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firstlightPhew. I'm not entirely happy with this. I stole VR from Shadowrun and Snow Crash, which is not what I'm unhappy about (because frankly, I'm writing fanfiction anyway :P ). What I'm unhappy about is Niou and Kirihara. Their personalities are a bit broken and I can't quite fix them.
Oh, and not a complaint, but a note: if 'ice' in this context is intrusion countermeasure electronics (or the stuff you use to keep people out of your computer system), then 'icebreakers' do exactly what it says on the tin... go read some Gibson now. ;)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
giving_ground
Title: Gentleman and Trickster (Part 5 of... some?)
Theme and Number: 13 - Virtual Reality or Dreams
Genres: Cyberpunk
Warnings/Disclaimers: Not mine. AU, obviously.
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Pairing: NiouxYagyuu (and a small dose of YanagixKirihara. if you want it to be.)
Rating: PG
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.
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
“I’ve got nothing,” Yanagi admitted once he’d ushered them inside. Niou couldn’t really tell from his face, because this was Yanagi after all, but there was an undertone of anger in his voice; he was sure the man was furious. Well, Kirihara had said he sounded scary, and their little demon would know better than the rest of them what Yanagi’s moods were like. Renji seemed to be the closest thing there was to a restraining force on Kirihara, in Yukimura’s absence.
Yagyuu had only nodded, apparently expecting Yanagi’s words.
“If you haven’t eaten, you’ll want to,” Yanagi added, in a jump which made Niou blink. Yanagi tilted his head in the general direction of the white-haired man, seeming faintly amused.
“Well, we’re going to be busy for a while, Niou. We have a lot of work to do.”
As they ate, seated around a table in the spotless kitchen which was apparently Yanagi’s, Niou found himself having to fight down laughter, over and over again. This was such a ludicrously normal thing to be doing, all things considered, that something about it seemed to go through normality and into the surreal. Four young men, eating a meal together, with such conversation as was going on entirely about mundane things. He kept on fighting the laughter, if only because he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop. Something like hysteria was hovering on the edges of his mind, waiting for a chance, and if he had to give in to it, he was damn well going to wait until later, at least.
He distracted himself by allowing his fingers to brush against Yagyuu’s leg under the table, not too often or too forcefully, but enough to draw a look from Hiroshi which seemed like cold disapproval. If Niou couldn’t read Hiroshi’s face well enough to catch the telltale signs of something between confusion and desire, he might have felt almost discouraged.
Afterwards, they spent a while setting up Yagyuu’s unit again, unpacking it and checking it over. Yanagi and Yagyuu seemed to slip onto the same wavelength at moments such as this (although it had been so much more pronounced, in the time before), and Niou could only watch blankly. A simple link he could cope with, but VR units weren’t something he’d ever really tried to comprehend. He would have been able to, had be wanted, because whatever Niou Masaharu might be he was certainly not stupid -- but he lacked the inclination. Yagyuu had more than enough skill and reputation in that area for both of them, in any case, and Yanagi had even more.
Kirihara, barely more knowledgeable than Niou, drifted uneasily around the flat. Niou noted with a certain amusement that, although the circumstances might be making Kirihara uneasy, he seemed entirely at home here. He wondered briefly if Kirihara’s relationship with Yanagi didn’t go a bit deeper than he’d thought, these days; it would be good if it did, in some respects. Maybe it would help the isolation both of them must have been feeling for the past year. It did raise a few interesting questions, though.
* * * * *
Yagyuu allowed himself to relax a little. Technology was uncomplicated, really, or at least predictable; and when he worked with it he could create a sort of haven for himself, temporarily. The routine inspection of his unit was a familiar enough ritual to be largely automatic, allowing his mind to drift, thinking about everything and nothing.
It occurred to him that he was going to have to find the time for a substantial conversation with Niou, sooner or later. It was true that they’d both matured to some degree, but he couldn’t quite grasp what the trickster’s intentions were. He hadn’t been able to understand last time, either, if it came to that; but he’d panicked, then. It felt like it had been a very long time ago, and he realised with something that was almost shock that it had been long ago. How many years? Eight? They had been so young.
He barely noticed that he’d finished checking the unit, and had been sitting staring at it for a few minutes before Yanagi broke into his private little world.
“Yagyuu, are you ready? I have some software you can use, it’s more up-to-date than yours.”
From anyone else, those words would have been insulting; but Yanagi was offering no slight, only speaking the truth, in a matter-of-fact way. Yagyuu had not been doing well financially recently, while Yanagi had been faring somewhat better; it was only logical that he’d have been able to keep his programs up to date when Yagyuu’s were beginning to show age a little. He shot the calm-looking man a grateful look and nodded, allowing himself a small smile.
It took a little longer to load all the software into his deck, and then he checked it all over again, because he was Yagyuu, and being thorough was just something he did. Everything was working smoothly, leaving him with a little feeling of quiet satisfaction. Perfect. Far too few things had gone this smoothly, of late.
“The first thing,” Yanagi explained, “is to see if the corp paid anyone for jobs lately other than us, and then to check who’s been paid by their rival. There’ll be a data-trail, even if it’s not much to work on, if either of those two is responsible for this mess. We’ll go from there. The main problem will be if it’s a third party, at which point we’ll need to investigate who else could stand to gain. It wouldn’t hurt to do that anyway, really.”
Yagyuu nodded again, and set about his work. The first bits could be done through the data-screen, without needing full immersion in VR, but that would only take him so far. They were looking for transactions which would be convoluted, obscured by layer upon layer of careful misdirection. They were skilled at getting through such things, though, there was no question of that; it was just down to time.
It didn’t take long to get through those first layers: into cyberspace, through a little security flaw onto the general corp network. After that, they’d need the extra focus that entering full VR would provide.
“We’re ready to move into VR. Do you want to join us?” he asked Niou, aware of how bored his companion was likely to become if left unattended, “You can ride passive on my connection, if you’d like to.”
Niou seemed to consider for a while, before shrugging and shaking his head in dismissal.
“I wouldn’t want Kirihara getting lonely,” he grinned widely, giving Kirihara an almost predatory look. Yagyuu felt briefly sorry for the younger man.
“Well, as you please; I’ll leave the settings so you can join the connection any time you like.”
He turned away, settling himself comfortably in his chair facing the unit before reaching for the switch on the side of his glasses...
... and VR unfolded around him, endless space waiting for something to fill it.
* * * * *
VR had started out relatively simple. Yagyuu could recall his first forays into it as a teenager, right after the network had been re-established in the wake of the big crash in 2012; that’d been when the corporations had decided a fresh start wouldn’t hurt the system, and had tried to set the network up to be the internet as it could have been. Better organised, more secure (though that was almost enough to make even Yagyuu laugh). Full-immersion VR had been someone’s idea of a toy to keep programmers busy, in all probability. Then, it had been simple 3-D representations set against the raw grid of cyberspace. Now, people created extended and complex metaphors for their domains, filling in the scenery and even supplying appropriate sound effects in an attempt to make the whole thing seem more convincing. The facsimile of a feudal Japanese landscape which had arranged itself before him was a classic and fairly popular example, but at least it was tasteful. It was also deeply typical of the corporation who owned it, from what Yagyuu knew.
He also noted, not without a trace of amusement, that Yanagi’s avatar would have fit seamlessly into the corp’s metaphor without alteration or masking, had they been trying to interact with it in any normal way. If anything, Yanagi’s representation of a traditional Japanese noble was a little too accurate for the setting the corporation had created. This place was more about the general look of the thing than accurate historical detail, and Yanagi was, after all, probably as much of a perfectionist as Yagyuu in his own way.
In any case, the simplest route for them to take was to adhere to the rules laid out by the metaphor until such a time as they needed to break them; it made it rather less likely that they’d be noticed by security programmes or corp employees.
Security here was still fairly light, as they walked down a dusty road between fields towards a fortified town. There were occasional guards, but the noble and his retainer passed by unnoticed and unquestioned until they stood at the gates of the town. (In a room somewhere in Tokyo, Yagyuu’s fingers flew over a keypad, kicking programmes into life and loading up icebreakers; beside him, Yanagi was doing the same.) A quick negotiation with the guards at the gate proved their credentials (Yagyuu privately admired the quality of Yanagi’s deception software), and they swept inside.
From then on, it was a series of ever more elaborate deceptions, some of them played out visually in VR, others going beyond the unspoken rules of the game, tricks on an unseen level. Yanagi was adept at this, as much as Niou was at tricks in reality, and Yagyuu couldn’t match him. Not that he wasn’t good; but his true area of expertise was the hardware, after all. For now, with Yanagi keeping everything under control, he could take a relatively passive role and clean up anything which Yanagi couldn’t spare enough attention for. Even Yagyuu could admit that there was never any shame in playing second to one of the Three. They had always been in a class of their own, and even now, Yanagi remained so. From the rumours so did Sanada, and who knew about Yukimura, these days?
When they found what they were looking for, it was in a place where the metaphor didn’t hold, a little blankly grey area with blocky, inelegant forms representing the data files. It wasn’t surprising; why put effort into an area which was so carefully sealed away?
Yanagi was already engaged in extracting the information when Yagyuu became aware that another avatar had appeared in the ‘room’. Back in reality, his fingers took up their high-speed dance again, getting a trace on the newcomer. Not from within the corp; somewhere in Tokyo, though...
There. That location was one usually used by Hyoutei. Couple that with the fact that the avatar looked like it had been constructed by someone fairly sane and highly skilled, and there was only one likely candidate. Time to make an educated guess.
Ohtori, he sent so that Yanagi would pick it up as well. An unexpected pleasure. I hope Shishido is well.
* * * * *
Niou stretched in a fluid motion, feline, and began to prowl the flat. It was a small space, crowded with the four of them, even if only two of the people in the place were actually there in any sense but the physical. Kirihara was looking thoroughly bored, regarding Yanagi and Yagyuu’s vacant forms with slight annoyance; a bored and annoyed Kirihara was probably most people’s idea of a liability. Once, Niou might have considered the prospect to be a source of near-endless amusement, but he’d turned down Yagyuu’s offer of a trip into VR for a reason, after all. He leaned in towards Kirihara, and flicked the younger man’s nose, a little gesture reminiscent of when Kirihara Akaya had really been the kid of their group.
“Hey, Kirihara, c’mon through to the other room,” he grinned, and practically dragged his victim away, moving too swiftly for any kind of protest to make it out of Kirihara’s mouth. He wanted to ask a few questions, and didn’t think he wanted to know what either Yanagi or Yagyuu would do to him if he and Kirihara broke their concentration by talking at a critical moment. He must be getting to be almost responsible in his old age, he thought, and only just managed to avoid laughing out loud at himself.
“So,” he released Kirihara, who shot him a slightly confused look, “you and Yanagi? Spill.”
Kirihara’s eyes narrowed.
“You, Niou,” he grumbled, “are a fucking gossip. You know that?”
“I know,” Niou’s grin widened. “So are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“No, I don’t think I am, actually. What about you and Yagyuu, if you’re going to be like that?”
Ah. Yes. Conversations with Kirihara never went in quite the direction you wanted them to; but then again, Niou thought, it was possible he’d been unconsciously wanting to talk about this all along. Still... he should be doing a better job of directing the conversation than this.
“Brat. There’s nothing to tell.”
Kirihara treated him to a look of pure disbelief.
“What? I mean it. There’s nothing.”
“Sure. And Sanada was just friends with Yukimura.”
Niou rolled his eyes, and reached for a cigarette, almost a reflexive action. Kirihara held out a hand.
“Only if you talk,” Niou laughed at Kirihara’s expression. Maybe tormenting the kid hadn’t quite lost all of its charm yet.
“We just spend time together,” Kirihara snapped, before adding more quietly, “and if there’s anything more to it, it’s really none of your damn business, Niou.”
Niou scowled, but threw a cigarette at the younger man anyway. It was true; this wasn’t really anything to do with him. It was probably mostly the strangeness of his relationship with Yagyuu which was making him so curious; it wasn’t like he’d actually bothered himself over the relationships which had gone on in Rikkai before, or actively tried to find out what was going on in them. What he’d been able to observe from the way people interacted had always been plenty -- or sometimes a bit too much, even for him.
Kirihara was sprawled across Yanagi’s bed, smoking and staring at the ceiling. He looked like he was thinking about something; Niou gave it about another thirty seconds before another question about Yagyuu arrived. Kirihara felt like surprising him, though, it seemed. It only took about ten seconds, and when it came it was delivered with a mixture of amusement and irritation.
“Niou, I dunno what the fuck is going on with you and Yagyuu, but just sort it out already. How many years is it gonna take you?”
The Trickster blinked, and it was maybe just a second too long before he shrugged in dismissal. It occurred to him that he should really have remembered the random flashes of insight that Kirihara could be prone to; it was faintly embarrassing that the guy seemed to be manoeuvring Niou around to talking about his own life, considering the information he’d actually been after. He could probably use tiredness as an excuse. It had been, a quick count-up indicated, more than twenty-four hours since he’d slept last. A proper rest should have him back on form, but until he could get that, he might as well go and find out what was happening in VR. He muttered a vague excuse to Kirihara, who didn’t look like he was planning to move for a little while.
What Niou really believed in, he thought as he made himself comfortable in a chair in the kitchen area where all the tech was temporarily set up, was control. Not in the sense Yagyuu believed in it; the opposite, if anything. Yagyuu controlled himself, and Niou controlled other people, in a whole variety of ways, most of which would be entirely unexpected to anyone who knew him by reputation only -- or that was the theory. It wasn’t working out too well any more. He’d thought, earlier that day, that things had been well under control, from the job to his manipulation of Yagyuu; he’d definitely been wrong about one, and he was beginning to lose confidence in the other. It was possible he’d made a mistake; Yagyuu had definitely not pushed him away, but his partner had seemed confused.
What would Yagyuu be thinking now, about Niou’s flirting? He wasn’t absolutely certain; he could make guesses, but he was more likely to be wrong when Yagyuu Hiroshi was concerned.
The irony of the fact that he’d miscalculated Yagyuu more than once in the past when they were capable of acting like one another well enough to fool the world wasn’t lost on him. It seemed, he thought with no little frustration, that they were good at confusing each other to a surprising extent. It wasn’t a talent many people had, in either case, and Niou should have hated Yagyuu for it; instead, when he’d first realised that Yagyuu wasn’t as dull and predictable as the world believed, he’d developed a fascination with him. He was peculiar and he was a challenge.
He’d been a challenge for eight damn years now. Both of them had changed, over and over again, but Yagyuu had always been just a little way beyond his grasp.
Belatedly, Niou realised he’d been staring at the VR goggles without moving for about ten minutes, entirely lost in thought. Kirihara was right, he needed to sort this out -- introspection really didn’t suit him.
He slipped the goggles on, latched on to Yagyuu’s connection, and VR spread out around him just in time for him to catch sight of someone taking a wild lunge at Yagyuu’s avatar.
Right. That was why he hated being a passenger on someone else’s link.
Part 6
Oh, and not a complaint, but a note: if 'ice' in this context is intrusion countermeasure electronics (or the stuff you use to keep people out of your computer system), then 'icebreakers' do exactly what it says on the tin... go read some Gibson now. ;)
Author:
giving_groundTitle: Gentleman and Trickster (Part 5 of... some?)
Theme and Number: 13 - Virtual Reality or Dreams
Genres: Cyberpunk
Warnings/Disclaimers: Not mine. AU, obviously.
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Pairing: NiouxYagyuu (and a small dose of YanagixKirihara. if you want it to be.)
Rating: PG
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.
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
“I’ve got nothing,” Yanagi admitted once he’d ushered them inside. Niou couldn’t really tell from his face, because this was Yanagi after all, but there was an undertone of anger in his voice; he was sure the man was furious. Well, Kirihara had said he sounded scary, and their little demon would know better than the rest of them what Yanagi’s moods were like. Renji seemed to be the closest thing there was to a restraining force on Kirihara, in Yukimura’s absence.
Yagyuu had only nodded, apparently expecting Yanagi’s words.
“If you haven’t eaten, you’ll want to,” Yanagi added, in a jump which made Niou blink. Yanagi tilted his head in the general direction of the white-haired man, seeming faintly amused.
“Well, we’re going to be busy for a while, Niou. We have a lot of work to do.”
As they ate, seated around a table in the spotless kitchen which was apparently Yanagi’s, Niou found himself having to fight down laughter, over and over again. This was such a ludicrously normal thing to be doing, all things considered, that something about it seemed to go through normality and into the surreal. Four young men, eating a meal together, with such conversation as was going on entirely about mundane things. He kept on fighting the laughter, if only because he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop. Something like hysteria was hovering on the edges of his mind, waiting for a chance, and if he had to give in to it, he was damn well going to wait until later, at least.
He distracted himself by allowing his fingers to brush against Yagyuu’s leg under the table, not too often or too forcefully, but enough to draw a look from Hiroshi which seemed like cold disapproval. If Niou couldn’t read Hiroshi’s face well enough to catch the telltale signs of something between confusion and desire, he might have felt almost discouraged.
Afterwards, they spent a while setting up Yagyuu’s unit again, unpacking it and checking it over. Yanagi and Yagyuu seemed to slip onto the same wavelength at moments such as this (although it had been so much more pronounced, in the time before), and Niou could only watch blankly. A simple link he could cope with, but VR units weren’t something he’d ever really tried to comprehend. He would have been able to, had be wanted, because whatever Niou Masaharu might be he was certainly not stupid -- but he lacked the inclination. Yagyuu had more than enough skill and reputation in that area for both of them, in any case, and Yanagi had even more.
Kirihara, barely more knowledgeable than Niou, drifted uneasily around the flat. Niou noted with a certain amusement that, although the circumstances might be making Kirihara uneasy, he seemed entirely at home here. He wondered briefly if Kirihara’s relationship with Yanagi didn’t go a bit deeper than he’d thought, these days; it would be good if it did, in some respects. Maybe it would help the isolation both of them must have been feeling for the past year. It did raise a few interesting questions, though.
* * * * *
Yagyuu allowed himself to relax a little. Technology was uncomplicated, really, or at least predictable; and when he worked with it he could create a sort of haven for himself, temporarily. The routine inspection of his unit was a familiar enough ritual to be largely automatic, allowing his mind to drift, thinking about everything and nothing.
It occurred to him that he was going to have to find the time for a substantial conversation with Niou, sooner or later. It was true that they’d both matured to some degree, but he couldn’t quite grasp what the trickster’s intentions were. He hadn’t been able to understand last time, either, if it came to that; but he’d panicked, then. It felt like it had been a very long time ago, and he realised with something that was almost shock that it had been long ago. How many years? Eight? They had been so young.
He barely noticed that he’d finished checking the unit, and had been sitting staring at it for a few minutes before Yanagi broke into his private little world.
“Yagyuu, are you ready? I have some software you can use, it’s more up-to-date than yours.”
From anyone else, those words would have been insulting; but Yanagi was offering no slight, only speaking the truth, in a matter-of-fact way. Yagyuu had not been doing well financially recently, while Yanagi had been faring somewhat better; it was only logical that he’d have been able to keep his programs up to date when Yagyuu’s were beginning to show age a little. He shot the calm-looking man a grateful look and nodded, allowing himself a small smile.
It took a little longer to load all the software into his deck, and then he checked it all over again, because he was Yagyuu, and being thorough was just something he did. Everything was working smoothly, leaving him with a little feeling of quiet satisfaction. Perfect. Far too few things had gone this smoothly, of late.
“The first thing,” Yanagi explained, “is to see if the corp paid anyone for jobs lately other than us, and then to check who’s been paid by their rival. There’ll be a data-trail, even if it’s not much to work on, if either of those two is responsible for this mess. We’ll go from there. The main problem will be if it’s a third party, at which point we’ll need to investigate who else could stand to gain. It wouldn’t hurt to do that anyway, really.”
Yagyuu nodded again, and set about his work. The first bits could be done through the data-screen, without needing full immersion in VR, but that would only take him so far. They were looking for transactions which would be convoluted, obscured by layer upon layer of careful misdirection. They were skilled at getting through such things, though, there was no question of that; it was just down to time.
It didn’t take long to get through those first layers: into cyberspace, through a little security flaw onto the general corp network. After that, they’d need the extra focus that entering full VR would provide.
“We’re ready to move into VR. Do you want to join us?” he asked Niou, aware of how bored his companion was likely to become if left unattended, “You can ride passive on my connection, if you’d like to.”
Niou seemed to consider for a while, before shrugging and shaking his head in dismissal.
“I wouldn’t want Kirihara getting lonely,” he grinned widely, giving Kirihara an almost predatory look. Yagyuu felt briefly sorry for the younger man.
“Well, as you please; I’ll leave the settings so you can join the connection any time you like.”
He turned away, settling himself comfortably in his chair facing the unit before reaching for the switch on the side of his glasses...
... and VR unfolded around him, endless space waiting for something to fill it.
* * * * *
VR had started out relatively simple. Yagyuu could recall his first forays into it as a teenager, right after the network had been re-established in the wake of the big crash in 2012; that’d been when the corporations had decided a fresh start wouldn’t hurt the system, and had tried to set the network up to be the internet as it could have been. Better organised, more secure (though that was almost enough to make even Yagyuu laugh). Full-immersion VR had been someone’s idea of a toy to keep programmers busy, in all probability. Then, it had been simple 3-D representations set against the raw grid of cyberspace. Now, people created extended and complex metaphors for their domains, filling in the scenery and even supplying appropriate sound effects in an attempt to make the whole thing seem more convincing. The facsimile of a feudal Japanese landscape which had arranged itself before him was a classic and fairly popular example, but at least it was tasteful. It was also deeply typical of the corporation who owned it, from what Yagyuu knew.
He also noted, not without a trace of amusement, that Yanagi’s avatar would have fit seamlessly into the corp’s metaphor without alteration or masking, had they been trying to interact with it in any normal way. If anything, Yanagi’s representation of a traditional Japanese noble was a little too accurate for the setting the corporation had created. This place was more about the general look of the thing than accurate historical detail, and Yanagi was, after all, probably as much of a perfectionist as Yagyuu in his own way.
In any case, the simplest route for them to take was to adhere to the rules laid out by the metaphor until such a time as they needed to break them; it made it rather less likely that they’d be noticed by security programmes or corp employees.
Security here was still fairly light, as they walked down a dusty road between fields towards a fortified town. There were occasional guards, but the noble and his retainer passed by unnoticed and unquestioned until they stood at the gates of the town. (In a room somewhere in Tokyo, Yagyuu’s fingers flew over a keypad, kicking programmes into life and loading up icebreakers; beside him, Yanagi was doing the same.) A quick negotiation with the guards at the gate proved their credentials (Yagyuu privately admired the quality of Yanagi’s deception software), and they swept inside.
From then on, it was a series of ever more elaborate deceptions, some of them played out visually in VR, others going beyond the unspoken rules of the game, tricks on an unseen level. Yanagi was adept at this, as much as Niou was at tricks in reality, and Yagyuu couldn’t match him. Not that he wasn’t good; but his true area of expertise was the hardware, after all. For now, with Yanagi keeping everything under control, he could take a relatively passive role and clean up anything which Yanagi couldn’t spare enough attention for. Even Yagyuu could admit that there was never any shame in playing second to one of the Three. They had always been in a class of their own, and even now, Yanagi remained so. From the rumours so did Sanada, and who knew about Yukimura, these days?
When they found what they were looking for, it was in a place where the metaphor didn’t hold, a little blankly grey area with blocky, inelegant forms representing the data files. It wasn’t surprising; why put effort into an area which was so carefully sealed away?
Yanagi was already engaged in extracting the information when Yagyuu became aware that another avatar had appeared in the ‘room’. Back in reality, his fingers took up their high-speed dance again, getting a trace on the newcomer. Not from within the corp; somewhere in Tokyo, though...
There. That location was one usually used by Hyoutei. Couple that with the fact that the avatar looked like it had been constructed by someone fairly sane and highly skilled, and there was only one likely candidate. Time to make an educated guess.
Ohtori, he sent so that Yanagi would pick it up as well. An unexpected pleasure. I hope Shishido is well.
* * * * *
Niou stretched in a fluid motion, feline, and began to prowl the flat. It was a small space, crowded with the four of them, even if only two of the people in the place were actually there in any sense but the physical. Kirihara was looking thoroughly bored, regarding Yanagi and Yagyuu’s vacant forms with slight annoyance; a bored and annoyed Kirihara was probably most people’s idea of a liability. Once, Niou might have considered the prospect to be a source of near-endless amusement, but he’d turned down Yagyuu’s offer of a trip into VR for a reason, after all. He leaned in towards Kirihara, and flicked the younger man’s nose, a little gesture reminiscent of when Kirihara Akaya had really been the kid of their group.
“Hey, Kirihara, c’mon through to the other room,” he grinned, and practically dragged his victim away, moving too swiftly for any kind of protest to make it out of Kirihara’s mouth. He wanted to ask a few questions, and didn’t think he wanted to know what either Yanagi or Yagyuu would do to him if he and Kirihara broke their concentration by talking at a critical moment. He must be getting to be almost responsible in his old age, he thought, and only just managed to avoid laughing out loud at himself.
“So,” he released Kirihara, who shot him a slightly confused look, “you and Yanagi? Spill.”
Kirihara’s eyes narrowed.
“You, Niou,” he grumbled, “are a fucking gossip. You know that?”
“I know,” Niou’s grin widened. “So are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“No, I don’t think I am, actually. What about you and Yagyuu, if you’re going to be like that?”
Ah. Yes. Conversations with Kirihara never went in quite the direction you wanted them to; but then again, Niou thought, it was possible he’d been unconsciously wanting to talk about this all along. Still... he should be doing a better job of directing the conversation than this.
“Brat. There’s nothing to tell.”
Kirihara treated him to a look of pure disbelief.
“What? I mean it. There’s nothing.”
“Sure. And Sanada was just friends with Yukimura.”
Niou rolled his eyes, and reached for a cigarette, almost a reflexive action. Kirihara held out a hand.
“Only if you talk,” Niou laughed at Kirihara’s expression. Maybe tormenting the kid hadn’t quite lost all of its charm yet.
“We just spend time together,” Kirihara snapped, before adding more quietly, “and if there’s anything more to it, it’s really none of your damn business, Niou.”
Niou scowled, but threw a cigarette at the younger man anyway. It was true; this wasn’t really anything to do with him. It was probably mostly the strangeness of his relationship with Yagyuu which was making him so curious; it wasn’t like he’d actually bothered himself over the relationships which had gone on in Rikkai before, or actively tried to find out what was going on in them. What he’d been able to observe from the way people interacted had always been plenty -- or sometimes a bit too much, even for him.
Kirihara was sprawled across Yanagi’s bed, smoking and staring at the ceiling. He looked like he was thinking about something; Niou gave it about another thirty seconds before another question about Yagyuu arrived. Kirihara felt like surprising him, though, it seemed. It only took about ten seconds, and when it came it was delivered with a mixture of amusement and irritation.
“Niou, I dunno what the fuck is going on with you and Yagyuu, but just sort it out already. How many years is it gonna take you?”
The Trickster blinked, and it was maybe just a second too long before he shrugged in dismissal. It occurred to him that he should really have remembered the random flashes of insight that Kirihara could be prone to; it was faintly embarrassing that the guy seemed to be manoeuvring Niou around to talking about his own life, considering the information he’d actually been after. He could probably use tiredness as an excuse. It had been, a quick count-up indicated, more than twenty-four hours since he’d slept last. A proper rest should have him back on form, but until he could get that, he might as well go and find out what was happening in VR. He muttered a vague excuse to Kirihara, who didn’t look like he was planning to move for a little while.
What Niou really believed in, he thought as he made himself comfortable in a chair in the kitchen area where all the tech was temporarily set up, was control. Not in the sense Yagyuu believed in it; the opposite, if anything. Yagyuu controlled himself, and Niou controlled other people, in a whole variety of ways, most of which would be entirely unexpected to anyone who knew him by reputation only -- or that was the theory. It wasn’t working out too well any more. He’d thought, earlier that day, that things had been well under control, from the job to his manipulation of Yagyuu; he’d definitely been wrong about one, and he was beginning to lose confidence in the other. It was possible he’d made a mistake; Yagyuu had definitely not pushed him away, but his partner had seemed confused.
What would Yagyuu be thinking now, about Niou’s flirting? He wasn’t absolutely certain; he could make guesses, but he was more likely to be wrong when Yagyuu Hiroshi was concerned.
The irony of the fact that he’d miscalculated Yagyuu more than once in the past when they were capable of acting like one another well enough to fool the world wasn’t lost on him. It seemed, he thought with no little frustration, that they were good at confusing each other to a surprising extent. It wasn’t a talent many people had, in either case, and Niou should have hated Yagyuu for it; instead, when he’d first realised that Yagyuu wasn’t as dull and predictable as the world believed, he’d developed a fascination with him. He was peculiar and he was a challenge.
He’d been a challenge for eight damn years now. Both of them had changed, over and over again, but Yagyuu had always been just a little way beyond his grasp.
Belatedly, Niou realised he’d been staring at the VR goggles without moving for about ten minutes, entirely lost in thought. Kirihara was right, he needed to sort this out -- introspection really didn’t suit him.
He slipped the goggles on, latched on to Yagyuu’s connection, and VR spread out around him just in time for him to catch sight of someone taking a wild lunge at Yagyuu’s avatar.
Right. That was why he hated being a passenger on someone else’s link.
Part 6
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Date: 2005-12-12 09:00 am (UTC)That aside, however, I am still loving this story and all of the details you've woven in, and am quite eager to see if/how Niou and Yagyuu manage to have their talk. ^^ Can't wait to read more!
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Date: 2005-12-13 02:06 am (UTC)As for the cliffhanger... well... to be honest, it's mostly there because things have been a bit manic but I wanted to post something, and that was the first handy break-point I reached. ;)
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Date: 2005-12-13 03:05 pm (UTC)OMG, I'm totally awed by the details. And you have my TWO MOST FAVOUTRITE PAIRINGS!! >DDD Silver and Platinum *_*
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Date: 2005-12-13 03:48 pm (UTC)And by the way, that piece of D1 art you posted a while back (warriors?) has been lurking in my brain, and I think it's turning into the basis another AU fic for the community this story is being written for, unless you have any particular objections... it just kicked a whole load of stuff up to the front of my mind and said "look at these, these would be cool!" :P
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Date: 2005-12-14 12:25 am (UTC)not that they don't already have enough from us, and from each otherOMG!!! REALLY?!! *cries in happiness for the naughty warriors* PLEASE WRITE IT :O *latches on and doesn't let go*
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Date: 2005-12-14 07:57 am (UTC)It's being written. I've got over 1000 words, and I'll probably finish it either very very soon or over the weekend, depending on how well behaved I'm being regarding getting university work done.
It has magic and weirdness and, obviously, Niou and Yagyuu beating each other up. Amongst other things. ;)
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Date: 2005-12-14 11:15 am (UTC)I WANT TO READ IT LIKE, NOW. Beat each other up! Yeah, right. I can just interpret that as *cough* pre-smut violence *_* Amongst other things? =DDD GOOOOOOOOD.
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Date: 2005-12-14 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 06:36 pm (UTC)And YanaKiri! And a Choutarou mention [linked with a Shishido mention]! Bless you. <3
-mourns the fact that I can't read any more now, but the thought that it might make the waiting for the next chapter shorter cheers me up a little-
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Date: 2006-09-28 06:44 pm (UTC)Yeah, though it is rather angsty YanaKiri. They still want their own story though this is rather optimistic of them considering that the main fic still isn't done yet. >_>
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Date: 2006-09-28 08:12 pm (UTC)