Author - Kanshu
FanFiction.net Source
Warnings - Language and violence...
Synopsis:
"The design and execution of the trap had been flawless. It should have been safe. Or so Sagara Sousuke thought until it exploded in Kaname's face."
Part 1
Spoiler! :
Sergeant Sagara Sousuke sat huddled in a corner of a hospital waiting room, his usually vigilant eyes screwed shut in the vain attempt to keep away the images that haunted him. No matter how much he wracked his brain, how often he replayed every move, the design and execution of the trap had been flawless. 'It should have been safe.'
The device had been a simple trap he had rigged up to keep terrorists from tampering with the costume Chidori Kaname was to wear for a stage play. 'Those things are fool-proof. They don't explode. It wasn't supposed to explode!' It should have been safe. He was a professional, after all. 'Then, what went wrong? Did I miss something?'
Of course, Chidori had told him more than once that setting up traps was too dangerous and unacceptable, but he had calmly explained they were meant to improve her security. ‘There is always a small risk involved, but compared to the advantage of disabling the enemy…’
Only there was no enemy, no terrorists, and no war. The only one posing a threat in this ordinary Japanese High School was the professional mercenary sent to protect a precious Whispered. ‘There was no imminent threat. I had no reason to set up a trap in the first place.'
Sousuke drew a shuddering breath. When the device blew off right in Kaname’s face, he still had foolishly thought that everything would turn out okay. 'I made a mistake.’
For a moment, it had been absolutely quiet in the room. Kaname had just stood there, motionless, and he could see her shoulders squaring. Sousuke knew her well enough to know that he was in for trouble with a capital T, considering that the date of the play was close and the costume had been ruined. So he had waited for her to execute punishment with the paper fan she usually wielded like a weapon. But the punishment never came.
He still remembered vividly how she had slowly turned around, a look of utter surprise on her ghostly pale face. It was then that he noticed the remains of the metal coat hanger that had penetrated her neck directly above her left collar bone. Blood gushed out of the wound steadily, rapidly drenching her school uniform crimson. The surprised expression turned to one of realization and then the unabashed anger in her eyes burned through him with the destructive force of a nuclear explosion.
“Sousuke!”
It had been nothing but a soft hiss. Suddenly, her eyes had rolled back and she slumped to the floor boneless. His professional experience told him that the injury was grave, possibly lethal - judging by the color and amount of blood she was losing, an artery was nicked.
Blood. He stared at the dried blood on his hands, Kaname's blood. She had lost so much blood - 'Even if she survives, there's a high probability for brain damage.' He was a professional, supposed to stay cool and aloft. But Sousuke was only too aware of the complete and thorough hopelessness that overwhelmed him. Slight tremors ran through his body, fear choked him – in one word, he was in a mess. 'How can I protect you when I'm like this, Kaname?’
He recalled checking for a pulse and finding none, remembered the warmth of her blood on his face and hands when he had desperately fought for her life. He had breathed oxygen into her lungs until his head was ready to explode, hardly noticing the cracking noise when he had broken ribs to make her heart beating again. Through the dizzy haze in his brain he could hear someone screaming for an ambulance. He remembered the cold panic that had consumed him, and the stray thought that he would later on have to apologize to Chidori for taking her lips without permission. She would be mad, of course, and maybe he would end up being beaten into a bloody pulp, but she would forgive him, right?
'Kaname will survive. Everything will be all right.'
He repeated the thought over and over, like a mantra, clung to it in the desperate attempt to escape the inevitable truth. In retrospective, it was both laughable and embarrassing. Only an amateur would deny the facts and stick to childish hopes and wishes that had no chance of coming true. ‘Commander Kalinin will be furious if Kaname dies.’
After what seemed like a lifetime, the paramedics arrived, prying him away from her. Sousuke had watched them working on Kaname, recognized the practiced moves of professionals at work, detached and efficient.
‘When did I become so attached to her that it interfered with my efficiency?’
He almost lost her twice on the way to the hospital, but they brought her back just in time.
‘My responsibility.’
Then she was hurried out of his sight, into surgery. The nurses had ushered him to the waiting room when he had tried to follow, making it clear that any interference on his part would endanger the patient. It took him a while to get the bout of irrationality under control, pacing up and down in the assigned area like an animal in a cage. Dutiful, he had informed the Commander about what happened. He sat through a serious scolding by Miss Kagurazaka and answered endless questions by the police. Only too soon there was no more activity with which he could distract himself. There was no way to stop himself from thinking.
‘My fault.’
Time scattered to a halt when there was nothing left to do but wait. Wait for Kaname to pull through or the abyss to swallow him.
‘Please, don’t die.’
Whatever came first.
Spoiler! :
The sharp smell of disinfectants assaulted his olfactory sense, stirring unpleasant memories of too many weeks spent in hospital beds with painful injuries. Sergeant Kurz Weber suppressed a sigh, shouldered his duffel bag and looked for the information desk.
He had made it to Tokyo in record time, arrived in just under three hours after the incident that had almost cost Kaname's life. Of course, the fact that the de Daanan was comparatively close to Japan had helped considerably.
Kurz had almost reached the waiting room, but hesitated. He wasn't sure what to expect after reading the report. The thing that bothered him most about the report were the key words Sousuke had used to describe the situation. And Commander Kalinin was bothered as well, or he wouldn't sent him to 'assess the situation'. Kalinin had been very precise - 'You are authorised to retrieve Sergeant Sagara from his current mission if you think the situation is unstable.' - and Kurz would go through with it should there be any 'instabilities'.
Mao, of course, had joked that the Commander was just afraid that Kaname would chop Sousuke's head off this time and he would have to break in a new guinea pig for the Arbalest. But even through her banter, Kurz could tell that she was worried about their youngest team member. 'Keep an eye on him. If Kaname dies because of that device...' Melissa had never finished her sentence, but he had understood nevertheless. Kurz aquired a cup of coffee from one of the vending machines, reached for the waiting room's door handle and pushed it down.
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'Why does this take so long?' Sagara Sousuke frowned. 'I should have stayed with her.'
It was fourteen minutes past eight. They had begun the operation shortly after five, and no word about her condition yet. It didn't take that long to repair a torn blood vessel, did it? 'Maybe there are complications?'
Maybe Kaname was dead.
'No.'
He scuttled away from the thought frantically. 'She's strong. She will survive. Only if I see her dead body...' The image sent a shiver through him and his throat constricted painfully. Kaname's death was a possible outcome of this scenario. Actually, it was very likely that she wouldn't survive. Bloodstains on his hands. Kaname's blood. 'She can't be dead. There has to be a different reason...'
But what other reason could there be? The injury was no fake, after all. What if the enemy took advantage of the situation and abducted Kaname now that she was vulnerable? 'Maybe they tampered with my trap. It would all make sense then.'
His hands clenched to fists. 'Maybe the enemy wants to make sure this time that everyone thinks Kaname is dead so that they can use her for experiments?' The enemy would not fool him. 'I will look for you no matter what lies they will tell me.'
And what about the others who were waiting with him? Miss Kagurazaka, their teacher, looked very upset. She had called Kaname's father not too long ago. Would Mr. Chidori come to see his daughter? And what would happen then?
Kyouto, Kaname's best friend. She was pale and her worry for her friend was obvious, as well as the hostile attitude against him. Not that Sousuke blamed her for it. Had roles be reversed... he wasn't sure what he would do to whoever injured Kaname, but it would not be nice. He briefly wondered how this incident would influence his relationship to his classmates, but decided that he could live with whatever they would dish him. 'It's not like I was really a part of the class, to begin with.' He had only tried to fit in for Kaname's sake, anyway. Mithril had sent him as a bodyguard, to protect her with his life. ‘
Sousuke glanced at his watch, but only three minutes had passed since he had last checked the time. 'There's nothing I can do. I have to be patient.' Patience was a virtue for a professional mercenary, even though by now he was ready to claw into a nurse or doctor bare handed to get information about Kaname's well-being.
The bloodstains on his hands throbbed and pulsed, as if to mock him for his inability to keep her from harm. 'But I assembled the trap just like always. I made no mistake.'
Nonsense. The shouted warning had been too late. He had not paid proper attention. ‘I should have disabled the trap before Kaname entered the room.’
Though, if the trap had worked properly, she only would only have received an electric shock. Prior experiences had taught him to keep the more effective equipment out of range of meddling classmates. ‘It was never meant to explode.’
Which left, once again, only one option: enemy interference - and that meant that he had thoroughly failed his mission. Sousuke sighed. No matter how he looked at it, the outcome was the same. Kaname's life was at stake and it was his fault. He didn't like the feeling at all.
Five more minutes. He would give the doctors five more minutes, and then he would make sure that Kaname was doing okay.
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When Kurz Weber opened the door to the crowded waiting room, it took him only a few seconds to spot his comrade in arms. Sousuke had occupied one of the corners of the room, which was what Kurz had expected from his always strategic thinking team mate. The unusual thing was that he was given a wide berth by everyone else - no, Kurz corrected himself. Considering that Sousuke looked like he came out of a successful armed assault, dried blood on his face, hands and school uniform, normal people taking their distance was probably not that unusual. Kurz came carefully closer. "Sousuke?"
"U-urzu 6," his team mate acknowledged, deep distress only hidden by a shattering mask of indifference, with haunted eyes that had seen too much gore and death in a short lifetime. "Mission failed... Could not… protect her."
Kurz blinked. “Sousuke, are you okay?”
It was a stupid question, he knew. Even an idiot could see that Sousuke wasn’t okay.
“Affirmative. I…” There was a brief pause as Sousuke stared at his hands, as if the darkening patterns would reveal a solution to his dilemma. “’I’m fine.”
“You weren’t injured?” Kurz asked.
“No.” Sousuke seemed to mull over the question a second, then looked Kurz straight in the eye. “I wasn’t fast enough.”
‘Translation: It should have been me.’ Kurz thought. At least, Sousuke functioned. That was the good part. The bad part was that the kid was going down the same path like after the Helmajistan-disaster or the ill-fated fight against Gauron. Melissa had been hurt in the latter, and Sousuke had buried all of his team in the rock desert of Helmajistan. “Any news on Kaname?”
“She’s still in surgery.”
More silence, and it grated his nerves more than he cared to admit. “Maybe no news is good news.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
It sounded hollow, hopeless. 'Shit.'The situationwas worse than he had expected. Kurz sighed, wondering what to do. He should get Sousuke out of the waiting room. Fast. Even if it was just for a few minutes. “You’re scaring the locals.”
“Huh?”
“Get cleaned up, idiot.”
Sousuke looked down at his school uniform. “It’s ruined.”
"Take my spare shirt." Kurz reached for his duffel bag and forced a smile. “Ruin that, and you're dead."
Troubled brown eyes closed briefly, then, as if he had come to a resolution, Sousuke visibly straightened. "Thank you."
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His bloodied uniform jacket and shirt were safely tucked away in a plastic bag that one of the nurses had supplied. Kurz's shirt was two sizes to big and Sousuke had to roll up the sleeves to reveal his hands, but he didn't care. He checked his reflection in the restroom mirror once more, glad that water and soap had removed most of the stains.
For a frightening, panicky moment, when he had frantically scrubbed his hands, he had thought that the blood would never come off. It were silly fears, of course. The blood had always come off, no matter how many people he had killed, no matter who he had slaughtered. Even if that person was Kaname, who he had sworn to protect.
Sousuke stared at the mirror, and his reflection stared back. Accusation, failure, worry. All of those feelings were plain visible, and maybe that was what shocked him most. 'How can I call myself a professional if I can't get a grip on myself?'
Had the others seen how vulnerable he was? And Kurz was here. Sousuke wasn't quite sure what to make of his team mate's sudden appearance. Commander Kalinin's message had only said that Urzu 6 would arrive for back-up, but Sousuke had not expected Kurz to arrive within such a short time. Did that mean that there had been an outside threat, indeed? 'No. They would've told me.'
His reflection looked as puzzled as he felt, until a sickening thought got hold in his mind. 'Damage control.'
Kaname's father would want to see him punished, the police and possibly a criminal charge waited around the corner, and he was sure he had depleted whatever tolerance threshold Miss Kazaguraka or his class mates possessed. Was that why Kurz was here? Making sure that Seargent Clueless didn't cause more problems?
'Damn it.' Sousuke glared at his mirror image. 'I...'
His mental ramblings were cut short when the door opened and Kurz poked his head into the hospital restroom. "Yo, Sousuke. You better come."
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Floating. It was a nice feeling, that floating sensation. She floated through a world without substance and sound. Dark and warm, and without any worries. She clung to the sensation. Peaceful, it was so peaceful. She wished she could stay forever in this world without fears and pains.
Fragments of sound shattered the silence, a mismatch of tones that grated her ears. She shivered slightly when the warmth was ripped away from her, and she gradually became aware that the cacophony of noises had a meaning. Voices. How dare they disrupting the peaceful silence? Words. The words lured her out of the protective darkness. She recognised the voice. 'Trust me,' it whispered. 'I'm here to protect you.'
Lies. I trusted you. See what it got me? Go away.
Light. A face. Handsome in its own way, that face, yes. Eyes that had seen death, now full of concern and still brimming with happiness. That idiot. Go away. Stay away from me, you hear? Troublemaker. Sousuke, get lost. I'm so tired. Just go away already.
The darkness beckoned her, tempted and teased. Ensnared, she followed its sweet reassurance, plunging into the depth of an endless abyss until falling became floating. She smiled. It was pleasent. It was dark and warm. It was peaceful. Yes.
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'Everything will be okay. Kaname will survive. The operation went fine.'
The words formed an eerily happy singsong in Sousuke's head while he looked at Kaname's sleeping form. Her complexion was still too pale, two drips fed life into her and her chest was wrapped in bandages. Soft and steady, her chest rose and fell in the rythm of her breathing, her heart beat registering as a jagged curve on the monitor next to her bed. He soaked in the details, allowed himself to succumb to a fleeting moment of self-delusion.
"Please live, Chidori," Sousuke said quietly, quenching his out-of-place happiness with the ease of an M9 crunching a dung beetle. Even with the operation being a success, Kaname's survival chances were moderate at best due to the blood loss.
Suddenly, her eye lids fluttered and the pulse rate on the monitor shot up to an alarming rate. Kaname moaned something he couldn't understand, then murmured: "Sousuke... get... lost."
A direct hit with an armor-piercing bullet couldn't have been more effective. Sousuke took in a sharp breath, reeling back from words that... mattered. The next thing he knew was that Kurz dragged him back to the corridor to make way for the medical staff, and a nurse that told them to stay away until the patient was doing better.
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"Okay, let's see what we got so far. You said that you used just a simple trap?" Kurz Weber yawned and took a sip from the coffee mug Sousuke had placed in front of him. The two of them had spent the last twenty-eight hours trying to cover up for the mess at Jindai Highschool and looking for answers. On top of it, Kurz had had a quite unsettling conversation with Commander Kalinin.
Not to mention that Sousuke had spaced out more than a few times lately, probably worrying himself silly about Kaname. Like now, for example. His team mate stared at the table with a forlorn expression. Kurz sighed. "Sousuke."
"Huh?" The younger man's eyes focussed. "Sorry, Kurz."
"The trap."
"Oh." Sousuke jumped to his feet and rummaged through a box in his closet until he found what he was looking for. He placed a small device on the table and piled up various wires next to it.
Kurz eyed the small, growing pile doubtfully. “You call this a simple trap?”
“DRX-750. Nothing fancy. It’s easy to assemble and maintain,” Sousuke explained.
“According to the sweeper team’s report, the batteries of the device overheated due to false wiring, and that lead to the explosion.” Kurz stopped reading and frowned. “False wiring? Making such a mistake doesn’t sound like you, Sousuke.”
“Affirmative. I’m intimately familiar with the assembly of that particular design because I use it regularly to protect personal equipment. Maybe someone tempered with it?”
“Possible. Let’s have a closer look at the specifications,” Kurz fished for the appendix pages of the report, picked the blown up device’s wiring map and studied it closely. “C-2-blue, C-1-black.”
Sousuke shook his head. “I know for sure that I connected them to their usual slots, because they go in last. C-2-blue connects slots 43 and 57, C-1-black slots 12 and 15.”
Kurz stared at the sheet for a few seconds, then swallowed hard. “That’s not what it says here.”
“Did they refer to the regular instruction manual?”
“Yes.” Kurz shoved the wiring map into Sousuke’s face. “You wired it wrong.”
“No. I already told you that I can assemble it properly.” Sousuke’s fingers slid down a row of numbers as he checked through item numbers and technical data. “I made certain modifications to the device to improve performance, but it’s all well within acceptable safety margins. As a professional…”
The young Mithril soldier never finished the sentence. Little beads of sweat trickled down his paling face as he stared wide eyed at the document in his clenched hands. “But… Could it be possible?”
“Huh?” Kurz didn’t like his team mate’s darkening expression one bit.
“Apparently they sent me the latest version of the DRX-750.”
“Meaning…?”
“The layout is the same as with the old DRX-750, but they changed suppliers for most of the components. And if these new components couldn’t handle the extra power…”
“The device blows up. But… You checked the manual before building that thing, right?”
Silence.
“Tell me, damn it.”
“I made a mistake.”
“Mistake, my ass!” Kurz snapped. “You idiot!”
Sousuke looked as if he would be violently sick any moment. The crumpled manual sheet slid out of his hand, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I hurt her.”
