety of ways, ranging from forceful salesmanship to tearing your jacket off your back. Niou had grown up in neighbouring Fourteenth, and knew it well. People here didn't give him trouble; he walked like he belonged. Yagyuu was another matter, but after the first few overly enthusiastic individuals were met with just enough force (Niou felt proud, watching how Yagyuu handled the situation) the inhabitants of the district seemed to write him off as more trouble than he was worth.

They were still being followed, but not as closely. From what Niou could tell, they'd hit it lucky; the men didn't know this area, and they were having to fight their way through the crowds, while Niou and Yagyuu - with a little gentle persuasion - were being allowed just enough space that their progress was considerably easier. When he judged they'd opened enough space between them, Niou grabbed Yagyuu's arm and pulled his companion into a particularly crowded area, trying to get them lost amongst the people browsing the market stalls there. Eventually satisfied, he ducked into a back street and stripped off his jacket. As he began removing his shirt he noticed Yagyuu giving him a look which seemed to hover somewhere between amusement and an intense kind of interest.

"What?" Niou slipped the shirt off to reveal one of his more typical tops beneath it. "You thought I was stripping for you? Sorry, darling. Just needed to lose the suit jacket so I can move better." He packed the clothes away, throwing the glasses into his shoulder bag too, almost as an afterthought. "I give it another five minutes before they follow us down here. Let's get in position."

* * * *

These men were not corporate security, and they were not from any gang Yagyuu had heard of, although that didn’t rule out one of the smaller or more secretive ones. They were not agents, either. They seemed to be almost professional, but not quite. He and Niou were professional: even when Niou felt like making foolish comments the job got done anyway. These men didn’t run smoothly enough. They might have been people who were trying to establish themselves, but in general people working as agents either got things right very quickly or died - equally quickly. Mostly, they were getting it right. They just lacked a certain undefinable quality that the people who were going to make it invariably had.

These guys have no edge, Niou sent, as though he’d read Yagyuu’s thoughts.

Someone else might have said it would be easy, but things could go wrong in any situation: that was being realistic, not pessimistic. It was, however, far from the most challenging situation they’d found themselves in since this business began.

Niou was concealed on one side of the alley, perched on the ledge of a shuttered first storey window like an oversized crow, with his hair still black and an intense focus on his face. Yagyuu could see him because he knew where the man was, but Niou was almost lost in the shadows if you weren’t expecting him to be there. And who would be looking? Creative use of wrist-blades allowed Niou to climb fairly improbable surfaces. Yagyuu was further down the alley, where a space between buildings allowed him to remain out of sight.

It did not take long, once the men appeared. Niou picked several off with soft ammo, leaving them unconscious; Yagyuu was left to corner the last man standing. The man was too surprised to offer resistance when the Gentleman appeared in front of him, gun drawn; it was possible that he hadn’t actually taken the time to register the fact that his companions weren’t dead.

“Good evening,” Yagyuu said, unsmiling. “I would very much like you to answer some questions for us, if you would be so kind.”

“I don’t know anything,” the man said, too fast, the words barely distinguishable. He had the look of an animal caught in headlights.

“No? What organisation are you a part of?” Yagyuu’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “Or do you not have that information?”

“St. Rudolph,” the man managed, still obviously not in touch with the situation. Niou was probably laughing, or at least smirking, out of sight. St. Rudolph were a peculiar group. Technically agents, but mostly freelance smugglers, and fallen from grace somewhat, even in that role. Their inside politics were, by all accounts, odd.

They were not a logical choice to hire for anything, really, unless you specifically requested the services of one of their core members (which these men couldn’t possibly be); they had a few people of some small note, good for doing odd jobs here and there, Yagyuu could concede.

To get them to send low-ranking members after Rikkai was... an interesting decision. Yagyuu wondered why it had been made.

“What were your orders?” he asked, pressing on. He was standing just out of arm’s reach of the other man, holding the gun steady, and letting no trace of the dull ache spreading through his arm show on his face. Niou would have the situation covered anyway, but he wasn’t going to display weakness.

“Follow you. Delay you if you headed in certain directions. Mizuki sent us...” the man added, pre-empting Yagyuu’s next question.

“Good. We like fast learners,” Yagyuu told him. This was troublesome, though expected. With Mizuki as their fixer, these men probably had no idea why they were doing the job, just that it had to be done. “Now. Where didn’t your employer want us to go?”

* * * * *

“So we’re going...?”

“To Yanagi’s place. While we’re probably not being followed.” Niou ran a hand distractedly through his hair, messing it up thoroughly.

“What about the place they were trying to keep us away from?”

Ah. Yes. That. It wasn’t important, he was fairly sure. “I think we’re meant to waste time chasing off there. If it actually was a critical location, they’d have sent someone better to make sure we didn’t go there.’ Niou grinned up at Yagyuu. ‘Rather than sending that kind of shit which would just make us curious, without really stopping us.’ He hoped like hell he was right. “For now, I want to know what the fuck is up with our data master.”

* * * * *

“Shit, what a mess,” Niou said. His voice sounded flat, as though he were trying very hard not to snap. Yagyuu couldn’t disagree with the trickster’s assessment. Things had been knocked over, thrown against walls, smashed; the door had, interestingly, been barricaded from the inside. Niou had forced it open, and now they were staring at the destruction inside Yanagi’s home.

Niou moved around the main room, shifting things around, inspecting the damage. Yagyuu waited, as patiently as he could.

“This wasn’t done systematically to try and destroy things,” the trickster said eventually. “Looks like it was just from a fight.” There was a pause as they both tried to imagine Yanagi fighting in a way which would leave the place looking like this.

“Kirihara?” Yagyuu suggested. Niou nodded, and pointed towards the door to the bedroom. There was blood on the frame, and a fading trail leading into the room.

Kirihara was crouched on the floor on the far side of the room with his back towards them. Yagyuu watched, concerned, as Niou moved to check on the younger man; he couldn’t see any obvious injuries from here, but then, all that was visible was the curve of his back as he hunched over. He seemed to be shaking slightly.

“Hey, Kirihara,” Niou began, reaching out to touch Kirihara’s shoulder. “Are you--” Yagyuu saw him stiffen and practically jump backwards, saw Kirihara turn to look at them, and saw that Kirihara’s eyes were bloodshot.

Niou swore.

After that, it all got very messy.

* * * * *

This was something he’d heard about from Yanagi, in the form of a warning -- something which might happen, but they should hope never to observe at close quarters. This was his first time seeing it, but that was probably because Kirihara worked alone in situations where violence might be required; Niou had never been sure if that was Kirihara’s decision, or Yanagi’s. Either way, the level of violence Kirihara was capable of when he was like this had definitely been the basis of the man’s mixed reputation in the year since Yukimura’s disappearance. Kirihara might not be the most gentle person in the world normally, but this was a different level.

His first instinct, when he saw Kirihara’s eyes, was to put distance between them but, even though he recoiled, the punch Kirihara threw towards his face still connected, making him stumble and wince. The red-eyed man smiled with a kind of twisted satisfaction, and Niou wondered if he should be actually afraid rather than just worried. There was obviously no distinction between friends and enemies for Kirihara at the moment: he looked like a wild animal, cornered.

“Kirihara, calm down,” Yagyuu said from across the room, and the fact that Yagyuu could sound calm himself was annoying as hell. Kirihara seemed to have blanked his words, anyway; his eyes were fixed on Niou, disturbingly focused.

There was a blur of movement. Wired reflexes or not, Niou was too slow; another blow, this time to the stomach, knocked him backwards. Bent over and coughing, he dropped to the floor mostly on instinct, and felt the wind of another blow pass over his head. Then Kirihara kicked him, forcing him to uncurl; the next thing he knew, there was sharp pain across his scalp as Kirihara grabbed him by the hair and hauled him up to stare him in the eye.

Niou didn’t flinch. Recoiling from a blow was one thing, a reflex; looking away would be weak. Besides, he thought he’d seen movement out of the corner of his eye, and if Kirihara kept staring at Niou he might not notice whatever Yagyuu was doing. He had to admit, though, that Kirihara’s eyes were really creeping him out. Narrowing his own eyes slightly, he struck out at Kirihara’s arm and twisted, pulling free, ignoring the extra pain that caused. Wouldn’t this be so much simpler if he didn’t mind seriously hurting the guy. But Kirihara was already lunging for him again, not giving him any space to breathe. A hand closed around his upper arm, began to twist, and--

Kirihara faltered, made a noise of surprise, and folded. Behind him, Yagyuu was already turning away, slipping a gun back into its holster. Niou stared.

“What?” Yagyuu snapped, visibly annoyed for once. “I hit him with it. That’s all.”

* * * * *

It wouldn’t be long before Kirihara woke up, Yagyuu knew. He’d hit him as hard as necessary and no harder; he wasn’t Yanagi, calculating everything perfectly, but he could judge such things well enough. Kirihara would have a sore head, some bruising. He’d already checked to see if he’d caused any bleeding.

Niou was in a foul mood. It wasn’t surprising, but it left the entire flat far too tense as he stalked around, moving in figurative and literal circles, getting nowhere. When Kirihara finally stirred, the trickster watched from a safe distance, leaving Yagyuu to deal with him. Again, unsurprising, but not terribly welcome.

Kirihara’s eyes as he looked up at Yagyuu were normal but narrowed in suspicion.

“What the fuck? Did you need to do that?” he snapped, fingers cautiously exploring the back of his skull. Yagyuu treated him to a level stare.

“Yes. I quite like Niou’s arm unbroken, and his face intact. What happened?”

Kirihara finally had the grace to look embarrassed about the whole thing. “Shit, I guess I did kinda lose it,” he muttered, casting a glance in Niou’s direction. Yagyuu didn’t have to look around to know that Niou was glaring back. He could practically feel it.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Niou informed the younger man. Kirihara winced.

“Kirihara,” Yagyuu repeated, “what happened? Where is Yanagi?”

“Oh, fuck. Yanagi.” The dark-haired man started to his feet almost as soon as Yanagi was mentioned, and it was only Niou’s reflexes which stopped him making it clean out of the room. “Let me go, you bastard,” Kirihara growled, struggling to pull his arm away from Niou’s grip. Yagyuu fancied the trickster was using slightly more force than was strictly required.

“Not,” Niou told him, “until you actually tell us what happened. If you know where Yanagi is, you can tell us, instead of running off by yourself like an idiot.”

“I don’t know,” Kirihara admitted, mumbling the words so Yagyuu could barely make them out. “I don’t fucking well know. Didn’t see. Bastards kept me busy, soon as I could pay attention to anything else he was gone. I’ve gotta follow them. Can’t just let them take him.”

“That would be unproductive,” Yagyuu commented, already irritated by Kirihara’s lack of cooperation, though his voice remained even. “You have no idea where they went, and they must have been gone for over an hour now.”

“So? I can’t just do nothing. Some of us actually give a damn, you know.”

“It would be more helpful to let us know exactly what happened. Maybe then we can do something more useful than just chasing around with no idea where we should be looking.”

Kirihara didn’t have much information to share beyond what they’d already surmised. People -- no one he knew -- had come. Yanagi had spoken to them, and they’d been threatening, although he hadn’t heard the conversation. He’d stepped in, and been told to get lost; the situation had degenerated from there.

It was all horribly predictable, really.

The data storage unit was the only thing obviously missing from the flat, but that was horribly predictable, too. Yagyuu had made a backup of it, but it made him feel uneasy, in light of everything else that had happened. He found himself seriously considering just wiping the data. But...

But.

That would be admitting defeat. They still had another option.

“Niou, do you remember how to set up the VR unit?” he asked, cutting across whatever argument Niou was having with Kirihara at that moment. “I need to try something.”

* * * * *

“This is quite possibly the most idiotic thing you’ve ever done, you realise,” Niou pointed out, helping Yagyuu check the set-up of the somewhat patched up VR unit. He felt faintly proud. “I must finally be getting through.”

He loved the concealed amusement in the disapproving looks Yagyuu gave him for comments like that.

“But really, Hiroshi,” he added when Kirihara was out of the room for a moment, “don’t... you know.” Don’t get yourself into more trouble than you can get out of? Something like that.

Yagyuu just nodded, not looking up to meet his eyes. Niou caught himself feeling almost afraid; Yagyuu had come to a decision, and wouldn’t be swayed. And Niou was beginning to see the shape of his plan. He didn’t like it very much.

“Hiroshi,” he insisted, fingers pulling Yagyuu’s chin up to make the other man look at him. “Careful. None of us actually know what we’re dealing with here.”

Yagyuu nodded again, and Niou’s sharp eyes searched his face, looking for traces of emotion. Yagyuu would do whatever he wanted to do; he was quite a lot like Niou himself, in that respect.

“Stubborn,” he muttered, leaning in to press their lips together for just a moment before turning away, hiding the weakness he was sure must show on his face. “Well, we’re ready. Here goes nothing?”

Niou watched as Yagyuu powered the unit up, switched his set-up to full VR, and became vacant as his mind slid away into cyberspace. He waited fully thirty seconds before hooking himself up as a passenger. He should be watching Kirihara, but right now, watching Yagyuu seemed far more urgent.

* * * * *

He had no location to work from, but he could take some guesses. It wouldn’t be the sprawl. Out there, the network was weaker, unreliable, shifting. Not enough connections. It would be somewhere at the heart of things; it might even still be within a corporate node, though there might be too much of a risk of detection in such a location.

He did not know exactly what he was looking for, but he thought he would know when he found it; it would be like nothing he had ever encountered before, after all.

* * * * *

Yagyuu was moving through cyberspace at an almost dizzying speed. Niou couldn’t really follow; it required practice to be able to take in so much at once, and sharp as Niou was, he didn’t spend much time in the virtual world. He didn’t send Yagyuu any messages or do anything to notify the other man of his presence; if he was noticed, that was alright. It didn’t matter either way. Yagyuu was, though, probably too busy to pick up on his passenger.

He had a good idea of what Yagyuu was looking for, but no idea how he intended to find it; how did you find an AI if it didn’t want to be found? He wasn’t even sure how long the search went on, with Yagyuu diving from node to node, apparently careless -- even Niou could tell he wasn’t taking the care to mask his presence that he usually would. But Yagyuu was never careless, and never untidy, especially not when hacking.

But... of course. If you wanted to find an AI and thought that the AI might, in turn, be looking for you... Niou would have smiled if he hadn’t been aware of just what a dangerous game Yagyuu was playing.

Even as he thought it, everything changed. It was as though the layers of VR had been stripped away, right down to the base code; something was being built up in its place and--

The signal went dead. Niou was looking at static for a moment, and then even that faded out, and there was just the room.

And Yagyuu wasn’t breathing.

Part 9

Current Mood: guilty
Current Music: Thousand Yard Stare - Dream Disciples

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

forochel.livejournal.com

Oooooooh~

I WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! :D

To put it all eloquently into one word, and it isn't even in English: SUGOIIIIIII~!!

*G*

Everything was built up so nicely and tension was so high and it's like. Flat. *whoops*

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[PoT] AU: Gentleman and Trickster (part 8)

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